I don't understand why he's still there with all this insider information.
What are the democrats doing about this? What is congress doing?
How come there's no comment from anyone about this story?

This HAS to be investigated!

WHNT originally claimed last night that the blocked segment was due to “a techincal(sic) problem with CBS out of New York.” But that claim was contradicted by CBS in New York, who told Horton, that “there is no delicate way to put this: the WHNT claim is not true. There were no transmission difficulties. The problems were peculiar to Channel 19.”

WHNT now has a different explanation on its website:

WHNT says it “will re-air the broadcast of that segment.”

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/25/60-minutes-blocked/

Parts of "60 Minutes" Broadcast Blocked in Alabama...
Larisa Alexandrovna

If you do not yet know who Don Siegelman is or what has happened in this country, then let me ask you to please read the following articles and visit the following websites, before I tell you what the latest developments are:

Introduction

The Permanent Republican Majority Part I

The Permanent Republican Majority Part II

The Permanent Republican Majority Part III

Harper's Excellent Coverage via Scott Horton HERE

My blog, at-largely, HERE

And this evening's 60 Minutes broadcast HERE
Also Don Siegelman support site

Soviet America
Now, let me tell you what has been going on. As 60 Minutes was putting its show together, the White House put pressure on CBS -- the parent company -- to kill the show. Over the last few days, as word got out that the 60 Minutes show would air tonight, Karl Rove's associates began planting defamatory stories about journalists working on this story (see example here) and attacking the whistle-blower who came forward, Dana Jill Simpson. If you recall, Ms. Simpson testified, under oath, to Congress about Karl Rove's involvement in politicizing the DOJ. What you may not know, however, is that her house mysteriously caught fire and she was run off the road in the weeks leading up to her testimony.

What you may also not know is that Governor Siegelman's house was broken into twice during his trial as was his attorney's office.

Yesterday, the attacks on Simpson and journalists increased with a series of emails from the Alabama GOP. See Here.

Tonight was something truly unseen in US history. During the 60 Minutes broadcast and ONLY during the Don Siegelman portion -- the screen went black for Huntsville residents and Mobile residents. There are other reports of other locations, but I have not yet confirmed those. In Florida, a series of strange ads were running about the FISA bill and how Democrats are not tough on terrorism, apparently during the 60 Minutes hour and also right before 60 Minutes, but not after (still trying to confirm when the ads stopped running).

In other words, in the United States of America, a man is imprisoned for being a Democrat. When reporters attempt to get this story out, they are threatened and smeared. When all else fails, the public is not allowed to see the news. This is not acceptable and I -- as a US citizen -- demand that Congress investigate this series of blackouts immediately. Any company involved in this must have their FCC license pulled too. Karl Rove may be gone from office, but he clearly is not gone from power. So long as his buddy, George W. Bush, continues to occupy the White House -- what used to be a symbol of how a nation could both be governed and be free -- we will continue toward abuse after imperial, no Soviet, abuse against us. That too is unacceptable.

Contact Congress now, non-stop, and demand a full investigation into what caused this selective blackout. You can find your member's contact information here. If no investigation happens ... If no one in Congress responds, then you will know finally and fully the ugly truth: we are no longer a democracy . And if we are no longer a democracy, then presidential election can fix the problem, because something that no longer exists cannot be fixed. Sadly, at that point, the only path left to us is the one I most abhor.

Update:
We are now being told that it was a technical issue with CBS in New York:

We apologize that you missed the first segment of 60 Minutes tonight featuring "The Prosecution of Don Siegelman."

It was a techincal(sic) problem with CBS out of New York. We are working with them right now to see if we can re-broadcast the segment.

Please be patient with us during this time. We are doing our best to correct the problem.

Excuse me? Are they trying to tell us that a glitch in New York ONLY happened in Alabama -- which is the topic of the 60 Minutes broadcast -- and ONLY during the Don Siegelman segment? Are you kidding me? We have selective prosecution and now we have selective news delivery?
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You can lead a republican to the truth, but you can't make him think it...

Isn't it bad enough that the GOP has adopted the tact of calling shotgun on issues they are guilty of themselves? Do we have to listen to opportunistic Dems who are following their lead?

Could Mr. Conyers please explain the difference between what the DOJ did, and his refusal to impeach?

In the end, crimes were allowed, because prosecuting the perpetuators would damage the party's chance of attaining a bulletproof majority, in both instances.

When I think of the legal reasons why Mr. Conyers doesn't push for the impeachment of BushCo, it boils down to the same thing. Mr. Conyers has selected party loyalty, because to enforce the laws of America means that half the DLC will be sitting in Gitmo next to Bush and his Daddy's Taliban buddies.

When I see names like Rockefeller, Durbin, and Sylvestre getting non-stop favorable press, while knowing that these same rat bastards are the ones who sided with the rat bastards who cheerled America into becoming a worldwide laughingstock, it makes me want to puke.

We are witnessing the Democratic flipside of the swiftboat campaign. Instead of swiftboating to damage, they use polls to determine what the Constitutional lefts concerns are, then they allow the most prosecutable of the criminals to spearhead the efforts that they know will create the warm and fuzzy feeling needed for us to forget that they've been raping us.

Jeez, when it's written like that, they sound more like pedophiles buying bicycles for their victims, so the victim doesn't prevent his/her next rape by calling the cops.

The Gonzo/Bush team fired attorneys to prevent damage to his party. Conyers/Pelosi are refusing to push impeachment so the negative fallout won't damage their party.

It's all just organized crime to me.

Breaking: Alabama Dems call for special prosecutor...

From a presser I just got:

Alabama Democratic Party
For Immediate Release:
February 25, 2008
Contact: Jim Spearman (334) 262-2221 Cell: (205) 712-2350

Alabama Democratic Party Calls for Special Prosecutor

Dems Say FCC Should Launch Inquiry into Huntsville CBS Blackout

The Alabama Democratic Party today called on the US Justice Dept. and the US House Judiciary Committee to appoint a special prosecutor into the allegations of the political prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman after the facts and interviews were released by CBS Television Network in their 60 Minutes program this past Sunday night.

Executive Director, Jim Spearman says there is too much smoke and too many facts for DOJ and Congress to ignore. "Abuse of the federal prosecutorial system for partisan political gain must be taken very seriously. The accusations by the 52 former state attorneys general, including the former republican AG from Arizona Grant Woods should be taken into account by the US Attorney General", Spearman says. Congress should not delay in taking the next step to call witnesses and to hold those not answering supeanoes in contempt of Congress.

For the Alabama Republican Party to issue its statement yesterday prior to the airing of the 60 Minutes segment trying to discredit CBS even before the program airs shows that indeed republicans may have something to hide. "How can the ALGOP really try to discredit a former republican AG who is now a co-chair of their US Presidential Nominee's campaign effort,"Spearman notes.

Also today, Alabama Democratic Chairman Joe Turnham says he will send a letter to the Federal Communications Commission asking for a formal inquiry into the CBS Huntsville affiliate black out of the the Siegelman airing. It has come to the attention of many Democrats in North Alabama that the principal owners of WHNT are Bush Pioneers and major republican donors. Many suspect that enormous pressure was put on CBS to not air the Siegelman story. If CBS received political pressure to stifle the first amendment rights of the network or affiliate, the FCC and Congress should take appropriate oversight into the matter.

Sounds to me like they are pissed and are not going to take it anymore. Can we move these folks into replace our current Congressional Democrats?
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You can lead a republican to the truth, but you can't make him think it...

By: Christy Hardin Smith Monday February 25, 2008 8:35 am

In a prior post, we talked about the quasi-judicial role that prosecutors play: review the facts and the laws involved, and determine whether the conduct in question and the evidence you have requires charges in the interests of justice. When a prosecutor deviates from this -- forcing the evidence to fit the law in any way they can to justify prosecution -- then you have a very big public problem.

It is the public's trust that is violated by this misconduct. Via Scott Horton:

First, we know that the first two career prosecutors assigned to the case, including the most experience prosecutors who worked on it, came to the same conclusion that Grant Woods did: no reasonable prosecutor would ever have charged this case. The Justice Department has consistently made false statements about the roles of the two earlier prosecutors, and their role only emerged in the last few months. It’s extremely noteworthy that throughout the history of this case, whenever a career prosecutor concluded that charges should not be brought, that career prosecutor ran into a bump in his career and was off the case. The message to the remaining career prosecutors was plenty clear. In fact it is clear that the career prosecutors’ views were overridden by political appointees driven by a strong partisan political agenda.

Second, they claim that the case was brought on a fair reading of the law. It was not, and indeed reasonable career prosecutors never would have acted on the basis of the reading they advanced, and a fair detached judge never would have allowed the case to go forward. This case offered neither.

Third, they claim that evidence was produced to sustain the charges. But the key evidence that the prosecutors brought forward was false, and they knew it was false. In this case proceeding on the basis of that false evidence was a corrupt wielding of prosecutorial power, pursued for a corrupt partisan political end—the elimination of a political adversary. They withheld the Bailey notes which would have demonstrated that his memory on this was conflicted or wrong and would therefore have devastated his testimony. There is mounting evidence that one or more witnesses were unethically pressured to give false evidence or face retaliation.... (emphasis mine)

If this were the sole instance of politicized prosecutorial conduct under the Bush Administration, it would still be a huge problem. But it isn't. Not by a long shot.

Which makes this yet another enormous red flag in a long, long line of systematic perversion of justice and the rule of law in an "ends justifies the means" scheme hatched by the Bush Administration. It reeks. And any decent, upstanding person in this country -- regardless of political affiliation -- ought to be outraged that the mechanisms of their government would be used for such a dirty, appalling political scheme.

To deliberately hold back evidence which is exculpatory in nature, calling into question the fundamental fairness of proceedings, raises serious questions of prosecutorial misconduct. Should it be shown that there was a broad-ranging political conspiracy to misuse the resources of the USAtty's office for political purposes? That the name in the center of all of this fetid, festering scourge is none other than Karl Rove? Well, that's just par for the Turdblossom, isn't it?

Except it can also be criminally and civilly actionable. More sunshine, now...
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You can lead a republican to the truth, but you can't make him think it...

The Republican AG who was interviewed in the 20/20 piece stated that the prosecution and imprisonment of Mr. Siegelman was politically motivated and expressed his opinion that what had been done was wrong. When asked why he was speaking out as he was a Republican, his answer was that he was an American first.

Mr. Chairman, isn't it time for the House Judiciary Committee to subpoena Mr. Rove and the others who are accused of misusing the DoJ and even of manufacturing false "evidence" to imprison an "inconvenient" political opponent to clear the way for his Republican opposition?

Political prisoners in America? Men and women continuing to be sent needlessly to die in Iraq? The US Treasury being bankrupted in order to keep financing bush's Iraq folly? Spying on Americans in violation of the 4th amendment? Willful negligence allowing the destruction of much of an entire US city, and refusal to rebuild said City--while claiming the need to rebuild the infrastructure of Iraq (even as it's being further destroyed on an ongoing daily basis)? Outsourcing the jobs of large portions of the American workforce? Importing of toxic toys and foods, lack of inspection of domestic foods? Pollution of the environment while the EPA looks the other way?

When will the Democrats in Congress, especially the "Bush Dogs" finally understand that the People have Had Enough? When will they themselves have had enough? Things are not going to get any better in the next 11 months. In fact, things will keep getting worse and unless Congress intervenes now, we will see more political prisoners, more deaths in Iraq; more US cities vulnerable because of bushie incompetence, more toxins in toys, food, water and air; and more rovian "Dirty Tricks" and character destroying lies which could well assure another Republican presidency if Congress doesn't demand accountability now.

Now, it seems that the DOJs in the states feel they, too, can do as they god-damned well please. What justice? Maybe, the Department of Justice should change its name to the Department of Political Expedience instead?

This story is so sickening. The pursuit by many to do in one man who was innocent to begin with. The GOP's really good at that, particularly, if Rove's in on it.

Kucinich is dealing with the same kinds of power trying to do him in.

It seems laws just don't count anymore. Eventually, this will result in more violence in this country.

"There is nothing to fear but fear itself."
Franklin D. Roosevelt

is the implosion of Democracy in America. This blog is providing ample proof that partisan politics is now trumping all functions of government. This blog is providing proof that it's on both sides of the aisle, not just the Republicans. Just because "the game" is played two different ways by each side does not mean it's OK to play "the game" with our government.

Today, we have partisan politics trumping even the justice department with selective prosecutions - a game both sides of the aisle are guilting of playing. We can be sure that when Democrats gain the White House, the roles will reverse and they will selectively prosecute while Republicans play the self righteous outraged citizens. Neither side will have our countries best interests in mind.

Democracy is already dead. We're just too optimistic to accept it yet.

Just wondering what's it going to take to finally get the guts and put these people away. Or does this explain why nothing gets done?

GOP Engages In ‘Political Extortion,’ Draws Up Hit List Of Democratic Lawmakers

In 2007, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed forward on her pledge to run the most ethical Congress in history and established the House Ethics Enforcement Task Force. She charged the group with setting up an Office of Congressional Ethics, an “independent ethics panel” composed of six “nonpartisan professional staff” members who were jointly appointed by the Speaker and Minority Leader. Lawmakers and lobbyists would be barred from serving.

The House is expected to vote on the task force’s proposal on Thursday. Even though this committee will be independent and nonpartisan, the GOP is already resisting. In an attempt to dissuade Democrats from voting for the ethics office, senior House Republican aides are drawing up a hit list of 10 Democratic lawmakers who would be pursued with ethics investigations if the measure passes. National Journal reports (sub. req’d):

Senior House Republican aides are drawing up a list of Democrats to target if the House votes Thursday to create an independent panel to weigh ethics complaints against lawmakers.

In a move that one top Democratic lawmaker called “political extortion,” House GOP aides said Tuesday the names of more than 10 Democrats are likely to end up on the list and that investigations would be pursued against all of them.

It is not clear how much support House Republican leaders are giving to the staff effort, but several GOP leadership aides who were asked about the list said they were aware of it.

Democratic lawmakers on the GOP list include John Murtha (PA), Jim Moran (VA), and John Conyers (MI), among others.

Pursuing investigations against lawmakers is one thing. But holding off on the investigations to blackmail lawmakers is another. “If they have legitimate ethics concerns about any member, why wouldn’t they bring it forward now?” wondered Rep. Michael Capuano (D-MA), who chairs the ethics task force.

If Boehner is truly serious about his pledge “to enforce a tougher ethical standard in the 110th Congress,” he should disavow this hit list.

GOP Engages In ‘Political Extortion

'Primitive' White House technology lost more than 1M emails over 1,000 days, former employee says
02/27/2008 @ 9:17 am
Filed by Nick Juliano

Questions remain over Cheney's missing Plame e-mails

The internal workings of the White House that caused it to lose perhaps millions of internal e-mails over several years is becoming clearer, but with that sharper focus comes diminishing hopes among Democrats and open-government activists that history will ever get the full picture of how the Bush administration operated.

At a Capitol Hill hearing yesterday, a former White House computer technician outlined the administration's shortcomings in implementing a "primitive" e-mail archiving system that created a high risk the information would be lost.

Steven McDevitt, who worked for the administration from 2002 to 2006, also doubled previously reported estimates of the number of days of missing e-mails. Investigators for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee previously said e-mails were missing for 473 days; McDevit said in written testimony to the committee that the number was closer to 1,000 days. He also said at least 1 million e-mails were believed to have gone missing; activists have estimated the number of missing e-mails is closer to 10 million.

The exact number of missing e-mails is unknown, but several days on which e-mails were not archived covered key dates in a Justice Department inquiry into the roles of Vice President Dick Cheney and his aides in leaking the identity of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. As RAW STORY previously reported, no e-mails were archived on the very day the probe was announced and White House officials were ordered to maintain anything that could become evidence in the investigation that ended the conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, on perjury and obstruction of justice charges.

As The Associated Press reports, Tuesday's hearing shed some light on what happened to e-mails from the Vice President's office, but many questions remain unanswered.

For the first time, a former White House computer technician went public with the details. Steven McDevitt revealed in written statements submitted to Congress how a plan was developed to try to recover the missing e-mail for [Special Prosecutor Patrick] Fitzgerald.

Ultimately, 250 pages of electronic messages were retrieved from the personal e-mail accounts of officials in Cheney's office, but whether that amounted to all the relevant e-mail is a question that may never be answered.

McDevitt made clear that it was a sensitive issue inside the White House.

"I worked with ... White House Counsel on efforts to provide an explanation to the special prosecutor," McDevitt wrote. "This included providing a briefing to the special prosecutor's staff on this subject."

Rep. Henry Waxman, the committee's chairman, also said during Tuesday's hearing that the Republican National Committee, which had hosted e-mail addresses used for official business by White House adviser Karl Rove and others, "has no intention of trying to restore the missing White House e-mails."

The Washington Post provides some background:

Administration officials have acknowledged that Rove and many other White House officials routinely used RNC accounts for government business, despite rules requiring that they conduct such business through official communications channels. The RNC deleted all e-mails until 2004, when it exempted White House officials from its e-mail purging policy. About 80 White House aides used RNC accounts for official government business, committee staff members said. Rove, for example, sent or received 140,000 e-mails on RNC servers from 2002 to 2007, and more than half involved official ".gov" accounts, the panel has said. The RNC dispute is part of a broader debate over whether the Bush administration has complied with long-standing statutory requirements to preserve official White House records -- including those reflecting potentially sensitive policy discussions -- for history and in case of future legal demands.

Whether historians will ever get a full picture of internal deliberations remains to be seen. But Tuesday's hearing went a long way toward exposing problems with the White House and RNC. McDevitt, according to the Associated Press, also revealed that:

_The White House had no complete inventory of e-mail files.

_Until mid-2005 the e-mail system had serious security flaws, in which "everyone" on the White House computer network had access to e-mail. McDevitt wrote that the "potential impact" of the security flaw was that there was no way to verify that retained data had not been modified.

_There was no automatic system to ensure that e-mails were archived and preserved.

The National Security Archive, which is suing the White House over its poor record keeping, said Tuesday that the hearing revealed incompetence on the part of the White House, which also ignored warnings that its e-mails were not being archived in accordance with legal requirements.

"The White House's witnesses disclaimed knowledge and responsibility for the e-mail problem," said Meredith Fuchs, the group's general counsel, in a statement. "The [National Archives] witnesses said that they are waiting for the White House to take action. But no one is doing anything and time is running out."
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Also:

Congress to Bush: You've Lost Mail

By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Wednesday, February 27, 2008; 1:30 PM

The Bush White House has made a mockery of the Presidential Records Act and its requirement that official White House records -- including e-mails -- be preserved for posterity.

At a congressional hearing yesterday, it became clear for the first time that top White House officials knowingly adopted a new e-mail system in 2002 that was riddled with technical problems that not only risked data loss but could easily be exploited by those who wished to keep their e-mails from public scrutiny. We've known for a while that a lot of White House e-mails, by some accounts numbering in the millions, are missing and have possibly been erased. Yesterday's discovery raises the question of whether that happened by accident -- or by design. And the White House's unhurried approach to addressing the problem is hardly reassuring.

Similarly, we already knew that Karl Rove and many of his colleagues routinely used Republican National Committee e-mail accounts for official business over a period of years, thereby avoiding any archiving process whatsoever. But House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman made the startling announcement yesterday that the RNC has not tried -- and has no intention of trying -- to restore any of those e-mails.

In addition to the many detailed questions prompted by yesterday's hearing, there is one overarching issue: Can White House officials coast all the way to Jan. 20 without being exposed in such a way that the press and the public take full notice of what they've done?

At least when it comes to the e-mail scandal, there are signs they can. The coverage today was muted at best.
Reason to Be Suspicious

Here is the report from the Democratic committee staff issued yesterday. Its main bullet points:

-- "The White House has not had a reliable system for preserving White House e-mails since 2002, when the White House made the decision to stop using the Automatic Records Management System (ARMS) used by the Clinton White House." This despite repeated warnings to that effect from technologists inside the White House and from officials at the National Archives.

-- "Until mid-2005, the system that the White House used for preserving e-mails had serious security flaws." This meant that White House aides could potentially have viewed, changed and/or erased their own or others' ostensibly secure e-mail archives.

-- "The White House has refused to cooperate with efforts by the National Archives to ensure the preservation of White House e-mails."

-- "The process of recovering missing e-mails from RNC servers and White House back-up tapes has not begun."

At yesterday's hearing, two officials from the White House's Office of Administration expressed confidence that the e-mails were not really missing. They said that all e-mails should have been captured by the ad hoc "journaling system" adopted after the White House changed e-mail programs. And they insisted that, in the worst-case scenario, they could always get the missing e-mails off their backup tapes.

But an anecdote in the report belies that confidence. There's been exactly one previous attempt to find and restore missing e-mails. It took place in late 2005 and early 2006, after special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald subpoenaed the White House for e-mails related to the leak of Valerie Plame's identity. White House officials found that several days' worth of e-mails from the vice president's office were missing in their entirety. After several failed attempts, officials did finally manage to find some e-mails, there's no reason to believe they found all of them.

From the House report: "The difficulties the White House encountered in recovering e-mails for Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald . . . undermine its claim that the journaling system was adequate. According to documents provided and shown to the Committee, the journaling archive system contained no e-mails from the Office of the Vice President for important dates: September 30, 2003, to October 6,2003.

"In an effort to recover the e-mails, the White House restored backup tapes for these days. These backup tapes also contained no journaled e-mails or .pst files for those dates for the Office of the Vice President. The only e-mails that could be recovered and provided to the Special Counsel were e-mails that the White House was able to restore from the personal email accounts of officials in the Vice President's office."

The White House team eventually "recovered 17,956 e-mails from these individual mailboxes on the backup tape and used these as their basis to search for e-mails responsive to the Special Counsel's request," the report says.

But consider this fact: "A restoration of personal mailboxes from a backup tape does not recover any e-mails deleted by the user before the backup tape was made."

The backup tape the White House used to restore the e-mails was a snapshot taken fully two weeks after the gap in question.

Also consider that according to Steven McDevitt, a former White House computer technician, until mid-2005 "the file servers and the file directories used to store the retained email . . . were accessible by everyone on the EOP network." McDevitt said the "potential impact" of this security flaw was that there was "[n]o verification that data retained has not been modified."

Here are the written responses from McDevitt to questions from the committee, and a series of other supporting documents provided to the committee by the White House and the archives.

Here are the prepared texts of opening statements by Alan R. Swendiman, director of the Office of Administration, Theresa Payton, the White House's chief information officer, and Allen Weinstein, the archivist of the United States.

Blogger emptywheel liveblogged the contentious hearing.
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You can lead a republican to the truth, but you can't make him think it...

Crimes in High Places
Elizabeth Holtzman
Posted February 27, 2008 | 09:26 PM (EST)

Despite President Bush's frequent claim that "we don't do torture," top officials of the US government this month admitted that waterboarding was used on at least three detainees. The White House reaction was to announce that, if needed, waterboarding would be used again.

Since crimes in high places have now been admitted, those responsible must be held accountable. There are only two ways to do this: prosecution or impeachment.

Most experts agree that waterboarding, which was used at least as early as the Spanish Inquisition, is torture. As such, it violates the US anti-torture law 18 USC Section 2340 (a) as well as US treaties. Although it bars torture overseas, it covers any US national who order, directs, or conspires with those who engage in it abroad, including, for example, a president or vice-president. Thus, all administration officials involved in the waterboarding, including President Bush, could be guilty of violating that law.

Given the recent admissions and the White House's refusal to condemn the practice, it is most likely that the president, the vice president and other high level officials authorized the waterboarding. At the very least this was not -- and is still not -- viewed by them as a "rogue" activity.

Notwithstanding those who deny that waterboarding is torture, no one can seriously dispute that waterboarding constitutes cruel and degrading treatment of detainees, a practice that was outlawed by the War Crimes Act of 1996. That act was designed to carry out US obligations under the Geneva Conventions and makes it a federal crime to violate certain provisions of the War Crimes Act.

It is indisputable that the president and then Attorney General Gonzales, as well as other members of the Bush administration, understood that "enhanced interrogation techniques," including waterboarding, could violate the Geneva Conventions and the War Crimes Act.

It was the fear of criminal prosecution that motivated at least in part the president's rejection of Geneva Convention applicability to Al Qaeda and Taliban detainees. The thinking was that if the Geneva Conventions didn't apply, then the War Crimes Act did not apply. But administration officials were still haunted by the possibility of criminal liability under the War Crimes Act for waterboarding and other mistreatment of detainees, so in the fall of 2006, just as it became clear that the Democrats were going to win control of the House, the Bush administration snuck through legislation retroactively nullifying the War Crimes Act.

That nullification can fortunately be overturned in the next administration, thereby making anyone who violated the original War Crimes Act, including, if the facts warrant it, the president and his team liable to prosecution.

But the fact that the administration approved and engaged in water boarding -- a practice that top officials knew at the time could violate US law -- calls for a response by Congress now.

There are two approaches. One is to ensure that the criminal law is enforced. But Mr. Mukasey, the new Attorney General, has refused to do this. His position is that the Justice Department cannot prosecute anyone if it advised that person that the conduct was legal. This position smacks of the Nuremberg defense -- "I was just following orders" -- and is untenable.

The February 2002 memo to the president from Mr. Gonzales shows that the rejection of Geneva was a ruse to allow mistreatment of detainees, and suggests that the president knew what he was doing, violated the Geneva Conventions and US criminal law, but was determined to proceed no matter what, trying the best he could to provide legal cover for his actions.

The president's objective was to circumvent the law. That is clear from the effort to nullify it retroactively, in essence giving himself and others pardons.

Congress should not sit by. The attorney general must be requested by Congress to commence an investigation of the president and the top team, picking a special prosecutor to do so. I doubt that this will happen. What these events show is that the special prosecutor law must be reenacted by Congress, to avoid a repetition of this spectacle.

Criminal investigation and prosecution must commence under the next administration.

Impeachment must commence. This is the second approach. For too long the Congress has taken impeachment off the table, but the time has come to put it back on. Since impeachment doesn't require violation of federal criminal law, it will not matter that the War Crimes Act has been retroactively nullified. Congress can impeach for the abuse of power inherent in the president's knowing and deliberate effort to violate the War Crimes Act. Similarly, Congress can determine that water boarding is torture and impeach the president for holding himself above the law with respect to the anti-torture act.

Failure to act creates a culture of impunity around presidential misconduct of the most repugnant kind. It is imperative that those like President Bush who put themselves above the law be held accountable. That is the essence of what a democracy, in the end, is all about: the rule of law.

Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman served on the House Judiciary Committee during Nixon's impeachment. She co-authored the 1973 special prosecutor statute, and co-wrote (with Cynthia L. Cooper) the 2006 book The Impeachment of George W. Bush.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-holtzman/crimes-in-high-places_b_88825.html

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I M P E A C H

One of the defining characteristics to what it means to be an American, is the freedom from a form of Government that needs to spy on it’s own people; FREEDOM FROM TYRANNY. Thus The Fourth Amendment.

R E M E M B E R:
THEY(sic) HATE US FOR OUR FREEDOMS…

And so, THEY(sic) lobby and debate the merits to undermining that characteristic, that freedom, that Right. When Americans and America lose that Right and freedom, who wins?

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WHAT DOES CONGRESS SUPPORT AND DEFEND
IF NOT THE CONSTITUTION OF THE USA?

Latest step in the Bush/Mukasey stonewalling about the House's Contempt of Congress charges against Miers and Bolton: Kagro X’s front page Daily kos diary discusses this letter, dated February 28, 08, from Speaker Pelosi to AG Mukasey, demanding that the DoJ pursue the contempt charges against Miers and Bolton: (emphasis mine)

”Dear Mr. Attorney General:
In accordance with 2 U.S.C. § 194 and the attached House Resolution 979 (adopted on February 14, 2008), I have today sent a certification to the United States Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeffrey Taylor, advising him of the failure of former White House Counsel, Harriet Miers, to appear, testify and produce documents in compliance with a duly issued subpoena of a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee and of the failure of Joshua Bolten, White House Chief of Staff and custodian of White House documents, to produce documents in his custody as required by a duly issued subpoena of the House Judiciary Committee.”

”Under section 194, Mr. Taylor is now required "to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action." The appropriate grand jury action is a criminal charge for violation of 2 U.S.C. § 192...and shall be subject to a fine and "imprisonment in a common jail for not less than one month nor more than twelve months."

”According to the testimony of your predecessor…and your recent testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, the Justice Department intends to prevent Mr. Taylor from complying...You claimed that "enforcement by way of contempt of a congressional subpoena is not permitted when the President directs a direct adviser of his... not to appear...or... to produce documents…but cited no court decision that supports this proposition.”

“…There is no authority by which persons may wholly ignore a subpoena and fail to appear as directed because a President unilaterally instructs them to do so...the witness is not at liberty to disregard the subpoena and fail to appear at the required time and place... Short of a formal assertion of executive privilege, which cannot be made in this case, there is no authority that permits a President to advise anyone to ignore a duly issued congressional subpoena for documents…”

”Your press spokesman has stated that you will "act promptly" to review this matter and reach a final decision…If, however, you intend to persist in preventing Mr. Taylor from carrying out his statutory obligation to present this matter to the grand jury in the District of Columbia, we respectfully request that you inform us… within one week from today, so that the House may proceed with a civil enforcement suit in federal district court…

It would seem a couple of things :

1/ Senator McCain, having wrapped up his campaign a tad early, has gone straight into the Campaign for the general election without waiting for the democrats to finish their kibuki dance.

2/ Senator McCain is presuming his opponent is Barak Obama.

3/ Senator McCain Knows Exactly what the real issue is. And would like to put it to bed, quietly, before he has an awake opponent.

Senator Obama Correctly pointed out that the War in Iraq was an offensive act. Senator McCain responded that That Does Not Matter. Senator McCain said that WHY we are at war is not important. That what is important is THAT we are at war. And that we win, though he made no mention of what the prize might be.

Senator McCain should not be allowed to believe that any one would believe him, should he spout such a line of botulism tainted pigswill. Yet the Senator obviously believes he will be believed. By numbers.

This is why Mr Bush should be Impeached.

It is also the lynchpin on which hangs Senator McCains' entire campaign. A hundred year war. Never looking back. For ... well, not Honor, certainly. ...not for Country. ...not for rights and freedom. ...not for Mom or apple pie. Apparently for the simple fear of looking at why we have killed a million Iraqis by invading their nearly defenseless country. That, and the fear of looking at the Bill of Rights and wondering what it is for.

I think I attempted several times the point of how to assure loyalty to a cause that deserves none : By getting the initiate to perform a reprehensible act in the name of that cause - then , ever after, guilt prevents reconsideration. Because reconsideration results in the admission of guilt. Which is painful.

Senator McCain is attempting to prevent America reconsidering. He is pointing in the direction we have been going. We all know it is the wrong direction. And that is why America is reconsidering, and why Senator McCain is attempting to prevent that.

Or pervert it. (meant seriously)

In sum, I think it important this point be handled correctly. Please consider it.

Different matter entirely :
Am I the only guy that thinks Barak Obama means Lightning and Thunder?
FF

Postscript : Liked what Pelosi had to say today.

02/28/2008 @ 8:01 am
Filed by Larisa Alexandrovna

Hijacker had post-9/11 flights scheduled, files say

Newly-released records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request contradict the 9/11 Commission’s report on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and raise fresh questions about the role of Saudi government officials in connection to the hijackers.

The nearly 300 pages of a Federal Bureau of Investigation timeline used by the 9/11 Commission as the basis for many of its findings were acquired through a FOIA request filed by Kevin Fenton, a 26 year old translator from the Czech Republic. The FBI released the 298-page “hijacker timeline” Feb. 4.

The FBI timeline reveals that alleged hijacker Hamza Al-Ghamdi, who was aboard the United Airlines flight which crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, had booked a future flight to San Francisco. He also had a ticket for a trip from Casablanca to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.

Though referenced repeatedly in the footnotes of the final 9/11 Commission report, the timeline has not previously been made available to the public.

The FBI timeline is dated Nov. 14, 2003 but appears to have been put together earlier (since the last date mentioned in the document is Oct. 22, 2001) and was provided to the 9/11 Commission during its 2003 investigation. The final Commission report cites the FBI timeline 52 times.
Post Sept. 11, 2001 flights

The FBI timeline reveals that Al-Ghamdi, the alleged United hijacker, was booked onto several flights scheduled for after the 9/11 attacks, a piece of information not documented in the Commission’s final report. According to the FBI timeline, Al-Ghamdi was booked on another United Airlines flight on the very day of the attack.

On page 288 under an entry pertaining to “H AlGhamdi,” the FBI timeline reads: "Future flight. Scheduled to depart Los Angeles International Airport for San Francisco International Airport on UA 7950."

The sourcing reads simply: “UA passenger information.”

The timeline similarly documents Al-Ghamdi’s bookings for several other post 9/11 flights, including one on Sept. 20, 2001 from Casablanca, Morocco to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and another on Sept. 29, 2001 from Riyadh to Damman, Saudi Arabia. (FBI Timeline 2, p. 296 under “H Alghamdi”)

No additional information or explanation is offered in the FBI timeline itself.
The Saudi connection

In January 2000, then-FBI Director Louis Freeh and CIA Director George Tenet attended regular briefings as Malaysian intelligence conducted surveillance of a “terrorist summit meeting” in Kuala Lumpur. Among the attendees were Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, two men who would later allegedly hijack American Airlines Flight 77 and crash it into the Pentagon.

A week after the Malaysian summit, al-Mihdar and al-Hazmi traveled to the United States. According to the 9/11 Commission report, they arrived in Los Angeles on Jan. 15 and “spent about two weeks there before moving to San Diego.” (9/11 Commission report, p. 215, chapter 7). The footnote for this item shows that the Commission relied on a different FBI report, “‘Summary of Pentbom Investigation,’ Feb.29, 2004 (classified version), p.16.”

But the FBI timeline contradicts this claim, placing the alleged hijackers in San Diego with specific details. According to the timeline, the two men resided in Apartment 152 at Parkwood Apartments, San Diego, from Jan. 15 through Feb. 2, 2000.

“A rental application shows that before renting Apartment 150 Parkwood Apartments on 02/05/2000, AL-MlHDHAR and Nawaf Alhazmi alleged that they resided with [REDACTED] from 01/15/2000 to 02/02/2000 at Apartment 152 of the same apartment complex,” page 52 of the FBI timeline reads.

Two pages later, the same apartment complex is noted again, this time with its full address: “AL-MIHDHAR and Nawaf Alhazmi resided at Parkwood Apartments, located at 6401 Mount Ada Road, Apartment 150, San Diego, CA. [REDACTED] was the co-signor and guarantor on the lease agreement for this apparement. The rental application shows that before renting Apartment 150, AL-MIHDHAR and Nawaf Alhazmi resided with [REDACTED]." (A photograph of apartment 152 appears atop this article. An image of apartment 150 appears on page 2.)

In other words, according to the only public account, both Al-Mihdhar and Hazmi were in San Diego, not Los Angeles, contrary to the Commission’s report.

Why did the Commission use an alternate source for the whereabouts of the two men, when the FBI’s own timeline said they were in San Diego by Jan. 15, the same day as their arrival in the US?

Paul Thompson, author of the The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute: A Comprehensive Chronicle of the Road to 9/11--and America's Response, has been wading through the FBI timeline since its release. His preliminary analysis can be found at the website of the History Commons (formerly known as the Center for Cooperative Research).

Thompson believes that the possible motive for the Commission to alter the dates is to obscure official Saudi ties to the hijackers.

He points to the redaction of the name of a person who is a known employee of a Saudi defense contractor, Omar al-Bayoumi, who lived at the same location.

“We know it’s Bayoumi,” said Thompson, “because after 9/11, the Finnish Government mistakenly released a classified FBI list of suspects that showed Bayoumi living in apartment #152 of Parkwood Apartments.” That information is available here.

“But also important is that it strongly suggests that the hijackers already had a support network in Southern California before they arrived,” Thompson continued.

“In the official version of the story now, the hijackers drift around L.A. listlessly for two weeks before chancing to come across Bayoumi in a restaurant [according to Bayoumi’s account],” Thompson added. “Whereupon he's an incredible good Samaritan and takes them down to San Diego, pays their rent, etc.”

”But from the FBI's timeline, we now know the hijackers started staying at Bayoumi's place on Jan. 15 – the very same day they arrived,” Thompson says. “So obviously they must have been met at the airport and taken care of from their very first hours in the US. That's huge because the FBI maintains to this day that the hijackers never had any accomplices in the US.”

Robert Baer, a former CIA case officer in the Middle East whose See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism became the inspiration for the award winning film Syriana, concurs with Thompson’s view.

“There are enough discrepancies and unanswered questions in the 9/11 Commission report that under a friendly administration, the 9/11 investigation should be re-opened,” Baer wrote in an email message Tuesday night.

“Bayoumi clearly offered material assistance to [the 9/11 hijackers].”

READ THE DOCUMENTS: PDF pages 1-105, PDF pages 106-210, PDF pages 211-297.
Continue to page 2: Who is Bayoumi?

Larisa Alexandrovna is managing editor of investigative news for Raw Story and regularly reports on intelligence and national security stories. Contact: larisa@rawstory.com.
click here

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You can lead a republican to the truth, but you can't make him think it...

When making preparations for "unexpected attacks", such as the one about to be unleashed on Iran, the puppetmasters usually take great pains to protect their assets.

One such asset, at least for the UK, is Prince Harry. After months of front line duty in Afghanistan, a handy "foreign leak" outed his precarious position resulting in a one way ticket home.

While some nations regard humans such as Harry, national treasures, America prays to the almighty dollar in the sky. The question becomes, how do we protect the ill-gotten gain accrued from unwarranted wars, during a time of great terror and economic uncertainty, such as what we witnessed after 9/11?

BushCo protecting their assets in preparation of 9/11 was easy, due to the fact that the attacks came in the USA. All they had to do was take out disaster insurance for their stocks during the run up to the attack, then drop it immediately thereafter. As Average Joe/Jane watched his/her retirement stock drop, the insider investor class elitists of America were spared.

Has anyone else seen the articles about investors being warned away from their investments in Iran? As a stand alone issue, the red flags don't fly. But when I look at the warnings given to Gaza about an impending invasion by Isreal, the warships positioned off the coast of Lebanon, McCain's stubborn refusal to see anything other than 100 more years of killing brown people, Government officials being told to ignore America's Justice system, and the Democrats finally understanding that "we the people" are serious about national loyalty and the rule of law over gangland activity disguised as party politics, I'm left with the belief that George and the DLC/RNC Congress would rather see America die or commit to another unwarranted war, than have the truth be known.

Did anyone follow the Texas story about the DA who was caught on camera trying to meet an underage boy for sex? When he realised that they had the goods on him, he killed himself. Of course, I can see where other pedophile Judges and DA's could have been spooked into thinking that their victims might be empowered by this type of activity, so they are suing the corporation that aired it, as a deterrent to others who may have the internal strength to fight, but not the physical strength to prevent their molestation.

My point being, even though America holds the honor of being the number 1 incarcerator of it's citizenry, the people who get off on our imprisonment would rather kill themselves than be seen for what they are. If this man thought he could bullshit his way out of it, or attack instead of defend, he'd still be lying to the public as he molests more children.

BushCo does everything with historic implications in mind. By finally getting the balls to damage his permanent record, as they try to prove beyond any reasonable doubt that his administration has committed many egregious Constitutional offenses, Congress is boxing him in a corner.

His only way out, with any hope of feigned honor, is forward. Having duped rank and file Americans into believing that the GOP represent the rule of law and Constitution, as they commit crimes and piss all over it, he knows the only thing keeping the GOP/DLC viable, is duplicity.

Mr. Conyers, when Bush and his friends manufacture the intelligence needed to commit to another unwarranted invasion of a sovereign nation, or ignore intelligence that could prevent the next 9/11 style attack, you have to keep doing the job you frantically campaigned for.

Bush will do what Bush will do. Your job should be to get it on record that what Bush does, is illegal in every sense of the word.

Every day I talk to rank and file GOP'ers who refuse to believe that little Georgie has ever lid to them, because America's justice system is based on the concept that we are all innocent until PROVEN guilty. Since my Democratic leaders appear to have succumbed to blackmail, the discussion always ends with the fact that if Dems can't muster the courage to prove it in court, they shouldn't be dogcatchers, let alone running America.

I believe, it has always been a foregone conclusion that Bush will throw everything but the kitchen sink at Congress, including another unjustified illegal war, martial law, and concentration camps, before he allows his legacy as a modern day Alexander the Great to be diminished.

Mr. Conyers, I accept the fact that your pursuing justice, might result in my unlimited detention and slavery, and I haven't written any books that caused Constitution supporting left wing Americans to wake up and smell the coffee for the first time in decades.

Your book emboldened us to believe in activism again. This is an historical reference that BushCo will never forgive. Eventually, when you've assured "George the Mediocre's" place in history, they will deal with your impertinence.

Due to our leaders inability to accept that history will record them to be the politicians who chose financial riches and personal edification, over the survival of the greatest nation that ever existed, their place in history is assured.

If BushCo wins, the history they write will describe why John Conyers was publicly shamed after lying in his book. If we win, BushCo will see that you get punished for the crimes you and they know about. It isn't only Bush that has worked himself into a corner.

You can run, but you can't hide. Go big or stay home. Impeach or be impeached.

Fuck the war. Yeah I said it, fuck the war. Do the frickin job you campaigned for. When you do more than slander, it will take Bush's rank and file support away. Wars come and go. It's the greed of those who see death as an economic opportunity, that make them so attractive to those who don't have to serve.

Average Joe GOP'er, is a GOP'er, because they understand that the rule of law and the Constitution protects them. If you show, for the first time in my generation, that Democrats are willing to pay more than lip service to our Constitutional system, they may see the validity of your leadership.

Until then, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better. Conyers/Pelosi have ensured it by refusing to allow the will of the people to impact the debate.

Mark my words Mr. Conyers. You have already reached the point of no return historically. Appeasing these fascist bastards, even for the sake of your Democratic homeys, will do nothing to ingratiate you to them.

Your future has been sealed. The only thing that remains to be seen, is whether or not you go down fighting the good fight, or in shame the way Benedict Arnold died in England.

Are you ready to rumble? You had better be, because they are.

What part of everything is on the table, don't you understand?

PS; Thank you for making the Just-Us Departments bribe to Ashcroft, an issue. Until you show that the healthcare mutual admiration society is filled with greedy pricks that see our existence as a threat to their way of life, they'll continue to let the cockroach class die. As a cockroach, I appreciate it.

Court gags ex-SAS man who made torture claims
Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian, Friday February 29 2008

A former SAS soldier was served with a high court order yesterday preventing him from making fresh disclosures about how hundreds of Iraqis and Afghans captured by British and American special forces were rendered to prisons where they faced torture.

Ben Griffin could be jailed if he makes further disclosures about how people seized by special forces were allegedly mistreated and ended up in secret prisons in breach of the Geneva conventions and international law. Griffin, 29, left the British army in 2005 after three months in Baghdad, saying he disagreed with the "illegal" tactics of US troops.

He told a press conference hosted by the Stop the War Coalition this week that individuals detained by SAS troops in a joint UK-US special forces taskforce had ended up in interrogation centres in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Guantánamo Bay. He had not witnessed torture himself but added: "I have no doubt in my mind that non-combatants I personally detained were handed over to the Americans and subsequently tortured."

Referring to the government's admission that two US rendition flights containing terror suspects had landed at the British territory of Diego Garcia, Griffin said the use of British territory and airspace "pales into insignificance in light of the fact that it has been British soldiers detaining the victims of extraordinary rendition in the first place".

The Ministry of Defence said it did not comment on special forces' activities.

In a separate move, the media have been prevented by a court order from reporting a court martial of six SAS soldiers charged with a conspiracy to "defraud of a value of about £3,000".

emphasis mine

Only this time it's not anthrax, nope, it's powder ricin found in a Las Vegas motel.

Las Vegas Police Probe Possible Ricin Found in Hotel (Update1)

By Demian McLean

Feb. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Seven people were hospitalized, one of them in a coma, after a substance believed to be the deadly toxin ricin was discovered yesterday in a Las Vegas hotel room.

Police officers were called to the Extended StayAmerica hotel, where the manager handed over a package that early tests suggest contains the poison, which is thousands of times more lethal than cyanide. More tests are expected today from the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The man who was staying in the room has been in a coma since the discovery and is listed in critical condition, the Associated Press said, citing Las Vegas Police Lieutenant Lewis Roberts.

``This is the just the beginning of what is obviously going to be a complex investigation,'' Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Detective Bill Cassell said in a telephone interview today.

The FBI, which is cooperating with the inquiry, said there is no reason to suspect terrorism.

Federal officials have warned police departments to look out for ricin, which could be deadly in the hands of terrorists. It may be used to contaminate air-conditioning systems, drinking water or lakes, the FBI has said.

The toxin is made from castor beans and has no antidote. Traces of ricin were found five years ago in a London apartment during a British-based counterterrorism raid.

Alternative uses of ricin include experimental cancer treatments.

To contact the reporters on this story: Demian McLean in Washington at dmclean8@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: February 29, 2008 13:39 EST

"There is nothing to fear but fear itself."
Franklin D. Roosevelt

While a large portion of Vermonters wonder why anti-terrorism helicopters are teaming with people like Pat Leahy to imprison his constituents for plants, a Democratic legislator is frantic over the possibility that the push for equal enforcement of the law will result in college children having their futures destroyed, due to their blatantly illegal acts.

Isn't it funny how the biggest story to come out of Vermont after discovering that they hold the honor of spending more money per capita on inmates, than anyone else in America, is about protecting drunk college students by allowing high schoolers to buy alcohol?

But wait, they also attempted to deal with the root cause of these detentions, selective prosecution, while Leahy was simultaneously funding those responsible.

The legislature also discussed legalizing hemp and marijuana, due to the fact that hemp could impact the environmental debate, and marijuana causes far less actual damage to society than alcohol consumption. Since they spend way more money on arresting potheads than education, it would seem that stopping the money flow from going to the pot police, would allow more to be spent on combatting the effects of booze.

For just a second I'm going to pretend that realtors and environmentalists aren't using the war on drugs as a means to depopulate Northern New York and Vermont, prior to creating the Great Bob Marshall Wilderness Park, as they are allowed to snort and smoke their way to a lower drinking age.

Knowing what I know about Pat Leahy's Vermont National Guard, and the helicopters he allows to be sent to my area for marijuana eradication efforts, it makes me wonder if federal anti-terrorism money was included while deciding which state holds the #1 spot regarding spending to incarcerate. If it wasn't, the numbers would be much higher.

But what do investor class elitist Democrats in Vermont want to talk about? Selective legislation designed to protect the drunken whelp of the investor class.

When I was a potsmoking kid, we were always happy to see college classes start in the fall. Once college started, the drugs would begin to flow. If we could get Leahy to pursue college drug dealers instead of flying helicopters over my Northern New York home, Vermont might get a little better bang for their bucks.

Instead, he tells them to go fuck themselves as he perpetuates the system of unequal justice America has become famous for.

But that's OK. If wealthy elitists weren't stacking the deck in their favor, America might not have the reputation we enjoy today.

It isn't every nation that can brag about being #1 incarcerator, and the premier torturer to the world at the same time. As long as progressive elitist liberals like Leahy keep giving money to fascists, we'll keep our status as #1.

Too bad the discussion the AP picked up on, reinforces the concept that Democrats see laws as things to be conveniently used or discarded, based on the societal capital of the offender.

I could be writing about the hope created by a product that could save America's citizens billions annually, as it lessens our dependence on Bush's Saudi friends. Instead I wind up slamming someone I respected.

Thanks for nothing Pat. The next time you get told to go Cheney yourself, I'll think of the helicopters flying over my mobile home, and say, good enough.

Pander to the prison industrial complex all you want. It'll prove to America what the rank and file has known all along. Laws mean nothing to Democratic educated America, unless they can be used arbitrarily and capriciously.

I CAN refuse subpoenas?

AG Refuses Probe of Ex-Bush Aides

Attorney General Michael Mukasey on Friday rejected referring the House's contempt citations against two of President Bush's top aides to a federal grand jury. Mukasey says they committed no crime.

Mukasey said White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet Miers were right in refusing to provide Congress White House documents or testify about the firings of federal prosecutors.

"The department will not bring the congressional contempt citations before a grand jury or take any other action to prosecute Mr. Bolten or Ms. Miers," Mukasey wrote House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The House voted two weeks ago to cite Bolten and Mukasey for contempt of Congress and seek a grand jury investigation. Most Republicans boycotted the vote.

Pelosi requested the grand jury investigation on Thursday and gave Mukasey a week to reply. She said the House would file a civil suit seeking seeking enforcment of the contempt citations if federal prosecutors declined to seek misdemeanor charges against Bolten and Miers.

Mukassey took only a day to get back to her. But he had earlier joined his predecessor, Alberto Gonzales, in telling lawmakers they would refuse to refer any contempt citations to prosecutors because Bolten and Miers were acting at Bush's instruction.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Attorney General Michael Mukasey is refusing to refer the House's contempt citations against two of President Bush's to aides to a federal grand jury. Mukasey says they committed no crime.

In a letter Friday, he told House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former presidential counsel Harriet Miers were right in refusing to turn over documents or testify about the firings of federal prosecutors.

The House voted two weeks ago to cite Bolten and Mukasey for contempt of Congress and seek a grand jury investigation. Most Republicans boycotted the vote.

Pelosi has threatened to file a civil suit over the issue.

Pelosi Responds

“By ordering the U.S. Attorney to take no action in response to congressional subpoenas, the Bush Administration is continuing to politicize law enforcement, which undermines public confidence in our criminal justice system.

“Anticipating this response from the Administration, the House has already provided authority for the Judiciary Committee to file a civil enforcement action in federal district court and the House shall do so promptly. The American people demand that we uphold the law. As public officials, we take an oath to uphold the Constitution and protect our system of checks and balances and our civil lawsuit seeks to do just that.”

Congressman,
Which Bush appointed Federal Judge do you hope gets the case?

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INHERENT
CONTEMPT!!!

Memo to Tim Russert: Dick Cheney thinks he controls you.

Tim Russert, shill for the GOP

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You can lead a republican to the truth, but you can't make him think it...

I have no doubt there are many in our government who know who has been the target of these wiretaps. It may not be Gore or Amanpour but my guess is the democrats and republicans have known this.

(snip)
Republicans are, of course, fundamentally pro-corporate, even more so than modern Democrats. But to go to bat this hard on behalf of an industry seems anomalous even for them. All a congressman usually has to do for his biennial bribe is vote in a corporation's interests, not engage in tantrum theatrics. There's more than pedestrian corruption at work here.

(snip)
In 2006, after Andrea Mitchell asked New York Times reporter James Risen, who broke the domestic spying story, out of the blue, "You don't have any information, for instance, that a very prominent journalist, Christiane Amanpour, might have been eavesdropped upon?" Risen did not, but NBC scrubbed the question from its transcripts of the interview, later explaining that the story had been "released prematurely," that they had not "completed" their reporting. But they didn't call the allegation irresponsible, or speculative, or any other dismissive adjective they could have used. They essentially confirmed that they had reason to believe that Bush was secretly wiretapping a prominent CNN reporter.

And why the hell wouldn't he, after all? Without a reviewable record of warrants, it's not as if anyone can possibly find out -- unless somebody sues the telecoms, and specific, decidedly non-terrorist surveillance targets are identified in the ensuing discovery process. And that is why the Republicans are going apeshit over retroactive immunity, not just to protect the telecoms, but to cover their own asses. If it ever comes out that their secret, illegal domestic wiretaps were not targeting al Qaeda, but Al Gore, the jig is finally up. The entire "trust us, we're hunting terrorists" rationale, as thin as it always was, will lose any residual integrity, and the GOP may never recover. And they know it. And maybe, hopefully, the Democrats finally know it too.

George Bush Is Engaged in an Epic Battle to Cover His Ass

ClammyC asks that question in his diary Do Your Job or Resign which pretty well nails the past, present and future consequences of Congress abrogating its power to the Executive.

After receiving Speaker Pelosi’s SWL last week bush puppet Mukasey Contemptuously responded that he will refuse to refer contempt charges (against Miers & Bolton) to a grand jury.

1. “…The Congressional investigation into whether or not the U.S. Attorneys have been overly politicized and are taking their prosecution orders from the White House will not go forward
2. because the White House has ordered the U.S. Attorney not to proceed
3. with the prosecution of the people who have defied their subpoenas and refused to testify
4. about whether or not the White House is calling the shots for the U.S. Attorneys….

This diary Quotes the Congressional Research Service’s Congressional Oversight Manual re: Inherent Contempt:

”Under the inherent contempt power, the individual is brought before the House or Senate by the Sergeant-at-Arms, tried at the bar of the body, and can be imprisoned. The purpose of the imprisonment or other sanction may be either punitive or coercive. Thus, the witness can be imprisoned for a specified period of time as punishment, or for an indefinite period (but not, at least in the case of the House, beyond the adjournment of a session of the Congress) until he agrees to comply. The inherent contempt power has been recognized by the Supreme Court as inextricably related to Congress’s constitutionally-based power to investigate.

As Kagro X says, (emphasis mine) “…Let's face it: if the "administration" simply refuses to budge, the Congress either has to fold its tent and go home, or enforce on its own authority the subpoena power the American people voted for…”

IMHO, referral of Mukasey/Bolton/Meirs and ultimately Bush/ Cheney’s Contempt of Congress and Congressional subpoena power to the Judiciary branch, dominated by politicized right-wing bushies is futile kabuki theatrics doomed to failure. If the Democratic Congressional leadership believes that they can regain their power (and sufficiently cover their posteriors) by throwing this “hot potato” struggle between the Executive and the Legislature to the right wing Judiciary for resolution, they are only fooling themselves.

There is no reason to believe that the same Judiciary, which twisted the law to hand the Executive over to bush, despite the fact that the majority of the popular vote went to his opponent and the fact that the "executive's" brother and his cronies were in charge of the voting process in the disputed vote in FL--yes THAT Judiciary--is capable of impartially resolving a power struggle between the Executive and the Legislative Branch.

IMHO, the likelihood that the Judicial will rescue the Legislative from their own foolish abrogation of power to the Executive is slim to none. Bush has had seven years to pack the Judiciary with bushies who won't be at all inclined to rule in Congress's favor. No, the only ones who can rescue the Congress from its own foolish nullification of its power is Congress itself. If Congress is serious about restoring any modicum of their power, they must be prepared to back up their threats with the only two actions now left to them that have any possibility of successfully restoring the Balance of Power, (because they are initiated and carried out by the Legislative Branch):

1. Reasserting Congressional subpoena authority: Enforcement of Inherent contempt. 2. Reasserting Congressional Oversight Authority: Opening up all the criminality, corruption, obstruction of justice, etc of the Administration by instituting Impeachment Hearings.

If, at this point they cave in yet again, Congress IS dead.

Dear Rep. John Conyers,

You have said that you are 'leaning toward impeachment'. If you are looking to find a bulletproof argument to determine that impeachment will be successful you will not find it. That argument cannot be made here or elsewhere. Invincibility is a false motive. Only the firm conviction inside one's own conscience can ever be successfully defended, because it is the only thing we own that only we keep and for which only we can answer. You have yours and no one can take it from you. In our defense, as your followers, all we can hope for is that we may look to your leadership earned from other crossroads you have passed, when you have acted on your inner-owned voice. This is the mark of trustworthiness and you are at that crossroads again, here, now.

Your own conscience must serve you now, it alone. For nowhere else will you find the guidance you require, nowhere else will you be able to hear a sufficiently convincing argument. These are things that Daniel Webster could remind you, since he told them to the Devil himself, as the story goes. He reminds him of the part of every man that makes him vulnerable, moral, beautiful and pure--and the one thing not owned by anyone else and not corruptible by any other soul.

You must do as your own voice requires. It's simple. It's what everyone who considers seeking public office must face: will they listen to their own voice for truth? Because the testing ground has never been more difficult. We recognize your struggle. Yet you must prevail.

I ask you, on behalf of all who are running for office now, to try to make this country better, to not vanquish our hope. Leadership is a torch passed from one to another. Do not drop the torch of your own Promethean fire, Sir. Call for these hearings for the good of the country, for the good of us all. From the depths of what is best within you, do what you must.

With All Earnest Imploration,
Laurie Dobson
Maine's Independent Candidate for US Senate
www.dobsonforsenate.com

Congressman,
It seems the People are becoming ANGRY at the inaction from Congress and especially from your Office. I guess if you won't act, the People MUST!

Please do telll, what have we become as a Nation, when our President becomes a wanted man in his own country?

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I M P E A C H
THEM BOTH !!!

It's a good summation, Unspun. What I would add is, the trip to Court is a necessary prerequisite to the recourse to inherent contempt. Prior to the trip to Court, there remains the potential that the Court will solve the problem. It is due diligence to at least ask the Court to do so, before the Congress acts to defend its' ... how to put this ... preogative.

Doesn't really seem as if Congress Wants to defend itself, though.

It seems a little like trying to get a depressed person to cheer up. It's like, ...
what does it take?

Thinking about it.
FF

Will Police from Brattleboro, Vt., Arrest Bush and Cheney?
By David Swanson

When citizens and voters go to the town meeting and primaries in Brattleboro, Vermont, on Tuesday, there will be a question on the back of all ballots, and a circle to mark Yes and one to mark No:

"Shall the Selectboard instruct the Town Attorney to draft indictments against President Bush and Vice President Cheney for crimes against our Constitution and publish said indictments for consideration by other authorities, and shall it be the law of the Town of Brattleboro that the Brattleboro police, pursuant to the above mentioned indictments, arrest and detain George Bush and Richard Cheney in Brattleboro if they are not duly impeached, and prosecuted or extradite them to other authorities that may reasonably contend to prosecute them?"

A public forum was held Sunday in Brattleboro to discuss the upcoming vote. Kurt Daims, the Brattleboro citizen who drafted the measure, was there, along with leading New England activists for peace and justice, including U.S. Senate candidate from Maine Laurie Dobson who is seeking indictments of Bush and Cheney in Maine as well.

If this thing passes on Tuesday I know a lot of cops around the country who are going to be jealous of the Brattleboro police force. I'm thinking of all the police officers I've seen arrest activists in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, but accept impeachment t-shirts from them and hide them under their hats. Here is an opportunity for law-abiding and law-upholding working men and women to arrest the biggest criminals of our age, and the two men most responsible for the human and financial costs we and others have suffered these past seven years. Who wouldn't want to be in on this?

Now, I know what you're thinking. If we just wait one more year, only a couple of more hundred thousand Iraqis and some hundreds of US troops will die, we'll only launch at most one more foreign war beyond the ones we're running now, our actions might not provoke an attack in this country, we'll still have several years left in which we can try to reverse global warming if we hurry, the millions of American families about to lose their homes to foreclosures will only have one winter to brave and it may be a warm one, and then a completely unreliable and probably fraudulent election will give us in 2009 a new president who - if we're lucky - won't be that crazy old senator who wants to stay in Iraq for 10,000 more years, and if we're really lucky future presidents will go ahead and obey laws even though they're not required to anymore . . . so what are we getting all excited about? Right? Admit it, that's what you're thinking, isn't it?

How could you not be when THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION IN HISTORY is forecast as imminent every day for two straight years every four years? Seriously, raise your hand if you do not know which presidential candidates are married, how many kids they each have, what their religions are, or if you could not rank them by age, height, or hair color.

Do you know what the most important election in history was? It was the one they decided not to hold between King George of England and his challenger. If they had held that election, and the American colonists had devoted all of their energies for two straight years to reading pamphlets about who had the whiter wig, we never would have had a Declaration of Independence, and we never would have had a democracy.

Oh, well, but that was different. Those colonists weren't fat and happy like we are, and that King George had committed crimes.

Had he? I think legally, it's the other way around. As Vermont impeachment activist Dan DeWalt has pointed out, it was the Declaration of Independence that had no force of law. The current president and vice president, on the other hand, live and work in a society of laws under a Constitution, and their violations of the law and of the Constitution are firmly established.

In a December 31, 2007, editorial, the New York Times faulted Bush and Cheney for kidnapping innocent people, denying justice to prisoners, torturing, murdering, circumventing U.S. and international laws, spying in violation of the Fourth Amendment, and basing their actions on "imperial fantasies."

Bush and Cheney's lies about Iraqi ties to al Qaeda are on videotape and in writing, and they continue to make them to this day. Their claims about Iraqi weapons have been shown in every detail to have been, not mistakes, but lies. Their threats to and lies about Iran are on videotape. Bush being warned about Katrina and claiming he was not are on videotape. Bush lying about illegal spying and later confessing to it are on videotape.

Torture, openly advocated for by Bush and Cheney and their staffs, is documented by victims, witnesses, and public photographs. Torture was always illegal and has been repeatedly re-criminalized under Bush and Cheney. Bush has reversed those and other laws with signing statements. Those statements are posted on the White House website, and a GAO report found that with a significant percentage of Bush's signing statements in which he announces his right to break laws, he has in fact proceeded to break those laws.

Bush and Cheney have exposed an undercover agent as punishment of a whistleblower. They've commuted the sentence of a top assistant who obstructed an investigation that included themselves. They've hired and fired public prosecutors based on their willingness to abuse the law in support of a political party.

Bush and Cheney have stripped the people of this country of protections under Amendments 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8, not to mention 13 and 15. We now arrive at the question of whether there is any life left in Amendments 9 and 10. The Ninth Amendment reads:

"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."

The Tenth Amendment reads:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

If those people referred to in that old document still exist anywhere, it is in Brattleboro, Vermont. And nowhere does the Constitution deny the people of Brattleboro the power to arrest, detain, or try in a fair trial individuals whom they have probable cause to believe guilty of mass murder.

Imagine if one of the esteemed Selectmen in Brattleboro were discovered to be accepting bribes, handing out public dollars to his friends, and torturing children in the basement. Would an appropriate response be "How awful, but you know he's retiring in another year and those children are used to being tortured by now anyway?" That response is not even imaginable.

But when the crime becomes larger and less intimate, when we begin discussing hundreds of thousands of murders and countless cases of torture carried out at a distance by loyal underlings, all of a sudden our conviction that accountability is called for becomes less absolute. Why, though, should the need for accountability shrink as the crime grows? This makes no sense to me and would have made none to the authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.

Now, that Constitution provides very prominently and discusses in six places a remedy for presidents and vice presidents who abuse it. In such cases, the Congress can impeach, try, remove from office, and bar from ever holding office again. But Article I, Section 3 also says:

"the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and punishment, according to Law."

In other words, whether a president or vice president or other civil officer of the United States is impeached and convicted in the U.S. Senate or not, he or she is subject before, during, or following that process to exactly what Brattleboro may propose to do on Tuesday.

And I would suggest that the failure of Congress to even consider impeachment gives Brattleboro and every other town in this country something more than the right to take justice into their own hands. We have a responsibility to make use of our democracy in those places where it still resides, where money and military and media have not killed it off. We have a duty, not just a right, to attempt at this late hour to make this again a nation ruled not by men but by laws.

The United States Department of Justice could take up this matter at the national level, it's true. It's also true that a chicken can squawk before a fox comes in the door. It's true that Blackwater can investigate itself. It's true that the New York Times comes with a built-in critic of its own mistakes. The trouble is that the Department of Justice is now an arm of the Republican Party. The most spineless Congress in the history of the country has asked that Justice Department to hold noncompliant witnesses in contempt, and it has refused.

Congress has a tool called inherent contempt in which the Capitol Police arrest and hold witnesses on Capitol Hill, but our invertebrate representatives are afraid to use that even on former staffers. They are not about to use it on Bush and Cheney.

We are in completely uncharted waters in Washington. We have not only unprecedented spinelessness from the first branch of our government, but we have previously unimagined offenses by the second branch, offenses that can best be called, in the words of the Brattleboro initiative, crimes against the Constitution.

Congress can now pass horrendous bills that become law or good bills that get vetoed. Or it can pass mixed bills in which the bad parts become law, but anything Bush doesn't like is undone with a signing statement. Yes, previous presidents wrote signing statements, but not in this volume and not in this way, not to announce the intention to violate laws and proceed to violate them. Congress has held hearings on this and countless other abuses. Some of these hearings lay out all the facts, but then nothing is done because the only thing Congress could do would be to impeach, and that would require integrity. At other hearings, witnesses don't show up, or show up having forgotten everything prior to breakfast that day. And Congress thanks them for coming, turns the other cheek, and begs to be slapped. Sometimes an abused spouse needs an intervention from a friend, and Congress right now has no better friend than the people of Brattleboro, Vermont.

Who would dare tell Brattleboro it is not its place to act? In recent times, we have seen nations around the world indict foreign criminals for crimes committed elsewhere. The crimes of Bush and Cheney directly impact the people of Brattleboro. The people of Brattleboro have officially paid some $11 million so far to occupy Iraq, or six times that if you consider the costs calculated by nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. Vermont and Brattleboro have lost lives in Iraq and Afghanistan, and had lives devastated. Vermont's national guard has been sent to guard somebody else's nation. You have the right to bear arms, but they have the right to put you on a plane and ship you to wherever the most oil is.

The abuse inflicted on our nation by the current president and vice president makes a lot of people angry. Responding with violence would be foolish and counterproductive. Responding with an election might be cathartic, but would not solve the problem. The only response that can work is one that calls the crimes what they are and upholds the rule of law. If we had really gotten this right under Nixon or Reagan or Clinton, we might have prevented some of the same people involved back then from committing new offenses.

More importantly, only a serious law-enforcement response will set a precedent for future administrations. Raise your hand if you are a Republican who wants Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama to have the power to spy without warrants, detain without charges, torture, murder, and rewrite any law passed by Congress.

And only a proper criminal trial can possibly lead to the restorative justice the occasion demands, to an open confession and apology for the crimes committed, and to a plan for those war profiteering individuals and corporations closest to the president and vice president, and including the vice president, to make restitution to the people of this country and the people of Iraq.

This must be about the law, but not merely the law. We need a restoration of our culture. Far too often around this nation we are seeing local police officers engage in brutality that seems to imitate the actions of those taking their orders from the White House and abusing captives in foreign lands. Let's begin to bring a new world out of this toxic one through the noble and honest actions of local police officers, those employed by Brattleboro.

Their first job can be assisting with poll watching, exit polling, and observation of a hand-count of Tuesday's ballots. Their next job can be making sure that Bush and Cheney get something they've denied so many other people: a fair trial.

Sorry for the brevity (/snark), but the political cover MUST STOP!

Congressman,
Can you ensure that either Democrat, Clinton or Obama, won't abuse the extremes pushed by the currant Administration and tolerated by the Congress. Can you guarantee that neither won't WARRANTLESS SPY, TORTURE, RENDITION, USURP CONGRESS and THE AMERICAN PEOPLE'S RIGHTS? You can't until you act!

==============
I M P E A C H
or RESIGN !!!

Q U E S T I O N:
When the President and Vice President of the USA become wanted criminals in their own country, what does that say about a Congress that allowed these men to become so evil and destructive to their own end?

IMPOTENT?
SPINELESS?
USELESS?
COWARDS?

or
Just agreeable?

If Telecoms are immunized ... how then may wiretaps be regulated?

(need to research further).