Some holiday joy for the New Year...

On the eve of the announcement of record holiday payouts to Wall Street investment firms, Governor Schwarzenegger announced a fiscal emergency and a 10 percent overall budget cut that he hopes will take place immediately. The slashing is the result of the faux-free market anti-tax political ideology that has firmly taken root in the American consciousness since the advent of Reaganomics along with the spinelessness and avarice of the so-called leaders of our once-great nation.

It is the job of the Legislative Analysis Office (LAO) to go over the governor’s budget proposal after its release in preparation for the “May revise.” When Schwarzenegger rolled out his budget plan for 2007, the LAO criticized it for rosy projections that depended on revenues which never materialized due to decades of tax cuts and a precipitous economic plunge.

For anyone surprised by this, it would be instructive to remember the days of Enron and the “Dot-Bomb” era, where wildly positive fiscal predictions gave way to crisis and collapse. Millions of people lost retirement funds while the perpetrators of the crimes escaped unscathed with hundreds of million dollars in ill-gotten booty.

Arnold Schwarzenegger is not some kind of benevolent moderate, and anyone who believes that needs to drop the rose-colored bipartisan glasses. The Guvornator is pure free-market Conservative, even if he slips up and shows glimpses of a social conscience from time to time.

On May 24, 2001 as he was revving up for the recall election, Schwarzenegger met with the late former Enron Chairman Kenny-boy Lay, über-free-marketeer Richard Riordan, and corporate raider Michael “Greed is Good” Milken, who was touting a deregulation plan that purported to solve the state’s energy crisis, but was actually massive theft. From the beginning, he’s been surrounded by former governor Pete Wilson and his minions.

Schwarzenegger has been trying to privatize the public school system of California since he took office, via the Compact for Higher Education and budget cuts that have forced the K-12 system to survive on a program of bake sales and overworked teachers who spend good portions of their incomes buying school supplies.

It seems as if tax cuts for the upper levels of earners have not created the free market utopia that we’ve been promised, and our infrastructure is eroding.

This is the real agenda for “free markets”: the transfer of wealth from the public into the private sector for the enrichment of a select few, including the politicians who enable the transactions. We’re going trillions of dollars in debt to fund tax cuts and war profiteers, yet we can’t — or won’t — spend the money necessary to fund our once-great system of public education.

We keep hearing the myth about the American Dream and upward mobility, but the facts on the ground belie that faded ideal. The wealth of our nation is being stolen by a handful of über-rich, modern day robber barons, even as our schools, health care, and infrastructure crumble around our ears.

On the upside, an ill-informed and uneducated populace is a lot easier to control.

Christ on Crutches

Has everyone noticed that it’s the most splendiferous time of the year, or that we are a nation of Christmas-lovin’ Americans? For those who have neglected to watch the annual Fox “News” “War on Christmas” extravaganza, our elected representatives have taken the time to remind the nonbelievers amongst us that yes, we are a nation of Christ, praise be.

Last week, just in time for the height of shopping season and in anticipation of the home stretch of a depressingly long election season, the people who make our laws busied themselves with House Resolution (HR) 847: Recognizing the importance of Christmas and the Christian faith.

HR 874 passed by a 372 to 9 vote, with 50 members of our esteemed representatives voting “present,” or not voting. On the “aye” side there were, 195 Democrats, and 177 Republicans, while all nine “nay” votes came from the few rational national Democrats. Kudos to Lynne Woolsey for being among the sane.

Many readers may think I’m just making this up. But seriously, on Dec. 10 the House of Representatives of the United States of America passed a resolution that states in part that, “on Dec. 25 of each calendar year, American Christians observe Christmas, the holiday celebrating the birth of their savior, Jesus Christ,” and that “Christmas is celebrated as a recognition of God's redemption, mercy, and Grace.”

The bill resolved that, “the Christian faith (is) one of the great religions of the world, acknowledges the international religious and historical importance of Christmas and the Christian faith,” and “acknowledges and supports the role played by Christians and Christianity in the founding of the United States and in the formation of western civilization.”

Excuse me while I swallow the bile that just rose in my throat.

We are not a “Christian nation.” We are a nation of Christians. And Muslims, and Deists, and Agnostics, and Atheists, with a few Wiccans thrown in for good measure. We even have room in the boat for Tom Cruise and the Scientologists.

I put this resolution up there with the investigation into steroid use in baseball. The people who wasted my tax dollars with this silly, yet dangerous bill are a bunch of wealthy mostly white people playing to the basest constituency, jerking each other while the rest of the world burns because of disastrous foreign and domestic policy.

We are facing crises of unprecedented scale on the home front and in the world. There’s a health care crisis, a financial crisis brought about by greed and hubris, and a multi-front war punctuated by waste, massive fraud, and the rise of private mercenary armies who will need something else to do once they desert the troops trapped in an unwinnable war. On top of this, the Justice Department has been turned into a political arm of the most crooked administration in the history of our nation.

The First Amendment to the Constitution states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” and Thomas Jefferson was in favor of “building a wall of separation between church and state.” The founders knew that religious fanaticism leads to slaughter and slavery, and engaged in a war of independence from the religious zealot King George in order to create a secular nation where people were free to worship as they saw fit, so long as they didn’t push their views onto others.

We have had Christianity pushed down our throats over the course of the past three decades, and HB 847 is continuing this dangerous trend.

I can’t help but remember the warning from philosopher George Santayana, that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. The dog and pony show of our political process has turned into a nauseating race for the bottom, while high crimes and misdemeanors continue to go unpunished.

We’ve lost the war on Christmas, my fellow secular humanists. Go out and shop as if your life and liberty depended on it.

Shopping and a gentle reminder of the carnage of foreign military adventures

It seems as if a lot of people don't want to think about the war in Iraq or have anything to do with it on a visceral level. They don't read news accounts about death rates, troop levels, or the fiscal costs of the war. I suppose it may be the time of year. Everyone is preoccupied with thoughts of shopping and the annoying visits of unwanted guests, which precludes them from thinking about events of national and global import.

As a public service, I'd like to give a brief run-down of events in Iraq — as I see them — just to help the community through the stress, and the joys of stuffing our faces and buying stuff for secular holiday celebrations.

It's the least I can do to ease my readers — such as they are — into vacation mode.

There is no good news coming from Iraq. Things are deteriorating by the day. Violence is at an all-time high and we have lost control of this war of choice that was brought about by the cold warrior junta that has taken over our government. In reality, however, we never really had control in the first place.

The Bush administration is getting ready to ask for another $173 billion in order to fund a war that was supposed to cost around $17.30, and be fully funded by Iraqi oil sales.

It seems as if the only thing in Iraq that is self-supporting is the insurgency, and that is according to U.S. National Intelligence Director and merchant of Iran-Contra death, John Negroponte.

According to the United Nations, more than 7,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in September and October. Nearly 5,000 of those killings occurred in Baghdad.

In a series of coordinated bombings, more than 200 Iraqis were killed on Thanksgiving Day - the day before "Black Friday," our most sacred of holidays. Think of it this way; while we Americans were stuffing our faces - the thing we do best - some mother in Iraq was burying her children.

That just about sums up the war in one short paragraph. Innocent citizens of a country economically brutalized by world powers for its entire history are now being militarily brutalized by a country whose citizens are more interested in XBoxes and Wii.

It's not as if none of us are sacrificing for the cause though. The death toll of American troops has passed the 2,800 mark, and our military is being decimated by repeated deployments in a war that has lasted longer than our involvement in WWII. Additionally, equipment is wearing down to the tune of $8 billion a month, according to a report in USA Today.

Charles Rangel (D-NY) was excoriated recently for suggesting a return to the draft. His reasoning is that if the draft were reinstated, more U.S. citizens would actually have to share in the sacrifices being made by a very tiny number of brave people. This in turn would reduce support for the war because people would have to take part in the carnage instead of watching Ted Koppel's hairpiece recount brieft snipets of the day's bloodshed.

It's not to be though, at least for now, because we are not interested in the suffering of others - even our fellow citizens - especially when there is a dyn-o-mite sale going on at the mall, and there are so many good things to watch on the teevee.

As I sit on my fat ass prognosticating on the stupidity of U.S. policy in the Middle East, our people in uniform continue to die alongside innumerable Iraqi civilians.

When I look out of my window and see the gaudy Christmas lights and the big plastic Santa on the neighbor's house, I often wonder how many innocent lives were destroyed in some oil-rich, war-torn corner of the globe so that he could mindlessly waste the 24-hour electricity that we all take for granted.

There are about five such houses within my range of vision.

We are not sacrificing anything directly for this phony "War on Terror," but the payment will be deferred to future generations. We'll go off to the malls over the course of the next few weeks and buy cheap stuff made in China - even as we borrow more money from the Chinese government to fund the "war effort," and tax cuts - and not even think of the people who will really pay for this atrocity.

Please spare me the bullshit about fighting them over there so that we don't have to fight them over here. Al Qaeda has very little control in Iraq. Any influence they have can be attributed to the U. S. military presence there and our successful destruction of Iraqi civil structure. It doesn't really matter who's doing the killing anyway. The dead are dead.

As an aside to my readers who may wish to waste time sending me venomous e-mails about my "dangerous" ideology, do something brave for once and join the Army or Marines over the holiday break. Stop the hypocrisy. For everyone else out there, happy holidays.

Electoral process gives brief respite from utter hopelessness

Sometimes the little things in life give us the most pleasure. Take, for instance, the election last week. Diminutive Nancy Pelosi, representing a political party many had written off forever, became Speaker of the House in one of the most stunning electoral victories since Arnold Schwarzenegger was re-elected as Govornator of California.

It was a pleasure to hear the punditocracy backpedal from its derision of the former minority party and jump on the Democratic bandwagon.

Even the detestable and drug-addled Rush Limbaugh distanced himself from his thuggish handlers, claiming that he felt "liberated" by Democratic victories in the House and Senate because he is "no longer going to have to carry the water for people (he doesn't) think deserve having their water carried." He also claimed that the Republican Congress has produced legislation "that (he has) just cringed at, and it has been difficult (for him) coming in here, trying to make the case for it when the people who are supposedly in favor of it can't even make the case themselves."

I'll pause now for a moment to relish in delicious reflection at the end of six years of political misery, and give in for just a moment to the sweet odor of hope.

In the wake of a major "thumpin'" — to quote the president himself — Howard Dean is being hailed as a genius. Of course, there are those who thought that back in 2003 when the same brilliant bunch of talking heads — the Wolf Blitzers and the Tucker Carlsons of the political world — painted him as angry and crazy.

The point that they missed was that a large portion of Americans were pissed off about our tragic societal tailspin, and now the larger American public has finally caught on and joined those who were already sick of the BushCo cabal and the one-party state.

Hopefully, a new era of accountability will be ushered in with this obvious message from the American public.

Many political wonks and wannabes council caution to the newly-elected Democratic majority, but I think the Democrats should take on the scorched-earth policy of the Republicans, and get this country back on track as soon as possible.

Bush should be impeached for dragging us into a foolish political war that we have lost and will continue to lose until a few remaining American citizens are plucked off the roof of Baghdad's Green Zone 10 years from now, alá Saigon on April 29, 1975.

The U.S. of A. is lucky that I don't hold a position of power, because I'd immediately bring on a constitutional crisis by frog-marching the whole lot of these bastards straight to the nearest international criminal court—although to be fair, Rumsfeld already appears to be on his way. After being canned by Bush, he is about to face repercussions for his involvement in the "war on Terr'r," as Germany's top prosecutor will seek a criminal investigation and prosecution of Rumsfeld. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, former CIA director George Tenet, and other senior U.S. civilians and military officers will also be charged for their alleged roles in abuses committed at Abu Ghraib and the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

The case will likely be symbolic at best, as our government will harbor these criminals and protect them from prosecution. Rummy will probably even get a Medal of Freedom out of the deal, not to mention the millions of dollars in profit he's received from steering tax dollars into the coffers of American defense contractors.

The other war profiteers, and their enablers in Congress, should be dragged off in chains for real jail terms, although realistically I know that won't happen, since many Democrats are equally guilty in this nasty episode in American history.

For the past 12 years — since Newt Gingrich and the dawn of the Republican Revolution — the Neocons, Theocons, and fringe rightwing radicals of the Republican Party have done everything they can to bring our country to its knees, from the trumped-up impeachment of Bill Clinton to the suspension of habeas corpus.

Don't get me wrong. I have no particular love for Clinton, although at least he was articulate and a much better representative of our country than our current imbecilic president. He's done more for the Neocons than Ronald Reagan ever did. When I think of stuff I would have impeached Clinton for, NAFTA and the Telecommunications Deregulation Act of 1996 are the first things that come to my mind.

He has also provided a handy target — along with Hillary — and a useful "straw man" that the mainstream press has happily perpetuated as a target of blame for Republican f--- ups.

I don't expect Democratic power to be the magic elixir that suddenly makes the world a better place. They are politicians after all, so the powerful elites of the "Iron Triangle" will get away with their ill-gotten booty, and Bush's cabal will likely get away unscathed. But at least it appears as if Bush will get his comeuppance in the annals of history as the worst president ever.

If nothing else, the election proves that maybe our electoral process is not beyond redemption after all.

The state of political discourse and the cost of empire

The specter of another day of voting is rapidly approaching, and the rhetoric has become particularly vile. Even our great "Uniter" George W. Bush came out less than a month after telling the country that we must work together "to meet the test that history has given us," and intimated that anyone who disagrees with his policies or doubts his wisdom is a traitor of the highest order. Of course, that includes anyone who is not fully invested in perpetual military folly.

The Republicans have been in charge for nearly six years, and despite all the scary rhetoric coming from the Republican National Committee, there is no threat to security if non-Republicans somehow wrestle a branch of government away this November. On the contrary, if the Democrats somehow win the House there may still be hope to turn the ship of state around, even if that hope only exists in the Republican-lite 21st century version of the Democratic party.

Republican political strategists are lying when they say that Democrats are soft on national security. After 9/11, no one will ever be soft on national security again, even if it means destroying our democracy out of a paranoid sense of fear.

Our government-led by Democrats and Republicans-has turned our tax dollars into a slush fund for the Department of Defense, and the Military Industrial Complex that Dwight Eisenhower warned against in 1961 as he handed the presidency over to John F. Kennedy.

"We yet realize that America's leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment," Ike said.

Our folly in Iraq is but the latest example of the way in which we have wasted our material progress on vague foreign military adventures that serve merely to redistribute the wealth of the nation into the coffers of the über-rich. War profiteers and Bush administration corporate cronies have used the war as a vehicle for theft, leaving generations of American children with the butcher's bill and the debt payment.There is no interest in world peace or human betterment, only empty patriotic rhetoric and fear of vague and shadowy threats to our stuff.

Under the "leadership" of the Republican Party in the past five years, our national debt has ballooned to $8.5 trillion dollars-that's trillion, with a "T"-and every man, woman, and child in this country owes $28,531.74 as of Oct. 15. Military spending has ballooned from $296.8 billion to $401 billion since the Bush cabal took over in 2001, and that doesn't even include the $300 billion that has evaporated in Iraq. The lion's share of that rise in defense costs has not gone to "supporting the troops," but to Research and Development which means defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin or Halliburton. To all the young Republicans out there who fear that there may not be enough debt and death if the Democrats somehow manage to take a sliver of power away from the corrupt and bloated GOP, fear not. There will be plenty to go around for you, your children, and your grandchildren. It is unfortunate that the rest of us will have to pay as well.

It will be easy for those who disagree with me to reduce my argument to partisan hackery, but the constitutional crisis we face today is no longer a partisan issue.

Please, spare me the letters about how it's all Clinton's fault or, "Time of war…etc." Terrorism may be real, but the "war on terr'" is a political strategist's creation used to divide this nation and justify the incremental theft of our civil rights, as the treasury is plundered in the name of national security.

The Constitution is under attack and the Executive Branch has made an unprecedented power grab that is threatening our stability as a nation. If we continue on our present course, we will become as fiscally impoverished as we have become morally bankrupt under a single-party system.

To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, we are stuck with our existing political parties, comprised of moneyed elites who ultimately only care about reelection. It seems as if the only reason the Democratic Party is in existence anymore is to preserve the power of the Republicans and to provide an additional bogeyman to the dual threat of terrorism.

"As we peer into society's future, we-you and I, and our government-must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering, for our own ease and convenience, the precious resources of tomorrow," Ike continued on that long-ago January day.

"We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage. We want democracy to survive for all generations to come, not to become the insolvent phantom of tomorrow."

It is long past the time for the adults to take back our government. I wonder if there are any left anywhere who may be able to save us.

Corporate hubris, BALCO, and the repeal of Magna Carta

Funny how things seem to come together every week to give me fodder for another column. Thus far, in my columned tenure, topics have been exclusive to the CSU system-but this week I'm on to bigger, better, more global issues. I'm sure that a lot of people will be happy to hear that I'm thinking more "globally."

One of the big stories going on in the Bay Area press is the fiasco that is eating up the administration of Hewlett-Packard. It seems as if former chairwoman Patricia Dunn and the rest of the HP leadership are in a bit of trouble after an internal investigation into boardroom leaks went awry and turned into a scandal that has thrown the organization into chaos.

The leaders of HP hired investigators who used techniques such as spying on directors, planting monitoring software in e-mail correspondences with journalists, and even a bizarre plan to infiltrate Silicon Valley newsrooms disguised as cleaners in order to justify rifling through garbage.

They also used a technique called "pretexting"-a colloquialism for "lying"-in order to get private records from phone companies.

So far, four executives have been ousted-including Dunn and HP general council Ann Baskins-and at least 10 witnesses have plead the fifth rather than testify in front of a House of Representatives commerce committee.

The matter is under investigation by the California Attorney General's office and is a fine example of a modern corporate boardroom acting as if it is above and beyond the law.

Dunn does not accept responsibility for a situation that, in the words of Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), looks like "a plumbers' operation that would make Richard Nixon blush."

In a rather amusing side development, Dunn recently received a "hall of fame" leadership award from a regional business lobbying and networking group known as the Bay Area Council, after she was forced to resign.

It's almost funny how shameless and unintentionally ironic modern business leaders can be. It brought to mind the Barry Munitz saga, but that's not really what I'm writing about this week.

The thing that struck me about this sick comedy is the way in which HP's leaders thought that it was okay to break the law in order to stop leaks to the press.

As I have followed the HP story over the course of the past two weeks, I can't help but think of the parallels to the BALCO story, in which two San Francisco Chronicle reporters have been sentenced to 18 months in jail for refusing to divulge the source of their information for a series of articles on the baseball/steroids issue.

The reporters-Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada-refused to give the names of their sources from a grand jury testimony leak and will sit in jail unless they agree to divulge the information. As they pay an unacceptable toll for doing their jobs well, scummy hacks like Bob Novak-a real threat to national security-walk amongst us, free to spew the corporate line.

Both of these stories represent a very real and looming threat to public access to information. In the HP case, corporate leaders felt comfortable enough in the current political climate to break the law in order to stop the leak of information. BALCO has shown us that the imprisonment of journalists has become an all too acceptable practice in the post-9/11 world.

For those of us with a scorecard, this should be a very troubling turn of events. Real journalists reporting news from around the world are being jailed, censored, and/or murdered for reporting uncomfortable or dangerous truths, while the flacks of the powerful continue to spread lies and misinformation unencumbered by accountability to the people.

Access to vital information about the way in which members of the business elite or elected officials behave is becoming increasingly difficult to obtain. Whistleblower protections are eroding, and if we are not careful, soon the only information available to us will be happy press releases written by PR flunkies who assure us that everything is okay, and every decision is the right one.

That type of "reporting" has become a hallmark of modern information dissemination. Statistics that back happy claims, written by minor bureaucrats are presented as fact, even though events on the ground belie the pretty numbers. What used to be called "fuzzy math," now goes by the names of "justification for war," or "growth projections," or even "necessary capital project."

While the bean counters walk around trying to convince everyone that things are all right, people continue to die, tax dollars are funneled into crony coffers, or the massive growth in the economy goes to the top 1 percent of the population while the taxpayers get stuck paying for missed projections.

The targeting of journalists and whistleblowers has become even more disturbing in light of the recent actions by the Bush administration, particularly in regards to detainee rights in the "war on terr'r."

Over the course of the past week, our government has passed legislation that flouts the Geneva Conventions as well as the tenets of the Magna Carta, all in one fell swoop. There is now a vehicle in place to deny American citizens the right to defend themselves in a court of law.

Our government is now free to unaccountably engage in torture-which will surely come back to haunt our men and women in uniform-and the rights of human beings now exist at the whim of the president of the United States.

Add to that $800 million worth of "detention centers" that Halliburton has been contracted to build, and the shiny new "fence" that is going up on the Mexican border, and we suddenly have what looks like a great big prison where a once-mighty nation stood. If you are not with us, don't bother trying to escape.

Hang on to your free speech zone, people. We're in for a long and scary ride to the lowest common denominator of humanity, thanks to the corporate failures that run our government.

I think that next week I'm going to return to covering CSU happenings. Thinking "globally" gives me the willies.

Published October 4, 1006, SSU Star

A tale of two perverts: Fiddling (with children) while the world burns

I am going to post my editorials from the archives of the SSU Star. I'm the Editor in Chief, so I can do that, right?

For fans of the trials, tribulations and public humiliation of sexual predators, last week represented something of a bellwether in the world of pedophilia. Between the story of a sad, middle-aged Republican House member's attempted peccadilloes with hot young pages, and the release of John Mark Karr - the man who did not murder Jon Benet Ramsey - there was a little something for everyone, both on the national and local stages.

The dominant story in the mainstream press last week was that of Representative Mark Foley, R-Fla., and his alleged taste for the tender flesh of underage males.

It appears that the man appointed as chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children - who introduced H.R. 3132, the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act of 2005, intended to crack down on Internet stalking and made into law as the Adam Walsh Child Protection Act of 2006 - was using the Internet and his access to nubile young congressional employees to satisfy his predilections for teenage boys.

Foley's participation on the committee follows the logic of Bush administration appointments, as a pedophile was put in charge of the office charged with cracking down on pedophiles. The story brought to mind oil companies in charge of energy policy, or drug manufacturers creating a Medicare drug plan that has siphoned billions of taxpayer dollars into their own coffers. This might be a good place for a gag about "insider's knowledge," but I'll refrain out of a sense of propriety.

A series of e-mail and instant messages between the Foley and some of the boys became public last week, and were plastered all over the newspapers and teevee news shows. There was even a dryly amusing, if disturbing, reading of a few of them on ABC news by Brian Ross, who would be well-advised to stick with reading the news, as he would never make it as a phone sex operator. (Thank you John Stewert).

House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other top Republican leaders spent the week scurrying around pointing fingers and playing the "blame game" in an attempt to deflect criticism to the pages, the Democrats, or anywhere else but the pedophilic Republican, or his prevaricating enablers. I'll forego the sordid details here, as I'm sure that unless my reading audience has been holed up in a cave in Afghanistan or detained somewhere without a warrant, we are all familiar with them in repulsive detail.

In a story that's closer to home here in Sonoma County, the dismissal of child pornography charges against the man who did not murder Jon Benet filled the empty space left over from reportage of the Foley circus.

As we all should know by now, Karr was arrested in Colorado on Aug. 17 for allegedly murdering the little girl the day after Christmas in 1996. There were many questions about the veracity of his guilt, and massive holes in the case against him, but the story took over the front pages of every newspaper in the Western Hemisphere.

Karr's embarrassing debacle made the Sonoma County District Attorney's office look incompetent when it became clear that he was not involved in the Ramsey murder, and the evidence for the child pornography case turned out to be highly suspect, if not nonexistent.

The bigger story, though, was not what was trumpeted on the front pages during the course of the week, but what was not. The same week the Foley story blew up to epic proportions, a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) informed us we are losing the war on terr'.

The NIE lays out the case that Iraq has become a training ground - and the Iraq war a recruiting tool - for a fresh-faced batch new-generation Jihadists. The Foley scandal also helped obscure the fact that the situation on the ground in Iraq is deteriorating by the day.

The Bush administration's new torture policy - which reinterprets the Geneva Conventions - and the rollback of habeas corpus for anyone deemed an "enemy combatant" by the president, were stories of equal if not more import.

Additionally, the Karr arrest made the headlines on the same day that a federal judge in Detroit ruled the NSA wiretap program unconstitutional and illegal.

Much like Orange Alerts, or the "number two man in Al Qaida," Karr and Foley appear to have served to obscure the fact that the trillions of dollars we've spent fighting terr'rists have for the most part been wasted.

I'm not saying that it's unimportant for pedophilic leaders of the Republican Party to be held accountable for their actions, or that these stories aren't really news. The point is, there's a lot of obfuscation going on in the halls of our government, and Karr and Foley were offered up as sacrificial lambs on the altar of misinformation.

A Guest Rant from Raelayna....

I heard a story on the radio on Tuesday that can't pass without comment. An eleven-year-old girl was raped by 10 men on a football team. What kind of sick shit is this?! When you see the state of society today, do you really think that humanity is capable of this kind of insanity? I cannot fathom why one man would even deign to think that raping a child is okay, let alone 10 of them! Okay, okay, if I have to be the one to say it, then I guess I will. Society, we are absolutely doing the wrong thing these days. I think that whatever parents have been teaching their children really needs to change, because if an entire flock of men think it is okay to rape an eleven-year-old, what we’ve been doing is obviously not working.

And my first reaction is always, “God I hope someone kills that poor girl.” I’m sorry if that sounds cruel but I am a firm believer in allowing people to end their misery. Just think of what that poor girl will go through the rest of her life. Wouldn’t it be a mercy in the end? How would it feel, in the real world, to be that girl who was raped by 10 men? What kind of relationships will someone like that have with people? I believe this child will most likely have at least two children by 16 purely because she’ll feel like she isn’t worth more than to be a feedbag for some calf. Imagine what it would be like to wake up every day with that knowledge. Of being forced to have sex with 10 strange men. To be a cum sack for some dude with no face. Would one be okay living with that feeling, the fact that those same men most likely walked within 14 months? Could you get out of bed every day knowing that no matter what you do, there will always be that one scar, you know that one that throbs during your period, the one from that guy that shoved a pipe in your vagina? How is a person supposed to live with that? What do you expect a person to do, just ignore the memory of some man standing over you, laughing at your tears, telling you to shut the fuck up and take it? Can we really expect someone to live with that and the nightmares that someday their own child will meet him, or his son, and live the life that you dread, the sound of existence making you want to vomit every day you wake? Could you really push that same exisitnance on someone else, perhaps someone you love? How would that feel, waking at night to hear them crying in their hands, for no reason other than they’re “really sad”? How much could my son pay to not hear me weep for the innocence lost? How many men would a father destroy to keep his eleven-year-old daughter from believing that everyone in her life wants to use and abuse her?

I once heard someone say “There is no wrong, there is no right.” Let me ask something. Does the fact that a nine-month-old baby was raped to death because the man that accosted her was convinced that her virgin blood would heal his AIDs, a neutral thing? Would that be wrong? Sorry baby, I happen to believe in people accepting responsibility for themselves and their offense is what keeps us monkeys from annihilating each other. There is wrong. Raping babies is WRONG!!!!! Raping people is WRONG!!!!! And so is try to justify it by saying these men thought it was right or funny. I can tell you that the pain caused by this action is so intense, so severe that even an imbecile could grasp the simplcity of the concept. What the hell is wrong with the mental capacity of these people? Where did they come up with the idea that raping an eleven-year-old would be cool?

Okay, parents, its time to be responsible. Okay? Its time to say no. No, you can’t have that. No, you can’t keep that. No, you can’t DO that. Where the hell is the sanity in this world? Have we really come to the point where a team of football players can rape a CHILD and get a guffaw from the president? Doesn’t he worry about this? I know I do. I really wish that little girl some peace from her suffering, even if it means death. I may not know what you are going through exactly daughter, but I know some of how you feel. Someday they will grovel at our feet and they will know punishment. Let us only hope.

I’m out. R

Ken Lay

Has found a new way to launder money.

Worst president ever?

Many people have been saying that for five years.

But wait...
There's more!

...and...
Losing another "war on" something that never attacked us in the first place. FDA captured by fundamentalist Bushites.

Destroying Appalachia to feed our addiction

Mountaintop Removal (MTR) is the practice of blowing the tops off of mountains, and in some cases taking out entire ranges, in order to get at the coal near the surface. First used in the late 1970s in the wake of the oil embargo, MTR is responsible for polluting more than 1,200 miles of streams and watersheds. Clean water for the Appalachian region is in danger of being lost forever to the practice. MTR fills valleys with vegetation, rock, and earth—called “overburden”— which is dumped, compacted and then planted with non-native plants in order to comply with environmental laws that require mining companies to restore the affected areas to “a level or gently rolling configuration.” What is left behind is a flat, barren plateau that will not support the region’s unique diversity of life.

The coal industry portrays MTR as an innocuous, even restorative practice that can enhance the area by creating recreational areas and flatland for development and construction projects, such as a prison built in Tennessee which has been dubbed “Sink Sink,” due to the fact that the unstable ground below it is shifting and causing damage to the structure. The Kentucky Coal Council and Kentucky Coal Association decry “emotional statements in the press about this form of mining that are neither based on fact nor supported by the truth,” but the evidence of the destruction can be seen in pictures of the area and the stories of people in the region who have been displaced either by flooding, blasting, or selling off ancestral homes to mining companies. The 24-hour blasting cracks the foundations of houses, rattles windows and the nerves of residents who are unfortunate enough to live near the massive mines, and there is danger of damage to health from flying debris and excessive dust in the air. Debris was the cause of the death of a three-year-old boy in Virginia, who was killed by a falling rock in August 2004. The A & G Coal Company was fined $15,000 because the incident was considered “an act of God.”

Damage to water supplies results when watersheds are filled in with the rocks and vegetation destroyed by heavy machinery. A loophole in regulation allows mining companies to dump mountaintop waste into seasonal streambeds—what the coal industry describes as “dry hollows”—that only run in rainy seasons and do not support fish. Opponents of MTR have been trying to get the US Office of Surface Mining (OSM) to enforce a buffer-zone prohibiting mining activity within 100 feet of a stream and to get the Army Corp of Engineers to regulate streambed fill. Occasional court victories by advocacy groups are set aside on appeal by attorneys for the industry or the various agencies involved, and the mining continues.

Another danger to water supplies is the process of washing freshly-mined coal, which leaves behind hundreds of billions of gallons of toxic black water and sticky black goo in impoundments referred to as slurry ponds, sludge lagoons, or waste basins that often perch precariously on the leveled tops of mountains. There have been several environmental disasters due to impoundments breaking and flooding entire communities. In 1972, two days of torrential rains in Logan County, West Virginia caused a waste storage structure owned by a subsidiary of the Pittston Coal Company collapsed and spilled 130 gallons of sludge into Buffalo Creek, washing tons of debris and even houses downstream leaving 125 dead, 1,000 injured and 4,000 homeless. The Pittston Mine Company called the disaster an “act of God.”

In October 2000, the bottom of a waste pond near Inez, Kentucky collapsed and spilled 250 million gallons of slurry into an inactive mine shaft, which then surged out through the mine’s exits into the Tug Fork of the Big Sandy and Ohio Rivers. No one was killed, but 20 miles of waterway was eventually declared an aquatic dead zone. The spill was 25 times the size of the spill in the Exxon Valdez disaster. The resulting slick eventually reached all the way to the riverfront in Cincinnati. The pond was owned by the Martin County Coal Company, a subsidiary of Massey Energy, which blamed the disaster on the rain.

Slurry waste is seeping into wells and water supplies and is causing health problems throughout areas where MTR is taking place. Massey Energy—with annual revenues of more than $2 billion—is being sued by 350 citizens in West Virginia, although Massey denies culpability for the damage. The state’s Division of Mining and Reclamations issued a memorandum that showed 500 environmental violations for the years 2000-01, more than twice the number of the next three largest coal producers combined. Their Brushy Fork slurry lagoon contains more than eight billion gallons of toxic sludge.

In Sundial, West Virginia, a battle is going on at Marsh Fork Elementary school over neighboring Sundial Mine which spews dust as coal is loaded into a silo that towers over the school. The school’s playground is often covered in black soot that also makes its way into the ventilation system. Many children at the school suffer from respiratory diseases and the school board and local government refuse to take action, claiming that the responsibility for the matter rests with the mining company. The state’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) claims that the facility poses no threat to the school, even though it lists the 385 foot high dam for the slurry pond that sits above the school as a class C facility, meaning that its failure could be expected to lead to a loss of human life. Concerned Sundial residents seek to block the construction of another silo within 200 feet of the school, and continue to fight expansion of MTR. In the summer of 2005, 18 protestors were arrested at the Massey plant and protests continued throughout the summer. Many of the protestors were participants in Mountain Justice Summer (MJS)—an advocacy group based in Knoxville, Tennessee—and were not from the area. Massey used that to their advantage and has engendered an “us versus them” mentality among their employees, which has led to threats of violence against local protestors as well as those brought in by MJS. The governor tested the school’s ventilation system in August and deemed the school to be environmentally safe. The tests came after weeks of scrubbing, and were considered to be a sham. According to Bo Webb of Mountain Watch, “if they admit there is coal dust and other mine-related pollutants in the children’s lungs, there is going to be a parade of lawsuits naming just about everyone who has been made aware and did nothing.” Others suggest the state’s economy is so dependent on coal that officials choose to look away.

The practice of MTR is spreading so fast that an accurate accounting of the affected area is not available, but more than 400,000 acres in Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and West Virginia have been destroyed by the practice, and if it continues unabated, by 2012, a section of the Appalachians the size of Rhode Island will have been flattened. The massive mining equipment will often shear 300-500 feet of mountaintop in order to get a few feet of coal.

The Bush administration considers coal to be the energy of the future and the coal industry even conflates the attacks of 9/11 with the need for more coal. A section of a timeline on the Kentucky Coal Council & Kentucky Coal Association’s website entitled “The History of Coal” reads as follows:

2001 Natural gas prices increase over 50% in one year. Electricity shortages result in rolling blackouts in California. Kentucky permits two coal-fired electric power plants, first in 20 years. September 11, 2001 - America is attacked.

AMERICA'S SECURE FUEL FOR ELECTRIC ENERGY -- COAL

The industry touts the economic benefits of coal production to the Appalachians, a region that has consistently been the most impoverished section of the US. The Appalachians have been treated much like oil-rich countries around the world, in that the mineral wealth is taken from the region—7.8 billion tons of coal have been taken out of Kentucky alone in the past 130 years—and funneled into the coffers of distant energy companies, while the people who work to extract the precious commodity are left to live in poverty, and endure the environmental destruction caused by the practice. Census numbers show that the standard of living in the “coal counties” are no better, and often much worse than members of non-coal communities. Coal mining in Tennessee is not even in the top five money-making enterprises. In 2004, 154 million tons of coal was extracted via MTR from West Virginia alone, where the numbers of mine-related workers has plummeted from 125,000 in 1948, to less than 19,000 in 2005. In 1979, there were 35,902 mining jobs in Eastern Kentucky, but by 2003, there were only 13,036. For every three people who once worked the mines, two are now doing something else.

Regulations are being relaxed, and even when mining companies are fined, they often find legal loopholes that allow them to avoid payment and environmental clean up. One method used to avoid regulation and restitution is for the major coal companies to set up subsidiary companies that break the law and once charged with violations and fined, the subsidiaries declare bankruptcy leaving the mess behind and releasing the real culprits from punishment.

The Appalachians is not the only region being harmed by the practice of MTR. Wyoming, which is the number one producer of coal in the US, depends on the economically efficient practice more and more, and it is increasingly being used throughout the rest of world from Alaska to Australia.

There has been a flurry of publication regarding MTR in recent month. Several disasters—including the Sago Mine Disaster—have focused attention on the regulation of mining practices in the US. Books by Erik Reece of the University of Kentucky, and an upcoming book by Penny Loeb, an independent journalist and former editor of US News and World Report who wrote about MTR for that magazine in 1997, examine the practice from beginning to end. Reece’s book “Lost Mountain,” chronicles his year-long observance of the destruction of a mountain top in Eastern Kentucky. Another recent book entitled “Missing Mountains,” edited by Bobbie Ann Mason, Kristin Johannsen, and Mary Ann Taylor-Hall, is a collection of essays, fiction and poetry by 35 Appalachian authors who are against MTR. In-depth articles in National Geographic, Harper’s, and even the New York Times and Washington Post are bringing the issues to a larger audience of Americans, but with an industry-friendly government in control of environmental and safety regulations, it remains to be seen if the reporting will have any real effect in solving the problem.

**********************************************

Additional reading:

Mountain Justice Summer

When Mountains Move, by John G. Mitchell, National Geographic, March 2006

Moving Mountains, by Erik Reece Grist.org, 16 February 2006
http://www.truthout.org/issues_06/021706EC.shtml

Resisting Mountaintop Removal in Tennessee
By Kari Lydersen, The NewStandard. Posted November 21, 2005.
http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/28489/

The Coal Mine Next Door, by Peter Slavin, The American School Board Journal, March 2006.
http://www.asbj.com/current/coverstory.html

EPA chief turns coal lobbyist
Mercury foe now represents a top polluter, by Michael Hawthorne, Chicago Tribune, February 9, 2006
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0602090094feb09,1,1986710.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

Cheney's "accident"

Ha ha. Funny stuff. Now that we've stopped laughing, let's look at what should have been in the news.

Cheney cuts out middle man

...And does the shooting himself, as the Rove propaganda machine spins away.

My question is; what is this ridiculous story covering up? Did Cheney really shoot a 78-year old lawyer, or is it another red herring to keep our focus off of some other terrible shit that's in the works?

From the Minneapolis Star-Trib...

I’m entitled to my own facts!

I read recently that I’m not entitled to my opinion, but that I do have the right to be wrong. Following that sterling logic, if I disagree with the prevailing paradigm, my only opportunity to be right is to keep my mouth shut and go along, or be frog-marched to the nearest American gulag to have my hippie head bashed in.

If in my opinion the president has the right to spy on American citizens, detain them without charges or access to courts, use national security and blind patriotism to pummel the population into submission, and use his newly-minted unfettered powers to declare war on anyone who may displease him at any given moment, I have my “facts” straight and can feel free to spout away.

If I want to believe that we are now safer and more prosperous, and that combat veterans such as Max Cleland—who left three perfectly useful limbs in Vietnam—and decorated Vietnam veteran John Kerry are weaklings when compared to the architects of 21st century American foreign policy, such as Dick “five deferments/I had other priorities” Cheney, and George “Champagne Unit: TANG” Bush, then they I am completely within my rights as a Stepford citizen to believe that.

But as a semi-educated, thinking and voting American, it’s not in my makeup to shut up, particularly when my country has been turned upside-down by a cabal of Orwellian thugs who don’t give a whit about the constitution, social justice, or the American people as a whole.

If my opinions are right or wrong, black or white, then I’ll adopt my own truths. Subsequently, it’s my reality that Condoleezza Rice is a vampire who thrives on the blood of dead Muslim babies. Just look at the pictures in the run-up to the unjustified and illegal war in Iraq. Condi made Bela Lugosi look like Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. She is also the darling of bloodthirsty multinational oil corporations, who had her very own super-tanker named after her.

My facts tell me that there may just be a connection between the ties of the Bush administration to the oil oligarchy, and that our Middle East “adventures” have nothing whatsoever to do with “spreading Democracy.” If I mention that out loud though, I am derided as a “conspiracy theorist” by people with a different version of reality, who think I should keep my opinions to myself.

It’s the same with the attacks of 9/11. If I think that my government either willfully or through incompetence allowed those planes to fly into the towers, I am immediately labeled a nut job. But what could be more preposterous than a theory that includes a shadowy network of Muslim extremists that infiltrated civilian flight schools in Florida, then took down four airliners using box cutters. They were so sly that the Air Force never even scrambled fighters on call for the very purpose of taking out hijacked airliners, yet several months later a Cessna 182 came within three miles of the White House and was immediately swarmed by F-16s from nearby Andrews AFB.

What about Osama Bin Laden, and the infamous “number three man in Al Qaeda”? Spooky men who have evaded capture despite the multi-trillion dollar efforts of the most powerful and technically advance nation in history? That sounds like a pretty whacky theory to me.

I’m supposed to believe that there were no warning signs, such as a President’s Daily Briefing entitled, Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S. and that our intelligence community was caught completely off guard. In the words of Donald Rumsfeld, “Who knew?”

Yet for the most part, we’ve swallowed it hook, line, and sinker, as an entire population. Our national “opposition” leaders have been neutered for fear of upsetting the narrative.

My reality tells me that our electoral process is corrupted to the point that I worry we’ll never have a legitimate election again, and if we can’t maintain a true Democracy here, my facts tell me that the relatives of all the brown people that we’re bombing into a red paste in Afghanistan, Iraq, and all the other countries where we commit mass murder will see through our hypocrisy and react with violence which may not be equal in force, but will dwarf our “nation-building” efforts in intensity.

Our government has turned on us, and is using 9/11 and national security as a cudgel to keep us under control while political hacks and Bush cronies expand executive power at a frightening rate. It is becoming ever more important to speak out, before we are all herded into concentration camps that are overseen by David Horowitz’s brown-shirted legions.

Thank god—as we know him—we live in a country where we are all entitled to our opinions. But it appears that we now have the added bonus of creating our own reality. Democracy is even better when things like unintended consequences don’t get in the way of fuzzy thinking.

Mark Morford for your pleasure

Good thing nobody reads this blog...

Here Is The Big Gay Agenda
Revealed! The horrifying secret plot to homo-amplify America. Also: Dig this hetero agenda!
- By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, January 27, 2006

I have spoken with my gay friends. I have been to yoga classes and men's health spas and Restoration Hardware, chic rug shops and the Castro Starbucks and really cute restaurants featuring mixed baby greens that cost $12. I have observed. I have taken notes. I have checked the fashions and the cars and the skin-tight T-shirts, the newsletters and the bumper stickers and the secret codes hidden within the rainbow flag.

It is time to come clean. It is time to reveal the truth. After all, the religious right has been hammering at it for years, the pseudo-Christians and the homophobes and the sexually terrified all fully and truly believing that there is a plot, a massive, deep-seated agenda among the gay community not only to decriminalize and demystify homosexuality but to actually coerce and cajole and actively lure the innocent white babies of America into the sordid and well-dressed "gay lifestyle," so much so that, much like aliens living in underground cities in Area 51, well, there must be something to it.

Just look. Look at the wanton slew of nasty e-mails I received -- intermixed like bloody shrapnel amid a huge stack of gorgeous e-mail enthusiasm, mind -- in response to my recent column extolling the virtues of the heartbreaking, perspective-altering "Brokeback Mountain" phenom, wherein I dared to suggest that this spare and potent little film might actually help deflect the savage karmic pain of people like Samuel Alito and move the human experiment forward, just a little. What nerve I had.

Mark, gay films move us back. To tell society, which includes children, that to stick a penis inside someones anus, a wholey unnatrual act is ok and normal is ubsurd. I don't hold anything against gays, I'm not one to judge people, they can do what they please, but to shove their pervertions down everyones throat, and to try to make it mainstream and teach children honosexualiy is a normal thing for people to do is sick. -- Steve W

Or this:

It is really hard to believe that people like yourself are gloating over this film and are so proud of the degradation of our country (USA) that you have joined the masses and are HELL BENT on the destruction of Christianity, family values, and everything that is decent and what out forefathers have fought and died for in this country. Your kind are the real BIGOTS! You are the enemy of everything that is decent and good, you love death and destruction (that is what the homosexual lifestyle will lead to)... -- Larry L

Isn't that sweet? Doesn't it make you feel good to be an American? Sure it does.

But you know what? Adorably rabid, misguided homophobes like Steve and Larry, they might have a point after all. Because after all my observations and when I really allow myself to be honest, I become convinced of the existence of a truly shocking gay lifestyle, an actual gay agenda far more sinister than even desperately misguided and morally lost people like Steve and Larry can comprehend.

Do you know what it is? Do you want to know the real gay agenda, what 96.8 percent of all gay couples wish for every single day including Sunday? Here it is:

From what I can glean and above all else, the gay people of America seem to want this simply inexcusable level of boundless, unchecked normalcy. It's true. For some reason, they believe the utterly disgusting idea that they should be able to live their lives in peace and trust and health, with full support and assistance from their schools and hospitals and government, just like everyone else. I know. Shudder.

It is, in fact, remarkably similar to what heteros want. And women. And black people. And immigrants. And dwarves. That is, to be able to fall in love and maybe even get married (or at least have the option) and have decreasing amounts of sex and raise a family and hold down a good job and pay their taxes and argue with their lovers over who the hell spent 200 bucks on long distance to their mother, all while not having to worry about getting the living crap beaten out of them with tire chains by Arkansas and Alabama and most of Texas, or secretly loathed by small-minded pseudo-Christians who wouldn't know Jesus' true message if it bit them on the other cheek.

Ah, the deviousness of it all, the sheer nerve to desire the same sort of lives as everyone else. But do you want to know the kicker? The true aspect of the "gay agenda" that makes the religious right's skin really crawl? Here it is: When all of that normalcy is in place, when these repulsive gay beings who like to walk around in public and eat at restaurants and drink their lattes and laugh out loud and stick things into each other's bodies for sexual pleasure, well, they want the most appalling thing of all: They just want to be left alone.

I know. It's hideous. How dare they! How dare most gays ask not to be harassed and not really care to flaunt their sexuality or convince anyone that homosexuality is cool or righteous or the only way to be, beyond reassuring children that it's OK to be whatever religion or sexual orientation your mind and body and heart and soul guide you to be. Can you imagine? What horror. Ignorant, intolerant schoolteachers should protest that nasty idea right now. Oh wait.

This is, in fact, the most sinister gay agenda of all. Normalcy. Lack of fear. Happiness. The right to be miserably in love just like everyone else and have it recognized by the culture as, well, no big deal. Safe. Healthy. Beautiful, even. What nerve.

To Steve and Larry's great dismay, gay people do not seem to care in the slightest for converting anyone to homosexuality, which of course would be the equivalent of converting a frying pan into a doorknob. It simply cannot be done. It's bitterly sad that this must be repeated so frequently in terms so simple that even Steve and Larry can comprehend, but gayness is no more a lifestyle choice than is blond hair or blood type or that knowledge, deep down in your skin, that Bush is raping the soul of the nation. It just is.

Much can be learned from this shocking revelation. Much we can glean from the gay agenda's "true" motivations -- most notably in how it contrasts with the famed and beloved Christian neoconservative heterosexual agenda, the one that instructs that you please keep your mouth shut and blindly believe in the same bitter God as everyone else, and by the way please bury your true sexuality and get married at 23 and pop out six kids and become quickly and quietly miserable and gain 30 pounds and stop having sex entirely and get divorced at 50 and wake up just in time to watch yourself die.

Oh my yes, that has proven to be just so much better, hasn't it, Steve? Larry?

Words of wisdom

From the Rude Pundit.

For earlier in the broadcast, David Gregory reported on the White House shooting down a widely-supported plan to rebuild New Orleans and said it could be done more cheaply. 'Cause, you know, that hope worked so well in Iraq. Gregory also reported on the White House's refusal to give documents to the bullshit committees investigating the response to Katrina. Indeed, the entire White House response has been the same as it was for the 9/11 Commission, the same as it was for any investigation of the "intelligence failures" on Iraq, the same as it was for any questions about NSA spying, the same as it was for the Plame affair, the same, the same, the same: the President ain't gotta tell you shit 'cause he's the motherfuckin' President, bitches.

Comforting words from the idiot in chief...

"Federal courts have consistently ruled that a President has authority under the Constitution to conduct foreign intelligence surveillance against our enemies. Predecessors of mine have used that same constitutional authority. Recently there was a Supreme Court case called the Hamdi case. It ruled the authorization for the use of military force passed by the Congress in 2001 -- in other words, Congress passed this piece of legislation. And the Court ruled, the Supreme Court ruled that it gave the President additional authority to use what it called "the fundamental incidents of waging war" against al Qaeda.
I'm not a lawyer, but I can tell you what it means. It means Congress gave me the authority to use necessary force to protect the American people, but it didn't prescribe the tactics. It's an -- you've got the power to protect us, but we're not going to tell you how. And one of the ways to protect the American people is to understand the intentions of the enemy. I told you it's a different kind of war with a different kind of enemy. If they're making phone calls into the United States, we need to know why -- to protect you."

But wait! There's more!!

"What I'm talking about is the intercept of certain communications emanating between somebody inside the United States and outside the United States; and one of the numbers would be reasonably suspected to be an al Qaeda link or affiliate. In other words, we have ways to determine whether or not someone can be an al Qaeda affiliate or al Qaeda. And if they're making a phone call in the United States, it seems like to me we want to know why.

This is a -- I repeat to you, even though you hear words, "domestic spying," these are not phone calls within the United States. It's a phone call of an al Qaeda, known al Qaeda suspect, making a phone call into the United States."

Here's the text of the Kansas State U. speech. Try to read it without laughing or throwing up.

One more step

in the march to fascism.

Is every word that comes out of this administration a lie?

Impeach Him

Great idea, but let's wait for Dick and that whack-job from Alaska, Ted Stevens, to die first since they are the next two in line for the presidency.

Oust Feinstein

Several Democrats, including Nelson and California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, already have said they don't think a filibuster is warranted.

Never...ever...will...I...vote...for Feinstein again!

Alito, an ardent baseball fan,

established himself as the Babe Ruth of evasion.