Tag: Congress

Chickenhawk Bush Has the Gall to Lecture Americans on Vietnam

Jon Ponder

When you hear the sound bites from George W. Bush’s speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars today in which he compares his botched war in Iraq to the Vietnam war, think about what he was doing while thousands of U.S. soldiers were wounded and killed in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

Bush is in effect saying that Vietnam could have been won if only we’d stayed there longer — that winning would have only required a few tens of thousand more lives lost — other than his own, of course.

As is well known, Bush’s elite status entitled him to a cushy berth in a “champagne unit” of the Texas Air National Guard. Associates from that era remember young Bush as being preoccupied with doing drugs, driving drunk and chasing women. There are rumors he seriously damaged a fighter jet while taxiing it on a runway while hungover. And there is strong circumstantial evidence he was discharged less than honorably after failing to show up for a series of Pentagon-mandated drug tests.

With that in mind, here is how Bush today, rewriting and politicizing the war he sat out:

The tragedy of Vietnam is too large to be contained in one speech. So I’m going to limit myself to one argument that has particular significance today. Then as now, people argued the real problem was America’s presence and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end…

In 1972, one antiwar senator put it this way: “What earthly difference does it make to nomadic tribes or uneducated subsistence farmers in Vietnam or Cambodia or Laos, whether they have a military dictator, a royal prince or a socialist commissar in some distant capital that they’ve never seen and may never heard of?” A columnist for The New York Times wrote in a similar vein in 1975, just as Cambodia and Vietnam were falling to the communists: “It’s difficult to imagine,” he said, “how their lives could be anything but better with the Americans gone.” A headline on that story, date Phnom Penh, summed up the argument: “Indochina without Americans: For Most a Better Life.”

The world would learn just how costly these misimpressions would be. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge began a murderous rule in which hundreds of thousands of Cambodians died by starvation and torture and execution. In Vietnam, former allies of the United States and government workers and intellectuals and businessmen were sent off to prison camps, where tens of thousands perished. Hundreds of thousands more fled the country on rickety boats, many of them going to their graves in the South China Sea.

[…]

CIA Opens FOIA Candy Jar to Bloggers — Kind of

Buck Banks

In an administration infamous for its secrecy, the CIA suddenly must look like a maverick. The agency has abandoned more restrictive policies and loosened the definition of “news media” to include — through no small amount of interpretation — bloggers among the media that can access government documents through the Freedom of Information Act for free instead of for exhorbitant fees.

But it’s the CIA’s explanation of the process by which it came around to not changing the rules that has to rank as a classic in the annals of gubmint gobble-speak:

… if any features of the proposed system were dropped, the advantages would not outweigh the disadvantages of adopting this system.
— CIA

The CIA received comments that supported some aspect of the proposed rule, while also receiving comments which were very critical of other aspects of this approach. After a review and consideration of all of the comments, it was clear that there was no way to reconcile the positive and negative comments into a refinement of our approach that was workable. We concluded that if any features of the proposed system were dropped, the advantages would not outweigh the disadvantages of adopting this system.

Since there was no support to proceed with the proposed rule as originally drafted, rather than implementing the sweeping changes set forth in the proposed rule, we have a more modest change by simply adopting the definition of “news media” contained in the March 27, 1987, Office of Management and Budget FOIA Guidelines. Although, the CIA remains confident in the adequacy and sufficiency of its previous interpretation of “news media” fee status, it has concluded that it is preferable to avoid sterile and unproductive technical litigation and the associated diversion of resources from more productive pursuits that that entails.

Sterile and unproductive technical litigation? Ew! Fortunately, a lawyer who speaks the language explained:

Meredith Fuchs, general counsel of the National Security Archive, a research institute and library located at The George Washington University, said the CIA changed its definition in an attempt to pre-empt a court ruling that the agency’s existing regulations were illegal. The Archive filed a lawsuit in District Court for the District of Columbia in June 2006, challenging a CIA decision that it did not qualify as “news media” and that its request would have to concern “current events” to qualify for the fee waiver.

“We hope these changes will minimize CIA efforts to discourage news media FOIA requesters in the future,” Fuchs said.

Yeah, that sounds likely. Meanwhile, we here at Pensito Review are compiling our wish lists of documents we would like to see revealed through the FOIA. They include — every scrap of paper and e-mail ever produced in Dick Cheney’s branch of the government, the doodles Alberto Gonzalez made during his congressional testimony, Harriet Meiers’ to-do lists, Michael Chertoff’s Maalox receipts — among many others.

Have some gubmint documents you’d like to see under the FOIA? Share your wish list with us in a comment.

Vitter Challenges Media to Prove He Consorted with New Orleans Hooker

Jon Ponder

His number appeared five times in DC Madam’s call lists but now he says reports that he frequented a New Orleans brothel in the 1990s are “not true”

“Unfortunately, my admission has encouraged some longtime political enemies and those hoping to profit from the situation to spread falsehoods too, like those New Orleans stories in recent reporting.”
– Sen. David Vitter

In the spring of 1987, Colorado Sen. Gary Hart held a commanding lead in early polling in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. But two questions dogged the candidate: How would he deal with the large debt carried over from his 1984 run for the presidency — and what about the rumors that he was, as they said back then, a “womanizer.”

The debt quickly became a non-issue after Hart made a miscalculation in handling the second question that has become a classic “what not to do” in politics — he challenged the media to prove he was having an affair:

“Follow me around … I’m serious. If anybody wants to put a tail on me, go ahead. They’d be very bored.”

Reporters from the Miami Herald took Hart up on the challenge and quickly outed his extramarital relationship with an attractive young woman named Donna Rice. After photos surfaced of Hart and Rice looking both intimate and disheveled on the deck of a yacht called Monkey Business, he dropped out of the race.

Yesterday, Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican with a penchant for pompous moralizing, may have made the same mistake Hart did 20 years ago. After waiting a full week to address revelations that he used the services of the DC Madam five years ago, he appeared before the media and dropped the gauntlet, all but challenging reporters to prove he had relationships with other prostitutes:

Unfortunately, my admission has encouraged some longtime political enemies and those hoping to profit from the situation to spread falsehoods too, like those New Orleans stories in recent reporting. Those stories are not true. Now, having said all of this, I’m not going to answer endless questions about it all over again and again and again and again.

Vitter was referring to stories that surfaced in New Orleans last week that he had been in a relationship with a working girl in the 1990s:

[…]

Video: Serial Adulterer Sen. Vitter Pontificates against Gay Marriage

Jon Ponder

“Marriage is the most fundamental social institution in human history,” Sen. David Vitter says in the video clip above. This statement came as part of the debate last summer over amending the U.S. Constitution to prevent gay people from marrying each other.

At the time, Vitter told CNN,”I don’t believe there’s any issue that’s more important than this one.”

Over the years, of course, Vitter has degraded and defiled his own marriage by hiring prostitutes, including at least one call girl from the D.C. Madam.

Prior to that, Wendy Cortez, a prostitute in New Orleans, claimed in 1999 that Vitter had an ongoing affair with her. Maybe he met her at this brothel:

In New Orleans, meanwhile, the madam of a high-priced brothel that was shut down by federal authorities in 2002 told a local television station, WDSU, that Mr. Vitter was one of her clients in the 1990s. The woman, Jeanette Maier, called him “one of the nicest and most honorable men I’ve ever met.” Mr. Vitter’s office did not immediately return a call for comment Tuesday night.

Serial Adulterer Giuliani Is Disappointed That Sen. Vitter Had Sex with Hooker

Jon Ponder

Presidential candidate Rudolph Giuliani’s reaction today to news that one of his supporters, Sen. David Vitter (R-La.) admitted he procured at least one prostitute from the so-called D.C. Madam six years ago, has raised the bar in Republican hypocrisy about adultery:

“I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.”
— Wendy Vitter

On Vitter, Giuliani … emphasized “this is a personal issue” and highlighted that he couldn’t have achieved so much in the campaign and during his years as mayor without the good character of his staffers and supporters. “But,” Giuliani added, “Some people disappoint you.”

While he was mayor of New York, Giuliani had at least two affairs outside his marriage to Donna Hanover. He made headlines when Hanover learned that Rudy planned to divorce her when he announced it at a news conference.

Vitter serves as a regional chairman of Giuliani’s campaign in the South. Recently, Giuliani’s South Carolina finance chair, Tom Ravenel, quit the campaign after it was announced he had been indicted on federal cocaine distribution charges.

Vitter was elected to the House in 1999, filling the seat vacated by Rep. Bob Livingston, the would-be Speaker of the House who was ousted at the eleventh hour when porn purveyor Larry Flynt obtained evidence about Livingston’s kinky extramarital sex life.

(Livingston was taking over the speakership from Newt Gingrich, who was removed from the leadership when it was revealed he was having an affair with a staffer. In the background of all this, Gingrich, Livingston and the House GOP were busy impeaching Pres. Bill Clinton over a sex lie.)

As regards Vitter, it turns out that this is not the first time he has been caught paying for sex:

…Vitter was accused of an extramarital affair in 1999 with a New Orleans prostitute, Wendy Cortez. Wendy Cortez contacted former Governor Treen’s office during the 2002 campaign for governor that year, because she was unhappy he was claiming to be a family values candidate and cheating on his wife with her.

He says it’s all behind him now, which sounds like a good idea, considering this quote from his wife:

“I’m a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary,” Wendy Vitter told Newhouse News. “If he does something like that, I’m walking away with one thing, and it’s not alimony, trust me.”

“I think fear is a very good motivating factor in a marriage,” she added. “Don’t put fear down.”

Lorena Bobbitt, you may recall (and I was fuzzy on the details, which Trish pointed out), cut off her husband’s offending member after he cheated on her and repeatedly assaulted her:

In the years following their 1989 marriage, the relationship between John Wayne Bobbitt, 26, and his Ecuadorian wife, Lorena, 24, grew increasingly strained. Their marital problems allegedly stemmed from a combination of the couple’s financial troubles, John’s extramarital affairs and his intensifying emotional and physical abuse of his wife. Their troubles peaked on June 23, 1993 when John came home to their Manassas, Va., apartment intoxicated after a night of partying and allegedly forced his wife to have sex, Lorena later testified during a 1994 court hearing.

Better watch out, Senator.

Hate Crime Victim Ryan Skipper’s Rep, Tom Feeney: No Need for Hate Crime Bill

Trish
Let the party begin! Rep. Tom Feeney rings the bell opening the American Stock Exchange.

This just in from Vicki Nantz, an independent film maker planning a documentary on Ryan Skipper, whose March murder in Central Florida is being investigated as a hate crime.

I recently wrote U.S. House Representative, Tom Feeney, Republican of Central Florida, and asked him why he does not support federal hate crime legislation that includes the gay and lesbian community. Why are acts of brutality, physical assaults and murder, which are meant to intimidate and terrorize the LGBT community, not included in our current, or likely-to-be-passed federal hate crime laws – the legislation that President Bush has promised to veto. I received written correspondence yesterday from Feeney that included the following:

…”I do not support specialized punishment for particular mentalities. This idea singles out groups for special treatment…When someone is murdered because the killer does not like the color of their skin, that killer deserves harsh punishment; but the killer deserves it because the victim is a human, not because of the killer’s hateful thoughts…Justice ultimately ought to be based on the fundamental worth of a human being and not the thoughts of the specific criminal…I hope in the near future crime legislation can be voted on that protects all equally and punishes the offender for the crime committed and not the thoughts in his mind.”

And yet Feeney and the other overwhelmingly Republican, antigay hypocrites like him have voted in support of federal legislation that does punish people for the thoughts in their minds. The following is part of the U.S. Code, federal law currently being followed in this country:

TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 113B

CHAPTER 113B—TERRORISM

(1) the term “international terrorism” means activities that—

(A) involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State;

(B) appear to be intended—

(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or

(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and…

(5) the term “domestic terrorism” means activities that—

(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State;

(B) appear to be intended—

(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

(ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or

(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping…

Clearly, hypocritical Representative Feeney, President Bush and the American religious extremists who decry inclusive hate crime legislation as being “thought crime” legislation reveal much behind their own selective, hate-filled thoughts. It is that same base thinking that led to the murders of Matthew Shephard and Ryan Skipper, and the dozens more LGBT murders and innumerable of acts of brutal violence that most people have never bothered to know about.

Use your voice. Use your votes.

Thanks Vicki. We agree with everything you said and find it particularly upsetting that Ryan’s own representatives, and those of his family and friends, can’t see the need for hate crime legislation.

But Tom Feeney’s words mean nothing. Feeney was among a group of fellow members of Congress investigated by the FBI because they were known by jailed lobbyist Jack Abramoff to be for sale.

Feeney, former speaker of the Florida House, is one of three men who were U.S. House members when they accompanied Abramoff to Scotland on trips that included rounds of golf at the legendary Royal & Ancient Golf Club at St. Andrews.

The others: former Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, who is serving prison time for corruption related to his Abramoff relationship, and former House Republican leader Tom DeLay, who was indicted in an unrelated Texas fundraising case and is under investigation in the Abramoff case.

Romney: My Dog Liked Riding on Car Roof 12 Hours from Boston to Ontario

Jon Ponder

Mitt Romney has reacted to the story that he illegally transported his large dog in a carrier on the roof of his car for 12 hour trips in the 1980s, including one from Boston to Ontario. He says the dog liked it:

“He scrambled up there every time we went on trips, got in all by himself and enjoyed it,” Romney said of the Irish Setter.

And, anyway, the entire controversy is PETA’s fault because they criticized him:

“PETA has not been my fan over the years. PETA was after me for having a rodeo at the Olympics,” he said in reference to his role as chief executive of the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, Utah. “PETA was unhappy when I went quail hunting in Georgia, and they’re not happy that my dog likes fresh air.”

This dumbass is one sick puppy.

What If the US Was Commandeered by a Rogue Elements – And Nobody Cared?

Jon Ponder

By any objective measure, rogue elements at the very top of the Executive Branch have seized control of the United States government:

  • For all we know, Dick Cheney is using a frontloader to deliver state secrets to the Saudis, or the British or Israel. Since 2003, he has refused to accede to security oversight regarding secret documents from his own administration.
  • If you think Cheney wouldn’t do anything to harm the country, you are wrong. In 2003, he instructed his minions, including Scooter Libby, to unmask a CIA agent who was working on a covert project tracking blackmarket sales of weapons of mass destruction. There is no reason not to expect that one of the weapons that the agent, Valerie Plame Wilson, would have otherwise helped capture will be set off in Times Square one day.
  • Late yesterday, the White House confirmed that Pres. Bush has also refused oversight on documents.
  • For years now, when Bush has signed a bill into law that he doesn’t like, he has simultaneously countermanded it with a “signing statement” indicating his intent to break the very law he just signed. He has done this over over 700 times.
  • Pres. Bush has admitted violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act over 1,000 times.
  • The United States Dept. of Justice is being run out of a a boiler room at the RNC.
  • To further his party’s political ends, Bush divided the country and then took us to war using an indictment against Iraq that was full of lies.

And yet what this state of affairs evinces from a wide spectrum of the American public is a shrug. “What can ya do?”

For many people, shrugging off the outrage comes from fatigue. While the Republicans controlled everything, it seemed it would never end. When the Democrats took over last year, their margin in the Senate was too slim to fully take control. The conventional wisdom now is that Bush will serve out his term, albeit under constant barrage from his critics.

But this could be changing. If action is taken against the rogue elements at the top of our government before they are scheduled to step down in January 2009, it will only be with the blessing of the Republican minority.

Bush has polled under 30 percent in four polls this year. A majority of Republicans continue to support him, roughly 60 percent in a recent poll. But this number was 20 percentage points higher six months ago.

If it continues to go down, we may find that despite Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s assurances last year, impeachment is on the table.

Lowering the Bloom — On the GOP

Buck Banks

Political analyst Craig Crawford says that New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s noisy exit from the Republican Party and foray into the ranks of political independence helps the Democrats and harms the Repugs:

Even though he was once a Democrat and despite his liberal social views, Bloomberg more naturally appeals to those Republicans who are iffy on social matters but who tend to admire a wealthy businessmen who runs government like a CEO (which he also once was).

What little polling data exists right now suggests a break toward Democrats. For instance, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York nets an across-the-board gain of three percentage points in a 3-way matchup against Bloomberg and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani done this month by SurveyUSA in battleground states. A Bloomberg candidacy boosts Clinton’s net margin in 10 of the 15 states surveyed, while giving Giuliani a bump in only three and producing no change in two.

The Bloomberg assist to Clinton is most evident in Southern and border states. Missouri actually flips from a Giuliani lead to a Clinton lead if Bloomberg is in the mix. And in Kentucky – one of the few Southern states that the Clinton campaign intends to target – the Bloomberg factor tightens a Giuliani lead to a dead heat between he and Clinton.

While a slew of new polls will surely test other matchups, expect the Bloomberg spoiler effect to narrowly benefit Democrats.

Bloomberg had better run for something and win because he’s quickly running out of potential party affiliations. Forget the Greens, maybe the Libertarians and there’s always the World Socialist Party of the United States or the National Nihilist Party, if he gets really desperate.

Pentagon Planned to Turn Enemy Troops Gay

Trish

The Pentagon’s 1994 plan to devise a “gay bomb” is making new headlines.

More significant than whether the Pentagon has really abandoned the plan is what their research proves: sexual orientation is biologically determined — not a lifestyle choice

The DOD requested $7.5 million over six years to develop the “weapon,” which they hoped would chemically alter straight enemy troops so they would become attracted to each other. Theoretically, the hostiles would become distracted by their new relationships and stop paying attention to blowing us up. Later, morale would suffer as Joe breaks up with Jim, and Jim’s friends all tell him he’s so much better off because everyone knows Joe is jerk. Then one of them starts going out with Joe. And so forth.

The official line is that almost as quickly as the idea was hatched, it was scuttled. But the Sunshine Project, which monitors such hair-brained Defense Department activity via the Freedom of Information Act, says that ain’t so.

[Sunshine Project Director Edward Hammond] went on to state that the Joint Non-lethal Weapons Directorate, based out of Quantico, actually used the “gay-bomb” idea as a marketing tool in a CD-ROM from 2001-2002 and that “the Pentagon… submitted it to the highest scientific review body in the country.”

More significant than whether the Pentagon has really abandoned the plan is what their research proves: sexual orientation is biologically determined — not a lifestyle choice. That fact could blow up more Republican and Christian right fund raising campaigns than the best placed bomb, gay or otherwise.