You gotta love it:
A member of the audience with the words ‘Tap This’ taped on her jeans walks out of the room as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, not pictured, speaks at Georgetown University Law School Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2006. Answering the Bush administration’s critics, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that warrantless surveillance is critical to prevent another terrorist attack within the United States. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
— Report from the National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center sent to the White House Situation Room — it also predicted that a Category 4 or 5 hurricane would cause severe damage in the city, including power outages and a direct economic hit of up to $10 billion for the first week.
— President Bush on Good Morning America
Another picture Bush doesn’t want you to see: The American Civil Liberties Union is asking the government to give it a rest in the case of recently acquitted terror suspect Sami Al-Arian. But Bush pettiness and pandering probably won’t allow that. St. Petersburg Times:
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida urged the government Monday not to retry Sami Al-Arian, who was acquitted in December on eight counts of terrorism-related charges in a federal trial in Tampa. The jury hung on nine counts, with 10 jurors favoring total acquittal on all but an immigration charge.
In a letter to federal authorities, the director of the Florida ACLU wrote: “In light of the jury’s acquittal … on the most serious charges and in light of reportedly spending millions of dollars in a trial that led to no convictions, a decision to retry (Dr. Al-Arian) would appear to be pointless and vindictive.”
But “pointless and vindictive” kind of sums up the Bush approach to fighting terror. Why, you might ask, does Bush Co. have a personal stake in this trial? The real Al-Arian/Republican story is pretty juicy. […]
After spending the better part of four days last week examining in minute detail Sen. Hillary Clinton’s remark that the Republicans are running the U.S. House of Representatives like “a plantation” — even though her statement mirrored similar remarks by disgraced Republican former House Speaker Newt Gingrich — the Kool Kids in the Capitol allowed Karl Rove to lie with impunity last Friday when he said:
ROVE: [S]ome leading Democrats have made wild and reckless and false charges against the president, and some even call for his removal from office. Let me be as clear as I can: President Bush believes if Al Qaeda is calling somebody in America, it is in our national security interest to know who they’re calling and why. Some important Democrats clearly disagree.
In spite of the fact that Rove is under scrutiny by federal prosectors for treasonously revealing the identity of a CIA agent for partisan political gain — not one of the bewigged and perfumed million dollar babies in the D.C. press corps batted an eye over this slanderous falsehood. Media Matters sets the record straight:
In fact, ever since a December 16 New York Times article first revealed the domestic wiretapping program, Democratic leaders have consistently acknowledged the need for U.S. intelligence agencies to eavesdrop on the communications of suspected Al Qaeda operatives. At the same time, Democrats — and numerous Republicans and conservatives — raised serious questions about Bush’s decision to bypass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which, except as otherwise specifically provided, requires the government to obtain a warrant to conduct domestic surveillance for foreign intelligence purposes.
Trump’s renaming of Lake Ontario has created a litmus test —
Yield, and rename it Lake America, at Donald Trump’s behest,
Like Google and Apple, which already capitulated,
Changing the name just like Dear Leader stipulated,
But there’s one defiant holdout — the original mapping site, Mapquest.
