Day: June 14, 2006

Still. Doesn’t. Get. It.

Trish

If you’re like me, and from your comments I know you are, you’re about over John Kerry and Hillary Clinton and any other “presumptive nominee” that could never possibly be elected but have been shoved down our Democratic throats.

John Kerry scolding Hillary Clinton has got to take the biscuit for annoying, self-serving hooey.

Shut up, will ya, Kerry? The 2004 presumptive dolt is bickering with the 2008 presumptive sure loser

Kerry, who was widely criticized as the party’s standard-bearer in 2004 for being too cautious in his criticism of the war, said Tuesday that politicians “cannot have it both ways.”

In remarks that could have been aimed at Clinton, Kerry said: “It’s not enough to argue with the logistics or to argue about the details. … It is essential to acknowledge that the war itself was a mistake. … It was wrong, and I was wrong to vote for that Iraqi war resolution.”

Oh shut up, will ya, Kerry? The 2004 presumptive dolt is bickering with the 2008 presumptive sure loser over whether or not to set a date to withdraw troops from Iraq.

Anti-war activists at a liberal gathering booed Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton on Tuesday for opposing a set date for pulling U.S. troops from Iraq. Facing down the jeers, Clinton said Democrats need to have “a difficult conversation” about the war…

“Sometimes this is a difficult conversation, in part because this administration has made our world more dangerous than it should be,” said Clinton, D-N.Y.

Note to Hil: a “difficult conversation” is when you tell your parents you want to discuss their living wills. One thing I’ll say for Clinton, though. She’s right to put the blame for this imbecility on Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney. On the other hand, she did vote for the war just before she voted against it.

Here’s what we have to do: we have to keep Kerry and Clinton and any other candidates that Republicans are peeing their pants hoping we’ll run from making it to “presumptive nominee” status. Last time I felt like my vote (for Edwards because Wesley Clark had already washed out by then) didn’t count — and I am in Florida, a frickin’ Super Tuesday, i.e. early primary state. We can not let a surefire loser make it to the podium in 2008.

Press Clampdown on Gitmo

Buck Banks

Covering up: Editor & Publisher is reporting that reporters for the Miami Herald and Los Angeles Times visiting the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were forced to leave today on the order of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s office, while a reporter for the Charlotte Observer was allowed to stay until Saturday. Ostensibly they were made to leave because of alleged pressure on the Pentagon from AP, CNN, Fox and other news outlets who were barred from having reporters on the base, but E&P speculates that it was more likely because of the tough reporting done by the reporters in the wake of last week’s detainee suicides. Read the whole article here.

Poll: The World Hates Us More Each Day

Buck Banks

We earned it: We, as a nation, are about as popular as Saddam Hussein is in Kurdistan, as Tony Blair is in England, as Fidel Castro is in Miami, as Ann Coulter is in New Jersey. I mean, the world really does not like the Benighted States of Merka much at all.

The latest survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project, conducted among nearly 17,000 people in the United States and 14 other nations from March 31-May 14, found:

  • Positive views of the United States have declined sharply in Spain (from 41 percent to 23 percent), India (71 percent to 56 percent), and Turkey (23 percent to 12 percent). Even in Indonesia, where U.S. tsunami aid helped lift America’s image in 2005, favorable opinions of the U.S. have fallen (from 38 percent to 30 percent).
  • Support for the U.S.-led war on terror, with few exceptions, is either flat or has declined, confidence in President Bush has fallen ever lower in Europe and majorities in most countries believe that the U.S. will not achieve its objectives in Iraq.
  • Americans and Western publics are increasingly concerned over Iran. Nearly half of Americans (46 percent) view the current government in Iran as a “great danger” to stability in the Middle East and to world peace, up from 26 percent in 2003. In Germany, Spain, France and Great Britain the percentage of people who see Iran as a great danger has roughly tripled compared with three years ago. But Muslim publics are far less alarmed by Iran and its nuclear program.
  • Divisions between the West and Muslim nations are even wider in opinions of the Hamas Party’s victory in Palestinian elections. On balance, Americans and Western Europeans — except for the British — feel the Hamas victory is bad for the Palestinian people. Muslim publics generally disagree.
  • Majorities in 10 of 14 foreign countries surveyed say the war in Iraq has made the world a more dangerous place. In Great Britain, 60 percent say the war has made the world more dangerous, compared with 30 percent who say it has made the world safer.
  • Global warming concerns are widespread in India and Japan — roughly two-thirds in each country say they worry a great deal about global warming. But in the U.S. and China, only about one in five says they worry a great deal about global warming.

Irrelevant Reps Want to Butt in to NSA Domestic Spying Investigation

Buck Banks

On the fringe looking in: Would-be NSA whistleblower Russell Tice is still having a hard time getting anyone on Capitol Hill to listen to his allegations of wrongdoings at the National Security Agency when it was run by Gen. Michael Hayden, now head of the CIA. Tice has not been able to meet with anything higher than the Senate committee aide level, and he can’t just tell anybody anything because what he has to tell is classified and few on the Hill have the requisite security clearance to hear it. Catch-22!

But Russ should take heart. His plight has caught the attention of a couple of the House’s least powerful knob-jobs who want to hear his story as a way of raisning their own paltry profiles. House Government Reform National Security Subcommittee Chairman Christopher Shays, R-Conn., and ranking member Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, have told the NSA they want to hear from Tice, who worked on special access programs at the agency until he was fired in May 2005.

These are the same guys who held hearings on cruise ship safety after absinthe-besotten George Smith went overboard on a Royal Caribbean cruise ship last summer. They are desperate for any attention they can get, which is why they are butting into the NSA case.

They are desperate for any attention they can get, which is why they are butting into the NSA case.

Shays is in a tough re-election campaign against Dianne Ferrell and his constituents are not pleased that he supports and continues to support the war in Iraq. Even Shay’s mother thinks he’s blowing the campaign by talking about Iraq.

Kucinich, who made an embarrassing bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2004 (remember? he wouldn’t quit campaigning) and was formerly known as the “Boy Mayor” when he was the youngest-ever mayor of Cleveland, just can’t seem to be taken seriously. Just the other day, in response to a press release issued by Kucinich following the assassination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, MSNBC’s Don Imus suggested that Kucinich might make a good replacement for Zarqawi as head of al Qaeda in Iraq. Zing!

The NSA, surprise, has been dragging its feet on responding to Shays and Kucinich, claiming A) Tice has not contacted the NSA to tell it what ilegal stuff he wants to talk about, and B) it’s not clear that the House Government Reform National Security Subcommittee has one iota of jurisdiction over the NSA. According to CongressDaily:

Tice originally wrote letters last December asking to meet with the Senate and House Intelligence committees. He got a meeting earlier this year with staff from the House Intelligence Committee, but they told him they were not cleared to hear what he had to say. Instead, Tice met last month in a closed session with senior staff from the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Tice said he told the staffers everything he knew. But he said the aides did not say how, or if, they would follow up on his allegations. Shays and Kucinich believe that the House Government Reform Committee has jurisdiction to hear from Tice. In a May 17 letter to the NSA, the lawmakers argue that they can hear from Tice because the House Intelligence Committee does not have exclusive jurisdiction over special access programs that Tice worked.

Shays and Kucinich must have stayed up all night to find this questionable microscopic loophole:

“If the SAP [special access programs] does not fall under the exclusive jurisdiction of [the House Intelligence Committee], but rather under the jurisdiction of the Armed Services Committee, the House rules provide that the Government Reform Committee may exercise oversight jurisdiction to investigate allegations of illegal activity under that government program,” the letter said.

There’s no doubt the NSA’s domestic spying initiatives should be investigated thoroughly and some committee with some clout should hear what Tice has to say. But allowing these two irrelevant grandstanders to become involved in what could be one of the most important government investigations since Watergate would be to doom any chances that we’ll ever know the truth about the Bush administration’s domestic spying activities.

But hey, maybe that’s the point.

SCOTUS Perks: Dough’s Good, Travel’s Great

Buck Banks

High court hijinks: This didn’t get much play in the MSM when it was released a few days ago, but here are some details of the Supreme Court justices’ 2005 travel and financial information for your edification and delight. Note: the money ain’t bad, and the travel perks are great. Unless you’re Clarence Thomas, that is.

Chief Justice John Roberts: Two trips, to New Haven, Conn., for a moot court and to London to teach a Georgetown University Law School summer program. Sold stock in companies such as Coca-Cola Co. and Fairmont Hotels & Resorts Inc. in September, a week before his Senate confirmation. Assets: $2.9 million to $7 million.

Justice John Paul Stevens: Four trips, to Chicago to throw out the first pitch of a Chicago–Cincinnati game and talk to lawyers, to Las Vegas for a lawyers meeting, to Fordham Law School in New York and to an American Bar Association meeting in Chicago. Assets: $1.5 million to $3.5 million.

Justice Antonin Scalia: Received permission to file report late (after the media reports, don’t you reckon?).

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy: Fifteen trips, including to Thailand for a meeting of Asian judges; to Hong Kong University; to Salzburg, Austria, to teach a course for McGeorge School of Law; to Prague, Czech Republic, for a meeting of the American Bar Association; and to Fresno, Calif., for a courthouse dedication. Assets: $65,000 to $195,000.

Justice David H. Souter: One trip, to Harvard Law School for a moot court. Assets: $5.6 million to $26.3 million.

Justice Clarence Thomas: Three trips, to Omaha, Neb., to teach at Creighton University; to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for a program of the Horatio Alger Association; and to Tuscaloosa, Ala., to lecture at the University of Alabama. Assets: $150,000 to $410,000.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Nine trips, including a teaching assignment at the University of Puerto Rico School of Law and speeches at Duke University, the University of Kansas, Wake Forest University, West Virginia University and Emmanuel College in England. Assets: $6.4 million to $28 million.

Justice Stephen Breyer: Fourteen trips, including a lecture in Melbourne, Australia, and the Saban Forum in Israel. Sold stock in Gannett Co., Merck & Co. and Fannie Mae, while buying stock in Nestle SA, Carnival Corp. and Teva Pharmaceutical. Assets: $3.4 million to $11 million.

Justice Samuel Alito: Two trips, while living in New Jersey, to Washington for a Constitution Project event at Georgetown Law School and to Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Va., to give a speech, both before his nomination to the court. Assets: $665,000 to $1.7 million.

Source: Financial Disclosure Reports, filed with the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts.