Year: 2006

Homeland Security Goes on Porn Patrol

Jon Ponder

Here is a bizarre story about two officers of the Maryland Homeland Security agency raiding a public library where they suspected that visitors were accessing porn sites on library computers:

Two uniformed men strolled into the main room of the Little Falls library in Bethesda one day last week and demanded the attention of all patrons using the computers. Then they made their announcement: The viewing of Internet pornography was forbidden.

The men looked stern and wore baseball caps emblazoned with the words “Homeland Security.” The bizarre scene unfolded Feb. 9, leaving some residents confused and forcing county officials to explain how employees assigned to protect county buildings against terrorists came to see it as their job to police the viewing of pornography.

After the two men made their announcement, one of them challenged an Internet user’s choice of viewing material and asked him to step outside, according to a witness. A librarian intervened, and the two men went into the library’s work area to discuss the matter. A police officer arrived. In the end, no one had to step outside except the uniformed men.

They were officers of the security division of Montgomery County’s Homeland Security Department, an unarmed force that patrols about 300 county buildings — but is not responsible for enforcing obscenity laws.

This is an example of what happens when the government’s security apparatus is overly empowered. These two super cops worked for the state of Maryland, but they share the mentality of the worker bees at the NSA who are under direct orders of President Bush to spy on anyone they choose.

There are always a few bad apples in the basket. Imagine what the bad apples at NSA have been up to — spying on congressional representatives of both parties and their staffs or the president’s political enemies, perhaps. It can’t be said that this couldn’t happen because it already has.

Spying on your enemies was the sport of choice not so very long ago. J. Edgar Hoover and Richard Nixon perfected it to an art. Nixon got caught, however, which led Congress to enact the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in order to keep future presidents out of the personal affairs of innocent Americans.

Jeb Going Squirrely Over Common Cause Victory

Trish

Columnists for the Orlando Sentinel outlined the perpetual piss-offedness of Gov. Jeb Bush, who this time is pissed at Common Cause for beating him at the Florida constitutional amendment game.

The governor then turned on Common Cause, saying he wasn’t satisfied that the organization had just disclosed top contributors to the $2.6 million Florida ballot campaign it has waged to have redistricting taken out of the hands of the Republican Legislature.

“I appreciate they gave up some of their donors. But what about the rest?” Bush said. “Where’s the outrage?”

Common Cause spokesperson Mary Boyle said, “the only secret squirrels we know about are hiding from Dick Cheney”

The list of 44 Common Cause contributors who gave $5,000 or more to the organization over the past year failed to include any big left-leaning donors such as George Soros, the financier who helped back the John Kerry presidential campaign.

Those major Common Cause contributors represented $1.3 million of the Florida campaign’s funding — with the remaining donations out of a pool averaging $50 each, the organization said.

But Bush isn’t satisfied. After earlier accusing Common Cause of raising “secret squirrel” money at “secret squirrel meetings,” he again raised the specter of the organization laundering its Florida contributions.

“What would happen if they gave a big transfer from the secret squirrel corporate headquarters in New York . . . down here for this?” Bush said.

“Common Cause of all people that tout themselves as being for good government and clean elections shouldn’t be participating in this. Where’s the outrage?” he said.

Common Cause spokesperson Mary Boyle called Bush’s allegations “ridiculous” and a “total diversionary tactic.”

“If the governor is still talking about ‘secret squirrels,’ ” she added, “the only secret squirrels we know about are hiding from Dick Cheney.”

Good one, Mary. Heh heh.

‘Brokeback Mountain’ Wins 4 British Oscars

Jon Ponder

“Brokeback Mountain” won four prizes at the British Academy Film Awards today, including Best Picture, Best Director for Ang Lee, Best Adapted Screenplay for Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana and Best Supporting Actor for Jake Gyllenhaal.

Heath Ledger lost the Best Actor to Philip Seymour Hoffman who won for “Capote.” Reese Witherspoon won Best Actress for her portrayal of June Carter Cash in “Walk the Line.”

“Crash” was nominated for nine awards but only won one of the top tier prizes. Best Supporting Actress went to Thandie Newton.

Poll: Bush Under 50% in 44 States, Including Texas

Jon Ponder

Glenn Greenwald at Crooks & Liars:

This 50-state polling chart compiled by USA Survey is quite telling. Bush’s approval rating is above 50 percent in only 6 states in the entire country, and Texas is not one of them. In 40 out of 50 states — 80 percent of the country — more people disapprove of Bush than approve of him.

Most revealing is Bush’s intense and pervasive unpopularity in Ohio, the state which swung the election in his favor. People in Ohio disapprove of Bush’s performance by an amazingly lopsided margin of 37-60 percent. Apparently, they’re not happy that they have no jobs, their kids have no health insurance, their neighbors have been stuck and are being killed in an increasingly unpopular, endless and senseless war in Iraq, and the President is surrounded by cronyism and corruption and thinks he has the power to break the law. But at least gay couples can’t get married, so that’s good.

Tarheel Gops Drop Pretense, Demand Church Members’ Contact Info

Jon Ponder

It had to happen: Republicans have taken control of the government largely by abusing the trust of gullible Christian conservatives. Now it appears that one state GOP group has forgotten that there is supposed to be at least the appearance of a demarcation between the spheres of politics and church life.

“It is imperative that we register, educate and get these potential voters from the pew to the ballot box.”

Yesterday, the Greensboro News & Record reported that the North Carolina Republican Party was collecting church directories, and it quoted two local pastors as objecting to the practice. The Rev. Richard Byrd Jr. of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Greensboro said anyone who sent in a directory “would be betraying the trust of the membership,” and the Rev. Ken Massey of the city’s First Baptist Church said the request was “encroaching on sacred territory.”

Chris Mears, the state party’s political director, made the request in a Feb. 15 memo titled “The pew and the ballot box” that was sent by e-mail to “Registered Republicans in North Carolina.”

Mears said the “Republican National Committee has completed a study on grass-roots activity that reveals that people who regularly attend church usually vote Republican when they vote.”

“In light of this study’s findings, it is imperative that we register, educate and get these potential voters from the pew to the ballot box. To do this we must know who these people are,” the memo continued.

“I am requesting that you collect as many church directories as you can and send them to me in an effort to fully register, educate and energize North Carolina’s congregations to vote in the 2006 elections,” it said.

It added that the “North Carolina Republican Party holds your church’s directory in strict confidence” and will not use it “to solicit church members for any other reason.”

The North Carolina Republican Party’s demand that churches turn over databases containing their members’ contact information has upset ultra-right Christian extremists:

“Such a request is completely beyond the pale of what is acceptable,” said the Rev. Richard Land, head of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The surprising thing is that anyone is surprised by this.

Cheney Could Have Been Charged with Criminal Negligence

Jon Ponder

Cover-up in plain sight: On MSNBC’s Countdown Friday night, Keith Olbermann interviewed Texas defense attorney Charles Parnham who finally said what everyone watching the coverage of Vice President Dick Cheney’s hunting accident has been thinking:

People who cause accidents because of their imprudent behavior are charged with criminal negligence every day. Even in Texas.

People whose imprudent behavior causes accidents are charged with criminal negligence every day, even in Texas, Parnham said, in so many words. (Transcript here.)

Viewed from the perspective that Cheney was indeed endeavoring to cover up a crime after he shot Harry Whittington last week, his actions — waiting a day to call local authorities in investigate, not notifying the press, etc. — cease to be confusing.

In fact, if you look at the sequence of events after the shooting, every action taken or avoided by the vice president, his hostess Katherine Armstrong and the hunting party appears to have been part of a deliberate effort to avoid future scrutiny:

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GOP Bush-Hater: Calamity Awaits Because Public Is Dumber Than Preznint

Jon Ponder

Un-smart Americans: Imagine if a liberal said this:

What does it say for democracy that half of the American population is unable to draw a rational conclusion from unambiguous facts? Americans share this disability with the Bush administration.

We’d be called “Bush haters” or “liberal extremists” — which would would be fine with us. But these statements were made by a Republican, Paul Craig Roberts, who served as an assistant secretary in the Treasury Dept. under Reagan, writing in Counterpunch last month. He also said:

Two recent polls, a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll and a New York Times/CBS News poll, indicate why Bush is getting away with impeachable offenses. Half of the US population is incapable of acquiring, processing and understanding information.

Much of the problem is the media itself, which serves as a disinformation agency for the Bush administration. Fox “News” and right-wing talk radio are the worst, but with propagandistic outlets setting the standard for truth and patriotism, all of the media is affected to some degree.

Despite the media’s failure, about half the population has managed to discern that the US invasion of Iraq has not made them safer and that the Bush administration’s assault on civil liberties is not a necessary component of the war on terror. The problem, thus, lies with the absence of due diligence on the part of the other half of the population.

Roberts says he considers himself a paleo-conservative. If so, paleo-conservatives think a lot like us:

Americans need desperately to understand that 95 percent of all Muslim terrorists in the world were created in the past three years by Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

Americans need desperately to comprehend that if Bush attacks Iran and Syria, as he intends, terrorism will explode, and American civil liberties will disappear into a thirty year war that will bankrupt the United States.

The total lack of rationality and competence in the White House and the inability of half of the US population to acquire and understand information are far larger threats to Americans than terrorism.

America has become a rogue nation, flying blind, guided only by ignorance and hubris. A terrible catastrophe awaits.

Scary on so many levels.

TNX JR!

Fox Does Soviet-Style Cleansing of Cheney’s Admission That He’d Been Drinking

Jon Ponder

Breshnevian: In the Fox News broadcast yesterday of lead anchor Brit Hume’s interview with Vice President Cheney about his hunting accident, Hume revealed that Cheney said he had “one beer” a few hours before he shot Harry Whittington.

But as Media Matters discovered, Fox did not include the actual video of Cheney making the admission in the broadcast.

What a big wet kiss to the vice president from this “news” channel. That sound bite would have been everywhere had they left it in — but now it has been scrubbed, Soviet-style.

Maybe Keith Olbermann can do a “Cheney Interview Puppet Theatre” re-enactment based on this transcript from the White House:

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Not Tancredo’s Campaign Treasurer

Jon Ponder

For the record: I have never met Tancredo and Trish and I are not related to his campaign treasurer, so far as we know:

Rep. Tom Tancredo has asked the Federal Elections Commission to say whether his congressional campaign can give up to $50,000 to a Colorado group behind a proposed constitutional amendment restricting state services for illegal immigrants.

Tancredo, R-Littleton, is seeking an advisory opinion that could have national implications. It could clarify a gray area of the law and determine how much members of Congress can get involved in state ballot initiatives.

Campaign treasurer Jon Ponder said Tancredo has not decided exactly how much to contribute to the group, Defend Colorado Now, but proposed the $50,000 figure in hopes of getting clear guidance on what’s allowed.

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