McCain Hearts Bush – Special Valentine
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Day: February 14, 2008
House Approves Contempt Charges against Loyal Bushies, Bolten and Miers
The House has approved criminal and civil contempt resolutions against White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers for failing to respond to subpoenas from the House Judiciary Committee. The vote was 223-32, as Republicans walked out of the chamber to protest the vote and the Democrats’ failure to take up the Senate-passed revision to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
House GOPs Walk Out to Protest Telecoms’ Lack of Immunity in FISA Bill After Bush Threatened to Postpone Trip in Support of His Accomplices
If “fascism” is defined as corporate control of government, then there has never been a more brazen display of American fascism than the one put on by Republicans in Washington today.
First, George Bush threatened to postpone his trip to Africa tomorrow because the House version of the new FISA bill does not give immunity to giant telecom corporations who conspired with him hundreds of times to violate federal wiretap laws and eavesdrop on Americans without warrants:
“If we have to delay (the trip), we’ll delay,” Bush said.
Bush is backing the Senate-passed bill, which includes retroactive protection from lawsuits that telecommunications companies are facing because they cooperated with government eavesdropping following the Sept. 11 terror attacks. The House has not passed that measure, and the law expires at midnight Saturday. The House bill also does not provide immunity from lawsuits for the telecommunications companies.
Then congressional Republicans staged a walk-out to protest the fact that their corporate masters could be held accountable for crimes they knowingly committed:
It’s political gamesmanship of the highest order.
House Republicans have just staged a walkout from the chamber to protest the decision of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership to let an act that expands the government’s surveillance powers expire.
Republican leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) is giving a press conference on the Capitol steps right now, saying that the decision of the House to debate a contempt resolution involving former White House officials instead of taking up the Protect America Act jeopardizes national security. He said the House Republicans would stay in Washington as long as necessary to finish the bill.
Pelosi and the Democratic leadership believe there isn’t enough time to reconcile the differences between the Senate and House versions of the act, which would make adjustments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act permanent, giving the government more power to monitor phone calls and emails without a court order in certain circumstances. The Democrats want a second extension of the current out to work out the differences.
So far, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is standing firm.
Quote du Jour
I remember as a child hearing my impatient missionary father explain to an elderly Chinese gentleman, “Does it mean nothing to you that if you reject Christ you will burn in hell?”
The Chinese gentleman smiled as he replied, “If, as you say, my ancestors are all in hell at this moment, it would be unfilial of me not to be willing to suffer with them.”
— Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973), American writer, recipient of the Pulitzer and Nobel prizes
Huckabee Endorsed by Hate Group Leader Dobson
This item was apparently “dumped” into late Friday news cycle last week, although it’s unclear who was trying to downplay it, James Dobson, the leader of the tax-exempt anti-gay group, Focus on the Family (FOTF), or Mike Huckabee, the no-shot Republican presidential candidate:
Ironically, evangelical Christian couples have a higher divorce rate that normal couples, and yet their leaders are too obsessed with their hatred of gay people to act against this this scourge within the church family.
James Dobson, one of the nation’s most prominent evangelical Christian leaders, backed Mike Huckabee’s presidential bid Thursday night, giving the former Arkansas governor a long-sought endorsement as the Republican field narrowed to a two-man race.
In a statement first obtained by The Associated Press, Dobson reiterated his declaration on Super Tuesday that he could not in good conscience vote for John McCain, the front-runner, because of concerns over the Arizona senator’s conservative credentials.
Dobson and his confederates promote FOTF as an advocacy group for “moral values.” However, it apparently does not concern them that Huckabee has two advisers who are notorious adulterers: Dick Morris, the professional Clinton-hater who consorted with prostitutes while married, and Rev. Tim Hutchinson, the former Arkansas senator who was conducting an extramarital affair in 1998 when he voted to convict Pres. Clinton for lying about having an affair with a staffer.
(Similarly, Pat Robertson, the TV preacher who also raises millions by promoting homophobia, endorsed Rudolph Giuliani, a serial adulterer, whose second wife learned he was leaving her for another woman when he announced it at a news conference.)
Senate Ethics: Weaseling out on Gay Stall Sex Charge ‘Improper’ – Hiring Call Girls a Non-Issue
Conservative moral relativism is on display once again.
After Sen. David Vitter, R-La., an unctuous spouter of family values, admitted last year that he’d consorted with call girls back when he served in the House, there were no calls for his resignation from his Senate colleagues and certainly no investigations launched by the Senate Ethics Committee.
Why? Not because these senators disapprove — or care — about Vitter’s predilection for paying for it (and reportedly wearing diapers when doing so). No, the issue is numbers. If Vitter had resigned, the governor of Louisiana, a Democrat at the time, would have replaced him with a Democrat, which would have tilted the already tight balance of power in the Senate one more seat to the left.
But when it comes to gay sex shenanigans, there’s no such reticence. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Id. — no less a family values spouter than Vitter — was not even seeking to pay for the sex he was after in an airport men’s room last summer. And yet, the Senate Ethics Committee is coming down hard:
The Senate Ethics Committee said Senator Larry Craig engaged in “improper conduct” during and after his arrest in a Minneapolis airport bathroom by seeking to withdraw his guilty plea and showing his business card to the arresting officer.
“We consider your attempt to withdraw your guilty plea to be an attempt to evade the legal consequences of an action freely undertaken by you — that is, pleading guilty,” the committee wrote, according to a letter posted on its Web site yesterday.
The panel said that Craig’s showing his Senate business card could be construed as an attempt to receive special treatment. The committee also criticized him for failing to secure its approval to use campaign funds to pay legal fees.
So Vitter did not expect, and receive, special treatment from the DC Madam because he was a member of Congress?
What Craig did was illegal. Having sex in a public bathroom is tacky, gross and a public nuisance. But what Vitter did was also illegal — and, yes, the statute of limitations had expired — but to ignore his shenanigans while pursuing Craig wreaks of homophobia.
