As you can see in the video above, Condoleezza Rice has gone before the Congress and the American people on several occassions to confirm that torture remains illegal under the Bush regime and the U.S. government was not committing or conspiring to torture people — but now the record is clear that, as national security adviser in Bush’s first term, she led meetings with other top Bush officials to draft guidelines for torture techniques to be used by the CIA. Last Friday, George Bush admitted the group had his blessing and that he ultimately authorized the torture techniques.
The Eighth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States forbids “cruel and unusual punishments.” The president, vice president, Rice and other officials who crafted the torture guidelines — including Sec. of State Colin Powell, Att. Gen. John Ashcroft, Defense Sec. Donald Rumsfeld, CIA Director George Tenet and their aides — all swore oaths to uphold the Constitution.
Besides being illegal according to the U.S. Constitution as well as international law, torture is immoral and unethical. On practical level, it is counter-productive. But is, without question, illegal. Jonathan Turley, a constitutional expert who was a strong advocate for impeaching Pres. Clinton, has said the officials who drafted the torture guidelines committed war crimes.
The media are ignoring this story. This was done in your name — and in the name of every American citizen. It simply cannot stand.
Go here and sign the petition demanding the resignation of Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice because she led the team that drafted the torture guidelines.
Just when you thought Republicans couldn’t come up with anything worse to do to this country, along comes proof they always, always can. Did you think George Bush’s tax rebate, which will plunge our government even deeper into debt, was awful? Well John McCain has a plan to postpone impending economic disaster that will not only do nothing to help in the long run, but which will hasten global warming to boot.
John McCain wants us to burn more gasoline. Yes, he wants us to take to the roads this summer and burn, baby, burn. Our incentive? Artificially cheaper gas prices that come, not at the expense of oil company profits, but at the price of our crumbling infrastructure and ballooning deficit.
Yes, you guessed it. He wants to cut taxes on gasoline.
McCain wants to have artificially cheaper gas prices that come, not at the expense of oil company profits, but at the price of our crumbling infrastructure and ballooning deficit.
It also was unclear how McCain would pay for his proposed gas-tax holiday, which would run from Memorial Day to Labor Day. The federal gas tax is 18.4 cents per gallon; 24.4 cents for diesel. The idea would cost the federal Highway Trust Fund, already at risk of going broke next year, billions of dollars…
“That takes $11 billion away from infrastructure spending on roads and bridges, which are badly in need of help as we saw with last summer’s bridge collapse,” said James Kvaal, domestic policy adviser for the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund, a Washington research group.
So how do we deal with the problems caused by our national carefree summer road trip? Dunno.
“The senator is not planning to raise taxes,” [McCain’s chief economic policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin] said repeatedly…
Of course not. Republicans don’t tax and spend, they borrow and spend.
Holtz-Eakin said money would be taken from general funds to ensure that the Highway Trust Fund didn’t run short. But the budget deficit already is projected at $500 billion.
And according to some economists, we are too far gone now to ever get back to the balanced budget Bill Clinton achieved and left in the care of George W. Bush.
[Rudy Penner, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute], a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said…”Those deficits are going to look awfully big as the new president takes office, and it will be very hard to do what President Bush did — claim the budget balances in 2012, or maybe ever again if you do honest projections.”
Emphasis added.
There’s one other teeny, tiny flaw with McCain’s logic. Who are these people that are going to pack up the family and drive? Surely it’s not all those folks facing foreclosure, or the ones being laid off, or trying to figure out how to pay three times more for bread and milk at the grocery store. I guess they should just listen to McCain and forget all that impending doom. Heck, let’s go to DisneyWorld! Let’s pack up for Branson! Maybe we’ll swing by Vegas while we’re on the road. I’ll go warm up the Navigator and you kids grab your iPods. It’s going to be a long drive.
George Bush often voices the wistful hope that his reputation will improve with time the way Democratic Pres. Harry Truman’s has. The similarity between the two presidencies is that, like Bush, Truman was very unpopular while he was in office. But now Bush has officially “won” the unpopularity contest between them:
At 39 months in the doghouse, George W. Bush has surpassed Harry Truman’s record as the postwar president to linger longest without majority public approval.
Bush hasn’t received majority approval for his work in office in ABC News/Washington Post polls since Jan. 16, 2005 — three years and three months ago. The previous record was Truman’s during his last 38 months in office.
There are crucial differences between Bush and Truman, of course. For starters, Truman’s record included some successes: He ended Japanese aggression by dropping the atomic bomb. He desegregated the armed forces, presided over the founding of the United Nations and instituted the Marshall Plan. And Truman’s “the buck stops here” approach to government was diametrically opposite of the responsibility-averse approach of George Bush.
The good news for George Bush is that he has escaped impeachment, and his likely fate is, like Richard Nixon, to grow old in disgrace.
When I first heard the news reports about six high-school cheerleaders in Polk County, Florida, whupping up on a girl who posted insults about them on MySpace, it didn’t really surprise me. When I learned that they had videotaped the whole beating to post on MySpace, that didn’t surprise me, either. And when I learned that the video was never posted by the girls even though it is all over the InterWeb, I was puzzled.
But when I learned that the only reason the video was all over the place was because Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd had released it to the media, I wasn’t surprised a bit. See, the high sheriff of Polk County is a blabbermouthed media whore who gladly sacrifices due process and individuals’ legal rights on the altar of his ego.
Judd wasted no time going on a media tour to express his outrage at the brutality of the attack and the girls’ lack of remorse after their arrest:
“It’s absolutely an animalistic attack,” Sheriff Grady Judd said Tuesday on NBC’s Today. “They lured her into the home for express purpose of filming the attack and posting it on the Internet.”
But then, a judge imposed a gag order on the high sheriff of Polk County:
Responding to an emergency request by an attorney for one of the eight people arrested in the case, Circuit Judge J. Michael McCarthy said there was concern that further public discussions about the case could affect the suspects’ right to a fair trial.
In his request for the gag order, attorney James “Rusty” Franklin wrote that the Polk County Sheriff’s Office had “released a barrage of inflammatory, prejudicial information about this case” to the media, and Sheriff Grady Judd had characterized the suspects as having ” ‘animalistic behavior,’ a ‘pack mentality,’ ‘disgusting.’ “
Well, predictably, that just pissed off Judd, who released the following statement:
I have the highest respect for the court and highest personal respect for Judge Michael McCarthy. He is my friend. I do, however, respectfully disagree with the court’s ruling to prohibit me, as an independent constitutional officer, to speak freely and inform the public regarding this case or any case.
This isn’t the first case where Judd’s media whoring has jeopardized a victim’s getting justice. In March 2007, Ryan Skipper was brutally murdered in Polk County by a couple of repeat offenders and likely meth addicts, and Sheriff Grady Judd was there as judge, jury and spokesman for justice as he tried Skipper in the court of public opinion. Trish broke the story on Pensito Review last March, and we covered it extensively.
In a nutshell, Sheriff Grady Judd alleged that 24-year-old Ryan Skipper was out cruising for gay sex when he hooked up with the two thugs who were so repelled by Skipper’s gay advances that they stabbed him more than 20 times, slit his throat, left his body on the side of the road and stole his car.
Now to me that sounds about as brutal and animalistic as it gets — much more so than a couple of teenage girls having a dust-up over some insults on MySpace. But there is a similarity between the two cases. Judd saw an opportunity to mouth off to the media about aspects of the cases before either investigation was completed. In one case he released evidence — videotape — to the media that should have been preserved for the trials. In the other, Judd assassinated the character of a young gay college student based on what his killers said.
But Sheriff Judd’s brand of law in Polk County can itself be brutal. When the sheriff’s SWAT team caught up with a man suspected of killing a policeman and his dog the day before, they fired 110 rounds of ammunition, hitting the suspect 68 times. Judd’s comment at the time:
“I suspect the only reason 110 rounds was all that was fired was that’s all the ammunition they had,” Judd said.
Rush Limbaugh officiated when Joe Lieberman was given an award by the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation (MCLEF), and Lieberman gave Rush this big sloppy kiss:
In fact, to show you how much things have changed for me, one of my greatest missions this year is to convince Rush to support the Republican candidate for President!
The truth is I greatly admire Rush’s love for our country and support for our troops, as shown by his remarks tonight and his generous support of MCLEF. Rush has a big voice but he has heart that is even bigger.
It looks like the righteous indignation, rancor, pique, and vitriol (but not bitterness) that alienated voters had toward Barack Obama after he said they were bitter is subsiding. Instead, Hillary Clinton is getting on their nerves.
Rasmussen’s Daily Poll (which I refer to often because as the name says, it’s daily) shows HRC’s unfavorability numbers taking a 3-point jump yesterday, to 54%. Obama’s slid a notch to 49% making it even with the number of people who say they view him favorably. Clinton’s favorability ranking dipped to 43%.
John McCain’s numbers also slid a bit yesterday. His favorabiilty went down a point from the previous day, to 53%, while he was rated unfavorably by 45% of those asked, a gain of two points over Monday.
Looks like this whole “Obama is an elitist” thing isn’t really working for HRC and McSame. Maybe they should hold hands again and find another bandwagon to jump on together.
Republican Congressman Geoff Davis (not kidding — that’s his real name) of Kentucky has apologized to Barack Obama for referring to him as “that boy“:
According to a Lexington Herald-Leader blog item, Rep. Geoff Davis, R-Ky., said Saturday that he had recently participated in a “highly classified, national security simulation” with Obama, and said that exercise showed that Obama can’t be trusted to make difficult decisions.
“I’m going to tell you something: That boy’s finger does not need to be on the button,” Davis said. “He could not make a decision in that simulation that related to a nuclear threat to this country.”
Geoff Davis, who was elected to the House in 2004, hand-delivered an apology to Obama’s Senate office that said:
“My poor choice of words is regrettable and was in no way meant to impugn you or the your integrity,” Davis wrote. “I offer my sincere apology to you and ask for your forgiveness.”
No word yet whether Obama has accepted the good ol’ boy’s apology.
McCain’s latest display of his lack of foreign policy understanding came today when said he wouldn’t divert troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to keep his promise to chase bin Laden to the gates of hell unless Gen. Petraeus said it was necessary.
Of course, Gen. Petraeus would not be making that determination about what was required in Afghanistan. Instead, that would be Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey, who temporarily replaced Admiral William Fallon as chief of Centcom.
Pundits say that Trump’s $5,000 midterm bribe was an overreach,
And they agree that if lies were a crime, he’d be impeached.
Despite all the dividend promises he’s made,
The fact is, not one has ever been paid,
So even before the midterms, he already owes us $8,000* each.
*$5000 stimulus checks via “DOGE dividend”; $2000 stimulus checks via a “tariff dividend”; $1000-plus checks via “savings” from expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies
“The man is afraid of the voice of the people and that the people understand and know what he’s doing. He’s trying to stifle the ability of journalists to let the people of America know what’s really going on with their government.”
— “Kamala Harris called President Donald Trump’s ban of CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House ‘absolutely abhorrent,’” The Wrap reports.
“Not one of them is trained in technical skills. Not one research PhD, as opposed to China, where half the cabinet is science and technology PhDs. We’re led by grifters and fools.”
— Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs, on X, on President Trump’s 35-person cabinet.
“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far… The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”
— Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL), breaking with President Trump in a direct-to-camera video.
“Donald Trump made over a thousand stock sales and purchases worth between $79m and $270m in July,” The Guardian reports. “His two largest sales were of Amazon and Microsoft stock, selling between $5m and $25m each on 20 July. That same day, he also sold up to $5m worth of Oracle and Costco stock, $500,000 to $1m in Nvidia, and bought up to $5m worth of shares in Intuit and Salesforce, among dozens of other transactions.”
“The unprecedented spate of mid-decade redistricting for the U.S. House has changed the congressional districts for one-tenth of Americans and significantly altered the makeup of at least one-fifth of districts, according to a new study,” the Associated Press reports.
A new Fox News Poll finds 71% of voters think the Trump administration lacks a clear strategy for ending the Iran War, including 95% of Democrats, 83% of independents, and 43% of Republicans. Sixty percent say U.S. military action against Iran was the wrong decision, while just 37% say it was right.
“The Trump administration last year spent $9.5 billion on paid administrative leave for federal workers as part of its plan to shrink the government and save taxpayers money, according to a new estimate by a congressional watchdog,” CNN reports.
Reuters has documented at least 470 targets of retribution under Trump’s leadership – from federal employees and prosecutors to universities and media outlets. The list illuminates the sweeping effort by the president and his administration to punish dissent and reshape the government.
