Tag: Fox News

Another Dog Killed by Republicans – Blackwater Shoots Resident Pooch at NYT Bureau in Baghdad

Pensito Editors

On Monday we learned that Mike Huckabee has been accused of covering up his son’s brutal killing of a stray dog years ago. Now there is word that handlers of security service dogs employed by Blackwater, the paramilitary mercenary group with exclusive, high-level and pervasive ties to the Republican Party — and that has received over $100 million in no-bid contracts from the Bush administration — shot a dog that lived at the New York Times bureau in Baghdad:

Investigators from the State Department have made two visits to The New York Times’s news bureau in Baghdad as they look into the shooting of one of the bureau’s dogs by Blackwater bodyguards last week.

Employees of the bureau said that the Blackwater guards shot the dog, named Hentish, during a search of the Times compound for explosives. A security team was conducting the search ahead of a visit by an American diplomat.

Anne Tyrrell, a spokeswoman for Blackwater, the private security firm, told Reuters that the dog had attacked one of Blackwater’s bomb-sniffing dogs.

“The K-9 handler made several unsuccessful attempts to get the dog to retreat, including placing himself between the dogs,” she said in an e-mail to Reuters. “When those efforts failed, the K-9 handler unfortunately was forced to use a pistol to protect the company’s K-9 and himself.”

It apparently didn’t occur to the Blackwater dog handler to remove the service dog from the area so that someone Hentish trusted could secure him inside. Or maybe saving the dog’s life was considered a waste of Blackwater’s precious time.

I guess we should take comfort that the Blackwater goon didn’t torture Hentish before shooting him.

Bush Lawyers – Including Alberto Gonzales – Discussed Destruction of CIA Torture Tapes

Jon Ponder

Current and former White House officials have admitted — though not for attribution — that senior Bush officials were deeply involved in discussions about whether to destroy videos of CIA agents torturing terror suspects:

This brings us back to an increasingly familiar question: What did Bush know about the destruction of the tapes, and when did he know it.

At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials.

The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged.

Those who took part, the officials said, included Alberto R. Gonzales, who served as White House counsel until early 2005; David S. Addington, who was the counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney and is now his chief of staff; John B. Bellinger III, who until January 2005 was the senior lawyer at the National Security Council; and Harriet E. Miers, who succeeded Mr. Gonzales as White House counsel.

It was previously reported that some administration officials had advised against destroying the tapes, but the emerging picture of White House involvement is more complex. In interviews, several administration and intelligence officials provided conflicting accounts as to whether anyone at the White House expressed support for the idea that the tapes should be destroyed.

One former senior intelligence official with direct knowledge of the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials to destroy the tapes. The former official did not specify which White House officials took this position, but he said that some believed in 2005 that any disclosure of the tapes could have been particularly damaging after revelations a year earlier of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

Some other officials assert that no one at the White House advocated destroying the tapes. Those officials acknowledged, however, that no White House lawyer gave a direct order to preserve the tapes or advised that destroying them would be illegal.

This brings us back to an increasingly familiar question: What did Bush know about the destruction of the tapes, and when did he know it.

Just in Time for Xmas: Not in My Cart

Trish

If you’re stymied about whether the gift you’re considering is toxic, swallowable, or a ticking time bomb of poor construction, we’ve got just the website for you. At NotInMyCart, you can see what’s been recalled and why, along with contact information so you can correct any buying mistakes. The Consumers Union people publish the site, so you know it’s legit.

You can also be like my family and take the pledge. Decide that this year, you’re not buying into the more, bigger, better mindset. What do you really need anyway? You’ve got a computer, you have time on your hands, and you’ve got a home with electricity and DSL or cable. You’re set. Now go help somebody who’s not.

This message brought to you by the War on Xmas folks at Pensito Review. Thank you.

Have Christian Extremists Been Running the White House?

Trish

Here we go again. The White House is being forced to reveal who’s been visiting the People’s House because they won’t tell us without being compelled to.

A U.S. judge ordered the Secret Service on Monday to disclose records of visits by nine prominent conservative Christian leaders to the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney’s residence.

Were Christian leaders willing partners in the effort to turn beliefs into dollars and votes?

The ruling, in response to a legal watchdog group’s suit, could shed light on the influence leaders like James Dobson of Focus on the Family have had on President George W. Bush’s administration. It may also affect legal efforts to force the release of visiting records of convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff and other similar cases…

Others whose visiting records were sought included Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, Gary Bauer, who unsuccessfully sought the 2000 Republican presidential nomination, and Moral Majority co-founder Jerry Falwell, who died in last May.

We know that Karl Rove cynically perverted Christian values to rally the base. What we don’t know is that these leaders were willing partners in the effort to turn beliefs into dollars and votes. If the White House fails to overturn the order, we might find out.

Gov. Crist Would Not Be First Bachelor Vice President – Vice Pres. King Was Longtime Companion of Pres. Buchanan

Jon Ponder

Florida’s Gov. Charlie Crist, a Republican and a bachelor, is on notice:

Longtime Washington Republican operative Roger Stone is the latest to talk up the vice-presidential possibilities of Florida Gov. Charlie Crist.

But Stone says wedding bells are going to have to be audible in the next few months for Crist to be considered in the veepstakes.

Stone writes: “Bachelors don’t get selected for vice president. While Crist denies any vice president ambitions (as a good politician should), should the Governor marry in the next six months, it would be clear that he is a hopeful candidate.”

Stone is incorrect. A bachelor, William Rufus de Vane King (update: new link), was selected to serve with Pres. Franklin Pierce, in 1852:

…King, the 13th vice president, died [on April 18, 1853] of tuberculosis six weeks after being inaugurated. He was the nation’s only bachelor vice president, but according to [Steve Tally, author of “Bland Ambition: From Adams to Quayle – The Cranks, Criminals, Tax Cheats, and Golfers Who Made it to Vice President,” published in 1992], it also was widely rumored that he was a homosexual and his rumored lover was James Buchanan, the country’s 15th president.

“He was certainly a fop and a sissy,” Tally says about King, who wore silk scarves, glittery accouterments and a powdered wig long after it was fashionable. King’s contemporaries called him “Miss Nancy” and “Aunt Fancy.” Asked if some readers might be upset to read that one of the country’s vice president was a homosexual, Tally replied, “I think they should be upset that they elected an alcoholic dying of a terminal disease.”

King was born in North Carolina in 1786, and represented the state in the House of Representatives for two terms before moving south and working to organize the government of Alabama. Upon statehood in 1819, he was elected to the Senate, where he represented Alabama for 25 years, during which he shared digs in Washington with Buchanan. After King and Buchanan died, their nieces destroyed all the letters their uncles had written one another.

Crist, who took office in January after Gov. Jeb Bush was term-limited out, registered a 65 percent approval rating in the Quinnipiac poll in October. Having a politician from Florida who is as popular as Crist on the ticket next year couldn’t hurt, and could even deliver the presidency to the GOP if the vote is as close as it was in 2000.

Crist was married for six months, from July 1979 to December 1980.

Republicans Connie Mack and Mary Bono Finally Make It Legal

Trish

Best wishes to the House’s newest newlyweds, Florida Rep. Connie Mack IV (R-Naples), and California Rep. Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs). The two are moderate GOPers, if you define moderate as referring to themselves by their first names on their official websites. They were married in Asheville, N.C. over the weekend.

Actually both have shown signs of independence from the Bush White House and Republican leadership. Connie, as we are invited to call him, is the latest of the dynasty that began with his great-grandfather the baseball guy. Last month, Connie rebuked Bushite Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence, for saying Americans no longer expect privacy. In a press release titled, “Mack Blasts Administration for Waving White Flag on Freedom,” Connie went all Democrat on his ass.

“Dr. Kerr’s comments suggest that he believes government ought to be entrusted to protect the private data of 300 million Americans. That’s absurd.

“Safeguarding our nation’s security is paramount. But so too is preserving our freedom. To bolster the first by disintegrating the latter runs counter to every democratic principle known to man.

“The American people have expectations of privacy and constitutional protections from government intrusion. Sadly, it seems that Dr. Kerr and his colleagues need a refresher course in Civics 101.”

Mary, as she is familiarly known, has also demonstrated skipping whole days of Kool-aid drinking. In October, she voted to override Bush’s veto of the Children’s Health Insurance Reauthorization Act, and expressed her frustration with those who would use children as political pawns.

“During the past few months, I have been dismayed by the political gamesmanship on this issue that has replaced compromise and bipartisanship,” said Bono. “While I am disappointed that we were unable to override the President’s veto, I believe that we must now take this opportunity to craft a viable compromise that will serve the needs of America’s children.”

This is a second marriage for both. Mary, of course, is the widow of Sonny Bono, who died in a skiing accident in 1998. Connie divorced his wife, Ann, mother of his children Addison and — you guessed it — Connie V at some hard to determine point in his relationship with Mary.

How they will continue to represent their districts remains to be seen. Both are maintaining residences back home, while living in their shared household in the northern Virginia ‘burbs.

DoJ Ruled Cheney Is Not Bound by Security Oversight After All

Jon Ponder

In June, Dick Cheney made the shocking claim that because he was an official of the Legislative Branch in his capacity as president of the Senate, the office of the vice presidential (OVP) in the Executive Branch is exempt from oversight to ensure that he and his staff are properly handling classified documents.

Rep. Rahm Emanuel threatened to take Cheney at his word that the OVP is not part of the Executive Branch and remove its $4.8 million operating budget. Within a few days after Emanuel’s threat, Cheney agreed to the oversight. Or so we thought.

Because Cheney has a record of betraying government secrets — it was he who directed his minions, including Scooter Libby and Karl Rove, to forfeit a secret CIA program that tracked the blackmarket for terror weapons in 2003 — without oversight, how can we be sure that Cheney and his staffers are not handing over secret documents to enemies of the United States such as al Qaeda and Iran?

Last summer, soon after Cheney announced that he was exempt from security oversight, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) threatened to take Cheney at his word that the OVP is not part of the Executive Branch and de-fund its $4.8 million operating budget. Very quickly after the threat, Cheney agreed to the oversight.

Or so we thought:

The Office of the Vice President is not an “agency” for purposes of the executive order on classification and therefore its classification and declassification activity no longer need be reported to the Information Security Oversight Office, the Justice Department finally informed ISOO Director Bill Leonard in a newly disclosed letter.

In a January 9, 2007 letter to the Attorney General, Director Leonard had questioned the OVP’s refusal since 2003 to submit to normal oversight. He was following up on a complaint filed with ISOO by the Federation of American Scientists, which was also forwarded to the Attorney General.

The OVP’s position is not consistent with a “plain text reading” of the executve order, Mr. Leonard wrote to the Attorney General at that time.

Be that as it may, the President’s intention is that the Office of Vice President should not be considered an “agency” for purposes of oversight, Steven G. Bradbury of the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel wrote to Mr. Leonard on July 20, 2007 on behalf of the Attorney General. He cited another letter to that effect from White House counsel Fred Fielding…

Paging Rahm Emanuel. Red phone, please!

No Jail Time for Abramoff Money Launderer Italia Federici

Jon Ponder

Italia Federici, who once headed a GOP anti-environmentalism front group, Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA), and who was used as a conduit between disgraced and imprison Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former Interior deputy secretary Stephen Griles, a high official in the Interior Department who was her lover, was sentenced on Friday to 60 days in a halfway house, four years of probation and a fine of $77,000 in restitution.

“Judge: You didn’t understand there was any quid pro quo going on?”
Federici: “It did strike me as odd.”

Federici admitted that she knowingly failed to pay income taxes on $187,000 in salary she drew over three years from the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy (CREA) and that she “minimized the extent of information I had” when she testified in 2005 about Abramoff and … Griles before openly skeptical members of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.

Federici, 38, was a go-between for Griles, with whom she was linked romantically, and Abramoff, who had his tribal clients donate $500,000 to her group…

[The judge] asked Federici why anyone would “believe for a minute” that Abramoff’s client contributions were unconnected to her role as an intermediary: “You didn’t understand there was any quid pro quo going on?”

“It did strike me as odd,” Federici said. But, she added, “at the time I viewed Mr. Abramoff as what we in the nonprofit community call an angel,” explaining that she saw him as “a truly ideologically aligned Republican.”

CREA, which used its resources to oppose the environmental movement, was as cynical an enterprise as any the Republican Party has come up with yet, was founded by Gale Norton, George Bush’s first anti-environmental secretary of the interior, and Grover Norquist, an anti-United States government crusader.