Republicans Killed Civility and Now Wonder What Happened to It

Civility and Iraq

What a good idea. Perhaps this is one of those things the president could take the lead on, seeing as he's the only person who ostensibly leads the entire nation and all. But has anyone seen even the slightest sign that he is willing to talk about any kind of withdrawal from Iraq, gradual or otherwise? The last I heard he'd decided to double down and escalate the war. Call me crazy but I just get the feeling that the Republicans might not be operating in good faith. But then that's because they never are.

The Republicans have been scorched earth, take-no-prisoners radicals for the last two decades and under Bush they took it to unheard of levels. (more at the link)

Bush's Executive Privilege Stonewalling: What Will Happen Next?

Bush's Executive Privilege Stonewalling: What Will Happen Next?

George W. Bush's presidential tenure has been marked by one cover-up after another. But the masterful spinning of Karl Rove and a compliant media enabled Bush to get away with it. Now that the Democrat-controlled Congress is investigating administration malfeasance, Bush's cover-ups have come cloaked in the guise of "executive privilege."

Recruiter Sexual Abuse: Friendly Fire at Home?

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Recruiter Sexual Abuse: Friendly Fire at Home?

As more women are joining the military, they are becoming the victims of sexual assault before they even take their oath. A former Army specialist explains the growing problem with abuse by recruiters and how the military is turning a blind eye.

Five Ways Bush's Era of Repression Has Stolen Your Liberties Since 9/11

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Five Ways Bush's Era of Repression Has Stolen Your Liberties Since 9/11

Today's America is a much less free place than the America of 2000. Following the attacks of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has, by word and by deed, erected an edifice of repression here in the United States.

We've been living in it ever since. And it's not a comfortable place. The government is monitoring your phone calls and can read your e-mails and open your snail mail.

The government can access records of your large financial transactions, such as buying a house.

Law enforcement officers can bust into your home when you're not there, riffle through your belongings, plant a recording device on your computer, and leave without notifying you for at least thirty days -- and maybe a lot more.

You no longer have the right to protest where the president or vice president can see you, or at major public events when they aren't even present.

Law enforcement officers can now monitor you in public if you are merely exercising your political rights.

They can infiltrate your political organizations.

And they can keep track of you at your place of worship. The government can find out from bookstores and libraries the material you've been reading, and the bookstore owner and the librarian can't talk about it, except to their lawyers, for a whole year -- or more.

The government can hold you in preventive detention for months on end as a "material witness."

If you're not a citizen the government can deport you on a technicality or for mere political association.

If you're not a citizen the government can label you an "enemy combatant" and send you to secret prisons around the world, where you may never see the light of day again -- much less a lawyer or a judge. And even if you are a citizen, the government can label you an enemy combatant and hold you in solitary confinement here in the United States.

Bush administration feels it is above the law

Bush administration feels it is above the law

Not every questionable assertion of Executive Privilege should be resolved in the context of a criminal prosecution because not every refusal to comply with a subpoena is criminal or even wrong. There is such a thing as "Executive Privilege," and -- like all other privileges, such as attorney/client or doctor/patient -- it does sometimes entitle defiance of a subpoena. It happens all the time in judicial proceedings that subpoenas are issued, the subpoenaed party claims a right not to comply, and both sides then present their arguments to a court, which resolves the dispute.

But refusals to comply with subpoenas become criminal where they are grounded not in good faith (even if questionable) assertions of privilege, but where, instead, a contempt for the rule of law is evidenced because one party abuses legitimate privileges in order to shield itself from investigation and accountability.

What the Bush administration is asserting here is the power to abolish that distinction, to immunize itself completely from the threat of criminal prosecution in those cases where it plainly abuses the assertion of privilege (as it is undoubtedly doing now) in order to immunize itself from accountability under the law. It removes completely the specter of criminal prosecution for refusing to comply with lawful investigations by vesting in the President an absolute, unchallengeable power to defy all subpoenas even where it has no arguable basis for doing so, by vesting in him the power literally to order federal prosecutors not to pursue an indictment.

Talk About Hypocrites Fascist Bill O'Reilly calling people Nazis

O'Reilly's Racist Slurs

* During an interview for Stuff magazine (11/02), O'Reilly opined that "the most unattractive women in the world are probably in the Muslim countries." O'Reilly later insisted (New York Daily News, 10/10/02), "There was no malice intended. It was just in jest."

* "Will African-Americans break away from the pack thinking and reject immorality--because that's the reason the family's breaking apart--alcohol, drugs, infidelity. You have to reject that, and it doesn't seem--and I'm broadly speaking here, but a lot of African-Americans won't reject it" (2/25/99).

New Studies Expose Government Lies About Medical Pot

New Studies Expose Government Lies About Medical Pot

David Vitter another Conservative Hypocrite

A Blast from Vitter's Past

In considering impeachment, Vitter asserted, Congress had to judge Clinton on moral terms. Decrying the law professors' failure to see this, Vitter observed, "Is that the level of moral relatively [sic] and vacuousness we have come to?" If no "meaningful action" were to be taken against Clinton, Vitter wrote, "his leadership will only further drain any sense of values left to our political culture."

Strong words. Now that Vitter, who entered the House of Representatives in 1999 after winning a special election to fill the seat of Representative Bob Livingston (who resigned after being caught in an adultery scandal) and who was elected senator in 2004, has admitted he placed a phone call to the so-called DC Madam, his constituents can only wonder if he will hold himself to the same standards he sought to apply to Bill Clinton.

Iraq Vets Bear Witness

Iraq Vets Bear Witness

Their stories, recorded and typed into thousands of pages of transcripts, reveal disturbing patterns of behavior by American troops in Iraq. Dozens of those interviewed witnessed Iraqi civilians, including children, dying from American firepower. Some participated in such killings; others treated or investigated civilian casualties after the fact. Many also heard such stories, in detail, from members of their unit. The soldiers, sailors and marines emphasized that not all troops took part in indiscriminate killings. Many said that these acts were perpetrated by a minority. But they nevertheless described such acts as common and said they often go unreported--and almost always go unpunished.

With The Usual Smirk Bush Lies To America Yet Again

With The Usual Smirk Bush Lies To America Yet Again

Q: Mr. President, you started this war, a war of your choosing, and you can end it alone, today, at this point — bring in peacekeepers, U.N. peacekeepers. Two million Iraqis have fled their country as refugees. Two million more are displaced. Thousands and thousands are dead. Don't you understand, you brought the al Qaeda into Iraq.

Bush: Actually, I was hoping to solve the Iraqi issue diplomatically. That's why I went to the United Nations and worked with the United Nations Security Council, which unanimously passed a resolution that said disclose, disarm or face serious consequences. That was the message, the clear message to Saddam Hussein. He chose the course…. It was his decision to make.

How did Saddam chose this course? U.N. weapons inspectors were in the country. They couldn't find non-existent weapons, so Bush took them out. This was whose decision?

What Our Grandparents Can Teach Us About Saving the World

What Our Grandparents Can Teach Us About Saving the World

Does this generation of Americans have the "right stuff" to meet the epic challenges of sustaining life on a rapidly warming planet? Sure, the mainstream media are full of talk about carbon credits, hybrid cars, and smart urbanism -- but even so, our environmental footprints are actually growing larger, not smaller.

The typical new U.S. home, for instance, is 40 percent larger than that of 25 years ago, even though the average household has fewer people. In that same period, dinosaur-like SUVs (now 50 percent of all private vehicles) have taken over the freeways, while the amount of retail space per capita (an indirect but reliable measure of consumption) has quadrupled.

Cheney and the Constitution

Cheney and the Constitution

If it weren't so frightening, the irony would be delicious: A Vice President who has done more than any other to push the envelope on executive privilege at the expense of the courts and Congress takes the position that his office has both legislative and executive functions so as to avoid accounting for the use of classified materials.

Any veneer of intellectual legitimacy that executive power defenders have caked on their vision of a monarchical executive evaporates in the glare of this naked opportunism. And the scope and nature of today's constitutional crisis comes into clearer focus.

The term "constitutional crisis" is much abused, invoked generally whenever Congress shows some life. Confrontations on war funding and Congressional subpoenas, to cite recent examples, are in fact as old as the Republic. They are but healthy sparks from a constitutional confrontation of "ambition against ambition," precisely as the Framers intended.

But the true crisis is hidden in plain sight--the existence of an office in the Constitution--the Vice President's--with no real remit and no real limits, open to exploitation and abuse.

Cheney's Claims Could Expose Him to Suit

Cheney's Claims Could Expose Him to Suit

Vice President Richard Cheney reversed his position last week when he asserted that he is not a member of our Executive Branch of Government. The Vice President, however, clearly took the position that he was a member of the Executive Branch in Cheney v. United States District Court for the District of Columbia, 542 U.S. 367 (2004) (involving disclosure of documents related to the Chaney led energy task force), and he benefited from that position when the Supreme Court decided to "give recognition to the paramount necessity of protecting the Executive Branch from vexatious litigation." Id. at 382. Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 60(b)(3) offers a unique opportunity to test the Vice President's conflicting (and possibly fraudulent) contentions in a court room. Rule 60(b)(3) states that "[o]n motion and upon such terms as are just, the court may relieve a party or a party's legal representative from a final judgment, order, or proceeding for . . . fraud (whether heretofore denominated intrinsic or extrinsic)*, misrepresentation, or other misconduct of an adverse party . . . ."

Vice President Cheney, at worst, if he continued to maintain his position may have committed a fraud (as defined in Rule 60(b)(3)) on the United States Supreme Court (as well as other Federal Courts) when he asserted that he was a member of the Executive Branch.

Tom Paine's 4th of July Advice for Congress about Dick Cheney

Tom Paine's 4th of July Advice for Congress

Certainly the description fits the vice president. Did not Paine anticipate Cheney when he wrote: "Men who look upon themselves born to reign, and others to obey, soon grow insolent; selected from the rest of mankind their minds are early poisoned by importance; and the world they act in differs so materially from the world at large, that they have but little opportunity of knowing its true interests, and when they succeed to the government are frequently the most ignorant and unfit of any throughout the dominions."

Secret Cheney Can't Hide

Secret Cheney Can't Hide

Vice President Dick Cheney isn't part of the executive branch? Next, Prince William will claim that he isn't a member of the royal family.

Yes, Mr. Cheney's antics can be good for a laugh. Before his office dropped the ridiculous claim, Democrats, pretending to take him at his word, winked and said they'd remove financing for the veep's office from the executive-branch budget.

In that case, the vice president's self-evident contradiction was silly. But as revealed last week in a Washington Post series, the vice president's inability to recognize contradictions can be tragic and disastrous. The basic contradiction is this: With pathological secrecy, Mr. Cheney pursues his law-bending (at best) activities in the name of making America and the world safer. The effect has been the opposite.

The series begins with a stunning example of Mr. Cheney's influence. In the fall of 2001, the vice president presented to President Bush a sweeping proposal to give the president the power, on his own say-so, to detain any foreign terrorism suspect indefinitely and without any access to judicial review. From presentation to signed executive order took less than one hour.

The series offers example after example of Mr. Cheney working, often behind the scenes, to get his way on issues from executive power to environmental policy to capital gains tax cuts for the wealthy.

Paris Hilton syndrome and how to avoid it - The one problem the super-rich can't solve with money? What to do with their messed up kids

Paris Hilton syndrome and how to avoid it - The one problem the super-rich can't solve with money? What to do with their messed up kids