Random noise, incoherent thoughts, whatever.
The Washington Post is writing about political pressure put on former Bush administration Surgeon General.
Richard H. Carmona, who served as the Surgeon General from 2002 to 2006, testified today at a House committee hearing that political appointees in the administration routinely scrubbed his speeches and reports for “politically sensitive” topics.
That kinda sounds like how the political officers operated in Soviet Union.
-TPP
The Washington Post writes about yet another incident where Alberto Gonzales claims to have had no knowledge of any illegal conduct by an agency under his jurisdiction, in this case the FBI and its violations of law when requesting information about individuals from third parties.
It is amazing how Alberto Gonzales doesn’t remember anything and doesn’t know anything about anything that goes on in this country. One could ask what it is that he actually does other than turn the other way?
-TPP
I am very happy for Scooter Libby. I know that this is a great relief to him, his wife and children. While for a long time I have urged a pardon for Scooter, I respect the President’s decision. This will allow a good American, who has done a lot for his country, to resume his life.
Those are the words of Fred Thompson, a would-be presidential candidate for the Republican Party, and an actor who plays a New York City District Attorney in TV series Law and Order. Apparently his role as the guardian of the rule of law in the TV series doesn’t extend to his real life.
There are plenty of “good Americans” sentenced to prison terms each and every day in this country. Most of them don’t have personal friends in the White House, so they actually end up serving their sentences.
-TPP
The Washington Post has an interesting article about Dick Cheney’s work to systematically destroy the environment in favor of giving handouts to businesses affected by environmental regulations.
His track record is abysmal, though. The article has two examples where his meddling into environmental policy came at pretty high costs, and ultimately was not successful, quite the opposite actually.
Klamath River is one of the habitats of endangered fish. It’s also a source of irrigation water for local farmers, who have been suffering from lack of water ever since the rain levels dropped and the Endangered Species Act prohibited taking adequate amounts of water from the Klamath River. Dick Cheney maneuvered around the Endangered Species Act and made sure the farmers got their water. The fish died, and a federal court ruled against Dick Cheney’s new “environmental policy” a few years later and prohibited the Federal Government from diverting water from the Klamath River. Meanwhile the fishermen in the area had their livelihood completely decimated and US Congress authorized $60M in disaster aid to keep the fishing industry from completely disappearing. What an astounding victory for Dick Cheney!
The other example the article states is the relaxing of air pollution regulations by the Environment Protection Agency. It turns out Dick Cheney ram the new “pro-business” regulations down the throat of EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman. She refused to sign the new air pollution regulations because she knew they weren’t scientifically sound. She resigned. The new regulations went into affect only to be overturned by federal appeals court. The federal appeals court judges stated in their decision to struck down the new regulations that:
…administration had redefined the law in a way that could be valid “only in a Humpty-Dumpty world.”
Humpty-Dumpty sounds about right.
-TPP
The Washington Post has uncovered a blatant effort by Bushies to stack the immigration courts with Republican (and presumably anti-immigration) judges, who often have no other qualifications than being loyal to Emperor Bush. These judges reside over deportation proceedings and other serious immigration matters. They literally can decide the faith of immigrants’ lives…with little or no experience in immigration law. It’s kinda like putting a an international horse show judge in charge of FEMA.
One third of all immigration judges appointed by the Attorney General since 2004 have close ties to the Republican Party. It’s illegal, btw, to appoint civil service employees such as immigration judges based on political factors. But what’s illegally appointing party loyalists compared to illegally wiretapping the entire country.
You know, if the Republicans really want that bad to keep the brown people out of the country, why don’t they just make a law that says that, rather than try all these behind closed doors tricks to do the same.
-TPP
John Edwards is a “faggot” [1], Al Gore is “a total fag” [2], Barack Obama is hunted in Pakistan [3] and cheating is ok in the Speaker’s house, but not in the White House [4].
So those would be examples of compassionate conservatism and family values, eh?
Let’s just leave it at that, no other comment is really necessary.
-TPP
1. Coulter on Edwards at CNN.com
2. Coulter on Gore at MediaMatters.org
3. Fox News chief on Obama at Huffington Post
4. MSNBC on Newt Gingrich
Todd Shriber, 28-year-old communications director for Representative Denny Rehberg (R-MT), has been exposed to have solicited two computer hackers to commit felony crimes.
It appears Mr. Shriber felt his college grades weren’t good enough and engaged two well known operators of the website attrition.org in an email conversation about hacking into the computer system of Mr. Shriber’s College to alter his grades. The school he went to: Texas Christian University. Thou shalt not steal, Mr. Shriber?
What Mr. Shriber didn’t know is that attrition.org operators are white-hat hackers and had no intention of going through with the plan. Instead they strung him along and finally posted the entire Email conversation on their website. A reporter investigating the story then found out Mr. Shriber’s true identity.
Mr. Shriber was fired from his congressional aide position.
There is no word, as of yet, on any possible arrest warrant issued for him. Soliciting someone to commit a felony crime is a crime in itself. Federal guidelines state soliciting felony crimes should be punishable by half the sentence of the crime being solicited.
The email conversation is posted on attrition.org website.
More links to the press coverage on the story:
Talking Points Memo
-TPP
Rumsfeld is gone. Long live the New Rumsfeld.
He should’ve, of course, been fired almost four years ago when he made his infamous “Old Europe” comment at the time the United States was busy trying to build the alliances to attack Iraq. Typical Rumsfeld, always the diplomat. Not.
-TPP
The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) was running a robo-dialing campaign that had purposedly designed the automated messages to sound like they were coming from the Democratic candidates. The robo-dialing was done in such an obnoxious manner (sometimes calling as many as 18 times in a row) it was probably designed to make the recipients annoyed at the Democratic candidate whose name was mentioned at the beginning of the message.
NRCC’s defense: “We did nothing illegal”. That’s right. Politicians, in their infinite wizdom, have made themselves exempt from many of the anti-annoyance laws they’ve passed over the years. They can spam, while nobody else can. And they can robo-dial to their hearts content.
I’m not sure how all this jives with the Family Values campaign the Republicans are running though. I wonder if the Family Values according to Republicans include deceipt, unethical campaigning and annoying others as they please?
Update: Washington Post picked up the story as well.
-TPP
Tiiiiiiimbeeeeeeer!
Bob Ney (R-Oh) resigns on his way to prison for his role in the Abrahamoff corruption scandal.
And right before the elections, too. Eeeeeexcellent.
-TPP
