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July 2009
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View Article  Governor Mark Sanford’s Two-fer

When the Sanford story broke, one woman in DC exclaimed that it was the classic case of the capable wife who cannot run for office herself so she runs her husband instead. That take may be materializing into a political future for Mrs. Sanford.

 

There have been notorious parallels. Hollywood director Peter Bogdanovich, back in the day, famously left his wife for beautiful supermodel-actress Cybill Shepherd—and his career fizzled, leaving a ...   more »

View Article  Sad follow-up: Monica Conyers pleads guilty to $5K bribery
In a sad follow-up to this morning's post, even sadder given the powerful message and content of this morning's press conference, Monica Conyers, wife of Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) and a Detroit city councilwoman, has pleaded guilty to a single bribery charge in an ongoing federal investigation ultimately involving the entire city council.

Rep. Conyers did not appear at the press conference organized for this morning on prosecutorial misconduct. His place on the panel in the National Press Club's First Amendment Lounge was taken by Judiciary Committee counsel Elliott Mintzberg. Mrs. Conyers' guilty plea could result in up to ...   more »
View Article  Today, John Conyers at National Press Club: Bush prosecutors targeted Dems
Today, June 26, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) is scheduled to speak at the National Press Club at a press conference about political prosecutions in the previous administration (8am-11am).

From the publicly released statement: "Conference At National Press Club About DOJ Political Prosecutions Features Rep. John Conyers, Don Siegelman, Scott Horton, And Former Alabama Federal Judge Clemon"

A study previously referenced by the House Judiciary Committee shows that Democrats were eleven times more liable to be prosecuted under the Bush Department of Justice.

Confirmed speakers, from the release:

Alabama's former Gov. Don Siegelman, a Democrat who was convicted on corruption charges ...   more »
View Article  Why do insurance companies balk at paying for MRIs?

Why do insurance companies balk at paying for MRIs?

 

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) led off questions for Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius at a congressional hearing yesterday by asking whether the White House wants “comprehensive” or “compartmentalized” health care reform. Sebelius replied predictably that of course President Obama wants comprehensive reform: “We can’t do just one thing at a time.”

 

The softball was a useful reminder that hardballs are available: ...   more »

View Article  Senator Graham, please stop using Quaker language to ramp up hostilities
Call this an open letter to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who yesterday on This Week with George Stephanopoulos called on President Obama to step up hostility against the Iranian regime. He also called the president, who endures more personal attacks daily than Graham is showing much awareness of, "timid" and "passive."

The kicker is that Sen. Graham employed the old Quaker expression "Speak truth to power" to convey his rhetorical bellicosities.

I myself was a Quaker for years, although I left my meeting several years ago--a local Religious Society of Friends meeting, here in the Maryland suburbs of D.C. In ...   more »
View Article  Still trying for war with Iran
The neocon war-boosting machine does not give up easily. Today--Sunday, June 21-- Fox News Sunday leads with the protestors in the streets in Tehran, and as with the central GOP talking point since last weekend, uses the protestors' bravery as a tub to thump for war. Here are the options for Iran, as Fox presents them: "Is this another revolution, or another Tienanmen Square?"

These commentators are not supporting the protestors. They are using the protestors to support war on Iran.

Some alternatives: In Fox's presentation, the Iranian government either is about to crack down even more harshly, like the ...   more »
View Article  Watergate break-in conspirator Bernard Barker worked for the Mafia, author says

Watergate break-in conspirator Bernard Barker worked for the Mafia, author says

 

 --On the anniversary of Watergate, Legacy of Secrecy author Lamar Waldron passes along further information not shared with the public during previous investigations: One of the men who broke in at the Watergate complex on June 17, 1972, was employed by the Mafia.

 

The main (or second) break-in at the Watergate, discovered by a security guard, started ...   more »

View Article  Federal judge nullifies Hondo, Texas, “unprecleared” recall election

Federal judge nullifies Hondo, Texas, “unprecleared” recall election

 

 --Temporarily resolving the dust-up over three Mexican American city council members for the small city of Hondo, Texas, removed from their new seats, on Friday a federal judge reinstated all three. Judge Fred Biery of the San Antonio federal court (U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas) canceled a special election scheduled for July to replace the three ...   more »

View Article  Iranian-Americans voted for change
Seeing Iran from Emeryville, California
 --Voting for many Iranian-Americans in northern California was located in the Hilton Garden Inn, Emeryville CA,  where by coincidence several National Writers Union members, in California for a training session, were also housed this weekend. Turnout was immense, enthusiastic, and dedicated: Hundreds of Iranian-American voters showed up to vote--and stayed, waiting patiently and cheerfully in line for hours, when ballots ran out and six hundred more paper ballots in Farsi and English had to printed, filling the ground-floor lobby of the hotel and spilling out of the front entrance.

I spoke with some waiting voters ...   more »
View Article  The right to bear arms already--if your gun is already drawn

Targeting the Internet versus scrutinizing the NRA:

Following up on last night’s post—

We’re not off to a good start. In the aftermath of rising gun sales and recent fatal shootings including the killing of security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns at the Holocaust Memorial Museum yesterday, we need to let the sunshine in on U.S. firearms trafficking and the political insolence of the gun lobby.

 

A quick run-down on how those issues ...   more »

View Article  Dear NRA, what part of "well regulated" do you not get?
Don't blame this on the Internet . . . Hysterically angry, hate-filled, disturbed, abusive, elderly James von Brunn has become the newest destroyer of the public peace, opening gunfire in the Holocaust Memorial Museum and shooting and killing heroic security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns*. Within minutes, media personalities were already targeting the public discourse--and blaming the Internet.   more »
View Article  Patrick Fitzgerald, Peter Lance, Rupert Murdoch and Judith Regan? I’m siding with the librarians

Patrick Fitzgerald, Peter Lance, Rupert Murdoch, Judith Regan, and I’m siding with the librarians. As the American Library Association notes, U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald in Chicago has been writing threatening letters to publisher HarperCollins since October 2007, demanding that Harper destroy a book critical of Fitzgerald--Triple Cross, by Peter Lance, published November 2006. Triple Cross appeared the week Lance’s publisher Judith Regan hit the fan with her decision to publish O. ...   more »

View Article  Voting in South Texas, voting south of the tracks

Hondo, Texas, Elections

 

Questionable recall election in Hondo, Texas—even though federal monitors were present

 

On May 9, three newly elected members on the Hondo, Texas, city council were ousted in a recall election riddled with irregularities that has given rise to a federal lawsuit. The three council members--Virginia Gonzales, Chavel Lopez and Lucio Torres—were elected May 10, 2008, after a campaign invigorated by enthusiasm for change and ...   more »

View Article  Crime in the United States: What is Illinois concealing?
The FBI publishes its Crime in the United States report annually. Here are a few quick facts from Crime in the United States, 2007, from available homicide data:

 - Law enforcement agencies submitted SHRs to the FBI for 14,831 murder victims who were slain in 2007.

- Concerning single victim/single offender incidents in which the age of the offender was known, 93.6 percent of the victims were killed by adults (persons 18 years of age or older).  (Based on Expanded Homicide Data Table 4.)

 - Of single victim/single offender incidents, 91.9 percent of black victims were murdered ...   more »
View Article  Prince Turki al-Faisal says to kill Bin Laden and get out of Afghanistan
This passed along from Spytalk, via CQ Politics: Prince Turki al-Faisal, formerly head of Saudi Arabia's intelligence agency, is recommending forcefully and publicly that the U.S. "kill" Osama bin Laden and then "get the hell out of Afghanistan."

He is half right. We need to be out of Afghanistan, and if bin Laden's purported presence there is the rationale justifying an unending and open-ended guerrilla campaign, then bin Laden needs to be found.

Still, as written previously, anyone with the United States' interests at heart would want bin Laden captured, not killed. Killing a spy or a terrorist is ...   more »
View Article  Sotomayor and that dangerous word “Better”

Years ago, back when I was teaching while pregnant, a couple of undergrad guys chose to sit in desks over against one side wall of the classroom, where they could watch my breasts getting bigger as the semester, and my pregnancy, progressed. It is a given that no man teaching college courses has had exactly this experience, and it would be nice to hope that the experience in some way made me better ...   more »

View Article  Cheney and Rumsfeld, Congress and CIA; continued

When the Church Committee began looking into abuses by the intelligence community—including CIA manipulation of the news media and domestic surveillance of administration critics—back in the 1970s, White House Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld and Assistant to the President Dick Cheney, working for Gerald Ford, knew they had to circle the wagons. Predictably if ironically, they did ...   more »

View Article  Congress, CIA, Cheney and Rumsfeld; continued

Following up with Lamar Waldron, author with Thom Hartmann of Legacy of Secrecy: The Long Shadow of the JFK Assassination:

 

Declassified archives show that Richard Helms, then number-4 man in the CIA, withheld even from his CIA chief and from President John F. Kennedy the CIA’s unauthorized continuation of plots to kill Fidel Castro and remove the ...   more »

View Article  Cheney and Rumsfeld pressured CIA to mislead Congress in the 1970s, too

Congress and Cheney and Rumsfeld and the CIA

 

The first time Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld pressured the CIA to mislead Congress was in 1975 and 1976, when Cheney was Chief of Staff to President Gerald Ford and Rumsfeld was Ford’s secretary of defense. Cheney, having held a series of positions alongside Rumsfeld—starting under him in the Nixon ...   more »

View Article  This week in news: 90 senators saw Aladdin, CIA helps out Nancy Pelosi

Just two days after I posted an entry critical of the CIA and its manipulation of the Washington Post in the lead-up to the Iraq war (last Sunday—May 17), the CIA did it again. Not to be bullied by some independent journalist, they showed their defiance by once again giving anonymous ‘quotes’ to the same Post reporter I quoted before. In that October 2002 article previously cited, the CIA made the anonymous argument—if ...   more »

View Article  CIA FILES LIST OF DOCUMENTS ON DESTROYED TORTURE VIDEOTAPES
With grateful thanks to Marc Ambinder, who posted this convenient list compiled and filed by CIA in the federal case presided over by Judge Hellerstein.

Looks like a lot of illuminating material pertaining to those destroyed CIA videotapes, esp considering the dates--from April 13, 2002, onward. Clearly, the policymakers were communicating throughout the process.

They kept it up on Shakespeare's birthday, too.
   more »
View Article  Why doesn't the Justice office in Chicago report its homicide statistics?
Pursuing research on firearms and gun crime, including homicide, via the Department of Justice web site, one runs up against a stumbling block: Other major cities around the U.S. are included in the tabulations of homicides, but Chicago IL is not.

Here for those following broad trends is the link:

http://bjsdata.ojp.usdoj.gov/dataonline/Search/Homicide/Local/LocalHomicide.cfm

If you click on "Trends in one variable"--the variable being number of homicides, over multiple years and in multiple jurisdictions--you can get statistics for Houston, DC and Miami among others, but not for Chicago.

If you click on "Single agency trends," meaning mostly ...   more »
View Article  The speaker versus the speakers’ bureau: Nancy Pelosi should resign; CIA should provide intelligence instead of CYA.

It should be clear by now that the Central Intelligence Agency under Bush-Cheney functioned less at its top levels like an intelligence agency than like a speakers’ bureau:

 

‘We have experts on call to meet your every need, from war in the Middle East to discrediting political opponents at home . . .

 

We have earned our reputation in the Washington region; trust us . .


View Article  What is the moderate number of foreclosures?

Kudos to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Wednesday, Sanders introduced an amendment to the upcoming credit card bill being passed by the Senate that would cap credit card interest rates at 15 percent. Unfortunately the amendment was voted down by sixty senators, mostly the same ones who defeated the cram-down amendment two weeks ago—including Joe Lieberman (I-Ct.), who had promised to caucus with the Democrats; those two ‘moderates’ of Maine, Olympia Snowe and Susan ...   more »

View Article  Today: Judiciary Subcommittee hearing -Continued: 302s to be released
C. 12:15 p.m., and it's time to switch away from Lindsey Graham trying to finesse a definition of torture he can make fun of--If you put a spider in a cage w/ someone who's afraid of spiders, Is it yadayadayada. The hearing on Bush admin torture has produced some evidence, however: For the first time, the 302s--FBI documents--from the interrogation of Abu Jandal are to be released.

Abu Jandal, though not present today, was among captives interrogated by one of today's witnesses, former FBI Special Agent Ali Soufan. Soufan's testimony definitively contradicts the false narrative presented in the torture memos, ...   more »
View Article  Today: Judiciary Subcommittee hearing -Continued
C. 10:40 a.m.-The Subcommittee recesses its hearing for a few minutes, for a floor vote. Introductory remarks and one witness, Georgetown Law professor David Luban, so far.

From the introductory statements:

Subcommittee Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse refers to the necessity for such a hearing as regrettable, saying "how loathsome . . . what a few men did" in the previous administration. Legislators having no authority to declassify, Whitehouse said, "we could not reply" even when hearing administration pronouncements about classified material that members of Congress knew to be false. Whitehouse also praises Sen. Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Intelligence Committee.

Sen. ...   more »
View Article  Today: Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on Bush administration torture

Today’s hearing of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Oversight and the Courts may help to clarify some recent history. Asked by Keith Olbermann on Countdown what America will know after the hearing that it does not know now, Subcommittee Chairman Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said last night that


I think what I`m really more doing is trying to build a foundation for looking at the Office of Professional Responsibility opinions that ...   more »

View Article  The false automobile-insurance analogy

  Opening their contribution to the dialogue on health care reform, U.S. insurance companies are asking that all Americans be required to buy health insurance, the way all automobile drivers are required to buy car insurance. As the Washington Post among other media report,

 

“Earlier this year, [the insurance industry] offered a major concession, offering to abolish policies that deny coverage because of preexisting coverage. In return, insurers said they want Congress to enact legislation that requires every American to have insurance . . . many Democrats back the concept, comparing it ...   more »

View Article  James Jones says U.S. does not know whether Osama bin Laden is alive

An item of solid news came from the Sunday talk shows yesterday morning: Administration security advisor Gen. James L. Jones said on ABC’s This Week with George Stephanopoulos that “no one knows” whether Osama bin Laden is alive or dead. Jones’ statement marks a change in administration position.

 

Remarkably, according to Jones, “The best intelligence is that we--we gauge our reaction based on what intelligence we have, and it is inconclusive.”...   more »

View Article  Senate caves to bankers, passes up chance to help U.S. homeowners
The U.S. Senate could have stepped up to the plate yesterday and passed an amendment to help bankruptcy judges help homeowners. Instead, twelve Democrats joined all the Republicans in the Senate--including those two supposed 'moderates' from Maine that we hear so much about--to defeat the amendment.

The amendment to Senate bill 896, called the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009 and introduced by Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), would have facilitated renegotiation in foreclosures by bankruptcy judges. It was proposed by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.)--and if only Durbin had been stronger in protecting the rule of law in ...   more »
View Article  Souter will be a loss no matter who replaces him
Reports that Justice David Souter will be retiring from the Supreme Court may not be a total surprise but are no good news. Regardless of who replaces him, Mr. Justice Souter will be a loss to the high court.

Intense media speculation about his replacement is inevitable. But regardless of who is chosen for the next open seat on the court, and regardless of who makes the best prediction about that choice or is given the scoop, there is one point to bear in mind: The reason that Souter has been so well regarded across the board is that when ...   more »
View Article  So Much for 'Good Credit'

     Americans are inundated with reminders about the importance of a good credit rating. Those disinterested folks at the credit-rating companies, for example, are always hiring twenty-something actors to come at us on the airwaves, touting the significance of good credit and thus of their product. Public discourse during the Big Wall Street Bailout debate of last fall, when the previous administration successfully rolled the current one, involved much harping on ‘irresponsible’ people ...   more »

View Article  Why is anyone listening to Dick Cheney on torture?

 --Admittedly the old rules of thumb for picking a topic of interest in journalism include prominence and proximity, and former Vice President Dick Cheney has settled right here near DC, in northern Virginia. But for talk shows or news broadcasts to treat Cheney as though he were somehow a credible voice on torture violates the key standard of journalistic objectivity.

 

Cheney, who has a track record when it comes to criticizing political ...   more »

View Article  Does the VA have ambulances?
We're still paying for Vietnam.

Two instances of longtime PTSD left from the Vietnam War have obtruded among my friends recently. The first I cannot write about for privacy reasons. The other occurred this morning, when a neighbor of mine had a flareup of a chronic condition.

His family was not home at the time.
I first noticed that an ambulance was stopped in front of the neighbors' house. Then after a little while it pulled away. Shortly afterward, my Purple Heart neighbor came knocking on my door to ask for help getting to the VA hospital. The ambulance would ...   more »
View Article  Fitzgerald tried to get Obama, came up with “Zilch,” says former Chicago Tribune editor

Fitzgerald tried to get Obama, came up with “Zilch,” says former Chicago Tribune editor

 

 --U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald interrogated convicted political fundraiser Tony Rezko and others intensively about then-senator and presidential candidate Barack Obama, a former managing editor of the Chicago Tribune said on television last week. Jim Warren, now a political commentator for MSNBC, told Hardball host Chris Matthews that Fitzgerald questioned Rezko “very aggressively” about possible involvement of Obama ...   more »

View Article  The torture memos and the U.S.S. Cole

There are a few areas of clarity in the memos newly released by the Justice Department:

 

1)      The torture memos rely heavily on the CIA in discussing the prisoners.

2)      The CIA stated repeatedly that waterboarding was used only on Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah, and Abd Al-Rahm Nashiri.

3)      The three memos dated May 10, 2005, and May 30, 2005, repeat most of the content ...   more »

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