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Bush to Law: Go Fuck Yourself
SCOTT THILL, Huffington Post

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Man, Cheney's "Go Fuck Yourself" insult has crazy staying power. You can use it for just about anything. Which is probably the same way George Bush feels about the U.S. Constitution. He can use it for anything. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 8:24 PM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Law


The attacks on SICKO make me sick
PATRICE GREANVILLE, Thomas Paine's Corner

Well, judging from what we are beginning to see, it didn’t take too long for the mainstream media to regain its footing, atone for its earlier honest hoorays for Moore’s film, and figure an angle from which it might preserve the remnants of its tattered honor while still fulfilling the dirty job its corporate masters demanded it to do, which was to badmouth Michael Moore’s brave documentary, SICKO, into complete ineffectiveness. The spectacle makes me sick. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 9:13 AM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Health


George W. Bush is One Tough Hombre
PAUL BEGALA, Huffington Post

Tough enough to execute Karla Fay Tucker -- and then laugh about it. Tough enough to sign a death warrant for a man whose lawyer slept through the trial -- and then snicker when asked about it in a debate. Even tough enough to execute a great-grandmother who murdered her husband -- after he abused her. A friend of mine at the time asked Bush to commute her sentence, telling him, "Betty Lou ain't a threat to no one she ain't married to." No dice.

Mr. Bush is tough enough to invade a country that was no risk to America, causing tens of thousands of civilian deaths and shedding precious American blood in the process. Tough enough to sanction torture. Tough enough to order an American citizen arrested and held without trial.

But if you're rich and right-wing and Republican, George is a real softie. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 10:20 PM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Law


Wilson: Congress Should Investigate Bush's Participation in Obstruction of Justice
Spencer Ackerman, TPM

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Just got off the phone with Joe Wilson, whose exposure of the hollowness of the Niger-Iraq uranium claim set in motion the chain of events that led to Scooter Libby's perjury and, today, his sentence's commutation by President Bush. Wilson -- who is pursuing a civil suit against Libby, Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney -- called on Bush and Cheney to release the transcripts of their interviews with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald "to let the American people know what they knew and when they knew it." If not, Wilson says, "Congress should hold hearings on the president's role in the obstruction of justice." More...

Monday July 2, 2007 8:30 PM EST

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Scooter Libby: Justice in disrepair
EDITORIAL, Seattle PI

President Bush's commutation of a pal's prison sentence counts as a most shocking act of disrespect for the U.S. justice system. It's the latest sign of the huge repairs to American concepts of the rule of law that await the next president. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 10:19 PM EST

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Florida election mayhem for 2008
Walter Shapiro, Salon

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WASHINGTON -- The biggest political event over the past three months in the Democratic presidential race had nothing to do with the candidates, their fundraising prowess, their debates or their TV spots. In fact, it originated with the Republicans, though it had no direct connection to the Bush White House.

This epic moment in Democratic politics came May 21 when Florida Republican Gov. Charlie Crist signed legislation moving the Sunshine State's presidential primary to next Jan. 29. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 7:35 AM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Election 2008


Court won't delay prison for Libby
Matt Apuzzo, Boston Globe

WASHINGTON --A federal appeals court refused on Monday to step in and delay former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's prison sentence in the CIA leak case. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 1:00 PM EST

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HOW CONSERVATIVES APPROPRIATED BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION
Risa Goluboff, Slate

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The Supreme Court's decision in last week's school desegregation cases represents the culmination of a 50-year-old debate about the meaning and content of Brown v. Board of Education. The conservatives have now taken over Brown, no question.

Justices in the majority—like the new chief justice, John Roberts, and Justice Clarence Thomas—can invoke Brown for the proposition that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prevents states from treating individuals differently on the basis of race. They invoke the mantra of the "color-blind Constitution" to strike down voluntary school desegregation plans in Seattle and Louisville, Ky. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 5:40 PM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Law


Inside the world of Rupert Murdoch
Keith Olbermann, MSNBC

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In 1976, Rupert Murdoch bought from its family ownership what had been for 30 years the country’s strongest, self-proclaimed liberal newspaper and promised not to change it. It was the “New York Post.” It can now no longer be described either as liberal, nor even as a newspaper. Thirty-one years later, Murdoch wants the “Wall Street Journal” and is negotiating with its family owners on editorial control. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 6:49 PM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Media


Guilty of confusion
EDITORIAL, Los Angeles Times

THE SUPREME COURT has obligations both to society and to the law. In its end-of-term rush last week, it served neither well, shirking its duties in rulings that undermined free speech, made it easier for a president to violate the Constitution's prohibition against funding religion and transformed the meaning of the 20th century's most important case, Brown vs. the Board of Education, from a call to an integrated society into a bar against that goal. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 7:15 AM EST

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Time to Take the Bull by the Horns
Rajeev Pillay, ICGA

The US is in danger of digging a deeper hole in Iraq. Just when you thought that this Administration’s policy in Iraq could not possibly get more screwed up than it already is, first it announces the building of walls around select neighbourhoods in Baghdad and then it begins to arm Sunni insurgents to fight Al Qaeda! All this comes on the heels of all the other bad decisions of monumental proportions: disbanding the army; purging all civil servants who were members of the Ba’ath party; redefining the new democratic institutions along sectarian lines; eliminating tariffs at the border; underestimating troop requirements, etc. etc. The litany of errors goes on and on. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 7:12 AM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Iraq


Monday: 3 GIs, 31 Iraqis Killed; 14 Iraqis Wounded
Anti-War

At least 31 Iraqis were killed and 14 injured during a relatively quiet day in Iraq. Also, two American soldiers and one Marine assigned to MNF-West were killed during a combat operation in Anbar province. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 1:00 PM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | War


Peering Inside Bush's Head
Dan Froomkin, Washington Post

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It's open season on psychoanalyzing President Bush.

The Washington Post this morning unfurls a 3,000-word attempt to figure out what's going on inside Bush's head as his presidency collapses around him. A particular mystery: How he is able to remain so calm and resolute amid so many signs of his own failures. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 4:49 PM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Bush


Bush Commutes Libby’s Prison Sentence
SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, New York Times

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WASHINGTON, July 2 — President Bush said today that he had used his power of clemency to commute the 30-month sentence for I. Lewis Libby Jr., the former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney, who was convicted of perjury in March and was due to begin serving his time within weeks. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 6:39 PM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Law


Bush is Bluffing: The Farce of 'Executive Privilege'
Eric Weiner, AlterNet

President Dwight Eisenhower was the first president to coin the phrase "executive privilege," but not the first to invoke its principle: namely, that a president has the right to withhold certain information from Congress, the courts or anyone else — even when faced with a subpoena. Executive privilege, though, is a murky and mysterious concept. Here, an attempt to clarify the murk. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 7:16 AM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Law


Hush-Hush: Rove's Security Clearance Renewal
Michael A. Fletcher, Washington Post

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Should White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove be privy to the nation's most sensitive secrets? Did he break trust with President Bush and the nation when he told syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak about Valerie Plame's classified job with the CIA? Did he further erode that trust in 2003 when he told then-White House press secretary Scott McClellan that, as McClellan put it, there was "no truth" to rumors that he played a role in the disclosure of Plame's identity? More...

Monday July 2, 2007 7:01 AM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Government


Commuter-in-Chief
MARTY KAPLAN, Huffington Post

My, what a clever boy he thought he would be. He wouldn't pardon Libby: oh no, that would be repeating Gerry Ford's Nixon mistake, and who'd want to risk that? Nah, he'd commute the sentence, that's the ticket. The base would cheer, the libs would scream (don't they always?), and the media would praise him as prudent, as searching for common ground, putting our long national nightmare behind us the right way, not the wimp way.

But I think most Americans will see this move for what it actually is: jury nullification, cronyism, Cheney puppeteering. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 10:16 PM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Law


Karl Rove, Master of Secrecy
Scott Horton, Harpers

Scooter Libby is not the only confidant of President Bush who is apparently above the law. There’s also Karl Rove. Now Rove serves as a senior presidential advisor and in this capacity he has been given a very high level national security clearance, allowing him to examine and hold classified and highly sensitive documents. Of course, this is the same Karl Rove who, as we now know thanks to the Patrick Fitzgerald investigation, used his access to classified information to out a covert CIA agent to reporters, hoping it would be published. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 10:21 PM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Law


Put Away The Flags
Howard Zinn, ZMag

On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 5:27 PM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | America


Bush Flips Off Spotted Owls
Kelpie Wilson, AlterNet

How important are owls in the scheme of things? How important are forests? What do most Americans know about forests?

The answer to the last question is that most Americans think that the majority of forests are managed by the Forest Service or the Park Service. Most Americans also think that those forests are protected from logging.

Both answers are wrong. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 5:24 PM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Environment


Study: Northern Canada ponds drying up
Randolph E. Schmid, Boston Globe

WASHINGTON --Ponds that have provided summertime water in the high arctic for thousands of years are drying up as global warming advances, Canadian researchers say. Falling water levels and changes in chemistry in the ponds first were noticed in the 1990s, and by last July some of the ponds that dot the landscape were dry, according to a report in Tuesday's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 6:49 PM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Environment


Problems for the Iraqi Oil Industry
Washington Post

Among the political benchmarks the Bush administration has embraced to chart progress in Iraq, approval by the Iraqi parliament of a hydrocarbon law looms large. Oil provides 95 percent of Iraq's national income, making the recovery of the country's oil sector critical to reducing the United States' military and economic burden.

But two recent U.S. government reports show that the much-awaited approval of that law -- which is designed to manage distribution of future oil revenue in Iraq and govern the granting of exploration rights to foreign companies -- would be just the beginning of addressing the nation's oil problems. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 7:03 AM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Iraq


Democrats Trouncing GOP in Money Race
RICK KLEIN, ABC News

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The Democratic presidential candidates have erased and reversed Republicans' historic edge in raising money for campaigns, reflecting growing enthusiasm among Democrats and adding to the GOP's already considerable burdens going into 2008. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 5:22 PM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Politics


Five U.S. troops killed in Iraq
Reuters

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Four U.S. soldiers and one Marine were killed in various attacks in Iraq on Sunday, the U.S. military said on Monday. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 7:26 AM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | War


Bush Commutes Libby's Jail Sentence
DAVID CORN, The Nation

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It's appropriate.

The president who led the nation into a disastrous war in Iraq by peddling false statements and misrepresentations has come to the rescue of a White House aide convicted of lying by commuting his sentence. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 10:17 PM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Law


The Creeping Fundamentalist Theocracy
Kenneth Barr , OpEd News

It is in this little known and rarely mentioned section of the main body of our Constitution that the separation of religion and government lives. The First Amendment, which prohibits the establishment of an official religion as the faith of the nation and guarantees the individual can believe (or not) in any faith they so choose, flows from this passage. Yet, the Bush Administration has been mounting a relentless attack on this basic principle of our democracy almost from its beginning. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 11:44 AM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Church & State


Christian Reconstructionists Are Trying to Take Dominion in America -- and They Have Powerful Friends
Jeremy Leaming, AlterNet

Tucked away a few miles off Interstate 40 just outside Asheville, N.C., the LifeWay Ridgecrest Conference Center provides Southern Baptists with a remote place to facilitate the nurturing of "Biblical Solutions for Life." More...

Monday July 2, 2007 7:18 AM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Religion


This Land is My Land
BARBARA EHRENREICH, The Nation

I took a micro-vacation last week--nine hours in Sun Valley before an evening speaking engagement. The sky was deep blue, the air crystalline, the hills green and not yet on fire. Strolling out of the Sun Valley Lodge, I found a tiny tourist village, complete with Swiss-style bakery, multi-star restaurant, and "opera house." What luck--the boutiques were displaying outdoor racks of summer clothing on sale!

But things started to get a little sinister--maybe I had wandered into a movie set or Paris Hilton's closet--because even at a 60 percent discount, I couldn't find a sleeveless cotton shirt for less than $100. These items shouldn't have been outdoors; they should have been in locked glass cases.

Then I remembered the general rule, which has been in place since sometime in the 90s: If a place is truly beautiful, you can't afford to be there. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 7:31 AM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Class Warfare


What George Tenet really knew about Iraq
Thomas Powers, Salon

How we got into Iraq is the great open question of the decade, but George Tenet in his memoir of his seven years running the Central Intelligence Agency takes his sweet time working his way around to it. He hesitates because he has much to explain: The claims made by Tenet's CIA with "high confidence" that Iraq was dangerously armed all proved false. But mistakes are one thing, excusable even when serious; inexcusable would be charges of collusion in deceiving Congress and the public to make war possible. Tenet's overriding goal in his carefully written book is to deny "that we somehow cooked the books" about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. If he says it once, he says it a dozen times. "We told the president what we did on Iraq WMD because we believed it." More...

Monday July 2, 2007 7:33 AM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | War


This Modern World
Tom Tomorrow, Salon


Click for complete cartoon
More...

Monday July 2, 2007 8:51 AM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Humor


Soft on Crime
EDITORIAL, New York Times

When he was running for president, George W. Bush loved to contrast his law-abiding morality with that of President Clinton, who was charged with perjury and acquitted. For Mr. Bush, the candidate, "politics, after a time of tarnished ideals, can be higher and better."

Not so for Mr. Bush, the president. Judging from his decision today to commute the 30-month sentence of I. Lewis Libby Jr., who was charged with perjury and convicted, untarnished ideals are less of a priority than protecting the secrets of his inner circle and mollifying the tiny slice of right-wing Americans left in his political base. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 10:07 PM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Law


The anti-green VP
Opinion, Baltimore Sun

No one in the cadre of national environmental activists seemed much surprised to learn last week that Vice President Dick Cheney is orchestrating the rollback in federal protections that marks the Bush administration's stewardship of America's natural resources. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 7:04 AM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Environment


EYE ON IRAQ: FIGHTING THE SHIITES
MARTIN SIEFF, UPI

WASHINGTON, July 2 (UPI) -- U.S. forces in Baghdad are back on a collision course with pro-Iranian firebrand Moqtada Sadr and his Mehdi Army militia. Worse yet, that conflict could embroil them with the wider Shiite community -- the 60 percent majority in Iraq. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 2:09 PM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Iraq


Democrats: No child law needs overhaul
Nancy Zuckerbrod, Boston Globe

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PHILADELPHIA --They all voted for it, but that was then. Democratic presidential candidates came out swinging Monday, not at each other but at the No Child Left Behind law. They spoke at the annual convention of the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 8:27 PM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Education


The N.R.A.’s Senate
EDITORIAL, New York Times

Given a choice last week between helping local police combat illegal gun trafficking and helping the National Rifle Association protect rogue gun dealers responsible for arming violent criminals, the Senate Appropriations Committee made the outrageously wrong choice. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 8:44 AM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Guns


GENERAL: IRAQI FORCES STILL UNRELIABLE
UPI

WASHINGTON, July 2 (UPI) -- The Iraqi army remains under-equipped, weak and unreliable, the U.S. House Foreign Relations Committee has been told. More...

Monday July 2, 2007 5:34 PM EST

e-mail this link | discuss | Iraq



Latest Posts

Karl Rove, Master of Secrecy Mon 10:21 PM EST (13)

George W. Bush is One Tough Hombre Mon 10:20 PM EST (33)

Scooter Libby: Justice in disrepair Mon 10:19 PM EST (19)

Bush Commutes Libby's Jail Sentence Mon 10:17 PM EST (55)

Commuter-in-Chief Mon 10:16 PM EST (18)

Soft on Crime Mon 10:07 PM EST (12)

Wilson: Congress Should Investigate Bush's Participation in Obstruction of Justice Mon 8:30 PM EST (29)

Democrats: No child law needs overhaul Mon 8:27 PM EST (9)

Bush to Law: Go Fuck Yourself Mon 8:24 PM EST (94)

Study: Northern Canada ponds drying up Mon 6:49 PM EST (13)

Inside the world of Rupert Murdoch Mon 6:49 PM EST (14)

Bush Commutes Libby’s Prison Sentence Mon 6:39 PM EST (55)


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