What To Expect From a Thompson Primary Run?

Just more of the same that you get from any GOP candidate these days... Lies, broken laws and MORE LIES! Mark Kleiman at HuffPo gets this one started:

But Thompson's real vulnerability is going to come from his speech to the Council for National Policy , which Fitzgerald's sentencing memorandum in the Libby case shows to be a mostly a pack of lies.

Thompson said:

As you may recall, for some inexplicable reason, the CIA sent the husband of one of its employees to Niger on a sensitive mission. She had suggested it. He came back to the U.S. and proceeded to publicly blast the administration. Naturally, everyone wanted to know "who is this guy?" and "why was he sent to Niger?" Just as naturally, the fact that he was married to Valerie Plame at the CIA was leaked.

Having virtually guaranteed that Ms. Plame's identity would be ultimately disclosed by using her, shall we say, "politically active" husband, the CIA then demanded that this leak of her name be investigated by the Justice Department for a possible violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act.

The Justice Department, bowing to political and media pressure, appointed a Special Counsel to investigate the leak and promised that the Justice Department would exercise no supervision over him whatsoever -- a status even the Attorney General does not have.

The only problem with this little scenario was that there was no violation of the law, by anyone, and everybody -- the CIA, the Justice Department and the Special Counsel knew it. Ms. Plame was not a "covered person" under the statute and it was obvious from the outset.

Furthermore, Justice and the Special Counsel knew who leaked Plames's name and it wasn't Scooter Libby. But the Beltway machinery was well oiled and geared up so the Special Counsel spent the next two years moving heaven and earth to come up with something, anything. Finally he came up with some inconsistent recollections by Scooter Libby, who had been up to his ears studying National Intelligence Estimates. But he worked for Dick Cheney, so that apparently was enough for the special counsel.

I didn't know Scooter Libby, but I did know something about this intersection of law, politics, special counsels and intelligence. And it was obvious to me that what was happening was not right. So I called him to see what I could do to help, and along the way we became friends. You know the rest of the story: a D.C. jury convicted him.

As we can all figure out by now, because of the Fitzmas gift that keeps on giving, all of Thompson's speech up there is 100% pure bush crack:

Removing any doubt about the status of Valerie Plame when Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and Dick Armitage started leaking her name out to the press, the CIA releases an unclassified summary of her employment history:

An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame's employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, indicates that Plame was "covert" when her name became public in July 2003.

The summary is part of an attachment to Fitzgerald's memorandum to the court supporting his recommendation that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former top aide, spend 2-1/2 to 3 years in prison for obstructing the CIA leak investigation.

Click on images for a lager view
(Images taken from original PDF)

Just trying to make it easy reading for those of you that might hate PDFs as much as I do!

Dan Froomkin spells it out for those of you that don't understand how serious the leak of Valerie Plame's identity by Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and Dick Armitage is:

In Friday's eminently readable court filing, Fitzgerald quotes the Libby defense calling his prosecution "unwarranted, unjust, and motivated by politics." In responding to that charge, the special counsel evidently felt obliged to put Libby's crime in context. And that context is Dick Cheney.

Libby's lies, Fitzgerald wrote, "made impossible an accurate evaluation of the role that Mr. Libby and those with whom he worked played in the disclosure of information regarding Ms. Wilson's CIA employment and about the motivations for their actions."

It was established at trial that it was Cheney himself who first told Libby about Plame's identity as a CIA agent, in the course of complaining about criticisms of the administration's run-up to war leveled by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson. And, as Fitzgerald notes: "The evidence at trial further established that when the investigation began, Mr. Libby kept the Vice President apprised of his shifting accounts of how he claimed to have learned about Ms. Wilson's CIA employment."

The investigation, Fitzgerald writes, "was necessary to determine whether there was concerted action by any combination of the officials known to have disclosed the information about Ms. Plame to the media as anonymous sources, and also whether any of those who were involved acted at the direction of others. This was particularly important in light of Mr. Libby's statement to the FBI that he may have discussed Ms. Wilson's employment with reporters at the specific direction of the Vice President." (My italics.)

Not clear on the concept yet? Fitzgerald adds: "To accept the argument that Mr. Libby's prosecution is the inappropriate product of an investigation that should have been closed at an early stage, one must accept the proposition that the investigation should have been closed after at least three high-ranking government officials were identified as having disclosed to reporters classified information about covert agent Valerie Wilson, where the account of one of them was directly contradicted by other witnesses, where there was reason to believe that some of the relevant activity may have been coordinated, and where there was an indication from Mr. Libby himself that his disclosures to the press may have been personally sanctioned by the Vice President." (My italics.)

Two suggestions:

• Scooter Libby should buy a few years supply of "soap on a rope"
• cheney should put a fresh battery in his pacemaker.

It's going to be a rough ride for both of them.

If you like rough rides than Libby is your man, Freddy m'boy! About the only thing Thompson got right in his speech to the Council for National Policy was the fact that he and Libby are friends. But Thompson takes his Libby loving a little more seriously than many of the other 2008 GOP candidates that are doomed to failure.

Former Senator Fred Thompson, a member of the Advisory Committee for the Libby Legal Defense Trust has graciously offered to host another fundraiser for the Libby Legal Defense Trust. We will be providing additional details in the coming days.

That little quote above is straight off of the front page of Libby's official "Defend the Traitor" page. There is little wonder why this little nugget buried in Dan Froomkin's Libby article the other day about Plameologist extrordinaire Marcy Wheeler might become relavent as people start looking for a better picture of 2008 candidates:

Nexthurrah blogger Marcy Wheeler blogs at the Guardian about how Libby's "defense team solicited his friends and associates to write letters to the judge arguing that Libby deserves a reduced sentence. Last Friday, Libby's lawyer Bill Jeffress submitted a filing opposing the release of those letters to the public. In it, he writes: 'Given the extraordinary media scrutiny here, if any case presents the possibility that these letters, once released, would be published on the internet and their authors discussed, even mocked, by bloggers, it is this case.' "

Concludes Wheeler: "Jeffress' invocation of bloggers is a cheap attempt to dismiss precisely what bloggers bring: an appropriate scrutiny of the motivations and actions of those who lied us into war and outed Valerie Plame."

Plan B?

You have to wonder if Thompson stepped up and sent an embarrassing letter in support of Libby to the judge. Unfortunately for Thompson, he seems to want to surround himself with many of the same bush players that are getting caught up in investigations:

The Wall Street Journal reports (sub. req.) that Timothy Griffin, the former aide to Karl Rove who became one of the most controversial figures in the U.S. attorney firing scandal, is in talks with Fred Thompson's presidential campaign:

Backers look for Fred Thompson to use a June 2 speech to Virginia Republicans to step closer toward the race. Thompson allies have had discussions with Tim Griffin, the Arkansas U.S. attorney and Rove protégé, about taking a top job with the campaign.

Griffin, of course, was installed as the U.S. attorney for Little Rock last year. Emails from Kyle Sampson have shown that the Justice Department and White House were plotting to use a little noticed provision in the USA PATRIOT Act Reauthorization Bill to keep Griffin in place throughout Bush's term without the need for Senate confirmation. Alberto Gonzales has somewhat unconvincingly disavowed the plan.

All of this is may seem like small potatoes, as far as Griffin's involvement in the GONEzales saga, but there are likely more important reasons why Griffin is leaving his government job. In light of the politicization of DoJ and USAs by the bush administration, old stories of Tim Griffin's involvement in "CAGING" (illegally purging voter rolls) suddenly start to look like blockbuster stories to the average American:

Greg Palast joins Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!

Greg Palast exposes true intent, cover up and criminal acts of Bush administration's US Attorney scandal. In summary, it's about wrongfully charging Democrats with made up crimes in order to influence the outcome of elections. In other words, it's about stealing elections or subverting our democracy. Just more evidence of the Bush administration's stated goal of turning America into a one-party state. Which comes pretty close to meeting the definition of treason.

Did he say treason? SNAP! I thought he said that...

Part 1



Part 2



Part 3



It should get interesting as Palast will now turn over to Conyers the many RNC Emails that they accidentally sent to him.

Yep, those incriminating Tim Griffin Emails. Tim Griffin is nothing more than a mini-me version of Karl Rove with a law degree. And thompson wants this piece of Republican junk to work on his campaign? It should be interesting as Fred Thompson tries to explain why one of his campaign workers might be found guilty of taking away Black soldiers right to vote in 2004.

Go ahead and run Thompson. We're just getting ready for you over here with a nice warm welcome to reality... Expect lot's more of this as you continue to open your big gaping piehole along the way.

Mad Conservative Disease

Campaign For America's Future catches a story on Mad Cow Disease:

Offered without comment. What is there possibly to say?

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture tests less than 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease, which can be fatal to humans who eat tainted beef. But Arkansas City-based Creekstone Farms Premium Beef wants to test all of its cows.

Larger meat companies feared that move because, if Creekstone tested its meat and advertised it as safe, they might have to perform the expensive test, too.

A federal judge ruled in March that such tests must be allowed. The ruling was to take effect Friday, but the Agriculture Department said Tuesday it would appeal -- effectively delaying the testing until the court challenge plays out.

Mad cow disease is linked to more than 150 human deaths worldwide, mostly in Britain.

There have been three cases of mad cow disease identified in cattle in the U.S. The first, in December 2003 in Washington state, was in a cow that had been imported from Canada. The second, in 2005, was in a Texas-born cow. The third was confirmed last year in an Alabama cow.

The Agriculture Department argued that widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry. U.S. District Judge James Robertson noted that Creekstone sought to use the same test the government relies on and said the government didn't have the authority to restrict it.

Oh, all right. One small comment. First, observe the contempt for liberty. When E. coli conservatives say self-regulation is preferable to government, they're even lying about that. Second, observe the contempt for small business. When a small company want to - voluntarily! - hold its product to a higher standard, the government blocks it, in part because bigger companies have to be protected from the competition, in part because a theoretical threat to the bottom line (false positives) trumps protection against a deadly disease.

There's your conservatism, America: not extremism in defense of liberty. State socialism in defense of Mad Cow.

It is pretty darn obvious that it ain't your parent's GOP anymore. They are all stark raving lunatics. Mad Conservative Disease is running rampant through the ranks of the Hamburger party.

I have a better idea...

Via Nicole Belle @ Crooks and Liars:

On Friday, Nevada MoveOn members got this action alert:

Last night, Sen. Harry Reid gave George W. Bush a blank check for endless war in Iraq–supporting the same bill that just days earlier Reid called "weak tea."

Reid needs to know we're disappointed–we expect stronger leadership from him, not weakness.

Can you send Harry Reid a bag of "weak tea" and a letter telling him your opinion of last night's vote?

And MoveOn members came through…and better yet, it did not escape the notice of the media... (read on)

I think it would be more effective, and certainly get his attention a lot quicker, if we just pelted him with boiling hot tea bags every time we see him. Yeah, yeah I know! The local FBI just loves to waste their time, and our tax dollars, watching jokers like me. Nevermind that it would be a waste of a perfectly good tea bag.

Fitzgerald files Libby Papers: Hints at Cheney Involvement

Removing any doubt about the status of Valerie Plame when Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and Dick Armitage started leaking her name out to the press, the CIA releases an unclassified summary of her employment history:

An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame's employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, indicates that Plame was "covert" when her name became public in July 2003.

The summary is part of an attachment to Fitzgerald's memorandum to the court supporting his recommendation that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's former top aide, spend 2-1/2 to 3 years in prison for obstructing the CIA leak investigation.

Click on images for a lager view
(Images taken from original PDF)

Just trying to make it easy reading for those of you that might hate PDFs as much as I do!

Dan Froomkin spells it out for those of you that don't understand how serious the leak of Valerie Plame's identity by Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and Dick Armitage is:

In Friday's eminently readable court filing, Fitzgerald quotes the Libby defense calling his prosecution "unwarranted, unjust, and motivated by politics." In responding to that charge, the special counsel evidently felt obliged to put Libby's crime in context. And that context is Dick Cheney.

Libby's lies, Fitzgerald wrote, "made impossible an accurate evaluation of the role that Mr. Libby and those with whom he worked played in the disclosure of information regarding Ms. Wilson's CIA employment and about the motivations for their actions."

It was established at trial that it was Cheney himself who first told Libby about Plame's identity as a CIA agent, in the course of complaining about criticisms of the administration's run-up to war leveled by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson. And, as Fitzgerald notes: "The evidence at trial further established that when the investigation began, Mr. Libby kept the Vice President apprised of his shifting accounts of how he claimed to have learned about Ms. Wilson's CIA employment."

The investigation, Fitzgerald writes, "was necessary to determine whether there was concerted action by any combination of the officials known to have disclosed the information about Ms. Plame to the media as anonymous sources, and also whether any of those who were involved acted at the direction of others. This was particularly important in light of Mr. Libby's statement to the FBI that he may have discussed Ms. Wilson's employment with reporters at the specific direction of the Vice President." (My italics.)

Not clear on the concept yet? Fitzgerald adds: "To accept the argument that Mr. Libby's prosecution is the inappropriate product of an investigation that should have been closed at an early stage, one must accept the proposition that the investigation should have been closed after at least three high-ranking government officials were identified as having disclosed to reporters classified information about covert agent Valerie Wilson, where the account of one of them was directly contradicted by other witnesses, where there was reason to believe that some of the relevant activity may have been coordinated, and where there was an indication from Mr. Libby himself that his disclosures to the press may have been personally sanctioned by the Vice President." (My italics.)

Two suggestions:

• Scooter Libby should buy a few years supply of "soap on a rope"
• cheney should put a fresh battery in his pacemaker.

It's going to be a rough ride for both of them.

And I would be unrealistic if I didn't point out the FACT that what this all adds up to is that the 3 people that admitted to the leaking, Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and Dick Armitage, did in fact provide aid and comfort to the enemy, whether purposefully or not, by taking down a CIA operative that was serving in Counter Proliferation Duties (CPD) under Non official Cover (NOC), pretty much as dangerous as it can get working for the CIA.

I may just have to start a Technorati tag called "Republican Terrorists" with how many of them there are out there to keep track of... That is a sad statement about the state of the Republican party today.

Bush Declares His Right to Dictatorial Powers

This is a long video (10 Mins.) from C-SPAN where they interview the author of one of those Swift Boat liar books, Gerome Corsi, that smeared Kerry in the runup to the 2004 elections and they discuss their shock at the announcement of bushies' latest power grab and the possibility of creating a dictatorship.



When swift boat liars are worried about the bush they love going against the Constitution... You know it is time to get out the frickin' tin foil.

The Undisputed Queen of Blogtopia Speaks

Arianna Huffington, owner of THE BIGGEST POLITICAL BLOG in the Blogosphere, discusses growing pains:

It's still the same place, with the same address, the same mission, and the same attitude that has always made HuffPost such a great read. It's just that now there is much more of it to love. And to organize it all we've created five new sections: Media, Business, Entertainment, a culture and lifestyle section called Living Now, and a Politics section that will feature our political editor Tom Edsall and a shared-content partnership with Josh Marshall and Talking Points Memo. Plus, we've improved the design, navigation, and search function to help you find what you want more easily. The front page will continue to feature our signature group blog and breaking news stories, but it was clearly no longer big enough to contain all the great stories, blog posts, and features we wanted to share with you. So each new section will have its own "front page" with fresh editorial talent and a constantly growing list of bloggers.

It is nice to hear that HuffPo is growing and improving. HuffPo has quickly grown to be the most read and linked political Blog on the net:


Traffic graph comparison key of some of the major players in the Blogosphere via Alexa:
Huffington Post, Crooks and Liars, dailyKos, Talking Points Memo, and Firedoglake.

It appears that more recently BOTH Crooks and Liars and Huffpo has been outperforming dKos traffic wise, but the Huffington Post took over the number one spot not long after they started publishing online in 2005.

Another thing to notice is that HuffPo has added the number 4 Blog, TPM, to its stable of contributors, while John Amato of the currently number 2 Blog in Blogtopia has been a long time contributor over there. I know that Firedoglake writers, like Jane Hamsher, also participate at HuffPo, and there are probably a dozen Blogs that probably come in around their rankings. I included them since they help to demonstrate just how HUGE HuffPo has become because Firedoglake is pretty darn big on their own.

Arianna, by any standards, has long since surpassed everyone on the net and is undeniably the Queen of Blogtopia and the Blogging universe right now. The Huffington Post is fast becoming a force to be reckoned with by any journalistic standards.

A side note: There may be other BIG BLOGS that would figure in this comparison well so don't feel slighted if I didn't use yours as an example here. It is just that I am pretty sure that those are the lefty blogs I, and others, read the most in the national Blogosphere. Well... Except for Kos, who seems to have recently lost his fucking mind. And, of course, skippy coined Blogtopia! :)

Obama Proposes Corporate Welfare for Insurance Giants

You can read it as Universal Healthcare:

Under Obama's proposal, everyone would be able to obtain health insurance, and the Illinois senator would create a National Health Insurance Exchange to monitor insurance companies in offering the coverage. In essence, Obama's plan retains the private insurance system but injects additional money into the system to pay for the expanded coverage.

Those who can't afford coverage would get a subsidy on a sliding scale depending on their income, and virtually all businesses would have to share in the cost of coverage for their workers.

I prefer to call it the CORPORATE WELFARE program that it really is.

What kind of lunatic thinks that handing more money over to the insurance companies that have caused most of the problems in the American Healthcare system is going to solve anything? Throwing money at the problem just makes it a bigger problem.

C'mon Obama! You can do better than this bush league proposal.

Think Single Payer...

Do YOU Support the Troops?

Staff Sergeant David Safstrom and Sergeant First Class David Moore on the situation in Iraq:

[Now] on his third deployment in Iraq, he is no longer a believer in the mission. The pivotal moment came, he says, this past February when soldiers killed a man setting a roadside bomb. When they searched the bomber's body, they found identification showing him to be a sergeant in the Iraqi Army.

"I thought, 'What are we doing here? Why are we still here?' " said Safstrom, a member of Delta Company of the 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division. "We're helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us."

snip

With few reliable surveys of soldiers' attitudes, it is impossible to simply extrapolate from the small number of soldiers in Delta Company. But in interviews with more than a dozen soldiers over a one-week period, most said they were disillusioned by repeated deployments, by what they saw as the abysmal performance of Iraqi security forces and by a conflict that they considered a civil war, one they had no ability to stop.

snip

"In 2003, 2004, 100 percent of the soldiers wanted to be here, to fight this war," said Sergeant First Class David Moore, a self-described "conservative Texas Republican" and platoon sergeant who strongly advocates an American withdrawal. "Now, 95 percent of my platoon agrees with me."

snip

But in Safstrom's view, the American presence is futile. "If we stayed here for 5, even 10 more years, the day we leave here these guys will go crazy," he said. "It would go straight into a civil war. That's how it feels, like we're putting a Band-Aid on this country until we leave here."

Go on and read the entire article for the views of other soldiers. No further comment necessary BUT I do have one question...

Do YOU support the troops?

Dem Cave Complete

Only slowly was this realisation of a capitulation suffused with the flush of passion, only with reflection did they make any personal application. "WE have surrendered!" came later; "in us America is defeated." Then they began to burn and tingle.
The War in the Air by Wells, H.G.

Last Wednesday tparty noted:

As Sirota writes, the Democratic leadership is planning to use parliamentary procedure to avoid the appearance of a real vote on this. And apparently the entire leadership is planning on voting for this "rule" that would essentially allow the supplemental to sail through without having to vote for it. CQ has more. Ask the reps below to vote against the rule.

Via David Sirota's Working For A Change:

The Final Insult:
Dems Brag to Press About Deceiving the Public on Iraq

In case you believe the malarkey being spewed by the House Rules Committee about the rule vote yesterday not really being the vote to give President Bush a blank check, take a look at the Washington Post and the Associated Press today. I reported this at the beginning of the day yesterday and was then criticized by House Rules Committee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter (D-NY). Now, though, it seems at least some major news organizations have caught on that I was exactly right. In the process, they are reporting what will be recorded in history as the final insult of it all: Democrats running to reporters bragging about their own brilliance in deceiving the public.

Here's the Associated Press:

“In a highly unusual maneuver, House Democratic leaders crafted a procedure that allowed their rank and file to oppose money for the war, then step aside so Republicans could advance it.”

Here's the Washington Post:

"Yesterday's vote to fund the war through September was a historical rarity: the passage of a bill opposed by the speaker of the House and a majority of the speaker's party. Two years ago to the day, then-Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) violated the "Hastert rule" -- that only bills supported by a majority of the majority can come up -- by bringing up legislation to allow federal funding for stem cell research. The majority of the Republican majority opposed the law. He voted against it, but he knew it would never become law over President Bush's signature...The North American Free Trade Agreement passed in 1993, over the objections of most Democrats, who were then in the majority. But NAFTA did have the support of then-Speaker Thomas S. Foley (D-Wash.), as well as the Democratic president, Bill Clinton. In contrast, the Iraq funding bill was not only opposed by the majority of House Democrats, it was also ardently opposed by the speaker and even the lawmaker who drafted it, Appropriations Committee Chairman David R. Obey (D-Wis.). And it is destined to become law. 'To have the chairman and the speaker vote against a bill like this, I've never heard of it,' Hastert said."

And here's the worst part of it all - Democrats are now bragging about it. Not only have they sent out a Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee fundraising email attempting to confuse voters by claiming with a straight face that they really stood up to President Bush. But most insulting of all, they are actually running to reporters to pat themselves on the back for engineering a procedural pirouette designed to confuse the public. Here's the Post again:

"But while protesters outside the Capitol condemned what they saw as a capitulation, Democrats inside were remarkably understanding of their speaker's contortions. Party leaders jury-rigged the votes yesterday to give all Democrats something to brag about...Democrats saw brilliance in the legerdemain. And with such contortions came more appreciation for the efforts Pelosi was making to fund the war in a fashion most palatable to angry Democrats. 'It was the responsible thing to do, and she's a responsible speaker,' said Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.)."

This is what we're dealing with folks. A party that runs to the press to brag about the brilliance of using their majority not to end the war, but to create a situation that makes it seem as if they oppose the war, while actually helping Republicans continue it.

Meanwhile in Iraq:

“Americans have opened nearly 1,000 new graves to bury U.S. troops killed in Iraq since Memorial Day a year ago. The figure is telling — and expected to rise in coming months. In the period from Memorial Day 2006 through Saturday, 980 soldiers and Marines died in Iraq, compared to 807 deaths in the previous year.”

Burning... Tingling... And...
MAD AS ALL HELL!

No one in the Blogosphere is buying the BS coming from these Democratic assholes in Congress. This is complete and total capitulation. Democrats in Congress know it, and we know it.

Impeach Cheney

If you believe in the Constitution than you must impeach Cheney. The grounds of the proposed impeachment are that the Vice President:

1. fabricated a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction,
2. purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States about an alleged relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and
3. has threatened aggression against the Republic of Iran absent any real threat to the United States, all in detriment to the national interest of the United States.

Supporting Documents for H Res 333

On April 24, 2007, U.S. House Representative Dennis Kucinich introduced H.Res. 333, calling for articles of impeachment to be sent to the U.S Senate with regards to Vice President Richard B. Cheney.

If you believe that Vice President Cheney should be impeached, then vote "Yes" here.

The one click form on this page will send your personal message to all your members of Congress, with your vote on the the question "Should Vice President Cheney be impeached?" At the same time it will send your personal comments only as a letter to the editor of your nearest local daily newspaper, if that option is selected below.

Nevermind the fact that both Cheney and Bush have attempted to subvert our Constitutionally guarenteed rights to privacy by breaking FISA laws, and have overseen a series of illegal efforts designed to delgitamize the Congress' right to advise and consent on too many issues based on their false and traitorous Neoconservative/Neoliberal theories of a "Unitary Executive".

This is a Democracy, not a kingdom, and impeachment is the only means left to secure the rights of the people.

Via Wikipedia:

The phrase "unitary executive" that was discussed in the Constitutional Convention referred merely to having a single individual fill the office of President, as proposed in the Virginia Plan, rather than have several executives or an executive council, as proposed in the New Jersey Plan and as promoted by Elbridge Gerry, Edmund Randolph, and George Mason; and that the Constitutional Convention debates show that the Founders' primary concern behind whether to have a single executive or an executive council was to choose the one that would ensure that the executive would be relatively weaker and more easily restrained by the legislature; that those who argued for a unitary executive advanced the argument because they considered that the best way to limit the executive’s power and keep it subordinate to the legislature, in opposition to arguments that a plural executive would support the executive’s independence; and the term "unitary executive" was thereby bound up with the intention of keeping executive power checked and restrained.

For example, James Wilson emphasized the advantage of greater accountability with a single chief executive:

"The executive power is better to be trusted when it has no screen. Sir, we have a responsibility in the person of our President; he cannot act improperly, and hide either his negligence or inattention; he cannot roll upon any other person the weight of his criminality; no appointment can take place without his nomination; and he is responsible for every nomination he makes... far from being above the laws, he is amenable to them in his private character as a citizen, and in his public character by impeachment."

IT IS WELL PAST TIME TO IMPEACH THESE FRAUDSTERS.

Classical Gas

Via C&L:

Guardian UK:

The House, eager to do something about record high gasoline prices in advance of the Memorial Day weekend, voted narrowly Wednesday to approve stiff penalties for those found guilty of gasoline price gouging.

The bill directs the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department to go after oil companies, traders or retail operators if they take “unfair advantage'' or charge “unconscionably excessive'' prices for gasoline and other fuels.

The White House called the measure a form of price controls that could result in fuel shortages. It said President Bush would be urged to veto the legislation should it pass Congress.

Via your local liberal brewery:

Rell and her hamburger party suggest dropping the 25 cent tax on gas:

Rell endorsed the idea several hours after Republican legislators introduced the measure at a press conference at the state Capitol complex. They vowed to force the Democrat-controlled legislature to vote on the issue, possibly in the next three days when the House is in session.

snip

"This is an irresponsible, half-baked scheme by the Republicans to appease the public with pennies, while costing the state over $120 million," Amann said. "Their annual sideshow is about as helpful to Connecticut drivers as the governor's press release last week calling for a national investigation into gasoline prices. It's embarrassing."

Amann said the legislature cannot guarantee that prices will drop at the pumps, because lawmakers do not control gasoline prices. Proponents of the measure said, however, that regardless of the price of gas, motorists would be paying 25 cents less per gallon.

Not only is Amann correct, but the fact is I can think of a lot better ways to spend excesses in government money that would benefit everyone. You can be damned certain that the price of gas would just go right back up shortly after they dropped the tax with distributors and oil companies soaking up even more excessive profits than they are already getting.

HMMMM? In the warped GOP view it is good when businesses rip you off, BUT bad when the government puts it aside, responsibly, for future needs.

OR

In the warped GOP view it is good when companies force fuel consumption down by ripping you off with price gouging, BUT bad when the government forces fuel consumption down with a legitimate tax.

Either argument that these CONservative jokes want to make exposes their GOP talking points for the pure unadulterated BS that it always is.

As a side note: A little pat on the head of the few republicans that actually understand that even republicans need to a planet to live on even if they are all space cadets:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California and fellow Republican Gov. Jodi Rell of Connecticut accused the U.S. government on Monday of "inaction and denial" on global warming."

It's bad enough that the federal government has yet to take the threat of global warming seriously, but it borders on malfeasance for it to block the efforts of states such as California and Connecticut that are trying to protect the public's health and welfare," the governors wrote in The Washington Post.

And in honour of these republicans speaking out on unnatural issues for the GOP... A little Classical Gas from down under: