Republican Children Walkout From Congress

If you missed this on Valentines day, the childish Republicans walked away from doing the job they were elected to do. Why? Because the GOP is full of members that are childish and stupid, of course!



Via Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker:

Surprise!

When the Dems finally made a move to get a vote on the contempt resolutions against White House officials for ignoring subpoenas in the U.S. attorney investigations, the Republicans had a walkout all planned out. As Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) gave a speech haranguing the Dems for "political grandstanding" at a time of dire threats to national security (because work on the surveillance bill has still not been completed). They then filed out onto the steps, where a podium was waiting to complete the photo op.

No political grandstanding, indeed.

I guess these republican children have a problem with the more criminal elements of the GOP machine actually being held responsible for their actions?

The Republicans refused to deal with two of their own being slapped with contempt charges:

The House of Representatives voted Thursday to cite Joshua B. Bolten, the White House chief of staff, and Harriet E. Miers, a former White House counsel, for contempt for refusing to testify about their participation in the firing of federal prosecutors.

The measure calls for House officials to seek enforcement of the contempt citation by the courts if, as expected, the Justice Department declines to act on the resolution.

The vote was a lopsided 223 to 32 in favor of the contempt citation, after most Republican members walked out to protest what their leaders called a political move.

Call the whambulance.

This is no different than the supremely stupid and childish walkout of the New Milford Republican BOE members last September:

This last couple of weeks a huge pile of steaming Republican childishness has played out and many in the town have been talking about it:

The five Republican members who walked out of a Board of Education meeting last week say they are disturbed that the action has been misconstrued and politicized when it was a legitimate protest of what they considered to be an improper, imprudent and even disrespectful action.

Like walking out on a vote is not improper, imprudent and even disrespectful action, never mind that it is as childish as taking their ball and going home in the middle of a game because they are losing.

Flying in the face of their own reasoning, they can't seem to even decide whether they walked out because of too much debate, or not enough:

"We simply, quietly, left the meeting at the end when there was nothing further to discuss. We had already discussed it three times, and our input was ignored. There was no reason to stay," said member Julie Turk of the minority Republicans' decision to leave before a second vote on hiring a director of human resources to replace the former director of operations.

snip

But some of the board's GOP members -- the school board has seven Republicans and five Democrats -- were disturbed that so little time had been given to such a key position, which will command a salary in the $90,000 to $100,000 range.

Make up your minds little GOP children... Did you decide to walk out on your job because:

1. Republicans think there is nothing left to discuss.
2. Republicans think there needs to be more time to discuss this.
3. Republicans think there needs to be more time to discuss that there is nothing left to discuss.

And never mind all of the other reasons that they threw at the fan. Several more inconsistencies fly back in their face in that one article. The supposed and incoherent apologies lead one to realize your mea maxima culpas. Simply being wrong, both in thoughts and actions. Get a load of another childish GOP response:

"They changed the rules so they could put something through that had already failed," McLachlan claimed.

What rules did the Board change? Something was brought up in a vote that was a 5-5 tie without all of the board members present in August. A sub-committee, including republicans, originally recommended returning to the issue. Does McLachlan have a problem with putting a vote to the full board just because of the inevitable 7-5 result?

What rules were changed? Don't just pull out "The republican victim card" and leave it out there without any backup. And just because someone too childish or incompetent to do their job and vote on this issue calls it bullying does not make it so, regardless of how the village idiot celebrates the idea:

"Kudos to Joe Failla, Julie Turk, Robin Ruggiero, Bill McLachlan and Joey Vita for having the gumption to stand up for what they believe in, against the odds and the "bullying" as one Member calls it."

Whom, exactly, is guilty of bullying? As a commenter over at your own Blog (Jay Lewin - Juice Box Republicans) notes:

"Interesting that the Operations sub committee "unanimously" OK'd bringing the issue back to the board. That sub committee includes Mr. Failla & Mrs. Turk. Why did they OK this on 9/4, and then reverse course to fight it on 9/11? Hmmmmmmm..."

Kudos for what. Jay? For recommending returning to this issue and then walking out on the vote when it does come up? (The GOP must be guilty of bullying themselves , either that or bullshitting themselves, 'cause we aren't buying it.) And for ignoring the reality of what most of the town's people recognized this childish tactic to be? Is there any doubt why one of New Milford's Board of Education members jumped the Republican ship of fools?

For the coming election, Traisci-Marandola said, she was rejected by the party's leaders for a re-election bid because she did what she promised, although it meant spending money.

Even with that rejection, Traisci-Marandola said she intended to retain her party affiliation.

Yet what she called this past "week of nonsense" has changed her mind. She said she intends to become a Democrat and support that party's slate for the November election.

snip

Traisci-Marandola said she was "appalled" that five of her fellow Republicans -- including appointed member Joseph Failla, endorsed for a four-year seat, and William McLachlan, endorsed for a Town Council seat -- orchestrated a walkout at last Tuesday's school board meeting.

This walk out was a pitiful example of Republican kids behaving badly and the nonsensical apologies and their apologists passing out the Koolaide are as sad as the the original actions. They are just playing little childish games and, in a typically GOP fashion, wasting the tax payers time occupying a job they are unwilling or unable to do in a manner respectful of Democracy.

The Twisted Republican Perspective

Nearly 4,000 dead American soldiers and over 29,000 wounded

U.S. Casualties By Calendar Year

Year	US Deaths	US Wounded
2003	486	2,416
2004	849	8,002
2005	846	5,947
2006	822	6,400
2007	901	6,084
2008	56	231
Total	3960	29080

And the senile old fart, Republican John McCain, thinks debating his age will distract us?

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis today sent an unmistakable message to Barack Obama over the Illinois Democrat's effort to stoke the obvious age contrast between himself and the 71-year-old McCain: Bring it on.

Hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis...

We maintain a daily count based on news reports. It is not intended to be complete. There is no agency that keeps track of accurate numbers of Iraqis killed. JustForeignPolicy maintains a running estimate based on the Lancet study with the rate of increase derived from the Iraq Body Count.

And Republican Senator Arlen Specter is intent on hunting down football tapes?

"There was confirmation that there has been taping since 2000, when Coach Belichick took over," Specter said.

Specter said Goodell gave him that information during the 1-hour, 40-minute meeting, which was requested by Specter so the commissioner could explain his reasons for destroying the Spygate tapes and notes.

On the home front, the country is getting flushed down the toilet by failed conservative policies run amok:

The U.S. economy is faltering. Family debt is on the rise, benefits are disappearing, the deficit is skyrocketing, and the mortgage crisis has worsened. Conservatives have attempted to deflect attention from the crisis, by blaming the media’s negative coverage and insisting the United States is not headed toward a recession, despite what economists are predicting.

And Republican Rep. Chris Shays is in a steroid induced stupor:

Once again, Chris Shays embarrasses the state of Connecticut with one of the most embarrassing tirades to date. Our congressman from the fourth district took grandstanding to a whole new level with his browbeating of Roger Clemens trainer Brian McNamee during today's House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on steroids in baseball.

After hearing Shays refer to McNamee as a "drug dealer" and spewing out what can only be described as complete nonsense, WFAN's sports radio personality (and former Shays supporter) Chris "Mad Dog" Russo saw the light.

Living up to his famous nickname, Russo took Shays to the woodshed and became Jim Himes' biggest supporter...all in the classic Mad Dog fashion that's made Russo famous.

It is obvious that the only campaign platform these spineless GOP candidates have to run on this election cycle is to avoid and deflect from every issue that is really important to this nation. These Republican children need to grow up and take responsibility for the failures they have created. There is no doubt about this fact:

The GOP has lost all perspective of reality.

And anyone would have to be a fool to vote for any of them...

[update] Changed video to add extended version of ctblogger's uploaded video. Original video is here... And normally I wouldn't ask this BUT... Help Connecticut Bob shut up:

"Shays struck out swinging with his ridiculous tirade. His wild pitch embarrassed everyone in the 4th District. Help Jim Himes hit a grand slam by contributing to Jim's ActBlue fund.

If you do, I promise I'll stop with the stupid baseball references."

JK Bob :)

A public service announcement

I have been a little neglectful of my poor Bloggie in the last couple of weeks due to some family thingies going on (Family ALWAYS comes first!) but I promise to get back into the swing of things over the next week. For the moment, enjoy a public service announcement from Blip.TV (H/t C&L and via QueerVisalia) on the SCLM:



Just remember the many lies and outrageous propaganda the corporate owned media has shoveled out in the last decade, in a manner that could only be characterized as incompetent in its reckless endangerment towards our nation's security, as they start to laud John McCain as some kind of "Maverick," or even a sane and competent candidate on the GOP side.

He is nothing more than another Neocon with a freakishly old far right wingnut face put on it... And he hasn't a clue about how disastrous bush, Joe Neocon Lieberman and St. McCain the warmongerer's illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq has been to America's security.

Via Kevin Drum at The Washington Monthly:

BOOT ON McCAIN....I have to give Max Boot credit: he doesn't beat around the bush. He thinks Iran, Syria, and North Korea are thumbing their noses at us and that John McCain is the right guy to make them stop:

Clearly, these rogue regimes do not fear the consequences of waging a proxy war on America and our allies. They think they can get away with killing and maiming American soldiers — and so far they have been right.

....It is hard to see how Bush could reverse this decline in America's "fear factor" during the remaining year of his presidency. That will be the job of the next president. And who would be the most up to the task?

To answer that question, ask yourself which presidential candidate an Ahmadinejad, Assad or Kim would fear the most. I submit it is not Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or Mike Huckabee. In my (admittedly biased) opinion, the leading candidate to scare the snot out of our enemies is a certain former aviator who has been noted for his pugnacity and his unwavering support of the American war effort in Iraq.

There you have it. If you think the most important apect of a president is the ability to "scare the snot out of our enemies," then McCain's your guy.

Now, you might think that after seven years of trying exactly this, with only the current collapse in our fortunes to show for it, the neocon establishment might at least pause for a moment to wonder if there's more to foreign policy than scaring the snot out of our enemies. But no. The real problem, apparently, is simply that the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld administration wasn't good enough at it. Not bellicose enough. Not unilateral enough. Not warlike enough. What America needs is someone even more bloodthirsty than the crew that got us into this mess. Time to double down, folks.

And that, my friends, pretty much sums up where this country will be buried under another 4 years of bush failure. Which is what you can expect from any GOP candidate, Johnny St. McCain included.

This is supposed to be some kind of Maverick and credible candidates campaign platform? Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan sum up the John McCain campaign platform pretty effectively:

BUCHANAN: Here’s a guy, basically, what does he say? The jobs are never coming back, the illegals are never going home, but we’re gonna have a lot more wars.

SCARBOROUGH: We’re gonna start a lot of wars! He has promised, for the record Keith, John McCain’s platform — and it certainly looks inviting for the fall — he has promised less jobs and more wars. Now that’s something we can all rally behind.

According to Think Progress:

While campaigning in Michigan earlier this month, McCain said some Michigan industries cannot be resurrected. “I’ve got to give you some straight talk: Some of the jobs that have left the state of Michigan are not coming back,” he said.

And just this weekend, McCain told a crowd of supporters, “There’s going to be other wars. … I’m sorry to tell you, there’s going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars.”

And the McCain Silly Walk Express stumbles its way into the lead through the shear incompetence of the other GOP presidential candidates. His likely campaign motto?

John McCain in 2008!
The best of the worst the GOP has to offer!

McCain Breaking Campaign Promises Already

The Real McCain is already breaking campaign promises:

As recently as this morning, McCain again told reporters that he planned on returning to the Senate for this evening’s vote on the economic stimulus, stating that Congress needed to quickly pass legislation.

The measure, blocked by conservatives, fell just one vote short of the 60 needed to end debate. At the “last minute,” McCain decided to skip the vote, even though his plane landed in DC in time. McCain claimed that he was “too busy“:

“I haven’t had a chance to talk about it at all, have not had the opportunity to, even,” McCain said. “We’ve just been too busy, focused on other stuff. I don’t know if I’m doing that. We’ve got a couple of meetings scheduled.”

Both Sens. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) were able to return to the Senate and vote on the bill.

The reason for breaking this promise and allowing his GOP to filibuster the stimulus package? McCain was afraid to offend the craziest and most wingnutty wackos in his party:

Voting “no” with Republican leaders would have offended millions of Social Security recipients and the disabled veterans not scheduled to receive rebates. Voting “yes,” on the other hand, risked alienating Bush, GOP leaders and conservatives already suspicious of McCain’s political leanings. McCain was speaking Thursday before a meeting of the Conservative Political Action Conference, a group that booed him last year in absentia.

If he can't stand up to the Republican terrorists in his own GOP's base, you can be certain that even the mention of the words "al Qaeda" will make him wet his pants. Those words seem to have that effect on a lot of conservatives these days, so no surprise about that one... Never mind that he turned his back on the elderly and disabled veterans because he is a scared little old man.

Diebold voting machine key copied from pic on Diebold site

Via BradBlog, (and h/t Buzzflash) anyone can have their very own Diebold voting machine master key now:

Good lord in heaven. How dumb are these guys at Diebold?! Can you believe the United States has actually entrusted them to build a security system for the original U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights?!

After everything else... now comes this.

It was revealed in the course of last summer's landmark virus hack of a Diebold touch-screen voting system at Princeton University that, incredibly, the company uses the same key to open every machine. It's also an easy key to buy at any office supply store since it's used for filing cabinets and hotel mini-bars! That is, if you're not a poll worker who already has one from the last time you worked on an election (anybody listening down there in San Diego?).

snip

This idiotic company has had a photograph of the stupid key sitting on their own website's online store! (Screenshot [up ^^^ there])

Of course, they'll only sell such keys to "Diebold account holders" apparently --- or so they claim --- but that's hardly a problem.

C'mon Connecticut! Do you still trust your vote to these Diebold morons?

[update] While on the topic of voting issues, Real Hartford is trying to figure out if this is irregular:

If there is anyone else from Hartford who voted for Kucinich, please comment or contact me privately. The Courant is reporting only ONE person in all of Hartford voted for him, and while that could be the case, I sort of doubt it. There are towns of only about 10,000 people recorded as having 7 or 8 people vote for him, so I’m a little suspicious about the single voter in Hartford stat.

What do the Soldiers think about Bush's failed war?

Well? What do they really think?

Yesterday, the Center for Responsive Politics reported that members of the military donated the most not to McCain, but to two anti-war candidates:

Individuals in the Army, Navy and Air Force made those branches of the armed services among the top contributors in the 4th Quarter, ranking No. 13, No. 18 and No. 21, respectively. In 2007, Republican Ron Paul, who opposes U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan, was the top recipient of money from donors in the military, collecting at least $212,000 from them. Barack Obama, another war opponent, was second with about $94,000.

These donations reflect the military’s disapproval with the Iraq war and President Bush’s handling of it. A recent Military Times poll found that just 46 percent of U.S. troops now believe that the country should have invaded Iraq, and only 40 percent approve of Bush’s handling of the war.

Money talks and bushit walks... And it is important to note that CGG's ActBlue (I am sure she has taken over the place now! lol jk) is becoming a real force to be reckoned with:

The biggest "contributor" of all after one year of fundraising remains the progressive group ActBlue, which facilitates individual donors pooling their money to finance Democratic candidates. In donations exceeding $200, ActBlue has directed more than $2.2 million to the presidential candidates, but nearly all of it went to dropouts John Edwards and Bill Richardson. ActBlue's fundraising is far greater than campaign finance reports would suggest, however, since donations below $200 are not itemized on candidates' reports and, therefore, cannot be tracked or totaled.

That money may not have pushed those candidates on to the top of the ticket, but it did help push Edwards and Richardson's pro-sanity positions on war, poverty and other issues to the forefront of the presidential debate. Sometimes winning is as simple as effecting the agenda of a primary or election. Never mind the large amounts ActBlue sends other candidates into what would normally be underfunded primary and election races.

ActBlue has raised over
$36,000,000.00
for their prefered candidates since 2004...

More Republican Sex Allegations

As one investigation led to another, it appears that more Republican sex may have taken place in Alaska. And, as is often the case, this typically GOPish sex scandal includes minors:

Allen teen sex inquiry reopened

Allen pleaded guilty in May to bribing Alaska lawmakers. Once the chairman and an owner of the oil field services company Veco, he was forced to sell the company and now faces a lengthy prison term. That's a stunning fall for a power broker who handed oil-policy decrees to a stable of bribed legislators and who regularly socialized with senators and other national political figures who came to Alaska as guests of Sen. Ted Stevens.

At the time the Boehm investigation was developing, from 2003 to 2004, Allen was still a major player in Alaska politics, as he had been for decades, and was a reliable source of campaign money for state candidates, members of Alaska's congressional delegation and other national politicians. In 2000 he was Alaska co-chairman of President Bush's election campaign.

In an interview in October, Vandegriff wouldn't name Allen's alleged victim or victims. He said Allen was not a direct subject of the Boehm investigation. But he said there was one person involved in both the Boehm case and the investigation of Allen: Bambi Tyree, one of Boehm's co-defendants.

Vince Blomfield, Tyree's boyfriend starting around 1999 when he was 36 and she was 18, said in an interview with a private investigator working for Boehm that Tyree claimed to have had a sexual relationship with Allen when she was 14 or 15. Allen would have been in his late 50s at the time. The interview with Blomfield was cited in a court filing by Boehm's attorneys, who were trying to portray Tyree as having a history of preying on older men with money.

It has become clear that in the modern dictionary "Republican" and "GOP" have become synonymous with "Pedophile". And before anyone starts with the "Both sides do this!" crap:

This summer’s political conventions are expected to be “a boom in business” for “the sex and adult entertainment industries,” but according to one veteran sex worker who spoke to the Rocky Mountain News, the GOP conventions are “a lot better for the sex workers.” “We get a lot more business,” Carol Leigh told the paper. “I don’t know if they’re just frustrated because of the family values agenda.”

Obviously, the party with all of those family values hypocrites do it a lot more, whether it involves minors or not.

Internet Media Internships At TPM

It is the last week to get your applications in for Talking Point Memo's spring internship program:

From January 14th:

Job Opening at TPM

Starting today, we're announcing a job opening for a reporter-blogger at TPMmuckraker. The new hire will be one of two full-time reporter-bloggers for the site. There is no deadline for applications. We'll be hiring as soon as we find the right person. If you're interested please send a resume, two clips and a letter describing your interest and qualifications for the job to talk (at) talkingpointsmemo.com with the subject line "TPMmuckraker Job".

This is a full-time position, with health care. The reporter-blogger will report from either New York or Washington, DC., depending on the applicant.

If you've already expressed interest in the position informally, please submit an application as described above.

To learn more about what we do at TPM and what we've accomplished in the last year, see these news reports on TPM from 2007. And thanks to our readers who make all of this possible.

Internships

TPM interns are vital to our operation and have a hand in everything we do. They work alongside our reporters to write and break stories, help our editors keep a finger on the pulse of the news day, and produce all kinds of digital media from youtube clips to mash-up photographs. Some of our interns have gone on to jobs here at TPM, others have moved on to jobs in new and old media alike, working for Think Progress, The Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, The New York Sun, and more. To learn more about what we do at TPM and what we've accomplished in the last year, see these news reports on TPM from 2007.

Because each intern is encouraged to work in multiple parts of our operation, it's important that applicants have a basic understanding of new media technologies (blogging, youtube, etc.) and a desire and ability to learn quickly. All internships are unpaid and based in TPM's New York City office.

To apply for any of our internships, send an email to talk at talkingpointsmemo.com with a cover letter, resume and two references. Include in the email subject "TPM Internship."

Spring 2008 Internship

Our Spring 2008 Internship runs from mid-March to early June. We will be accepting three or four full time interns. Part-time interns may be considered.

Applications are due on February 8th.

Summer 2008 Internship

Our Spring 2008 Internship runs from early June to late August. We will be accepting four or five full time interns. Part-time interns will not be considered.

Applications are due on March 21st.

Rolling Internships (Intern now!)

At any given time, it is always possible that we could use a smart person in the office to replace a lost intern or help us manage the ever-growing mountain of muck and news. If you're available to come in sooner than the beginning of the next internship cycle begins, let us know.

There are plenty of you Connecticut Bloggers that could bring a lot to their pages in filling these positions. And the trade off? Learning from one of the best media outfits on the intertubes...

DANGERstein Idiocy Alert!

Dan Gerstein's own brand of right wing propaganda, from BooMan at the The Booman Tribune:

For those of you keeping score at home, the Baby Boomer Generation is made up of people born between 1946 and 1964, meaning that they are currently between 44 and 62 years old. The Blog Reader Project shows the following demographic breakdown for Daily Kos readers:

Age:

Less than 18: 0.3%
18-20: 1.2%
21-34: 26.3%
35-45: 22.8%
46-55: 25.7%
56-65: 18.0%
66-75: 4.6%
Older than 75: 1.0%

The results show that the majority of Daily Kos readers are not Baby Boomers. The largest category (the plurality) is the 21-34 contingent, and more than 50% of readers (the majority) are too young to be part of the Boomer generation, while more than 5% are too old. This doesn't prevent senior adviser to Sen. Joe Lieberman's vice presidential and presidential campaigns, Dan Gerstein, from asserting:

The Kossacks and their activist allies -- who skew toward the Boomers -- believe that Republicans are venal bordering on evil, and that the way Democrats will win elections and hold power is to one-up Karl Rove's divisive, bare-knuckled tactics. Their opponents within the party -- who skew younger and freer of culture war wounds -- believe that the way to win is offer voters a break from this poisonous tribal warfare and a compelling, inclusive vision for where we want to take the country.

Technically, Gerstein said 'Kossacks and their activist allies', so I guess he can try to defend himself by claiming that the 'activist allies' skew to the boomer generation, thereby tilting Kossacks in that direction. I don't know, Gerstein is an asshat. But it's kind of important that he's screwed up the generational profile of Daily Kos because his entire essay depends on Kossacks (and by extension, the blogosphere as a whole) being about the politics of the past, in distinction from the hopeful, post-partisan politics of the future (as embodied in Senator Barack Obama).

Gerstein might be onto something about Kossacks (and the blogosphere more generally) but not because of the age distinctions, i.e., because non-Kossacks/Blogopshereites are "freer of culture war wounds." Ironically, Gerstein hits on a better explanation (though he skips right over it) while he is in the process of distorting the history of the Lieberman/Lamont battle.

Read on...

Yes! More asshat idiocy from Dan Gerstein...

Soldier Suicides Skyrocket

Meanwhile, suicide attempts and self-inflicted wounds are rocketing alongside the suicide rates:

Soldier suicides reach record level, study shows

"I'm very disappointed with the Army," Whiteside wrote in a note before swallowing dozens of antidepressants and other pills. "Hopefully this will help other soldiers." She was taken to the emergency room early Tuesday. Whiteside, who is now in stable physical condition, learned yesterday that the charges against her had been dismissed.

Whiteside's personal tragedy is part of an alarming phenomenon in the Army's ranks: Suicides among active-duty soldiers in 2007 reached their highest level since the Army began keeping such records in 1980, according to a draft internal study obtained by The Washington Post. Last year, 121 soldiers took their own lives, nearly 20 percent more than in 2006.

At the same time, the number of attempted suicides or self-inflicted injuries in the Army has jumped sixfold since the Iraq war began. Last year, about 2,100 soldiers injured themselves or attempted suicide, compared with about 350 in 2002, according to the U.S. Army Medical Command Suicide Prevention Action Plan.

The military is broken and all the idiots in the criminal administration do is offer lip-service:

Increasing suicides raise "real questions about whether you can have an Army this size with multiple deployments," said David Rudd, a former Army psychologist and chairman of the psychology department at Texas Tech University.

On Monday night, as President Bush delivered his State of the Union address and asked Congress to "improve the system of care for our wounded warriors and help them build lives of hope and promise and dignity," Whiteside was dozing off from the effects of her drug overdose.

Blumenthal investigating sub-prime mortgage crisis

Blumenthal is looking into the sub-prime mortgage crisis as millions of Americans are looking at losing their homes, a little less than a half a million of them in Connecticut:

It is estimated that more than $100bn (£50bn) was been wiped off the balance sheets across the financial sector, in losses and asset writedowns. Share prices have also fallen heavily.

The SEC is already conducting a clutch of civil investigations into the scandal.

Some US states have launched their own legal action. Yesterday, Connecticut state attorney general Richard Blumenthal said his office has issued subpoenas to all major rating agencies and bond insurers in a widening probe of industry practices related to the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

He said this includes MBIA and Ambac, the two monoline insurers who guarantee municipal loans whose shares plunged last week over concern they do not hold enough capital to guarantee their ratings, after getting caught in the sub-prime chaos.

Blumenthal also told Reuters that Connecticut was cooperating with the state of New York over its investigation.

Senator Chris Dodd had some words on this:

The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a $146 billion economic stimulus package on Tuesday. Parts of the package would allow the Federal Housing Administration and housing finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to help prop up the mortgage market.

These measures "will enable homeowners with larger mortgages to refinance, lower their monthly payments, and avoid foreclosure," said Rep. George Miller, a California Democrat, after passage of the package.

Sen Christopher Dodd, chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, urged the Senate to take similar action swiftly and spend billions of dollars more to help distressed homeowners.

"Unlike past recessions and slowdowns, the epicenter of this economic crisis is the housing crisis," the Connecticut Democrat said on the Senate floor.

"Reckless, careless, and sometimes unscrupulous actors in the mortgage lending industry essentially allowed loans to be made that they knew hard-working, law-abiding borrowers would not be able to repay," said the former presidential candidate.

He accused the Federal Reserve and the Bush administration of doing "absolutely nothing" to stop these practices.

Imagine that? Preznit bush doing nothing to help the little people. How republican of him!

John McCain's Campaign Platform

Joe Scarborough and Pat Buchanan sum up the John McCain campaign platform pretty effectively:

BUCHANAN: Here’s a guy, basically, what does he say? The jobs are never coming back, the illegals are never going home, but we’re gonna have a lot more wars.

SCARBOROUGH: We’re gonna start a lot of wars! He has promised, for the record Keith, John McCain’s platform — and it certainly looks inviting for the fall — he has promised less jobs and more wars. Now that’s something we can all rally behind.

According to Think Progress:

While campaigning in Michigan earlier this month, McCain said some Michigan industries cannot be resurrected. “I’ve got to give you some straight talk: Some of the jobs that have left the state of Michigan are not coming back,” he said.

And just this weekend, McCain told a crowd of supporters, “There’s going to be other wars. … I’m sorry to tell you, there’s going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars.”

And the McCain Silly Walk Express stumbles its way into the lead through the shear incompetence of the other GOP presidential candidates. His likely campaign motto?

John McCain in 2008!
The best of the worst the GOP has to offer!

According to ctblogger the Silly Walk Express will be stumbling through Connecticut with his neoconservative brother in eternal arms, Joe Lieberman:

McCain is coming to Connecticut... with Lieberman attached to the hip.

McCain, the front-runner in the Connecticut GOP primary, is appearing Sunday at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, the site of an appearance before winning the state's primary in 2000.

The Arizona senator will appear with Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman and U.S. Rep. Chris Shays, says a well-placed source.

I wonder how those "stick with Joe" Democrats feel right about now?

My guess is that they feel pretty darn dumb after we, in Connecticut's left Blogosphere, warned them over and over again...

Thank you Senator Dodd!

Via Missy's Brother at My Left Nutmeg, Americans thank Senator Chris Dodd for working to protect The Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the FISA battle:



The rest of Congress could learn a thing or two about leadership from Senator Dodd, and we thank him for his efforts in protecting our freedoms. Keep up the good work!

Previously brewed in New Milford:

Illegal Surveillance and the Telecoms - Just the Facts

Via PFAW:

• In December 2005, the New York Times reported that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Americans have had their phones wiretapped by the National Security Agency (NSA) without any judicial review. But the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), passed by Congress in 1978, prohibits domestic spying unless a warrant is first issued by the FISA Court. By authorizing government spies to bypass the process mandated by FISA, President Bush authorized them to break the law.
  
  
• The so-called “Protect America Act,” which passed in August, made the situation worse by sanctioning a legal infrastructure under which American citizens might unwittingly be subject to daily, repeated invasions of privacy or violations of other constitutional rights. These liberties are not abstract or optional. Freedom from government spying on our private lives is at the core of what it means to be an American – the kind of personal liberty that hundreds of thousands of Americans have died to protect.
  
  
• All parties involved must be held accountable for any illegal activity, including telecommunications companies (telecoms) that satisfied government requests for information about private communications. FISA currently provides sufficient mechanisms to allow telecoms to proceed lawfully with such requests. Every American should have the confidence that our judicial system will ensure that telecoms will not be permitted to circumvent this established process and undermine our fundamental right to privacy.
  
  
• It is unacceptable that the FISA reform being debated now seeks blanket immunity for the telecoms’ alleged complicity in the Administration’s actions. If the telecoms never have to testify, Americans may never know the true extent to which they have been targeted for surveillance. We have a right to know what’s been done and how far the overreaching went.
  
  
• In protecting the telecoms, the Administration is protecting itself. At a minimum, the Administration should not be given the power to bury the secrets of its domestic spying program by keeping the telecoms out of court. Telecom immunity not only has the potential to excuse illegal activity, it also precludes the public from getting access to information and prevents Congress from conducting effective oversight.
  
  
• Immunity compromises will not serve the interests of the American people. Substituting the government as the defendant in telecom lawsuits will only further rob Americans of their day in court by forcing them to sue a government that may use the power of the executive, state secrets, and other “privileges” to withhold information. Reimbursing the telecoms for their legal costs through indemnification rests financial burden on the taxpayers – essentially Americans paying for spying to which they object.
  
  
• Congress should err on the side of our Constitution and not bow to political pressure by signing off on telecom immunity. Americans deserve nothing less.

Now... There is one aspect of this that gets overlooked by many. BooMan makes a reasonable case that the entire lawsuit issue for telecoms is completely bogus:

There is no reason to immunize the telecom corporations because they are already immunized if they had a good faith reason to believe they were following the law. The only reason to immunize them is to prevent the truth about the extent of the lawbreaking from coming to light.

Even if this were not the case and they acted in bad faith the matter of lawsuits was already settled in the market place:

It has nothing to do with lawsuits and everything to do with covering the asses of the politicians that have acted criminally by illegally spying on Americans. Don't let them switch the topic to something as piddly as minor lawsuits that will cost telcoms a minuscule slice of their profits:

The Bush team argue impending financial doom for the telecom industry should lawsuits be permitted to continue. However, at this time, the financial impact is speculative (pdf file) with a market that “seems unconcerned” about the lawsuits filed against telecoms:

For example, when the complaint in Hepting v. AT&T Corp. was filed and when AT&T’s motion to dismiss the suit was denied, AT&T’s stock price remained essentially unaffected. The entirety of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s regulatory system requiring public filings and disclosures is premised on the idea that, when the relevant information is available publicly, the market is the most effective indicator of the value of a corporation. That the stock price of AT&T was unaffected by the suit indicates the market’s determination that the company’s financial footing remains sound, despite the potential liability.

Moreover, telecommunications carriers have survived enormous payouts in class action suits in the past. For example, in September of this year, Sprint received preliminary approval from the court for a $30 million class-action settlement. And in 1994, AT&T agreed to pay a $100 million settlement. Just as they have for the other risks incumbent in their business, telecommunications carriers have liability insurance to protect them in the event of an adverse civil judgment. And if, at some point in the future, a series of judgments comes to present a threat of widespread bankruptcy in the telecommunications industry, the government may take action at that time. But any preemptive liability shield is premature and unneeded.

Thus, should the telecom lawsuits proceed and if damages are awarded by the courts and if the damages are not covered by telecom liability insurance, and if Congress then determines that a bailout is needed for the industry, then Congress has the authority to legislate funding to the industry, thus preserving the plaintiffs’ right to a judicial remedy and the public’s right to a transparent government. As Sen. Feingold notes:

If the companies engaged in such widespread illegal conduct that the damages would be enormous, Congress can intervene to limit the damages. That’s a far more appropriate response than simply giving the companies a free pass for any illegal conduct.

Moreover, if the concern is financial liability, why is the immunity so broad that “cases will be dismissed even if they do not seek money damages but only declaratory and injunctive relief.”

The lawsuit distraction is just that... A distraction from the real issue of the bush illegally spying on Americans.

And even if the matter was not already settled in the market place... As Russ Feingold said, "Congress can intervene to limit the damages." Do not let them distract you from the fact that the bush administration was illegally spying on Americans, and not just after 911 but before that, according reports:

A former telecom executive told us that efforts to obtain call details go back to early 2001, predating the 9/11 attacks and the president's now celebrated secret executive order. The source, who asked not to be identified so as not to out his former company, reports that the NSA approached U.S. carriers and asked for their cooperation in a "data-mining" operation, which might eventually cull "millions" of individual calls and e-mails.

Like the pressure applied to ITT a half-century ago, our source says the government was insistent, arguing that his competitors had already shown their patriotism by signing on. The NSA would not comment on the issue, saying that, "We do not discuss details of actual or alleged operational issues."

Any reasonable person would realize that invocation of 911 by anyone is completely bogus when the illegal spying was, in fact, started before that date. Equally important here is the fact that it was not just Foreign calls that were being monitored, BUT all of the traffic on their networks:

Although the president told the nation that his NSA eavesdropping program was limited to known Al Qaeda agents or supporters abroad making calls into the U.S., comments of other administration officials and intelligence veterans indicate that the NSA cast its net far more widely. AT&T technician Mark Klein inadvertently discovered that the whole flow of Internet traffic in several AT&T operations centers was being regularly diverted to the NSA, a charge indirectly substantiated by John Yoo, the Justice Department lawyer who wrote the official legal memos legitimizing the president's warrantless wiretapping program. Yoo told FRONTLINE: "The government needs to have access to international communications so that it can try to find communications that are coming into the country where Al Qaeda's trying to send messages to cell members in the country. In order to do that, it does have to have access to communication networks."

And when I say all of the traffic, I mean telephone calls, both local and foreign, as well as all internet and Email traffic:

Conventional wisdom has long been that the bulk of the surveillance operations -- groundbreaking because they lacked judicial oversight -- involved primarily telephone calls. However, officials say the Bush administration's program frequently went after e-mail and other Internet traffic.

These actions by the bush administration go far beyond being simply criminal. They are an attack on the The Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

What part of these oaths do the politicians that swear to them fail to understand here?

• Presidential Oath:
  
  "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
  
  
• For Congress Members:
  
  "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter."

Many of these politicians' actions are not simply impeachable offenses for a failure to uphold their oaths of office, but exhibit a heretical acceptance of criminal actions and contempt for the founding documents that could only be described as treason.

Some Vermonters uderstand the real issues...

The important ones that our Congress should have dealt with years ago:

Brattleboro residents will vote at town meeting on whether President George Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney should be indicted and arrested for war crimes, perjury or obstruction of justice if they ever step foot in Vermont.

Surprisingly, "Vermont is the only state Bush hasn't visited since he became president in 2001." And just in case you are wondering if this might actually happen should the voters decide to pass it... The local police supported the petition drive to get this voted on.

"Everybody I talked to wanted Bush to go," [Kurt Daims] said, noting that even members of the local police department supported the drive.

snip

The article goes on to say the indictments would be the "law of the town of Brattleboro that the Brattleboro police ... arrest and detain George Bush and Richard Cheney in Brattleboro, if they are not duly impeached ..."

They might want to consider adding the names of everyone that has served in Congress under the criminal years of the bush administration and showed no effort or inclination to put impeachment on the table...

Illegal Surveillance and the Telecoms - Just The Facts

Via PFAW:

• In December 2005, the New York Times reported that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Americans have had their phones wiretapped by the National Security Agency (NSA) without any judicial review. But the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), passed by Congress in 1978, prohibits domestic spying unless a warrant is first issued by the FISA Court. By authorizing government spies to bypass the process mandated by FISA, President Bush authorized them to break the law.
  
  
• The so-called “Protect America Act,” which passed in August, made the situation worse by sanctioning a legal infrastructure under which American citizens might unwittingly be subject to daily, repeated invasions of privacy or violations of other constitutional rights. These liberties are not abstract or optional. Freedom from government spying on our private lives is at the core of what it means to be an American – the kind of personal liberty that hundreds of thousands of Americans have died to protect.
  
  
• All parties involved must be held accountable for any illegal activity, including telecommunications companies (telecoms) that satisfied government requests for information about private communications. FISA currently provides sufficient mechanisms to allow telecoms to proceed lawfully with such requests. Every American should have the confidence that our judicial system will ensure that telecoms will not be permitted to circumvent this established process and undermine our fundamental right to privacy.
  
  
• It is unacceptable that the FISA reform being debated now seeks blanket immunity for the telecoms’ alleged complicity in the Administration’s actions. If the telecoms never have to testify, Americans may never know the true extent to which they have been targeted for surveillance. We have a right to know what’s been done and how far the overreaching went.
  
  
• In protecting the telecoms, the Administration is protecting itself. At a minimum, the Administration should not be given the power to bury the secrets of its domestic spying program by keeping the telecoms out of court. Telecom immunity not only has the potential to excuse illegal activity, it also precludes the public from getting access to information and prevents Congress from conducting effective oversight.
  
  
• Immunity compromises will not serve the interests of the American people. Substituting the government as the defendant in telecom lawsuits will only further rob Americans of their day in court by forcing them to sue a government that may use the power of the executive, state secrets, and other “privileges” to withhold information. Reimbursing the telecoms for their legal costs through indemnification rests financial burden on the taxpayers – essentially Americans paying for spying to which they object.
  
  
• Congress should err on the side of our Constitution and not bow to political pressure by signing off on telecom immunity. Americans deserve nothing less.

Now... There is one aspect of this that gets overlooked by many. BooMan makes a reasonable case that the entire lawsuit issue for telecoms is completely bogus:

There is no reason to immunize the telecom corporations because they are already immunized if they had a good faith reason to believe they were following the law. The only reason to immunize them is to prevent the truth about the extent of the lawbreaking from coming to light.

Even if this were not the case and they acted in bad faith the matter of lawsuits was already settled in the market place:

It has nothing to do with lawsuits and everything to do with covering the asses of the politicians that have acted criminally by illegally spying on Americans. Don't let them switch the topic to something as piddly as minor lawsuits that will cost telcoms a minuscule slice of their profits:

The Bush team argue impending financial doom for the telecom industry should lawsuits be permitted to continue. However, at this time, the financial impact is speculative (pdf file) with a market that “seems unconcerned” about the lawsuits filed against telecoms:

For example, when the complaint in Hepting v. AT&T Corp. was filed and when AT&T’s motion to dismiss the suit was denied, AT&T’s stock price remained essentially unaffected. The entirety of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s regulatory system requiring public filings and disclosures is premised on the idea that, when the relevant information is available publicly, the market is the most effective indicator of the value of a corporation. That the stock price of AT&T was unaffected by the suit indicates the market’s determination that the company’s financial footing remains sound, despite the potential liability.

Moreover, telecommunications carriers have survived enormous payouts in class action suits in the past. For example, in September of this year, Sprint received preliminary approval from the court for a $30 million class-action settlement. And in 1994, AT&T agreed to pay a $100 million settlement. Just as they have for the other risks incumbent in their business, telecommunications carriers have liability insurance to protect them in the event of an adverse civil judgment. And if, at some point in the future, a series of judgments comes to present a threat of widespread bankruptcy in the telecommunications industry, the government may take action at that time. But any preemptive liability shield is premature and unneeded.

Thus, should the telecom lawsuits proceed and if damages are awarded by the courts and if the damages are not covered by telecom liability insurance, and if Congress then determines that a bailout is needed for the industry, then Congress has the authority to legislate funding to the industry, thus preserving the plaintiffs’ right to a judicial remedy and the public’s right to a transparent government. As Sen. Feingold notes:

If the companies engaged in such widespread illegal conduct that the damages would be enormous, Congress can intervene to limit the damages. That’s a far more appropriate response than simply giving the companies a free pass for any illegal conduct.

Moreover, if the concern is financial liability, why is the immunity so broad that “cases will be dismissed even if they do not seek money damages but only declaratory and injunctive relief.”

The lawsuit distraction is just that... A distraction from the real issue of the bush illegally spying on Americans.

And even if the matter was not already settled in the market place... As Russ Feingold said, "Congress can intervene to limit the damages." Do not let them distract you from the fact that the bush administration was illegally spying on Americans, not just after 911, but before that according reports:

A former telecom executive told us that efforts to obtain call details go back to early 2001, predating the 9/11 attacks and the president's now celebrated secret executive order. The source, who asked not to be identified so as not to out his former company, reports that the NSA approached U.S. carriers and asked for their cooperation in a "data-mining" operation, which might eventually cull "millions" of individual calls and e-mails.

Like the pressure applied to ITT a half-century ago, our source says the government was insistent, arguing that his competitors had already shown their patriotism by signing on. The NSA would not comment on the issue, saying that, "We do not discuss details of actual or alleged operational issues."

Any reasonable person would realize that invocation of 911 by anyone is completely bogus when the illegal spying was, in fact, started before that date. Equally important here is the fact that it was not just Foreign calls that were being monitored, BUT all of the traffic on their networks:

Although the president told the nation that his NSA eavesdropping program was limited to known Al Qaeda agents or supporters abroad making calls into the U.S., comments of other administration officials and intelligence veterans indicate that the NSA cast its net far more widely. AT&T technician Mark Klein inadvertently discovered that the whole flow of Internet traffic in several AT&T operations centers was being regularly diverted to the NSA, a charge indirectly substantiated by John Yoo, the Justice Department lawyer who wrote the official legal memos legitimizing the president's warrantless wiretapping program. Yoo told FRONTLINE: "The government needs to have access to international communications so that it can try to find communications that are coming into the country where Al Qaeda's trying to send messages to cell members in the country. In order to do that, it does have to have access to communication networks."

And when I say all of the traffic, I mean telephone calls, both local and foreign, as well as all internet and Email traffic:

Conventional wisdom has long been that the bulk of the surveillance operations -- groundbreaking because they lacked judicial oversight -- involved primarily telephone calls. However, officials say the Bush administration's program frequently went after e-mail and other Internet traffic.

These actions by the bush administration go far beyond being simply criminal. They are an attack on the The Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

What part of these oaths do the politicians that swear to them fail to understand here?

• Presidential Oath:
  
  "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
  
  
• For Congress Members:
  
  "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter."

Many of these politicians' actions are not simply impeachable offenses for a failure to uphold their oaths of office, but exhibit a heretical acceptance of criminal actions and contempt for the founding documents that could only be described as treason.

If you got this far down reading... Maybe you'll want to Buzz this! :)

$720 million per day for Iraq occupation

$720,000,000.00

It only costs $720 million per day to pay for the occupation of Iraq. Can you think of better ways to spend this money?



"Sign the petition to defund the war, and refund human needs today."

Get Out Your Webcams For FISA

OpenLeft, and particularly Tim Tagaris posting over there, have been providing some excellent coverage on Senator Chris Dodd's patriotic efforts to stand up to any efforts of giving immunity to the criminals that have illegally spied on Americans.

Well played, ACLU. Majority Leader Reid might not have felt a sufficient amount of heat as Americans with computers (the netroots) attempt to intervene on FISA, but I can promise you that articles like this in hometown papers get staffs and Senators to pay attention.

Reid in hot seat over backing of spying bill

Sen. Harry Reid angered liberals in his party last month as he sought to shield telecom companies from liability for their role in the Bush administration's domestic spying program.

As the Senate debates the surveillance issue this week, the criticism of Reid shows that his role is putting him at odds with his party's base.

Kudos to the ACLU for their efforts to attack this odious legislation on another PR front! As another point of attack, "Stop the Spying!" wants you to get out your webcam and participate in a PFAW video effort to get your message out:

Shoot a Video Today!

• Fire up your video cameras and webcams.
• In 60 seconds or less, give your city and state and tell your members of Congress why you want them to oppose telecom immunity.
• Read the Terms of Video Submission, and send your video clips to fisa@pfaw.org, or use the file-sending site YouSendIt to upload your video to the web -- no registration required. YouSendIt will then send your video to us.
• PFAW and partner organizations will send your videos to key decision-makers in Congress, especially those who may be able to use activist video testimonials in hearings or other procedures.

You make the video, and PFAW will do whatever they can to distribute to the powers that be and to the wankers that are fighting against your freedom!

Stop The Spying has some other suggestions on actions you can take to make your voice heard in the FISA debate.


Get this banner for your Blog or website!

BooMan at The Booman Tribune provides a roundup of other sites that are covering this topic:

Here are some links on FISA.

Emptywheel
Kagro X
mcjoan
Glenn Greenwald
digby
Jane Hamsher

These are the patriots that should be representing you in Congress instead of the bought and paid for corporate shills that we have there now.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is addressing the FISA issue as well and has some relevant info posted on their Deeplinks Blog:

With Congress back in session this week and the Presidential season in full swing, the fight to prevent the Bush administration from granting immuniy to the telecoms for illegal spying is heating up once again. Activists and bloggers alike are keeping the heat on.

First, Credo Mobile (formerly Working Assets) urged its members to write to Senators Clinton, Obama and McCain, the three presidential candidates who are still in the Senate and who have said they'd oppose immunity.

The results were tremendous: 67,000 emails were sent to the Senators.

Keep up the pressure on all fronts! This is not a battle that we can afford to lose.

[update] The Liberal Journal provides insight into one VP's seriously twisted view on the topic:

Dick Cheney doesn't rear his ugly head often, but when he does it's always on a topic of critical importance to the Bush agenda. Today, Dick came out "firing" on FISA:

Vice President Dick Cheney prodded Congress on Wednesday to extend and broaden an expiring surveillance law, saying "fighting the war on terror is a long-term enterprise" that should not come with an expiration date.

"This cause is bigger than the quarrels of party and the agendas of politicians," Cheney said. "And if we in Washington, all of us, can only see our way clear to work together, then the outcome should not be in doubt."

Administration allies in Congress not only want the expiring law made permanent but amended to give telephone companies and other communications providers immunity from being sued for helping the government eavesdropping and other intelligence-gathering efforts.

Cheney said such providers "face dozens of lawsuits."

"The intelligence community doesn't have the facilities to carry out the kind of international surveillance needed to defend this country since 9-11. In some situations, there is no alternative to seeking assistance from the private sector. This is entirely appropriate," Cheney said.

Cheney's comments can be summed up as: Don't sue companies that help us expand Big Brother, which will be around forever because the War on Terra is never ending.

Of note concerning this issue: It has nothing to do with lawsuits and everything to do with covering the asses of the politicians that have acted criminally by illegally spying on Americans. Don't let them switch the topic to something as piddly as minor lawsuits that will cost telcoms a minuscule slice of their profits:

The Bush team argue impending financial doom for the telecom industry should lawsuits be permitted to continue. However, at this time, the financial impact is speculative (pdf file) with a market that “seems unconcerned” about the lawsuits filed against telecoms:

For example, when the complaint in Hepting v. AT&T Corp. was filed and when AT&T’s motion to dismiss the suit was denied, AT&T’s stock price remained essentially unaffected. The entirety of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s regulatory system requiring public filings and disclosures is premised on the idea that, when the relevant information is available publicly, the market is the most effective indicator of the value of a corporation. That the stock price of AT&T was unaffected by the suit indicates the market’s determination that the company’s financial footing remains sound, despite the potential liability.

Moreover, telecommunications carriers have survived enormous payouts in class action suits in the past. For example, in September of this year, Sprint received preliminary approval from the court for a $30 million class-action settlement. And in 1994, AT&T agreed to pay a $100 million settlement. Just as they have for the other risks incumbent in their business, telecommunications carriers have liability insurance to protect them in the event of an adverse civil judgment. And if, at some point in the future, a series of judgments comes to present a threat of widespread bankruptcy in the telecommunications industry, the government may take action at that time. But any preemptive liability shield is premature and unneeded.

Thus, should the telecom lawsuits proceed and if damages are awarded by the courts and if the damages are not covered by telecom liability insurance, and if Congress then determines that a bailout is needed for the industry, then Congress has the authority to legislate funding to the industry, thus preserving the plaintiffs’ right to a judicial remedy and the public’s right to a transparent government. As Sen. Feingold notes:

If the companies engaged in such widespread illegal conduct that the damages would be enormous, Congress can intervene to limit the damages. That’s a far more appropriate response than simply giving the companies a free pass for any illegal conduct.

Moreover, if the concern is financial liability, why is the immunity so broad that “cases will be dismissed even if they do not seek money damages but only declaratory and injunctive relief.”

The lawsuit distraction is just that... A distraction from the real issue of the bush illegally spying on Americans. And remember that it is not just the infered "Liberal base of the Democratic party" that is against immunity for these criminals... It is the majority of Americans:

Today the ACLU's Caroline Fredrickson was quoted in The New York Times about Democrats' apparent willingness to capitulate to the administration with the new FISA bill:

"If Senator Reid wanted to win, he would have put the judiciary vote on the floor first,” Caroline Frederickson, director of the Washington legislative office of the American Civil Liberties Union, said. “It seems as if he wants to lose.”

A recent poll found that 57 percent of Americans oppose amnesty for telecoms. If you agree, there's still time to sign our FISA petition, which we'll deliver to Senator Harry Reid tomorrow.

Those of us in the left are not alone on this issue...

“I am a Republican, and at times I’m embarrassed"

No! Not me, silly. Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is embarrassed:

“I am a Republican, and at times I’m embarrassed by the lack of cooperation that this president and his appointees have had with the legislative branch,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) in a hearing yesterday. “There is a seething resentment by members of Congress who are Republicans by the fact that this administration has not even cooperated with us.”

Does any one really feel sorry for you and the other Republicans because YOU put that idiot in the White House? Nope! You reap what you have sewn. And you, Dana Rohrabacher, should take personal responsibility for what you and your fellow Republicans have done to this nation. Don't try and play the "bush victimized us!" card... We aren't buying it.

Micheal Weiner Savages the Airwaves

With bigoted views like this, is there any doubt why advertisers are pulling out from buying spots on his radio show?

On the air, he says that Latinos "breed like rabbits", and that America's public schools are "teaching kids in the third grade how to put a condom on a cucumber." He explains that civil rights are a "racket" that is "used to steal only from the white male -- no one else pays the price." He is worried about "degenerates on the left who want to sell Americans on the idea that homosexuality, bisexuality, transsexuality, even sex with animals is normal." He demonizes pot smokers, refers to third-world nations as "turd world nations", and strongly opposes abortion (although his first wife had two while they were married). After the Dixie Chicks spoke ill of President George W. Bush, Savage inexplicably suggested they should be jailed as traitors. "We've all been warned about the dangers of a theocracy", says Savage, "where religious zealots rule. Today in America, we have a she-ocracy where a minority of feminist zealots rule the culture."

Personally, I think his positions on sexuality must be the result of some self-loathing based the reality of some of his, both alleged and documented, past actions and statements:

One of his books was a work of fiction called Vital Signs, in which the protagonist wrestles with his attraction to masculine beauty. "I choose to override my desires for men when they swell in me", Weiner wrote, "waiting out the passions like a storm, below decks." At one time, Weiner self-published his own zines featuring inflammatory pieces about gay sex at San Francisco bathhouses. He was apparently opposed to such things. But he was a friend of beat poet Allen Ginsberg, the very, very out gay author of Howl. In a 1970 letter to Ginsberg, someone signed Michael Weiner described a semi-erotic encounter he had had with another man in Fiji. Weiner says he did not write the letter, though the return address was in Honolulu, where Weiner resided at the time. Savage now describes his one-time friend Ginsberg as "latrine slime," and says that upon hearing of his death, "I clasped my hands together and prayed to God. I said, 'Thank you, God, for answering my prayers. One of the blights of the human race is gone.'"

Perhaps, his statements after Ginsberg's death might be the result of unrequited love? Though, I am not certain how this would explain his attacks on women, like the Dixie Chicks, that stake out strong political positions?

Beyond his flip-flopping sexuality issues are his well documented deficiencies concerning issues ofideology, race - which extends well beyond just the above mentioned Latinos - and religion:

JUST SOME OF SAVAGE'S HATE:

"90 percent of the people on the Nobel Committee are into child pornography and molestation, according to the latest scientific studies" — Listen

Savage advocating "kill[ing] 100 million" Muslims — Listen

Savage on immigrant students' hunger strike: "[L]et them fast until they starve to death. ... Go make a bomb where you came from" — Listen

Citing more sex-change operations, increased lesbian fertility clinics, Savage said of 9-11: "That was God speaking" — Listen

On MLK Day, Savage called civil rights a "racket" designed to steal "white males' birthright" — Listen

To "save the United States," lawmakers should institute "outright ban on Muslim immigration" and on "the construction of mosques" — Listen

U.S. Senate "more vicious and more histrionic than ever, specifically because women have been injected into" it — Listen

"Jimmy Carter is like Hitler" — Listen

"Burn the Mexican Flag!" — Listen

Savage on the tsunami: "I wouldn't call it a tragedy. ... We shouldn't be spending a nickel on this" — Listen

Brave New Films has been conducting a a campaign to get advertisers to drop support of Micheal "Savage" Weiner's outrageous statements on his radio show "Savage nation." So far, four advertisers have buckled under the people's pressure:

Contact his advertisers:

• Geico Insurance (800) 861-8380
• Intuit (TurboTax) - THANK YOU INTUIT!
• Wyeth Consumer Healthcare (Advil, Robitussin, Centrum) (800) 322-3129
• Chattem (Gold Bond, Icy-Hot, Garlique) - THANK YOU CHATTEM!
• ITT Technical Institute - THANK YOU ITT TECH!
• Union Bank of California - THANK YOU UNION BANK!
• Office Depot (800) 463-3768
• Stamps.com
• USO (Support the Troops) (703) 908-6400 *
• USDA (MyPyramid.gov) (888) 779-7264 *

* USO is a non-profit organization that does not pay for its PSA's to air. Although it claims to have no control over when its advertisements air, it has refused to even request that its ads not run during the Michael Savage show.

He also seems to have a reckless tendency of advocating violence against those that he targets for his hate speech, as evidenced in his quotes above and something that his advertisers might want to be made aware of as well.

I suggest that you contact all of these companies and either 1) ask them to stop supporting the hate speech spewed by this bigot by pulling their adds OR 2) thank them for pulling their advertisements from his show already.

And please remember to be polite since you will catch a lot more flies with honey.

But if they refuse to comply or are particularly obstinate in their statements I won't blame you for verbally unloading on them a little. lol

[update] Another advertiser, GEICO, has has agreed to pull their adds.

Contact his advertisers:

• Wyeth Consumer Healthcare (Chapstick, Advil, Robitussin, Centrum) (800) 322-3129
• Stamps.com
• USO (Support the troops) (703) 908-6400 *
• USDA (MyPyramid.gov) (888) 779-7264 *
• Geico Insurance - THANK YOU GEICO!
• Intuit (TurboTax) - THANK YOU INTUIT!
• Chattem (Gold Bond, Icy-Hot, Garlique) - THANK YOU CHATTEM!
• ITT Technical Institute - THANK YOU ITT TECH!
• Union Bank of California - THANK YOU UNION BANK!

* USO is a non-profit organization that does not pay for its PSA's to air. Although it claims to have no control over when its advertisements air, it has refused to even request that its ads not run during the Michael Savage show.

* We are getting reports that some corporations are denying their ads are running. This is not true. Here is just one recent commercial segment with Wyeth (Chapstick) and Stamps.com advertising.