Deans are first.

Whooo hoooo jc!  way to go!  were any of those three ladies I mentioned the one that ordered?  Dina, Sonia, or Donna?

Mz*Little

It was a Jane.  ;-) 

Nope, don't know a Jane.  I did give one out to a kid that was handicapped as he loved the Gore sticker.  Also, some lady and her kid were looking at my bumper stickers when I was at costco and I did point out your website sticker.  Thank you so much for that.  I do what I can to promote you. 

What happened to everyone, i know you told every one there was a new thread.  thats why I knew to come here.

Mz*Little,

Everyone is probably too cold to blog.  :-)

Well, jc, my fingers ARE cold, even though I'm right next to the stove.

I'm looking foeard to next week's warming trend.

Meanwhile, waiting upon 16 to 26 inches of snow. 

And I'm also looking foreward....LOL!

I mentioned  a week or so ago that Israel would be the grand loser if Iran is attacked by the US or by Israel.  This article says the same.  What a shame that the forest can't be seen for the trees.

Ray McGovern | Bush and Cheney Playing Role of Kevorkian for Israel
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021307M.shtml
Ray McGovern writes: "President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are unwittingly playing Dr. Jack Kevorkian in helping the state of Israel commit suicide. For this is the inevitable consequence of the planned air and missile attack on Iran. The pockmarked, littered landscape in Iraq, Lebanon and Afghanistan, and the endless applicant queues at al-Qaeda and other terrorist recruiting stations, testify eloquently to the unintended consequences of myopic policymakers in Washington and Tel Aviv."
 

    Bush was so obviously unprepared to discuss substance with his Saudi guests that some of the president's aides checked into what had happened. The briefing packet for the president had been diverted to Cheney's office. Bush never got it, so he was totally unaware of what the Saudis hoped to accomplish in making the hajj to Crawford. (There is little doubt that this has been a common experience over the past six years and that there are, in effect, two " deciders" in the White House, one of them controlling the paper flow.)"

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/021307M.shtml 

more from above article: 

"

    George W. Bush may have the best of intentions in his zeal to defend Israel, but he and Cheney have the most myopic of policies. Israeli leaders risk much if they take reassurance from the president's rhetoric, particularly vis-à-vis Iran. I am constantly amazed to find, as I speak around the country, that the vast majority of educated Americans believe we have a defense treaty with Israel. We don't, but one can readily see how it is they are misled. Listen to the president exactly two years ago:

    "Clearly, if I was the leader of Israel and I'd listened to some of the statements by the Iranian ayatollahs that regarded the security of my country, I'd be concerned about Iran having a nuclear weapon as well. And, in that Israel is our ally (sic) - and in that we've made a very strong commitment to support Israel - we will support Israel if her security is threatened."

    We do no favors for Israeli leaders in giving them the impression they have carte blanche in their neighborhood - and especially vis-à-vis Iran, and that we will bail them out, no matter what. Have they learned nothing from the recent past? Far from enhancing Israel's security, the US invasion of Iraq and Washington's encouragement of Israel's feckless attack on Lebanon last summer resulted in more breeding ground for terrorist activity against Israel. This will seem child's play compared to what would be in store, should the US and/or Israel bomb Iran.

    Bottom line: there is a growing threat to Israel from suicide bombers. The most dangerous two work in the White House."

    --------

Almost time for "Boston Legal."

bbl 

Great firsties, jc, if you're still around!  Sorry to have missed sea: perhaps she'll be back during a commercial break.  And Barb: thanks, as always for your hard work and dedication!

****************

Very interesting program on Al Jazeera this am about how the Chinese have several major building contracts in Algeria (part of their African push), how they are actually flying everything, including the labor and food, in from Beijing and other areas of China.  Nonetheless, there is at the same time a lot of social integration going on there.

And this is just one of the countries where they are making significant inroads.  Of course, in Algeria, they already had a head start because Algeria tried to walk a fine line between the US and the USSR in the *old days* and at that time China was not yet a significant player so the Algerians did not feel that they would be compromising their integrity by dealing with the Chinese.  Interesting how the world has changed since those days.

But the biggest disaster overall for the US was the stolen election of 2000.  Since then, it's been a rapidly descending spiral ... and with putzie-poo and prick still in office instead of the chains they should be in ... there is no end in sight.

How about a really nice video of Governor Dean reaching out to the Muslim community.  This is from December, but so nice to see.   And an added picture from another time.  Still trying to get my inspiration going, but not working yet.

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/1070

Dean's message to MPAC and the Muslim community.

And a picture from a while ago.

Well, let us all hope that the pendulum does swing back ... and a President Gore may be just the person to help get it started ...

putzie-poo & prick .... bwaahaaahaa!

=================

The American swagger has become bombast, the cocky GI a bully. But with luck the pendulum may be ready to swing back

Jan Morris
Wednesday February 14, 2007
The Guardian

'Whisper of how I'm yearning", sang George M Cohan in one of the great American songs of nostalgia, "to mingle with the old time throng". Well, I'm yearning too, not for the gang at 42nd Street exactly, but for the America that Cohan was indirectly hymning - for the Idea of America, with a capital I, which once made the United States not just the most potent of all the nations but genuinely the most liked.

Perhaps, with a future new president already champing at the bit, we are about to witness its rebirth. As a foreigner I am immune to the rivalries or seductions of American party politics, but I have loved the old place for 60 years, and I simply pray for an American leader to give us back its baraka, as the Arabs say - nothing to do with religion or economics or power or even ideology, but the gift of being at once blessed and blessing.

Of course nobody can claim that the old dreams of America were ever perfectly fulfilled. They often let us down. They were betrayed by the national reputations for crime, corruption, racism and rampant materialism. Not all the presidents, God knows, were icons of virtue or even of glamour, and the benevolent Uncle Sam of the old cartoonists was more often interpreted, around the world, as a fat moron in horn-rimmed spectacles, chewing a cigar. Nobody's perfect, still less any republic.

But I think it is true that only in our time has the American Idea lost its baraka. A generation or two ago, most of us, wherever we lived, loved the generous self-satisfaction of it, if not in the general, at least in the particular. The GI was not then a sort of goggled monster in padded armour, but a cheerful fellow chatting up the girls and distributing candy not as a matter of policy, but out of plain goodwill - everyone's friendly guy next door. To millions of radio listeners around the world, the Voice of America was a voice of decency, and one could watch the lachrymose patriotic rituals of America - the hand on heart, the misty-eyed salute to the flag - with more affection than irony.

For myself, I responded to them all too sentimentally. Like Walt Whitman before me, I heard America sing! 

[...]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2012492,00.html

Of course, a President Dean would also do ... in my book ... but then we need Dean to help keep the 50-state strategy going!

Thanks for the great pic, floridagal!

Duelling lawmakers who are also veterans ...

================

Iraq Debate Turns Personal for Veterans

Wednesday February 14, 2007 6:01 AM

By LAURIE KELLMAN

Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The House's debate over Iraq turned deeply personal Thursday as opposing groups of warriors-turned-lawmakers recounted their own riveting stories from World War II through Iraq.

Eager to trade on the veterans' credibility, Republican and Democratic leaders yielded microphones on and off the House floor to veterans whose private pain gave the discussion the weight of experience.

The war storytelling was expected to continue through the week, with floor speeches Thursday from such Republican veterans as Armed Services Chairman Duncan Hunter of California, a decorated Vietnam veteran who is running for president.

On day one of the long-awaited debate, Vietnam veteran Sam Johnson, R-Texas, made his party's case that the Democrat-sponsored resolution at issue, though lacking the force of law, was the first step toward the new majority's goal of ending the war by cutting off funding.

Johnson had watched Congress cut off a war in progress before - from prison in Hanoi, where, as a young Air Force pilot, he was held and tortured for seven years. Thursday, Johnson added, was the 34th anniversary of his first day of freedom.

``When they pulled the funds for Vietnam, we were still POWs,'' Johnson said at a press conference, bringing tears to the eyes of Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio. ``We thought we were going to be there forever.''

Democrats say their resolution, which pairs statements of support for the troops with opposition to Bush's so-called ``surge'' of 21,500 soldiers, is the House's effort to reflect voter sentiment that gave congressional control to Democrats in the November elections.

Rep. Patrick J. Murphy, D-Pa., noted that he came to his position on the war after ``walking in my own combat boots'' as part of the 82nd Airborne Division during the 2003 invasion. Nineteen of his fellow paratroopers were killed, he said.

Murphy described his argument ``not as a Democrat or Republican, but as an Iraq war veteran'' and one of five freshman veterans voted into the House in the November elections. Opposing the president's escalation, he said, is not an attack on the soldiers on the ground.

[...]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,,-6414337,00.html

i went to the vilsack event tonight. downtown oakland, ca.there were about 50 people there. mostly local politicos and his supporters. plus some young dems. everyone, well, but me, was in a suit/tie. you know, that crowd. name tags and all.

i actually had a meeting for our new PAC at 7 pm and this event was scheduled for 6 to 7. the 2 events were only about a 1/2 mile apart, so i figured i'd be on time for both.

about 6:20 a local guy came out with vilsack and gave the intro, all of which has escaped my mind, but vilsack remarked that he asked the guy for a copy because it was said so well. ???

anyway, the speech was nice and short and went something like this:

1. there's hope (i wonder if that's the catch word for the year?) yet in america. he talked about a statue of a man holding a baby out in front and away from him to illustrate the generational look to the future.

2. he slammed bush and said troops home NOW, not tomorrow, but NOW, and gave all the reasons why.

3. (from the bio-diesel viewpoint) he talked about how a national effort larger than the manhatten project or the apollo project to create alternative fuels/power systems would renew everything from foreign policy to the economy, etc.

4. he then talked about having to make phone calls to iowa national guard member's families when they've died in iraq. he talked about one guy who did the right thing sacrificing his life to save others. when he called the guy's wife she admitted that the people he saved needed him more in those few seconds that she would for the rest of her life. this flowed into american exceptualism and his belief that we all have this type of courage in ourselves. he said that's why he's stepped up to the plate and that's why we all need to do the same. he actually asked all of us to make sacrifices in order to create a better society.

so, my take: all the while i've got DLC in the back of my mind. i have to admit, though, that i couldn't find any great fault with anything he said. he has this sort of "father knows best" thing going on. soft spoken. you couldn't imagine him yelling. very conversational speaking manner. seemed to have all his facts straight and no stumbling. all in all a pretty good presentation, but i've still got DLC in the back of my mind.

i have to leave to make the other thing, so i ducked out rather than staying for the q & a and rubbing elbows thing. but you guys know i'm not into the groupie stuff anyway.

Thanks so much, Condi, for your helpful efforts in making this continued chaos possible ... last summer's Israeli attacks on Lebanon, aided and abetted by you, putzie-poo and prick, as well as the poodle ... have helped to completely undo a very fragile nation that was desperately clawing its way back to stability after a long and bloody civil war.

You are ... absolutely ... the worst SoS ever, just as you have been a failure at everything else you've done since joining putzie-poo!  You rose to the level of your incompetence at Stanford and that is where you should have stayed.

==================

Guardian

The two bombs, detonated within 10 minutes of each other, occurred on the eve of a pro-government rally planned for today to mark the assassination two years ago of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.

The blast occurred less than a mile from the Christian village of Bikfaya, the hometown of the former president Amin Gemayel, whose son Pierre Gemayel, a one-time cabinet minister, was assassinated by gunmen in November.

No individual or group claimed responsibility for the attack yesterday.

Under the steady rain, forensic workers picked through the wreckage of the first bus, its roof peeled back off its sagging frame, and its panels and pillars twisted outwards. Troops and police sealed off the area, about 15 miles north of Beirut.

"We heard a loud explosion and then there was total silence, then we heard the screaming," said Joseph Khouri, 23, who runs a sandwich shop less than 20 metres from the scene of the first explosion. "I went out to look and saw smoke and people running everywhere, and the road was blocked with heavy traffic." He described seeing body parts strewn across the scorched road and people staggering from the bus.

[...]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329715068-111416,00.html

Thanks for the report on Vilsack, mprov.  I've got to admit that he has so far impressed me too.  I do not get the idea of the usual doublespeak from him and, in that way at least, he's like Howard.

judy, ya, i thought he was genuine. couldn't imagine the guy lying. no "packaging" that i could detect. but the dlc thing still bothers me. i'd like to pick his brain to get at the base points of his belief system.

A kindred Sagittarian, Piaf is once again being resurrected, the "kid" with the unparalleled gravelly voice.

But Sarkozy's likening his party's ethos to hers is a REAL stretch.  LOL

================

· Movie of tragic star's life expected to break records
· Film sees lucrative revival of national affection

She was the waif-like street urchin who rose to become France's cabaret queen, belting out painful love songs as she battled her own addictions, mourned lost lovers and succumbed to an early death.

But Edith Piaf, France's biggest musical export and the face of chanson française, has sparked a lucrative bout of nostalgia as the nation hopes a new biopic will provide an international box office hit to rival the film Amélie.

The glittering epic, La Môme (after Piaf's nickname The Kid) opens in French cinemas today after launching the Berlin film festival with a standing ovation last week. It has already been sold in 35 countries, including the UK and US, where it will be named after the Piaf hit, La Vie en Rose, when it comes out in June.

But it is in France where Piaf-mania is reaching extreme proportions. EMI is forecasting record-breaking sales of soundtracks, Piaf's acquaintances have released books, a musical hits Paris this week and television specials have attracted millions of viewers. Politicians on the presidential campaign have seized on the cult of Piaf - the destitute daughter of a street acrobat who grew up in a brothel, and whose tragic lyrics and piercing voice have made France nostalgic for the postwar years.

Unlike the other film-inspired marketing craze that recently swept France, Marie Antoinette-mania, the Piaf revival has sparked no heated rows about whether she deserves to be revered. "There is only affection and tenderness for her," wrote one commentator. "France loves desperate love songs," Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the former prime minister and ally of the presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, said. Piaf symbolised France's desire to return to the "real values of the people" and away from "elitism". He cited his own ruling party as an example of the Piaf ethos.

[...]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,329715100-110633,00.html

 Incase you can't see the whole link addy, here it is twice...the second time in two parts, just take out the line break:

 http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070213/NEWS/70213027 

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/2

 0070213/NEWS/70213027

that's good. i was really hoping that welch wasn't going to turn out to be another dud after all the trumpeting for him here. i wonder how mc nerney's speech tonight went down?

Definitely don't like that aspect myself, mprov, but he is not spouting their drivel these days ... and even Al Gore was DLC initially.

Anyway, he is one of the few who is so far on message, so far as I am concerned.

Hill is not and has literally tied herself up in knots to the point that, on the issue of Iraq ... and the ME in general, I really am unhappy with her, much as I would really like to vote for a woman candidate on principle.  I simply cannot support her right now.   Obama's words sound good but it's his actions (and/or failures to act) that bother me.  Edwards ... the jury is still out in many ways ... he seems to have learned a lot and at least is throwing his whole heart and soul into things ... on his own time, not US taxpayers' ... which bothers me generally about all of those who should be working hard in DC right now.  But ...

Kucinich is a total write-off for me ... while his words are probably closest to my own philosophy, he's too much of an opportunist IMHO ... and I, for one, will not forgive his throwing his Iowa votes to Edwards in 2004 when Edwards was NOT an anti-war candidate, just to push Howard into making a weaker showing in Iowa.

Clark is also one who says some good things ... also on his own time.  I really like that he actually went to CT in support of Lamont.  But I really see him better suited to Sec'y of Defense.

Anyway, that's my summary right now.

Why Al Gore Won�t Let the Rumors Die
By Steve Kornacki

It’s too much to say that Al Gore has decided to run for President in 2008.

But it does seem that he wants to preserve the option.

Certainly, the recent buzz about a possible Gore campaign in 2008 doesn’t seem to be spontaneously generated. According to one influential Democratic insider, close associates of the former Vice President have communicated to him and other prominent fund-raisers who are uncommitted to the other ’08 candidates that Mr. Gore will consider entering the race—if an opening presents itself—in September.

http://www.observer.com/20070219/2007021...

Thanks for the Welch links, listener.  Boy, you Vermonters are lucky to have so many good people!

***********

And it's Pumpkin Time!  Have good ones!

i pretty much agree with what you said, judy. i think i've got 3 levels: 1. would i support at all; 2. would i support and vote for; and 3. would i work to make it happen.

hillary's out in my book.

kucinich's out in my book.

biden, just no way.

gravel rates a 2, but hasn't a chance in hell.

dodd, well he seems like a nice guy, but who are we kidding?

richardson, forget about it.

obama, maybe a 2?

clark, maybe a 2, but as with you, i'd rather see him as state or defense.

edwards, if he proves himself, and re-structures his health care plan, could be a 2.5.

i'm still hoping for gore, but who knows?

anyone else, anyone else???

oh, i forgot vilsack: possible 2, but he's going to have to prove it over the long haul.

Michigan lawmakers committing early
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
By Sarah Kellogg
Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Twenty-one months out from the 2008 general election, some of Michigan's top elected officials have already made much-coveted presidential endorsements.

With the primary season shrinking to just the first six weeks of 2008, endorsements are coming earlier than ever. Party nominees may be decided as soon as Feb. 5, 2008, when Michigan could be among a slew of states voting in a new "Super Tuesday" contest.

"This process is telescoped -- we're going to know in less than a year who our nominee will be," said U.S. Rep. Fred Upton, R-St. Joseph, who has endorsed Arizona's U.S. Sen. John McCain.

http://www.mlive.com/news/statewide/inde...

Australia's Labor Wants Withdrawal of Troops in Iraq (Update1)

By Gemma Daley

Feb. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Australia's opposition Labor leader Kevin Rudd, leading opinion polls ahead of an election this year, supports a staged withdrawal of Australian troops from Iraq.

Rudd said he would consult with U.S. leadership about the staged withdrawal of troops if he won power. Prime Minister John Howard has said Australian troops would stay in Iraq ``until the job is done''.

``A staged withdrawal is the way to incrementally apply pressure on the Iraqis to begin to fashion a political settlement,'' Rudd told Australian Broadcasting Corp. radio today in Canberra. ``Howard's alternative strategy is business as usual: that's continuing four years of failure.''

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=2...

I sure do hope Al Gore decides to run...at least by September. ♥

 It has just begun to snow here in NW Vermont.

 Traveling Mercies to all travelers this night.  XOXOXXX

good morning!   yay!  it's a snow day! 

thanks for the link on Welch, listener.  I'm very impressed with him - I've heard him several times in committee hearings and he's good - very serious and passionate in his questions and comments.  and yes, WOOT on the VT resolution - Vermont is often first, hmmm?  we may be small, but we are always proud, pragmatic and fearless!  how lucky are we... this is a great place to be! 

mprov

you nailed Vilsack , that's the guy I know well

can a inherently modest man become President? don't know

Our Legislature also passed an anti-war resolution.(following Vilsack's lead)

Good morning, everybody

Got a bunch of email to read.  Congressdaily is now coming to me twice a day.

The wrap still doesn't work in rich Opera.

Our Carol had her five minutes last night, but I was already asleep.  Boehner is on re-run now. 

Gonna try something different.  What if I leave enough room for the ID block and then start typing?  Will that affect the wrap?   I'll still have to do a hard return to see if that messes it up.

Now they've got Ike Skelton up.  He's chair of the Armed Services Committee.  Maybe I'll get to see Carol this morning, after all, if they've got the committee members scheduled next.  

Nope, doesn't look like the wrap works. 

Overnight the brain came up with the sobriquet "Mr. Half and Half"--half for and half against most everything.  "Mr. Half-a-Loaf" might work too.

Ok, now off to read

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/03/spyagency200703 

Cindy Sheehan's lonely vigil in a ditch led directly to this House debate.

One person can have an impact.

America has made up her mind and the politicians are playing catch up.

You couldn't find majority support for the war in any one of those 435 sub-divisions of government. I expect quite a few Republicans to cross the aisle.

not one of them will credit Cindy though

Jim Dean is going to have travel troubles in this storm. He should break out the orange hat in the blowing snow. lol

hang in there Chicago I know you are good for a few Dean smiles

DFA Chair Jim Dean in Chicago this Thursday!  by Toscha Mintert

>

 free DFA  t-shirt, heer!  get ya free DFA t-shirt!  free t-shirt, heeer!

BTW (and am I the first to note) That's  Toscha (I bet)

The focus in the Vanity Fair article is on SAIC in general, but they don't make my favorite point that the original purpose of privatization was exactly to evade the accountability and responsibility that are integral to government operations, especially since the implementation of tort and liability legislation. It doesn't make a big issue of the probability that these enterprises have actually made a virtue of failing, using the "too big to fail" principle to their advantage.

But, what I want to highlight for this blog is the following because it supports my long interest in nuclear matters as regards the disposition of radioactive wastes. Although it's not addressed here, I wouldn't be surprised to discover that the various "tests" of the effect of depleted uranium on human who come in contact with it, were performed under the guidance of SAIC.

Anyway----

"Periodically over the years, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Department of Energy, prodded by executives in the nuclear industry, have sought to ease the rules against re-using "lightly" contaminated radioactive waste. The impetus has been the inexorably growing stockpile of nuclear debris—much of it lethal—that has been accumulating at weapons sites and power plants in America for decades. One way to draw down the stockpile would be to recycle large volumes of discarded nickel, aluminum, copper, steel, and other irradiated metals into usable products. If slightly radioactive metal were combined with other metals, the resulting material could be made into all kinds of consumer items—knives and forks, baby strollers, chairs, rings, eyeglass frames, bicycles, reclining rockers, earrings, frying pans. It also could be used in construction.

Lest any of this sound improbable, in the 1980s radioactive table legs began turning up in the United States everywhere from restaurants to nursing homes. A radioactive gold ring cost a Pennsylvania man his arm. The public outcry was so great that in 1992 Congress set out to ban this form of recycling. The N.R.C., D.O.E., and nuclear industry saw the ban coming and were not happy about it, but they also saw a way out: maybe it would be possible to develop broad guidelines that would allow the contaminated waste to be recycled based on what were deemed "safe" exposure levels. Never mind that there is no such thing as a safe dose of radiation. Two months before the ban was signed into law, the N.R.C. gave the multi-million-dollar job of formulating the guidelines to an outside contractor. The contractor was SAIC.

As the years slipped by, across town, another federal agency, the Department of Energy, was handing out a $238 million contract to B.N.F.L. Inc., at that time the U.S. subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels, "to clean up and reindustrialize three massive uranium enrichment facilities" at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Tennessee. The agreement called for B.N.F.L. to recycle "hundreds of thousands of tons of metals." British Nuclear Fuels had a questionable track record in the nuclear industry. For decades it had dumped plutonium and other radioactive waste into the Irish Sea and the North Atlantic. Its workers had falsified critical quality-control data. When the D.O.E. announced the contract, SAIC was identified as a major subcontractor in the recycling of radioactive scrap metal.

Because the N.R.C. and the D.O.E. for some reason weren't talking to each other, the elegance of this arrangement escaped everyone's attention. To connect the dots: SAIC was writing the regulations for one government agency, the N.R.C., which would set the permissible limits of radioactive contamination for recycling, even as it partnered with another company, under contract to a different federal agency, the D.O.E., to recycle the radioactive metal for which it was drafting the regulations."



We already know that Iraq's "lightly" contaminated scrap metal is ending up in Pakistan.

poemless girl, paine 

if Rahm hadn't meddled in the primary, Congresswoman Cegelis would be in DC giving a speech

Chicago on Thursday, February 15, 2007

>

Check it out!  Jim♥s  event is tomorrow! 

Right, Phil, thanks - poemless girl

Been reading through my congressdaily for today and found this:
********
Another measure would extend whistleblower protection to
national security officials and employees of federal
contractors.
"Particularly noteworthy is that demotion, discharge, and
other discriminatory acts by agencies in retaliation for
national security whistleblower disclosures would be
prohibited," said William Weaver, senior adviser to the National
Security Whistleblowers Coalition and associate professor at the
University of Texas. Intelligence and counter-intelligence
agencies have been exempted from complying with protections.
Weaver and representatives of other whistleblower groups
endorsed the bill, but all favored changing it to allow
whistleblowers to take their appeals to any federal circuit
court.
Appeals are restricted to the Federal Circuit Court of
Appeals. Since 1994, when Congress strengthened the 1989
whistleblower protection act, that court has decided two cases
for whistleblowers and 177 against them on the merits of their
cases, said Thomas Devine, legal director of the Government
Accountability Project. By Basil Talbott

Printable version

David Passaro, 40, the first US civilian to be charged with abusing a prisoner since the Iraq and Afghanistan wars began, was convicted last August.

Afghan prisoner Abdul Wali was beaten in June 2003 and died two days later.

Mr Wali, an Afghan farmer, had gone to the US authorities voluntarily to clear his name over a rocket attack.

US District Court Judge Terrence Boyle, sitting in Raleigh, North Carolina, said that a lack of an autopsy kept Mr Passaro from being charged with murder.

So, some still thinks there's a need for damage control--

Thompson Criticizes Fitzgerald For Conduct In CIA Leak Case
Former Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn., criticized Special
Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald's handling of the CIA leak
investigation Tuesday, saying the prosecutor had to have known
from the start that it was not a crime to disclose Valerie
Plame's identity as an agent.
A fundraiser for the defense of Lewis (Scooter) Libby, Vice
President Cheney's former chief of staff, Thompson depicted
Fitzgerald as out of control, telling ABC News there was "no
brake and no check and no balance" on the prosecutor.
Thompson's objections are similar to ones Democrats made in
the 1990s about independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who spent six
years investigating President Clinton and then-First Lady
Hillary Rodham Clinton.
"When you put too much power in the hands of unelected,
unaccountable people who have every incentive to focus massive
resources onto one particular person -- who gets the plaudits in
the media for doing so -- it's a bad thing," Thompson, a former
GOP counsel for the Senate Watergate Committee, told ABC.
In his capacity as chairman of the Senate Governmental
Affairs Committee, Thompson launched investigations of alleged
misconduct in the Clinton administration.
Thompson, who plays a prosecuting attorney in NBC's "Law &
Order," pointed out that no one has been charged with leaking
Plame's identity, saying no law had been broken. "The Justice
Department knew that early on. The CIA should have known that
early on," Thompson said. "Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald
had to have known that at the very beginning."

Happy Valentine's Day!

Stay warm you northeasterners. I hear you're next. Our high today will be close to 20 degees. Good snugglin' weather.

Good morning and HOWDY Poemless!

Chicago is being graced by another Dean today!!!

And DFA Illinois is hard at work. Congrats all you hard workers!

45. Whenever I hear kudos going to Rahm on his brilliant victories - I sigh and think about what a fine congressperson Ms. Cegelis would be. $6 million bucks to Duckworth - that's just brilliant.

A funny observation--

One of the stories my mother often told was of one of her playmates who had emigrated from Russia with his mother and how this woman seemed to do everything in bed. The story was intended to let us know that this was scandalous, but somehow inexplicable behavior.
Well, I now know why people who live in cold climates stay in bed in the winter--it's the most comfortable place to work.
Lap-tops make it downright attractive because of the heat they give off, keeping both lap and fingers warm. LOL

51.

I think we need to remember that they money didn't go to Duckworth. It went to media consultants and media production outfits--all of whom are hungry for a portion of the political pie.

This might be a good place to make one other observation about Obama. Really, the one authentic moment the other night occurred when Obama stepped up onto the circular platform (the center ring) from which he was to conduct his "town hall" meeting and, noticing that it had been covered with carpeting bearing his name and the name of the venue, he said "what's this...wonder how much that cost?" and somebody in the audience answered that it was to tell him where he was. That got a big chuckle from the audience and led into Obama's spiel. But, it's possible that just for a second he realized that the money he was busy hustling from all kinds of people was really being spent recklessly and really to no purpose. Somebody's scheduling the kinds of events for him that Dean had at the end and brought his campaign over budget.
So, the question I have is whether Obama is smart enough to call halt to this circus he's allowed to spring up and retool his effort. This kind of campaigning is not going to go down well with anyone in N.H. except the media outfits that charge huge fees to cover these events.
Kucinich and Dodd and Richardson are all going the small-venue locally organized route. We haven't heard from Vilsack since his wife subbed for him last year.

Did we know that there's a Republican Joe Wilson from South Carolina who's head of the victory in Iraq caucus? He's on C-SPAN

51. Me too

Monica, are we to take it you are typing from bed? :)

new thread

Well I know this is the Blog for America, and I agree that a living wage should be on the top of our domestic agenda- but what about the 30, 000 children that die every day due to the fact that they live in extreme poverty.  I think it's time we foucus our international aid so that we can accomplish the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.  WE have the power to make the unjust world that we live in a little more just.