Al Gore has made his sharpest attack yet on the George Bush presidency, describing the current US administration as "a renegade band of rightwing extremists".
(snip)
But he claims he does not "expect to be a candidate" for president again, while refusing explicitly to rule out another run. Asked if any event could change his mind, he says: "Not that I can see."

Enron former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling and founder Kenneth Lay were found guilty Thursday of conspiracy and fraud in the granddaddy of all corporate fraud cases.

Skilling was found guilty on 20 counts of conspiracy, fraud, false statements and insider trading. He was found not guilty on eight counts of insider trading.

Lay was found guilty on all six counts of conspiracy and fraud.

Both Lay and Skilling could face 20 to 30 years in prison, legal experts say.

FULL STORY

(House Speaker Dennis) Hastert (R-Ill.)raised concerns that the FBI's unannounced seizure of congressional documents during a raid of Jefferson's Rayburn office Saturday night violated the separation of powers between the two branches of government as they are defined by the Constitution.
(snip)
Republican objections are independent of any facts in the corruption probe against Jefferson. Their complaints pertain solely to constitutional questions about the raid itself.
Link to Full Story

"The progress we've made has been hard-fought, and it's been incremental," Bush said in remarks to the National Restaurant Association. "There have been setbacks and missteps, like Abu Ghraib, that were felt immediately and have been difficult to overcome. Yet we have now reached a turning point in the struggle between freedom and terror."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on "Fox News Sunday" that the international community has not asked the United States to promise Iran it will not attack or otherwise try to destabilize the regime.
(snip)
Rice added, "Iran is a troublemaker in the international system, a central banker of terrorism. Security assurances are not on the table."
LINK

"This is a sign to the rulers in Tehran that if they give up their long-standing support for terrorism and they give up their pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, that their regime can stay in place."
LINK

Despite Pledge, Taxes Increase for Teenagers

The $69 billion tax cut bill that President Bush signed this week tripled tax rates for teenagers with college savings funds, despite Mr. Bush's 1999 pledge to veto any tax increase.

Under the new law, teenagers age 14 to 17 with investment income will now be taxed at the same rate as their parents, not at their own rates. Long-term capital gains and dividends that had been taxed at 5 percent will now be taxed at 15 percent. Interest that had been taxed at 10 percent will now be taxed at as much as 35 percent.

Mr. Bush pledged in 1999 to veto any bill that raised taxes. In response to a question about the tax increase on teenagers in the new legislation, the White House issued a statement Friday that made no reference to the tax increase, but recounted the tax cuts the administration has sponsored and stated that President Bush had "reduced taxes on all people who pay income taxes."

Challenged on that point, the White House modified its statement 21 minutes later to say that Mr. Bush had "reduced taxes on virtually all people who pay income taxes."

.... far from defending the Constitution, President Bush has repeatedly sought to strip out the limits the document places on federal power. In its official legal briefs and public actions, the Bush administration has advanced a view of federal power that is astonishingly broad, a view that includes

• a federal government empowered to regulate core political speech--and restrict it greatly when it counts the most: in the days before a federal election;
• a president who cannot be restrained, through validly enacted statutes, from pursuing any tactic he believes to be effective in the war on terror;
• a president who has the inherent constitutional authority to designate American citizens suspected of terrorist activity as "enemy combatants," strip them of any constitutional protection, and lock them up without charges for the duration of the war on terror-- in other words, perhaps forever; and
• a federal government with the power to supervise virtually every aspect of American life, from kindergarten, to marriage, to the grave.

The government has the legal authority to prosecute journalists for publishing classified information, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Sunday.

"There are some statutes on the book which, if you read the language carefully, would seem to indicate that that is a possibility," Gonzales said on the ABC News program "This Week."
(snip)
Asked whether he was open to the possibility that the New York Times should be prosecuted for its disclosures in December concerning a National Security Agency surveillance program, Gonzales said his department was trying to determine "the appropriate course of action in that particular case."
(San Francisco Chronicle story

CrooksandLiars has the video of the whole exchange (originally posted by Keith Olberman back in January).

Video-WMP Video-QT

Is this really the guy we want to see in charge of the CIA?

May 17, 2006 -- LATE EDITION -- WMR can report tonight on more details concerning the confusing reports regarding Karl Rove and Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald from last Friday. WMR can confirm that the appearance of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales before the Grand Jury at the US Federal Courthouse in Washington was a formality in which the jury informed the Attorney General of their decision to indict Karl Rove. That proceeding lasted for less than 30 minutes and took place shortly after noon. Gonzales's personal security detachment was present in the courthouse during the Grand Jury briefing. From the courthouse, Gonzales's motorcade proceeded directly down Constitution Avenue to the Department of Justice.

According to sources within the Patton and Boggs law firm, Karl Rove was present at the law firm's building on M Street. WMR was told by a credible source that a Patton and Boggs attorney confirmed that Fitzgerald paid a visit to the law firm to inform Rove attorney Robert Luskin and Rove that an indictment would be returned by the Grand Jury against Rove. Contrary to other reports, some of which may have emanated from the Rove camp in order to create diversions and smokescreens, the meetings at Patton and Boggs did not last 15 hours nor was a 24-hour notice of intent to indict delivered to Rove. In the Scooter Libby case last October, after the Grand Jury decided to indict Libby on Friday, October 21 and the Attorney General personally heard the decision the same day at a meeting with the jury, the actual indictment was issued the following Friday, October 28. Several sources have told WMR that an announcement concerning the indictment of Rove will be made on Friday, May 19 generally following the same scenario from October 28, 2005 -- the posting of the indictment on the Special Prosecutor's web site followed by a press conference at Main Justice.

WMR was also told by a credible source that part of the reason for Fitzgerald's visit to Patton and Boggs was to inform Rove attorney Luskin that he has moved into the category of a "subject" of the special prosecutor's investigation as a result of a conversation with Time reporter Viveca Novak, in which Novak told Luskin that Rove was a source for Time's Matt Cooper. The special prosecutor, who has prosecuted one defense attorney in the Hollinger case, is reportedly investigating whether Luskin, as an officer of the court, may have violated laws on obstruction of justice.

WMR has also discovered that last year Rove, realizing he remained a lightning rod in the CIA Leakgate scandal, made preliminary plans to move into the private sector from the White House to take political heat off the Bush administration. However, as it became clear that he was in over his head legally and his legal bills piled up, Rove decided to remain at the White House.

The video, released by the government in conjunction with a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Judicial Watch legal activist group, was a longer, more complete version of still-frame images that were leaked to the news media in 2002.
(snip)
Judicial Watch said the Pentagon told the group it would release the images "now that the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui is over." Judicial Watch said the government previously had refused to release the video because it was (drumroll please) "part of an ongoing investigation"
(LINK to Full Story)

I'm convinced that 20 years from now we, as historians, will be looking back at this as one of the darkest eras in American history. And we're just beginning to sort of peel back the first layers of the onion. We're hoping against hope that it's not as bad as I suspect it will be, but reality sets in every time a new article is published and the first thing the Bush administration tries to do is quash the story.
(snip)
I'll tell you where this story probably will go next. Notice the USA Today article doesn't mention whether the Internet service providers or cellphone providers or companies operating transatlantic cables like Global Crossing cooperated with the NSA
Read the Full Interview at Salon

A final word from Karl Rove?

WASHINGTON - Some Democrats have already celebrated the downfall of Karl Rove.

At a Michigan Trial Lawyers' Association dinner Saturday night in Dearborn, Mich., the group's vice president Robert Raitt announced - according to the Detroit Free Press - that President Bush's longtime strategist had just been indicted. The announcement reportedly prompted a standing ovation by the crowd of 700, which included Sen. Hillary Clinton.

Strange then that a relaxed-looking Rove - not indicted, not out on bail, and wearing a business suit, not orange prison garb -- was in person at the right-wing think tank, American Enterprise Institute Monday morning.

Rove was, as usual, nerdy in his use of statistics, and was chummy and flattering with the reporters present -- just like in 2000 when Bush was first running for president. At one point in the question-and-answer session Rove told National Public Radio's Mara Liasson, "I love watching you on television."

If the United States had continued to conserve oil at the rate it did in the period from 1976 to 1985, it would no longer have needed Persian Gulf oil after 1985.
(snip)
The CAFE standards worked so well that they produced an oil glut by 1986. That's when the Reagan administration intervened to rescue America's domestic oil industry

Big Oil lets slip big secrets
(The following top-secret memorandum was obtained from a White House official. Its authenticity could not be confirmed.)

TO: Director/National Clandestine Service/CIA
FROM: Chief of Station/Lagos, Nigeria
RE: Interrogation of Exxon Mobil CEO

Subject, Rex W. Tillerson, was apprehended while disembarking at Lagos airport and brought to Covert Interrogation Center #7. After a cocktail of Sodium Pentothal and Desoxyn was administered, subject suffered disorientation but was able to answer questions on oil and gasoline pricing and company finances.

At outset of interrogation, subject became giddy when asked about 2005 financial results, which showed a profit of $36 billion on sales of $371 billion.

Subject showed no remorse about impact of higher prices on consumer finances, saying the recent results were merely "payback time" for all those years of lousy returns and living in Houston.

{snip}

Subject became agitated about taxation. He complained that Exxon Mobil last year made so much money that it ran out of loopholes and had to pay an effective corporate tax rate on U.S. profits of 33.5 percent. Three years before, the effective tax rate was 5 percent.

{snip}

But his mood changed when asked to read a proposal from liberal economists calling for a big new fuels tax - with the money rebated to consumers through a reduction in the payroll tax.

"We've been lucky that Americans and their politicians have never figured that out."

"It's the largest database ever assembled in the world," the paper quoted one source as saying. The agency's goal is "to create a database of every call ever made" within U.S. borders, it said the source added.
(snip)
Defending the controversial program, President Bush and his administration officials have said it aims to uncover links between international terrorists and their domestic collaborators and only targets communications between a person inside the United States and a person overseas.

But USA Today said that calls originating and terminating within the United States have not escaped the NSA's attention.
(LINK)

Although I consider myself an avid Bush-hater, and have long since distrusted everything spewing from the mouths of these facist, neo-conservative, war-mongering bastards, I've never really considered myself to be a conspiracy theorist.

Even though I never really bought the story of how a lone gunman (Lee Harvey Oswald) shot John F. Kennedy, I've never considered myself one who believes the Government is behind just about everything that has happened. Still, as more and more lies from the Bush Administration are debunked, I have a natural (okay, 'burning') curiosity to explore these theories. After all, I want to be well read and hear all perspectives.
Read the Whole Article Here

• "He knows the CIA inside and out," Bush said in a Rose Garden announcement yesterday morning. "He's the right man to lead this important agency at this critical moment in our nation's history."
  ~George W. Bush, August 11, 2004, Nominates Rep. Goss to Run CIA

• "Mike knows our intelligence community from the ground up. He has been both a provider and a consumer of intelligence. He's overseen the development of both human and technological intelligence. He has demonstrated an ability to adapt our intelligence services to the new challenges of the war on terror. He's the right man to lead the CIA at this critical moment in our nation's history."
  ~George W. Bush, May 8, 2006, Nominates General Mike Hayden to Run CIA
  
  

Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has come out against the nomination of Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden to head the CIA, calling the ousting of former Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) from the agency's top post "a power grab" by John Negroponte, the director of national intelligence.

Hastert's opposition to Hayden is not based on any personal reservations about the nominee. Rather, Hastert is concerned that installing a top-ranking military official at the "CIA would give too much influence over the U.S. intelligence community to the Pentagon."

GREAT song, great video. It's fascinating how the culture has finally turned against him and them.

And while we're at it, don't forget Pink's song "Dear Mr. President" - if you haven't seen/heard it, you need to.

"When Jared first started talking about joining the Army, I thought, 'Well, that isn't going to happen,' " said Paul Guinther, Jared's father. "I told my wife not to worry about it. They're not going to take anybody in the service who's autistic."

But they did. Last month, Jared came home with papers showing that he not only had enlisted, but also had signed up for the Army's most dangerous job: cavalry scout. He is scheduled to leave for basic training Aug. 16.
FULL STORY

RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, generally one of the party's premiere strategic optimists, warned GOP state chairs that the party would lose seats at every level of government.

Not "if" they didn't do X,Y, or GOTV. But "would lose," period. The task for state chairs: use lessons learned from '04 to flush out the Republican base as much as possible.
(snip)
What Mehlman and WH pol dir Sara Taylor didn't say -- but what all state chairs know -- is that the politics of nastiness generally turns off persuadable voters. So expect the marginal races this year to be quite nasty.
(Full Story Here)

"Your argument makes no sense," U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards told the lawyer for the Federal Communications Commission, Jacob Lewis. "When you go back to the office, have a big chuckle. I'm not missing this. This is ridiculous. Counsel!"

At another point in the hearing, Edwards told the FCC's lawyer that his arguments were "gobbledygook" and "nonsense."

"This empty shell of a bill is driven by one thing - the majority's cynical calculation that it will not pay a price with voters this November for failing to take meaningful steps to end this culture of corruption," said Rep. Steny Hoyer, D-Md., the second-ranking Democratic leader.
LINK

So, what does this bill "reform"?

• It requires that earmarks and the lawmakers who insert them into appropriations bills be identified. Critics would have preferred an outright ban.
• requires lobbyists to file quarterly rather than semi-annual reports (ooooh, those tough tough republicans)
• any lobbyist who knowingly offers a congressman a gift in excess of congressional limits would be subject to a fine of up to $50,000. (key word: "knowingly" gives a LOT of room for deniability. $50k fine for somebody like Exxon is punishment? Come on, they wipe their ass with $50k)
• Lobbyists, lawmakers and congressional staffers also would have to undergo ethics training. (by the time you're in Congress, should this be necessary?)
• eliminate pension benefits for lawmakers convicted of crimes

This is what the GOP calls "Reform".

Full Story

"What's the point of having a statute if...the president can cherry-pick what he likes and what he doesn't like?"
(snip)
"The problem is that you have a statute, which Congress has passed, and then the signing statements negate that statute," Specter said. "And there are more and more of them coming. If the president doesn't like something, he puts a signing statement on it."
(snip)
"It's a very blatant encroachment on [Congress's constitutional] powers. If he doesn't like the bill, let him veto it."

"We're undergoing a tsunami here with the flood coming from the executive branch on one side and the judicial branch on the other," Specter said. "There may as well soon not be a Congress.... And I think that most members don't understand what's happening."

"I think the national anthem ought to be sung in English, and I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English and they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English." Bush said

In his book, "American Dynasty," Kevin Phillips wrote that Bush "would drop in at Hispanic festivals and parties, sometimes joining in singing 'The Star-Spangled Banner' in Spanish, sometimes partying with a 'Viva Bush' mariachi band flown in from Texas."
(Full Story)

There have been 2,613 coalition deaths, 2,400 Americans, two Australians, 104 Britons, 13 Bulgarians, three Danes, two Dutch, two Estonians, one Fijian, one Hungarian, 29 Italians, one Kazakh, one Latvian, 17 Poles, one Romanian, two Salvadoran, three Slovaks, 11 Spaniards, two Thai and 18 Ukrainians in the war in Iraq as of May 1, 2006, according to a CNN count. (Graphical breakdown of casualties). The list below is the names of the soldiers, Marines, airmen, sailors and Coast Guardsmen whose deaths have been reported by their country's governments. At least 17,762 U.S. troops have been wounded in action, according to the Pentagon

INTELLIGENCE SOURCES SAY VALERIE WILSON WAS PART OF AN OPERATION THREE YEARS AGO TRACKING THE PROLIFERATION OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS MATERIAL INTO IRAN. AND THE SOURCES ALLEGE THAT WHEN MRS. WILSON'S COVER WAS BLOWN, THE ADMINISTRATION'S ABILITY TO TRACK IRAN'S NUCLEAR AMBITIONS WAS DAMAGED AS WELL.

THE WHITE HOUSE CONSIDERS IRAN TO BE ONE OF AMERICA'S BIGGEST THREATS.

Said Joe Wilson: "Well the CIA I think has responded first by asking the Justice Department to open an investigation and my judgment the leak of national security information is a betrayal a minimum of one's security clearance and certainly of the public trust and I for one can't understand how Mr. Rove remains on the payroll of the US Government."