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)