"There ought to be limits to freedom" ~Quote: George W. Bush, at Texas State House

How Lethally Stupid Can One Country Be?
Watching George W. Bush in operation these last couple of weeks is like having an out-of-body experience. On acid. During a nightmare. In a different galaxy. As he presides over the latest disaster of his administration (No, it's not a terrorist attack -- that was 2001! No, it's not a catastrophic war -- that was 2003! No, it's not a drowning city -- that was 2005! This one is an economic meltdown ... But let's give credit where credit is due. This is precisely by design. This is exactly the outcome intended by the greatest propaganda-promulgating regime since Hermann Göring set fire to the Reichstag. It was Göring himself who famously reminded us that, "Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. ...Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." Sure worked in Germany. And it worked even better here...

The Pentagon Strangles Our Economy: Why the U.S. Has Gone Broke
Military spending is taking a dramatic toll on the rest of the economy. The military adventurers in the Bush administration have much in common with the corporate leaders of the defunct energy company Enron. Both groups thought that they were the "smartest guys in the room." It is virtually impossible to overstate the profligacy of what our government spends on the military. The Department of Defense's planned expenditures for the fiscal year 2008 are larger than all other nations' military budgets combined. The supplementary budget to pay for the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not part of the official defense budget, is itself larger than the combined military budgets of Russia and China.

How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives
An eye-opening investigation of the all-pervasive, presence of the Pentagon in daily life -- a real-world Matrix come alive. From iPods to Starbucks coffee to Oakley sunglasses, Turse investigates the remarkable range of military incursions into the civilian world: the Pentagon's collaborations with Hollywood filmmakers, its outlandish schemes to weaponize the wild kingdom, its joint ventures with the World Wrestling Federation and NASCAR. He shows the inventive ways the military, desperate for new recruits, now targets children and young adults, tapping into the "culture of cool" by making 'friends' on MySpace.

The First Draft of History Looks Rough on Bush
April 11, 2008—President Bush often argues that history will vindicate him. So he can't be pleased with an informal survey of 109 professional historians conducted by the History News Network. It found that 98 percent of them believe that Bush's presidency has been a failure, while only about 2 percent see it as a success. Not only that, more than 61 percent of the historians say the current presidency is the worst in American history. In 2004, only 11.6 percent of the historians rated Bush's presidency in last place. Among the reasons given for his low ratings: invading Iraq, "tax breaks for the rich," and alienating many nations around the world. Bush supporters counter that professional historians today tend to be liberal and that it's too early to assess how his policies will turn out. [While Bush is unquestionably the worst AMERICAN president in history, he is the greatest REPUBLICAN president in 100 years. He has accomplished so much of the Republican agenda he makes Reagan look like a stoned-out slacker. He has drained the treasury and transferred the money to Republican-supporting contractors, lowered taxes on the wealthiest, dismantled many regulatory agencies, slashed environmental laws, destroyed workplace safety regulations, broken the wall between church and state, brought us closer to a police state, made busting unions easier, etc]

Bush Administration Says to Hell With Fourth Amendment Rights
News last week of former White House lawyer John Yoo's recently disclosed 2003 memo positing, among other things, that the president's authority as commander in chief allows him to override federal laws prohibiting "assault, maiming and other crimes" against suspects in the "war on terror" was followed by a second revelation: an alarming footnote on page 8 referring to another secret memo, written shortly after 9/11, and, in the name of national security, dispensing with the Fourth Amendment.

When Change Is Not Enough
There's something implacable, earnest, and righteously angry in the air. And it raises all kinds of questions for burned-out Boomers and jaded Gen Xers who've been ground down to the stump by the mostly losing battles of the past 30 years. Can it be -- at long last -- that Americans have, simply, had enough? Are we, finally, stepping out to take back our government -- and with it, control of our own future? Is this simply a shifting political season -- the kind we get every 20 to 30 years -- or is there something deeper going on here? Do we dare to raise our hopes that this time, we're going to finally win a few? Just how ready is this country for big, serious, forward-looking change? And now, thanks to 28 years of conservative misrule, we are now at the point where "manifest reality breaks away from anticipated reality;" and the breach is creating political turbulence. The average American has seen his or her standard of living contract by fits and starts since about 1972. Upper classes have broken faith with society's other groups, and began to openly prey on them in ways that threatened their very future. Not surprisingly, the other groups soon united, took up arms, and rebelled. And here we are again: Conservative policies have opened the wealth gap to Depression levels; put workers at the total mercy of their employers; and deprived the working and middle classes of access to education, home ownership, health care, capital, legal redress, and their expectations of a better future for their kids. You can only get away with blaming this on gays and Mexicans for so long before people get wise to the game. And as the primaries are making clear: Americans are getting wise. Between our corporate-owned Congress and the spectacularly bad judgment of Bush's executive branch, there's never been a government in American history more inept, corrupt, and criminally negligent than this one -- or more shockingly out of touch with what the average American is going through.

A Time to Reap
Wednesday 20 June 2007—My friend Dan was on his way home the other day, and found an American flag crumpled in a gutter outside his apartment building. The flag, perhaps as big as the cover of a book, had been used as a decoration for some pre-Fourth of July party, but afterwards was merely thrown aside like litter for the street-sweepers to collect. Dan gathered it up, smoothed the creases, and hung it from a nearby railing. The motivation for his actions was hard for him to explain, but it came down to this: Everything else in America is so screwed up, but this American thing before him would not be defiled within reach of his arm. My friend, surrounded by the chaos of a flailing nation and filled with the need to act, found some solace in the rescue of that flag. He is not alone in his sentiments, not alone in his desire to make things right again within reach of his arm. There is something happening today in America. With the right kind of ears, you can hear it in the sound of millions of brows slowly furrowing in anger and disgust. It feels like those tense moments just before the eruption of a summer thunderstorm, those moments when the air is electric, the ozone reek of spent lightning fills the world, and you know something very loud is about to happen. What is happening, what can be heard and smelled and sensed all across the land, is the cresting wave of rage, betrayal and fury that is, finally, roaring across the shores of our collective American heart. After more than six years of lies, theft, graft, corruption, manipulation and misconduct, just about every living person within these borders finds themselves today gripped by the slow seethe

Bush’s Veto of Bill on C.I.A. Tactics Affirms His Legacy
March 9, 2008 WASHINGTON — President Bush on Saturday further cemented his legacy of fighting for strong executive powers, using his veto to shut down a Congressional effort to limit the Central Intelligence Agency’s latitude to subject terrorism suspects to harsh interrogation techniques. Skip to next paragraph Related Text: Bush’s Message to the House of Representatives (March 8, 2008) Text: Bush on Veto of Intelligence Bill (March 8, 2008) Mr. Bush vetoed a bill that would have explicitly prohibited the agency from using interrogation methods like waterboarding, a technique in which restrained prisoners are threatened with drowning and that has been the subject of intense criticism at home and abroad. Many such techniques are prohibited by the military and law enforcement agencies.

Checks for $600 Won't Fix Our Economy
In a celebrated display of bipartisanship, both parties joined hands last month to pass a whopper of a stimulus package. Cash, they crowed, would soon be flowing. "We're sending a $600 check to you, and $300 to you, and $1,200 to couples, and...well, almost everyone will get money! It's manna straight from heaven to get our big ol' economy high-ballin' down Prosperity Highway," they exulted. "Not that there's anything wrong with our economy," they quickly added. "No, no," said the self-congratulatory stimulators. "Everything's fine. Really fine. Really."

'What We Are Seeing Is the Fall of America'
Nobody dared to stand up and criticize Bush when he unlawfully went to war on Iraq. It is depressing, and shows what direction this country has taken since he came to power -- a power which did not rightfully belong to him. The media is not playing its role. The Bushites are bullies and for a long time nobody dared criticize them and just swallowed their propaganda and lies. People have become scared. In this kind of climate, nobody is interested in the critical voice. You ask about the role of the intellectual in America today and I have to say: What role? What intellectuals? There is no room for them in the simplified and dumbed down world of today's media. We used to play a role, and there are still a few left, but we are a dying breed. Nobody seems to be interested in nuance anymore."

The Fraud of Bushenomics: They’re Looting the Country
The New York Times made it official. The Economy is a problem! So, now, at last we can discuss it. Not just discuss it, in rapid order "recession" became the word of the day, from White House, Congress, the Fed and the media. It's blamed, mostly, on the subprime crisis. But that's not the problem. It's a symptom. It is the logical, and probably one of the necessary results, of Bushenomics. Along with low, or no, job growth. Little or no business growth. Depressed wages. And the crashing dollar. (The president has a different vision of the economy. In his vision it's booming! And the number of jobs is growing! Though there is this little blip.) The idea under which Bushenomics was sold is this:

Bush is an un-American SOB, period
Normally we here at The Last Chance Democracy Cafe try to avoid using language quite this abrasive: effective advocacy, after all, should grow out of strong arguments and solid evidence, not from the screeching of insults. But every once in awhile, I guess, only screeching will do. In the years that have followed Sep. 11, 2001, George W. Bush has, of course, repeatedly manipulated the fear Americans feel over terrorism for political gain. He does this in a particularly reprehensible way — working to actually stoke, rather than to retard, the fear, so that he can use it as a tool for turning one American against another. Then, like some evil alien parasite from a Star Trek episode, he’s feasts on the resulting hatred to his political benefit. There is some good news, however: fear, it turns out, has a limited shelf life. As I said recently, “But the thing about being scared all the time is that people will only cower in fear for so long before saying, screw it, and getting on with their lives.” And sure enough, Bush’s political manipulation of the fear of terrorism is starting to lose its punch: so much so, in fact, that House Democrats are actually showing signs of fighting back. Bush, being the one act wonder he is, of course, is doing the only thing he can in response — turning up the volume on the same old scare tactics.

The Price Tag to Michigan for the War On Iraq and Bush's Tax Cuts for the Wealthy PDF
As the economy falters, President Bush’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2009 would ignore the needs of Americans by cutting basic services, increasing tax cuts for the wealthy and pushing military spending to historical highs. It would allow billions more for the war in Iraq at the expense of investments in Michigan's future.

All Terror, All the Time Is Giving Americans Heart Failure
A new UC Irvine study suggests that the Bush Administration's attempts to intensify fears of terrorism for political gain have significantly contributed to Americans' heart problems. Researchers showed that stress responses to the 9/11 attacks—particularly those that persisted for years afterward—were linked to a 53 percent increase in cardiac ailments. The most common triggers of renewed stress were videos of the attacks in the media (thanks, Rudy!) and—you guessed it—the rise and fall of DHS' terror alert levels. All that politically opportunistic drum-beating has actually made us sick. Perhaps if Americans had universal health insurance, the government would think twice about such callous manipulation.

The President’s Coming-Out Party
December 15, 2007 This has been an important week in the torture debate in America. It has been the week of the President’s coming-out party. Up until this point, torture has been something that “a few rotten apples” do. When evidence of it erupted in the media, a few grunts were quickly rounded up and scapegoated. Never officers, mind you—after all, they generally knew where the orders came from, and if you prosecuted them, they might just tell. But this week, a CIA agent, John Kiriakou, appeared, first on ABC News and then in an interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer, and explained just how the system works.

Voting machines have 'critical flaws,' could undermine ’08 election
his One of the most important swing states in America still can’t safeguard the vote. So says a new report, commissioned by Ohio’s top elections official, that found all five voting systems used in the Buckeye State to have “critical flaws” that could undermine the integrity of the 2008 general election. “It was worse than I anticipated,” Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner said of the investigation. “I had hoped that perhaps one system would test superior to the others.” The $1.9 million federally financed study, conducted by corporate and academic teams in parallel assessments and released Friday, found that voting machines and central servers made by Elections Systems and Software; Premier Election Solutions, formerly Diebold; and Hart InterCivic; were easily corrupted.

Creeping Fascism: From Nazi Germany to Post 9/11 America
"There are few things as odd as the calm, superior indifference with which I and those like me watched the beginnings of the Nazi revolution in Germany, as if from a box at the theater...Perhaps the only comparably odd thing is the way that now, years later...." These are the words of Sebastian Haffner (pen name for Raimund Pretzel), who as a young lawyer in Berlin during the 1930s experienced the Nazi takeover and wrote a first-hand account.

Rambo and the G.O.P.
I don’t know if children should be allowed to watch the Republican presidential debates. Skip to next paragraph Go to Columnist Page » There’s so much talk of violence and mayhem as the solution to our ills. The candidates seem so eager to flex their muscles and engage the nation in conflict: Let’s continue the war in Iraq. Let’s show them what we’re made of in Iran. Let’s round up those immigrants and ship ’em back where they came from. It’s like watching adolescent boys playing the ultimate video game, with no regard for the consequences. We’ve got the thunderclouds of a recession heading our way. We’re in the midst of a housing foreclosure crisis that is tragic in its dimensions. We’ve got forty-some-million people without health coverage. And the city of New Orleans is still on its knees. So you tune in to the G.O.P. debate on CNN to see what’s what, and they’re talking about — guns.

How Bush Took Us to the Dark Side
There are dire consequences that Americans will have to face now that torture and imprisonment of innocent people is everyday government practice.

Criminals In The Bush Administration
Late last year we decided to take stock of all the Bush Administration officials who’d been accused of corruption and/or resigned in the face of scandal, a staggering monument to the Bush Administration. Officials were only included if their accusers had them dead to rights (which is why Karl Rove didn’t make the cut). We also limited ourselves to officials who were either political appointees or whose actions were so political that they were effectively political appointees

Bush Scandals List
George Bush, the Connecticut cowboy, the good old boy from Yale is a man of mediocre intelligence, little imagination, and great stubbornness and vindictiveness. He may be the Decider but his handlers have long known how to manipulate him. The key is to hook him with short, simple sells. Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and Condoleezza Rice know that once he has consulted his gut and perhaps his higher father his decision is forever. So whoever gets to him first is likely to carry the day because he doesn't like to be challenged and is, quite simply, too lazy to change his mind. The Bubble is a natural consequence of this decision making process where logic, reason, and facts have little or no role.

ACLU learns of third 'secret' torture memo from Gonzales Justice Department
Legal papers filed in federal court Monday in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations disclose that the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) issued three secret memorandums relating to interrogation practices of detainees -- one more than has been publicly revealed. “These torture memos should never have been written, and it is utterly unacceptable that the administration continues to suppress them while at the same time declaring publicly that it abhors torture,” said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU’s National Security Project. “It is now obvious that senior administration officials worked in concert over a period of several years to evade and violate the laws that prohibit cruelty and torture. Some degree of accountability is long overdue.”

The End of America?
An interview with author Naomi Wolf, whose new book, "The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot," may confirm your worries about democracy in America.

Bush Gets Away with Lies, Lies and More Lies in History-Illiterate America
George Bush and other Iraq War supporters have argued that if we withdraw from Iraq the result will be like the killing fields of Cambodia -- an odd comparison considering that the US has direct responsibility for that holocaust.

Bush 'planted fake news stories on American TV'
Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies' products. Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are seeking information about stations across the country after a report produced by a campaign group detailed the extraordinary extent of the use of such items.

Bush wars to cost 40 times higher than original estimates
The United States is spending about $8,000 per man, woman and child in the country to pursue wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to new estimates that show the wars will cost about $2.4 trillion over the next decade. More than one-fourth of the money spent in Iraq and Afghanistan -- $705 billion -- will go to paying interest on the wars' costs, which are being funded with borrowed dollars, according to an estimate to be released Wednesday by the Congressional Budget Office. Iraq accounts for about 80 percent of the costs with a $1.9 trillion tab, including $564 million in interest, a House budget committee staff director told USA Today, which reported the numbers Wednesday morning.

Ex-Reagan Aide Calls Bush a "Mass Murderer"
Back in his pre-coronation days, when George W. was still known as "Governor Bush," the Campaign to End the Death Penalty had a bestselling item in its fundraising kit: a t-shirt with a mugshot of the future president splashed across the front, reading "WANTED FOR MURDER." Bush's crowning legacy at the time was having racked up a record-breaking 152 executions in the state of Texas--and doing so with a clear-eyed callousness that was at once startling and sickening.

Are Bush & Co. Gearing Up to Attack Iran?
It is as though I'm back as an analyst at the CIA, trying to estimate the chances of an attack on Iran. The putative attacker, though, happens to be our own president. It is precisely the kind of work we analysts used to do. And, while it is still a bit jarring to be turning our analytical tools on the U.S. leadership, it is by no means entirely new. For, of necessity, we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been doing that for almost six years now -- ever since 9/11, when "everything changed." Of necessity? Yes, because, with very few exceptions, American journalists put their jobs at grave risk if they expose things like fraudulent wars.

While Most of the Democrats in Washington Cower The Presidency Is Taking Over the Courts and Congress
It's way past time for members to stand up. Historic matters are at stake. The Constitution is being trampled, the very form of our government is being perverted, and nothing less than American democracy itself is endangered - a presidential coup is taking place. I think of Barbara Jordan, the late congresswoman from Houston. On July 25, 1974, this powerful thinker and member of the House Judiciary Committee took her turn to speak during the Nixon impeachment inquiry. "My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total," she declared in her thundering voice. "And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution." Where are the likes of Barbara Jordan in today's Congress? While the BushCheney regime continues to establish a supreme, arrogant, autocratic presidency in flagrant violation of the Constitution, members of Congress largely sit there as idle spectators - or worse, as abettors of Bush's usurpation of their own congressional authority.

The Bushites Have Outsourced Our Government to Their Pals
A monumental shift has quietly and quickly been taking place in the way the public's business is done -- and We the People have not even been informed about it, much less been asked to discuss and okay it. Corporations are taking over our government. No longer is it just a matter of big business's lobbyists and campaign donations perverting public policy. Now, politically connected corporations are also seizing day-to-day governmental operations for their own profit. The sprawling $43 billion homeland security department (HSD) is known chiefly for being the agency in charge of America's color-coded terrorist-threat alarm system ("Good morning, Americans. Today is Yellow. Be vigilant. Report all suspicious people.") It's boogeyman nonsense, of course, doing absolutely nothing to make our country safe. But such falderal helps those in charge obscure HSD's real mission: to serve as a giant federal cookie jar for corporate America. Go to HSD's website, and you'll find a prominent section called "Open For Business." There, on any given day, corporate shoppers can scroll through the hundreds of contracts and grants available to them. Just dip in and grab some cookies, each one worth from $50,000 to more than $80 million. Like the department's color codes, the vast majority of these projects do nothing to make our country safe. Instead, they are make-work studies, silly technologies, and useless systems that essentially serve as mediums for transferring billions of our tax dollars to a few corporate big shots.

Christianist Mercenaries, Michigan, and You
His name is Erik Prince, and he is the founder and CEO of a mercenary army that is receiving hundreds of millions of our tax dollars. His late father, Edgar, founded the anti-gay Family Research Council. His mother, Elsa Prince, gives lavish amounts of money to the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, and the Council for National Policy, an organization that wants to re-write our Constitution to make the United States one nation under their idea of God. Oh, and by the way - his brother-in-law, Dick DeVos, is a former and probably future candidate for Governor of the state of Michigan. In other words, these people are all right-wing religious extremists who want to criminalize our sexual orientations and gender identities. And not only do they have money and major ties to the White House, they also have access to a lot of automatic weapons. Scared yet?

Bush, Michigan, and Blackwater
When Blackwater contractors guarding a U.S. State Department convoy allegedly killed 11 unarmed Iraqi civilians on Sept. 16, it was only the latest in a series of controversial shooting incidents associated with the private security firm. Blackwater has a reputation for being quick on the draw. Since 2005, the North Carolina-based company, which has about 1,000 contractors in Iraq, has reported 195 "escalation of force incidents"; in 156 of those cases Blackwater guns fired first.

Ignoring science: Not just for Republicans anymore!
Newt Gingrich, claiming a mandate to make government smaller, actually managed to abolish only two offices: the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). The OTA was a widely praised, nonpartisan board that helped Congress understand and deal with technical issues -- exactly the kind of office you don't need if you get your understanding of biology from Genesis, your thoughts on telecommunications from K Street, and your opinions on energy from Exxon. The OTA was probably one of the least-known but best performing offices in all of D.C. Oddly, Gov. Jennifer Granholm of Michigan just killed the Michigan Environmental Science Board, which was composed of volunteer scientists appointed by the Governor. The only cost to the state was for member travel when on assignment, and for preparation and distribution of reports.

Rove's Science of Dirty Tricks
As Rove joins the ranks of discredited politicians who resign "in order to spend more time with family," a retrospective of his dirty tricks is in order.

The True -- and Shocking -- History of the CIA
The American people may not know it but they have some severe problems with one of their official governmental entities, the Central Intelligence Agency. Because of the almost total secrecy surrounding its activities and the lack of cost accounting on how it spends the money covertly appropriated for it within the defense budget, it is impossible for citizens to know what the CIA's approximately 17,000 employees do with, or for, their share of the yearly $44 billion-$48 billion or more spent on "intelligence." This inability to account for anything at the CIA is, however, only one problem with the Agency and hardly the most serious one either.

Impeachment and Preserving Our Constitution
The United States has been in a prolonged Constitutional crisis since the Supreme Court showed it had been corrupted by partisan politics when the Bush vs. Gore ruling was issued in December, 2000. The Bush Administration began by Republican politicians thumbing their noses at the rule of law. The past seven years have been an unending assault on Constitutional government, American political traditions and personal freedom. It is time to place impeachment fully on the table for the top members of the Bush White House and Cabinet. The appointment of Attorney General Gonzales should never have been approved by Congress. His record of distorting the truth in order to protect the political career of George W. Bush is the only real qualification he had when nominated. It was the reason he was appointed and the reason the appointment should have been soundly rejected. Gonzales has always been an advocate of radical legal theories that attack the essence of our Constitutional protections of personal freedom. The Attorney General holds legal theories that would give the President dictatorial powers. Bush, Cheney and Gonzales have resolutely claimed powers not given by the Constitution to the Executive Branch. These claims are essentially “high crimes” by their very nature. They subvert the American Constitution and border on treason.

Latest Bush Executive Order Kills Your 5th Amendment Right to Own Property
If you own a business, this concerns you. Whether you own it as a sole proprietorship, as a sole shareholder, or even as a partial shareholder of a corporation, you stand to lose all of it if the Secretary thinks you may commit an "act of violence" that may disrupt the war (or peace) effort in Iraq. Naturally, "act of violence" is not defined anywhere in this order. Once this becomes law, he has all the tools Hitler and Stalin had to keep their respective populations in utter subjection to their will. The executive order states in Section 1(a) that “all property and interests in property” of “any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of - blah, blah, blah (followed by a laundry list of “purposes or effects”).

You've Got to be Kidding!
You've probably seen the news this morning: President Bush let Cheney aide Scooter Libby, the one man who was convicted for the lies around the Iraq war, go free. Paris Hilton served more jail time than he will. Bush and Cheney think their administration is above the law. That's un-American, and this July 4th it's time for Congress to re-assert its constitutional authority and stop the administration's obstruction of justice. Congress can start by demanding answers from the Bush administration about the Iraq war and their illegal spying program, and not backing down until they get them. Cheney won't testify? Subpoena him. He won't come? Hold him in contempt of Congress and send over the police. And if that doesn't work, impeach the guy. We just can't let President Bush and his administration dismantle our Constitution. This July 4th, it's time to bring checks and balances back again.

Bush Hands Libby “Get Out of Jail Free” Card
With the war in Iraq mired in carnage with little prospect for hope, he ordered more troops into battle. Now even respected Republicans are saying it is time to do something new. And Monday, with his approval ratings positively Nixonian, he gave a trusted and loyal aid a presidential get -out-of-jail- free card. Lewis "Scooter" Libby seemed to have no constituency save the Republican base. That also happens to be the president's only apparent anchor and one to which he continues to respond. The Bush family image is of one that honors loyalty, and Libby was nothing if not that to the beleaguered president.

Don't Misunderestimate Dick Cheney
It has long been apparent that Cheney's genius is that he lets George W. Bush get out of bed every morning actually believing he is the President. Vice President Dick Cheney has regularly claimed that he is above the law, but until recently he has not offered any explanation of why. In fact, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find a law that Cheney believes does apply to him, whether that law be major and minor. For example, he has claimed that most of the laws passed in the aftermath of Watergate were unconstitutional, and thus implicitly inapplicable. His office oversees signing statements claiming countless new laws will not be honored except insofar as the President's extremely narrow interpretation allows. He does not believe the War Powers Act should be honored by the President. Nor, in his view, should the President be bothered with laws like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). In fact, it appears Cheney has actively encouraged defiance of such laws by the Bush Administration. A man who can so easily disregard the War Powers Act, FISA, the Geneva Conventions, and the War Crimes Act is merely flicking fleas when it comes to complying with laws like the Presidential Records Act, which requires him to keep records. Most recently, the Vice President has refused to comply with Executive Order 12958, as amended by his boss, George W. Bush. These orders were issued to implement the law adopted by Congress in 1995 to clarify the classification and protection of national security information. Most interesting in Cheney's defiance is his absolutely absurd explanation of why the law is not applicable to him or his staff.

Gorbachev Says US is Sowing World Disorder
Former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev criticized the United States, and current President George W. Bush in particular, on Friday for sowing disorder across the world by seeking to build an empire. Gorbachev, who presided over the break-up of the Soviet Union, said Washington had sought to build an empire after the Cold War ended but had failed to understand the changing world.0727 04 “The Americans then gave birth to the idea of a new empire, world leadership by a single power, and what followed?” Gorbachev asked reporters at a news conference in Moscow. “What has followed are unilateral actions, what has followed are wars, what has followed is ignoring the U.N. Security Council, ignoring international law and ignoring the will of the people, even the American people.” Russian President Vladimir Putin and Bush say they are friends but ties have been strained by U.S. plans for a missile defense shield in Europe, disagreements over Kosovo and the war in Iraq, and competition for allies in the former Soviet Union.

How to Stop Our Political and Economic Systems From Stealing Our Future
Paul Hawken has spent over a decade researching organizations dedicated to restoring the environment and fostering social justice. From multimillion-dollar nonprofits to single-person dot.causes, these groups collectively comprise a movement that has no name, no leader, no location, and that has gone largely ignored by politicians and the media. Like nature itself, it is organizing from the bottom up. Hawken's new book, Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming, explores the diversity of the movement, its ideas, strategies and hidden history.

Finally, the Neocons Are Sinking
As the George W. Bush administration struggles through its last two years in office, it appears that the agenda of neoconservative ideologues has finally lost its appeal among strategic parts of the U.S. foreign policy apparatus. But as their influence has waned at the Pentagon and State Department, neo-conservative hawks have taken charge on the battlefield of public diplomacy. Intent on fixing what American Enterprise Institute (AEI) fellow Joshua Muravchik termed Bush's "public diplomacy mess," right-wing hawks have gained control of the weapons in the "war of ideas" -- U.S. government-funded and supported media outlets such as Voice of America (VOA), Al-Hurra, and Radio Farda, which broadcast to the Middle East and aim to offer an alternative view of the news. The recent appointment of Jeffrey Gedmin, a veteran neo-conservative polemicist, as the director of Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty (RFE), and a smear campaign that led to the recent resignation of Larry Register, Al-Hurra's former news director, appears to herald a turn towards more ideologically rigid programming. As a result, viewers and listeners of U.S.-supported media in the Middle East are being exposed to a tougher ideological line that endorses the hallmarks of the neoconservative agenda -- regime change and interventionist policies in the region.

Ex-surgeon general faults White House
President Bush's first surgeon general testified Tuesday that his speeches were censored to match administration political positions and that he was prevented from giving the public accurate scientific information on issues such as stem cell research and teen pregnancy prevention. "Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried," Dr. Richard H. Carmona, who was surgeon general from 2002 to 2006, told a congressional committee. "The job of surgeon general is to be the doctor of the nation — not the doctor of a political party."

Bush Government to Poor Voters: We Don't Want You to Vote
State welfare offices across the country are not offering millions of low-income Americans the opportunity to register to vote when applying for public assistance despite a federal law requiring them to do so, according to an analysis of a recent federal voting registration report and experts who say the Department of Justice and states are to blame.

US Congress to retake trade authority from Bush
The Democratic-controlled Congress made clear on Friday it was taking back its constitutional trade authority from President George W. Bush, a day before his special power is set to end. The expiration of the Trade Promotion Authority (TPA), which allows the Bush administration to negotiate trade agreements that cannot be amended by Congress, could deal a major blow to the nearly collapsed Doha Round of World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks.

The Top 10 Idiots
Last week was a classic week for conservative idiocy - Dick Cheney (1) tops the chart with a rather tortured interpretation of the law, meanwhile presidential candiates Rudy Giuliani (2,3) and Mitt Romney (4) are embarrassed by some of their closest associates. Elsewhere, conservative talkers Michael Graham (5) and Tom Bauerle (6) advocate presidential assassination and arson respectively - and Trent Lott (7) is back on the list! Enjoy...

A Vice President Without Borders, Bordering on Lunacy
I’ve always thought Cheney was way out there — the most Voldemort-like official I’ve run across. But even in my harshest musings about the vice president, I never imagined that he would declare himself not only above the law, not only above the president, but actually his own dark planet — a separate entity from the White House. I guess a man who can wait 14 hours before he lets it dribble out that he shot his friend in the face has no limit on what he thinks he can keep secret. Dr. No used to just blow off the public and Congress as he cooked up his shady schemes. Now, in a breathtaking act of arrant arrogance, he’s blowing off his own administration.

Of Crazies, Neocons and the Enemy Within
An all too familiar and ominous echo is reverberating through the American landscape, once more blasted into the airwaves, and our minds, through the Ministry of Propaganda and its merry bunch of sycophants and stenographers. For yet another consecutive year since three monolithic towers were demolished, imploded and systemically brought down onto their own footprints in a catalyzing event unleashing a new American century, Americans are hearing the fiery rhetoric of imminent danger, a cocktail of fear, terror and warmongering fed our enemy-addicted culture, aimed both at stirring conflict with Iran and conditioning our minds into accepting the coming attack on yet another Muslim nation that poses no threat to the mighty Empire. For the Enemy Within is hard at work concocting the trigger-happy bogeyman Americans are always too eager to declare war upon, and they are working overtime, using their control of the print, radio and television media, to condition us into accepting their version of reality. Yes, the dreaded neocons are once more circling this nation like vultures, flying high above the dying carcass of freedom and democracy, ready to plunge down to Earth for a mighty feast. The reviled neocons, that plague that refuses to die, that pestilence that seemingly only increases in number, that nest of rats that lingers in our midst, is once more contorting truth and creating reality, once more beating the drums of war in continuation of their war song. The Enemy Within is softening us up, readying our minds, preparing us into accepting yet one more blitzkrieg of evil, criminality and mass murder. If you are not disgusted at how this species of human being has hijacked America, how it has condemned a million people to their premature death, how it has turned the beacon of freedom into the Gulag of criminality, how it has made mass murder, torture, rape and pillage acceptable, how it has made an entire nation hateful, xenophobic and jingoistic, how it has molded and conditioned an army of American authoritarians, then you have not been paying attention.

What do you get when you cross elmer fudd with bush?
A blog by Tammy Lynn Michaels-Etheridge: George Bush you are a criminal you are raping our country of our intentions i do wonder if his mom and dad go to bed at night proud of little whiskey-cokey-georgie poo for his dictatorship?

Poll shows 39% of Americans support impeachment
A poll published Tuesday shows that close to 40% of Americans favor the impeachment of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. [Editor: This number continues to grow with each poll]

Bush is Leading U.S. to Nuclear War
The administration is building the case for war against Iran -- a job made easier by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's recent announcement that Iran can now enrich uranium on an industrial scale -- despite the fact that many Iran-watchers and nuclear experts consider their claims of enrichment capacity to be an overblown boast. Yellow cake, aluminum tubes and histrionics about Saddam Hussein's nuclear capabilities have turned out to be completely fabricated. And, when not grinding the axe of pre-emptive war as counter-proliferation strategy, the administration periodically raises the specter of nuclear terrorism, in the form of dirty bombs and suitcase-sized warheads. In spite of these facts the Bush administration is busy planning a new generation of nuclear weapons known as "Complex 2030." While the United States demands that other countries end their nuclear programs, the Bush administration is busy planning a new generation of nuclear weapons. Nearly 20 years after the Berlin Wall crumbled, the United States is allocating more funding, on average, to nuclear weapons than during the Cold War.

Former Justice Deputy Describes Bush Behavior
Leaders at the White House and the Department of Justice clashed long before last year's dismissal of U.S. attorneys, according to former Deputy Attorney General James Comey. Comey, who worked under John Ashcroft in President Bush's first administration, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about the firings of U.S. attorneys and the alleged politicization of the Justice Department. One senator called it some of the most dramatic testimony he's heard in 25 years as a legislator.

Bush Has Gone AWOL
“To put this in a simple army metaphor, the Commander-in-Chief seems to have gone AWOL, that is ‘absent without leave.’ He neither acts nor talks as though he is in charge. Rather, he engages in tit-for-tat games. “Some in Congress on both sides of the aisle have responded with their own tits-for-tats. These kinds of games, however, are no longer helpful, much less amusing. They merely reflect the absence of effective leadership in a crisis. And we are in a crisis. “Most Americans suspect that something is fundamentally wrong with the President’s management of the conflict in Iraq. And they are right. “The challenge we face today is not how to win in Iraq; it is how to recover from a strategic mistake: invading Iraq in the first place. The war could never have served American interests. “We cannot ‘win’ a war that serves our enemies interests and not our own. Thus continuing to pursue the illusion of victory in Iraq makes no sense. We can now see that it never did.

Warnings Ignored by Bush/Cheney
An impending report from the Senate intelligence committee is likely to revive questions about whether President Bush was so consumed with invading Iraq and overthrowing Saddam Hussein that he didn't care about the disastrous consequences that could -- and did -- ensue. Mr. President, a new Senate report . . . contends that your administration was warned before the war that by invading Iraq you would actually give Iran and al Qaeda a golden opportunity to expand their influence, the kind of influence you were talking about with al Qaeda yesterday, and with Iran this morning. Why did you ignore those warnings, sir?

Can We End the Ascent of Empire, before it Ends Us
In politics, as in medicine, a cure based on a false diagnosis is almost always worthless, often worsening the condition that is supposed to be healed. The United States, today, suffers from a plethora of public ills. Most of them can be traced to the militarism and imperialism that have led to the near-collapse of our Constitutional system of checks and balances. Unfortunately, none of the remedies proposed so far by American politicians or analysts addresses the root causes of the problem. According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, released on April 26, 2007, some 78% of Americans believe their country to be headed in the wrong direction. Only 22% think the Bush administration's policies make sense, the lowest number on this question since October 1992, when George H. W. Bush was running for a second term -- and lost. What people don't agree on are the reasons for their doubts and, above all, what the remedy -- or remedies -- ought to be.

Fascist America, in 10 Easy Steps
If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy, but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps. As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated in the United States by the Bush administration. We need to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the United States. "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands … is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry.

Bush Does It Again: Sends Another Neocon to Head the World Bank
The man who tried to equate resistance to corporate globalization with the terrorism of al Qaeda now takes over the World Bank following Paul Wolfowitz's scandal-ridden tenure. Is a tone-deaf, name-calling steely opportunist a good choice to lead the World Bank? The bank's official mission, after all, is to fight global poverty, not promote U.S. corporate interests. And after the Wolfowitz uproar, one might have expected the Bush administration to pick a more genteel and broad-minded successor to lead this global institution. Is a tone-deaf, name-calling steely opportunist a good choice to lead the World Bank? The bank's official mission, after all, is to fight global poverty, not promote U.S. corporate interests. And after the Wolfowitz uproar, one might have expected the Bush administration to pick a more genteel and broad-minded successor to lead this global institution.

Social Conservatism As a Coercive Tool Of The State
Like religious conservatives throughout history and indeed, in the present, they used the state as a coercive tool to force their version of a conscience upon the rest of people. While only one-third of people generally tend to be socially conservative, this does not make a difference to those possessed with the compulsion to force their morality upon all others for their own good. This is not to say fundamentalists and other religious extremists are Nazis or Stalinists, but that they hold very similar views on these 'family values' and sexuality subjects and employ similar language in their positions and propaganda. They represent similar dangers to free societies as they always have throughout all of western history.

Loyal to Bush but Big Thorn in G.O.P. Side
At a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Mr. Comey gave a riveting account of how he intervened in 2004 at the hospital bedside of Attorney General John Ashcroft to prevent two top White House officials from persuading Mr. Ashcroft to reauthorize the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program. The Justice Department had ruled that the program would not be lawful without certain changes, and President Bush subsequently directed that the changes be made. Colleagues say Mr. Comey is, even now, a reluctant critic of the administration he served. But they say he feels strongly that there was no justification for the purge of prosecutors and remains furious about what he saw in 2004 as an improper attempt by the White House to bypass the Justice Department.

Bush Administration: Smoke, Mirrors, and War
Each day a new installment of the Bill Moyers special on how the press bought into the Bush Administration's war... Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

George Bush Special Report
President Bush speaks recently on C-Span um. This is a critical speech!

Scott Ritter: Calling Out Idiot America
The ongoing hand-wringing in Congress by the newly empowered Democrats over what to do about the war in Iraq speaks volumes about the level of concern (or lack thereof) these “representatives of the people” have toward the men and women who honor us all by serving in the armed forces of the United States of America. The inability to reach consensus concerning the level of funding required or how to exercise effective oversight of the war, both constitutionally mandated responsibilities, is more a reflection of congressional cowardice and impotence than a byproduct of any heartfelt introspection over troop welfare and national security. The issues that prompt the congressional collective to behave in such an egregious manner have more to do with a reflexive tendency to avoid any controversy that might disrupt the status quo ante regarding representative-constituent relations (i.e., re-election) than with any intellectual debate about doing the right thing.

Who's Afraid of Jimmy Carter? Dubya Outta Be!
Britain's support for the war in Iraq was a "major tragedy" for the world, and the Bush administration has been "the worst in history" in international relations, former President Jimmy Carter said in two interviews yesterday. Carter criticized Prime Minister Tony Blair's unwavering support for President Bush, saying it has contributed to the troubled aftermath of the Iraq invasion. Asked how he would judge Blair's support of Bush, the former Democratic president said: "Abominable. Loyal. Blind. Apparently subservient." Carter took aim at the Bush administration's policy of preemptive war in Iraq, as well as its Middle East diplomacy ... "I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history!"

Wolfowitz Resigns
Embattled World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz has resigned, in a move that will take full effect in June. Until then, he is on administrative leave. Pressure on Wolfowitz to step down has grown since the release of a report on his handling of a 2005 pay raise for his girlfriend, who is also a bank employee. When faced with charges of ethical breaches at the World Bank, Paul Wolfowitz didn't sit back. He went on the offensive, accusing his critics of launching a "smear campaign" against him and refusing to step down as bank president. Those who know Wolfowitz — or "Wolfie," as President Bush calls him — were not surprised. He has always believed that old adage about the best defense being a good offense. His entire Washington career, which spans 35 years and six administrations, has been based on it. As one of the architects of the Iraq war, Wolfowitz shot from relative anonymity to caricature very quickly. To his critics, he is the personification of the neoconservative hawk who believes the world's problems can be solved through military might.

Wolfowitz crisis challenged U.S. leadership
The ouster of Paul Wolfowitz as World Bank president, in another rift between the United States and its European allies, poses an unprecedented challenge to U.S leadership of the global financial system. Weakened by chaos in Iraq, low popularity and his lame-duck status, President George W. Bush was unable to prevent Wolfowitz's forced departure -- the first of a World Bank president -- after weeks of resistance and public acrimony over his promotion of a companion. Some U.S. officials and experts expressed alarm that the controversy could force the United States to give up its World Bank preeminence and long tradition of appointing the president.

Cheney impeachment introduced pdf
Democratic presidential candidate and Ohio congressman Dennis Kucinich has introduced articles of impeachment against VP Dick Cheney. Specifically, there are three charges that the Vice President: *Fabricated a threat of Iraqi WMD to justify a war of choice *Fabricated the connection between al Qaeda and Saddam *Is currently fabricating causes for war on Iran.

President is destroying faith in justice system
The stresses President Bush imposed on our military and our reputation abroad have now been spread with the same incompetence on the nation’s justice system. Much harm has been done by the political firings of federal prosecutors who were, in the words of a Justice Department officer, not “loyal Bushies.” It will take the next two presidents to put things back together. Gonzales may never really have thought of himself as the nation’s chief magistrate, only a legal valet Bush brought with him from Texas brandishing a Harvard law degree. Crucial decisions at the Justice Department, Gonzales on Thursday suggested, may have been left to presidential adviser Karl Rove or other dark figures at the White House, in Congress and in the Republican political committees. Members of the House and Senate have no business whatsoever calling federal prosecutors and telling them who to indict. It’s inexcusable interference with the nation’s justice system and a violation of the codes of ethics of both houses. It ought to be a crime.

Bush Foreign Aid Head Resigns Over Call Girl Links
The head of the Bush administration's foreign aid programs resigned Friday, a day after being interviewed about an alleged prostitution ring run by the so-called D.C. Madam. Randall Tobias' name had turned up in an investigation into the high-priced call girl service. According to ABC News, Tobias confirmed he had called the escort service to hire women to give him massages at his condo. But Tobias, who is married, reportedly said there was no sex during the visits.

The Secrets of the Christian Right: Pushing "The Word"
The author of “American Fascists” reports on the cult-like recruiting tactics of the Christian right, including the manipulative and highly successful practice of “love bombing.” There is a false, but effective, fiction that one has to be born again to be a Christian. The Christian right refuses to acknowledge the worth of anyone's religious experience unless, in the words of its tired and opaque cliché, one has accepted "Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Savior." The emotional meltdown that leads to the conversion experience -- one often induced in crowds skillfully manipulated and broken down by demagogues -- is one of the most pernicious tools of the movement. Through conversion one surrenders to a higher authority. And the higher authority, rather than God, is the preacher who steps in to take over one's life. Being born again, and the process it entails, has far more in common with recruitment into a cult than it does with genuine belief.

An Army of Pat Robertson Acolytes in Bush Administration
Since Robertson's failed presidential campaign, coverage of him has largely focused on his mercurial and bizarre personality. He seemed only to appear in the news when one of his many entertainingly outrageous gaffes or false prophecies earned publicity. While Robertson's hysterical episodes deserved all the coverage they generated, with a few notable exceptions, the mainstream press habitually ignored his political machinations. Thousands of Christian right cadres are waging the culture war from inside the White House, federal agencies and Republican congressional offices. Together they will continue to inflame conflicts that were previously unimaginable. Monica Goodling, a previously unknown Justice Department official who served as liaison to the White House, has become a key figure in the Attorneygate scandal. When newly released emails revealed the prominent role Goodling played in engineering the firing of seven US Attorneys, Goodling pled the Fifth Amendment, refusing to testify under oath.

The Great Illusion
In the sixties and seventies, a group of right-wingers in the United States formed a society of vindictive and power hungry men who thought they could reinvent reality. Initially they received little notice and operated inside the American Enterprise Institute; that think tank became the womb for these megalomaniacs and their monstrous ambition of remaking the world. Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Paul Wolfowitz were among them and the movement was to turn into a preposterous beast. The group called themselves Neoconservatives although they were hardly conservatives in the traditional sense and were very much out there on a new and tenuous limb. As the group assumed greater visibility, they established their goal as the creation of an artificial world which the U.S. empire would rule single-handedly. Ignoring history, they were set on creating an illusory world, one where they alone would set the rules, decide who would run big corporations, who would dominate the world scene, who would control the enormous oil wealth of the Middle East and Central Asia, who would dictate the fate of the world – without taking into consideration the ambitions of the rest of the world or the aspirations of human beings. This virtual universe began to turn into a frightening reality decades later when these men managed to seize power. When the Soviet Union was unmasked as being merely a mouse that roared rather than a fearful dragon, the Neoconservatives saw the opening they had awaited; the United States could now take over the running of the planet.

American's
A lot of people have given American's a bum rap for being stupid and knowing nothing about the world, but the reality couldn't be further from the truth as I discovered on the streets asking U.S. citizensd about the world their country runs.

Love Letters
A collection of Right Wing letters to Ava Lowery, a 16 year old peace activist and Youtube video producer from Alabama.

New Rule: Traitors don’t get to question my patriotism [EXCELLENT VIDEO]
What could be less patriotic than constantly screwing things up for America? You know, it's literally hard to keep up with the sheer volume of scandals in the Bush administration. Which is why I like to download the latest scandals right onto my IPod. That way, I can catch up on this week's giant f**k up on my drive into work. In fact, Bush has so many scandals he could open a chain of "Bush Scandal and F**k Up" theme restaurants. Hmmm, should I get the Harriet Miers Meatloaf, or the Katrina Crabcakes? You know, not to generalize, but the 29 percent of people who still support President Bush are the ones who love to pronounce themselves more patriotic than the rest of us. But just saying you're patriotic is like saying you have a...

Is the American Empire on the Brink of Collapse?
U.S. military expert Chalmers Johnson argues the catastrophe in Iraq and the staggering cost of running a military that stretches across 130 countries on 737 bases may finally cost America its empire. I believe that we're close to a tipping point right now. What happened to the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991 could easily be happening to us for essentially the same reasons. Imperial overreach, inability to reform, rigid economic ideology. ... The world's balance of power didn't change one iota on September 11, 2001. The only way we could lose the power and influence we had at that time was through our own actions, and that's what we did.

Conservatives Cost a Lot of Money
Let's put it this way: Carpet bombing is much more costly in every way than good intelligence and loyal allies. It's a pocketbook issue. The general effect of conservative governance, I mean other than criminal malfeasance, neglect of the citizenry, mashing of constitutional protections, trashing of the environment, bashing of real patriotism, and crashing of the ship of state into the nearest hundred-foot-high cliff (bad metaphor, but here's a contest: think of a better one!) is that it's so damned expensive. The fight, since Reagan, has been literally for the soul of the US. Conservatives are determined to define the nation as a hierarchy in which white Christian men are at the top, unchallenged by other groups, but able to extend favor to nonthreatening men or good-looking women as individuals. They want to define the world as a place where what America says goes, no matter how far away other countries are, or how much they disagree with our policies.

Scholars take on Bush over access to presidential papers
In December 1989, one month after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Presidents George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev met in Malta and, in the words of a Soviet spokesman, "buried the Cold War at the bottom of the Mediterranean." The Russian transcript of that momentous summit meeting was published in Moscow in 1993. Fourteen years later, American historians are still waiting for their own government to release a transcript. Now lawmakers and scholars are hoping to pry open the gateway to such archival documents by lifting what they say has been a major obstacle to historical research: a directive issued by the current Bush White House in 2001 that has severely slowed or prevented the release of important presidential papers. President George W. Bush's 2001 executive order restricted the release of presidential records by giving sitting presidents the power to delay the release of papers indefinitely, while extending the control of former presidents, vice presidents and their families. It also changed the system from one that automatically released documents 30 days after a current or former president is notified to one that withholds papers until a president specifically permits their release.

Why Conservatives Can't Govern
Alberto Gonzales is the latest imperious conservative tripped up by his own ideological arrogance.

Think the Nation's Debt Doesn't Affect You? Think Again
In addition to borrowing from the world's poorest countries, Bush & Co. are secretly confiscating your hard-earned dollars to support their out-of-control spending habits. With Bush and cronies having added over $3 trillion dollars to the national debt, the country's credit card tab now stands at $8.8 trillion. This represents an astounding increase of over 45 percent since Bush came into office in January of 2001. And all this fiscal profligacy took place during the years when the CBO originally forecasted record surpluses of approximately $2.5 trillion. And there is no end in sight to the deficits. If the U.S. does not change course, the rest of the world could end up owning 15 trillion-dollars worth of the United States. That's equal to the value of all American stock.

Why It’s Only Getting Worse
Jeff Cohen talks about life in the big media trenches, why news coverage is only getting worse, and how horse race politics and the corporatization of information are killing American democracy.

The Decider is Delusional
Is George Bush delusional? No, that question is not an attack on his intelligence. Nor is it a criticism of some bizarre new position he has taken with regard to the affairs of state – although, as it happens, he has. Rather, it is a serious question about whether the president understands what is going on around him. After he announced Tuesday that the White House would not make a serious effort to cooperate with the Senate Judiciary Committee's investigation into the firing of U.S. Attorneys who would not politicize their prosecutions, the president was asked about several of the attorneys who had been removed. "I'm sorry, just frankly, it bubbled to the surface the way it has, for the U.S. attorneys involved," answered Bush. "I really am. These are -- I put them in there in the first place. They're decent people. They serve at the pleasure of the president. And yet, now, they're being held up in the scrutiny of all this. And it's just -- what I said in comments, I meant about them. I appreciated their service, and I'm sorry that the situation has gotten to where it's got. But that's Washington, D.C., for you.

Bush Drunk Again?
Our White House Press Corps sources report further disturbing news about President George W. Bush. Our sources have witnessed a clearly inebriated Bush approaching members of the press corps and making rude comments, including one particularly crude remark about First Lady Laura Bush. In that case, Bush, nodding toward Laura, called her a "c**t." While Bush's drinking is no secret to the White House press contingent, that particular comment was reportedly the worst they have heard uttered by Bush. Our sources also report that Laura Bush's stays at the White House are less frequent and that her overnight trips to the Mayflower Hotel often coincide with the president's drunken binges.

Bush Erupts in Yet Another Temper Tantrum
Besieged as never before during his six years in the White House, George Bush lashed out yesterday at his Democratic foes in Congress. The President's tirade - delivered in the somewhat incongruous setting of an address to the National Cattlemen's Beef Association - came the day after the Senate, hitherto a usually reliable bulwark in his defence, had followed the House of Representatives in setting a mid-2008 date for the departure of the bulk of US combat troops from Iraq. ... [Team Bush continues on an ever downward spiral in light of] the scandal over the treatment of wounded Iraq war veterans at the US Army's Walter Reed Hospital, making a mockery of Mr Bush's professions to be champion of the country's armed forces. Now Washington is gripped by the controversy that threatens to bring down Alberto Gonzales, the Attorney General and a close colleague of Mr Bush since his days as governor of Texas. The row stems from the firing of eight US prosecutors last year for ostensibly political reasons. At least one of them was dismissed at the urging of Karl Rove, the President's once all-powerful political adviser.

Team Bush: Driving Up Gas Prices
2006 was the year that oil prices came close to breaching $80 per barrel. This was despite the fact that there were no significant supply interruptions and oil demand actually fell in industrialized countries. That raises the question of what caused the spike. It turns out there is good reason to believe that record oil prices may be due to our own strategic oil reserve, which the Bush administration may have been manipulating to drive up prices for the benefit of its clients. This is something Congress must investigate, and here is some preliminary evidence.

Neocons in Cheney's Office Fund al Qaeda
Seymour Hersh's recent report that Iran-Contra veterans working out of Dick Cheney's office are using stolen funds from Iraq to arm al Qaeda-tied groups and foment a larger Sunni-Shia war is a very big deal.

The Ungreening of America: Dirty Secrets
News: No president has gone after the nation's environmental laws with the same fury as George W. Bush -- and none has been so adept at staying under the radar. Few American's fully appreciate the scope and fury of the Bush administration's anti-environmental agenda. "What they're doing makes the Reagan administration look innocent," says Buck Parker, executive director of Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law firm. The Bush administration has been gutting key sections of the Clean Water and Clean Air acts, laws that have traditionally had bipartisan support and have done more to protect the health of Americans than any other environmental legislation. It has crippled the Superfund program, which is charged with cleaning up millions of pounds of toxic industrial wastes such as arsenic, lead, mercury, and vinyl chloride in more than 1,000 neighborhoods in 48 states. It has sought to cut the EPA's enforcement division by nearly one-fifth, to its lowest level on record; fines assessed for environmental violations dropped by nearly two-thirds in the administration's first two years; and criminal prosecutions-the government's weapon of last resort against the worst polluters-are down by nearly one-third. So why aren't more people aware that George W. Bush is compiling what is arguably the worst environmental record of any president in recent history?

Bush isolated from GOP lawmakers
Republican leaders in Congress (asking not to be quoted by name) early last week predicted Gonzales would fall because the Justice Department botched firing eight U.S. attorneys. By week's end, they stipulated that the president would not sack his longtime aide and that Gonzales would leave only on his own initiative. But there was still an ominous lack of congressional support for him. But this is less a Gonzales problem than a Bush problem. With nearly two years remaining in his presidency, Bush is alone. In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress -- not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment. Gonzales is the least-popular Cabinet member on Capitol Hill. The word most often used by Republicans in describing the management of the Justice Department under Gonzales is "incompetent." The I-word (incompetence) is used by Republicans in describing the Bush administration generally. Several of them I talked to described a trifecta of incompetence: the Walter Reed hospital scandal, the FBI's misuse of the Patriot Act and the U.S. attorneys firing fiasco. Bush isolated from GOP lawmakers
Republican leaders in Congress (asking not to be quoted by name) early last week predicted Gonzales would fall because the Justice Department botched firing eight U.S. attorneys. By week's end, they stipulated that the president would not sack his longtime aide and that Gonzales would leave only on his own initiative. But there was still an ominous lack of congressional support for him. But this is less a Gonzales problem than a Bush problem. With nearly two years remaining in his presidency, Bush is alone. In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress -- not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment. Gonzales is the least-popular Cabinet member on Capitol Hill. The word most often used by Republicans in describing the management of the Justice Department under Gonzales is "incompetent." The I-word (incompetence) is used by Republicans in describing the Bush administration generally. Several of them I talked to described a trifecta of incompetence: the Walter Reed hospital scandal, the FBI's misuse of the Patriot Act and the U.S. attorneys firing fiasco.

An Impartial Interrogation of George W. Bush George
They are published here as part of Moral Compass, a series focusing on the spoken word. I'm glad to be back at the National Press Club. Indeed, at the age of eighty-four, I'm glad to be anywhere. In my younger years when the subject of aging came up, trying to sound worldly wise, I would say, "It doesn't matter so much the number of years you have, but what you do with those years." I don't say that anymore. I now want to reach a hundred. Why? Because I thoroughly enjoy life and there are so many things I must still do before entering the mystery beyond. The most urgent of these is to get American soldiers out of the Iraqi hellhole Bush-Cheney and their neoconservative theorists have created in what was once called the cradle of civilization. It is believed to be the location of the Garden of Eden.

2nd Gonzales aide quits
The aide to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales who has invoked the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying before Congress resigned Friday. Monica Goodling is the second member of Gonzales' senior staff to quit in the scandal over the firing of eight U.S. attorneys. Goodling, a senior counselor to Gonzales, worked with Kyle Sampson, who was the attorney general's chief of staff, on deciding who to fire. Goodling submitted a brief letter to Gonzales announcing her departure. After receiving her law degree in 1999 from Regent University, founded by evangelist Pat Robertson, Goodling joined the Justice Department under Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Bush feels sting
The President's firing of eight US attorneys has developed into a political controversy that may force him to sack his close friend, the Attorney-General, Alberto Gonzales. More crucially, the Democrats are determined to fulfil what they see as the mandate they were given in the midterm congressional elections: to end US involvement in Iraq and bring home the troops.

Bush-Carlyle War Profiteering Connection
There are so many connections between the Bushes, the ‘Defence’ establishment, the global trade in arms, that the mind boggles. That it barely gets a mention in the mainstream media (except of course, to simply ‘report’ it) is a scandal of the grandest proportions. But it only goes to show the power of big business and the political class they have installed in both the US and the UK (after all, John Major is employed by the Carlyle Group and BAE Systems, the major arms supplier to the UK, is part-owned by Carlyle). Not only the connections beggar belief but the sheer hypocrisy of the Bush government should put it in a new category in the Guinness Book of Records! As you’ll see from just of a few of the links to information on Carlyle below, their tentacles extend to many of the armed conflicts going on in the world. There’s no business like war business!

Debt and the Bush budgets
According to the whimsical Bush administration's fiscal 2008 budget blueprint, the unified budget deficit of $248 billion in fiscal 2006 will decrease to $244 billion in 2007 and $239 billion in 2008. In reality however, while the Bush administration has been taking victory laps as the unified budget deficit declined from $413 billion in 2004 to $318 billion in 2005 and $248 billion in 2006, the national debt soared by $595 billion in 2004, $551 billion in 2005 and $546 billion in 2006. To put a fine point on the matter, the national debt has increased from $5.728 trillion on Jan. 20, 2001, to $8.713 trillion last week (The estimated population of the United States is 301,102,075 so each citizen's share of this debt is $29,205.09). When fiscal 2007 ends on Sept. 30, the national debt will exceed $9 trillion.

Bush's War on the World Results in a Huge boost in Military Spending by Chinese
China will boost military spending by almost 18 per cent this year, a higher than predicted increase that will unnerve the US and fuel fears about the real nature of the "peaceful rise" of the world's most populous country. The increase was revealed yesterday in a briefing before today's opening of the annual session of the National People's Congress, China's parliament. [Editor: Team Bush cowboy diplomacy and schizophrenic foreign policy creates an environment of paranoia worldwide. Click here to learn more about military spending by world governments.]

The War on Terror Is the Leading Cause of Terrorism
It's official: A new report shows that the U.S. has made the world more dangerous—not just for Americans, but for everyone. Innocent people across the world are now paying the price of the "Iraq effect," with the loss of hundreds of lives directly linked to the invasion and occupation by American and British forces.

It’s Time for Congress to Investigate the Ties Between the Bush Family and Osama bin Laden
Now that the U.S. Congress is investigating the truth of President George W. Bush's statements about the Iraq war, they might look into one of his most startling assertions: that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden. Critics dismissed that as an invention. They were wrong. There was a link, but not the one Bush was selling. The link between Hussein and Bin Laden was their banker, BCCI. But the link went beyond the dictator and the jihadist -- it passed through Saudi Arabia and stretched all the way to George W. Bush and his father. BCCI was the Bank of Credit and Commerce International, a dirty offshore bank that then-President Ronald Reagan's Central Intelligence Agency used to run guns to Hussein, finance Osama bin Laden, move money in the illegal Iran-Contra operation and carry out other "agency" black ops.

Hillary Knew Bill Lied
Hillary Clinton knew years before she voted for the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein didn't have WMDs -- Bill Clinton lied about Iraq's weapons programs to justify attacking the country in 1998.

An Army of Christian Right Lawyers Is Waging War on the Constitution
A look at the Christian Right's legal muscle leading the fight to end the separation of church and state. Last year, ADF received over $21 million in individual and foundation funding. Some of the major donors include the Covenant Foundation, financed by the "Granddaddy" of the Texas Christian Right, business mogul James Leininger; various members of the Amway-Prince Automotive empire, including the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, whose vice president, Erik Prince (Edgar and Elsa's son, and brother of Betsy DeVos, wife of the Amway magnate, right-wing financier, and unsuccessful Republican gubernatorial candidate Richard DeVos), founded the Blackwater USA military-security firm; and the Bolthouse Foundation, which is underwritten chiefly with profits from Bolthouse Farms, a family-run California company whose products are often seen at organic markets and Whole Foods. Bolthouse requires recipients of its grants to pledge adherence to a statement of faith that includes the declaration that "man was created by a direct act of God in His image, not from previously existing creatures" and a belief in "the everlasting blessedness of the saved and the everlasting punishment of the lost."

Can We Let Intelligence Officials Lie Without Punishment?
Lies have consequences . All those who helped President George W. Bush launch a war of aggression -- termed by Nuremberg "the supreme international crime" -- have blood on their hands and must be held accountable. This includes corrupt intelligence officials. Otherwise, look for them to perform the same service in facilitating war on Iran. "They should have been shot," said former State Department intelligence director, Carl Ford, referring to ex-CIA director George Tenet and his deputy John McLaughlin, for their "fundamentally dishonest" cooking of intelligence to please the White House.

The Psychology Behind the Worst Possible President
Back in the year 2000, when George W. Bush lost the popular vote and was shoe-horned into office by the Supreme Court in spite of clear conflicts of interest on the part of Scalia and Thomas, the psychology of Little George was known to only a few. To most of us he seemed like a doofus -- a more or less well-meaning guy who enjoyed running things like baseball teams and the State of Texas if not too much work was involved. Had been an alcoholic and a drug user, but had apparently come clean in some hazy, quasi-religious way -- that was his personal history to many Americans (if not to all those who met with Karl Rove behind closed doors and heard the truth).

Bush Continues to Unite the World... Against Him
Despite two years of a concentrated effort by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and her public diplomacy major- doma Karen Hughes to boost Washington's global image, more people around the world have an unfavourable opinion of U.S. policies than at any time in recent memory. The survey, which polled more than 26,000 people in 25 countries, including the U.S., between November and January, found that a 49 percent plurality overall believes the U.S. is playing a "mainly negative" role in the world today

Find Elected Officials Enter ZIP Code: or Search by State See Issues & Action Select An Issue Area: Contact The Media Enter ZIP Code: or