when will we start referring to the declaration of independence with the word "corporation" substituted for "people"?

Lowering the Bar for Government Ethics? (washingtonpost.com): "On Dec. 15, former House Energy and Commerce Committee chairman W.J. 'Billy' Tauzin (R-La.) took a job as top lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry. Tauzin and another prominent House member had negotiated jobs for themselves while heading panels responsible for legislation that affected the lawmakers' prospective employers.
The previous week, the White House vigorously defended Bernard B. Kerik, its choice for secretary of homeland security, against conflict-of-interest allegations -- including earning $6.2 million in two years consulting for a company that did business with the Department of Homeland Security. Kerik withdrew only after more personal revelations emerged.
In addition, the Department of Health and Human Services granted a waiver to a top administration official so he could negotiate a job for himself even while working on legislation that could benefit prospective employers. Meanwhile, a Pentagon civilian official arranged a favorable contract for Boeing Co. before taking a job with the aerospace manufacturer.
Ethics and government accountability groups say these events are a sign of weakening ethical restrictions. 'We're seeing an easing of ethical standards and disclosure standards,' said Charles Lewis, who runs the nonprofit Center for Public Integrity. 'They can dress it up any way they want, but they're trying to increase the employment opportunities for their officials.'
For example, the Office of Government Ethics has proposed, and Bush supports, legislation to ease financial disclosure requirements for government officials, reducing the amount of conflict-of-interest information that candidates and their families must report. The House recently passed a version of the legislation.
In addition, the ethics o"

corrupt to the core. hypocrisy at its finest. democracy has lost another heartbeat.

House to Consider Relaxing Its Rules (washingtonpost.com): "House Republican leaders are urging members to alter one of the chamber's fundamental ethics rules, which would make it harder for lawmakers to discipline a colleague.

The proposed change would essentially negate a general rule of conduct that the ethics committee has often cited in admonishing lawmakers -- including Majority Leader Tom DeLay -- for bringing discredit on the House even if their behavior was not covered by a specific regulation. Backers of the rule, adopted three decades ago, say it is important because the House's conduct code cannot anticipate every instance of questionable behavior that might reflect poorly on the chamber.

Republicans, returning to the Capitol on Tuesday after increasing their House majority by three seats in the Nov. 2 election, also want to relax a restriction on relatives of lawmakers accepting foreign and domestic trips from groups interested in legislation before the House.
A third proposed rule change would allow either party to stop the House ethics committee from investigating a complaint against a member.
Currently, if the panel, which is evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats, is deadlocked on a complaint, the matter automatically goes to an investigative subcommittee after 45 days. The proposed change would drop any complaint that is not backed by a majority vote to move it forward.
Government watchdog groups called the proposals startling and unjustified. If the proposed rules are adopted next week as GOP leaders suggest, they would amount to 'the biggest backtracking on House ethics rules that we have seen,' said Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21. "

of course bush refuses to hold him accountable. dictators never do such nasty things to each other.

Another Pass for Pakistan (washingtonpost.com): "TODAY PAKISTANI President Pervez Musharraf will break yet another of the promises he has made to his country and the world since seizing power in a 1999 military coup against an elected government. A year ago, in exchange for parliamentary support for a package of laws increasing his powers as president, extending his rule through 2007 and curtailing elected government through the creation of a military-dominated national security council, Mr. Musharraf pledged to resign from his post as Army chief of staff by Dec. 31. It was to be a modest step toward returning Pakistan to civilian rule, if not democracy. Yet now Mr. Musharraf is reneging, claiming that his continuance in uniform is essential to the country's 'unity.' He is wrong, of course -- but sadly, his chief ally, President Bush, is unwilling to hold him accountable. "

the beginning of the end of democracy. protecting criminals is not what we elected these people to do.

The New York Times > Washington > G.O.P. to Make Ethics Inquiries Harder to Begin: "WASHINGTON, Dec. 29 - In the wake of back-to-back ethics slaps at the House majority leader, Tom DeLay, House Republicans are preparing to make it more difficult to initiate ethics investigations and could remove the Republican chairman who presided over the admonishments of Mr. DeLay last fall."

how DARE we hold anybody republican accountable!

when you have leaders who not only turn their backs, but rather encourage such discontempt for human suffering.... this is what happens.
CNN.com - American diver underwater during catastrophe - Dec 28, 2004: "'She said she saw a lot of trash in the water. The dive master said it was really rude for people to throw trash. Then they saw large bits of debris and thought there might have been a boat crash,' Helen Wachs said.
She said her daughter didn't know what had happened until the dive master got a text message from his wife telling him about the catastrophe.
Soon they saw bodies floating past them, Wachs' mother said in an interview from Oakland, California, where she lives.
Once they returned to shore, the couple did what they could to help, Helen Wachs said.
'I can't describe carrying a moaning person who just saw his girlfriend killed down a hill in the middle of the night,' the e-mail said. 'I saw more bodies than I care to report. The hotel where we were staying is mostly gone. We lost everything, but our lives.'
Faye Wachs said she was impressed by the efforts of the Thai government and the International Committee for the Red Cross, but 'she was appalled at the treatment they got' from the U.S. government, her mother said.
At the airport in Bangkok, other governments had set up booths to greet nationals who had been affected and to help repatriate them, she said.
That was not the case with the U.S. government, Wachs told her mother. It took the couple three hours, she said, to find the officials from the American consulate, who were in the VIP lounge.
Because they had lost all their possessions, including their documentation, they had to have new passports issued.
But the U.S. officials demanded payment to take the passport pictures, Helen Wachs said.
The couple had managed to hold on to their ATM card, so they paid for the photos and helped other Americans who did not have any money get their pictures taken "

how in God's name does christmas remind our soldiers of why they are there? spreading christianity one bomb at a time? i think this provides even more proof to allegations that this war is a religious crusade.


Yahoo! News - Birth of Christ reminds US soldiers of their mission in Iraq: "BAGHDAD (AFP) - US soldiers in Iraq (news - web sites) celebrated the birth of Jesus while eating Christmas dinner in full body armour, with many explaining how the nativity story continues to motivate their mission in the war-torn country.
...
Elsewhere on the base, a few dozen soldiers filed into the austere chapel on Camp Cuervo, a base on the northeastern side of Baghdad, where three long rows of bleached pews face a big wooden cross. "

camp cuervo??? is that down the road from tequilaville?

and speaking of rewriting history.... the purge is on.

CIA removing documents from National Archives :: UnderReported.com :: Surprising stories from the media and primary sources: "[David] Geyer commented that the practice of submitting an entire FRUS [Foreign Relations] manuscript to the CIA had resulted in the reclassification of documents located at the National Archives. NARA, however, merely added these documents to the list of withdrawn items without indicating that the documents had been declassified previously. Don McIlwain noted that the Department of Energy cited the Kyl-Lott amendment as justification for reclassifying previously declassified documents. CIA reviewers, however, claimed the right to remove documents from the open files that, in their view, had never been 'properly declassified.'"

and while i'm on that page..... a perfect example of how the Dumbification Of America started. a question was asked about iraq, and rummy answers as if it was about terrorists.

DoD News: Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with Parade Magazine: "Q: What it sounds like you're saying too in this process then is that we're going to need to address Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, particularly in the light of even the evidence that with inspectors Saddam continued to build his arsenal through the 1990s and now we don't know what exactly has happened. Is that going to be a top priority as well?
Rumsfeld: Those are decisions for the president, but he has been very clear that he is deeply concerned about the problem of terrorism. He is going to find terrorists and keep them out and root them out, and he's going to create an environment that suggests to countries that are harboring them that they ought to stop. "

again, rummy slips.... and hardly anybody notices (except those fine folx on DU)

DoD News: Secretary Rumsfeld Interview with Parade Magazine: "Here we're talking about plastic knives and using an American Airlines flight filed with our citizens, and the missile to damage this building and similar (inaudible) that damaged the World Trade Center. The only way to deal with this problem is by taking the battle to the terrorists, wherever they are, and dealing with them. "

had to snap this one before someone decided to rewrite history and remove it.
CNN.com - Transcripts: "DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: And to change that way of living, would strike at the very essence of our country.

And I think all of us have a sense if we imagine the kind of world we would face if the people who bombed the mess hall in Mosul, or the people who did the bombing in Spain, or the people who attacked the United States in New York, shot down the plane over Pennsylvania and attacked the Pentagon, the people who cut off peoples' heads on television to intimidate, to frighten -- indeed the word 'terrorized' is just that. Its purpose is to terrorize, to alter behavior, to make people be something other than that which they want to be.

And that is exactly what we cannot allow to happen. "

a couple of good letters today, actually more than 2....

Letters To The Editor:
David Yepsen's Dec. 19 column, "Welcome Pro-life Democrats," praises some in the Democratic Party for wanting to embrace pro-life candidates. Meanwhile, the blatantly anti-life American foreign policy - a policy developed and maintained by men and women from BOTH parties - remains free of any criticism.

It seems pretty hypocritical to me, but I bet there are plenty of so-called pro-lifers out there who are also - thanks to convenient rationalizations to clear their consciences - vehemently pro-war.

Perhaps this is the type of sanctimoniousness Voltaire had in mind when he quipped: "It is forbidden to kill; therefore, all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets."
-Steve Hosch,
Gilbert.


"This lifelong Democrat will welcome pro-lifers into our party when the Republicans welcome pro-choicers into theirs.
-Ira Lacher,
Des Moines."