i wonder how many papers catch this story

A Florida law that bars exit polling near voting places violates the press' rights under the First Amendment, a lawsuit filed by The Associated Press and five television networks alleges.

The lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Miami contends that a 2005 amendment to state law that prohibits asking a voter a "fact" or "opinion" within 100 feet of a polling place is unconstitutional.

"We're asking the court to ensure they can talk to voters in Florida on Election Day within a reasonable distance from polling places," said Susan Buckley, the attorney representing the news organizations.

--story

FOLEY WATCH

gonna start cataloging articles that mention this wretch of a human being.

new york times

washington post

AP

usnewswire

editor and publisher

foxnews

by now it's all over the place.

sound like someone you know?

who does this sound like?

His primary rules were: never allow the public to cool off; never admit a fault or wrong; never concede that there may be some good in your enemy; never leave room for alternatives; never accept blame; concentrate on one enemy at a time and blame him for everything that goes wrong; people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.

(from wikipedia on the big lie)

the whole shebang

the IM's of MAF54 (foley's IM tag)

what's so sinister about this whole affair is that the republican leadership knew about it for a whole year but never told the democrats who insisted that foley resign. no wonder they're referred to as repukes. they make me sick.

and as skids noted on DU:

Republicans put draft dodgers in charge of wars, some guy who thinks the UN should be disbanded in as ambassador, corporate whores in as heads of OSHA and the mining safety agency, a guy who paves over wetlands and wants the EPA to let the states do all the work in as, yes you guessed it, head of the EPA, and oil moguls in charge of energy policy.

more proof that bush let 9/11 happen

The CIA'S top counterterrorism officials felt they could have killed Osama Bin Laden in the months before 9/11, but got the "brushoff" when they went to the Bush White House seeking the money and authorization.

CIA Director George Tenet and his counterterrorism head Cofer Black sought an urgent meeting with then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on July 10, 2001, writes Bob Woodward in his new book "State of Denial."

--source

Site of the Day

http://blueballfixed.ytmnd.com/

when do you call it corruption?

BAGHDAD, Sept. 27 -- A $75 million project to build the largest police academy in Iraq has been so grossly mismanaged that the campus now poses health risks to recruits and might need to be partially demolished, U.S. investigators have found.

The Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S. efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country's security, was so poorly constructed that feces and urine rained from the ceilings in student barracks. Floors heaved inches off the ground and cracked apart. Water dripped so profusely in one room that it was dubbed "the rain forest."

--source

the cities are only a hundred miles away

and i'd sure like to go up and protest.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans have chosen the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St. Paul — in the politically pivotal Midwest — for the 2008 presidential convention, GOP officials said Wednesday.

--story

they do NOT want us there

BAGHDAD, Sept. 26 -- A strong majority of Iraqis want U.S.-led military forces to immediately withdraw from the country, saying their swift departure would make Iraq more secure and decrease sectarian violence, according to new polls by the State Department and independent researchers.

--source

Quote of the Day

from a newspaper in connecticut:

The war in Iraq has worsened the U.S. position regarding the terrorist threat, according to officials familiar with the analysis who talked to reporters. In other words, we are less safe than we were before the war.

they lied and nobody cares

WASHINGTON — Adding to criticism of the Bush administration's prosecution of the war in Iraq, a retired senior general who commanded an infantry division in the conflict said Monday that requests by commanders for more soldiers were repeatedly turned down.

"Many of us routinely asked for more troops," retired Maj. Gen. John R.S. Batiste said, contradicting statements by President Bush and his senior aides that the administration had given the military all the resources it had asked for.

--source

Website of the Day

HERE

iraq is just a "comma" > bush

the transcript from blitzer's interview with the piece of shit:

BLITZER: Let's move on and talk a little bit about Iraq. Because this is a huge, huge issue, as you know, for the American public, a lot of concern that perhaps they are on the verge of a civil war, if not already a civil war…. We see these horrible bodies showing up, tortured, mutilation. The Shia and the Sunni, the Iranians apparently having a negative role. Of course, al Qaeda in Iraq is still operating.

BUSH: Yes, you see — you see it on TV, and that's the power of an enemy that is willing to kill innocent people. But there's also an unbelievable will and resiliency by the Iraqi people…. Admittedly, it seems like a decade ago. I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is — my point is, there's a strong will for democracy. (emphasis added)

something i caught in today's papers that i wanted to keep

for future reference:

The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times all lead with a government report finding that the war in Iraq is hurting the fight against terrorism. The classified National Intelligence Estimate, issued last April, finds that the occupation of Iraq has been a crucible for new, more decentralized extremist cells, while global outrage over the war has proved to be a boon for terrorist recruiters.
The NIE represents the opinions of all 16 intelligence agencies and was approved by Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte. It's worth noting, as all the papers do, that a 2002 NIE was used to build the case for invading Iraq. That history makes the report's stark assessment of the war all the more sobering. Since the report is still classified, the papers rely on sources familiar with the document for tidbits, and as a result the stories all sound very similar. TP won't pretend it's surprised that all three papers do their cover pieces on the same day, five months after the report was issued. It sounds, however, as if the slim 30-page report is a little short on specifics as well: There's no attempt to discern the chances of the U.S. being attacked again, nor does the report make any policy suggestions. The report simply states, one sources tells NYT, "that the Iraq war has made the overall terrorism problem worse."

--today's papers

Letter Of The Day

comes from my old school chum and the father of my neighbor across the street (small towns have that way of doing things like this).

Thirty-eight days into Bill Clinton’s presidency, the WTC was bombed. No one blamed George Bush Sr. Clinton’s Justice Department captured those responsible and put them in prison. No less than 22 planned Al-Qaeda attacks (20 in this country) were thwarted by these arrests.

Clinton tripled the counter-terrorism budget for the FBI, created a national security post and introduced two anti-terrorism bills, all fought by the Republicans in Congress. In 1998, in retaliation for U.S. Embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania, Clinton hit targets in Sudan and Afghanistan.

The Sudanese government never offered up bin Laden. A man named Mansoor Ijaz claimed he knew a Sudan general who could deliver him and suggested sanctions against Sudan be lifted. Sudan’s regime has killed more than two million Christians, deals in slave trade and state-sponsored terrorism. Sandy Berger deemed him unreliable.

U.S. policy deals with governments, not individuals. After the USS Cole attack, Clinton had Richard Clarke devise a comprehensive plan to eliminate al-Qaida. In December 2000, that plan was presented by Sandy Berger to the incoming Bush administration. It was ignored for nine months. In Bush’s first seven months in office, he was away on vacation 42 percent of the time.

In February 2001, the Hart-Rudman report on national security, which cited a very real terrorist threat, was also ignored by Bush’s people. Repeated FBI warnings involving al-Qaida, flight schools, airplanes and terrorists’ chatter were ignored.

Meetings between Clarke, Berger and the Bush administration were continually postponed. Repeated requests by Thomas Pickard of the FBI for manpower and money increases were denied by Attorney General Ashcroft and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. Finally on Sept. 4, 2001, Clarke’s plan reached the Principal’s Committee and they decided to advise Bush to accept it. One week later, the WTC fell. The next day, they blamed Clinton.

What?

--Gene Beller

attribution