April 6, 2005 — A Washington lobbyist under federal investigation for his lobbying activities arranged a lavish overseas trip to the island of Saipan for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, over the New Year's holiday in 1997.DeLay, his wife and daughter, and several aides, stayed for free at a beachfront resort.
U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar has asked for a federal and a state investigation into whether a Republican Party staffer should be charged with impersonating a Secret Service agent at a Denver town hall meeting on Social Security held by President Bush last month."I supported laws as (state) Attorney General, to keep people from impersonating law enforcement officers," said Salazar, D-Colorado, on Wednesday."We don't know the facts here, and I think in order to determine whether a prosecution is warranted, an investigation should occur first. The investigation may lead to the conclusion that nothing happened here, but the investigation may result in a conclusion that laws have been violated and somebody has to be punished."On Tuesday, Salazar sent a letter asking for an investigation to Dennis Schindel, with the Office of the Inspector General for the Department of the Treasury, and to Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrisey.The request for an investigation comes one day after U.S. Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., joined U.S. Rep. Raul M. Grijalva, D-Ariz., in asking the House Government Reform Committee to investigate several recent incidents in which citizens were removed from presidential events in Colorado, Arizona and North Dakota because of their political beliefs.
fukn blogger and its wsywyg editor. cut & paste jus aint right .... but i'm in a hurry.
A piece inside the Journal points out that right after World War
II, U.S. war-crimes tribunals prosecuted Japanese guards not only for torture
but also for merely humiliating American prisoners. One guard
who mainly forced POWs to salute non-stop for 30 minutes was sentenced to 12
years. "Extreme brutality or serious injury to the victim is not a necessary
element" for conviction, wrote one judge. Defense lawyers for Gitmo
detainees—and human-rights lawyers—are gleefully pointing to the convictions.
But the military argues there's no parallel, since the detainees now are
"unlawful combatants." (The WSJ adds some background in Web-only sidebars.)
The Chinook went down around 2:30 p.m. about 100 miles southwest of Kabul in a desert plain near the city of Ghazni, she said. Eighteen crew members and passengers were listed on the flight manifest, 16 of whom have been confirmed dead, according to officials. The two others remained unaccounted for when recovery operations were called off for the night.
The names of the dead are being withheld pending notification of their families, officials said. According to Moore, military investigators had not determined the nationalities or the military branches of those killed.
The Associated Press quoted the police chief of Ghazni, Abdul Rahman Sarjang, as saying that all of the dead were wearing U.S. military uniforms.
Moore said there was "no indication" the crash was caused by enemy fire. The second helicopter arrived at Bagram without incident.
they were all uniformed, and the quoted no indication of enemy fire, yet the 2nd helo didn't try to help? and why is this story coming by the AP with quotes from a POLICE OFFICER???
can ya smell the bushite stench?
"It's all about perception, to convince the American public that everything is going as planned and we're right on schedule to be out of here," said one adviser, Army Staff Sgt. Craig E. Patrick, 40, a reservist from Rock Island, Ill. "I mean, they can [mislead] the American people, but they can't [mislead] us. These guys are not ready."
It's comforting to know our beloved local grocer is helping us all understand what everyone else is thinking and talking about. Dahl's ban on non-English conversation by employees will at least calm the fretting from self-centered customers who think they deserve to eavesdrop on any conversation around them. How appropriate a policy given that the world will probably lose half its spoken languages over the next century. If everyone would just speak English we wouldn't be bothered with all those quirky languages us Americans don't understand.
It reminds me of a fitting joke. What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Trilingual. Two languages? Bilingual. And what do you call someone who speaks one language? American.
Dahl's' insensitive reaction to narrow-minded customers who are so paranoid to think that whenever someone is speaking another language in their presence that they are being made fun of, may just be the most American policy in the workplace.
- William Mikesell, Clive
attribution
"A third of party members polled said Democrats should prevent Republicans from "going too far in pushing their agenda."
April 6, 2005 — A Washington lobbyist under federal investigation for his lobbying activities arranged a lavish overseas trip to the island of Saipan for House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, over the New Year's holiday in 1997.
DeLay, his wife and daughter, and several aides, stayed for free at a beachfront resort.
A Texas energy company being investigated with regards to improper fundraising by those connected with House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) held a baby shower for DeLay's daughter Danielle Ferro in May 2002—and the event was attended by lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who paid for some of the congressman’s overseas travel, RAW STORY has found.
The shower, reported in the Washington, D.C. newspaper Roll Call Jun. 10, 2002 (article posted here), was held at the Washington offices of Reliant Energy Inc., a Texas-based power company that has given heavily to DeLay and his political action committees.
Donations collected from Reliant by a DeLay-linked political action committee are now the subject of a Texas state probe. DeLay’s daughter Danielle helped manage that committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, and her records have been subpoenaed by an Austin grand jury.
The Journal mentions a British government report criticizing U.S. tactics in Iraq. "Excessive use by the U.S. forces of overwhelming firepower has also been counterproductive," says the report, "provoking antagonism toward the coalition among ordinary Iraqis."
A piece inside USAT says the Army is about a thousand short of its goal of 8,000 factory-armored Humvees in Afghanistan and Iraq. More interestingly, the Army just increased (for the umpteenth time) the number of such Humvees it wants to 10,000.
A piece inside the LAT says that while politicians in Baghdad are finally getting their act together, things aren't going so well with local councils. "The councils are in a much bigger mess than the National Assembly," said one deputy minister. "And no one is paying attention."
WASHINGTON, April 5 - The wife and daughter of Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, have been paid more than $500,000 since 2001 by Mr. DeLay's political action and campaign committees, according to a detailed review of disclosure statements filed with the Federal Election Commission and separate fund-raising records in Mr. DeLay's home state, Texas.
The WP fronts yet another fishy travel expedition by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. In 1997, DeLay jetted over to Moscow on a trip that seems to have been financed by lobbyists at the service of the Russian government. DeLay reported that the trip was funded by a D.C. nonprofit, but the Post says people "involved in planning DeLay's trip" confirmed it was actually covered by a "mysterious company registered in the Bahamas." House ethics rules make it a no-no for legislators to have their trips covered by lobbyists or foreign agents.
It's one thing to oppose same-sex marriage, but some supposedly straight people are so obsessed with their hatred of gays that this week in California the High School Conservative Clubs of America and GayMarriageNo.org are holding a "Day of Truth" at which students will wear T-shirts that say, "No Gay" and "Homosexuality is a Sin," and distribute anti-gay literature.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay used the death of Terri Schiavo to hold a press conference during which he accused America's judiciary of being "arrogant, unaccountable, and out of control." Uh, Mr. DeLay, have you looked in the mirror lately?
-Dick Heimer,
Sheffield.
House Majority Leader Tom DeLay used the death of Terri Schiavo to hold a press conference during which he accused America's judiciary of being "arrogant, unaccountable, and out of control." Uh, Mr. DeLay, have you looked in the mirror lately?
If a bunch of street thugs try to intimidate judges, it's criminal conduct of the worst sort because it undermines the rule of law.
If a bunch of congressmen try to intimidate judges, well, that's just politics as practiced by Iowa's own Steve King and cohort Tom DeLay of Texas.
Sgt. Shaun Groom of Garner, who was deployed in February 2003 and returned in August 2004, said the hardest thing to adjust to in Iraq was the sand, the dust and the heat. He said the sand wasn't like sand on the beach. It was more like powder.
The unit also didn't have latrines for the first three months.
Groom, along with 13 other members of the 482nd, was transferred to the 459th Transportation Co. from Springfield, Mo. That's how he met the woman he is now married to, Mitzi, who was serving as a cook in the 459th.
Mitzi Groom, who transferred to the 482nd after marrying Shaun two weeks ago and moving to Iowa, became a truck driver after the unit got to Iraq.
"I couldn't stand the thought of being over there to do nothing," she said. She also had some of the training for the job already.
At first there were no private accommodations for female soldiers, she said.
On top of that, everyone in the unit initially had to go without showers for several days at a time and didn't have a clean place to sleep.
a new game. you should be able to tell whether a sports fan is a democrat or a republican. can you?
This Cardinals fan says, 'Yes!'
I was appalled while reading Sean Keeler's March 25 column about the Cardinals-Cubs airtime on Mediacom ("Cable Picks Cardinals in a Cubs-Crazy Town").
I am a lifetime fan (only 22 years old) of the Cardinals, and I am excited beyond words that I will be able to watch 68 percent of the games. I have written my letters to Mediacom and voiced my opinion, and I am very pleased.
Keeler's column was written in a very negative way. By suggesting Cub fans have alternatives such as boycotting Mediacom, he failed to try to unite everybody. He could have easily included a solution of carrying both teams, where everybody wins, instead of sounding like someone still whining over the 2003 playoffs.
-Jonathan Nielson,
Ames.
With nearly all of its schools at risk of not meeting federal standards under the No Child Left Behind act, Florida wants to make it easier for schools to comply.
Florida asked the federal government Friday to make it easier for schools to comply with the No Child Left Behind act, a rigorous set of rules that only one in four state schools currently are able to meet.
Since President Bush's signature education law passed three years ago, many Florida schools have allocated extra teachers and time to help bring various subgroups of students -- for instance, those in special ed, or with limit-English or low incomes -- up to standard.
Florida's changes, if approved by the U.S. Department of Education, would allow many principals to scale back those efforts.
By one estimate, they also would instantly triple the number of Florida schools making ''adequate yearly progress'' under federal law.
"Florida" didn't ask for anything. (The guy that runs the place is named BUSH, just say it, media. Under Gov. BUSH, schools are failing, and the BUSH administration wants to lower the bar to make BUSH look good. After all, his BROTHER is the EDUCATION president! Remember?)
FINALLY.... from rocky mountain news:
Members of Congress from both parties on Thursday raised sharp questions about the exclusion of political opponents from two taxpayer-funded appearances by President Bush.
Three people were ejected from the president's Social Security town hall meeting in Denver March 21 after they arrived in a car with a "No more blood for oil" bumper sticker.
"The essence of civilization is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak." House Majority Leader Tom DeLay added, "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior."
Angela D. Binns' letter of March 26 declares that articles pertaining to the so-called marriage amendment have been written in an anti-gay context.
She wrote that this subject should be portrayed in a "pro-family" style and fashioned to reflect popular "traditional Midwestern American values."
Her ideas simply deliver prefabricated buzzwords used to camouflage that particular amendment from its actual purpose of instituting brazen discriminatory regulations against law-abiding, taxpaying American citizens into the Constitution.
Furthermore, Binns' suggestion that the Register place a "positive spin" on this topic equates to nothing more than a double standard by requesting tolerance for the intolerant.
-Doug Bucklin,
Des Moines.
Wal-Mart paid $30 million directly in state and local taxes last year apart from the $114 million Wal-Mart generated in sales-tax revenues for the state and local communities.
Seventeen thousand Iowans work at our stores, clubs and distribution center in Iowa. We buy $545 million in goods and services from 1,233 Iowa suppliers who employ more than 64,000 people.
fostering hate from the bottom is nothing.fostering hate from the top is nothing short of being skum.
WASHINGTON - If American forces aren't pulling out of Iraq in a year, a draft will be needed to meet manpower requirements, military analysts warned Wednesday.
With recruitment lagging and no end in sight for U.S. forces in Iraq, the "breaking point" for the nation's all-volunteer military will be mid-2006, agreed Lawrence Korb, a draft opponent and assistant defense secretary in the Reagan administration, and Phillip Carter, a conscription advocate and former Army captain.
(the shiavo case) could have ended back then. But others weighed in, and Terri's family, the Schindlers, stepped up their campaign through media and religious groups. The tube was reconnected.Des Moines Register
Now, seven years later, the case is wending its way to a natural conclusion, after Florida's governor, Jeb Bush, was denied permission to take custody of Terri Schiavo, and the Florida Senate rejected a bill that would have prohibited the denial of food and water. And though Congress took the extraordinary measure of weighing in to give federal courts the authority to review her case, a federal appeals court ruled against reinserting her feeding tube. The Supreme Court refused to get involved.
The NYT off-leads a sneak-peak at a presidential-appointed panel's report on U.S. intel failures. Citing "officials who have seen the report's executive summary," the Times says the commission focuses much of its heat on the CIA's Iraq work but doesn't have any major bombshells. The commission, which the NYT notes operated behind closed doors, and whose creation was initially opposed by President Bush, was not specifically mandated to look at the other side of the question: how the administration portrayed the intel it received. The NYT mentions that the commission made a "case study" out of the much-flawed and rushed 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. What the Times doesn't mention is that the original classified NIE had lots of caveats and CYA language that somehow disappeared from the version that was made public in the run-up to the war.
little by little, time is revealing much more than what the neocons have told us, and more and more of what the non-neocons have told us.FORT BLISS, Texas - An Army reservist accused of killing a detainee in Afghanistan told investigators that the blows that caused the man's death were commonly used to deal with uncooperative prisoners and that his superiors approved of the technique.
Other soldiers testified at a hearing here that they were taught to administer the so-called "compliance blows" in an Army course covering non-lethal tactics and that the blows became an accepted way of dealing with detainees who were considered "combative."
The statement from Pfc. Willie Brand and the testimony from his fellow soldiers provide new evidence that prisoner abuse in Afghanistan and Iraq might have been the result of interrogation and detention practices adopted for the war on terrorism.
Fortune 500 companies that invested millions of dollars in electing Republicans are emerging as the earliest beneficiaries of a government controlled by President Bush and the largest GOP House and Senate majority in a half century.-- the washington post
The Los Angeles Times' top non-local story reports that the CIA closed out a spy ring in 2002 that it had assigned to monitor Iranian militants in South America. The agency was having some success intercepting information related to Tehran and Hezbollah, but top brass decided that the resources would be better spent on al-Qaida and Iraq. "We're going to be starting from near zero," one CIA official complained of future intelligence gathering on Iran.one again, a repuke adventure backfiring. only in this case, a result that which can not be sustained without more fear, blood and chaos. i guess the _is a reason why the republicon color is red.
"We think the appeal is mostly political and not really borne out of good economics,'' Brasher said. "Out of that minimum-wage-earning population, the vast majority, or certainly the biggest plurality, are essentially teenagers.then the author ot the piece proceeds to show just how disconnected from reality that man is:
Among those workers, 56 percent are 20 years old or older and 59 percent are women. According to the report, 37 percent worked between 20 and 34 hours per week while 28 percent worked full time. Thirty-four percent worked fewer than 20 hours per week.
