Dumbfounded carpoolers

Here's some comment on New York's transit strike.

An Intelligent Judge

AlterNet, and some comment as well.

A federal judge has ruled "intelligent design" cannot be mentioned in biology classes in a Pennsylvania public school district.

The Dover Area School Board violated the Constitution when it ordered that its biology curriculum must include "intelligent design," the notion that life on Earth was produced by an unidentified intelligent cause, U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled Tuesday.

Thank you, Your Honor. We now have a legal precedent.

Update:

The LATimes has a longer article, datelined 20 minutes ago! Damn, I'm good!

Congress: Investigate Bush's Illegal Domestic Spying

There's a letter at Act For Change that will be sent to your Senators, Congresscritter, and Abu ben Gonzales, requesting investigation of Bush's spy crime. You know what to do.

For once, Bush was right

Following up on Fixer's post, Jonathan Alter of Newsweek on Snoopgate.

No wonder Bush was so desperate that The New York Times not publish its story on the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant, in what lawyers outside the administration say is a clear violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I learned this week that on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story. The Times will not comment on the meeting, but one can only imagine the president's desperation.

This time, the president knew publication would cause him great embarrassment and trouble for the rest of his presidency. It was for that reason - and less out of genuine concern about national security - that George W. Bush tried so hard to kill the New York Times story.

Ya done stepped on it big time this time, Georgie. You knew it all along, too. And you renewed the illegal program in writing thirty times. What did you think was gonna happen? That over 500 people in Congress were gonna let you shit all over them and the Constitution because you're such a wonderful leader that you can show arrogance and contempt for the law at will?

Not this time, you stupid motherfucker. I'm lovin' it!

This will all play out eventually in congressional committees and in the United States Supreme Court. If the Democrats regain control of Congress, there may even be articles of impeachment introduced. Similar abuse of power was part of the impeachment charge brought against Richard Nixon in 1974.

If such a blessed thing should occur, and we must make sure it does, the subpoenas and indictments will fly thick and fast and may block out the Sun!

Pretty cool

PSoTD asks the Question of the Day.

What is your tradition, if you have any, for Christmas Eve?

And it got me thinking. So I left this comment.

Going to my sister-in-law's for the Italian fish-a-thon. An eating orgy. The guest list is also fantastic. 2 Catholics, 4 Jews, 2 Hindus, and one Heathen (me). And yes, it is a Christmas celebration. Yes, we all sing Christmas carols. And no, I'm the only one who doesn't practice thier particular religion.

And I look back at it (aside from my misspellings) and I think, 'that's pretty fucking cool'. We do have a pretty cool family. We've been doing this for 15 years, BTW. Personally, I think Jesus would approve.

RICO filings

I think we should call the Republican takeover of the United States what it is. It is an organized criminal conspiracy. This goes far beyond the random acts by a few individuals. It has been coordinated by the leadership of the Republican Party, down to the local levels of government. In short, Organized Crime. That falls under RICO.

In 1970, Congress passed the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, Title 18, United States Code, Sections 1961-1968. At the time, Congress' goal was to eliminate the ill-affects of organized crime on the nation's economy. To put it bluntly, RICO was intended to destroy the Mafia.

Throughout the 1970's, RICO's intended purpose and its actual use ran parallel to each other. Seldom was RICO used outside of the context of the Mafia, and it is not an overstatement to say that civil claims under RICO were simply not brought.

In the 1980's, however, civil lawyers noticed section 1964(c) of the RICO Act, which allows civil claims to be brought by any person injured in their business or property by reason of a RICO violation. Any person who succeeded in establishing a civil RICO claim would automatically receive judgment in the amount of three times their actual damages and would be awarded their costs and attorneys' fees. The financial windfall available under RICO inspired the creativity of lawyers across the nation, and by the late 1980's, RICO was a (if not the most) commonly asserted claim in federal court. Everyone was trying to depict civil claims, such as common law fraud, product defect, and breach of contract as criminal wrongdoing, which would in turn enable the filing of a civil RICO action.

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I'm no legal beagle (the one that lives here [Mrs. F.] could tell you if you're culpable in a negligence case but criminal law is out of bounds) but I'm pretty sure the Republicans would qualify for indictment under the RICO Act. Any of you lawyers agree, disagree? Jane? ReddHedd?

Springtime in Teheran

I think Karena has her tinfoil hat on but then again, what we know as fact today was tinfoil hattery a few years ago.

...

This morning he let it slip during a press conference. He plans to invade Iran. When asked how he could expect American citizens or foreign countries to accept future intelligence reports on WMDs when he blames faulty intelligence on the lack of WMDs in Iraq, Bush slipped and mentioned Iran.

At first it looked like he would try to pass over his mumbled, "Iran," but then he forged ahead. He spoke of Iran's threat to annihilate one of our allies. He never mentioned Israel, but we all know that's what he means. Hold tight. He is planning to invade.

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Either Iran or Syria in my book.

Secretude

Why does it seem like everybody connected to this domestic spying thing have some sort of culpability?

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This time, the scoop is about a top secret meeting in the Oval Office, involving President Bush...and the two top officials of the New York Times. For the last four days, the Times has been writing about the domestic spying program of the Bush Administration, and they did indeed report that the newspaper's story was held for a year, give or take.

But not once in its coverage did the Times mention that publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. and executive editor Bill Keller were summoned to the White House on Dec. 6, 13 days ago, in a last-ditch bid to get the newspaper to kill the story, which tonight has some members of Congress talking about impeachment.

No, for that morsel of news, we had to go to Newsweek's Jonathan Alter, who is reporting this tonight:

...

This news nugget would have made an excellent final paragraph to the Times story on Friday, but far be it the Times actually pushes the knife in and gives it a twist. It's time for Sulzberger and Keller to resign, not just over this but the Judy Miller fiasco as well. The New York Times, like the nation, is in dire need of new leadership.

Hat tip: Atrios

Fucking Greenpeace?

Or, J. Edgar Hoover lives.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 - Counterterrorism agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation have conducted numerous surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations that involved, at least indirectly, groups active in causes as diverse as the environment, animal cruelty and poverty relief, newly disclosed agency records show.

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One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a "Vegan Community Project." Another document talks of the Catholic Workers group's "semi-communistic ideology." A third indicates the bureau's interest in determining the location of a protest over llama fur planned by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals.

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It would be something if they actually monitored conversations between...say...White Supremacists (remember Tim McVeigh) and other subversive groups (though still illegal without a warrant, understandable), but no, we're watching fucking Greenpeace. We're watching a bunch of vegetarians.

This has absolutely nothing to do with keeping America safe. This has everything to do with keeping an eye on the Chimp's political 'enemies'.

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"You look at these documents," Ms. Beeson said, "and you think, wow, we have really returned to the days of J. Edgar Hoover, when you see in F.B.I. files that they're talking about a group like the Catholic Workers league as having a communist ideology."

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The FBI should be dragging the Chimp and his henchmen out of the White House in handcuffs, not bugging the phones of fucking tree huggers.

Great thanks to Rising Hegemon for the link.

More spine

Via Atrios; Sen. Boxer of California:

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On Sunday, December 18, former White House Counsel John Dean and I participated in a public discussion that covered many issues, including this surveillance. Mr. Dean, who was President Nixon's counsel at the time of Watergate, said that President Bush is "the first President to admit to an impeachable offense." Today, Mr. Dean confirmed his statement.

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Given your constitutional expertise, particularly in the area of presidential impeachment, I am writing to ask for your comments and thoughts on Mr. Dean's statement.

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Now we're talking!

A Byrd in the hand...

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The President claims that these powers are within his role as Commander in Chief. Make no mistake, the powers granted to the Commander in Chief are specifically those as head of the Armed Forces. These warrantless searches are conducted not against a foreign power, but against unsuspecting and unknowing American citizens. They are conducted against individuals living on American soil, not in Iraq or Afghanistan. There is nothing within the powers granted in the Commander in Chief clause that grants the President the ability to conduct clandestine surveillance of American civilians. We must not allow such groundless, foolish claims to stand.

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I continue to be shocked and astounded by the breadth with which the Administration undermines the constitutional protections afforded to the people, and the arrogance with which it rebukes the powers held by the Legislative and Judicial Branches. The President has cast off federal law, enacted by Congress, often bearing his own signature, as mere formality. He has rebuffed the rule of law, and he has trivialized and trampled upon the prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizures guaranteed to Americans by the United States Constitution. [my ems]

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I hope the backbone some Dems are showing is contagious.

Thanks to Blue Collar Blog for the link.

Jane sez...

I didn't know which piece to rob. Go read the whole post.

Indeed...again

Via Shakes, this is what I want to hear:

House Judiciary Committee Democrats, spearheaded by Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), are set to release possibly the sharpest congressional critique to date surrounding Iraq, RAW STORY has learned.

The report, titled "The Constitution in Crisis: The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution and Coverups in the Iraq War," is slotted to be made available to the public Tuesday. RAW STORY acquired a copy of the book's cover and some additional information about the document today.

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Indeed

Pic courtesy of Corpus Callosum.

Ethics...heh...

That word has lost its meaning over the past few years.

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"I do not think you can argue today that Congress is a coequal branch of government; it is not," said Lee H. Hamilton, president of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. Hamilton, a former Democratic congressman and vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, told reporters this month: "It has basically lost the war-making power. The real debates on budget occur not in Congress but in the Office of Management and Budget. . . . When you come into session Tuesday afternoon and leave Thursday afternoon, you simply do not have time for oversight or deliberation."

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Meanwhile, the House ethics committee has not opened a new case or launched an investigation in the past 12 months, despite outside investigations involving, among others, Cunningham and former lobbyist Jack Abramoff. [my em]

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Transit Strike

It's supposed to go off here at midnight. To all you tourists contemplating Christmas in New York City or New Years in Times Square, this means there will be no bus and subway service within the 5 Boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx, Staten Island). No, you can't rent a car instead, there is no place to park (literally), especially in Manhattan. Taxi? Good luck. Do yourself a favor, come here next year when this mess is settled. If they go out tonight, it's gonna get ugly.

Freedom

Preznit AWOL:

...

I also want to speak to those of you who did not support my decision to send troops to Iraq: I have heard your disagreement, and I know how deeply it is felt. Yet now there are only two options before our country - victory or defeat. And the need for victory is larger than any president or political party, because the security of our people is in the balance. I do not expect you to support everything I do, but tonight I have a request: Do not give in to despair, and do not give up on this fight for freedom.

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Trust me, dickhead, I ain't giving up the fight until your ass is in jail or swinging at the end of a rope.

More on Bush's "Fuck You"

The Rude One sums up Bush's "fuck you" speech in a haiku:

L'etat c'est moi, 'kay?
Once you accept that, you fucks,
We'll all get along.

That sums up Bush's arrogance and contempt for us and the Constitution quite nicely, I think.

Lexington and Concord

"A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free People."

Americans said this about the last King George who ruled this land.

Enemy of the State

This just makes me want to check out every book written in praise of Communism at my local library. Motherfuckers.