The Battle for Americas Soul

In 20 days the battle will be joined. A fight to decide exactly what America is destined to become.

Will we become a proto-fascist neo-theocracy where the public is constantly misled by a cowed press, kept under constant electronic surveillence without a warrant, where a well paid informant or an errant Myspace post just might send you (even if you happen to be a U.S. Citizen and West Point Graduate) to Gitmo without a hearing where you could be waterboarded and your coerced "confession" used against you...

or...

Something far more akin to the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independance and Bill of Rights, where the greatest of dangers to the people isn't the people themselves - it is the misuse of the powers of the State? A Nation where the accused, even accused terrorists, are presumed innocent until proven guilty by a court of law.

Does anyone seriously think the other guys are going to fight anywhere near fair?

The past month has been brutal for Republicans.

Starting with the ABC's Path to 9/11 Lie-u-drama, President Clinton clowning Chris Wallace on Fox News, the Senate Intelligence Report revealing that Al Qaeda and Saddam were enemies not allies, the latest NIE stating that the Iraq war has been increasing terrorism rather than making us "safer", Bob Woodward revealing Bush's ongoing State of Denial and Deception on their response to Al Qeada and the status of the Iraq War, Republican Torture-mongerers like John Warner have finally begun jumping off the Iraq Train, Conservative Christian David Kuo has been blowing the whistle on the Faith Based Voter Bribery Scam, not to mention the ongoing adventures of Senator George Macacawitz Allen of Virginia, Congressman Mark Foley the Alcoholic Formerly Molested Pedophilic IM-ing Page Stalker who has wrought Hastert-Gate and of course - North Korea testing a Nuclear Bomb!

So much for winning the war on terror.

As a result of some are expecting as much as a 30 seat gain for Democrats in the House.

I think a 30-seat gain today for Democrats is more likely to occur than a 15-seat gain, the minimum that would tip the majority. The chances of that number going higher are also strong, unless something occurs that fundamentally changes the dynamic of this election. This is what Republican strategists' nightmares look like.

Whether one looks at national or district-level polling data, or a survey like the new Democracy Corps survey that covered the 49 most vulnerable GOP districts, the conclusion remains the same: it is very ugly for Republicans.

Even with all this for some odd, unexplicable reason - both George Bush and Karl Rove remain very upbeat about the November election.

From the Washington Times.

White House political strategist Karl Rove yesterday confidently predicted that the Republican Party would hold the House and the Senate in next month's elections, dismissing fallout from the sex scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley.
At a luncheon with editors and reporters at The Washington Times, Mr. Rove -- who is widely credited as the architect of the party's historic 2002 midterm election gains -- said Republicans are beginning to make significant headway in defining their party's differences from congressional Democrats, especially on national security.
"I'm confident we're going to keep the Senate; I'm confident we're going to keep the House. The Foley matter has impact in some limited districts, but the research we have shows that people are differentiating between a vote for their congressman and a member from Florida,"

From U.S. News:

Some Republican strategists are increasingly upset with what they consider the overconfidence of President Bush and his senior advisers about the midterm elections November 7-a concern aggravated by the president's news conference this week.

"They aren't even planning for if they lose," says a GOP insider who informally counsels the West Wing. If Democrats win control of the House, as many analysts expect, Republicans predict that Bush's final two years in office will be marked by multiple congressional investigations and gridlock.

So just what the hell is going on here?

Is Rove right and have all these scandals and errors still brought us up short - or is there something else occuring in the mix? An October Surprise to end all Octobers?

Former Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter on the Randi Rhodes show Monday postulated that the surprise would be sudden violent conflict between Iran and the Eisenhower Carrier Group, which should be arriving in the area on Oct 21st.

Some have argued that the Rovian confidence stems from the upcoming November 5th announcement of the Saddam Hussein Verdict.

Still others have argued that massive purging of Democrats from the voter rolls have already occured in key states such as Ohio. Purging that will significantly narrow the margins in tight races and ensure that Republicans retain the House and Senate. Although some doubt has arisen on those claims, there are legitimate issues that various states have indeed made voting more difficult. A cursory examination of this years primary elections bears that out.

Hundreds of voters mysteriously "dropped or displaced" from registration rolls when master lists were electronically merged. Absentee ballots invalidated because voters didn't receive a flier telling them not to remove a security stub. Poll workers who didn't show up to work on Election Day. Polling places unable to open on time because computer memory cards for new machines hadn't been installed. Suspicious shortages of machines in precincts that happened to be heavily Democratic. Voters who left the polls in disgust without having cast a ballot, because they just couldn't wait for overwhelmed precinct workers to sort through a monstrous mess of administrative and equipment problems.

Ohio, 2004? Nope. Ohio, 2006

It's clear that the Repulicans are working hard to suppress the Democratic vote, while doing their damnedest to get their vote out. Kos has posted that the Republican Voluanteer Ground Game is currently breaking records in their outreach effort.

And this doesn't even begin to mention just how hackable a Diebold Voting Machine has proven to be - thanks to Princeton.

The best course, naturally, is to assume all the above is basically true.

Even though the polls are overwhelmingly in the favor of Democrats, we can not afford to expect that all the voters will be able to reach the polls, have their registration honored or that every vote will be accurately counted. That's simply not going to happen.

Even though the worst news for Republicans has been coming from Republicans, We can not simply sit back and expect that the Republicans are simply going to scandal themselves out of office. They've grown far too adept at the blame and deflection game and have long since learned that the electorate is much like a jury that's been sequestered in a hot courtroom for six months -- offer them any cockamamie semi-plausible sliver of doubt and they'll jump at it like a starving man and a bowl of freshly steamed calimari.

Therefore Bill Clinton's "tirade" on Fox was just an attempt to "burnish" his legacy and erase his culpability at failing to stop both Bin Laden and Lil Kim in Korea. Bad Bill. Bad. Bad.

Bob Woodard is suddenly a "hack with an agenda".

John Ashcroft admits he was briefed by the CIA on Al Qaeda, but never heard any specific Domestic Warnings before September 11th. (Never mind the fact that as Attorney General he doesn't have jurisdiction anywhere but Domestically, so if there was "No Domestic Warning" why was Tenet and Richard Clarke even bothering to talk to him in the first place?

Ken Mehlman claims the Left is filled with mean spirited name calling "Defeato-crats" who want to "Cut and Run" on our soldiers, stop our listening to terrorists and let them go free.

Rove denies calling Evangelicals "Nuts" and all is forgiven. Let's not pay any attention to the fact that Kuo's claims of disdain for "the Nuts" is exactly what Jack Abramoff's former lobbying partner Mike Scanlon has already displayed:

"Simply put," Scanlon wrote, "we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them. The wackos get their information from the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the Internet and telephone trees."

Kuo stated that the disdainful comments came from Rove's Office, not Rove himself. And look who just suddenly fired retired from Rove's Office? Susan Ralston, Jack Ambramoff's former assistant who no doubt worked very closely and who just may have shared a least a few similar sentiments with Scanlon.

Conincidence? I think not.

No matter how bad the news gets, how sleazy the scandal, these guys will keep coming back - again and again.

We have to recognize just who these people are. The atrocities of Haditha and our troops being provided contaminated drinking water doesn't faze them. A fake Anthrax Terrorist attack on Broadcaster Keith Olbermann is grounds for low comedy.

The Right-Wing Cabal that now control this country is commited, deadicated, resourceful, inventive, relentless and fanatical. Make no mistake, they are the American Taliban. They've been striving for over 30 years, since the fall of Richard Nixon, to arrive at a point where they essentially control all three branches of government. We can not afford to fixate on George W. Bush himself, but recognize that he has a legion of enablers behind him from his filth spewing buddies on Talk Radio (and their audiences) to the Unitary Executive/Signing Statement supporting stagnant pool of Federalist Society nut-balls from the DOJ like Abu Gonzales, Yoo, Bybee, John Roberts and Alito who continue to mangle the Constitution to do one thing - amass greater and greater power in the Whitehouse.

Power that no doubt will be abused.

These people have been lying in wait within the strata of our country for a very long time, decades, the reigns of power will only be wrested from their cold, dead hands. We can not afford to underestimate their cunning or their willingness to take it to the mat.

Nor can we allow ourselves to be frustrated should we fail to prevail in November, or grow overly elated if win back the House and/or Senate.

In either case, we have long, hard work ahead of us reclaiming true patriotism from the gingoist who would distort and misuse it as a tool of fear-mongering. Reclaiming America's International Honor and Intregrity from those who have wiped it off their Jackboots like freshly trampled mud - will be dirty, difficult work.

Fortunately, the actions of some of our current Democratic Leaders have finally begun to show signs of life as they as last discover - The L Word.

John Kerry:

"Bob Woodward says the Administration is in a state of denial. It's worse than that. The lying needs to end and the incompetents who gave us a Katrina foreign policy have to go. The Administration has a stand still and lose policy in Iraq which isn't the center of the war on terror, and a cut and run policy in Afghanistan which is the center of the war on terror. The only clear thing about the president's policy is that it's clearly not working.

American troops are coming home without arms and legs, for a strategy our military and our leaders know won't work, and a policy that worsens terrorism. The repetition of presidential platitudes in daily speeches only compounds the immorality of a policy that is reckless with young Americans' lives, and leaves America's moral authority in tatters.

We have seven times more troops in the crossfire of a civil war in Iraq, which our intelligence agencies confirm fuels terrorism, than we have in Afghanistan, where the Taliban is resurgent and Al Qaeda roams free. Rhetoric about providing money to rebuild Afghanistan is hollow from an Administration that has cut aid to Afghanistan by 30% this year, and even requested 67% less than that for next year. Even Don Rumsfeld acknowledged yesterday we need more troops in Afghanistan, but President Bush remains stuck in a state of denial.

This administration cut and run from the truth, and every day this administration refuses to face reality is another day they play into the hands of the terrorists. President Bush needs to start telling the truth, and acting on it."

Kerry is correct that we need to change course in Iraq and Afghanistan, even some of the Wing-nut Brigade is starting to realize that fact - but more importantly we need to change the direction of this country. We have to stop living in fear and apathy. We have to stop following empty rhetoric and start expecting actual results, results that demonstrably improve the quality of life not just for the Paris Hilton's set - but for all of us.

Certainly we can donate money to worthy candidates, we can continue to get the truth out through blogs and continue to press the media to do their freaking jobs - but that isn't going to be enough.

We have to Act, particularly those of us in Battleground States and Districts, we have to get up out of our chairs and from behind our PC, canvass our neighborhoods and ask everyone we meet "are you registered to vote yet?" We have to voluanteer to work at the polls or schedule a vacation day on November 7th to watch the polls - take note of how long the lines are, how easily or often people have been mistakenly left off the rolls or redirected into voting provisionally, read the Street Index Roster (which must be updated each hour during an election by poll workers to indicate who has voted and who hasn't), bring your cell phone and call people at home to remind them - "Have you voted yet?", go knock on their doors and make sure they have a ride to the voting location. Don't just sit their in front of your computer whining, get off your ass and make a difference.

It's not enough to simply vote yourself, we have to do what we can to protect each others vote too.

We don't have to wait for the DNC, the DSCC or the DCCC to get this done and we shouldn't. We are the voters, we are America - it's our responsibility to make sure this country is one we can be proud of. It's our responsibility to do what's neccesary to take our best hopes and dreams for brighter, less mean-spirited, less terror crazed America and make them part of the reality-based world.

Yes, they will lie, they will most definately try to steal the vote from us - but we can't let them get away with it. Not again.

I expect this battle will leave battered, bloodied and far from unscarred but if we honestly join in the fight on the web and on the ground - win, lose or draw - it will be well worth it.

And also, it will only be the beginning.

Vyan

Habeas Corpus dies with nary a whimper

From Thinkprogress:

President Bush signs the "Military Commissions Act of 2006″ today in the Rose Garden, a bill that will not grant detainees legal counsel. "Also, it specifically bars detainees from filing habeas corpus petitions challenging their detentions in federal courts." The new law sets the stage for what many analysts believe will be yet another historic showdown between the courts, the president, and Congress.

That's putting it mildly.

But what's so truly amazing about this event, is how little it's being covered, how little it's being noticed and how there is pratically no outcry at the undermining of our constitutional foundations what-so-ever.

That isn't to say that there hasn't been a reaction. Even before the legislation was signed two lawsuits were filed.

The new legislation, passed a week ago Friday, bars judges from hearing detainee lawsuits. Instead, it sets up a much more limited appeals process for detainees who are seeking to challenge their designation as an enemy combatant or to challenge a war crimes conviction by a military commission.

One suit was filed on behalf of Majid Khan, one of the 14 so-called high value Al Qaeda suspects recently transferred from secret Central Intelligence Agency prisons to the terrorist detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The other was filed on behalf of 25 detainees being held among some 500 men at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan.

The outstanding question of course is whether this law actually bars these suits themselves, a decision which will have have to wait until a judge decides whether a judge can decide on this matter. Talk about Catch-22.

Major news outlets have virtually ignored this story, allowing the President's rhetoric about "our desperate need to question detainees" being one of our most "vital tools" in the War on Terror. The fact that the people who we are coercively questioning may not be terrorists at all doesn't seem to enter into his thinking.

From Yahoo News:

KABUL, Afghanistan - Sixteen Afghans and one Iranian released from years in captivity at Guantanamo Bay prison arrived in Afghanistan on Thursday, an Afghan official said, maintaining that "most" of the detainees had been falsely accused.

The 16 Afghans appeared at a news conference alongside Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, head of Afghanistan's reconciliation commission, which assists with the release of detainees from the American detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the U.S. prison at the Bagram military base north of Kabul.

Mejadedi said many of the detainees, who are now free, had served up to four years in Guantanamo. He said "most" of the prisoners were innocent and had been turned in to the U.S. military by other Afghans because of personal disputes.

"For four years they put me in jail in Cuba for nothing," said Shah, a doctor from the eastern province of Paktia whose hands shook from nervousness when he spoke.

"All these people (the other prisoners) and all those Afghans still in Cuba, they are innocent," he told reporters. "All were arrested because of false reports, and the Americans, without investigating, they arrested innocent people and put them in jail for a long time."

Another former prisoner, 20-year-old Habib Rahman, said he was arrested because he had a weapon in his home.

"They told me, 'You are against us, you are anti-American and anti-government and you are fighting with us,'" said Rahman. "At that time in our area everyone had weapons. I was innocent and I hadn't participated in any fighting."

Rahman said that he was treated harshly at Guantanamo, and was once kept awake for 38 hours while being questioned about ties to terrorists.

"The last time they tortured me like that was four months ago," he said. "They were kicking us all the time, beating us with their hands."

Please note that Rahman is 20-years-old now, that means that when he was taken to Gitmo - he was only 16.

Many of the detainee currently at Gitmo were actually sold into captivity by Afghan warlords.

Bounties ranged from $3,000 to $25,000, the detainees testified during military tribunals, according to transcripts the U.S. government gave The Associated Press to comply with a Freedom of Information lawsuit.

A former CIA intelligence officer who helped lead the search for Osama bin Laden told AP the accounts sounded legitimate because U.S. allies regularly got money to help catch Taliban and al-Qaida fighters. Gary Schroen said he took a suitcase of $3 million in cash into Afghanistan himself to help supply and win over warlords to fight for U.S. Special Forces.

Even though the ACLU has obtained a literal mountain of documention via the Freedom of Information Act - the issue of how these people, many of them innocent, are being treated still falls on deaf ears. Even when ABC News features reports of abuse from a former Gitmo Marine.
From Thinkprogress:

President Bush has consistently touted the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay as a "model prison," saying the American people should "ftake great pride" in the facility.

But a sworn statement by Marine Sgt. Heather Cerveny paints an entirely different picture. Cerveny has described how "she met several Navy prison guards at a club on the base where, over drinks, they described harsh physical abuse" of Gitmo detainees. The guards alledgedly told Cerveny of practices including "hitting the detainee's head into the cell door" and "punching [them] in the face." The Pentagon Inspector General today announced a new investigation into the claims.

Cerveny gave her first public comments on her charges last night to ABC News. You can read Cerveny's affidavit to the Pentagon Inspector General here (pdf).

Here's what Amnesty International (who over a year ago called for the Prosecution of George W Bush for War Crimes) has to say on the subject:

The past five years have seen the USA engage in systematic violations of international law, with a distressing impact on thousands of detainees and their families. Human rights violations have included:

o Secret detention
o Enforced disappearance
o Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment
o Outrages upon personal dignity, including humiliating treatment
o Denial and restriction of habeas corpus
o Indefinite detention without charge or trial
o Prolonged incommunicado detention
o Arbitrary detention
o Unfair trial procedures

Yet at the same time, US officials have continued to characterize the USA as a "nation of laws" and one that in the "war on terror" is committed to what it calls the "non-negotiable demands of human dignity", including the "rule of law".

...

There is a stark "disconnect" between the USA and the international community. After all, President Bush's speech came only weeks after two expert United Nations bodies - the Committee against Torture and the Human Rights Committee - told the US government that secret detentions violated the USA's international treaty obligations. In effect, the President was rejecting the conclusions of these UN bodies, as well as admitting that the USA had resorted to enforced disappearance, a crime under international law.

The response of the US administration to the Hamdan v. Rumsfeld ruling has perhaps been even more shocking, although apparently not shocking enough to nudge Congress finally into calling the executive to account for "war on terror" abuses. Indeed, President Bush's defence of the CIA's program of secret detention and "alternative" interrogation techniques policy, which he said had been called into question by the Hamdan ruling and therefore needed congressional approval, showed an administration in assertively unapologetic mood.

Again, one can begin to trace the administration's manipulation of the law to fit its policy. According to a document recently issued by the Director of National Intelligence, after "high-value" detainee Abu Zubaydah was captured in Pakistan in March 2002 and handed over to the USA, he stopped "cooperation" with his US interrogators. In order to overcome this lack of cooperation, "over the ensuing months, the CIA designed a new interrogation program" and "sought and obtained legal guidance from the Department of Justice that none of the new procedures violated the US statutes prohibiting torture."

Any such claim of legality rings hollow. For until the Detainee Treatment Act was passed in December 2005 (in the face of executive opposition), Department of Justice lawyers took the position that because of the reservation attached to the USA's ratification of the Convention against Torture in 1994, the USA had no treaty obligation on cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment with respect to foreign nationals held in US custody overseas. In addition, in August 2002, the Justice Department provided legal advice in a memorandum which only came to light in mid-2004 after the Abu Ghraib torture revelations. It was reportedly written in response to a CIA request for legal protections for its interrogators. The memorandum stated among other things that interrogators could cause a great deal of pain before crossing the threshold to torture, that there were a "significant range of acts" that might constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment but would not rise to the level of torture and be prosecutable under the US torture statute, and that the President could override international or national prohibitions on torture.(1)

Conservatives have scoffed at claims that Zubaydah was "tortured" claiming that they simply kept the lights on and played Red Hot Chili Peppers music for hours. In a nation where Jackass Number Two is a hit movie, bright lights and loud music could hardly be considered torture - it sounds more like a RAVE right? To hear the Right tell it, they were just warming him up for Round II of Fear Factor: Electrodes to the Gonads. Let's face it: Torture is likely to be our next Extreme Sport, to be scheduled at the Triple-X Games right after Base Jumping while on fire and swallowing male-cow jism.

But all dark humor aside, Time Magazine and author Gerald Posner paint a different picture:

Posner elaborates in startling detail how U.S. interrogators used drugs--an unnamed "quick-on, quick-off" painkiller and Sodium Pentothal, the old movie truth serum--in a chemical version of reward and punishment to make Zubaydah talk. When questioning stalled, according to Posner, cia men flew Zubaydah to an Afghan complex fitted out as a fake Saudi jail chamber, where "two Arab-Americans, now with Special Forces," pretending to be Saudi inquisitors, used drugs and threats to scare him into more confessions.

This is known as a "False Flag" operation - where U.S. officials pretend to be Saudi, Egyption or Israeli interrogators who don't have any of the "limits" which U.S. law (used to) place on our own people - and is itself a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions (Article 37).

However, it should be noted that most of the valuable information we received from Zubaydah, such as the identity of "Muktar" as Khallid Sheik Muhammad, and the indentity of Jose Padilla came before he was tortured, not after. Oh, and by the way - Zubaydah is nuts.

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind paints a more complicated picture of Zubaydah. In one of the most hotly discussed sections of his book "The One-Percent Doctrine," Suskind reveals that at least one top FBI analyst considered Zubaydah an "insane, certifiable, split personality" and that he was mainly responsible only for logistics like travel arrangements. According to Suskind's reporting, the interrogation methods used on Zubaydah -- waterboarding and sleep deprivation, among others -- only yielded information about plots that did not exist.

SUSKIND: In the case of Zubaydah, when it comes to some of the harsh interrogation tactics he was put through, what occurred then was that he started to talk. He said, as people will, anything to make the pain stop. And we essentially followed every word and various uniformed public servants of the United States went running all over the country to various places that Zubaydah said were targets, and were not.

Ultimately, we tortured an insane man and ran screaming at every word he uttered.

What has largely worked in all the interrogations, what we got -- and in many cases it's not very much -- but whatever we got, for the most part occurred because we were, let's just say, a little more clever than that. Instead of going medieval, which is the tactic our enemies here embrace, we essentially find a way to confuse their expectations. In many cases, just by treating them as human beings we have created an environment where we get what we so desperately need, which is information that might help save American lives.

That's the key. The key is to not give in to anger, but to do whatever works best. There's clearly been a learning curve on that; some of the harsh techniques used early on have been I think largely abandoned because they didn't work.

So let's review shall we?

We now have an Official Policy of Indefinate Detention without trial, access to a lawyer or a hearing for people who may in all likelyhood be completely innocent. We will be torturing these people even though doing so has repeatedly given us bad information (such as Zubaydah or Ibn Sheik al-Libi who lied to us about Saddam training Al-Qaeda on the use of chemical weapons, or Abu Omar an innocent Egyption man who was kidnapped by the CIA in italy and tortured or Maher Arar the innocent Canadian man who was taken into custody and tortured in Syria) but that using "soft techniques" such as "Treating them like Human Beings" actually works better. Imagine that, eh?

All of this has been implemented as an end-run around Hamdan and 18 US 2441 the War Crimes Act - which then White House counsel Alberto Gonzales claimed in 2002 that if applied might result in "unwarranted charges" against administation officials.

I would argue that they are entirely warranted, and long overdue.

It is also frequently overlooked that the definition of an "Enemy Combatant" does not exclude American citizens. Last Night during his interview with John Ashcroft, Keith Olberman - the lone broadcaster willing to seriously address this subject - put this very question to the former Attorney General:

OLBERMANN: In your new book, you have defended some of the more imposing efforts to fight terror and terrorism, and this subject is particularly relevant right now, because the president is set to sign the Military Commissions Act tomorrow, which is going to codify some of those efforts into law.

I`d like to read one of the definitions in the act and ask you a hypothetical about it, if I may. "The term `unlawful enemy combatant` means -- (i), a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy combatant."

What is there in this new law that would check the president--or any president, not in terms of tradition or in terms of common sense nor even in terms of fear of bad publicity--but in that measure itself, if a president claims that you or I materially supported hostilities against America and declares us unlawful enemy combatants and he wants to send you and I off to Guantanamo Bay, where in the law does it say the president can`t do that?

ASHCROFT: Well, let me just first indicate that I have not read this new statute in its completeness.

I do believe that the president should have the authority to designate individuals who bear arms or take up hostility against the United States as enemy combatants. I think in doing so, the president has a responsibility to have a process that is consistent with the Constitution.

We have a president; we don`t have a king. And he has to make a determination based on facts.

Like the determination he made that Saddam Hussein was an imminant threat? The question posed by Olbermann is not an idle one. Jose Padilla is an American Citizen who has already been held as an "Enemy Combatant" without trial for years, as is Yaser Esam Hamdi. Normally it would be the job of the judiciary, an independant body free from the political winds, who would make the determination of what is fact and what is not regarding defendants and detainees (a Constitutional requirement which was recently reenforced by the Supreme Court in Hamdi v Rumsfeld (pdf)) -- but not anymore. Now the President himself can be judge, jury, torturer and even - executioner.

Is this what our nations forefathers fought and died to produce? Are these the actions of a nation which has touted freedom and justice as it's bedrock principles? I would hope and pray not - but with a stroke of a pen, President George W Bush has today murdered not only Habeas Corpus - not only our international moral standing and justification for our war against terror - he may have very well have murdered our democracy itself.

Vyan

E-Voting hits L.A. County - sort of....

From the Whittier Daily News.

SANTA FE SPRINGS - The computer world is coming to voters for the first time in Los Angeles County.

It means less chances of "over voting" and a new way for the blind and visually impaired to vote without assistance.

The $25 million InkaVote Plus system was unveiled by county election officials Thursday at the Registrar-Recorder's new 100,000-square-foot warehouse in Santa Fe Springs.

"This is the largest rollout of new voting equipment ever in America," said Conny McCormack, registrar-recorder/county clerk. "We never had voting equipment that had intelligence at every one of the voting locations. We're going to have that for the first time."

Sounds neat huh? No more mistaken ballots with overvotes, no more blank ballots (which accounts for about 7% of the 3 millions ballots cast each election in L.A. County)... but is that all there is to it?

Not hardly...

Continued:

Each of the 5,029 voting precincts in the county will receive a precinct ballot reader and an audio ballot booth. The ballot readers will tip off voters if they mistakenly voted for two candidates for the same office, or if their ballot wasn't marked.

When voters turn in their paper ballots, they will submit the ballot into the ballot reader. If there is no problem, the ballot goes into the ballot box.

But if a problem is detected, the ballot will pop back out and a small piece of paper will tell the voter what the
problem is. The voter can then go back and re-vote.

I happen to be a pollworker, and have been for the past several years including the 2004 Presidential election. LA and California are about as Blue as you can get, so we have very few seriously contested races most of the time.

Yesterday as part of my pre-election training, I along with dozens of others received my first look at the new election equipment - ballot readers and audio voting booth - that we'll be using this November in L.A. County.

The Ballot Reader.

The first issues is clearly the ballot reader itself. Since 2000 we switched away from punch-cards to the Inka-vote system, which uses as marker to indicate which item a person is voting for on a paper ballot. No more hanging chads for us. But the marker system itself isn't perfect, marks can be smeared, ballots can be torn or crumpled, and voters and mistakenly mark on than one candicate for the same race (an overvote).

One of the main problem in Florida which often goes undiscussed, was the confusion created by the overly complex butterfly ballot and overvotes. Most of the contested votes in that election were undervotes, where the voter didn't not completely and clearly mark their choice (undervotes), the Supreme Court eventually ended the recounting while Bush still retained a slim lead, and even if they hadn't done so and the recounting of ballots as dictated by Gore's selective targeting of undervotes in problem counties has continued - he still would have lost.

But... a post election study in 2001 by the National Opinion Research Center (which was most famously referenced via Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11) found that if either the more generous standard for determining voter intent used in Palm Beach Counter or overvotes had been considered Gore would have won Florida by 25 and 400 votes respectively. This study was far from conclusive and has been widely criticized, but in 2006 Professor Lance Dehaven-Smith of Florida State University performed an even more indepth study of the overvotes and found that in many, many cases - the voter also included a write-in candidate..

Apparently after being confused by the ballot itself, making an incorrect choice and attempting to correct that choice by voting the opposite way, many thousands of voters wrote their choice in the margins just to make certain it would be noted correctly. Unfortunatly invalidated their ballots and they were cast aside. Professor Dehaven-Smith found 46,000 unambigous overvotes with write-ins for Gore, but only 17,000 write-ins for Bush which would have given Gore an 30,000 victory except that none of those ballots were counted.

The new Ballot Reader being used in LA County - and I strongly suspect elsewhere - is intended to solve that problem. No longer will an entire ballot be invalidated by an overvote -- only the the specific race with multiple votes shown will be ignored.

The machine sits atop the ballot box, the voter inserts their ballot where it is scanned and analysed for errors. If the ballot is either blank or an overvote is detected it is rejected and a small printer indicates what the problem is, including exactly which race received multiple votes.

The voter has the option of allowing the ballot to be accepted anyway - if the problem happens to be in a race they don't care about and they don't have to time to fill out a completely new ballot. Voters can also choose not to have their ballot scanned at all and have the poll workers place it directly in the ballot box.

Overall to me this seems to be a good deal, one that is clearly intended to make the voters comfortable with the new system. The Ballot Reader does not tabulate the votes, although it does have that capability Country-Registrar McCormack has requested that featured be disabled - for now.

Unresolved issues:

Since the new ballot readers don't do vote tabulation (owing at at least partially to the fact that voters can opt-out of using the reader completely) tabulation has to still be performed at the County's main offices in Norwalk by voting machines at those locations. Physical and Software Security concerns for tabulators which have grown in the wake of various Deibold Whistleblowers from Stephen Heller to Ion Sancho and William Singer remain, particularly after the dramatic Princeton Deibold Hacking Demostration.

The Reader contains a printer, but when a ballot is accepted without errors, it prints nothing. There is no receipt or validation of exacly what the voter entered, although this is clearly possible since the very same machine is capable of printing an error report specify the exact problem when the voter makes multiple selections. (When activated it prints a "Zero Report" which shows that no ballots have been counted - sample shown at right)

I have 12 years experience as an IT professional working for a Defense Contrator under C2 Level Security which is the same level of protection (Greater than Top Secret: Special Access Required) as the NSA's Domestic Terrorist Surveillance program. We were all required to attend briefings by the FBI on counter-espionage and how to protect information security in order to retain our security clearances. From that perspective I can state that any machine with insuffienct security in place - including the ballot readers themselves -- which had no passcode security blocking access to it's ADMIN functions (at least not during the DEMO, which may change before the actual election) - are completely vulnerable to anyone malicious and resourceful enough. This brings us to the second portion of the new equipment we were shown yesterday...

The Audio Booth.

This machine is essentially an automated audio selection system much like what the type you encounter when calling most customer service numbers on your phone ("If you'd like to make a payment dail '1'. If you'd like to speak to an operator... give up") but a lot more useful.

The system is linked (via serial cable) to the ballot reader which includes a touch screen to select from one of eight available languages including Cantonese, English, Japanese, Korean, Mandarin, Spanish, Tagalog and Vienamese.

You don't have to be able to read or see to use this machine and vote. Simply by listening to the audio instructions you can easily scroll through the ballot and make your selections one by one. We were shown how this works and it does so quite well. Once the voter has completed their selections, the audio booth prints it's own ballot summarizing their choices.

This is all fairly nifty, and I'm sure will give the Red-States a mild hemorage as they consider the implications that people who don't read or speak English, but only Tagalog will have full access to vote.

Unresolved issues:

This machine contains a roll of only 25 ballots, the first of which prints out automatically on boot-up and has to be discarded leaving on 24. My precinct is in a neighboring filled with a large number of Spanish, Vietnamese and Korean speakers, but with only 24 Voice ballots available my inclination as poll worker would be to direct most of these people to use the normal Inkavote system with a multi-lingual printed ballot rather than the audio machine which would be more absolutely essential for blind or visually impaired persons. The Audio Booth happens to also be our handicapped access booth, but for sighted person I would still recommend they use the paper Inkavote, simply because of such a small number of available ballots. Unfortunely I've almost never seen a blind person at an election, probably because - well, it's an oxymoron - but now, they too can vote and IMO should be encouraged to do so.

Also there is no apparent method for the person using the Audio booth to confirm that the choices they made through it's system are actually what is contained on the ballot it prints. There are no open ports on the Audio booth, but it does connect to the ballot reader via a serial cable and the reader itself contains a network (TCP/IP) port. I didn't see any other access point, but from what I could tell the reader is the brains of the outfit and operates the audio booth as if it were a remote device. Any software glitches or "patches" applied to the reader could completely disrupt or "vote swap" what the audio booth actually prints without any way to detect the switch.

To my mind the primary way to resolve most of these issues is simply to print a receipt with a summary of the votes cast, a ballot ID number and a phone number for the voter to call and verify that their votes were indeed recorded as they intended. As a portion of HAVA (The Help America Vote Act) a system similar to this has been in place for several years involving provisional ballots, where voters are given a receipt and 40 days after the election can call to verify if their provisional ballot was actually counted.

Right now, Inkavote paper ballots are not uniquely numbered, so once your votes enter the ballot box there is no way to specifical identify who voted for what, but this could easily be implmented particularly with the new ballot reader system - and frankly SHOULD BE MANDATORY.

E. J. Dionne of the Washington Post seems to agree:

Sometimes, paranoids are right. And sometimes even when paranoids are wrong, it's worth considering what they're worried about.

I speak here of all who are worried sick that those new, fancy high-tech voting systems can be hacked, fiddled with and otherwise made to record votes that aren't cast or fail to record votes that are.

I do not pretend to know how large a threat this is. I do know that it's a threat to democracy when so many Americans doubt that their votes will be recorded accurately. And I also know that smart, computer-savvy people are concerned about these machines.

The perfectly obvious thing is for the entire country to do what a number of states have already done: require paper trails so that if we have a close election or suspect something went wrong, we have the option to go back and check the results.

Apparently a set of both Republicans and Democrats in the House feel the same way.

So it is heartening that a diverse group -- Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives -- in Congress has proposed legislation to give everyone, even the supposedly paranoid, confidence that our elections are on the level.

The bill has been pushed by Rep. Rush Holt (D-N.J.), with strong support from Reps. Tom Davis (R-Va.) and Tom Cole (R-Okla.). It has 219 co-sponsors, which happens to be a majority of House members.

The bill requires that voting machines produce a permanent paper record that voters themselves can verify. It requires random, unannounced hand-count audits in 2 percent of all precincts to make sure the machines recorded votes properly.

It prohibits connecting any voting machine component to the Internet and bans political and financial conflicts of interest among manufacturers, test laboratories and political parties. It also includes protections for voters with disabilities.

The Ballot Reader and Audio Booth system we were shown were manufactured by Election Software & Systems in connection with Unidyn. ES&S, is a company that used to have Chuck Hagel as one it's board members before he was elected to the Senate in an election which used ES&S machines. (This fact of course isn't proof of skull-duggery, it's just stinks to high heaven - lese sulfer is what our electoral process needs, not more)

But what is an even larger issue than the integrity of electronic machines, even these which may appear relatively harmless compared to full-on Deibold touch-screens (which are already being used in selected portions of L.A. County) is the issue of faked registrations, employer intimidation and voter disenfranchisement.

As shown by Robert F Kennedy Jr. - in 2004 heavily democratic precincts among battlegrond states were specifically targeted and people improperly dropped from the rolls forcing them to vote provisionally where many of their ballots were incorrectly discarded. Whether or not this actually changed the outcome of the election is besides the point - it's wrong and we all need to do everything we can to fight back against it.

Too many people in the nation have fought hard and died for the right to vote to have it stolen away in dead of night.

All of this is an issue that needs more focus, even though the GOP has taken some major hits in recent weeks as a result of Foley-Hastertgate - the new reports of North Korea's Nuke is likely to re-awaken the security moms, while Olberman's report last night that Conseravtive Evangelical's remain undetered and well prepared to hold their noses as they continue to slavishly vote for Republicans against their own best interest... Democrats can not afford to get too comfortable.

I am a commited partisan, but this is not a partisan issue - it's an American issue and needs to be addressed as such.

I hope other Dkos poll workers or election officials from various states - particularly the highly contested districts - will also contribute what they've seen and issue that remain to be addressed so that we can help each other form stratagies to protect all our votes, left and right alike.

Vyan

The Perfect Shit Storm

Has it finally arrived? Has Foleygate created the moment many of us have long waited for? No, not for a 50-plus old hypocrit Congress critter to be caught cyber fondling our youth.

The Perfect Shit Storm for Republicans in the Midterm Elections?

I'm not usually one to gloat at someone elses misfortune - but seeing as misfortune has nothing to do with this rapidly metastiziig scandal par excellance that was wrought from hubris, cronyism and cowardice - I'm gloating big time.

I had hoped that not finding any WMD's would be the breaking point. Or Katrina. Or Libby. Abramoff. Guckert. Cunningham. Safavian. Allen. Dusty Fogo and the Hookers? But it looks like Foleygate just might be it.

You know it's bad when they have to sneak Karl Rove's assistant out the kitty door in the dead of the night - and hardly anyone notices. Almost.

Even though the primary source for this story has been a Registered Republican since being able to vote - in response to the scandal Tom Delay's hand-picked House Speaker Dennis Hastert (and his enablers such as Rush Limbaugh and Drudge) have tried to blame Democrats, ABC, Gays, George Soros and even the Pages themselves.

Limbaugh:

Back in these days you could call Sears and order a refrigerator on the phone. I had a teacher living up the street and it was the biggest thrill in the world to just call and order a refrigerator and watch Sears deliver it to an unsuspecting teacher and his wife, and far stranger things than that. But we always picked out adults that we just thought were odd or weird, and it would be fun to make fun of them, and I don't think kids today are any different...

But you know as well as I do that young kids make fun of gay people. They make fun of the way they talk; they make fun of the way some of them walk and so forth. Who knows what the word around town about fellow Foley was. Who knows? We all know that young people gay bash. Young people do a lot of stuff. They don't have the maturity to understand this kind of stuff...

I tell you, folks, you've got this page out there; you probably have a bunch of pages laughing and making fun of Foley and the way he comes on to them, and he's gay and so forth, so they egg him on and so forth....

All this proves to me is that when Limbaugh was a kid, he was a abusive xenophobic asshole. Then again, not much has really changed for him since then has it?

They've tried to claim that Hastert acted quickly to have Foley resign, when the truth is that Foley had already resigned before the ABC report even aired.

And the News Media have even helped Hastert and crew get their disinformation message out there with their tried and market tested "he said/she said" reporting style which gives equal weigh to competing arguements even when one side is nothing more than a big bag of male cow feces.

CNN Reported the "Hastert took responsibility" line, without pointing out that he's actually done nothing of the kind.

Chris Matthews pimped the Democrat C-O-N-spiracy meme without question.

Despite all this though, the core message seems to be getting through.

Following the ABC revelations that self-styled child protector Mark Foley (R-FL) has instead been a child-predator, targeting former Congressional pages - the GOP has been in complete freefall and are taking a brass-knuckle beating in the polls.

But the worse numbers aren't at Newsweek - they're at Polling Report where it shows.

Congressional House Dems lead Reps by 15% (54 to 39) according to the latest Time Poll (10/3).

But the picture painted by the job trend numbers are much worse.

78% of respondants have heard of the Foley Scandal.

64% think the Republican Leadership tried to cover it up.

Although 68% said it made no difference, 24% said they would be less like to vote for the Republican candidate as a direct result of Foleygate, while just %4 said the reverse. That's a 21-point drop - one which is also reflected in reports that White Evangelical support of the GOP has dropped from 78% to 57%. Coincidence? I think not.

The Jury is still out however, on whether Speaker Haster should (39%) or should not (38%) resign.

What is clear however is that he's become Republican Kryptonite. Internal polling reported by Fox News indicates that the already likely Democratic take-over of the House might jump from 20-seats to 50 as a result of Hastert's failures of leadership. Fundraising engagements with Hastert have been cancelled by everyone but the one person with a higher particle-per-billion geiger rating than Hastert's own - President Bush who has just crashed landed at 33% again (Newsweek 10/5).

The irony of this pairing of last resort should be lost on noone.

The Republican pattern shown by Hastert of refusing to recognize clear warnings (Rice), claiming you didn't know and should have been told (Ashcroft, Rumsfeld), ignoring the facts even after the evidence in incontravertable (Cheney), then turning around and blaming people who had nothing to do with it - even making up imaginary strawmen enemies to rail against (Bush) should be crystal clear by now.

This has been the Neo-Con modis operandi since long before the invasion of Iraq. It's what we've seen over and over again. If the core of the poll bloodbath we're seeing now isn't simply tied to Foley's ignoble exit from Congress, but rather to the long-standing refusal of Congressional and White House Republicans to do their freaking jobs - we just might have a serious sea change in the offing.

Just think : a week and a half ago, Dennis Hastert was accusing Democrats of wanting to coddle the "most treacherous people in the world". Well, look who's coddling who now?

With Sen John Warner's "We need to change course" proclaimation laying a sledge hammer to the entire Karl "Cut and Run" Rove strategem - that Perfect Storm just might be arriving on November both in the House and the Senate, and hopefully it'll stick around for - oh - a decade or so.

It's going to take at least that long to clean up the mess Republicans have made of our Country.

Vyan

Truth 2 Power - Blog - Radio - Shirts - Books and Cds

Republicans don't care about our kids

Sure, they like to make a big stink everytime some violent sicko attacks a school or a child -- bleating loudly that Democrats would led perverts abuse your kids but when it comes to prevention, Bush and the GOP are completely AWOL. From Thinkprogress:

In the past few weeks, the nation has been stunned by the rash of school shootings in Colorado, Wisconsin, and at an Amish schoolhouse in Pennyslvania. President Bush said he was “saddened and deeply concerned” about the shootings and plans to convene a summit of education and law enforcement experts to discuss federal action that can help communities prevent violence.

But the facts of the matter are very different from the caring compassionate conservative picture painted by the President.

– In 2006, Bush proposed a five percent cut for youth and crime prevention programs. Bush’s 2005 budget proposed a 40 percent drop in juvenile-crime prevention, following a 44 percent cut in 2004.

– The Bush administration has repeatedly recommended eliminating federal funding for the Safe and Drug-Free Schools
and Communities State Grants program, which works on juvenile-crime prevention.

– Since 2001, Congress has voted to retain the Grants program over the administration’s objections, but at reduced levels. Funding for the program was $439.2 million in 2001 but fell to $346.5 million this year, with $310 million recommended for 2007.

– More than half the nation’s school districts receive $10,000 or less per year to fight violence and substance abuse — “too little to make a difference” according to an Education Department official.

Not only are Republicans failing to protect Congressional Pages from their own members, even though they had warnings over two years ago, they're failing to protect all our children and trying to somehow pin the blame for everything on George Soros ...

When asked about a groundswell of discontent among the GOP's conservative base over his handling of the issue, Hastert said: "I think the base has to realize after awhile, who knew about it? Who knew what, when? When the base finds out who's feeding this monster, they're not going to be happy. The people who want to see this thing blow up are ABC News and a lot of Democratic operatives, people funded by George Soros."

He went on to suggest that operatives aligned with former President Bill Clinton knew about the allegations and were perhaps behind the disclosures in the closing weeks before the Nov. 7 midterm elections, but he offered no hard proof.

"All I know is what I hear and what I see," the speaker said. "I saw Bill Clinton's adviser, Richard Morris, was saying these guys knew about this all along. If somebody had this info, when they had it, we could have dealt with it then."

and gays

There have been a number of signals through the course of the day that the last gambit of the GOP House leadership will be to blame the Foley debacle on a cabal of gay staffers who hid and/or enabled Rep. Foley's behavior for years. The idea being that they are to blame rather than the leadership.

That may sound like a plot turn out of a bad novel. But with the times we're living in I guess we shouldn't be surprised.

Fordham, the staffer who just turned on Hastert, is openly gay, as is at least one other central player in the drama. Fordham's word now threatens to take down the whole House leadership. So they're going to throw everything at him.

- which is completely, absolutely, pathetic, but perfectly in character for the GOP.

Vyan

What if it was one of your kids?

I don't really have to ask this question. My wife's son from her first marriage has already lived through exactly what these pages have gone through - and worse. His own father molested him.

He didn't want to admit it for a long time. But the medical evidence was conclusive. Later, and again some in the family didn't want to admit it, the sonuvabitch tried to rape my wife's sister.

And yet people didn't say anything. Her nephews who pull the bastard off their own mother said nothing. They let it go on... and on. Nobody told my wife until after she finally left the bastard and took her son with her.

Former Rep. Foley has admitted he was himself molested as a child by a member of the clergy. My feeling on this are as those spoken William Petersen as FBI analyst Will Graham in the 1985 film Manhunter (the Michael Mann precursor to "Silence of the Lambs") .. "As a child, my heart bleeds for him. Someone took a little boy and turned him into a monster. But as an adult... as an adult, he's irredeemable."

I admit that Foley may not quite be that far gone. He clearly needs help, But still these people, Foley, Hastert and Beohner have betrayed and failed our young. They've betrayed the most vulnerable among us. Give them a blastocyst to rally around and they'll move heaven and earth. Give them a poor brain-dead woman, and they'll stop time and magically pull the President away from his glorious vacation clearing brush on his horseless, cowless, ranch. But give them real live breathing and thinking children... and they fail. Every time.

They make excuses. It's the Democrats fault, even though not a single democrat was even made aware of what was going on. Tolerance and Diversity of gays is to blame, if only they could have really nailed that GAY BASTARD FOLEY. (What and lose a prime House seat in Palm Beach, FL -- are you kidding?) It's the media's fault, because ABC want's to make up for 5 hours of LIES on the 5th anniversary of 9-11.

Bullshit.

This is the truth and they can't handle the fucking truth.

They failed our children in the House of Representatives. Imagine having such a wonderful oppurtunity to actually serve democracy, to be part of the Constitutional process - only to be betrayed this way?

They've failed our children in the schools with their ridiculous "No Child Left Behind Act", a program so riddled with failure they had to pay so-called journalists to shill for it. They've failed them with deliberate Sex Mis-education which has nothing if not put more young people at risk of pregnancy and STD's. They've heaped a mountain debt upon the backs of the young, while dancing off to Scotland golf courses - and the brothels of Saipan - laughing with their tax cut kick-backs and lobbyist lucre.

And they've failed our young soldiers fighting their wars of ego and hubris in Iraq, with insufficent armor and contaminated water.

ENOUGH.

The excuses have to stop, right F-ing now. I'm sick of this shit.

You should be too.

Vyan

Hastert: Asshole

Hunter has this one. Prepare your stomach.

Simply amazing. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, on Rush Limbaugh's show, says it's all the Democrats' and the kids' fault:

SPEAKER HASTERT: There were two pieces of paper out there, one that we knew about and we acted on; one that happened in 2003 we didn't know about, but somebody had it, and, you know, they're trying -- and they drop it the last day of the session, you know, before we adjourn on an election year. Now, we took care of Mr. Foley. We found out about it, asked him to resign. He did resign. He's gone. We asked for an investigation. We've done that. We're trying to build better protections for these page programs.

But, you know, this is a political issue in itself, too, and what we've tried to do as the Republican Party is make a better economy, protect this country against terrorism -- and we've worked at it ever since 9/11, worked with the president on it -- and there are some people that try to tear us down. We are the insulation to protect this country, and if they get to me it looks like they could affect our election as well.

In two thin, mean paragraphs, Hastert manages to say that it's all a conspiracy by Democrats and/or by Foley's victims, and he says the kids who dared report the child sex predator the GOP had been shielding in their ranks are trying to "tear down" efforts to protect this country against terrorism. He says he's the "insulation" to protect this country -- when all the press reports out there say America would be stupid to trust Dennis Hastert to protect a Boy Scout troop.

This guy is just sick.

He doesn't get it, even today -- he thinks having a sex predator in Congress, knowing about it for at least a year and doing flatly nothing to even investigate how bad it was, not after Alexander knew about it, not after Shimkus knew about it, not after Reynolds knew about it, not after Boehner knew about it, not after Hastert himself was told about it, not even informing the Republican or Democratic members of the Page Board itself, is just another political thing to be "handled" on the Rush Limbaugh Show. And so now he's attacking the victims who finally did come forward, after nothing else worked, and saying that exposing the predator is all a plot against him and Republicans.

Hastert needs to go. It's done. He has no compass for leadership -- or even for remaining in Washington.

I'm with Hunter on this one. This isn't about Foley, it's about leadership and responsibility. Yet again, a set of Republicans has completely, totally failed at his reponsibility to protect the public. And this time it's with children. Children. This is not about partisanship - when Cynthia McKinney "hit a cop" she lost her primary. William Jefferson is still rattling somewhere under the bus having lost a massive amount of Democratic support.

Hastert has already been called to resign by Michael Reagan and even the Moonie Times - he should be toast.

But...

Apparently he got his wing-nut talking points this morning because Sean Hannity is singing the same sick self-absorbed tune.

Worse, some Conservatives, regardless of Newt Gingrich's claim that they might have been accused on "Gay bashing" are proceeding to do exactly that even though being a pedophile has nothing to do with being gay. Suddenly they've all turned into arm-chair psycotherapists - like Bill Frist with a videotape on Meth: Just look...

Ben Stein, American Spectator:

On the one hand, we have a poor misguided Republican man who had a romantic thing for young boys. He sent them suggestive e-mail. I agree, that’s not great. … I hope it won’t come as a surprise to anyone that a big part of male homosexual behavior is interest in young boys.

Linda Harvey, WorldNetDaily:

Open or suspected homosexuals should never be elected. The problem with homosexuals is that they frequently don’t have common sense and don’t acknowledge appropriate boundaries. Weird sex, public displays of “affection” and nudity, and sex with youth are built into the “gay” sub-culture.

Jonah Goldberg, National Review:

The funny thing is that you would think the left — particularly the gay left — would be a bit more interested in not having 16 and 17 year old teenagers classified as young children for legal/sexual/political purposes. If that were the case, then a whole lot of dirty old men would need to be prosecuted for felonies when they pick up street hustlers.

Wall Street Journal, editorial:

But in today’s politically correct culture, it’s easy to understand how senior Republicans might well have decided they had no grounds to doubt Mr. Foley merely because he was gay and a little too friendly in emails. Some of those liberals now shouting the loudest for Mr. Hastert’s head are the same voices who tell us that the larger society must be tolerant of private lifestyle choices, and certainly must never leap to conclusions about gay men and young boys.

I'm so glad to see some Republicans are as informed and sensitive as ever. They're ready to blamed the abused at the drop of a hat, yet Foley is this "poor lonely man".

Here's an accurate Profile of Pedophile:

Pedophiles don't have signs on their backs or neon arrows pointing over their heads.

It's easier to believe that the "dirty old man in the park", rather than the clean-cut bus driver down the street, is a pedophile.

Pedophiles aren't confined to our Catholic churches. They are in Protestant churches, synagogues, and mosques. Some of them are teachers, counselors, scout leaders, truck drivers, factory workers, and youth ministers. In fact, they are wherever children can be found, irrespective of age, race, education, occupation, class, social standing, or income.

Celibacy isn't the reason priests prey on children. Sexual attraction to children, and sexual gratification from children, are the reasons.

The Exclusive type of pedophile is attracted to children only. The Non-Exclusive is attracted to both children and adults.

A pedophile will not stop on his own, and will not turn himself in, because he does not take responsibility for his behavior and denies that he's doing anything harmful. He will abuse until he's caught.

If a child tells us he or she has been sexually abused by someone, be it family, friend, or trusted adult, we are obligated by law to report it to a child abuse hotline, police, or local children's services agency.

This wasn't political, it should've have become political. Now it is.

Sack the lot of them.

Vyan




Update:Surprising almost no one except the GOP, ABC Now reports that Foley had internet sex with a page, which finally explains why Mark made such an hasty exit from Congress just hours after being initially interviewed. He knew there was a lot more dust under that rug - I'll bet.

Al Qaeda Threat Warning to Rice : 10 on a Scale of 10

From Judd at Thinkprogress:

Condoleezza Rice describes her briefing with CIA officials George Tenet and Cofer Black on July 10, 2001 as relatively unremarkable. Here’s how her spokesman Sean McCormack described it yesterday:

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack [said]… the information Rice got “was not new'’ and didn’t amount to an urgent warning. “Rather, it was a good summary from the threat-reporting from the previous several weeks,'’ McCormack said in a statement from Saudi Arabia where Rice is traveling.

Earlier in the day, Rice questioned whether the meeting even happened and said that it was “incomprehensible” the meeting included a warning that U.S. interests faced an imminent threat from al-Qaeda.

Here’s how the briefing was described by the officials who prepared it, according to McClatchy:

One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a “10 on a scale of 1 to 10″ that “connected the dots” in earlier intelligence reports to present a stark warning that al-Qaida, which had already killed Americans in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and East Africa, was poised to strike again…

“The briefing was intended to `connect the dots’ contained in other intelligence reports and paint a very clear picture of the threat posed by bin Laden,” said the official, who described the tone of the report as “scary.”

Rice also considered the August 6 President’s Daily Brief, entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike US,” an historical document.

A lot has been said about this meeting ever since it was revealed by Bob Woodard in his new book "State of Denial" that George Tenet and Cofer Black went to Condoleeza Rice with this intense Powerpoint Presentation.

Of course our good friends over at RedState have been johnny-on-the-ball with this one.

I've just about had it with the “he said, she said” game by the press. Why are we not more skeptical of these "experts" who criticize the Bush Administration after talking to a few "insiders" looking for publicity? A journalist writes a book, and suddenly he's an expert on what essentially amounts to gossip.

The NY Times reported today that members of the 9/11 commission were "alarmed" to learn that Condoleezza Rice was informed in July of 2001 by CIA Director George Tenet about an imminent attack from al Qaeda, according to a new book, State of Denial, by journalist Bob Woodward. Secretary of State Rice of course denies this saying she has no recollection of any such meeting. Who could blame her? Big surprise there. So who’s right?

Ignoring the obvious ridiculousness of claiming that Bob ("All the President's Men/Bush At War Parts I &II") Woodard is just "suddenly" becoming on expert on various White House goings on. But it turns out, yet again, that Rice is the one whose wrong as was explained by Roger Cressey on Countdown last night.

OLBERMANN: My first question, you‘re now consulting within a firm with Richard Clarke, who was at that meeting on July 10, on the central question of whether Rice was warned then of an attack on the U.S. Do we know who‘s right here, Woodward or Secretary Rice?

CRESSEY: Yes, she was warned. I mean, there was a meeting. It was George Tenet, Dick Clarke, another individual from the agency, Cofer Black, and Steve Hadley. And what it was, Keith, was a briefing for Dr. Rice that was similar to a briefing the CIA gave to us in the situation room about a week before, laying out the information, the intelligence, laying out the sense of urgency. And it was pretty much given to Dr. Rice and Steve Hadley in pretty stark terms.

OLBERMANN: The $500 million Cofer Black action plan against bin Laden, would have read like crazy talk if that had been presented to her as Woodward describes it?

CRESSEY: Not crazy talk, but because in some respects, that‘s what we did after 9/11, although, as much as I love and respect Cofer, I don‘t think we would have been able to bring his head back in a box then, because, frankly, all the CIA sources in Afghanistan stunk, and that was part of the problem.

But that type of aggressive, robust covert action is ultimately what was implemented after 9/11.

CRESSEY: There have been reports that neither Secretary Rice nor director Tenet nor Mr. Black had told the 9/11 commission about the meeting on July 10. NBC News learned that the 9/11 commissioner Richard Ben Veniste and Rice‘s friend Philip Zelikow (ph), who was the executive director on the panel, in fact did interview Tenet about the meeting. Can you reconcile those two accounts for us?

CRESSEY: Yes, actually Andrea Mitchell did some great reporting on this today. There was that meeting, it was January 28, 2004. George Tenet spoke about the July 10 meeting extensively. And as a matter of fact, it is in the notes, the transcripts of that meeting that are now contained in the National Archives.

But according to the Right, this is all just payback for "Path to 9/11". Redstate revisted:

Conservatives know what really drives all of this. In the aftermath of Bill Clinton's emotional debacle of an interview with Fox News Sunday, the Left is poised to replace the blame for 9/11 on the shoulders of the current Clinton family counterpoint, Condoleezza Rice or any other poor sap in the Bush Administration at which they can throw mud.

Ok, when exactly did Bob Woodward join the left? He's been a staunch Republican and supporter of Bush for quite some time, some would argue that up until this book he'd tossed journalistic integrity out the window in exchange for access. In fact, I'd argue that point -- particularly regarding his previous two books about Bush at War:

CONDOLEEZZA RICE: He is terrific. He’s a great journalist, and I look forward to reading it. He’s talking about a pretty complex set of discussions about military issues and diplomatic issues, and I’m sure it will be — be fantastic. [CNN, 4/25/04]

DAN BARTLETT: I think Bob Woodward has done a pretty — particularly good job of describing how complicated of a process it is for a commander in chief to do two real important but sometimes conflicting responsibilities. [CNN, 4/25/04]

BARTLETT: We’re urging people to buy the book. What this book does is show a president who was asking the right questions and showing prudence as well as resolve during very difficult times. This book undermines a lot of the critics’ charges. [Washington Post, 4/21/04]

JOHN KING, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: But what is most striking is that, here at the White House, they say read the book. They believe it shows — it paints the picture of a president who asks the right questions, the tough questions, before going to war and then decided that he was right in launching that war. [CNN, 4/19/04]

But now it's clear that once he started asking questions that the Bushies didn't like, his access, particularly to the President was completely cut-off.

The right may cover their eyes and pretend this is "he said, she said" - or that Woodward suddenly has an "agendy", his information is "poorly sourced" or dissappears like "cotton candy" - but as you truly look closer it doesn't dissappear, it hardens into cold hard reality.

Rice was warned, repeatedly, and did nothing - except call for more meetings.

But wait it gets worse, Richard Ben-Veniste, who had originally claimed that the 9/11 Commission had no knowledge of this meeting has reversed his position and now states that they did know (just as Cressey describes). To me, these revelations have echoes of the Ben Sliney incident.

Sliney who played himself in the film United 93 (as a forward thinking man of action and basically the films lead character) was the FAA Hijack Co-ordinator on 9/11, which was also his first day on the job. In reality Sliney initially declined the offer of military assistance for an "intercept" of the aircraft even after they had realized that a hijacking was underway, but of course - this fact was left out of the film.

Intercepts of this type were in fact extremely common. According the Sen Mark Dayton's statements during the Condoleeza Rice confirmation for Secratary of State there were 62 successful intercepts of the "normal" type (where fighter planes are scambled to shadow and follow a no responsive aircraft), during 2001 prior to the 9/11 hijacking and over 100 such intercepts during 2000.

"I'm tired of the lies" Dayton stated in exasperation.

Such intercepts were under within the power of the FAA Hijack Coordinator (Sliney) to request. Not fully understanding his own authority, Sliney made no such request until after American Flight 11 had already hit the World Trade Center Tower 1.

History is being re-written right under our noses.

What this also reminds me of is the fact that in 2001 the FAA distributed a CD-ROM presentation to airlines and airports that cited the possibility of a suicide hijacking. This information and the fact the FAA's own Intelligence unit received over 50 warnings of possible suicide hijackings during that summer was kept Classified by the Bush Administration for five months after the completion of the 9/11 Report, and not released until after the 2004 election was over and Rice had been confirmed as the new Secretary of State replacing the just fired Colin Powell.

It's quite possible and in fact highly likely that portions or even all of the Powerpoint briefing that Tenet provided to Rice -- and according to McClatchy Newspapers were later to also shown to Rumsfeld and Ashcroft -- were also Classifed.

In all fairness to all involved, even Rice, federal law would prevent them from revealing any details of this meeting - even to the 9/11 commission unless they had the proper security clearances. It appears that Tenet's interview with the commission was done privately, and may have been restricted IMO -- (just as the full contents of the infamous Aug 6th PDB once were) - but since that time has been declassified. This would explain why they might first deny any knowledge, but it doesn't explain why they didn't take any action what so ever against Bin Laden and Al Qaeda even after their involvment in the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole was confirmed.

The very temerity of the arguement that this is some kind of journalistic payback for "Path to 9/11" or that ABC's timing on revealing the Foley scandal are some clumsy attempt at "balance" is just plain insulting. "Path to 9/11" was packed with politically charged lies and distortions of the truth.



But the truth is clear: Clinton tried (to stop al Qaeda), while Bushco simply stood by and let 3000 people die.

Vyan