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POPSJustice Dept Appoints Special Prosecutor Response to Justice report citing lack of White House cooperation in investigation of the presence of political pressure in firing US Attorneys, "abdicating" of responsibility by former AG Gonzales. Astonishing - Bush Justice Dept goes after Bush White House, appointees.
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POPS#6 Operation FALCON Raids May be of interest to those who have decided that McCain/Palin are just a front until Dick'n'George declare war on someone.
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POPSThe End of The Fairy Tale by Ralph Peters Putin went to war and the American president went to a basketball game--reinforcing the Kremlin's conviction that it could do as it pleased and get away with it. (Bush's gravest flaw is that he's a dreadful judge of character, stubbornly trusting undeserving men, from Iraqi schemer Ahmed Chalabi , through the incompetent Alberto Gonzales , to Vladimir Putin , who played Bush for a fool.) French president Nicolas Sarkozy, well-intentioned and inadequate The Putin regime was perfectly willing to let Monsieur le President return to Paris with a signed piece of paper. The Russians have drawn the lesson from Western efforts to negotiate with Iran and other rogue states that Europe can be narcotized with empty agreements and nebulous promises and that Europe has become a continent of bureaucrats who much prefer paperwork to reality. And there are no penalties when the agreements prove worthless.
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POPSDOJ: DOJ's own political judge appointments illegal Department of Justice's own report accuses Gonzales' aide Monica Goodling of "violating federal law and Justice Department policy by discriminating against job applicants who weren't Republican or conservative loyalists." Perjury charges against Goodling, Kyle Sampson, and Alberto Gonzales to be considered.
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POPS"Good Faith" Torture Deemed OK Interesting that they set a subjective standard for torture: viz., if the interrogator thought in "good faith" that the method wouldn't cause long-term mental harm. Note that it didn't require that the method would probably cause long-term mental harm, only that the interrogator didn't believe it would. By defining torture subjectively, the Bush administration: 1. Consigned the definition of torture to belief, thereby making it impossible to adjudicate by objective measures. 2. Totally marginalized the detainee's likely reaction to the method and, thereby, nullified the detainee's humanness and recognition as a rights-bearing being. This kind of sophistry one would expect of a brutal dictatorship.
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POPSinteractive guide: Who in the Bush administration broke the law, and who could be prosecuted
Each scandal is represented by a colored circle that encompasses the people who are implicated. As it's easy to see, many of the players here are mixed up in two, three, or more of the alleged crimes. Hence all the overlapping circles (Venn-diagram heaven!). The best way to make sense of this legal tangle is to mouse over the title of an individual scandal, which will highlight everyone implicated. For example, the wiretapping bubble ensnares George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, David Addington, John Ashcroft, John Yoo, and Alberto Gonzales. At the same time, Ashcroft and Gonzales fall into the overlapping circle for monkey business related to DoJ hiring. Mouse over a person's name for information on how each person is involved. Mouse over the title of each circle for specifics about the particular scandal. And if all else fails, fall back on this golden rule of wrongdoing in the White House: All roads lead to Gonzales.
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POPSAnother Terrorist Kangaroo Trial With alot at Stake So the government caught bin Laden's driver, we are told to believe, but yet they lost bin Laden? Right! It's all a lie and another show trial for a fictitious account to justify a fake war for regime changes. It is not only Mr Hamdan's future that will be determined by the trial. There is great concern among members of the Bush administration that they too could find themselves before foreign or international courts for the role they played in facilitating and encouraging the torture of detainees. The infamous "torture memos" circulated by Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Charles Addington, and two former administration figures, Douglas Feith and Alberto Gonzales, covertly approved the abuse of prisoners by the CIA. These men were publicly warned recently by Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Colin Powell when Mr Powell was Secretary of State, to "never travel outside the US
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POPSBush, Mukasey, Cheney Claim Exec Privilege, Obstructing in Plame Case But the Executive has no "privilege" to violate the law, nor to obstruct justice. And Cheney, by his own words, is not part of the "executive branch". Mukasey, the new AG replacing Alberto (Speedy) Gonzales, shows why he was chosen by Bush, i.e. to continue to obstruct justice. As even republican federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said on the Plame case, "a cloud hangs over the VP office", and Scott McClellan just opened up and published his account that Bush personally admitted authorizing the Plame leak! This is stonewalling to avoid prosecution for a "high crime" worthy of impeachment by George and Dick both.
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POPSJustice Dept. Wrongly Considered Politics in Hiring The article goes on: Under the changes instituted under Ashcroft and continued under his successor, Alberto Gonzales, the political appointees were encouraged to become more involved in the hiring process, Fine said. Tuesday's report is the first to come out of a series of inspector general investigations that arose out of the firings of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006. Fine's investigators also are looking into whether the firings were prompted by partisan political reasons, whether Gonzales and his aides misled Congress about the firings and whether civil-rights and voting-rights cases were politicized. This is how we wound up with so many underqualified attorneys from Regent University .
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POPS20 Ex-Prosecutors Side with Congress in Subpoena Case The piece goes on: "If permitted to enforce its subpoenas for documents and testimony, Congress has a unique ability to address improper partisan influence in the prosecutorial process," the former prosecutors wrote. "No other institution will fill the vacuum if Congress is unable to investigate and respond to this evil." In other words, allow the subpoenas or the WH is above the law.
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POPS‘It’s just a goddamned piece of paper’ Put aside, for a moment, political affiliation or personal beliefs. It doesn’t matter if you are a Democrat, Republican or Independent. It doesn’t matter if you support the invasion or Iraq or not. Despite our differences, the Constitution has stood for two centuries as the defining document of our government, the final source to determine “in the end ” if something is legal or right. Every federal official - including the President - who takes an oath of office swears to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States.” WHAT IS GLARINGLY OBVIOUS IS THE OUR "LEADERS" DON'T BELIEVE IN THE CONSTITUTION
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POPSPost-9/11 Memo Shows Disdain for Constitution Bush's "Justice" Dept had written memo claiming that 4th amendment of the Constitution "did not apply". The administration now disavows this position, it claims, yet we see little evidence of their disavowal in regard to civil liberties when it comes to domestic spying, the PATRIOT ACT, REAL ID, or a host of other examples. It was Bush who blurted out that the Constitution is "just a g--damned piece of paper" , when legal challenges were warned of.
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POPSCourt: Bush Intervened Unlawfully to Defend Mexican Gang Killer The question is, why? Maybe someone asked a "favor" of him or Alberto (speedy) Gonzales, who also came from Texas, where these crimes took place. This man even confessed to the murders. Bush used a Vienna Convention (international) statute as the basis for the request for retrial. This had to be either personally or politically motivated.
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POPS War Mongering Imbecilic Murdering Liar Plans Library > The Blackwater/Halliburton room where you are armed to the teeth and allowed to go berserker and shoot anything that moves, friendly or not. Then you charge the Gov't. a ton of cash$$$ for the privilege. > The Dick Cheney Room, in the famous undisclosed location, > complete with > shooting gallery. > > Plans also include: The K-Street Project Gift Shop - Where > you can buy > (or just steal) an election. > > The Men's Room, where you can meet some of your > favorite Republican > Senators. > > Last, but not least, there will be an entire floor devoted > to a 7/8 > scale model of the President's ego. > > To highlight the President's accomplishments, the > museum will have an > electron microscope to help you locate them. > > When asked, President Bush said that he didn't care so > much about the > individual exhibits as long as his museum > was better than his father's. Current Location: Corvallis, Oregon Current Mood: angry
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POPSTime To Vote Contempt Where's the beef, when it comes to justice, and the rule of law. I guess politics trumps the law everytime.
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POPSCriminal Inquiry of C.I.A. Waterboarding Tapes Destruction set by Justice Department
More: Those officials said the White House lawyers included Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel and later the attorney general. Mr. Gonzales resigned under pressure on Aug. 27, and Mr. Mukasey succeeded him. Administration critics blamed Mr. Gonzales for carving out positions on detention and interrogation they deemed too permissive. So the actions of Mr. Mukasey, who as a federal judge in New York built a reputation as tough on terrorism, are being closely watched. It remains unclear how various administration officials argued on the matter of the tapes, though one former senior intelligence official familiar with the matter said there had been “vigorous sentiment” among some top White House officials that the tapes should be destroyed. The House Intelligence Committee has ordered Jose A. Rodriguez Jr., the former C.I.A. official who has been described by intelligence officials as having authorized the destruction of the tapes, to appear at a hearing on Jan. 16
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POPSBush Spying, Trashes Constitution, Establishes Impearal Rule Bush yells, trust me trust me, yet again and again he proves he is untrustworthy. The constitution was set up to protect the American people from a dictator yet the Emperor is here. Time to stop the Emperor - Time to take back our country and reestablish the constitution as supreme law of the land.
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POPSWater torture judge wins job. This is a good marker for the end of the illusion of so-called: 'American values." Now all the brash and bloated pretensions can be tossed back into America's face. Without doubt it would be justified to see it's own troops tortured. Also It would be fair play to kidnap suspects and hold them in secret prisions for decades, without trial, charges, lawyers or family notification. Of course, too, other nations could also start wars based on lies and deliberate fabrications. Increase spying on citizens. Build up lists of 'terrorist suspects,' spend more money on prisons rather than schools, etc. Welcome to the New World Fascist Regime: Welcome to America. We just gave the job of Chief of Law and Order (our Attorney General) to a Republican hack who's willing to play ball with the warmongers. And the rival political party is playing along.
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POPS Michael Mukasey Confirmed As Attorney General He sentenced Omar Abdel Rahman, known as the "blind sheik," to life in prison for a plot to blow up New York City landmarks, and he signed in 2002 the material witness warrant that let the FBI arrest U.S. citizen Jose Padilla. That warrant marked the start of a case that wound its way through several federal courts as the government declared Padilla an enemy combatant and held him for 3½ years before he was convicted last month on terrorism-related charges. In an opinion article in The Wall Street Journal, Mukasey criticized U.S. national security law as too weak in some areas by noting that prosecutors are sometimes forced to reveal details of cases at the risk of tipping off terrorists. He is also a supporter of the government's anti-terror USA Patriot Act, wryly writing in 2004 that the "awkward name may very well be the worst thing about the statute."
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