Okay...Primary Battle Over...Game On

With all the acrimony that took place during the contest between Clinton and Obama during the end of the primary campaign, I made a vow to myself to wait until the issue was settled, before blogging again. It was very dispiriting to watch the Democratic party self-immolate.

But shortly thereafter, I decided to get involved again and chose to do it by posting on various forums throughout the net, not just progressive sites. I spent a lot of time posting on sites such as the NY Times and Washington Post. I then spread out beyond that and posted in other forums, whenever I saw a compelling reason to join the discussion.

I was finding it more compelling to speak my thoughts to those who might never consider reading a progressive blog. I liked sharing ideas with others on message boards, including both independents and conservatives. I also thought those type of posts reached many more people.

However, my blog should really include more of the source material for much of what I post elsewhere, anyway.

So today, I am making a vow to myself to re-invigorate this blog. I suspect I will be doing more, but shorter posts. The sources I reference, or comments I make on the message boards should have a central location here. So I plan on giving it a shot.

Michael Mukasey & The Manipulation of Truth

Last week, Michael Mukasey, speaking in San Francisco, made some startling comments about alleged pre-9/11 intelligence. He exploited the deaths of some 3,000 Americans to make political points in the FISA fight. Despite the fact that the media has been prepared to allow him to get away with those comments, there are those who have decided to expose what he said and actually hold the Attorney General accountable for his words.

What a concept!

I was listening to the Rachel Maddow show this evening on Air America, when she interviewed Glenn Greenwald, who has challenged Mukasey in a column at salon.com.

Greenwald writes:

"Speaking in San Francisco this week, Mukasey demanded that the President be given new warrantless eavesdropping powers and that lawbreaking telecoms be granted amnesty. To make his case, Mukasey teared up while exploiting the 3,000 Americans who died on 9/11 and said this:

"Officials "shouldn't need a warrant when somebody with a phone in Iraq picks up a phone and calls somebody in the United States because that's the call that we may really want to know about. And before 9/11, that's the call that we didn't know about. We knew that there has been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went."

"At that point in his answer, Mr. Mukasey grimaced, swallowed hard, and seemed to tear up as he reflected on the weaknesses in America's anti-terrorism strategy prior to the 2001 attacks. "We got three thousand. . . . We've got three thousand people who went to work that day and didn't come home to show for that," he said, struggling to maintain his composure.

"At the time of the attacks, Mr. Mukasey was the chief judge at the federal courthouse a few blocks away from the World Trade Center.

"These are multiple falsehoods here, and independently, this whole claim makes no sense. There is also a pretty startling new revelation here about the Bush administration's pre-9/11 failure that requires a good amount of attention."

Greenwald asks the questions and makes the points that the corporate-owned media has chosen to ignore.

Among them are the fact that warrants were not required under the old FISA law to monitor a call that originated in Afghanistan. Additionally, in a worst-case scenario, the government would have been allowed to monitor suspected terrorists for 72 hours without pursuing a warrant. So, Greenwald wonders, "why didn't they" eavesdrop on that alleged call.

If Mukasey was speaking metaphorically, he needs to come clean, and quick. Otherwise, the charge that the White House had pre-9/11 intelligence and refused to follow-up, needs to be investigated for sheer incompetence.

Greenwald also catches Mukasey in yet another lie. The Attorney General has repeated the untruth that the telecoms cannot face trial or our national secret methods of tracking down terrorists would be compromised.

Greenwald writes:

"Mike Mukasey was a long-time federal judge and so I feel perfectly comfortable calling that what it is: a brazen lie. Federal courts hear classified information with great regularity and it is not heard in "open court." There are numerous options available to any federal judge to hear classified information -- closed courtrooms, in camera review (in chambers only), ex parte communications (communications between one party and the judge only). No federal judge -- and certainly not Vaughn Walker, the Bush 41 appointee presiding over the telecom cases -- is going to allow "disclosure in open court of . . . . the means and the methods by which we collect foreign intelligence." And Mukasey knows that."

Greenwald goes farther than this and I urge you to check out the entire column here.

After familiarizing yourself with the story it would be a good idea to demand that our local politicians and media outlets actually start asking questions to get to the bottom of this.

Et Tu Carville

I have gone about 6 weeks since posting. That is how turned off I have become with Democratic politics in the run-up to the convention and election.

My last post explained why I switched from Senator Clinton(who I briefly supported after John Edwards withdrew from the race) to Senator Obama.

Events of the past month-and-a-half have confirmed to me that I made the right decision, and my mood has gone from depressed to downright angry.

In my mind, Hillary Clinton and her surrogates are demonstrating that they care more about her personal ambition than they do about winning the 2008 election. As I write, it is being gift-wrapped for Bush light, Senator McCain.

Perfectly illustrative of the type of politics the Democrats need to purge from the party is the latest salvo from Mr. Mary Matalin, James Carville.

In commenting about New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson's recent endorsement of Obama, Carville called the endorsement "an act of betrayal" and then had this to add: "Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic."

How pathetic that the man who is married to one of the top operatives in the GOP thinks this is all a game. How else to explain his decision to so discredit one of the top Hispanic politicians in America, because Richardson allegedly owes the Clintons loyalty for past high positions he was given in Bill Clinton's administration.

I know one thing, any person who is endorsed by cowboy Carville is somebody I will keep my distance from. I find his insider political gamesmanship more than a tad revolting, and if anybody is a traitor, it is Carville. It is comments like that that must make his home life with Mary so much more harmonious, as it plays perfectly into the GOP game plan.

And Carville damn well knows it.

Why Hillary Just Lost My Support

Call me a flip-flopper. It's been that sort of election season. In a president, I want a leader. Somebody who will go in and fight for what is right. I think I have been given definitive proof that Hillary is not that leader.

Once again, the Harry Reid-led Senate capitulated to George W. Bush in a disgraceful manner. The Senate, with substantial Democratic support, passed a bill that would give the president even more sweeping power to spy on Americans. Even worse, they have voted to grant immunity to telecom companies who obviously broke the law. Hey if they didn't, this would not be an issue.

Senator Barack Obama came back from campaigning to cast a 'no' vote. Senator Clinton, did not take the time to even vote. I guess she thought she wouldn't have to fight charges that the GOP will inevitably throw around...that anybody who voted no would be labelled soft on terror.

Give me a break.

I am so tired of the cowardice of the Democratic leadership. The continued caving in to the empty threats of the GOP instead of standing up for what is right. If the telecoms are granted retroactive immunity it will mean one thing...there is no rule of law in America if the one in power makes the claim that national security is at stake. Hey, why have laws at all? What hypocrisy!

Adding fuel to my decision to turn from Hillary was some powerful oratory I heard on my way home tonight. I was listening to the Thom Hartman show on Air America, and heard Obama speaking out strongly against both lobbyists and NAFTA.

Okay, maybe he's not all just touchy-feely as I thought. Maybe he does have the cojones to bring about a new era in government.

I just wish all of this had happened before the New York primary.

Hillary, you lost me. I will support you over any Republican candidate. But I do not think you deserve the nomination.

As for your efforts to seat the delegates in Florida and Michigan, you just can't do that. You can't change the rules midway through the game. I tend to feel the same about the superdelegate scenario as well. But I do think that after this election, the entire superdelegate concept needs to be disbanded.

It makes the Democrats look like Republicans.

Why This Edwards Supporter Voted For Hillary

Okay, I have to admit, I never thought in a million years that, when it came time for the New York primary I would cast my vote for Senator Hillary Clinton, but I did.

This isn't necessarily a good thing for Clinton. Everybody I have supported thus far has fallen by the wayside. Early on I wanted Feingold or Gore. No dice. I then rallied behind Kucinich and Dodd. See ya. Finally, right after I prepare to go gung-ho for Edwards he drops out BEFORE super Tuesday!

What's a progressive to do?

It wasn't so much that Clinton won my vote, but Senator Barack Obama lost it.

The first nail in the coffin was the Obama references to Ronald Reagan, while in the same conversation, lumping Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton together.

If you missed his comments, get them here.

After the resultant uproar, Obama disingenuously claimed that he wasn't really praising President Reagan. When one listens to that clip it is obvious that this is exactly what he was doing. And he was doing it because Obama sees himself as the great uniter.

Unfortunately, I do not feel that the GOP is going to feel like playing along.

In Senator Obama, I see a man who, if elected President, would probably not investigate the past crimes of the Bush administration, because he only seems to be thinking in a forward direction. However, if the sins of the past are not addressed and corrected, they will only be repeated.

I want somebody in the White House who realizes that we can still be unified while correcting the errors of the past 8 years. I am not so sure that Ms. Clinton would be especially good at it herself, but I think she understands better the gravity of the destruction that has been done to our government.

More than that, I cannot stand the hypocrisy of the mass media. And I need only one example to prove my point.

Michelle Obama, when asked if she would work to support Hillary Clinton, if she were the candidate, said, On the February 4th edition of Good Morning America, "I'd have to think about that. I'd have to think about that, her policies, her approach, her tone." Listen for yourself.

Can you imagine the media uproar that would have occurred had Hillary's spouse given such a lukewarm response about supporting Obama?? But Obama has been annointed by the mass media. He is their more compelling story. So we get treated to the daily demonizing of Hillary and the beatification of Barack.

Hey, I cannot stand the DLC, Hillary's wing of the party.

However, I do think that Clinton is vetted and tough and she probably will handle herself well against the typical vicious attacks that will most certainly come from the GOP.

The Democrats do not win elections by being nice. It didn't work for Kerry, or Gore (who won, but chose to let the steal go unchallenged), or Dukakis, or Carter (in his re-election bid). My fear is that Obama will, in his effort to project an upbeat 'unity' message, not fight back.

His inexcusable praise of Reagan signalled that for me. How he can even remotely praise a man and claim that he gave people hope, after all the people he allowed to be slaughtered in Central America, is obscene. And let's not forget the lasting damage that 'reaganomics' did to our country's fiscal health.

The media made its choice. Obama the saint, versus McCain the maverick hero.

Well, the media be damned. I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore.

Hence...my vote for Clinton. I was one person who was not especially enthusiastic about my vote. I will support whoever the nominee turns out to be, but this upcoming election hardly has me energized.

John Edwards For President

This has been brewing in me for weeks now, but in lieu of recent developments I have made the decision to support the candidacy of former Senator John Edwards for President.

Senator Edwards may not be the perfect candidate, but there is a lot to like about him. If I had my druthers I would have loved to have seen a President Russell Feingold. For that matter, Dennis Kucinich, or even Chris Dodd would have been comfortable choices for me. However, in the real world, even though the media and the DLC say otherwise, there are 3 candidates to choose from.

After initially supporting Edwards I had gotten turned off to him after his performance on the debate on glbt issues on Logo. It wasn't that Clinton or Obama were any better, but Edwards hardly inspired me. However, his anti-corporatism message resonates fully with me. Additionally, 2 recent events have made me realize how silly I was to have backed away from supporting his candidacy to begin with.

The first is the absolutely ludicrous performance of the mass media, especially since the New Hampshire primary. In the exit polling there, the economy emerged as the #1 issue for Democratic voters, so we then got bombarded with populist messages on our faltering economy by Clinton and Obama. Despite the fact that this has been Edwards' message all along, and these 2 were co-opting it for opportunistic reasons, the media acted as if this focus on the economy was somehow new and revelatory. It was, and for a long time has been, as if John Edwards was invisible.

No....it's more that the media has adopted a pack mentality and its reporting on the campaign has been stunningly inept and incomplete. They have focused on non-issues like the man's haircut and his wife's illness and have completely ignored the substance of Edwards' message.

Adding more fuel to the fire, and convincing me that I am right to support John Edwards, is the recent statements by leaders of the DLC, that this is a 2-person race. They have chosen to render John Edwards irrelevant.

All that action has done is make me realize that the DLC who are the irrelevant ones. They want the Democratic Party to be exactly like the GOP. They are in the pocket of the corporations and are trying to be bullying king (or queen)-makers.

Personally, I will never contribute money or time to a national Democratic Party organization again. I will only support individual Progressive candidates. In fact, I am so disgusted that I am considering renouncing my party membership and registering as an Independent.

The recent petty non-issue over race between Clinton and Obama is mindless. The media are not the only ones at fault here. So are the respective candidates for continuing to ratchet up the rhetoric. It makes it all the more easier to support the only candidate who seems to be speaking for me and not the corporations that control America.

That person is John Edwards.

Put that in your pipe, DLC.

What's Time's Point?

It's almost 2 weeks later, but this is the perfect companion to the preceding piece.

Again, no pic will accompany this post, because the point of the message is the remarkable lack of judgement from the press.

The last post had to do with the media giving too much coverage to a mass murderer, granting his request for fame. And now, Time Magazine, needlessly names the 2 victims of a tiger mauling despite a request for privacy.

Brothers Paul Dhaliwal, 19, and Kulbir Dhaliwal, 23, were at San Francisco General Hospital with severe bite and claw wounds. Their names were provided by hospital and law enforcement sources who spoke on condition of anonymity because the family had not yet given permission to release their names.

Since it is apparent that the family did not want the names released at this time, why would Time publish their identity? To what purpose?

And how much did they pay their "anonymous sources" to give them the info?

What is wrong with the news media today?

Time should be ashamed of their coverage.

Giving Serial Killers What They Want

There is deliberately no picture accompanying this post, which will be brief.

For a change, it is not related to politics. It is an indictment of what passes for news in America.

In the aftermath of the mass murder in Omaha, I was appalled to see MSNBC endlessly stating that the killer had left behind a letter saying that he wanted to be famous. All the while, these dolts kept the man's face plastered and gave him all the publicity he ever could have wished for. How many times did we have to hear his Internet rants and read about the letters he left behind?

And don't think that similarly-inclined people did not notice.

I didn't need to switch to other news networks to know that MSNBC was not alone in their coverage. This was the way this story would be played out. They all try and out-sensationalize the other, and their judgement is pretty awful.

So, I was more than a little bit relieved to see that maybe we have reached the tipping point.

The AP has a good piece today on the sensationalization of that crime and a debate on the merits of not giving these killers the publicity they seek.

At least I know I am not alone in my disgust.

You can access the story here.

Bill O'Reilly Opera!

Dana Milbank Takes Mitt Romney To The Woodshed

In today's Washington Post, Dana Milbank has a devastating column on GOP candidate Mitt Romney.

In a piece titled, "Anything Goes," Milbank writes that Romney is such a panderer that "much of what Romney says can't stand up to the light of day."

He goes on to list examples from a stump speech that Romney gave in Des Moines, Iowa on Friday. They are scathing examples.

I have written about Romney in the past, including his ever-evolving opinions on glbt-issues. You see, he had to hold a different set of beliefs when he was running for Governor of Massachusetts, than he does now that he has to capture the right-wing of the GOP in a national election.

If ever a man was all facade, hypocrisy and pandering phoniness, Mitt Romney fits the bill.

What I find most shocking, however, is that a respected reporter with national creds actually had the cajones to call him out on it.

This article will haunt Romney for the rest of his quest for the GOP nomination. No way he'll get it, however. Stick a fork in him.

The GOP Hypocrisy On Stem Cell Research

I was glad to see that the most popular article on the Time magazine website today had to do with a potential new breakthrough on stem cell research.

As somebody who has been very active in working with both Alzheimer's and Diabetes charitable organizations, I know the implications of stem cell research and the enormous upside. I understand why Nancy Reagan and most Americans are fully in favor of funding. I am also equally nauseated with the official Bush position, those of his lapdogs (like Rush Limbaugh) and the sickening religious right-wing, who still acts as if this is somehow an immoral practice.

As I have written in the past, it is hypocrisy to be against stem cell research if one is in favor of in vitro fertilization. That is because the embryos used for the research are taken from embryos harvested in fertility clinics, and which would be discarded anyway.

I am glad to see a widely read piece from Time saying the same thing.

Michael Kinsley, who suffers from Parkinson's, wrote,

"although the political dilemma that stem cells pose for politicians is real enough, the moral dilemma is not and never was. The embryos used in stem-cell research come from fertility clinics, which otherwise would discard them. This has been a powerful argument in favor of such research. Why let these embryos go to waste? But a more important point is, What about fertility clinics themselves? In vitro fertilization ("test-tube babies") involves the purposeful creation of multiple embryos, knowing and intending that most of them either will die after implantation in the womb or, if not implanted, will be discarded or frozen indefinitely. Even if all embryonic-stem-cell research stopped tomorrow, this far larger mass slaughter of embryos would continue. There is no political effort to stop it. Bush even praised in vitro fertilization in his 2001 speech about the horrors of stem-cell research. In vitro has become too popular for politicians to take on. But their failure to do so makes a mockery of their alleged agony over embryonic stem cells."

For the full text of his piece, click here.

Who Is Really Destabilizing Iraq?

In making his case against Iran, George Bush often uses the argument that it is the Iranians who are killing Americans in Iraq.

How interesting that new data from our own military, and published in today's New York Times, has revealed that 60% of the foreign fighters who are serving as suicide bombers, and engaging in other attacks in Iraq, hail from Saudi Arabia and Libya. A graphic representation of this, from the New York Times, is pictured above.

In fact, Saudi Arabia, BushCo's business partner, who provided 15 of the 19 terrorists who engineered the 9/11 attacks, provided a whopping 41% of foreign fighters. And, wouldn't you know, the impact of Iranian foreign forces is almost negligible, in comparison.

This begs the question...will Mr. Bush advocate an invasion of Saudi Arabia? Or of Libya, our newfound 'friend?'

Yeah, that will happen about as quickly as Halliburton offering their services at non-price-gouging rates.

It's all about the oil. Always is, and always was.

Bush: The Pro-Lie President

Who knew the Pillsbury Doughboy had the cajones to tell the truth about Dubya?

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, whose press briefings I used to check out more regularly than I should probably admit, was almost a sympathetic figure in that capacity. He always came across to me as somebody who was in way over his head for the task required of him...very much like Mr. Bush himself, actually.

I was not surprised when he left. However, I never expected him to be a newsmaker in retirement.

Imagine my surprise when he leaked a bombshell, from his upcoming book about his White House experience, that essentially blames Bush and Veep Cheney as being part of a cabal of 5 that deliberately misled McClellan on the Plame incident. I am referring to the infamous press briefing where McClellan told reporters he had been assured by both Rove and Libby that they had nothing to do with leaking Plame's identity as a covert agent to reporters.

From a story today in AP,

"In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, McClellan recounts the 2003 news conference in which he told reporters that aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were "not involved" in the leak involving operative Valerie Plame.

"'There was one problem. It was not true,' McClellan writes, according to a brief excerpt released Tuesday. 'I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff and the president himself.'"

Interestingly, we get no further details on what this means, as McClellan is refusing additional comment. However, if it is indeed true, the repercussions for whatever shred remains of Bush's credibility is enormous.

Forget about allegedly being pro-life, I have already discussed how ludicrous it is for folks like Bush to even use that term. This would solidify the Commander-in-Chief's standing as the first pro-lie president.

It's amazing what the lure of bucks and the marketing of a memoir will do to transform one's character, eh?

Giving Robert Novak Way Too Much Power

Columnist Robert Novak, who will always be a traitor in my eyes for leaking the identity of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame, in his role as propagandist for BushCo, is once again back in the news.

It has to do with today's Op-Ed column which starts out as follows:

"Agents of Sen. Hillary Clinton are spreading the word in Democratic circles that she has scandalous information about her principal opponent for the party's presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, but has decided not to use it. The nature of the alleged scandal was not disclosed.

"This word-of-mouth among Democrats makes Obama look vulnerable and Clinton look prudent. It comes during a dip for the front-running Clinton after she refused to take a stand on New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's now discarded plan to give driver's licenses to illegal aliens.

"Experienced Democratic political operatives believe Clinton wants to avoid a repetition of 2004, when attacks on each other by presidential candidates Howard Dean and Richard Gephardt were mutually destructive and facilitated John Kerry's nomination."

After the fiasco of the Plame leak, and the growing lack of credibility for the term 'unnamed source,' this alleged "scandalous information" is weak enough. Coming from Novak, it is downright meaningless, not to mention ludicrous.

So, how absurd is it for Sen. Barack Obama to go ballistic and immediately assume that this is a maneuver by Sen. Hillary Clinton?

According to reports today, an Obama statement released yesterday asserted that,

"her campaign appeared to be either digging for dirt on his personal life or working in conjunction with Novak to intimidate him.

"'If the purpose of this shameless item was to daunt or discourage me or supporters of our campaign from challenging and changing the politics of Washington, it will fail. In fact, it will only serve to steel our resolve,' the Illinois senator said. He urged Clinton to 'either make public any and all information referred to in the item, or concede the truth: that there is none.'"

I am not a supporter of either Obama or Clinton, but I think this maneuver makes Sen. Obama look extremely weak. Why on earth would he give any credence to a story like this from Novak? What, does he think that Clinton will come forth and share the alleged dirt?

We are talking Robert Novak here. Discredited Robert Novak! The man who has demonstrated that he will sell the national security of the U.S. down the tubes to further the neo-con agenda.

What Novak did with his fraudulent news tip was not just attempt to discredit Obama, but also to stir up enmity against Clinton for supposedly having an aide leak the dirt to begin with.

The Clinton camp struck back hard, but it was hardly necessary. Novak, at the behest of GOP operatives, laid out the bait, and a desparate Obama took a great big chomp.

How nice of him to give Novak the credibility he so richly does not deserve.

The Firefighters Talk About The Real 9/11 Rudy

I know that my last post covered much of the same ground, but this video from the firefighters union is a bit longer and should probably be the first video anyone watches when deciding whether or not to vote for Mr. Giuliani.

The only agenda the firefighters have is getting the truth out there.

Hopefully this video helps.

Making Rudy Giuliani Accountable

GOP front-runner for the presidential nomination, former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani, is making a bizarro-world run for the White House. I use the term bizarro, because only in a society on the other side of the looking glass could such an inappropriate choice for Commander-in-Chief be coasting along with a double-digit lead.

Let me put it this way. Giuliani is basing his entire persona on this media-created perception that he was somehow the fearless leader and hero of 9/11. But New Yorkers know the truth. This egomaniac, who even uses $9.11 as a fund-raising tactic, was unfit to lead then, and is unfit to lead now.

Rather than tell the story of where Giuliani put the emergency control center and how gross mismanagement and possible corporate favoritism cost many firefighters their lives, I will let the following short film do the talking. It comes from TheRealRudy.com.

Please share the film with others and sign the petition on their website so that an official investigation can finally get underway.

Mukasey's Gonzalez Moment

After initially receiving rave reviews, something curious happened to U.S. Attorney General nominee Michael Mukasey upon his return to the confirmation hearings.

The following bizarre exchange occurred at the 2nd confirmation hearing (transcript courtesy of the Blog of Legal Times):

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.): Just to finish that thought: So is waterboarding constitutional?
Mukasey: I don't know what's involved in the technique. If waterboarding is torture, torture is not constitutional.
Whitehouse: If water-boarding is constitutional is a massive hedge.
Mukasey: No, I said, if it's torture. I'm sorry. I said, if it's torture.
Whitehouse: If it's torture? That's a massive hedge. I mean, it either is or it isn't. Do you have an opinion on whether waterboarding, which is the practice of putting somebody in a reclining position, strapping them down, putting cloth over their faces and pouring water over the cloth to simulate the feeling of drowning -- is that constitutional?
Mukasey: If it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional.
Whitehouse: I'm very disappointed in that answer. I think it is purely semantic.

In an Op-Ed in the Los Angeles Times, Jonathan Turley wrote that Mukasey's answers on this specific torture led to the following conclusion:

"There are only two explanations for this answer, either of which should compel the senators to vote against confirmation. The first is that Mukasey is the most ill-informed nominee in the history of this republic. Torture, and water-boarding in particular, is one of the top issues facing the Justice Department, the subject of numerous lawsuits and one of the most obvious, predictable topics at the hearing. It has been discussed literally thousands of times in the media during the last six years. To say he is unfamiliar with the technique is perhaps the single greatest claim of ignorance since Clarence Thomas testified at his confirmation that he really had not thought enough about abortion to have an opinion on the subject.

"The second possibility is, unfortunately, the more likely explanation: Mukasey is lying."

To their credit, the 10 Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have sent a letter to Mr. Mukasey, seeking clarification on his position regarding waterboarding and torture.

Talking Post Memo posted the letter on their site. After education Mr. Mukasey about the history of waterboarding as torture, the letter directly asks if he feels that "waterboarding, or inducing the misperception of drowning, as an interrogation technique illegal under U.S. law, including treaty obligations."

I suspect that if Michael Mukasey chooses to once again couch his answers in semantics, he can forget about being confirmed.

We do not need a second Alberto Gonzales.

New York Times Joins The Choir On Lack Of Congressional Leadership

In listening to Progressive talk radio, an ongoing reference is made to the fact that those in Democratic leadership roles choose to not give interviews with those pundits on the Left. It is in clear opposition to the fawning behavior of GOP pols to their mouthpieces on the Right.

To me, it is just another indication that the Dems continue to take their base for granted. It also indicates that they are continuing to allow the GOP to define them, constantly being re-active to GOP threats, and rarely being pro-active on issues of moral leadership. It is why I recently began dubbing them as GOP 'lite.' Corporate influence seems to be a weakness of both parties, obviously.

The problem has been that the Pelosis and Reids have been able to be dismissive of our views as somehow being those of some face-less fringe in the blogosphere. But now, we are finally getting some heavyweights (well, heavyweights with the professional politicians, at any rate) chiming in.

The latest punch to the gut has been delivered by the New York Times.

In an editorial in Saturday's paper, titled "With Democrats Like These...," the Dems get it with both barrels.

In registering their disillusionment over the fact that the Dem leadership does not get the damage being done to our Constitution over illegal wiretapping during the Bush monarchy, the editorial concludes,

"It was bad enough having a one-party government when Republicans controlled the White House and both houses of Congress. But the Democrats took over, and still the one-party system continues."

When it comes to defusing the White House argument about the importance of circumventing warrants, the overriding message should be that, without court oversight, there is nothing to stop a dictator from spying on their political enemies. It is the reason such protections are in place to begin with. Tamper with that fact and you alter the American way of life, allowing the terrorists to win. End of discussion.

Maybe the Speaker and the Senate Majority leader, not to mention the DNC, will begin to listen.

Pete Stark on the Iraq War and more

Rep. Pete Stark is taking a lot of heat from the Democratic leadership, over his stark...and refreshingly honest...comments about our Commander-in-Chief.

I do not believe Rep. Stark owes anyone an apology. In fact, we should call him to show our support and thank him. Then call Speaker of The House Pelosi and suggest she support Stark herself, instead of tearing him down.

Rep. Stark's home office is 510-494-1388. His D.C. answering machine is full, so I am posting this number instead.

Speaker Pelosi's D.C. # is (202) 225-4965. I already left her a message expressing my displeasure at her efforts to chastise Rep. Stark.

Support Sen. Chris Dodd On FISA Bill

Today, Sen. Chris Dodd announced that he would put a hold on an upcoming FISA Bill that, because of Democratic capitulation once again, would allow telecommunications companies who illegally spied on American citizens to receive retroactive amnesty.

This is not acceptable.

Please click on the above banner and it will take you directly to Sen. Dodd's site to include your name (and comments) in support of his action.