Left News and Views

Twenty months to go and counting.

Counting the senseless deaths of our brave young men and women in Iraq.

Counting the illegal wiretaps and government meddling in other private information that are diminishing our freedom.

Counting the incidents of torture that are costing us our moral authority in the world.

Counting the number of “Bushies” polluting the Department of Justice.

Counting the National Guard units that are decimated and unable to help in the event of natural disasters or incidents of domestic terrorism.

And counting on a government that has sold its soul to the energy and pharmaceutical industries.

Yes, there are only 20 more months in which President Bush – now recognized by a vast majority of historians as the worst president in the history of this country – can continue to block all Congressional efforts to correct the problems that plague these United States.

But can we really wait that long? Fortunately, with the cost of gas putting a crimp in the ability of many Americans to go on a vacation this summer, more and more citizens are looking at impeachment as the only way to – pardon the phrase – move forward. It is inevitably the trivial problems in life that push people to the breaking point.

Go to Google and type in “impeach President Bush.” and you will find dozens of web sites devoted to moving our legislators to do what is needed to save this country – and, more important, show the world that this war monger is an aberration similar to Senator Joe McCarthy.

One of the most organized sites is located at ImpeachBush.org and has already had nearly 1 million people who havealready voted in their referendum to Impeach Bush. This group has even helped Congress by developing cogent articles of impeachment.

And why is impeachment becoming an imperative? Let me count the reasons.

At the current tragic level of violence in Iraq, more than 2,000 more American men and women will needlessly die there. That is, if the level doesn’t increase as it has every month this year. It is not inconceivable that the current number of those who have given their lives in this war – 3,471 as of today – could nearly double by the time Bush leaves office.

The phone bills, cable bills and other private documents of thousands of more citizens could be collected without warrants by a Department of Justice that has run amok.

Our electoral process could be further compromised by the “Bushies” in the Department of Justice looking for ways to prosecute Democrats – with or without justification – and quash the legitimate inquiries into Republican abuses.

Thousands of lives could be put at risk in the event of another Katrina or other natural disaster.

And now we find that our Department of Homeland Security is as dysfunctional as other federal agencies populated with Bush loyalists.

We learned this week that a Georgia man with extensively drug-resistant TB took two trans-Atlantic flights and was able to re-enter the United States, even though his passport was flagged and he was placed on a no-fly list. To get back from Europe, he merely flew to Toronto and then drove into the U.S.

Not much has been said about this part of the story yet, but imagine if a determined terrorist had injected himself with a highly infectious disease and then waltzed into the U.S. like this. Isn’t this precisely what the Department of Homeland Security had been created to prevent?

There are just too many reasons why we can’t wait to bring an end to this clear and present danger to the U.S. – President Bush.

I passed Jae Moon’s home on my run this morning, as I do every morning. His parents put out the flags that people originally placed there when Jae’s body was returned home following his death in Iraq on Christmas Day last year.

The sight of the flags resurrected the emotions of that day and nearly brought tears to my eyes once more, for Jae and the 3,467 other men and women who have died so needlessly in this illegal war.

While I opposed the war even before the invasion, joining in protest with thousands of others who were drowned out by the Bush propaganda machine, Jae was the first person close to me who died over there, the first to put a face on the suffering that many thousands of fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers and children face each day as loved ones either die, are maimed, or are at risk in a war that should never have happened.

This week, Cindy Sheehan, whose son, Army Spc. Casey Sheehan, died in Iraq, resigned from the anti-war movement. Sheehan came to prominence when she set a lawn chair down the road from President Bush’s Texas vacation ranch and refused to leave until he explained what “noble cause” her son had died for. She was the first to publicly express the anger and frustrations of the mothers whose young sons and daughters were dying because of Bush’s mismanagement of the war. She put a human face on the war’s toll that Bush and his warmongers couldn’t ignore.

“She did a tremendous thing in that she took her personal loss and made it public, so that people could understand the cost of the war,” Nita Chaudhary, an anti-Iraq-war organizer for MoveOn.org was quoted as saying in a story today in the San Francisco Chronicle.

“The anti-war movement is now the person next door, it’s not just Cindy Sheehan,” Chaudhary said.

According to the Chronicle, the mounting number of deaths of U.S. soldiers in Iraq — and the return of severely wounded soldiers speaking out about getting substandard treatment — has made Sheehan’s opposition to the war the predominant opinion. When the mainstream press discovered Sheehan in Crawford, 55 percent of Americans disapproved of the way Bush is handling the war. Now, 72 percent of Americans oppose the war, according to a May CBS/New York Times poll.

The Chronicle reported that Sheehan, who is emotionally exhausted and politically frustrated at Congressional Democrats for continuing to fund the Iraq war, said she is leaving public life to figure out her next step.

Regardless of how Sheehan resurfaces, the Chronicle reported, Nancy Lessin, a founder of the anti-war organization Military Families Speak Out, noted that her influence will continue. There were only two families when Lessin’s organization started in the fall of 2002; now there are 3,500.

The sad thing is that our military leaders – at least or highest military chief – don’t seem to feel the loss that so many of us do. In an appearance on CBS News Monday morning to discuss Memorial Day, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace, dramatically underestimated the number of deaths of US Armed Service-members in the Iraq War.

“When you take a look at the life of a nation and all that’s required to keep us free, we had more than 3,000 Americans murdered on 11 September, 2001. The number who have died, sacrificed themselves since that time is approaching that number,” Pace told CBS Early Show’s Harry Smith. “And we should pay great respect and thanks to them for allowing us to live free.”

As I wrote above, 3,467 American men and women have died in Iraq. Safe and secure in his Pentagon office, Pace doesn’t seem to know – or possibly care. This is the same general who labeled homosexuality as immoral. Which is more immoral, General Pace? Homosexuality or your lack of concern for the number of people who have died in Iraq.

I finally got around to watching former Vice President Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth last night. We have had it on our Tivo list for quite a while, but I just didn’t get the chance to sit down watch it. In a very sober and calm manner, Gore lays out how seriously global warming is threatening the equilibrium of our planet.

Gore demonstrates that if dramatic action isn’t taken now, millions of lives throughout the world could be threatened by rising ocean waters — not 50 or 100 years from now, but as soon as 2017. The good news is that the trend can be reversed if a number of not-so-drastic steps are taken by individuals and governments that ultimately will not only improve our chances for survival but have economic benefits as well.

It’s no wonder that Gore has been nominate for the 2007 Nobel Prize.

But, before we can go anywhere in the U.S., we need to reverse the devastation President Bush and company have wreaked on our regulatory agencies.

Let’s first look at the major, overriding reason those who put Bush in office have been so successful in convincing people that global warming isn’t a serious issue.

In the spring of 1998, the New York Times unveiled a memo detailing plans by parties within the American energy industry to derail the Kyoto Protocol. (Keep in mind that Vice President Dick Cheney was president of Halliburton at the time, a position he obtained mainly because of his ties within the U.S. government.)

The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is an amendment to the international treaty on climate change, assigning mandatory emission limitations for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to the signatory nations.

The objective is the “stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”

The document published in the Times laid bare a sophisticated, multi-million-dollar scheme to influence the discourse on global warming over a span of years. The key? Tapping scientists to express skepticism about climate change and developing a sophisticated media and public outreach campaign to get that message out to the public.

This plan pretty much followed the tactics used by the Tobacco Industry to deflect calls for regulatory restrictions on its deadly industry after the Surgeon General first issued its report on the impact on a person’s health and smoking in 1964. Think how long it took for people to realize that this threat was real and not just an overreaction by us liberals.

We don’t have that long for the government to take serious action and sign on to the Kyoto Protocol. But we have some serious roadblocks from both the energy industry and the Bush government.

Exxon, subsequently merged with Mobil to form ExxonMobil, has funneled about $16 million between 1998 and 2005 to a network of ideological and advocacy organizations that manufacture uncertainty on the issue.

Earlier this year, ExxonMobil seemed to indicate that they saw the writing on the wall – probably in no small part because of An Inconvenient Truth.

In a report by PBS’s Frontline, ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson is quoted as saying, “Our industry has a responsibility to contribute to policy debates and to take concrete steps to reduce emissions. We know our climate is changing, the average temperature of the earth is rising, and greenhouse gas emissions are increasing.”

Has ExxonMobil really changed, or do its leaders believe they have their tentacles so thoroughly embedded in the Bush Administration that they no longer need to spend money on disinformation campaigns?

In the past five years, according to Frontline, even as energy industry groups were changing their public position about climate change, the federal government was acting to influence scientific discussion in controversial ways. Since President Bush took office, government climate change experts at a range of federal agencies have complained that administration officials have attempted to bar them from bringing grim news about rising temperatures, increased potential storm activity and other data to the public.

“And even as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007 report removes what little scientific doubt remained,” Frontline reports, “the U.S. President and Vice President remain unconvinced. At a press conference last year the president told a reporter that the ‘fundamental debate’ was whether climate change was “manmade or natural.” Vice President Dick Cheney echoed that view in a recent interview with ABC News.”

If our Democratic Congress ever gets the guts to make the changes U.S. voters demanded in the last election, they might begin to look at a few other holes in the regulatory dike that need to be plugged as well.

According to a small, upfront story in this week’s Time magazine, “In 2004 the Denver Post found 100 Bush appointees regulating industries they used to represent as lobbyists or lawyers. That didn’t include former quasi-lobbyists like Vice President Dick Cheney, who became a CEO because Halliburton wanted government contracts.”

Among the advocates-turned-regulators are a former meat-industry lobbyist who helps decide how meat is labeled; a former drug-company lobbyist who influences prescription-drug policies; a former energy lobbyist who, while still accepting payments for bringing clients into his old lobbying firm, helps determine how much of the West those former clients can use for oil and gas drilling.

It’s just one big scary story.

Fear sells.

And no one knows it better than the two-headed monster better know as Bush-Rove. This monster, in its visible mode as President Bush, moved back into its leadership by fear mode this week, in spite of the fact that the voters resoundingly rejected the tactics in last November’s mid-term elections and even more people today are rejecting his policies than did during the polling

Seeing casualties mount to the point where each month marks a new record for the number of U.S. troops killed in 2007, even Bush must finally have recognized that more and more Republicans are joining in the revolt against his reckless policies. So, what does he do? He roles out his mindless mantra that if we leave Iraq, our enemies will follow us home.

But at his news conference yesterday, he kind of got his feet caught up in his mouth again. After pointing out once again that we are fighting Islamic extremists in Iraq so we don’t have to fight them here and that if we leave, they will follow us home, he later really got carried away by saying they can hit us anywhere in the world at any time.

So which is it, Mr. Bush? Why should we be wasting innocent lives in Iraq if our enemies there can hit us anywhere they want at any time?

By now, of course, polls show that the majority of Americans are now immune to his mindless blather – and, thank goodness, his fear mongering – but he hit new lows yesterday. But, let’s set the record straight once more.

In a survey of military and diplomatic analysts, McClatchy clearly debunks Bush’s claim:

U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic experts in Bush’s own government say the violence in Iraq is primarily a struggle for power between Shiite and Sunni Muslim Iraqis seeking to dominate their society, not a crusade by radical Sunni jihadists bent on carrying the battle to the United States.

Foreign-born jihadists are present in Iraq, but they’re believed to number only between 4 percent and 10 percent of the estimated 30,000 insurgent fighters —1,200 to 3,000 terrorists — according to the Defense Intelligence Agency and a recent study by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a center-right research center.
“Attacks by terrorist groups account for only a fraction of insurgent violence,” said a February DIA report.

While acknowledging that terrorists could commit a catastrophic act on U.S. soil at any time [now Bus agrees with this assessment] — whether U.S. forces are in Iraq or not — the likelihood that enemy combatants from Iraq might follow departing U.S. forces back to the United States is remote at best, experts say.

Other experts contend the assertion is ludicrous. Rather than revert to his politics of fear, Bush should take his head out of the ground and listen to the people who elected him.

According to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll, Americans now view the war in Iraq more negatively than at any time since the invasion more than four years ago.

Sixty-one percent of Americans say the United States should have stayed out of Iraq and 76 percent say things are going badly there, including 47 percent who say things are going very badly, the poll found.

Clearly, the policies of Bush and company have made us and the rest of the world more susceptible to attacks from the terrorists and it is time to put an end to the madness. God alone know what it will take to make Bush recognize this truth.

According to “intelligence” the White House declassified yesterday, Osama bin Laden ordered al Qaeda’s leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to form a cell in 2005 to plot attacks outside of Iraq and make the United States his main target.

Fran Townsend, President George W. Bush’s adviser for homeland security, said the information backs the administration’s assertion that U.S. troops must stay in Iraq for now to prevent it from becoming a “terrorist sanctuary.”

I listened last night as Katie Couric reported this with a straight face and no comment, I nearly fell off the couch. There is an old saying – one that Bush butchered when he tried to use it in one of his off-script gaffes – that goes: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me.

Our mainstream press in the U.S. should now be thinking, fool me multiple times and I shouldn’t wonder why people question my incompetence.

Give me a break. The timing of this announcement is so transparent that a thinking person can’t help but believe that it is as valid as past attempts to sell the war:

“The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” — President Bush, Jan.28, 2003, in the State of the Union address.

“Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — t that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” — President Bush, October 7,2002, in Cincinnati Museum Center.

[The CIA possesses] solid reporting of senior-level contacts between Iraq and al-Qaeda going back a decade.” — CIA Director George Tenet in a written statement released Oct. 7, 2002 and echoed in Bush’s Cincinnati speech.

“We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they’re weaponized and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements have been established.” — President Bush, Feb. 8, 2003, in a national radio address.

“Yes, we found a biological laboratory in Iraq which the UN prohibited.” — President Bush in remarks in Poland, published internationally June 1, 2003.

Both Bush and Vice President for War Dick Cheney have rolled out the claim over and over that Saddam Hussein had links with al Qaeda and harbored terrorist training camps, up to and well after the September 11 commission reported in June 2004 that it had found no “collaborative relationship” between Iraq and al Qaeda.

In this new assault on our intelligence, Reuters reports that Townsend said, “The intelligence community tells us that in January 2005 bin Laden tasked Zarqawi … to form a cell to conduct attacks outside Iraq and that frankly America should be his number one priority.”

Even though our vaunted intelligence agencies have yet to track down bin Laden, Townsend said these same intelligence officials had pieced together this information from accounts of some of Zarqawi’s dealings with bin Laden.

And we are supposed to believe this, why? Common sense would lead one to assume this is just another lie based on a host of lies. But, Bush was expected to make this assertion, none the less, in remarks this morning to the graduating class of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.

It is an insult to the intelligence of the American people. And, it is an insult to the more than 3,400 American men and women who have died in Iraq, nine more of whom were killed in a single day yesterday.

Maybe Congress won’t have to take the admittedly drastic step of impeaching Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as I suggested in my last post on Thursday – and was called for in a few newspaper editorials over the weekend. Like a renegade bull in a herd, it appears that he is being forced by those Democratic cowboys in Congress closer and closer to a chute in which the only direction left will be out.

One might think that Gonzales – and the Bush-Cheney-Rove gang – could finally see the writing on the wall with the upcoming House Judiciary Committee meeting on Wednesday in which the star witness will be Monica Goodling, who resigned her position as director of public affairs for the Department of Justice when the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys erupted into a scandal.

Goodling first declined to testify in the investigation into the firing of several federal prosecutors, citing her constitutional right not to incriminate herself – which was considered extraordinary by most legal analysts. She subsequently received limited immunity in exchange for testimony.

The reason Goodling’s testimony is so highly anticipated is that she was the direct conduit between the Department of Justice and the White House and, most particularly, Carl Rove in the White House. The fact that her lawyer originally advised her to invoke her right to refuse to provide testimony that might incriminate her leads many to believe she is privy to criminal activity.

As an aside, Goodling is also indicative of the type of talent recruited by Bush and company. She is among more than 100 lawyers in the Department of Justice who received her J.D. from Regent University Law School. Regent is ranked in the bottom tier of law schools by US News and World Report (136th out of 170 schools surveyed), and was founded by Pat Robertson in 1986.

When Goodling makes her appearance, she will undoubtedly be grilled on how extensive a role was played by the White House in targeting prosecutors for termination.

Seven of the eight fired had one thing in common: they were in districts where there were close electoral contests. In New Mexico, for instance, David Iglesias was fired after two Republican lawmakers, Senator Pete Domenici and Congresswoman Heather Wilson — who was in a tight House race — called him to inquire about a corruption investigation that could have hurt Wilson’s Democratic opponent.

Iglesias claims Domenici went so far as to ask whether charges would be filed before the November balloting. A few weeks later, after complaints from Rove reached Sampson, Iglesias’ name was added to the list of U.S. Attorneys to be fired. When Iglesias was booted with the others on Dececember 7, William Kelley, a deputy to then White House counsel Harriet Miers, sent Sampson an e-mail saying that Domenici’s chief of staff “is happy as a clam” about the move.

I am sure, however, that odds makers are taking bets now on whether Gonzales will announce his resignation prior to Goodling’s appearance. That’s because the White House gang might see the writing on the wall even sooner if the House and Senate appear to have the votes for a non-confidence resolution each will be considering this week.

In remarks made on CBS’s Face the Nation yesterday, Sen. Arlen Specter, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee is likely to resign before the Senate takes up a no-confidence resolution.

Quoted in the Washington Post, Specter said: “I have a sense . . . that before the vote is taken, that Attorney General Gonzales may step down” because of the likelihood that such a resolution would pass, Specter said on Face the Nation. “It is a very forceful, historical statement. . . . And I think . . . that he would prefer to avoid that kind of an historical black mark.”

My only comment is: With so many black marks, will another smudge really matter to either the Gonzo man or his master Bush? One can only hope.

The endgame for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales may well be near.

If he is proven to be a liar, can he still hold the post of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer? If he is proven to be a liar, and he refuses to resign on his own and President Bush continues to refuse to fire him, what can Congress do?

These are the issues that our congressional representatives should be wrestling with now in the wake of the testimony Tuesday by former deputy attorney general, James B. Comey in which he described a dramatic hospital bedside confrontation between Gonzales and his predecessor, John Ashcroft. (See yesterday’s post.)

To recap, Bush directed Gonzales to alter the Terrorist Surveillance Program that permitted limited wire tapping of suspected terrorists before the program expired on March 11, 2004. Comey, as acting attorney general, ruled that the proposed changes were not legal and wouldn’t sign off on them. Gonzales and Bush’s then chief of staff Andrew H. Card Jr. tried to do an end-run around Comey by rushing to the hospital to get Ashcroft, weak and on pain killers, to sign off. They were turned away by Ashcroft and Comey, who had heard of the plot and arrived minutes before them.

Aaccording to Comey’s testimony, only when faced with resignations by a number of Justice Department officials including Comey, his chief of staff, Ashcroft’s chief of staff, Ashcroft himself and possibly Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI, did the White House agree to make changes to the program that would satisfy the requirements of the Justice Department to sign off on it.

In a sworn statement in 2006, Gonzales said that the Terrorist Surveillance Program had aroused no controversy inside the Bush administration. This was either a lie or Gonzales, to use his favorite line, couldn’t recall the incident.

The Daily News of Longview, WA reported today that four U.S. Senators have sent a letter to Gonzales challenging him over that testimony.

“In light of Mr. Comey’s testimony yesterday, do you stand by your 2006 Senate and House testimony [saying there was no controversy over the program], or do you wish to revise it?” Democratic Sens. Russell Feingold of Wisconsin, Chuck Schumer of New York, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Dick Durbin of Illinois asked Gonzales in a letter yesterday.

While many of the things he couldn’t recall strained credulity during his testimony before the Senate and House Judiciary Committee hearings, he clearly couldn’t get away with using that defense over something as dramatic and potentially explosive as that confrontation in the hospital and the subsequent threats of mass resignations.

When asked on Keith Olbermann’s Countdown on MSNBC if this constitutes an impeachable offense – impeachment may be the only way Congress can force the firing of Gonzales – nationally recognized legal scholar Jonathan Turley said he could come up with may examples of transgressions by Gonzales that merited impeachment and, yes, this is one of them.

Now it is time for Congress to step up to the plate and act.

This whole investigation into the firing of eight – at least what started as eight – U.S. Attorneys is taking so many twists and turns it seems like a John le Carré novel. Unfortunately for the citizens of this country it is real and some of the revelations are horrifying.

On Monday, we learned that nearly half the U.S. attorneys considered for removal by the administration last year were targets of Republican complaints that they were lax on voter fraud, including efforts by presidential adviser Karl Rove to encourage more prosecutions of election- law violations.

According to the Washington Post, “Of the 12 U.S. attorneys known to have been dismissed or considered for removal last year, five were identified by Rove or other administration officials as working in districts that were trouble spots for voter fraud — Kansas City, Mo.; Milwaukee; New Mexico; Nevada; and Washington state. Four of the five prosecutors in those districts were dismissed.”

Through legislation and litigation, the Post reports, Republicans have pressed for voter-identification requirements and other rules to clamp down on what they assert is widespread fraud by ineligible voters. Starting early in the Bush administration, the Justice Department has emphasized increasing prosecutions of fraudulent voting.

Democrats counter that such fraud is rare and that GOP efforts are designed to suppress legitimate votes by minorities, the elderly and recent immigrants, who are likely to support Democratic candidates, the Post adds. A draft report last year by the Election Assistance Commission, a bipartisan government panel that conducts election research, said that “there is widespread but not unanimous agreement that there is little polling place fraud.”

Rick Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School who runs an election law blog, said that “there’s no question that Karl Rove and other political operatives” urged Justice officials to apply pressure on U.S. attorneys to pursue voter-fraud allegations in parts of the country that were critical to the GOP.

The growing scandal takes on even greater le Carré novel attributes when one considers the testimony of former deputy attorney general, James B. Comey, who appeared yesterday before the Senate Judiciary Committee in its inquiry into the dismissal of the federal prosecutors and the role of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

Comey was called before the committee because it want to explore Gonzales’ role in attempting to promulgate the illegal domestic eavesdropping program.

According to the New York Times, Comey recounted the events of a 48-hour drama, including, for the first time, President Bush’s role, the threatened resignations of Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III, and other senior Justice Department aides, and a race as Mr. Comey hurried to Ashcroft’s hospital sickbed to intercept White House officials who were pushing for approval of the wire-tapping program.

According to the Times, Comey, the former No. 2 official in the Justice Department, said the crisis began when he refused to sign a presidential order reauthorizing the program, which allowed monitoring of international telephone calls and e-mail of people inside the United States who were suspected of having terrorist ties. He said he made his decision after the department’s Office of Legal Counsel, based on an extensive review, concluded that the program did not comply with the law. At the time, Comey was acting attorney general because Mr. Ashcroft had been hospitalized for emergency gall bladder surgery.

Comey said that on the evening of March 10, 2004, Gonzales, who at the time was counsel to the President, and Andrew H. Card Jr., then Bush’s chief of staff, tried to bypass him by secretly visiting Ashcroft. Ashcroft was extremely ill and disoriented, Comey said, and his wife had forbidden any visitors.

Comey, after asking Mueller to meet him at the hospital, ordered his driver to race to the hospital with emergency lights and siren in order to get their before what can only be thought of now as Bush’s thugs.

The Times wrote:

When the White House officials appeared minutes later, Mr. Gonzales began to explain to Mr. Ashcroft why they were there. Mr. Comey said Mr. Ashcroft rose weakly from his hospital bed, but in strong and unequivocal terms, refused to approve the eavesdropping program.

“I was angry,” Mr. Comey told the committee. “I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man, who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me. I thought he had conducted himself in a way that demonstrated a strength I had never seen before, but still I thought it was improper.”

Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Card quickly departed, but Mr. Comey said he soon got an angry phone call from Mr. Card, demanding that he come to the White House. Mr. Comey said he replied: “After what I just witnessed, I will not meet with you without a witness, and I intend that witness to be the solicitor general of the United States.”

Mr. Comey said he reached Theodore B. Olson, the solicitor general, at a dinner party. At the White House session, which included Mr. Olson, Mr. Gonzales, Mr. Comey and Mr. Card, the four officials discussed the impasse. Mr. Comey knew that other top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, wanted to continue the program.

Mr. Card expressed concern about mass resignations at the Justice Department, Mr. Comey said. He told the Senate panel that he prepared a letter of resignation and that David Ayres, Mr. Ashcroft’s chief of staff, asked him to delay delivering it so that Mr. Ashcroft could join him. Mr. Comey said Mr. Mueller was also prepared to quit.

The next morning, March 11, Mr. Comey went to the White House for a terrorism briefing. Afterward, he said Mr. Bush took him aside for a private 15-minute meeting in the president’s study, which Mr. Comey described as a “full exchange.”

At Mr. Comey’s urging, Mr. Bush also met with Mr. Mueller, who emerged to inform Mr. Comey that the president had authorized the changes in the program sought by the Justice Department.

The fallout from this testimony has already begun. Today Sen. Chuck Hagel became the latest Republican to call for Gonzales’ resignation, citing these latest revelations.

“The American people deserve an attorney general, the chief law enforcement officer of our country, whose honesty and capability are beyond question,” Hagel said in a statement reported in the Houston Chronicle. “Attorney General Gonzales can no longer meet this standard. He has failed this country. He has lost the moral authority to lead.”

Even Tony Snow seems to be having difficulty defending the Gonzo now. His half-hearted statement: “Jim Comey gave his side of what transpired. The president still has full confidence in Alberto Gonzales.”

To read how seriously this whole affair is affecting the United States and its foreign policy, read op ed columnist Thomas L. Friedman’s “Failing by Example” in today’s New York Times.

Last Tuesday, without note in the mainstream U.S. media, more than half of the members of Iraq’s parliament rejected the continuing occupation of their country: 144 lawmakers signed onto a legislative petition calling on the United States to set a timetable for withdrawal.

Meanwhile, Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie is visiting American lawmakers on Capitol Hill this week trying to convince them that more patience is required in the Iraqi war. Translation, keep propping up the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki — Bush’s Iraqi poodle — in spite of the fact that a majority of Iraqi legislators realize it is time to for the U.S. to leave.

Could there be reasons beyond national security that al-Maliki wants the American troops to remain? Could it be that he and his merry band of men are getting a share of the 100,000 to 300,000 barrels a day of Iraq’s declared oil production that has gone missing over the past four years?

According to the New York Times, a draft American government report indicates that the missing oil could be cheating the Iraqi people out of revenue of $5 million to $15 million a day — every day for the past four years.

According to the Times, while the “report does not give a final conclusion on what happened to the missing fraction of the roughly two million barrels pumped by Iraq each day, the findings are sure to reinforce longstanding suspicions that smugglers, insurgents and corrupt officials control significant parts of the country’s oil industry.”

Corruption has been a way of life in Baghdad for decades, if not centuries. Bush, who probably has very little understanding of any culture, has certainly shown a total lack of understanding of the Iraqi culture of corruption, and yet he wants to continue spending American capital and American blood to prop up a clearly corrupt regime.

Transparency International, a global civil society organization that is leading the fight against corruption in the world, warned as early as March 2005 that the reconstruction of post-war Iraq is in danger of becoming “the biggest corruption scandal in history.”

It is now well on the way there.

We already know that Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney’s alma mater, overcharged billions on its contracts for the delivery of fuel to America’s forces in Iraq and about $36 million on its contracts to feed our troops. Seeing the writing on the wall with the election of a Democratic Congress, Halliburton this spring moved its CEO and corporate headquarters from Houston to Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, where they are beyond the reach of the U.S. criminal justice system and Internal Revenue Service.

So much for the Bush Administration’s support of American corruption.

Now it appears the corrupt officials in Iraq want their share, possibly to the tune of $5 million to $15 million a day. It is no wonder they are dragging their feet. The longer the American troops stand between the masses and them, the longer they can continue shoring up their offshore bank accounts.
On the web site, theage.com.au, a news story detailed the complaints about corruption from Iraqi businessman Mohammed Jawad.

Among a number of stories detailing how widespread corruption in Iraq is, Jawad said contractors had told him of the manipulation of a recent tender: “The work was worth about $15 million. But the minister’s staff wanted a rake-off of about $40 million. So they advised the bidder to inflate the price to $70 million, so that they could have their cut and the bidder would make a good profit too.”

Like many other Iraqis, the story reported, businessmen invariably make then-and-now comparisons with Saddam Hussein. Saddam ran his own massive corruption of the UN oil-for-food program and he and his cronies regularly demanded a cut of any new business or contract. But Jawad, a Shiite with no brief for his former leader, said: “I’d say that about 10 per cent of business was corrupt under Saddam. Now it’s about 95 per cent. We used to have one Saddam, now we have 25 of them.”

I wonder who it was that first shouted out from the crowd that, hey look, the emperor doesn’t have any clothes. Unlike the fairy tale, the reality didn’t sink in immediately. Indeed, there are some still who refuse to see the nakedness of this modern-day emperor, Bush, a person who has nothing left to cover his incompetence but a veneer of stubbornness.

But now the cry is rising to a crescendo. A new web site, proclaiming it is time to say when to the host of abuses by the Bush-Cheney gang, is heralding a new meaning for the famous “W”: it now stands for When – we’ve had enough.

They now join a host of others who feel Bush and Cheney should be held accountable for the carnage they have created. They include A28, After Downing Street, Bring Then Home Now, Impeach 07, Military Families Speak Out, VoteVets.Org, The World Can’t Wait, Veterans Against the Iraq War, Impeach Bush Cheney; and Youth Democracy, to name a few.

Their message is simple and direct: We’ve had enough lies; we’ve had enough scandal; we’ve had enough arrogance; we’ve had enough corruption; we’ve had enough manipulation; we’ve had enough willful disregard; we’ve had enough incompetence; we’ve had enough intimidation; we’ve had enough censorship; we’ve had enough fear; and we’ve had enough war.

While I agree with this group that we need to continue to ramp up the pressure on Bush to put his machismo aside and bring our troops home, I would like to see them go further and join the impeachment movement. Certainly their litany of abuses above is enough to make the leap.

In spite of the naysayers, it appears that the effort by US Rep. Dennis Kucinich to bring articles of impeachment to the floor of the House is gaining traction. US Rep. Albert Russell Wynn has become the fourth member to co-sign the legislation.

According to the Atlanta Progressive News, US Rep. Wynn is a champion of civil rights issues, but unlike Kucinich, and US Reps. Janice Schakowsky and William Lacy Clay, he is not a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. This suggests the bill is gaining appreciation beyond the traditional impeachment constituency of the CPC.

I agree with the activists who are raising the call that those congressional representatives who don’t join with Kucinich are enabling the Bush Administration to continue ignoring the will of the people and continue ruling with arrogance and incompetence, which endangers us all.

Democrats are now the majority in Congress. But Bush continues to refuse to be accountable to Congress, particularly on the US Invasion of Iraq. Bush has now vetoed historic legislation to attach funding for the occupation with a deadline for withdrawal. Thus, it is now even more clear that traditional oversight mechanisms will not be effective.

It truly is time to say when!

Will this be the year for the perfect storm needed to burst through the obscene profits of big oil’s ships of state and bring some relief to beleaguered consumers?

I know, every year minor squalls kick up every spring and are quickly laughed off by the big oil companies; after all, they could probably buy half the countries in the world without seriously damaging their profits, so whom do they have to fear.

But this year, events are converging to create the perfect storm. We’ve finally got a Democratic Congress itching for a fight with the oil lobbyists. The looming ’08 elections will encourage a whole host of newly “enlightened” politicians to sign on to legislation seeking to reign in the profiteering and price gouging. And the American consumer is both mad as hell and feeling the economic pinch of high oil prices turn into real pain.

In a Washington Post-ABC News poll taken in mid-April, two-thirds of U.S. adults said gasoline price increases had caused “financial hardship” for their households; 36 percent said that the hardship had been “serious.”

Round one began at the end of April. According to the Houston Chronicle, a group of eight freshman Democratic senators introduced legislation that would impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies and revoke some government subsidies.

(Between 1948 and 1998, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, the Department of Energy spent $111.5 billion on energy research and development. Of this amount, $26 billion went towards fossil fuel R&D. Unfortunately, these hefty taxpayers giveaways to the mature fossil fuel industry continue today with tax breaks, royalty exemptions, and direct subsidies.)

Noting that Exxon Mobil Corp. announced Thursday that it had raked in $9.28 billion in first-quarter profits, Sen. Robert Casey, D-Pa., said the legislation introduced by him and his seven colleagues would impose a 50 percent tax on profits after oil prices rise above $50 a barrel.

It also repeals tax “loopholes and breaks” from legislation passed by the rubber stamp Republican Congress in 2005.

According to the Chronicle story, Kenneth Cohen, Exxon Mobil’s vice president of public affairs, said, “It’s not the right thing for the economy, or to support a reliable, affordable supply of energy.”

“The oil and natural gas industry’s earnings are typically in line with other industries,” the American Petroleum Institute said. Yeah right. Name me one.

“Oil companies have been ripping us off over and over and over again, and this is going to stop,” said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, one of the bill’s co-sponsors. Right on, Amy.

On Tuesday, according to the Washington Post, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told the Energy and Commerce Committee to mark up a bill proposed by Rep. Bart Stupak that would give the federal government more power to pursue accusations of price gouging.

The bill, which has 100 co-sponsors, would instruct the Federal Trade Commission to define gouging to stop “unconscionably excessive” pricing or instances of “gross disparity” between the prices of crude oil and gasoline. The measure stipulates tough penalties, including fines up to $150 million and up to 10 years in prison for executives found guilty of price-gouging.

And yesterday, Sen. Charles E. Schumer said Congress would look into breaking up the giant companies.

According to the Post, refining margins have pushed to new highs in the first quarter, averaging $15.75 a barrel, about 30 percent more than last year. Democrats say that a series of oil mergers in recent years gave big companies the market power to drive up those margins.

As Secretary of Energy Samuel W. Bodman acknowledged at the end of April, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, it could be more than three years before consumers see relief at the pump. When Americans are getting hit hard in the pocketbook, it is absurd to further pad the pockets of big oil.

Do you feel safer with President Bush in the White House? The answer should be yes. After all, he was elected by a majority of voters in the last election, many of whom said they felt the Democrats were weak on National Defense.

Hurricane Katrina proved what a fallacy that was. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, Bush’s staff had to put together a DVD of news reports about the devastation before the Great Decider could understand the depth of misery there because of the inaction of the federal disaster agencies. Imagine if that had been a terrorist attack.

Has Bush and company learned anything from Katrina. Apparently not.

According to the New York Times, Governor Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas was among a chorus of governors who have been sounding the alarm that their state National Guards are ill-prepared for the next local disaster, be it a tornado, a flash flood or a terrorist’s threat, because of large deployments of their soldiers and equipment in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And then disaster did strike. On Friday, a deadly tornado all but cleared the small town of Greensburg off the Kansas map, totally destroying 80 square blocks of the small farming community.

“As you travel around Greensburg, you’ll see that city and county trucks have been destroyed,” Sebelius said in the Times story Monday. “The National Guard is one of our first responders. They don’t have the equipment they need to come in, and it just makes it that much slower.”

In Kansas, the National Guard is operating with 40 percent to 50 percent of its vehicles and heavy machinery. In Florida, even more susceptible to hurricanes this season, a recent analysis by the Government Accountability Office found the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have depleted tools from the Florida National Guard, leaving it with 53 percent of the dual-use equipment it once had for responding to a storm or domestic disturbance.

In Ohio, the National Guard is short of night vision goggles and M-4 rifles. Similar problems have been reported in California and Arkansas. Last year, all 50 governors signed a letter to President Bush asking for the immediate re-equipping of Guard units sent overseas.

According to a story in the Baltimore Sun, Gov. Martin O’Malley Gov. said that the equipment and troop shortage at home because of the war has “made our country more vulnerable instead of more safe.”

The troops are “just simply not there to do their homeland security job because they’ve been deployed to do the job in Iraq, and it’s a big problem,” the governor said in the Sun story.

Clearly, we are much less safe as a result of Bush’s failed policies and ill-fated war in Iraq. We went in to Afghanistan with the support of the world behind us to stamp out the training grounds for Al Queada terrorists. Then Bush and Cheney took their eyes off the ball and pursued the real war they wanted in Iraq, spawning a terrorist recruiting and training opertion of immense proportions.

Add Bush’s destruction of our National Defense forces to the list of criminal offenses for which he should be held accountable. Then, when his Republican lackeys come to his aid, ask yourself, are you really safer with a Republican in the White House?

It is really embarrassing to have to admit that your President is a boorish buffoon.

When addressing Queen Elizabeth during her state visit yesterday, Bush made one of his classic gaffes. “You helped our nation celebrate its bicentennial in seventeen s—” started, and then corrected himself, “in nineteen seventy-six.”

Instead of letting it go, he turned to the Queen of England and he winked at her.

He then said, “She gave me a look that only a mother could give a child.” Let me tell you, moron. That wasn’t the look a mother would give a child; that was a look that said “My, he really is a buffoon.”

The President of the United States winked at the Queen of England. Did he think he was back with his drinking buddies in the Texas Air National Guard?

Granted the man is creepy. Who can forget the time our President virtually groped German Chancellor Angela Merkel when he gave her an uninvited neck massage during the G8 Summit. Or the time he was caught on an open microphone telling Tony Blair that “they ought to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it’s over” — with a mouth full of food. He gave the term “potty mouth” a whole new meaning.

But, really, he winked at the Queen of England.

We now know that Bush’s staff had to put together a DVD of news reports about New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city before he could understand the depth of misery there because of the inaction of the federal disaster agencies. Would someone please put together a DVD of the moments he embarrasses himself and the United States, and make him watch it on a daily basis.

Such as the time he was seen picking his nose at a Texas Rangers game. Or being caught writing a note to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice during a UN General Assembly meeting that read, “I think I MAY NEED A BATHROOM break. Is this possible?” Or using the shirt of an unsuspecting woman to wipe his glasses during an appearance on David Letterman’s show.

And he winked at the Queen of England.

I know a President needs to commit high crimes and misdemeanors to be impeached. However, I am ready to start a movement to get an amendment to the Constitution passed that would allow a President to be impeached for overbearing boorishness and overwhelming stupidity. Bush would be gone in a minute.

How is it that those proponents of intelligent design that are the most vociferous in their objection to evolution often look very much like the apes whose ancestry they reject?

In last Thursday’s Republican presidential debate, three of the candidates raised their hands when asked if any of them did not believe in evolution: Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas; Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas; and Representative Tom Tancredo of Colorado.

I wonder how many would have raised their hands if the moderator had asked if any believed the world was flat.

“If you want to believe that you and your family came from apes, I’ll accept that,” former governor of Arkansas Mike Huckabee replied to a question about his views following the debate.

His question implies that maybe you and I descended from apes, but he and his sure didn’t. He then follows that with his trademark smile that is so chimp-like it is hard to deny where he did come from.

The raised hands of Huckabee, Brownback and Tancredo were really their attempt to give a big “hello there” to their Republican base. You know, the 25 percent or less of the population who oppose teaching evolution in the schools, who want to send more troops to die in Iraq, are opposed to allowing a woman to decide about her health and that George W. Bush is descended from the sun god.

What Huckabee et. al. profess to believe in is that intelligent design is an “alternative theory” to Darwin’s theory of evolution. Intelligent design is merely an attempt by the Christian right to apply a little cosmetics to their much maligned attempts to pass off creationism as a “science” that should be taught in public schools. It promotes the idea that an unseen force is behind the development of humanity.

Not surprisingly, scientists who believe that all theories should be subjected to rigorous testing before becoming an accepted part of the evolution of human understanding dismiss intelligent design as a cleverly marketed effort to introduce religious – especially Christian – thinking to students.

Also not surprising is that Bush feels it should be taught in schools as an alternative to the theory of evolution. He and these other wackadoos* of the Christian right say Intelligent design should be taught as a way to expose people to different schools of thought.

Fair enough. So let’s see what also should be introduced into the curriculum of our school children. For example, we all know – don’t you just love that phrase – that there is a significant number of people who have been abducted by aliens, subjected to testing and then returned to earth.

After all, whether or not one believes in intelligent design will cause no harm; but not believing in alien abduction could be hazardous to one’s health. On the web site “Stop Alien Abductions,” there are instructions on how to construct Thought Screen Helmets to stop the unwelcome visitations. Shouldn’t our students have the choice to consider this science?

Or how about that biggest hoax of all being foisted on our innocent schools children – that America landed a manned space craft on the moon? After all, Fox TV on February 15, 2001 put this hoax to rest when it aired a program called “Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?” It proved conclusively that NASA did not have the technical capability of going to the Moon, but pressure due to the Cold War with the Soviet Union forced them to fake it.

We can’t forget the Loch Ness Monster. While there isn’t any conclusive evidence of Nessie’s existence, the waters of the Loch are certainly deep enough to hide such a a creature. There must be some kind of conspiracy that is keeping Nessie out of the curriculum of most public schools.

I could go on, but I think I have proven beyond a doubt that there are a number of theories and beliefs that should be taught in public schools “as a way to expose people to different schools of thought.”

So Mike, if you want intelligent design taught in our schools, you go for it. Science was always too scientific for me too.

* I use the word wackadoo with good reason. As the Urban Dictionary points out, one of the definitions is “a person that is crazy beyond belief and doesn’t seem to notice.”