McCain's Revisionist History on Russia and the G8

McCain's Revisionist History on Russia and the G8

When it comes to his foreign policy, John McCain is a revisionist historian and a particularly clumsy one at that. Having asked Americans to ignore his record as the master of disaster on Iraq, John McCain similarly underwent an election-year transformation from rabid France-basher to born-again multilateralist and fawning Francophile. Now, the McCain campaign is hoping to erase any vestiges of John McCain's 2007 pledge to expel Russia from the G8. - MORE AT THE LINK

David Addington and John Yoo The Arrogant Twits of Pro Torture

David Addington and John Yoo The Arrogant Twits of Pro Torture

The President's power, that is, to allow prisoners to be sodomized with a broomstick. The President's power to murder prisoners in US custody. The President's power to hide prisoners from the Red Cross in violation of international law. The President's power, and the power of those around them, to commit war crimes. For your protection. In your name.

"After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes," Taguba wrote. "The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."



Now Yoo, on the other hand, seems afraid for his life and livelihood. He is trying not to answer any question too fully, is stretching out every answer to run out the clock on the questioners, is debating the meaning of words like "implemented," and is consulting with two lawyers on practically every question. He's trying to explain away the Convention Against Torture and generally throw up enough mud to resist any real answer.

Paging Monica Crowley You Forgot to Take Your Meds

Paging Monica Crowley You Forgot to Take Your Meds

Summary: On The Laura Ingraham Show, Monica Crowley claimed that Sen. Barack Obama "lifted his campaign line 'Yes, we can' from the recent presidential campaign of the Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad." Crowley claimed that Ahmadinejad used the slogan "We can." In fact, Obama reportedly used the phrase "Yes, we can" during his 2004 Senate campaign -- a full year before Ahmadinejad was elected in 2005.

John McCain's Voodoo Ethics Reform

John McCain's Voodoo Reformism

In early April John McCain held a top-dollar fundraiser at Washington's Willard Hotel, where President Ulysses S. Grant invented the term "lobbyist." It was a fitting locale, as the election-reform group Public Campaign noted, since thirty-five of the forty-three hosts for the evening were registered lobbyists. The following week Rick Davis--on leave from his job as a lobbyist to work as McCain's campaign manager--gave a strategy presentation to lobbyists from the oil, utility and nuclear power industries, soliciting campaign contributions.

Its Time For a Big Investigation of Bush Crimes

Time for a Grand Inquest Into Bush’s High Crimes

One of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s first acts upon taking the gavel was to rule impeachment off the table. She wanted Democrats to focus on challenging the president on the war and on kitchen table concerns — from energy to education to health care. With Democrats now enjoying an increasing margin in generic polls and looking towards gaining seats in both the House and the Senate, the strategy certainly hasn’t hurt politically.

But the constitutional implications are far more disturbing. This was dramatized as the Congress debated the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act reform legislation that will provide retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies for warrantless interception of the conversations of Americans — and by implication, retroactive acceptance of the president’s authority to order such wiretaps.

We have witnessed a staggering abuse of power by President Bush. Even former Bush Justice Department officials now charge him with trampling the Constitution. Bush has claimed the prerogative to declare an endless war without congressional approval, to designate someone an enemy without cause, to proceed to wiretap them without warrant, arrest or kidnap them at will, jail them without a hearing, hold them indefinitely, interrogate them intensively (read torture), bring them to trial outside the U.S. court system. He claims that executive privilege exempts his aides — even the aides of his aides and his vice president’s aides — from congressional investigation. He claims the right to amend or negate congressional laws with a statement upon signing them. And much more.

Even this Supreme Court, stacked with activist right-wing judges enamored of executive national security powers, has rebuked the president on some of these claims, particularly around the treatment of alleged enemy combatants. But many of Bush’s claims will escape judicial determination.

And there is the rub. According to the leading case on presidential powers, if Bush’s extreme assertions of power are not challenged by the Congress, they end up not simply creating new law, they could end up rewriting the Constitution itself. Inaction can alter the Constitutional division of powers by establishing the president’s claims as authority that the Congress or the courts may not infringe.

The Steel Seizure case — Youngstown Sheet and Tube v Sawyer, 343 U.S. 579 (1952), remains the leading case on presidential power. In Youngstown, a six-member majority of the Court joined in overturning President Truman’s executive order nationalizing the steel plants to end a strike during the Korean War. Justice Black wrote the opinion for the Court, but the historically influential opinions were penned by Justices Robert H. Jackson and Felix Frankfurter, both Democratic appointees. Frankfurter laid out the argument for a sort of common law of constitutional amendment:

Deeply embedded traditional ways of conducting government cannot supplant the Constitution or legislation, but they give meaning to the words of a text or supply them. It is an inadmissibly narrow conception of American constitutional law to confine it to the words of the Constitution and to disregard the gloss which life has written upon them. In short, a systematic, unbroken, executive practice, long pursued to the knowledge of the Congress and never before questioned, engaged in by Presidents who have also sworn to uphold the Constitution, making as it were such exercise of power part [343 U.S. 579, 611] of the structure of our government, may be treated as a gloss on “executive Power” vested in the President by 1 of Art. II.

In Youngstown, Jackson concurred, arguing that the president’s powers vary as to whether he acts with congressional authority (his greatest power), in the absence of it, or in opposition to it:

When the president acts in absence of either a congressional grant or denial of authority, he can only rely upon his own independent powers, but there is a zone of twilight in which he and Congress may have concurrent authority, or in which its distribution is uncertain. Therefore, congressional inertia, indifference or quiescence may sometimes, at least as a practical matter, enable, if not invite, measures on independent presidential responsibility. In this area, any actual test of power is likely to depend on the imperatives of events and contemporary imponderables rather than on abstract theories of law.

When a president egregiously abuses his power — particularly in areas relating to the rights of American citizens — remedies are often difficult. The Supreme Court is reluctant to arbitrate a power struggle between two co-equal branches. That is why the Constitution prescribes the specific remedy of impeachment for crimes and abuses of power — “high crimes and misdemeanors” — and empowers the House and Senate to sit in judgment whether the actions are to be accepted or condemned.

What the Court said in Youngstown is that if presidents assert a prerogative, such the power to make war without a congressional declaration — systematically, with unbroken regularity, with the knowledge of the Congress and are never questioned — then that practice becomes a Constitutional power that cannot be infringed upon by the Congress or the Courts.

Thus, Congress must formally object to President Bush’s abuses or it risks by “indifference or quiescence” contributing to the powers of our imperial presidency.

When Pelosi took impeachment off the table, impeachment was reduced to being a rhetorical protest vehicle for progressives like Dennis Kucinich or Russ Feingold. But Congress need not convict President Bush to impeach him for high crimes and misdemeanors. And arguably, the House need not even impeach the president to hold a grand inquest into the powers that he has claimed, registering a formal objection to them. The Judiciary Committee in the House should formally convene that inquest, no matter what the decision is on impeachment. For if Pelosi’s sensible political judgment results, as it has to date, in a show of congressional “inertia, indifference or quiescence,” the Democratic majority in Congress may have gained a dozen seats at the cost of relinquishing its own powers, and putting the rights of Americans at risk.

McCain spending 'unlawfully'

McCain spending 'unlawfully'

David Plouffe brought a prop to his briefing with reporter: a copy of John McCain's signature on a state election document in which he attested that he'd be taking public financing.

"John McCain is spending tens of millions of dollars, we believe, unlawfully,' he said, waving the document.

The details of the argument over whether McCain used an acceptable or unacceptable loophole to secure a loan with the possibility of public financing is now before a court in a DNC lawsuit and subject to the FEC's consideration.

"John McCain signed his name, 'John McCain," Ploufe said. "He got on the ballot attesting he would be in the primary system."

"They’re out there throwing stones in glass houses on this," he said of McCain's attacks on Obama on public financing.

White House Bush Refused to Open Pollutants E-Mail

White House Bush Refused to Open Pollutants E-Mail

The White House in December refused to accept the Environmental Protection Agency’s conclusion that greenhouse gases are pollutants that must be controlled, telling agency officials that an e-mail message containing the document would not be opened, senior E.P.A. officials said last week.

The document, which ended up in e-mail limbo, without official status, was the E.P.A.’s answer to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that required it to determine whether greenhouse gases represent a danger to health or the environment, the officials said.

This week, more than six months later, the E.P.A. is set to respond to that order by releasing a watered-down version of the original proposal that offers no conclusion. Instead, the document reviews the legal and economic issues presented by declaring greenhouse gases a pollutant.

Over the past five days, the officials said, the White House successfully put pressure on the E.P.A. to eliminate large sections of the original analysis that supported regulation, including a finding that tough regulation of motor vehicle emissions could produce $500 billion to $2 trillion in economic benefits over the next 32 years. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter.

McCain’s Gas Price Scam Is an Enron Re-Run

McCain’s Gas Price Scam Is an Enron Re-Run

The Bush/McCain gas price escalation is an Enron Re-Run. It is Chapter 2 of the scam Bush crony “Kenny Boy” Lay used in 1999-2001 to steal $100 billion from California ratepayers.

Now this administration is replicating that crisis to funnel untold billions into the coffers of its oil baron backers… and to push the failed strategies of offshore drilling and nuke power.

There is no doubt that we are at the edge of the petro-abyss. Peak oil is upon us, as is the global-warmed finale of Earth’s carrying capacity for burning more fossil fuels. It is the perfect storm that must end the age of fossil/nuke.

But the immediate situation is not so clear. Bush/McCain say soaring prices are due to a lack of supply, and there are those who agree.

The Saudis, and others with more credibility, argue the price rise is contrived by bankers and speculators. Their mega-theft comes not only at the gas pump, but in food prices and other essentials.

Whatever the case, remember that during the Enron con, there was no shortage of electric generating capacity. Enron’s operatives laughed into their PCs as they selectively shut perfectly operable power stations and jacked up electric prices 700% and more. Enron, of course, later went bankrupt, wiping out countless thousands.

Contrived or otherwise, today’s soaring gas prices are a tangible bonanza for Bush/McCain. Off-shore drilling would put billions in their cronies’ pockets, but would not lower gas prices a single cent. Nuke power could mean billions more in radioactive lucre for reactor builders who may never deliver a single electron of electricity.

It’s no accident that what Bush/McCain are NOT advocating is a massive shift to increased efficiency and renewable energy.

Prior to the Enron disaster, green power advocates proposed that some 600 megawatts of renewables and efficiency be installed in California. They said this “floor” was needed to protect the state from precisely the kind of gouging Enron then did.

But Southern California Edison’s John Bryson helped kill the green power proposal. Bryson now likes to be photographed in front of photovoltaic arrays. But he used a deregulation package promising a “free market in energy” to help pay off failed reactors at San Onofre and Diablo Canyon. Then he stepped back while Enron cashed in.

Today, despite years of grassroots advocacy, Bush has done everything in his power to squelch the conversion to a green-powered economy. Even as gas prices soar there is no meaningful commitment to reviving mass transit, increasing fuel efficiency, or promoting renewable energy.

Indeed, Bush/McCain’s two-step obsession with fossil fuels and nuke power is perfectly suited to guarantee that the public’s money does NOT go to renewables and efficiency. Those technologies could actually solve both the climate and the energy supply crisis. But they would strip the fossil/nuke cartels of their death grip on the global economy.

Ironically, soaring fossil fuel prices make building reactors even more expensive. Using high gas prices to push nukes that only produce electricity (and radioactive waste) is a complete disconnect.

Today’s wind and solar technologies are far cheaper than atomic energy, not to mention quicker to build, safer, more reliable and ecologically sound. The one thing certain about reactor construction is that it will stretch out years longer than planned. Capital costs are certain to at least double or triple before the first reactor could ever come on line, taking atomic energy totally out of the price range of renewables.

New drilling is also absurd. The off-shore and other protected areas Bush/McCain would destroy have limited, expensive oil beneath them. The GOP “energy plan” is that of a desperate junkie, tearing apart the planet for a few last grains of white powder to snort up its nose. That there will then be no more does not seem to matter.

The US once had the world’s greatest mass transit system, which was consciously destroyed by the auto and oil industries to sell more cars and gas.

It once had a virtual monopoly on the renewable and efficiency technologies that can solve global warming and give us energy independence, with local communities taking control of their energy supply.

Enron’s hucksters staged that fake electricity crisis to gouge California while pushing back the transition to a green-powered economy.

Now Enron II, the gas price crisis, is about gouging the whole nation. And about yet again postponing a community-owned, green-powered future.

The Solartopian conversion to renewables and efficiency could put the Bush/McCain barons of fossil nuke out of business. The sooner the better.

Bush bills U.S. taxpayers nearly $500 million to fund anti-American radio

Bush bills U.S. taxpayers nearly $500 million
to fund anti-American radio

An Arab-language television network and radio station, founded by the Bush administration to promote a positive image of the United States, has aired anti-American and anti-Israeli viewpoints, has showcased pro-Iranian policies and recently gave air time to a militant who called for the death of American soldiers in Iraq.

So far, U.S. taxpayers have spent nearly $500 million to fund those broadcasts. The television station, called Alhurra, and the radio network, Sawa, were meant to provide an American perspective on world events and counter the wave of global criticism that had been building against the Bush administration since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Bush’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff agrees with Barack Obama

Mullen: I Want ‘A Healthy Dialogue With Iran’ Because ‘Engagement Would Offer An Opportunity’

Last month, President Bush launched a political attack at Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and other Democrats while speaking before the Israeli parliament, saying that they favor a policy of appeasement toward terrorists. “Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals,” said Bush. “We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement.”

After Bush made the comments, CNN’s Ed Henry reported that “White House aides” said that Bush was referring to those who have said “it would be okay for the U.S. President to meet with leaders like the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.” But now, Bush’s chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, appears to be siding with those who favor direct engagement with Iran.

In an interview with National Journal published today, Mullen speaks favorably of directly engaging with Iran, even though he says Iran has not always shown a “propensity” for it

Scott McClellan told Congress Bushies Still Hiding Information

Administration 'Has Chosen to Conceal' Truth

Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan told Congress Friday that the Bush-Cheney Administration continues to conceal information about abuses of power committed to punish former Ambassador Joe Wilson for challenging the President's storyline with regard to the "need" to invade and occupy Iraq.

"This matter continues to be investigated by Congress because of what the White House has chosen to conceal from the public," McClellan told the House Judiciary Committee. "Despite assurances that the administration would discuss the matter once the special counsel had completed his work, the White House has sought to avoid public scrutiny and accountability."

Speaking under oath, the longtime aide to President Bush seemed at times to dumb down his testimony, softening points made in his explosive book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception.

In the book and in interviews promoting it, McClellan suggested that key players in the White House -- including political czar Karl Rove, vice presidential chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Vice President Dick Cheney -- had at critical points in 2003 lied to him (or, at the least, conspired to keep him in the dark) about their involvement in the leaking information about the fact that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, was a CIA covert operative.

Before the committee, the former spokesman was more cautious.

"I do not know whether a crime was committed by any of the administration officials who revealed (Wilson's wife) Valerie Plame's identity to reporters. Nor do I know if there was an attempt by any person or persons to engage in a cover-up during the investigation. I do know that it was wrong to reveal her identity, because it compromised the effectiveness of a covert official for political reasons."

McClellan specifically attempted to absolve President Bush, while keeping open the prospect that Cheney was an active conspirator. "I do not think the president had any knowledge (of the efforts to harm Wilson by leaking his wife's identity)," the former spokesman said. "In terms of the vice president, I do not know."

McClellan's testimony confirmed Libby's role in the campaign to discredit Wilson. And he raised new questions about former White House Chief of Staff Andy Card's involvement in the wrongdoing.

Speaking of Libby, who in 2007 was convicted of perjury, lying to federal investigators and obstruction of justice with regard to his involvement with the plot to out Plame Wilson, McClellan said: "He assured me in unequivocal terms that he was not (involved), meaning the leaking of Valerie Plame's identity to any reporters, and then I contacted reporters to let them know about that information."

"But," the former spokesman continued, "it was Andy Card that had directed me to do that, at the request of the president and vice president."

If that sounds like a contradiction -- McClellan first suggests Bush had no knowledge of the initiative and then says that he peddled false information at the behest of the President -- it may be. Then again, it is possible that Bush was lied to, as well.

Fox News Director Lies About Gore

Hume claimed Gore's "energy use has surged more than 10 percent," ignored Gore's response that it's all "green power"

On the June 18 edition of Fox News' Special Report, citing the purported findings of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, host and Fox News Washington managing editor Brit Hume claimed that former Vice President Al Gore's "energy use has surged more than 10 percent" since environmentally friendly renovations were completed on his home in 2007. An on-screen graphic showed a photo of Gore with the caption, "Climate Charlatan." However, Hume offered no response from Gore. In a June 18 article, The Tennessean reported that Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider responded to the TCPR press release by stating, "When [the Gores] do use power, it's green power." In 2007, Gore's office reportedly said that 100 percent of the electricity in his home comes from green power, and Kreider was similarly quoted in The Washington Post as saying that "[t]he power coming into their residence is green, renewable power."

As the Tennessean further noted, "[T]he Gores participate in the Nashville Electric Service's Green Power Switch program, which allows them to buy their electricity from renewable sources like wind power, solar power or methane gas." According to the Tennessee Valley Authority, which partners with the Nashville Electric Service and other local energy distributors to provide green power, "[a]lthough no source of energy is impact-free, renewable resources create less waste and pollution."

McCain's Opinions Delusional, Legal Scholar Says

McCain's Take On Bin Laden, Habeas Corpus Is Delusional, Legal Scholar Says

Bush Jails Innocent While Claiming to Spread Democracy

Bush Jails Innocent While Claiming to Spread Democracy

The militants crept up behind Mohammed Akhtiar as he squatted at the spigot to wash his hands before evening prayers at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

They shouted "Allahu Akbar" — God is great — as one of them hefted a metal mop squeezer into the air, slammed it into Akhtiar's head and sent thick streams of blood running down his face.

Akhtiar was among the more than 770 terrorism suspects imprisoned at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. They are the men the Bush administration described as "the worst of the worst."

But Akhtiar was no terrorist. American troops had dragged him out of his Afghanistan home in 2003 and held him in Guantanamo for three years in the belief that he was an insurgent involved in rocket attacks on U.S. forces. The Islamic radicals in Guantanamo's Camp Four who hissed "infidel" and spat at Akhtiar, however, knew something his captors didn't: The U.S. government had the wrong guy.

"He was not an enemy of the government, he was a friend of the government," a senior Afghan intelligence officer told McClatchy. Akhtiar was imprisoned at Guantanamo on the basis of false information that local anti-government insurgents fed to U.S. troops, he said.

An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens of men — and, according to several officials, perhaps hundreds — whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments.

McClatchy interviewed 66 released detainees, more than a dozen local officials — primarily in Afghanistan — and U.S. officials with intimate knowledge of the detention program. The investigation also reviewed thousands of pages of U.S. military tribunal documents and other records.

This unprecedented compilation shows that most of the 66 were low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals. At least seven had been working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants, according to Afghan local officials. In effect, many of the detainees posed no danger to the United States or its allies.

The investigation also found that despite the uncertainty about whom they were holding, U.S. soldiers beat and abused many prisoners.

Prisoner mistreatment became a regular feature in cellblocks and interrogation rooms at Bagram and Kandahar air bases, the two main way stations in Afghanistan en route to Guantanamo.

While he was held at Afghanistan's Bagram Air Base, Akhtiar said, "When I had a dispute with the interrogator, when I asked, 'What is my crime?' the soldiers who took me back to my cell would throw me down the stairs."

The McClatchy reporting also documented how U.S. detention policies fueled support for extremist Islamist groups. For some detainees who went home far more militant than when they arrived, Guantanamo became a school for jihad, or Islamic holy war.

Of course, Guantanamo also houses Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, who along with four other high-profile detainees faces military commission charges. Cases also have been opened against 15 other detainees for assorted offenses, such as attending al Qaida training camps.

But because the Bush administration set up Guantanamo under special rules that allowed indefinite detention without charges or federal court challenge, it's impossible to know how many of the 770 men who've been held there were terrorists.

Articles of Impeachment against George W. Bush

Articles of Impeachment against George W. Bush

35 Reasons To Call (202) 225-5126
by Larry Beinhart

On June 10, 2008, Dennis Kucinich introduced 35 Articles of Impeachment against George W. Bush.

On June 11, 2008, they were referred to the Judiciary Committee. According to NPR, the Associated Press and the like, they were sent there to die.That’s too bad. Because George Bush has committed “high crimes and misdemeanors.” Impeachable offenses. A lot of them.

He, and his administration, have also created a cloud of confusion and obfuscation around everything that’s happened in his administration. Every investigation has ground to a halt, lost in corporate lawyers tricks - refusal to hand over documents, lost documents, redacted documents, officials who can’t remember, or, at last resort, refuse to answer subpoenas.

According to the Articles of Impeachment:

• The administration consciously lied about the reasons to go to war.
• Conspired to create a secret propaganda campaign to go to war.
• Failed to meet the terms set out in the bill that allowed the president to go to war, thereby making the war illegal.
• Failed to meet the terms set by international law for war, therefore engaging in a “war of aggression,” a war crime.
• Engaged in Torture
• Illegal Detention: Detaining Indefinitely And Without Charge Persons Both U.S. Citizens and Foreign Captives
• Rendition: Kidnapping People and Taking Them Against Their Will to “Black Sites” Located in Other Nations, Including Nations Known to Practice Torture
• Imprisoning Children
• Failure, as the occupying power, to protect the civilian population of Iraq.
• Providing immunity for criminal acts by contractors, thereby condoning murder, rape and other crimes.
• Spied on Americans without warrants.
• Intentionally subverting and refusing to enforce laws through signing statements.
• Tampering with Free and Fair Elections,
• Corruption of the Administration of Justice
• Conspiracy to Violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965
• Obstruction of the Investigation into the Attacks of September 11, 2001
• Denial of Habeas Corpus

Among other things.

Many of these are on the record as true.

If congress says the hell with it, too much trouble to bring that up, and we don’t want to look vindictive, and just shrugs its shoulders, that makes them co-conspirators.

The man who will now make the decision to stash the charges on the shelf until after January, 2009, when Bush is gone, or to open up hearings, is John Conyers.

John Conyers phone number is (202) 225-5126.

ANWR Bush drilling plan wouldn't have eased pump prices

ANALYSIS-Bush drilling plan wouldn't have eased pump prices

The Bush administration says the United States would be less addicted to foreign oil and fuel prices would be lower if Congress had only opened up Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling.

But that claim doesn't reflect the long lead time to develop the refuge's huge oil reserves, which would not be available for several more years and initial volumes would still be small if Congress in 2002 had approved the administration's plan to drill in ANWR, energy experts say.

President George W. Bush during his first year in office made giving energy companies access to the estimated 10 billion barrels of crude in the refuge the centerpiece of his national energy policy that sprouted from Vice President Dick Cheney's controversial and secretive energy task force.

With gasoline prices soaring to records in recent weeks, Bush has stepped up his argument that ANWR oil is a solution.

"We should have been exploring for oil and gas in ANWR," he said last week when asked about record pump costs. "But, no, we made the decision and our Congress kept preventing us from opening up new areas to explore in environmentally friendly ways and now we're becoming, as a result, more and more dependent on foreign sources of oil."

Congress has tried several times in Bush's two terms to pass legislation to finally open the refuge to energy exploration, but always fell a few votes short due in part to concern over what drilling would do to ANWR's wildlife.

"They've repeatedly blocked environmentally safe exploration in ANWR," Bush complained to reporters on Tuesday at a Rose Garden press conference. He said oil supplies from the refuge "would likely mean lower gas prices."

The Energy Information Administration, which is the Energy Department's independent analytical arm, estimated that if Congress had cleared Bush's ANWR drilling plan the oil would have been available to refiners in 2011, but only at a small volume of 40,000 barrels a day -- a drop in the bucket compared with the 20.6 million barrels the U.S. consumes daily.

At peak production, ANWR could have potentially added 780,000 barrels a day to U.S. crude oil output by 2020, according to the EIA.

The extra supplies would have cut dependence on foreign oil, but only slightly. With ANWR crude, imports would have met 60 percent of U.S. oil demand in 2020, down from 62 percent without the refuge's supplies.

All three leading presidential candidates, Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain, are against oil drilling in the refuge.

The administration says if Congress had acted sooner, U.S. drivers would be getting relief at the pump from the extra oil supplies in the market.

"Opening up ANWR is not long term," Bush said Tuesday.

But both government and private energy experts say Bush is overly optimistic that ANWR oil would be flowing now if Congress had approved his drilling plan back in 2002, because of the years needed to find the crude and develop the fields.

"I would say under the best of circumstances it would take approximately 10 years" for any ANWR oil to make it into the market, said Philip Budzik, an EIA analyst.

"Even if oil was flowing, it would be too small amount to reduce the price" of crude or gasoline, said Daniel Weiss, energy expert at the Center for American Progress, a think tank in Washington.

"President Bush's claim ignores the primary causes behind record high oil prices: a cheap dollar, high demand from China and India, and speculators driving the price up. Drilling and sullying the Arctic would not address any of these causes of high oil prices," said Weiss.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel disputed Bush has implied ANWR oil would be available today if his drilling plan was approved in 2002. "He didn't say my 2002 vote," Stanzel said. However, he could not clarify whose drilling plan the president was talking about.

Gerald Kepes, head of the upstream oil and gas practice at the PFC Energy consulting group, said if the Interior Department had begun leasing tracts in ANWR in 2003 the first oil would had probably been flowing in 2012.

"This all assumes that there would be no environmental challenges," said Kepes, as lawsuits to block drilling could take years to resolve. "Really, 2015 is more then likely."

Opening ANWR could have made current prices worse because Saudi Arabia may have delayed increasing its oil production capacity, making world supplies tighter and prices higher.

"Since there is a worldwide market for oil, increases in production in one place (like ANWR) could be offset by decreases in production someplace else to keep the prices high,"

The legacy of Republican Ben Stein - Serial Liar

The legacy of Republican Ben Stein - Serial Liar

During the June 11 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, conservative commentator and actor Ben Stein misrepresented Sen. Barack Obama's tax plan to raise the capital gains tax rate on the wealthiest earners. Stein stated, "I'm very worried about increasing the capital gains tax, unless you want to just increase it on people that are terribly wealthy," whom he defined as "people that have an income of $5 million a year or more." He added, "But people that have incomes in the hundreds and the low hundreds of thousands, people that have incomes in the five digits, that's way -- that's crazy to increase their capital gains tax." But Stein's suggestion that Obama plans to raise the capital gains rate on "people that have incomes in the five digits" is false. In fact, Obama has said he would not raise the capital gains tax on individuals with income of less than $250,000. In a June 9 interview with CNBC's John Harwood, Obama said, "[K]eep in mind on all of these proposals, what I have said is, let's make sure that we define the well-off so that we're not hitting the middle class. I generally define well-off as people who are making $250,000 a year or more, and that means, for example, if we raise the capital gains tax, I would exempt people who are essentially small investors, and really capture the -- those who have done very, very well over the last two decades."

Furthermore, Stein asserted that Obama's tax plan would put Americans' retirement plans at risk: "It means a huge amount in terms of retirement planning, because if you are retiring, you're going to depend a lot on capital gains from your investments to fund your retirement. If that's going to be taxed away, your retirement is in severe jeopardy." However, Stein's statement ignores the fact that distributions from 401(k) and IRA accounts are taxed as regular income, not as capital gains.

Later in the discussion, co-host Gretchen Carlson asserted, "[P]art of the Barack Obama plan, I think, is to increase the tax when you try to sell your home, as well, which could affect, well, everyone, but retirees as well."

In fact, Carlson's suggestion that everyone who sells a home would be affected by raising the capital gains tax is false. The law exempts profits from the sale of a primary residence up to $250,000 for single owners and $500,000 for married owners. Only home-sales profits exceeding those values would be affected by Obama's proposal.

E.D. Hill and Fox Thinks Everyone is a Terrorist

Question for Fox News: Do you think any of these people might be terrorists?

An Internet search for terms "fist bump," "pound," "dap," and "bumping fists" has revealed images of numerous athletes, celebrities, and politicians performing the same social gesticulation. Does Fox think any of the following might be terrorists?

Right-wing Nut Case Laura Ingraham Out To Get Obama

Right-wing Nut Case Laura Ingraham Out To Get Obama

Summary: On The O'Reilly Factor, Laura Ingraham said that when Sen. Barack Obama was speaking at a fundraiser to Orthodox Jews in New York, "He did not talk about the Hamas endorsement." But Obama has repeatedly denounced Hamas, including during his comments to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, in which he said: "We must isolate Hamas unless and until they renounce terrorism, recognize Israel's right to exist, and abide by past agreements."

Anti-semitc nut tries to smear Obama

All snapshots taken of a anti-semitic web site that has tried to smear several presidential candidates including Barack Obama by placing inflammatory remarks at the Obama community web site, more hear BREAKING: “Jewish Lobby” Story Overinflated

Norm Coleman's Shame

Norm Coleman's Shame

In late October The Daily Outrage detailed the right-wing media's selective and misplaced reporting on the UN's handling of Iraq's oil-for-food (OFF) program. Joy Gordon followed-up recently in a Nation article which countered conservative claims regarding the extent of alleged corruption and showed that, far from giving Saddam a free hand, OFF actually required considerable monitoring. Now the Right's fury has reached a crescendo with a Wall Street Journal Op-ed by Republican Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota.

"It's time for U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to resign," Coleman begins, before overstating the amount of reported bribes, ignoring the effectiveness of UN sanctions in disarming Saddam Hussein, and accusing the relief plan of funding the Iraqi insurgency.

Coleman was far more charitable toward his own government last April, after Condeeleza Rice revealed that Bush had received a memo titled "Bin Laden determined to strike in US," a month before 9/11, Coleman defended Rice by saying: "We've got to get away from finger pointing and the blame game."

A month later, Coleman echoed GOP talking points by blaming the torture at Abu Ghraib on a "small group of soldiers." He called Donald Rumsfeld's Senate testimony "contrite, candid and thorough," and trusted Bush would properly hold high-ranking officers accountable. (Bush hasn't dismissed anyone over the scandal to date.) "This is not a time for critics," Coleman said. His subsequent silence on this issue has been deafening.

Coleman's OFF grandstanding seems part of his transition from moderate Democratic mayor of St. Paul to moderate Republican Senate candidate to reliably conservative lapdog. Now he's using Congressional OFF hearings to audition for the role of the next Jesse Helms, who famously withheld $1 billion in back dues from the UN.

Coleman earlier this year co-sponsored legislation mandating 10 percent US funding cuts for the UN next year and 20 percent for 2006 unless the world body hands over all OFF documents to Congress. Richard Lugar, the pragmatic Republican chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, blocked a hearing on the proposal. But Republicans plan to reintroduce the legislation in the next session.

Paul Volcker--the respected former chairman of the Federal Reserve--recently asked Coleman to lay low while he conducts his own investigation for Annan. Coleman quickly refused. The newest conservative demagogue apparently can't stay away from the spotlight.

McBush or McCain's reversal on spying, executive power

NYT front page reports on McCain's reversal on spying, executive power

On Wednesday, I documented John McCain's complete reversal of views -- in the last six months alone -- on FISA, warrantless eavesdropping and executive power. McCain's diametrically opposite views were contained in a questionnaire McCain completed for The Boston Globe last December (wherein he rejected many of the Bush/Cheney theories of presidential omnipotence and warrantless eavesdropping) and then a statement McCain issued this week to National Review (wherein he embraced those same theories in order to persuade the Right that he approves of and would continue Bush's lawless surveillance policies).

The reporter who circulated the spying/executive power questionnaire in December to all of the candidates for the Globe was Charlie Savage, one of the very few national reporters who has reported continuously and insightfully about Bush's executive power abuses over the past several years. Savage won the Pulitzer Prize for his work exposing Bush's radical use of signing statements to vest himself with the power to break the law.

In what might be one of the most significant and under-noted media developments of the year, it was announced last month that Savage was leaving the Globe and joining The New York Times. Already, that move has paid dividends, as the NYT today publishes a front-page story by Savage detailing McCain's reversal this week. The article begins this way:

A top adviser to Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team.

The article quotes my Wednesday column to make this point:

And Glenn Greenwald, a Salon columnist and critic of the Bush administration's legal claims, wrote that the statement was a "complete reversal" by Mr. McCain, accusing the candidate of seeking "to shore up the support of right-wing extremists."

An Obama spokesman was extremely critical of McCain's blatantly opportunistic switch: "anyone reading Mr. McCain's answers to The Globe and the more recent statement would be 'totally confused' about 'what Senator McCain thinks about what the Constitution means and what President Bush did.'"

The Bush Legacy Arming our own enemies in Iraq

Arming our own enemies in Iraq

In recent months, Gen. David Petraeus charged that Iran has supplied powerful rocket-propelled grenade launchers to Shiite militias in Iraq. But according to the U.S. government's own reports, there is no evidence to support that charge. In fact, the vast majority of RPGs in the hands of Shiite militants have come from either U.S.-purchased weapons intended for Iraq's new security forces, or from Saddam Hussein's old stockpiles, which the U.S. failed to secure when it took control of the country.

The Bush administration has long sought to create the impression that Iran has been playing a major military role in Iraq by supplying arms to Shiite militias, including the cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's powerful Mahdi army. But to date, U.S. military officials have offered scant or even dubious evidence of Iranian military involvement in Iraq -- and Petraeus' allegation about the RPGs is a clear-cut case of unsubstantiated charges.

Last October, and again in late December, Petraeus stated emphatically there was "absolutely no question" that Iran provided RPG-29s, a sophisticated anti-tank weapon, to Iraqi Shiite militiamen. He even called the RPG-29 an Iranian "signature weapon."

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What Petraeus failed to mention, however, is that RPG-29s are manufactured by Russia, not Iran, and those that have shown up in Iraq apparently came from Syria. The Syrian government bought large numbers of RPG-29s from Russia in 1999 and 2000, many of which ended up being used by Hezbollah in the war against Israel in 2006, according to Israeli and Lebanese media reports. Even some U.S. military officials were quoted in the media in May 2006 as saying that they believed RPG-29s had been smuggled into Iraq from Syria.

Moreover, as Air Force Col. Scott Maw of the Multi-National Force Iraq (MNF-I) Strategic Communications Office told me in a telephone interview last week, "very few" RPG-29s have actually been found in Iraq. An examination of U.S. military press releases on weapons caches found in Shiite areas reveals no mention of RPG-29s. Additionally, the U.S. military has never displayed a captured one to reporters.

In a highly publicized February 2007 slide show, U.S. military briefers did include a picture of what was identified as a round to be fired by an Iranian-made RPG-7AT-1 launcher, a less advanced weapon than the RPG-29, although it did not depict the launcher itself. But the U.S. military has found no evidence of an Iranian pipeline of RPG-7s to Iraqi Shiite militants, either.

In more than two dozen MNF-I news releases on Iraqi Shiite weapons since early 2007, more than 200 RPGs are listed. Not a single one was identified as Iranian-made. That was not because of a lack of effort by the U.S. military, however, to determine whether captured weapons were of Iranian origin. Lt. Col. Steve Stover, the spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division, which is deployed in and around Baghdad, confirmed that explosives experts examine the findings at each cache site to determine the origin of the weapons. "Normally we say whether they are Iranian-manufactured or not," Stover said in a telephone interview.

Col. Maw said that the number of these weapons found in militants' possession is rising rapidly -- now more than 400 -- due to many discoveries being made by Iraqi Security Forces in recent months. "Very few of them are of recent manufacture," he said, suggesting that they came from Saddam Hussein's old stockpiles.

The U.S. command is so eager to highlight any weapons that can be linked to Iran that one MNF-I press release from last September singled out the discovery of four Iranian hand grenades. But that find hardly supported the Iranian-weapons narrative, because the grenades were found in an area frequented by Sunni militants associated with al-Qaida. (There is no reason to believe that Iran would arm extremist Sunni fighters, who consider both Iran and the Shiites as their arch enemies.)

In the early stages of the war, when the Bush administration was being criticized for its failure to prevent the looting of the Saddam Hussein regime's arms depots, Bush officials downplayed the importance of the weapons that disappeared. In October 2004, an unnamed senior administration official was quoted by CNN as saying that the weapons were "stuff you can buy anywhere."

Among the pilfered Iraqi weapons were thousands of RPG-7s, which soon turned up on Iraq's thriving black market. Malcolm Nance, an Arabic-speaking 20-year veteran of military and civilian U.S. intelligence, recalls being offered more than 20 RPG-7 rocket launchers and dozens of RPG rounds in a single trip to an arms bazaar in Sadr City in September 2003. According to Nance, RPG-7s were also on sale in black markets at another location in Baghdad and in at least seven other Iraqi cities.

In a telephone interview, Nance, who is now a counterterrorism consultant to Homeland Security and the Army's Special Operations Command, among other government agencies, recalled that the Iraqi RPG-7s were "so ubiquitous" that they were selling for a mere $50 each for the launcher and $5 each for an RPG missile.

Sunni fighters got large numbers of Saddam's RPG-7 stocks, as discovered by U.S. troops who were frequently attacked by them in the early stages of the insurgency. But the Mahdi army has also been able to purchase them easily over the past four years.

Equally troubling is the near certainty that Soviet-made RPGs purchased by the Pentagon in 2004 and turned over to Iraq's Ministry of Interior have fallen into the hands of the Mahdi army. Beginning in 2004, the Pentagon sent at least 7,500 Soviet-made RPG-7s and 4,500 Soviet-made under-barrel grenade launchers to Baghdad to be distributed to Iraqi Security Forces, along with hundreds of thousands of sidearms, according to a September 2007 report by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction. U.S. authorities hired civilian contractors to distribute the U.S.-purchased weapons, but had no system to account for them once they left U.S.-controlled warehouses in Iraq. As the New York Times reported last November, the Iraqi businessman contracted to distribute Pentagon-funded weapons from one depot was widely known to be stealing them from the warehouse by the truckload.

Only 499 of the 2,389 Soviet-made RPGs that were provided to the new Iraqi security forces could actually be accounted for through serial numbers, according to a report by the Defense Department Inspector General's Office in November -- and that was because they were still in the warehouse. No one knows how many of the other 1,900 RPGs entered the Iraqi arms market. Inspector General Claude Kicklighter told the Senate Appropriations Committee in March that there is an ongoing investigation into "pilferage of storage facilities" for the arms in Baghdad.

Michelle Obama "fundamental belief and pride in this country and what it stands for"

Michelle Obama explains pride remark

Michelle Obama says she’s always been proud of her country, but for the first time she’s “seeing people rolling up their sleeves in a way that I haven’t seen.”

She had told an audience in Milwaukee that, “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country. Not just because Barack is doing well, but I think people are hungry for change.”

[ ]...When asked Wednesday if she would like to clarify her comment, Obama replied that she has been struck by the number of people going to rallies and watching debates, as well as record voter turnouts.

“What I was clearly talking about was that I’m proud in how Americans are engaging in the political process,” she said.

“For the first time in my lifetime, I’m seeing people rolling up their sleeves in a way that I haven’t seen and really trying to figure this out — and that’s the source of pride that I was talking about,” she added.

When asked if she had always been proud of her country, she replied “absolutely.” “Barack and I, our stories wouldn’t be possible, if it weren’t for fundamental belief and pride in this country and what it stands for.”

Her husband came to her defense. ‘‘Statements like this are made and people try to take it out of context and make a great big deal out of it, and that isn’t at all what she meant,’’ he said.

Michelle Obama’s latest comments came during a visit to Rhode Island ahead of its March 4 primary. She was to attend a rally with her brother, Craig Robinson, Brown University men’s basketball coach.

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"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
— Bush praising Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the morning after he revealed (in a network television interview) that he did not know about the thousands of people stranded at New Orleans' convention center until a day after extensive media reports on the situation. (Washington Post, "FEMA Director Singled Out by Response Critics", Spencer S. Hsu and Susan B. Glasser, Sept. 6, 2005.)

"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."
—Bush confronted by political opposition, Bush explains his strategy on promoting Social Security reform. (Washington Post, "The Ostrich Approach," Dan Froomkin, May 25, 2005)