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Robert Parry, Consortium News, July 21, 2007

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has taken impeachment “off the table,” in line with Official Washington’s view that trying to oust George W. Bush and Dick Cheney would be an unpleasant waste of time. But there is emerging a compelling logic that an unprecedented dual impeachment might be vital to the future of the United States.

If some historic challenge is not made to the extraordinary assertions of power by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, the United States might lose its status as a democratic Republic based on a Constitution that adheres to the twin principles that no one is above the law and everyone is endowed with inalienable rights.

Over the past six-plus years, Bush has trampled on these traditional concepts of liberty and the rule of law time and again, even as he professes his love of freedom and democracy. Indeed, in Bush’s world, the word “freedom” has come to define almost its classical opposite.

Bush’s “freedom” means the right of the Executive to imprison enemies of the state indefinitely without charge and without even the centuries-old right of habeas corpus; Bush’s “freedom” tolerates coercion, torture or what the Founders called “cruel and unusual punishment” to extract confessions from detainees; it countenances surveillance of anyone – citizen and non-citizen alike – without a requirement for judicial review or evidence of probable cause that a crime is being committed; it sees no problem with the government and its private-sector allies teaming up to silence dissent.

Bush’s “freedom” also embraces the notion of a Commander in Chief acting as a quasi-dictator possessing “plenary” – or unlimited – powers in wartime, deciding which human beings on the planet get basic rights and which ones don’t.

Given the indefinite and boundless nature of the “war on terror,” which could last forever and extends to a global battlefield (including U.S. territory), Bush’s presidential powers also don’t represent just a temporary suspension of the Constitution in the face of a short-term emergency, but rather a permanent change in the American system of government.

After all, if one man possesses unlimited power, that means the rest of us hold our personal liberties at the leader’s forbearance, much as feudal subjects lived at the pleasure of the monarch, not as citizens who could stand up to the ruler with the firm knowledge that their basic rights of life and liberty were unshakeable.

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Paul Krugman, The New York Times, July 20, 2007

In a coordinated public relations offensive, the White House is using reliably friendly pundits — amazingly, they still exist — to put out the word that President Bush is as upbeat and confident as ever. It might even be true.

What I don’t understand is why we’re supposed to consider Mr. Bush’s continuing confidence a good thing.

Remember, Mr. Bush was confident six years ago when he promised to bring in Osama, dead or alive. He was confident four years ago, when he told the insurgents to bring it on. He was confident two years ago, when he told Brownie that he was doing a heckuva job.

Now Iraq is a bloody quagmire, Afghanistan is deteriorating and the Bush administration’s own National Intelligence Estimate admits, in effect, that thanks to Mr. Bush’s poor leadership America is losing the struggle with Al Qaeda. Yet Mr. Bush remains confident.

Sorry, but that’s not reassuring; it’s terrifying. It doesn’t demonstrate Mr. Bush’s strength of character; it shows that he has lost touch with reality.

Actually, it’s not clear that he ever was in touch with reality. I wrote about the Bush administration’s “infallibility complex,” its inability to admit mistakes or face up to real problems it didn’t want to deal with, in June 2002. Around the same time Ron Suskind, the investigative journalist, had a conversation with a senior Bush adviser who mocked the “reality-based community,” asserting that “when we act, we create our own reality.”

People who worried that the administration was living in a fantasy world used to be dismissed as victims of “Bush derangement syndrome,” liberals driven mad by Mr. Bush’s success. Now, however, it’s a syndrome that has spread even to former loyal Bushies.

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Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein, The Washington Post, July 20, 2007

Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.

The position presents serious legal and political obstacles for congressional Democrats, who have begun laying the groundwork for contempt proceedings against current and former White House officials in order to pry loose information about the dismissals.

Under federal law, a statutory contempt citation by the House or Senate must be submitted to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, “whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action.”

But administration officials argued yesterday that Congress has no power to force a U.S. attorney to pursue contempt charges in cases, such as the prosecutor firings, in which the president has declared that testimony or documents are protected from release by executive privilege. Officials pointed to a Justice Department legal opinion during the Reagan administration, which made the same argument in a case that was never resolved by the courts.

“A U.S. attorney would not be permitted to bring contempt charges or convene a grand jury in an executive privilege case,” said a senior official, who said his remarks reflect a consensus within the administration. “And a U.S. attorney wouldn’t be permitted to argue against the reasoned legal opinion that the Justice Department provided. No one should expect that to happen.”

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the issue publicly, added: “It has long been understood that, in circumstances like these, the constitutional prerogatives of the president would make it a futile and purely political act for Congress to refer contempt citations to U.S. attorneys.”

Mark J. Rozell, a professor of public policy at George Mason University who has written a book on executive-privilege issues, called the administration’s stance “astonishing.”

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The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned.

The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although Bush is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: “Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo.”

Iran is making the same mistake Iraq made – sitting on Bush’s oil.

A reporter embedded with the U.S. military in Iraq reports a government official has recounted a new atrocity by al-Qaida: several instances in which terrorists baked a young boy, then invited his family to lunch with the victim as the main course.

The report is from Michael Yon, a Special Forces soldier who returned to Iraq to report on the successes there, inspired, he told radio talk-show host Hugh Hewitt, by a “news cycle that seems to pander toward the terrorists.”

Yon was in Baqubah listening to the statements of an Iraqi official who asked that his name not be reported. Yon said the Iraqi told him al-Qaida arrived in Baqubah and united a number of criminal gangs, leaving death and destruction behind.

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Ye Olde Scribe’s Incredible, Inedible Quote Machine

“Helping readers barf due to the sheer stupidity of the rhetoric our pundits and leaders use since 1999″

Junior in Nashville, TN, yesterday at a bakery…

You can’t keep making buns if Democrats keep taking your dough.

Whomever spoon-fed the little dictator wannabe THAT line should have stayed there and climbed into one of the hotter ovens.

When asked about intellectual property rights… (Nashville being a very creative; songwriter town)…

I have no earthly idea what you’re taking about.

Odd, agree or disagree, Al Gore does know what they’re talking about. He has argued this issue many times. (Many claim he has less of an interest in protecting those rights than he should. Scribe knows for a fact, however, sometimes those “rights” are used against creative people and for the less than creative status quo… whether it be a song, copying a CD, new and affordable medicine, or those who aren’t part of the big three carmakers but attempt to compete with them.)

Neo-Con Fascists current talking point in regard to the outing of Valerie Plame…

(Junior and Biggus Dickus) were just doing their jobs.

Yes, in their war on freedom, and supporting terrorism for political gain, fun and profit. BTW, when are we going to go after the Saudis? The vast majority of non-Iraqi insurgents are Saudis and so were the vast majority of the terrorists on 9/11. The answer? NEVER. Why? Because Junior LOVES terrorism. Without terrorism he wouldn’t be in office. That’s why he considers the REAL terrorist state his “bestist” buddy. -YOS

The Anonymous Adjuster
“Damn, people can be stupid.”

Scribe will never admit where he got this from, because it might get a decent soul in trouble. But Scribe knows him well and, because of that, believes these cases really happened…

I had a claim once where a stuntman was going to jump off a cliff… he had them move the airbag at the floor of the cliff into position. Then he asked for a lighter costume…. once set he ran, jumped off the cliff and splatted on the ground next to the air bag. And of course, his estate sued. Good news was the footage of him coming off the cliff made it into the movie! I did get the see the outtakes, and his eventual sudden landing.

Or how about the case that we referred to as the toasty taco claim (aka the refried beaner)…. someone hit a light pole, and the downed power line set the grass on fire next to a Mexican’s house. Being a good neighbor, he ran out with a garden hose, sprayed the fire, and was promptly electrocuted! Ouch…

…a claim in where they had an old elevator in this warehouse. This guy with his head out of the car looked up, hit the start button and promptly cut his head off…

Hats off to the last one. Wait… where did the hat go? Oh, it’s down THERE? Never… mind. OH, that’s down there too?

Justice

(more…)

Harvey Wasserman, Buzzflash, July 19, 2007

The massive earthquake that shook Japan this week nearly killed millions in a nuclear apocalypse.

It also produced one of the most terrifying sentences ever buried in a newspaper. As reported deep in The New York Times, the Tokyo Electric Company admitted that “the force of the shaking caused by the earthquake had exceeded the design limits of the reactors, suggesting that the plant’s builders had underestimated the strength of possible earthquakes in the region.”

There are 55 reactors in Japan. Virtually all of them are on or near major earthquake faults. Kashiwazaki alone hosts seven, four of which were forced into the dangerous SCRAM mode to narrowly avoid meltdowns. At least 50 separate serious problems have been so far identified, including fire and the spillage of barrels filled with radioactive wastes.

There are four active reactors in California on or near major earthquake faults, as are the two at Indian Point north of New York City. On January 31, 1986, an earthquake struck the Perry reactor east of Cleveland, knocking out roads, bridges, and pipes within the plant, which (thankfully) was not operating at the time. Then Ohio governor Richard Celeste sued to keep Perry shut, but lost in federal court.

The fault that hit Perry is an off-shoot of the powerful New Madrid line that runs through the Mississippi River Valley, threatening numerous reactors. The Beyond Nuclear Project reports that in August 2004, a quake hit the Dresden reactor in Illinois, resulting in a leak of radioactive tritium. Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, slated as the nation’s high-level radioactive waste dump, has a visible fault line running through it.

More than 400 atomic reactors are online worldwide. We can only shudder to guess how many are vulnerable to seismic shocks. But one-eighth of them sit in one of the world’s richest, most technologically advanced, most densely populated industrial nations, which has now admitted its reactor designs cannot match the power of an earthquake that just happened.

No matter the language, this translates into the unmistakable warning that the world’s atomic reactors constitute a multiple, ticking seismic time bomb. Talk of building more can only be classified as suicidal irresponsibility.

Read More Here

 Link

Oprah Winfrey plans to hold a Sept. 8 fundraiser for Democratic hopeful Barack Obama at her palatial estate near Santa Barbara, Calif., according to campaign spokesman Dan Pfeiffer.Obama has raised more than $58 million for his White House bid. Forbes magazine estimates that Winfrey, the Chicago-based host who boasts a lot more, including a magazine, is worth $1.5 billion.

Here are a few:

http://www.scholarsfortruth911.org/
http://911blogger.com/
http://www.reopen911.org/
http://www.geocities.com/killtown/
http://www.standdown.net/
http://www.911truth.org/
http://thewebfairy.com/killtown/911links.html
http://www.tvnewslies.org
http://www.prisonplanet.com/911.html
http://stopthelie.com/home.html
http://www.911proof.com/
http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com
http://911research.wtc7.net/
http://www.PatriotsQuestion911.com
http://www.legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news
http://ae911truth.org/

and  http://tvnewslies.org/blog/?p=648