Impeachment

Katrina Redux
by Stephen Lendman

Renamed and back, but first a personal note. Post-Katrina, writing about "The New Orleans Aftermath and (its) Ugly Glimpse of the Future" turned this retiree into a writer and radio host.

Now three years later, Gustav threatened and, on August 30, got New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin to hype the risk, scare the public, and order a dusk-to-dawn curfew and evacuation of the city's 239,000 residents ahead of what he called "the mother of all storms." Many hundreds of thousands more along the Gulf coast. "Nearly two million people from Texas to Alabama," according to an August 31 New York Times report. Thankfully without cause as "the storm of the century" made landfall as a Category 2, weakened to a tropical depression on September 2, and Louisianans were spared the worst of their fears.

Biden Rips Bush Administration

As reported by Jonathan Karl of ABCNews.com:

"In an Obama-Biden administration, we will not have an attorney general who blatantly breaks the law," Biden said at a town-hall meeting in West Palm Beach, Florida, his voice at times drowned out by applause. "We will not have a president who doesn't understand the Constitution. And I will not be a vice-president who thinks he's not part of any of the three branches of government."

Biden ripped the Bush administration for wasting a chance to unite the nation in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

"George Bush and his administration are going to be judged harshly by history," said the Delaware lawmaker. "Not for the mistakes they made, but for the opportunities to unite America and the world they squandered." ...noting that the next administration might appoint as many as three new justices.

"The single most important domestic decision that a president gets to make on his own or her own is the Supreme Court," he said.

Looking to the future but with one eye on the past, Biden also promised that an Obama-Biden government would go through Bush administration data with "a fine-toothed comb" and pursue criminal charges if necessary.

Revolving Door Woes Mount at Federal Minerals Agency
Following Guilty Plea MMS Director Warns Workers to Expect More Shoes to Drop

The criminal conviction of a top agency manager may be just the beginning of revolving door troubles at the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service, according to documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).

Workers at the agency are being told to expect more scandals to come.

On July 30, 2008, former special assistant to the Associate Director of Minerals Revenue Management, Mineral Management Service (MMS), Jimmy Mayberry, pled guilty before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to a felony violation of the conflict of interest law governing post-employment work. Mayberry faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison, and a fine of $250,000.

Judge says gov't must produce waterboarding memos

A federal judge has ruled in New York that the government must either produce memos on waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods used by the CIA or explain why they should be kept secret.

U.S. District Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein says the memos are "clearly responsive" to a lawsuit filed in 2003 by the ACLU and other civil rights groups seeking records on the treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody overseas.

The U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan declined to comment Wednesday.

The New York Times last year disclosed the existence some of the Justice Department memos. It said they authorized interrogators to use methods like waterboarding, head slapping and exposure to freezing temperatures.

Woodward's 'secret history' of Bush admin. to debut Sept. 8
RawStory.com

The suspense didn't quite compare to the identity of "Deep Throat," but we now know the name of Bob Woodward's fourth investigative work on the Bush administration, just three weeks before the book's release.

"The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006-2008" will be published Sept. 8 by Simon & Schuster with an announced first printing of 900,000 copies. Simon & Schuster is keeping the book under strict embargo — although such embargoes are often broken — and had even held back the title.

"There has not been such an authoritative and intimate account of presidential decision making since the Nixon tapes and the Pentagon Papers," Woodward's longtime editor, Alice Mayhew, said Tuesday in a statement. "This is the declassification of what went on in secret, behind the scenes."

According to Simon & Schuster, Woodward's book "takes readers deep inside the White House, the Pentagon, the State Department, the intelligence agencies and the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq.

Scott Horton Interviews Joe Lauria
Anti-War.com

Investigative reporter Joe Lauria discusses the series he co-wrote for the London Times about the Sibel Edmonds case, including the 30 year Washington connection to the A.Q. Kahn nuclear black-market operation, the difficulty in corroborating stories about such a secretive subject, the inability of American mainstream media to diverge from the status quo, how the Tinner family fits into the story and the history of the military-industrial-congressional complex as told in the new book he’s co-authored with former senator Mike Gravel, A Political Odyssey.

MP3 here. (50:50)

Joe Lauria is a New York-based investigative journalist. A freelance member of the Sunday Times of London Insight team, he has also worked on investigations for the Boston Globe and Bloomberg News. Joe’s articles have additionally appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Daily Telegraph, The Daily Mail, The Guardian, The Montreal Gazette, The Johannesburg Star, The Washington Times, New York Magazine, ARTnews

US-Iraqi Agreement: Leaked
By Raed Jarrar | Raed Jarrar's Blog

I read about a leaked copy of the US-Iraqi agreement a few days ago when a radio station in Iraq mentioned some of its details, then it was mentioned in some Arab newspapers like Al-Qabas and Al-Sharq Al-Awsat. A couple of days ago, one Iraqi website (linked to an Iraqi armed resistance group) published the leaked draft on their web page for less than a couple of days before their website went offline. (Thankfully, I downloaded the 21 pages agreement and saved them before their server went down)

'Stealing America': Voting-fraud documentary
Michael Ordoña | SFGate.com

The numbers don't add up.

$3.8 billion: The initial Help America Vote Act allocation that California Secretary of State Deborah Bowen said "pushed many counties into buying electronic systems that ... were not properly reviewed or tested."
Images
A scene from the documentary "Stealing America: Vote by V...Dorothy Fadiman, director of the documentary "Stealing Am... View Larger Images

18,000: Votes that did not register in a 2006 Sarasota County, Fla., local election using touch-screen machines, in a Democratic stronghold that the Republican challenger won by 368 votes.

Negative 16,022: Votes counted for Al Gore on a Diebold tabulator in Volusia County, Fla., in 2000.

Zero: The number of proven instances of election fraud involving electronic voting machines, according to industry spokespeople.

Alex - Impeach the Bastards - Watch the Lies!

Impeach the bastards

Click here.

Conyers Sets Deadline For Production of US Attorney Documents

"...Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee John Conyers, Jr. (D-MI) sent a letter to White House Counsel Fred Fielding setting a September 4, 2008, deadline for the White House to comply with its obligations regarding production of documents under the July 31 Order issued by U.S. District Judge John Bates in Committee on the Judiciary v. Miers. The letter also notes that a hearing at which Harriet Miers is to appear pursuant to subpoena has been rescheduled for September 11, 2008. The letter follows yesterday’s rejection by Judge Bates of the White House’s request that the July 31 Order be stayed pending appeal, as well as a status conference before Judge Bates that was held this morning. The full text of the letter is linked here.

Treating Iraqi Children For PTSD
by Lourdes Garcia-Navarro | NPR.com

According to the Web site iraqbodycount.org, at least 658 children were killed in Iraq in 2007, and the violence has touched the lives of many others. Iraq children also have been the victims of kidnapping, torture and rape.

The problem has become so acute that a new clinic for children suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder will be opening this month in Baghdad. It will be the first of its kind in Iraq.

Dhiya Moussa, 11, is a stocky child with shaggy brown hair. He cautiously answers questions from Dr. Haider Maliki, and confesses he still can't fall asleep at night.

George Bush, finally the uniter
By Mikel Weisser | MohaveDailyNews.com

When Bob Costas interviewed George Bush for NBC's Olympic coverage on Aug. 10, attempting to take a hard line, Costas asked Bush to comment on the problems in our country. Bush replied, “I don't see any problems with our country.”

Following the immediate crowd reaction of everyone in the room yelling “get that man a *&%&$@# pair of glasses” at the TV set, I, like many in the American public, came the realization that from his point of view things in America probably do look pretty rosy. After all, Bush does not have to see any problems. His problems are seen to.

Ex-Guantanamo detainees appeal to US Supreme Court

Four Britons released from Guantanamo in 2004 after two years' detention, requested the US Supreme Court to rule on the right of prisoners "to worship and...not to be tortured."

If the high court takes the case, it will have to decide whether war-on-terror detainees have additional constitutional rights besides the right to challenge their detention in civilian court, as was confirmed in a June Supreme Court ruling.

British nationals Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Jamal Al-Harith were held at the US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba from January 2002 to April 2004, when they were released uncharged and deported to Britain.

Military: Study cites poor public access to military courts
Report calls for standardized docket accessible via the Internet
By MARK WALKER | NCTimes.com

Public access to U.S. military courts around the world and information about current cases is woefully inadequate, according to a new study of the inner workings of justice in the armed services.

To improve access and basic information, the study calls for the creation of a Defense Department-managed docketing system for all military court matters that would be accessible to the public via the Internet.