Pelosi censors poster of troops
Bruce Fein
Friday, August 22, 2008
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-S.F., has done something worse than commit a crime against the First Amendment. The speaker's censorship of nonobtrusive posters featuring men and women who gave that last full measure of devotion in service to their country is a blunder that could alienate 23 million veterans and their families from the Democratic Party. If she is endowed with a crumb of constitutional or political sense, she will reverse course. The tale of Pelosi's folly begins with Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C. He wished to pay tribute to the service members of Camp Lejeune who had been killed in Iraq or Afghanistan. Accordingly, Walter placed a poster flat against the wall in the corridor outside his office showing their names and pictures. It was altogether fitting that Jones saluted the fallen soldiers on congressional premises. Congress authorized the wars that occasioned their tragic deaths. Congress appropriated the money that dispatched them to mortal danger. The posters communicated to congressional visitors that war is a combination of heroism and hell. Voters would leave with more informed judgments about the costs of the twin wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There was no tension between Jones' wall poster and the ordinary use of the House Rayburn Office Building to host direct communications between Members of the House and the public. On one occasion, for instance, a mother from Minnesota entered Jones' office with tears in her eyes to thank him for displaying the picture of her son who had been killed while serving the nation.
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Ex-Rep. Paul Findley, R-Illinois, continues to state that Israel has a vast, undue influence in the United States.
The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee is considered the most powerful lobby in Washington. How else could anyone explain why we are still fighting in Iraq, a country that is not a threat to us?
Findley states that we attacked Iraq for ``Israel and for oil.'' But he's not the only important American to say this. Ralph Nader, ex-President Jimmy Carter, Noam Chomsky, the Washington Post, ambassadors and newsmen have all stated that Israel has undue influence in American foreign policy.
How can AIPAC be the most powerful lobby in our nation's capital? Israel only has 6.4 million people.
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EAST CLEVELAND, Ohio (AP) — Democratic U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the first black woman to represent Ohio in Congress and a strong critic of the Iraq war, died Wednesday after a brain hemorrhage, a hospital spokeswoman said.
Tubbs Jones, 58, died Wednesday evening of a brain hemorrhage caused by an aneurysm that burst and left her with limited brain function, said Eileen Sheil, a spokeswoman for the Cleveland Clinic, which owns the Huron Hospital in East Cleveland where Tubbs Jones died.
"Throughout the course of the day and into this evening, Congresswoman Tubbs Jones' medical condition declined," Sheil said in a statement from the clinic and Tubbs Jones' family.
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The Bush Administration’s use of presidential signing statements to indicate disapproval of enacted legislation has generated confusion and has undermined congressional oversight of national defense policy, the House Armed Services Committee said in a report this week (pdf).
One problem is that the Bush White House often fails to articulate the basis of its objections or their specific application in practice, the report said, terming White House objections “broad and unsubstantiated.”
“The functionality of a signing statement is greatly reduced if it is too vague to identify the concerns of the President and the interpretation of the law that the President is trying to convey to the executive branch,” the Committee report said.
A report is out saying her doctors stated she remains critical.
Ohio Rep. Tubbs Jones Dies
By Catharine Richert, Jonathan Allen and Alan K. Ota, CQ Staff
Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones died Wednesday in an Ohio hospital after suffering an aneurysm a day earlier, according to a senior House Democratic aide.
Tubbs Jones, a Democrat who has represented Ohio’s 11th District since 1999 and was chairwoman of the House’s ethics committee, suffered the aneurysm Tuesday night while driving near her hometown of Cleveland.
Tubbs Jones, who would have turned 60 on Sept. 10, was scheduled to attend the Democratic National Convention next week as a superdelegate.
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By Harry Hanbury on Aug 19, 2008
Congressman Vern Buchanan, of the 13th district in Florida, is facing increasing trouble in his reelection campaign. A first-term congressman and a long-time autodealer, Buchanan is being sued by a remarkable number of former employees and customers at the very height of the campaign season. So far, seven separate legal complaints have been filed against Buchanan, accusing him of flouting campaign finance laws, defrauding banks and customers, and even smuggling undocumented immigrants into the country to work on his beachfront house. ANP traveled to Florida to investigate the story.
Aug 19, 2008
Americans play Monopoly, Russians chess
By Spengler
On the night of November 22, 2004, then-Russian president - now premier - Vladimir Putin watched the television news in his dacha near Moscow. People who were with Putin that night report his anger and disbelief at the unfolding "Orange" revolution in Ukraine. "They lied to me," Putin said bitterly of the United States. "I'll never trust them again." The Russians still can't fathom why the West threw over a potential strategic alliance for Ukraine. They underestimate the stupidity of the West.
American hardliners are the first to say that they feel stupid next to Putin. Victor Davis Hanson wrote on August 12 [1] of Moscow's "sheer diabolic brilliance" in Georgia, while Colonel Ralph Peters, a columnist and television commentator, marveled on August 14 [2], "The Russians are alcohol-sodden barbarians, but now and then they vomit up a genius ... the empire of the czars hasn't produced such a frightening genius since [Joseph] Stalin." The superlatives recall an old observation about why the plots of American comic books need clever super-villains and stupid super-heroes to even the playing field. Evidently the same thing applies to superpowers.
The fact is that all Russian politicians are clever. The stupid ones are all dead. By contrast, America in its complacency promotes dullards. A deadly miscommunication arises from this asymmetry. The Russians cannot believe that the Americans are as stupid as they look, and conclude that Washington wants to destroy them. That is what the informed Russian public believes, judging from last week's postings on web forums, including this writer's own.
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Monday, 18 August 2008 20:32
I am tired of hearing pathetic Democrats cry about stolen elections. Fine...it has been proven that George W. Bush and his handlers stole the last two presidential elections. The evidence is voluminous. The fact is that we have been living under the rule of enemies domestic for almost eight years and Congress, along with our military, have allowed these enemies of the state to remain in control of our government. Doesn't that tell you something? Don't you see a larger problem here?
Let me tell you whiny Democrats something...the Bush cartel did not steal the elections from the Democrats...they stole the election from the other criminal cartels who decide in advance which men we may choose from to be our president!
The battle over who becomes president does not take place among the citizens of this nation, it takes place among groups such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg Group. Let me tell you something...the Cheney/PNAC cabal stole the elections from George H.W. Bush, James Baker, George Schultz and associates, not from the Democrats. They are the ones who assembled the Bush administration and rigged the 2000 election to place them in power as a proxy presidential administration. The problem was that the Neocons, once in office, took control and did what they wanted to do, not what their sponsors wanted them to do.
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Thought Crimes Agenda Already Being Implemented
According to Catherine Herridge of FOX News:
U.S. Lawmakers Take Aim at Homegrown Terrorist Threat
Many Americans believe that the threat of homegrown terrorism is gravest in Europe, but according to the U.S. government, in the last 18 months more than a half-dozen plots were thwarted right here at home.
Indeed.
That's what they say. But what really happened? How much do we know about the homegrown terrorist threat in America?
Catherine Herridge goes on to portray an open internet as a very dangerous place indeed:
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Nancy Pelosi tells CHANGE Ohio she hasn't read Impeachment articles
Vote CINDY SHEEHAN for Congress '08
Want IMPEACHMENT?
You're going to have to go through Nancy Pelosi to get it.
She has said, over and over, "Impeachment is off the table".
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Related
Racist ICE chief
CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS – IMMIGRATION
Aug. 6, 2008 – 11:28 p.m.
By John Bicknell, CQ Staff
The head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will ask Congress to consider taking disciplinary action against one of its members for a statement he made equating ICE agents with the Gestapo, a senior agency official said Wednesday.
Luis V. Gutierrez , vice chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee that handles immigration, has called for a moratorium on ICE enforcement actions until Congress passes a comprehensive overhaul, something it has failed to do in each of the past two years.
In a column written for Politico, Gutierrez, D-Ill., commenting on recent ICE arrests of illegal immigrants in Iowa, said: “You know who is in charge now? The Gestapo agents at Homeland Security. They are in charge.”
A senior ICE official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Julie L. Myers, the assistant secretary of Homeland Security for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was “absolutely appalled and deeply angered” by the statement. The official said Myers would send a letter to senior members of Congress asking that disciplinary action be taken against Gutierrez’ for his remarks.
Dear Everyone, - - S.O.S. from CINDY SHEEHAN!
After camping with my family in a redwood grove for two days, I have just tonight returned and found an incredibly disturbing email from Cindy Sheehan <http://www.cindyforcongress.org/>. Cindy and her team submitted two thousand more signatures than needed in order for her name to be listed on the ballot in her November run against Nancy Pelosi. But now the San Francisco Department of Elections has "challenged" an almost unbelievable percentage of those signatures -- 43.5 percent! -- and is demanding that Sheehan collect another 2,116 valid signatures before 5 pm Friday in order to qualify for the ballot. It's a very fishy development, especially coming so late in the game, and it yet again raises all sorts of questions about the integrity of our elections, but that's a discussion for another time (see below*)... Nonetheless, Cindy believes that she can still get the needed valid signatures in time, but she really, really needs our help. What can we do?
1 -- Go to Cindy's website <http://www.cindyforcongress.org/> and follow the instructions for making sure that you and your friends and neighbors have signed her petition <http://www.cindyforcongress.org/>. OR If you are a registered San Francisco voter, please make a special trip to Cindy's office <http://www.cindyforcongress.org/article.p
2 - Wednesday, Aug 6, Hiroshima Day, has been designated as a "money-bomb" day for Cindy <https://salsa.wiredforchange.com/o/1590/t/2
- (I've been a fan of San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom ever since he began his political career by wading into the jungle of the San Francisco taxicab industry, but tonight this sentence from a 2003 San Francisco Chronicle profile of Newsom <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cg
i?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/02/23/mn2 45262.dtl> haunts me and makes my head start to wobble back and forth: "His aunt was married to the brother-in-law of Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, the House minority leader" (and now, of course, the Speaker of the House and Cindy's opponent in November). - - - FREEZE ACTION -- 5 pm, Market and Powell, SF, Today!
And regarding the "after" action that I mentioned in my last email -- I simply need about a dozen or more people (all are invited) to help me figure out camera angles and logistics and to try to envision any possible glitches for an action I intend to take place during the next week-to-month or so. If you're coming to the Freeze, please look for me -- I'll be passing out a flyer with details. I could use about ten-maybe-fifteen minutes of your time immediately following the Freeze. Any questions, please call me or email -- I'll do my best to get back to you. - - All the very best,
Brad Newsham newsham@mac.com 415-305-8294
(Wednesday, August 6, 2008)
"The relation of policy and its reportage is clear in the preparing of Americans for a war with Iran, and then priming them into a maybe we will maybe we won’t indecision. Each time heated talk about Iran cools slightly, the price of gasoline declines. Until the next surge of fanatic babble that claims Iran will nuke Israel and exterminate all Jews, at which point the price goes up again."
“...the zionist power configuration’s primary loyalty is to the state of Israel and its policy is designed to colonize the US congress on behalf and to the benefit of the ‘mother country’, Israel...”
-- James Petras
Petras speaks to a reality rarely discussed in circles accustomed to whispered criticism, at best, of the U.S. performance in support of Israel . He mentions congress, but the executive branch has been equally “colonized”. The scripted performances by major party presidential candidates , whether bowing before the Israel - American lobby in Washington or praying before the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, are evidence enough. The dominance exercised by what he calls the Zionist Power Configuration is a very critical problem for a public that remains generally oblivious to its existence, let alone the control it has over our political system.
With a crippled economy and over extended armed forces, America’s global position has old establishment groups trying to retake control before mindless dedication to the Jewish state brings about total ruin . A revival of the old WASP (white anglo saxon protestant) power cabal finds it in a struggle with the newer jewish power bloc. This clash of establishment gangs will hardly bring social justice and peace to America, but it could give the public a chance to come to its senses. Support for a racist state that brutalizes its native population in a way that shocks veterans of apartheid South Africa can only continue with a public kept in the dark.
Under the dominance of propaganda that tells us innocent Israeli Jews are being persecuted by evil Palestinian -Arabs, the U.S. continues to prop up the Jewish state with money, and wage nation destroying wars on its behalf. Constantly retelling the story of past dreadful persecution makes it seem that because German nazis brutalized european jews, Israeli Ashkenazis are morally justified to brutalize Palestinian arabs. Settlers in a land which they believe, with no evidence save religious faith, is where they originated, are seen as natives, while the people who’ve lived there for centuries are expelled, treated as terrorists, and despite their Semitic origins, called anti-semites by those whose only connection to Semitism is their belief system.
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Tuesday Aug. 5, 2008 10:53 EDT
Salon Radio: Rep. Rush Holt on anthrax
Salon Radio: Rep. Rush Holt on anthrax
(updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV)
Rep. Rush Holt represents the Central New Jersey district where at least one of the anthrax letters was sent. Rep. Holt's Congressional office was one of the few in which traces of anthrax were found. He is also a physicist and has been an outspoken critic of the FBI's investigation into the anthrax attacks. Perhaps most importantly, he is the Chairman of the House's Select Intelligence Oversight Panel, which very well may hold hearings to examine the FBI's investigation and conclusions.
This morning, I spoke with Rep. Holt for roughly 20 minutes. During the discussion, Rep. Holt:
indicated his support for the creation of an investigative body, with full subpoena power, along the lines of the 9/11 Commission, to investigate all unresolved aspects of the anthrax attacks;
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This morning, I spoke with Rep. Holt for roughly 20 minutes. During the discussion, Rep. Holt:
indicated his support for the creation of an investigative body, with full subpoena power, along the lines of the 9/11 Commission, to investigate all unresolved aspects of the anthrax attacks;
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It is not if we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists will we be?
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr
You know, I don't care if it's not proper for a Congressional candidate to say: "horseshit." I don't care if it is not a good "tactic" to get kicked out of a Congressional non-impeachment hearing that was just a bunch of horseshit anyway. I don't care if I get accused of being too "extreme" for bucking the (cyst)em by doing everything from camping in a ditch in Crawford, Tx to non-violent civil disobedience to, lately, running for Congress as (oh no!) an independent.
If people can't see how this nation is teetering on the precipice of financial ruin and dragging the rest of this planet down with us as we destroy our ecology, too…and if people don't realize how desperate our situation is, then I must say, that's horseshit!
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Aug. 5, 2008 – Updated 7:31 p.m.
Homeland Security Chairman Demands Compliance on Port Screening
By Matthew M. Johnson, CQ Staff
The House Homeland Security Committee chairman on Tuesday accused the Homeland Security Department of deliberately trying to undermine a law requiring 100 percent screening of cargo entering the United States by sea.
In a strongly-worded letter, Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., noted that the department in a recent report said it “will focus future scanning deployments on high-risk trade corridors, which represent the greatest threats to the United States.” Thompson called this an attempt to undermine the law.
“Your actions to hinder progress on this vital homeland security initiative are very troubling and may have put at risk our nation’s security,” Thompson wrote Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. “The unilateral decision to ignore the 100-percent scanning runs afoul of the act and puts our ports at risk. By what authority did you determine that you could ignore the congressionally mandated 100-percent cargo screening requirement in favor of a ‘high risk trade corridor?’”
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August 5, 2008
Voters Not Strongly Backing Incumbents for Congress
Percentage backing re-election for their member and most members near all-time lows
PRINCETON, NJ -- In a year when approval of Congress has reached a new low, just 36% of U.S. registered voters say most members of Congress deserve re-election. This is among the lowest ratings Gallup has measured in a recent presidential or congressional election year.
***
A fairly large proportion of voters (35%) are unsure whether their member of Congress is a Democrat or a Republican. But among those who are aware, the data suggest that Democratic members might be a little safer this year than Republicans.
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By JOHN BRESNAHAN & DANIEL W. REILLY | 8/4/08 6:56 PM EST
“Madam Speaker, let my people vote!” said Rep. Tim Walberg on the House floor.
If Friday’s impromptu House protest session had all the passion of a revival meeting, Monday’s Episode II was more like a prayer circle — intense but smaller, with shouts of glory replaced by wishful thinking.
Two dozen Republicans kicked off their second day of protests with an array of sometimes inartful, off-topic or histrionic floor speeches ranging in topic from John Quincy Adams’ views on slavery to a shout-out to Moses.
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Let them eat cake.
Let's not forget who got this mess rolling in the first place, that lover of all things Israel and dedicated Zionist, Rudy GHOULiani.
Seems like the former mayor was busy in his final days, whether it was helping with the pre-9/11 planning or helping his Zionist buddies rake-off billions of dollars in public money.
P.S. This story was told on Democracy Now when Zionist gatekeeper, Amy Goodman, was away on vacation. DN was hosted by Juan Gonzalez.
Field of Schemes: Congress Probes How New Sports Stadiums Turn Public Money into Private Profit
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On Tuesday, Senator Ted Stevens was indicted by federal prosecutors for failing to report gifts he had received from an oil company to help him renovate his Alaskan home. The charges were not a surprise, though official Washington mustered its collective, and requisite outrage. Senators Dole and Sununu were quick to return campaign contributions from the now-tainted Stevens. Editorials across the nation were quick to condemn the obvious graft targeted by the government.
But I confess, I don't get it. Not that I don't see the wrong in what Stevens has done. That's obvious. What's not obvious to me is why this wrong is so different from everything else that DC thinks is right.
The concern with the gifts that Stevens allegedly took from oil companies is clear enough. If a Senator takes a gift from a special interest, he's less likely to weigh the interests of that special interest properly. If he's getting gifts from an oil company, for example, he's less likely to weigh concerns about global warming properly. He's more likely to ignore those concerns. He's more likely, in other words, to put his private interest (in continuing the gifts) above the public interest (dealing with the threats from global warming). These types of events are exactly why myself and Joe Trippi started Change Congress: as a way to address corruption in Washington D.C.
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mparent7777_1- CRIMES AND CORRUPTIONS OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS
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