There is a lot happening over the next 36 hours.
http://truthout.org/fyi/
Heading to the airport
Wednesday 05 January 2005 @ 10:44
I am out the door to the airport, headed to DC. Blogging of the Electoral College hearing will begin for real on this page at 1pm EST on Thursday, but check in periodically for other reports. There is a lot happening over the next 36 hours.
It is snowing in Boston right now. Wish me luck that my plane gets off the ground...and stays in the air as long as it has to. :o)
See you in DC.
Oh, great...
Wednesday 05 January 2005 @ 10:12
Porter Goss continues the process of turning CIA into a political arm of the White House, and in the process, makes it harder to stop another 9/11-style attack. From the New York Times:
In the latest changes at the Central Intelligence Agency, Porter J. Goss, the new chief, has named a new deputy director for intelligence and has abolished a daily 5 p.m. meeting that had been used since the Sept. 11 attacks to coordinate counterterrorism operations around the world, intelligence officials said on Tuesday.
Under Mr. Tenet, the C.I.A.'s most senior officials along with representatives of the F.B.I. and other agencies convened each day at 5 p.m. for a counterterrorism meeting that participants have described as the most important session held each day in Washington. The C.I.A. has played the leading role in the clandestine effort against terrorism, and Mr. Tenet's admirers have said the meeting served a vital coordinating function.
In acknowledging that the meeting was no longer taking place, an intelligence official sought to minimize the significance of the move. The official said Mr. Goss was still presiding over frequent sessions on counterterrorism but had directed that the meetings be smaller, have a more tactical focus and be scheduled earlier in the day. The new meetings are being convened at least three days a week, the official said.
The move appears to reflect what Mr. Goss has publicly said was his concern that the C.I.A. under Mr. Tenet may have devoted too much time and resources to terrorism at the expense of other issues. A report issued last spring by the House Intelligence Committee, at a time when Mr. Goss was the panel's chairman, cautioned that "the Central Intelligence Agency must continue to be much more than just the 'Central Counterterrorism Agency' if America is to be truly secure, prosperous and free."
Read the rest here.....
Welcome to Bizarro World. Tenet was made the Judas Goat by people who claimed the CIA wasn't doing enough to stop terrorism...and now the new CIA chief claims Tenet was doing too much to stop terrorism.
A press conference worth catching
Wednesday 05 January 2005 @ 07:55
If you can:
BEYOND ANY REASONABLE DOUBT, BUSH DID NOT WIN THE OHIO OR NATIONAL VOTE.
HISTORIC PRESIDENTIAL CHALLENGE.
PRESS CONFERENCE, NATIONAL PRESS CLUB, WASHINGTON, D.C.
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 5TH AT 2:00 PM
WHO:
Lead plaintiff, Moss v. Bush, Rev. Bill Moss
Lead trial counsel, Peter Peckarsky
Professor and statistical expert, Ron Baiman, Ph.D.
Publisher and lawyer, Bob Fitrakis
Lawyer, Susan Truitt
Exit polling expert, Jonathan Simon, JD
Senior editor, freepress.org. Harvey Wasserman
Legal statistician, Richard Hayes-Phillips, Ph.D
Director, Progressive Democrats of America, Tim Carpenter
NAACP, National Voter Fund, Greg Moore
Author Warren Linney, MA (The Patriot Test)
WHAT:
• Exit polls did not match the reported vote in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida and 7 of 8 other key battleground states
• Voting machines with secret software owned by private, partisan companies subject to manipulation and which deprived citizens of their right to fair and transparent elections
• Uncounted and provisional ballots negatively and disproportionately affected African American voters
• Inexplicable vote disparities
• Voting Rights Act Violations
• Recount did not recount all the votes
• Challenge at January 6 Joint Session of Congress
WHY:
TO PROVIDE FULL BACKGROUND ON KEY ASSERTIONS PRIOR TO THE HISTORIC CONGRESSIONAL CHALLENGE TO THE 2004 VOTE
PARTIAL LIST OF EVIDENCE:
There is clear and compelling evidence that the election was stolen. By examining a very wide range of sworn testimonies from voters, polling officials and others close to the administration of the Nov. 2 election; by statistical analysis of the certified vote by mathematicians, election experts and independent research teams who have conducted detailed studies of the results in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania, and elsewhere; from experts who studied the voting machines, tabulators and other electronic equipment on which a fair vote count has depended; and from a team of attorneys and others who have challenged the Ohio results; the freepress.org
investigative team has compiled a portrait of an election whose true outcome must be investigated further by the Congress, the media and all Americans -- because it was almost certainly not an honest victory for George W. Bush.
Crucial flaws in the national vote count, most importantly in the national popular vote, and in Ohio and Florida indicate John Kerry was the actual winner on November 2, as reported in national exit polls. At the very least, the widespread tampering with how the election was conducted, and how Ohio's votes were counted and
re-counted, has compromised this nation's historic commitment to free and fair elections.
George W. Bush's ‘victory' appears to have resulted from multiple frauds – a GOP ‘do-whatever it takes' strategy to win the state that swung the election.
The questionable votes far exceed Bush's margin of victory in Ohio.
The Bush-Cheney ‘do what ever it takes" strategy in Ohio covered a very wide range of tactics, from disenfranchisement of minority voters to discarding of ballots to tampered tabulators and much more. Taken as a whole, this compendium of error, fraud, cover-up and contempt indicates that this was not a legitimate election, and is not worthy of being certified by the Congress of the United States.
Thirty disenfranchised voters on the Freedom Winter bus ride from Columbus, Ohio to Washington, D.C. will be present to share their voting horror stories with the media.
WHERE:
National Press Club
Zenger Room
529 14th St. NW, 13th Floor
Washington, DC 20045
SPONSORED BY:
Free Press, www.freepress.org
Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections, www.caseohio.org
Progressive Democrats of America, www.pdamerica.org
We Do Not Concede, www.donotconcede.com
Blackwell the braggart
Wednesday 05 January 2005 @ 06:14
The news site RawStory.com, which has been breaking some excellent stuff of late, has published a report from bluelemur.com stating that Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell bragged about getting Bush elected. The story reads:
Ohio’s Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell boasted of helping “deliver” Ohio for President Bush and said he was “truly pleased” to announce Bush had won Ohio even before all of the state’s votes had been counted in his own fundraising letter, RAW STORY has discovered.
The letter, which was received by a Butler County resident Dec. 31, is a plea to support Blackwell’s campaign for governor. The resident has asked to remain anonymous.
In apparent disregard for his nonpartisan role as Ohio’s chief election official, the Republican Secretary and chairman of Bush’s Ohio reelection campaign slammed Senator Kerry as a “disaster” who would have reaped “terrible” and “horrible” results on both Ohio and the United States.
Further, Blackwell’s use of the word “deliver” finds striking resonance with another controversial fundraising letter sent by the CEO of voting machine manufacturer Diebold Walden O’Dell in the summer of 2003 when he said he was “committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year.”
Between Kenneth Blackwell and Diebold CEO Walden O'Dell, there seem to have been a lot of very powerful Bush campaign officers promising to 'deliver' Ohio.
And people wonder why we need a Senator to stand with Conyers?
We need hearings. Period.
Stand Up, Senator
Tuesday 04 January 2005 @ 08:32
Stand Up, Senator
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Report
Wednesday 05 January 2004
"Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out."
- Vaclav Havel
Four years ago, members of the Congressional Black Caucus ran deliberately and vociferously into a brick wall when they chose to stand and protest the deplorable election calamity in Florida. They sought the name of one Senator, just one, which they could append to their complaints. Had they gotten that one name, a debate and discussion on what happened in Florida would have taken place in the House and the Senate. No Senator came forward, and the debate never happened.
Now, four years later, another election has come and gone. Now, four years later, there are rafts of evidence which point, once again, to overwhelming disenfranchisement of minority voters. Now, four years later, members of the Congressional Black Caucus, along with several other House members, plan to stand once again and protest an election that failed to live up to the standards required of participatory democracy. Now, four years later, they seek a Senator to stand with them.
This time, a Senator must answer the call.
Read the rest here.......
An essay coming
Tuesday 04 January 2005 @ 05:39
I will have an essay coming out on TO later today about the need for a Senator to stand with Conyers. Here are a couple of rough paragraphs for you to kick around:
Protecting the right to vote is not and must not be a partisan issue in this country. The fact that candidates of both parties too often acquiesce to the so-called Nixon Rule on elections – a tacit agreement not to argue the outcome of questionable elections, which came about after the riddled-with-inconsistencies 1960 presidential race – means that people who do violate the public trust by violating the sanctity of the ballot are safe from censure, especially if their actions lead to a victory.
In a perfect world, all 100 Senators would stand up because of one simple fact: They are where they are because of the vote, and if they do not protect that vote, it may be them looking at the short end of the stick come some future election day. All 100 should stand, but it only takes one. It only takes one to move us closer to that more perfect union, where every vote counts and every vote is counted, where the citizenry can trust that the people leading them were properly chosen, where partisans acting in the dark of night to thwart that simple, admirable goal are exposed and purged from our system.
I will post a link to the final when it is ready.
Gonzales and the Horse He Rode In On
Tuesday 04 January 2005 @ 03:18
TO essayist Steve Weissman has weighed in with a broadside against Bush's candidate for the Attorney General spot. He writes:
When Alberto Gonzales assured Mr. Bush that presidential war powers trumped anti-torture laws and treaties, the White House lawyer was doing what too many of his profession do. Like an ENRON tax lawyer or Mafia consigliere, he was helping his client commit crimes.
Big crimes. War crimes. Not Private Lyndie England having a good time forcing naked Iraqi captives with sacks of over their heads to masturbate at Abu Ghraib, though Gonzales's words certainly led to the subsequent scandal. His sin was far more substantial. As Counsel to the President, he enabled and encouraged the systematic use of torture, duly authorized by the Commander-in-Chief.
Rule of law? Due process? Fair trials? The presumption of innocence? Don't be silly. In the new post-9/11 paradigm propounded by Gonzales, these hard-won victories of the past sound as "quaint" as the Geneva Conventions with their old-fashioned idea that Prisoners of War need reveal only their name, rank, and serial number.
Former Attorneys General like Eliot Richardson, who resigned during Watergate, would have highlighted the limits prescribed by American and international law. Attorney Gonzales elaborated legal language to dodge those limits. His job, as he saw it, was essentially political - to give Mr. Bush cosmetic cover to do exactly what he wanted.
Other political lawyers - the ones we call judges and Justices - might or might not subsequently tell the President that he'd overstepped the line. But Gonzales knew they would not even consider the issue until long after Mr. Bush had done most of the damage he intended. And, when finally in court, the President's lawyers would have his legal defense in hand, ready to show that he tried to remain within the law as it was explained to him.
Gonzales was performing a legal burlesque, much as he will on Wednesday, when the Senate Judiciary Committee examines whether he is suited to become Attorney General. Will the Senators applaud the charade? Or will a few brave souls among them stand up and say what, on the face of it, seems hard to deny - that Mr. Gonzales has shamed his country, his profession, and himself.
Be sure to read the rest of this.
The headline says three
Tuesday 04 January 2005 @ 12:36
...but actually, if you read closely, there were five more U.S. troops killed in Iraq:
"Three more US soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing in Baghdad, the military said, after a soldier was killed in a similar attack north of the capital and a marine was killed in action in the west. The three soldiers were killed and two others wounded in a roadside bombing in northern Baghdad at 11:00 am (0800 GMT), said the military. This came after one US soldier was killed and another was wounded in a similar road attack in Balad, north of the capital."
There are now 1,340 American soldiers who have been killed in Iraq.
The Governor of Baghdad has been assassinated, shot in a brazen roadside ambush. "The shooting of Governor Ali al-Haidri in a roadside ambush," reads the Reuters report, "showed insurgents' power to strike at the heart of the governing class, raising fresh doubts as to whether security forces can protect politicians and voters as the ballot draws near."
Re: Tubbs-Jones and Boxer
Tuesday 04 January 2005 @ 11:11
After a series of telephone calls, the aforementioned story regarding Tubbs-Jones and Boxer stands just about where you'd figure. Senator Boxer is definitely considering offering a challenge to the Electors. If she actually decides to do so, however, she won't break cover until Thursday. That is, frankly, wise. To do otherwise would be calling down the thunder on herself and her staffers.
I couldn't get anyone to go on the record to confirm Lytel's statement that Rep. Tubbs-Jones can get Boxer to stand up just by asking her to do so. At the end of things here, Lytel's claim last night (which I am told he has repeated to a number of other blogs) is just going to hang out there in space until it is proven true or false.
Running in circles is fun. Please return to gnawing.
Clarity
Tuesday 04 January 2005 @ 01:01
I cannot vouch for Mr. Lytel's version of things until I have spoken with these people myself. There may very well be nothing to this other than another source offering wishes as fact. When I attempted to pin him down absolutely on the matter I got a lot of if and then if and then if and then if...
I will run this dog to ground on Tuesday as best I can. In the meantime, if you are one living and dying with every passing page of this tale, hold the celebrations. This needs to be confirmed.
And one last bit, in the form of an apology: I was blogging tonight at this protest on a device about the size of a pack of cigarettes, and everyone was yelling Senator this and Senator that...and I posted something about 'Senator' Tubbs-Jones...who is, of course, a Congresswoman. Somewhere in the zoo I garbled the report that if Rep. Tubbs-Jones steps forth, Senator Boxer w
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