Dirty Reid, Done Dirt Cheap?

In an Associated Press article released February 9th, staff reporters John Solomon and Sharon Theimer reported a pair of incidents that linked Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The first incident was Reid's opposition to approval of a new casino here in Michigan that would have put it in direct competition with one owned by Indian clients of Abramoff. What the article failed to point out, according to an article on the Media Matters website, was that "Reid said at the time that he opposed the legislation because it would create a "very dangerous precedent" for the spread of off-reservation gambling -- something Reid had opposed for nearly a decade."

The second incident, which sounds much more ominous in the article, concerns legislation intended to raise the minimum wage in the United States, and would have affected the Northern Mariana Islands, a U.S. territory that Abramoff represented. The article suggested that Reid worked with Abramoff to shoot down the legislation. However, according to Media Matters, "Reid was a co-sponsor of that legislation and spoke on the Senate floor in favor of its passage."

While both of these incidents have been highly publicized just about everywhere in the media, none appear to have mentioned that Reid's actions showed no proof that Reid did anything for Abramoff's clients.

Billing records from Abramoff's firm show that members of his staff met with Reid's staff on at least twenty different occasions in 2001 alone. A former colleague of Abramoff's, Ronald Platt, told the Associated Press that his contact with Reid's staff was "incidental, insofar as I simply bumped into Reid staffers at Democratic Party functions or occurred incidental to discussions regarding my clients, not Abramoff's." He added, "Any contacts that I may have had in regards to Abramoff's tribal clients would have been similarly incidental."

Moving to the other side of the aisle, the new House Majority Leader, John Boehner (R-OH) is renting an apartment from a Washington lobbyist with ties to legislation that Boehner has worked on in the past. The basement apartment, according to a Washington Post article, is owned by lobbyist John D. Milne, whose clients include restaurant chains and insurance companies - groups that are directly related to matters that Boehner works on in the House of Representative. Conflict of interest?

Not so, says Boehner spokesperson Don Seymour, who described the apartment, which Boehner pays $1600 per month, as a modest two-bedroom basement dwelling. A review of listings in the area show that the cost is close to that of similar apartments.

The question here, unlike the situation with Reid, is how much is too much? Boehner has already been criticized by both parties for handing out checks on the House floor from Big Tobacco lobbyists. As the person who is supposed to bring a bit of dignity back to his party after the DeLay and Abramoff scandals, he's not exactly working overtime to distance himself from the lobbyists.


All the best,
DCF

Dick in the Dirt

A report released today, February 9th, by the National Journal website says that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, currently under indictment for lying to a grand jury involved in the investigation of the Valerie Plame leak, told the grand jury that he had been authorized by Vice President "Big Dick" Cheney to leak Plame's identity and other classified information to the press in the summer of 2003.

According to correspondence recently filed by Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald, Libby was also authorized by "White House superiors" to leak parts of the National Intelligence Estimate, then still considered classified, regarding Saddam Hussein's supposed efforts to develop nuclear weapons.

Libby has made it clear that he intends to offer a "broad defense" in which he was encouraged and authorized by Cheney and other administration officials, according to unnamed sources with "firsthand knowledge" of this matter, to help build support for the Iraq war during the summer of 2003.

In testimony to the grand jury, Libby also said he was authorized to leak parts of the NIE report to help back up the administration in the face of claims by former ambassador Joseph Wilson that Iraq had never attempted to obtain yellow cake uranium (which is used to build nuclear weapons) from Niger, as Bush himself claimed during his 2003 State of the Union speech. The now infamous 16 words, "“The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," have continued to be a serious problem for the Bush Administration as support for the war drops further and further in public opinion polls.

In my own personal opinion, I'm not the least bit surprised to learn that Cheney may be involved in this. The guy is untrustworthy, right down to the cold, black lump of rock that constitutes his "heart". He was the one who kept pushing the whole "weapons of mass destruction" thing, even after it had already been shown to be false.

I really hope this clown goes down with the ship, along with Dubya and the rest of the crew. Especially Karl Rove. Maybe he and Cheney can share a cell together...

Fade In

A Prison Cell at a Federal Penitentiary

Rove: Hold me, Mr. Cheney! There's a guy in an orange jumpsuit who wants to make me his wife!

Cheney: Go f&%$ yourself, Karl... I've got to find my nitro pills... Chest...tightening...

Bush: Hey, can you fellas quiet down over there? Ah'm tryin' to get some sleep. It's hard work. It's very hard...

Cheney and Rove: SHUT UP!

Meanwhile, in Another Cell...

"The Butcher": You got a purty mouth... What was that I heard them other guys call you?

Libby: Er...(*whimper*)..They call me, uh..."Scooter"...

"The Butcher": When I'm done with ya, yer gonna be scootin' all right...

Fade Out to the Sound of a High-Pitched Scream

All the best,
Derek
(DCF)

Still Not Worried?

For those of you who read my post with the quote from Hermann Goering and rolled your eyes, I've got something else for you to check out. Check out this article from Capitol Hill Blue, the oldest political site on the internet, which states:

"President George W. Bush has signed executive orders giving him sole authority to impose martial law, suspend habeas corpus and ignore the Posse Comitatus Act that prohibits deployment of U.S. troops on American streets. This would give him absolute dictatorial power over the government with no checks and balances."

Now, taking this alone is disturbing enough as it is. But combining it with the similarities between Dubya's actions and those of Nazi Germany, it flat-out terrifying.

According to the article, for those of you who are just too darn lethargic to actually click the above link, Dubya has already considered using these "national security initiatives" put in place by Ronald Reagan in 1984. He first considered using them shortly after the September 11th, 2001 attacks to declare martial law. He actually acted on some of these initiatives after Hurricane Katrina, using the military to act as "police reinforcement", as well as hiring mercenaries from a company called Blackwater USA to "enforce security."

The initiatives were originally "hatched," the article says, "...by controversial Marine Corps Colonel Oliver North, later one of the key players in the Iran-Contra Scandal." John Brinkerhoff, deputy director of FEMA, developed the martial law implementation plan based on a plan put together by former FEMA director Louis Guiffrida that was designed to stop a "national uprising of militant blacks" after riots broke out across the country in the late 60's, the turning point being the 1968 Detroit Riots. the plan called for jailing of at least 21 million African Americans in "relocation camps".

This is the plan that was reworked for Reagan and first acted upon, in part, by George W. Bush.

If you're not worried, you haven't been paying attention.

All the best,
Derek
(DCF)