William Buckley Jr, one of this era's most famous conservatives, :
"Mr. Bush is in the hands of a fortune that will beunremitting on the point of Iraq. If he'dinvented the Bill of Rights it wouldn't get him out of hisjam...it's important that we acknowledge in theinner councils of state that it (the war) has failed, so that weshould look for opportunities to cope with that failure.''
If you still agree 100% with Bush's war policy, you have every right -- but you are in la-la-land. Not even some of the strongest Bush supporters -- William Buckley Jr, Fred Barnes, William Kristol, Tucker Carlson, Robert Novak, Joe Scarborough, and more -- are jumping ship.
Until now, the city government in New York City had censored the calls for help from the 9/11 tapes. The New York times and victims' families sued the government to get them released, and they succeeded. In today's newspaper, about some of those calls for help, helping put our country one step closer to full disclosure about what happened on that terrible day.
from this morning at President Bush's censure hearing:
"Where we disagree, apparently, is whether the President’s authorityunder Article II of the Constitution allows him to authorizewarrantless surveillance without complying with FISA. You have said youthink this is a close question. I do not believe he has such authorityand I don’t think it’s a close question. We will continue to debatethat I’m sure. But I think the fact that you have proposed legislationon this program undermines your argument that such presidentialauthority exists. Because if it does exist, then nothing that we canlegislate, no matter how carefully crafted, is worth a hill of beans.For starters, your proposed bill may or may not cover what the NSA isnow doing. You and I have no way of knowing because we have not beenfully briefed on the program, and I am a member of the IntelligenceCommittee as well. But regardless, if the President has the inherentauthority to authorize whatever surveillance he thinks is necessary,then he surely will ignore your law, just as he has ignored FISA onmany occasions.
"If Congress doesn’t have the power to define the contours of thePresident’s Article II powers through legislation, then I have no ideawhy people are scrambling to draft legislation to authorize what theythink the President is doing. If the President’s legal theory, which isshared by some of our witnesses today, is correct, then FISA is a deadletter, all of the supposed protections for civil liberties containedin the reauthorization of the Patriot Act that we just passed are acruel hoax, and any future legislation we might pass regardingsurveillance or national security is a waste of time and a charade.Under this theory, we no longer have a constitutional system consistingof three co-equal branches of government, we have a monarchy."
Just days after American freelance writer Jill Carroll was freed by her hostages in Iraq, the producer of the Don Imus radio program took a verbal stab at her because she insisted that her captors never harmed her. Imus's producer said "she's carrying Zarqawi's baby" and is "wearing terrorist headgear." He even called her "Taliban Janie."
For all you Democrats out there like me that don't want Hillary to be our party's nominee in 2008, here is more to make our heads boil. Hillary Clinton was in Texas and she raised a boat-load of money. . The former First Lady plans to raise tens of millions of dollars, almost all of which will not be spent on this year's Senate reelection contest, which was over before it began. She might end up having in January of 2007 more cash than George W. Bush had at the start of 2004.
Barack Obama is officially endorsing Joseph Lieberman in the Connecticut Senator's tough primary battle against Democrat Ned Lamont. During a speech in front of state Democrats, Lieberman was booed at times, which was why they brought Obama in there to quell the criticism. had the details about the event:
U.S. Sen. Barack Obama ralliedConnecticut Democrats at their annual dinner Thursday night, throwinghis support behind mentor and Senate colleague Joe Lieberman... "I am absolutely certainConnecticut is going to have the good sense to send Joe Lieberman backto the U.S. Senate so he can continue to serve on our behalf," he said.
Obama received widespread attention for his keynote address at the 2004Democratic National Convention, delivered while he was still a statesenator.
Lieberman became Obama's mentor when Obama was sworninto the Senate in 2005. They stayed close at Thursday night's event,too, entering the room together and working the crowd in tandem.
Despite the camaraderie between the two, the crowd was clearly morereceptive to Obama's remarks than Lieberman's speech about party unityand the potential for Democratic victories at the ballot box this fall.
In fact, scattered boos greeted Lieberman when he took the podium, andhe had to stop three times during his remarks to shush the crowd so hecould deliver key points.
Ned Lamont, a Democratic activist andanti-war candidate from Greenwich, is challenging Lieberman for theparty's nomination this year. Legions of supporters of Lieberman andLamont both attended the dinner.
Lieberman, who is seeking afourth term, also faces an Election Day challenge from Paul Streitz ofDarien, who is trying to win the Republican nomination.
SomeDemocrats at Thursday's event said Lieberman's support of the Iraq Waris still a sore point with them. In fact, the Democratic towncommittees in Windsor and Manchester both recently passed resolutionscondemning Lieberman's stance.
to help out Ned Lamont in his bid to knock off the pro-Bush Democrat.
The Independent has published examples of some of the fake "newspaper articles" that the paid to place in Iraqi newspapers. Andrew Buncombe shows how thearticles were full of claims that contrasted sharply with reality onthe ground at the time they were published. "Furthermore," he writes,"it has been alleged that quotations contained within these reports andothers - attributed to anonymous Iraqi officials or citizens - wereroutinely made up by US troops who never went beyond the perimeter ofthe Green Zone. What seems clear is that, taken by themselves, thesereports would provide an unbalanced picture of the situation insideIraq where ongoing violence wreaks daily chaos and horror."
So, since when all of a sudden was the ideal of media manipulation something to instill in a culture so early on in the democratic process? Even though I am not a father, I at least know that the most important stages of growth for a child happen earlier rather than later. I believe that the same is true for government, especially in the case of democracy. Instead of teaching the Iraqi government how to find loopholes in order to manipulate the democratic process -- pertaining to the issue of independent media -- we ought to be setting the right example and tell the truth to the Iraqi people.
Don't let yourself get duped by the notion that the Fox News show "Hannity and Colmes" offers balanced coverage on every issue. It doesn't. , "Hannity and Colmes" not only slants to the right, but "conservatives dominate" the discussion.
For all of you that want to be informed about the latest political issues of the day without a right-wing slant, don't waste your time with that program. Better yet, don't waste your time with that network.
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