In the 1990s, “rule of law” was hot.
In the 2000s, not so much.
Republicans, who impeached and tried to remove a president who lied about his private sex life, have now decided that the whole “rule of law” thing really isn’t all it’s cut out to be.
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So now perjury is a “technicality”?
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Also, check out Howard Kurtz.
FBI Papers Indicate Intelligence Violations
by Angry White LiberalSecret Surveillance Lacked Oversight
In one case, FBI agents kept an unidentified target under surveillance for at least five years — including more than 15 months without notifying Justice Department lawyers after the subject had moved from New York to Detroit. An FBI investigation concluded that the delay was a violation of Justice guidelines and prevented the department “from exercising its responsibility for oversight and approval of an ongoing foreign counterintelligence investigation of a U.S. person.”
In other cases, agents obtained e-mails after a warrant expired, seized bank records without proper authority and conducted an improper “unconsented physical search,” according to the documents.
Although heavily censored, the documents provide a rare glimpse into the world of domestic spying, which is governed by a secret court and overseen by a presidential board that does not publicize its deliberations. The records are also emerging as the House and Senate battle over whether to put new restrictions on the controversial USA Patriot Act, which made it easier for the government to conduct secret searches and surveillance but has come under attack from civil liberties groups.
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Takoma Park IRV Campaign Detailed In Website
by Angry White Liberal
Gulf Coast Suffers Record Hurricane Season
by Angry White LiberalAnd yet there are still people out there that insists that global warming is a myth!
Twenty-one tropical storms and hurricanes in the past five months, tying the most ever in a single season. The last letter left in the tempest alphabet was “W” and that has gone to Hurricane Wilma.
The World Meteorological Organization, a United Nations agency responsible for christening these uncontrollable offspring of nature, has never before run out of names. (There is no X, Y or Z, no U or Q _ not enough proper nouns begin with those letters, the agency says.) If there are more before the season ends on Nov. 30, and a potential storm was brewing this weekend south of Puerto Rico, noms de storms revert to the Greek alphabet, beginning with Alpha.
By July, one month into the season, there were already seven named storms _ tropical storms Arlene, Brett and Cindy, hurricanes Dennis and Emily, and tropical storms Franklin and Gert.
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Japan-China Oil Dispute Escalates
by Angry White LiberalRelations Already Uneasy as Tokyo Accuses Beijing of Tapping Disputed Fields
The Chinese action, Japanese officials charge, has aggravated a potential flash point in East Asia even as diplomatic relations between Tokyo and Beijing languish. The increasingly uneasy relationship between East Asia’s two dominant countries also includes territorial disputes and a heated row over Japan’s perceived lack of repentance for World War II-era aggression.
China is rapidly growing into an economic superpower and is hungry for sources of energy and raw materials. Economic ties have grown tremendously between the two nations in recent years, but they remain in fierce regional competition. Both, for instance, are courting Russia in the hopes of securing an advantageous route for a new trans-Siberian pipeline to the Pacific, and they are locked in a battle for diplomatic and economic influence over a host of Southeast Asian nations.
But Japan has grown so alarmed by China’s activities in the East China Sea that it dispatched two envoys to Washington this month to brief Bush administration and State Department officials on what authorities here described as a “major threat to Japanese sovereignty.”
Can you say PEAK OIL?
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Treatment of Coyotes Called Inhumane
by Angry White LiberalFollowing Outcry, Trapper’s Work Limited in Montgomery
There’s some debate over whether the coyotes came to Fallsgrove in Rockville, or whether the recently developed residential community was built on the animals’ turf.
There’s no dispute — at least among human beings — over who has to leave.
The coyotes do.
But Fallsgrove residents are clashing over the right way to evict them. A neighborhood homeowners association earlier this year hired Michael Adcock of Adcock Wildlife Management Inc. to get rid of the coyotes. Some residents and animal activists were disturbed when they saw the steel-jawed leg-hold traps he brought to their neighborhood.
“These devices are gruesome, horrible devices,” said Margaret Zanville, president of the Montgomery County Humane Society. “When they snap, they crack the bone. Animals will chew their own paws off to get out of this horrible pain.”
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Bias Ruled in Law On Same-Sex Rape
by Angry White LiberalCourt Cites Inequities in Kansas Statute
Yesterday’s ruling was the first time after several attempts that gay rights advocates had managed to translate their Lawrence victory into a favorable ruling on another issue in the lower courts. In 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court established same-sex marriage, based on the state’s constitution, not Lawrence.
Under the logic of the Kansas ruling, “not only this law but a lot of other laws that treat gay people badly would fall,” said James D. Esseks, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union’s Gay and Lesbian Rights Project.
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When it comes to ideas that this Nation’s elite’s do not want you to see, the Magazine Dollars & Sense presents what are easily the most censored ideas in the country.
Economist Larry Summers, former U.S. Treasury Secretary, once wrote that “in terms of substantive arguments, this estate tax argument [for repeal] is about as bad as gets,” and that he couldn’t see any case for cutting estate taxes other than “selfishness.” Unfortunately, as the latest round of Wall Street Journal editorials shows, neither selfishness nor bogus arguments about why we should repeal the estate tax are in short supply.
True enough, Sweden and Russia have repealed their estate taxes, and the third plank of Marx’s Communist Manifesto demands, “Abolition of all rights of inheritance.” But the rest of what the Journal’s editors have to say about estate taxes ranges from misleading to downright false.
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Why can’t the left face the Stolen Elections of 2004 & 2008?
by Angry White LiberalI got this from Ken Sain’s website.
Misguided and misinformed articles in both TomPaine.com and Mother Jones Magazine indicate a dangerous inability to face the reality that these stolen elections mean nothing less than the death of what’s left of American democracy, and the permanent enthronement of the Rovian GOP.
As investigative reporters based in Columbus, Ohio, we witnessed first-hand, up close and personal, exactly how the 2004 election was stolen, and how it will most likely be done in 2008. In the precinct in which Harvey Wasserman grew up, and in the one where Bob Fitrakis now lives, we saw the well-funded, profoundly cynical and deadly effective mechanisms by which the Bush-Cheney-Rove-Blackwell GOP machine switched a victory for John Kerry to an easily-repeatable defeat for democracy.
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