Montgomery County, MD Green Party Blog

The Takoma Park City Council unanimously passed a resolution on Monday calling for the impeachment of Bush and Cheney.  In doing so Takoma Park joined 80 other towns, cities, and counties which had already voted for impeachment; including San Francisco, Detroit, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

The resolutution charges Bush and Cheney whith having “conspired with others to defraud the United States of AMerica by intentionally misleading Congress and the public.”

An American Research Group poll released July 6 found that 50% of voters favor impeachment proceedings against Vice President Cheney, with only 44% opposed. Democrats favor impeachment by 76% to 24% while independents favor impeachment by 51% to 29%.

President Bush fares only slightly better with 46% of voters favoring impeachment proceedings and 44% opposing.  Democrats favor impeachment by 69% to 22%.  Independents are in favor by 50% to 30%.

Once again the Democrats in Washington are lagging behind the public.

Cynthia McKinney received a rousing reception at a Georgia NAACP fundraising dinner in Savannah, blasting the Democratic Party for failures on Iraq, ignoring Hurricane Katrina victims and failing to impeach President Bush.

“From the Democratic Party to the Congressional Black Caucus to those habitual Democratic voters, we’ve lost our home team,” McKinney charged.  “Do we even know it?”

McKinney blasted the Democrats for making no efforts at “impeachment of a president guilty of lying to the American people, spying on the American people and bankrumpting our economy,” and even blamed the Congressional Black Caucus for voting “to fund the war machine and its surge.”

There has been wide speculation that McKinney might seek the Green Party nomination for president next year, but she has not made her plans known yet.  At the convention, her father, Billy McKinney, commented on her plans; “I have some idea, but it’s not ready to be divulged yet.”

The National Security Archive has announced that the CIA will declassify in full a 693-page file amassed on CIA’s illegal activities during the 1960s and 1970s. The file had been compiled on the order of CIA director James Schlesinger in 1973, and had been dubbed “the family jewels.”

The file had been compiled under Schlesinger’s orders after it became public knowledge that Watergate burglars E. Howard Hunt and James McCord (both veteran CIA officers) had cooperation from the Agency as they carried out “dirty tricks” for President Nixon. The story was originally broken by Seymour Hersh in the New York Times in December, 1974, but until now, only a few dozen heavily censored pages of the file have been released.

The National Security Archives has posted a 1975 summary of the file, revealing 18 specific areas covered including:

1. Confinement of a Russian defector that “might be regarded as a violation of the kidnapping laws.”
2. Wiretapping of two syndicated columnists, Robert Allen and Paul Scott.
3. Physical surveillance of muckraker Jack Anderson and his associates, including current Fox News anchor Britt Hume.
4. Physical surveillance of then Washington Post reporter Michael Getler.
5. Break-in at the home of a former CIA employee.
6. Break-in at the office of a former defector.
7. Warrantless entry into the apartment of a former CIA employee.
8. Mail opening from 1953 to 1973 of letters to and from the Soviet Union.
9. Mail opening from 1969 to 1972 of letters to and from China.
10. Behavior modification experiments on “unwitting” U.S. citizens.
11. Assassination plots against Castro, Lumumba, and Trujillo (on the latter, “no active part” but a “faint connection” to the killers).
12. Surveillance of dissident groups between 1967 and 1971.
13. Surveillance of a particular Latin American female and U.S. citizens in Detroit.
14. Surveillance of a CIA critic and former officer, Victor Marchetti.
15. Amassing of files on 9,900-plus Americans related to the antiwar movement.
16. Polygraph experiments with the San Mateo, California, sheriff.
17. Fake CIA identification documents that might violate state laws.
18. Testing of electronic equipment on US telephone circuits.

The file should make for interesting reading when it is finally released.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday cautioned Turkey against sending troops into northern Iraq as it has threatened, to hunt down Kurdish rebels it accuses of carrying out terrorist raids inside Turkey.

“We hope there would not be a unilateral military action across the border into Iraq,” Gates told a news conference after meetings here with Asian government officials.

Yes, I know it sounds like a Jon Stewart straight line, but then unilaterally invading Iraq is something the administration knows a good deal about.  Who better to give advice?

Bush is ever more convinced of his own righteousness, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, and his pronouncements are beginning to scare even old friends:

Friends of his from Texas were shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated “I am the president!” He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of “our country’s destiny.”

Somebody cue the Twilight Zone theme …..

Broder opposes Democracy at the Federal level of U.S. Government.

That’s right, folks: The Washington Post Columnist David S. Broder opposes the principle of one-person-one-vote at the Federal level. If you do not believe me, then check out his column for yourself. It does not make for just interesting reading — it makes for incredible reading. He justifies his opposition to one-person-one-vote at the Federal level (Although, given the way he frames the issue, he almost certainly opposes one-person-one-vote at the state level as well.) on the grounds that the two party system might suffer. It is quite obvious that he is contemptuous of any voter who supports an independent/third-party candidate. This does beg the following question: Is he an elitist? Does he support the interests of the wealthy at the expense of the common people? Before reading this column, I would immediately have dismissed this question from my mind as being ridiculous; but now I can no longer do so. All of his rationalizations come straight out of the elite playbook: Say that you are opposing this in order to protect minorities (while at the same time opposing any allocation of any meaningful resources to assist said minorities that are discriminated against in the popular culture); Say that you are opposing this in order to protect the family farmer (while at the same time supporting corporate farmers at the expense of the small stakeholder); in short, say and do anything in order to maintain your political hegemony in this country — and indeed, throughout the world.

I never before would have argued that Broder is an elitist — but now I wonder.

Dan Froomkin writes in his White House Watch Column about the cynicism of a former New York Times editor who defends the behavior of elite (i.e., well paid) journalists while at the same time trying to have it both ways by claiming not to be cynical. Froomkin also links to Brad DeLong; check out both his entire entry and the accompanying comments.

Frankel on Libby and Journalism
Former New York Times executive editor Max Frankel weighed in this weekend with a major retrospective of the Scooter Libby trial and Washington journalism in the New York Times Magazine. He concludes “that the compelled testimony about reporters and their sources [will] end up doing more damage than even the reckless violation of a C.I.A. agent’s cover. For given the cult of secrecy that enveloped our government during the cold war and the hoarding of information that always attends the lust for power, a free, unregulated and unpunished flow of leaks remains essential to the sophisticated reporting of diplomatic and military affairs, a safeguard of our democracy. . . .

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But liberal blogger Brad DeLong takes exception to Frankel’s argument, pointing out that “most reporters to whom people like Scooter Libby leak do lazily regurgitate such leaks, and they certainly do not use them to pry out other secrets. If Scooter Libby had thought there was any chance that Judy Miller would have used his leak of the N.I.E. to expose it as deeply flawed, Scooter Libby would have kept his mouth shut. Only confidence that the reporter will be a complaisant tool of the source’s purposes induces the leak in the first place.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/03/27/BL2007032701000_pf.html

Deregister the Democrats! 

The House Democratic leadership’s bill to end the war is a cruel hoax.

• It will keep the war going well into 2008.
• It omits Congresswoman Barbara Lee’s amendment which would have fully funded withdrawal by the end of 2007.
• It gives the President the right to waive requirements that troops sent to Iraq be properly trained, equipped and rested.
• There is no prohibition on using the money to attack Iraq.
• Troops can stay in Iraq beyond the deadline to “capture or kill” Al Qaeda or other terrorists, or to train Iraqi troops–effectively giving Bush a loophole big enough to do as he wishes.

Conscientious anti-war Democrats came under relentless pressure to abandon their principles.

Authors of the appropriation had to resort to illogical and false arguments: they did not have the votes to cut off funding (how many votes does it take not to pass a bill?)  The bill would outlaw the war after a certain  date (but has so many loopholes that it is totally ineffective.)  The bill would require that the troops be properly trained and equipped (unless Bush certified the need for them.)

Democrats selling a plan that it no better than the administration’s and they are being nearly as disingenuous in doing so.  We cannot survive having two war parties run our government.

Individuals have few tools with which to change Congress’ course.  The most powerful–the vote-is two years away.  We have called and written our legislators and occupied their offices and not yet been successful.  It is time to send the Democrats a message that we will not support a policy that continues this disastrous war. Change your registration, leave the party, and let your representatives know that if they don’t defund the war, you will not be back.

Here are links to state boards of elections with registration forms you can download.  Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, D.C., Florida, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, West Virginia, Wyoming.

“The time has come when silence is betrayal.” -Martin Luther King