John Edwards Says What We ALL Should

Cookie Jill over at Skippy The Bush Kangaroo's little corner of Blogtopia reminds us of this dead-on John Edwards quote:

"It's wrong for your government to spy on you."

Amen, three cheers, and hallelujah!

Vermont's War To Violate Medical Privacy Wages Ever Onward

This latest widespread abuse of confidential medical drug records is IN ADDITION to a story first broken at Green Mountain Daily a few months back and I noted here - and the invasion continues! - that Vermont State Police, apparently bored (not enough one-day-expired emissions stickers they can ticket?), are going to pharmacies and demanding records on anyone taking painkillers along with antidepressants, etc.

And yet Vermont (ha!) is called the People's Socialist Republic of the U.S.:

Lawmakers Tuesday complained that a new electronic database of prescription drug records goes too far into the private lives of Vermonters. Members of the House Human Services Committee, who worked on the plan creating the state-run database of all prescribed drugs in Vermont, said the program now appears to have powers beyond what they envisioned when they passed it two years ago.

Committee members said the proposed policies of the Vermont Prescription Drug Monitoring Program would allow the state to collect too much information on people prescribed medication and share it with too many other state government employees.Bowing to privacy concerns, the bill passed in 2006 called for the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Health "personally" to share that prescription drug data to the commissioner of the Vermont Department of Public Safety "personally."

But the proposed rules for the law – the policies created and carried out by the state based on legislation passed by lawmakers – would now allow lower-level officials within the two departments to give and receive the sensitive information.

"I can't remotely think that anyone could construe from the word 'personally' that we meant designees," said Rep. Anne Donahue, R-Northfield, who added that the changes had her "beyond stunned." "We had lots of discussions about this here in the committee."

The Vermont Legislature passed the drug-monitoring system two years ago to help stop the illegal use of prescription drugs, which is now the top source of fatal drug overdoses in the state. The system will be maintained by the Vermont Department of Health and information from it can be used by law enforcement officials for investigations into specific alleged crimes.

In at least three cases (and this isn't a case with a warrant for a specific person's records, but just wholesale "give us all you got on anyone" situation), they've gotten it, too, with these being only the cases we KNOW about. Many pharmacies, of course, would never admit to providing this information because this would be a pharmacy that would (guaranteed) lose customers.

But the Vermont Congress can't skate here; anyone who agrees to the establishment of such a database DAMN WELL KNOWS it will be abused far worse than what individuals might do with those meds.

Huckabee, The U.S. Constitution, And The Will Of The People

Huckabee: Change The Constitution To Fit God's Word

Update: Here's a strange note; the video has now magically disappeared from YouTube. Hmmmm.... Found a different clip of Huckabee's same miserable performance, however, and I'll post it post haste.

Gee, I didn't know that the U.S. Constitution was supposed to BE the word of God and must be changed to fit!

From Greg Mitchell's personal blog (some may recognize his name, however, as editor at Editor and Publisher and columnist of Pressing Issues):

Obama got heat today from Richard Cohen in The Washington Post because his pastor said some nice things about Louis Farrakhan. Former reverend Mike Huckabee, meanwhile, in Michigan yesterday called for amending the constitution to ban abortions and gay marriage, explaining, that "it's a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God -- and that's what we need to do, is to amend the Constitution so it's in God's standards rather than try to change God's standards."

A new video of alleged "radical cleric" Huckabee.

Prescriptions: Just Between You, Your Doctor, AND Your State Police

As Julie at DailyKos points out from an article posted yesterday at Green Mountain Daily, the Vermont state police wants prescription drug records on citizens (not those suspected of committing crimes but information about anyone who takes drugs the police find "interesting" - full-scale data-mining of which any fascist police state would be damned proud).

Excuse me, is there a constitutional lawyer reading here who might be willing to help me start a class action suit? I won't stand for this, so I certainly won't sit back.

This isn't some "silly trip down the rabbit hole" - this is yet another bad butcher job on the U.S. Constitution, the Vermont government, and individual privacy. If they are allowed to do it here in Vermont, they WILL do it where you live, too. And imagine the myriad ways they can abuse it and "lose" it to data insecurity.

House Has Not Yet Killed Impeachment of Grand Emperor (VP) The Dick Cheney

While the Dem leadership seemed about as eager as most Repugs to kill it - and why they're so bashful about high crimes and misdemeanors when we're talking about treason committed in some of the most fundamental aspects of our society completely eludes me - it was Repugs who, thinking it might give Bush a "sympathy factor", who decided to let it hang around. (Somehow, I suspect only his parents give Bush much sympathy these days.)

Now others are pushing harder for the matter to go before the House Judiciary Committee, chaired by none other than John Conyers, a Dem who has shown he does not always buckle to popular pressure. Keep hope alive.

Dick Cheney, Enemy of the State (And The World)

As I posted elsewhere...

I strongly (as in STRONGLY) encourage you to find your local listing for this week's PBS Frontline for a startling, scary profile of Vice DickPresident Dick Cheney's 30+ year war to take away civil liberties at the same astonishing pace as he wants to turn the American presidency and any notion of democracy into a game only Cheney and his pals can play.

I was riveted and sickened all at once; those who maintain BIG questions about the Bush Administration's possible complicity in September 11th will find new fodder with the revelations from Cheney's own hench cretins that as buildings still burned that day, The Dick was calling in his people to stage a coup against American democracy and the U.S. Constitution while giving the president more powers than our founding fathers EVER wanted to allow.

This material, fully documented, FAR EXCEEDS the imagination of George Orwell's 1984 and the machinations of Machiavelli. And yet, with all of that, what REALLY amazed me was that the dimbulb former Attorney General (although a dimbulb HAS to burn brighter than also former AG Alberto Gonzales) John Ashcroft ACTUALLY stood up for us when Cheney demanded the feds launch the most massive domestic spying and data mining operation against the American people in U.S. history.

Al Qaeda Rising, Bush Spinning

Today may be Friday the 13th but, sadly, under the Bush 43rd Administration, every day feels like the world’s least fortunate day (that is, unless you’re a fatcat defense contractor, an energy company stockholder, or one of the hundreds of incompetent appointees of this president constantly rewarded for their grave failures). So I suppose it fits that we have been treated this week to the news not only that our Homeland Security czar decides terror levels based on his “gut” but that Al Qaeda has, after probably more than a trillion dollars (the Bushies hide so much) and countless lives have been expended “fighting” Osama bin Laden’s exclusive club, largely reconstituted itself to its “pre September 11th” strength.

Yet it’s not just al Qaeda here we need to worry about. Bush has made the world a far more scary and hate-filled place through his policies and pronouncements. There were, for instance, a number of Muslim-dominant countries that had “favorable” feelings toward the United States before Bush but almost none now.

While he’s spent more money than any other president EVER “reshaping” everything terror-wise, creating endlessly redundant agencies (for example, we have 4-5 people now who seem to be in charge of our wars, including our Commander in Cheat, Bush himself), removing civil liberties left and right as if the U.S. Constitution did not exist, restructuring spy agencies to make them “function better” only to have them work less well than ever before, what do we have?

We have NO greater homeland security than we had before. We are hated far more throughout the world than we have ever been before. We have done the almost impossible: made the Middle East far more dangerous and far less stable than it was before we went into Iraq.
But we also have a president who turned around and refuted his “intelligence experts” and his own gut-rumbling secretary of Homeland Security to claim al Qaeda isn’t restored AT THE SAME TIME Bush congratulated himself for keeping us so damned safe. This, the same man who, for his own political gain, quite obviously engineered the outing of a CIA operative directly involved in the search for weapons of mass destruction (WMD) as political payback because the woman’s husband exposed one of Bush’s flood of lies related to Iraq in the buildup toward war.

And we’re supposed to thank him. Right. Let’s hope he holds his breath until he receives our gratitude.

White House Lies, Damned Lies, And Infidelities: "Whatever Shall We Tell The Children?"

If the past few weeks - give or take seven years - have taught us anything, it's to yearn for the days when a president merely lied about a question that was simply NOT the business of special counsel Ken Starr or the American press corps to ask: whether he engaged in any form of adulterous sexual activity with a consenting adult.

True, it's sad as hell that the Clinton-Lewinsky cigar/blue dress debacle would seem like the good old days. Yet, back then, we weren't at war with everyone and everything, more Americans were earning a living wage while far fewer were forced into bankruptcy and home foreclosures, and Washington's only seeming grave concern was "What shall we tell the children?" about a lie that was really none of our business when, today, the people getting screwed are American workers and other citizens (and it's sure as heck not consensual!), the lies told undercut not the sanctity of marriage but the entire U.S. constitution, bill of rights, and the ever-declining integrity of a democracy.

Indeed, we really SHOULD be asking the question now, "Whatever will we tell our kids?" because, if we don't figure out how to address what the Bush Administration is doing to us and America and the world, our kids stand almost no chance whatsoever of living in a country of which they can be duly (rather than artificially) proud.

Free Press? So Why "Fear Is In Every Newsroom In The Country"?

So much for the First Amendment, folks. From Adbusters (with deep thanks to Buzzflash for the link):

When Australia’s Rupert Murdoch threw his support behind the Iraq War, so did the 175 media outlets he owns as part of News Corp. When Canada’s CanWest Global Communications justified the Afghanistan invasion, so did its eleven daily newspapers and 16 television stations. And when the major US media conglomerates signed off on the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq, American journalists lined up right behind them. In a recent interview on PBS’s Bill Moyers Report, former CBS Evening News anchorman Dan Rather explained why journalists were so afraid to question the war.

“Fear is in every newsroom in the country . . . particularly in [the] networks,” said Rather. “They’ve become huge international conglomerates. They have big needs, legislative needs, regulatory needs in Washington. Nobody has to send you a memo to tell you that that’s the case – you know. And that puts a seed in your mind of well, ‘If you stick your neck out, if you take the risk of going against the grain with your reporting, is anybody going to back you up?’”

Although the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have shown that media conglomerates limit the diversity of views, subvert democracy and stymie journalistic integrity, Canada, America and Australia’s media regulators continue to let them expand. In fact, over the past decade, media regulators have gone out of their way to help facilitate consolidation or have refused to speak up against it – all to the detriment of the public’s interest. As each of these three countries enters another round of media convergence, their federal media watchdogs appear to be looking the other way.

Wanted: Habeas Corpus' Return - LOTS of Questions Asked (Like, How Could We Give It Up?)

I love this from the ACLU. Link is here.

America's Own Hostages: Conditions At Guantanamo Bay Worsening

So says the BBC of Gitmo where Bush has kept hundreds of detainees, almost all Muslims, with only 10 people ever charged. The same detainees the Supreme Court played coward to this week knowing they could not legally protect the Bush Administration's inhumane treatment of these prisoners if they took the case for consideration.

And yet how the U.S. and Great Britain howled at the "terrible" treatment of the Brit sailor hostages Iran gave new clothes and gift bags to upon release yesterday. Yeah, we've got standing to talk about "inhumane treatment" all right.

Nation's Highest Court Shows Themselves To Be Supreme Cowards

Where it comes to the Bush Administration's wholly illegal detainment of people who have never been charged with any crime whatsoever, the U.S. Supreme Court shows themselves to be cowards of epic proportions and unworthy of their jobs!

"Bush's Monica Problem"

Ironic, no, that another Monica has cropped up with another president; the so-called "adult" president who claimed he would bring back the moral rectitude of the White House after the Clinton years. Ah, but this is no blowjob between consenting adults now, is it?

Before I quote from Dan Froomkin's column today on this Monica, let me note that I've heard from a LOT of people in the last 24 hours since the announcement that Al Gonzales' liaison to the White House from the Department of (In)Justice would plead the 5th; all say that this for them means this Justice Dept and White House are dirty as hell. And let me add that most of these same folks were hardly convinced before that the purging of the U.S. Attorneys/federal prosecutors fell into a gray area for them, where they were not certain actual wrong had been done.

Now to Froomkin:

Will another presidency be tripped up by another Monica?

As suspicions about the White House role in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year continue to deepen, one of the people who could shed light on what happened -- Monica Goodling, the Justice Department's White House liaison -- has suddenly decided to clam up, invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Juries in criminal cases are sternly lectured not to assume guilt when a defendant takes the Fifth. It is, after all, a Constitutional right.

But when a fairly minor player in what had heretofore not been considered a criminal investigation suddenly admits that she faces legal jeopardy if she tells the truth to a Congressional panel? Well, in that case, wild speculation is an inevitable and appropriate reaction.

For one, it's not at all clear what she's trying to say. Undeniably, if she chose to lie to the panel, she could face perjury charges. Her recourse, therefore, would appear to be to tell the truth.

So is she saying that if she told the truth, she would have to admit a crime? What crime?

Or is she saying something else: That she'd have to admit someone else's criminal behavior? Well, that's not something you can take the Fifth to avoid. Sorry.

Or is she just afraid of being grilled by an antagonistic bunch of congressmen? Well, that's not something you can take the Fifth to avoid either.

In my column yesterday, I wrote that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is almost certainly still getting his marching orders directly from the West Wing. I speculated about which Justice and/or White House aides were charged with delivering those orders. It's widely known that the White House has in many cases turned over the micromanagement of Cabinet officials to untested youngsters whose paramount qualification is that they follow orders.

Bush Boy may be going dow-dow-down-downnnnnn on this.