Hate IS Terrorism

Today, Washington is crowded with those protesting a number of different issues that come together under one major topic: how few hate crimes have been charged and prosecuted under the Bush Administration. Sadly, it's not that hate crimes are down... but the same people who support the Bushies are the same types, too often, who feel that any crime deliberately committed against a person of color, a homosexual, etc. are "justified."

In some of the most vicious crimes possible, where it's clear that the expression of hate toward someone just because of their color, sexual presence, race, etc., the feds allow for only simple charges to be brought rather than the much more serious charges inherent with hate crimes.

I'm with those marching which include some of those affected by the terrible "Gena 6" case. We must "recover" from the hate-filled Bush years and those who feel they get an automatic free pass to hang nooses, to threaten blacks and gays and others, to go after "towel heads" just because our president seems to feel that every Muslim is an evil one.

And, btw, HATE *is* terrorism.

Torture And The Laws Bush Won't Even Pretend to Follow

At the same time he stands by his unmitigated nerve to cry foul against Russia in 2001 for its human rights abuses (talk about the skanky pot calling the Putey-Put kettle black), Bush wants everyone to notice he's "making illegal" what was already illegal to do but which he practices with all the fervor of a Republican Christian moralist paying a dominatrix for kinky sex (can you say William "Morals Czar" Bennett, anyone?).

Thus, may we assume (oh, yeaaaaahhhhh!) that President Bush signed a new law designed to "stop" torture in interrogations used against detainees and so-called terror suspects using invisible ink, with his fingers crossed behind his hand, AND with a signing statement that says, "this law applies only to Democrats and others not named Bush & Cheney"?

Meanwhile, the CIA is now allowed to return to interrogating whoever the hell they want, after many appropriate (and too many unasked) questions arose about how they conducted them.

The Indefensible and Olbermann's Call For Bush-Cheney To Resign

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann had very strong words for the latest corrupt, self-serving, indefensible, protect-the-elite-Bushies-while-screwing-everyone-else action on the part of President Bush: commuting the sentence of convicted liar and former Cheney chief-of-staffer I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby so he does not have to serve a single day in prison for outing former CIA operative Valerie Plame in the scandal known as PlameGate.

Olbermann called Bush gutless, that Bush proved beyond all doubt that he is not the leader of the United States but the titular head of a small and very elite group for whom their protection and profit is all that matters to this White House, and more than merely suggested that not even disgraced former president, Richard Nixon, would have dared pull such a nasty trick.

Yet, as Olbermann also announced on Monday, tonight (Tuesday) he will deliver one of his scalding and scalpel-sharp Special Comments in which he calls for (demands?) the resignation of both Bush and Cheney. You should watch (8 PM ET, MSNBC).

In the meantime, even the often far-too-Bush-defensive Washington Post editorial page today calls Bush's action indefensible (meanwhile, everyone else connected with the case, including the Justice Department, rushed in to claim Bush came up with this terrible deal mostly on his own, without their consultation):

IN COMMUTING I. Lewis Libby's prison sentence yesterday, President Bush took the advice of, among others, William Otis, a former federal prosecutor who wrote on the opposite page last month that Mr. Libby should neither be pardoned nor sent to prison. We agree that a pardon would have been inappropriate and that the prison sentence of 30 months was excessive. But reducing the sentence to no prison time at all, as Mr. Bush did -- to probation and a large fine -- is not defensible.

Mr. Libby was convicted in March on charges of perjury, making false statements and obstruction of justice. Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff had told the FBI and a grand jury that he had not leaked the identity of CIA employee Valerie Plame to journalists, but after hearing abundant testimony and carefully deliberating, a jury concluded that he lied. As we wrote at the time of the conviction, lying under oath is unacceptable for anyone, and particularly for a government official. As Mr. Bush said in his statement yesterday, "our entire system of justice relies on people telling the truth. And if a person does not tell the truth, particularly if he serves in government and holds the public trust, he must be held accountable."

Bush: The "Gutless" Wonder

Virtually no one - except perhaps President Bush and Vice President Cheney - expected that this White House would rush in so soon to keep a convicted liar and obstructor of justice, former Cheney Chief of Staff I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, from having to pay any real penalty for his role in outing CIA covert operative Valerie Plame in the debacle known as PlameGate.

That Bush would subvert justice should not be such a surprise; after all, making a mockery and laughingstock out of the United States, its system of laws and government, and endangering the very people "charged" with protecting us while maximizing corruption to the great advantage of his pals is what he does best.

Yet even Bush reached a new low by delivering this announcement not in person, not on camera, not by official White House press conference, but by a press release delivered over what many are taking as a 10-day-long July 4th weekend. As MSNBC's Keith Olbermann noted Monday night, the way Bush did it proved he is entirely "gutless"; he hopes no one will notice because he expects them to be too busy drinking beer and swilling hotdogs.

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

I love this from the ACLU. Link is here.

April 15-22: Join The Boycott to Impeach For Peace and Justice

More information here on the action against the Bush Administration.

Thoughts On The Right's Huge Concern For Poor Scooter Libby While They Yawn At Abuse of Troops

If there's one thing we've all witnessed over and over and over again this week - besides the clip of the Florida medical examiner hinting we're not done with the titillating details of Tits-for-Brains Anna Nicole Smith - is that the far right Bushie loyalists have sobbed over poor, poor, poor Scooter Libby. They wail about:

• What a terrible miscarriage of justice has been done to him
• How a great patriot like Libby should never have to spend a moment in jail
• That the American people owe Libby a momentous debt of gratitude and that they should demand the jury's guilty verdicts against him be set aside, then carry the man in their arms to the White House where the Medal of Freedom can be bestowed upon him
• That the jury is treasonous for what they did
• That this is all the result of an evil plot hatched by Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame themselves and it's Wilson-Plame who deserve to spend the rest of their lives in jail
• Bush should pardon Libby immediately because it's what God wants

Gag me with a spoon! To say this again and again and again while they yawn and ignore the travesty of troop care by the Bush Administration - insisting only that this is hardly Mr. Bush's fault but taking no interest in the matter beyond that - while they work themselves into a righteous frenzy about poor millionaire Scooter Libby is really too much.

Go back and read the piece from Bob Herbert - "Lift The Curtain" - I just snipped from as well as some of the other posts I've had up in the last few weeks on the subject of troop care and abuse (and I first started posting about this more than two years ago; amazing that I could know about it while the Bush Administration and Pentagon and those heading Walter Reed, right there in Washington and their job TO know, did not...).

Then tell me which is the more important situation: poor Scooter Libby or men and women who have lost brain function, limbs, organs, and their lives for a cooked war and then rate nothing but squalor and poverty once they return home.