A Blogswarm To End All Swarms? Dream On!

However, the March 19th blogswarm commencing now is not to be taken lightly. Indeed, this war has never been a lightweight when it comes to brutality, sheer horror, the depths of human depravity, the ridiculously small amount of lying it took for Bush to get America to buy into a war that was not, nor was it ever, making torture sound like the most patriotic thing an American can do, anything to do with September 11th or al Qaeda, etc.

The race in November is, at its core, part of a much more fundamental competition against those who turn fascism into proud patriotism and bankrupted our nation at the same time securing record profit for banks who brought about the foreclosure crisis and energy companies demanding tax payers build them free refineries while we say thanks! for those $4/gallon at the umps.

We need a leader who can take us OUT of Iraq ASAP and not in the 100 years or so Republican presidential candidate John McCain recently proudly proclaimed it may take.

"America's Mayor" Campaign Going Boom DOT Bust?

For weeks and weeks, GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani has been pouring all his time and resources (and we've learned that his campaign, even before Mike Huckabee's, has run out of money in ways that make it impossible to pay all staffers) into key primaries like Florida's after doing very badly in Iowa, New Hampshire, and others.

However, it's unlikely Giuliani, mayor of New York City on September 11th, 2001, will win even Republican voters when it's time for the Empire State to cast ballots. But if he does as badly in the upcoming Florida primary as polls suggest, how can the man who sold out the firefighters and other 9-11 rescue workers, who took billions in no-bid contracts not just from the Bush Administration but from our supposed sworn enemies, and who should have an in among Floridians who were former New Yorkers, stay in the race? Despite his focus down there, he's halved his polling numbers since November (from 36 to 18%).

The Republican debate in Florida is tonight on MSNBC. Urg.

Former Republican Lawmaker Charged With Promoting Terrorism

OK, it's very tempting: a Midwest man (Mark Deli Siljander of Michigan) who formerly served in Congress (as a Republican) and as a delegate to the United Nations has been charged with 42 - count 'em - charges of funding and promoting terrorism. The righteous Republican tag makes me want to exploit this story for all it's worth.

But here's why I won't.

First, there's that strange notion of "innocent until proven guilty" that was hard hit even BEFORE the Bushies rode into office on a surplus of rigged electronic voting and almost completely eliminated now. But even that is not the only reason here I won't take the bait.

Siljander has been charged for his efforts with the Islamic American Relief Agency which the feds claim funnels money to groups that have actually threated America and its war of empire in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. However, we've seen a BUNCH of such charges that, even when the feds DO manage to win in court, seem to be built on unsubstantiated so-called evidence. Outside the U.S., many courts throughout the very civilized world have, often using info "developed" by the Bushies, have failed to render guilty verdicts because of the speciousness of the charges and the evidence the cases are built upon.

As the Christian Science Monitor so WISELY opined soon after September 11th, 2001 when they decided to stop using the term "terrorist" to identify everyone the Bushies do not like, "one person's terrorist is another person's freedom fighter." This government is waging war on money going to every Muslim cause that isn't directed at keeping the Bushies and American corporations in charge of the oil in Iraq and the huge oil pipeline planned to cross Afghanistan OR to promote the war Bush WANTS to have in Iran.

At the exact same time, this government turns a blind eye to fund raising for others who also might be construed as religious fascists; for example, it's fine if you donate huge sums of money to some of the seriously rightwing "let's get rid of these Muslims and anyone else of not-our-kind-of-Semite" groups in Israel. (Palestinians and others are also Semites, btw, which makes any criticism of the most rightwing of the Israeli government's actions as "anti-Semitic" just because some of us want a fairness way beyond odd.) And Israel is just one example of the terrorists our government IS willing to support while condemning a select group of others.

Knowing how many charges have been brought by the highly politicized judicial system under Bush for reasons that have nothing to do with actual justice, I'm sorry but I don't think anything they do stands up to the smell test.

IF Siljander's group and Siljander himself actually are terrorists, then I have no problem with them being charged and prosecuted. But persecution just for being Muslim - to this Christian, me - just stinks. STOP ALL TERRORIST FUNDING and then apply the rules, or stop bringing charges only against CERTAIN parties. We still support, for example, many programs that help keep any Saudi but the Saud royal family in extreme poverty in ways most of the rest of the world sees as terrorism against the Saudi people but God forbid an Islamic charity does anything to feed and educate those poor.

Bush's Kissing Cousins, The Royal Saudis

Also from Think Progress, some photos that almost make you wonder where Bush's allegiances FALL and scratch your head about how many Saudis were accused of being the 9-11 hijackers; happy photos from Bush's Middle East/Saudi fun fest trip.

Speaking Of The Government Investigating Itself For No Good End...

[See my previous posting on the Justice Department now "suddenly" wanting to investigate the Bush Administration's/CIA's willful and most criminal destruction of two videotapes depicting the torture of uncharged suspects "in our name".]

Glenn Greenwald has an excellent comprehensive piece about how the 9/11 commission - with its strangely picked crew by Bush and Cheney who fought the idea tooth-and-nail - had its work obstructed by... well, I bet you can guess that right on the very first try.

"Out of The Mouths of Blabbering Boobs & Bushies"

With so much bad news - from the economy to the declaration that we're having our deadliest years E-V-E-R in both Iraq and Afghanistan to a host of other awfuls, the Bushies have made a few really TELLING declarations in the past week that are worthy of note.

First, there was Bush's insistence that anything Pakistan leader Pervez Musharraf wanted to do to for his country was A-OK with Bush. But that's not quite the NEWS. Bush, when asked if it was appropriate for Musharraf to claim the presidency when he came to power through a military coupe with Musharraf heading the military at the time, Bush comes out with:

Can a leader run both the military AND be president of his country at the same time? Of course not!

Uh.... Houston to the president: YOU ostensibly run the military as commander in cheat.. uh chief WHILE you are also supposedly president.

Then there's White House spokesvermin Dana Perino, Tony Snow(job)'s even sorrier replacement who, when asked if it was appropriate for any country's leadership to choose arbitrarily to end his/her nation's democracy and civil liberties in the name of protecting its citizens from terrorism, said NO!

But all the Bushies have done, since even before Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, is spy upon us as its citizens without ANY proof any of us is jeopardizing national security, to wiretap and remove constitutionally protected liberties, all in the name of "homeland security." In fact, in the same week Perino uttered this startling declaration (and removing our liberties have NOT made us any safer, I must add), the Bushies had several new initiatives underway to snoop upon us without due cause.

Stop the insanity, people!

Rudy's Man In Stripes?

Considering Bernie's size, let's hope the prison stripes aren't horizontal.

Is it true? Is the man Rudy Giuliani tried to foist off on us as Department of Homeland Security chief, a man with a most checkered past and much of it tied right to Rude Rudy, former NYPD chief Bernie Kerik, about to be indicted?

A federal indictment against former police commissioner Bernard Kerik is expected as early as this Friday. Government sources say that if the indictment is unsealed on Friday, Kerik is expected to surrender at the Westchester Federal Courthouse in White Plains, N.Y.

The sources say Kerik has told his close friends and members of his legal team that he expects the potential indictment to come before the statute of limitations expires on Nov. 15 on charges that could include tax evasion and bribery.

If the indictment is leveled against Kerik, it will be the latest twist in the tale that began when the child of a prostitute rose to police commissioner of New York City, achieved heroic proportions in the shadow of the collapsing World Trade Center, was gifted a diamond-encrusted chief's badge, awarded millions of dollars in stun gun stock options by business clients and given the proffer of a presidential appointment by President George Bush to head the Department of Homeland Security.

Is it just me or did some of the strangest and worst people benefit outrageously much from 9-11? Bush, included.

Maybe Pat Robertson can pray for him. God knows, I pray for Pat (to be delivered to hades where he belongs where he will fight the devil for dominance).

Satan's Sidekicks: The Marriage of Rudy Giuliani and Pat "Your Blood, MY Diamonds" Robertson

Wow.

The great savior (of his own ass), Pat Robertson, who pretends to be a preacher and philanthropist so he can smuggle blood diamonds out of third world nations via his missionary and "humanitarian aid" planes, has thrown his complete support behind Rudy Giuliani for the GOP presidential nod for 2008.

I mean, if you were the Repug candidate, wouldn't YOU want a man like Pat, who blamed 9-11 on gays and liberals, who has threatened the U.S. Supreme Court and suggested institutions like the U.S. State Department SHOULD be blown up to fulfill God's will (threats that would get the rest of us serious prison time, btw), and who spouts nothing but hateful invective toward anything NOT Pat Robertson-centric?

Actually, if offered the financial and moral support of Pat Robertson vs. being boiled alive in oil, let me be the first to climb in that big vat. Pat's support holds sway only with the most extreme of the Christian fascists.

The old Rudy - the REAL Rudy - would have run from such an endorsement. But this is the Giuliani whose career was considered over on September 10th, 2001 and the very next day, on his way to being raised as a national hero AND a billionaire based on a total litany of noun-verb-911.

Jim Hogue's "The Ballad of Ladder 5" And The "9-11 Truth Movement"

I know many - and it's not just Dems - remain with serious questions about the events of September 11th. While I'm not trying to stir up a brew here on a Sunday, I did want to point to a bit of political poetry offered up by a Vermont local actor/activist Jim Hogue about 9-11 you can find here.

You can listen to Hogue's often politically-centric program, The House on Pooh Corner, streaming live at WGDR online every Monday from 8:30-10 AM ET.

Just Who Is The Terrorist?

Since last week's vote on Capitol Hill pronouncing Iran's military as a terrorist organization (trust me, I have no love lost for most of the last however many leaders of Iran but, as the Christian Science Monitor opined shortly after September 11th, 2001, "one man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter") adding more and more drums toward the steady Bush-Cheney beat toward a full blown war with THAT country as well, I can just about imagine how well it would play if other countries labeled Bush and "our" Pentagon as terrorist organizations.

Certainly, I think that even within our own nation, there is widespread concensus that Bush-Cheney and all their evil elves have functioned as not just enemies of "the state" we hold dear (as in free speech, democracy, their war on the middle/working class, non-stop lies to engage in more dirty tricks and torture and war, to name a scant few. Yet can you imagine the outrage and the "right"eously angry shaking jowls of the likes of a Fred Thompson, a Trent Lott, and a Dick Cheney if another country labeled them as terrorists?

The longer we allow this evil empire to continue making misery and mayhem wherever it goes (some of which "grow" right here at home), the more we in effect empower our terrorists to wreak havoc on others. Nor am I sure that it is in anyway prudent to allow Bush and Cheney to sit there, orchestrating global oppression for the 450-460 days left to run of their term.

In other words, there is really not much we can - or even should - do about Iran and its military. Yet, here at home, we have a huge obligation to stop this continuing seven year nightmare and eliminate our own homegrown terrorists like Dubya, The Dick, the Blackwater honchos. Time we acted, too.

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.

The Newest Season of The Fear Factor: Bush Pulls Osama Bin Laden From Mothballs to Terrorize Us Again

He's baaaaccck; not just Bush (who must be due for his annual 6 week summer vacation which should never be confused with the approximately 22 weeks of other vacations he takes each year) but his favorite convenient bogeyman, Osama bin Forgotten; the same one Bush can never decide whether he is the worst threat EVER or "completely unimportant so we don't need to bother to even pretend to catch him anymore". Writes Dan Froomkin in the Washington Post today:

Nearly six years after President Bush pledged to capture him "dead or alive," Osama bin Laden is not only still at large, but he and his al-Qaeda organization have apparently benefited greatly from Bush's decision to invade Iraq.

That's not just me saying so. It's the inevitable conclusion from the declassified summary of a White House intelligence report released to great fanfare yesterday.

It turns out that bin Laden and his al-Qaeda leadership are safely ensconced in Pakistan. They're still trying to attack us. And the U.S. occupation of Iraq has provided them with a potent rallying cry, recruiting tool and training ground they would not have had otherwise.

The White House has time and again used the specter of al-Qaeda to cow Capitol Hill into doing its bidding. Similarly, Bush and his aides have lately gone to great lengths to conflate the multifaceted insurgency in Iraq with al-Qaeda. After all, when it's Bush vs. al-Qaeda, how many Americans will side with al-Qaeda?

The report's release shot al-Qaeda back into the headlines. But this time, the al-Qaeda stories have a potentially devastating twist for the administration: As it turns out, Bush's policies may have helped bin Laden more than they've hurt him.

Gee, really?

Actually, I suspect that bin Laden and Bush are tied together not just at the hip, and not just at the wallet. Bush needs him as much as Osama needs Bush. What scares me most, however, is that I think their interests may be far more chummy - as profitable for each other as they are devastating to the rest of us - than we can yet even begin to conceive.

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.

Why Did Bush's FBI Allow Osama Bin Laden To Charter American Plane(s)?

Very good question, especially considering the Bush family and the Bin Laden family - on which Dubya sat on a board with bin Ladens - have for a very loooonnng time financially benefited from their war profiteering. Can you say Carlyle Group?

Notice this is from Canada since the press here still quakes in its boots:

FBI were aware that Osama bin Laden may have chartered one of the flights that took members of the bin Laden family out of the United States immediate after the 9/11 attacks, yet allowed the planes to depart, new Agency documents reveal.

The formerly confidential documents obtained by Judicial Watch through Freedom of Information Act and ongoing litigation states:

ON 9/19/01, A 727 PLANE LEFT LAX, RYAN FLT #441 TO ORLANDO, FL W/ETA (estimated time of arrival) OF 4-5PM. THE PLANE WAS CHARTERED EITHER BY THE SAUDI ARABIAN ROYAL FAMILY OR OSAMA BIN LADEN…THE LA FBI SEARCHED THE PLANE [REDACTED] LUGGAGE, OF WHICH NOTHING UNUSUAL WAS FOUND.

Traffic control reports show that the plane was allowed to depart the United States after making four stops to pick up passengers, ultimately landing in Paris where all passengers disembarked on 9/20/01, according to the document.

FBI’s most recent document production includes details of the six flights between 9/14 and 9/24 that evacuated Saudi royals and bin Laden family members.

The documents also contain brief interview summaries and occasional notes from intelligence analysts concerning the cursory screening performed prior to the departures.

FBI did not consider a single Saudi national nor any of the bin Laden family members as possessing any information of investigative value.

According to Judicial Watch the documents contain numerous errors and inconsistencies which call to question the thoroughness of the FBI’s investigation of the Saudi flights.

Republican Leaders: Pray For Another Terrorist Attack On U.S. So We Can Win

I noticed some people - including at least a few Republicans I spoke with - were quite taken aback when the head of the Arkansas state GOP said the other day that (to paraphrase):

What we need in America is another September 11th, another horrific terrorist attack
on our home soil, because that is what the GOP needs to win all the seats it wants
in the 2008 presidential election.

Excuse me? Really? We need another 9-11-01?

Unbelievably, this Arkansas ass is hardly the first rightwinger to state something like this. There are an endless number of examples, almost all of which come from the far red right.

For example, Newt Gingrich (who remains an undeclared contender for the GOP race for President) said last summer that America needed to do whatever it could to help Israel turn the war they were waging on Lebanon (one often called a proxy war fought by Israel for America to put the fear of God into other Arab/Muslim heavy countries like Iran and Syria.

Specifically, Gingrich said (and I am not engaging in hyperbole) that it was in the very BEST interests of the GOP to help Israel morph the Lebanon situation into World War III SINCE Americans would flock to embrace Bush's war-as-the-answer-to-everything doctine as they did after 9-11. He said this publicly and repeatedly. Virtually none of the press called him on that, or demanded to know why taxpayer money and U.S. soldiers' lives were completely and utterly expendable so long as Republicans not only retained power, but they also got MORE power.

Paul Krugman: "Trust and Betrayal"

Apt. Very apt. Read it all here.

“In this place where valor sleeps, we are reminded why America has always gone to war reluctantly, because we know the costs of war.” That’s what President Bush said last year, in a Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.

Those were fine words, spoken by a man with less right to say them than any president in our nation’s history. For Mr. Bush took us to war not with reluctance, but with unseemly eagerness.

Now that war has turned into an epic disaster, in part because the war’s architects, whom we now know were warned about the risks, didn’t want to hear about them. Yet Congress seems powerless to stop it. How did it all go so wrong?

Future historians will shake their heads over how easily America was misled into war. The warning signs, the indications that we had a rogue administration determined to use 9/11 as an excuse for war, were there, for those willing to see them, right from the beginning — even before Mr. Bush began explicitly pushing for war with Iraq.

In fact, the very first time Mr. Bush declared a war on terror that “will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated,” people should have realized that he was going to use the terrorist attack to justify anything and everything.

When he used his first post-attack State of the Union to denounce an “axis of evil” consisting of three countries that had nothing to do either with 9/11 or with each other, alarm bells should have gone off.

But the nation, brought together in grief and anger over the attack, wanted to trust the man occupying the White House. And so it took a long time before Americans were willing to admit to themselves just how thoroughly their trust had been betrayed.

[...]Here’s the way it ought to be: When Rudy Giuliani says that Iran, which had nothing to do with 9/11, is part of a “movement” that “has already displayed more aggressive tendencies by coming here and killing us,” he should be treated as a lunatic.

When Mitt Romney says that a coalition of “Shia and Sunni and Hezbollah and Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood and Al Qaeda” wants to “bring down the West,” he should be ridiculed for his ignorance.

And when John McCain says that Osama, who isn’t in Iraq, will “follow us home” if we leave, he should be laughed at.

But they aren’t, at least not yet. And until belligerent, uninformed posturing starts being treated with the contempt it deserves, men who know nothing of the cost of war will keep sending other people’s children to graves at Arlington.

Rest is here.

Bush and Benchmarks: More Lies and Games At Expense of U.S. Troops' and Civilians' Lives

Why is everyone applauding President Bush for his statement yesterday that he thought "benchmarks" might be a good idea re: Iraq?
First, Bush should NEVER have been given a blank check to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted, no matter what cost (financial, logistical, and human lives) in Iraq (and for this, I hold every single member of Congress as responsible as I do Cowboy Clown Dubya). I was one of a large but often none too vocal group who saw quite clearly that Bush and Cheney and the Neocon Express were taking us into Iraq on a case made of lies and greed. To this day, more than four years after the first American forces landed in Iraq, Bush and Cheney continue to promote the idea that Iraq somehow had some large part in planning and executing the September 11th, 2001 (9-11) attacks on the U.S. when it seemed clearly untrue back in 2003 and disproven countless times since then.

Second, Bush won't allow ANY compromise on his part whatsoever. He may say that benchmarks may be a good idea, but he certainly won't allow any checks and balances applied to what he wants to do in Iraq. He says this only to fool Americans into thinking he'll play ball; he doesn't even care that now a majority of Republican voters want troops out of Iraq in the next six months.

Third, don't fool yourself. Bush will be out of office before the U.S. is out of Iraq.

Paul Krugman: "Distract and Disenfranchise"

Rozius brings us Monday's missive from Professor Krugman; read it all here or accept my big snip-snip-snip:

I have a theory about the Bush administration abuses of power that are now, finally, coming to light. Ultimately, I believe, they were driven by rising income inequality.

Let me explain.

In 1980, when Ronald Reagan won the White House, conservative ideas appealed to many, even most, Americans. At the time, we were truly a middle-class nation. To white voters, at least, the vast inequalities and social injustices of the past, which were what originally gave liberalism its appeal, seemed like ancient history. It was easy, in that nation, to convince many voters that Big Government was their enemy, that they were being taxed to provide social programs for other people.

Since then, however, we have once again become a deeply unequal society. Median income has risen only 17 percent since 1980, while the income of the richest 0.1 percent of the population has quadrupled. The gap between the rich and the middle class is as wide now as it was in the 1920s, when the political coalition that would eventually become the New Deal was taking shape.

And voters realize that society has changed. They may not pore over income distribution tables, but they do know that today’s rich are building themselves mansions bigger than those of the robber barons. They may not read labor statistics, but they know that wages aren’t going anywhere: according to the Pew Research Center, 59 percent of workers believe that it’s harder to earn a decent living today than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

You know that perceptions of rising inequality have become a political issue when even President Bush admits, as he did in January, that “some of our citizens worry about the fact that our dynamic economy is leaving working people behind.”

But today’s Republicans can’t respond in any meaningful way to rising inequality, because their activists won’t let them. You could see the dilemma just this past Friday and Saturday, when almost all the G.O.P. presidential hopefuls traveled to Palm Beach to make obeisance to the Club for Growth, a supply-side pressure group dedicated to tax cuts and privatization.

The Republican Party’s adherence to an outdated ideology leaves it with big problems. It can’t offer domestic policies that respond to the public’s real needs. So how can it win elections?

The answer, for a while, was a combination of distraction and disenfranchisement.

The terrorist attacks on 9/11 were themselves a massive, providential distraction; until then the public, realizing that Mr. Bush wasn’t the moderate he played in the 2000 election, was growing increasingly unhappy with his administration. And they offered many opportunities for further distractions. Rather than debating Democrats on the issues, the G.O.P. could denounce them as soft on terror. And do you remember the terror alert, based on old and questionable information, that was declared right after the 2004 Democratic National Convention?

But distraction can only go so far. So the other tool was disenfranchisement: finding ways to keep poor people, who tend to vote for the party that might actually do something about inequality, out of the voting booth.

Remember that disenfranchisement in the form of the 2000 Florida “felon purge,” which struck many legitimate voters from the rolls, put Mr. Bush in the White House in the first place. And disenfranchisement seems to be what much of the politicization of the Justice Department was about.

Several of the fired U.S. attorneys were under pressure to pursue allegations of voter fraud — a phrase that has become almost synonymous with “voting while black.” Former staff members of the Justice Department’s civil rights division say that they were repeatedly overruled when they objected to Republican actions, ranging from Georgia’s voter ID law to Tom DeLay’s Texas redistricting, that they believed would effectively disenfranchise African-American voters.

The rest is here.

Confession Is Good For The (Bush) Hole?

Another absolutely right-on Jeff Danziger cartoon, this one (from March 16th) on the strange "confessions" by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed who admitted to being a 9/11 mastermind, the Madrid train bombings, stealing candy from a baby, and making Michael Jackson become a sexual pervert (just to name an unlikely few). Mohammed, as you may recall, is one of our "poster children" for torture, with Rumsfeld and Cheney coming out saying that "waterboarding" is good (as opposed to the experts, who agree that torture-based admissions aren't worth the paper they're written on).

Sheik Mohammed And The Beheading of Journalist Daniel Pearl: How Do You Trust The Confessions Of The Tortured

Today, the Bushies purposely let slip that Sheikh Mohammed, whom we've had in custody for more than a few years and whom we apparently torture on a near daily basis (Vice President Dick Cheney and former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld both noted he was an excellent candidate for "waterboarding" torture to find the truth, has claimed he was responsible for the kidnapping and videotaped execution of American journalist Daniel Pearl. They also claim he's admitted to being one of the masterminds behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Reports AP:

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's capture four years ago didn't shut down al-Qaida or bring the Americans to Osama bin Laden. But if his mega-confession is to be believed, his arrest was a crushing blow to bin Laden's plans for even more deadly attacks in the wake of 9/11.

But after more than four years in custody, and exposed to torture-torture-torture, how can we be sure what he really did or didn't do? That's one of the huge problems with torture; the information you get is notoriously unreliable. I don't buy that these admissions are true when they were elicited so very long after his capture.

Actually, I can say that there have been at least four or five separate statements/alerts offered up by Sheikh Mohammed in the past that turned out to be completely false, including some of the silliest possible attack on America scenarios. Yet now, the Bushies insist we believe him. Right.