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.

GOP Senator: White House Most Incompetent E-V-E-R

Of course, as Think Progress notes, this Republican Senator can admit all the trouble while not lifting a single manicured fingertip to remove such incompetents and corrupted types:

Profiles in courage.

A U.S. Senator talks to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius:

“This is the most incompetent White House I’ve seen since I came to Washington,” said one GOP senator. “The White House legislative liaison team is incompetent, pitiful, embarrassing. My colleagues can’t even tell you who the White House Senate liaison is. There is rank incompetence throughout the government. It’s the weakest Cabinet I’ve seen.” And remember, this is a Republican talking.

What’s truly pitiful and embarrassing is that this Senator understands these truths but hides behind a veil of anonymity, protecting his/her own political fortunes while the nation suffers.

Kudos For The House: Vote Succeeds To Give Washington D.C. Representation

Long past time, but sadly, not a done deal yet either; as reported by Political Wire:

"A bill giving the District its first full seat in Congress cleared the House yesterday, marking the city's biggest legislative victory in its quest for voting rights in nearly three decades," reports the Washington Post.

However, "the bill faces considerable obstacles. Democrats don't appear to have enough votes in the Senate to avoid a filibuster, and the White House has threatened a veto. If the measure becomes law, it probably will be challenged in court."

Can anyone possibly offer a truly legitimate reason that these voters, too long denied and forced to endlessly endure "taxation without representation", should not get a representative?

And have you noticed Bush threatens to veto anything and everything that is constitutionally correct, fair and appropriate?

Karl Rove And The "666" Tattooed Atop His Bald Head

Every large stone seems to have a snake hiding beneath it. And strangely, all too often, it's the same snake and its name is perpetually Karl Rove (that smell of something vile and dead is a good hint that Rove is Bush's beneath-rock-brain, too).

From Sunday's New York Times Op/ed:

Mr. Rove’s efforts to maintain one-party rule go deep into the government. Last week, we learned about a meeting set up by Mr. Rove’s staff with officials of the General Services Administration that was wildly inappropriate and perhaps illegal. The aim, as outlined by Mr. Rove’s deputy, Scott Jennings, seems to have been to take advantage of the billions of dollars in contracts put out by the agency every year to return Republicans to the majority in Congress in 2008. It included PowerPoint slides on vulnerable House and Senate seats.

This sort of behavior should not be all that surprising. It was not that long ago that the Bush
White House embraced the priorities of the Republican governor of Mississippi and virtually ignored the far greater needs of Louisiana’s Democratic governor after Hurricane Katrina.
Mr. Rove retreated a bit from the public eye in the heat of the Lewis Libby trial, but after avoiding indictment, he seems to have regained his confidence. Take a look at YouTube to see his bizarre, humor-challenged gyrations as “MC Rove” at an annual media dinner in Washington the other night.

The investigation of the firings of the United States attorneys seems to be closing in on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who should have been fired weeks ago. But Congress should bring equal scrutiny to the more powerful Mr. Rove. If it does, especially by forcing him to testify in public, it will find that he has been at the vortex of many of the biggest issues they are now investigating.

Life In The Bush-Big Brother America: "My National Security Letter Gag Order"

Pundits are great for saying things like "President George W. Bush has never asked Americans to sacrifice anything in these dark and scary times."

But that is simply NOT true. Americans have been required to sign away their freedom and other tenets upon which this nation was founded by ancestors like mine. Time and again, the Bushies prove they cannot accurately assess intelligence and frequently abuse Americans' trust and reasonable expectation of privacy, only to have these same Bushies demand more and more access to our private lives.

With these so-called "National Security Letters" or NSLs, they can snoop wherever and whenever they like; and just the sending of an NSL can make people treat the person being "checked out" quite differently. For example, as in my case, a "friendly inquiry" to a publisher results in lost work because who wants to have to deal with Alberto Gonzales' corrupt Department of (In)Justice?

Here, from the Washington Post, is someone's tale of such a National Security Letter and its attendant gag order. Read it all:

It is the policy of The Washington Post not to publish anonymous pieces. In this case, an exception has been made because the author -- who would have preferred to be named -- is legally prohibited from disclosing his or her identity in connection with receipt of a national security letter. The Post confirmed the legitimacy of this submission by verifying it with the author's attorney and by reviewing publicly available court documents.

The Justice Department's inspector general revealed on March 9 that the FBI has been systematically abusing one of the most controversial provisions of the USA Patriot Act: the expanded power to issue "national security letters." It no doubt surprised most Americans to learn that between 2003 and 2005 the FBI issued more than 140,000 specific demands under this provision -- demands issued without a showing of probable cause or prior judicial approval -- to obtain potentially sensitive information about U.S. citizens and residents. It did not, however, come as any surprise to me.

Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to provide sensitive information about one of my clients. There was no indication that a judge had reviewed or approved the letter, and it turned out that none had. The letter came with a gag provision that prohibited me from telling anyone, including my client, that the FBI was seeking this information. Based on the context of the demand -- a context that the FBI still won't let me discuss publicly -- I suspected that the FBI was abusing its power and that the letter sought information to which the FBI was not entitled.

Rather than turn over the information, I contacted lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union, and in April 2004 I filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the NSL power. I never released the information the FBI sought, and last November the FBI decided that it no longer needs the information anyway. But the FBI still hasn't abandoned the gag order that prevents me from disclosing my experience and concerns with the law or the national security letter that was served on my company. In fact, the government will return to court in the next few weeks to defend the gag orders that are imposed on recipients of these letters.

Living under the gag order has been stressful and surreal. Under the threat of criminal prosecution, I must hide all aspects of my involvement in the case -- including the mere fact that I received an NSL -- from my colleagues, my family and my friends. When I meet with my attorneys I cannot tell my girlfriend where I am going or where I have been. I hide any papers related to the case in a place where she will not look. When clients and friends ask me whether I am the one challenging the constitutionality of the NSL statute, I have no choice but to look them in the eye and lie.

I resent being conscripted as a secret informer for the government and being made to mislead those who are close to me, especially because I have doubts about the legitimacy of the underlying investigation.

The inspector general's report makes clear that NSL gag orders have had even more pernicious effects. Without the gag orders issued on recipients of the letters, it is doubtful that the FBI would have been able to abuse the NSL power the way that it did. Some recipients would have spoken out about perceived abuses, and the FBI's actions would have been subject to some degree of public scrutiny. To be sure, not all recipients would have spoken out; the inspector general's report suggests that large telecom companies have been all too willing to share sensitive data with the agency -- in at least one case, a telecom company gave the FBI even more information than it asked for. But some recipients would have called attention to abuses, and some abuse would have been deterred.

I found it particularly difficult to be silent about my concerns while Congress was debating the reauthorization of the Patriot Act in 2005 and early 2006. If I hadn't been under a gag order, I would have contacted members of Congress to discuss my experiences and to advocate changes in the law. The inspector general's report confirms that Congress lacked a complete picture of the problem during a critical time: Even though the NSL statute requires the director of the FBI to fully inform members of the House and Senate about all requests issued under the statute, the FBI significantly underrepresented the number of NSL requests in 2003, 2004 and 2005, according to the report.

I recognize that there may sometimes be a need for secrecy in certain national security investigations. But I've now been under a broad gag order for three years, and other NSL recipients have been silenced for even longer. At some point -- a point we passed long ago -- the secrecy itself becomes a threat to our democracy. In the wake of the recent revelations, I believe more strongly than ever that the secrecy surrounding the government's use of the national security letters power is unwarranted and dangerous. I hope that Congress will at last recognize the same thing.

How Opposition to Net Neutrality Has Become Political Third Rail

MissM - one of the brightest and best blooms below the Macon-Dixon line - also points us to this post at Save the Internet discussing how opposition to Net Neutrality is not endearing politicians to their constituents.

Opposing Net Neutrality has become a political third rail for candidates who seek elected office, according to a story today in the Washington Post.

I happen to like a nice can of Whoop Ass on occasion.

WaPo: Too Few Contract Workers To Rebuild Iraq

I guess giving Iraqis - rather than Halliburton, Bechtel, etc. - the money to rebuild themselves is just too wild an idea?

Here's the story from WaPo.

But Dana Milbank, We're Frigging Tired of The Washington Press Corps Making Nice With the Bushies

Dana Milbank of the Washington Post tells us all about a mock press gaggle at the White House where Tony Snow gets to question reporters. It all went so nicely.

Dana? We are soooooooo unbelievably tired of the Washington press corps - with the noble exception of the tenacious little nicely-attired pitbull named Helen Thomas, God love her! - making nice with the White House.

Do you really think there would be so many blogs being written if we thought the Washington press corps was up to their jobs? But they aren't.

The Department of (In)Justice Just Can't Get Anything Right

Cernig's Newshog points us to this sadly-no-stunner-but-still-mind-reeling report in the Washington Post:

Most of the Justice Department's major statistics on terrorism cases are highly inaccurate, and federal prosecutors routinely count cases involving drug trafficking, marriage fraud and other unrelated crimes as part of anti-terrorism efforts, according to an audit released yesterday.

Inspector General Glenn A. Fine found that only two of the 26 sets of important statistics on domestic counterterrorism efforts compiled by Justice and the FBI from 2001 to 2005 were accurate, according to a 140-page report. The numbers were both inflated and understated, depending on the data cited and which part of the Justice Department was doing the counting, the report said.

The biggest problems were in numbers compiled by the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys, which counted hundreds of terrorism cases that did not qualify for the designation because they involved minor crimes with no connection to terrorist activity, the report said.

...A 2005 Washington Post analysis of terrorism cases tallied by the Justice Department's Criminal Division showed that most defendants were charged with minor crimes unrelated to terrorism.

Fine's office examined similar data as part of its analysis but, unlike The Post, it accepted at face value any claims of a terrorism link by the government. Under those conditions, the report said, the Criminal Division actually understated the number of cases that would qualify as related to terrorism.

The only two entirely accurate sets of statistics were compiled by the FBI, said the inspector-general's report, but they got far more reports wrong too.

So the local pot dealer is getting counted as an Al Qaeda type? Oh goodie.