FBI Program Deputizes Corporations To Spy, Report On Workers, Among Others

If you haven't heard about InfraGard, a Bush Administration-FBI initiative to "fight the battle for homeland (in)security", you need to know. I've written about it in some detail at All Things Democrat, but you can also find the Democracy Now videocast of The Progressive's Matt Rothschild detailing it yesterday. Also, you can read his article here ("The FBI Deputizes Business").

At BEST, this is corporate favoritism and yet another program WE have to pay for with our tax dollars (many of these businesses involved with InfraGard not only pay minimal if any taxes, many are the recipients of huge rebates we also pay for).

At worst? Well, it staggers the imagination (like much of what the Bush Administration does).

As The Worm(s) Turn: Rove Flips The Bird While His ASSistant Refuses to So Much As Identify His Job Function

Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post offers a good take on Karl Rove's middle finger flip to the Senate Judiciary Committee today in the continuing, ever more baffling U.S. Attorney purge scandal that Rove and Bush clearly orchestrated for partisan gain; God forbid someone - anyone - in the Bush White House be held accountable for his or her actions.

For my take on how Rove's hench-weasel responded to the simplest questions posed by Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Arlen Specter (R-PA and Scotland (cough)), see this post. The fellow seemed unwilling to so much as give his name. The contempt these folks hold for anyone not part of them is just astonishing. I have to say I can find no real precedent for the extensiveness of the clear and utter disregard for any accountability for their felonious actions.

At the same time, the Bush Administration is apparently pumping its set of huge brass balls ever larger because, as it becomes clearer with each passing day that U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales cannot tell a truth and certainly has NO capacity for performing his job ("I serve at the pleasure of the president; I nap when he does!"), the Bushies want to give this dolt even MORE capability for spying on us all under FISA, without due cause and definitely without any accountability.

Elsewhere, Time Magazine states what is all too obvious to those of us paying attention: Bush won't boot Gonzo because to do so might bring some very nasty, impeachable, perhaps fully treasonous facts into the light of day. How terrible that would be - for them, that is.