Senator Leahy Just Ripped Alberto Gonzales a new hole over torturing suspected terrorists. Haw haw. Guess Alberto didn't get the memo that it's not Republican Patty-Cake Land up on Capitol Hill any longer...

Thank goodness that we have a guy with a spine like Senator Leahy in that job now. Where's Hilary Clinton's outrage? Or Barack Obama's angry statement about the fact that our President is a willy-nilly torturer?

Introducing The "Smoky Bomb"

Peter D. Zimmerman, a nuclear physicist, is a professor of science and security in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. He was chief scientist of the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2001 to 2003.

The exotic murder-by-polonium of the former K.G.B. spy Alexander Litvinenko has embroiled Russia, Britain and Germany in a diplomatic scuffle and a hunt for more traces of the lethal substance. But it also throws into question most of the previous analyses of “dirty bombs,” terrorist attacks using radioactive isotopes wrapped in explosives (or using other dispersion techniques) to spread radioactive material in crowded areas.

Essentially all analysts, including myself, played down the possibility of using alpha radiation — fast-moving helium nuclei ejected during the radioactive decay of certain isotopes, such as of polonium 210, the substance that killed Mr. Litvinenko — as a source of dirty bombs. We concentrated instead on isotopes that emit penetrating gamma rays, which are basically super-powered packets of light, hard to shield and effective at a yard or more.

The alpha radiation from polonium can be easily shielded — by a layer of aluminum foil, a sheet or two of paper, or the dead outer layer of skin. And so, the reasoning went, alpha radiation could not hurt you as long as the source stayed outside your body. Exactly. Mr. Litvinenko was apparently killed by polonium that he ate or drank or inhaled. That source was so physically small that it was hard to see, perhaps the size of a couple of grains of salt and weighing just a few millionths of a gram.

Dirty bombs based on gamma emitters, analysts have learned, can’t kill very many people. Mr. Litvinenko’s death tells us that “smoky bombs” based on alpha emitters very well could.

Polonium 210 is surprisingly common. It is used by industry in devices that eliminate static electricity, in low-powered brushes used to ionize the air next to photographic film so dust can be swept off easily, and in quite large machines placed end-to-end across a web of fabric moving over rollers in a textile mill. It is even used to control dust in clean rooms where computer chips and hard drives are made.

It may be difficult to get people to eat polonium; it isn’t hard to force them to breathe it. The problem for a radiological terrorist is to get his “hot” material inside people’s bodies where it will do the most harm. If the terrorist can solve that problem, then alpha radiation is the most devastating choice he can make. Precisely because alphas emit their nuclei so quickly, they deposit all of their energy in a relatively small number of cells, killing them or causing them to mutate, increasing the long-term risk of cancer.

The terrorist’s solution lies in getting very finely divided polonium into the air where people can breathe it. I see several fairly simple ways to accomplish this: burn the material, blow it up, dissolve it in a lot of water or pulverize it to a size so small that the particles can float in the air and lodge in the lungs.

It would be unwise of me to dwell on the details of just how one goes about getting a hot enough fire or breaking polonium into extremely fine “dust.” In the end, however, the radioactive material will appear like the dust from an explosion, or the smoke from a fire. My point is to demonstrate the urgent need for new thinking in the regulatory arena, not to give away important information.

Air containing such radioactive debris would appear smoky or dusty, and be dangerous to breathe. A few breaths might easily be enough to sicken a victim, and in some cases to kill. A smoky bomb exploded in a packed arena or on a crowded street could kill dozens or hundreds. It would set off a radiological emergency of a kind not seen before in the United States, and the number of people requiring life support or palliative care until death would overwhelm the number of beds now available for treating victims of radiation. First responders dashing unprotected into the cloud from a smoky bomb might be among the worst wounded. Fire and police departments around the country will need alpha radiation detectors, since the counters they carry now cannot see alphas.

Some of the steps involved with making a good smoky bomb from polonium would be dangerous for the terrorists involved, and might cost them their lives. That, unfortunately, no longer seems like a very high barrier.

What can we do to stop them? We must make it far less easy for them to acquiring polonium in deadly amounts. Polonium sources with about 10 percent of a lethal dose are readily available — even in a product sold on Amazon.com. Only modest restraints inhibit purchase of significantly larger amounts of polonium: as of next year, anyone purchasing more than 16 curies of polonium 210 — enough to make up 5,000 lethal doses — must register it with a tracking system run by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But this is vastly too high — almost no purchases on that scale are made by any industry.

The commission (and the International Atomic Energy Agency as well) is said to be considering tighter regulations to make a repeat of the Litvinenko affair less probable. There is talk that it might tighten the polonium reporting requirement by a factor of 10, to 1.6 curies. That’s better, but still not strict enough.

The biggest problem is that the regulatory commission’s regulations do not restrict the quantity of polonium used in industry. This may make it quite easy for terrorists to purchase large amounts of one of the earth’s deadliest substances. A near-term goal should to require specific licensing of any person or company seeking to purchase alpha sources stronger than one millicurie, about a third of a lethal dose. A longer-term goal ought to be eliminating nearly all use of polonium in industry through other technologies.

That is a technical challenge and would cost some money, but it would certainly be less expensive than coping with the devastation of a smoky bomb.

"Worst Of The Worst" Set Free

Majority of Gitmo Detainees Freed in Other Countries
By Andrew O. Selsky
The Associated Press
Friday 15 December 2006

The Pentagon called them "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth," sweeping them up after Sept. 11 and hauling them in chains to a U.S. military prison in southeastern Cuba.

Since then, hundreds of the men have been transferred from Guantanamo Bay to other countries, many of them for "continued detention."

And then set free.

Decisions by more than a dozen countries in the Middle East, Europe and South Asia to release the former Guantanamo detainees raise questions about whether they were really as dangerous as the United States claimed, or whether some of America's staunchest allies have set terrorists and militants free.

The United States does not systematically track what happens to detainees once they leave Guantanamo, the U.S. State Department says. Defense lawyers and human rights groups say they know of no centralized database, although one group is attempting to compile one.

When the Pentagon announces a detainee has been moved from Guantanamo, it gives his nationality but not his name, making it difficult to track the roughly 360 men released since the detention center opened in January 2002. The Pentagon says detainees have been sent to 26 countries.

But through interviews with justice and police officials, detainees and their families, and using reports from human rights groups and local media, The Associated Press was able to track 245 of those formerly held at Guantanamo. The investigation, which spanned 17 countries, found:

Once the detainees arrived in other countries, 205 of the 245 were either freed without being charged or were cleared of charges related to their detention at Guantanamo. Forty either stand charged with crimes or continue to be detained.

Only a tiny fraction of transferred detainees have been put on trial. The AP identified 14 trials, in which eight men were acquitted and six are awaiting verdicts. Two of the cases involving acquittals - one in Kuwait, one in Spain - initially resulted in convictions that were overturned on appeal.

The Afghan government has freed every one of the more than 83 Afghans sent home. Lawmaker Sibghatullah Mujaddedi, the head of Afghanistan's reconciliation commission, said many were innocent and wound up at Guantanamo because of tribal or personal rivalries.

At least 67 of 70 repatriated Pakistanis are free after spending a year in Adiala Jail. A senior Pakistani Interior Ministry official said investigators determined that most had been "sold" for bounties to U.S. forces by Afghan warlords who invented links between the men and al-Qaida. "We consider them innocent," said the official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the issue.

All 29 detainees who were repatriated to Britain, Spain, Germany, Russia, Australia, Turkey, Denmark, Bahrain and the Maldives were freed, some within hours after being sent home for "continued detention."

Some former detainees say they never intended to harm the United States and are bitter.

"I can't wash the three long years of pain, trouble and humiliation from my memory," said Badarzaman Badar, an Afghan who was freed in Pakistan. "It is like a cancer in my mind that makes me disturbed every time I think of those terrible days."

Overall, about 165 Guantanamo detainees have been transferred from Guantanamo for "continued detention," while about 200 were designated for immediate release. Some 420 detainees remain at the U.S. base in Cuba.

Clive Stafford Smith, a British-American attorney representing several detainees, said the AP's findings indicate that innocent men were jailed and that the term "continued detention" is part of "a politically motivated farce."

"The Bush Administration wants to be able to say that these are dangerous terrorists who are going to be confined upon their release ... although there is no evidence against many of them," he said.

When four Britons were sent home from Guantanamo in January 2005, Britain said it would detain and investigate them - then released them after only 18 hours. Five Britons repatriated earlier were also rapidly released with no charges.

Murat Kurnaz, a German-born Turkish citizen, was also quickly freed when he was flown to Germany in August, bound hand and foot, after more than four years at Guantanamo.

U.S. officials maintained he was a member of al-Qaida, based on what they said was secret evidence. But his New Jersey-based lawyer, Baher Azmy, said he was shown the classified evidence and was shocked to find how unpersuasive it was.

"It contains five or six statements exonerating him," Azmy said.

In October German prosecutors said they found no evidence that Kurnaz had links to Islamic radicals in Pakistan or Afghanistan and formally dropped their investigation.

The United States insists that the fact that so many of the former detainees have been freed by other countries doesn't mean they weren't dangerous.

"They were part of Taliban, al-Qaida, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners," said Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.

But Joshua Colangelo-Bryan, a lawyer representing several detainees, says the fact that hundreds of men have been released into freedom belies their characterization by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld as "among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth."

"After all, it would simply be incredible to suggest that the United States has voluntarily released such 'vicious killers' or that such men had been miraculously reformed at Guantanamo," Colangelo-Bryan said.

Mohammed Aman, a 49-year-old Afghan who describes himself as a former low-level member of the Taliban, said he initially wasn't worried when U.S. troops detained him.

"I was relaxed because I was innocent," he said. "I was sure I would be freed. I was always thinking that today or tomorrow I will be free."

He spent three years at Guantanamo until he was finally put on a plane at the base, blindfolded and with headphones covering his ears. When he made it back to his home in Malaik Khail, Afghanistan, villagers streamed out to greet him, many weeping.

Detainees are held at Guantanamo Bay because a military panel classifies them as an "enemy combatant," which refers not only to armed fighters but to anyone who aids enemy forces. Every year, each gets a hearing to determine whether he remains a security threat to the United States or has intelligence value.

Using those hearings as guidance, Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England decides whether to keep the detainee at Guantanamo, release him, or send him to another country for detention.

This year, through Nov. 20, he had ruled on 149 prisoners. He decided that 106 should be held, 43 should be transferred to custody of other countries and none should be released outright.

Azmy, the New Jersey lawyer, said the distinction between release and transfer is largely a fiction because recipient countries are under no obligation to imprison the returnees. The United States doesn't even ask them to.

A senior U.S. State Department official acknowledged that "We do not ask countries to detain them on our behalf, so when a decision is made by a country to move forward with an investigation for prosecution, that is something they have decided to do pursuant to their own domestic law."

Requesting anonymity because she is not authorized to speak on the record, she said about 15 former detainees returned to the battlefield after being freed. The Pentagon was unable to provide details.

"That's the risk that goes along with transferring people out of Guantanamo," she said. "It's not foolproof."

Some former detainees still face the justice systems of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and France.

Six Kuwaitis returned from Guantanamo stood trial on terror-related charges. Five were acquitted, and on Dec. 5 an appeals court overturned the conviction of the sixth, Nasser al-Mutairi.

In France, the trial of six transferred Guantanamo detainees has focused as much on the U.S. prison camp as on their prosecution on charges of "criminal association with a terrorist enterprise."

Prosecutor Sonya Djemni-Wagner has requested light sentences, saying she took into account the defendants' "arbitrary detention ... at a facility outside all legal frameworks."

She is seeking one year in prison plus suspended sentences for five suspects and no sentence for the sixth, all of whom are currently free.

Their time already served behind bars in France should be counted toward their sentences, she said, meaning that even if convicted, none would be locked up.
###

So... over half of the "worst of the worst" were no so bad that they could be released. Nice! This comes in addition to the news that several dozen of the detainees were under the age of 17 when first captured in 2002, and that many have undergone torture since being imprisoned at Gitmo.

Those of us on the "Commie Traitor Left" said from the beginning that paying cash money for "Al Qaeda" captives would result in nothing more than kidnap for bounty among hostile Afghan tribes. We were jeered at and told that the men in Gitmo had ALL been captured "on the battlefield."

Then we said that using torture as a routine questioning tactic was immoral because several hundred of them HAD to be innocent of all charges. We were sneered at and told that these men were "the worst of the worst" and deserved whatever they got.

Then we said that without trials, these men were being held illegally by a President out of control. We were laughed at and the GOP slammed Bush's "Torture Enabling Act" through a willing Congress.

Now we find out that everything we said was true: torture, underage kids, innocent tribesmen, and much much more. America's reaction? More sneering, jeering & ignoring the fact that their government has set aside all Rule of Law in its pursuit of this Gitmo Gulag.

I'm now of the opinion that the people of the US are a complaisant lot who deserve the Imperium that's coming. One day soon they'll wake up and realize that their country is broke, that their jobs have disappeared, and that they're in a political re-education camp...

and then they'll blame it on the Democrats.

US Settles Nuisance Lawsuit By Domestic Terrorist

U.S. Settles Suit Filed by Oregon Lawyer
$2 Million Will Be Paid For Wrongful Arrest After Madrid Attack

The U.S. government agreed yesterday to pay $2 million to settle a lawsuit filed by an Oregon lawyer who was arrested and jailed for two weeks in 2004 after the FBI bungled a fingerprint match and mistakenly linked him to a terrorist attack in Spain.

Under the terms of the settlement filed yesterday in U.S. District Court in Portland, the government also issued an unusual apology to Brandon Mayfield for the "suffering" caused by his wrongful arrest and imprisonment. It acknowledged that the ordeal was "deeply upsetting" to Mayfield and his family.

Mayfield will be able to continue pursuing his legal challenge to the constitutionality of the USA Patriot Act anti-terrorism law, which was used to obtain his personal records while he was under investigation.

The payment is a clear embarrassment for the FBI, which arrested Mayfield as a material witness in May 2004. FBI examiners had erroneously linked him to a partial fingerprint on a bag of detonators found after terrorists bombed commuter trains in Madrid in March, killing 191 people. The bureau compounded its error by stridently resisting the conclusions of the Spanish National Police, which notified the FBI three weeks before Mayfield was arrested that the fingerprint did not belong to him.

Mayfield's lawsuit alleged that his civil rights had been violated and that he was arrested because he is a Muslim convert who had represented some defendants in terrorism-related cases. In a statement Mayfield said that he was threatened with the death penalty while in custody, that he and his family were targeted "because of our Muslim religion," and that he looks forward "to the day when the Patriot Act is declared unconstitutional."

On March 11, 2004, terrorists later linked to al-Qaeda detonated bombs on several commuter trains in Madrid. The FBI assisted Spanish police by comparing latent fingerprints found nearby on a bag of detonators against its massive fingerprint database, which includes prints from former U.S. soldiers. Mayfield served in the U.S. Army. Two FBI examiners and a unit chief eventually narrowed the fingerprint match to Mayfield. Spanish police conducted their own analysis and concluded that the print was not Mayfield's. The FBI disputed that finding, dispatching an examiner to Madrid to press its case. Mayfield was arrested three weeks later amid media leaks about the ongoing investigation.

The FBI, which did not comment on yesterday's settlement, has repeatedly said that there were unusual similarities between Mayfield's fingerprints and the one found on the bag of detonators, which was eventually identified as belonging to an Algerian national named Ouhnane Daoud.

A report released in March by Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine found that although Mayfield's religion was not a factor in his initial identification, it contributed to the FBI's reluctance to reexamine its conclusions after challenges from Spanish police.

Fine also found that the FBI used expanded powers under the Patriot Act to demand personal information about Mayfield from banks and other companies, and that the law "amplified the consequences" of the FBI's mistakes by allowing other government agencies to share flawed information.

Once more the Bush Administration's War on Terror has blown up in their face. This time leaving you and I to foot the $2.3 Million bill for their fuckup.

But oh, no, we don't need to do away with the Patriot Act, do we? Government NEVER makes mistakes and never tries to ruin innocent people's lives. Government certainly never abuses its powers to detain alleged terrorism suspects under relaxed standards of probable cause... err, scratch that.

The Patriot Act is an abomination and must be repealed. Any parts of it which are truly necessary for law enforcement's use should be separated out and passed individually. The idea of lumping together all sorts of semi-legal and blatantly illegal bullshit together and then demanding that Congress vote on something called a "Patriot Act" three days after 9/11 is typical of Bush's reign of terror. Only one senator and two Congressmen had the guts to even read the thing in advance and all three of them voted against it... what should THAT have told us?

The Bind Torture Kill President -NEEDS- that power, though... how else is he to perpetuate his divide-and-conquer policy of State Terror enforced through fear?

Terrorist Whines to Congress About Torture

Alleged CIA Torture Victim Speaks Out

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Khaled el-Masri, who claims the CIA kidnapped and tortured him, recounted his story on Capitol Hill on Wednesday and said he hoped he could help prevent others from suffering a similar fate.

The Kuwaiti-born German citizen said he had brought his story to Washington to encourage greater oversight of CIA activities and force the U.S. government to acknowledge what happened to him.

El-Masri alleges he was kidnapped while trying to enter Macedonia for a vacation on Dec. 31, 2003. He claims he was flown to a CIA-run prison known as the ''salt pit'' in Kabul, Afghanistan, where he was beaten and sodomized with an object during five months in captivity.

Jeez, this guy AGAIN? Doesn't he know that he's just lucky we let him go the first time? How many times do we have to illegally kidnap and torture this guy before he gets the hint that he's not supposed to complain about us illegally kidnapping and torturing him?

Besides, rape is the sentence that every single American prisoner receives alongside his years in jail (some 25% of prison inmates are raped and America has chosen to ignore this). Why should our foreign terror suspects receive better prison treatment than our domestic forgery and drug abuse convicts? BRING ON THE RAPE!

Bind. Torture. Rape. Kill.

Incidentally, I'm all for "support our troops" and all, but what is it about America's military and intelligence cultures that brings out all the rape and forced sodomy?

What Happened and Why (And Don't Be Fooled)

The outcome of this election is as clear as it gets. Unfortunately, the Mainstream Corporate Media is out there spin, spin, spinning this election, spreading myths about what happened. The stickiest spin is that this election is somehow a victory for Conservatism and Conservative Democrats... the reasoning being that if Democrats want to stay in power, they have to be more like Republicans.

Sorry, no, not buying it.

In the interests of clarity, let's examine EXACTLY what this election meant versus what everyone is claiming:

(1) This is a devastating defeat for the Republican Party. Excuses are being made that this is "standard 6th-year losses for the President's party." If that's true, why did Democrats GAIN seats in the House in Clinton's 6th year in office? The truth here is that the President and his party are deeply unpopular and out of touch with America's desires. This win for the Democrats is a historically humiliating defeat for Bush and his supporters and they know it. We should be proud enough to acknowledge it and to force the Corporate Media to stop regurgitating Republican Talking Points.

(2) These election results are a resounding rejection of the core, defining premises of Bush's Republican Party. While the war was definitely on voters' minds, this election was NOT only about Iraq. The Democrats who won did so by opposing the main tenets of Bush's GOP: unchecked Presidential power, One-Party Rule, warmongering, war profiteering, bloated Federal deficits, tax cuts for the rich and the corruption which has fed the GOP elections machine for the last 12 years. Nine corrupt Republican incumbents were kicked out by the voters, and that's with the Corporate Media generally ignoring their crimes. When the Ethics Rules are tightened come January, and the investigations begin in earnest, another 9 will probably follow.


3) This election does NOT show support for "Conservatism" or for a new "Conservative Democratic Party."

When the Republicans took the House in 1994, their success resulted from picking off vulnerable Democrats in the South. By contrast, Democratic candidates won Tuesday in every part of the country and in the reddest of red states like Arkansas, Kansas and Indiana. The Republicans are rapidly collapsing into the Party of the Racist South... but even there, they lost incumbents and support. As we saw in Kansas where 9 major Republicans switched parties and ran as Moderate Democrats, the GOP has catered to the deranged Theologist Religious Right for so long that they've alienated middle of the road voters from their own party.

Most devastating for the Republicans, Democrats got 30% of the White Christian Evangelical vote. The message is sinking in for religious people: Republicans stand for power not for Jesus. There's no Christian message in fucking the poor and extending the life of Teri Schiavo, only hate-mana thrown to a small and deranged band of religious extremists. There's nothing Christ-like about scapegoating Gays while molesting Congressional pages. There's no message from God about shifting money from the poor to the rich through regressive tax cuts.

Furthermore, Democrats of all stripes and ideologies won... from the first honest-to-god Socialist to ever serve in the House to Jim Webb, former Secretary of the Navy for Ronald Reagan.

Yes, some conservative Democrats were elected. Some of them are pro-Life and some are opposed to gay marriage. Big Deal. Harry Reid is both of those things, but he's still a clear progressive whose stances on those issues kept Karl Rove from running distracting sideshows the real issues, like he has for the last 3 elections. The same goes for guys like Casey in Pennsylvania... I'd rather have a pro-life Democrat than a theocrat like Rick Santorum any day of the week.

Best of all, for the first time in 12 years, Democrats didn't win by pretending to be Republicans... they won because they emphatically and unapologetically vowed to oppose what the Republican Party has become and to put an end to its destructive one-party rule. No one voting thought they were getting Republican Lite. Democrats won by aggressively attacking everything Bush stands for, not by trying to be a slightly modified and duller version of it like they did in 2000, 2002 and 2004.


(4) The Blogs Won This Election. Many of the Democrats who won were candidates who were supported most enthusiastically by the most liberal blogs who raised money for only a handful of challengers, many of whom won against Republican incumbents in previously red districts: Sherrod Brown, Ben Cardin, Chris Carney, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Nick Lampson, Tim McNerery, Patrick Murphy, Joe Sestak, Jon Tester, Tim Walz and Jim Webb, among others.

Many of those Democratic winners weren't initially supported by the Democratic Party, either... especially McNerey in his race against Dick "I Hate The Earth" Pombo, who got $300,000 or so from the DNC versus the $1.6 million that the GOP pumped into that race. The Blogs and Environmental Movement made the difference in overcoming a corrupt polluter who spent over $7 Million against an expert in Wind Power.

Not every Blog-support candidate won, but that doesn't mean that liberal blogs weren't effective. Bloggers tended to support underdog Democratic candidates who were challenging Republican incumbents... the seats which are the most difficult to win. Most blog-favored Democrats who lost were ones running in extremely red districts against GOP incumbents -- such as Angie Paccione (against the heinous Marilyn Musgrave) and Victoria Wulslin (against the equally disgusting Jean Schmidt) -- and they came very close to winning.

Given those facts, the idea that this election was some great repudiation of the Progressive Blogger Branch of the Democratic Party is wishful thinking by those who wish it were so. The Democrats who won have one thing in common: aggressive opposition to the monstrosities of the Republican Party.

(5) Karl Rove is not All-Powerful and The American People aren't retarded -- or -- You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

For the last six years, Bush and his cronies have run rampant across the political landscape destroying our freedom, limiting our Civil Rights, and fatally wounding the Constitution. They've gotten away with it because they out-strategized their Democratic opponents at every turn.

In 2000, voters bought into Rove's talking points of "Compassionate Conservatism," "Clinton Fatigue," and "No Child Left Behind." Rove pointed Bush squarely at the middle, while simultaneously telling Christian Evangelical Theocracy-lovers that once in office Bush would outlaw abortion, evolution, stem cells and make being gay an executable offense. The mainstream Corporate Media refused to see the truth before their eyes, didn't notice that Bush wasn't sending "dog-whistle" code signals to religious voters (such as constantly quoting from the Bible and obscure right-wing Hymns in his speeches) and pretended that Bush's lies about the failure of his policies in Texas were equivalent to Gore's overstatements about the Social Security Lockbox and him personally inventing the Internet (which he didn't even say).

At the same time, Gore's handlers were telling him to run a Republican-Lite campaign. To aid this, Gore brought on Joe Lieberman, who proceeded to make the election about who loved God more, him or Bush. God, god, god, blah blah social security lockbox, god, god, god, earth-toned suits, God, god. Blechhh. Progressive voters stayed home, Gore won the popular vote and then blinked in Florida when confronted by clear voting fraud. His scrambling attempts to only recount Dem-leaning counties made him appear partisan. When the Supreme Court handed down their illegal and unprecedented ruling, Gore blinked again: Democratic "Leadership" advised Gore to step away gracefully to maintain his future electability, despite later recounts which showed that Gore had clearly won the state of Florida.

Having thus won in 2000, Rove and Tom Delay set about establishing permanent One-Party Rule of America. There was no tax they wouldn't cut, no legislation they wouldn't pass, so long as they got a corporate campaign contribution in return.

In 2001, before 9/11, Bush's popularity was hovering around 39%, the lowest for any President that early in his career. The Republicans were headed towards massive midterm losses. After 9/11, the Republicans used the boogeyman of Osama Bin Laden to scare voters into voting against their own economic and political self-interest. As proof of their weakness, the Democrats were even unwilling to challenge the legitimacy of Rove's terror alert issued in the week before the election. Rove made the 2002 elections a referendum on whether Democrats had the stomach to confront Saddam Hussein. Weak-kneed Democratic "Leadership" like Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt were unable to adjust to this new scaremongering reality, unable to rationally prove that Saddam was a paper tiger, express a clear alternative vision for the nation, and voted FOR the President's desired war. Thus, by playing Republican-Lite once again, they were swept from office by the Rove Machine.

In 2004, Democratic "Leadership" decided that instead of a popular progressive Governor who was against the war, the party machinery should instead be rallied behind a career political insider Senator who had voted for the war, a lifetime politician with a career full of procedural votes which could easily be twisted to mean anything the Republicans wanted ("he voted NO on giving our troops body armor"), NO charisma, no ability to speak movingly or clearly to the common man, an excessive love for nuanced speech ("I voted for the bill, before I voted against it), an inability to define his own career successes and a complete inability to fight back when aggressively attacked, either with labels (flip-flopper) or even about his own history (Swift-boats Veterans for Truth).

Faced with The Decider or The Equivocator, America voted for Rove's candidate. It helped that he had anti-gay ballot measures on 24 state ballots to drive his religious hate-filled partisans to the voting booth.

This time around, though, new Democratic Leadership rejected the Republican-Lite theory. Howard Dean, Rahm Emmanuel, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid kept a generally straight line as they marched towards Rove with bayonets lowered: The President is out of touch, the Republicans are corrupt, and the war is probably already lost. Faced with a unified opponent unwilling to play Republican-Lite, Rove's vaunted machine failed; today, he is a rejected loser. Karl Rove's ability to hypnotize zombified Americans with distractions like the New Jersey court ruling on gay civil unions, or John Kerry idiotic comments, or moronic buzzphrases has worn thin. No longer will catchy slogans about how Democrats "support terrorists" and their "San Francisco values" work to divide people like before... so long as Democrats don't allow themselves to stand still and allow the Republicans to define them.

Rovism is dead. Americans see Bush's Republican movement for what it is and have begun the process of smashing it.

(6) The Democratic victory is only one small step towards the restoration of our country, the Constitution and the Rule of Law. This President feels that Congress is irrelevant and has shown a propensity for ignoring any law that it passes and for ignoring any and all rebukes shown him by the Supreme Court. Reversing the damage done by six years of One-Party Rule will take time and concerted effort: there is still accountability to be imposed, subpoenas to be issued, crimes to be uncovered, radicalism to be reversed, and tons of damage to be undone... and none of that will be easy. Democrats still face a dysfunctional and corrupt national media, apathy on the part of some Americans, the potent use of propaganda by the Bush administration, voter suppression tactics, gerrymandering and fundraising corruption.

Lastly, let's not ignore the threats that still face us. Just because Karl Rove didn't wheel Osama bin Laden out in the week before this midterm election doesn't mean he's not saving him for 2008. Let's wait and see some serious examinations of the voting machine results in close elections before we admit that Diebold's machines are fine when they clearly are NOT fine. Let's also not forget the mindnumbing panic and fear that 9/11 produced which allowed this cabal of Authoritarian psychotics to gain absolute control of our country for four years. If another attack should happen, we need to be ready to point out that retreat into Despotism is NOT the answer.

Get to work, Democrats. Otherwise you're just part of the problem.

President Bush Signs Torture Enabling Act of 2006

President George W. Bush signs into law S. 3930, the "Military Commissions Act of 2006," during a ceremony Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2006, in the East Room of the White House. Joining him on stage, from left are: Utah Rep. Chris Cannon, Indiana Rep. Steve Buyer, Wisconsin Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, California Rep. Duncan Hunter, and Sen. John Warner of Virginia. General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales are in the background.

Now... look closer...
Closer... closer... closer on the photo...YES! Your president is SMILING while he signs into "law" a bill which allows him to torture anyone he wants, then use their testimony gained under torture as "evidence" in kangaroo court "trials" and execute these "enemy combatants" at his whim, all without Supreme Court interference, which the lickspittle Republican Congress cut out of the picture by stripping the combatants of their rights to Habeus Corpus.

Why are Republicans so THRILLED to reverse 791 years of Ango-American jurisprudence? One can only suppose that it's because they know the TRUE identity of George Bush:

The Minister Has Been Away

The Minister has been away in Miami Beach, Florida. He was invited to speak at The Wolfsonian Museum and the Miami Ad School about the subject of Propaganda and the Propaganda Research Project.

The Miami Ad School students were an amazing audience. They laughed where they were supposed to and asked a lot of questions afterwards. Hell, they even sat still, long after the Minister accidentally went over his time limit. The presentation that night involved the various types of Propaganda, how to see through them, and then some examples of the Minister's own Propaganda. The Minister kicked himself later for not speaking about fonts, the care he uses to replicate old 40's fonts, and the difficulty involved with picking a replacement font when the original is not available (or was hand-drawn). The Minister will make up for that next time.

The Wolfsonian audience was kept low due to a ferocious rainstorm which raged for two hours prior to the event. Still, for the 20 or so who turned out, a good time was had by all. The presentation on that night focused on the Bush Administration's attempts to propagandize the American citizenry through the use of subliminal signage and religious imagery in official press photographs, followed by a historical examination of the President's term in office as told through the Minister's propaganda pieces.

The Minister's favorite attendee at the Wolfsonian was the beefy white man, mid-40's with a crew-cut blocked three inches above the collar of his tweed coat, who was sitting in the audience taking notes on a clipboard. Afterwards the Minister ran into the man in the hallway and thanked him for coming to the event:

The Minister of Propaganda: "Hi, thanks for coming out. Oh, hey, I saw you taking notes... You're not with Homeland Security, are you?"

Sinister Man In Tweed: "See you in Gitmo, Kid!"

The Minister of Propaganda: "Ha ha... huh?"

For the rest of the evening, the Minister signed all books like this: "Dear __________, You're a traitor for owning this book. See you in Gitmo, Kid!"

The Minister has no idea if the crew-cut was indeed a military snitch, but the stories in the paper the next day where the ACLU once again proved that the Pentagon is spying on non-violent anti-war protestors like it was 1972 all over again didn't ease the mind.

Oh, and the Minister's bags were searched both when flying to Miami and flying home to Los Angeles. Probably because of the high incidence of published authors/anti-war activists who have joined Al Qaeda and blown up airplanes, right? Polite notecards were even left in the Minister's bags by the TSA, informing him of the search. That wasn't necessary though: the Minister always knows when his bags have been searched because they're the first ones off of the baggage carousel. Why, it's so convenient that it's almost worth surrendering your civil liberties for!

This marks the 19th and 20th consecutive times that the Minister's bags have been searched. Simple probability math results in a box set showing that the odds of this happening at random are approximately 1 in a few billion.

Lest you sneer and delcare that the Minister is suffering from delusions of grandeur, reflect for a moment on the fact that the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) in New York City wrote the text for the Minister's first book of posters. Then reflect on the fact that Barbara Olshansky, assistant legal director of the CCR in New York, reports that she has been stopped and searched every time she has flown since 9/11. On several of those occasions, she was forced to pull down her pants in view of other travelers. On one flight in 2002, six members of the CCR's staff, including Olshansky, were stopped and subjected to intense scrutiny, even though they had purchased their tickets independently and had not checked in as a group. On that occasion, Olshansky got angry and demanded to know why she had been singled out. The airline agent at the gate threatened to bar her from the plane if she raised a fuss and added brusquely, “The computer spit you out. I don’t know why, and I don’t have time to talk to you about it.”

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA), part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is authorized by law to maintain watch lists of names of individuals suspected of posing "a risk of air piracy or terrorism or a threat to airline or passenger safety." While initially denying to the media that such a list existed, the TSA finally acknowledged the No-Fly List's existence in October 2002. In December of 2002, the Electronic Privacy and Information Center (EPIC) sued the TSA and DHS to force them to reveal details of the No-Fly List and any evidence of the suspected "Hassle When Flying" List.

The documents obtained by EPIC establish that the TSA administers two lists: a "No Fly" list and a "Selectee" list, which requires the passenger to go through additional security measures. The names are provided to air carriers through any number of local and federal police agencies and are stored in their computer systems so that an individual with a name that matches the list can be flagged when getting a boarding pass. A TSA "No Fly List" name match requires the agent to call a law enforcement officer to detain and question the passenger. In the case of a Selectee, an "S" or special mark is printed on their boarding pass and the person receives additional screening at security. The TSA has withheld the number of names on each of the lists. The TSA has also withheld information about any existing approval process for putting citizens on the lists. Nor will the TSA reveal who (if anyone) verifies that the names are selected appropriately and whether the information is accurate. Nor does the TSA have a centralized standardized way to challenge or remove your name from either list.

In other words, even if the Minister has been put on the Selectee List, there's no way to verify that he has been, no way to discover why, no way to challenge said placement, and no way to get the Minister's name removed from the list.

While the Minister fully supports catching air-travelling "Terrorist Suiciders" he doesn't support the Bush Administration using a non-partisan government agency to target Americans based on their political beliefs.

Airport Security in this country has gotten painful in America since 9/11. Our Government's immediate response was to blame failed airport security for the failures of the CIA and FBI and Customs & Immigration services in allowing known terrorists into the country, to live here for years while planning and training for their attacks, and for not stopping them before they slammed two jetliners into the World Trade Center, a third into the Pentagon and a fourth into a field a few hundred miles short of the Capitol Dome or the White House.

This over-reaction to perceived (but not real) failures and the corresponding bulking up of Airport Security is stupid, futile and, in the long run, utterly pointless.

On September 11th, 2001, airport security did exactly the job that it was meant to do that day: it x-rayed the terrorists' carry-on baggage and ran them through a metal detector. The box cutters and Leatherman tools that the hijackers used on 9/11 were detected... and ignored because they were all perfectly legal to carry onboard of airplanes. If they hadn't been, they would have been confiscated.

Even that wouldn't have stopped the 9/11 hijackers, however. Ban whatever you like, it doesn't take the world's smartest criminal to smuggle a dangerous item onto plane. There's an entire class of people who spend all day concocting nefarious, and ultimately undetectable, instruments of destruction... prison inmates. As any Corrections Officer can tell you, prisoners are ruthlessly inventive when it comes to improvising weaponry with which to cause their fellow prisoners harm. Hell, G-10 laminate is an ultra-hard, metal-free material used in circuit boards, and can be carved into a wicked razor-sharp credit card knife that would pass any x-ray screening or metal detector. We can't keep weapons out of maximum security prisons... so how can we hope to keep them out of airports? Let's just stipulate that the hijackers would have boarded the planes on 9/11 despite whatever kind of weapons they had on them at the time.

So what's that mean? Quite simply, it says that metal detectors and X-Ray machines are the last line of defense designed to prevent a criminal from getting onboard a commercial airliner with an obvious weapons such as a handgun or a knife. They are not, and we should not expect them to be, front-line anti-terror tools. Stopping terrorists is a police and intelligence matter. Terrorism needs to be stopped at the planning stages. That's where increased security spending could do the most good. By the time the terrorist gets to the airport, it's too late... the primary line of defense has already failed and no amount of bullshit airport security will stop them at that point. If they've avoided detection, then these theoretical terrorists are easily clever enough to sneak weapons onboard the planes.

Despite whatever paranoid bullshit terror plots the Administration might bring up to scare Americans into surrendering civil liberties and expanding airport security measures, there remains one highly exceptional anti-terrorist protection scheme: the onboard passengers.

On September 11th, 2001, the era of the Al-Qaeda Passenger Airplane Bomb was both born... and strangled in its cradle. Prior to 9/11, terrorist hijackings typically ended with extended hostage negotiation situations and special-forces-shootouts on airport tarmacs. When those planes were hijacked, the passengers in them could only imagine that their flights would end the same way. But when the first three planes hit the World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon, word went out to every plane in the air, including United Flight 93. There were no armed pilots or Air Marshals on United 93... instead, average American citizens discovered that they were NOT going to be landing in Cuba and traded for PLO "prisoners of war" but instead that they were going to be slammed into a government building. So they charged their attackers and forced them to prematurely crash the plane.

Today, there will be no "maybe this will all work itself out" phase for airline passengers. Today, EVERY passenger knows what will happen if terrorists get control of the plane: either they'll die when they're slammed into a building or they'll die when Dick Cheney orders them shot out of the air. NO ONE will EVER allow their plane to get taken over by Terrorists ever again. People will stand up, push one arm through the strap of the flotation devices that they're sitting on, and charge whatever stupid Al Queada Suicider was dumb enough to announce his intention to hijack the plane. Then that stupid terrorist will be kicked and stomped to death by the panicked passengers. United 93 wasn't the first time passengers had risen up against people trying to take over the plane, but it was certainly the LAST time that any passengers anywhere will allow a small group of terrorists to hijack their plane. Knives or no knives, guns or no guns, bombs or no bombs, shoebombs or no shoebombs, liquid explosive bombs or no liquid explosive bombs, no terrorist will ever again be able to take control of an airplane once it is in flight.

Osama (or whoever) has to know this. It's why Al Qaeda hasn't tried the same tactic again. It's too bad that the TSA insists on always protecting us against YESTERDAY'S threat.

Yes, Al Qaeda has tried other things, such as the stupid Richard Reid shoe bomb plot attempt which utterly failed... and yet accomplished Al Qaeda's primary goal of spreading fear and panic... because now the TSA (reacting to yesterday's threat) makes us take off our shoes at the security booth and stand around waiting for our shoes to come out of the x-ray machine. Reid's lame shoebomb attempt was foiled not by an x-ray machine, but by a flight attendant and some passengers who punched his lights out (thus proving my above theory).

Yet again, though, we see the average passenger being punished for the actions of one lone nutcase who was easily stopped. Enough with the x-raying of shoes... it's inconvenient for passengers, the Department of Homeland Security said that x-raying shoes doesn't detect bombs,and even if some idiot winds up on the plane with a shoe-bomb, he's going to get kicked and stomped to death. Give us some credit for a sense of self-preservation, would ya?

Incidentally, all airport security is rendered moot by the simple fact that for $50, any Al Qaeda Terrorist can put a package onto any airliner he wants simply by sending it "air freight." To this day, a full five fucking years after 9/11/2001, Air Freight packages are NOT x-rayed, nor does the Al Qaeda shippen even have to get on board with his bomb!

Only a moron would allow potentially bomb-filled packages to be shipped on civilian airliners while simultaneously making fliers take off their shoes, not carry liquids, or like in Britain, check their laptops and ipods. The simple fact that air freight isn't x-rayed means that ALL airport security is merely a Kabuki Dance designed to make the sheep feel safe-ish, all while reinforcing the need for an all-powerful police state.

See ya in Gitmo, kids!

Senate Passes Bush's Torture Enabling Act of 2006

Americans of the future won't remember the Democrats' pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration. They'll only know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation's version of the Alien and Sedition Acts or the interment of Americans of Japanese descent.

House Passes Bush's Torture Enabling Act of 2006

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.

It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.

Last week, the White House and three Republican senators announced a terrible deal on this legislation that gave Mr. Bush most of what he wanted, including a blanket waiver for crimes Americans may have committed in the service of his antiterrorism policies. Then Vice President Dick Cheney and his willing lawmakers rewrote the rest of the measure so that it would give Mr. Bush the power to jail pretty much anyone he wants for as long as he wants without charging them, to unilaterally reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, to authorize what normal people consider torture, and to deny justice to hundreds of men captured in error.

These are some of the bill’s biggest flaws:

Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.

The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Sexual Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

There is not enough time to fix these bills, especially since the few Republicans who call themselves moderates have been whipped into line, and the Democratic leadership in the Senate seems to have misplaced its spine. If there was ever a moment for a filibuster, this was it.

We don’t blame the Democrats for being frightened. The Republicans have made it clear that they’ll use any opportunity to brand anyone who votes against this bill as a terrorist enabler. But Americans of the future won’t remember the pragmatic arguments for caving in to the administration.

They’ll know that in 2006, Congress passed a tyrannical law that will be ranked with the low points in American democracy, our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.
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SIlly Islamo-Fascist New York Times... don't you know that we're at WAR?!

President Bravely Slashes NASA Waste

The President has once again shown that he won't allow Big Government growth in frivolous programs which waste tax dollars in return for nothing which will make us safer from Terrorists:

WASHINGTON — A series of steep cuts in aeronautics research at NASA threaten to undermine the nation's aviation industry and delay a new air traffic system needed to prevent gridlock in the skies, according to members of Congress, industry officials and scientific leaders. Groups of lawmakers from both parties, academics and aerospace leaders say the reductions are hampering NASA's ability to develop new aviation technology.

NASA has lost hundreds of millions of dollars in aviation funding over the past decade and is struggling to pay for repairing the space shuttle and for President Bush's plan to send people to the moon and Mars. Next year, the agency faces a proposed 20% cut in aviation research. That means that, after adjusting for inflation, it could lose nearly two-thirds of that research funding since it peaked in 1994 at the equivalent of nearly $2 billion.

The agency is planning to cut $54 million — or 31% — from its effort to study emerging technologies required for a new national air traffic system. NASA is the primary agency researching the Next Generation Air Traffic System, an ambitious program to replace radars with satellite-based technology. Without increased capacity from the new system, airlines can expect increasing flight delays, according to government estimates.

Current NASA funding falls as much as $200 million to $300 million a year short of what is actually needed, according to the Aerospace Industries Association. Retired Air Force major general William Hoover, who co-chaired a government study on aeronautics research needs, told the House subcommittee on space Tuesday that NASA must boost work on the air traffic system now or face problems in the future.
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NASA is a Democrat program. We hate Democrat programs. Do the math. If you don't like it, maybe next time YOU should rig the election machines in your favor. But you won't, cuz you don't have the will to power.

Bush Slips In Surprise For Senators

The Bush administration, supported by House allies, has slipped a small but important change into last week's "compromise" bill on terror suspects. The earlier bill, worked out in negotiations with restive Senate Republicans, defined enemy combatants as those who have "engaged in hostilities," but the latest draft legislation expands the definition to include those who have "supported hostilities." The new language could boost the administration's contention that it can designate virtually anyone an enemy combatant. The Washington Post notes it "does not rule out the possibility" that the designation could be applied to a U.S. citizen.

Wheeeee! Now the President can kidnap and torture and kill American citizens!

Unfortunately, the Mainstream Corporate News Media seems to have awakened far too late to the most controversial aspect of the bill: If passed, the legislation would strip detainees of the right to challenge their imprisonment in court. The Senate judiciary committee took up the issue today, and among those invited to testify was Thomas Sullivan, a lawyer for several Guantanamo detainees. Describing existing Guantanamo hearings to Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, a former judge who supports stripping habeas rights, Sullivan channeled Joseph Welch:

There was no lawyer given to the defendants. They didn't speak English, most of them. They were young men who had no training in law. There were no rules of evidence applicable… Now, [do] you call that due process, Your Honor? Do you? … This is a historic moment in our time. To suspend the writ of habeas corpus without hearings, rushing it through just before elections, where people are afraid to vote against this bill because somebody on the other side is going to hold up a TV commercial and criticize them for it, is phony.

What an Islamofascist Traitor this guy is, with his quaint belief in the rule of law and the Constitution and the idea that America might be making some kind of mistake.

Islamofascist Drink-Lovers 1, Homeland Security 0

ARLINGTON, Va. — Passengers will be allowed to carry liquids on airplanes under new security rules prompted by FBI tests that show it's highly unlikely that terrorists could bring down a jet with a bomb made from small amounts of fluids, the nation's airport security chief said Monday.

Travelers may bring liquids and everyday items such as shampoo, toothpaste and makeup through security, provided they're stored in 3-ounce containers that fit in a 1-quart clear bag, Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley said Monday. Passengers also can carry on liquids and gels in any quantity that they buy in airport shops after passing through security, including at duty-free shops. Drinks and other items are screened before being sold in secure airport areas.

Testing by the FBI and at government labs showed that small containers of liquids "don't pose a real threat," Hawley said.
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Why... it's almost as if the threat was never real to begin with, and the government was only trying to scare us into voting correctly, this dire threat being announced as it was, the day after Ned Lamont defeated Joe Lieberman. But naaah, the government probably had a good reason to do this in the first place, right?

Jim Kapin, head of health and safety for the American Chemical Society, said small quantities of liquids could not seriously damage an airplane. Even if several terrorists smuggled liquid explosives on board, it is "practically speaking, impossible" to make a bomb on an airplane because of the equipment and expertise required, Kapin said.

Errrr..... uhm, okay, maybe we didn't have a point, but at least things are back to normal now, right?

A.J. Castilla, a screener at Boston's Logan International Airport and spokesman for a screeners union, said the new policy "is more confusing and certainly will add to the lines during the holidays." "We're just adding another level of screening to a screening process that was simple," Castilla said.

Travelers must remove the bags that hold liquids from their carry-ons so they can go through X-ray machines separately and be inspected by screeners. Each traveler may carry only one bag, which can hold several 3-ounce containers.

Okay, so I guess we're NOT back to where we were. Instead, we have to put all our liquids in a tiny bag, zip open our MAIN bag, get out the tiny bag, put that through the screener, zip open our computer laptop bags, put the laptops through, take off our shoes, put our shoes through, take any metal out of our pockets, put that through... and then rush back to the counter and buy a new ticket because we've all missed our fucking flights BECAUSE OF ALL THIS STUPID TERROR-MONGERING BULLSHIT.

I'M FUCKING SICK OF IT ALL. I'm now willing to sacrifice ONE PLANE PER YEAR so we can go back to pre-9/11 security. The airlines pay for the screeners, I go through a metal detector, put my bag through an x-ray machine and BLAM. Done. Guess what? Those screening measures would have stopped the 9/11 terrorists if only some twat in Washington hadn't decided that no one could kill anyone with a 3-inch knife or a boxcutter or a Leatherman tool.

What should have happened on 9/12 was those things and anything shaped like a nail file over 3" long should have become illegal, all luggage should have been mandatorily x-rayed, and that's it. Read that again: ALL FUCKING LUGGAGE SHOULD HAVE BEEN X-RAYED. It's not. Yup, 5 years after 9/11, not all bags are x-rayed. Wait, it gets even stupider: if I don't get on with my bags, then my bags are quite sensibly removed the aircraft, right? I mean, I could be a terrorist. Oh, but if I go to the airport 15 minutes before a flight, I can put an Air Cargo box onto the plane for $50 and I don't have to get on board with my box, nor does my fucking box get X-Rayed.

Yes, for $50 each, Al Qaeda could put bombs on every outgoing flight in America. Figure, they get 100 guys to do this all over the nation on the same day... ohmigod, for $5,000, Al Qaeda just blew all of Bush's expensive BULLSHIT SECURITY right out of the water. Billions on making American Citizens' lives harder, all ruined by $5000 and 100 Al Qaeda guys.

It's almost as if the Government's ENTIRE "airline security" measures are designed solely to make you FEEL like they're doing something when they're really not. Oh, and to make you constantly afraid and filled with the dread of ever-present Terrorism.

Instead of spending billions of dollars on machines that don't work and fucking up air travel for millions of voters, if we wanted to go overboard on security, then we could have set up a system of screeners like El Al airlines has where agents trained in micro-expression reading to roam among the passengers asking them questions and gauging their reactions. That's what the Israelis do. You know, the people who haven't had a single airline hijacking or terrorism incident in over 30 years?

But no, that's not what Bush-era security is all about. Our security is all about transferring taxpayer dollars to large corporations in return for political donations.

For Bush, War Anguish Expressed Privately

For Bush, War Anguish Expressed Privately
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 25, 2006;

FALMOUTH, Maine -- They sat on two frayed chairs in a teacher's lounge, the president and the widow, just the two of them so close that their knees were almost touching. She was talking about her husband, the soldier who died in a far-off war zone. Tears rolled down her face as she mentioned two children left fatherless. His eyes welled up, too. He hugged her, held her face, kissed her cheek. "I am so sorry for your loss," he kept repeating. She told him she considers him responsible for her husband's death and begged him to bring home the troops. "It's time to put our pride behind us and stop the bleeding, for all of us," she recalled saying. The president demurred, unwilling to debate a mourning woman. "We see things differently," he said.

The two sides of Bush as commander in chief can be hard to reconcile. His public persona gives little sense that he dwells on the costs of war. He does not seem to agonize as Johnson did, or even as his father, George H.W. Bush, did before the Persian Gulf War. While he pays tribute to those who have fallen, the president strives to show resolve and avoid displays that might be seen as weak or doubting. His refusal to attend military funerals, while taking long Texas vacations and extended bicycle rides, strikes some critics as callous indifference.

Yet the private Bush comes across differently in the accounts of aides, friends, relatives and military family members who have met with him. The first question Bush usually asks national security briefers in the Oval Office each morning is about overnight casualties, aides say, and those who show up for the next round of meetings often find him still stewing about bad news from Iraq.

If he does not show that publicly, it's in keeping with a White House practice of not drawing attention to the mounting costs of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have killed more than 3,000 U.S. troops and tens of thousands of civilians. Advisers worry that sending the wrong signal would further sap public will and embolden the enemy and Bush's critics. Aides say that Bush does not attend military funerals because the presidential entourage would disrupt solemn events and that, out of respect, the media have been banned from photographing coffins arriving at Dover Air Force Base. But they also know it would focus a spotlight on the price of the president's policies.
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Oh, if it weren't for those meddlesome advisers and aides! Their constant meddling means the President can never break down and cry in public about the deaths he's caused! And Bush's daily question about how Iraq is going doesn't indicate a man concerned that his party is going to get its ass kicked in November, but the deep musings of a

President Bush hugs Anita Kukkola after presenting her son, Pfc. Jason Kukkola of Fountain Hills, Ariz., with a Purple Heart at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. In both the preceeding story and in this photo, all Real Americans will note exactly how privately the President is expressing his war anguish. No one was present except the soldier, his mother, the President and the photographer and the press corps and maybe a few major campaign contributors and possibly a couple of energy corporation CEOs eager for face time with The Decider.

The United States of Torture

I, for one, am glad our President can now torture and murder prisoners at his own discretion. It makes me feel safer. At this point only a few more domestic terrorism scares and the death of 86-year-old Pro-Terrorist Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, stand between American criminals and torture! Who wouldn't want to see John Mark Karr tortured and murdered for whatever it was he claimed he did but didn't really do this week? It's the catharsis that counts, dammit! He's a creep and I want to see him fry! If we'd only allow secret evidence in American trials, we would have our disgusting revolving-door-prison-industrial-complex system! Yes, I can't wait until they televise the first electrocutions from Guantánamo Bay! President Bush is right: those silly Geneva Conventions are quaint and outdated, as is the even older and more outdated Bill of Rights. Those passé rules put the rights of terrorists and other accused criminals above OUR right to live free of crime, and it's time we put a stop to it!

President Gets Big Win In Quest For Torture Powers

A tentative deal between the White House and dissident Senate Republicans on the interrogation and trial of suspected terrorists has been announced. The compromise legislation clarifies acceptable interrogation techniques and outlines military commission procedures. It will likely pass both the Republican-controlled House and Senate just in time to drive home the "Republicans = Strong On Terror" theme so vital to our electoral system.

With a major GOP rift apparently closed, the Corporate Media spent all day playing up the unity-and-goodwill theme. This quote from Sen. John McCain is typical: "We're all winners because we've been able to come to an agreement through a process of negotiations and consensus." You're all winners? Really? Because the details—not to mention the crowing from the White House—indicate that Bush has scored a major victory while the Senate cravenly slinks away, barely able to save face. By focusing solely on the provisions over which the two sides disagreed, the Corporate Media overlooks sickening areas of GOP agreement.

The New York Times explains the compromise: the Bush administration agreed not to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions, an international treaty. In return, the senators agreed that the War Crimes Act, a domestic law, will be rewritten to define what constitutes "grave breaches" of the Geneva Conventions. As for less serious violations of the conventions ("those lying between cruelty and minor abuse"), the senators agreed Bush will be given the authority to judge the "meaning and application" of the Geneva Conventions.

Yeah, that's a good idea... because Bush has certainly shown such a clear record of restraint in these matters thus far.

In short, the deal seems to grant Bush the exact same "I want to reinterpret the Geneva Conventions" powers that he initially asserted, only now the Senate has simply changed the name. The Washington Post indicates that this wording change may have been all that McCain wanted from the beginning: the "biggest hurdle" in negotiations "was convincing administration officials that lawmakers would never accept language that allowed Bush to appear to be reinterpreting the Geneva Conventions."

Presidential counselor Dan Bartlett certainly views this "compromise" as nothing of the sort: "We proposed a more direct approach to bringing clarification. This one is more of the scenic route, but it gets us there."

Ahh, the scenic route to torture. It's almost Wadsworth! Yes, poetic turns of phrase like this inspire the human spirit, right? Methinks it's time for a senatorial torture haiku:

President Bush pleads:
"I lust to waterboard them!"
We smile and cave in...

As for the other main point of contention between the White House and the Senate "rebels" —that the accused should have access to secret evidence against them— the Corporate Media is pretending that the senators made more headway. Evidently defendants will be allowed to see secret evidence in "summary or redacted form." Of course, the extent of the summary and redaction goes unspecified, just like everything else in this "deal," which is rather unconscionable to anyone with respect for the rule of law. Most people would clearly recognize that: "America hereby sentences you to death because we have evidence that shows you ██████ on ████ with ██████" is pretty disgusting and fundamentally unAmerican. Evidently Senators McCain, Graham and Warner (and their acquiescent fellow Republicans who didn't even pretend to put up a fight) don't know unAmerican fascism when they sign off on it.

Rather typically, President Bush is already trying to wiggle out of even this minor concession by claiming that OTHER Republicans in the House of Representatives want to deny Bush's prisoners access to the secret evidence against them. How can President Bush possibly say no to the House's demands, regardless of the deal he just signed with the Senate to do exactly that?

Brilliantly played, sir.

Unfortunately the Corporate Media doesn't even bother to mention one of the biggest problems with this already gutted "compromise" legislation: even before negotiations began, both the administration and its Senate opponents had provisions in their respective bills to strip detainees of their right to file an application for a writ of habeas corpus. Apparently the goal of EVERYONE involved is to turn the prison at Guantánamo Bay back into a legal black hole that the Supreme Court has no jurisdiction over.

This entire rebellion was purportedly about President Bush's power to rewrite international human rights treaties that the United States is legally bound to obey. Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and John Warner cast themselves as Republican moderates who opposed this blatantly illegal move by the White House. Now we see that they are nothing of the sort, and that this entire "principled struggle" has been an elaborate Three Card Monte game designed to make the Republican Party seem principled, fair, and rational when it's nothing of the sort. The losers of this shell game are the accused terrorists, the American constitution, the American people, the rule of law, and every citizen of the world.

In essence, this deal merely codifies the current, sickening, and illegal status quo: that President Bush can illegally kidnap, imprison, torture and kill any citizen of any country, for any reason he likes, and that his decisions are final and cannot be reviewed by the Federal Courts. The only difference is that now President Bush has Congress's tacit approval for his worldwide reign of terror.

That's some compromise, guys. Have fun explaining that one to your grandchildren when they asked what you did to prevent the destruction of Democracy in America.

This abdication of responsibility by the Senate means that 2 of the 3 branches of American Government have signed off on abduction, torture and murder as routine anti-terrorism tools. The last objecting branch, the Supreme Court, is now the last bulwark against an Imperial Presidency with these powers. Justices Ginsburg, Souter, Breyer, Stevens, and Kennedy ruled on June 23rd, 2006 that the President did NOT have these powers. Alito, Scalia, and Thomas voted to let the President torture, try and execute these prisoners according to his own whims. John Roberts sat out the vote because he had previously been part of a federal appeals court that had ruled earlier in the case that Bush could do anything he wanted to. So, in essence that vote was truly 5-4.

The only thing that stands between us and the Dictatorship of an admitted Torturer now is the health of 86-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens, a man already 9 years beyond the 77-year average life expectancy of a wealthy white male in the United States. If Justice Stevens dies between now and January 20, 2009, expect President Bush to pack another right-wing religious zealot onto the court to replace him. Then Emperor Bush will have all three branches of government fully behind him and his disturbing need to torture.

I sure hope you people are voting Democrat this November.
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UPDATE - Someone wrote to say I'm overstating the case. His contention is that Bush doesn't claim this power over any citizen in the world, only over terrorists actively involved in attacks on the United States. That's what the Corporate Media wants us to believe, but it's not true. Bush has unilaterally redefined his own rules to include not only accused terrorists, but also anyone suspected of funding or even merely "supporting" terrorism. Because he's the only person who has the power to decide what "supporting" means, this is, in essence, self-granted Carte Blanche to abduct anyone, anywhere.

Bush is currently holding 14,000 people in Afghanistan and Iraq, most of whom the military freely admits are innocent of any crime. Bush has admitted that the CIA is operating several illegal prisons throughout the world. The European Union estimates that at least 100 citizens have been kidnapped off the streets of Europe since 9/11/2001 by the CIA. Several of these kidnapped people were innocent (if not the majority of them), and a small trickle of them have been released from Bush's Torture Chambers after several weeks, months and even years of pointless torture.

Anyone, anywhere is a target at any time, should Bush or his countless underlings decide that they might be involved in Terrorism. That's all it takes: an inkling.

The writer's second contention was that Bush isn't trying to kill the Guantánamo Bay prisoners, but merely to sentence them to long terms in prison. I'm sorry, old son, execution is EXACTLY what Bush's Justice Department argued Bush had the right to carry out in Gherebi v. Bush, before the 9th Circuit Court. To quote the presiding judge: "Indeed, at oral argument, the government advised us that its position [that the Guantánamo detainees had no access to the federal courts or writs of Habeus Corpus] would be the same even if the claims were that it was engaging in acts of torture or that it was summarily executing the detainees."

Summarily executing the detainees. Read that sentence again. Who was the last American President to advocate summary executions of prisoners based on secret evidence? Oh, right, there wasn't one. Ever. Perhaps the President is confusing The Constitution with The Night and Fog Decrees?

Bush Administration Appointees Perform Jobs Correctly, Protect Oil Companies

Once again, we see that the business of Government is business. Why can't Democrats understand that the Republicans won the elections of 2000, 2002, 2004 & 2006 (thanks, Diebold!) and that therefore we get to say or do anything we want with the country?

WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 — Four government auditors who monitor leases for oil and gas on federal property say the Interior Department suppressed their efforts to recover millions of dollars from companies they said were cheating the government.

The accusations, many of them in four lawsuits that were unsealed last week by federal judges in Oklahoma, represent a rare rebellion by government investigators against their own agency. The auditors contend that they were blocked by their bosses from pursuing more than $30 million in fraudulent underpayments of royalties for oil produced in publicly owned waters in the Gulf of Mexico.

“The agency has lost its sense of mission, which is to protect American taxpayers,” said Bobby L. Maxwell, who was formerly in charge of Gulf of Mexico auditing. “These are assets that belong to the American public, and they are supposed to be used for things like education, public infrastructure and roadways.”

The new accusations surfaced just one week after the Interior Department’s inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, told a House subcommittee that “short of crime, anything goes” at the top levels of the Interior Department.

In two of the lawsuits, two senior auditors with the Minerals Management Service in Oklahoma City said they were ordered to drop their claim that Shell Oil had fraudulently shortchanged taxpayers out of $18 million. A third auditor, also in Oklahoma City, charged that senior officials in Denver ordered him to drop his demand that two dozen companies pay $1 million in back interest. And in a suit that was filed in 2004, Mr. Maxwell charged that senior officials in Washington ordered him not to press claims that the Kerr-McGee Corporation had cheated the government out of $12 million in royalties.

These "auditors," are, of course, traitors to the Administration and should be purged. And we now what's REALLY behind their claims of fraud:

On Wednesday, Interior officials denied that the agency had suppressed any valid claims and implied that the auditors simply wanted a share of any money recovered through their lawsuits.

“If these auditors believed there were fraud and or false claims on the part of the companies they were auditing, they should have followed the proper procedures,” the Interior Department said in a written statement. “Instead, they opted to pursue private lawsuits under which, if they prevail, they could receive up to 30 percent of the monies recovered from the companies.”

In defying their own agency, the Interior Department’s auditors sued the oil companies under a federal law, called the False Claims Act, that was created to allow individuals to expose fraud against the government. People who successfully recover money for the government in such cases are entitled to a portion. A losing company is required to pay triple the amount of recovered money as well as back interest — potentially more than $120 million in the cases brought by the auditors.

You see? They just want the money. Not to punish these companies for cheating the country, but to enrich themselves. Crazy lawsuits like these are why we so desperately need Tort Reform in this country. So a few oil companies forgot to pay a few paltry million dollars in owed fees, and so a few Republican appointees covered up for them... why should Kerr-McGee have to pay triple damages now? I mean, they advertise on Fox News, for goodness' sake! How is the brave mouthpiece of America's President supposed to stay in business if the government keeps suing their advertisers? Only a trial lawyer could love laws like these.