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Politics : Bush Administration's Media Manipulation--MediaGate? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (9803)	8/21/2008 3:02:16 PM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9838

and bush is backing McCain...two clowns August 17, 2008 Op-Ed Columnist Russia Is Not Jamaica By MAUREEN DOWD WASHINGTON America’s back in the cold war and W.’s back on vacation. Talk about your fearful symmetry. After eight years, the president’s gut remains gullible. He’ll go out as he came in — ignoring reality; failing to foresee, prevent or even prepare for disasters; misinterpreting intelligence reports; misreading people; and handling crises in ways that makes them exponentially worse. He has spent 469 days of his presidency kicking back at his ranch, and 450 days cavorting at Camp David. And there’s still time to mountain-bike through another historic disaster. As Russian troops continued to manhandle parts of Georgia on Friday, President Bush chastised Russian leaders that “bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century” — and then flew off to Crawford. His words might have carried more weight if he, Cheney and Rummy had not kicked off the 21st century with a ham-fisted display of global bullying and intimidation modeled after Sherman’s march through the other Georgia. We knew we could count on the cheerleader in chief to be jumping around like a kid in Beijing with bikini-clad beach volleyball players while the Re-Evil Empire was sending columns of tanks into its former republic. (Georgia made the mistake of baiting the bear.) If only W. had taken the rest of his presidency as seriously as he’s taken his sports outings. When I interviewed him at the start of his first presidential run in 1999, he took an obvious shot and told me, “I believe the big issues are going to be China and Russia.” But after 9/11, he let Cheney, Rummy and the neocons gull him into a destructive obsession with Iraq. While America has been bogged down and bled dry, China and Russia are plumping up. China has bought so much of America that we’d be dead Peking ducks if they pulled their investments out of our market, and Russia has transformed itself from a pauper nation to a land filled with millionaires — all through our addiction to oil. What was so galling about watching W.’s giddy sightseeing at the Olympics was that it underscored China’s rise as a superpower and, thanks to the administration’s derelict foreign and economic policies, America’s fade-out. It’s as though China has become us and we’ve become Europe. Like Russia, China has also been showing jagged authoritarian ways and ignoring America’s preaching, including W.’s tame criticism as he flew into Beijing to revel in the spectacle of China’s ascension. Despite his 1999 prediction that Russia and China would be key to security in the world, W. never bothered to study up on them. In 2006, at the Group of Eight summit meeting in St. Petersburg, Russia, a microphone caught some of the inane remarks of W. to the Chinese president, Hu Jintao. “This is your neighborhood,” W. said. “It doesn’t take you long to get home. How long does it take you to get home? Eight hours? Me, too. Russia’s a big country and you’re a big country.” President Bush and his Russian “expert” Condi have played it completely wrong with Russia from the start. W. saw a “trustworthy” soul in a razor-eyed K.G.B. agent who has never been a good guy for a single hour. Now the Bush crowd, which can do nothing about it, is blustering about how Russian aggression “must not go unanswered,” as Cheney put it. (W.’s other Russian expert, Bob Gates, was, as always, the only voice of realism, noting, “I don’t see any prospect for the use of military force by the United States in this situation.”) The Bush administration may have a sentimental attachment to Georgia because it sent 2,000 troops to Iraq as part of the fig-leaf Coalition of the Willing, and because Poppy Bush and James Baker were close to Georgia’s first president, Eduard Shevardnadze. But with this country’s military and moral force so depleted, the Bushies can hardly tell Russia to stop doing what they themselves did in Iraq: unilaterally invade a country against the will of the world to scare the bejesus out of some leaders in the region they didn’t like. W. and Condi are suddenly waking up to how vicious Vladimir is. In a press conference with Condi on Friday, Mikheil Saakashvili, the president of Georgia, chided the West for enabling Russia to resume its repressive tactics. “Unfortunately, today we are looking evil directly in the eye,” he said. “And today this evil is very strong, very nasty and very dangerous, for everybody, not only for us.” As Michael Specter, the New Yorker writer who has written extensively about Russia, observed: “There was a brief five-year period when we could get away with treating Russia like Jamaica — that’s over. Now we have to deal with them like grown-ups who have more nuclear weapons than anybody except us.”

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (9803)	8/28/2008 4:31:17 PM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9838

MORE AND MORE IMPEACHMENT coming and time to put these lawbreakers into jail Executive privilege showdown looms for Congress, White House House Democrats schedule a hearing that would put former White House counsel Harriet Miers under oath. The Justice Department prepares a last-ditch court appeal. By Richard B. Schmitt Los Angeles Times Staff Writer August 28, 2008 WASHINGTON — Congress and the Bush administration headed for a preelection showdown Wednesday over the issue of executive privilege, with House Democrats scheduling a hearing that would put a key former administration figure under oath and the Justice Department mapping a last-ditch court appeal. Justice lawyers said they would go to court as soon as today to block a ruling by U.S. District Judge John D. Bates that forces the White House to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the politically charged firing of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006. The move came as Democrats pushed ahead with that investigation. Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, announced that he was calling former White House counsel Harriet E. Miers to appear before the committee on Sept. 11 to answer questions about her role in the firings. Conyers also set a Sept. 4 deadline for the administration to turn over White House documents concerning the firings as well as a log detailing what documents it was withholding because of security concerns and why. Legal experts said they doubted that the Justice Department would succeed in persuading the federal appeals court in Washington to intervene in the matter at this point. But it was also unclear what questions Miers would choose to answer if she took the witness chair next month, and that raised the possibility of further legal wrangling. Experts said the tug-of-war also seemed unlikely to be resolved before January, when the subpoenas legally expire. That would confront the new Congress with the decision whether to renew the battle. "It is an unpredictable game at this point," said Charles Tiefer, a former House counsel who is a professor at the University of Baltimore law school. "The Congress could win or the White House could drag it out." The rapid-fire series of events was triggered by an order by Bates on Tuesday in which he declined to put on hold a July 31 ruling in which he held that the refusal of the administration to cooperate in the U.S. attorney investigation was legally untenable. Bates had ruled that the administration's position that it had "absolute immunity" from being forced to honor subpoenas issued by Congress was unprecedented. He said Miers was obliged to at least show up -- but did not rule on which questions she would be required to answer. Justice Department lawyers told Bates at a hearing Wednesday that they intended to ask the appeals court to overrule the judge. Justice Department lawyer Carl Nichols indicated the government would file court papers to that effect no later than today. Investigators are trying to determine whether Miers and Karl Rove, Bush's former chief political advisor, were involved in the 2006 firings. Democrats have alleged that the prosecutors were singled out for failing to bring corruption and other cases that benefited Republicans and that the idea was hatched at the White House. Rove has also refused to appear before the House and Senate Judiciary committees and has been held in contempt by both panels. The Justice Department has argued that the former Bush aides are immune from having to testify because of the doctrine of executive privilege, which is grounded in the principle of separation of powers and is intended to insulate presidential policymaking decisions. Officials have also argued that, because U.S. attorneys are presidential appointees, Congress has no authority to question executive-branch advisors about decisions to fire them. The Justice Department effort to block the lower-court ruling would be considered by a three-judge panel that is randomly assigned to hear emergency appeals. The federal appeals court here, whose alumni include Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, has a generally conservative reputation. If the appeals court blocks Miers' testimony, even temporarily, it could allow the Bush administration to drag out the proceedings until after the election. But several legal scholars said they doubted that even a conservative panel would intervene. Bates himself was appointed by Bush to the federal bench in 2001, they noted, and he was likely to be shown deference. They also said his central ruling appeared to be indisputable. "The Supreme Court has never given any indication that the White House counsel or people who work for the president can just ignore a subpoena," said Cass R. Sunstein, a professor at the University of Chicago law school. "It would be very surprising to think that the White House official does not even have to appear to assert the privilege."

To: Hope Praytochange who wrote (9803)	9/16/2008 1:20:42 PM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 9838

Sarah Palin had been mayor of the Alaska town for four years when the practice came to the attention of state lawmakers, who passed a bill to stop it. From the Associated Press From the Associated Press September 12, 2008 ANCHORAGE — When Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, the city billed sexual assault victims and their insurance companies for the cost of rape kits and forensic examinations. Palin had been in office for four years when the practice got the attention of state lawmakers in 2000. They passed a bill to stop it. Former Democratic Rep. Eric Croft, who sponsored the bill, said he was disappointed that simply asking the Wasilla Police Department to stop hadn't worked. The bill passed despite the objections of Wasilla Police Chief Charlie Fannon, who said it would require the city to come up with more money to cover the costs of buying the rape kits and conducting the exams. Lawmakers became involved in 2000 after reports began coming in that police departments were charging sexual assault victims for the kits and exams, which cost between $300 and $1,200 at the time. The kit, a package of sample containers, swabs and other medical supplies, is used to collect evidence from women after they are attacked. Then-Gov. Tony Knowles said Thursday that Wasilla was unique in the state in charging rape victims for costs incurred by law enforcement in trying to solve the crime. Maria Comella, a spokeswoman for the campaign of Palin and John McCain, said that Palin "does not believe, nor has she ever believed, that rape victims should have to pay for an evidence-gathering test."