Alito is an effin' liar.

Well, first they announce that the Duke-Stir was wearing a wire, and then this...

Embattled Rep. Tom DeLay decided Saturday to give up his post as House majority leader, clearing the way for new leadership elections among House Republicans eager to shed the taint of scandal, two officials said. These officials said DeLay, R-Texas, was preparing a letter informing fellow House Republicans of his decision.

So, I'll just be heading over to Costco to get another pallet of microwave popcorn...let the games continue!

Update:

In a letter to rank-and-file Republicans, DeLay said, "I have always acted in an ethical manner."

At the same time, "I cannot allow our adversaries to divide and distract our attention," the Texas Republican wrote.

Let's see how fast the crumbling begins. Fat Denny Hastert has been Delay's bitch for so long, it'll be amazing to see him survive this. The House is falling, this ought to be interesting. And it only took them 10 years...

This is too funny...

We have to walk the line at Sony between the needs of technology and the consumer, and the rights of the artist, which we feel very strongly about.

Pretty damn funny. And he said it with a straight face.

All the war-floggers, especially that guy who calls himself a "captain" seem to be having hysterical reactions to being called bed-wetters. Our old friend, Falafel O'Loofah went on Letterman and excoriated Cindy Sheehan for her role in the anti-war movement, again, and came off looking like the jackass he is. A bit of poking around brought this interesting essay up from a Native American site, on the view that the Brits had during and after the events surrounding 1776.

"The colonies were acquired with no other view than to be a convenience to us," the London Chronicle pointed out in 1764, "and therefore it can never be imagined that we are to consult their interest preferable to our own." In fact, the British considered that their American colonies, having enjoyed an extended period of "salutary neglect" during the 18th century, were practically self-governing. They had only to fulfill their vital function within the mercantile system by providing raw materials and consuming the manufactures of the British Empire. (The laws prohibiting trade between the colonies and foreign countries had never been strictly enforced anyway; therefore, smuggling was a popular avocation.)

There remained the thorny subject of taxation. At considerable expense, Britain had won France’s North American territory in the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763). Britain now faced a large postwar debt and the responsibility of additional land to protect and govern. Highly burdened by taxes themselves, the British were merely asking the colonies to bear the expense of their own administration and defense. As each proposed revenue bill met with opposition, it was repealed, Parliament being anxious to appease the colonies. But such "lenity" only encouraged additional disobedience, which was skillfully orchestrated by colonial propagandists. The Boston Massacre of 1770, during which redcoats fired on a mob owing to extreme provocation, was played up as if hundreds of colonists had been killed instead of five.

Scarcely noted in the British press at first, the Boston Tea Party was magnified from a simple matter of destruction of property into an intolerable insult to British authority. Chiefly responsible for the incident were Sam Adams, a tough and cunning professional politician, who was said to control two Boston mobs which he exploited for his own personal gain and glory, and the rich and vain businessman John Hancock, later described as "an elegant revolutionary" of the "native governing class of merchants and landowners who interests were threatened by imperial policies and by the barrier to obtaining western land." These "incendiaries" used all manner of intimidation, even tarring and feathering loyal subjects of the king, to undermine their own current democratic self-rule, although British lawyers determined after careful consideration that the rebels were not guilty of high treason -- yet.

According to official accounts of the battles of Lexington and Concord, the British did not fire in self-defense until besieged by rebel mobs who scalped and removed the ears of their victims. These techniques, in addition to such practices as shooting from cover, were considered dishonorable conduct. By 18th-century European standards, opponents were required to mass large formations of troops facing one another on open terrain.

Still maintaining their "magnanimous tolerance" up to the eve of Bunker Hill in 1775, the British offered pardon to all who would lay down their arms -- except Adams and Hancock, whose offenses were "of too flagitious a nature to admit of any other consideration than that of condign punishment."

With the Declaration of Independence the colonists "crossed their Rubicon," as historian Edward Gibbon put it. King George III favored armed intervention to put down the rebellion, while his advisers preferred a naval blockade; wavering between a land or sea strategy, the British never fully implemented either. The opposition Whigs, advocates of trade rather than taxation and with no stomach for the war at all, accused the government of corruption and incompetence. The chief culprits were the rakish Lord Sandwich, who ran a highly idiosyncratic admiralty, and Lord George Germain, the arrogant colonial secretary whose instructions ensured the defeat of Gen. John Burgoyne at Saratoga in 1777. A major blow to British prestige, Saratoga encouraged the French to avenge the humiliation of the Seven Years’ War by coming to the aid of the Americans. In fact the French navy -- not the colonial farmer -- defeated the British navy and cornered Cornwallis at Yorktown in 1781, thus ending the war for all practical purposes.

Thanks to the political and physical difficulties of conducting such a huge overseas operation, the world’s greatest power was defeated by a ragged band of revolutionaries. But the loss of the American colonies, as formalized by the Treaty of Paris in 1783, was taken by the British with characteristic aplomb -- rather as if a group of businessmen were closing down an unprofitable branch, it was said.

Eyewitness Accounts

"Well, boys, you’ve had your Indian caper, haven’t you?" Admiral Montague of the Royal Navy remarked to a group of Bostonians after the Boston Tea Party. "But mind, you’ve got to pay the fiddler yet." British officers in the colonies were at first inclined to express such patriarchal condescension, and had an upper-class contempt for the rough-hewn Americans; letters home revealed their chief concerns to be pay, promotion, and perquisites.

As the War settled in for good and earnest, the British became more bitterly impassioned. "I every day curse Columbus and all the discoverers of this diabolical country," Maj. John Bowater wrote, while a surgeon on board one of His Majesty’s ships described the rebel army as "truly nothing but a drunken, canting, lying, praying, hypocritical rabble." A few, however, were moved to admiration of the Americans, particularly for Gen. George Washington and his ragged "banditti," who managed to frustrate the empire’s finest. "Come on, Maister Washington," murmured a grizzled old Highland officer in Virginia. "I could na think of gangin’ home without a sight of you."

With their defeat at Yorktown, it seemed to the British soldiers like "The World Turned Upside Down" -- one of their marching songs in which "ponies rode men" and "grass ate the cows." News of the defeat was received by British prime minister Lord North "as he would have taken a ball in his breast," a colleague reported. "O God! it is all over!" North kept repeating, and it was for him. His government would soon fall. The king, who had threatened to abdicate rather than give the rebels their freedom, steeled himself to receive John Adams, the ambassador from the new nation. Privately, however, he confided, "[I will] never lay my head on my last pillow in peace and quiet so long as I remember the loss of my American colonies."

Scalping them and removing their ears...gosh. How ... noble?

Are these, my fellow Democrats many of whom I admire just fucking brain-dead or what? Here's a simple "brightline" rule that even Clarence Thomas could figure out ... if it SMELLS like Abramoff lucre, then get rid of it. All of it. Just because you got paid and provided a service, there's no need to appear like such a bunch of greedy fucks for bucks. Damn. Are you spineless and stupid?

While dozens of lawmakers are dumping contributions from disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his clients, others including Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid smell no taint and plan to keep the money.

Still other officials and lawmakers, from Republican
President Bush to Democratic Rep. Charles Rangel (news, bio, voting record) of New York, are splitting the difference. They say only some of the money linked to Abramoff is tarnished.

As recently as Wednesday, Rangel refused to return any of the money he received from Abramoff-linked clients or firms. On Thursday, his spokesman said the congressman would give up $2,000 from a law firm where Abramoff once worked — donating it to the Boys Choir of Harlem — but would keep the rest, some $47,000.

"He has no problems with his contributions from native American tribes and he's not returning any of that," said spokesman Emile Milne. "It would be ridiculous for us to assume that these tribes would be forced or directed by Abramoff to help congressman Rangel."

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a fellow New York Democrat, is taking the opposite tack, donating $2,000 received from tribes Abramoff had worked with but deciding to keep contributions from lawyers at his firm.
...
Others who plan to keep Abramoff-related money include Sen. Patty Murray (news, bio, voting record), D-Wash., with $41,000; Rep. Patrick Kennedy (news, bio, voting record), D-R.I., $42,500, and Sen. Maria Cantwell (news, bio, voting record), D-Wash., $10,000.

Stand up or stand back. There's no choice here, no gray area...get rid of the money, or be face being gotten rid of. How do you like them apples?

In comments there is a bit of a discussion about this. The Mighty Wurlitzer/Rove BlastFax is not going to discriminate in terms of who in our party got money, or whether it was obtained legitimately, they are going to use the words "Money" "Lobbyists" "Special Interests" "Tribal Interests" and Abramoff's name interchangeably to smear any Democrat who took dime one legitimately or not. It's their way, we've seen it before: they Swiftboated John Kerry, smeared Max Cleland; and have done countless other things with less raw data than is provided by campaign finance statements.

If the folks who are keeping this money can't see what's coming, based on past performance of the shitbag republicans, then they're gonna get dragged through it. I don't want to see Charley Rangel's (or anyone elses) distinguished career tossed down the shitter because they feels compelled to hold on to some extra cash on some noble "principle", and hope that it can be explained away as "clean" without massive semantic contortions. A simple, "I could not be sure, so I gave it all away" would sound much better than hauling out the green eyeshade brigade everytime the subject of dirty money comes up even periperhaly. I suspect that voters will reward that behavior come this November and for many Novembers to come.

Perception is reality, and the Wurlitzer exists to keep it that way. We need to be one step ahead, not playing catch up here.

Bopping around Blogtopia this morning, I caught a reference to this in a comment over at Sadly, No!. Un-be-fucking-lievable.

Is there an efficient, legal way to keep crazy people off airplanes altogether, like the manic depressive man shot dead at the Miami airport last week?

As it turns out, the government was taking steps in that direction almost a month before Rigoberto Alpizar was plugged by U.S. air marshals after he ran down the Jetway with a bundle in his hands while saying, according to the government, that he had a bomb.

A Nov. 15 notice put out by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which is always thinking about new ways to keep potentially dangerous people off our airliners, states TSA is looking for contractors to add a number of new databases for screening passengers and airport workers.

Up first are the files of the Defense Department (DoD) and Veterans Administration (VA), which the TSA says it wants scoured for "mental defectives."

As if troubled veterans didn’t have enough to worry about. According to a 2004 Government Accountability Office (GAO) study, about 15 percent of the soldiers coming home from the intense guerrilla wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are likely to be afflicted with what was once called "combat fatigue."

The New England Journal of Medicine also reported in 2004 that "15.6 percent to 17.1 percent of returning soldiers from Iraq exhibited signs of anxiety, major depression or other mental health problems."

Today those symptoms are lumped together in what’s called post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, which afflicted hundreds of thousands of soldiers who came home from Vietnam combat with "a thousand-yard stare" and fell into depression, suicide, alcoholism and drug abuse.

One of them might be sitting next to you on an airplane: More than half, or 53 percent, of the 1 million combat veterans of Vietnam were afflicted to one degree or another, said a four-year, $9 million study published by the VA in 1990.

And the trend line for the new generation of veterans is going north. The number who sought help for depression at VA clinics in 2004 grew tenfold over the year before, according to the Los Angeles Times.

"In all, 23 percent of Iraq veterans treated at VA facilities have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder," it said. The VA is struggling to keep up with services for the troubled veterans, GAO said, thus exiling many to the streets, where they could be walking time bombs.

If they start trying to re-invent the SPN program for the purpose of classifying veterans for things like travel and other activities, it's gonna get ugly real fast. But remember, all those fucking chickenhawks 'preciate your service!!!

Now shut the hell up and get back to work, prole.

cross-posted at Main and Central

Decorated Iraq Vet (Bronze Star w/Combat "V") Brian Van Reet (One Veteran's Voice) is getting Swiftboated and threatened by a reader/commenter. Sort of reminds me of that sad-sack piece of elephant droppings who claimed to be a retired Marine E-9 who harrassed the gal who did the "Marine's Girl" blog a while back.

Anyhow, Brian doesn't take any shit from this junior Turdpolisher...go check it out.

What total buttwipes there are out there...Kos is right, they hide under beds and cry at loud noises, wetting themselves with fear and leaving a trail of slime where ever they tread. Oh, wait, I think we've made that point here before too.

Gotta love these little rat-fuckers though...they do provide the occasional bit of comic relief, proving that they can still talk with Unka Karl's hand up their asses.

Oh, yeah here's the link to Brian's Bronze Star Citation.

The General in charge of Abu Ghraib, who was never punished and was in fact fêtêd for promotion looks like he's gonna be a good soldier to the end and take one in the face for the 1600 Crew. LTG Ricardo Sanchez looks like he's going to retire as a three-star, instead of stirring up the Abu Ghraib pot in this election year.

The Army career of Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the American commander in Iraq during the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal, is coming to an end.

General Sanchez has told senior Army officials that he plans to retire, probably this summer, rather than face a bruising Senate confirmation fight over any new assignment, said two senior officials who were granted anonymity because General Sanchez has not made his decision public.
...
But the legacy of Abu Ghraib and its photographs of prisoner mistreatment that prompted worldwide outrage dogged General Sanchez and ensured that any promotion would ignite a political storm on Capitol Hill over holding senior military officers and top Pentagon officials accountable for the misconduct.

"It's a question of simply not being able to get by Senate confirmation," said one Army general, adding that Pentagon officials feared that nominating General Sanchez for a new job would "stir up too much political bad news in an election year."

Sanchez does have an interesting and compelling story, like Colin Powell before him, he's a guy who's a testament to the color-blindness of the military (as well as being an accomplished politician in his own right to get to the three-star rank).

The general's life story reads like a pitch-perfect script for an Army recruiter. As a 6-year-old, he worked as a dry cleaner's delivery boy to supplement the welfare payment that supported his Mexican-American family in Rio Grande City, Tex., a few miles from the border that his paternal grandfather first crossed in the early 1900's. He was the first in his family to graduate from high school.

Back right after Katrina, when we discovered that a failed political hack attorney with no experience had been appointed to head FEMA, and the righteous indignation of the American Public erupted, damn any blond bimbo eruptions, Beloved Leader wanted to appoint a lawyer with no experience in Immigration to be in charge of the Immigration Service. Of course, the Invertebrates in Congress made appropriate noises about how heckuva-job Brownie and his ilk could never be appointed again. So, the man who hates the Constitution now finds it advantageous to use it to make a recess appointment, Julie Myers, an extraordinarily unqualified person to that position today. From the Post in September:

The Bush administration is seeking to appoint a lawyer with little immigration or customs experience to head the troubled law enforcement agency that handles those issues, prompting sharp criticism from some employee groups, immigration advocates and homeland security experts.

The push to appoint Julie Myers to head the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, comes in the midst of intense debate over the qualifications of department political appointees involved in the sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina.

Julie Myers has held a variety of jobs at the White House and in federal government.

Concerns over Myers, 36, were acute enough at a Senate hearing last week that lawmakers asked the nominee to detail during her testimony her postings and to account for her management experience. Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) went so far as to tell Myers that her résumé indicates she is not qualified for the job.

Two-time gubernatorial loser Ellen Sauerbrey of Maryland, a rabid pro-lifer also got an appointment as an Assistant Secretary of State for Refugee affairs. I guess she needs a new housekeeper, because giving her access to the pool of people who are seeking asylum under Lady Liberty's torch can only be so she gets first crack at them for household duties.

We're so fucked...so fucked.

Aravosis has interesting list of the Friends of Jacky. Can't wait for all the incumbents here to explain how they never heard of Mr. Jack Abramoff. Oh, and I don't see any Dems on this list. How strange.

Note to the Democratic National Party War Room wonks ...pssst Start Here

Winning this year off the back of Abramoff is not a pipe dream. "Collateral damage" might include losing a seat of two of some "ethically challenged" Democrats who partook of the water at the Abramoff Trough...but Sam Rosenfeld nails this:

Historical parallels can be dicey, but Democrats would do well to consider some math here: Let's say, as has been hinted for the last month or so, that a dozen people end up facing indictments due to the Abramoff probe. (As one FBI official put it to Anne Kornblut, "With most cases, the plea is the end, but with Abramoff, the plea is just the beginning.") Would Democrats see this as a scandal worth pushing -- and running on -- if, say, two out the 12 were Dems? How about a 3 to 9 Dem-to-Republican ratio? One can imagine the answer Newt would give if the situation were reversed. Achieving a "throw the bums out" congressional takeover is not a delicate business -- you can't do it carefully threading a needle. Either Democrats run on ethics full-bore and accept the collateral damage, or they don't run on ethics to win.

Losing an ethically-challenged scumbag is not a major concern for me, if we gain either house of congress in November. Losing one or two of them and making the greater gain of committees with subpeona power is more important, we need to end the reign of Preznit FuckKnuckle forthwith, and getting his mis-administration exposed to the disinfectant of sunlight is far more important than protecting a good ol' boy or three.

As I said before, this is about as "bi-partisan" as I am Xtian, so I'm not overly worried about too many Democrats being scooped up in Abramoff's net, but there's gonna be some collateral damage by the shit-flinging that's a-comin'.

Pass the popcorn.

The republican scumbag brigade is trying going with the Hermann Goering Meme...if you tell a big enough lie, everyone will believe it to be the truth. It's not true that Abramoff was a bi-partisan corrupter...he was strictly a republican corruption machine, and while the egregious lobbying practices of "K" Street undoubtedly touched many whose moral compass was more aligned with Caribbean vacations than constituent ministration, this is not a "bi-partisan scandal", no matter how hard the GoOPers try and spin that angle.

You can see all the cock-a-roaches, as Telly Savalas used to say, scurrying for cover as the light of indictment gets brighter...

Hours after Abramoff pleaded guilty to conspiracy, mail fraud and tax evasion charges, House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) announced that he will donate to charity the tens of thousands of dollars that he has received from Abramoff's Indian tribe clients. Top Republican strategists pushed GOP leaders to embrace legislation to curb the influence of lobbyists.

Word.

So it's time to start calling these major league assholes in the media everytime they parrot the blast-fax line about "bi-partisan". The closest thing to a bi-partisan effort in Congress recently was that abortion of a bill on bankruptcy ... bought and paid for by banking lobbyists and kept alive at their behest by Democrat MBNA Joe Biden. We should be ashamed of him, and now we know why... he's part of the culture of corruption, not a Abramoff spawn, but on the same wavelength ... would he have turned down Jack "Jack"? Magic Eight ball says "unlikely".

So, perhaps not wanting to be the whipping boy for the next 1600 Crew debacle ("Osama bin Laden plans to strike US", remember that?) it seems that our buddies at the NSA were pre-shredding the Constitution to avoid the inevitable rush by Congress with their pre-written (strange how that came to pass, isn't it?) "PATRIOT" act.

The National Security Agency acted on its own authority, without a formal directive from President Bush, to expand its domestic surveillance operations in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, according to declassified documents released Tuesday.

The N.S.A. operation prompted questions from a leading Democrat, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who said in an Oct. 11, 2001, letter to a top intelligence official that she was concerned about the agency's legal authority to expand its domestic operations, the documents showed.

Sigh.

It was such a good idea, that whole Constitution thing. What a shame it's being destroyed by a bunch of whining pussies.

This is my 3001st post here at Democratic Veteran...wow. It sure doesn't seem like that could have been possible.

Thanks for your support even when I go drifting off for weeks at a time.

Oh, and just to pimp my blog On-line Magazine, any Koufax Nominations would be a nice holiday present (Most Deserving Wider Recognition category)...after all, this has to be the year of the Self-Promoting Democrats, or we're never gonna win anything. So I shamelessly plug myself.

I would be remiss in not encouraging everyone to go vote for Jane Hamsher at Firedoglake for everthing she's nominated for. She's simply amazing and has done more for bringing the entire Judy Miller/Plame-gate scandal out than almost anyone else out here in Blogtopia. Firedoglake has become a treasure on the internet, and is what blogging is all about. Vote early for Jane and FDL, and as often as the rules allow. Jane for Queen of the Internet, as far as I'm concerned...but then that's just me....

Aww, Preznit Tinpot Commissar is throwing a hissy fit. After being caught out overtly Torturing and then Subverting the Constitution, the Inerrant Boy is throwing a Preznitial Hissy Fit, to wit:

Bush, his voice rising in apparent irritation, said lawmakers must act on a permanent renewal of the law that expanded the government's surveillance and prosecutorial powers against suspected terrorists, their associates and financiers. Noting the Patriot Act was overwhelmingly approved not long after the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, he said political considerations now were getting in the way.

Whining is particularly unattractive in grown men. But then, alot of what makes Bunnypants such a loser is unattractive, so what's another negative? Such a fucking loser. I wonder how much "buyers remorse" there really is?

We'll find out in November, and that'll be here sooner than we think. A whining Penis-With-Ears will make a great campaign commercial...

Yeah, this just has to get the panties of the idiots in the "Drug War" all in a twist. I imagine that Joe Califano is probably going to go home and have a good, stiff drink of something or another tonight, after all his fascist drug-warrior ideology is crumbling around him.

Rhode Island on Tuesday became the 11th state to legalize medical marijuana and the first since the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that patients who use the drug can still be prosecuted under federal law.
...
The U.S. high court ruled June 6 that people who smoke marijuana because their doctors recommend it can still be prosecuted under federal drug laws, even if their states allow it.

Federal authorities, however, have conceded they are unlikely to prosecute many medicinal marijuana users.

The ever-incompetant and useless Department of Homeland Security, which is becoming a serious contender with the Pentagon for being the Department of Useless Bullshit announced that it will no longer use politics as a factor in granting taxpayer dollars for emergency equipment to places like North Pole, Alaska. Wow. Who would have ever believed that the 1600 Crew would use politics as a yardstick for neediness. Gosh, I'm so upset I might have to give up blogging. Not.

Facing cuts in antiterrorism financing, the Department of Homeland Security announced today that it has overhauled its system for evaluating new requests for money from a $765 million aid program for cities. The new system is based less on politics and city boundaries and more on assessments of where terrorists are likely to strike and potentially cause the greatest damage.

Someone must have given Mikey a copy of the budget and a map of the US:

"A single urban area may, in fact, include several cities," Mr. Chertoff said. "For example, what we have identified as the California Bay Area consists of Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose, as well as other, smaller, communities."

Only a matter of time before the feds rolled Abramoff...he knows where the skeletons are buried, probably in more ways than one...so it's pretty nice to see him give Ol' Tom a belated holiday present. ROTFLMAO.

Really, it could not happen to a nicer bunch if crooks and liars (sorry, John). Love this quote from "Representative #1":

In a statement today, Ney denied any wrongdoing and said the plea agreement by Abramoff does not change his stand.

"At the time I dealt with Jack Abramoff, I obviously did not know, and had no way of knowing, the self-serving and fraudulent nature of Abramoff's activities," Ney said. His statement added that he intends to cooperate with the investigation, which he asserted would show he did nothing wrong.

In 1994 the fucking thieving republicans ran as the party of alleged "Integrity" against a bunch of folks who couldn't manage a scandal with near the artfulness of the Rovians. In terms of the relative "badness" of the hammer used against the House Dems then, the "Post Office and 'Bank'" scandals, along with the publishing woes of Jim Wright it was pretty small potatoes. Now the lying fucks in the Greedy Old Party are going to have to start facing the music, and deny, deny, deny in the internet and 24/7 news era isn't going to help them...

Hey, "Rule of Law". Oh, that only applies to blowjobs.

I guess it's gonna be a bumpy ride for some of Abramoff's "friends". I'm thinking that Ronnie Earle will look positively friendly to a certain well-connected Texan soon. Could not have happened to a nicer guy.

Who's gonna write the "Ballad of the Republican Frogmarch"? It's gonna be a hit in 2006.

1. Shorter Ted Kennedy
   
2. Delay - Out (No, not like that...)
   
3. The Laugh your Ass off quote of the day...
   
4. Interesting...
   
5. Just. Give. It. Back.
   
6. What's your Code?
   
7. The Wingnutz be Out...does the Moooon Be Full?
   
8. One for the Team?
   
9. Fuck Congress, Fuck the Constitution and oh, Fuck You too ... xoxo, The 1600 Crew
   
10. An interesting list...