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By Bill Boyarsky
$19.60
By T Cooper and Adam Mansbach
$11.64
$24
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AP Photo / Gerald Herbert
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President Bush had a break from U.S. politics during his G-8 summit sojourn over the last week, but as he geared up for his return on Monday, the president threw down the gauntlet, challenging Democrats in Congress on their votes against Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales and pledging to push his immigration bill through the legislative process despite resistance.
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The stage is set for a possible Senate showdown next week after top Democratic and Republican senators came to an agreement Thursday with White House officials on the particulars for a proposed immigration overhaul.
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President Bush says he is now willing to talk about setting up benchmarks to gauge progress in Iraq, perhaps responding to pressure from both sides of the political aisle. However, he also made it clear Thursday that he’s going to reject another bill expected to pass soon in the House that would stop funding for the Iraq war this July.
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Congress regrouped Wednesday to vote in response to President Bush’s veto of the troop pullout bill on Tuesday, but the bill’s supporters failed to win the two-thirds of House votes needed to override the veto. Now Democrats, responsible for 220 of the 222 votes to override (203 members voted in opposition), have to take a different tack.
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President Bush is determined to keep American troops in Iraq well past Oct. 1, the date Congress set to begin the U.S. pullout in an agreement reached Monday. Although the House and Senate agreed to pour $124 billion more into the war chest, Bush says he’ll veto the bill, while his critics suggest he’s trying to save face as he rides out his term.
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At a media reform conference in Memphis, the PBS newsman applauded the coalition-building skills of the architects of the Net Neutrality movement. “Who would have imagined that sitting together in the same democratic broadband pew would be the Christian Coalition, Gun Owners of America, Common Cause and MoveOn.org?”
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By Marie Cocco — Our hypocritical Congress appears poised to approve a $170-billion “emergency” military appropriation bill to continue financing the Iraq war.
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In a cynical and mean-spirited attempt to reach out to their vaunted “base,” lame-duck conservative House Republicans plan on ignoring their duties to pass spending bills that would benefit the poor, and instead will put their energies into passing a “fetal pain” abortion bill based on “science” rejected by the American Medical Association.
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Bill Maher delivers a stirring and passionate rebuke to the neocons who so tragically misplanned the Iraq war. (Video & Transcript)
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It’s official. We just got medieval. The Associated Press calls it “tough interrogation.” We call it the indefinite-detainment, unyielding-torture, habeas-corpus-suspending, mortgage America’s bedrock principles upon the altar of anti-terrorism bill.
But different strokes for different folks.
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Left: forbes.com/Right: time.blogs.com
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George W. Bush, retreating to familiar ground, has blamed the Clinton administration for North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. But the official who brokered the Clinton-era deal with North Korea called the idea “ludicrous,” and defended his efforts.
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Keith Olbermann responded to the passage of the torture bill with this tongue-in-cheek investigative report on habeas corpus. (Video & Transcript)
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Bill O’Reilly claims Iran is “upping the violence” in Iraq to give Democrats a boost in the November election. O’Reilly then hypocritically encourages Bush to use military action to achieve a political end. (Video & Transcript)
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In this edition of our Truthdig-flavored videos: A comedy troupe reenacts Mark Foley’s IMs; Jon Stewart skewers Bush’s reduction of Iraq violence to a “comma”; and Bill Maher critiques sexual repression in America.
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From murkyview.com
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He’s done it again: After signing into law a bill that would mandate minimum requirements for the new FEMA director, Bush added a “signing statement” that declared those requirements null and invalid. (more…)
Update: ThinkProgress has the statement
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Maher makes the good point that in a less sexually repressed society, Mark Foley could have come out of the closet a long time ago.
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Lawyers for 25 men being held in Afghanistan filed a habeas corpus petition in advance of Bush’s plan to outlaw that exact motion.
If Congress isn’t going to stand up to Bush on this travesty of a law, it’s good to see that some parties are.
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The Senate majority leader, having concluded that we can’t win a guerrilla war in Afghanistan, wants to invite the Taliban and its supporters back into the government.
So, all that talk about bringing democracy and freedom to Afghanistan ... screw it, huh? Let’s just give the place back to the harborers of the 9/11 attackers?
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While we wait for the Supreme Court to invalidate Bush’s torture law, we offer up a little satire on the issue. In this piece, a Nation writer hilariously re-imagines our new Military Commissions Act. (Or let Jon Stewart take it away.)
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This week, our roundup of Truthdig-flavored videos includes Bill Clinton’s thrashing of Fox News’ Chris Wallace; Bill Maher & Co. debating the sanity of religion; retired generals blasting Rumsfeld; and Jon Stewart’s evisceration of Bush’s torture bill.
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As expected, the Senate sent the despicable detainee interrogation bill to the president’s desk last night. See its horrifying provisions here.
As long as this law stands, we too shall stand in forfeit of the moral high ground in this struggle. It’s a sad day for our once-proud republic.
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The interrogation bill headed for Bush’s desk would allow him to detain anyone indefinitely and decide (privately) what constitutes torture; it eliminates habeas corpus and judicial review, and it permits coerced evidence. The N.Y. Times calls it “our generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts.”
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A provision that would grant President Bush the discretion of deciding what is and isn’t torture is likely to land on his desk by the weekend unless there’s a legislative miracle.
We can only hope that the Supreme Court will toss out this travesty.
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Stephen Colbert offers his take on the fallout from Bill Clinton’s Fox News appearance, including the Hillary/Condi fracas, and why the former president is to blame for everything from Republican tax cuts to the war in Iraq.
Posted on Sep 28, 2006
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By Molly Ivins — With a smug stroke of his pen, President Bush is set to wipe out a safeguard against illegal imprisonment that has endured as a cornerstone of legal justice since the Magna Carta.
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From California Resources Agency
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California today became the first state in the country to impose a mandatory cap on greenhouse gases. The new law commits the state to a 25% reduction by 2020.
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Watch as a succession of former military officers, intelligence experts and religious figures speak out at a Capitol Hill forum against the president’s torture bill. (Via Andrew Sullivan)
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cnn.com
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Only a day after the secretary of state tried to smear Bill Clinton’s terror-fighting effort, Hillary came to the defense of her husband, and took a swipe at Condi in the process….
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This version of the president’s warrantless eavesdropping bill—which appears headed for passage—will apparently still allow Bush the option of submitting his surveillance programs to a court for review.
Posted on Sep 26, 2006
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Bill Maher and a panel including Reza Aslan (a Muslim), Sandy Rios (a conservative Christian) and Bradley Whitford (a liberal Episcopalian) discuss the morality of raising “Christian soldiers” to fight in God’s army, as depicted in the movie “Jesus Camp.”
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Remember the scene toward the end of “The American President” in which Michael Douglas, playing President Andrew Shepherd, delivers a stand-up-and-cheer tongue-lashing of his critics? Watch as Bill Clinton demolishes Fox News’ Chris Wallace in a similar manner.
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The editorial boards of the N.Y. Times and the Washington Post, along with First Amendment lawyer Glen Greenwald, condemned the interrogation bill agreed upon by the president and a group of GOP senators.
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The “Daily Show” pokes fun at Bill O’Reilly’s recent bragging that Al Qaeda has him on a hit list. As Jon Stewart points out: “I don’t know if you’ve seen the Al Qaeda tapes, um…we’re kind of all on the hit list.”
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NPR/Patrick Kovarik
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In an interview with NPR’s “Morning Edition,” former President Bill Clinton vigorously argued against Bush’s torture plans, citing both moral and practical reasons: “We have a system of laws here where nobody should be above the law, and you don’t need blanket advanced approval for blanket torture.”
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Web surfers in Zimbabwe got a rude surprise today when an international satellite firm basically shut down the country’s Internet access after the government failed to pay a $700,000 bill. More. (Via boingboing.net)
Posted on Sep 20, 2006
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Check out this can’t-miss two-part interview between Bill Maher and Joe Scarborough. Maher ends the first segment with a uppercut knockout punch straight to Bush’s jaw; in the second part, Bill says “the jury’s in” on the “idiot” question.
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The Huffington Post has a nice roundup of Bill Clinton gems gleaned from a massive New Yorker piece by David Remnick. After spending some quality time with the former president, Remnick was able to extract some surprisingly frank comments, including: ?I am sick of Karl Rove’s bulls—t.?
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Bill Clinton made an appearance on The Daily Show Monday to share the heartwarming work of his Clinton Global Initiative, but the climax of the interview was much more fun. Jon Stewart put the former president on the seat of heat and asked: Mr. President, Hillary Clinton may be running for president. If so, what is the key to defeating her?
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GOP Sen. Lindsay Graham is telling reporters that White House officials effectively forced military lawyers to sign a letter supporting President Bush’s new legislation on harsh interrogation tactics—after the lawyers previously testified publicly against those measures.
Watch the video.
Andrew Sullivan called the move “breathtaking and shameless.”
This article gives needed background to this complicated issue.
Posted on Sep 14, 2006
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The Huffington Post doyenne took a hard line with Bill O’Reilly on progressives’ plans for fighting terrorism, and slammed a Kurdistan ad running on Fox News.
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From the AP: “Senate Republicans blocked Democratic attempts to rein in President Bush’s domestic wiretapping program Wednesday, endorsing a White House-supported bill that would give the controversial surveillance legal status.”
The November elections can’t come soon enough….
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Phew! President Bush’s attempt to provide legal support for his warrantless wiretapping program appears dead—for now—in the Senate. Quote of the day (from Sen. Russ Feingold): “The president has basically said: I’ll agree to let a court decide if I’m breaking the law if you pass a law first that says I’m not breaking the law.”
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By Robert Scheer — Bill Clinton doesn’t seem to know the difference between getting mothers and their children off the welfare rolls and getting them out of poverty.
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From HBO
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Bill Maher sends up conservatives’ war on science, abortion and the United Nations in this planetary riff during the first new episode of his HBO series “Real Time with Bill Maher.”
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Illustration by Peter Scheer
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A bipartisan Senate bill that would have created a public database of all government contracts has been blocked by an unknown senator. The bill, which passed its committee unanimously, can now move forward only if the mysterious senator who placed it on “secret hold” removes the constraint. (h/t: Crooks and Liars)
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Those of you who only know him from his shock-rock act (or have only seen pictures) may not know that Marilyn Manson is extremely well-spoken and intelligent; and it’s all on display in this clip as he out-spars Bill O’Reilly on issues of sex and violence.
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From ThinkProgress
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We usually don’t link to people so inveterately immune to things like evidence and actual expert opinion, but if you really want to see delusion in the flesh, check out Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol talking about how Ned Lamont’s victory helped the terrorists.
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Terracide and the Terrarists: Destroying the Planet for Record Profits
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