Bush lied - again. This time, it isn’t Bush Lied, People Died, however. It’s Bush Lied, People Were Buyed. Pardon my bad grammar, but I’m angry.
It turns out that the Bush White House, the same Bush White House that insisted that it never had anything to do with convicted bribe man Jack Abramoff, is withholding 600 pages of documents about Jack Abramoff from Congress. That’s in addition to 3700 pages that were released.
Bush lied when he said he never met Jack Abramoff.
Now, Bush has been caught lying again to Congress, and defying the constitutional authority of Congress to conduct oversight.
What is on those 600 documents about Jack Abramoff’s dealings with the White House, and why is George W. Bush refusing to allow anyone to see them?
Yet more criminal activity in the Bush Administration: The House of Representatives Science and Technology Committee has sent a letter to NASA Adminsitator Michael Griffin, ordering him, under the authority of federal law 18 U.S.C. 1505, to stop destroying information about commercial airline safety that has been requested by Congress.
Why is this letter necessary? It seems that, after Congress requested information about a secret survey of airline safety conducted by a contractor for NASA, NASA officials ordered the contractor to give them all the survey information, and then to destroy their own files with information about the survey.
This isn’t the first time this year that evidence of a criminal cover-up at NASA has emerged. The congressional letter to Griffin explains, “As I am sure you know, this is not the first time this year that we have written regarding a report that NASA was involved in the destruction of materials. In that prior instance, your own General Counsel destroyed video records of your appearance before the staff of the Inspector General. The evidence of misconduct was so clear that the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Investigations and Oversight Subcommittee sent a bipartisan referral letter to the Department of Justice seeking the prosecution of your General Counsel.”
Earlier this month, it was revealed that NASA Associate Administrator Thomas Luedtke denied a Freedom of Information Act request for the results of a survey of airline pilots about commercial airline safety because, Luedtke said, allowing the public to know the results of the survey “could materially affect the public confidence in, and the commercial welfare of, the air carriers and general aviation companies whose pilots participated in the survey.”
It seems that NASA has information that should lead the American public to lose confidence in the safety of commercial flights within the United States, yet is refusing to give that information to the American public, and is allowing people to fly on commercial airlines in apparently unsafe conditions, all in order to protect the financial interests of airline corporations.
When did government of the people, by the people, for the people change into government of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations?
What involvement was there of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney in this criminal cover up? What did they know and when did they know it?
Good news for the survival of the American constitution. There is one United States Senator who is refusing to follow Harry Reid’s plan to cave in to George W. Bush and grant legal immunity to telecommunications corporations that helped Bush violate federal law and spy on the private communications of millions of innocent Americans - without any search warrant.
Unlike other politicians, Senator Dodd doesn’t just talk about how much loves liberty. Christopher Dodd is willing to put it all on the line. He’s standing up in the Senate, and saying that the Bush-Republican-Democratic plan to help George W. Bush cover up the spying on Americans BEFORE September 11, 2001 will be passed only over his dead body.
“I’ll begin with a hold. If the hold doesn’t work, then I’ll go with a filibuster.”
The leadership Chris Dodd is giving us now is the kind of leadership that America needs right now. Senator Dodd explains his stand in the following video. Please, help spread the word. Defend the Constitution! Support Chris Dodd!
The Washington Post reported this news this morning: “Senate Democrats and Republicans reached agreement with the Bush administration yesterday on the terms of new legislation to control the federal government’s domestic surveillance program, which includes a highly controversial grant of legal immunity to telecommunications companies that have assisted the program, according to congressional sources.”
What the HELL is wrong with the Senate Democrats? Why are they even negotiating with George W. Bush on the renewal of the Protect America Act?
Senate Democrats should just say NO. No renewal of the Protect America Act. Let it expire. In fact, kill it now. All of it.
Don’t these Democrats understand why George W. Bush wants retroactive legal immunity for telecommunications corporations for warrantless electronic spying against American citizens?
Congress has just learned from the former CEO of Qwest that George W. Bush had begun his illegal spying on Americans’ telephone calls - warrantless wiretapping - half a year before the attacks of September 11! There is absolutely no security justification for this espionage against American citizens. It was a crime, a high crime, an impeachable crime, pure and simple.
George W. Bush wants retroactive legal immunity for AT&T, Verizon and Bell South, corporations known to have helped Bush engage in his illegal spying against Americans, because George W. Bush himself has become a criminal suspect. George W. Bush is using the Protect America Act to protect himself from being impeached and going to prison. The Protect America Act ought to be renamed the Protect Bush’s Ass Act.
Shame on the Senate Democrats for going along with this charade. They ought to be coming together to impeach Bush, not give him immunity for crimes against the American people.
I got this nugget of news related to the Qwest court case from JustAnotherCoverup:
“New evidence conclusively demonstrates that Bush began the illegal surveillance of Americans long before September the 11th, 2001 - and in fact began as early as February 27th, 2001. This new evidence suggests that Bush began illegally wiretapping Americans shortly after he was installed in office by the Supreme Court.”
This quote refers to the court case of Joseph Nacchio, former CEO of Qwest, who is using in his defense, information indicating that George W. Bush began pushing Qwest to participate in warrantless surveillance of Americans’ private communications on February 27, 2001, just one month after becoming President, and before there was any reason at all to conduct the illegal spying for the sake of security.
This is a clear high crime. It’s against FISA, and Bush knew it, and has tried to cover his behind with the Protect America Act.
Will that maneuver work?
Will the Democrats in Congress be too weak to investigate this clear evidence of high crimes?
If they won’t stand against this, they won’t stand against anything.
Reminder came this week of what’s at stake in the movement to impeach Bush and restore the rule of law.
Former Qwest CEO Joe Nacchio may or may not be an inside trader, but he is also a patriot. Nacchio is on trial on allegations of insider trading, but during his trial, he plans on bringing up the fact that, when the Bush White House came to Qwest demanding, without a search warrant, huge databases including records of Americans’ private telephone calls, Qwest said no.
CBS reports that “While AT&T Corp., Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp. complied, Qwest refused after deciding the request violated privacy law,”
Thank you Qwest, for standing up against Big Brother attempts by George W. Bush to watch over the private communications of law-abiding American citizens in violation of the law.
As for Verizon, AT&T, and BellSouth, well, they’ve proven to their customers that they aren’t willing to stand up against illegal government operations to spy on Americans. If these other telecommunications companies won’t protect their customers from Big Brother, why should their customers stay on?
The U.S. government is collecting electronic records on the travel habits of millions of Americans who fly, drive or take cruises abroad, retaining data on the persons with whom they travel or plan to stay, the personal items they carry during their journeys, and even the books that travelers have carried, according to documents obtained by a group of civil liberties advocates and statements by government officials.
The personal travel records are meant to be stored for as long as 15 years, as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s effort to assess the security threat posed by all travelers entering the country…
Activists alleged that the data collection effort, as carried out now, violates the Privacy Act, which bars the gathering of data related to Americans’ exercise of their First Amendment rights, such as their choice of reading material or persons with whom to associate. They also expressed concern that such personal data could one day be used to impede their right to travel.
“The federal government is trying to build a surveillance society,” said John Gilmore, a civil liberties activist in San Francisco whose records were requested by the Identity Project, an ad-hoc group of privacy advocates in California and Alaska. The government, he said, “may be doing it with the best or worst of intentions. . . . But the job of building a surveillance database and populating it with information about us is happening largely without our awareness and without our consent.”
This is not how life is supposed to be in the United States of America. The Bill of Rights guarantees us protection from unreasonable search and seizure of our persons and papers… and papers would include our books! What right do they have to follow us as we travel, keeping notes on who we visit, and who we talk to, and what books we read?
This Homeland Security nonsense has gone too far! I don’t live in the stinking Homeland. I live in the USA, and in the USA, we still have a Constitution.
Call off those Homeland Security spies, Bush, or resign, or be impeached.
When presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich heard the news last week that government spy satellites will now be used by domestic law enforcement to track American citizens, he did not wait to express his outrage. Kucinich made a strong statement denouncing the plan by John Michael McConnell, Director of National Intelligence, that federal, state, and local law enforcement officials will now be able to gain access to U.S. military spy satellites in order to track the movements of American citizens.
The government acknowledges that, as part of the program, police will be able to use special government spy aircraft that can scan at wavelengths that allow the aircraft to actually see people inside of buildings, and even in underground bunkers. This is like the American government using U2 spy planes over the Soviet Union, only against American citizens on American soil, and using technology generations ahead of what U2 had available.
Dennis Kucinich was right on in his condemnation of this new program to expand the government’s programs to spy against American citizens far beyond the Constitution’s restriction of reasonable search and seizure. Kucinich points out that the program clearly violates the Posse Comitatus Act by using the might of the military, which is supposed to be aimed against foreign countries, as a law enforcement weapon against American civilians.
It’s a frightening thought that we now cannot even count on being free from the snooping eyes of our own government, not even when we’re out in the middle of nature. There will always be an eye in the sky, watching us. Kucinich said of this new government spying program, “Not only are they ramping up their attempts to lie and deceive this nation into another war, they are also using those lies and deceptions to justify creating a police state right here where everyone is under suspicion and everyone is secretly under surveillance from Big Brother in the sky.”
Kucinich is right. America is turning into a Big Brother police state.
