The Dynamic of a Bush Scandal: How the Spying Story Will Unfold (and Fade)
Sadly, Peter Daou’s analysis of the current spying scandal, in the context of the numerous other impeachable offenses the president has committed, is entirely correct. Bush commits a crime, the media fumbles the story, the Republicans front for him, the Democrats back down, the public gets confused, and eventually the story fades and the crimes continue. Lather, rinse, repeat.
Interesting, the comments people are making on that story. Basically, people are acknowledging that Daou is right, and predicting the end of America. Very disillusioned.
Cool bumperstickers and magnets
I clicked through an ad from my site to the Pro-Democrat Progressive Anti-Right Wing Products and had a fun time looking around, so I thought I’d give them an extra plug.
I loved their flag bedecked ribbon magnet that says “Just pretend it’s all okay” and the “F the President” sticker designed like the “W” sticker that everyone has on their cars. Unfortunately, my whole car is taken up already with stickers and magnets, and I already look like a fanatic.
Absolute Power corrupts absolutely
Obsidian wings has some commentary:
September 11 started the war. When will it end? Maybe never. Where is the battlefield? The entire world, including the United States. Who is an enemy combatant? Anyone the President says is an enemy combatant, including a U.S. citizen–no need for a charge, no need for a trial, no need for access to a lawyer. What if they’re found not to be an enemy combatant? We can keep them in prison anyway, and we don’t have to tell their families they’re alive or their lawyers that they were cleared. What can you do to an enemy combatant? Anything you want. Detain him forever, for the rest of his life, because this is a war like any other and we have always been able to detain POWs for the duration of the war. But you don’t need to follow the Geneva Conventions, because this is a war like no other in our history. And oh yes–if the President decides that we need to torture a prisoner for the war effort, it’s unconstitutional for Congress to stop him. They took that position in an official memo, and they have not backed down from it. They have said it was “unnecessary” but they have never backed down from it.
They are not only entitled to do these things to people; they are entitled to do them in secret. When Congress asks for information about them, they can just ignore it. And they are entitled to actively deceive the public about all this.
That’s the power they claim. At what point are we going to take that claim seriously?
At some level, I think we read these things and think: well, they can’t really mean that. But by now we know that they mean it enough to have shattered a number of lives.
Bomb Threat at the City-County building
People were evacuated from the City-County building today at 12:20 due to a phoned in bomb threat. Hmm. I’m guessing people are a little upset at last night’s city-county council meeting.
Local FBI spying on vegan groups
In another article about the domestic spying on left-wing organizations, this time from the New York Times, the article mentions in passing:
One F.B.I. document indicates that agents in Indianapolis planned to conduct surveillance as part of a “Vegan Community Project.”
Wow. If they’re spying on vegetarians in Indy, what do you think they’re doing about all those crazy homos? I wonder how to file for the Freedom of Information Act.
UPDATE: Okay, the ACLU press release is a bit clearer on what this is about. Our local FBI was investigating PETA, and one of the group’s events was passing out vegetarian starter kits to students and faculty on the “University of Indiana” campus. (They mean Indiana University.)
Well, I guess that actually isn’t any clearer to me what the FBI was doing.
A link to the redacted PDF document that the ACLU obtained through the FOIA.
Prop 622 passed, 15-14
Proposition 622 passed at the City-Council this evening, 15-14. My councilor, Patrice Abduallah voted for the ordinance. And we’re on the fox news at 10 again.
I’m very tired, and I’m going to bed.
People outside of Indianapolis coming here to tell us how to live
One of the things that needs to be pointed out about Proposition 622 is that many of the people opposing it don’t live in Indianapolis and wouldn’t be affected by it.
For example, in today’s Indy Star, there are several letters from people opposing this ordinance. One of them is from Eric Miller, the director of Advance America. It’s signed Indianapolis, but Eric doesn’t live here in Indy. Neither does the guy who wrote the letter signed from Avon, Indiana.
And neither did half the people who got up to speak at the first City-County Council Committee meeting to discuss Prop. 622. Many of them were bussed in from around the state by the aforementioned Miller. The city-county council caught on to this eventually, and at the second hearing, they made people state their address or township before speaking to highlight that the testimony needed to be coming from residents. About half the opposition who planned to speak stepped down, because they were busted.
The city-county council members made it clear that they were only considering letters and phone calls from their own constituents, so the American Family Association, a group that is based outside Indianapolis, is pouring money into the Indiana Family Institute (also based outside Indy) to fund robot phone calls to blanket the houses of people in Indianapolis, asking them to do the dirty work of calling the council for them.
Don’t let people outside Indianapolis tell you how to live your life or conduct your business. Email your councilors (you can contact them through this form from Indiana Equality — a group that lives and works right here!!)
I’m blogging because Fox 59 News is filming me right now
The News came to talk to us about Proposition 622, and I’m doing an action shot right now where they’re filming me at the computer, so I have do something. So I’m writing this blog entry. Say hi to the news!!
I’ll be on Fox 59 news tomorrow night at 10 p.m., so don’t forget to record it. Spike was a hit with Kara, the reporter, and Scott, the cameraguy, so he’ll probably show up on TV, too.
Bush Illegally spies on US Citizens
According to the New York Times, and later also reported by the Washington Post:
Bush Secretly Lifted Some Limits on Spying in U.S. After 9/11, Officials Say
Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.
Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible “dirty numbers” linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.
The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval represents a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.
One of the groups they’re spying on the QUAKERS, and other local anti-war organizations. The Quakers are pacifists, people. They believe in NOT blowing shit up.
The Quakers are one of thousands of organizations on a 400 page list (that’s 400 pages not 400 groups) that the Administration has been spying on inside the United States. All of them are left-wing organizations.
None of the investigated are right-wing groups. You know, right-wing ones, like the guys who bombed the Olympic park and abortion clinics. Like the ones who sent Anthrax to the Democratic leadership. The ones who blew up the Oklahoma Federal Building. The ones who keep killing doctors. Yeah, nobody’s investigating them. I feel so safe.