Does it ever end?

WASHINGTON - Nearly two dozen officials who received hefty performance bonuses last year at the Veterans Affairs Department also sat on the boards charged with recommending the payments.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press raise questions of conflicts of interest or appearances of conflicts in connection with the bonuses, some of which went to senior officials involved in crafting a budget that came up $1.3 billion short and jeopardized veterans’ health care.

The documents show that 21 of 32 officials who were members of VA performance review boards received more than half a million dollars in payments themselves.

Among them: nearly a dozen senior officials who devised the flawed 2005 budget. Also rewarded was the deputy undersecretary for benefits, who manages a system with severe backlogs of veterans waiting for disability benefits.

Deputy undersecretaries who sit on the review boards, which are appointed by VA Secretary Jim Nicholson, also had input on bonus recommendations involving themselves, fellow members and spouses that made questionable performance claims and neglected agency problems.

More at Yahoo News

Colbert on Blair’s legacy.

Now Da Bulls need to go back to Chitown, take the next game, and then go back to th Motor City and beat the Piston at Da Palace. Yeah baby!!!

AUBURN HILLS, Mich. - Suddenly, it’s a series.

Ben Gordon scored 28 points and the hot’shooting Chicago Bulls beat the Detroit Pistons 108-92 Tuesday night in Game 5 of the Eastern Conference semifinals, pulling to 3-2 in the series.

Detroit opened the second round with two routs and made a big comeback in the third game, leading some to predict it would end with a sweep - or in five games at the most.

Obviously, the Bulls had other plans.

Game 6 is Thursday night in Chicago and if Game 7 is necessary, it would be Monday night back on the Pistons- home court.

More at MSNBC

“Baby You Can Drive My Car”
Da Beatles

Blackout…….

BAGHDAD (AP) - Police fired warning shots in the air at the scene of a double bombing Tuesday, enforcing an order banning news photographers and TV camera operators from filming the aftermath of deadly bombings.

The Iraqi government said it decided last weekend to keep photographers and camera crews away from blast sites to prevent them from damaging forensic evidence. Media groups feared the order was aimed at preventing scenes of horrific carnage from being broadcast around the world.

The ban got its first test Tuesday, when a pair of bombs hidden in plastic bags exploded in two shops selling CDs and cigarettes in Tayaran Square in central Baghdad. Police said at least seven people were killed and 17 wounded.

More at al.com

This still makes no sense to me. Five years later and they decide they need a czar. This guy reports directly to the President. So what about Gates? Sounds like a fall guy to me.

After a frustrating search for a new “war czar” to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, ABC News has learned that President Bush has chosen the Pentagon’s director of operations, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute, for the role.

In the newly created position of assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for Iraq and Afghanistan policy and implementation, Lute would have the power to direct the Pentagon, State Department and other agencies involved in the two conflicts.

Lute would report directly to the president and to National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

Filling the position had become a priority for the White House, after a handful of retired generals told the White House they did not want the job. Among them, retired Marine Corps four’star Gen. Jack Sheehan, who proved an embarrassment to the White House after he wrote an op-ed piece in the Washington Post saying there were “huge shortcomings” in the White House view of the strategy in Iraq.

“What I found in discussions with current and former members of this administration,” wrote Sheehan, “is that there is no agreed upon strategic view of the Iraq problem or the region.”

More at ABC News

Ridiculous…… why not spend your time figuring out how to fix the traffic problems, or the lack of water, or a million other things……..

BY CHARLES RABIN

Miami-Dade Commissioner Barbara Jordan has proposed a symbolic resolution.In a move that may prompt debate over freedom of speech, Miami-Dade County Commissioner Barbara Jordan is trying to do away with the n-word.

She’s proposing a symbolic resolution that would create a moratorium on the word throughout the county — though it has no consequences for anyone who uses the slur.

Jordan said her resolution, which asks the county’s 35 municipalities to adopt similar measures, is not a response to recent digressions from radio host Don Imus and comedian Michael Richards, or an attack on the hip-hop music industry, where use of the term is somewhat common.

Instead, she said, it’s aimed at a word that is simply unacceptable in any circumstance.

”Every time I hear the word, I cringe. Maybe I’m just old school, but it bothers me,” said Jordan, one of four blacks on the 13-member County Commission.

On Monday, the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union called Jordan’s proposal a waste of time. And a friend of Jordan’s — one who had a famous run-in with the law over his own choice of words — questioned whether her moratorium was appropriate.

Rapper Luther Campbell of the group Two Live Crew, who was at the center of a famous obscenity case, said he applauded Jordan’s effort, but he warned her to be careful.

”I don’t think government has a role in free speech,” said Campbell, who said he punishes his kids on the Liberty City Optimists club football team when they use the word.

More at the Miami Herald

by Chris Cillizza

Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) is never going to win any popularity contests among his party’s liberal base — a fact he seems decidedly unconcerned about despite his 2006 Democratic primary loss to Ned Lamont.

Democrats’ 2000 vice-presidential nominee Joe Lieberman, left, is helping raise money for Republican Susan Collins of Maine, right.

Not only has Lieberman endorsed Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine.) — one of Democrats’ biggest targets in the 2008 cycle — but he’s planning to co-host a fundraiser for her on June 21 in Washington, D.C.

The event, which will be held in a Capitol Hill location still to be determined, will feature Lieberman and Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) — a very rare bipartisan fundraiser. Attendees are being asked to raise $3,000; $2,000 would come in the form of a political action committee donation while the other $1,000 would be a personal contribution, according to an electronic invite for the fundraiser obtained today by The Fix.

“Let’s try to make this a bi-partisan tour de force,” reads the invite.

“Senator Specter approached Senator Collins with the idea of doing a joint fundraising event with Senator Lieberman,” said Collins spokeswoman Jen Burita. “Both senators are colleagues with whom she works well and good friends, so we thought it was a great idea.”

Lieberman’s willingness to work openly for Collins’s reelection will surely not sit well with Democratic strategists who want Rep. Tom Allen (D) to oust the two-term incumbent. For Lieberman, his support of Collins is payback. She was one of a handful of senators who campaigned for him in the general election following his loss in the Democratic primary to Lamont. (He ran for and won reelection as an independent.) Lieberman and Collins also serve together as the chairman and ranking member, respectively, of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee in the Senate.

The Republican strategy in the race is clearly to kill Allen’s candidacy in the crib. The National Republican Senatorial Committee is up with an Internet ad that dissects Allen’s own Web announcement.

read more at THE WASHINGTON POST

Nice bunch of people we have running this country…….makes me sick.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Former Deputy Attorney General James Comey Tuesday disclosed new information Tuesday concerning attempts by the White House to get Justice Department approval for the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program.

Comey also said he had considered resigning after disagreements about the surveillance program.

Calling it “the most difficult time in my period of life,” Comey discussed publicly for the first time a hospital visit then-White House chief of staff Andrew Card and then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales made to Attorney General John Ashcroft on March 10, 2004.

Ashcroft had become sick the week before, and Comey had been designated the acting attorney general.

Comey refused to say publicly that the White House officials came to the hospital to discuss the NSA program. However, government officials previously confirmed to CNN that Comey had “vigorously opposed” aspects of the surveillance program and refused to sign off on its continued use, prompting Card and Gonzales to make the hospital visit.

Comey’s revelations came before the Senate Judiciary Committee as part of its investigation into the firing of eight U.S. attorneys last year.

In his testimony Tuesday, Comey recounted Ashcroft’s wife calling a Justice Department official that night informing her Card and Gonzales were on their way to see him. She had banned all outside phone calls and visitors, Comey said.

He immediately headed to the hospital and soon after he got there, the White House officials entered. He said Ashcroft, who had been weak from gall bladder surgery, “very strongly expressed himself” regarding his objections to a classified program, but added that his views didn’t matter because he was, temporarily, not the attorney general.

‘An effort to take advantage of a very sick man’

Comey said Card and Gonzales then left the hospital room without acknowledging him.

“I was very upset. I was angry. I thought I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man who did not have the powers of the attorney general because they had been transferred to me. I thought he had conducted himself — and I said to the attorney general — in a way that demonstrated a strength that I had never seen before, but still I thought it was improper,” Comey told the committee.

Comey told the committee that he and Ashcroft the week before had determined the classified program he declined to name Tuesday should not be authorized and had communicated that to the White House.

More at CNN