BREAKING NEWS: Rev. Jerry Falwell unresponsive, hospitalized

The Rev. Jerry Falwell arrived at Lynchburg General Hospital today around noon after being found unresponsive in his office.

Ron Godwin, the executive vice president of Liberty University, confirmed that Falwell was found unconscious in his office after missing an appointment this morning.

H/T to Joe for this post:

Greg Palast- Why is a BBC reporter doing the work that American network reporters will not do?

The whole Alberto Gonzales hearing issue tying Karl Rove in with political appointments to law enforcement positions could be blown wide open by an investigation by Greg Palast. The great Pacifica news program DemocracyNow had Amy Goodman interview Palast and he told of how he received 500 emails that were mis-addressed from the Republican email server to a server that was owned by a Palast friendly group. Those emails contained open discussion of how voters were going to be wrongfully blacklisted and law enforcement officials were going to bring bogus charges against Democrats and Democratic voters just prior to the election. This video is a bit long but once you start you will see why Greg Palast should be given high praise for his work that is ignored by the American media…other than DemocracyNow. This is the video from 5/14/07. After the Palast interview is an excellent interview with two Afghan women about the lack of Democracy in Afghanistan and the shrinking rights Afghan women are seeing. An MP3, text transcript, high speed video and low speed video stream of both stories are found .
at Democracy Now.

On a single day, December 7, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales demanded the resignations of 8 United States Attorneys. What was really the purpose of the firings - and who was behind it? Investigative journalist Greg Palast reports.
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We turn to the latest in the US attorney firing scandal. Nearly half of the US attorneys slated for removal by the Bush administration last year were targeted for not doing enough to prosecute voter fraud. According to the Washington Post, of the twelve US attorneys known to have been dismissed or considered for removal last year, five were identified by presidential advisor Karl Rove or other administration officials as working in districts that were trouble spots for voter fraud: Kansas City, Milwaukee, New Mexico, Nevada and Washington state. Four of the five prosecutors in those districts were fired.
Perhaps the most well-known of these US attorneys is ousted New Mexico prosecutor David Iglesias. His case has been at the center of the political firestorm. Investigative journalist Greg Palast has been closely following this story. He files a report and joins us in our firehouse studio.

This administration hate civil liberties.

The Bush administration made more than 200 revisions to the first report of a civilian board that oversees government protection of personal privacy, including the deletion of a passage on anti-terrorism programs that intelligence officials deemed “potentially problematic” intrusions on civil liberties, according to a draft of the report obtained by The Washington Post.

One of the panel’s five members, Democrat Lanny J. Davis, resigned in protest Monday over deletions ordered by White House lawyers and aides. The changes came after the congressionally created Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board had unanimously approved the final draft of its first report to lawmakers, renewing an internal debate over the board’s independence and investigative power.

Some of the changes sought by the administration ultimately were reversed, and some members of the panel said they were not opposed to the others.

But one section deleted by the administration would have divulged that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s civil liberties protection officer had “conducted reviews of the potentially problematic programs and has established procedures” for intelligence officials to file complaints about possible civil liberties and privacy abuses.

Continue reading at the Washington Post

From the New York Times:

A New York Times analysis shows that the number of earmarks for religious organizations, while small compared with the overall number, have increased sharply in recent years. From 1989 to January 2007, Congress approved almost 900 earmarks for religious groups, totaling more than $318 million, with more than half of them granted in the Congressional session that included the 2004 presidential election. By contrast, the same analysis showed fewer than 60 earmarks for faith-based groups in the Congressional session that covered 1997 and 1998.

Earmarks are individual federal grants that bypass the normal appropriations and competitive-bidding procedures. They have been blamed for feeding the budget deficit and have figured in several Capitol Hill bribery scandals, prompting recent calls for reform from White House and Congressional leaders.

They are distinct from the competitive, peer-reviewed grants that have traditionally been used by religious institutions and charities to obtain money for social services.

As the number of faith-based earmarks grew, the period from 1998 to 2005 saw a tripling in the number of religious organizations listed as clients of Washington lobbying firms and a doubling in the amount they paid for services, according to an analysis by The Times.

SYRACUSE, N.Y. — A 10th Mountain Division soldier facing a bad conduct discharge for going AWOL says he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and is being court martialed because he went home for help after the Army failed to provide him with adequate treatment.

“They don’t want the liability so they deny I have a problem, and because I tried to help myself, now they want to make me a criminal,” Spc. Eugene Cherry said in a telephone interview from Fort Drum, where he is restricted to post pending a court martial.

Cherry served as a combat medic in Iraq for a year with the division’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team, returning to Fort Drum in June 2005. That November, he took an unauthorized leave from the Army, returning to his native Chicago to live with his mother and find mental health treatment.

“This is not a borderline case. There is no question about his diagnosis,” said Dr. Hannah Frisch, a clinical psychologist who diagnosed Cherry with post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression.

Frisch prepared a six-page report on Cherry’s condition. She hoped to meet Monday with Cherry’s commanders and post mental health officials to discuss his case.

Frisch said Cherry needed intensive, individualized psychotherapy, not just drugs, to treat his condition.

“Here’s a young man, a combat veteran who has clearly sacrificed a great deal for his country. It appalls me that they are treating him like a criminal when he needs mental help,” said Frisch, who said she has treated other soldiers but never before taken such an advocacy role on a soldier’s behalf.

More at Newsday

But you’re not hearing about it on the news, are ya? It’s amazing the gag that’s been put on the MSM regarding the bad news out of Iraq. One Danish soldier was killed yesterday, also. Meanwhile, our politicians just dick around and dick around while the blood continues to spill. Shame shame shame on the Republican party for keeping us there. Shame on them all for not cutting off funding of this war.

14-May-2007 7 | US: 6 | UK: 0 | Other: 1
US NAME NOT RELEASED YET Al Anbar Province Hostile - hostile fire
US NAME NOT RELEASED YET Baghdad Non-hostile
US NAME NOT RELEASED YET Baghdad (nothern part) Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack
US NAME NOT RELEASED YET Baghdad (southern part) Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack
DK NAME NOT RELEASED YET Basra - Basrah Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack
US NAME NOT RELEASED YET Baghdad (southeast part) Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire
US NAME NOT RELEASED YET Baghdad (southeast part) Hostile - hostile fire - small arms fire

Living in Miami, this is no surprise to me. Driving in South Florida is an experience unlike any other. Speeding motorists aren’t as much of a problem as people who don’t know how to drive. I’ve been on an expressway, doing 70 miles an hour, and someone in front of you stops dead. Why? Because they want to change lanes and they don’t know how. So they stop dead and wait until the other lane is clear and then move over. They can’t go around curves without applying the breaks. They leave 4 car gaps between cars at stop lights, causing traffic back up. They get in the left lane of an expressway and go 40 miles an hour. They slow down to 40 on an expressway because they are on the phone. Red lights mean nothing to them. Pedestrians do not have the right of way. There are 800,000 illegal drivers in Florida. If you doubt that, take a ride through the Golden Glades interchange during rush hour. It’s more exciting than the Batman ride at Great America! I might add, I think people in South Florida take the prize for rudest…. period. On the road or off. Can you tell how much I love it here? Oh, and they can’t drive boats, either. They’ll smash into other boats at a marina and when they finally get into their slip, they’ll scurry out of the marina as fast as possible in case someone just saw them playing bumper boats on the way in. But hey, it’s paradise, right?
From Boston.com

Stressed Miami drivers speed, tailgate and cut off other drivers so frequently that the city earned the title of worst road rage in a survey released Tuesday.

AutoVantage, an automobile membership club offering travel services and roadside assistance, also listed Phoenix, New York, Los Angeles and Boston among the top five cities for rude driving.

Minneapolis, Nashville, St. Louis, Seattle and Atlanta were rated as the cities with the most courteous drivers, who were less likely to change lanes without signaling or swear at other motorists.

More than 2,000 adult drivers who regularly commute in 20 major metropolitan areas were asked to rate road rage and rude driving in telephone surveys between January and March. The survey conducted by Prince Market Research has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.

Drivers owned up to some rude behavior themselves: Nearly all said they had talked on a cell phone while driving, and 64 percent acknowledged they occassionally drive too fast.