And once in a while you read some good news:

Plumas forest projects halted

In a resounding repudiation of the Bush administration’s national forest management, a three-judge federal panel has ordered a halt to three major logging projects in the Plumas National Forest.

Logging had been set to begin June 1 but now cannot go forward until an environmental impact assessment conforms to a Clinton administration forest management plan, the panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said.

Judge John T. Noonan Jr. wrote the opinion and also a concurrence that says the U.S. Forest Service has an inherent conflict of interest when it sells large trees to finance fire protection efforts, as called for under the Bush plan.

“The financial incentive of the Forest Service in implementing the forest plan is as operative, as tangible, and as troublesome as it would be if … the agency was the paid accomplice of the loggers,” Noonan wrote.

Memo: Laws Didn’t Apply to Interrogators

The Justice Department sent a legal memorandum to the Pentagon in 2003 asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president’s ultimate authority as commander in chief overrode such statutes.

The 81-page memo, which was declassified and released publicly yesterday, argues that poking, slapping or shoving detainees would not give rise to criminal liability. The document also appears to defend the use of mind-altering drugs that do not produce “an extreme effect” calculated to “cause a profound disruption of the senses or personality.” [...]

Sent to the Pentagon’s general counsel on March 14, 2003, by John C. Yoo, then a deputy in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, the memo provides an expansive argument for nearly unfettered presidential power in a time of war. It contends that numerous laws and treaties forbidding torture or cruel treatment should not apply to U.S. interrogations in foreign lands because of the president’s inherent wartime powers.

You just know Bush and Co. are worried sick over this:

White House E-Mail Battle Heats Up

The White House has three days to explain why it shouldn’t be required to copy its computer hard drives to ensure no further e-mails are lost, a federal judge ordered Tuesday. [...]

Observing that even that step is “not without its costs,” Facciola gave the White House until close of business Friday to argue why it should not be required to make such copies.

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said the White House “fully intends to comply” with the order, which is currently being reviewed.

Actually, I was being snarky. They could care less.

8 years of GW failed policy……it’s enough!! Yah, once the Democrats take the White house, these clowns will all be history and the mess, again, will be the Dems to clean up. You’d think Americans would see the pattern here.

The US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, has told the Washington Post newspaper that he intends to leave his post early next year, to retire.

Reports have said Mr Crocker may leave Baghdad as soon as mid-January, before a new American president takes office.

Mr Crocker has repeatedly said that US troop withdrawals from Iraq should depend on conditions on the ground and not on timetables set in Washington.

This puts him at odds with the policies of some presidential candidates.

“I am prepared to remain in Baghdad until early 2009, when I intend to retire,” Mr Crocker told the Washington Post.

“That will make two years in Iraq and 37 years in the Foreign Service - it’s enough!”

More at the BBC

The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee yesterday unveiled a rival plan to stimulate the economy, offering a $500 check to virtually every American — including low-income seniors and rich financiers — in a direct challenge to the bipartisan deal reached last week by President Bush and House leaders.

The new proposal includes rebates for seniors and payroll taxpayers, extended unemployment insurance, tax relief for struggling businesses, and may also include heating assistance for the poor, food’stamp money, more business tax incentives and road-resurfacing funds, among other items.

In his SOTU speech last night, Bush said “the temptation will be to load up the bill” and that “this would delay it or derail it, and neither option is acceptable.”

For all the power they wield, for their over-bloated sense of self worth, these people are doing nothing more than playing Monopoly with our livelihoods.

When asked yesterday about a previous statement by White House spokeswoman Dana Perino that some White House e-mails are indeed missing, Fratto demurred. “I’m not sure what was said on that,” he said. “I could tell you today, though, that we have no evidence and we have no way of showing that any e-mail at all are missing.”

Hesitate… Obfuscate… Deny… Fratto does his job well.

I don’t understand why the media isn’t eating this story up. I don’t understand why congress (as a whole) isn’t all over this. I don’t understand why the 2008 presidential contenders aren’t railing against this. It’s a direct slap in the face for government accountability, transparency and openness - which is a requirement of our government.

Are we to believe anything will come of this though? Nope. This lying, thieving and power-grabbing republican bus will continue it’s journey onwards to a more kingdom-like America.

White House Study Found 473 Days of E-Mail Gone

The White House possesses no archived e-mail messages for many of its component offices, including the Executive Office of the President and the Office of the Vice President, for hundreds of days between 2003 and 2005, according to the summary of an internal White House study that was disclosed yesterday by a congressional Democrat.

The 2005 study — whose credibility the White House attacked this week — identified 473 separate days in which no electronic messages were stored for one or more White House offices, said House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.).
[...]

The White House is required by law to preserve e-mails considered presidential or federal records, and it is the target of several lawsuits seeking information about missing data and efforts to preserve electronic communications.

The internal study found that for Bush’s executive office, no e-mails were archived on 12 separate days between December 2003 and February 2004, Waxman said. Vice President Cheney’s office showed no electronic messages on 16 occasions from September 2003 to May 2005.