By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Investigative Report
cross posted at Democratic Underground

In-depth investigation shows how Vice President Dick Cheney pressured federal energy regulators to conceal evidence of widespread market manipulation by energy companies during the California electricity crisis in 2001.

In March 2001, while California’s two largest utilities were teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, and the state’s electricity crisis was spiraling out of control, Vice President Dick Cheney summoned Curt Hebert, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), to his office next to the White House for a hastily arranged meeting.

Cheney had just been informed by his longtime friend Thomas Cruikshank, the man who handpicked the vice president to succeed him at Halliburton in the mid-1990s, that federal energy regulators were close to completing an investigation into allegations that Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Williams Companies and AES Corporation of Arlington, Virginia had created an artificial power shortage in California in April and May of 2000 by shutting down a power plant for more than two weeks.

GOP Front Group Attacks Gray Davis, Shields Bush, Cheney

At the same time, Reed informed Rove and Cheney that his nonprofit, the American Taxpayers Alliance, a Republican front organization, would begin to air a series of scathing radio commercials taking aim at Davis’s failure to tame the energy crisis in June 2001. The ads, Reed said, were aimed to shift attention away from Republicans in Washington and “back to Sacramento where it belongs.” Reed added that the ads would leave Davis “bleeding like a stuck pig.”

read more at Democratic Underground

By Paul Kiel
from TPMuckraker

More troubles for Sen. David Vitter (R-LA). Washington, D.C. watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington has filed an ethics complaint against him, based on his admitted use of the D.C. Madam’s escort service. The basis of the complaint?

Engaging the services of a prostitute violates both District of Columbia and Louisiana criminal law.

The Senate Ethics Manual provides that certain conduct may be improper even though it does not violate specific Senate rules or regulations. Such conduct has been characterized as “improper conduct which may reflect upon the Senate.” This rule is intended to protect the integrity and reputation of the Senate as a whole. The Ethics Manual explains that “improper conduct” is given meaning by considering “generally accepted standards of conduct, the letter and spirit of laws and Rules…”

Whether or not Sen. Vitter is ultimately adjudicated to have broken any criminal laws, the Senate may still discipline him for improper conduct as it has other members in the past.

Unlike in the House, the Senate ethics committee does not require that a member file a complaint in order for it to be heard, so this could potentially become a liability for Vitter.

Update: Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) wants a “full airing” of the prostitute’scandal swirling around Sen. David Vitter (R-LA).

from Oliver Willis

This is the kind of content we have to look forward to as Fox prepares to launch the Fox Business Channel. From this past weekend’s “Forbes on Fox“, the panelists just got done answering the ludicrous question of whether the uptick in the stock market was a “major” victory over Al Qaeda (because clearly a bull market is the best way to avenge 9/11) and then the conversation went even further off the rails as Fox News contributor and Forbes Magazine publisher Rich Karlgaard asserted that the deaths of U.S. troops in Iraq wasn’t so bad because, hey, they volunteered to serve their country.

You’ll also notice how Fox anchor/host David Asman does his best to cut off and talk over the one panelist who isn’t toeing the right-wing line. That sort of thing is just not allowed on Fox News Channel.

Remember, the right claims that they’re the only ones who “support the troops” (and the media backs them up on it like the lapdogs they are).

read more and see the Fox News Video at Oliver Willis.com

Link below is to the clip of Michael Moore on “The Situation Room”

There must be applause for Michael Moore, producer of the new documentary “Sicko”. After a short “hit piece” about the film, Wolf “The Beard” Blitzer had Michael on live in “The Situation Room“. And Mike really went off on CNN. The link will take you to “Crooks and Liars“. Enjoy and appreciate Michael for speaking truth to power.

Check out the video here

cross-posted at Think Progress

Today, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani delivered a speech to the Jewish Community Relations Council in New York:

[I]f we flee Iraq, if we do what the Democrats want us to do - which is to not only flee Iraq, not only retreat in Iraq, but give them a timetable of our retreat.

Have you ever heard of that in a history of war? Have you ever heard of an army being required to give a printed schedule of its release to the enemy? It makes no sense, does it? Whether you-re for the war or against it, you would never have an army retreat on a six- month, one-year, 18-month schedule explaining, We-ll reduce the forces by 20,000, then by 30,000, then by 50,000. Gee, you can then figure out when the forces are depleted enough so you can really do damage to them.

Giuliani needs to brush up on his history. A publicly-announced gradual reduction of forces is exactly what the United States did in the Vietnam War. On May 14, 1969, President Richard Nixon laid out an “eight-point peace plan” calling for the gradual withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Vietnam:

Over a period of 12 months, by agreed-upon stages, the major positions of all U.S., allied, and other non-South Vietnamese forces would be withdrawn. At the end of this 12-month period, the remaining U.S., allied, and other non-South Vietnamese forces would move into designated base areas and would not engage in combat operations.

read more at THINK PROGRESS

cross-posted at NO QUARTER

“Thompson’s website, I’m With Fred, boasts of his purportedly central role in uncovering the existence of the White House taping system, noting that it was Thompson who asked Alexander Butterfield the fateful question.”

However, today’s Boston Globe reveals:

The day before Senate Watergate Committee minority counsel Fred Thompson made the inquiry that launched him into the national spotlight — asking an aide to President Nixon whether there was a White House taping system — he telephoned Nixon’s lawyer.

Thompson tipped off the White House that the committee knew about the taping system and would be making the information public. In his all-but-forgotten Watergate memoir, “At That Point in Time,” Thompson said he acted with “no authority” in divulging the committee’s knowledge of the tapes, which provided the evidence that led to Nixon’s resignation. It was one of many Thompson leaks to the Nixon team. …

“Thompson was a mole for the White House … Fred was working hammer and tong to defeat the investigation of finding out what happened to authorize Watergate and find out what the role of the president was.”

read more at “No Quarter“

cross-posted at Think Progress

Washington DC FM talk radio station 106.7 WJFK yesterday announced it was dropping Bill O-Reilly’s nationally syndicated show, and replacing it with a sports-talk program. The Washington Post reports today that O-Reilly’s cancellation is a “case in point” of how poorly conservative radio programs have fared in DC:

With the exception of Rush Limbaugh, conservative talk-radio hosts have struggled for years to find a wide audience on the local dial. While Limbaugh’s afternoon program remains popular on WMAL (630 AM), not many other conservatives- programs have.

Yet despite their underwhelming performance, numerous right-wing radio hosts have been given repeated opportunities to succeed in DC. “Such radio stars of the right as Laura Ingraham, Glenn Beck and Michael Savage at times have literally had no ratings in Washington, as measured by Arbitron.”

In its diagnosis of conservative talk’s failures in the DC region, the Post points to a host of factors including the weak signals of some stations, weak programming, and the unique culture of the area that is resistant to political talk radio. One factor that went unmentioned, however, is the impact media consolidation has had on the local market.

read more at THINK PROGRESS

Crossposted from AdBusters.com

By Matt Taibbi

Call it the Leslie Nielsen effect. Your first attempt at a show-biz career fizzles out and dies, but your failure is so quirky and charming that it wins you a whole second career. Think Robert Goulet, Bill Shatner, even John Travolta. America loves a brave second act, particularly one that doesn-t mind doing a take or two with egg still on his face.

What the Zucker brothers did for actors, the neocons are now doing for politics. In the first six years of the Bush presidency the administration’s ideological nucleus - a tribe of humorless conservative revolutionaries led by Dick Cheney and including the likes of Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Doug Feith and Elliott Abrams - racked up a startling record in matters of official policy. From their juking of the case for the Iraq War to their Jacobin-esque purges within the government’s intelligence apparatus to their paranoid and sometimes criminal fragging of political enemies great and minor, the neoconservatives working for George Bush botched virtually every important move they made in the last six years.

Moreover, each time they used the presidency’s bully pulpit to make a prediction, be it about the post-invasion spread of democracy in the Middle East, the utility of Iraqi oil revenues in financing the occupation, or the chilling effect our presence in Iraq would have on Palestinian resolve, more or less exactly the opposite ended up taking place.

And yet, despite the walloping defeat of the Republicans in the 2006 midterm elections that seemed to spell the end of neocon rule in Washington, the clowns are once again spilling out of the Volkswagen. Lately the neocons seem to be all over the public airwaves, and not as the targets of purgative public flogging or tarring ceremonies, but as the subjects of serious interviews, with respected journalists treating them like real human beings with real opinions. Even worse, a few are still in office, and appear to be cooking up a last-minute encore before the curtain finally comes down in -08.

Read more »

cross posted at Crooks and Liars

It’s about time somebody stepped up to the plate and called out this idiot on his strange and “neo-con-like” behavior. Scram, Joe. Go retire. And don’t let the door hit you in the arse. - JS

Connecticut for Lieberman Party Chairman John Orman called Tuesday for Sen. Joe Lieberman to resign, saying his advocacy of a military strike against Iran could explode into a global conflict.

“He has crossed the line,” said Orman, a professor of politics at Fairfield University. “His unilateral warmongering could lead to a new World War III.”

During an appearance on “Face the Nation” on CBS Sunday, Lieberman said the United States should consider a military strike against Iran because of Tehran’s involvement in Iraq.[..]

Orman, a former Democrat, switched party affiliation and took over the Connecticut for Lieberman Party earlier this year. Lieberman created the party last August to run for re-election as an independent after losing the state’s Democratic primary to Ned Lamont of Greenwich. However, Lieberman never joined the new party and remains a registered Democrat.

Orman issued a news release Tuesday asking Lieberman to immediately resign and urging Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell to appoint Susan Henshaw, secretary of the Connecticut for Lieberman Party, as his replacement.

Commentary: As the verdict for Scooter Libby fast approaches, a former federal prosecutor considers his fate. - By Elizabeth de la Vega

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com

If the memorandum filed by defense attorneys in anticipation of former top White House adviser I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s June 5th sentencing is any indication, it appears that Libby — one of the highest White House officials ever convicted of a felony — has learned precisely nothing from his trial and conviction on charges of false statements, obstruction of justice, and perjury.

Libby’s lawyers admit — because they have to — that their client, a man with three decades of executive-level federal government service, disseminated classified information about the status of CIA Agent Valerie Plame Wilson in response to public criticism of the Bush administration by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson. They nevertheless insist that this, at best, reckless (and, far more likely, intentional) act is not only not illegal, but not even wrong.

Unfortunately for Libby, this in-your-face position also has a certain shoot-yourself-in-the-foot quality. Libby is arguing for a probationary sentence, which is considerably more lenient than that called for by the Sentencing Guidelines. An essential factor every judge must consider in deciding whether to depart from the guidelines to impose such a light sentence is whether it would sufficiently deter others from similar misconduct.

Having aggressively argued that there was neither crime, nor misconduct, how do Libby’s lawyers then address the issue of deterrence? They argue that Libby has experienced a “very public fall from grace” and that this “dire consequence” alone would be enough to “warn the public — and high ranking government officials in particular — that it is important to take FBI and grand jury investigations very seriously.” This is an exquisite expression of the entitlement and arrogance that spawned the administration’s smear campaign against Joseph Wilson in the first place. It could only be more pointedly evocative of utter contempt for the rule of law if it were followed by a sneer emoticon.

read more at Mother Jones

from Think Progress

“It’s as big as Vatican City and makes the foreign embassies dotting the tree-lined streets of Washington, D.C., look like carriage houses, but the barely-finished U.S. embassy in Baghdad is already primed for expansion.”

According to Dave Foley, spokesman at the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, more Americans are still working at the embassy than initially expected, mainly because the overarching security problem in Baghdad has slowed and complicated efforts to rebuild the country and help establish a functioning central government there. […]

As designed now, the 619 blast-proof apartments may not be enough to accommodate some of the estimated 4,000 regular employees, contractors and local Iraqis working for the embassy, plus congressional and other diplomatic visitors who visit the capital on a regular basis.

from THINK PROGRESS

White House political director and top Karl Rove aide Sara Taylor, “who has been with George W. Bush from the outset of his first presidential campaign, is the latest staff member to leave the president’s employ.

Taylor cleared out her office early last week. She plans to take her skills to the private sector, where the pay will no doubt be better than the $137,000 she earned in 2006 as a deputy assistant to the president. “I haven-t decided on anything,” Taylor said. “I-m looking at a handful of different options.”

Taylor is reportedly intimately involved in the U.S. Attorney scandal. According to Kyle Sampson, Taylor was directly promoting efforts to appoint attorneys without Senate confirmation. The House and Senate Judiciary Committees have approved subpoenas for her testimony.

read more at THINK PROGRESS

cross posted at DAILY KOS

by BarbinMD
Sun May 27, 2007

On May 28, 2001, George W. Bush gave his first Memorial Day address. At that point in time, there were zero fatalities in Bush’s Global War on Terror. On that day he said:

It is not in our nature to seek out wars and conflicts.

Unfortunately, it was in his nature and four months after speaking those words, the terrorist attacks of September 11th “changed everything.”

And as the post 9/11 events unfolded and Bush planned for his war but not for the peace, it’s too bad he didn’t remember something else he said that Memorial Day:

We know that they all loved their lives as we love ours. We know they had a place in the world, families waiting for them, and friends they expected to see again. We know that they thought of a future, just as we do, with plans and hopes for a long and full life.

By May 27, 2002, there were 34 fatalities in Bush’ GWOT when he made his second Memorial Day address from Normandy.

Words can only go so far in capturing the grief and sense of loss for the families of those who died in all our wars. For some military families in America and in Europe, the grief is recent, with the losses we have suffered in Afghanistan. They can know, however, that the cause is just and, like other generations, these sacrifices have spared many others from tyranny and sorrow.

This was when we were in Afghanistan, going after al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden and those responsible for attacking America. But as we now know, the plans for Iraq had been made months before and on this Memorial Day, Bush floated one of the talking points for the upcoming war:

...In the nearly 14 decades since, our nation’s battles have all been far from home. Here on the continent of Europe were some of the fiercest of those battles, the heaviest losses, and the greatest victories.

And in all those victories American soldiers came to liberate, not to conquer.

Less than a year later, the mission was accomplished and when Bush made his third Memorial Day address on May 26, 2003, there were 275 total fatalities in his GWOT. On that day he said:

…we have laid to rest Americans who fell in the battle of Iraq. One of the funerals was for Marine Second Lieutenant Frederick Pokorney Junior, of Jacksonville, North Carolina. His wife, Carolyn, received a folded flag. His two year old daughter, Taylor, knelt beside her mother at the casket to say a final goodbye.

read more at DAILY KOS

cross posted at THINK PROGRESS

Some grisly details about criminal former Rep. Duke Cunningham and his crony hot-tub parties on his old boat, The Duke’stir.

The ‘Duke-Stir’

For one thing, Wilkes was totally disgusted by the hot tub Cunningham put on the boat’s deck during the autumn and winter. What repelled Wilkes - and others invited to the parties - was both the water Cunningham put in the hot tub and the congressman’s penchant for using it while naked, even if everybody else at the party was clothed. Cunningham used water siphoned directly from the polluted Potomac River and never changed it out during the season. “Wilkes thought it was unbelievably dirty and joked if you got in there it would leave a dark water line on your chest,” said one person familiar with the parties. “The water was so gross that very few people were willing to get into the hot tub other than Duke and his paramour.” That was a reference to Cunningham’s most frequently seen girlfriend, a flight attendant who lived in Maryland.

cross posted at Post Scipts
by Tina Grazier

On April 16, a Monday, passengers aboard the last Amtrak train of the day back from the Bay Area wondered why the engine ground to a stop as it approached the I Street bridge over the Sacramento River. They didn-t know that five people stood on the tracks, gang members among them, throwing rocks at the engineer, who stopped the train. The attackers dragged him out, demanded his wallet and cell phone, then beat him senseless with a bottle and a fire extinguisher. They also attacked the train’s conductor. The engineer, with head and internal injuries, was taken to hospital. The train finally crossed the river to the Sacramento station under the control of a student conductor.

“This is lawless barbarism,” West Sacramento mayor Christopher Cabaldon told the Bee’s Tony Bizjak, but the attackers remained unidentified. ** An April 18 Associated Press story came headlined “Mob forces train to stop, assaults engineer in West Sacrament” but mentioned only a “group of people” on the tracks. That could have meant anybody, but on Thursday emerged the involvement of the Broderick Boys a criminal street gang under a court injunction by Yolo County District Attorney Jeff Reisig, who calls the gang “domestic terrorists.”

On April 24, an appeal court tossed Reisig’s injunction, under which violent crime had decreased eight percent in the safety zone. The next day, the Bee ran a prominently featured piece of nearly 1,000 words by veteran reporters Bill Lindelof and Stephen Managnini. It turned out to be a forum for Joe Castro, 76, who described himself as proud to be a Broderick Boy, even though, he said, “I’ve never been around them when they caused any trouble.” Castro’s wife Mary said the injunction was “the worst thing that could have happened here,” stigmatizing a Latino community. Activists of La Raza Network said likewise. Neither Castro mentioned the train attack.

Bee columnist Marcos Breton also failed to mention the train attack at all in his April 29 column, “West Sac’s Gang Law was Racially Unfair.” He conceded that crime was down in the areas covered by the injunction but charged that the measure was a kind of racial profiling of “brown people.” The piece included no opinion on the fairness of the injunction from the engineer whose head the Broderick Boys had bashed in, nor from the conductor who had been beaten. The “alternative” Sacramento News & Review likewise avoided any mention of the train attack in its piece on the gang injunction against the Broderick Boys.

All told, a successful injunction against a violent gang garnered more wrath than a savage attack which Eugene Skoropowski, executive director of the Capitol Corridor train service, told the Bee was “the most horrific incident” he had seen in 40 years on the railroad.

read More at Post Scripts