Millions of dollars and so much time wasted investigating consensual sex between two adults, and this bastard walks freely with not so much as a shudder of disgust from fellow republicans. Could the christian-right be any more transparent? A “God-agenda”, my ass!

Foley may be off hook in Florida

WASHINGTON - Former Congressman Mark Foley is unlikely to face criminal charges for sending sexually explicit e-mails to teenage boys, sources close to the year-long investigation have told Scripps Howard News Service.

That could change if new evidence surfaces in the next week that proves Foley, 52, sent online messages to male teenagers with the intent to “seduce, solicit, lure, entice, or attempt to seduce a child,” a third degree felony under Florida law.

But as of now, the end of Foley’s political career may be the most severe consequence the former congressman faces for the revelations that stunned his longtime supporters and prompted his immediate resignation, just weeks before the 2006 election. The Fort Pierce Republican represented parts of St. Lucie, Martin, Okeechobee and Palm Beach counties.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement said this week the investigation should be completed within the next several days.

Source: Scripps Newspaper Group

Last night G and I were talking, and I’d like to share a couple of our thoughts. First of all, about the U.S. death toll in Iraq. A couple things. First of all, congress was to get a report on the success or failure of the surge in July. The Iraqi parliament has not met benchmarks. As far as the surge helping Iraq to establish it’s government and democracy, it’s a failure. I think Bush planned for this. He knew as far as the benchmarks go, it wouldn’t be good news. So how could he make it good news??

While taking questions after his speech in the Rose Garden on May 24th, (the one where Cheney was lurking in the bush) out of the clear blue he stated:

And so, yes, it could be a bloody — it could be a very difficult August, and I fully understand –

Why would he say that? Why August???? Why not July…..or September. Why August?

Now consider this……. what was the MSM spitting out all over the place come August 1st? How about this……

U.S. Troop Deaths Show Sharp Decline in July

And now, we have 23 U.S. deaths in the first 7 days of August.

I have to wonder what he knew in May. Why did he think August would be so bloody? Could it be that they withheld numbers in July so that they’d be able to say Oh look….. a sharp decline in U.S. deaths! The surge is working!! And in doing this, they’d have to report the deaths in August…….hence a bloody August. It’s not like it’s never been done before. During the Vietnam war it was done.

Conspiracy theory…….call it what you will. Six years ago I wouldn’t have been there. But I’m there now. I don’t trust this administration. Everything they do is calculated to make things look the way they want them to look. To work the way they want them to work. They will say and do anything to make it so. I think sometimes Bush fucks up and says things that give us clues what they are doing. And I think his bloody August comment was one of those clues. I can picture him and Cheney and Rove sitting and cooking this shit up. Ok…..we need things to look good in July because those Iraqis aren’t going to meet any benchmarks. Ohhhhhh let’s have less U.S. deaths. Ya, that’s the ticket.

Call me crazy, but this is the administration that has brought us illegal wiretapping, torture at Abu Ghraib, rendition and torture, the U.S. attorney scandal, the outting of a CIA agent, more signing statements than ever before, the Military Commission Act, the use of executive privledge at inappropriate times (Pat Tillman) , a President and Vice President who think they are accountable to no one and above the law, a guy who thinks the Geneva convention is “quaint”, secrets and lies beyond belief. Not to mention lying us into this war. I put nothing past them.

Oh, and the saddest part of all, Americans buy into this crap. A poll conducted last weekend showed Americans who think the surge is working up to 31% from 22% a month ago. That decline in U.S. deaths in July (which is really no decline at all), worked. Go figure……

Next up……what do we do to stop this madness?

By Maya Roney
Business Week Online

The outside of Susan Sabin’s house in Lenexa, Kan., is covered with lemons: lemon’shaped foam cutouts, twinkling lemon Christmas lights, and a lemon-adorned wreath on the front door. If you go to her Web site, you can see for yourself. You’ll also see photographs of splintered beams, bowed floors, and a graphic that declares: “Pulte Homes sold me a lemon!”

Sabin has been called crazy, but she’s not the only dissatisfied customer. The Internet has rapidly become an outlet for frustrated homeowners to chronicle their bad experiences with new homes they have found to be structurally defective. Homeowners can now post complaints, discuss legal options, and warn future buyers on at least a dozen builder-directed “gripe sites,” with names such as www.crapconstruction.com and www.khovsucks.com.

Careless Building During Boom?

As home values decrease and home sales slow in many parts of the country, construction problems seem to have become an even bigger concern for homeowners. “I notice the traffic has definitely picked up,” says Andy Martin, a longtime consumer advocate who runs three sites: www.FightPulte.com, www.FightDiVosta.com and www.FightDelWebb.com. The three sites serve as national clearinghouses for those who think they may be victims of shoddy construction. During the housing boom, builders were working fast to keep up with all the people gobbling up new properties, and Martin believes the quality of building suffered as a result. “The pendulum swung too far in (the builders’) favor,” he says. “The Internet now is rising to level the playing field.”

read more HERE

Surprised? From TheRAWStory:

Rove refuses to testify on role in prosecutor firings

TurdBlossom one day… if there’s any justice

White House senior adviser Karl Rove has rebuked a Senate Judiciary Committee subpoena and will not appear Thursday to testify about his role in the firing of nine US Attorneys, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said late Wednesday.

The Senate Judiciary chairman chided the White House for allowing Rove to give public speeches about the attorney firing scandal but not permit his testimony under oath.

“Mr. Rove has given reasons for the firings that have now been shown to be inaccurate after-the-fact fabrications,” Leahy said in a statement. “Yet, he now refuses to tell this Committee the truth about his role in targeting well-respected U.S. Attorneys for firing and in seeking to cover up his role and that of his staff in the scandal.”
[...]

“It is a shame that this White House continues to act as if it is above the law. That is wrong,” Leahy said. “The subpoenas authorized by this Committee in connection with its investigation into the mass firings of U.S. Attorneys and the corrosion of federal law enforcement by White House political influence deserve respect and compliance.”

Nick Juliano, TheRAWStory

The Raw Story

By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

LOS ANGELES, July 27 - The search for the self-described pedophile in the large-brimmed black hat commences nearly every day here, with findings posted on chat rooms frequented by mothers.

Jack McClellan, who calls himself a pedophile, has had Web sites in Seattle and Los Angeles detailing how and where he trolls for children.

He was spotted at a fair in Santa Clarita. He recently emerged from the Social Security office on Olympic Boulevard. He tapped away on a computer at the library in Mar Vista. Warnings have gone out. Signs have been posted.

And yet unlike convicted sex offenders, who are required to stay away from places that cater to children, in this case the police can do next to nothing, because this man, Jack McClellan, who has had Web sites detailing how and where he likes to troll for children, appears to be doing nothing illegal.

But his mere presence in Los Angeles - coupled with Mr. McClellan’s commitment to exhibitionistic blogging about his thoughts on little girls - has set parents on edge. One group of mothers, whose members by and large have never met before, will soon band together in a coffee shop to hammer out plans to push lawmakers in Sacramento to legislate Mr. McClellan out of business.

“Just the idea that this person could get away with what he was doing and no one could press charges has made me angry,” said Jane Thompson, a stay-at-home mother in East Los Angeles who recently read Mr. McClellan’s comments about a festival in her neighborhood in which he seemed to be describing her child.

Ms. Thompson is part of a movement to make it illegal to post images of children of any type on Web sites with sexual content or themes. “It became what I call a minor obsession of mine for the next six weeks,” she said, “to get to know his crowd and the things they talk about.”

read more HERE

These evil bastards have no shame…….

Twenty soldiers deployed to Iraq from this Army base were killed in May, a monthly high. That same month, the base announced a change in how it would honor its dead: instead of units holding services after each death, they would be held collectively once a month.

The anger and hurt were immediate. Soldiers- families and veterans protested the change as cold and logistics-driven. Critics online said the military was trying to repress bad news about deaths. By mid-June, the base had delayed the plan.

[Its commander, Lt. Gen. Charles H. Jacoby, was expected to decide Wednesday whether to go through with it.]

“If I lost my husband at the beginning of the month, what do you do, wait until the end of the month?” asked Toni Shanyfelt, who said her husband was serving one of multiple tours in Iraq. “I don-t know if it’s more convenient for them, or what, but that’s insane.”

Military historians and scholars say the proposal and its fallout highlight the tender questions facing the armed forces as casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan mount, and some soldiers and their families come to expect more from military bases than in past conflicts.

During Vietnam and Korea, the historians say, many bases were places for training soldiers and shipping them out, rarely to see them return, with memorial services uncommon. Now, in the age of the all-volunteer force, the base has become the center of community. The Army and other branches have fostered the idea that military service is as much about education, job training and belonging to a community as national defense.

More at the New York Times

Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.

The position presents serious legal and political obstacles for congressional Democrats, who have begun laying the groundwork for contempt proceedings against current and former White House officials in order to pry loose information about the dismissals.

Under federal law, a statutory contempt citation by the House or Senate must be submitted to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, “whose duty it shall be to bring the matter before the grand jury for its action.”

But administration officials argued yesterday that Congress has no power to force a U.S. attorney to pursue contempt charges in cases, such as the prosecutor firings, in which the president has declared that testimony or documents are protected from release by executive privilege. Officials pointed to a Justice Department legal opinion during the Reagan administration, which made the same argument in a case that was never resolved by the courts.

“A U.S. attorney would not be permitted to bring contempt charges or convene a grand jury in an executive privilege case,” said a senior official, who said his remarks reflect a consensus within the administration. “And a U.S. attorney wouldn’t be permitted to argue against the reasoned legal opinion that the Justice Department provided. No one should expect that to happen.”

More at the Washington Post

No doubt he makes Rove smile! Can you imagine just how worse things would be if our dear president wasn’t “intelligence-challenged”? But, as bad as these people are for America, they are not nearly as bad as those Americans out there that, come hell or high water, plan on voting republican in 2008… regardless.

(Jo Becker and Barton Gellman)

Amending environmental laws to help business

Cheney left no tracks as he steered policy moves to ease pollution controls
[...]

In Oregon, a battleground state that the Bush-Cheney ticket had lost by less than half of 1 percent, drought’stricken farmers and ranchers were about to be cut off from the irrigation water that kept their cropland and pastures green. Federal biologists said the Endangered Species Act left the government no choice: The survival of two imperiled species of fish was at stake.

Law and science seemed to be on the side of the fish. Then the vice president stepped in.

First Cheney looked for a way around the law, aides said. Next he set in motion a process to challenge the science protecting the fish, according to a former Oregon congressman who lobbied for the farmers.

Because of Cheney’s intervention, the government reversed itself and let the water flow in time to save the 2002 growing season, declaring that there was no threat to the fish. What followed was the largest fish kill the West had ever seen, with tens of thousands of salmon rotting on the banks of the Klamath River.

Characteristically, Cheney left no tracks.

Read more on Cheney’s shenanigans at MSNBC.com

from United Press International

EDINBURGH, Scotland, June 23 (UPI) — A Scottish woman has been sentenced to 12 years in prison for a “grievous breach of trust” — participating in the sexual exploitation of her daughter.

Caroline Dunsmore of Edinburgh pleaded guilty to the rape of her daughter, admitting that she participated with her husband, William King. King has since died.

A friend of King, John O’Flaherty, also received a 12-year sentence, The Scotsman reported. Another man, Morris Petch, who allegedly organized the pedophile activities, faces a possible life sentence.

Dana Fowley, Dunsmore’s daughter, ran out of the courtroom during the Friday sentencing hearing. She has allowed her name to be used in news accounts of the case.

“It was a justified sentence,” she said. “My whole life has been hell. Going through a trial has been hell and today has been hell.”

Fowley was sexually abused from the age of 6 to 15, while the defendants molested at least one other girl. Dunsmore’s father, William Dunsmore, who received a 5-year sentence last year, was also involved.

Gee, Henry… YA THINK?

Impeach the bastards already!

Cheney defiant on classified material

Executive order ignored since 2003
(Peter Baker, WashingtonPost.com)

Vice President Cheney’s office has refused to comply with an executive order governing the handling of classified information for the past four years and recently tried to abolish the office that sought to enforce those rules, according to documents released by a congressional committee yesterday.

Since 2003, the vice president’s staff has not cooperated with an office at the National Archives and Records Administration charged with making sure the executive branch protects classified information. Cheney aides have not filed reports on their possession of classified data and at one point blocked an inspection of their office. After the Archives office pressed the matter, the documents say, Cheney’s staff this year proposed eliminating it.

The dispute centers on a relatively obscure process but underscores a wider struggle waged in the past 6 1/2 years over Cheney’s penchant for secrecy. Since becoming vice president, he has fought attempts to peer into the inner workings of his office, shielding an array of information such as the industry executives who advised his energy task force, details about his privately funded travel and Secret Service logs showing who visits his official residence.

Full article at MSNBC.com

By AARON BEARD, Associated Press Writer
from YAHOO!

RALEIGH, N.C. - District Attorney Mike Nifong will be disbarred for his disastrous prosecution of three Duke University lacrosse players falsely accused of rape, a disciplinary committee decided Saturday. Even the veteran prosecutor said the punishment was appropriate.

“This matter has been a fiasco. There’s no doubt about it,” said committee chairman F. Lane Williamson.

Nifong sat motionless, one hand resting over his mouth, as Williamson recounted how he engaged in dishonest and deceitful conduct. He said Nifong’s early comments about the case - which included a confident proclamation that he wouldn’t allow Durham to become known for “a bunch of lacrosse players from Duke raping a black girl” - were purposefully designed to boost his campaign for district attorney.

“At the time he was facing a primary, and yes, he was politically naive,” Williamson said. “But we can draw no other conclusion that those initial statements he made were to further his political ambitions.”

Nifong will not appeal the punishment, his lawyer said.

The North Carolina State Bar charged Nifong with breaking several rules of professional conduct, including lying to both the court and bar investigators and withholding critical DNA test results from the players’ defense attorneys.

The committee, after deliberating for a little more than an hour on Saturday, unanimously agreed with the bar on almost every charge - including the most serious allegations - that Nifong’s actions involved “dishonesty, fraud, deceit and misrepresentation.”

Here’s a little something to scare the living hell out of Americans.
Bush is getting ready to become dictator. Everybody run!

NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/NSPD 51

HOMELAND SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/HSPD-20

Subject: National Continuity Policy

Purpose

(1) This directive establishes a comprehensive national policy on the continuity of Federal Government structures and operations and a single National Continuity Coordinator responsible for coordinating the development and implementation of Federal continuity policies. This policy establishes “National Essential Functions,” prescribes continuity requirements for all executive departments and agencies, and provides guidance for State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector organizations in order to ensure a comprehensive and integrated national continuity program that will enhance the credibility of our national security posture and enable a more rapid and effective response to and recovery from a national emergency.

Definitions

(2) In this directive:

(a) “Category” refers to the categories of executive departments and agencies listed in Annex A to this directive;

(b) “Catastrophic Emergency” means any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions;

(c) “Continuity of Government,” or “COG,” means a coordinated effort within the Federal Government’s executive branch to ensure that National Essential Functions continue to be performed during a Catastrophic Emergency;

(d) “Continuity of Operations,” or “COOP,” means an effort within individual executive departments and agencies to ensure that Primary Mission-Essential Functions continue to be performed during a wide range of emergencies, including localized acts of nature, accidents, and technological or attack-related emergencies;

(e) “Enduring Constitutional Government,” or “ECG,” means a cooperative effort among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Federal Government, coordinated by the President, as a matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches and with proper respect for the constitutional separation of powers among the branches, to preserve the constitutional framework under which the Nation is governed and the capability of all three branches of government to execute constitutional responsibilities and provide for orderly succession, appropriate transition of leadership, and interoperability and support of the National Essential Functions during a catastrophic emergency;

(f) “Executive Departments and Agencies” means the executive departments enumerated in 5 U.S.C. 101, independent establishments as defined by 5 U.S.C. 104(1), Government corporations as defined by 5 U.S.C. 103(1), and the United States Postal Service;

(g) “Government Functions” means the collective functions of the heads of executive departments and agencies as defined by statute, regulation, presidential direction, or other legal authority, and the functions of the legislative and judicial branches;

(h) “National Essential Functions,” or “NEFs,” means that subset of Government Functions that are necessary to lead and sustain the Nation during a catastrophic emergency and that, therefore, must be supported through COOP and COG capabilities; and

(i) “Primary Mission Essential Functions,” or “PMEFs,” means those Government Functions that must be performed in order to support or implement the performance of NEFs before, during, and in the aftermath of an emergency.

read more HERE

By AARON BEARD, Associated Press Writer
from YAHOO! NEWS

RALEIGH, N.C. - More than a year after shocking allegations emerged about Duke University’s lacrosse team, prosecutor Mike Nifong was back in court Tuesday - this time, as the defendant.

The North Carolina State Bar charged the Durham County district attorney with several violations of the state’s rules of professional conduct, all tied to his handling of the lacrosse case.

His trial is expected to run for five days, and as it started Tuesday, the hearing commission chairman promised a quick verdict. If convicted, Nifong could be disbarred.

Well before the start of the hearing, reporters and observers - including the mothers of David Evans and Collin Finnerty, two of the once-charged and now cleared lacrosse players - packed the state Court of Appeals courtroom to watch. Finnerty and the third player, Reade Seligmann, were expected to attend the trial at some point, as were their attorneys.

Nifong won indictments against the three last year after a woman hired to perform as a stripper for a lacrosse team party in March 2006 said she was raped there. He aggressively pursued the case, at one point calling the lacrosse team “a bunch of hooligans” in a newspaper interview.

That interview, along with several others made in the case’s early days, formed the basis of the bar’s initial complaint against Nifong, which said he made misleading and inflammatory comments to the media about the athletes.

read more at YAHOO! NEWS

You just know these bastards would do it……..

By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - After revelations of a US administration policy to hold Iran responsible for any al-Qaeda attack on the United States that could be portrayed as planned on Iranian soil, former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski warned last week that Washington might use such an incident as a pretext to bomb Iran.

Brzezinski, the national security adviser to president Jimmy Carter from 1977 through 1980 and the most senior Democratic Party figure on national’security policy, told a private meeting sponsored by the non-partisan Committee for the Republic in

Washington on May 30 that an al-Qaeda terrorist attack in the US intended to provoke war between the United States and Iran was a possibility that must be taken seriously, and that the administration of President George W Bush might accuse Iran of responsibility for such an attack and use it to justify carrying out an attack on Iran.

Brzezinski suggested that new constraints are needed on presidential war powers to reduce the risk of a war against Iran based on such a false pretense. Such constraints, Brzezinski said, should not prevent the president from using force in response to an attack on the US, but should make it more difficult to carry out an attack without adequate justification.

Brzezinski’s warning came a few weeks after the publication in April of former Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet’s memoirs, which revealed that CIA officials had told Iranian officials in a face-to-face meeting that the Bush administration would hold Iran responsible for any al-Qaeda attack on the US that was planned from Iranian territory.

The administration has made persistent claims over the past five years that Iran has harbored al-Qaeda operatives who had fled from Afghanistan and that they had participated in planning terrorist actions - claims that were not supported by intelligence analysts.

More at the Asia Times

H/T Bur$atil for this post!

Ahhhhhh sorry doesn’t cut it. Knowing he had a drug resistant strain of TB while in Italy, the asshole got on a flight and put God knows how many people at risk. He KNEW what he was doing at that point.

DENVER - The Atlanta lawyer quarantined with a dangerous strain of tuberculosis apologized to fellow airline passengers in an interview aired Friday, and insisted he was told before he set out for his wedding in Europe that he was no danger to anyone.

“I’ve lived in this state of constant fear and anxiety and exhaustion for a week now, and to think that someone else is now feeling that, I wouldn’t want anyone to feel that way. It’s awful,” Andrew Speaker, speaking through a face mask, told ABC’s “Good Morning America” from his hospital room in Denver.

Meanwhile, questions arose as to whether the wedding even took place. The mayor of the island of Santorini in Greece, Angelos Rousso, told The Associated Press: “There was no wedding. They came for a marriage but they did not have the required papers.” He said the couple stayed in a hotel for three days and then left.

In Denver, Speaker’s doctors said that he could be in the hospital for up to two months, and that if antibiotics fail to knock out the extremely drug-resistant infection, he may have to undergo surgery to remove infected lung tissue, about the size of a tennis ball.