Media - Corporate

Torture News Strike

Bob Fertik — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 08:25:34 -0400

Brattleboro (Vt.) Reformer
Kansas City Star
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Tuscaloosa (Ala.) News

On 4/11/08, George Bush told ABC News he personally approved of the approval of torture - including waterboarding - by Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and George Tenet.

Bush said, "Yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."

You would think a President confessing to war crimes would be on the front pages of all the nation's newspapers, and all over their editorial pages - not just on Countdown and The Daily Show.

You'd be wrong. The only newspapers that have covered the story are in the box on the right.

Is your newspaper missing from this list? Then let's work together to do something about it.

We're calling this action our "Torture News Strike."

Call the Editor of your local newspaper and tell him/her you are suspending your subscription until they give Bush's torture confession the serious coverage it deserves either in the news or editorial section, or preferably both.

If you get home delivery, then call the circulation department and tell them to suspend delivery until further notice. (If you buy at the newsstands, read something else.)

Want to connect with other activists who read the same newspaper as you? Read more...

1. Login to Democrats.com and look for a "Local" forum devoted to your newspaper, either under "state" or "county". If you don't see your newspaper listed, skip to (3) below.
http://democrats.com/local

2. Post a comment about your action and the editor's response in the forum.

3. If your newspaper isn't listed on your "Local" page, please add it:

Find the name and contact info for your newspaper's editor by opening the newspaper, using Google, or using this list:
http://www.mondotimes.com/world/usa/newspapers.html
click on your state
click on your local newspaper
Open Notepad and copy/paste the full name of the newspaper
Scroll down and look under "contact information" for the name of the editor
Copy/paste the editor's name into Notepad
Just above "contact information," click the web site
Find the main phone number and copy/paste into Notepad
Post this information on Democrats.com
Login and click http://democrats.com/local
If your newspaper serves an area smaller than your County, click the [Post] link next to "County" - if it serves more than one County, click the [Post] link next to "State"
For "Subject" use "Newspaper Strike:" and the name of your newspaper
For "Democrats.com Forums" choose "Hot Topics"
For "Body" copy/paste the Editor's name and phone number

4. Use the "Send" link below your local newspaper forum to invite your friends to participate.

Want to do more?

1. Write a letter to your local newspaper about Bush's torture scandal and the paper's failure to cover it. Also call your favorite talk shows.

2. Also sign our petition to Impeach Bush and Cheney for Torture:
http://www.democrats.com/impeach-for-torture

Thanks for all you do!

To learn more about the Torture scandal, visit these links:

ABC News 4/11/08: Bush Approved Torture
Democrats.com torture news
Troutfishing (How you can fight, What about sexual torture)
Invictus
AmericanTorture.com
Emptywheel
White House Watch by Dan Froomkin (Bush OK'd torture meetings)
The Abu Ghraib Scandal and the U.S. Occupation of Iraq by John Cox
Died hanging from wrists and gagged, with over 25 rib fractures by bewert
Prisoner Abuse in Iraq, Afghanistan and Elsewhere by Cooperative Research
The Green Light by Philippe Sands
Psychological Torture by US Forces, Physicians for Human Rights
Watch the new documentary: Standard Operating Procedure

Taking the "talk" to the next level

Bizguide — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:23:41 -0400

I am taking the lead here. I hope to get informed support. Here's the theme: Thought create. Words enable. Ideas can often be catagoized as creative or destructive. We have no time for destructive thoughts, words, or arguements. Guiding the conversation based on 6 degrees of separation, each of us has equal influence on our collective direction.

Consider that great leaders are idenified and empowered when they see where the people are going and lead them in that direction. That is why Barak Obama is welcomed now! Let's start a conversation that replaces the negative campaigning, from both sides, with accurate, creative habit forming creativity and optimism.

For example: Creating solutions to social problems ideas such as Youth Corp, or Green Jobs, or Decentralized Home Energy Production devices are creative ideas. Creative principals require that someone receive and speak for an idea. The opposing force, summed up by the name; Fear, expresses many attacks that are familar. The discussion here would be around identifying various expressions of fear and attack by naming them and then creating sound and reasonable responses to these expressions of fear. An example would be that mocking is a waste of time used by those threatened by the perceived "newness" or difference in a thing or idea. Another is that exaggeration is a form of lying. Another is when someone critizes in a passive aggressive manner using denial or misinterpretation such as the statement, "What poverty?" and another is displayed when ideas that insist the answer to a challenge must be handled in an either/or fashion.

So, I would like to develop a strident conversation using quality sources of information on these communication issues. The result would be that honest and accuarate responses to commonly used underhanded ideas are provided to readers here.

Best regards, Joseph McCluskey

Cable Networks Let Rightwing Pundits Ratf**k Democratic Convention

Bob Fertik — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:16:37 -0400

John Amato speaks for me:

Right wing TV Pundits destroy every segment on Democratic Convention

Every time I turn on the TV and watch CNN and FOX (my hotel doesn’t get MSNBC) every Republican operative controls the dialog and direction of the panel discussion and it’s disgusting. Just one example—Hillary Clinton gave a brilliant speech last night, but every Amy Holmes-type talking head throws as much cold water on the speech as he or she can. The result is that the Dem talkers spend the rest of the time disputing the outrageous claims made and thus the GOP controls the entire framing and the entire segment. It’s shameful that the networks are allowing this to happen. I saw Jeffrey Toobin tell Amy that she was out of her mind with some of her comments and the discussion continues to that end. Soledad O’Brien comes back and says “well, that was a lively discussion.” Oh, no it was not. It’s a calculated ratf&@k. This is going on all day and all night.

Why is the Democratic Convention being ruined by these creeps? And why do all the networks allow it to happen? Why do we need them on in force to counter what is supposed to be our event?

I’m in Denver and it’s a completely different atmosphere. Party unison abounds, but you’d never know it from watching TV. Karl Rove acts like the biggest troll known to man—making sure to point out every little detail he dislikes. Well, his mission is to get McCain in the White House. But he’s the expert that Chris Wallace goes to for his “unbiased” take.

Will the Democratic talkers be allowed to do the same to the Republican Convention? I think not. It will be viewed as being an incredible event.

Update 1: After Bill Clinton spoke, it took Chuck Todd exactly 1 minute to attack Obama using a bulls**t Republican talking point that Obama is "borrowing" Biden's experience.

Media Matters Launches County Fair

Bob Fertik — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 11:50:54 -0400

Our friends at Media Matters have launched an excellent new media watch blog called County Fair:

Why "County Fair"?

Longtime Springsteen fans may have caught onto our new blogs's name; it's copped from the relatively obscure, Nebraska-era song of his. (Here's a nice analysis of the tune; here are the lyrics.) After running out of "media"-based name possibilities for the blog (we're pretty sure they've all been taken by now), we just liked the idea the song conveyed of a meeting place for folks to gather.

The blog is omnivorous, covering the full spectrum from left to right, from blogs to TV, from obscure (like the AP's McCain mole Ron Fournier) to the famous (Morning GOP's Joe Scarborough). And of course you'll find links to the excellent columns by Eric Boehlert and Jamison Foser.

Enjoy!

This War Report Has Been Approved by Your Government

dlindorff — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:24:52 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

We Americans got a graphic illustration of the demise of any
independent American corporate news media these past few days as the
coverage on TV and in print was saturated with reports about John
Edwards’ infidelity and, equally important, Russia’s invasion of
Georgia.

In the first case, we had the completely pointless if prurient
airing of Edwards’ sordid extra-marital affair. Pointless because
Edwards at this time is a has-been politician. If there were any point
to the coverage it should have been, as Alex Cockburn pointed out in
his journal Counterpunch,
the abject failure of those same reporters and “news” organizations to
cover the story back last fall, when it might have mattered. Back then,
when the only paper covering the story was the National Enquirer,
Edwards was still a viable candidate for the presidency, or a possible
contender for vice president again. It’s not that his personal sex-life
has any news value in and of itself. The point is that had he won the
nomination, or been picked as a vice presidential running mate, its
inevitable exposure later during the general election would have
destroyed any Democratic presidential chances. And the corporate media
knew back then all about this story. They just weren’t pursuing it (and
the current blitz of stories proves that they weren’t holding back out
of principle!).

Then there’s the Georgia war. I was stunned by the graphic
depictions of Russian brutality in Gori and other cities that were
massively bombed and shelled, with apartment buildings collapsed into
rubble, children killed, and civilians targeted. The New York Times, in
particular, had photographic images of dead Georgian soldiers, of
charred bodies, of hysterical mothers. On NBC News, Russian planes were
shown dropping their loads of bombs on apartments.

We read that President Bush condemned the Russian invasion of another nation and called for an immediate ceasefire. Yet there was not one word of astonishment or challenge from reporters or commentators or editorial writers at this stunningly cynical statement coming from a leader who himself is responsible for the blatantly illegal and much more destructive invasion of another nation. And remember, while Georgia is on Russia’s border, and was at least possibly guilty of oppressing and attacking and perhaps even killing members of the Russian minority in two of its provinces (Georgia bombed the biggest town in the secessionist province of Ossetia, killing perhaps 1000 civilians, before Russia invaded), Iraq is half a world away from America and was minding its own business, not threatening Americans in any way. Russia, thus far, has at most killed a few thousand Georgians. America has, by most accounts killed hundreds of thousands and perhaps as many as 1.2 million Iraqis, very few of them combatants.

We watch and read voluminous reports on this relatively small Russian war against its neighbor and former domestic province (Georgia was one of the SSRs in the old USSR), and meanwhile there is almost nothing being reported about the continuing five-year-old war launched by Bush and Cheney against Iraq. And certainly, over the course of five years we have gotten no visual depiction of that war even approaching the scenes that were on display from the front in Georgia.

Apparently, in the view of our corporate news editors and managers, it is important for Americans to fully witness the bloody horrors of war when that war is being fought by Russia, but we are to be carefully protected from seeing such things when they are being perpetrated by our own centurions. We aren’t even allowed to see the grievous injuries and death being suffered by our own troops.

And, of course, don't feel to good about the quality of the coverage of the Russian/Georgia conflict either. This too is biased. Indeed one reason we are shown all the carnage is that the US government has been backing Georgia, and there is evidence that the US even encouraged the Georgian attacks on ethnic Russians which provoked the invasion. The US also has obligingly airlifted Georgian troops back from Iraq to Georgia.

This is not news. This is propaganda, pure and simple.

American corporate news media broadcasts and articles should include
a disclaimer: “This report was approved by the media managers of the
Bush/Cheney administration.”
_________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based journalist and columnist.
His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s Press, 2006
and now available in paperback edition). His work is available at
www.thiscantbehappening.net

Did CBS Botch ANOTHER Memo?

Bob Fertik — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 18:33:55 -0400

If I say "proportional-spaced font" and "superscript" and "Little Green Footballs," what comes to mind? Ah yes, the forged memo about George Bush's National Guard service that cost Dan Rather his job at CBS.

With that in mind, I invite you to read the following description of a different forged memo - the one Ron Suskind says was drafted at the White House on creamy stationery and given to George Tenet to have his people give to their asset (and former Iraqi intelligence chief) Tahir Jalil Habbush and then leak to the press. This is how the memo was described by the ultimate recipient of the leak, the U.K. Telegraph's neocon propagandist Con Coughlin:

The handwritten memo, a copy of which has been obtained exclusively by the Telegraph, is dated July 1, 2001

Now as far as I can tell, that forged memo has never actually been published. So imagine my surprise when I watched the CBS report by Bill Plante and saw... the forged memo!

Now you don't have to be an expert on superscripts or proportional-spaced fonts to spot the problems here:

1. If that is "handwritten," then Habbush is actually a robot.

2. The damn thing is in English, not Arabic, which would be awfully peculiar for a memo supposedly written by Habbush for Saddam, a thug not known for his Oxbridge accent.

So the first question is for CBS: guys is this the actual Habbush memo, or some overpaid intern's idea of what an Iraqi government memo might look like?

If CBS says it's the actual memo, then the next question is for Con Coughlin: is this the same memo you reported on? If so, where is the handwritten part?

Extra! Dog Bites Man! Read All About It!

dlindorff — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 16:23:00 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

In the category of yawn-inducing stories that we knew all about
before they happened, comes word that the jury of senior uniformed
officers sitting in judgement of Osama Bin Laden’s chauffeur in the
first Bush-league military tribunal to actually go to a hearing at
Guantanamo Naval Station found the prisoner, Salim Hamdan…

Drum roll please…

Guilty of supporting terrorism.

I pause here for gasps of astonishment.

It’s awfully silent…

Really, did anyone expect anything else? The officers, who all have
careers to think about that would surely be severely crimped if they
went off script and found the man innocent of the charges, heard
evidence that was obtained through torture. They heard reports of
confessions from a man who himself was subjected to torture, by the
admission of the military itself, and who was never afforded an
attorney during those interrogations.

Okay. So now we need to ask, do we all feel safer, knowing that a
car driver whose claim to fame is that he used to drive the Evil One
from house to house and wife to wife is going to be locked up for life?

Wait a minute. He is already being locked up for life. At least, he
was captured in November 2001, and shipped to Guantanamo in May 2002,
and he’s been held there ever since—for over six years—awaiting this
trial, er, I mean tribunal. There certainly was no prospect of his ever
being let go before the tribunal, so I’m not sure what the point of
this exercise was really.

So now we can move on to the next tribunal—this one involving Ahmed
Khadr, a Canadian boy picked up in Afghanistan at the age of 15, who’s
been held now for six years on the base. His “crime” is that he was
bombed by the US Air Force, and then shot up (in the back) by US
Special Forces, but he somehow managed, at least allegedly, to toss a
grenade at his attackers, killing one (actually there is some testimony
that he didn’t actually toss the grenade, but then, why quibble about
details, right?).

Does anyone want to guess about the outcome of his “trial”?

Back in journalism school, I remember being told that the classic
definition of a news story was “Man Bites Dog!” The notion was that if
something totally predictable happens, like a dog biting a man, it
ain’t really news. Only if it is unexpected does it have any real news
value. By that standard, Hamdan’s conviction should be relegated to a
one-sentence notice in the news briefs section, but I’m guessing it’ll
be page one tomorrow all over America: Terrorist Convicted!

What we really need to be asking is why taxpayer dollars are being
spent on this shameful farce, which makes a joke of American “justice”
around the world.

Salim Hamdan is one of three things:

* a vile terrorist, in which case he should be tried in a regular
court of law by a jury of citizens, with all the rights available under
our Constitution

* a prisoner of war, in which case he should be sent back to
Afghanistan, since that war is now technically over (he is not a member
of the Taliban).

* an innocent schmuck who was working for a living driving a rich
bearded guy around the Hindu Kush, and who got picked up instead of his
boss, who’s still plotting ways to blow us all up while the US
government wastes its time and its personnel prosecuting his driver.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Then again, maybe it is news after all: “US Attacked By Terrorist Gang, Mastermind’s Driver Gets Life Seven Years Later”
__________________

DAVE LINDORFF is a journalist and columnist based in
Philadelphia. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St.
Martin’s Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work
can be found at www.thiscantbehappening.net

Friday's House Judiciary Hearing on Impeachment: A Victory and a Challenge

dlindorff — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 16:34:40 -0400

By Dave Lindorff

The dramatic hearing on presidential crimes and abuses of power
held on Friday by the House Judiciary Committee was both a staged
farce, and at the same time, a powerful demonstration of the power of a
grassroots movement in defense of the Constitution. It was at once both
testimony to the cowardice and self-inflicted impotence of Congress and
of the Democratic Party that technically controls that body, and to the
enormity of the damage that has been wrought to the nation’s democracy
by two aspiring tyrants in the White House.

As Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), chairman of the committee, made clear
more than once during the six-hour session, this was “not an
impeachment hearing, however much many in the audience might wish it to
be” He might well have added that he himself was not the fierce
defender of the Constitution and of the authority of Congress that he
once was before gaining control of the Judiciary Committee, however
much his constituents, his wife, and Americans across the country might
wish him to be.

At the same time, while the hearing was strictly limited to the
most superficial airing of Bush administration crimes and misdemeanors,
the fact that the session—technically an argument in defense of 36
articles of impeachment filed in the House over the past several months
by Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH)--was nonetheless a major victory for the
impeachment movement. It happened because earlier in the month, House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who has sworn since taking control of the
House in November 2006, that impeachment would be “off the table”
during the 110th Congress, called a hasty meeting with Majority Leader
Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), Rep. Conyers, and Rep. Kucinich, and called
for such a limited hearing.

It was no coincidence that shortly before Pelosi’s backdown, peace
activist and Gold Star mother Cindy Sheehan announced that her campaign
had collected well over the 10,000 signatures necessary to qualify for
listing on the ballot as an independent candidate for Congress against
Pelosi in the Speaker’s home district in San Francisco. Sheehan has
been an outspoken advocate of impeaching both Bush and Cheney. “Pelosi
is trying to throw a bone to her constituents by allowing a hearing on
impeachment,” said Sheehan, who came to Washington, DC to attend. “It’s
just like her finally stating publicly that Bush’s presidency is a
failure—something it has taken her two years to come to, but which
we’ve been saying for years.”

So determined were Pelosi and Conyers to limit the scope and
intensity of the hearing that they acceded to a call for Republicans on
the Judiciary Committee to adhere to Thomas Jefferson’s Rules of the
House, which prohibit any derogatory comments about the President,
which was interpreted by Chairman Conyers as meaning no one, including
witnesses or members of the committee, could suggest that Bush had lied
or deceived anyone. Since a number of Rep. Kucinich’s proposed articles
of impeachment specifically charge the president with lying to Congress
and the American People, this made for some comic moments, with witness
Bruce Fein, a former assistant attorney general under former President
Ronald Reagan, to say he would reference his listing of crimes to the
“resident” of the White House.

In the end, the rule imposing a gag on calling the president a
criminal fell by the wayside, with witness Vincent Bugliosi. A former
Los Angeles deputy district attorney, accusing Bush of being guilty of
the murder of over 4000 American soldiers and of hundreds of thousands
of innocent Iraqi civilians because he had “lied” the country into an
illegal and unnecessary war, and with committee member Shiela Jackson
Lee (D-TX) suggesting that the president may have committed treason in
invading Iraq, and that he appeared to be preparing to do it again with
an unprovoked invasion of Iran.

Conyers also acquiesced in a Republican effort to minimize public
monitoring and involvement in the hearing, allowing the minority party
to fill most of the available seats in the hearing room with office
staffers who showed little interest in the proceedings. Only a few
dozen of the hundreds of pro-impeachment activists who had come to the
Rayburn Office Building at 7 am in order to get seats in the Judiciary
Committee hearing room were allowed in, with the rest having to remain
in the hall or go to two remote “overflow” rooms to watch the
proceedings on a TV hookup. Conyers also went along with a call by
Republican members of the committee to have some of those who did make
it into the hearing ejected simply for wearing buttons on their shirts
calling for impeachment (the Republican members referred to these as
“signs”), though such small personal tokens are routinely allowed in
congressional hearing rooms.

It was clear that this was to be a tightly controlled and strictly limited hearing.

It was also clear that it was intended to go nowhere.

At one point, after hearing witnesses like Fein, Bugliosi, former
representative and Nixon impeachment committee member Elizabeth
Holtzman, former Salt Lake City mayor and impeachment activist Rocky
Anderson, former House Clinton impeachment manager Bob Barr, former
Watergate Committee counsel and current senior counsel of the Brennan
Center for Justice Frederick A.O. Schwartz, and Elliott Adams,
president of the board of Veterans for Peace, lay out the
administration’s crimes and abuses of power—which included charges of
usurping the legislative powers of Congress, violating international
treaties, war crimes, lying to Congress, an illegal war, felony
violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and the Fourth
Amendment, defying Congressional subpoenas, obstruction of justice and
more, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chair of the Constitution
subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee, appeared convinced that the
abuses were real and serious.

But Nadler, who for two years has been a major obstacle on the
Judiciary Committee to any efforts to move impeachment to a formal
hearing, said, “No president has been removed from office through
impeachment.” He asked the witnesses, “How would you approach
impeachment today so it would be a viable option?”

Former Rep. Holtzman responded, “The real remedy to a president who
believes he is above the law is impeachment. There is no running away
from that.” She said, “An impeachment inquiry, handled fairly, could
work. Maybe I’m a cockeyed optimist, but I believe it could work.”

The basic point, made by Holtzman, by Fein and by many others,
including this writer, is that worrying about the political opposition
to impeachment, both in the House, and in the Senate, not to mention
among the broader public, is completely wrongheaded. Even when
impeachment articles were first filed against Nixon, the public and the
bulk of the Congress were against the idea. It was during the hearings
that the tide turned, as evidence of malfeasance, criminality and abuse
of power became evident through hearing testimony. The same would
happen in the case of President Bush and/or Vice President Cheney. Most
Americans don’t even know that the president made up evidence to
justify the war against Iraq out of whole cloth. They don’t know what
the Geneva Conventions are with regard to torture. They don’t know why
Congress passed the FISA act, which Bush has been feloniously violating
to spy on them (it was passed because Nixon was using the National
Security Agency to spy on Americans without judicial warrants!). They
don’t know the Bush has been refusing to enact laws passed by the
Congress. Public hearings by an impeachment panel would make all these
high crimes and misdemeanors clear on national TV to all sentient
Americans. Moreover, as Holtzman pointed out, the president would not
be able to use the claim of “executive privilege” to withhold testimony
from aides in an impeachment inquiry, the way he has done when they
have been subpoenaed by other House and Senate committees. Impeachment
would be about violations of the very executive actions he would be
claiming privilege on. As well, an impeachment committee, unlike any
other committee of the Congress, is specifically sanctioned and
empowered in the Constitution, meaning that even strict
“constructionist” Federalists on the bench would have a hard time
backing presidential obstruction.

As Holtzman noted, “There is no executive privilege in impeachment,
because refusing to testify is itself an impeachable offense.”

Committee Republicans, aided by two law professors they had brought
in to testify, Stephen Presser of Northwestern University School of Law
and Jeremy Rabkin of George Mason University School of Law, tried to
argue that impeachment was only meant for crimes in which the official,
or the president, was seeking personal gain. This nonsense was knocked
down by most of the speakers, who quoted numerous founders who made it
clear that what high crimes referred to were actions—even taken with
the noblest of intentions—that undermined the Constitution or abused
the powers of the office. As Rep. Nadler said, “Impeachment has nothing
to do with intentions or with good faith. Impeachment has to do with
abuse of power which weakens the balance of power.”

In the end, the hearing petered out, taking no action of any
kind—exactly the result that Pelosi, Hoyer and Conyers cynically
intended.

Now it is up to the public and the impeachment movement to call
their bluff and take impeachment to the next level. Noting that even
Rep. Conyers ended the hearing by saying, “We are not done yet, and we
do not intend to go away until we achieve the accountability that
Congress is entitled to and that the American people deserve,” Rep.
Kucinich and five other co-sponsors of his articles of impeachment
(Robert Wexler, Tammy Baldwin, Keith Ellison, Maurice Hinchey, Sheila
Jackson-Lee, and Hank Johnson) are calling on all Americans to contact
their representatives (202-224-3121) and urge them to join in
co-sponsoring those articles and in calling for a formal impeachment
hearing.

They are also calling on everyone to contact their local and
national media, nearly all of whom have blacked out news of
impeachment. Incredibly, the New York Times, for example, has not even
reported on Friday’s hearing, even as a news “brief.” Those news
organizations, like the Washington Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer,
that did report on the hearings did so only in short, inside articles.
Though the hearing was aired in full on C-Span (and is still available for download), many Americans don’t even know it happened.

Time is short, but even at this late date, it would be a simple
matter to impeach the president on some issues. As several of Friday’s
witnesses pointed out, President Bush has essentially dared Congress to
act, admitting that he openly violated the FISA law—a felony, and
openly admitting that he has refused to enact laws passed by the
Congress, claiming a power—unitary executive authority—not even
mentioned in the Constitution. He has openly admitted to having known
about, and approved, “enhanced interrogation techniques” devised by his
subordinates—techniques like waterboarding which clearly violate the
Geneva Conventions and US law. No hearings would be required to
establish these high crimes and misdemeanors. They could simply be
voted on by an Impeachment Committee and sent to the full House for a
vote.

Even if there were no time for a Senate trial, the simple act of
impeaching the president for one or more abuses of power would serve
notice on future presidents that future such abuses would not be
tolerated. Failure to do so, and allowing this administration to leave
office unimpeached, would send the opposite message: that Congress is
no longer a co-equal branch of government, but is merely a consultative
body, at best, and that a president is in effect a dictator.

That Pelosi buckled and permitted a hearing on impeachable crimes
by the Bush/Cheney administration is a major victory for the
impeachment movement, but it must not be the end of the line.
Impeachment activists need to now redouble their efforts to make
Congress do its Constitutional duty, and initiate a formal impeachment
proceeding.

As former Republican representative Bob Barr, now the Libertarian
candidate for president, told Friday’s hearing, “We had a nuclear clock
during the Cold War. In the ‘90s we had a debt clock. Now we have a
Constitution Clock.”

That clock is getting close to midnight, and it is ticking.
_____________
DAVE LINDORFF is a Philadelphia-based investigative journalist and
columnist. His latest book is “The Case for Impeachment” (St. Martin’s
Press, 2006 and now available in paperback edition). His work is
available at www.thiscantbehappening.net

How to Get a Job By Shooting Up a Church

davidswanson — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 21:00:27 -0400

By David Swanson

Imagine being so angry that you couldn't find a job that you were able to decide, as a man in Tennessee just did, that the way to solve your problems was to attack liberals - the people who support (albeit ineffectively) workers' rights, union rights, and fair trade, who oppose NAFTA, oppose tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas, support investing in job creation at home rather than wars abroad, and want to tax corporations and the super-rich rather than small businesses and working people.

And imagine deciding that the way to attack the people who stand for everything that might help you is to go shoot up a bunch of men, women, and children. And then imagine telling those damn liberals: "You see, you were wrong at least about gun policies, because if angry desperate people who believe everything they hear on the radio weren't allowed to get mad and go buy guns I never could have shot up your children's play! And why are you showing a dumb play about poor kids, anyway? You never put on plays about people like me, potential billionaires down on their luck who've been threatened by Muslim terorists and mistreated by blacks and gays and women and liberals!"

And imagine the Associated Press report completely playing along with your delusion, and writing:

"Although individual Unitarian churches can vary dramatically in outlooks, most congregations retain a deep commitment to social justice, which has led many to embrace liberal stances on the ordination of women, civil rights and gay rights."

What if labor rights had been mentioned?

And then imagine that the Knoxville News Sentinel gives your heros credit for deranging your mind and filling you up with bizarrely misdirected rage:

"Inside the house, officers found 'Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder' by radio talk show host Michael Savage, 'Let Freedom Ring' by talk show host Sean Hannity, and 'The O'Reilly Factor,' by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly."

And what if you were then given decades behind bars, without ever a word of thanks from your heros, to think about what in the world you might have been thinking? What would your advice end up being for others in the same sort of trouble you were in?

I like to think you'd eventually recommend selling your radio and television and spending some time talking to real people.

Speaking as a liberal who supports a sustainable full-employment economy with guaranteed education, income, and health care, I'm sorry that we have failed you and so many others so drastically, in fact failed so badly that you don't even have the slightest idea who we are. I suspect that if you knew us you would find us to have goals you approve of but to be grotesquely and despicably timid, hesitant, and easily compromised in how we go about trying to accomplish anything. And you'd be right.

We'll tell your story, for a week or so, both as an example of the effect of hatemongering propaganda and as an example of desperate economic stress and lack of community. But will we DO anything to improve those situations? I seriously doubt it. This is an election year, after all.

The U.S. Department of Media

davidswanson — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 13:27:25 -0400

By David Swanson

Last Friday one of two things indisputably happened. Either a dozen senior Congress members and several well-known expert witnesses went certifiably and collectively insane, or charges of the most extreme executive abuses of power ever heard in the history of this nation were backed up by overwhelming evidence during a six-hour hearing of the House Judiciary Committee focused on the possible need to impeach the President and the Vice President. Either way, a nation with a public communications system worthy of a democracy would have learned the news.

What we actually have in this country is a news media conglomerate that functions as a part of the executive branch of the federal government. Call it the United States Department of Media. But "branch" is not the right word, since the executive branch is all that remains of our government (aside from whatever Dick Cheney is). The legislative and judicial branches have been eliminated. Or, rather, they are constantly and effectively being shut out of the government, in no small part by the Media Department. But "department," too, is not the right word if one imagines any degree of independent decision making. None of the so-called departments and agencies in the executive government are any longer empowered to make significant decisions independent of the president (and whatever Dick Cheney is). And the Media Department is no exception.

One project of the U.S. Department of Media is the Cover Nothing Network (CNN) on which associate deputy undersecretaries of Media Campbell Brown and Erica Hill reported on Friday that there is not enough time for impeachment and that if the Democrats led the way to impeachment voters would punish them, and that therefore the hearing was a waste of money that could have been better spent publicizing the president kissing babies. I'm not making any of this up. Here's video:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bzx6ttmbTbs

Now, you'd think the Democrats would get credit for successfully violating the laws of physics by impeaching Bush and Cheney after CNN reported that there was not sufficient time to do so. Instead, CNN preemptively reports that instead of a Nobel prize in physics, Democrats would receive opposition from voters if they were to impeach Bush or Cheney, quite regardless of the supposed fact that there is not time to do so. Presumably it is part of CNN's passion for saving money that allows it to employ public officials too stupid to even realize they've done no research whatsoever that might provide them with the slightest clue as to whether or not what they are saying is complete horseshit.

Yet, most of the other state broadcast and cable and print outlets did even better at avoiding the news by reporting nothing at all. That fine performance didn't cost us a dime, and was worth every penny. But what did we miss?

Well, we missed the fact that the president now violates numerous laws and announces his intention to do so with "signing statements." This is absolutely unprecedented and indisputably a major violation of the basic outline of the U.S. Constitution. We missed that the current president has violated numerous requests, subpoenas, and contempt citations, effectively shutting down the Congress as a body with any right to control our government or even to know what our government is doing. We missed that this is completely unprecedented and a major violation of the basic system established by the Constitution, and that when Richard Nixon moved in the direction that this president has gone so far in, the Judiciary Committee voted to impeach Nixon. We missed that the current president has openly confessed to violating the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and that in this and numerous other cases impeachments of Bush and Cheney could be accomplished in under an hour, all the necessary information already being in the public domain.

That is to say, either we missed THAT and much more, or we missed witnessing the mass hypnosis of John Conyers, Hank Johnson, Bruce Fein, Tammy Baldwin, Vincent Bugliosi, Maurice Hinchey, Dennis Kucinich, Robert Wexler, Sheila Jackson-Lee, Liz Holtzman, Rocky Anderson, Elliott Adams, Bob Barr, Bobby Scott, Zoe Lofgren, Jerrold Nadler, and several other individuals, together with dozens of members of the public in the same room and hundreds more outside. Don't we have a right to know what happened? Who hypnotized them and why? How was it done? Who funded it? And is it possible that what actually occurred on Friday was a long-standing hypnosis wearing off momentarily? How will we ever know? And if we ourselves look at the White House website and appear to see numerous signing statements declaring the right to violate laws, and numerous public refusals to comply with subpoenas, are we going insane too? Are we falling into some sort of delusion? Are we secretly exploding with repressed anger and hatred for bibles, guns, and flags? And why do we hate our country so much?