Iraq Soldiers Protest War

“Latest polls show a clear majority of Americans are now against the campaign in Iraq.

Some soldiers who have returned from Iraq are disillusioned by the experience. Inigo Gilmore reports from the US. (BBC)”

U.S. soldiers are trained to desensitize themselves from Iraq civilians. The soldier said the Iraqi civilians “aren’t people, they are animals”.

To be clear this solder was not talking about terrorist but ALL innocent Iraqi citizens.

View the clip
http://news.bbc.co.uk/nolavconsole/ukfs_news/hi/newsid_4850000/newsid_4859400/bb_wm_4859458.stm

Impeachment: Nixon, Clinton, Bush?

I would like to bring attention to this speech in regards to the impeachment of President Richard Nixon. Presently the United States is engaged in a discussion of impeaching our current leader Mr. G. W. Bush. History tells us that Congressmen whom vote to impeach the President do not necessarily want the President removed from office. Impeachment can be a means for the People to seek answers to paramount questions , such as those that are currently not known to the public nor Congress.


Barbara Jordan: Statement on the Articles of Impeachment
delivered 25 July 1974, House Judiciary Committee

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, I join my colleague Mr. Rangel in thanking you for giving the junior members of this committee the glorious opportunity of sharing the pain of this inquiry. Mr. Chairman, you are a strong man, and it has not been easy but we have tried as best we can to give you as much assistance as possible.

Earlier today, we heard the beginning of the Preamble to the Constitution of the United States: "We, the people." It's a very eloquent beginning. But when that document was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787, I was not included in that "We, the people." I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake. But through the process of amendment, interpretation, and court decision, I have finally been included in "We, the people."

Today I am an inquisitor. An hyperbole would not be fictional and would not overstate the solemnness that I feel right now. My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total. And I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction, of the Constitution.

"Who can so properly be the inquisitors for the nation as the representatives of the nation themselves?" "The subjects of its jurisdiction are those offenses which proceed from the misconduct of public men."¹ And that's what we're talking about. In other words, [the jurisdiction comes] from the abuse or violation of some public trust.

It is wrong, I suggest, it is a misreading of the Constitution for any member here to assert that for a member to vote for an article of impeachment means that that member must be convinced that the President should be removed from office. The Constitution doesn't say that.

The powers relating to impeachment are an essential check in the hands of the body of the legislature against and upon the encroachments of the executive. The division between the two branches of the legislature, the House and the Senate, assigning to the one the right to accuse and to the other the right to judge, the framers of this Constitution were very astute. They did not make the accusers and the judgers -- and the judges the same person.

We know the nature of impeachment. We've been talking about it awhile now. It is chiefly designed for the President and his high ministers to somehow be called into account. It is designed to "bridle" the executive if he engages in excesses. "It is designed as a method of national inquest into the conduct of public men."² The framers confined in the Congress the power if need be, to remove the President in order to strike a delicate balance between a President swollen with power and grown tyrannical, and preservation of the independence of the executive.

The nature of impeachment: a narrowly channeled exception to the separation-of-powers maxim. The Federal Convention of 1787 said that. It limited impeachment to high crimes and misdemeanors and discounted and opposed the term "maladministration." "It is to be used only for great misdemeanors," so it was said in the North Carolina ratification convention. And in the Virginia ratification convention: "We do not trust our liberty to a particular branch. We need one branch to check the other."
"No one need be afraid" -- the North Carolina ratification convention -- "No one need be afraid that officers who commit oppression will pass with immunity." "Prosecutions of impeachments will seldom fail to agitate the passions of the whole community," said Hamilton in the Federalist Papers, number 65. "We divide into parties more or less friendly or inimical to the accused."³ I do not mean political parties in that sense.
The drawing of political lines goes to the motivation behind impeachment; but impeachment must proceed within the confines of the constitutional term "high crime[s] and misdemeanors." Of the impeachment process, it was Woodrow Wilson who said that "Nothing short of the grossest offenses against the plain law of the land will suffice to give them speed and effectiveness. Indignation so great as to overgrow party interest may secure a conviction; but nothing else can."

Common sense would be revolted if we engaged upon this process for petty reasons. Congress has a lot to do: Appropriations, Tax Reform, Health Insurance, Campaign Finance Reform, Housing, Environmental Protection, Energy Sufficiency, Mass Transportation. Pettiness cannot be allowed to stand in the face of such overwhelming problems. So today we are not being petty. We are trying to be big, because the task we have before us is a big one.

This morning, in a discussion of the evidence, we were told that the evidence which purports to support the allegations of misuse of the CIA by the President is thin. We're told that that evidence is insufficient. What that recital of the evidence this morning did not include is what the President did know on June the 23rd, 1972.

The President did know that it was Republican money, that it was money from the Committee for the Re-Election of the President, which was found in the possession of one of the burglars arrested on June the 17th. What the President did know on the 23rd of June was the prior activities of E. Howard Hunt, which included his participation in the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist, which included Howard Hunt's participation in the Dita Beard ITT affair, which included Howard Hunt's fabrication of cables designed to discredit the Kennedy Administration.

We were further cautioned today that perhaps these proceedings ought to be delayed because certainly there would be new evidence forthcoming from the President of the United States. There has not even been an obfuscated indication that this committee would receive any additional materials from the President. The committee subpoena is outstanding, and if the President wants to supply that material, the committee sits here. The fact is that on yesterday, the American people waited with great anxiety for eight hours, not knowing whether their President would obey an order of the Supreme Court of the United States.

At this point, I would like to juxtapose a few of the impeachment criteria with some of the actions the President has engaged in. Impeachment criteria: James Madison, from the Virginia ratification convention. "If the President be connected in any suspicious manner with any person and there be grounds to believe that he will shelter him, he may be impeached."

We have heard time and time again that the evidence reflects the payment to defendants money. The President had knowledge that these funds were being paid and these were funds collected for the 1972 presidential campaign. We know that the President met with Mr. Henry Petersen 27 times to discuss matters related to Watergate, and immediately thereafter met with the very persons who were implicated in the information Mr. Petersen was receiving. The words are: "If the President is connected in any suspicious manner with any person and there be grounds to believe that he will shelter that person, he may be impeached."

Justice Story: "Impeachment" is attended -- "is intended for occasional and extraordinary cases where a superior power acting for the whole people is put into operation to protect their rights and rescue their liberties from violations." We know about the Huston plan. We know about the break-in of the psychiatrist's office. We know that there was absolute complete direction on September 3rd when the President indicated that a surreptitious entry had been made in Dr. Fielding's office, after having met with Mr. Ehrlichman and Mr. Young. "Protect their rights." "Rescue their liberties from violation."

The Carolina ratification convention impeachment criteria: those are impeachable "who behave amiss or betray their public trust."4 Beginning shortly after the Watergate break-in and continuing to the present time, the President has engaged in a series of public statements and actions designed to thwart the lawful investigation by government prosecutors. Moreover, the President has made public announcements and assertions bearing on the Watergate case, which the evidence will show he knew to be false. These assertions, false assertions, impeachable, those who misbehave. Those who "behave amiss or betray the public trust."
James Madison again at the Constitutional Convention: "A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution." The Constitution charges the President with the task of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed, and yet the President has counseled his aides to commit perjury, willfully disregard the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, conceal surreptitious entry, attempt to compromise a federal judge, while publicly displaying his cooperation with the processes of criminal justice.

"A President is impeachable if he attempts to subvert the Constitution."

If the impeachment provision in the Constitution of the United States will not reach the offenses charged here, then perhaps that 18th-century Constitution should be abandoned to a 20th-century paper shredder.
Has the President committed offenses, and planned, and directed, and acquiesced in a course of conduct which the Constitution will not tolerate? That's the question. We know that. We know the question. We should now forthwith proceed to answer the question. It is reason, and not passion, which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision.

*I yield back the balance of my time, Mr. Chairman.*”

Marines Massacre Iraqi Civilians?

The question is not did U.S. Marines kill innocent Iraqi children, but it is how many more innocent civilians are being killed?

What right, policy, or justification does America have in this incident in Iraq. I see none. This was a War of Choice which from the beginning barely a majority of U.S. citizens were opposed too.

U.S. Rep. Colonel Jack Murtha said U.S. Marines Kill Iraqi Civilians "in Cold Blood" .

Under the leadership of Mr. G.W. Bush, Secretary Rumsfeld and General Casey this War of Choice continues to produce results of failure and incompetence. A CEO for any company would have been FIRED long ago for such a record.

More to come....












ABC Report:
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/story?id=2006497&page=1

Time Report:
http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1196435,00.html

Related Report 2005/ CNN:
http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0511/20/sun.03.html

Continued Violence in Iraq/Washington Times Report:
http://ap.washingtontimes.com/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ?SITE=DCTMS&SECTION=HOME

Fighting for Homeless Vets

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that as many as 400,000 American military veterans are homeless at least part of the time. And veterans of America's latest wars are adding to those numbers.

It's estimated that hundreds of recently returned veterans of the war in Iraq are living on the streets.

Herold Noel, an Iraq war veteran who found himself suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder -- and living out of his car in Brooklyn -- is the focal point of Dan Lohaus' documentary When I Came Home.

The film follows the stories of homeless veterans from the Vietnam War to the present conflicts, and the growing effort to address their needs.


NPR Report:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5436699

"Bush tells working folk to go to hell"

Dobbs: Bush, Congress tell working folk to go to hell
By Lou DobbsCNN

Wednesday, May 24, 2006; Posted: 12:30 p.m. EDT (16:30 GMT)
Editor's note: Lou Dobbs' commentary appears every Wednesday on CNN.com.

Lou Dobbs says President Bush and Congress are part of an "elitist war on the middle class"

NEW YORK (CNN) -- President Bush says that the installation of the new Iraqi government was a "watershed event," but at the same time warns Americans of the challenges and loss as we continue to prosecute the war against Iraqi insurgents. Sen. Harry Reid declares that legislation that would render English the national language is racist.

Thirty-seven Democrats vote for full amnesty for all illegal aliens in this country, even though nobody really knows whether the number is 11 million, 12 million or 20 million. The Senate Republican leadership demands that a "comprehensive immigration reform" plan must be passed before this Memorial Day weekend. And the president signs into law a tax cut that raises taxes on the educational funds of teenagers saving for college.

Never before in our country's history have both the president and Congress been so out of touch with most Americans. Never before have so few of our elected officials and corporate leaders been less willing to commit to the national interest. And never before has our nation's largest constituent group -- some 200 million middle-class Americans -- been without representation in our nation's capital George W. Bush's approval ratings have slumped to the lowest of his presidency. The approval rating for Congress is even lower, and nearly three-quarters of Americans believe the country is headed in the wrong direction.

But what is our government doing about that? The president is staying the course in Iraq and apparently demanding little of his generals to create a new, far more effective strategy for urgent success. Of course, he also wants a guest-worker program and amnesty of millions of illegal aliens. And Congress, faced with midterm elections in just over five months, is intent on giving the president what he wants and telling working men and women and their families, American citizens all, to go to hell.

Illegal aliens are more important to this Congress than securing our borders and our ports, more important than those legal immigrants who have waited in line and who follow the law. The Senate has added to the litany of lunacy that makes up what it calls reform: Illegal aliens would only have to pay back taxes on three of the past five years, they will not be prosecuted for felonies such as identity theft or purchasing or using fraudulent Social Security cards, and unlike millions of visa holders who have to leave the country to have them renewed, they may simply remain in the United States while this Congress and this president give away all the benefits and privileges of American citizenship.

This is an outright assault in the elitist war on the middle class. And working men and women who've already borne the pain of losing good-paying manufacturing jobs and having middle-class jobs outsourced to cheap foreign labor markets are faced with the onslaught of more illegal immigration and cheap labor into the American economy. This president and Congress talk about bringing illegal aliens out of the shadows while they turn out the lights on our middle class.

President Bush and his most trusted advisers tell us how well our economy is doing, how many jobs have been created and how so-called free trade will enrich the lives of the same people whose livelihoods these policies are destroying.

It's hard not to think of the trusted adviser to Catherine the Great who sought to hide from her the embarrassing and shoddy condition of Ukrainian and Crimean villages by having elaborate facades built to divert her attention and to mask an uncomfortable reality. I don't know whether Karl Rove is President Bush's Grigori Potemkin or whether George Bush has created Potemkin villages all by himself. But the facades are cracking, and phony fronts of failed policies are quickly crumbling.

Six thousand unarmed National Guardsmen working as adjunct rear support to our undermanned, under-equipped Border Patrol is not border security. Three million illegal aliens continue to cross our borders and depress wages by hundreds of billions of dollars every year. The millions of manufacturing and middle-class jobs lost over the last five years have been replaced by lower-wage employment.

The president's faith-based commitment to so-called free trade will likely lead to a $1 trillion U.S. current account deficit this year and a trade debt of $4.5 trillion after 30 years of trade deficits. And while the president and Congress point to No Child Left Behind as a solution to our educational crisis, we're failing an entire generation of Americans whose test scores continue to fall and whose high school dropout rates would be embarrassing to a third-world country.

And a third-world country is what we will be if our elected officials don't soon come to their senses.

The Next American Idol

C&B is taking a break from politics to discuss the next American Idol.

My vote always went to Paris whom was voted off then I voted for Elliot. Paris, a bright young African American woman, and Elliot, a deserving young man who endured many medical problems as a child. Both of these contestants would have made great Idols unfortunately the most deserving hardly ever win in America.

It is now down to Kat and Taylor. Let’s see hat happens.

Time to Call Bush on Lawbreaking

By Jesse Jackson
The Chicago Sun-Times
Tuesday 16 May 2006

"The National Security Agency has created "the largest database ever" with the phone records of millions of Americans provided to the NSA by AT&T, Verizon and Bell South for a price. The NSA says it used the records to trace patterns - data mining - in the hunt for terrorists. The agency got neither warrants nor permission from the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. As Republican Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter admitted, the FISA law "has been violated." But that's not all that is violated.

The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution protects the privacy and liberty of Americans. It says the government can't search or seize you without a warrant issued on probable cause to believe you are involved in a crime. This right is the line between a democracy and a police state, where the state can search or seize at will. That is the line that the NSA program erased.

President Bush authorized the program and defends it. "We are not trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans," he said last week. How do we know? The court set up to provide warrants has been ignored. The law set up to regulate the system has been trampled. How do we know the president is telling the truth? Trust us, he says.

Trust the president who led us into Iraq on the basis of disinformation and misinformation? Trust the president who just weeks ago told us the NSA program involved only international calls with al-Qaida? The same president who said he'd fire anyone in the White House who helped leak the identity of Valerie Plame, the undercover CIA employee whose husband helped expose Bush's lies about Iraq's nuclear capacity? Now, with Karl Rove in the center of the effort to discredit Wilson and out Plame, the president says he has no comment on a continuing criminal investigation.

This isn't a routine Washington dustup. This concerns the trampling of the Fourth Amendment by the government and the sale of our privacy by the phone companies. And it isn't an isolated case. Bush, along with Vice President Dick Cheney, who is the major force behind this thing, believes the president acts above the law in the war on terror. He claims the right to make war without a congressional declaration; to surveil Americans without warrant; to arrest us without probable cause; to hold us without a hearing; to deny us the right to counsel or even to hear the charges against us if the government decides, on the basis of evidence they need not produce, to tag us as accomplices in the war on terror.

Now most Americans would gladly sacrifice some of our liberties if it would increase our security against another Sept. 11. Bush counts on that feeling when he acts above the law. But the entire fabric of our freedom is woven into a system of checks and balances.

Here, all the checks and balances have been tossed aside. Qwest, the only honorable phone company, refused to cooperate with the NSA in this program without a warrant or permission from the FISA Court. NSA refused to produce either; the FISA court was ignored. The NSA and the administration have simply refused to supply information to Congress, and the lame Republican Congress has refused to hold them accountable. When the Justice Department's independent Office of Professional Responsibility opened an investigation on the lawyers who signed off the program, the White House refused to provide the secrecy clearances needed to have the investigation go forward. "Trust us," the president says, and then he ensures that we have no choice but to trust him, since every legal check and balance is locked out.

It is time for accountability. Two public-interest lawyers have sued Verizon for $5 billion for violating the law, which should force the administration to defend the program before an independent court. Don't hold your breath for this Congress to hold hearings. But Democrats should stand up and promise an in-depth series of investigations of this administration and its lawlessness - from Halliburton's making off with billions in sole-source contracts to the cesspool of hidden prisons to the trampling of liberties at home.

We wage the war on al-Qaida terrorists in defense of our freedoms. We'd better make certain this administration isn't shredding those freedoms along the way."
-------

National Security Conversation

The Conservative attempts to circumvent laws such as the 4th Amendment, & the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act justified only by asserting these changes are in the name of national Security is absurd, illegal, unaccountable, and unethical.

Laws must be followed with no deviation. National Security is not justification enough to support creating new programs, first without Congressional approval.

The laws must be changed first.

ALL policy should not be based on public opinion. The founders of our nation intended to secure freedoms for all Americans not simply a mob majority rule. That is why all States have equal representation within the Senate. They were intelligent enough to foretell corrupt people abusing their powers like we see now.

If the NSA & CIA cannot act within the Law then hell yes there operations need to be brought into the Sunshine.

Every agency within the U.S. government must be held accountable. There must be Checks and Balances at all levels.

The full Congress is not even aware of the activities of such agencies.

This is unacceptable within the United States of America.

An elected member of Congress is just as privileged to intelligence information as a 4 Star General. It is through this oversight that Congress is charged to do, that WE the people exercise our American birthright of democracy.

****With ZERO exception any surveillance upon a U.S. citizen must follow the book, not some ad-hoc program created in the name of National Security!!!

Gen. Michael V. Hayden
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_V._Hayden

Explanation of Warrantless Surveillance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSA_warrantless_surveillance_controversy

Gen. Hayden is Not fit to Head CIA

Any member of Congress that votes to confirm General Hayden to head the CIA will be ending their political career.

Hayden directed the NSA’s Domestic Surveillance program, and also directed the collection of millions of U.S. phone calls for customers of AT&T Corp., MCI, Sprint, Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp.

His role in these operations makes him an unacceptable candidate to continue to serve the American people.

The complexity of these issues are political HOT!

The matter of General Hayden’s involvement with 2 NSA Programs whose Constitutionality are in question is paramount to his appointment. These programs have not been proved to be legal because the Republicans refuse to allow for real investigations.

Furthermore it has not been made clear that the rules of FISA Courts are followed when surveillance is being conducted on a U.S. citizens. My position has been clear from the beginning. When it come to U.S. citizens the book must be followed zero exceptions.

It does not matter what opinion polls say, as public servants these people swear an oath to Executive the laws established by Congress not to make them. It was my understanding that traditional Conservatives too would support such my position.

This all began with Joe Wilson and his wife Valarie Plame, an CIA agent and has led us to a point where the position of the Directorship of the CIA is of great concern to the American public. The CIA and NSA both organization whom once held the complete trust and of the of the public, now whose operations both in sever question.

Years ago I had a gut feeling the moment that President Bush said in his State of the Union Speech “that terrorist were obtaining yellow cake uranium from Africa” that something was deadly wrong with Bush and his administration. An African nation who can barely produce food nether less high grade nuclear material.

All of these issues are connected and my gut tells me if we had an Attorney General other than friend of G.W. Bush Gonzalez that many more government officials besides Scooter “Loose-Lips” Libby would be indicted.
Administration policy is so corrupt that certain legal matters must be addressed:

"When sensitive intelligence is leaked it effects national security G.W. Bush". Mr. Bush authorizes the leak of classified information himself for political reasons, not reasons of National Security so this statement is clearly a contradiction.

My concern is the definition of sensitive.

Why is Congress asking for information from AT& T, Bell south and Verizon opposed to getting it directly from Executive Branch.?

Information is being collected on persons with known links to terrorist.
My concern is the definition of links.


WH on NSA Phone logs:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/05/20060511-1.html

USA Today:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-02-05-nsa-telecoms_x.htm

Hayden’s Words:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060512/ap_on_go_co/nsa_phone_records

The Price of Gas: Part IV

Gasoline Prices - How Are Gasoline Prices Normally Calculated?

FACT:
Crude Oil 49%
Federal/State/Local Taxes 26%
Refining 15%
Marketing/Distribution/Profits 10%


Source:
http://myfloridalegal.com/pages.nsf/4492D797DC0BD92F85256CB80055FB97/872136BEBD03D0A585256D02005A2880?OpenDocument

Comments:
Crude Oil is the greatest factor in determining Gas Prices. So why when Crude Oil goes down a buck or $2 our prices at the pump contines to go up like .10 cent a week?

I believe its Greed & Corruption.

Even the Republican Attorney General of Florida is implying that price gouging may be in play.

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/14483366.htm

As for Congress, let me tell you something. These Republicans in charge in Washington D.C have sold out the government and forgotten their trust to the people. This Corrupt Congress passed some crazy bill allowing for fines upon Oil Companies for price manipulation, but failed to define the terms for determining such manipulation. Come on!!!

Mr. G.W. Bush is simply absent.

Come November 2006 these folk are going to be greatly surprised. I predict the entire House will be overturned because of these gas prices not to mention a few dozen other things. This is a much greater political crisis than the Iraq War because it effects all Americans right in their bank accounts.