Friday, November 18, 2005

So Who's More Out of the Mainstream, Folks, Scott McClellan or Michael Moore? There, I did it. I kept a straight face. Now if you'll excuse me while I BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!   For Immediate Release Office of the Press Secretary November 18, 2005 Statement by the Press Secretary on Congressman Murtha's Statement STATEMENT BY THE PRESS SECRETARY Congressman Murtha is a respected veteran and politician who has a record of supporting a strong America. So it is baffling that he is endorsing the policy positions of Michael Moore and the extreme liberal wing of the Democratic party. The eve of an historic democratic election in Iraq is not the time to surrender to the terrorists. After seeing his statement, we remain baffled -- nowhere does he explain how retreating from Iraq makes America safer. # # #   November 17th, 2005 10:47 pm Statement by Michael Moore on the Bush Administration's Statement STATEMENT BY MICHAEL MOORE Unfortunately, the President doesn't understand that it is mainstream middle America who has turned against him and his immoral war and that it is I and the Democrats who represent the mainstream. It is Mr. Bush who is the extremist. ### 2:00:56 PM    comment []

This is too easy. Feel free to provide your own caption. As an extra creative challenge, try not to include "rabid", "rabies", or "skunkweed". 12:33:46 PM    comment []

How May We Screw You? An ongoing look into the global malignancy that is Wal-Mart.   100 Arrested at Wal-Mart Construction Site By MICHAEL RUBINKAM, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 33 minutes ago Federal immigration agents detained more than 100 workers at a construction site for a new Wal-Mart distribution center, authorities said. The workers, who Wal-Mart said were employed by a subcontractor and not by the retailing giant, were detained Thursday on suspected immigration violations, said Department of Homeland Security spokesman Marc Raimondi. They were being taken to Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers for processing, he said. More than 50 federal immigration agents, joined by the U.S. Labor Department, Social Security Administration and state police, raided the construction site near Pottsville, about 80 miles northwest of Philadelphia. Wal-Mart spokesman Marty Heires said the company would cooperate fully with federal authorities. "We have written contracts with these subcontractors requiring that they follow all applicable local, state and federal employment laws," he said in a statement. At least 120 illegal immigrants, most of them from Mexico, were detained, Schuylkill County Sheriff Frank McAndrew said. He said he began investigating the site and contacted federal officials after getting complaints from local tradespeople. "You've got a situation here where illegal immigrants are coming into Schuylkill County and taking (local union workers') jobs for eight bucks an hour. They are working for poverty wages, and creating unemployment because our skilled tradesmen are out of work," McAndrew said. In 2003, a raid of 60 Wal-Mart stores in 21 states led to the arrests of 245 illegal workers. An affidavit claimed a pair of senior Wal-Mart executives knew cleaning contractors were hiring illegal immigrants. The retailer agreed to pay $11 million in March to settle the case but denied senior executives knew of the hirings. Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press. 11:50:44 AM    comment []

All Hail the Gang of Six! Proving once again that not all Republicans are closet fascists. Just most of them.   Legislation Renewing Patriot Act Stalls - - - - - - - - - - - - By JESSE J. HOLLAND Associated Press Writer November 17,2005 | WASHINGTON -- Legislation reauthorizing the Patriot Act stalled Thursday as lawmakers worked to satisfy senators upset by the elimination of some civil liberties protections. Negotiators had worked for days to develop an acceptable compromise and presented a draft to senators and representatives late Wednesday. But senators on the negotiating committee have yet to agree to the compromise, aware that six Republicans and Democrats are threatening to block the final version of the bill when it comes to the full Senate. "If further changes are not made, we will work to stop this bill from becoming law," the six wrote the Senate Judiciary and Intelligence committees. The senators are Republicans Larry Craig of Idaho, John Sununu of New Hampshire and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Democrats Dick Durbin of Illinois, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Ken Salazar of Colorado. Congress is facing two deadlines. Lawmakers want to leave before week's end for Thanksgiving and many parts of the Patriot Act are to expire by year's end if Congress does not renew them. The Republican-controlled House hoped to approve the compromise on Friday. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., told senators on Thursday that they will have to address the legislation "before we leave." But Feingold, D-Wis., the only senator to vote against the original Patriot Act in 2001, said there are several different delaying tactics available to stop the bill in the Senate. Feingold said he had cleared his schedule through Thanksgiving. "And this time I don't think I'll be alone," he said. Added Murkowski: "We have worked too long and too hard to allow this conference report to eliminate the modest protections for civil liberties that were agreed to unanimously in the Senate." The six senators were the sponsors of legislation this year that would have tempered the powers of the post-Sept. 11 law that expanded the government's surveillance and prosecutorial powers. They complained that the House-Senate compromise would take back some civil liberty protections on which senators had agreed. They include changing a Senate requirement that the government inform targets of a "sneak and peek" search warrant within seven days to 30 days. Such warrants allow police to conduct secret searches of people's homes or businesses and inform them later. The compromise also removed a Senate proposal that would have mandated judicial reviews when authorities used the law to search financial, medical, library, school and other records, according to the six senators. The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, GOP Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, said he was working to address some of the complaints. The tentative compromise would make permanent most parts of the Patriot Act. It would set seven-year limits on rules on wiretapping, obtaining business records under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and standards for monitoring "lone wolf" terrorists who may be operating independent of a foreign agent or power. The draft also would impose a new requirement that the Justice Department report to Congress annually on its use of national security letters -- secret requests for the phone, business and Internet records of ordinary people. Also part of the tentative agreement are modest new requirements on roving wiretaps -- monitoring devices placed on a single person's telephones and other devices to keep a target from evading law enforcement officials by switching phones or computers. Salon provides breaking news articles from the Associated Press as a service to its readers, but does not edit the AP articles it publishes. © 2005 The Associated Press. 11:39:12 AM    comment []

Quote of the Day "People said to me, 'Were you scared of speaking out against George Bush?' No. The bravest thing I did this year was speaking out against homophobia. That's a scarier topic, because if you bring it up, people think you must be gay. But you don't have to be gay to not gay-bash. We're a very close-minded people." --Rapper Kanye West 11:27:16 AM    comment []

Conservative "Environmentalism": Up Is Down, Black is White, and Everybody's for Sale   The greening of Italia Federici To buy influence at the White House, GOP operative Jack Abramoff gave $500,000 in tribal loot to a Gale Norton pal who heads an "environmental" nonprofit. By Michael Scherer, Salon.com Enviroskank Federici: Is "perjury" the word of the day?   Photo by AP Photo/Yuri Gripas Nov. 18, 2005 | Italia Federici is a minor Republican player in Washington, the sort of dime-a-dozen functionary who can build a career trading favors in backrooms and producing political campaigns for moneyed interests. Her specialty is the environment. She leads a conservative front group called the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, or CREA, a tiny outfit, originally founded by Interior Secretary Gale Norton, that argues it is healthy for forests to clear-cut trees, good for the air to weaken air-quality controls, and "environmentally responsible" to drill for oil in the Alaskan wilderness. For the past five years, Federici has limited her public activities to supporting President Bush's environmental plans. She claims that traditional environmentalists, groups like the Sierra Club and Democrats like Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., are dishonest and deceptive. But that is just the public face of Federici. In private, she has played a very different role in Washington, one that has now put her in the middle of one of the largest political ethics scandals in a decade. On Thursday, she appeared before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee to explain under oath her relationship with Jack Abramoff, the disgraced Republican lobbyist whose exploits have already led to a handful of criminal indictments. For critics of Republican politics, the Abramoff investigations are a gift that keeps on giving. They reveal a world of ethical violations, illegal money transfers, perjury and graft that flowed between some of the biggest names in Republican politics. Already, Abramoff has been charged with fraud; a top White House official, David Safavian, has been charged with perjury; and another former White House official, Timothy Flanigan, has withdrawn from a Senate confirmation process. Abramoff's dealings have thrown ethical clouds over a number of Republican heavyweights, including Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas., evangelical activist Ralph Reed, and anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist. And the investigation is far from over. Under the direction of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the committee has uncovered evidence that suggests Federici entered into an unspoken deal with Abramoff, who is accused of stealing millions of dollars from his Native American clients. He funneled nearly $500,000 in donations from these clients to her environmental organization. In exchange, Federici became his advocate in the inner sanctum of the Bush administration, offering him access to at least two of her close friends, Norton and Deputy Secretary J. Steven Griles. "Ms. Federici would help get inside information about and possibly influence tribal issues within the Interior," explained Sen. McCain, at the start of the hearing. For her part, Federici flatly denied all allegations that she had done anything untoward. "We provided excellent environmental advocacy consistent with our mission," she said of her work with CREA, which is registered as a nonprofit. "I get a lot of unsolicited e-mail, and I am helpful to all of my friends." Sitting before the Senate panel, Federici had the bearing of a quiet, sympathetic elementary school teacher. She wore her blond hair loose over her shoulders, and spoke in soft tones. At one point she portrayed herself as an honest subordinate who had found herself working with unethical friends. "Jack was close to 50, a man and a high-dollar donor," she said of his blunt e-mails to her. "I did not feel comfortable correcting his vernacular." But she gave no ground to her inquisitors. She said, instead, that she believed the committee's staff had engaged in a smear campaign against her. She called McCain's investigation a "witch hunt," adding that she believed the senator might hold a grudge because she had opposed a bipartisan bill on air quality that McCain had sponsored. McCain seemed to take pleasure in the suggestion that he was the one bending ethical rules. He focused instead on the evidence he had compiled. He described multiple e-mails in which Federici responded to Abramoff's requests for help lobbying Interior officials. In April of 2003, for example, Abramoff asked her to find out about a procedural change proposed by the department that had upset his clients. "Hi Jack: I will definitely see what I can find out," she wrote back, before immediately changing the topic. "I hate to bug you, but is there any news about a possible contribution...?" "Any objective observer would see that there is a connection between contributions to your organization and the work that you would be doing on behalf of Mr. Abramoff," McCain said. "I attached a second unrelated thought about an environmental project," Federici protested. "Since your answers are so bizarre, I won't continue," said McCain a few minutes later. "I will let others make the judgment." The e-mails released by the committee on Thursday certainly presented a damning case. At minimum, it appears Abramoff believed he was buying access to the Interior Department through Federici. He claimed to colleagues that Federici had "juice" at the agency. He claimed that CREA functioned as "Norton's main group outside the department." He offered Federici skybox seats at Redskins games and paid the bill for her meals and cocktail parties at his downtown restaurant, Signatures. At the same time, Federici appeared to be catering to Abramoff's every wish. She arranged meetings, requested photo opportunities, delivered memos and newspaper articles to Interior officials. She even organized Georgetown dinner parties, under the cover of CREA, so Abramoff's clients could meet with Norton and Griles. "Thanks for all you do for my clients, the cause and me personally," Abramoff wrote her in a 2002 e-mail. "When my friends reach out to me and ask me to help them with things, I never turn around and say why don't you just do it yourself," Federici said, adding that she paid for her own cellphone to facilitate this process. "I believed at the time that the reason Jack was giving us money is because he was a very generous Republican contributor," she said at another point in the hearing. "That is unbelievable," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who is co-chairman of the committee. There was far less disagreement about what Federici had done with the tribal money she collected from Abramoff's clients. CREA spent it on initiatives that had nothing to do with the Native American tribes, but much to do with furthering President Bush's agenda. In April 2002, for example, CREA ran a $40,000 full-page ad in the Washington Post praising the environmental merits of the president's plan to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. "We are also going to do something mean to Senator John Kerry," Federici wrote Abramoff, a few days before the ad ran. She then described a video CREA had packaged that showed Sen. Kerry leaving an Earth Day celebration and stepping into a gas-guzzling sports utility vehicle. She sent the video to at least two television programs on the Fox News Network, "The O'Reilly Factor" and "Hannity and Colmes." "I am letting EVERYONE know that you are the only reason we have the funding to do this," she gushed to Abramoff in the same e-mail. At the same time, e-mails show that Abramoff and Federici plotted to use environmental causes to help Abramoff's gambling clients. In December 2002, Abramoff proposed to Federici that she encourage the Interior Department to "say that they are not satisfied with the Environmental Impact Report" of a proposed casino in Michigan that would compete with one of Abramoff's clients. "This is a direct assault on our guys," Abramoff wrote to Federici. Eight minutes later, she wrote back to say she would contact Griles. "I will call him asap," she said. The casino was eventually approved, after a protracted delay. Sen. Dorgan compared Federici's story to a fairy tale. "You know what bothers me?" Dorgan asked at the end of the hearing. "It's pretty clear that this is one of the most disgusting tales of greed and avarice, and perhaps fraud and stealing. It's unbelievable what we have uncovered here. It's almost sickening to see what we have uncovered. And you come to our table and say, 'Oh, gosh, this is just about friendships.' "Somehow none of this adds up," he continued. "This committee, in my judgment, has had people testify, and, in my judgment, some of the testimony was fraudulent. We need to find out who, because there are consequences to that." Dorgan may well have his way. The Senate Finance Committee is beginning its own investigation into the use of nonprofits like CREA by lobbyists like Abramoff. The Justice Department is in the midst of a wide-ranging investigation of Abramoff's lobbying operation. Sen. McCain has suggested the Internal Revenue Service should mount its own investigation. And Dorgan said he will ask for another hearing of the Indian Affairs Committee. No date has yet been set. But it is clear that Federici, a backroom player in big-money politics, will not have the last word. 11:02:21 AM    comment []

The Triumph of Decency Here is just one result of the weakening of the Republican leadership's death grip on national policy.  Imagine what a (relatively) bright and happy world it would be if they were stripped of their power completely. Will rural voters remember in 2006 that it was the Democrats who saved their health care programs? Will voters everywhere remember that while Bush was bleating about avian flu preparedness, it was his Republican cronies who tried to cut $8 billion earmarked for the potential pandemic? Probably not, unless Jesus comes down off the cross next October and reminds them. But on sunny days like this, we can always hope. . .         November 18, 2005 In Loss for G.O.P., House Rejects Spending Plan By CARL HULSE WASHINGTON, Friday, Nov. 18 - House Republican leaders were dealt a rare defeat Thursday as Democrats and 22 Republicans teamed up to kill a major health and education spending measure. The 224-to-209 rejection of the $142.5 billion in spending on an array of social programs was the first time since the early days of the Republican takeover of the House a decade ago that the majority had come out on the losing end of such a vote. The struggle on the measure underlined the divide over spending policy confounding House Republicans as they struggle to provide relief for hurricane victims while placating party members alarmed about growth in federal spending. It also focused attention once again on the difficulties of a leadership team that has been somewhat off balance since September, when Representative Tom DeLay was forced to step aside as majority leader after he was indicted in Texas. In rebelling against the spending measure, Democrats and some Republicans said it fell woefully short of fulfilling federal commitments. They pointed, for example, to $900 million in health care cuts that took a toll on the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and on rural health care. They opposed the elimination of $8 billion to prepare for a potential flu pandemic. And they pointed to a provision that would strip money from a variety of popular education programs and leave Pell Grants to college students frozen, as part of the first reduction in education spending in a decade. "The Republican bill to fund our nation's investments in health, education and other important programs betrayed our nation's values and its future," Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland said. Hours after the loss on the spending front, the leadership early Friday morning forced through a separate measure making nearly $50 billion in budget cuts over five years after massaging the plan to reduce opposition from Republican moderates. The vote, which came after a couple of false starts in recent weeks and a bitter debate, was 217 to 215. "Today we are simply slowing the future growth of government," said Representative Chris Chocola, Republican of Indiana, as the House opened debate. Mr. Chocola said the reductions, if translated to a typical family budget of $50,000, represented a savings of $50. Democrats said it was unfair to reduce spending on programs like food stamps and health care for the poor to offset the costs of the hurricanes. "This is the cruelest lie of all," said Representative Gene Taylor, a Mississippi Democrat who lost his home to Hurricane Katrina, "that the only way you can help people who have lost everything is by hurting somebody else." In another indication of the turmoil in Congress, a tentative deal to extend the government's antiterrorism powers appeared in some jeopardy Thursday, as Senate Democrats threatened a filibuster in an effort to block the legislation. In the Senate, Republicans claimed a victory early Friday morning as senators voted 64 to 33 to approve a $60 billion tax-cutting package. Republicans defeated Democratic efforts to impose a temporary tax on the sale of oil priced over $40 a barrel. Under the bill, energy companies would have been taxed 50 percent on profits not reinvested in increasing domestic oil and gas supplies. Members of both parties said the health and education spending measure fell victim to a unusual confluence of legislative circumstances. Pressured by conservatives to show dedication to spending discipline, negotiators stripped the bill of special local projects sought by members, a decision that cut into support, because House members who were already unhappy with the cuts had no other incentive to back the bill. "The combination of that was too much for them to swallow," Representative Jerry Lewis, Republican of California, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, said. Some Republicans sat stunned on the House floor after the vote, which threw a wrench into Republican plans to finish the spending measures and leave for the Thanksgiving break. Senior lawmakers were debating whether to reopen negotiations to fashion a bill that could pass, keep the programs operating under a yearlong stop-gap bill or try to add the measure to a must-pass Pentagon spending bill. The defeat averted a Senate vote on the bill, which even the chief Senate negotiator, Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, opposed. "There is a totally insufficient allocation on that bill, beyond any question," Mr. Specter said. Over all, the House measure that was defeated called for spending more than $600 billion. But the vast majority of that money flows automatically through Medicare and other mandatory programs, so the battle was over the $142.5 billion for discretionary programs, an amount $164 million less than current levels. The 22 Republicans opposing the bill represented a cross-section of ideologies and had a variety of reasons for objecting. Representative Bill Thomas, Republican of California, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said he objected because of an unexpected acceleration in the timetable for halting Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement for sexual impotence drugs. Among Republicans from Connecticut, New Jersey and New York, only two broke ranks to oppose the bill. They were Representatives Nancy L. Johnson and Rob Simmons, both of Connecticut. House supporters of the bill said that it provided a satisfactory level of federal support for health and education programs and that new fiscal restraint was called for, given the resources needed for the Gulf Coast hurricanes and the war in Iraq. "Maybe it is not as much as you like," said Representative Ralph Regula, Republican of Ohio, chairman of the subcommittee responsible for the measure. "But there is a lot of good in there." Democrats said the measure, which would have ended more than 20 programs and prevented the start of eight new ones, would shortchange Americans who need assistance at the very time the House and Senate were advancing new tax cuts that would benefit the more affluent. "This is the day when the price of Republican tax cuts for the wealthy becomes quite clear," said Representative David R. Obey of Wisconsin, senior Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. 9:36:18 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 Michael D. Zungolo. Last update: 12/1/2005; 11:07:43 AM.