about missing her opportunity to "kill" Bill Clinton, but I wonder whether she was referring to killing him or doing something else with him.

Starr accused of sending fake clemency pleas Prosecutors: Ex-independent counsel fabricated letters on inmate's behalf

ONLINE POLL: 68% Find Jack Abramoff More Credible Than George Bush

When asked about polls, Bush responded that if he worried about them, "I would be in the fetal position right now, which wouldn't be a pretty sight," one participant said.

Male U.S. representatives with daughters are more likely to vote in favor of abortion rights and "more liberally on a range of women's issues" than male representatives without daughters, according to a working paper published this month in the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Washington Post reports... The report adds that the association between voting records and daughters superseded any party affiliation... (Morin, Washington Post, 2/8).

Progessive blog doesn't like Bush.

"I support the free press, let's just get them out of the room." --George W. Bush, February 10, 2006

Explosions have killed 1,123 American service members in Iraq and have wounded at least 10 times more [11,230], often with a devastating combination of injuries -- ruptured organs and severed spines, obliterated limbs and burst eyeballs.

Civilians reported killed by military intervention in Iraq: Min: 28403 Max: 32013

"Change the channel."

"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing." --Dwight David Eisenhower

appointed by Ashcroft to the Justice Department's Director of Public Affairs... [and] suspiciously left the DoJ on October 1, 2003 -- right on the heels of the Plame case being referred by the CIA for investigation

I had no idea what a toxic waste dump the comments section would turn into as people went to work delving into the sewage pit that is her past.

Seven judges on a secret court have authorized all but one of over 7,500 requests to spy in the name of National Security. They meet in secret, with no published orders, opinions, or public record. Those spied on May never know of the intrusion.

This is beyond frightening. Thank you for this find.

This does not bode well for continued freedom.

Any chance of Bush rolling some of this back? It sounds amazing on its face. Why didn't Wen Ho Lee just "disappear" into one of these Star Chambers, never to return?

The Administration says talking about this(the NSA monitoring)tips off the enemy. Now, the idea that our enemies think that the most technologically sophisticated nation in the world isn't using all its' advantages to eavesdrop on them is peculiar. In 1978 we passed FISA. That alerted them, if any alerting was needed, that we were indeed listening in. Passing the Patriot act alerted them what we were going to do or not do. What I do not understand in this whole bizarre week we just had George, our arguing about the NSA survellience. The administration said it was desperately important to pass the Patriot Act. Under the President's sweeping assertion, not to say monarchical assertion of executive powers, which is to say when the executive branch says we're at war the executive branch essentially shuts down the other two branches, given that, at least 24 provisions of the Patriot Act are superflous, why would they need this legislation?

The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (or FISC) is a U.S. federal court authorized under 50 U.S.C. § 1803 and established by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (known as FISA for short). Its jurisdiction is to oversee requests for surveillance warrants by federal police agencies (primarily the F.B.I.) against suspected foreign intelligence agents inside the United States.

Hidden in Bush's reprehensible 2007 budget plan is a proposal to shut down the EPA's network of libraries - a network that is used not just by the EPA's own researchers but the public as well. Not only that, but Bush wants to -LITERALLY - wipe out 50,000 documents stored in the EPA's electronic catalog. Guess who uses the EPA library more frequently than perhaps any other group? EPA enforcement staff. Without the databases, there will be no way to support pollution prosecutions and monitor the history of a industry's pollution pattern. Thus, if enforcement officers try to take their case to court and make it stick, they will have one damned tough time proving a history of offenses. from Cheryl Seal Reports - Need to Know News

According to the documents, the Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore, a Quaker-linked peace group, has been monitored by the NSA working with the Baltimore Intelligence Unit of the Baltimore City Police Department....The documents came as a result of litigation in the August 2003 trial of Marilyn Carlisle and Cindy Farquhar. An NSA security official provided the defendants with a redacted Action Plan and a redacted copy of a Joint Terrorism Task Force email about the activities of the Pledge of Resistance activities.

For it's

one

two

three strikes

and you're out

at the old ballgame.

A senior Russian parliamentary official and leader of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Vladimir Zhirinovsky believes that a U.S. attack on Iran is inevitable, he has told Ekho Moskvy radio station. The date for the strike is already known -- it is the election day in Israel (March 28). It is also known how much that war will cost," Zhirinovsky said. He went on to add that the publication of Prophet Muhammad cartoons in the European press was a planned action by the U.S. whose aim is "to provoke a row between Europe and the Islamic world".

...has advocated restoring Russia to its previous imperial borders (including Finland and Alaska),

"We have our sensors in place in the U.S., Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, and most Arab countries. We know ahead of the time when they are coming, and since Mr. Bush has given American democracy along with the preemptive strike as the right of everybody in the world, we are going to use it and use it effectively. We are present in most of the military briefings of the U.S. in Afghanistan and Iraq. As soon as we see that it is imminent we hit them and hit them hard... Whether the U.S. or Israel attacks us, we will consider it as Israeli attack since we know how much power they have over the U.S. political and decision-making system." If the attack happens, that will trigger the nuclear efforts of Iran. We will definitely go underground and speed up nuclear weapon production, since there will be no choice except to have them and have them soon. Right now we do not need nuclear weapons which are a liability rather than an asset, because we do not have hostile enemy which we cannot smash when we want to. The country has been able to stand on its feet for the last 2,500 years and will do so in the future. Look at the last war we had with Iraq, which by the way, was shortest war we had during the last 200 years." More...

Monday, February 13, 2006 The fantasy prevailing in the White House and the Pentagon (and among some pandering Democrats in Congress) is that the U.S. can cripple Iran's nascent nuclear weapons development program by aerial bombardment of its enrichment facilities and scientific centers, and that this can be done at little cost or risk to the U.S. In fact, the doctrine of legitimate response to attack gives Iran a wide range of responses to any attack, which should make Americans very leery about playing such games. If the U.S. were to bomb an Iranian nuclear power facility, Iran would have the legal right to do the same to vulnerable American nuclear facilities. And while the U.S. might do its attacking with B-52 bombers, stealth aircraft or missiles, Iran could accomplish the same thing with trained commando units. ... This is an administration of chickenhawk policymakers and leaders who have never met a war they didn't weasel their way out of, and who seem to be trying to compensate for their youthful cowardice and lack of patriotism by displays of wanton violance and aggression. If they aren't stopped, they could well be responsible for losing a few more American cities by the time Bush's second term mercifully ends.

"winning in November" doesn't by itself undo a constitutional order that's gelled. Divided government can still operate within a new constitutional order that's been established by one party... winning back Congress in November is still of great interest, but it may only be effective in temporarily stopping the advance of the damage that can be done under the new order. It may very well be that it simply is not capable of reversing it, since it will no longer be a matter of repealing statutory law, but rather one of reversing new constitutional understandings and precedent.