Impeachment

MD Police Put Activists' Names On Terror Lists
Surveillance's Reach Revealed
By Lisa Rein | WashingtonPost.com

The Maryland State Police classified 53 nonviolent activists as terrorists and entered their names and personal information into state and federal databases that track terrorism suspects, the state police chief acknowledged yesterday.

Police Superintendent Terrence B. Sheridan revealed at a legislative hearing that the surveillance operation, which targeted opponents of the death penalty and the Iraq war, was far more extensive than was known when its existence was disclosed in July.

The department started sending letters of notification Saturday to the activists, inviting them to review their files before they are purged from the databases, Sheridan said.

"The names don't belong in there," he told the Senate Judicial Proceedings Committee. "It's as simple as that."

New Documents Reveal Unlawful Guantánamo Procedures Were Also Applied On American Soil

According to newly released military documents, the Navy applied lawless Guantánamo protocols in detention facilities on American soil. The documents, which include regular emails between brig officers and others in the chain of command, uncover new details of the detention and interrogation of two U.S. citizens and a legal resident – Yaser Hamdi, Jose Padilla and Ali al-Marri – at naval brigs in Virginia and South Carolina.

The documents were obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Allard K. Lowenstein International Human Rights Clinic at Yale Law School and the American Civil Liberties Union.

"Guantánamo was designed as a law-free zone, a place where the government could do whatever it wanted without having to worry about whether it was legal," said Jonathan Freiman, an attorney with the Lowenstein Clinic at Yale. "It didn't take long for that sort of lawlessness to be brought home to our own country. Who knows how much further America would have gone if the Supreme Court hadn't stepped in to stop incommunicado detentions in 2004?"

By John Nichols, Capital Times

ST. LOUIS -- Last week's vice presidential debate was really a junior presidential debate, in which Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Sarah Palin worked the issues with all the rhetorical passion and ideological positioning that we have seen in the dust-ups between Barack Obama and John McCain.

But there was one point at which Biden and Palin actually discussed what they might DO as vice president.

And Palin's response was sobering.

As a biographer of Dick Cheney and the author of a history of presidential power, I've spent the past few years not just pondering but worrying about the current vice president's determination to expand the authority and reach of his office -- and in so doing to tip the balance of the separation of powers in favor of a supercharged "unitary executive."

Bush to provide $6.4 billion in arms to Taiwan | BigNewsNetwork.com

The U.S. government is to sell $6.4 billion of weapons to Taiwan, the State Department announced on Friday.

State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood said Congressional approval was required, but believes this will come quickly. A submission went to Congress on Friday afternoon.

The sales involve a range of U.S.-made weapons systems, including Patriot III anti-missile missiles, Apache attack helicopters, Harpoon missiles, and Javelin anti-tank missiles.

The State Department has sponsored the sale through its appointment earlier this year of former Under-Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz to the State Department's International Security Advisory Board. Wolfowitz is also Chairman of the US-Taiwan Business Council, which includes a number of U.S. military contractors as members.

Bail-out leads to conflict of interest claims as Wall Street financiers cash in on crisis
New questions have been raised about the $700 billion economic bail-out of the US economy as President George W. Bush warned that the world may have to wait weeks for the benefits of the rescue package to be felt.

By Tim Shipman | Telegraph.co.UK

Experts warned the approach is laden with financial pitfalls, since it may be impossible to find independent contractors who do not have a vested interest in which debts to buy and the price at which they buy them. The companies hired to identify and buy the bad debts will have to make decisions that affect the same firms whose shares they own. In some cases they might effectively be buying up their own bad debts.

U.S. Treasury to Hire Up to 10 Asset Management Firms (Update1)
By Rebecca Christie and Robert Schmidt | Bloomberg.com

Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. plans to hire five to 10 asset-management firms as Secretary Henry Paulson establishes the government's new office for handling the financial bailout, a Treasury official said.

The department will also add about two dozen new employees, a mix of bankers, lawyers, accountants and others, the official said today on condition of anonymity. The Treasury's first attempt to hold an auction to buy troubled assets from financial firms will take at least four weeks to set up, said the official.

Pin-Up Girl Tells How She Spotted Suitcase Stuffed With Cash
Rory Carroll | GuardianUK

The 'suitcase girl' who discovered $800,000 in cash and ignited a political scandal across South America - then capitalised on it to forge a career as a Playboy pin-up - has relived her moment of glory in a Miami courtroom.

María del Luján Telpuk, 28, an Argentinian former airport security officer, is testifying in court about the moment she intercepted a suitcase and provoked a row between the governments of Argentina, Venezuela and the US. Claims of high-level corruption, cover-ups and vendettas have followed and commentators have dubbed the scandal 'Maletagate'; maleta is Spanish for suitcase.

Despite Ruling, Detainee Cases Facing Delays
By William Glaberson | IHT.com

When the Supreme Court ruled in June that detainees at Guantánamo had the right to challenge their detention in U.S. government court, the justices said that after more than six years of legal wrangling the prisoners should have their cases heard quickly because "the costs of delay can no longer be borne by those who are held in custody."

But nearly four months later, as the Bush administration has opened a new defense of its detention policies in U.S. federal court, none of the scores of cases brought by detainees has been resolved by any judge.

The Specter of Wall Street, Wall Street's Comeback as the Place Americans Love to Hate
By Steve Fraser | TomDispatch.com

Think of this as the month when Fannie and Freddie entered everyday speech as something other than friendly names, when Americans realized that WaMu wasn't an over-performing Orca at SeaWorld but a massive failing savings bank, and that Wachovia wasn't a watch brand, but a finance group, as well as the fourth largest bank holding company in the U.S.

And the faster we learned those names, the faster they disappeared into the dustbin of history. First, Bear Stearns hit the skids, then Lehman Brothers vanished into the ether just as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were being absorbed by the U.S. government. Merrill Lynch headed directly down the gullet of Bank of America. Just behind was a desperate American International Group (A.I.G.), the world's largest insurer, in a state of financial collapse, only to be bailed out by the Bush administration. Next, Washington Mutual (or WaMu) fell into the clutches of JP Morgan Chase, and

Seven Deadly Sins of Deregulation -- and Three Necessary Reforms
By Robert Kuttner | The American Prospect

Free-market extremists brought us this needless economic collapse. Here's a rundown of the mistakes we've made and the reforms we need now.

The current carnage on Wall Street, with dire spillover effects on Main Street, is the result of a failed ideology -- the idea that financial markets could regulate themselves. Serial deregulation fed on itself. Deliberate repeal of regulations became entangled with failure to carry out laws still on the books. Corruption mingled with simple incompetence. And though the ideology was largely Republican, it was abetted by Wall Street Democrats.

Why regulate?

By Bob Sommer, Kansas City Star

The year is 2019. It’s Sunday evening. Eighty-eight-year-old Morley Safer’s special guest on “60 Minutes” is an expert on national security, an elder statesman.

The image of former President George W. Bush fills the screen. His hunched shoulders quiver in a chuckle as Morley asks whether he’s finally cleared the last of the brush from his ranch.

Bush’s wartime presidential expertise is needed. War rages from the Mediterranean to the Himalayas, while newly drafted U.S. troops mass along the Canadian border.

Now in her second term, President Sarah Palin never blinked when she stared down the Canadian prime minister, who muttered in French, something about moose poaching.

It’s war.

U.S. to fund pro-American publicity in Iraq
$300 million media program meant to 'engage and inspire' local population
By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus | MSNBC.com

The Defense Department will pay private U.S. contractors in Iraq up to $300 million over the next three years to produce news stories, entertainment programs and public service advertisements for the Iraqi media in an effort to "engage and inspire" the local population to support U.S. objectives and the Iraqi government.

The new contracts -- awarded last week to four companies -- will expand and consolidate what the U.S. military calls "information/psychological operations" in Iraq far into the future, even as violence appears to be abating and U.S. troops have begun drawing down.

Blackwater Machine Gun Found in Raid on Iraqi Insurgents
Incident Was Kept Secret and Raises More Questions About the Firm's Iraq Operations
By Brian Ross | ABCNews.com

An M4 machine gun sent to Iraq by the Blackwater private security firm somehow disappeared from the company's storage facility in Baghdad and was later discovered during a US military operation, apparently against suspected insurgents, people familiar with the situation have told ABC News.

The incident, in 2006, has been kept secret until now but it raised more questions about Blackwater's operations in Iraq.

Allegations that Blackwater shipped weapons and silencers to Iraq without proper licensing are already under investigation by a federal grand jury in North Carolina, according to people familiar with the case.

Blackwater says all of its weapons "are shipped in accordance with U.S. export control regulations."

New Hampshire State Representative Betty Hall Sends You an Update

You may remember my efforts to compel the US Congress to consider impeachment. I introduced this past spring a petition HR 24 in the New Hampshire House to Commence Impeachment Proceedings in the United States Congress. I was grateful for your support in that effort. I received thousands of e-mails from all over the country.

The Petition was “tabled” - the speaker of the New Hampshire house followed our national leaders by sweeping accountability under the rug. But in NH, it’s a little harder to avoid the citizenry: any member of the House may move to bring it back to consideration at any time before the end of the legislative session.

HR 24 is still alive, and may (will) be brought up again any session day, if there is one, before the last day of the session. It will have added importance because we are now in the middle of an election.

Does the Bailout Bill Mark the End of America as We Know It?
Richard C. Cook

What seems to be happening is that the Bush administration is engineering a massive raid on the Federal treasury to pay off the people within the financial industry who have been operating the housing scam because the politicians told them to do it. This is hush money.

OCTOBER 1, 2008—Tonight the Senate passed the $700 billion Wall Street bailout bill by a vote of 74-25. This follows the rejection of the bill by the House on Monday. In an MSNBC poll, 62 percent of Americans oppose the giveaway, but the lobbyists are doing everything possible to assure the rejection is overturned. According to Bob Borosage, co-director of The Campaign for America’s Future, House leaders “are bringing in the small business lobby and the banking lobby to buy the twelve Republican votes they need.”

Fleecing What’s Left of the Treasury
By Chris Hedges | Truthdig.com

The lobbyists and corporate lawyers, the heads of financial firms and the crooks who control Wall Street, all those who spent the last three decades assuring us that government was part of the problem and should get out of the way, are now busy looting the U.S. treasury. They are also working feverishly inside the Democratic and Republican parties to blunt any effective regulatory reform as they pass on their distressed assets to us. The process is stunning in its hubris and mendacity, and two of the most potent enablers of this unprecedented act of corporate welfare are John McCain and Barack Obama.

The federal government, reeling backward from the meltdown of financial markets, is now considering taking responsibility for the bad assets of numerous financial companies. But if that intervention does not include robust new mechanisms of regulation, accountability and control we will see nothing more than a massive taxpayer-funded bailout of stockholders and the financial industry.

Say "No" to Paulson's Plunder at "Cash for Trash" sale at Fed Reserve
October 02, 2008
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM

JOIN IN A LIVELY "TRASH FOR CASH" sale in front of the Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta help us say "NO BUSH BAILOUT.""

Date: Thursday, October 2, 2008.
Location: Federal Reserve Bank, 1000 Peachtree St NE, Atlanta, GA, 30309).
Time : 6 pm - 7:30 pm.

If you want, bring some garbage / plastic bags with something in them so they look sorta full. We will hand our Wall St. "trash" (junk bonds / hedge funds / derivatives) to a "Federal Reserve officer" (one of us in a suit). Bring your own slogans on signs or here are some suggestions, "Honk if you want trash for cash," "Say NO to Paulson's Plunder," "Bailout Main St, not Wall St." "We don't want Wall Street's trash." Press may attend.

Psst - pass the word! Let's show these folks emough is enough!
Address:
Fed Reserve Bank, 1000 P'tree St NE
Atlanta, GA 30309

Bush Wants To Bankrupt America: There is Method To His Madness
By Sam Hamod | InformationClearingHouse.com | 07/01/03

Some have wondered if GW Bush knows what he's doing with his tax cut that benefits the corporations and the very rich, and cuts away the remaining money of the poor and the middle class. I say yes, he does know what he'd up to, as do his corporate advisors and his neo-con economist friends and theorists, chief among them Grover Norquist. Norquist has been the chief architect behind the dismantling of the American federal financial structure in terms of benefits for the common citizen, but has helped to create the superstructure of tax breaks for the very rich and the corporatocracy that now has a choke-hold on America.

Bush Had No Plan to Catch Bin Laden after 9/11
by Gareth Porter | InterPressService.com

New evidence from former U.S. officials reveals that the George W. Bush administration failed to adopt any plan to block the retreat of Osama bin Laden and other al Qaeda leaders from Afghanistan to Pakistan in the first weeks after 9/11.

That failure was directly related to the fact that top administration officials gave priority to planning for war with Iraq over military action against al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

As a result, the United States had far too few troops and strategic airlift capacity in the theatre to cover the large number of possible exit routes through the border area when bin Laden escaped in late 2001.

Senate to vote on financial rescue plan, with sweeteners aimed at gaining House OK
By Andrew Taylor | ABCNews.com

President Bush's plan to rescue U.S. financial markets is headed for a Senate vote Wednesday night after leaders there agreed to add tax breaks for businesses and the middle class and increase deposit insurance in an attempt to revive the legislation rejected by the House.

The surprise move by Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., appeared likely to win a big vote in the Senate that would put pressure on the House to go along and send the measure to the White House.

Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama and his GOP rival, John McCain, planned to fly to Washington for the Senate vote, as did Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Biden.

Adding a set of popular business tax breaks and legislation to prevent more than 20 million middle-class taxpayers from feeling the bite of the alternative minimum tax promised to win House GOP votes for the plan even as it angered moderate "Blue Dog" Democrats concerned about the tax cuts adding to the deficit.

Neoconservatives plan Project Sarah Palin to shape future American foreign policy
Neoconservatives whose influence had been waning in Washington have hitched their colours to rising star Sarah Palin in a bid to shape US foreign policy for another decade.
By Tim Shipman | TelegraphUK.com

"In choosing Palin, McCain may also have changed the course of history," he said. "Should this ticket win, Palin will eclipse every other Republican as heir apparent to the presidency and will have her own power base, wholly independent of President McCain."

Special Prosecutor Named in Attorney Firings Case
By Eric Lichtblau & Sharon Otterman | NYTimes.com

DOJ Statement

Full PDF Report

"Our investigation found significant evidence that political partisan considerations were an important factor in the removal of several . . . U.S. attorneys."

An internal Justice Department investigation concluded Monday that political pressure drove the firings of several federal prosecutors in a 2006 purge, but said that the refusal of major players at the White House and the department to cooperate in the year-long inquiry produced significant “gaps” in its understanding of the events.

At the urging of the investigators, who said they did not have enough evidence to justify recommending criminal charges in the case, Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey appointed the Acting United States Attorney in Connecticut, Nora Dannehy, to continue the inquiry and determine whether anyone should be prosecuted.

The 356-page report, prepared by the department’s inspector general and its Office of Professional Responsibility, provides the fullest picture to date of an episode that opened the Bush administration up to charges of politicizing the justice system. The firings of nine federal prosecutors, and the Congressional hearings they generated, ultimately led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales last September.

Tomgram: Chalmers Johnson, The Pentagon Bailout Fraud

Let's start with the money the Bush administration has already thrown at the war in Iraq. According to the June congressional testimony of William Beach, director of the Center for Data Analysis, the war has cost $646 billion so far. The new defense budget for 2009 tacks on another $68.6 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan in the coming year. However, military expert Bill Hartung of the New America Foundation puts a conservative estimate of the costs of a single week of the Iraq War at approximately $3.5 billion (or about $180 billion a year).

Congress to tweak bailout or risk deep recession
By David Lawder and Patrick Rucker | Reuters.com

U.S. efforts to revive a $700 billion bank bailout bill with some new provisions offered hope for battered markets on Tuesday, and economists warned of a long and deep recession if efforts to resuscitate it fail.

The defeat of the bill on Monday in the U.S. House of Representatives left two likely scenarios -- the plan gets tweaked enough to win passage, or Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke return to a limited tool box and piecemeal approach to dealing with the financial crisis.

A complete rewriting of the bill appears unlikely.

"For the near-term, we're going to get some modification on the Paulson plan and pass it or we're not going to get anything," said Michael Mussa, former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

"The worry is that if we don't pass the Paulson plan, we could have a steep recession that is among the worst we've seen in the post-War era," said Mussa, now a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.