Maj. General Paul Eaton On Bush Viet Nam
Comparison: An Unfortunate Trip Back Into History

post from Crooks and Liars on 22 August 2007 09:15:00 PM. © Crooks and Liars

On Tuesday’s “Countdown” retired Major General Paul Eaton gave his view on the Viet Nam comparisons made by President Bush in his speech today. Needless to say, he was not impressed and slammed Bush, comparing his failures in Iraq to those made during the Viet Nam conflict and his misunderstanding of the basic facts. [...]

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http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/08/22/maj-general-paul-eaton-on-bush-viet-nam-
comparison-an-unfortunate-trip-back-into-history/

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Great Explanations

post from Jesus' General on 22 August 2007 08:56:00 PM. © Jesus' General

I don't know about you, but I'm buying them.

I did it because black people scared me --conservative Christian legislator and McCain Florida Co-Chair Bob Allen after being arrested for offering a detective $20 to allow him to put the officer's little policeman in his mouth.

I did it because lightening scared me--conservative Christian legislator and McCain Florida Co-Chair Bob Allen after being arrested again for offering a Titusville cop $20 to allow him to put the officer's little policeman in his mouth.

Someone broke into my house, and mimicking my voice, used by wife's cellphone to make the calls--GOP political consultant Roger Stone after being accused of making abusive and threatening calls made to NY Governor Elliot Spitzer's father.

A maid stole pictures of me and my wife, descriptions of my thingy and her woowoo, and checkbook information to place the ads--GOP political consultant Roger Stone responding to charges that he and his wife placed ads in swingers magazines looking for "muscular, well hung, single men" to join them in their procreation-related activities.

President Bush's political appointee said soldiers would die if we didn't do it--Congressional Democrats on why they gave Inquisitor General Gonzales the power to wiretap without warrants or oversight.

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http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/2007/08/great-explanations.html

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Wash. Post suggested pro-Iraq war ad
campaign is an "attack" on Democrats, despite its reported GOP focus

post from Media Matters for America on 22 August 2007 08:42:01 PM. © Media Matters for America

An August 22 Washington Post article by Jonathan Weisman and Anne E. Kornblut reported that Freedom's Watch, a pro-Iraq war nonprofit organization, "will unveil a month-long, $15 million television, radio and grass-roots campaign today designed to shore up support for [President] Bush's policies before the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, lays out a White House assessment of the war's progress." The Post went on to report: "The burst of effort has been[...]

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http://mediamatters.org/items/rss/200708220017

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Discounting the Future

post from Ezra Klein on 22 August 2007 08:30:00 PM. © Ezra Klein

By Neil the Ethical Werewolf After backing it up with expert opinion, Scott Lemieux makes the commonsense response to the argument that giving people health insurance creates moral hazard:The thing is, being healthy is its own powerful incentive. Maybe[...]

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http://ezraklein.typepad.com/blog/2007/08/discounting-the.html

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CBS' Storm, Schieffer cropped Michelle Obama
quote, claimed "it may be up to the wives to criticize" Clinton

post from Media Matters for America on 22 August 2007 08:19:07 PM. © Media Matters for America

On the August 22 edition of CBS' The Early Show, co-anchor Hannah Storm and CBS News host Bob Schieffer discussed a recent comment by Michelle Obama, Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) wife, that "[i]f you can't run your own house, you can't run the White House." Storm claimed that "[a] lot of people ... took" the statement "as a slam at [Sen.] Hillary Clinton [D-NY]," adding: "She and her husband both said, 'Not so,' but there is a school of thought that says with a woman[...]

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Reversing Watergate

post from Daily Kos on 22 August 2007 08:11:47 PM. © Daily Kos

Diarists gbchaucer2 and R o o k both put us on notice today of the "administration's" latest outrage: their declaration that the White House Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

You can see either of their excellent diaries for expositions on that particular subject.

But I'll tell you why it caught my eye, and it's something I've been thinking about for a long time.

Remember what The New Yorker's Jane Mayer told us last year, in her articleon Dick Cheney's now-Chief of Staff, David Addington?

He thought the Presidency was too weakened. He’s a believer that in foreign policy the executive is meant to be quite powerful."

These views were shared by Dick Cheney, who served as chief of staff in the Ford Administration. "On a range of executive-power issues, Cheney thought that Presidents from Nixon onward yielded too quickly," Michael J. Malbin, a political scientist who has advised Cheney on the issue of executive power, said. Kenneth Adelman, who was a high-ranking Pentagon official under Ford, said that the fall of Saigon, in 1975, was "very painful for Dick. He believed that Vietnam could have been saved—maybe—if Congress hadn’t cut off funding. He was against that kind of interference."

And how Mayer confirmed this with Jane Harman?

Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who has spent considerable time working with Cheney and Addington in recent years, believes that they are still fighting Watergate. "They’re focussed on restoring the Nixon Presidency," she said. "They’ve persuaded themselves that, following Nixon, things went all wrong." She said that in meetings Addington is always courtly and pleasant. But when it comes to accommodating Congress "his answer is always no."

And how Cheney himself confirmed it, too?

In a revealing interview that Cheney gave last December to reporters travelling with him to Oman, he explained, "I do have the view that over the years there had been an erosion of Presidential power and authority. . . . A lot of the things around Watergate and Vietnam both, in the seventies, served to erode the authority I think the President needs." Further, Cheney explained, it was his express aim to restore the balance of power.

Well, that's the context in which you should consider the FOIA news.

What does wikipedia tell us about the Freedom of Information Act, as we now know it?

Following the Watergate scandal, President Gerald R. Ford wanted to sign Freedom of Information Act-strengthening amendments in the Privacy Act of 1974, but concern about leaks (by his chief of staff Donald Rumsfeld and deputy Richard Cheney) and legal arguments that the bill was unconstitutional (by government lawyer Antonin Scalia, among others) persuaded Ford to veto the bill, according to declassified documents in 2004. However, Congress voted to override Ford's veto, giving the United States the core Freedom of Information Act still in effect today, with judicial review of executive secrecy claims. [notes omitted]

And what does wikipedia have to say about... oh, let's say, FISA?

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act resulted from extensive investigations by Senate Committees into the legality of domestic intelligence activities. These investigations were led separately by Sam Ervin and Frank Church in the 1970s after certain activities had been revealed by the Watergate affair (see the Church Committee report). The act was created to provide oversight of covert surveillance activities, while maintaining secrecy.

Hmm. What else is under systematic attack today? Campaign finance?

Following reports of serious financial abuses in the 1972 Presidential campaign, Congress amended the FECA in 1974 to set limits on contributions by individuals, political parties and PACs. The 1974 amendments also established an independent agency, the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to enforce the law, facilitate disclosure and administer the public funding program.

Anything else? Congressional war powers, maybe?

During the Korean and Vietnam wars, the United States found itself involved for many years in situations of intense conflict without a declaration of war. Many Members of Congress became concerned with the erosion of congressional authority to decide when the United States should become involved in a war or the use of armed forces that might lead to war. The Senate and the House of Representatives achieved the 2/3 majority required to pass this joint resolution over President Nixon's veto on November 7, 1973.

Hmm. What are we seeing here?

Can anybody think of any post-Watergate or Watergate/Nixon-inspired reforms in government that haven't been under direct assault by this "administration?"

So, just out of curiosity... who won the fight to impeach/expel Nixon, anyway?

Discuss.

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http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/147103736/921

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Anonymous web browsing with tor

post from Talking in Circles on 22 August 2007 08:02:22 PM. © Talking in Circles

This guide will teach you how to protect your anonymity and hide your IP address while surfing the web with Firefox by using something called Tor. It slows down your connection quite a bit, but if you need to be anonymous or just don’t like taking chances then Tor can be invaluable. (If you’re using [...]

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http://talkingincircles.net/2007/08/22/anonymous-web-browsing-with-tor/

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Frank Zappa: Satan's Roadie

Kirk Cameron exposes Frank Zappa's unnatural love for Satan with this damning quote.

Frank Zappa declared:

"I'm the devil's advocate. We have our own worshippers who are called groupies. Girls will give their bodies to musicians as you would give asacrifice to a God."

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http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/2007/08/frank-zappa-satans-roadie.html

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Reviving eugenics

I really wasn’t going to expend any energy on Jules Crittenden’s attack on my post about fatherhood and masculinity, because from the outset it was so fundamentally silly that it hardly seemed worth devoting any effort to reading carefully,[...]

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http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/08/22/reviving-eugenics/

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Tribes Attack Mahdi Army in Baghdad

A brief truce between rural Sunni tribes and Shi'a militants in and around Baghdad's lawless southwestern zone broke down on Tuesday, Slogger sources report, as tribal forces aligned with Sunni extremists launched an attack on urban strongholds of the Shi'a Mahdi Army.

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http://www.iraqslogger.com/index.php/post/4044

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