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Not All the DOJ Missing Emails Are Missing
Hylas sends us to Democracy Now for a newscast on the missing emails, an interview with investigative journalist Greg Palast. Here's Palast talking about the fired US attorney from New Mexico, David Iglesias: "Iglesias believes the real reasons for the firings are in what are called the missing emails, emails sent by the [White House political advisor Karl] Rove team using Republican Party campaign computers, which Rove claims can't be retrieved. But not all the missing emails are missing. We have 500 of them. Apparently the Rove team misaddressed their emails, and late one night they all ended up in our inboxes in our offices in New York City." This story has had zero play in the US media; it's been being carried on the BBC.
Something bad is coming when people are suddenly anxious to tell the truth.
A bit of history on Greg Palast; he's the guy who, on the BBC, broke the story about election irregularities in Florida before the 2000 election. Admittedly, a few days before, but it's still a bit of a scoop.
Does no one else find it not only weird, but downright scary how this just seems to disappear from the American political media, even though it is happening IN AMERICA, and largely effects AMERICANS? I mean jeeze guys, do not care what happens to your country? Rise up! Revolt! Hell, have Civil Rights march, cuz God knows you need it...
This story has had zero play in the US media;
This can only be the work of the so-called "liberal media" in the US that we hear so much about. Look at those leftist, socialist Commie bastards protecting the interests of their right-wing Republican friends. Oh, wait...
This story has had zero play in the US media; it's been being carried on the BBC
Democracy Now airs in the US on quite a few small local stations (I listen to it on my ride home from work every day) as well as a few satellite channels.
Of course, everyone seems to completely ignore it, even though so far they have a pretty much spot-on record regarding the evils of the current administration... They broke the "secret prisons" story about two years before the mainstream media caught on; Regularly discussed Abu Ghraib and detainee torture at least six months before we all started "Doing the Lyndie"; Private jet chartering for illegal renditions to have prisoners tortured by third-party countries, 18 months before anyone cared (and still, even now that everyone stopped caring despite the practice continuing).
But then, ya just can't trust them tinfoil hat types, right?
Greg Palast is one of the few good reporters out there still willing to probe further and deeper. An interesting book of his, detailing the election, war, and oil machinations is "Armed Madhouse": http://www.gregpalast.com/madhouse/index.php/about /. For a quick summary, see this talk he gave in Portland: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-680222806 2297352475.
I don't know if you heard about the two blokes jailed for leaking a memo where Bush tells Blair that he wants to bomb the Al-Jazeera headquarters in Doha. Maybe Greg is afraid of an invocation of the patriot act?
i tain.memo.ap/index.html
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http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/05/10/br
Mr. Palast's credibility is top-notch as far as I'm concerned. He always dares to cover stories that everyone else is too scared to do. Look at the wonderful work he's done cornering Goldfinger and vulture funds. Poor kids in Africa are likely to have an education, healthcare and food thanks to his courageous work. Kudos to him!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/6
Res publica non dominetur
For example?
This story strains credibility
In what way? That it suggests that Karl Rove would lie? How is that straining anything?
The entire scenario is more than a little far fetched
Politicians do this sort of thing all the time.
unless you're automatically predisposed to hate Karl Rove.
You don't have to be predisposed to hating Karl Rove, he's such a cunt that it's impossible not to; but that's not really anything to do with the believability of this story of everyday political shenanigans.
I'll wait for a better, more credible source.
Like what? One that agrees with your strangely innocent view of politics?
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Here's how the mis-addressed email thing works. Politicos in the White House or elsewhere, have mistakenly typed .org instead of .gov when addressing their emails. The www.whitehouse.org owners are none to happy with Bush's politics, and so routinely forward their emails to Greg Palast, whose reputation is well known. Mystery solved. Palast says this much in most of his books. While American networks avoid Palast like the plague, largely because he is at odds with the media-moguls, he has had his own show on the BBC for years and is considered a good source for what is really happening in the US by the Europeans. He has also appeared on the NPR show On the Media and on Democracy Now from Pacifica Radio.
It is much better than this!p alast+2000&search=Searchp alast&search=Search
He investigated the contract Jeb Bush gave to a company to filter out from the voter rolls the people who had no right to vote. He got their listings printed, and found out that they had prevented tens of thousands of african-americans from voting for no legal reason! As everyone knows african-americans almost always (95%) vote for the democrats. That is how the 2000 election really was stolen, and all US corporate media boycotted what he found, which only aired on the BBC.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=greg+
For more great videos by Palast about the 2004 election and more:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=greg+
Also do a serch on emule for other exclusive materials.
FTFA I mean, he's not necessarily the sharpest knife in the drawer, and he and his guys were mistyping their email addresses, sent them to georgewbush.org, instead of dotcom, which is an email domain owned by friends of ours, who shot them right to us.
Tequila - drink of the gods.
The Attorney General (Alberto Gonzalez) serves as an appointee of the President. You've got that much right. However, the Attorneys General that were replaced are appointed by the US Attorney General whose office is charged with serving the interests of the Judicial branch of the US government, not the Executive branch. While the US AG may serve at the pleasure of the President, he is not expected be beholden to the partisan interests of the President. The US AG is supposed to facilitate the enforcement of that the Legislative branch's checks (i.e. laws), not to place attorneys who kowtow to the will of one party or the other.
I am an American.
blog
U.S. Attorneys are usually all replaced at the beginning of an administration. They are not supposed to be replaced in the middle of a term in order to obstruct justice.
While they are political appointees they do not occupy political positions. Supreme Court judges are political appointees too. They can't simply be yanked off the court by the president if he or one of his friends loses a court decision.
To get on the Supreme Court, a nominee has to be approved by Congress. Ordinarily that applies to U.S. Attorney nominees as well. (Even though they serve "at the pleasure of the president".) Specter's little Patriot Act amendment put an end to that. So now the president can simply fire a prosecutor if he or one of his friends get prosecuted, replace him with whomever he likes, and nobody can say a thing.
Now we have people in the president's own party demanding that his prosecutors bring bogus charges against their political opponents, rushed in time for elections. (Historically prosecutors have usually waited until after elections to avoid tainting them.) We have people in the president's own party having the prosecutors investigating them fired. We have prosecutors being replaced by guys who compile lists of registered voters in minority districts for mass voter challenges. We have prosecutors being replaced for investigating real crimes instead of wasting their time harassing voters with imaginary "voter fraud" cases. We have a Department of Justice that launches more than six corruption investigations of local Democratic politicians for every single investigation of a Republican. If you think this is a "non-story" you're out of your mind.
The illegality (if there was any) was in the claim that US Attorneys were asked to break the law, and then fired for not doing so. If there is a WHIFF of illegality, especially in the election process, government should welcome the scrutiny. I'd rather hear Rove and others say "I cannot find the emails, but I will do all in my power to help others recover them."
If there was, as Mr. Iglesias claims, an attempt to coerce him into breaking the law, and it's now coming to light because of his firing, it's worthy of investigation. I do wish he had stood up and counted when it was more relevant and easier to prove, and the fact that he didn't makes me REALLY doubt his story. And in the absence of proof, I believe Gonzales should be completely exonerated. But rather than stonewalling, welcome the investigation. If a (former) US Attorney says that he was approached to be part of a conspiracy to commit a crime, that should be enough to get a search warrant (because conspiracy to commit a felony is also a felony). I take it all with a grain of salt -- this is a disgruntled ex-employee who was fired -- to me the allegation is still serious enough to warrant (pun intended) further investigation
Off topic, the flower thongs you sell cracked me up! I hope they're moving well.
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
Not after Iraq. Not after warrantless wiretapping. Not after Gitmo. Not after Katrina. Not after the DOJ torture memo. Not after the billions of dollars spent in Iraq reconstruction that have never been properly accounted for (millions in cash), and the no bid contracts for a company the VP hold stock options in. Not after the Valeri Plame leaks. Not after scientific findings have to be submitted for alteration by an administration zampolit.
I'm sick of this "there's no difference between the Democrats and Republicans" business. Maybe there should be more difference, but there is one undeniable difference: the Republicans have brought us the most incompetent and corrupt administration in American history, aided by a congress almost to match it. The only modern parallel for incompetence, criminality, cronyism and rashness would be the Palestinian authority under Arafat, and I'm not sure that counts because it wasn't officially a nation.
I'm not saying the Democrats are angels, or that they have the best policies for America. But they've never delivered a government that was so poorly, criminally, or tyrannically run as that of the modern "Republicans". I put "Republicans" in quotes because I don't think they deserve the name of the party of Goldwater.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You can't have it both ways. So which is it?
I'll tell you. You're pulling a "Choicepoint" by omitting things from the story. Yes, Ethel Baxter (D) created the felon list (and since you claim felons vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, she must have been thinking about her sworn election office duty instead of her party), but a very important change was made by the Republicans: the decision to allow false positives. Under Baxter's rules, doubt over the status of a voter removed them from the list. With the new Republican guidance, you could now stack the list. (Wikipedia has more.)
This isn't a partisan issue: either you're for fair elections, or you're not. We should attack every instance of fraud, regardless of who is skewing the system.
And when you're "debunking" the BBC of all sources, you should provide some of your own of similar stature.
Lies about crimes
Under Clinton, the top marginal tax bracket went from 31% @ $86,500, to 39.6 @ $288,350. Bush subsequently adjusted the top rate to 35% @ 311,950.
By comparison the top tax brack for most of the years of the "Reagan Boom" was 50% at around $170K or so, dropping to 28% at $32K under Bush.
These figures are not adjusted for inflation by the way.
The MEDIAN household taxation rates during
the Reagan budgets (1982-1989): 17.9,17.5,18.0,18.1,18.0,17.6,17.9,17.9
Bush HW (1990 - 1994): 17.9, 17.6, 17.4, 17.3,17.3
Clinton (1994-2001): 17.3, 17.3, 17.3, 17.4, 16.8, 16.9 16.6,15.3
Bush (2002-2003): 14.8, 13.8, 13.9
Note that each president's first year in office is under the prior president's budget.
Overall taxation rates dropped slightly during the Clinton years while the median taxation rate went down consistently and the top quintile rose significantly. Under the Bush administratio, there has been a substantial drop in effective taxation at the median income, but curiously only a slight drop is seen in the top quintile. The big tax breaks go to a tiny, tiny sliver of the top quintile.
This basically paints Clinton as overall a slight tax cutter who shifted the burden to the top quintile. Bush is a dramatic tax cutter who cut median and ultra-high income tax rates.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Your point would be well taken except that the DOJ is run by Bush Appointees.
Consider this from a Paul Krugman column dated, 3/9/2007:
"Donald Shields and John Cragan, two professors of communication, have compiled a database of investigations and/or indictments of candidates and elected officials by U.S. attorneys since the Bush administration came to power. Of the 375 cases they identified, 10 involved independents, 67 involved Republicans, and 298 involved Democrats. The main source of this partisan tilt was a huge disparity in investigations of local politicians, in which Democrats were seven times as likely as Republicans to face Justice Department scrutiny."
Then consider that with such intense scrutiny by Attoney Generals who "played ball" and didn't get fired, there was found only a handful of 'vote fraud' cases.