For Dems only.

[FlaSoxxJim]

So did the Russell Tice testimony to Armed Services happen yesterday. I haven't heard anything.

[Balta1701]

So did the Russell Tice testimony to Armed Services happen yesterday. I haven't heard anything.

Beats the hell out of me, there's not a single story mentionning his testimony on Google. Maybe it happened behind closed doors?

[Balta1701]

"Even Baby Jesus accepted gifts, and I don't believe it corrupted him."

That's North Carolina Democrat Drew Saunders, trying to argue that a $200 disclosure requirement for non-family-gifts to Congresspeople was too low.

[Rex Kickass]

What an Fn idiot.

[Heads22]

Rasmussen shows Chet Culver (D) leading Jim Nussle ® 46%-40% for the Iowa governorship. Surprises me, because I thought Nussle had the inside track.

[Texsox]

That's North Carolina Democrat Drew Saunders, trying to argue that a $200 disclosure requirement for non-family-gifts to Congresspeople was too low.

 

What a stupid statement :headshake

 

I do think $200 is too low. That will create way too much auditing. I'd be comfortable with something around $500. If we elected someone that could be swayed for $250, we're already in trouble,

[FlaSoxxJim]

What a stupid statement :headshake

 

I do think $200 is too low. That will create way too much auditing. I'd be comfortable with something around $500. If we elected someone that could be swayed for $250, we're already in trouble,

$250 might be enough to sway congressmen if it was $250 worth of in-kind services - like prostitutes and such. . .

[kapkomet]

THAT is HYSTERICAL!

[Balta1701]

Fun with spit takes.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Fun with spit takes.

Yessiree, that was a good one.

[Soxy]

Fun with spit takes.

Except I couldn't laugh (which kind of fits with all of SNL lately). It was too sad.

[Soxy]

Madeleine Albright, my bff.

 

Albright critical of Bush's religious absolutism

 

By Gideon Long Mon May 22, 9:40 AM ET

 

LONDON (Reuters) -

President Bush has alienated Muslims around the world by using absolutist Christian rhetoric to discuss foreign policy issues, former Secretary of State

Madeleine Albright says.

 

"I worked for two presidents who were men of faith, and they did not make their religious views part of American policy," she said, referring to Jimmy Carter and

Bill Clinton, both Democrats and Christians.

 

"President Bush's certitude about what he believes in, and the division between good and evil, is, I think, different," said Albright, who has just published a book on religion and world affairs. "The absolute truth is what makes Bush so worrying to some of us."

 

Bush, a Republican, has openly acknowledged his Christian faith informs his decisions as president. He says, for example, that he prayed to God for guidance before invading

Iraq.

 

Some Muslims have accused him of waging a crusade against Islam, comparable with those of the Middle Ages. The White House says it has nothing against Islam, but against those who commit terrorist atrocities in its name.

 

But Albright says Bush's religious absolutism has made U.S. foreign policy "more rigid and more difficult for other countries to accept."

 

In her book, "The Mighty and the Almighty," Albright recalls how Bush, while he was governor of Texas, told Christians he believed God wanted him to be president.

 

She quotes from his speech to his party convention of 2004, when he told Republicans: "We have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom."

 

"Some of his language is really quite over the top," Albright told Reuters on Sunday during a trip to London to promote her book. "When he says 'God is on our side', it's very different from (former U.S. President Abraham) Lincoln saying 'We have to be on God's side'."

 

IRAQ WORSE THAN VIETNAM

 

The 69-year-old, who worked for Carter in the late 1970s and was Clinton's secretary of state from 1997-2001, says the war in Iraq "may eventually rank among the worst foreign policy disasters in U.S. history."

 

She describes it as arguably worse than the Vietnam War -- not in terms of the number of people killed but because the Middle East is a more volatile region than southeast Asia.

 

She also bemoaned "the growing influence of

Iran" in the region and warned sectarian violence between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims could escalate into an all-out "Arab-Persian conflict."

 

"We should not be contributing to what is a long historical struggle between the Sunni and Shia," she said.

 

Asked about her own beliefs, Albright said she had "a very confused religious background."

 

Born and raised a Roman Catholic in Czechoslovakia, Britain and then the United States, she converted to Anglicanism when she married and only later in life discovered she had Jewish roots.

 

It is this legacy which makes her wary of any religion which claims a monopoly on truth, she said.

 

These days, she describes herself as "an Episcopalian (U.S. Anglican) with a Catholic background," recalling how she used to pray to the Virgin Mary as a child and still does.

 

"I know I believe in God but I have doubts, and doubt is part of faith," she said.

Edited May 23, 2006 by Soxy

[Balta1701]

Pat Robertson has reportedly broken the world record for leg pressing, by over 660 pounds.

[Balta1701]

Tom Delay pulls a Blagojevic and holds up a Colbert interview as strongly supporting his position. Cached photos here.

[Heads22]

What sort of guy runs for congress in Iowa on border security?

 

Nebraska has declared war on us, but that's about it.

[Rex Kickass]

Border Security=illegal immigration?

illegal aliens=the new gays?

[NorthSideSox72]

What sort of guy runs for congress in Iowa on border security?

 

Nebraska has declared war on us, but that's about it.

There are plenty of recent immigrants to Iowa from Mexico. Some towns, where there are manufacturing plants, now have populations that are half recent immigrants.

 

Then there was the news story a year or so ago, when they found about a dozen dead bodies in a sealed grain car (in Iowa, they use trains to haul grain from the co-ops to the larger cities). They had apparently been sealed in in Mexico, with the arrangement that someone on the other side would let them out. Never happened. Imagine for a second, being in that metal grain car, for who knows how many days, probably sitting out in the heat of a rail yard in Phoenix while the inside temperature rose to 140 degrees. Then months later, the car went to Iowa for fall harvest.

 

The issue is not border security - its immigration, and its all over the country. Iowans are very friendly creatures, but they aren't usually apt to accept a lot of fast change, especially if it is hoisted on them from outside.

[Balta1701]

Murray Waas of the national Journal is now running with saying that Rove and Novak may have conspired together to create a story not implicating Rove in the CIA leak (which would be obstruction of justice if true). TIFWIW, but this guy has been doing some pretty good work on this case.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Murray Waas of the national Journal is now running with saying that Rove and Novak may have conspired together to create a story not implicating Rove in the CIA leak (which would be obstruction of justice if true). TIFWIW, but this guy has been doing some pretty good work on this case.

Huzzah! I just saw the Raw Story link on that. Wouldn't that be something, if true?

 

What was it Bush said about dealing harshly with anyone who had any awareness of wrongdoing? This would have included Ashcroft then, too, after Rove and Novak came clean with him.

 

True, this is still a TIFWIW, but Waas' Plamegate stuff has been mostly on the money.

 

Excerpts:

 

On September 29, 2003, three days after it became known that the CIA had asked the Justice Department to investigate who leaked the name of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame, columnist Robert Novak telephoned White House senior adviser Karl Rove to assure Rove that he would protect him from being harmed by the investigation, according to people with firsthand knowledge of the federal grand jury testimony of both men.

 

In the early days of the CIA leak probe, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft was briefed on a crucial conversation between Robert Novak and Karl Rove.

 

Suspicious that Rove and Novak might have devised a cover story during that conversation to protect Rove, federal investigators briefed then-Attorney General John Ashcroft on the matter in the early stages of the investigation in fall 2003, according to officials with direct knowledge of those briefings.

[FlaSoxxJim]

For the two or three who care. . .

 

maybe our best insights into the fabricated justifications for the Iraq invasion are going to come from across the Pond.

 

It's taken years, but it's finally happening. [uK] Attorney General Goldsmith has been ordered to turn over all information underlying his advice to Blair concerning the legality of attacking Iraq.

Those who have followed the twists and turns of the case will realize that this is of significantly greater importance than The Downing Street Memo.

 

The British military chiefs demanded an unequivocal declaration from the Attorney General that attacking Iraq would not be in contravention of domestic or international law. Originally, Goldsmith was unwilling to deliver such a pronouncement, and he gave one that was equivocal, and that questioned the legality. Washington pressured Blair, and Goldsmith returned a new assessment, that was torturous in the extreme in how it applied precedents . . .

 

DKos Diary Link – Wingers Need Not Click.

[Heads22]

There are plenty of recent immigrants to Iowa from Mexico. Some towns, where there are manufacturing plants, now have populations that are half recent immigrants.

 

Then there was the news story a year or so ago, when they found about a dozen dead bodies in a sealed grain car (in Iowa, they use trains to haul grain from the co-ops to the larger cities). They had apparently been sealed in in Mexico, with the arrangement that someone on the other side would let them out. Never happened. Imagine for a second, being in that metal grain car, for who knows how many days, probably sitting out in the heat of a rail yard in Phoenix while the inside temperature rose to 140 degrees. Then months later, the car went to Iowa for fall harvest.

 

The issue is not border security - its immigration, and its all over the country. Iowans are very friendly creatures, but they aren't usually apt to accept a lot of fast change, especially if it is hoisted on them from outside.

 

 

I would have thought Kennedy would have gone more the jobs route as far as immigration. Then again, I don't really think it's an issue that can win you an election in Iowa.

[IggyD]

I am moving to Libertarian...Back to Constitional Rule...WE THE PEOPLE...no more free money to any country...lower taxes...all our Military returns home to protect this great Country and they can spend all Holidays with their families...No Income tax on laborers..only on Big Corporate ....that is how it was until 1913... See The Lawsuit To Restore Constitutional Order they had hearing today which is currently under appeal in the U.S. Court of Appeals in DC and have gotten decisions against the IRS in our favor already...I am still waiting to hear what happened today.

 

Here is a quick little video of the IRS not being able to answer.."Is there a law that requires you to pay Income Tax" and they could not do it!!!

Edited May 26, 2006 by IggyD

[BigSqwert]

[Soxy]

Stephen Colbert: The reason I wish I had cable.

[FlaSoxxJim]

Stephen Colbert: The reason I wish I had cable.

Scary scary stuff.