For GOP only

[NorthSideSox72]

I agree in general with the article, but want to point out that Biden has indeed suggested something other than a pullout or stay-the-course plan. Biden is not my favorite candidate at all, I don't like him much, but he is trying a different path than everyone else.

[southsider2k5]

A forward from my inbox this morning

 

This test only has one question, but it's a very important one. By giving an honest answer, you will discover where you stand morally.

 

The test features an unlikely, completely fictional situation in which you will have to make a decision. Remember that your answer needs to be honest, yet spontaneous.

 

Please scroll down slowly and give due consideration to each line.

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------

 

THE SITUATION:

 

You are in Florida, Miami to be specific. There is chaos all around you caused by a hurricane with severe flooding.

 

This is a flood of biblical proportions. You are photojournalist working for a major newspaper, and you're caught in the middle of this epic disaster.

The situation is nearly hopeless.

 

You're trying to shoot career-making photos. There are houses and people swirling around you, some disappearing under the water. Nature is unleashing all of its destructive fury.

 

===============================================

 

THE TEST:

 

Suddenly you see a woman in the water. She is fighting for her life, trying not to be taken down with the debris. You move closer. Somehow the woman looks familiar. You suddenly realize who it is. It's Hillary Clinton! At the same time you notice that the raging waters are about to take her under forever. You have two options: You can save the life of Hillary Clinton or you can shoot a dramatic Pulitzer Prize winning photo, documenting the death of one of the world's most powerful women (in her mind, at least)

 

===============================================

 

THE QUESTION:

 

Here's the question, and please give an honest answer.......

 

 

"Would you select high contrast color film, or would you go with the classic simplicity of black and white?"

[mr_genius]

Obama ad. i liked it

 

Edited March 19, 2007 by mr_genius

[southsider2k5]

Obama ad. i liked it

 

 

FWIW, the Obama camp has disavowed anything to do with this ad. That being said, this is a pretty well thought out ad.

[southsider2k5]

Kind of an interesting story here... Literally as we speak there is an effort in Congress to force the Ex-Presidents and VPs to speed up the release of the documents related to their administration. This effort is being spearheaded by Dems currently in Congress.

 

More here at link

 

The interesting part is that the spouse of our last President is refusing to release her documents, pretty much across teh board. A few of the tribulations of team Clinton are among the things that have received silence or denials when requests have been filed.

 

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/na...ionalnews-print

 

WASHINGTON - The razor-edged rectangle of the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Library juts from a bank on the burbling Arkansas River like a massive metal file cabinet plopped in the mud.

 

To tourists, it's a place to ogle the 42nd president's golf clubs or the former first lady's department-store-bought wedding dress. But to the dozens of reporters, historians, anti-Clinton types and eccentrics who have filed requests for documents from the library's archive, it is Little Rock's Fort Knox.

 

The museum's 138-million-page presidential archive could play an important role in determining how Hillary Rodham Clinton's controversial White House past will affect her attempt to reclaim 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

 

"I haven't received any documents or even a note indicating that they're searching the records," said Jeff Gerth, a former New York Times reporter who requested a wide range of the first lady's files for an unauthorized Clinton biography he's working on.

 

With the 2008 election looming, researchers are eager to unearth undisclosed details from eight years marked by controversy, scandal and high-wire politics.

 

The Clintons' longtime personal lawyer, Bruce Lindsey, who helped defend the couple in the 1990s, has veto power over the release of the most sensitive documents. Attempts to contact Lindsey weren't successful.

 

Among the documents requested: almost all of Hillary Clinton's files as first lady, eight years' worth of her daily White House schedules, office diaries, day planners and telephone logs, according to a list of Freedom of Information Act requests obtained by Newsday.

 

Requests also have been filed for the internal correspondence of Clinton's ill-fated early-1990s health care reform task force (despite a court ruling saying its deliberations could remain private) and detailed files on Filegate, Travelgate, Whitewater, Monica Lewinsky, the pardons scandal and even back-and-forth about Clinton's 2000 Senate bid.

 

Sixteen months after the library started accepting applications, no major request for sensitive documents pertaining to Clinton's first-lady years have been released.

 

Gerth, whose request was logged on Jan. 17, 2006, should be among the first to receive documents - or a rejection letter - based on the library's first-come, first-served policy. He has received neither.

 

National Archives officials say the sheer volume of interest in both Clintons is slowing things down. As of last month, the archive had received 336 requests for documents, correspondence and e-mails totaling 9 million pages. That's three timesthe material requested from George H.W. Bush's archive in its first year.

 

"This is a tremendously complex and convoluted process," said the library's supervising archivist, Melissa Walker. "We review documents line by line, document by document, not box by box. It takes a lot of time."

 

But there is a political component, too. Under the Presidential Records Act, an ex-president's designated representative, in this case Lindsey, has the power to reject any release under the catch-all justification that the document reveals internal White House deliberations.

 

These so-called "P5" rejections are only allowed for the 12 years after a president leaves office, but President George W. Bush issued a November 2001 executive order that effectively extends that power indefinitely.

 

Of the first 54 requests that were acted upon for both Clintons between January and November 2006, only four were granted - and they were for videos and ceremonial letters.

 

Since then, about 500,000 pages of documents have been released - but there's been little movement on the three biggest Hillary Clinton requests, according to the people who made them.

 

"We're getting nowhere," said Tom Fitton, executive director of Judicial Watch, a Washington-based conservative government watchdog group that has long investigated the Clintons. His organization wants to see Hillary Clinton's schedules and diaries. "We may have to consider filing a lawsuit but the legal issues are very, very complicated."

 

It will be interesting to see if one particular researcher obtains his documents for reasons that go beyond politics, not to mention the solar system.

 

No less than 77 of the FOIA requests - about a quarter of the total - are from UFO researcher Grant Cameron, who wants, among other things, "all files related to UFOs, Roswell, N.M., or flying saucers from the files of Hillary Clinton."

 

It's not clear whether Cameron's request will be granted.

 

THE CLINTON SCANDALS

 

Whitewater: Clintons accused of using political influence in the 1980s to profit from ill-fated Arkansas housing development. In 1996, Hillary Rodham Clinton discovered tax documents related to the matter in her personal quarters, two years after investigators requested them. Cleared of wrongdoing by Special Counsel Robert Ray.

 

Cattle Futures: In 1979, Hillary Clinton invested $1,000 in cattle futures under guidance from a politically connected friend; 10 months later she quit trading after turning a $99,000 profit. No wrongdoing found.

 

Travelgate: In 1994, several Bush appointees were fired from White House travel office and replaced with friends of the Clintons. Ray cleared Clintons of wrongdoing but said first lady may have had hand in the dismissals.

 

Filegate: In 1996, White House staffer improperly collected FBI files on executive department employees. Clintons cleared.

 

- Compiled by Glenn Thrush

[southsider2k5]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17696092/

 

War bill includes tempting projects

 

Updated: 12:24 a.m. CT March 20, 2007

House Democratic leaders are offering billions in federal funds for lawmakers' pet projects large and small to secure enough votes this week to pass an Iraq funding bill that would end the war next year.

 

So far, the projects -- which range from the reconstruction of New Orleans levees to the building of peanut storehouses in Georgia -- have had little impact on the tally. For a funding bill that establishes tough new readiness standards for deploying combat forces and sets an Aug. 31, 2008, deadline to bring the troops home, votes do not come cheap.

 

But at least a few Republicans and conservative Democrats who otherwise would vote "no" remain undecided, as they ponder whether they can leave on the table millions of dollars for constituents by opposing the $124 billion war funding bill due for a vote on Thursday.

 

"She hates the games the Democrats are playing," said Guy Short, chief of staff to Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (R-Colo.), a staunch conservative who remains undecided, thanks to billions of dollars in the bill for drought relief and agriculture assistance. "But Representative Musgrave was just down in southeastern Colorado, talking to ranchers and farmers, and they desperately need this assistance."

 

Democratic leaders say the domestic spending in the bill reflects the pent-up demand from lawmakers who last year could not win funding for programs that had bipartisan support such as disaster assistance.

 

But in a formal veto statement last night, the White House denounced what it called "excessive and extraneous non-emergency spending." With unusually caustic and combative language, the statement dismissed provisions of the bill as "unconscionable," and said it "would place freedom and democracy in Iraq at grave risk" and "embolden our enemies."

 

As the opposition heats up, the Democrats have had some successes in their furious search for support. Yesterday, MoveOn.org announced that with 85 percent of its members backing the bill, the liberal activist group will begin working for its passage. That could prove to be a major boost for Democratic leaders struggling to keep in line the most liberal wing of the party, which wants to cut off funds for the war by the end of this year.

 

A few Republicans are at least considering a vote for the bill, including Reps. Wayne T. Gilchrest and Roscoe G. Bartlett of Maryland. Some conservative Democrats who had been expected to vote no on Thursday are wavering.

 

Hurricane recovery, peanut storage

To get them off the fence and on the bill, Democrats have a key weapon at their disposal: cold, hard cash. The bill contains billions for agriculture and drought relief, children's health care and Gulf Coast hurricane recovery.

 

For Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.), there is $25 million for spinach growers hurt by last year's E. coli scare. For three conservative Democrats in Georgia, there is $75 million for peanut storage. For lawmakers from the bone-dry West, there is $500 million for wildfire suppression. An additional $120 million is earmarked for shrimp and Atlantic menhaden fishermen.

 

So far, at least in public pronouncements, the $21 billion in funding beyond President Bush's request has earned Democrats nothing but scorn.

 

For more than a year, Rep. Charles Boustany Jr. ® has tried unsuccessfully to secure federal funds to prevent salt water from intruding on rice fields in his lowland Louisiana district. So it came as a surprise last week when Boustany found $15 million in the House's huge war spending bill for his rice farmers. He hadn't even asked that the bill include it.

 

"It gives me no satisfaction to vote against measures that I have been working for since even before [Hurricane] Katrina, but I cannot in good conscience vote for a bill that does this to our troops," Boustany said yesterday, decrying what he called the "cheap politics" of using disaster aid to win votes on a measure this controversial.

 

House GOP leaders have accused Democratic leaders of flagrant vote-buying.

 

"The war supplemental legislation voted out of the Appropriations Committee last week was an exercise in arrogance that demonstrated the utter contempt the majority has for the American people and their hard-earned tax dollars," fumed Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.). "We are at war with a ruthless global terrorist network, yet the appropriators allocated hundreds of millions in funds to gratuitous pork projects."

 

Even some Democrats say the issue of Iraq has become far too heated to be conducive to vote-buying.

 

"The profile and urgency of this Iraq vote really doesn't lend itself to these kinds of side deals," said Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.), who has pushed drought relief for more than a year.

 

But the success of adding the spending measures will not really be known until the votes are tallied. Rep. Bobby Jindal (R-La.), who is running for his state's governorship, has conspicuously refused to say whether he can vote against $2.9 billion for Gulf Coast hurricane recovery, including $1.3 billion for New Orleans levee repairs.

 

Rep. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), usually a reliable vote for the Republican leadership, is undecided as he ponders how he can vote against drought relief he has worked for months to secure. The same goes for Musgrave, whose district has been devastated by drought.

 

Democrats who may well have turned solidly against the bill are still weighing their options. Last year, Rep. John Barrow (Ga.) circulated a petition trying to get Republican House leaders to schedule a vote on drought relief. This year, Barrow's advocacy has yielded $3.7 billion worth of agricultural disaster assistance in the war spending bill, which he bragged about last week in a statement to constituents. The conservative Democrat, who narrowly escaped defeat in November, is now undecided on the Iraq bill.

 

High-stakes showdown

For the undecided, these days running up to the vote will be difficult. The vote has become a high-stakes showdown between a Democratic leadership that has staked considerable political capital on the bill and a Republican leadership demanding that its members stay united in opposition.

 

But votes against home-state interests will not go unnoticed. When Appropriations Committee member Rodney Alexander (R-La.) voted against the bill in committee last week, Democratic Whip James E. Clyburn (S.C.) shot off a statement to the New Orleans Times-Picayune declaring, "When [Gulf Coast] assistance is on the fast track, Rep. Alexander chose to stand with his party rather than with the people of his region."

 

North Dakota's Republican lieutenant governor, Jack Dalrymple, was in Washington last week, lobbying for agriculture disaster assistance. "What it's about is the impact on the economy of an entire region," he told the Associated Press. "When you come down to the human level, there is no question that there are farmers meeting with their bankers right now, and whether or not they can farm this year is dependent on whether this program is approved."

 

© 2007 The Washington Post Company

 

plus there is this little kicker

 

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB115...ff_main_tff_top

 

Breaking with many Democrats, Ms. Pelosi also spoke out against earmarking billions of dollars for home-state projects, a practice she calls a "monster" that hurts Congress.

 

If she becomes speaker in the next Congress, she says, she would press to severely reduce earmarks. "Personally, myself, I'd get rid of all of them," she says. "None of them is worth the skepticism, the cynicism the public has... and the fiscal irresponsibility of it."

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=206...vc&refer=us

 

Democrats May Add Money for Avocados, Mangoes to Iraq Measure

 

By Brian Faler

 

March 6 (Bloomberg) -- President George W. Bush's first spending fight with the Democratic-controlled Congress may come over the Iraq war -- and avocados and cattle and flood protection.

 

Lawmakers are pushing to add billions of dollars to the administration's war-funding request to meet a host of unrelated demands, including those from California fruit farmers hit by freezing temperatures, ranchers whose livestock were killed in Colorado blizzards and children poised to lose their health insurance.

 

The potential add-ons threaten a battle in the coming weeks with the White House. Bush has never vetoed a spending measure, and Democrats, betting he won't veto one paying for the war, see a way to aid a number of constituencies seeking federal aid.

 

``There are urgent, emergency situations that have to be addressed,'' said Senator Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat.

 

Senator Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican, said the extra spending is ``fiscally irresponsible and it's blatantly unseemly.''

 

``We're supposed to be fighting this war and paying for the troops -- making sure they have what they need,'' he said. ``We're not supposed to be paying for avocado growers.''

 

Democrats voted last month to drop thousands of pet projects, called ``earmarks'' or ``pork,'' from a $463 billion annual spending measure. Gregg said the calls for adding to the Iraq measure, which have come from Republicans and Democrats alike, looked like pork to him.

 

Bush last month requested $103 billion in emergency spending for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and for Hurricane Katrina relief, a proposal that would bring total spending on the war on terror to more than $600 billion. The House Appropriations Committee will take up the measure as early as March 9. Its Senate counterpart is slated to begin its work later this month.

 

Shut Military Bases

 

Some provisions may have already secured a place on the Iraq legislation. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat, said he will add $3.1 billion for the Pentagon to help shut down military bases that Congress voted to close.

 

House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, a Wisconsin Democrat, said he will add $750 million for the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which provides coverage for more than 5 million poor children. The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service said 14 states would have to cut enrollment in the program this year if they don't receive the additional funding.

 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, told the National Farmers Union March 2 that the Iraq spending measure will include an unspecified sum of agricultural aid.

 

That may not be enough to satisfy requests from across the country to help farmers hit by inclement weather.

 

Colorado Cattle

 

Democrat John Salazar and Republican Marilyn Musgrave, both representatives from Colorado, have asked for aid to farmers there who lost thousands of cattle to blizzards in December and January. Conrad, the North Dakota Democrat, is asking for $4 billion for farmers hit by drought. California lawmakers, meanwhile, have requested $1.2 billion for avocado, mango, orange and grapefruit growers whose crops were destroyed by a January freeze.

 

``People are having a hard time making it day to day,'' said Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both California Democrats, in a letter to the Appropriations Committee. ``Those who have been hardest hit this year -- who have seen their entire crop wiped out -- will not have a crop again for two or three years because of the damage to the trees by the sustained low temperatures,'' they wrote.

 

Flood Projects

 

Elsewhere, Senator David Vitter, a Louisiana Republican, said his state needs as much as $3.2 billion more for flood protection projects. Senator Gordon Smith, an Oregon Republican, is planning to ask for as much as $400 million to extend for one year a recently elapsed program that funnels a portion of federal timber sales to counties with national forest land, which isn't subject to taxation.

 

Last year, the administration requested $94.5 billion in emergency funding for the war and Hurricane Katrina relief. By the time the Senate passed the measure, it had grown to $109 billion. The Bush administration threatened to veto the plan, prompting lawmakers to scale the measure back to the president's request.

 

A spokesman for the White House Office of Management and Budget hinted this year's measure might meet a similar fate.

 

``Using the war supplemental as a vehicle for funding non- related, add-in initiatives would only delay the process and in turn delay getting our troops in the field the resources they need,'' said spokesman Sean Kevelighan.

 

To contact the reporter on this story: Brian Faler in Washington at [email protected]

[kapkomet]

Yes, it's different. Not.

[retro1983hat]

Just an FYI, Dennis Miller's talk show will premiere on WIND on Monday Noon - 2pm.

[southsider2k5]

Another pledge bites the dust...

 

Hoyer Won't Rule Out Extending War Vote

 

By: Josephine Hearn

March 22, 2007 06:51 AM EST

 

When Democrats were in the minority, they lambasted Republican tactics on the House floor, reserving particular vitriol for the GOP practice of holding votes open longer than the allotted time in order to round up enough support for victory.

 

Now in the majority and facing their first close vote with the $124 billion wartime spending bill, House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) is leaving open the possibility that Democrats might extend the vote beyond the usual 15 minutes.

 

Asked Wednesday night whether Democrats would keep to the time limit, Hoyer paused, then pointed out that many votes can run a few minutes longer for various reasons. Pressed further by a reporter who pointed out that Democrats themselves had often criticized Republicans on this very point, Hoyer said, "It won't be open three hours. How about that?"

 

"How about 30 minutes?" the reporter asked.

 

"I won't guarantee it," Hoyer replied.

 

On their first day in the majority in January, Democrats amended the House rules to mandate that a vote "shall not be held open for the sole purpose of reversing the outcome of such vote."

 

Under earlier GOP rule, Democrats routinely attacked Republicans for extending the voting time, often citing the 2003 vote on the Medicare prescription drug bill that was famously held open three hours. And Hoyer himself was one of their foremost critics.

 

In a July 8, 2004, news release, Hoyer railed against GOP leaders for extending a 15-minute vote to 38 minutes in order to defeat a spending amendment offered by former Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

 

"House Republican leaders proved once again today that they will stop at virtually nothing to win a vote, even if that means running roughshod over the most basic principles of democracy such as letting members vote their conscience and calling the vote after the allotted time has elapsed," Hoyer said.

 

"They ought to be ashamed of themselves, but when it comes to holding votes open and twisting the arms of their own members they clearly have no shame,’’ he went on. “These back-alley tactics have no place in the greatest deliberative body in the world. They might be the lifeblood of the tin-horn dictator, but not a world leader. It's an embarrassment.”

[southsider2k5]

So they have found the maker of the Apple/Hillary ad, and it is a Democratic operative with links to Obama.

 

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070322/D8O16DSG0.html

 

Mystery Creator of Anti-Clinton Ad ID'd

 

 

Email this Story

 

Mar 22, 7:21 AM (ET)

 

By JIM KUHNHENN

 

(AP) Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee member, and Democratic Presidential hopeful,...

Full Image

 

 

 

Google sponsored links

Military Ringtone - Send this complimentary ringtone to your phone right now!

RingRingMobile.com

 

Bring home Troops T-Shirt - it's time to return our soldiers. Our print designs are different.

www.troopstshirts.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Internet video sensation that targeted Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton now has rival Sen. Barack Obama on the spot.

 

Heralded by many as the embodiment of Web-driven citizen activism, the mysterious YouTube ad now stands revealed as the work of a Democratic operative employed by a consulting firm with Obama links.

 

"It's true ... yeah, it's me," said Philip de Vellis, a 33-year-old strategist with Blue State Digital, a Washington company that advises Democratic candidates and liberal groups.

 

Blue State designed Obama's Web site, and one of the firm's founding members, Joe Rospars, took a leave from the company to work as Obama's director of new media.

 

Obama, Blue State and de Vellis all say de Vellis acted on his own. De Vellis left the company on Wednesday. He said he resigned; Thomas Gensemer, the firm's managing director, said he was fired.

 

The entire episode hangs a cloud over the Obama camp.

 

Since he arrived on the national political scene, Obama has won convert after convert with a vow to rise above the bare-knuckle fray of politics.

 

However tenuous, any link to the ad, with its Orwellian image of Clinton as Big Brother, raises questions the Obama camp would rather not face.

 

In a statement, the Obama campaign said it "had no knowledge and had nothing to do with the creation of the ad."

 

"Blue State Digital has separated ties with this individual and we have been assured he did no work on our campaign's account," it added.

 

De Vellis, in a blog he wrote after he had been identified by Huffingtonpost.com, appeared to acknowledge the trouble he had brewed. "I support Senator Obama," he wrote. "I hope he wins the primary. (I recognize that this ad is not his style of politics)."

 

It's not as if Obama's campaign is not willing to mix it up.

 

Last month, Obama adviser Robert Gibbs referred to the infamous Lincoln Bedroom sleepovers of the Clinton era after the Clinton team demanded that Obama apologize for anti-Clinton remarks by Hollywood producer and Obama backer David Geffen.

 

And this week, Obama consultant David Axelrod publicly challenged Clinton strategist Mark Penn over his characterization of Obama's stance on the war in Iraq.

 

The unmasking of de Vellis also cracks the enticing image of the Internet as a freewheeling arena where average citizens engage in vigorous, often provocative, discourse.

 

De Vellis said he acted like any techno-savvy, politically attuned Web surfer. He said he worked on a Sunday in his apartment, using his Mac computer and video editing software to alter an updated version of a classic Apple ad that aired during the Super Bowl in 1984.

 

But the fact remains that de Vellis was a political professional. He had worked for Democratic Rep. Sherrod Brown in his successful campaign for U.S. Senate in Ohio. And he was working for a firm with political clients, including Obama.

 

"Obviously some people are going to look at this and see that I'm working in politics and they'll think that it's kind of disingenuous or not genuine," de Vellis said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I still think that ordinary citizens can change politics. It could have been anyone else who could have made this ad."

 

The ad portrayed Clinton on a huge television screen addressing an audience that sat in a trancelike state. A female athlete, running ahead of storm troopers, sprints into the auditorium and tosses a hammer at the screen, destroying Clinton's image. "On January 14th the Democratic primary will begin," the text states. "And you will see why 2008 isn't going to be like '1984.'" It signs off with "BarackObama.com"

 

In the interview, and later in a blog written for the Huffington Post, de Vellis expressed pride in his creation, while acknowledging that his employers are "disappointed and angry at me, and deservedly so."

 

"It changes the trajectory of my career," he said.

[southsider2k5]

On the record...

 

I came accross an interesting article while surfing today. For all of the yelling between Hillary and Barack, they have cast a differening vote on Iraq exactly 1 time, out of 69 votes.

 

http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/el...a_votes_on_iraq

[BigSqwert]

MSNBC.com Breaking News headline:

 

Pentagon notifies National Guard in 4 states about possible Iraq deployment.

[EvilMonkey]

You know, if Bush and Rove were truely evil, they would both resign and leave us with a Pelosi presidency for the last leg of this journey. The Dems would be damned if they do and damned if they don't. Either they pass all their crap, and the electorate sees them for what they are and they lose in 08, or they do nothing, and get hammered as the do-nothing party when they were literally handed the opportunity to 'bring the troops home' on a silver platter.

[Controlled Chaos]

Becoming Illegal (From a Maryland resident to his senator)

 

The Honorable Paul S. Sarbanes

Senate Office Building

309 Hart

Washington DC, 20510

 

Dear Senator Sarbanes,

 

As a native Marylander and excellent customer of the Internal Revenue

Service, I am writing to ask for your assistance. I have contacted the

Department of Homeland Security in an effort to determine the process for

becoming an illegal alien and they referred me to you.

 

My primary reason for wishing to change my status from U.S. Citizen to

illegal alien stem from the bill which was recently passed by the Senate and

 

for which you voted. If my understanding of this bill's provisions is

accurate, as an illegal alien who has been in the United States for five

years, all I need to do to become a citizen is to pay a $2,000 fine and

income taxes for three of the last five years. I know a good deal when I see

 

one and I am anxious to get the process started before everyone figures it

out.

 

Simply put, those of us who have been here legally have had to pay taxes

every year so I'm excited about the prospect of avoiding two years of taxes

in return for paying a $2,000 fine. Is there any way that I can apply to be

illegal retroactively? This would yield an excellent result for me and my

family because we paid heavy taxes in 2004 and 2005.

 

Additionally, as an illegal alien I could begin using the local emergency

room as my primary health care provider. Once I have stopped paying premiums

 

for medical insurance, my accountant figures I could save almost $10,000 a

year.

 

Another benefit in gaining illegal status would be that my daughter would

receive preferential treatment relative to her law school applications, as

well as "in-state" tuition rates for many colleges throughout the United

States for my son.

 

Lastly, I understand that illegal status would relieve me of the burden of

renewing my driver's license and making those burdensome car insurance

premiums. This is very important to me given that I still have college age

children driving my car.

 

If you would provide me with an outline of the process to become illegal

(retroactively if possible) and copies of the necessary forms, I would be

most appreciative. Thank you for your assistance.

 

Your Loyal Constituent,

 

Pete McGlaughlin

 

Please pass this onto your friends so they can save on this great offer!

[mr_genius]

Uh oh, wait until PETA hears about this.

 

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/340688,...y041307.article

[EvilMonkey]

I didn't want to start a whoel new thread about this, because I have no desire to have the hoard coming down on me about the religion of peace, but just to show how wacko the fringe elements of it are, here is this little tidbit from Iraq"

American commanders cite al-Qaida's severe brand of Islam, which is so extreme that in Baqouba, al-Qaida has warned street vendors not to place tomatoes beside cucumbers because the vegetables are different genders, Col. David Sutherland said.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nati...raqsplit21.html

Those that still think like this deserve to be bombed back into the stone ages. Or maybe they just need to get laid.

[CrimsonWeltall]

American commanders cite al-Qaida's severe brand of Islam, which is so extreme that in Baqouba, al-Qaida has warned street vendors not to place tomatoes beside cucumbers because the vegetables are different genders, Col. David Sutherland said.

 

They're going to be really mad when they realize some of the cucumbers are gay.

[southsider2k5]

http://www.corruptionchronicles.com/2007/0...o_slumlord.html

 

Obama And His Chicago Slumlord Cash

Barack Obama has dedicated much of his work as a legislator and attorney to help the poor but that hasn’t stopped the Democratic presidential candidate from taking hefty campaign contributions from a slumlord in his Chicago district whose tenants lived in deplorable conditions.

 

The slumlord--also a close friend of the Illinois senator—is a shady political fundraiser named Antoin Rezko who has been indicted on fraud and corruption charges for taking huge kickbacks on government deals. He owned dozens of low-income housing structures beset by code violations and 11 of them were in Obama’s state senate district. Buildings were crumbling and some didn’t even have heat, a necessity to endure brutal Chicago winters.

 

Rezko, who got millions of taxpayer dollars to rehab some of the buildings, claimed he didn’t have the money to repay the loans or turn the heat on in the apartments. He did, however, find money to contribute heavily to Obama who at the time was a state senator.

 

The relationship strengthened over the years and a two-part newspaper series details just how close the Illinois lawmaker is with the corrupt slumlord who kept his tenants—many of them the African Americans Obama claims to advocate for--shivering for more than a month during a nasty Chicago winter in the late 1990s.

 

The first part of the series tells how, as an attorney at a small Chicago law firm, Obama actually helped his corrupt friend get more than $43 million in government funding to rehabilitate more than a dozen of those apartment buildings for the poor. Then, as a state legislator, Obama let Rezko get away with abusing the very poor people he strives to help.

 

No wonder Rezko has been a huge political contributor to Obama’s campaigns over the years. Before his 2004 U.S. Senate run, Obama appointed Rezko to serve on his campaign finance committee, which raised more than $14 million.

 

Posted by at April 23, 2007 04:39 PM

[southsider2k5]

Finally.

 

I know that this has been a goal of the Democrats from before day one, and all of the way back to probably the day the Repubs indicted Clinton. It pretty much has no chance of going anywhere, as most of the Dems are more worried about the polls and their special interests to step up to the whispers and rhetoric that has been going on for 6+ years now. Its really too bad that is takes a guy who is nobody to stand up and step to the forefront while everyone else cowers, until their polls indicate otherwise.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20070425...nation/15189758

 

Kucinich: Impeachment is the Right Response The Nation

Wed Apr 25, 12:05 AM ET

 

The Nation -- Congressman Dennis Kucinich has now filed his three articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney, and the Ohio Democrat is clearly serious about the holding the vice president to account for manipulating intelligence to fabricate a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, manipulating intelligence to fabricate a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and openly threatened aggression against Iran absent any real threat to the the United States.

 

Kucinich's House website contains the text of the resolution, H.R. 333, along with pages of documentation supporting the articles, a summary of impeachment procedures, and a copy of the congressman's letter to the vice president.

 

On Tuesday afternoon, Kucinich explained his initiative at a Capitol Hill press conference that he began by delivering the following statement:

 

We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that, among these, are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the government; and, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.

 

These words from the Declaration of Independence are instructive at this moment. Because not only whenever any form of government, but whenever any government official becomes destructive of the founding purposes, that official or those officials must be held accountable.

 

Because I believe the vice president's conduct of office has been destructive to the founding purposes of our nation. Today, I have introduced House Resolution 333, Articles of Impeachment Relating to Vice President Richard B. Cheney. I do so in defense of the rights of the American people to have a government that is honest and peaceful.

 

It became obvious to me that this vice president, who was a driving force for taking the United States into a war against Iraq under false pretenses, is once again rattling the sabers of war against Iran with the same intent to drive America into another war, again based on false pretenses.

 

Let me cite from the articles of impeachment that were introduced this afternoon, Article I, that Richard Cheney had purposely manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and the Congress of the United States by fabricating a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the use of the United States armed forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security.

 

That despite all evidence to the contrary, the vice president actively and systematically sought to deceive the citizens and the Congress of the United States about an alleged threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

 

That preceding the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the vice president was fully informed that no legitimate evidence existed of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The vice president pressured the intelligence community to change their findings to enable the deception of the citizens and the Congress of the United States.

 

That in this the vice president subverted the national security interests of the United States by setting the stage for the loss of more than 3,300 United States service members and the loss of 650,000 Iraqi citizens since the United States invasion; the loss of approximately $500 billion in war costs, which has increased our federal debt; the loss of military readiness within the United States armed services, through an overextension and lack of training and lack of equipment; and the loss of United States credibility in the world affairs and decades of likely blowback created by the invasion of Iraq.

 

That with respect to Article II, that Richard Cheney manipulated the intelligence process to deceive the citizens and the Congress of the United States about an alleged relationship between Iraq and Al Qaida in order to justify the use of United States armed forces against the nation of Iraq in a manner damaging to our national security.

 

And that, despite all evidence to the contrary, the vice president actively and systematically sought to deceive the citizens and Congress of the United States about an alleged relationship between Iraq and Al Qaida.

 

That preceding to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, the vice president was fully informed that no credible evidence existed of a working relationship between Iraq and Al Qaida, a fact articulated in several official documents.

 

With respect to Article III, that in his conduct while vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney openly threatened aggression against the Republic of Iran, absent any real threat to the United States, and has done so with the United States's proven capability to carry out such threats, thus undermining the national security interests of the United States.

 

That despite no evidence that Iran has the intention or the capability of attacking the United States, and despite the turmoil created by the United States's invasion of Iraq, the vice president has openly threatened aggression against Iran.

 

Furthermore, I point out in the articles that Article VI of the United States Constitution states, and I quote, "This Constitution and the laws of the United States shall be made in pursuance thereof and all treaties made or which shall be made under the authority of the United States shall be the supreme law of the land. Any provision of an international treaty ratified by the United States becomes the law of the United States."

 

The United States is signatory to the U.N. Charter, a treaty among the nations of the world. Article II, Section 4 of the United Nations Charter states, and I quote, "All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations."

 

The articles conclude by pointing out that the vice president's deception upon the citizens and the Congress of the United States that enabled the failed United States invasion of Iraq forcibly altered the rules of diplomacy so that the vice president recent belligerent actions toward Iran are destabilizing and counterproductive to the national security of the United States of America.

 

These articles of impeachment are not brought forth lightly. I've carefully weighed the options available to members of Congress and found this path the path that is the most important to take.

 

The justifications used to lead our nation to war have unquestionably been disproved. Brave soldiers and innocent civilians have lost their lives in a war the United States should never have initiated. The weight of the lies used to lead us into war has grown heavier with each death. Now is the time for Congress to examine the actions that led us into this war, just as we must work to bring the troops home. This resolution is a very serious matter, and I will urge the Committee on Judiciary to investigate and carefully consider this resolution.

 

 

John Nichols, the best-selling biographer of Vice President Dick Cheney, is the author of a new book: THE GENIUS OF IMPEACHMENT: The Founders' Cure for Royalism. Rolling Stone's Tim Dickinson hails it as a "nervy, acerbic, passionately argued history-cum-polemic [that] combines a rich examination of the parliamentary roots and past use of the 'heroic medicine' that is impeachment with a call for Democratic leaders to 'reclaim and reuse the most vital tool handed to us by the founders for the defense of our most basic liberties.'"

[Cknolls]

Dick Durbin accused himself of political cowardice yesterday during the Senate debate on the surrender/pork bill. The Washington Times reports:

 

The Senate's No. 2 Democrat says he knew that the American public was being misled into the Iraq war but remained silent because he was sworn to secrecy as a member of the intelligence committee.

"The information we had in the intelligence committee was not the same information being given to the American people. I couldn't believe it," Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin, Illinois Democrat, said Wednesday when talking on the Senate floor about the run-up to the Iraq war in 2002.

 

"I was angry about it. [but] frankly, I couldn't do much about it because, in the intelligence committee, we are sworn to secrecy."

 

 

It's unclear what released Durbin from his supposed vow of secrecy four years after the fact, but his charge is ludicrous on its face. It gets tiresome having to point out the same facts over and over, but we know what the CIA and the other intelligence agencies told both the White House and Congress prior to the Iraq war. The consensus view of the agencies was reported in their National Intelligence Estimate in the fall of 2002. The consensus of the intelligence agencies was that, with a "high level of confidence," Iraq possessed both chemical and biological weapons and was "expanding its chemical, biological, nuclear and missile programs contrary to UN resolutions." As to nuclear weapons specifically, the agencies concluded, with a "moderate level of confidence," that "Iraq does not yet have a nuclear weapon or sufficient material to make one but is likely to have a weapon by 2007 to 2009." and with a "high level of confidence" that "Iraq could make a nuclear weapon in months to a year once it acquires sufficient weapons grade fissile material."

 

The only instance Durbin cited of supposedly wrong intelligence was the issue of Iraq's purchases of aluminum tubes, which he says was debated within the intelligence community. But, given the agencies' conclusions about Iraq's nuclear ambitions (not to mention its actual possession of both chemical and biological weapons) that issue was a footnote at best.

 

Durbin accuses himself of cowardice, but it's hard to know what he would say about the other Democratic members of the Senate Intelligence Committee: as the Times notes, five of the nine Democrats on the committee voted for the war, and at least two of them, Levin and Rockefeller, specifically said before the war that Saddam was pursuing nuclear weapons. Apparently they didn't get access to the double-secret information Durbin now talks about, four years after the fact.

 

So glad this s***bag represents me in the Senate. Can only hope Edgar runs agianst him.

[southsider2k5]

Hmmm how does "Duke" Finestein sound?

 

http://thehill.com/david-keene/feinsteins-...2007-04-30.html

 

David Keene

 

Feinstein’s Cardinal shenanigans

By David Keene

April 30, 2007

Anyone who knows much about real power in Congress knows that almost every member of the House and Senate lusts after a seat on the Appropriations Committee and hopes one day to achieve the status of Cardinal. The Cardinals, of course, are the folks who chair the various Appropriations Committee subcommittees and literally control the billions of dollars that pass through their hands.

 

California Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D) chairs the Senate Rules Committee, but she’s also a Cardinal. She is currently chairwoman of the Interior, Environment and Related Agencies subcommittee, but until last year was for six years the top Democrat on the Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies (or “Milcon”) sub-committee, where she may have directed more than $1 billion to companies controlled by her husband.

 

If the inferences finally coming out about what she did while on Milcon prove true, she may be on the way to morphing from a respected senior Democrat into another poster child for congressional corruption.

 

The problems stem from her subcommittee activities from 2001 to late 2005, when she quit. During that period the public record suggests she knowingly took part in decisions that eventually put millions of dollars into her husband’s pocket — the classic conflict of interest that exploited her position and power to channel money to her husband’s companies.

 

In other words, it appears Sen. Feinstein was up to her ears in the same sort of shenanigans that landed California Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham ® in the slammer. Indeed, it may be that the primary difference between the two is basically that Cunningham was a minor leaguer and a lot dumber than his state’s senior senator.

 

Melanie Sloan, the executive director of Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington, or CREW, usually focuses on the ethical lapses of Republicans and conservatives, but even she is appalled at the way Sen. Feinstein has abused her position. Sloan told a California reporter earlier this month that while”there are a number of members of Congress with conflicts of interest … because of the amount of money involved, Feinstein’s conflict of interest is an order of magnitude greater than those conflicts.”

 

And the director of the Project on Government Oversight who examined the evidence of wrongdoing assembled by California writer Peter Byrne told him that “the paper trail showing Senator Feinstein’s conflict of interest is irrefutable.”

 

It may be irrefutable, but she almost got away without anyone even knowing what she was up to. Her colleagues on the subcommittee, for example, had no reason even to suspect that she knew what companies might benefit from her decisions because that information is routinely withheld to avoid favoritism. What they didn’t know was that her chief legal adviser, who also happened to be a business partner of her husband’s and the vice chairman of one of the companies involved, was secretly forwarding her lists of projects and appropriation requests that were coming before the committee and in which she and her husband had an interest — information that has only come to light recently as a result of the efforts of several California investigative reporters.

 

This adviser insists — apparently with a straight face — that he provided the information to Feinstein’s chief of staff so that she could recuse herself in cases where there might be a conflict. He says that he assumes she did so. The public record, however, indicates that she went right ahead and fought for these same projects.

 

During this period the two companies, URS of San Francisco and the Perini Corporation of Framingham, Mass., were controlled by Feinstein’s husband, Richard C. Blum, and were awarded a combined total of over $1.5 billion in government business thanks in large measure to her subcommittee. That’s a lot of money even here in Washington.

 

Interestingly, she left the subcommittee in late 2005 at about the same time her husband sold his stake in both companies. Their combined net worth increased that year with the sale of the two companies by some 25 percent, to more than $40 million.

 

In spite of the blatant appearance of corruption, no major publication has picked up on the story, the Senate Ethics Committee has reportedly let her slip by, and she is now chairing the Senate Rules Committee, which puts her in charge of making sure her colleagues act ethically and avoid the sorts of conflicts of interest with which she is personally and so obviously familiar.

[Controlled Chaos]

A Lesson in Open-Borders Math

By Michelle Malkin

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

 

The New York Times is always ready and willing to serve as lead public relations staffers for the open-borders movement. On May Day, the day of mass illegal alien protests across the country, the paper saw fit to print a front-page sob story decrying rising illegal alien deportations.

 

"Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, facing intense political pressure to toughen enforcement [read: do their jobs], removed 221,664 illegal immigrants from the country over the last year," the Times reported ominously. That's "an increase of more than 37,000 -- about 20 percent -- over the year before, according to the agency's tally."

 

221,664. Big number. It certainly sounds like we're getting serious about immigration enforcement, if you believe what the Times tells you.

 

But you know better than that. It's what the paper didn't tell you on the day of the pro-amnesty demonstrations that provides the truly alarming news. Far from a nation that takes its immigration laws seriously, we remain in a shoddy, dangerous state of immigration non-enforcement nearly six years after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- chaos that will only worsen if Congress and the White House join hands on a "comprehensive" illegal alien amnesty plan.

 

In March, the Homeland Security Department's inspector general disclosed that the feds have lost track of 623,292 fugitive illegal aliens. These "absconders" were apprehended by immigration officers, placed in the immigration court system, ordered out of the country and released. Never to be seen again.

 

221,664 "removed" illegal aliens vs. 623,292 released illegal alien fugitives.

 

In other words: There are nearly three times as many officially designated illegal alien fugitives freed by the feds as there are illegal aliens who have been removed over the last year.

 

This inconvenient truth was glossed over by the Times.

 

So was this: Despite more than $204 million earmarked since 2003 for 52 special fugitive operations teams across the country, the "backlog of fugitive alien cases has increased each fiscal year since the [fugitive apprehension] program was established in February 2002."

 

While pro-amnesty marchers stressed this week that they are "law-abiding" (except for those pesky immigration rules), more and more of the illegal aliens caught by immigration authorities and ordered to appear for deportation hearings are skipping out. The DHS inspector general's office explains that thousands of illegal aliens ignore orders to appear at their immigration hearings. Of the 460,000-plus immigration judge decisions and administrative closures issued by the Executive Office of Immigration and Review (EOIR) between 2001-2004, 39 percent (181,807) were issued to illegal aliens who had been released but later failed to appear at their respective immigration hearings.

 

And the total number of aliens failing to appear is increasing. In fact, according to DHS's Detention and Removal Office, 85 percent of the illegal aliens released that have been issued final orders of removal will abscond. That goes not just for illegal aliens from Mexico, but for illegal aliens from terror-friendly and terror-sponsoring nations. Homeland security? What homeland security?

 

Compounding the danger: The federal Detention and Removal Office estimates that in 2007, "there will be 605,000 foreign-born individuals admitted to state correctional facilities and local jails during the year for committing crimes in the U.S. Of this number, DRO estimates half (302,500) will be removable aliens. Currently, most of these incarcerated aliens are being released into the U.S. at the conclusion of their respective sentences due to the lack of DRO resources." That's upwards of 300,000 convicted criminal aliens who will walk out of their cells and onto the streets. Never to be seen again.

 

Just doing the context-setting and number-crunching the rest of the mainstream media won't do. Now, back to your regularly scheduled, emotion-driven, one-sided coverage of America the Oppressor. Over to you, New York Times.

 

 

 

10 Differences between Conservatives And Liberals

By John Hawkins

Friday, April 27, 2007

 

Conservatives and liberals approach almost every issue with completely different philosophies, underlying assumptions, and methods. That's why it's so hard to find genuine compromise between conservatism and liberalism -- because not only are liberals almost always wrong, their solutions almost always make things worse.

 

With that in mind, let me take a few moments to explain some of the key differences between liberals and conservative to you.

 

Bonus) Conservatives believe that judges should act like umpires instead of legislating from the bench. That means that judges should determine whether laws are permissible under the Constitution and settle debates about the meaning of laws, not impose their will based on their ideological leanings. Liberals view judges as a backdoor method of getting unpopular left-leaning legislation passed. They don't want umpires, they want political partisans in black robes who will side with them first and then come up with a rationale to explain it.

 

10) Conservatives believe that individual Americans have a right to defend themselves and their families with guns and that right cannot be taken away by any method short of a Constitutional Amendment, which conservatives would oppose. Liberals believe by taking arms away from law abiding citizens, they can prevent criminals, who aren't going to abide by gun control laws, from using guns in the commission of crimes.

 

9) Conservatives believe that we should live in a color blind society where every individual is judged on the content of his character and the merits of his actions. On the other hand, liberals believe that it's ok to discriminate based on race as long as it primarily benefits minority groups.

 

8) Conservatives are capitalists and believe that entrepreneurs who amass great wealth through their own efforts are good for the country and shouldn't be punished for being successful. Liberals are socialists who view successful business owners as people who cheated the system somehow or got lucky. That's why they don't respect high achievers and see them as little more than piggy banks for their programs.

 

7) Conservatives believe that abortion ends the life of an innocent child and since we believe that infanticide is wrong, we oppose abortion. Most liberals, despite what they'll tell you, believe that abortion ends the life of an innocent child, but they prefer killing the baby to inconveniencing the mother.

 

6) Conservatives believe in confronting and defeating enemies of the United States before they can harm American citizens. Liberals believe in using law enforcement measures to deal with terrorism, which means that they feel we should allow terrorists to train, plan, and actually attempt to kill Americans before we try to arrest them -- as if you can just send the police around to pick up a terrorist mastermind hiding in Iran or the wilds of Pakistan.

 

5) Conservatives, but not necessarily Republicans (which is unfortunate), believe it's vitally important to the future of the country to reduce the size of government, keep taxes low, balance the budget, and get this country out of debt. Liberals, and Democrats for that matter, believe in big government, high taxes, and they have never met a new spending program they didn't like, whether we will have to go into debt to pay for it or not.

 

4) Conservatives believe that government, by its very nature, tends to be inefficient, incompetent, wasteful, and power hungry. That's why we believe that the government that governs least, governs best. Liberals think that the solution to every problem is another government program. Even when those new programs create new problems, often worse than the ones that were being fixed in the first place, the solution is always....you guessed it, another government program.

 

3) Conservatives are patriotic, believe that America is a great nation, and are primarily interested in looking out for the good of the country. That's why we believe in "American exceptionalism" and "America first." Liberals are internationalists who are more concerned about what Europeans think of us and staying in the good graces of the corrupt bureaucrats who control the UN than looking out for the best interests of this nation.

 

2) Conservatives, most of them anyway, believe in God and think that the Constitution has been twisted by liberal judges to illegitimately try to purge Christianity from the public square. We also believe, most of us anyway, that this country has been successful in large part because it is a good, Christian nation and if our country ever turns away from the Lord, it will cease to prosper. Liberals, most of them anyway, are hostile to Christianity. That's why, whether you're talking about a school play at Christmas time, a judge putting the Ten Commandments on the wall of his court, or a store employee saying "Merry Christmas" instead of "Happy Holidays," liberals are dedicated to driving reminders of Christianity from polite society.

 

1) Conservatives believe in pursuing policies because they're pragmatic and because they work. Liberals believe in pursuing policies because they're "nice" and make them feel good. Whether the policies they're advocating actually work or not is of secondary importance to them.

[southsider2k5]

John Edwards isn't just looking to repeal the Bush tax cuts, he is looking to possibly raise them further.

 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20...24141-8365r.htm

 

SAN DIEGO -- Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards said yesterday raising taxes for higher-income families back to their levels under the Clinton administration is a floor, not a ceiling, and he would consider even higher tax increases.

"What I believe is the starting place is to go back to the Clinton levels," Mr. Edwards told reporters after addressing the 2,000 delegates to California's state Democratic Party convention.

[Texsox]

+4

[southsider2k5]

Holy s***! So much for the myth of "law abiding" I had no idea the #s were this high.

 

Compounding the danger: The federal Detention and Removal Office estimates that in 2007, "there will be 605,000 foreign-born individuals admitted to state correctional facilities and local jails during the year for committing crimes in the U.S. Of this number, DRO estimates half (302,500) will be removable aliens. Currently, most of these incarcerated aliens are being released into the U.S. at the conclusion of their respective sentences due to the lack of DRO resources." That's upwards of 300,000 convicted criminal aliens who will walk out of their cells and onto the streets. Never to be seen again.