April 23, 2006

News (Page 2) -- April 23, 2006

Bush Impeachment - The Illinois State Legislature is Preparing to Drop a Bombshell - "The Illinois General Assembly is about to rock the nation. Members of state legislatures are normally not considered as having the ability to decide issues with a massive impact to the nation as a whole. Representative Karen A. Yarbrough of Illinois' 7th District is about to shatter that perception forever. Representative Yarbrough stumbled on a little known and never utlitized rule of the US House of Representatives, Section 603 of Jefferson's Manual of the Rules of the United States House of Representatives, which allows federal impeachment proceedings to be initiated by joint resolution of a state legislature. From there, Illinois House Joint Resolution 125 (hereafter to be referred to as HJR0125) was born. Detailing five specific charges against President Bush including one that is specified to be a felony, the complete text of HJR0125 is copied below at the end of this article."

Return of America First? - "Friday's lead story in America's largest newspaper must have made for sober reading at AEI and the Council on Foreign Relations, the twin dorms that house the Wilsonian wings of our national parties. Americans, it appears, have had a bellyful of interventionism and globaloney."

Attack Iran, Ignore the Constitution - "During the 2004 election, George W. Bush famously proclaimed that he didn't have to ask anyone's permission to defend America. Does that mean he can attack Iran without having to ask Congress? A new Congressional resolution being drafted by Representative Peter DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon, can be a vehicle to remind Bush that he can't."

Deadly serious war games - "It is not exactly a closely guarded military secret when the announcement appears as a dispatch in USA Today, a national newspaper that appears on every street corner, indeed, virtually every hotel in the land. The message this week: the National Strategic Gaming Center of the National Defense University (NDU) will conduct a "war gaming" exercise on July 18 involving Iran's nuclear program."

Worldwide Terror Attacks Exceed 10,000 - "Yet the numbers are a striking reminder that violence around the globe has dramatically increased in the more than four years of the war on terror." -- In other words, the War on Terror is not preventing terror attacks. Shocker.

Flight 93 cockpit recording is a hoax - "I will stick my neck out and declare it a hoax: Jurors in the al-Moussaoui trial were shown alleged cockpit voice recordings of the final stages of the hijacking of United Airlines flight 93. It was played to the court accompanied by a video showing gruesome pictures of charred bodies, so it was intended to stir emotions rather than to provide hard evidence. The defence team's objections to the type of evidence were over-ruled. It took the authorities a long time to come up with evidence from the flight recorders which they had earlier stated were not recoverable. It seems to me they still did a rather sloppy job when replacing the real recordings with this dramatic production. Here is why:"

Virginia Judge allows defense in AIPAC trial to summon Rice - "U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis on Friday allowed the defense to summon Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to testify in the trial of two former AIPAC officials accused of disclosing classified information."

Is U.S. being transformed into a radical republic? - "As Alexis de Tocqueville once said: "America is great because she is good. If America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." In January 2001, with the inauguration of George W. Bush as president, America set on a path to cease being good; America became a revolutionary nation, a radical republic. If our country continues on this path, it will cease to be great - as happened to all great powers before it, without exception."

Probation for owner of grisly porn site - "Wilson's website gave soldiers free access to pornography in exchange for posting pictures from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars." -- Hmmm.

Stolen Away - "Safah is part of a seldom-discussed aspect of the epidemic of kidnappings in Iraq: sex trafficking. No one knows how many young women have been kidnapped and sold since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. The Organization for Women's Freedom in Iraq, based in Baghdad, estimates from anecdotal evidence that more than 2,000 Iraqi women have gone missing in that period. A Western official in Baghdad who monitors the status of women in Iraq thinks that figure may be inflated but admits that sex trafficking, virtually nonexistent under Saddam, has become a serious issue. The collapse of law and order and the absence of a stable government have allowed criminal gangs, alongside terrorists, to run amuck. Meanwhile, some aid workers say, bureaucrats in the ministries have either paralyzed with red tape or frozen the assets of charities that might have provided refuge for these girls. As a result, sex trafficking has been allowed to fester unchecked."

Donald Rumsfeld Makes $5 Million Killing on Bird Flu Drug - "Donald Rumsfeld has made a killing out of bird flu. The US Defence Secretary has made more than $5m (£2.9m) in capital gains from selling shares in the biotechnology firm that discovered and developed Tamiflu, the drug being bought in massive amounts by Governments to treat a possible human pandemic of the disease."

What's To Worry? - "The way the US government measures unemployment is ludicrous. Instead of counting the number of people actually out of work, it counts the number of people filing for unemployment benefits. Which would be accurate, if benefits lasted until one found a position. So once your benefits run out, you are not counted as unemployed by the governmnet, regardles of whether or not you were successful in gaining employment. So when the government lists unemployment at 4.7%, is it really an accurate representation of unemployed? ... Well, the reality is, that the economy is only doing well for the top 20% of Americans. The average executive compensation to worker compensation ratio has gone from 107 to 1 in 1990, to 431 to 1 in 2003. The top 10% of Americans hold 37% of the income. And they just got a tax cut that Bush wants to make permanent to boot.The average American worker however, is seeing none of this "booming" economy. Their healthcare costs are going up, as well as the price of gas, which will eventually drive up the price of everything else. But as long as the haves and have mores aren't hurting, don't expect the Republicans to do anything about it."

Why a strong economy is no GOP asset - "Of all the problems Republicans face heading into the fall political season, one of the most exasperating is the economy."

Hillary Clinton vs. Al Gore - "There simply is no one as powerful as Al Gore to run as the Democratic candidate in 2008. He has all the experience of serving as a United States Senator, of serving as the Vice President, and of already having run once for the Presidency and, thereby, learning from his mistakes. Although he should not personally exploit it, the increasing view that he had the Presidency taken away from him by a biased Supreme Court in what is now widely believed to be a questionable Presidential election in 2000, would also work in his favor. Many Americans could easily look back on the last eight years and imagine much better things for America than George Bush has given us."

Pigs Lining Up To Suckle At The Public Teat:Repiglickin's - "The question often arises, are our public servants seeking election out of a genuine desire to serve the people, or are they merely seeking to serve their own needs and line their pockets? Is it wrong for us to question when say, Dick Cheney's Halliburton and it's subsidiaries get numerous no-bid contracts from the government, or are they just fortunate to be the only companies prepared for the needs of the government? Is it just a coincidence that Halliburton was prepared to meet the many needs of the Bush administration and it's war on "terror", or did they anticipate it?"

Play pushed underground - "Rachel Corrie was born in Washington, killed in the Gaza Strip, praised in London and censored in Manhattan. Now she's being forced to go underground in Toronto. ... But the astonishing thing about this whole affair is that at no point in the play's history has it been the cause of any actual confrontations or demonstrations. It's the fear of what might happen that seems to be motivating people's actions."

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