Browsing all articles from June, 2007

Jun
30

How'd that Dick get on the ticket?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OfwZEuMjVQ]

References:

tompaine.com

June 30, 2007 // General // No Comments //

Jun
27

BushCo's war losing GOP support

NB Voinovich and Lugar are not Christianists….

MCM

GOP support for Iraq war slips

By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press Writer

Republican support for the Iraq war is slipping by the day.

After four years of combat and more than 3,560 U.S. deaths, two Republican senators previously reluctant to challenge President Bush on the war announced they could no longer support the deployment of 157,000 troops and asked the president to begin bringing them home.

“We must not abandon our mission, but we must begin a transition where the Iraqi government and its neighbors play a larger role in stabilizing Iraq,” Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, wrote in a letter to Bush.

Voinovich, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released his letter Tuesday – one day after Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, the panel’s top Republican, said in a floor speech that Bush’s strategy was not working.

God's Supreme Court strikes again, and again, and again, and again….

News Updates from Citizens for Legitimate Government
25 Jun 2007
http://www.legitgov.org/

Supreme Court Limits Students’ Speech Rights 25 Jun 2007 The Supreme Court tightened limits on student speech Monday, ruling against a high school student and his 14-foot-long ”Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner. Schools may prohibit student expression that can be interpreted as advocating drug use, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court in a 5-4 ruling.

Supreme Court bars taxpayers from suing over White House faith-based program 25 Jun 2007 The Supreme Court ruled Monday that ordinary taxpayers cannot challenge a White House initiative that helps religious charities get a share of federal money. The 5-4 decision blocks a lawsuit by a group of atheists and agnostics against eight Bush administration officials including the head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives.

Supreme Court ends ban on corporate-funded campaign ads 25 Jun 2007 The Supreme Court gave President [sic] Bush and Republican leaders two important victories today by clearing the way for corporate-funded broadcast ads before next year’s ‘election’ and by shielding the White House’s “faith-based initiative” from challenge in the courts. Both came in 5-4 rulings led by new Chief inJustice John G. Roberts Jr.*

[SEE PAUL LEHTO'S COMMENTARY BELOW*]

Supreme Court Rules Against Environmentalists 25 Jun 2007 The Supreme Court sided with developers and the Bush administration Monday in a dispute with environmentalists over protecting endangered species. The court ruled 5-4 for home builders and the Environmental Protection Agency in a case that involved the intersection of two environmental laws, the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act.

Please forward this update to anyone you think might be interested. Those who’d like to be added to the Newsletter list can sign up: http://www.legitgov.org/#subscribe_clg.
Please write to: signup@legitgov.org for inquiries.

*FROM PAUL LEHTO:

This morning the US Supreme Court ruled in a case called FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life. 551 U. S. ____ (2007).

The issue was whether “issue advocacy” ads during a political campaign season that do not expressly identify a particular candidate (but which may nevertheless be highly identified with a particular candidate running for office) can be regulated consistent with the First Amendment (as CANDIDATE ads can be). The BCRA had so regulated these types of ads, and the FEC sued an organization called Wisconsin Right to Life over an issue ad in the 2004 election. The issues before the Court is whether the First Amendment protected essentially unlimited issue-based advertising even though during campaign season (unlike candidate ads, which the Court has approved regulation of), and whether the case was moot because the 2004 election was over.

The Court Ruled:

In drawing that line, the First Amendment requires us to err on the side of protecting political speech rather than suppressing it.

We conclude that the speech at issue in this as-applied challenge is not the functional equivalent of express campaign speech. We further conclude that the interests held to justify restricting corporate campaign speech or its functional equivalent do not justify restricting issue advocacy, and accordingly we hold that BCRA Â§203 is unconstitutional as applied to the advertisements at issue in these cases .

Although analysis of this case is breaking as we speak, and many haven’t finished reading the opinion yet, based on the briefing and analysis prior to the case, this holding appears to portend a relatively massive de-regulation of “issue ads” by corporations and interest groups. The more money one has, the more unlimited one’s influence can be on campaign ISSUES so long as they don’t mention campaign CANDIDATES. Money=speech, and that “speech” is now essentially unlimited as to issues.

Because this ruling is based on an interpretation of the requirements of the First Amendment, the US Supreme Court is the “final authority” on such things and there’s little or nothing Congress can do about it, other than find a way around the opinion, if any.

This is a watershed legal ruling on campaign finance that dramatically reinforces functional inequities of speech and opportunity whereby those with money can have basically unlimited EXPENDITURES even in campaigns so long as issue advertising methods are chosen, while those who need to raise money (Candidates) are significantly limited in terms of CONTRIBUTIONS they can accept, and the relatively small caps on those contributions ensure that politicians who are NOT rich must spend massive amounts of time fundraising from many individuals. While we may all agree that broad public support as evidenced by many contributors is a good thing, that policy, in the new context of unlimited issue-based attacks, will also come under heavy pressure to fall even from those who tend to believe in it, in order to free up the funds to defend against unlimited issue-based attacks.

The remainder of this email is a quotation from the case to give background legal context. A full link menu to all of the court’s opinions today is at http://www.clcblog.org/blog_item-140.html

Paul Lehto

Attorney at Law

June 26, 2007 // General // No Comments //

Jun
26

Bush "gets to decide" Cheney's status

And–lo!–he did decide! So this whole thing is a “non-issue.”

MCM

White House Defends Cheney’s Refusal of Oversight
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 23, 2007; Page A02

The White House defended Vice President Cheney yesterday in a dispute over his office’s refusal to comply with an executive order regulating the handling of classified information as Democrats and other critics assailed him for disregarding rules that others follow.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Cheney is not obligated to submit to oversight by an office that safeguards classified information, as other members and parts of the executive branch are. Cheney’s office has contended that it does not have to comply because the vice president serves as president of the Senate, which means that his office is not an “entity within the executive branch.”

“This is a little bit of a nonissue,” Perino said at a briefing dominated by the issue. Cheney is not subject to the executive order, she said, “because the president gets to decide whether or not he should be treated separately, and he’s decided that he should.”

Jeff "Running Dog" Greenfield snaps at Michael Moore's new movie

From Jerry Policoff:

Jeff Greenfield’s piece on “Sicko” on Friday evening’s (June 22, 2007) CBS News is just one more example of how our mainstream media has become a mouthpiece for corporate America. Our television networks rake in enormous ad revenues from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries, and Greenfield’s piece smacks of payback (you can read the entire transcript below).

Greenfield criticizes Moore for not including in his film critics of the European health care systems he praises, and he suggests the film is one-sided and biased and that its assertions “are likely to be widely challenged,” yet he neither cites specifics nor challenges a single assertion made in the film. Nor does he even mention the central theme of the film, namely that the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries have brought our health care system to the brink of ruin, leaving at least 45 million people uninsured and many millions more under-insured. He does not mention that a proposed three-year ban on direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical ads was killed this week in the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Health, thanks, at least in part, to heavy lobbying from the broadcast industry.

Worst of all, Greenfield blandly asserts that “no one — Democrat or Republican — has come close to advocating the kind of government-run national health system Michael Moore proposes.” “Why not?,” he asks, answering his own question by turning to “Health analyst Paul Ginsburg” who says Americans are just different. Says Ginsberg: ” We’re much less willing to have government make decisions for people than is the case in Canada and Europe. It’s a cultural difference.” Ginsberg, president of the Center for Studying Health System Change, suggested otherwise in a November 2004 health care conference when he indicated that the rising cost of health insurance was calling the people to action that could “energize the government to deal with this problem.“

But Greenfield could have turned to much more authoritative sources than Ginsberg, who has no apparent expertise in United States public opinion, to test his opinion that Americans are just “different,” and don’t want the government meddling in health care. Numerous polls have dealt with this question in the past six months, and all of them suggest the opposite including a New York Times poll in March of this year in which 64% of respondents indicated that the “Federal government should guarantee health insurance for all Americans.” Only 27% felt that “Health insurance for all is not the responsibility of the federal government.“

Jeff Greenfield and CBS News have revealed themselves once again as the corporate shills they really are. This piece of so-called “journalism” was a political hit job, pure and simple, totally devoid of objectivity or balance.

Jerry Policoff

CBS’s Greenfield Highlights Michael Moore’s One-sided Presentation of ‘Sicko’

Posted by Brad Wilmouth on June 22, 2007 – 22:45.

On Friday’s CBS Evening News, correspondent Jeff Greenfield, formerly of CNN, pointed out the one-sideness of Michael Moore’s film Sicko during a report that explored whether the film was likely to impact the presidential race. Although Greenfield did not debunk any aspect of the film in his report, he pointed out that the film “does not include critics” of government-run health systems in other countries “championed” by Moore. And, regarding Moore’s claim that typical Cubans receive the kind of quality care presented in the movie, Greenfield cautioned: “That assertion is likely to be sharply challenged.”

Anchor Katie Couric set up the report by relaying a CBS News/New York Times poll finding that 90 percent of Americans support “fundamental change or a complete overhaul” of America’s health care system as she contended that those happy with the system are “in a minority.” Couric: ” If you’re happy with the health care system in this country, well, you’re in the minority.” (Transcript follows)

Greenfield introduced the story relaying that Moore’s new film “assails America’s health care system and champions more or less uncritically a government-run health care system.” After conveying that Moore’s film praises socialized health care in Canada, France, and Britain, Greenfield added: “The film does not include critics of those systems.”

Then the CBS correspondent recounted the story of Moore’s trip to Cuba with 9/11 first responders who were treated to health care they had not been given access in America, and the filmmakers’s dubious claim that the care was the kind typically received by Cubans. Greenfield: “Later, at a Havana hospital, they received health care that Moore claimed was typical for Cubans. That assertion is likely to be sharply challenged.”

Without exploring the merits of private versus government health care, Greenfield concluded by making the case that the film is unlikely to bring about government-run health care in America, citing a health analyst who argued that Americans are “less willing to have government make decisions” than people in other countries.

Below is a complete transcript of the story from the Friday June 22 CBS Evening News:

KATIE COURIC: If you’re happy with the health care system in this country, well, you’re in the minority. In a CBS News/New York Times poll, nine out of ten people told us the system needs fundamental change or a complete overhaul. Filmmaker Michael Moore has his own point-of-view on that in a movie that’s just opened smack in the middle of the presidential campaign. Here’s Jeff Greenfield.

JEFF GREENFIELD: Another movie premier, the red carpet, the paparazzi. But the draw this night isn’t a pirate captain or Spider Man — but this man. Filmmaker Michael M

oore, whose new film Sicko assails America’s health care system and champions more or less uncritically a government-run health care system.

MICHAEL MOORE: We can no longer have a system where private health insurance is calling the shots. We have to remove profit.

GREENFIELD: Sicko features affecting stories of personal suffering at the hands of indifferent corporations, and the film celebrates the government-run systems of Canada, France, and Britain. The film does not include critics of those systems.

Unidentified man: It’s not America.

GREENFIELD: Most controversially, Moore took 9/11 rescue workers, denied health care after taking ill, to Guantanamo Bay to demand the same care given al-Qaeda suspects.

MOORE, standing on a boat: Hello?

GREENFIELD: Later, at a Havana hospital, they received health care that Moore claimed was typical for Cubans. That assertion is likely to be sharply challenged. But beyond the arguments that seem to surround every Michael Moore movie — is it accurate advocacy, is it distorted propaganda? — lies a bigger question. Could it help shape the direction, even the outcome, of the coming presidential campaign? Recent history says there is reason for some skepticism. There are examples of cultural events that helped shape politics. The 1979 movie The China Syndrome intensified anti-nuclear sentiment. By contrast, 1983’s The Right Stuff did nothing to advance the presidential hopes of former astronaut John Glenn. And Moore himself says his 2004 smash Fahrenheit 9/11 didn’t change many minds about President Bush.

MOORE: Probably a lot of people who went to see it already didn’t like what was going on.

GREENFIELD: So far, the candidates for President have all talked a lot about changing the health care system.

RUDOLPH GIULIANI: Then we should have a health savings account.

Governor BILL RICHARDSON (D-NM): No new bureaucracies.

Former Governor TOMMY THOMPSON (R-WI): Make it a wellness system and make it a prevention system.

GREENFIELD: But no one — Democrat or Republican — has come close to advocating the kind of government-run national health system Michael Moore proposes. Why not? Health analyst Paul Ginsburg says Americans are just different.

PAUL GINSBURG, Health analyst: We’re much less willing to have government make decisions for people than is the case in Canada and Europe. It’s a cultural difference.

GREENFIELD: Michael Moore has proven that he can bring much bigger audiences to his movies than the typical documentary. But if history is any guide, Sicko is likely to have a much bigger impact at the box office than at the ballot box. Jeff Greenfield, CBS News, New York.

http://newsbusters.org/node/13681

June 24, 2007 // General // No Comments //

Jun
20

Feinstein's e-voting bill is HORRIBLE!

As you know, I don’t support HR 811. It therefore ought to tell you something that I think the Holt bill–a disaster, in my view–looks great by contrast with Dianne Feinstein’s pending Senate legislation.

With Democrats like these….!

MCM

From John Gideon:

Mark,

This deconstruction of S-1487 is very well done and we are proud to feature it on VotersUnite.Org. Here is just a small part of what Robert Bancroft has to say about Sen. Feinstein’s gift to Corporate America:

http://www.votersunite.org/info/S1487Deconstruction.asp

>>snip<>snip<< — John Gideon Co-Director and Information Manager VotersUnite.Org www.votersunite.org

June 20, 2007 // General // No Comments //

Jun
20

E-voting firms won't guarantee their wares!!

From Paul Lehto:

The slightly updated form of the “white paper” publication on warranties and disclaimers of warranties regarding voting machines is now online at http://electionfraudnews.com/LegDoc/LegDoc/ZeroGuarantee.pdf

This is a significant paper because it proves, I think, that vendors do not stand behind their products at all and are literally not willing to promise they will work for even their most basic functions. So, if the manufacturers themselves don’t really believe in their products and back them up 100%, why should We the People spend millions and billions and bet our Republic on them?

Please post and link this broadly since I think it has a very important legal perspective that everyone can understand. Vendors always propose contracts that are “as is” meaning literally that they DO NOT promise that the e-voting machines will work, even for their basic purposes. In cases where they disclaim all warranties, but still provide a 1 year (typically) partial warranty, these limited warranties are all specially drafted by corporate lawyers and are swiss cheese that avoid the main risks.

This paper constitutes the legal framework for a separate proposed amendment to Holt and Feinstein’s bill that would UPGRADE warranty protections on voting systems, but only modestly so: to the same level of protection that consumers get when purchasing USED cars. The amendment would apply the federal Magnuson Moss Warranty Act to voting systems, and declare that voters are consumers as a matter of law with respect to the voting systems they use while voting, and thus have standing to sue if any contractual express warranty is made.

I believe this is proposed amendment number 19 to the Feinstein bill, on Kathy Dopp’s list of amendments she is circulating.

We can and should, of course, have voting systems with a full and complete GUARANTEE warranty, but we are instructed by our Masters in Congress that such expectations of no fail systems that we’ve come to expect with regard to other core governmental services like fire protection, water supply and so forth we clearly can not expect when it comes to voting. Voting, after all, involves simple acts of counting addition that are difficult for government to figure out, even with the assistance of the private sector and the wonders of computer technology. So therefore, I’ve been more modest in only asking for warranty levels to be upgraded from the current “as is” sales to the protections available for used cars.

Paul Lehto

June 20, 2007 // General // No Comments //

Jun
19

Scalia's faith-based reasoning

And it’s a TV show that he believes in.

MCM

Scalia: The Jack Bauer Torture Test
by SusanG

Tue Jun 19, 2007 at 08:46:44 AM PDT

This is what we have come to: Supreme Court justices citing Hollywood for constitutional principles:

Senior judges from North America and Europe were in the midst of a panel discussion about torture and terrorism law, when a Canadian judge’s passing remark – “Thankfully, security agencies in all our countries do not subscribe to the mantra ‘What would Jack Bauer do?’ ” – got the legal bulldog in Judge Scalia barking.

The conservative jurist stuck up for Agent Bauer, arguing that fictional or not, federal agents require latitude in times of great crisis. “Jack Bauer saved Los Angeles. … He saved hundreds of thousands of lives,” Judge Scalia said. Then, recalling Season 2, where the agent’s rough interrogation tactics saved California from a terrorist nuke, the Supreme Court judge etched a line in the sand.

“Are you going to convict Jack Bauer?” Judge Scalia challenged his fellow judges. “Say that criminal law is against him? ‘You have the right to a jury trial?’ Is any jury going to convict Jack Bauer? I don’t think so.

Protect NY's e-voting law!

From Bo Lipari:

Two years ago in June 2005, the New York State Legislature adopted some of the strictest requirements for new electronic voting systems in the country. This June, in the last week of the session, lobbyists for the voting machine vendors are pushing a back door amendment drafted by Microsoft attorneys that would effectively gut the source code review protections provided in our current law. New Yorkers must not allow this to happen – you must act now.

Early in the week of June 18, the last week of the Legislative session, a bill will be introduced to correct “technical problems” with an earlier law changing New York’s Presidential primary date. But this bill will contain a poisonous provision that effectively removes the possibility of meaningful review of electronic voting system software. In the last 2 months, Microsoft and the voting machine vendors have conducted a full court press in Albany, trying to make OUR Election Law suit THEIR interests. We can’t let that happen.

Read the full story here in my blog and New York State newspapers:

http://nyvv.org/blog/bolipariblog.html

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=598403

http://lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070616/NEWS05/706160348/1021

Take Action Now! – It’s urgent that you call your State Senator and Assembly representative this Monday and Tuesday, June 18 and 19, at their Albany offices, and tell them they must not weaken New York State’s voting machine escrow and review requirements. Remind them that the Legislature can be proud of passing a strong law 2 years ago – they must stand by that decision and not give in to pressure by voting machine vendors who seek to undermine these essential protections.

In this last hectic week of the Legislative session, a lot of damage can be done to all we’ve achieved in the fight for secure, transparent, verifiable elections. Unless we act now, New York State’s strict electronic voting machine laws could be gutted by the end of the week. Please call your Representatives in Albany this Monday and Tuesday, June 18 and 19.
Find your Assembly member’s contact information here:

http://www.assembly.state.ny.us/mem/
(Not sure who your Assembly member is? Click here to search by Zip Code)

Find your State Senator’s contact information here:
http://www.senate.state.ny.us/senatehomepage.nsf/senators?OpenForm
(Not sure who your State Senator is? Click here to search by Zip Code)

Bo Lipari
Executive Director,
New Yorkers for Verified Voting

June 17, 2007 // General // No Comments //

Jun
15

2/3 of voters don't notice vote-flipping on DRE machines

What this means is that there were actually many more such instances than all of those

that were reported coast to coast; and those that were reported, with a handful of exceptions,

told of Kerry votes turning into Bush votes.

MCM

New Study: Two-Thirds of Voters Fail to Notice Vote-Flipping on Touch-Screen DRE Voting Systems

If Voters Don’t Notice Incorrect Votes on The Review Screen in Front of Their Face, Why Would They Notice it on a So-Called ‘Paper Trail’ Printed Afterward?

Guest Blogged by John Gideon of VotersUnite.org

A new study supports the contentions of Election Integrity advocates who oppose Rush Holt’s election reform bill (HR 811) on the basis that it allows for the use of Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) touch-screen voting systems. In her recently released doctoral thesis, “The Usability of Electronic Voting Machines and How Votes Can Be Changed Without Detection”, Rice University researcher and Doctoral candidate Sarah P. Everett reveals that only 37% of the participants noticed that vote flipping had occurred on their review screens during mock election testing.

And yet Holt supporters think voters will notice such “errors” on a paper trail printed after the review screen?…

FULL REPORT: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4682

June 15, 2007 // General // No Comments //

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