Former Bush Official Charged For Erasing Computer Files

By GottaLaff

I have a feeling that, little by little, more and more members of the Bush crime family will be finding themselves in this awkward little stress position:

Former U.S. Special Counsel Scott Bloch was charged today with criminal contempt of Congress in connection with his notorious use of Geeks On Call to scrub his computer while under investigation for misusing his office, according to a court filing in federal court in Washington. [...]

That was in late 2006.

I just adore skipping down Memory Lane, especially when it leads me to a happy ending.

Nazi looted art found at future site of Bush presidential library

By GottaLaff

(via)

That's some blog title. It's not mine, it belongs to The Hill:

Two valuable works of art looted by the Nazis during World War II have been discovered at Southern Methodist University (SMU), which is the future home of the George W. Bush Presidential Library.

I vill not make any Chimpenfuhrer jokes. I vill not make any Chimpenfuhrer jokes.

Because if I did, I'd be just like those mean ol' Tea Tantrumers and ClusterFoxers linking Obama to Hitler, right?

The former president's office declined to comment on the story.

Of course, this Bush/Hitler connection comes to mind, no matter how hard I try to suppress it.

Where Was the Outcry? Special Comment by my 72-year-old friend

By GottaLaff

My very caring, impassioned 72-year-old Twitter pal, who goes by the name 42bkdodgr, would like to share his feelings about the hypocrisy, racism, and outright hostility of the -Ers, and I am more than happy to oblige.

I took the liberty of adding a couple of graphics.

Take it away, 42bkdodgr:

The Political Carnival recently posted an article titled “ Colorado Tea Party Organizer Issues Racist Threat To Fellow Blogger” which I read with great interest. Many of you know I detest racism in all forms from my previous special comments on The Political Carnival.

I found the racist threat made by Shaun Conley, a plumber in Johnstown Colorado, to be disgusting and reprehensible. What caught my interest was his ending comment, “You can’t spend your way to prosperity, and you can’t borrow your way out of debt. That’s what we’re trying to fight as a group” (tea baggers).

I ask Shaun and the “tea baggers” the following:

Where was the outcry when President George Bush took the budget surplus given to him by the Clinton Administration and used it up and substantially increased the National Debt?

Where was the outcry when President Bush took this country into an unjust war on misinformation that his administration provided Congress and the American people?

Where was their outcry when Bush Administration violated national and international laws... and our country lost the respect of the international community?

Where was the outcry when the Bush administration didn’t include the cost of the Afghan and Iraq Wars in the annual budget, but hid it under “supplementing spending”?

Where was the outcry when President Bush signed a prescription drug plan for the elderly without being able to pay for it?

Where was the outcry in 2005, when the budget estimate for the Medicare prescription drug plan would cost more than $1.2 trillion in the coming decade? That amount is larger than the $900,000 billion to $1 trillion dollars the Obama administration is estimating the Health Care Reform (HCR) will cost over 10 years, which will be fully funded.

Where was the outcry outrage when end-of-life provision for terminally ill people was included in the 2003 Medicare Drug Bill, that was overwhelmingly approved by the Republicans in Congress? Why are you then so concerned about the so called “death panel” inclusion in the proposed HCR bill?

From Conley’s remarks, you know he was surely against any stimulus plan, so he probably would have liked the banks, brokerage firms and auto companies to fail, throwing this country into a deep depression.

Maybe if these so called “tea baggers” would have been as vigilant during the Bush Administration, as they are concerned about the birth place of Obama, whether he is “one of us”, rather than engaging in mob rule to shut down real discussion at Town Hall meetings, this country would be in better shape today.

Great thanks again for another relevant, thought-provoking piece, 42bkdodgr. We need a gazillion more like you.

You never fail to make my day.

Cheney Responds to Time Magazine Scooter Libby story

By GottaLaff

The Limpest Dick gets it up long enough for some premature snarlization:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney issued a statement in the wake of a Time magazine story on his last ditch efforts to push for a presidential pardon for his chief of staff:

"Scooter Libby is an innocent man who was the victim of a severe miscarriage of justice. He was not the source of the leak of Valerie Plame's name. Former Deputy Secretary of State, Rich Armitage, leaked the name and hid that fact from most of his colleagues, including the President. Mr. Libby is an honorable man and a faithful public servant who served the President, the Vice President and the nation with distinction for many years. He deserved a presidential pardon."

Awww, wittle "honorable" Scooty is a victim! His Douchiness says so, so it must be true.

And of all things, His Douchey Dickiness swears that Boy Georgie was left in the dark! Yes, the President of the United States [sic] had no idea what was going on in his own government. Guess he wasn't exactly the Master of his Domain. Talk about impotent.

The Last Hours of the Bush Administration

By GottaLaff

Slimy and Slimier:

In a must-read piece, Time looks at the final days of the Bush administration when Vice President Dick Cheney "had been pleading, cajoling, even pestering" President Bush to pardon his former chief of staff, Scooter Libby.

"These last hours represent a climactic chapter in the mysterious and mostly opaque relationship at the center of a tumultuous period in American history. It reveals how one question -- whether to grant a presidential pardon to a top vice-presidential aide -- strained the bonds between Bush and his deputy and closest counselor. It reveals a gap in the two men's views of crime and punishment. And in a broader way, it uncovers a fundamental difference in how the two men regarded the legacy of the Bush years. As a Cheney confidant puts it, the Vice President believed he and the President could claim the war on terrorism as his greatest legacy only if they defended at all costs the men and women who fought in the trenches. When it came to Libby, Bush felt he had done enough."

VIDEO: Liz Cheney Won't Say Whether or Not Her Father Broke the Law

By GottaLaff

Via Firedoglake:

Liz:

Mika:

CIA Vet: Agency Doesn't Need Secret Program To Target al Qaeda

By GottaLaff

Remember that Ultra Super Duper Secret Illegal Cheney CIA Program that I posted about earlier? Well, well, well, looks like it was Ultra Super Duper redundant... unless it was those darned Americans they were targeting:

Vince Cannistraro, a former CIA counterterrorism chief, told TPMmuckraker that because we've been in a state of war against al Qaeda since just after September 11, there would have been no need for a secret CIA program that received special legal authorization.

Since the war on terror began, said Cannistraro, the CIA has routinely conducted operations targeting top Qaeda leaders. "The CIA runs drones and targets al Qaeda safe houses all the time," said Cannistraro, explaining that there's no important difference between those kinds of attacks and "assassinations" with a gun or a knife.

Cannistraro said the Defense Department has also conducted such targeted efforts, under an initiative that New Yorker reporter Seymour Hersh has written about. [...]

But Cannistraro cautioned that that DOD program has nothing to do with the secret, unidentified CIA program which Cheney is said to have hid from Congress, and which CIA director Leon Panetta ended last month.

As for what the program did involve, Cannistraro suggested that it involved Americans as targets, and that it went beyond surveillance, but declined to elaborate. He added that, though Cheney may have directly ordered the CIA to keep Congress in the dark, the veep wasn't acting alone. "The approval was from the president," said Cannistraro.

But prosecuting would throw us into a tizzy. Don't let on, but I think we're already in one.

Why Democrats won't prosecute Bush's crimes

By GottaLaff

Jonathan Turley just now on MSNBC:

"Democrats like to disclose crimes, but don't like to prosecute them. Why? Because they'd have to [...] indict Bush."

Color me naive, but isn't that why one would disclose the crimes? To prosecute them? To prevent future crimes? To uphold the law?

BushCo lied and withheld information from Congress. That's a crime. So says Turley. So prosecute.

I'm sorry, I may be a little slow here, but what's the problem again?

Former Homeland Security SecretaryTom Ridge: We were wrong to torture

By GottaLaff

Was Tom Ridge for torture and illegal detention before he was against it?

America's first homeland security secretary has accepted some criticisms of the US "war on terror" made in a recent report by legal experts.

Tom Ridge told the BBC that the report's attacks on extended detention and torture were justified. [...]

The report the International Commission of Jurists said anti-terror measures worldwide had seriously undermined international human rights law.

After a three-year global study, the ICJ said many states had used the public's fear of terrorism to introduce measures including detention without trial, illegal disappearance and torture.

It said the framework of international law that existed before the 9/11 attacks was robust and effective, but had been actively undermined by the US and the UK.

Mr Ridge, who was appointed to the new post of homeland security secretary after the 11 September, 2001 attacks on the US, said the ICJ was on "solid ground" in its commentary "with regard to torture and sustained detention without due process".

In an interview with the BBC's World Today programme he said that regardless of what terrorism suspects had done, the US still needed "to afford them some sense of due process."

"It has taken a while for us to get to that point but we are certainly there now," he said.

He added that there was now a consensus in the US and beyond that water-boarding - a harsh interrogation technique that simulates drowning - was torture, saying there had been no allegations of its use since 2003.

Oh goody. He says we only waterboarded people until 2003. That's a relief. I bet he can't wait for those who were brutally tortured to get wind of this... the ones that survived.

And how nice that he finally feels free to openly acknowledge these horrendous, illegal abuses... in 2009.

Oh, did I forget to mention this?

However, Mr Ridge also defended US policy, saying counter-terrorism work was now about detaining people before they were able to commit terrorist acts. [...]

Many suspects had "embraced an ideology, a belief system, that said it's perfectly all right in order to advance a cause to kill innocents along the way", he said.

"They had no loyalty to a country so they're not the traditional prisoner of war, they don't wear the uniform of a country so we can't treat them as we have done in previous wars."

Mr Ridge added: "How we dealt with them in terms of returning them to their potential country of origin was a difficult issue that not only the United States but other countries have had to deal with.

"So, we're in the process of dealing with it."

But are we in the due process of dealing with it?

Sidebar: I wonder if Mr. Ridge is currently employed. If so, he may be one of the lucky 25%.

Paging Attorney General Holder: Former Gitmo Guard Tells All, and It's Not Pretty

By GottaLaff

It seems like a daily occurrence now: Someone comes forward to share his or her vile revelations about the Bush Crime Family's practice of repeatedly using torture, and then covering it up:

Army Private Brandon Neely served as a prison guard at Guantánamo in the first years the facility was in operation. With the Bush Administration, and thus the threat of retaliation against him, now gone, Neely decided to step forward and tell his story. “The stuff I did and the stuff I saw was just wrong,” he told the Associated Press. Neely describes the arrival of detainees in full sensory-deprivation garb, he details their sexual abuse by medical personnel, torture by other medical personnel, brutal beatings out of frustration, fear, and retribution, the first hunger strike and its causes, torturous shackling, positional torture, interference with religious practices and beliefs, verbal abuse, restriction of recreation, the behavior of mentally ill detainees, an isolation regime that was put in place for child-detainees, and his conversations with prisoners David Hicks and Rhuhel Ahmed.

But we should look forward, not back, according to Team Obama. I'm a big fan, Prez O, but I'm a bigger fan of justice and the Constitution. My hope is that the president is waiting for things like this to turn up so that he can say that, clearly, he would be justified in nailing these thugs.

Neely:

• [The guards ] were put under great pressure to get rough with the prisoners and to violate the standards they learned.

• [There were] displays of contempt for Islam by the camp authorities, and also specific documentation of mistreatment of the Qu’ran. [...] Moreover, it is clear that the Pentagon Public Affairs office was fully aware, even as it went on the attack against Newsweek, that its claims were false and the weekly’s reporting was accurate.

• [H]ealth professionals are right in the thick of the torture and abuse of the prisoners—suggesting a systematic collapse of professional ethics driven by the Pentagon itself. He describes body searches undertaken for no legitimate security purpose, simply to sexually invade and humiliate the prisoners. [...] The Bush White House vehemently objected to provisions of the law dealing with rape by instrumentality. When House negotiators pressed to know why, they were met first with silence and then an embarrassed acknowledgment that a key part of the Bush program included invasion of the bodies of prisoners in a way that might be deemed rape by instrumentality under existing federal and state criminal statutes. While these techniques have long been known, the role of health care professionals in implementing them is shocking.

And in case all of that isn't obvious enough, here is the reason we need to conduct a full and thorough investigation... right here:

Neely’s account demonstrates once more how much the Bush team kept secret and how little we still know about their comprehensive program of official cruelty and torture.

You can find his entire account here.

Chris Matthews Show: Panel Excuses Lack of Potential Torture Prosecutions

Bullsh*t excuses. I think this is what should happen.

VIDEO-- Keith Olbermann's Special Comment: Prosecute Bush for torture

By GottaLaff

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Justice Department's Schlozman called career lawyers "libs", "pinkos", "treacherous"

By GottaLaff

Video is from his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, re: U.S. Attorney hirings and firings

Schlozman is the sleazy little high-talker who made false statements to Congress, but never got prosecuted. In other words, he's typically BushCoian:

A report out today describes what is unquestionably the most blatant case of inappropriate consideration of politics in the hiring of career lawyers at the Justice Department under the tenure of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The report is strongly critical of Bradley Schlozman, a former deputy in the Civil Rights Division who also served as its acting director.

According to the Justice Department's inspector general, Schlozman regularly made reckless comments about lawyers and applicants for jobs that he considered too liberal -- which, for him, apparently covered a lot of ground.

He called some career lawyers "libs" and "pinkos" and described others as "disloyal," "not on the team" or "treacherous." Those he endorsed he called "RTA's," which stood for "right thinking Americans."

An analysis of the hirings under his watch found that 64% were Republicans or conservatives, compared with only 4% of the hirings in which he was not involved. Two percent of the hirings were Democrats or liberals under Schlozman, compared to 23% when he was not involved.

This pathetic excuse for a human being should be squashed like a bug, along with the rest of the thugs in the Bush crime family.

Moral TARPitude

By GottaLaff

Moral TARPitude: BushCo must have a bazillion dollars now. Right now, or... or.... what? And for whom? And why? And how? Details, damnit, we want details:

Under the emergency rescue legislation approved by Congress in October, the administration must inform lawmakers that it wants access to the second installment of $350 billion. Unless Congress passes a resolution rejecting the request within 15 days, the Treasury can begin to tap the funds. If Congress turns down the request, the president could veto the resolution and then the Treasury could proceed. The money would be blocked only if Congress overrides the veto, which would require a two-thirds majority in both chambers. [...]

Both Bush and Obama officials say gaining access to the balance of the rescue funds is crucial to turning the economy around. Without the money, it would be nearly impossible to offer significant help for homeowners facing foreclosure, stabilize the financial system or jump-start the credit markets so more consumers and companies can get loans.

So, on the TARP-o-meter scale of 1-350 billion, BushCo scores a.... 0. Next:

Even as foreclosures continue by the hundreds, more than $100 million set aside by the state to help families keep their homes is going untapped. The state programs are so narrow and carry so many restrictions that getting approval is nearly impossible.

Since July 1, a program to help homeowners make payments on their mortgages has helped one borrower so far, with just five approvals pending. That, despite 382 applications for the program — the Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program, or EMAP.

The centerpiece program, CTFAMLIES, has fared better, with 65 loan refinancings closed, totaling $13.5 million, among 309 applications. Another seven refinancings are approved, and awaiting a closing date.

In yet another program — the Homeowner Equity Recovery Program, or HERO — the state planned to buy mortgages from lenders, who would take a loss, and negotiate to set more affordable interest rates. HERO has yet to help a single homeowner, and just one loan is expected to close later this month, state records show.

To quote Commenter Chris from an e-mail she sent me:

So....who exactly is being helped by the TARP funds that BushCo must have immediately? Not the state programs or the individual homeowners. Could it possibly be that BushCo thinks it hasn't stolen enough taxpayer money & is going for the final reaming on us all??

In a word: yes. After all, he needs some pocket change to pay for all those attorney fees that are coming up.

H/t: Chris

Prosecuting Bush, redux: Eight Years of Madoffs

By GottaLaff

Barry Blitt

It seems everyone's on the same page today. Frank Rich:

THREE days after the world learned that $50 billion may have disappeared in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, The Times led its front page of Dec. 14 with the revelation of another $50 billion rip-off. This time the vanished loot belonged to American taxpayers. That was our collective contribution to the $117 billion spent (as of mid-2008) on Iraq reconstruction — a sinkhole of corruption, cronyism, incompetence and outright theft that epitomized Bush management at home and abroad.

The source for this news was a near-final draft of an as-yet-unpublished 513-page federal history of this nation-building fiasco. The document was assembled by the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction — led by a Bush appointee, no less. It pinpoints, among other transgressions, a governmental Ponzi scheme concocted to bamboozle Americans into believing they were accruing steady dividends on their investment in a “new” Iraq. [...]

Those of us who questioned these astonishing numbers were dismissed as fools, much like those who begged in vain to get the Securities and Exchange Commission to challenge Madoff’s math.

What’s most remarkable about the Times article, however, is how little stir it caused. [...]

After all, next to big-ticket administration horrors like Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and the politicized hiring and firing at Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department, the wreckage of Iraq reconstruction is what Ralph Kramden of “The Honeymooners” would dismiss as “a mere bag of shells.” The $50 billion also pales next to other sums that remain unaccounted for in the Bush era, from the $345 billion in lost tax revenue due to unpoliced offshore corporate tax havens to the far-from-transparent disposition of some $350 billion in Wall Street bailout money. In the old Pat Moynihan phrase, the Bush years have “defined deviancy down” in terms of how low a standard of ethical behavior we now tolerate as the norm from public officials. [...]

Not even a good old-fashioned sex scandal could get our outrage going again. Indeed, a juicy one erupted last year in the Interior Department, where the inspector general found that officials “had used cocaine and marijuana, and had sexual relationships with oil and gas company representatives.” [...]

It took 110 pages for the Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan research organization, to compile the CliffsNotes inventory of the Bush wreckage last month. It found “125 systematic failures across the breadth of the federal government.” [...]

Who put that bogus “uranium from Africa” into the crucial prewar State of the Union address after the C.I.A. removed it from previous Bush speeches? How high up were the authorities who ordered and condoned torture and then let the “rotten apples” at the bottom of the military heap take the fall? Who orchestrated the Pentagon’s elaborate P.R. efforts to cover up Pat Tillman’s death by “friendly fire” in Afghanistan?

And, for extra credit, whatever did happen to Bush’s records from the Texas Air National Guard? [...]

Though he [Henry Waxman] remains outraged about both the chicanery used to sell the Iraq war and the administration’s overall abuse of power, he adds: “I don’t see Congress pursuing it. We’ve got to move on to other issues.” He would rather see any prosecutions augmented by an independent investigation that fills in the historical record. “We need to depoliticize it,” he says. “If a Democratic Congress or administration pursues it, it will be seen as partisan.” [...]

While our new president indeed must move on and address the urgent crises that cannot wait, Bush administration malfeasance can’t be merely forgotten or finessed. A new Justice Department must enforce the law; Congress must press outstanding subpoenas to smoke out potential criminal activity; every legal effort must be made to stop what seems like a wholesale effort by the outgoing White House to withhold, hide and possibly destroy huge chunks of its electronic and paper trail. [...]

As if to anticipate the current debate, she [Dawn Johnsen, a law professor and former Clinton administration official who last week was chosen to run the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice] added that “we must avoid any temptation simply to move on,” because the national honor cannot be restored “without full disclosure.”[...]

To make the policy decisions ahead of us in the economic meltdown, we must know what went wrong along the way in the executive and legislative branches alike. [...]

If Bernie Madoff, at least, can still revive what remains of our deadened capacity for outrage, so can those who pulled off Washington’s Ponzi schemes. The more we learn about where all the bodies and billions were buried on our path to ruin, the easier it may be for our new president to make the case for a bold, whatever-it-takes New Deal.