Who REALLY Supports the Troops?

Operation Truth a vote in the Senate today on a supplemental $213 million bill that would fund the production of armored humvees for Iraq. How did the votes break out? Well, let's see...

YEAs: 61	NAYs: 39
Akaka (D-HI)	Allard (R-CO)
Alexander (R-TN)	Bennett (R-UT)
Allen (R-VA)	Bond (R-MO)
Baucus (D-MT)	Brownback (R-KS)
Bayh (D-IN)	Bunning (R-KY)
Biden (D-DE)	Burr (R-NC)
Bingaman (D-NM)	Chambliss (R-GA)
Boxer (D-CA)	Coburn (R-OK)
Burns (R-MT)	Cochran (R-MS)
Byrd (D-WV)	Cornyn (R-TX)
Cantwell (D-WA)	Craig (R-ID)
Carper (D-DE)	Crapo (R-ID)
Chafee (R-RI)	DeMint (R-SC)
Clinton (D-NY)	Dole (R-NC)
Coleman (R-MN)	Domenici (R-NM)
Collins (R-ME)	Ensign (R-NV)
Conrad (D-ND)	Enzi (R-WY)
Corzine (D-NJ)	Frist (R-TN)
Dayton (D-MN)	Graham (R-SC)
DeWine (R-OH)	Grassley (R-IA)
Dodd (D-CT)	Gregg (R-NH)
Dorgan (D-ND)	Hagel (R-NE)
Durbin (D-IL)	Hatch (R-UT)
Feingold (D-WI)	Inhofe (R-OK)
Feinstein (D-CA)	Inouye (D-HI)
Harkin (D-IA)	Isakson (R-GA)
Hutchison (R-TX)	Kyl (R-AZ)
Jeffords (I-VT)	McConnell (R-KY)
Johnson (D-SD)	Murkowski (R-AK)
Kennedy (D-MA)	Roberts (R-KS)
Kerry (D-MA)	Sessions (R-AL)
Kohl (D-WI)	Shelby (R-AL)
Landrieu (D-LA)	Smith (R-OR)
Lautenberg (D-NJ)	Stevens (R-AK)
Leahy (D-VT)	Sununu (R-NH)
Levin (D-MI)	Thomas (R-WY)
Lieberman (D-CT)	Vitter (R-LA)
Lincoln (D-AR)	Voinovich (R-OH)
Lott (R-MS)	Warner (R-VA)
Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCain (R-AZ)
Mikulski (D-MD)
Murray (D-WA)
Nelson (D-FL)
Nelson (D-NE)
Obama (D-IL)
Pryor (D-AR)
Reed (D-RI)
Reid (D-NV)
Rockefeller (D-WV)
Salazar (D-CO)
Santorum (R-PA)
Sarbanes (D-MD)
Schumer (D-NY)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Stabenow (D-MI)
Talent (R-MO)
Thune (R-SD)
Wyden (D-OR)

Sure are a lot of "R"s in that "NAY" column, aren't there? Keep that in mind the next time a winger tries to tell you that Dems don't support the troops.

And just to break it down even further, this shows a solid 44 of 45 Senate Democrats voting for this, and only 16 of 54 (!!) Senate Republicans. Yeah, they care. Assholes. (via Kos)

No support for the US Troops

The Bush Administration has ensured that former US POWs who were tortured in Iraq during the first Gulf War will NOT be compensated and will NOT receive the justice they deserve ... and had already been awarded. Unconscionable.

From the LA Times:

POW's Claims Against New Iraq Government Rejected
By David G. Savage
Times Staff Writer

9:53 AM PDT, April 25, 2005

WASHINGTON — U.S. pilots and soldiers who were taken prisoner and tortured by the Iraqis during the Persian Gulf War of 1991 lost their legal battle to hold Iraq liable today, as the Supreme Court turned away their final appeal.

The justices heeded the advice of the Bush administration and let stand an appeals court ruling that threw out a nearly $1-billion verdict won by the Gulf War POWs two years ago.

The court's refusal to hear the case spares the administration from having to go before the Supreme Court to argue against American POWS who were tortured.

The 17 ex-POWs had sued Iraq and the regime of Saddam Hussein under the terms of a 1996 antiterrorism law that opened the courthouse door to claims from Americans who had been injured or tortured at the hands of "state sponsors of terror."

Their story was little known because the Persian Gulf War was witnessed by most Americans as a TV spectacular in which U.S. forces pounded and destroyed Iraq's army in just a few weeks.

But during that time, the POWs said they were beaten and had their bones broken by their Iraqi captors. Several of the men nearly starved in the weeks they were held in cold, filthy cells, including at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad.

By the time the ex-POWs had won their claim in court, the United States had invaded Iraq and toppled the Saddam Hussein regime. And to the surprise of the former U.S. prisoners, the Bush administration went to court seeking to nullify the award they had won.

The government's lawyers argued that Iraq, now under American occupation, was no longer a "state sponsor of terror." Moreover, President Bush had canceled the sanctions against Iraq and moved to shield its $1.7 billion in frozen assets. This money was needed to rebuild the nation, Bush said.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington agreed with the administration last year and ruled that "weighty foreign policy interests" called for dismissing the lawsuit brought by the Gulf War POWs.

The former prisoners' last hope had rested with the Supreme Court. In their appeal, they argued that U.S. law and the Geneva Convention forbid the torture of war prisoners and prohibit nations from absolving perpetrators of torture of their legal liability.

"Our country does not have a good record for holding nations accountable for how they have treated American captives," Col. Clifford Acree, the lead plaintiff, said recently.

He was shot down over Iraq on Jan. 18, 1991, the second day of the Gulf War. He was injured when he ejected from his jet. He was blindfold and beaten by the Iraqis until he lost consciousness.

"What message do we send for the future?" he asked in a recent news briefing, if the POWs' lawsuit is dismissed by the courts.

The ex-POWS had won the support of a bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Sens. George Allen (R-Va.), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.). They filed a friend-of-the-court brief urging the justices to restore the verdict won by the ex-POWs.

But last month, Bush administration lawyers urged the court to dismiss the case. They said "the Presidential Determination (by Bush that canceled the sanctions) reflects a most profound shift in the (government's) foreign policy toward Iraq — from viewing it as an enemy to a state subject to our protection."

In a one-line order today, the high court turned down the appeal in Acree vs. Iraq and the United States.

"The court's decision is unfortunate. (It) sends the wrong message to those who would torture or kill Americans," said Paul Kamenar, counsel for the Washington Legal Foundation, which filed the brief for the lawmakers on behalf of the ex-POWS.

While the judge who heard the case had awarded the POWs damages that totaled nearly $1 billion, their lawyers had told government officials they would have settled the claim for a small fraction of that amount. But the lawyers said administration officials refused to discuss a settlement.

Today's dismissal ends the lawsuit with no money for the plaintiffs.

More on the Filibuster Issue

This time from a speech by President Vice President Gore. Why can't we elect guys like him? (via the hamster)

"This fight is not about responding to a crisis. It is about the desire of the administration and the Senate leadership to stifle debate in order to get what they want when they want it. What is involved here is a power grab -- pure and simple.

And what makes it so dangerous for our country is their willingness to do serious damage to our American democracy in order to satisfy their lust for total one-party domination of all three branches of government. They seek nothing less than absolute power. Their grand design is an all-powerful executive using a weakened legislature to fashion a compliant judiciary in its own image. They envision a total breakdown of the separation of powers. And in its place they want to establish a system in which power is unified in the service of a narrow ideology serving a narrow set of interests.

Their coalition of supporters includes both right-wing religious extremists and exceptionally greedy economic special interests. Both groups are seeking more and more power for their own separate purposes. If they were to achieve their ambition -- and exercise the power they seek -- America would face the twin dangers of an economic blueprint that eliminated most all of the safeguards and protections established for middle class families throughout the 20th century and a complete revision of the historic insulation of the rule of law from sectarian dogma. One of the first casualties would be the civil liberties that Americans have come to take for granted.

Indeed, the first nominee they've sent to the on-deck circle has argued throughout her legal career that America's self-government is the root of all social evil. Her radical view of the Social Security system, which she believes to be unconstitutional, is that it has created a situation where, in her words: "Today's senior citizens blithely cannibalize their grandchildren."

Read the whole speech here.

By the way, from the looks of Al's new website, he might be tossing his hat into the ring for the '08 race!

The Rise of National Socialism

Digby is digging around in the past to try to teach us a little bit about the present. One of his latest posts truly did make the hair on the back of my neck stand up...

[Digby quoting Fritz Stern]"Twenty years ago, I wrote about “National Socialism as Temptation,” about what it was that induced so many Germans to embrace the terrifying specter. There were many reasons, but at the top ranks Hitler himself, a brilliant populist manipulator who insisted and probably believed that Providence had chosen him as Germany’s savior, that he was the instrument of Providence, a leader who was charged with executing a divine mission. God had been drafted into national politics before, but Hitler’s success in fusing racial dogma with a Germanic Christianity was an immensely powerful element in his electoral campaigns. Some people recognized the moral perils of mixing religion and politics, but many more were seduced by it. It was the pseudo-religious transfiguration of politics that largely ensured his success, notably in Protestant areas.

German moderates and German elites underestimated Hitler, assuming that most people would not succumb to his Manichean unreason; they didn’t think that his hatred and mendacity could be taken seriously. They were proven wrong. People were enthralled by the Nazis’ cunning transposition of politics into carefully staged pageantry, into flag-waving martial mass. At solemn moments, the National Socialists would shift from the pseudo-religious invocation of Providence to traditional Christian forms: In his first radio address to the German people, twenty-four hours after coming to power, Hitler declared, “The National Government will preserve and defend those basic principles on which our nation has been built up. They regard Christianity as the foundation of our national morality and the family as the basis of national life.”

Read the whole thing.

The Filibuster and the Nucular Option

What Josh said:

There is a certain logic to the proposition that anything that comes to the senate should go to a vote of the entire senate. The only problem is that both Houses of the United States Congress have operated for more than 200 years by the committee system, which says that that logic isn't the one we follow. Nominations and laws die in committee all the time. Just ask Bill Weld. It's happened, literally, for centuries.

Don't get me wrong. Individually, these rules have been bent or broken here and there. The WSJ article itself notes that something similar happened with Ken Adelman's nomination in 1983. But when you take together the nuclear option business, this new part of the Bolton drama, and other recent developments, you see a leadership (and really, because that's who's controlling this, a White House) which wants to win every time at any cost and is pretty much indifferent to the existing rules if they get in the way.

In the words of the immortal Napoleon Dynamite: "Idiots!"

Day Tripper

From Salon:

The Secret Service may have thought it was clearing things up when it turned over to Reps. John Conyers and Louise Slaughter security logs showing Jeff Gannon's comings and goings from the White House. It hasn't worked out that way.

As Raw Story noted almost immediately, there are all sorts of holes in the documents the Secret Service released. The documents show that Gannon got access to the White House roughly 200 times in less than two years, but they also show days in which Gannon is listed as arriving but not leaving and leaving but not arriving. Our inbox is full of hopeful speculation: Was Gannon somebody's overnight guest at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.?

It's not impossible, we suppose, but we'll assume, until we see some evidence to the contrary, that the Secret Service just did a bad job of keeping track of who was coming and going at the White House. That's not exactly a comforting thought, either -- especially given Gannon's rather tawdry background -- and a group of internet sleuths calling themselves ePluribus Media have just raised a whole new set of questions about the matter. They've compared the Secret Service "access control" records with video clips of White House press briefings, and they say they've found five tapes that show Gannon at briefings inside the White House on days that the Secret Service says he wasn't there at all. The group asks: Did the Secret Service screw up that much on its own, or did someone at the White House figure out a way to help Gannon get in without appearing on the Secret Service logs?

Meanwhile, Conyers and Slaughter are asking some questions of their own. When Scott McClellan was pressed on Gannon's access back in February, he said: "Well, let me explain a few things. First, as the press secretary, I don't think it's the role of the press secretary to get into picking or choosing who gets press credentials. Also, I don't think it's the role of the Press Secretary to get into being a media critic, and I think there are very good reasons for that. I've never inserted myself into the process." But according to Conyers and Slaughter, the Secret Service documents show that McClellan's media assistant, Lois Cassano, requested 48 of the day passes Gannon used to get into the White House. In a letter they sent to McClellan this week, Conyers and Slaughter ask whether he'd like to "revise" his claim about not getting involved in the process.

Incidents of Terrorism on the RISE

Jeebus, can't this administration do ONE EFFING THING right?!

According to the Washington Post today, there were 655 incidents of terrorism last year, shattering the record of 175, set in 2003.

And not only that, but the administration is trying to hide this information:

"The State Department announced last week that it was breaking with tradition in withholding the statistics on terrorist attacks from its congressionally mandated annual report. Critics said the move was designed to shield the government from questions about the success of its effort to combat terrorism by eliminating what amounted to the only year-to-year benchmark of progress.

Although the State Department said the data would still be made public by the new National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), which prepares the information, officials at the center said no decision to publish the statistics has been made.

The controversy comes a year after the State Department retracted its annual terrorism report and admitted that its initial version vastly understated the number of incidents. That became an election-year issue, as Democrats said the Bush administration tried to inflate its success in curbing global terrorism after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks."

Number of wars Pres. Chimpy has started: 2
Number of wars Pres. Chimpy is winning: 0
Cost of wars to America: astronimical

Sons of bitches.

Splash Day

Long time no blog. But I'm back.

This one writes itself:

BUSH ASKS ABOUT 'SPLASH DAY'

President Bush raised eyebrows on Tuesday when he asked locals in Galveston, Texas: "Do you still have Splash Day?"

"Splash Day" is the annual "adult oriented enormous beach party" celebration on the Gulf Coast.

BUSH: Do you still have Splash Day?

(LAUGHTER)

BUSH: You have to be a baby boomer to know what I'm talking about.

(LAUGHTER)

BUSH: I'm not saying whether I came or not on Splash Day. I'm just saying, Do you have Splash Day?

(LAUGHTER)

Bush was unaware "Splash Day" is now a fully gay and lesbian event on the beaches.

I love it. First he's holding hands with a man, and now this!