‘I would not have said what he said.’
By on Jul 30th, 2007 at 11:12 am
‘I would not have said what he said.’
A former administration official says that while the 2004 dispute over the NSA program focused on data-mining, not eavesdropping, the distinction is not sufficient to justify Gonzales’ statements to the Senate Judiciary Committee:
“The attorney general may have been splitting hairs here,” the former government official said. “He may be able to say ‘the dispute’ was not about the NSA monitoring program per se. But I would not have said what he said.”
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The definition of “is” is in question again! How soon the worm squirms when the Repugs are caught!
July 30th, 2007 at 11:15 amClinton did it too!
July 30th, 2007 at 11:16 am“Democrats charge the attorney general is making a distinction without an actual difference because the data mining and the surveillance both fall under the umbrella of the domestic surveillance program, which critics say stretches the limits of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.”
No wiggle room there.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:21 am“The attorney general may have been splitting hairs here,†the former government official said.
“Splitting hairs”. That’s such a comfortable euphemism for lying through your teeth.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:24 amI watched the whole Gonzales hearing on C-SPAN yesterday.
I was embarrassed to watch him lie time after time, repeating ‘I don’t recall’ many, many times, calling the WH meeting something other than what it was, ad nauseum.
This little prick has got to pay for lying to Congress & the American people. Period. I want to see him tried & convicted for this BS.
‘Judge Gonzales’, my ass. He was only appointed because he carried Bush’s water for many years.
This is not a smart man. Arrogant, conceited? Yes. But not smart.
It’s time to clean house, America; our top lawyer is a liar.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:26 amAlberto Gonzales claims there was no dispute over the NSA program even though the FBI director and others threatened to quit over the illegality of a specific component of the program.
That’s like Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig saying there is no dispute over Barry Bonds’ home runs because everyone agrees that baseball is a sport.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:30 amYawn… I wish TP would MoveOn. I mean, the Atty Gen is not going anywhere. AND if he does, who cares?
I think the left is clearly delusional over this. Go after Alberto – no one cares. But you can’t get Bush. AND that’s what you want, but your spineless, wimpy party doesn’t have the balls to do it. My party did and we won everything in 2000.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:33 amIt was a “disagreement” not a “dispute.”
Sheesh. If Congress would only use the approproate precise language then Gonzo wouldn’t have to keep “clarifying” his statements.
Nor would he have to ask his staff in open testimony about how he clarified his statement.
By not talking to a reporter. And not knowing what was said on his behalf by a spokesperson.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:36 am#8 – I wish Congress would get back to the work of the American people. This witch hunt is turning off moderate voters.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:37 amYawn… I wish TP would MoveOn. I mean, the Atty Gen is not going anywhere. AND if he does, who cares?
I think the left is clearly delusional over this. Go after Alberto – no one cares. But you can’t get Bush. AND that’s what you want, but your spineless, wimpy party doesn’t have the balls to do it. My party did and we won everything in 2000.
Comment by God Help Us — J
You got one thing right.
GOD HELP US!
MEANWHILE , THE POOR, POVERTY, SICK, CONTINUE TO SUFFER!!
July 30th, 2007 at 11:40 am
. My party did and we won everything in 2000.
Comment by God Help Us — J
July 30th, 2007 at 11:41 amYOU ALSO WON A FREE TICKET TO HELL!
#7 Spoken like a true authoritarian fascist. No moral compass. Contempt for the rule of law. The usual.
#9 Don’t pretend to be a moderate. You and your pals aren’t fooling anyone. And besides, in #7 you said “my party” and you meant GOP when you said it. There are no moderates in the GOP. Liar.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:42 amKKKarl must have loosened the purse strings. The trolls are out in force for a Monday morning.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:44 amFREE Ticket to ALL FREEDOM FIGHTERS!
July 30th, 2007 at 11:44 amSATAN
#8 – I wish Congress would get back to the work of the American people. This witch hunt is turning off moderate voters.
Comment by God Help Us — July 30, 2007 @ 11:37 am
Sorry to ask again but I missed your earlier response. Did you or did you not have the same feelings during the Clinton witch hunt? I respect those who have consistency of thought.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:46 amWhich witch hunt? The only thing I see going on is Congress upholding the Constitution, and the Republicans and the Administration $HITTING on America.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:46 amOCEAN CITY, Maryland (AP) — Investigators found three tiny bodies wrapped in plastic and hidden at the home of a woman who was charged last week with killing her newborn child, police said Monday.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:48 amOnce FREEDOM HAS BEEN GIVEN! IT CANNOT BE TAKEN AWAY?
July 30th, 2007 at 11:49 amTRUE OR FALSE?
Which witch hunt? The only thing I see going on is Congress upholding the Constitution, and the Republicans and the Administration $HITTING on America.
Comment by whiteyfresh — July 30, 2007 @ 11:46 am
You know the trolls are getting desperate when they start richochetting around like 4 yr olds on a sugar rush.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:52 amI Guess I,ve been Banned By Republican T.P.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:52 am
yeah all the traitors who support Bush and his criminal cabal want to “move on” and call oversight a “witch hunt” because every single hearing has uncovered GROSS incompetence, illegal Hatch Act activities and utter mismanagement of our govt. agencies. Bush ADMITTED in public that the Plame leak came from HIS WH yet he DOES NOTHING about it??? Treason is ok by him I guess.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:53 amYou idiots who do not see what Gonzo has done to our country by protecting Bush from his crimes by abdicating his responsibility of being the NUMBER ONE AG in our nation are traitors. You same people went apeshit over a personal indiscretion of Clinton and hounded him, cost Americans millions yet in light of actual CRIMINAL ACTIVITY like inventing intelligence to lie to the public to start a WAR, you don’t have the backbone to stand up and demand justice.
You Bush supporters are nothing more than blind followers with not ONE SHRED of morality or decency. You are all traitors to the Constitution. Luckily, your numbers are so small you are inconsequential, you are simply the lunatic fringe of our society. Your hero WILL be brought to justice and will go down in history as the most vile President this country has ever seen.
He keeps Gonzo there to cover him for his CRIMES AGAINST AMERICA and NO other reason.
Every single supporter of the Bush regime is a traitor.
Willing to make a big deal about a BJ yet not willing to stand up and protect our Constitution OR our troops.
You do not deserve to call yourselves Americans.
My Comments Are Being Deleted!
July 30th, 2007 at 11:53 amLOL!
http://www.wlwt.com/news/13766925/detail.html
July 30th, 2007 at 11:54 amThe Republic of Stupidity,
You’re the Klansman!
You’re racist and that’s why you are after Alberto!
Comment by Alberto Gonzales is the Man! — July 30, 2007 @ 11:46 am
Hispanic isn’t a race, puto.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:54 am“Conservatives Refuse To Appear On Fox News To Publicly Defend Gonzales…”
Poor Gonzo… hung out to dry… by the WH!!!! When your own gang members won’t speak up for you, the end is near.
Going…. going… GONZO!!! He’s OUUUTTTTA here!
July 30th, 2007 at 11:55 am“The attorney general may have been splitting hairs here,â€
______________________________
Which hairs and who’s hairs? That’s what inquiring minds want to know.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:56 am#7,
Yeah keep living in the past. Your party is doomed for the near future and I pray to Christ that Hillary is the next president so I can watch all you NASCAR rednecks squirm.
July 30th, 2007 at 11:58 amCHENEY ORDERED GONZALES’ ILLEGAL EFFORTS:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/29/opinion/29sun1.html?_r=1&hp&oref=login
Mr. Gonzales’s Never-Ending Story
Article Tools Sponsored By
Published: July 29, 2007
President Bush often insists he has to be the decider — ignoring Congress and the public when it comes to the tough matters on war, terrorism and torture, even deciding whether an ordinary man in Florida should be allowed to let his wife die with dignity. Apparently that burden does not apply to the functioning of one of the most vital government agencies, the Justice Department.
Americans have been waiting months for Mr. Bush to fire Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who long ago proved that he was incompetent and more recently has proved that he can’t tell the truth. Mr. Bush refused to fire him after it was clear Mr. Gonzales lied about his role in the political purge of nine federal prosecutors. And he is still refusing to do so — even after testimony by the F.B.I. director, Robert Mueller, that suggests that Mr. Gonzales either lied to Congress about Mr. Bush’s warrantless wiretapping operation or at the very least twisted the truth so badly that it amounts to the same thing.
Mr. Gonzales has now told Congress twice that there was no dissent in the government about Mr. Bush’s decision to authorize the National Security Agency to spy on Americans’ international calls and e-mails without obtaining the legally required warrant. Mr. Mueller and James Comey, a former deputy attorney general, say that is not true. Not only was there disagreement, but they also say that they almost resigned over the dispute.
Both men say that in March 2004 — when Mr. Gonzales was still the White House counsel — the Justice Department refused to endorse a continuation of the wiretapping program because it was illegal. (Mr. Comey was running the department temporarily because Attorney General John Ashcroft had emergency surgery.) Unwilling to accept that conclusion, Vice President Dick Cheney sent Mr. Gonzales and another official to Mr. Ashcroft’s hospital room to get him to approve the wiretapping.
Mr. Comey and Mr. Mueller intercepted the White House team, and they say they watched as a groggy Mr. Ashcroft refused to sign off on the wiretapping and told the White House officials to leave. Mr. Comey said the White House later modified the eavesdropping program enough for the Justice Department to sign off.
Last week, Mr. Gonzales denied that account. He told the Senate Judiciary Committee the dispute was not about the wiretapping operation but was over “other intelligence activities.†He declined to say what those were.
Lawmakers who have been briefed on the administration’s activities said the dispute was about the one eavesdropping program that has been disclosed. So did Mr. Comey. And so did Mr. Mueller, most recently on Thursday in a House hearing. He said he had kept notes.
That was plain enough. It confirmed what most people long ago concluded: that Mr. Gonzales is more concerned about doing political-damage control for Mr. Bush — in this case insisting that there was never a Justice Department objection to a clearly illegal program — than in doing his duty. But the White House continued to defend him.
As far as we can tell, there are three possible explanations for Mr. Gonzales’s talk about a dispute over other — unspecified — intelligence activities. One, he lied to Congress. Two, he used a bureaucratic dodge to mislead lawmakers and the public: the spying program was modified after Mr. Ashcroft refused to endorse it, which made it “different†from the one Mr. Bush has acknowledged. The third is that there was more wiretapping than has been disclosed, perhaps even purely domestic wiretapping, and Mr. Gonzales is helping Mr. Bush cover it up.
Democratic lawmakers are asking for a special prosecutor to look into Mr. Gonzales’s words and deeds. Solicitor General Paul Clement has a last chance to show that the Justice Department is still minimally functional by fulfilling that request.
If that does not happen, Congress should impeach Mr. Gonzales.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:00 pmTRoS:but, just like a 4 year old on a sugar rush, it IS fun, in a slightly train-wreckkish way, to watch.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:02 pmThe financial links between those who lied, and those who benefited as a direct result of the lies (primarily in the oil and military industries – to say nothing of Israel) are clear. The evidence that the President’s speech knowingly included a lie about the Niger Yellow Cake is proveable in a court of law under oath.
That the Vice President knew for a fact that the claim was based on a forgery in advance of the President’s speech is a given (he ordered that the forgery be created and sent Ledeen to do it). That he instructed others to ensure that the sentence made it into the speech is also a given. What did the Vice President know, and when did he know it?
Every time the Vice President knowingly lied to the American People to advance the cause of war, he committed a crime against the United States which both directly harmed other US citizens and directly enriched himself.
Indict Dick Cheney for Fraud.
Section 1031. Major fraud against the United States
(a) Whoever knowingly executes, or attempts to execute, any scheme or artifice with the intent -
(1) to defraud the United States; or
(2) to obtain money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, in any procurement of property or services as a prime contractor with the United States or as a subcontractor or supplier on a contract in which there is a prime contract with the United States, if the value of the contract, subcontract, or any constituent part thereof, for such property or services is $1,000,000 or more shall, subject to the applicability of subsection (c) of this section, be fined not more than $1,000,000, or imprisoned not more than 10 years, or both.
(1) the gross loss to the Government or the gross gain to a defendant is $500,000 or greater; or
(2) the offense involves a conscious or reckless risk of serious personal injury.
The outing of Valarie Plame falls into precisely the same category, as it was specifically designed to ensure that the lead up to war continued apace…
Consummate diplomats like Wilson typically do not speak of “lies.” So outraged was Wilson, though, that this bogus story had been used to “justify” an unprovoked war, that he made a point to note that the already proven dishonesty begs the question regarding “what else they are lying about.”
It was a double whammy. And, as is now well known, the White House moved swiftly-if clumsily (and apparently illegally)-to retaliate.
It was clear from the start that Vice President Dick Cheney and Kemosabe (Amer. Indian for “Scotter”) Libby, as well as Karl Rove, were taking the lead in this operation to make an object lesson of Wilson and his wife.
But there is abundant evidence that senior White House officials were aware of the CIA’s doubts regarding the Niger story long before the State of the Union. Nearly a year earlier, in February 2002, the CIA had dispatched former Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to investigate the claim about uranium purchases. When the CIA debriefed him in March, his findings were emphatic: As Wilson explained in a New York Times op-ed on July 6, “It did not take long to conclude that it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place.” CIA Director George Tenet claimed on July 11 that Wilson was sent to Niger by junior nonproliferation experts at the CIA acting “on their own initiative” and that senior administration officials were unaware of his mission. But this is not true. Wilson was told by CIA officials that the mission had been specifically requested by the office of the vice president. Indeed, Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, told Time magazine that Cheney had “asked a question about the implication of the [uranium] report.” And, as Wilson tells The New Republic, “When an executive agency is tasked to find something out and it gets an answer, it goes back to the person who requested it.” For the White House to suggest that Cheney’s office was unaware of the results of Wilson’s inquiry strains credulity.
Moreover, there is strong evidence that the CIA clearly conveyed its doubts about the Niger allegation to the White House on more than one occasion prior to the State of the Union. When Bush wanted to include the claim in an October 7, 2002, speech in Cincinnati, Tenet personally intervened, imploring Condoleezza Rice’s National Security Council (NSC) deputy, Stephen Hadley, to cut the allegation from the speech, which he did. The idea that no one involved with the State of the Union was aware of this earlier, emphatic intervention is implausible. And when the latter speech was being written, the CIA again raised questions about the Niger assertion. According to The New York Times, when NSC proliferation staffer Robert G. Joseph called his CIA counterpart, Alan Foley, to ask about including the allegation in the State of the Union, Foley told Joseph the CIA was not confident about the information.
Indict Vice President Cheney. Put him under oath.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:06 pmI think the left is clearly delusional over this. Go after Alberto – no one cares. But you can’t get Bush. AND that’s what you want, but your spineless, wimpy party doesn’t have the balls to do it. My party did and we won everything in 2000.
Comment by God Help Us — July 30, 2007 @ 11:33 am
Contrary to what you obviously believe, this isn’t a sport. This isn’t a contest to see which party can get more members of the other party discredited. And it certainly shouldn’t be a one-upmanship show of “neener neener neener my party can impeach and yours can’t!”
Yet that’s how our political system has been cheapened. It’s become a sporting event for far too many people. People choose the team they root for, and they are loyal to that team no matter what. If the referee makes a call against a team for a flagrant foul, the loyal fans of that team will rise in protest, whether the call was a good one or not. Everything is all about “winning” at any cost. Party ahead of country. Party ahead of people. Party ahead of constitution and the law. Rah, rah. We’re numbah one.
Question for you — if our current president was a Democrat, would the Iraq war be acceptable to you? How would you feel about warrantless wiretapping? Voter caging to knock people of your party off the voter rolls? How about firing government employees without cause — or because they refused to engage in illegal activity? Think about Bush and Cheney and everything they have done. And ask yourself if all their actions would be OK with you even if they were Democrats. My guess is that instead of admiring their “balls”, you would be screaming bloody murder.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:07 pmThe chymp is trapped. He can’t fire Gonzo, and the only way out is for Gonzo to stonewall, hoping they won’t impeach him.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:08 pmI always enjoy missmolly’s posts.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:10 pmJUST NOW:
“You must be feelin’ damn old, Jim!” – George W. Bush during a press conference with new British PM Gordon Brown.
Bush was chatting with a reporter who just asked a question about the war. Bush answered but then mentioned it was the reporters birthday, and so the topic of age came up. It ended with Bush saying that… live… on national news…. right after talking about the war.
That’s class. That’s presidential.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:10 pmMy guess is that instead of admiring their “ballsâ€, you would be screaming bloody murder.
Comment by missmolly — July 30, 2007 @ 12:07 pm
Careful, missmolly… their pointy little heads just might start exploding if you keep asking questions like that. But, really, the trolls should be thinking about all of that, ’cause come Jan 2009, a Dem is going to be wielding all those new Presidential superpowers. They should start practicing their squealing ahead of time.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:11 pmThe chymp is trapped. He can’t fire Gonzo, and the only way out is for Gonzo to stonewall, hoping they won’t impeach him.
Comment by RUCerious — July 30, 2007 @ 12:08 pm
Why wouldn’t a single WHer go on Fox to defend Gonzo yesterday???
Geez, it doesn’t get any more user-friendly for the WH that Fox.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:13 pm“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, THE TRUTH IS THE GREATEST ENEMY OF THE STATE.”
– Joseph Goebbels, German Minister of Propaganda, 1933-1945
By: okiemon on September 27, 2006 at 10:24am
“As people do better, they start voting like Republicans – unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing.”
Karl Rove.
“See in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”
GEORGE w. BUSH
Here’s a great comparison of Goebbels to Bush:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/may2005/260505newbushism.htm
July 30th, 2007 at 12:14 pmTRoS:but, just like a 4 year old on a sugar rush, it IS fun, in a slightly train-wreckkish way, to watch.
Comment by whiteyfresh — July 30, 2007 @ 12:02 pm
I just get a little tired of having to hose everything down afterwards, over and over again. And some of the stains ain’t coming out.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:14 pmMORE!
Reporter: “…What has arrived with the new Prime Minister that didn’t come with Tony Blair?”
Bush: “Uuhh… toothpaste? Eh-eh-eh-eh (laughter).”
***This is happening RIGHT NOW, live. Bush and Gordon Browns press conference.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:14 pmaNON byC: ugh……
July 30th, 2007 at 12:17 pmI think I just threw up a little in my mouth.. can I borrow some of Gordon Brown’s toothpaste?
GONZO THE ENABLER
BUSH’S WAR CRIMES
http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/68705,CST-EDT-REF23B.article
EXCERPT:
Because there is no statute of limitations in cases where death resulted from the mistreatment, prosecutors far into the future, not appointed by Bush or beholden to him, would be making the decisions whether to prosecute.
To ”reduce the threat of domestic criminal prosecution under the War Crimes Act,” Gonzales recommended that Bush not apply the Geneva Conventions to al-Qaida and the Taliban. Since the War Crimes Act carried out the Geneva Conventions, Gonzales reasoned that if the Conventions didn’t apply, neither did the War Crimes Act. Bush implemented the recommendation on Feb. 7, 2002.
When the Supreme Court recently decided that the Conventions did apply to al-Qaida and Taliban detainees, the possibility of criminal liability for high-level administration officials reared its ugly head again.
What to do? The administration has apparently decided to secure immunity from prosecution through legislation. Under cover of the controversy involving the military tribunals and whether they could use hearsay or coerced evidence, the administration is trying to pardon itself, hoping that no one will notice. The urgent timetable has to do more than anything with the possibility that the next Congress may be controlled by Democrats, who will not permit such a provision to be adopted.
Creating immunity retroactively for violating the law sets a terrible precedent. The president takes an oath of office to uphold the Constitution; that document requires him to obey the laws, not violate them. A president who knowingly and deliberately violates U.S. criminal laws should not be able to use stealth tactics to immunize himself from liability, and Congress should not go along.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:17 pmLast May, Cheney appeared on Larry King. He stepped in it big time, but few people caught it. I alerted Rude Pundit and he wrote about it.
an excerpt:
Then Cheney made this statement: “In a sense, when you’re at war, you keep prisoners of war until the war is over with.” So, like, if, in a sense, the Gitmo campers are “prisoners of war,” then, in a sense, don’t they get Geneva Conventions protections?
Cheney and Gonzales have been playing a semantics game to justify torture, since “war” was never formally declared. It’s pretty obvious why they chose to embark upon the path of war without ever formally declaring it – so they could not be held accountable for the War Crimes they knew they’d be committing.
Bush tells us every day that we’re at war. Cheney and Gonzales tell us that we’re not REALLY at war.
Problem is, Cheney is on tape stating not only that we are at war, but that we are holding “prisoners of war.”
The Geneva Conventions DO APPLY, and Cheney is guilty of war Crimes.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0505/30/lkl.01.html
KING: They specifically said, though, it was Guantanamo. They compared it to a gulag.
D. CHENEY: Not true. Guantanamo’s been operated, I think, in a very sane and sound fashion by the U.S. military. Remember who’s down there. These are people that were picked up off the battlefield in Afghanistan and other places in the global war on terror. These are individuals who have been actively involved as the enemy, if you will, trying to kill Americans. That we need to have a place where we can keep them. In a sense, when you’re at war, you keep prisoners of war until the war is over with.”
So this is the war without end, and these prisoners will be held forever?
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060227fa_fact
New Yorker
From the article:
Yoo believed that the President’s role as Commander-in-Chief gave him virtually unlimited authority to decide whether America should respond militarily to a terror attack, and, if so, what kind of force to use. “Those decisions, under our Constitution, are for the President alone to make,” he wrote in a law article.
A top Administration official told me that Yoo, Addington, and a few other lawyers had essentially “hijacked policy” after September 11th. “They thought, Now we can put our views into practice. We have the ability to write them into binding law. It was just shocking. These memos were presented as faits accomplis.”
In Yoo’s opinion, he wrote that at Guantánamo cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment of detainees could be authorized, with few restrictions.
“The memo espoused an extreme and virtually unlimited theory of the extent of the President’s Commander-in-Chief authority,”
So this same approach was used across the board. Addington effectively sought to obtain “legal opinions” which were in fact illegal, with the specific intent to provide Bush and Cheney with sufficient legal cover to behave as Dictators and Kings, as there were virtually no laws that applied to them, as determined by edict.
This is where we stand today. There is not one single law that applies to Bush or Cheney. They have found lawyers who were willing to craft opinions stating that they were above the law, and in so doing, have subverted the Constitution of the United States.
This activity was intentional, willful and treasonous.
They were sworn to uphold the constitution.
Given this information, others in a position to do something about it (who also swore under oath to protect the Constitution against all enemies Foreign and DOMESTIC) now have an obligation to fulfill.
They must call for the impeachment of this administration. It is their legal obligation given the evidence before them.
Time to choose sides, folks.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:18 pm#29 – The fact you actually think Hillary is viable in the general shows how out of touch you are. She is about the only thing that could unite the GOP right now. She is very popular among the uneducated, poor and black, but most of them don’t vote. She is very un-popular among those who don’t live off the govt. She can only win if the GOP lets her.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:20 pmMondale, the former number two to Democratic President Jimmy Carter in the late 1970s, in an opinion piece appearing Sunday in the Washington Post newspaper, fingered Cheney as the chief transgressor in a White House guilty of “great excess” and “exceeding its authority.”
He wrote that since the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, “Cheney set out to create a largely independent power center in the office of the vice president.”
“His was an unprecedented attempt not only to shape administration policy but, alarmingly, to limit the policy options sent to the president,” he wrote, calling the George W. Bush administration “seriously off track” in the unprecedented amount of power it has ceded to Cheney.
“Through his vast government experience, through the friends he had been able to place in key positions and through his considerable political skills, he (Cheney) has been increasingly able to determine the answers to questions put to the president — because he has been able to determine the questions,” Mondale continued.
In particular, many of the policy positions Cheney has pushed through on handling terror suspects and the domestic use of intelligence “have proved offensive to the values of the constitution and have been embarrassingly overturned by the courts.”
Mondale also slammed “Cheney’s zealous embrace of secrecy” and his “near total aversion to the notion of accountability” to the public and Congress.
“I’ve never seen a former member of the House of Representatives demonstrate such contempt for Congress and contempt for the will of Congress,” wrote Mondale in The Post.
“It’s almost as if he denies the legitimacy of an equal branch of government,” he added.
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/ExVP_Mondale_accuses_Cheney_of_power_0729.html
July 30th, 2007 at 12:21 pmTRoS:but, just like a 4 year old on a sugar rush, it IS fun, in a slightly train-wreckkish way, to watch.
Comment by whiteyfresh — July 30, 2007 @ 12:02 pm
It is DELICIOUS to watch the trolls play Ricochet Rabbit.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:24 pmComment by God Help Us — July 30, 2007 @ 12:20 pm
What’s her numbers with educated professional under 50 white females? Oh yeah, did I miss your response as to #17 again. Is it poor phrasing, subconscious, or by intent that you link blacks and uneducated in the same sentence?
July 30th, 2007 at 12:25 pmGHU, more BS as usual..
FOX News/Opinion Dynamics Poll. July 17-18, 2007. N=900 registered voters nationwide. MoE ± 3.
LV = likely voters
“Thinking ahead to the next presidential election, if the 2008 general election were held today and the candidates were [see below], for whom would you vote?” Names rotated
Rudy
Giuliani (R) 41%
Hillary
Clinton (D) 46%
John
McCain (R) 42%
Hillary
Clinton (D) 45%
Mitt
Romney (R) 35%
Hillary
Clinton (D) 50%
Fred
Thompson (R) 38%
Hillary
Clinton (D) 47%
And this is a Fox News poll, which are usually slanted 3-5 points toward the Repugnicant candidate.
GHU, stuff this data up your posterior orifice.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:25 pmLOL you idiot GOPers have truly lost your minds. The fact that you don’t see a problem with Bush decimating our Justice dept. shows just how stupid you are.
You ally yourselves with these Neocon liars and criminals when the truth is, none of you have any money, none of you even come close to qualifying for any of his tax breaks. You are just blind lemmings who want to push your ridiculous pseudo christian agenda. Your party has had MORE INDICTMENTS and MORE IMPRISONED ELECTED MEMBERS than EVER IN HISTORY.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:34 pmCunningham is singing like a bird, we will see more and more indictments coming along to go along with the already mind boggling number of imprisoned GOP members.
You are all goin’ down. 26 percenters are the dumbest people in America.
Im suprised they can even type.
Say bye bye to the GOP, your neocon criminal pals have destroyed it completely.
GOP issynonomous with CRIMINAL and everyone knows it.
All you bible bangers preach your crap, like VItter, when the entire time you are committing the very crimes you claim to be against. Funny how you don’t see DEMS being arrested for paying whores or for screwing male interns….
Crooks and Liars lacking any morality is all you are. If Jesus could see all the neocons using his name in vain, he’d be damn disappointed.
All of you will burn in hell with Falwell
Nope Gonzales lied like a dog to the Congress, but now Leahy wants to cut him some slack to alter his testimony.
Sen Leahy > as a former prosecutor you know damn well that lying under oath is perjury and nobody in a court of law gets to change their testimony after the fact.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:36 pm#29 – The fact you actually think Hillary is viable in the general shows how out of touch you are. She is about the only thing that could unite the GOP right now. She is very popular among the uneducated, poor and black, but most of them don’t vote. She is very un-popular among those who don’t live off the govt. She can only win if the GOP lets her.
Comment by God Help Us — July 30, 2007 @ 12:20 pm
She is very popular among the uneducated and poor, but most of them don’t vote.
the uneducated and poor – Geez, what’cha got against all those folks in Kansas and Arkansas and Texas tath belive the Earth isonly 6,000 yrs old, and BTW, tended to vote for Bush?
Insted of posting irrational smears, try making a point.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:38 pm#49 – Fox News is biased to favor the GOP – by your own admittance. They show Hillary ahead to convince Dems that she can win …
I would go with Gallup or Rasmussen that show her support cannot break 46-48%. She is simply too divisive. Her unfavorables right now are around 48%. The campaign hasn’t even started yet and her msm coverage has been nothing less than fawning.
Wait til we get our hands on Hitlery. She won’t know what hit her. AND neither will you fools. Thanks for lowering the political discourse – we won’t use any tactics that weren’t used again Bush.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:39 pmShe can only win if the GOP lets her.
Comment by God Help Us — July 30, 2007 @ 12:20 pm
Many of us don’t favor Hillary either. But we’ll win the election with the candidate we have, whoever that is, even if it’s not the candidate we want.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:41 pm#52 – Hillary appeals to idiots who don’t vote and white elites who yearn for the days of Stalin’s Russia. That was the point.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:41 pmIt is DELICIOUS to watch the trolls play Ricochet Rabbit.
Comment by shane — July 30, 2007 @ 12:24 pm
There is an entertaining quality to it, isn’t there? Uh, we did lock up all the pointy metal objects – scissors, forks, etc? And the paste is the edible kind, correct? You’d think their own side would at least provide them w/ protective head gear, don’t you? I guess dealing w/ self-inflicted head trauma is just part of being a troll.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:41 pm#52 – Hillary appeals to idiots who don’t vote and white elites who yearn for the days of Stalin’s Russia. That was the point.
Comment by God Help Us — July 30, 2007 @ 12:41 pm
Unfortunately, that’s totally incoherent no matter how you phrase it. We’ve had the “Stalinist” sh*t run into the ground around here. This only the 700th or so time someone tried to drop the “S” bomb.
YAWN… what else ya got, or don’t got, as the case may be…
July 30th, 2007 at 12:44 pmHillary appeals to idiots who don’t vote and white elites who yearn for the days of Stalin’s Russia. That was the point.
Comment by God Help Us — July 30, 2007 @ 12:41 pm
As opposed to what, Bushco, that appeals to Hitler loving facists. And it’s the GOPers who don’t believe in science, ie. evolution and global warming. You should go to Red States if you feel like calling voters idiots.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:46 pm#52 – Hillary appeals to idiots who don’t vote and white elites who yearn for the days of Stalin’s Russia. That was the point.
Comment by God Help Us — July 30, 2007 @ 12:41 pm
Does this make any sense to anyone? GHU is it too much to ask to get that #17 response?.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:47 pmDiageo/Hotline Poll conducted by Financial Dynamics. July 19-22, 2007. N=801 registered voters nationwide. MoE ± 3.5.
.
“Now thinking about the next election for president in 2008, if the election for U.S. president were held today, would you be voting for the Democratic candidate or the Republican candidate?” Options rotated
7/19-22/07
Republican Candidate 27
Democratic Candidate 51
Neither (vol.) 5
Unsure 17
GHU, you can have 2/3 of the undecided (12) and all the neithers and you’re still going to get your ass handed to you.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:48 pmGHU’s ass, meet GHU, dumbfu(k.
But we’ll win the election with the candidate we have, whoever that is, even if it’s not the candidate we want.
Comment by shane — July 30, 2007 @ 12:41 pm
Indeed, Shane.
We win elections w/ the candidate we have, not the candidate we wish we had. There are known knowns, and there are unknown knowns. There are known unknowns and there are things we think we know but can’t know, things we know we know but don’t know, things we don’t know we know…
Shit… I’m beginning to sound like a GOOPer. Maybe I should have myself waterboarded so I can get some straight answers out of myself!
July 30th, 2007 at 12:48 pmTRoS, why is it our job to lock up the pointy objects and the glue? They’re fighting a war against the constitution and if there are casualties, oh well.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:49 pmI love the theory “Fox News is biased to favor the GOP – by your own admittance. They show Hillary ahead to convince Dems that she can win” that GHU throws out there.
Pefect illustration of the bankruptcy of his position.
Not only does he acknowledge that Fox is biased, he goes further and says that the reason Fox polls show Hillary beating every GOP candidate head-to-head is because Fox is willing to manipulate facts and outright lie in order to achieve its right-wing agenda.
So, to sum up: either GHU is wrong, and Hllary is a much stronger candidate than he wants to admit, or GHU is right and he recognizes that Fox has no credibility as a news organization.
Which is it, GHU?
July 30th, 2007 at 12:50 pmShit… I’m beginning to sound like a GOOPer. Maybe I should have myself waterboarded so I can get some straight answers out of myself!
Comment by The Republic of Stupidity — July 30, 2007 @ 12:48 pm
Or you could go get a job with a Repuke candidate. Their voters love this doublespeak/nonspeak. They think something important has been said that they just didn’t understand, again.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:52 pmTRoS, why is it our job to lock up the pointy objects and the glue? They’re fighting a war against the constitution and if there are casualties, oh well.
Comment by shane — July 30, 2007 @ 12:49 pm
Just worried about the liability issues for the house. Some of those trolls look like they’re capable of really hurting themselves.
July 30th, 2007 at 12:59 pmWhich is it, GHU?
Comment by mikey r — July 30, 2007 @ 12:50 pm
If it’s the latter, I would think he would no longer use FOX as a basis for any of his arguments.
July 30th, 2007 at 1:02 pmCrap mikey, GHU’s head just exploded as it tried to puzzle out what you just said.
July 30th, 2007 at 1:08 pmCrap mikey, GHU’s head just exploded as it tried to puzzle out what you just said.
Comment by RUCerious — July 30, 2007 @ 1:08 pm
My momma always told me to try to do at least one good deed a day. I guess I can take the rest of today off now.
July 30th, 2007 at 1:17 pmFrom Glenn Greenwald at Salon:
“What was the administration doing prior to 2004 that was so illegal that the entire top level of the DOJ threatened to quit over it? It’s nice that the Senate Judiciary Committee wants a criminal investigation concerning Gonzales’ perjury.
But the real criminal investigation that is needed here — and that has been needed for quite some time — is an investigation over the underlying surveillance crimes — both warrantless eavesdropping and whatever else it was that they were doing that caused the DOJ mutiny on the ground that it was against the law.”
Precisely. Let’s hope that Leahy understands this also…I think that he does.
July 30th, 2007 at 1:50 pmIn an article by Ariel Natan Pasko and Arutz Sheva in the Israel National News, 3-26-03 / 22Adar 5763, titled This War Is For Us, the authors state that:
“JERUSALEM – Of course this war against Iraq and Saddam Hussein is for us. Even the anti-Semites, like Patrick J. Buchanan and Congressman Jim Moran know it.
“However, we already knew that this war is for us, i.e., the Jews and Israel. Chazal our sages throughout the ages have explained the Torah [the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament: ed.], telling us that everything that happens in the world is for the benefit of the Jewish People.
“Simply put another way, if all the world is a stage, then the Jews and especially those in the Land of Israel are the lead actors on the stage of history, and the goyim nations, i.e. the gentiles have supporting roles, while the evildoers are props and background scenery.
“As our tradition states, G-D – the great playwright created the world for the sake of the Jewish People, and it is our responsibility to implement the Torah absolute morality and the blueprint of creation in it.
“Stop and think for a moment: the last Gulf War in 1991 ended erev just before Purim. This Gulf War began motzei just after Shushan Purim. Get the picture? In between, “The Jews had light, and gladness, and joy, and honor.” (Book of Esther 8:16) [end excerpting article]
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/article.php3?id=2125
July 30th, 2007 at 2:20 pm“#8 – I wish Congress would get back to the work of the American people. This witch hunt is turning off moderate voters.”
In your dreams. The last poll conducted found that something like 57% of those polled want the Democrats to run the country whereas only 34% wanted the Republicans to run the country. There are a lot of “moderates” in that 57% and I suspect there are even some Republicans. All the Republicans I know are angry and embarrassed about what their party has become and unless they do something to bring the party back to the real Republican values, they will all be voting Democratic in the next election.
July 30th, 2007 at 3:26 pm“This only the 700th or so time someone tried to drop the “S†bomb.
YAWN… what else ya got, or don’t got, as the case may be…”
This must be the new Right Wing buzz-word. I think they have worn out Islamofascists so now the word is Stalinist? That makes no more sense than the Islamofascist buss-word did.
It’s really too bad that the trolls can’t get into an intelligent conversation. All they can do is to make stuff up and then get all indignant when they are asked to prove what they say.
July 30th, 2007 at 3:29 pm