Today when Bootlick Atty Gen. Mukasey gave his speech he asked for Congress to issue a new AUMF for the Bush admin. If this doesn't send out warning bells to every citizen, then they are just plain braindead.

As part of the plan, the administration also wants Congress to "reaffirm," nearly seven years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, that the United States "remains engaged in an armed conflict with al Qaeda" and other terrorist groups. The administration used Congress’s original affirmation of an armed conflict, three days after 9/11, not only to invade Afghanistan, but also to incarcerate enemy combatants without trial and to conduct wiretaps on Americans without a court warrant.NYTimes

Over the last couple years many have called on Congress to rescind the current AUMF since Bush uses it as a excuse for many illegal acts including Torture.

For a while now the media has been covering how the International Criminal Court had issued a Arrest Warrant and had Indicted Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president for War Crimes. Today Mark Levine, a professor of Middle East history at the University of California, drew the parallel to Bush.

"Bashir was directly responsible [for the activities of the militias]. He is the president. He is the commander-in-chief. Those are not just formal words. He used the whole state apparatus. He used the army; he enrolled the militia/Janjaweed. They all report to him. They all obey him. His control is absolute."

In such context, Bush is also directly responsible for the horrific disaster in Iraq.

Bush's imperial presidency, with its "Unitary Executive" and arrogation of the right to declare war from the constitutionally-appointed Congress, has similarly "used the whole state apparatus" to wage the Iraq war. He "enrolled" our soldiers and his military commanders who "all report to him".

Wednesday Judge Walker, of the famous FISA cases, rules that Bush is not more powerful than FISA no matter what Bush says. How this will effect , if at all, the other FISA cases is yet to be known. For one thing this case is against the Government, not the Telecoms so the Immunity Sellout would not of affected it anyway.

WASHINGTON — A federal judge in California said Wednesday that the wiretapping law established by Congress was the "exclusive" means for the president to eavesdrop on Americans, and he rejected the government’s claim that the president’s constitutional authority as commander in chief trumped that law.

A quick glance does raise a few questions for me, the layman, by rejecting the claims of authority that should mean Bush broke the Law. If Bush broke the law, then the authority he gave the Telecoms is null and void right ?

While we have all been worrying about the Telecom Immunity and the other changes to the FISA Laws Rep. Obey has quietly made sure the FBI doesn't have the money to do more harm. Obey and his Appropriations Comm. voted down a big 11 Million Dollar expansion of the FBI's datamining.

Earlier today, a House appropriators voted to pull $11 million to expand a controversial FBI data-mining project, after the Bureau repeatedly stiff-armed Congressmen and their gumshoes in the Government Accountability Office.

"By refusing to answer even the most basic questions about this program, the Department of Justice has given us little choice.  In fact, we’re only doing what they told us to do," said Congressman Brad Miller in a statement. "The Department of Justice... said that if Congress didn’t like what they were doing, we could pull their funding.  Well, that’s what we’ve done... Until an agency can provide reasonable explanations, and assurances that our citizens’ privacy won’t be violated, it would be irresponsible to give the Department of Justice this large increase in funds. " http://blog.wired.com/...

Yup, a Federal Judge has ruled that the NSA can wiretap a attorney and cannot be forced to admit it. If your calls with your attorney were swept up in Bushs Illegal Warrantless Wiretapping scheme then they are free to use whatever it was they heard. There is no fruit of the poison tree even if illegally collected.

WASHINGTON --
The National Security Agency does not need to tell lawyers for Guantánamo Bay detainees whether their phones were tapped as part of the Bush administration's domestic surveillance program, a federal judge ruled Wednesday.

So when a Lawyer calls a witness to see what they have to say they must take care that whatever is said could be used against them. If they need privacy they should travel and do all communications face to face in some kind of Safe Room.

While publicly playing the tough guys both Conyers and Sanchez are playing another game behind the scenes. Conyers has claimed they have have yet to receive any formal notice that the Pres. is asserting privilege, but it is being reported that the White House has ordered Rove not to testify.

House Judiciary Committee Democrats on Monday renewed their demand that former White House political adviser Karl Rove testify publicly on the politicization of the Justice Department but suggested they may accept a compromise in which Rove would be interviewed in private without taking an oath to tell the truth.

House Dems may accept unsworn statements from Rove

So much for all the tough talk. Next step is a meaningfully mean letter right ?

 It's beginning to look like that so-called Security Agreement Bush has been trying so hard to slip past Congress is going to come back and bite him in the ass. According Micheal Ware of CNN is warning that the Ieaqis may just decide to " take over this War ".

Maliki and others are not happy with many of the rules Bush wants. Things like 60 US bases, Immunity for Blackwater and the other contractors, control of the Iraqi Airspace, among other things. Ware told CNN tonight that if the Iraqi Parliament can get it together to pass the right laws that Bush could be forced to start the withdrawls before he leaves office. Talk about Bush being a laughing stock. His poor ego would not be able to handle being seny home with his tail between his legs. Personally I can't think of a more fitting end to this fiasco of Bush's Ego.

I don't know anything much about Gov. Kaine except for what I read in this Editorial. I can tell you I think Obama could do much worse. Being the Gov. of Virginia means he will take a lot of heat for this choice and a move like this could take him off the list or move him up in the rankings. I vote for moving him up in the ranking.

VIRGINIA GOV. Timothy M. Kaine (D), a confidant of Barack Obama's and the first governor outside Illinois to endorse the senator's bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, is routinely mentioned as a vice-presidential prospect. Many politicians in his position might bend or suspend principle to keep such prospects alive. But this week, Mr. Kaine commuted the death sentence of a mentally deficient triple killer to life in prison without parole. Under the circumstances, the decision, which could well provide convenient fodder for Republican attack ads in a national campaign, was courageous as well as fair-minded and fact-based.

Today in a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs two members of the Iraqi Parliament  told members of Congress several new truths. One was that the only reason there was so much violence in Iraq was because the US Troops were there. That the violence was not pointed at Iraqis but at the Occupier's and that it would end when a Timetable was in place.

A interesting aside is that the only Hawkish member of the House present was Dana Rohrbacker, and he is nuts anyway. The only other Republican present almost flat out apologized for the War, stating we went in on a lie and he knew it now. More on the flipside

Asia Times via ThinkProgress is reporting a attack on the Iranian Quds Force. The story also say the "Senator Diane Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Senator Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, said they would write a New York Times op-ed piece "within days"."  This should come as no surprise if it happens.

NEW YORK - The George W Bush administration plans to launch an air strike against Iran within the next two months, an informed source tells Asia Times Online, echoing other reports that have surfaced in the media in the United States recently.

Two key US senators briefed on the attack planned to go public with their opposition to the move, according to the source, but their projected New York Times op-ed piece has yet to appear.

Most of us know Vincent Bugliosi as the man who prosecuted Charlie Manson, Mass Murders, and as the author of the book Helter Skelter. Tomorrow Bugliosi's new book, " The Prosecution of George W. Bush For Murder", will be released. The shit should hit the fan shortly after that if there is still justice in America. I have spent this morning reading excerpts, watching video, and digesting the information.

If Bush were impeached, convicted in the Senate, and removed from office, he'd still be a free man, still be able to wake up in the morning with his cup of coffee and freshly squeezed orange juice and read the morning paper, still travel widely and lead a life of privilege, still belong to his country club and get standing ovations whenever he chose to speak to the Republican faithful. This, for being responsible for over 100,000 horrible deaths?* For anyone interested in true justice, impeachment alone would be a joke for what Bush did. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

 In what I can only call shocking, Muskasey while giving a commencement speech at the Boston College Law School tried to defend John Yoo, one of the authors of the Torture Memos.  The dodges he use are insulting, even more so since being used to a crowd of Lawyers and Law Professors. They had to have seen through his ploys, and if it had been my graduation I would of had to walk out.

After some time setting up his straw dog it comes down to his basic argument. Tough Times call for tough readings of the Law, consequences be damned.

In short, the message sent to our national security lawyers in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks was clear; it was bipartisan; and it was all but unanimous.  It was that the legal culture in our intelligence agencies, and in the Justice Department, was too risk-averse.  It needed to be more aggressive, it needed to push to the limits of the law, to give policymakers and operators the most flexibility possible to confront the existential threat of international terrorism. Transcript

A breath of fresh air in this time came today when the Canadian Supreme Court voted 9-0 in a ruling signed simply " by the Court " that the records of all interrogations of the child soldier Omar Khadr, and any other records held by the Canadian Gov. be released to his Attys. They chose to follow their countrys constitution and laws, unlike our own gov.
 

The Supreme Court of Canada has ordered the federal government to hand over information to alleged terrorist Omar Khadr that it gleaned from interrogation sessions that Canadian agents held with him in 2003.

Now 21, Mr. Khadr's U. S. war-crimes trial is scheduled to begin later this year. His lawyers are seeking the material in order to prepare his defense.

The 9-0 decision – signed simply "by the Court" – said that Mr. Khadr is entitled to any records of the interviews, regardless of what form they are in. It stated that he must also be given any information that Canadian authorities have given to their US counterparts as a direct consequence of conducting the interviews.

Barack Obama has put the Media Giants that have been buying up smaller newspaper, tv and radio stations on notice that his Dept. of Justice will resume looking into Anti Trust Violations. At the same time he also warned Big Pharma about some of the deals that are suspect of price gouging and problems with the Generics Market. This is a major policy shift from what we have seen in the last 7 yrs and maybe longer.

"I will assure that we will have an antitrust division that is serious about pursuing cases," the Illinois senator told an audience of mostly senior citizens in Oregon.

"There are going to be areas, in the media for example where we're seeing more and more consolidation, that I think (it) is legitimate to ask...is the consumer being served?"

Bush today in his speech in Israel made a startling claim in regards to his own Sec. of Def. From that speech:

"Some seem to believe we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along," Bush told the Israeli lawmakers. "We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: 'Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.' We have an obligation to call this what it is -- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Yesterday Sec. Gates had this to say :

The United States should construct a combination of incentives and pressure to engage Iran, and may have missed earlier opportunities to begin a useful dialogue with Tehran, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday.

There is a disturbing narrative running unchecked across the web. This same narrative is not even mentioned in the traditional media. For the last 20 or more years this country has filled jails and prison, clogged the courts, and ruined many a life all in the name of Law and Order. It is only slightly ironic that after all of this, something that has change to US for the worse, when it should be applied for one of the best reasons, has been judged as politically bad for the nation.

It the recent Newsweek, Dahlia Lithwick, a gifted writer who has focused on the real truths all through this Administration, joined the same dangerous narrative. Glenn Greenwald, a kind of web hero to many of the Progressives against the last 7 yrs responded to me during a Q&A at Firedoglake, that he felt the same way as laid in Dahlias article. To be very clear, Glenn also said if he were appointed our new Atty. Gen., his first act would be the opposite. Have you figured out the narrative yet ?

Yesterday Chairman Jerrold Nadler, of the  House Judiciary Constitution, Civil Rights & Civil Liberties Subcmte. held a hearing with 4 expert witnesses. Well, 3 experts and admin. shill Prof. Rivkin. It has been shown on Cspan twice that I know of, once very early this morning and currently ending up now on Cspan 3. At this hearing many interesting facts came out for the first time. One of those facts was about the "Ticking Bomb Defense"

"Radio silence was the response when today’s witnesses were asked to identify a single example of a true ‘ticking bomb’ scenario ever occurring, even though such scenarios are often invoked to justify torture," Conyers said. "These scholars, who have studied this issue extensively and have intimate knowledge of the legal authority the Administration sought, could not identify a single example. I hope that the Administration officials who have agreed to testify will shed some light on this and many other questions raised in today’s hearing."

"Obliteration" speaks for itself. This morning on CNN Hillary was asked flatout if Iran was attacked Israel is she meant she would a Nuke on Iran. When she used the word  Obliteration , did she mean a nuclear bomb would be used ? She said that the word speaks for itself.She went on when pressed what she meant, she said it means "Massive Retaliation".  She struck fear deep in my heart in the same way I felt when the rumors Bush jr. was running for Pres. started yrs ago.

I'm quoting as best I can but it may not be exact, but it is damn close. She was also asked if she would attack Iran over their supplying of weapons and training to Iraqis ? She ducked and weaved around that direct question, sounding just like GWBush when he is asked the same question.