Bush & Rove are America's Enemies

Started by hub_spinner, Apr 26 06 07:55

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[A href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/04/27/rove_bush/index_np.html"][FONT size=2]http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/04/27/rove_bush/index_np.html[/FONT][/A] [H1]The passion of George W. Bush[/H1] [P id=deck]The president doesn't care that he is reviled. He is a martyr, and someday all will see his glory. Meanwhile, he's got Karl doing his dirty work.

 [P id=byline]By Sidney Blumenthal

 [DIV class=clearfix id=article_tools] [DIV class=right][img alt="Karl Rove and President Bush" src="http://www.salon.com/opinion/blumenthal/2006/04/27/rove_bush/story.jpg"]
[/DIV][/DIV][/DIV]<=article_body> <="article body">  [DIV class=article_photo_right] [P class=article_photo_credit]AP Photo/Ron Edmonds

 [P class=article_photo_caption]Karl Rove and President Bush

 [P class=article_photo_credit]

  [!-- ends article_photo_right --] The urgent dispatch of Karl Rove to the business of maintaining one-party rule in the midterm elections is the Bush White House's belated startle reflex to its endangerment. Besieged by crises of his own making, plummeting to ever lower depths in the polls week after week, Bush has assigned his political general to muster dwindling forces for a heroic offensive to break out of the closing ring. If the Democrats gain control of the House or Senate they will launch a thousand subpoenas to establish the oversight that has been abdicated by the Republican Congress.   In his acceptance speech before the Republican National Convention in 2004, the "war president" spoke of "greatness" and "resolve" and repeatedly promised "a safer world" and "security," and compared himself "to a resolute president named Truman." Afterward, Bush declared he had had his "accountability moment"; further debate was unnecessary; the future was settled.   But Rove's elaborate design for Republican rule during the second term has collapsed under the strain of his grandiosity. In 2004, Rove galvanized "the base" (ironically, "al-Qaida" in Arabic) through ruthless divide-and-conquer and slash-and-burn tactics. But with Bush winning the election by a bare 50.73 percent, he failed to forge the unassailable Republican realignment that he sought.

     

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 [FONT face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" color=#990000 bgcolor="#FFFFFF"][FONT style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: #ff4040" color=#000000]Chicken-Hawk Dough-Boy Karl Rove Facing Heat[/FONT][/FONT] [FONT face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" color=#990000 size=6 bgcolor="#FFFFFF"][FONT color=#000000]Paper: Fitzgerald considering perjury, obstruction charges against Rove[/FONT][/FONT]  [A href="http://rawstory.com/"][FONT color=#ff0000]RAW STORY[/FONT][/A]
[FONT face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color=#990000 size=1][FONT face="Times New Roman, Times, serif" color=#000000 size=1]Published: Wednesday April 26, 2006[/FONT][/FONT]

  [FORM id=frm_print_me action=http://www.rawstory.com/admin/dbscripts/printstory.php?story=1953 method=post]Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is said to be mulling perjury or obstruction of justice charges according to Thursday's [A href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-042606rove_lat,0,4307366,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines"]Los Angeles Times[/A], [A href="http://rawstory.com/"][FONT color=#ff0000]RAW STORY[/FONT][/A] can report. Excerpts.[/FORM]

 [H2]White House political advisor Karl Rove today went to a courthouse where he testified for the fifth time before a federal grand jury investigating his role in the CIA leak case.[/H2] "He's testifying now, and is doing so voluntarily," Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Rove, told Bloomberg news service.

 After several hours, Rove was photographed leaving the courthouse. It was not known whether he would return.

 Rove has been under scrutiny over whether he promptly disclosed to investigators and the grand jury conversations he had with journalists about CIA officer Valerie Plame, whose identity was leaked to the media in the summer of 2003. It is a crime to disclose the identity of a covert CIA agent.

 Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald is believed to be considering perjury or obstruction charges against Rove or charges that he offered misstatements to investigators.

 [A href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-042606rove_lat,0,4307366,print.story?coll=la-home-headlines"]FULL STORY HERE[/A]


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 [TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=4 width="100%" border=0] [TBODY] [TR] [TD width="80%"] [FONT face=Verdana size=2]April 23, 2006[/FONT]

 [FONT face=Verdana color=#000080 size=4]Lies from the Whitehouse; David Broder Says We Have to Take the President at His Word[/FONT]

[/TD] [TD width="25%"] [DIV align=center] [SCRIPT language=DOH!Script] document.write ("[a href=\"http://www.opednews.com/tellafriend.php?page="+location.XXXX) document.write ("\" target=\"_blank\"]") [/SCRIPT]  [SCRIPT language=DOH!Script] document.write ("[/a]") [/SCRIPT]  [/DIV][/TD][/TR] [TR] [TD width="75%"] [P align=left][FONT face=Verdana size=2]by Rob Kall[/FONT]

[/TD][/TR][/TBODY][/TABLE] [P align=left][FONT face=Verdana size=1][A href="http://www.opednews.com/"]http://www.opednews.com[/A][/FONT]

 [P align=left][FONT face=Verdana size=2]On Meet the Press today, David Broder said that we should take the President at his word. I would argue that there are probably close to 100 million or more Americans who do NOT take the president at his word, who consider him to be a pathological liar.

So where do we go with that? We don't believe the liar in chief. We don't trust him. We listen to what he says and assume the statements are peppered with lies.

I'd say the same, perhaps even worse applies to Vice President Dick Cheney. He is more despised, mistrusted and not believed.

What effect does this mistrust have on the nation? I would assume that the rest of the world feels the same way about Bush and Cheney, that there are literally billions of people who consider Bush and Cheney to be liars who can not and should not be trusted.

And so, we have Scott McClellan leaving. This presents an opportunity, with a tiny, tiny, miniscule possibility for truth.

Bush could appoint someone who the people of the US and the world trust. A naive idea, yes. It is the nature of the office of Whitehouse press secretary to prevaricate, isn't it? Well, maybe it isn't. Maybe the toxic level in the Whitehouse has brought us to a point where we just assume that the replacement for Scott McClellan will be another liar. But maybe that doesn't have to be. Maybe there is some fleeting vestige of integrity in one of the advisors at the Whitehouse-- no, not Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld or Condi Rice. They are a blend of liar and co-conspirators at perpetuating fraud. They should be receiving regular mainstream media coverage villifying their roles in perpetrating the lies that led us into war in Iraq.

But maybe there is someone there who could argue that the Whitehouse is such a laughed at joke that it desperately needs someone who is honest enough to help instill trust back in the Whitehouse.

I may be fantasizing that there is any such person, that even George Washington would be seen as a dupe to these chronic liars.

The thought that there is talk of taking one of the sleazeballs at Fox News-- Shepard Smith's name has been raised-- is really funny, like plastic vomit--funny, but disgusting. Could they really think that he will be at all trusted or believed by any but the diehard thirty some percent of greedy wealthy, religious extremists and macho guys who use Bush tough talk for vicarious Viagra support.

No, it is highly unlikely that there is a person who will be able to replace McClellan who will be any more trustworthy. We can expect more of the same sandbagging, stonewalling and flat out lying that we've been getting.

The world is used to it. We in the US are used to it. But why can't the mainstream media start making it part of the news-- making jokes about anything the whitehouse says, commenting on how lame the lies are.

It's about time.[/FONT]


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[A href="http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/index.php?ntid=81668&ntpid=0"]http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/index.php?ntid=81668&ntpid=0[/A]

   [DIV id=captimesHeader]John Nichols: Citizens are out front on impeachment

[DIV id=captimesSUBheader]

[DIV id=captimesByline]By John Nichols, April 27, 2006

Inside the Beltway, legislators have been slow to support moves to censure or impeach President Bush and other members of the administration.  Only 33 members of the U.S. House of Representatives have signed on as co-sponsors of Congressman John Conyers' resolution calling for the creation of a select investigative committee. It would be charged with reviewing the administration's preparations for war before receiving congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, and retaliation against critics such as former Ambassador Joe Wilson. The committee could make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.

 Only two members of the Senate have agreed to co-sponsor Sen. Russ Feingold's proposal to censure the president for illegally ordering the warrantless wiretapping of phone conversations of Americans.

 Outside the Beltway, legislators are far more comfortable with censure and impeachment at least in the state of Vermont. Sixty-nine Vermont legislators, 56 members of the state House and 14 members of the Senate, have signed a letter urging Congress to initiate investigations to determine if censure or impeachment of members of the administration might be necessary.

 [TABLE style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 0px 0px" cellPadding=0 width=200 align=left bgColor=#ebebec] [TBODY] [TR] [TD vAlign=top align=middle][A onclick="OpenPopup('http://www.madison.com/tct/photo.php?image=/images/articles/tct/2006/04/26/27319.jpg',515, 350);" href="http://www.madison.com/tct/opinion/column/index.php?ntid=81668&ntpid=0#"][img class=Caphomeimg2 height=133 alt="John Nichols: Citizens are out front on impeachment" src="http://www.madison.com/images/articles/tct/2006/04/26/27319_thumb.jpg" width=199 border=0][/A][/TD][/TR] [TR] [TD vAlign=top align=left] [DIV id=greybox] [DIV id=captimesPhotoLinks]AP Photo/Orange County Register, Jebb Harris

[DIV class=photostory]President George W. Bush addresses The Orange County Business Council in Irvine, Calif., on Monday, [/DIV][/DIV][/TD][/TR][/TBODY][/TABLE] The letter, penned by state Rep. Richard Marek, suggests that Bush's manipulations of intelligence prior to the launch of the Iraq war, his support of illegal domestic surveillance programs and other actions demand that Congress determine whether the time has come for "setting in motion the constitutional process for possible removal from office." Marek, a Democrat, is from Newfane, Vt., where voters made international news in March by calling for the impeachment of Bush at their annual town meeting.

 Noting that his town and a half-dozen other Vermont communities have called for impeachment, as has the state Democratic Party, Marek told the Rutland Herald, "Vermonters from across the state have expressed concerns with the president's actions and have displayed that through resolutions, meetings and petitions. I thought it was important to put our voices down as supporting an investigation and possible censure and impeachment."

 The letter, which will be delivered to members of Vermont's congressional delegation including Rep. Bernie Sanders, a co-sponsor of the Conyers resolution is just one of a number of fresh impeachment-related initiatives in Vermont.

 State Rep. David Zuckerman, a Burlington legislator who is a member of Vermont's Progressive Party, plans to introduce a resolution next week asking for the state legislature to call on the U.S. House to open impeachment hearings. Parliamentary procedures developed by Thomas Jefferson as vice president in the early years of the United States, and still used by the U.S. House as a supplement to that chamber's standing rules, have been interpreted as giving state legislatures at least some authority to trigger impeachment proceedings. Zuckerman's resolution responds to calls from Vermonters to take that dramatic step.

 Several county Democratic parties in Vermont also have urged the state legislature to take advantage of the opening created by "Jefferson's Manual," which suggests impeachment proceedings can be provoked "by charges transmitted from the legislature of a state."

 There's no question that Vermont is in the lead, but legislators in other states are also exploring their options for pressing Congress to act on articles of impeachment. A trio of Democratic state representatives in Illinois Karen A. Yarbrough and Sara Feigenholtz from the Chicago area and Eddie Washington from Waukegan has introduced a measure similar to the one Zuckerman is preparing in Vermont. The bill urges the Illinois General Assembly to call on the U.S. House to initiate impeachment proceedings against Bush.

 In Pennsylvania, state Sen. Jim Ferlo, D-Pittsburgh, has launched a public campaign urging his constituents to sign petitions calling for Congress to launch an impeachment inquiry. Ferlo, a former Pittsburgh City Council president, says it's entirely appropriate for state officials and citizens to add their voices to the impeachment debate.

 [/TBULL /][/TINIT 36='""' /]"Impeachment proceedings are now the most important issue facing our nation," Ferlo says. "The debate and opinions expressed should not be limited to the views of journalists, legal scholars, intelligence officials and just a few politicians. Every American must confront this issue and speak out loudly and clearly. This is one opportunity to do so."

 John Nichols is associate editor of The Capital Times.