Things That Just Piss Me Off

Craig pleads guilty in airport restroom incident
By Jared S. Hopkins
Times-News writer

Senator Larry Craig’s Arrest Report Here.

WASHINGTON - A report Monday that U.S. Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, was arrested in June on charges of lewd conduct in a Minnesota airport men’s room left Idaho’s political circle stunned and unsure of how to react.

Craig was arrested June 11 at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport by a plain-clothes police officer looking into complaints about activity in a public restroom, Roll Call, a news organization that intensely covers Capitol Hill, reported on its Web site Monday.

The revelation, coming nearly 20 days after Craig quietly entered a guilty plea, paid a fine and was placed on a year’s probation, prompted the state’s senior senator to resign as the Senate co-chair of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign.

“He didn’t want to be a distraction, and we accept his decision,” the Romney campaign told CNN.

I bet they do.

In a statement released late Monday, Craig said he did nothing improper.

“At the time of this incident, I complained to the police that they were misconstruing my actions. I was not involved in any inappropriate conduct,” Craig said. “I should have had the advice of counsel in resolving this matter. In hindsight, I should not have pled guilty. I was trying to handle this matter myself quickly and expeditiously.”

So he was caught. He plead guilty. He now says he wasn’t. This surprise anyone? It shouldn’t. Par for the course for politicians who break the law.

News and Media Blog
Things That Just Piss Me Off

As each of Bush’s cronies is removed, another takes their place. Bush seems to have a neverending list of cronies with no qualifications to appoint into positions of authority. Birds of a feather flock together.

Chris McElroy aka NameCritic

WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush on Monday said he reluctantly accepted the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, whose “good name was dragged through the mud for political reasons.”

After months of standing by his top prosecutor and “close friend,” Bush spoke briefly in Texas to praise Gonzales, saying the attorney general endured “unfair treatment that has created harmful distraction at the Justice Department.”

I agree. Gonzales lying under oath was a harmful distraction to say, actually doing his job and not firing US Attorneys for political reasons. Totally unfair he was treated badly for committing perjury. Totally unfair. You should expect people that Bush appoints to be liars and cheats and you should let them alone to continue to lie and cheat.

Bush said it’s “sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person” is impeded “from doing important work.”

Like firing anyone who disagrees with the Bush administration.

Although Bush had long stood by Gonzales, many members of Congress from both sides of the aisle had called on him to quit after the firing of several U.S. attorneys in 2006 — terminations which were alleged to have been politically motivated.

Senior Justice Department officials say Gonzales’ resignation is not expected to affect the scope or pace of an ongoing internal investigation into the U.S. attorneys’ dismissals and other issues.

“Alberto Gonzales was never the right man for this job,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Monday. “He lacked independence, he lacked judgment and he lacked the spine to say no to Karl Rove.” Rove, another longtime Bush official and his top political adviser, also resigned this month.

“This resignation is not the end of the story,” Reid warned. “Congress must get to the bottom of this mess and follow the facts where they lead, into the White House.”

Yeah, like that will happen.

News and Media Blog
Most Wanted Fugitives Blog

OK, we have made fun of GW Bush for quotes like “Our children IS Learning More.” and “Nucular” instead of Nuclear”, but he is not the only one we need to pay attention to.

Having an illiterate president that believes it is everyone else who is illiterate is not our only problem. However, do listen carefully to any bush speech. He will tell you something, then say, “In Other Words”, and tell you again because he thinks you are too stupid to have understood it the first time.

An example was on the bridge collapse recently. Bush said “We need to prioritize those things in building our infrastructure, and when I say we need to prioritize, I mean we need to make this a priority.”

And this is the guy that runs our country, decides which wars to take on, decides whether or not to continue the space program, and other “Prioritzed Issues”.

Now let’s check out another person in charge of gathering “INTELLIGENCE”, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell.

Transcript: Debate on the foreign intelligence surveillance act
By Chris Roberts / ©El Paso Times
Article Launched: 08/22/2007 01:05:57 AM MDT

The following is the transcript of a question and answer session with National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell.

Question: How much has President Bush or members of his administration formed your response to the FISA debate?

Answer: Not at all. When I came back in, remember my previous assignment was director of the NSA, so this was an area I have known a little bit about.

The former Director of the NSA knew “A Little” about FISA. Like, “Yeah I heard of that. Some kind of court right?” lol

So I came back in. I was nominated the first week of January. The administration had made a decision to put the terrorist surveillance program into the FISA court.

You mean made a decision as in like they had to because the laws said so? So the bush administration “decided” to comply with the law, so they should get credit for thinking of it?

I think that happened the 7th of Jan. So as I come in the door and I’m prepping for the hearings, this sort of all happened. So the first thing I want to know is what’s this program and what’s the background and I was pretty surprised at what I learned.

I bet.

First off, the issue was the technology had changed and we had worked ourselves into a position that we were focusing on foreign terrorist communications, and this was a terrorist foreigner in a foreign country.

Technology changing, yeah that is rough. “We worked ourselves into a position . . .” “Foriegn Terrorist was a foriegn terrorist in a foriegn country?” Ok, I think we got you so far here. Please continue.

The issue was international communications are on a wire

You mean wiretap?

so all of a sudden we were in a position because of the wording in the law that we had to have a warrant to do that.

Yeah, that pesky wording in the law just gets in the way of things, doesn’t it. So in other words the wiretaps were illegal and bush did it anyway, but you say, “all of a sudden we were in a position because of the wording in the law.”

Yeah, that bank I robbed put me in a position because of the wording in the law that makes it illegal. Would that be a similar statement?

So the most important thing to capture is that it’s a foreigner in a foreign country, required to get a warrant.

Wait. Now it’s the foreigner in a foreign country that needs the warrant?

Now if it were wireless, we would not be required to get a warrant.

Wow. That’s convenient. So if I understand you so far, A foriegner in a foreign country needs a warrant so you can wiretap him, but a foreigner would not need a warrant to buy a cell phone?

Plus we were limited in what we were doing to terrorism only

Yeah, probably something to do with that pesky wording in the law.

and the last time I checked we had a mission called foreign intelligence

The last time you checked? Just when was that?

which should be construed to mean anything of a foreign intelligence interest, North Korea, China, Russia, Syria, weapons of mass destruction proliferation, military development and it goes on and on and on.

Oprah Winfrey, OJ Simpson, Michael Vick, Judge Judy, Paris Hilton, Tom Cruise, and anything else we want to add to the list so that you can basically wiretap anything you want? “it goes on and on and on”. I bet it does.

So when I engaged with the administration, I said we’ve gotten ourselves into a position here where we need to clarify

But you didn’t say that it was illegal. We just need to “clarify” it. Good twist.

so the FISA issue had been debated and legislation had been passed in the house in 2006, did not pass the Senate. Two bills were introduced in the Senate, I don’t know if it was co-sponsorship or two different bills, but Sen. (Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.) had a bill and Sen. Specter had a bill and it may have been the same bill, I don’t know, but the point is a lot of debate, a lot of dialogue.

Ok. Too easy. Not even going to add to that. Yes I am . . The bill was a bill, that really wasn’t two bills instead of one bill. The one bill superceded the other bill, I think, wait, it was two bills and a duck . . .

So, it was submitted to the FISA court and the first ruling in the FISA court was what we needed to do we could do with an approval process that was at a summary level and that was OK,

Nice of them to agree to let you do it, but how can a court decision be retroactive? It wasn’t legal when you started doing it.

we stayed in business and we’re doing our mission. Well in the FISA process, you may or may not be aware …

We are now.

News and Media Blog
Most Wanted Fugitives Blog
Who Let The Blog Out?
Things That Just Piss Me Off

The thought of a cyberwar is still science fiction to most Americans. They believe that kind of stuff only exists in movies. But there is a real threat of real cyberwars in the future. Here is a good article about cyberwarfare for you to ponder; (The Title could be a book or a movie)

When Bots Attack
By John Robb of Wired Magazine

If you want to bring down a country’s information infrastructure and you don’t want anyone to know who did it, the weapon of choice is a distributed denial of service attack. Using rented botnets, you can launch hundreds of thousands — even millions — of infobombs at a target, all while maintaining total deniability. In this hypothetical scenario, a single attack launched by China against the US lasts only a few hours, but a full-scale assault lasting days or weeks could bring an entire modern information economy to its knees.

I know. It sounds like the plot to a movie as I said before, but this is real. Cyberwar is a real possibility we are not prepared for.

News and Media Blog
Most Wanted Fugitives Blog
Things That Just Piss Me Off

Politicians and celebrities each enjoy a whole different justice system then you or I ever will. We now live in a world where if you are a celebrity or politician, you are above the law. This is just one example of politicians above the law.

Now a Lobbyist, an Ex-Senator Uses Campaign Money
By RAYMOND HERNANDEZ and DAVID W. CHEN of the NYTimes

When he was last running for the United States Senate from New Jersey in 2002, Robert G. Torricelli collected donations from thousands of people who apparently wanted to see him re-elected. They might be surprised to see how he spent a portion of their money.

Mr. Torricelli, a Democrat who was one of the Senate’s most flamboyant personalities and prodigious fund-raisers, abruptly quit the 2002 race amid allegations of ethical misconduct and became a lobbyist. Since then, he has given $4,000 from his campaign fund to Puerto Rico’s nonvoting member of Congress, $10,000 to Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich of Illinois and more than $40,000 to Nevada Democratic Party organizations and candidates linked to the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid.

All of those politicians had one thing in common: influence over Mr. Torricelli’s, or his clients’, business interests.

In early 2006, for instance, Mr. Torricelli contributed $10,000 from his Senate account to the mayor of Trenton and his slate of City Council candidates, just as city agencies were reviewing an ultimately successful proposal by the former senator to develop retail and office space in the city.

Mr. Torricelli quit the 2002 race in October of that year, several weeks after the Senate Ethics Committee issued a letter “severely admonishing” him for accepting three gifts from a contributor, David Chang.

Bottom line; Whether there are loopholes that allow him to use that money to contribute to campaigns or not, he should not be contributing to the campaigns of politicians that can help him in his new lobbying business or its clients.

But then, someone who resigned over questions of ethics, that now becomes a lobbyist, isn’t really expected to operate ethically is he?

News and Media Blog
Most Wanted Fugitives Blog
Things That Just Piss Me Off

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!