Mr. Timberman, I know rat-holes. They are holes, in a variety of matrices, within which rats are to be found. Dennis Kucinich, Mr. Timberman, is not a rathole.

(with apologies to Lloyd Bentson)

By the time this occurred, it had already been approved about 12 times by the Department of Justice.

There is some conversation about this over at AL as well, but this quote struck me as being completely contrived by Cheney. He can't remember, he claims, sending the hired help over to the ICU at the hospital. But he can somehow remember that, at the time they were sent, the surveillance activities had been reviewed "about twelve times". Not "about eleven times", nor "about thirteen times".

Mr. Cheney's memory works in strange ways.

To be clear, I'm not assailing you, nor solely defending Kucinich, but also offering the concept (poorly) that no vote, when cast, is thrown away.

Uh, unless they actually throw it away after you've cast it. But that's a whole nother problem...

Inslee's Impeachment bill (re: Gonzales) has a number and has been referred to rules committee. Hit the floor with 15 co-sponsors, which is not bad. Those who like the bill might want to contact their Reps and ask them to cosponsor.

To track the bill, try this link:

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d110:2:./temp/~bdC3V1:@@@L&summ2=m&|/bss/d110query.html|

If this link is just temporary, you'll need to go to THOMAS main page and search under Inslee's name.

I agree about the dearth of democrats who can communicate well to the people. I'd add Pelosi to the list of those who can't. She's Horrible.

Perhaps Obama best in the field in this regard, and I've heard a couple of Biden speeches on CSPAN that were done well (my impression, anyway) in terms of communicating.

True, Kucinich's run is not taken seriously. But I maintain that a vote for Kucinich is not thrown away (Fraud Guy's point painfully taken, re: Ohio). At very least, it forms a record of where the electorate is, and that does have an impact down the road on party policy and the like.

Why stop there? If we're going to send our forces into soveriegn nations, let's go get North Korea. And Castro is STILL THERE. HELLO--

Chavez? He's right in our back yard. We need the Oil.

Speaking of which, those Canadian oil sands are a matter of US national energy security. Let's get 'em.

4) Immediate multilateral talks with India, Afghanistan, and Iran about containing Pakistan, and containing intercepting the funding, communications, and movements of any al Qaeda and Taliban into or out of Baluchistan and Waziristan or the NWF.

Which are the nations that will meet to contain the U.S.?

But I agree and echo your thoughts about this as a criminal and intelligence issue, rather than military one.

Obama's idea that invading Iraq was bad, but invading Pakistan may be a much better idea is important.

I don't know if he actually believes what he's said, or he had to do something to close the Hillary Gap--and this was the best thing they could come up with.

But it is instructive that this bellicose tactic (unilateral invasion of sovereign nations and threatening heads of state) has made it from the right-radicals to centrist democrats in a very short time, with time to spare to become a big part of the '08 election.

I don't know what Obama's "get-tough" gimmick will do to or for him, but his tactic is important. But if he has no problem adopting this horrible concept of the neocons, what other of their tools will he also find attractive?

It shows me how important it is to trim significant power from the Executive Branch--NOW. It shows very clearly that regardless of which party has the White House in '08--either party is quite capable of continuing our collective nightmare in executive over-reach, endless war, and disastrous foreign policy.

Now the reason for the rush to make FISA more dangerous is clear:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20075751/site/newsweek/

Discussion at Anon. Liberal and Balkinization. The FISC apparently ruled parts of the NSA program out of bounds. FISC has never ever objected to anything--total pushovers. It had to be bad.

So, undisclosed parts of "the program" remain, once again, illegal.

Sys, have you checked this out?

The Mysterious Mr. Blank:

http://shii.org/knows/Mr._Blank

It is difficult to know where "Parroting" ends, and conspiracy to willfully promote propaganda begins.

A Parrot's only agenda is to get the cracker--which in press terms means access, professional advancement, standing, and the like. Or that's my understanding.

But a conspirator is a different critter. Yes, the advancement goal is still there (I suppose similar to the advancement a whore might realize), but a media conspirator is also willfully misleading the viewer/reader in order to create political, governmental, or public change/advancement. The conspirator is a willing participant in deception, the parrot not so much.

Just as we are seeing a disturbing wave of private mercenaries like Blackwater receive huge contracts for security-work from Iraq to post-Katrina New Orleans, what kinds of mercenary work is taking place in the military PR area, and in the press proper. The significance of outsourcing of this kind is that the 'mercenaries' escape much of the oversight and legal containment that US forces and government employees would. So a PR consulting firm working for the Army, for example, might have all kinds of latitude that the Army itself doesn't have.

A year ago the above would seem paranoid to me. But there is now more than ample evidence coming out of Waxman's and Leahy's hearings that politicization--and I mean criminal politicization--is rampant to a truly alarming degree. Arguably, politication would be most toxic in two Departments: DOJ and DOD.

yep, it sure did.

Whatever the problem is, I suspect it's likely GG's fault.