Posted by Mary Mancini on February 28, 2006 under Uncategorized | 
According to NBC: “Scooter Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, has hired a renowned memory-loss expert to assist him with his legal defense. Harvard psychology professor Daniel L. Schacter tells NBC News he has been retained by Libby as a consultant. An official familiar with the Libby defense team confirms the news. . . . Libby’s lawyers hinted in court filings last week that memory loss will be ‘central themes’ of Libby’s defense. Libby’s lawyers write: ‘…any misstatements he made during his FBI interviews or grand jury testimony were not intentional, but rather the result of confusion, mistake or faulty memory.’”
“Libby’s lawyers say that, during Libby’s hectic days handling sensitive national-security matters, “it is understandable that he may have forgotten or misremembered relatively less significant events. Such relatively less important events include alleged snippets of conversations about Valerie Plame Wilson’s employment status.”
People who function at Libby’s level don’t “forget.” That’s why they’re hired in the first place.
Posted by Mary Mancini on February 27, 2006 under Uncategorized |
Bill Moyers in ‘08. Read his platform here. It’s long but well worth it.
Time to start seriously pushing for Campaign reform. Take the first step by going to PublicCampaign.org.
Molly Ivins is one smart cookie when she takes on the Dubai Ports World dealio: “The government is willing to outsource American jobs for the holy grail of free trade. Why is it surprising that national security is ditto?” It’s the Corporation, Stupid.”
And there’s a link to the status of a women’s reproductive rights in Tennessee at the Pro-Choice America website. We get a grade of a D+ with 94% of Tennessee counties having no abortion provider. Also, it appears that there is no NARAL affiliate in this state. For general information on affiliates, including starting one in Tennessee, please contact:
Director of Affiliate Development, 1156 15th St, NW, Suite 700, Washington, DC 20005, (202) 973-3000 or email field@ProChoiceAmerica.org.
ACLU-TN aggressively lobbies all the anti-choice legislation in TN and will be quite busy with the anti-choice proposal pending. According to ACLU Director Hedy Weinberg, ACLU-TN and Planned Parenthood of Middle and East Tennessee (PPMET) are the main actors on this issue in TN and they are on the hill all the time during session, fighting these and other egregious bills. To stay on top of what they’re doing, join their email alert list, a free and confidential email service designed to alert Tennesseans to civil liberties legislation pending in the Tennessee General Assembly and in Congress, as well as to alert Tennesseans to upcoming events of interest.
Posted by Mary Mancini on February 13, 2006 under Uncategorized |
Dan Savage takes a common sense look at the “ex-gay” movement in the NY Times.
“What should really trouble evangelicals, however, is this: even if every gay man became ex-gay tomorrow, there still wouldn’t be an ex-lesbian tomboy out there for every ex-gay cowboy. Instead, millions of straight women would wake up one morning to discover that they had married a Jack or an Ennis. Restaurant hostesses and receptionists at hair salons would be especially vulnerable.”
Read more…
Posted by Mary Mancini on February 8, 2006 under Uncategorized |
…don’t try and manipulate members of Congress.
“A House Republican whose subcommittee oversees the National Security Agency broke ranks with the White House on Tuesday and called for a full Congressional inquiry into the Bush administration’s domestic eavesdropping program.” Read more…
Posted by Mary Mancini on February 4, 2006 under Uncategorized |
And trust me, read this and you will too.
Posted by Mary Mancini on February 2, 2006 under Uncategorized |
The headline for this article is “Budget Cuts Pass By a Slim Margin.”The headline for this article should be “Impact of Budget Bill Negligible on Deficit,” or “Tax cuts would more than negate the savings from the budget bill.”
Action: “The House yesterday narrowly approved a contentious budget-cutting package that would save nearly $40 billion over five years by imposing substantial changes on programs including Medicaid, welfare, child support and student lending.”
Impact: “The impact of the bill on the deficit is likely to be negligible, slicing less than one-half of 1 percent from the estimated $14.3 trillion in federal spending over the next five years. As the House debated the budget-cutting measure, the Senate moved to begin final negotiations with the House on a package of tax cuts and extension of expiring tax cuts that could cost up to $60 billion over five years, more than negating the savings from the budget bill.”
Reasonable Response: “I do not know how anyone can say with a straight face that when we voted to cut spending in December to help achieve deficit reductions, we can now turn around a short while later to provide tax cuts that exceed or cancel out the reduction in spending,” Sen. George V. Voinovich (R-Ohio) said yesterday, as the Senate took up a procedural motion that would allow tax-cut negotiations to begin. “We cannot afford these tax cuts.”
Read More.”
Posted by Mary Mancini on under Uncategorized |
Capitol Police Apologize to Activist Sheehan.
Posted by Mary Mancini on February 1, 2006 under Uncategorized |
Usually the State of the Union address is a hopeful exercise. A President lays out his plan for a better America to Congress and the American people. Traditionally he may not be able to see many of his ideas become actual policy - mainly due to partisan politics - there is still a feeling that perhaps he wants to make our lives better.
But this President’s words are flat and empty. After watching him work for 5+ years we know that the plans he sets forth in the SOTU are nothing but bombast. With a majority in both houses of Congress, this President could make life better for the American people but he could care less.
This President says he has a plan to increase our competitiveness in the global marketplace by making math and science education a priority. Yet, his current policies prove that education for all Americans is anything but. Almost 13 million dollars in educations grants cut. The “No Child Left Behind” program underfunded. The privatization of tutoring services promoted over equipping our schools with what they need to help students stay in school and succeed. With a majority of his party in both houses of congress he continues to cut and underfund programs that would help the least fortunate among us in favor of tax breaks for large corporations and tax cuts for the wealthy.
This President’s foreign policy is a disaster. His use of the word “offensive” in last night’s speech (”take the offensive,” “be on the offensive,” “stay on the offensive”) was in itself, offensive. He took the opportunity to manufacture his own reality and create a fake opposition to his foreign policy. An opposition that he insists wants the US to return to “isolationism.” Is he seriously equating the withdrawal of troops from Iraq with isolationism? Is he saying that seeking a diplomatic solution to Iran is isolationist? If so, then he’s incorrectly equating a better, less thug-like foreign policy with isolationism. In his mind, there are no solutions in between “isolationism” and deploying troops preemptively and prematurely. In the minds of his real opposition, the Jack Murthas and John Kerrys and Barack Obamas of Congress for instance, there are many, many solutions and none of them suggest that we crawl in a hole and ignore the rest of the world.
And I wonder where all of last night’s talk about bi-partisanship came from? Now that the Republicans are mired in scandal is it time to paint Washington with one broad bi-partisan stroke? Is it really the responsibility of both parties to “clean up Washington” and the business of politics? Perhaps it is. But this President presented it this way not because a bi-partisan initiative is right for the country but because he wants the American people to think that Jack Abramoff played his little games on both sides of the aisle. Very sneaky, Mr. President, but in the words of Paul Krugman, “the Abramoff affair is a purely Republican Scandal.”
It’s difficult to get excited or even agitated about a Bush SOTU anymore. So many hollow and dishonest words. He’s had many years to shift our focus and cut our reliance on oil. Does anyone really believe that he will lead this country in the next three years in any other direction? Will Dick Cheney and his record-profit making Exxon cronies let him?
Posted by Mary Mancini on under Uncategorized |
It’s our pre-Alito-confirmation, pre-SOTU show. Global warming, domestic wiretapping, health care, the Bush-Abramoff photos. And we’re joined by Gene Policinski, Executive Director of the First Amendment Center. Also, Mary is confused and dismayed by the warm fuzzies she feels for Republican Senator Chuck Hagel. And for some reason we reference Bob Dole a lot.
Click here to listen.
Click here to subscribe.
Posted by Mary Mancini on under Uncategorized |
This is too good not to post in it’s entirety.
A False Balance By PAUL KRUGMAN
“How does one report the facts,” asked Rob Corddry on “The Daily Show,” “when the facts themselves are biased?” He explained to Jon Stewart, who played straight man, that “facts in Iraq have an anti-Bush agenda,” and therefore can’t be reported.
Mr. Corddry’s parody of journalists who believe they must be “balanced” even when the truth isn’t balanced continues, alas, to ring true. The most recent example is the peculiar determination of some news organizations to cast the scandal surrounding Jack Abramoff as “bipartisan.”
Let’s review who Mr. Abramoff is and what he did.
Here’s how a 2004 Washington Post article described Mr. Abramoff’s background: “Abramoff’s conservative-movement credentials date back more than two decades to his days as a national leader of the College Republicans.” In the 1990’s, reports the article, he found his “niche” as a lobbyist “with entree to the conservatives who were taking control of Congress. He enjoys a close bond with [Tom] DeLay.”
Mr. Abramoff hit the jackpot after Republicans took control of the White House as well as Congress. He persuaded several Indian tribes with gambling interests that they needed to pay vast sums for his services and those of Michael Scanlon, a former DeLay aide. From the same Washington Post article: “Under Abramoff’s guidance, the four tribes … have also become major political donors. They have loosened their traditional ties to the Democratic Party, giving Republicans two-thirds of the $2.9 million they have donated to federal candidates since 2001, records show.”
So Mr. Abramoff is a movement conservative whose lobbying career was based on his connections with other movement conservatives. His big coup was persuading gullible Indian tribes to hire him as an adviser; his advice was to give less money to Democrats and more to Republicans. There’s nothing bipartisan about this tale, which is all about the use and abuse of Republican connections.
Yet over the past few weeks a number of journalists, ranging from The Washington Post’s ombudsman to the “Today” show’s Katie Couric, have declared that Mr. Abramoff gave money to both parties. In each case the journalists or their news organization, when challenged, grudgingly conceded that Mr. Abramoff himself hasn’t given a penny to Democrats. But in each case they claimed that this is only a technical point, because Mr. Abramoff’s clients — those Indian tribes — gave money to Democrats as well as Republicans, money the news organizations say he “directed” to Democrats.
But the tribes were already giving money to Democrats before Mr. Abramoff entered the picture; he persuaded them to reduce those Democratic donations, while giving much more money to Republicans. A study commissioned by The American Prospect shows that the tribes’ donations to Democrats fell by 9 percent after they hired Mr. Abramoff, while their contributions to Republicans more than doubled. So in any normal sense of the word “directed,” Mr. Abramoff directed funds away from Democrats, not toward them.
True, some Democrats who received tribal donations before Mr. Abramoff’s entrance continued to receive donations after his arrival. How, exactly, does this implicate them in Mr. Abramoff’s machinations? Bear in mind that no Democrat has been indicted or is rumored to be facing indictment in the Abramoff scandal, nor has any Democrat been credibly accused of doing Mr. Abramoff questionable favors.
There have been both bipartisan and purely Democratic scandals in the past. Based on everything we know so far, however, the Abramoff affair is a purely Republican scandal.
Why does the insistence of some journalists on calling this one-party scandal bipartisan matter? For one thing, the public is led to believe that the Abramoff affair is just Washington business as usual, which it isn’t. The scale of the scandals now coming to light, of which the Abramoff affair is just a part, dwarfs anything in living memory.
More important, this kind of misreporting makes the public feel helpless. Voters who are told, falsely, that both parties were drawn into Mr. Abramoff’s web are likely to become passive and shrug their shoulders instead of demanding reform.
So the reluctance of some journalists to report facts that, in this case, happen to have an anti-Republican agenda is a serious matter. It’s not a stretch to say that these journalists are acting as enablers for the rampant corruption that has emerged in Washington over the last decade.
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
