Howie Klein (Blue America) has announced that Eric Massa will be a guest at Firedoglake this Saturday - should be another good way to showcase his race and get some contributions ta boot! Here's part of what Howie says about Eric:

My next Saturday Blue America guest at Firedoglake is going to be Eric Massa. That’s 2PM East Coast time; 11AM on the West Coast this coming Saturday. I had a couple of great preliminary talks with Eric today and at one point he launched into a heated tirade about Karl Rove and the other puppeteers surrounding Bush.

This one was personal. "All they know how to do is smear people in the military. And why? Because they have never served in the military." Eric is a veteran of 24 years of active duty in the U.S. Navy have served in the Middle East, Kosovo, Panama and as the Special Assistant to General Wes Clark when he was Supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces. Like all decorated American fighting men who speak out against Bush’s criminal and unconstitutional excesses, Eric will be attacked and swiftboated by Rove and the Republican far right smear machine led by the likes of craven and cowardly chickenhawks like Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney and Bill O’Reilly.

Well, we just don't know, but it sure is an interesting question. Found this at Americablog - by John in DC - looks like Wes' phone records could be on the market for a while... 

US House Republicans suddenly pull cell-phone privacy bill, Rep Markey thinks Bush spy agency types may have gotten it killed today

Well isn't this interesting. Remember when I bought General Wesley Clark's cell phone records for under a $100 in order to prove that anyone's privacy could be violated?

Well, since that time there have been a number of bills in the House and Senate to address this problem. The House recently passed one bill unanimously, and a second bill was coming up in the House today. But it suddenly disappeared without a word right when the story broke about the Bush administration illegally spying on all of our phone records.

Coincidence? Not according to what Representative Markey may be hearing. He wrote to House Speaker Denny Hastert today asking what happened to the bill:

    "With no notice or explanation, H.R. 4943 summarily disappeared from the House floor schedule that day and it has not been seen or heard from since. I am concerned about reports that some intelligence agency or interest had a hand in the bill's disappearance. . . Is it currently in some legislative 'Guantanamo Bay'?"

dkos has a new 2008 (all inclusive) poll up - Wes behind Feingold and Gore right now - tied with Warner - however, the poll is new - please vote!

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/26/171315/28

 Chris Matthews: Media Matters for America's 2005 Misinformer of the Year

(stiff competition from the likes of O'Leilly, Hannity, Limbaugh and Drudge, but Tweety this year out-misinformed them all - couldn't imagine a more deserving "journalist"!) 

Since our launch in May 2004, Media Matters for America has monitored, analyzed, and corrected conservative misinformation in the media, wherever and whenever we find it. As you may remember, last year our staff conducted an extensive review of all the misinformation we identified and corrected in the early days in order to name the first annual "Misinformer of the Year." We singled out one particularly egregious purveyor of falsehoods and awarded Bill O'Reilly the dubious title. O'Reilly graciously accepted the award on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor.

This year, of all the news anchors, columnists, pundits, and reporters whose work we've critiqued and corrected, one man stands alone as a clear successor to the O'Reilly throne. We are pleased to announce broadcast journalist, former newspaper bureau chief, former presidential speechwriter, and best-selling author Chris Matthews has earned the title of 2005's "Misinformer of the Year." At times, it has even been difficult to tell the difference between 2005's Misinformer of the Year and his predecessor.

For your reading pleasure, we've compiled some highlights of Matthews's most egregious false and misleading claims, as well as his glowing and gushing praise for President Bush.

Without further ado:

    * Chris ♥ George, Part 1: Bush sometimes "glimmers" with "sunny nobility." On MSNBC's Hardball, during a discussion with Washington Times editorial page editor Tony Blankley of the effects on President Bush and his administration of the investigation into the leak of the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame, Matthews said "[S]ometimes it glimmers with this man, our president, that kind of sunny nobility." [Hardball, 10/24/05]

 This got started today at dkos and is going to be an all-out blitz of Congress and the media to take our country back NOW! They need all the help they can get, so if you are so inclined, please JOIN IN, post it everywhere you can and tell everyone you know! (repost from dailykos):

 http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/12/17/233929/95

Operation Flabbergasted: Let's Watergate Bush
by smintheus
Sat Dec 17, 2005 at 09:39:29 PM PDT

This cannot stand. In ordering the NSA to spy secretly on America, George Bush has overturned United States Signals Intelligence Directive 18, which prohibits domestic spying by NSA; violated the federal act which created the FISA court to oversee covert domestic investigations; and trampled upon the Fourth Amendment guarantee against warrantless searches. It cannot stand for a day, much less a month while Congress is in recess.

Friday, when Sen. Specter said he'd make investigating the allegations a top priority in January, it was barely possible to pretend that they might be false. But by Saturday's radio address, when Bush defended his policy and insisted it would continue, we had entered a full-blown constitutional crisis. George Bush would love for Congress to back down from a fight next week, to go home grumbling "Wait until next year."

Operation Flabbergasted We cannot let that happen. We have to ensure that by Monday, all hell has broken loose in D.C.

Found this at dkos:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/12/17/92148/310

White House press release (buried in the Friday night trash).  President Bush is going to nominate Hans von Spakovsky to the Federal Election Commission.

Who?

Well, Hans von Spakovsky is a long-time activist in "voting integrity."  Translated, he is a long-time activist in keeping people away from the polls.  His ideas led to the notorious purge of Florida's voting rolls before the 2000 election in which thousands of mostly-eligible, mostly-Democratic, and mostly-minority voters were removed from the voting lists.  Von Spakovsky also was a volunteer for Bush in the Florida recount. 

This guy is a disaster.  There is no way he should be on the FEC.  FEC Commissioners are subject to Senate approval, so write or call your Senator.

 I COMPLETELY stole this from kos because I don't have a subscription to NYT, but this is really powerful and gives me hope beyond words. Fingers and toes crossed that Fitz has all the documentation, the witnesses, the flippers, the EVIDENCE he needs to send this whole house of cards tumbling down!

FRANK RICH: It's Bush-Cheney, Not Rove-Libby

Asked repeatedly about Mr. Rove's serial appearances before a Washington grand jury, the jittery Mr. Bush, for once bereft of a script, improvised a passable impersonation of Norman Bates being quizzed by the detective in "Psycho." Like Norman and Ms. Stewart, he stonewalled.

That stonewall may start to crumble in a Washington courtroom this week or next. In a sense it already has. Now, as always, what matters most in this case is not whether Mr. Rove and Lewis Libby engaged in a petty conspiracy to seek revenge on a whistle-blower, Joseph Wilson, by unmasking his wife, Valerie, a covert C.I.A. officer. What makes Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation compelling, whatever its outcome, is its illumination of a conspiracy that was not at all petty: the one that took us on false premises into a reckless and wasteful war in Iraq. That conspiracy was instigated by Mr. Rove's boss, George W. Bush, and Mr. Libby's boss, Dick Cheney.

--snip--

Mr. Wilson and his wife were trashed to protect that larger plot. Because the personnel in both stories overlap, the bits and pieces we've learned about the leak inquiry over the past two years have gradually helped fill in the über-narrative about the war. Last week was no exception. Deep in a Wall Street Journal account of Judy Miller's grand jury appearance was this crucial sentence: "Lawyers familiar with the investigation believe that at least part of the outcome likely hangs on the inner workings of what has been dubbed the White House Iraq Group."

--snip--

 Very little has been written about the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG. Its inception in August 2002, seven months before the invasion of Iraq, was never announced. Only much later would a newspaper article or two mention it in passing, reporting that it had been set up by Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff. Its eight members included Mr. Rove, Mr. Libby, Condoleezza Rice and the spinmeisters Karen Hughes and Mary Matalin. Its mission: to market a war in Iraq.

Of course, the official Bush history would have us believe that in August 2002 no decision had yet been made on that war. Dates bracketing the formation of WHIG tell us otherwise. On July 23, 2002 - a week or two before WHIG first convened in earnest - a British official told his peers, as recorded in the now famous Downing Street memo, that the Bush administration was ensuring that "the intelligence and facts" about Iraq's W.M.D.'s "were being fixed around the policy" of going to war. And on Sept. 6, 2002 - just a few weeks after WHIG first convened - Mr. Card alluded to his group's existence by telling Elisabeth Bumiller of The New York Times that there was a plan afoot to sell a war against Saddam Hussein: "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."

The official introduction of that product began just two days later. On the Sunday talk shows of Sept. 8, Ms. Rice warned that "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," and Mr. Cheney, who had already started the nuclear doomsday drumbeat in three August speeches, described Saddam as "actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons." The vice president cited as evidence a front-page article, later debunked, about supposedly nefarious aluminum tubes co-written by Judy Miller in that morning's Times. The national security journalist James Bamford, in "A Pretext for War," writes that the article was all too perfectly timed to facilitate "exactly the sort of propaganda coup that the White House Iraq Group had been set up to stage-manage."

--snip--

    The Bush-Cheney product rolled out by Card, Rove, Libby & Company had been bought by Congress, the press and the public. The intelligence and facts had been successfully fixed to sell the war, and any memory of Mr. Bush's errant 16 words melted away in Shock and Awe. When, months later, a national security official, Stephen Hadley, took "responsibility" for allowing the president to address the nation about mythical uranium, no one knew that Mr. Hadley, too, had been a member of WHIG.

    It was not until the war was supposedly over - with "Mission Accomplished," in May 2003 - that Mr. Wilson started to add his voice to those who were disputing the administration's uranium hype. Members of WHIG had a compelling motive to shut him down. In contrast to other skeptics, like Mohamed ElBaradei of the International Atomic Energy Agency (this year's Nobel Peace Prize winner), Mr. Wilson was an American diplomat; he had reported his findings in Niger to our own government. He was a dagger aimed at the heart of WHIG and its disinformation campaign. Exactly who tried to silence him and how is what Mr. Fitzgerald presumably will tell us.

    It's long been my hunch that the WHIG-ites were at their most brazen (and, in legal terms, reckless) during the many months that preceded the appointment of Mr. Fitzgerald as special counsel. When Mr. Rove was asked on camera by ABC News in September 2003 if he had any knowledge of the Valerie Wilson leak and said no, it was only hours before the Justice Department would open its first leak investigation. When Scott McClellan later declared that he had been personally assured by Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby that they were "not involved" with the leak, the case was still in the safe hands of the attorney general then, John Ashcroft, himself a three-time Rove client in past political campaigns. Though Mr. Rove may be known as "Bush's brain," he wasn't smart enough to anticipate that Justice Department career employees would eventually pressure Mr. Ashcroft to recuse himself because of this conflict of interest, clearing the way for an outside prosecutor as independent as Mr. Fitzgerald.

    THIS modus operandi was foolproof, shielding the president as well as Mr. Rove from culpability, as long as it was about winning an election. The attack on Mr. Wilson, by contrast, has left them and the Cheney-Libby tag team vulnerable because it's about something far bigger: protecting the lies that took the country into what the Reagan administration National Security Agency director, Lt. Gen. William Odom, recently called "the greatest strategic disaster in United States history."

    Whether or not Mr. Fitzgerald uncovers an indictable crime, there is once again a victim, but that victim is not Mr. or Mrs. Wilson; it's the nation. It is surely a joke of history that even as the White House sells this weekend's constitutional referendum as yet another "victory" for democracy in Iraq, we still don't know the whole story of how our own democracy was hijacked on the way to war.
  

 I always feel much more clear about the ins and outs of any court case after hearing John Dean's take on it - here he provides us details of the charges against the rotten Hammer and gives us some hope about how it may all play out...

The Case Against Tom DeLay: What has Happened to Grand Jury Secrecy in Texas?
    By John W. Dean
   
    Friday 07 October 2005

    What is one to make of the criminal charges against Tom DeLay?

    I spoke with several knowledgeable Texas lawyers, of both parties, about the case against DeLay; they were willing to speak, but only off-the-record. Or, as one put it, "Who in hell wants to get in the middle of a fight between a polecat and a skunk?"

    (I don't like unidentified sources. But I will use them in this column, only because they are sharing nothing more their expertise, no inside information. They were offering their professional "speculation," if you will.)

    There is no speculation, however, by the grand jurors who have spoken out in this case; they are familiar with the evidence prosecutors must have adduced, before them, to convince them to indict. And what they are saying appears dangerously close to breaking their oaths of secrecy.

    The Charges Against DeLay

    The (now) former Majority Leader of the U.S. House of Representatives was indicted on September 28, and again on October 2, by two different Travis County, Texas grand juries. The second indictment is far more serious than the first.

    The first indictment charges DeLay with engaging in a criminal conspiracy in violation of Texas Penal Code Section 15.02. It states that DeLay and two of his associates (also indicted) agreed to make corporate political contributions which are prohibited by the Elections Code. If convicted, DeLay faces up to two years in jail and a $10,000 fine.

    Six days later came the second indictment, which is twice the length of the first, with its two counts. The first count charges another conspiracy under Section 15.02, again to violate the election law - but ALSO to launder corporate money, in violation of Texas Penal Code Section 34.02, the state's money laundering prohibition. The second count charges DeLay outright with the offense of money laundering, and because the amount of the money allegedly laundered exceeds $100,000, that is a felony punishable by life in prison.

    Not surprisingly, DeLay angrily responded that the charges are blatantly political, reckless, a sham, and "wholly unsupported by the facts." DeLay called the first indictment "one of the weakest, most baseless indictments in American history." He called the second indictment a "do over" by Texas prosecutor Ronnie Earle, suggesting that Earle was facing a legally-strong motion to toss the first indictment as defective, and hedging his bets with the second indictment.

    The First Indictment is not Flawed but it is now Irrelevant

    All those with whom I spoke said that DeLay's attorney, Dick DeGuerin, is extremely able. As one former judge, a Democrat who knows the players well, told me, "DeGuerin is A-1, probably several notches above Ronnie Earle." DeGuerin successfully defended Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson when Earle indicted her in 1994.

    DeGuerin's motion to dismiss the first indictment has not been made public. All that is known is that the gist of his argument is a claim that the conspiracy statute cited in the initial indictment, Section 15.02 of the Texas Penal Code, was not applicable at the time of DeLay's purported offense, the alleged 2002 violation of the Election Code prohibiting corporate contributions.

    Despite DeGuerin's skill, one of my sources suggests his tactic in filing the motion to dismiss the first indictment when he did, may have been faulty. "DeGuerin probably pulled the trigger too fast," one attorney told me. "Had he waited until it was clear the statute of limitations had passed, and had he made it clear DeLay's waiver of the statute of limitations had ended, he might have done to Earle again what he did in the Kay Bailey Hutchinson case, and raise the technical error when it was too late to fix it. But by going in guns blazing, trying to blow Earle out of the water, Earle simply issued a second indictment to cover himself."

    Another Texas attorney told me he thought that, in any case, DeGuerin's technical argument about the defect in the first indictment would not fly. Texas has had a conspiracy statute forever. And it has had a prohibition against corporate contributions for about as long. So the fact that the state legislature did not get around to adding statutory language picking out, in particular, a conspiracy to violate the elections laws does not seem especially significant. Thus, it probably does not mean, as DeGuerin says, that there cannot be a conspiracy to violate the election laws. This lawyer, a former federal prosecutor, but now active criminal defense attorney, believes that any thinking judge will deny DeGuerin's motion to dismiss the first indictment.

    "But it's irrelevant now, with the second indictment," he added, "and DeLay is in much worse shape under the second indictment."

    Could the Second Indictment be Barred by the Statute of Limitations?

    But what if the second indictment is barred by the statute of limitations for the offenses it describes?

    The issue of whether the statutory limitations period has expired is complicated by the fact that DeGuerin at least temporarily waived his client's ability to raise the statute of limitations as a defense. In the first indictment, this waiver is set forth.

    But only temporarily: When DeGuerin filed his motion to dismiss the first indictment, he simultaneously sent a letter to District Attorney Ronnie Earle, advising him that DeLay was now withdrawing his waiver of his client's ability to raise the statute of limitations as a defense. Clearly, this was a move by DeGuerin to cut off further indictments.

    So now that the waiver has expired, has the statute of limitations elapsed vis-à-vis the second indictment? It seems the answer is probably no.

    When I asked two Texas attorneys who have been following the case in the news, as well as on their respective local grapevines (but neither has insider information), I got a unanimous opinion that Earle's second indictment was timely. As one put it, "The reason DeLay is pissed is that Earle moved faster than they thought he could. He found a spanking new grand jury, and he had a new indictment within hours. That suggests to me that Ronnie Earle has some good evidence." "Those Austin grand jurors usually aren't push-overs," he told me.

    This attorney continued, "It is my understanding that the reason Earle's office moved so fast was because the day the motion to dismiss arrived was the last day under the Texas statute of limitations to charge DeLay with money-laundering." So Earle got the second indictment just in the nick of time. (Incidentally, the same source reminded me that DeLay's associates, and now alleged co-conspirators, John D. Colyandro and James W. Ellis, had also been previously indicted for money laundering.)

    While this attorney said he had not looked at the docket in the Colyandro and Ellis cases, he had read news accounts indicating that these defendants have been filing, and losing, a number of motion against their separate money laundering charges.

    In short, it seems that Earle's money laundering case has been poked and probed, and found to be solid.

    "These money launder charges against DeLay are going to trial," I was told with some assurance. "Unless the feds indict DeLay, and request that Travis County step back, and the judge and prosecutor agree."

    But no one can predict what a Texas jury will do, if a trial does occur.

    DeLay's Foolish Untruthful Public Statements about the Case

    One experienced criminal defense attorneys (from Texas, who is following the case closely) volunteered his surprise that DeLay was going around to radio and television shows to speak out on the matter. DeLay has visited Rush Limbaugh's show, Sean Hannity's, and Chris Mathews's "Hardball" to mention a few. At each stop, DeLay repeats his claim that the grand jury had no basis, no evidence whatsoever, to indict him.

    "It is just not smart for a criminal defendant to blabber on," the attorney told me. "Those public statements will come back to haunt Tom DeLay in a courtroom, probably early next year." I asked that he be more specific.

    This attorney said he had watched DeLay contradict himself on "Hardball," and then, apparently, lie about never having been requested to appear before the grand jury. I pulled the transcript.

    Referring to the fund-raising entity at the heart of the case, Texans for a Republican Majority PAC, DeLay told Mathews, "TRMPAC is a separate entity. I had no fiduciary responsibilities. I had no managerial responsibilities. I had nothing to do with the day-to-day operation. I was simply, along with four other elected officials, on an advisory board. They used my name as headliners for fund-raisers."

    A few minutes later, though, the transcript reflects that DeLay is contradicting himself. He tells Mathews he was, in effect, deeply involved: "Everything TRMPAC did - and I insisted on - to even be on their board of advisers. Now, TRMPAC was my idea. I wanted the Texas House to be a Republican majority. And I went down there and worked with them to do that. We were successful."

    One DeLay lie that seemed to stir several of the grand jurors into speaking out, was his false statement that the grand jury and the prosecutor had ignored him. In fact, they claimed, the grand jurors had requested DeLay be invited to appear, and Ronnie Earle had transmitted their request to DeLay, but DeLay refused, submitting an unsworn written statement in lieu of an appearance, which would have been required to be under oath.

    Nevertheless, DeLay told Mathews: "The grand jury and prosecutor never asked me to testify, never doing anything for two years."

    Grand Jurors put the Lie to DeLay: Have they Violated their Secrecy Oath?

    Frankly, I was surprised to read, within 48 hours of DeLay's denials, and commentary on the grand jury, a response by no less than the foreman of the grand jury that issued the first indictment. "It was not one of those sugarcoated deals that we handed to [District Attorney] Ronnie Earle," William M. Gibson, a retired sheriff and state insurance inspector, was quoted telling the Dallas Morning News.

    Even more remarkable was Gibson's interview with Aaron Brown of CNN. Gibson told the anchor, that while he was a Democrat, he was not politically motivated. Aaron Brown asked, "Was there any single compelling piece of evidence that said to you, Mr. DeLay knew that this money was being raised from corporations and sent to Washington and then sent back to Texas? That he knew it."

    "We had information that was presented to us," Gibson continued, "and the twelve members of that grand jury decided that was enough evidence to warrant that indictment."

    "Would you have liked to have heard from Mr. DeLay?" Gibson was asked.

    "We had requested. He had answered with Ronnie Earle the district attorney. But he would not go under oath. He gave a statement to Mr. Earle. That statement was presented to the grand jury. We had requested that Mr. DeLay visit with us. He was given an open invitation but he never did appear."

    This extraordinary peek inside the grand jury continued, as Brown pressed forward: "Let me ask you one other thing. There's an old saying that a good prosecutor perhaps, even a bad one, can get a grand jury to indictment a ham sandwich. Did you hear evidence that would have led you to believe beyond a reasonable doubt that Tom DeLay was guilty of a crime?"

    Gibson, after congratulating Ronnie Earle's work, said, "We were provided with documentations, we had witnesses. I cannot go into what was said and everything, but I feel that the grand jury acted properly and I would have not put my name on that indictment had I not felt there was sufficient evidence to proceed on with this."

    Clearly, Gibson was trying to be careful. But he appears perilously close to the line. The Texas Code of Criminal Procedure, Article 19.34, requires all grand jurors take an oath to "keep secret" their proceeding. And Article 20.02 is rather blunt in describing this secrecy: "The proceedings of the grand jury shall be secret."

    And Gibson was not alone. Veronica Dixon, who sat on the jury that returned the first indictment, told the Houston Chronicle that the "only thing the grand jury bases its decisions on is the evidence presented to us. " "We had quite a lot of evidence," she said. Dixon, a state employee who said she voted Democratic in the last elections, added, "My decisions had nothing to do with what party I belonged to."

    The Chronicle found a public copy of the list of the grand jurors' names, before it was sealed by a judge, and determined that seven of the 12 grand jurors had voted in Democratic primaries in recent years. One grand juror had voted in a Republican primary. Four of the grand jurors had no history or could not be fully identified by the Chronicle.

    Interesting reporting. Clearly the grand jury was not totally stacked against DeLay politically, and clearly its members saw convincing evidence. But this reporting is also very close to the reporting described by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in All The President's Men - reporting that came very close to landing the reporters in jail, for grand jury secrecy rules apply to the press, as well as grand jurors.

    It seems the best thing that has happened to this case is this: It has gotten buried by the hubbub surrounding President Bush's controversial nomination of White House counsel Harriet Miers for Justice O'Connor's seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.

    Both the prosecution and the defense are better off trying Tom DeLay's case in a courtroom, not in the news media. And it should be thrilling.

General Odom says history will view Iraq as the greatest strategic disaster in US history - way to go chimpy - there's your LEGACY!

from The Lowell Sun

WASHINGTON -- The invasion of Iraq was the “greatest strategic disaster in United States history,” a retired Army general said yesterday, strengthening an effort in Congress to force an American withdrawal beginning next year., Retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom, a Vietnam veteran, said the invasion of Iraq alienated America's Middle East allies, making it harder to prosecute a war against terrorists.

The U.S. should withdraw from Iraq, he said, and reposition its military forces along the Afghan-Pakistani border to capture Osama bin Laden and crush al Qaeda cells.

Krugman lays out only a handful of big bad ones here - just a drop in the proverbial bucket, but shows the republican "government" for what it is - and gives a us good picture of the size and scope of the trouble this country is in.

Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

He sold all his stock in HCA, which his father helped found, just days before the stock plunged. Two years ago, Mr. Frist claimed that he did not even know if he owned HCA stock.

According to a new U.S. government index, the effect of greenhouse gases is up 20 percent since 1990.