For Our Jewish Friends…

Easter Blessings to You!

Cross-posted from Politics Plus

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

May the good Lord

Greet you in heaven

A half an hour before

The devil knows you’re dead!

Now, if we could just send St. Patrick to the White house!

Cross-posted from Politics Plus

A Sweep for Obama

Voters in three states voted yesterday for their choice in candidates. In both Washington and Wisconsin, Republican voters were McConned. Barack Obama won a narrow victory in Washington, but no delegates were at stake, having been decided in caucuses earlier. In Hawaii, Obama scored an overwhelming win, as expected, in his birth state. Wisconsin appeared closer, because the demographics of the state, in which the majority of democratic voters were white, female, lower middle class, and less educated seemed to favor Clinton. She was campaigning to her base. But Obama won convincingly, ahead or even with Clinton in every demographic category except voters over 65.

The Democratic Side

The Votes

	Clinton	Obama
Hawaii	24%	76%
Wisconsin	41%	58%

The Demographics

The Delegates

	Pledged	Super	Total	Pledged	Super	Total
Clinton	1005	234	1239	46.9%	59.2%	48.8%
Obama	1140	161	1301	53.1%	40.8%	51.2%
Total	2145	395	2540

Overall, the Democrats will have 4049 delegates at their convention. Of those 3,253 will be pledged delegates and 796 will be super delegates. I oppose the inclusion of the super delegates, because they give roughly 20% of the power to nominate to party insiders. They include Senators, Representatives, Governors, DNC members, and other party hacks, and they are not bound to represent the will of the voters.

The Republican Side

The Votes

	Huckabee	McCain	Paul
Washington	22%	49%	7%
Wisconsin	37%	55%	5%

The Demographics

100% of Republicans voted for war, greed, bigotry, inequity and injustice, except Ron Paul wing-nuts who voted only for the last four,

The Delegates

	Pledged	Uncom	Total	Pledged	Uncom	Total
Huckabee	214	3	217	19.5%	5.9%	18.9%
McCain	870	48	918	79.1%	94.1%	79.8%
Paul	16	0	16	1.5%	0.0%	1.4%
Total	1100	51	1151

Overall, Republicans will have 2,380 delegates at their convention. Of those 1,913 are pledged delegates and 463 are unpledged delegates. But of the 463 unpledged delegates, 340 of them are unpledged by stare rules. The remaining 123 delegates are RNC members.

Looking Forward

There are no primaries next week, but on March 4, there will be Democratic primaries in Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas and Vermont. In order to regain parity in pledged delegates, Clinton would need to be close in Rhode Island, while scoring 30 point wins in both Ohio and Texas. Frankly, I don’t see it happening. Given the demographic similarities between Ohio and Wisconsin, except that Ohio has far more black voters. Hillary may do well in Texas, but will probably lose ground overall. Bear in mind, however, that is two weeks away, a political eternity, and factors may develop that I could not foresee.

Personally, if either candidate wins a majority (1,627 or more) of the pledged delegates, I will support that candidate, because I believe that voters, not party insiders, should decide the nomination.

Cross posted from Politics Plus

Will SCOTUS Goose Step?

THE BUSH administration has asked the Supreme Court to take a case it says needs to be decided quickly because it presents a serious threat to national security. The justices should grant the administration its wish, and promptly rule against it.

The case involves a challenge to a lower court’s ruling involving the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, which were set up to decide whether detainees at Guantanamo Bay are being legally held as enemy combatants. Under the tribunal system, a government recorder is tasked with gathering information about a detainee from government and military databases, including exculpatory information that may argue against the detainee’s incarceration. The recorder then culls the information for the most relevant evidence and provides it to the tribunals. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has the exclusive right under the Detainee Treatment Act to review the tribunals’ decisions.

In Gates v. Bismullah, a unanimous D.C. Circuit panel found last year that it could not properly rule on a case without seeing all of the information gathered by the recorder — not just what was forwarded to the tribunal. The administration decried the decision, saying it imposes an extraordinary burden on the government; the administration says it keeps records only of the information presented at a tribunal. Forcing government personnel to reconstruct the original record would squander resources necessary to the preservation of national security, the government claims. The D.C. Circuit gave the government a choice: Go back and re-collect all of the raw information or give detainees new tribunals. The administration filed its appeal with the Supreme Court on Thursday… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Washington Post>

The DC Circuit Court made the right decision. Considering the history of Bush and the GOP at cherry picking only the information they wanted while hiding clear evidence to the contrary while “fixing the intelligence around the policy” prior to Iraq, their Reich cannot bet trusted to have presented all the relevant evidence to the tribunal, especially exculpatory evidence. This case warrants watching.

Visualize for a moment, if you will that this case was coming before SCOTUS under a John McCain administration and that McCain had gotten to appoint just one more justice to the Court. Would there be any doubt about the decision then?

Cross posted from Politics Plus

Kangaroos at Work!

The Bush administration has announced its intention to try six alleged al Qaeda members at Guantánamo under the Military Commissions Act. That Act forbids the admission of evidence extracted by torture, although it permits evidence obtained by cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment if it was secured before December 30, 2005. Thus, the administration would be forbidden from relying on evidence obtained by waterboarding, if waterboarding constitutes torture.

That’s one reason Attorney General Michael Mukasey refuses to admit waterboarding is torture. The other is that torture is considered a war crime under the U.S. War Crimes Act. Mukasey would be calling Dick Cheney a war criminal if the former admitted waterboarding is torture. Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s former chief of staff, has said on National Public Radio that the policies that led to the torture and abuse of prisoners emanated from the Vice President’s office.

The federal government is working overtime to try and clean up the legal mess made by the use of illegal interrogation methods. In a thinly-veiled attempt to sanitize the Guantánamo trials, the Department of Justice and the Pentagon instituted an extensive program to re-interview the prisoners who have undergone abusive interrogations, this time with “clean teams.” For example, if a prisoner implicated one of the defendants during an interrogation using waterboarding, the government will now re-interrogate that prisoner without waterboarding and get the same information. Then they will say the information was secured humanely. This attempt to wipe the slate clean is a farce and a sham.

In Brady v. Maryland, the US Supreme Court held that a prosecutor has a duty to give criminal defendants all evidence that might tend to exonerate them. Yet the CIA admitted destroying several hundred hours of videotapes depicting interrogations of Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Ramin al-Nashiri, which likely included waterboarding. The administration claims Abu Zubaydah led them to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the defendants facing trial in the military commissions. So the government has destroyed potentially exonerating evidence. Moreover, the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation techniques” are classified so they can be kept secret from the defendants, and CIA agents cannot be compelled to testify or produce evidence of torture.

A report just released by Seton Hall Law Center for Policy and Research reveals more than 24,000 interrogations have been conducted at Guantánamo since 2002 and every interrogation was videotaped. Many of these interrogations were abusive. “One Government document, for instance, reports detainee treatment so violent as to “shake the camera in the interrogation room” and “cause severe internal injury,” the report says.

The Military Commissions Act contains other provisions that deny the defendants basic due process. It allows a trial to continue in the absence of the accused, places the power to appoint judges in the hands of the Secretary of Defense, permits the introduction of hearsay and evidence obtained without a warrant, and denies the accused the right to see all of the evidence against him. Defense attorneys are not allowed to meet their clients without governmental monitoring, and all of their notes and mail must be handed over to the military…

Inserted from <AlterNet>

Bush and the GOP like to compare these hearings to Nuremberg, but the comparison is flawed. At Nuremberg, no evidence was obtained under torture, and a defendants had all the rights they would have in a standard court martial. These are nothing more than show trials, of the kind we were taught to condemn as children when such trials were taking place in the USSR.

No doubt Bush will veto the recent legislation passed against torture to allow these trials to proceed, when they should not. Congress must overturn that veto.

At least some of these trials will not take place until after we have a new President in 2009. This makes the candidates’ positions on this issue especially important, from a human rights perspective.

…If elected president, Hillary Clinton would ask the Justice Department to determine if alleged 9/11 plotters currently held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could be tried in civilian courts or regular military courts rather than face military commissions that have sparked controversy both inside and outside the United States, her campaign says.

Clinton’s response to questions about charges filed last week against six Guantanamo prisoners was the most far reaching of the three leading presidential candidates.

Her opponent for the Democratic nomination, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., said that the so-called “high-value detainees” at Guantanamo should be tried in federal or traditional military courts, but did not say what actions he would take to move the trials.

Republican Sen. John McCain, the likely Republican nominee, said he plans to continue the military commissions even if the detention center in Cuba is closed… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <McClatchy DC>

While Clinton’s response is the most detailed, it leaves open the possibility of continuing the commissions. DOJ is still infested with unqualified ideologues planted by Bush and the GOP, and she would have insufficient time to clean them out that early in her presidency, so DOJ may well recommend in favor of the kangaroos.

Obama’s position is better, but he needs to flesh it out with detail on how he will accomplish it.

McCain is going what he promised to do. he’s goose stepping behind his Fuhrer in hope of becoming the new Fuhrer of the Reich. He must be defeated!

Cross posted from Politics Plus

Weekly Primary Report: 2/17

This will be shorter than previous reports, because there is not much going on this week. New Mexico finished their recount, announced a narrow win for Hillary Clinton. Most of the campaign news has centered on the controversy regarding seating the delegates from Florida and Michigan, and over the super delegates, an issue Politics Plus was one of the very first blogs to cover. Since John McCain has a virtual lock on the nomination from the Reich, I see no need to report their upcoming primaries. There will be no report next week, because there are no after Hawaii and Wisconsin this week, there are no more primaries until March 4. Don’t forget to vote!

The Democratic Side

The Hawaii Caucus (2/19)

There is no polling data available.

The Wisconsin Primary (2/19)

According to Rasmussen:

Clinton	Obama
43%	47%

The Delegate Count

	Pledged	Super	Total	Pledged	Super	Total
Clinton	978	235	1213	47.0%	59.5%	49.0%
Obama	1102	160	1262	53.0%	40.5%	51.0%
Total	2080	395	2475

Overall, the Democrats will have 4049 delegates at their convention. Of those 3,253 will be pledged delegates and 796 will be super delegates. I oppose the inclusion of the super delegates, because they give roughly 20% of the power to nominate to party insiders. They include Senators, Representatives, Governors, DNC members, and other party hacks, and they are not bound to represent the will of the voters.

The Republican Side

The Delegate Count

	Pledged	Uncom	Total	Pledged	Uncom	Total
Huckabee	214	3	217	20.7%	10.3%	20.4%
McCain	804	26	830	77.8%	89.7%	78.1%
Paul	16	0	16	1.5%	0.0%	1.5%
Total	1034	29	1063

Overall, Republicans will have 2,380 delegates at their convention. Of those 1,913 are pledged delegates and 463 are unpledged delegates. But of the 463 unpledged delegates, 340 of them are unpledged by stare rules. The remaining 123 delegates are RNC members.

Cross posted from Politics Plus

Bush/GOP Intentionally Enabled Predatory Lending

Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders. Some were misrepresenting the terms of loans, making loans without regard to consumers’ ability to repay, making loans with deceptive “teaser” rates that later ballooned astronomically, packing loans with undisclosed charges and fees, or even paying illegal kickbacks. These and other practices, we noticed, were having a devastating effect on home buyers. In addition, the widespread nature of these practices, if left unchecked, threatened our financial markets.

Even though predatory lending was becoming a national problem, the Bush administration looked the other way and did nothing to protect American homeowners. In fact, the government chose instead to align itself with the banks that were victimizing consumers.

Predatory lending was widely understood to present a looming national crisis. This threat was so clear that as New York attorney general, I [Elliot Spitzer] joined with colleagues in the other 49 states in attempting to fill the void left by the federal government. Individually, and together, state attorneys general of both parties brought litigation or entered into settlements with many subprime lenders that were engaged in predatory lending practices. Several state legislatures, including New York’s, enacted laws aimed at curbing such practices.

What did the Bush administration do in response? Did it reverse course and decide to take action to halt this burgeoning scourge? As Americans are now painfully aware, with hundreds of thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure and our markets reeling, the answer is a resounding no.

Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.

Let me explain: The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers.

In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government’s actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.

But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.

Throughout our battles with the OCC and the banks, the mantra of the banks and their defenders was that efforts to curb predatory lending would deny access to credit to the very consumers the states were trying to protect. But the curbs we sought on predatory and unfair lending would have in no way jeopardized access to the legitimate credit market for appropriately priced loans. Instead, they would have stopped the scourge of predatory lending practices that have resulted in countless thousands of consumers losing their homes and put our economy in a precarious position… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Washington Post>

Bush and the GOP were faced with a problem. The middle class had become so squeezed by stagnant wages and high inflation of the basic necessities not counted when they measure inflation, health care food and energy, that they were reaching the limits of their credit. The massive gushing up of funds that trickle down economics always brings was slowing down, thus threatening the obscene profits of millionaires. Worse yet, the poor were actually spending their paltry pittances on themselves, instead of dutifully handing them over to millionaires! No Millionaire Left Behind, the only Bush/GOP success was at risk. Multi-million dollar golden parachutes were threatened. So Bush and the GOP came to the rescue and went out of their way to personally engineer a means to suck every last bit of wealth from the poor and middle classes: predatory lending. Here you see how they took class warfare to an extreme to do it.

Cross posted from Politics Plus

19 Hours Until FISA Returns

Rebuffing a series of incendiary statements from President Bush, House Democrats left town for a week without granting telecommunications firms immunity from violating federal privacy laws.

In a speech on Thursday, Bush accused Democrats of endangering “the lives of countless Americans” by not enacting the legislation he and fellow Republicans had proposed, which includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies that illegally opened their networks to the National Security Agency.

The White House subsequently circulated a statement saying: “This risks creating new intelligence gaps, which damages our national security and makes no sense if the first priority is making sure our citizens are safe.”

There is a sharp political irony here. The irony is that nearly all House Democrats actually had voted a day earlier to extend the controversial wiretapping law for three weeks–but that bill didn’t include telecom immunity.

That wasn’t good enough for Republicans, who wanted both the extension and retroactive immunity. Bush even threatened a veto of a bill without retroactive immunity. Portions of the so-called Protect America Act are scheduled to expire on Saturday… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <CNET>

With the House closed for a week, there is no possible way that Bush and the GOP can prevent the ill-named, poorly-conceived and unconstitutional Protect America Act from expiring in a little over 19 hours! The original FISA which Bush, the GOP and the Telecoms violated to illegally spy on US citizens will become law once again. Telecom immunity, not the safety of Americans, is the only issue here. The House and Senate gave Bush and the GOP everything they wanted, except telecom immunity. Bush could have easily accepted that and introduced Telecom immunity as a separate bill. In truth, Bush and the GOP don’t care about protecting the Telecoms. This is REALLY about Bush/GOP immunity.

Fellow bloggers, I’m pleased to inform you that this development is because of us. Had we not fantasized it, it would have never happened.

…Perino also attacked Congress for holding a contempt of Congress vote on White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers instead of expanding Bush’s surveillance powers:

The American people will find it baffling that on a day that House leaders are trying to put off passing critical legislation to keep us safer from the threat of foreign terrorists overseas, they are spending scarce time to become the first congress in history to bring contempt charges against a president’s chief of staff and lawyer. … The ‘people’s House’ should reflect the priorities of the American people, not the fantasies of left-wing bloggers.

… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Think Progress>

Dana, the ‘people’s House’ did reflect the will of the American people. In poll after poll, the between 55 – 60 percent of the American people oppose Telecom immunity, but we thank you for crediting us with our role in informing the people with the truth, something you and your Faux Noise cronies have never done.

Now, a week can pass and people can see that there will be no deadly terrorist attack that Bush promised will occur if he didn’t get his will that very day, and if there is, we can be certain that Bush and the GOP are the terrorists.

Cross posted at Politics Plus

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