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Impeach Bush--Index 32
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August 15, 2006 The administration has put itself in the position of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. If, God forbid, a serious terrorist conspiracy is uncovered, there will be a tendency to dismiss it in a backlash to these over-hyped "plots." July Survey/Posted August 21,
2006
August 17, 2006 August 18, 2006 "This ruling is a bad situation that just got worse for the White House," says Turley. "These crimes could constitute impeachable offenses." August 17, 2006 Hatch was quoted in Tuesday's Tooele Transcript Bulletin as saying Middle East terrorists are "waiting for the Democrats here to take control, let things cool off and then strike again." August 18, 2006 August 17, 2006 August 17, 2006 August 17, 2006 Forty-eight percent of individuals in families earnings between $35,000 and $49,999 said they had either a somewhat serious or very serious problem paying their medical bills in the last two years, according to a study by The Commonwealth Fund. Meanwhile, 50 percent of adults in that income bracket said they had difficulties affording their health insurance. August 17, 2006 U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Detroit became the first judge to strike down the National Security Agency's program, which she says violates the rights to free speech and privacy as well as the separation of powers enshrined in the Constitution. August 15, 2006 August 13, 2006 The alleged abuses would have been bad enough. But as a judge eventually pointed out, something else was amiss: Benatta was never charged with a crime. The FBI grillings stopped sometime in November 2001, when an internal report was prepared saying he was cleared. On paper, he was no longer a terror suspect. No one bothered to tell him. August 14, 2006 The anonymous inquiry included a photo of Labor Department deputy assistant secretary Karen Czarnecki appearing on Fox News as a "conservative strategist." She's also a regular "conservative analyst" on the PBS show "To the Contrary" and, according to her department biography, has appeared on MSNBC, CNN, Canadian Public Broadcasting and C-SPAN. August 17, 2006 The Deputy Prime Minister's condemnation of President Bush and his approach to the Middle East could cause a diplomatic row but it will please Labour MPs who are furious about Tony Blair's backing of the United States over the bombing of Lebanon. August 15, 2006 on the GOP: "The Republicans should be very careful in trying to play politics with this London airport thing, because they're going to have a hard time with the facts." On Lieberman: That is, there were almost no Democrats who agreed with his position, which was, 'I want to attack Iraq whether or not they have weapons of mass destruction.'" August 15, 2006 August 14, 2006
August 14, 2006 August 14, 2006 Defense Minister Amir Peretz faired worse. Defense ministers have almost always been extremely popular in Israel but Peretz` approval rating plummeted from 65 percent last month to 37 last week. August 14, 2006 The Israeli plan, according to the former senior intelligence official, was "the mirror image of what the United States has been planning for Iran." (The initial U.S. Air Force proposals for an air attack to destroy Iran's nuclear capacity, which included the option of intense bombing of civilian infrastructure targets inside Iran, have been resisted by the top leadership of the Army, the Navy, and the Marine Corps, according to current and former officials. They argue that the Air Force plan will not work and will inevitably lead, as in the Israeli war with Hezbollah, to the insertion of troops on the ground.) August 13, 2006 August 13, 2006 Some of the fiercest sentiment in support of the militant Shiite cleric has erupted during anti-Israel and anti-U.S. protests in predominantly Sunni countries like Egypt, Jordan and Kuwait — all key U.S. allies in the region. Demonstrators have voiced outrage at their leaders for failing to back Hezbollah and Lebanon. August 15, 2006 August 14, 2006 August 14, 2006 The Federal Communications Commission has issued 42 formal letters of inquiry to holders of 77 broadcast licenses, the office of Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said Monday. August 12, 2006 Roger Stillwell told a federal magistrate that he had been given hundreds of dollars worth of football and concert tickets from Abramoff, who at the time was lobbying for the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. August 11, 2006 August 14, 2006 I wrote about the subject the next day, warning that "politicians who wrap themselves in the flag while relentlessly pursuing their usual partisan agenda are not true patriots." We now know that from the very beginning, the Bush administration and its allies in Congress saw the terrorist threat not as a problem to be solved, but as a political opportunity to be exploited. Can a last-minute effort to make a big splash on terror stave off electoral disaster? Many political analysts think it will. June 13, 2006 August 14, 2006 August 15, 2006 Tuscola County Prosecutor Mark E. Reene did not respond to repeated messages from The Saginaw News. August 13, 2006 If the war gave Lamont a message, the Web gave his campaign tools to scale with amazing speed. Attention from bloggers with national audiences helped create buzz around the campaign, giving it an air of credibility when the challenge to Lieberman still seemed an incredible long shot. Organizational muscle came via the Web-based activist group MoveOn.org and a sharp campaign Web site that included links to a vibrant community of supporters beyond the formal campaign organization. Said journalist and blogger Josh Marshall, "Blogs were the vehicle that helped that latent but pervasive disgruntlement among Connecticut Democrats become aware of itself." August 11, 2006 In the wake of Connecticut Democratic Senate candidate Ned Lamont's primary victory over incumbent Sen. Joe Lieberman, and Lieberman's decision to run against Lamont as an independent in the general election, the political media were awash in pro-Lieberman and pro-Republican spin about Lamont, Connecticut voters, and what it all means for this fall's congressional elections. August 11, 2006 August 11, 2006 And that's just the Republicans. Yesterday, Cheney bashed those who voted for Democrat Ned Lamont in the Connecticut Senate primary, claiming that these votes would encourage "al Qaeda types" to think that "they can break the will of the American people." August 11, 2006 August 12, 2006 Bush had left his ranch vacation and jetted north for a scheduled closed-door fundraiser. No press plane accompanied him. And so when news broke that Britain had broken up a major terrorist plot, the only ones there to convey the president's reaction were a handful of local reporters and a few pool journalists who ride in the back of Air Force One. August 15, 2006 August 12, 2006 The rejection of Lieberman made Cheney wonder if "the dominant view of the Democratic Party" is "the basic, fundamental notion that somehow we can retreat behind our oceans and not be actively engaged in this conflict and be safe here at home." And if being against the Iraq War makes you "extreme left," then the administration has succeeded in pushing 60 percent of Americans into that camp. That's the proportion opposed to the war in the new CNN poll. August 13, 2006 August 12, 2006 August 8, 2006 House and Senate versions of the 2007 Defense appropriation bill contain $7 million for the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center — half of what the center received last fiscal year. August 10, 2006 July 16, 2006 August 7, 2006 August 7, 2006 August 7, 2006 Some, even within the White House, have started referring to the "Condi Rice show" — suggesting that the Secretary of State spends too much time on television talking to a domestic audience and not enough in international negotiations. A senior Republican expressed unhappiness at the way that she was snubbed recently by Fouad Siniora, the Lebanese Prime Minister. "Henry Kissinger would never have been turned away from any capital," he told The Times. August 7, 2006 No such questions have been asked by the media. And yet recent months have seen a number of alleged terrorist plots—in the US, Canada and Australia—that were supposedly thwarted by the security services. In each case, mass arrests were made of people who, according to the indictments, had merely discussed terrorist acts. No concrete plans were discovered, no weapons or explosives seized. And in most of these cases, the supposed plots were initiated and encouraged by government informers who acted as agent provocateurs and entrapped the alleged conspirators. August 11, 2006 Strock admitted the Corps had overlooked a flaw in the design that caused some of the most significant breaches. August 10, 2006 Last March, as a result of the continuing federal investigations arising out of charges against former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.), prosecutors said they were reviewing CIFA contracts that went to MZM Inc., a company run by Mitchell J. Wade, who had pleaded guilty in February to conspiring to bribe Cunningham. August 9, 2006 And a majority of poll respondents said they would support the withdrawal of at least some U.S. troops by the end of the year, according to results from the Opinion Research Corporation poll conducted last week on behalf of CNN. The corporation polled 1,047 adult Americans by telephone. August 9, 2006 "They are the ones that coalesced with the big corporations to pass unfair trade agreements that hurt America," Feingold said. "It was the DLC that came up with the health care plan with the Clintons that was so complicated nobody could understand it. It's the DLC that has cut off our ability to say things like, "Let's get out of Iraq because it's a bad idea.'" August 9, 2006 August 9, 2006 Ghaziyeh's normal population of 23,000 has reportedly been swelled by a wave of refugees. It is a predominantly Shiite town near Sidon, a region where most of the population is composed of Sunni Muslims. Many people from further south had fled there to stay with relatives and friends. There was no indication that the town was used to launch rockets against Israel or had any intrinsic strategic significance. The objective was merely to further terrorize people who have already suffered the loss of their homes and seen members of their families massacred in the relentless Israeli bombardment of southern Lebanon. The aim is to force them to flee further north, or kill them. August 8, 2006 August 7, 2006 Although Wali died in his cell, Passaro is not charged in his death. August 9, 2006 August 8, 2006 Officials say the amendments would alter a U.S. law passed in the mid-1990s that criminalized violations of the Geneva Conventions, a set of international treaties governing military conduct in wartime. The conventions generally bar the cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment of wartime prisoners without spelling out what all those terms mean. August 7, 2006 August 1, 2006 August 8, 2006 Consumer credit, or non-mortgage loans to individuals, rose $10.3 billion to $2.19 trillion, following a revised $5.89-billion increase in May. The two-month gain was the biggest since September-October 2004. August 2, 2006 August 6, 2006 As Fed chairman Ben Bernanke prepares to decide whether to raise American interest rates for the 18th time on Tuesday, bond prices and the high level of borrowing costs are now showing a 38 per cent chance of recession, according to a model published by Fed economist Jonathan Wright earlier this year. August 6, 2006 Mr. Wilkes had set up separate meetings with the lawmakers hoping to win a government contract, and he planned to punctuate each pitch with a campaign donation. But his hometown congressman, Representative Bill Lowery of San Diego, a Republican, told him that presenting the checks during the sessions was not how things were done, Mr. Wilkes recalled. August 5, 2006 Carl J. Truscott, a 22-year veteran of the Secret Service who took over as ATF chief in 2004, was under fire for his spending and management practices at a time when the agency was considering sharp cuts in the number of new cars, bulletproof vests and other basics it provides agents. Sources familiar with the project told The Washington Post earlier this year that Truscott planned to buy, among other things, nearly $300,000 in extras for the new director's suite, including a $65,000 conference table and more than $100,000 worth of hardwood floors, custom trim and other items. August 4, 2006 And if it takes impeachment to get there, they said at a follow-up rally on the Brattleboro town commons, then so be it. August 4, 2006 Somehow NBC couldn't dig up the quotes of Rumsfeld saying that he doubted the war would last six months (Feb. 7, 2003) or that US troops "would be welcomed" in Iraq (Feb. 20, 2003) or that "we know where [the WMD] are" (March 30, 2003). The quotes were easily dug up by ThinkProgress. August 4, 2006 In his new book, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created A War Without End, Galbraith, the son of the late economist John Kenneth Galbraith, claims that American leadership knew very little about the nature of Iraqi society and the problems it would face after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. A year after his "Axis of Evil" speech before the U.S. Congress, President Bush met with three Iraqi Americans, one of whom became postwar Iraq's first representative to the United States. The three described what they thought would be the political situation after the fall of Saddam Hussein. During their conversation with the President, Galbraith claims, it became apparent to them that Bush was unfamiliar with the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites. August 4, 2006 Army troops in and around the capital interviewed in the last week cite a long list of evidence that the center of the nation is coming undone: Villages have been abandoned by Sunni and Shiite Muslims; Sunni insurgents have killed thousands of Shiites in car bombings and assassinations; Shiite militia death squads have tortured and killed hundreds, if not thousands, of Sunnis; and when night falls, neighborhoods become open battlegrounds. August 3, 2006 August 4, 2006 "We do have the possibility of that devolving into a civil war," Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in Washington on Thursday. August 3, 2006 The alleged assault was uncovered during an investigation that previously led to allegations that seven Marines and a Navy corpsman murdered an Iraqi civilian on April 26. Three of those Marines _ Sgt. Lawrence G. Hutchins III, Cpl. Trent D. Thomas and Lance Cpl. Jerry E. Shumate Jr. _ now face an additional charge in the April 10 assault. August 4, 2006 The prosecutor, Captain Joseph Mackey, was speaking on the last day of a legal hearing to determine whether there is enough evidence to prosecute the troops following the May 9 slaying of three detainees. "US soldiers must follow the laws of war. That's what makes us better than the terrorists, what sets us apart from the thugs and the hitmen. These soldiers did just the opposite," Mackey said, in his closing argument. July 30, 2006 By the time the dust had settled, Woodland Hills, which Mr. Boyd founded in 1992, had lost about 1,000 of its 5,000 members. Mr. Boyd lambasted the "hypocrisy and pettiness" of Christians who focus on "sexual issues" like homosexuality, abortion or Janet Jackson's breast-revealing performance at the Super Bowl halftime show. He said Christians these days were constantly outraged about sex and perceived violations of their rights to display their faith in public. "Those are the two buttons to push if you want to get Christians to act," he said. "And those are the two buttons Jesus never pushed." August 2, 2006 The Marines initially reported after the Nov. 19, 2005 killings at Haditha that 15 Iraqi civilians had been killed by a makeshift roadside bomb and in crossfire between Marines and insurgent attackers. Based on accounts from survivors and human rights groups, Time magazine first reported in March that the killings were deliberate acts by the Marines. August 2, 2006 The ears of another staff member, Miles Kara, perked up as well. "I said to myself, That's not right," the retired colonel, a former army intelligence officer, told me. Kara had seen the radar re-creations of the fighters' routes. "We knew something was odd, but we didn't have enough specificity to know how odd." As the tapes reveal in stark detail, parts of Scott's and Arnold's testimony were misleading, and others simply false. At 9:16 a.m., when Arnold and Marr had supposedly begun their tracking of United 93, the plane had not yet been hijacked. In fact, NEADS wouldn't get word about United 93 for another 51 minutes. And while NORAD commanders did, indeed, order the Langley fighters to scramble at 9:24, as Scott and Arnold testified, it was not in response to the hijacking of American 77 or United 93. Rather, they were chasing a ghost. NEADS was entering the most chaotic period of the morning. August 2, 2006 August 1, 2006 July 31, 2006 July 30, 2006 July 30, 2006 July 31, 2006 July 30, 2006 If Mr. Lieberman had once stood up and taken the lead in saying that there were some places a president had no right to take his country even during a time of war, neither he nor this page would be where we are today. But by suggesting that there is no principled space for that kind of opposition, he has forfeited his role as a conscience of his party, and has forfeited our support. July 26, 2006 |