Pat Oliphant: can’t hang around here all day
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Mike Luckovich; testy
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Tony Auth: foreign policy goals
Archive for October, 2005
three to see
Monday, October 31st, 2005
More Parents Naming Children After GOP Stars
Monday, October 31st, 2005http://swiftreport.blogs.com/news/
Forget about Jacob, Madison and Abigail. The hottest baby names these days are Sean, Grover, Condi and Coulter–the monikers of Republican stars. But not every GOP personality is guaranteed a top spot on the baby name list. Experts say few parents are naming their children for Tucker Carlson, the beleaguered conservative commentator.
Most popular name among Hispanics: Gonzo, for Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez.
THE BIG PICTURE
Monday, October 31st, 2005http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/002885.html
As the indictments stemming from Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation are revealed, several columnists and bloggers have been keeping the larger context of the Plame leak in view. Laura Rozen writes at War and Piece, “the Vice President’s office was leading an all-out propaganda war – every bit as choreographed as the pre-war propaganda campaign by the same officials – to blame the CIA for the fact that there weren’t any WMD to be found in Iraq after all, and the chief stated reason for the war was collapsing. And it enlisted not just leaks to reporters about Valerie Plame to conduct that war against the CIA. It also enlisted key Republican officials in Congress, to buck up its narrative, and literally divert attention from the role of the White House and executive branch offices in citing truly dubious Iraq intelligence – some, including the Niger yellowcake claims, not supported by the intelligence community at all. And Congress so far has gone along.”
SOURCE: WarandPiece.com, October 19, 2005
For more information or to comment on this story, visit:
Analysis of the Indictment Story
Monday, October 31st, 2005LARRY JOHNSON, lcjohnso@ix.netcom.com, http://noquarter.typepad.com
Johnson worked as a CIA intelligence analyst and State Department counter-terrorism official. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He said: “It is slowly dawning on the American people that the Bush administration attack on Valerie and Joe Wilson was part of a broader conspiracy to hide the fact that our political leaders fabricated a case for war in Iraq. Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, and Karl Rove, among others, apparently preferred to destroy a valuable intelligence asset rather than expose the truth that the United States went to war in Iraq based on misinformation and deception. That is a crime deserving the most serious punishment.”
From: Institute for Public Accuracy
“How do we regulate speech in a democracy?
Monday, October 31st, 2005When do words make you a criminal, conspirator, aider and abetter, and when do they make you a journalist, reporter, whistle-blower, free citizen? Soon we will know whether Karl Rove, Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby or any other White House figure will face charges for revealing the name of a CIA operative as part of a campaign to silence her husband, a vocal critic of the war in Iraq. But as many major scandals do, the ‘Plamegate’ affair has sprouted hydra-heads of side scandals — and none so interesting as the question of the role journalists have played in outing Valerie Plame…The treatment of journalists connected to Plamegate should send a cold chill through internet publishers of any stripe, and worry those of us intent on fully transporting democratic principles to the online world…Congress isn’t likely to extend the narrow legal protections that mainstream journalists want to bloggers, message-board posters and mailing-list participants.”
Learn more in Wired News.
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,69350,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_3
From: Future Brief
The WasteBasket: A Bulletin on Wasteful Government Spending
Monday, October 31st, 2005by Taxpayers for Common Sense www.taxpayer.net
Vol. X No. 37
October 28, 2005
Big Oil Blowout
America has seen its fair share of tough times these days: an ongoing war, a spate of devastating natural disasters, and a stumbling economy have all weighed heavily on families this fall. But there’s one group of Americans who’ve weathered the storm quite comfortably: top executives at big oil companies. With gasoline hovering at $3 a gallon and home heating oil prices expected to be the highest in recent memory, Big Oil execs have all the reason in the world to kick back, snack on brie and drink a little Chablis.
Since major energy companies are reaping record profits, you might think that Congress would, for once, stop trying to shovel tax dollars into Big Oil’s pockets. You’d be wrong. Lawmakers have been floating
a whole bunch of porky proposals for the oil and gas industry in the past few weeks, huge boondoggles that would cost taxpayers billions of dollars but do nothing to lower the price at the pump. To lawmakers, oil pork is like an itch they can’t stop scratching, and nothing seems to stop the craving.
Read the complete wastebasket here:
http://www.taxpayer.net/TCS/wastebasket/environment/2005-10-28bigoil.htm
GOING ON AT TAXPAYER.NET THIS WEEK
1. TCS opposed the newst incarnation of corporate welfare legislation known as the energy bill. Thankfully, the Senate had the good sense not to pass this porker out of conference.
2. The Costs of Katrina: Rebuilding the Gulf – TCS’s resources on the cost of rebuilding the Gulf Coast, including a database of the largest reconstruction contracts given out thus far, as well as profiles of the contractors involved.
http://www.taxpayer.net/budget/katrinaspending/index.htm
3. Fiscal Roadmap for Reconstruction – Rebuilding the Gulf and restoring the lives of those who live there will cost the federal government $200 billion. We put together a reasonable and achievable
list of budget offsets for how Congress can pay for this massive undertaking. One of our suggestions: cut $10 billion in pork from the transportation bill.
http://www.taxpayer.net/budget/katrinaspending/fiscalroadmap.htm
ACTION ITEMS
Take action to tell your Senator how you feel about their vote on the “bridges to nowhere” amendment
http://capwiz.com/taxpayer/issues/alert/?alertid=8150666&type=CO
Comment:
“Yes, our numbers are large, but we are half the size of the returns of the financials and pharmaceuticals.”
–American Petroleum Institute President Red Cavaney, defending the oil industry’s record profits in the third quarter of 2005