Happy New Year, Folks...It'll sure be happier if George, Dick, and company resign-or are finally impeached!

High Crimes and Misdemeanors
Talkin' About the "I"-Word
By RALPH NADER
Richard Cohen, the finely-calibrated syndicated columnist for the Washington
Post, wrote a column on October 28, 2004 which commenced with this straight
talk: "I do not write the headlines for my columns. Someone else does. But
if I were to write the headline for one, it would be 'Impeach George Bush'."
Cohen stated the obvious then. Bush and Cheney had plunged the nation into
war "under false pretenses." Exploiting the public trust in the Presidency,
Bush had persuaded, over the uncritical mass media, day after day, before
the war, a majority of the American people that Saddam Hussein possessed
chemical, biological weapons and nuclear weapons programs, was connected to
al-Qaeda and 9/11 and was a threat to the United States.
These falsehoods, Cohen wrote, "are a direct consequence of the
administration's repeated lies--lies of commission, such as Cheney's
statements, and lies of omission."
Fourteen months later, no widely syndicated columnist or major newspaper
edi
torial has called for the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
Not even Cohen again. Yet the case for impeachment is so strong that,
recently, hardly a day goes by without more disclosures which strengthen any
number of impeachable offenses that could form a Congressional action under
our Constitution. An illegal war, to begin with, against our Constitution
which says only Congress can declare war. An illegal war under domestic
laws, and international law, and conducted illegally under international
conventions to which the US belongs, should cause an outcry against this
small clique of outlaws committing war crimes who have hijacked our national
government.
An illegal, criminal war means that every related U.S. death and injury,
every related Iraqi civilian death and injury, every person tortured, every
home and building destroyed become war crimes as a result--under established
international law.
There are those on talk radio or cable shows who scoff at international law.
They rarely tell their audiences that the United States has played a key
role in establishing these treaties, like the Geneva Conventions, and the
United Nations Charter. When these treaties are agreed to by the U.S.
government, they become as binding as our federal laws.
By these legal standards and by the requirements of the U.S. Constitution
(Article 1, Section 8, the war-declaring authority), George W. Bush and Dick
Cheney are probably the most impeachable President and Vice President in
American history. An illegal war based on lies, deceptions, cover-ups and
their repetition even after being told by officials in their own
administration--not to mention critical retired generals , diplomats and
security specialists--of their falsity should have prodded the House of
Representatives into initiating impeachment proceedings. But then, Bush did
not lie under oath about sex.
A majority of the American people have turned against this war-quagmire,
against its intolerable human and economic costs, against the increased
danger this war is bringing to our nation's interests. They want the
soldiers to return safely home. In increasing numbers they sense what Bush's
own CIA Director, Porter Goss, told the U.S. Senate last February. He noted,
along with other officials since then, that U.S. soldiers in Iraq are like a
magnet attracting and training more terrorists from more countries who will
return to their nations and cause trouble. Many national security experts
have said, in effect, you do not fight terrorists with policies that produce
more terrorists.
Now comes the most recent, blatant impeachable offense--Bush ordering the
spying on Americans in our country by the National Security Agency. This
disclosure stunned many N.S.A. staff who themselves view domestic
surveillance as anathema, according to Matthew M. Aid, a current historian
of the agency.
Domestic eavesdropping on Americans by order of the President to the
National Security Agency violates the 27-year-old Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act unless they obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA) Court. This court meets in secret and has rejected
only four out of 19,000 applications.
So why did Bush violate this law and why does he defiantly say he will
continue to order domestic spying as he has since 2002? Not because the FISA
Court is slow. It acts in a matter of hours in the middle of the night if
need be. The law actually permits surveillance in emergencies as long as
warrants are requested within 72 hours or 15 days in times of war.
Bush violated the law because of the arrogance of power. Ostensibly, he
believes that a vague Congressional resolution after 9/11 to fight al-Qaeda
overrides this explicit federal law and the Fourth Amendment to the
Constitution. Bush even claims he can unilaterally decide to domestically
spy from the inherent powers of the Presidency to fight wars. (To him
Congressionally-undeclared wars are still wars).
Other than his legal flaks in the White House and Justice Department making
such transparently specious arguments as "good soldiers", the overwhelming
position of legal scholars is that Bush and Cheney have violated grave laws
protecting the liberties of the American people.
The crime, says Professor David Cole of Georgetown Law School, is
"punishable by five years in prison." Professor Jonathan Turley of George
Washington University Law School said that the President ordered such a
crime and ordered US officials to commit it.this is a serious felony.what
happened here is not just a violation of Federal law, it's a violation of
the U.S. Constitutionan impeachable offense."
It matters not that a Republican-dominated Congress has no present interest
in moving to impeach Bush-Cheney. What matters is that impeachment in this
case-- based on the authority of Congress to charge the President and Vice
President with "high crimes and misdemeanors"--is a patriotic cause rooted
in the wisdom of our founding fathers who did not want another King George
III in the guise of a President.
As Senator Russell Feingold said a few days ago: The President is not a
King, he is a President subject to the laws and Constitution of the land.
Apparently, George W. Bush seems to believe and behave as if his unlimited
inherited powers flow from King George III, given the way he has shoved
aside both federal law and the nation's Constitution.
Both George W. Bush and Dick Cheney should resign. They have disgraced their
office and bled the nation. They have shattered the public trust in so many
serious ways that will only become worse in the coming months.

This is how the Bush Misadministration brings our soldiers home?

I am shocked, SHOCKED!!!

Powerful Government Accountability Office report confirms key 2004 stolen election findings by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman October 26, 2005

As a legal noose appears to be tightening around the Bush/Cheney/Rove inner circle, a shocking government report shows the floor under the legitimacy of their alleged election to the White House is crumbling.

The latest critical confirmation of key indicators that the election of 2004 was stolen comes in an extremely powerful, penetrating report from the Government Accountability Office that has gotten virtually no mainstream media coverage.

The government's lead investigative agency is known for its general incorruptibility and its thorough, in-depth analyses. Its concurrence with assertions widely dismissed as "conspiracy theories" adds crucial new weight to the case that Team Bush has no legitimate business being in the White House.

Nearly a year ago, senior Judiciary Committee Democrat John Conyers (D-MI) asked the GAO to investigate electronic voting machines as they were used during the November 2, 2004 presidential election. The request came amidst widespread complaints in Ohio and elsewhere that often shocking irregularities defined their performance.

According to CNN, the U.S. House Judiciary Committee received "more than 57,000 complaints" following Bush's alleged re-election. Many such concerns were memorialized under oath in a series of sworn statements and affidavits in public hearings and investigations conducted in Ohio by the Free Press and other election protection organizations.

The non-partisan GAO report has now found that, "some of [the] concerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes."

The United States is the only major democracy that allows private partisan corporations to secretly count and tabulate the votes with proprietary non-transparent software. Rev. Jesse Jackson, among others, has asserted that "public elections must not be conducted on privately-owned machines." The CEO of one of the most crucial suppliers of electronic voting machines, Warren O'Dell of Diebold, pledged before the 2004 campaign to deliver Ohio and thus the presidency to George W. Bush.

Bush's official margin of victory in Ohio was just 118,775 votes out of more than 5.6 million cast. Election protection advocates argue that O'Dell's statement still stands as a clear sign of an effort, apparently successful, to steal the White House.

Among other things, the GAO confirms that:

1. Some electronic voting machines "did not encrypt cast ballots or system audit logs, and it was possible to alter both without being detected." In other words, the GAO now confirms that electronic voting machines provided an open door to flip an entire vote count. More than 800,000 votes were cast in Ohio on electronic voting machines, some seven times Bush's official margin of victory.

2. "It was possible to alter the files that define how a ballot looks and works so that the votes for one candidate could be recorded for a different candidate." Numerous sworn statements and affidavits assert that this did happen in Ohio 2004.

3. "Vendors installed uncertified versions of voting system software at the local level." 3. Falsifying election results without leaving any evidence of such an action by using altered memory cards can easily be done, according to the GAO.

4. The GAO also confirms that access to the voting network was easily compromised because not all digital recording electronic voting systems (DREs) had supervisory functions password-protected, so access to one machine provided access to the whole network. This critical finding confirms that rigging the 2004 vote did not require a "widespread conspiracy" but rather the cooperation of a very small number of operatives with the power to tap into the networked machines and thus change large numbers of votes at will. With 800,000 votes cast on electronic machines in Ohio, flipping the number needed to give Bush 118,775 could be easily done by just one programmer.

5. Access to the voting network was also compromised by repeated use of the same user IDs combined with easily guessed passwords. So even relatively amateur hackers could have gained access to and altered the Ohio vote tallies.

6. The locks protecting access to the system were easily picked and keys were simple to copy, meaning, again, getting into the system was an easy matter.

7. One DRE model was shown to have been networked in such a rudimentary fashion that a power failure on one machine would cause the entire network to fail, re-emphasizing the fragility of the system on which the Presidency of the United States was decided.

8. GAO identified further problems with the security protocols and background screening practices for vendor personnel, confirming still more easy access to the system.

In essence, the GAO study makes it clear that no bank, grocery store or mom & pop chop shop would dare operate its business on a computer system as flimsy, fragile and easily manipulated as the one on which the 2004 election turned.

The GAO findings are particularly damning when set in the context of an election run in Ohio by a Secretary of State simultaneously working as co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign. Far from what election theft skeptics have long asserted, the GAO findings confirm that the electronic network on which 800,000 Ohio votes were cast was vulnerable enough to allow a a tiny handful of operatives -- or less -- to turn the whole vote count using personal computers operating on relatively simple software.

The GAO documentation flows alongside other crucial realities surrounding the 2004 vote count. For example:

The exit polls showed Kerry winning in Ohio, until an unexplained last minute shift gave the election to Bush. Similar definitive shifts also occurred in Iowa, Nevada and New Mexico, a virtual statistical impossibility.

A few weeks prior to the election, an unauthorized former ES&S voting machine company employee, was caught on the ballot-making machine in Auglaize County

Election officials in Mahoning County now concede that at least 18 machines visibly transferred votes for Kerry to Bush. Voters who pushed Kerry's name saw Bush's name light up, again and again, all day long. Officials claim the problems were quickly solved, but sworn statements and affidavits say otherwise. They confirm similar problems inFranklin County (Columbus). Kerry's margins in both counties were suspiciously low.

A voting machine in Mahoning County recorded a negative 25 million votes for Kerry. The problem was allegedly fixed.

In Gahanna Ward 1B, at a fundamentalist church, a so-called "electronic transfer glitch" gave Bush nearly 4000 extra votes when only 638 people voted at that polling place. The tally was allegedly corrected, but remains infamous as the "loaves and fishes" vote count.

In Franklin County, dozens of voters swore under oath that their vote for Kerry faded away on the DRE without a paper trail.

In Miami County, at 1:43am after Election Day, with the county's central tabulator reporting 100% of the vote - 19,000 more votes mysteriously arrived; 13,000 were for Bush at the same percentage as prior to the additional votes, a virtual statistical impossibility.

In Cleveland, large, entirely implausible vote totals turned up for obscure third party candidates in traditional Democratic African-American wards. Vote counts in neighboring wards showed virtually no votes for those candidates, with 90% going instead for Kerry.

Prior to one of Blackwell's illegitimate "show recounts," technicians from Triad voting machine company showed up unannounced at the Hocking County Board of Elections and removed the computer hard drive.

In response to official information requests, Shelby and other counties admit to having discarded key records and equipment before any recount could take place.

In a conference call with Rev. Jackson, Attorney Cliff Arnebeck, Attorney Bob Fitrakis and others, John Kerry confirmed that he lost every precinct in New Mexico that had a touchscreen voting machine. The losses had no correlation with ethnicity, social class or traditional party affiliation---only with the fact that touchscreen machines were used.

In a public letter, Rep. Conyers has stated that "by and large, when it comes to a voting machine, the average voter is getting a lemon - the Ford Pinto of voting technology. We must demand better."

But the GAO report now confirms that electronic voting machines as deployed in 2004 were in fact perfectly engineered to allow a very small number of partisans with minimal computer skills and equipment to shift enough votes to put George W. Bush back in the White House.

Given the growing body of evidence, it appears increasingly clear
that's exactly what happened.

GAO Report

Revised 10/27/05


Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman are co-authors of HOW THE GOP STOLE AMERICA'S 2004 ELECTION & IS RIGGING 2008, available via http://freepress.org and http://harveywasserman.com. Their What Happened in Ohio?, with Steve Rosenfeld, will be published in Spring, 2006, by New Press.

Send to a friendPost a CommentRead all posts by Lyn Davis Lear


link to entire article:

Huffington Post article

New State Slogans for Delaware

Thanks to the person who stated these in the Sound Off column in the Delaware State News...


1. Welcome to Delaware-We're for sale. Bring lumber, concrete, wire and pipe.


2. We have land we haven't ruined yet.


3. Bring plenty of money; We approve everything.


4. We grow homes, Not corn.


5. We always say "yes".


6. Rehoboth: Indian word for Gridlock.


7. Hurry! We're not full yet.


8. Land of the invisible governor.


9. Small wonder-We haven't sunk yet, But we're trying!


My personal favorite:


10. Time to move away.


11. Chicken farms smell worse than asphalt-We need you.


12. Plant a tree, Plow the rest.


13. Dig a hole, Cover with a box.




And, my own submission: The new state name for Delaware is:

"WEST NEW JERSEY"!

The last SLUUUURRRRRRP of the global chocolate milkshake...

Some homegrown killers...

...oh, and the CIA, too...

ABSURD DUBYA QUOTE OF THE DAY

Nooo..., ya think???


"We've also got to understand, in order to power the power-generating plants that are now being built in California, we need more energy."

---- Washington, D.C.; April 24, 2001