Political Jackass

From ThinkProgress:

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan will publish a memoir in April titled “What Happened.” In an excerpt posted by his publisher, McClellan implicates “the President himself” in the Valerie Plame scandal:

“The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

“There was one problem. It was not true.

“I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the president himself.”

McClellan, who orchestrated the White House’s stonewalling of the investigation into the leak, later said he was lied to by those directly involved.

I doubt these e-mails will ever see the light of day. They will claim they’ve been destroyed and have no record of any of these e-mails. The American public will probably just let them get away with lies once again. It’s sad really. The Republicans know they can get away with anything so they do what they want.

A federal judge Monday ordered the White House to preserve copies of all its e-mails, a move that Bush administration lawyers had argued strongly against.

U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy directed the Executive Office of the President to safeguard the material in response to two lawsuits that seek to determine whether the White House has destroyed e-mails in violation of federal law.

In response, the White House said it has been taking steps to preserve copies of all e-mails and will continue to do so. The administration is seeking dismissal of the lawsuits brought by two private groups, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the National Security Archive.

The organizations allege the disappearance of 5 million White House e-mails. The court order issued by Kennedy, an appointee of President Clinton, is directed at maintaining backup tapes which contain copies of White House e-mails.

The Federal Records Act details strict standards prohibiting the destruction of government documents including electronic messages, unless first approved by the archivist of the United States.

Justice Department lawyers had urged the courts to accept a proposed White House declaration promising to preserve all backup tapes.

“The judge decided that wasn’t enough,” said Anne Weismann, an attorney for CREW, which has gone to court over secrecy issues involving the Bush administration and has pursued ethical issues involving Republicans on Capitol Hill.

The judge’s order “should stop any future destruction of e-mails, but the White House stopped archiving its e-mail in 2003 and we don’t know if some backup tapes for those e-mails were already taped over before we went to court. It’s a mystery,” said Meredith Fuchs, a lawyer for the National Security Archive.

CREW and the National Security Archive are seeking to force the White House to immediately explain in court what happened to its e-mail, an issue that first surfaced nearly two years ago in the leak probe of administration officials who disclosed Valerie Plame’s CIA identity to reporters.

Special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald revealed early in 2006 that relevant e-mails could be missing because of an archiving problem at the White House.

The White House has provided little public information about the matter, saying that some e-mails may not have been automatically archived on a computer server for the Executive Office of the President and that the e-mails may have been preserved on backup tapes.

The White House has said that its Office of Administration is looking into whether there are e-mails that were not automatically archived and that if there is a problem, the necessary steps will be taken to address it.

Kennedy issued the order following recommendations to do so by a federal magistrate who held a hearing on the matter.

“We will study the court’s order and the magistrate’s recommendations,” said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel. “However, the Office of Administration has been taking steps to maintain and preserve backup tapes for the official e-mail system. We have provided assurances to the plaintiffs and to the court that these steps were being taken. We will continue preserving the tapes in compliance with the court’s order.” Source: CNN

Another gay sex scandal for Republicans. This comes from The Daytona Beach News-Journal:

A former Daytona Beach city commissioner and a local high school teacher arrested Thursday during a sex sting at a Volusia mall bathroom were released from the Volusia County Brach Jail today, authorities said.

Former commissioner and mayoral candidate Mike Shallow and David Behringer, an athletic trainer and teacher at Seabreeze High School, posted $1,000 bail today after midnight, a jail spokesman said.

Behringer resigned today, according to officials with the Volusia County School District. Read more…

For the party that hates gays, doesn’t think they should get married, and calls them immoral, the GOP sure has a lot of closet homosexuals. Yet another government official and member of the GOP caught in a homosexual sex scandal.

A Republican state legislator who repeatedly voted against gay rights measures resigned his seat Wednesday amid revelations he had sex with a man he met at an erotic video store while in Spokane on a GOP retreat.

In a written statement, Rep. Richard Curtis, of La Center, said that while he believes he’s done a lot of good during his time in the Legislature, “events that have recently come to light have hurt a lot of people.”

“I sincerely apologize for any pain my actions may have caused,” he wrote. “This has been damaging to my family, and I don’t want to subject them to any additional pain that might result from carrying out this matter under the scrutiny that comes with holding public office.”

Three days earlier, Curtis had insisted to his local newspaper that he was not gay and that sex was not involved in what he said was an extortion attempt by a man last week……

He went to the Hollywood Erotic Boutique in Spokane early on Oct. 26 and met Castagna, who accompanied him to the hotel, police documents released Tuesday said. The two arrived at the hotel around 3:34 a.m. and had sex, after which Curtis fell asleep, according to the documents.

Police interviewed several witnesses at the Hollywood Erotic Boutique, and according to the report, Curtis walked into a bathroom at the store early on the morning of Oct. 26 and a few minutes later left the bathroom wearing long red women’s stockings and a black sequined lingerie top. A witness told police that shortly after that he saw a man with a cane performing a sexual act on Curtis in an upstairs room.

Police also interviewed Jalene Henneman, a Hollywood Exotic Boutique employee, who told them Curtis had been in the store three separate times in the past month, and called him “the cross dresser.” Henneman said Curtis told her his wife knew he was gay, but that he only pursued sex with men when he was out of town, according to the report.

In 2005 and 2006, Curtis voted against a bill that granted civil rights protections to gays and lesbians.

In 2007, Curtis voted against a bill that created domestic partnerships for same-sex couples. Source

Ron Paul has gotten a huge following on the internet. Websites, such as the ever-popular Digg, are flooded with Ron Paul articles. Why is a radical so popular around web communities? Some researches might have an answer: Spambots.

Presidential hopeful Ron Paul hasn’t been doing very well with the print media, and offline, his name recognition isn’t that high. But online, the libertarian candidate seems to have an almost cult-like following. But how much of that is real? Much of Ron Paul’s online support may be at least partially manufactured by overenthusiastic supporters, as some researchers say that spammers have recently stepped up their efforts to gain support for their favorite candidate.

The University of Alabama-Birmingham’s computer forensics research department, which collects spam messages as part of its Spam Data Mining for Law Enforcement Applications project, analyzes hundreds of thousands of e-mail messages per month. When it began getting bombarded with e-mails about Ron Paul immediately following a Republican debate on TV, the lab began to examine their origin and saw consistent patterns that it described as “disturbing.”

The e-mails originated from IPs all over the world, but researchers’ suspicions were aroused when they found that the e-mails purported to come from different countries than their IPs indicated. Messages claiming to come from the US were actually coming from Korea, for example, and messages claiming to come from Italy were actually coming from the US. The pattern showed that the messages were clearly not coming from Ron Paul’s official campaign, but rather illegitimate spam operations and botnets.

“We’ve seen many previous e-mails reported as spam from other campaigns or parties, but when we’ve investigated them, they all were sent from the legitimate parties,” department director Gary Warner said in a statement. In contrast, the Ron Paul messages clearly came from a number of other parties attempting to spoof where they came from. Paul’s campaign may run afoul of the authorities as a result of these e-mails. Warner believes that the messages may violate the CAN-SPAM Act due to their deceptive sending practices.

The Ron Paul camp, however, wants to make sure the world knows it’s not involved in the spam. “This is the first I’ve heard about this situation,” Ron Paul spokesman Jesse Benton told Wired. “If it is true, it could be done by a well-intentioned yet misguided supporter or someone with bad intentions trying to embarrass the campaign. Either way, this is independent work, and we have no connection.” via ars technica

Take a look at Ron Paul’s resume. I know it’s fashionable to love Ron Paul, but many who support him have no idea who they really support. Besides this list here, Paul would like to get rid of all middle class subsidies. Guess someone should let Mr. Paul know that the middle class is what makes the American economy what it is. Without their spending power, America is as good as dead. Take away what makes them middle class and you take away the middle class.

Paul introduced The Sanctity of Life Act of 2005, a bill that would have defined human life to begin at conception, and removed challenges to prohibitions on abortion from federal court jurisdiction. Defining embryos and fetuses as persons would make abortion murder and outlaw fetal stem cell research and some contraception and fertility treatments. In 2005, Paul introduced the We the People Act, which would have removed “any claim based upon the right of privacy, including any such claim related to any issue of … reproduction” from the jurisdiction of federal courts. If made law, either of these acts would allow states to PROHIBIT ABORTION.

Ron Paul’s bill to provide that human life shall be deemed to exist from conception.
http://tinyurl.com/yuo3ta

Ron Paul’s bill to prohibit any Federal official from expending any Federal funds for any population control or population planning program or any family planning activity.
http://tinyurl.com/2h6y7w

Ron Paul’s bill to limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes.
http://tinyurl.com/2sts73

Ron Paul was the only member of congress to vote against a bill (HR 180) to prohibit spending federal tax dollars on companies doing business with genocidal warlords in Darfur.
http://tinyurl.com/2cazda

Ron Paul voted against establishing Bill HR 5252 Amendment 987(Jun 2006)[169], which would have legally protected network neutrality.
http://tinyurl.com/27xg44

Ron Paul failed to vote against the FISA amendment that legalized warrantless wiretapping of US citizens.
http://tinyurl.com/2p3t65

Ron Paul believes that all federal taxation should be eliminated.
http://tinyurl.com/yuvdk2

Ron Paul wants to eliminate the federal reserve and replace the U.S. dollar with a currency based on the gold standard.
http://tinyurl.com/2dhx28

Ron Paul wants to amend the constitution to eliminate birthright citizenship.
http://tinyurl.com/2gh52n

Ron Paul wants to end US membership in the UN
http://tinyurl.com/yoajxb

Ron Paul wants to build a 700 mile wall between the U.S and Mexico.
http://tinyurl.com/2yunzn

Ron Paul opposes universal health care.
Ron Paul is a fundamentalist born-again Christian who believes there is a war on Christmas being waged by the secular left.
Ron Paul supporters seem to be composed largely of people who oppose the war in Iraq, but for some reason believe they have no choice but to support a Republican over any Democrat (in addition to the smaller number of hard-core true believers). These casual supporters need to be aware that the vast majority of his views are bizarre and extreme.

Ron Paul is the candidate backed by the White Supremacists…
http://tinyurl.com/36k9rw

… to the point they even arranged to have supporters bussed to the straw polls in Iowa…
http://tinyurl.com/32kwtb

…and extensively cover anything Ron Paul, see e.g….
http://tinyurl.com/2mfyvq

Ron Paul has reciprocated the love from the White Supremacy groups by giving interviews to David Duke.
http://tinyurl.com/2jqhan

The 9/11 Truth movement also endorse Ron Paul, see e.g….
http://tinyurl.com/399wqb

Ron Paul authored a newsletter in which he made the following racist statements (among many others):
RP Quote: “If you have ever been robbed by a black teen-aged male, you know how unbelievably fleet-footed they can be.”
RP Quote: “Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions”
RP Quote: “Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the “criminal justice system,” I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal”
RP Quote: “we are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers.”
RP Quote: “We don’t think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That’s true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such.”
RP Quote: “What else do we need to know about the political establishment than that it refuses to discuss the crimes that terrify Americans on grounds that doing so is racist? Why isn’t that true of complex embezzling, which is 100 percent white and Asian?”

He wants to ban abortion, legalise the teaching of creationism and remove the separation between church and state. His politics stink of Christian fundamentalism and to believe otherwise is a fantasy.

A vote for Ron Paul endorses irrationality, dishonesty, bigotry, racism, fundamentalism, obscurationism and an incredibly retrograde and backwards world view. If you vote for Ron Paul, you are voting for these things. You don’t get to pick and choose and claim that your vote endorses a “balanced budget” and not “a 19th century style deportation project estimated to cause over a hundred thousand deaths”.

A private watchdog group is asking the White House to show immediately that it has not destroyed archives of at least 5 million e-mails that were improperly deleted from internal servers. So far, the Bush administration has refused to provide such assurances.

A motion filed Friday by the National Security Archive seeks to compel the White House to hand over records that show it has maintained backup tapes of the deleted e-mails, as required by presidential record-keeping laws. A nearly identical case from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, another watchdog, seeks similar assurances that the Bush administration has not permanently erased the millions of e-mails exchanged among scores of White House aides.

“What we want is to find out what e-mails have been saved, and what e-mails are missing and how we can recover the e-mails that are missing from the backup tapes,” Meridith Fuchs, general counsel for the Security Archive, told RAW STORY. “They have every interest in delaying, we have every interest in speeding it along.”

As President Bush nears the end of his second term, the groups say it is vital that the White House demonstrate precisely what archives it has and be prevented from destroying any more records that will prove invaluable to historians studying how the administration operated.

“We need information so we can take steps to preserve all possible sources of e-mails deleted from the White House servers,” Fuchs said in a news release.

So far, the White House has told the groups only that it is preserving any records it had in its possession as of September of this year, when the cases were filed. Justice Department lawyers, representing the administration, have argued against court orders that would open the possibility of contempt proceedings if the records were destroyed; the administration also has refused to document how long its archives go back.

A lawyer familiar with the proceedings told RAW STORY that the NSA and CREW proceedings are “totally on the same page,” and are expected to be combined into a single court case.

A federal magistrate recommended that a federal judge order the White House to preserve all its e-mails, and the judge’s recommendation could come as soon as this week, the lawyer said. Feuch’s called the magistrate’s recommendation “encouraging,” but she said it wouldn’t affect the archives’ case unless or until the two are combined.

The lawsuits are not seeking the contents of White House e-mail exchanges, rather they demand that the White House Office of Administration provide general information about what was archived over what period of time.

Bu$hCo needs you to fight so they make more money. They are considering reinstating the draft to fight in their mis-handled war that should have never happened to begin with.

A top U.S. military officer in charge of co-ordinating the U.S. war effort in Iraq said yesterday that it makes sense to consider a return of the draft to meet the U.S. military’s needs.

Lieutenant-General Douglas Lute, said the all-volunteer military is serving “exceedingly well” and the administration has not decided a draft is needed.

But in an interview with National Public Radio, he said, “I think it makes sense to certainly consider it, and I can tell you, this has always been an option on the table.” source