America comes to this realization too late to spare us this second term we’re currently suffering through. But perhaps in time to strike some balance by taking away Bush’s lapdog Republican Congress… we have to remain hopeful. Failing that, all that will remain is the cleanup of his mess, and the bad memory of the Bush era.
Bush Tops List As U.S. Voters Name Worst PresidentQuinnipiac University, 6/1/06
“We can’t think of a president who has gone to the American people more often than George W. Bush has to ask them to forget about things like democracy, judicial process and the balance of powers — and just trust him. We also can’t think of a president who has deserved that trust less.”
The New York Times
February 12th, 2005
Last Friday the New York Times broke the story that the Bush Administration has been eavesdropping on Americans without a warrant since shortly after 9/11/2001.
The Times had delayed reporting the story for a year, at the request of the Administration which claimed that disclosure of the news would be harmful to national security. More likely, such disclosure would have been harmful to President Bush’s re-election prospects. In early December of 2005, Bush summoned the editor and published of the Times to the Oval Office, to again attempt to halt the story
Has Bush’s arrogance and disregard for the Constitution finally gone too far? Calls for an immediate investigation of Bush’s warrant-less wiretapping are coming from Democrats and Republicans alike in Congress.
9/11 was a tragic day. But to George Bush and Dick Cheney, it was their golden ticket to justify any action, defend any failure, and disregard any law. The horrible losses of that day have been amplified to incalculable levels in further loss of life and the tearing down of America by these men who claim to be defending it.
My Congressman, at least willing to state the obvious…
In an interview last week, Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, said “it’s a fair comment” that the GOP-controlled Congress has done insufficient oversight and “ought to be” doing more.
“Republican Congresses tend to overinvestigate Democratic administrations and underinvestigate their own,” said Davis, who added that he has tried to pick up some of the slack with his committee. “I get concerned we lose our separation of powers when one party controls both branches.”
Democrats on the committee said the panel issued 1,052 subpoenas to probe alleged misconduct by the Clinton administration and the Democratic Party between 1997 and 2002, at a cost of more than $35 million. By contrast, the committee under Davis has issued three subpoenas to the Bush administration, two to the Energy Department over nuclear waste disposal at Yucca Mountain, and one last week to the Defense Department over Katrina documents.
read more:
Bush’s Fumbles Spur New Talk of Oversight on Hill
The Washington Post, 12/18/05
Ironic Title!
from today’s Washington Post…
Bush Authorized Domestic Spying
President Relents, Backs Torture Ban
UPDATE: A mid-day headline offers a ray of hope…
The most impressive thing really is how quickly and firmly he has established his hold on this position. It would have been the case already with a single term, but it’s a distinction he’ll hold for the ages after two.
IS GEORGE BUSH THE WORST PRESIDENT — EVER?
by Richard Reeves
The Washington Post has a very cool feature on their news stories that I’ve been meaning to write about. Many of their articles include a sidebar block like the one shown here titled ‘Who’s Blogging?’. Using the blog search engine Technorati, the Post searches blogs for postings that reference and link back to articles on washingtonpost.com, and then in turn links back to them.
I think this is a very smart thing for the Post to do. Recognizing that bloggers are more likely to be offering some commentary about the news, rather than breaking new news, these links to bloggers who are discussing their stories enhance the news that the Post is providing by showing how it contributes to the online conversations and debates of the blogosphere.
And it can lead to some interesting connections. When I recently wrote a posting titled ‘Holy Ignorance‘ which commented on an article I read in the post about the development of a ‘Creation Museum’ being built in Ohio, the first comment posted in response came from the web developer who manages the web site for the Creation Museum. I’m pretty certain he wasn’t a regular on my humble blog, but found his way there from the list of links from washingtonpost.com.
Here’s a very interesting read from today’s Washington Post that gets past the surface level of the debate about Torture and whether it’s something that the United States does or doesn’t do. The article describes the underlying laws and conventions that specify how prisoners of war are to be treated, and the legalistic dance the Bush administration uses to backup Bush’s claim that “we don’t torture” while at the same time using techniques that if used against Americans, all would surely agree is torture. It’s a shameful example of one of the many ways that George Bush has diminished America.
Torture, American-Style
The Washington Post, 11/27/05
Heading home from work, and stopped at a light on 14th Street, I noticed this press stakeout on the sidewalk and snapped a couple of photos with my Treo. This is a composite of those two photos, and my hunch that it was related to Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation into the White House leak of a covert CIA agent’s identity. This is at Fitzgerald’s office.
