J's Cafe Nette

Archive for July 11th, 2007

This speaks for itself.

Relatives of firefighters killed at the World Trade Center reproached GOP presidential hopeful Rudy Giuliani in a video Wednesday, pairing footage of the falling twin towers with charges the city’s former mayor was woefully unprepared for Sept. 11.
The parents and siblings of some of the 343 firefighters killed in the terrorist attacks released the video with the International Association of Fire Fighters, which opposes Giuliani’s candidacy.

Giuliani’s campaign denounced the images, saying that the former mayor had a long history of supporting firefighters’ health and safety and that the international union releasing the video only supports Democratic presidential candidates.

Fire union officials and family members, repeating claims they had made for months, charged Giuliani pushed for a faster cleanup of ground zero at the expense of finding remains, put an emergency center in a building that collapsed on Sept. 11 and failed to provide working radios for firefighters, making it impossible for them to learn the towers were on the verge of collapse.

“Virtually the whole thing goes back to him with the radios,” Jim Riches, a deputy fire chief whose son was killed on Sept. 11, says in the video. “He’s the guy on the top, and he’s the guy you yell at.

“He takes the hit. And my son is dead because of it.”

Giuliani’s camp called the video a “mockumentary.” Giuliani campaign spokesman Michael McKeon said the union leadership “makes Michael Moore look like Edward R. Murrow.”

Former New York firefighter Lee Ielpi, whose son died on Sept. 11, and former Office of Emergency Management Commissioner Richard Sheirer appeared at a news conference with McKeon, calling the video a “disgrace” and saying it is full of “half-truths

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Can you believe this?

Congressional investigators set up a bogus company with only a postal box and within a month obtained a license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission that allowed them to buy enough radioactive material for a small “dirty bomb.”
Sen. Norm Coleman, R-Minn., who will ask the NRC about the incident at a Senate hearing Thursday, said the sting operation raises concerns about terrorists obtaining such material just as easily.

Nobody at the NRC checked whether the company was legitimate and an agency official even helped the investigators fill out the application form, Coleman said in an interview Wednesday.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission acknowledged that more checking is needed in such licensing and said that since being told of the GAO sting operation it has tightened licensing procedures.

“We’ve fixed the problem,” said NRC Commissioner Edward McGaffigan in an interview Wednesday. He said that such licenses now will require visits to the company or in some cases company officials will have to come to NRC offices.

The license that was obtained allowed for the purchase of up to five portable moisture density gauges widely used in construction, in which are encased small amounts of cesium-137 and americium 241, two highly radioactive isotopes.

Individually, these devices pose little threat because of the small amount of radioactive material, radiation experts say. Still the devices require an NRC license to be purchased and must be closely safeguarded by companies that use them to avoid theft.

But the investigators from the Government Accountability Office, Congress’ investigative arm, found a way to purchase as many as 45 of the gauges and could have bought many more because they duplicated the NRC-issued license and removed the restrictions on the amount that could be purchased.

“With patience and the proper financial resources, we could have accumulated from other suppliers substantially more radioactive source material than what the two supplies initially agreed to ship to us,” says the GAO in a report prepared for Thursday’s hearing.

Coleman, the ranking Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs investigations subcommittee, said the NRC “still has this good-faith assumption. The problem is there are bad-faith people out there.”

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Now this is what you call Contest of wills.

President Bush ordered former counsel Harriet Miers to defy a congressional summons, even as a second former aide told a Senate panel Wednesday she knew of no involvement by Bush in the dismissals of eight federal prosecutors. Contempt citations against both women were a possibility.
House Democrats threatened to cite Miers if she refused to appear as subpoenaed for a Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday. The White House said she was immune from the subpoena and Bush had directed her not to appear, according to Miers’ lawyer. Democrats said her immunity ended when she left her White House job.

Across the Capitol, meanwhile, former White House political director Sara Taylor found out what Miers may already have known: It’s almost impossible to answer some committee questions but not others without breaching either the subpoena or Bush’s claim of executive privilege.

After first refusing to answer questions about Bush’s possible role in the firings, Taylor later told the Senate Judiciary Committee that she knew of no involvement by the president. Further, she said, she knew of no wrongdoing by administration officials in the controversy that has hobbled the Justice Department and imperiled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The developments whipped across Washington as part of a broader dispute over the boundaries of Bush’s executive power and Congress’ oversight duty. Democrats, in control of Congress for the first time in a dozen years, are probing whether the White House ordered the prosecutor firings in ways that might help Republicans in elections.

The Bush administration acknowledges that the firings were clumsily carried out but insists no wrongdoing occurred. Bush has offered to allow his aides, including counselor Karl Rove, Miers and Taylor, to be interviewed by congressional investigators — but only in private and without a transcript.

Democrats on the committees rejected the offer and subpoenaed Miers and Taylor to appear this week, a possible foreshadowing of what’s to come for Rove.

In letters dated Tuesday, White House Counsel Fred Fielding told Miers’ lawyer that Bush had ordered her to stay away from Thursday’s hearing.

“Ms. Miers has absolute immunity from compelled congressional testimony as to matters occurring while she was a senior adviser to the president,” Fielding wrote to Miers’ lawyer, George T. Manning. “The president has directed her not to appear at the House Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday, July 12, 2007.”

Manning, in turn, notified committee chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., and Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., chairwoman of the subcommittee on commercial and administrative law.

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Lady Bird Johnson, wife of President Lyndon B. Johnson, as died at her home in Austin of natural causes.

I always admired Mrs. Johnson, as she and probably Pat Nixon were the last First Ladies before the current one who were not political but found a cause and pushed for it from their position as First Lady.

Mrs. Johnson’s cause was the beautification of America, and when you see the beautiful wildflowers planted on the medians of highways, think of Mrs. Johnson.

My heart and prayers go out to Lynda and Luci and families on the loss of their mother and grandmother.

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I guess the Republicans are beginning to eat their own. I can’t believe this. For a Democrat this is a dream come true.
They’ve turned into the Democrats, two years ago.
I’m only joking.

Rep. Heather Wilson (R-N.M.) called for comity Wednesday during a meeting of the Republican Conference after House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) referred to Senate colleagues who have begun to favor a change in course in Iraq as “wimps.”

Wilson declined to comment directly on what Boehner had said during the closed-door meeting, but she noted that “Senator [Richard] Lugar’s (R-Ind.) speech was one of the more thoughtful speeches [she had heard] in the Senate in a long time.”

The lawmaker added that the war and the thoughts of her colleagues about the conflict “should always be taken seriously.”

Wilson, a former Air Force officer and Republican centrist, questioned the Bush plan to increase troop levels in Iraq but voted against Democratic-backed Iraq war measures.

According to sources, Boehner and Minority Whip Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) were urging solidarity among House Republicans, explaining that they must distinguish themselves from their Senate colleagues.

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It appears one of the Marines who had been charged in the Haditha case will be cleared of at the very least the murder charges.

It is my hope that the others will also be found to be innocent of cold blooded murder.

It has always been my contention that if any soldier intentionally kills, they should be treated as any civilian would be, but this case was clearly in many aspects a “rush to judgment” and a thirst by the MSM (and Congressman Murtha) to condemn these Marines. I wonder if there will be any apologies forthcoming to LCpl Sharratt.

Also, Michael Yon has posted another dispatch from Iraq. Seems we must be doing something right.

Al-Qaeda on the Run: Feasting on the Moveable Beast

While we were driving in the belly of the Stryker into Buhriz, I asked Abu Ali, “What did you do to al Qaeda?”

Abu Ali said that on 1 April 2007, he and his people attacked al Qaeda in Buhriz for their crimes against Islam. He also said something that many Muslims have said to me: al Qaeda are not Muslims. (Both Sunni and Shia have said nearly the exact same words, at times on video.) Abu Ali said they fought hard against al Qaeda, and on 10 April, they asked the Americans to join the attack. It worked.

Sounds like we must be winning at least some hearts and minds.

And
Courtesy of Jack Army I discovered this link to the Global Incident Map. In looking over the information provided, there are events which I clearly remember reading about and others which I checked out by reading the copy provided when clicking on the incident itself. Just a little something different for those who have never seen anything quite like this.

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Story here.

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As many have probably guessed I am a chronic insomniac. I don’t stay awake because I’m worrying about something. A lot of times I just ponder the greatness of the universe and wonder how anyone can think it’s made randomly.

Other times I think silly thoughts such as:

What silly things do you think about while trying to go to sleep?

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Former Bush aides Sara Taylor and Harriet Miers have said they will not provide documents Congress is requesting unless the courts tell them they must.

President Bush’s former political director says she intends to follow his directive and not answer questions about her role in the administration’s firing of federal prosecutors — unless a court directs her to defy her former boss.

“While I may be unable to answer certain questions today, I will answer those questions if the courts rule that this committee’s need for the information outweighs the president’s assertion of executive privilege,” Sara M. Taylor, who left her White House job two months ago, said in remarks prepared for presentation to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday.

“Thanks for understanding,” she added in the statement, made available in advance of the midmorning hearing.

Democrats insist that there are plenty about the firings that Taylor can discuss — and is compelled to reveal under a subpoena — that are not covered by Bush’s executive privilege claim.

Her lawyer was expected to advise her as the hearing progressed on which questions she could or could not answer under the president’s directive.

The same goes for a second former Bush aide, one-time White House counsel Harriet Miers, Democrats say. Miers, subpoenaed to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday, said through her lawyer this week that she “cannot provide the documents and testimony that the committee seeks.”

“Ms. Miers is thus subject to conflicting commands, with Congress demanding the production of information that the counsel to the president has informed her she is prohibited from disclosing,” Miers’ lawyer, George Manning, wrote to House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers of Michigan and ranking Republican Lamar Smith of Texas.

The two former aides are now private citizens, and some congressional officials have argued that it is not clear Bush’s executive privilege claim covers them even though White House Counsel Fred Fielding told lawyers for Miers and Taylor that the president was directing them not to answer questions or provide any information about the firings.

“Ms. Miers has no choice other than to comply with the direction given her by counsel to the president in his letters,” Manning wrote.

Taylor’s message was much the same. “I intend to follow the president’s instruction,” she said in her statement.

Next we see what the courts decide, and you can be assured this will have to be decided by the Supreme Court. They next meet in October unless special circumstances require them to be called in on a special session. Highly doubtful.

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Proof that tax cuts work.

The nation’s budget deficit will drop to $205 billion in the fiscal year that ends in September, less than half of what it was at its peak in 2004, according to new White House estimates.

Tax cuts give businesses and individuals more money, meaning more people can work and contribute to the treasury with their tax money.

It also means the businesses have more revenue to be taxed. The small businessman, especially, is helped by tax cuts as he is usually taxed at the individual rate. If his taxes are raised he has to either raise his product price or lay off workers.

We need to encourage the Congress to make permanent the tax cuts that are set to expire in 2010 and the current Congress intends to allow to expire. The “experiment” has once again been proved.

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This is an editorial from the Washington Post.

Once again, new information raises questions about statements by the attorney general.

“INEVER saw documents. We never had a discussion.” Those were the words of Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales in March when trying to distance himself from the Justice Department’s controversial decision to fire eight U.S. attorneys. The attorney general was, we now know, mistaken: E-mails and the testimony of former aides prove that he had been involved in that process — and for nearly two years.

Mr. Gonzales is using a similar defense now in another matter. As The Post’s John Solomon reported yesterday, Mr. Gonzales was sent several documents in early 2005 outlining FBI mistakes or abuses concerning national security letters and other intelligence-gathering tools. These notifications are technically known as referrals to the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board, which helps police the government’s surveillance programs; the notifications are routinely forwarded to the attorney general. Days later, Mr. Gonzales testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which was considering reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, a post-Sept. 11 law that greatly enhanced the president’s power to pursue terrorism suspects through such existing tools as national security letters. “There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse” under the Patriot Act, Mr. Gonzales testified on April 27, 2005.

How does the Justice Department square Mr. Gonzales’s apparent contradiction? Justice officials note that national security letters predate the Patriot Act. They assert that the violations outlined in the 2005 documents sent to Mr. Gonzales had nothing to do with the subject of the Intelligence Committee hearing and that the use of the Patriot Act had been given a clean bill of health in several government audits at the time Mr. Gonzales testified.

We’ll come back to this legalistic defense in a moment. But first, fast-forward to the release of a report from Justice’s inspector general this year about a significant increase in FBI violations in the use of national security letters. The IG, in part, based his conclusions on the spike in the number of referrals made to the President’s Intelligence Oversight Board — the same kind of documents the attorney general had been receiving in 2005. Yet Mr. Gonzales claimed to be surprised. “I was upset when I learned this, as was [FBI Director Robert F.] Mueller,” Mr. Gonzales said on March 9. “To say that I am concerned about what has been revealed in this report would be an enormous understatement.”

Editorial

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This is going to be an interesting piece of legislation to watch. Let’s see how well they hold up against the lobbyist. They are always accusing the Republicans of catering to big business.
Will they fight or cave?

With the House set to take up legislation this week that would sharply cut subsidies to student loan companies by about $19 billion, lenders are trying to do something they have barely had to bother with in recent years: appeal to Democrats.

The companies have been scouring for partners in the Democratic base to help them make their case against the bill and a companion one in the Senate.

Sallie Mae, the nation’s largest lender, has met with representatives of historically black colleges; with Michael L. Lomax, chief executive of the United Negro College Fund; and with members of the Congressional Black Caucus, arguing that cuts in lender subsidies could make it harder for black students to borrow.

Tom Joyce, a spokesman for Sallie Mae, said the company was talking to other institutions, too. “We’re certainly letting schools know that now is the time to weigh in with their views,” Mr. Joyce said.

The Consumer Bankers Association, for its part, reached out to organized labor, directly contacting union locals around the country. In one case, union officials were asked to sign a letter to Democratic lawmakers, warning that changes to the loan program could make it harder for students to pay for college.

The lenders have assembled an armada of Democratic lobbyists and communications specialists. Sallie Mae, for example, hired former Senator John B. Breaux, a Louisiana Democrat, as well as Mark Schuermann, a former senior aide to former Representative Harold E. Ford Jr., a Tennessee Democrat who lost his bid for a Senate seat last year

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I hesitated posting this because I heard the squabble that’s gone on for the past week.
It’s, I know, another study but the more information the better. Right?

A new scientific study concludes that changes in the Sun’s output cannot be causing modern-day climate change.
It shows that for the last 20 years, the Sun’s output has declined, yet temperatures on Earth have risen.

It also shows that modern temperatures are not determined by the Sun’s effect on cosmic rays, as has been claimed.

Writing in the Royal Society’s journal Proceedings A, the researchers say cosmic rays may have affected climate in the past, but not the present.

“This should settle the debate,” said Mike Lockwood from the UK’s Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory, who carried out the new analysis together with Claus Froehlich from the World Radiation Center in Switzerland.

Dr Lockwood initiated the study partially in response to the TV documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle, broadcast on Britain’s Channel Four earlier this year, which featured the cosmic ray hypothesis.

~X(

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You’ve got to admire the man for his, I don’t care what you think, attitude.

President Bush pushed back Tuesday against demands from Republican lawmakers to outline a new war strategy, urging them to hold their fire until Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, delivers a progress report in September.

Bush told a friendly audience here that the additional troops he ordered to Iraq have only recently arrived to join the fight. “I believe that it’s in this nation’s interests to give the commander a chance to fully implement his operations. And I believe Congress ought to wait for General Petraeus to come back and give us an assessment of the strategy that he’s putting in place before they make any decisions,” Bush said at a town hall appearance.

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I realize that this is going to make a lot of people uncomfortable but it’s still news.
If it offends you, I apologize in advance.

The Human Rights Campaign’s Joe Solmonese and Melissa Etheridge will question Democratic candidates in Los Angeles in a first-ever debate on gay issues, sponsored by LOGO and HRC. It will take place on August 9 and be broadcast live on LOGO as well as stream live at their website.

According to 365gay.com, “the panelists in a statement said they plan to cover a range of issues including relationship recognition, marriage equality, workplace fairness, the military, hate crimes, HIV/AIDS and other important issues.”

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All administrations do it.

The first U.S. surgeon general appointed by President George W. Bush accused the administration on Tuesday of political interference and muzzling him on key issues like embryonic stem cell research.

“Anything that doesn’t fit into the political appointees’ ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried,” Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as the nation’s top doctor from 2002 until 2006, told a House of Representatives committee.

“The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds. The job of surgeon general is to be the doctor of the nation, not the doctor of a political party,” Carmona added.

Carmona said Bush administration political appointees censored his speeches and kept him from talking out publicly about certain issues, including the science on embryonic stem cell research, contraceptives and his misgivings about the administration’s embrace of “abstinence-only” sex education.

Carmona’s comments came two days before a Senate committee is due to hold a hearing on Bush’s nomination of Dr. James Holsinger as his successor. The administration allowed Carmona to finish his term as surgeon general last year without a replacement in place.

Gay rights activists and several leading Democrats have criticized Holsinger for what they see as “anti-gay” writings, but the White House has defended him as well qualified.

U.S. surgeons general in the past have issued influential reports on subjects including smoking, AIDS and mental health.

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