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Today’s Links

Today’s Links

Just some things that caught my eye…

A Revealing Look at the Presidential FrontRunners | Washington Post

Do you know the voting record of your presidential candidate? Time to look at it…

Members of Congress: Bio and Voting Record | Washington Post

Please comment if you have outstanding links on the objective record of non-congressional candidates.

Impeachment and Bush Record Workshops in Atlanta

Impeachment and Bush Record Workshops in Atlanta

Impeachment Workshop, June 28th

This workshop will focus on Bush’s impeachable offenses and bring out the full array of crimes committed by the Bush administration. Speakers will also address the need to build a movement across the country on the grounds of impeachment as the vehicle to force the Bush administration from office.

Thursday, June 28, 3:30 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.

Inman Park United Methodist Church
DOT-ADA Community Room
Marta Stop- Inman Park
1 block from the station on Edgewood Dr.

Speakers:

Dennis Loo, co-editor of the book “Impeach the President: A Case Against Bush and Cheney”, an Associate Professor of Sociology at Cal Poly Pomona, and member of the World Can’t Wait Steering Committee.

Prachi Noor, member of the World Can’t Wait Steering Committee and involved since its launch in July 2005. She has been at the forefront of the movement to stop the repression of immigrant communities.

David Swanson, co-founder of the AfterDowningStreet.org coalition, a writer and activist, and the Washington Director of Democrats.com.

Mathew Cardinale, editor of Atlanta Progressive News

Crimes Against Humanity–The Bush Record, June 29th

You thought you knew. But you can’t really know until you see the full scale and scope of all the crimes brought together. It is far worse than you could even imagine. This is the documentation that activists in all fields need.

Join the session “Crimes Against Humanity–The Bush Record” at the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta, Friday, June 29, at 10:30 am.

Location: Second Floor meeting room of the Central Library. The Library is at the corner of William St. NW and Forsyth St. NW.

Participants in the Atlanta panel include: Dennis Brutus, South African poet and former prisoner with Nelson Mandela on Robben Island, Ann Wright, former US diplomat and retired US Army Colonel, Larry Everest, author of Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda, Clark Kissinger, convener of the Commission, together with short video excerpts on the evidence.

The hearings of the International Commission of Inquiry on Crimes Against Humanity, held in the winter of 2005-2006, is where the U.S. public first heard, brought together in one place, the stunning evidence of crimes against committed by the Bush Administration.

These hearings are where we first heard together: * Gen. Janis Karpinski describe how the orders for torture at Abu Ghraib came right from the top. * Journalist Jeremy Scahill expose the deployment of armed mercenaries in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and the ethnic cleansing that followed. * Dr. Alan Berkman detail the genocidal implications of the Bush administration’s “abstinence only” policy as the cure for AIDS in Africa. * Daphne Wysham document the censorship of government scientists trying to warn of global warming. * United Nations weapons inspector Scott Ritter explain exactly how the Bush administration in fact that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

The printed verdict of the Commission and two different DVD programs based on the hearings will be available at the session.

Our mandate from the beginning has been to change the very terms of debate in society by forcefully raising the proof of crimes against humanity. You can help make this important material available to the thousands coming to the U.S. Social Forum by contributing to the Commission.

Help put the DVDs of the Bush Crimes Commission into the hands of activists from all over the country. Make a tax-deductible contribution to support the work of Bush Crimes Commission. Other contributions can be made out to NION SOC Inc., and mailed to NION, 305 West Broadway, #199, New York, NY 10013.

So Impeach Gonzales

So Impeach Gonzales

President Bush won’t fire his long-time friend U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales… he has too much to lose. He’s used to being able to say – “Here’s how I want it to be – you figure out the legal stuff.”

On Monday President Bush once again expressed his support: “I stand by Al Gonzales.” He accused Senators involved in the push for a no-confidence vote against Gonzales as engaging in “pure political theater,” despite the fact that many Republicans as well as Democrats have called for and/or support his resignation.

According to James Comey, who was acting Attorney General when Ashcroft was in the hospital, Gonzales and then chief-of-staff Andrew Card tried an end run around him by secretly visiting Ashcroft there in the middle of the night. Who knew? Ashcroft, whatever his faults, refused to reauthorize the secret wiretapping program. Notice how long he lasted…

In nominating Alberto Gonzales to be the next attorney general, President Bush has selected a man with a long record of giving him the kind of legal advice he wants. Unfortunately, that advice has not always been of the highest professional or ethical caliber. Gonzales is perhaps best known for a controversial January 2002 memorandum to the president in which he argued that Geneva Convention proscriptions on torture did not apply to Taliban and al Qaeda prisoners, and that the conventions are, in fact, “obsolete.”*

Gonzales is supposed to be working for the American people. He’s supposed to be running the Department of Justice. Let’s be serious. He’s the legal arm of Bush. In 1994, he was named general counsel to Texas Governor George W. Bush, and in 1997 appointed by Bush as Secretary of State of Texas, and in 1999 named to the Texas Supreme Court by the then-Gov. He’s been with Bush all the way.

He has largely succeeded in destroying the Department of Justice – was that the intent? Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty (Comey’s successor) recently resigned. Professionals that still try to work there are demoralized. They are also surrounded by inexperienced hacks and cronies – like Monica Goodling. Sheesh. How many graduates of Robertson or Falwell U work over there anyway? Do we have workers from Halliburton, Exxon, and Enron too?

Even before the attorney firings, which were clearly motivated by a right-wing agenda, there was enough to impeach him on.

Gonzales is not just Bush’s yes man. I wonder if Bush might be Gonzales’ yes man. Maybe he and Cheney… no, that’s just speculation.

Whatever. Like Cheney, Gonzales is one scary dude. He has actively subverted the Constitution while under oath to protect and defend it.

His role is to promote executive power. He has argued for presidential powers of a “unitary executive” (sounds like a king or a dictator, right? right!). Constitutionally speaking, Bush is commander in chief of the Army and Navy – but not the commander of every government employee, and certainly not commander of the citizenry.

On Gonzales’ advice (and I’m thinking, under significant direction) President George W. Bush has added objections to laws he has signed into law – they basically say that it’s the law, unless he decides it’s not. With Gonzales’ approval, Bush has withheld requested information – on dozens of issues – from Congress. Executive Order 13233, drafted by Gonzales and issued by George W. Bush on November 1, 2001 attempted to place limitations on the Freedom of Information Act by restricting access even to the records of former presidents.

In violation of the spirit of America (not to mention various U.S. statutes and international treaties), Gonzales authored the torture memos, giving a green light from the top for the use of overly-aggressive interrogations for enemy combatants. Oddly, there are no POWs at all. The definition of an enemy combatant is anyone Bush labels as an “enemy combatant” – including U.S. citizens. Since the first wave of what will be the continuing scandal of Abu Graib (you ain’t heard nothin’ yet), we’ve outsourced much of our torture. You may have heard something about that.

Gonzales wrote the Presidential Order which authorized the use of military tribunals to try terrorist suspects, and has fought for shortened or endlessly deferred trials for enemy combatants. He has stated that he doesn’t believe that habeas corpus is constitutional. We should close Guantanamo immediately – for a lot of reasons – and tell detainees what they are charged with – or call them POWs and give them those rights. They are American prisoners. They should be in Levenworth or another high-security prison under American law.

Gonzales had a heavy role in approving electronic surveillance without a warrant – in defiance of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (at least – we still don’t know how far that has gone or will go). I won’t even get into the multiple issues revolving around the so-called Patriot Acts.

Gonzales’ testimony has been misleading at best. He has not been honest or forthright. Yet unlike Monica Goodling, he doesn’t even have the decency to openly plead the fifth. He giggles at times as he dances around the questions he’s been asked. He’s confident. Isn’t it odd that Bush continues to stonewall against asking him to resign?

Congress has one option: Impeach him! While you still can!

Democracy for America and Greenwald have set up a petition to demand that Congress get serious about holding an errant executive branch to account. Check out the Brave New Films video and sign on:

Impeach Gonzales
http://impeachgonzales.org/

We, The Undersigned, urge the House Judiciary Committee to begin the process of impeachment of US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, in accordance with Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, which provides for removal of the President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States. We believe the process will prove that Atty. General Gonzales has committed High Crimes and Misdemeanors, including the abuse of power and violation of the public trust, both impeachable offenses.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGlOBPNr7Kg[/youtube]

Impeach George Now

Impeach George Now

For a number of valid (if frustrating) reasons, the Democratic leadership is not considering impeachment at this time.

You, however, can still join the Peace Team in expressing your views on the matter. If there were more outcry, momentum toward impeachment might go forward.

IMPEACHMENT ACTION PAGE: http://www.peaceteam.net/impeachment_now2.php

Before the coming of george bush and his shadow president Dick Cheney, the greatest military blunder in American History was thought to be Custer’s Last Stand. It did not take a lot of hindsight to know that general Custer’s vain assault on a much larger force of better-armed native Americans would come to no good end. His own Indian scouts told him that the encampment at Little Bighorn was far too large to be attacked. But in his supreme arrogance, Custer believed that HE knew better than his own best sources of intelligence. We all know the result of that one.

How uncanny are the parallels to the current situation in Iraq? The neocon ideologues who seized dictatorial control of our government brushed off all contrary advice, and manufactured intelligence to support their case. They dismissed any challenge to their vision of the absolute power of American military dominance as a matter of right. They fired any underling who dared to try to tell them the truth, that
deposing Saddam would lead directly and inexorably to an Islamic theocracy, if not a sectarian civil war. They used the power of their crony associates in the corporate media to smear any public critic. And they are still doing it.

In case you had not noticed, the very first act of the new secretary of defense was to order more troops to Kuwait. [This was] to enable sending more to Iraq. In other words, the self-anointed “decider” has already decided– to defy the will of the American people, their Congress, and the entire rest of the world, for all it matters to him. In his mind, this is another one of those “done deals.” The only thing that’s taking so long to make the official announcement is the difficulty of yet another con job on us, with public opinion moving ever more forcefully in the opposite direction. Most of the remaining rubber stamp members of Congress are already coming down with a major case of cold feet, thanks to your voices, but george bush does not care.

They’ve even had problems this time finding strategists to sign on to this surge of stupidity. The best that they could come up with was some chest pounder talking about “choosing” victory, as if this was just some kind of personal motivation seminar, and the Iraqi people themselves were to have no say at all in the matter. Why don’t we have George Custer tell us that the number of Indians was of no consequence? The primary difference between him and what bush has done is that Custer did not wreck the ENTIRE U.S. Army, Custer did not mortgage our whole economy for generations to come, and, unlike bush, he actually had the courage to enter mortal combat himself.

You see, our child king has already declared that, as long as he is president, he is not budging an inch from Iraq. Take him at his word. You heard him say it. He is determined to take this country down with him in a pique of stubborn ignorance. He will not go out without a final surge of insanity and horror. And the only thing that can possibly save us all, and our future, is to finally stand up and hold him accountable for his high crimes and misdemeanors. [These are] enough to impeach every president who has ever served.

IMPEACHMENT ACTION PAGE

It is impossible to read the Constitution and not see george bush’s name writ large in every reference to the salvation of impeachment. If the founders had known his actual name, it certainly would have been expressly stated there, just as they enumerated the many outrages of their own king George. And all that is required for it to happen is for enough of us to speak out at the same time, to our members of Congress, in letters to the editors of our newspapers, and it WILL be so. When Custer’s Crow scouts told him in unison that he was out of his mind, he let them go. It’s not only time to let george bush go; but we must MAKE him go– NOW.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours.

To be added to the list, go to http://www.peaceteam.net/in.htm

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Living with War

Living with War

Listen to Neil Young’s new album, Living with War.

Visit the blog.

Don’t need no ad machine
Telling me what I need
Don’t need no Madison Avenue War
Don’t need no more boxes I can see

Covered in flags but I can’t see them on TV

Don’t need no more lies
Don’t need no more lies
Don’t need no more lies

Click on the track title for the lyrics in ticker formet at the official website, or here for the whole list.

“Let’s Impeach The President”

Let’s impeach the President for lying
And misleading our country into war
Abusing all the power that we gave him
And shipping all our money out the door

Who’s the man who hired all the criminals
The White House shadows who hide behind closed doors
They bend the facts to fit with their new stories
Of why we have to send our men to war

Let’s impeach the President for spying
On citizens inside their own homes
Breaking every law in the country
By tapping our computers and telephones

What if Al Qaeda blew up the levees
Would New Orleans have been safer that way
Sheltered by our government’s protection
Or was someone just not home that day?

(Bush clips)
Flip – Flop
Flip – Flop
Flip – Flop
Flip – Flop

Let’s impeach the president for hijacking
Our religion and using it to get elected
Dividing our country into colors
And still leaving black people neglected

Thank god he’s cracking down on steroids
Since he sold his old baseball team
There’s lots of people looking at big trouble
But of course our president is clean.

Thank God

I’ve added him to the “Salute” category of links. Thanks Neil.

Take Action – Progressive Activism

Take Action – Progressive Activism

Here are some of the progressive actions that you can take today. Please consider each of these carefully, and take action if you agree.

Oppose Attack on Iran
Join Gold Star Families for Peace, CODE PINK, Progressive Democrats of America, Democrats.com, Traprock Peace Center, Global Exchange, Velvet Revolution, Democracy
Rising, Truthout, OpEdNews, Backbone Campaign, Consumers For Peace, Campus Antiwar
Network, and The Young Turks in signing a petition to Bush and Cheney opposing the
launching of a war of aggression against Iran. The petition, with all the signatures and
comments you add, will be delivered to the White House by Cindy Sheehan and many other
activists.
Sign Petition at Don’t Attack Iran

Reports that the Bush administration may be planning a nuclear attack against Iran are alarming. A strong statement of opposition from the American public before that idea becomes credible is important. Please sign the MoveOn message to Congress today: we don’t want a nuclear attack on Iran.

A “preventive military strike” upon Iran is illegal under international law. It threatens to destroy 30 years of efforts toward non-proliferation and disarmament, and could even trigger a global war. It’s time to declare a hot pink alert! We weren’t able to stop the last war, but we must stop the next one…NOW! The United Nations, which is the mandated to uphold international law, must speak out against the Bush Administration’s plans.
Send a letter to Secretary General Kofi Annan imploring him to denounce this threat and call for a diplomatic solution.

Corrections: Washington Post
The Washington Post’s editorial page has been printing blatantly false statements about the White House’s Iran-is-buying-uranium hoax and Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s exposure of the fraud.
Read more and ask the Post to correct its statements

Impeachment Investigation Resolution 635
Thirty-four members of Congress have signed onto House Resolution 635 which would create a select committee to investigate the Administration’s intent to go to war before congressional authorization, manipulation of pre-war intelligence, encouraging and countenancing torture, retaliating against critics. This committee would make recommendations regarding grounds for possible impeachment.
Ask your Congresspeople to sign on

Reverse the Raid on Student Aid
Tuition rates at four year public schools have skyrocketed by 40% since 2001.1 Today’s typical student borrower is $17,500 in debt after graduating from college. Yet, earlier this year, Congress – in a virtual party line vote forced by the Republican majority – cut $12 billion out of student aid programs – even as interest rates on student and parent loans are being hiked UP this year. Instead of helping to deal with rising costs, the Republican-led Congress is making college more expensive. In response, Rep. George Miller (D-CA) and Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL) have introduced the Reverse the Raid on Student Aid Act of 2006, which would cut interest rates in half for students and parents — a move that would save a typical student $5,600 in interest payments. The Reverse the Raid Act will not move forward if the Republican majority continues to put special interests ahead of students, so please petition House Majority Leader, John Boehner (R-OH) to endorse the Miller-Durbin bill and lead the House to make college affordable.
Call on House Majority Leader John Boehner to immediately lead the House of Representatives to slash the interest rates on college loans in half, and increase student grant aid.

Protest Expansion of Offshore Drilling
For more than two decades, most of America’s splendid coastline has been off-limits to oil and gas drilling. Unfortunately, anti-environment Senators and Representatives have recently introduced a flood of proposals to open our nation’s priceless coastline to oil and gas drilling, benefitting wealthy oil giants like ExxonMobil in the process. Drilling off our coasts is not the answer to America’s energy problems. Destructive offshore drilling would only produce a few months’ worth of fuel that won’t even be available for another seven years. Meanwhile, government data shows that clean energy solutions like fuel efficiency and wind and solar power would cut down on energy usage and lower costs right away. Offshore drilling produces huge amounts of mercury and other toxic pollution that could poison and even kill dolphins, manatees, sea turtles and other marine wildlife. And that’s if everything goes well! The consequences of an accident would be far worse — an oil spill could contaminate Florida’s beaches in as little as 24 hours. The Senate will vote on offshore drilling early this spring.
Please urge your Senators to oppose efforts to open Florida’s gulf coast and others to destructive drilling.

Demand Clean Air
The EPA is accepting public comments on the issue of air quality standards until April 17th. Air quality is not a political issue; it is a most basic human issue. It is critical that Administrator Johnson hear from all of us who care about the quality of the air that we breathe each and every day. The Bush administration needs to hear loud and clear that it’s time to stop catering to corporate polluters and start protecting public health and the environment. Unfortunately, the standards the EPA recently proposed would jeopardize the health and safety of Americans across the country. The science is clear. Particle pollution in the air causes serious health problems, including tens of thousands of premature deaths, increased use of medications, missed school days, emergency room visits, strokes, and heart problems. Millions of Americans are at risk from particle pollution, especially those with asthma and other chronic lung diseases, children, seniors, and those with cardiovascular disease or diabetes. The EPA is refusing to propose adequate standards. Despite their mandate, they are caving to some of the nation’s biggest polluters. EPA Administrator Steve Johnson has even ignored recommendations from the EPA’s own staff scientists who agree that the proposed soot limits are too weak to protect public health. Why? See if you can put it together. Johnson recently headlined a fundraiser for a Republican congressional candidate in Denver. Representatives of coal, oil and gas industries paid to have some private time with the head of the agency that affects their businesses.
Please take a moment to insist that the EPA stand up for clean air and a healthy environment instead of bowing to pressure from polluting industries.
Send your comments through the American Lung Assocation campaign, Union of Concerned Scientists, or the
League of Conservation Voters
. Deadline April 17th! Sign today.

Junk Mail Opt-Out
Urge your members of Congress to support the petitions and support citizens’ rights to easily opt-out of wasteful ad mail targeted into our private homes. The production and disposal of unsolicited mail wastes trees, pollutes our water, and consumes more energy than 2.8 million cars at a time when energy security is more important than ever. Worst of all, it forces citizens and local governments spend more than $370 million per year to collect and dispose of unsolicited waste and it violates the privacy of our homes. Three years ago, the Do Not Call registry rightfully returned control over one aspect of citizen’s privacy. A Do Not Junk registry is needed to restore another. As the Supreme Court ruled in Rowan v. U.S. Post Office Dept., there should be no distinction between unwanted ad mail, marketing call, door-to-door sales, or any other form of commercialism targeted into our private homes.
Take action