What Liberal Media?

Of televised news programs in the US only MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann and Lou Dobbs Tonight have bothered to report that the non-partisan American Bar Association conducted a study and released a report and testified before congress that President Bush is violating the US Constitution by his signing statements (more than 800 bills) in which he said he may violate them if he decides to. President Bush has claimed that some of these laws he thought were unconstitutional, but if that were the case he is duty bound by his oath of office to veto them and inform Congress of what needs to be changed to make them constitutional. He has not fulfilled his duty and instead has declared himself and his administration above the law more than 800 times. The Constitution requires that he enforce all laws passed by Congress and signed into law, but he is reserving the right to ignore that duty for more than 800 laws he himself signed into law. ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, CNN (except for Lou Dobbs Tonight) and MSNBC (except for Countdown with Keith Olbermann) have not bothered to inform the American people about this. Several newspapers have reported this (with the exception of the LA Times which has not), but few Americans get their news from newspapers. So TV news is their only source. And if they didn’t happen to watch the episode of Lou Dobbs or the episodes of Countdown that reported this Americans were uninformed that their president is violating the Constitution placing himself above the law almost a thousand times in his five and a half years in office.

We need to contact ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC and demand that they cover this issue. Also thank CNN for Lou Dobbs covering it and thank MSNBC for Keith Olbermann covering it.

Contact information:
ABCE-mail: Contact page
ABC News 7 W. 66th St. New York, NY 10023

CBSE-mail: E-mail form
CBSNews 524 W. 57th St. New York, NY, 10019

CNNCNN
One CNN Center,
Box 105366, Atlanta, GA 30303-5366
Phone: 404-827-1500
Fax: 404-827-1906

Fox News Channel
FOX News Channel
1-888-369-4762
Comments@foxnews.com
1211 Avenue of the AmericasNew York, NY 10036

MSNBC
viewerservices@msnbc.com
MSNBC TV
One MSNBC Plaza Secaucus, N.J. 07094
MSNBC contacts
NBC
viewerservices@msnbc.com
NBC News
30 Rockefeller Plaza New York, N.Y. 10112
NBC News contacts

Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
202 W. 1st St. Los Angeles, CA 90012 (213) 237-5000

When contacting the media, please be polite and professional. Express your specific concerns regarding that particular news report or commentary, and be sure to indicate exactly what you would like the media outlet to do differently in the future.

Courts Uphold Justice and the Rule of Law Again

On Monday Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan ruled that the FBI was acting legally when they searched Democratic Congressman William Jefferson’s congressional offices as they had a legal search warrant issued by a judge. This is a victory for America, Americans and the Rule of Law. FBI agents searched Jefferson’s offices for eighteen hours looking for evidence connected to bribery charges pending against him. House Speaker Dennis Hastert insisted that US Congressmen’s offices could not be searched by FBI agents even with legal search warrants while investigating crimes. Several other members of Congress also objected and claimed that members of Congress were above the law. Judge Hogan called bullshit on these claims. Thank you, Judge Hogan, for restoring law and order on Capitol Hill at least in this small issue. Members of Congress who thought it was fine for the NSA to track the phone calls of 200 Million Americans without warrants and with no probable cause, were aghast that their offices could be searched with warrants while actually investigating criminal activity.

Nice try dimwits! Some Republican leaders in Congress threatened to reduce funding to the FBI in retaliation for this. How dare you! They were investigating a crime and had search warrants. Neither Congress nor the President are above the law. Thank you again, Judge Hogan.

Hastert only objected to this Democrat’s office being searched because he knows that far more Republicans are going to be found connected with criminal activity and he doesn’t want their offices searched for evidence of wrongdoing. Democrats called on Jefferson to step down from his committees when it came out that he was involved in bribery. He has yet to do so. He should do so immediately.

Bush Wasting Tax Payers' Money on Lessons He Never Learned

From America Blog:

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) offers a few more lessons learned:

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the President said we continue to be wise about how we spend the people's money.

"Then why are we paying over $100,000 for a 'White House Director of Lessons Learned'?

"Maybe I can save the taxpayers $100,000 by running through a few of the lessons this White House should have learned by now.

"Lesson 1: When the Army Chief of Staff and the Secretary of State say you are going to war without enough troops, you're going to war without enough troops.

"Lesson 2: When 8.8 billion dollars of reconstruction funding disappears from Iraq, and 2 billion dollars disappears from Katrina relief, it's time to demand a little accountability.

"Lesson 3: When you've 'turned the corner' in Iraq more times than Danica Patrick at the Indy 500, it means you are going in circles.

"Lesson 4: When the national weather service tells you a category 5 hurricane is heading for New Orleans, a category 5 hurricane is heading to New Orleans.

"I would also ask the President why we're paying for two 'Ethics Advisors' and a 'Director of Fact Checking.'

"They must be the only people in Washington who get more vacation time than the President.

"Maybe the White House could consolidate these positions into a Director of Irony."

Why Do So Many US News Sources Refer to 14-Year-Old Rape and Murder Victim as a Woman?

In recent days it has become known that five US soldiers allegedly raped and killed a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killed her 5-year-old little sister and their parents and burned the bodies to cover up the crime.

Some news agencies including Reuters were able to prove that she was only 14 using her passport and identity card. The doctor examining her remains said she was 14. Records show that she was born August 19, 1991. A picture of her in 1993 shows her as a 2-year-old child.

In spite of this many US news media sources continue to refer to her as a woman. Why?

This has been bothering me for days. I just checked Fox News, CNN, the BBC, NBC and CBS as well as many print news sources continue to refer to the little girl as a woman. I wasn't able to check ABC.

Sarah Weber writing in Editor and Publisher takes up this point in this article entitled When is a 14-year-old girl a woman.

I’m glad Ms. Weber wrote the article because this has been bothering me since it came out that the victim was only a child. What is the rational for so many US news outlets continuing to call her a woman? It seems to be a consented effort among many of them. Who is pressuring them to continue this?

The Lawrence Journal-World, published a letter from a reader which read: "I really can’t decide what is more disheartening about the news story regarding the 'young Iraqi woman' who was allegedly raped and killed by U.S. soldiers: the fact that there are armed Americans running around Iraq who evidently don’t view Arab females as human, or the fact that the news media tries to mitigate the magnitude of their alleged crime by referring to the victim as a 'woman. Let’s keep the facts straight here, and let’s not soften the horror by aging the victim semantically. She was a 14-year-old girl."

Hear hear. I'm glad I'm not the only one concerned by this.

An updated aticle from Editor and Publisher can be found here. Again, who is behind the push to call this 14-year-old little girl a woman in the media reports?

That way politicians can focus on addressing the needs of a handful of Corporate CEOs and ignore the needs of the vast majority of Americans.

Much as they do now!

Joe

Bush Family Position on Truth-telling

“The truth is useless. You have to understand this right now. You can't deposit the truth in a bank. You can't pay rent with the truth. You can't buy groceries with the truth. The truth is a useless commodity that will hang around your neck like an albatross-all the way to the homeless shelter. And if you think that the million or so people in this country that are really interested in the truth about their government can support people who would tell them the truth, you got another thing coming. Because the million or so people in this country that are truly interested in the truth don't have money.”

- Jeb Bush in 1986 explaining the Bush family philosophy extremely succinctly

Hey, at least he was being honest there!

- Joe, one of the million or so people in this country that are truly interested in the truth

Happy Independence Day!

On this day in 1776 the American people declared themselves independent of King George, a head of state who overreached his authority over the American people. The American people rejected George’s interference in their lives and his view of how America should be run. It was a long hard battle, but the result was a free nation with a constitution that has been the model and envy of the rest of the world. The US Constitution has provided us with the Rule of Law and a balance of power among the three branches of government that is vital to the survival of the United States of America. Many people risked and lost their lives winning and preserving the rights detailed in our constitution. These liberties are symbolized in our flag and other symbols of the USA, but the rights they symbolize are far more important than the symbols themselves.

Let us remember this Fourth of July the sacrifices made by US troops over the history of our nation especially the more than 2,500 soldiers and marines killed and as many as 20,000 wounded in Iraq. Let us remember their families who will have to spend the Fourth of July without these brave men and women.

Americans stood up to King George then and have resisted his authoritarian ideology throughout our history.

Let us remember that and celebrate.

Why Do the Editors of the National Review Hate America?

The editors of the National Review penned a piece of &#$%! Friday regarding Thursday’s Supreme Court decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. It’s not worth reading. I’ll save you the trouble: the Supreme Court Justices are lucky their not up for election because they illegally applied a mere treaty (the Geneva Convention) to the rule of law and they didn’t have jurisdiction in the case anyway because of the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) passed last December.

What the editors of the National Review fail to understand or worse deliberately mislead their readers about is that Article VI of the US Constitution makes all treaties ratified by the United States (and the Geneva Accords are treaties ratified by the US) equal in stature with the Constitution itself as the “supreme law of the land” in the words of Article VI itself.

Furthermore the War Crimes Act of 1996 passed by a Republican Congress declares violating the Geneva Conventions and in particular Common Article 3 which the Supreme Court declared the Bush policy to violate to be a war crime. “The law applies if either the victim or the perpetrator is a national of the United States or a member of the U.S. armed forces. The penalty may be life imprisonment or death. The death penalty is only invoked if the conduct resulted in the death of one or more victims.” And the general in charge of Abu Ghraib has stated that Rumsfeld and other top administration officials ordered that inhuman treatment and torture be conducted as part of a deliberate strategy. Treatment that led to the deaths of several of those detainees thus fulfilling the requirement for the death penalty for those responsible for the war crimes. So the Supreme Court was correctly ruling on existing law.

As to the claim that the Detainee Treatment Act took Hamdan out of the federal courts hands, discussions before the law was passed mentioned that that specifically, because the Hamdan case was already in the courts prior to the DTA’S passage. Those discussions stated that DTA did not take Hamdan out of the federal courts for this reason.

Senators Lindsay Graham and John Kyl inserted into the Congressional Record a phony debate after the law was voted on to make it seem as if it was Congress’ intention that Hamdan would not be in the federal courts jurisdiction. The senators submitted an amicus brief including this faux debate. The Bush Administration’s lawyers used this in their arguments before the bench. But Hamdan’s lawyers were able to prove to the Supreme Court that Graham-Kyle Colloquy was inserted after the fact by showing the video of the debate in which Graham and Kyl’s comments are missing. In the brief Graham and Kyle indicate other material that was not discussed before the vote, but do not indicate their colloquy was also inserted after the fact giving the impression that it was part of the deliberation leading up to passage of the DTA. The amicus brief was to convince the Supreme Court that Congress had intended Hamdan to be out of judicial hands in the lead up to the vote.

So Senators Graham and Kyl and the Bush Administration lawyers are a party to an attempt to sway the Supreme Court using false testimony. In a true republic this would be deemed as perjury, and one of the justices writing in the majority decision mentioned this as a warning shot across Graham and Kyle’s bows not to try anything as unconscionable as that again. I hope they and the rest of the GOP get the hint that lying to the Supreme Court in an attempt to get your way will not be tolerated.

This ruling was a victory for the Rule of Law, not for the terrorists. If we surrender our legal system the terrorists will have won. Thursday the terrorists lost and the American people won regardless of whether the National Review chooses to recognize the victory.

Help Fund the War on Terror – Sponsor a Missile

With the cost of the War in Iraq expected to top half a Trillion US Dollars and our nation’s birthday fast upon us, it is incumbent on all patriotic Americans to come to the aid (financial aid) of their country in this time of need. Please watch the linked public service announcement and do choose to sponsor a missile. Thank you for your patriotism.

Public Service Announcement from a member of the Bush family.


And thank you for your support.