bernada “forward or backward” – I like it.

we were out enjoying migrating birds with guests all yesterday, so no time to post till now, but I wanted to share a new thing I tried, in the short time I DID have before we took off with them.

I’ve spread the word to friends & other contacts before, & written MSM folk as well as Congress inumerable times.
But somehow I never broke thru to our local Dem. forces-that-be, who normally post stewings about local schools & sewers, & pass along the occasional stale article from the paper, but tend (at least to my eyes) to miss the national level shenanigans that may seem distant & inaccessible to them (I’m guessing wildly here; I just dunno the reason. It just has always seemed to me they could look at the “larger picture” more than they do.)

In the last 2 days, I tried to turn their lil’ e-newsletter inside-out, as it were, by ramming a teaser with links into their system, directly e-mailed to a local head-honcho & accompanied by a plea for coverage. Bingo! It was not only put on their little blog, but it spawned some MORE coverage (which, btw, was much more fiery than my little screed, heh!), concerning the obscene behavior of Gonzo in re Acroft & at least some of the evilagenda jr.’s crew have been foisting off on J.Q Citizen under the radar.

I suggest other FDL folk might want to try anew to tickle the noses of their local honchos with some of the national stuff. It surely did strike a chord here. Below is what I sent in, fwiw… [yes, painfully arm’s-length & dry - on purpose - ya just have to try to understand… this “worked” whereas previous ranting or simply suggesting links, or anything in tw’, hadn’t… ;->]

Tuesday, May 15, 2007, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee held open
hearings to discuss Justice Department policy under the Bush/Cheney
administration. Their sole witness was James Comey, formerly Asst.
Atty. General under John Ashcroft.
Occurring on a busy news day, the hearings were not covered by C-Span,
unfortunately (although Jim Lehrer on PBS, Lou Dobbs on CNN and Keith Olbermann on
MSNBC have dealt with the subject on their programs, and video
of part of the hearings is available at a link below).

Mr. Comey’s testimony was not only riveting, but shocking in its content
and import for anyone concerned about the future of our country.
Comey’s revelations make it clear that Pres. Bush authorized warrantless
wiretapping, knowing it to be illegal, and over the objections of his
top two Justice Department officials. All signs point to this illegal
decision continuing to guide policy today.

Please see video and commentary at the following links:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/g…..index.html
http://www.commondreams.org/ar…..05/02/906/
http://www.firedoglake.com/200…..-it-again/

After all, his slogan for his “surge” is “the new way forward”. What was the old way? Forward or backward, or just backassed?

Alfred Kelgarries @ 202

Hello to all firepups, the spook is floating ectoplasmically over the lake…

i just finished reading emptywheel’s post at TNH. If i’m reading her correctly, comey and schumer cooked this up between them. comey WAS NOT SUBPOENAED he came on his own. and because they managed to keep it a secret from bushco, the wh couldn’t step in and stop it.

her take seems to be that specter knew about all this in advance and that’s why he now says “when the investigation is over AGAG will have resigned” almost in terms you’d describe a terminally ill family member in denial. and her piece seems to be saying that the NC vote is actually a ranging run for a full-on impeachment of AGAG. why bother? simple.

wait for it

IT WOULD LEAVE MCNULTY RUNNING THE DOJ UNTIL CONGRESS CONFIRMS A NEW AG. AND CHIMPY CAN’T FIRE MCNULTY OR FORCE HIM TO RESIGN, ***HE ALREADY HAS.****

can you image what kind of h*ll mcnulty could raise at the doj now that bushco has publicly thrown him under the bus?

I invite counterarguments from the lake.

Whoa! If that is true, that is some masterful chess playing. I said the other day that I thought that Comey had been waiting for exactly the right moment to play this card–and it looks like he did. Lessons learned from years of tracking down & entrapping racketeers as a prosecutor.

YES!!! YES!!!
And masterful analysis by the always brilliant emptywheel, as well as others who have been all over this. Hopefully, this will be the equivalent of the Saturday night massacre–
But is it, really? I remember instant firestorm after the SNM; but am I compressing the actual sequence in my memory?

If we want this to be the equivalent of the SNM, we are going to have to help by spreading the word to all our friends, writing letters to the editor, etc.– We need to get the broader public more involved!!!

Bob in HI

You know, Seedy Gonzales, who showed up at a sick man’s hospital bed one night to try to strongarm the sick man into approving an unconstitutional, un-American secret spying program.

Yep, that Seedy Gonzales. The evil, faithful sidekick to Oil Can Dicky and Ernst BloBush.

emptywheel has an important update to her “Gumming” post on Griffin.

She’s got a whole series of dynamite posts today!
Go, Marcy, Go!!!
Woo-hoo!!!

Bob in HI

Mary at 4

I was UPUd on this bit from several threads ago.

I wonder if someone out there is trying to connect some of the dots on the DOJ issues with Andy Card and the imprisonment of his cousin.
http://www.watchermagazine.com/?p=6763

It is interesting that his own cousin was a victim of these attacks on our Constitution, and he was the one who ratted her out.

That answers Chetlonian whether this is way way worse than the plumbing job from all those years ago.

Hugh @ 201

It will be interesting to see how much Wolfowitz’s leaving will cost. I heard today that he was guaranteed a severance package of #385,000 and in the past there was talk of a $250,000 bonus if he made it to June. He’s leaving at the end of June so I wonder if he gets the bonus or not.

He collects the bonus – thats what he really fought for – you realise its supposed to be a performance based productivity bonus – so what does it say for the gravy trains that the old boys have set up – i hope people realise that these bonus/severance/salary payments are coming out of ‘development’ donations/share contributions of donor countries.

ccmask @ 211

Maybe she was a test case and did it for the party.

This story is pretty scary if accurate … an American citizen held at an extended facility on a military base, at a psychiatric facility, on trumped-up charges, forcibly medicated and restrained, to keep her quiet and pliant. That sounds.. um… so… American.

… the political abuse of state psychiatry…

Maybe Schumer or Leahy or Conyers oughta bring her in to testify. Ironic, don’t you think?

Eureka Springs @ 196

He needs to spend more time playing PNACle..

He’s going to spend more time with his wife, er, mistress, er uh, some mangy stray dog.

Woodhall Hollow @ 112

Marcy has more on Schumer and the Comey testimony–and it’s a real sizzler!

Can someone confirm for a confused Brit who remembers Watergate.Isn’t this stuff much, much more serious?

Same general idea of establishing a dictatorship or Imperial Presidency, but different techniques and the Bush administration is doing a LOT more things to get us there. Apparently George is in a hurry.