Who is really in Charge at the White House Bush says there will be an investigation for example and if the leaker is found he will be punished. Tell me how does that work if you grant clemency to the guy who knows who the leaker is? Does Bush just say stuff and then everyone in the White House feels free to ignore him? I know that his loyal Bushies all think its to preserve plausible deniablity from criminal, civil, and war crimes. But I’m starting to wonder just what hasn’t he delagated to Cheney and Rove? We (cough) elected Bush as President the Buck stops with him. This Republican theory of plausible deniablity is just an attempt to shield the President from guilt. But the problem with this theory is that by doing this he is as guilty of Neglegence and therefore liable for all the acts of his underlings. As any building inspector who lets a building contractor build a house that is not up to code. Plus we (cough) elected him to be in charge not Cheney or Rove passing the buck does not absolve him of guilt.

wigwam @ 239

things come undone @ 234

Who is really in Charge at the White House Bush says there will be an investigation for example and if the leaker is found he will be punished. Tell me how does that work if you grant clemency to the guy who knows who the leaker is? Does Bush just say stuff and then everyone in the White House feels free to ignore him? I know that his loyal Bushies all think its to preserve plausible deniablity from criminal, civil, and war crimes. But I’m starting to wonder just what hasn’t he delagated to Cheney and Rove? We (cough) elected Bush as President the Buck stops with him. This Republican theory of plausible deniablity is just an attempt to shield the President from guilt. But the problem with this theory is that by doing this he is as guilty of Neglegence and therefore liable for all the acts of his underlings. As any building inspector who lets a building contractor build a house that is not up to code. Plus we (cough) elected him to be in charge not Cheney or Rove passing the buck does not absolve him of guilt.

Correction: he didn’t say that the leaker would be punished. This is from CNN.com:

“If there’s a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is,” Bush told reporters at an impromptu news conference during a fund-raising stop in Chicago, Illinois. “If the person has violated law, that person will be taken care of.

Emphasis is mine.

So far, Bush has been a man of his word on this matter.

Thanks for that important clarification, “wigwam”….and ”take care as in care for” he did – I’m sure there’s a Swiss bank account for Scottie in the range of a mil.

“things come undone” – an even shorter way (sorry for the English professor in me but..;-)) to denote the stolen elections of ‘00 and ‘04 is to put it in quotes: “elected”.

Thank you, TRex, for posting it!

To the Editor:

When George W. Bush was governor of Texas, he presided over more than 150 executions. In more than one-third of the cases — 57 in all — lawyers representing condemned inmates asked then-Governor Bush for a commutation of sentence, so that the inmates would serve life in prison rather than face execution.

Some of these inmates had been represented by lawyers who slept during trials. Some were mentally retarded. Some were juveniles at the time they committed the crime for which they were sentenced to death.

In all these cases, Governor Bush refused to commute their sentences, saying that the inmates had had full access to the judicial system.

I. Lewis Libby Jr. had the best lawyers money can buy. His crime cannot be attributed to youth or retardation. He has expressed no remorse whatsoever for lying to a grand jury or participating in the administration’s effort to mislead the American people about the war in Iraq. President Bush’s commutation of Mr. Libby’s sentence is certainly legal, but it just as surely offends the fundamental constitutional value of equality.

Because President Bush signed a commutation, a rich and powerful man will spend not a day in prison, while 57 poor and poorly connected human beings died because Governor Bush refused to lift a pen for them.

David R. Dow

Houston, July 3, 2007

The writer is a professor at the University of Houston Law Center who represents death row inmates, including several who sought commutation from then-Governor Bush.

Mornin’ all! Happy 4th!

i’m in mourning today. if i had a black flag, i’d hang it.

In commuting the sentence of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, President Bush said that the former vice presidential aide had suffered enough and that the 30-month prison term ordered up by a federal judge was “excessive.”

But records show that the Justice Department under the Bush administration frequently has sought sentences that are as long, or longer, in cases similar to Libby’s. Three-fourths of the 198 defendants sentenced in federal court last year for obstruction of justice — one of four crimes Libby was found guilty of in March — got some prison time. According to federal data, the average sentence defendants received for that charge alone was 70 months.

Daylight again, following me to bed
I think about a hundred years ago, how my fathers bled
I think I see a valley, covered with bones in blue
All the brave soldiers that cannot get older been askin’ after
you
Hear the past a callin’, from Ar- -megeddon’s side
When everyone’s talkin’ and no one is listenin’, how can we
decide?

(Do we) find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground

Mother earth will swallow you, lay your body down
Find the cost of freedom, buried in the ground
Mother earth will swallow you, lay your body down
(Find the cost of freedom buried in the ground)

from the The LA Times

Private contractors outnumber U.S. troops in Iraq

The number of U.S.-paid private contractors in Iraq now exceeds that of American combat troops, newly released figures show, raising fresh questions about the privatization of the war effort and the government’s capacity to carry out military and rebuilding campaigns.

More than 180,000 civilians — including Americans, foreigners and Iraqis — are working in Iraq under U.S. contracts, according to State and Defense department figures obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

Including the recent troop buildup, 160,000 soldiers and a few thousand civilian government employees are stationed in Iraq.

The total number of private contractors, far higher than previously reported, shows how heavily the Bush administration has relied on corporations to carry out the occupation of Iraq — a mission criticized as being undermanned.
there’s a lot more…