We need to fight back and shutdown this fact free GOP commercial paid for by General Electric. We need to stop the GOP from getting around campaign finance laws.

The question being, “How?” As one person I don’t watch the cr*p; also try to refrain from buying products made by them but, until the majority of Americans follow suit, what can be done? Aint’ no way pols are gonna actually *do* something about it. :-(

In Norway there’s no tradition for fireworks arranged by the city. It’s too cold in January to gather downtown for the celebrations, so everyone just go out into their gardens or a nearby open spot, launch their rockets and then head back inside. The result is more than simply beautiful.

T: Republican candidates like the Addams family
I: Huckabee = batsh*t insane [well, okay, he may not have “said” batshit but that was the tone]
T: homoerotic commercial between Huckabee and Chuck “third fist” Norris
T: polling all over the place because nobody can stand these guys for more than five mins at a time
I: isn’t any of them worse than what we’ve got now.

T: Democratic wives in a snit over Michelle Obama’s boots

okay, guys, I want the boot report.

…So, in October 2003, we sent another wave of questions to the C.I.A.’s general counsel. One set posed dozens of specific questions about the reports, including those about Abu Zubaydah. A second set, even more important in our view, asked for details about the translation process in the interrogations; the background of the interrogators; the way the interrogators handled inconsistencies in the detainees’ stories; the particular questions that had been asked to elicit reported information; the way interrogators had followed up on certain lines of questioning; the context of the interrogations so we could assess the credibility and demeanor of the detainees when they made the reported statements; and the views or assessments of the interrogators themselves.

The general counsel responded in writing with non-specific replies. The agency did not disclose that any interrogations had ever been recorded or that it had held any further relevant information, in any form. Not satisfied with this response, we decided that we needed to question the detainees directly, including Abu Zubaydah and a few other key captives.

In a lunch meeting on Dec. 23, 2003, George Tenet, the C.I.A. director, told us point blank that we would have no such access. During the meeting, we emphasized to him that the C.I.A. should provide any documents responsive to our requests, even if the commission had not specifically asked for them. Mr. Tenet replied by alluding to several documents he thought would be helpful to us, but neither he, nor anyone else in the meeting, mentioned videotapes.

A meeting on Jan. 21, 2004, with Mr. Tenet, the White House counsel, the secretary of defense and a representative from the Justice Department also resulted in the denial of commission access to the detainees. Once again, videotapes were not mentioned.

As a result of this January meeting, the C.I.A. agreed to pose some of our questions to detainees and report back to us. The commission concluded this was all the administration could give us. But the commission never felt that its earlier questions had been satisfactorily answered. So the public would be aware of our concerns, we highlighted our caveats on page 146 in the commission report.

As a legal matter, it is not up to us to examine the C.I.A.’s failure to disclose the existence of these tapes. That is for others. What we do know is that government officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the president, to investigate one the greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction.