This carries no weight without the name of the publication and the entire article with byline.

• Bush Bashed by Republicans - Democrat
  • This carries no weight without the name of the publication and the entire article with byline. - -
    • Each brown place in the link takes you to a different article that supports this article...nm - Democrat
      • With all due respect. - -
        • Here's my reasoning on stem cell research - sm
          • tax dollars go to many things we dont want - gt
            • Now wouldn't that bring accountability to the government?sm - Democrat
              • I think that's a great idea, Democrat. - Libby
            • It might behoove you to read the post before answering. - -
              • always read the posts - gt
                • Careful! Some neocon troll might twist your post into a threat!!! - Libby
          • I don't support stem cell research. - -
            • stem cell research - gt
              • Remember the fuss over the govt promoting... - SM
                • Im for it - gt
                  • If anything should be privatized, - Libby
                • At least privately - -
              • What makes you think they haven't. - -
              • You can bet the farm that people like that - Hmmmmmmmmmm
                • I wouldn't bet any real estate on that, farm or otherwise. - -
        • Well, you're right but the polls tell the story even better.sm - Democrat
          • You said it! - -
    • You can click on any of the brown places in the post and it will take you to the link.nm - Democrat

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U.S. military was protecting the Hezbollah supporters. Am I really missing it?

thing to help his pal John Gibson sell his book on this fictional topic.

After this *War on Christmas* was conjured up by these two, I believe that some people jumped on the *Happy Holidays* bandwagon simply because they're sick and tired of the religious right forcing their religion down everyone's throats for the past 5 years in the form of laws, supreme court nominees, FDA rulings, etc.

I think people of all religions are sick and tired of their religions being regarded as somehow *less* if they're not Christian (or even begin the *right kind* of Christian). 

The other week, I made a contribution to a Salvation Army *pot* outside of a store I was visiting.  The young man wished me a Merry Christmas, and I responded back with *Merry Christmas,* because I'm aware that the Salvation Army is a Christian organization.  I would never dare to ASSUME that every stranger I encounter is Christian, and if I am the person initiating the *Happy* greeting, I use the phrase *Happy Holidays.*  If I'm responding, I respond back with whatever they say to me first.

Yes, CHRISTMAS obviously is a Christian holiday first and foremost.  But this holiday has also evolved into a secular one which includes Santa Claus and jingle bells, lights, tinsel and credit cards.  It provokes people of ALL religions to act in a *Jesus-like* way:  With kindness, charity, love and tolerance.  

I believe that the Christmas *season* is so loved by ALL people that they are just unwilling to give it up to those who have proven to be so intolerant for the last 5 years.  They want to feel included and validated, as well.  It's ironic how some of the ones who claim to be the most *Christian* are unwilling to share their holiday with the rest of the country, and rather than being inclusive and welcoming of others under the umbrella of *Happy Holidays,* they instead choose, once again, to bully others.  Must be the true meaning of the *bully pulpit.*

Merry Christmas to all Christians who celebrate Christmas.

Happy Holidays to others of all religions who just might enjoy the Jesus-LIKE feeling they get in their hearts during this time of the year.  And as long as I initiate holiday wishes to strangers, I will be very respective, tolerant and inclusive of those who just might not be Christian, as I fondly remember the *good old days* when freedom of religion for ALL was not only *tolerated* but was unquestioned, welcomed and encouraged here in the United States of America.

And I truly don't understand why.  I tried to quickly find the transcript of the entire interview, but I was unable to find it.

I wish they would have posted the entire interview because Sean and Newt argued and probably for the first time did not agree.  If I remember correctly, there was even a jovial comment at the end about Newt being closer to Alan than Sean (or something to that effect).  I don't remember the exact words.  I did watch the entire interview, and I can tell you that Sean challenged Newt on points, but Newt still disagreed with him.  The gist of what Newt said was that the President just needs to start being honest with the American people about things he does. 

If I have more time later, I will search some more and see if I can find the entire interview in case you don't believe what I have told you after watching the entire interview.

I do agree, however, that the entire interview should have been there because I think his disagreement with Sean was much more interesting than his agreement with Alan.

it would save a lot of that foot taste in your mouth and egg on your face.

I never said that the transcript was not Rush's words.  What I said was a bunch of bunk and lies was the columnist's comments about Rush and I stand by that.   and for your information just because something is posted on the internet does not make it factual or true.  Do I really have to point that out to you?

Oh, and BTW I don't agree with Pat Robertson's remarks.  I am Christian, but I think Pat R. needs to shut up and retire.  He definitely does not speak for all Christians, but again, Cindy Sheehan has said the equivalent about Bush except in much, much more vulgar and hateful language.

Iraq = $333 million per day.  S-CHIP = $19 million per day.  Hmm, if we can "find" money for one, don't you think we can find money for the other.  Again, I ask, "What would Jesus do?"  What would the leaders of any religion recommend?  I think they would recommend taking care of our most innocent souls.

The cigarette tax would go a long way in covering the program, but I think our government could come up with money to fund the rest.

This whole Rove thing is not about outing anyone, it is about the uranium and Wilson finding no evidence that Saddam was trying to buy it.  Great article.  Link is below.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/17/opinion/17rich.html?incamp=article_popular

    Thursday 18 August 2005

    Cindy Sheehan is still waiting for Bush to answer her question: What noble cause did my son die for? Her protest started as a small gathering 13 days ago. It has mushroomed into a demonstration of hundreds in Crawford and tens of thousands more at 1,627 solidarity vigils throughout the country.

    Why didn't Bush simply invite Cindy in for tea when she arrived in Crawford? In a brief, personal meeting with Cindy, Bush could have defused a situation that has become a profound embarrassment for him, and could derail his political agenda.

    Bush didn't talk with Cindy because he can't answer her question. There is no answer to Cindy's question. There is no noble cause that Cindy's son died fighting for. And Bush knows it.

    The goals of this war are not hard to find. They were laid out in Paul Wolfowitz's draft Pentagon Defense Planning Guidance in 1992, and again in the neoconservative manifesto - The Project for a New American Century's Rebuilding America's Defenses - in September 2000.

    Long before 9/11, the neocons proclaimed that the United States should exercise its role as the world's only superpower by ensuring access to the massive Middle East petroleum reserves. To accomplish this goal, the US would need to invade Iraq and establish permanent military bases there.

    If Bush were to give an honest answer to Cindy Sheehan's question, it would be that her son died to help his country spread US hegemony throughout the Middle East.

    But that answer, while true, does not sound very noble. It would not satisfy Cindy Sheehan, nor would it satisfy the vast majority of the American people. So, for the past several years, Bush and his minions have concocted an ever-changing story line.

    First, it was weapons-of-mass-destruction and the mushroom cloud. In spite of the weapons inspectors' admonitions that Iraq had no such weapons, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, and Bolton lied about chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. Bush even included the smoking gun claim in his state of the union address: that Iraq sought to purchase uranium from Niger. It was a lie, because people like Ambassador Joe Wilson, who traveled to Niger to investigate the allegation, had reported back to Cheney that it never happened.

    The Security Council didn't think Iraq was a threat to international peace and security. In spite of Bush's badgering and threats, the Council held firm and refused to sanction a war on Iraq. The UN weapons inspectors asked for more time to conduct their inspections. But Bush was impatient.

    He thumbed his nose at the United Nations and invaded anyway. After the "coalition forces" took over Iraq, they combed the country for the prohibited weapons. But they were nowhere to be found.

    Faced with the need to explain to the American people why our sons and daughters were dying in Iraq, Bush changed the subject to saving the Iraqis from Saddam's torture chambers.

    Then the grotesque photographs emerged from Abu Ghraib prison outside of Baghdad. They contained images of US military personnel torturing Iraqis. Bush stopped talking about Saddam's torture.

    Most recently, Bush's excuse has been "bringing democracy to the Iraqi people." On June 28, 2004, he ceremoniously hailed the "transfer of sovereignty" back to the Iraqi people. (See Giving Iraqis What is Rightly Theirs). Yet 138,000 US troops remained in Iraq to protect US "interests."

    And Iraq's economy is still controlled by laws put in place before the "transfer of sovereignty." The US maintains a stranglehold on foreign access to Iraqi oil, private ownership of Iraq's resources, and control over the reconstruction of this decimated country.

    For months, Bush hyped the August 15, 2005 deadline for Iraqis to agree on a new constitution. But as the deadline came and went, the contradictions between the Shias, Sunnis and Kurds over federalism came into sharp focus. The Bush administration admitted that "we will have some form of Islamic republic," according to Sunday's Washington Post.

    So much for Bush's promise of a democratic Iraq.

    The constitutional negotiations are far removed from the lives of most Iraqis. When journalist Robert Fisk asked an Iraqi friend about the constitution, he replied, "Sure, it's important. But my family lives in fear of kidnapping, I'm too afraid to tell my father I work for journalists, and we only have one hour in six of electricity and we can't even keep our food from going bad in the fridge. Federalism? You can't eat federalism and you can't use it to fuel your car and it doesn't make my fridge work."

    Fisk reports that 1,100 civilian bodies were brought into the Baghdad morgue in July. The medical journal The Lancet concluded in October 2004 that at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died in the first 18 months after Bush invaded Iraq.

    Unfortunately, the picture in Iraq is not a pretty one.

    Bush knows that if he talked to Cindy Sheehan, she would demand that he withdraw from Iraq now.

    But Bush has no intention of ever pulling out of Iraq. The US is building the largest CIA station in the world in Baghdad. And Halliburton is busily constructing 14 permanent US military bases in Iraq.

    George Bush knows that he cannot answer Cindy Sheehan's question. There is no noble cause for his war on Iraq.

By John Yewell/City Editor

With Cindy Sheehan gone home to take care of her stroke-stricken mom, President Bush can enjoy the last week of his Texas vacation free of the distraction of her encampment outside his ranch. But a grieving liberal mom whose son died in Iraq demanding an audience may not be Bush’s biggest problem.

His biggest problem may be my mom.

My mother is a lifelong Republican. She got it from her father, a yellow-dog Republican if ever there was one. As unofficial GOP godfather of Fillmore, Calif., he collected absentee ballots every election for his large family and marked them himself. No sense in taking chances that someone might vote for a Democrat.

So when my mother called me the other day and told me she was considering registering as a Democrat, I was, well, stunned. Somewhere in a cemetery plot near Fillmore a body is spinning.

For the last year or more my mother has been gradually expressing ever greater exasperation with President Bush, the war, and the religious right. “Have you heard about this James Dobson guy?” she asked me on the phone, referring to the head of Focus on the Family. “If they overturn Roe vs. Wade, that’ll be it for me,” she said.

Then she mentioned Cindy Sheehan.

For all the efforts to discredit Ms. Sheehan, what she accomplished in drawing attention to the human cost of the war, if my mother’s opinion is any indication, crossed party lines. There’s a Mom Faction in American politics, and while it isn’t a monolithic Third Rail, it’s at least and second-and-a-half rail. When their children are dying on a battlefield of choice, you touch it at your peril.

My mother has her fingers on the pulse, and scalps, of many such women. She’s a hairdresser with a clientele that has been coming to her regularly for decades. Now grandmothers, these women were moms during Vietnam, in which over 50,000 American sons and daughters died. They worried then about their kids’ safety, now they’re worried about grandkids - theirs or someone else’s. Most are pretty mainstream, most Republican, and most, my mother tells me, pretty much fed up with George Bush.

There is other evidence of trouble on the Republican horizon. According to the latest compilation of state polls produced 10 days ago by surveyusa.com, of the 31 states Bush won in 2004, he now enjoys plurality job approval in only 10. This includes a 60 to 37 percent disapproval rate in the key state of Ohio, and a 53 to 44 disapproval rate in Florida.

A recent assessment from the influential and scrupulously nonpartisan Cook Political Report reads: “Opposition to and skepticism about the war in Iraq has reached its highest level, boosted by increased American casualties, a lack of political progress inside the country and growing signs of an imminent civil war. Given the centrality of the Iraq War to the Bush presidency and re-election, a cave-in of support for the president on the war would be devastating to his second-term credibility and influence.”

If Republicans are wondering where Cook is finding this “cave-in of support,” they could start looking in worse places than my mother’s one-chair salon, where Cindy Sheehan found sympathetic ears.

According to various reports, Bush and his team concluded that granting Sheehan an audience would only have encouraged other malcontents to demand similar attention from the president. Whatever the rationale, the decision alienated the clientele of Natalie’s Beauty Shoppe.

In the end my mother decided against changing her registration. Any criticism she might have of Bush, she decided, would be more credible if she stayed in the party, a sophisticated conclusion I admire and applaud.

Although Democrats can’t count on being the automatic beneficiaries of such dissatisfaction, Bush’s refusal to acknowledge fault, his “because I’m the Daddy and I say so” attitude, doesn’t work for a lot of women anymore. Women resent being patronized, and that’s how many view the president’s treatment of Cindy Sheehan.

The next election may be 14 months away, but when my mom and a lot of others like her walk into their voting booths, they may well be reflecting on their children and their choices, and which party is less likely to put either in harm’s way.

John Yewell is the city editor of the Hollister Free Lance. He can be reached at jyewell@freelancenews.com.

In a little-remembered debate from 1994, the Clinton administration argued that the president has inherent authority to order physical searches — including break-ins at the homes of U.S. citizens — for foreign intelligence purposes without any warrant or permission from any outside body. Even after the administration ultimately agreed with Congress's decision to place the authority to pre-approve such searches in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, President Clinton still maintained that he had sufficient authority to order such searches on his own.

It is important to understand, Gorelick continued, that the rules and methodology for criminal searches are inconsistent with the collection of foreign intelligence and would unduly frustrate the president in carrying out his foreign intelligence responsibilities.

Executive Order 12333, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1981, provides for such warrantless searches directed against a foreign power or an agent of a foreign power.

Reporting the day after Gorelick's testimony, the Washington Post's headline — on page A-19 — read, Administration Backing No-Warrant Spy Searches. The story began, The Clinton administration, in a little-noticed facet of the debate on intelligence reforms, is seeking congressional authorization for U.S. spies to continue conducting clandestine searches at foreign embassies in Washington and other cities without a federal court order. The administration's quiet lobbying effort is aimed at modifying draft legislation that would require U.S. counterintelligence officials to get a court order before secretly snooping inside the homes or workplaces of suspected foreign agents or foreign powers.

In her testimony, Gorelick made clear that the president believed he had the power to order warrantless searches for the purpose of gathering intelligence, even if there was no reason to believe that the search might uncover evidence of a crime. Intelligence is often long range, its exact targets are more difficult to identify, and its focus is less precise, Gorelick said. Information gathering for policy making and prevention, rather than prosecution, are its primary focus.

The debate over warrantless searches came up after the case of CIA spy Aldrich Ames. Authorities had searched Ames's house without a warrant, and the Justice Department feared that Ames's lawyers would challenge the search in court. Meanwhile, Congress began discussing a measure under which the authorization for break-ins would be handled like the authorization for wiretaps, that is, by the FISA court. In her testimony, Gorelick signaled that the administration would go along a congressional decision to place such searches under the court — if, as she testified, it does not restrict the president's ability to collect foreign intelligence necessary for the national security. In the end, Congress placed the searches under the FISA court, but the Clinton administration did not back down from its contention that the president had the authority to act when necessary.

Byron York--NRO