Some of you may have heard about this, some not, but a friend of mine in Virginia was just attacked by staffer for George Allen, the Virginia Senator.  Mike Stark, a Marine who is now in law school went to an Allen event to ask him some pretty uncomfortable questions.  He was tackled and pushed to the ground by a couple of guys who work for Allen.  Allen has a sealed arrest record and a sealed divorce record, and Mike went to ask him about some of the allegations that have been made.

Now, Mike's a known partisan, he has a website called CallingAllWingnuts.com, where he calls talk shows and posts the recordings.  It's a pretty funny site.  He's also involved in getting Democrats elected, as so many former service members are.  It's amazing that the Congress has become so insulated that they feel that this is ok, to physically attack their critics, but I guess that is what it has come to.  Anyway, I'll be talking to him in the next couple of days or so, so I'll get more for you soon, though since he's not exactly a private guy, he'll probably be posting everything up at his website.

So the question for the gallery is, is this the sort of behavior we can now expect from Congress?  And should we tolerate it?

Story and video here: http://www.alternet.org/blo...

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too.

He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

He walks on the government-provided sidewalk to subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union.

If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It is noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe also forgets that his in addition to his federally subsidized student loans, he attended a state funded university.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards to go along with the tax-payer funded roads.

He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans.

The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."

I've gone on about this piece of legislation before.  Last night, Keith Olbermann did another comment on it that you can watch here.  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id...
I stayed up pretty late, going over the details with people and it seems we are walking very close to the edge of the abyss.

The Military Commissions Act of 2006, besides making legal our reinterpretation of the Geneva Conventions, also creates a new class of criminals: unlawful enemy combatants.  Anyone, including US citizens, may be declared unlawful enemy combatants under this law.  The remainder of the law only deals with alien enemy combatants (AECs) or non-citizens.  There is no procedure that details the process for a citizen that has been detained as a non-alien enemy combatant.  Among the procedures for dealing with AECs is the suspension of Habeas Corpus, the law that requires that evidence used against you is presented.

This, like the wiretapping bill, is going to be argued for using the premise that anyone who is detained will have actually broken the law and they will be presumed to be terrorists, despite the fact that hundreds of people who have been detained already have been released because no link to terrorism could be found.  We cannot allow ourselves to believe that there is no reason for a trial of any person, no matter how vile that person may be.

Last, here is the crux of the debate:  How secure is your citizenship?  If your citizenship is the only thing standing between yourself and the loss of all of your rights, how solid is that foundation?  In World War II, the Japanese were forced to renounce their US  citizenship (which can be done on US soil only during time of war) so that they could legally be interned.   The Patriot Act II, which has not passed, strips citizenship from anyone who is involved with terrorist activities.  It does not make clear how that determination is made.

We stand now, one pen stroke away from ending the great experiment that is America.  And I can think of no way to do a damn thing about it.

A plane has crashed into the 20th floor of a 50 story highrise in Manhatten, 524 E. 72nd Street, on the upper East Side.  Reports are spotty, but it looks like a multi engine small plane.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id...

News is still breaking...

I've mentioned this before, but Olbermann covered it tonight as only he can.  It was an excellent piece that you can read or watch here.  Here's how it starts:

Our third story on the Countdown tonight, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 and what it does to something called "habeas corpus."
And before we reduce the very term "habeas corpus" to something vaguely recalled as sounding kinda like the cornerstone of freedom, or maybe kinda like a character from "Harry Potter," we thought a Countdown Special Investigation was in order.
Congress passed The Military Commissions Act to give Mr. Bush the power to deal effectively with America's enemies — those who seek to harm this country.
And he has been very clear about who that is:
"…for people to leak that program, and for a newspaper to publish it does great harm to the United States of America."
So the president said it was urgent that Congress send him this bill as quickly as possible, not for the politics of next month's elections, but for America.


This has been the justification for a lot of plans the have come out of this administration, and as they are framed as anti-terror, it's hard to push back against them.  But as we've seen with Katrina and North Korea, these plans to make us safer don't seem to address the real dangers we face.


 Still, getting the Military Commissions Act to the President so he could immediately mull it over for two weeks was so important, some members of Congress didn't even read the bill before voting on it. Thus, has some of its minutiae, escaped scrutiny.
One bit of trivia that caught our eye was the elimination of habeas corpus. which apparently used to be the right of anyone who's tossed in prison, to appear in court and say, "Hey, why am I in prison?"

This law does indeed remove habeas corpus for anyone who is named by the President as an "enemy combatant".  There are no rules for this and no legal procedure outlined.  The Constitution does provide, as Olbermann covers, for the suspension of habeas during an invasion or insurrection. Under this law, habeas is abolished for anyone who for any reason is declared an enemy combatant. There is no judicial review for this decision.
Keith finishes with a summary of why habeas corpus is so important and underpins our most basic rights.

The reality is, without habeas corpus, a lot of other rights lose their meaning.
But if you look at the actual Bill of Rights — the first ten amendments to that pesky Constitution — you'll see just how many remain.
Well, ok, Number One's gone.
If you're detained without trial, you lose your freedom of religion, speech, the press and assembly. And you can't petition the government for anything.
Number Two? While you're in prison, your right to keep and bear arms just may be infringed upon.
Even if you're in the NRA.
Three?
No forced sleepovers by soldiers at your house. OK. Three is unchanged.
Four?
You're definitely not secure against searches and seizures, with or without probable cause - and this isn't even limited to the guards.
Five… Grand juries and due process are obviously out.
Six. So are trials, let alone the right to counsel. Speedy trials? You want it when?
Seven. Hmmmm. I thought we covered "trials" and "juries" earlier.
Eight — So bail's kind of a moot point…
Nine: "Other" rights retained by the people. Well, if you can name them during your water-boarding, we'll consider them.
And Ten — powers not delegated to the United States federal government seem to have ended up there, anyway.
So as you can see, even without habeas corpus, at least one tenth of the Bill of Rights, I guess that's the Bill of "Right" now… remains virtually intact.
And we can rest easy knowing we will never, ever have to quarter soldiers in our homes… as long as the Third Amendment still stands strong.
The President can take care of that with a Signing Statement.

Again, for the full effect of the piece, read it or watch it here.

Nancy Pelosi, the House Minority Leader, just released some additions to the Democratic plans for the 110th Congress.  Here is a portion of the text including the plan for the first 100 hours.

 Some of our proposals are in our New Direction for America that we put forth. Among the suggestions were to make the economy fairer by raising the minimum wage and repealing the subsidies for companies that send our jobs overseas. It’s quite a remarkable phenomenon: you’re a worker, you pay taxes, and your taxes are used to give an incentive to a company to send your job overseas, and then you are asked to train your replacement or else you won’t get any severance.

"Essential to economic security for American families is access to health care, and we will make health care more affordable by giving the federal government the opportunity to negotiate for the lower the cost of prescription drugs. We will make college more accessible by cutting interest rates for student loans in half, and making tuition tax deductible. And we will do this with fiscal discipline.

"In addition to some of those things that we can do within the first 100 hours of a new Congress, a longer-term goal would be to ensure economic justice and opportunity by supporting our Innovation Agenda. It says that the future prosperity and competitiveness of America demands that we initiate a sustained financial investment in innovation. In doing this, we must also ensure that our children and grandchildren are not burdened by failed policies that have exploded the national debt. That is why House Democrats put these priorities under the rigors of pay-as-you-go budgeting to ensure that new spending or tax cuts do not add to the deficit.

"Also essential to our economic success is to advance energy independence with solutions that are homegrown. Our energy independence plan commits America to a comprehensive plan that provides tax incentives to encourage increased biofuel production, increase the number of flex fuel cars, expand ethanol use, and it also goes to other alternative energy resources as well.

"Democrats believe that none of this matters unless we have strong national security to protect the American people. But the strength of our country must also be measured by the economic well-being of America’s families. Today, we will hear some positive initiatives on how to take us to that place, but we have a challenge because the priorities of this Administration have been for the privileged few and not for all Americans."

Also included is a reference to the New Direction for America Plan (pdf).  Take a look and let's see what's hot and what's not in Bakersfield.

This subject is bleeding over into other threads so I wanted to put up a central place for them.  It looks like this story is just getting started and new info is surfacing constantly.  For those just getting started, Foley is the Florida Congressman who resigned after sexual emails and IMs with high school boys who worked in the Congressional page program surfaced.

So far we know that this has been going on since at least 2003.  The FBI is now investigating and Foley has stepped down.

If you have new facts or info, post your links.