Beware possible spam bot infiltration.

As much as I like Bill Clinton, this is by far the biggest display of the pot calling the kettle black.


Former President Bill Clinton blasted his successor's decision to spare former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby from prison, telling Iowa radio listeners that Libby's case differed from his own administration's pardon controversy.

"You've got to understand, this is consistent with their philosophy," Clinton said during an interview on Des Moines news-talk station WHO.

Bush administration officials, he said, "believe that they should be able to do what they want to do, and that the law is a minor obstacle."

 President Bush on Monday commuted Libby's 30-month sentence for perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to federal agents investigating the 2003 exposure of former CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Bush's order keeps Libby's conviction on his record, but he called Libby's prison sentence "excessive" and suggested that Libby will pay a big enough price for his conviction.

Clinton was impeached in 1998 over perjury allegations stemming from his sexual relationship with a White House intern, but the Senate acquitted him.

And a flurry of last-minute pardons issued as he left office in 2001 -- particularly his absolution of fugitive financier Marc Rich -- sparked largely partisan outrage. Critics alleged that the pardon of Rich was linked to contributions raised for Clinton's presidential library by Rich's ex-wife.

Libby's defenders have pointed to Democratic support for Clinton during that period to accuse critics of Bush's clemency order of hypocrisy.

 "Wasn't it Bill Clinton that was handing out pardons like lollipops at the end of his administration?" former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, now seeking the Republican presidential nomination, told supporters in Iowa on Tuesday.

"And isn't there some recognition that perhaps you might look a little silly if you didn't have anything to say when he was handing out pardon after pardon after pardon for political purposes only?"

But the former president said, "I think the facts were different."

"It's wrong to out that CIA agent, and wrong to try to cover it up -- and wrong that no one was ever fired from the White House for doing it," he said.

Clinton's wife, Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-New York, is now seeking the presidency and has been campaigning in Iowa during the Independence Day holiday. She put him on the phone during a Tuesday interview with Iowa political columnist David Yepsen.

Libby was Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff before his October 2005 indictment. He was not accused of leaking Plame's identity, but prosecutors argued his false statements hindered their investigation of the disclosure and left a "cloud" over the White House.

The leak occurred shortly after Plame's husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had gone public with allegations that the Bush administration "twisted" intelligence used to justify the invasion of Iraq.
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Rich fled to Switzerland in the 1980s to avoid racketeering, tax evasion and fraud charges stemming from oil trades with Iran.

Libby, who represented Rich from 1985 to 2000, told a House committee in 2001 that prosecutors "misconstrued the facts and the law" in pursuing the tax evasion charges.

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Oh, is it July already? I guess it is that time of year again.

Thanks for the information and for sharing. Unfortunately, many of us already know that they will do nothing but roll over instead of doing what is right. Welcome to politics. We do have to keep trying though, so maybe somebody who uses the above info will get them to see the light

He's letting people know that this Saturday, July 7, is the Live Earth concert. It's pretty impressive: 24 hours, 7 continents, 2 billion people. But it's more than a one-day event. It's a challenge -- to nations and individuals -- to do something about climate change.

A lot of people think that it's hard. It's not. Here's something I did. My husband and I bought a super-efficient dishwasher and clothes washer and got a couple hundred dollars in rebates back on our water and power bills. We used the extra money to better insulate our 140-year-old house. Now we're a little warmer -- and the world is a little cooler.

Here's something else I did. I went to Carbonfund.org,a partner of Working Assets, where you can offset your carbon output. You can offset 7 tons of CO2 for $38.50. Or offset a cross country trip in your Prius for just $7. Or go ZeroCarbon for $99 a year. Carbonfund.org even lets you choose your offset method -- renewable energy, investment in energy efficiency or tree planting.

If we're going to make the changes needed to avert a climate crisis, we all have to do our part. That's why I'd like to know about your ideas for putting the brakes on global warming. Send them to me at carbon@workingassets.com. I'll publish them on the Working Assets blog.
 
I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Sarah Clusen Buecher
Citizen Action Manager & Global Warming Fighter
Working Assets

I refuse to watch any of that cult member's movies. Him and John Travolta.

Hours after a federal appeals court ruled that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby would have to begin serving his prison sentence while appealing his conviction for crimes of perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators, President Bush commuted his sentence.

Last week Vice President Cheney asserted that he was beyond the reach of the law. Today, President Bush demonstrated the lengths he would go to, ensuring that even aides to Dick Cheney are beyond the judgment of the law.

It is time for the American people to be heard.

I call for all Americans to flood the White House with phone calls tomorrow expressing their outrage over this blatant disregard for the rule of law.


Remind George Bush what he told staffers during a swearing in ceremony for White House staff back in January 2001:

"[We] must remember the high standards that come with high office. This begins with careful adherence to the rules. I expect every member of this administration to stay well within the boundaries that define legal and ethical conduct. This means avoiding even the appearance of problems. This means checking and, if need be, double- checking that the rules have been obeyed. This means never compromising those rules. No one in the White House should be afraid to confront the people they work for, for ethical concerns, and no one should hesitate to confront me as well. We are all accountable to one another. And above all, we are all accountable to the law and to the American people."

Video of George Bush addressing staff:

I have no desire to buy an iPhone. I have no desire to waste $600 on something that will be outdated in a year. I have a cell phone that I use as a cell phone and that's enough for me.

Many of you have written to ask us when we were going to call for the
impeachment of Bush as well as Cheney. Of course we have done Bush
impeachment action pages before, and were focusing on Cheney on the
premise that he was not only the least popular, but also the most
guilty. But now Bush has thrown himself in the middle of the worst of
the Cheney scandals, and so we have launched a new action page
calling for the impeachment of them both.

IMPEACH BOTH: http://www.usalone.com/impeach_both.php

If you were looking to submit something to reiterate your call for
impeachment, please submit the page above as this is a NEW joint
action.

The ink was barely dry on the order DENYING bail on appeal to
convicted White House felon Scooter Libby, before president Bush
intervened to "commute" his sentence. It is very well possible that
NEVER before in the history of American jurisprudence had anyone
sentenced to prison received such a commutation BEFORE serving a
single day of that sentence.

Cheney and Bush conspired together to give Libby an escape hatch.
This was their contingency plan all along, to game our legal system
with every frivolous defense imaginable, knowing all along they would
subvert justice in the end to whatever extent necessary. Who are the
people celebrating this gross miscarriage of justice, as they dance
on the grave of our Constitution?

IMPEACH BOTH: http://www.usalone.com/impeach_both.php

The Department of Justice's own guidelines specify that to apply for
a commutation a convict MUST first have started to serve their
sentence AND have abandoned all appeals. Scooter Libby has done
neither. Bush has again abused his office to shield Cheney and
himself from further exposure of their own impeachable offenses, as
would happen were Libby finally compelled to testify truthfully, as
was Judith Miller by her own incarceration.

This is nothing but a weasel pardon, a premeditated obstruction of
justice. Indeed, there is nothing to prevent Bush from further
granting Libby a full pardon in January of 2009, as he no doubt PLANS
on doing, UNLESS both he and Cheney are impeached first. More than
sufficient evidence of their constitutional crimes is already a
matter of public record. There is no oversight they have not
unilaterally defied. And now this, from an execution happy governor
of Texas who once MOCKED a woman who begged him only for life in
prison.

Bush asserts that the Libby prison sentence was excessive. But will
he change the law and the guidelines which fairly call for the
sentence handed down based on the severity of Libby's crimes? No he
will not. Instead with the equivalent of a signing statement he has
again selectively nullified the will of the people and their
representatives in Congress. The only thing excessive here is the way
Cheney and Bush continue to shred the Constitution.

Once again there has been no accountability. Whatever fine was left
in place will be paid from the millions and millions in Libby's
defense slush fund, or else he get some fat consultant job from a
right wing contributor who that just happens to pay him the entire
sum and more. He'll probably make a tidy profit on the whole affair.

But this is all yet more gasoline on the fire of the rapidly
expanding impeachment movement. Votes in the National Cheney
Impeachment Poll were already more than 80,000 as to Cheney standing
alone. Their administration is a walking constitutional crisis that
can no longer be avoided.

IMPEACH BOTH: http://www.usalone.com/impeach_both.php

There is one and only one remedy, that can't be vetoed, signed away
or tossed out by the courts, and that is impeachment. Congress needs
to hear from enough of us all at one time until they understand that.
Look at how quickly Congress did an about face on the immigration
bill when they were flooded with calls and emails. That is what must
happen also here.

And then they will most surely act.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed
to be ours, and forward this message to everyone else you know.

Bush: Or is it just me they hate? 

The world: YES! 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/01/AR2007070101356.html

Sorry for the reply to an old post, but if you have the Google bar installed, you can enable spell check for forms, so it will tell you as you type instead of having to push another button. I thought it was part of the forums here until I noticed it doing on another site.

According to the Washington Post, Sen. Patrick Leahy, the Democratic chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says that a contempt charge is not out of the question if the White House refuses to turn over subpoenaed documents.

"If they don't cooperate, yes, I'd go that far," Sen. Leahy said Sunday on NBC's Meet the Press. "This is very important to the American people."

"Leahy's comments raise the stakes in a growing conflict between the Democrat-controlled Congress and the Bush White House, suggesting the constitutional clash may end up in a court case that could last beyond Bush's tenure as president," Post reporter Lyndsey Layton writes.

"Congressional investigators want testimony, internal e-mails and other documents to clarify what role Bush's senior staff played in the Justice Department's removal of nine prosecutors last year," she adds. "The firings have triggered bipartisan calls for Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales to resign."

The White House refused last week. In exerting "executive privilege," the Administration asserted the power of the presidency against other branches of government.

Leahy says he may also take the matter to court.

The Raw Story

I suppose I should start:


You will soon become a very powerful Sith. Henceforth, you shall be known as Darth....Vader.