By Bob Geiger

Citing "the Bush administration's failure to take aggressive action to enforce and punish wartime fraud," Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) on Friday introduced legislation to crack down on the massive fraud and theft by some defense contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan and allow the government to criminally prosecute guilty parties even after the war is over.

S. 2892, the Wartime Enforcement of Fraud Act of 2008, would close a loophole in the 66-year-old Wartime Suspension of Limitations Act, that allowed the government to investigate and prosecute contracting fraud up to three years after the end of a war, but that does not apply to the current Bush-McCain war in Iraq because it was never formally declared.

This has been coming for a long time. I’ve been watching the politicians in Washington very closely to see exactly how they intended to manage an administration that is so extremely neo-conservative that they are dangerous to this country and the world. I’ve seen heroic stances by some like Dennis Kucinich, Bernie Sanders, Patrick Leahy, Russ Feingold and even Ron Paul. However, this is not enough. We’ve seen Cynthia McKinney disenfranchised as well as others that have stood up to tyranny and war. Meanwhile, while all of this has taken place, the Democratic Party has been split down the middle and has offered no protection or support to any that oppose the horrendous regime in Washington.

A brave and agreeable statement from Sen. Menendez:

Dear President Bush:
1400 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington DC

We are writing to express our concerns about the Chinese government's continued human rights violations and urge you not to attend the opening ceremonies at the Olympic Games in Beijing this summer. The Chinese government's unwillingness to acknowledge or address their record of human rights violations is in direct conflict to the spirit of the Olympic Games, and the United States cannot just accede to the Chinese government with our attendance.

The recent developments in Tibet, in which Buddhist monks and other ethnic Tibetans were violently punished and in some cases killed for participating in protests, are disturbing and should be unacceptable to anyone who believes in basic human freedoms. Furthermore, these developments also seem to confirm that the Chinese government, which has long disrespected the rights of its citizens, has failed to sufficiently improve its conduct when confronted with citizens who happen to

Andrew Taylor | Washington | April 2

AP - Momentum built Wednesday for a bipartisan Senate bill designed to ease the slumping housing market and help millions of families threatened by foreclosure, though economists are skeptical that it will help much.

The scaled-back proposal released by Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and GOP leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky contains an amalgam of ideas aimed at boosting demand for housing and helping homeowners saddled with subprime mortgages avoid foreclosure.

The plan contains $4 billion in grants to local governments to buy and refurbish foreclosed homes, new authority for states to issue bonds to be used to refinance subprime mortgages and a $7,000 tax credit for people buying new homes or properties in foreclosure.

``It is a robust package,'' Reid said. ``This is good news for the American people.''

But economists across the political spectrum were skeptical that the measure would have much practical effect to ease the wrenching crisis in the housing market and the wave of foreclosures spreading across the country.

I know that there has always been a segment of the American public that can’t seem to back the two main political parties but the amount of dissatisfaction with both the Republican Party and the Democrats has been particularly pronounced this time around. I have been predicting large scale defections from both parties in this presidential contest, but even I am surprised at the number of people that have been voicing their displeasure at the choices that have been presented to them. Even more than the number of people that are dissatisfied, the thing that I find most surprising is how early on they are voicing these opinions. I had expected that it would be closer to November before we would see this, after the people had time to get a closer look at the candidates, and after the constant media attention devoted to the them became too much to bear. This seems to be happening already, and its only April 1st.

By Bob Geiger

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) who has long been a Democratic stalwart on the Senate Intelligence Committee has smacked down Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell for using the Fox News "some say" construct to smear Democrats at a Furman University speech last week.

"To falsely attribute statements to United States Senators serves only to mislead the American people," wrote Feingold in a letter sent to McConnell today. "It also undermines your credibility and that of the position of Director of National Intelligence."

Here's what McConnell said in his speech at Furman about the recent Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) debates in the Senate:

“We had a bill go into the Senate. It was debated vigorously. There were some who said we shouldn't have an Intelligence Community. Some have that point of view. Some say the President of the United States violated the process, spied on Americans, should be impeached and should go to jail. I mean, this is democracy, you can say anything you want to say. That was the argument made. The vote was 68 to 29.”

Feingold called McConnell on this and demanded that he cite specifically which U.S. Senators had made those assertions.

I am very excited to see Mike Gravel “jump ship” and align himself with the Libertarian Party. I’m sure that anyone who that has read any of my articles knows that I too have come to the conclusion that there is basically very little difference between the Democrats and Republicans when it comes to the central core issues. We have of course, Republicans that espouse “progressive” stances as well as a good number of Democrats that could be considered liberal/progressives. The premise that the two parties have radically different ideologies when we look at their centrist bases however, belies the fact that the two parties have any real substantive differences.

It just goes to show that some people will never “get it”. The Progressive Press has whipped up a cauldron of molten ire against George W. Bush’s statement that the war in Iraq was “worth it”. My God, how could he say such a thing? The Progressive Press remarks; “Doesn’t he know that almost 4,000 Americans and untold Iraqi’s have died in a quagmire? Doesn’t he realize that the cost of this war is in the trillions? Doesn’t he realize that we are no closer to victory than we were five long years ago?”

Sure he does. He just doesn’t really care. He feels that as long as the defense contractors are making windfall profits along with Halliburton and their subsidiary KBR, and are getting gigantic no-bid contracts, and the Federal Reserve pours trillions of dollars at interest into the economy, making the bankers rich, and as long as the oil companies can get their hands on that Iraqi oil, the world is a great place. If you believe that he sees anything as wrong or right, you have a problem with your perception.

The Winter Soldier is underway in Washington DC. There, brave Iraq Vets are testifying to criminal acts committed while on duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. These orders came from the top down and the rules of engagement changed from day to day, all outside the scope of International Law. These soldiers and sailors have been vetted and they are speaking “Truth to Power”, something that also happened during 1971 at the First Winter Soldier.

The Seminar is getting huge mainstream media attention, however this is mostly International attention, the US media doesn’t seem at all interested in reporting on this, which is par for the course. The facts are that the Iraq War has only 1% of the coverage of the MSM. This is different than the pre-surge level of 15%. It seems as if the perception in this country is that the US has “turned the corner” in Iraq. This is the farthest thing from the truth. This week alone was one of the most violent weeks since before the surge. 12 US soldiers were killed last week alone.

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing


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Why do we continue to support The Democrats in this day and age? I said the same thing in 2004 and I was told that we must change the party from within. Hogwash, the Democrats won’t change because their base is just fine with the way they are. The so-called “progressives” that vote for Democrats are not really progressive at all, the point being that if you vote for the “lesser of two evils” you are still voting for evil. The Democrats have supported this war since the beginning. Hillary Clinton supported the war and Obama supported the funding for this war.

The Democrats have not done the will of the people since they took control of Congress in 2006. We have heard only excuses on why this is so. The long and short of this matter is that a large percentage of Democrats have voted in lockstep with George W. Bush. They have not been censored by the Democratic Party because they are the majority of Democrats. This charade that the Democrats have been running on the American people has got to stop. The reason that progressives have not had a voice in the government can be laid at the feet of the Democrats. If the Democrats did not exist, there would be nothing to stop Progressives from getting behind Progressive candidates.

This Bush presidency will probably be compared to the presidency of Andrew Jackson if only for the power that has been infused into it. The eight years of power that Bush held will more than likely be looked at as the strongest presidency that never accomplished anything except a misguided war in a nation we should never become involved in. The backlash will be tremendous, the American people are already tired of this imperial presidency. Just as the presidency was weakened after Jackson, the presidency will be weakened after Bush, mainly because most Americans are extremely wary of this “unitary presidency”. With Cheney and Addington (Cheney's Chief of Staff and the chief proponent of the "unitary presidency") gone, there will be few proponents of a strong presidency working in the halls of power anywhere near Washington.

This letter is addressed to every individual in this country that has managed through their own perseverance and hard work to reap the benefits of the American Dream. The accumulation of wealth is not a means to an end however; the accumulation of wealth is only that, an accumulation of wealth. What one does with that wealth is the true measure of a person. I realize that many wealthy people in this nation have done great things with the fortunes they have accumulated, and this is one of the great reflections of the American spirit. There is unfortunately, a crisis that we are facing in our nation. This crisis has come about due to the way wealth has been distributed and used in the political arena. The sad truth is that the people of this nation no longer control the political landscape. We no longer enjoy a free, unfettered election process that is free of special moneyed interests. The media is controlled by a small number of corporations, and the major political parties are controlled by corporate donations that dwarf the donations that are made by average citizens.

Considerations

Most analyses of voting records begin by looking at the bills, and only looking a "key" votes (there are a lot of procedural moves in the roll call, as well as nonsense votes). So, by careful selection, the National Journal is able to "show" that Barack Obama has the most liberal voting record in the Senate (more liberal than Bernie Sanders, the socialist), just as they did for John Kerry in 2004. Conversely, Progressive Punch gives Clinton a 91.5 to Obama's 89.28. One of the ratings sites used to call Obama a "Rank and File Democrat" and Clinton a "Radical Democrat", but I can't find it, so maybe they're in the process of reversing the designations.

Furthermore, there's really no way for an outsider to know by looking at the write-up on Thomas what a particular vote really means (is an "Aye" vote on a procedural move the same as a "Nay" vote on the underlying bill? Only sometimes.) The only people who can possibly know what a vote actually are the people in the Senate, so I decided to avoid classifying bills or roll-calls at all. Let the Senators classify them, by their votes.

Methodolody

GovTrack.us has rdf yearly files of roll call votes here, which list by bill who voted which way. Using a simple xml parser, I invert these so I have a list for each senator of how they voted on each bill. That makes it easy to compare each senator's voting record for a year.

I started by producing two lists: Obama's voting record compared to everybody else's, and Clinton's voting record compared to everybody else's. These are sorted by descending order of percent of agreement. For example, here's the top of Obama's 2007 list (percent agreement, number of comparable votes, senator):

So much has happened in the last decade. Americans are bewildered and confused…at least this one. I have always had faith in America, always believing that although Americans are reluctant to criticize their government, they will eventually act and set about changing its course as to reflect the people’s wishes. The war in Vietnam was a good example. It took years for the American people to understand that it was a very different kind of war than they had experienced in the past. They were reluctant to believe that their own government had been less than honest with them. Still, they managed to understand that no matter who won, the nation couldn’t afford the cost of continued involvement in that war.

By Bob Geiger

When MSNBC's Chris Matthews lit into Barack Obama supporter (and Texas State Senator) Kirk Watson during Tuesday night's election coverage for not being able to list Obama's "legislative accomplishments," you would have inferred from his ferocity that Matthews was on the verge of cracking a major story.

While Matthews stopped short of waterboarding Watson to get a response, he kept at him no less than eight to ten times over the next few minutes, sneering "You have to give me his accomplishments. You've supported him for president, you're on national television -- name his legislative accomplishments."

Clearly without experience in appearing with Matthews and obviously without sufficient background on the recent dynamics in the United States Senate, Watson did indeed look more nervous than Mike Huckabee at a Planned Parenthood rally and failed to respond both in answering the question and, on behalf of the Obama campaign, shutting down the very premise.

It’s about time that Liberals were proud of being called…well, Liberals. There has been change in this country, brought on by the radical Neo-Conservative movement that seems to have been utterly rejected by the American people. The Neo-Cons and their right-wing radio personalities and their Faux-News network have found their days numbered, and their audience shrinking. The constant bromating and discordance has provided no defense against the surge of Democrats that flock to the caucuses and primaries to remove the Republican Neo-Con stain that has sullied our government. The people in this country want change, and for the moment, that change is being touted by Barack Obama who seems certain to win the Democratic Primary by a significant margin, that is unless the super-delegates swing the tide to Hillary, and that doesn’t seem likely.

Cross posted from TortDeform.Com

"It is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad."--James Madison

The significance of this quote, shared by Senator Dodd during hearing statements last fall--can be observed now amidst the newest round of debates over whether telecommunications companies that illegally spied on the American public (by doing things like tracking what blogs we read, reading our emails, listening in on our phone calls, and keeping track of our activity on password protected sites) should be granted retroactive immunity for violating our constitutional right to privacy.

I've ranted about this issue before. But the Administration's apparently increasing gall and contempt for the law notwithstanding, and its undying commitment to shielding corporate friends from the effect of the law aside, let's focus instead on the lie of so-called "liability protection" and what it really means for the public and our civil justice system.

A graduate of the London School of Economics, Brent Budowsky has been quoted by name recently on CNBC. The following is an excerpt of his regular Tuesday column in The Hill.

The economic crisis

By Brent Budowsky

President Bush, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) should be applauded for bipartisanship, but the pending stimulus falls short, with a gathering storm of economic danger upon us…

The possibility of a cascading recession that spreads to global markets is real. The need for an anti-recession “insurance policy” is urgent. Chairman Greenspan, Chairman Bernanke, President Bush, Secretary Paulson, Congress and Wall Street leaders have all been wrong about this crisis. They must restore their credibility with policies equal to the task.

I know Chris Dodd is running for president. He'd probably make a darn good one too. But it probably won't happen. That being said, the idea of him leveraging his newer, higher profile into a the Senate Majority Leader spot, as Sam Stein writes as the Huffington Post, would be great. Anything to get rid of Harry Reid at this point is acceptable to me. Reid, as Ian has noted on several occasions is not a progressive. But, as recent history has shown, Chris Dodd is. As the Huffington Post notes:

Almost all of the support for this effort now comes from the netroots, much of which favors such a move. But talk of Dodd making a run at the post has slowly crept into the corners of Capitol Hill as well. And in light of the Connecticut Democrat's successful filibuster threat this week over granting immunity to telecommunications firms that conducted warrantless surveillance, some in the progressive community see the framework for a potential shakeup.

Maybe Dodd has the parliamentary chops to handle a razor-thin majority better than Reid has thus far. One can hope, no? Then again, the Democrats also need to hold on to the Senate and although the prognosis is good at this point, that can change, especially with Reid's "leadership."

The fight has begun in Congress and the one Senator leading the charge against "retroactive immunity" for the telecoms is Sen. Dodd. You can follow his fight and support him here. He needs our support. I'll be updating the post soon. But until then, call your Senator, email Senators Clinton and Obama and ask them if they are going to stand with Senator Dodd and progressive values or with President Bush? And while you are at it, ask Senator Clinton what, exactly, is her relationship with the telecom lobbyists?

Update: Today's events in the Senate here

Update: As Agonist reader Gordon notes: Reid backs down, pulls the bill. Huge victory for Chris Dodd and the Netroots!

Here's a link to Dodd's site. As Atrios is fond of saying, reward good behavior and give Dodd some money.

From The Hill’s Pundits Blog:

Did Democrats and Republicans Endorse Torture?

Brent Budowsky

The reason a special prosecutor is needed in the torture tapes obstruction of justice case, and the reason there is private panic in many Democratic and Republican circles, is that it now appears that some prominent Democrats, along with some prominent Republicans, gave a private thumbs-up to torture in 2002…

It is time for truth. It is time for truth without fear. It is time to end torture. It is time for those who were wrong, in either party, to put their wrongness to the side and call for a full and complete investigation, no matter where the truth may lead, because it is clear where the cause of right must stand: End torture now.

What a bunch of losers, led by chief loser himself, Harry Reid:

Congressional Democrats prepared Wednesday for major concessions on Iraq war funding, children's health insurance, tax policies, general spending and energy, because they could not overcome vetoes by President Bush.

Why don't they just give away Social Security why they are at it? Hell, give New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, California and Texas back to Mexico too. Pathetic. Absolutely no "oh, please understand it's 49+1 in the Senate" bullshit excuses are going to work here. They caved. Full stop. They caved on just about everything important to Democrats across the country, caved on just about everything the people elected them to take take care of. And the chief ringleader in all of this? Harry Reid.

Why is it that the only thing Reid seems to care about is patronage and pork, as a friend noted to me today?

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing


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Washington | November 26

NBC - NBC News has learned that Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., the minority whip is in the midst of informing close allies that he plans to resign his senate seat before the end of the year. It's possible a formal announcement of his plans could take place as early as today.

Lott's office initially denied that he he would step down, but subsequent requests for information about his plans went unanswered.