This video is from Comedy Central’s The Colbert Report, broadcast June 26, 2008.
Bill W. already posted about Conyers’ statement that he is committed to getting Rove to testify in the Don Siegelman case, even if it means having him arrested. However, this segment from MSNBC’s Verdict, where Catherine Crier explains to host Dan Abrams the process and the seriousness of an Inherent Contempt of Congress charge is was too good not to use, so I asked Heather to make the video for me. Besides, it’s small and petty of me, but I don’t think you can hear “haul Karl Rove to jail” too many times.
Cindy McCain on husband’s ‘non-negative campaign’
McCain’s pastor problems
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Sen. Barack Obama said Thursday that the most important thing he could achieve as president would be to deal with Iraq and the threat of al Qaeda in Afghanistan while improving "our influence around the world."
Sen. Barack Obama, in his first interview since the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, speaks with Wolf Blitzer.
In his first interview since the North Carolina and Indiana primaries, Obama said he thinks the United States' influence around the world has been diminishing. "The world wants to see the United States lead. They've been disappointed and disillusioned over the last seven, eight years," he told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in an interview on "The Situation Room."
"I think there is still a sense everywhere I go that if the United States regains its sense of who it is and our values and our ideals, that we will continue to set the tone for a more peaceful and prosperous world." 
Watch the full interview with Obama »
This video is from NBC’s Today Show, broadcast May 7, 2008.
(CNN)— Texas Congressman Ron Paul said Monday his revolution is still alive, and he will not be shut out of the presidential race by the Republican Party.“We’re trying to say we have a right to argue our case that Republicans ought to stand for something,” Paul told CNN Monday morning. Adding, the need for change is vital, but all three candidates, including John McCain, represent a continuation of the same policy.......Ron Paul: the revolution lives on
After learning that more than 17 veterans per month commit suicide while under the care of the Veterans Affairs Department, senators accused VA of withholding information about suicide rates and demanded the removal of its mental health chief.
“The culture of the VA has to change,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., after a Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing Wednesday.
To restore credibility, she said VA must take responsibility and dismiss Dr. Ira Katz, deputy chief patient care services officer for mental health.
“He clearly knew information and was holding it from us here in Congress,” Murray said.
Deputy VA Secretary Gordon Mansfield said he shared Murray’s concerns, but stopped short of taking responsibility for them.
“I apologize for the implications here,” he said, adding that he does not believe VA is engaged in a concerted campaign to withhold information.
Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chairman of the committee, backed the call for Katz’s resignation.
Given Senator John McCain ’s signature stance on campaign finance reform, it was not surprising that he backed legislation last year requiring presidential candidates to pay the actual cost of flying on corporate jets. The law, which requires campaigns to pay charter rates when using such jets rather than cheaper first-class fares, was intended to reduce the influence of lobbyists and create a level financial playing field.
But over a seven-month period beginning last summer, Mr. McCain’s cash-short campaign gave itself an advantage by using a corporate jet owned by a company headed by his wife, Cindy McCain , according to public records. For five of those months, the plane was used almost exclusively for campaign-related purposes, those records show.
Mr. McCain’s campaign paid a total of $241,149 for the use of that plane from last August through February, records show. That amount is approximately the cost of chartering a similar jet for a month or two, according to industry estimates.
The senator was able to fly so inexpensively because the law specifically exempts aircraft owned by a candidate or his family or by a privately held company they control. The Federal Election Commission adopted rules in December to close the loophole — rules that would have required substantial payments by candidates using family-owned planes — but the agency soon lost the requisite number of commissioners needed to complete the rule making.>>>>
Two candidates not named John McCain got a combined 219,913 votes in the Pennsylvania Republican primary Tuesday, and one of them is still in the race.
Sort of.
“I’m a real candidate, but I try to keep everybody living in the real world,” Ron Paul said in an interview, alluding to the exuberance of his supporters.
Despite posting a video on his website last month conceding that he couldn’t win and indicating that he was winding down his campaign, Paul continues to be a presence in the GOP contest. He aired a radio ad before the Pennsylvania primary, is still traveling the country to appear at campaign events and, as of the end of March, had more than $5 million in the bank.
SAN DIEGO -- Military security contractor Blackwater Worldwide is not giving up on a training facility in San Diego County, according to company officials.
MediaMatters reports that on his radio show this morning, Don Imus said that Barack Obama is "almost a bigger pussy than [Hillary Clinton]."
WESTPORT, Conn. (AP) - Republican Sen. John McCain refused Wednesday to rule out a pre-emptive war against another country, although he said one would be very unlikely.
The likely Republican presidential nominee was asked Wednesday at a town-hall style meeting if he would reject "the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war," a reference to Bush's decision to invade Iraq without it having attacked the United States.
"I don't think you could make a blanket statement about pre-emptive war, because obviously, it depends on the threat that the United States of America faces," McCain told his audience at Bridgewater Associates Inc., a global investment firm.
"If someone is about to launch a weapon that would devastate America, or have the capability to do so, obviously, you would have to act immediately in defense of this nation's national security interests."
McCain said he would consult more closely and more carefully "not with every member of Congress, but certainly the leaders of Congress
ABC | April 08, 2008
ABC's Jennifer Duck reports: Clearly choked up, and at times wiping away his own tears, President Bush awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously at the White House Tueday to Navy SEAL Petty Officer Michael Monsoor, who was killed in Iraq in September of 2006 when he fell on a grenade to save comrades during fighting in Ramadi.
Monsoor was the fourth service member to receive the nation's highest award for valor in the 6 1/2 years of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. Bush awarded the medal in the White House's East Room Tuesday to Monsoor's parents.
There used to be an organization for people who believed in a truly limited government — limited taxes, limited spending, limited interference in individual lives and limited intervention in foreign affairs. That organization was known as the Republican Party. But the only one of those beliefs that still motivates the G.O.P. establishment is limited taxes. In 2008, people who still hold all of them joined the Ron Paul Revolution.
But now the revolution is ebbing. Congressman Paul's new campaign finance report shows that he's raised nearly $35 million, including more than any other Republican candidate in the fourth quarter of 2007, and he's inspired remarkable passion among the kind of diehards who hold up campaign signs on highway overpasses and post irate comments on obscure blogs. But the presidency isn't decided on YouTube or Technorati. Paul didn't win any Republican primaries, and he recently conceded that "victory in the conventional sense is not available."
Of course, nothing in Paul's world is ever done in the conventional sense, so he has refused to drop out of the race and endorse the presumptive G.O.P. nominee, Senator John McCain. Instead he argues that all Republicans should have "the right to vote for someone that stands for traditional Republican principles." And he's got a point.
TIME
http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1724358,00.html
WATCH VIDEO
WATCH VIDEO
WATCH VIDEO
WATCH VIDEOIt was not until he got a quiet word of correction in his ear from Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, who was traveling with Mr. McCain as part of a Congressional delegation on a nearly weeklong trip, that Mr. McCain corrected himself.
“I’m sorry,” Mr. McCain said, “the Iranians are training extremists, not Al Qaeda."
John Hagee : God Bless President Bush (2:11)
Democratic leaders agreed to a request by Republicans for the extraordinary session, on legislation opposed by President George W. Bush.
So what went wrong with Mr Romney's well-financed campaign?
Mr Romney had attempted to run as the legitimate heir of Ronald Reagan, one of the most popular Republican presidents in recent times, a "conservative's conservative."
He had the looks, the personality and the money to be a credible Republican presidential candidate.
And as a Republican governor in a Democratic state, he appeared to have the potential to reach out beyond the Republican base.
Credibility problem
But Mr Romney had a big credibility problem among Republican primary voters, who were not convinced by his conversion from a liberal Massachusetts governor to a conservative candidate for national office.
His "flip-flop" on a universal health care mandate, which he had introduced in Massachusetts but repudiated nationally, was one commonly cited example.
Conservatives were also suspicious about his changed views on social issues like abortion.
This served to alienate him from the Christian right, a key group within the Republican party, which was already suspicious of his Mormon religion.
In the primary elections on Tuesday, most Christian evangelicals backed Mike Huckabee, taking enough votes away from Mr Romney to give victory to John McCain in key states like California and New York.
Although he won a number of smaller states, especially those who chose their delegates by caucus, his weak showing in his home state of Massachusetts, which he only narrowly carried, was an early indication of his fading campaign.
WATCH VIDEO
WATCH VIDEORadio talk show host Rush Limbaugh drew media attention to himself last week when he suggested he might not support McCain if he became the Republican nominee. Now Ann Coulter has upped the ante, telling Fox News host Sean Hannity that if John McCain is the Republican nominee, she's supporting Hillary Clinton.
"If he's our candidate, then Hillary's going to be our girl," Coulter asserted. "Because she's more conservative than he is. I think she would be stronger on the war on terrorism. ... I absolutely believe that. ... I will campaign for her if it's McCain."
WATCH VIDEO
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A series of newsletters in the name of GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul contain several racist remarks -- including one that says order was restored to Los Angeles after the 1992 riots when blacks went "to pick up their welfare checks."
CNN recently obtained the newsletters -- written in the 1990s and one from the late 1980s -- after a report was published about their existence in The New Republic.
None of the newsletters CNN found says who wrote them, but each was published under Paul's name between his stints as a U.S. congressman from Texas.
Paul told CNN's "The Situation Room" Thursday that he didn't write any of the offensive articles and has "no idea" who did.
Key vulnerabilities of Diebold machine identified within ten minutes by programmer
Prison Planet
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
"It's not who votes that counts. It's who counts the votes." Joseph Stalin.
Vote fraud expert Bev Harris has warned that New Hampshire's electronic voting machines are wide open to fraud and that even modestly skilled computer programmers were able to identify key vulnerabilities within ten minutes of assessing them as key Democrat and Republican primaries unfold today.
The contract for programming all of New Hampshire's Diebold voting machines, which combined will count 81 per cent of the vote today, is owned by LHS Associates, which also holds the contracts for Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont.
LHS is owned by John Silvestro, who has been at the center of a long-running public dispute in trying to deflect accusations made by hacker Harri Hursti that the machines can easily be rigged. "The exact same make, model and version hacked in the Black Box Voting project in Leon County is used throughout New Hampshire, where about 45 percent of elections administrators hand count paper ballots at the polling place, with the remaining locations all using the Diebold version 1.94w optical scan machine," writes Harris.
One area of disagreement between Hursti and Silvestro was the amount of expertise needed to exploit the Diebold 1.94w optical scan system. Silvestro claimed (in a strange contortion of reasoning) that he doesn't hire very skilled programmers, implying that this makes New Hampshire elections more secure.
In this You Tube video, Silvestro constantly interrupts Hursti's testimony in front of the New Hampshire legislative.
After purchasing a Diebold 1.94w machine, a computer repair shop employee picked at random by Black Box Voting was able to zero in on the system's vulnerable memory card within just ten minutes.
Harris points out that LHS is a private company that will count over four fifths of the New Hampshire vote with no oversight whatsoever.
LHS is not subject to public records requirements, as the government is, at least, not in New Hampshire. The control over memory card contents is absolute; when cards malfunction or get lost, LHS brings the replacements.
Since LHS maintains the machines, repairs the machines, and replaces the machines -- often on Election Day -- when they malfunction, they have intimate access to the chips, sockets, ports, communications devices and other electronic components.
A recent CNN report featured on Lou Dobbs' show highlights just how easy it is to hack a voting machine and change how votes are tallied with just rudimentary programming skills. Experts warn that it takes only a minute for an unsupervised machine to be inserted with a virus and hacked.
Posts
