Write a letter, get an audit

[UniverseSeven]

My cousins daughter, my niece eight years old, wrote GW Bush a letter on her own volition stating her opposition to the war.

1 week later they received a response from the President saying Blahzay.

1 week after the response letter they received a notice of AUDIT from the IRS.

This was a common tactic used by Nixon and LBJ against critics of the Vietnam War.

"home of the brave, land of the free" my ass.

[jonnygemini]

sorry to hear about this brother 7

I will be praying for a hasty & proper resolution

BUCK FUSH

December 18, 2005
In Speech, Bush Says He Ordered Domestic Spying
By DAVID E. SANGER

WASHINGTON, Dec. 17 - President Bush acknowledged on Saturday that he had ordered the National Security Agency to conduct an electronic eavesdropping program in the United States without first obtaining warrants, and said he would continue the highly classified program because it was "a vital tool in our war against the terrorists."

In an unusual step, Mr. Bush delivered a live weekly radio address from the White House in which he defended his action as "fully consistent with my constitutional responsibilities and authorities." He also lashed out at senators - both Democrats and Republicans - who voted on Friday to block the reauthorization of the USA Patriot Act, which expanded the president's power to conduct surveillance, with warrants, in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The revelation that Mr. Bush had secretly instructed the security agency to intercept the communications of Americans and suspected terrorists inside the United States, without first obtaining warrants from a secret court that oversees intelligence matters, was cited by several senators as a reason for their vote.

"In the war on terror, we cannot afford to be without this law for a single moment," Mr. Bush said forcefully from behind a lectern in the Roosevelt Room, next to the Oval Office. The White House invited cameras in, guaranteeing television coverage.

He said the Senate's action "endangers the lives of our citizens," and added that "the terrorist threat to our country will not expire in two weeks," a reference to the approaching deadline of Dec. 31, when critical provisions of the current law will end. His statement came just a day before he is scheduled to make a rare Oval Office address to the nation, at 9 p.m. Eastern time on Sunday, celebrating the Iraqi elections and describing what his press secretary on Saturday called the "path forward."

Mr. Bush's public confirmation on Saturday of the existence of one of the country's most secret intelligence programs, which had been known to only a select number of his aides, was a rare moment in his presidency. Few presidents have publicly confirmed the existence of heavily classified intelligence programs like this one.

His admission was reminiscent of Dwight Eisenhower's in 1960 that he had authorized U-2 flights over the Soviet Union after Francis Gary Powers was shot down on a reconnaissance mission. At the time, President Eisenhower declared "No one wants another Pearl Harbor," an argument Mr. Bush echoed on Saturday in defending his program as a critical component of defending against terror attacks.

But the revelation of the domestic spying program - which the administration temporarily suspended last year because of concerns within the government about its legality - came in a leak. Mr. Bush said the information had been "improperly provided to news organizations." As a result of the report, he said, "our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies, and endangers our country."

As recently as Friday, when he was interviewed by Jim Lehrer of PBS, Mr. Bush refused to confirm the report the previous evening in The New York Times that in 2002 he authorized the domestic spying operation by the security agency, which is usually barred from intercepting domestic communications. While not denying the report, he called it "speculation" and said he did not "talk about ongoing intelligence operations."

But as the clamor over the revelation rose and Vice President Dick Cheney and Andrew H. Card Jr., the chief of staff, went to Capitol Hill on Friday to answer charges that the program was an illegal assumption of presidential powers, even in a time of war, Mr. Bush and his senior aides decided to abandon that approach.

"There was an interest in saying more about it, but everyone recognized its highly classified nature," one senior administration official said, speaking on background because, he said, the White House wanted the president himself to be the only voice on the issue. "This is directly taking on the critics. The Democrats are now in the position of supporting our efforts to protect Americans, or defend positions that could weaken our nation's security."

Not surprisingly, Democrats saw the issue differently. "Our government must follow the laws and respect the Constitution while it protects Americans' security and liberty," said Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee and the Senate's leading critic of the Patriot Act. Senator Arlen Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who is chairman of the committee, said on Friday that "there is no doubt this is inappropriate" and that he would conduct hearings to determine why Mr. Bush took the action.

In his statement on Saturday, Mr. Bush did not address the main question directed at him by some members of Congress on Friday: why he felt it necessary to circumvent the system established under current law, which allows the president to seek emergency warrants, in secret, from the court that oversees intelligence operations. His critics said that under that law, the administration could have obtained the same information.

The president said on Saturday that he acted in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks because the United States had failed to detect communications that might have tipped them off to the plot. He said that two of the hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon, Nawaf al-Hamzi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, "communicated while they were in the United States to other members of Al Qaeda who were overseas. But we didn't know they were here, until it was too late."

As a result, "I authorized the National Security Agency, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, to intercept the international communications of people with known links to Al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations," Mr. Bush said. "This is a highly classified program that is crucial to our national security."

Mr. Bush said that every 45 days the program was reviewed, based on "a fresh intelligence assessment of terrorist threats to the continuity of our government and the threat of catastrophic damage to our homeland." That review involves the attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, and Mr. Bush's counsel, Harriet E. Miers, whom Mr. Bush unsuccessfully tried to nominate to the Supreme Court this year.

"I have reauthorized this program more than 30 times since the Sept. 11 attacks, and I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from Al Qaeda and related groups," the president said. He said Congressional leaders had been repeatedly briefed on the program, and that intelligence officials "receive extensive training to ensure they perform their duties consistent with the letter and intent of the authorization."

The Patriot Act vote in the Senate, coming a day after Mr. Bush was forced to accept an amendment sponsored by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, that places limits on interrogation techniques that can be used by C.I.A. officers and other non-military personnel, was a setback to the president's assertion of broad powers. In both cases, he lost a number of Republicans along with almost all Democrats.

"This reflects a complete transformation of the debate in America over torture," said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director of Human Rights Watch. "After the attacks, no politician was heard expressing any questions about the executive branch's treatment of captured terrorists." That has now "changed fundamentally," Mr. Malinowski said, a view that even some of Mr. Bush's aides and former aides echoed.

Mr. Bush's unusual radio address is part of a broader effort this weekend to regain the initiative, after weeks in which the political ground has shifted under his feet. The Oval Office speech on Sunday evening, a formal setting that he usually tries to avoid, is his first there since March 2003, when he informed the world that he had ordered the Iraq invasion.

White House aides say they intend for this speech to be a bookmark in the Iraq experience: As part of the planned address, Mr. Bush appears ready to at least hint at reductions in the troop levels in Iraq, which he has said in a series of four recent speeches on Iraq strategy could be the ultimate result if Iraqi security forces are able to begin to perform more security operations currently conducted by American forces.

Currently, there are roughly 160,000 American troops in Iraq, a number that was intended to keep order for Friday's parliamentary elections, which were conducted with little violence and an unexpectedly heavy turnout of Sunnis, the ethnic minority that ruled the country under Mr. Hussein's reign. The American troop level was already scheduled to decline to 138,000 - what the military calls its "baseline" level of troops - after the election.

But on Friday, as the debate in Washington swirled over the president's order to the N.S.A., Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the top American commander in Iraq, hinted that further reductions may be on the way. "We're doing our assessment, and I make some recommendations in the coming weeks about whether I think it's prudent to go below the baseline," General Casey told reporters in Baghdad.

[jonnygemini]

maybe this...via: Sploid

www.sploid.com/news/2006/01/thugs_kill_dc_s.php

Thugs kill political scandal reporter
[NYT reporter David Rosenbaum brutally killed in his ritzy DC neighborhood]

David E. Rosenbaum spent his long newspaper career unraveling the lies and scandals of Washington, from Watergate to Iran-Contra to the current war in Iraq.

The veteran reporter was attacked Friday night by two men on the street near his home in a wealthy Northwest D.C. neighborhood where crime is unknown.

The men escaped in a black sedan after smashing Rosenbaum's skull. He died at Howard University Hospital on Sunday.

Police and firemen arrived within minutes of being called, but the 63-year-old Rosenbaum lay bleeding on the street for another 22 minutes before an ambulance arrived.

Instead of calling a nearby ambulance, dispatchers made the inexplicable choice of sending one from the other side of the city.

D.C. police, meanwhile, have an explanation for their own bizarre behavior: They didn't pursue the suspects because they allegedly believed Rosenbaum had a seizure or stroke.

Yet police immediately told Rosenbaum's horrified family that he had been beaten and robbed of his wallet. The family was even told on Saturday that someone tried to use one of the reporter's stolen credit cards, but no details were offered and nobody has been arrested.

Stranger still, the neighbor who found Rosenbaum on the street Friday night -- Jerry Pritchett -- didn't know Rosenbaum and searched for a wallet and identification. There was none. Still, he didn't suspect foul play.

Rosenbaum was found by Pritchett on Gramercy Street NW, described by the Washington Post as "a one-block street in an upscale neighborhood about a half-mile south of the Montgomery County border."

Police say Rosenbaum's watch, wedding ring and portable radio were all still with him. Nothing was reportedly taken except for his wallet.



The Nice Part of D.C.

In a city notorious for its violent crime, Rosenbaum's exclusive neighborhood didn't have a single homicide last year. Even simple robberies are rare -- two per month -- compared to Washington's 4,000 recorded robberies in 2005.

Resident Mitchell Strickler told the paper his neighbors didn't even regularly lock their houses. "There was no fear of things," Strickler said.

Another Gramercy neighbor, Peter Bass, said that "everybody's comings and goings are noticed."

"It's a remarkably safe neighborhood, or it feels that way ... until now," Bass said after the attack.

Rosenbaum's brother Marcus, also a resident of the area, agreed.

"It's a really safe neighborhood," he said. "I wouldn't think twice about walking around at 2 o'clock in the morning, and this was 9 o'clock at night."

The Political Elite

Rosenbaum officially retired from the New York Times just weeks ago but had agreed to continue as a contributing editor. It is unknown what stories he was pursuing before his murder.

He spent most of his 35 years with the Times at the Washington bureau, where he was a respected writer, reporter and editor.

Rosenbaum was considered to be an especially tough reporter when it came to the shady world of government money. He was especially praised for his work unraveling the first President Bush's disastrous backtracking on the "No New Taxes" pledge and Bush Jr.'s 2003 appointment of a crooked lobbyist as head of the GOP.

He had also covered Watergate, the Iran-Contra, various Clinton scandals and the fake intelligence leading to the current Iraq War.

Like many political reporters, he had critics on both sides of the aisle. Republicans thought he was biased; Democrats thought he was soft.

Just Two Months Ago ...

On November 8, there was a similarly mysterious attack in the area.

Emilia DiSanto, a chief investigator on the Senate's finance committee, was prominently involved in the unraveling of convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff's dirty deals.

She drove to her suburban Virginia home across the river from the Capitol. A man was waiting in the dark. He wore black clothes, black gloves and a black hat. He beat her so savagely with a baseball bat that it took nine staples to close up her head again.

He took nothing, and fled when people heard her screams. The crime was never solved.

And in June, a Los Alamos whistleblower was lured to a fake meeting with informants just before he was to testify for Congress.

Tommy Hook was horribly beaten by "three or four" assailants in a parking lot. Again, they focused on the head.

"Mr. Hook was hospitalized in an emergency room with severe trauma to his face and head, including a fractured jaw, and a herniated disk," the Project on Government Oversight announced after the attack. "He is heavily medicated today and unable to speak to the media."

Or to Congressional investigators ....

[jonnygemini]

Alito Memo in '84 Favored Immunity for Top Officials :.

This was the last article written by New York Times reporter and editor, David E. Rosenbaum. He was murdered on January 8th.

One of Alito's harshest critics (with any kind of audience), beaten to death during a robbery.

This sends a concise message to critics of the regime. F*ck with us too much, and you're dead. You know, like Barb advocates:

The attorney general should be immune from lawsuits for ordering wiretaps of Americans without permission from a court, Samuel A. Alito Jr., President Bush's Supreme Court nominee, wrote in a memorandum in 1984 as a government lawyer in the Reagan administration.

[UniverseSeven]

About Rosenbaum

I couldn't help but think of Devil's Advocate, when the character is beaten to death while jogging.

[jonnygemini]

ROSENBAUM'S KILLER TO COPS: 'WHY AM I ON TV?'
[Can you say 'patsy'?]



Last night Michael Hamlin walked into the 7th District police station and asked "Why is my face on the news tonight?"

He was immediately arrested for the murder of retired New York Times reporter David Rosenbaum, who had been killed in a brutal mugging outside his home in a tony DC neighborhood last Friday.

An hour after arriving at the station Hamlin confessed.

Hamlin's face had been captured on several surveillance cameras throughout the city as he went on a $1,300 shopping spree courtesy of Rosenbaum's credit cards.

Hamlin began shopping immediately after murdering Rosenbaum, buying laundry soap, car parts and tires for his Cadillac.

The Cadillac, which was seen by witnesses at the scene of the mugging, was turned over to police last night by Mr. Hamlin. Police said they had obtained a search warrant for the car.

"I'm actually shocked," said Capt. C.V. Morris, head of the Violent Crimes Division. "But I'm glad that it happened this way."

Morris should be glad. There is no way the DC police are ever going to uncover who is truly responsible for Rosenbaum’s murder.

[jonnygemini]

January 16, 2006 -- Why is John McCain so supportive of Bush and Cheney after being so viciously attacked by them in the 2000 campaign? The answer to this question may partially rest in Navy records detailing the events that took place on the USS Forrestal in "Yankee Station" in the Gulf of Tonkin at the end of July 1967. The neo-cons, who have had five years to examine every file within the Department of Defense, have likely accessed documents that could prove embarrassing to McCain, who was on board the USS Forrestal on July 29, 1967, and whose A-4 Skyhawk was struck by an air-to-ground Zuni missile that had misfired from an F-4 Phantom.



What have sealed Navy records given to the neo-cons to blackmail McCain? Plenty, according to eyewitness on the USS Forrestal.

According to an eyewitness to the Navy's worst fire disaster that killed 134 sailors and injured 62, McCain and the Forrestal's skipper, Capt. John K. Beling, were warned about the danger of using M-65 1000-lb. bombs manufactured in 1935, which were deemed too dangerous to use during World War II and, later, on B-52 bombers. The fire from the Zuni misfire resulted in the heavy 1000 pounders being knocked loose from the pylons of McCain's A-4, which were only designed to hold 500-pound bombs.

During the fighting of the fire and while VF-74 and VF-11 were still counting their dead, McCain was helicoptered off the Forrestal to the USS Oriskany, which suffered a major fire on October 27, 1966, that killed 44 sailors. In that event, thousand pound bombs were jettisoned away from the fire but the lessons of the Oriskany went unheeded by the Forrestal's officers, including McCain, who served with the VA-163 Saints on board the Oriskany when the fire on that vessel occurred. On October 26, 1967, McCain was shot down over North Vietnam during a bombing sortie from the Oriskany.



Aug. 29, 2005 -- Bush celebrating McCain's 69th birthday with a cake. Bush and his operatives may have more than a cake up their sleeves when it comes to McCain's Navy record prior to his time as a POW.

The unstable bombs had a 60-second cook-off threshold in a fire situation and this warning was known to both Beling and McCain prior to the disaster. On January 14, 1969, the USS Enterprise, steaming 75 miles southwest of Pearl Harbor, suffered a major fire. In that episode, similar unstable 1000-pound bombs detonated, killing 27 sailors and injuring more than 100. At the time of the Enterprise disaster, the Commander-in- Chief of US Pacific Forces was Adm. John S. McCain, Jr.,Sen. McCain's father.

At the time of the Forrestal disaster, Admiral McCain was Commander-in-Chief of US Naval Forces Europe (CINCUSNAVEUR) and was busy covering up the details of the deadly and pre-meditated Israeli attack on the NSA spy ship, the USS Liberty, on June 8, 1967. The fact that both McCains were involved in two incidents just weeks apart that resulted in a total death count of 168 on the Forrestal and the Liberty, with an additional injury count of 234 on both ships (with a number of them later dying from their wounds) with an accompanying classified paper trail inside the Pentagon, may be all that was needed to hold a Sword of Damocles over the head of the "family honor"-oriented (McCain's persona is supported by his book about his father and grandfather, both Navy admirals, titled "Faith of My Fathers") and the "straight talking" McCain.

The Bush administration and neo-cons may have uncovered reams of documents that throw cold water on that public perception. STORY IN PROGRESS.

via: Wayne Madsen Report