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Bush Administration was Asleep at the Switch
While the President was taking a long vacation at his ranch in Crawford, the CIA told him that, Osama bin Laden might be planning to hijack an airliner as part of some, who-knows-what terrorist action against the United States. http://www.thenation.com/capitalgames/index.mhtml?bid=3&pid=60

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"They want to destroy the moral fabric of our country. They want to destroy our way of life. They want to take away our freedom!"
Sound like a familiar rant from the conservatives? It ought to. They used the same rhetoric when they opposed Medicare, Social Security, Civil Rights, Voting Rights, an end to lynching, segregation, and every social improvement in history.

FYI
Who holds the record for holding the longest filibuster in the US Senate's history?
Answer

Where Was the ‘Values’ Crowd When Dr. King Needed Them?
While Hoover and his FBI tapped his phone--you know Dr. King really had some dangerous ideas!--"The great protectors of morality and human rights now, were silent–or even worse, critical of Dr. King."
Ron Rosenbaum-The Observer.com

Where is the Outrage?
IIn order to pay for their vast tax cut for the richest 1 percent of Americans, the Bush administration cut the most famous and successful of all the War on Poverty programs. Where is the outrage from the pro-life, pro-child, pro-family advocates? They want to save the children, but they don't want to feed them. We hear the never-ending mantra, of "socialism" every time there's an effort to correct an injustice, or make improvements on deplorable conditions. Well, if thinking that pregnant women and children shouldn't starve makes you a socialist, then we plead guilty.
TThe Fight For Children

The GOP, they Privatize Profit's but Socialize Losses.

"The model of thought that says we need to go out and extend unemployment benefits and health insurance benefits and so forth, is not, I think, one that is commensurate with the American spirit here". --Dick Armey (R-The Killing Fields, TX) Regarding benefits for Americans who were laid off, just two weeks after the terrorist attack, and after they bailed out the airline industry

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Democrats Tried to Prevent the Enron Disaster
Four things the Democrats tried to do to keep the "malefactors of great wealth" in check, but all were sandbagged by the Gingrich/Bush "deregulation" and "free market" mantras.
Democrats Sounded the Warnings

Best Quote
"Can you believe this Enron mess? I love how [Bush's] good friend 'Kenny Boy' suddenly turned into 'Mr. Lay.' Give me a break!"...Johnny Carson

G.O.P. Fights Proposed Rules on Auditors
RRepublicans led by Senator Phil Gramm of Texas and the accounting industry's trade group worked to kill a Democratic measure that would impose new rules on auditors. http://www.nytimes.com 5/18/2002

G.O.P Back to Protecting Corporado Tax Havens
Republicans (the we always need more studies party) have pulled a tax bill (HR 4626) aiding married couples to protect the tax havens for companies like Enron. GOP leaders are trying to avoid a showdown over tax breaks for corporations that move their headquarters overseas.
hhttp://www.nytimes.com 5/16/2002

Drug Industry

New York Times article on lobbying by the drug industry during time of crisis.br> A Muscular Lobby Tries to Shape Nation's Bioterror Plan

Also access the complete Public Citizen report at: hhttp://www.citizen.org/documents/pharma.pdf

Airline Security
For more than a decade, the airline industry and its Washington friends consistently blocked efforts to improve airport security, placing the bottom line above the public's safety.
The best lobbyists money buy

The penny-pinching, privatization-good, regulation-bad policies of the conservatives--they were unwilling to pay the price of public safety.
Paying The Price/Paul Krugman-www.nytimes.com

Airlines Fought Security Changes
Despite warnings, companies wanted to avoid delays. Article from Boston Globe 9/20/01

Trust the Airlines?
"Not since deregulation of the airline industry have we faced such a critical point in the history of air transportation in this country. We are closer than ever to seeing an industry totally dominated by three mega-airlines", says John McCain.
Airline Competition Restoration Act
American Airlines get's green light to crush competitors
When Airlines Dislike Competition

Political Intelligence
U.S. spies had the goods on terrorists and nuclear bombs being built long ago, but the government wouldn't listen.
Reports were politically inconvenient

Bush Rejected Terrorism Commission Report-"White House officials failed to embrace any of the recommendations to prevent acts of domestic terrorism delivered earlier this year. Bush administration officials told former Sens. Gary Hart, D-Colo., and Warren Rudman, R-N.H., that they preferred instead to put aside the recommendations issued in the January report by the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century. Instead, the White House announced in May that it would have Vice President Dick Cheney 'study' the potential problem of domestic terrorism -- which the bipartisan group had already spent two and a half years studying -- while assigning responsibility for dealing with the issue to [FEMA], headed by former Bush campaign manager Joe Allbaugh. The Hart-Rudman Commission had specifically recommended that the issue of terrorism was such a threat it needed far more than FEMA's attention." http://www.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/09/12/bush/index.html

Dirty Money Laundering Terrorists and the Bush Team
The U.S. was all set to join a global crackdown on criminal and terrorist money havens earlier this year. Thirty industrial nations were ready to tighten up on offshore financial centers whose banks have the potential to hide and often help launder billions of dollars for drug cartels, global crime syndicates--and groups like the al-Qaeda organization. Last year Sen. Phil Gramm R-TX (news, bio, voting record) blocked a Clinton-administration proposal to ban access to American financial markets to nations that didn't cooperate with money-laundering investigations. The GOP railed that then-Tres. Sec. Summers alarms were just big government meddling. Then the Bush Administration took office, and Sec. Tres. Paul O'Neill defended the right of banks to "slam the door in the inspector's kisser." "The government has not been respectful of the cost it imposes on society." he announced! Indeed, the conservative right's think tank, that great bastion of honor and integrity the 'Heritage Foundation' met with O'Niell, with the goal of getting the United States to cease its pressure on nations like the Cayman Islands and Liechtenstein, whose bank secrecy laws stand athwart law-enforcement attempts to monitor illicit endeavors and restrict the dealings of Osama Bin Laden.

Bush Flip Flopped on Money Laundering
It took the worst terrorist attacks in U.S. history to turn the Bush Administration around on money laundering. Top officials, including Attorney General John Ashcroft and even O'Neill, were suddenly declaring that tough new anti-money-laundering laws were needed. Just prior to 9/11 the Bush administration rejected the international efforts to strangle this corrupt racket.(Money Laundering Efforts Abandoned by Bush) Sec.Treasurer O'Neill recommended delays in Clinton-era money-laundering regulations that had not yet been implemented, and essentially promoted money laundering by drug dealers, arms traffickers, terrorists, and crooked dictators. Why? Could it be that these criminals do business with the Bush organized crime family?
Banking on Secrecy Time Magazine
A Retreat on Tax Havens NYT Editors
Follow the Money Laundering to the White House

Did America Turn a Blind Eye?
How can it be that the former President of the US and the current President of the US have business dealings with characters that need to be investigated?
BBC Newsnight-Greg Palast

Terrorists are Made, Not Born
Former House Hypocrite, Newt Gingrich said President Clinton should have done more to wage a campaign against terrorism. Former Secretary of State James Baker - the chief architect of the Florida coup - wants the CIA back in the business of assassination, staging bloody coups, to install brutal dictators. Is anyone looking at U.S. Foreign Policy, not in an attempt to justify the hideous attacks on our nation, but to even ask why they hate us so much?
Will American's Ever Wake Up From Their Coma?
WWhy Do They Hate Us?

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Bush's Dept. of Injustice - With Iran and Against Americans br> The State Department had listed Iran as the most active state sponsor of terrorism in the world for the year 2000. And after Sept. 11, President Bush told Congress that America's message to the world on terrorism was clear: "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists." But where, does the Justice Department stand on this? Americans that were held hostage by the government of Iran for 444 days beginning in 1979. The hostages had a lawsuit initiated against Iran last year under the Antiterrorism Act of 1996, signed by President Clinton. But after Sept. 11, our government took sides with Iran — and against the hostages.
With Iran, Against Americans NYT's Article

George Bush Sr. pardoned anti-Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch
Denise Rich makes $1 million contribution to Clinton-Marc Rich gets a pardon. The mining industries make a $4 million contribution to Bush, and he reverses two campaign promises--support for benefits to miners with Black Lung disease and lowering carbon-dioxide emissions. Republicans somehow don't see any relation between these two scenarios. Nor do they see anything wrong with the pardon by former President Bush of a terrorist, Orlando Bosch, who conspired in the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976, killing all passengers and crew and now resides freely in Miami, while they continue to carp about the Marc Rich Pardon.
The Harboring of a Terrorist

Bush's Deal With the Taliban
Mr. Bush sanctamoniously declared that "terrorists use drug profits to fund their terrorist cells", calling drug dealers the scourge of society--although he has no problem with tobacco dealers. Yet six months before the 9/11 attack he gave the Taliban drug-lords/terrorists $43 million, to help finance their oppresive regime. "Enslave your girls and women, harbor anti-U.S. terrorists, destroy every vestige of civilization in your homeland, and the Bush administration will embrace you. All that matters is that you line up as an ally in the drug war, the only international cause that this nation still takes seriously. Never mind that Osama bin Laden operates the leading anti-American terror operation from his base in Afghanistan, from which, among other crimes, he launched two bloody attacks on American embassies in Africa in 1998." On May 22, LA Times columnist Robert Scheer denounced "the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world.
Los Angeles Times Article

"Oil barons court Taliban in Texas":
Was the title a December 17, 1997 article in the British paper, The Telegraph. A Creeping Collapse in Credibility at the White House: From ENRON Entanglements to UNOCAL Bringing the Taliban to Texas and Controlling Afghanistan.
http://www.counterpunch.org/tomenron.htm

Former sex slaves, known as "comfort women," win a symbolic victory over Hirohito and the Japanese Imperial Army.
Court Gives Ex-Comfort Women Symbolic Victory

Helping Women of the World Physical abuse of women worldwide
www.equalitynow.org An international human rights organization dedicated to end violations against girls and women.
www.maitinepal.org Maiti Nepal helps victims of sexual trafficking.
www.ijm.org The International Justice Mission helps rescue girls forced into prostitution.
www.heifer.org Through the Heifer Project, you can donate cows, pigs, chicks and other livestock to needy families.
www.rawa.org Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)

Freedom From Hunger
Empowering Women-through a combination of cash credit and vital health/nutrition education. Credit with Education enables women to buy more and better food, invest in their children's education, take control of their families' health, and help each other to have a greater influence in their communities. http://freedomfromhunger.org/index.html

The battle for equality never takes a day off, it demands your ongoing attention. Please take action by visiting the Feminist Majority Foundation.

Catholic Hospital Mergers Curtailing Medical Services, Especially for Women
A nationwide wave of profit-driven mergers between Catholic and non-Catholic hospitals have forced many non-Catholic institutions to operate under health care guidelines issued by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops. These guidelines have already restricted access to reproductive health services, but they also have major implications for other forms of medical care and research.
Under the Knife and the Cross-Tompaine.com
Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services -Issued by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, June 2001.
Merger Watch

World Summit Policy Brief #4-Whats Good for Women is Good for the World
Throughout the 1990s, several major United Nations conferences stressed the importance of including women in sustainable development.  But despite these commitments on paper, there has been far too little action.  True and meaningful equity between women and men will take much more than inserting a paragraph here and there in the documents issued at a United Nations convention or in national laws.
http://www.worldwatch.org/worldsummit/briefs/

Saudi Arabia: Religious Police
March 11, the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (mutawwa'in, in Arabic) interfered with rescue efforts during a fire at a girls' public intermediate school in Mecca, that claimed the lives of at least fourteen students because the fleeing students were not wearing the obligatory public attire (long black cloaks and head coverings) for Saudi girls and women.
http://hrw.org/press/2002/03/saudischool.htm

 

"W" Stands for Women?

Back Door Attempts to Chip Away at Abortion Rights
Bush Administration announced that states may classify a developing fetus as a "person". One more quiet step toward overturning Roe v. Wade.
The 'Prenatal' Propaganda

The Quiet War on Abortion
After decades of noisy protests and violence, anti-abortion activists are relying on a new 'stealth strategy' to shut down clinics.
http://www.motherjones.com/magazine/SO01/abortion.html

Harmful Traditional Practices Affecting the Health of Women and Children
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu6/2/fs23.htm#i

 

Click Here to Provide
a Free Mammogram to
an under-priviledged woman

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The Taliban Wing of the Republican Party

Pat Robertson's Gold
What, pray tell, does the Good Lord make of Pat Robertson's gold-mining venture in Liberia with Charles Taylor, international pariah and one of the most ruthless, greedy and terror-producing heads of state in all of sub-Saharan Africa?
Pat Robertson's Gold from Washington Post
More on Pat Robertson

Falwell = Terrorist says Cronkite
September 28, 2001 -- WALTER Cronkite has unleashed an unusually harsh attack on religious broadcasters Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. The retired anchorman calls Falwell's remarks about the Sept. 11 terror attacks as "the most abominable thing I've ever heard," in the upcoming TV Guide.
Cronkite's Remarks

Falwell's Opportunistic Propaganda
Before the ashes had even cooled at the World Trade Center site, Reverend Mullah Falwell and Pat Robertson were using the tragedy to promote their vile and hateful agenda. "The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen", says Falwell. People For the American Way Foundation has exposed some of the intolerance expressed by the icons of the Religious Right.
Intolerance by Radical Right in wake of September 11

People For the American Way Foundation reports on a number of extremist statements coming from the right since September 11th.
Right Wing Watch Online

Guerillas And Bodybags And Sharks…Oh, My!: A Short History Of Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition hhttp://www.au.org/press/pr121201.htm

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The President Who Swore to "Restore Integrity"

The Secret Presidency br> As president watchers know, we have a president who likes secrecy. He has hired only tested leak-proof and loyal staffers, effectively sealing the Bush White House. He has had his records as the Governor of Texas hidden, shipping them off to his father's presidential library, where they are inaccessible. He has stiffed the Congressional requests for information about how he developed his energy policy--refusing to respond. Then on November 1, President George W. Bush signed Executive Order 13233, a policy enabling his administration to govern in secrecy. Ari Fleischer made the ludicrous statement that Bush issued the order "because of Sept. 11" - the most outstanding overreach to date in blaming absolutely everything on the terrorists. But the Reagan years were supposed to have been opened in January 2001. Three times earlier this year, Bush blocked access to the papers, and he finally issued the executive order on Nov. 1.
HHiding Past and Present Presidencies

Protecting Mafia Murders and a Corrupt FBI
PPresident Bush imposed executive order to deny Dan Burton access to subpoenaed FBI documents. The the request began with the case Joseph Salvati, whom the FBI And J.Edgar Hoover knowingly allowed to be wrongly convicted for murder to protect Mafia murderers who were FBI informants. font color="#000000">The interview with Burton aired Sunday Jan. 27. The following links are for the official hearing transcripts of the House Committee on Government Reform hosted by the Government Printing Office (GPO).
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=107_house_hearings&docid=f:78051.wais
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=107_house_hearings&docid=f:76507.wais

Lobbying in Secrecy
VV.P. Dick Cheney thinks he has a right to be lobbied in secret and that the energy industries interests should not be disclosed to congress or the American Public.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/28/business/28CHEN.html?todaysheadlines

Bush's Iran-Contra Cabinet
Lying to Congress and Mass Murder, just a "matter of the past"?
Integrity in the Whitehouse?

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Fugitive Fingers Jeb Bush
Fugitive living in Spain told ABC's "20/20" that Jeb Bush made a crucial call to Washington when his HMO needed help. http://www.motherjones.com/mother_jones/JA95/bush.html

How Neil Bush Does Business
President Bush said his education bill would be a boon for public schools and underpaid teachers; what he left out was that it was also a boon for his little brother. As Mother Jones reported last year, Neil Bush's education software company stands to make millions as a result of the new legislation. http://www.motherjones.com/magazine/MJ01/neilbush.html

Neil Bush’s Saudi Business Connection
What was Neil Bush doing in Jidda, Saudi Arabia, last week? Officially, the president’s youngest brother was a keynote speaker at an international business forum. (Among the main backers of the event: the Saudi Binladin Construction Group and Prince Alwaleed bin Talal.
http://msnbc.com/news/694829.asp#deals

The Bush Clan's Family Business
Jeb and Neil Bush...the poster boys of S&L Fraud helped in looting America's Savings and Loans. http://www.motherjones.com/news_wire/bushboys.html

Bush Family and Republican Corruption

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The Revival of McCarthyism and Vietnam War Rhetoric
There were only two senators who voted against the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, during the Vietnam War, Morse and Gruening. On August 7, Morse said:

"I believe that history will record that we have made a great mistake in subverting and circumventing the constitution of the United states... by means of this resolution. As I argued earlier to day at great length, we are in effect giving the president... war-making powers in the absence of a declaration of war. I believe that to be a historic mistake"

Since casting the lone vote in Congress in opposition to handing President Bush a blank check to pursue the war on international terrorism Rep. Barbara Lee has received death threats, a slew of vile emails, and been branded a traitor by right-wing ideologues. Using the same neurotic, paranoid, communist tactics and rhetoric of the Vietnam era that they used to keep Democrats from speaking out, they've labeled Rep. Lee along with Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass.), former talk-show host Phil Donahue and others as "anti-American communists" and "heathens". After the Pentagon Papers exposed the lies by Robert McNamara and others, and the willful deception used to obtain The Tonkin Gulf Resolution, you would think Americans would learn from the mistakes of the past. But evidently not.

It's one thing for the right-wing opportunistic conservatives to jump on the old that bandwagon, we're use to it. But when a Green Party member, California State Assemblywoman Audie Bock, uses it to advance her agenda it's more than a little surprising.
The odd political imaginings of Audie Bock and California's GOP

Vietnam Ghosts
We can't shake those memories. When the tapes show Johnson worrying about protecting himself against his party's right wing or complaining that "the more bombs you drop, the more people you make mad," it's impossible not to wonder if we're looking forward as well as back. Congress gave Johnson authority to wage the war on the basis of a North Vietnamese gunboat attack, but on the tapes, the president told his secretary of defense "we concluded maybe they hadn't fired at all." New York Times 11/11/01

Peace Treaty Shenanigans
Negotiations for Peace Treaties ought to be solemn, careful enterprises. But the foremost negotiator of our time, Henry Kissinger, and his boss, former President Nixon, were busy posturing, while men were dying in Vietnam. No one deserves a Nobel peace prize for worrying about their image with the press or polishing one-liners during debates. But leave it to Nixon and Kissinger to polish their egos and keep sending home the body bags.
Read more on Peace Treaty Shenanigans
More Kissinger Offenses
The Fugitive Minority Report

Ronald Reagan and his Contra Buddies
What happens when you get a bad actor, anti-Communist rhetoric, and some rogue assassins? Senate hearings! See--Ronald Reagan forget what he did before. Thrill--to the stumblings of Robert McFarlane! Witness--the Administration invoking both the Founding Fathers and the Pope erroneously, to support their treason. Drink the waters of Lethe, forget this ever happened, and try to name national monuments after the man in charge!
Ronald Reagan, Oliver North et al., commit treason in the Iran-Contra scandal.

The Mozote Massacre
It was the reporters' word against the government's. Columbia Journalism Review

A Ronald Reagan Retrospective
Washington pundits praise the 90-year-old Ronald Reagan as a "hero" -- a verdict delivered with no discernible dissent. The documented record is now clear: Ronald Reagan aided and abetted some of the worst war crimes in the history of the Western Hemisphere. Consortiumnews.com , a site with a commitment to independent journalism, has decided to repost three past articles about the 40th U.S. president: his real deeds and his real legacy.

The Chile Coup--The U.S. Hand
Twenty-five years ago, tanks rumbled through the streets of Chile, terrified civilians were lined up before firing squads at the National Stadium, the elected president was dead. Yet, in Washington and at Richard Nixon's White House, the events were a cause for celebration, a culmination of three years of covert operations, propaganda and economic sabotage.
http://www.consortiumnews.com/consor33.html

What Was Bush's 'Business' in Guatemala?
"In 1999, a Guatemalan truth commission, which had received historical records from the Clinton administration, concluded that about 200,000 people were killed in the political violence that dated back to a CIA-sponsored coup in 1954. Some of the worst bloodletting occurred during the 1980s, when the Reagan-Bush administration backed a right-wing military dictator, Rios Montt, who was blamed for massacres in 626 Mayan Indian villages in a butchery judged 'genocide' by the commission." Last December, a spokesman said Bush's travel had included "business" in Guatemala. Robert Parry of 'Consortium News' asks: "What was his 'business' in Guatemala and when was he conducting it? Who were his business associates? ... When he was there, what did George W. Bush know about the atrocities and did they matter to him?... Bush's aides have put these supposed business dealings in Guatemala on the public record... it seems reasonable for reporters to ask what, where, when, why and with whom."
Consortiumnews.com

The Bush Family and Rev. Sun Myung Moon
At odds over North Korea, George W. Bush and South Korean President Kim Dae Jung share what might seem like an unlikely financial connection. Both have benefited from the mysterious political largesse of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon. US intelligence stumbled onto Moon's secret political financing of Kim Dae Jung in 1987 when Moon was trying to unseat an unfriendly government in South Korea. Moon also has been a benefactor to the Bush family, both directly with payments to George W.'s father and indirectly by backing the Bush family dynasty through Moon's newspaper, The Washington Times. Full History at Consortiumnews.com

Shrubs Mess
Back at the ranch, they're Busy Cleaning up Shrubs Mess in Texas, Molly Ivins writes. "Living with the aftermath of Bush is a bad hangover. Some people were smart enough to see it coming. When Ronald Reagan was pushing tax cuts 20 years ago, a Republican voted against him, predicting the cuts would lead to massive deficits. The guy's name was Jim Jeffords." (news - bio - voting record)
Also see:
De-Bushing Texas
Shrub Flubs His Dub
What Can You do When The Cupboard is Bare?

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They Lie...They Lie "Big Time"
During last year's presidential campaign, Richard B. Cheney acknowledged that the oil-field supply corporation he headed, Halliburton Co., (see The Asbestos Act)did business with Libya and Iran through foreign subsidiaries. But he insisted that he had imposed a "firm policy" against trading with Iraq. "Iraq's different," he said. According to oil industry executives and confidential United Nations records, however, Halliburton held stakes in two firms that signed contracts to sell more than $73 million in oil production equipment and spare parts to Iraq while Cheney was chairman and chief executive officer of the Dallas-based company.
See article at: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35751-2001Jun22.html

KEEPING SECRETS
W A S H I N G T O N, June 25 — A government watchdog agency is losing patience with the White House's refusal to detail secret meetings that produced President Bush's national energy policy and is threatening to take steps that could land the tug of war in the courts. (A must read...timeline of requests at the website)
http://abcnews.go.com/sections/politics/DailyNews/cheney_gao010625.html

"Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex Conservative"
David Brock, the author of the book, "The Real Anita Hill" suggested, in a magazine article to be published, that Justice Thomas used an intermediary to provide Mr. Brock with damaging information about a woman who had come forward to provide support for Ms. Hill's accusations of harassment by Justice Thomas. Ms. Hill's accusations became the focus of Senate hearings into Justice Thomas's nomination to the Supreme Court in 1991. Mr. Brock reported that he then used the information to force the woman to retract her statements about Justice Thomas. Brock goes on to say, he did everything he could to "ruin Hill's credibility," using "virtually every derogatory and often contradictory allegation I had collected on Hill into the vituperative mix." "I demonized Democratic senators, their staffs, and Hill's feminist supporters without ever interviewing any of them," he continued. The article, in the August issue of Talk magazine, is excerpted from Mr. Brock's new book:
Blinded by the Right: The Conscience of an Ex Conservative
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/27/politics/27THOM.html

The Smoke Machine
The "vast right-wing conspiracy" is not an overheated metaphor but a straightforward reality, and it works a lot like a special-interest lobby. Report by Paul Krugman

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Bush Wants to Eliminate Social Security and Medicare for Healthy Seniors - and Abolish the Corporate Income Tax
In an interview with the Financial Times, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, "questioned the guarantees the government provides for full public subsidy of senior citizens' health care and retirement programmes. 'Able-bodied adults should save enough on a regular basis so that they can provide for their own retirement and, for that matter, health and medical needs," they should not pass part of their own responsibility on to a broader population,' he said." On the other hand, O'Neill says, he 'absolutely' wants to eliminate corporate income tax and do away with capital gains taxes on businesses. Instead, he says, this tax burden should be shifted to the individual. This government "for the welfare of the corporations' can't be any more transparent than this.
Click Here To Read
CBO Finds Bush Budget Full of Deficits and Trust Fund Raids

Our Tax Dollars?
If Americans want some of their tax money back, they should be telling their congressmen, to stop taking bacon home to renovate monuments in Alabama to the tune of $3.5 million , $4 million to build a chopper-craft carrier that the military neither wants nor needs. Tell them what you need instead of that nice statue repaired, is decent health care coverage so when your kids are sick they can go to the doctor and get medicine. If they stopped spending OUR federal tax money on their favorite pork projects we'de be able to provide, healthcare, drug coverage and still have money left over.
Instead of Beefing up Intelligence, Congress Porked up at the Trough

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Putting The Fox in Charge of The Chicken Coop
Interior Secretary Gale Norton invited Robert Redford to join her in releasing a condor into the wild. Redford did not mince words in turning her down: "Sadly, since assuming the Interior Secretary post, you have compiled an abysmal record of capitulating to big businesses at the expense of the nation's public health, public lands and wildlife". The actor and environmentalist, whose films include Three Days of the Condor, said that instead of helping Ms. Norton he would spend time trying to counter “the devastating environmental repercussions of the agenda you and President Bush embrace”. Redford has said that the appointment of Ms Norton was like “putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop”.
Bush vs. the American Landscape by Robert Redford

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The Scrub List for Shrub
On November 7, tens of thousands of eligible Florida voters were wrongly prevented from casting their ballots, nearly all were Democrats. Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris hired Database Technologies, now DBT, to go on a "felon-hunt". DBT provided them with a list consisting of thousands of individuals, wrongly identified as felons. Leon County alone, only one of Florida's 67 counties, independently researched every name on its scrub list. The county could only verify that 34 of the 694 cited -- 5 percent -- had criminal records. Another piece of data passed on to local officials: the voter's race. Next to every alleged felon's name was the
designation "BLA" or "WHI." The report first appeared in Britain's Observer. Reporter Greg Palast paid a visit to Tallahassee in this investigation, the investigation that the American news networks are not doing.
Full Report by Greg Palast:
Scrub for Shrub
Click here to watch the video

Pay Day for Bush's Pioneers
Greg Palast reports from Texas for BBC Newsnight.
Click here to watch the video

Palast's other investigative reports, and more on the "Scrub List" investigation can be found at www.gregpalast.com where you can also subscribe to his column.

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Bush Ignores His Own Ministers
Dubya often talks the talk, but seldom walks the walk of his "faith", while Imposing Religious-Right Doctrines on the Nation. A born-again Christian and a member of the Methodist Church, he has frequently been criticized by Texas Methodist ministers, particularly over the death penalty. The Methodists officially oppose capital punishment and handgun ownership. Dubya supports both. And the list of disagreements continues with abortion rights, gays in the military, school vouchers, even Social Security policy.

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