Bristol Palin Really Is the Perfect Ambassador for Abstinence Education

OK, I have to ask: How on earth does Bristol Palin find time to fly around singing the praises of sexual abstinence, between pursuing that elusive high school diploma, and caring for the son she and Levi Johnston had as...well...teenagers not practicing sexual abstinence? And second of all, why is the daughter of Alaska's increasingly unpopular governor still in the news at all?

Do as I say, not as I do. Yoo betcha.

http://www.alternet.org/story/139912/

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From: David Swanson [mailto:david@davidswanson.org]

Please sign by sending Email to jtmpinfo@comcast.net


Attorney General Eric Holder                                                April 13, 2009
Department of Justice
Washington, DC 20530
 
Dear Attorney General Holder:
 
Thank you for taking the necessary steps to vacate the conviction of Senator Ted Stevens because of misconduct by federal prosecutors. We now ask that you quickly do the same for all Bush-era politically motivated cases, starting with Don Siegelman and Paul Minor.  Such action is necessary to restore public confidence in the rule of law and the Department of Justice ("DOJ"), and to rectify a vast and manifest injustice. You must act soon because the victims of such prosecutions are now suffering—some of them cruelly. It is unacceptable that any one of them should have to endure imprisonment, financial ruin and even loss of family while courts ponder whether trial error occurred.

It is well established that the previous DOJ was controlled by partisans who misused their authority by targeting Democrats and others with viewpoints different from their own.  As a result, people have been variously wronged, either by (1) rejection for employment at DOJ, (2) dismissal from positions there, or (3) trumped-up and/or partisan-targeted criminal prosecution. Under your leadership, the DOJ has moved toward ending such abuse. With your investigations of the hiring practices at DOJ and the US Attorney firings, you have begun to take concrete steps to deal with Points (1) and (2).  As to Point 3, however, not enough has been done.  Other than early, still-cursory DOJ investigations of problems with the prosecution of Don Siegelman and Paul Minor, your office has announced no action or intention to redress well-documented allegations of selective criminal prosecutions carried out by the Bush administration.

A preponderance of evidence demonstrates that zealous partisans in the Bush White House and DOJ played favorites with some, while targeting other enemies based on their party's ideology.  Certain politicians, such as Governor Siegelman, were seen as a threat to hoped-for Republican electoral gains, and certain jurists and attorneys, such as Oliver Diaz and Paul Minor, were also deemed dangerous to the interests of Republican allies in big business.
 
As Bobby Kennedy Jr. and Brendan DeMille recently reported, while urging the release of Paul Minor, a study by University of Missouri professors Donald Shields and John Cragan, showed that "eighty percent of the Bush DOJ's political investigations targeted Democrats -- 5.6 Democrats for every Republican investigated by U.S. attorneys for political misconduct.  Shields noted in Congressional testimony that 'such selective investigation and prosecution rates' represent a clear bias in the severely disproportionate 'political profiling' of Democrats under Bush."

The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals recently upheld most charges against Gov. Siegelman, with everyone involved deliberately ignoring the huge elephant in that courtroom—i.e., that post-trial revelations, deemed inadmissible by the appellate judges, pointed to serious political concoction as well as prosecutorial abuse.  The governor should not have to wait months, or years, for a court to address these issues when you have the authority to do so at once.
 
And then there is Paul Minor, an attorney now in federal prison for a "crime" related to the funding of Democratic candidates and causes. Minor's wife is dying of breast cancer in a hospital in Baton Rouge.  Last month, he was given a three-hour pass to spend a moment with her (under supervision), but she had no chance to talk to him, because she had been given her pain medication, and lay fast asleep throughout his visit.  Why should this man have to spend another hour away from his wife's bedside, awaiting the decision of some court, when the clear partisan motivations behind his prosecution should lead your department to withdrawing charges, just as you did in the Stevens case.

Selective prosecution based on impermissible political considerations constitutes prosecutorial misconduct at least as egregious as that found in Senator Stevens' case. We therefore ask that you immediately order the dismissal of charges against Don Siegelman and Paul Minor, and move quickly to investigate and identify other cases mounted by the Bush Administration for political advantage and, where appropriate, vacate them immediately. Only through such righteous action, which is wholly in your power, can we be sure that justice will, at last, be done, and the public's confidence in our great legal system can begin to be thoroughly restored.

Sincerely,

Brad Friedman
David Swanson

 

What is Jeb Bush's role in the Lehman Brothers meltdown?

This whole family is supposed to be a dumb as a rock with the exception of Jeb. I'm not sure which ones are dumb (exccept george) and which ones are dumb but for a fact all of them are self-serving, self-centered, thieves & crooks. It's enough to make one turn on the conspiracy theory channel and wonder if they haven't taken over the country already.

_________________________________________________
Lehman Brothers was founded in 1850. The firm managed to get through the Civil War, WWI, and WWII, the Great Depression, and the attacks of September 11, 2001. Yet after hiring Jeb Bush in late August of 2007, the firm suddenly goes belly up in a year. It also should be noted that in 2006, George H. Walker IV was also hired by Lehman Brothers.
Now, let's take a walk down memory lane, shall we?

What is Jeb Bush's role in the Lehman Brothers meltdown?

http://www.atlargely.com:80/2008/09/what-is-jeb-bus.html

Don Siegelman Appeal..Last year Don Siegelman spent the holidays in a cold and lonely cell far from home.

It could happen again.

Don was not a wealthy man to begin with and now through no fault of his own, he owes millions of dollars in legal fees. Having no income during the nine months he was in prison, plus not being able to work full-time since his release, has caused financial stress for his family.

A donation of $5, $10, $50 or more from any of your readers can help him get get past the hard times he and his family are going through - and it will let him know that we still care.

You can donate to Don Siegelman's legal defense fund here, via paypal
http://www.donsiegelman.net/donations_page_paypal.html or by sending a check by mail.


Siegelman Legal Defense Fund
P. O. Box 430116
Birmingham, Alabama 35243


Also, writes Don Siegelman, "the U S Congress must be encouraged to vote Rove in Contempt to uncover the truth! Please log on now to www.ContemptForRove.com to send your message to Congress."


If anyone on this list has a user account at the Daily Kos, you can supportthis fund raiser by voting it up so it has a shot at hitting the rec list.Thanks, Bruce Wilsonhttp://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/11/25/65640/261/1015/666139

Statement From Don Siegelman]
I am now engaged in two important fights: One for my own freedom and the other to see that Karl Rove in brought to justice. I need your financial help to keep these fights going.

The government has reportedly spent over 40 million dollars to prosecute me. I have pulled virtually everything out of my life's saving to fight these false charges. I need you to give generously. My Legal Defense Trust Fund can take donations of corporate, PAC, foundation or personal money of any size.

While I am fighting for my own freedom, the U S Congress must be encouraged to vote Rove in Contempt to uncover the truth! Please log on now to www.ContemptForRove.com to send your message to Congress.

This fight must be won to unravel the injustices that have been perpetrated against our democracy.

With your help, Karl Rove and his accomplices will be held accountable for their abuse of power.

Thank you,

Don Siegelman
Governor of Alabama 1999-2003

From 1999 to 2003 Don Siegelman was the popular Democratic Governor of Alabama... until what a bipartisan array of politicians including Wesley Clarke and Republican Former US Attorney General Richard Thornburgh have criticized as a politically motivated effort, tied to Karl Rove and also connected to former lobbyist Jack Abramoff, that convicted Siegelman of dubious felony charges and sent him to federal prison. [ you can read and watch CBS, CNN, MSNBC, Time, Rolling Stone and New York Times coverage of Don Siegelman's story, at Don's website ]

A bipartisan group of 52 former states attorneys general have filed a legal brief on Siegelman's behalf, in the appeals case to come before the 11th Circuit Court this December 9th.

But even if Don Siegelman is exonerated rather than thrown back in federal prison the legal fees for Don's years-long legal battle has consumed his entire retirement saving account plus an additional borrowed $900,000.

As Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane eloquently write,

For most Americans, the very concept of political prisoners is remote and exotic, a practice that is associated with third-world dictatorships but is foreign to the American tradition. The idea that a prominent politician -- a former state governor -- could be tried on charges that many observers consider to be trumped-up, convicted in a trial that involved numerous questionable procedures, and then hauled off to prison in shackles immediately upon sentencing would be almost unbelievable.

But there is such a politician: Don Siegelman, Democratic governor of Alabama from 1999 to 2003. Starting just a few weeks after he took office, Siegelman was targeted by an investigation launched by his political opponents and escalated from the state to the federal level by Bush Administration appointees in 2001. [full Raw Story investigation with timeline, on the Siegelman prosecution]

http://www.donsiegelman.net/Pages/MAIN/aboutdon.html

Impeach the Little Bastard - Because people deserve to know the truth

We! Magazine

by Bryan Zepp Jamieson

Republicans have abused the power of the Presidential pardon since Gerald Ford used it to preemptively pardon the criminal Richard Nixon. It was argued that Americans, with their delicate sensitivities, weren’t mature enough to cope with the idea that an elected official might face a fair and public trial for crimes he may have committed or had committed while in office.
If the JFK assassination undermined American innocence (and Gerald Ford tried to spin fairy tales about that, too), then the Nixon pardon undermined American confidence in themselves as a place where justice could be served.

Lightning struck again some 18 years later, when George Bush used the power of the pardon to kick apart the case being pursued against the criminal Ronald Reagan, and in which some scummy little felons and traitors such as Oliver North and G. Gordon Liddy got to run free and sneer loudly at the country that gave them their undeserved liberty.

Losing in Vietnam didn’t do nearly as much damage to American self-respect as the sight of G. Gordon Liddy braying into his radio microphone that people should shoot federal agents in the head as a way of demonstrating their Liddy-style patriotism.

A lot of people watched this, and watched right wingers openly gloating over it, and wondered what the fuck had gone wrong with America.

And then, for the next eight years, the same vicious and amoral clowns who guffawed over the sight of Nixon lazing in the California sun and tried to make a tin hero out of the moronic Reagan, tried to destroy the Clinton presidency by impeaching him over trivia.

Now, we have a crowd that makes the Nixon scummies and the Reagan sleazers look like pikers. For the past eight years, we’ve seen the most criminal and anti-American administration in history. They haven’t settled for third rate burglaries and selling arms to terrorists, no. They stole an election to get in, and then proceeded to spend years looting the national treasury, lied the country into a war whose real aim was to abet in that looting, let terrorists attack the country, refused a serious investigation into it, and used it to pass measures that slashed the rights of Americans while politicizing the judicial branch of the government, and attempted to establish one-party rule, supported by a corrupted judiciary and a crooked voting system.
And while they were at it, they committed war crimes, and gave America the same reputation the old Soviet Union used to have, of torture and unjust imprisonments without trial and secret prison camps.

They robbed the country blind, and humiliated and debased it in the process. They didn’t govern America; they didn’t even rule it. They simply raped it.

And now, mercifully, the reign of these vicious, anti-American little Republican scumbags is coming to an end.

But will any of them ever pay for their crimes? Trillions of dollars have gone missing from the common weal, either sunk into wars for profit, siphoned off to the undeserving rich, or evaporated in the implosion of a capitalist bubble that was given all the internal air pressure it wanted. Three thousand people died in 9/11, and another 5,000 Americans have died in Afghanistan and Iraq. We’ll probably never know how many died in Iraq just for living there, or how many were herded off to American gulags to die of torture, or spend years wondering if they would ever get a trial, let alone ever be set free. Elections were suborned, and Clinton was hardly the only public servant to be attacked by the Republican slime-and-destroy machine, now in the paws of the nation’s district attorneys. At least one governor was framed and sent to jail. In today’s paper, there was a story of a indictment of Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales in which the judge, another corrupt, bent Republican stooge, actually tried to dismiss the charges before they were legally filed.

What the fuck is wrong with America, you ask? It got taken over by corrupt, amoral Republican crooks, and nobody has the balls to make them pay for their crimes. And now, they are just clinging on, hoping that the entire country won’t collapse before the mess is foisted off on President-elect Obama, and trying like hell to blame him for the situation they created.
And while they are doing that, they are waiting for Putsch’s preemptive pardons, the ones that ensure that they will never have to face their responsibility for the millions of lives lost and the trillions of dollars squandered or stolen. They’ll never have to stand in open court and explain why they insisted Saddam had nukes when he didn’t, or why NORAD was ordered to stand down on the morning of 9/11, or why Governor Siegleman was sent to jail, or why Putsch suddenly fired all those Federal attorneys and replaced them with ones willing to investigate Democratic candidates for office.

The Republicans, who laughingly describe themselves as the party of personal responsibility, desperately need those presidential pardons issued preemptively so they can skate, never pay a dime, and crow that if they were criminals, why weren’t they ever put on trial?
If that doesn’t sicken you, then you are morally bankrupt or worse, a Republican.
That’s why it is so important that impeachment proceedings be started now in the Democratic House of Representatives against George W. Bush. He won’t actually be impeached in the 58 days remaining before he leaves office, making an impeachment moot. There isn’t time.

But the Constitution, the one which grants Presidents the power to pardon, has one exception: A president may pardon, “except in cases of impeachment.” As I read it, it means that not only may a president not pardon any high public officials who are facing impeachment, but it means that a president who is facing the impeachment process may not use it in any way that could undermine the process against himself.

Putsch will abuse it and use it to take himself and his cronies off the hook. Don’t doubt that for an instant.

And don’t doubt that it will be another emotional and moral body blow to Americans, who had just regained a little self-respect and a lot of hope from electing Obama and throwing off the Republican reign of sleaze.

It isn’t just a matter of vindictiveness against Putsch, although personally I would be delighted if he spent the rest of his natural life rotting away in a jail cell. It’s because America, which has always prided itself on justice, and avenging wrongs, has faced terrible injustice and wrongs for the past eight years, and needs the opportunity to address it through rule of law, in open court, and by the standards of the civilized world.

Don’t let Putsch get away with his crimes. Impeach the little bastard now, and make him eventually face a jury to explain himself.

I'm The One They're Talking About

With all the vitriol I've been hearing from the right-wingers of late, I can't help but recognize myself as the target of their vicious attacks. So I thought I'd take this opportunity to out myself, just so they know who it is they're spending so much time talking about.

Yes, I'm that American-hating broad who believes in life, liberty and equality for all Americans, not just those of a "socially acceptable" color, religion, address, pay scale or political affiliation.

I'm that leftie pro-choicer who thinks that every child should be a wanted child, and that the ultimate decision to give birth should be the difficult yet intensely personal decision of the woman whose body and life is involved. I also believe that people who really care about saving babies might want to think about the ones who are already born – especially the ones born in places our government is currently blowing off the map, or might plan to in future.

I'm that infamous anti-Christian who actually believes that I am my Brother's Keeper – and that includes supporting legal immigration and social safety-nets that provide food for the hungry, shelter for the homeless, care for the sick – you know, all that yadda-yadda stuff that Christ used to preach about back when people who called themselves Christians had a passing familiarity with his teachings. I also believe that just because Christ was tortured to death doesn't mean he was promoting the idea as something we are free to do to others with his approval.

I'm that unscrupulous libertine who has deluded myself into thinking that if the gay couple down the street get married, they're not going to destroy every heterosexual marriage in the neighborhood – and by the way, I've yet to hear a coherent argument as to how that would happen if they did.

I'm that unpatriotic wench who thinks that sporting a flag pin in your lapel doesn't mean squat if you're wearing it while supporting pay-cuts for the troops, or budget cuts to veterans' care, and more tax cuts for millionaires – or, for that matter, calling anyone and everyone who disagrees with you "unpatriotic" because you really have nothing of substance to say, but just love the sound of your own meaningless rhetoric blasted over the airwaves.

I'm that blatant sexist who thinks that if someone like Sarah Palin has nothing more to offer than being "hot" while seeking the office of the vice presidency, she'd better have something more in her training bra than a wad of Kleenex – like actual knowledge of the responsibilities of the job, for starters.

I'm that socialist leftie who thinks people should reap the financial rewards of their own hard work while the CEOs of the corporations they toil for share the resulting profits, rather than pocket them all while throwing crumbs to those whose labor created those profits in the first place. Yup, that's me - another anti-capitalist, spouting my big mouth off when oil companies earning record profits get tax subsidies, as though they don't deserve them.

I'm that big city chick, who couldn't possibly share the same values of Joe the Plumber, or the midwestern farmer, or the small-town librarian - or anyone who, unlike me, was raised in the right pocket of Americana - wherever that may be.

I'm that no-good Bush-basher who had the gall to notice that an idiot who couldn't string two words together without getting both of them wrong would inevitably lead this country into an unwinnable war (or two), financial ruin, complete moral failure, and global disgrace.

And while I'm at it, I may as well come completely clean – because, let's face it, you've got me dead-to-rights: I'm also a tree-huggin' environmentalist who believes in such outrageous ideas as protecting the environment, upholding the Constitution, equal treatment under the law, and civil rights – and the hypocrisy of people who call ME un-American makes me speechless (almost!) with fury.

So now that you know who I am, please feel free to vent about me all you want. I'm proud of who I am, what I believe in, and what I stand for.

But don't be embarrassed by not recognizing me in a crowd – you see, there are tens of millions like me, and you know what they say: All those liberal anti-Americans look alike. And we're all about to vote alike – which means voting your asses out of office.

And the next time you think about calling people like me anti-American, you might want to look back at what this election has been all about - and who the REAL Americans truly are...........Nance Greggs at Democratic Underground


"I'll second that" - - Magginkat - www.ProudLiberalBitch.com



Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning, Satan shudders & says... "Oh shit....she's awake!!"....http://grandmamaggies.blogspot.com/

The Times They Are A-Changing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D9S48A81os&feature=related

Come gather 'round people where ever you roam

And admit that the waters around you have grown

And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone

If your time to you is worth savin'

Then you better start swimmin' or you'll sink like a stone,

For the times they are a' changin'!

Come writers and critics who prophesy with your pen

And keep your eyes wide the chance won't come again

And don't speak too soon for the wheel's still in spin

And there's no tellin' who that it's namin'

For the loser now will be later to win

For the times they are a' changin'!

Come senators, congressmen please heed the call

Don't stand in the doorway don't block up the hall

For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled

There's a battle outside and it's ragin'

It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls

For the times they are a' changin'!

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land

And don't criticize what you can't understand

Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command

Your old road is rapidly agin'

Please get out of the new one if you can't lend your hand

For the times they are a' changin'!

The line it is drawn the curse it is cast

The slow one now will later be fast

As the present now will later be past

The order is rapidly fadin'

And the first one now will later be last

For the times they are a' changin'