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Are House Republicans ethical? 
Pelosi Seeks Special Counsel for an Inquiry on DeLay by Charles Babington
The House's top Democrat yesterday called for a special counsel to look into Majority Leader Tom DeLay's role in an embattled Texas political action committee, ratcheting up an ethics dispute that has gripped the House in the closing days of the 108th Congress.
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) surprised Republicans by gaining the House floor just after a 6:30 p.m. roll call, when the chamber was nearly full. Before they could rule her out of order, she introduced a resolution condemning DeLay (R-Tex.). GOP members sat stone-faced as the House clerk read the resolution's summation of the House ethics committee's four admonishments of DeLay's conduct, three in the past eight days.
Pelosi called on the committee to pursue another allegation, which it had deferred this week, and to hire an outside lawyer to help. Her resolution said DeLay has "displayed contempt" for the bipartisan panel by claiming that he had been exonerated and by calling the charges frivolous. Republicans immediately set the resolution aside on a party-line vote.
The 10-minute drama constituted the Democrats' first coordinated response to Wednesday's report in which the ethics committee's five Republicans and five Democrats admonished DeLay and warned him to "temper your future actions." Republicans responded with a flood of statements defending DeLay, ridiculing the charges and blaming vengeful Democrats for the fuss. [more]
Republicans really understand democracy
Call Made to Discourage Voting by Erica Taylor
Local republicans get a slap on the wrist after they are accused of trying to persuade democrats not to vote.
Most polls show that the race between President George W. Bush and Sen. John Kerry is still very close in West Virginia, and each camp is going the distance to clench a victory for their candidate.
But now, election officials believe some in the Eastern Panhandle are going too far.
In a letter, Berkeley County clerk John Smalls cites calls from a cell phone were made to Eastern Panhandle democrats telling them that they were not registered to vote. The letter also said the calls informed democrats in some cases they wouldn`t be able to vote on Election Day.
John Ott is the top election official in Jefferson County. "This is an improper act and they should notify the proper authorities," he said.
It`s considered an improper act because when upset citizens called the voter registration office to make sure they were registered to vote, indeed they were. So, who made these misleading calls? The Berkeley County Clerk`s Office traced the number voters gave as the source back to the Eastern Panhandle Republican Headquarters. [more]
Laughable
Bush, from the debate:
I remember sitting in the White House looking at those generals, saying do you have what you need in this war? Do you have what it takes? I remember going down to the basement of the White House the day we committed our troops as last resort. Looking at Tommy Franks and the generals on the ground. Asking them do we have the right plan with the right troop level? And they looked me in the eye and said, yes, sir, Mr. president.
Of course, I listened to our generals. That's what a president does. A president tests the strategy and relies upon good military people to execute that strategy.
If what Bush said isn't a bald-faced lie, then Tommy Franks and the generals on the ground responded they way they did because they knew that Bush would do to them exactly what he did to General Eric K. Shinseki if they responded otherwise.
Eric Shinseki
Scorned general's tactics proved right by Matthew Engel
Blind Into Baghdad by James Fallows
Shinseki vs. Wolfowitz by Michael E. O'Hanlon
'My name is Shinseki and I am a soldier' by Ramon Farolan
Beginning the Shinseki Vindication
Bush should have listened to General Shinseki, and fired Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, etc., etc., etc.
More on the most revealing question of the night
If you want to know more about just how bad a president Bush is, spend some time studying the writings of some of Bush's "mistaken appointments."
Joshua Micah Marshall has more
Swiftboat swift one
Conservative TV Group to Air Anti-Kerry Film by Elizabeth Jensen
The conservative-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group, whose television outlets reach nearly a quarter of the nation's homes with TV, is ordering its stations to preempt regular programming just days before the Nov. 2 election to air a film that attacks Sen. John F. Kerry's activism against the Vietnam War, network and station executives familiar with the plan said Friday.
Sinclair's programming plan, communicated to executives in recent days and coming in the thick of a close and intense presidential race, is highly unusual even in a political season that has been marked by media controversies.
Sinclair has told its stations -- many of them in political swing states such as Ohio and Florida -- to air "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal," sources said. The film, funded by Pennsylvania veterans and produced by a veteran and former Washington Times reporter, features former POWs accusing Kerry -- a decorated Navy veteran turned war protester -- of worsening their ordeal by prolonging the war. Sinclair will preempt regular prime-time programming from the networks to show the film, which may be classified as news programming, according to TV executives familiar with the plan.
Executives at Sinclair did not return calls seeking comment, but the Kerry campaign accused the company of pressuring its stations to influence the political process.
"It's not the American way for powerful corporations to strong-arm local broadcasters to air lies promoting a political agenda," said David Wade, a spokesman for the Democratic nominee's campaign. "It's beyond yellow journalism; it's a smear bankrolled by Republican money, and I don't think Americans will stand for it." [more]
ANTI-KERRY FILM TO AIR ON 1/4 OF NATION'S TV'S RIGHT BEFORE THE ELECTION AMERICAblog
Folks, this is the most outrageous thing I've read this election. A conservative group that owns TV outlets that reach into nearly a quarter of the nation's homes is FORCING its local stations to PREEMPT ITS REGULAR PRIME-TIME COVERAGE, just days before the election, to air a film attacking Kerry's military record.
I won't even bother repeating the story here - you can read it all in the Los Angeles Times. The conservative group is the same one that refused to air Nightline's homage to our fallen troops.
Read the article and then someone out there find out which EXACT local stations belong to this Sinclair Broadcast Group. We are going to take those stations down. I want to know the exact stations, with proof (find me the source), then I want to help coordinate a campaign to kill their advertising. I cannot run a second Web site, someone else needs to start it and run, but you can copy it after our StopDrLaura.com campaign (the site is still up as an archive), and I'm happy to give advice and help with publicity.
We need to know which of our local stations is in bed with the president and this right-wing zealot and we need to destroy them. I'm talking get every single advertiser to leave those stations. Publish the advertisers email and phone and contact them, demanding that they stop funneling their money to partisan un-American TV zealots who are trying to throw our election. I suspect most advertisers will not like hearing about this story.
The most revealing question of the night
Q: President Bush, during the last four years, you have made thousands of decisions that have affected millions of lives. Please give three instances in which you came to realize you had made a wrong decision and what you did to correct it. Thank you.
Mr. Bush: I - I have made a lot of decisions and some of them little, like appointments to boards you've never heard of, and some of them big. And in a war there's a lot of - there's a lot of tactical decisions that historians will look back and say, he shouldn't have done that, he shouldn't have made that decision. And I'll take responsibility for them. I'm human.
But on the big questions, about whether or not we should have gone into Afghanistan, the big question about whether we should have removed somebody in Iraq - I'll stand by those decisions because I think they're right. It's really what your - when they ask about the mistakes, that's what they're talking about. They're trying to say, did you make a mistake going into Iraq? And the answer is absolutely not. It was the right decision.
The Duelfer report confirmed that decision today because what Saddam Hussein was doing was trying to get rid of sanctions so he could reconstitute a weapons program and the biggest threat facing America is terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. We knew he hated us. We knew he'd been - invaded other countries. We knew he tortured his own people.
On the tax cut, it's a big decision. I did the right decision. Our recession was one of the shallowest in modern history.
Now you ask what mistakes. I've made some mistakes in appointing people, but I'm not going to name them. I don't want to hurt their feelings on national TV.
But history will look back and I'm fully prepared to accept any mistakes that history judges to my administration. Because the president makes the decisions, the president has to take the responsibility.
If it weren't for the weakness of those unnamed (don't want to hurt any feelings on national TV) appointees, and future historical revisionists, Bush would be perfect.
Debate transcript
The President of the United States?
The Scary Little Man by William Rivers Pitt
(...)
... Exactly 30 minutes into the debate, Bush became so agitated by Kerry's description of the "back-door draft," which is literally bleeding the life out of our National Guard and Reserve forces, that he lunged out of his chair and shrieked over moderator Charles Gibson, who was trying to maintain some semblance of decorum.
"You tell Tony Blair we're going alone," Bush roared. "Tell Tony Blair we're going alone!" The disturbed murmur from the crowd was audible. Bush, simply, frightened them.
More unsettling than Bush's demonstrable agitation was his almost uncanny disconnect from reality.
The voluminous report released by Charles Duelfer and the Iraq Survey Group, compiled by 1,625 U.N. and U.S. weapons inspectors after two years of searching some 1,700 sites in Iraq at a cost of more than $1 billion, stated flatly that no weapons of mass destruction exist in that nation, that no weapons of mass destruction have existed in that nation for years, and that any capacity to develop weapons of mass destruction within that nation has been crumbling for the same amount of years.
"My opponent said that America must pass a global test before we used force to protect ourselves," said Bush during the Iraq phase of the debate. "That's the kind of mindset that says sanctions were working. That's the kind of mindset that said, 'Let's keep it at the United Nations and hope things go well.' Saddam Hussein was a threat because he could have given weapons of mass destruction to terrorist enemies. Sanctions were not working."
What? First of all, the Duelfer Report proves beyond any question that sanctions had worked incredibly well. The stuff wasn't there, because Scott Ritter and the UNSCOM inspectors destroyed it all during the 1990s, along with any and all equipment and facilities to make it. The stuff wasn't there because the sanctions put into place against Hussein prevented him from getting any material to develop weapons. The stuff wasn't there because Hussein stopped making it years ago, because the sanctions were breaking his back. The sanctions worked.
When Bush made the statement about Hussein giving weapons of mass destruction to "terrorist enemies," the needle edged over from 'Dumb' to 'Deranged.' How many different ways must one say "The stuff wasn't there" before George picks up the clue phone? How does someone give away something he doesn't have?
Bush continued in this appalling vein when he said, "He keeps talking about, 'Let the inspectors do their job.' It's naive and dangerous to say that. That's what the Duelfer report showed." Welcome to Bush World, where everything is upside down and two plus two equals a bag of hammers. It is naive and dangerous to point out that the inspectors got the job done in the 1990s, that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction whatsoever? No, George. It is simply the truth. [more]
Oliver Willis has a clip from the debate which pretty much sums up the difference between Kerry and Bush. Check it out. Bush Flips Out.
What was that wood joke all about?
Are Bush and Cheney "Small Businesses?" Their Ad Counts Them As Such: A Bush-Cheney ad says Kerry would raise taxes for 900,000 "small businesses" and "hurt jobs." It's a big exaggeration.
A Bush-Cheney '04 ad claims Kerry would raise taxes on 900,000 small businesses and "hurt jobs." But it counts every high-salaried person who has even $1 of outside business income as a "small business owner" -- a definition so broad that even Bush and Cheney have qualified while in office. In fact, hundreds of thousands of those "small businesses" have no jobs to offer.
Furthermore, by the Bush definition 32 million "small businesses" would see no tax increase. The ad doesn't mention that, of course. Nor does it mention Kerry's proposals for some tax cuts specifically targeted for small businesses.
(Update, Oct. 1: After this article was posted, the Tax Policy Center issued a new estimate that the number of small employers is 471,000 -- barely half the number the Bush ad claims.)
(...)
President Bush himself would have qualified as a "small business owner" under the Republican definition, based on his 2001 federal income tax returns. He reported $84 of business income from his part ownership of a timber-growing enterprise. However, 99.99% of Bush's total income came from other sources that year. (Bush also qualified as a "small business owner" in 2000 based on $314 of "business income," but not in 2002 and 2003 when he reported his timber income as "royalties" on a different tax schedule.)
(Oct 9; CORRECTION: What we originally reported as a "timber-growing" enterprise is actually described on Bush's tax return as an "oil and gas production" concern, the Lone Star Trust. We were confused because The Lone Star Trust currently owns 50% of another company, "LSTF, LLC", described on Bush¹s 2003 financial disclosure forms as a limited-liability company organized "for the purpose of the production of trees for commercial sales." So, Bush does own part interest in a tree-growing company, but the $84 came from an oil and gas company and we should have reported it as such.)
Vice President Cheney and his wife Lynne qualify as "small business owners" for 2003 because 3.5% of the total income reported on their tax returns was business income from Mrs. Cheney's consulting business. She reported $44,580 in business income on Schedule C, nearly all of it from fees paid to her as a director of the Reader's Digest . But giving the Cheneys a tax cut didn't stimulate any hiring; she reported zero employees. [more]
To fully understand this issue read the entire article, prepared by the nonpartisan FactCheck.org to which Dick Cheney referred in the Vice Presidential Debate.
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