We're not an "each and every item in the Times" site. I've spent about enough time on the paper as I care to already this morning so go over to BuzzFlash for other news this morning. (Were the bombs in London home made? Go find the link. More on Rove, go find the links. There's a ton of stuff up there.)
There's a link to an op-ed from the Times on the Patriot Act. (I haven't read the op-ed and wouldn't critique it here if I had.) So let's go over to the Bill of Rights Defense Committee:
Congress about to reauthorize USA PATRIOT Act! The House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees plan to mark up USA PATRIOT Act reauthorization bills the week of July 11, and have a floor vote the week of July 18. Your representative needs to hear from you! Subscribe to BORDC's e-mail newsletter and action alerts to stay up to date on the progress of these bills. Read about the provisions of the PATRIOT Act subject to sunset.
the gina & krista round-robin has been providing you with links (if you get the round-robin) for weeks now so use some of that contact information today.
Kara's e-mailed to note Katrina vanden Heuvel's latest ("More Bush Lies") and we'll note it here and not in the mid-morning Democracy Now! post:
In his recent Nation web piece, "Profiles in Cowardice," William Greider rightly took aim at Democrats who may be "preparing to take a dive on the issue they have righteously hammered for four years--repeal of the estate tax."
If any more evidence was needed that Dems need to hang tough on this defining issue, they should read David Cay Johnston's stunning, and inexplicably buried New York Times article "Few Wealthy Farmers Owe Estate Taxes, Report Says." (In my edition it was published on page A 30.)
Johnston is America's premier journalist on the inequities of Bush's tax policies. His clear reporting has consistently exposed how the working class is getting screwed by an Administration which gives hundreds of billions in tax breaks to the wealthiest one percent, while cutting back on health care, education, affordable housing, veterans' needs and programs for everyone else.
Remember back in June 2001, Bush said he'd talked to farmers who told him the estate tax (or in GOP doublespeak, "the death tax") had destroyed their family farms? And you know all those Republican spinners like Grover Norquist and Frank Luntz who prattle on about how the estate tax is destroying family farming? Well, according to a Congressional Budget Office report released last week, they're not telling us the truth.
And Lloyd e-mails to note Ruth Conniff's latest "A Terrible Symbiosis:"
In a speech to the FBI training academy in Quantico, Virginia, today, the President declared Iraq the "central front" in the war on terror.
The bombs that killed at least 50 commuters in London last week show that his policies in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world are necessary, the President said, and that we must keep on fighting the war on terror. He also used the tragedy in London to plug the reauthorization of the U.S. Patriot Act.
In a speech that made the most cynical use of mass civilian casualties since the Administration took up flogging 9/11 to justify its war against a country that had nothing to do with the downing of the World Trade Center, Bush jumped on the recent bombings to claim that more of the same policies that stirred up the terrorists in London are now in order. http://www.nytimes.com
And yet the Administration's own intelligence shows that there was no Iraq-Al Queda connection--at least until the U.S. invasion turned that country into a magnet for terrorists-in-training.
The President said today that winning the war in Iraq will help put an end to terrorism because "free societies are peaceful societies." Tell that to the rush-hour commuters of London. Or to the New Yorkers who got on subways this morning with the jittery feeling that the next attack could be at any local station.
And we'll note BuzzFlash's latest editorial "If a Mob Boss Says to a Hit Man, "Kill Jim Smith's Wife," Can He Claim He Didn't Order the Murder Because He Didn't Mention Her Name? Apparently, That's Karl Rove's Thinking:"
We've warned BuzzFlash readers not to get too overjoyed about the reports of Karl Rove being nailed as one of the two people who outed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative specializing in tracking the illicit sales of WMD at a time that he was orchestrating the propaganda to start a war based on a nation possessing illicit WMD (which they didn't actually possess).
It is so monstrously treasonous -- such a big lie and betrayal -- that it is hard to believe.
But it is, apparently, true.
However, the Bush Administration is, it appears, adopting a strategy of toughing out their treason by claiming that Karl Rove didn't actually "name" Valerie Plame to Matt Cooper, among other "reporters." Rove did, according to "Time" e-mails, assert that Joe Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and specialized in WMD, but he, apparently, will assert that he didn't utter the name "Valerie Plame."
(Micah e-mailed to note the editorial.)
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
