The Obfuscation Report

Labels: George W Bush, Iraq, Pentagon, protests, Rocky Anderson, torture

Staff and agencies
Friday March 16, 2007

Guardian Unlimited

The world experienced its warmest period on record during this year's northern hemisphere winter, the US government said today.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration report said the globally averaged combined land and sea surface temperature for December to February was the highest since records began in 1880.

During the three-month period, known as boreal winter, temperatures were above average worldwide, with the exception of Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and areas in central United States.

The global average was 0.72C higher than the previous record in 2004, but the report did not provide an absolute temperature for the period. An NOAA spokesman told Reuters news agency that the deviation from the mean was what was important.

A significant contributing factor to the record warmth was an El Niño weather pattern, a periodic warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean. It was particularly strong in January - the warmest January ever - but the ocean surface had since begun to cool.

In the northern hemisphere, the combined land and water temperature was the warmest ever at 0.91C, while the southern hemisphere, where it was summer, recorded a temperature 0.49C above average, which was the fourth warmest.

The global temperature of land surface alone during this period was also the warmest on record, while the ocean surface temperature was the equal second warmest, with the equatorial Pacific, North and South Atlantic, and the South Indian oceans all recording warmer than average temperatures.

During the past century, global temperatures had increased at about 0.06C each decade, but the increase had been three times larger since 1976, at about 0.18C per decade, the report said.

The 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1995.

The report comes just over a month after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said global warming had very likely been caused by human actions and was so severe it would continue for centuries. Most scientists attribute the rising temperatures to so-called greenhouse gases, which build up in the atmosphere and trap heat from the sun.

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"The whole (global warming) thing is created to destroy America's free enterprise system and our economic stability."
- Jerry Falwell

“Global warming is indeed a scam, perpetrated by scientists with vested interests, but in need of crash courses in geology, logic and the philosophy of science.”

Dr Martin Keeley

With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it.

JAMES M. INHOFE, speech in U.S. Senate, July 28, 2003

Yes, there is still much about global warming we have to learn and research should continue. But the longer we delay, the more CO2 will build up in the atmosphere. It stays there a long time. If we wait too long before acting, we will pass a point of no return and lock ourselves into centuries of global warming. We could pass one of those dangerous tipping points that could make life very difficult. It's a risk we shouldn't take.

JIM DIPESO, speech, May 1, 2003

Global warming -- at least the modern nightmare vision -- is a myth. I am sure of it and so are a growing number of scientists. But what is really worrying is that the world's politicians and policy makers are not.

DAVID BELLAMY, Daily Mail, July 9, 2004

I believe that global warming is a myth. And so, therefore, I have no conscience problems at all and I'm going to buy a Suburban next time.
Jerry Falwell

Much of the debate over global warming is predicated on fear, rather than science.
James Inhofe

Climate changes. It's warmed a little. The issue is, is it a bad thing? It may be a good thing. John Stossel

There are many who still do not believe that global warming is a problem at all. And it's no wonder: because they are the targets of a massive and well-organized campaign of disinformation lavishly funded by polluters who are determined to prevent any action to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming out of a fear that their profits might be affected if they had to stop dumping so much pollution into the atmosphere.
Al Gore

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On February 14, CNN's Wolf Blitzer and Fox News Channel's Megyn Kelly and Brit Hume all reported on the cancellation of a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee hearing on climate change due to severe winter weather conditions in Washington, D.C., with both Blitzer and Kelly deeming the turn of events "ironic," suggesting that cold weather and snow in February cast doubt on the existence of global warming.

On the February 14 edition of CNN's The Situation Room, host Blitzer said: "And, of course, all the severe winter weather is coming amid growing concern about global warming. In fact, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee was scheduled to hold a hearing on all things global warming this morning. Ironically -- get this -- it was canceled because of the winter weather conditions here in the nation's capital. It's cold out there."

On the February 14 edition of Fox News Channel's America's Newsroom, anchor Kelly said, "And how's this for irony? The House Subcommittee on Energy and Air Quality had to cancel its 10 a.m. hearing today. Lawmakers there were going to talk about global warming. Instead, dealing with a national freeze."

On the February 14 edition Fox News' Special Report with Brit Hume, anchor Hume said, "A House subcommittee hearing on climate change and the warming of the planet was called off today because of the snow and ice storm that hit Washington. And in St. Louis, a scheduled showing of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth movie on global warming was canceled by Maryville University because of the harsh winter weather."

News of cancellation of the climate change hearing and, as Hume reported, a showing of An Inconvenient Truth, the former vice president's documentary on global warming, both due to cold weather conditions, also appeared on the Drudge Report, the website of Internet gossip Matt Drudge. The weblog Think Progress noted that some right-wing bloggers cited the Drudge story as evidence that global warming does not exist.

On February 15, The Washington Times also reported the cancellation of the climate change hearing, and noted that "[t]he news was pointed out by climate-change skeptics and was a lead headline on the Drudge Report."

As Media Matters for America has previously documented, weather in a given portion of the United States at any one time is not indicative of whether the Earth is warming. As the National Climatic Data Center noted in its preliminary 2006 report, "[f]ollowing the warmest year on record for the globe in 2005, the annual global temperature for 2006 is expected to be sixth warmest since recordkeeping began in 1880." That report also noted that "the 2006 annual average temperature for the contiguous United States (based on preliminary data) will likely be 2°F (1.1°C) above the 20th Century mean, which would make 2006 the third warmest year on record."

Labels: Global Warming, Retarded, Right Wing Misinformation Campaign

This could be George Bush's Watergate.

Eight U.S. Attorneys, fired because they wouldn't follow orders by the Bush Administration.

Fired because they refused to go on witch-hunts against Democrats, or ignored the Republicans' blatant disregard for the law. Fired so that they could be replaced by talking heads and loyalists of the Bush Administration.

When Scooter Libby was convicted, I said that this administration reminded me of Richard Nixon's administration -- more obsessed with their critics than with the jobs the American people entrust them with. But this latest White House scandal takes that comparison to another level.

Just what did George Bush, Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales and the rest of the Bush White House and Republican senior staff know about the Justice Department firings -- and when did they know it?

Join us in our effort to use the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to try to cut through the White House's nonsense -- the finger-pointing, the lies, the cover-up. Americans have a right to access any and all records between the Republican National Committee, other Republican party committees, and the Department of Justice in order to get to the bottom of this investigation.

Sign our FOIA request:

http://www.democrats.org/RNCFOIA

"I can accept that mistakes were made."

When Attorney General Alberto Gonzales uttered those words yesterday, he admitted what many had suspected: that eight U.S. prosecutors were improperly fired -- and, because of a Patriot Act provision slipped in by Congressional Republicans, replaced with Bush Administration cronies. The fired attorneys included:

• Carol Lam, who prosecuted former Republican Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham for bribery, and who was actively investigating Republican House Appropriations Chairman Jerry Lewis at the time of her dismissal;
• Paul Charlton, who was investigating Republican Congressman Rick Renzi for bribery and illegal land dealings, and who had publicly clashed with the Bush Administration over the merits of the death penalty; and
• David Iglesias, a commander in the U.S. Navy Reserve and the basis for Tom Cruise's character in A Few Good Men, who was pressured by Republicans to indict Democratic politicians prior to the 2006 elections.

In January, Gonzales claimed that he would "never, ever make a change in a United States attorney for political reasons or if it would in any way jeopardize an ongoing serious investigation." Justice Department officials claimed the firings were part of standard personnel turnover.

But when questioned by Congress, Gonzales's deputy, Paul McNulty, claimed they were fired for poor performance -- even though most of the fired attorneys had received excellent performance reviews.

Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and President Bush himself were in contact with Gonzales's office about the attorneys. Just weeks after Bush spoke to Gonzales, they were fired.

Former Washington state GOP Chairman Chris Vance admitted to pressuring fired U.S. Attorney John McKay to investigate Democrats at the urging of the "White House's political office." And emails released yesterday show that White House deputy political director and former RNC opposition researcher J. Scott Jennings used an RNC email account to talk with Justice Department about the appointment of U.S. Attorney and former Karl Rove aide Tim Griffin.

These revelations raise even more questions -- and it's time for answers. Add your name to the FOIA Request, and demand accountability from the White House:

http://www.democrats.org/RNCFOIA

In an all-too-familiar scene, Gonzales's chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, resigned over the scandal. But we won't let Sampson be the fall guy for another Bush Administration cover-up.

Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Scooter Libby, already took the fall for the Bush Administration's orchestrated leak of a CIA agent's identity. And incompetent FEMA Director and Bush buddy Michael Brown took the fall for our president's disgraceful reaction to Hurricane Katrina -- while the Gulf Coast remains in shambles.

Just like the Nixon Administration, cronyism and corruption has hollowed this White House from the inside-out.

It's time for Republicans to stop spinning such a tangled web of deceit to get what they want. Some Democratic Senators have already called for Alberto Gonzales's resignation. But this is part of a much bigger problem.

The purge of U.S. Attorneys wasn't a "mistake," as Alberto Gonzales claims. It was part of a long, calculated effort by the Bush Administration and the Republican Party to silence its critics and remain above the law.

Help us use this FOIA request to go beyond the lies and reveal the truth behind the White House, Justice Department, and Republican Party's corruption. The American people deserve nothing less:

http://www.democrats.org/RNCFOIA

Sincerely,

Governor Howard Dean, M.D.

Labels: Howard Dean, take action

Statements on Firing of Prosecutors Are Key Issue
By Dan Eggen

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 15, 2007; A01

In testimony on Jan. 18, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales assured the Senate Judiciary Committee that the Justice Department had no intention of avoiding Senate input on the hiring of U.S. attorneys.

Just a month earlier, D. Kyle Sampson, who was then Gonzales's chief of staff, laid out a plan to do just that. In an e-mail, he detailed a strategy for evading Arkansas Democrats in installing Tim Griffin, a former GOP operative and protege of presidential adviser Karl Rove, as the U.S. attorney in Little Rock.

"We should gum this to death," Sampson wrote to a White House aide on Dec. 19. "[A]sk the senators to give Tim a chance . . . then we can tell them we'll look for other candidates, ask them for recommendations, evaluate the recommendations, interview their candidates, and otherwise run out the clock. All of this should be done in 'good faith,' of course."

The conflict between documents released this week and previous administration statements is quickly becoming the central issue for lawmakers who are angry about the way Gonzales and his aides handled the coordinated firings of eight U.S. attorneys last year.

Democrats and Republicans are demanding to know whether Gonzales, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty and other Justice officials misled them in sworn testimony over the past two months. Yesterday, Republican Sen. John E. Sununu (N.H.) joined a handful of Democrats in calling on President Bush to fire his attorney general and longtime friend.

Gonzales has declined to address the apparent contradictions in detail, saying only that he was unaware of the specifics of the plan that Sampson was orchestrating.

The inconsistencies between Justice's positions and the documents are numerous. On Feb. 23, for example, a Justice legislative affairs aide wrote to Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) that the department "was not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin." But internal Justice e-mails show that "getting him appointed is important" to Rove and was closely monitored by political aides in the White House.

Last week, senior Justice official William E. Moschella told a House Judiciary subcommittee that the White House was not consulted on the firings until the end of the process.

But the documents released this week show that the plan began more than two years ago at the White House counsel's office, which initially suggested firing all 93 U.S. attorneys. Gonzales rejected that idea, and Sampson wrote back in January 2006 that Justice and the White House should "work together to seek the replacement of a limited number of U.S. Attorneys."

Schumer argued this week that Sampson "may well have obstructed justice" by not disclosing his communications to Congress and other senior Justice officials, who had said for weeks that the White House had only a limited role in the removals. "There has been misleading statement after misleading statement, and these have been deliberately misleading statements," Schumer said yesterday.

The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers also called yesterday for investigations by Congress and a special prosecutor looking at "whether any official has testified falsely in violation of federal perjury and obstruction of justice statutes."

Legal scholars noted yesterday that prosecutions in connection with lying to or misleading Congress are uncommon.

Sampson, who resigned on Monday as the e-mails and memos came to light, has hired a lawyer, Bradford A. Berenson, who worked under Gonzales in the White House counsel's office from 2001 to 2003. Sampson also worked there during most of that time.

Most lawmakers have stopped short of alleging any illegality, and Gonzales implicitly laid the blame for providing "incomplete information" to Congress on Sampson.

"I regret the fact that information was not adequately shared with individuals within the Department of Justice and that, consequently, information was shared with the Congress that was incomplete," Gonzales said during a brief news conference Tuesday, in which he conceded that "mistakes were made" in the firings.

McNulty, Moschella and other Justice officials were enraged when they found out about the communications last Thursday, when Sampson produced the documents, according to officials who declined to speak for attribution in discussing internal Justice matters.

Many Democrats have focused on the Feb. 6 testimony by McNulty, who appeared before the Senate judiciary panel for several hours to mount a strong defense of the legality and propriety of the prosecutor firings.

McNulty told the committee that there was no plan to use Gonzales's appointment powers to evade Senate oversight, that accusations of "politicizing" the hiring and firing process were "completely contrary to my daily experience," and that the dismissals of everyone but the Arkansas prosecutor were purely "performance-related."

Each of those contentions is called into question by the 143 pages of internal e-mails and other documents turned over to the House and the Senate on Tuesday. Most had been sent or received by Sampson.

Political considerations, for example, figured prominently in who was chosen to be fired. Sampson ranked all 93 U.S. attorneys in part on whether they "exhibited loyalty" to Bush and Gonzales or "chafed against Administration initiatives etc."

Legal scholars say that prosecutions related to lying to or misleading Congress are rare, and that they usually focus on cases in which a defendant is alleged to have clearly lied or destroyed evidence in an attempt to mislead lawmakers. One recent example was the prosecution of former White House aide David H. Safavian, who was sentenced to 18 months in prison for lying to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee and others.

Stephen Gillers, a law professor at New York University, said several statutes involving obstruction of justice and perjury can be applied to cases in which witnesses allegedly mislead lawmakers.

"The law essentially says what you can't do is lead Congress off on the wrong trail or to the wrong conclusion, even if what you say is technically true," Gillers said. "But it's very rare to actually have prosecutions for lying to Congress."

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

Labels: Alberto Gonzales, Keystone Cops, Lied under Oath

US: Some violence in Iraq is Civil War

Pentagon offers bleak assessment

By Globe Wire Services | March 15, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The US military for the first time yesterday said in a new report that some of the violence in Iraq can be described as a civil war.

In its bleakest assessment of the war to date, a quarterly Pentagon report said that last October through December was the most violent three-month period since 2003. Attacks and casualties suffered by coalition and Iraqi forces and civilians were higher than any other similar time span, according to the report.

Most of the data in the Pentagon's 42-page report is before President Bush ordered an additional 21,500 troops and thousands of support personnel to Baghdad to combat the escalating violence there. The report cautions that it should be considered "a baseline from which to measure future progress."

The Pentagon report was issued as Iraqi officials issued an upbeat assessment yesterday of the impact of the crackdown in Baghdad.

Members of the Bush administration have been loath to say that the US military is struggling to quell a civil war, and the report agreed that the term does not capture the complex situation there.

But it added, "Some elements of the situation in Iraq are properly descriptive of a 'civil war,' including the hardening of ethno-sectarian identities and mobilization, the changing character of the violence , and population displacements."

A similar assessment released by the US intelligence community last month came to roughly the same conclusion.

The Pentagon's report is the latest in a series of quarterly updates put out by the Pentagon, measuring the security and stability in Iraq. In detailing the increase in violence, the report said that 80 percent of the attacks from November through January were concentrated in four provinces -- Baghdad, Anbar, Diyala, and Salah ad Din -- with Baghdad seeing a record 45 attacks per day. The other three provinces saw more than 70 attacks per day, during the same time frame.

The report showed that there were an average of more than 1,000 attacks per week, compared with nearly 1,000 per week in the last quarter, and about 800 per week during the May-to-August period. The reports provide bar charts but not exact numbers.

It also noted that while most of the attacks are directed against coalition forces, the majority of the casualties are suffered by Iraqis.

In Baghdad, Iraqi officials yesterday touted the successes of the crackdown, seen as a last-ditch attempt to quell the civil war, by noting that civilian casualties had dropped sharply in the first month of the plan.

Their US counterparts, however, offered a more cautious assessment.

Execution-style killings, the hallmark of sectarian death squads, were down by more than 50 percent, said Major General William B. Caldwell, the top US military spokesman in Iraq. But he said "high-profile" car bombings reached an all-time high in February and had the potential "to start that whole cycle of violence again."

US-led forces have focused their efforts in recent days on locating and destroying the facilities that produce car bombs; many of those facilities are believed to be on Baghdad's fringes, Caldwell told reporters at a briefing.

But he appealed for patience, saying it would be months before the United States has all its forces in place and that there might not be a discernible difference in Iraq until "the fall time frame."

Lieutenant General Abboud Qanbar, the Iraqi commander of the Baghdad security plan, said 265 civilians were killed and 781 injured since the crackdown began Feb. 13, compared with 1,440 killed and 3,192 injured the previous month. Sectarian displacement was also decreasing, and about 2,000 families had returned to their homes, he said.

"The achievements of the last 30 days cannot only be evaluated by numbers and statistics," he said at a briefing inside the heavily fortified Green Zone.

Many Sunni Arab and Shi'ite militants are believed to have fled Baghdad, contributing to the apparent decline in sectarian killing in the capital and a spike in attacks in parts of Diyala, Babil, and other outlying provinces.

Violence continued yesterday with at least eight Iraqis killed in a bomb blast and other attacks.

A suicide car bomber exploded his vehicle at a military checkpoint in the Sunni-dominated Baghdad neighborhood of Yarmouk, killing at least one person and injuring four others, police said.
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On a lighter note, Fox News Continued it Comedy Hour with it's regular programming:

Labels: Civil War, Fox News is a Joke, Iraq

In an op-ed today, former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY) declared his opposition to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (after voting for it in 1993) and wrote this:

In World War II, a British mathematician named Alan Turing led the effort to crack the Nazis’ communication code. He mastered the complex German enciphering machine, helping to save the world, and his work laid the basis for modern computer science. Does it matter that Turing was gay? This week, Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said that homosexuality is “immoral” and that the ban on open service should therefore not be changed. Would Pace call Turing “immoral”?

Towleroad points out: “Incidentally, plenty of people did call Turing ‘immoral’ at the time, and he killed himself with a cyanide apple a year after being convicted of ‘gross indecency’ after it was discovered he was in a homosexual relationship. Following that conviction he was ordered to undergo hormone therapy or go to prison.”

Labels: Alan Turing, gay, hero

“What PFAW’s review reveals is a lawyer who too often allows his legal judgment to be driven by his close relationship with the President rather than adherence to the law or the Constitution. The risk that such lack of independence poses … is simply too great to warrant [Gonzales’] confirmation.”
-- Ralph G. Neas, January 4, 2005

“[Gonzales] has never stopped being consigliere to Mr. Bush’s imperial presidency.”
-- The New York Times Editorial Page, March 11, 2007

The evidence of AG Gonzales’ failure has piled up too high and cannot be ignored any longer. If you agree that Gonzales must resign or be removed from office, sign the petition now!

Dear **********,

Enough is enough.

As scandal after scandal emerges, each one shedding new light on the Bush administration’s abuse of power, violations of Americans’ civil liberties and contempt for the Constitution, People For the American Way is calling for the resignation or removal of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as the first step in holding the White House and Department of Justice accountable to the rule of law.

Please sign our petition calling on congressional leaders to demand the resignation or removal of Attorney General Gonzales now!

Two years ago, PFAW vigorously opposed the confirmation of Alberto Gonzales as U.S. Attorney General on the grounds that his loyalties were misplaced, showing a much greater commitment – both personal and political – to President Bush than to the law and the Constitution. It’s not just recent revelations that have confirmed our suspicions, but indeed Gonzales’ entire record as Attorney General.

Here’s a quick glance:

• Defended the Bush administration’s illegal domestic spying program, which operated in secrecy for years in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and was declared unconstitutional by a federal district court
• Falsely suggested in testimony before Congress that the Constitution does not provide the right of habeas corpus
• Continues to back the Bush administration’s authority to hold U.S. detainees without judicial review
• Oversaw the Justice Department’s failure to fully enforce laws that protect every eligible American citizen’s right to vote
• Undermined checks and balances by asserting that the courts have no right to judge the executive branch’s national security policies

And just recently:

• We’ve learned from long-overdue and much-needed congressional oversight hearings that dedicated and effective U.S. Attorneys were forced to resign from their posts for apparent political reasons, to be replaced by individuals chosen by Attorney General Gonzales with no congressional vetting under a little-known provision of the Patriot Act. And recent news reports indicate that the firings were driven by pressure from the White House – including President Bush himself.
• We’ve seen reports that the FBI has been severely abusing its expanded authority under the Patriot Act by using so-called “national security letters” to obtain American citizen’s private information without judicial review.

The evidence of AG Gonzales’ failure has piled up too high and cannot be ignored any longer. And the recent hearings by Congress show a renewed commitment to oversight, indicating the time to act is NOW.

If you agree that Gonzales must resign or be removed from office, sign the petition now!

Bipartisan criticism of Gonzales’ performance has been building. And this past Sunday, both the New York Times and the third-ranking member of the Senate’s Democratic leadership, New York’s Chuck Schumer, called on Gonzales to resign.

Help bring the chorus to a crescendo by adding your voice!

1. Sign the petition at http://www.pfaw.org/go/GonzalesMustGo
2. Spread the word and get your friends to sign the petition

Congress seems ready to listen. Let’s make some noise!

-- Your Allies at People For the American Way

http://www.pfaw.org/go/GonzalesMustGo

Labels: Alberto Gonzales must go, PFAW

WP: Firings had genesis in White House

The White House suggested two years ago that the Justice Department fire all 93 U.S. attorneys, a proposal that eventually resulted in the dismissals of eight prosecutors last year, according to e-mails and internal documents that the administration will provide to Congress today.

The dismissals took place after President Bush told Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales that he had received complaints that some prosecutors had not energetically pursued voter-fraud investigations, according to White House spokeswoman Dana Perino.

Gonzales approved the idea of firing a smaller group of U.S. attorneys shortly after taking office in February 2005. The Gonzales aide in charge of the dismissals — his chief of staff, D. Kyle Sampson — resigned yesterday, officials said, after acknowledging that he did not tell Justice officials about the extent of his communications with the White House, leading them to provide incomplete information to Congress.

Lawmakers requested the documents as part of an investigation into whether the firings were politically motivated. While it is unclear whether the documents will answer Congress's questions, they show that the White House and other administration officials were more closely involved in the dismissals, and at a much earlier date, than they have previously acknowledged.

Seven U.S. attorneys were fired on Dec. 7, and another was fired months earlier, with little explanation from the Justice Department. Several former prosecutors have since alleged intimidation, including improper telephone calls from GOP lawmakers or their aides, and have alleged threats of retaliation by a Justice Department official.

Administration officials have repeatedly portrayed the firings as a routine personnel matter, designed primarily to rid the department of a handful of poor performers.

But the documents and interviews indicate that the idea for the firings originated at least two years ago, when then-White House counsel Harriet E. Miers suggested to Sampson in February 2005 that all prosecutors be dismissed and replaced. Miers resigned this January.

Gonzales immediately rejected that idea as impractical and disruptive, Justice officials said, but over the next 22 months Sampson orchestrated more limited dismissals.

‘Mitigating the shock’
"I recommend that the Department of Justice and the Office of the Counsel to the President work together to seek the replacement of a limited number of U.S. Attorneys," Sampson wrote to Miers in January 2006. A "limited number of U.S. attorneys could be targeted for removal and replacement, mitigating the shock to the system that would result from an across the board firing."

Administration officials say they are braced for a new round of criticism today from lawmakers who may feel misled by testimony in recent weeks from Gonzales, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty and William E. Moschella, principal associate deputy attorney general. Several Democrats, including Sen. Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.), have asked for Gonzales's resignation in recent days.

Perino said that "it doesn't appear the president was told about a list nor shown a list" of U.S. attorneys at any point in the discussions. She said White House political adviser Karl Rove had an early conversation with Miers about the idea of firing all chief prosecutors and did not think it was wise.

Bush mentioned complaints about voter-fraud investigations to Gonzales in a conversation in October 2006, Perino said. Gonzales does not recall the conversation, Justice Department officials said.

Bush "believes informally he may have mentioned it to the AG during the meeting discussing other matters," Perino said. "White House officials including the president did not direct DOJ to take any specific action with regards to any specific U.S. attorney."

Rove and other White House officials also forwarded complaints that U.S. attorneys were not doing enough to prosecute voter fraud.

Since the 2000 election ended in dispute in Florida, Republicans at the national and local levels have repeatedly raised concerns about possible voter fraud, alleging that convicted felons and other ineligible voters have been permitted to cast ballots to the benefit of Democrats.

The documents show that Sampson sent an e-mail to Miers in March 2005 ranking all 93 U.S. attorneys. Strong performers "exhibited loyalty" to the administration; low performers were "weak U.S. attorneys who have been ineffectual managers and prosecutors, chafed against Administration initiatives, etc." A third group merited no opinion.

At least a dozen prosecutors were on a "target list" to be fired at one time or another, the e-mails show.

The e-mails also show that Rove was interested in the appointment of a former colleague, Tim Griffin, as an Arkansas prosecutor. Sampson wrote in one e-mail that "getting him appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc."

Only three of the fired given low ratings
Only three of those eventually fired were given low rankings: Margaret Chiara in Grand Rapids, Mich., Bud Cummins in Little Rock and Carol S. Lam in San Diego. Two were given strong evaluations: David C. Iglesias in Albuquerque, who has alleged political interference from GOP lawmakers, and Kevin V. Ryan in San Francisco, whose firing has generated few complaints because of widespread management and morale problems in his office.

Ten months later, in January 2006, Sampson sent to the White House the first list of seven potential candidates for dismissal, including four who were dismissed at year's end: Chiara, Cummins, Lam and Ryan. The list also recommended Griffin and other replacements, most of whom were edited from the documents viewed by The Post.

In September, Sampson produced another list of firing candidates, telling the White House that Cummins was "in the process of being pushed out" and providing the names of eight others whom "we should consider pushing out." Five of the candidates on that list were fired in December; three others were spared.

Iglesias, the New Mexico prosecutor, was not on the list in September. Justice officials said Sampson added Iglesias in October, based in part on complaints from Sen. Pete V. Domenici and other New Mexico Republicans that he was not prosecuting enough voter-fraud cases.

Sampson also strongly urged bypassing Congress in naming replacements, using a little-known power slipped into the renewal of the USA Patriot Act in March 2006 that allows the attorney general to name interim replacements without Senate confirmation.

"I am only in favor of executing on a plan to push some USAs out if we really are ready and willing to put in the time necessary to select candidates and get them appointed," Sampson wrote in a Sept. 17, 2006, memo to Miers. "It will be counterproductive to DOJ operations if we push USAs out and then don't have replacements ready to roll immediately.

"I strongly recommend that as a matter of administration, we utilize the new statutory provisions that authorize the AG to make USA appointments." By avoiding Senate confirmation, Sampson added, "we can give far less deference to home state senators and thereby get 1.) our preferred person appointed and 2.) do it far faster and more efficiently at less political costs to the White House."

Miers thanked Sampson for the idea. "Kyle thanks for this. I have not forgotten I need to follow up on the info. But things have been crazy," she wrote.

One e-mail from Miers's deputy, William Kelley, on the day of the Dec. 7 firings said Domenici's chief of staff "is happy as a clam" about Iglesias. Sampson wrote in an e-mail a week later: "Domenici is going to send over names tomorrow (not even waiting for Iglesias's body to cool)."

Talking about bypassing Democratic senators
The documents also provide new details about the case of Griffin, a former Rove aide and Republican National Committee researcher who was named interim U.S. attorney in Little Rock in December.

E-mails show that Justice officials discussed bypassing the two Democratic senators in Arkansas, who normally would have had input into the appointment, as early as last August. By mid-December, Sampson was suggesting that Gonzales exercise his newfound appointment authority to put Griffin in place until the end of Bush's term.

"There is some risk that we'll lose the authority, but if we don't ever exercise it then what's the point of having it?" Sampson wrote to a White House aide. "(I'm not 100 percent sure that Tim was the guy on which to test drive this authority, but know that getting him appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc.)."

Labels: Alberto Gonzales, liar, lies, lying

Halliburton Takes the Money and Runs Away

Charlie Cray at HuffPo

With various ongoing investigations, Halliburton's sale of KBR and announcement that it will soon move to Dubai, UAE are tantamount to fleeing the scene of a crime.

Halliburton is moving to UAE at a time when it is being investigated in the U.S. for bribery, bid rigging, defrauding the military and illegally profiting in Iran.It is currently in the process of divesting all of its ownership interest in the scandal-plagued KBR subsidiary, notorious for overcharging the military and serving contaminated food and water to the troops in Iraq.

Although Halliburton will still be incorporated inside the United States, moving its corporate headquarters to UAE will make it easier to avoid accountability from federal investigators. The company has proven adept at using offshore subsidiaries to circumvent restrictions on doing business in Iran and to elude responsibility for paying benefits to former employees.

Halliburton has also used its operational structure for contracts in Iraq and post-Katrina -- especially multiple layers of subcontractors -- to elude oversight and accountability to taxpayers.

Moving to UAE may also hinder ongoing government investigations into Halliburton's alleged bribes paid to the government of Nigeria. CEO David Lesar, a former accountant who is presumably very adept at structural finance, supervised former KBR chairman Albert "Jack" Stanley during the time when KBR is alleged to have bribed Nigerian government officials. Stanley was subsequently fired after allegedly receiving $5 million in "improper" payments related the bribery scheme. Lesar, who was president and chief operating officer at the time, reported directly to then CEO Dick Cheney. According to the Dallas Morning News, "Mr. Cheney ran Halliburton when one of four suspicious payments occurred." (Dallas Morning News, Sept. 8, 2004.) (Dallas Morning News, Sept. 8, 2004.)

The United States has no extradition treaty with the UAE.

Given the multiple ongoing investigations into Halliburton's alleged wrongdoing, policymakers should closely scrutinize Halliburton's latest move, and whether it will allow the company to further elude accountability. Moreover, this underscores the need for Congress to bar companies that have broken the law, or avoided paying taxes, from receiving federal contracts, which 18 members already suggested last year should immediately be the policy regarding Halliburton.

Sarah Anderson of the Institute for Policy Studies notes that most Fortune 500 companies have global operations, so that moving an entire headquarters to another country is not necessary. "With today's technologies, there's no real reason to have to physically relocate," she said. "Those that have are trying to evade U.S. oversight and tax authorities. And Dubai is a tax-free haven - no corporate or employee taxes. Halliburton claims this is not a big deal, but I can't imagine Lesar will be working over there alone in a little cubicle. This will be a much-expanded operation in Dubai."

"Despite the billions in US government contracts Halliburton has received, it has no loyalty or sense of obligation to US troops or taxpayers," she said, adding, "I find it ironic that Lesar is going to the same place as one of the only other individuals who's received even more bad publicity in recent years -- Michael Jackson."

Martin Sullivan, contributing editor at the nonpartisan Tax Notes magazine, said relocating to the no-tax jurisdiction of Dubai would change Halliburton's tax situation "significantly" even though the company would still be registered in the US. By re-locating its CEO and other top executives to Dubai, Halliburton can argue that a portion of its profits should be attributed to the no-tax jurisdiction, he said.

Halliburton earned a record $2.3 billion in profit last year. That's almost equal to the $2.7 billion the Pentagon found in the company's overcharges in Iraq.

Members of Congress have called for an investigation. Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) said, "I want to know, is Halliburton trying to run away from bad publicity on their contracts? Are they trying to run away from the obligation to pay US taxes? Or are they trying to set up a corporate presence in Dubai so that they can avoid the restrictions that currently exist on doing business with prohibited countries like Iran?"

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) said, "This is an insult to the US soldiers and taxpayers who paid the tab for their no-bid contracts and endured their overcharges for all these years."

Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the powerful House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, has promised hearings into the matter. "I want to understand the ramifications for U.S. taxpayers and national security," he said.

In addition to grilling Lesar about the regulatory and tax avoidance aspects of their announced move, the question of jurisdiction should also be raised w/relation to the company's executives' personal incomes.
Lesar has already managed to make about $50 million personally in recent years -- much of it off the war on terror, while providing shoddy service to the US military. The guy is a former partner with Enron's auditors, Arthur Andersen. So, it's hard to imagine they're really just interested in locating their executives near the action so they can deal with Sheiks and oversee all that welding and drilling. The military manages to run CENTCOM, its Middle Easter command center, out of MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. Is Halliburton so special that they have to locate their top executives so near their field operations? What would an accountant know about drilling and welding anyway? Isn't it more likely to be the case that they'd rather live in a tax haven so they can set themselves up to play more of the kind of shell games that they have been playing already in Iraq, Iran, Nigeria and elsewhere?

It looks like what's really going on is that Halliburton has decided to construct a new globalized corporate crime strategy. What a fine export. And we were worried about Dubai running some ports!

Labels: Criminals, Dick Cheney, Halliburton, Thieves

Jane Smiley at HuffPo

Whoops

In light of the Walter Reed scandal and the other evidence that American soldiers serving in Iraq are getting less that adequate (let's call it "indifferent" care), it's revealing to return to September 10, 2001, and a speech given by Donald Rumsfeld to Pentagon outsourcers at the Pentagon. Quoted in Jeremy Scahlll's new book, Blackwater, it is more than interesting, it is damning:

"The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, to the security of the United States of America. This adversary is one of the world's last bastions of central planning. It governs by dictating five-year plans. From a single capital, it attempts to impose demands across time zones, continents, oceans, and beyond. With brutal consistency, it stifles free thought and crushes new ideas. It disrupts the defense of the United States and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk. Perhaps this adversary sounds like the former Soviet Union... [but] this adversary is closer to home. It's the Pentagon bureaucracy."

What is this but a declaration of war on the Pentagon? Rumsfeld might now say that he was using metaphor and hyperbole for effect, but as all us post-Freudians know, there are no slips of the tongue. What you say is what you mean. What Rumsfeld meant was that he was going to hobble and cripple the Pentagon in their planning and their long term thinking. He was going to make sure that one time zone didn't know or care what the other time zone was doing, that there would be no central organization, and no sense of the common good--either of the armed forces or of the nation. The armed forces were going to be run for fun and profit. All experts were going to be undermined and all hucksters promoted.

Given the fact that in 2001, we know Rumsfeld and Cheney were planning war with Iraq and just looking for an excuse (which they got and recognized the very next day), we have to suppose that what we have seen happen to the army in the last six years--its breakdown from a well-trained, well-equipped, well-educated superior volunteer force that the Pentagon was proud of to a struggling mess, where injured soldiers are redeployed (see Salon, Sunday) because of staffing shortages, where injured soldiers get poor care or no care (see the New York Times, Sunday and Minday), where female soldiers are at risk of rape from not only their fellow soldiers, but their commanding officers (also in Salon), and where recruits are increasingly actual convicted criminals--we have to accept that when Rumsfeld declared war on the army, he was not kidding, and he carried out his plan, and that, indeed, his success in destroying the army was the very reason Cheney called him a great Secretary of Defense.

Scahill goes into the reasons he sees for Rumsfeld's war against the army--mercenary soldiers are in your future (though Scahill doesn't answer the question of healthcare and benefits for these soldiers. No doubt, as with most outsourcing, a mercenary will find himself up shit creek when he gets a serious head injury). You can read Scahill's book, and you should--I am. What interests me here is not the goal but the philosophy. In Rumsfeld's audience that day were lots of war industry representatives who were drooling at the chance of taking over military functions and charging us, the US taxpayers, for them at a very high rate--higher than the Pentagon was charging us. The plan was that we would have a smaller, more flexible, but more expensive army, through which Rumsfeld, Cheney, and their cronies could make millions. That was to be the new army's first and primary goal--scamming the taxpayer, and Rumsfeld was going to do that under the banner of the free market, by equating his very own generals and soldiers to Communists! The gall of these people does serve as a continual spur to outrage!

When you and your relatives are fighting about who is a patriot and who isn't (you--yes, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, Rice--not), you can ask them if the loyalties of our ruling class can be shown to be to us, regular US citizens, or to some other group, such as themselves--wealthy citizens and investors of all nations. After 9/11, our government gathered up the Bin Ladens and other Arab investors and sent them out of harm's way. Yesterday, Halliburton declared that it is moving its headquarters to Dubai. No prominent Republican that I know of has shipped his children off to the Iraq War. Jonah Goldberg didn't bother to sign up. Neither did Ann Coulter. Most importantly, Bush took an oath to uphold the Constitution, and he has subverted it at every turn. The Constitution represents the will of the people. It, in fact, represents the people and is their document. But this is nothing new for the corporate class. They are used to aggrandizing themselves at the expense of the nation. When Goldman Sachs demanded tax breaks from the City of New York as the price of keeping their offices there, and then turned around and handed out princely bonuses at the end of 2006, it was no surprise--corporations have no loyalties--not to their workers, not to their customers, not to their nations. And don't get me started on their perennial resistance to product safety. Every time a corporation witholds taxes owed or keeps them offshore, they are acting in an unpatriotic manner, and yet they are the first to scream when dissenters raise legitimate questions about, for example, using the American army as a band of mercenaries to conquer oil lands in the Middle East.

Money, as we know, doesn't care who owns it. No one should be surprised that a corporate hacks like Cheney and Rumsfeld and Bush have been utterly indifferent to the army and the soldiers, and have, in fact, treated them as expendable cogs in the war machine. Some day, with luck, Rumsfelld will be tried. Will his defense be "I've always been a jackass", as Libby's defense was "Gosh, what an idiot I am, I can't keep track of a thing"? Yes, Rumsfeld is and has always been a jackass. But he broke the army and the defense of this country as a matter of malignant policy. His words show his intentions and the pictures and articles we see all around us show the results.

There are new pictures and observations (mostly about food) at my website

Labels: Bush Administration, destroyed America for profit, Rumsfeld, willful idiot

Where's the right wing outrage on this one? If liberals made this plan or god forbid even suggested it... right wingers like Hannity, O'Reilly, Coulter and Fox News would be trying to get us hung. Why don't they call the U.S. Military Traitors too?

Here's the story:

U.S. military plans Iraq fallback strategy: report
Mon Mar 12, 2007 6:13 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. military planners have begun work on a fallback strategy in case the U.S. troop buildup in Iraq fails, including a gradual pullout of U.S. forces and more emphasis on training and advising Iraqi forces, the Los Angeles Times reported in Monday's editions.

The strategy, based partly on the U.S. experience in El Salvador in the 1980s, is in the early planning stages, the newspaper said, citing U.S. military officials and Pentagon consultants who spoke on condition of anonymity.

It is a fallback if the Bush administration's plan to send about 26,000 more U.S. troops fails to stabilize Iraq, or if the Democratic-led Congress limits that move, it said.

The newspaper quoted a Pentagon official as saying "This part of the world has an allergy against foreign presence. You have a window of opportunity that is relatively short. Your ability to influence this with a large U.S. force eventually gets to a point that is self-defeating."

The United States sent 55 Green Berets to El Salvador to help its military fight rebels from 1981 to 1992, in a drive to make the U.S. military presence less visible, the newspaper said.

It said Pentagon officials said the Iraq plan would have to entail many more advisors, but that the El Salvador model had influenced planning.

There are currently about 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq.

Shifting from a troop increase to more reliance on an advisory role would bring the administration more in line with the Iraq Study Group, the bipartisan panel that recommended a gradual reduction in U.S. combat forces in Iraq.

________________________________

Notes:

Today, at his first Pentagon news conference since taking office in December, Defense Secretary Robert Gates declared that any Iraq resolution opposing President Bush’s escalation plan “certainly emboldens the enemy and our adversaries.” “It seems pretty straightforward that any indication of flagging will in the United States gives encouragement to those folks,” Gates clamed.

Donald Rumsfeld from 11/20/05: “[W]e also have to understand that our words have effects. … Put yourself in the shoes of the enemy. The enemy hears a big debate in the United States, and they have to wonder, maybe all we have to do is wait, and we’ll win.”

In response to Democratic plans to question parts of the USA Patriot Act during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, John Ashcroft suggests that people who disagree with the administration's anti-terrorism policies are on the side of the terrorists. "To those who pit Americans against immigrants, and citizens against non-citizens; to those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil."

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle expresses mild disagreement with US anti-terror policies, saying US success in the war on terror "is still somewhat in doubt." In response, Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) says that Daschle's "divisive comments have the effect of giving aid and comfort to our enemies by allowing them to exploit divisions in our country."

After the disclosure that President Bush received a general warning about possible Al Qaeda hijackings prior to 9/11, Democrats demand to know what other information the administration had before the attacks. In response, White House communications director Dan Bartlett says that the Democratic statements "are exactly what our opponents, our enemies, want us to do."

President Bush says, "You can embolden an enemy by sending a mixed message... You send the wrong message to our troops by sending mixed messages."

Senator Orrin Hatch (R-UT) claims that terrorists "are going to throw everything they can between now and the election to try and elect Kerry," adding that Democrats are "consistently saying things that I think undermine our young men and women who are serving over there."

Presidential adviser Karl Rove responds by suggesting that Durbin and other liberals seek to put US troops in danger, saying that "Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals."

President Bush says that "These baseless attacks send the wrong signal to our troops and to an enemy that is questioning America's will."

Rep. J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ) states that "Many on the Democratic side have revealed their exit strategy: surrender"

Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY) says that "[T]he liberal leadership have put politics ahead of sound fiscal and national security policy. And what they have done is cooperated with our enemies and are emboldening our enemies.

December 2005: After DNC chairman Howard Dean says "The idea that we're going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong," Republicans reiterate the same line of attack. House Speaker Dennis Hastert says Dean "made it clear the Democratic Party sides with those who wish to surrender" and GOP chairman Ken Mehlman says Dean's statement "sends the wrong message to our troops, the wrong message to the enemy, the wrong message to the Iraqi people."

January 2006: President Bush suggests that "defeatists" on Iraq are disloyal by contrasting them with a "loyal opposition," stating that the American people "know the difference between a loyal opposition that points out what is wrong, and defeatists who refuse to see that anything is right."

June 2006: In response to Democratic calls for a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq, President Bush suggests that Democrats want to surrender. "There's a group in the opposition party who are willing to retreat before the mission is done," he said. "They're willing to wave the white flag of surrender. And if they succeed, the United States will be worse off, and the world will be worse off." However, Bush adviser Dan Bartlett is unable to name a single Democrat to which this description applies.

Labels: American Media, Right Wing Hypocrites, Where's Fox News?

from Orcinus

To supplement the recent series on eliminationism, I've compiled herein a selection of eliminationist rhetoric documented at this site since 2003. Some of the original links have disappeared, in which event I've simply linked to the original Orcinus post.

They are arranged by categories of eliminationism, namely: Expressing a desire or a demand for extermination, removal, or infliction of harm; identification of opponents with national enemies; identification of opponents as a target for retaliation or incarceration; expressing a desire for or approval of genocide or murder; identification with vermin or disease. Some of these overlap, and in some instances I found instances that reflected all of the above.

A: Expressing a desire or a demand for extermination, removal, or infliction of harm

Rush Limbaugh: "I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus -- living fossils -- so we will never forget what these people stood for."

Stop the ACLU [post since removed]:

Rope + Tree + ACLU Lawyer = Pinata

Ann Coulter: "I think our motto should be, post-9-11: 'Raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences.'"

Ann Coulter: "We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens' creme brulee. ... That's just a joke, for you in the media."

"This free speech thing is a canard. ... How about not letting traitors teach at universities? Yes, I realize I've just proposed firing the entire Harvard faculty. These institutions can be shaken -- look at Dan Rather. He's out. Or, as I look at it, one down, two to go. We're going to need a much bigger trophy case for all these stuffed heads."

"Some liberals have become even too crazy for Texas to execute, which is a damn shame. They're always saying -- we're oppressed, we're oppressed so let's do it. Let's oppress them."

Rush Limbaugh:

[Quoting from an AP report] "Aljazeera has broadcasted an insurgent video today, shows four peace activists taken hostage in Iraq, with a previously unknown group claiming responsibility for the kidnappings. The unknown group is the Swords of Righteousness Brigade, and they said the four were spies working undercover as Christian peace activists, according to Aljazeera. Aljazeera said that it could not verify any of the information on the tape. The aid group Christian Peacemaker Teams has confirmed that four of its members were taken hostage on Saturday...."

[P]art of me that likes this. And some of you might say, "Rush, that's horrible. Peace activists taken hostage." Well, here's why I like it. I like any time a bunch of leftist feel-good hand-wringers are shown reality. So here we have these peace activists over there. I don't care if they're Christian or not.

[...]

Yeah, as warped as these people are, you know they're going to blame Bush for this... They wouldn't have been kidnapped because they wouldn't have been there in the first place if Bush hadn't gone and caused the war and created all these terrorists. I mean, these people are liberals, they're warped. Well, I mean, that's why there's -- I'm telling you, folks, there's a part of me that likes this. Probably, even with this, though, you know, they're not going to see the light of day. They're not going to -- I know, let them take me out of context. I don't care anymore.

Melanie Morgan: "I would have no problem with [New York Times editor Bill Keller] being sent to the gas chamber."

Melanie Morgan: "A great deal of good could be done by arresting Bill Keller having him lined up against the wall and shot."

Lee Rogers: "[T]he day will come when unpleasant things are going to happen to a bunch of stupid liberals and it's going to be very amusing to watch."

"The Political Insight":

Let's start with the following New York Times reporters and editors: Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. , Bill Keller, Eric Lichtblau, and James Risen. Do you have an idea where they live?

Go hunt them down and do America a favor. Get their photo, street address, where their kids go to school, anything you can dig up, and send it to the link above. This is your chance to be famous -- grab for the golden ring.

RedState contributor "Thomas Crown":

I repeat: Should the entire American Left fall over dead tomorrow, I would rejoice, and order pizza to celebrate. They are not my countrymen; they are animals who happen to walk upright and make noises that approximate speech. They are below human. I look forward to seeing each and every one in Hell.

Ann Coulter:

LINDA VESTER (host): You say you'd rather not talk to liberals at all?

COULTER: I think a baseball bat is the most effective way these days.

Bill O'Reilly

Hey, you know, if you want to ban military recruiting, fine, but I'm not going to give you another nickel of federal money. You know, if I'm the president of the United States, I walk right into Union Square, I set up my little presidential podium, and I say, "Listen, citizens of San Francisco, if you vote against military recruiting, you're not going to get another nickel in federal funds. Fine. You want to be your own country? Go right ahead."

And if Al Qaeda comes in here and blows you up, we're not going to do anything about it. We're going to say, look, every other place in America is off limits to you, except San Francisco. You want to blow up the Coit Tower? Go ahead.

Dean Franks:

I'll make a deal with the Left: You wanna impeach President Bush? Go ahead. Knock yourself out. In fact, let's just go to the polls and turn the whole government over to the Democrats. You wanna run the whole show? Fine. Elect Howard Dean President. End all surveillance against possible enemy combatants, unless you can get a warrant based on probable cause. Withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan immediately. Permanently kill the PATRIOT Act. Do whatever you want to do. I'm perfectly willing, at this point, to do it your way.

I mean, really, what's the worst that can happen? An American city goes up in nuclear fire? Well, it’ll probably be New York, Chicago, or LA. You know, a major city. I don't live there, nor do most Americans. So we'll be fine.

But here's the other half of the deal: If that happens, we get to march on Washington, drag you naked and screaming from your offices, and hang you from the ornate lampposts that line The Mall. Then, free from roadblocks thrown up by infantile political fools, maybe we'll get serious about defending the United States, her people, her freedoms, and her values, in an increasingly hostile world.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin:

I am absolutely convinced that God is far from finished with the story of the United States of America. ... First of all, [there's] the matter of the little battle that must be fought, just as it was in the 19th century." There were, and are, "two incompatible moral visions for this country. We had to settle it then. We're going to have to settle it now. I hope not with blood, not with guns, but we're going to have to settle it nonetheless. The good news is that I think our side is finally ready to settle it. Roll up its sleeves, take off its jacket, and get a little bloody. Spill a little blood. We'll settle it. And we'll win. And then there's no holding us back.

Rep. Jim Gibbons, R-Nev.:

While praising the efforts of American troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Gibbons accused liberals, movie stars and song makers of "trying to divide this country."

"I say we tell those liberal, tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, hippie, tie-dyed liberals to go make their movies and their music and whine somewhere else," he told the crowd, according to the Elko Daily Free Press.

He then said it was "too damn bad we didn't buy them a ticket" to become human shields in Iraq.

His comments came a week after he apologized for calling those who oppose corporate donations for President Bush's inaugural parties "communists."

Ann Coulter:

"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."

"We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too."

"They are either traitors or idiots, and on the matter of America’s self-preservation, the difference is irrelevant. Fifty years of treason hasn’t slowed them down."

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

"God said ... rape the planet -- it's yours. That's our job: drilling, mining and striping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars -- that's the Biblical view."

"I have to say I'm all for public flogging."

"I think [women] should be armed but should not [be allowed to] vote."

"Liberals hate America, they hate flag-wavers, they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam, post 9/11. Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do. They don't have the energy. If they had that much energy, they'd have indoor plumbing by now."

"My libertarian friends are probably getting a little upset now but I think that's because they never appreciate the benefits of local fascism."

"In this recurring nightmare of a presidency, we have a national debate about whether he [Clinton] 'did it,' even though all sentient people know he did. Otherwise there would be debates only about whether to impeach or assassinate."

Daniel Kish, a senior adviser to Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., in an email:

"Connecticut should have its statehood taken away from it. The foolishness of its pampered residents should be demonstrated to others by a government program to bulldoze the entire state, salt the land and construct a windfarm to supply NYC with electricity. And its residents should be relocated to Guantanamo Bay where they can take a number behind the 3 who hung themselves this weekend, since they seem so intent on suicide."

Joe M. Richardson, letter to Editor and Publisher:

The duped soldier should be put at the very front of the action, no armor. The cooperating sergeant's career should be over and maybe become MIA. Pitts and all his cronies should be executed as traitors. We are fighting a war, the debate is over, you’re either for us or against us, there is no middle ground. I say start executing the leftists in our country, soon.

E-mail to Colorado Rep. Terrance Carroll:

You are so SOOOO lucky lynching and the firing squad for treason aren't available punishments anymore . . . I'd vote you in, in a heartbeat . . . "

"Enjoy Hell, Yellow Belly," the e-mail continued. "It takes a patriotic man to represent his country, and Sir, you are neither patriotic . . . nor a man."

Rep. Peter King:

And Joe Wilson has no right to complain. And I think people like Tim Russert and the others, who gave this guy such a free ride and all the media, they're the ones to be shot, not Karl Rove.


Derik L. Jobe, in a letter to the editor:

I am a United States sailor. I have chosen to defend my country and the freedom some take for granted.

I love my country, my family, my freedom. Only by the blood which was shed by the service members before me did we receive this freedom.

There are some, though, who do not appreciate this freedom. I call these people traitors; they call themselves protesters. They are nothing more than an infectious disease that infests the minds and hearts of the Americans we are defending. It consumes the honor and courage within its host until it kills the very patriotism that made this country.

There is no cure for this disease. Never will everyone be satisfied. But let it be known what this guardian of America's freedom thinks of these protesters: Traitors should be hanged. I hold our enemies in higher standing. At least they are willing to fight for their beliefs and the country they love.

Sonar Technician
Derik L.Jobe
U.S. Navy

Mark Byron:

A paramilitary organization calling itself the Christian Liberation Front changed the balance of power in Washington by a pair of brutal attacks this afternoon. A force estimated at about 200 CLF commandos stormed the Supreme Court building, killing 35 people, including five Supreme Court Justices. At the same time, a contingent of 1,000 CLF paramilitaries attacked the Hart Senate Office Building, where a Senate Democratic Caucus meeting was being held. Approximately 50 people were killed in the attack. Once the commandos had seized the building, they systematically killed Democratic senators from states with Republican governors.

Bill O'Reilly:

Where does George Soros have all his money? Do you know? Do you know where George Soros, the big left-wing loon who's financing all these smear [web]sites, do you know where his money is? Curaçao. Curaçao. They ought to hang this Soros guy.

IMAO:

So what do we do with these idiots who annoy us?

Mass slaughter you say?

No, though we can easily do that, we need to find solution more tolerant, such as showing them the errors of their ways. …

Carefully Explain the Errors in Their Logic: They think Bush is like Hitler, so show them the difference. Have them wear a sign in front of the Whitehouse saying, "I hate the government." and then have them wear the same sign in some country like Syria. Maybe they'll understand the difference in the moments before death.

"Sock" Sokolowski, to Stephanie Miller:

As with Cindy Sheehan the best thing that could happen to you would be seeing some WONDERFUL activist sticking an AK-47 up your Glory Holes and sending you into eternity. But this is not a threat as I am a paci-fist preferring to confront dumb fucks like you two with words rather than violence. But I would gather my 1st amendment rights permit me to HOPE (!) and PRAY (!) that someone decides you're better off as statistics. Honestly, should I hear of either you leaving this earth prematurely I would initiate a personal celebration that would make Animal House appear to be just another quiet Sunday in church.

... Therefore, I trust the both of you mother fuckers will continue to show yourselves on TV shows, exposure to more and more people, as GUARANTEED your words will someday possibly accelerate your demise again not on my hand but by someone who believes in such finalizing action. ... Would love to celebrate and would for days one end as I always would and will when still another America HATER meets his/her maker.

Letter to Al Neuharth after his criticism of the war:

The Patriot Act will put both of you (Neuharth and Greg Mitchell) on trial for treason and convict and execute both of you as traitors for running these stories in a time of war and it should be done on TV for other communist traitors like you two to know we mean business. This is war and you should be put in prison NOW for talking like this. Who the hell do you people think you are? You give aid and comfort to our enemies and aid them in murdering our proud soldiers. You people are a disgrace to America. Your families should be put in prison with you, then be made to leave and move to the Middle East ...This is a great Christian nation and god wants us to lead the world out of darkness with great leaders like President George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. Communists like Al and Greg will soon be in prison and on death row for your ugly papers. We won the election and now you are mad. We own America and all the rights, you people are trash, go back to Russia and Africa and take your friends with before we put you on death row after a fair trial.

Commenter at 'Shot in the Dark':

The only "common ground" we'll ever find with the blue state scum is the battleground, when we finally cut the shit and put all the enemies of this nation to the pike. It can not come too soon.

... Have fun spending your vast wealth when you are dead. Other countries will be happy to sell you potash and soybeans. But you'll all be dead, so they might balk at the terms.

"J. Baker, Phoenix":

You people are utterly useless to humanity and wholly better off dead, burning in eternal damnation.

Ya know, I think it's too bad that we can't follow Saddam's model of dealing with opposition - just open up mass graves and start torturing, maiming, and murdering liberals and leftists by the millions - toss them into the ground, and fill the holes up with dirt. I would love to volunteer for such duty!

Eat shit and die, all of you!

B: Identification of opponents with national enemies


Michael Barone:

Our covert enemies are harder to identify, for they live in large numbers within our midst. And in terms of intentions, they are not enemies in the sense that they consciously wish to destroy our society. On the contrary, they enjoy our freedoms and often call for their expansion. But they have also been working, over many years, to undermine faith in our society and confidence in its goodness. These covert enemies are those among our elites who have promoted the ideas labeled as multiculturalism, moral relativism and (the term is Professor Samuel Huntington's) transnationalism.

At the center of their thinking is a notion of moral relativism. No idea is morally superior to another. Hitler had his way, we have ours -- who's to say who is right? No ideas should be "privileged," especially those that have been the guiding forces in the development and improvement of Western civilization. Rich white men have imposed their ideas because of their wealth and through the use of force. Rich white nations imposed their rule on benighted people of color around the world. For this sin of imperialism they must forever be regarded as morally stained and presumptively wrong. Our covert enemies go quickly from the notion that all societies are morally equal to the notion that all societies are morally equal except ours, which is worse.

... We have always had our covert enemies, but their numbers were few until the 1960s. But then the elite young men who declined to serve in the military during the Vietnam War set out to write a narrative in which they, rather than those who obeyed the call to duty, were the heroes. They have propagated their ideas through the universities, the schools and mainstream media to the point that they are the default assumptions of millions. Our covert enemies don't want the Islamo-fascists to win. But in some corner of their hearts, they would like us to lose.

Dinesh d'Souza:

"There is no way to restore the culture without winning the war on terror. Conversely, the only way to win the war on terror is to win the culture war. Thus we arrive at a sobering truth. In order to crush the Islamic radicals abroad, we must defeat the enemy at home."

Glenn Beck:

With that being said, you are a Democrat. You are saying, "Let's cut and run." And I have to tell you, I have been nervous about this interview with you, because what I feel like saying is, "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies."

And I know you're not. I'm not accusing you of being an enemy, but that's the way I feel, and I think a lot of Americans will feel that way.

Bill O'Reilly:

Everybody got it? Dissent, fine; undermining, you're a traitor. Got it? So, all those clowns over at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. Will you have that done, please? Send over the FBI and just put them in chains, because they, you know, they're undermining everything and they don't care, couldn't care less.

Michael Reagan:

"Howard Dean should be arrested and hung for treason or put in a hole until the end of the Iraq war!"

Erich "Mancow" Muller and Brian Kilmeade, Fox News and Friends, Dec. 6, 2005:

MULLER: Guys, I do want to do one serious thing today. Howard Dean ought to be kicked out of America.

KILMEADE: Absolutely.

MULLER: He ought to be tried for treason. He is the enemy. These people, these Dummy-crats -- I'm not a Republican. I'm a Libertarian --

DOOCY: What did he say, Mancow, this time?

MULLER: He said yesterday -- it was late-breaking news -- I, -- I've never done this before in my life -- I was calling radio shows. I've never done that. I called Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes last night [saying]: "You guys gotta get on this. Howard Dean said we're going to lose the war."

KILMEADE: Yeah.

MULLER: This is the head of the Democrats!

HILL: Hey, Mancow --

MULLER: These people want every boy to die. They're bloodthirsty animals. Howard Dean is a vile human being. I can't believe it.

David Horowitz:

Make no mistake about it, there is a war going on in this country. The aggressors in this war are Democrats, liberals and leftists who began a scorched earth campaign against President Bush before the initiation of hostilities in Iraq.

Karl Rove:

"Has there ever been a more revealing moment this year?" Mr. Rove asked. "Let me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals."

Bob Newman:

In a statement that has angered, embarrassed and humiliated Marines around the globe, one of our own -- a retired Marine Corps Reserve colonel -- has called for the legendary fighting force to retreat from Iraq and surrender to the terrorist organization that has killed thousands of Americans at home and abroad. He has even called for the United States to enter into negotiations with al Qaeda. This vermin’s demand for retreat, surrender and negotiations with the enemy is so committed to assisting al Qaeda in their efforts in Iraq that he has posted his unspeakable demands on his website in the form of an official statement.

The traitor, Democratic Rep. John P. Murtha, agrees 100% with Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al Zarqawi that the Marine Corps, which is mangling the enemy on a daily basis in Iraq and suffering comparatively light casualties, should lay down its arms, call it quits, and abandon the people they are defending in the fledgling democracy of Iraq.

Furious Marines from wars as far back as World War II are spitting mad at the cowardly colonel and many want his head on a stake in the middle of the Marine Corps Commandant's lawn. Personally, I would not soil that good earth with so vile and despicable a piece of offal.

"Misha," the "Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler":

'Cept number 2 is absolutely right. Keep up this pandering to every treasonous twit that chooses to aid and comfort our enemies, and we're going to have a LOT of dead Americans before people wake up and realize that we're at war.

You may think that people encouraging our enemies to continue fighting by showing them that they have an effect is "harmless", John, but you'd be wrong. Dead wrong.

Put it this way: What do you think would've happened if people had turned out in the streets in, say, 1942, demanding that we surrender to Nazi Germany and the Nips? You think that we'd have just coddled them and chastised anybody calling them traitors for "stifling their freedom of speech"?

We're at war. Keep denying it if you must, but it'll only make the awakening to reality all that much more painful, because there IS no "opting out" of this one.

Amber Pawlik:

I don't really consider the Democrat party a party of the people anymore, nor do I consider the socialist Democrats (they are not "liberal", that's just a euphemism for socialist anymore) "nice people who are misguided." I consider them to be pure, raw evil, who want to destroy everything rational or beautiful in sight: success, prosperity, even the very security of the country.

KVI's John Carlson, discussing Sen. Dick Durbin:

This man is simply a piece of excrement, a piece of waste that needs to be scraped off the sidewalk and eliminated.

Rush Limbaugh:

Dick Durbin has just identified who the Democrats are in the year 2005, particularly when it comes to American national security and when it comes to the US military. These are the same people they say they support the troops. This is how they do it, huh? They give aid and comfort to the enemy. They make it possible for Mullah Omar and bin Laden, whoever else is out there still alive, to laugh themselves silly at us. Mogadishu all over. Remember what bin Laden said after we cut and run out of Mogadishu? "That's when I knew the US was a paper tiger, that's when I knew they didn't have the guts, that's when I knew they couldn't take casualties," and that's what fueled his planning for 9/11. He has said so. So, bammo! Here you go, Dick Durbin. Thanks once again for telling our enemies just what a bunch of soft patty cakes we are and how we'll back away from our own treatment of people much less back away from dishing it out to people like our enemies.

C: Identification of opponents as a target for retaliation or incarceration

Ann Coulter:

Patriotic Americans don't have to become dangerous psychotics like liberals, but they could at least act like men.

Why hasn't the former spokesman for the Taliban matriculating at Yale been beaten even more senseless than he already is? According to Hollywood, this nation is a cauldron of ethnic hatreds positively brimming with violent skinheads. Where are the skinheads when you need them? What does a girl have to do to get an angry, club- and torch-wielding mob on its feet?

Melanie Morgan: "We've got a bull's-eye painted on [Nancy Pelosi's] big, wide laughing eyes."

Glenn Beck:

All you Muslims who have sat on your frickin' hands the whole time and have not been marching in the streets and have not been saying, 'Hey, you know what? There are good Muslims and bad Muslims. We need to be the first ones in the recruitment office lining up to shoot the bad Muslims in the head.' I'm telling you, with God as my witness... human beings are not strong enough, unfortunately, to restrain themselves from putting up razor wire and putting you on one side of it. When things -- when people become hungry, when people see that their way of life is on the edge of being over, they will put razor wire up and just based on the way you look or just based on your religion, they will round you up. Is that wrong? Oh my gosh, it is Nazi, World War II wrong, but society has proved it time and time again: It will happen.

Kathleen Parker:

Miller is not alone, though some are more sanguine when it comes to evaluating the roster of contenders. Here's a note I got recently from a friend and former Delta Force member, who has been observing American politics from the trenches: "These bastards like Clark and Kerry and that incipient ass, Dean, and Gephardt and Kucinich and that absolute mental midget Sharpton, race baiter, should all be lined up and shot."

"Emperor Misha," after publishing another blogger's home address:

Not saying anything in specific, mind you, but we'd be damn careful about showing our face in public if we were you. You just never know who that perfect stranger behind you in that alleyway might be. Could be a sibling or other relative of one of the fallen soldiers that you just took a dump on the grave of, and G-d only knows what might happen then.

Eric may not be famous enough to be a pick for the 2004 Dead Pool, but there's another signed Imperial Mug for the first LC to inform me that Eric Blumrich has died in a "tragic" accident.

Accidents DO happen, you know, and that's the kind of news that would definitely make my entire day.

Caller to Jerry Klein's Washington, D.C., radio talk show:

Not only do you tattoo them in the middle of their forehead but you ship them out of this country ... they are here to kill us."

Another said that tattoos, armbands and other identifying markers such as crescent marks on driver's licenses, passports and birth certificates did not go far enough. "What good is identifying them?" he asked. "You have to set up encampments like during World War Two with the Japanese and Germans."

Daniel Pipes:

Leftist and Islamist organizations have so successfully intimidated public opinion that polite society shies away from endorsing a focus on Muslims.

In America, this intimidation results in large part from a revisionist interpretation of the evacuation, relocation, and internment of ethnic Japanese during World War II. Although more than 60 years past, these events matter yet deeply today, permitting the victimization lobby, in compensation for the supposed horrors of internment, to condemn in advance any use of ethnicity, nationality, race, or religion in formulating domestic security policy.

"Border Guardian" Laine Lawless, in an e-mail to neo-Nazis describing ways they can harass Latinos:

-- "Steal the money from any illegal walking into a bank or check cashing place."

-- "Make every illegal alien feel the heat of being a person without status. ... I hear the rednecks in the South are beating up illegals as the textile mills have closed. Use your imagination."

-- "Discourage Spanish-speaking children from going to school. Be creative."

-- "Create an anonymous propaganda campaign warning that any further illegal immigrants will be shot, maimed or seriously messed-up upon crossing the border. This should be fairly easy to do, considering the hysteria of the Spanish language press, and how they view the Minutemen as 'racists & vigilantes.' "


Little Green Footballs commenter "really grumpy":

Whether or not the street knows it -- and they don't -- we are now in the early phases of the fight for our existence as a nation, and as the standard-bearers of the idea of democracy.

We have most of the EU and a good portion of NATO aligned against us -- the old school appeasers of Europe -- and most of the Arabic nations, and third-world oppressor nations as well. They are starting to sense a common ground of opposition to our position, which is one of self-determination of man.

That is very dangerous to all these folks, as they represent the dictator and dictator-enabler; the rapists and the voyeurs who profit from the rapes of mankind.

This war won't be quick, or easy. We will undoubtedly end up being forced to kill off some of our own citizens in order to protect the ideas set down by our framers over 200 hundred years ago.

It's happening now, and suddenly, and we are right in the midst of it. It is going to get bloody and scary and desperate before all is finished and a victor emerges.

Free Republic poster, referring to antiwar activists in California:

Fuckin Leftist traitors break the law and think they should get away with it?! FUCK YOU YA GODDAMN LEFTIST PUKES AND DON'T EVEN THINK OF FUCKING WITH FREE REPUBLIC MOTHERFUCKERS!

WE WILL BEAT YOU DOWN IN THE STREETS NEXT FALL!!!!

The same commenter later promised:

If I see you or any of your comrades from Dem Underground I will kick the living shit out of you you filthy faggotcunt traitor

DO NOT IDENTIFY YOURSELF AS LEFTIST OUT ON THE STREET YOU PIECE OF SHIT OR YOU WILL BE BEATEN UNCONSCIOUS YOU GODDAM ENEMY OF AMERICA!!!!!

Dean Esmay:

When I say "treason" I don't mean it in an insulting or hyperbolic way. I mean in a literal way: we need to find these 21st century Julius Rosenbergs, these modern day reincarnations of Alger Hiss, put them on trial before a jury of their peers, with defense counsel. When they are found guilty, we should then hang them by the neck until the are dead, dead, dead.

No sympathy. No mercy.Am I angry? You bet I am. But not in an explosive way. Just in the same seething way I was angry on 9/11.

These people have endangered American lives and American security. They need to be found, tried, and executed.


D: Expressing a desire for or approval of genocide or murder

Mark Steyn

Why did Bosnia collapse into the worst slaughter in Europe since World War Two? In the thirty years before the meltdown, Bosnian Serbs had declined from 43 percent to 31 percent of the population, while Bosnian Muslims had increased from 26 percent to 44 percent. In a democratic age, you can't buck demography -- except through civil war. The Serbs figured that out -- as other Continentals will in the years ahead: if you can't outbreed the enemy, cull 'em. The problem that Europe faces is that Bosnia's demographic profile is now the model for the entire continent.

Glenn Reynolds

Civilized societies have found it harder, though, to beat the barbarians without killing all, or nearly all, of them. Were it really to become all-out war of the sort that Osama and his ilk want, the likely result would be genocide — unavoidable, and provoked, perhaps, but genocide nonetheless, akin to what Rome did to Carthage, or to what Americans did to American Indians. That’s what happens when two societies can’t live together, and the weaker one won’t stop fighting — especially when the weaker one targets the civilians and children of the stronger. This is why I think it’s important to pursue a vigorous military strategy now. Because if we don’t, the military strategy we’ll have to follow in five or ten years will be light-years beyond “vigorous.”

Glenn Reynolds:

... [I]t's also true that if democracy can't work in Iraq, then we should probably adopt a "more rubble, less trouble" approach to other countries in the region that threaten us. If a comparatively wealthy and secular Arab country can't make it as a democratic republic, then what hope is there for places that are less wealthy, or less secular?

Michael Savage:

Right now, even people sitting on the fence would like George Bush to drop a nuclear weapon on an Arab country. They don't even care which one it would be. I can guarantee you -- I don't need to go to Mr. Schmuck [pollster John] Zogby and ask him his opinion. I don't need anyone's opinion. I'll give you my opinion, because I got a better stethoscope than those fools. It's one man's opinion based upon my own analysis. The most -- I tell you right now -- the largest percentage of Americans would like to see a nuclear weapon dropped on a major Arab capital. They don't even care which one. They'd like an indiscriminate use of a nuclear weapon.

In fact, Christianity has been one of the great salvations on planet Earth. It's what's necessary in the Middle East. Others have written about it, I think these people need to be forcibly converted to Christianity but I'll get here a little later, I'll move up to that. It's the only thing that can probably turn them into human beings. ... Because these primitives can only be treated in one way, and I don't think smallpox and a blanket is good enough incidentally. Just before -- I'm going to give you a little precursor to where I'm going. Smallpox in a blanket, which the U.S. Army gave to the Cherokee Indians on their long march to the West, was nothing compared to what I'd like to see done to these people, just so you understand that I'm not going to be too intellectual about my analysis here in terms of what I would recommend, what Doc Savage recommends as an antidote to this kind of poison coming out of the Middle East from these non-humans.

Michael Savage, referring to the victims of the December 2004 tsunami:

You could take the argument that it's God's will, it's too bad and let's move on. And then let others help them. They're not in our sphere of interest. Primarily, they hate our guts in plain English. All right, well, the argument is, well, if you send them money, they're gonna like us, show 'em we're not anti-Muslim. That is such rubbish. That is such rubbish. They're gonna hate you anyhow, no matter what we ever do.

[...]

It's not a tragedy. I wouldn't call it a tragedy. It's a human disaster. It's not a tragedy in that sense. But, the issue is, theological questions suddenly arise. ... Now, for you atheists, you have no questions about this. It's a pure accident of nature. You don't ask yourself, "Was it God's hand?"

Various Minutemen:

"It should be legal to kill illegals," said Carl, a 69-year old retired Special Forces veteran who fought in Vietnam and now lives out West. "Just shoot 'em on sight. That's my immigration policy recommendation. You break into my country, you die."

"I agree completely," Michael said. "You get up there with a rifle and start shooting four or five of them a week, the other four or five thousand behind them are going to think twice about crossing that line."

Minuteman Craig Howard

No, we ought to be able to shoot the Mexicans on sight, and that would end the problem. After two or three Mexicxans are shot, they'll stop crossing the border and they'll take their cows home, too.

Vox Day, regarding the mass deportation of all illegal aliens:

Not only will it work, but one can easily estimate how long it would take. If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn't possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don't speak English and are not integrated into American society.

E: Identification with vermin or disease

"radar":

We can learn from Buffalo, New York. Now in Buffalo the rat problem in the city was a huge one. Exterminators could not handle the problem. But then in 2001 the city mandated that everyone would have to begin using special anti-rat garbage totes that the rats could not open. With no way to get to the garbage, the rats left Buffalo. Now, they went to the suburbs and now the suburbs are fighting them. But it is no longer a problem for the people of Buffalo, New York. Here is how to do the same with our problem:

1) No services.

Absolutely no services of any kind for those who cannot prove they are in the country legally. Nothing but emergency medical care. Without all the social services, medical and other services provided for them, the illegals will find life here less attractive.

2) No schools.

Absolutely no schooling for anyone who cannot prove they belong here legally.

3) No easy birthright.

Change the law. Now, if you are born here, you are a citizen. I say, if you cannot prove that you were born here and that your mother was here legally at the time, then your citizenship is that of the mother and not of the USA.

4) No legal status. No drivers licenses. No bank accounts. No ability to sue a citizen. No legal standing for anyone who is in this country illegally.

5) No free lunch for "The Man".

Make it a criminal offense (and enforce it if it is already on the books) to hire an illegal alien, or to rent a dwelling place to him, or to sell him a home knowing that he intends to live there. Make employers provide documentation for all of their workers. You put the onus on "The Man" and it suddenly becomes less appealing to take advantage of the illegals.

THE RATS WILL GO SOMEWHERE ELSE

Glenn Reynolds [referencing Muslim mothers reluctant to obtain certain immunizations]: "Just think of it as evolution in action."

Minuteman Ted Hayes:

"They're teaching Middle Easterners Spanish, teaching them how to dress Hispanic, and now they're all over this country, and Lord knows what they'll do." He says illegal aliens are draining the health-care system, bankrupting hospitals and crowding schools. As a former law-enforcement officer, Hayes says, the thing that really burns him is the impact on public safety.

"They're in vehicular accidents where they leave the scene or have no insurance," he says. "Rapes, robberies, killing cops and running back to their home country -- these people are breaking the law every day they're here. They're 10 percent of the nation's crime, and our prisons are full of them."

Michael Savage:

And I say also, No. 2, to the politicians, I warn you personally. You will not be re-elected. If you take to the streets with the vermin who are trying to dictate to us how we should run America, even though they're not even entitled to vote or be here, you're going to be thrown out of office. The people will throw you out of office. There are not enough of them to re-elect you. You will be out of a job. You will not have a living. You will be hunting for a job. Maybe, you'll be picking the vegetables.

Grover Norquist:

This should not surprise us. Expect the crescendo to grow through 2004. The other team isn't being unreasonable. It is reacting rationally to a real threat to its ability to function. Anything short of placing snipers on the rooftops of D.C. would be an underreaction by the Left.

Cornered rats fight. Hard.

F: All of the above

Mike Thompson, Reason, "Declaration of Expulsion: A Modest Proposal":

For many decades, conservative citizens and like-minded political leaders (starting with President Calvin Coolidge) have been denigrated by the vilest of lies and characterizations from hordes of liberals who now won't even admit that they are liberals--because the word connotes such moral stink and political silliness. As a class, liberals no longer are merely the vigorous opponents of the Right; they are spiteful enemies of civilization's core decency and traditions.

Defamation, never envisioned by our Founding Fathers as being protected by the First Amendment, flourishes and passes today for acceptable political discourse. Movies, magazines, newspapers, radio/TV programs, plays, concerts, public schools, colleges, and most other public vehicles openly traffic in slander and libel. Hollywood salivated over the idea of placing another golden Oscar into Michael Moore's fat hands, for his Fahrenheit 9/11 jeremiad, the most bogus, deceitful film documentary since Herr Hitler and Herr Goebbels gave propaganda a bad name.

When they tire of showering conservative victims with ideological mud, liberals promote the only other subjects with which they feel conversationally comfortable: Obscenity and sexual perversion. It's as if the genes of liberals have rendered them immune to all forms of filth.

... The truth is, America is not just broken -- it is becoming irreparable. If you believe that recent years of uncivil behavior are burdensome, imagine the likelihood of a future in which all bizarre acts are the norm, and a government-booted foot stands permanently on your face.

That is why the unthinkable must become thinkable. If the so-called "Red States" (those that voted for George W. Bush) cannot be respected or at least tolerated by the "Blue States" (those that voted for Al Gore and John Kerry), then the most disparate of them must live apart -- not by secession of the former (a majority), but by expulsion of the latter. Here is how to do it.

John Shelley:

Instead of sitting around, incessantly sniping at President Bush and the US Military, sipping "liberal coward broth", hating America and Conservatives, the wacko liberal poison Left-Wing Nuts — and the rest of The Enemy Within™ — should be rounded-up and put into "re-education camps" and forced to watch 24 hour, non-stop TV news footage of 9-11, Sodomy Insane's rape/torture/murder rooms and the unearthing of Iraqi mass graves. Those hard-core Lefty wacko filth who can't be converted, should be summarily tried and locked away for life; no chance of parole. They're a waste of oxygen and a "clear and present danger" to America, as is the murderous, degenerate cult of Islam. Free and unfettered speech is guaranteed under the First Amendment, but actively working and trying to destroy this Nation, in a time of war, when our very lives are in peril, is a treasonous and seditious offense, and should be treated as such, and punished by death. The much-maligned Patriot Act provides for that very situation, and should be implemented post haste. All verminous, hate-America, liberal-socialist-commie filth should be contained and selectively eliminated.

Adam Yoshida:

The enemy we are facing has several columns. Of these, the fifth is the strongest. Last week I discussed how, contrary to reports in the mainstream media, we are winning in Iraq. The problem is this: we can win ten thousand battles in Iraq and still lose the war. Ultimately, the question of victory or defeat will not be decided over there, but here at home. The one enemy which can defeat the United States is the one enemy that all of those brave soldiers, sailors, marines and airmen cannot meet upon the field of battle. The real enemy is the enemy within.

... I fully realize that my assertion of this doctrine will set some to screaming about the right of ‘dissent’. Well, as to that, let me say this. The right to ‘dissent’ is the right to remain silent, to disagree, to not participate. That is a natural right which is retained by every single human being under any condition. There is no right, however, to attempt to incite others to join you in undermining the efforts of a national at war. That is not dissent: it is sedition. There is no right to speak out in support of an enemy of the nation. That is no dissent: it is treason.

We have seen this before, in Vietnam. Those who we fight here at home will abuse freedom in order to destroy it. They claim the mantle of liberalism and the protections that it affords in order to attack liberal society. That is the question before us now: can we allow those who mean to destroy the Constitution to cloak themselves in it?

The enemy at home is well-entrenched and means to fight us to the death. Will we allow them to betray freedom again, as they did in Vietnam? Never! When I think of Vietnam, I can hear but two words echoing in the distance, ‘never again.’ Never again will we allow our forces to win a war on the fields of battle only to see that victory thrown away by the traitors and cowards at home and never again will we allow the shame of defeat to stain American honor.

Under the cover of darkness the enemy is on the move. They will strike at dawn. We have no option but to fight them, meet them, and ultimately destroy them. Our soldiers over there are doing there job, why do we not do our job? They have the courage to march into Islamist guns. Have we not the courage to deal with the traitors and seditionists who would stab our brave forces in the back?

Sometimes I think that the treason is so deeply ingrained in our society that nothing short of martial law, the suspension of habeas corpus, and the repeal of Posse Comitatus will do. Sometimes I think that we will need to think to the Revolution, where Tories and other traitors were dealt with harshly by a righteous people. I hope that I am wrong, but I do not deny the possibility.

This is too important to be dealt with civilly. Civility will bring us only defeat. We need to recall the spirit of those construction workers in New York City who, upon seeing a treason rally after the invasion of Cambodia, charged into the protests with their fists flying. The next time you see a person walking down a street with an anti-war button, even if they are minding their own business, call them a name. Start a screaming match with them. If a relative if yours opposes the war, refuse to speak to them, except in support for the war. If a bookstore displays anti-war books in a prominent position, refuse to shop there and explain to the owners exactly why.

We will never win by denouncing the anti-war movement as a whole. Altogether, they are too powerful to be easily defeated. Rather, we need to drive anti-war sentiments underground by making it difficult to be anti-war. For example, if you know for a fact that the owner of a small business is opposed to the war, look for ways to hurt that specific small business. Boycotting a large company, even one with obvious liberal leanings like Ben and Jerry’s or a movie made by some jackass like Sean Penn is unlikely to have any real effect. Rather, hit the small people. Make those who oppose the war pay a price for their treasonous beliefs. If they own a little market, picket it. They might have a free speech right to oppose the war, but you have a free speech right to oppose them. I want them to lose their businesses, lose their jobs, go bankrupt, and lose their homes. Given their great efforts against America, that is the least deserved by everyone who opposes the war. Stop thinking of people who oppose the war as your friends, family, and neighbours: start thinking of them as enemies of America who must be defeated if the Republic is to endure.

ADDENDUM

Eliminationist book titles:

Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism, by Ann Coulter

Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism and Liberalism, by Sean Hannity

The Enemy Within: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Schools, Faith, and Military, by Michael Savage

Liberalism is a Mental Disorder, by Michael Savage

The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11, by Dinesh d'Souza

Labels: Conservatives, Republicans, right-wing nutjobs