A three-hour election show from film-maker Michael Moore has been dropped by a US cable TV company.
The Michael Moore Pre-Election Special, including the first TV showing of his film Fahrenheit 9/11, was to be shown on pay-per-view channel In Demand.
The company said the decision to axe the show the night before the November 2 elections was due to "legitimate business and legal concerns."
DAVIE, Fla. -- Miami Dolphins quarterback Jay Fiedler said Friday that he'll start at Buffalo Sunday despite missing practice time this week with a cracked rib.
"I'm playing and I'm good to go," said Fiedler, who aggravated the injury last Sunday in a 24-10 loss to New England and sat out the end of the game.
Yesterday, the New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, sued Marsh & McLennan, accusing it of misleading customers and raising the costs of their insurance to increase Marsh's profit.Bush/Cheney stand with the Insurance Industry.
With the lawsuit, Chief Executive Jeffrey Greenberg is confronted with a third government investigation of a core operating unit. Two inquiries - one at Putnam Investments, its money management division, and the other at Mercer Inc., its consulting unit - started last year. The latest - at Marsh Inc., its insurance brokerage arm - was disclosed yesterday. Putnam later settled with regulators for $110 million.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States on Friday ordered a freeze on assets of the militant group led by Jordanian Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, which has claimed responsibility for a series of bombings, kidnappings and beheadings in Iraq.WEINISH: you see this article?
The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control added Zarqawi's Tawhid and Jihad group to its list of suspected terrorists and terrorism financiers.
The move, which came a day after Britain ordered banks to seek out and freeze any assets of the group, blocks any accounts, funds and assets of Tawhid and Jihad in the United States.
Josh Marshall of TalkingPointsMemo.com made this happen. Thank the blogs.
CONCORD — Federal prosecutors yesterday called a halt just 20 minutes before Democrats were to question a Republican official under oath over the identity of a Bush-Cheney official allegedly implicated in an illegal phone-jamming operation.
Computerized telephone calls jammed five Democratic get-out-the-vote phone banks, plus a sixth run by Manchester firefighters, for about an hour and a half during the 2002 election.
The U.S. Justice Department will ask a judge as soon as today to stay depositions that Democrats had scheduled yesterday and today in their civil lawsuit against the GOP in connection with the scheme launched in the 2002 New Hampshire election.
"These depositions, if they took place at this particular time, would interfere with our criminal investigation," said Bryan Sierra, a spokesman for the justice department.
Decrying last minute "interference" by federal officials, Democrats in court filings yesterday identified the alleged co-conspirator as Jim Tobin, director of the 2004 New England regional Bush-Cheney campaign.
Tobin was the regional director of the Republican Senatorial Committee during the 2002 election when Democrat Jeanne Shaheen was defeated in a close race by John Sununu.
A 17-member Army Reserve platoon with troops from Jackson and around the Southeast deployed to Iraq is under arrest for refusing a "suicide mission" to deliver fuel, the troops' relatives said Thursday.The President said, "They are all Kerry supporters!!!"
The soldiers refused an order on Wednesday to go to Taji, Iraq — north of Baghdad — because their vehicles were considered "deadlined" or extremely unsafe, said Patricia McCook of Jackson, wife of Sgt. Larry O. McCook.
Sgt. McCook, a deputy at the Hinds County Detention Center, and the 16 other members of the 343rd Quartermaster Company from Rock Hill, S.C., were read their rights and moved from the military barracks into tents, Patricia McCook said her husband told her during a panicked phone call about 5 a.m. Thursday.
Poland will start reducing its 2,500-strong troop contingent in Iraq from early next year, Polish Prime Minister Marek Belka says.
" Senator Edwards: Now, as to this question. Let me say first that I think the Vice President and his wife love their daughter. I think they love her very much. And you can't have anything but respect for the fact that they're willing to talk about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace her. It's a wonderful thing. And there are millions of parents like that who love their children, who want their children to be happy."Would you like to add anything else? Uhhhhhhhhhh, no.
After which, VP Dick Cheney responded: "Well, Gwen [the moderator], let me simply thank the Senator for the kind words he said about my family and our daughter. I appreciate that, very much."
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Bob LonginoPerfect.
"...if you like your social commentary mixed with grade-school humor and shameless incivility, you'll laugh till you cry." more... A-
Boston Globe, Wesley MorrisShutup, douche.
"...a smart movie trapped in the body of a dead-end action flick." more... B-
Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert "Like a cocky teenager who's had a couple of drinks before the party, [Parker and Stone] don't have a plan for who they want to offend, only an intention to be as offensive as possible." more... C-Perfect.
Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder "...you quite never know whose team they're on, and that's why Parker and Stone's wily brand of kamikaze satire works..." more... B-B-?
The federal government reached its $7.4 trillion debt ceiling yesterday, forcing Treasury Secretary John W. Snow to delay contributing to one of the federal employees' pension systems to avoid running out of cash and possibly defaulting on government debt.It's called Fiscal Responsibility.
The situation will probably be temporary, as it has in the past. Congressional leaders said that when they return for a lame-duck session after the election, they will raise the debt ceiling to allow the government to borrow the money it needs to pay its bills. At that point, any overdue contributions to the pension fund would be paid, with interest.
...the Treasury has on five occasions delayed pension fund payments as it approached its limit on borrowing. Three of those incidents came under President Bush -- in 2002, 2003 and yesterday -- as Republicans in Congress have become leery of voting to raise the debt limit. The others were during the rapidly spiraling deficits of 1985 and the budget showdown between the new Republican Congress and President Bill Clinton in 1995.
WGME's plan to air a documentary critical of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry prompted three Maine companies Thursday to pull their advertising from the Portland TV station.
Hannaford supermarkets, the Lee Auto Malls, and the law offices of Joe Bornstein withdrew their advertising indefinitely from WGME (Channel 13) over its plans to air "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal" on Oct. 23.
The New Republic Today at TNR Online Fri 10/15 2kDidn't say I was cool.
washingtonpost.com Politics: The Final Push Fri 10/15 42k
James Carville Listen Up Fri 10/15 17k
OpinionJournal On the Editorial Page - October 15, 2004 Fri 10/15
MichaelWolff.com Michael Wolff - News Update Thu 10/14 8k
Anthony D. Romero Protect the Vote Now Thu 10/14 7k
The New Republic TNR Politics: Conscience of a Conservative
Oregon's attorney general opened a criminal investigation Wednesday into allegations that Democratic voter registration forms were destroyed or discarded by a political consulting firm working for the Republican National Committee.
The allegations involve a voter registration drive conducted by Sproul & Associates, a Phoenix-based consulting organization that was hired by the RNC earlier this year and is headed up by the former executive director of the Arizona Republican Committee, Nathan Sproul.
Sproul has become entangled in controversial allegations in at least three states where his company was conducting registration drives paid for by the RNC.
Seventeen months into a shadowy terror campaign that has killed more than 100 people, numerous Saudis express less anger at the insurgents than at the United States for its invasion of Iraq, the signal event that they say touched off the attacks inside the kingdom.Some call them Saudis, I call them allies.
In interviews over the last week, the Saudis condemned the terror attacks, aimed primarily at foreigners, but called them a small inconvenience that has not forced them to make significant changes in their daily lives. By contrast, they expressed unremitting disdain for the United States.
Many Saudis appear to have reached a form of intellectual accommodation with those carrying out the violence. When asked about the attackers' goals, they assigned varied motives but often one that is consistent with their personal, social or political concerns.
The interviews were with nearly two dozen Saudis, from a bejeweled prince of the royal court, sipping coffee at a cafe, to a truck driver wearing a frayed caftan, clutching a bag of onions at a local supermarket.
Cheap
I was struck last night by this line:
BUSH: I would. Thank you.
I want to remind people listening tonight that a plan is not a litany of complaints, and a He just said he wants everybody to be able to buy in to the same plan that senators and congressmen get. That costs the government $7,700 per family. If every family in America signed up, like the senator suggested, if would cost us $5 trillion over 10 years.
Leave aside for a minute Bush pretending that Kerry was calling for a government.
My first thought was... wow! That's actually pretty cheap. In fact, I think Bush just made an extraordinary argument for some version of a mandatory single payer system.
According to the CBO, health care expenditures in 2002 were equal to $5,450 per capita. So, assuming Bush's numbers are correct (and who am I to question him?), bring it on baby! $7,700 per family is a hell of a lot less than $5,450 per person. The health care revolution is here! Bush is its fearless leader!
FORT MYERS, Fla. (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney called himself ``a pretty angry father'' on Thursday after Sen. John Kerry mentioned their gay daughter during the final presidential debate -- comments Kerry said were meant to be positive about families with gay children.Why are they so upset? They are THAT EMBARRASSED!
Jurors should be free to decide whether killers who are under age 18 when they commit their crimes are mature enough to deserve the death penalty, a lawyer for the state of Missouri told the Supreme Court on Wednesday.In case you're wondering, and I know you are, there are a few other countries that allow the death penalty for people under 18: China, Congo, Iran, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Nations just like ours!
"There are 17-year-olds who are equally culpable (of murder) as 18-year-olds or 25-year-olds or some other age," said James Layton, Missouri's solicitor.
But Seth Waxman, arguing for a Missouri man who was sentenced to death for a slaying he committed when he was 17, said that it is impossible for jurors to accurately assess a juvenile's maturity at the time of such a crime. Therefore, Waxman said, the death penalty for juvenile crimes violates the Eighth Amendment's ban on "cruel and unusual" punishment.
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. -- A computer crash that forced a pre-election test of electronic voting machines to be postponed was trumpeted by critics as proof of the balloting technology's unreliability.The dry run to test out the machines was postponed. The dry run.
The incident in Palm Beach County -- which is infamous for its hanging and pregnant chads during the 2000 presidential election -- did not directly involve the touch-screen terminals on which nearly one in three U.S. voters will cast ballots on Election Day.
But critics of the ATM-like machines said it proved how fickle computer-based voting systems can be and highlighted the need for touch-screens to produce paper records.
Tuesday's public dry run had to be postponed until Friday because excessive heat caused a computer server that tabulates data from the touch-screen machines to crash, said county elections supervisor Theresa LePore. Such ''logic and accuracy'' tests are required by law.
Foreign policy was the topic when retired four-star U.S. Air Force Gen. Merrill A. "Tony" McPeak spoke in Chambers Building last night.Let me know if one turns up.
McPeak originally supported George W. Bush in the 2000 election but has since registered as an Independent and is supporting the Kerry/Edwards ticket. He said he is upset with Bush's foreign policy and does not feel the answers lie in a war with Iraq.
"I had great admiration for the Bush parents, so it was natural for me to drift to the Bush side in the 2000 election," McPeak said. "I have regretted it from day one."
Imagine if the CBS television network pre-empted "60 Minutes" this Sunday and broadcast Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11." Many of you might be thrilled. But many of you would be disgusted and outraged, calling it a deliberate, misleading, and unfair ploy to impact the presidential election at the very end.Yeah, just "imagine" that.
The Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. isn't CBS. But Sinclair does own 62 television stations, including 35 affiliated with the major broadcast networks. (20 Fox stations, 8 ABC, 4 NBC, and 3 CBS.) And Sinclair is ordering all of its stations to pre-empt regular programming and run, as early as this weekend, a partisan documentary about John Kerry titled "Stolen Honor."
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Two explosions have killed at least eight people in one of the bloodiest attacks on Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.Are they saying that we cannot protect even the Green Zone? Reassured?
"There were body parts scattered everywhere. There could be more than eight dead, and several are wounded," said a source at a U.S. military hospital on Thursday inside the compound, which houses government offices and the U.S. and British embassies.
Hours after Bill O'Reilly accused her of a multimillion dollar shakedown attempt, a female Fox News producer fired back at the TV star today, filing a lawsuit claiming that he subjected her to repeated instances of sexual harassment and spoke often, and explicitly, to her about phone sex, vibrators, threesomes, masturbation, the loss of his virginity, and sexual fantasies. Below you'll find a copy of Andrea Mackris's complaint, an incredible page-turner that quotes O'Reilly, 55, on all sorts of lewd matters. Based on the extensive quotations cited in the complaint, it appears a safe bet that Mackris, 33, recorded some of O'Reilly's more steamy soliloquies. For example, we direct you to his Caribbean shower fantasies. While we suggest reading the entire document, TSG will point you to interesting sections on a Thailand sex show, Al Franken, and the climax of one August 2004 phone conversation.
Lynne V. Cheney, wife of Vice President Cheney, accused John F. Kerry on Wednesday night of "a cheap and tawdry political trick" and said he "is not a good man" after he brought up their daughter's homosexuality at the final presidential debate.How dare he tell people when we're working so hard to hide it!
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott says he would argue before the United States Supreme Court in defense of a Ten Commandments monument on the state capitol grounds.The AG is arguing that it's legal in front of a Supreme Court that will agree?
The Bush administration is holding talks with its European allies on a possible package of economic incentives for Iran, including access to imported nuclear fuel, in return for suspension of uranium enrichment activities that are suspected to be part of a nuclear arms program, European and American diplomats said Monday. The diplomats said that while the administration had not endorsed any incentives for Iran, it was not discouraging Britain, France and Germany from assembling a package that the administration would consider after the American presidential election on Nov. 2, for likely presentation to Tehran later in the month.In other words, what Kerry wants to pursue, and what Clinton did pursue in North Korea is only a good plan if you use it in Iran.
European diplomats said that the administration was very squeamish about even discussing incentives, in part because it would represent a policy reversal that would provoke a vigorous internal debate, and in part because of the presidential campaign. Senator John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, has made Iran an issue, criticizing the administration for not working more closely with European nations. Mr. Kerry has said that if elected he would endorse a deal supplying Iran with civilian nuclear fuel under tight restrictions and would press for sanctions if Iran refused.The beat goes on.
10/13/2004
Charles R. Gerow, the owner of the company which provides rental space and handles checks for the anti-Kerry film ordered to be shown by Sinclair Broadcasting Group, was appointed by President Bush to serve on a multi-year, multi-million dollar celebration committee, RAW STORY has learned.
On Monday October 11th, with its members itching to set off on their re-election campaigns, the Senate passed a corporate-tax bill 650 pages long. Unless President George Bush vetoes it, which is unlikely, the bill will distort America’s tax code in favour of manufacturers, reward multinationals for avoiding taxes and dispense fiscal goodies to any number of firms with effective lobbyists. Needless to say, it was not originally intended to do any of these things...I suggest reading it all if you're into this shite.
But not all are as fatalistic as Mr Buiter. Indeed, some still hope for fundamental tax reform in the United States. For them, the true burden of taxation is not the money it levies but the economic decisions it distorts: decisions to work, save and invest. They hold up the tax reform Ronald Reagan passed in 1986 as an example of how to broaden and streamline the tax code, removing its distortions and freeing it from special interests.
But within a few years of that landmark act, the pork barrels began to roll again. Too many lawmakers want to see their pet projects enshrined in the tax code. Too few keep sight of the interests of the economy as a whole. From time to time, Mr Bush has hinted at his ambition to simplify taxes as well as cut them. He has denounced the special interests served by this bill. But he will probably sign it anyway. He is not a man with much fiscal credibility. It will take a bolder president to tame the forces of Congress’s nature.
President Bush charged in a pair of television ads yesterday that John F. Kerry's health care plan would lead to "rationing," "less access," "fewer choices" and "long waits." But his campaign acknowledged that these were references to the existing Medicaid program, whose eligibility would be expanded under the Massachusetts senator's proposal."Not entirely" means it's a lie.
The ads also charge, as Bush has on the campaign trail, that his challenger's plan is "a big government takeover." But there is no takeover -- the Kerry plan builds on the existing system of private health insurance, primarily through tax credits and incentives.
Fact sheets provided by the Bush campaign offered little evidence for these and other accusations beyond excerpts from such conservative forums as the Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Weekly Standard.
Black leaders said the scene at the supervisor's office last week was reminiscent of a blocked schoolhouse door at the height of desegregation. They charge that GOP officials are deliberately using the law to keep black people off the rolls and hinder them from voting.Sheeesh, haven't we done enough for these people?
Four years ago, ballots cast from black neighborhoods throughout Florida were four times as likely to go uncounted as those from white neighborhoods. Nowhere was the disparity more apparent than in Duval County, where 42 percent of 27,000 ballots thrown out came from four heavily Democratic black precincts.
Despite attempts by Florida officials to prevent a repeat of the controversy that dogged the last presidential election, black leaders said they are concerned that this year new registrations are being rejected for technical errors and that limited accessibility to early polling places could lead to more disputes, roiling Florida and the nation long after Election Day.
Leaked Democratic memos indicate that Mr. Estrada was targeted, in part, because, "he is Latino, and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment," and because, "we can't make the same mistake we made with Clarence Thomas." Judiciary Democrats, led by Sens. Edward Kennedy, Patrick Leahy and Richard Durbin, agreed to block or slow-walk particular nominees at the behest of liberal campaign donors, including the trial lawyers, the NAACP, and the national abortion providers' lobby. These Democrats decided, in advance of hearings, which nominees to block, and Democratic staffers characterized Bush nominees as "Nazis."Wow.
WOULD John Kerry or George Bush do a better job stewarding America's economy? Judging by the polls, voters are not sure. Within the past couple of months both candidates have had narrow leads on the issue. Ask economics professors, however, and you get a clearer answer.Fucking Liberals! The last point pretty much sums it up.
In an informal poll of 100 academics, conducted by The Economist, Mr Bush's policies win low marks. More than 70% of the 56 professors who responded to our survey rate Mr Bush's first-term economic policies as bad or very bad. Fewer than 20% give positive marks to Mr Bush's second-term economic agenda, and almost six out of ten disapproved. Mr Kerry hardly got rave reviews either, but his economic plan still fared better than the president's did. In all, four out of ten professors rated Mr Kerry's economic plan as good or very good, but 27% gave it negative scores.
The results can be seen here.
...More than seven out of ten respondents say the Bush administration's tax cuts were either a bad or a very bad idea, and a similar proportion disapproves of Mr Bush's plans to make his tax cuts permanent.
I wonder if President Bush could look into the eyes of Christopher Reeve’s family and tell that that it’s because he values life so deeply that he is preserving clusters of cells in freezers—cells that resulted from in-vitro fertilization and could be used for embryonic stem cell treatment—despite the fact that more people will die as a result of his decision. I wonder if he could stare into their grief and defend the fact that he has released only a few lines of stem cells—lines that are basically useless because they have been contaminated. Or brazenly point out that he has authorized funding for adult stem cells—which do not hold the same miraculous potential as embryonic stem cells.Probably could?
The sad fact is, the president probably could. After all, Laura Bush went on national television during the week of my father’s funeral and spoke out against embryonic stem cell research, pointing out that where Alzheimer’s is concerned, we don’t have proof that stem-cell treatment would be effective.
The consumer electronics arm of the Virgin Group is introducing a new 5-gigabyte hard-disk portable music player, bringing a powerful brand name in music to the increasingly crowded product space.If you plug the Virgin model into your ass it can be used as a rocket booster to propel you into orbit.
Virgin Electronics hopes its slim Virgin Player, which debuts Tuesday and is smaller than a deck of cards, will rise as a lead competitor to Apple Computer Inc.'s wildly popular iPod players. Apple dominates the portable player market that is filled also with choices from Rio Audio, Sony Corp., Samsung Electronics, and Creative Labs Inc., among others.
In yesterday's Week in Review section, The Times's Dexter Filkins wrote movingly from Baghdad about the reporters trying to cover the war. There's been a relentless expansion, he said, of areas that reporters dare not venture into because they are too dangerous. Most European reporters have left the country, and there are far fewer Americans than just a few months ago.read on.
Forty-six reporters have been killed and Mr. Filkins himself has been attacked by a mob, shot at and detained by the Mahdi Army.
If Mr. Bush has a plan to clean up the mess in Iraq, he should say so. If he has a strategy - besides more tax cuts - to bolster employment in the U.S., he should tell us. If he's in touch with the real world in which these and other very serious problems exist, he might consider letting us know.
Spinning gets old after a while. A president who spends too much time spinning webs of illusion can find himself trapped in them.
This is news. I can't change the fact that these people decided to come forward today. The networks had this opportunity over a month ago to speak with these people. They chose to suppress them. They chose to ignore them. They are acting like Holocaust deniers, pretending these men don't exist.The networks are like Holocaust deniers for not running a smear campaign against Senator Kerry.
After the 2001 terrorist attacks, the Smiths' company, Sinclair Broadcasting Group Inc., ordered its local anchors to read editorials backing the administration against al Qaeda. Earlier this year, Sinclair sent a vice president who has called John F. Kerry a liar to Iraq to find good news stories that it said were being overlooked by the biased liberal press. And the Smith brothers and their executives have made 97 percent of their political donations during the 2004 election cycle to Bush and the Republicans.
Uh, let me give you a couple of examples I guess of the kind of person I wouldn't pick. I wouldn't pick a judge who said that the Pledge of Allegiance couldn't be said in a school because it had the words 'under God'' in it. I think that's an example of a judge allowing personal opinion to enter into the decision-making process, as opposed to strict interpretation of the Constitution. Another example would be the Dred Scott case, which is where judges years ago said that the Constitution allowed slavery because of personal property rights. That's personal opinion. That's not what the Constitution says. The Constitution of the United States says we're all - you know, it doesn't say that. It doesn't speak to the equality of America.It's really hard to even figure out where he was going. But the point being is he supposedly supports judges who don't put personal opinion into their rulings. In Dred Scott, THEY DIDN'T! Blacks were 3/5 a man at the time. This was a personal property case, and blacks weren't equal to other white men, and the Constitution allowed them to be owned!
Perhaps that's all too complicated for the media to grasp. Fine. But simple history shouldn't be, and that history certainly suggests Kerry takes deficit reduction more seriously than Bush. As a senator, Kerry actually broke with his party leadership to vote for the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Act--officially titled the "Balanced Budget and Emergency Deficit Control Act of 1985"--that was a precursor to the PAYGO system established in 1990. He also voted for President Clinton's 1993 and 1997 budgets, two controversial measures that led to the creation of budget surpluses. In 2000, the ten-year budget forecast predicted a $4.6 trillion surplus--at least some of which then-Governor Bush, like his opponent Al Gore, promised to save in order to shore up Social Security and Medicare. But, as we all know, Bush didn't save that money. Instead, he pushed through massive tax cuts, ignoring warnings that they were unsustainable, particularly given the unpredictability of the economy. Today, the ten-year outlook is for $2 to $5 trillion in deficits.It's a good read.Simply put, Bush had a surplus, now he has a deficit. That's HIS RECORD.
Since May, Brig. Gen. Oscar B. Hilman, commander of the 81st Brigade Combat Team, a National Guard unit from Washington state that operates the base, has requested 500 to 700 more soldiers. But he said the request has been denied.
"Because the enemy is persistent, we need additional forces. We asked twice," said Hilman, who arrived here in April for a yearlong stint. But Hilman said he was told that "there are no additional forces," and that U.S. soldiers are needed elsewhere, particularly to battle insurgents and cover a large area to the north that includes the rebellious cities of Tikrit and Samarra.
The 81st Brigade's top enlisted man, Sgt. Maj. Robert Barr, said the soldiers here are frustrated, and that he often hears the same question: "Why aren't we stopping it or killing their guys who are doing it?"
Their complaints contrast sharply with statements by President Bush and top Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who say U.S. troop strength is sufficient but that more soldiers will be sent if senior commanders ask.
While the 81st provides security inside the fence that surrounds the base, the task of protection outside the concertina wire falls to the 2nd Brigade, part of the 1st Infantry Division, based in Tikrit. During the past week, the division has participated in the effort to take back Samarra from insurgents. Those units, too, are stretched thin.
WASHINGTON, October 8, 2004 — The military's mission at Abu Ghraib was inadequately planned almost from conception. It was subordinated to political and intelligence goals and bogged down at every level by inadequate resources and hostile conditions, according to classified documents reviewed and now posted by the Center for Public Integrity.God head shed his grace on thee...
The documents, the first installment of background materials from Army Major General Anthony Taguba's investigation into abuses of military detainees in Iraq, were provided to the Center by Rolling Stone contributor Osha Gray Davidson. The Center plans to post the second installment of the documents later this month.
Including high-level policy memos, special investigations and witness testimony, the documents describe attacks, prisoner riots, interrogation methods and the torture and deaths of detainees. They reveal that the torture and abuse of inmates at the prison by military police, exposed in April 2004 news accounts of the classified report, took place under the guidance of military intelligence with little direct supervision from overburdened senior officers.
Sinclair Broadcast Group of Maryland, owner of the largest chain of television stations in the nation, plans to preempt regular programming two weeks before the Nov. 2 election to air a documentary that accuses Sen. John F. Kerry of betraying American prisoners during the Vietnam War.I wonder if Congress will freak out about the accuracy of this film, like they did the Reagan Documentary?
Sinclair has ordered its 62 stations, some of which are in the critical swing states of Ohio, Florida, Iowa and Wisconsin, to air "Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal" during prime-time hours next week. The Sinclair station group collectively reaches 24 percent of U.S. television households.
Sinclair's top executives, including members of the controlling Smith family, have been strong financial supporters of Bush's campaign. The company made news in April when it ordered seven of its ABC-affiliated stations not to air a "Nightline" segment that featured a reading of the names of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq; a Sinclair executive called that broadcast "contrary to the public interest."
President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, said Wednesday that the Bush-Cheney campaign is planning some October "surprises" for challengers John Kerry and John Edwards.If I had to guess Bush is going to lead the 10th Mountain Division into the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan and personally stab Osama bin Laden.
"We've got a couple of surprises that we intend to spring," Rove told ABC radio host Sean Hannity while explaining that he intends to wage an aggressive campaign no matter what the polls show.
Associated PressIt just keeps going...
Oct. 9, 2004 12:00 AM
WASHINGTON - The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights voted Friday to wait until after next month's election to discuss a report critical of the Bush administration's civil rights record. Republican members had objected to the report's timing.
The report remains posted on the commission's Web site (www.usccr.gov), however, despite objections from GOP commissioners.
Major American oil companies and a Texas oil investor were among those who received lucrative vouchers that enabled them to buy Iraqi oil under the United Nations oil-for-food program, according to a report prepared by the chief arms inspector for the Central Intelligence Agency.I refuse to believe this, unless of course all these companies have French CEOs.
The 918-page report says that four American oil companies - Chevron, Mobil, Texaco and Bay Oil - and three individuals including Oscar S. Wyatt Jr. of Houston were given vouchers and got 111 million barrels of oil between them from 1996 to 2003. The vouchers allowed them to profit by selling the oil or the right to trade it.
