My name is Catherine Morgan, I'm a writer, nurse, mother, and founder of "The Political Voices of Women". This is a blog dedicated to inform and educate the voting public through articles, ideas, and links. It's also a way of giving myself a voice, rather than just sitting back and watching politics and my opinion go by.
--- I am now also at the Care2 Election Blog.
Late Monday the Senate decided to delay a vote on a bill that would have given the telecom industry immunity for providing private customer information to the government. However, this is just one part of a much more complicated and troubling bill. It’s actually a new government eavesdropping bill that has more than a dozen amendments. This new surveillance bill is meant to replace a temporary law that Congress hastily passed back in August. The law expands the government’s authority to listen in on American communications, [and this is the most troubling part] without a court order.
So, if this law is passed (and it has only been delayed until January), it will give our government the right to eavesdrop on any American citizen, without first getting a warrant to do so from a judge.
This is from my post at the Care2 Election Blog, I hope you will check it out.
Federal Judge Smacks Down on White House Log Secrecy.
Why in the world do White House visitor logs need to be a national secret? Well, when all else fails the Bush administration usually plays the “Threat to National Security” card. No surprise here, that is exactly what they did. However, on Monday, a federal judge rejected the Bush administration argument for secrecy, and ruled that the visitor logs are subject to the Freedom of Information Act and are public information.
I wasn’t at all shocked when I saw this today on Countdown. It’s just more evidence of how the Bush administration uses fear and manipulation of the American people to further their agenda.
During his time in office Donald Rumsfeld used to write 20 to 60 brief memos each day to his staff and he called these memos snowflakes. They gave advice on how to manipulate the press and the public and some of the worst were things like should terrorism be considered a “worldwide insurgency”, “go out and push people back”, “keep elevating the threat” and “link Iraq to Iran”.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - There’s no sign of a family reunion planned, but U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney and Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama are distant cousins.
So says the vice president’s wife, Lynne Cheney, who said she discovered that her husband of 43 years is eighth cousins with the senator from Illinois.
The two men could hardly be more different. Cheney is an advocate for pursuing the war in Iraq to try to stabilize the country, while Obama wants to get U.S. troops out of Iraq. — read full article here
A judge threw out the lawsuit by ex-spy Valerie Plame Wilson and husband Joseph Wilson.
WASHINGTON (CNN) — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit by outed spy Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband against Vice President Dick Cheney and other top Bush administration officials.
Plame had accused members of the Bush administration of leaking her identity.
AP: Reporting that Lewis (Scooter) Libby Prison Sentence Commuted by President.
Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former Chief of Staff to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, arrives for his sentencing hearing at U.S. District Court in Washington in this June 5, 2007 file photo. Libby, a former vice presidential aide, on July 2, 2007 lost his bid to delay serving his 2 1/2-year prison sentence while he appeals his conviction in the CIA leak case. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/Files (UNITED STATES)
Vice President Dick Cheney is greeted by General David Petraeus, commander of the U.S. forces in Iraq, as he arrives at Baghdad International Airport, May 9, 2007. (Gerald Herbert/Pool/Reuters)
Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday that “we’ve go a long way to go” in reducing violence in Iraq. In a trip punctuated by an explosion that shook windows at the U.S. Embassy, where Cheney was visiting.
Protesters burn effigies of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney during a rally in Kerbala, 110 km (70 miles) south of Baghdad, May 9, 2007. Hundreds of supporters of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr attended the demonstration denouncing Cheney’s visit to Iraq. The Arabic inscriptions on the banner reads: “We demand the Iraqi government not to welcome the messenger of terror Dick Cheney”. REUTERS/Mushtaq Muhammad (IRAQ)
The vice president urged that Iraq’s parliament abandon plans for a two-month summer vacation while U.S. forces are fighting. With important issues pending, including how to share Iraq’s oil wealth, “any undue delay would be difficult to explain,” Cheney said. — read full article . . . . . . . .
Vice President Dick Cheney (R) meets Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki (L) in Baghdad May 9, 2007. (Gerald Herbert/Pool/Reuters)
Cheney spent most of the day at the U.S. Embassy inside the heavily protected Green Zone in central Baghdad. He was in the building when an explosion rattled windows and prompted officials to move reporters accompanying Cheney to the basement for several minutes. Witnesses said a mortar or rocket appeared to have been fired from the mostly Shiite areas on the east side of the Tigris River toward the Green Zone.
The vice president, at a news conference a half hour later, did not mention the blast. He had been wearing an armor-plated vest when he got off his plane at the airport. — read full article
Vice President Dick Cheney, right, chats with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki at the start of their dinner in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, May 9, 2007. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
President Bush awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to former CIA director George Tenet during a ceremony at the White House, December 14, 2004. Tenet faced accusations of hypocrisy from former espionage officials on Monday for not speaking out earlier against the White House’s push to invade Iraq, which he describes critically in his new memoir. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)
NEW YORK — The backlash has built up even before the official release of former CIA Director George Tenet’s memoir, with criticism about his version of the run-up to the Iraq war, interrogation techniques and other events.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Sunday disputed Tenet’s claim that the Bush administration, before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, never had a serious debate about whether Iraq posed an imminent threat or whether to tighten existing sanctions. — read full article
I don’t feel sorry for Tenet. He has a book deal, while the troops and their families are really suffering.
BAGHDAD - Five U.S. troops died in weekend attacks, pushing the death toll past 100 in the deadliest month for American forces since December, the military said Monday as a wave of violence battered Iraqi civilians including a suicide bombing at a Shiite funeral. — read full article
US Vice President Dick Cheney addresses The American Heritage Foundation 13 April 2007. Doctors examined Cheney’s left leg on Tuesday and found that a blood clot discovered last month after a nine-day trip to Asia was “gradually resolving,” his office said.(AFP/File/Jeff Haynes)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, speaks about funding for the Iraq war in Washington, DC. US President George W. Bush and Democrats looking to pull US troops from Iraq waged a pitiless war of words Tuesday over a bill that funds the conflict but aims for an April 1, 2008 withdrawal.(AFP/Getty Images/Mark Wilson)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Dick Cheney accused Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Tuesday of pursuing a defeatist strategy in Iraq to win votes in the next election - a charge Reid said did not warrant a response.
The two sparred hours after President Bush said he will veto the latest war spending bill taking shape in Congress, which includes a timetable for withdrawing from Iraq.
Cheney, after attending the weekly Republican policy lunch on Capitol Hill, lashed out at Reid. “Some Democratic leaders seem to believe that blind opposition to the new strategy in Iraq is good politics,” Cheney said. “Sen. Reid himself has said that the war in Iraq will bring his party more seats in the next election.
“It is cynical to declare that the war is lost because you believe it gives you political advantage,” Cheney said. –read full article
It seems to me that it is even more cynical to assume people that believe the war in Iraq is lost, are only saying that to get a political advantage.
An unidentified person straightens a flag that tipped over due to wind and rain on the campus of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Tuesday, April 24, 2007. The flags, one for each American soldier lost in Iraq, were placed at the UNO Pep Bowl and names of the fallen were read, during a Tribute To The Fallen 2007 event. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)
Iraqi firefighters douse fire which swept over cars at the site of a car bomb that exploded in a parking lot nearby the Green Zone area in central Baghdad. US President George W. Bush and Democrats looking to pull US troops from Iraq waged a pitiless war of words Tuesday over a bill that funds the conflict but aims for an April 1, 2008 withdrawal.(AFP/Joseph Eid)
Iraqi children walk past a three-mile-long concrete wall around Baghdad’s Sunni enclave of Adhamiyah. A suicide truck bomber attacked an Iraqi police checkpoint on Tuesday and killed 13 people, a day after a similar bomb attack on a US military patrol base left nine soldiers dead.(AFP/Ali Yussef)
I remember the good old days…..when walls were coming down….now they are going up. What does that say about us? It seems we are going backward and not forward?
US armoured vehicles secure the area where two car bombs exploded in a parking lot nearby the Green Zone area in central Baghdad. A suicide truck bomber attacked an Iraqi police checkpoint on Tuesday and killed 13 people, a day after a similar bomb attack on a US military patrol base left nine soldiers dead.(AFP/Dave Clark)
In this photo provided by CBS, Vice President Dick Cheney appears for a taping of CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’ in Washington, Saturday, April 14, 2007. The interview will be broadcast Sunday morning, April 15, 2007. (AP Photo/CBS Face the Nation, Karin Cooper)
WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney says he is “willing to bet” that Democratic lawmakers will back down and approve a war-spending bill that doesn’t call for U.S. troops to leave Iraq. — READ FULL ARTICLE
In this photo released by China’s Xinhua News Agency, the carrier rocket Long March 3-A blasts off from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China’s Sichuan Province Saturday, April 14,2007. China successfully launched a navigation satellite aboard Long March 3-A early Saturday, part of the country’s ‘Compass’ navigational system, which is expected to provide services such as positioning in transportation, meteorology, petroleum prospecting, forest fire monitoring, disaster forecast, telecommunications and public security, to customers all over China and neighboring countries by 2008. (AP Photo/Xinhua, Li Gang)
The Most Heated Space Race Since The Cold War - China’s Missile Program Taking An Alarming Direction
TOKYO - Upstart China challenges the United States by blasting a satellite out of orbit. North Korea lobs a missile over Japan, prompting Tokyo to initiate a multi-billion dollar spy satellite program. India is readying a lunar mission, while rival Pakistan makes headlines with a new, improved warhead.
The most heated space race since the Cold War is under way in Asia, where countries are concluding that a space program is no longer just an expensive status symbol but a matter of national security. And they are scrambling to keep abreast. — READ FULL ARTICLE
CNN REPORT ON THE US VULNERABILITY TO CHINESE MISSILE
On Saturday, the country launched a Long March 3-A rocket that sent a navigation satellite into orbit as part of its effort to build a global positioning system, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The satellite is the fourth China has launched as part of the Compass navigation system, which is expected to be operational in 2008.
But some see the anti-satellite missile as evidence that China’s program is taking an alarming direction.
“The successful test of a Chinese direct-ascent anti-satellite weapon represents a new and dangerous phase of Chinese foreign policy,” said Tom Ehrhard, a retired U.S. Air Force colonel and senior fellow with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, a military think tank.
“Despite official statements about its ‘peaceful rise,’ China aims to challenge the internationally recognized sanctity and neutrality of the ‘commons,’ those areas like international waters, airspace, cyberspace and space itself,” he said. — READ FULL ARTICLE
Thick smoke rises from the site of an explosion at Baghdad’s Al-Sarafiyah bridge where a suicide bomber blew up a truck, 12 April, 2007. A suicide bomber has blown himself up in the Iraqi parliament canteen in Baghdad’s Green Zone, killing three people in a major breach of security at the country’s most heavily guarded site.(AFP/Ali Yussef)
BAGHDAD - A suspected suicide bomber blew himself up in the Iraqi parliament cafeteria Thursday, killing at least eight people in a stunning assault in the heart of the heavily fortified, U.S.-protected Green Zone.
The blast came hours after a suicide truck bomb exploded on a major bridge in Baghdad, collapsing the steel structure and sending cars tumbling into the Tigris River, police and witnesses said. At least 10 people were killed. –READ FULL ARTICLE
Emergency services look for survivors next to a collapsed bridge in Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, April 12, 2007. A suicide truck bomb exploded on a major al-Sarafiya bridge in Baghdad early Thursday, collapsing the steel structure and sending cars toppling into the Tigris river below, police and witnesses said. — AP PHOTO
KARBALA, Iraq (AFP) - A suicide car bomb killed 34 people near a revered Shiite shrine in Iraq’s pilgrimage city of Karbala on Saturday, exactly two months after troops launched a security crackdown in Baghdad.
Another suicide attack killed 10 people in the capital, while other violence left 18 more people dead, pushing the death toll to 62 in the latest carnage to undermine the Iraqi-US security offensive as it headed into a third month.
The Karbala bomb exploded in an area cluttered with market stalls around 200 metres (yards) from the Imam Hussein shrine, where hundreds of thousands of Shiite pilgrims flock every March during the Shiite Ashura commemorations. — READ FULL ARTICLE
A judge threw out the lawsuit by ex-spy Valerie Plame Wilson and husband Joseph Wilson.
Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former Chief of Staff to U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney, arrives for his sentencing hearing at U.S. District Court in Washington in this June 5, 2007 file photo. Libby, a former vice presidential aide, on July 2, 2007 lost his bid to delay serving his 2 1/2-year prison sentence while he appeals his conviction in the CIA leak case. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/Files (UNITED STATES)
Vice President Dick Cheney is greeted by General David Petraeus, commander of the U.S. forces in Iraq, as he arrives at Baghdad International Airport, May 9, 2007. (Gerald Herbert/Pool/Reuters)
Protesters burn effigies of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney during a rally in Kerbala, 110 km (70 miles) south of Baghdad, May 9, 2007. Hundreds of supporters of Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr attended the demonstration denouncing Cheney’s visit to Iraq. The Arabic inscriptions on the banner reads: “We demand the Iraqi government not to welcome the messenger of terror Dick Cheney”. REUTERS/Mushtaq Muhammad (IRAQ) 
Vice President Dick Cheney (R) meets Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki (L) in Baghdad May 9, 2007. (Gerald Herbert/Pool/Reuters)
Vice President Dick Cheney, right, chats with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki at the start of their dinner in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday, May 9, 2007. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-NV, speaks about funding for the Iraq war in Washington, DC. US President George W. Bush and Democrats looking to pull US troops from Iraq waged a pitiless war of words Tuesday over a bill that funds the conflict but aims for an April 1, 2008 withdrawal.(AFP/Getty Images/Mark Wilson) 
An unidentified person straightens a flag that tipped over due to wind and rain on the campus of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Tuesday, April 24, 2007. The flags, one for each American soldier lost in Iraq, were placed at the UNO Pep Bowl and names of the fallen were read, during a Tribute To The Fallen 2007 event. (AP Photo/Nati Harnik)
Iraqi firefighters douse fire which swept over cars at the site of a car bomb that exploded in a parking lot nearby the Green Zone area in central Baghdad. US President George W. Bush and Democrats looking to pull US troops from Iraq waged a pitiless war of words Tuesday over a bill that funds the conflict but aims for an April 1, 2008 withdrawal.(AFP/Joseph Eid)
Iraqi children walk past a three-mile-long concrete wall around Baghdad’s Sunni enclave of Adhamiyah. A suicide truck bomber attacked an Iraqi police checkpoint on Tuesday and killed 13 people, a day after a similar bomb attack on a US military patrol base left nine soldiers dead.(AFP/Ali Yussef)
US armoured vehicles secure the area where two car bombs exploded in a parking lot nearby the Green Zone area in central Baghdad. A suicide truck bomber attacked an Iraqi police checkpoint on Tuesday and killed 13 people, a day after a similar bomb attack on a US military patrol base left nine soldiers dead.(AFP/Dave Clark)
Thick smoke rises from the site of an explosion at Baghdad’s Al-Sarafiyah bridge where a suicide bomber blew up a truck, 12 April, 2007. A suicide bomber has blown himself up in the Iraqi parliament canteen in Baghdad’s Green Zone, killing three people in a major breach of security at the country’s most heavily guarded site.(AFP/Ali Yussef) 
