From Sen. Bernie Sanders

In less than 24 hours, more than 6,300 6,600 8,000 11,625 17,618 of you co-signed Bernie Sanders’ letter to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on the Bush administration’s $700 billion Wall Street bailout bill. “We are appalled that your proposal puts the cost of this bailout on average Americans; that it contains no provisions reversing failed deregulatory policies; that it allows executives at these failed institutions to continue to make exorbitant salaries and bonuses, and that your proposal contains no help for average Americans who themselves are facing severe economic hardships,” the letter says.

On Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Paulson were met with angry reactions from some senators as they pressed for quick passage of the bailout package. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd told them that the “economic maelstrom” was caused by a combination of “private greed and public regulatory neglect.”

In Vermont, newspaper editorial pages weighed in on the crisis and what to do about it. “Say what you want about Vermont’s Sen. Bernard Sanders,” the Brattleboro Reformer editorial began, “but he is right more often than not on economic issues.” The Rutland Herald said “the staggering irresponsibility of the financial sector and the failure of Washington to rein in its excesses have borne out the direst warnings from Vermont’s senator.”

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From Liebermanmustgo.com

We CANNOT tolerate a leader of the Senate Democratic Caucus who supports George Bush and McCain’s War in Iraq. We CANNOT tolerate a Democratic chairman of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee who endorses and stumps for McCain. We call on the Senate Democratic Steering Committee to strip Joe Lieberman of his chairmanship and his leadership role.

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From After Downing Street

Please call your Congress Member at 202-224-3121 and Email them and ask them to co-sign a letter to President Bush from House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers threatening impeachment if Bush attacks Iran. Below is a note from Conyers asking his colleagues to co-sign. Below that is the letter to Bush.

Join Me in Calling on President Bush to Respect Congress’ Exclusive Power to Declare War

Dear Democratic Colleague:

As we mark five years of war in Iraq, I have become increasingly concerned that the President may possibly take unilateral, preemptive military action against Iran. During the last seven years, the Bush Administration has exercised unprecedented assertions of Executive Branch power and shown an unparalleled aversion to the checks and balances put in place by the Constitution’s framers. The letter that follows asks President Bush to seek congressional authorization before launching any possible military strike against Iran and affirms Senator Biden’s statement last year that impeachment proceedings should be considered if the President fails to do so.

I hope that you will join me in calling on the President to respect Congress’ exclusive power to declare war. To sign the letter below, please contact the Judiciary Committee staff at 225-3951.

Sincerely,

John Conyers, Jr.

Chairman

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From The Free Press

The New York Times has exposed a secret Pentagon campaign to infiltrate the media with pro-war propaganda.

The scheme reaches all the way to the Bush White House, where top officials recruited dozens of “military analysts” to spread favorable views of the war via the news. Many of these propaganda pundits didn’t reveal that they were working from Pentagon scripts or lobbying for companies seeking to cash in on major military contracts.

This is a violation of every conceivable standard of journalism — and possibly of federal law.

Send a letter to Congress and demand better media.

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From Democrats.com

On 4/11/08, George Bush told ABC News he personally approved of the approval of torture - including waterboarding - by Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and George Tenet.

“Yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved.”

In the wake of this shocking and appalling confession, we’ve come to a historic moment where every American - and every Member of Congress - must take a stand.

Either you’re for torture or you’re against it. And if you’re against it, you must support the only Constitutional remedy: impeachment.

We don’t need a Special Prosecutor when the President has publicly admitted to approving war crimes!

It’s no excuse to say, “we can’t impeach Bush because President Cheney would be worse.” We know that Cheney directly approved torture, so they must be impeached together. If they were convicted by the Senate (or resigned to avoid impeachment), Speaker Pelosi would become President, as prescribed by the Constitution.

It’s no excuse to say, “we don’t have the votes to impeach Bush and Cheney.” Democrats didn’t have the votes to impeach Nixon when they started, but when the House Judiciary Committee reluctantly adopted Articles of Impeachment, Nixon resigned rather than face impeach.

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From AlterNet
By Joshua Holland

They say journalists provide the first draft of history. With the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, that draft led to an almost universal consensus, at least among Americans, that the attack was a justifiable act of self-defense. The Afghanistan action is commonly viewed as a “clean” conflict as well — a war prosecuted with minimal loss of life, and one that didn’t bring the kind of international opprobrium onto the United States that the invasion of Iraq would lead to a year later.

Those views are also held by many Americans who are critical of the excesses of the Bush administration’s “War on Terror.” But there’s a disconnect there. Everything that followed — secret detentions, torture, the invasion of Iraq, the assault on domestic dissent — flowed inevitably from the failure to challenge Bush’s claim that an act of terror required a military response. The United States has a rich history of abandoning its purported liberal values during times of war, and it was our acceptance of Bush’s war narrative that led to the abuses that have shattered America’s moral standing before the world.

In his book, The Guantánamo Files, historian and journalist Andy Worthington offers a much-needed corrective to the draft of the Afghanistan conflict that most Americans saw on their nightly newscasts. Worthington is the first to detail the histories of all 774 prisoners who have passed through the Bush administration’s “legal black hole” at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But his history starts in Afghanistan, and makes it abundantly clear that the road to Guantánamo — not to mention Abu Ghraib — began in places like Kandahar.

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From Thomas Paine’s Corner
By Ramzy Baroud

We know well who killed the top Hezbollah commander, Imad Mugniyah on Feb 12th in Damascus.

While in the US media, only journalists like Seymour Hersh will have the nerve to point out the obvious, the Israeli media has not shied away from evidence of the Israeli intelligence’s involvement in this well-calculated assassination.

A major Israeli daily newspaper Maariv shared the views of many others when it concluded that: “Officially, Israel yesterday denied responsibility for the killing. But experts say the brilliant execution of the attack was characteristic of the Mossad.”

The Financial Times reported on the “triumphant mood” of the Israeli Press which hailed “the demise of one the country’s most feared adversaries” and quoted an Israeli paper stating “the account is settled.”

The Financial Times also quoted a most telling analysis offered by one Israeli commentator. “Mugniyah’s assassination is perhaps the hardest blow Hezbollah has taken to this day. Not just because of his operational abilities, his close ties to the Iranians, and the series of successful terror attacks that he carried out. But because he was a symbol, a legend, a myth.”

Donald Rumsfeld is no longer in public eye but his wisdom lives on. “We also know there are known unknowns,” he once told perplexed reporters. Precisely, the unknown known is that the Israeli Mossad killed Mugniyah, and killed him for specific political reasons, at a well-chosen time and place that would make perfect sense from the Israeli government’s point of view.

Let’s first look at the timing.

President Bush’s second term in office will expire in one year. For the president who has unconditionally rubber-stamped Israeli policies, one year is not enough to set long-term goals, but it’s enough to ignite chaos.

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From Credo

The Senate seems once again poised to cave in to the Bush administration’s fear mongering tactics. In upcoming days the Senators will once again be addressing domestic wiretapping legislation that gives President Bush all the tools he wants to infringe on Americans’ civil liberties and grants retroactive immunity to big telecom companies that helped him spy on Americans without warrants.

There are three Senators who, thanks to their presidential aspirations, can play a uniquely powerful role in this debate: Hillary Clinton, John McCain, and Barack Obama. These three candidates can and should show real leadership today by returning from the campaign trail to stand up for our Constitution and stop retroactive immunity from becoming law.

The question is, of what sort of country do Senators Clinton, Obama, and McCain want to be President in January 2009: one where the rule of law protects everyone equally, or one where the rule by law can be retroactively nullified to protect the powerful friends of the President?

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From Credo Action

The White House does not often lose a fight that really matters. However, the struggle to secure amnesty for the telecom companies that helped the Bush administration illegally spy on Americans may be the rare exception.

Why amnesty? Bush wants retroactive immunity for the telecom companies to thwart lawsuits that threaten to expose his own violations of the original FISA law. If these lawsuits aren’t allowed to go forward, we may never know the extent of the Bush administration’s illegal efforts to spy on American citizens without the required warrants.

Pressure from CREDO Action members (who have sent over 50,000 faxes on this issue alone), the ACLU, MoveOn.org, the blogosphere and other allies has thus far successfully beaten back efforts amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to grant amnesty for AT&T and Verizon’s lawbreaking.

The Bush administration is fighting back. This time, with a version of FISA that lets the telcos off the hook by making the federal government the defendant in pending cases instead of the telecom companies. We must act now before key democrats cave to the White House and approve this measure.

Our best hope is a filibuster. Senator Dodd has pledged to filibuster any bill that gives amnesty to the telecom companies. But to prevail he needs 40 senators to support him. The choice is clear: our senators can stand with the constitution, or help Bush and his cronies cover up their lawbreaking

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From Action OpenLeft

The Senate is considering a bill that would grant immunity to any telecom company that assisted in the administration’s illegal wiretapping. Chris Dodd promised to put a hold on any such bill, and Joe Biden and Barack Obama pledged to uphold it. We believe that any bill coming before the Senate that includes provisions for so-called ‘amnesty’ for large companies involved in illegally spying on Americans should be opposed, and have authored a letter to this effect addressed to Majority Leader Reid. You can co-sign it below.

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