That is a mailing by California Republican Bill Conrad, a candidate for the State Assembly. Typical Republican attack - get on their health. Could you image what the right would have done if Edwards said something like this about Dick Cheney in 2004? Hey Bill Conrad - at least Tom Berryhill has a heart you bastard. (Hotline has more).
Crooks and Liars is temporarily down due to a server problem. They should be back up shortly.
Here are some choice quotes from this New York Times article today about the Hayden hearings and the NSA program:
"It would be very difficult to have a confirmation hearing for General Hayden when half the committee knows what he's been doing and the other half hasn't," said Senator Christopher S. Bond, Republican of Missouri.
[...]
"This is something that should have happened, frankly, long before now," said Senator Olympia J. Snowe, a Republican of Maine who serves on the Intelligence Committee. "Congress should be an ally in the war on terror, not an adversary."
[...]
Asked if Wednesday's session might prompt Democrats to tamp down their questions during Thursday's confirmation hearing, Senator Trent Lott, Republican of Mississippi, said: "I hope it does. It should."
Mr. Lott was among a handful of committee members previously briefed on the program. But he said: "I've never been comfortable with this administration's reluctance to give us proper briefings."
The confirmation hearings are going on now. The article also points out that John Rockefeller it recovering from major back surgery so Carl Levin is acting as the ranking Democrat on the committee. John says this is a good thing and I feel the same. Levin is definitely a man to stick by his guns and this is one instance where we really need that.
Now let's head over to the House. Things are even heating up there, but this time it is over Bush's plan on dealing with immigration:
SURVEY USA has their new 50-state tracking poll out for Bush's approval rating. The overall weighted approval is at 33% (the lowest I have seen on SUSA). Even more interesting is the fact that Bush rates 50% or above in only 3 state (Idaho - 52%, Utah - 51% and Wyoming - 50%). In Bush's home state of Texas he gets a low 42% and here in Ohio, where he was given a trip back to the White House, he is now at 32%. In other words, our country would be very blue right now if it were election time.
An Inconvenient Truth is already being coined as "alarming" and "frightning". Perhaps that is why the big oil companies are running scared and getting ready to spend their money (or should I say our money) to launch counter ads, as Think Progress points out:
Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) will unveil two 60-second TV ads focusing on what it calls “global warming alarmism and the call by some environmental groups and politicians to reduce fossil fuel and carbon dioxide emissions.” The ad, which will be aired in more than a dozen cities across the country, is being released just a week before the May 24th opening (in LA and NYC) of Al Gore’s new movie on global warming, An Inconvenient Truth.
The groups like CEI are the ones that let people like Bush say "the jury is still out on global warming". In fact the jury is in and the corporate whores are the ones who want to argue with the science. Our planet is warming, which no one disputes, but the warming being caused by humans is the question. It shouldn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that we use the atmosphere as our sewer for things like factories and automobiles. Every sewer needs a good rooting out every once in awhile, and the atmosphere is no different. When the rooting out of the atmosphere occurs it will be catastrophic.
Al Gore is working hard to raise the awareness of what our planet faces if they don't change their ways. This movie is a great addition to his already growing arsenal of information delivery. Click the link below to check out the trailer for this spectacular movie.
On his second day behind the White House cameras, Tony Snow once again put his foot in his mouth. Today he suggested that ABC was a "competing network" and now the question is - competing against what?
Q Okay. But, I mean, maybe it was a terrific meeting. As far as I can tell, that has not stopped Republicans, particularly in the House, from going gangbusters against this President before they've had a chance to read everything, as you say they should do.
MR. SNOW: Well, as I pointed out -- I mentioned this yesterday, and for -- let me see if I can find my quote, because I pulled it out. Chuck Hagel, as you may recall, made a fair amount of news over the weekend when he first said that -- let's see -- "Well, I want to listen to the details and I want to listen to the President," said Senator Hagel -- he said this on "This Week" on a competing network. But I would say this: I think we have to be very careful here. That's not the role of our military, that's not the role of our National Guard." That's what Senator Hagel said on Sunday.
After the President's address, here's what Senator Hagel said, after having a chance to read and review it: "I support everything the President said tonight." It's a change. I think a lot of times when people have an opportunity to look at these things -- there are going to be some people, David, who are just going to disagree with the President completely and totally on this. That's how democracy works. We don't have a problem with that. But I think also, a number of people who have expressed skepticism, I think, once they took a fuller look at all this are going to say, okay, this addresses our concerns.
One good thing about the Bush administration - we sure have seen a good number of Republicans going to jail:
A senior official in U.S. President George W. Bush's re-election campaign was sentenced to 10 months in prison on Wednesday for his role in suppressing votes in a key U.S. Senate race, a scandal that Democrats charge may involve the White House.
James Tobin, 45, one of three Republican campaign operatives convicted in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in a 2002 election, was convicted in December of two telephone harassment charges.
Prosecutors had asked for a two-year sentence.
U.S. District Judge Steven McAuliffe described the crime as "extremely serious" and a threat to the U.S. political tradition of free and fair elections.
"People in your position need to know they cannot do these things and if they do the consequences are very, very serious," he said in handing down a sentence harsher than the six months home detention and community service sought by Tobin's lawyer.
Democrats want an investigation into 22 telephone calls made by Tobin and New Hampshire Republican Party officials to the White House on November 5 and 6, 2002, and say they believe national Republican officials may be involved in the scheme.
There should be no doubt that the Republican party is in fact the party of corruption. How much longer until we can just consider them organized crime?
The House Ethics Committee gets to work (some what):
In a burst of activity that ended 16 months of inaction, the House ethics committee on Wednesday opened investigations of a Republican and a Democrat who are subjects of federal bribery inquiries. One lawmaker is connected to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Rep. Bob Ney (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio, who had strong ties to Abramoff and accepted favors from him, will be investigated along with Rep. William Jefferson (news, bio, voting record), D-La. A former aide to Ney pleaded guilty last week, admitting he tried to corrupt the congressman. Two businessmen have pleaded guilty to bribing Jefferson.
The committee also will conduct a preliminary inquiry into whether other lawmakers were involved in a bribery scandal that led to the conviction of former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, R-Calif.
In a separate announcement, the committee said it would have investigated overseas travel by former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, but will not do so because the Texas Republican soon is leaving Congress. The committee does not have jurisdiction over lawmakers once they leave.
So since they won't investigate Delay since he is leaving, does that make it more obvious he was the one shutting the committee down? I would say so. Interesting also how they choose to investigate one from each party. While I admit both need investigated there are more people who still have "questionable" activities (more so from the right than the left) which also merit investigation. Hopefully they will look into those also.
A couple weeks ago Michelle Malkin had a post about being attacked by "cyberjihadis". This is what she said about it:
I greatly appreciated all the blogosphere's support when the cyberjihadis took down my site down over the Mohammed Cartoons. If you're down, please send me an e-mail and I'll keep a list here of all those affected. We are all affected by cyberterrorist tactics, wherever they may originate.
Glenn Reynolds had posted on his blog that the attack originated in Saudi Arabia:
HOSTING MATTERS IS DOWN as the result of a DOS attack. They're working on it. The only other thing I know is that it originates in Saudi Arabia. I'll be posting here until it's fixed.
Then updated with this:
UPDATE: Rand Simberg emails, correctly, that originating in Saudi Arabia doesn't actually mean that the perpetrators are Saudis -- just the computers they've hijacked. True enough.
The update is very true. Anyone with some computer knowledge knows it is easy to find proxies from anywhere in the world. When you are doing attacks on web servers then you need a simple web proxy which are in an even greater abundance than Socks proxies.
Today I found this article which could shed some light on the attack that took down all these blogs:
Blue Security CEO Eran Reshef said in an interview with Wired News that his anti-spam company would close its doors, as the attacks against his company impacted sites beyond Blue Security's.
You might get some odd errors while viewing the site today. We have a problem going on with the database. The great people at Lypha (the hosting company which I highly recommend) are working hard to fix it so stay tuned and we will be back shortly.
