The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) is the nation’s oldest, largest, and most diverse civil and human rights coalition. For more on Samuel Alito, visit www.saveourcourts.org For more information on LCCR visit www.civilrights.org

Alito, 55, would replace retiring Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a moderate conservative who often has been the nine-member court's swing vote on abortion, civil rights and other social issues.

Alito was expected to be sworn in before Bush, who promised to put conservatives on the federal bench, gives his State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday night.

The Senate on Monday soundly defeated a Democratic bid to stop Alito with a procedural hurdle known as a filibuster.

On a vote of 72-25 -- 12 more than the 60 that were needed -- the Senate approved a motion to end debate and move to a confirmation vote.

"I am pleased that a strong, bipartisan majority in the Senate decisively rejected attempts to obstruct and filibuster," Bush said in a statement.

"Judge Alito is extraordinarily well-qualified ... and America is fortunate that this good and humble man is willing to serve," Bush said.

Democratic Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, who lost the 2004 White House election to Bush, helped lead the failed effort to mount a filibuster against Alito.

Kerry argued that Alito posed a threat to civil rights and abortion rights and would not be an effective check on presidential powers.

Bush nominated Alito after a rebellion within his conservative ranks led to the withdrawal of an earlier high-court candidate, White House counsel Harriet Miers. Critics voiced concern that she lacked the clout and commitment to make the court more conservative.

Conservatives rallied around Alito, who has served since 1990 as a member of the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Even Republican now publicly say Bush must come clean on just how many times he and his administration met with Abramoff and what White House action were affected by the influence peddler’s money.

“I'm one who believes that more is better, in terms of disclosure and transparency,”said Sen. John Thune, R-S.Don Fox News Sunday. “So I'd be a big advocate for making records that are out there available."

And while Republicans publicly still support Bush, privately they admit the White House and the party are in serious trouble from the Abramoff affair.

“We came into town promising to clean up the system,” says one GOP Congressman elected in the Republican takeover of Congress in 1994. “Now we’re the very problem we promised to fix.”

Republican attempts to spin the Abramoff scandal as a bi-partisan problem where Democrats also took money from the tainted lobbyists have failed to sell with a public fed up with GOP corruption and abuse of power on Capitol Hill.

Abramoff was a product of a determined GOP effort to put more lobbyists on K Street, the stretch of Washington real estate that is home to many of the rich and powerful sellers of influence. That was former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay’s job and DeLay is as crooked as Abramoff.

“Fuck the law,” Delay told me in a meeting in 1990. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about the law.” I met with Delay through my role as Vice President for Political Programs for the National Association of Realtors. DeLay wanted us to hire more Republicans.

When I told Delay that I didn’t care whether the folks I hired were Republican or Democrat as long as they did the job, he got mad.

“Listen you cocksucker,” he said, his eyes narrowing. “I’m tired of mealy-mouthed assholes like you kowtowing to the Democrats. We’re keeping a list and you’re on it. Either start supporting Republicans or you’ll find yourself out in the cold.”

I kept good notes on that meeting so I could report back to my boss, Realtor chief lobbyist Stephen Driesler, who laughed and shook his head.

“Yeah, that’s Tom,” he said, “but we have to listen to him because he will be a power someday.”

DeLay became even more of a power when Republicans took control of Congress in 1994. That power intensified with his political buddy George W. Bush took office in 2001 and both DeLay and Bush gladly accepted political largesse from their good buddy Jack Abramoff.

Bush introduced Abramoff to a campaign gathering in Florida in 2004, calling the lobbyist “a great friend to this administration.” Capitol Hill Blue first revealed on January 18 that the lobbyist kept pictures of he and the President today at his office, including one taken at the President’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, and autographed to “My great friend Jack.” Other news sources quickly followed with reports of the photos but the White House refused to release them.

Bush also faces damaging new information that his former chief procurement officer, David Safavian provided "sensitive and confidential information" about four subsidiaries of Tyco International to Abramoff, warning the lobbyist of pending government actions against his clients.

Court records in a pending criminal case against Safavian also show a tight relationship between Abramoff and David Flanigan, a lawyer for Tyco who was nominated by Bush last October to be assistant attorney general under Alberto Gonzales. Bush later withdrew the nomination when questions surfaced over his relationship with Safavian and Abramoff.

“This web of scandal and deceit is ever-widening and Bush cannot escape the fact that he is at the center of it,” says Harleigh, who worked in the Nixon administration. “It is usually the cover up that brings an administration down. The President would do well to remember that.”


Originally published at and © Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue

"They average about two per week," said Susan Walsh, an AP photojournalist and president of the White House News Photographers Association, after directing that review. "The White House staff photographer's role is to document the president. They have now crossed the line and become public relations photographers for the administration."

She added: "I don't know the rationale behind it, but there are [handout] events that could clearly include press coverage. The problem with the [photo] releases is that they are often of events that could accommodate press coverage and that previous administrations had allowed press to cover."

Bush Press Secretary Scott McClellan did not return several calls seeking comment.

Walsh and other photo veterans who criticized the practice said it both limits real news coverage of the president and allows the White House to choose only those images it wants people to see.

"Any handout restricts coverage by the press," said Dennis Brack of Black Star Publications, who has photographed each president since LBJ. "It curtails our access to events we should be covering with an independent eye and it fools the American public into thinking they are news pictures when they are really public relations pictures."

Steve Deslich, managing editor for Knight Ridder Tribune Photo Service in Washington, agreed. "When Clinton was in there, they would let other people in," he said. "But they stick with the handout pictures. We have said, 'thanks, but no thanks'."

Walsh, a five-year WHNPA president who has covered the White House since 1997, acknowledged that some events require strict security that may keep news photographers out. But she cited some recent events, such as a Bush visit to a Smithsonian Institution museum and the re-signing of the Americans With Disabilities Act, that were restricted for no apparent reason.

Then there was Bush's White House get-together last month with those receiving the Kennedy Center Honors, just hours before the event. Walsh said photographers were barred from that meet-and-greet as well. "During the Clinton Administration, we were always allowed to that event," she said. "The Bush Administration never has allowed it."

But the opposition to White House-manufactured images is not just a press access issue, photographers contend. They point out the power such an arrangement gives the White House to literally control news.

"If you put five photographers at an event, you will get five different sets of images - the good, the bad and the ugly," Walsh notes. "One photographer whose images are approved and screened at the highest levels of the White House, you don't know what images are missing." She pointed out that, with today's Photoshop capabilities, images can be doctored any number of ways.

"Would anyone on the word side take a press release and regurgitate it verbatim and publish it in the newspaper as legitimate news," she asked. "Of course not."

There is also the quality aspect, which several Washington photo veterans contend is much worse through the White House's official camera lens. "They are very staged, protective moments and do not have much content interest," said Jeff Franko, director of photography for Gannett News Service. "We use them because we are not around the White House much. But they are not a whole lot of value."

Walsh said that is another danger of the increased use of handouts, when news agencies start to use them as though they are news material. She cited a trip aboard Air Force One last fall, when Bush took one of his first flights over the devastation of Hurricane Katrina.

Although AP, Reuters, and Agence France-Presse were allowed to photograph Bush as he looked out the window at the Gulf Coast ruins, a White House handout photo of him at that moment was also released and used by at least three major newspapers, she said. "Nobody at those papers apparently looked to see where the photo came from," she said.

Walsh took the photographers' concerns to McClellan during a meeting in October and admitted that fewer handouts have been used since. But, she said the problem is still too common and has prompted the WHNPA to begin its own three-month review of the practice, which began Dec. 1 "We will be looking at when access is allowed and how many photos are released," she said. "We want to see if they are of sensitive events or those where we could clearly have been given access."

4. A third of US veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, some 40,000 persons, exhibit at least some signs of mental health disorders. Some 14,000 were treated for drug dependencies, and 11,000 for depression.

5. Increases in American consumer spending come from borrowing.

6. The $320 - $400 bilion deficits run by the Bush administration may push up the cost of mortgages and loans.

7. 58% of Americans think Bush is painting Iraq as rosier than it is. A majority thinks we should never have invaded the country.

8. The US military is at a breaking point.

9. In fact, The US and Iran are tacit allies in Iraq.

10. Mor e money would be needed to finish the US reconstruction projects begun in Iraq.

With great fanfare the other day, Oprah Winfrey asked James Frey a question that mainstream journalists refuse to ask George W. Bush: "Why would you lie?"

Many pundits and news outlets have chortled at the televised unmasking of Frey as a liar. The reverberations have spanned from schlock media to highbrow outlets. On Friday, the PBS "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer" devoted an entire segment to what happened. The New York Times supplemented its page-one coverage with an editorial that concluded "Ms. Winfrey gave the audience, including us, what it was hoping for: a demand to hear the truth."

A key reality of the National Security Agency spying story is: President Bush lied. But routinely missing from media coverage is a demand to hear the truth.

More than two years after he started the NSA's domestic spying without warrants, Bush was unequivocal. During a speech in Buffalo on April 20, 2004, he said: "Any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so."

Frey lied about his personal life in a book, and that infuriated Oprah Winfrey. "It is difficult for me to talk to you, because I really feel duped," she said, confronting him in the midst of the Jan. 26 telecast. "I feel duped. But more importantly, I feel that you betrayed millions of readers."

Yet the journalists who interview Bush aren't willing to question him in similar terms.

The president didn't merely betray millions of readers. He betrayed hundreds of millions of citizens.

Bush lied about basic civil liberties in the United States. Instead of relying on euphemisms, the news media should directly confront him with the question: "Why would you lie?"

During the "Oprah" show, while lecturing a powerful book-publishing executive who had served as an enabler for the author's mendacity, Winfrey declared: "That needs to change." But what about the powerful news-media executives who keep enabling the president's mendacity?

When Frey tried to weasel out of responsibility for concocting a phony story about a root canal without anesthesia, the host interrupted after the words "I've struggled with the idea of it --"

"No, the lie of it," Winfrey said. "That's a lie. It's not an idea, James, that's a lie."

But high-profile journalists are unwilling to confront President Bush on national television with such clarity: "That's a lie. It's not an idea, George, that's a lie."

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet and others begged Bush to reconsider his executive order giving the NSA authority to wiretap phone calls and monitor emails of American citizens but their pleas fell on deaf ears.

“Mr. President, I fear you are heading down a course that could doom your administration,” Powell told Bush in a meeting in early 1992. “I urge you to reconsider.” Powell also argued against Bush’s plans to turn Pentagon spies loose on American antiwar groups, saying “such actions don’t belong in America.”

Powell wasn’t the only one worried about the legality of wiretaps. Then deputy attorney general James D. Comey, acting as attorney general while John Ashcroft was hospitalized, refused to sign off on Bush’s executive order, prompting then White House Counsel, and now attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, to visit Ashcroft at his hospital bed in a failed attempt to get the AG to overturn his deputy.

Ashcroft, however, stood by Comey and told Gonzales that he could not condone the spying, even though he had authored the controversial, and rights-robbing, USA Patriot Act.

“This is not legal and the President is exceeding his authority,” Ashcroft said. “Jim (Comey) is right to oppose it.”

Then CIA director George Tenet, in a stormy meeting with Bush, told the President that use of the NSA to spy on Americans was a direct violation of the agency’s charter.

“This is illegal and a flagrant misuse of the agency and its technology,” Tenet said.

Those who opposed Bush on his actions, which the President claimed were justified under his powers as a “wartime commander-in-chief,” are no longer part of the administration. Bush fired Tenet (publicly, the CIA direction was allowed to resign). Powell and Ashcroft resigned shortly after Bush began his second term. Comey quit in disgust.

Those privy to the contentious White House meetings where all tried in vain to talk Bush out of his reckless course of action say the President’s allies in using the NSA to spy on Americans were Vice President Dick Cheney and White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, the man Bush tapped to replace Ashcroft.

Powell, top aides say privately, considering resigning early in Bush’s first term because of what he considered the President’s “reckless and irresponsible actions,” but stayed on because he still felt he could play a moderating role with the extremists in the administration.

“As a career soldier, Gen. Powell felt a duty to serve is country even when that service meant answering to those he considered wrong,” says a longtime aide who served with the general at the State Department as well as when Powell chaired the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “He was a moral man trapped in an immoral nest of vipers.”

Originally published at and © Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue

In Bush's vision, drivers will stop at hydrogen stations and fill their fuel-cell cars with the pollution-free fuel. Or they would power their engines with ethanol made from trash or corn. More Americans would run their lights at home on solar power.

Bush has been talking about these ideas since his first year in office. Proposals aimed at spreading the use of ethanol, hydrogen and renewable fuels all were part of the energy bill that he signed into law in August, but that hasn't eased Americans' worries about high fuel prices.

Americans were hit with the biggest jump in energy prices in 15 years in 2005, and worries about the cost of gas and heating oil have damped spirits about the economy despite other recent encouraging signs.

Add in the unrest in the Middle East, and energy becomes a major problem for the president to address Tuesday night.

``I agree with Americans who understand being hooked on foreign oil as an economic problem and a national security problem,'' Bush said in a recent interview with CBS.

Eight in 10 Americans surveyed earlier this month by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press said gasoline prices were a big problem.

Home heating fuel and health care were the other major economic concerns. It's not a coincidence that Bush will spend much of his State of the Union reassuring Americans that he has a plan to address energy and medical costs.

House Democrats sought to take the luster off Bush's speech with a television commercial that accuses the president and Republicans of tilting their policies toward the pharmaceutical, oil and investment industries. It shows lawmakers cheering Bush's words from three previous State of the Union addresses, and asks: ``What Special Interest Will the Republican Congress Rubberstamp This Time?''

Officials said the commercial would air only once, on Fox, in the run-up to Bush's speech, making it more like a guerilla-style attack on the GOP than an attempt to mold public opinion.

Bush told CBS that he does not support a big raise in the gas tax, as others have proposed. Instead, he is looking for tax breaks that encourage new technologies, which is popular with farmers, with industry and with consumers of those products.

``We have got to wean ourselves off hydrocarbons, oil,'' Bush explained. ``And the best way, in my judgment, to do it is to promote and actively advance new technologies so that we can drive - have different driving habits.''

For example, he said, the federal government could push more widespread use of corn-based ethanol and spur production from other sources.

Almost all ethanol produced now comes from corn. Although non-corn ethanol from sources like grasses, wood chips and even garbage is widely talked about, a practical and cost-effective process for producing it appears years away.

Bush noted to CBS that about 4.6 million cars on the road in the United States can run on ethanol. The fuel works in more than 30 models, including General Motor's Yukon, Chevrolet's Silverado and Ford's Taurus. However, almost all drivers of those vehicles outside the Corn Belt fill up with gasoline.

Automakers and environmentalists are also excited about the prospect of fuel cells, which would run on hydrogen that would only emit water instead of gas fumes. But fuel cell vehicles are extremely expensive to produce and lack an infrastructure of fueling stations to make them viable. The government has said it hopes hydrogen fuel cell vehicles will be available in car showrooms by 2020.

When it comes to alternative ways to power homes and businesses, very little U.S. electricity now comes from renewables such as wind, solar, geothermal, wood and waste. But that share is expected to increase as the price of fossil fuel rises.

If ever we needed a good laugh, the time is ripe, because we're only a few hours away from George W. Bush's State of the Union speech.

For background, check out the History News Network's perspective on past speeches by past presidents. I'm partial to that site anyway. You see, historians tend to sneer at journalists, and journalists tend to sneer at historians, and HNN tries to explain why that separation between journalism and history just won't cut it these days, or any day:

Given how public opinion is shaped today, whipsawed emotionally on talk shows this way and that in response to the egos of the guests, the desire for ratings by the hosts and the search for profits by media companies and sponsors, historians are especially needed now. They can help remind us of the superficiality of what-happens-today-is-all-that-counts journalism.

Among the many duties we assume are these: To expose politicians who misrepresent history. To point out bogus analogies. To deflate beguiling myths. To remind Americans of the irony of history. To put events in context. To remind us all of the complexity of history. & Because we believe history is complicated our pages are open to people of all political persuasions. Left, right, center: all are welcome.

Back to Bush: The POTUS is likely to be more soothing and less bellicose tonight, as I've pointed out, but now he has even more reason to get his handlers to place a twinkle in his eye: The chief investigator of the Wampumgate scandal, Noel Hillman, has just left the building, for a presidentially appointed federal judgeship in New Jersey.

This move may delay the deadly fallout from that massive scandal long enough for the GOP to keep its death grip on Congress in this year's elections. Now another prosecutor will have to get up to speed.

It's enough to make you go postal, but someone in Santa Barbara, California, already beat you to it.

No, Bush won't mention Wampumgate, but he'll probably wax warmly about the Supreme Court, because 19 Democrats have caved in to the GOP. As the Washington Post's Charles Babington writes this morning:

The Senate voted 72 to 25 to end debate on Alito's nomination and to allow a roll call on his confirmation today, shortly before noon. Alito's supporters garnered a dozen more votes than the 60 they needed to choke off a Democratic filibuster effort, which would have allowed debate to continue indefinitely.

Leaders of both parties said Alito, 55, will comfortably win confirmation today, although not by the 78 to 22 margin that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. received last fall. Legal analysts say Alito's 15-year record as an appellate court judge suggests he may be more consistently conservative than Roberts. Moreover, they say, Alito is poised to make a larger impact on the court because he will replace Sandra Day O'Connor, the deciding vote in numerous 5 to 4 decisions over the years. Roberts succeeded a fellow conservative, the late William H. Rehnquist.

All the more reason for those of you who browse via Firefox to install Mike Ely's Homeland Insecurity Idiocy Level extension, which keeps you current with the regime. I couldn't agree more with one Firefox denizen, who wrote, "Useless, but funny!"

Ely, a web brainiac in southern Oregon (check out Taupe Hat Systems), has raised a ruckus, especially among the humorless, with his funny extension. He explains it this way:

Based closely (a rewrite, basically) upon the excellent work of Scott Stroz (www.boyzoid.com), this extension is designed to display, in humorous language, the current threat level at the US Department of Homeland Security.

More seriously, Ely's just one of many smart computer jocks who has questioned the creepy new computerized voting machines purveyed by Bush partisans like Diebold's Walden O'Dell.

But Ely doesn't just speak in code. His extension has generated lots of comment from Firefox users, and he's not afraid of the heat, explaining:

There is a difference between arguing one's point of view and flat-out saying, "You're wrong, I'm right, period." While it's arguably true that referring to George W. Bush as "an idiot" falls within this category, I'd have to say that lampooning our political figures is very much a time-honored tradition in this country. Remember poor Gerald Ford? The public really believed that the man couldn't take two steps without tripping over his feet. Not to mention some of the jokes that went around about John Kerry - I think calling him "Lurch" was pretty funny, personally …

Ely tries to tell die-hard Republicans to get a funny bone and continues:

Bill Clinton tries to lie his way out of a blow job, fails, and you treat him as though he were the Second Coming of Lucifer or some shit. Meanwhile, Bush lies (deliberately, duh) about the reasons for going to war in Iraq, incidentally killing about 2,000 US soldiers so far, at least 27,000 Iraqi civilians, more than half of whom were women and children, and destroying any ounce of credibility, respect, and most importantly, support that we had from our neighbors. So he's a hero? He's got backbone? Doubtful. But let history judge his hubris, and may God forgive him in ways that I cannot.

As I write this, Ely's "idiocy level" extension translates the DHS's fearmongering "elevated" level of "threat" to "scared." Me, I just know that God must have a sense of humor or she wouldn't have scheduled Bush to speak tonight.

It is universally assumed by the great majority of citizens that we are living in a free and Democratic society. The idea has been ingrained in us from cradle to grave. In spite of this, I have come to believe that the term ‘Democracy’ is bandied about to our detriment with great recklessness. Its legitimacy is assumed, not proven, because we do not often think deeply about the enormous responsibility that Democracy requires of its practioneers. Democracy is a paradigm that is deeply ingrained in the public conscience, but it is not a fact—a reality—that is verified by the evidence. Our situation reflects a lack of critical thought about things that matter.

In fact, I would argue that Democracy is frequently used against us as a method of self deception and control. Therefore, it behooves us as world citizens to stop applying the term to the form of government we have. We have never lived in a true Democratic society, no matter what pretense we may have about it. Let us aspire to achieve this most worthy of goals.

The Random House Collegiate Dictionary makes the following distinction between Democracy and Plutocracy:

Democracy: Government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system.

Democratic: Pertaining to or characterized by social equity.

Plutocracy: The rule or power of wealth or the wealthy. A class or group ruling or exercising power by virtue of its wealth.

Applying these definitions to ourselves, it is not difficult to see the kind of government we have. In his book: Wealth and Democracy, Kevin Phillips brings forth some important facts that further help to define the issue:

“In 1995 American corporate CEO salaries increased by ninety-two percent; corporate profits rose seventy-five percent, worker layoffs increased thirty-nine percent, consumer prices went up one percent. The highest paid CEO received more than $65 million in 1995. The top one percent in America now own approximately sixty percent of all wealth. Approximately thirty-five percent of American families are living below the poverty line in 1998.”

Clearly, those endowed with wealth and property, especially those born into privilege, have power that those without do not. The question must be asked: How is inequity equivalent to Democracy? In truth, the two cannot be reconciled. So, when we hear George Bush talking about Democracy in the Middle East, we must expose his galling ignorance by exposing the premise of his case, which is based upon fallacy.

I contend that what ails America also ails much of the world. Whatever it is named, it is so deeply ingrained, so profoundly wrong, that it cannot be reformed. If we want to have a free and Democratic society, more powerful forces must be marshaled against the existing infection of Plutocratic rule. Our journey must begin with an understanding of the kind of government we have, as well as who we are as a people.

Whenever populist insurrection occurred in America, the authorities have always protected the agents of injustice—the corporations, the mine owners, the Rockefellers and the Carnegies. Even as the leaders of the civil rights movement were attacked and beaten by angry mobs, the National Guard was called out not to defend them, but to arrest them. It has always been those who upheld the principles of Democracy who were imprisoned—a trend that continues to this day. These are actions that clearly define the form of government we have, as well as who we are as a people. Most assuredly, it is not a democracy. Actions speak louder and more emphatically than words.

A Democratic nation could not have begun with the extermination of the original inhabitants of a continent. It could not have excluded women from participating; it could not have allowed chattel slavery; or the Viet Nam War. It could not allow imperial ambitions or the immense concentration of wealth and power that is in vogue today. The few command the labor and loyalty of the many, even as it exploits them and sends them off to war. These are not the just actions of a Democratic government—they are those of oppressive Plutocracy. We should never confuse the two.

We are living during an amazing time. The events that alternately divide and galvanize us have a verifiable history littered with the bones of those who sought to set things right. We have a history of undermining and destroying legitimate Democracies whenever and wherever we find them. Democracy is the avowed enemy of Plutocracy. The current difficulty is the result of a long pattern of abuse and injustice, so obvious that only the blind or those unwilling to look cannot see them. Nations, like individuals, are judged by their actions more than by the words they espouse.

There is no chance that we can evolve into the people we dream of becoming until we realize who we are now. To move forward will require conscience and spirit, as it always does. It will not occur through conformity and capitulation to power. It is a Herculean task that will test our mettle, try our souls and define our faith. The kind of government we will have is embodied by the actions and the inactions of the people. One wonders how history will judge us. Let us awaken and rise to the occasion, as the times demand.

Charles Sullivan is a furniture maker, photographer, and free lance writer residing in the eastern panhandle of West Virgina. He welcomes your comments at earthdog@highstream.net

Wikipedia is a global reference that relies on its Internet users to add credible information to entries on millions of topics.

Matt Vogel, Meehan's chief of staff, said he authorized an intern in July to replace existing Wikipedia content with a staff-written biography of the lawmaker.

The change deleted a reference to Meehan's campaign promise to surrender his seat after serving eight years, a pledge Meehan later eschewed. It also deleted a reference to the size of Meehan's campaign account, the largest of any House member at $4.8 million, according to the latest data available from the Federal Election Commission.

"Meehan first ran for Congress in 1992 on a platform of reform," the pre-edited entry said. "As part of that platform Meehan made a pledge to not serve more than four terms, a central part of his campaign. This breaking of the pledge has been a controversial issue in the 5th Congressional District of Massachusetts."

The new entry reads in part: "Meehan was elected to Congress in 1992 on a plan to eliminate the deficit. His fiscally responsible voting record since then has earned him praise from citizen watchdog groups. He was re-elected by a large margin in 2004."

Vogel said, "It makes sense to me the biography we submit would be the biography we write."

The change doubled the length of the entry on Meehan, corrected errors and replaced "sloppy" writing, Vogel said. "Let the outside world edit it. It seemed right to start with greater depth than a paragraph with incorrect data from the '80s."

Wikipedia's online honor system has made it ripe for abuse by vandals. Recently, a user wrote in a Wikipedia bio that Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor "smells of cow dung." Another wrote that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is "ineffective." These statements were traced to the House Internet-protocol (IP) address.

In November and December, The Sun has learned, users of the House's IP address were temporarily blocked from changing content because of violations described by the site as a "deliberate attempt to compromise the integrity of the encyclopedia."

"I'm not denying it," Jon Brandt, a spokesman for the Committee on House Administration, which oversees the House computer network, said when asked to confirm House ownership of the address.

For security reasons, Brandt declined to say to whom the address is assigned.

While vandalism is a problem, deleting factual information raises ethical concerns, said Geoffrey Bowker, director of the Center for Science, Technology, and Society at Santa Clara University.

"The vandalism is just plain childish," Bowker said. "The term-limit pledge (that was changed by Meehan's staff) is a much more serious case. That's someone trying to alter the public record.

"To knowingly remove a truthful statement is just wrong," he added. "It's not the place of any special-interest group to tamper with the facts available to the public."

Most of the 1,000 House changes were meant to enhance various encyclopedia entries. Slurs against Cantor and Frist, which have been removed, are the first examples of abuse that Wikipedia's founder Jimmy Wales has seen derived directly from the legislative branch of the U.S. government.

Wikipedia records every change to its site and who made it. The encyclopedia prefers that editors log in with a user name, but it's not necessary. Many editors make changes anonymously; Wikipedia identifies these users by tracking the number assigned to their Internet entry point, called an IP address.

But Wales said the deletion of factual information goes against the principles of Wikipedia, which promotes a "neutral point of view" policy.

"You don't delete it," Wales said. "If they wanted to put in their side of things, that would seem ethically relevant, rather than just omitting it."

Mistakes were inserted into the Meehan entry at different points of its evolution, according to an examination of the edits. One editor erroneously said Meehan attended Harvard College; another indicated it is likely that Meehan would run for Sen. Edward Kennedy's seat.

Wikipedia reaches around the globe, having 3.1 million articles published in more than 200 languages. The English-language version is the largest category, with more than 910,000 articles and 856 million words. That's more than six times larger than Encyclopedia Britannica -- the largest reference printed in English.

And people read it.

Yesterday, Wikipedia was ranked the 19th- busiest site on the Internet, according to alexa.com, a subsidiary of Amazon.com that tracks Webtraffic.

A new reference to Meehan's term-limit pledge was inserted in the Wikipedia entry in November by a person not using the House address.

On Dec. 27, someone using the House IP address reduced the reference to a single sentence: "(Meehan) also supported term limits, pledging to serve no more than four terms."

Vogel said he did not authorize the change.

No reference to Meehan's top-rated campaign account has been reintroduced.

The changes by Meehan's staff are not as "reprehensible" as inserting derogatory comments in someone else's entry, said Stephen Potts, former director of the federal Office of Government Ethics, which establishes conduct standards for the executive branch.

But the sheer breadth of changes emanating from the House reflects an abuse of public time and equipment, said Potter, now chairman of the Ethics Resource Center.

"That kind of usage, plus the fact that they're changing one person's material, is certainly wrong and ought to be at a minimum the focus of some disciplinary action," he said.

There is no secret about any of this. The Washington Post last week said it had obtained a copy of a 41-page report on the hurricane distributed by the Department of Homeland Security before the storm hit. According to the Post, an e-mail containing this report reached the White House Situation Room at 1:47 a.m. on August 29, hours before the full force of the storm raked the Gulf Coast.

The paper also obtained a FEMA document prepared for discussion at a 9 a.m. meeting on August 27, two days before Katrina. This report compared Katrina to Hurricane Pam, the simulated storm federal officials used a year before as an exercise to aid in planning for disaster. The briefing paper pointed out that Katrina could end up being worse than the simulated Pam. It warned that the storm surge from a Category 4 onslaught could "overtop" levees and other flood protection systems, and predicted "incredible search and rescue needs." More than one million residents would be displaced, it said.

So while President Bush vacationed in Texas and top government officials talked airily of federal versus state responsibilities, the operations sections of the federal government must have known precisely what was about to happen.

And, of course, it gets worse. The Army Corps of Engineers, which has been building dams and levees all over the southern stretches of the Mississippi River, routing and rerouting it for well over 100 years, somehow just didn't know that water had been pooling up in yards adjacent to a flood wall for a year before the storm. That pooling should have led to an investigation of whether the levees were leaking. The residents had been complaining to the New Orleans Sewerage and Water Board, but nobody told the engineers from the corps, which is responsible for the levee system, what was going on. Why they didn't find out on their own has yet to be explained.

One might have predicted that Donald Rumsfeld, who as secretary of defense oversees the Army Corps of Engineers and is instrumental in ordering both regular troops and federalized National Guard troops into a rescue effort, won't cooperate. The first question anyone would ask him is how come the army corps didn't act years before the storm. The second is whether the Iraq war has so depleted the Guard that it can't fulfill its duties at home.

The one federal agency that seems to have known what was going on was the Coast Guard, which rescued thousands of people during and after the storm. Another was the Weather Bureau, which predicted hour by hour the movement of the storm before, during, and after it made landfall. It is worth noting that right-wing Republicans would love to privatize the Weather Bureau, and during the Reagan years, the right wanted to privatize the perpetually underfunded Coast Guard by handing it over to a big defense contractor like Raytheon. Yet when push came to shove, it was the one federal agency that worked.

Since the rest of the federal government could not, or would not, operate during and after Hurricane Katrina, the job naturally fell to the oft-named list of cronies.

Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's old haunt, has contributed $29,822 to Bush's presidential campaigns, according to the Center for Public Integrity. The political action committee for its subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root contributed $120,784 to "various Republican causes" in 2002 and 96 percent of its $168,277 campaign contributions in 2000.
The payoff? Rumsfeld's Department of Defense has awarded Kellogg, Brown & Root more than $136 million in various Katrina-related contracts, according to the nonprofit Taxpayers for Common Sense.

Another big contributor, the Fluor Corporation, gave $9,900 to President Bush's campaigns. In 2004, 83 percent of Fluor's $356,290 campaign contributions went to Republican candidates, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense. Fluor has received more than $200 million in Gulf Coast contracts since October 2005.

The long and the short of it is that Katrina, like Iraq, has been a cash cow for Bush's entrepreneur buddies. Congress has approved $62.3 billion for Katrina relief efforts so far. And that's only the beginning.

Where there's smoke

In the midst of a congressional hearing on the Sago Mine disaster last week, David Dye, the acting assistant secretary of labor, who runs the Mine Safety and Health Administration, up and left the room. Senator Specter, chair of a House Appropriations subcommittee, had just told Dye his "presence would be required for another hour." To which Dye replied, "Senator, we've still got a mine fire going. We have a rescue team that's in the Sago Mine. They have another mine fire—which no one was hurt—burning in Colorado. . . . We've got some really pressing matters."

Having not heard of the fire in Colorado, the Voice phoned the MSHA field offices in Colorado. There, nobody had heard about any current pressing matters. Finally the United Mine Workers Communications Director Phil Smith explained that Dye was referring to "the ongoing fire in Alma [West Virginia], which is being fought very professionally by the people up there, and a fire [at the West Elk mine in Colorado] that has been burning for two months." That explanation was then confirmed by MSHA staff in Colorado.

When asked why the Colorado fire was such a big deal that it caused Dye to leave the hearing, a Labor Department spokesperson explained, "Certainly, when there's a mine fire going on, for the acting director of MSHA, it's a pressing matter for him." But when asked what was so pressing about the long-smoldering West Elk fire, he responded, "I don't have any more details."

In a way, you can't blame Dye for wanting to hightail it from the senators; he has been stuck in the job of acting assistant secretary for a year. That's because the Bush administration has failed to fill the head office at MSHA. The Department of Labor website lists vacancies for the assistant secretary, a second deputy assistant secretary, and the chief of staff for MSHA. The current candidate to run MSHA, Richard Stickler, nominated September 15, is only now coming before Congress for confirmation.

Neither the government bureaucracy nor the Congress could care less about coal miners, even though coal is the basic fossil fuel that has powered American industry from the industrial revolution on and almost certainly will end up being at the center of U.S. energy policy. So why such scant attention to the mines? Perhaps there is a clue in the following: Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao, who has served since 2001, is married to Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky. In the run-up to his 2002 re-election, McConnell received $129,100 from mining firms in campaign donations, topping all other members of Congress benefiting from that industry.

Recently, however, it has come to light that the President has indeed, to quote Mr. Gonzales, "had the policy and the agenda of authorizing actions that would be in circumvention of our criminal statutes."

But there’s more. Gonzales also specifically promised Feingold and the US Senate, to notify Congress if the President makes such a decision "as soon as I reasonably can, yes, Sir."

Gonzales has said recently that he knew about the wiretapping, has attempted to justify it, and that he and the President knew of the likely opposition of Congress to Bush’s policy of domestic wiretapping. The policy had been initially proposed in a draft of legislation which was scrapped as soon as it was leaked to an interest group. Also, Gonzales and President Bush conferred on possibly approaching Congress for the authority to conduct erstwhile illegal wiretapping, and decided it would be unwise to seek such authority from Congress.

"It now appears that the Attorney General was not being straight with the Judiciary Committee and he has some explaining to do," US Senator Feingold said in a prepared statement.

Senator Feingold–a possible contender for President of the United States in 2008–also had some good questions for Mr. Gonzales, which he issued in advance of upcoming Senate hearings on Bush’s domestic wiretapping.

First, Feingold has asked Gonzales to define "the legal standard that the government has used to decide whose telephone calls and emails to intercept within the United States under the NSA program; how that standard compares to the FISA standard; who has been making those determinations; and what oversight and training the Department has provided those individuals on the legal requirements of the program, if any."

Second, Feingold has asked for "the contemporaneous legal advice provided by the Justice Department, or by you [Gonzales] as White House Counsel, throughout the course of the program, and how it may differ from the Administration's current legal justifications." Feingold wrote that any contemporaneous, written, legal analyses had already been requested by US Senator Leahy (D-VT) and others, and should be provided in advance of the upcoming Senate hearings on wiretapping.

Third, Feingold asked, What are "the limits, if any, to the Administration's legal theory that the President has the authority either under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force or as Commander in Chief to violate criminal laws of the United States. What other statutes or treaties are being or might be violated under this legal theory? Would this legal theory permit surveillance of communications by U.S. citizens solely within the United States or the assassination of U.S. citizens within the United States? If not, why not?"

Feingold’s letter, which includes extended text of his exchange with Mr. Gonzales during Gonzales’s Senate testimony .

President Bush also appears to have been dishonest during April 20, 2004, remarks in New York about the Patriot Act. "Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so," President Bush said, according to the White House website

For Atlanta Progressive News’s previous coverage of the wiretapping scandal, please see, "Federal Agencies Play Hot Potato over Wiretapping Probe"

http://www.atlantaprogressivenews.com

Matthew Cardinale is Editor of Atlanta Progressive News. He has written previously for the Sun-Sentinel Newspaper, Shelterforce Magazine, The Advocate Magazine, and the Berkeley Daily Planet Newspaper. He has also written for numerous online publications including OpEdNews, BuzzFlash, CommonDreams, AlterNet, RawStory, and TruthOut. He may be reached at matthew@atlantaprogressivenews.com

Stickler, 61, was appearing Tuesday before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. There will also be a confirmation hearing Tuesday for Edwin G. Foulke Jr., who has been nominated to lead the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

In prepared testimony, Stickler said he's dedicated to mine safety and the mission of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. He recalled working underground in West Virginia in 1968 when a methane gas explosion in an adjacent mine killed 78 workers.

"The sights and sounds of that experience as well as other tragic mine accidents will be with me as long as I live," said Stickler, of Terra Alta, W.Va.

Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., the committee's ranking Democrat, questioned Stickler's commitment to safety.

"Every human life is precious. We must only confirm nominees to safety and health positions who understand this," Kennedy said. "Mr. Stickler's history is long on coal production experience but short on ensuring worker safety."

Kennedy is among a handful of members of Congress who have called for reform at MSHA after the deaths of 14 West Virginia miners earlier this month. One main criticism of MSHA, which has a 2006 operating budget of $277 million, is that it's been run by mining insiders lax in enforcing fines and opening up documents. It has been without a leader since November 2004.

Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., who is also on the committee, said Stickler has practical experience as an underground manager, superintendent and shift foreman that would benefit the agency.

"He is a man who, for most of his adult life, has wiped the coal dust off his boots every night," Isakson said.

Stickler received a gubernatorial award for his work on the scene at the Quecreek mine in 2002 when the nine trapped miners were rescued. He ran Pennsylvania's agency from 1997 to 2003 after working for 30 years for Beth Energy Mines Inc. in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

The grand jury investigation of Quecreek did not name individuals and no criminal charges were filed. The problems were blamed on miners breaching an abandoned mine that released millions of gallons of water that trapped them until they were rescued 77 hours later.

In his urgent advisory after the disaster, Stickler wrote to the state's mines, "The consequences of inaccurate maps of abandoned workings can be catastrophic," according to documents under reviewed by the Senate committee and obtained by The Associated Press.

Howard Messer, who represents eight of the nine Quecreek miners, has said he opposes Stickler's nomination because of the secrecy surrounding the investigation that followed the disaster.

The United Mine Workers has opposed his nomination to lead the federal agency _ just as it opposed his nomination to the state agency.

In 1997, the United Mine Workers wrote in a letter to then-Gov. Tom Ridge that its evaluation of federal records showed there were incident rates in mines Stickler ran that doubled the national average in six of eight years. It noted that one of the mines he managed for five years had two fatal accidents during that time.

Documents provided to the committee, however, say he was strict in enforcement, which could explain the numbers.

In 1998, one of Stickler's own inspectors complained in a letter to him about a change in policy involving ventilation in mines, documents show. He said the change would make the industry less safe for two-thirds of workers and "this policy is strictly an economical document which neither promotes or extends safety."

After Stickler apparently met with miners in New Stanton, Pa., in 1999, the United Mine Workers' safety officer wrote to the head of the Pennsylvania Department of Environment Protection complaining that Stickler was failing to address miners' safety concerns.

"The continued tenure of Mr. Stickler will have a grave an immediate impact on state's miners," the letter said.