Folks at the White House stay pretty busy these days just trying to untangle the lies George Bush keeps telling every time he opens his mouth. For example, back in April 2004, Bush explained to a cheering audience and an unchallenging press corps in Buffalo about "eavesdropping" on Americans -- "When you think 'Patriot Act,' constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because," he said earnestly while leaning over the podium, his hand on his heart "--because we value the Constitution."

Bush "Value that (insert Lord's name in vain) piece of worthless paper" I think not. From his actions and manner of speech, it is doubtful that Bush has read either the US Constitution or the holy book upon which he placed his hand twice and swore to preserve, protect and defend it.

....today is the anniversary date of the wounded knee massacre of 1890 on pine ridge in south dakota. was sitting in the coffee shop this morning staring out to the still dark street....

indian people are still dying , just more slowly now, by practice and policy. genocide still an open and active force....not at all past tense (in term or effect)

leonard peltier is still in prison

the sky here, cries softly this morning

an near empty city bus stops at the stop, and rolls on, followed by a huge suv with a single occupant bearing a new 30 day tag

it's easy to connect the dots

can also see my reflection in the glass, as i peer out to the street

am still a part of the problem

by tomorrow in 1890, crimson will offer contrast to freshly fallen snow

today, the rain from the sky offers the chance for new, and continued life 

peace, michael

U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has admitted that he "ghosted" a detainee, meaning that he made the decision to hold a prisoner without keeping any records of the fact. 

While prisoners of war can be theoretically stripped of their rights by calling them other names (like "unlawful combatants"), they are probably most effectively stripped of all rights by keeping their imprisonment secret.  That is what Rumsfeld says he did.

An account of what we know on this matter can be found on page 110 of a new report by Congressman John Conyers called "The Constitution in Crisis; The Downing Street Minutes and Deception, Manipulation, Torture, Retribution, and Cover-ups in the Iraq War." http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/5769

Following a catalog of evidence of other crimes sanctioned by top Bush Administration officials, the report reads:

Journalists should be in the business of providing timely information to the public. But some -- notably at the top rungs of the profession -- have become players in the power games of the nation’s capital. And more than a few seem glad to imitate the officeholders who want to decide what the public shouldn’t know.

When the New York Times front page broke the story of the National Security Agency’s domestic spying, the newspaper’s editors had good reason to feel proud. Or so it seemed. But there was a troubling backstory: The Times had kept the scoop under wraps for a long time.

The White House did what it could -- including, as a last-ditch move, an early December presidential meeting that brought Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office -- in its efforts to persuade the Times not to report the story. The good news is that those efforts ultimately failed. The bad news is that they were successful for more than a year.

“The decision to hold the story last year was mine,” Keller said, according to a Washington Post article that appeared 10 days after

AUSTIN, Texas -- 2006 makes the ninth year in a row the federal minimum wage has been stuck at $5.15 an hour. It's bad economics, it's bad policy, it's stupid, it's unfair, and it's high damn time to do something about it. It is also, as Sen. Edward Kennedy says, a moral issue.

The Democrats have a new strategy that may finally get the Republicans off the pot. They're working to get a minimum wage increase on state ballots, including Ohio, Michigan, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Arkansas and Montana. The theory is that putting a minimum-wage increase on the ballot does for Democrats what putting on an anti-gay marriage proposition does for Republicans -- it gets out the base.

Of the seven states with the best chance to have minimum wage ballot initiatives, five were decided by less that 10 percentage points in the most recent presidential election. In theory, this should scare the happy pappy out of the Republicans, who will then vote to increase the minimum wage the first chance they get in Congress, thus assuring an increase either way. Clever, eh?