South Dakota: First to outlaw abortion this century

AUSTIN, Texas -- South Dakota is so rarely found on the leading edge of the far out, the wiggy, the California-esque. But it has now staked its claim. First to Outlaw Abortion This Century. The state legislature of South Dakota, in all its wisdom and majesty, a legislature comprised of sons and daughters of the soil from Aberdeen to Zell, have usurped the right of the women of that state to decide whether or not to bear the child of an unwanted pregnancy. THEY will decide. Women will do what they decide.

These towering solons, representing citizens from the great cosmopolitan centers of Rapid City and Sioux Falls to the bosky dells near Yankton, are noted for their sagacity and understanding. When you think "enlightenment," the first thing that comes to your mind is "the South Dakota Legislature," right?

As well it might. The purpose of the law is to force a decision from the United States Supreme Court, where the appointments of John Roberts and Sam Alito have now shored up the anti-choice forces.

Three years on

Anniversaries are forced remembrances of events our busy lives otherwise leave forgotten. Past events rush forward through time to spend one day with us in the present, incessantly tapping our shoulders and asking: Remember me? Remember what happened on my day, and what has happened since because of me?

The third anniversary of the aerial “shock and awe” campaign that launched the U.S led war on Iraq will tap our shoulders this month. It will remind us that a fourth year of war stands eager to follow the same terrible path down which this country has been misled for three. War, such as it is, always stands ready and willing, always prepared to gather up its victims from the land of the living, and set them down in their early graves.

Kurt Vonnegut's "Stardust Memory"

On a cold, cloudy night, the lines threaded all the way around the Ohio State campus. News that Kurt Vonnegut was speaking at the Ohio Union prompted these “apathetic” heartland college students to start lining up in the early afternoon. About 2,000 got in. At least that many more were turned away. It was the biggest crowd for a speaker here since Michael Moore.

In an age dominated by hype and sex, neither Moore nor Vonnegut seems a likely candidate to rock a campus whose biggest news has been the men’s and women’s basketball teams’ joint assault on Big Ten championships.

But maybe there’s more going on here than Fox wants us to think.

Vonnegut takes an easy chair across from Prof. Manuel Luis Martinez, a poet and teacher of writing. He grabs Martinez and semi-whispers into his ear (and the mike) “What can I say here?”

Martinez urges candor.

“Well,” says Vonnegut, “I just want to say that George W. Bush is the syphilis president.”

The students seem to agree.

“The only difference between Bush and Hitler,” Vonnegut adds, “is that Hitler was elected.”

NY Times bungles coverage of AP video which proves Bush lied about breached levees

In its coverage Thursday of the latest White House Katrina scandal, the New York Times has unbelievably missed the entire main story that President Bush lied to Americans when, four days after the Hurricane hit, he declared on ABC's Good Morning America that"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." But a new videotape released Wednesday by the Associated Press clearly shows the president, along with Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, being warned the day before the storm struck that the levees in fact were in serious jeopardy. Yet the Times' story makes absolutely no mention of this contradiction. In fact, its opening paragraph is so way off the mark as to almost exonerate the Bushies over their inept response to the storm:

"A newly released transcript of a government videoconference shows that hours after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, federal and state officials did not know that the levees in New Orleans were failing and were cautiously congratulating one another on the government response."

How do you feel free in Ohio?

I have been reading your email newsletters since before the 2004 "election".....and I have to say to you, "how are you accepting this total afront to your local democracy?" As a Marylander who so far has much less to worry about in our state government, the news from Ohio is mindboggling, to say the least! Does your Free Press newsletter ever get MSM coverage in your state? If so, I would think that hundreds of thousands of Ohioans would be marching to burn down the capital with all the political crooks still inside.

The best I can say at this point is, "Good Luck"! You obviously will need all you can get. While I am well aware that voting election fraud is rampant in our nation, the State of Ohio takes the cake. Florida pales in comparison, except for the fact that far too many of us were more naive at that time.

Blackwell for Governor? Are they serious??? Only a blatant election theft could make that happen.....

Regards,
James L. LaGarde
Pocomoke City, MD

Bush and Gandhi

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?"

There is a terrible profanity in George Bush's intention to lay a wreath at the memorial of Mahatma Gandhi, the man who uttered those words, during the president's trip to India on a mission of nuclear proliferation and at a time when his draconian occupation of Iraq is spinning into all-out civil war. "It will be as though he has poured a pint of blood" on the great pacifist's memory, writes novelist Arundhati Roy.

Few world leaders today less embody the ideals Gandhi represents than Bush. Does he not know this? Does he think some PR advantage will accrue from his hollow gesture in Rajghat, or that it will mask the horror of his incompetence?

Ohio election

Dear Bob and Harvey,

Thank you God and the Free Press for Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman.

I am grateful that you continue to pursue the election fraud and corrupt Ohio gov't. Your articles are about the only time and place where this information is available. I also love to hear your interviews on Air America and other progressive venues. When everything the Bush administration keeps destroying before our eyes gets to me I find a weird solace in knowing that they really NEVER were elected. Not in 2000 or 2004. There is some comfort in knowing not all Americans are that totally stupid.

I agree with your findings of 2005 with the RON election reforms. Your articles are about the only place that reported those discrepancies between polling and results. I tried searching archives in Ohio papers and found nothing. People think I am nuts when I tell them about that. I worked for the RON initiatives, but was so disheartened that not one person in that effort pursued the impossible outcome.

15 arrested at White House torture protest

Washington – Fifteen people were arrested yesterday in front of the White House after winding their way for two hours through the streets of the nation’s capital, demanding the U.S. stop torturing detainees in military prisons. 

Members of Witness Against Torture began their protest at the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court, continuing to the Capitol and the Department of Justice, and ending at the White House where U.S. Park Police carried out the arrests.  Speakers called on officials in each of the buildings to cease planning and executing policies that have injured and killed people in prisons such as Guantanamo Bay, Bagram in Afghanistan, and Abu Ghraib in Iraq. 

Arrested were Art Laffin, of the Dorothy Day Catholic Worker House in Washington, Amanda and Matt Dalaisio, and Tania Theriault of the Catholic Worker’s Mary House in New York, Susan Crane from Jonah House in Baltimore, Matt Vogel, Mark Colville, Brian Kavanaugh, Carmen Trotta, Jacqueline Allen-Doucot, Alice Gerard, Bill Streit, Tom Feagley, Edith Tetaz and Jordan Manuel.

Details emerge in latest round of plame emails ‘found’ by the White House

The White House confirmed Tuesday that it recently turned over to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald 250 pages of emails from the Office of Vice President Dick Cheney related to covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a vocal critic of the Bush administration's pre-war Iraq intelligence. The emails were not submitted three years ago when then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales ordered White House staffers to turn over all documents that contained any reference to Valerie and Joseph Wilson.

Gonzales's directive in October 2003 came 12 hours after he was told by the Justice Department that it was launching an investigation to find out who leaked Plame Wilson's undercover CIA status to reporters in what appeared to be an attempt to discredit and silence her husband from speaking out against the administration's rationale for war. Gonzales spent two weeks with other White House attorneys screening emails and other documents his office received before turning them over to Justice Department investigators.

News of the 250 pages of emails was revealed to Libby's attorneys during a court hearing Friday.

The price of incompetence

AUSTIN, Texas -- The administration's competence problem is already at the yadda, yadda, yadda stage. They were supposed to protect us from terrorist attack, they said Iraq would be a cakewalk, that we only needed 50,000 troops. They failed to plan for the occupation or Hurricane Katrina or the prescription drug plan. Yadda.

But when you look at the details of what incompetence means, it becomes both chilling and really, really expensive. The Army announced this week it has decided to reimburse Halliburton for nearly all of the disputed costs in the more than $250 million in charges the Pentagon's own auditors had identified as excessive or unjustified.

According to the Pentagon's figures, it normally withholds an average of 66 percent of what the auditors recommend. In this case, the Pentagon wound up paying all but 3.8 percent of the disputed costs, a figure so far outside the norm it was noticed immediately. Rick Barton of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told the New York Times, "To think that it's that near zero is ridiculous when you're talking these kinds of numbers."

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