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Republicans want to talk about John Edwards

fff

Well-known member
SEX! SEX! John Edwards, a private citizen, holding no elected office, had sex and lied about it. My God. How could he? Vetter used prostitutes. Mark Foley apparently preferred young boys. Newt had sex, lied about it, then told his wife (during her cancer treatment) that he wanted a divorce! And he's a hero today. Guess Edwards will just have to wait a few years and maybe he can be a hero, too. Probably not since his affair didn't take place while his wife was having cancer treatments. :roll: What Republicans don't want to talk about:

The Justice Department’s Truthiness Problem
By Scott Horton

“Truthiness,” a phrase coined by the comic Stephen Colbert, has emerged as one of the hallmarks of the Bush Administration. Truthiness, Colbert tells us, is something a government spokesperson knows “from the gut”–without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. “Truthiness” has the outward appearance of truth. However, statements offered as “truthiness” are invariably false. Worse, the person who utters them usually knows they are false. But telling lies and getting away with it is a political art form. Call it the art of “truthiness.”

The Bush Justice Department has a huge truthiness problem. This helps explain why public confidence in the Justice Department just reached an all-time low point. Americans now have more confidence in the integrity and reliability of Post Office employees than they do in federal prosecutors and FBI agents. But is the Justice Department going to start coming to grips with its “truthiness” problem, or will it just plod along through inauguration day, 2009?

The clock is ticking on a series of important internal investigations. In recent weeks the public has gotten important details about a Bush Administration effort to pack the career-level ranks of the Justice Department with political hacks, in violation of laws protecting the integrity of the civil service. The Inspector General concluded that two figures, Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling, both trusted acolytes of Karl Rove, implemented this program, successfully hiring dozens of hacks for the Justice Department and firing or passing over career employees for a variety of illegal and unethical reasons. They were enabled in the process by an unprecedented sweeping authorization given them by Alberto Gonzales–an authorization designed to give Gonzales himself plausible deniability with respect to an illegal, and possibly criminal exercise.

In one case a former U.S. attorney was taken down based on unsubstantiated (and false) rumors that she was a lesbian. In another a prosecutor lost a promotion when it became known that he was married to a known Democrat. In a third an individual in an unguarded moment let slip some words of praise for Condoleezza Rice. True, Condi is a prominent Republican and a loyal Bushie to the core. But Monica Goodling found this expression of loyalty disturbing. After all, Condi supported abortion rights. The level of political vindictiveness that dominated this process of hiring and firing is astonishing—though not to those who have closely tracked developments at Justice over the last seven years.

In her recent book, Dark Side, Jane Mayer interviews senior political appointees, all card-carrying Republican conservatives with long records of faithful service to the Republican Party, who describe the atmosphere of fear and intimidation which the White House had carefully cultivated in the nation’s erstwhile temple of justice. The message was clear: the Justice Department existed to do the White House’s political bidding. Any suggestion of independence or fidelity to the law would be rudely crushed. Many were convinced their phones were being tapped illegally. Some even feared that they might be targeted for a hit or “accidentally” run over by a truck (the favored tactic of the Ukrainian mafiosi with whom Karl Rove was seen hobnobbing at Yalta only a few weeks ago). Any hint of caution about the White House’s agenda would be enough to destroy a career. This is the environment in which the Justice Department launched roughly six criminal probes into Democratic political figures for every one targeting a Republican. It was a Justice Department hijacked and converted into a partisan political attack machine.

Still, the Inspector General’s report concluded that the hacks were there to stay. Glenn Fine took a “forgive and forget” attitude towards the perpetrators, recommending no criminal action against them, though that was plainly a viable option. And most disturbingly, the Inspector General report stopped with Sampson and Goodling, not venturing to peel back the curtain to look at the person who trained them and for whom they were working: Karl Rove.

On another front, Justice’s internal probe of a corrupt and politically motivated series of prosecutions and lawsuits targeting prominent Democratic politicians in Missouri continues. Former senior officers of the department have engaged criminal defense counsel and refused all cooperation with the probe. It’s fairly clear that at least one of them made false statements to Congress, and possibly to other investigators—potential felonies. Yesterday Murray Waas noted that grand jury subpoenas had been issued to Bradley Schlozman and Hans von Spakovsky, two G.O.P. operatives who served in high positions in the Bush Justice Department and who consistently instigated schemes designed to suppress the voter turnout of minorities and other likely Democratic constituencies, and bullied and pressured U.S. attorneys around the country to implement their schemes, with high-level backing. Schlozman was the man in charge of the Justice Department’s voting rights policy for key periods, then went into the field to serve as U.S. Attorney in Kansas City, when the U.S. attorney there refused his directions to launch a series of bogus lawsuits. Alabama-born Spakovsky has long been a key G.O.P. vote suppression expert. He worked closely with Schlozman, and was recently nominated by President Bush for service on the Federal Election Commission—a nomination pronounced dead on arrival in the Senate, which proceeded to stay open to block Bush from making a threatened recess appointment.

In other administrations, the fact that two senior Justice Department officers were refusing to cooperate with a criminal probe would be shocking news. The fact that they had to be subpoenaed to answer questions about their official conduct at the Justice Department would grab headlines. For the Bush Justice Department, however, it’s just another day, hardly any different from those that preceded or will follow it. Indeed, the sense among senior Justice staff with whom I have spoken is that Schlozman and Spakovsky are, relatively speaking, small frye. The focus remains on the investigation of the U.S. attorneys’ scandal, which involves serious allegations of wrongdoing and the prospect of a criminal probe of the Department’s four most senior political appointees, starting with Attorney General Gonzales. Still the real focus of inquiries into the scandal is not on the Justice Department at all, but rather its former political puppetmaster, Karl Rove.

The Inspector General’s report on the U.S. attorney’s scandal is due to be released before Labor Day, the traditional start of the presidential campaign. Any later than that and it risks becoming too much a front-and-center aspect of the election campaign, which would hardly serve the interest that every sober observer now recognizes in a less political Justice Department.

Today we learn that the Inspector General’s report is taking a focus, as expected, on the White House’s role in improperly directing Justice Department decisions. And the initial focus will fall squarely on the Justice Department’s sprawling “truthiness” problem. As the U.S. attorneys’ scandal unfolded, Justice Department spokesmen, and senior figures, issued a series of aggressive statements dismissing concerns and directing attention away from the White House. The Inspector General’s team is learning that more often than not, the denials of White House involvement were in fact authored inside the White House by individuals who knew the statements were not true.

A key initial chapter goes to a February 23, 2007 letter that the Justice Department sent in response to Congressional inquiries. Congress was trying to learn what role Karl Rove had played in the decision to sack the U.S. attorneys, and it was focusing in on the appointment of Rove’s deputy, Tim Griffin, to be the new U.S. attorney in Little Rock. Griffin had no credentials as a federal prosecutor. On the other hand, Griffin had great skills in partisan trench warfare, and was often identified as a key expert in the craft of “voter caging,” a legally dubious technique used by Rove to suppress minority voter turnout in battleground states.

The Justice Department letter stated that “The department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin.” It continued the Justice Department was “not aware of anyone lobbying, either inside or outside of the administration, for Mr. Griffin’s appointment.” These statements appear to be knowing falsehoods transmitted for purposes of obstructing the Congressional investigation. In fact the appointment of Griffin had come at Karl Rove’s behest, implemented over push back from the Department itself. Yet these false statements were issued in the name of the Justice Department. But who was responsible?

As Murray Waas reports today, federal investigators have now learned that the February 23 letter was the joint product of Kyle Sampson, Karl Rove’s former assistant, dubbed the “mini-Rove” by his co-workers, who moved to Justice with Alberto Gonzales, and a White House lawyer. At Justice, Sampson served as one of Rove’s principal cat’s paws. His co-author was Chris Oprison, then an associate general counsel at the White House, working under the nominal supervision of Harriet Miers, but in fact working closely with Rove. In other words, the Justice Department’s denial of White House involvement was actually authored by White House figures close to Karl Rove who had personal, direct knowledge that the statements they were making were false.

This is but one strand of a story which leads with increasing clarity directly to the White House, and straight to the office of Karl Rove.

The latest disclosures bring a focus on one issue that the Inspector General will have to address: the persistence of Justice Department “truthiness.” By the sterner view, it is obstruction of a Congressional investigation and lying to Congress: acts which warrant a criminal investigation, possible felony prosecution, and professional disciplinary measures for attorneys, possibly including disbarment. But the prevailing view inside of Justice today is different. It holds that there’s nothing wrong with telling fibs to Congress—it’s all part of the game. If the report takes the path that the latest disclosures suggest, then it will point clearly to the need for a special prosecutor, a person of unquestioned integrity and ability, to make decisions about the indictment and prosecution of Mr. Rove and the immediate past top leadership of the Bush Justice Department. Mukasey has firmly resisted such calls so far, but in doing so he has put his own reputation at risk.

Michael Mukasey tells us that he wants to restore integrity to the Justice Department. That would start with respect for the truth. But Mukasey has made Brian Roehrkasse—an outrageous and well-documented vendor of falsehoods–his principal public relations officer. And yesterday he took a further step down the same road by appointing as his new chief of staff Brian Benczkowski, another political flak best know for defending torture and for a falsehood-laden letter he delivered to Congress defending misbehaving prosecutors. When the report on the U.S. attorneys’ scandal surfaces, the Justice Department response will most likely be managed by Roehrkasse and Benczkowski, two individuals who should be right in the spotlight of the controversy. At Mukasey’s Justice Department the drawbridge is going up, and the battlements are being manned by the agents of “truthiness.” Truth is about to attempt to recapture the Justice Department. And the institution’s reputation and future hang in the balance.

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/08/hbc-90003376
 

Larrry

Well-known member
Edwards doesn't interest me much.

What I would like to know is Obamas qualifications for President. I am sure you missed it below when asked and am sure you wouldn't want to miss your chance to brag up your candidate.
 

fff

Well-known member
Larrry said:
Edwards doesn't interest me much.

What I would like to know is Obamas qualifications for President. I am sure you missed it below when asked and am sure you wouldn't want to miss your chance to brag up your candidate.

Edwards or something else. Anything to not talk about how the Bush Adminsitration and their Republican Congress have gutted our Constitution. You made my point nicely. Thank you. :lol:

I guess I did miss your question. Constitutional qualifications for president are pretty simple and Obama meets all of them. BTW, being white or male is not a requirement. :D

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.


http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_A2Sec1.html
 

VanC

Well-known member
fff said:
Larrry said:
Edwards doesn't interest me much.

What I would like to know is Obamas qualifications for President. I am sure you missed it below when asked and am sure you wouldn't want to miss your chance to brag up your candidate.

Edwards or something else. Anything to not talk about how the Bush Adminsitration and their Republican Congress have gutted our Constitution. You made my point nicely. Thank you. :lol:

Enough of the evil Bush administration and Republicans in congress. They aren't running for president. Obama is. Quit ducking the question.

fff said:
I guess I did miss your question. Constitutional qualifications for president are pretty simple and Obama meets all of them. BTW, being white or male is not a requirement. :D

This is laughable. :lol: Millions of Americans meet the constitutional requirements. By your standards they are all qualified to be president? How silly. Gee, you really don't have an answer to the question, do you? :D

No person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty-five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.


http://www.usconstitution.net/xconst_A2Sec1.html
[/quote]

I honestly think this should be changed to include naturalized citizens. There are many of them out there who would do a fine job as president, just as there are many naural born citizens who would not. Heck, the "gene pool", so to speak, is shallow enough, at least if you judge it by the candidates we've been given over the past few years. Why restrict it even more? :D
 

fff

Well-known member
VanC said:

Enough of the evil Bush administration and Republicans in congress. They aren't running for president. Obama is. Quit ducking the question.

John McCain's chief surrogate has said that McCain's tax and healthcare policies are essentially "an extension or maybe an enhancement of the Bush policies." We've seen how eager he is to "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran", how willing he is to have US troops in Iraq for "100 years." McCain will be another Bush term. So, no, not "enough" about the Bush Administration and Republicans in Congress. They are responsible for the mess this country is in from high gas prices, recession, job losses, the high cost of medical care, a broken Justice Department, and many, many more disgusting problems. McCain should not be allowed to continue these polices that have almost broken our military and damaged our economy.


This is laughable. :lol: Millions of Americans meet the constitutional requirements. By your standards they are all qualified to be president? How silly. Gee, you really don't have an answer to the question, do you? :D

I don't make the requirements for President. Our founding fathers set those out.

I honestly think this should be changed to include naturalized citizens. There are many of them out there who would do a fine job as president, just as there are many naural born citizens who would not. Heck, the "gene pool", so to speak, is shallow enough, at least if you judge it by the candidates we've been given over the past few years. Why restrict it even more? :D

I see why you go that route. With the way things are going for Republicans, Arnold Schwarzenegger is likely to be the Republican's best hope for a while. :D
 

VanC

Well-known member
fff said:
John McCain's chief surrogate has said that McCain's tax and healthcare policies are essentially "an extension or maybe an enhancement of the Bush policies." We've seen how eager he is to "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran", how willing he is to have US troops in Iraq for "100 years." McCain will be another Bush term. So, no, not "enough" about the Bush Administration and Republicans in Congress. They are responsible for the mess this country is in from high gas prices, recession, job losses, the high cost of medical care, a broken Justice Department, and many, many more disgusting problems. McCain should not be allowed to continue these polices that have almost broken our military and damaged our economy.

I'm not a big fan of McCain, and I'm not sure I'm going to vote for him, but he has bucked Bush on many issues the last eight years. So this tired, old tactic of linking the two doesn't hold water with me. Besides, if given the choice, I'd vote for four more years of Bush and all his baggage before I'd vote for someone like Obama.
This is laughable. :lol: Millions of Americans meet the constitutional requirements. By your standards they are all qualified to be president? How silly. Gee, you really don't have an answer to the question, do you? :D

fff said:
I don't make the requirements for President. Our founding fathers set those out.

So you're going to vote for McCain after all? He meets those requirements, you know. :lol:

I honestly think this should be changed to include naturalized citizens. There are many of them out there who would do a fine job as president, just as there are many naural born citizens who would not. Heck, the "gene pool", so to speak, is shallow enough, at least if you judge it by the candidates we've been given over the past few years. Why restrict it even more? :D

fff said:
I see why you go that route. With the way things are going for Republicans, Arnold Schwarzenegger is likely to be the Republican's best hope for a while. :D

God help us!! :lol: I'd have to go to a third party, or hope the Democrats go back to giving us candidates we deserve. I know it's hard to believe, but there was a time when the Democrats made some sense.
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
VanC said:
fff said:
John McCain's chief surrogate has said that McCain's tax and healthcare policies are essentially "an extension or maybe an enhancement of the Bush policies." We've seen how eager he is to "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran", how willing he is to have US troops in Iraq for "100 years." McCain will be another Bush term. So, no, not "enough" about the Bush Administration and Republicans in Congress. They are responsible for the mess this country is in from high gas prices, recession, job losses, the high cost of medical care, a broken Justice Department, and many, many more disgusting problems. McCain should not be allowed to continue these polices that have almost broken our military and damaged our economy.

I'm not a big fan of McCain, and I'm not sure I'm going to vote for him, but he has bucked Bush on many issues the last eight years. So this tired, old tactic of linking the two doesn't hold water with me. Besides, if given the choice, I'd vote for four more years of Bush and all his baggage before I'd vote for someone like Obama.
.

Voting 90% of the way Bush wanted looks like he kissed Bush's hiney more than he bucked him.... :roll:

Interestingly my Senator that supported all the issues I wanted that support small business and the family rancher voted only 35% of the time with Bush....


http://www.cqpolitics.com/wmspage.cfm?parm1=142

McSame voted 90% of the time supporting Bush
Obama voted 40% of the time supporting Bush
Paul voted 53% of the time supporting Bush
 

Texan

Well-known member
fff said:
I guess it's too late to run Jon Tester for President? :lol:
Don't be ridiculous. Jon Tester is just a former state senator who is only in his first term in the United States Senate. With such limited experience, nobody in their right mind would ever suggest that he would be qualified to be President.

Well...unless he was black. :lol:
 
A

Anonymous

Guest
Texan said:
fff said:
I guess it's too late to run Jon Tester for President? :lol:
Don't be ridiculous. Jon Tester is just a former state senator who is only in his first term in the United States Senate. With such limited experience, nobody in their right mind would ever suggest that he would be qualified to be President.

Well...unless he was black. :lol:

Comically there has been a lot of talk about our popular Populist/Centrist governor as a possible V.P. candidate either this year or in the future- and he is a former State senator who is in his first term as Governor... :wink: I doubt that will happen- as our 3 electoral votes don't get many national candidates- and I think after he wins in a landslide this election he will start building his war chest to walk into Baucus's Senate seat with...

But Obama and he could do better than Bush or the Bush mirrored policies of McSame anyday- especially with the economy....They support the USA and USA made products-or in Schweitzers case made in Montana.....

Not often the Repubs concede the election this early- and their own polling company tells them not to say bad things about a Dem.... :wink: :lol:

How are these Repubs going to run a campaign if they can't personally attack someone because Bush proved their current policies have been a disaster :???: :lol: :p

GOP pollster's advice: Don't attack Schweitzer
By CHARLES S. JOHNSON
Gazette State Bureau

HELENA - A pollster advised the state Republican Party this summer not to attack Democratic Gov. Brian Schweitzer because of his popularity, but to offer positive policy alternatives.

"Schweitzer has been effective at creating a majority centrist coalition, particularly with women and independents, and this is being driven by improving the state's economy," the Winston Group said in a June 19 memo to the Montana Republican Party.

It added: "Given the environment and the positive view of Schweitzer, the best strategy is to not attack Schweitzer, but on focusing on policy outcomes you want to offer and making positive contrasts with Democrats."

The Washington, D.C., polling company conducted a poll for the Montana Republican Party June 8-9. The Montana Democratic Party obtained a copy of the two-page memo. State Republican Chairman Erik Iverson said the party did commission the poll, with the memo aimed at Republican legislators and legislative candidates.
---------------------------------------

State Democratic Party spokesman Kevin O'Brien said he found some of the GOP poll information encouraging to Democrats. Fifty-eight percent believe the state is headed in the right direction and 29 percent say the wrong direction, the summary said, and 64 percent have a positive view of the state's economy, with 27 percent disagreeing.

Voters now give Democrats the edge over Republicans in handling the economy and jobs.

http://billingsgazette.net/articles/2008/08/05/news/state/45-pollsters.txt
 

Texan

Well-known member
Here's another good reason to talk about Edwards. From Novak in January:

"Illinois Democrats close to Sen. Barack Obama are quietly passing the word that John Edwards will be named attorney general in an Obama administration."

http://townhall.com/columnists/RobertDNovak/2008/01/26/attorney_general_edwards


There were rumors at the time that Obama had offered AG to Edwards for an endorsement. I haven't kept up with it since that time, but you have to wonder what would have happened. Obviously, someone who lies about sex would be perfect for a Dem AG. :lol:
 
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