The Brad Blog's Brad Friedman interviewed former Alabama governor Don Siegelman at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday August 27, 2008. The excellent exchange (6:14) includes the following choice quotes:
On Rove: "If we do not vote the contempt citation, Karl Rove is simply going to get in his getaway car and thumb his nose at the Constitution, Congress, and the American people. It creates almost two systems of justice: one for the powerful, those connected to the White House, and then another system for you and me and the rest of the people."
On Democrats: "Democrats are so magnanimous in victory, as they were after Watergate, they did nothing. After the Iran-Contra scandal, they did nothing. But what Democrats are going to want to do is get on with positive programs, to fix the damage that has been done by the Bush administration...But I view this as part of that positive change. Finding out who hijacked the Department of Justice and who used it as a political weapon."
On his 'stolen' 2002 election: "I went to bed the winner. The media had been sent home. The poll-workers had been sent home. The party chairmen had been given their copies of the election results. And then after midnight a light went on in the basement of the capitol, the basement of the courthouse, in the sheriff's office, and 5,200 votes that were mine were shifted to my opponent."
In theory Americans should vote for leaders who best serve their interests. The middle class is the largest voting block in the country and should have the most say in electing the next president. Below, themiddleclass.org analyzes just how well the current crop of candidates has represented the bulk of the American electorate...
It is because of numbers like these that Republicans can never rely on issues based campaigning and instead relentlessly use fearmongering and Swift Boating to win elections.
Last Thursday in Los Angeles Deborah spoke about her book and her experiences...
Part 1 - Introduction (3:59)
Deborah opened by talking about her engagement and marriage to the "charming and dashing" Palestinian Marwan whom she met at the United Nations. But Deborah quickly discovered that she "lived with somebody that really had a very secret life" and that she had failed to understand his "connection to the Palestinian 'Cause.'"
After they were married the couple moved to Washington, D.C. where Marwan became the Arab League representative and Palestinian Ambassador. In the nation's capitol Deborah's life became very isolated because, "the world that those people live in -- not only diplomatic world but within the Palestinian political community -- is not a world where they like to let outsiders in."
Despite the isolation and some horrible circumstances of her marriage (see below), Deborah was able to find some positives in her situation: "The one good thing that happened, beside my two children, during the marriage was that I got to meet many fascinating women who were married to Arabic leaders. And these women just impressed me so much. They were strong, they were leaders in their own right. They were rebelling against the fundamentalism in their countries. They were fighting for women's rights. They were doing remarkable things."
"Unveiled" is the story of these women as well as Deborah's own journey.
Part 2 - Yasser and Suha Arafat (8:42)
Despite talking to Yasser Arafat many times over the phone, Deborah did not meet the PLO leader until his first trip to the U.S. in 1993 to sign the Declaration of Principles with Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin which paved the way for limited Palestinian self-government in Gaza and the West Bank.
Upon meeting Arafat Deborah was sure that, "he knew that he had something that [she] would never have -- [her] husband's complete devotion."
Much of this segment, however, is dedicated to telling a couple of interesting stories about Suha Arafat who did not accompany her husband on his historic trip to the delight of Arafat's advisors who universally "hated" her. Much to their chagrin, however, Suha was still able to steal the spotlight during the signing statement from "her living room in Tunisia."
Deborah also reveals how Arafat's marriage to Suha was leaked to the press by Suha's mother who was worried about public perception of the relationship between Arafat and her daughter.
Part 3 - Baha Kikhia (2:07)
In Part 3 Deborah briefly tells the story of Baha Kikhia whose husband Mansour was the Libyan Foreign Minister and Ambassador to the United Nations. Mansour eventually resigned from his posts in protest of Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi's human rights violations. The couple then started a human rights organization for the Libyan people. Three years later Mansour was kidnapped in Cairo, Egypt.
Baha's subsequent search for her husband eventually led her to a surreal meeting in the middle of the Libyan desert with Gadhafi (excerpted from page 115 of "Unveiled"):
"You know, I love Mansour very much," Gadhafi said.
"Me, too," Baha answered again. They laughed despite her tears.
"You know what I think? I think it was the CIA that took him. Mansour wasn't the opposition. He was my friend."
"No, let's speak honestly. We know he was a leader in the opposition, but there is nothing wrong with that. Opposition means, they disagree with your thoughts. It means being against certain ideas, not against you, there is nothing wrong with that. He always said you were his friend, but he disagrees with you. Remember, Mansour didn't like to fight with anyone."
Despite Baha's heroic efforts Mansour was never found. The CIA would eventually give Baha a piece of paper with two lines written on it saying that her husband was executed but she refuses to accept it as valid.
Part 4 - Spying on Hamas and Kidnapped Children (9:53)
Like Baha, Deborah has also found herself in the middle of some rather scary situations. At one point the United States government tried to leverage her 70-year-old father's freedom and assets to get Deborah to spy on Hamas.
"The FBI started contacting me and asking me to meet them at this airport hangar in Santa Monica. So I went a few times and basically they were saying to me, 'if you go spy on Hamas we'll let your father go'. So they were holding him like a pawn," Deborah stated. But she refused the Agency's offer stating, "I don't know anything about Hamas and I would never risk my life or my children's life and I refused to do it."
Because of her father's burdensome legal troubles Deborah made the fateful decision to send her children to visit their father in the West Bank city of Ramallah. When Deborah later followed them to the Middle East she was informed by her ex-husband that their children would remain with him, that she no longer had any rights to them, that he would not provide her with any financial support and that she should return to the United States.
"The next day I started to call the consulate, the embassy, I called the state department in America, I called this woman that my children had given me the phone number of who was with the World Bank and basically everyone told me the same thing -- you no longer have any rights to your children. You are under Islamic law. There are no reciprocal agreements. There is absolutely nothing you can do."
With few options other than trying to kidnap her children back, Deborah met with Yasser Arafat who, limited by Islamic law, offered her a job so that she could obtain a visa from the Israelis and remain near her children.
Part 5 - Queen Dina of Jordan and Toujan al-Faisal (6:59)
Two other woman whose stories are told in Unveiled are Queen Dina of Jordan and Toujan al-Faisal who was Jordan's first female Member of Parliament.
Queen Dina became the first of King Hussein's four wives when they married in 1955. When they divorced two years later she became known as Her Royal Highness Princess Dina Abdul-Hamid of Jordan. Queen Dina eventually fell in love with the King's enemy - a Palestinian guerilla leader - which resulted in thousands of people dying when the King declared war against the Palestinians in what is now referred to as Black September. Queen Dina is also remembered for secretly arranging one of the largest prisoner exchanges ever.
Toujan al-Faisal was accused of apostasy and there were calls for her execution when she stood up to religious fundamentalism in Jordan. The court eventually dismissed her case and she was elected to Parliament in 1993 where she served until 1997. During their time together Toujan explained how Deborah could help Jordanians:
"People in the Middle East are either born as an oppressor or they were born to be oppressed. The only way to make change was to embarrass her country and its laws. The only way to change our laws is through retention from outsiders. Now that they know outsiders are watching Jordan wants to appear progressive. That's why I wanted to meet you [Deborah] so that you can be our messenger."
Part 6 - Return of her Children (9:10)
After three years of living in the West Bank in order to be close to her children, Deborah took a trip to the U.S. Shortly thereafter the Second Intifada occurred and her children were evacuated to Jordan by her ex-husband's current wife. Scared herself, the American born current wife was amenable to sending Deborah's children back to the U.S. but needed to get them passports since her husband had sent them to Jordan with Palestinian documents.
With the help of her cousin Donna Shalala, who was Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Clinton, Deborah got her children passports overnight. And her children, then 13 and 15, were put on a plane out of Jordan just as her ex-husband was returning to get them.
Deborah was quick to point out that it was not quite the Hollywood ending her book publisher was looking for as her children went through difficult adjustment periods. However, she did end the talk on an extremely positive note:
"One of the great thrills of being there was meeting these incredible Palestinians and Israelis who wanted to work together for peace. And I don't mean a few, I mean a lot... and there is just a huge grassroots civil movement going on and unfortunately it is not shown on the news. The news would rather show the war that is going on. But I tell you that these peacemakers are out there and they are strong and the people have a big desire to work together."
White House Press Secretary Dana Perino admits that she is not cut out for hard hitting journalism in this clip from Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace today. No kidding.
Even more remarkable is that Perino reached this conclusion when she found herself unable to interview the mother of a child murder victim. Yet, Perino seemingly has no problem whatsoever defending the man responsible for the deaths of thousands of children on a daily basis. WOW!
The terrorist watch list, which makes air travel extremely difficult for people on the list, is now made up of more than 1 million Americans. The FBI, which manages the list, says that people are only added to the list when "there is a reasonable suspicion to believe the individual is involved in terrorism."
Thus, according to our government 1 out of every 300 Americans can reasonably be suspected of being involved in terrorism. Which means that every time one attends a Redskins football game this year at FedEx Field, you can reasonably suspect that 303 fans in the 91,000 seat stadium are involved in terrorism.
By Jason Leopold and Alan Breslauer, Cross-posted at The Public Record
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's appearance Monday at a West Los Angeles college to discuss her recently published book was marred by dozens of protestors and several angry outbursts by audience members who demanded Pelosi immediately authorize a House committee to hold impeachment hearings against President George W. Bush.
The Speaker made it clear she would not support any effort to hold impeachment hearings against President Bush saying that the president "will be gone in a hundred days."
Halfway through her discussion at The American University of Judaism, where more than 300 people paid $30 each to hear Pelosi speak about her upbringing and her family's impact on her political career as detailed in her book Know Your Power: A Message to America’s Daughters, the topic shifted to Congress's historically low approval rating and how it reflected on Pelosi’s tenure as Speaker.
American University of Judaism's Rabbi Robert Wexler, who led the 75 minute interview, asked Pelosi to analyze a recent Rasmussen poll that found nine percent of individuals polled believed Congress was doing a good job, far lower than President Bush's overall approval rating.
Pelosi responded by defending her performance and the performance of her Democratic colleagues in Congress.
"I preside over the greatest collection of integrity and idealism," Pelosi said.
Prior to her appearance in West Los Angeles Monday evening, CNN’s Larry King interviewed Pelosi. She told King she was willing to drop her staunch opposition to offshore drilling and would likely allow the House to vote on the issue.
She said, in her opinion, the reason behind Congress’s low approval rating was largely due to the fact that Democrats could not muster up the votes to end the Iraq war, which the Democratic Speaker from San Francisco said she could not do much about because of the Democrats’ razor-thin majority in both Houses.
Wexler, however, continued to press Pelosi to elaborate on her response given that the Rasmussen poll suggested that a wide-range of issues beyond the Iraq war was responsible for Congress’s single-digit approval.
Pelosi, visibly flustered, said she was well aware that “much more work needs to be done.”
In November 2006, Pelosi explained the significance behind the record voter turnout that helped shift the balance of power in Washington for the first time in 12 years.
“People voted for change and they voted for Democrats who will take our country in a new direction,” Pelosi said during a victory speech in San Francisco on Nov. 8, 2006.
But Pelosi, who became House Speaker, never managed to exact the change she promised. She explained that she and her colleagues tried vigorously to pass legislation to end the war in Iraq.
"The public doesn’t want to know about process and 60 votes, they want outcomes, they want results," Pelosi said, explaining why Democrats could not end the war as promised prior to the midterm 2006 elections.
But Pelosi’s comments appeared disingenuous to many, since she was largely responsible for crafting an appropriations bill in backroom discussions with House Democratic leaders, passed in June, and then worked secretly with the White House budget director offering up concessions on Iraq war benchmarks if Bush would agree to the domestic spending attached to the final bill with little debate preceding a vote on the measure.
In fact, since the electoral victories in November 2006, the Democratic-controlled Congress has approved more than $300 billion in emergency spending bills for Iraq and Afghanistan without the benchmarks or withdrawal timetables that Pelosi and other leaders said they would demand.
When Pelosi launched into the reasons an administration led by presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain would be dangerous for the country, identifying the candidate's support for an endless war in Iraq and his intention to uphold many of the questionable constitutional interpretations relating to torture and civil liberties during the Bush administration, Pelosi said the only way to "dig our way out" is by electing Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
“Whether it’s the deficit or the challenges to the constitution we have to dig our way out,” Pelosi said, adding “this election is like death for life on this planet as we know it today."
Her response led Peter Thottam, founder of the LA Impeachment Center, to demand Pelosi do her job and pursue impeachment hearings against President Bush for launching a war on false pretenses.
"Who gave you the right to take the constitution and shove it down the toilet? Who gave you the right to take impeachment off the table? Nobody told them to do this,” Thottam shouted at Pelosi moments before Secret Service agents removed him from the packed auditorium. “One million Iraqis are dead. Five thousand Americans are dead. You have destroyed the First, Second, Fourth, Fifth and Eighth Amendments."
Pelosi seemed stunned by the outburst, but the way she addressed Thottam’s charges further fanned the flames and led to additional verbal protests over her decision not to hold the administration accountable for what many individuals in the audience believe are High Crimes and Misdemeanors by President Bush.
When a member of the activist group Code Pink stood up and insisted Pelosi brush up on her reading regarding evidence of the Bush administration's long list of alleged constitutional violations, Pelosi reacted angrily.
"I take an oath of office to uphold the constitution of the United States and don't tell me that I don't do that,” Pelosi said, using hand gestures to emphasize her disdain over the impeachment demands. "Why don't you go picket the Republicans in Congress that will not allow us to have a vote on the war. This is not very effective. Not very effective."
"As Speaker of the house, the third highest office, first is the president, then vice president, and then Speaker, I take my responsibilities deadly seriously,” Pelosi said. “I try to promote bipartisanship but that's not what the other side wants."
Before Election 2006, Pelosi declared impeachment “off the table,” in part, to avoid alarming centrist voters. Now, with Democrats hoping to gain additional seats in Election 2008, a similar political calculation applies, fearing a backlash against a last-minute drive to impeach Bush and Cheney. Bush knows that Pelosi long ago rejected impeachment proceedings, the one instrument included in the Constitution for Congress to wield against a President who has abused his powers.
At the conclusion of Monday evening’s presentation, Pelosi signed books but refused to answer questions about her policy decisions. The Public Record asked Pelosi whether she would authorize the full House to vote on contempt charges against former White House political adviser Karl Rove, who has refused to comply with a congressional subpoena to testify about his role in the alleged political prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, a Democrat.
Immediately following his query to Pelosi, Alan Breslauer was grabbed by Secret Service and dragged away from the table where Pelosi was signing copies of her book. The Speaker did respond to Breslauer's question, however, saying a vote on contempt charges against Rove is "up to [House Judiciary Committee Chairman] Conyers."
A remarkable interview of President Bush yesterday at the China Olympics by Bob Costas produced the following nuggets...
1. Bush on America: “I don't see America having problems”
2. Bush on religion: “If you are a religious person, you understand that once religion takes hold in a society it can't be stopped.”
3. Bush on the the Russia/Georgia conflict (all said without any hint of irony):
“This violence is unacceptable”
“I expressed my grave concern about the disproportionate response of Russia”
“It is interesting to me that here we are trying to promote peace and harmony and we're witnessing a conflict take place”
“I was very firm with Vladimir Putin and he and I have got a good relationship”
“Hopefully this will get resolved peacefully. There needs to be an international mediation there”
--
It is worth noting that YouTube initially would not post my video because of a block the copyright owner (presumably NBC) put on its content (presumably Olympic coverage). Only after I filed a complaint stating that the video met the news exception of Fair Use was the video made accessible. Oddly, a similar video posted on YouTube and then Democratic Underground is no longer available.
According to Funny or Die stats, Paris Hilton's presidential response ad to John McCain's absurd Obama celebrity ad has now garnered 6.5 million views:
Washington -- Richard Mihous Nixon announced his resignation Thursday as President of the United States, the first chief executive to resign in the republic's 198-year history.
Gerald Rudolph Ford, Vice President since Dec. 7, 1973, will take the oath of office at 9 a.m. PDT today to become the nation's 38th President, the first ever to take office without having been elected by the people to either the Presidency or Vice Presidency.
In a 15-minute television speech to the nation, Mr. Nixon, his face drawn, his expression somber, said he no longer ha a "strong enough political base in the Congress" to warrant continuing his fight against impeachment and that he was resigning in "the interests of the nation."
He admitted mistakes of judgment in his handling of the Watergate scandal but stopped short of acknowledging any guilt for the coverup conspiracy that ended his 28-year career as a public servant...
President Nixon's failure Thursday night to acknowledge guilt of impeachable crimes virtually guarantees that Congress will not act on proposals to support immunity from prosecution for "Citizen Nixon," reaction from House and Senate members indicated.
Thus the question of Mr. Nixon's future legal liability apparently will be left to incoming President Ford and special prosecutor Leon Jaworski. Thursday night Jaworski would say only that no agreement had been made with the White House before the President quit.
The proposals for a pro-immunity expression from Congress had appeared to be dying even before the resignation, because of doubts about their constitutionality and widespread sentiment that Mr. Nixon's guilt should be publicly recorded in such a way that it could not be questioned later...
