Rachel Maddow and Thomas Frank, author of The Wrecking Crew, All about conservatism and privatizing government.

Remember all the controversy a few months back about building a fence along the US border with Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants? Some $2.4 billion has been spent since 2005 on a still-unfinished project to erect more than 600 miles of new fence along the US-Mexico border – a finding that is being met with surprise, anger, and consternation by immigrant groups and at least some border residents. The entire length of the Mexico-United States border is 1952 miles long. [Border Fence Project]

Last September the [Christian Science Monitor] reported that “$6.5 billion will be needed to maintain the new fencing over the next 20 years. So far, it has been breached 3,363 times, requiring $1,300 for the average repair.”

The Anderson Cooper video demonstrates that the border fence does not or will not work. The cost of building and maintaining the fence is exorbitant. Those billions of dollars can be put to better use. Health care reform certainly comes to mind. If you add in the billions of dollars spent, and still being spent in the war on Iraq, was a waste of money and lives. The cost of the war in Afghanistan is questionable as well. The United States has, during my lifetime alone, spent trillions of dollars in war. My lifetime experience includes World War II, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan. The United States, as a nation, seems enamored with war. Only in World War II were we attacked by another country—Japan. We were not attacked by the countries of Korea, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan.

That tunnel under the border fence with Anderson Cooper was located at Otay Mesa which is at Tijuana. The tunnel would have permitted a flow of illegal immigrants and narcotics into the United States from Mexico.

Last spring President Barack Obama’s budget blueprint canceled plans to extend the border fence along the U.S.-Mexico border beyond the 670 miles already completed or planned, symbolically breaking with a much-heralded approach to border security advocated by President George W. Bush. [Dallas Morning News] That should end the waste of money for the ineffective border fence project.

The US-Mexico border will re-emerge again as soon as Congress can get back to it from their arguing over health care reform. The question about security of the border will center around illegal immigration and Mexican drug cartel’s entry into the United States. [Politico]

It may well be that the security of the United States is in more danger from the drug cartels than either illegal immigration, terrorists or Al Qaida in Afghanistan/Pakistan. You might want to add citizens of the United States who are addicted to drugs and buy them from the drug cartels as threats to national security.

[Read more →]

The Nation is reporting

A former Blackwater (renamed Xe) employee and an ex-US Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company’s owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince “views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe,” and that Prince’s companies “encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life.”

In their testimony, both men also allege that Blackwater was smuggling weapons into Iraq. One of the men alleges that Prince turned a profit by transporting “illegal” or “unlawful” weapons into the country on Prince’s private planes. They also charge that Prince and other Blackwater executives destroyed incriminating videos, emails and other documents and have intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies. [Read more →]

I joined working in the Obama Presidential campaign when I learned he eschewed taking campaign contributions from lobbyists. I have viewed lobbyists as corporate agents used to retain corporate ownership of the United States Congress. Bluntly, big corporations own Congress by using lobbyists to make campaign contributions to help re-elect Senators and Congressmen/women to office who help the corporations make more money.

I’ve posted blogs in the past stating that we ordinary people will have to buy back Congress so that Congress will have to represent us ordinary mortals rather than Corporate America.

In today’s Politico is an article that troubles me. I am troubled by Democrats looking for ways around Obama’s avoidance of lobbyist contributions.

Tonight there is a Democratic fundraiser scheduled to take place at some hotel. They call it an Issues Conference. It is an invitation only event—costs $5,000 a head to go. (You do have $5,000 laying around don’t you? But do you have an invitation?) I’m sure lobbyists have invitations and the $5,000 admission. The Obama rule is that no money be taken from lobbyists at tonight’s Conference.  So the Democrats won’t take lobbyists’ money tonight. But Friday morning, after Obama is gone, the lobbyists can line up with their campaign contributions in hand to pass over to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, who will willingly accept those campaign contributions. See the following quote from Politico:

Please note that the Friday Issues Conference is NOT subject to lobbyist restrictions, though the event is intended for personal contributions only,” a finance official from the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee wrote in an e-mail sent to lobbyists Tuesday and obtained by POLITICO, bolding the entire sentence to underscore the clarification. “The Issues Conference is separate from the DSCC/DCCC events with President Obama.”

Democratic Senators and Congressmen/women are just as susceptible to accepting corporate contributions as are Republicans. Common sense tells you that those that accept the money will see that those that gave the money get the red-carpeted treatment.

We ordinary Democrats will take a second seat while corporate American continues on with business as usual.

There has got to be a better way to finance political campaigns. Money is the mother’s milk of politics. Obama’s presidential campaign demonstrated that us ordinary people can have our voices heard with $5, $10, $20 campaign contributions so long as we remain engaged and make such contributions by the thousands. Democratic and Republican Senators and Congressmen/women need to learn that lesson and gear their campaigns to appeal to the ordinary voter for their contributions and support rather than the wealthy corporations.

I don’t expect that to happen. But I think it should. Democratic politicians are following the same old path which leads to corruption as we saw during the Bush-Cheney regime. We never learn.

LONDON (Reuters) – Photographs of Iraqi prisoner abuse which U.S. President Barack Obama does not want released include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on Thursday.

U.S. Major General Antonio Taguba, now retired, said:

“These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.”

Taguba said he supported Obama’s decision not to release them, even though Obama had previously pledged to disclose all images relating to abuses at Abu Ghraib and other U.S.-run prisons in Iraq.

The newspaper said at least one picture showed an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.

Others are said to depict sexual assaults with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.

The photographs relate to 400 alleged cases of abuse carried out at Abu Ghraib and six other prisons between 2001 and 2005.

And Bush-Cheney look like they’re going to get away with it.

Republican Congressman Dean Heller, Nevada Congressional District 2

Democratic Senator and Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid

I enjoyed reading Jon Ralston’s column yesterday in the Las Vegas Sun. He has a way with words. “Let us turn our attention today from the train wreck unfolding in Carson City” he began, inviting our attention to Nevada Senator and Majority Leader of the Senate, Harry Reid. [Read more →]

Cartoon by Bob Englehart

The Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at former U.S. President George W. Bush during a farewell visit to Baghdad has been sentenced by an Iraqi court to three years in prison.

The trial of Iraqi journalist Muntader al-Zaidi, who shot to fame after flinging his shoes at former President George Bush during a press conference last December in Baghdad, ended with a relatively light three-year sentence. [Voice of America]

Three years for a simple assault? In the United States a simple assault is a misdemeanor which could result in a maximum of 1 year in a county jail? Frankly, the guy deserves a medal.

The Arab press has called him as a "hero" and several admirers have even offered to betroth their daughters to him, as a reward for his "courage."

I agree with the Arab press.

Well, actually, they ignored it. George W. Bush’s solemn pledge at his two inaugurations as President that he would “defend and uphold the Constitution of the United States” were empty words.

The Obama administration threw open the curtain on years of Bush-era secrets Monday, revealing anti-terror memos that claimed exceptional search-and-seizure powers and divulging that the CIA destroyed nearly 100 videotapes of interrogations and other treatment of terror suspects.

The Justice Department released nine legal opinions showing that, following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Bush administration determined that certain constitutional rights would not apply during the coming fight. Within two weeks, government lawyers were already discussing ways to wiretap U.S. conversations without warrants. [Huffington Post]

“Fourth Amendment protections against unwarranted search and seizure, for instance, did not apply in the United States as long as the president was combating terrorism, the Justice Department said in an Oct. 23, 2001, memo.”

"First Amendment speech and press rights may also be subordinated to the overriding need to wage war successfully," Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo wrote, adding later: "The current campaign against terrorism may require even broader exercises of federal power domestically."

The memos reflected a belief within the Bush administration that the president had broad powers that could not be checked by Congress or the courts. That stance, in one form or another, became the foundation for many policies: holding detainees at Guantanamo Bay, eavesdropping on U.S. citizens without warrants, using tough new CIA interrogation tactics and locking U.S. citizens in military brigs without charges.

In summary Bush was positioned as a dictator empowered to govern without Constitutional restriction. Like Nixon, some of the tapes constituting evidence useful in a prosecution was destroyed.

The saddest part of this episode is that the American people elected the despot twice, happily endorsing the acts of casting aside the Constitution. Makes one wonder if the American people have sense enough to protect their own rights and liberties.

The CIA destroyed 92 videotapes of terror-suspect interrogations, according to a court document filed by the government on Monday. [CNN]

The tapes were made in 2002 and showed the interrogations of two suspected al Qaeda leaders, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. According to former CIA officer John Kiriakou, some of the videos showed harsh interrogations, including the use of waterboarding, which is said to simulate drowning and is considered by most people to be a form of torture.

The tape destruction is under investigation by John Durham, a federal prosecutor. The disclosure of the number of tapes involved came as part of a federal court proceeding in New York involving an American Civil Liberties Union motion to hold the CIA in contempt of court for destroying the tapes.

So the United States didn’t engage in torture? Of course it did during the Bush administration.

I repeat, the George W. Bush administration committed war crimes and should be prosecuted like any other criminal enterprise for doing so.