In case you missed, KO knocked that bum McCain out:

Keith Olbermann takes on John McCain and his campaign managers with another powerful Special Comment on Monday’s Countdown. McCain has consistently voted against our troops, but he and his campaign continue to spread lies and distortions about Barack Obama, painting him as unpatriotic and anti-military, while glossing over his own betrayal of our military on the floor of the Senate.

 Download | Play  Download | Play (h/t Heather)

Now as promised a Special Comment on the remarks of the Senior Senator from Arizona about Senator Obama at the VFW Convention, and about NBC News and MSNBC.

Four times in just two days, Senator McCain’s campaign managers have, simply, hung him out to dry.

First, trying to scapegoat the media, in the exact way that has spelled doom for other presidential candidates already watching from the sidelines.

Second, doing so with a petulant statement so full of holes that it virtually **confirms** that which was reported, and which set off this pointless temper tantrum in the first place.

Third, sending the candidate out to speak before the Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, even as the millstones of a series of disastrous, anti-veteran votes, still figuratively dangled from around his neck.

And fourth, encouraging Senator McCain, while there, to address his opponent in the language of unseemly contempt, undignified calumny, and holier-than-thou persiflage unsupported by reality… near-nonsensical bluster that — at best — makes the speaker look like a dyspeptic grouchy neighbor shouting “Hey you kids, get out of my yard.”

Transcript below the fold.

(Read the rest of this story…)

Just as McCain did Monday, Barack Obama addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars today, and didn’t pull any punches in his response to McCain’s attacks, especially when it came to the cheap shot that he would rather win the Presidency than win the war. It’s welcoming to see a Democrat eager to go before traditionally Republican-friendly audiences and knock it out of the park.

 Download | Play  Download | Play (HT: David)

In the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, I warned that war would fan the flames of extremism in the Middle East, create new centers of terrorism, and tie us down in a costly and open-ended occupation. Senator McCain predicted that we’d be greeted as liberators, and that the Iraqis would bear the cost of rebuilding through their bountiful oil revenues. For the good of our country, I wish he had been right, and I had been wrong. But that’s not what history shows. […]

These are the judgments I’ve made and the policies that we have to debate, because we do have differences in this election. But one of the things that we have to change in this country is the idea that people can’t disagree without challenging each other’s character and patriotism. I have never suggested that Senator McCain picks his positions on national security based on politics or personal ambition. I have not suggested it because I believe that he genuinely wants to serve America’s national interest. Now, it’s time for him to acknowledge that I want to do the same.

Full transcript below the fold:
(Read the rest of this story…)

Check this one out. McCain even drew mocking laughter from the crowd. This guy is a wealthy out of touch elite.

DNC Nails Mr. "5 Million" Hotlist by MLDB [Subscribe]

Tue Aug 19, 2008 at 08:25:55 AM PDT

More multiple point messaging like this please. While Obama is vigorously going after McCain's deplorable patriotism attack, the DNC is just out with this in response to the Saddleback forum:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/19/111420/396/185/570362

(h/t to Bob Sackamento for notifying us of this subject)

Barack Obama is speaking in front of the VFW right now in Orlando, and is hitting McCain very hard on his Achilles heel - the fundamental decision to go to war, and for the first time, brings up the fact that McCain pushed for war with Iraq right after 9/11:

Six years ago, I stood up at a time when it was politically difficult to oppose going to war in Iraq, and argued that our first priority had to be finishing the fight against Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda in Afghanistan. Senator McCain was already turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11, and he became a leading supporter of an invasion and occupation of a country that had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, and that – as despicable as Saddam Hussein was – posed no imminent threat to the American people.

And he then pivots to the original decision to launch the war in Iraq:

Joe Sudbay (DC) · 8/18/2008 06:47:00 PM ET

Must read Krugman today:

So Mr. McCain would seem to offer a target a mile wide: a die-hard supporter of failed economic policies who takes his advice from people completely out of touch with the lives of working Americans.

But while polls continue to show that the public, by a large margin, trusts Democrats more than Republicans to handle the economy, recent polling shows that Barack Obama has at best a small edge over Mr. McCain on the issue — four points in a recent Time magazine poll, and he is one point behind according to Rasmussen Reports, which does automated polling. And Mr. Obama’s failure to achieve a decisive edge on economic policy is central to his failure to open up a big lead in overall polling.

Why isn’t the Obama campaign getting more traction on economic issues?

    What's the old saw? Never get into an argument with people who buy ink by the barrel? Is there an electronic equivalent?
    I'm not even sure you can't beat a media organization. But if you're a presidential candidate and you come after it with a craven and silly argument - and you follow a path previously tried by a now ex-presidential candidate - you've probably been poorly advised.
    Thus tonight, between Senator McCain's manager's broadside against us, and his creative but tinny-sounding attacks on Senator Obama today at the VFW Convention, I've got a Special Comment planned.

    The Obama part first:

    "Behind all of these claims and positions by Senator Obama lies the ambition to be president," you said -- with a straight face -- today. "What's less apparent is the judgment to be commander in chief. And in matters of national security, good judgment will be at a premium in the term of the next president -- as we were all reminded ten days ago by events in the nation of Georgia."
     Senator, three points:
     One -- is your increasingly extremist and reactionary language towards Senator Obama really the method by which you want to try to achieve the Presidency -- or perhaps split the country if you succeed?
      Two -- criticizing a man for having quote "the ambition to be president"? Seriously? You do realize you are currently running for president, as well, right? That either you also have "ambition to be president" or, what?, somebody's blackmailing you into it?
      And three -- you might want to ask somebody -- somebody other than say, your Foreign Policy Advisor, Randy Scheunemann -- whether or not you are making a jackass out of yourself every time you bring up the conflict between Georgia and Russia.
      The Georgians have paid Mr. Scheunemann and his companies $800,000 over the last several years to lobby for them.
      It's pretty clear the Georgians have bought Mr. Scheunemann.
      And, Senator McCain, it sure as hell looks like the Georgians thought they had bought you.
      When you had the tastelessness to paraphrase the rallying cry of 9/11 and say that we are now all Georgians, that nation's President called you out...
      He said that your words were very nice, but he needed action -- not a verbal receipt from a lobbyist and his pet Senator!

      And a little about the contretemps with NBC:

      "We are concerned that your News Division is following MSNBC's lead in abandoning non-partisan coverage of the Presidential race. We would like to request a meeting with you as soon as possible to discuss our deep concerns about the news standards and level of objectivity at NBC."
     What (Rick) Davis is really saying here, of course, is that he wants no level of objectivity, that the only campaign he wants questioned is Obama, and that "partisan coverage" consists of questioning whether McCain or his campaign support the stage whispers branding Obama as somehow 'foreign,' or whether McCain is to be inoculated from all criticism by dint of his military service.

   
      Bring your popcorn.

======================================================

Olbermann just blasted McCain!  It was beautiful.  Catch if if you can.

From the always wonderful blogger

by Jerome a Paris [Subscribe]

TRANSCRIPT:

WALTER ISAACSON: [...] Tom Friedman's column mentioned that you haven't been there supporting the tax breaks that need to be extended for wind and solar. Do you support those breaks, and will you keep pushing for--will you push for it at some point?

JOHN MCCAIN: Yes, and I have, and I have a long record of that support of alternate energy. [...] I've always been for all of those and I have not missed any crucial vote. But my citizens in Arizona know that when I'm running for the President of the United States I have to be out campaigning. But I of course I am for renewable energy

Credit for the research goes to the Sierra Club, which has kindly put together this list foe wider distribution.

Fact: McCain missed EVERY SINGLE VOTE on the 2007 energy bill

Fact: McCain has cast at least 8 votes against Renewable Electricity Standards or funding for clean energy.

 http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/18/14622/9065/715/569832

In a presidential race marked by references to preparedness in the face of the 3 a.m. call, the revelation that presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain has taken the sleeping pill Ambien during his travels raises concerns that the rare side effects of the medication could impair his judgment.

"Taking more than the recommended dosage of Ambien or combining it with other sedative-hypnotics — for example, alcohol — may result in amnesia, fugue states and sleep walking," said Dr. Peter A. Fotinakes, medical director of the St. Joseph Sleep Disorders Center in Orange, Calif. "Used appropriately, Ambien is a relatively safe medication."

Though rare, such side effects associated with Ambien have made headlines.

Patients who claimed that they engaged in a bizarre variety of activities while asleep after taking the drug — from binge eating to driving their cars while asleep — lodged class action lawsuit in 2006 against Sanofi-Aventis, the maker of the drug.

The unusual side effects of the drug once again made headlines a few months later, when Rhode Island Rep. Patrick Kennedy smashed his Ford Mustang into a barrier near Capitol Hill. He later released a statement saying that he had been disoriented by two prescription medications he had taken, one of which was Ambien.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has uncovered more than a dozen reports of sleep-driving, all linked to the drug. Partly in response to such reports, the FDA urged sleep drug manufacturers on March 14, 2007 to strengthen their package labeling to include warnings of sleep walking, "sleep driving" and other behaviors.

Still, some sleep experts maintained that the rarity of these side effects, coupled with the wide use of the drug, make it unlikely that a problem would arise if the commander-in-chief were taking the pills.

"I suspect that drugs like Ambien are used very commonly by government officials, particularly when crossing time zones," noted Dr. Donald W. Greenblatt, director of the Strong Sleep Disorders Center at the University of Rochester Medical Center.

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Politics/Story?id=4919842&page=1

So, is this why McCain can't remeber anything?  I also understand that he is only up to doing one campaign event per day.  Let's face McCain is physically unfit for the stress of a Presidency.

John Aravosis (DC)

Amazing column by Frank Rich today. This is a very tough one to excerpt:

What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president’s response to Katrina; he fought the “agents of intolerance” of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence-peddlers.

With the exception of McCain’s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.

McCain never called for Donald Rumsfeld to be fired and didn’t start criticizing the war plan until late August 2003, nearly four months after “Mission Accomplished.” By then the growing insurgency was undeniable. On the day Hurricane Katrina hit, McCain laughed it up with the oblivious president at a birthday photo-op in Arizona. McCain didn’t get to New Orleans for another six months and didn’t sharply express public criticism of the Bush response to the calamity until this April, when he traveled to the Gulf Coast in desperate search of election-year pageantry surrounding him with black extras.

McCain long ago embraced the right’s agents of intolerance, even spending months courting the Rev. John Hagee, whose fringe views about Roman Catholics and the Holocaust were known to anyone who can use the Internet. (Once the McCain campaign discovered YouTube, it ditched Hagee.) On Monday McCain is scheduled to appear at an Atlanta fund-raiser being promoted by Ralph Reed, who is not only the former aide de camp to one of the agents of intolerance McCain once vilified (Pat Robertson) but is also the former Abramoff acolyte showcased in McCain’s own Senate investigation of Indian casino lobbying.

Though the McCain campaign announced a new no-lobbyists policy three months after The Washington Post’s February report that lobbyists were “essentially running” the whole operation, the fact remains that McCain’s top officials and fund-raisers have past financial ties to nearly every domestic and foreign flashpoint, from Fannie Mae to Blackwater to Ahmad Chalabi to the government of Georgia. No sooner does McCain flip-flop on oil drilling than a bevy of Hess Oil family members and executives, not to mention a lowly Hess office manager and his wife, each give a maximum $28,500 to the Republican Party.

While reporters at The Post and The New York Times have been vetting McCain, many others give him a free pass. Their default cliché is to present him as the Old Faithful everyone already knows. They routinely salute his “independence,” his “maverick image” and his “renegade reputation” — as the hackneyed script was reiterated by Karl Rove in a Wall Street Journal op-ed column last week. At Talking Points Memo, the essential blog vigilantly pursuing the McCain revelations often ignored elsewhere, Josh Marshall accurately observes that the Republican candidate is “graded on a curve.”

Most Americans still don’t know, as Marshall writes, that on the campaign trail “McCain frequently forgets key elements of policies, gets countries’ names wrong, forgets things he’s said only hours or days before and is frequently just confused.” Most Americans still don’t know it is precisely for this reason that the McCain campaign has now shut down the press’s previously unfettered access to the candidate on the Straight Talk Express. 

http://www.americablog.com/2008/08/frank-rich-other-than-his-time-in.html

Joe Sudbay (DC

McCain = Bush. It's not that complicated:

A day after Barack Obama and John McCain exchanged an embrace during a faith forum at a California megachurch, Obama called the U.S. economy a disaster thanks to "John McCain's president, George W. Bush," and chided his Republican rival's campaign team for trying to make him look unpatriotic and weak.

But Sunday, after praising the Arizona senator as a "genuine American patriot," the Democratic presidential hopeful got back to business — methodically tearing into McCain's health care, tax and energy policies and criticizing his advisers.

"McCain says 'Here's my plan, I'm going to drill here, drill now which is something he only came up with two months ago when he started looking at polling," Obama said of McCain's energy policy.

The GOP hopeful has become a vocal proponent of offshore oil drilling as a way to ease U.S. dependence on foreign oil and has criticized Obama for failing to embrace it as a way to help bring down oil prices. Obama noted that McCain had long opposed lifting the moratorium on offshore drilling.

The Illinois senator also criticized McCain's advisers as "the same old folks that brought you George W. Bush. The same team." He noted many had been lobbyists in Washington before McCain asked them to sever all lobbying ties.

Memo to: John McCain.

From: Five million thirst-crazed Coloradans.

Subject: Forget about winning our nine electoral votes next November. We don't vote for water rustlers in this state; we tar and feather them!

Yes, fellow citizens of the state whose official motto is "Whiskey is for drinking, water is for fighting," John McCain has thunk the unthinkable — and proposed renegotiating the 1922 Colorado River Compact.

To quote from Charles Ashby's story in the Friday Pueblo Chieftain:

"The water compact that Colorado and other upper basin states have with California and Arizona should be renegotiated," U.S. Sen. John McCain said Thursday.

"In a telephone interview with The Pueblo Chieftain, the presumptive GOP candidate for president said the water sharing agreement reached in 1922 between seven Western states doesn't take into account increases in population and changing water needs."

You can read the rest of McCain's politically suicidal ramblings at www.chieftain.com. Suffice to say, they aren't pretty.

As a senator, McCain has long represented a state, Arizona, that would love to steal Colorado's water. But now, he wants our votes. Apparently, nobody bothered to brief the candidate who Paris Hilton called "that wrinkly, white-haired guy" that stealing Colorado's water to benefit Arizona, California and Nevada isn't as popular an idea in Colorado as it is in Arizona, California and Nevada.

Who knew?

As Ashby notes: "The Colorado River compact allocates 7.5 million acre-feet of water to California, Nevada and Arizona. Anything left over is split between Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming."

None of the latter four upper basin states whose snowmelt feeds the river is ecstatic about giving up our meager share of our birthright to fill those artificial lakes beloved by Las Vegas casinos. By the time Ashby's story finishes rocketing around the Rockies, McCain's name will be McMud among the water buffaloes.

The problem, from Colorado's perspective, is that in the 76 years since the compact was signed, California, Nevada and Arizona have grown much more rapidly in population — and political power — than the upper basin states. So when the lower basin states talk about "renegotiating" the compact, that's their code for a process of give and take — in which Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Wyoming give and California, Arizona and Nevada take.

Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, an expert on water law, sprang at McCain's blunder like a mongoose throttling a cobra.

The compact would be reopened "over my dead body," the normally mild-mannered Salazar roared.

Even the Sierra Club, rarely a friend to water buffaloes, piled on. Southwest regional director Rob Smith said, "Scientists have predicted a 10 to 30 percent reduction of water flow in the Colorado River due to long-term drought and higher temperatures associated with climate change in the Southwest. Instead of threatening a diminishing resource, it would be better to help states and communities with water conservation projects and stream restoration."

Here's some free advice, wrinkly guy: When campaigning in Colorado, you might survive advocating atheism, taking our guns away or outlawing apple pie. But never, ever, mess with our water.

McCain would have been wiser to heed the warning a visitor got years ago when he arrived in Pueblo to speak to the annual Lincoln Day Dinner. His hosts cautioned him that water is always a controversial topic in the Arkansas Valley. The speaker, whose former life in water-rich Iowa left him ill-prepared for the intensity of the wrangles over our liquid gold in semi-arid Colorado, asked, "What should I know about water?"

"Well, it's all right to drink some," his host replied. "But don't talk about it. And for God's sake, don't spill any!"

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_10218277?source=rss

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This isn't isn't going to make McCreepy too popular in Colorado.

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Former congressman Bob Ney of Ohio has been released from a halfway house in Cincinnati after serving a sentence in connection with a public corruption scandal.

Ney has served nearly a year-and-a-half of his original two-and-a-half-year prison sentence. The sentence was reduced after he completed treatment for alcohol problems.

Ney admitted trading political favors for golf trips, other gifts and campaign donations arranged by lobbyist Jack Abramoff and his associates.

The Republican veteran of six House terms was released from the halfway house Friday.

=====================================================

Oh no another GOP crook on the loose

JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS | August 16, 2008 11:03 AM EST |

WASHINGTON — Even the top Republican in charge of the party's Senate campaigns concedes that the GOP will lose seats this year _ the only question is how many.

With President Bush's ratings at rock-bottom, fewer Republicans signing up to vote, and voters nationally gravitating toward Democrats in public polls, the GOP is bracing for defeats in November that will expand Democrats' now razor-thin 51-49 majority in the Senate.

Democrats have solid chances of winning five seats, according to strategists in both parties and public polls, and realistic shots at picking off another three to five Republican senators. Republicans have only one good opportunity for replacing a Democrat, in Louisiana.

A quirk of the political calendar _ Republicans are defending 23 seats this year to Democrats' 12 _ put the GOP at a disadvantage from the start. Worse still, those include five Republican retirements _ which typically make it harder to keep a seat _ compared to none among Democrats.

The scent of defeat threatens to become a self-fulfilling prophecy: Republican donors are sitting on their hands, giving Democrats a nearly 2-to-1 advantage in fundraising that limits the GOP's ability to defend key seats.

Democrats are pouring cash into TV advertising and on-the-ground voter mobilization. They're competing aggressively in 11 states, including GOP strongholds like Alaska, North Carolina and Virginia that they hope to convert by translating Barack Obama's appeal to African-American and young voters into wins for Democratic Senate candidates.

"It shapes up to be a very good Democratic year. This could be one of those change elections _ I call them tectonic," said Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., the head of his party's Senate campaign arm, which has $46.2 million in the bank.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., the GOP Senate campaign chief, says he'll be lucky if his party can hold its losses to two seats. A few weeks ago he said the best-case scenario would be four losses.

Shocking Revelations Unveiled in Corsi's New Autobiography

Right-wing attack-dog journalist Jerome Corsi, whose controversial book, Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, helped sink Sen. John Kerry's presidential hopes in 2004 and whose similarly incendiary attack on Sen. Barack Obama, The Obama Nation, is now on sale, reveals in his new unauthorized autobiography that he liked pulling wings off flies as a boy, stole his grandmother's dentures on her deathbed and almost never changes his underwear

Corsi portrays himself as a secretive, dishonest, calculating physical coward who pretended to be the Count of Monte Cristo to avoid military service and once robbed a nun.

In the book's most sensational admission, the author claims that he has uncovered documents showing that he may have sold a used car to Osama bin Laden in 1986 -- a lemon, he admits, that might well have been what turned bin Laden so viciously anti-capitalist and anti-Western.

In another astonishing revelation, Corsi tells how he sold his baby sister to the gypsies to get money to finance a plot to sabotage his hometown 4-H Club. "I'm not proud of that," he says. "I way undercharged."

"My slime-ball, truth-twisting antics," Corsi writes in his epilogue, "disqualify me even as a shameless hack writer peddling dollar-a-page drivel. But the thing about me is, I'm an oily creep and I don't give a -----."

His next written effort, Corsi notes, involves hatchet jobs on all six of the most prominent Democratic vice presidential candidates, "just to be ready."

Originally posted at the Washington Independent

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of "All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall" and "Zany Afternoons."

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Corsi is a typical right wing lying GOP weasel.

Barack Obama raised $51 million this month!

Barack Obama raised $51 million this month!

en. Barack Obama. (D-Ill.), raised $51 million in July, nearly twice as much as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)

McCain revealed Friday that he raised $27 million last month, his best month of the campaign.

On Saturday morning, Obama’s campaign announced his own huge haul. Here’s the text of the release:

More than 65,000 New Donors Contributed to the Obama Campaign in July, Bringing July Total to Over $51 Million

Obama campaign has $65.8 million on hand

CHICAGO – Senator Barack Obama’s campaign announced today that more than 65,000 new donors contributed to the Obama campaign during the month of July, bringing the total raised for the month to over $51 million. More than 2 million people have now contributed to the campaign.

"The 65,000 new donors to the Obama campaign demonstrate just how strongly the American people are looking to fundamentally change business as usual in Washington. We are proud of the millions of volunteers and more than two million donors to the Obama campaign who will provide the backbone of our campaign to put America back on track and reject the old politics and failed Bush policies, which is all John McCain is offering," said David Plouffe, campaign manager of Obama for America.

And of course if you didn't know, the Obama team now has over 2,000,000 donors!

The Obama campaign just released it's fundraising totals for the month of July...

   More than 65,000 New Donors Contributed to the Obama Campaign in July, Bringing July Total to Over $51 Million

   Obama campaign has $65.8 million on hand

   CHICAGO – Senator Barack Obama’s campaign announced today that more than 65,000 new donors contributed to the Obama campaign during the month of July, bringing the total raised for the month to over $51 million.  More than 2 million people have now contributed to the campaign.

   "The 65,000 new donors to the Obama campaign demonstrate just how strongly the American people are looking to fundamentally change business as usual in Washington.  We are proud of the millions of volunteers and more than two million donors to the Obama campaign who will provide the backbone of our campaign to put America back on track and reject the old politics and failed Bush policies, which is all John McCain is offering," said David Plouffe, campaign manager of Obama for America.

   Obama raised $52 million last month, and with the $51 million this month we can see that Obama has kept the pace of roughly $50 million a month he needs to meet his goal of raising $300 million or more.

   Obama's haul is also nearly double the $27 million raised by McCain in July. The McCain campaign and Republican National Committee have roughly $100 million on hand. The DNC's numbers are expected sometime this weekend, so we'll soon be able to see how the two sides stack up against each other.

DNC raises $28 million in July

As wealthy Obama backers start writing big checks to the DNC, the committee and its joint fundraising committees raised $27.7 last month, and has slightly more than that on hand.

The DNC says it's the first time since October, 2004 it's outraised the RNC.

The committee cash boosts the respective candidates, though it's no equivalent in value to the hard money raised by the candidates, and not all can or will be spent on the general election.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/16/12417/3823/670/568868

 

Take that McDirtbag!

August 15, 2008—

Six attorneys rejected from civil service positions at the Justice Department filed a lawsuit today against former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and three other top officials for allegedly violating their rights by taking politics into consideration in the hiring process.

The suit is an attempt to hold top officials accountable for the hiring scandal that ultimately led to Gonzales' resignation last year, said Daniel Metcalfe, the attorney for the plaintiffs who is also executive director of its Collaboration on Government Secrecy at American University's Washington College of Law.

"My clients wish that they hadn't had to bring this lawsuit -- they would have greatly preferred to be working inside the Justice Department, where by all rights they deserved to be, defending the government in court rather than standing as victimized examples of government wrongdoing," said Metcalfe, a former longtime Justice Department official.

One of the rejected attorneys -- Sean Gerlich -- first filed suit against the department in June. Today's amended complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, broadens the suit to include Gonzales; Monica Goodling, former White House Liaison; Michael Elston, former chief of staff to then-Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty; and Esther McDonald, former counsel to Gonzales.

In it, the attorneys allege that top officials violated the applicants' privacy and due process through the politicized hiring process in the Honors Program and Summer Law Intern Program.

The suit alleges that in vetting candidates' political affiliations -- in part by Googling their names in connection with any political activity -- the officials violated privacy rules requiring that applicants' files maintain no additional information about the individuals' political activity. The department's failure to fully address this "reveal defendant Department of Justice's utterly unredeemable obliviousness to its legal obligations, and its remarkably recidivistic failures to meet them, in the first place," the complaint states.

The suit also argues that a wholesale shift in taking political ideology into account in hiring for the civil service positions violated the applicants' constitutional rights. "This was an extraordinary, and uniquely successful, conspiracy to achieve political results that required the gross deprivation of hundreds of individuals' constitutional rights...for which defendant Gonzales was legally most responsible," the complaint states.

Goodling's attorneys, led by John Dowd, issued a statement calling the suit a public relations ploy without merit and nothing to do with the issues Goodling was involved with. "We have no idea why the six plaintiffs in this case were not selected for the Department's extraordinarily competitive Honors Program and Summer Law Intern Programs, except that it had nothing to do with Monica Goodlinga fact that the evidence will bear out in court," they wrote.

Elston's attorney, Bob Driscoll and the Justice Department declined comment. Calls to McDonald and Gonzales' attorney were not immediately returned.

The Justice Department first came under fire last year when questions were raised about whether nine U.S. Attorneys were fired for political reasons. Further investigations revealed broader problems at the department, including how top political officials had screened out applicants for career positions who had more liberal affiliations and politics.

So far, the department's inspector general has issued two reports on the politicization at the department. They found that Goodling, Elston and McDonald violated the law in vetting candidates for career positions based on their political allegiences and affiliations.

Lawsuits seeking to hold top officials civilly liable for acts done during their tenure in government often face difficultly in court, such as the recent case seeking to hold top military officials including former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld accountable for the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. But if successful, the lawsuit may be the only legal consequences these officials face. Earlier this week Attorney General Michael Mukasey said the feds will not prosecute individuals involved in the Justice Department scandal.

Click Here for the Investigative Homepage.

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About time!

So I hear on Free Speech Radio News today that US special forces trained the same exact Georgian troops that invaded South Ossetia just days or weeks before the invasion.  And so then I looked and found an article from 1 month ago which discusses these US servicemen obeying their orders to train Georgian troops, the same Georgian troops that turned around and invaded South Ossetia.

This is an outrage and of course begs the question:  what exactly was the Bush administration's involvement in the instigation and lead-up to this invasion during the Olympics and right before an election.

This is of course classic "wagging the dog" before an election.  And who has more motive than the criminal Bush administration to wag the dog?

Georgian, US troops start military exercise amid escalating tensions with Russia

July 15, 2008

Georgian and U.S. troops started a joint military exercise Tuesday amid growing tensions between the ex-Soviet republic and Russia, a Georgian defense ministry official said.

About 1,200 U.S. servicemen and 800 Georgians will train for three weeks at the Vaziani military base near the Georgian capital, Tbilisi, ministry spokesman Mindiya Arabuli said. The drills were planned months ago and are not related to recent tensions over two separatist Georgian regions that are backed by Moscow, he said.

[snip]

Georgia claims a string of recent explosions and border skirmishes in Abkhazia and South Ossetia are part of a Russian plan to annex the regions, while Russia claims Georgia is gearing up for a mid to take control of the regions by force.

I particularly like that last bolded blockquote considering it was Georgia that invaded South Ossetia, NOT Russia.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/15/20847/8772/893/568645

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I am absolutely convinced that the murderous Chimp is behind this.

Crossposted at Strategy '08

Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, the pastor that presided over Jenna Bush's wedding ceremony and is considered a close personal friend of President Bush, absolutely ripped into John McCain today on a conference call with reporters.  Rev. Caldwell took issue with Senator McCain's remarks that he made at the Sturgis bike rally last week when he volunteered his wife for the rally's "beauty" pageant, the Ms. Buffalo Chip pageant.  For those who were not familiar with that story, the Ms. Buffalo Chip pageant is a topless modeling contest, that among other things, involves a section with a banana.

Much more below the fold.

Caldwell comments highlight exactly why true family values conservatives should have a problem with John McCain.

"Well, I don't know a lot about John McCain's family history, I do know, however, that as recently as last week I think it was, the Senator made a comment in South Dakota regarding his wife entering some Buffalo Chips contest which is this topless deal and if she were to enter she would probably win it and my personal opinion and based on my understanding of the Christian faith, that's not not, N-O-T, not the type of expression that a presidential candidate, or anyone for that matter who is a follower of the Christian faith, ought to make," said the Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell. "I don't know if that is a perfect case in point, but it surely does help to juxtapose the DNA of Senator Obama, if you would, versus the DNA of Senator McCain."

The article also points out that Caldwell is backing Obama for president, and is a member of the Matthew 25 network.  For anyone who is not familiar with the Matthew 25 network and the great work they do, you can check out cardboard's diary currently on the Rec list.

During the conference call, Rev. Caldwell also hits John McCain on his adultery during his first marraige:

His marital history has been duly recorded," said Caldwell, referring to McCain, "and as recently as yesterday I think it is, our pastor from Saddleback, Rick Warren indicated that he would not feel comfortable voting for an adulterer and I don't know exactly to whom he was referring but I think the data speaks for itself, and again, at the end of the day, and I really appreciate you raising this because, at the end of the day again I think the American public deserves full revelation of the candidate's character and competency. Character and competency. So, whatever questions that should be asked that would give the voting public an indication as to who they are and what they've done should be fair game."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/8/15/143035/180/24/568489

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Sorry Johnny, it would seem the religious righties think you have no moral values.