http://www.washtimes.com/national/20051121-103434-8775r.htm


Informant: NHNE

Judith Coburn writes that George W. Bush and his associates must have remarkably short memories. While he has been careful to mouth words of cooperation in the Plamegate case, he has depended on the Republican control of Congress to stonewall on just about every egregious misdeed that has seen the light of day, blocking public hearings into Abu Ghraib, the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo, the CIA secret prison system, faux intelligence on Iraq, and Plamegate itself.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112205L.shtml

Marc Ash writes, "They say the first casualty of any war is the truth, but lies alone don't launch armies. There has to be a fervor, a madness if you will, that drives the architects, a certainty of righteousness. What drove Richard Nixon to order the carpet-bombing of Cambodia? When George W. Bush used the word crusade as part of his rationale for war, was it his mistake or Freud's?"

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/112205I.shtml

http://www.nydailynews.com/11-22-2005/news/wn_report/story/367940p-313140c.html


Informant: acpollack2

From ufpj-news

Center For Individual Freedom
by staff

11/17/05

On November 7th, the United States Supreme Court announced, over strenuous objections by the Bush administration, that it will review the legality of the administration's planned military commissions for accused terrorists, setting up what could be one of the most significant rulings on presidential war powers since the end of World War II. Later this term, the Court will hear the case of Osama bin Laden's former driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, which deals with the legality of military commissions to try Guantanamo Bay detainees. Last term, the Justices threw out the administration's claim that the United States could hold enemy combatants indefinitely without access to the courts. At the crux of many of the war power cases is the assertion that the courts lack authority to even consider cases restricting presidential war powers...

http://tinyurl.com/bup2y


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Hawaii Reporter
by Laura Brown

11/17/05

The U.S. Supreme Court decided wrongly against parents this week in the Schaffer v. Weast decision to place the burden of proof on parents when disputing the adequacy of their child’s special education program. The decision assumes that government bureaucrats know what is best for children. Parents can opt out of mandatory government education to determine their child’s education program only if they have the money to pay for private placement and services or -- if poor -- can legally prove that their child is being harmed by an inadequate program...

http://tinyurl.com/czcrw


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

The Price of Liberty
by Ted Lang

11/21/05

I asked Dr. Daniel Ellsberg this question on Tuesday, November 15th, after he had just completed his lecture to instructors, professors, students and members of the public that were in attendance to hear him speak at William Patterson University in Wayne, New Jersey: Dr. Ellsberg, which bomb do you think will go off first -- Fitzgerald bringing another indictment, or the military attack on Syria and Iran? His answer was frightening -- he offered that the war would probably come first, initiated in all likelihood as an engineered distraction to negate the effect of the expected upcoming indictments. Daniel Ellsberg is an American achiever and a TRUE patriot akin to the Spirit of '76 inculcated into our national psyche by the writings and documents of our Founding Fathers...

http://www.thepriceofliberty.org/05/11/21/lang.htm


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Arizona Republic
by Richard Ruelas

11/21/05

For some, the ban on torture that Arizona Sen. John McCain has introduced before Congress is not a theoretical concept. For whose who have experienced torture, talking about it brings back stinging memories of torn-off fingernails, dislocated shoulders and broken cheekbones. Being the recipient of torture teaches some lessons. For instance, torture can make someone talk. The rule about soldiers only giving their name, rank and serial number eventually goes away. 'Everybody that I know broke,' said Larry Chesley, who was held a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for four years. But torture does not lead to truth. The pain will make someone say nearly anything to get it to stop. 'You really don't know if you've got anything or not,' Chesley said. Someone who gets tortured doesn't feel right having his country take up such behavior. 'I think physical torture is unacceptable,' said Chesley, a former state legislator and current Republican Party district chair...

http://tinyurl.com/avb5c


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

Intellectual Conservative
by W. James Antle III

11/21/05

The anti-Murtha juggernaut will fail. The Pennsylvania Democrat may not be Scoop Jackson but he is certainly not Michael Moore, no matter how much some in the White House might want to link the two. A majority of Americans are now entertaining second thoughts about the Iraq war, not just a far-left fringe. Yet by refusing to question the war or respond to changing circumstances on the ground, Republicans risk driving the country into the left's arms. An inability to rethink military action while combat is ongoing prevents a realistic assessment of our current policy -- a policy that a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll found 52 percent of Americans no longer believe to be worthwhile. It does no disservice to our troops to question the policies of their civilian leaders. It is not surrender to abandon a course if it was misconceived from the beginning. We must not continue to spend blood and treasure in Iraq based on premises as faulty as those which led us into war in the first place...

http://www.intellectualconservative.com/article4748.html


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

National Review
by Sabrina Leigh Schaeffer

11/22/05

Throughout this fall President Bush has suffered a constant barrage from Democrats and antiwar critics who charge that he manipulated pre-war intelligence in order to fool the American people into a war with Iraq. Not surprisingly, against this backdrop of hostility, the president's poll numbers began to fall. And fall. And fall. Now, in mid-November, only 35 percent of Americans approve of how the president is handling the war in Iraq. Nearly 60 percent of the country believes the president is dishonest. Our commander-in-chief appears to have hit rock bottom, and most wonder whether he can escape from what seems to be political quicksand. No matter what he does to pull himself out, pundits and political elites just keep repeating that he is sinking -- and quickly. That is, in fact, all that Americans have heard for the past three months -- until now...

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/schaeffer200511220915.asp


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp