Lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleads guilty and Washington trembles.
http://www.telepolis.de/tp/r4/artikel/21/21751/1.html

http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=_XqUxgRkSnXs05FodyjQ1Q..

Records showing how thoroughly the Internal Revenue Service audits big corporations and the rich, and how much it discounts the additional taxes assessed after audits, are being withheld from the public despite a 1976 court order requiring their disclosure, according to a legal motion filed last week in federal court in Seattle.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011006M.shtml

Jack Abramoff, former superlobbyist and newly convicted felon, is learning how unpleasant disgrace can be. After pleading guilty last week to federal corruption charges in Washington and Florida, Mr. Abramoff is now mocked by late-night comedians and editorial cartoonists.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011006L.shtml

Marjorie Cohn writes: "If confirmed, Alito would tip the high court's delicate balance radically to the right. Nearly always favoring the government, corporations and universities, Alito has ruled against individual rights in 84 percent of his dissents."

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011006I.shtml

by Ralph G. Neas, TomPaine.com

Separating spin from reality in the confirmation hearings.
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20060110/cracking_the_alito_codebook.php

by Harvey J. Kaye, TomPaine.com

Even 230 years after the publication of his revolutionary pamphlet, Thomas Paine's words still speak to the challenges of the American experience.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20060110/regaining_our_common_sense.php

Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is said to have spent the past month preparing evidence he will present to a grand jury alleging that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove knowingly made false statements to FBI and Justice Department investigators and lied under oath while he was being questioned about his role in the leak of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity more than two years ago, according to sources knowledgeable about the probe.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/011006Z.shtml

Washington Times
by Nat Hentoff

01/09/06

As Congress begins to look into the president's authorization of the National Security Agency's warrantless searches of e-mails and phone calls into -- and out of -- the United States, a question many Americans are asking was posed to the president at a Dec. 19 press conference by Peter Baker of The Washington Post: 'If the global war on terrorism is to last for decades ... does that mean we're going to see ... a more or less permanent expansion of the unchecked power of the executive branch in American society?' The president had no direct answer, but he did say it was 'shameful' of the New York Times to break this story. However, the more we know about the porous nature of the president's defense of his authorization of the NSA's bypassing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court, it's becoming clearer that the New York Times should not have held the story for a year at the Bush administration's request...

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20060108-102309-6546r.htm


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp

AlterNet
by G. Pascal Zachary

01/10/06

President Bush deserves plenty of blame for secretly authorizing domestic spying by the National Security Agency. But some of the president's fiercest critics in Congress gave him the political cover to do so. The question why they did so says much about the nation's brittle democracy and how Democrats have covertly joined with Republicans to restore the imperial presidency and effectively remove any checks on the executive branch of the U.S. government...

http://www.alternet.org/story/30600/


Informant: Thomas L. Knapp