http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/17092/
EPA Confirms Toxic Substances in Chinese Drywall
NEW YORK—Chinese drywall has been confirmed to contain toxic materials after test results by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The Chinese drywall was tested alongside U.S.A.-made drywall and the results were released on May 21.
Sulfur was discovered in the Chinese-made drywall, and not in the U.S.-made drywall, according to a press release by Senator Bill Nelson (D-FL).
Strontium at levels ten times as high as in U.S. drywall were found, as well as two other organic compounds generally found in acrylic paint that were not detected in any U.S.-made wallboard.
The Florida Department of Health has recorded 379 complaints from homeowners as of May 19. Residents with the Chinese-made drywall have had health problems that include bronchitis, dizziness, headaches, fatigue, and irritated eyes. Many affected houses have a rotten-egg-like smell, metal is turning black, and appliances are failing.
Used in construction, the tainted drywall emits a sulfur gas that mixes with moisture in the air to produce sulfuric acid—a highly corrosive acid found in acid rain.
“We now know there are three things in there that aren’t in other drywall samples,” Senator Nelson said. Nelson represents Florida, where an estimated 36,000 homes are believed to contain Chinese-made drywall.
“In the end, I think all this stuff is going to have to be ripped out,” Sen. Nelson said.
Senator Mary Landrieu represents Louisiana, where tons of the drywall was used in post-Hurricane Katrina construction.
“Sen. Nelson and I are continuing to work closely with federal officials to get answers for families with sick children and pets, construction workers and builders removing the product, and local health officials who are concerned with dumping the drywall in their landfills,” Sen. Landrieu said.
All told, it’s thought that between 60,000 and 100,000 homes nationwide may contain tainted drywall, according to the release.
The EPA said more testing is needed.
A congressional hearing begins Thursday into the drywall issue, where experts from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the EPA, Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), a Florida homeowner affected by the drywall, and a Louisiana homebuilder are all expected to testify
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Democrats' 'Battered Wife Syndrome'
source: The Consortium News
By Robert Parry (A Special Report)
April 25, 2009
In recent years, the Washington political dynamic has often resembled an abusive marriage, in which the bullying husband (the Republicans) slaps the wife and kids around, and the battered wife (the Democrats) makes excuses and hides the ugly bruises from outsiders to keep the family together.
So, when the Republicans are in a position of power, they throw their weight around, break the rules, and taunt: “Whaddya gonna do ‘bout it?”
Then, when the Republicans do the political equivalent of passing out on the couch, the Democrats use their time in control, tiptoeing around, tidying up the house and cringing at every angry grunt from the snoring figure on the couch.
This pattern, which now appears to be repeating itself with President Barack Obama’s unwillingness to hold ex-President George W. Bush and his subordinates accountable for a host of crimes including torture, may have had its origins 40 years ago in Campaign 1968 when the Vietnam War was raging.
President Lyndon Johnson felt he was on the verge of achieving a negotiated peace settlement when he learned in late October 1968 that operatives working for Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon were secretly sabotaging the Paris peace talks.
Nixon, who was getting classified briefings on the talks’ progress, feared that an imminent peace accord might catapult Vice President Hubert Humphrey to victory. So, Nixon’s team sent secret messages to South Vietnamese leaders offering them a better deal if they boycotted Johnson’s talks and helped Nixon to victory, which they agreed to do.
Johnson learned about Nixon’s gambit through wiretaps of the South Vietnamese embassy and he confronted Nixon by phone (only to get an unconvincing denial). At that point, Johnson knew his only hope was to expose Nixon’s maneuver which Johnson called “treason” since it endangered the lives of a half million American soldiers in the war zone.
As a Christian Science Monitor reporter sniffed out the story and sought confirmation, Johnson consulted Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Defense Secretary Clark Clifford about whether to expose Nixon’s ploy right before the election. Both Rusk and Clifford urged Johnson to stay silent.
In what would become a Democratic refrain in the years ahead, Clifford said in a Nov. 4, 1968, conference call that “Some elements of the story are so shocking in their nature that I’m wondering whether it would be good for the country to disclose the story and then possibly have a certain individual [Nixon] elected. It could cast his whole administration under such doubt that I think it would be inimical to our country’s interests.”
So, Johnson stayed silent “for the good of the country”; Nixon eked out a narrow victory over Humphrey; the Vietnam War continued for another four years with an additional 20,763 U.S. dead and 111,230 wounded and more than a million more Vietnamese killed.
Over the years, as bits and pieces of this story have dribbled out – including confirmation from audiotapes released by the LBJ Library in December 2008 – the Democrats and the mainstream news media have never made much out of Nixon’s deadly treachery. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Significance of Nixon’s Treason.”]
The Watergate Exception
The one exception to this pattern of the Democrats’ “battered wife syndrome” may have been the Watergate case in which Nixon sought to secure his second term, in part, by spying on his political rivals, including putting bugs on phones at the Democratic National Committee.
When Nixon’s team was caught in a second break-in – trying to add more bugs – the scandal erupted.
Even then, however, key Democrats, such as Democratic National Chairman Robert Strauss, tried to shut down the Watergate investigation as it was expanding early in Nixon’s second term. Strauss argued that the inquiries would hurt the country, but enough other Democrats and an energized Washington press corps overcame the resistance. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]
With Nixon’s Watergate-compelled resignation in August 1974, the Republicans were at a crossroads. In one direction, they could start playing by the rules and seek to be a responsible political party. Or they could internalize Nixon’s pugnacious style and build an infrastructure to punish anyone who tried to hold them accountable in the future.
Essentially, the Republicans picked option two. Under the guidance of Nixon’s Treasury Secretary William Simon, right-wing foundations collaborated to build a powerful new infrastructure, pooling resources to finance right-wing publications, think tanks and anti-journalism attack groups. As this infrastructure took shape in the late 1970s, it imbued the Republicans with more confidence.
So, before Election 1980, the Republican campaign – bolstered by former CIA operatives loyal to former CIA Director George H.W. Bush – resorted to Nixon-style tactics in exploiting President Jimmy Carter’s failure to free 52 American hostages then held in Iran.
The evidence is now overwhelming that Republican operatives, including campaign chief Bill Casey and some of his close associates, had back-channel contacts with Iran’s Islamic regime and other foreign governments to confound Carter’s hostage negotiations. Though much of this evidence has seeped out over the past 29 years, some was known in real time.
For instance, Iran’s acting foreign minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh told Agence France Press on Sept. 6, 1980, that he knew that Republican candidate Ronald Reagan was “trying to block a solution” to the hostage impasse.
Senior Carter administration officials, such as National Security Council aide Gary Sick, also were hearing rumors about Republican interference, and President Carter concluded that Israel’s hard-line Likud leaders had “cast their lot with Reagan,” according to notes I found of a congressional task force interview with Carter a dozen years later.
Carter traced the Israeli opposition to him to a “lingering concern [among] Jewish leaders that I was too friendly with Arabs.”
Israel already had begun playing a key middleman role in delivering secret military shipments to Iran, as Carter knew. But – again for “the good of the country” – Carter and his White House kept silent.
Since the first anniversary of the hostage crisis coincidentally fell on Election Day 1980, Reagan benefited from the voters' anger over the national humiliation and scored a resounding victory. [For more details on the 1980 “October Surprise” case, see Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]
GOP’s Growing Confidence
Though much of the public saw Reagan as a tough guy who had frightened the Iranians into surrendering the hostages on Inauguration Day 1981, the behind-the-scenes reality was different.
In secret, the Reagan administration winked at Israeli weapons shipments to Iran in the first half of 1981, what appeared to be a payoff for Iran’s cooperation in sabotaging Carter. Nicholas Veliotes, who was then assistant secretary of state, told a PBS interviewer that he saw those secret shipments as an outgrowth of the covert Republican-Iranian contacts from the campaign.
Veliotes added that those early shipments then became the “germs” of the later Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal.
But the Republicans seemed to have little to fear from exposure. Their media infrastructure was rapidly expanding – for instance, the right-wing Washington Times opened in 1982 – and America’s Left didn’t see the need to counter this growing media power on the Right.
The right-wing attack groups also had success targeting mainstream journalists who dug up information that didn’t fit with Reagan's propaganda themes – the likes of the New York Times Raymond Bonner, whose brave reporting about right-wing death squads in Central America led to his recall from the region and his resignation from the Times.
This new right-wing muscle, combined with Ronald Reagan’s political popularity, made Democrats and mainstream journalists evermore hesitant to pursue negative stories about Republican policies, including evidence that Reagan’s favorite “freedom fighters,” the Nicaraguan contras, were dabbling in cocaine trafficking and that an illegal contra-aid operation was set up inside the White House.
In mid-1986, when my Associated Press colleague Brian Barger and I put together a story citing two dozen sources about the work of NSC official Oliver North, congressional Democrats were hesitant to follow up on the disclosures.
Finally in August 1986, the House Intelligence Committee, then chaired by Democrat Lee Hamilton and including Republican Rep. Dick Cheney, met with North and other White House officials in the Situation Room and were told that the AP story was untrue. With no further investigation, the Democratic-led committee accepted the word of North and his superiors.
Lucky Exposure
It was only an unlikely occurrence on Oct. 5, 1986, the shooting down of one of North’s supply planes over Nicaragua and a confession by the one survivor, Eugene Hasenfus, that put the House Intelligence Committee’s gullibility into focus.
The plane shoot-down – and disclosures from the Middle East about secret U.S. arms sales to Iran – forced the Iran-Contra scandal into public view. The congressional Democrats responded by authorizing a joint House-Senate investigation, with Hamilton as one of the mild-mannered co-chairs and Cheney again leading the GOP’s tough-guy defense.
While the Republicans worked to undermine the investigation, the Democrats looked for a bipartisan solution that would avoid a messy confrontation with President Reagan and Vice President Bush. That solution was to put most of the blame on North and a few of his superiors, such as NSC adviser John Poindexter and the then-deceased CIA Director Bill Casey.
The congressional investigation also made a hasty decision, supported by Hamilton and the Republicans but opposed by most Democrats, to give limited immunity to secure the testimony of North.
Hamilton agreed to this immunity without knowing what North would say. Rather than show any contrition, North used his immunized testimony to rally Republicans and other Americans in support of Reagan’s aggressive, above-the-law tactics.
The immunity also crippled later attempts by special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh to hold North and Poindexter accountable under the law. Though Walsh won convictions against the pair in federal court, the judgments were overturned by right-wing judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals citing the immunity granted by Congress.
By the early 1990s, the pattern was set. Whenever new evidence emerged of Republican wrongdoing – such as disclosures about contra-drug trafficking, secret military support for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and those early Republican-Iran contacts of 1980 – the Republicans would lash out in fury and the Democrats would try to calm things down.
Lee Hamilton became the Republicans’ favorite Democratic investigator because he exemplified this approach of conducting “bipartisan” investigations, rather than aggressively pursuing the facts wherever they might lead. While in position to seek the truth, Hamilton ignored the contra-drug scandal and swept the Iraq-gate and October Surprise issues under a very lumpy rug.
In 1992, I interviewed Spencer Oliver, a Democratic staffer whose phone at the Watergate building had been bugged by Nixon’s operatives 20 years earlier. Since then, Oliver had served as the chief counsel on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and had observed this pattern of Republican abuses and Democratic excuses.
Oliver said: “What [the Republicans] learned from Watergate was not ‘don’t do it,’ but ‘cover it up more effectively.’ They have learned that they have to frustrate congressional oversight and press scrutiny in a way that will avoid another major scandal.”
The Clinton Opportunity
The final chance for exposing the Republican crimes of the 1980s fell to Bill Clinton after he defeated President George H.W. Bush in 1992.
Before leaving office, however, Bush-41 torpedoed the ongoing Iran-Contra criminal investigation by issuing six pardons, including one to former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger whose cover-up trial was set to begin in early 1993.
Special prosecutor Walsh – a lifelong Republican albeit from the old Eisenhower wing of the party – denounced the pardons as another obstruction of justice. "George Bush's misuse of the pardon power made the cover-up complete," Walsh later wrote in his book Firewall.
However, the Iran-Contra investigation was not yet dead. Indeed, Walsh was considering empanelling a new grand jury. Walsh also had come to suspect that the origins of the scandal traced back to the October Surprise of 1980, with his investigators questioning former CIA officer Donald Gregg about his alleged role in that prequel to Iran-Contra.
The new Democratic President could have helped Walsh by declassifying key documents that the Reagan-Bush-41 team had withheld from various investigations. But Clinton followed advice from Hamilton and other senior Democrats who feared stirring partisan anger among Republicans.
Later, in a May 1994 conversation with documentary filmmaker Stuart Sender, Clinton explained that he had opposed pursuing these Republican scandals because, according to Sender, “he was going to try to work with these guys, compromise, build working relationships. …
“It seemed even at the time terribly naïve that these same Republicans were going to work with him if he backed off on congressional hearings or possible independent prosecutor investigations.” [See Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]
No Reciprocity
But the Democrats – like the battered wife who keeps hoping her abusive husband will change – found a different reality as the decade played out.
Rather than thanking Clinton, the Republicans bullied him with endless investigations about his family finances, the ethics of his appointees – and his personal morality, ultimately impeaching him in 1998 for lying about a sexual affair (though he survived the Senate trial in 1999).
After the impeachment battle, the Republicans – joined by both the right-wing and mainstream news media – kept battering Clinton and his heir apparent, Vice President Al Gore, who was mocked for his choice of clothing and denounced for his supposed exaggerations.
Though Gore still managed to win the popular vote in Election 2000 and apparently would have prevailed if all legally cast votes had been counted in Florida, the Republicans made clear that wasn’t going to happen, even dispatching rioters from Washington to disrupt a recount in Miami.
George W. Bush’s bullying victory – which was finalized by five Republican partisans on the U.S. Supreme Court – was met with polite acceptance by the Democrats who again seemed to hope for the best from the newly empowered Republicans. [For details on Election 2000, see our book, Neck Deep.]
Instead, after the 9/11 attacks, Bush-43 grabbed unprecedented powers; he authorized torture and warrantless wiretaps; he pressured Democrats into accepting an unprovoked war in Iraq; and he sought to damage his critics, such as former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Now, after eight destructive years, the Democrats have again gained control of the White House and Congress, but they seem intent on once more not provoking the Republicans, rather than holding them accountable.
Though President Barack Obama has released some of the key documents underpinning Bush-43’s actions, he opposes any formal commission of inquiry and has discouraged any prosecutions for violations of federal law. Obama has said he wants “to look forward as opposed to looking backward.”
In dismissing the idea of a “truth and reconciliation commission,” Obama also recognizes that the Republicans would show no remorse for the Bush administration’s actions; that they would insist that there is nothing to “reconcile”; and that they would stay on the attack, pummeling the Democrats as weak, overly sympathetic to terrorists, and endangering national security.
On Thursday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs admitted as much, saying that Obama rejected the idea of a bipartisan “truth commission” because it was apparent that there was no feasible way to get the Republicans to be bipartisan.
“The President determined the concept didn’t seem altogether workable in this case,” Gibbs said, citing the partisan atmosphere that already has surrounded the torture issue. “The last few days might be evidence of why something like this might just become a political back and forth.”
In other words, the Republicans are rousing themselves from the couch and getting angry, while the Democrats are prancing about, hands out front, trying to calm things down and avoid a confrontation.
The Democrats hope against hope that if they tolerate the latest Republican outrages maybe there will be some reciprocity, maybe there will be some GOP votes on Democratic policy initiatives.
But there’s no logical reason to think so. That isn’t how the Republicans and their right-wing media allies do things; they simply get angrier because belligerence has worked so well for so long.
On the other hand, Democratic wishful thinking is the essence of this political “battered wife syndrome,” dreaming about a behavioral transformation when all the evidence – and four decades of experience – tell you that the bullying husband isn’t going to change.
By Robert Parry (A Special Report)
April 25, 2009
In recent years, the Washington political dynamic has often resembled an abusive marriage, in which the bullying husband (the Republicans) slaps the wife and kids around, and the battered wife (the Democrats) makes excuses and hides the ugly bruises from outsiders to keep the family together.
So, when the Republicans are in a position of power, they throw their weight around, break the rules, and taunt: “Whaddya gonna do ‘bout it?”
Then, when the Republicans do the political equivalent of passing out on the couch, the Democrats use their time in control, tiptoeing around, tidying up the house and cringing at every angry grunt from the snoring figure on the couch.
This pattern, which now appears to be repeating itself with President Barack Obama’s unwillingness to hold ex-President George W. Bush and his subordinates accountable for a host of crimes including torture, may have had its origins 40 years ago in Campaign 1968 when the Vietnam War was raging.
President Lyndon Johnson felt he was on the verge of achieving a negotiated peace settlement when he learned in late October 1968 that operatives working for Republican presidential candidate Richard Nixon were secretly sabotaging the Paris peace talks.
Nixon, who was getting classified briefings on the talks’ progress, feared that an imminent peace accord might catapult Vice President Hubert Humphrey to victory. So, Nixon’s team sent secret messages to South Vietnamese leaders offering them a better deal if they boycotted Johnson’s talks and helped Nixon to victory, which they agreed to do.
Johnson learned about Nixon’s gambit through wiretaps of the South Vietnamese embassy and he confronted Nixon by phone (only to get an unconvincing denial). At that point, Johnson knew his only hope was to expose Nixon’s maneuver which Johnson called “treason” since it endangered the lives of a half million American soldiers in the war zone.
As a Christian Science Monitor reporter sniffed out the story and sought confirmation, Johnson consulted Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Defense Secretary Clark Clifford about whether to expose Nixon’s ploy right before the election. Both Rusk and Clifford urged Johnson to stay silent.
In what would become a Democratic refrain in the years ahead, Clifford said in a Nov. 4, 1968, conference call that “Some elements of the story are so shocking in their nature that I’m wondering whether it would be good for the country to disclose the story and then possibly have a certain individual [Nixon] elected. It could cast his whole administration under such doubt that I think it would be inimical to our country’s interests.”
So, Johnson stayed silent “for the good of the country”; Nixon eked out a narrow victory over Humphrey; the Vietnam War continued for another four years with an additional 20,763 U.S. dead and 111,230 wounded and more than a million more Vietnamese killed.
Over the years, as bits and pieces of this story have dribbled out – including confirmation from audiotapes released by the LBJ Library in December 2008 – the Democrats and the mainstream news media have never made much out of Nixon’s deadly treachery. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “The Significance of Nixon’s Treason.”]
The Watergate Exception
The one exception to this pattern of the Democrats’ “battered wife syndrome” may have been the Watergate case in which Nixon sought to secure his second term, in part, by spying on his political rivals, including putting bugs on phones at the Democratic National Committee.
When Nixon’s team was caught in a second break-in – trying to add more bugs – the scandal erupted.
Even then, however, key Democrats, such as Democratic National Chairman Robert Strauss, tried to shut down the Watergate investigation as it was expanding early in Nixon’s second term. Strauss argued that the inquiries would hurt the country, but enough other Democrats and an energized Washington press corps overcame the resistance. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]
With Nixon’s Watergate-compelled resignation in August 1974, the Republicans were at a crossroads. In one direction, they could start playing by the rules and seek to be a responsible political party. Or they could internalize Nixon’s pugnacious style and build an infrastructure to punish anyone who tried to hold them accountable in the future.
Essentially, the Republicans picked option two. Under the guidance of Nixon’s Treasury Secretary William Simon, right-wing foundations collaborated to build a powerful new infrastructure, pooling resources to finance right-wing publications, think tanks and anti-journalism attack groups. As this infrastructure took shape in the late 1970s, it imbued the Republicans with more confidence.
So, before Election 1980, the Republican campaign – bolstered by former CIA operatives loyal to former CIA Director George H.W. Bush – resorted to Nixon-style tactics in exploiting President Jimmy Carter’s failure to free 52 American hostages then held in Iran.
The evidence is now overwhelming that Republican operatives, including campaign chief Bill Casey and some of his close associates, had back-channel contacts with Iran’s Islamic regime and other foreign governments to confound Carter’s hostage negotiations. Though much of this evidence has seeped out over the past 29 years, some was known in real time.
For instance, Iran’s acting foreign minister Sadegh Ghotbzadeh told Agence France Press on Sept. 6, 1980, that he knew that Republican candidate Ronald Reagan was “trying to block a solution” to the hostage impasse.
Senior Carter administration officials, such as National Security Council aide Gary Sick, also were hearing rumors about Republican interference, and President Carter concluded that Israel’s hard-line Likud leaders had “cast their lot with Reagan,” according to notes I found of a congressional task force interview with Carter a dozen years later.
Carter traced the Israeli opposition to him to a “lingering concern [among] Jewish leaders that I was too friendly with Arabs.”
Israel already had begun playing a key middleman role in delivering secret military shipments to Iran, as Carter knew. But – again for “the good of the country” – Carter and his White House kept silent.
Since the first anniversary of the hostage crisis coincidentally fell on Election Day 1980, Reagan benefited from the voters' anger over the national humiliation and scored a resounding victory. [For more details on the 1980 “October Surprise” case, see Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]
GOP’s Growing Confidence
Though much of the public saw Reagan as a tough guy who had frightened the Iranians into surrendering the hostages on Inauguration Day 1981, the behind-the-scenes reality was different.
In secret, the Reagan administration winked at Israeli weapons shipments to Iran in the first half of 1981, what appeared to be a payoff for Iran’s cooperation in sabotaging Carter. Nicholas Veliotes, who was then assistant secretary of state, told a PBS interviewer that he saw those secret shipments as an outgrowth of the covert Republican-Iranian contacts from the campaign.
Veliotes added that those early shipments then became the “germs” of the later Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal.
But the Republicans seemed to have little to fear from exposure. Their media infrastructure was rapidly expanding – for instance, the right-wing Washington Times opened in 1982 – and America’s Left didn’t see the need to counter this growing media power on the Right.
The right-wing attack groups also had success targeting mainstream journalists who dug up information that didn’t fit with Reagan's propaganda themes – the likes of the New York Times Raymond Bonner, whose brave reporting about right-wing death squads in Central America led to his recall from the region and his resignation from the Times.
This new right-wing muscle, combined with Ronald Reagan’s political popularity, made Democrats and mainstream journalists evermore hesitant to pursue negative stories about Republican policies, including evidence that Reagan’s favorite “freedom fighters,” the Nicaraguan contras, were dabbling in cocaine trafficking and that an illegal contra-aid operation was set up inside the White House.
In mid-1986, when my Associated Press colleague Brian Barger and I put together a story citing two dozen sources about the work of NSC official Oliver North, congressional Democrats were hesitant to follow up on the disclosures.
Finally in August 1986, the House Intelligence Committee, then chaired by Democrat Lee Hamilton and including Republican Rep. Dick Cheney, met with North and other White House officials in the Situation Room and were told that the AP story was untrue. With no further investigation, the Democratic-led committee accepted the word of North and his superiors.
Lucky Exposure
It was only an unlikely occurrence on Oct. 5, 1986, the shooting down of one of North’s supply planes over Nicaragua and a confession by the one survivor, Eugene Hasenfus, that put the House Intelligence Committee’s gullibility into focus.
The plane shoot-down – and disclosures from the Middle East about secret U.S. arms sales to Iran – forced the Iran-Contra scandal into public view. The congressional Democrats responded by authorizing a joint House-Senate investigation, with Hamilton as one of the mild-mannered co-chairs and Cheney again leading the GOP’s tough-guy defense.
While the Republicans worked to undermine the investigation, the Democrats looked for a bipartisan solution that would avoid a messy confrontation with President Reagan and Vice President Bush. That solution was to put most of the blame on North and a few of his superiors, such as NSC adviser John Poindexter and the then-deceased CIA Director Bill Casey.
The congressional investigation also made a hasty decision, supported by Hamilton and the Republicans but opposed by most Democrats, to give limited immunity to secure the testimony of North.
Hamilton agreed to this immunity without knowing what North would say. Rather than show any contrition, North used his immunized testimony to rally Republicans and other Americans in support of Reagan’s aggressive, above-the-law tactics.
The immunity also crippled later attempts by special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh to hold North and Poindexter accountable under the law. Though Walsh won convictions against the pair in federal court, the judgments were overturned by right-wing judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals citing the immunity granted by Congress.
By the early 1990s, the pattern was set. Whenever new evidence emerged of Republican wrongdoing – such as disclosures about contra-drug trafficking, secret military support for Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and those early Republican-Iran contacts of 1980 – the Republicans would lash out in fury and the Democrats would try to calm things down.
Lee Hamilton became the Republicans’ favorite Democratic investigator because he exemplified this approach of conducting “bipartisan” investigations, rather than aggressively pursuing the facts wherever they might lead. While in position to seek the truth, Hamilton ignored the contra-drug scandal and swept the Iraq-gate and October Surprise issues under a very lumpy rug.
In 1992, I interviewed Spencer Oliver, a Democratic staffer whose phone at the Watergate building had been bugged by Nixon’s operatives 20 years earlier. Since then, Oliver had served as the chief counsel on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and had observed this pattern of Republican abuses and Democratic excuses.
Oliver said: “What [the Republicans] learned from Watergate was not ‘don’t do it,’ but ‘cover it up more effectively.’ They have learned that they have to frustrate congressional oversight and press scrutiny in a way that will avoid another major scandal.”
The Clinton Opportunity
The final chance for exposing the Republican crimes of the 1980s fell to Bill Clinton after he defeated President George H.W. Bush in 1992.
Before leaving office, however, Bush-41 torpedoed the ongoing Iran-Contra criminal investigation by issuing six pardons, including one to former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger whose cover-up trial was set to begin in early 1993.
Special prosecutor Walsh – a lifelong Republican albeit from the old Eisenhower wing of the party – denounced the pardons as another obstruction of justice. "George Bush's misuse of the pardon power made the cover-up complete," Walsh later wrote in his book Firewall.
However, the Iran-Contra investigation was not yet dead. Indeed, Walsh was considering empanelling a new grand jury. Walsh also had come to suspect that the origins of the scandal traced back to the October Surprise of 1980, with his investigators questioning former CIA officer Donald Gregg about his alleged role in that prequel to Iran-Contra.
The new Democratic President could have helped Walsh by declassifying key documents that the Reagan-Bush-41 team had withheld from various investigations. But Clinton followed advice from Hamilton and other senior Democrats who feared stirring partisan anger among Republicans.
Later, in a May 1994 conversation with documentary filmmaker Stuart Sender, Clinton explained that he had opposed pursuing these Republican scandals because, according to Sender, “he was going to try to work with these guys, compromise, build working relationships. …
“It seemed even at the time terribly naïve that these same Republicans were going to work with him if he backed off on congressional hearings or possible independent prosecutor investigations.” [See Parry’s Secrecy & Privilege.]
No Reciprocity
But the Democrats – like the battered wife who keeps hoping her abusive husband will change – found a different reality as the decade played out.
Rather than thanking Clinton, the Republicans bullied him with endless investigations about his family finances, the ethics of his appointees – and his personal morality, ultimately impeaching him in 1998 for lying about a sexual affair (though he survived the Senate trial in 1999).
After the impeachment battle, the Republicans – joined by both the right-wing and mainstream news media – kept battering Clinton and his heir apparent, Vice President Al Gore, who was mocked for his choice of clothing and denounced for his supposed exaggerations.
Though Gore still managed to win the popular vote in Election 2000 and apparently would have prevailed if all legally cast votes had been counted in Florida, the Republicans made clear that wasn’t going to happen, even dispatching rioters from Washington to disrupt a recount in Miami.
George W. Bush’s bullying victory – which was finalized by five Republican partisans on the U.S. Supreme Court – was met with polite acceptance by the Democrats who again seemed to hope for the best from the newly empowered Republicans. [For details on Election 2000, see our book, Neck Deep.]
Instead, after the 9/11 attacks, Bush-43 grabbed unprecedented powers; he authorized torture and warrantless wiretaps; he pressured Democrats into accepting an unprovoked war in Iraq; and he sought to damage his critics, such as former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.
Now, after eight destructive years, the Democrats have again gained control of the White House and Congress, but they seem intent on once more not provoking the Republicans, rather than holding them accountable.
Though President Barack Obama has released some of the key documents underpinning Bush-43’s actions, he opposes any formal commission of inquiry and has discouraged any prosecutions for violations of federal law. Obama has said he wants “to look forward as opposed to looking backward.”
In dismissing the idea of a “truth and reconciliation commission,” Obama also recognizes that the Republicans would show no remorse for the Bush administration’s actions; that they would insist that there is nothing to “reconcile”; and that they would stay on the attack, pummeling the Democrats as weak, overly sympathetic to terrorists, and endangering national security.
On Thursday, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs admitted as much, saying that Obama rejected the idea of a bipartisan “truth commission” because it was apparent that there was no feasible way to get the Republicans to be bipartisan.
“The President determined the concept didn’t seem altogether workable in this case,” Gibbs said, citing the partisan atmosphere that already has surrounded the torture issue. “The last few days might be evidence of why something like this might just become a political back and forth.”
In other words, the Republicans are rousing themselves from the couch and getting angry, while the Democrats are prancing about, hands out front, trying to calm things down and avoid a confrontation.
The Democrats hope against hope that if they tolerate the latest Republican outrages maybe there will be some reciprocity, maybe there will be some GOP votes on Democratic policy initiatives.
But there’s no logical reason to think so. That isn’t how the Republicans and their right-wing media allies do things; they simply get angrier because belligerence has worked so well for so long.
On the other hand, Democratic wishful thinking is the essence of this political “battered wife syndrome,” dreaming about a behavioral transformation when all the evidence – and four decades of experience – tell you that the bullying husband isn’t going to change.
The Guy wants the government to create "single mothers day"..
By Douglas Mackinnon
Special to NYDailyNews.com
Saturday, May 9th 2009, 4:00 AM
As one who has toiled in and around the Republican world for years, I've always been the square peg in the round hole. I grew up on welfare and was homeless a number of times; life saw my family evicted in and out of various black, white and minority neighborhoods. Abject poverty and race relations were anything but ivory tower academics or simple political rhetoric to me, my siblings and my friends.
A number of years ago, I had the high honor of serving as director of communications for former Sen. Bob Dole. The same Bob Dole who lost the use of his right arm while defending freedom on a hilltop in Italy, and in my opinion and, all politics aside, has earned the right to define the word "hero." (That's a title, by the way, he has never claimed, nor will he ever claim for himself.)
Every year, as Mother's Day approaches, I think of a conversation that I had with the senator in which he bemoaned the fact that the word "hero" is thrown around much too loosely and too frequently in our nation these days. That conversation then propels me back in time to my childhood, to a reality that not only exposed me to true heroes - but to an environment that is all but alien to most of our leaders.
Those true heroes, for me, are the single moms I met that selflessly and at tremendous cost to themselves, sacrificed everything to provide for their children. Everything. Leaving the oftentimes vile and vacuous stereotypes seen on television and at the movies aside, these single moms, (mostly African-American in my nomadic experience) overcame obstacles created solely to crush the human spirit.
With absolutely zero support, they would work two or three jobs, pay the bills, clean their home, figure out creative ways to stretch their meager supply of food, teach their children right from wrong, shield them from violence, often cry themselves to sleep from the fear, despair and hopelessness that was their every waking second, and then start the whole process over again the next morning certain that things were only going to get worse.
Knowing that, and knowing that there are tens of thousands of single moms in our nation this very second struggling to do the very best they can (my late mom, sister and niece having shared the title), I would propose to President Obama and our lawmakers that they create a "Single Mother's Day." To me, such a designation would honor those who long ago gave up on help, on hope and on empathy.
While the past administration and some of my fellow conservatives would have or will reject this proposal on the basis of "family values," I would only tell them that true family values, character and decency, are personified most strongly in the hearts, souls and deeds of these single mothers. Do not judge what you do not know.
This Mother's Day, millions of married moms will be taken out to brunch, given wonderful gifts, be pampered and be showered with love. How fortunate for them.
But while that is happening, untold thousands of single moms will be ignored, shunned and judged as they head out the door for their Sunday part-time job.
For the most part, these true American heroes have nothing and will never have anything. While meaningless to most, how nice would it be if they knew that their silent, unseen and unrelenting battles with the unfairness of life were at least acknowledged and honored by our new President and Congress.
It's time to create a "Single Mother's Day."
MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official and author of the novel, "The Apocalypse Directive."
Earl, take it home: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/...thers_day.html
Special to NYDailyNews.com
Saturday, May 9th 2009, 4:00 AM
As one who has toiled in and around the Republican world for years, I've always been the square peg in the round hole. I grew up on welfare and was homeless a number of times; life saw my family evicted in and out of various black, white and minority neighborhoods. Abject poverty and race relations were anything but ivory tower academics or simple political rhetoric to me, my siblings and my friends.
A number of years ago, I had the high honor of serving as director of communications for former Sen. Bob Dole. The same Bob Dole who lost the use of his right arm while defending freedom on a hilltop in Italy, and in my opinion and, all politics aside, has earned the right to define the word "hero." (That's a title, by the way, he has never claimed, nor will he ever claim for himself.)
Every year, as Mother's Day approaches, I think of a conversation that I had with the senator in which he bemoaned the fact that the word "hero" is thrown around much too loosely and too frequently in our nation these days. That conversation then propels me back in time to my childhood, to a reality that not only exposed me to true heroes - but to an environment that is all but alien to most of our leaders.
Those true heroes, for me, are the single moms I met that selflessly and at tremendous cost to themselves, sacrificed everything to provide for their children. Everything. Leaving the oftentimes vile and vacuous stereotypes seen on television and at the movies aside, these single moms, (mostly African-American in my nomadic experience) overcame obstacles created solely to crush the human spirit.
With absolutely zero support, they would work two or three jobs, pay the bills, clean their home, figure out creative ways to stretch their meager supply of food, teach their children right from wrong, shield them from violence, often cry themselves to sleep from the fear, despair and hopelessness that was their every waking second, and then start the whole process over again the next morning certain that things were only going to get worse.
Knowing that, and knowing that there are tens of thousands of single moms in our nation this very second struggling to do the very best they can (my late mom, sister and niece having shared the title), I would propose to President Obama and our lawmakers that they create a "Single Mother's Day." To me, such a designation would honor those who long ago gave up on help, on hope and on empathy.
While the past administration and some of my fellow conservatives would have or will reject this proposal on the basis of "family values," I would only tell them that true family values, character and decency, are personified most strongly in the hearts, souls and deeds of these single mothers. Do not judge what you do not know.
This Mother's Day, millions of married moms will be taken out to brunch, given wonderful gifts, be pampered and be showered with love. How fortunate for them.
But while that is happening, untold thousands of single moms will be ignored, shunned and judged as they head out the door for their Sunday part-time job.
For the most part, these true American heroes have nothing and will never have anything. While meaningless to most, how nice would it be if they knew that their silent, unseen and unrelenting battles with the unfairness of life were at least acknowledged and honored by our new President and Congress.
It's time to create a "Single Mother's Day."
MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official and author of the novel, "The Apocalypse Directive."
Earl, take it home: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/...thers_day.html
UPDATE: Rapper Dolla Shooting Story: More Holes Than Swiss Cheese
Man charged in Atlanta rapper’s death claims self-defense
Snellville man could get life in prison
By CHRISTIAN BOONE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
The alleged shooter of Atlanta rapper Dolla was formally charged with murder Wednesday in Los Angeles, though his lawyer said the Snellville music promoter was acting in self-defense.
Aubrey Louis Berry, 23, also faces felony assault charges for shooting at the rapper’s cousin, Wilbert Robinson, and Sidiq Abawi, a friend and recording partner. Both men escaped the gunfire that killed Dolla, born Roderick Anthony Burton II.
Enlarge this image
Spencer Weiner/Los Angeles Times
Aubrey Louis Berry appears in court, May 20, 2009 in Los Angeles.
Enlarge this image
Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
Berry, who was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport carrying a loaded 9mm handgun, faces life in prison if convicted.
Investigators are still trying to determine a motive, one that might trace back to Atlanta. Robert “Bull” Shaw, manager of Platinum 21 Adult Entertainment, said Dolla was involved in an altercation at the strip club roughly two weeks ago.
“It was over before it started,” said Shaw, who doesn’t know Berry. “No one seems to know who [Berry] is.”
Berry’s attorney, Howard R. Price, told reporters in Los Angeles that it was a coincidence that the two men flew to the same city and ate at the same restaurant (P.F. Chang’s China Bistro) on the same date and time.
Price accused Burton and his entourage of being affiliated with the Crips street gang.
Burton’s stepfather, George Viera, said Dolla was merely a character — not a real-life thug.
“To us he was just Roddy,” said Viera, married to Dolla’s mother, Dawnee Robinson Viera, for three years. “When he was home, you couldn’t pry him away. Loved to play with his nieces and nephews, loved to play on the Wii.”
The rapper’s family, including sisters Divinity Burton, 22, and Sadenicole Burton, 20, gathered at the Viera’s southwest Atlanta home Tuesday to plan Dolla’s funeral, scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday at Murray Brothers Funeral Home. A memorial service, also at Murray Brothers, will be held at 6 p.m., Friday, Viera said.
They learned of Burton’s shooting from his longtime girlfriend, Crystal Jackson, a Los Angeles native
and student at Clark Atlanta University. Dolla was planning a birthday party for Jackson, whom he had dated for at least three years, Viera said.
“They [Dolla, Abawi and Robinson] had just come out of P.F. Chang’s,” Viera said. “They heard gunfire and started running.”
Burton was shot in the back, his stepfather said: “The bullet pierced his heart.”
He was nearing completion of his first album, “Another Day, Another Dolla’,” Viera said, but had future plans that might surprise his fans.
“He wanted to go to theology school,” he said. “He was very interested in religion. People think rapper, they think hard, but he wasn’t that way.”
But according to a bio on his official MySpace page. Dolla was no stranger to the streets.
He sold drugs when he was just 10 years old to support his family. When he was five, Dolla writes, he witnessed his father’s suicide.
He addressed his father’s death and his own mortality in one of his songs, “Rainy Nights”: “Papa died at 25 so he must have been great, they say the good die young, I guess I’m on my way.”
Sound like lil shawty might have trusted /crossed up the WRONG bitch...
Too many coincidences for me...
Murder charge filed in rapper's killing
By ANTHONY McCARTNEY
AP Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES — A lawyer for the man accused of killing Dolla acknowledged that his client pulled the trigger Wednesday, but said he did it in self-defense.
Prosecutors charged Aubrey Louis Berry, 23, with murder and a pair of assault charges in connection with Monday's shooting in a valet area at an upscale mall.
Berry made his first court appearance Wednesday afternoon and his bail was raised to $5 million. He postponed entering a plea until a Friday court hearing.
Berry's attorney, Howard R. Price, said his client was acting in self-defense when he killed Dolla, 21, and fired at two other people.
Price said Berry feared for his life after he and Dolla, whose real name is Roderick Anthony Burton II, had an altercation at an Atlanta nightclub earlier this month.
Dolla, an Atlanta-based rapper and a protege of Akon, recently released two singles with his mentor: "Like This" and "She So Fine."
Price said it was a coincidence that the two men ended up in the same city (Los Angeles), the same restaurant (P.F. Chang's China Bistro) on the same day and at the same time. He said Burton, who was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport after the killing with a loaded 9mm handgun and a plane ticket, was trying to leave the city because he feared for his safety.
Price accused Burton and his entourage of being affiliated with the Crips gang and said that is one of the reasons Berry feared for his life. He said Berry told him that Burton threatened him in the restroom and followed him to the valet area and that's why he opened fire.
Price said Berry did not file a police report after the altercation in Atlanta earlier this because "he knew who he was dealing with."
Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office, said the office would not comment on the evidence, but that details presented by Los Angeles police detectives were sufficient to support the murder and assault charges.
"As far as arguing the merits of the case, we prefer to do that in the courtroom and not on the sidewalk," Gibbons said.
Police have not discussed a motive for the killing.
Price said Berry is not a flight risk and plans to argue that during Friday's hearing.
He said videotape shot at the restaurant will corroborate Berry's story, but that there is no video of the actual shooting.
He said Berry, a music promoter from Atlanta, was at the restaurant on Monday for a business meeting.
Burton was in Los Angeles to work on a studio album.
___
May 20, 2009 - 8:10 p.m.
More "holes"...
Snellville man could get life in prison
By CHRISTIAN BOONE
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
The alleged shooter of Atlanta rapper Dolla was formally charged with murder Wednesday in Los Angeles, though his lawyer said the Snellville music promoter was acting in self-defense.
Aubrey Louis Berry, 23, also faces felony assault charges for shooting at the rapper’s cousin, Wilbert Robinson, and Sidiq Abawi, a friend and recording partner. Both men escaped the gunfire that killed Dolla, born Roderick Anthony Burton II.
Enlarge this image
Spencer Weiner/Los Angeles TimesAubrey Louis Berry appears in court, May 20, 2009 in Los Angeles.
Enlarge this image
Frazer Harrison/Getty ImagesBerry, who was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport carrying a loaded 9mm handgun, faces life in prison if convicted.
Investigators are still trying to determine a motive, one that might trace back to Atlanta. Robert “Bull” Shaw, manager of Platinum 21 Adult Entertainment, said Dolla was involved in an altercation at the strip club roughly two weeks ago.
“It was over before it started,” said Shaw, who doesn’t know Berry. “No one seems to know who [Berry] is.”
Berry’s attorney, Howard R. Price, told reporters in Los Angeles that it was a coincidence that the two men flew to the same city and ate at the same restaurant (P.F. Chang’s China Bistro) on the same date and time.
Price accused Burton and his entourage of being affiliated with the Crips street gang.
Burton’s stepfather, George Viera, said Dolla was merely a character — not a real-life thug.
“To us he was just Roddy,” said Viera, married to Dolla’s mother, Dawnee Robinson Viera, for three years. “When he was home, you couldn’t pry him away. Loved to play with his nieces and nephews, loved to play on the Wii.”
The rapper’s family, including sisters Divinity Burton, 22, and Sadenicole Burton, 20, gathered at the Viera’s southwest Atlanta home Tuesday to plan Dolla’s funeral, scheduled for 1 p.m. Saturday at Murray Brothers Funeral Home. A memorial service, also at Murray Brothers, will be held at 6 p.m., Friday, Viera said.
They learned of Burton’s shooting from his longtime girlfriend, Crystal Jackson, a Los Angeles native
and student at Clark Atlanta University. Dolla was planning a birthday party for Jackson, whom he had dated for at least three years, Viera said.“They [Dolla, Abawi and Robinson] had just come out of P.F. Chang’s,” Viera said. “They heard gunfire and started running.”
Burton was shot in the back, his stepfather said: “The bullet pierced his heart.”
He was nearing completion of his first album, “Another Day, Another Dolla’,” Viera said, but had future plans that might surprise his fans.
“He wanted to go to theology school,” he said. “He was very interested in religion. People think rapper, they think hard, but he wasn’t that way.”
But according to a bio on his official MySpace page. Dolla was no stranger to the streets.
He sold drugs when he was just 10 years old to support his family. When he was five, Dolla writes, he witnessed his father’s suicide.
He addressed his father’s death and his own mortality in one of his songs, “Rainy Nights”: “Papa died at 25 so he must have been great, they say the good die young, I guess I’m on my way.”
Sound like lil shawty might have trusted /crossed up the WRONG bitch...
Too many coincidences for me...
Murder charge filed in rapper's killing
By ANTHONY McCARTNEY
AP Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES — A lawyer for the man accused of killing Dolla acknowledged that his client pulled the trigger Wednesday, but said he did it in self-defense.
Prosecutors charged Aubrey Louis Berry, 23, with murder and a pair of assault charges in connection with Monday's shooting in a valet area at an upscale mall.
Berry made his first court appearance Wednesday afternoon and his bail was raised to $5 million. He postponed entering a plea until a Friday court hearing.
Berry's attorney, Howard R. Price, said his client was acting in self-defense when he killed Dolla, 21, and fired at two other people.
Price said Berry feared for his life after he and Dolla, whose real name is Roderick Anthony Burton II, had an altercation at an Atlanta nightclub earlier this month.
Dolla, an Atlanta-based rapper and a protege of Akon, recently released two singles with his mentor: "Like This" and "She So Fine."
Price said it was a coincidence that the two men ended up in the same city (Los Angeles), the same restaurant (P.F. Chang's China Bistro) on the same day and at the same time. He said Burton, who was arrested at Los Angeles International Airport after the killing with a loaded 9mm handgun and a plane ticket, was trying to leave the city because he feared for his safety.
Price accused Burton and his entourage of being affiliated with the Crips gang and said that is one of the reasons Berry feared for his life. He said Berry told him that Burton threatened him in the restroom and followed him to the valet area and that's why he opened fire.
Price said Berry did not file a police report after the altercation in Atlanta earlier this because "he knew who he was dealing with."
Sandi Gibbons, a spokeswoman for the district attorney's office, said the office would not comment on the evidence, but that details presented by Los Angeles police detectives were sufficient to support the murder and assault charges.
"As far as arguing the merits of the case, we prefer to do that in the courtroom and not on the sidewalk," Gibbons said.
Police have not discussed a motive for the killing.
Price said Berry is not a flight risk and plans to argue that during Friday's hearing.
He said videotape shot at the restaurant will corroborate Berry's story, but that there is no video of the actual shooting.
He said Berry, a music promoter from Atlanta, was at the restaurant on Monday for a business meeting.
Burton was in Los Angeles to work on a studio album.
___
May 20, 2009 - 8:10 p.m.
More "holes"...
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