Russ weighs in on Holder

Russ Feingold weighs in on Eric Holder (in an interview on the Rachel Maddow Show,) and discusses whether an investigation and potential prosecution of Bush, Cheney and others for war crimes would be 'on the table' under Holder's watch.



I find it interesting that Russ is using phrase 'on the table' when discussing an investigation of the Bush Administration. "On the table." Really? Is this a hint that we are going to see a new approach from Democratic leadership?

Feingold questions Petraeus

Can we clone Senator Feingold - please?

Indiana will take two. Thank you.



UPDATE: I just found out that two of the seven soldiers who authored this New York Times op-ed "The War as We Saw It" died yesterday in a vehicle accident in Iraq. One of them, Sgt. Mora, was due to return home in November.

Several Senators, including Senator Chuck Hagel, spoke highly of the op-ed and the soldiers who wrote it during the hearings - asking who the Senate should be expected to believe, the soldiers who fought in Iraq, or Petraeus?

Meanwhile, Petraeus never mentioned that two of them had just died, the previous day.

He obviously knew about the accident... he mentions it at the end of this YouTube video.

Did he know that two of the op-ed writers died in that accident? Their obituaries had already run in their hometown newspapers (Staff Sergeant Yance Gray, Sergeant Omar Mora) by the time of the hearings. Their names were out - to the general public. How could Petraeus not know?

And imagine the embarrassment had this come out in the hearings...

The Pentagon doesn't have a very good track record of letting on that they know information that will be damaging to their case (Tillman, Lynch.) And because of this past behavior, I no longer give them the benefit of the doubt.

Petraeus will most likely have known their names IF their names were on that op-ed writers' list, because someone from below would have freaked and sent the news up through the ranks. The Pentagon PR people were undoubtedly going crazy.

Or... perhaps not. Perhaps Petraeus 'wouldn't recall' their names anyway. Perhaps such a high ranking general wouldn't care about individual names. Which is worse - that he knew and didn't say, or that he didn't know because nobody cared?

I just hope he was squirming like hell when the Senators were talking about these guys. If two out of seven guys who write an op-ed can't even get home alive... yeah, surge is going just great. Hopefully the rest will make it out of, as Senator Hagel puts it, that 'meat-grinder.'

Gotta love Russ...

This is great: from The Progressive Patriots Fund!

An open letter to Senator Feingold

Mr Feingold...

I live in Indiana, so believe me - there is no one here 'representing me' that I can ask. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I'm not naive, and I used to consider myself to be a very logical person (I was a system analyst for 18 years.) I am also a history nut, so I've read all about the rise of Hitler.

Please tell me that I am dreaming - that I don't see what I think I see. Tell me I am wrong. From you... I would believe it.

This Executive branch is now completely out of control, and no one will impeach. There isn't even a special prosecutor. Halliburton is building - no, has built concentration camps on our own soil, and no one has told us why. The mainstream media doesn't talk about it. I've seen the aerial photos now - they are real.

Blackwater training installations are springing up all over the place, and these 'contractors' don't seem to answer to anyone... or perhaps they do. I'm afraid to ask. All I know is that our national guard - our 'militia' - is overseas, and there could be thousands of these 'other' guys running around, right here in our country. I don't know, because other than Jeremy Scahill, no one talks about them.

Our government is now torturing people, and setting up secret torture camps around the world. This is something we have never done, going all the way back to George Washington. Our president and vice president scoff at Geneva conventions. We invaded a country that didn't attack us, and seem poised to bomb or invade another one. We won't leave. People all around the world are beginning to hate us, for so many reasons now that I've lost track.

Our food is being poisoned, our medicines turn out to be lethal, and half the time the media won't even cover it. The FDA puts corporate interests ahead of saving lives.

Our media... may as well be the Pravda now. They'd rather talk about American Idol than our civil liberties, or the war. They don't talk about the fact that most of our watchdog agencies have now been 'privatized.' They seem to print pretty much whatever they are told to print, with a few exceptions.

The president has created a new 'emergency' directive that gives him dictatorial powers. But then, he has suspended habeas corpus anyway, so not sure how this really differs.

We thought we won a victory last November when we somehow managed to overcome Diebold and elect a Democratic Congress and Senate majority. But the Democratic leaders won't do anything to stop... any of this. Dennis Kucinich stood up and talked on the House floor for an entire HOUR about how our oil companies want to take Iraq's oil... and everyone ignored him. The mainstream media didn't cover it.

It appears the Democrats in Congress are either compromised by lobbyist interests -- or afraid. Maybe I'd be afraid too.

Actually I'm afraid every time I blog. For some reason I do it anyway. I think this is because the people I have always admired in my life all spoke out, and in the end I just want to be able to look at myself in the mirror. I don't want to be the kind of person who 'sins by silence when they should speak out,' as Lincoln said.

If everything I see - or think I see - is real, then by now I am probably on some list. Me... I will carry a spider out of the house before I will harm it. Some risk.

But I think and I write. That's dangerous in a society that isn't free. We live still in the belief that we are free. It now appears that this could all change on a dime. The data-miners have been making their lists for a long time.

It has all happened before. It could happen again. Our forefathers certainly warned us. I don't see anyone in Congress raising a finger to stop it. Investigations here and there, but nothing to STOP IT. Nothing that would over-rule the president should he suddenly decide to declare martial law.

I'm sitting here at my desk in the middle of the night and I can't believe... I am afraid. I'm in America, where I grew up... in Indiana no less. Everything around me is familiar. And yet, it is all becoming surreal.

Please... is there any hope? Can we pull out of this dive? Or is the fat lady warming up?

I know you aren't my representative, but frankly you're the only person I'd believe. I'd give anything to hear you say that I'm imagining all of this, and that democracy is fine and well. Please tell me that so I can sleep.

Thank you.

Those who voted no

Just say no.

Ron Paul was one of only two Republicans in the House to vote against the war. Yes, officially this was a vote to provide the 'war funding' without deadlines or consequences attached.

Senator Hillary was smart enough to know she should vote against the funding bill, and from what I have heard, Obama voted against it at the very last moment (once he knew it would pass? That is what I have heard, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.)

Congressman Dennis Kucinich - of course - voted against the blank check, and a few other Democratic Senators voted against: Leahy, Feingold (of course,) Kerry and Kennedy. Representatives Barbara Boxer and Jerry McNerney also voted nay - I know without looking, because they sent out emails expressing their dismay at the outcome.

Tough (GOP) guys don't cry

Meanwhile, House Minority Leader John Boehner wept openly on the House floor, asking when America was going to 'make the killers of the 3000 9/11 victims accountable for their crimes.'

Well, sir that is a good question. Because you see, the actual terrorists were from Saudi Arabia, not Iraq - and are all dead. The man who took credit for the attack on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Osama Bin Laden, is apparently in Pakistan - not Iraq.

So you have a valid point... sort of. Whither Bin Laden? Are we even looking for him? Of course, he is much more useful to Bush alive than dead; he makes a terrific and very convenient boogyman with which to scare the American populace.

Mr. Boehner, sir: everyone knows that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. The only people who don't understand this after years of bungled warfare, are the people who persist in watching Fox News. Perhaps you are one of them, and you really don't have any idea what you are talking (or crying) about. This honestly wouldn't surprise me.

If your tears are in earnest, and you really do want justice... try looking for Bin Laden. Try talking to the Pakistani government. Of course, you can't take their oil, so why would you bother? If you aren't seriously looking for Bin Laden - don't talk to us about 9/11 victims. That is Giuliani's shameless territory.

Don't need no more lies.

Read it and weep

Full tally of yesterday's vote:

House vote

Senate vote

Representative Julia Carson was the lone hero from Indiana - in either the House or the Senate. We're not terribly surprised. I called her office and thanked her.

Poor Russ (poor us)

Russ washes his hands. I keep wondering when this guy is going to finally get completely fed up and become an Independent.

By the way, Russ actually posts on Daily KOS. Guess even Senators head to the Internet when desperate to make sense of this ongoing, national nightmare...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MAY 22, 2007
3:39 PM


CONTACT: Senator Russ Feingold
Zach Lowe (202) 224-8657

Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold
On the Iraq Supplemental Conference Report


WASHINGTON - MAY 22 -“Under the President’s Iraq policies, our military has been over-burdened, our national security has been jeopardized, and thousands of Americans have been killed or injured. Despite these realities, and the support of a majority of Americans for ending the President’s open-ended mission in Iraq, congressional leaders now propose a supplemental appropriations bill that does nothing to end this disastrous war. I cannot support a bill that contains nothing more than toothless benchmarks and that allows the President to continue what may be the greatest foreign policy blunder in our nation’s history. There has been a lot of tough talk from members of Congress about wanting to end this war, but it looks like the desire for political comfort won out over real action. Congress should have stood strong, acknowledged the will of the American people, and insisted on a bill requiring a real change of course in Iraq.”

True.

And imagine... now they've even removed those annoying, 'toothless benchmarks!'

They rolled over. Completely. Pelosi and Reid gave Bush that 'blank check.' I'm sure he served them a nice banquet afterwards, in the Rose garden.

Oh, they threw in something about raising the minimum wage... like that is going to somehow make this OK.

Weren't they going to raise minimum wage anyway? When they were running for office last year, I distinctly remember them promising to get us out of Iraq AND raise minimum wage.

Its getting really hard to decide who is more corrupt these days; the GOP, or the Democrats we sent in to replace them.

Did it ever occur to them that this might seem, oh, a little disingenuous? That we may not have wanted to 'trade' something we were already promised, for a blank check on Iraq funding? Did Reid and Pelosi somehow forget why we gave them that majority last November?

My GOD these Democrats are weak. The GOP is corrupt beyond recognition, and the Democrats are weak and capitulating corporate pawns.

Depressing day.

Just to cheer us up even more, here is what we can look forward to during our next national disaster!

On May 9th, Bush released a new presidential directive appointing himself dictator ('disaster decider,' or 'crisis czar,') and of course, 'protector of the constitution' in the event of a national emergency.

Just one more reason to dread a disaster. Now I'm not sure which I'm more afraid of... the F-5 tornado, or W in my yard: with a bull horn, a maniacal grin and a bulldozer.

Protector of our 'constitutional government', huh? Yeah. Somebody had better hide the Constitution now - quick - in a place where he'd never find it (a public library would work.) You can bet that once the document was in his care, Rove or Gonzales would 'accidentally' spill their coffee all over it (or pour gasoline on it and burn it,) rendering it forever illegible... and open to entirely new interpretation!