GOP Prepares for Indictments, Builds SmearCampaign

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G.O.P. Testing Ways to Blunt Leak Charges

By RICHARD W. STEVENSON and DAVID JOHNSTON
WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 - With a decision expected this week on possible indictments in the C.I.A. leak case, allies of the White House suggested Sunday that they intended to pursue a strategy of attacking any criminal charges as a disagreement over legal technicalities or the product of an overzealous prosecutor.

Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, is expected to announce by the end of the week whether he will seek indictments against White House officials in a decision that is likely to be a defining moment of President Bush's second term. The case has put many in the White House on edge. [Page A15.]

Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., who is Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, have been advised that they are in serious legal jeopardy. Other officials could also face charges in connection with the disclosure of the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer in 2003.

On Sunday, Republicans appeared to be preparing to blunt the impact of any charges. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, speaking on the NBC news program "Meet the Press," compared the leak investigation with the case of Martha Stewart and her stock sale, "where they couldn't find a crime and they indict on something that she said about something that wasn't a crime."

Ms. Hutchison said she hoped "that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars."

President Bush said several weeks ago that Mr. Fitzgerald had handled the case in "a very dignified way," making it more difficult for Republicans to portray him negatively.

But allies of the White House have quietly been circulating talking points in recent days among Republicans sympathetic to the administration, seeking to help them make the case that bringing charges like perjury mean the prosecutor does not have a strong case, one Republican with close ties to the White House said Sunday. Other people sympathetic to Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby have said that indicting them would amount to criminalizing politics and that Mr. Fitzgerald did not understand how Washington works.

Bush White House prefers and endorses treason over the constitution. Republicans appear to love to devour other republicans more so than democrats. How odd. The GOP appointed a republican as a special prosecutor and they are now going to attack him.

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* There have been 20,000 Americans wounded (many severely wounded) and there are only 20,000 insurgents in Iraq. That is an average of one American wounded for every insurgent. The numbers are so high because there are not enough troops to protect our military and Iraq. We only have 150k troops in Iraq, and it needed to be 500k to do it properly. The only way for us to get that many troops over there would be a draft.
The People with the Blood-Soaked Hands

US troops fighting losing battle for Sunni triangle
Iraq Slips Away

* The Kurds have been doing ethnic cleansing in Kirkut. The Kurds get major funding from the US.

Ethnic Cleansing in Baghdad


*The president's chief procurement officer was arrested one day after "resigning" from his position, and, like much of the GOP, is tied to Abramoff"

*The Senate Majority Leader is under investigation by the SEC and is in great jeopardy of going to jail.

*Senate Republicans, fearing Democrats will expose corruption in FEMA and DHS, refuse to permit a bi-partisan investigation into the Katrina relief effort.

*How many times has Halliburton, Cheney's company, overcharged the government for so-called "services" in Kuwait, Iraq, and now in Louisiana?

*How many news stories, how many right wing so-called "journalists" were paid by this admin to float fake stories to advance this admin's programs? Some call this "propaganda."

*Bush appointed a horse show manager to head Americas primary emergency response agency-- hundreds died needlessly; they died because FEMA was incapable of responding to a crisis after being used as a dumping ground for Bush's political pals.

*Karl Rove and Scooter Libby likely conspired to expose a covert CIA agent's identity to punish its political opponents, a traitorous and shameless act of political aggression and corruption.

* Bush lied to Congress, lied to the UN and lied to America about WMD, leading to an "optional" war in Iraq and the deaths of 2,000 Americans and 100,000 Iraqis.

*House majority leader DeLay has been indicted for money laundering, a crime usually associated with Mafia crime families, and he's also tied to Abramoff.

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GOP Friend of Rove Busted, Cited as Possible Rove Cell Mate

The Republicans simply CANNOT keep their mitts OUT of the cookie jar!

NY TIMES

WASHINGTON, Nov. 4 - Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, the head of the federal agency that oversees most government broadcasts to foreign countries, including the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, is the subject of an inquiry into accusations of misuse of federal money and the use of phantom or unqualified employees, officials involved in that examination said on Friday.

Mr. Tomlinson was ousted from the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting on Thursday after its inspector general concluded an investigation that was critical of him. That examination looked at his efforts as chairman of the corporation to seek more conservative programs on public radio and television.

But Mr. Tomlinson remains an important official as the chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The board, whose members include the secretary of state, plays a central role in public diplomacy. It supervises the government's foreign broadcasting operations, including Radio Martí, Radio Sawa and al-Hurra; transmits programs in 61 languages; and says it has more than 100 million listeners each week.

The board has been troubled lately over deep internal divisions and criticism of its Middle East broadcasts. Members of the Arab news media have said its broadcasts are American propaganda.

People involved in the inquiry said that investigators had already interviewed a significant number of officials at the agency and that, if the accusations were substantiated, they could involve criminal violations.

Last July, the inspector general at the State Department opened an inquiry into Mr. Tomlinson's work at the board of governors after Representative Howard L. Berman, Democrat of California, and Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, forwarded accusations of misuse of money.

The lawmakers requested the inquiry after Mr. Berman received complaints about Mr. Tomlinson from at least one employee at the board, officials said. People involved in the inquiry said it involved accusations that Mr. Tomlinson was spending federal money for personal purposes, using board money for corporation activities, using board employees to do corporation work and hiring ghost employees or improperly qualified employees.

Through an aide at the broadcasting board, Mr. Tomlinson declined to comment Friday about the State Department inquiry.

In recent weeks, State Department investigators have seized records and e-mail from the Broadcasting Board of Governors, officials said. They have shared some material with the inspector general at the corporation, including e-mail traffic between Mr. Tomlinson and White House officials including Karl Rove, a senior adviser to President Bush and a close friend of Mr. Tomlinson.

Mr. Rove and Mr. Tomlinson became friends in the 1990's when they served on the Board for International Broadcasting, the predecessor agency to the board of governors. Mr. Rove played an important role in Mr. Tomlinson's appointment as chairman of the broadcasting board.

The content of the e-mail between the two officials has not been made public but could become available when the corporation's inspector general sends his report to members of Congress this month.

That inspector general examined several contracts that were approved by Mr. Tomlinson but not disclosed to board members. The contracts provided for payments to a researcher who monitored the political content of several shows, including "Now" with Bill Moyers, and payments to two Republican lobbyists who were retained to help defeat a proposal in Congress that would have required greater representation of broadcasters on the corporation's board.

The inspector general also examined the role of a White House official, Mary C. Andrews, in Mr. Tomlinson's creation of an ombudsman's office to monitor the political balance of programs.

Mr. Tomlinson has said he took those steps to counter what he called a clear liberal tilt of public broadcasting. But broadcasting executives and critics of the corporation say the steps violated the corporation's obligations to insulate broadcasting from politics.

On Thursday Mr. Tomlinson was forced to step down from the corporation, which directs nearly $400 million in federal money to public radio and television, after the board was briefed about the conclusions by its inspector general. In that inquiry, examiners looked at accusations that Mr. Tomlinson improperly used corporation money to promote more conservative programming.

State Department officials said on Friday that al-Hurra, the Arabic language satellite television network set up by the board of governors, was also being examined by the inspector general for possibly problematic procurement practices. That audit was first disclosed on Friday by The Financial Times.

The audit began at the request of al-Hurra, the officials said. A statement by the broadcasting board said that the agency had "no indication of any wrongdoing."

The network, which receives nearly $50 million in federal financing and is broadcast in 22 countries, was set up to compete with al-Jazeera and other Arab news media. One State Department official said Karen P. Hughes, under secretary of state for public diplomacy, had been briefed on the subject and "awaits the findings of the inspector general's audit."

Do we have enough people to sit on grand juries for all the scandals breaking out?

It's getting hard to keep up with all of them.






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Survey USA Poll: 6 States Still Love Bush

www.surveyusa.com/50State2005/50StatePOTUS1005SortedbyState.htm

As of the end of October, Survey USA finds that a majority of people in only 6 states approve of the job Mr. Bush is doing:
Wyoming
Idaho
Alaska
Nebraska
Utah
Oklahoma

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10 Mind-Numbing
Quotes By Tom Delay
10-28-5

1) "So many minority youths had volunteered that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like myself." --Tom DeLay, explaining at the 1988 GOP convention why he and vice presidential nominee Dan Quayle did not fight in the Vietnam War


2) "Now tell me the truth boys, is this kind of fun?" -Tom Delay, to three young hurricane evacuees from New Orleans at the Astrodome in Houston, Sept. 9, 2005


3) "I AM the federal government." -Tom DeLay, to the owner of Ruth's Chris Steak House, after being told to put out his cigar because of federal government regulations banning smoking in the building, May 14, 2003


4) "We're no longer a superpower. We're a super-duper power." -Tom DeLay, explaining why America must topple Saddam Hussein in 2002 interview with Fox News


5) "Nothing is more important in the face of a war than cutting taxes." -Tom DeLay, March 12, 2003

6) "Guns have little or nothing to do with juvenile violence. The causes of youth violence are working parents who put their kids into daycare, the teaching of evolution in the schools, and working mothers who take birth control pills." -Tom DeLay, on causes of the Columbine High School massacre, 1999


7) "A woman can take care of the family. It takes a man to provide structure. To provide stability. Not that a woman can't provide stability, I'm not saying that... It does take a father, though." -Tom DeLay, in a radio interview, Feb. 10, 2004


"I don't believe there is a separation of church and state. I think the Constitution is very clear. The only separation is that there will not be a government church." -Tom DeLay


9) "Emotional appeals about working families trying to get by on $4.25 an hour [the minimum wage in 1996] are hard to resist. Fortunately, such families do not exist." -Tom DeLay, during a debate in Congress on increasing the minimum wage, April 23, 1996


10) "I am not a federal employee. I am a constitutional officer. My job is the Constitution of the United States, I am not a government employee. I am in the Constitution." -Tom DeLay, in a CNN interview, Dec. 19, 1995

I heard an interesting discussion on local public radio today, where a caller asked "Why do we call them public servants, but yet bestow upon them titles like honorable, and distinguished, them set them up for life with entitlements; free medical benefits and a pension for life for just a few years of service?"

DeLay has apparently allowed his public service to give himself a "God-like" status, not only over his constituency, but over his fellow American's as well.