The Kerry campaign has tracked down not just one or two tentacles connecting Bush and the Swift Boat Phonies, they've found a veritable octopus! "Karl Rove, Ken Cordier, Benjamin Ginsberg, Harlan Crow, Bob Perry, Kady Bailey Hutchinson, John O'Neill, Merrie Spaeth, Tex Lezar, Harriet O'Neill, Margaret Wilson, the Bush-Cheney campaign HQ in FLA, the Minnesota RNC, the DCI Group, Charles Francis, Tom Synhorst, and Chris Lacivita. All were involved in the Swift Boat smear Campaign and ALL have strong ties to Bush and/or the Bush campaign. So where's the "60 Minutes," "Front Line," "Date Line," or "48 Hours" expose?

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (NJ) just released a list of some bin Laden family members allowed by the Bush Administration to leave the US in the week after 9/11. Two of the bin Ladens who departed were investigated for terrorist ties before 9/11. Omar Awad bin Laden, a nephew of Osama bin Laden, was allowed to leave even though his brother and housemate, Abdullah, was a long-time American head of the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY). WAMY is a suspected terrorist organization raided by the FBI this past spring. A 2003 TomPaine.com article by Greg Palast revealed the Omar and Abdullah bin Laden apartment was also just blocks away from both the listed address of two of the 9/11 hijackers and from WAMY headquarters. Also allowed to leave was Khalil Binladin, whom Brazilian police investigated for suspected terrorist ties.

Rude Pundit blogs, "apparently Bush keeps Saddam Hussein's gun, the one he had when he was captured from the 'spider hole,' in a study off the side of the Oval Office. Bush shows it to visitors; he is 'proud of it' because, it seems, or so it is said, it reminds the resident of how 'proud' he is of the troops... Exactly how may laws, federal and D.C., might the resident be breaking with his possession of that firearm? Did he receive a background check for the transfer of ownership? Is Bush licensed to possess a firearm in a federal facility? The District of Columbia prohibits firearms to be gifts. How many people are implicated in Bush's firearm possession? And, of course, ignorance of the law does not excuse the potential crimes." Impeach Bush Now!

Just two and one-half months before Bush launched his "lets go to Mars" PR ploy, an audit of NASA revealed that a staggering $565 BILLION (with a "B") was not properly accounted for. In addition, "There were hundreds of millions of dollars of 'unreconciled' funds and a $2-billion difference between what Nasa said it had and what was actually in its accounts, which are held by the Treasury Department." The NASA auditors (from Price Waterhouse Cooper) were so frustrated and outraged that they quit. Yet this incredible story was swept from the mainstream news until now, and no real investigation has been launched (which of course might reveal funny business with Bush-connected-corporate contracts) Why? Because Bush was planning his big Mars PR ploy. Couldn't have any negative NASA news before then, now, could we?

Bernard Weiner writes: "Since Bush Administration policies are so outrageous and extreme, and since the manner of carrying out those policies is so incompetently handled, and since Bush&Co. alienate everyone who comes near them, one is tempted to believe that these Bush guys are alien pod people, or forces from the dark side, or agents of a foreign power -- sent to destroy America from within and ensure defeat abroad. Of course, I'm not serious about that. But at times the Bush Administration's policies, behavior and bumbling ways certainly make one wonder. In addition to the blowback that can be expected from Bush's Israel/Palestine mistakes, here are a few more examples of policies that, if one didn't know better, could be viewed as designed to aid our enemies."

Greg Palast remains consistently a year or more ahead of the headlines, breaking critical stories others fear to investigate For example, how Enron swindled its way into an energy monopoly. Or how the Bush family stole the election in Florida with illegal voter purges, registrations collecting dust, millions of missing ballots, and the Bush Brothers' plan for the "Floridation" of our elections called the "Help America Vote Act." Recently, Palast got his hands on the secret State Department "Iraq Strategy" document - the blueprint for a free-market Disneyland of, by and for Washington insiders and lobbyists - outlining the real reasons our troops are putting their lives on the line in Iraq. Palast told Mike Hersh he felt compelled to release a new Expanded Election Edition of NY Times Best Seller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy because, "Sewage keeps pouring out of the pipe." It "gets newer - more urgent and topical everyday." For more info. see www.GregPalast.com.

Thomas R. Asher writes, "The rising visibility of major White House miscalculations before and after 9/11, including the deteriorating situation in Iraq, have unleashed a skunky whiff of Watergate into Washington's springtime air. Bush's credibility is sinking as did Richard Nixon's when caught covering up the misdeeds of his 'plumbers;' his clandestine re-election campaign crew that spied on Nixon's opponents. Bush faces a wider range of potential scandals, which include: Iraq: the rationale for, cost of, and occupation plans following America's conquest (DOS, DOD, CIA, FBI); Suppressed Medicare costs (HHS) and bioterrorism studies (DOD); Insufficient terrorism preparedness and prevention, domestic and international, before and after 9/11 (CIA, FBI, DOD, etc.); Mounting fiscal deficits and tax relief only for the wealthy (Treasury, OMB); and Skewed or suppressed scientific research and policies (NIH, HHS, FDA, EPA)."

Sid Blumenthal writes, "The serious constitutional issues and governmental abuses, the methods and the continuity of some key personnel, evoke memories of the mostly forgotten Reagan administration Iran-Contra scandal. Iran-Contra involved a network of aides outsourcing U.S. foreign policy like a separate government to circumvent the separation of powers, by selling missiles to Iran to fund the Nicaraguan Contras. The Iraq war was not conceived by aides but by the president and his war Cabinet in an apparent effort to evade constitutional checks and balances. In Iran-Contra, the NSC, CIA and Pentagon were stealthily exploited from within; in Iraq, they were abused from the top. When the Iran-Contra scandal was revealed, Reagan's administration was placed into receivership by the old Republican establishment. Neoconservatives and adventurers, criminal or not, were purged, from Elliott Abrams to Richard Perle. Now they are at the center of power."

Public Citizen reports: "Two consumer groups today called on the Texas Legislature to repeal a unique law passed under former Gov. George Bush that blocks Texas consumers from recovering $6 billion in overcharges on car loans and allows dealers to keep kickbacks secret. The 1999 law allows auto dealers to pocket kickbacks from lenders in exchange for inflating the interest rates on car loans, without disclosing the kickbacks to car buyers. Using court records and insider information from whistleblowers, consumer groups and attorneys have found overcharges ranging from hundreds of dollars to more than $15,000. These kickbacks have led to higher-priced auto loans for consumers, even when the consumers have good credit. The law makes Texas the only state in the nation to specifically permit non-disclosure of the dealer kickbacks from lenders."

John Dean: "Dick Cheney is a political disaster awaiting recognition. In the book, I set forth a relatively long list of inchoate scandals, not to mention problems worse than scandals. They all involve Cheney in varying degrees. Bush can't dump Cheney, for it is Cheney, not Rove, who is Bush's backroom brain. He is actually a co-president. Bush doesn't enjoy studying and devising policy. Cheney does. While Cheney has tutored Bush for almost four years, and Bush is better prepared today than when he entered the job, Cheney is quietly guiding this administration. Cheney knows how to play Bush so that Cheney is absolutely no threat to him, makes him feel he is president, but Bush can't function without a script, or without Cheney. Bush is head of state; Cheney is head of government."

The Hill reports, "At least nine high-profile investigations have been triggered in the wake of a flood of Democratic demands targeting the heretofore scandal-free [say what???] Bush administration and the Republican-controlled Congress. They range from an inquiry on the cost of the new Medicare law to multiple probes on the alleged failure of intelligence in monitoring Iraq's weapons programs. In response to the new scrutiny, many Republicans claim the rush to investigate at the Democrats' behest is politically inspired. Nevertheless, some political observers believe the cumulative effect of these probes is damaging Bush's re-election chances."

Paul Krugman writes, "It's important, when you read the inevitable attempts to impugn the character of the latest whistle-blower, to realize just how risky it is to reveal awkward truths about the Bush administration. When Gen. Eric Shinseki told Congress that postwar Iraq would require a large occupation force, that was the end of his military career. When Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV revealed that the 2003 State of the Union speech contained information known to be false, someone in the White House destroyed his wife's career by revealing that she was a C.I.A. operative. And we now know that Richard Foster, the Medicare system's chief actuary, was threatened with dismissal if he revealed to Congress the likely cost of the administration's prescription drug plan. The latest insider to come forth, of course, is Richard Clarke, George Bush's former counterterrorism czar and the author of the just-published 'Against All Enemies.' "

"The Department of Health and Human Services inspector general is launching an inquiry into whether Bush administration officials committed any wrongdoing last year by withholding from Congress internal analyses showing that Medicare prescription drug legislation the White House supported would cost significantly more than lawmakers believed... The internal inquiry into the handling of the cost estimates is part of a broad damage-control strategy HHS officials have begun mounting to defuse accusations that the administration has put politics above accuracy on an issue that Bush has cited in his reelection campaign as a prime domestic achievement."

Ted Kahl and Bob Fertik write: "On Tuesday, George W. Bush plans to obliterate coverage of the Democratic winner of the Iowa Caucus by giving his State of the Union speech a week earlier than usual. In the speech, Bush will lay out his major plans for 2004, thus effectively launching his campaign to get four more years in the White House - by getting more votes (if $200 million in fat-cat contributions makes that possible) or simply rigging the results (if all else fails). But before the nation looks ahead, we want to take one last glance at 2003, to highlight the 5 biggest scandals of the White House since his last State of the Union. Each of these scandals is huge. Indeed, each of these scandals completely eclipses the biggest scandal of President Clinton's eight years in office, Monicagate. If Democracy still existed in America, each of these 5 scandals would be headline news, and the news media would be demanding answers every single day."

Bob Fertik and Ted Kahl write, "As the 2004 election year begins, we are astonished to discover that a handful of Americans actually believe George W. Bush should be given four more years in the White House. Obviously this is the result of too much holiday eggnog. So in the spirit of all those year-ending 'top' lists of 2003, here is a quick refresher list of the Top Bush Scandals of 2003. We hope you will send this and future lists to any friends who think they might vote for Bush in 2004. Because there are so MANY scandals, we will publish our list in two parts, the first part being devoted strictly to the Mother of All Scandals - Iraq. Bush's invasion of Iraq may be the single greatest scandal in American history, thoroughly eclipsing such major scandals as Watergate and Teapot Dome, not to mention the utterly insignificant Lewinsky affair. Sometime in the future, historians will judge whether it marked the end of American Democracy and the start of a totalitarian American Empire."

Joan Claybrook writes, "Two indicted Westar executives, David Wittig and David Lake, were part of a scheme in 2002, revealed through e-mails released by the company's board of directors, to obtain 'a seat at the table' in last year's energy bill conference committee by giving money to a number of congressional campaigns. The campaigns included those of House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas); Rep. Billy Tauzin (R-La.), who co-chaired the energy conference in 2002 and 2003; and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), an influential member of the conference both years... Despite the recent Westar indictments, neither the DOJ nor the House ethics committee has taken any action on the matter. Instead, Tauzin and Barton were given leadership roles again in this year's conference committee on the energy bill." We demand a Special Prosecutor!

US News and World Report: "For the past three years, the Bush administration has quietly but efficiently dropped a shroud of secrecy across many critical operations of the federal government--cloaking its own affairs from scrutiny and removing from the public domain important information on health, safety, and environmental matters. The result has been a reversal of a decades-long trend of openness in government while making increasing amounts of information unavailable to the taxpayers who pay for its collection and analysis... Important business and consumer information is increasingly being withheld from the public... New administration initiatives have effectively placed off limits critical health and safety information potentially affecting millions of Americans. The information includes data on quality and vulnerability of drinking-water supplies, potential chemical hazards in communities, and safety of airline travel and other forms of transportation."

Scootergate! Dumbanddubya.com Exposes the Truth about Bush's Segway Accident

Jackson Thoreau writes: "Early one Saturday afternoon in July 2003, I made a simple phone call to Margie Schoedinger, a Texas woman who filed a rape lawsuit against George W. Bush in December 2002. I expected to leave a message on a machine, so I was caught a little offguard when Schoedinger answered. She, too, sounded somewhat surprised I had called, saying she hadn't heard from many other reporters. But she talked to me for a few minutes about the legal action. 'I am still trying to prosecute [the lawsuit],' said Schoedinger, a 38-year-old African-American woman who lived in the Houston suburb of Missouri City. 'I want to get this matter settled and go on with my life.' Well, Schoedinger hasn't gone on with her life. In fact, three months after I spoke to her, she died in an apparent suicide. And this matter remains unsettled."

At the very same time as the Busheviks are broadcasting Saddam torture videos to build support for their catastrophic occupation, they are BETRAYING American soldiers who were among Saddam's torture victims. "The Bush administration is seeking to block a group of American troops who were tortured in Iraqi prisons during the Persian Gulf war in 1991 from collecting any of the hundreds of millions of dollars in frozen Iraqi assets they won last summer in a federal court ruling against the government of Saddam Hussein." "I've always tried to keep in the back of my mind that we were never going to see any of the money," said Colonel Storr, who was held by the Iraqis for 33 days - a period in which he says his captors beat him with clubs, broke his nose, urinated on him and threatened to cut off his fingers if he did not disclose military secrets. "But it goes beyond frustration when I see our government trying to pretend that this whole case never happened." Had enough? Impeach Bush Now!

"A State Department employee was found dead outside the agency headquarters Friday around 5 p.m., Fox News has confirmed... John Kokal worked in a unit that dealt with intelligence and research. Sources said he handled classified documents regularly but was not involved in intelligence analysis... Fire Department Spokesman Alan Etter said the man, a white male, was wearing a dress shirt, tie and slacks, but was not wearing shoes nor a suit jacket. He was found lying in the bottom of a concrete window well near 23rd and D streets, about eight stories below the top of the building. The well drops about 20 feet from ground level... It was not yet known whether the employee jumped or fell. Firemen told Fox News that the D.C. police were handling the investigation and that the death could possibly be a homicide and that the body would not be immediately removed." Is this Bush's Vince Foster murder/suicide mystery? Is Karl Rove sending a deadlier Valerie Plame "message"? Stay tuned...

"More than 70 American companies and individuals have won up to $8 billion in contracts for work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan over the last two years, according to a new study by the Center for Public Integrity. Those companies donated more money to the presidential campaigns of George W. Bush - a little over $500,000 - than to any other politician over the last dozen years, the Center found. Kellogg, Brown & Root, the subsidiary of Halliburton - which Dick Cheney led prior to being chosen as Bush's running mate in August 2000 - was the top recipient of federal contracts for the two countries, with more than $2.3 billion awarded to the company. Bechtel Group, a major government contractor with similarly high-ranking ties, was second at around $1.03 billion. However, dozens of lower-profile, but well-connected, companies shared in the reconstruction bounty."

On 10-22-03, Ashcroft indicted Abdurahman Alamoudi, a consultant to the Pentagon on the Chaplain Program for more than a decade, now accused of helping Osama bin Laden and Hamas. According to John Loftus, "What Alamoudi and al-Arian have in common is a guy named Grover Norquist. He's the super lobbyist. Newt Gingrich's guy, the one the NRA calls on, head of American taxpayers. He is the guy that was hired by Alamoudi to head up the Islamic institute and he's the registered agent for Alamoudi, personally, and for the Islamic Institute. Grover Norquist's best friend is Karl Rove, the White House chief of staff, and apparently Norquist was able to fix things. He got extreme right wing Muslim people to be the gatekeepers in the White House. That's why moderate Americans couldn't speak out after 9/11. Moderate Muslims couldn't get into the White House because Norquist's friends were blocking their access."

PentaPost reports, "Bush's chief spokesman said yesterday that the allegation that administration officials leaked the name of a CIA operative is 'a very serious matter' and vowed that Bush would fire anybody responsible for such actions." ROTFL! Everyone in the White House - from Bush on UP to Rove and Cheney - is "responsible" for the "outing" of Valerie Plame. Character assassination - if not outright murder - is Standard Operating Procedure for the Busheviks. Remember John McCain, who was accused of having a black child - and - going crazy while POW - during the GOP primaries in 2000? Remember Al Gore, who was accused of lies he never told? Remember J.H. Hatfield, who was driven to suicide by Karl Rove's character attacks? Remember Max Cleland, who was accused of being unpatriotic during the 2002 campaign?

A Buzzflash Reader Commentary: "Too bad American and Iraqi lives were sacrificed in the effort. It would have been easy to catch 'chemical Ali' back under the first Bush administration, which knew of his activities and tolerated him, and them. As the heroic, late congressman Henry B. Gonzalez pointed out, Ali Hassan al-Majid was on the short list of Iraqi front entities with which the US under then-President Bush was in the habit of doing dangerous business... In the speech, Gonzalez pointed out the widespread knowledge in other countries of Saddam's activities; the extensive trade with Saddam by American companies and companies in Europe; the part that US financing and the CIA had played in Saddam's buildup; and the close involvement of the Reagan and senior Bush administrations in supporting Saddam. (Donald Rumsfeld went to Baghdad and engaged in his famous handshake with Saddam, videotaped, in 1983.)"

Joe Conason writes: "For the Bush dynasty, crony capitalism is rite of passage, way of life, and family business. President Bush, his father, his three brothers, and sundry other relatives all have joined (and sometimes hastily abandoned) enterprises where their chief contribution was the perception of political influence at home and abroad. It would be possible -- although grim and morally exhausting -- to write an entire book about nothing but ethically dingy Bush business deals." Buy the book -- read it and then -- stand up and fight.

Katherine Yurica writes that Democrats in Congress, "can still file an unprecedented RICO (Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organization) case against the Bush-Cheney enterprise. Similarly, California's Governor Gray Davis (or Cruz Bustamante-should he succeed Davis) can file both a civil and criminal RICO against the Bush-Cheney enterprise... The fact that what I am suggesting has never been done before is no reason why it should not be carried out now. Never before have we had a suspected criminal enterprise being directed from the White House. RICO was created by Congress to reach racketeering activities, including white-collar crimes that could not be prosecuted by any other means... RICO allows prosecutors (civil or criminal) to name the corporate entity, which in this case is the U.S. Government as a defendant, plus the corrupt 'enterprise' within the government as a defendant, and the individuals who make up the corrupt enterprise and commit the illegal acts as defendants."

Jim Lobe writes, "As Karl Marx might have said, 'A spectre is haunting Washington -- the spectre of Iran-Contra'. Even some of the people and countries are the same. And the methods -- particularly the pursuit by a network of well-placed individuals of a covert, parallel foreign policy that is at odds with official policy -- are definitely the same. Boiled down to its essentials, the Iran-Contra affair was about a small group of officials based in the National Security Agency (NSC) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that ran an 'off-the-books' operation to secretly sell arms to Iran in exchange for hostages... The picture emerging from the latest reports about the manipulation of intelligence in the drive to war with Iraq, as well as efforts by administration hawks to deliberately aggravate tensions with Syria, Iran, and North Korea in defiance of official State Department and U.S. policy, suggest a similar but much more ambitious scheme at work."

"The Pentagon official who oversaw the development of a plan for the military to operate a terrorist futures-trading market is resigning under pressure, a senior defense official said today. John M. Poindexter, a retired rear admiral who was President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser, is stepping down 'in the next few weeks,' the official said, following disclosure of a proposal that outraged lawmakers and embarrassed senior Pentagon officials. The plan was to create... an online betting parlor that would have rewarded investors who forecast terrorist attacks, assassinations and coups... [Defense Secretary Don] Rumsfeld agreed that the admiral's credibility was shot and it was time for him to go... Poindexter first gained notoriety [and a court conviction, later thrown out] in the Iran-contra scandal during the Reagan administration." Yes, and he helped "disappear" tens of thousands of Latin Americans who opposed right-wing juntas and terrorists.

Jeff Milchen writes, "If anyone even suggested publicly the idea of putting a bounty on the head of a Bush Administration official you can bet they'd at least be jailed on felony charges promptly. Yet incredibly, the Bush administration initiated (and then cancelled in the face of immediate opposition) a scheme that would have provided financial incentives for would-be terrorists to assassinate political leaders in the Middle East -- the 'Policy Analysis Market,' or PAM. A graphic on PAM's website on Monday displayed several hypothetical futures contracts. Investors could bet on the likelihood that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would be assassinated or Jordan's King Abdullah II overthrown. One less violent investment apparently was suggested -- the U.S. recognizing Palestine as a political entity. Those hypothetical investments were promptly taken off the website, but were captured and presented below." See the unscrubbed site!

"The Pentagon on Tuesday abandoned a plan to establish a futures market that would have allowed traders to profit by correctly predicting assassinations and terrorist strikes in the Middle East... Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., said.... he received assurance [from the Pentagon] that it would 'stop all engines on this matter today'... [T]he plan was disclosed Monday by Democratic Senators Ron Wyden... and Byron Dorgan... Daschle denounced the program as 'an incentive actually to commit acts of terrorism'... [Barb Boxer said] 'I think you ought to end the careers of whoever it was thought that up'... Wyden said the Policy Analysis Market is [supervised by Iran Contragater] John Poindexter, head of the Terrorism Information Awareness program... [The PAM] Web page Monday showed....futures contracts... on the likelihood that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would be assassinated...Jordanian King Abdullah II would be overthrown... [and] a North Korea missile attack."

ABC reports, "Will the king of Jordan be overthrown? Will Yasser Arafat be assassinated? Will North Korea launch a nuclear attack? You can bet on it. Anyone - even terrorists, some lawmakers warn - will soon be able to place anonymous bets on future terrorist attacks on a Web site. The Pentagon has set up a Web site for the Policy Analysis Market, which is intended for a group of scholars and analysts to bet on the likelihood of dramatic events, especially in the Middle East... But as Sens. Byron Dorgan, D-ND and Ron Wyden, D-OR told reporters in Washington, D.C., today, it is a sick idea... 'Can you imagine if another country set up a betting parlor so that people could go in and bet on the assassination of an American political figure, or the overthrow of this institution or that institution?' Dorgan said. So far, $749,979 has been spent on the project and Wyden and Dorgan said the Pentagon is asking Congress for $8 million to set up the Internet program." Impeach Bush Now!

US Code, Title 4, Chapter 1, Sec. 8 (g): "The flag should never have placed upon it, nor on any part of it, nor attached to it any mark, insignia, letter, word, figure, design, picture, or drawing of any nature." So why does this photo show Bush signing a flag? Isn't this prima facie evidence of a crime? Impeach Bush Now!

BuzzFlash writes, "If David Corn, the Washington editor for The Nation is correct in his suspicions, two unidentified 'senior administration officials' are guilty of betraying our national security [when they] revealed the identity of a CIA operative to conservative columnist Bob Novak, who printed her name in his syndicated newspaper column... If true, it's the latest, and most treasonous, mafia tactic that the Bush administration has been using to intimidate patriotic Americans: 'Mess with us and we will have no compunction about betraying the national security. Our first priority is enforcement of loyalty to this administration and George W. Bush, not the nation. We will intimidate and punish anyone who is disloyal, whatever the costs to America's security. We will go as far as we need to go in achieving our objectives. If you think we won't do it because it will hurt national security, we will, if that's what it takes to protect Bush and carry out our objectives.'"

In Today's "Reliable Source" in the Washington Post, Lloyd Grove reveals the White House's "National Enquirer"-style hot line to Matt Drudge. Drudge, of course, professes to be "hardhitting" and "unbiased." (Yeah, and the Godfather is really Santa Claus). When ABC News' Jeffrey Kofman covered a story this week on the plummeting morale of US troops, the White House called Drudge to provide him with a smearing tip: Kofman is both gay and a Canadian. And, being a good White House minion but a very bad journalist (we like to assume good journalists have some ethics), Drudge regurgitated his "inside scoop" to the public - as did the Post, through Grove. But this is typical rightwing 'ethics' - whether a man is gay or from Canada is more important than whether that man is telling the truth.

"'America's top spy catcher, Paul Redmond, has suddenly resigned in the middle of his secret investigation into how Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden allegedly obtained US computer software, the Sunday Express claimed this weekend... Redmond was a legendary CIA spy catcher... He was told to investigate how Robert Hanssen, the renegade FBI computer specialist who was a longtime Soviet agent, had handed over a copy of the software - known as Promis - to his KGB controllers for $ 2million. Hanssen, now serving a life sentence, has yet to reveal all he knows about how the KGB sold on a copy of the software to Osama bin Laden for $ 4million shortly before the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. 'But until Redmond's abrupt resignation, increasingly the documents relating to Saddam's use of PROMIS - and his relationship with President [sic] Bush's father - were what Redmond had begun to focus on', said a source close to the departed spy catcher."

From Wired Magazine, March 1993: "What for the past decade has been known as the Inslaw affair began to unravel in the final, shredder-happy days of the Bush administration... PROMIS was stolen from Inslaw by the Department of Justice directly after Etian's 1983 visit to Inslaw... PROMIS was then given or sold at a profit to Israel and as many as 80 other countries by Dr. Earl W. Brian, a man with close personal and business ties to then-President Ronald Reagan and then-Presidential counsel Edwin Meese. A House Judiciary Committee report released last September found evidence raising 'serious concerns' that high officials at the Department of Justice executed a pre-meditated plan to destroy Inslaw and co-opt the rights to its PROMIS software... One journalist, Danny Casolaro, died as he attempted to tell the story (see sidebar), and boxes of documents relating to the case have been destroyed, stolen, or conveniently 'lost' by the Department of Justice."

NY Times opines, "There's nothing like having a few friends over for a cocktail or two,' Bush told more than 1,200 Republicans who paid $2,000 apiece last week to begin what will be a record-breaking binge of Republican money-raising. Bush's gratitude went over well with the Washington crowd, who ponied up $3.5 million. Even more, it underlined the extraordinary gilded age of fat-cat politicking that has befallen the nation with the intersection of Bush tax cuts favoring the affluent - $1.7 trillion worth and counting - and the start of Bush's phantom primary campaign season. With no G.O.P. challenger in sight, Mr. Bush nevertheless will easily raise as much as $200 million in primary money for his re-election coffers, much of it from the warm-hearted supporters benefiting most from his deficit-financed tax cuts. This is revenue synergy of a high order that promises only to intensify." Impeach Bush Now!

In a major analysis in The Atlantic Alan Berlow writes, "As the legal counsel to Texas Governor George W. Bush, Alberto R. Gonzales -- now the White House counsel, and widely regarded as a likely future Supreme Court nominee -- prepared fifty-seven confidential death-penalty memoranda for Bush's review. Never before discussed publicly, the memoranda suggest that Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise Bush of some of the most salient issues in the cases at hand," including "ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating evidence, even actual evidence of innocence."

A must read! Maureen Farrell writes: "'These people are overly reaching, overly aggressive, overly secretive, and just plain corrupt. I don't trust these people.' - Ronald Reagan Jr., on the current Bush administration. Sometimes, one simple assertion triggers an avalanche. The above statement, for example, after prompting an obligatory, 'Wasn't Iran-Contra aggressive, secretive and corrupt?' conjures a cascade of murkier questions. Ever since Prescott Bush was penalized for trading with the Nazis and the words 'George Bush of the CIA' surfaced on a 1963 FBI report on the JFK assassination, the Bush family has been tied to speculation... following the Reagan assassination attempt, NBC's John Chancellor and the Houston Post's Arthur Wiese and Margaret Downing reportedly stunned their respective audiences with news that Scott Hinckley, brother of Reagan's would-be assassin, was scheduled to dine with Vice President Bush's son Neil the night of the shooting."

NY Times reports, "For some of the reconstruction work in and around Iraq, the United States Army Corps of Engineers confidentially awarded a one-year contract worth up to $100 million on April 1 to the Perini Corporation, which had revenue of barely $1 billion last year. The agency released a brief statement about the award on April 4, but Perini did not receive clearance to issue its own statement about the significant chunk of business until April 8. By then, its stock had climbed more than 40%... 'There is no secret that is known to 30 bureaucrats,' Professor John Coffee added. 'As soon as it's known that broadly, nothing is more foreseeable than that this information will leak and affect the market'" - and that BushFeld cronies will cash in "big-time." We demand a Special Prosecutor for the corrupt awarding of Iraq occupation contracts!

Alan Bisbort writes, "The crimes of George W. Bush ON A DAILY BASIS surpass the collective crimes of Richard Nixon's entire presidential career. So, why aren't people more outraged by the current White House's abuse of power, unprecedented in American history? What could be more criminal than to start a war by invading another country that poses no immediate threat? What could be more criminal than starting this war by using fictitious documents, photographs and threats of retaliation against countries, and longtime allies, that will not go along with this charade?... What could be more telling about this Little Caesar in the White House that, even as he needlessly puts our brave, dutiful soldiers in harm's way, he is cutting the benefits to veterans of previous wars? What could be more criminal than to loot the U.S. Treasury to conduct a blood-for-oil feud, then pass the cost on to generations unborn? ... Even Dick Nixon looks good to me now "

Frank Rich writes: "His next film, titled 'Fahrenheit 911,' is scheduled for release in the two months before Election Day. It tells 'in part the story of twin errant sons of different oilmen,' he says, and will stir together the pre-9/11 intersection of Bush and bin Laden family business interests when both had ties to the Carlyle Group. Such connections 'may mean nothing,' Mr. Moore concedes. But then he recalls Jane Mayer's article in the November 2001 New Yorker about the private Saudi jet that the Bush administration permitted to fly 24 members of the bin Laden family out of the country after 9/11, before they could be questioned in detail by the F.B.I. 'Here's one question I want to pose,' he says. 'What if on the day after Oklahoma City, Bill Clinton, suddenly worried about the safety of the McVeigh family up in Buffalo, allowed a jet to pick them all up and take them out of the country, not to return?'"

Michael Moore "is putting together a deal with actor Mel Gibson's production company to finance 'Fahrenheit 911,' a documentary that will trace the roots of terrorism against the United States. But perhaps most shockingly, Moore will also spell out [actual] dealings between two generations of the Bush and bin Laden clans, according to Variety. 'The primary thrust of the new film is what has happened to the country since Sept. 11, and how the Bush administration used this tragic event to push its agenda,' Moore said in the Variety report. Moore said the film 'certainly does deal with the Bush and bin Laden ties,' and 'asks a number of questions that I don't have the answers to yet, but which I intend to find out'...the business relationship began with former President George Bush and Saudi construction magnate Mohammed bin Laden, the father of Osama -- a relationship that endured. 'The senior Bush kept his ties with the bin Laden family up until two months after Sept. 11,' Moore said."

Prescott's Nazi financing, Iran-Contra, Iraqgate, Enron, Funeralgate, Carlyle Group and much, much more!

"Weeks before the first bombs dropped in Iraq, the Bush administration began rebuilding plans. ABCNEWS has obtained a copy of a 99-page contract worth $600 million... The USAID contract is filled with details about plans to construct Iraqi schools, airports, roads, bridges, hospitals, power plants and more. But other details are being shielded by the USAID, which chose to conduct the bidding in secret... Normally, USAID puts out contracts on the Internet, and any company can bid. But to move this through quickly, the agency said it went to firms with track records and security clearances. It asked seven - about half the number that normally would have sought the business - to bid. Among the companies believed to be bidding are Bechtel, Fluor, Parsons, the Washington Group and Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney's old firm... All are generous political donors - principally to Republicans... USAID denies politics are involved in any of this." Yeah, RIGHT! Impeach Bush Now!

NY Press reports, "Clear Channel Worldwide Inc., the nation's largest owner of radio stations, sponsored the numerous 'patriotic rallies' which were held around the country. They organized, advertised, provided speakers and entertainment for them, and even handed out numerous American flags... There are close ties between the company and Bush. The Vice Chair of the company is Tom Hicks, a member of the Bush Pioneer club for elite donors... The two were embroiled in scandal when Hicks, as University of Texas Regent, was responsible for granting endowment management contracts of the newly created (under legislation signed by Bush) UT Investment Management Co. (UTIMCO)... Hicks purchased the Texas Rangers from George Bush, making him a wealthy man through a deal that was partially sweetened by a shiny new taxpayer financed stadium, which included valuable land obtained at below market rates through the use of eminent domain." Impeach Bush Now!

"Lt. Col. Bill Burkett completed 28 years of decorated service and was medically retired from the US Army National Guard in 1998 after suffering meningoencephalitis on return from an assignment in Panama. From 1995 until his illness, Burkett served as State Plans Officer for the Texas Army National Guard and Governor Bush. After refusing to follow direct orders involving falsifying readiness reports, Burkett sought 'whistleblower' status for reports involving anti-Semitic activity; personnel fraud; readiness fraud and the alteration of the personal military file of Governor Bush. Lt. Col. Burkett is currently the plaintiff in his appeal to the US Supreme Court in the case of Burkett v. Goodwin, Taliaferro, Meador, et al, in regard to the retaliation against him following breaking the Bush records issue." Read his powerful critique of Bush's W-ar.

According to Jeff Jacoby, Sami "Al-Arian is not the only Islamist zealot who has gained access to Bush and his inner circle. Consider, for example, Abdurahman Alamoudi, the founder of the American Muslim Council, an extremist group with a record of defending terrorism and denouncing the United States. Like Al-Arian, Alamoudi attended the Rove briefing in the White House in 2001; a year earlier, he was one of several Muslims invited to meet with candidate Bush in Austin, Texas. Alamoudi is certainly influential - but he is also an open backer of terrorism. In October 2000, he was cheered at a pro-Palestinian rally in Washington, D.C., when he declared: 'We are all supporters of Hamas.... I am also a supporter of Hezbollah.' Three months later he was in Beirut for a terrorist summit, along with leaders of Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, and Al Qaeda. Is Alamoudi really the sort of Muslim with whom the administration should be involved?"

Forward reports, "Ari Fleischer told reporters that the Secret Service had alerted the White House that Al-Arian was under investigation, but he said that such a warning is not necessarily grounds to block a visit. Fleischer noted that Yasser Arafat has been to the White House many times. Critics were unimpressed with the explanations. 'Why did Bush and his aides do it? Either they think there is an electoral advantage, or they don't give a damn,' said Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler of New York. 'And if in fact the Secret Service warned them about this person, then there is no excuse.'... Al-Arian, in fact, boasted of having helped get out the Florida Muslim vote for Bush in 2000. Footage aired this week by NBC News showed Al-Arian telling a Muslim crowd at a fundraiser last April: 'I wanted to talk about the last elections because I think I personally played a big role in [s]electing Bush. Gore ignored us, Bush did not ignore us, in fact, everything we asked him for he did.'"

Salon's Scott Rosenberg writes, "The arrest last week of the U. of South Florida professor Sami Al-Arian on terrorism charges quickly became an occasion for gloating among commentators on the right -- their latest opportunity to tar as a traitor anyone who advocates due process and minority rights during the 'war on terrorism.' John Podhoretz, for instance, launched a broadside in the NY Post against writers who have raised questions about the Al-Arian case, including the NY Times' Nicholas Kristof and Salon's Eric Boehlert, calling them 'idiots.' Mr. Podhoretz, here are a couple names you'll now need to add to your 'idiot' list: George Bush and Karl Rove. That's because a little problem has emerged for the 'dare call it treason' crowd: In June 2001, it turns out, Al-Arian paid a visit to the Bush White House -- apparently as the specially invited guest of Bush's political guru, Rove, who was meeting with a Muslim-American group as part of a strategy to line up Islamic support."

Rightwinger David Frum writes, "The arrest of Sami al-Arian on terrorism charges marks an epoch not only in the War on Terror, but in the history of the Bush administration... Not only were the al-Arians not avoided by the Bush White House - they were actively courted. Candidate Bush allowed himself to be photographed with the al-Arian family while campaigning in Florida. Candidate Bush denounced the immigration laws that detained - and ultimately deported - [al-Arian's brother-in-law] Mazen al-Najjar... The al-Arian case was not a solitary lapse. The Bush campaign in 2000 very determinedly reached out to Muslim voters. Indeed, Muslim-Americans may have tipped the election to Bush... That outreach campaign opened relationships between the Bush campaign and some very disturbing persons in the Muslim-American community. Many of those disturbing persons were invited to stand beside Bush at post-9/11 events, like his meeting with Muslim community leaders at the Massachusetts Ave. mosque."

Insight, the Moonie magazine, reports that Sami Amin Al-Arian was invited to a White House briefing on 6-22-01 led by Karl Rove (Cheney cancelled at the last minute due to negative publicity) despite being under investigation for a leadership role in Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Al-Arian's name would have set alarms ringing at the Secret Service, so how did he get an invitation the White House? An anonymous associate of the GOP's top Islamic influence-peddler, Grover Norquist, insists he specifically warned the White House about al-Arian. So who ignored Norquist and overruled the Secret Service? There's only one person with the power to bring a suspected terrorist right into the White House - Karl Rove. We demand a full investigation!

Just as George W. Bush denied knowing "Kenny Boy" Lay, now he's denying his connections with Professor Sami Amin al-Arian, who was just charged with being the US leader of a terrorist group. ''Then-Governor Bush just walked around greeting people,'' Buchan said. Al-Arian did not contribute money or volunteer work to the Bush campaign, she said. But Newsweek reports that al-Arian got out the Muslim vote for Bush in Florida, ''He was a Bush supporter,'' said Robert McKee, an attorney who is representing al-Arian in a legal dispute with the university. ''As close as the election in Florida was, Sami may have put him over the top. He got out the vote in the Muslim community in Florida.'' Later, his son was invited to the White House for a meeting related to Bush's "faith-based" initiative.

WashPost reports that Sami al-Arian, "a former university professor indicted this week as a terrorist leader attended a 6-22-2001 group meeting in the White House complex with Karl Rove. Al-Arian, a former computer engineering professor at the University of South Florida, had been under investigation by the FBI for at least six years at the time of the June 2001 briefing for [the American Muslim Council]. Numerous news accounts also had said federal agents suspected Al-Arian of links to terrorism. Al-Arian was indicted Thursday on charges that he conspired to aid suicide bombings in Israel and the Palestinian territories and has served for years as a leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist organization." Cheney was supposed to lead the meeting, but he cancelled after "the Jerusalem Post had run a front-page article headlined, 'Cheney to host pro-terrorist Muslim group.'" Al-Arian campaigned for Bush in Florida mosques and was photographed with Bush on 3-12-2000.

According to customs broker Matt Erion, Bush's coverup of boxes saying "Made in China" was a crime. "Obscuring country-of-origin markings is a violation of Title 19 of the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 134.4. Each count carries a penalty of up to a $5,000 fine and a year in jail." We demand a criminal investigation!

ABC News reports, "Bush delivered his remarks from a warehouse floor at JS Logistics, a trucking, courier and warehouse business that provided a visual image for his argument that his proposal carries economy-boosting benefits for small businesses. The audience was flanked on all sides by piles of cardboard boxes with additional piles in front of and behind his podium. Each one of the hundreds of boxes had a piece of paper obscuring its 'Made in China' label. White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan [lied and] attributed the clearly gargantuan paper-affixing effort to an 'overzealous volunteer'. A backdrop made-to-order for the White House filled the space directly behind Bush, which is most likely to show up on TV news clips of the event. Blaring a logo of 'Strengthening America's Economy,' it exactly mimicked the real-life box piles, down to perfectly aligned shelves. Except the boxes on the backdrop were labeled, 'Made in the USA.'" A PERFECT metaphor for Bushonomics!

Tom Flocco writes, "Most recently activated American soldiers are unaware that they will likely be facing the same deadly chemical and biological agents provided illegally to Iraq by their own government just prior to the last Gulf War - and that high-ranking Bush 41 cabinet officials profited from secret investments in these companies manufacturing weapons of mass destruction.... Members of George Sr.'s cabinet held sizable and conflicting financial positions in Gulf War-related companies linked to a Secret Iraqi Policy Document... Moreover, the war-related WMD financial holdings were substantial enough in 1990 to necessitate [Bush 41] to employ a Confidential Conflict of Interest Waiver -- also kept secret from Congress -- in order to absolve his cabinet and others from future legal action should Gulf War military families ever question or litigate the private and undisclosed financial links of high-ranking government officials to Iraq."

Andrew Schneider of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has revealed a brand new major scandal in the Bush Administration. In April 2002, "The Environmental Protection Agency was on the verge of warning millions of Americans that their attics and walls might contain asbestos-contaminated insulation." The product was W. R. Grace's "Zonolite," contaminated with an extremely lethal asbestos fiber called tremolite that has killed or sickened thousands of miners and their families. "But, at the last minute, the White House intervened, and the warning has never been issued." Naturally, the Bush administration rejected FOIA requests to reveal the decision-making documents. But the evildoer is apparently John Graham, head of Office of OMB's Information and Regulatory Affairs. We demand a Special Prosecutor!

The NY Sun reports, "The latest move in the Saudi Arabian public relations effort in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks is a half-million dollar donation by a Saudi prince to the President George Herbert Walker Bush Scholarship Fund at Phillips Academy, Andover. Unlike Mayor Giuliani, who sent back a $10 million disaster-relief check from Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the Massachusetts private school intends to keep the money. In fact, the school, where both George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush spent their high school years, says it solicited the gift." When will Giuliani denounce this latest Bush scandal? We also remember the massive Republican outrage when Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) invited Prince Alaweed to give the spurned $10 million to African-American causes - so where is Republican outrage now???

William Rivers Pitt writes, "I want to see the proof of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq before we engage in a war that will send tens of thousands of civilians to their deaths, enrage the Muslim world against us, grievously wound the American economy, and guarantee more terrorism here at home. I am sure the Bush administration's incontrovertible proof that these weapons exist is a sheaf of shipping manifests from roundabout 1984, when we sent the stuff to Saddam in the first place, but I want to see it anyway... I want to know what happened on September 11th, and why, and who messed up... I want to know what was in the smallpox shot Bush got. Was it distilled water or Maker's Mark?.. I want a nationally known journalist - any journalist - to begin the process of calling the Bush administration to account for its dizzying malfeasance. Enron, Halliburton, Harken, Arthur Andersen, Eli Lilly, Carlyle and O my Lord how the money rolled in..."

When the Office of Management and Budget put printing of the 2004 budget up for public bid in October, it was defying federal law and launching a privatization campaign that could more fundamentally consolidate GOP power and corporate corruption than any other act of his Presidency. By replacing independent government work and fair contracting guidelines with new contracts controlled directly by the White House, the goal is the end of civil service protections for work done under government funding, the creation of massive corporate corruption at the teet of the government, and the building of a new large-scale network of corporate donors in thrall to Bush's White House. Impeach Bush Now!

A Texas woman named Margie Schoedinger sued George W. Bush in Fort Bend County Court on December 3, alleging that Bush and Schoedinger had a sexual relationship, and also that Bush discussed killing Schoedinger. Deputy County Clerk Becky Kasper issued a routine subpoena to Bush on December 4. As a reading of the complaint - and the discussion in Democratic Underground - suggests, there are lots of reasons to doubt Schoedinger's charges. Still, we can't wait to see whether Internet scandal-monger Matt Drudge backs Schoedinger's lawsuit, the way he backed Danny Williams' bogus paternity charges against Bill Clinton.

Margie Burns writes: "The full effects of the 2001 so-called 'USA Patriot Act' have not yet been felt, fortunately. But one of its first effects has been to benefit the [G. W.Bush]'s brother, Marvin. Marvin P. Bush, one of George['s]...three younger brothers, is co-founder and partner in Winston Partners, a private investment firm in Alexandria, Va. Winston Partners in turn is part of a larger venture capital entity called the Chatterjee Group, headed by venture capitalist Purnendu Chatterjee. (Venture capital firms provide money to start-up businesses and other companies, usually in return for equity and some managerial say in the company.) Through this and other business relationships, this Bush sibling is positioned to do very well in high-tech activities as a result of provisions of the Patriot Act." And, it's a family affair: brother Jeb is also an investor and beneficiary of this scheme. We DEMAND an investigation of these conflicts of interest!

"Judicial Watch...reported today that a federal court judge said he would refer allegations of threats against Judicial Watch Chairman and General Counsel Larry Klayman to the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. Judicial Watch learned through various sources that GOP and the Bush Administration were improperly investigating Klayman and seeking to have him jailed... In hearings over the last two days, Judge Sullivan said that he would criminally refer the serious allegations to U.S. Attorney Roscoe Howard for investigation and possible prosecution. 'Any member of the Bush Administration and any Republican who threaten to jail those who pursue investigations against them ought to be prosecuted. We applaud Judge Sullivan's criminal referral to the U.S. Attorney's Office. We will not be intimidated from pursuing our legal actions against the VP nor any other politician' stated Larry Klayman."

The Washington Post offers a pictorial documentary of the Enron scandal and the impact on its employees. See Bush, who received more than $290,000 in contributions from former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay, stroll with Karl Rove. Read the suicide note left by former Enron Vice Chairman John Clifford Baxter. See Former Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow take the 5th Amendment and refuse to testify before a House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee. Watch as Bush buddy "Kenny Boy" Lay refuses to answer lawmakers' questions about his role in the collapse of Enron. See US Army Secretary Thomas White listen to a reporter's question about his relationship with Enron during a Pentagon briefing; he doesn't look to eager to talk, does he? But where is that Special Prosecutor for the Harken-Enron-Halliburton scandals, eh?

Says Ralph Nader: "Iraq is a distraction strategy by the Bush administration to avoid being implicated in some of these scandals. The president [sic] still goes to various election-funding events with the people of the corporate world, and he doesn't want a judicial witch hunt to be unleashed against his corporate friends." The evidence certainly supports this: despite supposedly being so concerned about the dangers of terrorism and the should-be heavy mantle of a "war time" president, Bush has spent a large proportion of his time lately attending corporate-sponsored $1,000 (and up) per plate fund raisers. Doesn't sound very worried about anything but his campaign bank account, does he?

"Secret documents obtained by an IRA spy network included transcripts of telephone conversations between Tony Blair and Bush, security sources confirmed yesterday," reports the London Telegraph.

Travelers browsing the State Department Web site for helpful tips about Guadalajara, Mexico, found much more than they bargained for when they clicked on a photograph of Resident Bush. The click transported them to a partisan playground, where they were told how to get involved with the Republican Party and even how to donate money to it. The State Department site, it turns out, had been providing a link to a Web site run by the Republican National Committee despite federal laws prohibiting government resources from being used for partisan purposes... [The link] may violate several laws, including the Hatch Act, which prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan activities 'while on duty or in government offices' [and] campaign finance laws that impose penalties for soliciting campaign contributions from government property. 'Somebody has made a horrible mistake,' said Trevor Potter, a Republican who is a former chairman of the FEC." We demand prosecution of everyone involved!

MSNBC.com reports: "Inside a cold, foreboding structure of brown sandstone in New Haven, Conn., lives one of the most heavily shrouded secret societies in American history. Yale's super-elite Skull and Bones, a 200-year-old organization whose roster is stocked with some of the country's most prominent families: Bush, Harriman, Phelps, Rockefeller, Taft, and Whitney. Journalist Alexandra Robbins, herself a member of another of Yale's secret societies, interviewed more than a hundred Bonesmen and writes about the rituals that make up the organization. Read an excerpt from her book 'The Secrets of the Tomb'... Skull and Bones has curled its tentacles into every corner of American society. This tiny club has set up networks that have thrust three members into the most powerful political position in the world. And the group's influence is only increasing." Does Robbins get the truth, or just disinformation?

Bob Fritrakis from Columbus Alive writes, "Senator John Kerry's BCCI investigatory committee established that BCCI was a conduit for opium money laundering from the Golden Crescent where Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan come together. The Arab oil sheiks were fronts to create the illusion of 'petro dollars' funding the bank. Dubya and Harken Energy's friends at BCCI were the core of a group of people - supported by the CIA, the Pakistani Inter Service Intelligence Agency and the Saudi royal family - secretly funding the al Qaeda terrorist network and Islamic fundamentalist groups in their successful campaign to destroy the Soviet Union." BCCI was also a bank of Noriega, Saddam Hussein, al Queda and the CIA. This drug link seems pretty clear to us! Is this what is hidden in Reagan's papers that Bush refuses to release?

Even right-wing robot Robert Novak is appalled by the soaring cost of oil, which is the completely predictable result of Bush's incessant war-drum banging over Iraq. Everyone assumes Bush is serious about bombing Baghdad back to the Stone Age, but what if he's just running a massive scam to SCARE Americans, drive oil prices through the roof, and thus make the gargantuan oil companies even richer? That's preposterous, you say? Then you have already forgotten the great California Electricity Scam of 2001, when BushCheney conspired openly with energy "traitors" like Kenny Lay's Enron to steal $30 BILLION from California consumers and business. The California scam proved that Bush is a Texas energy gangster on such a breathtaking scale that Americans can't believe their own eyes. There's only one way to stop Bush - defeat ALL Republicans!

The Daily Enron: "'Apparently George Bush's plan for getting corporate crooks out of the boardroom is to get them elected to public office.' [Said one California voter when she learned that Bush] was coming to California to raise money for Republican gubernatorial candidate, William Simon Jr. [This is exactly what White House strategists fear most from this weekend's fundraising appearances with Simon. So Bush & Cheney avoid being photographed with Simon]. 'They're going to try to do this under the radar as best as possible,' a GOP strategist [said]. 'You will not get the pResident standing up and declaring Simon's innocence,' But putting Simon and Bush in the same room together brings with it the risk of comparison. The two men are veritable clones. While each man made millions of dollars in the private sector, an examination of their business affairs shows both their fortunes linked more to their famous fathers than their own efforts." Simon Sr. was an architect of the New Right.

"In the millions of words written in the national news media about Neil Bush and his part in the Silverado Savings & Loan scandal, no reference has been made to an extremely significant fact of his life. Neil Bush, son of the then vice president of the United States, was scheduled to have dinner on March 31, 1981, with Scott Hinckley, brother of John Hinckley, the day after a bullet came within an inch of making Neil Bush's father the new president of the United States. Even though John Chancellor had let slip out this most remarkable assassination coincidence shortly after John Hinckley tried to kill President Reagan, it was censored by NBC News and the other organs of the national news media during the subsequent 10 years... Thus I spent almost three years researching, writing and publishing a book that details scores of facts that would forever erase the ludicrous myth that John Hinckley gunned down President Reagan 'to impress Jodie Foster.'" So begins Nathaniel Blumberg.

"The Anonymous CPA" (TAC) writes another blockbuster in MakeThemAccountable.com: that George W. Bush evaded $3 MILLION in taxes when he sold his share of the Texas Rangers for over $15 million in 1998. Bush reported the income as a capital gain, which allowed him to pay a rate of only 20% ($3 million), compared with the 39.6% rate for ordinary income ($6 million). TAC's analysis is based on the case of Illinois Gov. Otto Kerner (D), who was convicted in 1972 of income tax fraud for treating a gain of $180,000 in race track stock as capital gains, rather than ordinary income. Jim Thompson was the prosecuting US Attorney, a Republican appointed by Richard Nixon who later became Governor. Thompson convinced a jury that Kerner corruptly used his political influence to increase the value of his race track stock. That's EXACTLY what Bush did, when the man he appointed to run the $9 billion endowment of the University of Texas bought the Rangers for $250 million. Investigate Bush's "bidness"!

"It's not something George W. Bush talks about much -- indeed, it's a fact that has been virtually purged from his official biography -- but for four years in the early 1990s, Bush was a director of a company that ultimately collapsed under the weight of its junk-bond financing and management mistakes," David Ignatius reveals in the Post. "The privately held company, called Caterair International Inc., was created in 1989 when Marriott Corp. spun off its airline catering business to investors organized by the Washington investment bank the Carlyle Group. The Caterair deal was a piece of financial engineering known at the time as a 'leveraged buyout.' It was financed mostly by high-yielding 'junk bonds,' of the sort pioneered in the 1980s by Michael Milken, who later served jail time for his financial shenanigans." In other words, the Bush who self-righteously condemns financial shenanigans is a hypocrite and crook.

Former Reagan official Lawrence Korb writes, "The Bush administration has not yet completed a much more comprehensive and important document, the National Security Strategy report. Without this report, it is difficult, if not impossible, to make a rational decision about whether the homeland security strategy or many other government programs designed to protect our security make any sense. This National Security Strategy report, which should have been sent to Congress within five months of Bush's inauguration and which must be updated annually, is required by Section 404A, Chapter 15, Title 10 of the US Code... Because we have not been presented with this presidential vision and assessment, the Congress and the country are being asked to put the cart before the horse. In the absence of this national security report, how can we have a rational and informed debate about all the controversial foreign policy decisions that Bush is making?" Impeach Bush Now!

Jackson Thoreau of Fight the Right writes: "In an obvious intimidation ploy, the Bush administration's FBI is trying to get members of Congress to submit to lie-detector tests related to whether they leaked information about what certain officials might have known before Sept. 11...Contact your representatives and tell them to only agree to take a lie-detector test if Bush, Cheney, and Ashcroft themselves submit to such tests about what exactly they knew before Sept. 11. And while they're at it, Bush should answer questions about Harken Energy's scams, (and more)...Cheney should answer questions under a polygraph test about fraud committed while head of Halliburton Co., who he met with to develop the energy policy, why he tried to get India to pay off a multimillion-dollar loan to Enron last year, (and more)...And Ashcroft should answer to why he only flew on private planes in the months before Sept. 11 (and more)..."

Jerry Politex writes "What George does to make a Bush buck is called 'Crony Capitalism' by commentator Jim Hightower. Case in point: Dubya's financial relationship with Richard Rainwater during his tenure as Texas governor... When Bush became Guv in '95, he put all but his Texas Rangers stock into a blind trust managed by--surprise--Rainwater... Among the favors Rainwater has enjoyed: *State buildings sold to Rainwater's real estate company at bargain basement rates; *State college and public school funds invested in Rainwater's company; *A Bush-sponsored tax cut that failed, but would have cut millions in annual taxes for Rainwater; and *A stadium-financing bill backed by Bush that gave a $10 million bonus payment to a Rainwater company." And this is just ONE example of how Bush Crony Capitalism broke the law and screwed the public!

Reps. John Conyers (D-MI), Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), Maxine Waters (D-CA), and Melvin L. Watt (D-NC) sent a letter to Bush with 9 pages documenting scandals involving Bush/Harken, Cheney/Halliburton, and White/Enron. "It is now well recognized that the lack of credibility of this Administration caused by these unanswered allegations has seriously hampered your ability to calm recent market upheavals. Indeed, much of the malaise in the economy has been attributed to suspicion among American investors that, like the CEOs of Enron and WorldCom, you and other officials in your Administration fell far short of the highest ethical standards and may have violated criminal laws in your business dealings. There is only one way to put these suspicions behinds us: full disclosure." The letter is great - so where are all of the other Democrats?

"Did Enron deliberately create and manipulate the California 'energy crisis' of 2001, giving the oil industry an excuse to draft the Bush Energy Plan? Definitely. Did...Bush violate the law when he failed to report that he made $848,000 by selling shares in a money-losing company called Harken, of which he was a director. Definitely, according to a memo from the SEC. Did...Cheney engage in illegal activities at the Halliburton...? Highly likely, though not yet proven, and the DOJ does not seem anxious to find out. Did Bush and Cheney conspire to have jets crash into the WTC, the Pentagon and a field in PA on 911? Not likely. But if they keep shredding the Constitution while feeding our billions to their corporate buddies, it'll be hard to argue otherwise, at least in those countries where historians still have the right to say such things. Maybe it would help if Bush, Cheney and their known co-conspirators were actually indicted for what they did at Harken, Halliburton and Enron."

Bill Black and James Galbraith write "From 1981 to 1988, the Reagan-Bush administration covered up the S&L debacle. It forced reductions in S&L examiners and fought against the top federal regulator, Ed Gray, who sounded the alarm... Meanwhile, Neil Bush, private citizen, was getting a 'loan' from a business partner... Neil knew that this business partner was not creditworthy and yet was borrowing over $100 million from Silverado S&L... George W. Bush, private citizen, emulated his brother Neil... Why was he able to sell his Harken shares for a profit? Because Harken committed a financial fraud that hid real losses and created fictional income [which was] a variant on the Enron and Lincoln Savings frauds... George W. Bush is a wealthy man today because his business friends were willing to stoop to fraud to make him rich. George W. Bush is in trouble, in part, because of his clumsy coverups of this fraud."

Bruce Ticker writes, "Yes, George W Bush can now be called a crook. Just like Nixon. Not a convicted crook, mind you, but a crook nonetheless. The Securities and Exchange Commission makes it clear: A stockholder must report his/her insider stock sales promptly. Not eight months late as Bush did more than a decade ago. Bush broke the law. Even if he did not intend to, he broke the law. That makes him a crook right there." And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Republicans - and the corporate media - attacked Bill Clinton for 8 years over a real estate deal called "Whitewater." Bush has his own real estate scandal, called Arlington. As Nicholas Kristof writes, "Essentially, Mr. Bush and the owners' group he led bullied and misled the city into raising taxes to build a $200 million stadium that in effect would be handed over to the Rangers. As part of the deal, the city would even confiscate land from private owners so that the Rangers owners could engage in real estate speculation... 'A group of wealthy and influential people threatened and traded their way into an unprecedented takeover of government power and private property in an awesome display of greed and avarice,' charges a lawsuit by the landowners, in what strikes me as a fair recitation of events. Another suit charges that the deal 'can only be described as astounding, unprecedented and blatantly illegal.'"

Paul Krugman explains Bush's transformation from failed oilman to rich baseball owner. "First, the city of Arlington built the Rangers a new stadium, on terms extraordinarily favorable to Mr. Bush's syndicate, eventually subsidizing Mr. Bush and his partners with more than $150 million in taxpayer money. The city was obliged to raise taxes substantially as a result... Mr. Bush's syndicate eventually resold the Rangers, for triple the original price. The price-is-no-object buyer was a deal maker named Tom Hicks." When Bush became governor, he privatized the endowment of the University of Texas, and put Hicks in charge. " Under [Hicks'] direction, at least $450 million was invested in private funds managed by Mr. Hicks's business associates and major Republican Party donors... Eventually Mr. Hicks's investment style created a public furor" Time after time, Bush used public assets to amass his private wealth. And he continues to do so as Commander-in-Thief. Impeach Bush Now!

George W. Bush promised to "restore honor and integrity to the White House." Instead, Bush has run the most scandal-ridden administration since Richard Nixon produced Watergate. Worst of all, Bush has absolutely no guilt or shame! Democrats.com created "Bushgate" to track the progress of ALL of Bush's scandals, as they make their way from Internet exposes... to columns, books and films... to mainstream news stories... to Congressional investigations... and finally, to IMPEACHMENT. Naturally, we use Bush's color-coded scheme to rate the warning level of each scandal. Which of these many scandals will finally bring Bush to justice? Stay tuned!

Time reports, "At issue is whether the two men benefited during their business careers from the same kind of cronyism and slippery accounting that the Administration is now publicly condemning... Once the questions began, Bush looked like a 5-year-old losing a battle with an ice-cream cone on a summer day… Bush's business dealings were legal but on the wrong side of the new corporate morality he is now preaching. How could the President [sic] chastise executives for doing the same kinds of things he did as a director, without apology?... As Bush struggled to explain away the past, Cheney was being investigated by the SEC and sued by Halliburton shareholders and the conservative activist group Judicial Watch. The allegation: that Halliburton, while Cheney was CEO, greased the books to boost the firm's flagging fortunes."

Truthouth's Marc Ash writes, "It is difficult to imagine what it would take to make the case to the American center that Mr. Bush and his associates are up to no good. The information in the public record to date is so damning that it should have toppled this regime five times over. Enron alone should have been the end of the road for Bush & Co. It is a criminal scandal of unparalleled scope. Hundreds of millions of dollars stolen, entire states economies impacted and thousands of workers pensions destroyed. George W. Bush was in bed with Ken Lay and did his bidding, on cue open-and-shut. Yet for some inexplicable reason we as a nation have decided that we do not want to see. September 11th. : Did Gorge W. Bush Know? Every major news source in the country has presented enough evidence of the Bush administration's foreknowledge of the attacks that killed three thousand Americans to indict Mr. Bush and his top aids... Outrage, public outcry? No, fear and silence."

Paul Krugman writes, "On Tuesday, George W Bush is scheduled to give a speech intended to put him in front of the growing national outrage over corporate malfeasance. [Yet this pose is surreal, given the way Thomas White, Dick Cheney and Mr. Bush himself acquired their wealth. The 'new tone' that George W Bush brought to Washington isn't one of integrity, but of permissiveness]. Unfortunately, the administration has so far gotten the press to focus on the least important question about Mr Bush's business dealings: his failure to obey the law by promptly reporting his insider stock sales. It's true that Mr. Bush's story about that failure has suddenly changed, from 'the dog ate my homework' to 'my lawyer ate my homework -- four times.' But the administration hopes that a narrow focus on the reporting lapses will divert attention from the larger point: Mr. Bush profited personally from aggressive accounting identical to the recent scams that have shocked the nation."

Joshua Green writes that Enron staffers openly referred to Tom White as 'Mr. Magoo.' "Bush, Cheney, and White are all part of a culture of 'crony capitalism' whose resurgence has been quietly accepted in Washington... To dump White would risk raising questions about this entire way of life. [Even without independent-counsel inquiries, something fundamental has changed. The GOP House has no incentive to pursue the Bush Administration, and the Democratic Senate appears to lack the nerve]. The Bush administration also enjoys broader leeway because it is free of the 'vast right-wing conspiracy' -- the subsidized scandal-mongering, talk radio, and attack journalism that has no equivalent on the left. [Bush recently told White that] 'As long as they're hitting you on Enron, they're not hitting me -- that's your job. You're the lightning rod for this administration.' Bush may benefit from keeping White in the job," but the American People suffer the consequences. Impeach Bush Now!

Frank Rich writes, "Mr. Bush keeps saying all the right things. He is 'deeply concerned.' He will 'hold people accountable.' But words, like stocks, lose value when nothing backs them up. It is now more than six months since the president [sic] promised 'a lot of government inquiry into Enron'... Mr. Bush says that only 'a few bad actors' are at fault. Why is the administration so lax about bringing them to justice? That may have something to do with who those 'few bad actors' are. [The chairman] of the New York Stock Exchange, tossed out a range of 1 to 15 as the rough count of corporate culprits. [So far, at least five members of that] tiny club have direct ties to the Bush administration: Enron, Halliburton, Andersen, KMPG and Merrill Lynch - the last three all former clients... SEC chairman Harvey Pitt. Five for 15: Mr. Bush could have used a batting average that high when he ran the Texas Rangers."

David Corn writes, "This past Fourth of July, I was glad to see that George and Martha were in the media spotlight together. No, not the Washingtons, the first First Couple, but George W. Bush and Martha Stewart, a symbolic First Couple of insider capitalism. [Thanks to WorldCom, Tyco, Xerox, Martha Stewart], and other alleged corporate malfeasants, Bush's own less-than-stellar corporate past has been revived. Al Gore may be thinking, 'hey, it's a little late for this.' But Bush's record as a private businessman -- a subject few journalists bothered to explore during the 2000 campaign -- is now deemed relevant, as Corporate America (Bush's home district) turns ugly."

The AP reports: "President [sic] Bush defended in a snappish tone Tuesday his own business experience with a corporation accused of fishy accounting. 'Everything I do is fully disclosed; it's been fully vetted,' the [criminal posing as] president said as he paused to speak with reporters during a church appearance in Wisconsin. 'Any other questions?' " As a matter of fact, we've got TONS of questions for you -- starting with how you and Karl Rove engineered the Florida voter purge.

Ponder this as the Bushes 'act' like grand 'patriots' on July 4th. It is bad enough that the Bush family helped raise the money for Thyssen to give Hitler his start in the 1920's, but giving aid and comfort to the enemy in time of war is treason. The Bush's bank helped the Thyssens make the Nazi steel that killed allied soldiers. As bad as financing the Nazi war machine may seem, aiding and abetting the Holocaust was worse. Thyssen's coal mines used Jewish slaves as if they were disposable chemicals. There are six million skeletons in the Thyssen family closet, and a myriad of criminal and historical questions to be answered about the Bush family's complicity.

Salon's Anthony York says that with every move Bush makes, his own corporate past, and that of Dick Cheney, the former Halliburton CEO, may come back to haunt him. These moves "remind Americans of the corners Bush and Cheney cut during their days in the executive suites of corporate America. [Bush dumped thousands of shares of Harken stock and filed his disclosure forms 34 weeks late. While Bush calls for accountability from company executives, the SEC is investigating charges that the Halliburton Corp hid] more than $100 million in losses while Cheney was the company's CEO. [Jeff Faux] says the crisis of confidence goes to the ideological core of the Republican Party's domestic policies. 'The Republican domestic agenda rests on the assumption that less regulation is better. It presumes that government has got to be cut back and the market will deliver whatever you need. Now they've got to plug up this massive leak in their ideological dike.'"

Paul Krugman finally told on Bush, and his own rotten insider trading scandal, when as a board member of Harken Energy, he relied on fraudulent books to deceive investors while he unloaded stocks right before a crash. The full Bush hypocrisy in jawboning for corporate integrity is now exposed for all to see. It only took the Times two years to catch up with us.

In this time when Shrub is using the bully pulpit to lambaste execs and promise jail time for insider trading, it's good to remember that's how the little crook made his own initial fortune. As Governor of Texas, George W. Bush made money over the years with a little help from his friends. But SEC filings show that he served on Harken Energy Corporation's board and was able to realize a huge profit by selling his stock in the corporation because an accounting sleight-of-hand concealed it was losing large sums of money. Shortly after he sold, the stock price plummeted. That profit helped make him a multimillionaire. It's funny how Martha Stewart is noteworthy for a much smaller insider trade, but the rightwing media will of course totally ignore the Resident's own complicity.

Salon's Anthony York reports that criticism of Robert Mueller "echo charges that arose more than 10 years ago during Mueller's handling of the investigation into the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. At the time, the criticism of Mueller focused on his willingness to defend the Justice Department and its employees, and his refusal to admit error in an investigation that, critics alleged, went awry. [In the early 1990s, Mueller oversaw the DoJ's] investigation into BCCI, which was eventually found to be involved in a host of criminal activities, including international money laundering, the support of global terrorism, and the selling of nuclear technology, according to a 1992 congressional report on the bank." BCCI was also tied into CIA money laundering, especially the BushDaddy's covert funding of Saddam Hussein. Now -- will Mueller's involvement in the Iran-Contra cover-up be exposed along with 'Poppy' Bush's last minute pardons of his Iran Contra co-conspirators?

Wayne "Smith, 52, the No. 2 official at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, filed for whistle-blower protection on Thursday rather than respond to a demand for his resignation by 5 p.m. that day. He is fighting his ouster on the grounds that he was retaliated against for protesting 'undue' White House influence on his decision-making, said his attorney, Nancy Luque. Appointed last September, Smith is one of the highest-ranking Bush administration appointees to be forced out... Luque... also asked the office of U.S. Attorney Roscoe C. Howard Jr. to investigate 'corruption' at the Interior Department, which she believes 'goes to the White House' regarding alleged pressure on Smith to intervene in a regional BIA decision involving a tribal membership issue in California. Smith had declined to intervene and instead reported the White House pressure to his superiors in Interior Secretary Gale A. Norton's office, Luque said. A week later, he was being 'leaned on' to resign, she said."

Mark Weisbrot writes, "Back in January, when the Enron scandal threatened to ensnare the Bush Administration, [Ari Fleischer bragged] 'Did you notice all the Enron stuff that everybody was asking about? Look what made it on the air --the business-scandal side of it.' Fleischer had succeeded in burying the political-scandal side of the story, and it was a remarkable professional achievement in the world of spin. Here was an Administration that was locked in 'a carnal embrace' with Enron... But the political fallout was barely registering. Now Fleischer's magic, and President [sic] Bush's teflon coating, may finally be fading. The discovery that there were numerous warning signs leading up to the massacre of Sept. 11, that went unheeded, could mark the beginning of a Great Unraveling."

"Human rights advocates are calling for a probe of the Bush administration's possible role in another energy and influence-peddling scandal. According to a recent report by the British-based NGO Global Witness, Bush and US oil interests have ties to some of the key figures in the arms-for-oil scandal which has devastated Angola. Known as 'Angolagate' in France, the scandal involves arms-for-oil deals between French businessman Pierre Falcone, the head of a firm called Brenco International... Falcone's wife, Sonia, a former Miss Bolivia and a friend of First Lady Laura Bush [R- Façade], became a big-ticket contributor to Bush's 2000 election campaign. Contributions were made to the campaign through Sonia's Essanté Corporation, a distributor of health, beauty, and sexual pleasure products (such as a cream called Entisse that Essanté's web site says is guaranteed to duplicate the effects of Viagra)." We demand an investigation!

John Nichols writes that in April, Cynthia McKinney's "call for a real investigation of what Bush knew -- [drew a firestorm of criticism] from pundits and partisans. 'The American people know the facts, and they dismiss such ludicrous, baseless views,' grumbled White House spokesman Scott McLellan. 'The fact that she questions the president's legitimacy shows a partisan mind-set beyond all reason.' Barely one month after McKinney was so condemned, [the headlines echo McKinney's words. On Thursday, she said]: 'It now becomes clear why the Bush Administration has been vigorously opposing congressional hearings. The Bush Administration has been engaged in a conspiracy of silence. If committed and patriotic people had not been pushing for disclosure today's revelations would have been hidden by the White House.' " Hey Scott - Bush HAS NO legitimacy, only partisan rightwingers say that he does. Impeach Bush NOW!

Salon.com editor David Talbot writes, "Well, there goes Karl Rove's strategy of using 9/11 to sell the Republicans as the party of national vigilance in the midterm elections. Just one day after the GOP tried to shake the money tree with [the 9/11 photo of Bush, they were] forced to admit that while Bush was relaxing at his Crawford ranch in early August, he was briefed about a potential Osama bin Laden hijacking plot. [One of the biggest questions] is why it took eight months for the White House to admit it had received early warnings about the day of infamy. Immediately after 9/11, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told the press that Bush officials had 'no warnings' of the al-Qaida offensive. Now it turns out they were awash in clues, [from warnings about] Middle Eastern men in flight training schools, to the [FBI agent] who flat-out warned that suspected terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui was the type who 'could fly something into the World Trade Center.'"

The Bu$h Administration is riddled with Iran-Contra co-conspirators, including: "JOHN POINDEXTER. Reagan national security adviser during Iran-Contra, the retired admiral is director of the Pentagon's Information Awareness Office. Created after the Sept. 11 terror attacks...ELLIOTT ABRAMS. A former assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, Abrams was hired by Bush last year as special White House assistant for democracy and human rights...OTTO REICH. Serving as assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, Abrams' old job...RICHARD ARMITAGE. As deputy secretary of state, Armitage is No. 2 at the State Department after Secretary of State Colin Powell...JOHN NEGROPONTE. A veteran diplomat serving now as U.N. ambassador...MITCH DANIELS. Currently director of the Office of Management and Budget..." and COLIN POWELL! (After an historical review of Republican Iran Contra scandal, scroll down for listing.)

Allyson Cowan writes in the New York Times, "President [sic] Bush acted lawfully in sending his gubernatorial papers [to Poppy's] library instead of the state archives across the street from the Texas Capitol, but the documents are state property and subject to Texas' open-records law... 'We had a few high-fives,' said Peggy D. Rudd, director of the Texas State Library and Archives Commission... 'We felt very vindicated.' At the behest of Mr. Bush... Texas enacted a law in 1997 that gave its governors the right to name an alternate depository for their official papers. But details of such a transfer remained murky under the law... Bush library officials said that they could not be expected to comply with a state law [10 day freedom-of-information requests] and lacked the resources to do so, though they have" come close to doing so. Nice Try, Shrub! Same Luck, Next Time!

David Corn writes in TomPaine, "How does the Bush administration take care of valuable public property? It hands the asset to a private corporation and allows that business to exploit away. That’s precisely what the Bush gang did with an important piece of Internet real estate. On April 24, while you were busy reading e-mail or perusing Web sites, you probably missed the biggest electronic land rush in years. That day NeuStar, a Washington-based firm, started selling, via 70 online retailers, e-mail and Web addresses in the .us domain. (Think of yourname.us.) This was a big deal, as e-speculators rushed to grab addresses, and the public -- and the public interest -- was largely cut out of the picture."

Monty Python's Terry Jones delivers a stinging indictment of Shrub's illegitimacy. "Since its ground-breaking experiments in vote-counting in Florida two years ago, the US has been universally recognised as the chief innovator in the field of democratic principles. Therefore, one of the factors that must surely confer legitimacy on any democracy would be approval by the US... It is also no good imagining that landslide victories are any guide to legitimacy. Just because Chavez has twice been elected President by the largest margins in Venezuela's history... that does not mean it can go around passing any legislation it wants. According to the 'Florida Rules', the narrower the margin of victory, the greater the legitimacy. In fact, if the victor actually has fewer people voting for him than the loser (almost half-a-million fewer in the case of George W. Bush) then that is democracy's way of awarding him carte blanche to do whatever he and his friends in the oil business want." Yowza!

Judicial Watch "will launch an investigation of how the Department of the Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) manages the Indian Gaming License process... The April 11, 2002 edition of the Wall Street Journal contained a report from Jim Vandehei entitled, 'Wealthy Tribes Give More to GOP As Desire for Tax Breaks Increase' ... Interior Secretary Gale Norton reportedly met with tribal leaders of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw, and the Coushatta and Chitimacha from Louisiana last fall at a private home in Washington DC's exclusive Georgetown neighborhood. The tribes are represented by Jack Abramoff, a fundraiser for Bush. The Wall Street Journal reports that each tribe has agreed to contribute as much as $1 million dollars to Republican 2002 campaigns. Another meeting with Bush and a small group of tribal leaders was reportedly arranged by Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, a group the Wall Street Journal reported is partly funded by the Indian tribes."

The submarine joyride on the USS Greenville by Texas energy executives that cost 9 lives, including 4 teenagers, has now cost US taxpayers $11.5 million in compensation to the Japanese government. The submarine was piloted by one of the Texan energy executives during its fateful ascent to the surface. To date, the Navy has spent $60 million to raise the fishing boat, at least $40 million of which went to Cheney's Halliburton (http://starbulletin.com/2001/07/01/news/story5.html ). The Navy is conducting separate compensation talks with the victims' families. Former President Bush #41 is the honorary chairman of the Pearl Harbor Restoration Fund. And how much did the Texas energy executives contribute to the restoration fund, and to Bu$h 43's campaign fund?

David Corn writes in Alternet, "Will someone please buy George W. Bush a dictionary? It's not that he needs to expand his vocabulary -- though a synonym for 'evildoer' might be useful -- but his administration has been misusing common words and, in the process, perverting political discourse. Days ago, The Washington Post reported the Bush administration's recently-drafted nuclear posture review -- the master plan for developing and structuring the U.S. nuclear force -- notes that nuclear weapons will be part of the U.S. 'offensive deterrence.' Offensive deterrence? Is this Orwellian, or merely Strangelovian?"

The Nation's David Corn writes, "Too bad Bush only has his words, and not his own experience, to offer as inspiration while crusading for corporate responsibility. When he was in the private sector, he and his corporate colleagues violated several of the principles he now champions." Corn documents Bu$h's abuses from 1986-1991 while serving as a Director of Harken Energy. While investors lost their shirts, Bu$h cashed out to buy his interest in the Texas Rangers baseball team, which he sold for nearly $16 million several years later.

David Corn writes "Every so often, our elected leaders -- or somewhat elected leaders -- get something exactly wrong. Consider the Bush White House's over-our-dead-bodies refusal to release records on Vice-President Dick Cheney's energy task force to the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Democrats and Republicans across town have been saying for weeks this is a boner of a move -- from a political vantage. It makes the White House looks guilty, and it continues to draw attention to the Bush-Enron connection. There's no one in the capital -- outside of the White House -- who believes this information won't pop out sooner or later. It's the principle, the principle, the White House keeps bleating. The Bushies are playing it like a good cop/bad cop routine: 'I'd like to release this material, really I would, but my hard-ass partner here, Mr. Principle...'"

Molly Ivins writes, "When Bush was in the oil business, his failing company Spectrum 7 was bought by Harken Energy. Bush and his two partners got $2 million in stock in exchange for a company that had lost $400,000 in the six months prior to the sale. Bush himself got stock worth about $500,000 and an annual consulting fee of $120,000, later reduced to $50,000. In June 1990, Bush sold two-thirds of the Harken stock he had acquired in the Spectrum 7 deal at $4 a share -- $318,430 more than it was worth when he got it. A month before Bush sold his stock... Smith, Barney, Harris, Upham & Co., the financial consultants hired by Harken, told Bush... only drastic action could save the company. So Bush sold his stock before the news became public. According to U.S. News & World Report, there was 'substantial evidence to suggest that Bush knew Harken was in dire straits.'" We demand a Special Prosecutor!

"Richard Nixon is beginning to look pretty good. Presidential payoffs to bad guys, enemy lists, misuse of government agencies, even obstruction of justice are taking on the pleasant emergence of wistful nostalgia--a real stroll in the park--compared to the sweeping and open violations of public trust being committed by George W. Bush & Company. One longs for the likes of that brooding president sitting hunched over a tape recorder in the dark of night, snuffing and resnuffing the few puffs of a smoking gun, as opposed to the happy-go-lucky personality who has done more lasting harm in one year than Dick Nixon in six." So writes P.M. Carpenter in the History News Network.

In 1990, King George I was President and the dauphin was in the oil "bidness," as a director and major shareholder in Harken Energy. On June 22, Bu$h unloaded 60% of his shares at $4.12 for a profit of $848,560. Six days later, Harken closed the 2nd quarter with a loss of $23 million, which caused the stock to plunge to $2.37. "This left Bush, a Harken director and member of the firm's audit committee, exposed to accusations of insider trading: dumping stock before the company's troubles became public knowledge... Bush denied all charges of impropriety, and the probe ended ambiguously." Bu$h got away with his crime because the SEC Chairman, Richard Bredeen, was a former partner of James Baker at Baker & Botts, and deputy counsel to George I when he was VP. In The Nation, Chris Floyd reveals that Harken's auditors were - you guessed it - Arthur Andersen! We demand a Special Prosecutor!

When asked about the secret meetings between Enron and Dick Cheney, Pretzelman went ballistic. "If somebody has got an accusation about some wrongdoing, just let me know." OK Pretzelman, we're SOOOO glad you asked! Why did Cheney have six meetings with Enron, and where are the notes of those meetings? Why did Cheney's report include 17 provisions specifically benefiting Enron? Why is Enron the single largest beneficiary of the energy plan? What did Ken Lay promise Dick Cheney in reward for all of these benefits? What did you and Cheney promise Ken Lay in return for his $2 million in contributions to your campaign and the GOP? Why are you keeping the records of the energy task force secret, when Republicans ceaselessly demanded the records of Hillary's health care task force? Besides your energy plan, how many OTHER policies have you sold to the highest corporate bidder? And lest we forget, don't you belong in jail for stealing the Presidency?

"The Bush Administration's entanglement with ENRON is beginning to unravel as it finally admits that Enron executives entered the White House six times last year to secretly plan the Administration's energy policy with Vice-President Cheney before the collapse of the Texas-based energy giant. Meanwhile, even more trouble for our former-Texas-oil-man-turned-President is brewing with reports that unveil UNOCAL, another big energy company, for being in bed with the Taliban, along with the U.S. government in a major, continuing effort to construct pipelines through Afghanistan from the petroleum-rich Caspian Basin in Central Asia. Beneath their burkas, UNOCAL is being exposed for giving the five star treatment to Taliban Mullahs in the Lone Star State in 1997. The 'evil-ones' were also invited to meet with U.S. government officials in Washington, D.C." So writes Tom Turnipseed in Common Dreams.

Remember the media furors over Bill Clinton's haircut at LAX airport, and the helicopter trips to play golf? Now just IMAGINE the furor if an advance team for a Clinton photo op had had an accident that sent 4 firefighters to the hospital! That's EXACTLY what happened in Brookline Massachusetts on Sunday, but did you hear one word about it? Of course not! It's one more Republican media scrub!

"A central figure in an investigation into the desecration of graves at two Florida Jewish cemeteries is dead of an apparent suicide, police said Thursday. Peter Hartmann, 45, was found dead late Wednesday in the garage of his parents' Boca Raton home, apparently from carbon monoxide poisoning. A car was running, police said, and the garage was full of smoke. Hartmann was the general manager of the Menorah Gardens Cemetery chain that had come under fire for allegedly digging up bodies without notifying their relatives and, in some cases, losing the remains of the deceased. Menorah Gardens is operated by Service Corporation International, one of the country's largest providers of funeral and cemetery services." SCI was the corporation in Bush's original Funeralgate scandal in Texas that has reared its ugly head again in Jeb's Florida. (Enter 'funeralgate' in our .Compass search engine for more).

"Remember how the GOPMedia buried the 'Funeralgate' story [in Texas] surrounding George W. Bush -- just as they buried the Air National Guard desertion story, the drug-use stories, the booze stories (until his DUIs started coming to light)? Remember how the main figure in that story, Eliza May, was convinced to settle out of court, rather than (horrors!) drag the sacred Bush name through the mud? Well, this is one story that won't stay buried. In fact, the chief figures in Funeralgate -- the fine folks running the Houston-based Service Corporation International funeral company – have been accused of similar gruesome stunts in (you guessed it) that other Bush fiefdom, the State of Florida!…George W. Bush was not able to avoid testifying under oath concerning the [original] Funeralgate case…even one of SCI's own lawyers contradicted Bush's sworn testimony, indicating the strong possibility that then-Governor Bush deliberately lied and misled while under oath."

"Still, the details that [the authors of 'Bin Laden: The Hidden Truth'] provide (including the fact that the Taliban hired the niece of former CIA director Richard Helms to orchestrate their publicity) do not contradict what was already known about the relationship between Washington and its soon-to-be arch-enemy. In fact, they support it. Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid's well-regarded book 'Taliban: Islam, Oil And The New Great Game in Central Asia' outlines how oil politics has affected U.S. policy in Afghanistan. The Taliban's unprecedented offer to extradite bin Laden to a third country, well before the Sept. 11 attacks, was reported by the Times of London in February. In September, this newspaper reported on the often cozy relationship between Washington and the Taliban. What are we to make of all of this?"

The collapse of Enron Corp. promises to blow a hole through the American economy that will dwarf the financial damage done by terrorists on September 11. One of America's largest corporations, with a market capitalization of hundreds of billions of dollars at its peak, Enron has gone south in a hurry, leaving tens of thousands of investors with billions of dollars in losses. The employees of Enron were prohibited by the terms of their company administered retirement plan from diversifying. Meanwhile Kenneth Lay, a close friend and major contributor to both Bush presidents made off with over $300 million over the last few years. The top brass did equally as well. Directors included former Treasury Secretary Jim Baker, former Commerce Secretary Robert Mosbacher, and former Commodities Future Trading Commissioner Wendy Gramm, wife of Republican Senator Phil Gramm.

In their book, "Brisard and Dasquie claim a significant part of the Saudi royal family supports bin Laden. 'Saudi Arabia has always protected bin Laden - or protected itself from him,' says Brisard. He points out that attacks inside the kingdom targeted US interests, never the Saudis. Khalid bin Mahfouz is the former chairman of the kingdom's biggest bank, the National Commercial Bank...Brisard and Dasquie call him 'the banker of terror'. The 73-year-old Mahfouz is now under house arrest in the Saudi resort of Taif, accused by the FBI and CIA of having diverted $2 billion to Islamic charities that helped bin Laden." Bin Mahfouz was involved with BCCI, the CIA-linked money laundering operation. He was the banker for a Saudi sheikh who invested in Bush's Harken Energy. Mahfouz also inherited the Houston interests of bin Laden's late brother, Salem. Salem allegedly invested in Bush's Arbusto Energy (For more, enter 'madsen' in our .Compass search engine).

"The Saudi Arabian monarchy has long played a double game on the international scene. In its political and financial networks can be found an astonishing mix of Islamic fanatics, respectable bankers, big American oil companies, pro-Taliban lobbyists, members of the Bush clan and sponsors of terrorism. An exclusive inquiry by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie (editor in chief of Intelligence Online) focuses on the political and financial underpinnings of the Al Qaeda organization and secret negotiations between the Bush administration and the Taliban until this summer." This book exposes the ultimatum delivered by Bush representatives to the Taliban. The Bushies allegedly told them to either go along with the BushCheney Oil Plan in exchange for a 'carpet of gold', or else they would be 'buried under a carpet of bombs.' There is a link for ordering 'Bin Laden, The Hidden Truth' -- available in French (no English translation) for now.

In light of the news of Bush/Taliban dealings alleged by Brisard and Dasquie, we are re-running this fascinating timeline compiled by Michael Ruppert at his CopvCIA.com site. "The terrorist attack on 911 came as a bolt out of the blue to the American people. But the US government was up to its eyeballs in war planning. The government received warnings from various foreign leaders and intelligence services, and a CIA official is reported to have met with Bin Laden himself in July. Around that time, US officials sent a warning to the Taliban that we would attack them, and early in September British and US forces were deployed in the Persian Gulf. What did the US know, and when did they know it? Here is a useful list of events leading up to 911."

In September, we ran an item that asked, "Why Did Bush Give $43 Million to Afghanistan in May?" Here is an excerpt: "On May 22, LA Times columnist Robert Scheer denounced 'the recent gift of $43 million to the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan, the most virulent anti-American violators of human rights in the world today. The gift, announced last Thursday by Secretary of State Colin Powell...makes the U.S. the main sponsor of the Taliban and rewards that 'rogue regime' for declaring that opium growing is against the will of God. '" So was this about Opium -- or Oil? Was this $43 million a tasty sample of the gold feast the Taliban would enjoy for getting with the BushCheney Oil Program? (For an article by Wayne Madsen about Bush/Taliban dealings, enter 'madsen' in our .Compass search engine. To read about Taliban spokesperson Lalai Helms [former CIA Director Richard Helms' niece] enter 'helms'. Helms got the Taliban access to the State Dept].

Investigative reporter Greg Palast has been looking into the events leading up to Sept. 11. "The CIA and Saudi Arabia. The Bushes and the Bin Ladens. Did their connections cause America to turn a blind eye to terrorism?" His report is being broadcast on BBC on Tuesday, and will be available permanently at gregpalast.com

After a month, it appears clear that the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan has backfired. It has not driven the Taliban from power; instead, it has rallied the people of Afghanistan behind them. So why are we dropping so many backfiring bombs? Could this be a payoff from Bush Jr. to his father, Bush Sr., and his other cronies - including the mastermind of the Stolen Election, James Baker - who are the super-wealthy influence peddlers in the Carlyle Group? According to the Guardian, "Among the defence firms which benefit from Carlyle's success is United Defense, a Virginia-based contractor which makes vertical missile launch systems currently on board US Navy ships in the Arabian sea." Disturbing questions like these are EXACTLY the reason why former Presidents and other top government officials should be prohibited from selling their influence in the private sector. We demand an investigation!

Initially to keep Reagan's papers from being released, "the Bush White House has drafted an executive order that would usher in a new era of secrecy for presidential records and allow an incumbent president to withhold a former president's papers even if the former president wanted to make them public. The five-page draft would also require members of the public seeking particular documents to show at least a 'demonstrated, specific need' for them before they would be considered for release. Historians and others who have seen the proposed order called it unprecedented and said it would turn the 1978 Presidential Records Act on its head by allowing such materials to be kept secret 'in perpetuity.'" Surrounded by a staff of his Daddy's Iran-Contra/Iraqgate cronies, Bush has drafted an order that is nothing less than a sweeping abuse of power to cover up his Daddy's crimes -- and to provide CYA for his own illegitimate, corrupt administration.

The House "stimulus" bill is the most outrageous act of war profiteering in history. And who's behind it all? "It's not too surprising that calculations by Citizens for Tax Justice show General Motors, with its 380,000 workers, getting a check for $800 million. But it's quite amazing that TXU (formerly Dallas Power and Light), a company with only 16,000 employees, would get a check for $600 million. And there are a number of medium-sized companies that, like TXU, are in line for surprisingly big benefits. These companies include ChevronTexaco, Enron, Phillips Petroleum, IMC Global and CMS Energy. What do they have in common? Well, they tend to be in the energy or mining businesses; and they tend to be based in or near Texas. In other words, the one-eyed bearded man with a limp looks a lot like Dick Cheney." So writes NY Times columnist Paul Krugman.

Powerful Saudi Arabian banker Khalid bin Mahfouz was a principal in BCCI, which defrauded depositors of $10 billion in the '80s in what has been called the "largest bank fraud in world financial history" - and also channeled funds from the Reagan/Bush CIA to the Contras and the Afghan Mujahadeen. Bin Mahfouz invested funds with James Bath, a close Bush friend, who in turn invested in Bush's first oil company, Arbusto Energy. Bin Mahfouz was also the banker for Saudi Sheik Abdullah Taha Bakhsh, who bough 17.6% of Bush's second oil company, Harken Energy. According to investigative reporter Wayne Madsen, "bin Mahfouz allegedly has been financing the bin Laden terrorist network—making Bush a U.S. citizen who has done business with those who finance and support terrorists." We demand an investigation!

"Two years ago, President Bill Clinton signed an executive order freezing $254 million in Taliban assets in the United States, more than twice the amount linked to terrorist groups and seized worldwide since the Sept. 11 attacks. U.S. officials will not disclose where the $254 million came from, except to say that it was under the control of the Taliban... With no other way to explain the $254 million, [Afghan spokesman Yar] Mohabbat said he suspected the money included profits from drug sales. Afghanistan became a major supplier of opium for heroin in the 1990s, and Asa Hutchinson, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, told Congress last week that the Taliban's "modest economy is dependent upon opium." Contrast the actions of the Clinton administration with Bush's bizarre policy of giving the Taliban from $43 to $100 million since May.

Famous Yellowstone ranger Bob "Action" Jackson, who was rewarded by the Clinton administration's Dept. of Interior for vigilantly pursuing hunters who sneak inside the park to shoot protected wildlife, has been removed from his post and silenced by a gag order. Jackson is likely to be fired, without just cause. Obviously, Gail Norton's Department of the Interior has ulterior motives - they want to open up our park lands for widespread corporate plundering, hunting, and recreational activities that would spoil the environment and decimate protected wildlife. "Action" Jackson is just an obstacle in their way, so we must defend him. Sign the petition!

"Fred Malek [was] deputy director of CREEP (Committee to Re-elect the President), the Nixon White House operation behind Watergate… After lying low for a time, he made his political comeback as a leader in the Republican Party in the late 1980s, only to resign as deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee in 1988 when an ugly incident from his past came to light: At Nixon's behest, he had drawn up a list of Jews in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, where Nixon thought a 'Jewish cabal' was out to get him. Nonetheless, Malek rebounded yet again in 1992 as campaign manager for the Bush/Quayle ticket… The Carlyle connection runs in the family. In 1990, a year after Carlyle acquired Caterair, a large airline-catering firm, Fred Malek, a longtime Bush associate [and elsewhere described as an advisor to Carlyle], helped place George W. on the board of Caterair." Read more about the Carlyle Group at the Bushwatch's series, "The Bush-bin Laden Money Connection."

From the Houston Chronicle, 6/4/92: "In sworn depositions, [James] Bath said he represented four prominent Saudis as a trustee [one of whom was Saudi Sheik Salem M. Binladen] and that he would use his name on their investments...Tax documents and personal financial records show that Bath personally had a 5 percent interest in Arbusto '79 Ltd., and Arbusto '80 Ltd., limited partnerships controlled by George W. Bush... According to a 1976 trust agreement, drawn shortly after Bush was appointed director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Saudi Sheik Salem M. Binladen appointed Bath as his business representative in Houston…In a sworn deposition, Bath said he was the sole director of Skyway Aircraft Leasing Ltd., a company that a court document shows is owned by Khaled bin Mahfouz. Bin Mahfouz had been a major shareholder in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International." Bath and George W. have been friends since their days in the National Guard. (Click and scroll down).

"Dallas attorney Robert Jordan was confirmed [last] Wednesday by the United States Senate to serve as ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Jordan has no diplomatic experience. However, his connections leave no doubt as to why he was named to the post. He defended George W. Bush in a probe of insider trading allegations in 1990. The allegations involved the sale by Bush of 60% of his Harken Energy Corp. stocks two months before a 25% drop in the stock's price. According to a 7 Sep 2000 article by the Associated Press, 'At the time of the investigation, Bush's father was president of the United States and the SEC was run by one of his biggest political supporters, Richard Breeden. The SEC's then-counsel, James R. Doty, was another staunch presidential supporter who as a private attorney was George W. Bush's lawyer when he purchased his share of the Texas Rangers baseball team.'" See the second article on this page – the first one is about the Carlyle Group.

"An important tenet of journalism is that you should always ask, 'Who benefits?' In the case of a war, the answers to this question become of paramount importance. Suppose, for example, that profits from military contracting were to go in the pockets of a former U.S. President whose son (and a presumed future heir) is now President? Suppose further that such profits escalate in times of conflict. Wouldn't this be of concern to the public? Wouldn't you expect the media to be all over such an important ethical (not to mention moral and maybe legal) angle? Though described by the Industry Standard as 'the world's largest private equity firm, ' with over $12 billion under management, chances are readers haven't ever heard of The Carlyle Group. Isn't that a little odd, considering it is run by a veritable who's who of former Republican political leaders." So writes Alice Cherbonnier in the Baltimore Chronicle.

"A prominent budget watchdog group today called for an investigation to determine whether taxpayer funds were used to pay for an exclusive fireworks display that took place at the White House last night. "'Taxpayers have the right to know whether they paid for this elaborate and unnecessary spectacle,' commented Jill Lancelot, Legislative Director at Taxpayers for Common Sense. 'We need to make sure that we're getting the biggest bang for our buck with our tax dollars and picking up the tab for a fireworks display at an essentially private event isn't the way to do that.' One hundred thirty-six White House guests were treated to a fireworks display on the Ellipse that reportedly cost $175,000 to $250,000...The group also questioned the Bush Administration's motives in awarding the contract for the display to Zambelli Fireworks Internationale. George Zambelli, the head of the company, gave a $2,000 individual contribution to George W. Bush's presidential campaign last year."

"Bush welcomed President Vicente Fox of Mexico on Wednesday night with a bang – a fireworks display that was as big, and as loud, as it was under-publicized…In Georgetown, the noise woke up a family with an 11-year-old daughter. 'The president of the United States just woke up three-quarters of a million people for a private party,' said the girl's father, who did not give his name. 'It's not a national holiday; it's a school night, it's a work night . . . it's just about common decency that neighbors have for one another'... At the White House this morning, there was surprise about the uproar. 'The White House tries to be respectful of the residents of Washington, D.C.,' said Ashleigh Adams, a spokeswoman for [Queen...er...] first lady Laura Bush. 'This was part of a grand event meant to celebrate our relationship with Mexico. We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused to others.'"

Do you remember the famous Bush line that goes, "It's YOUR money!" Well, here's what Dirty Georgie did with YOUR money: he spent as much as $250,000 on a PRIVATE fireworks display for Mexican President Vicente Fox and 135 other guests, many of whom are not US taxpayers. The fireworks - reportedly the best in decades - were shot over the Mall, but Bush DELIBERATELY kept the public in the dark, so WE wouldn't get to see the fireworks. In other words, YOUR money was used to put on a spectacular show to which YOU were not invited, but NON-TAXPAYERS were! Now this is EXACTLY the kind of scandal America's corporate media can understand. And just IMAGINE how much coverage this would be getting if it was the Clinton Administration (remember the silly Haircutgate?). Call the media and demand wall-to-wall coverage of Fireworksgate, to find out exactly what Dirty Georgie did with YOUR money!

Bush has made it all but impossible for anyone who disagrees with him to get within a mile of the White House. But now we find he gave a cozy special welcome to a large party of so-called FReepers (short for Free Republic). These folks are, essentially, one step on the food chain above Neo-Nazis, and often just as vicious. They are the ones responsible for a high % of the especially nasty (i.e, unprintable here), even threatening e-mails to folks who express opinions they don't like on Internet forums (we've gotten some pretty horrendous FReeper mail here at Dems, believe me!). They are bigoted, paranoid, and very pro-gun - not a very nice combination. Yet these are the folks given a big ole warm southern (Confederate?) welcome by the White House. So, when can we expect the formation of the "Bush Youth" movement?

Even Judicial Watch, which usually targets Democrats only, thought that Tom DeLay stepped over the legal line when he promised lobbyists meetings with White House officials in exchange for donations to the GOP (DeLay is currently hustling doctors in a boiler room operation that promises victims nonexistent "advisory positions" in exchange for donations). But Ashcroft's "corruption-fighting division" says it won't even investigate DeLay and his sockpuppet -- Denny Hastert. In other words, Ashcroft knows DeLay is guilty and is aborting justice by not even looking into the matter. Had these crimes been committed by Democrats, Ashcroft would have gone after them with a vengeance.

Few people are as responsible for Bu$h's coup d'etat as Rupert Murdoch, the right-wing owner of FOX. FOX, of course, led the war against Clinton for 8 years, then against Gore during the campaign. And FOX employed Bu$h's cousin John Ellis, who made the crucial call of Florida for Bu$h at 2 am on Election Night, which made Gore the underdog from that moment on. To repay his massive debt, Bu$h - through his corporate shill Michael Powell, Colin's son - violated numerous laws to let Murdoch buy 10 more TV stations. If you hate the corporate media lies now, just wait until FOX owns 100% of America's media.

The Washington Post's Sebastian Mallaby points out how, in his first year, Bush has committed virtually all of the policy "sins" that Republicans used to ruthlessly attack Clinton. He also criticizes Bush for a "regressive tax cut, a forced march toward missile defense and head-in-sand policies on global warming -- all of which Clinton would have spared us." But he says that Bush "has avoided major scandal and restored dignity to the White House." Is he kidding? The scandal that relentlessly dogged Clinton until 1999 was Whitewater - which was ultimately dismissed by Ken Starr because it was a media hoax! Meanwhile, Bush is stalked by one ENORMOUS scandal that the PEOPLE know, but the media adamantly refuses to cover - that he STOLE the Presidency. Some day, Bush will have to face up to this truth, which will be remembered as perhaps the biggest Presidential scandal in history.

In 1976, CIA director George H. W. Bush read an AP story exposing the fact that former CIA chief, Richard Helms, lied to the Warren Commission about the CIA's involvement with Lee Harvey Oswald. Even though the story was accurate, Bush's CIA "pressured one news outlet to back away from an accurate story while using an asset in the press corps to suppress it in another." If you think the Bushes stopped operating this way in 1976, you're most certainly wrong. We demand an investigation!

According to the Washington Post, "Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) called yesterday for a Justice Department review of White House senior advisor Karl Rove's repeated discussions with executives and representatives of companies in which he held stock. In a letter to White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales, Waxman said Rove appeared to be in violation of federal conflict-of-interest laws." Gonzales, a Bush/Rove crony from Texas, is covering up Rove's criminal behavior. We demand an INDEPENDENT investigation by the Public Integrity Section of the Justice Department!

"Of all the events of ex-President Bush’s political career, his participation in the Iran-Contra affair proved to be the most ignominious…When Bush subsequently pardoned Weinberger and his fellow Iran-Contra conspirator, Elliott Abrams, he was, in fact, pardoning himself…Elliott Abrams is a liar and an apologist for mass murderers. That is not opinion, it is fact. While apologists ask us to forget his past, the citizens of those nations who suffered for his dishonesty and amorality cannot be asked to be quite so generous. Moreover, Abrams’ return stains the honor of all Americans. With his appointment to the National Security Council, Abrams joins Bush appointees John Negroponte and Otto Reich, both of whom played significant roles in these same shameful events, as part of a propaganda campaign to convince Americans that his father and Ronald Reagan did nothing wrong when they put the United Sates of America on the side of genocidal killers in Latin America and then lied about it."

In the early '90's, investigative reporter Danny Casolaro was hot on the trail of what he called 'the Octopus.' Wrote John Connally in a 1993 Spy Magazine article, "The Octopus, in Casolaro's view encompassed the alleged theft of a sophisticated computer software program by Justice Department officials; an effort by a former CIA operative to use a California Indian reservation as a front for supplying weapons to the Nicaraguan contras; the shady connections between the Wackenhut Corporation and the CIA; the burgeoning BCCI scandal; and the October Surprise." The Octopus has also been thought to include the CIA-Noriega alliance, the Savings and Loans lootings by Neil Bush and others -- and Bush Sr.'s covert arming of Saddam Hussein's military. Regrettably, Casolaro died under mysterious circumstances – an apparent 'suicide' that left more questions than answers. Consider that all of Casolaro's files of his investigation were missing from the hotel room where he died.

Several weeks ago, Karl Rove was exposed for meeting with Intel executives while holding $100,000-$250,000 worth of Intel stock - a clear violation of ethics laws. But apparently Karl Rove believes he is ABOVE the law. Sorry, Karl, we ain't buying it. It's time for Karl Rove to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Greg Palast is one of the last true investigative reporters. He discovered the smoking gun used by the Bush team in their theft of the Florida election. Palast reported in "The Nation" that a firm hired by Katherine Harris purged thousands of African Americans -- and therefore likely Gore voters -- from the voter registry. Mr. Palast has also reported on the energy problems in California as a result of deregulation and price gouging by the energy sector. Lately, Mr. Palast's newspaper -- the London Observer --is being sued by Barrick Gold Mining for Palast's story about Barrick's human rights abuses in Tanzania. Palast also described how Barrick paid only $10,000 for $10 billion worth of gold mine rights, thanks to a deal finessed by the previous Bush administration. After leaving office, Bush Sr. was put on the Barrick payroll. Palast will be interviewed by Meria Heller on Tues. July 3rd, 1 pm EST. Following the initial webcast, an archive of the program can be played anytime.

Please join the "I Called Tom" campaign today by calling Senator Tom Daschle's office at 202-224-2321 to urge him to aggressively pursue Republican influence selling schemes, like Karl Rove's sale of influence to Intel. Rove "can't recall" if he took action to help Intel, yet the lobbyist who met with him called the meeting "very helpful." Help Daschle and the Democrats draw the line on Republican abuse of authority!

"The General Accounting Office is investigating the propriety of private meetings by Vice President Cheney's energy task force, and Cheney's office is refusing to provide some of the requested information. The GAO, the investigative arm of Congress, has told the vice president's office that it is looking into the costs and practices of the National Energy Policy Development Group, which Cheney headed and which developed the energy policy President Bush announced May 17." Said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee,"the Cheney task force's refusal to provide basic information about its interactions with nongovernmental entities and individuals raises serious questions about the access large donors have to the policymaking process in the Bush administration." There has also been evidence that executives from Enron -- Bush's #1 backer -- have weighed in on Bush appointments. Where's the outrage?

E.J. Dionne comments on the double standard of the Bushies pumping the bogus Clinton vandalism stories vs. their whine of "partisan investigations" over hero Henry Waxman's calls for legitimate investigations. Specifically, Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett was whining against the need for investigations into Karl Rove's meetings with the chief executive from Intel, since Rove is invested heavily in Intel stocks. Dionne writes, "The double standard is clear. Anything allegedly bad that happened under Clinton was worth investigating over and over and over. But anything allegedly bad that happens under Bush should certainly not be investigated. Investigating the Clinton administration was an obligation to justice. Not investigating the Bush administration is an obligation to civility." But we disagree with Dionne that "Tom Daschle was shrewd to say that" there is no need to investigate Rove. Rove's meetings were hardly "peccadilloes" – since they pose a serious conflict of interest.

Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle went on Fox News Sunday (!) to raise the white flag of surrender to the illegitimate and thoroughly corrupt Bush administration. When asked if there will be an investigation of Karl Rove, Daschle said, "I don't see one, no... We're not going to engage in payback. There's plenty of temptation to do that, but we're not going to." Hey Tom - we're not asking for payback. We want an investigation of violations of federal law by top administration officials. That is the responsibility of the Democrats as the majority party in the Senate!! Just follow the lead of Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) - who has no power because House Dems are in the minority - but is nevertheless pressing Rove for the facts and Dan Burton for an investigation.

"Bush the Second has tapped a number of Reagan/Bush alums who were involved in Iran/contra business for plum jobs: Colin Powell, Richard Armitage, Otto Reich and John Negroponte. But [Elliott] Abrams's appointment [for an NSC position] - should it come to pass - would mark the most generous of rehabilitations…[Abrams] billed himself as a 'gladiator' for the Reagan Doctrine in Central America - which entailed assisting thuggish regimes and militaries in order to thwart leftist movements and dismissing the human rights violations of Washington's cold war partners... The First Bush…did include Abrams [who was convicted for lying to Congress] in his lame-duck pardons of several Iran/contra wrongdoers [to save his 'in the loop' self]... In 1998 the CIA's own inspector general issued a thick report noting that the Reagan Administration had collaborated with suspected drug traffickers while managing the secret contra war." With the Iran-Contra gang back, Dubya has replaced Reagan as his Daddy's puppet.

"Republicans were indignant during the last campaign about what they portrayed as the ethical shortcomings of the Clinton administration. The president campaigned in part on a promise to 'restore honor and integrity to the White House.' The capacity for indignation has since faded. When Vice President Cheney used his residence for some Clintonesque stroking of campaign contributors that Republicans might earlier have found offensive, then Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott said: 'I'm sure it's being done in an appropriate way, or Dick Cheney wouldn't do it.' But it was no more appropriate than was Mr. Rove's meeting with Intel. Now some Democrats are talking about holding mirror-image hearings of the Republican administration, but that's hardly the ideal solution. Having rightly announced high standards, these folks should just live up to them." So writes the Washington Post.

"Wasn't this supposed to be the team that brought 'honor and dignity' back to the White House? Now that the honeymoon is over and the country is well past the getting-to-know-you stage with the White House's new occupants, the sleaze is piling up pretty fast. The latest sordid tale concerns Karl Rove, President Bush's top political strategist and presumably a man who had something to do with Bush's honor-and-dignity campaign theme... The Rove flap comes on the heels of a recent story by Salon.com about Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who may have made millions in the last few months from White House-initiated increases in the value of his Alcoa stock... In both cases, top White House officials stood to add to their private wealth by virtue of their connection to public policy-making. Honor and dignity? Sounds more like a bunch of rich guys -- just getting richer." So writes the San Francisco Examiner.

Last week Bush puffed out his chest and held his chin high as he presided over the ceremonies commemorating the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Yet Bush's very presence at such events is a mockery compared to the sacrifices of real patriots. Whenever Bush makes such appearances -- we will be here to remind our readers that grandfather Prescott Bush's companies assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act for financing Nazis. Our troops were two weeks away from fighting the Nazis in North Africa. But the Bush-Nazi alliance has continued since then. In 1988 old Nazis were exposed within the Bush Sr. campaign team (enter 'nazi' in our .Compass search engine). Moreover, Bush Sr. armed and financed Saddam Hussein's military right up to the Kuwait invasion, and left the American taxpayers holding $2 billion in defaulted Iraqi debt (enter 'iraqgate' in the .Compass). Dubya himself was AWOL from the National Guard for up to 2 years. (See our 'smokingjet.com' expose')

Ari Fleischer promoted the White House trashing lies back in January, but those lies are coming back to bite him now that the GAO says it "found no damage" to White House real estate. Now Ari is trying to salvage his lost credibility by collecting belated reports from anonymous Republican staffers. Even so, the only "damage" Fleischer could find in the White House was "a photocopier in the West Wing that had pictures of naked people interspersed with blank photocopy paper so deep in the tray that they were still popping out weeks after the inauguration." Sounds like the work of some sex-obsessed Christian Coalition hack to us. Hey Ari - you've lied so many times, why should we believe you now? Where is the evidence? Face it, Ari, your lies have caught up with you. You're history - don't trash anything on your way out the door!

The Bush administration has announced it will deny federal financial aid to students who won't answer questions about their drug records. Since this policy comes from a man who spent an entire campaign refusing to talk about his own drug history, we have one simple request: "President [sic] Bush, if you deny federal funds to students who won't talk about their drug histories, it's only fair that you forego your federal salary until you are willing to come clean with your own drug past." Sign the petition at justsayblow.com

Dubya's AWOL is but one of a long list of anti-patriotic offenses by the Bushes. As the Boston Globe recently reported, grandfather Prescott Bush was the director of Nazi-financing front companies, which had their assets seized under the Trading with the Enemy Act in 1942 (enter 'nazi' in our .Compass search engine). Also, a squadron mate of George Sr.'s during WWII - Chester Mierzejewski - claimed in 1988 that pilot Sr. bailed out of his plane early - when he could have landed it on the water without dooming his crewmen to their deaths. And Bush Sr. was 'in the loop' that armed our then-enemy Iran, while Contra supply chief Felix Rodriguez regularly reported to VP Bush's office (see Lawrence Walsh's 'Firewall'). Bush Sr also covertly armed Hussein's military right up to the Kuwaiti invasion, and left the American taxpayers holding $2 billion in defaulted Iraqi debt (enter 'iraqgate' in .Compass). Bush also invaded Panama to get his old partner Noriega out of the picture.

NYU Media Studies professor Mark Crispin Miller puts Karl Rove's treatment of J.H. Hatfield in the context of the Bush's family's Nazi/CIA past, and its many other propaganda and disinformation campaigns. Karl Rove masterminded George Sr's attack on Dan Rather; the Willie Horton campaign; and the attack on Jimmy Swaggart (to undermine Pat Robertson, who was then running against Bush Sr.). Rove's biggest challenge is to manipulate the media to deny the fact that Bush stole the election - but Democrats.com is never going to let him get away with it!!

"While Mr. Bush headlined a Republican 'gala' Tuesday that raised a party record of $23.9 million, Democrats branded a gathering of donors at Vice President Dick Cheney's house Monday as the sort of influence-peddling for which the GOP criticized and investigated President Clinton" and Al Gore. Said Phil Schiliro, a spokesman for Rep. Henry Waxman, [D-CA], "It's not so much the tactics as the blatant hypocrisy." The article continues -- "the guest list for the "Presidential Gala" included Philip Morris, AT&T and Bristol-Myers Squibb. The chairs of the event included Dallas residents Jeff and Nancy Marcus. The ticket price was $1,500. People who raised $500,000 were considered co-chairs; $250,000 secured a vice-chairmanship...Some Bush critics said fund-raising methods – including private briefings by Cabinet officers and high-ranking officials – challenge his pledge to restore 'honor and dignity' to the office."

Judicial Watch, the right-wing legal firm that tormented the Clinton administration, will "institute legal action concerning a RNC fundraising event for hundreds of Republican donors last night at the government residence of Vice President Dick Cheney. Among other laws, the event was a prima facie violation of the prohibition of the use of federal property for political fundraising purposes. Judicial Watch has already initiated legal action against the National Republican Senatorial Committee and National Republican Congressional Committee over similarly illegal and unethical fundraising practices, including selling access to Bush Cabinet officials, Bush foreign policy officials, foreign ambassadors, and other federal employees... 'Attorney General John Ashcroft must now appoint a special counsel to investigate the apparent violations of law by high level Administration officials,' stated Judicial Watch Chairman Larry Klayman."

"Remember when Hillary Clinton conducted her closed-door meetings on the health-care crisis? The media pilloried her from pillar to post because the nation was shut out of the deliberations. Yet in Cheney's case, the same media moguls who fired shot after shot against Hillary have remained silent... When a physicians group sued to open the health-care task-force hearings, a number of news organizations stepped in with support. Among those filing friend-of-the-court briefs were the Society of Professional Journalists, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, the American Society of Editors and the Associated Press. Where are they today as the task force releases its report and President Bush trumpets their conclusions?" So writes Jerry Fuchs in the San Francisco Examiner.

The Democratic Policy Committee has compiled a report on the blatant conflict of interest that has become a daily way of life for Bush and Cheney, who are doling out the nation's treasures to their oil buddies as if they were leftover Halloween candy. The report found that big oil gave $3.2 million to the Bush campaign and a net total of $25.6 million to the GOP in general and now want to collect the "interest." The report also accuses Shrubcheney of giving big oil execs secret access to the White House to help formulate the nation's energy plan. We say impeachment on the grounds of egregious conflict of interest is just around the corner!

Texas 'Pioneers' raised $40 million for George W Bush ... and investigative reporter Greg Palast asks, "What have they gotten in return?" The Newsnight team flies to the Alcoa Aluminum lignite strip mine and power plant which Texas Governor Bush, following secret meetings with company execs, permitted to dodge demands that the plant cut its sulphur emissions in half. Now as President, Bush and his Secretary of Treasury have proposed a budget which eliminates all funds for civil enforcement of pollution laws. Savings to Alcoa: about $100 million. The Secretary of the Treasury, Paul O'Neill is selling $100 million of Alcoa stock. On camera, Texas senator Teel Bevins, Bush buddy and 'Pioneer' funder, explains why it's only fair that the big funders get special access to the President, while others are locked out: "Ya' dance with them that brung ya'." Scroll to the bottom to find the video link.

Bush has nominated "former Iran/contra operatives who are being rehabilitated and rewarded with powerful foreign policy posts. John Negroponte's nomination to be US ambassador to the United Nations is a case in point...As ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, Negroponte was the acknowledged 'boss' of the early covert contra operations; he also…denied or misrepresented politically inconvenient evidence of atrocities and abuse by the [Hondurun military]." Bush has also nominated Otto Reich as Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere. "In 1983 a CIA propaganda specialist named Walter Raymond handpicked Reich to head the new and innocuous-sounding Office of Public Diplomacy… a Comptroller General's review concluded that Reich's office had 'engaged in prohibited, covert propaganda activities designed to influence the media and the public. '" (See also Sarah Wildman's March 19 article on Negroponte at "thenewrepublic.com").

The Washington Post is finally getting past its loathing of Bill Clinton, and has discovered what we all know - the Bu$h administration is rotten to the core. "What caught our attention at the 100-day mark... wasn't so much a matter of tone as of smell: the smell - you might even call it stink - of buying and selling access. President [sic] Bush and his party campaigned on a promise of restoring honor to the Oval Office... The fact that the Bush administration, even before most of its officials are nominated or confirmed, feels the need to begin a corrupting and humiliating money chase reflects the dominance that campaign finance has acquired in official life. President [sic] Bush could do something about that: He could promise his support for the McCain-Feingold reform bill and urge the House to get serious on it. Failing that, any change in tone is likely to be overcome by an all-too-familiar odor." Hey - in another decade or two, the Post might even report that Bush stole the election!

Funeralgate - the scandal left over from Bush's Texas years - is back in the news. On June 8, Eliza May's lawyers will be taking a deposition from Bush's former Chief of Staff, Joe Allbaugh, who was confirmed to head FEMA in February. And now May's lawyers want to deposte White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, who is one of Bush's top choices for the U.S. Supreme Court. Gonzales, who is otherwise generally described as brilliant, claims he cannot remember anything about the case. Let him say that under oath - and subject himself to perjury charges.

"Cmdr. Scott Waddle…now believes the presence of 16 civilians in the crowded control room broke the crew's concentration at a critical time, said Waddle's attorney, Charles Gittins." During the naval inquiry, "none of the civilians was called to testify nor was the retired admiral who arranged for them to be aboard the Greeneville…Gittins indicated he plans to ask about the public relations program if his client is ordered to a court martial. Testimony showed the Greeneville was ordered to sea Feb. 9 solely to provide the civilian VIPs with a show, a violation of Navy rules." Like the rest of the media reports, this article fails to mention the joyriders' GOP connections. We will repeat it again – the majority of the 16 joyriders were from the Texas oil and energy industry. Some were contributors to the Bush campaign. Many were associated with the USS Missouri Restoration Association that has George Bush Sr. as an honorary chairman.

"…Resident Bush and the first lady [sic] made nearly $900,000 in 2000, while…Vice President [sic] Dick Cheney and his wife reported nearly $36.1 million in income." Limited tax information has been released -- natch. Of course, there is always the matter of how Cheney and Halliburton made those bucks in Iraq, and through their office in Iran. In addition, there is Hal's business with Sinopec, a Chinese petroleum corporation that has also been doing work in Iran. Remember Cheney's big lie during the debates that the US Government had nothing to do with his success at Halliburton? To see the actual White House press release reporting Cheney's 2000 income and taxes paid, visit "www.thesmokinggun.com."

USA Today writes, "By failing to subpoena any of Greeneville's civilian guests, Navy investigators missed a crucial opportunity to probe questions that have surfaced about how civilians came to be guests of the Greeneville and how their presence may have played into the accident." But like almost all of the media, USA Today does not provide the most troubling details about the civilians. So we will repeat it again and again - most of the 16 civilians were from the Texas oil industry. Some had contributed generously to the Bush Campaign and the GOP. Two of the joyriders had donated to the USS Missouri Restoration Association, which has Bush Sr. as an honorary chairman.

Remember "HairCutGate," when President Clinton got his hair cut on Air Force One at LAX and the right-wing media went crazy? Get ready for "LoneStarGate". Why is the crew of Air Force One (Lieutenant Colonels, we're told) carrying Bush's beer? Is Bush's Air Force One just a flying frat party, carrying on like he and his buddies did at Kappa Delta Epsilon? More importantly, has the alcoholic commander-in-thief gone back to the bottle? We demand an investigation!

Civilians aboard the U.S. nuclear submarine USS Greeneville confirmed on Wednesday they manned controls of the vessel before it struck a Japanese fishing trawler. But conspicuously missing from this article is any mention that many of the joyriders contributed to Bush, the Republicans, and the the USS Missouri Restoration Association which has Bush Sr. as its honorary chairman. Moreover, most of the 16 joyriders were from the Texas oil industry. Why is the "liberal" media avoiding the facts behind a scandal that killed 9 students?

Remember the Republican commercial attacking Gore's prescription drug proposal with the subliminal "RATS" message? Democrats complained to the FCC that the ads were illegal. But instead of investigating, the Republican-controlled FCC simply whitewashed the crime, as described by a dissenting FCC commissioner. We demand an investigation!

Australian Tennis star John Newcombe was drinking with George W. on the night in 1976 when Bush was arrested for DWI in Maine. Newcombe recalls that Bush drank about six beers. After they were pulled over, Newcombe remembers: "boy, was that cop in for a shock when he found out who he had arrested. He looked really nervous when he realised that he had picked up the son of the CIA director." Last November, Newcombe went into hiding for the five days between when the story broke and the election - to avoid the press. At the time, Bush and the GOP charged the Democrats with pulling a pre-election "surprise," but the truth is that this story had been known by the media for years. Interestingly, this story broke on the same day that Senators Bob Kerrey (D-NE) and Daniel Inouye (D-HI) held a press conference to call attention to the long festering AWOL scandal. Unfortunately, the DWI story drowned out the far more serious AWOL story - thus preventing its disclosure to the American people.

Judicial Watch, the right-wing law firm that sued President Clinton every time he breathed, told Bush the Smarter to resign from the Carlyle Group, a $12 Billion private investment firm. "This is simply inappropriate. Former President Bush should immediately resign from the Carlyle Group because it is an obvious conflict of interest," said Larry Klayman.

Does Larry King realize when he is coddling George W. and Bush Sr. that the Bush family made their fortune financing Nazi industrialists? As John Loftus, head of the Florida Holocaust Museum, told an audience recently, "That's where the Bush family fortune came from: It came from the Third Reich" (see link). Also, see scans of the actual documents ordering the Bush-Harriman asset seizure under the Trading With The Enemy Act in 1942 at http://www.mbpolitics.com/bush2000/Vesting.htm. At that time, US troops were days away from combat in North Africa. (See also http://www.nycny.com/columns/rogers/index.html and http://members.nbci.com/_XMCM/trufax/elkhorn/elk19.html)

The Carlyle Group has also invested in a real estate firm headed by a fanatical Scientologist who forces his employees to take Scientology courses. As reported earlier, George Bush Sr. is a highly paid adviser to Carlyle, a private equity firm. Perhaps this explains why Scientologists have been touting their connections to the new Bush Administration, as reported recently by Jeanette Walls in her MSNBC column.(Also check out the photo of the elder Bushes and Colin Powell with prominent Scientologists at http://www.freedommag.org/english/la/issue02/page05a.htm)

Two days before he left office, Bush the Smarter pardoned Edwin Cox Jr. Cox's family contributed nearly $200,000 to Bush and the Republicans. We demand an investigation!

A naval court of inquiry is investigating the USS Greeneville sub accident that resulted in the deaths of 9 Japanese students. From the NY Times to USA Today and the wire services that reach the local dailies, the media has dropped the subject of the joyriders' identities. But we won't. We will repeat it again and again - most of the 16 civilians were from the Texas oil industry. At least one was a major donor to the Bush Campaign and the GOP. Two of the joyriders had donated to the USS Missouri Restoration Association, that has Bush Sr. as an honorary chairman. Can you imagine what a field day the media would have had if they had been democrats? The Big Lie is that the media is "liberal".

"The largest corporate donors to Bush's campaign are beginning to seek - and receive - a return on their investments by pushing the White House on issues ranging from tougher bankruptcy laws to oil drilling in Alaska." So writes the Wall Street Journal (subscription required). What happened to Bush's promise to restore integrity to the White House? We demand an investigation!

A federal grant jury charged Juanita Yvette Lozano of Austin, Texas with mail fraud, false statements to the FBI and perjury. If convicted, she faces 15 years in prison and a $750,000 fine. Lozano was a low-level employee of Maverick Media, headed by Bush's media consultant Mark McKinnon. No doubt Lozano was taking instructions from higher up the Bush chain of command (McKinnon? Karl Rove? Karen Hughes?) - but will she point the finger? 15 years seems like an awfully long time to sacrifice for someone else's crime...

The Bush organized crime family has been scrubbing records for decades. Here's a 1993 expose by Mother Jones about a weekend of shredding in 1992 at the U.S. Department of Agriculture to cover up the IraqGate scandal. We demand an investigation!

In January 1989 the acting attorney general wrote: "For 30 years [Orlando] Bosch has been resolute and unwavering in his advocacy of terrorist violence.... He has repeatedly expressed and demonstrated a willingness to cause indiscriminate injury and death.'" Yet this feared terrorist is a free man living in the USA, thanks to being released on parole by George Herbert Walker Bush. We demand an investigation!

That's what The New Republic says about Bush's budget figures, which reduced the gain to the wealthiest 1% from 45% to 22% - by scrubbing the estate tax cut and the wealthy-favoring cuts phased in after 2005. The media went crazy when Al Gore confused the head of FEMA with FEMA's #2. When will the media start calling Bush a baldfaced liar?

When Democrats on Dan Burton's Government Reform Committee got their chance to call witnesses, they highlighted a bunch of ugly Republican pardon scandals that have received none of the attention given to Clinton's pardons. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) cited Orlando Bosch, a right-wing Cuban terrorist who was released on parole by Bush the Smarter in 1990 after lobbying by Jeb Bush - which cemented Jeb's support among Miami's right-wing Cuban community and led to his election as Governor. Waxman also cited Armand Hammer, pardoned by Bush the Smarter in 1989 after he gave $200,000 to the Republican Party and the Bush-Quayle Inaugural Committee. Democrats also brought up the pardons of election law felon George Steinbrenner, fundraising abuser Gilbert Dozier, and Pakistani drug trafficker Aslam Adam. Waxman urged Burton to subpoena records from the Reagan and Bush Libraries, but Burton refused. We can't wait until Democrats regain the House and Waxman gets to issue the subpoenas!

Double standards are just"bidness" as usual for the Bushes. Having Jr. play"good cop" while his operativies play"bad cop" is par for the course. And the Bushes - albeit through their minions - should be the last ones to cry foul about Marc Rich."[Rich] has worked with the world's premier dirty banks, including BCCI, Nugan Hand and BNL. George H.W. Bush relied on Rich's assistance in the October Surprise operation, weapons deals with Iraq and Iran, tax evasion and the laundering of drug profits (from both South America and earlier, from Southeast Asia). Rich is also involved with Prescott Bush, and numerous arms and ammunition deals in China." The Bushes are also in deep with Glenn Braswell, who contributed $25K to George W. and $150K to the Republican Party. Braswell got Jeb Bush to write an article in his magazine promoting Braswell's sleazy alternative medicine enterprise. Braswell had been"convicted in 1983 of mail fraud, perjury and tax evasion in connection with a fraudulent herbal drug business".

Joe Conason reviews Bush Sr.'s highly questionable pardon of Armand Hammer, after Hammer had deposited hundreds of thousands into the Bush and Republican Party coffers. Hammer's attorney was none other than Ted Olson -- Bush Jr.'s pick for Solicitor General. Olson is a good friend and fellow Federalist Society member to C. Boyden Gray, Bush Sr's legal counsel and another Ken Starr pal. Both Olson and Gray played roles in the "Get Clinton" efforts, and later in helping Bush steal the election. Conason also reviews Bush Sr.'s pardon and swift deportation of heroin trafficker Aslam P. Adam. Conason writes "that Bush, a former CIA director, may have had his own occult foreign policy or national security reasons for releasing Adam -- but none ever came to light" -- thanks to a media that looked the other way. The same questions could be raised about Bush Sr.'s pardon of the anti-Castro terrorist Orlando Bosch at the behest of Jeb Bush. Throughout his CIA career, and later during Iran-Contra, Bush Sr. enjoyed a long association with anti-Castro Cubans who were folded into the CIA. Bush's favorite spook was Felix Rodriguez, an anti-Castro Cuban and long-time CIA agent. When Rodriguez was Contra Supply Chief, he regularly reported to Bush Sr. We demand that Congress grill Olson about the Hammer pardon! We also demand that they call Bush Sr. about his pardons if they call Clinton!

While Bush was Governor of Texas, National Heritage Insurance, the state's Medicaid administrator, defrauded the state out of $10 million. Last summer, state auditors found that the insurer had made $50 million in incorrect payments, especially in paying unlicensed dentists. Regarding the recent charges, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Rob Junell (D-San Angelo) said: "The information that has been gathered is alarming and leads me to believe that the contract that was entered into was an extraordinarily bad deal for the state of Texas. There's also evidence that the current contract may not have been negotiated in a manner that is arm's length and protective of Texas taxpayers." This sounds like Funeralgate, which involved the use of unlicensed embalmers by a powerful Bush crony. What did Bush and his team know about this contract? We demand an investigation!

Where is the outrage over George Bush Senior's 10 billion dollar rip off of the taxpayer to shut down an investigation into his own role in the Iran Contra illegal arms deal? Bush got a seven year no show job out of the deal, the GOP got lucrative foreign campaign contributions and American justice and the taxpayer got the shaft.

During Bush's first press conference, he said a number of incoherent things. One that was the butt of many jokes was his reference to the cultivation of "cocoa" leaves in Columbia. (Listen to the audio for yourself at 19:26.) Well, somehow "cocoa" was changed to "coca" when the official White House transcript was posted. Tampering with government documents is a crime - we demand an investigation!

The 16 civilians whose joyride on the USS Greeneville sank the Ehime Maru have been revealed. Guess what "bidness" they're in? You guessed it - OIL. And how much have they given to the Republican Party and George W. Bush? $41,000 and counting. We demand an investigation!

When Papa Bush left the White House, he gave a sweetheart deal to the Canadian company Barrick Goldstrike. Bush gave them mining rights for US land with an estimated $10 Billion in gold for only $10 Thousand. Oh and by the way, the company then hired Papa Bush after he left office where he was on the payroll till 1999. The company also donated $148,000 to the Republican Party. Unfortunately, you can't read this story any more at the Guardian because Barrick Goldstrike has threatened a lawsuit. But you can still read it here.

A number of stories embarrassing to the Bush/Cheney regime has disappeared from commercial media websites. Richard Nixon was obsessed with leaks from within his administration, and his secret team of "plumbers" worked to stop these leaks, breaking the law as they went about their dirty business. George W. Bush is obsessed with any public record that documents illegal, unethical, or embarrassing activities. He has a secret team of "scrubbers" who make sure such records mysteriously "disappear" from government offices and media websites. We're keeping track of all of these "scrubbed" records - and "unscrubbing" them whenever we can. Pretty spooky stuff...

Two days before leaving office, former President George H.W. Bush granted clemency to Aslam P. Adam, a Pakistani heroin dealer, who had been sentenced to 55 years in a North Carolina prison. Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) had taken an earlier interest in this case. The pardon was arranged by Bush's legal counsel C. Boyden Gray, who had been instrumental in impeding Lawrence Walsh's investigation of Iran-Contra. If one includes the six pardons of Iran-Contra conspirators, plus this highly questionable one for a drug smuggler, at least 10% of Bush's 66 total pardons were for Iran-Contra and/or drug related activity. Magistrate Paul Taylor warned in 1989 when he denied a move to deport in lieu of further imprisonment, "Deportation of a Pakistani national back to the very country from which the heroin was shipped...defies all logic and makes a mockery of the laws which were designed to prohibit drug importation and punish serious offenders." We demand an investigation!

Investigative reporter Robert Parry looks at the consequences of the failure of the Democrats in Congress to support former Special Prosecutor Lawrence Walsh's case against George Bush Sr. and his treasonous coterie of Republican henchmen. He hits the nail of truth right on the head: As they had for almost a decade, the Democrats let the Republicans determine which situations deserved investigations and which ones didn’t. While Republicans conducted new hearings on Clinton’s pardons – a contrast to the lack of hearings on George H.W. Bush’s Iran-contra pardons in 1992 – the Democrats made no move to force an investigation of the GOP power plays around the Florida recount. The only congressional hearing on the Florida case was called by Republicans – and that was for the Orwellian purpose of having news executives explain why their “erroneous” projections had shown Al Gore to be the voters’ choice in Florida. Though the Democrats have the right to demand hearings in the evenly split Senate, they appeared to have no stomach for confrontational hearings about the Florida showdown, clearly one of the most important political events in recent U.S. history. Thanks to this Democratic timidity, no Republican has been called on the carpet for dispatching hooligans to south Florida. No conservative Supreme Court justice has been compelled to justify the unprecedented interference in the electoral process that meant negating more than 50 million votes cast by American citizens for Al Gore. None of Jeb Bush’s aides has been hauled before Congress to explain how thousands of African-American voters apparently were purged from voting lists based on an inaccurate computer program for eliminating supposed felons. Having retreated so far and so often, today’s Democrats seem incapable of fighting back. It is a pattern of behavior that – as much as anything – has made the Republicans the dominant political force in Washington and left American democracy in an endangered state."

"What is the relationship, if any, between the Thoman-Hall appearance on the 'Today' show and the apparent need for the White House to orchestrate the media's response to the disaster?" Bush Watch wants to know!

14 of the 16 civilians on board the Greeneville were donors to a foundation for the restoration of the USS Missouri. Interestingly, the honorary chairman of the USS Missouri Memorial Association is none other than former President George Bush. Meanwhile, the Navy refuses to release information about the civilians, but reports are circulating that at least one civilian was a major Bush donor.

Chief of Staff Andy Card broke the law on his first day on the job, when he issued a memorandum mandating a 60 day delay in the effective date of regulations published by the Office of Federal Register (OFR). Card also ordered that federal agencies withdraw most of the safety standards submitted to - but not yet published by - the OFR. Furthermore, Card has specified that these withdrawn rules are now subject to review by the Bush Administration, but with "no timetable for such review and...no restriction on the ability of the incoming officials to make wholesale changes in the rule". Environmentalists fear a return to the tactics of the Reagan-Bush Office of Management that tied up regulations for years - not to mention obliterating some rules altogether. Emboldened by their coup, the Bush team are now pulling out all the stops in expanding their power. Card's actions are entirely illegal - once again, we demand an investigation!

If you believe every word that Linda Tripp says about the Clintons, then you have to believe her tale about Jennifer Fitzgerald, Poppy Bush's Paramour. Let's impeach Poppy!

Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet has been charged with multiple counts of murder and kidnapping. While it is now known that the CIA backed Pinochet's 1973 military coup, will Pinochet's trial reveal more about the CIA's actual role in the bloody overthrow and Pinochet's subsequent reign of terror? Last year, President Clinton ordered the release of CIA and State Department documents to the Chilean government to aid in their pursuit of justice. Will Pinochet's trial also expose what CIA Director George H.W. Bush knew about the 1976 car bombing of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffit in Washington D.C. (Please see this "Consortium" Article for details about the Letelier car bombing.)

How many voters knew that President Bush is credibly charged with lying under oath about influence-peddling in a whistle-blower lawsuit that's scheduled for trial this year? Known as Funeralgate, Eliza May's wrongful termination lawsuit also questions the credibility of Bush's nominee to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Joe Allbaugh, formerly his campaign manager, whom the AP article about his nomination reported is "at the center" of the potentially sensational case.

Joe Allbaugh, George W. Bush's nominee to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), has been revealed to be a "Named Conspirator" in Funeralgate, a Texas whistleblower lawsuit against George W. Bush, according to documents published on the Internet by Democrats.com, the largest independent news and community website for Democrats. Allbaugh was campaign manager of Bush's Presidential campaign, and is widely regarded as one of Bush's most powerful aides, along with strategist Karl Rove and spokeswoman Karen Hughes. Together, the three are known as the "Iron Triangle." Allbaugh is scheduled to testify before the Senate Government Affairs Committee on Tuesday, February 13 at 10:30 a.m. "Joe Allbaugh appears to have lied to the Senate Government Oversight Committee in response to its question about 'Funeralgate,'" said Fertik. "In the coming days, Democratic and Republican members of the committee should carefully examine Allbaugh's evasive answer - and pose additional detailed questions - to get to the truth about Allbaugh's involvement in this scandal, which reaches all the way up to the President of the United States," Fertik concluded.

How many voters knew that President Bush is credibly charged with lying under oath about influence-peddling in a whistle-blower lawsuit that's scheduled for trial this year? Known as Funeralgate, Eliza May's wrongful termination lawsuit also questions the credibility of Bush's nominee to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Joe Allbaugh, formerly his campaign manager, whom the AP article about his nomination reported is "at the center" of the potentially sensational case. Allbaugh's confirmation hearing before the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee is scheduled for Feb. 13. If Democrats break the conspiracy of silence about Funeralgate by calling Eliza May to explain her allegations against Bush and Allbaugh, the country may get a jolting preview of a presidential lawsuit that could make the Paula Jones case look like mere gossip. Read our exclusive report.

"Yet, when the evidence of Chinese nuclear espionage surfaced in the late 1990s, around the time of the congressional impeachment of President Clinton, the Republicans tried to pin the blame for the lost secrets on the Clinton-Gore administration. The national news media contributed to the confusion by failing to explain clearly to the American public that the security breaches represented a Reagan-Bush scandal, not a Clinton-Gore scandal." The Iran-Contra files reveal that the Chinese collaborated with Oliver North in providing weapons to the Contras. Can you say quid pro quo?

Can the US Supreme Court protect baby Bush from the law? Looks like Dubya got some stuff on his boots in Texas, and it still stinks! They're calling it Funeralgate - Bush has been named as a defendant in the whistleblower lawsuit brought by Eliza May, the former executive director of the Texas Funeral Service Commission. The suit alleges that Bush and others who got campaign contributions from funeral giant Service Corporation International worked to thwart an investigation into SCI's hiring of improperly licensed embalmers. Al Gonzales, who is now the White House general counsel, will do all he can to keep Bush out of situations in which he must swear to tell the truth. But the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that President Clinton could be sued for actions taken as Governor of Arkansas, so it's gonna take a Texas-size backflip to keep Bush out of the dock.