Let me preface this by saying I’m REALLY GLAD the 2nd amendment was preserved…HOWEVER…

Lo and behold!!! Is it yet ANOTHER case of selective law enforcement by DC Park Police and Metro Cops…hmm? I think so.

WIthin the last month these people were arrested for protesting on the steps of the Supreme Court…observe here…

MEANWHILE just yesterday THESE protesters were NOT arrested so far as I know…just pointing out the hypocrisy. Are the park police a bunch of scared sissies afraid to arrest pro-gun bubbas but if the folks are already assuming the position in orange jumpsuits they’re gung ho and ready to fill the paddy wagon?

I don’t think EITHER SETS OF PROTESTERS should be arrested. Free speech and power to the people, and especially right up to the steps of the Supreme Court, screw your free-speech zones…AND FINALLY… the DC park police and metro cops need to understand that WE THE PEOPLE see their selective enforcement as politically motivated and despicably biased. Why don’t you guys start acting with a bit of evenhandedness and integrity? It’d be a nice change.

The time has long passed for this nation to throw off these lawless criminals who have (at the least) violated human rights wantonly and brazenly in the face of nearly UNIVERSAL condemnation. It’s time for Americans to stand up for justice. These sons of bitches must be held accountable.

McClatchy Has The Scoop

WASHINGTON — The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing “war crimes” and called for those responsible to be held to account.

The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who’s now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.

“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”

If a single moment of clarity comes to you mindless Repubs who feebly cry out “off the table” anytime the subject comes up…consider this.

The GOP is already on the ropes and this election cycle will be a sure loser.

Nancy and Harry have “flip-flopped” before. Don’t claim they won’t/can’t. LOL

Petition drives continue from folks like Wexler on the judiciary committee and Kucinich supporters are going to make themselves heard as well.

Investigations are turning up impeachable offenses, including war crimes,  if they can connect the dots to Bush OR Cheney they’re screwed. The walls are closing in on this administration.

I’m sorry for ever hating you. I miss you. We’ll meet again someday. Happy Father’s Day.

Folks I don’t normally have time to complain too much about local happenings, but I feel rather compelled to let the good folks of the world know that we’re having a LITTLE PROBLEM up here in Newton County with folks HANGING THEMSELVES in the jail up here. I’m not sure what to say except that I sure hope someone is taking the time to look into it DEEPLY.

Where’s the FBI? Where’s the Arkansas Bureau of Prisons? Where’s ANYONE at this point? WTF?

Why are these incidents an atrocity to reason?

The main reason is the sheer weight of negligence required to have a jail housing prisoners 24 hours a day without a full time jailer or even a properly working closed circuit TV system operational. The backup system (CCTV) failed in BOTH these cases. A dispatcher is not capable of monitoring an entire jail full of inmates remotely.

Do you see wrongful death lawsuits coming? I do.

Faith in the local civic leadership has been eroding steadily over the time I’ve lived up here due to several bad policies and choices made and not made concerning law enforcement and the jail. These events have caused the jumpstart of a campaign by a write-in candidate to overturn the incumbent Sheriff Keith Slape. The first-term sheriff recently suffered personal tragedy in the death of his daughter, leaving some locals to question his ability to effectively show enough leadership in dealing with this particular situation to maintain office after November. Time will tell.

*UPDATED 6/29*

New information supplied by a local law enforcement source proves the rumor that the second suicide was from hanging from a bunk bed was incorrect, as had been originally reported right here in error…it was actually a vent duct near the ceiling over the toilet. I hope that clears up a lot of confusion but maintain my position that both deaths were probably avoidable had better controls been in place and had the jail had a full time staff. How there couldn’t be one is a real mystery to me. Just seems absent minded and flat ass dangerous.

From Firedoglake

Scottie McC doesn’t know it yet. But that’s basically what he revealed this morning on the Today Show (h/t Rayne).

During the interview, Scottie revealed the two things that really pissed him off with the Bush Administration. First, being set up to lie by Karl Rove and Scooter Libby. And second, learning that Bush had–himself–authorized the selective leaking of the NIE.

Scottie McC: But the other defining moment was in early April 2006, when I learned that the President had secretly declassified the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq for the Vice President and Scooter Libby to anonymously disclose to reporters. And we had been out there talking about how seriously the President took the selective leaking of classified information. And here we were, learning that the President had authorized the very same thing we had criticized.

Viera: Did you talk to the President and say why are you doing this?

Scottie McC: Actually, I did. I talked about the conversation we had. I walked onto Air Force One, it was right after an event we had, it was down in the south, I believe it was North Carolina. And I walk onto Air Force One and a reporter had yelled a question to the President trying to ask him a question about this revelation that had come out during the legal proceedings. The revelation was that it was the President who had authorized, or, enable Scooter Libby to go out there and talk about this information. And I told the President that that’s what the reporter was asking. He was saying that you, yourself, was the one that authorized the leaking of this information. And he said “yeah, I did.” And I was kinda taken aback.

Did you miss this tidbit on Friday? I did…ha…and they say there could NEVER be a “North American Union” ummhmmm….

FROM THE BBC

The leaders of 12 South American nations have formed a regional body aimed at boosting economic and political integration in the region.

At a summit in Brazil, they signed a treaty which created the Union of South American Nations (Unasur).

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the move showed that South America was becoming a “global player”.

LOL…this is really funny stuff…believable or NOT you gotta hear it from the Alex Jones radio show (NO, I do not listen to Alex Jones OR ANY OTHER radio personality regularly)…what caught my interest is the audio is supposedly the DC Madame saying she had no plans of hanging herself in a recent interview. All that aside, the more important question I’m asking myself…why would I even doubt that a guy who is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity would end up facing allegations over a dead hooker? Well…DICK…you are teh suck. That’s why.

One final note…in the pantheon of conspiracy theories of late this one is certainly the most amusing and plausible…it’s not hard to fake a suicide, just ask Hillary. Enjoy the vid.

Fellow Citizens,

Halfway through the current political season I see that we have been given two choices…bad or worse. When will we wake up and take back our country? How much lawlessness, brutality, and creeping fascism are we able to stand? Something must be done.  Ralph Nader weighs in on the situation:

Country of Laws

The Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer, has resigned for being a longtime customer of a high-priced prostitution ring.

The President of the United States, George W. Bush, remains, disgracing his office for longtime repeated violations of the Constitution, federal laws and international treaties to which the U.S. is a solemn signatory. In his forthright resignation statement, Eliot Spitzer—the prominent corporate crime buster—asserted that “Over the course of my public life, I have insisted, I believe correctly, that people, regardless of their position or power, take responsibility for their conduct. I can and will ask no less of myself.”

In a recent speech to a partisan Republican fund-raising audience, George W. Bush fictionalized his Iraq war exploits and other related actions, and said that next January he will leave office “with his head held high.”

Eliot Spitzer violated certain laws regarding prostitution and transferring of money through banks—though the latter was disputed by some legal experts—and for such moral turpitude emotionally harmed himself, his family and his friends.

George W. Bush violated federal laws against torture, against spying on Americans without judicial approval, against due process of law and habeas corpus in arresting Americans without charges, imprisoning them and limited their access to attorneys. He committed a massive war of aggression, under false preteneses, violating again and again treaties such as the Geneva Conventions, the UN Charter, federal statutes and the Constitution.

This war and its associated actions have cost the lives of one million Iraqis, over 4000 Americans, caused hundreds of thousands of serious injuries and diseases related to the destruction of Iraq’s public health facilities. As the popular button puts it, “He Lied, They Died”.

From the moment the news emerged about Spitzer’s sexual frolics the calls came for his immediate resignation. They came from the pundits and editorialists; they came from Republicans and they started coming from his fellow Democrats in the Assembly.

Speaker Sheldon Silver told Spitzer that many Democrats in the Assembly would abandon him in any impeachment vote.

George W. Bush is a recidivist war criminal and chronic violator of so many laws that the Center for Constitutional Rights has clustered them into five major impeachable “High Crimes and Misdemeanors” (under Article II, section .4)

Scores of leaders of the bar, including Michael Greco, former president of the American Bar Association, and legal scholars and former Congressional lawmakers have decried his laceration of the rule of law and his frequent declarations that signify that he believes he is above the law.
Many retired high military officers, diplomats and security officials have openly opposed his costly militaristic disasters.

Only Cong. Dennis Kucinich (Dem. Ohio) has publicly called for his impeachment.

No other member of Congress has moved toward his impeachment. To the contrary, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Dem. Calif.), Rep. Steny Hoyer (Dem. MD) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman, John Conyers (dem. Mich.) publicly took “impeachment off the table” in 2006.

When Senator Russ Feingold (Dem. Wisc.) introduced a Resolution to merely censure George W. Bush for his clear, repeated violations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act—a felony—his fellow Democrats looked the other way and ignored him.

Eliot Spitzer came under the rule of law and paid the price with his governorship and perhaps may face criminal charges.

George W. Bush is effectively immune from federal criminal and civil laws because no American has standing to sue him and the Attorney General, who does, is his handpicked cabinet member.

Moreover, the courts have consistently refused to take cases involving the conduct of foreign and military policy by the president and the Vice President regardless of the seriousness of the violation. The courts pronounce such disputes as “political” and say they have to be worked out by the Congress—ie. mainly the impeachment authority.

Meanwhile, the American people have no authority to challenge these governmental crimes, which are committed in their name, and are rendered defenseless except for elections, which the two Party duopoly has rigged, commercialized, and trivialized. Even in this electoral arena, a collective vote of ouster of the incumbents does not bring public officials to justice, just to another position usually in the high paying corporate world.

So, on January 21, 2009, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney will be fugitives from justice without any Sheriffs, prosecutors or courts willing to uphold the rule of law.

What are the lessons from the differential treatment of a public official who consorts with prostitutes, without affecting his public policies, and a President who behaves like King George III did in 1776 and commits the exact kinds of multiple violations that Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other founders of our Republic envisioned for invoking the impeachment provision of their carefully crafted checks and balances in the Constitution?

Well let’s see.
First, Bush and Cheney are advised not to travel to Brattleboro or Marlboro Vermont, two New England towns whose voters, in their frustrated outrage, passed non-binding articles instructing town officials to arrest them inside their jurisdictions.

Second, George W. Bush better not go to some men’s room at an airport and tap the shoe of the fellow in the next stall. While one lame-duck Senator barely survived that charge, for the President it would mean a massive public demand for his resignation.

We certainly can do better as a country of laws, not men.