"DeLay said -- apparently with a straight face -- that the change was needed to protect Republicans from the Democrats' "politics of personal destruction."
ROFLMFAO!!

Did anyone really expect anything less from this gang of thieves?

Did anyone really expect anything less from this gang of thieves?

I must admit, I did not expect that kind of a statement from that lowlife scumbag SOB.

Tom Delay is the chairman of my task force. He calls and asks for money. Do you suppose he's ... .. .. ...with my $$?

Don't ask, he won't tell. Even if you do ask, he's still not tellin'.

If nobody inquires, nobody gets hurt.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Politics of personal destruction rules as long as DeLay himself isn't the target.

Prosecutor Blasts GOP for Shielding DeLay

By Associated Press

November 23, 2004, 7:30 PM EST


NEW YORK -- A Texas prosecutor who is leading an investigation into possible illegal campaign spending lashed out at congressional Republicans on Tuesday for changing their rules in order to protect House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.

The House Republicans repealed a rule that automatically required party leaders or committee chairmen to step down if they are indicted on a felony charge. The new rule provides for a case-by-case review.

The change means DeLay could maintain his power if indicted in the investigation being conducted by Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle.

"Politicians in Congress are responsible for the leaders they choose. Their choices reflect their moral values," Earle wrote in an opinion piece published Tuesday in The New York Times. "The cynical destruction of moral values at the top makes it hard for law enforcement to do its job."

Earle has not said that DeLay is a target, but three of DeLay's top lieutenants have been indicted.

Republicans have accused Earle, a Democrat, of using the investigation as a partisan witch hunt or fishing expedition.

The investigation centers on the use of corporate campaign contributions, long outlawed in Texas, to help secure a Republican majority in the state Legislature in the 2002 election. The corporate donations were made to Texans for a Republican Majority, a political action committee created with help from DeLay.

"It is a rare day when members of the United States Congress try to read the minds of the members of a grand jury in Travis County, Texas. Apparently Tom DeLay's colleagues expect him to be indicted," Earle wrote.

A spokesman in DeLay's office did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

The Ethics committee report on Tom Delay is coming up next on c-span, as if anyone cares.

Corporate PAC's Backed Republicans 10 to 1
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: November 26, 2004




WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 (AP) - The top-giving corporate political action committees did not hedge their bets in the fall elections despite the narrow division between Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

They favored Republican candidates 10 to 1.

Of 268 corporate PAC's that donated $100,000 or more to presidential and Congressional candidates from January 2003 through the middle of last month, 245 gave the majority of their contributions to Republicans, according to an analysis released Wednesday by Political Money Line, a nonpartisan campaign finance tracking service.

Twenty-three corporate PAC's made more than half their donations to Democrats, according to the study, based on the most recent campaign finance reports available.

Corporate PAC's are financed with limited donations from company employees, who can each give up to $5,000 a year. In turn, the PAC's can donate up to $5,000 for a primary and another $5,000 for the general election to each federal candidate they support.

No money from the corporation itself can go to Congressional or presidential candidates.

These were the five most-Republican-leaning corporate political action committees:

¶Cooper Industries PAC: All $208,000 to Republicans. Cooper Industries, based in Houston, makes hardware and electrical and automotive products.

¶Flowers Industries PAC: All $131,500 to Republican candidates. Flowers Industries, a bakery company, is based in Thomasville, Ga.

¶The PAC of Phillips International: All $113,500 to Republicans. Phillips is a publishing company in Potomac, Md.

¶Harris Corporation Federal PAC: $168,500 to Republicans; $4,000 to Democrats. Harris, based in Melbourne, Fla., is an international communications equipment company.

¶Illinois Tool Works for Better Government Committee: $139,500 to Republicans; $5,000 to Democrats.

These were the five most-Democratic-leaning political action committees:

¶Cablevision Systems Corporation PAC: $88,000 to Democrats; $24,500 to Republicans.

¶The PAC of MWH Americas: $69,334 to Democrats; $48,000 to Republicans. MWH Americas is a construction and engineering company based in Broomfield, Colo.

¶The PAC of the LaSalle Bank Corporation of Chicago and its Standard Federal Bank subsidiary: $65,250 to Democrats; $47,500 to Republican candidates.

¶New York Mercantile Exchange PAC: $200,500 to Democrats; $148,000 to Republicans.

¶Harrah's Entertainment casino company PAC: $75,767 to Democrats; $57,793 to Republicans.

Republicans increased their majorities in both houses of Congress in the Nov. 2 elections.

When lawmakers take office in January, the Senate will have 55 Republicans, 44 Democrats and one independent. There are now 51 Republicans, 48 Democrats and one independent.

The House breakdown after the November elections is 231 Republicans, 200 Democrats and one independent, with three races not yet decided. Before the elections, there were 227 Republicans, 205 Democrats, one independent and two vacancies.

Now there's a mandate.

I don't think only Christian Science members read the paper. I've never even met one.

The name alone should make you shudder. But then I notice it being quoted much here lately.

The name alone should make you shudder.  But then I notice it being quoted much here lately.

Is the paper a religious periodical?

No, it's a real newspaper published by a church — The First Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston, Mass., USA. Everything in the Monitor is international and US news and features, except for one religious article that has appeared each day in The Home Forum section since 1908, at the request of the paper's founder, Mary Baker Eddy.

In an age of corporate conglomerates dominating news media, the Monitor combination of church ownership, a public-service mission, and commitment to covering the world (not to mention the fact that it was founded by a woman shortly after the turn of the century, when US women didn't yet have the vote!) gives the paper a uniquely independent voice in journalism.

How do you compare to other newspapers covering international news?

Unlike most US dailies, the Monitor does not rely primarily on wire services, like AP and Reuters, for its international coverage. We have writers based in 11 countries, including Russia, China, France, the UK, Kenya, Mexico, Israel and India, as well as throughout the US.

Why does the Christian Science church publish a newspaper?

One answer might be found in a story the Monitor's Washington bureau chief, David Cook, told in a talk he gave several years ago:

“Consider this case. It is 1907. An elderly New England woman finds herself being targeted by Joseph Pulitzer's New York World. She is 86 years old and holds some unconventional religious beliefs that she expounds in a book. The book becomes a bestseller, making her wealthy and a well-known public figure.

The New York World decides she is incapable of managing her own affairs and persuades some of her friends and her two sons to sue for control of her estate.

Although Boston and New Hampshire newspapers and major wire services interview this person and find her competent, the New York World is unrelenting. The lady in question finally is taken to court where the case against her is dropped.

And the next year this woman, Mary Baker Eddy, founds The Christian Science Monitor.

Given her experience with the press, it is not all that surprising that she sets as the Monitor's goal ‘to injure no man, but to bless all mankind.’ In one of life's little ironies, Joseph Pulitzer went on to endow the Pulitzer prizes for journalistic excellence. And Mrs. Eddy's newspaper went on to win five Pulitzers so far. [Since Dave gave this talk, the Monitor won a sixth Pulitzer — the 1996 prize for international reporting, and a seventh Pulitzer in 2002 for editorial cartooning.]

“Mrs. Eddy had been thinking about a newspaper for a long time before 1907. Way back in 1883 she wrote: ‘Looking over the newspapers of the day, one naturally reflects that it is dangerous to live, so loaded with disease seems the very air. These descriptions carry fears to many minds, to be depicted in some future time upon the body. A periodical of our own will counteract to some extent this public nuisance; for through our paper we shall be able to reach many homes with healing, purifying thought.’

There were many more letters and messages to church members from Eddy on the subject between then and the New York World case. Then an interesting coincidence occurred in March 1908, eight months before the paper's launch: Eddy received a long letter from a local journalist and Christian Scientist, John L. Wright. In it, he told her he felt there was a growing need for a daily newspaper that ‘will place principle before dividends, and that will be fair, frank and honest with the people on all subjects and under whatever pressure’ — a truly independent voice not controlled by ‘commercial and political monopolists.’

Wright certainly got the idea. (A few months later he left the Boston Globe to become the Monitor's first city editor.) His was among 1,000 job applications the Monitor's first editor, Archibald McLellan, received prior to launch.”

Is publishing the Monitor about spreading good values?

That's part of it, but let's be clear: The Christian Science church doesn't publish news to propagate denominational doctrine; it provides news purely as a public service. Here's why: If the basic theology of that church says that what reaches and affects thought shapes experience, it follows that a newspaper would have significant impact on the lives of those who read it.

A newspaper whose motive is “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind,” as its founder charged, would have a "leavening" effect on society, as well as on individual lives — to use a metaphor Eddy herself appreciated and used. The idea is that the unblemished truth is freeing (as a fundamental human right); with it, citizens can make informed decisions and take intelligent action, for themselves and for society.

Then if the paper's basically secular and for everybody, why is “Christian Science” in its name?

Eddy insisted, against strong opposition from some of her advisers and church officers, that the words “Christian Science” should be in the paper's name. According to one of her biographers, Robert Peel, to Eddy, "the designated title was an identification of the paper with the promise that no human situation was beyond healing or rectification if approached with sufficient understanding of man's God-given potentialities. Nor did the “good news” of Christianity involve the prettification of bad news, but rather, its confident confrontation" (witness Monitor correspondent David Rohde's Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting 1995 on alleged massacres by Bosnian Serb forces.

Listen, asswipe, quit defending DeLay. You have a long history of defending crooks, starting with the Enron etc. "geniuses'. Shut the fark up.

Kofi Annan is not a crook. Not everyone is like the inner-circle of the Bush II Administration.

ANGRY WHITE LIBERAL MALE......................ROFLMAO                  

Too much lead in the water? Bad genes?

My mom used to get the CSM in the mail for free back when I was a kid.  I think they purposely sent it to teachers.  I was more of a "Weekly Reader" person, myself.

One of my great aunts was a teacher. She used to send the coolest books for our birthday and Christmas presents, carefully selected from award winning children’s books.

My mom used to get the CSM in the mail for free back when I was a kid.  I think they purposely sent it to teachers.  I was more of a "Weekly Reader" person, myself.

I thought all you guys were old. I remember Grit and the Weekly Reader.
   
whoops, I'm ollllllldddddd.....

Kids that couldn't get paper routes sold Grit and Cloverine salve. 

Cloverine salve.

The timing was perfect: On Nov. 23 -- exactly three weeks after the election and as a flurry of top Bush administration officials announced their departures -- the Office of Government Ethics declared that it was relaxing prohibitions on lobbying by former Cabinet secretaries and other top officials.

Praise Jesus!

[Wasn't someone going to "return honor or integrity" to the White House, or some other equally meaningless Republican bullshit lies?  Well, NOW do you rightwingers see why I'm soooo damned mad at these hypocritical, self-serving jerks?

I'll be darned.
I wonder if it's available in sandlewood?

he agreed to recuse himself from matters affecting his former firm's clients. Earthjustice legislative counsel Joan Mulhern said she suspected Griles is leaving "now that he can no longer double-dip at the taxpayers' expense."

shocking, isn't it? Especially one who is so pious and meek