I have tracfone, so I screen my calls.
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What is "partial birth abortion?" If you are talking about a procedure that is very rare and usually invoked to save a womans life, then no. I'm not against saving a womans life.
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The phone was $30, and I got 100 minutes in a referal program,10 free minutes,  plus 10 minutes by activating online, so I ended up with 120 minutes and 4 months for my 30 bucks. I figure I can buy a new phone, refer myself, and have a warrantied phone for another 30 when this one runs out. Then I could give the old phone away or sell it cheap with at least 100 minutes on it.

A great deal since I mostly use it as a pager and make my long calls from land lines. But I have it since I'm out on the road with somebody in delicate condition quite a bit, and ride alone in fairly untraveled desert.
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Sleazy scumsucking lying bastard.
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I swear, I thought Reuters threw out all the lying scumsucking bastards along with the terrorist term thingie.  Ooops that was the BBC.  My bad.

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What part of "proposal" don't you understand?

All the radical left has done is waste their time trying to slander the President of the United States.  The lies and exaggerations speak reams about their confusion and hatred for a man that isn't even going to be running in the next election.

Turn of the screw? Or just plain screwed?

This just out from Rep. Ney's office ...

I wanted to tell you directly that this week the Department of Justice asked the Congressman's office to provide documents related to the government's investigation of Jack Abramoff. Consistent with the Rules of the House of Representatives, the Congressman has informed the Speaker of this request and this request will be handled consistent with House Rules.

The Congressman has not been notified that he is the target of an investigation and we do not believe that there would be any grounds to do so. There have been a litany of unfounded allegations made against the Congressman by the Washington media in recent months and he looks forward to addressing them as thoroughly and expeditiously as possible with the appropriate entities looking into the Abramoff matter.

Congressman Ney has made the following statement regarding this matter: "As I have said repeatedly, we will cooperate fully with any inquiry. I voluntarily provided information to the Senate Indian Affairs Committee last year and I have offered to make myself available to meet with the House Ethics Committee. I believe, however, that although the government's investigation of Mr. Abramoff has been well-publicized through other sources, it is inappropriate for my office to comment in any detail about an ongoing investigation."

Can you say 'subpoenaed'? Apparently Ney's press secretary can't.

Here's what The Hill and Roll Call (sub.req.) have to say about Ney getting subpoenaed.

-- Josh Marshal

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/006928.php

Success!
By Matthew Yglesias

Some have doubted whether the Bush administration can really create an American-style democracy in Iraq. Evidence indicates, however, that they're succeeding wildly:

Ziad Cattan was a Polish Iraqi used-car dealer with no weapons-dealing experience until U.S. authorities turned him into one of the most powerful men in Iraq last year — the chief of procurement for the Defense Ministry, responsible for equipping the fledgling Iraqi army.

As U.S. advisors looked on, Cattan embarked on a massive spending spree, paying hundreds of millions of dollars in Iraqi funds for secret, no-bid contracts, according to interviews with more than a dozen senior American, coalition and Iraqi officials, and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times. The money flowed, often in bricks of cash, through the hands of middlemen who were friends of Cattan and took a percentage of the proceeds.

Cattan's obviously learned a lot from Bush, DeLay, Abramoff, Blunt, etc. It's a model that, I'm sure, will take the world by storm any day now.
http://yglesias.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/11/6/103910/307

DeLay Uses Campaign Tactics to Fight Charges

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 6, 2005; Page A07

With his future tied to the outcome of a criminal indictment in Texas, Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) is using an extraordinary array of campaign tactics to try to win his court battle and save his political career.

Other politicians caught in a legal bind have tried to make a similar case that they were victims of prosecutorial excess or partisan attack. But few have done it to the degree of DeLay and his allies, who have launched an aggressive campaign to portray the former House majority leader as both a victim of a vendetta and an irreplaceable champion of conservatism.

By so doing, DeLay's team hopes to accomplish three critical goals: undermine the stature of his Democratic prosecutor, Ronnie Earle, in the minds of potential Texas jurors; win over DeLay's suburban Houston constituents before a potentially difficult reelection campaign; and retain his political base in Washington before a planned return to power.

The effort includes television advertisement that portrays Earle as a snarling Rottweiler, a staff of well-connected communications aides and skillful lawyers, e-mail blitzes, talking points for friendly radio hosts, speeches and a bulging legal defense fund.

AP: DeLay's Staff Tried to Help Abramoff

By JOHN SOLOMON
The Associated Press
Thursday, November 3, 2005; 3:23 PM

WASHINGTON -- Investigators have unearthed e-mails showing Rep. Tom DeLay's office tried to help lobbyist Jack Abramoff get a high-level Bush administration meeting for Indian clients, an effort that succeeded after the tribes began making a quarter-million dollars in donations.

Tribal money went both to a group founded by Interior Secretary Gale Norton, the Cabinet secretary Abramoff was trying to meet, as well as to DeLay's personal charity.

"Do you think you could call that friend and set up a meeting," then-DeLay staffer Tony Rudy wrote to fellow House aide Thomas Pyle in a Dec. 29, 2000, e-mail titled "Gale Norton-Interior Secretary." President Bush had nominated Norton to the post the day before.

Rudy wrote Abramoff that same day promising he had "good news" about securing a meeting with Norton, forwarding information about the environmental group Norton had founded, according to e-mails obtained by investigators and reviewed by The Associated Press. Rudy's message to Abramoff was sent from Congress' official e-mail system.

Within months, Abramoff clients donated heavily to the Norton-founded group and to DeLay's personal charity. The Coushatta Indian tribe, for instance, wrote checks in March 2001 for $50,000 to the Norton group and $10,000 to the DeLay Foundation, tribal records show.

The lobbyist and the Coushattas eventually won face-to-face time with the secretary during a Sept. 24, 2001, dinner sponsored by the group she had founded.

Abramoff's clients were trying to stop a rival Indian tribe from winning Interior Department approval to build a casino.

Federal and congressional investigators have obtained the DeLay staff e-mails from Abramoff's former lobbying firm as they try to determine whether officials in Congress or the Bush administration provided government assistance in exchange for the money Abramoff's clients donated to Republican causes.

The assistance to Abramoff from DeLay's staff occurred just a few months after DeLay received political donations, free use of a Washington arena skybox to reward donors and an all-expense-paid trip to play golf in Scotland arranged by Abramoff and mostly underwritten by his clients.

DeLay's lawyer said this week his client probably didn't know about the assistance his aides gave Abramoff five years ago and does not believe his office would ever provide government assistance in exchange for political donations.

"On its face it's not unusual for staffers to assist people trying to get a meeting with an executive branch agency and that would be something a member of Congress would not typically be involved with. That's staff work," attorney Richard Cullen said in an interview.

"Tom DeLay conducts himself consistent with the highest standards of conduct and he mandated the same for his staff," Cullen said.  (more)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...5110300436.html

The most puzzling thing about this (and other ethics scandals) is the complete lack of effort at hiding any of this.  Is it hubris, or are they so lacking in morality that they truly believe that none of this is wrong, scandalous, stinking, a stench in the nostrils of the public?

And what the hell is wrong with our right wing posters that they defend this sort of crap as being acceptable or excusable?
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it's all a media conspiracy. It's them against the world.

If the evidence against them is overwhelming it's only obvious it was a set up by a disgruntled former insider.
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No, it's just that they have been brainwashed.  They, like the Christian fundies, have been manipulated and lied to for so long they can't accept the truth.

  DeLay's aide called them "whackos".  He'd know.
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Yeah, Earle really needs to get an injunction against those rottweiler ads.  A very clear case of an attempt to poison the jury pool.
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He's using personal funds for these ads, right?
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He's using personal funds for these ads, right?
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Recently indicted Michael Scanlon, DeLay aide:

"The wackos get their information through the Christian right, Christian radio, mail, the internet and telephone trees," Scanlon wrote in the memo, which was read into the public record at a hearing of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee. "Simply put, we want to bring out the wackos to vote against something and make sure the rest of the public lets the whole thing slip past them." The brilliance of this strategy was twofold: Not only would most voters not know about an initiative to protect Coushatta gambling revenues, but religious "wackos" could be tricked into supporting gambling at the Coushatta casino even as they thought they were opposing it.

  I sent an e-mail to James Dobson and cited the above and asked him how "in God's name he could continue to support the republican party.

  I haven't received a reply.
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I thought he was soliciting funds from allies.
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are there any people in texass? Or is it just repuslickans?
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Do Mexicans count?
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Do Mexicans count?
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Do you mean native Texicans?
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63/64ths + one red hair.
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Earle is a public figure, hence he cannot sue for slander or libel.  (Though that's a law I'd like to see modified.)

But hmmm, Earle could make a pretty good case for the "malice aforethought" exception to the public figure exception.
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Earle has his public office to use against his enemies, and his speeches to his Democrat s to prove that he was planning from the start to bring down DeLay. It's a fair political fight, especially considering most people assume a prosecutor has some proof of wrongdoing, even if has to shop for a favorable jury that has just been brought in.
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He trying to imply he only had two beers?
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Delay has fame, political clout second only to George Bush, and unlimited money.


He’s no Clarence Darrow.
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He's no Henry Darrow. But he's all the Dems had at the time.
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I would agree that the average criminal defendant is at great disadvantage to the State, however.
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He the fargin' county prosecutor, not some hit-man.
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Maybe he should have kept his mouth shut beforehand and it wouldn't look like he was a hitman.
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They're just hoping he is. Who knows, maybe they'll get their wish. I'd always kinda hoped DeLay would go away, but not in a political Vendetta.
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They're just hoping he is. Who knows, maybe they'll get their wish. I'd always kinda hoped DeLay would go away, but not in a political Vendetta.
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If Earl doesn't get him, the Abramoff probe is working it's way through Congress.

  It's going to take a few congressmen out with it.  All republicans, I think.
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