typo on Fox News?

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford disappeared for 5 days. His staff said he was on a solo hike on the Appalachian Trail. As it turns out, using taxpayer funds, he was visiting his mistress in Argentina. According to Fox News, Gov. Sanford's a Democrat, but in real life, he's a Republican. An innocent mistake...

But wait! Back in 2006, Fox News employed this very same tactic when former Republican Representative Mark Foley was embroiled in a scandal involving sexual instant-messages to teenage male pages.



In an April 2003 IM, Foley and a teen reportedly describe having orgasms. Congressman Foley then explains to the young lad that he has to go back to work and vote. "What was Foley off to vote for?" Alex Cockburn wrote at the time, "That evening the House voted on HR 1559, Emergency War Time supplemental appropriations. Just another wargasm in the life of Empire."

State Secrets: Smell the Obama Difference

President Obama has been repeatedly invoking the state secrets defense to prevent our government and corporations from being held accountable for their roles in cases of torture and spying, the very same practice candidate Hope & Change criticized Bush for overusing.

The state secrets privilege was Obama's justification for opposing multiple lawsuits brought against the government and phone companies for Bush's warrantless spy program.

Hell, he even outdid Bush on the illegal wiretapping lawsuit brought against the government by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In April, Obama aped the Bush camp's claim that the state secrets privilege protected the Bush administration from any lawsuits for illegal spying. Then Obama took it a step further than even Bush with a claim of "sovereign immunity" barring ANY lawsuits for government spying unless there is "willful disclosure" of the information obtained. Simply put, Obama is claiming that the government has the right to spy on our phone calls or emails without a pesky warrant as long as what's found out isn't publicized on purpose.

Most recently, Obama is attempting to have a lawsuit brought against Jeppesen Dataplan, a Boeing subsidiary, dismissed in order to protect state secrets. Five men, claiming to be victims of extraordinary rendition, are suing the flight-planning company for aiding the CIA in the abduction and flying of them to secret prisons in other countries where they were tortured. Keep in mind, Obama isn't invoking state secrets regarding specific evidence here. He wants the whole suit tossed out.

It should also be noted that the extraordinary rendition program of outsourcing torture hasn't slowed down one bit under Obama.

U.S. journalists kidnapped by N. Korea: blame China

Seriously, blame China!

TEXT

Shell to pay $15.5M to keep role in Saro-Wiwa's death out of court

In 1995 Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight others were executed after a sham of a trial. Saro-Wiwa led a peaceful movement opposing Royal Dutch Shell's environmental destruction of the Niger Delta and the oil giant's cozy relationship with Nigeria's brutal military dictators. Shell's ties to the country's military and direct involvement in the killings of Ken Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni eight led to the New York lawsuit. Here's a report from Democracy Now!:

TEXT

statistic of the day

30 percent of Republicans don't like Rush Limbaugh.
2 percent of African-Americans do.

he'll end the war in 2012

“I have made it clear to the Iraqi people that we pursue no bases, and
no claim on their territory or resources. Iraq's sovereignty is its
own. And that's why I ordered the removal of our combat brigades by
next August. That is why we will honor our agreement with Iraq's
democratically elected government to remove combat troops from Iraqi
cities by July, and to remove all of our troops from Iraq by 2012,” -
statement from President Obama on June 5, 2009.

it's OK to be lazy, just don't say it out loud

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: "I understand that during her
career, [Sotomayor has] written hundreds and hundreds of opinions. I
haven’t read a single one of them, and if I’m fortunate before we end
this, I won’t have to read one of them.”