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Latest News
Week of May 15 2006
by Stephanie Westbrook
NSA Building Massive Database of Phone Records The news broke last week in USA Today that the NSA has been compiling what one person described as the largest database in the world with phone records of millions of U.S. citizens. AT&T, Verizon and Bell South turned over records to the NSA of billions of phone calls. Qwest refused the order due to doubts of its legality. Read editorials on The New York Times and the Boston Globe as well as an analysis of Bush's response, "Parsing Bush’s Words on the NSA Scandal" on The Progressive and Media Matters assessment of the mainstream media's reaction.
Meanwhile, the same NSA has blocked a Department of Justice probe into the warrantless spy program, denying the investigators the necessary security clearances. Read "White House, NSA Block Investigation of Spying" on The Nation.
And as reported last week, Gen. Hayden, former head of NSA has been nominated to take over the CIA.
Rove Indictment Imminent Jason Leopold of Truthout is reporting that Karl Rove has been indicted in the CIA leak case. It was first reported on Friday, May 12 that Rove had informed the White House of the impending indictment and that he would resign his position. On Saturday, Leopold reported that Rove has indeed been indicted, with word from high level sources with direct knowledge of the meeting between Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and Rove's attorneys. According to the story Rove has 24 hours to get "his affairs in order." This puts the official announcement at Tuesday or Wednesday.
No word on this from the mainstream media.
Pelosi on Impeachment, Kerry on Censure House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi told her caucus that the idea of impeaching President Bush isn't in the cards if the party takes over the House in November's elections. Read the article on the San Francisco Chronicle.
John Kerry instead became the third senator to cosponsor Russ Feingold's motion of censure. Read about it on The Progressive and see for yourself on the Library of Congress web site.
Take Action: Send your thoughts to Nancy Pelosi:
sf.nancy@mail.house.gov. Contact your representatives to make sure they support impeachment of both Bush and Cheney. See also the Backbone Campaign's "Never Say Never Nancy" with more contact info for Pelosi.
Wiki The Presidency
People for the American Way have created a wikipedia site where the general public can share and acquire information about Executive Branch wrongdoings. This is a one stop site for everything that is wrong with this presidency. See the WikiThePresidency.org web site.
Take Action: Contribute to the site. See instructions on how to add your contributions to the wiki pages.
Ray McGovern Takes on Donald Rumsfeld Veteran CIA agent Ray McGovern got a chance to ask Donald Rumsfeld why he lied to "get us into a war that was not necessary" during a Q&A session at a meeting of the Southern Center for International Studies in Atlanta. Read the transcript or watch the video on Democracy Now! See also FAIR's analysis of the media coverage of the exchange.
Take Action: On Thursday, May 18, at 3pm McGovern is taking his demand to Donald Rumsfeld's house in Washington, D.C., right after the DontAttackIran petition is delivered to the White House. See AfterDowningStreet for more information and tell your friends and family in DC! And if you haven't already, sign the DontAttackIran petition.
West Point Graduates Against The War Graduates of the famed military academy speak out against the war in Iraq and threats of war against Iran. In the article "Now Is The Time," co-founder James Ryan makes an appeal to other graduates to join their ranks.
Al Gore on Saturday Night Live On the lighter side, Al Gore, who has apparently been taking lessons from Steven Colbert, appeared on Saturday Night Live as President of the United States. And he was funny. Here's an example:
"Right now, in the 2nd week of May 2006, we are facing perhaps the worst gas crisis in history. We have way too much gasoline. Gas is down to $0.19 a gallon and the oil companies are hurting. I know that I am partly to blame by insisting that cars run on trash.
I am therefore proposing a federal bailout to our oil companies because- hey if it were the other way around, you know the oil companies would help us."
