DAMFA

A federal prosecutor in a major terrorism case in Detroit has taken the rare step of suing Attorney General John Ashcroft, alleging the Justice Department interfered with the case, compromised a confidential informant and exaggerated results in the war on terrorism.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Convertino of Detroit accused the Justice Department of "gross mismanagement" of the war on terrorism in a whistleblower lawsuit filed late Friday in federal court in Washington.

"I did my duty. I was honorably discharged!" Bush proclaimed, as though that proves anything. Keep this in mind. Convicted D.C. sniper and serial killer John Muhammad served in the Louisiana National Guard from 1978 to 1985. He was twice court-martialed, once for striking an officer, another time for stealing. He was AWOL and spent time in the jail. Muhammad left the National Guard with an honorable discharge.

But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty's figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make them up out of your head.

The [insurgency] strategy is to sow chaos, defeat President Bush and hope that his Democratic successor will pull out.... the most important statement on Iraq that can be made - one that could even save lives - ... could only come from the likely Democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry.

"This is one Democrat who's going to fight back, and I've only just begun to fight," he said. "George Bush, who speaks of strength, has made America weaker - weaker economically, weaker in health care and education. And the truth is George Bush has made us weaker militarily by overextending our forces, overstraining our reserves, and driving away our allies."

Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, called the man, Ted Sampley, "one of the most despicable people I have ever had the misfortune to encounter."

In defending Mr. Kerry, Mr. McCain - who has campaigned for President Bush this year - said of Mr. Sampley: "I consider him a fraud who preys on the hopes of family members of missing servicemen for his own profit. He is dishonorable, an enemy of the truth, and despite his claims, he does not speak for or represent the views of all but a few veterans."

We now know that some time this fall Kerry campaign supporters intend to go into pro-life chat rooms on the Internet to spread a scurrilous story that President Bush drove a former girlfriend to an abortion clinic, and paid for her abortion, according to the New York Daily News.

Kerry Supporter Moby Suggested Democrats Spread Internet Rumors About President Bush. One of Sen. John Kerry's celebrity supporters is ready to pull out all the stops to get him elected. Republicans are shrieking over a suggestion by rocker Moby that Democrats spread gossip about President Bush on the Internet. "You target his natural constituencies," says the Grammy-nominated techno-wizard. "For example, you can go on all the pro-life chat rooms and say you're an outraged right-wing voter and that you know that George Bush drove an ex-girlfriend to an abortion clinic and paid for her to get an abortion." (Rush and Molloy, "Punk The Prez?" New York Daily News, 2/8/04)

"I can think of no one who deserves less to be pardoned," Kay said in Washington. He called the disclosures "a wake-up call" and said Khan was "running essentially a Sam's Club" of weapons technology.

Third quarter records were lost during conversion to microfiche, Dept of Defense says

The 10-member, bipartisan panel had been barred from reviewing notes taken by three commissioners and the commission's executive director, Philip Zelikow, who reviewed the data in December but couldn't take the summaries with them. Under the agreement, the entire commission were allowed to read versions of the summaries that were edited by the White House.

Commissioners reviewed the materials in a daylong meeting Tuesday and said the information provided a better understanding of what the government knew prior to Sept. 11.

The deal will not allow the full 10-member commission to read the original documents, or have access to notes on the documents taken by some of the commission's own members.

The summary -- provided to commissioners during a closed-door meeting Tuesday -- covered several dozen original intelligence documents and was first examined by the White House, officials said. ...

... "You either say you didn't have warning prior to 9/11 and you let us see the documents, or you shouldn't claim that," said Democratic commission member Timothy J. Roemer, a former House member from Indiana. "To say there's nothing in the PDBs that gave the president warning and then put together an agreement that only allows one or two commissioners to see the PDBs is not defensible."

MATTHEWS: He says he's not sure there are any left, but he'll make them available.

CLELAND: The military just doesn't burn things. They just don't disappear. Where are they?

MATTHEWS: So if he was getting paid for the - his weekend warrior work, he should have some pay stubs to show it.

CLELAND: And every person in the military, as far as I know, gets a DD-214 upon their discharge. Where is the DD-214?

I have one. Everybody that went through military has one. It shows exactly your tours of duty, where you served, and exactly the times and dates. Where is the DD-214?

"He knows very well that that is not true. We understand his pre-election concerns, his problems with public opinion, Congress and the media," he said.

He said Libya had begun discussions with the U.S. administration "well before" the possibility of a U.S.-led war in Iraq started being talked about in public.

"'There are only two kinds of politics. They are not radical and reactionary or conservative and liberal. Or even Democratic and Republican. There are only the politics of fear and the politics of trust.

One says: you are encircled by monstrous dangers. Give us power over your freedom so we may protect you. The other says: the world is a baffling and hazardous place, but it can be shaped to the will of men.' Cast your vote, he concluded, in trust in the ancient traditions of this home for freedom."

All history was a palimpsest, scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.

The largest section of the Records Department, far larger than the one on which Winston worked, consisted simply of persons whose duty it was to track down and collect all copies of books, newspapers, and other documents which had been superseded and were due for destruction. A number of The Times which might, because of changes in political alignment, or mistaken prophecies uttered by Big Brother, have been rewritten a dozen times still stood on the files bearing its original date, and no other copy existed to contradict it.

Democrats are now as intensely opposed to Bush as Republicans are intensely supporting him. By a 2-1 margin, political independents were more likely to say they would definitely vote against him than definitely support him.

"I think he's run the country into the ground economically, and he comes out with these crazy ideas like going to Mars and going to the moon," said Richard Bidlack, a 78-year-old retiree from Boonton, N.J., who says he voted for Bush in 2000. "I'm so upset at Bush, I'll vote for a chimpanzee before I vote for him."

Bush's approval rating stood at 47 percent in the AP-Ipsos poll taken in early February, down from 56 percent approval just a month ago. Half, or 50 percent, said they disapproved in the latest poll.

It is a great irony that the electoral process that Sharpton did so much to enrich, in which his formidable presence deterred white Democrats from reverting to racist type, has resulted in more palatable choices for Black voters, but negligible delegate clout for himself.

We must ask why Al Sharpton emerged as a contender for national Black leadership via the presidential primaries. The answer is simple, and should be deeply troubling: He was the only one to step forward. Such was also the case in the decades of Sharpton's rise to prominence in New York. When police brutalized African Americans, Al Sharpton was there. When demonstrations needed to be mounted, Sharpton was on point. When Black anger rose, Sharpton rose to the occasion - year, after year, after year.

Whites of all political persuasions denounced Sharpton as an opportunist and publicity seeker - as if they were telling Black folks something we didn't know. But we desperately needed publicity, and an opportunity to be heard. Rev. Al seized the spotlight and shook things up, which was a lot better than nothing.

To rebut this charge, the Bush campaign has relied on two mysterious documents. The documents are neither dated nor signed, which makes their legitimacy entirely questionable. Moreover, the document that the campaign claims covers the year from May 1972 to May 1973 is badly torn and can only be linked to Lt. George W. Bush by the letter "W".

The Bush plan would eliminate 65 programs and cut back 63 others, but the total savings for next year would add up to only $4.9 billion.

... federal grants to local police, fire and emergency rescue departments. Money for so-called first responders would be cut from $4.4 billion this year to $3.5 billion next year

So, until John Kerry is the nominee or is driven from the race, we will have a daily feature called "John Kerry buyer's remorse section" ...

... For those Kerry supporters who object to this section, we say: if you can't stand the heat of The Heat, how can Democrats expect you to stare down Rove and Gorbachev?

What we don't know yet is (reconciling) what we thought and what the Iraqi Survey Group has found, and we want to look at that

In early August 2001, Britain gave a categorical warning that the US should expect multiple airline hijackings. This warning was passed on to Bush a short time later. [Sunday Herald, 5/19/02] In June 2001, Germany warned that Middle Eastern terrorists were planning to hijack commercial aircraft and use them as weapons to attack "American and Israeli symbols, which stand out." [Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 9/11/01, Washington Post, 9/14/01, Fox News, 5/17/02] In August, Russian President Putin warned the US that suicide pilots were training for attacks on US targets. [Fox News, 5/17/02]

A review of FEC and other data by The Washington Post found that Kerry has raked in millions from U.S. corporations, especially financial companies such as Citigroup and telecom firms, including Rubert Murdoch's News Corp., which also flew one of his Senate staffers to California for a meeting.

In the presidential race, Kerry has accepted contributions from the same "special interests" he accuses Bush of being too cozy with: HMOs, drug companies and energy firms. He has raised nearly $27,000 from oil and gas companies, tops of the remaining Democratic candidates; $34,000 from health maintenance organizations, second to Dean; and $18,500 from pharmaceutical companies, third behind Dean and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (Conn.). Even after subtracting money Kerry has raised for his presidential campaign, he ranks in the top four Senate beneficiaries of lobbyist cash, the CRP found.

One of Kerry's biggest -- and perhaps most controversial -- donors has been the Boston-based law firm Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glovsky and Popeo. The group, which lobbies on behalf of the telecommunications industry -- and employs the senator's brother, Cameron -- is his single largest contributor over the course of his Senate career. David Leiter, Kerry's former chief of staff, is vice president of a lobbying company affiliated with the Boston-based law firm.

A Party member lives from birth to death under the eye of the Thought Police. Even when he is alone he can never be sure that he is alone. Wherever he may be, asleep or awake, working or resting, in his bath or in bed, he can be inspected without warning and without knowing that he is being inspected.

Further steps could be taken to ensure a safe general election in November, the report concludes. But ultimately, the report says, Diebold election software has to be rewritten to meet industry security standards and called for limited use of paper receipts to help verify voting. ...

... In a statement released today, Bob Urosevich, president of Diebold Election Systems, said this report and another by the Science Applications International Corporation "confirm the accuracy and security of Maryland's voting procedures and our voting systems as they exist today."

"Maybe people elsewhere trust machines more than they trust humans, but that would be totally out of the question here," said Secretary of State Bill Gardner, one of the longest-serving elections officials in the country. "I'm aghast that other places are considering touch-screen computers."

Indeed, if there's anybody who could make Dean attractive, it's Kerry.

Kerry is a miserable candidate, bereft of political skills, and possessing of a record and a persona tailor-made for Karl Rove. The Republicans will merely have to say about Kerry what they said about Gore--that he wants to be on every side of every issue, that he's culturally out of touch with mainstream America, that he's a pompous bore--and this time the sale will be easier, because all these things are far more true of Kerry than of Gore.

I'd love to see the Democrats nominate Wes Clark, who still has great potential as a general election candidate, or John Edwards, who has great potential not only as a candidate but as a president also. ... Failing that, I'd take Kerry over Dean, but it's a choice of defeat over disaster, akin to--as my colleague Frank Foer puts it--the Republicans selecting Bob Dole over Pat Buchanan in 1996.

But what a stellar crowd," Bush said. "It looks like the index of Paul O'Neill's book. Let me say something about that book. Paul said I was disengaged because he talked to me for 45 minutes and I didn't say a word. I wasn't disengaged. I was bored as hell and my mother told me never to interrupt. . . . "

" 'Boy, that speech in Iowa was something else,' Bush said, referring to Howard Dean's field holler after placing third in the caucuses Monday. 'Talk about shock and awe. Saddam Hussein felt so bad for Governor Dean that he offered him his hole.'

" 'Then we have Senator Kerry. I think Kerry's position on the war in Iraq is politically brilliant. In New Hampshire yesterday, he stated he had voted for the war, adding that he was strongly opposed to it.'

DIXVILLE NOTCH, N.H. (Reuters) - Wesley Clark captured eight of the 15 votes cast for Democrats in the first balloting of the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday in the northern hamlet of Dixville Notch, giving his candidacy a symbolic boost before the rest of the state goes to the polls.

"I'm grateful to be here and for the support here at Dixville Notch. This is a big step for me," said Clark, who is making his first bid for any elective office. ///

/// The first votes were cast in ritual fashion shortly after midnight in the northern hamlets of Dixville Notch and Hart's Location. Clark had 14, Kerry eight, Edwards and Dean four each and Lieberman one.

It confirms what I have said for a long period of time, that we were misled — misled not only in the intelligence, but misled in the way that the president took us to war," Kerry, a White House contender, said on "Fox News Sunday." "I think there's been an enormous amount of exaggeration, stretching, deception."

Presidential Address: Lowest Rated Since 2001

President George W. Bush's State of the Union address, the last of his current term, drew a 28.0 rating and 43.4 million viewers 2-plus on the eight networks that carried it live: ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, CNN, CNBC, FOX News Channel and MSNBC. It was the lowest rated address since the 27.6 for Bush's first on Feb. 27, 2001.

MATTHEWS: You know, what is this story? We had Chris Lehane on, who is working now for General Clark, attacking his old candidate he was fired by or whatever when he left his campaign - that's Kerry - saying that Kerry ought to release his financial records.

MATTHEWS: But isn't this kind of a pissant campaign, to spend your time saying who had the higher rank in the military and who is the richer or the poorer of the candidates? Is this what it's come down to?

The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair.

"I like John Kerry. I consider him a patriot," said Clark. "It's up for the voters to decide." ...

As a former Massachusetts resident, however, [John Walt] found much to agree with in Hardy's criticisms of John Kerry. "If you want anything done in Massachusetts, you went to Kennedy's office, you didn't go to Kerry's office to get it done."

Kerry can't win because he seems aloof and again, he's from New England. Also, his military credentials, although admirable, include an episode where he returned from Vietnam and threw his medals at the capital. Unfortunately, it also turns out that he actually threw a friend's medals and his turned up later on his office wall. This will confuse his image.

In April 1971, testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, he asked the question of his fellow citizens, 'How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

NASA's Spirit rover has successfully driven to its first target on Mars, a football-sized rock that scientists have dubbed Adirondack.

[I]t is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist.

Speaking to a crowd of about 1,000 people on the grounds of the South Carolina State Capitol, where the Confederate battle flag waves atop a flagpole at the entrance to the grounds, General Clark called the flag a divisive symbol.

"I've seen that flag, I've seen it all my life," said General Clark, who grew up in Little Rock, Ark. "It's a flag of the past."

Then, pointing behind him to an American flag, he added: "This American flag is our flag, and that's the flag of the future. And I want to recommend to all the people of South Carolina, come together under the American flag and honor it." ...

Earlier Monday, at a commemorative service at Zion Baptist Church in Columbia, the Rev. Dr. Sheila B. Koger delivered a fiery sermon about equal rights and Dr. King - and also took a shot at homosexuality. "God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve," Dr. Koger said to applause from some of the several hundred people attending.

General Clark, who sat through the sermon, later told reporters: "I don't support those views. I believe we have to have equal rights for every American regardless of race, color, gender, sexual orientation or any other discrimination."

There are a lot of good Democrats in this race. But Wes Clark is the best Democrat. He is a true progressive. He's the Democrat's Democrat. I've been around the political block - and I can tell you, I know a true progressive when I see one. And that's why he has my vote.

According to Bush advisers, this is the gist of his speech, which will have solemn passages with an overall tone of optimism:

We are a nation at war. My bold decisions have made America safer, but we are not yet safe. At home, my administration's policies have made us better and more prosperous. But I am not satisfied, and Congress must pass more of what I have proposed.

There are only four ways in which a ruling group can fall from power. Either it is conquered from without, or it governs so inefficiently that the masses are stirred to revolt, or it allows a strong and discontented Middle group to come into being, or it loses its own self-confidence and willingness to govern. These causes do not operate singly, and as a rule all four of them are present in some degree. A ruling class which could guard against all of them would remain in power permanently. Ultimately the determining factor is the mental attitude of the ruling class itself.