ELECTION SEEN AS GREEN LIGHT FOR GOP ENVIRONMENTAL AGENDA
"With the elections over, Congress and the Bush administration are moving ahead with ambitious environmental agendas that include revamping signature laws on air pollution and endangered species and reviving a moribund energy bill that would open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to energy exploration. In addition, the administration intends to accelerate conservation efforts by distributing billions of dollars to private landowners for the preservation of wetlands and wildlife habitats."
(NEW YORK TIMES)

LESBIAN ELECTED DALLAS' SHERIFF (NO, REALLY!)
"One-time migrant farm worker Lupe Valdez made history this week when she became the first woman and the first Hispanic elected Dallas County sheriff, not to mention the first Democrat to win the post since the mid-1970s. She also is openly gay."
(HOUSTON CHRONICLE, unearthed by Bill Messick)

EMINEN JOINS THE REVOLUTION
"Eminem, the man who George Bush once called 'the most dangerous threat to American children since polio' , and one of the least likely artists to come out with an overtly political message and a rallying call to youth, released 'Mosh, a rousing call to arms for the hip hop generation to take back the government that seeks to represent them.
With 'Mosh,' Eminem, the most polarizing musician of our times, takes on the most polarizing election of our times.
In the video, Eminem leads a mob fired up and politicized by four years of outrage and anger at the Bush administration. Clad in black hoodies, fists raised, the angry young men and women descend on a state building ... to vote."
(ALTERNET)

UNION CLAIMS HATCH ACT VIOLATION BY FORMER BUSH ADVISER
"When retired Air Force Col. Ken Cordier took questions during a mandatory training session on prisoner-of-war issues, 'his comments included statements about scumbags who threw their medals over the fence, [and] that the Democratic Party was the 'peace' party, as if that were a derogatory title,' an American Federation of Government Employee wrote in the union's request for a Hatch Act investigation. "
(WASHINGTON POST)

BUSH'S PENCHANT FOR SECRECY
"As detailed in a telling new Congressional report, Mr. Bush's secrecy obsession - by now a widely recognized hallmark of his presidency - is truly out of hand."
CLICK HERE FOR THE REPORT
CLICK HERE FOR A DETAILED PRESS RELEASE
(NYT)

NEWS CREW CONFIRMS WEAPONS THERE AFTER US ARRIVAL
A videotape shows a huge supply of explosives still at the Al Qaqaa munitions complex nine days after the fall of Baghdad.
FOR AN ONGOING DISCUSSION ON THIS TOPIC SEE THE TALKING POINTS BLOG

(NYT)

WE DON'T NEED NO STINKIN SPIN
"As the presidential election reaches its final days, both campaigns are airing a barrage of dishonest claims in their advertisements. An examination of several prominent examples demonstrates just how bad the situation has become."
(SPINSANITY)

SWING STATE REVIEW
The blog, Election Law at Moritz is publishing a swing state review, most importantly reporting that "All eyes are, or should be, on Ohio, as the state prepares to conduct hearings later this week on the challenges raised by the Republican Party to over 20,000 newly registered voters. The vast majority of these challenges will occur in Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland and is predominantly Democratic territory. The county's board of elections will hold hearings at the Cleveland Convention Center to hear the more 17,000 challenges lodged by the Republicans in this county. "
(ELECTION LAW AT MORITZ, unearthed by Ed Still's VOTELAW)

IS TOO!
Minneapolis' City Pages has just posted a story with some Bush quotes, the most interesting of which is a listing of the times he has made the al Qaeda/Sadam connection.
"This is a person [Saddam] who has had contacts with al Qaeda."
--October 2002
"He's got connections with al Qaeda."
--October 2002
"This is a guy who has had connections with these shadowy terrorist networks."
--October 2002
"We know he's got ties with al Qaeda."
--November 2002
"In terms of [Iraq's] support for terrorism, we have established that Iraq has permitted al Qaeda to operate within its territory. As the president said recently, 'The regime has long-standing and continuing ties to terrorist organizations. And there are al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq.' The president has made his position on Iraq eminently clear, and in the coming weeks and months we shall see what we shall see."
--John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control, speech to the Hudson Institute
"We know that he's had connections with al Qaeda."
--November 2002
"He's had connections with shadowy terrorist networks like al Qaeda."
--November 2002
"We know that he has had contacts with terrorist networks like al Qaeda."
--November 2002
"And, not only that, he is--would like nothing better than to hook up with one of these shadowy terrorist networks like al Qaeda, provide some weapons and training to them, let them come and do his dirty work, and we wouldn't be able to see his fingerprints on his action."
--November 2002
"Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications, and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda."
--January 2003
"God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East."
--GWB to Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, as reported in the Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, June 23, 2003
"Fuck Saddam. We're taking him out."
--Speaking to Condi Rice, March 2002, a full year before the invasion of Iraq.

(CITY PAGES)

CRONKITE DOWN ON THE WAR
"Veteran newsman Walter Cronkite said Americans aren't any safer because of the U.S.-led war on Iraq. 'The problem, quite clearly, is we have excited the Arab world, the Muslim world, to take up arms against us,' Cronkite said Saturday, adding that this excitement far exceeds the anger that existed among terrorist groups prior to the war."
(FINDLAW)

HOW UNCONVENTIONAL
"A new legal opinion by the Bush administration has concluded for the first time that some non-Iraqi prisoners captured by American forces in Iraq are not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions, administration officials said Monday. The opinion, reached in recent months, establishes an important exception to public assertions by the Bush administration since March 2003 that the Geneva Conventions applied comprehensively to prisoners taken in the conflict in Iraq, the officials said. But, as recently as May 2004, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld reiterated in public testimony the administration's view that "everyone in Iraq who was a military person" as well as "the civilians or criminal elements" who were detained by the American authorities would be "treated subject to the Geneva Conventions." "
(NYT)

THE REAL ISSUE IN MIDDLE EAST IS SUPPORT FOR MODERATES
"President Bush's 'global war on terror' is a politically expedient slogan without real substance, serving to distort rather than define. It obscures the central fact that a civil war within Islam is pitting zealous fanatics against increasingly intimidated moderates. The undiscriminating American rhetoric and actions increase the likelihood that the moderates will eventually unite with the jihadists in outraged anger and unite the world of Islam in a head-on collision with America."
(NYT OP-ED)

WHERE HAS THE GRAND OLD PARTY GONE?
"The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brown shirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong's moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, N.M., little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt's evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we're deaf, dumb and dangerous. "
(SEATTLE POST INTELLIGENCER, unearthed by Jim Sturdevant)

BUSH'S BLINDERS
"There are consequences, often powerful consequences, to turning one's back on reality. The president may believe that freedom's on the march, and that freedom is God's gift to every man and woman in the world, and perhaps even that he is the vessel through which that gift is transmitted. But when he is crafting policy decisions that put people by the hundreds of thousands into harm's way, he needs to rely on more than the perceived good wishes of the Almighty. He needs to submit those policy decisions to a good hard reality check."
(NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED)

STOP, STOP, STOP HURTING AMERICA
"JON STEWART ON CNN'S CROSSFIRE: Here's just what I wanted to tell you guys.
CARLSON: Yes.
STEWART: Stop.
STEWART: Stop, stop, stop, stop hurting America. "
(MEDIA MATTERS)