Dubya's Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

The war, missing emails, the Dubya and the Dick! Want it all to just end right now? Prissy has a cure for your frustrations-register your protest. Yes you can write a post card or make a call, but why not get really creative?

Creativity seems to have been stifled, most likely at an early age, in hard core right wingers. It puts them at a real disadvantage. If Americans during the American revolution had not been creative in their strategies, we may have lost...shudder at the thought.

Of course we did win and with it the right to tell our government when it is wrong-without fear of reprisal, as guaranteed by the Constitution and Bill of Rights.Look, no net!

Not that Bushies concerned themselves with those pesky rights-no indeed-they stepped all over them. But we can demand their return with creative protesting.

Prissy will give you some ideas, let her know if you hear of a really creative (and legal!) protest method. Civil disobedience methods and tactics are welcome, as Prissy doesn't know much about those...

In Nancy Pelosi's district, military families have used sidewalk chalk to write her and her staff messages "END THE WAR" "You do not support the troops, only the war" "Impeach Bush for Blowing the Job" -oh there are many other slogans you can use. Freeway blogger has some great ones, if you need ideas.

Progress Ohio is having a campaign "What would you tell Senator Voinovich?" The winner gets a truck billboard with their saying on it, along with encouragement for others to call Voinovich. They will drive past the Senators house and neighborhood as well as his old stomping ground of Cleveland. The former governor really should know Ohioans better than to think he'll get away with his rubber stamp on Dubya's crazy foreign policies. Shame on him!

From Prissy's Inbox: May want to stock up enough for a couple of weeks, Dearest Readers Truckers Protest April 23-25 "Truck Out"

Participate in the TRUCKER'S "TRUCK OUT" RALLY, on April 23rd, 24th, and 25th. Join in on one or all three days to rivet every citizen's attention on the injustice being done to you and to our country by the criminal, reckless, and unprecedented actions of our Government.

Traprock Peace Center Presents Scott Ritter & former Congressman Andy Jacobs in INDIANAPOLIS

As Indiana National Guard members face call up for offshore deployments to Iraq, Veterans for Peace Indiana Chapter #49 invites you to discuss:

U.S. Policy in the Middle East: Wednesday April 18, 2007 7-8:30 pm Target Iran / The Role of Congress

Hear Scott Ritter US Marine, Gulf War Veteran and former UNSCOM Weapons Inspector and Honorable Andy Jacobs, Korean War Veteran and former Indiana Congressperson

Note to Dearest Readers: Scott Ritter thinks stopping a war with Iran may be impossible. As far as the missing emails go, remember that Rover and his laywer "found" 250 emails that the were previously unavailable-not "archived through the usual White House process." That and the emails were being sent through a non-government email account.

Patrick Fitzgerald's investigators made copies of the hard drives of all of Rovers' computers during the CIA Leak investigation.

Dearest Readers, Please let Prissy know if you will be traveling to the Columbus area. Betty and Prissy had the pleasure of meeting some Dearest Readers Saturday night and it was a lot of fun;-)

Coming up in Columbus: EARTH DAY April 22, 2007 Check the schedule of events here.

Hot Links

India Times Euro hits 2-year high versus $

The euro reached a two-year high against the dollar and approached a record versus the yen as signs of faster growth in Europe raised speculation the European Central Bank will increase interest rates.

Gains in the euro accelerated after it rose above $1.34, triggering orders to buy back the currency, traders said. ECB officials said this week that higher borrowing costs are needed to contain inflation as reports showed strength in manufacturing. The Bank of England kept rates unchanged on Thursday.

Mercury News San Mateo pyschiatrist arrested on molestation charges

Dr. William Ayers, 75, a well-known San Mateo County child psychiatrist, sat behind bars on $1.5 million bail Thursday night accused of several counts of child molestation in a case spanning decades.

Ayers - who treated children from the 1960s through last year - first came to the attention of authorities in 2002 when a victim reported that he was sexually assaulted on multiple occasions by the doctor during the 1970s. Authorities, however, were unable to prosecute the doctor because the case fell out of the statute of limitations.

But during a subsequent civil case against Ayers, several victims reported that they also had been molested by Ayers from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. None of those cases, however, fell within the statute of limitations.

Is he another 'Chester the Molester' republican? Just wondering...

India Times Pakistan offers to sell Iranian gas to India

Lending a new twist to negotiations on the tri-nation gas pipeline, Islamabad has offered to sell Iranian gas to India at its border to save New Delhi the bother over risks associated with safe transit of the fuel through Pakistani territory.

Pakistan's Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz at a late night meeting with Petroleum Minister Murli Deora here on April 3 offered to buy 60 million standard cubic meters per day of gas from Iran, use half of it in his country and sell the rest to India at the Indo-Pak border, highly placed sources said.

This way India will neither have to deal with Iran, which faces UN sanctions over its nuclear programme, nor be bothered about cumbersome security of the 1,035-km pipeline stretch in Pakistan and safe delivery of gas at its border.

On the flip side, Pakistan may add some margin to the already high Iranian gas price.

ABC 7Cheney Hasn't Called Libby Since Trial

"Well, there hasn't been occasion to do so," Cheney said in an interview broadcast Sunday on CBS'"Face the Nation."

Libby is the highest-ranking White House official convicted in a government scandal since the Iran-Contra affair two decades ago. He was found guilty last month of perjury and obstruction in the investigation into the 2003 leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.

The episode undercut the Bush administration's credibility, one of a string of a bad-news stories that have hurt the president's standing.

President Bush and Cheney have expressed sadness for Libby and his family, but largely refrained from comment because the matter is an active legal case. Libby plans to appeal.

Dick is just mad because Scooter was caught...

Haaretz Israel Angry, Wants to Sell China Arms, US Says NO

Peretz told his hosts that he had suffered injuries when he was serving as an officer in the Israel Defense Forces (sparing them details of the accident). Ivanov was the most impressive of them all: sharp, fluent and displaying the qualifications that have made him one of the two leading candidates to succeed Russian President Vladimir Putin. Gates, who will arrive in Israel tomorrow for a short visit, was limp and gray, quite the opposite of Ivanov. He did not radiate the power of someone who represents the defense establishment in the strongest country in the world.

In the mid-1980s, Gates was the head of the CIA intelligence administration and deputy to the CIA director, William Casey. In his professional capacity, Gates often met with people from the Mossad and Israeli military intelligence in Washington and Tel Aviv. They did not like him much. On one of his visits here, Yoram Hessel of the Tevel division for foreign relations at the Mossad accompanied him on a flight to the Golan Heights. Gates looked out over Syria and advised Israel not to leave the Golan. Now at the diplomatic level, he will take care not to repeat this.

Gates' visit to Israel reflects a decision not to boycott it: He must not skip Israel on his visit to the region, though he is known to be cooler toward it than his predecessor Donald Rumsfeld. There are no fateful issues that Gates is authorized to conclude with Peretz, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni (whom he asked to meet, perhaps because of the rumor that she is getting closer to becoming prime minister) and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Dealing with Iran is the president's jurisdiction. In Iraq, the Pentagon has refrained from accepting overt Israeli help. Gaza, which the administration is making efforts to prevent from bursting into flames, belongs to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, even in the channel of Security Coordinator Keith Dayton. So what's left? Not a lot, mainly just the delicate issue of the sale of arms to other countries - an issue wrapped in hypocrisy on both sides.

It's probably a positive thing Israeli officials don't like Gates. Quite frankly, Prissy doesn't like or trust him much, either...

Salon Will Rush Limbaugh be Next Off Air?

At least, that was the fear at the Free Congress Foundation on April 13, where a panel discussion of an ancient broadcasting regulation quickly turned into a discussion of Don Imus and how his firing might portend a similar fate for some of the right's best-known media personalities. In the absence of any compelling evidence, participants in the latest of the conservative think tank's occasional Next Conservatism Forum series managed to convince themselves that the Fairness Doctrine, a rule that was scrapped by the Federal Communications Commission 20 years ago, was poised for a comeback, and was about to become a weapon in a liberal jihad against the right wing's freedom of speech.

In fact, the prominent conservatives, addressing a crowd of 30 on the ground floor of a Washington row house, described what sounded like a conspiracy. Panelist Ken Blackwell, formerly Ohio's secretary of state and the Republican candidate for governor last fall, said Imus was "not a conservative" and that "the left has sacrificed one of their own to give them a platform to go after true conservative talk show hosts." Cliff Kincaid, of the conservative media watchdog Accuracy in Media, said the Imus firing had been a revelation. "It wasn't exactly clear to me how [liberals] intended to bring back the Fairness Doctrine, but I think now with the Imus affair, we know ... [And it's a] short leap from firing Imus to going after Rush Limbaugh."

Established in 1949, the Fairness Doctrine was an FCC regulation that required broadcasters to give balance to opposing viewpoints in any opinion programming. Its abolition by the FCC during the Reagan administration is widely credited with making the explosion of conservative talk radio possible.

With the return of the Democrats to power in Congress, conservatives have become concerned that the Fairness Doctrine might be on its way back. William S. Lind, director of the Free Congress Foundation's Center for Cultural Conservatism and moderator of the April 13 panel discussion, said the choice of topics had been occasioned by an "emergency" -- the Fairness Doctrine's seemingly imminent return.

We can only hope...

Muckraker Gonzo Drinks GOP Koolaid "Can't Remember"

I tell you, it's hard work remembering what Alberto Gonzales remembers and doesn't remember.

In October of last year, President Bush had a conversation with Gonzales about U.S. attorneys. According to the White House's public statements, the conversation was a broad one, about voter fraud in three districts. Gonzales has said publicly that he doesn't remember such a conversation taking place.

But that's not what Kyle Sampson told congressional investigators this past weekend. According to Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Sampson said that in early March of this year, Gonzales told him about a conversation he'd had in October with Bush that was specifically about U.S. Attorney for New Mexico David Iglesias. Remember that the White House was getting heavy pressure from Sen. Pete Domenici (R-NM) and other New Mexico Republicans to can Iglesias.

So in early March, Gonzales told Sampson privately about this conversation (this was, by the way, before the White House had publicly disclosed that there had been any conversations between Bush and Gonzales about U.S. attorneys). But on March 26, Gonzales told NBC and the world that he didn't remember having any such conversation.

ABC Killer's Note: 'You Caused Me to Do This'

Cho Seung-Hui, the student who killed 32 people and then himself yesterday, left a long and "disturbing" note in his dorm room at Virginia Tech, say law enforcement sources.

Sources have now described the note, which runs several pages, as beginning in the present tense and then shifting to the past tense. It contains rhetoric explaining Cho's actions and says, "You caused me to do this," the sources told ABC News.

The number of dead is almost twice as high as the previous record for a mass shooting on an American college campus. That took place at the University of Texas at Austin on Aug. 1, 1966, when a gunman named Charles Whitman opened fire from the 28th floor of a campus tower. Whitman killed 16 and injured 31.

Seattle Times French intelligence service knew of al-Qaida hijacking plot in early 2001 (so did as many as 8 other countries intel warnings were also ignored, including Cuba and Germany)

"It wasn't about a specific airline or a specific day, it was not a precise plot," Lorenzi told The Associated Press. "It was a note that said, 'They are preparing a plot to hijack an airplane, and they have cited several companies."'

The Sept. 11 commission's report on the four hijacked flights has detailed repeated warnings about al-Qaida and its desire to attack airlines in the months before Sept. 11, 2001.

In a version declassified last September, the report shows that the Federal Aviation Administration's intelligence unit received "nearly 200 pieces of threat-related information daily from U.S. intelligence agencies, particularly the FBI, CIA, and State Department."

NDTV Patti Smith lashes out at Guantanamo Bay

Rocker Patti Smith said on Friday that her concern for the hundreds of men imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay compelled her to record a song about a former detainee.

"I feel responsible as an American citizen. It's a terrible injustice and I think it will be a stain upon us when history examines this period," said Smith.

Smith's Without Chains focuses on Murat Kurnaz, a German-born Turkish citizen who said he was kept under fluorescent lights for 24 hours at a time and complained of being beaten at the US military detention center in southeast Cuba.

And...In October, German prosecutors said they found no evidence linking Kurnaz to Islamic radicals in Pakistan or Afghanistan and formally dropped their investigation.

Reuters Over 250,000 still without power in U.S. East and Canada

More than 250,000 homes and businesses remained without power Tuesday morning after a rare spring nor'easter hit on Sunday and Monday, knocking out electric service to more than 1.3 million customers from the Carolinas to Maine and Quebec.

Wired U.S. Watch Lists Sow Frustration and Fear

Elizabeth Kushigian spent time in an isolation room at Miami International Airport every time she returned from an international trip -- until a senator got her taken off a DHS watchlist.

For years, Elizabeth Kushigian never had a problem flying back-and-forth to Costa Rica, where she runs a local micro-lending nonprofit. But in 2004, she suddenly found it impossible to re-enter the United States without being ordered into a special isolation room at Miami International Airport. There, she'd wait for extra scrutiny.

"I was in the line where you come in and stamp your passport, and each time they would scan the passport and look at (the) screen and stiffen," Kushigian says. "I was on some sort of list. I don't know why; it could have been because of something I did in the '60s and in the early 1980s, I did some civil disobedience on behalf of El Salvador."

Kushigian is just a member of a growing club of American citizens whose lives have been touched by a slew of government watch lists proliferating with little oversight or redress mechanisms since the 9/11 attacks. Containing, by some estimates, hundreds of thousands of names submitted by dozens of agencies, the lists have not only snagged people like Kushigian -- who wind up on them for mysterious reasons -- they've also stigmatized and inconvenienced thousands of others whose names happen to be similar to an entry on the list.

Quotes of the Day

Few men of action have been able to make a graceful exit at the appropriate time--British journalist, author, satirist, media personality, soldier-spy

There's a trick to the Graceful Exit. I begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over -- and to let go. It means leaving what's over without denying its value.--Ellen Goodman

Great Quotes from Catch-22

Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them. Chapter 39, pg. 415

The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.-- Yossarian, character

Open your eyes, Clevinger. It doesn't make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who's dead.-- Chapter 12, pg. 133-134

You know, that might be the answer - to act boastfully about something we ought to be ashamed of. That's a trick that never seems to fail. Chapter 13, pg. 149