February 29, 2004 - President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, chosen in Haiti 's first democratic election in 1990, left Port-Au-Prince airport this morning for an undisclosed destination. He was first ousted by a military coup in 1991 when George H. W. Bush was President of the United States . Restored to office by a US intervention in 1994 when the Military regime's campaign of terror and oppression left the country in ruins Aristide was re-elected to a five year term last year. For the second time the country's only democratically elected President has been run out of town by armed thugs led by the remnants of the Army and terrorist death squads while President George W. Bush first stood aloof from the chaos in our hemisphere and then applied the push that gave the poorest nation in our backyard back to the terrorists destroying its fledgling democracy. The Marines have been dispatched to prevent Haitians from fleeing their chaotic home.

It is ironic that the United States is engaged in nation building in Iraq claiming to bring democracy to that distant country. Its Viceroy in Baghdad presides over a government of occupation that has just missed the US imposed deadline to create an interim Constitution for the Mideast 's first US sponsored "democratic" regime. We have backed that effort with an army of occupation a hundred thousand strong.

When violence erupted into rebellion the Bush Administration immediately ruled out any military intervention to restore order in the island nation. Could it be that Haitians are Black, speak French, and have no oil?

February 28, 2004 - Do you remember the late, great Bill of Rights? Peter Zenger, the Freedom of the Press and all that? Well the Bush Administration doesn’t.

It seems that words are nothing more than a commodity like wheat, corn, or soybeans. Should those words be produced in a country on the Administration’s black list a publisher must now secure a license from the Treasury Department before editing or translating the material. Reordering paragraphs, correcting syntax to Standard English usage, adding illustrations or publishing anything other than camera ready copy without a license from the government is “trading with the enemy” and subjects the publisher to criminal prosecution if the original was written in a country under a US trade embargo. At least that is what the Treasury Department claims in letters sent to US publishers over recent months. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/28/national/28PUBL.html?8br

According to the letters and as confirmed by Treasury spokesperson Tara Bradshaw collaboration on and editing of the manuscripts, the selection of reviewers, and facilitation of a review resulting in substantive enhancements or alterations to the manuscripts; or even correcting typos constitutes “the provision of prohibited services” and subjects a publisher to fines of $500,000 and 10 years in jail. A publisher whose newspaper quotes in English from a newspaper published in Teheran or Havana would be subject must first obtain a license or be at the mercy of John Ashcroft’s Department of Justice...click here for entire article

February 27, 2004 - From 1939 until 1944 my mother’s parents lived with us in the big house on Williams Street. Granddad had lost his job as Director of a CCC camp in Rushville when the program wound down and he leased a Texaco gas station in Monticello. Dad had taken a job with Hamburg Distributing in Champaign. Mother had an appointment as Piatt County’s first Home Extension Advisor. Grandmother Heath ran the household and me.

The house was full of music. Granddad Heath was a country music fan. We never missed a broadcast of the National Barn Dance on WLS. My father had played his way through college and then went to Detroit to try his hand playing nights on the speakeasy circuit while holding down a day job in the accounting department of S.S. Kresge. Mother had been a classical violinist playing in local orchestras.

Grandmother, the Methodist Minister’s daughter from Findlay, Ohio had always had a secret ambition that she carefully kept from her father. As a teenager she had been courted by a local blade, one Tell Taylor. Taylor went off to New York to pursue a career as a tunesmith and Grandmother longed to follow him to the excitement of show business. When she married the Illinois farm boy instead one of the prize possessions she brought west to Illinois was her piano and her collection of sheet music...click here for entire article

February 26, 2004 - Franklin Delano Roosevelt made a promise to the wage earners of this nation. He promised that if they would pay a tax on their wages their employer would equal it and when they reached 65 they would be entitled to a pension paid from the Social Security Trust Fund. Over the generations America has kept that promise. But while generations have relied upon it generations of Congressmen have found the Social Security Trust Fund an easy resource to fund other promises that they found it expedient to make. Social Security has added entitlements to its catalog of old age and survivor’s benefits. Supplemental Security Income provides a safety net for those not otherwise entitled to draw social security but who are unable to provide for themselves. Two generations ago Congress cooperated with the President to use the Social Security Trust Fund to disguise the real operating deficit by the simple technique of including its assets in a unified operating budget.

The Ponzi game financing that each succeeding administration adopted ran out its string in the first three years of the Bush Administration. The $1.7 Trillion balance in the Social Security Lock Box has been matched by the package of tax cuts George Bush has handed out to those of his patrons most able to contribute to the costs of maintaining the commonwealth. The increase to the national debt created by the first three Bush deficits and the deficits he forecasts for the next four years will exceed that figure. Alan Greenspan warns that the deficit will require a reduction in both Social Security and Medicare benefits....click here for entire article

February 24, 2004 - How does a ceremony performed half a continent away cementing with the glue of the law a relationship between two people I do not know and will never meet diminish and imperil the marriage between my wife and I? How does a ceremony solemnizing a union of fidelity and commitment between two strangers, of whatever gender, strike at the institution of all of the couples who have freely chosen to join themselves in a marriage recognized by law and bound to be respected? How does the declaration of two unique individuals that they are united in love and fidelity and pledging to support one another act to weaken the similar vows that I have exchanged with my wife and the law of my State recognized? How does preventing two people who have tied themselves in a bond of fidelity and commitment from seeking the public affirmation of marriage strengthen and defend anyone else’s marriage?

The fact that John and Ann’s wedding in Boston was yesterday has no effect on my marriage. Neither did the wedding of Amy and Ann in San Francisco diminish my obligation to my spouse in Illinois. I do not know them nor will anything that they do or do not do have any impact on my life. How then do I, a citizen of Illinois, through the machinery of my Federal government, have the right to define for them the circumstances and conditions under which they can be married?....click here for entire article

February 20, 2004 - It’s the economy, Stupid. It isn’t the stock market with its rarified air breathed by speculators, traders and corporate raiders. It’s the job market and the super market and the gas pump at the convenience store. It’s whether or not there’s some of the week left at the end of the paycheck. It’s a make do and hand-me-down and did the unemployment check come on time life for millions of us. It’s a close the plant and stand in line for the jobs that disappeared.

The jobs are still there, they have just moved offshore. It’s a Wal-Mart full of Chinese goods and food stamps in the grocery line. That is what people live with day to day. That is what the coming election is about.

Poor George is clueless because he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth – or nose if you believe the rumors – and he just doesn’t know how people live when they fall below the median income line. To George everybody has money in the bank and shares in the market. He just can’t comprehend a life that is spent in a Friday to Friday spiral. It is beyond his experience and beyond his ability to imagine. He has lived his life without having to deal with consequences. His life has been different and he can’t conceive of life in any other way....click here for entire article

February 19, 2004 - Sex scandals abound in this political year. No, I’m not talking about the abortive Drudge-Rush-Murdock crawl through the sewers from here to Kenya. It is more basic than that. Leaving the private conduct of Presidential aspirants aside; sex scandals strike at several of our most basic public institutions.

Let me list a few.

Frederick Maryland is all a titter as its city government has been ordered to make public the evidence it seized in connection with the arrest of the operator of an “escort service”. The evidence consisted of the Maryland Madam’s black book; surveillance videos and some crude homemade porno flicks distributed on her web-site; and computer files containing e-mails, some of which contain applications for employment. While titillated citizens pour over the salacious material seeking grist for the gossip mill one tidbit stands out. An e-mail to the Madam from “Bam-Bam” seeking work on her staff as an exotic dancer originated from a House of Representative web-site computer. Based upon a subsequent e-mail in which the Madam refers to “Bam-Bam” it appears that the applicant was a male. The image of a Member of Congress or a Congressional staffer moonlighting as a cut-rate Chippendale should give America pause....click here for entire article

February 18, 2004 - On April 22, 1971 John Kerry testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In his opening statement he said:

“[S]everal months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command...."

“They told the stories at times they had personally raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to human genitals and turned up the power, cut off limbs, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan, shot cattle and dogs for fun, poisoned food stocks, and generally ravaged the countryside of South Vietnam in addition to the normal ravage of war, and the normal and very particular ravaging which is done by the applied bombing power of this country."

“We call this investigation the "Winter Soldier Investigation." The term "Winter Soldier" is a play on words of Thomas Paine in 1776 when he spoke of the Sunshine Patriot and summertime soldiers who deserted at Valley Forge because the going was rough."

“We who have come here to Washington have come here because we feel we have to be winter soldiers now. We could come back to this country; we could be quiet; we could hold our silence; we could not tell what went on in Vietnam, but we feel because of what threatens this country, the fact that the crimes threaten it, not reds, and not redcoats but the crimes which we are committing that threaten it, that we have to speak out.”

“...In our opinion, and from our experience, there is nothing in South Vietnam, nothing which could happen that realistically threatens the United States of America. And to attempt to justify the loss of one American life in Vietnam, Cambodia, or Laos by linking such loss to the preservation of freedom, which those misfits supposedly abuse, is to us the height of criminal hypocrisy, and it is that kind of hypocrisy which we feel has torn this country apart....”....click here for entire article

February 16, 2004 - Back in 1999 Tammy Phillips, an owner of a Carrollton, Texas fitness spa and former Playboy lingerie model, spun a torrid tale of her red panties and Texas Governor George W. Bush for the National Enquirer. Though many details of the story checked out the tabloid pronounced the story false while, of course, spinning out its lurid details. The story died and the lady in question sued the Enquirer for breaking what she claimed was an agreement to hold the story until she released it for publication.

On February 15, 2004 Matt Drudge “revealed” a rumor he claimed was making the rounds of Washington insiders that John Kerry had an “intern problem” quoting Wesley Clark and referring to a mysterious woman who had worked for AP and had “fled” to Africa at Kerry’s urging. As if on cue Rush Limbaugh piled on, regaling his readers with promises to pillory Senator Kerry if he had the nerve to deny the Drudge peddled rumor. Rupert Murdock’s Sun tabloid ran with it in the U.K. identifying the mystery intern as Alex Polier and quoting her parents.

The Sun claimed that Kerry had “pursued” her and that her father called the Senator a “sleezeball”. Buried in the story was the detail that the claimed “pursuit” was an offer of a job with the Senator’s re-election campaign in 1997 – the year Ms. Polier graduated from Clark University in Wooster, Massachusetts. Internet political discussion sites bubbled with right wing posters treating the tale as though it was proven and predicting that George Bush would triumph in November as a result of Kerry’s supposed peccadilloes. ...click here for entire article

February 15, 2004 - The release of a ream of paper records generated by the military career of Lieutenant George W. Bush of the Texas Air National Guard has told us a lot about the young man. Some of it we already knew. The man has been defending his military record since his first run for Governor of Texas in 1994 so bits and pieces have been dribbling out in to the public arena as the Bush team felt was warranted. This voluminous release documents a more full account of his 5 ½ years in the Guard but it does not fill in the gaps on his journey from the gung ho pilot patrolling the skies of Texas described by his commander in May 1971 to the grounded TANG dropout in bound for Harvard Business School October 1973.

Less than a year after his commanding officer extolled Lt. Bush as a pilot, an officer, and a credit to the Texas Air Guard Bush failed to show up for a flight physical and, as a result, no longer was able to follow what he had earlier written was a life time passion. Less than a year later the young George W. Bush quit going to guard drills – his last was April 17th 1972 – and did not show up again until the weekend of October 28-29th. Nothing in the ream of paper gives us any insight into that curious behavior pattern...click here for entire article

February 14, 2004 - Halliburton’s motto, according to a former employee working in Iraq, is “Don’t worry about the price. It’s cost-plus.” There are some situations in which cost-plus contracting make sense. It is applicable where the cost of the project can’t be calculated in advance and equity dictates that the risk is shared by both sides of the contract. Iraqi reconstruction and combat support may be one of those situations in which prudent management requires that the contractor be guaranteed a fair profit. A cost-plus contract requires that the contractor be reimbursed its reasonable costs and then adds a reasonable profit – usually stated as a percentage of the costs. Administration of those contracts is difficult requiring both sides to diligently monitor costs to determine whether or not hey are reasonable. The reason is obvious. The higher the costs are the greater the profits become.

Nobody seems to be rigorously monitoring the billings coming from Halliburton and its KBR subsidiary. As a result the Defense Department’s contracts with Dick Cheney’s former employer resemble more of a blank check than prudent contracting. The scandals keep coming – a $61 Million overcharge for fuel to keep the Humvees moving; $6.3 Million in kickbacks to KBR contract administrators; billing for 47 Thousand meals a day when only 14 Thousand meals were served. In each instance the guaranteed profit margin was added and deposited in the company’s Cayman Islands tax shelter. And these were just the deals that were caught!...click here for entire article

If Kerry denies this, that's not going to be good enough. We're going to demand pay stubs, and we're going to demand dental records from Kerry and the alleged woman to prove that the affair never happened, and we're not going to stop there. We're going to go places, we're going to find anybody that saw them together, we're going to demand to know where they were. Did you see them? We're going to go all through this, ladies and gentlemen. I'll tell you what - it does not give new meaning to the name John F-ing Kerry, it validates it.

 In 1999 when he was confronted with the persistent questions of cocaine use George said he wasn't going to answer and play the Washington game of "gotcha" and the chorus rose in a crescendo decrying "the politics of personal destruction." It rang hollow then after four years of the Republican leadership's march to the sewer in pursuit of the blue dress. It rings hollow now when the credibility of the Bush Administration and the President has become a central issue politically at home and diplomatically abroad...click here for entire article

“Outsourcing is a growing phenomenon, but it's something that we should realize is probably a plus for the economy in the long run.”

February 11, 2004 - When those 2.8 million manufacturing jobs went to China, Mexico, or some where else it was a good thing. When the technical and professional positions that we supposed would replace them flew away too it was even better. When the President’s guest worker program gets underway replacing the Americans who have found a McJob flipping burgers; manning the door at Wal-Mart; or changing sheets at the Red Roof Inn the economy will be in even better shape. We won’t have to worry about inflation then. Without jobs greedy American workers won’t be able to demand goods and run up the price. Employers will be spared the burden of providing health insurance and that will drive the cost of health care down. Profits will soar and so will stocks. That will run up the value of your 201K until it is almost a 401K again.

You see, when greedy American workers get jobs they expect benefits; they expect a living wage; they expect to be able to have quality health care, a car that works, and a decent place to live. How can we expect to compete in a modern economy with expectations like that? We just have to recognize that we are in a Global Economy and will have to moderate unreasonable expectations of a decent life for laborers if we are going to see share prices continue to rise...click here for entire article

February 10, 2004 - In January Hassan Ghul, a Pakistani who is described by US officials as a “senior Al Qaeda courier, was arrested at the Iraq-Iran border. He was carrying a computer disk that contained a 17 page letter to the Al Qaeda leadership seeking support for a plan to foment a civil war between Shiite and Sunni factions in Iraq. The letter was believed to have been authored by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian who is described as an Al Qaeda associate. US authorities believe that Zarqawi is behind a car bombing campaign against non-US targets including various Iraqi police headquarters; the Imam Ali mosque and UN Headquarters. .

Two years ago the President sent the Marines to Afghanistan to bring Osama and the Al Qaeda to justice. It was a military effort that had the unified support of the American people and the international support of longtime allies and erstwhile foes alike. If there was criticism is was that the President had not committed a strong enough force to do the job. When Mullah Omar and Osama melted into the mountains the President declared that he had lost interest in Osama and it was no longer important whether Bin Laden was alive or dead because he had been marginalized. The effort to get Al Qaeda on the run, round it up, and bring Osama to justice was left unfinished while American attention was diverted to Iraq:...click here for entire article

February 9, 2004 - After David Kay made public his conclusion that the weapons the administration used to sell the war in Iraq were non-existent; the product of a systemic intelligence failure; Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld continued to claim that the weapons were there and would be found. He coined a pithy epigram, "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." That argument seems to have gained a life of its own made applicable by the Bush team to every situation in which the accuracy of an administration account might be questioned. Chicken George seized on the Rumsfield theorem repeatedly in his interview broadcast on Meet the Press on Sunday Feb. 8 th 2004.

The session was taped in the Oval Office rather than being framed in the program's usual live format and the host, Tim Russert, omitted to follow up on many of the President's less than forthcoming answers. While Russert touched on the areas in which the re-election campaign is thought to be the most vulnerable he let the many of the President's statements go without tough follow-up questions. The President used the theorem on, of course, questions about the failure to find Iraqi weapons; the failure of his tax cuts to produce the new jobs he promised that they would; and, most egregiously, questions about his missing National Guard service. The most telling exchange was this:...click here for entire article

The press has all but awarded the 2004 Democratic nomination to John Kerry and the slash and burn Bush assault team is springing into action with its campaign to Clelandize the Silver Star winner. With one week of February gone the Junior Senator from Massachusetts has a 70 delegate lead on Howard Dean, the Bush team’s January target of the month, and is 10 percent of the way to the number he needs for the nomination. With one week gone in February the conservatives have attacked him for being a “babykiller”; for having the disloyalty to be revolted by killing babies; for having a rich wife; and for living in Massachusetts...click here for entire article

February 7, 2004 - Savoy, Illinois is the home of U of I Willard Airport, a bustling regional facility with a modern four gate terminal set in the prairie. Not too long ago two of the gates were equipped with those moveable jetports you walk down to board your jetliner to travel to far off places. Not long ago far off places meant direct flights to exotic destinations like New York, Washington DC or Fort Lauderdale. But the deregulation, retraction and restructuring of the airline industry in the late 1980s took its toll on Willard. The jetliners don’t land here anymore. The jetports are rusted and unused. American Express offers three commuter flights to Chicago - O’Hare; Northwest Express flies three daily to Detroit; and American Connection has two to St. Louis. The community just offered a $900,000 annual guarantee to Delta to add three Delta Express flights to its hub in Cincinnati. Still it is an airport even though it is not much of one.

It was strange in the days after 9-11 to see the Humvees parked at the entrance and the almost empty terminal patrolled by burly National Guardsmen wearing helmets and flak jackets. The convenient parking lots were blocked off to prevent cars from coming within 300 yards of the terminal and every approaching vehicle was searched – sort of – before proceeding. We take homeland security seriously here in East-Central Illinois...click here for entire article

February 6, 2004 - "America is safer when our commitments are clear, our word is good and our will is strong.” Those words did not come from John Kerry, Wes Clark, John Edwards, or Howard Dean. They came out of the mouth of George W. Bush on the anniversary of Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN Security council. There was a time when America’s commitments were clear - before January 20, 2001. There was a time when the world trusted America’s word - before January 20, 2001. And there was a time when a united and aroused America will to defend liberty wherever it was challenged was undoubted - before January 20, 2001.

In 1946 America made the clear commitment to work with its allies and within the framework of the United Nation’s Charter to defend human liberty throughout the world and for 56 years she kept that clear commitment. She also kept her clear commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization faithfully until 2002. In the fall of 2002 the current administration turned its back on those clear commitments. In the fall of 2002 it declared the United Nations irrelevant; NATO unreliable; and a doctrine that the United States is free to launch a unilateral war against any regime that it considers might pose a threat to the interests of the United States wherever and whenever it chooses. The only thing that is clear from the Bush Doctrine is that America won’t be bound by its commitments however clear they may seem. Yes, Mr. Bush, America is safer when our commitments are clear – and when we keep those commitments...click here for entire article

February 4, 2004 - Mr. Bush wants the facts. He wants to know what led up to the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. He wants to know what intelligence failures caused the administration to miss the mark on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. But he doesn’t want to know the facts too soon. That is why he hasn’t been willing to give the Keane Commission studying the intelligence failures preceding 9-11 attacks the 90 day extension it asked for from the May deadline for its report. He will support extending the life of the commission to 2005 however.

He is willing to appoint a 9 member commission to conduct an independent and leisurely assessment of US intelligence operations in Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. It too would not report until 2005. He also wants the facts about who leaked the fact that Ambassador Wilson’s wife was a covert CIA operative. But he did not want those facts enough to either conduct an internal Whitehouse investigation announcing the results or to press his Attorney General to act promptly. With any luck at all Grand Jury secrecy rules will keep those facts bottled up until after the election.

Unfortunately for Mr. Bush there is another commission studying these same facts. It is made up of you and I and all the rest of the citizens who will sit in judgment on Mr. Bush and his administration and announce their findings on November 2. That commission of voters will evaluate the facts as presented to them and in their forum there is no presumption of innocence. Nor are their investigators, the free and uncensored press, restrained from seeking out the truth and disseminating it to the millions who will sit in judgment during the coming months...click here for entire article

February 3, 2004 - Mr. Bush sent the Republican Congress a declaration of war against the middle class yesterday with his Budget message. It asks the Congress to borrow $520 Billion this year to fund government operations while making permanent the tax cuts that benefit the wealthiest of his patrons. The Bush budget does not include, of course, the direct spending to prosecute its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan or its world wide operations in the eternal war on terror. Like his father’s bail out of the Savings and Loan industry those costs are to be handled “off budget” when he comes to Congress with for supplemental spending authority after the November elections.

Faced with David Kay’s excursion off the Republican reservation to tell some of the truth to the American people Mr. Bush has reluctantly embraced the idea of creating an independent commission charged with investigating how his administration misstated and exaggerated the Iraqi weapons excuse to invade and occupy that country. Naturally the commission will be charged with the responsibility to conduct an investigation and report to the people only after the November elections...click here for entire article