Five Before Chaos

is to get out there now and bring attention to the upcoming last-blitz of Bush deregulation we’re about to see:

Two other rules nearing completion would ease limits on pollution from power plants, a major energy industry goal for the past eight years that is strenuously opposed by Democratic lawmakers and environmental groups.

One rule, being pursued over some opposition within the Environmental Protection Agency, would allow current emissions at a power plant to match the highest levels produced by that plant, overturning a rule that more strictly limits such emission increases. According to the EPA’s estimate, it would allow millions of tons of additional carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually, worsening global warming.

A related regulation would ease limits on emissions from coal-fired power plants near national parks.

A third rule would allow increased emissions from oil refineries, chemical factories and other industrial plants with complex manufacturing operations.

These rules “will force Americans to choke on dirtier air for years to come, unless Congress or the new administration reverses these eleventh-hour abuses,” said lawyer John Walke of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

As the article says, it may be hard to undo some of these, but perhaps if Obama made a stink over it, and how he will work hord to undo some of these, it might make them back off. Meh… probably not.

Ass hurt yet?

Cue sound of smacking forehead. This is getting old. From Kos:

That means, of course, de facto amnesty for the telcos. The federal district court would not be deciding on the legality of the program, they would be limited to determining if the White House showed the telcos a piece of paper saying that the warrantless program was legal enough–which we already know. They’re going to try to justify it with that “substantial evidence” business, as if defining that piece of paper as “substantial” somehow makes the fact that they are directing the court to make its decision, regardless of the law, not a travesty.

This did not need to happen. For more on this:

TMP Muckraker ‘

“A formal statement goes out making it clear that everyone — Democrats, Republicans, House, Senate — agrees that telecoms should have retroactive immunity.”

Greenwald:

“I’ve now just read a copy of the final “compromise” bill. It’s even worse than expected. When you read it, it’s actually hard to believe that the Congress is about to make this into our law. Then again, this is the same Congress that abolished habeas corpus with the Military Commissions Act, and legalized George Bush’s warrantless eavesdropping program with the “Protect America Act,” so it shouldn’t be hard to believe at all. Seeing the words in print, though, adds a new dimension to appreciating just how corrupt and repugnant this is”

You know what to do, folks. If you have a blog, please spread the word, or at the very least, get some friends to make some phone calls.

Contact Nancy Pelosi: District Office – 450 Golden Gate Ave. – 14th Floor – San Francisco, CA 94102 – (415) 556-4862 -
Washington, D.C. Office – 235 Cannon HOB – Washington, DC 20515 – (202) 225-4965
FAX: 202-225-4188

Contact Steny Hoyer (who is to blame for a good deal of this happening): 1705 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
Phone – (202) 225-4131
Fax – (202) 225-4300

Contact the Obama campaign: 866-675-2008

Contact Peter Welch: (802) 652-2450

Other congress members contact info can be reached here.

Right on…

The Massachusetts School of Law in Andover is organizing a conference detailing what a potential war crimes trial for Bush and his cronies. And they’re taking “war crimes trial” very seriously, according to AfterDowningStreet.org:

“This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred,” said convener Lawrence Velvel, dean and cofounder of the school. “It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth.”

“We must try to hold Bush administration leaders accountable in courts of justice,” Velvel said. “And we must insist on appropriate punishments, including, if guilt is found, the hangings visited upon top German and Japanese war-criminals in the 1940s.”

“For Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and John Yoo to spend years in jail or go to the gallows for their crimes would be a powerful lesson to future American leaders,” Velvel said.

Oooh, hangings. That Which Must Be Never Spoken Aloud. I was thrilled to read that, as that’s something I’ve thought would really be the most fitting punishment, considering the crimes, much more appropriate than impeachment. But Godless forbid you say that to anyone, you get excommunicated from the Forward Thinking People’s Club or something.

It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. If you’re interested in attending, contact eff Demers at demers@msl.edu (978) 681-0800; or Sherwood Ross, media consultant to MSL, at sherwoodr1@yahoo.com.

The new issue of Radar magazine has a feature that oughta scare the shit out of you. The Last Roundup is a piece by Christopher Ketcham that details a secret government spy program that may very well spy on or detain as many as 8 million Americans.

Entitled “Main Core”, it first came to light last year during the testimony of James Comey, who worked right under then-attorney general John Ashcroft.You might remember hearing something about Alberto Gonzales trying his damnedest to get a bedridden and hospitalized Ashcrof to sign off on and certify a new surveillance program. Ashcroft wouldn’t sign it, and due to his condition, Comey was acting AG, and he wouldn’t sign off on it either, at one point later threatening resignation over the matter.

Kecham dug around and found that the program involves a massive data-mining effort. And here’s the scary part:

According to a senior government official who served with high-level security clearances in five administrations, “There exists a database of Americans, who, often for the slightest and most trivial reason, are considered unfriendly, and who, in a time of panic, might be incarcerated. The database can identify and locate perceived ‘enemies of the state’ almost instantaneously.” He and other sources tell Radar that the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.

Yeah, sounds like something in Stalin’s Soviet Union, doesn’t it? And as far as what would constitute a “national emergency”? Well, it’s not too clear:

Of course, federal law is somewhat vague as to what might constitute a “national emergency.” Executive orders issued over the past three decades define it as a “natural disaster, military attack, [or] technological or other emergency,” while Department of Defense documents include eventualities like “riots, acts of violence, insurrections, unlawful obstructions or assemblages, [and] disorder prejudicial to public law and order.” According to one news report, even “national opposition to U.S. military invasion abroad” could be a trigger.

And what kind of info?

Main Core also allegedly draws on four smaller databases that, in turn, cull from federal, state, and local “intelligence” reports; print and broadcast media; financial records; “commercial databases”; and unidentified “private sector entities.” Additional information comes from a database known as the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment, which generates watch lists from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for use by airlines, law enforcement, and border posts. According to the Washington Post, the Terrorist Identities list has quadrupled in size between 2003 and 2007 to include about 435,000 names. The FBI’s Terrorist Screening Center border crossing list, which listed 755,000 persons as of fall 2007, grows by 200,000 names a year. A former NSA officer tells Radar that the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, using an electronic-funds transfer surveillance program, also contributes data to Main Core, as does a Pentagon program that was created in 2002 to monitor antiwar protesters and environmental activists such as Greenpeace.

If previous FEMA and FBI lists are any indication, the Main Core database includes dissidents and activists of various stripes, political and tax protesters, lawyers and professors, publishers and journalists, gun owners, illegal aliens, foreign nationals, and a great many other harmless, average people.

It’s really just the tip of the iceberg. Ketcham really did his homework on this, citing many historical examples and telling signs as to what is involved.

So it’s a crapshoot as to what could trigger something like this. But that’s only part of the deal. The Continuancy of Government (COG) plans could indeed very much be a police state, with the executive branch holding all of the cards. There’s a lot more to it than I can paraphrase here, but it’s indeed quite chilling in its scope. Go and read the whole thing.

Well, apparently that Dem strategy of talking tough for a bit, get everybody excited and still bend over for Bush is still in full swing. It seems like now, after holding fast on FISA, there’s talk of still passing the telco immunity obstruction of justice provisions, this time in two separate votes which enables the House members opposed to immunity to still somehow feel good about themselves, while failing to realize if they actually did something dramatic or drastic, they might feel good about themselves and stand up for the Constitution. But that’d be asking too much, now, wouldn’t it? It boggles the mind? It’s still truly baffling why some feel compelled to give in to Mr. Dogshit-in-Chief. Where is the pressure coming from? Oh, that’s right.. all that telco money. Silly me.

And I’d like to issue a correction, of sorts. A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece praising Rep. Silvestre Reyes for standing up to Bush on FISA, with his sharply worded letter that stated:

You have also suggested that Congress must grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies. As someone who has been briefed on our most sensitive intelligence programs, I can see no argument why the future security of our country depends on whether past actions of telecommunications companies are immunized…

I, for one, do not intend to back down – not to the terrorists and not to anyone, including a President, who wants Americans to cower in fear.

We are a strong nation. We cannot allow ourselves to be scared into suspending the Constitution. If we do that, we might as well call the terrorists and tell them that they have won.

Well, you can throw Reyes and his letter into the full-of-shit can, as well. TPM Muckraker has the goods on a CNN interview with Reyes from last weekend (emphasis mine):

And Reyes said yesterday that “we are talking to the representatives from the communications companies because, if we’re going to give them blanket immunity, we want to know and we want to understand what it is that we’re giving immunity for.” When Wolf Blitzer asked him whether he’s “open” to such immunity, he answered “absolutely.” He said that he and the other House and Senate Dems working on hammering out a compromise would probably be finished “probably within the next week.”

Fucking disgusting. And they know they got us all by the proverbial balls right now. We need more primary challenges. Many more. I know, it’s not an end-all solution, but it’d be a good start.

Reyes on CNN :

I’m really torn about what should be the caption for this photo. I’m thinking either “Bush headbutts small Ghanian boy after he asks question about Obama” or “Bush asks boy to stand still while he signs the top of his head”. Others?

Since the cons must instinctively know by now that their days in power are numbered, expect a bunch of stuff like this for the reaminder of the year. They truly are going to try to get away with as much damage as possible. From the WaPo: Farms May Be Exempted From Emission Rules. Big, polluting factory farms, that is:

Under pressure from agriculture industry lobbyists and lawmakers from agricultural states, the Environmental Protection Agency wants to drop requirements that factory farms report their emissions of toxic gases, despite findings by the agency’s scientists that the gases pose a health threat.

The EPA acknowledges that the emissions can pose a threat to people living and working nearby, but it says local emergency responders don’t use the reports, making them unnecessary. But local air-quality agencies, environmental groups and lawmakers who oppose the rule change say the reports are one of the few tools rural communities have for holding large livestock operations accountable for the pollution they produce.

Opponents of the rule change say agriculture lobbyists orchestrated a campaign to convince the EPA that the reports are not useful and misrepresented the effort as reflecting the views of local officials. They say the plan to drop the reporting requirement is emblematic of a broader effort by the Bush-era EPA to roll back federal pollution rules.

I know, nothing surprising. Zero accountability for polluters and other harmful industries is part and parcel of the conservative movement, yet another thing that will need some serious undoing in the years ahead. Of course, we should just let the private sector police themselves, because that’s worked out so well in the past, hasn’t it?

Anyone ask what John Sydney McCain thinks about this? They did try to take over the world once, you know.

Well, as you probably know by now the lefty blogs are all twittered about the Dem-led House actually standing up to Bush for real this last week, both in not caving on FISA and in issuing those contempt citations for Bolten and Meirs. And the word is that Bush was actually caught off guard because he (as well as most of us) was so used to them caving over and over again. What took ‘em so friggin’ long? I’m withholding excitement for now, because we’ve often seen a pattern of toughness followed by the inevitable backdown. It sure would be nice if they’re really getting that spine transplant we’ve been hoping for for so long.

Anyways, poking around reading about it, I came across this letter to Bush from House intelligence committee Chair Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) via TPM. What he says, and with the authority he says it needs to be the de facto method of dealing with Bush from now on, and more importantly, it needs to be the public face that the Dems need to put on if they ever expect to be taken seriously by the public (emphasis mine):

If our nation is left vulnerable in the coming months, it will not be because we don’t have enough domestic spying powers. It will be because your Administration has not done enough to defeat terrorist organizations – including al Qaeda — that have gained strength since 9/11. We do not have nearly enough linguists to translate the reams of information we currently collect. We do not have enough intelligence officers who can penetrate the hardest targets, such as al Qaeda. We have surged so many intelligence resources into Iraq that we have taken our eye off the ball in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As a result, you have allowed al Qaeda to reconstitute itself on your watch.

You have also suggested that Congress must grant retroactive immunity to telecommunications companies. As someone who has been briefed on our most sensitive intelligence programs, I can see no argument why the future security of our country depends on whether past actions of telecommunications companies are immunized…

I, for one, do not intend to back down – not to the terrorists and not to anyone, including a President, who wants Americans to cower in fear.

We are a strong nation. We cannot allow ourselves to be scared into suspending the Constitution. If we do that, we might as well call the terrorists and tell them that they have won.

TPM has the whole letter. What I’m wondering is if that little light bulb went on somewhere after all of this and perhaps the House leadership might actually feel good and more importantly, emboldened by standing up to Bush. In the past, even when making feeble attempts, it’s always been with a modicum of embarrassment or something as though they felt like thy needed to be ashamed for doing the right thing. i’m not holding my breath on this one, but at the very least it’s a good development and they should be commended for it.