One Utah

Via Glenn Greenwald, here’s a glimpse of the Joys of Washington Bipartisanship as President Bush rejoiced in yet another humiliation of the Democrats this afternoon in the Rose Garden.
This one is special, signing the bill keeps Bush from being prosecuted on multiple felony counts for at least 30 violations of the Foreign Intelligence [...]

The United Nations mandate for the Multinational Force, which currently provides a shred of legality to cover the U.S. occupation of Iraq, expires on December 31, 2008 at the request of Iraq’s Green Zone Government. Then what? Then we withdraw, right?
In the quotes below, emphasis added just to highlight the deep respect our [...]

And there is nothing we can do about it, at least in the short run. A sad time for America.

Glenn Greenwald:
The votes in the Senate on various amendments to the FISA “compromise” bill and to the underlying bill itself were originally scheduled for today, but have been postponed until tomorrow (Wednesday, July 9) to [...]

Greg Mitchell reminds us that it appeared in The New York Times five years ago today. One of the most irresponsible remarks ever by a U.S. President:
“Anybody who wants to harm American troops will be found and brought to justice,” Bush said. “There are some that feel like if they attack us that we [...]

Do you remember the feeling of coming home with a bad report card? The Bush administration has failed Iraq policy again and again, and if any more proof is needed we got it this week.
1. A new 700-page study from the U.S. Army Training and Doctrine Command’s Contemporary Operations Study Team at Fort Leavenworth, [...]

The Los Angeles Times recently had an insightful article about what $200-a-barrel oil and $7 a gallon gasoline would do to America.

With every penny hike in the price of gas costing American consumers about $1 billion a year, sharply higher pump prices would lead to “significant bankruptcies and store closings,” said Scott Hoyt, director of [...]

I’m not in the habit of quoting at length from other blogs, but I haven’t got the ability to say this any better. The following is straight from CTuttle on the excellent site Main and Central.
“I’d like to indulge in a little exercise, let’s take a gander at several news reports on the same [...]

Thursday, channel 501 showed the 1984 film The Killing Fields. For those who haven’t seen it, it’s based on the experiences of NY Times reporter Sydney Schanberg and Cambodian reporter Dith Pran in Cambodia in the 1970s; Pran was captured by the Khmer Rouge and spent years living and laboring in their camps before [...]

The northern city of Mosul is the second-largest in Iraq (Basra is a close third). Despite the scarcity of news from Iraq lately, you may have heard about the launching of a long-delayed offensive last month to regain control of the ruined city of nearly 2 million people for Nouri al-Maliki’s Green Zone government. [...]

Senator Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee, has announced his support of H.R. 6304, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 that passed the House of Representatives yesterday.
Obama has caved on an important constitutional issue and has given us a window into his governance as President, i.e. triangulation. Back in September, Obama vowed to [...]

This morning, 105 Democrats voted for the FISA Amendments Act of 2008, including our own Rep. Jim Matheson (D-UT) (R-UT). This legislation is unconstitutional and a total capitulation to White House claims of unlimited executive power. It also stymies future efforts to investigate the full extent of the Bush administration’s illegal surveillance activities. [...]

This is a first for me, a light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel post about Iraq. Whether or not the light is an oncoming freight train depends on whether or not you view withdrawal of combat forces as an admission of defeat, as Senator John McCain does.
There are two significant, and perhaps converging, developments to report. First, Senator [...]