100% Ridiculous

From POLITICAL HOTSHEET at CBS NEWS:

Over the past several weeks, hundreds of Americans have submitted personal tales of economic hardship on the “Occupy Wall Street”-affiliated Tumblr “We are the 99 percent.” Now, conservatives who oppose the Wall Street protests have an answer to it in the form of their own Tumblr, entitled “We are the 53%.”

According to the Washington Post, the blog was conceptualized by Redstate.org founder Erick Erickson, who collaborated on it with the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Josh Trevino and conservative filmmaker Mike Wilson.

The Tumblr claims to represent the 53 percent of Americans who pay federal income taxes – the implication being that those associated with “Occupy Wall Street” are not also part of that 53 percent and do not pay federal income taxes.

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Something Stinks on the Links

From POLITICO:

By all public estimations, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) is a pretty good golfer.

He should be, given the $82,998 his political action committee has spent on golf outings so far this year, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

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(In the golf cart, left to right:  Joseph Bruno, Jack Abramoff, Steve Buyer, Salvatore DiMasi)

Buh-bye 4th Amendment ~sniff~ I’ll Miss You!

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The House on Friday overwhelmingly approved a bill overhauling the rules on the government’s wiretapping powers and conferring what amounts to legal immunity to the telephone companies that took part in President Bush’s program of eavesdropping without warrants after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

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The Big Top Flip-Flop!

From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — A top adviser to Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team.

In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. McCain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance.

…snip…

Although a spokesman for Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, denied that the senator’s views on surveillance and executive power had shifted, legal specialists said the letter contrasted with statements Mr. McCain previously made about the limits of presidential power.

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Sir Veil Lance A Lot

From The Christian Science Monitor:

Washington – House Democrats are hunkering down for a long siege with President Bush over his administration’s terrorist surveillance program.

Democrats are aiming to rein in the White House’s power to wiretap without a warrant and assert “state secrecy” in key court battles.

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Spy-on-all Crap

From the Los Angeles Times:

WASHINGTON — A day after warning that potentially critical terrorism intelligence was being lost because Congress had not finished work on a controversial espionage law, the U.S. attorney general and the national intelligence director said Saturday that the government was receiving the information — at least temporarily.

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So Who Protects America from Chimpy?

Good morning. At this moment, somewhere in the world, terrorists are planning new attacks on our country. Their goal is to bring destruction to our shores that will make September the 11th pale by comparison.–George W. Bush, February 13, 2008

From the Christian Science Monitor:

Washington – The White House and Democrats on Capitol Hill each had a hand in letting a temporary wiretapping law expire this weekend, but most of the political fallout is landing on Congress.

President Bush had pledged to veto any bill that merely extended the temporary law without resolving the matter of immunity for telecommunications firms that helped the government with its secret eavesdropping program after 9/11. A “patchwork extension” wouldn’t give the security needed to protect the nation, Mr. Bush said, and he urged Republican lawmakers to vote against it.

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Bananas

From The New York Times:

Bush, Facing Troubles, Focuses on War and Taxes

And we know how difficult it is for the little fella to focus!

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