Mark Warner

In a move that will certainly play to the base, outgoing Governor and 2008 presidential hopeful Mark Warner has decided he doesn't want to be Mr. 1000. Warner has commuted the sentence of Robin M. Lovitt, who would have been the 1000th person executed since the death penalty was re-instituted in 1976.

Warner did have a good reason to commute his sentence, a clerk had thrown away evidence that could have exonerated Lovitt, but the sense I get is that some other reason would have been found if needed. It's a good move for Warner. This will excite the left wing of the Democratic party and these are the only ordinary people who are actively watching the presidential race right now. This will be long forgotten by the time conservative democrats start to pay attention.

This Sucks

I didn't realize that when CNN was expanding American Morning they were going to stop going live at five AM. I want my live news at five AM back! I do understand that I am probably the only person watching, but let's be clear. ME! ME! ME!

Coleman Out

Michael Coleman has dropped out of the Ohio Gubernatorial race.

Dumb Duke

How did it take so long to catch Duke Cunningham? On of the bribes he accepted was a thirty thousand dollar personal check that he deposited in his Congressional Credit Union account. Must of thought that hiding the money in plain sight was the way to go. Dumb.

12%

An interesting event will take place this week as the United States will execute its 1,000th prisoner since the death penalty was re-instated in 1976. It will probably take place in Virginia, which will execute its 95th prisoner, second only to Texas with 355.

I have mixed emotions on the death penalty. I am mainly opposed to it due to the cost. Life without parole is a much cheaper alternative, although keeping the death penalty around helps steer criminals to plea to avoid it, so I'm not necessarily for banning it.

My only problem is that 122 inmates sentenced to the death penalty have been exonerated since its re-implementation. That's roughly 12% of the total we will have executed by week's end. If we are going to continue to apply justice in an irreversible manner, I think we owe it to ourselves to do a tad bit better than the upper eighties in correctly convicting people for capital crimes.

Critics might point out that the 12% number is misleading being that there are currently 3,415 inmates serving time on death row in America today, but I would like to point out that those inmates have yet to reach their demise. A few will be exonerated, and some will be executed, but most of them will simply die in prison from mostly natural causes. California currently has 648 inmates on death row, but has only executed 11 since 1976. With most of these inmates ending up serving life without parole, the only thing that has been accomplished is that we paid Cadillac prices for Geo sentences.

Approval for the death penalty is at an all time low so this event may lead to some renewed debate about its application, though it will probably get pushed aside if Rove gets indicted.

Ownership

What does it cost to own a US Congressman? Here is a sample of the Duke's gifts of grafts. From Fox.com:

It is "clear from the facts that this was a crime of magnificent and extraordinary audacity," said U.S. Attorney Carol Lam.

The case started earlier this year when Cunningham and his wife, Nancy, were accused of using the proceeds from the $1,675,000 sale of his home in Del Mar home to buy a $2.55 million mansion in ritzy Rancho Santa Fe. Cunningham then had the capital gains tax on the property paid by his conspirators.

Though no others were named, in prior reporting, defense contractor Mitchell Wade was said to have bought the Del Mar, and then sold it nearly a year later for a loss of $700,000.

Lam said Cunningham also was given money for a yacht, a party for his daughter's graduation, rugs, antiques, furniture and a Rolls Royce as well as travel expenses for his wife and a payment of more than $500,000 to pay the mortgage in the Rancho Sante Fe home.

All in all, it summed up to about $2.4 million.

Rove

From the various things I've been reading, it's pretty clear Karl Rove will be indicted later this week. I'm going to guess that he gets indicted on three counts of perjury, two counts of making false statements, and one count of obstruction of justice, unless he pleas out. It's Fitzmas all over again.

The Duke Pleas Out

Duke Cunningham has pleaded guilty to four counts of conspiring to take bribes and for tax evasion for not paying taxes on those bribes. Sentencing is set for Febuary 27. He's going to give a press conference at 2:30 EST outside the San Diego Federal Court. Just in case you want to track all of your republican scandals in one place, here's a scorecard.

Cuba

I think yesterday's New York Times article about Cuba misses its true potential. Sure, Cuba will become a major travel destination once Castro is gone and these silly sanctions end, but the real potential for Cuba is to become the number one retirement destination for aging Americans.

There is already a movement to retire south of the border to stretch ever shrinking retirement benefits, but Cuba has something the rest of Latin America lacks, some of the finest affordable health care in the Western Hemisphere. Hell, they have a lower infant mortality rate than the US.

All that this requires is for the United States to reverse 46 years of failed policy. That reversal would certainly bring some new players to the table to lobby their position. Big Pharma for instance? I can't imagine they want a couple of million customers getting on the socialized medicine bandwagon.

Fingered

There's a mouse in the house. A big one, specifically Big Tony Moscatiello. Moscatiello has fingered Jack Abramoff and Bob Ney pal Adam Kidan as the financier in the gangland murder of Gus Boulis. Big Tony went as far as to basically label the killing dumb. From the Sun-Sentinel:

Moscatiello said that killing Boulis made no sense and he never would have approved of it. Even if there were a lengthy legal fight over SunCruz, it would still have been a profitable venture for him, he said.

"It's a company doing 147 million a year," Moscatiello said. "If you can't skim a few dollars off 147 million a year, ha-ha you shouldn't be in business."

Moscatiello said later in the conversation, "I'm not going to go down the yellow brick road for something that I would ... I would have been dead set against and never, never once in a million years would I have said, `Let's do this.' And I'm just not going to go ... I'm not going [to] do life without parole for this."

By the way, Moscatiello has made a career out of not doing time when entangled in criminal probes. He was once indicted with John Gotti's brother Gene, but mysteriously the charge went away and he never did any time. The funny thing is that either Moscatiello didn't tell his lawyer that he is a career stoolie or his lawyer is trying to keep him alive long enough to make it to witness protection. Really funny couple of paragraphs from the Sun-Sentinel:

David Bogenschutz, Moscatiello's attorney, said Wednesday night that he had not seen the transcripts of his client's statements to police.

"At this time and since the time from his arrest, Anthony Moscatiello is not cooperating," Bogenschutz said. "He never intends to cooperate and does not have a history of cooperating."

Oh, I think he does, and did, and will. Enjoy LWOP Adam.

General?

I wonder if this guy is a general in Bill O'Reilly's push back in "The War Against Christmas"?

Who?

On this Thanksgiving morning, I am thankful for someone whom I do not yet know. That someone is the person willing the make public the Bush-Blair memo about the bombing of al-Jazerra. The British government is threatening any publisher with the Official Secrets Act. The memo must be made public. If valid, it shows that the United States is currently being run by a madman, and that madman must be removed from office.

I don't know if the average American can grasp what this truly means. An attack on the free press, even a foreign free press, is an attack against all of us. It is prima fascia evidence of tyranny being committed against free men. Evidence of this nation committing the same offense that turned the Thanksgiving attendees of 229 years ago into revolutionaries to form this country to rid ourselves of the tyranny of King George III. It's one of the reasons cited for fighting this current war.

Who will stand against this tyranny? Publish the memo.

They Write Letters

Rebecca Lusignolo-McGlone writes a letter to today's Dispatch imploring people to leave Thanksgiving alone. She's talking about the supposed "War on Christmas" that has been trumpeted by the right the last couple of years. From the Dispatch:

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this quote in an Ohio Historical Society tract while attending a school field trip a couple of weeks ago. Rather than mentioning the Thanksgiving holiday by name, it was listed as "a day set aside to celebrate good fortune." This, by the self-described historical society!

These people are nuts. I don't know how the whole Happy Holidays thing got turned into a conspiracy by the left to attack Christians, but it isn't. These things are focus grouped and studied to death by marketers and apparently they feel it helps them sell more crap, period. I personally don't care, but let me be the first to wish you a better than average end of the year annual events time period. May whatever gift giving fiasco you celebrate be fruitful.

Liar

Murray Waas has found the smoking gun that proves the Bush administration lied to the American public on at least one aspect of the pre-war intelligence that led to the Iraq War. On September 21, 2001 George Bush received a Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) in which he was told there was no connection between Iraq and al-Queda and no evidence to the contrary has ever been given to the president. From the National Journal:

Ten days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda, according to government records and current and former officials with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The information was provided to Bush on September 21, 2001 during the "President's Daily Brief," a 30- to 45-minute early-morning national security briefing. Information for PDBs has routinely been derived from electronic intercepts, human agents, and reports from foreign intelligence services, as well as more mundane sources such as news reports and public statements by foreign leaders.

One of the more intriguing things that Bush was told during the briefing was that the few credible reports of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group. Saddam viewed Al Qaeda as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime. At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks of Al Qaeda with Iraqi nationals or even Iraqi intelligence operatives to learn more about its inner workings, according to records and sources.

[snip]

The conclusions drawn in the lengthier CIA assessment-which has also been denied to the committee-were strikingly similar to those provided to President Bush in the September 21 PDB, according to records and sources. In the four years since Bush received the briefing, according to highly placed government officials, little evidence has come to light to contradict the CIA's original conclusion that no collaborative relationship existed between Iraq and Al Qaeda.

"What the President was told on September 21," said one former high-level official, "was consistent with everything he has been told since-that the evidence was just not there."

In arguing their case for war with Iraq, the president and vice president said after the September 11 attacks that Al Qaeda and Iraq had significant ties, and they cited the possibility that Iraq might share chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons with Al Qaeda for a terrorist attack against the United States.

Gotcha bitches!

Batshit Loony

George Bush met face to face with Tony Blair last April to bounce an idea off of him. Bush wanted to blow up al-Jazerra's headquarters in Qatar. Blair shot the idea down. If two members of the British government weren't being charged with violating the Official Secrets Act in leaking this information, I'd be tempted to say this is bullshit. However, David Keogh and Lee O'Conner are being charged so there must be some validity to this.

Can Bush really be that insane? This is the stupidest thing I've heard yet come out of the White House.

Na Na Na Na, Na Na Na Na, Ney, Goodbye

The Dispatch has all the juicy tidbits that Michael Scanlon will testify against Bob Ney. From the Dispatch:

In the agreement made public by Justice Department officials, Scanlon will testify that he and Abramoff provided Ney and his staff with all- expense-paid trips to the Marianas Islands in 2000, the Super Bowl in Tampa, Fla., in 2001 and Scotland in 2002 to play golf at the prestigious St. Andrews course.

The papers also say Scanlon has told prosecutors that he and Abramoff supplied Ney and his top aides with free tickets to concerts and sporting events in Washington, made campaign contributions and paid for meals and drinks at a posh Washington restaurant that Abramoff used to own.

Some-body's going to do some time. Maybe Ney can bunk with Jim Traficant.

Shameless Revisionism

Dick Cheney simply sounds like a fool with the latest line of attacks on critics of the administration's prosecution of the Iraq War. From The New York Times:

Vice President Dick Cheney stepped up the White House attacks on critics of the Iraq war on Monday, declaring that politicians who say Americans were sent into battle based on a lie are engaging in "revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety."

Let's take a look at some of the shameless revisionism that has marked the rhetoric in the Iraq War. Remember when we had to take out Saddam Hussein because he had large stockpiles of WMD? Hmm, that didn't quite work out for us so then the rationale became that Hussein had an active WMD program. Yep, that's why we attacked him. Oops, no program either, umm, well the real reason we went to free Iraq from a dangerous dictator. After all, who could argue that the world isn't a safer place without Saddam.

That's some mighty fine shameless revisionism, if I do say so myself. The latest reason given as to why we have to stay given by the administration is that we can't let Iraq's oil fields fall into the hands of terrorists, and unfortunately, there is some merit to that claim. But if you parse that statement closely what Bush is saying is that we really fucked up, and we have to keep on fucking up otherwise our enemies will get there hands on a lot of money to really fuck us up. That's not a policy, that's a prayer.

Jean Schmidt

I was talking over the weekend with a friend of mine from across the aisle who works at a large state agency. When Jean Schmidt's name came up, he told me that the director of the agency wouldn't even send her a congratulatory letter when she won the primary last year. The reason? He said she was a pathological liar and he was afraid she would claim that he had endorsed her.

My friend then looked at me and said,"your guy almost pulled that out." I replied,"Yea but I'm glad he lost. It would be difficult to hold that seat next year and now your stuck with that idiot."

Out Of Touch

If there is anyone out there who still isn't convinced that the republican party is out of touch with mainstream America, they should be forced to read this story from the Washington Post.

Bruce Springsteen famously was "born in the USA," but he's getting scorned in the U.S. Senate.

An effort by New Jersey's senators, both Democrats, to honor the veteran rocker was shot down yesterday by Republicans who apparently are still miffed a year after the Boss lent his voice to the campaign of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

The chamber's GOP leaders refused to bring up for consideration a resolution, introduced by Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Jon Corzine, that honored Springsteen's long career and the 1975 release of his iconic album "Born to Run."

This goes to show not only the level of vitriol of the modern republican party, but also their arrogance.

Closing Time

The bar that me and my crew hang out at, Brian Borus, is closing. It is located in an apartment complex that went condo and the condo association doesn't want a bar there so they bought the business to close it. It will become some sort of crappy retail space. So, where do we move to? We go out a lot, and we spend a lot of money. We debated over the weekend what demands we should put for the new hang out to acquire our business. (We really spend a lot of money at bars) One bar manager has already offered us ten% off of our tabs. We also debated buying our own bar.

Use the comments to put in your input into what bar should be our new hang out. We would prefer to stay in the Short North. Food is always a plus, as is a large amount of bar space. (We would rather sit at the bar than at tables) Also, and I hate to admit this being the good liberal I am, some hotties on the staff doesn't hurt either. Anyway, any ideas are appreciated.