…and gets a bullseye by cutting through all the bullshit.

This is an amazing, heartfelt, and no-punches-pulled piece of commentary by Keith Olbermann of MSNBC regarding the horrific public deception tactics and shifting blame that the Bush administration has been attempting lately. No matter what your politics, you have to admit that calling some of the public relations stunts that have been pulled lately “underhanded” would be doing a kindness. This isn’t one of those ridiculous rants from some one-sided partisan hack (this same journalist wasn’t afraid to grill Clinton when he screwed up either). This fantastic 10-minute film sums up the frustration and betrayal felt by many Americans, and lays out in plain English the real reasons and motives behind the Bush administration’s deceptive and borderline criminal tactics — and it’s not to “keep us safe” as we’ve heard over and over and over and over again. I have never seen a mainstream media journalist with this much courage in my lifetime. Please take some time to watch.

Finally, evidence that at least one branch of our government is still operating as it should. Today, a federal judge ruled that the free-ranging wiretapping program ordered by the White House to spy on Americans without a warrant is unconstitutional, and ordered that it be terminated immediately. Even though this is kind of a “duh” moment — I would think it is self-evident that wiretaps without warrants are illegal — it is a victory for those of us who still value the Bill of Rights.

The Bush administration, naturally, disagrees with the ruling and has already appealed the decision.

Read the article on CNN.

This article from The Independent Institute contains some good points about some presidents we normally look up to — and an interesting perspective on those we don’t like anyway. But who’s the worst president in history? The most dangerous? Take a guess…

It doesn’t get more sickly ironic than this…the Bush administration is currently seeking to pass legislation that will protect them from prosecution for violations of the War Crimes Act passed by a Republican House and Senate in 1996 that criminalizes violations of the Geneva conventions for conduct during war and threatens the death penalty for those that violate it.

Everyone read that sentence again to make sure it sinks in.

Specifically, the legal shield they are trying to establish is for conduct in 2002, for actions taken under a presidential order that the Supreme Court has already declared illegal. The order was illegal because it arbitrarily declared current prisoners of war exempt from the Geneva conventions and authorized torture as a means to extract information. Since the order was illegal and the president and his administration have actually violated the Geneva conventions on torture, they are technically guilty of war crimes and can be prosecuted and held to the death penalty! However, that is what this new legislation they are trying to pass will prevent.

How can any other nation on earth possibly respect us anymore? We are no longer a nation of laws. We are a nation of thugs, our top leaders are now clearly above the law, laws that they have made, free to violate it without punishment and who even have the balls to make new laws exempting themselves from the law. Between this and the spying on American citizens without a court order and trying to control the press…our country looks, sounds, and smells like a fascist dictator state. What happened to democracy? What happened to this ideal that we were raised to love? What happened to balance of power? Oh that’s right, we handed the whole country over to a single party, one that’s controlled by irrational right-wing idiots who would choose fear and war-mongering to run the country over reason and logic any day of the week. People, your vote counts more than ever. Give power back to moderate, reasonable people, people who can fight terrorism without violating every other article in the Bill of Rights and without killing hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens in other countries. The midterm elections are coming up this fall, and you’d better get out there and vote if you want any resemblance of the America you once knew to remain by the time Bush finally leaves office.

Just in case anyone had any doubts that Fox News Channel has turned into a propaganda machine for our more and more twisted government, Huffington Post’s Eat the Press has an excellent piece up right now detailing exactly how far the crooked news organization will go to tell Americans what to think. For example, of the 100 guests Fox has had on the air in the last 6 days to discuss the crisis in the Middle East, most have been Israeli or administration officials; fewer than five have been Arabs (or women), or anyone who has raised any serious objections to the conflict. In contrast, a recent poll of everyday Americans showed that for the most part we think “Israel should agree to a cease-fire as soon as possible, a position rejected by Washington, D.C., Jerusalem and Fox News.” Hmmm.

There’s a lot more interesting stuff in the article that quantifies why I have said for years you should never watch Fox News — unless you are one of the right-wing sheep who can’t think for themselves and have to be told what to believe. Harsh words? Perhaps. But it’s people like that who are destroying this country from the inside out.

There is at least one journalist not afraid to stand up and say the right thing in this near-communist era of restricted reporting. Even though I’m normally not a fan, CNN’s Lou Dobbs writes some good articles that point out some of the areas of gravest concern about our government. From the article:

“A bipartisan, 11-member panel of the ABA found that President Bush is not only disregarding laws but using such signing statements far more than any president in history. In fact, Bush has used signing statements to raise constitutional objections to more than 800 provisions in more than 100 laws. All of the presidents combined before 2001 had issued only 600.

The ABA asserts that signing statements cannot be a substitute for a presidential veto and that such an assertion of presidential power amounts to a line-item veto, which the Supreme Court already has ruled unconstitutional.”

A great read, take a look. Hurry, before Lou Dobbs “disappears” or has an “accident.”

In an unprecedented move, Bush has blocked the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) from obtaining clearance for gathering evidence on the illegal NSA surveillance program. Effectively, the president has blocked the Justice Department’s investigation into who authorized what and whether or not it was illegal, proving once again that apparently this administration is above the law and no one’s going to do anything about it. His denial to the OPR is the first of its kind in history. From the article:

“Since its creation some 31 years ago, OPR has conducted many highly sensitive investigations involving Executive Branch programs and has obtained access to information classified at the highest levels,” chief lawyer H. Marshall Jarrett wrote in a memorandum released Tuesday. “In all those years, OPR has never been prevented from initiating or pursuing an investigation.”

I think it’s quite clear at this point that Bush has abused his power at least as much as Nixon. Why, then, isn’t anything truly being done about it? Welcome to the new communist state. The government gets away with anything under the guise of “national security.”