TROUBLING INFORMATION

Democrat Max Baucus (Montana)

Democrat Evan Bayh (Indiana)

Democrat Tom Carper (Delaware)

Democrat Bob Casey (Pennsylvania)

Democrat Kent Conrad (North Dakota)

Democrat Dianne Feinstein (California)

Democrat Daniel Inouye (Hawaii)

Democrat Tim Johnson (South Dakota)

Democrat Herb Kohl (Wisconsin)

Democrat Mary Landrieu (Louisiana)

Democrat Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas)

Democrat Claire McCaskill (Missouri)

Democrat Barbara Mikulski (Maryland)

Democrat Ben Nelson (Nebraska)

Democrat Bill Nelson (Florida)

Democrat Mark Pryor (Arkansas)

Democrat Jay Rockefeller (West Virginia)

Democrat Ken Salazar (Colorado)

Democrat Jim Webb (Virginia)

Paul Kiel at TPMMuckraker:

Let there be no doubt: a majority of senators, and a large number of Democrats, think the telecoms should not suffer the hazard of accountability for cooperating with the administration's warrantless wiretapping program. Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) took to the floor last night to give a speech asking, "This is our defining question, the question that confronts every generation: The rule of law, or the rule of men?" The resounding answer: the rule of men.

The Senate voted on the Dodd/Feingold amendment, which would have stripped retroactive immunity from the surveillance bill just now. The final tally was 31-67; crossing over to vote nay were Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), Evan Bayh (D-IA), Daniel Inouye (D-HI), Tim Johnson (D-SD), Herb Kohl (D-WI), Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Claire McCaskill (D-MO), Mark Pryor (D-AR), Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Ken Salazar (D-CO), Tom Carper (D-DE), Barbara Mikulski (D-MD), Jim Webb (D-VA), Ben Nelson (D-NE), Bill Nelson (D-FL), Kent Conrad (D-ND), and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI). Update: Here's the official tally.

Presidential candidates Sens. John McCain (R-AZ) and Barack Obama (D-IL) were present for the vote – voting nay and yea, respectively.

Democrat Evan Bayh (Indiana)

Democrat Tom Carper (Delaware)

Democrat Kent Conrad (North Dakota)

Democrat Dianne Feinstein (California)

Democrat Daniel Inouye (Hawaii)

Democrat Tim Johnson (South Dakota)

Democrat Herb Kohl (Wisconsin)

Democrat Mary Landrieu (Louisiana)

Democrat Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas)

Democrat Claire McCaskill (Missouri)

Democrat Barbara Mikulski (Maryland)

Democrat Ben Nelson (Nebraska)

Democrat Bill Nelson (Florida)

Democrat Mark Pryor (Arkansas)

Democrat Jay Rockefeller (West Virginia)

Democrat Ken Salazar (Colorado)

Democrat Debbie Stabenow (Michigan)

Democrat Jim Webb (Virginia)

We're also standing against the forces of extremism embodied by the regime in Tehran. Iran's rulers oppress a good and talented people. And wherever freedom advances in the Middle East, it seems the Iranian regime is there to oppose it. Iran is funding and training militia groups in Iraq, supporting Hezbollah terrorists in Lebanon, and backing Hamas' efforts to undermine peace in the Holy Land. Tehran is also developing ballistic missiles of increasing range, and continues to develop its capability to enrich uranium, which could be used to create a nuclear weapon.

Our message to the people of Iran is clear: We have no quarrel with you. We respect your traditions and your history. We look forward to the day when you have your freedom. Our message to the leaders of Iran is also clear: Verifiably suspend your nuclear enrichment, so negotiations can begin. And to rejoin the community of nations, come clean about your nuclear intentions and past actions, stop your oppression at home, cease your support for terror abroad. But above all, know this: America will confront those who threaten our troops. We will stand by our allies, and we will defend our vital interests in the Persian Gulf. (Applause.)

Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com, January 28, 2008:

The vote on the Motion for Cloture on the 30-day extension [of the Protect America Act] (i.e., to proceed to a vote on it) just failed -- 48-45 (again, 60 votes are needed). All Democrats (including Clinton and Obama) voted in favor of the Motion, but no Republicans did -- not a single one. Thus, at least as of today, there will be no 30-day extension of the PAA and it will expire on Friday.

Reid, however, indicated that it was certain that the House will vote in favor of an extension tomorrow, which means it will be sent to the Senate for another vote. It's possible, then, that the Senate will vote again later in the week on an extension, but it's hard to imagine any Republicans ever voting in favor of an extension since Bush has vowed to veto it.

By blocking an extension, Republicans just basically assured that the PAA -- which they spent the last seven months shrilly insisting was crucial if we are going to be Saved from The Terrorists -- will expire on Friday without any new bill in place. Since the House is going out of session after tomorrow, there is no way to get a new bill in place before Friday. The Republicans, at Bush's behest, just knowingly deprived the intelligence community of a tool they have long claimed is so vital. Is the media going to understand and be able to explain what the Republicans just did? Yes, that's a rhetorical question.

New York Times editorial, "The FISA Follies, Redux," 1/26/08

The Senate (reportedly still under Democratic control) seems determined to help President Bush violate Americans’ civil liberties and undermine the constitutional separation of powers. Majority Leader Harry Reid is supporting White House-backed legislation that would expand the administration’s ability to spy on Americans without court supervision and ensure that the country never learns the full extent of Mr. Bush’s illegal wiretapping program. . . .

With the help of Republican senators and the misguided chairman of the Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller, the White House got a bill that, once again, reduces court supervision of wiretapping. It also adds immunity for telecommunications companies that cooperated with the illegal spying.

Mr. Bush says without amnesty, the government won’t get cooperation in the future. We don’t buy it. The real aim is to make sure the full story of the illegal wiretapping never comes out in court.

Mr. Reid — who is still falling for the White House’s soft-on-terrorism bullying — set up deliberations in a way that ensured that a better Judiciary Committee version of the bill would die a procedural death and that the Intelligence Committee bill would pass.

The Judiciary bill died this week, with the help of other bullyable Democratic senators like Mr. Rockefeller, Claire McCaskill, Mary Landrieu and Ben Nelson. The Republicans repaid them by announcing they would block any further attempts to reach a compromise.

It is now up to the House to protect Americans’ rights. Mr. Bush has already started issuing the ritual claims that if his bill is not passed instantly, Osama bin Laden will be telephoning his agents in the United States and no one will know. Let us be clear, Mr. Bush has always had the authority to order emergency wiretaps — and get court approval after the fact. That has never been the problem with FISA.

The House should vote to extend last summer’s flawed rules for at least 30 days and go on recess, forcing the Senate to do the same thing, and then bring the whole matter to a conference committee.

President George W. Bush and seven of his administration's top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Nearly five years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, an exhaustive examination of the record shows that the statements were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses.

On at least 532 separate occasions (in speeches, briefings, interviews, testimony, and the like), Bush and these three key officials, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan, stated unequivocally that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (or was trying to produce or obtain them), links to Al Qaeda, or both. This concerted effort was the underpinning of the Bush administration's case for war.

It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to Al Qaeda. This was the conclusion of numerous bipartisan government investigations, including those by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004 and 2006), the 9/11 Commission, and the multinational Iraq Survey Group, whose "Duelfer Report" established that Saddam Hussein had terminated Iraq's nuclear program in 1991 and made little effort to restart it.

In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003. Not surprisingly, the officials with the most opportunities to make speeches, grant media interviews, and otherwise frame the public debate also made the most false statements, according to this first-ever analysis of the entire body of prewar rhetoric.

President Bush, for example, made 232 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and another 28 false statements about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Secretary of State Powell had the second-highest total in the two-year period, with 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda. Rumsfeld and Fleischer each made 109 false statements, followed by Wolfowitz (with 85), Rice (with 56), Cheney (with 48), and McClellan (with 14).

The massive database at the heart of this project juxtaposes what President Bush and these seven top officials were saying for public consumption against what was known, or should have been known, on a day-to-day basis. This fully searchable database includes the public statements, drawn from both primary sources (such as official transcripts) and secondary sources (chiefly major news organizations) over the two years beginning on September 11, 2001. It also interlaces relevant information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches, and interviews.

-- Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith, "False Pretenses," for The Center for Public Integrity.

Tammy Baldwin in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal, January 19, 2008:

On Dec. 14, I joined with my colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee, Reps. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.) and Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), in urging Chairman Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) to conduct hearings on a resolution of impeachment now pending consideration in that committee.

Among my constituents, there are those who say I have gone too far in calling for Congress to examine possible impeachable offenses by the Bush administration. There are also those who argue I have not gone far enough. In letters, emails, phone calls, personal conversations and listening sessions, I have heard passionate arguments from those who think we are losing our democracy and that I should do more to hold the Bush administration accountable for its actions.

The call to impeach is one I did not take lightly. But as we said in our letter to Chairman Conyers, the issues are too serious to ignore. We simply cannot discount or overlook numerous, credible allegations of abuse of power by the Bush administration that, if proven, may well constitute high crimes and misdemeanors under our Constitution. To prove this, we must follow the form of the signers of our own Declaration of Independence who wrote, "let Facts be submitted to a candid world."

Impeachment hearings in the House Judiciary Committee will establish the facts and prove whether or not this administration did the following:

• Spied on Americans without a court order in violation of the Fourth Amendment;
• Directed senior members of the administration to ignore subpoenas in contempt of Congress;
• Outed Valerie Plame Wilson as a covert agent of the CIA and then intentionally obstructed justice by disseminating false information through the White House press office;
• Ordered U.S. attorneys to pursue politically-motivated prosecutions in violation of the law;
• Fired eight U.S. attorneys and allowed others to retain their jobs because of partisan political considerations;
• Refused to provide subpoenaed emails and other documentation;
• Purposefully manipulated intelligence to deceive American citizens and the Congress;
• Fabricated a threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to justify the war in Iraq - a war that has taken the lives of nearly 4,000 U.S. troops, injured 60,000 more, and that will cost more than a trillion dollars by many accounts;
• Alleged, despite all evidence to the contrary, a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida, to justify the war in Iraq;
• Manipulated and exaggerated evidence of Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities;
• Undermined national security by openly threatening aggression against Iran, despite no evidence that Iran has the intention or capability of attacking the U.S.;
• Suspended habeas corpus by claiming the power to declare any person an "enemy combatant" - ignoring the Geneva Convention protections that the U.S. helped create;
• Endorsed torture and rendition of prisoners in violation of international law and stated American policy and values, and destroyed videotaped evidence of such torture;
• Awarded unlawful no-bid contracts to political friends at home and abroad; and
• Skirted legal consequences by employing paid mercenaries to act as bodyguards for American diplomats in Iraq.

The abuses of this administration demand a formal response. Congressional oversight is a fundamental part of our constitutionally-proscribed system of checks and balances.

Bush Begins Preparations For Nation's Final Year

As his last term in office winds to a close, President Bush has directed White House aid[e]s and Cabinet staff to begin preparing for 2008, the nation's 232nd and final year in existence.

"My fellow Americans, it has been an honor to be your last president," said Bush during a televised address Tuesday, assuring citizens he would do everything possible over the next few months to promote a smooth transition into utter oblivion. "I want you all to know that I do not intend to let what precious little time we have left go to waste. That's why I ask all citizens to pull together and follow me, so we can accomplish everything we've ever wanted to before it all crumbles around us in a terrible belch of smoke and ash."

Added Bush, "It's now or never, people. No regrets."

As part of his ambitious 11-and-a-half-month plan, Bush has prioritized winning the War on Terror in order to secure Iraq's stability in a world where the U.S. is nothing more than a fleeting memory. Additionally, he has urged Congress to block upcoming stem-cell legislation "just in case," and has set aside the months of April and May to get in touch with all countries the U.S. has wronged in the past and apologize, and default on America's $9.16 trillion dollar international debt with a wild spending spree, respectively.