Employment Relation

Maybe FBI Director Robert Mueller was watching The Daily Show last week and saw Lewis Black's rant about why terrorists are buying guns legally --

Lewis Black, "Daily Show" commentator: "Thank God we live in a country where anyone can buy guns, and I mean anyone. A Congressional investigation revealed last year nearly 50 terror suspects on federal watch lists were legally allowed to purchase firearms. And as NRA president Wayne LaPierre told CBS, it's shameful, shameful that those suspects right to bear arms is being threatened."

Reporter [on tape]: "If it's good enough for the FBI to put them on a terrorist watch list, why isn't it good enough for the NRA to not sell them a gun?"

Wayne LaPierre, NRA president [on tape]: "Because what is a watch list?"

Black: "It's a list of suspected terrorists we're watching — in this case, watching buy guns!"

[Transcript from ABC News - I'm looking for a video link because you really gotta see this clip.]

Now Director Mueller has written a letter to Senator Lautenberg calling for a re-evaluation of our nation's gun laws:

FBI Director Robert Mueller hinted at a shift in Bush Administration policy today in a letter to Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), signaling his belief that gun control laws regulating background checks and the purchase of firearms deserve review, RAW STORY has learned.

“I believe a review of the law regarding the National Instant Criminal Background Check system is warranted given the findings of the GAO report,� Mueller wrote.

Mueller’s response is in seeming variance with Bush Administration policy, which largely opposes gun control.

“For the first time, a highranking member of the federal government is suggesting the Brady Gun Laws on the books today may need to be tightened,� said Lautenberg spokesman Alex Formuzis. “This is a major shift in tone coming from the Bush administration that just a few months ago allowed the Assault Weapons Ban to expire and has done nothing to shut down the Gun Show Loophole. �

A Government Accountability study released in March found that dozens of terrorist suspects on federal watch lists have been allowed to buy firearms legally in U.S. because of holes in U.S. gun laws.

FBI officials told the New York Times at the time they were hampered by rules on privacy of gun owners; all but nine states allowed purchases because checks found no automatic disqualifications even though the buyers came up on classified internal FBI watch lists.

The Bush Administration had better be careful, or they might suffer an outbreak of sanity.

For anyone who thinks that "election fraud" is just a code phrase for "Kerry really won," LITBMueller offers this trove of articles and factoids on the state of the election process in this country:

[L]et us remember that it was Congressman Peter King (R-NY) who said: "It's already over. The election's over. We won. It's all over but the counting and we'll take care of the counting." (The video of King making this remark can be seen at www.velvetrevolution.us)
Diebold and Electronic Systems & Softway (ES&S)

• ES&S and Diebold count 80% of all votes in America. (http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0503/S00127.htm)
• Diebold also makes ATM machines. Their ATM machines, unlike their electronic voting machines during the 2004 election, provide paper receipts.  (http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-03-15-advanced-atms_x.htm)
• ES&S managed many aspects of the 2004 election, including voter registration, printing of ballots, the programming of their voting machines, tabulation of votes (often with armed guards keeping the media and members of the public who wished to witness the count at bay) and the first reporting of the results -- for 60 million voters in 47 states.  Actual counting of votes by citizens is very rare in the U.S., except for a few counties in Montana and other states, where paper ballots are still hand-counted.  (http://valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:91516)
• The largest investors in ES&S, Sequoia (another voting machine company), and Diebold are government defense contractors Northrup-Grumman, Lockheed-Martin, Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and Accenture. Diebold hired Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC) of San Diego to develop the software security in their voting machines. A majority of officials on SAIC's board are former members of either the Pentagon or the CIA including (http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5517):
  • Army Gen. Wayne Downing, formerly of the NSC
  • Bobby Ray Inman; former CIA Director
  • Retired Adm. William Owens, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
  • Robert Gates, another former director of the CIA.
• The U.S.'s largest voting machine company, ES&S, is owned by The Omaha World Herald.  (http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0503/S00127.htm)
• Diebold has its corporate headquarters in Ohio.  (http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5359)
• Diebold chairman, president, and C.E.O., Walden O'Dell, is a prominent Bush supporter and fund-raiser who proclaimed in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." (See "Hack the Vote," by Michael Shnayerson, Vanity Fair, April 2004.)  (http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=5359)
• The vice president of E.S.&S. and the president of Diebold are brothers.  (http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html)
• Diebold and ES&S's other major "competitor", Sequoia, is owned by a partner member of the Carlyle Group, which has substantial ties to the Bush family and friends.  (http://valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:91516)
• Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of AIS, which later became ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines in Nebraska in what was a major upset.  (http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html)
• Senator Hagel, who was on the short-list of G.W. Bush's VP candidates, was caught concealing information about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee, even though he was officially absolved of improperly hiding information.  (http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx and http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm)
• One of the longest-serving Diebold directors is W.R. "Tim" Timken.  Since 1991 the Timken Company and members of the Timken family have contributed more than a million dollars to the Republican Party and to GOP presidential candidates such as George W. Bush. Between 2000 and 2002 alone, Timken's Canton-based bearing and steel company gave more than $350,000 to Republican causes, while Timken himself gave more than $120,000. In 2004, he was one of George W. Bush's campaign Pioneers, and pulled in more than $350,000 for the president's reelection bid.  (http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html)
• In 2003, a cadre of computer scientists showed that the software running Diebold's new machines can be hacked with relative ease.  (http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html)
• On a CNBC cable TV program, Black Box Voting (which opposes electronic voting) executive Bev Harris showed guest host Howard Dean how to alter vote totals within 90 seconds by entering a two-digit code in a hidden program on Diebold's election software. "This is not a bug or accidental oversight," Harris said. "It is there on purpose."  (http://valleyadvocate.com/gbase/News/content?oid=oid:91516)
• Managers of a subsidiary of Diebold once included a cocaine trafficker, a man who conducted fraudulent stock transactions and a programmer jailed for falsifying computer records.  The programmer, Jeffrey Dean, wrote and maintained proprietary code used to count hundreds of thousands of votes as senior vice president of Global Election Systems, or GES. Diebold purchased GES in January 2002.  According to a public court document released before GES hired him, Dean served time in a Washington state correctional facility for stealing money and tampering with computer files in a scheme that "involved a high degree of sophistication and planning."  He left when Diebold acquired GES.  (http://www.wired.com/news/evote/0,2645,61640,00.html)

And that's just for starters. Read the whole thing ... and then go drink a pint of Guinness for me.

The White House yesterday condemned human rights abuses in Iraq. (Yes, that's right -- Iraq with a 'q'!) Says the New York Times:

The State Department on Monday detailed an array of human rights abuses last year by the Iraqi government, including torture, rape and illegal detentions by police officers and functionaries of the interim administration that took power in June.

In the Bush administration's bluntest description of human rights transgressions by the American-supported government, the report said the Iraqis "generally respected human rights, but serious problems remained" as the government and American-led foreign forces fought a violent insurgency. It cited "reports of arbitrary deprivation of life, torture, impunity, poor prison conditions - particularly in pretrial detention facilities - and arbitrary arrest and detention."

Either they're goofing on us, or they really don't think anyone is paying attention.

The allegations of abuses by an Iraqi government installed by the United States and still heavily influenced by it provided an unusual element to the larger report. The report did not address incidents in Iraq in which Americans were involved, like the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, which came to light in 2004.

This is just one instance where America pays the price for embracing policies of torture and disregard for international standards and norms of human rights. Just a month ago, we had our new Secretary of State and Attorney General declaring to the Senate unwillingness to disavow and condemn torture, and refusal to take responsiblity for their parts in making torture a part of US military and paramilitary policy.

Who the fuck is the Bush Administration to condemn Iraq for acts of turture and human rights abuses that the Bush Administration itself advocated and administered in the very same country at the very same time?

What is this? Soviet Russia? Are we now supposed to pretend that Abu Ghraib never happened? Are we supposed to forget that Alberto Gonzales led the legal charge to rationalize and approve use of torture?

What sickens me -- what sickens millions of us Americans -- is that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Rice, Attorney General Gonzales and a whole host of others have been employing these policies with a real self-righteousness based upon their own perverted, twisted views of humanity ... and they've been doing it in the name of America.

We are all soiled by their sin of torture. We all, as a people, will pay for their sin. Think about that.

Think about it when you look at the babies in strollers at the store, when you see children giggling and laughing on the playground, when you see ordinary people going about their lives every day. While each and every person in the Bush Administration refuses to take responsibility for his or her own actions (and their collective actions), and while they all refuse to disavow use of torture in American foreign -- and domestic -- policy, we Americans, including our children, will pay the price.

In our own country, we have American citizens being held without charges. Just yesterday, a federal judge ordered the Justice Department to either charge or release American citizen Jose Padilla:

The judge said he had no choice but to reject the president's claim that he had the power to detain Mr. Padilla, who was arrested in May 2002 at O'Hare International Airport in Chicago and was later accused of having planned to detonate a radiation-spewing "dirty bomb" in the United States as part of a plot by Al Qaeda.

"To do otherwise would not only offend the rule of law and violate this country's constitutional tradition," Judge Floyd wrote, "but it would also be a betrayal of this nation's commitment to the separation of powers that safeguards our democratic values and individual liberties."

Judge Floyd, who was nominated to the court by President Bush in May 2003, said that to agree with the president would "be to engage in judicial activism," a phrase often used by the White House to criticize rulings with which it disagrees.

Although Judge Floyd's opinion was notable for its sweeping language, its substance was not a surprise because it reflected a Supreme Court ruling last June in a related case involving Yaser Esam Hamdi. Mr. Hamdi, a Saudi who was an American citizen by virtue of his birth in the United States, was arrested on the battlefield in Afghanistan and held as an enemy combatant in the same brig in Charleston.

The justices ruled that Mr. Hamdi was entitled to have his case heard in court, saying "a state of war is not a blank check for the president."

Yes, these men may be very bad men -- they may be very very very bad horrible men. But in this country called America, there's this thing called the Constitution, and it says, among other things, that the President cannot just lock people up willy nilly. Every American is entitled by right to know what he or she is charged with and to face his or her accusers and have his or her day in court. The are our rights as citizens of the United States of America.

Why President Bush and his cohorts disagree, I don't know. But "law and order" without the law part is not justice, it's dictatorship.

America used to stand for freedom and justice and opportunity. But now, to the rest of the world, America stands for torture and killing on a mass scale -- all a part of doing what America wants to do rather than doing what is right. And we have President Bush and company to thank for it.

Al-Qaeda is a hate group that uses indiscriminate killing and horror to try to achieve its goals (whatever they might be). Why must we become more like them in order to fight them? Why must we become more like them in order to fight everyone else?