A full scale investigation needed to expose Bush/GOP massive crime:

By The Associated Press | April 28, 2006

Key events in the political dirty tricks by a telemarketing company that Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour helped start when he was a lobbyist:

May 2000: GOP Marketplace obtains a business license from the Commonwealth of Virginia. The operating agreement describes a loan from Barbour's investment business that gives the lender an ownership stake in the company.

GOP Marketplace is headed by a political consultant, Allen Raymond, who worked for Barbour when the governor headed the Republican National Committee.

Snip...

December 2004: Tobin is indicted on charges including conspiracy and aiding and abetting telephone harassment. The RNC pays a prominent Washington law firm to defend Tobin and covers his legal bills.

February 2005: Raymond is sentenced to five months in prison.

Snip...

April 2006: The Associated Press discloses the frequent calls to the White House as the phone jamming operation gets under way and is abruptly shut down.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/maine/articles/2006/04/28/d8h8v17g6

May 12, 2006

New Fears of Security Risks in Electronic Voting Systems

By MONICA DAVEY

CHICAGO, May 11 — With primary election dates fast approaching in many states, officials in Pennsylvania and California issued urgent directives in recent days about a potential security risk in their Diebold Election Systems touch-screen voting machines, while other states with similar equipment hurried to assess the seriousness of the problem.

"It's the most severe security flaw ever discovered in a voting system," said Michael I. Shamos, a professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University who is an examiner of electronic voting systems for Pennsylvania, where the primary is to take place on Tuesday.


http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/us/12vote.html?ex=1147752000&en=af030dc9161b4f9f&ei=5087%0A

CIA leak case court filing focuses on Cheney

By Kevin Drawbaugh
Sun May 14, 10:35 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. prosecutor in the CIA leak case has told a court he plans to use as evidence a newspaper article with notes that he says were hand-written by Vice President Dick Cheney referring to Valerie Plame shortly before she was exposed as a CIA operative.

The notes show Cheney and his former chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were "acutely focused" on the July 6, 2003, article written by Plame's husband, Bush administration critic and former U.S. ambassador Joseph Wilson, said Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald

Snip...

Libby and senior Bush adviser Karl Rove spoke to reporters about Plame before her identity was made public by newspaper columnist Robert Novak in July 2003.

In October, Libby was charged with obstruction of justice and lying to FBI agents and a grand jury during the investigation. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is scheduled to go to trial in January.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060514/pl_nm/bush_leak_cheney_dc

Former Aide to Rep. Ney Pleads Guilty

By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer
Mon May 8, 10:21 PM ET

WASHINGTON - A former top aide to Rep. Bob Ney (news, bio, voting record), R-Ohio, pleaded guilty Monday in the Jack Abramoff influence peddling scandal, admitting he conspired to corrupt Ney, his staff and other members of Congress with trips, free tickets, meals, jobs for relatives and fundraising events.

Snip...

In a conference phone call with reporters, Ney's lawyers acknowledged that the congressman met with Abramoff about a wireless contract for the House buildings. The lawyers added that Ney, then chairman of the House Administration Committee, also met with Haley Barbour, now the governor of Mississippi, who was lobbying for a competing firm at the time. Ney has said he would have been within his rights to award the contract on his own, but instead held an open competition and awarded it based on merit to the firm represented by Abramoff, Foxcom Wireless.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060509/ap_on_go_co/lobbyist_probe_12

Motion filed to intervene in AT&T secrets case

Sat May 13, 10:27 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. government filed a motion on Saturday to intervene and seek dismissal of a lawsuit by a civil liberties group against AT&T Inc. over a federal program to monitor U.S. communications.

Snip...

The class-action suit was filed by San Francisco-based Electronic Frontier Foundation on behalf of AT&T customers in January -- before reports this week that AT&T and two other phone companies were secretly helping the government compile a massive database of phone calls made in the United States.

In its motion seeking intervention, posted on the court's Web site, the government said the interests of the parties in the lawsuit "may well be in the disclosure of state secrets" in their effort to present their claims or defenses.

"Only the United States is in a position to protect against the disclosure of information over which it has asserted the state secrets privilege, and the United States is the only entity properly positioned to explain why continued litigation of the matter threatens the national security," said the motion, dated May 12.

Snip...

On Thursday, USA Today reported that the NSA, helped by AT&T, Verizon Communications Inc. and BellSouth Corp., was secretly collecting phone records of tens of millions of people, and using the data to analyze calling patterns in an effort to detect terrorist activity.

President Bush denied the government was "mining and trolling through" the personal lives of Americans.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060513/pl_nm/security_att_dc_1

Logs show Abramoff visited White House in 2001, 2004

By Jim Drinkard, USA TODAY
Thu May 11, 7:28 AM ET

Convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff made two visits to the White House during the Bush administration, according to Secret Service logs released Wednesday under a court order.

The logs do not say with whom Abramoff met or what they discussed and "appear to be incomplete," said Tom Fitton, president of the watchdog group Judicial Watch, which requested the records.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20060511/pl_usatoday/logsshowabramoffvisitedwhitehousein20012004

Published on Wednesday, May 4, 2005 by TomPaine.com

Proof Bush Fixed The Facts

by Ray McGovern

"Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."
Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would see those words in black and white—and beneath a SECRET stamp, no less. For three years now, we in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been saying that the CIA and its British counterpart, MI-6, were ordered by their countries' leaders to "fix facts" to "justify" an unprovoked war on Iraq. More often than not, we have been greeted with stares of incredulity.

It has been a hard learning—that folks tend to believe what they want to believe. As long as our evidence, however abundant and persuasive, remained circumstantial, it could not compel belief. It simply is much easier on the psyche to assent to the White House spin machine blaming the Iraq fiasco on bad intelligence than to entertain the notion that we were sold a bill of goods.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0504-34.htm

From: frank_lautenberg@lautenberg.senate.gov

To:
Subject: Responding to your message
Date: Fri, 2 Dec 2005 19:46:39 +0000

December 2, 2005

Dear

Thank you for contacting me about White House reporter James Guckert, a.k.a. “Jeff Gannon.” I appreciate hearing from you, and apologize for the delay in my response.

Jeff Gannon, then a reporter for the conservative Talon News, received national attention for asking ‘softball’ questions of Press Secretary Scott McClellan during White House press briefings. Gannon was ineligible for permanent access to the briefing room because he was not credentialed by the Congressional press galleries. Instead, the White House issued him daily passes for nearly two years.

This is just one of a series of incidents that signal this administration’s apparent willingness to mislead American citizens. I wrote to Scott McClellan in February, requesting that he release all relevant documents regarding how Jeff Gannon enjoyed such free access to the White House briefing room when he used an alias and worked for a questionable news source. I have repeatedly demanded answers in cases such as that of conservative commentator Armstrong Williams, whom the Department of Education paid to pass off positive comments about its policies as his own.

Finally, I have introduced legislation, which has just been reported unanimously out of the Senate Commerce Committee, to require the administration to disclose itself as the source when it pays for or produces “prepackaged news” for broadcast in the United States. This “prepackaged news” is made to look like real news with a real reporter, and does not tell the viewer that it is actually information coming straight from the U.S. Government.

Please be assured that I will continue to fight disturbing efforts such as these by the administration to control public information. Thank you again for contacting me.

April 28, 2005

Lawmakers Introduce Legislation to Stop Covert Propaganda by the Administration

Lautenberg-Kerry Bill Subject of Hearing and Will be Marked-Up After the Recess

WASHINGTON, DC -- Today, United States Senators Frank R. Lautenberg (D-NJ) and John F. Kerry (D-MA) introduced legislation to protect the American people from covert propaganda produced by the government. The legislation would require that "prepackaged news stories" produced by the Administration contain a disclosure of the source of the material. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has ruled that the Administration's use of "prepackaged news stories" was illegal "covert propaganda" because the government's role was not disclosed to viewers. On March 11th 2005, the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Justice issued memos to all executive branch agencies ordering them to ignore the GAO ruling and gave the green light to further use of fake news stories that hide the government's role in their production.

The Lautenberg-Kerry Truth in Broadcasting Act would follow the legal ruling of the GAO and establish permanent federal law that prepackaged news stories by the government must disclose the government's role with a disclaimer. The disclaimer would run continuously throughout the "news story." Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens has committed to holding a hearing and a markup on the bill in early May. "Our government should not be in the business of fooling the public with fake news stories," said Lautenberg. "If President Bush wants to promote his views, he can do that, but he should not hide behind fake reporters to get his message out. The President already has the 'Bully Pulpit' -- he shouldn't need to use puppets pretending to be reporters."

"I am really looking forward to the hearing on our bill. The American people deserve to know that they're not just watching the administration's spin on their local newscasts -- they're paying for it, too. It's one thing to watch Jon Stewart on television. It's another to imitate him with Americans' hard-earned tax dollars. In a time of record-budget deficits, we need to address this abuse of the public trust and waste of money," said Kerry.

Lautenberg and Kerry introduced similar legislation as an amendment to a bill before the Senate Commerce Committee on April 14th. The Senators withdrew their amendment in exchange for Chairman Ted Stevens' (R-AK) commitment to hold a hearing and mark-up on the legislation.

These fake news stories have run -- undisclosed -- on several television news stations on a number of topics including the Medicare prescription drug law and to promote the President's "No Child Left Behind Act". At least 20 federal agencies have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments over the past four years.

http://lautenberg.senate.gov/~lautenberg/press/2003/01/2005428B52.html