Abuse of Power

Seems rather convenient for the governor to have had our Alaskan friends release the abuse of power investigation way past 5pm EST on a Friday. And it's a 263-page report at that!

It looks like a mixed bag of findings. Palin didn't break labor laws when she decided to reassign the then Public Safety Commissioner, Walt Monegan, as retaliation for his insubordination. Of course, her camp is spinning it as a decisive victory for her.

Yet the report does say she broke ethics laws by abusing her executive power. In her case though was her inability to reign in her husband's "inappropriate efforts" in trying to get their ex-brother in-law fired

So let me get this straight : The US had 750 billion dollars to bail out Wall Street; a sector of the US economy which has been historically controlled by "white" or US Americans of European ascendancy. The US Congress found 750 billion dollars for them and their European and Asian investors. A bailout, by the way, that now said banks are pooh-poohing, lest the US Treasury and tax-payers find out the depths of their accounting infamies. Yet there's no money to pay back reparations to African Americans for the evils of slavery and Jim Crow laws?

Discuss.

[A scene from the movie Birth of a Nation (1915). Image found in Wikipedia under "Lynching in America")

And allegedly, out of spite, voted against the bail out. Of course, Barney Frank offers them a hug and a kiss :

Give me those twelve people's names, and I will go talk uncharacteristically nicely to them, and tell them what wonderful people they are, and maybe they'll think about the country.

LOL!

That said, I still think this bill was a crock of horse effleurage. We the people of the United States deserve to be better informed about this fiasco. George Bush's 14 minutes on TV didn't do it. Paulson's screaming "the markets are falling" didn't do it. Certainly the non-answers I got from my Senators and US Congresswoman didn't help either --they seem to have been characteristic of most of Congress communication skills.

The freedom loving sheriff of Denver aided and abetted by the city's major, has created a detention pen full of cages just in time for the DNCC. The place is not even a correctional facility --it's is cages inside an abandoned warehouse with no visible water, bathrooms, ventilation or access to phones and lawyers.

Oh, did I mention this detention place full of human cages was supposed to be a secret?

Denying due process to people without US citizenship, residency papers, green cards or a visa is becoming a business racket for private prisons and private security (aka paramilitary) companies.

The more people are thrown into those jails, the more money the concentration camps make.

Welcome to the new American economy.

h/t American Humanity

I just wrote a post about López Lomong for Awearness blog over at Kenneth Cole's. I am waiting for it to be published. It's a bit of a recap of his life as a Lost Boy from Sudán and now, not only an Olympic athlete, but an American citizen and the flag bearer for the US Olympic team in China.

While writing his Cinderella story I couldn't help but think of Hiu Lui Ng's horror story.

Hiu Lui Ng died in the custody of Homeland Security's Immigration and Customs' Enforcement agency. Actually, he was documented : He had a job as a computer programmer. He had a wife and children and a home in Queens.

His crime? His visa had expired.

[Nota Bene : Revised and promoted by liza]

On the Friday before July 4 Republican Senator Arlen Specter showed his respect for the U.S. Constitution and his anger about President Bush’s repeated pissing on it by introducing the "Presidential Signing Statements Act of 2007". What happens to this crucial bill will test both congressional integrity and courage.

Specter had the honesty to call President Bush's abuse of signing statements an "unconstitutional attempt to usurp legislative authority." "The president cannot use a signing statement to rewrite the words of a statute nor can he use a signing statement to selectively nullify those provisions he does not like," said Specter.

“Presidential signing statements can render the legislative process a virtual nullity, making it completely unpredictable how certain laws will be enforced. This legislation reinforces the system of checks and balances and separation of powers set out in our Constitution,” said Specter.

Commenting on the legislative process, Specter noted: “This is a finely structured constitutional procedure that goes straight to the heart of our system of check and balances. Any action by the president that circumvents this finely structured procedure is an unconstitutional attempt to usurp legislative authority. If the president is permitted to rewrite the bills that Congress passes and cherry-pick which provisions he likes and does not like, he subverts the constitutional process designed by our framers.” Subversion of our Constitution – pissing on it: that’s what Bush has gotten away with. Bush-the-ruler has made a mockery of our sacred rule of law.