BREAKING NEWS
Former Hillary Clinton Aide Acquitted
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- The former national finance director for Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate campaign was acquitted Friday of lying to the government about a lavish 2000 Hollywood fund-raising gala.
David Rosen was charged with two counts of making false statements to the Federal Election Commission about the cost of the star-studded gala, which attracted such celebrities as Cher, Melissa Ethridge, Toni Braxton, Diana Ross, Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston.
The jury deliberated about six hours before reaching its verdict.
"It was hard for me to hold back tears. My whole family is crying, and my attorney is crying. It was the happiest moment, next to my marriage, in my life," Rosen said.
Clinton was not charged, but Republicans closely monitored the trial, hoping fallout from it might damage the New York Democrat's 2006 re-election bid and scuttle any hopes for a possible presidential campaign in 2008.
Friday, May 27, 2005
Judge Rules Against DeLay Group Official
The treasurer of a political action committee formed by U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay broke the law by not reporting hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions, a judge ruled Thursday in a lawsuit brought by Democratic candidates.
State District Judge Joe Hart said the money, much of it corporate contributions, should have been reported to the Texas Ethics Commission.
The judge ordered Bill Ceverha, treasurer of Texans for a Republican Majority, to pay nearly $200,000 in damages. It will be divided among those who brought the lawsuit against Ceverha — five Democrats who lost state legislative races in 2002.
(AP)
Democrats Force Delay of Bolton Final Vote
Democrats forced the Senate to put off a final vote Thursday on John R. Bolton's nomination to be U.N. ambassador, the latest setback for the tough-talking nominee President Bush has called strong medicine for corruption and inefficiency at the United Nations. Democrats contended the White House had stiff-armed the Senate over classified information on Bolton's tenure in his current job as the State Department's arms control chief, and demanded more information before the Senate can give Bolton an up-or-down vote.
(AP)
Thursday, May 26, 2005
GOP Confident Bolton Will Get U.N. Post
Democrats held out the possibility that they could try to hold up a final vote on Bolton on Thursday if they do not receive internal State Department documents and classified intelligence information they have sought for several weeks.
At the same time, Democrats said they do not plan to mount a filibuster to indefinitely block a vote, and some of their leading voices on the Bolton fight seemed to acknowledge that time is running out.
"I would seriously hope that the president — and I really don't have much hope — but I wish the president had taken another look at this and found us someone," else, argued Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., D-Del.
"This guy should not be going to the U.N.," Biden said with an air of resignation.
(AP)
FBI Records Cite Quran Abuse Allegations
Terror suspects at the Guantanamo Bay prison told U.S. interrogators as early as April 2002, just three months after the first detainees arrived, that military guards abused them and desecrated the Quran, declassified FBI records say.
"Their behavior is bad," one detainee is quoted as saying of his guards during an interrogation by an FBI special agent on July 22, 2002. "About five months ago the guards beat the detainees. They flushed a Quran in the toilet."
(AP)
Amnesty International: Guantanamo is the 'Gulag of Our Time'
Amnesty International castigated the U.S. prison camp in Guantanamo Bay as a failure Wednesday, calling it "the gulag of our time" in the human rights group's harshest rebuke yet of American detention policies.
Amnesty urged Washington to shut down the prison at the U.S. Navy's base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where some 540 men are held on suspicion of links to Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime or the al-Qaida terror network. Some have been jailed for more than three years without charge.
(AP)
Wednesday, May 25, 2005
Tuesday, May 24, 2005
House Dems to hold forum on media bias Tuesday with Franken, Brock, others
In the wake of a firestorm on the House floor over a Newsweek article about desecrating the Quran, a dozen members of Congress have planned a forum next Tuesday on media bias, RAW STORY has learned.
Among those scheduled to testify are Air America Radio host Al Franken, Media Matters chief David Brock, AmericaBLOG's John Aravosis, a Washington bureau BBC reporter, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting's Steve Rendell and Mark Lloyd, from the progressive thinktank Center for American Progress. Wonkette's Ana Marie Cox has also been invited.
The panel will be hosted by ranking House Judiciary Committee Democrat Rep. John Conyers, Jr (D-MI).
“I think a number of Democratic members have been disturbed about what is and what isn’t being covered in the corporate news media," a House aide said, speaking of the event. "Specifically, there’s been a great deal of disappointment of the media’s coverage of the Iraq war and the Downing Street memo and great concern about the White House’s efforts to intimidate media outlets such as they’ve done in the Newsweek matter.”
House Republicans have aggressively attacked Newsweek for an article later retracted that said an internal U.S. military report would find that the Quran had been flushed down a toilet at the Guantanamo Bay prison.
(Raw Story)
Deal Reached to Avert U.S. Showdown on Judges
Fourteen U.S. Senate moderates struck a deal across party lines on Monday to avert a historic showdown vote over President Bush's stalled judicial nominees.
The bipartisan compromise -- which includes a commitment to clear the way for confirmation votes on three of five disputed nominees -- was reached less than 24 hours before the Republican-led Senate was to decide whether to strip Democrats of their power to block Bush's candidates for federal courts.
If Republicans had prevailed -- and it was uncertain whether they had the votes -- Democrats vowed to retaliate by raising other obstacles that could tie the chamber into knots.
The issue has assumed major political significance because of its importance to future Supreme Court nominations, with at least one retirement expected soon.
Special-interest groups from the political right and left have joined the battle, since the federal courts decide many cultural and social issues, such as abortion rights.
With the stakes high and outcome uncertain, the 14 moderate lawmakers crafted their deal a week after talks between the Senate's top two leaders broke down.
"This is a good day for the country, a good day for the Untied States Senate," Ohio Republican Sen. Mike DeWine, flanked by fellow negotiators, told a news conference in announcing the accord.
"I say thank God," said Sen. Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat. "We have lifted ourselves above politics."
The accord provided enough senators on both sides of the political aisle to enforce a carefully worded compromise.
(Reuters)
Laura Bush Heckled in Jerusalem
US first lady Laura Bush faced Palestinian and Israeli protests yesterday as she toured Jewish and Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City.
Wearing a black headscarf and accompanied by the wife of Israeli President Moshe Katsav, Mrs. Bush spent a few moments of silence in the women’s section of the Western Wall, a Jewish holy site.
Among the bystanders, dozens of young women waved photographs of Jonathan Pollard, a Jewish American who was jailed for life in 1987 in the United States on charges of spying for Israel. A slightly larger group of men, some of them symbolically handcuffed, also shouted slogans calling for Pollard’s release.
At the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, the response to her visit was equally hostile, with a handful of protesters shouting as she entered the golden-topped Dome of the Rock. (Arab TV stations showed only one person shouting).
But the visit passed off peacefully, arousing little interest among local Palestinian stallholders, who dismissed the trip by the wife of US President George W. Bush as little more than a photo opportunity for the media.
“It’s mainly a publicity stunt,” said Mazen, a 50-year-old carpet seller. “What we want to see is results on the ground. President Bush promised to resolve the conflict two years ago, but nothing has changed.”
Hassanin, 43, said, “We don’t care about any American presidents or their wives. They don’t help us.”
(Al-Jezeera)
Sunday, May 22, 2005
Dozens Have Alleged Koran's Mishandling
Senior Bush administration officials reacted with outrage to a Newsweek report that U.S. interrogators had desecrated the Koran at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention facility, and the magazine retracted the story last week. But allegations of disrespectful treatment of Islam's holy book are far from rare.
An examination of hearing transcripts, court records and government documents, as well as interviews with former detainees, their lawyers, civil liberties groups and U.S. military personnel, reveals dozens of accusations involving the Koran, not only at Guantanamo, but also at American-run detention facilities in Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Pentagon is conducting an internal investigation of reported abuses at the naval base in Cuba, led by Air Force Lt. Gen. Randall Schmidt. The administration has refused to say what the inquiry, still weeks from completion, has found so far.
But two years ago, amid allegations of desecration and hunger strikes by inmates, the Army instituted elaborate procedures for sensitive treatment of the Koran at the prison camp. Once the new procedures were in place, complaints there stopped, said the International Committee of the Red Cross, which monitors conditions in prisons and detention facilities.
The allegations, both at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere, contain detailed descriptions of what Muslim prisoners said was mishandling of the Koran — sometimes in a deliberately provocative manner.
In one instance, an Iraqi detainee alleged that a soldier had a guard dog carry a copy of the Koran in its mouth. In another, guards at Guantanamo were said to have scrawled obscenities inside Korans.
Other prisoners said Korans were kicked across floors, stomped on and thrown against walls. One said a soldier urinated on his copy, and others said guards ridiculed the religious text, declaring that Allah's words would not save detainees.
(Los Angeles Times)
Media Matters: The Top 10 filibuster falsehoods
With Senate debate on two of President Bush's most controversial judicial nominees beginning May 18, the heated rhetoric over the so-called "nuclear option" to ban Senate filibusters on judicial nominations has reached its boiling point. The rules of the Senate thus far remain intact, but filibuster opponents have pulled all rhetorical stops, advancing numerous falsehoods and distortions, and, as Media Matters for America documents below, the media have too often perpetuated that misinformation by unskeptically, and sometimes even deliberately, repeating it.
(MediaMatters.org)
LA Elects Latino Labor Leader as Mayor
Los Angeles has elected its first Latino mayor in more than a century: Antonio Villaraigosa defeated incumbent Jim Hahn in a landslide, 59 to 41 percent. As mayor of the country's second-biggest city, Villaraigosa immediately becomes a national political figure in the Democratic Party. But he's not just a Latino; he's also a longtime labor activist who started out as a union organizer and then headed the ACLU of Southern California.
This was Villaraigosa's second try--he was defeated four years ago when Hahn ran a vicious campaign that successfully exploited black fears about electing a Latino mayor. Hahn lost his African-American support when he fired the black police chief, Bernard Parks, who then ran against him in this year's primary. Villaraigosa knows his key political task is cementing a progressive alliance between Latinos and blacks. If he can do that, he will point the way to a new liberal-left coalition and make political history not just for LA but for the country.
(The Nation)