jamiroguy1

Another Halliburton Probe Already under fire for its contracts in Iraq, the company now faces a Justice Department inquiry about business done during Dick Cheney’s tenure WEB EXCLUSIVE Newsweek Updated: 4:16 p.m. ET Feb. 04, 2004 Feb. 4 - The Justice Department has opened up an inquiry into whether Halliburton Co. was involved in the payment of $180 million in possible kickbacks to obtain contracts to build a natural gas plant in Nigeria during a period in the late 1990’s when Vice President Dick Cheney was chairman of the company, Newsweek has learned. There is no evidence that Cheney was aware of the payments in question and an aide said today the vice president has not been contacted about the probe. Still, the inquiry by the Justice Department’s fraud section—which prosecutes federal anti-bribery law violations—is likely to bring new public attention to the vice president’s past at the giant oil-services firm. Halliburton has been under intense scrutiny in recent months over its handling of hundreds of millions of dollars contracts relating to the rebuilding of Iraq. The Justice inquiry, along with a related probe by the Securities and Exchange Commission, parallels a separate investigation into the Nigerian payments that is being conducted by a French magistrate and has received widespread attention in recent months in the European press. But the Justice Department and SEC probes have not previously been reported, although they were briefly mentioned by Halliburton last week near the end of a lengthy filing with the SEC. In the filing, the Houston-based company disclosed that the French magistrate was investigating the Nigerian payments and then added: “The U.S. Department of Justice and the SEC have asked Halliburton for a report on these matters and are reviewing the allegations in light of the US. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Halliburton has engaged outside counsel to investigate any allegations and is cooperating with the government’s inquiries… If illegal payments were made, this matter could have a material adverse effect on our business and results of operations.†Full Article http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4163810/

You should have fear if Bush is (s)elected again.

Update: 2nd American Jailed for Obscene Gesture in Brazil Feb 7, 10:16 AM (ET) SAO PAULO, Brazil (Reuters) - The second American in a month was arrested while entering Brazil for making an obscene gesture while being photographed by an immigration official, police said on Saturday. Federal police in Foz do Iguacu on Brazil's border with Argentina and Paraguay said retired U.S. banker Douglas Allan Skolnick, 56, was jailed overnight for flipping his middle finger in a photo now required to be taken of all U.S. tourists entering Brazil. Brazil began fingerprinting and photographing Americans entering the country in January after the U.S. government imposed a similar process on foreigners, except for those from 27 mostly European countries. "Mr. Skolnick went before the judge this morning and opted to take the public prosecutor's offer that he pay a 15,000 real fine ($5,000) to avoid prosecution," said officer Marcos Koren of the Foz do Iguacu federal police. Skolnick, who came into Brazil on a charter flight with 91 other tourists -- mostly American -- from Chile on Friday, is being held in his hotel room under police guard until he pays the fine, said Koren. He will then be free to leave Brazil. Skolnick declined to comment. On Jan. 14, an American Airlines pilot was arrested upon entry into Brazil via Sao Paulo, after flipping his finger in a photo. American Airlines paid a fine nearly $13,000 to free the pilot. Link to article http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/383813|top|02-07-2004::10:27|reuters.html

No, it's not your posts at all. You actually attempt at balancing your views.

as well.

The Lie Factory By Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest It's a crisp fall day in western Virginia, a hundred miles from Washington, D.C., and a breeze is rustling the red and gold leaves of the Shenandoah hills. On the weather-beaten wood porch of a ramshackle 90-year-old farmhouse, at the end of a winding dirt-and-gravel road, Lt. Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski is perched on a plastic chair, wearing shorts, a purple sweatshirt, and muddy sneakers. Two scrawny dogs and a lone cat are on the prowl, and the air is filled with swarms of ladybugs. So far, she says, no investigators have come knocking. Not from the Central Intelligence Agency, which conducted an internal inquiry into intelligence on Iraq, not from the congressional intelligence committees, not from the president's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. All of those bodies are ostensibly looking into the Bush administration's prewar Iraq intelligence, amid charges that the White House and the Pentagon exaggerated, distorted, or just plain lied about Iraq's links to Al Qaeda terrorists and its possession of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. In her hands, Kwiatkowski holds several pieces of the puzzle. Yet she, along with a score of other career officers recently retired or shuffled off to other jobs, has not been approached by anyone. Kwiatkowski, 43, a now-retired Air Force officer who served in the Pentagon's Near East and South Asia (NESA) unit in the year before the invasion of Iraq, observed how the Pentagon's Iraq war-planning unit manufactured scare stories about Iraq's weapons and ties to terrorists. "It wasn't intelligence‚ -- it was propaganda," she says. "They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together." It was by turning such bogus intelligence into talking points for U.S. officials‚ -- including ominous lines in speeches by President Bush and Vice President Cheney, along with Secretary of State Colin Powell's testimony at the U.N. Security Council last February‚ -- that the administration pushed American public opinion into supporting an unnecessary war. Until now, the story of how the Bush administration produced its wildly exaggerated estimates of the threat posed by Iraq has never been revealed in full. But, for the first time, a detailed investigation by Mother Jones, based on dozens of interviews‚ -- some on the record, some with officials who insisted on anonymity‚ -- exposes the workings of a secret Pentagon intelligence unit and of the Defense Department's war-planning task force, the Office of Special Plans. It's the story of a close-knit team of ideologues who spent a decade or more hammering out plans for an attack on Iraq and who used the events of September 11, 2001, to set it into motion. Full Artcle http://motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_405.html

It is live...Live taped. God forbid there be a costume malfunction or any embarassing moment for King George.

Oh come on, Mahs... I'm sure you can find some flash cartoon of some dems or lefties that are being humiliated by their short comings. Now's your chance.

Cute. Since we're posting political humor now.... http://homepage.mac.com/webmasterkai/kaicurry/gwbush/dishonestdubya.html

Yeah!!! And black people and gays!!!!! Oooh... how bout Jews?

The kind that hates debate and decent. "Listen to me... I'm a big know it all douche bag" O'Reiley is an arrogent asshole.

This is just plain nutty!

Yeah, I agree with you there but is it that big of a deal to sue Viacom or ultimately sue Janet Jackson or Justin Timberlake?

Dogs don't file joint income tax returns. Gay married couples do.

Who the fuck knows! Ask the parents.

That's laughable. Of course their interest was monetary. Same as ours in that region. What's rediculous is how you've selectively rearranged the facts and chain of events.

It's funny how you acuse me of being one sided. Forget about me for a seconded and try to argue the issues and not hurling insults when your intelligence is threatened, you fucking moron.

I'm not disagreeing with you that they're wasn't any country that did not say that they Saddam was in violation of UN resolutions. I'm saying what you said was bullshit that everyone agreed that Iraq was an immenent threat. In fact have you read any front page of any news paper in the country today and you'll see that Tenet is saying that they never said Iraq was an immenent threat. Also, since you brought up UN resolutions, you'll recall that the United States was going to present a second resolution after 1441 to authorize use of military force but in the face of a veto from half the security coucil members we backed out. So I'll say again, to you saying that 'everyone agreed with Bush that Iraq was an immenent threat', was bullshit. http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/s799317.htm

Cheney's Staff Focus of Probe Posted Feb. 5, 2004 By Richard Sale Published: Tuesday, February 17, 2004 Federal law-enforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA officer's identity last year. The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice Department official said. According to these sources, John Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were the two Cheney employees. "We believe that Hannah was the major player in this," one federal law-enforcement officer said. Calls to the vice president's office were not returned, nor did Hannah and Libby return calls. The strategy of the FBI is to make clear to Hannah "that he faces a real possibility of doing jail time" as a way to pressure him to name superiors, one federal law-enforcement official said. The case centers on Valerie Plame, a CIA operative then working for the weapons of mass destruction division, and her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who served as ambassador to Gabon and as a senior U.S. diplomat in Baghdad in the early 1990s. Under President Bill Clinton, he was head of African affairs until he retired in 1998, according to press accounts. Wilson was sent by the Bush administration in March 2002 to check on an allegation made by President George W. Bush in his State of the Union address the previous winter that Iraq had sought to buy uranium from the nation of Niger. Wilson returned with a report that said the claim was "highly doubtful." On June 12, Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus revealed that an unnamed diplomat had "given a negative report" on the claim and then, on July 6, as the Bush administration was widely accused of manipulating intelligence to get American public opinion behind a war with Iraq, Wilson published an op-ed piece in the Post in which he accused the Bush administration of "misrepresenting the facts." His piece also asked, "What else are they lying about?" Full Article http://www.insightmag.com/news/2004/02/17/National/Cheneys.Staff.Focus.Of.Probe-598606.shtml

Kinda like this dick head igloo.

It's not up to the church to tell how people are to be wed. Besides, civil union couples do not have the same rights as married couples and that's not fair. Who are we to decide who gets more benifits because it doesn't fit in our regious ideology. Here are some limitations with civil unions: -Portability: Marriages are respected state to state for all purposes, but questions remain about how civil unions will be treated in other states. GLAD believes there are strong arguments that civil unions deserve respect across the country just like marriages. But the two appellate courts that have addressed the issue (in Connecticut and Georgia) have disrespected them based on the fact that their states do not grant civil unions themselves. -Ending a Civil Union: If you are married, you can get divorced in any state in which you are a resident. But if states continue to disrespect civil unions, there is no way to end the relationship other than by establishing residency in Vermont and filing for divorce there. This has already created problems for some couples who now have no way to terminate their legal commitment. -Federal Benefits: According to a 1997 GAO report, civil marriage brings with it at least 1,049 legal protections and responsibilities from the federal government, including the right to take leave from work to care for a family member, the right to sponsor a spouse for immigration purposes, and Social Security survivor benefits that can make a difference between old age in poverty and old age in security. Civil unions bring none of these critical legal protections. -Taxes & Public Benefits for the Family: Because the federal government does not respect civil unions, a couple with a civil union will be in a kind of limbo with regard to governmental functions performed by both state and federal governments, such as taxation, pension protections, provision of insurance for families, and means-tested programs like Medicaid. Even when states try to provide legal protections, they may be foreclosed from doing so in joint federal/state programs. -Filling out forms: Every day, we fill out forms that ask us whether we are married or single. People joined in a civil union don't fit into either category. People with civil unions should be able to identify themselves as a single family unit, but misrepresenting oneself on official documents can be considered fraud and carries potential serious criminal penalties. -Separate & Unequal -- Second-Class Status: Even if there were no substantive differences in the way the law treated marriages and civil unions, the fact that a civil union remains a separate status just for gay people represents real and powerful inequality. We've been down this road before in this country and should not kid ourselves that a separate institution just for gay people is a just solution here either. Our constitution requires legal equality for all. Including gay and lesbian couples within existing marriage laws is the fairest and simplest thing to do. How real are these differences between marriage and civil unions, given that a federal law and some state laws discriminate against all marriages of same-sex couples? Would any of this change immediately with marriage of same-sex couples? Probably not, because married same-sex couples will face other layers of discrimination against their marriages. Right now, a federal law denies recognition of same-sex unions conferred by any state for purposes of all federal programs and requirements and over 30 state laws do the same. Ending discrimination in marriage does not mean the end of all discrimination, but using the term "marriage" rather than "civil union" is an essential first step to opening the door and addressing whether continued governmental discrimination against civil marriages of gay and lesbian people makes sense. Marriage and civil unions remain different, both in practice and in principle. First, more than a dozen states have not taken a discriminatory position against civil marriages of gay and lesbian couples. In those states, civilly married gay and lesbian couples should be able to live and travel freely and without fear that their relationship will be disrespected. Second, even as to those states with discriminatory laws, legally married gay and lesbian couples from those states may well face some discrimination in some quarters, but their marriages will also be treated with legal respect in other arenas. Marriages are far more likely to be respected by others than newly minted "civil unions." Using the term marriage also prompts a discussion about fairness. Allowing same sex couples to marry (rather than enter a separate status) will allow gay and lesbian people to talk with their neighbors, their local elected officials, and the Congress about whether discrimination against their marriages is fair. Where gay and lesbian people and their children are part of the social fabric, is it right to continue discriminating against them in civil marriage? The federal government and states that have taken discriminatory positions against marriages of gay and lesbian couples could rethink those policies and go back to respecting state laws about marriage, as they have done for hundreds of years. In the end, we will not be able to have this discussion until gay and lesbian folks have what everyone else has: civil marriage. Civil Marriage & Freedom of Religion A myth: A major myth about ending discrimination in civil marriage is that it will somehow compel religious faiths to change their doctrine or practices about who they marry. This is flatly incorrect. We have freedom of religion in this country. When a court or legislature ends discrimination in civil (governmental) marriage, there is no compulsory impact on any faith. Each faith is-and will remain-free to define its own requirements for its marriage rite: who, what, when, where and why. Some people say marriage is a sacrament. And it is for some religious faiths. But the government is not in the sacrament business. The only "marriage" to which the couples in the Massachusetts case are seeking access is civil/governmental marriage. Governmental marriage already exists side by side with each faith's different rules for their religious rite of marriage. Nothing can change that. Two Types of Marriages Though people may think about marriage in different ways, there are only two types of marriage - either civil or religious. In some ceremonies, both are celebrated at once. Couples may have one or both types of marriage. However, to receive the legal protections of marriage, a couple must have a civil marriage. It is only civil marriage that can be addressed by courts or legislatures. Civil Marriage Any couple can have a civil marriage if they meet the government's requirements. Right now, the requirements in Massachusetts are that the partners be adults, pass a blood test, and not be already married or closely related. Most of us also think about marriage as a public commitment of love and support by adult couples. The government does, too, and uses the commitment of marriage as a gateway to hundreds of legal protections, responsibilities and benefits established by the state, and over 1000 by the federal government. Ever since the founding of this country, states have regulated who may enter into a marriage and under what conditions. Religious Rite of Marriage Only couples who meet the requirements of a particular faith tradition can have a religious marriage. Religions have complete autonomy in deciding which marriages they will consecrate; they do whatever suits their faith tradition. Some religions will not marry people who were divorced, or people of different faiths, even though these same people could have a civil marriage. Every religious community always has the right to perform or not perform any marriage rite it deems appropriate, regardless of the partners' sex. Religious marriages do not convey legal rights or responsibilities. Freedom of Religion The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects every citizen's right to freedom of religion: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." The founders of American government made it clear from the beginning that in this new nation religion and government would exist side by side, and the law would not define religious practice. In addition to allowing free rein to religious practice, our Constitution protects freedom of religion by preventing any one religion from dictating the content of law. For all religious views to be protected and respected, it is critical that laws not be made with a particular religious viewpoint in mind, including laws about civil marriage.

I don't think there is any certain answer to stop abductions of children. Maybe a combination of methods but I do believe everyone should at least take some sort of martial arts training growing up so that you can at least somewhat defend yourself.

Lawdahamercy!