The Political Chase

George Bush vs. New York Times

Hell hath no fury like King George scorned.

Instead of opening an investigation into the illegalities of the Bush administration, the Justice Department has opened an investigation into the leak of Snoopgate, the president’s extensive program of spying on Americans via the NSA.

Technorati Tags : george+bush, NSA, spying, snoopgate, politics, investigations, department+of+justice

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UK Torture Documents

This comes via TalkLeft and seems to be a rather significant and damning evidence against Bush and Tony Blair on torture detainees. Boiling people to death is not just a little persuasive treatment.

Tony, Tony. I’m getting quite disappointed in you. You know better and are not in the same category as George Bush – don’t let the man dupe you anymore!

BlairWatch, fearful of Great Britain’s Official Secrets Act, is requesting that bloggers publish these memos.

The HTML or JPEG document is a legal opinion rendered by the UK’s Foreign Office on the boundaries of when torture is legal or not legal, and what the implications are.  The second document (PDF) is by far the most telling – the type of document that is quite likely to raise the ire of many. It contains several memos/telegrams from Craig Murray, Britain’s former Ambassador to Uzbekistan, which details the passing of intel from the Uzbek Secret Forces to the UK and the US.

Complicity is definitely demonstrated in these documents – quite damning.

The original documents can be found here and here or posted within the framework of BlairWatch. Don’t miss reading them.

More later…

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Cookies and Web Bugs

Every day something new is revealed that tears into the fiber of the Bush administration. With Congress not being in session, things are a bit slow, but thanks to the White House, CNN, MSNBC, and bloggers are not lacking for items to report and discuss – the building NSA drama, cookies from the NSA (no, not the chocolate chip variety), web bugs on the White House Web site, etc. If the administration could be trusted, I would not worry too much about the Web tracking revealed this week, but there is always that big “if” looming out there. “If” doesn’t have a very good track record to stand on.

What does remain as a concern, regardless of the extent of actual harm done, it is against the law. Period. End of discussion. No matter how much George Bush and Rush Dumbaugh want to tout, “no harm done,” it is against the law and it is the president’s Constitutional responsibility to uphold the law.

Tracking cookies can be very benign and useful to Web site publishers. They are used here at TPC, but the sole purpose is to collect statistics primarily on new and returning visitors in an aggregate fashion. There is no personally identifiable information associated with each cookie, but integrate the right technology and with less than honorable intentions and you have a perfect recipe for significant surveillance of the wrong kind.

Bush and company cannot be allowed to employ their historically successful strategy of saying it’s not so, or no big deal and America turns the other cheek. The apologists and Bush continue this modus operandi and a deaf ear must be turned to the rhetoric rather than the other cheek.

It’s simple – you break the law and you suffer the consequences.

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Crazy times…

I have been out of town all day and it looks like its been a cookie monster, web bug, and UK torture news day.

First, let me briefly explain why I have been out of town so much lately and “attending meetings”, etc., which has impacted the normal flow of things here. I prefer to not make a public statement like this for many reasons, but feel that it is necessary so faithful readers will not get the impression that “things are just getting slack.”

Life seems to present the most trying of times when one starts a new venture, which in “blog years”, The Political Chase is relatively new. The only reason I am making this public, is I have a strong commitment to the purpose of this blog and to those that read it. I feel obligated to provide an honest explanation, apologies for not being as productive as possible (on the blog), hope that each of you will understand and will remain a TPC reader.

My father is in the final stage of the dreadful disease, idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. His decline has been quite rapid, especially within the last week and honestly we don’t know if he has 5 minutes or 5 weeks. It varies by the day and sometimes by the hour. He received last rites Monday, but it was obviously a fire drill.

So much for that…I will be here as much as possible and this too will past. Now, on to the business of the day.

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