The 11 o'clock News

A “LOST” Democracy

Ambassador Vernon Walters aka “The General” fervently believed that once a country lost its democracy it could never return.  I thought the General meant Communist block countries but I'm beginning to think he was referring to US.   It would help explain Barack Obama's embrace of Bush's state secrets privilege in the torture/rendition cases and his position in the  Al-Haramain case -- the only remaining case against the Government with any real chance of resulting in a judicial ruling on the legality of Bush's NSA warrantless eavesdropping program. 

"Dick, Get Brent ." -  Brent Scowcroft said when Dick Cheney  became VP that he was not the person that he knew.  Brent never elaborated. Was Dick brainwashed one weekend at Camp David?   If so, perhaps that may explain Barack Obama's complete turnabout on his position on one of the worst abuses of the Bush administration and its endless reliance on vast claims of secrecy to ensure that no court could ever rule on the legality of the President's actions.

As Glenn Greenwald (Salon) reports:

"Why is the Obama administration so vested in preventing that from happening, and -- worse still -- in ensuring that Presidents continue to have the power to invoke extremely broad secrecy claims in order to block courts from ruling on allegations that a President has violated the law?  The Obama administration now asserts the same Bushian state secrets argument, provoking outrage from civil libertarians."

"Whatever the Case May Be":  The Bush administration succeeded in blocking all other judicial challenges to its illegal NSA eavesdropping because (a) nobody knows on whom the Bush administration spied without warrants (precisely because eavesdropping without warrants assumes the targets are concealed even from a court) and (b) that information cannot be disclosed to anyone (including courts) because it's a "State Secret," no individual party has "standing" to sue because nobody can prove that they were actually subjected to the illegal eavesdropping. A federal appeals court dealt a blow to the Obama administration Friday when it refused to block a judge from admitting top secret evidence in a lawsuit weighing whether a U.S. president may bypass Congress, as President George W. Bush did, and establish a program of eavesdropping on Americans without warrants.

Are we as “LOST” in the lies and deception of our government as Jack and the gang are numbed by Ben Linus’s endless lies and deception?  Are we are growing immune to just how outrageous and destructive it is, in a democracy, for the President to violate federal statutes in secret?

"We still don't know the full extent of our government's illegal surveillance or illegal interrogations despite Congress's failed efforts to get to the bottom of it. Congress instead resorted to enacting new legislation on both issues largely in the dark. Yet here we have the Obama DOJ doing exactly this -- not merely trying desperately to keep the Bush administration's spying activities secret, and not merely devoting itself with full force to preventing disclosure of relevant documents concerning this illegal program, but far worse, doing everything in its power even to prevent any judicial adjudication as to whether the Bush administration broke the law by spying on Americans without warrants."

As Obama's hand-picked OLC chief put it:  "I'm afraid we are growing immune to just how outrageous and destructive it is, in a democracy, for the President to violate federal statutes in secret."

Not in Portland:  Will our "LOST" democracy ever be found?  Perhaps.  A federal appeals court on Friday allowed a lawsuit alleging that the U.S. illegally eavesdropped on two American attorneys and an Islamic charity in Portland, Oregon to proceed despite a last-minute plea from the Obama administration to delay the case. The order, by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, means that U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker can grant the plaintiff's lawyers access to top secret documents under secure conditions and allow them to litigate their case against the administration.

The Justice Department had argued that the lawsuit jeopardized national security, and the ruling puts the Obama administration in the awkward position of defending the Bush administration's secret warrantless surveillance program, which began shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Perhaps not. Signaling that the Justice Department had no immediate plan to back down, department lawyers late Friday told the district judge that he didn't have the authority to override the executive branch's determination that the plaintiffs' lawyers had "no need to know" the information. Instead, they said, the judge should review the documents himself in his chambers to determine the merits of the lawsuit. Before issuing any ruling on the record, they asked the court to give the department time to appeal.  If the judge was determined to grant access, the government lawyers demanded to be given notice so they could determine whether to withdraw the information from the court.

The defendents' attorney  called the government lawyers' threat of taking the documents from the court's custody "astounding."  "That would be a shocking violation of the constitutional separation of powers — the sort of thing that just doesn't happen in America," he said.

Oh really?  The General would disagree.

 

The Bush Years: “Dallas” Revisited

Perhaps it was all just a bad dream.  Perhaps the GOP had no alternative but to try to convince US that the neo-con-fusion of the past eight years of the Bumbling Bushes was just a bad dream, ala the “Dallas” desperate writers jumping-the -shark in Pam’s discovery of her dead husband but now quite alive Bobby Ewing in the shower.  How else can the GOP explain the recent performance of neo-con Richie the Perle, the ideological architect of the Iraq war and of the Bush doctrine of preemptive attack?    

As Dana Milbank reported:

“At a forum of foreign policy intellectuals, Perle created a fantastic world in which:  Neoconservatives do not exist.  Perle was not a neo-con.  Even if neoconservatives did exist, they certainly couldn't be blamed for the disasters of the past eight years.

"There is no such thing as a neo-conservative foreign policy," Perle informed the gathering, hosted by National Interest magazine. "It is a left critique of what is believed by the commentator to be a right-wing policy."

So what about the 1996 report he co-authored that is widely seen as the cornerstone of neo-conservative foreign policy?

 "My name was on it because I signed up for the study group. I didn't approve it. I didn't read it."

And the two letters to the president, signed by Perle, giving a "moral" basis to Middle East policy and demanding military means to remove Saddam Hussein?

 "I don't have the letters in front of me," Perle replied.

And the Bush administration National Security Strategy, enshrining the neo-conservative themes of preemptive war and using American power to spread freedom?

"I don't know whether President Bush ever read any of those statements," Perle maintained. "My guess is he didn't."  (he's got US there)

"I see a number of people here who believe and have expressed themselves abundantly that there is a neo-conservative foreign policy and it was the policy that dominated the Bush administration, and they ascribe to it responsibility for the deplorable state of the world,"  Perle told the foreign policy luminaries at yesterday's lunch. "None of that is true, of course."

But it may be true that the neo-con “Dallas” bad dream strategy may be working.

At Pershing Elementary in Dallas,  post-prez George Bush made one of his first public appearances. Ducking in one room, Bush asked, "Hey kids, do you know who I am?"

Blank stares.  Then someone blurted, "George Washington?"

Another asked, "Why did you come here?"

Bush told the kids he came because he saw signs that welcomed him, and it made him feel good, and he wanted to say thanks. He told them it was just as important to listen to their teachers.  "I didn't always do that," he said, grimacing.

He thanked everyone for inviting him. He seemed to have such a good time that someone in the crowd told him they could use him for their haunted house.

"I'd make a good ghost," he said, grinning.

You betcha, just like Bobby Ewing.

 

 

 

Sarah Palin: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

"The Media is a Threat"

The Politico reports Sarah Palin (remember her?) says the media deliberately tried to bring her down during her vice presidential run.  Yeah, just like the New York Post is trying to make a monkey out of Obama. 

Sarah says The MEDIA made a decision that “we’re going to seek and we’re going to destroy this candidacy of Sarah Palin’s because of what it is that she represents.  Obviously something big took place in the media,” she added. It is “very frightening, I think, what the media was able to get away with, this go around.” (what's with these paranoid politicians running for vice-president?)

Relax , Sarah, if you had read a newspaper or magazine  or watched the Nightly News during the past eight years, you would know the MEDIA doesn't make decisions. They just mindlessly repeat whatever TPTB tell them to write or say. 

Blame the "media-government"

Sarah then channeled Michele Bachmann: “This is for the sake of our democracy that there is fairness in this other branch of government, if you will, called the media,” she said. “There have been lies told, there have been reputations trashed, there have been children that have been harmed,” she continued. 

Hmmm...whose children were harmed, Sarah?  Are you referring to Obama's daughters when you smeared the good name of their father?

Perhaps there is something we can all agree:  Sarah says the unbalanced media coverage posed a threat to democracy.  Yes, if she was referring to the Iraq War coverage.

 

A Patriotic Soul-ution to Ease the Housing Crisis

The Republican Party, as well as the birdbrains of the Mainstream Media, belittle all you bloggers out there who just throw stones and never offer solutions to our country's  problems, like they do(other than tax cuts, right).  Well, here's a soul-ution to kill two birds with one stone: the housing crisis and the number of injured soldiers and soldier-widows facing financial ruin.

According to the USA TODAY, as  the home foreclosure crisis sweeps across America, military and financial aid groups say they are hearing from a rising number of troops who say they are falling behind on their mortgage payments and struggling to keep their homes.

"The Army as a whole has seen an increase in soldiers and families seeking assistance for mortgage foreclosures," says Army Lt. Col. Anne Edgecomb, an Army spokeswoman, citing data from branch legal offices trying to advise soldiers.

Of course, neither the Pentagon nor the Department of Veterans Affairs think of tracking the number of military families facing foreclosure. Numbers of mortgage delinquencies are kept, however, by USAA, a San Antonio-based financial services company that serves military members and their families. The company declined to release figures, saying in a statement only that "we have seen an increase."

The VA and financial counseling services say they are hearing from more service members fighting to stave off foreclosure. In the current crisis, 1.2 million foreclosures have occurred nationwide.

The nine VA regional loan centers have seen an increase in calls, now daily, from veterans and active-duty service members with home-finance problems, according to an informal poll conducted by department officials in recent weeks, says spokesman Steve Westerfeld.

And calls from troops in mortgage crisis received by one non-profit credit counseling service — Houston-based Money Management International — doubled from two dozen per month the first quarter of 2007 to four dozen per month this past quarter, spokeswoman Catherine Williams says.

Troops have limited foreclosure protection under the Service members Civil Relief Act. Lenders can seek a court order to foreclose on a house, even if the soldier is in combat, federal housing records show.

Army Staff Sgt. Daniel Escamilla was on his third combat tour in Iraq last year when he had to negotiate from the battlefield with his lender over disputed penalties for the adjustable-rate loan on his four-bedroom home near Fort Carson, Colo. His payment had ballooned from $967 to more than $3,000.

"Not only do I have to worry about staying alive, but now I got to worry about whether or not my family's going to get kicked out of the house," Escamilla says of the long-distance haggling last fall.

He finished his combat tour Dec. 31, but the mortgage fight only escalated, says Escamilla, who has three children. His lender, Colorado-based Aurora Loan Services, sent him a written threat of foreclosure a few weeks ago, he says.

After a USA TODAY inquiry last week to the parent company, New York-based Lehman Bros., a corporate officer notified Escamilla that all penalties would be removed and his payment adjusted down to its original amount, Escamilla says. "She was sorry for what happened," the soldier says.

Before the loan problem was resolved, however, the Escamillas were under serious financial and emotional stress. Angie Escamilla says her hair started falling out a month before her husband left for Iraq for the third time. In addition to seeing him leave and being left to care for their children, she also faced losing their home because of escalating mortgage penalties and late fees, and the destruction of their credit, she says.

So here is your chance,  you patriotic Republicans, especially you chickenhawks, to support an Extreme Makeover bill to give a foreclosed house free to widows and soldiers making less than 60K  who have been incapacitated by a war-related to get a foreclosed house.  It will be your chance to show that you feel guilty for not putting your own necks on the line for these wars, and it will help reduce the number of vacant homes that your budget busting war help to create.

“What’s the endgame, General?” “Mr. President, we…er…don’t have one.”

If  President Obama wants to start our road back to fiscal sanity, a good place to start cutting budgets would be the “big thinkers” over at the Pentagon.  What the hell are they doing over there?  For example, President Obama at a meeting with Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon Jan. 28, Obama asked the Joint Chiefs, "What is the end game?" in Afghanistan, and was told, "Frankly, we don't have one," according to a Feb. 4 report by NBC News Pentagon correspondent Jim Miklaszewski.

We don’t have one?  Do they mean no one  thought the need to come up with a strategy or they have put their group-think “minds” together and they just couldn’t come up with one?

As a result of that confidence-building answer, Obama decided to approve only 17,000 of the 30,000 troops requested by Gen. David McKiernan, the top commander of U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, and Gen. David "Peaches" Petraeus, the CENTCOM commander, after McKiernan was unable to tell him how they would be used, according to a White House source.

“An endgame, you mean like in Vietnam?”

According to an article by ace reporter Gareth Porter (IFP), "Obama’s decision to approve just over half the full troop request for Afghanistan recalls a similar decision by President Lyndon B. Johnson to approve only part of the request for U.S. troop deployments in a parallel situation in the Vietnam War in April 1965 at a comparable stage of that war. Johnson reluctantly went along with the request for additional troops within weeks under pressure from both the field commander and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.  The rationale from the military leadership for doubling the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, even without a strategy or a concept of how the war could end, was eerily similar to the Henry Kissinger Vietnam “strategy”, "buy time" for an effort to build up security forces."

 And we all remember how that "strategy" ended just fine.

“Everything is just Peaches.”

President Obama had also learned by early February that earlier assurances from “Peaches” Petraeus of an accord with Kyrgyzstan on use of bases had been premature, and that the U.S. ability to supply troops in Afghanistan would be dependent on political accommodations with Russia and Iran.

Perhaps President Obama is getting Vietnam déjà vu and realizes there is no endgame in Afghanistan, despite his strong commitment to increasing troops to Afghanistan during the campaign.

It’s Ziggy to the rescue:  Former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski advises:  "We have to decide more precisely what is the objective of our involvement. Because we are increasingly running the risk of getting bogged down both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan in pursuit of objectives which we are lacking the power to reach." Brzezinski said the administration needed "very specific, narrow objectives."

Why not use Petraeus’ Iraq counter-insurgency “strategy” and just buy them all off?

Perhaps that is already in the works. Political,diplomatic, as well as military policy issues included the option of incorporating elements of the insurgents into the government through negotiations. President Hamid Karzai has been advocating negotiations with the Taliban for two years.

BUT that kind of out-of-the-box thinking is apparently contrary to the group-think “big thinkers” in the Pentagon, where their motto is: History be damned.   As McKiernan said, "There's always an inclination to relate what we're doing with previous nations," he said, adding, "I think that's a very unhealthy comparison."

Repeat after US:   Iraq is not a quagmire.  Afghanistan is not a quagmire. Vietnam was not a quagmire. 

President Obama would be wise to ignore these “experts” in the Pentagon.  Johnson was correct when he worried about sliding into an open-ended commitment to a war that could not be won. But two months later he gave in, against his better judgment, to a request from Gen. William Westmoreland, the commander in Vietnam, for "urgent reinforcements." The escalation of the war continued for another two years.

"LOST" "316": Why, Y or ?, That is the Question

"LOST" episode "316" marks the return of the OC 6, minus Aaron (guess Kate was speaking for the writers when she says "don't ever ask me about him (Aaron) again."  The question is Why, Y or ??   Unfortunately, "316" raises more questions than answers, such as:

Why did Hurley, Jack and Kate flash before our eyes and end up in the same waterfall/lagoon where Kate and Sawyer found Mars' suitcase in "Shape of Things to Come?"

And what's the deal with that mysterious guy (Caesar) sitting next to Hurley?  If he  "flashed" to the island, why did he if the only others who returned have a previous connection to the island?

And why (or Y) is Hurley showing us that Spanish comic book? (other than because Walt also read a spanish comic book and the "316" gang was to mirror the "815" gang)

And why call it  "316" and not "LOST and Found?"

Perhaps there is a clue in the Brian Vaughn comic book with the cover of that ghoulish astronaut, "The LAst Man", which is actually titled "One Small Step." (FYI: Brian was a clever writer on the show,  and hopefully it is more than a shout-out and free "pub" for him.)

Here's some interesting connections: 

Y is the symbol for Ytterium, which is used in manufacturing color TV tubes.

"One small step" was the famous phrase uttered by Armstrong when he stepped on the moon.

Philo T. Farnsworth created electronic television, which allowed US to watch as man first stepped on the moon. Philo also worked on a novel way to create nuclear fusion,"Sun in a Bottle", also a name for orange juice, which Jack gave Kate in the opening of "316."

So IF there is a fusion connection with "316", perhaps it is another way of naming "388", which is a small tactical nuke.  And perhaps Caesar - "Who is our Said, Sayid" - may know something about that suitcase fusion nuke that was on flight 815 and never made it to LA.  Maybe he was trailing Jack back to the island to recover it. (and IF Caesar mirrored another terrorist on flight 815, who was it?)

Perhaps "One Small Step" connects to Charlie when he made "one small step" on that beehive and Kate tried to place a suitcase over it (House of the Rising Sun).  But it broke and it was every  LAST MAN for themselves. And if the suitcase fusion bomb detonates, there will be another Rising Sun for Kate and the others to not ask Y, why or ? , just  RUN!

The Bonfire of the Republican Inanities

The Bonfire of the Vanities is a 1987 novel  about ambition, racism, social class, politics, and greed in 1980s New York City.  If one were to write a present-day novel depicting the same topics it should be titled The Bonfire of the Republican Inanities.

Having ruled over an explosion of debt to finance "good" projects during the past eight years, Republicans- once Masters of the Universe - are now preparing to pounce on any wasteful spending in the $787 billion stimulus package as they refocus their criticisms of a measure whose success could hurt their 2010 election prospects.  Republicans opposed the bill almost unanimously, and any embarrassing examples of misused funds or other shortcomings will let them say, "I told you so. But that didn’t stop some of the naysayers from accepting the stimulus in their home districts. 

Rep. John Mica voted “no” but then said, "I applaud President Obama's recognition that high-speed rail should be part of America's future," the Florida Republican beamed in a press release.  Mica is the top Republican on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, and a longtime backer of high-speed rail. GOP committee spokesman Justin Harclerode explained that Mica saw the bill's $8 billion for rail as a "silver lining," and "he's encouraged others are supporting high speed rail too."

Mica wasn't alone in touting what he saw as the bill's virtues. Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, also had nice things to say in a press release.Young boasted that he "won a victory for the Alaska Native contracting program and other Alaska small business owners last night in H.R. 1, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act."

One provision would have made it harder for minority businesses to win contracts, and Young explained that he "worked with members on the other side of the aisle to make the case for these programs, and was able to get the provision pulled from the bill."

Yet later in the day Young — who recently told McClatchy that he would've included earmarks, or local projects, in the bill if it had been permitted — issued another statement blasting the overall measure.

"This bill was not a stimulus bill. It was a vehicle for pet projects, and that's wrong," he protested.

Mike Steel, a spokesman for House GOP Leader John Boehner of Ohio, at first ducked when asked about Mica and Young issuing press releases praising the bill they'd opposed.

"I don't work for Mica or Young," Steel said initially.

But then he explained that what Mica and Young did in touting aspects of the bill was in fact consistent with the Republican message.  "Being supportive of one portion of a trillion dollar bill, but voting against the entire trillion dollar bill, is perfectly reasonable," Steel said.

Perfectly reasonable.

Spoken like true Masters of the Universe.

 

Our Democracy Wasn’t “LOST” in a Day

As “LOST” uses flashbacks and flashforwards to provide the backstory of the lives of the stranded characters, let US examine our democracy’s dire situation using the same plot devices:

FLASHFORWARD 2021 – A failed war in Iraq has allowed the terrorists to regain their pre-9-11 organization.  Besieged by terrorist attacks on the Homeland, including a “suitcase” nuclear bomb that has leveled downtown Manhattan, the American people willingly submit to a military takeover headed by American Caesar David Petraeus. 

FLASHBACK 2007 -   How did David Petraeus become the most powerful American general since Douglas MacArthur?  It began when our 36^th rated presi-dense George W. Bush announced that “Peaches” was his "main man" who would decide when, how, and if an Iraq troop drawdown would occur, giving Petraeus unilateral control of U.S. foreign policy.

FLASHBACK 2009 -   After Petraeus, Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are unable to change President Obama from his 16-month redeployment  policy, a group of senior retired officers prepare to support Petraeus, Gen. Ray Odierno, and their allies, such as Thomas Ricks, by mobilizing public opinion against Obama's decision. 

Et tu, Ricks?  The MacArthur-like coronation of Petraeus is evident in Rick’s latest book, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008.   In his book Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq, 2003-2005, Ricks also portrayed Petraeus as the only division commander who got it right in post-invasion Iraq. As Ricks notes, Petraeus needed time "not to bring the war to a close, but simply to show enough genuine progress that the American people would be willing to stick with it even longer." Even Ricks seems uncertain that we've seen genuine progress; maybe we've actually just "poured more gas on the fire," he thinks, and even though the surge is a failure, its "attitude is right" so it was "the right step to take," and we should continue to support U.S. presence in Iraq because we'll be there a long time whether we support it or not.

FLASHFORWARD 2011 – Iraqi security forces stage a coup, igniting an Iraqi civil war.  

PRESENT DAY:  On Meet the Press, Ricks says Petraeus and his supporters have Obama over a barrel. If Obama continues to stand up to them, they'll accuse him of betraying the troops because of a campaign promise. If things go the way Ricks predicts, the president will fold, the military oligarchy will consolidate its hold on American political power.

As "LOST" characters know, so many flashbacks and flashforwards can make one's head spin.  Perhaps it is true History can’t be changed.  But perhaps it’s also true that those who forget the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.  If so, then Obama should remember Harry Truman and Petraeus should remember MacArthur.  

Mary Beth’s Wrong Turns in the Erie Collar Bomb Case Lead to Dead End

Mary Beth Buchanan, along with other sitting federal prosecutors and U.S.marshals, has been asked to stay on in her position in Pennsylvania's Western District temporarily.  But when Team Obama gets around to replacing Mary Beth, the new US Attorney and the DOJ should request that Mary Beth stay around a little longer to answer some questions about her wrong turns in the Erie Collar Bomb case.

The more one researches the “facts” about the Erie Collar Bomb bank robbery and Mary Beth’s “case” against Brian Wells as an unindicted co-conspirator, primarily based on the “good word” of “master con-man” Kenneth Barnes, the more one realizes Mary Beth’s case has more holes than the “GUESS” shirt Brian was wearing when he was murdered and more wrong turns than Brian took after he left the Summit Towne Bank.

Here are some questions for the new US Attorney to ask:

Where is William Rothstein’s large, “yellowish” car?
 
The little, green Geo Metro that Brian drove has been the best-known vehicle involved in the robbery, but Mary Beth’s wrong turn on Brian’s complicity is based heavily on the movements of a large, “yellowish” car the FBI said belonged to William A. Rothstein. The FBI repeatedly refers to the car in the search in the Wells case. But where is this large, “yellowish” car? According to Goerie.com writer Ed Palattella, the large “yellowish” car that Mary Beth says was involved in the events that unfolded before, during and after the bomb locked to Wells' neck is missing.   

 (http://www.goerie.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070730/NEWS02/707300342/0/NEWS30)

 “Rothstein's car is not mentioned again in the 38-page affidavit, which authorities used to search Barnes' Perry Street house, on Erie's east side, in March and May 2006. If the car had been found, the FBI likely would have noted its discovery in the affidavit. All the court records in the case, as well as interviews the Erie Times-News previously conducted with acquaintances of Barnes indicated the FBI never found the car.”

 Why did the “Evil Genius” William Rothstein follow co-conspirator Wells to the pizza shop?

 According to the prosecution’s witness, master conman Kenneth Barnes, “Rothstein allegedly used the “yellowish” car to follow Wells as the pizza deliveryman drove his Geo Metro north on Peach Street sometime after 1:30 p.m. on Aug. 28, 2003.”

 Now why would Rothstein have to check on Brian’s whereabouts if Brian was involved in the bank robbery?  One would think master criminals would have coordinated their plans so that Brian would be at the pizza shop waiting for Rothstein’s call. According to Barnes, at 1:30 p.m., according to Barnes, Rothstein “placed a pizza order with Wells” from the pay phone at the Shell station at Peach Street and Robison Road.    

 “Placed an order with Wells?”  Well, not exactly.  Whoever called Mama Mia's Pizza-Ria spoke first with the manager.  Only when the manager did not know the location did he give the call to Brian to determine the location.

 If the plan was for Wells to give Rothstein the money outside the bank, why did he need to look for a note at McDonald’s to find the key? 

 According to master con-man Kenneth Barnes, the plan was for Wells to give Rothstein the money when he left the bank.  But according to witnesses at the scene, after robbing the bank, Wells searched frantically under a rock near a sign for the McDonald's to retrieve a note.  This delay gave the State Police time to arrive to arrest Wells in the parking lot of Eye Glass World, and he died there when the bomb exploded at 3:18 p.m.  

According to Barnes, Rothstein then drove the car to his house, where Diehl-Armstrong and Barnes met him. Barnes said he and Diehl-Armstrong had been in her red Jeep

 "Rothstein was already there and had an angry look on his face," the FBI said in the affidavit. "Barnes claimed that Diehl-Armstrong talked to Rothstein in the driveway, but Barnes remained in the car and could not hear their conversation.

 “An angry look on his face?”   Why would Rothstein be angry?  Because he couldn’t collect the money from Wells?  Was he hiding under the rock at the McDonald’s?  If , as Barnes swears, the plan was for Wells to give Rothstein the money when he left the bank, and Rothstein was sitting in his LARGE, MISSING” YELLOW-ISH CAR, how could Wells miss him?

 If the plan was for Wells then to drive to Interstate 79, where the bomb would have eventually detonated, why would the criminals left incriminating evidence at the scene, requiring them to drive like madmen to retrieve it?

 "Barnes stated that he and Diehl-Armstrong then got into Rothstein's large yellowish car and drove to Interstate 79, where Diehl-Armstrong entered the highway going the wrong direction," the FBI said in the affidavit. ."Diehl-Armstrong pulled onto the side of the berm, got out of the car and went down over the embankment into the woods. She returned carrying a white shirt with something inside it, which she threw in the back seat of the car."

 Where is Floyd Stockton?

 Floyd Stockton, a convicted rapist and close friend and housemate of Rothstein,  reportedly carried the collar bomb out of Rothstein’s garage, but is not mentioned in the indictment.  But his name appears throughout the affidavits of probable cause for the search warrants the FBI and ATF filed in the Wells case for Barnes' residence on Perry Street in Erie in 2006. The investigators said in the affidavits that Diehl-Armstrong and Barnes identified Stockton as being involved in the Wells plot, and that Barnes said Stockton helped Rothstein handle the bomb that was locked to Wells' neck. The FBI in the affidavits also identifies Stockton as meeting with investigators at least twice. The information in the affidavits, as well as the lack of an indictment against Stockton, suggest he has reached an agreement with the government in exchange for his cooperation in the Wells case.

 So Stockton, a co-conspirator in one of the most heinous murders, has reportedly been given complete immunity?  Some deal. Perhaps Marj Diehl-Armstrong should call his lawyer.

Well, here’s the deal for the new US Attorney:

 1. In response to the Wells’ family request, re-open the Brian Wells murder investigation.

2. Polygraph master conman Kenneth Barnes and rapist Floyd Stockton.

3. Question the investigators about their efforts to locate the two young men “missing” persons of interest.

4. Review Mary Beth’s plea deals with master conman Barnes and rapist Stockton and her decision not to polygraph them.

5.  Ask Mary Beth how she could take so many wrong turns in this case that has lead to a investigative deadend.

The USA Today is Bankrupt Financially and Morally

The USA today is getting quite the reputation as a nation of deadbeats, financially and morally.

Financially

According to USA Today, state and local governments have set aside virtually no money to pay $1 trillion or more in medical benefits for retired civil servants.   With bills coming due as Baby Boomers start to retire, states, cities, school districts and other governments may be forced to raise taxes, cut benefits or both — a task made especially difficult in an economic downturn.

State governments have unfunded obligations worth $445 billion to subsidize health insurance for teachers, judges and other civil servants after they retire, according to a USA TODAY survey of state financial reports.

Cities, school systems, park districts, water authorities and other local governments have even bigger obligations, in excess of $500 billion, although the exact number isn't known.

States will receive a large chunk of the $787 billion stimulus bill Congress approved last week, but that money is aimed at immediate spending, not long-term costs.

Morally

Joe Conason argued , as Glenn Greenwald in Slate writes, "that there should be no criminal investigations of any kind for Bush officials "who authorized torture or other outrages in the 'war on terror'."  Instead, Conason suggests that there be a presidential commission created that is "purely investigative," and Obama should "promise a complete pardon to anyone who testifies fully, honestly and publicly." 

"So, under this proposal, not only would we adopt an absolute bar against prosecuting war criminals and other Bush administration felons, we would go in the other direction and pardon them from any criminal liability of any kind."

"The U.S. really has bound itself to a treaty called the Convention Against Torture, signed by Ronald Reagan in 1988 and ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1994.  When there are credible allegations that government officials have participated or been complicit in torture, that Convention really does compel all signatories -- in language as clear as can be devised -- to "submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution" (Art. 7(1)).  And the treaty explicitly bars the standard excuses that America's political class is currently offering for refusing to investigate and prosecute:  "No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat or war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture" and "an order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture" (Art. 2 (2-3)).  By definition, then, the far less compelling excuses cited by Conason (a criminal probe would undermine bipartisanship and distract us from more important matters) are plainly barred as grounds for evading the Convention's obligations.

"What is absolutely clear beyond any doubt is that -- just as is true for any advance promises by the Obama DOJ not to investigate or prosecute -- issuing preemptive pardons to government torturers would be an unambiguous and blatant violation of our obligations under the Convention.

"And yet those who advocate that we refrain from criminal investigations rarely even mention our obligations under the Convention.  There isn't even a pretense of an effort to reconcile what they're advocating with the treaty obligations to which Ronald Reagan bound the U.S. in 1988.  Do we now just explicitly consider ourselves immune from the treaties we signed?

Well, if we can walk away from our debts, what is stopping US from ignoring treaties?