Gnorb.NET

This is just sickening: “The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee rejected a proposal to investigate the Bush administration’s program of conducting electronic eavesdropping without warrants, while agreeing to create new congressional panels to increase oversight.. (See the full article in Bloomberg.)

In other words, “We, the Republican congress, have decided not to investigate the President’s violations of FISA and the 4th Amendment, and instead have chosen to make his actions legal retroactively.” Man, what if Clinton had as lap-dog of a congress as this one? He wouldn’t have been impeached! Oh, but wait: cheating on your wife and then lying about it is much, MUCH worse than running illegal wiretap programs (yes, as in “multiple” — there’s more than one) against innocent Americans.

I’m sure Nixon was praying for spineless lap-dogs like these just before he resigned. But Bush? He has them! Except for a few exceptions, the entire Republican congress is made up of nothing but criminals protecting a corrupt administration.

The Culture of Corruptions created by the Republicans make me ashamed of ever having been affiliated with the party. (Yes, I am a registered Republican. Not for long, thought. These criminals have done a great job in pushing me to the not-quite-as-dark-side of the force.)

More sources: Daily Kos, The Moderate Voice. Information as I find it.

Update: More from Unclaimed Territory:

The Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday rejected Sen. Rockefeller’s motion to hold hearings to investigate the President’s warrantless eavesdropping program by an 8-7, strict party line vote. Yet again, every Senate Republican followed White House instructions not to investigate the President, and this time did so despite the statements of several of those GOP Senators just within the last 8 weeks that such an investigation was urgent and necessary.

Sen. [Captain Obvious] Rockefeller stated the obvious: Emerging from a closed-door session in which Democrats lost two party-line votes, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), the vice chairman of the committee, said the outcome pushed the panel “further into irrelevancy” and reflected the influence of the Bush administration.“The committee is, to put it bluntly, basically under the control of the White House,” said Rockefeller.

Irrelevant indeed, Mr. Rockefeller. So when do we officially replace the “c” with a “k” in “America”?

Rather interesting developments in the whole “Who screwed up Katrina” situation:

From the AP: In dramatic and sometimes agonizing terms, federal disaster officials warned President Bush and his homeland security chief before Hurricane Katrina struck that the storm could [UPDATE]breach top levees, put lives at risk in New Orleans’ Superdome and overwhelm rescuers, according to confidential video footage.

SEE THE FOOTAGE HERE, available in QuickTime (.mov) and Windows Media Player (.wmv).

More information can be found here:

• CNN: Transcript shows governments underestimated Katrina (Watch the CNN Video)
• The Moderate Voice (TONS of links and information, highly recommended.)
• AmericaBlog

Updates as I find them. Check out the links for tons more information from people who blog a lot more than I do. Oh, and from news sources as well. (Look, even Faux News got into the act.)

UPDATE: From MSNBC: (Video available here.) It looks like the entire “failure all around” scenario is shaping up to be just that: failure all around, especially at the federal level. Not only did Bush and his cronies screw up the event with their “fog of bureaucracy”, but a new video shifts the blame more to the state (while at the same time not exonerating the federal government in any way).

(It should be noted that this was during the actual hurricane, so any delay in communication should be expected. We have taped evidence that Bush knew the worst case scenario, where Michael Brown basically begged for federal government assistance. But what about the governor? What was she doing all this time? How was she preparing for this worst case scenario?)

My question is, in a city that’s shaped like a bowl, what’s really the difference between a levee getting topped and breached? Severity? In either case the city’s still getting flooded, with water that has no place to go.

According to MSNBC, “[Max Mayfield] warned only that the levees might be topped, not breached, and that on the many conference calls he monitored, ‘Nobody talked about the possibility of a levee breach or failure until after it happened.’”

My question stands. The administration is relying on the whole “topped, not breached/it’s all Brown’s fault” argument as their excuse for not getting help in right away, but doesn’t this seem like — oh I don’t know — relying on a technicality like “depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is”?

This makes for a great spin of events for the Bush, aka “The Teflon President,” aka “Spinmeister W”.

[UPDATE]: The Moderate Voice has a lot more information on this new video. Newsweek has an item about a hastily produced “missing transcript” of a video conference call — a transcript that hadn’t been provided to Congress but was hastily sent to Newsweek by the White House. Although no one knows for sure (yet), it would appear this was shoved forward due to the emergence of the highly damaging video…

I got this from “Eagle Eye” Quantum Skyline:

News of this phishing scam became public today. To be honest, this one would have got me.

The reason why this phishing scam is so good is that it uses a completely valid certificate for SSL based (read: encrypted) communication with your browser. Most users are educated only to check for the little lock icon in their browser, because phishers were traditionally too lazy to use an SSL certificate. However, for the price of $69.99, a domain, and a MySQL database, anyone can create a decent phishing site

The thing is, very few people check the SSL certificate of their banks…

Take a second to check out Quantum’s post, and from now on also check your bank’s Security Certificates. While you’re at it, stop by the Anti-Phishing.org website and educate yourself on how not to give up your banking information.

For those of you interested in cryonic suspension and life-extending technologies, here’s an interesting read from the Sydney Morning Herrald: “US doctors have developed a method of inducing hypothermia to shut down the body’s functions for up to three hours. In tests, they reduced the body temperature of injured pigs from 37C to 10C before operating on them and then reviving them.”

I wonder how this will affect our understanding of near-death experiences?

(For more information on cryonics, see The Alcor Life Extension Foundation’s website.)

Sorry about the silence folks. No excuse other than more important things are getting in the way. I’ll be back soon, if not full force, at least enough to report on the holidays, (Christmas, Channukah, New Year) and thoughts thereof.

By the way, if you’re in Fort Lauderdale, or plan to be here during Christmas, there WILL be Christmas-day services at Calvary Chapel. Pastor Bob figured that although most people would be with their family (and would probably have attended one of the 9 services in 5 days before Christmas), some may not have family to go to. For them, he decided to open the church doors for a 10:15 service on Sunday, Christmas Morning. I won’t be there (I wish I could be; I’ll be in Tampa), but if you’re in the area, drop by Christmas morning and say hello. (Or drop by to one of the three Saturday services and enjoy some good ol’ fashioned worship.) Someone you yet don’t know might need you.

Of course, if you’re not in the area and wish to check out services anyway, you can always watch online. I’m not sure if the Sunday Christmas services will be Internetelevised. If you go to their page, http://www.calvaryftl.org, and look at the top banner it’ll tell you whether they’re internetelevising services. No message, no service. Still check out the Active Word page to download some of the services in MP3 form.

Here are the service times over the next few days:

• Dec 21: 6:30pm, 8:30pm
• Dec 22: 7:30pm
• Dec 23: 7:30pm
• Dec 24: 4:30pm, 6:30pm, 8:30pm, 11:00pm
• Dec 25: 10:15am