Eideard

“Not intended to be a factual statement.”

The now-infamous statement from Sen. Jon Kyl’s office was released after he said on the floor of the U.S. Senate that abortions represent “over 90 percent of what Planned Parenthood does.”

It turns out that the actual number is 3%, a mere rounding error of 87%. But it was presented to the American people and enshrined in the Senate Record as a means of arguing that Planned Parenthood should be entirely defunded in the current budget.

This has nothing to do with fiscal responsibility and everything to do with the disproportionate influence of social conservative activists.

Their most compelling argument is that the American people don’t support federal taxpayer money paying for abortions, which is true — and why federal funding of abortion has been banned since 1976.

But the facts are inconvenient, and so they are ignored. Instead, talking points taken from talk radio are repeated until they take on a life of their own and eventually get the validation of a U.S. senator.

The news wasn’t that Kyl made a mistake; it was his staff essentially acknowledging that in the current hyper-partisan environment, facts are a secondary concern, even on the floor of the U.S. Senate, even when they are paraded as statistics. The important thing is to scare the hell out of people so that they remember your political point and pass it on.

In this absurd spin cycle, there’s one dependable place to look for sanity: satire. And on cue came Stephen Colbert, who took Kyl’s statement as a challenge and dialed it up to 11.

Using the Twitter hashtag #NotIntendedToBeAFactualStatement, Colbert unleashed a steady stream of Jon Kyl mistruths with the requisite denial. Among my favorites:

• Jon Kyl developed his own line of hair care products just so he could test them on bunnies.
• Jon Kyl can unhinge his jaw like a python to swallow small rodents whole.
• Every Halloween Jon Kyl dresses up as a sexy Mitch Daniels.
• Jon Kyl sponsored S.410, which would ban happiness.
• Jon Kyl let a game-winning ground ball roll through his legs in Game 6 of the ’86 World Series.
• Jon Kyl once ate a badger he hit with his car.

This crap is properly called “lying”. That it is done for political gain and later followed by a rationale acceptable to politicians and fools – does not make it acceptable behavior. We all complain about the lack of ethics, the duplicity and deceit of Congress – but, this deliberate distortion of fact by the fiction of bigots is inexcusable. And anyone who does excuse it is as guilty as the salaried liar who invented the propaganda.

Colin Powell, the US secretary of state at the time of the Iraq invasion, has called on the CIA and Pentagon to explain why they failed to alert him to the unreliability of a key source behind claims of Saddam Hussein’s bio-weapons capability.

Responding to the Guardian’s revelation that the source, Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi or “Curveball” as his US and German handlers called him, admitted fabricating evidence of Iraq’s secret biological weapons programme, Powell said that questions should be put to the US agencies involved in compiling the case for war. In particular he singled out the CIA and the Defence Intelligence Agency – the Pentagon’s military intelligence arm. Janabi, an Iraqi defector, was used as the primary source by the Bush administration to justify invading Iraq in March 2003. Doubts about his credibility circulated before the war and have been confirmed by his admission this week that he lied.

Powell said that both the CIA and DIA should face questions about why they failed to sound the alarm about Janabi. He demanded to know why it had not been made clear to him that Curveball was totally unreliable before false information was put into the key intelligence assessment, or NIE, put before Congress, into the president’s state of the union address two months before the war and into his own speech to the UN…

On 5 February 2003, just a month before the invasion, Powell went before the UN security council to make the case for war. In his speech he referred to “firsthand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails … The source was an eyewitness who supervised one of these facilities”. It is now known that the source, Janabi, made up the story.

Curveball told the Guardian he welcomed Powell’s demand. “It’s great,” he said tonight. “The BND [German intelligence] knew in 2000 that I was lying after they talked to my former boss, Dr Bassil Latif, who told them there were no mobile bioweapons factories. For 18 months after that they left me alone because they knew I was telling lies even though I never admitted it. Believe me, back then, I thought the whole thing was over for me.

“Then all of a sudden [in the run up to the 2003 invasion] they came back to me and started asking for more details about what I had told them. I still don’t know why the BND then passed on my information to the CIA and it ended up in Powell’s speech.”

Neocon lies, the self-fulfilling prophecies based on their lies, even the gullible rightwingers who still babble on about the necessity of regime change in Iraq based on these fearsome – and wholly non-existent – weapons of mass destruction need to have their foolishness turned on its head.

Creeps like Cheney and Rumsfeld still trundle about the political landscape making political hay and retirement income from their deceit. True Believers line up cash in hand to plight their fealty.

Sucker!

The defector who convinced the White House that Iraq had a secret biological weapons programme has admitted for the first time that he lied about his story, then watched in shock as it was used to justify the war.

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, has told the Guardian that he fabricated tales of mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories in an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled in 1995.

“Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right,” he said. “They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy.”

Don’t concern your pointy little head over the deaths of hundreds of thousands of your fellow Iraqis.

The admission comes just after the eighth anniversary of Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations in which the then-US secretary of state relied heavily on lies that Janabi had told the German secret service, the BND. It also follows the release of former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s memoirs, in which he admitted Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction programme.

The careers of both men were seriously damaged by their use of Janabi’s claims, which he now says could have been – and were – discredited well before Powell’s landmark speech to the UN on 5 February 2003.

The former CIA chief in Europe Tyler Drumheller describes Janabi’s admission as “fascinating”, and said the emergence of the truth “makes me feel better”. “I think there are still a number of people who still thought there was something in that. Even now,” said Drumheller.

Try to put this question to a schmuck like Cheney – or any of Bush’s neocon dunce brigade – and you will certainly witness repetition of all the same lies from Day One of planning for the Iraq War. Including the lies from al-Janabi. Truth, history, mean nothing to criminals.

“Don’t worry, George – no one really cares about honesty”

The Bush White House, particularly before the 2006 midterm elections, routinely violated a federal law that prohibits use of federal tax dollars to pay for political activities by creating a “political boiler room” that coordinated Republican campaign activities nationwide, a report issued Monday by an independent federal agency concludes.

The report by the Office of Special Counsel finds that the Bush administration’s Office of Political Affairs — overseen by Karl Rove — served almost as an extension of the Republican National Committee, developing a “target list” of Congressional races, organizing dozens of briefings for political appointees to press them to work for party candidates, and sending cabinet officials out to help these campaigns…

The Office of Special Counsel, a relatively obscure federal agency, is charged with enforcing the Hatch Act, a 1939 law that prohibits federal employees from engaging in partisan political activity. Certain members of the White House political staff — including the top aides at the Office of Political Affairs — are exempt, as are the president, vice president and members of the cabinet. But the law still prohibits the use of federal money, even by these officials, to support political causes.

The report found that during the Bush administration, senior staff members at the Office of Political Affairs violated the Hatch Act by organizing 75 political briefings from 2001 to 2007 for Republican appointees at top federal agencies in an effort to enlist them to help Republicans get elected to Congress…

“These briefings created an environment aimed at assisting Republican candidates, constituting political activity within the meaning of the Hatch Act,” the 118-page report said…

The investigators also found evidence that the Bush White House improperly classified travel by senior officials as official government business, “when it was, in fact, political,” and the costs associated with this travel were never reimbursed.

A spokesman for the Office of Special Counsel said Monday that because the administration officials had left office, it no longer has jurisdiction to file any charges. It also said that it had not made a formal referral to the Justice Department to ask it to pursue any possible charges.

Obama’s version of the same Office of Political Affairs hasn’t conducted business with federal dollars – and has been moved to Chicago to assure functioning with political party funds. Just another area of “change” Republicans hate – and would reverse if they were once again in charge of the White House.

Corruption and deceit as a lifestyle is hard to leave. Just ask Dick Armey.

Former Prime Minister Tony Blair is to be recalled to give evidence a second time to the Iraq Inquiry.

He is one of a number of key figures, including former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, asked to appear before the Chilcot committee again…

The inquiry said it wanted “more detail” in some key areas…

The BBC’s Diplomatic Correspondent Nicholas Witchell said it was not clear why Mr Blair had been asked to appear once more, but there must be significant details that the inquiry wished to clarify following its analysis of documentary evidence and a number of private hearings over the summer…

The committee has been holding hearings since November, in which it has questioned a host of former Labour Cabinet ministers, senior military commanders, civil servants and diplomats.

A number of former government lawyers have argued that the invasion was unlawful…

Sir John has stressed the final report, not expected to be published before March, will be “full, thorough, evidence-based and frank”.

“We are independent of government and will not shy away from criticising if we find fault or if we conclude that errors have been made. We are determined to produce a report that will be useful to future governments,” he added.

Anyone ever going to depose George W. Bush under oath? Not that he wouldn’t offer the same lies, half-truths and rationales that continue to be the heart of American foreign policy.

Do you think the United States Congress or the White House – now or in the future – would have sufficient integrity, courage, to peer behind the barbed-wire closet door at the former emperor’s collection of patent leather lies?

Former Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, once one of the state’s most feared powerbrokers, has been sentenced to two years in federal prison.

Bruno, 81, became the latest – and perhaps the most notable – state politician to face time behind bars after his December conviction on federal corruption charges.

But when he reports to prison may be up to the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court is reviewing three cases involving the “honest services” provision of federal law that led to Bruno’s conviction…

Sharpe rapped the disgraced senator for a lack of contrition.

“I sat here listening for you to turn to the citizens of New York and say, ‘I’m sorry,’” Sharpe said. “You didn’t do it because you don’t believe you did anything wrong.”

A defiant Bruno, who did not take the stand during his 22-day trial, told the judge as much.

“In my heart and in my mind I know I did nothing wrong,” he said. “Maybe I used bad judgment, maybe I was cavalier in the way I handled my business judgments…”

Bruno was found guilty of accepting 11 payments worth $200,000 from two companies controlled by businessman and pal Jared Abbruzzese for consulting work he never performed.

He was also convicted of receiving $80,000 from Abbruzzese for a horse that prosecutors said was worthless.

If you’ve wondered who establishes standards for state and federal politicians, here’s a good example. A leader in the NY Republican Party and returned to office time and again by an ignorant fawning electorate that respects power over ethics any day of the week.

It’s the American Way.

Indian opposition parties disrupted parliament, asking questions about a report alleging the government secretly tapped the phones of top politicians. Both the upper and lower houses were adjourned amid angry scenes. India’s home minister denies the allegations.

But senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader LK Advani has called for a response from the the prime minister.

Outlook magazine reported that the mobile phones of politicians, including a federal minister, were being tapped. It claimed that the phones were tapped by the government using equipment from a federal intelligence agency…

The opposition is also calling for a joint parliamentary committee probe into the matter…

“In the garb of tracking terror, the government is tracking politicians and even their cabinet ministers,” senior BJP leader Rajiv Pratap Rudy said before the session began…

Outlook magazine said that the phones of a federal minister, Sharad Pawar, Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar, Communist leader Prakash Karat and a senior politician of the ruling Congress party Digvijay Singh had been tapped.

Has someone in the Indian bureaucracy gone completely bonkers and hired Dick Cheney to guide security policy? Or has the “American” disease of fear and terror simply continued its path of infection around the world?

Amrit Singh and Jameel Jaffer

In the spring of 2003, long before Abu Ghraib or secret prisons became part of the American vocabulary, a pair of recently hired lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union noticed a handful of news reports about allegations of abuse of prisoners in American custody.

The lawyers, Jameel Jaffer and Amrit Singh, wondered: Was there a broader pattern of abuse, and could a Freedom of Information Act request uncover it? Some of their colleagues, more experienced with the frustrations of such document demands, were skeptical. One made a tongue-in-cheek offer of $1 for every page they turned up.

Six years later, the detention document request and subsequent lawsuit are among the most successful in the history of public disclosure, with 130,000 pages of previously secret documents released to date and the prospect of more.

The case has produced revelation after revelation: battles between the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the military over the treatment of detainees at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp; autopsy reports on prisoners who died in custody in Afghanistan and Iraq; the Justice Department’s long-secret memorandums justifying harsh interrogation methods; and day-by-day descriptions of what happened inside the Central Intelligence Agency’s overseas prisons…

But Mr. Aftergood said the case also illustrated how costly litigation was often necessary to unearth documents the government preferred to protect. “The law gives you standing to fight,” he said. “It doesn’t guarantee victory.”

Nor, in reality, does it guarantee the American people an open and trustworthy government. The months and years of stonewalling by the Republican administration and the bureaucrats loyal to obfuscation rather than the Constitution they were sworn to uphold – leave us with only a few lawyers dedicated to the task.

RTFA. Think about it. We’re supposed to be the freedom-loving nation that shines the light for the rest of the world – if you accept the propaganda. Then why should we even need a Freedom Of Information Act – and why do we have to sue our elected officials to wring out the truth of what they do in office?

Here’s a fun example of astroturfing in its purest form: A woman attending a town hall event for Rep. Steve Kagen (D-WI), and–while loudly raising objections to the Democrats’ health care reform proposal–insisting she’s just a regular concerned citizen. Except, she’s actually a GOP official.

Heather Blish was vice-chairman of the Kewaunee County GOP until 2008. She actually worked for Kagen’s opponent, and, according to her own resume, is affiliated with the Republican National Committee.

The Talking Points Memo folks did everyone around the country a service by posting this at their site. But, the credit goes to the local reporter who acted like a real journalist.

Here in New Mexico the answer is none, zero, nada.

Politics is not for the faint of heart, especially in the final days of a tight race. Still, amid all the attack ads on the airwaves competing to out-ugly one another, we think we’ve found a winner.

Sen. Elizabeth Dole, a Republican of North Carolina is trying to hold onto her seat in an extremely close race, and to that end, she is attacking the religious faith of her opponent, Kay Hagan. Listen to the ad…

Yeah, you heard that right: “There is no God.” The only problem is Kay Hagan never said it. Never. Just a picture of her face over someone else’s audio. Kay Hagan is a member of the Presbyterian Church. She is a former Sunday school teacher.

The fundraiser the ad mentions was not hosted by the Godless American Political Action Committee. A member was one of 40 different co-hosts.

The information in this ad is so ridiculously misleading, and yet, Dole is standing by it and continuing to raise questions about Hagan’s so-called “godlessness” on the campaign trail. Is this really what it comes down to?

Yes, I think we might qualify as a 21st Century nation if silliness like this didn’t count. Do you know any voters who would be affected by tripe like this?