Charged with concealing gifts and services and lying on financial statements - He got  goods and services worth more than $250,000 from oil firm for political favors.

Washington Post, July 29th 2008
Carrie Johnson & Paul Kane

Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens (R) was charged with seven counts of making false statements on his financial disclosure forms in an indictment unsealed in federal court in the District this afternoon. 

The indictment accuses Stevens, former chairman of the powerful Appropriations Committee, of concealing payments of more than $250,000 in goods and services he allegedly received from an oil company. The items include home improvements, autos and household items.

The Alaska oil firm, Veco, and its onetime leader Bill Allen, asked for help in return. Allen and another former Veco official pleaded guilty in May 2007 in connection with their role in the bribery of Alaskan public officials.

The indictment charges Stevens with violating the Ethics in Government Act between 2001 and 2006 by hiding payments from Allen, Veco and two other people. The law requires elected officials to disclose gifts and debts that exceed $10,000 during any point in the year.

Brendan Sullivan, a defense lawyer for Stevens, did not return a telephone call seeking comment.

Stevens, a senator since 1968, “knowingly and willfully engaged in a scheme to conceal a material fact” according to the 28-page indictment. Click here to read more in the Washington Post.

Republican George Bush announces Record Breaking Budget Deficit

Who says Republicans are fiscally Conservative?

Associated Press, July 28th 2008

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Bush administration on Monday projected the U.S. budget deficit will soar to a record of nearly half a trillion dollars in fiscal 2009 as a housing-led economic slowdown cuts into government revenues.

The economic and fiscal deterioration will complicate efforts to bring the budget to balance and pose challenges for whoever takes over the White House in January, either Republican Sen. John McCain or Democratic Sen. Barack Obama.

“I believe whoever becomes the next president will have a very, very sobering first week in office,” predicted Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat.

Reacting to the White House’s new prediction that the budget deficit will hit $482 billion in the fiscal year that starts October 1, Conrad said that number easily could rise by an additional $80 billion when the full costs of the Iraq war are tallied next year.

Click here to read more about the deficit at Associated Press.

FLIP FLOP ALERT, MOTHER OF ALL FLOPS!”

Unbelievable!  McCain endorses 16 month withdrawal plan.  A week ago, he said: “Obama is absolutely wrong about the withdrawal.”  Is John McCain going to endorse Senator Barack Obama for President? Is this how he stays on message? If this is yet another “Senior Moment;” can anyone really believe that John McCain has the judgment or temperament to be President.

McCain: A ‘Pretty Good Timetable’

By: Michael Cooper, New York Times, July 25th 2008

First the Iraqi government gave Senator Barack Obama a boost by seeming to embrace his proposal for a 16-month timetable for withdrawing American troops from Iraq. But could Senator John McCain, who built his candidacy in large part on his opposition to a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, possibly be following suit?

“I think it’s a pretty good timetable,” Mr. McCain said Friday in an interview on CNN’s “The Situation Room,’’ before adding that it should be based “on the conditions on the ground.’’

For months Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, has railed against setting timetables for withdrawing from Iraq, and has criticized Mr. Obama, his Democratic rival, for suggesting one. But in recent days the debate has shifted as Iraqi officials, including Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, moved closer to Mr. Obama’s position.

Click here to read more about John McCain and his political savvy.  WE RECOMMEND THAT YOU READ SOME OF THE COMMENTS TO THIS ARTICLE.

It is quite likely that this is another Senior Moment for John, but this is rather unbelievable even for a Republican nominee to change his mind about an issue as large as the Iraq war with no forewarning.  Only seven hours ago, he accused Senator Obama of choosing failure in Iraq.  Click here to read an interview with CBS News.

Daily Kos has a story from Der Spiegle and the preparations for Senator Barack Obama’s speech this coming Thursday.  Hundreds of thousands may attend.

Daily Kos, July 20th

Barack Obama’s planned campaign rally and speech in Berlin on Thursday is roiling the German political class, reports Der Spiegel (article in German). Authorities in Berlin are preparing for a million spectators, which would instantly make Obama’s speech the biggest political event in that country since unification in 1990. There are even plans to close down the street, a mile long, and replicate the setup during the World Cup with massive projection screens. Inevitably with a political earthquake of this magnitude, there’s some controversy stoked by conservatives.

Obama will be speaking on the eastern side of the Victory Column - the Siegessäule - a monument to the Prussian victories in the wars of unification that preceded Bismarck’s establishment of the Second Empire. The speech itself will be focused on the Trans-Atlantic relationship and give a preview of the foreign policy approaches of an Obama administration towards our NATO allies.

Team Obama picked what is arguably one of the most historically evocative spots in Berlin for his speech, and that history is not uniformly benign. Conservative members of the German parliament, the Bundestag, are pointing out, correctly, that the Victory Column was built in triumph over countries Germany defeated in its quest for unification; Denmark in 1864, Austria in 1866, France in 1871. But, as is often the case in Berlin, this terrain carries far more associations than that, some inspiring, some evil.

The column was inaugurated in 1873, somewhat less than two years after the proclamation of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles. As you can see, the statue of Victoria on its summit points a laurel wreath into the distance; the direction it’s pointing to is towards Paris, a literal finger in the eye of France. It was built on Königsplatz, “King’s Square”, which later became Platz der Republik, “Square of the Republic”, then Adolf-Hitler-Platz, which needs no translation.

In 1938/1939, as part of the preparations for Hitler’s rebuilding of Berlin into Germania, the capital of the Fourth Reich, the column was moved from its original location across from the Reichstag - which was ordered to not exceed it in height, to demonstrate the respective societal rank of military power and popular democracy in Bismarck’s Germany - to its present location. The supervising architect of the move was one Albert Speer. During the move, the column was heightened, to give it more visual prominence at what was essentially the Western entrance to Berlin’s government quarter.  Click here to read more at Daily Kos.

John McCain and George Bush feel that it would be surrender to pull troops out of Iraq.  Meanwhile, Iraq Prime Minister al-Maliki has demanded that the Bush Administration accept a timetable for troop withdrawal.  His recent interview with the German press amounted to an endorsement of Senator Barack Obama’s plan to pull out of Iraq.  This leaves John McCain looking rather silly.  Americans want out, the Iraqi’s want us out, and most of the free world wants us to get out (and help lower oil prices).  John and George are stuck with yesterday’s policy, 3,000 war dead, a trillion dollars of debt and un-cooperative stooges.

New York Times, July 19th 2008
Sarah Wheaton

The policies and whims of American leaders have played a major role in politics in Iraq and elsewhere. And now, Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, dipped his toes in the United States’ race for the White House. Mr. Maliki essentially endorsed Senator Barack Obama’s plan for withdrawing troops from Iraq in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel.

“U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months,” Mr. Maliki said, according to the magazine’s online English edition. “That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.”

Naturally, Mr. Maliki did not want to imply he was backing one candidate over another in a foreign election:

“Of course, this is by no means an election endorsement. Who they choose as their president is the Americans’ business,” he said. But then, apparently referring to Republican candidate John McCain’s more open-ended Iraq policy, Maliki said: “Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of U.S. troops in Iraq would cause problems.”

The timing could not be better for Mr. Obama, who began the first leg of his foreign trip in Kabul earlier today, with a stop in Iraq expected later. Mr. Maliki’s comments were published just a day after President Bush agreed to a “general time horizon” for withdrawing troops from Iraq.

This is the largest lead of the campaign season yet.  It also show Senator Obama gathering strength with moderates and independent voters.

Washington Post / ABC News Poll, July 16th 2008

Sen. Barack Obama holds his biggest advantage of the presidential campaign as the candidate best prepared to fix the nation’s ailing economy, but lingering concerns about his readiness to handle international crises are keeping the race competitive, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Overall, the Democrat has a lead of 50 percent to 42 percent over Republican Sen. John McCain among registered voters nationwide, lifted by a big edge among women, and he has also regained an edge among political independents. But it is Obama’s 19-point lead on the economy that has become a particularly steep challenge for McCain.

Economic concerns continue to eclipse other issues, with half the country saying the economy will be “extremely important” to their vote. Gasoline and energy prices, which voters rarely mentioned at the start of the year, come in just behind. The Iraq war, which was again the subject of direct engagement between Obama and McCain yesterday, ranks third. A cluster of domestic issues, including education, health care and Social Security, ranked behind the war, as did the issue of terrorism.

Obama continues to hold an edge over McCain on many domestic policy areas.

The campaign is playing out against the backdrop of a leadership crisis in Washington, with Americans remaining in a generally sour mood about their representatives in the nation’s capital. In the new survey, President Bush’s overall approval rating hit another record low in Post-ABC polling: Twenty-eight percent said they approve of the way he is handling his job, while 69 percent disapprove, including 56 percent who strongly disapprove.  Click here to read more at the Washington Post.  Here is some poll commentary from ABC News.

Do you somehow think John McCain is changing into George Bush before your eyes? Well you’re not alone.  When George says “drill;” well then John says “drill!”  When George says “privatize social security;” John say “private social security accounts.”  Honestly, you can’t even see George’s lips move when John speaks.  Here’s a neat little story from the Tucson Citizen.

 Billy Stanton, Tucson Citizen, July 16th

Poor John McCain. No matter where he goes or what he tries, he’s still seen as a clone of President Bush. Their mirrored identity is irrevocably embedded in the American psyche. So the idea of busting a “little old lady librarian” for a “McCain = Bush” sign seems ludicrous.

It happened, though, on July 7 in downtown Denver.

Carol Kreck - a diminutive, deaf, 60-year-old, part-time librarian - was escorted by police out of a courtyard at the Denver Center for the Performing Arts complex. A McCain town hall there wasn’t to start for another two hours and Kreck wasn’t going to attend. She can’t hear. She was there only because Progress Now e-mailed requests for “bodies” to support a press conference before the event.

“I figured that’s something even a deaf person can do,” Kreck told me. Now the media are having a field day over the little old lady librarian. That’s not the best description of Carol Kreck, however.

During 34 years as a Denver Post reporter, she was better known as a bit of a bulldog. Kreck didn’t rest till she had her facts - and until her editors, including me, had kept her facts straight. She had the qualities you want in a reporter: earnest, hardworking, determined, thorough, fair-minded and ethical. Plus, she’s fun. “Mostly, I’ve been laughing for a week,” Kreck admits.

In an unattributed claim, The Denver Post initially blamed Kreck’s ouster from the DCPA on McCain’s staff. The senator’s staff disputed that. A security guard who helped remove Kreck said, while being filmed by MSNBC, that U.S. Secret Service agents had ordered Kreck’s removal. The Secret Service denied it. And a DCPA spokeswoman told the Post that the security guard was “mistaken. . . . He is not a trained speaker in any way. It was the height (sic) of the moment.”

Said an amused Kreck, “She made it sound like some variation of Tourette’s syndrome. . . . I often get nervous, too, but it doesn’t cause me to blurt out ‘Secret Service.’ ” Kreck isn’t laughing about the serious issues, though.

She questions the relationship between federal officials and police in Denver, where the Democratic National Convention will be held Aug. 25-28. She wonders whether an institution built largely by taxpayer money - the DCPA - qualifies as private property.
Kreck also asks, “If you advertise a public town hall, open to the public, can you then cherry-pick the people you let inside?

“And if the Secret Service is so undiscriminating that they’re threatened by a little old lady with a McCain = Bush sign, how in hell are they going to deal with Recreate ‘68, Code Pink, anarchists, immigrants and, no doubt, more little old ladies?”

The Secret Service already is being sued by Denver attorney David Lane on behalf of Steven Howards, who was arrested in a Beaver Creek, Colo., mall where he told Dick Cheney that the vice president’s policies in the Middle East are reprehensible.
Charges against Howards were dropped, but Lane’s suit to protect Howards’ First and Fourth Amendment rights continues.
Lane also will represent Kreck in a civil lawsuit after defense lawyer Pete Hedeen handles her trespassing charge.
“I will not pay a fine, I will not accept diversion,” Kreck says in a blog on The Huffington Post Web site (www.huffington post.com). “That leaves two options: dropped charges or going to trial.”

McCain, meanwhile, has left Denver far behind. He met Monday with the National Council of La Raza and held a town hall Tuesday in New Mexico. But while no more “McCain = Bush” signs have been reported, the two mens resemblance to each other remains.

For that, McCain has only himself to blame. He sucked up shamelessly during Bush’s re-election four years ago, trying to capitalize on their shared ideology. McCain’s been trying to distance himself, though, ever since the president’s popularity took its long-overdue nose dive. In truth, though, McCain is more Bush-like than ever.

The Arizona senator now says Roe v. Wade, which he once supported, “should be overturned.” He and Bush both oppose abortion and support parental notification for minors seeking abortions. McCain now would make permanent the Bush tax cuts that he voted against in 2001 and in 2003. Indeed, he would add more corporate tax cuts on top of those Bush pushed through to benefit the richest Americans.

Best-known among McCain’s Bushite tendencies, of course, is his avid support of the Iraq invasion of 2003 and of the 2007 “surge” of increased troops. Add it all up, and it boils down to one simple equation. McCain = Bush.

Road Still Bumpy for McCain’s Retooled Bandwagon

Associated Press at Huffington Post, July 12th, 2008

HUDSON, Wis. — Every presidential campaign has its hitches. For John McCain, they felt more like full-blown lurches this week, with nearly every step forward quickly offset by a misstatement or wisecrack that seemed to blow his message off course.

It was the week McCain hoped to show off his newly focused, smoother-running operation after he rearranged his campaign hierarchy and acknowledged errors in the staging of events and other matters.

But a joke about U.S. cigarettes killing Iranians, criticism of the Social Security program and word that one of his top economic advisers had called the country “a nation of whiners” suffering a “mental recession” undermined the Arizona senator’s effort.

Democrat Barack Obama has had his own stumbles recently, but McCain’s journey through the key election states of Colorado, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin was bumpy.

McCain said he is not worried.

“I’m very aware that, from time to time, some words of mine will be taken out of context,” he told reporters Friday. “I’m not going to change the way our campaign is.”

AuditAZ, a non-partisan election integrity group has alleged that evidence and circumstances seem to indicate the possibility that the 2006 RTA election was rigged by Pima County election officials.  Chairman of the Pima Supervisors, Richard Elias says the facts seem to indicate that a re-count of the original ballots is needed.

Fox 11 Arizona, July 9th, 2008

By Deanna Morgan, Fox 11 News

It’s one of the basic elements of democracy: the people vote. But some people are now saying that two years ago, your vote on one local issue didn’t count as you intended.

The allegations are serious, involving the vote counting after the 2006 election which authorized the Regional Transportation Authority. It increased the sales tax by a half-cent, but members of the Pima County Democratic Party allege they have evidence that proves the RTA plan never passed.

“We have credible evidence from the mouth of the computer operator who said that he rigged it,” says Bill Risner, the lead attorney in the case. The only evidence is an affidavit, a statement from a man who says the computer operator of the Pima County Elections Division told him at a bar on First Avenue he, quote, “fixed” the RTA election because his bosses told him to.

About 120,000 ballots are sitting in the treasurer’s office that could be destroyed, but the Chairman of the Board of Supervisors says the County would be happy to recount them. “They are the ultimate evidence, and I think they should be counted,” says Pima County Supervisor Richard Elias.   Click here to read more at Fox11 Television.

Ex-Officials, James Baker and Warren Christopher, Offer Plan to Revamp War Powers Act

New York Times,  July 7th

WASHINGTON — Two former secretaries of state have declared the War Powers Resolution of 1973 obsolete and proposed a new system of closer consultation between the White House and Congress before American forces go into battle.

Their proposal would require the president to consult lawmakers before initiating combat lasting longer than a week except in rare cases requiring emergency action. Congress, for its part, would have 30 days to approve or disapprove of the military action.

The plan would create a new committee of Congressional leaders and relevant committee chairmen, with a full-time staff with access to military and intelligence material. The president would be required to consult with the group in advance of any extended strike.

Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and James A. Baker III oversaw a year-long study of the longstanding tension over war powers between the executive and legislative branches. In a report to be released on Tuesday, they concluded that the 1973 law, which was passed in the waning days of the Vietnam War and which aimed to limit the president’s ability to commit American forces to war unilaterally, never served its intended function and must be replaced.

In an Op-Ed article in The New York Times on Tuesday,, Mr. Christopher, who served under former President Bill Clinton, and Mr. Baker, who served under the first President Bush, wrote that the 1973 act is “ineffective at best and unconstitutional at worst. No president has recognized its constitutionality, and Congress has never pressed the issue. Nor has the Supreme Court ever ruled on its constitutionality.”  Click here to read more in the New York Times.