By Dave Lindorff

Before the West Virginia primary vote on Tuesday, it was a foregone conclusion that Hillary Clinton would sweep the state, perhaps by over 70 percent. In the event, she came close to that, with 68 percent of the vote. Now that the vote has happened, Clinton and a corporate media anxious to spin out the ratings-boosting contest as long as possible, are arguing that Obama is in trouble.

It is true that twenty percent of those voting for Clinton in this almost lily-white, low-income, low-education state said they voted for her on the basis of race, which is to say they wouldn't vote for a black man. Theirs was a vote Clinton has actively pursued. Forty percent of her backers said they would not vote for Obama in the general election if he were the Democratic candidate.

This morning, the Chicago City Council considers a resolution against war with Iran and in favor of real diplomacy. I'll be following the proceedings here. The meeting started at 10 AM Central.

The proceedings are streamed on the web.
mms://chicago-city-council.wm.llnwd.net/chicago_city_council

10:16 At the moment the Council is "debating" a resolution praising a recently passed Chicago resident who owned a barbecue restaurant. My spin: this is good for us. I think it would be hard for anyone to argue that the Council doesn't have time to consider the resolution against war with Iran.

10:35: Currently considering resolution honoring Eugene Pincham. Here’s the MSNBC obituary.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23945335/

On May 8 twenty peace activists visited the Portland office of Sen. Susan Collins to urge her to vote against the "Emergency Supplemental Bill" that will fund the
Iraq occupation well into 2009 (an additional $172 billion). After hearing that the senator would again vote to fund the occupation the delegation decided to remain in the office until she changed her mind. They entered the office just after noon and people remained in the office until 5:00 a.m. the next morning despite the fact that the staff of Sen. Collins locked the bathrooms in the office and would not allow her constituents to use the toilet. Among the group were women in their 70's and 80's.

The Congress, originally scheduled to vote on the bill last week, is now expected to have the vote sometime this week. With that in mind a decision has been made to return to the office of Sen. Collins on Wednesday, May 14th at noon to resume the office sit-ins.

By David Swanson

That's the title of a new book by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky. It's actually just a collection of the familiar quotes by Bush, Cheney, and gang, plus Democrats, plus pundits, all lying about Iraq before and during the occupation. It's mostly not a funny collection, but it's sort-of packaged as one and it's probably funnier than that truly dumb "The Young Dick Cheney" book that Alternet has promoted in a few hundred Emails. But it's not a serious collection either. It's not comprehensive or organized in a way to make any particular case. It also promotes the notion that prior to the invasion of Iraq nobody warned against it or debunked the lies, which is itself a major lie. Still, if you want a handy, huge-font collection of colorful lies in book form, picking up a copy of this would be easier than, say, printing out Waxman's database.

Words of John Yoo from Esquire via TPMMuckraker

Certainly there was this whole industry of people outside the Congress, all these Clinton-haters, who were making a career out of attacking Clinton, but I thought it was a legitimate subject for investigation. The president and his advisors were trying to cover up financial misconduct or sexual harassment. I think Congress is allowed to ask about that. For example, I think Congress is fully allowed to ask about interrogation procedures. That's one of their roles. They should have oversight. It can be crippling, obviously, to the executive if Congress goes forward guns blazing in its oversight powers, but I don't think there's anything unconstitutional about it.

Certainly for Hatch it wasn't vindictive. I can't speak for everyone who worked in the Senate. Hatch thought there were things that could be wrong here.

Democrats propose taxes to fund veterans' benefits
By ANDREW TAYLOR, AP

WASHINGTON (AP) - House Democrats are proposing a tax surcharge on
millionaires to pay for a big increase in education benefits for veterans
of the war in Iraq, lawmakers said Tuesday.

The plan, if accepted by rank-and-file Democrats, would clear the way for
a vote Thursday on a long-stalled war funding bill that would pay for
military and diplomatic operations in Iraq and Afghanistan into next
spring.

Conservative "Blue Dog" Democrats blocked a vote last week over Democratic
leaders' attempts to add an additional $51.8 billion over the next decade
for veterans education to the $183.8 billion war funding tab. They
insisted on finding a way to pay for the new benefit without simply adding
to the deficit.

"What we're talking about is a one-half percent income tax surcharge on
incomes above $1 million," said Rep. Mike Ross, D-Ark., a leader of the

By David Swanson

Wild Wonderful West Virginia may, when the last vote is counted (or tossed out) give Senator Clinton 18 pledged delegates and Senator Obama 10. It'll be pretty close to that, and if that's the final count, then the new totals will be Obama 1,602 and Clinton 1,440. There are 189 delegates left to be pledged. Of those, Clinton must win 176 of them, or 93 percent, in order to beat Obama. Obama, on the other hand, only needs to win 14 more delegates for the whole charade to be over. There are 103 delegates on the line next Tuesday in Kentucky and Oregon. There's not a single employee of any of the media outlets promoting this phony contest that believes Obama could possibly win fewer than 14 delegates in Kentucky and Oregon.

Just as it has been over for several months, it's still over.

Part 2

By Jason Leopold, www.consortiumnews.com

A senior legal adviser to the Bush-Cheney 2004 reelection campaign is working behind the scenes to help enact a Missouri state constitutional amendment that critics say would suppress the vote in the key battleground state this November by requiring voters to show proof of citizenship.

Mark “Thor” Hearne, Bush-Cheney’s national counsel in 2004 and now a partner in the St. Louis, Missouri, firm of Lathrop & Gage, has been collaborating with Missouri’s Republican state Rep. Stanley Cox, the sponsor of the constitutional amendment, Cox’s office confirmed this week.

For years, Hearne has been a leading Republican figure demanding stricter voter-identification laws and popularizing claims about widespread voter fraud, although many election experts dismiss such alarms as hyperbole.

By Ben Evans, Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- A House Judiciary Committee deadline passed Monday with former White House adviser Karl Rove standing by his refusal to testify about allegations that he pushed the Justice Department to prosecute former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman.

In his latest offer to settle the matter, Rove sent the panel a letter offering to respond to questions in writing, according to his attorney. But he reiterated that he would not testify publicly and under oath.

Committee leaders did not immediately answer questions about how they will respond. Earlier this month, they threatened to subpoena Rove if he did not agree to appear voluntarily by Monday.

The dispute is the latest in a standoff between President Bush and Congress over testimony from current and former White House staffers on a variety of issues.

Sexual Terrorism
By DAVID ROSEN, CounterPunch

The “New York Times’” recently revealed the existence of a little-known executive order issued by President Bush in the summer of ’07 that permitted U.S. intelligence operatives to circumvent restrictions on the use of humiliating and degrading interrogation techniques.

Bush’s order permitted U.S. intelligence operatives to effectively side-step the legal and moral restrictions imposed by the Supreme Court and Congress (and formally approved by Bush) as well as Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

Brian Benczkowski, a deputy assistant attorney general, laid-out the rationale for the continued subversion of these restrictions:

The fact that an [humiliating interrogation] act is undertaken to prevent a threatened terrorist attack, rather than for the purpose of humiliating or abuse, would be relevant to a reasonable observer in measuring the outrageousness of the act.

By David Swanson

Former Republican Rhode Island Senator Lincoln Chafee on Tuesday evening called George W. Bush the worst president in U.S. history and the occupation of Iraq the worst foreign tragedy in U.S. history. Chafee said Bush deserved to be impeached.

Chafee served in the U.S. Senate from 1999 to 2006 and credits his defeat in 2006 - as do most analysts - to his membership in the party of Bush and Cheney. In 2003 Chafee was the only Republican senator to vote against authorization to attack Iraq. Chafee and John McCain had been the only two Republican senators to vote against the first round of Bush tax cuts.

While Chafee is supporting Barack Obama for president, he said on Tuesday that the Democrats as well as the Republicans have moved too far to the right. Without any apparent bitterness, Chafee remarked that while voters got a new Senate and House in 2006, they didn't get any changes in policies out of it.

DEMOCRACY NOW!

Last month marked the fifth anniversary of the US military shelling of the
Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. The attack killed two journalists: Reuters
cameraman Taras Protsyuk and Jose Couso, a cameraman for the Spanish
television network Telecinco. The Pentagon has called the killings
accidental, but in this broadcast exclusive Army Sgt. Adrienne Kinne (Ret.)
reveals she saw secret US military documents that listed the hotel as a
possible target. Kinne also discloses that she was personally ordered to
eavesdrop on Americans working for news organizations and NGOs in Iraq.

Listen/Watch/Read

On Tuesday, May 13th, from 8-9 p.m. ET, I'll have the pleasure of interviewing, with your help, the former Senator from Rhode Island. Go to: http://thepeoplespeakradio.net to learn more. Go to http://www.thepeoplespeakradio.net/listen-live to listen live. You'll find instructions there to enter a paltalk chat room where you can post questions, which I will ask. You can also phone in and ask Senator Chafee your questions on the air. Call in tollfree from anywhere in the United States or Canada at 888-228-4494 or anywhere else in the world at 877-489-6350. Following the show, the audio file will be posted at http://www.thepeoplespeakradio.net/audio/2008 and you can find there now the recordings of numerous shows with amazing guests. To support The People Speak Radio please donate at http://www.thepeoplespeakradio.net/donate

The Last Sane Republican
By David Swanson

The Republican Party as a national mainstream organization began with Abraham Lincoln and ended with Lincoln Chafee. Before and after those Lincolns, the party was not something that most Americans could relate to, was not something that many people could imagine offered any sort of benefit to all people as opposed to particular types of people.

By David Swanson

Rep. Robert Wexler (Dem., Florida) has written a book, soon to be released, that is as different from most congress members' books as Wexler is from most congress members. He's titled it "Fire-Breathing Liberal: How I Learned to Survive (and Thrive) in the Contact Sport of Congress." Wexler is depicted on the cover with the Capitol in the background and his fists in the air.

Wexler is a fighter and a liberal, and - yes - one CAN be both. But Wexler, I think, is more of a fighter than a liberal. He's unusually willing to speak up and fight for controversial positions. He does so loudly and articulately, and he goes for the jugular. But I don't find in his book any passionate or deep liberal world view. In fact, at times, Wexler expresses viewpoints that I find disturbingly illiberal.

Prague; May 12, 2008

Dear friends,

We are writing to you to inform you of a very serious issue facing the Czech Republic and Europe as a continent – the plan of the current US administration to install two new military bases in Central Europe as part of National Missile Defense system of the USA.

For nearly two years we have been involved in a non-violent struggle to prevent our government from participating in this dangerous project. However, in spite the fact that two thirds of Czechs oppose this project our government continues the negotiations with the US government and is nearing to signing the treaty at the beginning of June. In fact, the treaty was supposed to be signed by US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice and the Czech government on May 5. The date has now been postponed by one month, but the plan remains the same.

By Mark Crispin Miller

Friends, tomorrow (Wednesday, 5/14), I will be testifying before two subcommittees of the House Judiciary Committee, which is looking into how the DoJ has dealt with vote suppression.

I'll be joined by Allen Raymond, the GOP operative who went to prison over his involvement in the party's phone-jamming scheme in New Hampshire's 2002 election (he was the fall guy), and Paul Twomey, the Democratic lawyer whose civil suit over the matter has apparently been thwarted by the DoJ. For my part, I'll be talking about the activities of Sproul & Associates, which ran stealth voter registration drives throughout the nation in the months before the 2004 election.

(The GOP was also supposed to have a witness there, but decided not to.)

By Dave Lindorff

I want to be clear here from the start: there is a difference between ignorance and stupidity. Ignorance is a lack of knowledge. Stupidity is a lack of intelligence. But even here, there are subsets. Some ignorance results from a lack of access to knowledge, while some is the result of a laziness or unwillingness to learn. Some stupidity is the result of some genetic or nutritional deficiency or perhaps of some abuse or lack of care or attention during early childhood, while some is the result of mental laziness or a willful desire not to think.

The motto of the state of Maine is "I lead" or "I direct." Will Chicago's City Council follow the lead of Harpswell, Maine, in voting opposition to war with Iran?

This article below ran the same day as the town of Harpswell, Maine voted overwhelmingly "to call for peace with Iran by submittng a resolution to Maine Representatives in Congress to:

1. Prohibit the us of funds to cary out any military actions against Iran without explicit Congressional authorization.
2. Ensure US relations with Iran are consistent with international law.
3. Encourage talks without preconditions between the US and Iran n nuclear issues and the ending of violence in Iraq."

Hopefully Chicago and Harpswell will inspire people in other municipalities to push for similar expressions of opposition to the administration's drumbeat for a widened and vastly more disastrous war in the Middle East. When the people lead, the politicians will follow.