Chertoff to be Latest Bush Recess Appointment?

BY FRANK J RANELLI

Claiming “exigent circumstances”, Bush is likely to recess appoint Michael Chertoff as Attorney General, breaking a deal with Senate leader Harry Reid.

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Michael Chertoff, the co-author of the USA PATRIOT ACT and the man behind the massive failure of FEMA during hurricane Katrina, could be recess appointed without the consent of the 110th Senate.

Shortly before the Senate broke for recess in August, Bush and Senate leader Harry Reid struck a bargain concerning Bush’s dubious recess appointing practices. Reid promised not to block some of Bush’s judicial nominees during the next session, and in return, Bush would not install any recess appointees to vacant positions while Congress was in recess. That may all change now with the resignation of current AG Alberto Gonzales.

President Bush, it has strongly been suggested, is going to claim "exigent circumstances", breaking his deal with Reid not to recess appoint anyone, and install Michael Chertoff as Attorney General, sans any vetting by the Senate.

Given Bush’s long record of disdain for the law, and even basic statesman-like decorum, this is not out of the realm of possibility. Bush has long claimed that as Commander-in-Chief he has additional powers not expressly granted by the Constitution. He may likely transmit that his suspect assertion of being a “unitary executive” affords him the right to break his deal with Reid, especially during a time of war.

Finally, with the new FISA provisions about to take effect over warrantless wiretapping, which requires an Attorney General to oversee the new Protect America Act of 2007, Bush may feel more than justified in moving immediately to recess appoint Michael Chertoff to the post of Attorney General.

Even though Gonzales’ resignation does not officially take effect until September 17, 2007, after Congress returns from recess, Bush could see to it that Gonzales’ resignation takes effective immediately in order to facilitate the end-around on Reid and the installation of Chertoff.

Reid would have been wise to heed the advice of the old adage “caveat emptor”, "let the buyer beware", as the Attorney General, does “serve at the pleasure of the President.” The pleasure of this president, as has been the case for over six years now, is to break treaties, deals, and good-faith agreements whenever it suits his expedient political agenda or thwarts his Democratic rivals.

Quote of the Day!

Frank J Ranelli

"It is a matter of reason and rationale for agnostics and atheists to challenge and confront 'moderates of faith' with the uncomfortable notion that God may indeed not exist and 'ostensible moderation' may be the bedrock from which religious extremism is forged."

Senator Voinovich, are you watching?

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Former Ohio AG Jim Petro Likely to be Replacement for Deborah Pryce in OH-15

BY FRANK J RANELLI


In the wake of the current Republican D.C. mass exodus, that now includes Ohio’s own favorite Bush toady, Deborah Pryce; it appears that former Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro (R) will try his sorry hand at yet another republican political run. This time, for Pryce’s soon to be vacated and soiled congressional seat.

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Republican Jim Petro, the former Attorney General for Ohio appears to be the heir-apparent candidate to replace the sycophantic Deborah Pryce as the Republican Party’s candidate for Ohio’s 15th District. Petro is infamous for successfully arguing before the U.S. Supreme Court for the State of Ohio’s right to uphold the banning of late-term abortions in 2005. He then lost the Republican nomination race for Governor to ultra corrupt, then-Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell. The Columbus Dispatch is now reporting that he is the most likely person to follow Pryce.


Given Petro’s observable penchant as a typical republican, he too spuriously claims republicans want a smaller and less intrusive government. He then proceeds to climb into a woman’s womb to stake an American Flag and plant a Bible, which would only signify “more of the same shenanigans” to be expected if Petro were elected to Congress.


Petro, in 2006 was unable to beat out the mega-crooked, preacher turned politician, Kenneth Blackwell – of Ohio voter suppression fame – for the Governor’s nomination to the Republican Party. This clearly illuminates how far-right and out-of-touch Petro is; he could not even muster enough support to supplant Blackwell as the Republican Governor nominee.


When Kenneth Blackwell is seen as the lesser of two evils for republican voters, just exactly how bad are you? Keep in mind that Ted Strickland (D) obliterated Blackwell in the general election for Ohio’s Governorship last year. A poll at the Columbus Dispatch might just clue us in on the answer. The poll entitled, “Would you prefer Jim Petro or Mary Jo Kilroy to replace Rep. Deborah Pryce in Congress?” shows Mary Jo Kilroy a clear winner by 18 percent over Jim Petro. While the poll is far from scientific, it does provide a glimpse as to how unpopular and untrustworthy Petro is to Ohioans.


Consider these facts: Petro, after leaving his post as Ohio’s Attorney General, failed to garner enough support for the Republican Party Nominee in 2006 for the Governor’s post, and now can’t even gather enough republican backing to represent a solitary congressional district!


The very last thing needed in Ohio’s 15th district is another republican representative in Congress. America and Ohioans have overwhelmingly had enough of obsequious, warmongering, goose-stepping, and genuflecting Bush toadies in the people’s House of Government. Pryce has voted in total synchronicity with the Republican Party and George W. Bush virtually every time. Pryce has always been about choosing her party over the people. Jim Petro would assuredly commit to the same acts of blind deference just as Pryce has done for Bush since 2001. Ronald Reagan previously demonstrated and said that government is the problem, and then Republicans go about proving just that.


Deborah, Ohio and America will not miss you; you will gleefully be added to the virtual graveyard of botched political conservative ground crawlers, right next to Dennis Hastert, Tom Delay, Karl Rove, et al. The only grave markers you might find in the midst of our virtual necropolis from the Bush Era conservative failures would be annotated as such: Do not exhume, dangerous to democracy!


Jim Petro, it appears, already has one foot in the political grave.


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Correspondent Lindsay D. Riggs contributed to this article.

Announcing, Vantage Point Radio - the Aggressive and Progressive Internet Talk Radio Show!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 15, 2007


Join and listen in every Friday as host Frank J Ranelli teams up with Nick Sabatino weekly to provide a critical and progressive analysis of politics, war, and religion in the 21st century.

Each and every Friday Nick Sabatino, a hard-hitting and rapid-fire political science major presses Frank J. Ranelli, an erudite political writer and researcher, to peer back through the looking glass with a discerning and progressive eye at the perilous politics, radical religiosity and pre-emptive wars of the new millennium enacted by the odious policies of obsequious Republicans and the neoconservative Bush Administration.

Every Friday, Nick and Frank will take head-on, discuss and debunk the latest right-wing spin, expose the propaganda of the nefarious Republican agenda and lay bare the truths about the inane beliefs in deities, dogma, and the status quo.

Tune in, take the next revolutionary step in blogging – live Blog Talk Radio – and listen in as Nick and Frank look beyond the artificial grandeurs of elective war, unmask blind nationalism and fake patriots, and map out a better America with a uniquely fresh and progressive outlook!

Listeners are encouraged to call in to Vantage Point Radio at, 646-716-9082 and join in the discussion with Nick and Frank. You can find show scheduling, future planned topics, invited guests and even download archives of past shows for free! Vantage Point Radio can be found at: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/vantagepoint .

Please Join Nick and Frank this Friday, August 17, 2007, for their inaugural show, where they will cover the Weekly Progressive Review, a re-cap and analysis of the past week’s events, in and out of the political arena, as well as the feature topic: Is Conservatism a mental disorder? Science may hold the answer!

Silence is complicity and the time has come for Progressive Americans to have a voice!

For a sneak-peak preview, click play on the embedded media player below and hear a 15-minute sample of Vantage Point Radio - the Aggressive and Progressive Internet Talk Radio Show!

The Duplicity of Dick

Dick Cheney in 1994. Appears Dick did not heed his own advice.

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A Real Call-up to Duty?

Every wish the Bush twins or the Romney boys could get drafted? Do you want to see the rest of the warmongering crowd, military service dodgers who brought you the debacle in Iraq forced to enlist (or at least their children or families)? Do you feel like the “burden of a ruinous war” should be shared by all?

Lucky for the bellicose and combative among us who crave infinte war, cheer it on, and advocate Global American Militarism, there is hope.

Yes, those who desire war the most may actually get their chance to participate on the front lines and in the hot sands of the Iraq quagmire.

In the video below, General David Petraeus states Iraq will be “a nine or ten year endeavor.” While Bush’s new War Czar, General Douglas Lute, on August 10, 2007, intimates at the return of a draft to promote and promulgate more, endless war.

Will the raucous and vociferously hawkish among us finally “step in line” or will calls for conscription send them running for college deferments and medical waivers?



Watch it!

A Message for the ‘Dirty 41’ who voted FOR the Bush changes to FISA

BY FRANK J RANELLI

America is headed on a fast track of elective tyranny, fostered by a cowering and once-again trembling legislative branch. The seemingly uninterrupted, expansive powers that Congress continually acquiesces to President Bush have downgraded Congress to being merely a Ceremonial Branch of our government.

James Madison, acutely aware of the dangers of any form of authoritarianism stated, “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judicial in the same hands, whether of one a few or many, or whether hereditary, self-appointed or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

Remember, the very despotic powers that you, as a member of Congress continue to grant freely to President Bush, may someday in turn be used to usurp your very own liberties or rights to live in a free and sovereign society.

History has taught us, as recently as the Bush Administration’s egregious behavior, disdain for Congress and the rule of law, that once power is wholly consolidated, those who aided in the establishment of a totalitarian government by achieving unconstrained authority may themselves become enemies of, or victims of, the very police-like state they helped create.

Please, think about what you are doing to all of us, including yourself and you family next time you decide to mistakenly vote to give President Bush more unconstitutional and despotic powers!

A Prescient Thought to Ponder, Especially for Republicans

By Frank J. Ranelli


A Bush proclivity for secrecy, a reputation for arrogance and power grabs, and openly flouting the rule of law has one conservative Republican asking, “Do we candidly desire reaping what we have sown over the past six-plus years?”

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A short article entitled, More Bush-Congress court fights likely, is an interesting and contemplative piece highlighting the aggressiveness and smugness – including outright hubris – of the Bush Administration’s transgression of, and secretive standards by, a belligerent and confrontational President, that far exceeds Nixon’s pugnacious approach, has operated under since January 20, 2001.


Contained within this brief but telling essay, by Associated Press writer Charles Babington, is a keen and perceptive quote from Bruce Fein, the former associate deputy attorney general throughout the Reagan administration.


"The Bush administration is close to reducing Congress to wallpaper, when it comes to oversight, if Congress does not respond" more forcefully, he said. Republicans, he added, may come to regret the precedents that Bush is asserting. "I tell my Republican friends that Hillary Clinton will be the president some day," Fein said. "They just don't get it."


Fein, a strong conservative and constitutional lawyer, also recently spoke to Bill Moyers on PBS about Bush’s power grabs and over-reaching, calling for his (Bush’s) impeachment, critically reminded Moyers and us all why the Founders fittingly feared an unchecked executive by stating, “Men are not angels. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition to avert abuses or tyranny. The Constitution embraced a separation of powers to keep the legislative, executive, and judicial branches in equilibrium.” That “equilibrium”, or symmetry and balance, has been vilely attacked and to a great extent neutralized under the Bush Administration. Abuse indeed, has been bountiful.


Of course, Fein is reminding the Republicans, and their supporters, of the old axiom that quips, “Be careful of what you wish for; for someday you may actual receive it”. Moreover, by abdicating and bequeathing many of Congress’ co-equal capacities under the Constitution to Bush, that this continued genuflecting to an egocentric, deeply unpopular President may likely be returned in kind, in the very near future. And the Republicans may find the fruits of their disgracefully obsequious labor to be a very fetid orchard crop of ill-advised deference once an exchange of power ensues.


Power only has as much clout and muscle, by that which it is given by those who bow or consent to it. In addition, power, no matter how seemingly omniscient and enduring is only immortal for an exceedingly limited time. No matter how consolidated, power habitually and frequently changes hands. When it does, the invertebrates that acquiesced and yielded to a flawed fallacy of permanent supremacy – and helped bring it about – always tend to have a rude and unpleasant revelation.


Recipients of power through overturn then tend to use the very monopoly of authority that the previous preponderance of blind ambition errantly and extemporaneously built, by relegating the erstwhile primacy to the minority, and therefore the retributive target of, the new pre-eminence. History is replete with examples of terrible and devastating consequences of such precarious power plays and shifts for omnipotence rule.


What Bruce Fein is suggesting, in fact pleading for, is for Congress to act as a whole and synchronous body of our Government, in the interest of our Nation, and not continue this sycophantic behavior to a supercilious Executive bent on an imperial presidency. To prolong doing so begets the very question Fein posited in his very quote above for all Republicans (and perhaps the rest of us) to deliberate, “Do you genuinely desire the near unmitigated and proto-despotic powers Bush has defacto claimed in the hands of President Hillary Clinton?”

Former Speaker Newt Gingrich Eviscerates Bush, Calls War on Terror “Phony”

BY FRANK J. RANELLI
Friday, August 03, 2007

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The contentious and conservative, erstwhile Speaker of the House bemoans how Bush has helped America become a country that is “no longer serious”, harshly criticizes the Bush administration's handling of terrorist groups, calling the war on terror “phony”, and claims hyper-partisanship is a “stupid way to run a country”.


In an extraordinary and stinging repudiation of Bush’s phantom war – the so-called “War on Terror” – former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich, justifiably pronounced Bush’s apparent and failing exercise of nation building in Iraq as a “phony” war.

Quoting Gingrich, who was attending and speaking at the National Conservative Student Conference in Herndon, Virginia on Thursday, “the Bush administration is waging a ‘phony war’ on terrorism”, and “there is no evidence that we are winning this war”.

Gingrich, the architect of the Republican Revolution in 1994, which swept Republicans into Congressional power for thirteen years, before the historic, mid-term election of 2006 thrust Democrats back into control, is no ally of the left. However, Gingrich, due do his deep conservative roots, makes his admonishment of Bush’s failing foreign policy and flawed, mock war especially cutting and acerbic.

Signifying just how out of touch Bush’s energy policies are with Americans, and especially his own political party, the former Speaker declared, the U.S. needs a “national energy strategy aimed at weaning the country from its reliance on imported oil and some of the regimes that petro-dollars support”.

In his strongest chastising and chiding of the Bush years, Gingrich, referred to the autocracy years from 2001-2007, when the Republicans controlled both branches of Congress and the White House, as a time where “I don't think you can look and say that was a great success”.

Further illuminating on Bush’s crippling and abortive war of futility in Iraq, Gingrich lamented on how America “took on Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany” and “beat all three in less than four [years]”, yet somberly, Gingrich staidly pointed out that “we're about to enter the seventh year of this ‘phony war’...and we're losing”.

Whilst Newt Gingrich is an antithetical ideologue of a progressive America, who once shut down the government for 28 days during the Clinton years, he has managed a small, token gift to the left; he has properly proffered the best analogy for what Bush’s seven-year ‘war on terror’ is: “Phony”.