As a former Ohioan, now living in famously corrupt New Jersey, I really miss the open and honest government of my youth.
COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) All 34 judges on the Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court have been disqualified by Ohio's chief justice from hearing a lawsuit alleging corruption by the Republican party.
Chief Justice Thomas Moyer said on Tuesday the unusual move was necessary to eliminate any perception of bias by the court system that's dominated by Democrats. Moyer is a Republican.
Moyer said he will appoint a retired visiting judge from outside Cuyahoga County to the case.
Moyer ruled in a lawsuit filed on Aug. 2, 2004, by Cuyahoga County Commissioner Timothy Hagan, the 2002 Democratic nominee for governor.
The suit accuses Gov. Bob Taft, other elected Republicans and the Ohio GOP of instituting a "pay-to-profit" system in which millions of dollars were raised by trading unbid state contracts for campaign contributions.
At the time, Taft spokesman Orest Holubec said the lawsuit was "frivolous, politically motivated and it ought to be dismissed." He said the Taft administration has strictly followed Ohio's competitive-bidding laws.
Moyer noted in his decision that Hagan "exercises considerable authority over the budget" of the court.
"The public could reasonably question whether any judge now serving on the court of common pleas in Cuyahoga County would be able to render a decision based solely on the relevant facts and the law applicable to those facts," he said.
Ohio! You gotta love it!
avenger and bendito:
two years ago scott mcclellan told the american people that karl rove had absolutly nothing to do with the valery plame affair
was that a lie?
Posted by dpnann at July 14, 2005 04:24 AMWhat's Scott Ritterr doing lately? He was always good about picking at that WMD scab.
Posted by obelus at July 14, 2005 05:24 AMCongradulations to eriposte! Arianna over at the Huffington Post, is giving you credit for a great compilation of the lies that have spewed forth from the whitehouse and GOP, regarding Rove and Wilson
Posted by ouzel at July 14, 2005 05:45 AMEri hit the big time! Congratulations.
Posted by idiosynchronic at July 14, 2005 06:24 AMNice job, eriposte. We, the great people of phidipidonia, salute you.
Posted by phidipides at July 14, 2005 06:54 AM(7/14/05)TOON OF THE DAY: Rove's Retainer Fee
Posted by jjoats at July 14, 2005 07:02 AMIt was Scott Ritter, sounding very prescient, who said in an interview with a South African media outlet back in March of 2003 that, "...the defeat of the United States in this war is inevitable."
"The United States is going to leave Iraq with its tail between its legs, defeated. It is a war we can not win," he told private radio TSF in an interview broadcast here on Tuesday evening.
Frontline interviewed Ritter and he outlined how UNSCOM was ultimately compromised by an infiltration of US intelligence and the degradation of the UN mandate. This, in turn, led us on a path to war.
Sadly, the inspections could have been allowed to succeed; however, that would have left the U.S. short of its goal which was regime change. Therefore, the inspection process was allowed to fail and, when we had our own regime change, Bush immediately set out planning for war with Iraq. It is perhaps likely that 9/11 came as a complete surprise to the administration. As caught up as they were with bringing down Saddam, they simply failed to adequately respond to the intelligence they were receiving.
We now clearly know from the 9/11 Commission's report that the War on Terror was really just the War on Saddam with a clever new title. But we once came close to verifying that Iraq posed no tangible WMD threat to us or its neighbors. The fact that in 2002 the new administration was able to amplify and distort intelligence to suggest otherwise and create an ongoing, criminal hysteria is sobering.
Are we, the public, really as dumb as they think we are?
Posted by obelus at July 14, 2005 07:16 AMAs to why this investigation is so important (beyond payback):
The "brass plate" CIA proprietary had offices in Boston and Washington, DC. Active since 1994, Brewster-Jennings was instrumental in tracking the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) and had agents or correspondents in a number of countries including Iraq, North Korea, Belarus, Russia, South Africa, Iran, Israel, China, Pakistan, Congo (Kinshasa), India, Taiwan, Libya, Syria, Serbia, and Malaysia. By releasing Valerie Plame's, other agents' non-official covers were blown and the lives of U.S. operatives within foreign governments and businesses may have been placed in danger...At least one anonymous star (representing a covert U.S. agent killed while working abroad) placed on the CIA's Wall of Honor during the past year was reportedly a direct result of the disastrous disclosures from Cheney's office. (Wayne Madsen, http://www.copvcia.com/free/ww3/081104_winds_change.shtml)
By leaking Plame's name Rove murdered one known CIA operative, and who knows how many other double-agents and unknown operatives died as a result of his stupidity. Who ever the leaker is, the president, Rove, Libby, it doesn't matter, that person is a murderer. When you neo-cons and republi-cons pop in here and say this is a non-issue, you support murder. That's what this is about. It's a murder inverstigation, dumbshit neo-cons. When will you figure this out?
Posted by phidipides at July 14, 2005 07:40 AMWho is Karl Rove REALLY working for?
Posted by Sharon at July 14, 2005 07:43 AMOn another topic:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2005-07-14-potter-leak_x.htm
"Tim Meyer and Andrew Rauscher, who both work in the city's Downtown neighborhood, say they bought the books Monday in a Downtown shop.
Meyer, 33, and Rauscher, 25, would not name the store, saying they're frequent customers and don't want to cause trouble for the management, which apparently made the mistake of putting the book out too early. They described the store as similar to an airport gift shop, located near their offices at Pathway Productions, 200 S. Meridian St."
Right - go to Pathway Productions - http://www.pathwayproductions.com/ Who are they? They're advertising professionals. Who, "Tell great Stories. On time. On budget."
A little mom & pop vendor near where you guys work had the book out by accident - RIGHT. And the sales clerk just happened to work for Scholastic as a marketing flack, right?
"But Wednesday afternoon, Meyer was getting ready to delve into chapter 18, titled "Birthday Surprises." He said he likes the fast pace of the latest Potter volume.
"A lot of what I'm reading, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to believe," Meyer said. "What J.K. Rowling is telling you is pretty shocking considering the last five books.""
Mmm, hmm. We wouldn't want to spoil the story by anything revealing, right? And we just happen to work for a little media advertising company that specializes in forming a narrative.
- -
My wife and I have copy coming by mail on Friday and we're both looking forward to reading it, but crap like this makes me so friking angry. It's 'news' like this, from an obvious marketing campaign that USA Today is peddling, that got us hopeless George W., a frickin' nightmare of war, and a domestic disaster of debt and defits. All because some twit was either too dumb or too gutless to call out an obvious fabrication.
Posted by idiosynchronic at July 14, 2005 07:46 AMExcellent link, Sharon!!
To which country or faction do these people owe their allegiance? What have they been paid to do? The one certain fact: Who ever leaked Plame's name murdered CIA agents and operatives. Those are the simple hard facts.
Posted by phidipides at July 14, 2005 08:02 AMthe white house by putting the onus on the cia for their lies to go to war..made an enemy..one they will regret...
Posted by dennis at July 14, 2005 08:06 AMnew poll says only 41% think Bush is honest. Suck on that trolls.
Posted by T2 at July 14, 2005 08:19 AMT2,
I believe a significant portion of that 42% is not above lying for what they perceive is political gain, or they did not adequately know how to define "honest" for the purpose of answering the poll.
Oh. My. God. Richard Cohen, of all people, finally says it--Rove's not the problem, the entire Iraq war sales job is the problem:
It was supposed to be additional evidence that Iraq had, in the memorable word uttered by Vice President Cheney, "reconstituted" its nuclear weapons program. That, of course, is the real smoking gun in this matter -- the crime, if there is one at all, in what should now be called Karlgate. (It encompasses so much -- the outing of Plame, the jailing of reporter Judith Miller, the moral collapse of the press, the preening of Wilson -- that it sorely needs a moniker.) The inspired exaggeration of the case against Iraq, the hype about weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda's links to Hussein, makes everything else pale in comparison. It was to protect those lies, those exaggerations, that incredible train wreck of incompetence, ideologically induced optimism and, of course, contempt for the quaint working of the democratic process, that everything else stems from. Wilson was both armed and dangerous. He claimed the truth.Posted by Matt Davis at July 14, 2005 08:51 AM
Anybody read the book by Pete Peterson? “Running on Empty – How the Democratic and Republican Parties are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It.”
Great book.
I heard an interview with him over the weekend, and he's involved with a team that includes Bob Kerry, Sam Nunn, Robert Rubin, and Paul Volcker (among others).
He said that in order to keep current Social Security and Medicare benefits at the same levels for future generations, our kids will have to pay a payroll tax rate of 39%.
He also said that the problem with America's health care system is the End of Life care. He said that in England, if you're old and you have a stroke or other serious condition, they just send you home and you die. But here, we put you in intensive care and hook you up to tubes, and try to keep you going. It's this End of Life care that is so expensive and really adds to the costs of the system.
Good interview, great book. Check it out.
Posted by muckdog at July 14, 2005 10:02 AMHaving also read the Peterson book, I might add that he also explains why the "starve the beast" mentality of Norquist and crew is a recipe for fiscal disaster.
Posted by rlprather at July 14, 2005 10:25 AMBut here, we put you in intensive care and hook you up to tubes, and try to keep you going.
God wants it that way.
Posted by George W. Bush at July 14, 2005 10:31 AMBasically, rl, the social programs have to be cut drastically. Well, they will. It's just a matter of time. Money doesn't grow on trees.
During the interview, Peterson said that Paul Volcker thinks that we'll have a currency crisis within 5 years. Rubin doesn't think it'll be that dramatic.
That'll be interesting.
It was a great book. Pete Peterson is an interesting guy.
Posted by muckdog at July 14, 2005 01:45 PMNo, the Bush tax cuts are going to have to go. Medicare is going to be the big problem, it may have to be folded into a single payer system long term. Social Security has some breathing room. I like the analogy that says you don't destroy your bathroom because you have a leakey sink, you fix the leak. That's about where Social Security is.
Posted by rlprather at July 14, 2005 02:58 PMrl, taxes are going to have to go up to over 70% to fund the programs you're talking about. You've read the book, right?
We'd have to first, reinstate Bush's tax cut. Then, double everybody's taxes.
I think Howard Dean should run on that in 2008.
Posted by muckdog at July 14, 2005 05:24 PMYou've read the book, right?
Yes, including the part in chapter 9 about improving consumer awareness on issues like nutrition. One hurdle on that point is that foods that are low priced are often high in fat and calories. I reserve independiant thought on useful books as well as on other issues. I probabally should have elaborated, but I had unexpected issues to attend to.
beans and rice are low in fat. and cheap.
Posted by muckdog at July 14, 2005 08:06 PM