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Announcing TBR Ebooks!

Starting with a new publication concerning the background behind the 9/11 attacks, TBR News will be presenting a series of interesting, informative and definitive works for our readers. Future titles will include the complete Voice of the White House with much more added material that was considered too controversial to post, the heavily-censored Armenian Holocaust of 1916, the Bush-Lay private correspondence, the Assassination of JFK,Pearl Harbor intrigues and rare documents, Malaparte’s inside study of the making of revolution, sensational selected articles from the German Rudolf historical revision files, unpublished before Rudolf’s arrest and forced deportation to Germany, World War II studies of holocaust history, taken from secret German files and much more. Please see the title page for more information.

The Editors

Descending Into Darkness: The Harring Report

A well-researched study into the background of the 9/11 attack: Who knew what and when did they know it. Russian and German intelligence material, not published before show that the U.S. had ample warning...and did nothing about it.

THE VOICE OF THE WHITE HOUSE

The full collection of the twice-weekly commentary of what is really going on inside the corrupt Bush White House. The spectrum includes the Gannon scandal, the planned invasion of Iran, many stories of stupidity and corruption coupled with biting sarcasm. Interesting to note that many, if not most, of the predictions have come true.

REGICIDE The Official Assassination of John F. Kennedy

A landmark book that sold very well in hardback, this work contains actual intelligence documents concerning the inside U.S. plans to kill Kennedy; the reasons, the methods and the results.

The Final Reckoning: An Analysis of Demographics in Holocaust Literature

By Harold Kreig, Lt.Col, AUS ret.

This is the first rational, heavily documented work on the subject of the Holocaust. Colonel Krieg has taken thousands of documents, including the official SS concentration camp records from 1935 through 1945 and official U.S. government postwar analysis of the system and the casualties and causes of death and produced a book that is highly informative and readable.  Heavily footnoted and annotated, ‘The Final Reckoning’ is logical and compelling and is an historical work that should be read through by any student of the period and subject.

Coup D’Etat: The Technique Of Revolution

By Curzio Malaparte

First published in Italy by Curzio Malaparte in 1928, this is a seminal work on historical seizures of power from Napoleon through Hitler.

Gestapo-Chief: The CIA & Heinrich Müller by Gregory Douglas

                In 1948, the former head of Hitelr’s Gestapo was interviewed by senior officials of the CIA in Switzerland where Müller had been in hiding since the end of the Second World War. His interview, for Colonel James Critchfield of the CIA’s Gehlen Organization, runs to nearly a thousand pages and for years was hidden in the CIA’s files.

                This is a translation of a part of the interview, which was initially conducted in German and then translated into English for CIA use.

                It is a fascinating series of historical episodes covering both the Axis and Allied sides with comments on Hitler, Stalin, Roosevelt, Henry Wallace, Winston Churchill, the 20^th of July bomb plot against Hitler, Bishop von Galen’s heroic, and successful, attacks on the Nazis and their euthanasia program, the concentration camps, the Duke of Windsor, the Roger Casement diaries and many more fascinating and insightful views of a man who ran the most effective counter-intelligence agency in modern times. 

                There is also extensive information on the attempts on the part of the CIA to silence or discredit the fact that the Gestapo Chief worked for the United States and eventually came to live in Washington, D.C. as part of the notorious “Operation Paperclip.”

                Fascinating inside views of many top Nazis and CIA officials. 

The CIA COvenant: Nazis in Washington

by Gregory Douglas

* From the end of World War II, the American CIA imported thousands of Nazis into the United States to work for them, many on the list of wanted war criminals

*One of the most important of these was Heinrich Mueller, once head of Hitler's Gestapo. Mueller was recruited by Colonel James Critchfield who ran the CIA's "Gehnel Organization' in Munich.

* Mueller kept journals and this book is a translation of three years (1948-1951) of notes and observations made of top CIA officials, President Truman, top U.S. government officials, plans for murder, thefts, kidnappings, wholesale thefts of public money and a terrifying pattern of uncontrolled ambition, unchecked by any person or agency.

* Also included are CIA and other agency's activities that have never been revealed.

*Mueller's deals in stolen Nazi art for the CIA are covered in detail.

*Also to be found are the steps the frightened CIA have taken to prevent the publication, sales or distribution of this work.

An Essay on the Principle of Population

by Thomas Malthus

The 1798 classic study of how supplies of food do not keep up with an expanding population

Malthus' theory is that population growth is geometric while the food supply increase is arithmetic.

A very literate and current study that clearly highlights present and current population problems

With the world's population higher than ever before, this is a work of great and current interest

CONSPIRACIES for Fun and Profit

Contents
The Evil Catholics Murdered Abraham Lincoln
TWA Flight 800: The Gathering of the Nuts
The Real Truth About the Kennedy Assassination!
The Great 9-11 Plot
Who is Sorcha Faal?
The Bush Indictments
Faked Conspiracy photos
The Sinking of the MV Estonia
The German Guy and the Destruction of Houston
The Great Contrail Conspiracy
Planet X
Remote Viewing unveiled

Notice!

Our new security system prevents email messages coming through the AOL server from being delivered to our address. This is because of the probability of unwelcome and problematical attachments to messages from this source, coupled with the fact that AOL’s voluntary cooperation with various American, and foreign, law enforcement groups makes contact with them in any form a risky business.  Correspondents wishing to contact TBR News are suggested to use another server. Ed.

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people, On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”
- H.L. Mencken

“That we are to stand by the president, right or wrong is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”
-Theodore Roosevelt

“Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited. The discrediting is not an automatic result of the blunders and abuses of those in power, but the deliberate work of men of words with a grievance.”
-Eric Hoffer The True Believer

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

America’s Enemies!

There are four entities who represent the most dangerous enemies to American liberties since George III.

They are:

1.                    The Neocons or Likudists who owe their personal allegiance to another country and now completely control our foreign policy. They lied and deceived us into the Iraq war and are demanding that more and more American soldiers die to preserve their own country and ideals.

2.                    The Christian Evangelical right who is trying to force the United States into becoming a theocracy under their rule. They know in their hearts that they alone can restructure a secular humanist America into their idea of Heaven on Earth.

3.                    An element of American society that call themselves Patriots and are obsessively militaristic and great admirers of the corporate or fascistic state. Many of these have been very minor members of the American military and as a counterbalance to their reserve or rear area tours of duty, are rabidly in favor of draconian military action, the bloodier the better. Usually these drumbeaters are too old, or too fat, to fight and have no sons of draft age.

4.                    George W. Bush, who is the worst president in the history of the United States and directly responsible for the huge death tolls in Iraq, is determined to rule the United States until God puts a stop to him and is even more determined to force the American people into becoming obedient, Christian and self-sacrificing lemmings who worship at his shrine and march in step.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.

Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., April 15, 2007: “On Thursday, March 15, a meeting was held in a private suite at the Hay-Adams hotel in Washington.

This meeting was attended by CIA and CIA-based Mossad personnel, a Russian/Israeli representative of  Boris A. Berezovsky, an Israeli citizen formerly a  Russian citizen, representatives of  Mikhail Brudno and Vladimir Duboy, also Israeli citizens and once major holders in Yukos, the Russian oil giant.. Also present was a personal representative of Vice President Cheney.

The meeting was under clandestine electronic  surveillance and it quickly emerged that the purpose of this meeting, which commenced after a luncheon served in the rooms and began at 1425 hours, was to discuss the means by which Vladimir Putin, President of the Russian Republic, was to be removed from office, either through extensive civil disruption or assassination.

The former Russian/Israeli oil and business oligarchs had been effectively removed from power by Putin, following the departure of Russian President, Boris Yeltsin. Yeltsin had been effectively supported by the CIA and when in office, denationalized the very important Russian oil and gas fields, permitting the so-called Oligarchy (of which Berezovsky, Brudno, Duboy and others, were part and parcel.)

Their known aim was to gain complete control over these natural resources with the aid of their co-rerligi9nists in the World Bank (now run by another co-religionist,  Paul Wolfowitz) the IMF and the Israeli-controlled Bank of New York.  The method was to improve the fields’ production capacity with loans from American and British oil companies and then sell controlling interests to both entities.

These plans were frustrated by Putin, and the immensely wealthy oligarchs stripped of their holdings and run out of the country. Most of them fled to Israel with as much money as they could abscond with and where they are now living, completely safe from any criminal prosecution ,while Berezovsky fled to England where he is currently resident.

Berezovsky, born on 23, January, 1946, he and his associated gained the support of Yeltsin and he personally took over control of the state controlled AutoVAZ car business, Aeroflot, the Russian airline and several very rich natural resources, later reorganized into Sibneft. These acquisitions were accomplished by bribery, extortion and outright theft and were all protected by the Yeltsin people. He also was able to seize control  of important segments of the Russian  media which he used to support the 1996 Yeltsin presidential campaign. This media conglomerate also included  the TV6 and Ort television channels and the large-circulation newspapers, Novye Izbestiya, Nezavisimaya Gazeta and Kommersant.

Acting on information from the Israeli Mossad, Berezovsky established contact with Neil Bush, the very corrupt younger brother of the President and became a very heavy investor, since 2003,  in Bush’s computer company, Ignite! Learning. The two have met, in Europe and the Baltic areas, a number of times subsequently.

Berezovsky then became heavily involved in the political situation in the Ukraine in 2005. Working in cooperation with elements of the CIA who were under orders from the Vice President Cheney to “destabilize the pro-Russian government of the Ukraine “ and seek to bring it under the aegis of Nato with especial emphasis on gaining the oil rights in the Donets Basin and, most importantly, to secure the oil and gas pipeline systems running from Russia to eastern Europe.  Berezovsky financially supported  Viktor  Yushchenko and transferred “significant amounts of cash” from his London bank accounts to the Yushchenko campaign. Such foreign interference is illegal under current Ukrainian laws

Although Yushchenko was elected, political activity sponsored by Russia made it impossible for the U.S. interests to either secure control over Ukrainian pipelines or gain access to the natural resources of the Donetz basin.

Following this very expensive debacle, Yuschenko then turned his attention to projects designed to either physically eliminate Putin or drive him from office. He stated in a public interview in January of 2006 that he was fully intent in overthrowing Putin, a goal heartily supported by Vice President Cheney who personally hates Putin and is under pressure from his friends in the oil industry to remove a man who not only snatched control over the rich Russian natural resources from them but has actively blocked their continuing efforts to somehow get their hands on Russian oil and gas.

Well aware of Berezovsky’s activities (the Russian intelligence services have long ago penetrated Israeli intelligence organs, a number of Berezovsky’s minions have either vanished without a trace or, like his co-religionist, ex-Russian FBB intelligence officer and alleged “reporter,” A. Litvinenko, was poisoned by a dose of radioactive material as were two other Russian “reporters” and in Washington, an anti-Putin former CIA official was shot in front of his house and the entire episode covered up by the American press.

Although these deaths should have warned not only Berezovsky and his allies, they apparently learned nothing and are now working to overthrow Putin and restore the oil and gas interests to status quo pre-Putin.

As early as August, 2003, tentative plans were being developed between the CIA, the Mossad and dissident groups inside Russia, plans that later were formalized in Washington with the blessing of Cheney. During the course of the 7^th International Workshop held in Helsinki, Finland, at the Sonera Conference Center in that city,  meetings were held between a CIA official using the name of Roger Simkins, his Israeli opposite number, Rahm Gittlesohn, a Mossad agent attached to the Israeli embassy and  Moshe Sitkovetsky, an Israeli-based agent of Berezovsky.  These “initial exploratory talks” lasted off and on for two days and were later continued on six separate occasions, five of these in London and the last one in Washington.

An organization was created, called ‘Another Russia’ and contact was made with Eduard Limonov who heads the National Bolshevik Party.  Beresovsky has no problem using this man but the Vice President, who is strongly anti-Communist ,  has objected to the inclusion of Limonov. . Berezovsky hates Putin for destroying his empire and has on several occasions labeled the pro-German Putin as a “nazi.’ He also has advocated the killing of Putin’s daughters “as a warning” to the Russian president but to date, this project has received little attention.

The current plan is to have ‘Another Russia’ begin a series of disruptive public protests, utilizing students;, former Communists and some members of Russia’s rapidly shrinking Jewish community. There have been active discussions about what kind of articles will appear in the American media (anti-Putin) and, of course, non-documented promises of large cash rewards to the leaders of the opposition in the event of their so disrupting Putin that he will resign. In the event that he retaliates, it is hoped that he does so in front of cameras and at the same time, a plan is being formulated to shoot him in the Crimea while on vacation and blame it on Ukrainians.

It is to be stressed that both the United States and Israeli governments are fully in accord with the thrust of these plan. If, on the other hand, the British government were to become aware, at least officially, that these plots were being conducted from British soil, the consequences for Berexovsky could be very serious and it was put forward that as friendly an ally as PM Blair has proven to be to U.S. interests, it would not be productive to attempt to enlist British cooperation.”

The Attacks of the Rabid Jesus Freaks

Who's the Boss? How Pat Robertson's law school is changing America.

April 7, 2007

by Dahlia Lithwick

Washington Post

Monica Goodling has a problem. As senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Justice Department liaison to the White House, Goodling no longer seems to know what the truth is. She must also be increasingly unclear about who her superiors are. This didn't used to be a problem for Goodling, now on indefinite leave from the DoJ. Everything was once very certain: Her boss's truth was always the same as God's truth. Her boss was always either God or one of His staffers.

This week, through counsel, Goodling again refused to testify about her role in the firings of several U.S. attorneys for what appear to be partisan reasons. Asserting her Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination, Goodling somehow felt she may be on the hook for criminal obstruction. But it was never clear whose truths she was protecting or even whose law seems to have tripped her up. She resigned abruptly Friday evening without explanation.

Goodling is an improbable character for a political scandal. She's the mirror opposite of that other Monica—the silly, saucy minx who felled Bill Clinton. A 1995 graduate of an evangelical Christian school, Messiah College, and a 1999 graduate of Pat Robertson's Regent University School of Law (this seems to be her Web page), Goodling's chief claim to professional fame appears to have been loyalty to the president and to the process of reshaping the Justice Department in his image (and thus, His image). A former career official there told the Washington Post that Goodling "forced many very talented, career people out of main Justice so she could replace them with junior people that were either loyal to the administration or would score her some points." And as she rose at Justice, according to a former classmate, Goodling "developed a very positive reputation for people coming from Christian schools into Washington looking for employment in government."

Start digging, and Goodling also looks to be the Forrest Gump of no comments: Here she is in 1997, fielding calls from reporters to Regent's School of Government admissions office. Asked whether non-Christians were admitted, she explained that "we admit all students without discrimination. We are a Christian institution; it is assumed that everyone in the classes are Christians." Here, in 2004, she's answering phones at the Justice Department about whether then-Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement knew about the abuses at Abu Ghraib when he told the Supreme Court that the United States does not torture.

Said Goodling, in lieu of taking the Fifth: "We wouldn't have any comment." (Jenny Martinez, who argued against Clement that day at the court, suggested to Salon's Tim Grieve: "When Mr. Clement said to the court that we wouldn't engage in that kind of behavior, either he was deliberately misleading the court or he was completely out of the loop." Sound familiar?)

Goodling is only one of 150 graduates of Regent University currently serving in

this administration, as Regent's Web site proclaims proudly, a huge number for a 29-year-old school. Regent estimates that "approximately one out of every six Regent alumni is employed in some form of government work." And that's precisely what its founder desired. The school's motto is "Christian Leadership To Change the World," and the world seems to be changing apace. Former Attorney General John Ashcroft teaches at Regent, and graduates have achieved senior positions in the Bush administration. The express goal is not only to tear down the wall between church and state in America (a "lie of the left," according to Robertson) but also to enmesh the two.

The law school's dean, Jeffrey A. Brauch, urges in his "vision" statement that students reflect upon "the critical role the Christian faith should play in our legal system." Jason Eige ('99), senior assistant to Virginia Attorney General Bob McDonnell, puts it pithily in the alumni newsletter, Regent Remark: "Your Résumé Is God's Instrument."

This legal worldview meshed perfectly with that of former Attorney General John Ashcroft—a devout Pentecostal who forbade use of the word "pride," as well as the phrase "no higher calling than public service," on documents bearing his signature. (He also snatched the last bit of fun out of his press conferences when he covered up the bared breasts of the DoJ statue the "Spirit of Justice"). No surprise that, as he launched a transformation of the Justice Department, the Goodlings looked good to him.

One of Ashcroft's most profound changes was to the Civil Rights Division, launched in 1957 to file cases on behalf of African-Americans and women. Under Ashcroft, career lawyers were systematically fired or forced out and replaced by members of conservative or Christian groups or folks with no civil rights experience. In the five years after 2001, the civil rights division brought no voting cases on behalf of African-Americans. It brought one employment case on behalf of an African-American. Instead, the division took up the "civil rights" abuses of reverse discrimination—claims of voter fraud or discrimination against Christians. On Feb. 20, Gonzales announced a new initiative called the First Freedom Project to carry out "even greater enforcement of religious rights for all Americans." In his view, the fight for a student's right to read a Bible at school is as urgent a civil rights problem as the right to vote.

We may agree or disagree on that proposition, but it certainly explains how Goodling came to confuse working to advance Gonzales' agenda with working to advance God's. But while God may well want more prayer in the public schools, it's not clear He wanted David Iglesias fired on a pretext. In an excellent 2005 article about Regent in the American Prospect Online, Christopher Hayes points out that more than two-thirds of the students at Regent identified as Republicans, and only 9 percent identified as Democrats. As he concludes, "what students are taught at a place like Regent, or even Calvin and Wheaton, is to live out a Christ-centered existence in all facets of their lives. But what they learn is to become Republicans."

Is there anything wrong with legal scholarship from a Christian perspective? Not that I see. Is there anything wrong with a Bush administration that disproportionately uses graduates from such Christian law schools to fill its staffing needs? Not that I see. It's a shorthand, not better or worse than cherry-picking the Federalist Society or the bar association. I can't even get exercised over the fact that Gonzales, Rove, and Miers had their baby lawyers making critical staffing decisions for them. The baby lawyers had extremely clear marching orders.

No, the real concern here is that Goodling and her ilk somehow began to conflate God's work with the president's. Probably not a lesson she learned in law school. The dream of Regent and its counterparts, like Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, is to redress perceived wrongs to Christians, to reclaim the public square, and reassert Christian political authority. And while that may have been a part of the Bush/Rove plan, it was, in the end, only a small part. Their real zeal was for earthly power. And Goodling was left holding the earthly bag.

At the end of the day, Goodling and the other young foot soldiers for God may simply have run afoul of the first rule of politics, codified in Psalm 146: "Put no trust in princes, in mere mortals in whom there is no help."

A version of this article also appears in the Outlook section of the Sunday Washington Post.

Dahlia Lithwick is a Slate senior editor.

For God’s Sake

by Paul Krugman

April 13, 2007

New York Times

In 1981, Gary North, a leader of the Christian Reconstructionist movement — the openly theocratic wing of the Christian right — suggested that the movement could achieve power by stealth. “Christians must begin to organize politically within the present party structure,” he wrote, “and they must begin to infiltrate the existing institutional order.”

Today, Regent University, founded by the televangelist Pat Robertson to provide “Christian leadership to change the world,” boasts that it has 150 graduates working in the Bush administration.

Unfortunately for the image of the school, where Mr. Robertson is chancellor and president, the most famous of those graduates is Monica Goodling, a product of the university’s law school. She’s the former top aide to Alberto Gonzales who appears central to the scandal of the fired U.S. attorneys and has declared that she will take the Fifth rather than testify to Congress on the matter.

The infiltration of the federal government by large numbers of people seeking to impose a religious agenda — which is very different from simply being people of faith — is one of the most important stories of the last six years. It’s also a story that tends to go underreported, perhaps because journalists are afraid of sounding like conspiracy theorists.

But this conspiracy is no theory. The official platform of the Texas Republican Party pledges to “dispel the myth of the separation of church and state.” And the Texas Republicans now running the country are doing their best to fulfill that pledge.

Kay Cole James, who had extensive connections to the religious right and was the dean of Regent’s government school, was the federal government’s chief personnel officer from 2001 to 2005. (Curious fact: she then took a job with Mitchell Wade, the businessman who bribed Representative Randy “Duke” Cunningham.) And it’s clear that unqualified people were hired throughout the administration because of their religious connections.

For example, The Boston Globe reports on one Regent law school graduate who was interviewed by the Justice Department’s civil rights division. Asked what Supreme Court decision of the past 20 years he most disagreed with, he named the decision to strike down a Texas anti-sodomy law. When he was hired, it was his only job offer.

Or consider George Deutsch, the presidential appointee at NASA who told a Web site designer to add the word “theory” after every mention of the Big Bang, to leave open the possibility of “intelligent design by a creator.” He turned out not to have, as he claimed, a degree from Texas A&M.

One measure of just how many Bushies were appointed to promote a religious agenda is how often a Christian right connection surfaces when we learn about a Bush administration scandal.

There’s Ms. Goodling, of course. But did you know that Rachel Paulose, the U.S. attorney in Minnesota — three of whose deputies recently stepped down, reportedly in protest over her management style — is, according to a local news report, in the habit of quoting Bible verses in the office?

Or there’s the case of Claude Allen, the presidential aide and former deputy secretary of health and human services, who stepped down after being investigated for petty theft. Most press reports, though they mentioned Mr. Allen’s faith, failed to convey the fact that he built his career as a man of the hard-line Christian right.

And there’s another thing most reporting fails to convey: the sheer extremism of these people.

You see, Regent isn’t a religious university the way Loyola or Yeshiva are religious universities. It’s run by someone whose first reaction to 9/11 was to brand it God’s punishment for America’s sins.

Two days after the terrorist attacks, Mr. Robertson held a conversation with Jerry Falwell on Mr. Robertson’s TV show “The 700 Club.” Mr. Falwell laid blame for the attack at the feet of “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians,” not to mention the A.C.L.U. and People for the American Way. “Well, I totally concur,” said Mr. Robertson.

The Bush administration’s implosion clearly represents a setback for the Christian right’s strategy of infiltration. But it would be wildly premature to declare the danger over. This is a movement that has shown great resilience over the years. It will surely find new champions.

Next week Rudy Giuliani will be speaking at Regent’s Executive Leadership Series.

Comment: It should be evident at this point in time, that the general American public has very rapidly lost interest in, and sympathy for, conservative Christian organizations and their goals. Most people are not evangelical Christians or even far right advocates of social issues but tend to be tolerant and disinterested in these things.

If Christian activists are losing support, they have only George W. Bush to blame for this. His opportunistic embrace of right wing Christian movements to include the anti-abortion platform, teaching fundamentalist views in school science classes, control over public entertainment such as the motion picture and television industries (people do not read), and belief in various Pentecostal dogma such as Rapture, the Final Days and such themes has finally filled the cup of the public and they have rejected all of this.

Instead of toleration, they now are becoming anti-Christian activists.

I cite for your contemplation, a recent report by an Asian-American religious figure, attached to the White House as a representative of the religious right, in which he expresses horror at the mockery and complete contempt that the White House staff, to include the president himself and most specifically Karl Rove, his chief aide, expressed about the various religious leaders and their visitations to the White House seeking more and more assurances of support and power.

In short, the ruthless Republican politicians now in waning power, merely used these people and willeasily discard them if it proves necessary.

In summation, the goals and aspirations of the Christian right are now greatly diminished and as usually happens, they have no one to blame but themselves.

The play is over, the house lights have gone up and the actors have left the stage. Another play is waiting eagerly in the wings but some of the audience are still sitting in their seats, blinking in bewilderment because the curtain has come down on a fiction they took for reality.

' While we are in the light, let us walk in the light for the darkness cometh.'

It has indeed.  Brian Harring

Group Releases “Wanted” Poster for Jesus Christ

Washington, DC – The Traditional Values Coalition (TVC) released a symbolic “Wanted” poster today for the arrest of Jesus Christ and those who follow Him for violating the proposed Hate Crimes law (H.R. 1592).

“The free exercise of religious speech will be criminalized eventually if this so-called Hate Crimes legislation becomes law,” said Rev. Louis P. Sheldon, TVC Founder and Chairman.

“Liberal and homosexual extremists want to silence people of faith whose religious beliefs condemn homosexual behavior. This bill effectively adds a footnoted exception to the First Amendment of the Constitution – ‘none of these protections apply to Christians or other people of faith.’

“This bill begins to lay the legal foundation and framework to investigate, prosecute and persecute pastors, business owners, and anyone else whose actions are based upon, and reflect, the truths found in the Bible.

“This poster is intended to dramatize the treatment of the teachings of Jesus Christ as criminal. Liberals are trying to silence Christians and intimidate them so they will no longer publicly express the dictates of their faith on the issue of homosexuality.

“People of faith must raise their voices against this diabolical proposal which violates the civil rights of Christians in order to create an illusion of moral normalcy for homosexual behavior.

“This bill should cause grave concern for any American who values the free exercise of religious beliefs and speech.”

Surely the Right Hand Knoweth Not what the Left Hand Doeth

Gates Angry, Bush Ambushed by Leak

April 14, 2007

by Mark Thompson

TIME

The Pentagon's never been able to keep a secret, but top officials were really steamed this week when some unknown defense official tipped off the press to the impending announcement that Army troops would be spending more time in combat zones. In an ideal world, commanders want to be able to tell their combat units, in their own way, that they won't be going home as early as they hoped. Instead, Army grunts got the bad news via the Internet after it leaked prematurely to reporters Tuesday night.

Army Lieutenant General Ray Odierno grumbled Friday about the rushed official announcement in a video press conference he did from Iraq with Pentagon reporters. "I know the announcement the other day was probably one that surprised" troops in harm's way and their families, he said. "We would have loved to have let our families know first before it was out in the press, and we wish we had the opportunity to do that and also talk to our soldiers first."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates put it more bluntly on Wednesday. "Some very thoughtless person in this building made the unilateral decision [Tuesday] to deny the Army the opportunity to notify unit commanders who could then talk to their troops 48 hours before we made a public announcement," Gates said. He complained as he officially announced that active-duty Army troops in Afghanistan and Iraq will stay there for 15 months, instead of the planned 12, until further notice. "And I can't tell you how angry it makes many of us that one individual would create potentially so much hardship not only for our servicemen and -women, but their families, by letting them read about something like this in the newspapers."

There had been rumors that the Army was thinking of extending its active-duty units in Iraq and Afghanistan. In fact, the Army had recommended the move to Gates recently as a way of ensuring that units would get at least a year at home between deployments to war zones (traditionally, they have gotten two years at home for each year overseas, but the Pentagon chopped that in half after the Iraq war began, and some units have been redeploying after less than a year at home).

Of course, soldiers and their families weren't the only ones surprised by the Pentagon announcement. Just hours before the news leaked out, President Bush complained about Democratic congressional foot-dragging that has held up approval of a $120-billion-plus supplemental war bill. "The bottom line is this: Congress's failure to fund our troops will mean that some of our military families could wait longer for their loved ones to return from the front lines," Bush told an American Legion audience in suburban Virginia. The next day, his Pentagon did it all by itself, without any help from anyone of either party on Capitol Hill.

Shades of Watergate! More bad fiction for the American public

White House: Millions of e-mails may be missing

April 13, 2007

Time

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Millions of White House e-mails may be missing, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino acknowledged Friday.

"I wouldn't rule out that there were a potential 5 million e-mails lost," Perino told reporters.

The administration was already facing sharp questions about whether top presidential advisers including Karl Rove improperly used Republican National Committee e-mail that the White House said later disappeared.

The latest comments were a response to a new report from a liberal watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), alleging that over a two-year period official White House e-mail traffic for hundreds of days has vanished -- in possible violation of the federal Presidential Records Act. (Watch CREW's comments on the missing messages )

"This story is really now a two-part issue," CREW's Melanie Sloan told CNN. "First there's the use of the RNC e-mail server that's inappropriate by White House officials and secondly we've also learned that there were between March of 2003 and October of 2005 apparently over 5 million e-mail that were not preserved and these are e-mail on the regular White House server."

Perino stressed there's no indication the e-mails were intentionally lost, but she was careful not to dispute the outside group's allegations. "I'm not taking issue with their conclusions at this point," Perino said. "We're checking into them. There are 1,700 people in the Executive Office of the President."

White House: 'We screwed up'

Perino's disclosure about the White House e-mail comes a day after she admitted that the White House "screwed up" by not requiring e-mails from Republican Party and campaign accounts to be saved and was also trying to recover those e-mails.

Perino said 22 aides in the political arm of the president's office use party or campaign e-mail accounts, which were issued to separate official business from political work. Some of those accounts were used to discuss the December firings of eight federal prosecutors, a shake-up that has triggered a spreading controversy on Capitol Hill.

Congressional investigators have questioned whether White House aides used e-mail accounts from the Republican Party and President Bush's re-election campaign for official government business to avoid scrutiny of those dealings.

Sen. Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, accused the White House of trying to hide messages on the Republican Party system related to the firing of the U.S. attorneys, which has stirred up a hornet's nest on Capitol Hill.

"You can't erase e-mails, not today," said Leahy, D-Vermont. "They've gone through too many servers. They can't say they've been lost. That's like saying, 'The dog ate my homework.' " (Watch Leahy compare e-mails to Nixon tapes )

Leahy said the e-mails would have remained on party or campaign computer servers, and he compared the situation to the famous 18½-minute gap in one of the Watergate tapes.

"They're there," he said. "They know they're there, and we'll subpoena them, if necessary, and we'll have them."

Perino told reporters that the e-mails from those accounts should have been saved, but said policy has not kept pace with technology. She said computer experts were trying to retrieve any records that have been deleted.

"We screwed up, and we're trying to fix it," she told reporters.

E-mails sought by special prosecutor also missing

Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case, disclosed last year that some White House e-mails in 2003 were not saved as standard procedure dictated.

In a January 23, 2006, letter to the defense team of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald wrote: "We advise you that we have learned that not all e-mail of the Office of Vice President and the Executive Office of President for certain time periods in 2003 was preserved through the normal archiving process on the White House computer system."

Robert Luskin, personal attorney for Rove, told CNN Friday that he "has no reason to doubt" Fitzgerald's assertion that some White House e-mail was missing.

"You're quite right," Luskin said in a telephone interview. "There was a gap there."

Democrats charge this raises questions about whether the public has gotten the full story on everything from the CIA leak case to the fired U.S. attorneys controversy.

"The biggest problem here is really that here is a White House that is deliberately violating an existing statute that requires them to preserve all records," said Sloan. "And we have significant evidence now both from the RNC e-mail and the White House e-mail that are missing that the White House was using every means possible to avoid complying with the law."

Luskin said it was "foolish speculation" for CREW -- which serves as counsel to former ambassador Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, in a private suit against Rove and other Bush officials -- to suggest that the gap in White House e-mail helped Rove avoid indictment in the CIA leak case. Luskin said Fitzgerald told him that Rove was cleared in the case because he "did nothing wrong."

Luskin added that until this month, Rove believed his RNC e-mail was being archived and did nothing wrong.

"Rove has always understood from very early on in the Bush administration that RNC and campaign e-mail were being archived," said Luskin. "He was absolutely unaware until very, very recently that any e-mails were lost. And he never asked that e-mails be deleted or asked for the authority to delete e-mails."

CNN's Ed Henry and Lisa Goddard contributed to this report.

The Wailing Wall

Wolfowitz's critics are having a field day

The controversy over how his girlfriend landed a good job and huge pay increases brings deep-seated resentments to the surface.

April 14, 2007

by Joel Havemann, Maura Reynolds and Paul Richter

LA Times

WASHINGTON — Two years ago, when Paul D. Wolfowitz left the Pentagon to head the World Bank, he was under fire over his role in the Iraq war, but he approached his new job with the same moral fervor and appetite for shaking up the status quo that had marked his tenure at the Defense Department.

Wasting no time, he launched a campaign against corrupt borrowers. He cut off loans to uncooperative countries without consulting other officials. He created ethics police to monitor employees. He even chopped back the bank's traditionally lavish Christmas party.

Now, having sown the wind, Wolfowitz has reaped the whirlwind.

The controversy over how his girlfriend landed a good job and large salary increases has brought to the surface deep-seated resentments from almost every quarter.

"When the match was lit, the fire exploded. The gas was already in the room," said a former Treasury Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of close ties to the bank.

On Friday, with Wolfowitz's job on the line, the Bush administration faced two questions: how hard to fight for him and how much damage his ouster would cause.

The bank's board of directors continued to say it was pondering the matter. But one clue emerged about how tough the infighting had become: a leaked report that European governments had decided to cut off contributions to the bank's loan funds if Wolfowitz did not resign.

Publicly, the White House reiterated its support for Wolfowitz, but it was not clear how hard it was prepared to push behind the scenes. Wolfowitz is not a U.S. official but was nominated by President Bush; by tradition, the United States — the bank's largest financial backer — picks the president.

"The president has full confidence in Paul Wolfowitz," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. "He's done a remarkable job at the World Bank, where they are working to lift people up out of poverty from around the world. He's apologized for the matter, and his board is undergoing an internal review.

"And we expect him to remain as World Bank president — he has the president's support," she said.

White House spokesman Tony Fratto said the U.S. representative on the World Bank's board — Clay Lowery, assistant Treasury secretary for international affairs — "is representing the United States and he knows that President Bush supports President Wolfowitz."

Bush has a record of sticking by beleaguered appointees, including former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, former Treasury Secretary John W. Snow and Atty. Gen. Alberto R. Gonzales. Bowing to criticism emboldens the administration's enemies, White House strategists think.

Another former Treasury Department official familiar with relations between the bank and the administration said that because the board of directors operated largely by consensus, the U.S. exercised substantial influence. But the emphasis on consensus means that if the board turned against Wolfowitz, he would probably step down.

"I believe we could block an effort to remove Wolfowitz. That said, if there were an overwhelming mood against him, he would cease trying to stay," said the former Treasury Department official, who works elsewhere in government and spoke on condition of anonymity, lacking authorization to discuss the matter.

The Wolfowitz imbroglio involves one of the most polarizing figures to serve in the Bush administration and one of the most unusual institutions in Washington.

At the Pentagon, where he was deputy Defense secretary, Wolfowitz bruised feelings among senior military leaders and career bureaucrats because of what they saw as his lack of respect for their expertise and his tendency to disregard opinions outside his inner circle.

In Congress, during the run-up to the Iraq invasion, even some Republicans questioned Wolfowitz's assertions that Iraqis would welcome U.S. troops as liberators and that the war would end quickly.

At the World Bank, many members of its multinational staff resented Wolfowitz's role as an architect of the Iraq war. They also resented his efforts to shake up an entrenched bureaucracy that had long operated with little outside supervision.

Career bank officials had strong views on how international aid programs should be run, and they were accustomed to salaries and perks far more lavish than those of U.S. government workers.

The new president challenged the staff on both counts, and he did it with a managerial style that added to the resentment, said sources with close ties to the institution who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals.

Bank workers were especially infuriated by Wolfowitz's decision to create an internal unit to oversee employees' conduct. The unit cracked down on travel, checking whether employees spent extra days on overseas trips at the bank's expense. It also increased efforts to assure compliance with a rule that staff members not accept gifts worth more than $50.

Many of the bank's experts thought Wolfowitz and a small group of aides he brought with him from the Pentagon had bypassed them on decisions about key projects. This approach contrasted sharply with the previous World Bank president, James Wolfensohn, who became a favorite of employees by consulting them on decisions.

Many World Bank employees thought they weren't paid enough, even though their salaries surpassed U.S. government standards.

Some bank employees see Wolfowitz's efforts to cut employee perks and police their ethics as hypocritical in light of his role in assuring that his girlfriend was highly paid and because he gave huge raises to two close aides who followed him from the Pentagon.

Wolfowitz brought with him Robin Cleveland, whose title is counselor and whose salary is $263,000, and Kevin Kellems, a communications specialist who makes $249,000. The only Bush administration official with a higher salary is Bush, at $400,000.

The World Bank declined to provide Wolfowitz's salary, though published estimates range from $300,000 to $400,000.

The most senior policy makers at the bank are paid as much as $200,000, and a few make more than $300,000. Unlike U.S. workers', the salaries of World Bank employees are largely tax-free.

According to documents released Friday by the World Bank, Wolfowitz told bank officials about his relationship with his girlfriend, Shaha Ali Riza, before becoming president in June 2005. She worked for the bank at the time and made a salary of $132,600.

He offered to recuse himself from all personnel decisions concerning Riza, but the bank's ethics committee thought that didn't go far enough.

"Even with recusal, the issue of 'perception' remains" regarding a conflict of interest, according to notes of an ethics committee meeting June 2, 2005.

A month later, the ethics committee informed Wolfowitz that the best resolution to the conflict would be for Riza to be reassigned to a new job.

The committee noted that she was a top contender for a promotion and that "the potential disruption of the staff member's career prospect will be recognized by an in situ promotion on the basis of her qualifying record."

The promotion came with a salary increase of $50,000, the documents said.

Riza eventually accepted reassignment to the State Department, where her salary grew to $193,590. But she made clear she wasn't happy.

"I have now been victimized for agreeing to an arrangement that I have objected to and that I did not believe from the outset was in my best interest," she wrote last April.

joel.havemann@latimes.com

maura.reynolds@latimes.com

paul.richter@latimes.com

Satire

Your Shiny Happy Discount Death

Amongst the bulk cheese and the plasma TVs, a slew of coffins, now at Costco.   Bargain!

April 11, 2007

by Mark Morford

SF Gate Columnist

If you feel your life is just too boring, if you feel you are lacking sufficient gobs of wicked surreality and ironic humor and morbid perspective combined with a strange sense that this planet is actually some sort of warped dreamlike petri-dish experiment run by scaly hyperintelligent lizards possessing savage and incomprehensible senses of humor, well, I have a suggestion.

Simply march your happy overfed American butt over to Costco.

Not just any Costco, mind you, but Costco out in, say, the Palm Desert region of California, where the land is scrappyhot and the air is dry and the massive strip malls and neon-green golf courses outnumber healthy environmental concern by a factor of about 1,000 to 1.

Do this: Walk the massive air-conditioned aisles and ogle the giant slabs of meat and the enormous bins of imported Guatemalan fruit and the economy packs of adult diapers and the two-gallon bottles of vodka, much of it generally aimed at the happy retirement crowd that lives here six months out of the year.

And then notice, as you leave, your cart crammed with drums of olive oil and 10-foot plasma TVs and 80-packs of frozen cream puffs, that strange display you apparently didn't notice when you came in, the one right by the front door next to the tires and the lawn furniture and the hot-dog stand, the one you seem to have blocked out because it was just too weird and your mind couldn't really get around it.

Yes, they are coffins.

They are enormous, shiny caskets for sale, at Costco.   Would that I were making this up.

This is what you see: A seemingly innocuous, nondescript display featuring corner sample pieces of giant kitschy caskets (alas, there are no full-sized models to climb into to test for comfort/fit/sex/morbid humor), all made by something called the Universal Casket Company, and they apparently come in all manner of glossy finish and silky crepe linings and fake gothic handles and pink rose filigree and all available for immediate overnight delivery because, well, you just never know.

Yes, you can now buy a coffin at Costco.

Six, actually, different styles and qualities and color schemes to match your lifestyle and your sofa and your love of mauve and fake lion's-head handles and it is, all at once, funny and disturbing and creepy and yet, somehow, entirely appropriate.

You want shameless target marketing?

You want life and death and commerce and capitalism and convenience all rolled into a little ball of gloomy consumer joy?

Here is your nirvana.

Look a little closer.

Around the display are a number of modest signs featuring handsome black-and-white stock photos of healthy-looking, middle-age people apparently discussing why the hell they'd want to buy a huge shiny $1,000 casket at Costco, why you'd want to consider such a thing right after you just spent two hours on a sunny Saturday dumping 300 bucks on bulk cheese and massive platters of frozen chicken wings and maybe a 29-person camping tent.

Each sign has its own simple sales-pitch phrase above the photo, such as "Affordable" or "Non-Threatening"or (my personal favorite) "Non-Emotional," which I take to mean that Costco believes it's much gentler on your nerves and easier on your deepest fears to consider casket acquisition on a benign, shopping-crammed weekend than to wait until, say, you're sitting in a bleak funeral home and you can't choose a shade of taupe for the deceased's pillow through all the teary, soul-crushing Muzak.

After all, why feel death?

Why not let Costco help you send grandma off with ease, without those pesky feelings? Mmm, numbness.

Coffins are, so far as I can tell, only available at the Costcos in and around retirement communities (and also on the Costco Web site, along with, fittingly, urns).

They are, in other words, only physically on display in those regions where death does good, dependable business, where a sense of finality lingers in the air like a nagging perfume, death just another commodity to be decided upon the way you choose a pack of underwear or a new gas barbecue grill because really, in this day and age, why make it anything more?

Please note: I could be wrong about the above paragraph. In fact, caskets might be available in many "normal" Costcos all over the country.

It is very possible, in other words, that I simply haven't noticed a large and burgeoning trend in the big-box store universe, wherein more and more of these consumer black holes are realizing the huge profit potential to be had in the billion-dollar death business, especially considering the Boomer generation's forthcoming march into the big BMW dealership in the sky.

It's entirely possible that you will soon see funeral services and tasteful casket offerings from, say, Pottery Barn. Or Williams-Sonoma. Target. Ikea.

In fact, it is no stretch at all to imagine Wal-Mart offering cheapie Chinese-made caskets (extra-large, double-wide, super-reinforced) back in the corner of the Home and Garden section, next to the potting soil and the pink porcelain garden fairies and the creepy life-size lawn statues of St. Francis.

Why not?

And why stop at caskets?

Wal-Mart, for one, could easily upend the entire funeral industry and offer budget cremations, right out back, next to the tire center and the giant shredding machines where they destroy all that evidence of labor malpractice and health care abuse and where they shred the once-shimmering souls of their tepid, dreary-hearted executives.

Just a thought.

But I suppose such surreal product placement makes most sense for a strange place like Palm Desert, that most bizarre and surreal of California locales, all massive, low megadevelopments and heavily manicured retirement communities and truly insane, scattershot sprawl set against a backdrop of stunning but increasingly battered desert scrub and jackrabbits and coyotes and low lumpy dreamy mountains and a nice gauze of smog.

It is one of those increasingly overdeveloped places that, if you look too closely (or even if you don't), will rather effortlessly disturb your innate sense of balance, your sense of harmonious nature and how humans are supposed to interact with it.

I know, in tract-home/big-box/Bush-ravaged America, this sort of disconcerting landscape is pretty much the norm.

But in the scrubby desert the contrast feels just that much more brutal.  Which, in a way, makes it just right for bulk casket sales.

As my own sly, happily retired father said to me as he pointed out the existence of the Costco caskets in the first place, it actually makes perfect (metaphorical) sense for Costco to sell coffins: "Hell, it all comes together in the end," he shrugged. "You enter into one big box, and exit in a little one."

Ain't that the truth.