Again with "these people"

Curious. A scant 700 showed up yesterday for George W. Bush's visit to Edison raising, supposedly, $650,00 for New Jersey's GOP. At $300 a plate and $5,000 for grip-and-grins with Mr. 28% (25% in New Jersey), he must have grinned for a lot of pictures. More likely, a couple of sugar daddies -- oil, pharma? -- pumped some fiscal amphetamines into the coffers.

Pushing his only-leg-to-stand-on terrorism button, Bush doesn't give up his "these people" talk, a bigotry Rick Perlstein called out in an editorial. Bush said:

"These people are brutal. They have no conscience," Bush said. "The only way to deal with these people is to stay on the offensive — fight them overseas so we don't have to fight them here."

"You can't ration (ration?) with them. You can't compromise with them. You can't even hope for the best with them," Bush said. "You must treat them as they are — cold-blooded killers, and bring them to justice."

Who are "these people?" He sends our troops to kill Iraqis, none of whom killed or threatened to kill anyone on our shores. Osama bin Laden, the Saudi mastermind of 9/11 operating from Afghanistan, is said to be in Pakistan now. Of Osama, Bush in March 13, 2002, said, "I don't know where he is. You know, I just don't spend that much time on him. I truly am not that concerned about him." Osama isn't one of the "they," apparently. I wonder why not.

And we can't "ration" with them? This is what happens when oil-rich daddies buy their kids a college degree.

In further lack of "ration," Bush attacks, "(The Democrats)... think they can spend your money better than you can." Then he talks about just signing a bill he wanted to spend $30 billion of our money on AIDS/HIV treatment and prevention in Africa. It looks like he's spending our money, better than we can. Is he saying he's a Democrat, then?

The RNC chased out the TV trucks, so we can't tell who showed up. As they say, there are none so blind as he who will not see.

Doin' the voter fraud shuffle

I did a double-take on Monica Goodling's testimony in Congress on Gonzogate Thursday.

"I believe the deputy (Paul McNulty) was not fully candid about his knowledge of White House involvement in the replacement decision, failed to disclose that he had some knowledge of the White House's interest in selecting Tim Griffin (former RNC research director) as the interim U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of Arkansas, inaccurately described the department's internal assessment of the Parsky commission, and failed to disclose that he had some knowledge of allegations that Tim Griffin had been involved in vote caging during his work on the president's 2004 campaign."

I was shocked no one on the House Judiciary Committee seemed to ask her anything about Griffin "caging." Caging is illegal. It's a.k.a. voter suppression, preventing targeted groups, usually black people, from voting. Caging was one of the tricks the Republican National Committee used in both 2000 and 2004 to succeed in overturning the true elections of Al Gore and John Kerry for president. Caging is reportedly the reason the White House snuck a clause into the Patriot Act renewal to bypass Senate confirmation on U.S. attorneys, because they couldn't risk Griffin being asked about his '04 caging.

BBC reporter Greg Palast, as always was on top of this, has his well-written report at Bradblog. Lawyers at Balkinization have a good post, too. The day after: Palast blasts both barrels at a troll making Internet mileage criticizing his research.

Griffin’s sending this email to Goodling while he’s a sitting US prosecutor. How dumb can you get? This dumb: He adds, “The Republican State Parties wanted to show that thousands of fraudulent voter registrations had been completed. They ultimately did.”

Oh, no they didn’t. And that brings us full circle: to the prosecutor firings. None of the honest US Attorneys found a single “fraudulent voter” in the hundreds of thousands that were challenged as a result of ‘caging.’

See, what Griffin's caging crew "found" was that they prevented registered voters -- targting black populations -- from voting, which does not mean those votes wouldn't have been valid. None of those who didn't vote, or whose vote is among more than 100,000 in Ohio alone still sitting uncounted from the '04 presidential election, has been proved to be an illegal vote, which is what "voter fraud" would be. Indeed, the New York Times has reported that despite the DOJ's 2002 attorney training specifically to nail "voter fraud," virtually no voter fraud was found, try as they might.

Griffin's activities described in his own emails should have him now sitting charged with federal felonies, but instead he's sitting as Arkansas' top federal law enforcement official. This is just nuts, and evidence neither party in Washington is representing "we the people." If corporate sugar daddies could be denied a vote, we'd see fists up.

Flashback to our post on New Jersey "voter fraud."

Curious that New Jersey U.S. Attorney Chris Christie was on the firing list from January to November 2006. In September 2005, then-candidate Assemblywoman Jennifer Beck did Rove's dirty work crying Democratic foul on the enigmatic "voter fraud" claim. It's no wonder Christie was put on the firing list in January 2006. It's not really hard to speculate what got him off the list in November, either, with that political ploy in what appears -- at least until he comes up with an indictment and conviction in this now stale case -- to be abuse of his power to undermine now-Sen. Bob Menendez's campaign.
It all seems so strategic, doesn't it?

Think about it: If Christie's "Menendez under federal investigation" stunt had worked, Republicans would have the majority in the Senate today and would control every piece of legislation in committee. This wouldn't be investigated in a Sen. Arlen Specter's Senate Judiciary Committee.

Extra credit: Are they going to steal the '08 election? They already did, Palast says.

Who's holding the cards now?

Who can forget ex-Chief of Staff Andrew Card whispering in his boss' ear at 9:05 a.m. Sept. 11, 2001, what he later told the New York Times was, "A second plane hit the other tower, and America's under attack."
George Bush sat with his usual smirk, listening to third graders read "The Pet Goat" and chatting with them 10 or 15 minutes more. Card let Bush enjoy himself, not even curious who was attacking America. Any other dimwit might think it a good idea to get America's bull's eye away from the kids, but not Card.

So, when University of Massachusetts faculty and grads protested an honorary degree for Card at commencement yesterday, maybe they were forgetting Card is a historic figure -- either the most incompetent chief of staff in U.S. history or one who helped stage the biggest false-flag attack in world history.

Maybe "28 percent" Bush will find a similar reception when New Jersey Republicans welcome him at 3:45 p.m. Wednesday at the Exposition Center in Edison. His own party seems reluctant to come. Most Monmouth County Republicans aren't willing to say if they're going, although Assemblywoman Jennifer Beck says "no thanks" to the invite. Yesterday, most of Ocean County's GOP said they, too, won't be going. Perhaps they suspect another chorus of boos and catcalls there.

Worse than McCarthy (that's, McCarTHY)

This opinion piece at TomPaine.com on Bush's bird-poop press conference Thursday so hits the nail on the head, we're sharing it in full with hat tip to author Rick Perlstein:

Who Are 'These People'?

President Bush today: "These people attacked us before we were even in Iraq!"

Can we have a little frankness, please?

The President of the United States is a racist. Or at the very least, an anti-Muslim bigot.

In Iraq, Shi'ites and Sunni are fighting each other to the death. Under what possible logic can they be joined by a common identity?

There is no "these people" except in their common Middle East-ness.

Iran and Iraq fought a decade-long war - Shia against Sunni. They are, to our president, "these people." "They" attacked us. "They" continue to attack us. Iran, Iraq: all the same.

The people who attacked us on September 11 were from a group called "al Qaeda." According to U.S. intelligence, Iraq was one of the few countries in the Middle East where Al Qaeda did not have a beachhead.

In the 1960s, to much of the public, China and Russia were equally "these people." Even as those countries were on the verge of nuclear war with one another. Bad people stoked the equivilance of the two even after they knew better. They did it to keep a monstrous war going, as the American people began to know better.

It's much worse now. Who are "these people," Mr. President? Why are you worse than McCarthy?

How they voted

The roll call on the Iraq funding vote yesterday in the House:

Vote No. 424 (the first roll call) included funds for Katrina relief, children's health insurance subsidies, an increase in the minimum wage, and other spending items. Vote 425 (the second one) included funds for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, among other things. In the Senate, they were rolled together into one bill, which both of NJ's senators voted for. ...

Andrews, D-Haddon Heights Y Y
Ferguson, R-Westfield Y Y
Frelinghuysen, R-Harding N Y
Garrett, R-Wantage N Y
Holt, R-Pennington Y N
LoBiondo, R-Millville Y Y
Pallone, D-Long Branch Y N
Pascrell, D-Paterson Y N
Payne, D-Newark Y N
Rothman, D-Fair Lawn Y N
Saxton, R-Mount Holly Y Y
Sires, D-West New York Y N
Smith, R-Robbinsville Y Y

What some of them said is here.

Rep. Rob Andrews, D-Haddon Heights: "There are two ways to end our involvement in Iraq's civil war. The first is to elect a new President who will accomplish this goal. The second is to achieve a veto-proof majority for a withdrawal plan during this President's term.

Try a third way. Don't give any more of our damn money to the military-industrial complex.

I still (heart) Paul McCartney

What goes around comes around

I call it good aim:

ABC's Ann Compton reports: An outdoor news conference in perfect spring weather, with birds chirping loudly in the magnolia trees, is not without its hazards.

As President Bush took a question Thursday in the White House Rose Garden about scandals involving his Attorney General, he remarked, "I've got confidence in Al Gonzales doin' the job."

Simultaneously, a sparrow flew overhead and left a splash on the President's sleeve, which Bush tried several times to wipe off.

That's one smart bird! Bush also was boasting about winning all his new war funding, no strings attached, and said yesterday it would be a bloody summer for our soldiers (hear: hee, hee, hee, I'm the commander guy). The sadist seems to thirst for that blood.

Listening to him makes my skin crawl, so I'm not going to post the video. But what fool wipes bird poop off his left arm with his right hand and then grabs the presidential podium, aka Bush's bully pulpit? Where's his sidekick with a wipe?

Extra-credit reading:

... (T)he Sermon on the Mount, in the Book of Matthew, ... says if you want to know God's design when it comes to the question of empires, study the sparrows.

Then, lo and behold, a sparrow empties our bowels upon our emperor.

Missing the lead, or Holy Powerline, Batman!

The sneaky Bush administration performed swift and subtle "public hearings" on its plan to have the Department of Energy seize any property in New Jersey it wants -- no state or local permission needed -- for its National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors.

The East Coast plan includes a line that would send electricity from West Virginia coal mines to the Philly/New Jersey/Delaware region. More dead miners, so builders can put up more developments -- just what New Jersey needs! Didn't climate experts just tell us that area could start going underwater by, what, 2020?

But it may have set its sights on Oyster Creek nuclear power plant and other nuclear generators, too.

A company called Energetics and the DOE, before the public was told, held workshops for sparkly-eyed contractors looking at this new treasure trove of our tax money. It reminds me of the scene in the documentary, "Fahrenheit 911," in which military contractors are told how to make a bundle on the impending Iraq invasion.

Energetics' parent is VSE Corp., an old Navy defense contractor, a public company that's splitting its stock 2-to-1 on June 11.

VSE subsidiary Energetics Incorporated reported that it was awarded a new contract for engineering, technical, and management support services for the Department of Energy’s Office of Advanced Nuclear Research Office (NE-20). This four-year, task-order contract offers an opportunity for Energetics to provide engineering, technical, and management services to NE-20 for nuclear research and development programs. Energetics anticipates that work ordered under the contract could exceed $2 million.

VSE fits a pattern of many of the big opportunists, like Halliburton and Parsons, on the verge of bankruptcy when Bush took (and I mean "took") office. In 2001, VSE listed:

DESCRIPTION: VSE provides engineering services to government agencies and support for other government contractors, primarily in the areas of defense, postal services and information technology. Its largest business unit, BAV, is a joint venture with consulting giant Booz Allen & Hamilton Inc. that helps foreign governments buy surplus U.S. Navy vessels.

DEVELOPMENTS: Last year was rough for VSE, whose profit fell 37 percent ... VSE lost a major U.S. Postal Service contract in January and had to cut 100 employees. The company has taken several steps to try to turn things around. It replaced its president and chief operating officer last fall with Jim Todd from American Management Systems Inc. It named Computer Data Systems Inc. co-founder Cliff Kendall to the board of directors.

CEO Don Ervine announced a month before the U.S. invaded Iraq that he was shutting down its telecommunications unit immediately to focus on "traditional business," presumably the divisions that have been generously fueling the company ever since with federal Defense and Energy contracts.

BTW, I think the Postal Service was used by Bush I criminals in the '80s to launder the money for smuggling illegal arms to Iran (Iran?!) by smuggling cocaine out of Nicaragua. Many of those convicted then, including Elliot Abrams, are back in the saddle at the Bush II White House ranch.

How much of our money will VSE and its Energetics get for helping the White House use eminent domain to take, with no recourse (that's the key), unlimited New Jersey property?

Extra-credit reading: Some insightful members of Congress are trying to switch from old energy-hungry infrastructure to promoting green-collar jobs.

Asking the wrong question

U.S. Attorney Chris Christie keeps saying Alberto Gonzales never asked him to do anything partisan, but why aren't the journalists asking the obvious folo question: Did he talk with anyone else in DoJ or the White House, like, say, Monica Goodling, who at 33 had experience only at the RNC with her degree from Pat Robertson's Tier 4 law school before becoming Christie's boss. She admits attorneys were used in partisan plots.

We learned yesterday those nine attorneys weren't "fired," according to Goodling. They were just part of the DoJ's "attorney replacement program." Dontcha just love newspeak?

Why aren't reporters interested in this story, and, moreover, why does MSM seem to need to continue to go out of their way to deceive readers about the fact Christie was on the firing list from January to November 2006, not just put on and off it in November?

Don't miss the post on yesterday's testimony at Bradblog.

Gonzogate, the next generation

While Senate minority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., wastes his bluster threatening games to stop a nonbinding no-confidence resolution on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, filmmaker Robert Greenwald and Democracy for America have launched a video website, ImpeachGonzales.org, to keep us up to date on the inevitable impeachment process to come.

Gay equality: the new civil rights fight

This is very disappointing:

...(T)he New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services announced that 852 couples have gotten civil-unioned in New Jersey in the first ninety days of the civil unions law. During the same 90 days, Garden State Equality received 102 complaints of a civil union not being recognized by an employer or insurer in New Jersey. Today, in fact, Garden State Equality received its 103rd complaint. The failure rate is nearly 1 in 8, or 12 percent.

Asked Steven Goldstein, chair of Garden State Equality: "What society would ever tolerate a law that fails 12 percent of the time? If New Jersey's civil unions law were a person, it would be arrested for committing fraud."

I hope the state public advocate, Ronald Chen, wastes no time in suing the employers and insurance companies for those 88 percent. I would imagine there are more than a few common offenders among them.

Paying the piper

Have friends who say, "I don't believe in global warming"? Frustrating, isn't it?

New Scientist gives sources for each of the main points. Use it if you see a window of hope to help people understand how human behavior is helping what would be a cycle that takes millions of years -- plenty of time for evolutionary adaptations -- spiral out of control within the next couple of generations.

One island already has been permanently inundated, gone, and 10,000 people left homeless. Not New Orleans. This island is off India. And it's just the tip of the iceberg, no melting pun intended.

Chris Christie's spin

What will it take to get U.S. Attorney Chris Christie's groupies off Cloud 9?

Christie has been pretty adroit in spinning the media throughout Gonzogate, but now I've seen everything. He has Newark Star-Ledger columnist Tom Morantwisting the latest news so illogically in favor of Christie that it makes me wonder if Moran isn't on Christie's exploratory campaign '08 staff. Moran's awe-shucks piece Friday on Thursday's Washington Post scoop concludes it should prove saintliness that Christie was on the Jan. 1, 2006, list to be fired. He glosses right over the fact that Christie made the partisan grade to be removed from the chopping block in November, after an U.S. Senate campaign in which it's looking as if Christie started a nonsense investigation to swing subpeonas that would include remote landlord records in now Sen. Robert Menendez' office:

As for Christie, he was never given an explanation for any of this, even when he pressed Elston, the man who put his name on the list.

But given what we now know about the breathtaking incompetence of Gonzales and his senior staff, no reasonable person can hold this against Christie. If this crew didn't like him, that's probably a good sign.

Has Moran paid no attention to the fact that virtually every known Christie political investigation since January 2006 has been a Democrat? Did he notice Christie waited until after the statute of limitations ran out to open his Christmas tree investigation on pork barreling that some of us remember the Republicans abusing for a decade, too?

Where are the journalists who scrutinize the powerful, free of fear or favor?

We all want someone to rescue New Jersey politics from rampant corruption. But I'll be blunt: Christie isn't that savior.

If he continues to be left unchecked, we are in serious danger of creating a supermonster of corruption in a few years within the N.J. Republican Party. Christie is taking down the Democrats while letting the corrupt Republicans off the hook and covering their stink with cologne.

Could it be the reason an unusually large number of Republicans are not running for re-election is to take eyes off their corrupt histories? At the same time Christie is prosecuting almost exclusively Democrats, he's stumping for Republicans by giving his "corruption-buster" seal of approval by officiating Republican swearing-ins and speaking to Republican groups about the importance of "voting out the crooks." His mouth says he's not singling out Democrats, but his deeds say the opposite.

And consider another overlooked tidbit in this report: Michael Elston. Christie only now, mid-May, admits Elston called him two months ago about his being on this list, even though Christie has denied knowing anything about the list during that time. Not exactly honest for an adored "corruption buster."

But, who is Elston and what is Christie's true relationship to him, I wonder. Christie implies he's a pal, but then again, isn't Elston now the last man standing behind Attorney General Alberto Gonzales? He put the names on the list after talking to people, so there will be more to this story on Christie when we find out who were those people who said Christie was not being a good partisan boy before January 2006.

WaPo reported:

"We don't know how he got on and off that list," said Michael Drewniak, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney, reiterating Christie's point to the Post. "It's a complete mystery to us. ...We're clueless as to why he was chosen. This U.S. Attorney's Office has always received the highest marks."

And I'd like to sell you a bridge in Brooklyn.

Welcome back, Whitman

Now, our other Christie is in the news. Ex-Gov. Christie Whitman cried uncle to Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., and agreed to testify about her time as George Bush's first EPA administrator. I'm glad she had the sense to tell Bush to take his job and shove it, but I wish she had kept the job and still shoved it to him. Successors at the Environmental Protection Agency have been bigger disasters.

911blogger.com has a post on how Whitman came to be persuaded to testify, with a good comment thread already started, but please come back here to comment, too.
I hope she'll be as honest as James Comey was about his time in the DoJ.

Those "right on the dial" might think about the fact that if it weren't for Whitman dutifully telling us for her royal unitary executive that it was safe to breath the air in New York City a week after 9/11, Michael Moore wouldn't have had victims for this new film, "Sicko," premiering tomorrow at Cannes Film Festival. He took rescue and cleanup workers suffering lung ailments from 9/11 to Cuba for a cure. Could it be a little shock and awe for the Bushies?

What a surprise (not)

So, the Washington Post reported New Jersey's U.S. Attorney Chris Christie was on one of the early firing lists, after all. He has said he knew nothing. I guess the timing is just coincidental that his "performance" after being on that list became more partisan and more acceptable to the Bush hacks to strike him from that list.

Hmmmmm.

Let's see, updating my timeline a bit. Those lists started in February 2005 and were discovered after eight to 10 were fired or forced to resign by December 2006.

I'm short on time now, but catch up here today with clammyc at BlueJersey.com and scroll through Blue Jersey's huntu's many diaries on Christie, including the table of Christie's political corruption cases that show he virtually stopped looking at Republicans as of January 2006.

A little peer pressure

Ouch! Gonzo's Harvard Law School Class of '82 has called him out in a personal letter to him that they also published as a full-page ad in the New York Times on Tuesday, I guess just in case his staff -- if there are any who haven't resigned -- tries to shield him for reality the way he shields his boss from it.

So it has been with dismay that we have watched your cavalier handling of our freedoms time and again. When it has been important that legal boundaries hold unbridled government power in check, you have instead used pretextual rationales and strained readings to justify an ever-expanding executive authority. Witness your White House memos sweeping aside the Geneva Conventions to justify torture, endangering our own servicemen and women; witness your advice to the President effectively reading Habeas Corpus out of our constitutional protections; witness your support of presidential statements claiming inherent power to wiretap American citizens without warrants (and the Administration’s stepped-up wiretapping campaign, taking advantage of those statements, which continues on your watch to this day); and witness your dismissive explanation of the troubling firings of numerous U.S. Attorneys, and their replacement with others more "loyal" to the President’s politics, as merely "an overblown personnel matter." In these and other actions, we see a pattern. As a recent editorial put it, your approach has come to symbolize "disdain for the separation of powers, civil liberties and the rule of law."

As lawyers, and as a matter of principle, we can no longer be silent about this Administration's consistent disdain for the liberties we hold dear. Your failure to stand for the rule of law, particularly when faced with a President who makes the aggrandized claim of being a unitary executive, takes this country down a dangerous path.

On Our Radar thanks his former classmates now of New Jersey -- Robert Chesler of Roseland and Catherine Redlich of Ridgewood.

Next at bat? So, with Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling long resigned, and now No. 2 Paul McNulty taking a hike, who's left to prop up Gonzoles? Michael Elston, with whom Jesus' General blog has some fun. Elston's brother, Rick, is some piece of work.

P.S.: In case you wonder if I can't see Gonzo's pic is out of focus, I can. I pulled it from his official government bio Web site. Good media production, huh? If only Halliburton were in the photography business ...

Revelations about Gonzales

Former Attorney General John Ashcroft's former No. 2 man, James Comey, gave frank and shocking testimony Wednesday about how George Bush's patently illegal warrantless wiretapping "program" came about.

Step away from the popcorn!

Diacetyl. This ingredient in microwave popcorn is destroying workers' lungs.

So, what do the fumes do to us when we microwave it? What about movie theater concession workers?

The workers' unions finally have gotten the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to at least pretend to look into it. I have little hope the study will be sincere as long as the Bush administration operates it. After all, it's mostly Latino immigrants losing their lungs, which seems to be the real reason this White House wants to look the other way on immigration problems.

The federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration did test it. OSHA reports one of four rats died after a 6-hour exposure to heated vapors of artificial butter flavoring containing 285 ppm diacetyl, yet it would not establish a cause-effect relationship between diacetyl and bronchiolitis obliterans.

Lawyers haven't overlooked the problem. The liability bandwagon starts here and here.

Religion that matters

So long, Jerry Falwell. How sad your informal public eulogies focus on your racism, sexism, homophobia, greedmongering, warmongering. Enough on that now. This post is about religion.

I love what Gina-Marie Cheeseman has written about the Jesus of the Bible, not of the misogynist Moral Majority religious frauds Falwell inspired:

The Religious Right stole Jesus; the Jesus of the Gospels who fed the five thousand, treated women with respect, and subverted the religious and political structures of his day. They have taken the Jesus who was a political radical and executed for his radical politics, replacing him with a smiling, weak, and money-loving Jesus.

They stripped Jesus of his politics. They have made the politics of Jesus all about taking away the rights of women. They have made Jesus into something he was not, someone he would despise.

They stole Jesus, but I am taking him back from their sexist theology. I am claiming the Jesus that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote about; the Jesus who talked to a Samaritan woman, healed women, and hung out with people society tossed away. I am taking back the real Jesus and casting aside their Jesus. I do not need that one any longer. ...

Turtle soup, anyone?

Did you ever see a turtle with a cat fetish? Dayum!

Dix Six: Is "stupid" a crime?

I keep hearing people refer to the six men charged with cooking up a lame scheme for "jihad" at Fort Dix as "terrorists." Yet, none is convicted, let alone even charged, with committing acts of terrorism.

Fact is, these men didn't actually do anything but talk, and I for one didn't feel terrorized until caped crusader U.S. Attorney Chris Christie made hay announcing indictments based on the FBI investigation.

Now, it looks like there could be a snag in the prosecutor's plan. The smartest of the wannabe jihadists, the seeming idea man, was an FBI informant. I can't see how entrapment wouldn't be an issue here, except that media hysteria feeds good old American bigotry. The worst of the alleged suspicious behavior seems to have come from the FBI informant. And, curious:

Also, one of the men, Tatar, called a Philadelphia police officer in November, saying that he had been approached by someone who was pressuring him to obtain a map of Fort Dix, and that he feared the incident was terrorist-related, according to court documents.

The fact they were arrested on conspiracy charges while "on their way" to buy assault weapons from an FBI operative who offered them reminds me of the Tom Cruise movie, "Minority Report," where future America imprisoned people for what psychics saw them doing in the future.

The story looks more and more like one of those illusions that's either a chalise or two faces, depending on how long you stare at it. Still, this Christie quote in the Asbury Park Press follow story made me ponder:

The investigation into a potential attack at Fort Dix began more than a year ago when an unidentified clerk at a Circuit City electronics store tipped off authorities to a video showing 10 men shooting weapons at a firing range and calling for jihad, prosecutors said. ...

While Christie credited the tip for spurring the investigation, he said Wednesday that it seemed unremarkable at the time.

"There was nothing different about it," (seriously?) he said. "We didn't know if there was a case here or not. Did a light bulb go off over my head when I saw this? No."

Then, what would it take to make a light bulb go off over Christie's head, I wonder, if not 10 New Jersey residents shouting "jihad" while shooting guns, as is his scary story today on this? If the terror threat story is true, then it would seem also true it was bloody hard last year to divert Christie's focus from politics to risks his constituents would be killed. Last year, Christie's boss Alberto Gonzales and the White House were firing his colleagues who refused to play partisan games with our U.S. Justice offices.

Christie now claims these men are oh-so dangerous, yet it took more than a year for Christie's "light bulb" to go off. Wuh? Was he too busy plotting his own future political candidacy by creating his version of "imminent threat" hysteria on white-collar political corruptions? And what about the other four men playing jihadist with paint guns in the tape? I don't assume the two informants are upstanding citizens -- the FBI usually taps them because they need absolution from some other crime -- but that still leaves two others unarrested. Are we not supposed to wonder who they are?

This just in: Cannonfire blog expresses similar suspicion and adds, "... maybe the Dix six were hauled in precisely because they lacked the testicles to play their assigned roles. Consider: These guys could have been dragged off at any time. They were working illegally. They drove without licenses, and they received citations frequently during the "planning" period. I couldn't get away with that kind of behavior and neither could you, but these guys had a stay-out-of-jail card."

That is odd that none of the local authorities who presumably (typically) are not in on a federal sting but who knew of immigration and DMV violations for perhaps years didn't raise the red "terror" flag. The rest is a bit of "conspiracy theory," yes, but I do stop to wonder for a minute, what if? Christie doesn't head the FBI, nor anymore does his boss, still for the time being the embattled Gonzales. Robert Mueller is head of the FBI, which as of 2004 answers to and is directed by the White House through the Director of National Intelligence, not the Attorney General. Details in comments) I'm not saying I think this is the case -- in fact, I doubt it -- but what if it was a setup of some type to create some violence on the homefront to make us fear Muslims? It's not as if plots (bay of pigs) haven't been hatched by renegade intel before. Would Christie necessarily be in on such a plan under the new accountability structure?

It's sad to say, but haven't we learned we can't believe anything that comes out of this White House? The boy cried wolf one too many times.

Help me here, please. There was a similar "Muslim terrorist" scare about six months ago, somewhere I can't remember, that within days looked more like the would-be "terrorists" actions were just misinterpretted acts of stupidity. Anyone remember this story?

Thanks, Blue Jersey's huntsu.

There's the repeated political use of terror alerts which suspiciously stopped right after the 2004 election.

There's the "home grown" Florida terrorists who the government claimed wanted to destroy the Sears Tower in Chicago but had no plan, no weapons and the only contact they had with al Qaeda was with the FBI informants.

I wonder what money and perks the FBI paid the two Dix informants.

MoJo Blog adds Lackawanna Six, John Walker Lindh and Jose Padilla to the list of FBI and DoJ screwups.

Can you hear me now, Mr. Christie?

Waking the beast? We can hope. Finally a mainstream newspaper chain has picked up the real voter fraud story that has long been reported in investigative blogs but was swept under a rug by Big Media, perhaps because the Goebbelsean spin machine told dutiful Big Media reporters to look the other way. Most of this was old news:

Accusations about voter fraud seemed to fly from every direction in Missouri before last fall's elections. State and national Republicans leaders fretted that dead people might vote or that some live people might vote more than once.

The threat to the integrity of the election was seen as so grave that Bradley Schlozman, the acting chief of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division and later the U.S. attorney in Kansas City, twice wielded the power of the federal government to try to protect the balloting. The Republican-controlled Missouri General Assembly also stepped into action.

Now, six months after freshman Missouri Sen. Jim Talent's defeat handed Democrats control of the U.S. Senate, disclosures in the wake of the firings of eight U.S. attorneys show that that Republican campaign to protect the balloting was not as it appeared. No significant voter fraud was ever proved.

The preoccupation with ballot fraud in Missouri was part of a wider national effort that critics charge was aimed at protecting the Republican majority in Congress by dampening Democratic turnout. That effort included stiffer voter-identification requirements, wholesale purges of names from lists of registered voters and tight policing of liberal get-out-the-vote drives.

Bush administration officials deny those claims. But they've gotten traction in recent weeks because three of the U.S. attorneys ousted by the Justice Department charge that they lost their jobs because they failed to prove Republican allegations of voter fraud. They say their inquiries found little evidence to support the claims.

So, where are those indictments resulting from the "Bob Menendez under investigation" leak from New Jersey U.S. Attorney Chris Christie's office in September 2006 as the Democrat was running a close and ultimately successful U.S. Senate campaign against Christie's party favorite Thomas Kean Jr.?

Mr. Christie, did your call get "dropped" on that "investigation"? After eight months without indictment, let alone conviction, can you blame us for thinking your wild election-time subpoena was a partisan ploy?