Paul Hackett, candidate for U.S. Senate for Ohio, has been an inspiration for many Iraq war vets. Hackett has inspired other vets to run for office as Democrats. Read the story here. Hackett and these other vets would bring a fresh perspective to the U.S. Senate. Check out Paul's campaign site.
READING
According to MSNBC.com, we are to believe that President Bush has become an "avid" reader. He has two books that he intends to read over his "vacation" time in Texas--- When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt After the White House (512 pages) and Imperial Grunts: The American Military On the Ground ( 448 pages). Someone should give him a quiz on each book because I doubt that he will completely read either book. It sure looks good to carry the books.
LISTENING
Raw Story has information that indicates that the National Security Agency spied on members of the U.N. Security Council. Here is an excerpt:
President Bush and other top officials in his administration used the National Security Agency to secretly wiretap the home and office telephones and monitor private email accounts of members of the United Nations Security Council in early 2003 to determine how foreign delegates would vote on a U.N. resolution that paved the way for the U.S.-led war in Iraq, NSA documents show.
Two former NSA officials familiar with the agency's campaign to spy on U.N. members say then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice authorized the plan at the request of President Bush, who wanted to know how delegates were going to vote. Rice did not immediately return a call for comment.....
Doesn't that make you feel good about your government?
The warrantless wiretaps have also opened up another can or worms. The New York Times has the following:
Defense lawyers in some of the country's biggest terrorism cases say they plan to bring legal challenges to determine whether the National Security Agency used illegal wiretaps against several dozen Muslim men tied to Al Qaeda.
The lawyers said in interviews that they wanted to learn whether the men were monitored by the agency and, if so, whether the government withheld critical information or misled judges and defense lawyers about how and why the men were singled out.
The expected legal challenges, in cases from Florida, Ohio, Oregon and Virginia, add another dimension to the growing controversy over the agency's domestic surveillance program and could jeopardize some of the Bush administration's most important courtroom victories in terror cases, legal analysts say.
The question of whether the N.S.A. program was used in criminal prosecutions and whether it improperly influenced them raises "fascinating and difficult questions," said Carl W. Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond who has studied terrorism prosecutions....
