Brown thrasher foraging, hungry mouths to feed

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 223 to 32 today to hold Harriet Miers and Josh Bolten in contempt. They were ordered to appear before Congress nearly a year ago and have not. Miers was nominated to the Supreme Court as a brushback pitch setting up Roberts, and Bolten was the chief of staff during the U.S. Attorney firings. Both are wanted to testify about their roles in firing several federal prosecutors and manufacturing allegations to cover the actual reasons for the dismissals. Bush has offered to have them testify without transcripts or oaths.

The Senate Judiciary Committee also approved contempt citations for Bolten and Rove, but the full Senate has not acted.

Florida Rep. Wexler is determined to have Cheney before him under oath in the coming year, and this is a good step in that direction.

If County Commission decides to simply appoint the high vote getter with no regard for party:

If the almost unanimous silence of people not paid to be Republicans hasn't made it clear, the party of torture, disaster and failure seems to be having a crisis of confidence. What do Republicans believe? Mike Huckabee says, "We believe in some things, we stand by those things, we live or die by those things."

If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

I hope it's not illegal to link to Brian's Blog, but look who has a crush on a Democrat! He's so cute when he's gushing.

A Carolina chickadee finds a nibble amid the lichen on a branch.

There will be a public meeting next Wednesday at Pellissippi St TCC on Hardin Valley Rd regarding the August draft environmental impact statement published by the Office of Surface Mining, and the comment period, originally to end October 23, has been extended to November 23.

This was announced October 10, and I missed the news, which means I got the date wrong in my Metro Pulse column published today and missed a chance to publicize the meeting. My regrets!

At least now you have more time to send a letter.

The recent video from Osama bin Laden was leaked to the press before al Qaeda officially released it. This alerted the terrorist organization to a breach in its security, and apparently it has fixed the problem. Whether that was done by killing someone, changing an encryption key or something else is hard to guess, but we have now lost an intelligence conduit into the organization we have spent a trillion dollars fighting.

The University of Tennessee is going to pay the UT Foundation $56 million for Knoxville Place, the massive apartment complex that takes up most of the block behind the law school.

Pakistan ought to be the model of democracy in the Islamic world, being secular and more modern than its neighbors, but a political crisis is rapidly developing there. Now Osama bin Laden, likely hiding in Pakistan's rugged, semi-autonomous, northern mountains, has called for a holy war against President Musharraf.

Knox County Commission should reject the amended stormwater ordinance on second reading and instead adopt the version endorsed by their engineering department. Here is why:

President Bush declared a national emergency last Wednesday so that he could deal with "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States." This threat is so unusual and extraordinary that, based on a Google News search, it received almost no mention in the U.S. press. An article appeared in the New York Times, and it was excerpted in a Christian Science Monitor story about Syria's role in upcoming Middle East peace talks.

The executive order declaring this emergency allows the Secretary of the Treasury to freeze the assets of anyone thought to be acting to "undermine Lebanon's legitimate and democratically elected government or democratic institutions, to contribute to the deliberate breakdown in the rule of law in Lebanon, including through politically motivated violence and intimidation, to reassert Syrian control or contribute to Syrian interference in Lebanon, or to infringe upon or undermine Lebanese sovereignty contribute to political and economic instability in that country and the region."

Run for the hills!!!

In honor of the recovering-alcoholic President and the nation that wants to have a beer with him, in search of the punch line for the shaggy-dog war that is Victory in Iraq, I jest:

Q. What is the difference between the Bush administration and a bunch of maggots liquefying a dog turd?

Dennis Kucinich introduced articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney today:

"Vice President Richard B. Cheney has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as Vice President, and subversive of constitutional government, to the prejudice of the cause of law and justice and the manifest injury of the people of the United States."

Dupree stomps Saddam hysterics scurrying across the pantry floor.

That's my cousin Will climbing a hemlock on the cover of today's Sentinel. Not only has Will discovered the tallest and most voluminous hemlocks, but also several dozen other species. He has revolutionized the way trees are measured, devising a ground-based method that has proven accurate within a foot or so, vastly superior to traditional forestry methods.

He and a couple other big tree enthusiasts also devised a way to calculate wood volume, a laborious task requiring lots of measurements. It's not so bad with a hemlock since they are mostly trunk, but Will and a crew of six or seven spent two days in a live oak in South Carolina measuring its many limbs to come up with a volume estimate.

Friends of the Smokies is now funding Will's hemlock documentation project, but he got started before he had any funding and has been hunting champion trees as a weekend hobby for over a decade.

If you want to set market forces to work on reducing emissions, you have to make air pollution costly. It is costly in terms of human health, acid rain, haze, destabilized weather patterns and more, but these costs are borne by someone other than the polluter. To bring costs to bear on polluters, you must use artificial means to internalize the costs. A tax on emissions would serve that purpose.

The bureaucratic infrastructure for taxing air pollution already exists. Polluters as large as Eastman Kodak and as small as an auto-body paint shop have to estimate their emissions and receive a permit. We need to start taxing polluters based on their permitted output. Only holders of air pollution permits would be directly impacted.

Here is the beauty of this approach...

The gutless resolution passed this week and the embarassing excuse for an ethics reform bill passed by the new Congress are just the Democrats testing to be sure the training wheels are off, right? Now that they realize they have enough votes to pass legislation, the House will endeavor to explain to America how pallets of hundred-dollar bills were lost in Iraq and why soldiers were performing sexual humiliation, stress tests, physical torture, degradation and injury on prisoners in Cuba, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Instead of pursuing answers and solutions, Democrats again are fumbling about trying to do no wrong because they can't decide what is right. The resolution passed this week had to be non-binding to keep it from being unconstitutional...

At one point during this war our exit strategy was 'Iraq will ask us to leave as soon as they are ready for us to leave.'

Iraqi leaders say the recent arrest of several Iranian diplomats by Americans violates sovereignty. It sounds like they might be ready for us to leave. Until Iraq's parliament votes for U.S. troop withdrawal, they can not claim to be sovereign.

I'm sure we have just cause for detaining the Iranians. Between Iranian espionage and all the missing money, oil and materials in Iraq, there's plenty of just cause to choose from.

If Congress wants to do something constructive toward bringing troops home, it should ask Iraq to hold a vote on whether we should leave. If they vote yes, we can leave. If they vote no, our continued presence is validated and they will have gotten a taste of that freedom America is famous for.

The Wall Street Journal ran an interesting article on earmarks on Dec. 26. It's interesting partially for what it says about earmarks and partially for what it says about the WSJ.

More...

If you were paying attention to the world this week, you probably heard that a trusted aide and translator for the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan was arrested on espionage charges. Also, in the past day or two, British and American soldiers in Iraq raided houses thought to be important centers for Shia insurgents, only to wind up holding Iranian diplomats as captives. These diplomats were invited to Iraq by Jalal Talibani, who sat with President Bush in the White House earlier this month...

Rolling Rock has a new ad wherein a spokesperson at a desk gives a wooden apology for a previous ad in which a guy in an ape suit parachutes into a pool party. He holds up a chart showing apes winning out by a distinct margin over dogs, rats and otters as "animal most associated with a pool party." The previous ad is real; the reaction for which they are apologizing is invented.

...to the wrong person. Beck told newly elected Congressman Keith Ellison he wanted him to "prove to me that you are not working with our enemies" because Ellison is a Muslim. Beck felt really bad about being so suspicious.

Maybe the reason Beck couldn't discard the question is because it's an important question. If only Republicans had the sense to ask it of people who actually do things that help our enemies. For example, it would be a great demand to make of the people who punched a hole in our intelligence firewall for Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress buddies. That hole would be the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, created from whole cloth during the lead-up to the invasion, inserted into the intelligence hierarchy above any vetting or oversight, then quietly disbanded after Chalabi's coziness with Iran was discovered.

When will the person responsible for sharing critical state secrets with Chalabi be asked to prove he is not working with our enemies? 

Someone told me Pilot Light had no cover on election night if you voted, but charged $20 if not. I suspect they used the honor system, but I was wondering how you could prove you voted. We don't purple our fingers in America.

It occured to me that I had tossed my voting receipt in a trash can on my way out of the polling place. Those tiny slips with the 4-digit code and a timestamp work as a receipt.

So here is my question: is it possible for the eSlate system to spit out a list of all the timestamped access codes for which it stored a ballot? If so, the list could be posted on the walls of the polling place or on the Internet or at the courthouse or all three. Voters could verify that their receipt is on the list and know their vote was counted.

It wasn't walking on water, but Charlie Crist walked on George W. Bush's face when he refused to be seen with him while running to succeed his brother as governor of Florida. It was Republicans like Crist who finally gave the overdue sign from within the party that the President is out of control. Republicans here at KnoxViews have refused to address the many substantive episodes of corruption, law breaking and negligence by the Executive Branch, essentially doing just what Crist did, giving no quarter to a lying theives. Good for them!

A big thank you to Republicans for abandoning your President. You won't regret it. A party can not survive corruption on this scale, and I'm heartened that enough of you recognized the disease and gave the House of Representatives, the chamber with the power to impeach a President, to the Democrats.

And you gave up your Katherine Harris habit! I'm so happy for you guys. 

It was once obvious to Americans that someone being snuck into the White House under false pretenses was a cause for concern, a red flag indicating a security breach or hidden interests at play. A pretend reporter in the White House press corps was the kind of thing that required an explanation and perhaps a change in policy or personnel.

When it also turns out the bogus reporter is a gay prostitute who was not just participating in press briefings, but also routinely visiting the White House itself, the red flag becomes a flashing warning light. In the No-Account Era of Bushco, however, such warnings just alert the faithful to grab their shovels and head to the barn. When it became known that Jeff Gannon of Talon News Service was actually James Guckert, a former serviceman with a web page advertising the dimensions of his penis and his rates for nightly or weekend-long escort services, parroting administration spin for a "news service" that was merey a website funded by one of Bush's Texas fundraisers, the Bullshit Brigade switched into denial overdrive.

Willing dupes like Les Jones turned into helpful tour guides, "Nothing to see here, folks. Move along." They talked incessantly about day passes and how unregulated they are, but they refused to talk about any of the facts that made this case unique. None of the dupes wanted to touch the eight-inch, uncut penis. Now Ted Haggard, a trusted Republican spiritual advisor with White House access, has resigned after his hired gay lover outed him as hypocrite, and campaign records have shown the RNC taking big donations from a gay-porn producer whose catalog includes many films starring former servicemen.

Is it all a coincidence, or were Haggard and Guckert working on a five-part box set of a gay-sex-themed "West Wing" ripoff filmed on location?

What bothers me about the Gannon affair is not the gayness or the sex or the hypocrisy. What bothers me is I feel like I'm living in a world that has gone batshit insane. How can a clumsy, inconsequential remark by John Kerry spark a media frenzy during of time when truly important news is in steady supply? Haggard's career has just been ruined by his gay lover. How do we know that Guckert is not blackmailing someone far more important and powerful with the threat of exposing whoever it was in the White House that was sneaking him in?

If Republican leaders want to be lying hypocrites, fine. What I really want to know is what the hell is wrong with rank-and-file Republicans and the mainstream press? Is there no level of truth and decency for which they are willing to take a stand? Must our nation rewrite every law the President violates? Must we willingly go along with every rewriting of history and repackaging of current events that spins out of the mouthpieces? Has my country gone insane?

The last day to submit comments on TVA's draft Land Use Policy is Friday. The draft policy includes a fairly strong commitment to keeping TVA land in public ownership except in "rare instances where the benefits to the public will be so significant that...transferring lands...is justifed."

Look it over and let them know what you think. Instructions for submitting comments are at the linked page. Also, feel free to register your thoughts and suggestions as comments to this thread. 

Congressman Duncan is against building a road through the national park connecting Bryson City to Fontana Dam. Comments have been collected on the project and surveys done, and a prefered alternative is expected soon.

Most of the impacted creeks are exceptionally clean and support a rich aquatic ecosystem. Floral diversity includes primitive forms like mosses, mushrooms and liverworts and many varieties of trees, shrubs, wildflowers and vines. High densities of aquatic insect larvae form the basis of a fauna that includes crayfish, darters, madtoms, brook trout, salamanders, dragonflies, sandpipers, otters and raccoons.

Plus, the construction estimates now surpass $600 million, and the $52 million settlement gets gradually less valuable as time passes. Swain County voted to accept the settlement in 2003, but Congressman Taylor allocated $16 million in 2001, from which an environmental impact statement has been drafted. 

Today several county officials took the oath of office and affirmed before God, state and country their disregard for the citizens and voters of Knox County. From this day forward, until the efforts to dismantle and undermine the referenda that established charter government and term limits are either given the blessing of the Tennessee Supreme Court or rejected by it and a remedy devised, Knox County is a bastard.

Here is a list of 11 ways the incompetence of the George W. Bush administration has exceeded what would be expected from normal human error:

1. An administration official told Ahmed Chalabi we had decrypted Iran's communications and could eavesdrop on their conversations. At the time, Chalabi was in frequent negotiations with Iran as a member of the Iraqi Provisional Government. Chalabi told Iran. We can't eavesdrop on Iranian communications anymore.
2. Arbitrary imprisonment of suspected terrorists without trial or charges or even acknowledgement that we were holding them was a gross human rights violation unjustified by the circumstances. This is not a dispute of their arrest or capture, but of how they were handled once detained. Such behavior is inexcusable for a nation respected as a moral leader.
3. The Republican Congress under Clinton fought hard for privatization of military functions, arguing competition for contracts would yield efficiency and cost savings. They suceeded in privatizing the military. One of the first acts of Bush's tenure was to have the Army sign a ten-year exclusivity deal with Kellogg, Brown & Root, eliminating competition.