I haven’t blogged for a while due to a massive amount of work, but I expect to blog more now that I’m caught up.
It seems like the white house is now in a quite a serious bind. President Bush has once again cited executive privilege and refuse to turn over documents subpoenaed by Congress. This time though, the head of the senate Judiciary Commitee, Senator Patrick Leahy, has suggested that he is willing to press criminal contempt charges against Bush.
Incidentally, there is also a bill floating around Congress to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney. Why this bill has gotten absolutely no media coverage is beyond me.
Blacked Out by the Corporate Media, Impeachment Advances
by Dave Lindorff | Jul 1 2007 – 9:55amThe corporate media are disgracing themselves even further, if that is possible, on the impeachment story.
On Thursday, three more members of Congress signed on to Rep. Dennis Kucinich’s bill to impeach Vice President Dick Cheney (H Res 333), bringing the total number of co-sponsors of the bill to 10. That in itself would be national news, but there is more to it than simple numbers. The new sponsors include two freshman, Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, who ran for office calling for impeachment, and Hank Johnson, who took over the seat of pro-impeachment Rep. Cynthia McKinney (McKinney filed her own bill of impeachment against President Bush in the waning days of the last Congress), but the group also includes Rep. Jim McDermott (D-WA).
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The White House is practically an insane asylum at this point, the better question is why hasn’t everyone been impeached yet. Apparently in Japan, the public is so outraged with a pension scandal that the prime minister was forced to give up his bonus and take responsibility for the blunder. If only we in the US could hold our own government to such high standards.
Japan PM Abe’s support rate stuck near danger zone
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Abe, who faces his first major electoral test in a July 29 upper house poll, is trying to soothe voter outrage over mismanaged pension records, but the Nikkei said its survey showed he has failed to do so.
Disapproval of Abe’s cabinet stood at 52 percent, up 8 points from May, according to the telephone survey conducted from Friday to Sunday among 898 voters, the Nikkei said.
The government has come under fire after revelations that no proper record was kept of millions of pension premium payments, meaning some retirees could be short-changed.
Abe will return 2.34 million yen ($18,890) of his summer bonus of 5.36 million yen to take responsibility for the pensions issue, chief cabinet secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki told a news conference.
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Now, for a random but interesting graph:
