Do progressive bloggers have the power to force the Democrats to finally hold the President accountable for his actions?

In a move that will up the pressure on Hillary and Barack Obama to stand firm against the Senate telecom immunity FISA bill, MoveOn and a dozen top progressive blogs will launch an all-out campaign tomorrow to pressure the two Senators into publicly declaring their support for Chris Dodd's threat to place a hold on and filibuster the bill, Election Central has learned.

MoveOn spokesman Adam Green tells me that the group will send out an email to "thousands" of its members tomorrow morning, and thousands more throughout the day, asking them to call the offices of Hillary and Obama and demand that they publicly affirm their support for Dodd.

"We'll be asking Obama and Clinton to publicly get Chris Dodd's back and say in a statement that they will explicitly support his hold and filibuster," Green tells me. "Pretty much this is the exact same ask made to Joe Biden in a Washington Post chat. The question was, Will you join Chris Dodd? He said Yes."

If Hillary and Obama don't comply, Green added, "it would send an unfortunate signal to Democratic voters about whether they're willing to stand up to George Bush. The idea is to get Democrats to stand on principle and exercise the powers of their office to stop Bush from covering up how far he went in illegally spying on the private emails and phone calls of innocent Americans."

Well I am going to lend my support to this cause, as insignificant as it may be.

I applaud my fellow progressives for rising up and demanding that the Democrats start doing their damn jobs! It is beyond frustrating to read day after day the accounts of this administration continuing to push through policies designed to increase our commitment in Iraq and steal our freedoms here at home.

We placed all of our hopes on the Democrats in the mistaken belief that they understood our anger and frustration and would act on our behalf. That has not happened.

Go ahead, tell me again that the Bush administration knew nothing about a possible terrorist attack before 9-11. Or worse.

The phone company Qwest Communications refused a proposal from the National Security Agency that the company’s lawyers considered illegal in February 2001, nearly seven months before the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, the former head of the company contends in newly unsealed court filings.

The executive, Joseph P. Nacchio, also asserts in the filings that the agency retaliated by depriving Qwest of lucrative outsourcing contracts.

The filings were made as Mr. Nacchio fought charges of insider trading. He was ultimately convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading and has been sentenced to six years in prison. He remains free while appealing the conviction.

Mr. Nacchio said last year that he had refused an N.S.A. request for customers’ call records in late 2001, after the Sept. 11 attacks, as the agency initiated domestic surveillance and data mining programs to monitor Al Qaeda communications.

But the documents unsealed Wednesday in federal court in Denver, first reported in The Rocky Mountain News on Thursday, claim for the first time that pressure on the company to participate in activities it saw as improper came as early as February, nearly seven months before the terrorist attacks.

The significance of the claim is hard to assess, because the court documents are heavily redacted and N.S.A. officials will not comment on the agency’s secret surveillance programs. Other government officials have said that the agency’s eavesdropping without warrants began only after Sept. 11, 2001, under an order from President Bush.

So for what possible purpose did the Bush administration want access to personal phone records?

And after you ponder that one until your head hurts, turn to an even darker place and ask how far they would go to get what they wanted?

Now try to sleep without a nightlight or your binkie. Can't do it can you?

More evidence that Gonzales lied to the Senate.

The White House demanded in 2004 that the Justice Department approve a secret national security program without allowing the ailing attorney general, "feeble, barely articulate, clearly stressed," to discuss the matter with top advisers, according to the FBI director's personal notes.

The partially censored notes from FBI chief Robert S. Mueller, dated March 12, 2004, describe a distraught and feeble Attorney General John Ashcroft in his hospital room just moments after being visited by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and Andy Card, the president's chief of staff at the time.

Mueller's account backs up earlier descriptions of the dispute over whether to continue the program despite Justice Department concerns about its legality.
Last month, Mueller told a House committee that the clash was about the government's warrantless wiretapping; Gonzales and the White House denied that and said it was about other intelligence activities.

"Saw AG," Mueller wrote in his timed log of the events on the evening of March 10, 2004. "Janet Ashcroft in the room. AG is feeble, barely articulate, clearly stressed." Ashcroft was in the hospital with pancreatitis.

Before seeing Ashcroft, Mueller met with then-Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey at the hospital about 7:40 p.m., the notes indicate. Comey said Ashcroft told Card and Gonzales that he would not approve the classified terrorist surveillance program, which was set to expire the next day.

So remember what the rule is when hearing ANYTHING from the White House: If they are saying it, then by definition, it is a LIE! If you just keep that rule in your mind you will always know when this administration is lying to you.

I have absolutely no idea how you would be able to tell if they suddenly decided to tell the truth however. That would be a stumper.

Cheney and other White House officials subpoenaed over warrrantless wiretapping.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has served Vice President Dick Cheney and other officials in the White House and Justice Department with subpoenas over President George W. Bush's warrantless wiretapping programs.

Man this is going to be a hot summer!

I am having so much trouble keeping up with all of this news which keeps breaking at such an incredible pace.

I am doing yard work much of the day and it is time consuming and not a lot of fun for me. I would much rather be posting negative things about Bush, Cheney, the Iraq war, and the Republicans, but what is a guy to do when his yard looks like a South American jungle?