"Bush as Don Corleone"

By: Lowell
Published On: 5/21/2007 9:34:25 AM

Our friend Mark Levine over at INSIDE SCOOP has, well, a SCOOP! :) Check this out:

On Mark Levine's INSIDE SCOOP on Washington, Mark exposes Thursday's shocking testimony of James Comey, the Deputy Attorney General of the United States (No. 2 under Ashcroft) who explained to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2004 how Bush sent Alberto Gonzales to trick the severely ill Ashcroft into signing a blatantly illegal order to spy on millions of Americans and how Ashcroft, weak from his surgery, still strongly refused. Comey's testimony has been WIPED from C-SPAN but is preserved here unedited with Mark's powerful commentary. Reality is more powerful than fiction.

Check it out here.

P.S.  By the way, Mark Levine is a constitutional lawyer, Magna Cum Laude out of Harvard and Yale, and definitely no "conspiracy theorist."  In other words, he's very serious when he makes these serious charges.

Comments



A terrible tale of poor judgement and lack of ethical grounding. (john4_SamRasoul_2008 - 5/21/2007 1:01:25 PM)
I saw most of the testimony of Mr. James Comey, now the the former Deputy Attorney-General of the United States, when it was broadcast last week.  He tells a story that is a terrible commentary on the poor judgement, and lack of compassion, not to mention lack of ethical grounding, of Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales.

As others have pointed out, a proposed motion picture, which included this tale, you would have been rejected, like so: "Look, terrible stuff goes on in Washington -- true.  But nobody would try something this dumb, which would look this bad when it got out.  And worse, this Ashcroft guy is one of their team. No. Try this, ... then, bring it back. Capice?"

In Virginia, we have a prospective Democratic Candidate for the 6th Congressional District, named Sam Rasoul < http://www.sam2008.c... >, who appreciates how harmful this sort of stunt is for our republic. Sam is all for appropriate Congressional oversight, and will work to create a more honest, stable, and law abiding climate in Washington, D. C.



The Gun: It Smokes (hereinva - 5/21/2007 1:20:57 PM)
Are folks waking up to the fact that the highest office is capable of undermining-ignoring the rule of law ?

Seems Bush is confused on the clarity of Mr. Comey's testimony-when questioned by Kelly O'Donnell:

[http://www.crooksand...]

O'Donnell: "There's been some very dramatic testimony before the Senate this week from one of your former top justice department officials, who describes a scene that some Senators called stunning about a time when the warrantless wiretap program was being reviewed. Sir, did you send your then chief of staff and White House counsel to the bedside of John Ashcroft, while he was ill to get him to approve os that program and do you believe that kind of conduct from White House officials is appropriate?"

Bush: "Kelly, there's a lot of speculation about what happened and what didn't happen and I'm not going to talk about it?It's a very sensitive program?"

"The Decider" The "Commander Guy", and now  "The Denier Dude"



Laura had it right (Rebecca - 5/21/2007 5:38:01 PM)
Remember Laura's comedy routine where she compared the Bush family to the Sopranos, especially Barbara Bush? George spent a lot of time with Barb as a boy. No doubt the family attitudes were passed to the next generation.


Update from Fairfax County Public Access TV (Lowell - 5/22/2007 8:28:27 AM)
After approving and then allowing our show to be up for over 14 hours, Google pulled the show and so far has refused to say why. I have requested help in finding out why and by whom we were rejected. A Sr. VP of Google whom is a friend is working on this for us. This looks like they got a complaint from someone because of the amount of time it was allowed to be up. The last time they rejected our show it was corrected later. Last time they couldn't believe that our shows were not copyrighted by a larger network and was actually the hard work of a public access station and its volunteers.

What the hell is THIS all about?!?



Public TV (Rebecca - 5/22/2007 11:11:45 AM)
Public TV has certain constraints having to do with the distribution of their material. In addition, they are not allowed to be affiliated with a political party, at least that is my understanding. Both of these may be why they asked for this to withdrawn. Based on knowing those who run the station, don't think it is any kind of censorship.

On the subject of the C-SPAN content on the hearings that could be antoher story.



Rebecca, let me correct this slightly (James Southworth - 5/22/2007 12:41:52 PM)
Cable Access Stations are actually governed by first ammendment rights.... equal access but freedom of speech... as long as the content is not slanderous, blantantly false(it could be an opinion), or pornographic etc. and since there are no sponsors to control the purse strings, almost no resrictions apply to politics... Now in the case of our station we have close to equal parity in terms of hours of conservative vs liberal vs independent vs strange etc. (we have two different shows that have stated an opinion that the Holocaust did actually happen...)

We have dozens of stations now picking up the Mark Levine Inside Scoop show which is produced at FCAC mostly because it is a progressive show, but also because it goes out of its way to show both sides of the topics where you can find two sides..... In the case of this Senate testimony if you believe the evidence and the witness, there is only one side.... there is no requirement for any of our shows to not take sides on any topic or content... Ask Jim Parmalee of "Northern Virginia GOP" or the "Conservative Round-table", or even Lyndon Larouche.... no balance on any of those....

Now there is something else going on here and we find out what it is... Mark did another show last night with Republican Mike Lane and brought the subject up again... you can see that show at http://video.google....

So far that one is still up, but 14 hours haven't elapsed and Google isn't talking about what the problem was yet...
We have 50 hours of all sorts of shows out there and they are just picking on this one production so far... something smells strange here....

Jim Southworth, President and CEO of Fairfax Public Access



Thanks for the clarification (Rebecca - 5/22/2007 1:01:17 PM)
Apparently, I didn't know all the background and details on this when I wrote the first post. Maybe this IS some sort of censorship.

On the same subject someone recently told me that Google Video stopped carrying the link to the Adam Curtis documentary "The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear". I'm not sure if that was a censorship issue. It could have been a rights issue because Adam Curtis created this for the BBC. When Greg W. contacted him about showing this in the US Curtis said it was ok, but it couldn't be shown for profit. It is possible that Google makes a profit from posting videos? Does anyone know the answer?



A call to action (Dianne - 5/22/2007 8:41:57 AM)
Call C-SPAN  (202) 737-3220
E-mail C-SPAN  viewer@c-span.org

Tell them to put the hearing back up on C-SPAN's website.

The cable industry funds C-SPAN.  Contact your cable provider.

Are we going to just let them take away our democracy? and in this case an important historic moment?

Brian Lamb, Chief Executive Officer

The May 17, 2007 hearing testimony of James Comey has been removed from C-SPAN's website.  As the defender and advocate of free speech in the media, re-post this hearing.

Respectfully,

Your name

 



Was able to read the text (Rebecca - 5/22/2007 1:13:43 PM)
I was able to get to the transcript of the testimony via a link from another website. Its a job to get through it, but I was left with a very strong impression that our president has very poor judgement (read stupid as a rock). Its almost like having a child as a president. Justice department officials had to go to the Whitehouse and talk with Bush in private to convince him that he was making a big mistake. Virtually all the top level officials at DOJ as well as the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, threatened to resign en masse if the president overrode their authority.