skippy the bush kangaroo

i did a lexis search and found that jason's article was the first to report the scanlon-miller story. jason is understandably miffed. he writes by e-mail:

three months ago, i broke a big story in the jack abramoff lobbying scandal. i reported that abramoff's ex-partner michael scanlon was implicated in the scandal by his jilted lover and former fiancee, emily miller, who met scanlon when the two worked as press aides for congressman tom delay. i spent four months fleshing out this story. i spoke to a dozen people in washington who told me how this went down. in the end, i discovered that miller spoke to the fbi after scanlon broke off their engagement and started dating another woman. it was an important story. it had all the makings of a hollywood thriller. my story was published on the internet magazine, raw story. it received some play on the net and in indpendent media circles. some mainstream publication reporters acknowledged the good work in private emails to my editor, john byrne. however, it was never picked up or republished by any of the traditional publications.

today, the wall street journal published a front-page "exclusive" that basically recycled my story from january without mentioning that it was first reported by me or that i broke the story wide open. i spoke to two journal editors in new york. they acknowledged this morning that they read my story and assigned a reporter to follow it up. but they refuse to credit me for first reporting it.

Why does George Bush feel he can just laugh off the laws passed by Congress and even the Constitution itself? He did it AGAIN by attaching a so-called signing statement to the renewal of the Patriot Act, reserving the right to DISREGARD even the minimal reporting requirements that Congress had the temerity to impose. Who is going to challenge him? He's not just laughing at the legislature. If you do not speak out now, he is laughing at YOU.

montpelier, vt. -- leading democrats in vermont plan to decide in april whether to urge state lawmakers to petition for president bush's impeachment using a little-known provision in the rules of the u.s. house.

democratic committees in at least half of the state's 14 counties have passed resolutions calling for impeachment, citing a rule in "jefferson's manual," a book of parliamentary guideslines written by thomas jefferson that supplements u.s. house rules.

the anti-bush movement is "genuinely bubbling up from the grass roots," said jon copans, the state party's executive director.

the state democratic committee is scheduled to decide the issue in a special meeting april 8... [ap/washpost]

"Shelley Moore Capito answers to no one except the people she represents. The President and I need people of Shelley's caliber to help us keep our nation prosperous. ..."
Vice President Dick Cheney.

Capito was the largest recipient of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's ARMPAC campaign contributions. DeLay is being prosecuted on charges of felony money laundering of campaign finances and conspiracy to launder money. To date, Capito has not offered to return any of the $48,500 she received.

snip

According to federal prosecutors, Capito's name appears in e-mails that suggest her former chief of staff was trying to help lobbyist Jack Abramoff secure a GSA lease for land for a religious school. However, Capito denies knowledge of the action and her former chief of staff claims that he did not bring the issue to her attention.

the national debt clock, as it is known, is a big clock. a spot-check last week showed a readout of 8.3 trillion -- or more precisely 8,310,200,545,702 -- dollars ... and counting.

but it's not big enough.

sometime in the next two years, the total amount of us government borrowing is going to break through the 10-trillion-dollar mark and, lacking space for the extra digit such a figure would require, the clock is in danger of running itself into obsolescence. - afp

a former kpmg llp tax partner pleaded guilty monday, saying he helped wealthy investors dodge millions of dollars in taxes with fraudulent documents, sham companies and phony tax shelters.

...he was among 19 defendants charged with conspiracy last year in a tax scheme that the government alleges helped affluent kpmg clients escape $2.5 billion in taxes.- ap

the turnaround expert who led enron corp. through its bankruptcy engaged in unacceptable billing practices and has agreed to cut in half the $25 million he has been seeking as a "success fee," the justice department said monday. - ap

dental care for the needy remains painfully scarce in the chicago area, leaving tens of thousands of people with untreated cavities, toothaches and bleeding gums.

the ailments are distressing in themselves, but research also has linked them to serious conditions such as heart disease and premature birth, and they can worsen the effects of diabetes.

...stroger hospital, the centerpiece of the county's system, gets 7,000 calls a month from people who want to see a dentist, but its clinic has only 777 monthly appointments, he said. even then, in-demand services such as dentures simply aren't available.

of 24 community-based health clinics run by the county in chicago and its suburbs, eight offer dental care. finding community resources for patients is "extremely hard," thomas said.

the outlook isn't any better with the city's public health system: just two medical clinics offer general adult dental services, in englewood and on the lower west side.

but behind closed doors, the president was certain that war was inevitable. during a private two-hour meeting in the oval office on jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to prime minister tony blair of britain that he was determined to invade iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by mr. blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by the new york times.

"our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," david manning, mr. blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between mr. bush, mr. blair and six of their top aides. - nytimes 27 march 2006

c reported on his recent talks in washington. there was a perceptible shift in attitude. military action was now seen as inevitable. bush wanted to remove saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and wmd. but the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. the nsc had no patience with the un route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the iraqi regime's record. there was little discussion in washington of the aftermath after military action. - the times online - 1 may 2005

now if we could get awol to go sleep with someone other than laura so that politicians and the american public will pay attention.

st. vincent conceded in september that its doctors had improperly arranged for a liver transplant to a saudi national, bypassing 50 people on a regional waiting list whose conditions were more dire, and that hospital staff falsified records to hide the arrangement. the saudi embassy paid $339,000 for the operation, as much as 30% more than the hospital would have received from the government or insurance. - latte times

in major white house shakeup, bush to replace rove and cheney with rove and cheney

the bracero program was, in fact, beneficial to the american agricultural industry, but the struggles of mexican migrant workers have been greatly downplayed. the mexican migrant workers went through what the director of the program, labor officer lee g. williams, described as "legalized slavery." the migrant workers labored in horrid conditions, sometimes in excess of 10 hours a day, while grossly unscrupulous bosses profited immensely. the program was finally halted in 1964, not only because of the intoduction of mechanized harvesting, but because of reports of human rights abuses. the program, for the most part from a humanitarian standpoint, was deemed a complete and utter failure. - wikipedia

participation in the bracero program was limited to agricultural workers, and not open to urban dwellers. prospective braceros often were asked to show their calloused hands to prove that they were experienced farm laborers. workers were fingerprinted as part of the processing procedure, and were fumigated with ddt before being allowed to enter the united states.- america on the move

i cheered for ben, the editor of my last book at regnery, when he announced his new position. i criticized unhinged bloggers on the left who leveled vicious ad hominem attacks against him. it's clear, as the good folks at red state (which ben co-founded) note, that his detractors were on a search-and-destroy mission from the get-go.

but now the determined moonbat hordes have exposed multiple instances of what clearly appear to me to be blatant lifting of entire, unique passages by ben from other writers.

[--snip--] then, the left should cease its sick gloating and leave him and his family alone.

An investigation into these allegations was ongoing, and in the interim, Domenech has resigned, effective immediately.

When we hired Domenech, we were not aware of any allegations that he had plagiarized any of his past writings. In any cases where allegations such as these are made, we will continue to investigate those charges thoroughly in order to maintain our journalistic integrity.

the administration acknowledges the no-bid contract with hutchison whampoa ltd. represents the first time a foreign company will be involved in running a sophisticated u.s. radiation detector at an overseas port without american customs agents present. - minn.star tribune

and a u.s. military intelligence report, once marked "secret," cited hutchison in 1999 as a potential risk for smuggling arms and other prohibited materials into the united states from the bahamas.

hutchison's port operations in the bahamas and panama "could provide a conduit for illegal shipments of technology or prohibited items from the west to the prc (people's republic of china), or facilitate the movement of arms and other prohibited items into the americas," the now-declassified assessment said. - ap

Late yesterday, the liberal Web sites Daily Kos and Atrios posted examples of what appeared to be instances of plagiarism from Domenech's writing at the William & Mary student paper. Three sentences of a 1999 Domenech review of a Martin Scorsese film were identical to a review in Salon magazine, and several sentences in Domenech's piece on a James Bond movie closely resembled one in the Internet Movie Database. Domenech said he needed to research the examples but that he never used material without attribution and had complained about a college editor improperly adding language to some of his articles.

Adopted in 1866, a year after the end of the Civil War, Revised Statute 2477 (RS 2477) was originally intended to ensure that local governments could invest in highway construction across public lands without fear of being labeled trespassers. In 1976, Congress repealed RS 2477 and replaced it with an updated process to determine reasonable access to public lands.

But some states and counties across the West have been claiming that abandoned roads, off-road vehicle routes, cattle paths, and streambeds are technically highways under RS 2477, and in recent years the administration has been trying to figure out how to legitimize these claims. Now it appears that Department of the Interior staff are poised to adopt a streamlined process for effectively surrendering control of thousands of federally owned Jeep tracks, cow paths, and little-used trails across public lands throughout the West to local and state governments. Under the new guidance, these routes could be viewed as highways, and could be maintained as such.


Removing federal protections from these routes could have major consequences throughout the West. National parks, wildlife refuges, national monuments, national forests, conservation areas, and other sensitive federal lands could see more road development and damaging off-road vehicle use under the new scheme. For example:

· In Utah’s Canyonlands National Park, San Juan County is claiming that a streambed called Salt Creek is a highway under the loophole. The National Park Service considers the area rich in cultural artifacts and an important water source for the region.

· The state of Utah submitted a map to the Interior Department in 2000, claiming that 100,000 miles of routes, including every hiking trail in Zion National Park and routes across every designated wilderness in the state, are highways under RS 2477.

· In California, San Bernardino County has claimed that more than 2,500 miles of highways crisscross the Mojave National Preserve, including more than 700 miles within designated wilderness. The great majority of these routes are ranch trails, cow paths, and other faint non-highway routes.

· Moffat County, Colorado has claimed that 240 miles of trails through Dinosaur National Monument, including part of the Yampa River itself, are highways.

· The state of Alaska has asserted 164 separate routes through 14 Alaska national parks, totaling almost 3,000 miles. More than half of those miles are in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, America's largest park. A 1993 National Park Service report concluded that the impact of these claims "could be devastating." The state also claims more than 3,700 miles of potential roads and trails through 15 national wildlife refuges, including the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Many of these routes are nothing more than dog sled trails or old horse paths.