LIE OF THE WEEK: 04-28-2006

Sen. Hillary Clinton is her usual demagogue self on the high gas price issue:

"With gas prices skyrocketing and President Bush and the Republicans in Congress refusing to act to ease the burden on American families and businesses. ... Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y. and Sen. Clinton will join a local small business owner and local residents in Queens at a press conference at a local gas station, highlighting the burden placed on Americans having to pay outlandish prices at the pump."

THE TRUTH: She is just as guilty as every other member of Congress for doing nothing to stop the gouging by the big 5 oil companies. And just like every other member of Congress, it's clear why by looking at the records of corporate contributions to her campaign committee:
http://query.nictusa.com/cgi-bin/com_rcvd/C00346544/

The only way to stop Congress from selling out the American people on every single issue is to do away with the idea that corporations have the same rights as individuals to free speech, including campaign contributions. Once we stem the flow of corrupting money, we will quickly see Congress and the President reign in corporate abuse in every area of American life.

LIE OF THE WEEK: 04-21-2006

Senator Hillary Clinton on raising the minimum wage:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who earlier this year compared Congress to a plantation, said Thursday that lawmakers should know what it feels like to be working poor and going years without a raise.

THE TRUTH: Most federal lawmakers are millionaires - many due to misuse or outright abuse of their public positions for personal gain. Even for those not earning a cent over their salary won't "feel like the working poor" by forgoing a raise on their $160,000+ annual salary plus expense accounts, very generous benefits, etc. Discussing the appropriate minimum wage is an excellent topic, but this is political demagoguery at it's worst.

LIE OF THE WEEK: 04-14-2006

Defense Secretary Rumsfeld on the retired generals who are now his critics:

"Out of thousands and thousands of admirals and generals, if every time two or three people disagreed we changed the secretary of defense of the United States it would be like a merry-go-round," he said.

THE TRUTH: This is not about a couple of people disagreeing with the secretary on a policy and spinning it this way can't hide the facts. This is all about an administration (and especially a department of defense) that does whatever it wants despite all of the corrective institutions put in place to make sure government agencies do the right thing. If they don't like the intelligence coming out of the CIA, then they ignore that and gather intelligence through the Defense Intelligence Agency. If they don't like the techniques used by the FBI to interrogate domestic suspects, then they ignore that and use military interrogators to accomplish their goals. Our government has gone through many periods of corruption and other problems - the difference between our system and others around the world is that we try to learn from our mistakes and put safeguards in place to ensure that mistakes aren't repeated. This administration needs to learn it's place in history and respect the constitutional controls and institutions created after each historical mistake and realize that they don't have the right to create policy as if they have a blank slate to do whatever they want.

LIE OF THE WEEK: 04-07-2006

White House spokesman Scott McClellan on the President possibly authorizing leaking of classified information (in an act of unilateral declassification):

Of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, part of which Mr. Libby shared with Judith Miller, then a [New York] Times reporter, Mr. McClellan said, "There was nothing in there that would compromise national security."

THE TRUTH: This administration has been the most secretive ever in terms of keeping harmless information classified for no apparent purpose, other than potential political concerns. The fact that they are actually reclassifying already declassified information is also troublesome. For them to now come out and justify potential illegal acts of unilateral declassification for political purposes by stating that the information was no risk to national security is the ultimate in hypocrisy. Also, this act of declassification involved the exposure of the identity of an undercover CIA agent, which put her and all of her contacts and others using her front company at risk, so I doubt the assertion is even true for this purely political abuse of power.