RW-(the original) Dancing Madly Backwards Through A Liberal Minefield

Jack Murtha escaped prosecution by federal authorities in the Abscam scandal, but that wasn't the end of his worries. Even as federal prosecutors were putting a half dozen of his corrupt colleagues on trial, he still had to worry about how the rest of his colleagues in the House would deal with him -- that is, he had to deal with a potential investigation of his activities by the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct (otherwise known as the House Ethics Committee).

Technically, he hadn't violated the laws of the United States when he attended a meeting with an undercover FBI agent posing as the representative of an Arab sheik -- even an undercover FBI agent who offered him $50,000 in cash.

But even though Murtha refused to take the cash at that first meeting, explaining somewhat apologetically that he didn't know the agent well enough yet (and leaving open the possibility that he would take the money during a second meeting), he still had serious trouble to deal with: the Rules of the House of Representatives required that any attempted bribe be reported immediately to the proper authorities.

Murtha had failed to do so. In fact, when he was first questioned by the local press about his role in the scam, he falsely claimed "They didn't offer me any money, and I didn't take any."

(Hat tip:Andy)

Click here to meet Jack's opponent

.....please leave your ideas of what they are associated with or what it really means in the comments.

This statement after an appearance by Rudy Giuliani rightfully places the blame for 9/11 on those that attacked us. Here's what he said:

"The idea of trying to cast blame on President Clinton is just wrong for many, many reasons, not the least of which is I don't think he deserves it," Giuliani said in response to a question after an appearance with fellow Republican Charlie Crist, who is running for governor. "I don't think President Bush deserves it. The people who deserve blame for Sept. 11, I think we should remind ourselves, are the terrorists _ the Islamic fanatics _ who came here and killed us and want to come here again and do it."

So why is this the AP headline?

Giuliani Defends Clinton on 9/11 Efforts

PRINCETON, NJ -- The recent firestorm over former President Bill Clinton's culpability for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was fueled on Tuesday when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice contrasted President Bush's efforts to pursue al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden with Clinton's efforts. Clinton has strongly denied various suggestions that his administration missed key opportunities to kill bin Laden and left the Bush administration without a comprehensive anti-terrorism strategy. However, Bush -- whom Clinton says did nothing about al-Qaeda for the first eight months of his presidency -- has the bigger image problem with Americans on the issue.

According to a recent Gallup Panel survey, the American public puts the primary blame on Bush rather than Clinton for the fact that bin Laden has not been captured. A majority of Americans say Bush is more to blame (53%), compared with 36% blaming Clinton.

After framing their results as America holding President Bush more responsible for the attacks on 9/11 you see what they asked.



So they ask about who you blame more that Bin Laden hasn't yet been captured, but begin their analysis as if they had asked who you blamed more for the attacks. It's silly enough that Clinton restarted the finger pointing game, but this poll acting as if it bolsters his view is reprehensible. Of course Bush is more to blame that Bin Laden hasn't been captured yet. If Gallup asked "Who do you feel is more responsible for Bin Laden not being killed in the 1990's" you would see a different result, but you would never read the story.

CLINTON: You don’t want to go there, Peter. You don’t want to go there. Not after what you people did and the way you, your network, what you did with Kenneth Starr. The way your people repeated every little sleazy thing he leaked. No one has any idea what that’s like. That’s where I failed. You want to know where I failed? I really let it, it hurt me. I thought I believed in a, I thought I lived in a country where people believe in the Constitution and the rule of law, freedom of speech. You never had to live in a time when people you knew and cared about were being indicted, carted off to jail, bankrupted, ruined because they were Democrats and because they would not lie. So I think we showed a lot of moral fiber to stand up to that, to stand up to these constant investigations, to this constant bodyguard of lies, this avalanche that was thrown at all of us. And, yes, I failed once. And I sure paid for it. And I’m sorry.

Video at Hot Air. This link opens in this window, click the title to open in a separate window.

Yes if Bin Laden had just made some comment about Slick Willy possibly doing a less than perfect job Bubba would have been all over him with fingers wagging and giving him a stern lecture.

Chris Wallace should have watched this video so he would have known what the late Peter Jennings knew, don't have your chairs too close when the rage kicks in.

Chris Wallace shares his thoughts on the interview with FishbowlDC.

I was utterly surprised by the tidal wave of details--emotion--and political attacks that followed.

The President was clearly stung by any suggestion that he had not done everything he could to get bin Laden. He attacked right-wingers--accused me of a "conservative hit job"--and even spun a theory I still don't understand that somehow Fox was trying to cover up the fact that NewsCorp. chief Rupert Murdoch was supporting his Global Initiative. I still have no idea what set him off.
Former President Clinton is a very big man. As he leaned forward--wagging his finger in my face--and then poking the notes I was holding--I felt as if a mountain was coming down in front of me.

The President said I had a smirk. Actually--it was sheer wonder at what I was witnessing.

**UPDATE** As you might expect this rant contained a good mix of wild eyed hyperbole and threw in a few whoppers. There are several bloggers fact checking as I type. Hot Air has been updating and linking as new revelations come along. Don't miss Patterico's post showing that Chris Wallace has indeed been even handed.

This is the You Tube video that Fox anchors have mentioned off and on playing up on how many views it's had. I suspect their lawyers will feign indigence and ask to have it pulled after they are sure everybody has seen it. See Billy boy I'm helping out your "rightwinger" theory. Now give us back our proper name, we are supposed to be called The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. You can't have your "wife" give us that name and then sneer at it, if you don't like our name take it up with her.

It's not like we don't have evidence of what he looks like when he's lying.



Ace has more details about that one time Clinton actually tried to do something.

**UPDATE** It looks like someone found a translation of the parts where Bill was slurring his words. It ties this post up quite nicely.

As Randy, at a great site called RightWinged, mentions here the quality of the above videos pretty well suck. What's he expect? I got them out of the tubes. Since most readers here are also from the luckovich site you've seen Randy's blog about 17 Zillion times. Yes it's the source of that darling post of the left wing, the Hillarycopters. Don't hold it against him, we all get a post hijacked once in a while. Besides he's made it up to us by posting a couple of Hugo Chavez videos of what was really said, without that pesky translator.

I bet this story also gives us fluff credit at Nicole's!

Allahpundit has a few different takes on this endeavor, depending on when you visit. Apparently the Russian brides with babies in tow is distracting him into wildly updating this report.

Democrats said they had invited Republicans to attend the hearings, which will start in Washington on Monday and move across the country in October and November -- before and after the November 7 congressional elections in which control of both houses are at stake.

So I guess the Democrats must be planning to take their traveling inquest to the homes of any witnesses they want to call, right? Maybe they will give them a schedule:

Disgruntled ex-Generals-Tuesday in Pittsburgh

Unhappy detainees-Wednesday in Omaha

Conspiracy theorists-Thursday in Seattle

I'm sure this little stunt is going to make them look just great to the voters on November 7th.

Wouldn't you just love to find the memo Karl Rove planted telling Harry this was a good idea?

Rove you magnificent bastard!

The Zarqman lives?

As much as I would love to excerpt this article I can't for the life of me figure out which part. Zarqawi is alive because he was Bush's buddy, the same President Bush that is building a.......I don't want to spoil it for you. One thing about Pravda, you don't have to go to multiple stories to piece together crackpot theories.

By: Cyrus Nowrasteh

The hysteria engendered by the series found more than one target. In addition to the death threats and hate mail directed at me, and my grotesque portrayal as a maddened right-winger, there developed an impassioned search for incriminating evidence on everyone else connected to the film. And in director David Cunningham, the searchers found paydirt! His father had founded a Christian youth outreach mission. The whiff of the younger Mr. Cunningham's possible connection to this enterprise was enough to set the hounds of suspicion baying. A religious mission! A New York Times reporter wrote, without irony or explanation, that an issue that raised questions about the director was his involvement in his father's outreach work. In the era of McCarthyism, the merest hint of a connection to communism sufficed to inspire dark accusations, the certainty that the accused was part of a malign conspiracy. Today, apparently, you can get something of that effect by charging a connection with a Christian mission.

"The Path to 9/11" was intended to remind us of the common enemy we face. Like the 9/11 Report itself, it is meant to enable us to better defend ourselves from a future attack. Past is prologue, and 9/11 is merely another step in an escalating Islamic fundamentalist reign of terror. By dramatizing the step-by-step increase in attacks on America--all of which, in fact, occurred--we are better able to see the pattern and anticipate the future. That was the point of the series, its only intention. Call it the canary in the coal mine. Call it John O'Neill in the FBI.

CHAPPAQUA — Sen. Hillary Clinton this morning blasted the producers of a new film depicting the assassination of Pres. George W. Bush.

"I think it's despicable," Clinton said of "Death of a President," a fictional film that features a staged assassination of the president in 2007. "I think it's absolutely outrageous. That anyone would even attempt to profit on such a horrible scenario makes me sick."

Whatever the motivation, that's the kind of statement someone had to make. Thanks Hillary.

The international critics decided to honor the film, of course, with the Fipresci Award.

Thanks to the New York Times, we now know the dreaded torture methods the sadistic CIA used on captured Al Qaeda big shots shortly after the 9/11 attack. I warn you: Reading this column any further will subject you to unvarnished brutality.

According to a front-page article in the Times on Sunday, Sept. 10, Pakistani authorities captured Abu Zubaydah, Al Qaeda's personnel director, a few months after the terror attack five years ago. Zubaydah, wounded in the confrontation, was turned over to American authorities and whisked away to Bangkok, Thailand, where FBI interrogators began questioning him.

According to unnamed sources in the Times article, the FBI and CIA clashed over whether to use soft or tough questioning methods on the captured terrorist. Because it had jurisdiction, the CIA took over and the inquisition began. Agency interrogators stripped Zubaydah, put him in a freezing room and subjected him to Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Not the vegetables, the rock group.

Apparently, the CIA sadists cranked up the volume on some Red Hot Chili Pepper recordings and Zubaydah broke. Wouldn't you?

Now, I am not making this up. The dreaded torture machine that is the Bush administration unleashed the Red Hot Chili Peppers on an Al Qaeda big shot. How could they?

According to the article, Zubaydah gave up a number of his fellow killers, including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9/11. But come on, the ends do not justify the means. Using the Chili Peppers is beyond the pale.

Good one Bill! The Atlanta Journal Constitution's leftist moonbat cartoonist this weekend is portraying the Bush policies as condoneing beheadings. The same idiot often runs cartoons wondering why OBL is still on the loose. It must be awfully easy being a liberal whackjob these days. Why are they always so miserable?

Here's some great video from the President's last press conference. Make sure you watch all the way to the end!

"I listen to my Democrat friends, and I wonder if they're more interested in protecting terrorists than in protecting the American people," he said.

Memo to elected Democrats: If you want to have questions like that stop, quit making them ring so true. Quit having Harry Reid breathlessly talking about how Dems had killed the patriot act. Quit trying to pretend that the President is spying on American citizens when you know that isn't the case. Quit leaking all of our classified counter terrorism programs to the New York Times. Quit your witchhunt over Valerie Plame. Never mind, if you could understand any of this you wouldn't be Democrats.

THE 'UNIFIED AFTER 9/11' MYTH

Going all the way back to the 2004 presidential campaign between The Poodle and the president, we have often heard repeated the line that America was unified after 9/11 and Bush squandered all that goodwill. Bill Clinton repeated the line yesterday, saying "We had an astonishing moment of unity" after 9/11. It's a nice idea, but it never happened.

Oh sure...members of Congress from both parties stood on the Capitol steps and sang "God Bless America" and it made for a nice photo op. But just because politicians came out as a single force on that one day, it doesn't mean differences magically disappeared. In fact, those differences only became stronger.

Myth #1: Americans and politicians from both political parties were 100% behind President Bush in everything he did immediately after 9/11. The fact is this isn't true. While many did come together, there were differences about what we should do in response to 9/11 and whether or not the Bush Administration was to blame. There were still those who wanted to follow the Clinton approach of treating Islamic fascism as a law enforcement problem.

Myth #2: There was universal support for the invasion of Afghanistan. The facts say otherwise. There were plenty that were opposed. There were protests even as the invasion was being planned.

Myth #3: George Bush squandered all of the public and the world's goodwill by invading Iraq. This is also untrue. The invasion of Iraq was popular at the time it took place, with the public and most Democrats strongly behind the president. The idea that somehow Operation Iraqi Freedom was responsible for busting up the mythical 9/11 unification is just a fantasy.

Democratic and Republican differences didn't disappear just because of 9/11. Once the dust settled, just as many Democrats wanted to treat Islamic terrorism as a law enforcement problem as before. Many blamed Bush for the attacks and did not favor going to war. We just went back to business as usual, just like we were always going to. If there was any supposed unification, it lasted just a few days.

Because at the end of the day, Democrats believe what they believe and Republicans have their beliefs.

I would bet real American greenbacks that the Clintonistas started making a list of what they needed to cover up before noon that day.

Be sure to scroll to the bottom of Nealz Nuze. He posts a series of articles each day and even though he's no Andy he does a decent job.

....Joseph Angelini Sr. was among many that had no idea it would be their last. Mr. Angelini was by all accounts a dedicated public servant and family man. Perhaps a nice dinner with family and friends was the order of the day or maybe a good nights rest before the busy day ahead.

I had the pleasure and honor of meeting and riding with Joe Angelini Sr. on R-1 a few years back. When my children ask about the bracelet I now wear(and will never take off), I will tell them about one of NYFD's best. I know I will meet Joe Sr. in a better life later and I will still have on the bracelet I wear in his honor and of all the 343 brothers that did their job that morning.
Mark Casey (Kennedy Space Center Fire Department, FL )

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I am truly blessed to be a friend of Mary Angelini, the daughter of Joe Angelini Sr. and the sister of Joe Angelini Jr. I don't even know where to begin in trying to extend my sincerest condolences to her and her family. The Angelini’s are an amazing family. They are all civil servants, doing their part in making the world a better place to live. Mary gets her inner strength and values from her supportive family. It is clear that she has always been inspired by her kin to make a difference in this conflicted civilization. Mary has been working for a non-governmental agency in Abuja, Africa promoting democracy. The loss of her father and brother has only fortified her convictions; she is a true testament to the resilience of the human spirit. She has since returned to Africa and is continuing to follow her passion, international diplomacy. Both Joseph Angelini’s were made up of the same beliefs and fervor. They were family men who died as brave heroes for their country.

We owe our respect to all the Firemen and Policemen of New York City. May God bless you all for your courage. The world will always honor you and will never forget your heroism. My heart goes out to all the families who have suffered as a result of 9/11. You are in my thoughts and prayers.

All my love, Marilyn

“...I ride as a guardian of the night, toward the far away glow
Of my destiny, dauntless, duty bound,
Endeavoring to a life fully-lived within the grasp of mortality.

And when my watch is over; when my tour is ended
And I am finally called home
To the embrace of my gentle guardian, I will ride again.

Racing through the heavens, oh so swiftly
For I will ride there in glory,
With angels’ escort, aboard a screaming red chariot of honor.”
- Lt. Robert E. Higgins, FDNY

P.S. I'll never forget the time Mary's father drove her home in his fire truck and helped her get into our apartment on 88th Street when she was locked out. :) He was such a dedicated loving father and grandfather. Mary was one of many children in her family who was the apple of his eye. He loves you all so much. May he rest in peace...
Marilyn H (San Francisco, CA )

Those are some excerpts from the Joseph J. Angelini Sr. guest book at legacy.com. From the September 11th victims tribute page.

I too live in Lindenhurst. There is not a day that goes by that I do not think of Joe and his son. Whenever I ride on Angelini Way they are brought back to mind and I whisper a prayer for their families. The community will never forget their sacrifice.

Reading through these tributes it becomes strikingly apparent that America lost a fine man on September 11, 2001. The reality is that we lost many fine and courageous people that day. Joseph J. Angelini Sr., you are missed by many that you knew well and by others you never met and that never had the pleasure of meeting you. Firefighter Joseph Angelini Sr. of Rescue 1 was laid to rest on September 22, 2001. One month later he was joined by his son, Joseph Angelini Jr. of Ladder 4. Join me in saying a prayer tomorrow for the Angelini family as well as all the other victims.


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To read about others who were taken from us on September 11, 2001, click the title of this post to open a list in another window or click here to leave this page and view the list of blogs that have joined this project.

UPDATE 9/11/2010 The full tribute page has moved here

nicole said...
I think the time for the obligatory fluff piece draws nigh. And it can't have ANYTHING to do with politics or any related nonsense.

"You can't fix it," Berger said on CNN. "You gotta yank it."

The reason it has to be yanked to fix it is because so much of it will be an accurate depiction of the fecklessness of the Clinton administration and we can't have that.

I've set up a site called Path to 9/11 where we can discuss the movie if ABC does show it. There is a huge effort to trash this movie in any forum possible regardless of it's worth. The Path to 9/11 site will require you to be signed up with a blogger account and use word verification to post.

I don't think this guy was impressed.

On Sept. 7, 1977, Gen. Omar Torrijos Herrera and President Jimmy Carter signed treaties giving Panama gradual control of the canal, phasing out U.S. military bases, and guaranteeing the canal's neutrality. Carter's relinquishment of the Panama Canal and the subsequent installation of a government secretly influenced by Manuel Noriega leads to an invasion of Panama in 1989. And the overthrow of Noriega.

It appears that the upcoming ABC mini-series about 9/11 is going to be a straight forward look at the commission findings on the lead up to the attacks. This has the loony left in an uproar as it seems to have dipped back before January 20, 2001. Some of what we will be peppered with is this call to arms from the DUmmies:

We need to be ready to respond. We need to be ready to point out how Clinton repeatedly tried to catch or kill bin Laden but his hands were tied by the Republican Congress. We need to show how they criticized his efforts at every turn.

We also need to be ready with the REAL 9/11 report that most people have never read. Especially Chpater 8 "The System was Blinking Red", which points out how Bush completely ignored the threat.

We need to be ready to point out how the Clinton Administration tried to warn Bush about the threat of bin Laden and Bush completely ignored it.

One of the strengths of the left is their persistence. We have had these discussions with them multiple times over the years so the arguments won't change. They will have nothing new to offer and they won't even try to pretend they do. The moonbat brigades will just hope that you get sick of providing them with facts and they will take getting the last word as victory.

The scene in the documentary that seems to be causing them the most heartburn is this one:

One astonishing sequence in "The Path to 9/11" shows the CIA and the Northern Alliance surrounding Bin Laden’s house in Afghanistan. They're on the verge of capturing Bin Laden, but they need final approval from the Clinton administration in order to go ahead. They phone Clinton, but he and his senior staff refuse to give authorization for the capture of Bin Laden, for fear of political fall-out if the mission should go wrong and civilians are harmed. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger in essence tells the team in Afghanistan that if they want to capture Bin Laden, they'll have to go ahead and do it on their own without any official authorization. That way, their necks will be on the line - and not his. The astonished CIA agent on the ground in Afghanistan repeatedly asks Berger if this is really what the administration wants. Berger refuses to answer, and then finally just hangs up on the agent. The CIA team and the Northern Alliance, just a few feet from capturing Bin Laden, have to abandon the entire mission. Bin Laden and Al Qaeda shortly thereafter bomb the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, killing over 225 men, women, and children, and wounding over 4000.

Tragedy ... Steve Irwin - pictured here with his wife Terri - has died aged 44 in a horrific accident involving a stingray while filming an underwater documentary in Queensland / News Limited newspapers

The very principles of Communism are freedom and democracy, debate, dialogue and discussion (“Soviet” for instance means “advisory committee”). Communism stands for universal access to education, excellent public services such as healthcare, transportation, cultural activities for leisure time, a work ethic which includes leisure as part of the daily routine, free housing, a guaranteed pension and essential living conditions.

Given that the USA was the leader of the “free” world which spend trillions of dollars sabotaging the Communist experiments, forming belligerent alliances which in turn forced the countries adopting the Socialist model to squander resources while trying to protect the State against the Imperialistic onslaught led by the moneyed few who pull the strings in Washinghton and elsewhere where the centres of finance and decision making are based, making snide remarks about Communism being totalitarian would appear a trifle misguided, to say the least. A classic Bushism.

I wonder which names Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY uses when he blogs at ml's?

Having just watched this purported documentary I'll go with crock. This thing takes every possible sound-bite or portion of testimony to nitpick 9/11 with the finest of hindsight and the obligatory Bush bashing. There is a bit near the beginning where you hear that this is not just one administration's problem it's both. That is the be all and end all of anyone but GWB taking the hit. Case in point, after alluding that the Clintonistas might have shared the blame they go on to portray Jamie Gorelick as a thoughtful, tender fact-finder.

When it comes to the instructions to those in tower 2 to go back to their work stations, they portray that as a huge error in judgment. They even show a few family members saying they would certainly leave their house if the next door neighbor's house was on fire. OK, it was an error. If you knew this was an attack and another plane was going to hit then telling someone to go back up might even make you a part of the plot. If you thought it was an accidental crash into tower one, however, then the instruction is fully justified. How are the responders going to cope with all the extra people in their way? I know I would have left the building and encouraged anyone I saw to do the same, but following the advice of well meaning security at the time can't legitimately be dismissed.

When it comes to flight 93 they make a huge deal out of the timing of scrambled military aircraft. It's a little disconcerting to think they mean the plane crashed before we had time to shoot it down, but I digress.

In this instance they highlight the communication problems between the FAA and the military. Alright I can see that if you are saying that by the time flight 93 was heading toward Washington you should have been ready to take military action. That isn't what this hit piece movie does. No, they again show family members saying how incompetent the government was not to have military planes up to intercept this flight. What the hell do they think was going to happen if our F-16's would have been there to save their loved ones? Make the argument that Washington wasn't protected quickly enough and maybe I'll play along, but trying to convince me that you wish the Air Force would have shot you down first is a non-starter.

The other thing that this "documentary" does is to show an isolated computer graphic of one plane and it's flight path while they complain that enough wasn't being done to track it and know it's status. They have quite the grand old time telling you how the FAA and the military, both run by George W. Bush, can't deal with this one plane without ever mentioning the thousands of planes that were showing on the controller screens. The unbelievably heroic job that was done that morning to land thousands of planes at unscheduled locations with no certainty of the status of the particular flights is completely ignored.

Did I mention I'll go with "crock?"