MICHAEL MOORE: Yeah, right. So the F.B.I. was looking through these to see if any of the hijackers, or any of their buddies or whatever, had potentially bought weapons in the last couple of years. When Ashcroft found this out, he put a stop to it, because the Brady Bill specifically prohibits using the gun background check files for anything other than the instant background check—you’re not supposed to use them for anything else.

The Republican Party, which has adopted the "4 R's" of neo-conservative undemocratic political action -- refusal (to vote), recount, redistricting, and recall -- is attempting to stage yet three more gubernatorial coups in November's off-year elections -- Kentucky and Mississippi on November 4 and Louisiana on November 15.

You got that? The Sequoia spokesperson complains that there shouldn't be a paper trail because voters will say "That's not how I voted"!!! This company is making it clear that they trying to stop voters from being able to verify that the machine correctly records their vote!

last minute reminders to bring "knives, your will, IDs, your passport, all your papers."

"When it comes to this guy, I have trouble crying," Rehnquist wrote. "He lived in this country 25 years and never bothered to become a citizen." Rehnquist called it an "act of grace" for the government to let him "temporarily decamp on Ellis Island."Mezei would "decamp" in the jail there for nearly four years, literally a man without a country.

Rehnquist said Congress already had provided that noncitizens like Mezei were "excludible without hearing" and that "if Congress plainly said that all aliens with green hair shall be excluded, I know of nothing in the Constitution which would prevent them."

To preserve U.S. “credibility” nearly 40 years ago, American policymakers pursued an escalated war in Vietnam -- when cutting their losses and getting out sooner would have ultimately salvaged more world esteem. The same is likely to be true in Iraq.

As the executive director of the Center for Justice and Democracy, a nonprofit organization that casts itself as a champion of consumer rights, Ms. Doroshow was asked if she would be interviewed for a talk show examining the issue of tort reform. When Ms. Doroshow agreed, she said, the caller informed her that it would cost her organization $5,900 to have its point of view heard. When Ms. Doroshow balked, she said, the caller offered to see if it could be reduced to $3,500.
And he is unapologetic about the price she was asked to pay. He said that hundreds of companies - " Oracle, Dell, every tech company, most of the pharmaceutical companies, all the big energy companies'' - have agreed to make their representatives available for interviews, for a similar fee.
To be interviewed free, Mr. Holland said, "you have to be a senator. You have to be a president. You have to be a secretary of state. You'd have to be huge. Or you'd have to have influence with us. It's a gift.''

There he was. On the Tuesday after a long Fourth of July weekend. In the ballroom of an ornate Wall Street hotel that once housed the New York Merchants Exchange. Standing in front of a blue-and-white backdrop with the words corporate responsibility printed over and over on it, in case you should miss the point. Promising us "a new ethic" for American business. Our president, Scourge of Corporate Misbehavior.
It was like watching a whore pretend to be dean of Southern Methodist University's School of Theology. But as Luther said, hypocrisy has ample wages.

The "sale" of Aloha Petroleum, from Harken to Harken, was again Enron writ small and so outrageous that the SEC stepped in, declared the accounting unacceptable, and forced the company to restate its earnings. Bush unquestionably knew about the deal.
SEC chief Harvey Pitt had so many previous business connections with the firms he was now regulating, he had already had to recuse himself in twenty-nine cases being pursued by the SEC. Bush's hard-nosed, hard-assed political adviser, Karl Rove, had owned $108,000 in Enron stock and, more important, knew the Enron CEO because he was Bush's biggest funder.

It took a corporate-responsibility bill-written entirely by Democratic senator Paul Sarbanes and vigorously opposed by Bush almost until the day it was passed unanimously by the House-to save the president and staunch the stock market's hemorrhaging.

But before we leave the subject, consider some wisdom from Jerry Jeff Walker, the Texas singer-songwriter. Walker met the man who inspired his first hit, "Mr. Bojangles," when they were both in jail in New Orleans. Years later, a reporter for National Public Radio asked Walker if he had worried about winding up in a drunk tank when he was in his early twenties. "No," Walker said. "It was just one time. You start worryin' when there's a pattern."

As reporters began to press harder on the issue, even the un- flappable Ari Fleischer began to flap. "The SEC has been well aware of the issue and the SEC has concluded that this is not anything that's actionable," said Fleischer in early July. Bush too became testy, telling reporters that if they wanted more information they should get the minutes of Harken's board of directors' meetings. Harken refused to release the minutes.