CIA tells it's side of the story at;

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"He who is willing to sacrifice freedom for safety deserves neither freedom nor safety." - Ben Franklin
"One useless man is called a disgrace; two useless men are called a law firm; and three or more useless men are a congress" - John Adams
Politicians and diapers should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons.
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it."--Mark Twain

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http://www.truthuncovered.com/ or if you've got Comcast for cable & you've got digital service from them go to "On Dedamd" and you'll see, at the end of the list of "Free Movies", "Ucovered: Iraq War". It's 57 mins. long, and is from filmmaker Robert Greenwald, creator of the 2000 election expose Unprecedented, considers the administration's case for the Iraq War and finds among the alarmist rhetoric little supporting evidence to back it up.

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A letter from Congressman Richard Pombo to the Pres.

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"He who is willing to sacrifice freedom for safety deserves neither freedom nor safety." - Ben Franklin
"One useless man is called a disgrace; two useless men are called a law firm; and three or more useless men are a congress" - John Adams
Politicians and diapers should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons.
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it."--Mark Twain

---

WASHINGTON — Today, in a letter to President Bush, Congressman Richard Pombo (CA-11) called attention to California’s water needs and importance of Calfed.

“Water supply and quality is critical to California," said Congressman Pombo. "It’s important we take measures now to establish adequate flood management, safeguard the public and our economic well being.”

The letter is as follows:



Dear President Bush:


As you make your case for budget priorities in the Calfed Program, and develop agency priorities for managing our water resources in the State of California, I ask that you keep in mind the importance of water supply, water quality and levee integrity. These issues are vital to the well being of California.


Water Supply

The budget should emphasize the importance of increased water supply reliability and improved water yield for agricultural, domestic, and environmental needs. New and expanded storage facilities increase control and regulation of water for enhancing the ability of transferring and conveying water to other users. Storage improves system flexibility for managing water supply and demand to reduce conflict between competing users.


Water Quality

The budget should recognize the requirement of improving water quality conditions of Bay-Delta supplies prior to increasing export pumping and additional diversions from the Bay-Delta. The budget should provide direction to the heads of the federal agencies to undertake specific activities of the South Delta Improvement Program, including the installation of temporary and permanent flow control barriers, agricultural drainage reduction, San Joaquin floodway improvement, protection of local diversions and water supplies, and water quality to all users, including agricultural water diverters in the South Delta.


Levee Integrity

The Delta covers a vast expanse of productive farmland and wildlife habitat interlaced with hundreds of miles of waterways. Much of this land is below sea level. Eleven hundred miles of levees are needed to protect Delta land uses including 520,000 acres of farmland, a water conveyance pipeline that crosses the Delta to deliver water to East Bay, highways and roads, a railroad, natural gas and electric transmission facilities, and thousands of acres of habitat. Levees also protect water quality for Delta and export users.


The purpose of providing authorizations for levee stability is to provide long-term protection for multiple Delta resources by maintaining and improving the integrity of the extensive Delta levees system. The Calfed ROD proposes investing a total of approximately $450 million in the Stage I implementation phase. A major levee break in Stockton, California last year illustrated the need to strengthen our levees to prevent another costly flood.


The budget should focus on providing assistance to help local reclamation districts reconstruct all Delta levees to a base level of protection. Nearly half of the 1,100 miles of Delta levees do not meet this standard. More than 400,000 people live in Delta towns and cities and giving protection to life and personal property, water quality, farming industries, and wildlife habitat are priorities for levee stability actions.


In particular, please note the importance of the Los Vaqueros Reservoir expansion and the San Luis Reservoir Low Point. The Los Vaqueros Reservoir Expansion will provide an alternative location in the Delta to avoid the detrimental water quality impacts which will result from the anticipated increase in pumping at the State and Federal pumps. I am requesting $2 million for FY 2006 for this alternative intake relocation project for initial studies and environmental compliance.


The goal of the San Luis Reservoir Low Point Improvement Project is to increase the operational flexibility of storage in San Luis Reservoir and ensure a high quality, reliable water supply for San Felipe Division contractors. Additional feasibility studies of the low point problem are necessary to improve current conditions. This project needs an additional $10 million.

Last year, Congress passed a bipartisan Calfed authorization which included many vital water projects. While I understand this will be a challenging fiscal year, I look forward to working with you to fund Calfed and address the critical water needs of California.



Sincerely,
P
RICHARD W. POMBO

Member of Congress

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Barbara Boxer get back to me

---

"He who is willing to sacrifice freedom for safety deserves neither freedom nor safety." - Ben Franklin
"One useless man is called a disgrace; two useless men are called a law firm; and three or more useless men are a congress" - John Adams
Politicians and diapers should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons.
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it."--Mark Twain

---

Thank you for writing to express your
concerns about the electoral process.

I thought that you would be interested in
the following statement, which I made on the
floor of the United States Senate on January 6:

For most of us in the Senate and the House, we
have
spent our lives fighting for things we believe
in always
fighting to make our nation better.

We have fought for social justice. We have
fought for
economic justice. We have fought for
environmental
justice. We have fought for criminal justice.

Now we must add a new fight the fight for
electoral
justice.

Every citizen of this country who is
registered to vote
should be guaranteed that their vote matters,
that their
vote is counted, and that in the voting booth
of their
community, their vote has as much weight as
the vote of
any Senator, any Congressperson, any
President, any
cabinet member, or any CEO of any Fortune 500
corporation.

I am sure that every one of my colleagues
Democrat,
Republican, and Independent agrees with that
statement. That in the voting booth, every
one is equal.

So now it seems to me that under the
Constitution of the
United States, which guarantees the right to
vote, we
must ask:

Why did voters in Ohio wait hours in the rain
to vote?
Why were voters at Kenyon College, for
example, made
to wait in line until nearly 4 a.m. to vote
because there
were only two machines for 1300 voters?

Why did poor and predominantly
African-American
communities have disproportionately long
waits?

Why in Franklin County did election officials
only use
2,798 machines when they said they needed
5,000? Why
did they hold back 68 machines in warehouses?
Why
were 42 of those machines in predominantly
African-
American districts?

Why did, in the Columbus area alone, an
estimated 5,000
to 10,000 voters leave polling places, out of
frustration,
without having voted? How many more never
bothered
to vote after they heard about this?

Why is it when 638 people voted at a precinct
in Franklin
County, a voting machine awarded 4,258 extra
votes to
George Bush? Thankfully, they fixed it but
how many
other votes did the computers get wrong?

Why did Franklin County officials reduce the
number of
electronic voting machines in downtown
precincts, while
adding them in the suburbs? This also led to
long lines.

In Cleveland, why were there thousands of
provisional
ballots disqualified after poll workers gave
faulty
instructions to voters?

Because of this, and voting irregularities in
so many other
places, I am joining with Congresswoman
Stephanie
Tubbs Jones to cast the light of truth on a
flawed system
which must be fixed now.

Our democracy is the centerpiece of who we are
as a
nation. And it is the fondest hope of all
Americans that
we can help bring democracy to every corner of
the
world.

As we try to do that, and as we are shedding
the blood of
our military to this end, we must realize that
we lose so
much credibility when our own electoral system
needs so
much improvement.

Yet, in the past four years, this Congress has
not done
everything it should to give confidence to all
of our
people their votes matter.

After passing the Help America Vote Act,
nothing more
was done.

A year ago, Senators Graham, Clinton and I
introduced
legislation that would have required that
electronic voting systems
provide a paper record to verify a vote.
That paper trail would
be stored in a secure ballot box and
invaluable in case of a
recount.

There is no reason why the Senate should not
have taken up and
passed that bill. At the very least, a
hearing should have been
held. But it never happened.

Before I close, I want to thank my colleague
from the House,
Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones.

Her letter to me asking for my intervention
was substantive and
compelling.

As I wrote to her, I was particularly moved by
her point that it is
virtually impossible to get official House
consideration of the
whole issue of election reform, including
these irregularities.

The Congresswoman has tremendous respect in
her state of Ohio,
which is at the center of this fight.

Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones was a
judge for 10 years.
She was a prosecutor for 8 years. She was
inducted into the
Women's Hall of Fame in 2002.

I am proud to stand with her in filing this
objection.




Sincerely,


Barbara Boxer
United States Senator

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For a BUSH he just not going to be green ever

---

"He who is willing to sacrifice freedom for safety deserves neither freedom nor safety." - Ben Franklin
"One useless man is called a disgrace; two useless men are called a law firm; and three or more useless men are a congress" - John Adams
Politicians and diapers should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons.
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it."--Mark Twain

---

Rejected Last Year, Bush Anti-Environmental Judicial Nominees Are Back

Hearings will begin soon in the Senate Judiciary Committee on a series of President Bush's federal court nominees who were rejected by the Senate last year. President Bush has renominated seven appeals court nominees who were blocked in the last session.

First up is one of the most anti-environmental of the Bush nominees, William G. Myers III. Mr. Bush aims to seat Myers on one of the most important benches in the nation, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The 9th Circuit has jurisdiction over three-fourths of all federal lands, covering nine western states -- the scene of perennial battles over mining, drilling, grazing and timber.

Until he resigned in October, 2003, Myers was chief attorney for the Bush Department of Interior, where he helped shape the weakening of the Endangered Species Act. He also helped curb federal protections designed to prevent destructive mining and overgrazing of public lands.

During Myers' tenure at Interior, the department's inspector general ruled that despite meeting 37 times with representatives of the grazing and mining industries, including former clients, Myers--a former lobbyist for mining and grazing interests--did not violate an ethics agreement.

Noting that the Senate has already approved 204 of President Bush's 260 nominees, Earthjustice senior legislative counsel Glenn Sugameli says "Renomination of so many judges who the Senate has refused to confirm has never happened before. President Bush is trying to convert the Senate into a rubber stamp."

Before joining the Bush Interior Department, Myers served as a lobbyist for the National Mining Association. He was also executive director of a trade association promoting the interests of ranchers who graze sheep and cattle on public lands, and was director of federal lands for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.

In one legal opinion he wrote at Interior, Myers overturned the opinion of his predecessor so that Interior Secretary Gale Norton could approve a 1,650-acre cyanide heap-leach gold mine in California.

During his previous nomination for the 9th Circuit last January, not a single member of the American Bar Association's committee that rates federal judicial nominees found Myers "well qualified." More than a third rated him "unqualified." Unlike most judicial nominees, Myers has never been a judge.

His nomination was opposed by the National Congress of American Indians, representing more than 250 tribal governments, and by 23 public interest organizations.

###

TAKE ACTION
Sign a petition on People for the American Way's website.

MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

send comments via Email to me,

DEAR ABBY,

---

"He who is willing to sacrifice freedom for safety deserves neither freedom nor safety." - Ben Franklin
"One useless man is called a disgrace; two useless men are called a law firm; and three or more useless men are a congress" - John Adams
Politicians and diapers should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons.
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it."--Mark Twain

---

My husband has a long record of money problems. He runs up huge credit card bills. At the end of the month, if I try to pay them off, he shouts at me, saying I am stealing his money. He says pay the minimum and let our kids worry about the rest, but already we can hardly keep up with the interest.

Also he has been so arrogant and abusive toward our neighbors that most of them no longer speak to us. The few that do are an odd bunch, to whom he has been giving a lot of expensive gifts, running up our bills even more.

Also, he has gotten religious in a big way, although I don't quite understand it. One week he hangs out with Catholics and the next with people who say the Pope is the Anti-Christ. And now he has been going to the gym an awful lot and is into wearing uniforms and cowboy outfits, and I hate to think what that means.

Finally, the last straw. He's demanding that before anyone can be in the same room with him, they must sign a loyalty oath. It's just so horribly creepy!

Can you help?

Signed, Lost in DC



DEAR LOST:

Stop whining, Laura. You can divorce the jerk any time you want. The rest of us are stuck with him for four more years!

ABBY

MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

send comments via Email to me,

Barbara Boxer on her Soap Box for the best of reasons

---

"He who is willing to sacrifice freedom for safety deserves neither freedom nor safety." - Ben Franklin
"One useless man is called a disgrace; two useless men are called a law firm; and three or more useless men are a congress" - John Adams
Politicians and diapers should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons.
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it."--Mark Twain

---

I thought you would be interested in the following
message.

===================================================

Dear Friend:

In early January a great political hero, Shirley
Chisholm,
passed away leaving behind an incredible political
legacy of
fighting for the under served and the under
represented. She
will be remembered as she defined herself;
“unbossed and
unbought” and a tireless advocate for the
unemployed, for
low-wage workers, for women, for children, and for
people of
color. She will be greatly missed, both as a
friend to the
Congress and as one of the great initiators of
political change
for our nation.

Shirley Chisholm began her political career in 1964
as an
elected member of the New York State Assembly, and
began
immediately to influence the political status-quo.
In 1968
Chisholm won election to the United States
Congress--the first
African-American woman to hold the office--and
immediately
established herself as a powerful voice unsilenced
and
undeterred by the criticisms of her contemporaries.

Considered by some to be “stubborn” or “difficult”
in
compromising the foundations of her political
principles and
ideas, Chisholm was in fact unwilling to compromise
in her
fight for the rights of the under represented. She
founded the
Congressional Black Caucus as the “Conscience of
the Congress,”
and never let the political establishment, be it at
the local
or national level, turn a blind eye to the people
whom she
represented.

Chisholm was re-elected to the Congress in 1970 for
her second
term. She hired an all-female staff and began a
intense focus
on women’s rights. An excellent public orator and
a sought
after public speaker, Chisholm co-founded the
National
Organization for Women remarking that, “Women in
this country
must become revolutionaries. We must refuse to
accept the old,
the traditional roles and stereotypes.” Shirley
Chisholm
certainly emulated these principles in her own
life, and set an
example for a generation of women to follow.

Chisholm once said of her political style, “My
greatest
political asset, which professional politicians
fear, is my
mouth, out of which come all kinds of things one
shouldn’t
always discuss for reasons of political
expediency.” Serving
in the U.S. Congress from the late 1960's to the
late 1970's,
Chisholm was talking about civil rights, about the
rights of
the poor and the marginalized, Shirley Chisholm was
talking
about those who did not yet have a voice in the
mainstream
political discussion. Chisholm’s greatest
political
contribution was her refusal to let this voice be
silenced; her
efforts to force it to be heard, and from this our
nation has
invaluably benefitted.

I hope you will join me in honoring the amazing
legacy of
Shirley Chisholm, one of America’s most courageous
leaders.

Sincerely,

Barbara Boxer
United States Senator

MY ADVICE endeavors at keen.com. The number is 1-800-275-5336 (800-ask-keen) + ext. 0329063 for tech stuff, 0329117 for running a small business, and 0329144 on investing. Want to CHAT, I use Yahoo's IM as the_web_ster. View me in the Friends & Family part of webcamnow.com, just click on "view cams", then in the Java window click on WebcamNow Communities drop down arrow & select Friends & Family. Under the live webcams look for & click on me "the_webster".

send comments via Email to me,