I hope justice is done in the Enron case, no matter how much table pounding the defendants’ lawyers do.
Now, if the Bush Gang can somehow have a fair trial…

Posted by: mistah charley | May 17 2006 15:58 utc | 4

addendum:
In other words, they may lie to you with impunity, exactly the same as the mainstream media.
NSA Thwarts Whistleblower

The NSA denies that it practices retaliation against whistleblowers. Yet, Tice is still being monitored by the agency. In a January 9 letter to Tice, Renee Seymour, Director of NSA Special Access Programs Central Office, reminded him that he was required to report problems to “appropriately cleared individuals” at the NSA or Department of Defense before talking to any congressional committees—and reinforced that no one in either the House or the Senate Intelligence Committees was cleared to receive the information he wished to divulge.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | May 17 2006 20:18 utc | 6

From Greg Palast’s website
This is: the snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration’s Homeland Security spy network and private companies operating beyond the reach of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You can call it the privatization of the FBI — though it is better described as the creation of a private KGB.
Palast isn’t a lawyer, he’s an econo-guy, iirc.
He went into this further, along with other issues on Democracy Now! –Rick Happ posted the url but not as a hyperlink.
(btw, Rick, look up above the box where you post. see the last item that starts with (less than sign)a href… ? if you type exactly what bernhard has there, to the = sign, you can then post a url. close the link with the ” and greater than sign, then write what you want ppl to see and end it with the “A” tag that b. also shows…then people can click on your urls to go to the page.)
from democracy now-
GREG PALAST: … I just got back from meeting with Chavez, as you know, and you showed our interview a few weeks ago. He’s offered the U.S. $50-a-barrel oil. That’s a third off of what we’re paying right now. Now, you would think our president would be down in Caracas kissing Hugo Chavez’s behind and saying, “Thank you, thank you for dropping the price of oil by a third, and let’s make a deal,” because Chavez wants a deal.
But he’s not doing that, our president, even though the high prices are costing about a million jobs right now. And the reason he’s not is that what Chavez will not do is that Chavez will not return the money. It’s not about petroleum, it’s about petrodollars, as I explain in the book. In other words, when George Bush rides around King Abdullah in his little golf cart on the Crawford ranch, he’s not trying to get Abdullah’s oil. Abdullah can’t drink the stuff. He’s got to sell it to us and Japan. But Abdullah takes the money back from the — when you fill up your SUV, you give your money to Saudi Arabia, the big oil companies, Saudi Arabia. But then he returns it the form of petrodollars, and that is what is funding George Bush’s mad spending spree.
We have a president who has racked up $2 trillion in extra debt, you know, stone sober, apparently. And someone’s got to pay for that. And basically we’re paying for it by effectively an oil tax, which is returned to us, because the Gulf states and our other trading partners are now buying up $2 trillion in U.S. Treasury bonds and debt. So, in other words, they’re recycling the money back and paying for George Bush’s spending spree on ending inheritance taxes, you know, several wars, etc.
Now, Hugo Chavez says, “I’ll give you cheap oil, not only to the poor, but to everyone. But I’m not giving you back the money. That money is going to stay in Latin America to build our nations.” And he just withdrew $20 billion out of the U.S. Federal Reserve. You have to understand, this is a punch in the face of the U.S. administration, far more than withholding oil, withholding and withdrawing petrodollars, as I explain in the book, and that’s why you have that little nice floater from — balloon thrown out by Reverend Robertson, Pat Robertson, saying “Hugo Chavez thinks we’re trying to assassinate him, and I think we ought to just go and do it,” because they have got to get that — it’s not that they need that oil, they need that oil money. And if they can’t get it, they have to eliminate Hugo Chavez.
And another good Democracy Now! today about Frank Church
During its investigation the Church Committee uncovered that several major corporations – including Western Union, ITT and RCA Global – helped the NSA spy on Americans in a secretive program known as Project Shamrock…which was also allowed govt spying via corps.
Special counsel to the Church committee (speaking of lawyers, but this one isn’t a joke.)
FREDERICK SCHWARZ: …what I’m really concerned about is the theory that Dick Cheney first voiced many years ago and he’s continued to voice and Bush’s lawyers have voiced, which is the theory that the President has the right to break the law. Now — and indeed that the Constitution gives the President the right to break the law. That’s never been suggested before. It’s being suggested now, and if it’s not put down and defeated, we are in a slippery slope moving toward a much more totalitarian government that’s like the monarchy which we supposedly — we tried to put behind us when we had the revolution 200 years ago.

Posted by: fauxreal | May 17 2006 21:46 utc | 8