Where are the friggin lawyers when we need them?
Given this arrogant, we-know-it-all attitude, there was no reason, then, for Bush and his subordinates to listen to the technical experts who warned early last year (1), and even as recent as last August (2) about the disaster-in-the-making for the Space Shuttle and its crews unless certain procedures and processes were fixed. These NASA experts were ignored by Bush and his advisors (2), and removed from their positions (1).
(1) "When an expert NASA panel warned last year that safety troubles loomed for the fleet of shuttles if the agency's budget was not increased, NASA removed five of the panel's nine members and two of its consultants. Some of them now say the agency was trying to suppress their criticisms.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/03/national/03NASA.html
(2) From Don Nelson to Mr. Bush: "I am a recently retired NASA aerospace engineer and it is my duty to inform you that our space shuttle astronauts are in imminent danger. Your intervention is required to prevent another catastrophic space shuttle accident. NASA management and the Aerospace Safety Advisory Panel have failed to respond to the growing warning signs of another shuttle accident." (August 25, 2002,
www.nasaproblems.com/#Moritorium)
http://truthout.org/docs_02/020903E.htm
Sure sure nice going
spend 500 billion on the war machine and death, let the country fall apart..
Ahhhh yes we have democracy and an open society! What the friggin f&%k is going on?
WASHINGTON - It is time for Congress or the courts to blow the whistle on the Bush administration's excessive secrecy. The secrecy is especially pernicious when set in the context of the administration's proclivity to spin. "Spin" is the fashionable word. "Twist," "distort," "deceive," or "cover up" would be more forthright.
Consider these examples:
⢠The White House tried to obstruct the appointment of an independent commission to investigate the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, implying it doesn't want Congress to know what it knows. Contrast President Truman's cooperation when Congress appointed a joint committee to investigate the attack on Pearl Harbor.
⢠Attorney General Ashcroft insists on closing court proceedings that are ordinarily open, including some the Constitution requires to be open. He's done this under the flimsiest of excuses: The release of names of arrestees would give away to Al Qaeda bosses who has been arrested. Or that release of names would violate the arrestees' right of privacy.
⢠The Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Agriculture, and the Department of Health and Human Services have been given the authority to classify documents as "secret." Wielding a SECRET stamp gives bureaucrats a particular sense of exhilaration; and we can be sure that if a bureaucrat has this power, he or she will use it.
⢠Vice President Cheney argues that the administration came to the government determined to restore the powers of the president to what they were before the congressional onslaught during the Vietnam War and Watergate. Since the Washington administration, the powers of the president and Congress have moved against each other like a seesaw. They may be expected to continue to do this, but not at such an abrupt pace.
â¢
Perhaps most egregious of all, Mr. Bush has signed an executive order which gives the sitting president the right to control the release of the papers of any past president. That is, if Bush were so inclined, he could bar the release of the papers of George Washington. His White House counsel, in fact, did order the National Archives not to release 68,000 pages from Ronald Reagan's administration. These included papers from George H. W. Bush's vice presidency.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0206/p09s02-coop.html
THIS IS NOT what my country stands for!!!!
Get the thugs out, clean up the house, it's stinking up the frigging world
I want my country back and what IT USED to stand for.
