Citizen Power

This has nothing to do with power or protesting but I can’t resist posting something that’s about justice. I’ve been hoping to see this SOB put on trial for years. Remember the Valerie Plame case? Rove was instrumental in destroying a covert CIA agent’s career, endangered America by doing so, and to top it all off she was working on intelligence on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. OK, Karl, time to talk.

Could this be the end of the road for Karl Rove? He may finally see his day in court and maybe even several hundred days in jail for obstructing justice and politicizing the hiring and firing of federal judges, besides the deliberate outing of a CIA agent.

Rove has been subpoenaed again by Congress, and this time, he won’t be getting away with not showing up. His original claim was “executive privilege” but can’t claim that any longer because our new president isn’t sharing any secrets with him.

Several stories have come out recently on Rove’s recent subpoena, and I even have his actual subpoena here (thanks to Talking Points Memo) Here is page one of the actual subpoena. Click for a larger version.

For page 2, see below.

Obama order could present problems for Rove
A little-noticed twist in an order issued by President Barack Obama the day after his inauguration may present problems for former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and other Bush Administration officials that have been targeted for their alleged role in various scandals.

Rove was subpoenaed Monday afternoon by House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI). . . . .
. . . . Determination of executive privilege must now also be examined by President Obama’s lawyers. In fact, Rove’s lawyer made direct reference to Obama’s role in any future decision to enjoin Rove’s appearance on the congressional witness stand Monday night.

“It’s generally agreed that former presidents retain executive privilege as to matters occurring during their term,” Rove’s lawyer, Robert Luskin, told The Washington Post. “We’ll solicit the views of the new White House counsel and, if there is a disagreement, assume that the matter will be resolved among the courts, the president and the former president.”
Not so fast! See the story for more. I’m sure the Obama administration has ways and means to nail this slippery guy, at long last.

Read More here
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The following article that appeared in Solar Today magazine is a good analysis on the “debate” about whether climate change exists, whether it’s caused by humans and why people are so reluctant to believe facts and evidence. There is no real debate on this subject except to wonder about how bad things might get if we don’t “do something”. But the American mainstream media would like us to argue about it, so they continue to present both sides of the issue. That’s really not smart or necessary. When someone says the earth is flat, the media doesn’t need to put them on TV to talk about it. The earth is not flat, that is a fact, so there is no reason to include a flat-earth believer in a “debate”. That debate is over. The debate about climate change is also over, but the media has not yet realized that because the issue has been politicized.

As the article points out, mention the words “global warming”, (which is what conservatives usually call it), and you will get the intonations of conspiracy theory and doubt. Some conservatives believe that “liberals” are trying to spread a fake theory so that we can create jobs and clean up pollution, which would be terrible somehow, for conservatives. I don’t know why this science is politicized, and I don’t know why some conservatives are so reluctant to believe science, but I have encountered it online quite a bit and it’s maddening. I’ve even been told by quasi-”progressives” that global warming is not real. No, I’m not kidding. It’s really bizarre. It’s also maddening, because we have to act fast on climate change and we can’t do that if half the country thinks it’s a hoax. Or can we? Maybe we can go forward without some of the public’s support. Even so, our Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, will have to convince China and India and other countries to reduce their CO2 emissions very very fast. (This is one of her state goals as SoS).

This analysis wonders if we can’t just ignore the “doubters” and act anyway. That is more or less what President Obama is doing so far, to his credit. His administration is saying, let them doubt it, we don’t care, we are going to run our policy on science, not political conspiracy theories and badly informed conservatives. Here is the analysis which is in their (downloadable and free) online issue.

“The Debate is Over! (Or Is It?)

Unless people recognize that human greehouse gas emissions cause global warming, we cant’ fix it.
By Chuck Kutscher

Several years ago, magazines and newspapers began declaring that the climate change debate is over. But is it really? While most Americans now apparently believe tht our planet is warming, a surprising number of us believe it is a natural variation. Why is this? And does it matter?

When I talk to people about climate change, I come away with one consistent impression: Whether a person believes we are responsible for warming the planet is strongly correlated to a person’s political orientation. To say that climate change has been politicizes is an understatement. When it comes to the politicization of scientific issues, climate change should be in the Guinness World Records. It is said that al of us tend to get our information from sources that reinforce our points of view. And there is no denying that one end of the media spectrum touts the message that climate, like the weather, is simply going through a natural cycle.

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