Congresswoman Overheard Peddling Influence in Exchange for Appointment Favors

[ This is an old story from 2009 but, frankly, too irresistible to pass up in light of further advances of the American Security State in last year three years. ]

In 2005 the NSA recorded (via wiretap) Congresswoman Harmen trading a sentence reduction for espionage charges against members of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) for lobbying favors to become chair of the House Intelligence Committee. 

The Congresswoman, Democrat Jane Harman, is outraged at the “abuse of power” in her conversations being intercepted though the action was court approved. Ironically Rep. Harman was a staunch advocate of the USA PATRIOT ACT, the very legislation which permitted such wiretapping, but seems to find its protention application to herself unsavory. The FBI pursued a further corruption charge against the Congresswoman but Attourney General Alberto Gonzales “pulled the plug” because he needed the Congresswoman’s public support for such wiretapping programs.

The lolz are thick and juicy here. Some choice quotes from the Congresswoman:

“I never had any idea that my government was wiretapping me at all!”

“I think this is an abuse of power Wolf!”

“I want to make sure members of Congress are not routinely wiretapped without their knowledge.”

Excellent Daily Show segment on the topic here.

Yom HaShoah

Yom HaZikaron laShoah ve-laG’vurah (יום הזיכרון לשואה ולגבורה; “Holocaust and Heroism Remembrance Day”), known colloquially in Israel and abroad as Yom HaShoah (יום השואה) and in English as Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Holocaust Day, is observed as Israel’s day of commemoration for the approximately six million Jews and five million others who perished in the Holocaust as a result of the actions carried out byNazi Germany and its accessories, and for the Jewish resistance in that period. 

…

At 10:00 am on Yom HaShoah, sirens are sounded throughout Israel for two minutes. During this time, people cease from action and stand at attention; cars stop, even on the highways; and the whole country comes to a standstill as people pay silent tribute to the dead.

people are funny.

un-fucking-believable

Keren Levy (Real Estate agent):

They Chose Hamas to rule them, it’s their fault, they got it to where it is now

Don’t you think it gets worse bombing them?

No I think that is the only solution, I think they should just clear off all the city, just take it off the ground.

Yes I’m a little bit fascist.

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

this is pretty spot on. both the commentary from Andrea Mitchell and the cacophony of American politician squawking on the issue makes are fucking cringe worthy.

key quotes:
“they did it now because they wanted to ‘clean the slate’ before the new administration came in.”

“i started a baby fighting ring. under the Bush administration i received tax breaks for starting it”

and
“the Mobius Strip of issues… there’s only one side!”

i don’t like to opine on the Isreal / Palestine situation for a couple reasons.

one because it’s an issue that raises extreme emotional responses very very quickly. similar to other emotionally poignant issues like abortion or gay rights, most people i speak to on the matter seem to have already made up their mind on a basis that is not entirely rational. that’s their right i suppose but ultimately a frustrating waste of my time to try to constructively dialog with them. “It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into” - Jonny “Modestly Proposing To Sex Your Face” Swift y’all.

secondly, i’m not nearly as well informed as i’d like to be on the conflict’s rather lengthy and complex history. sure i know some of the big dates and ideas: six days in 1967, west bank / gaza territorial disputes and some stuff about religion BUT on the whole i’m humble enough to admit my lack of knowledge.

now i know what you’re thinking: “but Scott you normally express your crack-pot opinions on topics you have no credible authority to speak to on a alarmingly regular basis” and of course you’re right. a complete absence of knowledge this doesn’t NORMALLY stop me from brazenly asserting my opinion. i mean i’ll spitball about the Sassanid Empire (Khosra I rocks y’all) or state my speculations on exactly what a professional athlete is thinking as undeniable fact, but something about combining a lack of knowledge with a touchy issue just doesn’t ring true to me. who knew i was a man of tact?

anyways, having gotten that lengthy disclaimer out of the way, i will say that this Cynthia McKinney / Dignity / Humanitarian Aid / Israeli Navy incident is really bizarre for a lot of reasons.

first of all lets give Cynthia McKinney some serious props for fucking sailing across the goddamn Mediterranean at all. i don’t know if you’ve seen the woman but she’s 53 and not exactly slender. seriously though, when’s the last time you heard of a political icon actually ACT in accordance with their beliefs? is Barack Obama going to come to your house himself to take your gun? no. he has goons for that. is Karl Rove going to get HIS hands dirty in the assassination of his former IT guru to hush him up before federal investigation. no. he’s going order it from his lazy boy and then rape another Vietnamese child sex slave like he does every Tuesday night.

secondly, how fucking bizarre is the language used by Avital Leibovich in her segment of the piece? apparently the Dignity got too close to an area where Israeli military was “operating” and whenever the Israeli military is operating you must obey its “polite requests” even if you are in international waters some distance from the “operation”. what the fuck does that even mean? operating? polite requests? i also love how she quickly asserts that the Dignity (which looks like a fucking luxury yacht) crashed into the gunboat and that the gunboat was damaged as well. the poor gunboat! while, there are conflicting accounts of who initiated contact with whom i am hard pressed to believe that the English captain of the vessel, no matter how drunk, would REPEATEDLY ram a military ship. just sayin’.

third, IS DELIVERY BY LUXURY YACHT REALLY THE MOST EFFECTIVE METHOD OF DELIVERING EMERGENCY MEDICAL SUPPLIES? i mean goddamn.

also, if you didn’t like my embedding an Al-Jazeera English video as a credible account of the incident, follow this link. it provides the only other legitimate ideological starting point to appraise the situation. if you have any opinion not adequately expressed either of these media outlets you are a total nutjob wacko with way out crazy views. fair and balanced y’all!