Thanks for this news, Sara; that is encouraging. How did you learn of it?

The lack of readily available information on staff of congressional committees and members’ offices is IMO a major mechanism for shutting out grassroots lobbying and magnifying the power of insiders.

For instance, had someone not reported the news that Kerry (or someone on the Foreign Relations committee) hired CIA torturer John Kirakou for the committee, there’d be no way of telling from the committee’s website or news releases.

Do you have any tips on how to find out the names of House or Senate committee staff?

Wonder if Colbert could make a rap song out of that line? They sure could do a sequence of many of our congress folks repeating this line

Ottawa Beach store for ice cream? Cherries and blueberries galore

I’ve been watching another relationship. John Kerry has just hired as his Chief Investigator for the Foreign Relations Committee Jack Blum. Name may not ring a bell, but this is the guy who took down BCCI back in 1988 — and when Clayborne Pell stopped Kerry’s investigation after he turned up Clark Clifford (dem) and links to the Bush Family — Blum handed over his material to the Bank of England, which was forced to close down BCCI. Blum also handed over to NY State Prosecutor, Robert Morgenthau, the necessary evidence from the work he had done for Kerry’s subcommittee so that he could persue state charges against some of the BCCI Bankers in the NY Courts. Blum has been working at it all these years, and I smell something interesting if Kerry (with no Pell to hold him back this time) is bringing back his hot-shot investigative counsel and setting him up with the Foreign Relations Committee. Something to keep an eye on, me thinks. No reason in the world Kerry could not open up on International Banking and Finance from Foreign Relations.

what kind of psychosis or lack of backbone motivates these people ???

I think I’m right

I might be right

I could be right

except I’m a chicken shit, and I can’t be positive I’m right

so I’ll be a chick shit and do nothing

except talk about that time I was almost right

and that time I almost did something

cuz almost being right is almost as good as being right …

exchanging a walk-on part in a war for a leading role in a cage ???

when did Roger Watters become so prophetic ???

Barney Frank — The Social Security investment in the stock market train wreck, perhaps?

But I have never seen North Americans so thoroughly snowed on just about every front as we have been through this decade. This past week here has seen one triumph of the utterly hare-brained (from government ministers and agencies) after another, and I am feeling deeply discouraged.

Enough with the process. We need structure; we need laws, and we need penalties, this time for the guys who don’t think the law applies to them.

I don’t know why this is a sudden revelation. There’s a lot of people been shouting this from the mountain tops for a long while now, mostly to deaf ears… including the “progressive” community.

Anyone thinking Kennedy has any chance whatsoever of moving this thing is deluded. He’s one non-dominant cell in a federal organism fully wired to keep doing what it’s been doing… eg: nothing.

This starts & ends w/Obama because he’s the only one w/megaphone loud enough to move masses. BO’s chosen not to do this… not to focus any light on how/why all this happened, not to take committed meaningful action to prevent it’s re-occurrence, nor to lay out “another way”.

He’s jumped in bed w/all that made it happen, he’s betting our future on the same financial crook’s helmsmanship in steering all of us out of it by the same means they pulled us into it. Obama/Geithner’s proposals are, literally, another roll of the dice… a gamble. A multi-trillion $$, blow on the dice gamble.

Show me one dem congressman over last 8 years, who spoke up against any of W’s multi-faceted abuses, who’s congressional actions or words had any affect on checking (much less correcting) what was then converging train wrecks.

Was there any… even one? Does anyone even remember? Did they accomplish anything more than sticking a post’em on the passing train… visible to nobody, and blown away to oblivion in moments?