http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/testim….._09_01.htm

FY 2002 Budget Request

The President’s FY 2002 budget increases the Department’s resources for counterterrorism and critical infrastructure protection by $103 million over the enacted FY 2001 funding level. This amount includes $40 million in requested program enhancements plus base adjustments and portions of programs that support counterterrorism-related activities.

Of the $40 million in program enhancements, a total of $32 million is requested by the FBI for security and investigative duties at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, for increased security requirements at various FBI locations, and to support its incident response readiness responsibilities.

For the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), $7 million in new funding is included to establish intelligence units along our Northern and Southern borders. These units will monitor terrorist activities and smuggling operations, and assist in tracking the movement of illicit narcotics, weapons, and other contraband across our nation’s borders.

And the Criminal Division requests $1 million for extradition and foreign legal assistance workload, translation services and computer network security enhancements.

In addition to the enhancements discussed above, and in recognition of the critical role State and local public safety agencies play in managing the consequences of any terrorist event involving weapons of mass destruction, the Department’s total budget request includes $220.5 million to continue the Office of Justice Programs’ Counterterrorism programs in FY 2002 and ensure State and local response readiness.

Statement of Attorney General John Ashcroft
before the United States Senate
Committee on Appropriations
Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and State,
The Judiciary, and Related Agencies

Hearing on U.S. Federal Efforts to Combat Terrorism

May 9, 2001

*snip*

The Second Annual Update was transmitted to Congress on May 1, 2001. Let me describe just a few examples of the progress that we reported to you in our second update:

Agencies report steady progress in the enhancement of intelligence collection, analysis and sharing, as well as the refinement of software applications that can be used on an interagency basis.

With a continued critical need for analyst and language capabilities, agencies report that they have made progress toward enhancing these capabilities.

The Visa Waiver Pilot Program was made permanent through legislation, and statutory requirements now exist to implement an automated system for tracking aliens who travel in and out of the United States.

Terrorist fundraising has continued to be the focus of nationally coordinated investigations and training efforts, including a commitment to establish within the Treasury Department a Terrorist Asset Tracking System.

Agencies have continued to make progress in upgrading the security at federal facilities and have increased interagency coordination of security at special events.

Capabilities of state and local emergency responders to address weapon of mass destruction incidents have been further enhanced through training of more than 1900 additional first responders.

The Second Annual Update of the Five-Year Plan describes many more forward steps that agencies have taken, alone or working together, to address our common goals of preventing and responding to terrorist acts.

*snip*

http://www.usdoj.gov/ag/testim….._09_01.htm

The ownership of both parties by Wall Street has been made abundantly clear by the events transpiring between the hopped-up panic and now. Yet the implications are very slow to sink in. It’s hard to let go of the idea that someone in our supposedly representative democracy has our interests at heart. But no one who matters does.

I was primarily thinking of the market meltdown; something like $600 million? billion? being removed from US banks on a day in Sept 2008, followed by:
– Hank Paulson’s 3 page ‘edict’ to Pelosi, et al, frankly telling them there’d by no strings, no accountability, no questions asked.
– The R’s refusing to help the Dems bail out the credit market freeze in Sept, Oct 2008
– The extent of the Ponzi schemes: Madoff’s $50 billion money laundering fraud; Stanford’s money laundering antics in Antiqua…
– Elizabeth Warren’s news that n-o-n-e of the $700 b-b-billion in TARP funds had been adequately accounted for, nor did there seem any plans to do so.
– The sloppiness and complete bullshit involved in the configuration of the arrays of calculations in the credit derivative swaps, and the extent of their use
– The revelations about commodities speculations (see ’summer 2008 energy prices’ just for starters).

Finally, I’m actually a bit surprised that Bush and Cheney didn’t as much as look at one another (as far as I can discern) during the inauguration of Obama; that I did not see coming.

My surprises of the past year tend to focus around the economic news: it’s brazen illegality, the scope, the shamelessness, the speed (some of which seems rather suspicious given that the markets really collapsed the week that the world heard Sarah Palin interviewed, as if the economic players threw in the towel on McCain, the GOP, and the existing order and yanked their billions out of US currency as fast as they were able, although no doubt there are other explanations as well. But it did seem as if international interests (drug lords? arms traders?) saw that the GOP was going to lose the WH and yanked their billions out of the US markets in Sept 2008. I’m sure this speculation on my part puts me at the head of the Tin Foil Hat Parade, but the timing between the US elections and the market implosions is more than strange.)

In a profession – Law Enforcement – where a keen sense of *suspicion* is prized, Ashcroft the Attorney General of the United States stands out for the see-no-evil/hear-no-evil/speak-no-evil gaping hole – where his Ethic of Responsibility – where his Integrity used to be.

He’s a True Believer with a ‘Snooker Me’ sign slap-taped on his back by Addington.

He was punkable because his Political Loyalty to Bush was stronger than his Respect for the Constitution and the Rule of Law. It was, imvho, Ashcroft’s ‘twisted’ sense of Ideological Loyalty that made him reluctant to even question Bush.

Up until the Hospital Visit, he appears to have simply ‘accepted’ every Bush utterance with a barked, “Yes, my Colonel!” and then ‘enabled’ the ‘legality’ of those utterances with a combination of Acts of Commission and Acts of Omission on his part.

Then he gets put out to pasture with a $52M No-Bid Contract to retire on.

Imvho, he was never up to faithfully carrying-out the responsibilities of the AG, at a time when We most needed a Stalwart of the Law to stand his or her ground against a panicked/opportunistic stampede for unrestricted power by his Ideological peers.

Instead, he was the furthest thing from Professionally Independent of Political Influence – he threw the Constitution and the Rule of Law down in the mud for Bush to walk on, promptly, when Bush told him to.

Since, afaik, with the exception of the Hospital Visit, Ashcroft had No Track Record of Independence from Bush, he can only be considered an Enabler, a Co-Conspirator, in the breeches of the Rule of Law ordered-up by Bush.

Florida’s new senator is facing scrutiny for dealings
BY STEVE BOUSQUET, MARY ELLEN KLAS AND MARC CAPUTO
HERALD/TIMES TALLAHASSEE BUREAU

TALLAHASSEE — “When Gov. Charlie Crist anointed George LeMieux as Florida’s new U.S. senator, he did more than hand his closest adviser the plum job of a lifetime.

“With a hug and a handshake, Crist transformed LeMieux from a little-known insider (”George LeWho?” one paper asked) to a major political figure, suddenly thrust into a spotlight that’s illuminating how his public service brought him private profit.

“Amid charges of political cronyism and claims he was picked to be the governor’s proxy in Washington, there is renewed scrutiny of LeMieux’s dealings and those of his law firm, Gunster Yoakley & Stewart, on multiple fronts:

More. Much more.

EXCLUSIVE: CIA asks Justice to probe leaks of secrets
By Eli Lake, Sara A. Carter THE WASHINGTON TIMES

“Besieged by leaks of several closely held secrets, the CIA has asked the Justice Department to examine what it regards as the criminal disclosure of a secret program to kill foreign terrorist leaders abroad, The Washington Times has learned.

“Two U.S. intelligence officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because of the sensitivity of the case, said the leak investigation involved a program that CIA Director Leon E. Panetta told Congress about in June and that surfaced in news reports just a month later.”

More.

I can’t top yours, but here’s one I’ve been meaning to try, so I’ll send it along with my many thnx!

But I’m on the fence with Ashcroft. He did right in the hospital room, sure enough. And he refused to appoint Yoo to head the OLC. But the whole OLC Memo thing happened in his shop, right under his nose. He approved the Surveillance without really looking critically at what they were doing. You’re bringing up waterboarding. I’m not sure he gets off for “not knowing” or “not being told.” He only seemed to rise to the occasion when someone like Comey took the lid off the chamber pot and said, “Smell this!” That’s a mighty low standard for an Attorney General.

Yet, as readerOfTeaLeaves says, “One thing that makes the Ashcroft hospital scene so riveting is the absence of sanitized language in any reports of what took place. That was an instance of clear, frank, honest talk, which appears to have been a rarity between 2000 and 2008.“