Joke making the rounds among veterans' advocates sick of the Bush administration's incompetence and outright hostility towards veterans.

Ray & Bubba 
 
Mechanical engineers were standing at the base of a flagpole,  looking up. A woman walked by and asked what they were doing. 
 
"'We're supposed to find the height of  the flagpole," said Bubba,  "but we don't have a tall enough ladder."

The woman took a wrench from her purse,  loosened a few bolts, and laid the pole down. Then she took a tape measure from her pocket, took a measurement, and announced: "Eighteen-feet, six-inches," and walked  away. 
 
Ray shook his head and laughed. "Ain't that just like a woman!" 
 
"We ask for the height and she gives us the length!" 
 
Bubba and Ray are currently working for the VA in benefits adjudication.

Those longing for an accounting of Bush's historic abuse of power may get their wish.

In Salon, Tim Shorrock has uncovered new modes of state surveillance of Americans, and revealed documents contemplating "a potential investigation of the White House that could rival Watergate."

Breaking new ground on the government's programs monitoring Americans to be used in a declared national emergency, Shorrock reports on programs "designed for use by the military in the event of a national catastrophe, a suspension of the Constitution or the imposition of martial law."

Some excerpts:

From Nichols at The Nation:

Three senior members of the House Judiciary Committee have called for the immediate opening of impeachment hearings for Vice President Richard Cheney.

Democrats Robert Wexler of Florida, Luis Gutierrez of Illinois and Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin on Friday distributed a statement, "A Case for Hearings," that declares, "The issues at hand are too serious to ignore, including credible allegations of abuse of power that if proven may well constitute high crimes and misdemeanors under our constitution. The charges against Vice President Cheney relate to his deceptive actions leading up to the Iraq war, the revelation of the identity of a covert agent for political retaliation, and the illegal wiretapping of American citizens."

Updated: John Edwards fundraiser acquitted on all counts, DOJ political prosecution goes up in flames

Via Mal Contends - Even as the U.S. Justice Department arrogantly stonewalls requests by the House Committee on the Judiciary for documents pertaining to politically-charged prosecutions in Alabama, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin (the Georgia Thompson affair), Wisconsin’s U.S. Atty. Stephen Biskupic volunteered to offer transcribed testimony under oath before the Judiciary Committee.

From Dan Bice in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

"If they (the House Judiciary Committee) want to hear from me, I'm happy to do it."
Even if the testimony is transcribed and under oath?
"It really doesn't matter to me," said Biskupic.

Via Michael Leon (MAL Contends) - As the politicalization of the DoJ and numerous other Bush administration agencies has become clear in the public mind, the House Committee on the Judiciary Chair, John Conyers, released a Justice Department internal e-mail on the discredited Georgia Thompson prosecution, tossed out of a Seventh Circuit's appellate panel.

The e-mail as recounted in Talking Points Memo reads:

Madison, Wisconsin—A Vietnam-era veteran filed his reply brief Monday in his benefits-turned-criminal case before the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Keith Roberts, an honorably discharged Navy veteran (1969-71) from Gillett, Wisconsin, filed his brief arguing that “his constitutional rights were violated in this case, and that he was unjustly convicted and sentenced.”

Since March of this year, Roberts, a veteran with no criminal record, has been serving a 48-month sentence (and his family financially hit with associated costs of some $300,000) for federal wire fraud purportedly committed in his benefits application process with the VA, in a criminal-charges/VA benefits case now simultaneously before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit and the Court of Appeals for Veteran Claims (CAVC), where Roberts is pursing his benefits claim.

Court of Appeals for Veteran Claims (CAVC)

William R. Steiger, son of the late Wisconsin Congressman William A. Steiger (1967- 1978) and advisor to former Gov and HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson, is skewered in a page one Washington Post piece today as a political hack.

“A specialist in education and a scholar of Latin American history whose family has long ties to President Bush and Vice President Cheney. Since 2001, Steiger has run the Office of Global Health Affairs in the Department of Health and Human Services,” reads the piece.

U.S. Rep. Artur Davis (D-AL) has had enough of the politicized prosecutions of the Bush/Rove Department of Justice.

Davis, a three-term congressman and member of the House Committee on the Judiciary, has taken up the cause of former Alabama governor Don Siegelman (D), roundly criticizing the DoJ prosecutions of him (one prosecution was dismissed) and calling for a Congressional investigation.

The bizarre conviction of Siegelman this year is drawing nationwide condemnation as a political prosecution engineered by Karl Rove, similar to the prosecution of the innocent Wisconsin state worker Georgia Thompson, now exonerated.