While indictment fever gripped the Washington press corps, the president’s spin doctor was incapacitated. An ailing Karl Rove could not help the Republican search for a media cure. With temperature rising, the political physician was in no position to cure himself or anyone else.

Now, a media siege is underway at the White House. A dramatic convergence of legal proceedings and presidential politics has forced the Bush administration into a fundamentally defensive crouch.

A year ago, when President Bush hailed him as the political strategist who made a second term possible, Rove was the toast of Washington. Now -- even though he hasn’t been indicted -- it seems he’s toast.

In Washington, where nothing succeeds like political success, an election victory is widely seen as proof of justification. Strip away the razzle-dazzle, and you’re left with a rather simple precept: Whatever works.

And, for almost five years, the Rove media operation worked. From maximal exploitation of 9/11 for political gain to the “Swift Boating” of John Kerry, the presidential spin machinery wrapped

As federal probes rack Team Bush in Washington, three huge indictments for money laundering and other pro-Bush election crimes involving Ohio "Coingate" lynchpin Tom Noe have stoked powerful new Watergate-style financial fires under Ohio's stolen 2004 election scandal.

A close associate of key Republicans from George H.W. Bush to George W. Bush to Ohio Senator George Voinovich to Ohio Governor Robert Taft and many, many more, Noe has long been known as northwest Ohio's "Mr. Republican."

He has also been at the heart of speculation on how huge numbers of votes in the Toledo area may have wrongly found their way into the Bush column, helping the GOP again take the presidency in 2004.

Re: In essence, the GAO study makes it clear that no bank, grocery store or mom & pop chop shop would dare operate its business on a computer system as flimsy, fragile and easily manipulated as the one on which the 2004 election turned.

Not true. Almost every major organization has significant flaws in their computer security (user passwords are just one example). Minor organizations like mom and pop stores are likely to have far more security problems than the voting machines did.

Banks might do an ok job, but the other organizations wouldn't.

Just notice how often that windows (sic) comes out with security releases that you need to install to avoid someone gaining possible control of your computer (Eg a total security breach). It's about once a month.

The more complex a computer system is, the more likely there is to be a major security flaw. Most of them just don't get noticed, because you'd have to stumble into the flaw (get lucky).

My take on Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post 9/11 World (featuring David Barsamian's interviews with Noam Chomsky)

Once Again "The Heretic" Takes the Empire to Task

As you read these words, I have little doubt that The Grand Inquisitor for the Bush regime is aching for a shot at The Empire’s ultimate heretic. Noam Chomsky has been a consistent intellectual thorn in the collective sides of the Machiavellians comprising the ruling elite in the United States for years. I recently had the pleasure of reading his latest, Imperial Ambitions: Conversation on the Post-9/11 World. Difficult as it is to imagine (if one has read Chomsky), I breezed through the nine chapters in about two hours. Throughout the 201 pages, interviewer David Barsamian poses probing questions, which serve to pry open the burgeoning treasure trove of knowledge and activate the analytical juggernaut comprising Avram Noam Chomsky's brain. With little prompting from Barsamian, Chomsky unleashes an onslaught of profound insights into how the world has changed since 9/11, and on America's role in shaping and effecting that change.

Glad he is only a "part-timer"

As a legal noose appears to be tightening around the Bush/Cheney/Rove inner circle, a shocking government report shows the floor under the legitimacy of their alleged election to the White House is crumbling.

The latest critical confirmation of key indicators that the election of 2004 was stolen comes in an extremely powerful, penetrating report from the Government Accountability Office that has gotten virtually no mainstream media coverage. Click here for GAO Report

The government's lead investigative agency is known for its general incorruptibility and its thorough, in-depth analyses. Its concurrence with assertions widely dismissed as "conspiracy theories" adds crucial new weight to the case that Team Bush has no legitimate business being in the White House.

Nearly a year ago, senior Judiciary Committee Democrat John Conyers (D-MI) asked the GAO to investigate electronic voting machines as they were used during the November 2, 2004