Obama: Butting Some Heads... HOORAH!!!

Tear Them To Pieces, Barack!

TOUGH TALK: 

Touring a Riddell sporting-goods factory in Ohio, President Obama was presented with a gleaming blue football helmet emblazoned with the presidential seal and "44" on the back, the pool reports.

Prompted by a reporter, Obama said he'll "need this during the State of the Union."

"That is a serious-looking helmet," Obama said. "I can knock some heads with this."

Obama boarded Air Force One at 4:08 p.m.

UPDATED: Obama headed to the Oval office after arriving in Marine One landed on the South lawn around 5:30 pm.

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Let The Sun Shine In......

Remember These Five Names....

More Importantly, Remember the Names of The Corporate Jackasses who buy our government. 

Making a list a checking it twice.....

By Jim Hightower

Last September, I wrote The Hightower Lowdown about how the Roberts' Court could throw out over 100 years of campaign finance law.

Remember their names: Alito, Kennedy, Roberts, Scalia, and Thomas.

Yesterday, from within the dark isolation of the Supreme Court, these five men pulled off a black-robed coup against the American people's democratic authority. In an unprecedented perversion of judicial power, this court cabal has decreed that corporations have a free-speech "right" to dip into their corporate coffers and spend unlimited sums of money to elect or defeat candidates of their choosing.

Corporate interests already had too much money power over our political system.

No other group in America comes anywhere near the spending clout that this relatively small clutch of wealthy special interests wields over our elections and government. So it's ludicrous for anyone – much less Supreme Court judges – to argue that the corporate voice is a victim of political "censorship." This is not merely judicial activism, it is judicial radicalism.

Thomas Jefferson warned about the dangerous rise of corporate power, declaring that must "crush in its birth the aristocracy of our moneyed corporations." Today, I'm sure that founding patriots like Jefferson are not simply spinning in their graves at the Supreme Court's surrender to this aristocracy – they're trying to claw their way out of their graves to throttle all five of the traitors.

We MUST fight back. Many good groups are working on this issue, and we all have to get involved to fight against this corporate take over of our political system. Public Citizen has a petition we can sign. Common Cause is asking us to contact our congresspersons and make sure they have signed on to the Fair Elections Now Act. I mentioned other good groups that are working on this issue. Get in touch with them. Let's fight the good fight... and win! Onward!


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Let The Light Shine In....

Dutch Say Iraq War Not Justified....

more, it was "probably" Illegal! 

Not even U.N. resolution 1441, in no way, made the bombing, invasion and occupation anything less than a war crime.

An inquiry into the Netherlands' support for the invasion of Iraq says it was not justified by UN resolutions.

The Dutch Committee of Inquiry on Iraq said UN Security Council resolutions did not "constitute a mandate for... intervention in 2003".

The inquiry was launched after foreign ministry memos were leaked that cast doubt on the legal basis for the
war.

The Netherlands gave political support to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but had no military role.

The report demolishes the Dutch case for supporting the invasion, says the BBC's Europe correspondent Jonny Dymond.

It could also be taken to reinforce the international case against the Iraq war, he says.

The report accuses ministers of a selective use of intelligence reports, and says Prime Minister Jan-Peter Balkenende "gave little or no leadership to debates over the Iraq question", which was steered by the foreign minister at the time, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer.

Mr Balkenende formally thanked the committee for its report, but said he needed time to study it before responding.

Political loyalty

Mr Balkenende decided to join the "coalition of the willing" assembled by US President George W Bush because, he said, Saddam Hussein had consistently flouted UN resolutions and possessed weapons of mass destruction.

The Dutch parliament opposed the decision to back the invasion.

Committee chairman, Willibrord Davids, said the Netherlands' loyalty to its alliance with the US and UK had taken precedence over the need to ensure the legality of the invasion.

The committee said there had been no UN mandate for the attack, putting the decision to join at odds with international law.

It said "the wording of [UN Security Council] Resolution 1441 cannot reasonably be interpreted as authorising individual member states to use military force".

Iraq's alleged breach of Resolution 1441, which gave Iraq "a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations", was used by the coalition, and the Netherlands, to justify its invasion.

However, a memo from the time by Dutch foreign ministry lawyers, subsequently leaked, suggested the war was in fact illegal under international law.

The inquiry said there was no evidence to support rumours that the Dutch military took part in the invasion.
While the government has always said its military was not involved, questions had been raised because Dutch troops were taking part in exercises nearby at the time.

Dutch forces became part of the stabilisation force that was deployed to Iraq in the years after the war.
The Dutch parliament is likely now to consider whether the prime minister misled parliament, and whether to launch a formal parliamentary inquiry.



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Let The Sun Shine In......