We had to go through a similar video at DirecTV.

IT was an Anti telecommunication workers of america union video where it talked about how evil unions were.

Then we had to sign a paper when hired promising we'd never join a union, and that if we did it would be grounds for immediate termination. And we had also signed over our rights for any lawsuits due to signing the Mediation clause most employers are now carrying.

those mediation clauses suck, the most famous mediation clause went before congress of a young girl went to Iraq for extra pay for Haliburton and was gang raped, then detained in a box for days she tried to sue but was never able to and courts/police/fbi all ignored her.

Senator Franken brought the matter before a judiciary committee trying to BAN mediation clauses for employers. Dunno where it went after that, but yea.

I worked there for 3 weeks at directv, we had solicitations to join the unions when we'd go to lunch people would walk up to us, eventually a bunch of us couldn't handle the stress and quit. Cause you never knew if it was directv employees testing you, cause even if you took pamphlets they'd fire you.

it was a mess....

^ From the presence of Senator Franken, I deduce it is in the US Senate. From the caption text I deduce it is a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing!

The discussion seems to suggest an inquiry into misuse of the Patriot Act and the constitutional legality of said Act in general.

Captain Obvious strikes again!

Specter is about as moderate a Republican as John Boehner is.


Here's a brief rundown:

In the 110th Congress, Specter voted with his party 70.6 percent of the time

• Rated 12% by APHA, indicating a anti-public health voting record.
• Rated 81% by the Christian Coalition.
• Rated 0% by SANE, indicating a pro-military voting record.
• Rated 0% by the ARA, indicating an anti-senior voting record.


• Voted YES on Bush Administration Energy Policy.
• Voted YES on defunding renewable and solar energy.
• Voted YES on drilling ANWR on national security grounds
• Voted YES on allowing some lobbyist gifts to Congress.
• Voted NO on repealing tax subsidy for companies which move US jobs offshore.
• Voted NO on $100M to reduce teen pregnancy by education & contraceptives.
• Voted YES on prohibiting same-sex marriage
• Voted YES on Amendment to prohibit flag burning.
• Voted NO on banning drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
• Voted NO on including oil & gas smokestacks in mercury regulations.
• Voted NO on background checks at gun shows.
• Voted NO on negotiating bulk purchases for Medicare prescription drug.
• Voted NO on including prescription drugs under Medicare.
• Voted YES on Strengthening of the trade embargo against Cuba.
• Voted NO on requiring FISA court warrant to monitor US-to-foreign calls.
• Voted YES on telecomm deregulation.
• Voted YES on authorizing use of military force against Iraq


On March 9, 2006, the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 was signed into law. It amended the process for interim appointments of U.S. Attorneys, written into the bill by Arlen Specter during his chairmanship of the Senate Judiciary Committee.[18] The change allowed the Bush Administration to appoint interim U.S. attorneys without term limits, and without confirmation by the Senate. The Bush administration used the law to place at least eight interim attorneys into office in 2006.



There's ungodly amount more of really piss-poor judgment.

I think I can fill out most of the list:

#1. The House Sergeant at Arms (left), and I think he's accompanied by the Senate Sergeant at Arms.
#2. Special guests
#3. From left to right, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL), Senator Chuck Shumer (D-NY), and in front of them looks like Supreme Court Justice Sam Alito.
#4. From left to right, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geitner, and HRC herself (Secretary of State).
#5. In the middle is Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY), I'm guessing he's with other House Representatives from NY.
#6. Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT) currently also Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee (kinda important atm)
#7. From left to right, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA), and House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH). These two are the current Republican House leadership.
#8. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).
#9. Senator Judd Gregg (R-NH), who had a brief flirtation with being Obama's Commerce Secretary.
#10. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). He's the current Republican Senate leadership.
#11. Earl Devaney, the new Inspector General Obama was talking about seconds before (who helped bust Jack Abramaoff)
#12. Not sure who the guy picking at his ear is, but the other two are Housing and Urban Development Secretary (HUD) Shaun Donovan, and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis.
#13. Juggs magazine. Or the text of the speech he's listening to. Oh, and it's Senator Richard Shelby (R-AL), who's the ranking Republican on the Senate Banking Committee (and former chair).
#14. The infamous Joe Lieberman (I-CT), former Democrat who campaigned for John McCain.
#15. Senator Arlen Spector (R-PA), one of the 3 Republicans to vote for the Stimulus bill.
#16. Senators Evan Bayh (D-IN), and Roland Burris (D-IL) the latter of Blagojevich fame.
#17. Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) in the middle, not sure of anyone else. He's the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
#18. I'm forgetting his name, but he's a House Republican, and most likely so is the woman next to him.
#19. Peter Orszag, new Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), formerly Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel is to his left.
#20. Chuck Shumer again.
#21. Secretary of Veterans Affairs (VA) Eric Shinseki
#22. Not sure, I think he's a House Republican.
#23. Energy Secretary Steven Chu.
#24. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA)
#25. Don't know.
#26. Don't know. I'll wager a guess it's a House Democrat though.
#27. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI)
#28. Don't know.
#29. Senator Dick Lugar (R-IN)
#30. Don't recognize him, but he must be an Obama cabinet member, since that's who he's sitting amongst.
#31. Evan Bayh (D-IN) again.
#32. On the left is Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL), not sure who's next to him.
#33. Don't know.
#34. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), buddy of John McCain.
#35. From left to right, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar, Defense Secretary Bob Gates, Treasury Secretary Tim Geitner, and Hillary something or other.
#36. I only know the one on the left, Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but those are the *cough* Joint Chiefs of Staff; the heads of the Navy, Army, Air Force, and Marines (in that order unless I've misidentified the uniforms).
#37. No clue, but it's likely they're part of the JCS organization.
#38. Dunno, but he's sure to be on this list somewhere. To his left is Ted Strickland, Governor of Ohio (D).
#39. Don't know. I think that's the Republican House section, though.
#40. Don't know.
#41. Captain Sully Sullenberger. Pilot of this plane.
#42. Mayor Bob Dixon, from Greensburg, Kansas; the city Obama's talking about.

Phew.

Commentary about lying from someone who should be in jail for obstruction of justice for his own refusal to testify when subpoenaed by the House Judiciary Committee. Oh, it is delicious.

I'm going to cut this off when the World Socialist website goes heavy into the socialism:

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/jun2008/impe-j12.shtml

"House Democrats kill resolution to impeach Bush
By Patrick Martin
12 June 2008

In a display of parliamentary maneuvering that combined cynicism and cowardice, Democratic members of the US House of Representatives voted unanimously to kill an impeachment resolution against President Bush introduced by Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio.

Kucinich himself participated fully in the farce. He introduced the resolution Monday and read out the 35 articles of impeachment for crimes ranging from the lying pretexts given to the American people for the war in Iraq to torture at the US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba and illegal domestic spying. Then he moved to send the resolution to the House Judiciary Committee, whose chairman John Conyers has long rejected any effort to hold Bush constitutionally accountable.

The 251-166 margin of the vote, held on a roll call Wednesday, saw all 227 Democrats—including Kucinich and his lone co-sponsor, Robert Wexler of Florida—joined by 24 Republicans move to dispose of the resolution. Voting against were 166 Republicans, who sought to force a debate on impeachment for the purpose of embarrassing the Democratic Party leadership.

After Kucinich introduced the measure Monday and spent more than four hours reading the entire text into the Congressional Record, House Republicans utilized a parliamentary provision to force the clerk of the House to read the text out loud all over again on Tuesday, consuming another four hours and keeping the House in session until after midnight. The purpose was to rub the Democrats’ noses in their own refusal to take action to back up their occasional bursts of anti-Bush demagogy.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ruled out any impeachment of Bush as soon as the Democrats won control of Congress in November 2006. Impeachment resolutions against Cheney were introduced in May and November of 2007 and killed each time by the Democrats, in the same fashion as the Bush impeachment resolution Wednesday.

There is no question that, unlike Bill Clinton, who was impeached for lying about a private sexual encounter, George W. Bush is guilty of offenses that meet the “high crimes and misdemeanors” standard set by the US Constitution.

The adamant opposition to impeachment proceedings on the part of Pelosi, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and the rest of the Democratic leadership does not stem from a belief that such proceedings would be unpopular. According to public opinion polls, a majority of the American people and an overwhelming majority of Democratic voters favor Bush’s impeachment and removal from office.

A public vote in the House of Representatives would, however, find a clear majority of the Democrats in Congress siding with Bush against the sentiments of their own constituents. The Democratic leadership seeks to block any vote to conceal as much as possible their role as the last line of defense for the Bush administration.

The Democratic leadership opposes impeachment not on legal, but on political and class grounds. They are well aware that the adoption of an impeachment resolution against Bush and Cheney, regardless of the outcome of a Senate trial, would deal a major blow against the White House as an institution and undermine the legitimacy of all Bush’s actions as “commander-in-chief,” especially in the war in Iraq.

It would also inevitably raise the question of who in Congress was complicit with Bush’s criminal conduct over the past seven years—tarring Democrats as well as Republicans, since a majority of Senate Democrats and a large number of House Democrats voted for the Iraq war resolution in 2002. Many other actions listed in Kucinich’s articles of impeachment were given near-unanimous support by the Democrats.

More fundamentally, the Democratic Party is a bourgeois party and it seeks to uphold the authority of the bourgeois state..."

bourgeois, stop.

Still some valid points though - rare you'll see me agreeing with that site, but there you go.

>> ^MINK:
but... it's good that he didn't STAY quiet, right?


Yes, they're just still going to be damned by historians for CYA handwringing after the fact.

Now, if he gives sworn testimony before Congress, and his testimony leads to the eventual arrest of the top officials responsible, maaaybe I'll cut him some slack.

He's gonna be getting an invitation to come before the House judiciary committee soon, so he's got an opportunity at that.

That video shows a clear individual who we can judge..it's good TV, not abstract. Katrina is visual and visceral..global warming and civil liberties are not: http://www.videosift.com/video/Frogs-in-Boiling-Water-the-Psychology-of-Global-Warming

In reply to this comment by Farhad2000:
People seemingly get more railed up about police abuses captured on video then the continuing judicial abuses committed by the Whitehouse. One affects a minority the other affects the majority. Kind of like whats going on right now in the Senate:

Senate Yesterday

After more than a year of wrangling, the Senate handed the White House a major victory on Tuesday by voting to broaden the government’s spy powers and to give legal protection to phone companies that cooperated in President Bush’s program of eavesdropping without warrants.

One by one, the Senate rejected amendments that would have imposed greater civil liberties checks on the government’s surveillance powers. Finally, the Senate voted 68 to 29 to approve legislation that the White House had been pushing for months. Mr. Bush hailed the vote and urged the House to move quickly in following the Senate’s lead.

People seemingly get more railed up about police abuses captured on video then the continuing judicial abuses committed by the Whitehouse. One affects a minority the other affects the majority. Kind of like whats going on right now in the Senate:

Senate Yesterday

After more than a year of wrangling, the Senate handed the White House a major victory on Tuesday by voting to broaden the government’s spy powers and to give legal protection to phone companies that cooperated in President Bush’s program of eavesdropping without warrants.

One by one, the Senate rejected amendments that would have imposed greater civil liberties checks on the government’s surveillance powers. Finally, the Senate voted 68 to 29 to approve legislation that the White House had been pushing for months. Mr. Bush hailed the vote and urged the House to move quickly in following the Senate’s lead.

N.F.L. Commissioner Roger Goodell will travel to Washington on Wednesday to meet with Senator Arlen Specter for a discussion about the league’s investigation into the Patriots’ spying on other teams.

“I have a lot of questions,” Specter said. “I’m hoping to get some answers.”

Specter, of Pennsylvania, is the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He first requested a meeting with Goodell in a letter in November. Specter wanted to know why the league had destroyed all evidence in the spying case and whether there was any indication that the Patriots had cheated when they played the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl XXXIX."