"Often controversial, seldom liked. The FCC."

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Sometimes it seems that the Government Accountability Office is the only one trying to do it's job. In their report on the Federal Communications Commission, they state that the agency favors lobbyists over citizens in that lobbyists are kept up to date on FCC actions while citizen groups were not.

Granted, they need to do more stuff like this on their own instead of waiting to be asked, but at least they aren't towing the same line that all the other corrupt and inept agencies are.

DHL

(Image is in the Public Domain)

In what has become the norm and not the exception, an expensive Department of Defense project has been shown to be a complete failure wasting millions of dollars and all of our time. What makes this story interesting is it was due in no small part to the efforts of the Government Accountability office that this project was scrapped. They discovered that the program was using live data on American citizens instead of dummy data and that none of the required privacy protections had been put in place. Go figure.

Most frightening is this line:

The privacy office concluded that although required privacy analyses were ignored, the Privacy Act was not technically violated because the live data were covered by privacy notices issued earlier for other programs that originally gathered the information.

Which demonstrates the danger of taking data for one reason, but using for a completely different reason altogether.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

A scandal with the FBI showed that they had been abusing their power, breaking rules, and now are being accused of breaking the law (which is totally inline with all government agencies in the Bush regime).

Considering their recent track record, maybe approving their massive new data mining project would be a little premature…

George W. Bush

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

One of the scariest developments of the Bush reign was the power to take any citizen, declare them an enemy combatant, and jail them indefinitely with no trial or evidence. That practice has been recently (finally) overturned.

"To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians . . . would have disastrous consequences for the constitution -- and the country," U.S. Circuit Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote for the majority.

Let me say this again, the problem is that Bush has declared that he alone gets to decide who the terrorists are and what laws to follow and which to ignore.

George W. Bush

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

No stranger to using doctored data, Bush painted a rosy picture of the efforts of the US to slow greenhouse gas emissions that was totally false.

George W. Bush

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

A newly disclosed effort to keep Vice President Dick Cheney's visitor records secret is the latest White House push to make sure the public does not learn who has been meeting with top officials in the Bush administration.

According to Crooks and Liars.com, they've changed the rules so that they're directly responsible for visitors which prevents the Secret Service from having to publicize the lists when served with FOIA requests.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

What is the point of a federal regulatory agency that won't do it's job?

The issue landed in court after Creekstone Farms offended the USDA by constructing a state of the art facility to test for mad cow. The USDA fears that testing will reveal too many 'false positives,' scaring the hell out of consumers and threatening the financial health of the nation's meat industry.

Since when was the regulatory agency in the business of social control rather than industry regulation?

They must be taking pointers from the FDA and the FTC.

Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

(Image is in the Public Domain)

When the former head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was caught violating the law, he was charged with two misdemeanors. When the former director of China's State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) was convicted on corruption charges, he was sentenced to death.

I don't know. I'm thinking that the Chinese version makes the next guy a little more responsible…

(Image is in the Public Domain)

I stumbled on this article today that really amused me. It's fantastically well written and biting on both Gonzales and the Bush administration, but it's very short. Here are some of the highlights:

The ultimate humiliation has now been inflicted on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, the nation's demonstrably incompetent and intellectually corrupt chief law enforcement officer. Virtually all major Latino activist groups that vigorously supported his appointment have now declared their support of Gonzales null and void. ... This mass disaffection of Hispanics simply adds to the growing realization in Congress and the public that Gonzales is unfit ethically and intellectually to fulfill the oath of attorney general to be the people's lawyer, not the in-house mouthpiece for President Bush and his constitutionally dubious conduct.

And most importantly:

Nothing, absolutely nothing—not even the war—is more critical to the preservation of American government than restoring respect for law and for returning the Department of Justice to those with a profound regard for the Constitution. So too does the nation need legal professionals who understand the rights of citizens and who have the character to repudiate wrongdoing—even in the White House.

DHL

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Apparently, the DHS has only charged 12 cases of terrorism out of 814,000 cases it's brought.

TRAC reported more than 85 percent of the charges involved more common immigration violations such as not having a valid immigrant visa, overstaying a student visa or entering the United States without an inspection.