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WikiLeaks hasn't even released the latest round of US government documents and already politicians and pundits are calling for prosecutions.

The latest release from the WikiLeaks website is expected to include as many as 250,000 secret diplomatic cables.

The Obama administration warned Wednesday that the documents could damage US relations with friends and allies.

"Leaking the material is deplorable," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News' Chris Wallace Sunday. "I agree with the Pentagon's assessment that the people at WikiLeaks could have blood on their hands."

"I don't know what the cables may say but it's just a -- we're at war. I mean the world is getting dangerous by the day and the people who do this are really low on the food chain as far as I'm concerned. If you can prosecute them, let's try."

Sen. Clair McCaskill (D-MO) agreed. "Lindsey's right," she said. "The people who are leaking these documents need to a gut check about their patriotism and I think they're enjoying the attention they're getting but, frankly, it's coming at a very high price in terms of protecting our men and women in uniform."

"I hope that we can figure out where this is coming from and go after them with the force of law," McCaskill said.

Also appearing on Fox News Sunday, former State Department official Liz Cheney called for the government to go after the leakers.

"I think, once again, the government of Iceland ought to shut down that [WikiLeaks] website," Cheney said. "I think they ought to stop allowing the stuff to come out of the website in Iceland. I think that the administration ought to be focused very much on prosecuting those responsible."

The State Department sent a letter Saturday to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Publication of documents of this nature at a minimum would:

* Place at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals -- from journalists to human rights activists and bloggers to soldiers to individuals providing information to further peace and security;

* Place at risk on-going military operations, including operations to stop terrorists, traffickers in human beings and illicit arms, violent criminal enterprises and other actors that threaten global security; and,

* Place at risk on-going cooperation between countries - partners, allies and common stakeholders -- to confront common challenges from terrorism to pandemic diseases to nuclear proliferation that threaten global stability.

"Despite your stated desire to protect those lives, you have done the opposite and endangered the lives of countless individuals. You have undermined your stated objective by disseminating this material widely, without redaction, and without regard to the security and sanctity of the lives your actions endanger," State Department legal advisor Harold Hongju Koh wrote.

"If you are genuinely interested in seeking to stop the damage from your actions, you should: 1) ensure WikiLeaks ceases publishing any and all such materials; 2) ensure WikiLeaks returns any and all classified U.S. Government material in its possession; and 3) remove and destroy all records of this material from WikiLeaks' databases."

Assange told reporters Sunday that Washington had "contacted the governments of almost every nation on earth to brief them about what some of these embarrassing revelations will do."

"They’re in a rather unusual difficult position where it is not sure precisely what is going to be revealed," he said.

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Some things never change and if it's Sunday, you can count on it being another week of Bloody Bill Kristol war mongering on Fox News. This week rather than calling for air strikes on North Korea, he wants us to try to help overthrow their government instead.

KRISTOL: President Obama himself didn't seem to have his heart in it when he said once again we're rallying the international community to put pressure. You know what? That's fine but we should try to destabilize the regime during this transition. It's not easy for this regime to make the transition from Kim Jong Il to his 27 year old son. We should be doing everything we can to bring down this terrible regime, end that nuclear weapons problem and reunite the two Koreas.

After Juan Williams points out that the Obama administration has shown a great deal of restraint by not war mongering and starting something they can't finish, Kristol says he's not advocating for war, just for sending the country into complete chaos.

KRISTOL: In North Korea, what would do the most good is trying to find fissures in the military; people who are upset about this 27 year old son taking over and bring down this regime. I'm not calling for war. I am calling for everything we can do...

WALLACE: let me ask you... what makes you think if we brought down that regime, the next regime would be any better?

KRISTOL: It couldn't be worse. It couldn't be worse and it would be... there would be reunification on the Korean Peninsula and maybe the Chinese would want to keep a sort of token North Korea up by their border for their own sake but about 2/3 of North Korea could become part of the unified Korea and that would be a lot better than the current situation.

LIASSON: The South Koreans want to do that in a manageable way, not all of the sudden and huge chaos.

KRISTOL: Well we should help them do it. The chaos of refugees fleeing across the border to freedom is a chaos we should welcome compared to the current situation.

It seems no amount of war or "chaos" is ever too much for the likes of Kristol or his buddy Liz Cheney. As the post at Think Progress pointed out, "arguing that the United States should start wars is what he does."

Not that this will matter to the congressional Republicans, whose agenda is not actually improving the economy nor listening to economists, the wealthiest 2%, or any other American, come to that. But the country's wealthiest men, Warren Buffett and Bill Gates, dismiss the calls of Republicans to extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans and say that the wealthy SHOULD pay more taxes.

Warren Buffett, Chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, said that the rich should be paying more taxes and that the Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy should be left to expire at the end of December.

"If anything, taxes for the lower and middle class and maybe even the upper middle class should even probably be cut further," Buffett said. "But I think that people at the high end -- people like myself -- should be paying a lot more in taxes. We have it better than we've ever had it."

The billionaire brushed aside Republican arguments that letting tax cuts expire for the wealthy would hurt economic growth.

"They say you have to keep those tax cuts, even on the very wealthy, because that is what energizes business and capitalism," anchor Amanpour said.

"The rich are always going to say that, you know, just give us more money and we'll go out and spend more and then it will all trickle down to the rest of you. But that has not worked the last 10 years, and I hope the American public is catching on," Buffett explained.

It's the simplest of messages and yet sadly not on the tongues of any Democratic politicians (including the President): if tax cuts worked, why isn't the economy better right now? Gates also expressed disappointment in the failure of the ballot initiative 1098 that his father, Bill Gates Senior, was very publicly endorsing, to raise taxes on the wealthiest citizens in Washington state, showing once again how easily the majority of Americans will vote against their own interests, especially in the face of big money advertising persuasions.

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The military's controversial "don't ask, don't tell" policy which forces gay, lesbian and trans-gender members to hide their personal lives or face expulsion from the service "is working," according to Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain.

The Pentagon is expected to release a survey Tuesday that will say most of those serving don't have strong objections to repealing the policy.

In mid-November, McCain said he rejected that study because it didn't ask service members whether the policy should be repealed.

"[T]his study was directed at how to implement the repeal, not whether the repeal should take place or not," McCain said.

But Defense Secretary Robert Gates disagrees that there should be a new survey that amounts to a "referendum."

"I do not believe that military policy decisions -- on this or any other subject -- should be made through a referendum of Servicemembers," Gates wrote to McCain in October.

"I think he certainly has a point," McCain told CNN's Candy Crowley Sunday.

The Arizona senator belives that by repealing "don't ask, don't tell," the Obama administration is trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist.

"I would also certainly say that we should remember where this all started. There was no uprising in the military, no problems in the military with 'don't ask, don't tell,'" McCain noted.

"It's called 'don't ask, don't tell.' If you don't ask somebody, and they don't tell," he said.

"The fact is this was a political promise made by an inexperienced president or candidate for presidency of the United States. The military is at its highest point in recruitment and retention and professionalism and capability, so to somehow allege that this policy has been damaging the military is simply false," McCain continued.

"So the fact is that this system is working," he added.

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Looks like the incoming freshmen class of Republicans has all of their talking points down pat -- we care about small businesses, tax cuts control runaway spending, we're listening to the American people, freedom, and god bless America! Or in other words, another two years of platitudes and trickle-down economics.

Hi, I’m Austin Scott. Earlier this month, I had the privilege of being elected to represent the people of Georgia’s Eighth Congressional District.

This week, Americans will gather to give thanks for what matters most: for me, that’s family, faith and freedom. We are fortunate to live in a country where we, the people, are free to speak out and alter the course of our government.

The American people have sent 85 new Republicans to Washington with a clear message: listen up, stop the job-killing policies, stop the runaway spending, and focus on getting our country back on track.

Continue reading »

As the charges against Julian Assange heat up, the anonymous folks of Wikileaks continue undaunted and promise another bombshell:

Who: WikiLeaks.

What: A Twitter message posted by the whistle-blowing website announced plans to release classified U.S. diplomatic cables reporting corruption allegations against foreign governments and leaders. WikiLeaks said the latest release will be seven times larger than the previous leak of classified Pentagon documents of roughly 400,000. U.S. State Department officials say the upcoming dump features corruption allegations and is set to cause serious embarrassment for American and foreign governments and politicians named in them.

Where: It is not yet known where the classified documents would be released, however, the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, gave America’s New York Times, Britain’s Guardian newspaper and the German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel – access to the documents some time ago.

When: WikiLeaks has not specified when the tranche of documents would be released but Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan said U.S. officials were expecting a possible release of documents ‘late this week or early next week’.

As would be expected, the State Department has claimed that the leaks could cause irreparable harm and could put lives at risk.

The latest leak is expected to include documents covering US dealings and diplomats' confidential views of countries including Australia, Britain, Canada, Israel, Russia and Turkey.

The letter from the US state department's legal advisor Harold Koh was a response to correspondence from Mr Assange, who had written to the US ambassador to Britain, Louis Susman.

Mr Assange had asked which individuals would be put at risk due to the leak, the State Department said.

A senior American official told the BBC that Mr Assange was offering to negotiate over limited redactions.

Of course, expect the government to go into overdrive in demonizing Assange even further in the hopes of deflecting the information.

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WikiLeaks hasn't even released the latest round of US government documents and already politicians and pundits are calling for prosecutions.

The latest release from the WikiLeaks website is expected to include as many as 250,000 secret diplomatic cables.

The Obama administration warned Wednesday that the documents could damage US relations with friends and allies.

"Leaking the material is deplorable," Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Fox News' Chris Wallace Sunday. "I agree with the Pentagon's assessment that the people at WikiLeaks could have blood on their hands."

"I don't know what the cables may say but it's just a -- we're at war. I mean the world is getting dangerous by the day and the people who do this are really low on the food chain as far as I'm concerned. If you can prosecute them, let's try."

Sen. Clair McCaskill (D-MO) agreed. "Lindsey's right," she said. "The people who are leaking these documents need to a gut check about their patriotism and I think they're enjoying the attention they're getting but, frankly, it's coming at a very high price in terms of protecting our men and women in uniform."

"I hope that we can figure out where this is coming from and go after them with the force of law," McCaskill said.

Also appearing on Fox News Sunday, former State Department official Liz Cheney called for the government to go after the leakers.

"I think, once again, the government of Iceland ought to shut down that [WikiLeaks] website," Cheney said. "I think they ought to stop allowing the stuff to come out of the website in Iceland. I think that the administration ought to be focused very much on prosecuting those responsible."

The State Department sent a letter Saturday to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Publication of documents of this nature at a minimum would:

* Place at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals -- from journalists to human rights activists and bloggers to soldiers to individuals providing information to further peace and security;

* Place at risk on-going military operations, including operations to stop terrorists, traffickers in human beings and illicit arms, violent criminal enterprises and other actors that threaten global security; and,

* Place at risk on-going cooperation between countries - partners, allies and common stakeholders -- to confront common challenges from terrorism to pandemic diseases to nuclear proliferation that threaten global stability.

"Despite your stated desire to protect those lives, you have done the opposite and endangered the lives of countless individuals. You have undermined your stated objective by disseminating this material widely, without redaction, and without regard to the security and sanctity of the lives your actions endanger," State Department legal advisor Harold Hongju Koh wrote.

"If you are genuinely interested in seeking to stop the damage from your actions, you should: 1) ensure WikiLeaks ceases publishing any and all such materials; 2) ensure WikiLeaks returns any and all classified U.S. Government material in its possession; and 3) remove and destroy all records of this material from WikiLeaks' databases."

Assange told reporters Sunday that Washington had "contacted the governments of almost every nation on earth to brief them about what some of these embarrassing revelations will do."

"They’re in a rather unusual difficult position where it is not sure precisely what is going to be revealed," he said.

It's a scary time, when the Republican Party moves further to the right each day. While this may be good for Democrats at least some of the time, it's really not good for our country. It makes the possibility of an actual right-wing takeover that much more plausible:

In an age when far-right tea party activists have taken over the Republican Party and demanded lockstep allegiance, Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN) has been one of the few GOP lawmakers to step out of line. In particular, Lugar, the ranking GOP member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has blasted his own party for relentlessly blocking ratification of the New START nuclear arms treaty with Russia, calling on his fellow GOP senators to “do your duty for your country” and complete the pact.

Not surprisingly, this insubordination has earned Lugar significant scorn within the Republican base, which now seems to value blind obedience over principled independent decision-making. In a New York Times profile of Lugar published today, former GOP Sen. John Danforth feared that the backlash against Lugar from his own party signals that the GOP has gone “far overboard” with no hope of turning back:

“If Dick Lugar,” said John C. Danforth, a former Republican senator from Missouri, “having served five terms in the U.S. Senate and being the most respected person in the Senate and the leading authority on foreign policy, is seriously challenged by anybody in the Republican Party, we have gone so far overboard that we are beyond redemption.”

Mr. Danforth, who was first elected the same year as Mr. Lugar, added, “I’m glad Lugar’s there and I’m not.”

Danforth’s fears are not unfounded. Lugar, who is up for reelection in 2012, hasalready been targeted by tea party groups. “If I was Dick Lugar, I would certainlyexpect a challenge,” noted veteran political analyst Stuart Rothenberg.

As Diane Hubbard, a spokeswoman for the Indianapolis Tea Party, told the Times, removing Lugar “will be a difficult challenge. But we do believe it’s doable, and we think the climate is right for it and we believe it is a must.”

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Looks like the incoming freshmen class of Republicans has all of their talking points down pat -- we care about small businesses, tax cuts control runaway spending, we're listening to the American people, freedom, and god bless America! Or in other words, another two years of platitudes and trickle-down economics.

Hi, I’m Austin Scott. Earlier this month, I had the privilege of being elected to represent the people of Georgia’s Eighth Congressional District.

This week, Americans will gather to give thanks for what matters most: for me, that’s family, faith and freedom. We are fortunate to live in a country where we, the people, are free to speak out and alter the course of our government.

The American people have sent 85 new Republicans to Washington with a clear message: listen up, stop the job-killing policies, stop the runaway spending, and focus on getting our country back on track.

Continue reading »

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During the "Tell me something I don't know" segment of The Chris Matthews Show, conservative columnist Reihan Salam suggests that after this dust up over the TSA's invasive searches, the right is suddenly going to start caring about Americans' civil liberties being violated.

SALAM: The conservative backlash against the TSA is just part of a bigger revival of civil liberties talk on the right. We’re going to see a lot more of it in the next year or two.

I'm sure those concerns will end again just exactly as soon as another Republican gets elected president. I'd like to know where their concerns were when the Bush administration was still in power.