Gridlock News

In a heroic and necessary action church members in a church in Knoxville Tennessee tackled a man that opened fire in the church with a shot gun.

A quiet Sunday morning turns violent in Knoxville. A gunman opened fire in a church sanctuary killing one person and wounding eight others.

"It's the one place you expect to be safe," eyewitness and  Chattanooga native Amy Broyles said.

But the sanctuary of the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church was everything but safe this morning.

Broyles and her family were among the nearly 2-hundred congregants in the church when a man walked in and opened fire.

"He was an older man, mid 60s. He didn't say anything, he was just very calmly shooting," Broyles described.

Broyles says she was with her 2-year-old daughter inside the church's "quiet room" when she heard a loud boom.

"Right outside the quiet room was a man standing with a shotgun to his shoulder. I dropped down against the door so he couldn't see us," Broyles said.

Broyles then heard several men tackle the gunman. Among them, her husband Jamie Parkey.

Chattanooga Native Describes Knoxville Church Shooting | WDEF News 12 | News, Weather and Sports for Chattanooga and the Tennessee Valley

This is one of those incidents that we often view as heroic, but historically, this is an action that is just plane necessary.  When a crazed person starts killing people, someone needs to step up and stop them.  It goes against human group psychology to do this, but it is possible to rise above that and stop a tragedy from developing any further.  It doesn't take special training, it doesn't take advanced levels of bravery or adrenalin, a super latte from Starbucks, or Ephedrasil Hardcore energy pills. It takes a will to survive and a will to stop the killing of your friends, family and even strangers around you.

People of the World, we are in this thing together whether we like the situation or even each other or not.  We have to get better at taking care of each other like the people of Knoxville, TN did today or the people of Flight 93 did on 9/11.  Together we can harness the violence and check its impact.  There are more sane people than crazy people, we just have to work together.

The Army and military in general always seems to have to apologize for things decades after the fact.  It makes me as an Army veteran seriously wonder sometimes why the Army is so consistently and historically screwed up?

Why can't they be a little quicker to get to the bottom of things and the truth. 

In this situation a 28 African American members of the military were improperly prosecuted for lynching an Italian man.  The prosecutor for the military convinced the Judge to withhold information from the Defense that would have and eventually did clear the men.

In a system that lets no bad deed go unrewarded that prosecutor was later named as the special prosecutor in the Nixon Scandals of the seventies where he promptly continued to prove he was not a useful public servant.

The Army didn't stop there of course.  Their screw ups and cover ups from Pat Tillman's killing to Abu Grahib to whatever they are covering up this week are enough to make you doubt their morals and intelligence.  How is covering up wrong doing in the Army protecting the Constitution?

The answer is that it does not protect the Constitution.  After serving in the military, I know that there are hundreds of thousands of extremely smart and capable people, but all to often they get engaged in politics or scandals with no oversight and the result is that the service, the country and many people suffer for years and decades.

We are not talking about a simple screw up on some a car insurance policy, we are talking about imprisonment for crimes never committed, career ending actions, things that can detour a person for the rest of their life and possibly detour entire families.

These are not simple clerical errors, but serious attempts to subvert justice and it is happening today just like it happened 64 years ago.  The Army has not learned this historical lesson yet.

I have been watching the House debate over the limit of Presidential Powers in the House Judiciary committee as a result of the impeachment article sets offered up by Representative Dennis Kucinich this spring and again this summer.

The crux of the discussion seems to founder around the concept of the power that Congress has to check the Executive Branch entirely with impeachment and no other measure.  The problem is that all of the powers held by Congress can be trumped by an Executive Branch that hides behind executive privilege which has been hijacked more than one time over the last 40 years.

Executive privilege has become a massive wound on the American Constitution and not just a blemish acne cream like actions can be used to cure.  It is a cancer causing problem that creates the need to remove a President from power that has become cancerously abusive of the power given him to protect the Constitution.

The House has no other authority to act outside of impeachment.  That means the American people have no other protection from an abusive President rather than to have their representatives in Congress stand up and take the actions available to them as provided by the founders of our country.

Just as the Bush Administration was showing some signs of leadership as they prepared to bail out Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the backbone of mortgage lenders around the country, Congress is finally starting to find some of its own Backbone.

It started last week as Dennis Kucinich offered up an abbreviated version of an Impeachment article (he had offered about 35 articles last month), to have the House vote on whether or not the President should be impeached.  It would appear that Kucinich has gained significant political ground and even Nancy Pelosi, who stated after coming to head the House of Representatives in 2006 on the winds of change, that change (post 2006 election) would not include impeachment and that impeachment would be off the table.

Well, she has to run for re-election in 2008, and is finally getting the message that the people of the United States not only want change, but they want accountability for the crimes committed in our name and against us and our Constitution.

Breaking News. This from the desk of Florida Congressman Robert Wexler, one of the co-sponsors of the 35 articles of impeachment introduced by Rep. Dennis Kucinich:
“Capitol Hill is buzzing today with major developments regarding our campaign for impeachment hearings for President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Just today, in what could be described as a perfect impeachment storm:
"After stating unequivocally that impeachment "is off the table," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi stated to CBS News today that the House Judiciary Committee should address the issues that Rep. Kucinich's has raised in his impeachment resolution.... This issue now reaches far beyond the substance of the Judiciary Committee's original inquiry regarding the firing of US Attorneys for political purposes. The crisis at hand relates to our most fundamental laws and of our Constitution. It is, in many ways, more serious than the Constitutional crisis surrounding Watergate."
Nancy Pelosi’s comments reflect the growing pressure of impeachment supporters on all elected officials and the heat from Cindy Sheehan’s courageous campaign to unseat her in the coming November elections. Cindy has made the impeachment of Bush, and Pelosi’s previous refusal to allow impeachment to proceed, a centerpiece of her campaign.

 

VotetoImpeach.org

Not Just Words, Real Action that Harms America For a man that has never really had to look for employment, he is quick to throw away our rights without cause or reason.

I came across Dave Johnson, from SeeingTheForest.com's, article titled "Obama's FISA Screw up".  His article basically spins off an article by Dave Winer at Scripting News.  Despite the fact that my first name is not Dave (it's Brett), I'd like to spin off their thoughts as I agree with what they have written thus far (Dave Johnson' first then quoting Dave Winer):

The issue of our Congress giving the big telecom companies immunity from being sued for illegally enabling the Republican Party to listen to our calls and read our emails is a very, very big deal to non-Republicans. Republicans, of course, are happy as clams about it. (They are also happy as clams that America now tortures people.)

I have talked to a number of friends who were major Obama supporters during the primaries, and not one of them is happy today because of Obama's reversal on telecom immunity in FISA. He had pledged, promised, sworn, committed to oppose telecom immunity -- then after securing the nomination reversed himself and voted for it.

So today I'm cruising the internets and come across Dave Winer, another Obama supporter. He articulates my own thoughts well. Obama's FISA screwup (Scripting News),

First, the conservative pundits who say that Obama turned his back on the extreme left by voting for the new FISA bill have it wrong. He turned his back on people of all persuasions who believe in our form of government.

. . . He was right if he assumed he had our vote. I will not vote for McCain to prove this point. But I'm also not going to give him any more money. I'm going to save that for causes I believe in.

I no longer believe there is a cause to Obama other than getting Obama elected. It's up to him now to prove otherwise. The FISA vote can be undone, but he has to actually do the undoing.

CALL TO STOP DONATIONS TO OBAMA

So here's how I see it.  Barack Obama is in this for number 1, himself.  He's in it to get elected President for all the wrong reasons despite his ability to articulate good reasons to further his progress.

He obviously doesn't pay attention to anyone's REAL concerns unless there is a significant amount of money involved.  With that in mind, the only way to make him pay attention is to pull financial support from him.

STOP DONATING IMMEDIATELY

As Dave W. mentions we do not have to give him any more money.  In fact, save it for the ACLU or the EFF, odds are even if Obama is elected, we're going to need them just to protecting the remaining things we call liberties.

It doesn't take a digital frame full of pictures of the economy to read this as a very dangerous premonition of where the economy is and where it is going.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson indicated Sunday evening that the Federal Government will be taking action to attempt to save Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from failing after their stock prices sank more than 50% on Wall Street last week.

Based on the Treasury response it would appear that the Federal Government, including Treasury, the SEC, and the Federal Reserve all feel that these institutions are in serious jeopardy.  Unlike the Bear Stearns bail out last winter, this government bail out is likely to cost the government a very large amount of money, possibly making the Iraq War look cheap.

Below is a complete text of the statement by Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac play a central role in our housing finance system and must continue to do so in their current form as shareholder-owned companies. Their support for the housing market is particularly important as we work through the current housing correction. GSE debt is held by financial institutions around the world. Its continued strength is important to maintaining confidence and stability in our financial system and our financial markets. Therefore we must take steps to address the current situation as we move to a stronger regulatory structure. In recent days, I have consulted with the Federal Reserve, OFHEO, the SEC, Congressional leaders of both parties and with the two companies to develop a three-part plan for immediate action. The President has asked me to work with Congress to act on this plan immediately. First, as a liquidity backstop, the plan includes a temporary increase in the line of credit the GSEs have with Treasury. Treasury would determine the terms and conditions for accessing the line of credit and the amount to be drawn. Second, to ensure the GSEs have access to sufficient capital to continue to serve their mission, the plan includes temporary authority for Treasury to purchase equity in either of the two GSEs if needed. Use of either the line of credit or the equity investment would carry terms and conditions necessary to protect the taxpayer. Third, to protect the financial system from systemic risk going forward, the plan strengthens the GSE regulatory reform legislation currently moving through Congress by giving the Federal Reserve a consultative role in the new GSE regulator's process for setting capital requirements and other prudential standards. I look forward to working closely with the Congressional leaders to enact this legislation as soon as possible, as one complete package.

This weekend has been packed with one important news story after another, but if you tried to get your news from Cable or Network news this weekend you would have struggled to hear anything.

The Cable News channels covered how reporters were covering politics most of the weekend without ever really reporting anything.  It begs the question, whether or not we could learn anything from the nearly dead fourth estate.

In a few more years it will be highly unlikely if the news even exists at all. By then it might even be hard to find news on the internet. Who knows maybe we'll have to share news virally on MP3 players or something if things keep degenerating.

Tony Snow the former White House Press Secretary and former Fox News person, passed away early this morning of cancer.  He had been fighting cancer even while serving as press secretary for some of the darkest hours of the Bush Administration.

He seemed to enjoy his verbal sparring with reporters almost as if he were waging his war against cancer both internally and externally in the press room in the White House.  Despite my severe dislike for the cover ups and illegal actions performed by the Bush Administration that Tony Snow managed to gloss over with flippant remarks, I wish no one a battle with cancer and hope that Tony Snow will rest in peace and his family will find comfort some day.

Even more so, I hope he managed to squirrel away a tell all book, that his family might benefit from financially that could hit the book shelves as soon as possible.  I'd be more than happy to support his family by picking up a best buy on a grumbles from the grave styled tell all.