I thought about posting about this for a while this week and I have been undecided. I've been sorta bummed out about it and thus the dearth of writing, but any way...here goes.
I grew up around fire. My family had a fireplace in our basement that we used regularly for heat and to provide "atmosphere" to our evening socializing. We had central heat and ultimately added a central air conditioning unit in the late 1960's, but the fireplace was a major feature of our home as I grew up.
My mother's father's house had three fireplaces, the house being built in the 1930's by hand from lumber cut and sawn off of his farm. As a child I remember the cold nights and the primary fireplace in his family room being a source of heat and community gathering when the family was there together.
I went camping with the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts and a friend of mine was the designated "troupe arson" because Mickey could light a fire better than anyone we knew. Fire is your friend when you are a kid and you're camping out and you need to get warm or cook dinner or need something to goof around with--within certain limitations.
I had a fireplace in my first two houses. I also had a chainsaw and I cut wood and stoked those fireplaces full and loved every minute of it until 1994. That was the year that I gave my ex-wife my second house and the fireplace. She could have cared less about my fireplace--but I loved it.
I have lived without my own fireplace ever since. I had a house since then, but I didn't have a fireplace...and I had a fire, and that caused a big problem. You see, I bought my third house in the summer of 1997 and happily lived there after my divorce until April 5, 2001 when I came home from work and my house had burned up.
If you have never experienced a house fire on an up close and personal basis, I hope you never have to because there is no way for you to understand what happens to your life. There was a police tape wrapped around it and there was water running down the driveway and almost everything I owned except my Snapper mower and my Webber Charcoal grill and my Nissan Maxima and the Chevy Suburban that I happened to be driving that day was toast.
Worst of all, the police want to talk to you and treat you like some kind of criminal because YOU are the number one suspect when your house burns down. Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it, the cause of my fire was obvious--a crappy, cheep, surge suppressor/power strip on my fancy smancy 110 watt per channel Bose surround sound TV system.
Never again.
Go in your home office, go in your bedrooms, go in your living rooms, and look at what you have plugged into the surge protectors and wall outlets. Do you have an "octopus" of electrical wires? DO YOU WANT TO COME HOME AND FIND YOUR FRONT DOOR CHOPPED IN AND POLICE TAPE ACROSS YOUR FRONT PORCH? Do you want to see everything you've worked for, possibly your plants and your pets, cooked into ashes?
No?
Then think about what you are connecting to the electrical circuits in your house and get some help if you have any doubts and don't end up like me that day, moving into a motel room, dragging along what few of your possessions you can scrounge out of the rubble, smelling of smoke and dripping soot and water, stinking up your car parked out in the parking lot.
It really sucks......don't let it happen to you...
OK?
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Friday, April 01, 2005
Plea BARGAN
A year in prison (not jail) and a $100,000 fine. That is what former Clinton national security adviser Sandy Berger could have gotten for each of his admitted crimes.
The details of the plea bargain (heavy, heavy, emphasis on BARGAN) were printed this morning:
"Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, a former White House national security adviser, plans to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, and will acknowledge intentionally removing and destroying copies of a classified document about the Clinton administration's record on terrorism.
Berger's plea agreement, which was described yesterday by his advisers and was confirmed by Justice Department officials, will have one of former president Bill Clinton's most influential advisers and one of the Democratic Party's leading foreign policy advisers in a federal court this afternoon.
The deal's terms make clear that Berger spoke falsely last summer in public claims that in 2003 he twice inadvertently walked off with copies of a classified document during visits to the National Archives, and then later lost them.
He described the episode last summer as "an honest mistake." Yesterday, a Berger associate who declined to be identified by name but was speaking with Berger's permission said: "He recognizes what he did was wrong. . . . It was not inadvertent." "
So are you following me here?
Right in the middle of the so called “independent” 9/11 commission’s investigation, right in the middle of Richard Clark’s book publication impugning President Bush’s efforts and Condoleezza Rice’s knowledge of Al Quada, Berger and his magic pants and socks were removing unique, original copies of documents from the Clinton administration records:
"The terms of Berger's agreement required him to acknowledge to the Justice Department the circumstances of the episode. Rather than misplacing or unintentionally throwing away three of the five copies he took from the archives, as the former national security adviser earlier maintained, he shredded them with a pair of scissors late one evening at the downtown offices of his international consulting business.
The document, written by former National Security Council terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke, was an "after-action review" prepared in early 2000 detailing the administration's actions to thwart terrorist attacks during the millennium celebration. It contained considerable discussion about the administration's awareness of the rising threat of attacks on U.S. soil. "
Who knows what Berger actually got away with destroying, but being the career security employee that he was, he definitely knew of the illegality of tampering with secure documents and the potential consequences of his actions, but this 59 year old man was willing to risk his reputation and career to do what he did to protect SOMEONE.
I wonder who that SOMEONE was?
Berger took five copies, of which he destroyed three.
Five times ten is 50 years. Five times $100,000 is $500,000.
Three times ten is 30 years, three times $100,000 is $300,000.
But Berger got 0 years and $10,000 on a misdemeaner, not a Felony, plus a three year suspension of his security clearance.
What I want to know is, how in the hell can we ever trust this man with a security clearance again?
This man was the Kerry campaign's national security consultant. He was in line to serve in the Kerry cabinet if the media had managed to get his sorry ass elected.
Like I said before, what a nice Plea BARGAN.
The details of the plea bargain (heavy, heavy, emphasis on BARGAN) were printed this morning:
"Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger, a former White House national security adviser, plans to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, and will acknowledge intentionally removing and destroying copies of a classified document about the Clinton administration's record on terrorism.
Berger's plea agreement, which was described yesterday by his advisers and was confirmed by Justice Department officials, will have one of former president Bill Clinton's most influential advisers and one of the Democratic Party's leading foreign policy advisers in a federal court this afternoon.
The deal's terms make clear that Berger spoke falsely last summer in public claims that in 2003 he twice inadvertently walked off with copies of a classified document during visits to the National Archives, and then later lost them.
He described the episode last summer as "an honest mistake." Yesterday, a Berger associate who declined to be identified by name but was speaking with Berger's permission said: "He recognizes what he did was wrong. . . . It was not inadvertent." "
So are you following me here?
Right in the middle of the so called “independent” 9/11 commission’s investigation, right in the middle of Richard Clark’s book publication impugning President Bush’s efforts and Condoleezza Rice’s knowledge of Al Quada, Berger and his magic pants and socks were removing unique, original copies of documents from the Clinton administration records:
"The terms of Berger's agreement required him to acknowledge to the Justice Department the circumstances of the episode. Rather than misplacing or unintentionally throwing away three of the five copies he took from the archives, as the former national security adviser earlier maintained, he shredded them with a pair of scissors late one evening at the downtown offices of his international consulting business.
The document, written by former National Security Council terrorism expert Richard A. Clarke, was an "after-action review" prepared in early 2000 detailing the administration's actions to thwart terrorist attacks during the millennium celebration. It contained considerable discussion about the administration's awareness of the rising threat of attacks on U.S. soil. "
Who knows what Berger actually got away with destroying, but being the career security employee that he was, he definitely knew of the illegality of tampering with secure documents and the potential consequences of his actions, but this 59 year old man was willing to risk his reputation and career to do what he did to protect SOMEONE.
I wonder who that SOMEONE was?
Berger took five copies, of which he destroyed three.
Five times ten is 50 years. Five times $100,000 is $500,000.
Three times ten is 30 years, three times $100,000 is $300,000.
But Berger got 0 years and $10,000 on a misdemeaner, not a Felony, plus a three year suspension of his security clearance.
What I want to know is, how in the hell can we ever trust this man with a security clearance again?
This man was the Kerry campaign's national security consultant. He was in line to serve in the Kerry cabinet if the media had managed to get his sorry ass elected.
Like I said before, what a nice Plea BARGAN.
Another Government Cover-Up
Well, it’s official. Another Clinton administration official gets off with a slap on the wrist and the rest of us regular peon citizens continue to cower in the shadow of the US justice department.
“Former national security adviser Sandy Berger will plead guilty to taking classified material from the National Archives, a misdemeanor, the Justice Department said Thursday.
Berger is expected to appear in federal court in Washington on Friday, said Justice spokesman Bryan Sierra.
The former Clinton administration official previously acknowledged he removed from the National Archives copies of documents about the government's anti-terror efforts and notes that he took on those documents. He said he was reviewing the materials to help determine which Clinton administration documents to provide to the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.
He called the episode "an honest mistake," and denied criminal wrongdoing.”
This, of course, is complete bull based on what I read last summer. Do you go to the library and put copies of historic documents into your socks, underwear, coat pockets, and briefcase by accident, then walk out and take them home and cut them up with scissors while trimming your mustache?
I usually don’t have that problem.
Let’s review what Mr. Berger and his magic socks and pants were observed doing in a secure area of the National Archives, as reported by FOX News last summer:
"Berger testified publicly at one of the commission's hearings about the Clinton administration's approach to fighting terrorism.
Berger had ordered his counterterrorism adviser, Richard Clarke, in early 2000 to write the after-action report and has publicly spoken about how the review brought to the forefront the realization that Al Qaeda had reached America's shores and required more attention.
The missing documents involve two or three draft versions of the report as it was being refined by the Clinton administration. The Archives is believed to have copies of some of the missing documents.
In the FBI search of his office, Berger also was found in possession of a small number of classified note cards containing his handwritten notes from the Middle East peace talks during the 1990s, but those are not a focal point of the current criminal probe, according to officials and lawyers.
Breuer said the Archives staff first raised concerns with Berger during an Oct. 2 review of documents that at least one copy of the post-millennium report he had reviewed earlier was missing. Berger was given a second copy that day, Breuer said.
Officials said Archive staff specially marked the documents and when the new copy and others disappeared, Archive officials called Clinton attorney Bruce Lindsey.
Berger immediately returned all the notes he had taken, and conducted a search and located two copies of the classified documents on a messy desk in his office, Breuer said. An Archives official came to Berger's home to collect those documents but Berger couldn't locate the other missing copies, the lawyer said.
Breuer said Berger was allowed to take handwritten notes but also knew that taking his own notes out of the secure reading room was a "technical violation of Archive procedures, but it is not all clear to us this represents a violation of the law."
Justice officials have informed the Sept. 11 commission of the Berger incident and the nature of the documents in case commissioners had any concerns, officials said. The commission is expected to release its final report on Thursday."
I can’t find all of the news articles archived, but I remember reading that the National Archives staff became very suspicious when Berger repeatedly excused himself to make bathroom visits and acted suspiciously while reviewing the documents.
Now here is the kicker...
After jacking around with this for over a year, the government morons let Mr. Berger off easy.
Although the crime carries up to a year jail sentence and a $100,000 fine, they let him off with no jail time, a $10,000 fine, and a three year suspension of his security clearance.
What a total load of crap…
