01/20/2004: 
Fraud & Conspiracy
Really there is nothing going on here. Go about your business citizen.
Costello pushes hearings on Cheney
By Beth Hundsdorfer, Mercury News
U.S. Rep Jerry Costello has called for impeachment hearings against U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney during Congress' session that begins today.
Costello called for hearings Saturday while on the Iowa caucus campaign trail with fellow U.S. House of Representatives member and presidential candidate Dick Gephardt, according to the Drudge Report.
Costello questioned the award of billions of dollars of contracts to Cheney's former corporation Haliburton to extinguish fires and rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure after the war.
"Can you imagine what the Republicans would be doing to a Democratic president who was a CEO of a company that now has gotten billions of dollars worth of contracts -- no-bid contracts -- without competition?" Costello, D-Belleville, was quoted as saying.
"There would be hearings day after day. And my prediction to you is that you will see in this session of Congress ..., there will not only be hearings, but I think there ought to be impeachment hearings."
So far, Haliburton has earned more than $2 billion from the war contracts.
Cheney headed Haliburton from 1995 to 2000, when he quit to become George W. Bush's running mate.
The General Accounting Agency sued Cheney after he refused to release documents about who and when he met with before formulating the country's energy policy.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently decided to hear Cheney's appeal.
The Los Angeles Times reported Saturday that Cheney spent last week duck hunting in Louisiana with one of the Supreme Court Justices who may decide the case -- U.S. Supreme Court Judge Antonin Scalia.
Costello, who serves on the energy subcommittee, was elected to Congress in 1988.
Watchdog groups question Cheney, Scalia hunting trip, Supreme Court justice denies doing anything improper
from Bill Mears, CNN
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Justice Antonin Scalia has not indicated whether he will pull out a of an upcoming Supreme Court case involving Vice President Cheney, following reports the two recently went on a hunting trip and had dinner together.
Cheney invited Scalia, an old friend, to Louisiana earlier this month to hunt waterfowl on a private reserve. The trip occurred three weeks after the court agreed to hear the case, scheduled for sometime in April. Details of the trip were first reported by the Los Angeles Times.
The two also had a private dinner with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Maryland's Eastern Shore in November, when the justices were still considering Cheney's appeal.
Cheney is fighting a federal court's order that he release internal files of a task force he headed for the Bush administration. A lawsuit claims he made improper contacts with energy industry lobbyists when developing government policy.
Cheney's task force met throughout in 2001 and developed a report recommending opening more federal land to oil, natural gas and coal development. That includes the remote Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in northeast Alaska. Such development has become a political rallying point for both environmentalists and pro-energy forces.
Among the task force advisers was former Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay.
I am having some trouble believing that the "Cheney/Halliburton conspiracy" is a paranoid fantasy, as I have been told repeatedly that it is.
3 Annotations Submitted
Tuesday the 20th of January, rafuzo noted:
That's OK, I had a hard time believing Johnny Huang's connection to a colonel in the Chinese PLA was just a paranoid fantasy, myself.
Tuesday the 20th of January, prof_booty noted:
i think it would be more useful to frame the debate in the context of the power elite getting all the breaks as opposed to Democrats/GOP defrauding the citizenry. it doesn't really matter what party you are in, conflicts of interest (or the appearance therof) are endemic to federal politics. but i believe costello to be right when he says that were the roles reversed, there would be hearings televised live on fox every day.
it isnt a fantasy that cheney is a corrupt son of a bitch, neither was it a fantasy that clinton made some slight of hand movements in the white house. vast x-wing conspiracy.
Wednesday the 21st of January, santo26 noted:
if the republican's couldn't get billy c. with the getting campaign contributions from the chinese red army in exchange for missle technology ( and China suddenly putting a man in space, hello? hello? ) and al with the actual taking of the donation from the buddhist temple (al got left holding billy c's bag in more ways than one), then i don't see cheney getting hung for halliburton, although the evidence is right there.
what DOES concern me is the cheney hanging out with scalia! WTF?!? cheney is VP, scalia is a supreme court justice, hello? isn't this the very definition of impropriety?
and what of asskkkross recusing himself from the case?
if you think about it, maybe it would be best for bush to win re- election. his shit is about to totally unravel, going down like a led zepplin may ensue.
