Apologies that I don't have much of a diary here, but I just found this on Russ Feingold's website:

Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold
On the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Consideration of FISA Legislation
October 18, 2007

"As a member of the SSCI, I will strongly oppose any FISA legislation that fails to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans, overseas and here at home. When the Committee considers this legislation today, I will also fight to reject immunity for anyone alleged to have cooperated with the Administration’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program. The documents made available by the White House for the first time this week only further demonstrate that the program was illegal and that there is no basis for granting retroactive immunity to those who allegedly cooperated. The one silver lining of the flawed FISA bill passed in August was that it had a 6-month expiration date. It would be shameful to miss this opportunity to fix the law. It is time for Congress to stand up for the rights of Americans and to defend the Constitution and the rule of law."

Thanks to several recent diaries, including the excellent one by smintheus , we now know that operations at Walter Reed were outsourced to IAP, a company run by Cheney’s former Halliburton crony, Al Neffgen. Neffgen was formerly Chief Operations Officer for Government Operations of KBR. Although KBR is currently an 80%-owned subsidiary of Halliburton (following a 20% initial public stock offering of KBR shares in November, 2006), on February 27, 2007, Halliburton announced its intention to spin off the remainder of KBR through a split-off exchange to existing Halliburton shareholders. Put more simply, when the Democrats gained control of the House and the Senate in the November, 2006 elections, Halliburton decided to move as quickly as possible to distance itself from KBR’s scandal-plagued contracts to provide basic services to the military in Iraq.

I don't know who is currently serving as Joe Lieberman's Campaign Treasurer, but, during the primary, the individual in charge of campaign finances was Lynn Fusco. Fusco is the President of Fusco Construction in New Haven, CT and a long time contributor and fund raiser for both Lieberman and DeStefano. It doesn't appear that she has any particular financial background. Her role as CFO for Lieberman's primary bid appears to have been primarily as a point person for fundraising, from what I can see.

As someone who has taken accounting courses, worked with accountants and hired accountants over the years, I must say that I was astonished upon first hearing about the $387,000 "petty cash" account. Let me be perfectly clear: no one keeps $387,000 in petty cash, and no half-way decent accountant would ever account for that much money in a petty cash account. There are plenty of journal accounts in which to bury that kind of money if the expenses are at all questionable. So why were the expenses accounted for in such a blatantly unprofessional manner? What follows is my conjecture.

Danny Stover is the Democrat running against "Mr. Congressional Page Protector" John Shimkus in IL-19. On September 30, with all the diaries calling for the ouster of Denny Hastert and John Shimkus, I decided to email Danny Stover (even though I've never met him, and only know about him through his website) and ask him to become a member of the Daily Kos community in order to open up a dialogue and give us a chance to see if we can help him out in his race. Today, I received an email from Mr. Stover saying that he had taken my advice and registered as a Daily Kos member but he was being told he needed to wait the requisite one week in order to post a diary. Given how little time remains until the elections, Kos, is there any way you can give the computer a nudge and allow Mr. Stover to post earlier?

It's a sad thing to say, but, for me, Bush has so politicized the tragedy of September 11, that I am somewhat deliberately avoiding domestic news today. Happily, I found a cheerful headline in today's The Independent,U.K. (http://news.independent.co.uk/....):

Gore says he hasn't ruled out running for president

As Steven D diaried earlier, Gore arrived in Australia on September 10 for the local premiere of his global warming movie, "An Inconvenient Truth".  Although the import of Gore's movie was summarily dismissed by right wing Prime Minister John Howard, the press took more of an interest in Gore's presence.

This morning's New Haven Register (registration required) reports that actor and human rights activist Danny Glover will be in Connecticut today to endorse both Ned Lamont and John DeStefano. Glover is internationally recognized for his work on behalf of minorities, global human rights and AIDS. In 1998, Glover was appointed ambassador to the United Nations Development Program. More after the fold.

In an interview with the Associated Press this afternoon, following a contentious exchange between Senate Armed Services Committee member Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Clinton has called for Rumsfeld's resignation. More after the fold.

The Hartford Courant is reporting that Connecticut Republican state senator Diana Urban has filed papers to petition as an independent candidate for the U.S. Senate race in November. Urban describes herself as a "Teddy Roosevelt/Abraham Lincoln" Republican but will run as an anti-war independent in the November race. More on the flip.

Just got off the phone with my best friend, the "Rockefeller Republican" (yes, I know, a dying breed). As a little bit of background to what constitutes a "Rockefeller Republican", to the extent they still exist, he believes Bush should be impeached for breaking the law and for taking us into Iraq based on fabricated evidence, is horrified by the spying on Americans, values personal freedoms, believes in fiscal responsibility, supports civil unions but opposes gay marriage or child adoption by gays, supports universal health care but opposes the estate tax. That's actually the short list, but I think you get the idea. He also voted for Kerry in the last presidential election but wasn't wildly enthusiastic about him as a candidate. My friend's views on the flip.

Tonight I'm attending a local MoveOn gathering to discuss major positive goals for America. The groups have been asked to submit goals that are specific, positive, and brief (no more than 5 words used to describe the goal). Some of the examples given beforehand were:

--A balanced federal budget
--Affordable healthcare for all
--Stop spread of global AIDS

The idea, I gather, is to produce a big vision,something like LBJ's Great Society. (No, they didn't say that precisely. I'm just interpreting the directive.)

An AP story just up on Yahoo begins with the following:

Telecommunications giant Qwest refused to provide the government with access to telephone records of its 15 million customers after deciding the request violated privacy law, a lawyer for a former company executive said Friday.

The story goes on to say that the lawyer, one Herbert J. Stern, is currently representing former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio. Although the AP story doesn't mention any of Mr. Stern's background, after some Google searching on my own, I discovered that Herbert J. Stern is indeed a heavy hitter when it comes to prosecuting government officials who break the law.

There are so many daily outrages, whether it's illegal wiretapping, abortion rights, port security, or the Iraq fiasco, that it's easy for one more issue to go unnoticed. Today, that issue is renewal of the Patriot Act. The Chicago Tribune, to my neverending surprise, today provided its readers with a surprisingly fair and complimentary article on Russ Feingold and his attempts to modify the Patriot Act prior to a re-vote [http://www.chicagotribune.com/...]. The vote against cloture failed yesterday, with only 30 senators voting against cloture. I am proud to say that both my senators, Obama and Durbin were among the naysayers, and I promptly wrote to thank them and to voice my concerns about civil liberties protection. More below the fold.

As someone diaried earlier today, the Chicago Tribune has asked readers for e-mail comments on Bush's unauthorized use of spying for a column that will appear in tomorrow's edition of the paper. Since that earlier diary has disappeared, I wanted to share with you my response as well as to alert other dKos readers to the Tribune's request. Whether or not they publish my letter, or parts thereof, I hope that in some small way my opinion may influence the Trib in understanding exactly who comprises their readership and that the political views of their readers are not all somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun. My letter follows after the fold.