If only this was the final nail in the coffin.  

Oh, there you are, Perry. -Phineas -SLB-

Check my story below.  I have a link to a long story in the Dallas Morning News on the funeral home scandal + more docs ... reprinted at the Crawford Peace House site.

Hickok: "You know the sound of thunder. Can you imagine that sound if I ask you to? Ma'am, listen to the thunder."

  This is another octopus. Here's an arm

Division of Funeral Corp. Charged With Desecrating Corpses Hired to Collect Deceased Victims of Hurricane Katrina

A funeral services company that recently learned that one of its subsidiaries is negotiating a lucrative contract with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to remove dead bodies in areas ravaged by Hurricane Katrina paid $100 million to settle a class-action lawsuit several years ago alleging the company desecrated thousands of corpses and dumped bodies into mass graves.

Moreover, the company, Service Corporation International (SCI), paid $200,000 to settle a whistleblower lawsuit that sought to expose that two members of the Texas funeral commission, the agency which regulates the funeral industry, were actually employees of the company they were supposed to monitor--an obvious conflict of interest.

...full article

It never ceases to amaze me that no matter what name appears in any news story with any prominent member of the administration, they always seem to be attached to some scandal in George Bush's past.

Actually, this gives me a little bit of comfort.  It at least lets me think that maybe this insanity really is being caused by a relatively small, close-knit cabal, and once they are finally frogmarched out we can get back to the relative normalcy of traditional scandals and bickering.

Birds of a feather, they say ..

"You're des-picable!!!" </daffy>

Not one dollar more...

This SCI angle is quite tantalizing ... talk about skeletons in the closet ... or is it corpses in the dumpster, as it were?  

Having read a few of those links, I can't help but think of the ravenous take over crew from Kroner's who hounded the Fishers on Six Feet Under.  Anyone else think of this 6 Degrees of 6 Feet Under reference?

Urban Oasis

Duck Season.  Rabbit Season.  I do love that damn cartoon.  At least you we can smile once in a while.

"Have you no sense of decency, sir. At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" -- Boston Attorney Joseph Welch, taking down Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

I can't think of a better example of the callousness of the administration than Dick Cheney's accidental shooting of his hunting buddy. That's such an appropriate metaphor for the actions of this administration. It's not that they're deliberately evil. I believe Cheney wasn't trying to shoot his friend. But he was so self-absorbed, so into what he was doing, so greedy - trying to get one more bird, as if he hasn't killed enough of the poor things in his lifetime, that he ended up wounding someone who presumably meant something to him.

That's exactly what they're doing to America. They're not deliberately ruining the country. They just truly don't have a clue. The people they meet all kiss their feet. The protestors are kept down the road. They are ruining the planet with their energy and deforestation policies. They are dismantling our civilization. And all for a fast buck, because they can. They're just following the quail and firing, irregardless of the consequences.

More at http://realhistoryarchives.blogspot.com/.


"If you look for the social economic motive, you will not have to wait for history to tell you what was propaganda and what was truth." - George Seldes

Good God! Unf*ckinbelievable. It just breeds of scandal. No wonder it damn near sounded like a hit or a warning shot across the bow, the dude is deeply disturbed. This whole thing just reeks of something very foul.

Just to make a point, Mr. Cheney doesn't hunt. He goes to game farms to kill pen-raised and -fed animals, who thus have little fear of humans, and who are released into relatively confined areas for the the prepositioned "hunters" to shoot. Reportedly, he killed more than 70 pen-raised pheasants and an unreported amount of mallard ducks that day. His party of 10 "hunters" accounted for a total of 417 birds that day.
Most hunters I know consider this entire activity to be both unsportsmanlike and distasteful.

Someone had to ask, would you go hunting with Cheney?

...after a local reporter in Corpus Christi, Texas, received a tip from the owner of the property...

Why would the property owner tip off the press? I would think that this person supported Cheney, et al.
Strange.

Sometimes ya just gotta call it like ya see it!

Living in TX and outside Austin, I do have to wonder what other scandals went on while he was Gov. The funeral scandal really did not make news here and if it did, it was just mentioned in passing. But then again, the TX press was in love with Dudya. I did find an old article from The Austin Chronicle. However, it looks like this scandal made news else where considering Senator John Cornyn made this little statement for his opening argument when he was our AG:  

Texas Attorney General John Cornyn, who appeared in court on the governor's behalf, told the court during his opening argument that "the eyes of the world are on Texas and this court to see if Texas believes in frontier justice or in the rule of law."

Not only that, Cornyn went out of his way to make an appearance to defend the Dudya instead of the Dudya's legal counsel and it looked like I might have to do some digging since we were getting sued 10X a day:

Cornyn explained that his rather unusual appearance in the courtroom was motivated by his desire to "defend an important principle." He said the state of Texas is sued about 10 times a day and that if Bush were required to testify in the lawsuit brought by May, "then this governor and future governors will have little time to do anything else."

Here are a few more links found at Raw Story

The U.S. ambassador to Switzerland was the third member of a hunting party which went awry after Vice President Dick Cheney accidently shot 78-year-old Austin, Texas attorney Harry Whittington, according to a story written for the Cox news service, RAW STORY has learned.

According to Open Secrets, "Willeford and her immediate family contributed a total of $23,200 to Republicans during the 2000, 2002 and 2004 election cycles, including $7,000 to the Bush campaigns and an additional $500 to the Bush-Cheney recount fund established after the 2000 election."

Brad Blog has more details on the incident, along with background on some of the prominent Texan Republicans that were at the scene.

Just reported, Whittington will not be talking to reporters "out of respect for the Cheney."

Hmmmm...the guy gets shot in the face, neck, and chest...he must have been silenced.

Seriously though, we pay millions of dollars a year to have our elected officials protected. It concerns me greatly that anyone (but secret service) was even allowed to carry a gun anywhere near Cheney. It could just as easily been Cheney on the other end of the barrel. It would seem to me that this should not be allowed by the secret service. Something on the order of "its alright to go hunting, but your friends can't bring their guns".

-s

Monday's hunting trip to Pennsylvania by Vice President Dick Cheney in which he reportedly shot more than 70 stocked pheasants and an unknown number of mallard ducks at an exclusive private club places a spotlight on an increasingly popular and deplorable form of hunting, in which birds are pen-reared and released to be shot in large numbers by patrons. The ethics of these hunts are called into question by rank-and-file sportsmen, who hunt animals in their native habitat and do not shoot confined or pen-raised animals that cannot escape.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported today that 500 farm-raised pheasants were released yesterday morning at the Rolling Rock Club in Ligonier Township for the benefit of Cheney's 10-person hunting party. The group killed at least 417 of the birds, illustrating the unsporting nature of canned hunts. The party also shot an unknown number of captive mallards in the afternoon.

"This wasn't a hunting ground. It was an open-air abattoir, and the vice president should be ashamed to have patronized this operation and then slaughtered so many animals," states Wayne Pacelle, a senior vice president of The Humane Society of the United States. "If the Vice President and his friends wanted to sharpen their shooting skills, they could have shot skeet or clay, not resorted to the slaughter of more than 400 creatures planted right in front of them as animated targets."

Disgusting! No real hunter would go to such a place. But, what else would you expect from a five-deferment dick.

When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace. - Jimi Hendrix