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Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a California Democrat dismayed by the House vote over the weekend to prohibit taxpayer subsidies for insurance policies that cover abortion in the healthcare overhaul, is saying maybe the IRS should investigate the tax-exempt status of the Catholic Church following its lobbying effort for the restriction. “I expect political hardball on any legislation as important as the health care bill,” Woolsey writes in Politico. “I just didn’t expect it from the United States Council of Catholic Bishops … Who elected them to Congress?

I expect political hardball on any legislation as important as the health care bill. I just didn’t expect it from the United States Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Who elected them to Congress? The role the bishops played in the pushing the Stupak amendment, which unfairly restricts access for low-income women to insurance coverage for abortions, was more than mere advocacy. They seemed to dictate the finer points of the amendment, and managed to bully members of Congress to vote for added restrictions on a perfectly legal surgical procedure. And this political effort was subsidized by taxpayers, since the Council...

Turn Oil into Salt by: Sarah Carlsruh, September 18, 2009 James Woolsey, Former Director of the CIA, presented insight into the two subjects that invariably define Saudi Arabia, religion and oil. “The United States has [had] its own periods of intolerance,” Woolsey stated, pointing to the KKK and the fact that the state of Rhode Island exists because the Puritans of Massachusetts banished one man for his religious beliefs. Those regrettable snippets of history are true for this country but, he said, “its general thrust is of religious liberty.” Woolsey then spoke about the 1950’s Soviet Union, where he...

An overflow crowd of about 1,200 people attended a boisterous town hall meeting Monday night in Petaluma on the national health overhaul, many expressing support for a proposed government-run program and others shouting it down. Nearly 100 shut out of overflowing meeting The two-hour meeting, run by Democratic Rep. Lynn Woolsey, was the first and only chance for many Sonoma and Marin County residents to ask questions and air comments before Congress reconvenes after Labor Day to consider the pending legislation. Dozens spoke on both sides of the debate amid constant jeers and chants from an audience that filled every...

Dear [xxxx], You are invited to join me, Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, for a townhall meeting to discuss health care reform. Monday, August 31, 2009 6:00 – 8:00 pm Petaluma Veterans Memorial Hall 1094 Petaluma Boulevard South Petaluma, CA 94952 For more information or to request special accommodations, please call either of my California offices (415-507-9554 or 707-542-7182) Sincerely, Lynn Woolsey Member of Congress

Rep. Lynn Woolsey, a Marin Democrat, was arrested at the Sudanese embassy this morning with four other members of Congress.

As Milosevic's intelligence chief, Jovica Stanisic is accused of setting up genocidal death squads. But as a valuable source for the CIA, an agency veteran says, he also 'did a whole lot of good.' By Greg Miller March 1, 2009 Reporting from Belgrade, Serbia -- At night, when the lawns are empty and the lamps along the walking paths are the only source of light, Topcider Park on the outskirts of Belgrade is a perfect meeting place for spies. It was here in 1992, as the former Yugoslavia was erupting in ethnic violence, that a wary CIA agent made his...

For 30 years Jim Woolsey has been a hawkish guardian of American national security. As director of the CIA under Bill Clinton he lived every day with the terrorist threats to his homeland. Yet in his view, the greatest danger to the country now is not nuclear and chemical weapons but climate change and the American dependence on oil which is partly blamed for causing it. Mr Woolsey believes the greatest weapon in America's arsenal is not the stealth bomber, the Abrams tank or the F-16 jet – but the humble plug-in hybrid car that will let most people do...

"We should not just try to import less oil," the former CIA director under former President Clinton told a Miami audience Sunday. "We should destroy oil as a strategic commodity" that allows oil exporting nations to hold monopoly power... Woolsey's wide-ranging speech went from describing how Americans' dollars at the gas pumps made their way to fundamentalist Islamic institutions to illustrating advances in solar energy technology that make it more efficient and affordable... Among his suggestions was California's decision to decouple energy company profits from sales two decades ago, keeping the state's electricity consumption flat while the rest of the...

Clinton-era Director of Central Intelligence James Woolsey talks to PJM Washington Editor Richard Miniter on the likelihood of future terror attacks on American soil and the differences between the Muslim populations of the U.S and U.K. NEW YORK—Will it happen here? An attack like the ones we have seen in London and Glasgow? I asked former CIA Director James Woolsey at a conference sponsored by the Hudson Institute Briefing Series in New York. ,,, Then he added a frightening postscript. “We definitely have Al Qaeda cells in the U.S., possibly preparing terrorist attacks.” He provided no evidence, but may not...

Robert James Woolsey Jr.-Jim to his friends-isn't your typical Prius driver. Educated at Stanford, Oxford, and Yale, he was facing down the Russians in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks of the late 1960s before he was out of his 20s. He's held a series of senior government posts; the walls of his office bear signed photographs and messages of thanks from every president since Nixon. In 1993, Bill Clinton made him director of Central Intelligence, giving him control of the CIA's $30-billion annual budget and its network of tens of thousands of agents and a brief to run covert operations...

-Excerpt- "I believe that the Vilayat Faqih in Iran is a theocratic totalitarian movement for which destruction of Israel and the United States is not a policy but its very essence. It defines itself in that way. Saying that is should change its policy with respect to destroying Israel and the United States is like trying to persuade Hitler away from anti-Semitism. It was his essence and it is the essence of the Iranian Vilayat Faqih. I believe that the nuclear weapons program of Iran is an important part of this and as Bernard said the recent up tick in...

James Woolsey, former Director of the CIA, told IsraelNationalRadio's Alex Traiman that a Palestinian state should wait "many decades" until they stop teaching their children to hate and murder. Traiman asked about Woolsey's choice of terminology in calling the present conflict between the West and Islam as World War Four. Woolsey explained that shortly after 9/11, "I saw an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal by Eliot Cohen of Johns Hopkins University where he wrote that the Cold War was World War III, and that the war against what I call Islamist totalitarianism is World War IV... We have a...

I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby won't lack powerful friends or financial resources when he goes on trial on Tuesday. A private fund set up to pay the legal bills of the former top aide to Vice President Dick Cheney has collected more than $3 million since Libby's indictment 14 months ago. (snip) Nevertheless, the Armitage disclosure further strengthened the belief among Libby’s many influential friends and supporters that he is an innocent man whose life has been turned upside-down by unjust accusations. One of those friends is Dick Carlson, a former ambassador and Republican stalwart who has headed the Voice of...

Greek police arrested three brothers, Savas Triandafyllos, 40, Christodoulos Triandafyllos, 44, and Vassilis Triandafyllos, 30, and charged them with being members of the Marxist-Leninist Revolutionary Organisation of November 17 terrorist group. The brothers are being charged with having participated in a number of terrorist inspired killings. The police have now made nine arrests, including the Xiros brothers. Savas Triandafyllos, reported to have Sudanese links, was seriously injured on 29 June when a bomb he was carrying exploded. On investigation, police found the fingerprints of Alexandros Giotopoulos, a 58-year-old academic, in flats containing bomb-making equipment. Giotopoulos denies all knowledge of the...

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT BUSH Hon. George W. Bush The White House Washington, D.C. 20500 Dear Mr. President: You have just received the report of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group (ISG) with its 79 recommendations for policy changes, force redeployments and other course corrections with respect to the conflict in Iraq. We believe you have responded properly in welcoming this product -- but reserving judgment as to whether you will accept its suggestions. This is especially important because of the argument being made in some quarters that, in light of the unanimity exhibited by the distinguished Republican and Democratic...

ELEANOR HALL: A former CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) director and chief adviser to New York's Terrorism Preparedness Taskforce has described the conflict against al-Qaeda as the "fourth world war", and he predicts it will go on for decades. James Woolsey was director of the CIA under President Clinton and was an arms control negotiator under presidents Reagan and Bush Senior. He's critical of US administrations from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton for failing to tackle Islamic terrorism more robustly. James Woolsey has been speaking to Paolo Black. JAMES WOOLSEY: I think that war will go on for decades, like the...

BIRMINGHAM -- Nearly 50 people -- including a former U.S. government official who served as a European ambassador and later directed the CIA - spoke during an intense hearing Friday on the divestment policy of the Presbyterian Church (USA). Nearly equal numbers opposed and favored the resolution of the 216th General Assembly that called for "phased selective divestment" of PCUSA holdings in corporations doing business with Israel. The majority of the overtures being reviewed by the assembly's Committee on Peacemaking and International Issues oppose the one-sided divestment policy that has spawned worldwide opposition from Jewish groups. A few favor the...

Just the other day, I wrote that Looney Lynn Woolsey was too busy aiding America's enemies--foreign & domestic--to get involved in the fight to remove high-risk sex offenders placed among her constituents in Marin County. Need proof? From the Lefty website The Raw Story, Woolsey, plus 70 other Democrats in the House and Independent Socialist Bernie Sanders filed briefs in two federal courts to stop the NSA terrorist eavesdropping program. Also among the 70 are fellow Treason Lobby members John Conyers, "Baghdad" Jim McDermott, Barbara Lee, Jerrold "Jabba-the-Hut" Nadler, Fortney Pete Stark and Maxine Waters. They were also joined in...

Excerpts from James Woolsey's visit By Jason Cato TRIBUNE-REVIEW Tuesday, May 2, 2006 Excerpts from former CIA Director James Woolsey's visit Monday with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review: On the motivation behind part of the Iraqi insurgency:

Ex-CIA chief: Oil key to U.S. security By Jason Cato TRIBUNE-REVIEW Tuesday, May 2, 2006 Think gas prices are bad now? Imagine another terrorist attack -- especially one on Saudi Arabian oil refineries, former CIA Director R. James Woolsey said Monday during a visit to Pittsburgh.

The Talk Shows Sunday, April 30th, 2006 Guests to be interviewed today on major television talk shows: FOX NEWS SUNDAY (Fox Network): White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten; incoming White House Press Secretary Tony Snow. MEET THE PRESS (NBC): Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman; American Petroleum Institute President Red Cavaney; Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill. FACE THE NATION (CBS): Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; Sens. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska. THIS WEEK (ABC): Rice; Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y.; petroleum industry lobbyist Bennett Johnston; actor George Clooney. LATE EDITION (CNN) : Rice; Sens. Trent Lott, R-Miss., and Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.;...

Two former CIA directors have resigned from the board of the organization planning tomorrow to make public secret recordings of Saddam Hussein and his advisers. In the last week both John Deutch and James Woolsey abruptly left their positions at Intelligence Summit, according to its president, John Loftus, who said their departure is part of a campaign by the directorate of national intelligence to punish him for releasing the recordings.

    Woolsey-Eyed DemocratsBy R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. Published 2/2/2006 12:08:54 AM WASHINGTON -- In the months after our invasion of Iraq -- our liberation of Iraq -- there was a neat little peace movement. It was composed of the likes of linguist Noam Chomsky, Ramsey Clark, and various lesser patheticos who all looked like they belonged on the streets of Berkeley, California, some with begging pots in their hands. That this forlorn band did not grow for many months was no surprise to me. America had suffered 3,000 casualties at home, not one of whom had been engaged in warfare...

THOSE WHO TUNED IN EARLY TO THE STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS LAST NIGHT know Cindy Sheehan got herself arrested before the speech began. Unless they follow the Hate America Left closely, what they don’t know is that Sheehan was ejected because she and her cronies tried to hijack the president’s constitutionally mandated annual speech by shouting him down. And a “progressive” congresswoman may have been her enabler.

"Peace Mom" Cindy Sheehan is so angry that she wasn't allowed to disrupt last night's State of the Union address that intends to file a lawsuit claiming she was brutalized by Capitol Hill police who suppressed her first amendment freedoms. "I have the bruises and muscle spasms to prove it," Sheehan said, in a message posted to several left wing web sites after she was arrested and then released on her own recognizance. Sheehan also contends she suffered emotional trauma, complaining: "I am so upset and sore it is hard to think straight." The Bush-bashing Gold Star mom says she...

Dear Friends, As most of you have probably heard, I was arrested before the State of the Union Address tonight. I am speechless with fury at what happened and with grief over what we have lost in our country. CindySheehan's diary :: :: There have been lies from the police and distortions by the press. (Shocker) So this is what really happened: This afternoon at the People's State of the Union Address in DC where I was joined by Congresspersons Lynn Woolsey and John Conyers, Ann Wright, Malik Rahim and John Cavanagh, Lynn brought me a ticket to the...

Anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan of Vacaville, given a ticket by Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, to attend President Bush's State of the Union address Tuesday evening, was arrested by Capitol police in the front row of the House gallery, reportedly for wearing a T-shirt with an anti-war message in violation of House rules. Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq while serving in the Army, gained national fame in August when she camped out near Bush's Crawford, Texas, ranch unsuccessfully seeking a meeting with the president. Since then she has campaigned against the war and was arrested outside the White...

Cindy Sheehan, whose grief at losing her son in Iraq has been manipulated by the Enemy Within, was arrested by Capitol Police prior to tonight's State of the Union Address. She was the guest of "Red" Lynn Woolsey, the treasonous Congresswoman representing Marin & Sonoma Counties. According to news reports, Sheehan was trying to unfurl a banner in the balcony of the House of Representatives. Woolsey is one of a handful of Democrats in the House who co-signed an impeachment bill. As mentioned here on January 14, she is one of 200 signatures for an "Urgent Peace Plan" by the...

Cindy Sheehan said she will be part of the live audience during the president's State of the Union speech to congress Tuesday. Bay Area Congresswoman Lynn Woosley gave anti-war activist a gallery pass late Tuesday, just hours before the planned State of the Union speech. Sheehan was in Washington to protest the president during his national address, but then came word she was invited to see the speech live. A spokesman for Sheehan says she decided to accept the invitation two hours prior to the speech. The spokesman also said that Sheehan will be respectful and listen to the address...

Assemblyman Joe Nation has started off the new year by firing a couple of political broadsides at Rep. Lynn Woolsey. Nation, D-San Rafael, is challenging Woolsey, D-Petaluma, for the Democratic nomination in the June primary. While Nation is viewed as a political moderate, Woolsey is one of the more liberal members of Congress. In a press release, Nation blasted Woolsey for taking privately-sponsored trips to such exotic locales as Jamaica, Cancun and the Bahamas. In another salvo this month, Nation took Woolsey to task for voting against pay raises for U.S. troops while voting to increase her own pay. "People...

James Woolsey on Comedy Central Tonight 11pm

Code Pink Women For Peace (hereafter to be nicknamed "Code Pinko" in this blog, more on that later) has Lynn Woolsey as one of 200 signatures of prominent women for the group's "Urgent Peace Plan" to end the War in Iraq. Other signers include Berzerekeley CA's own Barbara Lee (the lone dissenter against the resolution for military action after 9/11) and Cynthia McKinney (D-GA).

Early in November, hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee examined hate literature being distributed in American mosques. This material had been translated and published earlier this year by Freedom House's Center for Religious Freedom. (I was chairman of Freedom House at the time and wrote the book's foreword.) The hearings examined these Saudi publications in the context of assessing Chairman Arlen Specter's proposed Saudi Arabia Accountability Act. In addition to the material presented at the hearings, the underlying role of Saudi Arabia's state religion, generally referred to in the West as Wahhabism, deserves expanded attention for a variety of reasons....

MICHAEL LERNER was back on campus at Berkeley. But this time he is a portly Jewish rabbi leading 1,200 mostly middle-aged "spiritual progressives," and not the young Students for a Democratic Society agitator targeted by J. Edgar Hoover in the 1960s. The "Politics of Meaning," Lerner's label for his spiritual liberalism, peaked in the early 1990s, when his supposed fans, Bill and Hillary Clinton, ascended to power. But Hillary disavowed Lerner when his quirky views attracted fire, and the old Berkeley activist, though still publishing Tikkun, seemingly faded. Now Lerner is back. And his "Conference on Spiritual Activism," held at...

Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey's (ULTRALIB-CA) poll question: "Do you support the Administration's plan to keep troops in Iraq for "as long as it takes?"

After a meeting with convicted Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols, a U.S. congressman reaffirmed evidence of a Middle East connection to the 1995 attack. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif. – who has publicly vowed to address unanswered questions about the bombing – went with a staff aid to the super-maximum security prison in Florence, Colo., where Nichols is serving 161 consecutive life sentences, according to the Northeast Intelligence Network, a private, counter-terrorist research and investigation group. In his quizzing of Nichols, the congressman relied heavily on the investigative work of journalist Jayna Davis and her book, "The Third Terrorist: The Middle...

GIBSON: A Republican congressman is blasting the CIA, accusing the agency of gross incompetence, saying it dropped the ball on everything from the hunt for Usama to Iran's nuclear weapons programs. Representative Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania is the vice chairman of the House Homeland Security and Armed Services Committees. He makes his charges in a new book. The congressman says the top tier of the CIA, entire top tier of the CIA, should be fired. That is a suggestion that is not sitting all that well in Langley. Joining us now to talk about it, the former Director of the...

WASHINGTON – Former CIA chief James Woolsey affirms the work of a special commission investigating the threat of a nuclear-bomb generated electromagnetic pulse attack on the U.S. by rogue states or terrorists and is urging the country to take steps necessary to protect against the potentially devastating consequences. In testimony before the House International Terrorism and Non-Proliferation Subcommittee, chaired by Ed Royce, R-Calif., Woolsey, director of the CIA from 1993 through 1995, referred to the nuclear EMP threat, characterized in intelligence circles, he said, as "a SCUD in a bucket." "That is a simple ballistic missile from a stockpile somewhere...

SEC. 2. IMPLEMENTATION OF PUBLIC INTEREST STANDARDS. Section 309 of the Communications Act of 1934 (47 U.S.C. 309) is amended by adding at the end the following new subsection: `(l) Implementation of Public Interest Standard- `(1) PURPOSE- The purposes of this subsection are-- `(A) to restore fairness in broadcasting; `(B) to ensure that broadcasters meet their public interest obligations; `(C) to promote diversity, localism, and competition in American media; and `(D) to ensure that all radio and television broadcasters-- `(i) are accountable to the local communities they are licensed to serve; `(ii) offer diverse views on issues of public importance,...

The US is turning on old friends in Europe, writes John Laughland. Before he denounced the "prevailing influence" of the US in the "anti-constitutional coup" that overthrew him, President Askar Akayev of Kyrgyzstan used an interesting phrase to attack those who were stirring up trouble in the drug-ridden Ferghana Valley. A criminal "third force", linked to the drug mafia, was struggling to gain power. Originally a label for covert operatives shoring up apartheid in South Africa before it was adopted by the US-backed "pro-democracy" movement in Iran in November 2001, the third force is also the title of a book...

Wesley Clark the other day blamed the Bush administration for the intelligence failures leading to the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. And Hillary Clinton said, darkly, that the administration's refusal to hand over documents to a 9/11 commission "unnecessarily raises suspicions that it has something to hide." Meanwhile, Condi Rice in a speech last week pointed to the failure to take terrorism seriously during the 1990s — in other words, she pointed to Clinton administration failures. The war over the war on terror has just begun. In this battle, it's useful to stick to specifics. Let's take,...

CODEPINK Events happening in Fayetteville for March 19 March 19: Political Listener Campaign. We have been asked by the March 19 Fayetteville Rally Organizing Committee to initiate a regional campaign to invite decision-makers to join the rally as listeners. Requests have already gone to Gov. Howard Dean, NC Rep. Coble, and NC Rep. Watt. However, these requests need to be repeated and the campaign needs to be extended to ALL regional (NC, SC, and VA) REPRESENTATIVES AND SENATORS to CONGRESS. If you believe you can contribute to this effort, please join us, men and women alike! We must demand that...

(CNSNews.com) - The increased frequency with which Middle Eastern terrorists target Americans and U.S. installations is due in part to the terrorists' continued perception that America acts cowardly when under attack, according to former Central Intelligence Agency director R. James Woolsey. Woolsey, who addressed students and reporters at George Washington University Tuesday, said America's reaction to the 1979 hostage crisis in Iran and the deaths of 241 U.S. marines in 1983 are examples of why that perception endures. With President Jimmy Carter trying to negotiate the hostages' release in 1979 and 1980, the reaction of the average American was to...

Muslims in the United States should "behave as if on a mission behind enemy lines." Not the admonition of a crank or a freak from the lunatic fringe, but Saudi-funded religious pamphlets distributed to mosques throughout America. Says who? Says Freedom House, one of the oldest human rights groups in the U.S. and headed by James Woolsey, CIA director in the first Clinton administration. The organization did a one-year study of the kind of "hate propaganda" the Saudi government has paid to print and distribute to U.S. mosques. The 89-page report, based on 200 Saudi documents, released by Freedom...

The Agency Rides Again - Angleton on Chalabi Michael Ledeen/NRO Like everyone else, I've been reading the stories about my friend Ahmad Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress, and the accusations that he's an Iranian spy. I don't believe it, but before launching a tirade against the misnamed Central Intelligence Agency I thought I'd better check with the greatest unliving expert on intelligence, the late James Jesus Angleton. He was the longtime chief of CIA counterintelligence, and knew everything there was to know about spying, so I dusted off the ouija board and got him on the second try. JJA:...

Whatever the overall effects of the recent intelligence reorganization, the new director of national intelligence (DNI) should at least be able to bring about one important improvement -- coordinating foreign and domestic intelligence.Such coordination was not really even being attempted before 9/11 because domestic intelligence, for all practical purposes, did not exist. The FBI was the only institution that had ever actually been in the business, e.g. with its very effective long-term penetration of the American Communist Party. But discredited in the mid-1970s by the revelation of excesses, including spying on Martin Luther King Jr., the Bureau had essentially been...

WASHINGTON — The House on Saturday commended the Boy Scouts (search) and condemned legal efforts to limit government ties to the group because of its requirement that members believe in God. A nonbinding resolution, passed by a 391-3 vote, recognized the 3.2 million-member Boy Scouts for its public service efforts. But the main thrust of the debate was what the House Judiciary Committee chairman, Rep. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., said were the "strident legal attacks" on the group. The Pentagon (search) agreed last week to tell U.S. military bases around the world not to directly sponsor Boy Scout troops. ....... Voting...

Though Lynn Woolsey, the North Bay's representative in the House, feels "honored" to be re-elected by over 70 percent of area voters, like many Democrats, she's disappointed with the results of last week's presidential election.

When James Woolsey took the microphone at The Breakers Friday night, he told the 400-plus guests that he was honored to be asked to speak. "Then again, I was a Washington lawyer for 22 years and I was director of the CIA under Bill Clinton. I'm actually honored to be invited to any polite gathering anywhere." Woolsey, who served in two Democratic and two Republican administrations, was the guest speaker at the annual meeting of the Philanthropy Roundtable. His topic was the war on terrorism, which he called "the long war of the 21st century." "Some refer to it as...