thewolf05827:
"...conservatives have never cared much for civil liberties."
"The only limitations on government that conservatives want is less regulation on business and lower taxes, both of which disproportionately help the rich, if the average person is helped at all."
Do you even understand you are posting generalizations?
Oh. Well then, if you really want specifics, here are just a few from somebody (me) who has not spent very much time digging them out. If you want more, you'll have to look for yourself or find somebody with more time to undertake educational outreach.
1. From 2001 to 2003, Republican staffers on the Senate Judiciary Committee illicitly accessed nearly 5,000 computer files containing confidential Democratic strategy memos about President Bush's judicial nominees. The GOP used the memos to shape their own plans and leaked some to the media. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act states it is illegal to obtain confidential information from a government computer.
2. The convictions of three Detroit men allegedly linked to al-Qaida were overturned in September 2004. when the DOJ's lead prosecutor in the case, Richard Convertino, withheld key information from the defense and distorted supposed pieces of evidence -- like a Las Vegas vacation video purported to be a surveillance tape.
3. A National Security Council memo from February 2001 "directed the N.S.C. staff to cooperate fully with [Dick Cheney's] Energy Task Force as it considered the 'melding' of ... 'operational policies towards rogue states,' such as Iraq, and 'actions regarding the capture of new and existing oil and gas fields.'" The Federal Advisory Committee Act says the government must disclose the work of groups that include non-federal employees; a lawsuit claims energy industry executives were effectively task force members. The task force's activities could shed light on the administration's pre-9/11 Iraq aims. Cheney continues to stonewall.
4. Halliburton received a five-year, $7 billion no-bid contract for services in Iraq. The Army Corps of Engineers' top contracting officer, Bunnatine Greenhouse, objected to the deal, saying the contract should be the standard one-year length, and that a Halliburton official should not have been present during the discussions.
5. In mid-2004, Pentagon auditors determined that $1.8 billion of Halliburton's charges to the government, about 40 percent of the total, had not been adequately documented.
6. The Bush administration diverted $700 million in funds from the war in Afghanistan, among other places, to prepare for the Iraq invasion. Article I, Section 8, Clause 12 of the U.S. Constitution specifically gives Congress the power "to raise and support armies." And the emergency spending bill passed after Sept. 11, 2001, requires the administration to notify Congress before changing war spending plans. That did not happen.
7. The inspector general of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq released a series of reports in July 2004 finding that a significant portion of CPA assets had gone missing -- 34 percent of the materiel controlled by Kellogg, Brown & Root -- and that the CPA's method of disbursing $600 million in Iraq reconstruction funds "did not establish effective controls and left accountability open to fraud, waste and abuse." As much as $50 million of that money was disbursed without proper receipts.
8. A high-ranking State Department official, Donald Keyser, was arrested and charged in September with making a secret trip to Taiwan and was observed by the FBI passing documents to Taiwanese intelligence agents in Washington-area meetings. Such unauthorized trips are illegal. And we don't have diplomatic relations with Taiwan.
9. Before the United Nations' vote on the Iraq war, the United States and Great Britain developed an eavesdropping operation targeting diplomats from several countries. U.N. officials say the practice is illegal and undermines honest diplomacy.
10. In 2003, the Air Force contracted with Boeing to lease a fleet of refueling tanker planes at an inflated price: $23 billion. The deal was put together by a government procurement official, Darleen Druyun, who promptly joined Boeing. Beats using a headhunter.
11. In May 2003, DeLay's office persuaded the Federal Aviation Administration to find the plane carrying a Texas Democratic legislator, who was leaving the state in an attempt to thwart the GOP's nearly unprecedented congressional redistricting plan. According to the House Ethics Committee, the "invocation of federal executive branch resources in a partisan dispute before a state legislative body" is wrong.
12. In 2002, with a tight Senate race in New Hampshire, Republican Party officials paid a Virginia-based firm, GOP Marketplace, to enact an Election Day scheme meant to depress Democratic turnout by "jamming" the Democratic Party phone bank with continuous calls for 90 minutes. Federal law prohibits the use of telephones to "annoy or harass" anyone.
13. Thomas Scully, Medicare's former administrator, threatened to fire chief Medicare actuary Richard Foster to prevent him from disclosing the true cost of the 2003 Medicare bill. Congress voted on the bill believing it would cost $400 billion over 10 years. The program is more likely to cost $550 billion.
14. To promote its Medicare bill, the Bush administration produced imitation news-report videos touting the legislation. About 40 television stations aired the videos. More recently, similar videos promoting the administration's education policy have come to light. The administration broke two laws: One forbidding the use of federal money for propaganda, and another forbidding the unauthorized use of federal funds.
15. The Department of Education paid conservative commentator Armstrong Williams $240,000 to promote its educational law, No Child Left Behind. Williams did not disclose that his support was government funded until the deal was exposed in January 2005.
16. Government officials publicly minimized the health risks stemming from the World Trade Center attack. In September 2001, for example, Environmental Protection Agency head Christine Todd Whitman said New York's "air is safe to breathe and [the] water is safe to drink." Research showed serious dangers or was incomplete. The EPA used outdated techniques that failed to detect tiny asbestos particles. EPA data also showed high levels of lead and benzene, which causes cancer. A Sierra Club report claims the government ignored alarming data. A GAO report says no adequate study of 9/11's health effects has been organized.
17. Ashcroft's exploratory committee for his short-lived 2000 presidential bid transferred $110,000 to his unsuccessful 2000 reelection campaign for the Senate. The maximum for such a transfer is $10,000.
18. In early 2001, chief White House political strategist Karl Rove held meetings with numerous companies while maintaining six-figure holdings of their stock -- including Intel, whose executives were seeking government approval of a merger. "Washington hadn't seen a clearer example of a conflict of interest in years," wrote Paul Glastris in the Washington Monthly. The Code of Federal Regulations says government employees should not participate in matters in which they have a personal financial interest.
19. In his January 2003 State of the Union address, Bush said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The statement was untrue. By March 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency showed the claim, that Iraq sought materials from Niger, was based on easily discernible forgeries.
