Martians are smart people too, but they fart a lot it seems, and it’s given them away after hiding for eons.

Yesterday NASA scientists reported in Live Blogging The Mars Methane Mystery: Aliens At Last?, blogging at Blogs.DicoverMagazine.com that:

…they recorded plumes of methane rising from the surface of the Red Planet. Working back from their measurements of methane in the air, the researchers pinpointed some particular spots on Mars where the methane came from. And it’s a lot of methane they’re talking about-19,000 metric tons of the stuff in one plume.  It’s coming out of Mars at the same rate seen at methane-producing spots on Earth.

Those places on Earth happen to be places where microbes are churning the gas out. There might be other ways of getting plumes of methane into the air-generating it from magma, for example. But in a paper published today by Science, Mumma and his colleagues point to the possibility that microbes buried a mile or two under the surface of Mars might be responsible. There are certainly analogs here on Earth-or here under Earth. On our planet, scientists can study these deep microbes by traveling down through mine shafts. Sending the equipment to dig a mine shaft on Mars might be a wee bit expensive, unfortunately.

So-what’s going on?

What’s going on, you ask? Well, it turns out that after the Martians had been successfully hiding from Earthlings for billions of years, the Bush/Complicit Democrat/PNAC/Neocon faction that hijacked the US Government eight years ago and turned it into a murderous planet wide hegemonic killing machine of imperialism has finally pushed the Martians just a little too far, according to recent leaks by CIA spooks eager to save themselves from inclusion as defendants in war crimes prosecution of Bush, Cheney, Pelosi, Reid, and others.

This morning, less than a day after the NASA scientists reported the likelihood of life on Mars, their conjectures were confirmed incontrovertibly.

We are not alone in the universe. And apparently the rest of the universe is just as pissed as we are.

This morning another leak from another spook, this time in the State Department, has confirmed that a Diplomatic Communique was received from Mars addressed to the Bush Administration overnight.

Why would Martians talk to the Bush Administration you ask? Without even any pre-conditions?

It turns out that with all the recent media attention on a Special Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute Bush and Cheney and others, the Petition For A Special Prosecutor has apparently made its way to Mars too, along with old television transmissions of The Prisoner with famed British actor Patrick McGoohan (RIP), and has been enthusiastically received there.

The Martian Diplomatic Communique was delivered in the form of one single image transmitted through NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover, and is reproduced below…

The afternoon session has moved from CSPAN3 to CSPAN.

You can watch the hearing live on CSPAN (Windows Media Player)

or through the committee’s Real Player Live Webcast.

Click image to watch the hearing on CSPAN … opens in new window …

This page should load faster than the morning thread.

Click image to watch the hearing on CSPAN3

The Senate Committee on the Judiciary Holder Confirmation Hearing has just begun a few minutes ago with Patrick Leahy and Arlen Specter making opening comments.

You can watch the hearing live on CSPAN3 (Windows Media Player) or through the committee’s Real Player Live Webcast.

To save time I’ll quote here BarbinMD’s post this morning at DKos:

Holder has the support of the Democratic Senators on the Judiciary Committee, along with the backing of Orrin Hatch, the endorsement of three former Deputy Attorney Generals, not to mention former Senator John Warner introducing and offering his support at today’s hearing, along with testimony from Louis J. Freeh, the Former Director of the FBI. And while the level of support Holder will enjoy might cramp attempts to delay his confirmation, it certainly won’t stop the Republicans from trying.

Taking the lead in these efforts has been Arlen Specter, who went from not having “taken any position” on Holder, to denouncing him on the Senate floor, comparing him to Alberto “I don’t recall” Gonzales, and Chuck Grassley, who has attempted to tie Holder to the scandal-plagued Rod Blagojevich. Throw in the Republican requests for documents related to Clinton’s impeachment, fund-raising by Al Gore, and the case of Elian Gonzalez, and you can see that the attempt to force Obama “to spend political capital early,” is on.

By all means, every Senator should ask the hard questions, explore the pardon of Marc Rich, or any other areas of concern they may have. But the Republican Senators may want to consider two things: the overwhelming support that Obama enjoys and how the last two elections have worked out for them. If they overplay their hand here, they might find themselves hoisted by their own petard peg.

A complete witness list for today’s hearing is available here.

If anyone watching the hearing has not yet signed the Formal Petition to Attorney General-Designate Eric Holder to appoint a Special Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute any and all government officials who have participated in War Crimes… please sign it now.

Michael Ratner, President, Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR).

Tuesday afternoon the Center For Constitutional Rights (CCR), under President Michael Ratner, issued a Call for a Special Prosecutor to Investigate U.S. Torture, and over Executive Director Vincent Warren’s signature sent an emailed Action Alert to their large subscriber list, in which they also issued a…

…call to action to phone your senators with questions for Eric Holder’s hearing on his nomination to be the next Attorney General. The second is to send you a link to a report we released yesterday on the simple steps to closing Guantanamo.

While President-Elect Obama has said he will close the base, he has yet to say how or when, which are the most important questions. We are all excited at the chance for a new beginning: it is up to us to make it one we can be proud of. Please call your senators, and please download and distribute our report so we can end this terrible chapter in our history.

I. This Thursday, January 15th, the Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing to decide whether nominee Eric Holder should be confirmed as the new Attorney General. While Holder’s public statements suggest he would be a marked improvement over Alberto Gonzales and Michael Mukasey, it is critical that the American public be certain that our nation’s chief lawyer has an unwavering commitment to upholding the rule of law.

Senate Judiciary Committee members have a serious responsibility to put an end to subverting law to politics – and to ensure that President-Elect Obama appoints an Attorney General who will help him restore, protect and expand our human rights. And it is our responsibility to make our voices heard and stand against torture, racial profiling and other violations of human rights.

Please call the Senate Judiciary Committee members today and tell them that we need Eric Holder to make a clear statement against torture and racial profiling. Phone numbers are provided below. It will only take a few minutes to urge them to ask these two critical questions:

Are you, unlike your predecessor, willing to acknowledge under oath what U.S. military and civilian courts have recognized for over 100 years: that waterboarding is torture and therefore criminal? If so, will you fulfill your duty to ensure that justice and the rule of law apply to all by appointing a Special Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute those who have used, ordered, and authorized the use of waterboarding and other forms of torture?

I’ve saved the CCR Action Alert email I received as a web document so that you can read it in full here, if you hadn’t received it. It includes the list of Senators you can call, with their contact phone numbers, who will be involved in Holder’s confirmation hearings later this week.

Here are the rules.

The other day George Will, of all people, was comparing Obama refusing to prosecute Bush and Cheney to Ford pardoning Nixon.

If a far right crazed wingnut can get it right, why can’t the rest of us?

This comparison is one that we can use to good effect, but only if we do it continuously and loudly.

A friend of mine a couple of days ago, a nearly unquestioning Obama supporter, said to me, and I quote:

No argument from me.  Ford should have been stood against the wall and shot for that pardon.  Nixon cooling his heels in the clink for a few years would have prevented this mess, no doubt.

Ford’s pardon of Nixon was the beginning of the end of any hope Ford had of being politically effective, and absolutely killed his future chances for reelection.

So let’s see… if Obama doesn’t want a political blood bath that might define his first term as him being a bush enabler and a torture excuser and might drown him, then he’ll tell Holder to appoint a Special Prosecutor, and answer Fertik’s question directly himself, instead of hiding behind excuses and Joe Biden, since according to Biden it is not the job of the president or the vice president, but of the Justice department.  

Image courtesy of: www.arimelber.com

On December 30, 2008 I wrote here about Ari Melber helping to push the petition and public awareness of Bob Fertik’s great efforts at forcing the demand for a Special Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute Bush administration war crimes to the top of the list of questions for Barack Obama at change.gov, under Additional Issues. At the time Ari had written a great article for The Nation, which was also published at Huffington post, about Obama’s Open For Questions invitation for citizen input.

Ari Melber is The Nation’s Net Movement correspondent and a writer for the online magazine’s blog State Of Change. Ari’s own website is www.arimelber.com.

Well, that wasn’t a one shot effort on Ari’s part, and he emailed me on Thursday to let me know that he’s been at it again, continuing his push as Net Movement correspondent with another article on Thursday at The Nation, Torture Prosecutor Tops 70,000 Questions for Obama on Change.Gov. His article was also graciously showcased again by Arianna Huffington at Huffington Post, yesterday.

Since all of that happened several more progressive bloggers including Digby and David Swanson have picked up on the story and it’s been spreading, finally prompting even the New York Times to relent and write about it, as Ari explains in his article below.

We’re getting somewhere folks, inch by groaning inch, but we are making an impact!

Here is Ari’s article in full on the flip:

Cleaned it up, slowed down the scrolling, rearranged some images, and generally upped the quality some.

The soundtrack is a copyright free instrumental called “Transformation”.

I think it looks not too bad, for what we need it for. Let me know how you like it, or don’t like it. Either way  this is what we have!

The embed code is at Youtube, or on the flip below…