It looks like Henry Cuellar is going to take the Democratic nomination in Texas 28, but I just want to say how brave, how inspirational the participation of everyone on this site and across the blogosphere has been in the Ciro Rodriguez race.
It took Rove, Reed, Norquist and the College Republicans 20 years to gain power. We like to think of the Presidency of George W. Bush as an aberration of the Florida vote in 2000 but that doesn't take into account the ground war that the Republican party has been waging since the 80s. The extreme right wing of the GOP gained power because they put up extreme right wing candidates in every race and backed them to the limit, win or lose. And they did it virtually unnoticed by the American public until eventually, they prevailed.
We did that in this race. We sent a very loud, long message to the Democratic party about what we're willing to fight for. It's extremely difficult to defeat an incumbent and we took a race that wasn't even close in January and made it competitive. That's huge.
As much as we look for a hero to ride in on a white horse and deliver us all from this mess that's not going to happen. Many count on Bush to eventually screw things up so badly that the electorate simply jumps ship but that doesn't ever seem to happen either, no matter how bad it gets. The sad, hard truth is that the GOP has gamed the system so thoroughly that we're going to have to challenge it brick by brick from the bottom up and that's going to take a lot of commitment, a lot of patience and a lot more time than many will comfortably admit. But that is the reality of the situation we're in.
Wyonate supplies
this Chomsky quote:
"John Hamilton, who drove from Ithaca to see Chomsky, stood up to ask a question during the question-and-answer period following Chomsky's speech. "My question is, what do you find hopeful?" Hamilton said.
"I think one should be very optimistic for the reasons I just mentioned," Chomsky said. "The large majority of the population already agrees with the things activists are committed to."
The talking heads would have you believe that we're so far out of the mainstream that we're just marginal, angry extremists. In point of fact we only seem extreme when measured by the yardstick of those they themselves have allowed to dominate the debate.
Cuellar is an example of the latest GOP tactic -- run a Republican as a Democrat in a district that will never elect a Republican. He represents a creeping cancer within the party that has to be fought if we're not going sit back and let it be overtaken by the GOP too. We had to draw a line in the sand and actively
show them we're willing to challenge them on that front. We did that. It was important. We showed up for the fight.
There are no quick fixes. We're not going to be able to match overnight the ground game that was put in place by the right over the past twenty years and beyond. The Ciro Rodriguez race may be a short term defeat, but it's a necessary part of a long game. Thanks to everyone who showed up, who contributed, who took part in the battle. Thanks to Kos and Atrios and MyDD and the Swing State Project, to Tracy Joan and all the people in the Rodriguez campaign, and especially to Redd and all the people here at FDL.
You're my heroes.
Update: By special request,
our Act Blue page -- where you can give to Ned Lamont.
Uupdate II: Email from Ciro:
"As far as I am concerned we are in a run-off. We will be picking up our signs from the polls and re-using them in thirty days. Until we know exactly what happened today in Webb County, this race is not over.
I wouldn't be here if I hadn't gotten the support of the online community. It's been overwhelming to see how people can make a difference, and make things happen by coming together, even if it an hour of blockwalking, a few phone calls or $20 and $40 dollars at a time. We must have the final word in who our leadership will be, not the
special interests, and we must keep up this fight. I want to think the thousands who have given their time and resources to push this campaign forward.
Thank you from the bottom of my heart for each and every kind word, dollar bill and one cent.
Update III: Gilliard, via email:
Let's understand two things:
One, we DO NOT RUN CAMPAIGNS.
All we can do is give them a fighting chance. That's it. We can give them the resources, but that's it. How they use it is up to them.
Two, EVERY race is a learning lesson. Rodriguez was going to get blown off the map without that money. Please, please keep that in mind. This way, we made this a race.
Look, we've moved a lot faster than the GOP has or can. We've done in two years what took them 20 to do.
We will win races, but it will take time. It may well take until 2008 or 2010. Because it took the conservatives from 1964 to 1980. So if we win in 2006, great. But this is a marathon, not a sprint. One race is just another fight, it isn't the war, it isn't even the battle.
So, we did a lot more than anyone else was going to do. And that's it.
Update IV:
Bowers:
I'd like to point out that Texas apparently has an open primary system, where Republicans can actually vote in a Democratic primary, and vice versa. Given this, Ciro almost certainly won the day among registered Democrats, and at the very least would have forced a runoff in a closed primary. As someone who has always been an advocate of clsoed primaries, I submit this election as Exhibit A. As disgusting as it sounds, if Cuellar wins the Democratic primary without a run-off, it will be because of the Republican vote. I love it when Republicans select the Demcoratic nominee! Someone please tell me again why we should have open primaries.
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Polls closed at 8pm EST/5pm PST. You can watch the results as they are posted
here.
Kos is following the race closely, and Tracy Joan is live blogging over at
Swing State Project. She is reporting that at 7:30 pm that:
According to Commissioner's Court sources in Webb County they are unable to report Early Voting because their systems are down.
Let's just hope Webb County doesn't wait to see the votes that they need to win before reporting. Locals claimed it has happened before.
In fact Webb County was a deciding factor in
Cuellar's last win over Ciro:
An abnormally high number of voters in Webb County aged 90 years or older prompted an attorney for the Ciro Rodriguez congressional campaign to request an investigation by the Texas Secretary of State. During the first 4 days of early voting, 93 votes were cast by people 90 or over and 51 were 100 or older.
In a message addressed to Kim Thol, Programs Specialist for the Elections Division of the Secretary of State, Luis Vera requested “an immediate appointment for an inspector for Webb County.” Vera reminded Thol, “Webb County has a long history of allegations of voter fraud.” In the 2004 primary election, Vera added, “the fraud made national news.” He was referring to the controversial election between Henry Cuellar and Rodriguez in which ballots, “discovered” days after the polls closed, eventually swung the election to Cuellar by a narrow 58 votes.
Vera also requested an investigation by the Voter Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice.
Fasten ye olde seat belt.
Update: The Austin Statesman is reporting quite different totals from the Secretary of State site.
Update II: Tracy Joan says that "Two representatives from the AFL-CIO have been sent to Webb County to deal with the developments" (where they have touch screen voting).
Update III: Cuellar has a history of screwing around with Webb County voting. In the last election Ciro charged that 500 of the votes that put Cuellar over the top came from people who were registered in vacant addresses or homes where they did not live in Webb and Zapata counties -- including Cuellar's campaign manager, Colin Strother, who was registered at the address of Cuellar's parents.
From
The San Antonio Express News, 2004:
The Cuellars, in an interview with a reporter Monday, said no one named Strother lives there.
Told of the allegation, Cuellar spokesman T.J. Connolly said that when Strother agreed to work on Cuellar's campaign, he was given a salary and the option to live in a rental property at Cuellar's parents' home.
Strother reportedly registered and voted at that address, although he has been living with his wife in another location outside of District 28 as part of her employment compensation. The two have been planning to relocate to the Cuellar residence, but furor over the campaign has kept them from doing so, Connolly said.
"He knew that's where he'd be residing long term," he said.
Well I'm convinced.
Update: Bowers is tracking the race over at
MyDD.
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Last week Olympia Snowe said she would vote to investigate George Bush's NSA wiretap crimes as part of the Senate Intelligence Committee. In December
she said:
“Revelations that the U.S. government has conducted domestic electronic surveillance without express legal authority indeed warrants Congressional examination. I believe the Congress – as a coequal branch of government – must immediately and expeditiously review the use of this practice,” said Snowe.
Today she caved like a cheap suitcase.
Glenn Greenwald:
Nobody who has lived outside of a cave for the last five years could possibly be surprised by any of this. One of the reason we are at the point we're at in our country -- where we have a President who not only breaks the law but claims he has the right to do so, while the media barely finds any of it worthy of much attention -- is because the Congress has completely abdicated its responsibilities at the altar of cult-like obedience to White House decrees. That's just one of the many rotted roots in our government.
From
Bloomberg:
"This committee is basically under control of the White House," Rockefeller told reporters after the two-hour meeting today in Washington. "It's an unprecedented bout of political pressure from the White House."
Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts said any inquiry would be detrimental to national security.
"We should fight the enemy, not fight each other," Roberts, a Kansas Republican said. "The program is extremely important."
After negotiations with the Bush administration, the panel voted to create a new subcommittee whose seven members, out of the committee's 15 total lawmakers, would receive full briefings on the program. Those briefings had been limited to just Rockefeller and Roberts.
Emptywheel (from
the comments):
Interesting note: Roberts has announced the 4 members of SSCI that will be part of this "oversight" committee (and I use scarequotes advisedly). Roberts, Bond, Hatch, and DeWine.
So the three people who invented anti-Wilson conclusions for the SSCI, plus DeWine, who seems like he's going for double wingnuttery or nothing in OH.
Georgia10 has a few words on the topic. Pat Roberts' announcement is
here. And emptywheel has more on
GOP Eunuchs.
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CNN is reporting that the Intelligence Committee has knuckled under to Bill Frist, shirked their responsibility for oversight, collaborated with the criminal Bush cabal and voted not to look into the illegal NSA wiretaps. Ed Henry says that they agreed to propose new legislation requiring a 45 day reauthorization cycle.
Proving once again --
there is no such thing as a moderate Republican.
Our hopes for the immediate future now seem to lie with the Judiciary Committee. The
Roots Project will be having an action later this week in Pennsylvania to put pressure on Arlen Specter so if you live in Pennsylvania or have some connection to it and would like to be involved in the action please send me your email
here and I'll add you to our contact/discussion list.
We're also planning to do a little fundraising shortly to expand the Roots project and hire a full time person to oversee it. It's an effective mechanism we are just beginning to fully exploit so keep the faith and pass the ammo.
Update: Josh of
Thoughts From Kansas reports (via email) that Snowe, DeWine, Hagel were all on board.
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The CIA filed a motion on Friday opposing Scooter Libby's request for access to the Presidential Daily Briefings (PDBs), citing substantial national security concerns at allowing any of the information contained therein become public. The motion was unsealed on Tuesday, according to
the AP (via Forbes).
Gathering the materials sought by I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's former chief of staff, would take up to nine months, Marilyn Dorn, a CIA information review officer, said in a sworn statement filed in U.S. District Court.
Dorn said the CIA believes disclosure of the information would damage national security and wants a chance to be heard in court before any material is turned over to Libby, who is charged with lying in the investigation into the leak of a CIA operative's identity.
"The defense's requests clearly implicate highly classified, compartmentalized information and potential claims of executive privilege for presidential communications and the deliberative process," Dorn wrote.
"Compartmentalized" information requires a special security clearance, meaning the CIA could not assign just anyone to help gather the material Libby's lawyers want, Dorn said.
As our Traitorgate readers already know, Fitzgerald opposed Libby's voluminous request as a breathtaking attempt at a graymail defense. (I covered this
here and
here.)
Bloomberg reports that it would take the CIA over nine months to compile the full breadth of what Libby requested, and over three months to compile the compromise amount proposed by Judge Reggie Walton, in an order after the last hearing.
It was expected that the CIA would take a hard line about disclosing any of this information, because of the substantial risk for leaks and that the information would become public in a criminal trial with
this level of press coverage.
"Referring to the topics ... even in an abstracted or generalized manner presents the same concerns about disclosure of classified information," she wrote. "The very fact that these topics were presented to the president discloses sensitive information concerning U.S. intelligence and policy priorities."
That these PDBs deal with the most sensitive information the federal government touches -- and that the PDBs have substantial imapct on the ongoing national security matters with which the President deals on a day-to-day basis -- well, that is a calculation made in a graymail defense strategy, isn't it? If the government simply refuses to hand over the information for national security reasons, then Team Libby will ask for a dismissal.
What Judge Walton will do with this, though, is anyone's guess. I would seriously doubt that he will grant a dismissal motion on this, just based on his pre-emptive attempt at compromise, and I would bet he has some ideas up his judicial robes to cut through the crap on all sides and strike a balance that keeps the trial on track. I hope so, anyway, in the interests of justice. I do think that his pre-emptive maneuver bodes well, but I'm trying not to get too ahead of myself, since I have never practiced before this particular judge and am only relying on hearsay from several attornies who have been before him that he is a no nonsense, tough on crime kinda guy.
As I said, we'll see.
I would argue, strenuously, that the PDBs have no value in terms of whether or not Scooter Libby was honest with the grand jury or investigators, or impeded the investigation in any way. It's a smoke screen for the jury designed to give Scooter an excuse to be a liar, and it won't fly in any event.
Here's hoping the Judge agrees with me. Look for more hearings to be scheduled to argue these matters in the weeks ahead. And for another flurry of motions on this topic as well -- this particular issue is far from over, as it is the last best hope for Libby prior to trial.
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Retired
Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash:
"We're in a civil war now; it's just that not everybody's joined in," said retired Army Maj. Gen. William L. Nash, a former military commander in Bosnia-Herzegovina. "The failure to understand that the civil war is already taking place, just not necessarily at the maximum level, means that our counter measures are inadequate and therefore dangerous to our long-term interest.
"It's our failure to understand reality that has caused us to be late throughout this experience of the last three years in Iraq," added Nash, who is an ABC News consultant.
Anthony Cordesman:
"If you talk to U.S. intelligence officers and military people privately, they'd say we've been involved in low level civil war with very slowly increasing intensity since the transfer of power in June 2004."
Since the elections last year, Cordesman says, more radical Islamist insurgents have made "a more dedicated strike at the fault lines between Shiites and Sunnis." And they have succeeded.
Current US Ambassador to Iraq,
Zalmay Khalilzad:
The top U.S. envoy to Iraq said Monday that the 2003 toppling of Saddam Hussein's regime had opened a "Pandora's box" of volatile ethnic and sectarian tensions that could engulf the region in all-out war if America pulled out of the country too soon.
In remarks that were among the frankest and bleakest public assessments of the Iraq situation by a high-level American official, U.S. Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad said the "potential is there" for sectarian violence to become full-blown civil war.
For now, Iraq has pulled back from that prospect after the wave of sectarian reprisals that followed the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite Muslim shrine in Samarra, he said. But "if another incident [occurs], Iraq is really vulnerable to it at this time, in my judgment," Khalilzad said in an interview with The Times.
Official
Presidential and DoD outlook, via Chairman of the JCOS, Gen. Peter Pace:
"I wouldn't put a great big smiley face on it, but I would say they're going very, very well from everything you look at."
Froomkin documents even more articles on the subject of civil war and conflict in Iraq and quotes from various experts on the ground and back here at home, but Pace's comments are clearly a bit out of step, to put it mildly, compared to every other assessment I've been reading.
For more perspective on this, please take a peek at the articles
Froomkin links today -- some good stuff. (
Yesterday's Froomkin had some great links as well, in case you missed it.) One in particular that I want to highlight for its Iraqi take on things is the one from
Reuters. Also, as always,
Prof. Juan Cole has an exceptional summary and updates that are well worth your time. See also,
here and
here from the NYTimes.
I don't know any good answer for any of this mess. Everything I read on potential solutions comes riddled with caveats. I was against this war from the start, because it was ill-advised, unnecessary and very poorly planned. But woulda, coulda, shoulda doesn't get us out of Iraq without making things any worse...and lord knows, making things worse is the last thing that the Iraqi people need at the moment.
The one thing that is crystal clear in my mind is this fact: in order to resolve any of these issues, the President has to be willing to look at the facts -- the honest-to-god reality of the situation, and not the sugar-coated rosy scenario that his advisors spoon-feed him to keep him happy -- and I'm not confident that is happening, based on the spin we constantly get from the Bush Administration.
When the President can't even be honest with himself about a grave error in judgment -- when he is too cowardly to even be honest with himself in his own heart, can he ever make a course correction for the better? Can he allow himself to say "I was wrong, and we need to do things differently?" (And nothing like having the Vice President
threaten Iran with "meaningful consequences" to escalate tension in the region, eh? I'm just saying...)
If the President refuses to even be honest with himself, who will step in and make him see the need to do just that...before it is too late?
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Two things:
(1) Congress legislates. Not the President.
(2) President Bush is proposing legislation for a line-item veto. Again. This time it's being fronted by Administration surrogates: Bill Frist, Mitch McConnell and John McCain. (And, btw, this has already been declared unconstitutional in a previous form that was put forward during the Clinton years. Just, you know, for history's sake and all, I thought I'd mention it.)
Given the President's propensity to use his powers to punish those who cross him, why would any member of Congress want to give him this power? I mean honestly -- you think Trent Lott is going to be comfortable with Bushie's finger on the pork button? How about Chuck Hegel? Or Olympia Snowe? Or...well, you see where I'm going with this.
Would you trust President Bush to make these budgetary decisions based on merit and need, and not retribution and greed for his Republican cronies? Unless you are part of Bushie's little governance clique, your state or district is going to get screwed -- and as mercurial as the President's temperament has been of late, would any sane person in Congress want to take that risk? The
WaPo reports:
Seeking to reassert his party's scuffed reputation for fiscal conservatism, President Bush yesterday proposed a law giving him authority to veto individual items in legislation as a way to curb fast-growing federal spending.
Bush, who has never exercised his veto power in more than five years as president, said the line-item veto would give him authority to clamp down on special-interest items, known on Capitol Hill as earmarks, increasingly slipped into legislation to benefit the home districts of lawmakers.
Just to be really clear on this: Republicans control both houses of Congress and the White House at the moment. Fiscal responsibility is not exactly their specialty, is it? I'm just saying.
No Democrat (short of Joe Lieberman) could possibly be on board with something this idiotic,
would they?At first blush, Bush's proposal is being received with bipartisan approval in Congress. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who proposed similar legislation during his 2004 presidential campaign, called the measure overdue. He introduced his own version of the measure yesterday, which his office said appears to be no different from Bush's proposal.
SIGH
Well, maybe that string of no vetoes in five whole years in office will hold. Or, maybe not. What's wrong with this picture?
UPDATE: Southern Dem has
a great diary at dKos this morning on a smarmy Elizabeth Dole tactic. Please go and have a read and give it a recommend or leave a comment. This sort of crap needs to be exposed to some serious sunlight! Thanks to Southern Dem for bringing it to everyone's attention.
UPDATE #2: Reader Malcolmjames asks
the big question in the comments: Even with a Congressional vote being required to uphold the Presidential line item veto, what makes anyone think this Republican Congress would do anything other than continue to function as the Bush Administration's rubber stamp?
UPDATE #3: Thanks to Pach for pointing me to
this Steve Gilliard theory on Kerry's proposal. Interesting...guess we'll see where this goes over the next few days.
UPDATE #4: From the comments, reader cbl gets a serious chuckle
for this one:
"Seeking to reassert his party's scuffed reputation for fiscal conservatism, President Bush yesterday. . ."
Excuse me, scuffed???
I'm sure the writer was trying to sound all urbane and stuff but, the Titanic was lightly grazed by an iceberg, the Hindenberg brushed a wire . . .
Bwahahahaha. Good one.
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The
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence votes today on whether they will exercise their Constitutional duty to provide oversight on the illegal NSA domestic spying -- or whether they are an irrelevent bunch of nitwits who don't deserve a paycheck. I think that pretty much sums up how I feel about it -- how about you?
Anonymous Liberal, guest posting at Glenn Greenwald's blog this morning, has a few choice thoughts for the Democratic leadership on this issue.
Long story short, it seems that most Democrats have, at least so far, badly misjudged the relative strength of their hand and the weakness of their opponent's. They've got pocket Aces with another Ace showing on the flop, and they're still afraid to call an obvious bluff. It's pathetic. Every Democrat should be repeating verbatim what Al Gore said when he spoke about this subject last month, and with the same intensity.
Damn straight.
If Americans understand anything, it's real world examples that directly impact their lives. You think the Bush Administration isn't spying on everyday, ordinary people who are doing nothing wrong? Well, think again. How about this example of some regular folks who were scrutinized because they...
paid off a credit card.
And all they did was pay down their debt. They didn't call a suspected terrorist on their cell phone. They didn't try to sneak a machine gun through customs.
They just paid a hefty chunk of their credit card balance. And they learned how frighteningly wide the net of suspicion has been cast.
After sending in the check, they checked online to see if their account had been duly credited. They learned that the check had arrived, but the amount available for credit on their account hadn't changed....
They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.
I'm with Arthur on this one. I'm just going to assume from now on that the Bush Administration is monitoring everything I do. (And a big morning howdy to my minder. Just put on a fresh cuppa coffee in case you are stopping by today. **wave**)
Take a little time this morning to call members of the
Senate Intel Committee and explain -- in a short and succinct way -- how un-American you find this behavior without some checks and balances and oversight -- and that you expect them to do their jobs and provide oversight. It will make you feel better.
Then, put on a fresh pot of coffee. You never know who might be dropping by to check on that payment you sent to the drycleaners or the pharmacist or...well, you never know these days, do you?
UPDATE: As
Wesgpc points out in the comments, all those Pizza Hut runs for the FBI have a whole new level of meaning now, don't they? Also,
Sam caught an error -- that
Bruce Schneier pointed out -- the problem is the amendments made to the Bank Secrecy Act via the Patriot Act. Check out
Bruce's blog for specifics on this.
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Mike Stark sent an email to Andrew Wilkow letting him know he was
making him famous in the blogosphere with his
radio call-in clip about saving the 2 year-old child vs. the 5 blastulae in the burning fertility clinc (which quite deservedly got links on
Atrios and
Kos as well).
Mike got a response:
Mike ya know I thought you were a good person to bounce things off of. But you really a little baby. You sit home all day and call talk radio. Then you take you pathetic excuse for a "win" and you go running around beating your drum. Dude...you're a loser. Anyone can plan to get someone hot under the collar. Fine, maybe you did that...whoopee. In the real world you lost that asinine argument. Don't ever contact me either by phone or e-mail. Take as a way to tell your 5 friends that you go to me.
-Andrew
Andrew won that one like he won the spelling bee but everyone is entitled to his own opinion, I suppose.
And Laura E. writes:
Here's an extension of the 5 blastulae or the 2-year-old question. Do first responders, like fire fighters, have training and equipment to rescue petri dishes? Would they run into a burning building to save them even if there weren't any 2 year olds? Do they have protocols? Will they need to train in South Dakota? What are the emergency evacuation policies in fertility clinics?
And then there's the classic from
Yes, I'm Crazy on the topic of naturally conceived embryos that are
flushed out in a woman's normal menstrual cycle:
Personally, I'm not going to be happy until we create little cemetaries for all the sanitary napkins carrying what's left of all those fertalized eggs Dr. Opitz talked about. We'll call the cemetaries Kotex Necroblastocropoli and they'll have teeny-tiny angel statuary which we make out of match sticks and pipecleaners and hangers. I can hardly wait!
It will be dark but yes, there will be much South Dakota humor.
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Somebody needs to get ahold of the people who book Meet the Press and throttle them.
When their normal Republicans-only schedule is occasionally peppered with Democrats it's either the henpecked James Carville who won't say a thing against the Vice President (and as Digby has noted this sure didn't hold true for Mary Matalin during the Clinton years), Joes Klein or Lieberman who spews GOP talking points so Tim won't have to, token "liberals" like Doris Kearns Goodwin who tell knee-slappers about the Van Buren administration while John Meecham's grenades against Howard Dean go unanswered, or people like Joe Biden and John Edwards who are so busy running for president they won't utter anything even slighly contentious about the administration.
But they should at least do some due diligence about the people they invite on to discuss a particular topic. Jack Kemp
was in full-throated support of the Dubai Ports World deal yesterday. But
as Arianna notes, there's quite a bit he left out:
"It's the right thing to do," he said, calling the UAE a "valued ally" and reiterating the claim that canceling the deal would, as he put it in his column, "weaken our own national security and our chances for peace and liberation throughout the Middle East and Africa" (Shades of Andrea Mitchell, another die-hard member of the establishment, who suggested on Hardball that killing the ports deal could lead to rioting in the Muslim world).
What Kemp didn't say is that the UAE has invested millions in Free Market Global, an energy-trading company that he chairs.
You think all those zeroes might have had some influence on his opinion? Maybe not. But I'm pretty sure that a disclosure of his financial connection to those he was so fulsomely praising would have had some influence on the opinions of those watching.
Especially if viewers learned that Gen. Tommy Franks, whom Kemp used as his debating trump card -- quoting both in print and on Meet the Press the General extolling the Emirates -- is on the advisory board of Free Market Global, and stands to profit from maintaining good relations with the oil-rich emirs.
I called Kemp to ask him why he hadn't mentioned this intersection of interests, but I haven't heard back, even though I said why I was calling. Or perhaps because I did.
If Meet the Press was anything more than the New Pravda, they'd open the next show by saying "last week, we invited Jack Kemp on to speak on the UAE ports deal, and he did not disclose his close financial ties to the owner of Dubai Ports World. We apologize."
Don't worry, I know it's not going to happen. But it should.
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Digby, via email:
I just realized that those nuts in South Dakota might be having an unanticipated effect. I am working today and this guy said to me over lunch, "I can't believe that these people are really serious." He's a bit of a putz and he admitted that he'd believed women were exaggerating the threat. I said "I hope you're ready to be daddies, boys. Last time abortion was illegal they didn't have DNA testing" and they all looked stunned.
These are the new totals for Ciro Rodriguez's Act Blue pages:
$25535.15 firedoglake
$25054.44 Eschaton
$21474.06 Netroots Page
Remember what Democratic consultant
Steve Elmendorf said to the Washington Post?
"The bloggers and online donors represent an important resource for the party, but they are not representative of the majority you need to win elections," said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist who advised Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. "The trick will be to harness their energy and their money without looking like you are a captive of the activist left."
We're now the number one blog fundraiser for Ciro Rodriguez, and that money is 100% pro-choice (not that the others are not, BTW). These totals speak in a language so simple even Elmendorf can understand it -- if candidates want to harness our energy and our money, they better have their pro-choice credentials in order.
Bob Casey need not apply.
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Alex at
Wonkette writes today about web sites that are being blocked by military computers in Iraq, as opposed to those that are deemed "acceptable":
Wonkette - blocked
O'Reilly -- OK
Air America -- blocked
Limbaugh -- OK
ABC News "The Note" -- OK
Al Franken Show -- blocked
G. Gordon Liddy Show -- OK
And despite this
72% of US troops want out of Iraq within the year. You have to wonder what those numbers would look like if they weren't being blocked from alternative news sources.
Update: I'll be on the
Young Turks radio show tonight at 5:05pm discussing
Russert Watch.
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I brought up one of my favorite forced birth conundrums the other day, guaranteed to make wingnut "life begins at conception" heads explode. If a fire breaks out in a fertility clinic and you can only save a petri dish with five blastulae or a two-year old child, which do you save?
We just love Mike Stark, who takes this stuff to the streets. He called
Andrew Wilkow's radio talk show and put the question to him, and Wilkow's head did, in fact, explode. He was reduced to a sputtering rage, screaming that he would not, in fact, save the two year-old child. Mike hung right in there with him and the results are predictably hilarious. You can just feel Wilkow's listeners flipping the channel and saying "fuck that noise, that guy's insane." It's a brilliant little sound clip.
Over at
our new blog (which we will be populating any day now, we just have some graphics issues that we're addressing) I put up a test of my old "Is Heaven Filled With Blastulae" post, where I mention that that between 60 and 80 percent of all naturally conceived embryos are simply flushed out in a woman's normal menstrual cycle in the first 7 days after fertilization. One anxious commenter does a Jesus' General and takes internal wingnut logic to its natural conclusion:
Is Heaven Filled With Blastulae?
My God, you don't understand fundamentalists at all, do you, Ms. Hamsher? Any fundy will tell you that Heaven is most definitely NOT filled with blastulae. The fires of Hell, on the other hand, are smoking with the little fellers, along with all the other unchristened souls whose bodies never uttered the magic phrase, "Jesus is God".
I apologize for my error, Bullgoose is absolutely right and as a minister's daughter I should've remembered this fine point of fundamentalist theology. The fundies have always conveniently kept swarthy people out of heaven by insisting that if you have not accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as your personal savior that you will not be able to enter the gates of heaven. When others (such as my 12 year-old self) would argue that this is unfair to those in non-western countries who might never have been exposed to the gospel, those concerns were dismissed as "God's will," because God in his infinite wisdom would've managed to get the word to them if he wanted them in heaven.
So. Unless embryos are a lot more chatty than we have been given to believe, Bullgoose is right, in vitro fertilization produces embryos that will only suffer the eternal hellfires of damnation.
I thank you for the opportunity to amend my faulty headline.
Update: We crashed Mike's server so the clip is
now hosted at C&L.
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Well, great. Just great. The President and his huge freaking personal White House staff can't even request a simple absentee ballot properly, so guess who is taking Air Force One out for a spin just so he can vote in the local primary in
Crawford, Texas?
Bush hasn't missed a GOP contest since he started voting in Crawford in March 2002. An administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, indicated Saturday that White House staff had slipped up on the paperwork for requesting a mail-in ballot this time.
And how much is this going to cost out of my pocket and yours? Who the hell knows, because the White House refuses to publish costs for these little jaunts.
But when you consider the cost of fuel, staffing, security, overtime costs, food, overhead and everything else that goes into this hastily thrown-together little jaunt...and you add in the additional cost of a trip to the Gulf region for some CYA -- also hastily arranged -- so it's not all about the fact that George Bush is too much of a dumbass to follow-up with his staff about his absentee ballot request...well, that's a whole lot of cash, isn't it?
Especially when you think about it in terms of what it would have cost had Bush filled out his little form and sent it in: some minimal postage and a few minutes to mark the ballot and put it back in the envelope.
The cost of continually failing to pay attention to the details? Astronomical. And who is paying for these failures -- repeatedly? The American public.
Look, I know Bush has a lot on his plate, what with the abysmal Katrina response and the fact that even Republicans in Congress are calling him a "failure of leadership," and the blossoming civil war potential in Iraq, along with the fact that he and his Republican leadership cronies in Congress and lots of members of his own Administration staff are under investigation currently for corruption, bribery, espionage and lots of other criminal activity. Then there's the whole blossoming federal deficit, the Dubai ports deal, and the fact that Bill Kristol just called him incompetent.
But this is one little, tiny thing -- and you are telling me that the President and his enormous staff of minions couldn't fill out a form, put a 39 cent stamp on it and stick it in the mail? And because Bush and his staff can't do even the simplest thing properly, we end up footing the bill -- to the tune of a buttload of cash -- just to fly him to his vacation home for the day so he can vote?
Here's an idea: how about since Bush screwed up, he has to pay for the trip out of his own pocket?
(Hat tip to reader Punaise for the heads up on this. Via
Salon.)
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Professor Foland has it absolutely right in the comments on the issue of
lack of accountability and the Bush Administration:
Several times in the past week the question has come up: was the King badly informed, OR actually lying?
Why choose? His job is to make the right decisions.
If he runs his ship in such a way that subordinates feel free to hide things from him, and he's not asking questions to get the right information, then he's a failure in making the right decisions.
If he's getting the information and then lying about it, he's a failure at making the right decisions.
The King has failed to do his job. How exactly this came to be is of interest as an educational moment for others who come after him. But it is of no interest as a political matter.
He failed to treat Tillman with honor. He failed to make the right call on Iraq. He failed to help New Orleans. He failed to uphold the fourth amendment. He failed to keep the name of a CIA counter-proliferation agent secret.
As far as accountability is concerned, these were his calls to make, and he failed.
No OR's about it.
Just a reminder to everyone that the vote on the illegal domestic NSA surveillance will be held in the Senate Intelligence Committee tomorrow -- and it is past time the Bush Administration was held accountable for its decisions and actions.
Bill Frist and his Republican leadership cronies cannot be allowed to prevail with their smarmy back-door tactics and threats.
Please take some time to contact your Senators and Representatives in the House and let them know that you expect them to do their jobs -- that Congress is vested with the responsibility of oversight, and you expect them to do it. If they will not, then come November, they can expect to be out of a job. No more rubber stamps. Period.
Glenn Greenwald has a good review of the issues involved today, and I urge you to read his piece and please contact your elected representatives. If you have time, please call in to a local talk radio broadcast or post a note on a public discussion board for news organizations -- anything to keep the fact that Republicans are trying to cheat their way out of doing their jobs to protect the Constitution in front of the public and our elected officials.
According to
the Washington Times, NSA whistleblower Russell Tice has offered to testify to the committee regarding what he sees as an illegal program which specifically violates the Fourth Amendment. Let's try to give him a chance to testify. (And thanks to reader ck for the heads up on the article.)
It's time for some accountability in Washington for a change. As voters, it is our right to demand that our elected officials do their jobs -- take a few minutes to demand some accountability.
(Graphics love to Oliver Willis.) [NOTE: Although I am informed that this may have originated with Billmon. Either way, I needed this giggle this morning. And whomever was first with the genius on this, kudos.]
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Pat Tillman gave up a $3.6 million dollar NFL contract to fight for his country in the wake of 9/11. You can't make up a better recruiting poster than a former NFL star turned Army Ranger, can you? I mean, really, you couldn't write fiction like that and make it believeable.
But then Pat Tillman was killed, in a "friendly fire" incident in Afghanistan, while fighting with his unit in April of 2004. Why write about old news? Because the case is back in the headlines -- the Army has decided to re-open the investigation of Pat Tillman's death to investigate possible criminal conduct on the part of personnel who were involved in the shooting. According to
the WaPo (which has done exceptional reporting on this case from day one, btw):
Col. Joseph Curtin, an Army spokesman at the Pentagon, said the Army will open an investigation to examine whether soldiers violated military law when they failed to identify their target before opening fire on Tillman's position.
Although there have been several military investigations into the Tillman shooting, this will be the first criminal investigation. A defense official said that it will probably focus on potential charges of negligent homicide, which means investigators will try to determine whether soldiers fired recklessly without intending to kill their fellow soldier.
"We want to do the right thing for the family," Curtin said. "We owe it to the family. We owe them the truth."
Here's the rub, though: the Army only re-opened the investigation after Tillman's family had to publicly complain. The Tillman's lost their son, were lied to initially about their son's death -- they were told that "enemy fighters" had shot him, and the military used Pat Tillman publicly as their poster boy hero killed by al qaeda and the Taliban. Except this was not true -- and they knew it at the time, hushing the Rangers who had been with Pat
at the time of his death.
Tillman was killed in a barrage of gunfire from his own men, mistaken for the enemy on a hillside near the Pakistan border—perhaps, we will soon learn, criminally. "Immediately," the Post reported, "the Army kept the soldiers on the ground quiet and told Tillman's family and the public that he was killed by enemy fire while storming a hill, barking orders to his fellow Rangers." Tillman posthumously received the Silver Star for his "actions."
The military investigation, exposed by the Post, "showed that soldiers in Afghanistan knew almost immediately that they had killed Tillman by mistake in what they believed was a firefight with enemies on a tight canyon road. The investigation also revealed that soldiers later burned Tillman's uniform and body armor."
As if that weren't bad enough, the Army then continued to lie to the Tillmans and stonewall up the chain of command after the initial investigation was concluded. Their questions were not answered, the Army continued to spin out its propoganda for public consumption.
Think about the timing of Pat Tillman's death for a second. April of 2004 was in the thick of the Presidential campaign. One of the bits that struck me most in
Greg Mitchell's great review of this matter in E&P was the fact that George Bush delivered a taped message to Pat Tillman at an Arizona Cardinals game:
Mary, the mother, complained to the Post that the government used her son for weeks after his death. She said she was particularly offended when President Bush offered a taped memorial message to Tillman at a Cardinals football game shortly before the presidential election last fall.
The crassness of this just goes beyond my ability to express anger. Either George Bush knew that he was taping a message filled with lies to bolster the patriotic feeling about Pat Tillman, and by association George Bush, right before the election in Arizona, OR the Pentagon brass were lying to the President about the facts, but there is no evidence that any consequences have occurred among the upper level brass.
The only thing that has occurred in terms of accountability at this point is that the military is now pursuing a criminal investigation into lower level enlisted soldiers in an effort to fob off responsibility for lying to the Tillman family, to the American public and to the press, and to provide convenient scapegoats for all the decisions that came after Pat Tillman's death: having his uniform and armor burned, hushing up soldiers who were at the scene, lying to the Tillmans, parading the President around and having him deliver a taped message at an NFL game just prior to the election.
What won't these people use? I mean, honestly -- is nothing at all sacred to them?
Of course there needs to be a thorough investigation into Pat Tillman's death. We owe that to his family, and if gross negligence was involved, those responsible need to be held to account. That goes without saying.
But those responsible for spinning out the lies to a grieving family -- lies that they also fed to the public and the press in a close campaign season -- need some exploration as well. Who gave the orders to silence the Rangers on the ground? Who gave the orders to burn Tillman's gear? Who gave the orders to falsify information contained on Tillman's Silver Star citation -- because it now appears that some of the information in the chain of events does not match up with later stories? Who fed Tori Clark the information she spewed from the press podium at the DoD? Who fed it to Donald Rumsfeld? Did Rumsfeld order this to be propgandized -- or did that come from the President's campaign staff, including from Karl Rove?
Who gave the orders to start all of this ass covering -- up the line to the President of the United States?
And who made the decision for the President to use Pat Tillman as a campaign prop in Arizona -- when the taped message the President gave was a lie? And did the President know at the time that his lovely public words about a fallen American hero were nothing but lies -- and gave the taped message anyway? If not, has anyone been held to account for feeding the President false information that he publicly stated about the Tillman matter -- and if so, who has been held to account and by what means?
This feels just like the manufactured story they used for Jessica Lynch, a story which she lived to correct, much to her credit. But Pat Tillman is not here to speak for himself today -- he was killed in the line of duty, in our nation's uniform, and then had his government lie outright to his family -- repeatedly through four separate botched investigations
into his death.
"The Army's public release made no mention of friendly fire, even though at the time it was issued, investigators in Afghanistan had already taken at least 14 sworn statements from Tillman's platoon members that made clear the true causes of his death.
"But the Army's published account not only withheld all evidence of fratricide, but also exaggerated Tillman's role and stripped his actions of their context. ... The Army's April 30 news release was just one episode in a broader Army effort to manage the uncomfortable facts of Pat Tillman's death, according to internal records and interviews."
Now the Army is going after soldiers who presumably pulled the triggers at the scene. There is no evidence that it is looking at its own high-level cover-up.
"Maybe lying's not a big deal anymore," Tillman’s father told the Post last year. "Pat's dead, and this isn't going to bring him back. But these guys should have been held up to scrutiny, right up the chain of command, and no one has."
Who will stand up and speak for Pat Tillman? What is the truth behind all of the lies -- not just the ones that the military and the Bush Administration want to pin on convenient scapegoats?
USAToday has an editorial about this entitled "
Army Dishonors War Hero." But it's not just the Army -- and what I want to know is who decided to use a dead war hero as a campaign prop for George Bush? The buck stops on the desk of the Commander in Chief. Let's see some accountability all the way up the chain.
Pat Tillman and his family deserve to know the whole truth -- not just the bits that are convenient for the Administration. For once, can they just be completely honest and forthcoming? I doubt it, because lying seems to be the modus operandi of the Bush Administration, but isn't there some person with some sense of decency out there who will tell this family the truth about what happened on the ground in Afghanistan and with the whole web of lies that followed?
Who will speak for Pat Tillman?
UPDATE: Speaking of using people in uniform,
Josh at TPM has been doing some great work the last couple of days on the Republican party having military personnel appear in uniform at campaign events. This is
directly in violation of military regs. A soldier can be court-martialed for it, although the politician who asks them to take that risk doesn't put their ass on the line, and I doubt that the politicians are informing the enlisted folks they are using as props that they can be cashiered out of the military via the UCMJ.
This is severely detrimental to the purpose of a military separate and distinct from the political process, which is the whole point of the rule in the first place. As
Josh points out:
The existence of this ban and the enforcement of it are hugely important both to good order and discipline within the military and to preserving our democratic republic. The military can't be made into an arm of one or the other political party. Nor can the executive be allowed to enlist members of the armed forces, either individually or en masse, willingly or not, as soldiers in his domestic political battles.
This is about having a professional military -- and not using them as props for a photo op is a part of that. Bob Novak reported this would be a Republican campaign strategy for the 2006 elections -- someone ought to tell those soldiers that the thing most on the line is their own butt, BEFORE they appear at the campaign event. Anyone want to bet that the GOP has left that little bit of information out of the invitations?
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I know you must all be gripping the edges of your seats, shivering with anticipation. So without further ado, by popular vote, the winner of the most irrefutably stupid Joe Klein quote of all time is:
13. "People like me who favor this [NSA wiretapping] program don't yet know enough about it yet. Those opposed to it know even less -- and certainly less than I do."
The prize goes to SanGuevara who went dumpster diving into Klein's ouevre and brought it forth for the benefit of us all. We owe you a tremendous debt of gratitude.
But this was only part of the glory. The Charles P. Pierce Award for Excellence in Klein Snark, chosen by Mr. Pierce himself, goes to
Wesgpc for a comment on Klein Quote #6:
"I'm a so-called journalist
[irrefutable confirmation that he did write one thing containing an empirical fact]
who views his job as doing the legwork
[showing his great care and precision - he did not say headwork or investigation, did he?]
and then calling them as I see them.
[Credit him with brutal honesty. He specifically said "them." And how does he see them? Well the Democrats are old out-of-it chumps, losers, very "industrial age", and fun to use for some wordly-wise cynical cred, by beating up on them with stereotyped, canned, pre-cooked snark. Democrats are also earnest and frumpy, so clearly good target for calling hypocrites. The Republicans are kewl, very "information age" "with-it" innovative hipsters who are fun to hang with if you'll play. He was careful not to say "call IT as I see it" because that would falsely imply that he was talking about, you know, out-of-it "industrial age" unhip things with old person smell, like facts and stuff.]
And I'm tired of civilians of the left and the right who, in their infinite wisdom, spew vituperative nonsense instead of asking substantive questions when they have the opportunity.
[I can't figure this out at all, but it sounds like something, you know, real deep, so it must be profound and very hiply wise-ass and immensely knowing, in a knowing sort of way. So, points for style on the landing -he nailed it going to the radical center and hit the bulls-eye, not a jitter not a half step. What a dismount! The word "civilians" is genius, it implies some deep socio-philosophical subtext that we would hesitate to admit we do not get -almost worthy of the NRO]
As Charles says, "The Tim Daggett-ish 'What a dismount!' put it over the top." A superb effort.
But we are also awarding honorable mentions. One comment by
Thesaurus Rex didn't make it in under the wire last night but was definitely worthy of note nonetheless:
"Calling George Bush a minimalist is like calling a potted palm an environmentalist."
Another goes to
Bullgoose, who maintains that the Klein Snark award deserves to go to Klein himself:
I vote for take-your-pick, and nominate the master, Joe Klein himself, to be the recipient of the first annual Charles P. Pierce award. No one is more deserving of the maiden Snarky than Joe. His work speaks against itself with an immediacy and authority that no third-person invective could ever hope to achieve. It stands on its own, as writing that is not merely bad, but blatantly, shockingly, grotesquely bad. Its inherent ugliness flies in your face like a handful of shit out of a baboon cage. And just as surely as it is unnecessary to crawl up a baboon's ass with a suppository to be covered in baboon shit, it is unnecessary to probe deeply into Klein's work in order extract analytical evidence that he is a bare-assed stupid, shit-slinging baboon. The evidence is clear the moment his work is put on display. Piss on it, if it makes you feel better, but you will only improve it by dilution. Dump on it to your heart's content, but your most vicious shit only serves to sweeten the stink of Joe's best. To give the Pierce prize to anyone other than the creator of this steaming pile would be as unfair as to honor the chumps at the cage for the shit on their faces, rather than the shit-slinging baboon with the unerring aim. Give Vogon Joe Klein his prize. Give it to him as undiluted and unsweetened by thoughtful commentary as he gave his dreck to us. Klein bows to no one in the domain of the Vogonsphere. We are unworthy.
Yet another goes to Dover Bitch, for her efforts to channel the altitudinally and follically challenged Klein over comment #3 and the anguish of Dick Cheney:
"I am an abysmal judge of character of epic proportions. I contracted mononucleosis from kissing my sister in seventh grade and missed the week when our English teacher taught the rest of my classmates the meaning of the word "irony." I never even considered, in the absence of such a word, the occurrence of hilariously incongruous events and statements. My conversations with combat veterans have made me an expert in the field of distinguishing between the trauma that comes from war and the agony of having to talk to Brit Hume."
And Bentley Stanforth III, for oh so many quotes, but who can forget:
This isn't just wrong. It's wrongness encased in incoherence and swathed in bullshit.
And then of course the memorable "Joke Line."
Thanks to everyone who took the time to participate, who waded through the swamp of Kleiniana, were willing to momentarily pollute their eyeballs such that we could drag Joe onto the shore and create some context and awareness of way he represents "Democrats" on a daily basis. Thanks also to Charles P. Pierce for officiating the snark contest. Both SanGuevara and Wesgpc will be taking home copies of the DVD of
Action, so please send me your emails and I will send them off to you soon.
You are all great Americans.
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I have to say I'm liking the glamor/train fashion redux but Naomi Watts looks like she just took a stroll through the cobwebs of Peggy Noonan's mind. Jessica Alba, on the other hand, looks fab.
Generally I hate writing about Hollywood so I defer to people like
David E.,
John Rogers and and James Wolcott who do it and do it well.
Wolcott says:
[T]he 'Hollywood doesn't reflect mainstream America' argument is one of the oldest and phoniest in the playbook, with Michael Medved making the same case that Catholic organizers did in the 30's to push for a decency code. The truth is that Hollywood has almost never reflected heartland values, from its birth it's reflected urban energy, cosmopolitan taste, social conscience, and pagan fascination, and when it's conformed to conventional pieties, as during the dreariest stretches of the postwar period, when disillusionment and subversion had to sneak in through the shadows of film noir as the topline product stayed shiny, bright, and chipmunk cheerful. Do you really think the racy, wisecracking, night-owl-edition, socially conscious crime dramas and comedies of Warner Brothers in the thirties reflected heartland values? Or those Lubitsch comedies with their flirty innuendos and musky intrigues so redolent of Paris and Budapest? Or the Astaire-Rogers "white telephone" musicals, with their French farce plots and Manhattan-skyline sparkle? MGM manufactured an enduring neo-Victorian mimicry of smalltown America in the Andy Hardy movies and others, but that didn't so much reflect heartland values as reflect the immigrant vision of what the white-picket-fence country they imagined lay east of the Hollywood hills.
Think of the movies now considered classic (or semi-classic) from the great grunge stretch of the late Sixties and Seventies, movies such as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, The Last Detail, Five Easy Pieces, Blazing Saddles, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Nashville, The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, A Clockwork Orange, on and on--do these movies speak to the pieties and platitudes that William Bennett holds dear? Even back then during all the noise and excitement I remember sweet old ladies wondering why they didn't make nice movies like The Sound of Music anymore, and they're still asking that same question today. It may be the same old ladies, having gone through two generations of floral muu-muus. Get over it, grandma! They're not going to make movies like Sound of Music anymore, they barely made them back then.
Amen.
The only thing I have strong opinions about are the best documentary category. Love love love
Murderball, love Street Fight (gave Marshall an ad in the sidebar, please click), and I absolutely LOVED “
The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club” (nominated for best short documentary). That was some of the most remarkable storytelling I've seen in years, I was on the edge of my seat and I'm pulling for Dan Krauss.
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I'm on
Russert Watch over at the HuffPo for Arianna this week while she covers the Oscars.
John Edwards fans: don't bother.
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The fact that Bill Frist is threatening to neuter the Senate Intelligence Committee is probably a pretty good sign that he doesn't have enough votes on March 7 to keep them from looking into the illegal NSA wiretaps. His actions (buried in the weekend news cycle) are no doubt meant to put pressure on wobbly Republicans like Hagel and Snowe.
Kyle Michaelis at
The New Nebraska Network blog is urging Nebraskans to contact Hagel's office as part of the Roots project:
Glenn Greenwald provides a full rundown on Frist's supremely partisan maneuvering, which might well include stripping the Senate Intelligence Committee of the 30 year-old safeguards intended to prevent precisely these sorts of abuses of intelligence for political gain. Taking a page from Tom DeLay's playbook in the House, Frist might even resort to removing any Republican Senator from the committee who won't do his bidding.
That leaves Committee member Chuck Hagel, Nebraska's Republican Senator, in the spotlight and perhaps even in the crosshairs of his own party's leadership. To be honest, Hagel's been uncharacteristically quiet about the situation, so he obviously doesn't think it's ripe for the type of media attention that he seeks. What the situation is ripe for, though, is proving that Hagel is the independent-minded patriot he tries to present himself as to the American public -doing what's right, not what he's told.
Kyle has all the contact info for Hagel's office, so everyone who's concerned about the future of these proceedings -- and I've heard from a lot of you, so I know the numbers aren't small -- please click through and help Nebraskans urge their Senator to do the right thing.
Therisites2 has contact info for Olympia Snowe and Pat Roberts as well, and Josh from Thoughts From Kansas reports that he thinks our Roots Kansas action
has been getting to Pat Roberts.
That's pretty cool.
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Crooks and Liars has some video clips up from today's Sunday morning gabfests. All I can say is "ouch."
First, there is this clip from
Rep. John Murtha's appearance on Face the Nation:
The public is way ahead of what’s going on in Washington. They no longer believe it. The troops themselves, 70 percent of the troops said we want to come home within a year. The only solution to this is to redeploy. Let me tell you, the only people who want us in Iraq is Iran and al-Qaeda. I've talked to a top-level commander the other day, it was about two weeks ago, and he said China wants us there also. Why? Because we’re depleting our resources, our troop resources and our fiscal resources.
Murtha comes across as not only very credible, but also as caring about the lives of our troops, the consequences of the horrible choices made by the Bush Administration, and as having some serious sources at high levels in the military who are having the same concerns. Perhaps because all of that is true -- you can really feel the anger on behalf of the nation and its men and women in uniform coming off Murtha in waves, can't you? Boo yah.
Crooks and Liars also has a clip from David Gergen's appearance on Reliable Sources this morning, and it is really a doozy. (Thanks to
Nate for the heads up on this -- I e-mailed John Amato to see if he could pull the clip, and he was already working on it. I swear, how did we survive before C&L?) Anyway,
Gergen said the following:
This administration has engaged in secrecy at a level we have not seen in over 30 years. Unfortunately, I have to bring up the name of Richard Nixon, because we haven't seen it since the days of Nixon. And now what they're doing -- and they're using the war on terror to justify -- is they're starting to target journalists who try to pierce the veil of secrecy and find things and put them in the newspapers.
Now, in the past what the government has always done is go after the people who leak, the inside people. That's the way they try to stop leaks. This is the first administration that I can remember, including Nixon's, that said -- and Porter Goss said this to Congress -- that we need to think about a law that would put journalists who print national security things to...bring them up in front of grand juries and put them in jail if they don't -- in effect, if they don't reveal their sources.
Given the stories on the White House efforts to go after leakers who make them look bad or expose illegal activites on the part of the President -- but selectively fail to really take their own selective leaking seriously (hello -- Dick Cheney can declassify whatever the hell he feels like, even though that's not what the law says?) -- I'd say that's certainly a topic worth some serious public discussion.
See more at
the WaPo and the
NYTimes.
Glenn also discusses this issue on his blog this morning, and it is worth a read as well.
Can someone explain to me how the Bush Administration expects anyone to take them seriously on this matter when Karl Rove still works in the West Wing with his security clearance intact after admitting to discussing Valerie Plame Wilson with two reporters?
When you use the laws to punish your critics -- even to the point of abusing this to try to silence whistleblowers -- yet you fail to punish your allies for illegal behavior that violates national security regulations...well, you don't really expect to have any credibility at all, do you? And to threaten journalists with jail for printing true information on how the Bush Administration may be breaking the law -- well, all I can say is that Stalin would be awfully proud, wouldn't he?
It's getting ugly in Washington for George Bush. And its about damn time -- if ever a President earned scorn and disgust, it is this one.
(As a kid, I loved Wile E. Coyote and his Acme gadgets of doom. His repeated failures were funny in Saturday morning cartoons -- but the repeated failures and poor choices of the Bush Administration aren't so funny. Thought everyone could use a laugh this morning.
Chuck Jones was a genius, pure and simple.)
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ThinkProgress made a great catch from this morning's Fox News Sunday, and I wanted to take a moment this morning to talk about the potential implications of Bill Kristol's pronouncement of the Bush Administration as incompetent.
Here's
Kristol's quote:
I think it’s become in people’s minds an emblem of the administration that just isn’t as serious about the competent execution of the functions of government as it should be. And even — I’m struck talking to conservatives and Republicans — they agree with the president on basic political philosophy, the they agree with his basic policy agenda, but they are worried that they just don’t seem to be able to execute as well as they should be. (emphasis mine)
That Kristol was saying this on Fox this morning is telling of a couple of things: the Republican party establishment is now worried that President Bush has become a drag on the entire party, and that he poses a serious problem for them in the upcoming mid-term elections in the Fall; and that someone has sanctioned Kristol talking about this on air on Fox.
Which leads me to a whole host of questions:
-- Is this evidence that Dick Cheney is not going quietly into the night but, instead, is using Kristol as pushback by proxy against Rove's attempt to throw him under the bus as an Administration sacrifice to the possibility of better poll numbers via a new VP nomination? As close as Kristol has been with Cheney's neocon cabal, it's certainly possible. But Cheney's power is at a low ebb at the moment, and I have to wonder if Kristol -- who has been opportunist in the past -- would stick his neck out for Cheney against Rove, without some reasonable expectation that Cheney had an ace up his sleeve. (Or that, perhaps, Rove might be looking more closely at an indictment than we've publicly heard. Or something to that effect.)
-- Is this some Rovian machination to distance the President from Congress and the Republican party while his popularity is so far down, in an effort to salvage every vote they can for the mid-terms to try to maintain the Republican strangle-hold on Congress? And, if so, wonder what the President thinks of Turdblossom having a surrogate call him incompetent on Faux News as a political ploy? Ego versus tactics -- wonder which one wins out in Bush's mind?
-- Is this Kristol expressing fears of members of Congress and the Republican party, rather than having anything to do with the Administration? Are members of Congress and old guard Republicans -- including the money that backs the party's machine -- ready to throw Bushie under the bus? In other words, has he gone from lame duck status straight to political road kill?
-- Is Kristol just not getting the Administration love any longer, and he's decided to take it out on them by smacking them around while the President is out of town? I mean, really, everyone else is smacking him around these days, why shouldn't Kristol get in a swipe to build up his "honest broker" credentials (**cough**)...after all, there's another election coming up and Kristol needs to keep that pundit gig.
-- Is this another salvo of the Team McCain in 2008 campaign?
Judd makes a
great point in his post:
Kristol is right, and it’s a dynamic that makes policy debates almost irrelevant. Even if the administration were to stumble onto a policy that would improve things, it’s highly unlikely the people in charge would be able to execute the policy effectively.
Maybe the Katrina video is resonating in the internal Republican polling numbers more than we thought. In any case, whatever the answers to these questions, it's stacking up to be an interesting week.
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Here is the Sunday Talking Head Show line-up
for today:
FOX NEWS SUNDAY (WTTG), 9 a.m.: Gen. Peter Pace , chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. David Johnson , director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and Michael D . Brown , former Federal Emergency Management Agency director.
THIS WEEK (ABC, WJLA), 9 a.m.: Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), retired Gen. Wesley K. Clark and comedian Stephen Colbert .
FACE THE NATION (CBS, WUSA), 10:30 a.m.: Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) and Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.).
MEET THE PRESS (NBC, WRC), 10:30 a.m.: Former senator John Edwards (D-N.C.), former representative Jack Kemp (R-N.Y.) and Pace .
LATE EDITION (CNN), 11 a.m.: Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf , United Arab Emirates Economy Minister Sheikha Lubna al- Quasimi , Gen. James Jones , NATO supreme allied commander, and Iraqi parliament member Adnan Pachachi.
Fox News Sunday looks like it could get fiesty with Michael Brown on the line-up, and Brit Hume in the Karl Rove Memorial Administration Apologist Chair. Wonder if they'll ask Gen. Johnson from NOAA how the research on global warming is being ignored by the Bush Administration? Probably not.
This Week might be worth it for Gen. Wesley Clark and especially Stephen Colbert. I'm guessing Susan Collins and Duncan Hunter are going to publicly smack the Bush Administration around a little more for their pitiful Katrina response (Collins) and the failure to do adequate due diligence on the Dubai ports deal (Hunter, who appears to have a big thorn in his paw about this issue.)
Face the Nation looks quite interesting with Lugar and Murtha. I'm guessing we'll be seeing a Murtha clip or two today, because I would bet they'll be talking about the mess in Iraq.
Press the Meat has Edwards and Kemp -- who will be discussing the findings of their US-Russia committee study, no doubt nuclear issues will come up -- wonder what Kemp thinks about Bush
giving away the nuclear weapons oversight in India for some mango concessions? (Well, they are tasty, I suppose...) Gen. Pace will be on here as well, no doubt trying to explain why civil war in Iraq is...well, who am I kidding, things are going swimmingly and the violence is in its last throes. **rolling eyes**
Late Edition looks like it's trying to make some sense out of the Bush foreign policy strategy. (They have a strategy? I thought
Condi Rice just focused on having a good work-out.)
A note about
the Koufax Awards this morning:
First, thanks so much to everyone who nominated Jane and me for any of the awards. We're nominated in the company of some exceptional bloggers, and I urge you to check out the awards threads and take a peek at some truly great writing and insight. There are some enormous brains working on the issues of our day -- but as you read, you'll discover some even bigger hearts. So, thank you for including Firedoglake in their company.
We're nominated in the following categories: Best Blog (non-professional), Best Series (for our Traitorgate coverage), Best Expert Blog (for our legal and journalism coverage), and Best Group Blog. I've also been nominated for a Best Writing Koufax -- to be included with Digby and Wolcott and so many other amazing writers is incredible, and I thank the reader who nominated me in that category. It's truly an embarassment of riches this year for our blog.
It's going to be really tough to select where my votes will go -- the talent and thought behind so many of these blogs is so impressive that it's going to be difficult to narrow the vote down to just one per category. Please, explore
the Koufax nominees, and cast your votes -- everyone on the list works very hard at what they do, and the recognition is hard earned and very well deserved.
Thanks again for including FDL among them.
(Today's picture is a
Carolina Wren. I have a nesting pair that have been hanging out at my bird feeders, hopping around and twittering to each other, and feeding each other tidbits for the last week. I'm hoping they select our yard for their nest -- little wrens are awfully cute.)
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I thought we would announce the winner of the
Joke Line Joe Klein mental midgetry award tonight but I fear that the varying amounts of traffic/participation we have had on each night make a cumulative vote total a bit skewed, so we find ourselves in the interest of fairness conducting a runoff. Tonight the top vote getters from each of the previous heats will advance and tomorrow we will have our counter-Oscars when we will award the gold.
Since it was Digby's relentless skewering of Wee Joe that inspired this particular contest in the first place, it is only fitting that
Digby be the wind beneath our wings tonight:
Has there ever been a more useful Republican idiot than Joe Klein? I don't think so. If you don't believe me, check out the huge array of idiotic statements he's written over at firedoglake. Jane says, "No one man can claim credit for the minority status of Democrats today, but Joe Klein can certainly rest easily knowing that he has done more than his fair share." I think he and all his fake liberal pundit friends are the most responsible of all. They are killing us. People on both the left and the right confuse Joe Klein with a real Democrat and mistake his incomprehensible political philosophy for that of the Democratic Party. If there is nothing else that the liberal blogosphere can do, we must make it clear to the American people and the Democratic politicians that Joe Klein speaks only for his elite, insider cadre of cocktail weenie addicts. His opinions are irrelevant to serious Democratic politics.
We humbly accept the challenge. And with that here are tonight's finalists in Joe Klein: In His Own Words:
3. "The possibility of vice-presidential anguish was barely mentioned by most commentators at first. Cheney is a tough customer; Oprahfied "sharing" isn't his way. But then, there he was, with that haunted look in his Fox News interview, saying, "[T]he image of him falling is something I'll never be able to get out of my mind. I fired, and there's Harry falling ..." Hunting had given him "great pleasure" in the past, but he wasn't so sure now. In fact, he sounded a lot like the combat veterans I've spoken with over the years, for whom the living nightmare of firing a weapon under questionable circumstances is a constant theme."
13. "People like me who favor this [NSA wiretapping] program don't yet know enough about it yet. Those opposed to it know even less -- and certainly less than I do."
25. "I've never seen George Bush lose a debate. He is a brilliant minimalist.
36. "Abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution, and so interpretations are all we have. One way to solve this--perhaps the best way--is to put abortion to a vote, as a constitutional amendment or on a state-by-state basis. Issues this important should be decided democratically, don't you think?"
Tough contenders all. Who will wear the coveted crown? Judges the burden is upon you. Since we have all snarked on these particular entries before, tonight is simply a victory lap -- freestyle snark for the fun of it. We will also be announcing the winner of the
Charles P. Pierce Award for Excellence in Klein Snark tomorrow, the winner currently being held in a sealed envelope by the firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Please vote by number, vote early, and since this is not Florida, only once.
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Margot has found
the perfect job for Amy Ridenour (no, not Dennis Hastert impersonator).
Angie lets us know she was
a real piece of work during her testimony before the Indian Affairs Committee.
Valley Girl gives us
this link to an article about the NCPPR entitled "Tom DeLay's Right Arm" and quotes from The Hill, June 23, 2005:
The Center's chief executive officer, Amy Ridenour, a friend of Abramoff's from their time as College Republicans in the early '80s, testified that Abramoff told her the money was part of an "educational project to tell the American people ... the very impressive story of the ... Choctaw Indians." She accepted an additional $1.5 million contribution in 2003. Abramoff directed her to route that money to the Capitol Athletic Foundation and a company named Kaygold.
And it looks like
Pam Spaulding has been on this one for a while.
Yet another College Republican. What a pernicious mutant breeding ground that turned out to be.
Update: Digby chimes in:
Amy has long been jack, ralph and grover's personal bitch. From Frank Foers great piece about the College Republicans:Back in 1981, Abramoff and his campaign manager, Norquist, promised their leading competitor, Amy Moritz, the job of crnc executive director if she dropped out of the race. Moritz took the bait, but it turned out that Abramoff had made the promise with his fingers crossed. Norquist took the executive director job and named Moritz his deputy. That demotion didn't last long, either. After discovering the talented Ralph Reed, Norquist handed the Christian Coalition godfather Moritz's responsibilities and her office space. They placed all of Moritz's belongings in a box labeled "amy's desk." Even 25 years later, she hasn't shed her role as College Republican doormat. Abramoff used her think tank, the National Center for Public Policy Research, to funnel nearly $1 million into a phony direct-mail firm with an address identical to his own.
Poor Amy. Never cool enough for the real Ratfuckers. While the three little pigs were making millions, she was still doing college republican level dirty tricks: Bilking old people.
Her "think tank" was also used last year by the allegedly liberal NPR to explain why social security privatization was such a great idea. They actually referred to it as non-partisan. I wrote about it here.
I was told by a reader who complained that the executives of the show were appalled when they realized that their producers had no idea that they were dealing with a right wing organization.
I was appalled that NPR producers didn't realize they were broadcasting partisan swill just by the content alone. I had heard the program while driving down the 405 and almost swerved off the clover-leaf when I realized it was going to be unrebutted.
I guess that particular College Republican chestnut of ripping off the elderly is something passed down from generation to generation.
The GOP. They're all about tradition.
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In January, 2005 Raw Story
published a letter sent by Amy Ridenour of The National Center for Public Policy Research to elderly people under the pretense that they were "saving" their endangered Social Security benefits:
"Should we put most of our time and effort into fighting to prevent liberal big-spenders from draining an estimated $100 billion from the trust fund?" Ridenour asks. "Or should I go head to head against the left-wing's reckless use of $70 billion tax surplus when they promised to put our Social Security first?"
It was one of many "scare letters" designed to terrify the elderly. And it worked. According to the
San Francisco Examiner:
The letters so distressed Shelby, who is 86 and lives in a senior center, that she often sat up nights, fretting over which crisis most deserved her help. Fearful that her benefits might expire, she regularly responded with small donations.
"I didn't know that I could just turn them down," Shelby said. "I was thinking it was something I had to do. . . . I thought if I didn't correspond about Social Security, I wouldn't get my checks."
Shelby is one of millions of seniors nationwide targeted by so-called "fright mail," computer-generated by self-proclaimed public policy organizations in mostly legal but controversial campaigns to raise cash.
(snip)
Amy Moritz Ridenour, president of the National Center for Public Policy Research, says that emotional pitches get results, and insists that would-be donors don't want the details.
"It's just that you're competing with a lot of other organizations. People seem to respond better to emotion than they do with letters that have lots and lots of facts," said Moritz, who said her letters were written by a direct-mail firm, Response Dynamics, but read by her before they were sent. "You have to give something that is light enough that people will be willing to read it upon receipt. . . . If they don't read it right at that moment, all the studies show they never will."
In the Ridenour letter printed by Raw Story, she tells her elderly victims that:
Inside your sealed envelope is information regarding the potential collapse of the Social Security system -- and how it can endanger you and the entire United States senior citizen population."
It is also critical that you share this pertinent information ONLY [sic] with other trustworthy individuals.
In other words don't tell anybody who might tell you this is a scam and interfere with our right to fleece you. A typical tactic used by those who exploit children and the elderly.
Raw Story noted at the time that NCPPR were the group that paid $64,000 in travel expenses when Hot Tub Tom went to Moscow in 1997, and over $70,000 for a trip made by DeLay and his aides in mid-2000 to Europe. Oh and they mention that one of the NCPPR's directors at the time was Jack Abramoff.
Suddenly the NCPPR has
decided that Raw Story has "violated their copyright" by printing the letters, which is such unmitigated bullshit it's hard to know where to begin. The publication of the letters would be a rather text book case of Fair Use, but the point of the cease and desist email doesn't have anything to do with the merits of their claim (virtually none) -- it has to do with the fact that most small organizations don't have the funds to hire lawyers to battle this stuff so it is easier to comply with the request than to fight it.
You can read the excerpted letters
here and
here.
There is a bright side to all this -- it gives the story a whole new life cycle, and awakens people to the machinatians of social mange/professional GOP crooks like Amy Ritenour. Who will not doubt be making a more prominent entry onto the Abramoff stage in the near future.
Nice to be able to accelerate her debut.
Update: Pigboy tells us
Amy has a blog -- and it is quite possibly the ugliest blog I've ever seen. Funny that.
I wonder -- can you blog from the slam?
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I didn't expect
my post about Michael Brown to cause as much controversy as it did. But it got a conversation going that I think is actually quite interesting so I'd like to carry it a bit further.
Josh Marshall is right -- the release of the new tapes show simply that Brown cared about what was going on, was aware of the potential danger of Katrina and tried to do something to address it. It does not absolve him from a host of other sins we've all devoted much time to documenting from the time Katrina hit. And
as Atrios notes, his current candor does not make Brown a hero. It would have been heroic to step up at the time and tell the public what was happening, at a time when it could have made a difference. That didn't happen.
And
as Digby notes, Michael Brown really didn't have many other options. He was so thoroughly discredited, so completely goated by BushCo. that he didn't have much alternative but to turn on them if he wanted to have a future at all as anything other than the guy who forever fucked New Orleans.
Still, his current actions took some nerve. The kind of nerve people quite frequently can't muster on their own and are much more likely to discover when they know they have people who will back them. Which raises an interesting point of speculation.
As a veteran of many PR trench warfare campaigns, I can tell you that the first thing I would've done once it became apparent that BushCo. was going to throw him under the bus would be to go after Brownie. If I was, say, a big politician who had been targeted by the GOP and lost my seat, or was given to a pugilistic bent, or had an axe to grind over any high-profile Rovian rat-fuck delivered by BushCo. over the years I would've looked at the Katrina disaster, recognized that it was the single worst blow to George Bush's credibility in the public mind and gone immediately to work on the guy who had the potential to deliver me a blue dress moment.
I have no knowledge of what actually happened but the push to rehabilitate Brown does have, at moments, something of an organized feel (particularly the superb timing). And right now, Brown has the ability to do what no other person can -- keep Bush's Katrina inadequacies in the headlines, kicking him when he's down and damaging his poll numbers such that it both paralyzes him and emboldens his opponents.
None of which can work, mind you, if nobody is willing to listen to Brown's story. That Bush let someone with the goods on him get so far out of the fold is an incredibly stupid mistake; Brownie above all others should've been kitted up with some cushy job and bankrolled to into abject silence. It was an outrageous stumble on the part of a beleaguered and embattled administration, one I'm more than willing to take advantage of.
So if you're still speaking, Michael Brown, I'm all ears.
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Shorter Harry's Reid, in his response to Bill Frist on Friday: "Have you no shame?"
Here is the pertinent part of Reid's
response in full:
“I agree with Senator Frist, the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee has been bogged down by partisanship. The only way we can restore this important committee’s non-partisan tradition is for Leader Frist and Chairman Roberts to stop bowing to the pressure of the Bush White House and permit the committee to do its job. When faced with strong evidence that the Bush Administration has misused intelligence, misuses that have made America less secure, time and again the Senate Intelligence Committee has ducked its responsibilities and refused to hold the Administration accountable. The recent record of the Republican-controlled committee is most notable for its abdication of authority and responsibility.
“The Intelligence Committee’s meeting on March 7th presents an important credibility test for Senator Frist and Senator Roberts. If both are serious about their desire to let this committee perform its duties, Chairman Roberts will keep his word and permit the committee to conduct a vote on Senator Rockefeller’s reasonable proposal to review the Administration’s controversial domestic spying program.”
It's the accountability, stupid. Please take some time to let your Senators, your local media, the corporate media and whomever else you feel is appropriate that the Republican Leadership's attempt to cheat on behalf of George Bush is just plain wrong. That Bill Frist and Pat Roberts and the Republican leadership of the Senate, along with the Bush Administration, are trying to go back on their word.
The American public should not stand for this, because it is just plain wrong.
If the President of the United States is too scared to allow the Senate Intelligence Committee to do its job over oversight -- then all Americans deserve to know what he and the Republican leadership are trying so desperately to hide about the NSA -- from Senators, from the FISA court judges, from the American public.
What are they trying to desperately to hide about George Bush's role in authorizing the conduct in question? Why is the Bush Administration and the Republican leadership so terrified of oversight that they are willing to throw out decades of Senate tradition and the bipartisan nature of the Senate Intelligence Committee just to protect George Bush?
Bill Frist is trying to use his position to enable the Bush Administration to cheat their way around legitimate oversight. If George Bush wants people to respect his position, perhaps he ought to think about following the rules for a change instead of having everyone bend the rules to suit his needs of the moment. He's a President, not a king, and it is about time someone made that abundantly clear to him.
Note to Bushie: the rules apply to everyone, even you. And if you broke the law, the American public -- including Senators from all political stripes -- have a right to know about it. Enough with the lies and the cheating -- it's time for some accountability.
And just so ya know, Cartman is a crappy role model for Presidential behavior.
(Hat tip to
dmsilev at dKos for the heads up.)
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Bill Frist on
November 7, 2003, on the floor of the Senate:
The [Intelligence] Committee’s nonpartisan tradition has been carefully cultivated over the years by its members. The tradition is part and parcel of the Committee’s rules, which extend prerogatives to the Minority that are not found in other committee rule books.
For a quarter century, there has been a consensus in the Senate that the Committee’s nonpartisan tradition must be carefully safeguarded. Nothing less is acceptable, given the dangerous and sensitive nature of the subject matter for which it has oversight responsibility. (emphasis mine)
Bill Frist on
March 3, 2006 (via Glenn Greenwald), in a letter to Sen. Harry Reid:
The Committee was established and structured to reflect the Senate’s desire for bipartisanship, and to the maximum extent possible, nonpartisan oversight of our nation’s intelligence activities. If attempts to use the committee’s charter for political purposes exist, we may have to simply acknowledge that nonpartisan oversight, while a worthy aspiration, is simply not possible. If we are unable to reach agreement, I believe we must consider other options to improve the Committee’s oversight capabilities, to include restructuring the Committee so that it is organized and operated like most Senate Committees. (emphasis mine)
So, when it suits Bill Frist's purpose politically to pretend to be a bi-partisan, non-political committee supporter to score points on the floor of the Senate, that's hunkydory.
But when you get down to a question of the majority of the Intelligence Committee members wanting to do their jobs and investigate what is an illegal use of the NSA for domestic surveillance by the Bush Administration...well, that just can't be allowed, and Frist's previous assertion "that the Committee’s nonpartisan tradition must be carefully safeguarded" be damned.
Bill Frist: cheater and hypocrite.
Please, take some time to write, fax and call your Senators, radio talk shows and media folks -- both via e-mail and on any media blog comments threads where this would be approriate to discuss (thanks to reader froggermarch for the idea on this). This craven attempt to manipulate the rules of the Senate because George Bush is too cowardly to face up to the consequences of his decisions cannot be allowed to stand. Bill Frist does not get to cheat without a light being shone on his hypocrisy.
Please, take some time to help us shine a very bright spotlight on this.
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Since its creation in 1976, the United States Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence has purposely been a bi-partisan, non-political committee. It was specifically designed to minimize the partisanship among Republicans and Democrats, to function as a check on the executive branch's substantial powers of surveillance and intelligence gathering, and to ensure that consideration of the national security of this nation was not done in a politicized atmosphere -- but, rather, with only the best interests of the entire nation in mind.
The balance of the Committee is essential to maintaining this apolitical oversight.
But President Bush doesn't want the Senate to do its job and provide oversight of his illegal use of the NSA for domestic spying without a warrant in violation of the Fourth Amendment. Despite applying substantial behind-the-scenes pressure, there are Republicans on the Intel Committee who put the nation's interest ahead of Karl Rove's dictates, and it looks as though the vote scheduled for March 7 will lead to oversight hearings of this illegal NSA mess. (An enormous thank you to everyone who has participated in
our Roots project -- you have made such a HUGE difference.)
Except for one thing: Bill Frist has decided if they can't win on the merits, then he'll cheat. Frist threatened Harry Reid, in a letter delivered late on Friday, that he would change the composition of the Intel Committee unless they rubber stamped the Bush Administration's repeated illegal activity.
Guess Frist was hoping reporters would miss his smarmy threat of cheating if he dumped it in the late Friday news cycle...too bad for him,
Glenn Greenwald caught it.
Frist specifically threatened that if the Committee holds NSA hearings, he will fundamentally change the 30-year-old structure and operation of the Senate Intelligence Committee so as to make it like every other Committee, i.e., controlled and dominated by Republicans to advance and rubber-stamp the White House’s agenda rather than exercise meaningful and nonpartisan oversight.
Yet again, Republicans are threatening to radically change long-standing rules for how our government operates all because they cannot manipulate the result they want. From redistricting games to changing the filibuster rules, when Republicans are incapable (even with their majorities) of manipulating the political result they want, they use their majority status to change how our government works in order to ensure the desired political outcome.
While Frist’s threat here is, in one sense, of a piece with those tactics, it is actually quite extraordinary and motivated by a particularly corrupt objective. The whole purpose of the Senate Intelligence Committee – the only reason why it exists – is to exercise oversight over controversial intelligence activities. Whatever else one might want to say about the NSA warrantless eavesdropping program, it is controversial on every front. There is no conceivable rationale for the Intelligence Committee not to hold hearings.
This truly is an unprecedented move: the Senate Majority Leader is threatening to make the Intelligence Committee a political rubber stamp because the White House and the Republican leadership are so terrified that the President's actions won't withstand scrutiny and will be found illegal by the Committee.
Bill Frist is nothing but a cheater, who is trying to rig the Committee -- a majority of whose members WANT to provide oversight and actually DO their jobs. This is the single most craven, pathetic and weak move -- the fact that the interests of the nation would be served by an oversight hearing takes a back-seat to Karl Rove's marching orders that George Bush's authority not be questioned. Ever.
Because how dare the American public deserve honest answers, and how dare the United States Senators want to exercise their responsibilities to provide real, meaningful oversight rather than just be a rubber stamp -- even in the face of real, honest questions of illegality.
What, exactly, does Bill Frist and the rest of the Republican leadership think their job is as Senators? I mean, honestly: what is your purpose as a separate branch of government, if not to provide checks and balances through meaningful oversight, on important issues like violations of law and an end-run of Constitutional principles on top in addition to your legislative duties? Why are my tax dollars paying your salary, funding your cushy health insurance, paying your substantial retirement plan -- if you aren't going to bother to do your whole job?
What a bunch of frightened babies huddling in the corner of the Senate, taking orders from Karl Rove and hoping it will all blow over before the elections in the Fall. That Bill Frist would have to resort to cheating to protect the President's flank is just pitiful. That he thinks the American public will just swallow it whole, though, is wrong. Dead wrong.
I'm asking you to take some time today to e-mail, fax, or call your Senators. And to also contact members of the media. Inform them exactly what Bill Frist is trying to do and that you see this tactic for what it is -- cheating -- and that you will not stand for it. If Frist thought he could dump this out with the Friday trash and no one would notice, he thought wrong. Let's make sure he doesn't get away with this tactic.
I have not been able to find one piece of reporting in the corporate media about this today. Let's hang the cheater sign around Bill Frist and George Bush's neck. Please, take some time to call a talk radio show in your area, send out a fax or an e-mail -- anything -- between now and March 7th when the Intelligence Committee votes. The only way the Republican leadership gets away with this is if we all sit back and passively let them do it.
I refuse to let that happen. Bill Frist and George Bush are cowardly cheaters -- and it's time to hold them accountable.
(Painting entitled
"Cheater with the Ace of Diamond" by Georges de la Tour.)
UPDATE:
Georgia10 has more at DKos.
"Operate like most Senate Committees" is code for "controlled by rubber-stamp Republicans and no minority rights." Frist is threatening that if the Democrats demand the President be held accountable for breaking the law, then he'll just change the law to silence them. Typical Republican maneuver, to be sure, but the frequency of the tactic doesn't diminish its repulsiveness.
Georgia10 has some links to Sunday shows, including the Chris Matthews show (which I think is pre-taped on Fridays, but I'm not certain on this -- maybe a reader knows for sure and can let us know in the comments). In any case, please take some time to contact all Senators -- not just the ones on the Intel Committee, but all of them. Your Senators should know that you will not tolerate partisan cheating just so George Bush can continue to illegally spy on Americans without anyone questioning his authority.
NOTE: I made an error regarding Committee composition, which has been corrected above -- it's an equalization by the rules, and not the numbers on the Committee. Glenn has a
great post on this. Thanks to reader Anonymous for the heads up on this -- I was so pissed off this morning, I didn't do my usual research re-check before posting.
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And thus we arrive at this, the final night of our semi-final round to see who will take home the gold for finding the most gallingly stupid Joe Klein comment of all time. If the past three nights have taught us nothing else, it is that there is no agony of defeat here; each and every comment proffered for entry seems to supersede the one before it for pure noxious flapdoodle.
No one man can claim credit for the minority status of Democrats today, but Joe Klein can certainly rest easily knowing that he has done more than his fair share.
So without further ado, here are tonight's contenders in "Joe Klein, In His Own Words:
29. "And yet, for the moment, Bush's instincts -- his supporters would argue these are bedrock values -- seem to be paying off. The President's attention span may be haphazard, but the immediate satisfactions are difficult to dispute. Saddam Hussein? Evildoer. Take him out. But wait, no WMD? No post-invasion planning? Deaths and chaos? Awful, but ... Freedom! Look at those Shi'ites vote!"
30. "As for Bush, a hopeful sign is that he spent more time talking about poor people when he ran for president than any Democratic nominee I've watched -- since, er, McGovern. His domestic policy was the most creative of any Republican I've ever covered, far more creative than Gore's."
31. RE: Bush's "incredible instincts": "But expertise and deliberation have never seemed more stodgy, unappealing and unconvincing than they do right now."
26. "I think private accounts a terrific policy and that in the information age, you're going to need different kinds of structures in the entitlement area than you had in the industrial age."
33. "Kerry, like many other Democrats, never truly understood this reality. He did not bother to visit the Southern Baptist Convention or any other fundamentalist group to say, Look, we're going to disagree on some issues, but there are lots of things we have in common, and I want to hear your point of view. He did not take a "listening tour" through rural Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi; he simply ignored the South. When Whoopi Goldberg lewdly compared the President to a body part in her southern hemisphere, Kerry -- who was in the audience -- came onstage and said entertainers like Goldberg represented "the heart and soul of America." He did not criticize the mayor of San Francisco when he broke the law to perform gay marriages. He condoned late-term abortions. He had nothing to say about Janet Jackson's Super Bowl breast flash. Unlike Al Gore, he did not even give a speech supporting faith-based social programs. To religious conservatives, he seemed a secular extremist. The Democrats have paid a heavy and honorable price for their support of equal rights -- first for African Americans and now for homosexuals."
34. "I'm not nearly as smart as Eric [ Alterman], to have opinions without bothering to report first. Instead let me react by speaking to the facts. After all, I've lived my life by seeking out facts and then reporting them. One advantage I think I have over other columnists is that I do reporting."
35. "Given the circumstances, there is only one possible governing strategy: a quiet, patient, and persistent bipartisanship."
36. "Abortion is not mentioned in the Constitution, and so interpretations are all we have. One way to solve this--perhaps the best way--is to put abortion to a vote, as a constitutional amendment or on a state-by-state basis. Issues this important should be decided democratically, don't you think?"
37. "I watched the President go through his public paces last weekÂa joint press conference with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, speeches touting Social Security reform and the Patriot ActÂand his stubborn consistency was both admirable and annoying. His unwillingness to drop Social Security reform in the face of lousy polling results is certainly admirable. He has changed the emphasis from semi-privatization of old-age pensions (although he still favors that change) to the solvency of the system, and he has proposed a creative solution, progressive indexing, which would modulate benefits according to income, with the poor receiving proportionately more than the wealthy. This is an idea Democrats would embrace if they had the courage of their "progressive" convictions. But the donkeys appear to be more obsessed with social issues (like abortion rights) than with programs to benefit the poor, and most obsessed with short-term tactics to thwart Bush, regardless of the quality of his proposals."
Remember to vote only once and by number, and that your comments are also being evaluated for snark factor as they contend for the Charles P. Pierce Award for
Excellence in Klein Snark. Mr. Pierce will be selecting the winner of this award from entries made in the comments section, so please defend your choice with craft and passion. The winner of this coveted crown will likewise be awarded a DVD copy of the darkly funny and late lamented show
Action.
Show Joe some love.
First night semi-final roundSecond night semi-final roundThird night semi-final round
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Mike Stark's O'Reilly action makes it to Olberman. Mike reports he now has dozens more volunteers for a Monday call-in, and that he has told O'Reilly he will cease and desist if he takes down his anti-Olberman petition and apologizes to Keith.
I know, I know, when pigs fly. But it's good old fashioned entertainment for the rest of us in the mean time.
Crooks & Liars has video of the glue coming out of O'Reilly's cracks. Watch if for no other reason than the former prosecutor who says the only person who's done anything actionable here is O'Reilly, and that she thinks he needs to be investigated.
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Michael Browne's willingness to be honest about what happened during Hurricane Katrina and not be just another ass-coverer for the sins of BushCo. has facilitated one of the most amazing image rehabilitations in blogger history. Over at
The Moderate Voice Joe Gandelman wrote an apology to him, and received this in his comments (Joe believes it is legitimate):
Dear Joe:
I have religiously avoided responding to any of the blogs, but feel compelled to respond to you. Apology accepted. And thank you, too, for the apology.
I have stated on numerous occasions the mistakes that I made and accepted responsibility for those mistakes. And, I hope now that the public, Congress, and especially the Administration, will heed the warnings I wrote to them in 2003, 2004 and 2005, that this kind of disaster was inevitable because of the way the Department of Homeland Security was functioning. I would be glad to provide you copies of those memos if you're interested.
In January, 2005, I came to the conclusion that FEMA was doomed to failure. But rather than quit immediately (which my wife reminds me constantly was a huge mistake for our family) I commissioned an internal study (the "Mitre Report") in order to leave a legacy of how FEMA could make things work that were broken - logistics, supply chains, communications. We were never able to finish that study because of a lack of funding and of course, impending disasters.
The Mitre Report is now in the hands of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and I hope they make good use of its initial findings and recommendations.
Best regards,
Michael D. Brown
I'll pick up that baton from Joe -- Michael Brown was in over his head but contrary to what I snarked about at the time, the tapes show that he did appreciate the threat and he was trying to get the government to respond. They wouldn't, and they deserve to absorb every bit of scorn that was heaped on Brown at the time for their failure to do so, so I would officially like to transfer my snark. It is to Brown's credit that he's being honest about it now and refusing to be the BushCo. goat. I offer my apologies and hope that others are encouraged to follow in his footsteps.
Update: FWIS "
Michael Brown" responds in the comments.
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Just got an email from
Mike Stark. One of the people he organized into an O'Reilly call-in, whose crime was uttering the name "Olbermann" on Bill's radio show, was contacted by someone who identified himself as Tony Burdy of Fox Security. For the record,
this is what was said on the radio show:
O'REILLY: Orlando, Florida, Mike, go.
CALLER: Hey Bill, I appreciate you taking my call.
O'REILLY: Sure.
CALLER: I like to listen to you during the day, I think Keith Olbermann's show --
O'REILLY: There ya go, Mike is -- he's a gone guy. You know, we have his -- we have your phone numbers, by the way. So, if you're listening, Mike, we have your phone number, and we're going to turn it over to Fox security, and you'll be getting a little visit.
HILL: Maybe Mike is from the mothership.
O'REILLY: No, Maybe Mike is going to get into big trouble, because we're not going to play around. When you call us, ladies and gentleman, just so you know, we do have your phone number, and if you say anything untoward, obscene, or anything like that, Fox security then will contact your local authorities, and you will be held accountable. Fair?
HILL: That's fair.
O'REILLY: So, just -- all you guys who do this kind of a thing, you know, I know some shock jocks. Whatever. You will be held accountable. Believe it.
So Mike called Fox Security back:
I took the number and called Tony. We had a ten minute conversation. I explained that I run callingallwingnuts.com and that I am recruiting callers to join me in calling Bill's show to protest his smearing of Keith Olberman. Tony explained to me that if he can use his years of experience as a NYC Police detective as a guide, that it can be considered harassment if you repeatedly call somebody. I told him that i was no lawyer, but it would probably take a pretty novel argument to convince a judge that a person was harassing a talk show host by accepting their invitation to call... I also explained that he can sample the wares on my site and see for himself that I've never been rude or disrespectful.
I asked him to tell O'Reilly that we'd be happy if he took the anti-Olberman petition down and apologized to Keith. Tony said that would be an unlikely turn of events, and we left it at that.
Then Mike received another email from
another caller:
I just got a phone call from the head of Fox Security, Anthony Burti, #212-XXX-XXXX. I got the call on the phone I used to call him from the head of Fox News security. He said that harassing phone calls were coming from my phone. I asked him how many? He did not know. I asked him what was said that was harassing? He said that he did not know but that it did not have to be what was said, but how many calls were being made. He tried to make like I made 20 phone calls instead of one, and that I cursed O'Reilly out. All I said was that I was grateful to O'Reilly for turning me on to Olberman. Then he hung up.
I guess O'Reilly was telling the truth, the Falafosphere
does have its own personal storm troopers.
Fifty bucks says Loofah Boy likes to parade around in lace panties and jack boots.
Update: Mike gets more emails from yet another caller:
I called back Fox Security, (unfortunately was not able to tape the call), but Tony was very pleasant, and told me that my phone number had come up on a list of having called Bill "numerous times". I interupted and said "Numerous times? I had to call several times to get through, but today was the first time that I called the Bill O'Reilly show."
He seemed surprised and said that "If that's the case than I apologize for calling you." (I paraphrase here...) Some people have called numerous times and it can rise to the level of harassment based on the number of calls, and it varies from state to state. (it "can" not that it "does"!)
I asked him why security at Fox News was handling an issue that happened at Westwood One. He didn't have much of an answer, accept to say that Bill wanted them to look into it, and they work for the same company. Honestly, he really didn't sound like he wanted to be doing this at all. Then he told me that "you're entitled to like or dislike whoever you want, you know, freedom of speech, but if it rises to the level of harassment, then they have to take it seriously. I commented that "Ol' Bill has some pretty thin skin, huh?" He didn't really answer, then I assured him that I was no threat to Bill O'Reilly.
That's a very good question. If O'Reilly's show is on Westwood One, what the heck does Fox Security have to do with it? And what right would Fox have to be taking legal action?
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Romenesco:
We've been having some vigorous discussion here -- and have been in correspondence with the ombudsmen of The Washington Post and New York Times -- about various ethical and journalism issues. We thought you'd be interested in these issues, and we'd appreciate your thoughts about them. We also think some of this should raise caution flags for your gatekeeping editors as they assess whether to use copy from competing national news organizations.
First, in this post-Jayson Blair era, we believe newspapers must be more transparent then ever about the sources of their stories. That includes acknowledging when others have beaten us to a big story. The Washington Post and New York Times each failed this standard in recent weeks.
On Feb. 7, Warren Strobel reported on a State Department reorganization that sidelined career arms control experts who don't share the Bush administration's mistrust of international arms negotiations and agreements. Exactly two weeks later, The Washington Post published a virtually identical story by Glenn Kessler. We say "virtually identical" only because the stories were written with different words. There was not a single fact in Kessler's story that was not in Strobel's, the product of weeks of careful enterprise reporting and interviews with 11 current and former government officials. We have asked, through the Post's ombudsman, Deborah Howell, who was once executive editor in St. Paul, for a published acknowledgement of the Knight Ridder story. To date, it hasn't happened. We understand that there has been vigorous opposition from the Post reporter, who has claimed, in essence, that the "trade press" had already widely reported the story, a contention that is in fact not correct. We're waiting to see what happens.
Lil' Debbie is on the case. When she's done covering the local pie eating contest and flogging Dana Milbank for his fashion gafs I'm sure she'll be all over this.
Meanwhile our Roots radio advisor
Mike Stark had scored a
direct hit on Bill O'Reilly with his team of radio callers. At the very mention of the word "Obermann" O'Reilly said Fox Security would personally order the police to deal with it. C&L says Keith will be covering it tonight on Countdown. More must-see TV.
Update: Howie Klein is over at Kos
giving Lieberman a whipping. If you're a Kos member please go hit the "recommend" button.
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From
aRealPatriot, per
me to me:
There is something known as a [sic] Judah sheep.
These are sheep that lead their own brothers and sisters to their doom and slaughter, then they get out of the way just before they themselves are slaughtered.
The rest of the sheep follow the "Judah" to their own doom, even through the slaughtered screams of their kin before them.
Clearly, there are not only "Judah sheep" among animals, there are those among men that would lead their own to slaughter as well.
The question arises;
Do Judah sheep know what they are doing and what will become of their brothers and their sisters?
I would think most of these "Judah sheep" both sheep and men, probably not, for these sheep and and these men have been conditioned to do what they do. They don't exactly see or understand where they lead those behind them, they think it's their calling in life
However among men there ARE Judah sheep that DO know what they are doing.
They are part of the very plot.
I don't believe people that support this administration even through the legislation that flies in the face of their own best interest, and people that try to convince others that these are good policies actually know that they have become Judah sheep.
Supporting these policies that attack the fiber of the middle class demonstrates the how effective the corporate propaganda machine really is.
I believe most of the middle class in America who vote republican are just sheep, and victims of the corporate propaganda machine, they are shallow and lazy, and they are hypnotized by the marketing strategies of corporate enterprise.
HOWEVER;
The politicians and the media personalities who repeat things like "talking points" do know what they are doing.
People that protect and defend those who forge data and initiate unprovoked war against countries that they know pose no threat to our country.
And people that protect and defend policies that would actually siphon vital resources FROM our fight against terrorism, and take the equipment and funding FROM the boys and girls that desperately need those resources if they are to succeed.
And people that protect and defend policies that create terrorism in countries where none existed before, and policies like those that deliberately destroy the infrastructure of the country we overthrow.
(snip)
And policies that would take our very own money which we invested for generations and giving those assets to the richest people on the planet, people who will never ever spend it...our hard earned money which we earmarked for our retirement, we earmarked your parents health and drug care, and most important, investments we earmarked for our children's college education.
Even your kids future is not a sacrifice too great to these Judah sheep.
It's mind boggling the damage that can be done to this country before the people that enable it realize what's happening.
Name your favorite Judas Sheep.
(
Anonymous pointed out in the comments that it's actually "Judas Sheep." But the point is the same.)
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I think it's great that a guy who normally gets 200 hits a day can terrify a sitting U.S. Senator just by telling the truth, but how petrified must Lieberman be of Ned Lamont to try and strongarm the Huffington Post into censoring their bloggers?
I guess that "Vote Lieberman: Warmonger" slogan must not be testing out too well.
Anyway, go read about how
Howie Klein is giving Joe Lieberman the running shits. It's a scream.
Update: Howie has more Lieberman
graphics love here, and he's got two more musicians giving statements about
their opposition to Holy Joe. I guess I understand why he's now in the Imodium brigade.
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Will the Christian Broadcasters Association now face the wrath for
voting Pat Robertson off their Board of Directors like he told the
folks in Dover, Pennsylvania they would for voting against his wishes?
Guess we'll see.
(And how pathetic is it to have your spokesperson say you intended to separate from the board only after you lost the election and you are scrambling to save face? So sad, so very sad.)
(Photo via
Pam's House Blend.)
UPDATE: And now, the Army has a new role:
Concern Troll. Your tax dollars, hard at work...you can't make this shit up.
And "the tea snarf of the day" award goes to Meteor Blades for: "Patwa." Brilliant. Just brilliant.
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ThinkProgress headline from today:
Before Katrina Struck, Michael Brown Warned Bush ‘The Levees Could Actually Breach’
Major corporate media outlet headlines on the issue of Bush being warned that levees could breach, or that FEMA had done a trial run on this very issue on the year prior to Katrina, or that the President was getting constant updates along with Michael Chertoff at DHS headquarters on the conditions in the Gulf Region:
**crickets chirping**
Yep,
Media Matters is a good read again today.
Hellooooooo, in there?
UPDATE: Just a reminder -- please take a moment to click thru the ads on our blog and peruse the information, the wares, the great stuff our advertisers have for you to see. These ads help defray our blog costs, so please be nice to the folks who buy them and take a peek at what they are offering or with what they would like your help. And now back to our regularly scheduled discussion...
UPDATE #2: Holy mogambo...we've been nominated for a
Koufax for Best Blog. Wow. Thanks, really, just thanks.
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It's not enough that the President lies about the big things. He lies about the little ones, too. Remember the flap over Kerry ordering his cheesesteak in Philly with Swiss cheese and Rove and his malignant cronies having a field day over it? They set up a photo-op shortly afterward in Philly, with George Bush standing in front of a crowd at a Boeing plant, so he could go
on camera and say:
"This is the 32nd time I’ve been to your state of Pennsylvania," he told the Boeing crowd, "and, you all know the reason why, don’t you? It’s because I like my cheesesteaks Whiz Wit’."
Except for one thing: Bushie likes his cheesesteak with American cheese, and not the Philly-preferred Cheez Whiz and provolone, too. So, no honesty from President Bush about this little cheesy detail?
Hell no.
She reported that Bush actually "prefers his steak absent of the usual Cheez Whiz and provolone, accompanied only by cheese of the American variety," information that she obtained from her own Deep Throat, one Caeser Barnabei, the owner of the well-known cheesesteak shop, Jim's Place. Barnabei, who has fed the Bush camp on previous swings through Pennsylvania and provided "70 to 80 hoagies" for the Bush campaign yesterday, confided to Carey that "the Jim's Special is altered to whet the 'W' appetite."
As
Matt Yglesias put it at the time, George Bush wants to be elected so badly, to do whatever it takes to cover his ass, that he is willing to lie about cheese. A completely unimportant detail to everyone (except perhaps a few die-hard Philly cheesesteak purists in Essington).
Why lie? Because he could. He and Karl and their malignant spin crew thought no one in the media would do any follow-up, that they'd move right on to the next spin cycle and never bother to look in the bottom of the washer for that one lost sock.
Too bad for them some enterprising young reporter did the follow-up (yay,
Kathleen Carey). And too bad for them some enterprising reporter at the AP did a little follow-up of their own on the Katrina briefing video. And too bad we still have that video of the President just sitting on his butt, endlessly staring with that frightened rabbit in the headlights look on his face, after being informed by Andy Card that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center and that we were under attack.
George Bush is a product, with all sorts of fun labeling on the box -- nifty claims of "made with whole grains" and "fortified with vitamins and minerals," but what we're really looking at is a sort of candidate who, when you get down to what is really there, is a whole lot of fluff and nonsense, lots of fillers and ultra-refined crap, with a really good marketing team behind him. He sounds good when the team has everything working like a well-oiled machine, but those moments when he's off-script, off-plan, being "real" as opposed to "scripted," you get a real sense of who he is -- and in a crisis, it's not a pretty picture.
It's this pattern of behavior with this President that concerns me, the real behavior, not the spin and the projection and the tap dance that his Wurlitzer pals try to sell like so many PR folks with a wind-up Energizer bunny in their pocket -- and it ought to concern all Americans.
Faced with a crisis or some question of his leadership, his integrity, pretty much any question at all, George Bush's first response is to freeze, then huddle with his staff and come up with a media response. It's all statement, no actual leadership, no actual work. The PR blitz becomes the entire focus of this Administration -- all campaign mode, all the time, with no real concern for doing the actual work -- for really digging into the nitty gritty and governing.
All hat, no cattle.
And you know, I could really give a rats ass about what sort of cheese George Bush likes on his cheesesteak, because it has no bearing on anything in my life. But when he lies about something larger -- when he makes promises of aid to frightened Gulf Coast residents and then fails to follow-through on those promises after Katrina hits, sitting back and not deploying every resource available while people are dying, even though he promised to do just that, I get pissed.
Or when he just sits in a classroom filled with children with a copy of
"The Pet Goat" in his hands (
video here), for more than five minutes, with all those lives about to be lost in Manhattan and his very first action when he finally gets out of his little chair is to huddle with Andy Card and his PR crew, not call the Pentagon, not call the WH sit room, but to huddle with his PR folks to craft a statement for the media and then ride around on Air Force One for hours, leaving Dick Cheney in charge...well, that "all hat, no cattle" really fits, doesn't it?
Dan Froomkin summed it up perfectly in yesterday's
White House Briefing:
Faced with challenges like these -- an attack on our nation or a natural disaster bearing down on our shores -- we can reasonably expect that our presidents will stand up, demand answers and options, and lead.
If the White House insists that Bush did that with Hurricane Katrina, it is incumbent upon them to back up that claim up with evidence. Otherwise, the image of him mouthing platitudes threatens to become defining of his presidency.
All talk, no action. That's our President in a nutshell, isn't it?
My husband reminded me this morning of a passage from the Bible (
Matthew 15:8, in case you are interested), wherein Christ rebukes the Pharisees for doing a whole lot of talking, but not actually doing what they pretend to believe.
These people draw near to Me with their mouth, and honor Me with their lips, but their heart is far from Me.
George Bush likes to do a whole lot of public courting of the religious right. But it is worth a reminder that Christ's example was that you LIVE the teachings -- ALL of them, not just the ones that help give you a wedge issue and get you elected in the short-term, but ALL of them -- because just mouthing the words and then doing as you please is...well...hypocritical and wrong.
And it seems to me that repeated lying, especially when those lies are ones which lead to deaths of Americans, lead to damage to our nation, lead to the ever-widening divide between people who live here because immediate political gain for the short term by using a nasty wedge issue is more important to this President and his malignant spin crew than long-term damage to the nation as a whole...well,
as Jane said, karma can come back to haunt you. And lately it sure seems like that's been happening in spades for George Bush and his Administration, doesn't it?
Lies have a way of catching up to you. When you lie about the little things that don't matter, over and over again, it starts to add up. And maybe you can get away with that, even as President, if it doesn't affect the lives of the American people. It's craven and weak and pathetic as a character question, but if it doesn't really impact the rest of the country and their everyday lives, it can be ignored by a vast number of people, I suppose.
But when you lie about the big things: "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." or "we will move in whatever assets and resources we have at our disposal after the storm..." -- but you don't actually mean them or it's just a flat-out lie, and Americans know that you don't mean it and you are lying to them...repeatedly...about
things that matter -- well, then the shit really begins to hit the fan.
Americans remember people pleading for help at the Superdome...for days. They remember FEMA sending refrigerator trucks filled with ice to Maine, instead of to the Gulf Coast, where they were actually needed. They remember the President staying on vacation, getting a new guitar, appearing at public events in California, while dead bodies floated in the streets of New Orleans and people in the Gulf Coast of Mississippi were living under make-shift shelters and scavanging in the local Walmart for baby formula to keep their children alive...for days, after the storm. And the President stayed on vacation, and federal resources sat on idle...for days. (And I see that Michael Chertoff is still drawing a paycheck. Accountability? Hell no.)
The American people see soldiers dying in Iraq and car bombs exploding there on the evening news and no amount of repeated lying to them on television about the insurgency being in its "last throes" makes that go away -- and it doesn't cover the fact that the President and
his Administration knew all along that there was no "mushroom cloud" immediate threat from Saddam Hussein. And that they were told there was a substantial risk for civil war in Iraq -- that could spread to other nations in the Middle East -- if they didn't do the job right from the start. The fact that the Pentagon's plans were horribly underdone, and that we are facing a huge problem there now -- no accountability from Congress, no "second guessing" as the President puts it from the Administration. Well, that's just peachy -- if we just ignore the fact that we've botched things, maybe they'll just resolve on their own, eh? Lovely.
Lies have a way of catching up to you. And for this Administration, the constant stream of lies are catching up to them all at once. No amount of spin can cover the fact that this President is all hat and no cattle.
"Trust me" sure as hell doesn't cut it any more for George Bush, does it? But with Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, there will be no accountability for him either. He gets to continue to be the irresponsible frat boy, lying his way around whatever damage is done, getting away with not doing his job, having other people clean up his messes, only interacting with people who tell him he's doing a heckuva job.
You want to hold George Bush accountable? Elect a Democrat. It's that's simple. Until that happens, George Bush gets to continue to lie, hide, smear, and manipulate with impunity, because the Republican-controlled Congress will just continue to publicly mouth a few platitudes and then refuse to hold any further hearings and let George Bush and his malignant band of cronies do whatever they want without any real oversight.
You want to restore honesty to government? Then put Democrats in office who will hold him accountable. No more rubber stamp for George Bush's lies. No more.
It's time that "all hat, no cattle" learned the meaning of responsibility.
(Graphics love to
BZB's Briarpatch. This photo had such a little ornery boy in his Tom Mix get-up, chasing people around with his pop gun feel to it. So perfect.)
UPDATE: I'm informed by "Tony" that no decent person orders their cheesesteak with provolone. When I was in grad school at UPenn in Philly, I got mine with Whiz and provolone, so clearly I'm not a purist, either. But I didn't insert my own preference above, I got the info from a local reporter who covered the issue initially, so clearly there is some local debate on what constitutes proper cheese on a cheesesteak, too. None of the "cheesy" debate, though, gets around the fact that George Bush actually likes his with American cheese -- and he lied about it, in public, to make himself look better for an election. George Bush can't even be honest about cheese -- what a wanker.
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The competition has been fierce this week to discern which comment by every B-list Bush apologist's favorite "Democrat" takes the title of Most Revoltingly Stupid Joe Klein Comment of All Time. Project Runway has nothing on the drama heating up in our comments section, just a few more bugle beads and bloomers.
From week to week people like Atrios and Media Matters do a very good job of pointing out the all-Republican, all-the-time composition of most TV news shows. Many in our comments section often wonder "where are the Democrats?" like they have anything to do with it.
The person who gets the coveted slot of "token Democrat" is usually of the Joe Klein ilk. We then get a break from Republicans endlessly repeating GOP talking points to hear a self-professed Democrat endlessly repeating GOP talking points. It's not like the Democrats are telling the bookers "sorry, I'm too busy." This guy gets the air time.
And what does he do with it? Here are tonight's entries for "Joe Klein: In His Own Words:"
19. "One can only imagine the Republican wrath and utter ridicule—the Rush Limbaugh fulminations—if, say, John Kerry had proposed a similar policy: Let's pin our Middle East hopes on the statesmanship of Hizballah and Hamas. But that is where the democratic idealism of the Bush Doctrine has led us. If the President turns out to be right—and let's hope he is—a century's worth of woolly-headed liberal dreamers will be vindicated. And he will surely deserve that woolliest of all peace prizes, the Nobel."
20. "I bow to nobody in my disdain for bloggers. You know, they're all opinions and very little information." (video here)
21. "And I've got to say, Bob, that, you know, usually at this - at this stage of a campaign, with a whole big field of a lot of candidates, you know, it's easy to look on them as a bunch of dwarfs or buffoons, but the Democrats have some really serious and substantive and - and effective candidates out there. Of course, there's another whole brigade of buffoons that are led by Al Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich and Carol Moseley-Braun, none of whom really have a chance to become president, and - and are kind of cluttering up the stage at this point, but there - there are some good, serious candidates out there, too."
22. The Democrats have for the last 10 or 15 years blatantly, shamelessly demagogued this issue. They've offered nothing positive on Social Security or on Medicare or on Medicaid, and it's time for them to compromise here. It's also time for the Republicans to compromise here. One area where you might see, you know, some--one possibility is the old Washington standby, the demonstration project. We might try privatization for some younger, you know, Social Security recipients--not recipients but, you know, contributors, or we might try it in a city or a couple of places. We haven't--we don't know how it's going to work."
23. "But these concerns pale before the importance of the program. It would have been a scandal if the NSA had not been using these tools to track down the bad guys. There is evidence that the information harvested helped foil several plots and disrupt al-Qaeda operations.There is no such thing as a pure political product. The two existing political parties are amalgams of passion and sanity, traditional liberalism and conservatism. Those who win the presidency create harmonic majorities by plausibly balancing these strains."
24. "In less than a second, less time than it takes to tell," Dick Cheney mused last week, his quail-hunting expedition had gone "from what is a very happy, pleasant day with great friends in a beautiful part of the country, doing something I love—to, my gosh, I've shot my friend. I've never experienced anything quite like that before." It was perhaps the most eloquent, emotionally unguarded moment from the notoriously buttoned-up Vice President. He seemed stunned, uncertain for once. And the haunted look in his eyes reminded me of what soldiers in Vietnam used to call the Thousand-Yard Stare—the paralytic shock that comes from seeing the impact that even low-caliber weaponry can have on human flesh.
25. "I've never seen George Bush lose a debate. He is a brilliant minimalist.
26. "And then there is her husband, a one-man supermarket tabloid. A few weeks ago, the New York Post ran a photo of Bill Clinton leaving a local restaurant with an attractive woman, and the political-elite gossip hounds went berserk."
27. "Look, this is a debate we're going to have in this country. And the rules may well change and they maybe should change. But to do it in the way that this has been done, to send the message that we're sending, you cannot guarantee me that we're not creating more militants, more -- and more problems for ourselves."
28. "If Lee does hook large black audiences, there's a chance the message they take from the film will increase racial tensions in the city. If they react violently--which can't be ruled out--the candidate with the most to lose will be David Dinkins."
Remember not only to vote by number, but to vigorously lobby for your choice because the winner of the best Klein snark in the comments section will also receive The Charles P. Pierce Award for Excellence in Klein Snark (to be awarded by
Charles P. Pierce himself) and will also win a copy of the
DVD of Action.
Now is your chance to do to Joe what he does to us every time he opens his mouth. Don't waste it.
First night semi-final roundSecond night semi-final round
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The latest meme from
TBogg. I'd say it's right up there with his best work -- "The Clenis" and "101st Fighting Keyboardists" (so omnipresent nobody remembers he originated them.) I think "Bush cargo culters" is a perfectly succinct description of those who don't have to have the slightest idea about what Fearless Leader is doing before they know they like it.
Latest case in point --
Ole 60 Grit O'Beirne:
I heard the fellow in front of the weather map saying we can't predict this could happen and then I heard Michael Brown telling us what his gut was telling him. Unfortunately, when I watched, I guess The National Weather Service fellow at his map, we all bring a lot of skepticism to weather reports, Chris. We're habituated to thinking weather reports are wrong....
That woman would get on her knees and blow a tail pipe if Bush asked her to.
(via
TRex)
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As
mcjoan notes over at Kos, all of Bush's polls are in free fall. Periodically Gosprey sends me bits of interest from the subscription-only conservative
Stratfor report, and I always feel like I'm getting a look into the belly of the beast. Behind all the lies and spin and absurd attempts to put a good face on things, they're freaked:
The point here is not to argue the merits of the Dubai ports deal, but rather to place the business deal in the context of the U.S. grand strategy. That strategy is, again, to split the Islamic world into its component parts, induce divisions by manipulating differences, and to create coalitions based on particular needs. This is, currently, about the only strategy the United States has going for it -- and if it can't use commercial relations as an inducement in the Muslim world, that is quite a weapon to lose.
The problem has become political, and stunningly so. One of the most recent opinion polls, by CBS, has placed Bush's approval rating at 34 percent -- a fairly shocking decline, and clearly attributable to the port issue. As we have noted in the past, each party has a core constituency of about 35-37 percent. When support falls significantly below this level, a president loses his ability to govern.
The Republican coalition consists of three parts: social conservatives, economic conservatives and business interests, and national security conservatives. The port deal has apparently hit the national security conservatives in Bush's coalition hard. They were already shaky over the administration's personnel policies in the military and the question of whether he had a clear strategy in Iraq, even as they supported the invasion.
Another part of the national security faction consists of those who believe that the Muslim world as a whole is, in the end, united against the United States, and that it poses a clear and present danger. Bush used to own this faction, but the debate over the ports has generated serious doubts among this faction about Bush's general policy. In their eyes, he appears inconsistent and potentially hypocritical. Economic conservatives might love the ports deal, and so might conservatives of the "realpolitik" variety, but those who buy into the view that there is a general danger of terrorism emanating from all Muslim countries are appalled -- and it is showing in the polls.
If Bush sinks much lower, he will breaks into territory from which it would be impossible for a presidency to recover. He is approaching this territory with three years left in his presidency. It is the second time that he has probed this region: The first was immediately after Hurricane Katrina. He is now down deeper in the polls, and it is cutting into his core constituency.
"In effect, Bush's strategy and his domestic politics have intersected with potential fratricidal force. The fact is that the U.S. strategy of dividing the Muslim world and playing one part off against the other is a defensible and sophisticated strategy -- even if does not, in the end, turn out to be successful (and who can tell about that?) This is not the strategy the United States started with; the strategy emerged out of the failures in Iraq in 2003. But whatever its origins, it is the strategy that is being used, and it is not a foolish strategy.
The problem is that the political coalition has eroded to the point that Bush needs all of his factions, and this policy -- particularly because of the visceral nature of the ports issue -- is cutting into the heart of his coalition. The general problem is this: The administration has provided no framework for understanding the connection between a destroyed mosque dome in As Samarra, an attack against a crucial oil facility in Saudi Arabia, and the UAE buyout of a British ports-management firm. Rather than being discussed in the light of a single, integrated strategy, these appear to be random, disparate and uncoordinated events. The reality of the administration's strategy and the reality of its politics are colliding. Bush will backtrack on the ports issue, and the UAE will probably drop the matter. But what is not clear is whether the damage done to the strategy and the politics can be undone. The numbers are just getting very low.
Karl Rove did not just arbitrarily decide that "national security" would be the battle cry for the 2006 elections. Losing the "national security" conservatives is an unmitigated disaster for them, and they know it.
The Dubai Ports World deal is set to go through on Monday. Another manifestation of Bush's "hang tough and fuck'em all" leadership strategy? This isn't just another garden variety scandal for the GOP. The implications are much greater. But it would seem that the Administration is treating it as such.
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I don't want Cecile Richards, head of Planned Parenthood, to feel left out by giving Nancy Keenan all the credit for the new
Mississippi Rapist Rights Bill, so The General has
a few words for her, too.
Feel the love.
Update: Digby on the Utah law which requires parental notification for abortions even if the father molested the girl:
These Republicans admit that women give up their rights when they have sex. Good to know. And they believe a child molesting father's parental rights are more important than the daughter he impregnated. Also good to know.
Thanks, Sammy Alito. You make this all possible.
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Here's my conclusion after reading
Murray Waas' exceptional new piece in the National Journal today: (1) the President either knew that Saddam posed no immediate threat to the United States and repeatedly lied to the American public and leaders around the world (and allowed multiple members of his Administration to lie about it as well) or (2) he doesn't bother doing his job, and had no idea what information was contained in multiple sensitive national security briefs that he was given over a long period of time, and no one in the Administration bothered to clue him in on this.
You choose.
I've wracked my brain this afternoon to come up with another alternative -- but no matter how I twist it around in my brain, it comes back to "he knew and lied" or "he doesn't bother doing his job."
The information regarding the aluminum tubes and the fact that the WH was aware of alternate uses for them isn't new -- Eriposte covered this issue back on
Nov. 23rd on LeftCoaster in his exceptional series (which is up for a
Best Series Koufax, btw -- congrats!).
What Waas does with this article, though, is put it in terms that major media outlets can distill into real questions for the White House -- and also gives excellent quotes and context to show how the Administration deliberately used each other to spin the false story on the tubes out. (I covered some of this WH story circle jerk, as has Jane, in our reporting on the WHIG. See
here as just one example.)
One of the most damning aspects of
the Waas article is this section, discussing the WH knowing -- via multiple reports from multiple intelligence agencies -- that Saddam Hussein posed NO threat to the US unless we
attacked him first. (In other words, as a defensive action rather than an offensive one, should it come to that.)
The conclusion among intelligence agencies that Saddam was unlikely to consider attacking the United States unless attacked first was also outlined in Senior Executive Intelligence Briefs, highly classified daily intelligence papers distributed to several hundred executive branch officials and to the congressional intelligence oversight committees.
During the second half of 2002, the president and vice president repeatedly cited the threat from Saddam in their public statements. "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us," Cheney declared on August 26, 2002, to the national convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
In his September 12 address to the U.N. General Assembly, Bush said: "With every step the Iraqi regime takes toward gaining and deploying the most terrible weapons, our own options to confront that regime will narrow. And if an emboldened regime were to supply these weapons to terrorist allies, then the attacks of September the 11th would be a prelude to far greater horrors."
In an October 7 address to the nation, Bush cited intelligence showing that Iraq had a fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons. "We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting the United States," the president declared.
"We know that Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network share a common enemy -- the United States of America," he added. "Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints."
These were all lies. All of them. The President and his staff knew -- or damn well should have known -- that the information they were feeding all of us, on talking head pundit shows or during national speeches or in testimony to Congress, all of it was lies.
And these lies were fed to a nation already reeling from the horror of 9/11, living in the ghostly shadow of the fallen towers in Manhattan, and looking to this Administration to keep them safe.
This Administration spit on the nation's trust, lied to our faces, and chose to start a war that we never needed to fight.
Because the scary threat that the Administration built to a fever pitch was a precariously balanced house of cards, on a false foundation of mis-used intelligence, cherry-picked so that no opinion that contradicted what George Bush and Dick Cheney wanted ever got into the public domain until we were already in Iraq.
Public statements made by officials in this Administration -- including by the President himself -- were unwavering in their accusations of wrongdoing on the part of Saddam Hussein. On the threat he posed to this nation. On the possibility of a "mushroom cloud." On the potential for nerve agents or other biological toxins being in his possession and being unleashed on the United States by Saddam's ties to al qaeda.
All lies. And all lies that the Administration knew -- or should have known, had they been doing their damn jobs -- were false before they were ever publicly uttered.
The report stated that U.S. intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that it was unlikely that Saddam would try to attack the United States -- except if "ongoing military operations risked the imminent demise of his regime" or if he intended to "extract revenge" for such an assault, according to records and sources....
On numerous other occasions, Cheney, then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and then-U.N. Ambassador John Negroponte cited Iraq's procurement of aluminum tubes without disclosing that the intelligence community was split as to their end use. The fact that the president was informed of the dissents by Energy and State is also significant because Rice and other administration officials have said that Bush did not know about those dissenting views when he made claims about the purported uses for the tubes.
The President of the United States and his advisors have an obligation to the public to be honest and forthright with them if we are going to go into battle to defend our nation. To start a war is the single most critical decision a President ought ever make. For all those mothers and fathers who send their child into battle on behalf of our great nation, we owe them nothing less than full honesty -- and the President owes them nothing less than honesty with himself as to all of the information available before he gives the orders that will potentially send their children to their death.
This President has lost faith with these soldiers and their families. And Congress ought to be ashamed of themselves for providing what little oversight has been done -- they bear just as much responsibility as the President. Our men and women in uniform deserve much better than this.
They are facing death every day in the streets of Iraq because the President was too dishonest, too craven, too lazy to stand up and be honest with the American people about the reasons he was taking the nation to war. But the people who pay the price for this war are not the sons and daughters of privilege by and large -- and too often they are the families who can least afford to pay the price of so great a sacrifice. But pay it they do, for they love their nation. And for their love of country, what they have gotten in return is a President who has broken faith with them, and sent them into battle based on lies ginned up to create an atmosphere that would support Bush's War.
All that false caring about the troops, the praying with the families of the dead, the false bravado of the boo-yah in a speech on a base, is worthless if you didn't care enough about their lives to do the work to start with before they went into battle.
Just as all that false caring about the people in the Gulf Region here in the US is meaningless when you stay on vacation for days after you know how dire the situation is. All of the public staging, the spin, the Mighty Wurlitzer storylines about what a great, genial, wonderful man you are doesn't mean squat if you aren't man enough to listen to criticism when it is warranted -- and to information that contradicts what you want to hear. A real man faces reality, a coward hides in his bubble surrounded by sycophants who tell him only what he wants to hear and feeds him hand-picked audiences to stroke his ego.
To say that I am disgusted doesn't even come close today.
No more lies without accountability.
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As a direct result of Samuel Alito's confirmation to the Supreme Court, Mississippi now falls in line behind South Dakota to pass a
Rapist Rights Bill:
Gov. Haley Barbour said Wednesday he would probably sign a bill under consideration in the state House that would ban most abortions in Mississippi.
The measure, which passed the House Public Health Committee on Tuesday, would allow abortion only to save a woman's life. It would make no exception in cases of rape or incest.
Barbour, a Republican, said he preferred an exception in cases of rape and incest, but if such a bill came to his desk: "I suspect I'll sign it."
The full House could vote on the bill next week, and it would then go to the Senate.
And yet NARAL and Planned Parenthood continue to support Joe Lieberman and Lincoln Chafee. I'm hearing that they are greatly annoyed at having to deal with "attacks from the left" on this "one little point" that we seem to disagree on. They're catterwauling that this is "just what the right wants."
Number one -- if you're rubber stamping the people who put Alito on the bench, how EXACTLY does that qualify YOU as the left?
Number two -- it's not "one little point." If another vacancy comes up on the Supreme Court, how do NARAL and Planned Parenthood plan to fight it? If it was okay for Lieberman and Chafee to vote for cloture on Alito, what's going to be different the next time? Are they waiting for someone WORSE before they put up a fight?
Number three -- "just what the right wants?" I'll tell you "just what they right wants." They want to be able to steam roll their fundie freaks onto the bench with no organized opposition, which is exactly what they got. I really don't see how we can make them much happier.
Most big feminists, I'm finding out, have no idea that NARAL and Planned Parenthood are supporting Chafee and Lieberman, or that they told their memberships to thank them both for their Alito votes. When they find out they go appropriately apeshit. They've been contacting a much-irritated Nancy Keenan who seems to think choice is a fine price to pay to maintain her own personal access to Republican cocktail parties.
We get coathangers so she can have cocktail weenies.
Not one more penny for either organization until they agree to stop giving it to people like Lieberman and Chafee who put Alito on the bench.
If there is any hope of stopping this juggernaut, I urge everyone to put your money where it will do some good -- to send a wake-up call to the Democratic Party, NARAL and Planned Parenthood that this is bullshit, people are angry and they better smell the fucking coffee.
Give to
Ciro Rodriguez and Ned Lamont.
The fight starts now.
(hat tip to
Joe from Americablog and not to NARAL, whose blogger mailing list I am on)
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Reuters:
Dubai Ports World's $6.85 billion acquisition of Britain's P&O will close on Friday or Monday, despite an additional 45-day review by the U.S. government in response to security concerns, a U.S. Treasury Department official said on Thursday.
"My understanding is that the deal will not close today," Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt told a Senate panel. "Although they had announced March 2 as the closing date ... that deal will not now close until tomorrow or Monday."
Kimmitt made his statement in response to a question from lawmakers on the Senate Banking Committee.
Can I just say how unhappy I am that Dobbs is allowed to own this thing?
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The March 7 deadline on the vote by the Senate Intelligence Committee is looming as to whether or not they'll investigate the illegal NSA wiretaps, and the wavering Republicans -- Snowe and Hagel -- need some nudging. So we're asking people to both call and write on behalf of this today; BushCo. is on the ropes right now and the time is perfect to use it to our advantage.
Glenn Greenwald has been doing yeoman's work into this, you can brush up on
talking points here and read his
latest update here. But the basic point is that the Committee needs to vote to look into this.
So pick up your telephones, grab your fax machines and work those keyboards:
Olympia Snowe (R-ME) -- previously indicated she supported amending FISA in some fashion, but voted with Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS) to adjourn the committee without considering a motion to hold NSA hearings.
Senator Snowe webmailSenator Snowe Telephone Numbers:
Washington, D.C. Office (202) 224-5344
Washington, D.C. toll-free from Maine (800) 432-1599
Auburn office (207) 786-2451
Augusta (207) 622-8292
Bangor (207) 945-0432
Biddeford office (207) 282-4144
Portland office (207) 874-0883
Presque Isle office (207) 764-5124
Senator Snowe Fax Numbers:Washington, D.C. (202) 224-1946
Auburn office (207) 782-1438
Augusta (207) 622-7295
Bangor (207) 941-9525
Biddeford (207) 284-2358
Portland (207) 874-7631
Presque Isle (207) 764-6420
Chuck Hagel (R-NE) Senator Hagel WebmailSenator Hagel Telephone Numbers:
Washington, D.C. (202) 224-4224
Omaha office (402) 758-8981
Lincoln (402) 476-1400
Kearney (308) 236-7602
Scottsbluff (308) 632-6032
Senator Hagel Fax Numbers:
Washington, D.C. (202) 224-5213
Omaha office (402) 758-9165
Lincoln (402) 476-0605
Kearney (308) 236-7473
Scottsbluff Office (308) 632-6295
We're also encouraging people who are from Maine or Nebraska, or have ties to those states, to write carefully crafted letters to local media outlets. Vichy Dems has the contact information for
Maine here and
Nebraska here.
We keep getting fabulous feedback about all the letters we managed to get printed in the local Kansas papers last week (more on that later), and I'm certain we can do the same in Maine and Nebraska. It's a great way to cut through the national media ice, fly under the radar and hit hard in the back yards of these Senators where our efforts can have the maximum impact.
Thanks to everyone for their help on this matter, you're inspirational.
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A car bomb intended for the US Embassy in Karachi, Pakistan, instead exploded on impact with a vehicle carrying an American foreign service officer,
according to the NYTimes.
A suicide attacker rammed a car packed with explosives into a vehicle carrying an American diplomat in Pakistan's largest city, killing the diplomat and three other people before President Bush's visit to Pakistan. Fifty-two people were wounded.
The blast near the U.S. Consulate and the Marriott Hotel propelled cars into the air and flung charred wreckage as far as 200 yards. It shattered windows at the consulate and on all 10 floors of the hotel, and damaged a nearby naval hospital.
I know a few people working in the foreign service, but I've lost track of postings for a couple of them in the last year. No names have yet been released, but I'm certain that family and friends of those posted in Pakistan are on pins and needles at the moment awaiting news. Thoughts and prayers for all of you -- family, friends, co-workers -- as you wait for the phone to ring.
Working for the United States in a posting as dangerous as Pakistan is a very tough job. Most of our personnel in difficult postings cannot bring their families with them, but they do a tough job -- trying to sell this Administration's abysmal foreign policy pronouncements to an increasingly skeptical world, while still maintaining some semblence of long-term strategic diplomacy with the nation in question, all the while worrying about safety concerns and potential terrorist threats and kidnappings and other assorted threats -- because the nation's interest requires it.
Ever since Valerie Plame Wilson was outed by her own government in an act of political vengeance and intel exposure, recruiting for these tough posts has been difficult indeed. Who wants to trust an Administration who outs its own personnel? The embassies are staffed not just with diplomatic personnel, but also security experts, analysts and others -- and recruiting has suffered over the last few years under the Bush Administration, I am told by several sources in the diplomatic community despite an initial upsurge in applicants after 9/11. The brave men and women who work tirelessly for this nation in positions this dangerous are heroes, plain and simple -- that we have lost at least one today is a tragedy.
I just wanted to say thank you to those foreign service personnel who work diligently in the field for all of the rest of us. So, thank you. Please, stay safe.
The WaPo has more.
(Photo by
Syed Zargham via NYTimes.)
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Why are the Bush Administration poll numbers tanking? Well, in my opinion, it's all the lying. The American public can forgive mistakes, so long as they are not done with some malignant intent. Apparently they can also overlook some incompetence, so long as they believe the President is working hard at his job.
But when the public begins to think they have been lied to -- repeatedly -- that love goes sour. Very sour. And lately, for the Bush Administration, it's been all about the lying.
For instance, with the UAE ports deal, we were publicly told there was an investigation done with regard to potential national security. Well....not so much,
according to Rep. Peter King (R-NY):
And what bothered me about the whole thing, and I was asking questions at the beginning. I said I had concerns about it. And when I met with people who are on this committee, I was told upfront - this is before they got their act together - that they did no investigating. There was no investigation done. And then I’m watching "Meet the Press" a week ago Sunday, and Secretary Chertoff was on, and he was saying, 'Well, if the American people knew what a rigorous investigation was conducted, they wouldn’t have any concerns.' That’s when I realized they’re not telling us the true story here, and that’s why I’ve come out against the deal, and at least until there’s a form of investigation.
According to
USATodayOnDeadline (via
FiredUpAmerica), quoting CNN's Ed Henry, Rep. King spoke with members of both Department of the Treasury and Homeland Security on this "who were involved in this CFIUS process, and he asked them did you check out whether or not DP World, the company involved, had ties to al Qaeda, and he is telling CNN he was told, quote, Congressman, you don't understand, we don't conduct a thorough investigation."
And, gee, who could have known that the situation in Iraq would devolve into civil war? Erm...
the CIA, well before we ever entered the country for a war of choice? But, the President didn't know about this, right? Well, actually, he did. (Or at least, ought to be charged with knowing, since the information was prepared for him to...you know...do his job. He owes our troops in uniform that much before sending them into harm's way, don't you think?)
"If the entire body of official intelligence analysis on Iraq had a policy implication," Pillar wrote, "it was to avoid war -- or, if war was going to be launched, to prepare for a messy aftermath."
Pillar describes for the first time that the intelligence community did assessments before the invasion that, he wrote, indicated a postwar Iraq "would not provide fertile ground for democracy" and would need "a Marshall Plan-type effort" to restore its economy despite its oil revenue. It also foresaw Sunnis and Shiites fighting for power.
Pillar wrote that the intelligence community "anticipated that a foreign occupying force would itself be the target of resentment and attacks -- including guerrilla warfare -- unless it established security and put Iraq on the road to prosperity in the first few weeks or months after the fall of Saddam."
And yet, the American public was told stories about flowers and candy greeting our troops...and that Saddam had nuclear capabilities (
he didn't), and WMDs (
he didn't), and that oil revenue from Iraq would pay for the war (
it isn't). Oh, and that Saddam was trying to get nuclear materials from Niger (
he wasn't).
Dick Cheney would never drink and shoot? (
He did.)
Medicare reform is going to save seniors money and make things easier for them to get their prescriptions? (
You've got to be kidding me.)
The President promises to fire anyone involved in leaking the name of a CIA NOC to the press? (Rove still working in the West Wing with his security clearance intact, and Libby only resigned the day he was indicted for multiple felonies.)
Fiscal responsibility? (
hahaha -- the Congress is about to raise the federal debt ceiling...again...this time to raise it above the current level of $8.2 trillion. We'd better all hope China stays happy with us, because they own a lot of our debt right now.)
Any domestic spying is done with a warrant? (Well, that's a quaint little Fourth Amendment notion, now isn't it?
And a big fat lie. And it's now being
challenged directly, just fyi.)
And now, yesterday, we learned that the President was told --
directly -- by state, local and federal officials that Katrina posed a "catastrophic" threat to the Gulf Coast. And that the President said the federal government was "fully prepared" to assist in every way. And we all know how well that turned out, don't we?
Here is what the President said to Elizabeth Vargas on February 28, 2006,
about what he knew:
VARGAS: When you look back on those days immediately following when Katrina struck, what moment do you think was the moment that you realized that the government was failing, especially the people of New Orleans?
BUSH: When I saw TV reporters interviewing people who were screaming for help. It looked — the scenes looked chaotic and desperate. And I realized that our government was — could have done a better job of comforting people.
We were told that Dan Bartlett had to put together a DVD of news snippets for the President several days after Katrina hit on the 29th to show him what was going on -- is THAT when the President realized things weren't going well? Days after the hurricane -- and only because a staffer made him watch a video to catch him up with the news...while he was still on vacation...for days after the catastrophic hurricane?
Then there was this gem, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees." from the interview with Diane Sawyer on 9/1/05. (
Crooks and Liars has the video clip.)
Having seen clips from this latest tape obtained by the AP, it is going to be very difficult for the White House to spin us back to that veneer that the President was "engaged" in the hurricane planning process -- given that he asks no questions during the briefing, sitting in a conference room at his vacation home in Crawford, with a sparse staff of advisors, all the while state, local and FEMA and other disaster officials are clearly ramping up in the Gulf region. (
C&L has video on this as well.) You see things
like this on the tape:
Bush was dialed into the conference Sunday at noon Eastern time from a meeting room at his ranch in Crawford, with Deputy Chief of Staff Joseph Hagin at his side.
"I want to assure the folks at the state level that we are fully prepared to not only help you during the storm, but we will move in whatever resources and assets we have at our disposal after the storm," Bush said, gesturing with both hands for emphasis on the digital recording. Neither Bush nor Hagin asked questions, however....
"This is, to put it mildly, the big one," Brown said. "Everyone within FEMA is now virtually on call."
Did I mention that President Bush remained on vacation...for days afterward, even after the worst possible scenario came to pass.
Yesterday, Jack Cafferty was reading viewer e-mails on the subject on CNN's Situation Room. Someone wrote into the show with a quote that is particularly apt: "Only the Bush Administration could take a disaster of Biblical proportions, and make it worse."
If you are going to lie about not knowing how bad a disaster will be -- then you should be certain that no video of you being told it will be a disaster exists. In this case, there have been so many preceding lies, the hope this Administration can hold onto at this point is that the American public will just chalk it up to the way things work in Washington.
Except, at the moment, the Republican party controls Congress and the White House. And when you add in all the Abramoff investigations and guilty pleas thus far and the entire GOP KStreet operation, the Duck Cunningham bribery pleas and continuing investigations, the Tom DeLay indictment and investigations and all the rest of the mess, you get a very ugly picture of what the current party leadership of the Republican party has been doing. And it sure as hell doesn't look like the public's business from here, now does it?
It's all about the lying. No accountability, no taking responsibility, none. This President comes off as an irresponsible frat boy who is more than willing to blame anyone else to get his own ass out of trouble. That may work when you are 19 (although it wouldn't have worked with my parents, I can tell you that), but one would think that the President of the United States would hold himself to a higher ethical standard on this. Especially given a situation where people lost their lives.
You want accountability? Then restore some balance in Washington. Elect Democrats to Congress -- because the only way this President is ever going to see some checks and balances is from the opposition party. And lord knows THIS President needs some serious oversight.
No more lies without accountability. Period.
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We have a very special announcement tonight. Last night we told you that there would be not one but two prizes awarded in
our contest -- the best Joe Klein quote to be voted on by the readers of this blog, and the Charles P. Pierce Award for Excellence in Klein Snark to be awarded by a panel of FDL judges. Our version of the Thalberg.
But we know how these things go -- with decisions this subjective there will inevitably be charges of jury tampering, favoratism and just plain bad taste. And thus we have enlisted the outside assistance of a judge with too much at stake to be swayed by the lures both sexual and chemical inevitably proffered in exchange for such a crown, someone who would never allow his good name to be sullied by succumbing to base and carnal temptations.
The sole judge for the Charles P. Pierce Award for Excellence in Klein Snark will be noneother than Charles P. Pierce himself, who set the gold standard with
this piece.
So sharpen your quills and get ready for tonight's contestants as we enter the second round semi-final of "Joe Klein, In His Own Words":
10. "This month, Democrats may use procedural tricks to stop all Senate business and block a Republican effort to eliminate minority filibuster rights and jam through seven federal judges proposed by the President. The fight may be winnable, but it is a culture of law cul-de-sac. The Democrats will be shutting down the Senate over a matter of process rather than substance, a pinhead of principle most civilians will find difficult to understand. The Armageddon of confirmation battles—over the next Supreme Court Justice—will probably follow soon after, and it may cement a public impression of the Democrats as a party obsessed with the legal processes that preserve the status quo on issues such as abortion, gay rights and extreme secularism—and little else. The political damage may be considerable."
11. "[I will] have a lot more to say on this (NSA) issue next week -- but first I have to learn more about it."
12. "The notion of calling it wiretapping is questionable, I think, although I'm still not entirely sure."
13. "People like me who favor this program don't yet know enough about it yet. Those opposed to it know even less -- and certainly less than I do."
14. "The president has said privately he doubts that he will ever get credit for this eruption of American diversity. But admirably, he has never really asked for credit. He hasn't gone around trumpeting the fact that during his first term, the Secretary of State and the National Security Adviser were the first African Americans to hold those positions. Or that there were four women in his Cabinet. Or that Gonzales would be the first Hispanic Attorney General."
15. "And then there is the pessimism problem. Populists of both strains tend to believe that the system is rigged by dark and powerful forces that prevent the little guy from getting ahead, which means they tend to be angry. They also tend to be dividers rather than uniters. Even the nice-guy populism attempted by former Senator John Edwards in the last presidential campaign had a divisive edge. His theme was "two Americas." Pessimism, anger and unsubtle divisiveness tend to be total nonstarters in American politics."
16. "In fact, liberal Democrats are about as far from the American mainstream on [the NSA spying] as Republicans were when they invaded the privacy of Terri Schiavo's family in the right-to-die case last year. But there is a difference. National security is a far more important issue, and until the Democrats make clear that they will err on the side of aggressiveness in the war against al-Qaeda, they will probably not regain the majority in Congress or the country."
17. "Bill Clinton gives the appearance of taking stands-for some sort of tax cut, some sort of welfare reform, some sort of balanced budget-but these are ploys, mirages: they exist only to undermine positions taken by the Republicans. He doesn't fight for anything substantive-except of course, re-election. ...He has fallen into the dangerous habit of lip synching the presidency: he gives the appearance of leadership, but not the substance."
18. "And so the President finds himself in an exceedingly odd position for a post-Reagan Republican. He is acting like a Democrat, standing for abstract principles and high-minded long-term projects in the face of a public demanding easy answers and immediate results."
Remember to vote by number and only once for the best quote. Your analysis will be evaluated separately for snark factor, so please argue your choice passionately for the benefit of your fellow commenters. The winners will receive a copy of the
newly released DVD of Action.
Bring your best work because
someone -- we don't know who -- is obsessed with searching Technorati for the name Joe Klein.
Let the snark begin.
First Night Semi-Final Round
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But who knew it was going to be
so direct.
George Bush
with Diane Sawyer, September 1, 2005:
"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees. They did anticipate a serious storm. But these levees got breached. And as a result, much of New Orleans is flooded. And now we are having to deal with it and will."
But now according to a new tape unearthed by the AP, we see Bush being advised by experts the day before the storm hit:
"I also make absolutely clear to everyone that there is the potential for a large loss of life in the coastal areas from the storm surge" and "I don't think anybody can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not, but that's obviously a very very grave concern."
Despite this, George Bush made a decision to stay on vacation in Crawford.
From the AP:
Homeland Security officials have said the ``fog of war'' blinded them early on to the magnitude of the disaster. But the video and transcripts show federal and local officials discussed threats clearly, reviewed long-made plans and understood Katrina would wreak devastation of historic proportions. ``I'm sure it will be the top 10 or 15 when all is said and done,'' National Hurricane Center's Max Mayfield warned the day Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast.
Hoping to counteract the damage of the story, the White House
leaked Newsweek transcripts from daily noon FEMA conference calls during and after Katrina to show how engaged and concerned Dubya was. Trouble is, these are transcripts that they had initially refused to provide to congressional investigators:
[T]he administration initially told Congress that the transcript for the Aug. 29 call -- the call congressional investigators were most curious about, given that it occurred as the hurricane was actually battering the Gulf Coast -- did not exist, with officials initially telling Capitol Hill that someone at FEMA or Homeland Security forgot to push the button on a tape recorder.
"Everybody has been looking for that transcript," former FEMA chief Michael Brown said Wednesday.
A White House official unexpectedly e-mailed the transcript to NEWSWEEK earlier today Wednesday morning -- initially without explaining that it was the missing transcript. Two officials familiar with congressional investigations said that the document was turned over to Capitol Hill investigators Tuesday night. Administration officials told both Congress and NEWSWEEK that FEMA officials in Atlanta had taped the Aug. 29 conference call by aiming a video camera at a TV screen rather than following the usual recording procedure. The videotape was subsequently discovered and transcribed.
I can't recall offhand how many times the Administration has invoked the "dog ate my homework" excuse this year, but I'd have to take off my shoes to count them.
They really had to weigh the benefits of this one -- in order to try and prove that a narcissistic, elitist frat boy actually gave a shit about a bunch of dying poor people they had to bust their own lies:
Under questioning by congressional investigators as to why he went home at 10 p.m. on Aug. 29 amid conflicting reports about flooding and levee breaches, Rapuano indicated that the administration did not believe the White House was supposed to be a command center. He says he went home believing that FEMA's Michael Brown had all the resources he needed and that extensive search-and-rescue efforts were under way in New Orleans. Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, said earlier this year: "The White House is not an operational institution. It doesn't run the nitty-gritty in natural disasters, and it doesn't direct bombing sorties in Iraq."
Some congressional investigators say it now seems somewhat ironic that having belatedly found the Aug. 29 conference-call transcript, the administration is now touting it as evidence of deep presidential -- and White House -- involvement in the crisis.
Once again, the White House proves that when Congress asks for documents for the purposes of a legitimate investigation -- well, that's just beyond the pale, executive privilege, national security, blah blah blah, fill in the blank. But leaking those very same documents to spin the press in a convenient moment of CYA, or if something needs to be declassified as part of a larger PR smear campaign, well that's just fine and dandy.
I don't know what deity might be brewing up this perfect storm of payback for Dubya but he does not seem to be interested in having a friendly conversation with the Boy King at the moment.
(graphic by Dark Black)
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Just got off the phone with Sara Wheat, Executive Director of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas who told me that NARAL has endorsed Ciro Rodriguez. They've also donated $5,000 to his campaign.
Sarah said, "Ciro was such a strong ally in the US house, with a 100% voting record for supporting reproductive health and pro-choice legislation. With so many right-wing extremists in the US Congress, we need someone like Ciro who understands that most Texans are pro-choice."
This is really exciting and exactly the kind of thing NARAL should be doing -- jumping into primary races when there's a clear-cut distinction between a pro-choice candidate (Rodriguez) and an anti-choice candidate (Cuellar). The endorsement was made by the NARAL national PAC, so despite the fact that they continue to endorse Lincoln Chafee they are doing something right.
We've kicked 'em when they're wrong so let's thank 'em when they're right. Please let NARAL know how much we appreciate their support of Ciro and their efforts to kick the DINO Cuellar back into the unemployment line, and while you're at it tell them you hope they will endorse Ned Lamont in his race against Joe Lieberman:
NARAL Pro-Choice America
1156 15th Street, NW Suite 700
Washington, DC 20005
Main Number: 202.973.3000
Main Fax: 202.973.3096
can@ProChoiceAmerica.org
feedback form
And we're closing in on
our ActBlue page as the single biggest donor to Ciro's campaign. How much would I love to be screaming from the rafters that the largest internet donation to Ciro was pro-choice money? That's a headline. That might just knock some sense into the Democratic establishment. That would be a message that even lunkhead Democratic "strategists" like
Steve Elmendorf and
Bob Doyle -- who plan to use the internet as an ATM for the upcoming election -- will be able to hear.
Remember -- every $50 dollars you give today puts someone on the ground in Texas walking the precinct for next week's primary vote. You can make the lesson so clear that even DC cement heads can understand it
by giving here.
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Last week we
initiated a campaign to get people in Kansas writing letters to the editors in their local papers with remarkable success. Although many of them haven't yet appeared, numerous people have been contacted by the papers and told that they will in fact be published. We'll have a round-up as soon as we get something more concrete.
The deadline for the new vote by the Senate Intelligence Committee as to whether they will investigate the illegal NSA wiretaps is March 7. In targeting Kansas we've already hit committee Chairman Pat Roberts, and today we want to direct our energies toward writing letters targeting wavering Republicans Olympia Snowe and Chuck Hagel in Maine and Nebraska respectively.
Glenn Greenwald's
post here provides good talking points, and as his
post from today notes that it has become apparent based on news reports that there are other warrantless surveillance programs aimed at Americans besides the one the NYT reported on. All the more reason the committee cannot shirk its duty to investigate.
A contact list of
Nebraska papers here.
A contact list of
Maine papers here.
Remember -- personal, carefully crafted letters from local addresses are much more likely to get printed, so we want to encourage people who actually live in these states, or have some kind of connection with them to do so.
Tomorrow we'll be asking people to call Snowe's and Hagel's offices, so stay tuned.
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Touching:
Dear Dr. Dobson:
This is just a short note to express my heartfelt thanks to you and the entire staff of Focus on the Family for your help and support during the past few challenging months.
I would also greatly appreciate it if you would convey my appreciation to the good people from all parts of the country who wrote to tell me that they were praying for me and for my family during this period.
As I said when I spoke at my formal investiture at the White House last week, the prayers of so many people from around the country were a palpable and powerful force.
As long as I serve on the Supreme Court I will keep in mind the trust that has been placed in me.
I hope that we'll have the opportunity to meet personally at some point in the future.
In the meantime my entire family and I hope that you and the Focus on the Family staff know how we appreciate all that you have done.
Sincerely yours,
Samuel Alito
The fight against the next repulsive Supreme Court nominee begins
now with a wake-up call to the Democratic party: pro-choice matters, gay rights matter, and don't come calling on the blogosphere with your hand out unless you're willing to fight this Dobson shit tooth-and-nail. Ciro Rodriguez is
neck-and-neck in a Congressional red state race against an anti-choice, anti-gay rights, pro-war so-called Democrat. Every $50 he gets today will
send someone to walk a precinct next week on March 7, the day of the primary.
Let's show up now. Today. When it really matters.
You can donate to Ciro
here.
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Remember that whole "we'll get Osama, dead or alive" thing?
Still waiting... 4 years, 5 months, 18 days and counting...
(Thanks to
Froomkin on the math. It's an extra good column today. Just FYI. Plus, graphics love to
TBHPolitoons.)
NOTE: Yep, you guys were right. That's what I get for not double-checking. Thanks for the heads up.
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The WaPo is reporting this morning that more than one in three American servicepeople report suffering from mental distress after returning from Iraq.
It's unfortunate that the Bush Administration and the VA have consistently refused to raise funding for treatment of PTSD and other mental issues to correspond with the increase in our veterans requesting treatment over the last few years. In fact,
it gets worse:
The Administration targeted many severely-disabled veterans suffering with mental health problems by seeking review of their benefits, subjecting them to the trauma of re-documenting their claims even though the errors that prompted the review were the result of administrative mistakes and not fraud, as the Administration implied. The Administration has also halted a congressionally mandated study to examine the long-term health effects of PTSD on Vietnam veterans.
Read more
here -- and it's not just mental health issues that are under-funded.
This is shameful, and something that your representatives in Congress ought to hear about. And something that would make a great issue for a letter to the editor in your local newspaper or a call to a local talk radio show. Our soldiers risk their lives day in and day out -- they deserve a helluva lot better from this Administration than a deliberately underfunded system of support year after year.
We knew going into Afghanistan and Iraq that the number of injured veterans was likely to rise -- as it always does when you engage in an armed conflict. That this Administration and the Republican-controlled Congress failed to plan for this increase -- by budgeting and staffing adequately for it up front -- is dishonest and wrong. And it dishonors the veterans who put their lives and their limbs on the line for all of us. Shame on Congress and the President for failing our veterans at a time when they need us most. For shame.
It's bad enough that this Administration is asking soldiers to
re-pay them for body armor pulled off their bleeding bodies because the proper paperwork wasn't done in the middle of a combat arena, or that foreign troops are
getting priority over our own national guard troops in receiving upgraded body armor from the DoD -- but this VA underfunding issue is really the last straw for me.
Our veterans deserve better. George Bush and his Administration have an obligation to the men and women they send in harms way to provide adequate medical care for these soldiers when they return from the field of combat. We owe them that much. And I expect the Bush Administration and the Republican-controlled Congress to step up to the plate and honor these veterans by doing the right thing.
UPDATE: SteveO, posting at
Bob Geiger's blog, provides a link for you to Hold a Bake Sale to help a soldier get proper body armor.
UPDATE #2: Well, this is
appalling (via Wonkette). Thanks to reader radish for bringing it to my attention. According to Wonkette, the US Marine Corps has decided our soldiers are fighting for Communist China or Stalinist Russia or something -- because they are heavily censoring what our soldiers can or can't read -- including limiting access to any news organizations or blogs who would *gasp* dare criticize the Administration. E-mail access has also been blocked (wouldn't want our soldiers learning anything contrary to what our government wants them to know, now would we?) You know, in the not so distant past, this nation valued the First Amendment and freedom of speech and liberty. It all seems so quaint now, doesn't it? (And who the hell decided that soldiers are gonna stay cheery on the battlefield without access to internet porn? Sheesh.)
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That memory defense is looking more fuzzy all the time
for Scooter Libby.
"A CIA employee assigned to provide daily intelligence briefs to the Vice President and Libby has handwritten notes indicating that Libby referred to 'Joe Wilson' and 'Valerie Wilson' by those names in conversation with the briefer on June 14, 2003," Fitzgerald wrote in a recently unsealed brief.
The filing suggests Cheney may have been present when Libby griped to his CIA briefer about agency officials slamming the veep in the press.
Seven officials have testified that Libby raised the CIA spy with them before columnist Robert Novak outed her.
Hmmmm...seven officials. Shall we play a game of "Who is pointing the finger at Scooter?" I'm in for Rove in a heartbeat if it saves his butt, but who else has "testified" that Libby raised the issue of Valerie Wilson with them? And who else might he have spoken to that has not yet been asked to give testimony? (WHIG, anyone?)
Will try and get my hands on the filing today, and will report back on any other interesting tidbits. One thing that leapt out at me in
the NYDailyNews article was that "Fitzgerald also revealed that his investigators also confiscated computers."
My, that IS interesting, isn't it. But the question is, whose computers? From the office of the Vice President? From the Executive Office of the President? From a number of WHIG members?
Is this why Stephen Hadley was telling friends that he expected to be indicted back in October of last year? Was this the cause of Rove's nervousness? (Because the FBI marching into your office with a warrant and seizing the computer off your desk can be a bit nervewracking, I'm sure.) Is this what led to the testimony of two Rove aides -- and Rove's fourth G/J appearance?
No idea -- but one thing is certain, that disclosure alone tells me that Fitz's investigative team has been doing things by the book, no matter how much power the people being investigated wield on a day to day basis. And that alone makes me very happy indeed. I've seen what these sorts of investigators can do in piecing together disparate elements to weave an entire backstory into a case -- and I would never, ever want to be in their investigative crosshairs. Especially when they feel they have been lied to, mislead, and obstructed.
You should see what the white collar crime unit guys can do with a hard drive that has been "wiped." I saw a kiddie porn guy break down in tears at a hearing once just seeing what these folks had reconstructed for me out of a hard drive he tried to burn...literally, burn, as in fire. Imagine what they could do with back-up computer tapes and the like, along with a hard drive and a network as intricate as they must have at the White House.
The FBI doesn't take kindly to people flouting the law. And when those people happen to be public officials who take an oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws in the execution of their public duties...well, let's just say that is doubly offensive. All the more incentive to keep digging until you get to the bottom of the scheme, wouldn't you say?
Did I mention that the investigation is ongoing? Oh yeah, more coffee for me today. Lots more digging to do.
(Image via
All Things Beautiful. Thanks to pollyusa for the reminder on this article last night -- I meant to get to it yesterday, but life interfered, so we get a Fitz fix this morning instead.)
UPDATE: By the way, if you have a moment this morning, please take the time to fill out
the Blogads survey. They do this survey every year to get an idea of the sorts of people who read political blogs -- to help them sell advertisers on buying ads on blogs like this one. And those ads help Jane and I to defer the costs of running the blog, and perhaps buy ourselves some new pens, notebooks,
Manolos and such. If you do fill out the survey, please consider answering "Firedoglake" for question #23. Thanks in advance for everyone who does this -- it's a great service for all the bloggers who do work on the political scene for advertisers to understand we have educated, savvy readers. (Thanks to
C&L for the link on this.)
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