TruthOut.Org: Rove To Be Indicted

Would this be a late 2005 or an early 2006 Fitzmas present? From TruthOut:

Despite vehement denials by his attorney, who said this week that Karl Rove is neither a "target" nor in danger of being indicted in the CIA leak case, the special counsel leading the investigation has already written up charges against Rove, and a grand jury is expected to vote on whether to indict the Deputy White House Chief of Staff sometime next week, sources knowledgeable about the probe said Friday afternoon. * * *

Luskin was informed via a target letter that Fitzgerald is prepared to charge Rove for perjury and lying to investigators during Rove’s appearances before the grand jury in 2004 and in interviews with investigators in 2003 when he was asked how and when he discovered that Valerie Plame Wilson worked for the CIA, and whether he shared that information with the media.

If the grand jury returns an indictment Rove would become the second White House official - and one of the most powerful political operatives in the country - charged in the case since the leak investigation began in the fall of 2003.

In the event that an indictment is handed up by the grand jury it would be filed under seal. A press release would then be issued by Fitzgerald’s press office indicating that the special prosecutor will hold a news conference, likely on a Friday afternoon, sources close to the case said. The media would be given more than 24 hours notice of a press conference, sources added.

Luskin was at his office when called for comment but his assistant said he would not take the call or comment on this story.

In recent weeks, sources close to the case said, Fitzgerald's staff has met with Rove's legal team several times to discuss a change in Rove's status in the case - from subject to target - based on numerous inconsistencies in Rove's testimony, whether he discussed Plame Wilson with reporters before her name and CIA status were published in newspaper reports, and whether he participated in a smear campaign against her husband.

The meetings between Luskin and Fitzgerald which took place on several occasions a few weeks ago were called to discuss a timeframe to schedule a return to the grand jury by Rove to testify about, among other things, 250 pages of emails that resurfaced February 6 from Vice President Dick Cheney's office and the Office of President Bush in which Rove wrote to former White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card about strategizing an attack against Wilson, sources familiar with the case said.

Neil Young's "Living With War"

You can listen to Neil's new album here. It rocks.

Quote Of The Day

"Only problem with this case is that it’s hard to tell which ones are the whores."

A comment made by "trueblue" at the Think Progress site with regard to a Duke-Stir-related story contending that defense contractors may have supplied as many as a half dozen congressmen with prostitutes.

Holy Shit!

It looks like Tyler Drumheller's appearance on 60 Minutes last Sunday was the straw that broke the camel's back for the Bolsheviks in the Bush Regime.

As you may remember, Drumheller, the CIA's top man in Europe during the run-up to the Iraq Catastrophe, revealed that Bush, Cheney, and Rice knew a year before the U.S. invasion that Iraq had no active WMD programs. Here's BushCo's apparent response to Drumheller's accusation (from The National Journal):

The CIA has imposed new and tighter restrictions on the books, articles, and opinion pieces published by former employees who are still contractors with the intelligence agency. According to several former CIA officials affected by the new policy, the rules are intended to suppress criticism of the Bush administration and of the CIA. The officials say the restrictions amount to an unprecedented political "appropriateness" test at odds with earlier CIA policies on outside publishing.

The move is a significant departure from the CIA's longtime practice of allowing ex-employees to take critical or contrary positions in public, particularly when they are contractors paid to advise the CIA on important topics and to publish their assessments.

Good Talking Points Memo Post

I liked this post from Josh Marshall:

The president is unpopular for a lot of reasons. The biggest reason is probably Iraq -- in all its many manifestations. But a very big reason -- and one that suffuses many of the other reasons -- is a growing sense that the president and his chief advisors are dishonest, incompetent, cynical and possibly corrupt.

That's not great. But when you think about this coming election, and the stakes for the White House, you need to figure that that's all come about without any independent, let alone antagonistic or hostile, investigations into the key issues that have led to this souring view of the president.

Would the president look better after a new look at the Iraq intel bamboozlement that wasn't controlled by Sen. Roberts? How about an investigation into the executive branch side of the Abramoff scandal? What about a look into the Plame affair? What about the folks in Rumsfeld's office who knew about Duke's corruption but looked the other way?

Aggrieved opposition parties can go overboard when they come back into power and damage themselves -- the Republicans in 1946 and 1994 are good examples. But the Bush administration has built up a very big backlog of bad acts.

Get ready for a rough summer and fall. The White House can't afford to lose either house of Congress.

Danimal and I were just talking the other day about how remarkable Bush's low approval ratings are given that the GOP controls everything, which of course means that there have been no serious investigations into any of the GOP corruption. When you also consider that the Corporate Media pretty much covered up for Bush all those years, the fall from grace becomes even more remarkable.

I criticize the American people a lot for being easily manipulated -- think November 2004 -- but Americans have really been able to see through all the BushCo bullshit lately. It kind of reminds me of Clinton's second term, when the American people were able to see through all the GOP crap and Clinton was able to maintain a strong approval rating during an impeachment.

And speaking of BushCo corruption, it looks like Scooter's latest legal maneuver failed:

A federal judge refused Thursday to dismiss charges against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former top White House aide who was indicted on perjury and obstruction charges last year in the CIA leak scandal.

In a 31-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton turned down a motion by lawyers for Vice President Dick Cheney's one-time top assistant, who challenged the authority of Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald to handle the case.

Libby's lawyers had argued that Fitzgerald was given too much power — more than the attorney general — and that the appointment should have been made by the president with the Senate's approval.

Walton said Thursday he did not need to "look far" in the law to reject the claim by Libby's defense team. The judge said there is no question the attorney general can delegate any of his functions.

This Should Be Fun

Tony Snow is BushCo's new Press Secretary:

President Bush on Wednesday named Tony Snow, a conservative pundit who has nonetheless been critical of the administration, as his press secretary — the latest move in Bush’s effort to remake his troubled White House.

“He sometimes has disagreed with me,” Bush said of Snow’s comments in print and television. Bush said he had asked Snow about those comments, and got this response from Snow: “You should have heard what I said about the other guy.”

That's a pretty funny joke, Tony. But Think Progress has a list of some of the things Snow has said about Bush in the past, and some of it wasn't very nice:

– Bush has “lost control of the federal budget and cannot resist the temptation to stop raiding the public fisc.” [3/17/06]

– “George W. Bush and his colleagues have become not merely the custodians of the largest government in the history of humankind, but also exponents of its vigorous expansion.” [3/17/06]

– “President Bush distilled the essence of his presidency in this year’s State of the Union Address: brilliant foreign policy and listless domestic policy.” [2/3/06]

– “George Bush has become something of an embarrassment.” [11/11/05]

– Bush “has a habit of singing from the Political Correctness hymnal.” [10/7/05]

– “No president has looked this impotent this long when it comes to defending presidential powers and prerogatives.” [9/30/05]

– Bush “has given the impression that [he] is more eager to please than lead, and that political opponents can get their way if they simply dig in their heels and behave like petulant trust-fund brats, demanding money and favor — now!” [9/30/05]

– “When it comes to federal spending, George W. Bush is the boy who can’t say no. In each of his three years at the helm, the president has warned Congress to restrain its spending appetites, but so far nobody has pushed away from the table mainly because the president doesn’t seem to mean what he says.” [The Detroit News, 12/28/03]

– “The president doesn’t seem to give a rip about spending restraint.” [The Detroit News, 12/28/03]

– “Bush, for all his personal appeal, ultimately bolstered his detractors’ claims that he didn’t have the drive and work ethic to succeed.” [11/16/00]

– “Little in the character of demeanor of Al Gore or George Bush makes us say to ourselves: Now, this man is truly special! Little in our present peace and prosperity impels us to say: Give us a great man!” [8/25/00]

– “George W. Bush, meanwhile, talks of a pillowy America, full of niceness and goodwill. Bush has inherited his mother’s attractive feistiness, but he also got his father’s syntax. At one point last week, he stunned a friendly audience by barking out absurd and inappropriate words, like a soul tortured with Tourette’s.” [8/25/00]

– “He recently tried to dazzle reporters by discussing the vagaries of Congressional Budget Office economic forecasts, but his recitation of numbers proved so bewildering that not even his aides could produce a comprehensible translation. The English Language has become a minefield for the man, whose malaprops make him the political heir not of Ronald Reagan, but Norm Crosby.” [8/25/00]

– “On the policy side, he has become a classical dime-store Democrat. He gladly will shovel money into programs that enjoy undeserved prestige, such as Head Start. He seems to consider it mean-spirited to shut down programs that rip-off taxpayers and mislead supposed beneficiaries.” [8/25/00]

Of course, Snow will probably just claim that he was lying when he said all these things about his new boss. But it goes without saying that the White House press corps will have a field day with all this, particularly if Snow starts acting like an asshole in his new job (which I'm sure he will do). I can hear it now:

"Tony, I have a two part question: (1) Isn't the White House's latest proposal simply an example of -- to use your own words from back in December 2003 -- the President acting like the boy who just couldn't say no, and (2) isn't this simply another example of -- to use one of your phrases -- the president not giving a rip about spending restraint?"

FauxNews States Its Terms RE: White House Press Room Take-Over

From The Hot Line (via Political Wire):

The Hotline has more on the likely new White House press secretary: "Tony Snow is said by Republicans familiar with the negotiations to have asked for guaranteed access to the president's ear and to an unusually large degree of latitude to reconfigure the WH press operation. That pleases the new chief of staff, who wants to relegitimize the press podium in the Brady briefing room."

"But Snow, not content to be a herald, also wants near-complete control over what he says from the podium, be it bromides, platitudes or substance. That would encroach on the broad portfolio of responsibilities that Dan Bartlett claims for himself."

Senator Pat Roberts Strikes Again

I really hate this guy:

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said he wants to divide his panel’s inquiry into the Bush administration’s handling of Iraq-related intelligence into two parts, a move that would push off its most politically controversial elements to a later time.

The inquiry has dragged on for more than two years, a slow pace that prompted Democrats to force the Senate into an extraordinary closed-door session in November. Republicans then promised to speed up the probe.

The Democrats should be able to use Roberts' maneuvering to their advantage, perhaps in a campaign ad illustrating why GOP control of all branches of federal government is a bad thing for the country.

It's Amazing What A 32% Approval Rating Can Do

The apocalypse must nearly be upon us. Or Hell just froze over. One of the two, because Bush has ordered an investigation into gas prices:

President Bush is ordering an investigation into whether the price of gasoline has been illegally manipulated, his spokesman said Monday.

During the last few days, Bush asked his Energy and Justice departments to open inquiries into possible cheating in the gasoline markets, said White House press secretary Scott McClellan. Bush planned to announce the action Tuesday during a speech in Washington.

Bush is under pressure to do something about gas prices that have reached nearly $3 a gallon. In a new CNN poll, 69 percent of respondents said gasoline price increases had caused them personal hardship. Other polls suggest that voters favor Democrats over Republicans on the issue, and President Bush gets low marks for handling gas prices.

Of course, this has nothing to do with the fact that the latest CNN poll has Bush's approval rating at 32%, the lowest of his presidency so far. I can't wait to see what happens when his approval numbers drop into the high 20s. Maybe he'll fire Donald Rumsfeld.

Actually, if past BushCo investigations are any indication, this current investigation will not only find no wrongdoing, but will probably result in the CEOs of each major oil company receiving a Medal of Freedom.

Bush Impeachment Imminent

Illinois is getting the ball rolling on the impeachment of George W. Bush:

The Illinois General Assembly is about to rock the nation. Members of state legislatures are normally not considered as having the ability to decide issues with a massive impact to the nation as a whole. Representative Karen A. Yarbrough of Illinois' 7th District is about to shatter that perception forever. Representative Yarbrough stumbled on a little known and never utlitized rule of the US House of Representatives, Section 603 of Jefferson's Manual of the Rules of the United States House of Representatives, which allows federal impeachment proceedings to be initiated by joint resolution of a state legislature. From there, Illinois House Joint Resolution 125 (hereafter to be referred to as HJR0125) was born.

California is also using this rule to impeach both Bush and Cheney. Something tells me that this tactic won't work, but merely typing the title to this post felt great. Thanks for the link, Slic[k].

Looks Like The Intel Leading Up To The Iraq Debacle Wasn't So Faulty After All

If you missed the 60 Minutes interview of Tyler Drumheller last night, you can read all about it here. Drumheller, a 26-year veteran of the CIA and that agency's top man in Europe during the run-up to the Iraq War, dropped a bombshell during the interview:

[T]he CIA had made a major intelligence breakthrough on Iraq’s nuclear program. Naji Sabri, Iraq’s foreign minister, had made a deal to reveal Iraq’s military secrets to the CIA. Drumheller was in charge of the operation.

"This was a very high inner circle of Saddam Hussein. Someone who would know what he was talking about," Drumheller says.

"You knew you could trust this guy?" Bradley asked.

"We continued to validate him the whole way through," Drumheller replied.

According to Drumheller, CIA Director George Tenet delivered the news about the Iraqi foreign minister at a high-level meeting at the White House, including the president, the vice president and Secretary of State Rice.

At that meeting, Drumheller says, "They were enthusiastic because they said, they were excited that we had a high-level penetration of Iraqis."

What did this high-level source tell him?

"He told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction program," says Drumheller.

"So in the fall of 2002, before going to war, we had it on good authority from a source within Saddam's inner circle that he didn't have an active program for weapons of mass destruction?" Bradley asked.

"Yes," Drumheller replied. He says there was no doubt in his mind at all.

"It directly contradicts, though, what the president and his staff were telling us," Bradley remarked.

"The policy was set," Drumheller says. "The war in Iraq was coming. And they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy."

Drumheller expected the White House to ask for more information from the Iraqi foreign minister.

But he says he was taken aback by what happened. "The group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they're no longer interested," Drumheller recalls. "And we said, 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said, 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change.'"

"And if I understand you correctly, when the White House learned that you had this source from the inner circle of Saddam Hussein, they were thrilled with that," Bradley asked.

"The first we heard, they were. Yes," Drumheller replied.

Once they learned what it was the source had to say — that Saddam Hussein did not have the capability to wage nuclear war or have an active WMD program, Drumheller says, "They stopped being interested in the intelligence."

The White House declined to respond to Drumheller's account of Naji Sabri’s role, but Secretary of State Rice has said that Sabri, the Iraqi foreign minister turned U.S. spy, was just one source, and therefore his information wasn’t reliable.

"They certainly took information that came from single sources on uranium, on the yellowcake story and on several other stories with no corroboration at all and so you can’t say you only listen to one source, because on many issues they only listened to one source," says Drumheller.

"So you’re saying that if there was a single source and that information from that source backed up the case they were trying to build, then that single source was ok, but if it didn’t, then the single source was not ok, because he couldn’t be corroborated," Bradley asked.

"Unfortunately, that’s what it looks like," Drumheller replied.

This is a pretty amazing revelation, particularly given that the Bush Regime and its co-conspirators in Congress have been claiming for the last two years that the Iraq Failure was due to faulty intelligence. Now we know that a high-ranking Iraqi minister -- a member of Saddam's inner circle no less -- was telling us one year before the invasion that Saddam had no WMD and that Bush, Cheney, and Rice had direct knowledge of this.

No wonder Drumheller felt compelled to come forward with this. He supervised a major intelligence victory for the CIA with regard to Iraq, only to have the White House (1) disregard it because it didn't fit in with BushCo's plans for regime change and then (2) blame the CIA for "faulty intelligence" when everything started to go sideways. It makes me wonder how many other Drumhellers are out there with a similar story to tell.

What I find particularly remarkable is that the folks planning the invasion of Iraq didn't want to talk to Foreign Minister Sabri about anything, despite the fact that he undoubtedly had extensive knowledge with regard to Iraq's military capabilities. Sabri could have given these planners information that might have saved American lives during our invasion and subsequent occupation, but for some reason these planners weren't interested in saving American lives.

But it gets worse. Josh Marshall did a follow-up on all this:

Drumheller's account is pretty probative evidence on the question of whether the White House politicized and cherry-picked the Iraq intelligence.

So why didn't we hear about any of this in the reports of those Iraq intel commissions that have given the White House a clean bill of health on distorting the intel and misleading the country about what we knew about Iraq's alleged WMD programs?

Think about it. It's devastating evidence against their credibility on a slew of levels.

Did you read in any of those reports -- even in a way that would protect sources and methods -- that the CIA had turned a key member of the Iraqi regime, that that guy had said there weren't any active weapons programs, and that the White House lost interest in what he was saying as soon as they realized it didn't help the case for war? What about what he said about the Niger story?

Did the Robb-Silbermann Commission not hear about what Drumheller had to say? What about the Roberts Committee?

I asked Drumheller just those questions when I spoke to him early this evening. He was quite clear. He was interviewed by the Robb-Silbermann Commission. Three times apparently.

Did he tell them everything he revealed on tonight's 60 Minutes segment. Absolutely.

Drumheller was also interviewed twice by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (the Roberts Committee) but apparently only after they released their summer 2004 report.

Now, quite a few of us have been arguing for almost two years now that those reports were fundamentally dishonest in the story they told about why we were so badly misled in the lead up to war. The fact that none of Drumheller's story managed to find its way into those reports, I think, speaks volumes about the agenda that the writers of those reports were pursuing.

"I was stunned," Drumheller told me, when so little of the stuff he had told the commission's and the committee's investigators ended up in their reports. His colleagues, he said, were equally "in shock" that so little of what they related ended up in the reports either.

What Drumheller has to say adds quite a lot to our knowledge of what happened in the lead up to war. But what it shows even more clearly is that none of this stuff has yet been investigated by anyone whose principal goal is not covering for the White House.

My conclusion from all this? Expect massive GOP-fueled election fraud this Fall. There is no way the Republicans can afford to lose either the Senate or the House in November. The last thing Bush needs is someone doing a real investigation into these issues.

Crooks and Liars has video of the Drumheller interview here.

Martin's New Blog

I was wondering why Martin hadn't put up a post at his blog for a few months. The reason is because he has a new blog that he didn't tell me about. Definitely check it out -- the link is on the right.

His post for a drinking game based on the show "24" is pretty good.

John Dean On The "October Surprise"

John Dean makes some suggestions with regard to what this year's October Surpise might be:

If anyone doubts that Bush, Cheney, Rove and their confidants are planning an "October Surprise" to prevent the Republicans from losing control of Congress, then he or she has not been observing this presidency very closely.

What will that surprise be? It's the most closely held secret of the Administration.

How risky will it be? Bush is a whatever-it-takes risk-taker, the consequences be damned.

One possibility is that Dick Cheney will resign as Vice President for "health reasons," and become a senior counselor to the president. And Bush will name a new vice president - a choice geared to increase his popularity, as well as someone electable in 2008. It would give his sinking administration a new face, and new life.

The immensely popular Rudy Giuliani seems the most likely pick, if Giuliani is willing. (A better option for Giuliani might be to hold off, and tacitly position himself as the Republican anti-Bush in 2008.) But Condoleezza Rice, John McCain, Bill Frist, and more are possibilities.

Bush's second and more likely, surprise could be in the area of national security: If he could achieve a Great Powers coalition (of Russia, China, the United Kingdom, France, and so on) presenting a united-front "no nukes" stance to Iran, it would be his first diplomatic coup and a political triumph.

But more likely, Bush may mount a unilateral attack on Iran's nuclear facilities - hoping to rev up his popularity. (It's a risky strategy: A unilateral hit on Iran may both trigger devastating Iran-sponsored terrorist attacks in Iraq, with high death tolls, and increase international dislike of Bush for his bypass of the U.N. But as an active/negative President, Bush hardly shies away from risk.) Another rabbit-out-of-the-hat possibility: the capture of Osama bin Laden.

Thanks for the link, Slic[k].

Did BushCo Intentionally Blow An Opportunity To Reduce Friction With Iran?

I hope members of the Mainstream Media pick up on this. It looks like Iran was making back-channel overtures to the Bush Administration back in 2003 -- shortly after Bush declared "mission accomplished" in Iraq -- for "comprehensive negotiations to resolve bilateral differences," but the War Mongers running our country would have none of it. Kevin Drum has all the details here, and then offers this suggestion:

[Q]uit letting Cheney's crackpots run foreign policy and talk to Iran. After all, the administration's ideologues killed an opportunity to ratchet down tensions three years ago, and since then things have only gotten worse: Iran has elected a wingnut president, they've made progress on nuclear enrichment, gained considerable influence in Iraq, and increased their global economic leverage as oil supplies have gotten tighter. So why blow another chance? If the talks fail, then they fail. But what possible reason can there be to refuse to even discuss things with Iran — unless you're trying to leave no alternative to war?

Even though the invasion of Iraq was a huge blunder, the Bush Regime could have at least used that invasion to put some pressure on Iran. Hell, Iran was asking for negotiations. What's the old rule again -- always negotiate from a position of strength. It certainly appeared back in May of 2003 that we were in a position of strength (it took several months for the Iraq insurgency to start making major headway).

But Cheney and company were apparently saving Iran for a later war, obviously thinking that Iraq would soon flower into the greatest democracy in the Middle East. Oops.

Now, BushCo refuses to negotiate with Iran, opting instead to let other countries do it. Harry Reid recently expressed regret with regard to BushCo's inability to engage Iran diplomatically:

The Bush administration is relying too heavily on other countries in the international effort to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, according to Sen. Harry Reid.

Reid, D-Nev., said the administration should be taking the lead, but instead is relying on Germany, France and Great Britain to convince Iran to end its uranium enrichment program.

"It is hard to comprehend," Reid said Tuesday in Reno. "We should be involved at trying to arrive at a diplomatic solution. ... Not just these three countries."

Reid said the Middle East is a "powder keg" because of U.S. failures in Iraq, the rise of fundamentalism and the recent election of Hamas in Palestine.

"Our not being involved diplomatically in trying to solve the situation in Iran shows the Bush failure in foreign policy there and elsewhere."

And he said the U.S. has no military option in Iran.

"We don't have the resources to do it" because of the ongoing war in Iraq," he said.

BushCo's ability to consistently do the wrong thing never ceases to amaze me.

Thirty-Three Percent

The latest FoxNews poll gives Bush a 33% approval rating:

More Americans disapprove than approve of how George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and Congress are doing their jobs, while a majority approves of Condoleezza Rice. President Bush’s approval hits a record low of 33 percent this week, clearly damaged by sinking support among Republicans. * * *

President Bush’s job approval rating slipped this week and stands at a new low of 33 percent approve, down from 36 percent two weeks ago and 39 percent in mid-March. A year ago this time, 47 percent approved and two years ago 50 percent approved (April 2004).

Did I mention this is a FoxNews poll?

Is George W. Bush The Worst President In American History?

Princeton History Professor Sean Wilentz chimes in on what he thinks might be President George W. Bush's eventual place in history, and it ain't pretty. From Rolling Stone (via a heads-up from Slic[k]):

George W. Bush's presidency appears headed for colossal historical disgrace. Barring a cataclysmic event on the order of the terrorist attacks of September 11th, after which the public might rally around the White House once again, there seems to be little the administration can do to avoid being ranked on the lowest tier of U.S. presidents. And that may be the best-case scenario. Many historians are now wondering whether Bush, in fact, will be remembered as the very worst president in all of American history.

The reason I think Bush will be remember as one of if not the worst of the American presidents is because of the deadly combination of (1) over-the-top incompetence, (2) supreme arrogance, and (3) unfortunate historical timing. Wilentz cites other examples of awful chief executives -- e.g., James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Herbert Hoover -- and explains why Bush will probably end up being the worst of that bunch:

Calamitous presidents, faced with enormous difficulties -- Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Hoover and now Bush -- have divided the nation, governed erratically and left the nation worse off. In each case, different factors contributed to the failure: disastrous domestic policies, foreign-policy blunders and military setbacks, executive misconduct, crises of credibility and public trust. Bush, however, is one of the rarities in presidential history: He has not only stumbled badly in every one of these key areas, he has also displayed a weakness common among the greatest presidential failures -- an unswerving adherence to a simplistic ideology that abjures deviation from dogma as heresy, thus preventing any pragmatic adjustment to changing realities. Repeatedly, Bush has undone himself, a failing revealed in each major area of presidential performance.

It's hard to argue with that, particularly when you add to the mix his inability to outright fire supremely incompetent people (Rumsfeld still has his job, and Condi Rice and Paul Wolfowitz were actually promoted).

And unfortunately for us, we've had this loser during a particularly calamitous time in our history. I'm not just talking about the 9-11 attacks. Global warming has already started wreaking havoc on this country as well as the rest of the world, and Bush has not only done nothing to slow it down -- his administration has actually attempted to cover up its very existence. Unless Bush is forced out of office -- or unless he has a change of heart in the next year or two -- this country will have wasted eight years by not dealing with an issue that even Bush's own Pentagon admits is the most dangerous security threat this country currently faces.

But let's get back to the whole 9-11 issue. After a promising initial response, Bush ultimately responded to 9-11 by . . . invading a country that had nothing to do with 9-11, and then doing it in the most incompetent way imaginable. The decision to invade Iraq will undoubtedly go down as the greatest American foreign policy blunder ever. We'll be feeling the effects of that mistake for decades to come.

And if all those colossal failures weren't enough, we also have the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the images related to BushCo's inept response to that particular catastrophe, images which are seared into the minds of people all over the world. I suspect that even folks around the world who hate Bush's America were horrified by the pictures of American citizens dying on their own streets and dead bodies floating in downtown New Orleans -- images which showed that the greatest nation in the history of the world may not be as great as everyone thought.

The problem is that everyone in this country knows that we are a lot better than what the images in the Katrina aftermath portrayed. Unfortunately, we are stuck with an enormously incompetent president who actually seems eager to destroy this country. Professor Wilentz makes this particular point very effectively in his article:

According to the Treasury Department, the forty-two presidents who held office between 1789 and 2000 borrowed a combined total of $1.01 trillion from foreign governments and financial institutions. But between 2001 and 2005 alone, the Bush White House borrowed $1.05 trillion, more than all of the previous presidencies combined. Having inherited the largest federal surplus in American history in 2001, he has turned it into the largest deficit ever -- with an even higher deficit, $423 billion, forecast for fiscal year 2006. Yet Bush -- sounding much like Herbert Hoover in 1930 predicting that "prosperity is just around the corner" -- insists that he will cut federal deficits in half by 2009, and that the best way to guarantee this would be to make permanent his tax cuts, which helped cause the deficit in the first place!

But Bush's biggest failure has to be the fact that he could have gone down as one of the greats -- history certainly presented such an opportunity to him -- but he was too stupid to follow a path that would have guaranteed him an honorable place in history. He instead decided to abandon the moderate tone he took during the 2000 campaign to become the most extreme American president ever. He'll have to live with that decision, but unfortunately, so will we.

Even folks like Thomas Friedman are starting to see the danger that Bush represents, particularly in the area of foreign policy:

I look at the Bush national security officials much the way I look at drunken drivers. I just want to take away their foreign policy driver's licenses for the next three years. Sorry, boys and girls, you have to stay home now -- or take a taxi. ... You will not be driving alone. Not with my car. * * *

If ours were a parliamentary democracy, the entire Bush team would be out of office by now, and deservedly so. ... But ours is not a parliamentary system, and while some may feel as if this administration's over, it isn't. So what to do? We can't just take a foreign policy timeout.

Anyway, read Wilentz's Rolling Stone article. It's excellent.

It's always fun to end one of these rants with a song, so here's a good one (thanks for the link, Fredrick).

The Theocrats In Kansas Were Not Amused

The Bible-Beaters on the Kansas Board of Education apparently don't believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Oh ye of little faith:

State Board of Education member Connie Morris took exception Wednesday to a picture of a made-up creature that satirizes the state's new science standards hanging on a Stucky Middle School teacher's door.

Fellow board member Sue Gamble told The Eagle that Morris asked for the picture to be removed.

The creature, called the Flying Spaghetti Monster, is the creation of Bobby Henderson of Corvallis, Ore. It looks like a clump of spaghetti with two eyes sticking out of the top and two meatballs flanking the eyes.

Henderson created the entity and an accompanying mythology on the origin of mankind to make fun of Kansas' recent debate over the teaching of criticisms of evolution, including intelligent design.

In November, the board voted 6-4 to allow criticisms of evolution to be taught in Kansas schools.

Criticism of evolution is OK in Kansas schools, but criticism of the critics of evolution apparently is not.

Stalin would be proud of these people.

Will FauxNews' Tony Snow Be BushCo's New Press Secretary?

From CNN:

"I have given it my all sir and I have given you my all sir, and I will continue to do so as we transition to a new press secretary," McClellan said. He's expected to remain on the job until his replacement is named.

CNN has learned from multiple Republican sources that new White House chief of staff Josh Bolten reached out to Fox News anchor Tony Snow several weeks ago at the White House. Snow, who was a speechwriter for former President George H.W. Bush, had no comment on the story.

Appointing Snow to this position would be a sensible move for two reasons: (1) FoxNews has been the de facto press secretary for the Bush Regime since George W. was appointed to the White House in 2000, so why not formalize this arrangement; and (2) Snow and the rest of the folks at FoxNews are accomplished liars as well as experts at disseminating extremist propaganda. McClelland was never much of a liar.

Harold Returns From The Poker Graveyard

Our poker group played our weekly tournament last night. We had nine players at the start, and the top three would finish in the money. As is the usual pattern lately, Danimal's wife Ease was on a tear. She's won quite a few times in the last few weeks. I was able to bluff a monster pot away from her by representing pocket jacks when I only had a 7-3 offsuit in the pocket; but other than that, she was winning pretty much every major contested pot.

Anyway, we got down to six players and I was somewhere in the middle as far as chip stack size goes. I called pre-flop with a K in the pocket, and I got a K-high two pair on the flop, but two spades also showed up so I put in a moderate raise. Ease called, and Walter was all-in after he called. A blank showed up on the turn, so I raised it up again, and Ease, who had a big chip stack at this time, called me. I put Ease on a spade draw, so when another spade hit on the river, I figured she made her spade flush, so I checked and Ease went all-in.

Although I though she might be bluffing the flush since she had the big stack at the table, I decided to fold, mostly because Walter was all-in in that hand which meant that I'd be able to see Ease's cards anyway. Well, she had the flush, so Walter got knocked out and we were down to five players.

Although I was happy with my fold, the battle left me with only 3500 or so in chips and the blinds were at 500/1000. A couple hands later, I got dealt a K-7 in the small blind, so when everyone folded to the blinds, I went all-in in an attempt to steal the big blind. Unfortunately, Jenny, who was in the big blind, had A-K. She had 300 less in chips than I did, so when she called me and her A-K held, I was down to 300 in chips at a point in the tournament when the blinds were 500/1000. In other words, I was beyond dead. I couldn't even cover the small blind at that point.

Due to crappy cards, I had to wait until the big blind rotated around to me. Luckily, I got dealt an A-4 spades in the pocket when the big blind reached me, so I was all-in with my 300. I hit a spade flush on the river and tripled up. I doubled up a few times more, and pretty soon I was right back in it. Jenny took Charlie out, and we were down to four. A few hands later, I called Corrina's all-in with an Ace high, and my ace held.

Ease then took Jenny out, so Ease and I were heads-up. I was pretty short stacked, so Ease was able to dispatch me fairly quick and win yet another tournament. But I was more than happy to finish in the money after being virtually dead with a mere three black $100 chips when the blinds were 500/1000 and there were still five players in the game. It was my biggest hold 'em comeback to date.

Mr. Stevens Goes To Washington

I love it when Republicans lament about how nasty things have become in Washington D.C. and then act like none of it is their fault, despite the fact that they control both branches of Congress and the White House.

Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska is, of course, responsible for more than his fair share of vitriol. Who could forget when he tried to sneak ANWR oil drilling in through the Senate's back door and then threw a hissy fit when his little scheme didn't work.

That's why I had to laugh when I read this:

As he pushed his way into the Senate race in Washington state last week, Sen. Ted Stevens (Alaska) did not wear the "Incredible Hulk" necktie that on Capitol Hill signals his readiness for close-quarters combat.

The Senate's longest-serving Republican sounded more wistful than wound up. Stevens reminisced about an era when he could trust Democratic senators from Washington state. He recalled that the late senators Warren G. Magnuson and Henry "Scoop" Jackson had "adopted" him and had always done right by Alaska.

"Warren called me 'Son,' " Stevens, 82, said at a breakfast in this port city with executives whose companies depend on trade with Alaska. "I have not forgotten."

So, Warren Magnuson called Teddy Stevens "Son." God, it almost brings a tear to my eye. But why is Stevens in Washington State you ask? Well --

Fond memory, though, has given way to bad blood between Alaska and Washington -- and Stevens blames much of it on Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), who faces reelection this fall. She has lead Democratic opposition to Stevens's long-frustrated crusade for oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

When Cantwell again worked last December to torpedo the drilling, Stevens warned on the Senate floor that he would go to her state and "tell them what you've done." And so he did last week, but more in sadness than anger.

"I can't remember until these past few years any senator from your state who wasn't a close friend of mine," Stevens said. "That is a problem."

Well now I'm really starting to get choked up. Poor Senator Stevens has no close friends in the Senate from Washington State anymore. Isn't that awful.

But you're probably wondering where the funny part of the article is. Well, it's right here:

The problem, though, does not appear to be costing Cantwell voter support. Polls here show that the public is opposed to ANWR drilling and increasingly frustrated with Republican leadership on Capitol Hill.

Stevens's ire, in fact, may prove a political windfall for Cantwell, who squeaked into the Senate six years ago with a winning margin of just over 2,000 votes and whom some Republican strategists have described as beatable.

In the past year, Cantwell's knack for getting Stevens's goat has won widespread attention across this Democratic-leaning state, garnered favorable local press coverage, partially drowned out the campaign of her formidable Republican challenger and, polls suggest, may help her win reelection.

Senator Ted "I Can't Seem To Ever See The Big Picture" Stevens is welcome over in these parts anytime.

Would You Like A Little Propaganda With Your Egg Roll?

Here's the lyric of a song some kids sang at the at the White House Easter Egg Roll today (via Think Progress):

“Our country’s stood beside us
People have sent us aid.
Katrina could not stop us, our hopes will never fade.
Congress, Bush and FEMA
People across our land
Together have come to rebuild us and we join them hand-in-hand!”

Anyone else think this is just a bit creepy?

This Is Complete Bullshit

A group of retired generals have come out in support of Donald Rumsfeld, and they had this to say about Generals Zinni and Newbold's recent criticism of Rumsfeld:

"It unfortunately appears that two of the retired generals (Messrs. Zinni and Newbold) do not understand the true nature of this radical ideology, Islamic extremism, and why we fight in Iraq. We suggest they listen to the tapes of United 93."

Excuse me? How many Iraqi hijackers were aboard United Flight 93 again?

Geesus, it's one thing for the troops to be ignorant on issues like this. Eighty-five percent of our soldiers in Iraq think the U.S. invaded that country to "retaliate for Saddam's role in the 9-11 attacks," and this ridiculously high percentage obviously reflects the ability of the U.S. military to effectively disseminate propaganda within the ranks. [They're not buying into all the bullshit, however -- to their credit, 72% of these troops think the U.S. should exit Iraq within the next year.]

But it speaks volumes that the retired generals who have come out in support of Rumsfeld had to knowingly lie in order to do it. At least I hope they knew they were lying -- if they actually thought they were telling the truth, then I'm glad these guys are retired because we can't afford such idiocy in the upper ranks of our military. Hell, even our Imbecile President has begrudgingly admitted that Saddam had nothing to do with 9-11.

It Will Be Interesting To See How Giuliani Deals With The Extreme Religious Right

John McCain has learned his lesson. As previously noted, McCain recently embraced the radical, religious, bin Laden-like arm of the G.O.P., even though in 2000 he referred to Jerry Falwell an "agent of intolerance." Well, it now appears that the ball is in Rudolph Giuliani's court:

The Rev. Jerry Falwell doesn't see any Democrat making inroads with evangelical Christian voters in the next presidential election. Potential Republican candidate Rudolph Giuliani, the former New York city mayor, won't be scoring any points with Falwell, either.

"Everybody admires him. And I'll never forget the great things he did on 9/11 and following," Falwell said.

"But, of course, we have, as conservative Christians who take the Bible seriously, we have probably irreconcilable differences on life and family and that kind of thing," Falwell said Sunday on "Late Edition" on CNN.

"I'll never speak an ill word about him because he means so much to America. But, yes, you're right. I couldn't support him for president," he said.

Will Giuliani be forced to suck up to the American Taliban just like McCain did, or will he attempt to represent the moderate wing of the Republican Party? Stay tuned.

Biggest Snowfall Of The Year

I was just commenting to someone the other day about how great it was to finally be rid of the heavy snowfall for the year. It's been a long winter, and I was really getting tired of it all. Sure, we routinely get snow here into May, but only an inch or two at a time, if that.

Well, I spoke too soon. We woke up this morning to at least a foot of new snow at our house. In fact, I think it was the most snow we've gotten overnight in quite a while, and it's the middle of April.

Although this year's heavy snowpack will be great for fishing, there is a good chance that some of the lakes we like to fish won't be accessible for some time. I doubt, for example, that we'll be able to get into Three Creeks Lake until mid-to-late July. It's at 6500' elevation, but we were fishing it in early May last year. There's probably 15 feet of snow there right now.

Neil Young Has Been Busy Lately

From JamBase:

As Harp Magazine recently reported, Neil Young has announced a new album... and it's already finished!

The news that Neil Young has a complete album in the bag shocked all of us at JamBase. On the heels of his very successful 2005 release, Prairie Wind and with his award-winning documentary Neil Young: Heart of Gold in theatres now, no one saw this coming.

Filmmaker Jonathan Demme (who filmed Neil Young: Heart of Gold) recently sent an email stating; "Neil just finished writing and recording – with no warning – a new album called Living With War. It all happened in three days."

Young has long worked under the "strike while the iron is hot" mentality, often working in creative spurts and never forcing it. Well, it seems the iron must have been burning bright for him to create a complete album in three days!

As Katherine Silkaitis at Harp reported, Demme went on to say, "It is a brilliant electric assault, accompanied by a 100-voice choir, on Bush and the war in Iraq... Truly mind blowing. Will be in stores soon."

Details are sketchy at best, but the featured song, "Impeach the President" contains Bush's voice accompanied by a choir chanting "flip/flop."

At first, I was a bit worried to hear that he wrote and recorded the album so quickly -- I mean, how good could something like that be. Then I remembered that he wrote "Cinnamon Girl," "Down by the River," and "Cowgirl in the Sand" all in one day when he was sick with the flu.

If Neil gets deported over this album, then I'll really have something to write with regard to immigration.

Immigration

A reader asked me this question:

Dude: Are things that slow in Bend? No mention of the immigration story--THE big story of the past couple of weeks--on your blog? Come on, man! Are you seeing the shit that Reed is shoveling at the president and at frist for them being such pussies when it comes to immigration reform? You gotta get on that story. There were over 20K people on the streets of white-bread Seattle, declaiming the hypocrisy and bigotry of our country's immigration policies (sure, you can clean my yard, but stay the f&#k out of my schools and hospitals!). Phoenix and Atlanta had crowds to rival the '60s civil rights movement. Dude: This is our generation's civil rights movement happening right before our eyes. Don't get too fixated on that dip-shit in the White House to miss what's going on right here, right now.

I've actually attempted to do a post or two on the whole immigration deal, mostly with regard to how certain elements of the GOP are attempting to use it as this year's big wedge issue and how that whole strategy has kind of backfired on them. But I am never able to finish the post. I know this sounds a bit insensitive, but I just don't care about the issue because it will ultimately go nowhere. I was just telling someone yesterday about how little I care about this whole immigration thing.

I'd be really surprised if any legislation was passed with regard to this issue. I mean, what do we really want, the kind of set-up that Europe has with all the "guest worker" stuff? Look where it has gotten them. I think a guest on the Daily Show asked the other day if there is a car in France that hasn't been set ablaze.

Our economy relies on these people in a big way, and although not perfect, the American system seems to work pretty well. Sure these folks are a bit of a drain on the system, but I think illegals end up paying something like $10 billion in taxes every year on top of doing the crap work that nobody else wants to do, so it's not such a bad trade-off. The last thing we want to do is formalize that system in some way. That would be asking for trouble.

All the protesting has been pretty cool, though.

Back In the U.S.S.A.

We're starting to get a better picture as to why Bush didn't want anyone to know about his illegal warrantless surveillance program:

Mark Klein was a veteran AT&T technician in 2002 when he began to see what he thought were suspicious connections between that telecommunications giant and the National Security Agency. But he kept quiet about it until news broke late last year that President Bush had approved an N.S.A. program to eavesdrop without court warrants on Americans suspected of ties to Al Qaeda.

Now Mr. Klein and a few company documents he saved have emerged as key elements in a class-action lawsuit filed against AT&T on Jan. 31 by a civil liberties group, the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The suit accuses the company of helping the security agency invade its customers' privacy.

Mr. Klein's account and the documents provide new details about how the agency works with the private sector in intercepting communications for intelligence purposes. The documents, some of which Mr. Klein had earlier provided to reporters, describe a mysterious room at the AT&T Internet and telephone hub in San Francisco where he worked.

The documents, which were examined by four independent telecommunications and computer security experts at the request of The New York Times, describe equipment capable of monitoring a large quantity of e-mail messages, Internet phone calls, and other Internet traffic.

The equipment, which Mr. Klein said was installed by AT&T in 2003, was able to select messages that could be identified by keywords, Internet or e-mail addresses or country of origin and divert copies to another location for further analysis.

Didn't we fight a Cold War for over 40 years because we were against this kind of stuff?

BushCo Suffers Some Political Setbacks RE: Iraq

Another retired general wants Rumsfeld to resign. This time, however, it is a general who actually commanded troops in Iraq:

Retired two-star Maj. Gen. John Batiste, who commanded the Big Red One - the Army's 1st Infantry Division - in Iraq until November, said Rumsfeld must go for ignoring and intimidating career officers.

"You know, it speaks volumes that guys like me are speaking out from retirement about the leadership climate in the Department of Defense," Batiste told CNN.

"I believe we need a fresh start in the Pentagon. We need a leader who understands teamwork, a leader who knows how to build teams, a leader that does it without intimidation," said Batiste, a West Point graduate who also served in the 1991 Persian Gulf War and is now president of Klein Steel Service in upstate Rochester.

"When decisions are made without taking into account sound military recommendations, sound military decision-making, sound planning - then we're bound to make mistakes," he said.

Batiste will, of course, get a lot of crap from BushCo with regard to the fact that he probably didn't complain when he was in active service. Well, all General Shinseki did was suggest that it might take several hundred thousand troops to secure Iraq (i.e., he made a sound military recommendation which turned out to be dead on) and he was fired, so I really can blame Batiste for not speaking out when he was in command of the 1st Infantry.

Meanwhile, it looks like Italy will be pulling out of Iraq (sort of):

Romano Prodi, the leader of the Union coalition, which won the latest elections in Italy, said on Wednesday that he will withdraw the Italian troops from Iraq when he takes office, claiming there was no justification for the US-led invasion of the Arab country.

In an interview with the French Le Monde daily, the Italian Prime Minister Elect said that he will fulfill his election promise of withdrawing his country´s troops from Iraq.

Following the pullout, an Italian civil contingent will be sent to Iraq to help in the reconstruction of the infrastructure and institutions, asserted Prodi.

Why Can't The Democrats Take Advantage Of This?

Here's some more crap from those radical right-wing religious lunatics out there who apparently became pharmacists in order to spread the word of Ja-Heesus by not doing their jobs:

Cedar River Clinics, a women's health and abortion provider with facilities in Renton, Tacoma, and Yakima, filed a complaint with the Washington State Department of Health this week alleging three instances where pharmacists raising moral objections refused to fill prescriptions for Cedar River clients. The complaint includes one incident at the Swedish Medical Center outpatient pharmacy in Seattle.

According to the complaint, someone at the Swedish pharmacy said she was "morally unable" to fill a Cedar River patient's prescription for abortion-related antibiotics. Cedar River's complaint quotes its Renton clinic manager's May 17, 2005, e-mail account: "Today, one of our clients asked us to call in her prescription... to Swedish outpatient pharmacy. [We] called the prescription in... and spoke with an efficient staff person who took down the prescription. A few minutes later, this pharmacy person called us back and told us she had found out who we were and she morally was unable to fill the prescription." (Cedar River thinks their client eventually got her prescription filled.)

This kind of stuff is happening all over the country. It's as if God himself came down and handed the Democrats the Mother of All Wedge Issues, yet the Democrats don't want to do anything to exploit this opportunity.

Well, that's not exactly true. Last week, the Democrats claimed they want to push legislation which would expand access to contraceptives and sex education:

The Prevention First Act is sponsored by Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), one of few congressional Democrats considered anti-abortion. The bill, which Reid introduced at the start of the Congress, has the support of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), presumptive front-runner in the 2008 presidential primary and 21 other Democrats.

The bill would prohibit group health plans from excluding contraceptive drugs, devices and outpatient services if they cover the cost of other prescription drugs and outpatient services. It would also require the secretary of health and human services to disseminate information on emergency contraception to healthcare providers and require hospitals receiving federal money to provide emergency contraception to victims of sexual assault.

The bill would also mandate that federally funded programs provide information about contraceptives that is medically accurate and includes data on health benefits and failure rates.

OK, that's a good start. Well, maybe calling it a "start" is a bit premature, given that the Democrats passed up an opportunity last month to attach this legislation to a budget resolution and Reid doesn't seem to be in too much of a hurry to bring it forward. But even if the Democrats got off their back ends and started aggressively pushing this legislation, it is too weak by a long shot.

A democrat in Congress should instead propose a bill making it a violation of federal law for pharmacists to refuse to fill these types of prescriptions. Every Republican running for reelection in 2006 would, of course, oppose such a bill out of fear of reprisals from radical, right-wing Christian cults if they don't, and the Democrats could then use this opposition against these candidates during the run-up to this year's Mid-Terms.

Such legislation might not be constitutional you say? I don't care about that, because the purpose of proposing such legislation is to create a wedge in the GOP's support base. Whether or not such a law passes constitutional muster is irrelevant. In fact, it doesn't even matter if the bill passes Congress.

The Republicans pull this kind of stuff all the time, most recently in Arizona, where the radicals tried to pass a bill which required doctors to inform a woman seeking an abortion after 20 weeks that the "unborn child" can feel pain (Arizona's Democratic governor vetoed it).
I can't understand why the Democrats are reluctant to do the same type of thing. One of the GOP's biggest weaknesses is its embarrassing affiliation with the extreme religious right, and it's time for the Democrats to start exploiting this connection.

Liar

From the Washington Post:

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

Over the lunch hour, FoxNews was trying to minimize all this, saying that Bush didn't know of this report when he made his statement, or some such thing (that, of course, doesn't explain why BushCo continued to repeat this claim for months afterward). But every time I read an article like this, I ask myself the same question: Why didn't the Bush Administration merely plant evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq either before, during, or immediately after the U.S. invasion?

Sure, such an act would have been pretty sleazy, but "sleazy" is this administration's middle name. After all, this is an administration that was more than willing to lie to the American people in order to get us into Iraq in the first place, and then commit treason in order to attack the credibility of a critic who started pointing out all of the lies. What's one more deception in the grand scheme of things?

Planting the WMD would have saved BushCo a lot of grief in the long haul, and everyone knows that the Bush-loving Corporate Media would never have taken a serious look at the authenticity of the bogus evidence.

UPDATE: Here's Scotty McClelland's thinking on the latest revelation with regard to the so-called mobile biological labs:

You know, I saw some reporting talking about how this latest revelation — which is not something that is new; this is all old information that’s being rehashed — was an embarrassment for the White House. No, it’s an embarrassment for the media that is out there reporting this.

I brought up with some of you earlier today some of the reporting that was based of this Washington Post report. And I talked to one of network about it…they expressed their apologies to the White House.

I hope they will go and publicly apologize on the air about the statements that were made, because I think it is important given that they had made those statements in front of all their viewers. So we look forward to that happening as well.

I also hope that happens. The more public the apologies, the more people will be exposed to this story and will learn of yet another BushCo deception with regard to Iraq.

What Did Bush Tell Fitzgerald?

This editorial from the Ventura County Star asks the right question with regard to BushCo's TreasonGate Scandal:

Did the president tell the special prosecutor's team all the truth he knew, or did he tell them the same thing he told us back then?

We need to know because what Bush was telling us in 2003 — that he knew nothing about the leaks and wanted to find and fire all leakers — ran the narrow gamut from misleading half-truth to bald-faced untruth.

Of course, it is not a federal crime for a president to lie to the American people when he is not under oath. (No, the usual punishment we inflict upon incumbent presidents who lie is to re-elect them.)

But it is a crime for anyone to mislead, impede or lie to federal investigators — whether they are not under oath to tell the truth or not. For a president or a vice president, it can be an impeachable crime. (This point was argued most persuasively by congressional Republicans a few years ago as they made a federal case out of an incident that was not about national security, but consensual oral sex.)

Bush and his spokespeople had maintained ever since the controversy began in the summer of 2003 that neither Karl Rove, nor Vice President Dick Cheney chief-of-staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby, nor then-deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley were involved in any effort to discredit Wilson. But that was not true. * * *

The publicly unanswered question is whether the president or vice president helpfully told the special prosecutor's probe all they knew about the effort to discredit Wilson's comments (which cast doubt on Bush's claim that Iraq tried to buy yellow-cake uranium from Niger). Then again, we don't even know if he was asked about it.

To have known so much and said little could have been construed as misleading or impeding a federal investigation. Of course, we have no indication the special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald wants to go that route against either the president and/or vice president. Still, it is true Bush, Cheney and anyone who knew what they knew could have greatly helped the special prosecutor's mission. Perhaps, indeed, Bush and Cheney eagerly told all they knew. Perhaps.

Well, I guess it is possible that Bush came clean with the prosecutor. After all, Bush did hire a lawyer to represent him on this particular matter and I would have to think that the lawyer advised him not to obstruct justice. But then again, this is an administration that doesn't think it has to follow the law on anything.

When It Rains, It Pours

I always assumed that the White House was involved in the 2002 New Hampshire phone jamming scheme, but I figured that Rove and Company would have done a better job of covering their tracks. From the AP:

Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.

The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 -- as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.

The national Republican Party, which paid millions in legal bills to defend Tobin, says the contacts involved routine election business and that it was "preposterous" to suggest the calls involved phone jamming.

I think it is preposterous to suggest that the White House wasn't involved.

From John Sherffius (via Hoffmania)

Another Right Winger Flip-Flops On Iraq

This time it's Newt Gingrich:

Newt Gingrich, the former Republican Speaker of the House, told students and faculty at the University of South Dakota Monday that the United States should pull out of Iraq and leave a small force there, just as it did post-war in Korea and Germany.

"It was an enormous mistake for us to try to occupy that country after June of 2003," Gingrich said during a question-and-answer session at the school. "We have to pull back, and we have to recognize it."

Meanwhile, leading neocon Francis Fukuyama is taking some heat for his recent change of heart with regard to Iraq (via Digby):

SEVEN WEEKS AGO, I published my case against the Iraq war. I wrote that although I had originally advocated military intervention in Iraq, and had even signed a letter to that effect shortly after the 9/11 attacks, I had since changed my mind.

But apparently this kind of honest acknowledgment is verboten. In the weeks since my book came out, I've been challenged, attacked and vilified from both ends of the ideological spectrum. From the right, columnist Charles Krauthammer has accused me of being an opportunistic traitor to the neoconservative cause — and a coward to boot. From the left, I've been told that I have "blood on my hands" for having initially favored toppling Saddam Hussein and that my "apology" won't be accepted.

What does he want, forgiveness? Hell, I still haven't forgiven John Kerry and Hillary Clinton for voting to give Bush the authority to invade, and probably never will.

More Fallout From BushCo's Iraq Debacle

This is what happens when your Commander-In-Chief is an idiot:

Young Army officers, including growing numbers of captains who leave as soon as their initial commitment is fulfilled, are bailing out of active-duty service at rates that have alarmed senior officers. Last year, more than a third of the West Point class of 2000 left active duty at the earliest possible moment, after completing their five-year obligation.

It was the second year in a row of worsening retention numbers, apparently marking the end of a burst of patriotic fervor during which junior officers chose continued military service at unusually high rates.

Mirroring the problem among West Pointers, graduates of reserve officer training programs at universities are also increasingly leaving the service at the end of the four-year stint in uniform that follows their commissioning.

This Doesn't Surprise Me

BushCo's War On Science continues:

Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman has quietly disbanded the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB), the department’s “principal independent advisory board on scientific and technical matters,” reports Nature magazine.

The board, established by President Carter in 1978, is “a mix of distinguished scientists, such as Nobel laureate Burton Richter, and business executives, such as former ExxonMobil chairman Lee Raymond.”

The Energy Department said the board is no longer necessary because Bodman has his own “scientific” background. But Bodman isn’t the first Energy secretary with scientific training. James D. Watkins, President George H.W. Bush’s Energy Secretary who received his masters degree in mechanical engineering and completed a reactor engineering course at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, kept the panel in place during his tenure.

This is Bush's way of retaliating against scientists for finding the missing link.

Siletz River Trip

Here's a steelhead I caught on March 20 fishing with friends Phil and John on the Siletz River. It weighed about 12 pounds, and was a hatchery fish so I got to keep it. And yes, it was delicious.

We caught two other steelhead that day -- a seven pounder and a four pounder -- but they were native fish and were released.

How Is This Not A Civil War?

Seventy-nine people were killed today in an attack on a Baghdad mosque:

Suicide attackers wearing women’s robes blew themselves up Friday in a Shiite mosque, killing 79 people and wounding more than 160, police said. It was the deadliest single attack in Iraq this year and the second major bombing of a Shiite target in as many days.

Police Lt. Col. Falah al-Mohammedawi said the blasts were caused by two suicide attackers wearing black abayas at the Buratha mosque, which is affiliated with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, the main Shiite party.

The Most Desperate GOP Talking Point Yet

This is pretty funny:

On the April 5 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews once again suggested Democrats would abuse the congressional subpoena authority if they regain control of one or both houses of Congress in the 2006 elections. In a conversation with former Rep. Vin Weber (R-MN), Matthews asserted that in 2006, Republicans will likely campaign on the claim that if elected, Democrats "are going to try to lynch the president."

The notion that Democrats will pursue partisan investigations of President Bush if they gain control of one or both houses was first advanced by Republicans and then picked up by Matthews. For example -- as Media Matters for America previously noted -- on the March 15 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-GA) alleged that "you can expect two years of all-out investigations, attacks, anything they can bring to bear" if the Democrats regain control of the House or Senate in the 2006 midterm elections. Additionally, the Associated Press reported March 23 that in a fundraising letter, Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman claimed "[t]he Democrats' plan for 2006" is to "[t]ake the House and Senate, and impeach the president," adding, "With our nation at war, is this the kind of Congress you want?"

I think it is interesting the Chris Matthews and other BushCo members think that Bush has committed impeachable offenses. But really, what is the message here? Is BushCo saying,

"Look people -- we know you're not too happy with us right now. Sure, we've done some pretty squirrelly things and may have committed a few felonies in the process, but if you vote Democrat this year, then the Democrats could take control of at least one branch of Congress. If that happened, then its likely that the Democrats will investigate all of our wrongdoing, and you don't want that, do you? We're at War, for Christ's Sake! WAR!!!"

I just think it's funny that the predominant GOP talking point these days is: "If you don't want Bush impeached, then vote Republican." Such a talking point could easily backfire, given that Bush isn't really all that popular at present.

And speaking of popularity, Bush's approval rating in the latest AP-Ipsos poll is 36 percent, his lowest-ever rating so far in that particular poll.

Good Stuff From The Boorman Tribune

This is an interesting catch:

On September 8, 2002, Judith Miller and Michael Gordon published an article entitled U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts . In the first week of October, the intelligence community produced the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. It was a report that was requested from Congress and it was used to justify their vote for the authorization of force. As you will see, it used almost the same language, and drew the same conclusions, to describe the state of Iraq's nuclear capabilities as Miller's article had used. In other words, Judith Miller had seen all the facts that went into this highly classified report a month before Congress did.

Now, fast-forward to July of 2003. Baghdad is occupied, but no one can find anything to back up either Judith Miller's reporting, or the reporting from the NIE (they are the same thing) on Iraq's nuclear program. Once again, Scooter Libby goes to Judith Miller. He shows her (again) the key findings of the NIE (as if she hadn't seen them back in September 2002). He also reveals Valerie Plames's name and occupation (apparently getting her department wrong).

Now he claims, in court, that he went and got specific permission to leak these documents to Judith Miller in July. But, who leaked them to her in September of 2002?

Will Bush Have To Fire Himself Now?

It is starting to look like Bush himself may have been involved in the leaking of Valerie Plame's name:

Vice President Dick Cheney's former top aide told prosecutors President Bush authorized the leak of sensitive intelligence information about Iraq, according to court papers filed by prosecutors in the CIA leak case.

Before his indictment, I. Lewis Libby testified to the grand jury investigating the CIA leak that Cheney told him to pass on information and that it was Bush who authorized the disclosure, the court papers say. According to the documents, the authorization led to the July 8, 2003, conversation between Libby and New York Times reporter Judith Miller.

There was no indication in the filing that either Bush or Cheney authorized Libby to disclose Valerie Plame's CIA identity.

But the disclosure in documents filed Wednesday means that the president and the vice president put Libby in play as a secret provider of information to reporters about prewar intelligence on Iraq.

This is big news because it demonstrates that Bush was directly involved in the BushCo effort to counter the truths that Ambassador Wilson was telling with regard to Iraqi threat. It will be interesting to see how this affects Bush's approval numbers.

Those Brits Really Know How To Party

It was a pretty slow news day in the States, so here is another article from overseas. This one is about a man who just couldn't say no:

Doctors from London University have revealed details of what they believe is the largest amount of ecstasy ever consumed by a single person. Consultants from the addiction centre at St George's Medical School, London, have published a case report of a British man estimated to have taken around 40,000 pills of MDMA, the active ingredient in ecstasy, over nine years. The heaviest previous lifetime intake on record is 2,000 pills.

Though the man, who is now 37, stopped taking the drug seven years ago, he still suffers from severe physical and mental health side-effects, including extreme memory problems, paranoia, hallucinations and depression. He also suffers from painful muscle rigidity around his neck and jaw which often prevents him from opening his mouth. The doctors believe many of these symptoms may be permanent.

He was taking 25 tablets a day at the peak of his consumption.

Here's my favourite part of the article: "'He came to us after deciding that he couldn't go on any more,' said Dr Christos Kouimtsidis, the consultant psychiatrist at St George's Medical School in Tooting who treated him for five months. 'He was having trouble functioning in everyday life.'"

Here's An Article You Probably Won't See In The American Press

From BBCNews:

It is one of the most important and yet largely untold stories of our world in 2006. George W Bush has lost Latin America.

While the Bush administration has been fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, relations between the United States and the countries of Latin America have become a festering sore - the worst for years.

Virtually anyone paying attention to events in Venezuela and Nicaragua in the north to Peru and Bolivia further south, plus in different ways Mexico, Argentina and Brazil, comes to the same conclusion: there is a wave of profound anti-American feeling stretching from the Texas border to the Antarctic.

And almost everyone believes it will get worse. * * *

The young Sandinista revolutionary, Daniel Ortega, is back. He may well be re-elected president of Nicaragua.

Can you imagine it? The man who survived CIA plots and Contra death squads, who relinquished power peacefully to Washington's candidate, Violeta Chamorro, sweeping back into the Nicaraguan presidency?

It will be a huge embarrassment for George Bush junior, a symbol of everything that has gone wrong with American foreign policy in the hemisphere.

Sure, Bush is probably accustomed to huge embarrassments by now, but Ortega regaining power in Nicaragua would definitely be a major humiliation.

Katherine Harris Meltdown Continues

Now here is a Republican whom I'd like to see stay in a campaign, but it looks like her days are numbered:

Changing locks on her campaign headquarters and accusing her staff of disloyalty and her own party of spying on her are signs of erratic behavior that some Katherine Harris staff members say has worsened since her father's death.

Harris is restaffing her campaign and will announce new key staff members today, a campaign spokeswoman said Monday.

But in the past 10 days, Harris has:

•Had locks changed and posted a security guard at the door of her campaign headquarters in Tampa and had former staff members escorted in to retrieve their belongings.

•Told a gathering of supporters in Cocoa Beach on Saturday that the Republican Party had "infiltrated" her campaign staff to put "knives in my back."

•Told a reporter that a longtime, trusted political adviser had leaked a story about her staff members quitting, then called back to retract the comments.

•Announced hiring her new staff without identifying them.

Those events come atop previous reversals and contradictions, including her announcement last month that she would spend her inheritance from her father on her campaign, which she changed, saying she would sell her assets.

Former campaign manager Jim Dornan, who left in November, called the most recent events in the campaign "unbelievable."

"It smacks of real paranoia," he said of the headquarters lockout and comments about infiltration. "That campaign staff was so loyal to her, and to be treated like that is absolutely unconscionable."

Hang in there, Katherine.

Scooter's Memory Appears To Be Improving

From the conservative magazine Insight (via Hoffmania):

Attorneys for former Vice President Chief of Staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby say one of three senior State Department officials was the source of a leak that exposed CIA agent Valerie Plame.

They say the officials are: former Secretary of State Colin Powell, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and then-Undersecretary of State Marc Grossman.

The attorneys for Mr. Libby plan to argue that a senior official in the State Department leaked Mrs. Plame's identity amid the administration's defense of the U.S. failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The attorneys have sought to highlight heavy infighting between White House staff and the CIA and State Department amid criticism by Mrs. Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

"The media conflagration ignited by the failure to find WMD in Iraq and in part by Mr. Wilson's criticism of the administration, led officials within the White House, the State Department and the CIA to blame each other, publicly and in private, for faulty pre-war intelligence about Iraq's WMD capabilities," papers filed by Mr. Libby's defense team said.

Well, at least they're not blaming Bill Clinton.

Did DeLay Take One For The GOP?

It's always great to wake up to news like this:

Succumbing to scandal, former Majority Leader Tom DeLay said Tuesday he will resign from Congress in the face of a tough re-election race, closing out a career that blended unflinching conservatism with a bare-knuckled political style.

"I have no fear whatsoever about any investigation into me or my personal or professional activities," DeLay said in a statement to constituents. At the same time, he said, "I refuse to allow liberal Democrats an opportunity to steal this seat with a negative, personal campaign."

I'm not sure what all this means. For example, will there now be a special election to replace DeLay?

I watched FoxNews' coverage on DeLay earlier this morning -- I always watch Fox when the GOP gets some bad news. Of course, FoxNews' anchor was minimizing everything, saying stuff like "DeLay has effectively removed himself as a punching bag for the Democrats in the run-up to the 2006 Mid-Terms."

We'll see.

UPDATE: Others in the Corporate Media are starting to take up FoxNews' lead and are spinning DeLay's resignation as a defeat for the Democrats. This is from the ABC News blog (via Josh Marshall):

When an email from an aide to the House Democratic leadership arrived this morning saying, "The Republican culture of corruption goes much deeper than DeLay," it became immediately clear that Democrats are a bit concerned about losing their most prominent face of the corruption scandals swirling around Washington as former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) resigns from his seat and removes himself from the ballot for reelection.

Tom DeLay's departure from the scene also seems to indicate that Republicans believe this year's midterm election is going to be extremely close. Control of the House of Representatives very much hangs in the balance. DeLay, a loyal and dedicated leader of the Republican Party, would never want to jeopardize the party's hold on power and clearly believes getting out of the race is the best way to insure a Republican will continue to represent his Houston-area district when the next congress convenes.

"It will no longer be a national race like it was," declared DeLay.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but I really do think that a political party is hurt when a top leader in that party is forced to resign in disgrace.

UPDATE II: OK, the real story behind DeLay's resignation is beginning to emerge:

By stepping aside so early in an election year, a lawmaker "wouldn't be spending to be reelected" and could transfer the funds immediately to fend off any federal charges, said lawyer Kenneth A. Gross, a former head of the FEC's enforcement division. The last lawmaker to gain the FEC's formal approval for such a transfer was Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.), who resigned last November after pleading guilty to evading taxes and accepting bribes.

I'm liking the sound of that.

Zinni On Iraq

Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former CENTCOM commander, had this to say on Meet The Press yesterday with regard to the recent right-wing accusation the the media are not reporting the good things that happen in Iraq:

RUSSERT: Do you believe the American media is distorting the news from Iraq or presenting an accurate picture?

ZINNI: Well, I think the American media is being made a scapegoat for what’s going on out there. At last count, I think something like 80 journalists have been killed in Iraq. It’s hard to get outside the Green Zone and not risk your life or risk kidnapping at a minimum to get the story. And it’s hard to blame the media for no good stories when the security situation is such that they can’t even go out and get the good stories without risking their lives. And you have to remember that it’s hard to dwell on the good things when the bad things are so overwhelmingly traumatic and catastrophic. So I think that’s an unfair blame that’s put on the media. I think that there probably are good things at the lower level, but are they balanced out by the bad things that are happening? All the good things happening out there will mean nothing if this unity government doesn’t come together.

Zinni also stated that Rumsfeld should resign.

By the way, "[n]ine U.S. service members were killed Sunday and three others are missing after separate incidents in Anbar province in Iraq, the U.S. military said Monday."

Will McClelland And Snow Be The Next To Go?

From CNN:

Presidential press secretary Scott McClellan and Treasury Secretary John Snow could be next in a shake-up in the Bush administration, according to White House and GOP sources.

The possible departure of both men could be among "several senior-level staff" announcements to come within the next couple of weeks, said former White House staff members, GOP strategists and administration officials.

"You're going to have more change than you expect," one GOP insider said.

One change already has been announced: Chief of staff Andy Card officially will leave April 14 and is being replaced by Josh Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget.

Under one scenario, Dan Bartlett, counselor to the president, would replace McClellan, Republican officials said.

But other GOP strategists said they believe McClellan's position is secure because of his close relationship with President Bush going back to Texas. McClellan was a communications aide to the president when he was governor of the Lone Star state.

More Fear-Mongering From the American Fascists

You can find the latest GOP attack ad here. Just love those 9-11 references.

And this is for all you Kaloogian fans out there.