Fold, Spindle, Mutilate

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posted @ 11:59 PM EDT

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VEEP DOO-DOO

by Hendrik Hertzberg

According to a CBS News poll released last Monday, the “favorability” rating of Vice-President Dick Cheney has sunk to a new low. How low a low? Well, that evening, Jon Stewart, as part of the buildup to the “Daily Show” star’s going global on Oscar Sunday, was the guest on CNN’s “Larry King Live.” When King barked out the number—“Cheney eighteen per cent”—Stewart, citing another well-known poll result, observed solemnly, “Four out of five dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum.” That is, the proportion of Americans who have a favorable opinion of Cheney is outweighed by the proportion of dentists who recommend sugary gum for their patients who chew gum.

The Vice-Presidency isn’t what it used to be. No one bothered to rate the favorability of Garret Hobart, Charles Dawes, or Alben Barkley. But the clout of that once legendarily insignificant office has been growing for half a century. In his time, Walter Mondale was history’s most powerful Vice-President. So was Al Gore in his. But Cheney is an order of magnitude different. For a number of reasons—his bureaucratic ruthlessness, his domineering influence over a feckless President who seems fated to remain forever inexperienced, his will to power combined with an alleged lack of ambition to succeed his nominal boss—he is universally agreed to be one of the two most powerful officials in the executive branch of the federal government, though it is not universally agreed which one. Truly, this is the Bush-Cheney Administration, in alphabetical order. The hyphen looks like a coy equal sign—not the towhook it was for Clinton-Gore, Reagan-Bush, Carter-Mondale, and Nixon-Agnew, to say nothing of Hoover-Curtis and Roosevelt-Garner.

That same CBS News poll put President Bush’s favorability rating at twenty-nine per cent, also a personal worst. It would be natural to attribute the eleven-point gap to the unpleasantness two weeks earlier at the Armstrong ranch, in Texas. Among respectable commentators, the predominant view of that unfortunate occurrence has been that it was much ado about not very much. As scandals go, this was, like the Vice-President’s lunchtime refreshment, small beer. An accident, nothing more. A private matter, essentially.

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posted @ 11:37 PM EDT

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Friday Night Surprise: White House Aide Caught In Shoplifting Scheme

When Claude Allen, the former Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy, resigned suddenly a few weeks ago, the White House gave its official explanation for the departure:

President Bush’s domestic policy advisor, Claude A. Allen, has resigned to spend more time with his family, the White House said.

Many were skeptical of the White House’s explanation. It turns out the suspicions were justified: Allen was arrested yesterday and charged in a “retail theft scheme.” From the police report:

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posted @ 11:18 PM EDT

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Dobson site denies lobbying Norton for Abramoff

Filed by RAW STORY

In a message posted on his Focus on the Family website, Dr. James Dobson's group has denied lobbying outgoing Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton on behalf of fallen lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

"There is no connection," Dobson's site says flatly.

However, in already public e-mails and letters sent in early 2002 between former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed and Abramoff, Reed insists that he has secured Dobson's support for Abramoff's gaming interest clients in Louisiana, in opposition of allowing competing tribes to expand the state's access to legal gambling.



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posted @ 11:08 PM EDT

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Oversight by Capitulation

By Robert Parry
Consortium News

Despite a dip in his opinion polls, George W. Bush's transformation of the United States into an authoritarian society continues apace, with new "compromises" with Congress actually consolidating his claims to virtually unlimited executive power.

Bush's latest success came as part of a supposed "concession" to Congress that would grant two new Republican-controlled seven-member subcommittees narrow oversight of Bush's warrantless wiretapping of Americans.

While "moderate" Republican senators - Mike DeWine of Ohio, Olympia Snowe of Maine, and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska - hailed the plan as a retreat by the White House, the deal actually blesses Bush's authority to bypass the courts in spying on Americans and imposes on him only a toothless congressional review process.

Indeed, the congressional plan may make matters worse, broadening the permissible scope of Bush's wiretaps to include Americans deemed to be "working in support of a terrorist group or organization."

Given Bush's record of stretching words to his advantage - and his claim that anyone who isn't "with us" is with the terrorists - the vague concept of "working in support" could open almost any political critic of the Bush administration to surveillance.

Plus, the only check on abuses would be the closed-door oversight work of the seven-member panels, which would only be informed of a warrantless wiretap after it had been in place for 45 days. Republicans also would have four of the seven seats on each subcommittee and any dissent from the minority Democrats would be kept secret.

In other words, the plan would let Bush and his Republican congressional loyalists conduct wiretaps of anyone whose activities might be called supportive of terrorists, while any Democratic critic would be muzzled from saying anything publicly under penalty of law.

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posted @ 10:56 PM EDT

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Bush at his lowest ebb after ports defeat

By Edward Alden and Holly Yeager in Washington

President George W. Bush's defeat over the Dubai ports deal has put him in the weakest political position of his presidency.

Some of his former supporters are now questioning whether the president can regain the initiative during his remaining three years in the White House.

"If this was a European parliamentary system, it would have been a vote of no-confidence," said Ed Rollins, a top political adviser to President Ronald Reagan and now a Republican strategist.

An AP/Ipsos poll on Friday found that confidence in the president continued to fall, even among Republicans. Two-thirds of Americans said the country was now on the wrong track, up from 61 per cent a month ago, and 77 per cent believed a civil war would break out in Iraq.

On Thursday, Dubai Ports World, the state-owned company which had acquired five US port terminal facilities as part of its $6.8bn purchase of P&O, was ordered by the ruler of Dubai to divest the ports in the face of congressional opposition.

That may not be enough to end the controversy, however. A person close to the deal said last night that DP World would not necessarily sell all of its interest in P&O's US assets and could retain as much as 49 per cent.

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posted @ 09:34 PM EDT

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Sandra Day O'Connor Warns Of "Beginnings" Of Dictatorship...

NPR's Nina Totenberg aired an amazing story this morning about a talk that just-resigned Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor gave at Georgetown University. The first woman to serve on the High Court wouldn't allow her actual words to be broadcast, and that's a shame, because -- based on Totenberg's report -- every American needs to hear what she said. The Reagan appointee who became a moderate and an American icon -- Bush v. Gore notwithstanding -- all but named names in thinly veiled attacks on former House majority leader Tom DeLay and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, and ended with a stunning warning.

O'Connor told her Georgetown audience that judges can make presidents, Congress and governors "really really mad," and that if judges don't make people angry, they aren't doing their job. But she said judicial effectiveness is "premised on the notion that we won't be subject to retaliation for our judicial acts." While hailing the American system of rights and privileges, she noted that these don't protect the judiciary, that "people do":

Listen here.

Read some of the transcript here.

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posted @ 09:04 PM EDT
The sweetness of the smoking gun

Toby Barlow

For the past six years, I’ve been worried that, despite the Bush Administration's obvious incompetence, we would never be able to really bust them in the old-fashioned gotcha sense. And this culture needs the gotcha, we're addicted to the smoking gun theory. We just can't seem reason this stuff out.

It's even worse now than it used to be, according to news reports, jurors who have grown accustomed to the action on C.S.I. won't even convict anymore unless there are gobs of physical evidence found at the scene of the crime.

They need fingerprints, loose hair, and maybe a half a cup of the accused's spit left at the scene of the crime.

On the political scene, it's even worse. We had Nixon and his incredibly stupid taping system. We were spoiled. (Can you imagine how wonderful it was to be a liberal Democrat the day the news broke about the tapes? Can you feel the glee?)

But this administration has a well known obsession for secrecy - and why wouldn't you if about a third of your administration was bent on funneling cash to the corporate elite, the other third was focused on subverting the constitution and the last third couldn't tie their shoes without bumping their heads- so despite how obvious their awfulness was, I feared we would just never get them. After all, we hear about the August briefings in which Bush was warned that terrorists were planning to use planes as weapons, but we aren’t really there, we don't actually see it, and consequently Bush never truly has to answer for his tragic failure there.

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posted @ 10:25 AM EDT

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Hopeless

Sports Illustrated has a weekly feature in which it identifies a "Sign that the Apocalypse is Upon Us." We can't have one of those here in War Room -- it would be stealing, and we'd never be able to limit ourselves to just one sign a week, anyway.

Take this week. Please.

We thought surely we saw the sign of the fiery end when we checked out the results of a poll of U.S. troops serving in Iraq: Eighty-five percent of them, apparently, believe that a major reason for the U.S. mission there is "to retaliate for Saddam's role in the 9/11 attacks."

But when it comes to predictors of our untimely demise, the poll of U.S. troops just might have to take a back seat to a new poll of the good folks back home. The McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum conducted a random poll of 1,000 American adults to test their knowledge of the First Amendment. The thingy at the beginning of the Bill of Rights? The one that talks about free speech and stuff? The good news is, 69 percent of the respondents knew that much.

What else does the First Amendment protect?

Unprompted, 24 percent of the respondents managed to say freedom of religion. Eleven percent said freedom of the press -- the same percentage that claimed, incorrectly, that the First Amendment protects the right to bear arms. Ten percent got freedom of assembly, and a whopping 1 percent managed to remember the right to petition the government for redress of grievances.

Truth be told, that one always gets us, too.

But it's not like Americans are ignorami or anything: While only 28 percent of those polled could name two or more rights protected by the First Amendment, 41 percent could name two out of three "American Idol" judges, and 52 percent could name two or more characters from "The Simpsons."

Aside from the end-of-the-world aspect of it all, we're not sure what it all means -- except that maybe Democrats who hope to win back the White House ought to spend a little less time on the separation of powers and the unitary executive and a little more on power ballads and fart jokes.

It's the doughnuts, stupid.

-- Tim Grieve
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posted @ 03:49 AM EDT

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posted @ 02:00 AM EDT

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Telling the Truth About the War on Drugs

Walter Cronkite

As anchorman of the CBS Evening News, I signed off my nightly broadcasts for nearly two decades with a simple statement: "And that's the way it is."

To me, that encapsulates the newsman's highest ideal: to report the facts as he sees them, without regard for the consequences or controversy that may ensue.

Sadly, that is not an ethic to which all politicians aspire - least of all in a time of war.

I remember. I covered the Vietnam War. I remember the lies that were told, the lives that were lost - and the shock when, twenty years after the war ended, former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara admitted he knew it was a mistake all along.

Today, our nation is fighting two wars: one abroad and one at home. While the war in Iraq is in the headlines, the other war is still being fought on our own streets. Its casualties are the wasted lives of our own citizens.

I am speaking of the war on drugs.

And I cannot help but wonder how many more lives, and how much more money, will be wasted before another Robert McNamara admits what is plain for all to see: the war on drugs is a failure.


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posted @ 01:57 AM EDT

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COUNT ’EM

by Hendrik Hertzberg

Last Thursday morning, in one of the smaller function rooms at the National Press Club, in Washington, an ad-hoc bunch of amateurs, once-weres, might-bes, and goo-goos floated an initiative that, with a little luck, could enable our ramshackle republic to take a long, and long overdue, step toward a more perfect union. The idea behind their initiative is this: that the President of the United States should be elected by the people of the United States.

This idea is neither new nor outlandish, but for most of the past couple of centuries it has been dismissed as unachievable. The Electoral College is enshrined in the Constitution itself, so getting rid of it would require the concurrence of two-thirds of both houses of Congress plus three-quarters of the state legislatures. That’s not going to happen.

But maybe it doesn’t have to. The promoters of the Campaign for a National Popular Vote, as they’re calling themselves, have come up with an elegant finesse. Instead of trying to change the Constitution, they propose to apply it, one bit in particular: Article II, Section 1, which instructs each state to “appoint” its Presidential electors “in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct.” Here’s how the plan would work. One by one, legislature by legislature, state law by state law, individual states would pledge themselves to an interstate compact under which they would agree to award their electoral votes to the nationwide winner of the popular vote. The compact would take effect only when enough states had joined it to elect a President—that is, enough to cast a majority of the five hundred and thirty-eight electoral votes. (Theoretically, as few as eleven states could do the trick.) And then, presto! All of a sudden, the people of all fifty states plus the District of Columbia are empowered to elect their President the same way they elect their governors, mayors, senators, and congressmen. We still have the Electoral College, with its colorful eighteenth-century rituals, but it can no longer do any damage. It becomes a tourist attraction, like the British monarchy.

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posted @ 01:27 AM EDT

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Drawing the Line

by Jeffrey Toobin

Will Tom DeLay’s redistricting in Texas cost him his seat?

For three days in October of 2003, Tom DeLay left his duties as majority leader of the House of Representatives and worked out of the Texas state capitol, in Austin. During the previous year, DeLay had led his Republican colleagues there in an effort to redraw the boundaries of the state’s congressional districts. For more than a century, congressional redistricting had taken place once every decade, after the national census, but the Texas Republicans were trying to redraw lines that had been approved just two years earlier. Several times during the long days of negotiating sessions, DeLay personally shuttled proposed maps among House and Senate offices in Austin. Once, when reporters glimpsed DeLay striding through the corridors of the state capitol, they asked him about his role in the negotiations. “I’m a Texan trying to get things done,” he said.

Before the end of the month, the Republicans had pushed their plan through both houses, and it paid off in November of 2004. The Texas delegation in the House of Representatives went from seventeen to fifteen in favor of the Democrats, to twenty-one to eleven in favor of the Republicans. Martin Frost was the third-ranking Democrat in the House when the Republicans eliminated the district he had represented for twenty-six years. “I knew what DeLay was doing,” Frost told me. “I didn’t like it, but he wasn’t just trying to get me, he was trying to get as many Dems as possible. I went ahead and ran in one of the other districts. It was almost impossible to win, and I didn’t. But I went out with my boots on.”


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posted @ 01:20 AM EDT

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The CIA's 'Black Sites'

What are we going to do with the secret prisoners who cannot be tried in our courts?

by Nat Hentoff

illustration: Mirko Ilic

The CIA's top counterterrorism official [Robert Grenier] was fired last week because he opposed detaining Al Qaeda suspects in secret prisons abroad, sending them to other countries for interrogation, and using forms of torture such as "waterboarding," [making a prisoner believe he is about to be drowned] intelligence sources have claimed. The Sunday Times, London, February 12

For more than three years, I've been reporting on what has been increasingly, but fragmentarily, revealed about secret CIA prisons around the world. On September 17, 2001, the president, in a classified order, gave the CIA these "special powers" (as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales agreed during his confirmation hearings).

These "black sites"—as they are called in CIA, White House, and Justice Department files— escaped attempted congressional oversight until December 2005. But in the National Defense Authorization Act, the Senate finally called for regular reports on where those prisons are, what plans there are for the ultimate release of their prisoners, and "a description of the interrogation procedures used." Ted Kennedy and John Kerry introduced the resolution.

A similar December requirement was passed by the House (226 to 187) in a nonbinding resolution to urge the House and Senate negotiators to shine a shaft of sunlight on these "dark sites" in the final National Defense Authorization Act for 2006. But secretly, both the Senate and House resolutions were killed by the conference committee.


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posted @ 01:03 AM EDT
Wiliam F. Buckley Throws in the Towel on Iraq

Now what will newspaper editors do? As the situation worsens in Iraq, one wonders what it will take for editorialists in this country to endorse the notion of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. A look back at critical editorials on the eve of invasion shows how timidly editors have acted since.

By Greg Mitchell

(February 23, 2006) -- One wonders what it will take for newspapers in this country to endorse the notion of a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq starting, oh, how about now? I’ll take speedy (the Murtha plan) or slow and steady (the realistic idea). But some-time-in-our-lifetime (the default position) doesn’t quite cut it, especially after the events of the past few days in Iraq.

Readers will likely not respond to a call for withdrawal by canceling subscriptions or making crank calls to editors. A Gallup poll this week revealed that 55% of adult Americans now call the war "a mistake"--up 4% since the end of January. And that was before that mosque got its head blown off in Samarra.

Conservative icon William F. Buckley in a Friday column throws in the towel on the war, saying bluntly that our "mission has failed....different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat. "

Bill Buckley can say that, and great moderate and liberal newspapers can't?

Also on Friday, the Pentagon announced that the one Iraqi battalion capable of fighting without U.S. support has been downgraded to a level requiring them to--you guessed it-- fight with American troops backing them up. The battalion, made up of 700 to 800 Iraqi Army soldiers, has repeatedly been offered by the U.S. as an example of the growing independence of the Iraqi military.


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posted @ 02:59 PM EDT

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More incest than a village in Appalachia

Bush Family, Dubai Ports World and the Carlyle Group:

Via Randi Rhodes, the Goddess of Progressive Talk Radio. BTW: Air America is a great way to keep up on things if you can’t read blogs at work. But keep the volume down or you might get questions from co-workers like “what is she bitching about now?”.

The Lou Dobbs show, CNN, 2/22/06:

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): The oil-rich United Arab Emirates is a major investor in The Carlyle Group, the private equity investment firm where President Bush’s father once served as senior adviser and is a who’s who of former high-level government officials. Just last year, Dubai International Capital, a government-backed buyout firm, invested in an $8 billion Carlyle fund.

But there’s much more:

Another family connection, the president’s brother, Neil Bush, has reportedly received funding for his educational software company from the UAE investors. A call to his company was not returned.

Snow: Who knew?

Then there is the cabinet connection. Treasury Secretary John Snow was chairman of railroad company CSX/. After he left the company for the White House, CSX sold its international port operations to Dubai Ports World for more than a billion dollars.

In Connecticut today, Snow told reporters he had no knowledge of that CSX sale. “I learned of this transaction probably the same way members of the Senate did, by reading about it in the newspapers.”

It just doesn’t stop:

Another administration connection, President Bush chose a Dubai Ports World executive to head the U.S. Maritime Administration. David Sanborn, the former director of Dubai Ports’ European and Latin American operations, he was tapped just last month to lead the agency that oversees U.S. port operations.

Conspiracy theory? Let’s follow the gagillions of dollars and let the players speak for themselves:


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posted @ 12:42 PM EDT

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The Republican War on Grandparents

Abracadabra Economics

The new magic makes supply-side economics old hat.
By Michael Kinsley

The hideous complexity of President Bush's prescription-drug program has reduced elderly Americans—and their children—to tears of bewildered frustration. The multiple options when you sign up, each with its own multiple ceilings and co-payments; the second round of red tape when you actually want to acquire some pills; the ludicrously complex and arbitrary standards of eligibility, which play a cruel and pointless game of hide-and-seek as they lurch up and down the graph paper like drunks: Suddenly a mystery is solved—so, this must be what he means by "compassionate conservatism."

Thus Bush's only major domestic accomplishment in six years as president has not achieved its intended purpose of cementing the affection of senior citizens for the Republican Party. Many Republicans are sobbing with frustration, too. It is one thing to put aside your principles and spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on the largest expansion of the welfare state since the Great Society if it is going to help you to win elections (so you can pursue your dream of smaller government). It is another to sell your soul and not get anything for it. No one looks more foolish than a failed cynic.

But, look on the bright side, say the Bushies. The wretched thing does seem to be restraining drug prices and costing the government less than it was supposed to. The current cost estimate is only $678 billion over 10 years. That's down 8 percent from the previous estimate of $737 billion. Cool. But when the prescription-drug benefit was enacted in 2003, it was supposed to cost $400 billion over 10 years. As disenchanted conservative Bruce Bartlett retails in his new book about the Bush presidency, delicately entitled Impostor, there was a mini-scandal and an official investigation when it came out that the administration was hiding its own estimate of $534 billion. When the dust settled, that figure had become $557.7 billion.

Who believes any of these numbers? Do you? I will bet anyone a month's supply of Lipitor, collectible in 2016, that the 10-year bill will be more than $678 billion. Any takers?


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posted @ 03:48 AM EDT

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Business as usual

Photo AP/Luis M. Alvarez
Neil Bush, left, talks to Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud, of Saudi Arabia, during a luncheon on Feb. 14, 2005, in Miami.

Bush's strong support of the Dubai ports deal isn't so surprising in light of his family's many financial ties to Arab sheikdoms.

By Joe Conason

To hear George W. Bush urge calm upon the nation is a refreshing change from his administration's habitual encouragement of fear for political advantage. No more color-coded terror alerts, election-timed warnings or partisan-tinged posturing will emanate from the White House, or at least not until Dubai Ports World has safely completed its takeover of several major American shipping terminals. The president's shift in tone is as remarkable as his threat to use his first veto in five years to protect the Dubai deal in the face of bipartisan congressional opposition.

But Bush's passionate defense of the United Arab Emirates and the ports deal inevitably raises questions -- not only about the due diligence of his administration in this instance but about his and his family's long-standing ties to the Persian Gulf sheikdoms, and specifically to the UAE's rulers. His insinuation that skepticism is equivalent to bigotry cannot deflect such concerns, which first arose in the months after the 9/11 attacks.

By now, everyone paying attention to the furor over the Dubai ports deal should be aware of the UAE's mixed record with regard to terror and global security. The Emirates' ruling families formerly maintained close relationships with the Taliban and Osama bin Laden, whose hunting camps in Afghanistan they frequented; two of the 20 hijackers in the 9/11 plot were UAE nationals who used safe houses and banks in Dubai; and the A.Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network also used facilities there to mask its operations. Since 9/11, however, the Emirates have cooperated with U.S. operations against al-Qaida, and their state-owned corporations have eagerly participated in American attempts to improve transportation security.

What seems worrisome even to some who might ultimately accept the Dubai ports deal is the "casual attitude" of the Bush administration in vetting the company, as Sen. Carl Levin put it. Considering the history of Bush entanglement with the oil despots of the Gulf, that lax indulgence was bad policy and worse politics.


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posted @ 03:03 AM EDT

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posted @ 02:35 AM EDT
One War Lost, Another to Go

By Frank Rich
The New York Times

If anyone needs further proof that we are racing for the exits in Iraq, just
follow the bouncing ball that is Rick Santorum. A Republican leader in the Senate
and a true-blue (or red) Iraq hawk, he has long slobbered over President Bush,
much as Ed McMahon did over Johnny Carson. But when Mr. Bush went to Mr. Santorum's
home state of Pennsylvania to give his Veterans Day speech smearing the war's
critics as unpatriotic, the senator was M.I.A.

Mr. Santorum preferred to honor a previous engagement more than 100 miles away.
There he told reporters for the first time that "maybe some blame"
for the war's "less than optimal" progress belonged to the White House.
This change of heart had nothing to do with looming revelations of how the new
Iraqi "democracy" had instituted Saddam-style torture chambers. Or
with the spiraling investigations into the whereabouts of nearly $9 billion
in unaccounted-for taxpayers' money from the American occupation authority.
Or with the latest spike in casualties. Mr. Santorum was instead contemplating
his own incipient political obituary written the day before: a poll showing
him 16 points down in his re-election race. No sooner did he stiff Mr. Bush
in Pennsylvania than he did so again in Washington, voting with a 79-to-19 majority
on a Senate resolution begging for an Iraq exit strategy. He was joined by all
but one (Jon Kyl) of the 13 other Republican senators running for re-election
next year. They desperately want to be able to tell their constituents that
they were against the war after they were for it.

They know the voters have decided the war is over, no matter what symbolic
resolutions are passed or defeated in Congress nor how many Republicans try
to Swift-boat Representative John Murtha, the marine hero who wants the troops
out. A USA Today/CNN/Gallup survey last week found that the percentage (52)
of Americans who want to get out of Iraq fast, in 12 months or less, is even
larger than the percentage (48) that favored a quick withdrawal from Vietnam
when that war's casualty toll neared 54,000 in the apocalyptic year of 1970.
The Ohio State political scientist John Mueller, writing in Foreign Affairs ,
found that "if history is any indication, there is little the Bush administration
can do to reverse this decline." He observed that Mr. Bush was trying to
channel L. B. J. by making "countless speeches explaining what the effort
in Iraq is about, urging patience and asserting that progress is being made.
But as was also evident during Woodrow Wilson's campaign to sell the League
of Nations to the American public, the efficacy of the bully pulpit is much
overrated."

Mr. Bush may disdain timetables for our pullout, but, hello, there already
is one, set by the Santorums of his own party: the expiration date for a sizable
American presence in Iraq is Election Day 2006. As Mr. Mueller says, the decline
in support for the war won't reverse itself. The public knows progress is not
being made, no matter how many times it is told that Iraqis will soon stand
up so we can stand down.

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posted @ 03:55 PM EDT

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posted @ 03:51 PM EDT

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Looks like I may have been right about Rice

Back in July I speculated that Condoleezza Rice may be at the center of the Wilson/Plame leak. Now it seems like that speculation may, in fact, have been right on. While she is denying her role - the fact that she feels compelled to offer a public defense today should tell us something: namely, the sharks are circling around her and her former deputy, Stephen Hadley.

If the Times of London today is right and Hadley was Woodward's direct source, that raises a very important question: Was Hadley ordered to leak Plame's name to the press by his boss at the time, Condi Rice? In other words, Rice may not have been Woodward's direct source as she claims - but that doesn't mean she didn't give the order. Remember, as I wrote back in July, Wilson's New York Times op-ed was a direct indictment of Rice, meaning she had a personal motive. And it would be extremely hard to imagine Hadley acting alone with such a coordinated hit job on a CIA officer...Stay tuned.

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posted @ 11:21 PM EDT

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Blame-throwing Bush tries to burn Democrats

Joe Conason - The New York Observer

11.18.05 - If President George W. Bush can implicate enough
Democrats in the deception and incompetence that
led us into Iraq, he seems to expect that his dismal
ratings will rise again, as they did when many
people - including most members of
Congress - still believed him. But why
should the stupidity or even the mendacity of
politicians of either party provide any exoneration
for him?

Escaping accountability was plainly the aim of the
message he delivered to the nation on Veterans
Day, when he marred a patriotic holiday with a
tinny partisan speech. How strange on that day to
hear him mention Senator John Kerry, a Navy
veteran whose superior military record his Texas
minions trashed last year.

Seeking to use Mr. Kerry as a prop, the president
declared that many critics of his war policy
"supported my opponent during the last
election, who explained his position to support the
resolution in the Congress this way: 'When I
vote to give the president of the United States the
authority to use force, if necessary, to disarm
Saddam Hussein, it is because I believe that a
deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in
his hands is a threat, and a grave threat, to our
security.'" He went on to note that
“more than a hundred Democrats in the
House and the Senate - who had access to
the same intelligence - voted to support
removing Saddam Hussein from power."

Now it's true that Mr. Kerry and many of his
fellow Democrats stumbled haplessly into the Iraq
trap laid for them by the White House, and are only
now beginning to learn how to articulate their
dissent. They entrusted the president with the
authority to use force against Saddam Hussein,
believing him when he promised war would be his
last resort, and have since learned how carelessly
he abused that trust. They accepted the worthless
intelligence reports on Iraq's arsenal of
mass destruction that had been subjected to
extreme distortion by the White House.

And it is also too true that for too long, leading
Democrats hesitated to speak out.

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posted @ 11:13 PM EDT

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Bob Woodward: Smoke-and-Mirrors From the Start

RJ Eskow

The prevailng myth on the left these days seems to be that Bob Woodward is a fallen angel, a once-idealistic crusader turned cynical tool of the powerful. There's another explanation - that from the beginning he's used internecine warfare in the intelligence community and elsewhere to advance his own career. The Watergate story may just be the first of many Bob Woodward tricks with smoke and mirrors.

We can start with the obvious holes in the Watergate mythology as it is currently accepted in this country: Mark Felt, an idealistic and disaffected senior FBI official, turned into "Deep Throat" and brought down a President. Felt contacted the journalist he first met what the young, fresh-faced scribe was with Naval Intelligence. Signalling his idealistic reporter friend with flower pots and the like, he met them in secret garages and led them to the secrets that saved the country. "The system," as so many liked to say at the time, "worked."

Felt was already deeply engaged in an internal struggle to wrest control of the FBI away from the factions brought in by Richard Nixon, with whom he had personal dealings. He was already, in effect, the "Chief Operating Officer" of America's secret police. His later indictment for illegal "black bag jobs" against American dissenters demonstrated both his lack of interest in the American constitution and his willingness to stop at nothing to advance his own side of a power struggle.

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posted @ 10:50 PM EDT

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The "Some Other Dude Did It" Defense of I. Lewis Libby

By Elizabeth de la Vega
TomDispatch.com

Is Woodward's revelation a bombshell or a smokescreen?

Shortly after Vice President Cheney's former Chief of Staff, I. Lewis ("Scooter")
Libby, was indicted for obstructing justice and making false statements to a
government agent and a grand jury, Libby's attorneys suggested that they would
use the standard he's-a-busy-man-who-can't-remember-everything defense. But
now, with Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward's revelation that a senior administration
official other than Libby told him, in mid-June 2003, that Joseph Wilson's trip
to Niger had been arranged by Wilson's CIA operative wife Valerie Wilson, it
appears the Libby team has added another favorite, the SODDI Defense - as in,
"Some Other Dude Did It." Unfortunately for Libby, that turkey won't
fly. Here's why.

According to Libby's attorney, Theodore Wells, Woodward's disclosure is a "bombshell"
that "undermines the prosecution" because it disproves Special Prosecutor
Patrick Fitzgerald's alleged contention that Libby was the first senior administration
official to reveal to a reporter that Valerie Wilson worked as a CIA analyst.
Not true. For starters, a prosecutor's press conference statements are irrelevant
to, and not admissible in, the trial of the case. And Fitzgerald never said
Libby was the first official to have disclosed information about Valerie Wilson;
he said Libby was the first official known to have disclosed such information.

More important though, it is of no help to Libby that another administration
official, "some other dude," disclosed classified information about
Valerie Wilson's employment in order to discredit her husband before Libby himself
did so. (By the way, Woodward's impression that the disclosure by his source
was "casual" proves nothing about whether the smearing official knew
that the information being leaked was classified.) Despite the impression newspaper
readers may carry away from the flap over Woodward, Libby is not charged with
being the first to disclose Valerie Wilson's employment; he's not charged with
disclosing anything at all. And in a criminal trial, it is the charges that
define the issues. What, exactly, are those charges?

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posted @ 10:39 PM EDT

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The Greening of Italia Federici

Also see below:      Lobbyist Probe Sparks Senate Fireworks•

By Michael Scherer
Salon.com

To buy influence at the White House, GOP operative Jack Abramoff gave $500,000 in tribal loot to a Gale Norton pal who heads an "environmental" nonprofit.

Italia Federici swears in before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee in Washington Thursday. (Photo: Photo Yuri Gripas / AP Photo)

Italia Federici is a minor Republican player in Washington, the sort of dime-a-dozen functionary who can build a career trading favors in backrooms and producing political campaigns for moneyed interests. Her specialty is the environment. She leads a conservative front group called the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, or CREA, a tiny outfit, originally founded by Interior Secretary Gale Norton, that argues it is healthy for forests to clear-cut trees, good for the air to weaken air-quality controls, and "environmentally responsible" to drill for oil in the Alaskan wilderness.

For the past five years, Federici has limited her public activities to supporting President Bush's environmental plans. She claims that traditional environmentalists, groups like the Sierra Club and Democrats like Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., are dishonest and deceptive. But that is just the public face of Federici. In private, she has played a very different role in Washington, one that has now put her in the middle of one of the largest political ethics scandals in a decade.

On Thursday, she appeared before the Senate Indian Affairs Committee to explain under oath her relationship with Jack Abramoff, the disgraced Republican lobbyist whose exploits have already led to a handful of criminal indictments. For critics of Republican politics, the Abramoff investigations are a gift that keeps on giving. They reveal a world of ethical violations, illegal money transfers, perjury and graft that flowed between some of the biggest names in Republican politics. Already, Abramoff has been charged with fraud; a top White House official, David Safavian, has been charged with perjury; and another former White House official, Timothy Flanigan, has withdrawn from a Senate confirmation process.

Abramoff's dealings have thrown ethical clouds over a number of Republican heavyweights, including Rep. Tom DeLay, R-Texas., evangelical activist Ralph Reed, and anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist. And the investigation is far from over.

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posted @ 10:27 PM EDT

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What We Don't Know about Karl

Yesterday, public interest groups sent a letter to Corporation for Public Broadcasting calling for full public disclosure of all evidence of communications between top CPB board members and the White House.

In the letter Free Press, the Center for Digital Democracy and Common Cause demand the immediate release of all evidence uncovered during a recently completed Inspector General's investigation -- including e-mail correspondence between ex-CPB Chairman Kenneth Tomlinson and White House adviser Karl Rove.

The CPB's Inspector General Kenneth Konz struck this correspondence and other potentially damaging evidence from the version of the report that CPB released to the public on November 15.

The CPB board and the Inspector General must not be permitted to maintain a "secret dossier" on potential illegal and unethical activities. Jeff Chester of CDD said, "They should immediately disclose all the information related to efforts to force programming changes onto PBS and NPR. The public needs to know whether high-ranking White House officials dictated or influenced public broadcasting content."

The Inspector General's report describes "e-mails between the former Chairman and staff in the Executive Office of the President that, while cryptic in nature … [give] the appearance that the former Chairman was strongly motivated by political considerations in filling the President/CEO position." The CPB board ultimately selected Patricia Harrison, a seasoned GOP operative and former co-chair of the Republican Party, as president.

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posted @ 08:28 PM EDT

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Scanlon, Abramoff Associate, Agrees to Plea-Bargain Proposal

Nov. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Michael Scanlon, a former partner of
Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff, agreed to a proposed plea
bargain in connection with charges that he conspired to corrupt
public officials and defraud his Indian-tribe clients.

The agreement suggests that Scanlon is ready to cooperate
with prosecutors in a widening U.S. Justice Department probe of
Abramoff that is spilling into the halls of Congress. A hearing
on the charges is set for Nov. 21.

A reference in the complaint to an unnamed lawmaker may add
to the woes of President George W. Bush and the Republican Party
going into the 2006 elections. Their popularity is already
declining in polls, partly over concerns about honesty in
government. Last month, White House aide I. Lewis Libby was
indicted in a probe of the disclosure of a covert CIA operative's
identity and former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay -- Scanlon's
former boss -- was charged in Texas with money laundering.

``It is quite possible that for the majority party, we're
going to have indictments and trials going into next year that
parallel 1994,'' said Norman Ornstein, a fellow at the
Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, referring to
corruption cases that helped usher in Republican control of
Congress 11 years ago. ``The plea suggests that there is more to
come.''

$53 Million

Scanlon is accused of conspiring with ``Lobbyist A'' --
identified as Abramoff by a person close to the investigation --
to bilk the casino-owning Indian tribes out of millions of
dollars. Scanlon raked in almost $53 million in fees from four
tribes and kicked back $19.7 million to Abramoff, according to
the charges.

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posted @ 08:13 PM EDT

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A Private Obsession

By Paul Krugman
The New York Times

"Lots of things in life are complicated." So declared Michael Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, in response to the mass confusion as registration for the new Medicare drug benefit began. But the complexity of the program - which has reduced some retirees to tears as they try to make what may be life-or-death decisions - is far greater than necessary.

One reason the drug benefit is so confusing is that older Americans can't simply sign up with Medicare, as they can for other benefits. They must, instead, choose from a baffling array of plans offered by private middlemen. Why?

Here's a parallel. Earlier this year Senator Rick Santorum introduced a bill that would have forced the National Weather Service to limit the weather information directly available to the public. Although he didn't say so explicitly, he wanted the service to funnel that information through private forecasters instead.

Mr. Santorum's bill didn't go anywhere. But it was a classic attempt to force gratuitous privatization: involving private corporations in the delivery of public services even when those corporations have no useful role to play.

The Medicare drug benefit is an example of gratuitous privatization on a grand scale.

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posted @ 01:42 PM EDT

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Fitzgerald sees new grand jury proceedings

By Adam Entous
Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald said in court filings that the ongoing CIA leak investigation will involve proceedings before a new grand jury, a possible sign he could seek new charges in the case.

In filings obtained by Reuters on Friday, Fitzgerald said "the investigation is continuing" and that "the investigation will involve proceedings before a different grand jury than the grand jury which returned the indictment" against Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Fitzgerald did not elaborate in the document. For two years he has been investigating the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity. The grand jury that indicted Libby expired after the charges were filed late last month.

President George W. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, was not indicted along with Libby. But lawyers involved in the case said Rove remained under investigation and may still be charged.

Earlier this week Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward disclosed that he testified under oath to Fitzgerald that a senior Bush administration official had casually told him in mid-June 2003 about CIA operative Valerie Plame's position at the agency.

Fitzgerald's comments about bringing proceedings before a different grand jury were contained in court filings in which he backed off seeking a blanket order to keep all documents in the CIA leak case secret.

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posted @ 01:24 PM EDT

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posted @ 01:09 PM EDT

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Pulling A Nixon On Us?

By Stephen Pizzo, News for Real

When did this happen?

WASHINGTON - White House advisers convene secret sessions about the political dangers of revelations that American troops committed atrocities in the war zone ….. in the face of an increasingly unpopular war, they wonder at the impact on support at home. The best way out of the war, they agree, is to prop up a new government that they hope can unite the fractured foreign land… The President, meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told them to pull out all the stops. "don't worry, we're taking the political heat. "Publicly, we say one thing," he told aides. "Actually, we do another."

You are forgiven for assuming that was from George Bush and Dick Cheney's talking points the other day. Actually, it's straight out of newly-released Nixon administration documents from 1969.

Back then Nixon was trying to worm out of blow-back from the Mai Lai massacre and his illegal bombing of neutral Cambodia. (Full Story)

The reason I bring this up is because on Wednesday our current President and Vice President were busy furiously denying that they lied to get us into another war.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 16 - Vice President Dick Cheney joined the White House attack on critics of the Iraq war Wednesday night when he told a conservative group that senators who had suggested that the Bush administration manipulated prewar intelligence were making "one of the most dishonest and reprehensible charges ever aired in this city." (Full Story)

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posted @ 12:49 PM EDT

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There was a political thunderclap across the capital yesterday

An Iraq Deadline for Bush

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

This will be remembered as the week when President Bush lost control over the Iraq war debate. His administration has perhaps six months to get things right. If the situation in Iraq fails to improve significantly, public pressure for withdrawal will become irresistible.

There was a political thunderclap across the capital yesterday when Rep. John Murtha -- Marine veteran, defense specialist, longtime hawk and traditional supporter of presidential prerogatives in foreign policy -- called for pulling American troops out of Iraq. American soldiers, he said, "have done all they can in Iraq." Continued engagement by American troops was "not in the best interest of the United States."

To understand what these words meant coming from this tough, moderately conservative Pennsylvania Democrat, try to imagine Bush calling for increasing taxes on the rich or Arnold Schwarzenegger criticizing bodybuilding. Support for the administration's war strategy is crumbling.

Murtha's comments came just days after the Senate sent Bush a signal of its own. Only five of 44 Democrats voted against the party's amendment to the defense bill calling for estimated timetables on withdrawing from Iraq. The tally pointed to the end of Democratic fear of retaliation from Bush on national security issues. The political shock and awe that the administration regularly deployed after Sept. 11, 2001, no longer works.

Even more alarming for Bush is the fact that Senate Republican leaders felt obligated to introduce and pass their own resolution declaring 2006 "a period of significant transition to full Iraqi sovereignty." The resolution called, without specific timetables, for "creating the conditions for the phased redeployment of United States forces from Iraq."

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posted @ 12:45 PM EDT

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posted @ 03:55 AM EDT

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Mom Makes Teen Stand on Street With Sign

By SEAN MURPHY, Associated Press Writer

Tasha Henderson got tired of her 14-year-old daughter's poor grades, her chronic lateness to class and her talking back to her teachers, so she decided to teach the girl a lesson.

She made Coretha stand at a busy Oklahoma City intersection Nov. 4 with a cardboard sign that read: "I don't do my homework and I act up in school, so my parents are preparing me for my future. Will work for food."

"This may not work. I'm not a professional," said Henderson, a 34-year-old mother of three. "But I felt I owed it to my child to at least try."

In fact, Henderson has seen a turnaround in her daughter's behavior in the past week and a half. But the punishment prompted letters and calls to talk radio from people either praising the woman or blasting her for publicly humiliating her daughter.

"The parents of that girl need more education than she does if they can't see that the worst scenario in this case is to kill their daughter psychologically," Suzanne Ball said in a letter to The Oklahoman.

Marvin Lyle, 52, said in an interview: "I don't see anything wrong with it. I see the other extreme where parents don't care what the kids do, and at least she wants to help her kid."

Coretha has been getting C's and D's as a freshman at Edmond Memorial High in this well-to-do Oklahoma City suburb. Edmond Memorial is considered one of the top high schools in the state in academics.

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posted @ 03:51 AM EDT

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Ex-Convict Took Bribes in Iraq, U.S. Says

By JAMES GLANZ

A North Carolina man who was charged yesterday with accepting kickbacks and bribes as a comptroller and financial officer for the American occupation authority in Iraq was hired despite having served prison time for felony fraud in the 1990's.

The job gave the man, Robert J. Stein, control over $82 million in cash earmarked for Iraqi rebuilding projects.

Along with a web of other conspirators who have not yet been named, Mr. Stein and his wife received "bribes, kickbacks and gratuities amounting to at least $200,000 per month" to steer lucrative construction contracts to companies run by another American, Philip H. Bloom, an affidavit outlining the criminal complaint says. Mr. Stein's wife, who was not named, has not been charged with wrongdoing in the case; Mr. Bloom was charged with a range of crimes on Wednesday.

In the staccato language of the affidavit, filed in Federal District Court in the District of Columbia, Mr. Stein, 50, was charged with wire fraud, conspiracy, interstate transportation of stolen property and conspiracy to commit money laundering.

But the list of charges does little justice to the astonishing brazenness of the accusations described in the complaint, including a wire transfer of a $140,000 bribe, arranged by Mr. Bloom, to buy real estate for Mr. Stein in North Carolina. The affidavit also says that $65,762.63 was spent to buy cars for Mr. Stein and his wife (he bought a Chevrolet; she a Toyota), $44,471 for home improvements and $48,073 for jewelry, out of $258,000 sent directly to the Bragg Mutual Federal Credit Union into accounts controlled by the Steins.

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posted @ 03:35 AM EDT

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We just didn't think the villagers could afford the peripherals

Well, it was a nice try, anyway. Apple's play to make OS X the operating system of choice in the developing world by offering it to the One Laptop Per Child project for free fell apart when the initiative's founders balked at the idea of putting a proprietary OS on their low-cost laptop for the masses (see "And we don't expect any complaints about scratches on the case"). "We declined because it's not open source," Seymour Papert, a professor emeritus at MIT and one of the project's founders, told The Wall Street Journal. Even so, that hasn't kept Microsoft from talking to the folks in charge of the project, after initially snorting at the idea of a $100 laptop. "Their first reaction was to laugh at the idea, then the next reaction was kind of antagonistic," Papert said. "Recently, they're very friendly."

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posted @ 12:16 AM EDT
Commando death squads stalk Iraq

Among the varied armed security men on Baghdad's streets these days, you cannot miss the police commandos. In combat uniforms, bulletproof vests and wrap-around sunglasses or ski masks, they muscle through Baghdad's traffic jams in police cars or camouflage- painted pickup trucks, clearing nervous drivers from their path with shouted commands and the occasional gunshot in the air.

James Rupert

Among the varied armed security men on Baghdad's streets these days, you cannot miss the police commandos. In combat uniforms, bulletproof vests and wrap-around sunglasses or ski masks, they muscle through Baghdad's traffic jams in police cars or camouflage- painted pickup trucks, clearing nervous drivers from their path with shouted commands and the occasional gunshot in the air.

The commandos are part of the Iraqi security forces that the Bush administration says will gradually replace American troops in this war. But the commandos are being blamed for a wave of kidnappings and executions around Baghdad since the spring. One such group, the Volcano Brigade, is operating as a death squad - under the influence or control of Iraq's most potent Shiite factional militia, the Iranian- backed Badr Organization, say Iraqi government officials and Baghdad residents.

In the past six months, Badr has heavily infiltrated the Interior Ministry under which the commandos operate, the sources said. Badr also was accused of running the secret Interior Ministry prison raided Sunday by US troops.

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posted @ 03:42 AM EDT

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Dick Cheney, who outright lied to justify invading Iraq, now attacks Demcrats for calling him on his lies

by John Aravosis

UPDATE: Cong Henry Waxman has a document online detailing 51 times that Cheney misled the country about Iraq! (The Cheney stuff begins on page 26 of the document, which is actually page 32 of the pdf file.)

Oh this is rich. Cheney is the newest attack dog Bush is sending out to chastize Dems for calling Bush and company liars. The only problem? Cheney himself is one of the liars who repeatedly and intentionally misled the country in order to justify the war.

Do you remember the one where...

1. Cheney Claimed Iraq Was Providing WMD Training To Al-Qaeda Months After Source Recanted

or the one where...

2. Cheney claimed Saddam was harboring Al Qaeda? He wasn't.

or the one where...

3. Cheney claimed Saddam gave Al Qaeda bomb-making expertise and trained Al Qaeda terrorists how to use chemical and biological weapons? Saddam didn't.

or the one where...

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posted @ 12:24 AM EDT

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posted @ 12:16 AM EDT

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George W. Bush's 'Evil Genie'


He tells senators to 'go fuck themselves' and calls congressmen 'midges.' He wasn't a bright student, nor was he a great athlete. But Dick Cheney has become, by many accounts, the most powerful vice president in American History. According to this article in France's Liberation, he looks like an evil spirit, and that's the way he likes it..

By Christine Legrand, special correspondent
Translated By Mike Goeden

The history books have not recorded the exact phrase used by the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, against the Democratic senator from Vermont, Patrick Leahy, on June 22, 2004. Certain witnesses heard "fuck you," while others remember hearing "go fuck yourself;" in any case, both expressions are generally frowned upon by polite society. Mr. Leahy had dared to request an investigation into reconstruction contract for Iraq awarded to Halliburton, which Cheney headed until his election in 2000.The vice president had responded "frankly," according to his spokesman. The incident was quickly declared over and done with. When the Senate is not in session, exchanging insults is not considered in breach of etiquette.

Behind the retired fly fisherman facade, 64-year-old Dick Cheney hides a certain brutality. He has been known to regularly employ rather brash language toward the Democrats, the press, and even members of Congress, whom he once referred to as "midges."He has no fear of confrontation. Even though he managed to avoid serving in Vietnam, he was Secretary of Defense from 1989 to 1993. He has even referred to himself as a hawk "who never met a weapons system he hasn't voted for."

Little is known of Dick Cheney. His biographers have themselves admitted to being disappointed in this regard, including the journalist John Nichols, author of the polemical Dick, the Man Who Is President (2004). He writes that, despite his 35 years in the public arena, Mr. Cheney "has succeeded in keeping the lowest of low profiles."The vice president sometimes attributes his rise to power to this very same discretion, which he also at times describes as his strongest quality. But very much against his will, Mr. Cheney is finding himself more and more frequently on the front page. Halliburton, the energy plan, Iraq: his name is linked to various fiascos of the Bush presidency.

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posted @ 12:05 AM EDT
Italy Goes After Getty

By Ulrike Knöfel

The Italian government is accusing museums all over the world of having purchased stolen artwork on a grand scale. This week, a former curator at California's Getty Museum appears before a Rome court to face charges. The museum community, especially in the United States, is watching the case closely.

The Italian government is accusing museums all over the world of having purchased stolen artwork on a grand scale. A former curator at California's Getty Museum now faces charges in Rome. The museum community, especially in the United States, is watching the case anxiously.

It's a clique shrouded in mystery, and it includes some of the most powerful people in the art world. Each year, this group -- made up of the directors of some 50 world-renowned museums -- meets to exchange information ranging from confidential gossip to their visions for the future.

This year's meeting of the "Bizot Group" -- named after founder Irène Bizot, the former head of France's Reunion des Musees Nationaux -- was two weeks ago in Los Angeles. Every top name in the business was there, including museum directors from Australia, the United States, and Europe; from Madrid, Vienna and Berlin. Three museum directors from London attended: the heads of the British Museum, the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Philippe de Montebello, director of New York's Metropolitan Museum, was one of the meeting moderators. The gathering was scheduled to span several days, including one spent in the well-heeled Getty Museum in Los Angeles.

But the topic under discussion at the Getty was anything but pleasant. "The tone suddenly became quite sharp and the mood nervous," says one attendee. After all, the art empire of oil billionaire J. Paul Getty (which also includes the Getty Villa and Getty Center) is under fire. The Getty Museum has become embroiled in a scandal and the word "Gettygate" -- as innocuous as it may sound -- spells big trouble for the museum world.

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posted @ 10:57 PM EDT

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Chavez Says Bush Left Summit, 'With Tail Between His Legs'

Venezuelan President was in rare form during his weekly TV and radio show on Sunday, attacking Mexico's President Vicente Fox for his support of the U.S-sponsored Free Trade Area of the America's and, according to this article from Venezuela's El Universal, saying that President Bush left the Summit, 'with his tail between his legs, by the back door.'

Caracas: On his weekly TV and radio show, Hello, Mr. President, Hugo Chávez, the President of the Republic, warned his Mexican colleague Vicente Fox "not to mess with him," while showing videos of the discussions at the recent 4th Summit of Americas at Mar Del Plata, during which differences emerged over the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).—BBC NEWS VIDEO: Chavez Attacks Mexican President Vicente Fox for His Support of President Bush, November 14, 00:01:25

Chavez insisted that the FTAA was dead and "buried by the people," and criticized the chief executives that supported the U.S.-sponsored proposal, while he promoted the position of MERCOSUR (Common Market of the South, comprised of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay), which is to proceed with caution in regard to the FTAA.

Chavez said that Fox attacked the President of Argentina, Nestor Kirchner, for his decision to oppose the FTAA, and insisted that the Mexican president was "bleeding from his wound'' due to the results of the meeting.

'"You know that I responded to President Fox. President Fox. I told him that there is a song from the plains. It's about Florentino, who fought the devil, and it goes like this: 'I am like a thorny bush that lies on the Savanah, I give off perfume to those who pass by, and prick those who shake me. Don't mess with me Mr., because you'll end up getting pricked," Chavez said.

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posted @ 10:45 PM EDT

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posted @ 10:25 PM EDT

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Bill Clinton Calls Iraq 'Big Mistake'

By LARA SUKHTIAN
The Associated Press

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- Former President Clinton told Arab students Wednesday the United States made a "big mistake" when it invaded Iraq, stoking the partisan debate back home over the war.

Clinton cited the lack of planning for what would happen after Saddam Hussein was overthrown.

"Saddam is gone. It's a good thing, but I don't agree with what was done," Clinton told students at a forum at the American University of Dubai.

"It was a big mistake. The American government made several errors ... one of which is how easy it would be to get rid of Saddam and how hard it would be to unite the country."

Clinton's remarks came when he was taking questions about the U.S. invasion, which began in 2003. His response drew cheers and a standing ovation at the end of the hour-long session.

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posted @ 10:20 PM EDT

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DuPont Knew, Covered Up Pollution of Americans' Blood for 18 Years

Former DuPont Top Expert: Company Knew, Covered Up Pollution of Americans' Blood for 18 Years

Documents: Company Couldn't Find Safe Level of Exposure in 1973 to Chemical that Never Breaks Down, Clings to Human Blood

Study Results Show Company Found Safer Ways to Coat Food Packaging But Shelved Them to Save Money

WASHINGTON - November 16 - Glenn Evers was a DuPont employee of 22 years, one of the company's top technical experts and the chairman of an invitation-only committee of its 40 best scientists and technical experts. He holds six patents, and his work has, to date, made the company an estimated $250 million in after-tax profits. Evers was, by his description, a dedicated "company man."

He was also the company's top chemical engineer involved with designing and developing new uses of grease-resistant, or perfluorinated, chemical-based coating for paper food packaging.

Breakdown chemicals from these coatings and related sources are now in the blood of 95 percent of Americans, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has spent the last several years trying to determine how they get there.

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posted @ 10:07 PM EDT

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DEMOCRATS PROPOSE PLAN FOR BROADBAND IN EVERY HOME

Five-Year Program Would Provide Cheap, Universal High-Speed Internet Access

By Ira Teinowitz

WASHINGTON (AdAge.com) -- House Democrats today proposed an "innovation agenda" that includes as one of its platforms affordable broadband access in every home within five years.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said one goal of the plan is to 'put all Americans ... no more than a keystroke or mouse click away from jobs and opportunities.'

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi today said the agenda is needed to keep the country the "most competitive and innovative nation in the world."

"Universal broadband will propel advanced Internet applications, such as distance learning, health IT, video-on-demand and voice over IP," the California Democrat said in a speech today at the National Press Club.

'A click away from jobs'

It "will put all Americans, no matter where they live, no more than a keystroke or a mouse click away from the jobs and opportunity broadband both creates and supports," Ms. Pelosi said.

The party's plan calls for creating a national broadband policy, promoting broadband to rural and underserved communities, and encouraging additional ways to access broadband through wireless and power line connections.

"Democrats will ensure that the U.S. has the world's most advanced telecommunications infrastructure to bridge the digital divide so that every American has access to affordable broadband Internet service and communications technology," Ms. Pelosi said.

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posted @ 09:52 PM EDT

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D.C. Establishment Freaks Out

As Dems Challenge Lobbyists' Power, D.C. Establishment Freaks Out

David Sirota

Why are House Democrats' efforts to distance themselves from K Street corporate lobbyists being portrayed as a problem?

That's the question I have after reading today's Hill Newspaper story which disgustingly portrays House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's independence from K Street as some sort of negative trait. The story says "lobbyists are grumbling that they have not been enjoying the same access to Pelosi as they have in the past." These lobbyists are used to lawmakers "run[ning] plans past K Street early to avoid any surprises or disagreements farther down the line." That's a euphemism for Corporate America expecting the people's representatives to make sure to get Big Business's stamp of approval on every potential piece of legislation.

Pelosi, of course, should be congratulated for her independence, especially since we're living through the Republicans' "Culture of Corruption" whereby K Street essentially dictates everything that our government does. As just one example, the Washington Post notes that the House of Representatives is run by Roy Blunt (R-MO), a guy who has maximized his "influence by delegating authority to Washington business and trade association lobbyists to help negotiate deals with individual House members to produce majorities on important issues."

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posted @ 05:41 PM EDT

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Vine Deloria Jr., Champion of Indian Rights, Dies at 72

By KIRK JOHNSON

DENVER, Nov. 14 - Vine Deloria Jr., a Standing Rock Sioux who burst into the American consciousness in 1969 with his book "Custer Died for Your Sins" and later amplified his message through 20 more books about the Native American experience, died on Sunday, a family friend said.

He was 72 and lived in Golden, just west of Denver, and had recently been hospitalized with an aortic aneurysm.

Mr. Deloria, who was trained as both a seminarian and a lawyer, steadfastly worked to demythologize how white Americans thought of American Indians. The myths, he often said - whether as romantic symbols of life in harmony with nature or as political bludgeons in fostering guilt - were both shallow. The truth, he said, was a mix, and only in understanding that mix, he argued, could either side ever fully heal.

And while his Custer book, with its incendiary title, was categorized at the time as an angry young man's anthem, Mr. Deloria's real weapon, critics and admirers said, was his scathing, sardonic humor, which he was able to use on both sides of the Indian-white divide. He once called the Battle of the Little Bighorn, where Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer and the Seventh Cavalry were defeated by a combined force of Sioux and Northern Cheyenne in 1876 in the Montana territory, "a sensitivity-training session."

"We have brought the white man a long way in 500 years," he wrote in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times in 1976. "From a childish search for mythical cities of gold and fountains of youth to the simple recognition that lands are essential for human existence."

In "We Talk, You Listen: New Tribes, New Turf" (1970), Mr. Deloria argued that technology and corporate values were destroying American life, and urged a return to the tribal standards of Indian culture as a window to salvation.

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posted @ 05:36 PM EDT

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posted @ 05:24 PM EDT

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Woodward Was Told of Plame More Than Two Years Ago

By Jim VandeHei and Carol D. Leonnig
Washington Post Staff Writers

Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA leak case that a senior administration official told him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her position at the agency nearly a month before her identity was disclosed.

In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward told Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official casually told him in mid-June 2003 that Plame worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction, and that he did not believe the information to be classified or sensitive, according to a statement Woodward released yesterday.

Fitzgerald interviewed Woodward about the previously undisclosed conversation after the official alerted the prosecutor to it on Nov. 3 -- one week after Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, was indicted in the investigation.

Citing a confidentiality agreement in which the source freed Woodward to testify but would not allow him to discuss their conversations publicly, Woodward and Post editors refused to disclose the official's name or provide crucial details about the testimony. Woodward did not share the information with Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr. until last month, and the only Post reporter whom Woodward said he remembers telling in the summer of 2003 does not recall the conversation taking place.

Woodward said he also testified that he met with Libby on June 27, 2003, and discussed Iraq policy as part of his research for a book on President Bush's march to war. He said he does not believe Libby said anything about Plame.

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posted @ 04:30 PM EDT

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Bush's magnificent deception

By Thomas Oliphant, Globe Columnist

WASHINGTON JUST FOR the record, the polling numbers President Bush claims not to read show the following with regard to the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in 2003:

According to The Wall Street Journal-NBC News survey last week, 57 percent of the sample believe Bush deliberately misled the country on the way to war, more than 20 points above the numbers asserting he was straight with the country.

In denying the charge, however, it is fascinating that the White House spin machine has avoided giving examples of its nuanced rhetoric on the subject of the alleged threat posed by Iraq at the time in order to make its case to a skeptical public. That's because there aren't any.

Instead, there has been an entertaining chorus of claims that the charge is false but that everybody else did it -- other countries' intelligence services, assorted politicians in this country (especially Democrats). Lacking a defense, Bush's operatives have sought to construct a Potemkin universe of intelligence dupes.

In this blizzard of disinformation, though, the unique nature of Bush and his top advisers is conveniently overlooked. Everyone else in the world with the possible exception of Tony Blair recognizes the corollary to the now-accepted wisdom that Iraq possessed no unconventional weapons and posed no threat to the United States worthy of adjectives like grave, imminent, or even serious.

The corollary would be that knowing then what is known now, an essentially unilateral invasion of Iraq under conditions of haste and waste in March of 2003 would have been ill-advised in the extreme. Virtually alone in the world, Bush has proclaimed for months that he would have invaded Iraq even if he had known it posed no threat.

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posted @ 08:57 AM EDT

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Scariest president ever

Very disturbing story about Bush's state of mind in the Wash Times magazine

by John Aravosis

The Washington Times, you may know, is an "independent" newspaper that is basically the mouthpiece of the Republican party. For that reason, it sometimes gets inside scoops as to what the GOP is thinking, and even what's going on inside the White House. For that reason, their latest story on Bush is extremely disturbing:

President Bush feels betrayed by several of his most senior aides and advisors
and has severely restricted access to the Oval Office, administration
sources say. The president's reclusiveness in the face of relentless
public scrutiny of the U.S.-led war in Iraq and White House leaks
regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame has become so extreme that Mr.
Bush has also reduced contact with his father, former President George
H.W. Bush, administration sources said on the condition of anonymity.

Matt Drudge adds on his site:

The sources said Mr. Bush maintains daily contact with only four people:
first lady Laura Bush, his mother, Barbara Bush, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice and Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes. The sources
also say that Mr. Bush has stopped talking with his father, except on
family occasions.

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posted @ 01:58 AM EDT

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THE ENTIRE PLAMEGATE CHRONOLOGY!

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Click on the image above to see a 12 minute preview! Rove's War DVD is now complete! Take Back The Media is offering the two-DVD set for a $20 minimum donation.

Takebackthemedia.com and their Hollywood Award winning director/producer Symbolman is proud to present the Definitive Chronology of the Rove/Plamegate outing in DVD format, "Roves War."


After more than a year of research, filtering through hundreds of hours of footage and blogs, the "Rove's War" double DVD set weighs in at 150+ minutes of Red Meat for those that want to know exactly where, when, what and who pulled treasonous crimes - as we shred media propaganda and rumors, and expose the Truth.

read more

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posted @ 01:22 AM EDT

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New Orleans Death Toll Climbing As Returning Residents Find Bodies…

Kevin Johnson, Richard Willing   |  Associated Press

More than a month after the official search for victims of Hurricane Katrina ended, the death toll in Louisiana has jumped by 104 as returning families in the New Orleans area continue to find bodies.

Many of the newly discovered victims are elderly people who sought refuge in attics and upper floors from the rising waters throughout New Orleans' devastated 9th Ward, said Frank Minyard, the coroner in greater New Orleans.

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posted @ 01:00 AM EDT

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posted @ 12:47 AM EDT

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Document Says Oil Chiefs Met With Cheney Task Force


Testifying at a Senate hearing last week were, from left, Lee R. Raymond of Exxon Mobil, David J. O'Reilly of Chevron, James J. Mulva of ConocoPhillips, Ross Pillari of BP America and John Hofmeister of Shell Oil.

By Dana Milbank and Justin Blum
Washington Post Staff Writers

A White House document shows that executives from big oil companies met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001 -- something long suspected by environmentalists but denied as recently as last week by industry officials testifying before Congress.

The document, obtained this week by The Washington Post, shows that officials from Exxon Mobil Corp., Conoco (before its merger with Phillips), Shell Oil Co. and BP America Inc. met in the White House complex with the Cheney aides who were developing a national energy policy, parts of which became law and parts of which are still being debated.

In a joint hearing last week of the Senate Energy and Commerce committees, the chief executives of Exxon Mobil Corp., Chevron Corp. and ConocoPhillips said their firms did not participate in the 2001 task force. The president of Shell Oil said his company did not participate "to my knowledge," and the chief of BP America Inc. said he did not know.

Chevron was not named in the White House document, but the Government Accountability Office has found that Chevron was one of several companies that "gave detailed energy policy recommendations" to the task force. In addition, Cheney had a separate meeting with John Browne, BP's chief executive, according to a person familiar with the task force's work; that meeting is not noted in the document.

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posted @ 12:44 AM EDT

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Gulf Coast slaves



Katrina cleanup workers rest on cots in a hangar at the Seabee naval base in Gulfport, Miss.

Halliburton and its subcontractors hired hundreds of undocumented Latino workers to clean up after Katrina -- only to mistreat them and throw them out without pay.

By Roberto Lovato

Arnulfo Martinez recalls seeing lots of hombres del ejercito standing at attention. Though he was living on the Belle Chasse Naval Base near New Orleans when President Bush spoke there on Oct. 11, he didn't understand anything the ruddy man in the rolled-up sleeves was saying to the troops.

Martinez, 16, speaks no English; his mother tongue is Zapotec. He had left the cornfields of Oaxaca, Mexico, four weeks earlier for the promise that he would make $8 an hour, plus room and board, while working for a subcontractor of KBR, a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton that was awarded a major contract by the Bush administration for disaster relief work. The job was helping to clean up a Gulf Coast naval base in the region devastated by Hurricane Katrina. "I was cleaning up the base, picking up branches and doing other work," Martinez said, speaking to me in broken Spanish.

Even if the Oaxacan teenager had understood Bush when he urged Americans that day to "help somebody find shelter or help somebody find food," he couldn't have known that he'd soon need similar help himself. But three weeks after arriving at the naval base from Texas, Martinez's boss, Karen Tovar, a job broker from North Carolina who hired workers for a KBR subcontractor called United Disaster Relief, booted him from the base and left him homeless, hungry and without money.

"They gave us two meals a day and sometimes only one," Martinez said.

He says that Tovar "kicked us off the base," forcing him and other cleanup workers -- many of them Mexican and undocumented -- to sleep on the streets of New Orleans. According to Martinez, they were not paid for three weeks of work. An immigrant rights group recently filed complaints with the Department of Labor on behalf of Martinez and 73 other workers allegedly owed more than $56,000 by Tovar. Tovar claims that she let the workers go because she was not paid by her own bosses at United Disaster Relief. In turn, UDR manager Zachary Johnson, who declined to be interviewed for this story, told the Washington Post on Nov. 4 that his company had not been paid by KBR for two months.

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posted @ 12:31 AM EDT

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Report Says Ex-Chief of Public TV Violated Federal Law

By STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - Investigators at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting concluded today that its former chairman repeatedly broke federal law and its own regulations in a campaign to combat what he saw as liberal bias.

A scathing report by the corporation's inspector general described a dysfunctional organization that violated the Public Broadcasting Act, which created the corporation and was written to insulate programming decisions from politics.

The corporation received $400 million this year from Congress to finance an array of programs on public television and radio, although its future financing has come under heavy criticism, particularly from conservative lawmakers. Its board is selected by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

The corporation's former chairman, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, who was ousted from the board two weeks ago when it was presented in a closed session with the details of the report, has said he sought to enforce a provision of the Public Broadcasting Act meant to ensure objectivity and balance in programming.

But the report said that in the process, Mr. Tomlinson repeatedly crossed statutory boundaries that set up the corporation as a "heat shield" to protect public radio and television from political interference.

The report said he violated federal law by being heavily involved in getting more than $4 million for a program featuring the conservative editorial writers of the Wall Street Journal. It said he imposed a "political test" to recruit a new president. And it said his decision to hire Republican consultants to defeat legislation violated contracting rules.

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posted @ 12:02 AM EDT