STUPID WHITE MEN

Bush seems to think that the situation in Iraq is similar to the situation in Korea, and requires the same solution. This is mind-numbingly stupid – frighteningly so. Who is the “external” enemy being kept out? Where exactly is the boundary, the DMZ, that will be protected? Where can the troops be stationed in safety over the long haul? Is he talking about a FIFTY YEAR commitment, as we’ve had in Korea?

I’d like to see a Senate vote on THAT proposal.

With every passing day it becomes clearer and clearer: they have no clue – NONE – of what they are doing and what they are hoping to accomplish

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_27.php#014375
[Reuters] President George W. Bush would like to see a lengthy U.S. troop presence in Iraq like the one in South Korea to provide stability but not in a frontline combat role, the White House said on Wednesday. . . [read on]

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_27.php#014379
[DS] I have believed, from the beginning – though I have always hoped to be proven wrong – that the Bush White House (i.e. Cheney) has had as its principal goal in Iraq the establishment of a permanent military presence in that country. . . [read on]

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_27.php#014385
[Josh Marshall] The president says so many stupid things about Iraq that it's sort of hard to know which ones to focus on. But in purely political terms if no others I would think the president's critics would want to focus in on what the White House said about how long the president thinks US troops should stay in Iraq. . . .

As TPM Reader DS made clear in the email we posted earlier, there's only one goal that makes sense of that strategy. And that is to permanently dominate the cluster of oil fields in southern Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iran. Nothing to do with democracy, as though that needed saying. But also nothing to do with terrorism. We're permanently occupying Iraq to lock down the world oil supply.

But all that is commentary. The headline is clear enough to get the message out: the president wants US troops in Iraq for decades to come. . . .

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_27.php#014387
[WG] The proper analogy for Iraq is still Vietnam. While the government we created in South Korea was functional and able to control its population, the government we have created in Iraq, like the government we created in South Vietnam, has been largely irrelevant. In Iraq, Shiites and Sunnis are fighting us, our al Maliki government, the Kurds, each other and themselves in a last-man-standing free-for-all. While it's tempting to try to find some method to the madness of the last few years, you won't find it in a 50-year plan to control the oil supply of the Middle East. That's a pipe dream that didn't survive the occupation. By floating the Korean occupation as an analogy for Iraq, Bush has created one more leaky vessel to cling to as his presidency is swept into the backwaters of history. . . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_27.php#014381

http://www.first-draft.com/2007/05/today_on_holden_16.html

How much can we trust General Petraeus’s own evaluation of how well his new Iraq war policy is working?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/30/133429/341
[Ilan Goldenberg] So would this ever happen in the corporate world? You have an employee. He’s doing a job. You ask him to evaluate how he is doing his job. You base your entire evaluation on his own assessment without getting any objective outside input. Sounds ridiculous doesn’t it. But that’s exactly what President Bush wants us to do when evaluating whether or not the "surge" is working. . . .

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/30/escalation-succeed/
Over the weekend, Fox News pundit Fred Barnes claimed that in September, Gen. David Petraeus will report “great progress and say [Baghdad] is heavily pacified.” That optimistic assessment is not shared, however, by one of Petraeus’ key advisers.

On CBS Evening News last night, Stephen Biddle, an early proponent of the escalation, argued that Bush’s strategy in Iraq is “likelier to fail than succeed at this point.” Biddle assessed that there is “maybe a one in ten” chance the escalation will succeed. “Maybe it’s a one in five longshot, if we play our cards right,” he said. . .

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YTM2M2Q3MGZiYzMyYTUzYTg5YTgzYjljNTliODA2NTM
[Rich Lowry] Was talking to an influential Republican strategist who thinks if Iraq looks the way it does now in September, Bush will lose about 25 Senate Republicans on a bill with some sort of timetable for withdrawal. . .

You think there isn’t a desperate troop shortage?

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/31/1171/11573
[Jeralyn Merritt] Army Returns Soldiers With Missing Limbs to Active Duty . . .

Bush worries that America is “losing its soul” (not that Mr. Torture and Secret Rendition has had anything to do with that)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/05/30/BL2007053001194.html

More: http://www.americablog.com/2007/05/bush-suddenly-worried-that-immigration.html

Bush announces a $30 billion AIDS program. Does ANYONE believe the money will be administered fairly and effectively – or will this just be another boondoggle for theocratic “abstinence” programs?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/boondoggle-alert-by-tristero-call-me.html
[NYT] “This money will be spent wisely,” Mr. Bush said in the White House Rose Garden, where the brilliant sunshine and the music of birds seemed incongruous, given the seriousness of the subject.

[Tristero] That's right. Bush actually said, “This money will be spent wisely.” If that ain't a tipoff, I dunno what is. . .

Bush in denial

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2007/05/30/bushrove/index.html
[Tim Grieve] But for our money, the most interesting part of Ron Hutcheson's interview with Bush comes toward the end, when he asks the president whether Karl Rove was "the main guy drawing up the list" of U.S. attorneys who were fired last year. "Just look at the facts as they've come out," Bush says.

Hutcheson: It's unclear.

Bush: There has been plenty of testimony, plenty of hearings, plenty of statements. And one thing is for certain, that there was no wrongdoing done.

The question, again, wasn't whether there was "wrongdoing done," but whether Rove was the "main guy drawing up the list" of U.S. attorneys who were fired. We'd call Bush's response a nondenial denial -- if only there had been any denial in it at all.

Yes, it WAS all about the phony “voter fraud” agenda the White House wanted them to pursue

http://www.slate.com/id/2167340
[Daniel Politi] The LAT fronts a look at how the former U.S. attorney for Minnesota, Tom Heffelfinger, who was frequently praised as an effective prosecutor, ended up on the infamous Department of Justice list of U.S. attorneys who could be fired. It increasingly looks like Heffelfinger's work to protect the voting rights of Native Americans was at least partly to blame. His name appeared on the list only three months after his office began questioning a state directive that would have forbidden tribal ID cards as a valid form of identification at the voting booth. . .

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_27.php#014388
[Josh Marshall] One of my first introductions to how aggressively the post-2000 Rove GOP was going to use bogus 'vote fraud' stories to stop minorities from being able to vote came in the extremely close South Dakota senate race back in 2002. . . It was a riveting and also profoundly disgusting story. . .

Rove protégé Tim Griffin reportedly OUT as US Attorney in Arkansas – and wait ‘til you see what his new gig might be

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_27.php#014384

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003315.php

Get more popcorn

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/30/AR2007053001499.html
Justice Department investigators have widened an internal probe of the firings of U.S. attorneys to include a broader examination of hiring practices at the sprawling department, including the troubled Civil Rights Division and programs for beginning lawyers, officials said yesterday.

"We have expanded the scope of our investigation to include allegations regarding improper political or other considerations in hiring decisions within the Department of Justice” . . .

More: http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003316.php

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_27.php#014377

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003311.php

On the other hand, there are plenty of reasons to be suspicious of these “internal” investigations – a case in point

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/05/what_constitute.html

Now that Fitzgerald has affirmed unambiguously that Valerie Plame WAS a covert agent, will a single one of the right-wing’s apologists, pundits, hired guns, and hackologists admit they were wrong when they were pooh-poohing the notion that there was any underlying crime at stake, because they said she wasn’t?

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/30/9402/

Wolfie’s replacement, Bob Zoellick, may not have smooth sailing over at the World Bank

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_27.php#014371

Here’s something you probably didn’t know about Fred Thompson, the new savior of anybody-but-Rudy-McRomney Republicans

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_05_27_archive.html#2719508571202612732
[Atrios] Candy Crowley just informed me that Fred Thompson had a "bout with cancer" but that he's "cancer free." . . .

Thompson has indolent lymphoma. It's incurable. It will kill him, if something else doesn't first. It may not kill him very soon. He may live many years. But he's not "cancer free."

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/05/thompsons_formidability.php
[Matt Yglesias] I think Thompson is going to end up as a case study in why governors have an easier time winning the White House than do Senators. If you combined Thompson's persona and TV skills with a few token gubernatorial accomplishments (cut taxes eleventeen times, tripled awesomeness, etc.) you'd have a bitchin' presidential contender.

Instead, as a 1990s-vintage GOP Senator he has no real accomplishments to his name and a voting record ready to be mined for attacks . . .[read on]

More: http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/05/thompson_as_clark.php



McCain/Lieberman in ’08? They can share photos

http://www.americablog.com/2007/05/lieberman-in-iraq-says-so-called-surge.html
CNN reports that Lieberman is on an unannounced "surprise" visit to Baghdad. Paula Hancocks followed Lieberman around. She talked to Lieberman and reported, "He said he was happy with the progress. . .”

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/30/23124/6909
[McClatchy] The soldiers smiled and greeted him, stood with him for pictures and sat down to a lunch of roast beef and turkey sandwiches. It was unclear if they ever asked their questions....It isn't clear whether [Spc. David] Williams mentioned the last line on his note card, the one that had a star next to it.

"We don't feel like we're making any progress," it said. . .

Theocracy watch: Sam Brownback (R-KS) plays “how low can you go?”

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/bad-pun-at-heart-of-creationism-by.html
[Tristero] Sam Brownback's ghost writer gives us the Republican candidate's opinion of science and reality. He's against 'em both. On principle. The amount of deliberate misinformation, bad science, and even worse theology in this op-ed achieves a new high on the Idiocies Per Sentence Index (tm). However, while there is plenty of stupidity to unpack in Brownback, I'd like to focus on only one small rhetorical detail . . .

More: http://www.samefacts.com/archives/_/2007/05/the_democrats_and_the_scientific_estate.php
[Mark Kleiman] Scientists are popularly respected, and friendly to Democrats. The Republicans have been mistreating scientists and science. This is a political opportunity for the Democrats, but one they're not currently grabbing. . .

Please explain it to me: Why isn’t it fair game to ask Dick and Lynne Cheney to comment on this?

http://www.americablog.com/2007/05/concerned-women-for-america-spokesman.html
Concerned Women for America spokesman blasts Mary Cheney and girlfriend as just "playing house," not "real parents," birth of son is "tragedy" . . . .

Of course, Cheney doesn’t think he has to answer for ANYTHING

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/29/cheney-lawyer-told-secret-service-not-to-keep-visitor-logs/
“A lawyer for Vice President Dick Cheney told the Secret Service in September to eliminate data on who visited Cheney at his official residence, a newly disclosed letter states.”

The Sept. 13, 2006, letter from Cheney’s lawyer says logs for Cheney’s residence on the grounds of the Naval Observatory are subject to the Presidential Records Act.

The Justice Department filed the letter Friday in a lawsuit by a private group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, seeking the identities of conservative religious leaders who visited Cheney at his official residence. . . .

UPDATE: Such unethical secrecy is not new for the Vice President. In 2005, the Center for Public Integrity discovered that “Cheney and his staff have been unilaterally exempting themselves from long-standing travel disclosure rules followed by the rest of the executive branch, including the Office of the President.”

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/30/big-time-liar/
[CBS News, April 15, 2007] Despite the conviction of his former chief of staff in a high-profile trial, Vice President Dick Cheney said today that he has not had an opportunity to speak to his friend, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the highest-ranking official of the Bush administration to be convicted of federal crimes.

[NY Post, March 21, 2007] Vice President Dick Cheney spoke to Hudson Institute members Monday at the Union League Club. Asked about a possible pardon for Scooter Libby, he smiled and said, "You can imagine how I feel about that." Libby himself was seated in the front row.

Bonus item: More Stupid White Men

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/30/20411/5504
Michael Griffin NASA Administrator has told America's National Public Radio that while he has no doubt a trend of global warming exists "I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with. . . . I guess I would ask which human beings - where and when - are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take."

http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/5/30/164841/715
[Dennis Kucinich, on why he has agreed to participate in the Fox News sponsored debate when all the major Democratic candidates have declined] "I know some people object to Fox News," Kucinich said, "and they take issue with Fox coverage, and the way Fox covers the news. I've taken issue with Fox on many occasions, but I don't hesitate to be questioned by Fox or any of its affiliates. I've also taken issue with the New York Times -- which, after all, was largely responsible for selling the Bush war plans to the American people” . . . [read on!]

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003313.php
[Paul Kiel] Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons’ run-ins with the FBI, a cocktail waitress, the Wall Street Journal and most recently his state’s legislature, have gotten the new governor’s tenure off to a “rocky start” . . . It looks like the Republican governor’s involvement in myriad scandals might be catching up with him. . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:28 AM

 
THOSE STUBBORN FACTS

May, deadliest month of the year in Iraq, third deadliest all-time, and it’s not over yet

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/29/11418/2267

http://www.americablog.com/2007/05/wednesday-morning-open-thread_30.html
[Dick Cheney, May 30, 2005] I think we may well have some kind of presence there over a period of time. But I think the level of activity that we see today, from a military standpoint, I think will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.

It’s inexcusable that the Bush gang lied to drive the country into war – but, you know, this isn’t okay either

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/05/28/clinton.iraq/index.html
A new biography of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has once again raised the issue of whether members of Congress read a key intelligence report before the 2002 vote to authorize war in Iraq.

Clinton did not read the 90-page, classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. . .

For members of Congress to read the report, they had to go to a secure location on Capitol Hill. The Washington Post reported in 2004 that no more than six senators and a handful of House members were logged as reading the document. . .

The intelligence report did contain passages that raised questions about the weapons conclusions, said John McLaughlin, then deputy director of the CIA.

"I think if someone read the entire report, they would walk away thinking the intelligence community generally thinks he has weapons of mass destruction, but there are quite a bit of differences," he said.

On “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.” Support for Bush’s war, what remains of it, has moved beyond any semblance of coherence or consistency

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/014348.php
[Josh Marshall] There's a very troubling, but not very surprising article in today's Times about the outward flow of jihadists from Iraq into neighboring countries. Lebanon, Jordan are cited as examples. But one could likely list all the neighboring states and Europe and the United States as destinations for fighters either trained in the Iraqi insurgency or wielding methods honed there against American troops.

On its face it is almost a storyline you might expect war supporters to embrace -- Iraq as the central front in the 'War on Terror', a breeding ground of terrorism now spreading to other countries. Again we see the leitmotif of the president's war on terror -- evidence of the abject failure of his policies marshaled as evidence of the necessity of pursuing them.

We're so far deep into this mess that sometimes I believe we're past the point of argument. You look at the evidence and you either see it or you don't. Or perhaps more agnostically, you look at the evidence and one of two completely contradictory narratives makes sense. Whichever is right, the assumptions brought to the issue are so divergent as almost to defy argument or debate. . . [read on]

More: http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/05/fighting_them_over_there.php

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_27.php#014357

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10946.html

Bush, head cheerleader of denying the facts – and, for once, a mainstream news outlet calls him on it

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003306.php
[AP] Bush said: "I recognize there are a handful there, or some, who just say, `Get out, you know, it's just not worth it. Let's just leave.' I strongly disagree with that attitude. Most Americans do as well."

In fact, polls show Americans do not disagree, and that leaving — not winning — is their main goal. . . [read on]

The FACT is, he’s even starting to lose the base

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/us/politics/30swing.html

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118047452890317616.html
Despite President Bush's low popularity [28%] he is still getting better marks than the weakest ratings for Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, according to a new analysis from Harris Interactive. . .

[NB: I think this certainly qualifies as the most ridiculous attempt to put a positive spin on terrifically bad news . . .]

More: http://www.samefacts.com/archives/the_wayward_press_/2007/05/spinning_much.php

Another edition of “Putting Bush on the couch”

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10940.html

We're learning more about the forged Niger uranium document that helped build the case for war – and triggered the whole Plame mess

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/29/202544/145
One day in December 2002, [Alan] Foley [head of the CIA's Weapons Intelligence Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center] called his senior production managers to his office. He had a clear message for the men and women who controlled the output of the center's analysts: "If the president wants to go to war, our job is to find the intelligence to allow him to do so." . . .

[McJoan] I second both Schwartz and Kevin Drum in saying that maybe Congress should think about interviewing Mr. Foley, extensively and under oath. . .

More: http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/001517.html

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10948.html

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/truth-will-set-us-free-by-digby.html

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/out-of-thin-air-by-digby-not.html
[Digby] Not stovepiping, not intelligence failure --- they just made stuff up . . .

The real source of the Plame leaks

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/05/29/BL2007052901024.html
[Dan Froomkin] Special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald has made it clearer than ever that he was hot on the trail of a coordinated campaign to out CIA agent Valerie Plame until that line of investigation was cut off by the repeated lies from Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. . .

Fitzgerald has repeatedly asserted that grand-jury secrecy rules prohibit him from being more forthcoming about either the course of his investigation or any findings beyond those he disclosed to make the case against Libby. But when his motives have been attacked during court proceedings, Fitzgerald has occasionally shown flashes of anger -- and has hinted that he and his investigative team suspected more malfeasance at higher levels of government than they were able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. . .

It was established at trial that it was Cheney himself who first told Libby about Plame's identity as a CIA agent, in the course of complaining about criticisms of the administration's run-up to war leveled by her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson. And, as Fitzgerald notes: "The evidence at trial further established that when the investigation began, Mr. Libby kept the Vice President apprised of his shifting accounts of how he claimed to have learned about Ms. Wilson's CIA employment."

The investigation, Fitzgerald writes, "was necessary to determine whether there was concerted action by any combination of the officials known to have disclosed the information about Ms. Plame to the media as anonymous sources, and also whether any of those who were involved acted at the direction of others. This was particularly important in light of Mr. Libby's statement to the FBI that he may have discussed Ms. Wilson's employment with reporters at the specific direction of the Vice President." . . . [read on]

More: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/big-surprise-by-digby-not-that-theyll.html
[Newsweek] An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame's employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, indicates that Plame was "covert" when her name became public in July 2003. . .

NOW they tell us

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/washington/30interrogate.html
As the Bush administration completes secret new rules governing interrogations, a group of experts advising the intelligence agencies are arguing that the harsh techniques used since the 2001 terrorist attacks are outmoded, amateurish and unreliable. . .

More on the Nazi origins of the “enhanced interrogation” euphemism

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/014368.php

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/05/verschfte_verne.html

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/30/81943/1098

The Democrats may have lost the battle over the Iraq spending bill – but they can still win the war

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/29/171626/657
[CNN] In the months ahead, lawmakers will vote repeatedly on whether U.S. troops should stay and whether Bush has the authority to continue the war. The Democratic strategy is intended to ratchet up pressure on the president, as well as on moderate Republicans who have grown tired of defending Bush administration policy in a deeply unpopular war. . .

Will the Dems call for a special prosecutor to investigate DOJ misconduct?

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003308.php

As Mark Kleiman says, let’s start shining the light on Fred Thompson – the best GOP alternative to Rudy McRomney

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/campaign_2008_/2007/05/fred_thompson_and_scooter_libby.php

More: http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/002151.php

Giuliani’s trumped-up 9/11 street cred

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10950.html

The immigration debate is a tailor-made wedge issue that the Dems can use to divide and demoralize the Republicans (a game the GOP has played brilliantly against them for years) – will the Dems be clever enough to do it effectively?

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/29/the-double-edged-gop-wedge/

Just another crooked Republican

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/29/19343/2954
[Kos] The FBI has been on a tear in Alaska of late, cracking a ring of corrupt Alaskan state legislators (all Republican, of course), who had the temerity to call themselves the "Corrupt Bastards Club". (The Anchorage Daily News has a whole section dedicated to the FBI investigation.)

And my, who turns up as a target of the FBI investigation? Our favorite Internet expert and bridge builder extraordinaire -- Ted Stevens. . .

Newt goes ballistic

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/06/04/070604fa_fact_goldberg
Newt Gingrich is one of those who fear that Republicans have been branded with the label of incompetence. He says that the Bush Administration has become a Republican version of the Jimmy Carter Presidency, when nothing seemed to go right. “It’s just gotten steadily worse,” he said. “There was some point during the Iranian hostage crisis, the gasoline rationing, the malaise speech, the sweater, the rabbit”—Gingrich was referring to Carter’s suggestion that Americans wear sweaters rather than turn up their thermostats, and to the “attack” on Carter by what cartoonists quickly portrayed as a “killer rabbit” during a fishing trip—“that there was a morning where the average American went, ‘You know, this really worries me.’ ” He added, “You hire Presidents, at a minimum, to run the country well enough that you don’t have to think about it, and, at a maximum, to draw the country together to meet great challenges you can’t avoid thinking about.” Gingrich continued, “When you have the collapse of the Republican Party, you have an immediate turn toward the Democrats, not because the Democrats are offering anything better, but on a ‘not them’ basis. And if you end up in a 2008 campaign between ‘them’ and ‘not them,’ ‘not them’ is going to win.” . . . [read on]

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/29/142625/457

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/29/13257/1769

Wolfie’s replacement

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/05/sweet_mediocrity.php
[Matt Yglesias] Robert Zoellick, who doesn't seem to have done the country any good as US Trade Representative or as Deputy Secretary of State, but who also has the rare distinction of having served at a high level of the Bush administration without directly causing any major fiascos is set to head the World Bank. . . .

Theocracy watch: Tom DeLay is hearing Voices in his head

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10939.html

Theocracy watch, pt 2: Remember that when Bush wants more money for “abstinence programs,” this is really about his larger agenda of funneling as much public money to religious organizations as possible – watch for a big upsurge in this during his remaining months in power

http://www.americablog.com/2007/05/bush-requesting-additional-billions-to.html

Why is the Bush gang AGAINST testing meat for mad cow disease?

http://www.first-draft.com/2007/05/protectin_thu_h.html

Hmmm. . . now why would Fox News have cut back their coverage of the Iraq war (half the coverage of other networks)? Thanks to Buzzflash for the link

http://harpers.org/archive/2007/05/hbc-90000173

Bonus item: The new $600 million US embassy in Iraq – yep, they’re settling in for a long, long, stay

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/29/photos-embassy-iraq/

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:12 AM

 
DESTINY

Hey, how’s it going?

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/05/27/lara-logan-returns-to-iraq-it-looks-like-a-wasteland/
After a six weeks away, CBS Chief Foreign Correspondent, Lara Logan, returned to Iraq and shared her stark observations with Bob Schieffer this morning on "Face The Nation." Logan spoke about the deteriorating conditions in Bagdad and the underlying theme coming out of Iraq; sectarian killings are down, but U.S. troop deaths are up and the number of attacks on our soldiers are on the rise.

Schieffer: "What's your assessment at this point, is it better, worse, or about the the same as when you left?"

Logan: "Well, I can tell you Bob, I've only been gone for about six weeks and just the drive from the airport into Baghdad itself was really visually disturbing. You could sense there is a dramatic change in the feeling in the city itself. It looks like a wasteland. The drive really reminded me of something out of Armageddon."

Ask the troops

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011388.php
[Kevin Drum] In the New York Times today, Michael Kamber writes that after spending a week with an infantry company in Baghdad he can find virtually no one who still believes they're doing any good in Iraq . . .

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/the_war_in_iraq_/2007/05/were_helping_guys_that_are_trying_to_kill_us.php
"We're helping guys that are trying to kill us"

Bush’s version

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/05/28/national/main2858868.shtml
"Those who serve are not fatalists or cynics," he added. "They know that one day this war will end, as all wars do. Our duty is to make sure this war was worth the sacrifice" and that the fighting men and women succeeded — and "where tyrants and terrorists are frustrated and foiled ... where our nation is more secure from attack."

"This is our country's calling," Mr. Bush said. "It's our country's destiny." . . .

More: http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/29/what-the-doormouse-said/

Iraq’s newest export

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10936.html
[Steve Benen] The good news is there appears to be something of an “exodus” of terrorists leaving Iraq. The bad news is they’re leaving because they’ve finished their training and are now prepared to wreak havoc elsewhere. . .

Most of the White House’s Iraq rhetoric, particularly during the fight with Congress over war funding, emphasizes the significance of preventing Iraq from becoming a launching pad for terrorism. If we withdraw from Iraq, Bush and others argue, terrorists will establish training camps, create a base of operations, and launch attacks elsewhere.

What Bush and his allies neglect to mention is this is already exactly what’s underway in Iraq right now. . . .

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/4072
[Swopa] Consider it George W. Bush's lasting gift to the world. . . .

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/28/world/middleeast/28exodus.html

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_27.php#014348

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/28/fighting-them-there-so/

Diplomacy: what a concept!

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_27.php#014344
[Steve Benen] [I]t's worth noting that after years of saying talks with Iran would be reckless and irresponsible, the Bush gang is grudgingly accepting the reality that Dems have been pushing for quite a while.

Would it be rude to point out how often this has happened of late? Dems said Bush should talk directly to Syria; Bush said Dems were weak to even suggest it; and Bush eventually came around. Dems said Bush should talk to North Korea and use Clinton's Agreed Framework as a model for negotiations; Bush said this was out of the question; and Bush eventually came around. Dems said Bush should increase the size of the U.S. military; Bush said this was unnecessary; and Bush eventually came around.

And Dems said Bush should engage Iran in direct talks, particularly on Iraq. It took a while, but the president came around on this, too.

For years, all we've heard from the right is that Bush is a bold visionary when it comes to foreign policy, and Dems are weak and clueless. And yet, here we are, watching the White House embrace the Dems' approach on most of the nation's major foreign policy challenges.

Now, if Bush could just bring himself to accept the Democratic line on Iraq, too, we'd really see some progress.

More: http://www.juancole.com/2007/05/first-formal-us-iran-talks-since-1980_29.html

Suppressing unfavorable news coverage

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10934.html

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/28/business/media/28carr.html

More evidence that Republicans are ready to bail on the President’s war policies come September

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_27.php#014343
[Steve Benen] When Chuck Hagel makes comments like these, it's expected. When Jeff Sessions makes them, it's unusual.

In addition to Sessions, Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.) recently said he "won't be the only Republican, or one of two Republicans, demanding a change in our disposition of troops in Iraq" by September. Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said he'll need to see "significant changes" by September. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) wants a change if the policy isn't working "by the time we get to September." Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) said, "There is a sense that by September, you've got to see real action on the part of Iraqis. I think everybody knows that, I really do."

We'll see. Anyone who has ever bet on congressional Republicans bucking the White House on war policy has lost money. Either way, whether war supporters like it or not, September is circled on DC's calendar.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011391.php
[LAT] U.S. military leaders in Iraq are increasingly convinced that most of the broad political goals President Bush laid out early this year in his announcement of a troop buildup will not be met this summer and are seeking ways to redefine success. . .

Military officers said they understood that any report that key goals had not been met would add to congressional Democrats' skepticism. But some counterinsurgency advisors to Petraeus have argued that it was never realistic to expect that Iraqis would reach agreement on some of their most divisive issues after just a few months of the American troop buildup.

[Kevin Drum] These unnamed "counterinsurgency advisors" would be right if nobody had been working on any of these key goals until February 2007. In fact, though, they've been key goals for a long time. The problem isn't that we won't have any progress to show after six months, the problem is that we don't have any progress to show after four years.

Paul Krugman presents a worthy offering for Memorial Day

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/28/opinion/28krugman.html
Now that war has turned into an epic disaster, in part because the war’s architects, whom we now know were warned about the risks, didn’t want to hear about them. Yet Congress seems powerless to stop it. How did it all go so wrong?

Future historians will shake their heads over how easily America was misled into war. The warning signs, the indications that we had a rogue administration determined to use 9/11 as an excuse for war, were there, for those willing to see them, right from the beginning — even before Mr. Bush began explicitly pushing for war with Iraq.

In fact, the very first time Mr. Bush declared a war on terror that “will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped and defeated,” people should have realized that he was going to use the terrorist attack to justify anything and everything.

When he used his first post-attack State of the Union to denounce an “axis of evil” consisting of three countries that had nothing to do either with 9/11 or with each other, alarm bells should have gone off. . . [read on]

What the Department of Homeland Security ISN’T doing

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/05/dhs_hasnt_found.html

It’s at the point where, whenever somebody quits this administration, you assume they are escaping with legal questions nipping at their heels

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/27/AR2007052700896.html
As the Bush administration inches closer to its concluding months, more top aides are headed out to the private sector. Sara M. Taylor, the White House political director and microtargeting guru who has been with George W. Bush from the outset of his first presidential campaign, is the latest staff member to leave the president's employ. . .

Paul Wolfowitz: the only person left on the planet who thinks his resignation deal was some sort of vindication (well, we knew he was capable of incredible self-deception already, didn’t we?)

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/28/152146/555
"I'm pleased that finally the board did accept that I acted in good faith and acted ethically," he said. . . [read on]

More incredible self-deception: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/29/13629/6157
[Vanity Fair] With nearly two-thirds of Americans opposed to the war, one could be forgiven for thinking that [Richard] Perle might be looking for cover. Earlier this year, Vanity Fair magazine published an article raising the astonishing prospect that Perle, one of the most ardent advocates of war on Iraq, had been having second thoughts. . .

Why we should know who wrote letters of support for Scooter Libby for his sentencing hearing

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/28/you-oughta-know/

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/28/154740/075

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:32 AM

 
BIG LIES

The Party of the Big Lie

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/05/27/gop_rivals_embrace_unproven_iraq_911_tie/
In defending the Iraq war, leading Republican presidential contenders are increasingly echoing words and phrases used by President Bush in the run-up to the war that reinforce the misleading impression that Iraq was responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. . . [read on]

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_27.php#014342

This isn’t complicated is it?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_27.php#014335
[Maureen Dowd] The president said an intelligence report (which turned out to be two years old) showed that Osama had been trying to send Qaeda terrorists in Iraq to attack America. So clearly, Osama is capable of multitasking: Order the killers in Iraq to go after American soldiers there and American civilians here. There AND here. Get it, W.?

The president is on a continuous loop of sophistry: We have to push on in Iraq because Al Qaeda is there, even though Al Qaeda is there because we pushed into Iraq. Our troops have to keep dying there because our troops have been dying there. We have to stay so the enemy doesn’t know we’re leaving. Osama hasn’t been found because he’s hiding. . .

Bush is reportedly “furious” about the story yesterday saying that planning has begun for a 50% pullout of troops next year (before the elections). Why would he be angry? (1) They do intend to do this, but they want to make the announcement on their own schedule, in their own way, and don’t want to make it seem like a necessary response to crumbling Congressional support. (2) They actually have no intention of pulling out troops any time soon, and they want to keep expectations low that this is even a possibility. (3) Whether they will or won’t pull out troops, they’re furious about the leak itself, and an increased culture of leaks (which they controlled so rigidly early in Bush’s tenure) suggesting that more and more people are covering their own rears rather than reinforce the Bush message machine

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/27/bush-furious-nyt-report/

Listen to the troops

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/world/middleeast/28cnd-delta.html
“In 2003, 2004, 100 percent of the soldiers wanted to be here, to fight this war,” said Sgt. First Class David Moore, a self-described “conservative Texas Republican” and platoon sergeant who strongly advocates an American withdrawal. “Now, 95 percent of my platoon agrees with me.” . . .

Six Memorial Days under George Bush

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/27/17147/7130
[May 28, 2001] It is not in our nature to seek out wars and conflicts. . . [read on!]

John McCain’s torturous deviations on Iraq

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_05_27_archive.html#600651664062470428

US mercenaries in Iraq are not covered by US military laws, and they are protected from coverage by local Iraq laws. The consequences of this stunning lawless status are quite predictable

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/26/AR2007052601394.html
Employees of Blackwater USA, a private security firm under contract to the State Department, opened fire on the streets of Baghdad twice in two days last week, and one of the incidents provoked a standoff between the security contractors and Iraqi forces, U.S. and Iraqi officials said.

A Blackwater guard shot and killed an Iraqi driver Thursday near the Interior Ministry, according to three U.S. officials and one Iraqi official who were briefed on the incident but spoke on condition of anonymity because of a pending investigation. On Wednesday, a Blackwater-protected convoy was ambushed in downtown Baghdad, triggering a furious battle in which the security contractors, U.S. and Iraqi troops and AH-64 Apache attack helicopters were firing in a congested area.

Blackwater confirmed that its employees were involved in two shootings but could neither confirm nor deny that there had been any casualties, according to a company official who declined to be identified because of the firm's policy of not addressing incidents publicly. . . .

Lawless: http://pbd.blogspot.com/2007_04_01_archive.html#6172866669819896787

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10930.html

More from Cheney’s West Point commencement address

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/duty-honor-country-by-digby-steve-benen.html
"As Army officers on duty in the war on terror, you will now face enemies who oppose and despise everything you know to be right, every notion of upright conduct and character, and every belief you consider worth fighting for and living for. Capture one of these killers, and he'll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away."

[Digby] Benen wryly observes that it would be nice if Cheney referred to the "protections of the Geneva Conventions and the US Constitution as a good thing, perhaps protections that he's proud of?"

No kidding. He talks about such things as if they are some sort of anachronistic nicety that everyone agrees is completely ridiculous. . . [read on]

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/05/cheney_on_geneva.php
[Matt Yglesias] This, of course, is exactly the sort of thing one would point to as an example of the moral superiority enjoyed by a liberal democracy when fighting a group of murderous fanatics -- we treat people in accordance with domestic and international law in a manner consistent with the basic principles of human rights and human dignity; they do not. But in Dick Cheney's America our delicate sensibilities fall away too.

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10929.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/26/165455/546

http://www.americablog.com/2007/05/associated-press-prints-false-cheney.html

The growing problem of Iraq’s refugees

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003590933

Looks as if the threat of mass resignations over the DOJ’s refusal to approve illegal surveillance, and Bush’s efforts to circumvent or pressure them, was even worse than we’d heard

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_27.php#014336
[Newsweek] Back at the Justice Department, there is an equally extraordinary scene. Appalled by the White House's heavy-handed attempt to coerce the gravely ill attorney general, virtually the entire top leadership of the Justice Department is threatening to resign. The group includes the director of the FBI, Robert Mueller, Associate Attorney General Robert McCallum and the chief of the Criminal Division, Chris Wray. Some of them gather in the conference room of Deputy Attorney General James Comey, who describes Ashcroft's bravely turning away the president's men from his hospital bed. The mood that night in the conference room was tense -- and sober.

"This was a showdown," says a former senior Justice Department official who was there. "Everybody understood the choice they were making and the gravity of the situation. Everybody knew what the stakes were." A different source estimated that as many as 30 top DOJ officials would have resigned. . . .

[NB: And still Gonzales maintains that there was no serious disagreement over the policies]

More: http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/05/details.html

Gee, no one wants to be a US Attorney under this administration – I wonder why

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_27.php#014333

Iraq or Anna Nicole Smith? A survey of media priorities

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_27.php#014337

How the press keeps their thumbs on the scale

http://sideshow.me.uk/smay07.htm#05271557
[Avedon Carol] Jonathan Alter has an interesting view of things: Basically, if the public believes something that's totally wrong because the Republican spin machine keeps pushing it, Democrats can't afford to contradict it. Oh, that's not exactly what he says, but it's what it amounts to. The first rule people need to learn about dealing with lies is to stop repeating them. I hate to disagree with my friend keninny about this, but what Alter is doing is precisely what creates so many problems for Democrats - refusing to acknowledge that if you want to do the right thing and have people understand why you're doing it, you must tell them. Tell them the Republicans are lying about who is preventing funding from going to the troops, and that cutting off funding for the occupation does not mean leaving the troops high and dry in the desert. (Giving Bush what he wants does that, and has been doing so since the beginning.) Glenn Greenwald understands this, and understands that every time a Democrat caves in saying it's because we can't just leave those poor kids out there without proper funding, they are reinforcing the GOP lie, and thus making it harder to do the right thing. . . .

More: http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/27/the-broken-democratic-message-machine/

Bonus item: Gay pride – a breeding ground for terrorists?

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/27/gay-terrorist/

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 10:07 AM

 
HOW WE GOT HERE

Bush’s great achievement

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20251
[Jonathan Freedland] One of the few foreign policy achievements of the Bush administration has been the creation of a near consensus among those who study international affairs, a shared view that stretches, however improbably, from Noam Chomsky to Brent Scowcroft, from the antiwar protesters on the streets of San Francisco to the well-upholstered office of former secretary of state James Baker. This new consensus holds that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was a calamity, that the presidency of George W. Bush has reduced America's standing in the world and made the United States less, not more, secure, leaving its enemies emboldened and its friends alienated. Paid-up members of the nation's foreign policy establishment, those who have held some of the most senior offices in the land, speak in a language once confined to the T-shirts of placard-wielding demonstrators. They rail against deception and dishonesty, imperialism and corruption. The only dispute between them is over the size and depth of the hole into which Bush has led the country he pledged to serve. . . . [read on]

http://www.nytimes.com/cq/2007/05/25/cq_2798.html
[Craig Crawford] Whether you call it admirable resolve or blind stubbornness, George W. Bush’s refusal to compromise has once again kept management of the Iraq War firmly in his own hands. . .

Faced with nothing but bad news from Iraq, coupled with the enduring and widespread fear that his strategies are showing little or no hope of producing a turnaround on the battlefield or in public opinion, an unpopular president has been able to secure unfettered financing to maintain an unpopular war with no end in sight. How has Bush done this? . . .

More: http://www.alternet.org/story/51975

More on the false promise of possible troop reductions (some day, perhaps, let’s wait and see)

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/05/26/troop_reductions/index.html
[Glenn Greenwald] For four straight years, the same set of war supporters have constantly and repetitiously given the same exact false assurances about Iraq -- virtually verbatim -- in order to protect themselves politically. It is hard to know what is more amazing about this ritual -- (a) how stupid they believe Americans are that they can make the same commitments over and over which never transpire, or (b) that the press jumps each time to proclaim the imminent troop reductions as though it never happened before . . . [read on]

More: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/4070

And sure enough: http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2007/05/26/white_house_plays_down_report_of_iraq_troop_cut
[Reuters] The White House on Saturday played down a newspaper report that the Bush administration was weighing a scenario for possibly sharp cuts in U.S. troop levels in Iraq next year. . .

Bush claims he’s still credible on Iraq because “he reads the intelligence” – but does he?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_20.php#014331
[Steve Benen] In other words, the White House managed to reject what intelligence agencies got right and embrace what the agencies got wrong. How exquisitely true to form. . . [read on]

The lies that built the case for war

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_20.php#014332

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/24/feith-iraq-alqaeda

No shame

http://www.americablog.com/2007/05/in-blatant-lie-cheney-tells-west-point.html
[Joe Sudbay] As John notes . . . the Bush administration refused to provide IED-proof vehicles that troops in Iraq desperately wanted. Think Progress has the video of a last night's CBS News report on "the outrageous delay" in getting the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles to Iraq. These types of stories about sending troops to the Iraq war without proper equipment have been pervasive. Yet, today, Dick Cheney had the audacity to assure the graduating class at West Point that he and George Bush would make sure they had "all the equipment, supplies, manpower, training and support" they needed for "victory."

More: http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/26/for-whom-does-cheney-speak/

Could this story BE more revealing?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_20.php#014329
[Steve Benen] When it comes to Middle East policy, career U.S. intelligence officer Patrick Lang is hardly a slouch. He was in charge of the Middle East, South Asia, and terrorism for the Defense Intelligence Agency in the 1990s, and was later tapped to run the Pentagon's international spying operations.

So when he sat down in 2001 with Doug Feith for a job interview, Feith probably should have been anxious to bring someone with Lang's experience, stature, and expertise into the young Bush administration. Feith needed someone to run the Pentagon's office of special operations and low-intensity warfare, and Lang had been recommended for the position. The interview didn't go well. . .

[TP] Lang went to see him, he recalled during a May 7 panel discussion at the University of the District of Columbia.

"He was sitting there munching a sandwich while he was talking to me," Lang recalled, "which I thought was remarkable in itself, but he also had these briefing papers -- they always had briefing papers, you know -- about me.

"He's looking at this stuff, and he says, 'I've heard of you. I heard of you.'

"He says, 'Is it really true that you really know the Arabs this well, and that you speak Arabic this well? Is that really true? Is that really true?'

"And I said, 'Yeah, that's really true.'

"That's too bad," Feith said. . .

"That was the end of the interview," Lang said. "I'm not quite sure what he meant, but you can work it out."

A nice primer on political rhetoric: and why the Democrats have been losing this game

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20217

An example: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_20.php#014325
"Enhanced interrogation techniques"

Hmmm. . . . Obama and McCain don’t seem to like each other much. Let’s watch!

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_20.php#014330

Look, I’m all for the Congressional Black Caucus: but it was a mistake to get into bed with Fox News, and now they’re paying the price for it

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/27/us/politics/27fox.html

Sunday talk show line-ups

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-talk/
[Zachary Goldfarb] NBC's "Meet the Press" gives New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D) his due as the sole guest. Richardson announced early this week (for the third time) that he is running for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Meanwhile, long shot candidate Jim Gilmore (R), the former governor of Virginia, will appear on ABC's "This Week." Also on the show will be Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez for a discussion of immigration legislation.

"Fox News Sunday" has another long shot candidate, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee (R). Also appearing are Sens. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.).

CBS's "Face the Nation" has Sens. Jeff Sessions (R-Al.) and Carl Levin (D-Mich.). And CNN's "Late Edition" has two 2008 candidates -- Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.) and Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) -- as well as Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.), the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee.

Bonus item: Bill Maher on the French (thanks to AG for the link)

http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2007/05/bill_maher_on_t.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:35 AM

 
WORKING THE REFS

Our gullible press falls once again for a “we may be planning for the possibility of the contingency of considering under certain circumstances to perhaps reduce troop levels at some unspecified point in the future” story

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/26/washington/26strategy.html

More: http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/25/225855/752
[Big Tent Democrat] If you buy this one, the Times has a nice bridge to sell you . . .

How many times have we heard that one? . . . [read on]

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_05_20_archive.html#5848611678072723407
[Atrios] NA GA HA PEN

But it has the intended effect, driving THIS story off the headlines

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/I/IRAQ_MISSED_WARNINGS
Intelligence analysts predicted, in secret papers circulated within the government before the Iraq invasion, that al-Qaida would see U.S. military action as an opportunity to increase its operations and that Iran would try to shape a post-Saddam Iraq.

The top analysts in government also said that establishing a stable democracy in Iraq would be a "long, difficult and probably turbulent process." . . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/25/AR2007052501380.html
Months before the invasion of Iraq, U.S. intelligence agencies predicted that it would be likely to spark violent sectarian divides and provide al-Qaeda with new opportunities in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a report released yesterday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Analysts warned that war in Iraq also could provoke Iran to assert its regional influence and "probably would result in a surge of political Islam and increased funding for terrorist groups" in the Muslim world. . .

More: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/006168.html

http://democrats.senate.gov/journal/entry.cfm?id=275182

Come September. . .

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/25/korb-on-petraeus/
[Faiz] Whether the September reassessment successfully results in a drawdown currently depends on whether Gen. David Petraeus, the commanding general in Iraq, issues a candid report about the deteriorating conditions resulting from the escalation. Already, Petraeus has said that his report will not say “anything definitive.”

Center for American Progress Senior Fellow and former Reagan Pentagon official Lawrence Korb writes in the Philadelphia Inquirer today that Petraeus cannot be trusted to deliver an unbiased report . . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/25/163659/008
[Hunter] For the love of God, do not shovel publicity crap about how anything is going to be different in September. You know, I know, the mailman knows, and the wastepaper basket down the hall knows that come September, a half-Friedman Unit away, precisely nothing will have changed. The "surge" will still be "surging", the Republicans will still be blustering about how any minute now they're going to start getting serious about oversight, but not quite yet, the administration will still be saying that with just six more months, real progress will be at hand, and a great number of Democrats will be cowering in abject terror of taking any position more forceful than a stern talking-to.

And in the intervening three months between then and now, somewhere around 300 more Americans will have been killed. While Congress and the president yet again declare a mulligan on the entire issue and decide to wait a few months, that's how the time is being bought, and that's how it's going to be paid for.

That's not OK, and it's not going to be OK. . . .

Yes, there still ARE people like this

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_20.php#014320
[JDG] Yes, our war in Iraq is very much like the one in Viet Nam, but not the way its opponents mean the comparison. What's similar is this: Both of these war efforts by the United States have been sabotaged, probably on purpose, and we will probably lose this one as we lost Viet Nam, by the media's practice of showing us the daily body count in color on the nightly news every single day, again and again and again and again!

It is simply impossible for a democratic country to pursue any war, no matter how justified, to a successful conclusion under those conditions.

No matter what you think of the merits of the present war, it's obvious that two choices lie before America: either we go back to our pre-1950 policy (which most countries in the world still follow) of wartime censorship -- not just of information that would help enemy commanders, but also of information that would undermine our own public's morale -- or we may as well pack it in and invite China to rule our country, since we can never possibly win another war.

Follow-up on a Bush-Cheney split over what to do to Iran

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011381.php

Why do all those Constitution-lovers hate America?

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070526/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/congress_detainees;_ylt=Air30H.P8o7cWtJ1FiCKq2qs0NUE
Senate Democrats are backing a bill that would grant new rights to terror suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including access to a lawyer regardless of whether the prisoners are put on trial. . . .

It’s a story because THEY SAY it’s a story: the phony “flak” flak

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/the_wayward_press_/2007/05/flak_and_flackery.php

Monica 2.0: “"At heart, I am a fairly quiet girl”

http://www.slate.com/id/2165447/
[Emily Bazelon and Dahlia Lithwick] Goodling, in fact, described herself as a "type-A woman" who blocked the promotion of another type-A woman basically because the office couldn't tolerate infighting between two strong women. . . . That move sounds pretty grown-up and steely. Yet in her testimony this week before the House judiciary committee, Goodling turned herself back into a little girl, and it's worth pointing out that the tactic worked brilliantly. . . .

To be sure, plenty of twenty- and thirty- and eightysomethings refer to themselves and their friends as girls. Particularly when there are mojitos around. But they don't often do so before the U.S. Congress. The same Goodling who once wanted to be powerful, so powerful that she refused to relinquish her power to hire and fire assistant U.S. attorneys even when she changed jobs at the Justice Department. . . .

And at the heart of Goodling's ingénue performance? The astonishing claim that while she broke the law, she "didn't mean to." This is the stuff of preschoolers, not cum laude graduates of law school. The images we can't shake: By night, the blond demon driver in the convertible who gets pulled over for speeding and charms the cops out of giving her a ticket with lots of hair-tossing and "I didn't know I was doing 90 miles per hour, officer …" By day, the busy-bee administrative assistant Girl Friday, beloved for responding to late-night calls with a winning "can do" flair. All of which would be sexist for us to invoke, had Goodling not gone so far to evoke it herself.

But heed the lesson, girlfriends. It works. . . [read on]

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/23/AR2007052301446.html

Who, me?

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-usatty25_may25,1,940844.story
The Justice Department said it could find no record to support claims by Goodling that taking politics into account to fill positions on the immigration bench had been approved by department officials.

Goodling is already under investigation on suspicion of violating federal civil service rules and department policy for considering political activity while she conducted reviews of candidates for career prosecutors. . .

The internal Justice Department investigation, although focused on Goodling, could turn up embarrassing information about Gonzales' management practices and what, if anything, he knew about the role that politics played in hiring employees protected by civil service laws. . . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/25/AR2007052502124.html
The Justice Department considered political affiliation in screening applicants for immigration court judgeships for several years until hiring was frozen in December after objections from department lawyers, current and former officials said yesterday.

The disclosures mean that the Justice Department may have violated civil service laws, which prohibit political considerations in hiring, for as long as two years before the tenure of Monica M. Goodling . . .

The impact of DOJ politicization on immigration judges

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003299.php

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/05/curious-case-of-goodling-and.html

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/25/stimulating-the-subpoenal-gland/

They’re not done yet: going after Rove and his (illegal) RNC emails

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/25/rove-emails-letter/

More: http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003295.php
[Paul Kiel] Emails show that White House and Justice Department officials worked together for months to install Griffin, dating back to last summer. Rove's aides in the White House Office of Political Affairs were intimately involved. Up until now, however, there had been no evidence of direct communication between Rove and Griffin about the appointment. But an email contained in documents released earlier this week shows Griffin directly emailing Rove and his deputies in the White House Office of Political Affairs . . . [read on]

The politics of the immigration debate (thanks for Buzzflash for the link)

http://southernstudies.org/facingsouth/2007/05/immigration-debate-its-all-about-future.asp

Libby’s sentencing: the documents he and his lawyers don’t want you to see

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/05/random_details_.html
[Emptywheel] Jeff argues that the most important news in the presentencing memo is that Plame was covered by the IIPA statute [i.e., she WAS a covert agent] . . .

First, there are the several times when Fitzgerald suggests that Libby's lies served to protect Dick [Cheney] . . .

This one where he points out that Dick may be behind the whole thing. . . .

This one where he suggests Libby and Cheney coordinated Libby's story. . . .

And my favorite, suggesting "coordination." You know, as in conspiracy . . .

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/05/libby_doesnt_wa.html
[Emptywheel] I noted earlier that there was a mini-controversy brewing over whether the letters sent, arguing that Libby shouldn't go to jail because he's too important, should be released to the public. You may think I'm joking. But Jeffress is particularly worried about the letters getting released to you. To me. To bloggers.

More: http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/26/0826/06743

The OPC’s final draft recommendations on firing Lurita Doan got softened

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/05/did_scott_bloch.html
[Emptywheel] Gosh, you think that Scott Bloch, under attack by the Bush Administration, might softpedal such harsh conclusions? . . .

Now, I can only speculate as to what happened here--whether the White House instructed Bloch to back off its harsh recommendation, whether Bloch did so on his own, or whether this is an elaborate plot on Bush's part to simultaneously discredit OSC and get his buddy Lurita off for breaking the law.

But in any case, do you see how perfectly it works? In addition to the Doan actions, the OSC is also currently investigating Monica Goodling and the DOJ as a whole for their use of partisan tests in hiring for merit positions. More importantly, it is investigating Karl Rove for doing business on the RNC server, for his political PowerPoints, and, um, just about everything else he does. No matter how you slice this, this serves to discredit OSC (either Bloch did spike the investigation, or the whole leak is orchestrated). Now, neither Rove nor Goodling fall under the same Senate-approved category as Doan (so, for example, OSC might be able to fire the already-resigned Goodling; I'm less sure about Rove). But all of those discussions will now take place against the background of this leak.

To be honest, I wasn't looking forward to Doan's upcoming visit to Waxman's committee before this. Now, I am. . .

Decline and fall (thanks to Buzzflash for the link)

http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB118005313993514160-ffyvlR98p8u9Sorpc2R_TwOs50w_20070601.html
American men in their 30s today are worse off than their fathers' generation, a reversal from just a decade ago, when sons generally were better off than their fathers, a new study finds. . .

The findings suggest "the up escalator that has historically ensured that each generation would do better than the last may not be working very well" . .

Still in denial over global warming

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/23/175350/063

The Kentucky governor’s race: not normally of interest here, except that it features an excellent opportunity to get rid of the egregious liar and criminal Ernie Fletcher (R)

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/25/17409/8400

Theocracy watch: Bush’s long-term legacy – creating a foothold for evangelicals in government (thanks to AG for the link)

http://margaretsoltan.phenominet.com/2007/05/compare-this-account-of-evangelical.html

More: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052507R.shtml

Polls, polls, polls

http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2007/may/25/poll_70_think_bush_has_let_veterans_down
[NBC] Most Americans do not believe either the Bush Administration or the Department of Veterans Affairs has done a good job in meeting the needs of the men and women who have returned home from Iraq. 70% disapprove of the job the Bush Administration has done . .

http://www.juancole.com/2007/05/us-public-skeptical-of-surge-72.html
[Juan Cole] It isn't amazing that 61% of Americans think the US should never have invaded Iraq. . . [read on]

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:54 AM

 
SERIOUSLY CREEPY

Back from China, returning to our normal production schedule. . . .

Congress passes Iraq funding bill (with toothless “benchmarks”) – both sides claim victory. Yawn

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/25/washington/25cong.html
Congress voted Thursday to meet President Bush’s demand for almost $100 billion to pay for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan through September, providing a momentary truce in a bitter struggle over war policy.

Even before the House and the Senate acted, Mr. Bush welcomed the legislation, which does not set the timetable sought by Democrats for withdrawing troops but requires the Iraqi government to meet a series of benchmarks as a condition of receiving further American reconstruction aid.

The measure also calls for reports from Mr. Bush in July and September about how his strategy is unfolding in Iraq and requires independent assessments of the performance of the Iraqi government by Sept. 1 and the abilities of Iraqi military forces within 120 days. . . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/24/AR2007052402256.html
But the ground beneath the president on the issue remains precarious, as he himself recognized yesterday in addressing Iraq, which was the focus of questioning during a 50-minute session in the Rose Garden. There was little gloating over his victory in Congress, only praise of bipartisanship and a sober new warning to the Iraqi government to shape up. . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10907.html
[AP] Democrats may have lost the first round with President Bush on ending the war in Iraq since taking over Congress in January, but they say their fight has just begun.

In the months ahead, lawmakers will vote repeatedly on whether U.S. troops should stay and whether Bush has the authority to continue the war. The Democratic strategy is intended to ratchet up pressure on the president, as well as on moderate Republicans who have grown tired of defending Bush administration policy in a deeply unpopular war.

“I feel a direction change in the air,” said Rep. John Murtha (news, bio, voting record), D-Pa., chairman of the House panel that oversees military funding. . . .

“Those of us who oppose this war will be back again and again and again and again until this war has ended,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. . . . ]read on]

Bush immediately starts lowering expectations: don’t expect things in Iraq to get better. . . .

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070524/pl_nm/iraq_usa_funding_dc_7;_ylt=AoNeKT50b.M.R4oJIR.W_8sE1vAI
He predicted Iraqi insurgents and al Qaeda will attempt to influence the U.S. debate on the war by launching spectacular attacks in advance of the U.S. military's assessment of the war's progress in September.

"It could be a bloody -- it could be a very difficult August," Bush said. . . .

And. . . tah da! . . . yet another “new” strategy in Iraq is being developed

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/22/AR2007052201600.html
Top U.S. commanders and diplomats in Iraq are completing a far-reaching campaign plan for a new U.S. strategy, laying out military and political goals and endorsing the selective removal of hardened sectarian actors from Iraq's security forces and government. . .

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/23/81431/3056

[NB: It's another new plan, see? We need to give it more time to work]

No, Iraq isn’t Viet Nam, but for those of us who remember, the echoes are eerie

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/comin-to-get-us-by-digby-josh-marshall.html
If we quit Vietnam," President Lyndon Johnson warned, "tomorrow we'll be fighting in Hawaii, and next week we'll have to fight in San Francisco." . . . [read on!]

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_20.php#014305
[Josh Marshall] President Bush, yesterday: "Now, many critics compare the battle in Iraq to the situation we faced in Vietnam. There are many differences between those two conflicts, but one stands out above all: The enemy in Vietnam had neither the intent nor the capability to strike our homeland. The enemy in Iraq does.”

There are so many problems and distortions with this statement that it is difficult to know where to start. . .

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10909.html

The next phase of the Senate’s report on prewar intelligence to be released later today

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18854414/
In a move sure to raise even more questions about the decision to go to war with Iraq, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will on Friday release selected portions of pre-war intelligence in which the CIA warned the administration of the risk and consequences of a conflict in the Middle East.

Among other things, the 40-page Senate report reveals that two intelligence assessments before the war accurately predicted that toppling Saddam could lead to a dangerous period of internal violence and provide a boost to terrorists. But those warnings were seemingly ignored. . .

Does Cheney think Bush is a wimp?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011376.php

The Goofus Files: Bush’s surreal, incoherent press conference

http://www.americablog.com/2007/05/bush-if-we-leave-iraq-al-qaeda-is-going.html
[John Aravosis] I totally missed the bizarre exchange Bush had with ABC's Martha Raddatz at his press conference this morning. First, Bush told the reporters, twice, that if we leave Iraq before "victory," Al Qaeda will come to America and kill our children. He then said that if the Iraqi government asked us to leave today, we'd leave. He repeated that answer, twice. . . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10904.html
Q: Mr. President, moments ago you said that al Qaeda attacked us before we were in Iraq. Since then Iraq has become much less stable; al Qaeda has used it as a recruiting tool, apparently with some success. So what would you say to those who would argue that what we’ve done in Iraq has simply enhanced al Qaeda and made the situation worse?

BUSH: Oh, so, in other words, the option would have been just let Saddam Hussein stay there? Your question is, should we not have left Saddam Hussein in power? And the answer is, absolutely not. Saddam Hussein was an enemy of the United States. He’d attacked his neighbors. He was paying Palestinian suicide bombers. He would have been — if he were to defy — and by the way, cheating on the U.N. oil for sanctions program — oil-for-food program. No, I don’t buy it. I don’t buy that this world would be a better place with Saddam Hussein in power, and particularly if — and I’m sure the Iraqis would agree with that.

[Steve Benen] Given the president’s small and confused worldview, he’s simply unable to answer the question. By any reasonable measure, Bush’s policies have made an awful situation tragic. We invaded Iraq in part because it was a destabilizing force in the Middle East, and we made it and its region less stable. Al Qaeda is getting stronger, not weaker. Terrorist attacks are going up, not down. Casualty rates are increasing, not decreasing.

Confronted with this fairly obvious and straightforward reality, Bush offers a forceful response: Saddam Hussein was a bad guy.

It’s like having a foreign policy argument with a six-year-old. . .

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/25/9285/
[Scarecrow] In what may have been his most fear-mongering performance to date, the President mentioned al Qaeda about 20 times. But when reporters asked why his Administration had not caught Osama bin Laden, Bush evaded the question except to say that bin Laden had not been caught because he was hiding.

THE PRESIDENT: Why is he at large? Because we haven’t got him yet, Jim. That’s why. And he’s hiding, and we’re looking, and we will continue to look until we bring him to justice. . . .

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/you-say-shia-i-say-sunni-by-digby.html
[Bush] There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern.

[Digby] He's an inspiration. . . [read on]

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10903.html
[Steve Benen] To his enormous credit, NBC’s David Gregory, at this morning’s press conference in the Rose Garden, asked the president one of the more important questions Bush has heard in quite some time.

“Mr. President, after the mistakes that have been made in this war, when you do as you did yesterday, where you raised two-year-old intelligence, talking about the threat posed by al Qaeda, it’s met with increasing skepticism,” Gregory explained. “The majority in the public, a growing number of Republicans, appear not to trust you any longer to be able to carry out this policy successfully. Can you explain why you believe you’re still a credible messenger on the war?” . . .

Go back and look at the question again — Gregory asked why Americans should find the president credible on Iraq after he’s gotten every question, every challenge, and every opportunity wrong. The president started by sort of addressing the point — he says he’s credible because he reads the intelligence — but even that’s hardly reassuring. First, he’s misinterpreted the intelligence before. Second, he’s been reading the intelligence since before the war began and has nevertheless managed to screw up every step of the way.

I don’t want to overstate the significance of the exchange, but it struck me as important. In dealing with the most important policy matter in a generation, the president is no longer trustworthy. Asked why we, the people, should believe what he has to say about this crisis, the president gives a 400-word response — that doesn’t answer the question. Not even close.

It’s rather striking. Bush has not only lost his credibility about a war, he’s reached a point at which he can’t even explain why Americans are wrong to distrust him. . . Even by Bush’s low standards, it was a pathetic display.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html
[Dan Froomkin] Despite President Bush's attempt yesterday to win back support for the war in Iraq by reminding people of the dangers posed by al-Qaeda, today's coverage is full of skepticism and distrust. And given the chance to address his lack of credibility at a hastily scheduled press conference this morning, Bush was unable to reassure the doubters. . . . [read on]

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/25/35952/2244

http://www.first-draft.com/2007/05/your_president__13.html

Drugged

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003291.php
Sounding more than a little beleaguered, Bush responded "I thought it was interesting how you started your question, ‘over the months,’ I think you said, ‘over the last months'... this investigation is taking a long time…. kind of being drug (sic) out, I suspect for political reasons… as I mentioned it the other day, it’s 'grand political theater.'" . . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10902.html
[Steve Benen] To fully appreciate how inarticulate all of this was, you’ll have to see the clip — Paul Kiel posted it. I particularly liked the phrase “drug out,” instead of the correct “dragged out,” in part because of the irony — the president sounded quite medicated when he said it. . . .

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10890.html

Review of Monica 2.0’s seriously creepy performance on Wednesday. Despite her explicit admission of repeated illegal acts, Republicans praised her testimony as further proof that “nothing wrong happened here”

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_20.php#014289
[Josh Marshall] It's interesting to note how the House Republicans continue to praise Monica Goodling for her testimony even as she admits to repeated criminal acts (namely, using partisan affiliation as a criterion for hiring career employees).

Good summaries

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003289.php

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003273.php

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10895.html

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/24/just-a-teeny-tiny-question/

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/05/monicas_loyalti.html

This is ILLEGAL

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052307R.shtml
[William Fisher] Monica Goodling, the former White House liaison for the Justice Department, confirmed Wednesday during testimony before a House Judiciary Committee hearing that she used a political litmus test in screening applicants for hire as Justice Department employees in what appears to be a violation of numerous federal laws. . . . She said, "I crossed the line," with regard to applicants for civil service positions, "But I didn't mean to." . . [read on]

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011365.php
"I may have gone too far, and I may have taken inappropriate political considerations into account on some occasions," Goodling said. ''And I regret those mistakes.''

Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., hammered Goodling on her decisions to hire prosecutors who favored Republicans.

"Do you believe they were illegal or legal?" Scott asked.

"I don't believe I intended to commit a crime," Goodling, a lawyer, answered. . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011373.php
[Slate] [Goodling] tells Brad Sherman, D-Calif., that she looked at Web sites detailing the political contributions made by applicants for assistant U.S. attorney positions, and that she felt she could take account of political considerations in evaluating immigration judges. (Kyle Sampson told her that was OK.) She tells the committee that she didn't give one job candidate a position, adding, "I didn't know she was a Democrat. But I had heard she was a liberal." . .

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/23/goodling-pushed-out-career-officials/
Former colleagues said that she prevailed upon the head of the office, Michael A. Battle, to replace two long-serving officials who probably would have viewed the firing of prosecutors without cause as highly suspicious, and helped install a fellow Regent law school graduate as a replacement.” . .

Who told her it was okay to do this? (And who’s in legal trouble next?)

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003298.php

Witness tampering?

http://newsblogs.chicagotribune.com/news_theswamp/2007/05/goodlings_tale_.html
Goodling did produce more information about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales many people will find disturbing. She testified that after it became clear earlier this year that Goodling and Gonzales would likely be called before Congress to testify, Gonzales discussed with Goodling facts related to the firings in a way that some could argue was an attempt by the nation's highest law enforcement official to coach or perhaps even tamper with a federal witness. . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10906.html
[Steve Benen] On a related note, how did Dems on the House Judiciary Committee know to ask Goodling about the awkward chat she had with Gonzales? Apparently, Goodling’s lawyer told them to ask about it. . . .

http://sideshow.me.uk/smay07.htm#05241432
[Avedon Carol] Fredo Gonzales comes up with a lovely excuse for illegally coaching Monica Goodling on her testimony: "The statements made by the attorney general during this meeting were intended only to comfort her in a very difficult period." . . .

More: http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003286.php

Perjury?

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003281.php
[Paul Kiel] How do senior Justice Department officials end up giving false testimony to Congress? Well, it's complicated, Goodling testified. But first you start answering one question, then you get another question, and then you get another and then all of a sudden people were answering questions that they didn't have answers for. "It just snowballed into a not good situation."

Goodling: McNulty lied. McNulty: Goodling lied

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_20.php#014292

Acting under orders?

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/23/goodling-points-to-white-house/
[TP] In denying her own role in the firings, Goodling pointed a finger at the White House, appearing to suggest that the attorney purge may have arose from a group of select White House advisers.

“I have never attended a meeting of the White House Judicial Selection Committee. The attorney general and Kyle Sampson attended those meetings. To the best of my recollection, I’ve never had a conversation with Karl Rove or Harriet Miers while I served at the Department of Justice. And I’m certain that I never spoke to either of them about the hiring or firing of any U.S. attorney.”

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003270.php

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003282.php
[Paul Kiel] When Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) asked whether the committee needs to go to the White House to get answers about the White House role in the firings, Goodling conceded, "I can't give you the whole White House story."

[From the comments] Goodling worked directly with Rove staffer J Scott Jennings.

Goodling worked directly with Rove staffer Jane Cherry.

Look for a bombshell on Cherry shortly.

Christian? Don’t make me laugh

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aeeBC8RJgVi8&refer=home

More video “highlights” from her testimony

http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=415

No confidence vote for Gonzales coming in June

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003292.php

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_20.php#014294
[Josh Marshall] This has to be one of the funnier quotes I've seen about Alberto Gonzales in some time. Apparently the AG is the Justice equivalent of Wayne Gretzky, Winston Churchill and, I don't know, Albert Einstein rolled into one. Says Sen. Wayne Allard (R-CO): "If he steps down, who is it that we can find to replace him? Right now, I don't see an alternative."

The irreplaceable man. . .

Pat Leahy (D-VT), master of irony

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10892.html
“It is curious that yet another senior Justice Department official claims to have limited involvement in compiling the list that led to the firings of several well-performing federal prosecutors. What we have heard today seems to reinforce the mounting evidence that the White House was pulling the strings on this project to target certain prosecutors in different parts of the country.

“It is deeply troubling that the crisis of leadership at the Department allowed the White House to wield undue political influence over key law enforcement decisions and policies. It is unacceptable that a senior Justice Department official was allowed to screen career employees for political loyalty, and it confirms our worst fears about the unprecedented and improper reach of politics into the Department’s professional ranks.

“As Congress continues its oversight to pull back the curtain on the politicization of the Justice Department, it is abundantly clear that we must do all we can to get to the truth behind this matter and the role White House played in it.”

[Steve Benen] You know, it is curious. These questions are pretty straightforward, but no one is able to answer them. Lawmakers asked Kyle Sampson about who drew up the list of U.S. Attorneys to be fired and how those names got on the list. Dunno, he said. They asked Alberto Gonzales. Beats me, he said. They asked Paul McNulty. Ask everybody else, he said. They asked Monica Goodling. Ask anybody else, she said. . .

Career DOJ officials of both parties are disgusted

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/23/older-and-wiser-heads/

Lurita Doan, head of GSA, violated the Hatch Act – and now Henry Waxman wants her to return before his committee to explain it (involved again: Scott Jennings. . . see a pattern here?)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18833180/
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel has found that General Services Administration chief Lurita Alexis Doan violated the federal Hatch Act when she allegedly asked GSA political appointees during a January briefing how they could "help our candidates" win the next election, according to a report by the office. . . .

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003296.php
[Paul Kiel] General Services Administration chief Lurita Doan was such a hit in her hearing with the House oversight committee last time around, Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) wants her back. . . .

Waxman wants to know if Doan tried to smear agency employees who testified against her in an investigation by the Office of Special Counsel. All the employees who were witnesses, she told investigators, were biased against her -- they were poor performers who "will not be getting promoted and they will not be getting bonuses or special awards or anything of that nature." . . .

Things that make you go hmmmm……

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/24/rove-fielding-pay-mysterious-visit-to-capitol
[Politico] “Senior White House aide Karl Rove and White House Council Fred Fielding were just spotted leaving a meeting room just off the Senate floor in the Capitol. But neither gave a reason for their trip to the Hill. . . . Rove remained mum, simply smiling and greeting the staffers who quickly surrounded him. ‘Something big must be happening‘ a startled Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said as he watched Rove walk out the building.”

72%

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/24/72/
Percentage of Americans who believe “generally, things in the country are seriously off on the wrong track,” a higher number “than at any time since the Times/CBS News poll began asking the question in 1983. The figure had been in the high 60’s earlier this year.” . .

McClatchy being punished by Defense Dept for its war reporting?

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003588819

Bonus item: Crying Wolf? Girlfriend dumps him

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/23/wolfowitz-loses-his-joband-his-girlfriend/

The latest rumor to replace Wolfie at the World Bank? You won’t believe it

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2007/05/24/frist/index.html
[A] loyal administration ally who retired from the Senate last year amid speculation that he would run for president, which he declined to do after his political fortunes fell with those of the administration. . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 10:02 AM

 
IT’S JUST WHAT THEY DO

The Dems back down, and say “Okay, we’ll fund the war until September, but THEN we’ll get really, really serious about setting an end to the war.” This is a political rout, unfortunately; they think that come September things will be no better in Iraq and more Republicans will be forced to support them. But here’s what will happen – Gen Petraeus will issue some trumped-up report in September citing “significant progress in some important respects” (there are always signs of progress to cite SOMEWHERE), and asking for more funds and more time. The cup will be represented as half-full, not half-empty, and we’ll be right back to where we are today

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/washington/22cnd-cong.html

Yes, I said, a ROUT: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/22/184423/123
Democrats Concede On Iraq

Democrats Retreat in Funding Showdown

Bush Wins Congressional Battle Over Iraq

Harry Reid tries to save face: http://tinyurl.com/yokx5g
I think we have to look at the progress that has been made. We now have the timeline that the Republicans have set, and that's this September. And that's the very least. And then, as I've indicated, the defense authorization, we're going to start right where we've left off with this bill, continuing our push to change direction in the war in Iraq. And now we're being joined by Republicans.

More post-mortem: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10881.html

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/22/162515/628?detail=f

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/22/20613/8150

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/4060

http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/5/22/1968/13557

http://www.juancole.com/2007/05/dems-blink-on-timetable-new-iraq-plan.html

Meanwhile, MORE troops to Iraq

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/316612_secondsurge22.html
This "second surge" of troops in Iraq, which is being executed by extending tours for brigades already there and by deploying more units, could boost the number of combat troops to as many as 98,000 by the end of this year. When support troops are included, the total number of U.S. troops in Iraq could increase from 162,000 now to more than 200,000 -- the most ever -- by the end of the year.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10292643
The White House and Pentagon are under increasing pressure from Congress and the public to end U.S. military involvement in Iraq. But the Pentagon is considering maintaining a core group of forces in Iraq, possibly for decades. . . .

What a mess: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/21/AR2007052101439.html
President Bush and his senior military and foreign policy advisers are beginning to discuss a "post-surge" strategy for Iraq that they hope could gain bipartisan political support. The new policy would focus on training and advising Iraqi troops rather than the broader goal of achieving a political reconciliation in Iraq, which senior officials recognize may be unachievable within the time available.

[NB: Now, NOW!???, they are talking about training Iraqi troops again?]

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10873.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011358.php

Finally! Proof -- PROOF -- of an Al Qaeda/Iraq link

http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/news/news-iraq-usa-binladen.html
Osama bin Laden ordered al Qaeda's leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, to form a cell in 2005 to plot attacks outside of Iraq and make the United States his main target, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday.

Citing newly declassified intelligence, Fran Townsend, President George W. Bush's adviser for homeland security, said the information backs the administration's assertion that U.S. troops must stay in Iraq for now to prevent it from becoming a ''terrorist sanctuary.'' . . .

[NB: Oops! This is in 2005, BECAUSE of the war we started. . . . I love how they take a story that reeks of their own failures, and try to turn it into yet another reason why we must stay there for the long haul. The better things get, the more reason we have to stay, and the worse things get, the more reason we have to stay. Brilliant!]

Oh, great (thanks to AmericaBlog for the link)

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2573299.ece
Farmers in southern Iraq have started to grow opium poppies in their fields for the first time, sparking fears that Iraq might become a serious drugs producer along the lines of Afghanistan. . .

Not good

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2565123.ece
The US Army tried to kill or capture Muqtada al-Sadr, the widely revered Shia cleric, after luring him to peace negotiations at a house in the holy city of Najaf, which it then attacked, according to a senior Iraqi government official.

The revelation of this extraordinary plot, which would probably have provoked an uprising by outraged Shia if it had succeeded, has left a legacy of bitter distrust in the mind of Mr Sadr for which the US and its allies in Iraq may still be paying. "I believe that particular incident made Muqtada lose any confidence or trust in the [US-led] coalition and made him really wild," the Iraqi National Security Adviser Dr Mowaffaq Rubai'e told The Independent in an interview. It is not known who gave the orders for the attempt on Mr Sadr but it is one of a series of ill-considered and politically explosive US actions in Iraq since the invasion. In January this year a US helicopter assault team tried to kidnap two senior Iranian security officials on an official visit to the Iraqi President. . .

Worse and worse

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011350.php
[Joe Klein] This much I can confirm: there is growing pessimism among U.S. officials about the possibility of the long-sought political deal amongst Shi'ites and Sunnis and Kurds. The current feeling is that there's no way to get the Shi'ites to relinquish any significant power. So there may be an American desire to shake things up.

On the other hand — I just love it when I have to start a paragraph so forcefully — there's also the sense that Maliki is the most plausible alternative amongst the various Shi'ite factions. The vain hope, now six months old, that a broader coalition might be built to run Iraq amongst Kurds, acceptable Sunnis, secular Shi'ites and assorted cats and dogs is now officially dead.

Look, as Atrios says, just because we caused the disaster in Iraq, just because we OUGHT to fix it, doesn’t mean we CAN fix it. A serious discussion of the matter would have to take this possibility very seriously

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_05_20_archive.html#7380847867001350077

This is a real reach, even for the Republicans

http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/5/21/115812/836
[Roll Call] But the Republican National Committee looked for the bright side in polling data it released. "We show the increase in people who feel the war is going badly has stopped," the RNC said in a memo released Friday. "Although a majority of the public continues to feel the war is going badly, we have seen a small increase throughout the spring in the number of people who feel things are going better in Iraq."

“Another CIA ghost detainee”

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/22/122546/593

The Bush gang doesn’t like FISA, they don’t believe they have to follow FISA, and now they want to change FISA (again) to fit their surveillance practices, rather than vice versa

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/05/21/fisa_changes/index.html
[Glenn Greenwald] Mike McConnell, the Bush administration's Director of National Intelligence, has a remarkably dishonest Op-Ed in The Washington Post this morning, in which he argues for completely unspecified "updates" and "changes" to FISA in order to expand -- yet again -- the Government's powers of eavesdropping on Americans. McConnell's entire argument for expansion of surveillance powers rests on a patent falsehood. . . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10859.html
[Steve Benen] The problem, of course, is that McConnell left out a few details. In fact, he left out all details.

First, as Glenn Greenwald noted, McConnell argued, “The failure to update this law comes at an increasingly steep price.” But therein lies the rub: the law has been updated. Many, many times. FISA may have been passed nearly three decades ago, but it’s been amended repeatedly to adapt to evolving threats and circumstances. McConnell overlooks this altogether. How convenient.

Second, as Kevin Drum noted, McConnell insists FISA needs to be changed, without telling us what kind of changes he’d like to see. “McConnell’s op-ed is a masterpiece of vagueness, distinguished more by what it doesn’t say than by what it does,” Kevin explained. “Most notably, in the course of 600 words he never says what kinds of changes he’d like to see in the law. In fact, he never so much as hints at it.”

Third, McConnell argued, “In a significant number of cases, our intelligence agencies must obtain a court order to monitor the communications of foreigners suspected of terrorist activity who are physically located in foreign countries.” This is wildly misleading — FISA applies if one of the participants in, say, a suspicious phone call, is in the United States. If we’re dealing with communications between “foreigners suspected of terrorist activity,” and none of them are on U.S. soil, FISA doesn’t apply anyway.

And fourth, the real issue here, which McConnell sidesteps entirely, is that the president has ignored the FISA law because he believes he should. If McConnell and the administration have some additional recommendations on amendments to FISA they’d like to see, they can go back to Congress, which can hold hearings and consider proposals.

But the White House is apparently under the impression that the law is inconvenient, and therefore irrelevant. As Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) noted way back in January 2006, “If [Bush] needs more authority, he just can’t unilaterally decide that that 1978 law is out of date and he will be the guardian of America and he will violate that law. He needs to come back, work with us, work with the courts if he has to, and we will do what we need to do to protect the civil liberties of this country and the national security of this country.”

If McConnell disagrees, maybe he can write another op-ed on the subject. . .

They won’t stop (until we stop them)

http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Americablog/~3/118554830/gonzales-proposing-new-orwellian.html
[CNet] Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is pressing the U.S. Congress to enact a sweeping intellectual-property bill that would increase criminal penalties for copyright infringement, including "attempts" to commit piracy.... The Bush administration is throwing its support behind a proposal called the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2007, which is likely to receive the enthusiastic support of the movie and music industries, and would represent the most dramatic rewrite of copyright law since a 2005 measure dealing with prerelease piracy....

The IPPA would, for instance:

* Criminalize "attempting" to infringe copyright. Federal law currently punishes not-for-profit copyright infringement with between 1 and 10 years in prison, but there has to be actual infringement that takes place....

* Permit more wiretaps for piracy investigations. Wiretaps would be authorized for investigations of Americans who are "attempting" to infringe copyrights....

* Allow computers to be seized more readily. Specifically, property such as a PC "intended to be used in any manner" to commit a copyright crime would be subject to forfeiture, including civil asset forfeiture....

* Require Homeland Security to alert the Recording Industry Association of America. That would happen when CDs with "unauthorized fixations of the sounds, or sounds and images, of a live musical performance" are attempted to be imported.

[John Aravosis] First off, what this legislation is really about: The Homeland Security department getting carte blanche authorization to fish through your computer and tap your phones with impunity, whenever they want, so long as they argue that they think you might have ever tried to download even a single song via Limewire or some of other music-sharing software, or have ever copied a photo off the Internet, or even watched a single clip from any TV show on YouTube. They're going to use this legislation to hunt for terrorists, and won't need search warrants, etc. That's what this is about.

Now to the specifics.

1. Why change the law to an "attempt" to infringe? Copyright law has been fine until now, why change it?

2. As mentioned above, they can wiretap anyone who may be "attempting" to infringe on copyright. That means if they suspect that you may have saved a copy on your computer of one of my orchid photos they can tap your phones, without a warrant I suspect. They can also tap your phone if they think your teenage daughter may be "attempting" to download a song online. They could also tap the phones of every YouTube user who has ever posted a clip from any TV show. Think about that.

3. They can seize your computer, forever, if you "intend" to copy even one song or one photo from the Internet. Not if you DO copy it. Just if you even just plan on it in your mind. And the religious right has a problem with hate crime laws? At least with hate crime laws you actually have to have committed a violent crime like murder or aggravated assault. And Bush is threatening a veto of that bill. But he has no problem with a bill that throws you in jail for just thinking of maybe downloading music or a photo or posting a copy of a Washington Post article to your blog or putting a clip from the Daily Show or South Park on YouTube (that too would permit Bush to tap your phones).

And finally, if Homeland Security doesn't have enough work to do already, and has the time to set up a hotline to the Record Industry Association every time little Suzie downloads a Christina Aguilera song, well, then we might as well just pack it in and put up a big welcome sign for Osama to hit us again.

Was the Comey testimony the “tipping point” for support for Alberto Gonzales?

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070520/28justice.htm

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/05/the_new_details.html
[Emptywheel] [H]ere are some key details that were new with Comey's testimony:

George Bush was actively involved. . . .

Bush reauthorized the program without DOJ certification. . .

Comey and FBI Director Mueller believed there might be coercion. . . .

The key disagreement relates to issues that Bush won't confirm. . . . [read on]

Interesting: http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/21/fredos-revenge/
[US News] Indeed, congressional sources tell U.S. News that Democrats will ask the Texas Bar Association to determine whether Gonzales violated his code of professional responsibility or broke laws by bringing up the NSA program in the hospital in front of Ashcroft's wife, who lacks security clearances. . .

What WAS the program DOJ wouldn’t approve? http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003268.php

“No confidence” vote postponed?

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003264.php

Bush continues to talk tough

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/05/21/bush.gonzales.ap/index.html
"He has done nothing wrong," Bush said in an impassioned defense of his longtime friend and adviser during a news conference at his Texas ranch. . . . "I stand by Al Gonzales, and I would hope that people would be more sober in how they address these important issues," Bush said. "And they ought to get the job done of passing legislation, as opposed to figuring out how to be actors on the political theater stage."

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/21/175415/834

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/21/abu-go-bye-bye/

Gimme a break: Bush condemns “political theater.” What nerve!

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/leading-man-by-digby-this-is-probably.html

“Why this scandal matters”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/21/opinion/21mon1.html

Later today: Monica 2.0. A few questions for her

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/05/questions_for_m.html

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003269.php

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/22/AR2007052201601.html
When Jeffrey A. Taylor, interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, wanted to hire a new career prosecutor last fall, he had to run the idea past Monica M. Goodling, then a 33-year-old aide to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.

The candidate was Seth Adam Meinero, a Howard University law school graduate who had worked on civil rights cases at the Environmental Protection Agency and had served as a special assistant prosecutor in Taylor's office.

Goodling stalled the hiring, saying that Meinero was too "liberal" for the nonpolitical position, said according to two sources familiar with the dispute.

The tussle over Meinero, who was eventually hired at Taylor's insistence, led to a Justice Department investigation of whether Goodling improperly weighed political affiliation when reviewing applicants for rank-and-file prosecutor jobs . . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011362.php
[Karen Tumulty] How much will we learn [Wednesday] when Monica Goodling, the Justice Department's former White House liaison, testifies in front of the House Judiciary Committee under a grant of immunity from prosecution? A spokeswoman for the Committee says it has been given "every indication" that she will be forthcoming.

The documents she still won’t provide: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2007/05/22/conyers/index.html

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/22/do-the-perp-walk/

Another document dump from DOJ, and some fascinating tidbits hidden in there

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/05/did_orrin_hatch.html
[Emptywheel] Did Orrin Hatch and Byron York Get Their Oppo Research from Monica? . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10870.html
[Steve Benen] I haven’t had a chance to delve into the docs in any real detail, but Tim Grieve noticed a couple of interesting emails.

On Feb. 26, [Christopher Oprison at the White House Counsel’s Office] sent a message to Goodling in which he said he needed “to chat about the ‘performance evaluations’ for the departing U.S. attorneys.” He asked her to call him — some things are better handled outside the White House e-mail system, apparently — and said that it’s a “time sensitive issue for Tony.” Tony? Tony? The first Tony that comes to our mind is White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, who might indeed have been expecting, at that point, to be facing questions about the purge.

That’s certainly likely, but why were the words “performance evaluations” in quotes?

Also, this was an amusing one.

On Dec. 18, 2006, the Justice Department’s Rebecca Seidel sent an e-mail to several of her colleagues warning them that Republican Sen. Jon Kyl was “significantly disturbed” over the firing of U.S. Attorney Paul Charlton and might raise the matter at an upcoming hearing. “We should ensure that the AG is adequately prepared to deal with a question over the firings of the USAs,” she wrote. “Do we need a paper on it, or is the AG prepared?”

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/05/whats_here_is_c.html
[Emptywheel] Remember way back before we knew about the partisan tests for hiring, when the biggest reason for Monica Goodling to plead the Fifth was the accusation that she had prepared Paul McNulty to state falsehoods in his testimony before the Senate?

Well, why do you suppose we only got this document on the eve of her testimony, after she had already been granted immunity? . . .

More: http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/05/speaking_of_bac.html

The evidence that this all started with Republican attempts to trump up phony voter-fraud cases keeps accumulating – and by the way, they haven’t stopped trying to use that despicable ploy, either

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/5/22/152031/076
[Clammyc] It is pervasive, deep, goes against the very first and most basic premise of democracy and is a concerted effort by many individuals and organizations throughout the republican party, its affiliated "associations" as well as many levels of government whose primary purpose is to ensure that this most basic premise of democracy is not subverted. . . [read on]

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_20.php#014254
[Josh Marshall] It's really enough to make you sick. . . [read on]

More: http://www.slate.com/id/2166589

Subpoenas coming – then what?

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003260.php
The House Judiciary Committee is prepared to use subpoenas to compel the testimony of Karl Rove and other White House officials. . .

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003254.php
[Laura McGann] Former general counsel to the House Charles Tiefer explained that these face-offs never culminate in court.

"In theory, what happens is, after the House, or the Senate, goes through a certain process, [the case] is kicked over to a prosecutor," Tiefer said. But to think that will actually happen "is a naive way" of looking at Congressional investigations.

No top government official has ever been indicted for failing to respond to a Congressional subpoena. Tiefer, who signed off on more Congressional subpoenas than anyone else while counsel to the House from 1984 to 1996, explained that these investigations mount pressure to achieve results.

When asked if a Congressional subpoena has teeth he asked his own question: “Does a vise have teeth?” Well, no, but, “you could crack stones in a vise.”

The investigation process ramps up political pressure with letters, media outreach, subpoenas and contempt until one side cracks. The more bipartisan support an investigation has, the heavier each move weighs. The more the public supports the opposing branch, the more likely a committee will be to back down.

Usually a negotiated agreement is reached before the investigation hits a serious phase. . .

Never forget the real target at stake here – the Great White Whale

http://www.first-draft.com/2007/05/the_final_days_.html

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/052107A.shtml

Rove aide takes the Fifth. How long can people keep saying “there’s no evidence of any crime,” when key players fear self-incrimination? (She’s looking for immunity, like Monica 2.0)

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003267.php

More: http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Former_Rove_aide_pleads_Fifth_on_0522.html

Lurita Doan, the GSA chief who sponsored partisan workshops for her staff about how they could use government procurement to “help” the Republicans in the 2006 election, gets an internal report telling her she violated the Hatch Act. Uh, that’s a CRIME folks – can we see the report too?

http://www.federaltimes.com/index.php?S=2777859

[NB: And by the way, what about Rove staffer Scott Jennings, who GAVE the presentations? Are we supposed to think this wasn’t his intention too? And whose idea was it anyway. . . as if we didn’t know]

Kos thinks Harry Reid’s plan to block any future recess appointments won’t work

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/21/131611/501
Bush will prove that he doesn't give a sh-t about any "tradition" of recess appointments being done only during recesses longer than 10 days. Heck, before long he'll be using long weekends as an excuse to bypass Senate approval of his regressive acolytes (the ones that couldn't win Senate approval even when it was controlled by Republicans).

Bye-bye Boykin

http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=8205
[NB: General “My God is bigger than your God”. Good riddance]

I’m with Mark on this one: glad to see the Republicans re-nominate corrupt and stupid officials so the Dems have a chance to beat them. Fletcher’s one of the worst . . .

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/_/2007/05/christmas_in_may.php

Joe Lieberman is so full of it

http://tinyurl.com/yqqwa3

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011355.php

Theocracy watch: cloning Monica 2.0

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/21/114218/090
[Jeralyn Merritt] This is about the scariest article I have read in a while.

It begins with Jerry Falwell and his Liberty University dream of "training a new generation of lawyers, judges, educators, policymakers and world leaders in law from the perspective of an explicitly Christian worldview."

Then it lists the other law schools in the mold. The number is growing. Check out the quotes from the students. . . .

Does John McCain have a temper problem? %**$@!&# yeah he does!

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10865.html

More: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/politics/la-na-outburst22may22,1,1135212.story

I’m sure things will change, but right now 2008 is looking like a landslide

http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2007/may/21/dems_fundraising_edge_over_gop_for_house_races_grows
[Greg Sargent] Being in the majority continues to help the Democratic Party stockpile cash for 2008 -- and its advantage over the GOP for the 2008 House races continues to mount. . . .

http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2007/may/21/senate_dems_hammer_gop_in_april_fundraising
[Greg Sargent] [W]e brought you the tidings that Dems have upped their advantage over the GOP for the 2008 House races. Well, we've just received the numbers for the Senate races -- and the picture is more striking.

http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2007/may/21/dems_outraising_gop_in_the_south
[Greg Sargent] Now here's an interesting subplot to the story of the success Dem Presidential candidates are having -- the Dems appear to actually be outraising their GOP counterparts in, of all places, the GOP stronghold of the south. . .

http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2007/may/21/election_central_morning_roundup
[Eric Kleefeld] The Washington Post reports that the GOP is having a hard time keeping up with the online activism of the Democrats. For example, the top three Dem Presidential candidates raised $14 million online in the past quarter, while the top three Republicans raised only $6 million. The Post posits, "an underlying cause may be the nature of the Republican Party and its traditional discipline — the antithesis of the often chaotic, bottom-up, user-generated atmosphere of the Internet." . . .

http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2007/may/22/happy_hour_roundup
[Eric Kleefeld] President Bush has reached a new low in Rasmussen polling — the firm that has tended to give him the best approval numbers at any given time — with only 33% approval. The kicker: He is breaking the record low 34% Rasmussen approval number that he set for himself ... three days ago. Bush has also hit a new low of 31% approval in American Research Group's polling.

The best and the brightest

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/05/us_government_g.html
Al Hurra television, the U.S. government's $63 million-a-year effort at public diplomacy broadcasting in the Middle East, is run by executives and officials who cannot speak Arabic, according to a senior official who oversees the program.

That might explain why critics say the service has recently been caught broadcasting terrorist messages, including an hour-long tirade on the importance of anti-Jewish violence, among other questionable pieces. . . .

Duke Cunningham: what a guy

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003262.php
“Wilkes was totally disgusted by the hot tub Cunningham put on the boat's deck during the autumn and winter. What repelled Wilkes -- and others invited to the parties -- was both the water Cunningham put in the hot tub and the congressman's penchant for using it while naked, even if everybody else at the party was clothed. Cunningham used water siphoned directly from the polluted Potomac River and never changed it out during the season.”

Bonus item: Predictable, but still very funny

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_20.php#014248

Extra bonus item: Think THAT was hilarious? Read this

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/believe-me-by-digby-dont-you-just-hate.html
[Newsweek] After the incident, there were recriminations over what Comey portrayed as an attempt by Bush's top lawyer and chief of staff to "take advantage" of a very ill man. Comey didn't tell the Senate panel that the bad feelings were stoked even more the next morning when White House officials explained the hospital visit by saying Gonzales and Card were unaware that Comey was acting A.G. (and therefore the only person authorized to sign off on the surveillance program), according to a former senior DOJ official who requested anonymity talking about internal matters. Top DOJ officials were furious, the source said. Just days earlier, Justice's chief spokesman had publicly said Comey would serve as "head of the Justice Department" while Ashcroft was ill. Justice officials had also faxed over a document to the White House informing officials of this. When a Gonzales aide claimed the counsel's office could find no record of it, DOJ officials dug out a receipt showing the fax had been received. "People were disgusted as much as livid," said the DOJ official. "It was just the dishonesty of it." A Gonzales aide at the time (who asked not to be ID'd talking about internal matters) said there was a "miscommunication" and "genuine confusion" over who was in charge. Democratic senators plan a no-confidence vote in Gonzales. They also want him to explain his testimony last year that "there has not been any serious disagreement" about the terrorist-surveillance program.

[Digby] This is so lame that you have to believe it was one of those tests. The White House counsel didn't know that the Attorney General, who was in the ICU, had officially turned over his duties? Please. If he didn't he should have been fired for incompetence.

But this whole thing fails to account for the shocking fact that in this event, they were willing to have a man who was extremely ill and high on drugs sign off on a secret program that was so controversial that the upper echelon of the DOJ were all refusing to recertify it (including, as it turned out, John Ashcroft himself.)Is that supposed to be acceptable even if he hadn't technically turned over the office to his deputy? Who are these sick people?

This was a typical Bush/Cheney/Rove style power play. They tried a completely unethical end-run that didn't work and then they attempted to make the Justice Department swallow a lie that was so lame that it could only have been a loyalty test. How infuriating. . . [read on]

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011353.php
[Kevin Drum] This sounds just like our Alberto, doesn't it? He's consistently demonstrated an inability to construct explanations for bad behavior above the level of a junior high school student. "We didn't get the fax" is par for the course.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 3:37 AM

 
THE MIND BOGGLES

The conceit of the geniuses from Project for a New American Century was that a bunch of egg-heads could sit around and redesign the Middle East to suit their interests, then go in with a combination of military, political, and economic strategies and turn these people around to their way of thinking.

Well, we’re still mired in the wonderful war they gave us. As should have been obvious, we’re being opposed by very clever and resourceful people who have found ways to turn the naïve, arrogant aspirations about a restructured Middle East into fodder for their own interests. In the process, the PNAC legacy has made almost every major problem in the region worse. Thanks, guys

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-na-binladen20may20,0,5046563.story
A major CIA effort launched last year to hunt down Osama bin Laden has produced no significant leads on his whereabouts, but has helped track an alarming increase in the movement of Al Qaeda operatives and money into Pakistan's tribal territories, according to senior U.S. intelligence officials familiar with the operation.

In one of the most troubling trends, U.S. officials said that Al Qaeda's command base in Pakistan is increasingly being funded by cash coming out of Iraq, where the terrorist network's operatives are raising substantial sums from donations to the anti-American insurgency as well as kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis and other criminal activity.

The influx of money has bolstered Al Qaeda's leadership ranks at a time when the core command is regrouping and reasserting influence over its far-flung network. The trend also signals a reversal in the traditional flow of Al Qaeda funds, with the network's leadership surviving to a large extent on money coming in from its most profitable franchise, rather than distributing funds from headquarters to distant cells. . .

Little more than a year ago, Al Qaeda's core command was thought to be in a financial crunch. But U.S. officials said cash shipped from Iraq has eased those troubles.

"Iraq is a big moneymaker for them," said a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_20.php#014232
[Steve Benen] Indeed, we learned last September from the National Intelligence Estimate that the war is "shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives," creating a "cause celebre" for jihadists, which in turn "cultivat[es] supporters for the global jihadist movement." Or, put another way, the war in Iraq is making it harder, not easier, to combat global terrorism, and in the case of al Qaeda, our presence has become something of a cash-cow. . . .

[Kevin Drum] Say it with me: We. Need. To. Get. Out. The sooner the better. Our presence in Iraq is doing nothing for Iraq itself, which is doomed to sectarian civil war no matter what we do. It's actively hindering the destruction of al-Qaeda in Iraq, which will almost certainly proceed more quickly and more ruthlessly once we leave. It's made Iran into a more powerful regional player than it ever could have dreamed of. It's produced a relentlessly worsening foreign policy catastrophe by swelling the ranks of Middle Eastern Muslims who support anti-American jihadism in spirit, even if they don't directly support al-Qaeda itself. And it's turned into a bonanza of recruiting and fundraising among those who do directly support al-Qaeda.

In almost every way you can think of, our continued presence in Iraq is bad for Iraq, bad for the Middle East, and bad for America's own national security. I can't even think of anything on the plus side of the ledger anymore, and every additional day we stay there only makes the ledger look worse.

Who was PNAC? http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm
[1997] Elliott Abrams, Gary Bauer, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen, Midge Decter, Paula Dobriansky, Steve Forbes, Aaron Friedberg, Francis Fukuyama, Frank Gaffney, Fred C. Ikle, Donald Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, I. Lewis Libby, Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle, Peter W. Rodman, Stephen P. Rosen, Henry S. Rowen, Donald Rumsfeld, Vin Weber, George Weigel, Paul Wolfowitz

[NB: I count at least eight who went on to serve in the Bush administration]

Hmmm. . . . the PNAC’s celebratory publications on the Great Victory in Iraq seem to have petered out in 2005. Wonder why? http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraqmiddleeast.htm

The coming collapse of the Iraq government?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_20.php#014229
[Steve Benen] Sudarsan Raghavan has an important front-page piece in the Washington Post today on what appears to be a major overhaul of Moqtada al-Sadr's political tactics. Sadr seems to be making a new play: giving up on Maliki's government and "moderating" the Mahdi image. Raghavan calls it one of the most "dramatic tactical shifts since the beginning of the war" for Sadr's movement. . .

As Juan Cole noted, Sadr may very well be "maneuvering to have a Sadrist PM succeed al-Maliki if the latter's government fall." . .

http://www.juancole.com/2007/05/incredible-vanishing-iraqi-political.html
[Juan Cole] Abdul Aziz al-Hakim has chosen to seek chemotherapy for his lung cancer in Iran rather than in the US. . . . He is likely to be absent from Iraq in Iran for several months, and says he is going there so as to be closer to his family than he would be in the US.

Al-Hakim leads the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council (SIIC), the most powerful Shiite party in Iraq, which controls Baghdad province and 8 other provinces (Iraq has 18 provinces). The party also has some 30 seats in parliament, but that is not as important as al-Hakim's leading role in the United Iraqi Alliance, the leading Shiite coalition in parliament, which has formed both federal governments in the past 3 years.

Despite its elected government, Iraq is actually run by a small handful of movers and shakers. These include the two Kurdish leaders, Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani. Then on the Shiite side you have al-Hakim and Da'wa Party leader Nuri al-Maliki. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and Sunni Arab vice president Tariq al-Hashimi are on the margins of the top Shiite/Kurdish club.

So of the central club, al-Hakim is now absent. And, Jalal Talabani is flying to the US to spend three weeks, allegedly in a bid to lose weight. I'm tempted to speculate that something is in the works such that someone thinks it desirable that Talabani be out of country, since the idea that Mam Jalal suddenly decided he needed to go to a fat farm in Minnesota strikes me as far-fetched. But I will control myself; speculation in the absence of information is not very useful. . .

More: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/4052

Another little lesson from history: every time a new “policy czar” is appointed in Washington, whether it’s a Drug Czar, an Energy Czar, an Inflation Czar – they ALWAYS fail. Apart from the unfortunate (and profoundly undemocratic) associations of the title, it’s a sign of desperation and failure by the actually responsible government agencies. General Douglas Lute, our new “Iraq War Czar,” will just be the latest

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/20/weekinreview/20leibovich.html

More: http://www.slate.com/id/2164058/

It gets worse. Desperate, flailing, and with no friggin’ clue about what to do next, the Bush gang NOW says they want to take another look at the Iraq Study Group report, which they scorned and then ignored when it was released

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/20/AR2007052001406.html
After an initially tepid reception from policymakers, the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group are getting a second look from the White House and Congress, as officials continue to scour for bipartisan solutions to salvage the American engagement in Iraq. . .

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/05/zombie_commission.php
[Matt Yglesias] You'd think the people working in this White House would just be too embarrassed to wake up some mornings.

http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/5/21/2950/37935
[Jonathan Singer] It truly amazes me that there are people -- particularly people inside the Beltway who purport to watch politics closely -- who still believe that President Bush will ever be willing to budge one inch from his position on Iraq. . .

[T]his story provides yet another example of the establishment media allowing itself to be bamboozled by the President over Iraq. There are simply too many previous instances of this trend to recall here in this post, but just since the end of the year many in the media have failed to comprehend that the real reason behind President Bush's escalation policy is to enable him to keep American forces in Iraq for at least two to three more years. This fact was hammered home again this month when the military all but admitted that they will push forward with the escalation through at least the middle of next year regardless of the planned assessment of the policy this September.

If I haven't said it clearly enough, my apologies. President Bush intends to stay in Iraq for the duration of his term in office and will say just about anything -- including that he is rethinking his opposition to the ISG report -- to achieve this goal. . . .

The hidden costs of war: 13,000 additional “contractor” casualties

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/19/africa/contractors.1-57039.php

What will the Democrats do now with the Iraq war funding bill?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/20/172725/929

Look, I know that there’s an unwritten rule against former Presidents criticizing current ones – but the lesson of Jimmy Carter’s recent outburst against Bush ought to be, How big a muck-up has Bush made of things that Carter felt compelled to speak out? On the other hand, it does provide an opportunity for the Bush gang to show that they can rise above such criticisms, right?

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/05/20/carter.bush.ap/index.html
White House spokesman Tony Fratto shot back Sunday from Crawford, Texas, where Bush spent the weekend.

"I think it's sad that President Carter's reckless personal criticism is out there," said Fratto. "I think it's unfortunate. And I think he is proving to be increasingly irrelevant with these kinds of comments." . .

Well-said (thanks to Buzzflash for the link)

http://www.indystar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070519/OPINION/705190303/-1/LOCAL17
[Marie Cocco] It is time to stop referring to the "fired U.S attorneys scandal" by that misnomer, and call it what it is: a White House-coordinated effort to use the vast powers of the Justice Department to swing elections to Republicans.

This is no botched personnel switch. It is not even a political spat between the fired U.S. attorneys and Bush administration officials who deemed some of them insufficiently zealous in promoting the department's law enforcement priorities. Connect the dots and you see an insidious effort to corrupt the American electoral system. . . .

The emerging picture is one in which widespread Republican claims of "voter fraud" -- unsubstantiated in virtually every case examined closely by law enforcement officials, local journalists, state elections officials and academics -- were used to stymie Democratic-leaning voter registration groups and create a taint around Democrats. The Justice Department's own statistics show that only a handful of people were convicted of voting illegally since it began a "voter integrity" initiative in 2002. Its top election crimes official, a career prosecutor, has told the U.S Election Assistance Commission that the proportion of "legitimate to illegitimate claims of fraud" hasn't changed. . . .

More: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/shaving-odds-by-digby-via-tpm-i-see.html

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/05/are_they_using_.html

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/20/the-new-ones-get-impatient/

The White House calls a no-confidence vote against Alberto Gonzales “a political stunt.” Then they say it’s un-American (even though there is precedent). But the question now is, will Gonzales stick around long enough to receive one?

http://www.reuters.com/article/wtMostRead/idUSN2026394520070520
"As for no-confidence votes, maybe senators need a refresher course on American civics," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto, with President George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas. "What I mean is I think you find no-confidence votes in parliamentary systems, not the American system of government."

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/21/7123/52125
[Big Tent Democrat] Very true. Our system of government provides for a different mechanism. . . I agree with the White House that impeachment of Alberto Gonzales is the proper course.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_20.php#014228
[Steve Benen] After Sens. Schumer and Feinstein unveiled their no-confidence resolution, all eyes were on Senate Republicans to see how much, if any, GOP push-back there'd be. The White House dismissed the measure as a "stunt," but the Senate minority has barely lifted a finger to oppose the resolution. Indeed, the afternoon it was introduced, more GOP lawmakers abandoned Gonzales. (For those keeping score at home, there are 10 Republican senators who've said, publicly, they think it's time for Gonzales to go, one way or another.)

This morning, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Gonzales' days as AG are numbered. . . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/20/135536/558
SPECTER: ... You already have six Republicans calling for his resignation. I have a sense, Bob, that before the vote is taken that Attorney General Gonzales may step down.

SCHIEFFER: Really?

SPECTER: Well, it is a very forceful, historical statement. Votes of no confidence are very rare. More than a century ago one was leveled against a sitting president. I think historically that is something which Attorney General Gonzales would like to avoid. . . .

SCHIEFFER: What leads you, senator, to the conclusion that he will probably step down before such a vote is taken?

SPECTER: Because of the likelihood, a very substantial vote of no confidence. I think that if and when he sees that coming, that he would prefer to avoid that kind of an historical black mark.

http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/05/does_specter_kn.html
[Emptywheel] I suspect that Specter is speaking from the position of someone who has been in negotiations on such a topic. There are several elements that make me believe that Specter is sending Gonzales a next to last ultimatum here, rather than just blabbing like he normally does. . . . [read on]

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/20/135536/558
[Mitch McConnell, minority leader] Look, that’s for the president to decide. The attorney general serves at the pleasure of the president. If the president says he’s satisfied with the job the attorney general’s doing, the opinions of senators are interesting and certainly make good fodder for Sunday talk shows.

But as long as he’s satisfied the president, I think he’s going to continue.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you’ll vote against the no-confidence resolution by Senator Schumer?

MCCONNELL: Well, we won’t have a no-confidence resolution in the Senate unless there are other resolutions. In the Senate, nobody gets a clear shot. If there’s a resolution on Attorney General Gonzales, there will probably be another kind of resolution. So we’ll see what happens.

With McNulty out and a Gonzales vacancy a distinct possibility, the last thing the Bush gang wants to do is have a new nominee go through confirmation hearings (imagine the questions: “Where do you stand on torture, warrantless surveillance, the US Attorney firings, the unitary executive theory?”). So they’d like, I’m sure, to pull another recess appointment – well, Harry Reid (D-NV) has different plans

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/politics/washingtonwhispers/070520/bushs_summer_hires_targeted.htm
[Paul Bedard] Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has a little trick up his sleeve that could spell an end to President Bush's devilish recess appointments of controversial figures like former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton. We hear that over the long August vacation, when those types of summer hires are made, Reid will call the Senate into session just long enough to force the prez to send his nominees who need confirmation to the chamber. The talk is he will hold a quickie "pro forma" session every 10 days, tapping a local senator to run the hall. Senate workers and Republicans are miffed, but Reid is proving that he's the new sheriff in town.

Henry Waxman (D-CA), our hero

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/i-heart-henry-by-digby-republicans-have.html

Here’s how much the next election means: the next President might have a chance to replace three relatively liberal Supreme Court justices

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_20.php#014233

The immigration “compromise” – hold your nose

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/20/194016/086

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/21/2954/84643

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/20/194725/716
[Jeralyn Merritt] Among the provisions of the compromise immigration bill is one calling for the building of more detention camps. . . .

Warning: this story will shock and depress you. It can’t be happening in America

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/best-health-care-system-in-world-by.html

Theocracy watch: Falwell’s gone, but Newt’s ready to pick up the cross and lead the parade

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_20.php#014231
[WP] In a speech heavy with religious allusions but devoid of hints about his presidential ambitions, Gingrich drew applause from the graduates and their families in the school's 12,000-seat football stadium when he demanded: "This anti-religious bias must end."

"In hostility to American history, the radical secularists insist that religious belief is inherently divisive," Gingrich said, deriding what he called the "contorted logic" and "false principles" of advocates of secularism in American society.

"Basic fairness demands that religious beliefs deserve a chance to be heard," he said during his 26-minute speech. "It is wrong to single out those who believe in God for discrimination. Yet, today, it is impossible to miss the discrimination against religious believers."

[Steve Benen] Impossible to miss? It can't be that impossible; I have no idea what on earth he's talking about. Religious beliefs don't have a chance to be heard? Since when?

I'm hard pressed to imagine what country Gingrich and the 12,000 people who applauded his worldview are living in. Out of the 535 members of Congress, 50 governors, the president, vice president, the Bush cabinet, and nine Supreme Court justices, there is exactly one person -- not one percent, just one guy -- who does not profess a faith in God. If polls are to be believed, less than 5% of the population describes themselves as non-believers.

In the last presidential election, one candidate announced during a presidential debate, "My faith affects everything that I do, in truth.... I think that everything you do in public life has to be guided by your faith, affected by your faith." This was John Kerry, the more secular candidate of the two.

As for "discrimination," the New York Times had an interesting report last week showing that so much public money is now going to ministries, religious groups are hiring lobbyists to get more.

In our culture, religion is common in the media — I can’t remember the last month Time and/or Newsweek didn’t feature religion as a cover story — almost exclusively in a positive light. In sporting events, celebrating athletes routinely express their religiosity. At awards ceremonies, entertainers routinely “give thanks to God” from the outset, usually to considerable applause.

Gingrich sees all of this and believes an “anti-religious bias” dominates U.S. society. I have no idea why.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:56 AM

 
BARE RUINED CHOIRS

Bush's magic touch

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/19/AR2007051900212.html
Former President Carter says President Bush's administration is "the worst in history" in international relations, taking aim at the White House's policy of pre-emptive war and its Middle East diplomacy.

The criticism from Carter, which a biographer says is unprecedented for the 39th president, also took aim at Bush's environmental policies and the administration's "quite disturbing" faith-based initiative funding. . . .

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/20/390/15308

Let’s see, he’s ruined the nation’s international status, he’s ruined the domestic policy apparatus, he’s ruined the military, he made a hash of Katrina – and now we see that Bush has worked his magic with the Justice Dept too

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_13.php#014225
[Steve Benen] In March, we started hearing about the panic and paralysis that had taken over the Justice Department in the wake of the prosecutor purge scandal. "You have no idea," said one Justice official, "how bad it is here." By one account, top DoJ officials -- the ones who haven't resigned -- were turning on each other. "It's unreal -- it's open warfare over there," a former Justice official with close ties to Gonzales' team said. . . .

The overall picture is becoming crystal clear

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_13.php#014220
[Steve Benen] It's not as if we need additional evidence that former New Mexico U.S. Attorney David Iglesias was fired for failing to politicize his office, but proof keeps piling up anyway.

Weeks before the 2006 midterm election, then-New Mexico U.S. Atty. David C. Iglesias was invited to dine with a well-connected Republican lawyer in Albuquerque who had been after him for years to prosecute allegations of voter fraud.

"I had a bad feeling about that lunch," said Iglesias, describing his meeting at Pappadeaux Seafood Kitchen with Patrick Rogers, a lawyer who provided occasional counsel to the New Mexico Republican Party.

When the voter fraud issue came up, Iglesias said, he explained to Rogers that in reviewing more than 100 complaints, he hadn't found any solid enough to justify criminal charges.

What Iglesias did not know was that Rogers and Mickey Barnett, another prominent GOP attorney in New Mexico, had taken their concerns about Iglesias and "voter fraud" directly to DC. Monica Goodling (who else?) helped arrange some meetings for them.

One of those they met with was Matthew Friedrich, a senior counselor to Gonzales. Friedrich would meet again with Rogers and Barnett in New Mexico, where, he told congressional investigators, the pair complained about Iglesias. They made it clear "that they did not want him to be the U.S. attorney.... They mentioned that they had communicated that with Sen. Domenici, and they also mentioned Karl Rove," Friedrich said, according to a transcript provided by congressional investigators.

When Iglesias said he believes "all roads lead to Rove," he wasn't kidding.

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/19/meeting-with-monica/
[Scarecrow] Looking for smoking guns? Here we have Bush loyalist and DoJ WH liaison, Monica Goodling — the person with as much influence as anyone in Gonzales’ DoJ for hiring/firing decisions — with the help (direction?) of an aide to WH political director Karl Rove, arranging a DoJ meeting for Rogers, the attorney responsible for pressing the phony voter fraud allegations for the Republican Party in New Mexico, for the purpose of discussing why the US Attorney for New Mexico should be fired for failing to pursue the phony claims that just happen to be Mr. Rove’s favorite political scam. Of course, right after the elections, and another meeting in which Iglesias is urged again by Rogers to pursue the phony claims — but again refuses — Iglesias just happens to wind up on the final list of those to be fired. . . .

More: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-usattys19may19,0,1657142,full.story

By all means, let’s continue going after Gonzales and Rove: but let’s not forget the misconduct of others

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/19/173740/486
[McJoan] In the focus on the Gonzales job death watch and Karl Rove's role in the firing of U.S. Attorneys, focus has shifted away from the involvement of a handful of legislators in the firings. Early reports included both Heather Wilson and Pete Domenici in the Iglesias firing, and Doc Hastings in John McKay's. As more information unfolds, it looks like Domenici, in particular, was closely involved in the firing. . .

More: http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/05/and_if_domenici.html
[Emptywheel] Which is all kind of interesting because Pat Rogers was one of Domenici's four choices to replace Iglesias. And it appears that someone with a six-letter name--either Rogers or Peifer--was Domenici's "overwhelming choice" on January 8. It sure sounds like Domenici has been pushing for Rogers for a while. . . .

Because that would be especially neat, wouldn't it? If Rogers got Iglesias fired because he wouldn't trump up voter fraud cases against Democrats . . with some kind of expectation he might replace Iglesias? . . .

What if they CAN’T replace McNulty?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_13.php#014225
[Think Progress] Few in Washington have envied Paul McNulty over the past three months. But with the deputy attorney general's resignation last week amid the scandal over the firings of at least eight U.S. attorneys, there's one person whose position might be even less desirable: McNulty's yet-to-be-named successor.

"I'd rather trade places with Jose Padilla," jokes Viet Dinh, a former senior Justice official under then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.

[Steve Benen] I can't imagine what's holding potential applicants back. The last DAG was blamed for the purge scandal despite having been "largely left out of the loop," and his predecessor was James Comey, who had a rather unique experience with Gonzales and the Bush White House during his tenure.

Yeah, right

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_13.php#014226
[Steve Benen] The AP had an interesting item today, highlighting Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' perspective on being close friends with the president. As the embattled Gonzales sees it, his close relationship with Bush, which spans decades, is inherently "a good thing" for everyone.

"Being able to go and having a very candid conversation and telling the president: 'Mr. President, this cannot be done. You can't do this,' -- I think you want that," Gonzales told reporters this week. "And I think having a personal relationship makes that, quite frankly, much easier . . .”

[NB: Okay, everyone, raise your hands. How many of you think Gonzales EVER said to Bush, “You can’t do this”?]

The kind of man he is

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/18/AR2007051801394.html
[Eugene Robinson] It just gets worse and worse. We already knew that Alberto Gonzales -- who, unbelievably, remains our attorney general -- was willing to construe the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions however George W. Bush and Dick Cheney wanted. We knew he was willing to politicize the Justice Department, if that was what the White House wanted. Now we learn that Gonzales also was willing to accost a seriously ill man in his hospital room to get his signature on a dodgy justification for unprecedented domestic surveillance.

The man Gonzales harried on his sickbed was his predecessor as attorney general, John Ashcroft. The episode-- recounted this week in congressional testimony by Ashcroft's former deputy, James Comey -- sounds like something from Hollywood, not Washington. It's hard not to think of that scene in "The Godfather" when Don Corleone is left alone in his hospital bed, vulnerable to his enemies, and Michael has to save him. . . .

The image I can't get out of my head is of Alberto Gonzales carrying a document for Ashcroft's signature into the man's hospital room, attempting a sneaky end-run around the deputy whom Ashcroft left in charge of the department, knowing full well that Ashcroft was seriously ill and almost certainly medicated. What did he intend to do, guide the man's hand?

This is the attorney general of the United States, ladies and gentlemen. Heaven help us.

More: http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/05/what_a_week_gon.html

The ONE thing, the ONLY thing, we’ve succeeded with in Iraq (of course)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070519/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/world_s_largest_embassy;_ylt=AkIzPqWtp6wjbML1.JWEubGs0NUE
The new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad will be the world's largest and most expensive foreign mission. . . The Bush administration designed the 104-acre compound — set to open in September in what today is a war zone — to be an ultra-secure enclave. . .

The $592 million embassy occupies a chunk of prime real estate two-thirds the size of Washington's National Mall, with desk space for about 1,000 people behind high, blast-resistant walls. The compound is a symbol both of how much the United States has invested in Iraq and how the circumstances of its involvement are changing. . .

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/19/9181/
[Scarecrow] [W]e are building a huge, permanent infrastructure in Iraq. We are putting in the latest equipment, and it is not there to support some temorary military presence. What’s going up is not something to be taken down and removed when our troops withdraw or respond to some uncertain Congressional appropriation. And the facilities that are being constructed, and the way they are being linked, indicate a more or less permanent military presence. . . .

[NB: OK, yes, they got rid of Saddam – but in the end even that was botched up]

Watch how quickly Gordon Brown, Tony Blair’s successor, goes about reversing the British commitment in Iraq

http://www.juancole.com/2007/05/beginning-of-end-of-anglo-american-iraq.html

Just what we need: more power in Bush and Cheney’s hands

http://progressive.org/mag_wx051807

How low can he go?

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/political_updates/president_bush_job_approval
The President’s Job Approval has fallen to the lowest level ever recorded by Rasmussen Reports. . .

Broder-bashing: so easy, but so satisfying

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/20/2427/73257

Sunday talk show line-ups

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/19/233919/034
* NBC Meet the Press: Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT); Newt Gingrich (R-GA); roundtable on "Reagan Diaries" with historian Douglas Brinkley, ex-Reagan CoS Michael Deaver and ex-AG Ed Meese.

* CBS Face the Nation: Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA); Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA); AEI's Fred Kagan; retired Gen. Paul Eaton.

* ABC This Week: Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA); Senate Min. Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY); roundtable of the Nation's Katrina vanden Heuvel, Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, and George Will.

* Fox News Sunday: Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC); Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY); ex-SCOTUS Justice Sandra Day O'Connor; ex-House reading clerk Paul Hays

* CNN Late Edition: DHS Sec. Michael Chertoff; Commerce Sec. Carlos Gutierrez; Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI); Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL); Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX); Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-CA); Gov. Janet Napolitano (D-AZ); Brookings Institution’s Shibley Telhami; CFR’s Vali Nasr

Bonus item: Fox News does polling

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_13.php#014219
"Recently Democratic Leader of the Senate Harry Reid said that the war 'is lost' in Iraq. Do you feel this was an acceptable thing or an unacceptable thing for Reid to say while U.S. troops are still in the field fighting?"

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:57 AM

 
SO, NOW WHAT?

Bush refuses to negotiate with the Dems over an Iraq funding bill. What should the Dems do next? What WILL they do next?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10844.html
[Steve Benen] By late last night, it appeared that a compromise between congressional Dems and the White House on war funding was very close. Predictably, it looked like Dems were going to give up far too much in exchange for very little, and then hope to find more success the next time around.

But as it turns out, the compromise fell through today. White House negotiators looked a gift horse in the mouth, and decided to give it back. . . .

So, a bill that funds the war with every penny Bush asked for, with a timeline the president can waive, and without a penny of extra spending is too much for the president to bear. . . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/18/13954/4761
[Kos] It's time for congressional Dems to send Bush the exact same bill as last time. If Bush wants to defund his own war by vetoing the supplemental, that'll be his problem. . .

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_05_13_archive.html#1173037946501410488
[Atrios] Since the decider guy will not engage in any genuine negotiation or compromise, it's time for Democrats to flip things around. I don't know why they let Bush get away with claiming that the Democrats refused to fund the troops after he vetoed the bill with those funds. Just keep sending him the same bill over and over again.

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/18/12572/9328
[Big Tent Democrat] The choice for the Democratic Congress is binary. Continue to fund the Iraq Debacle on Bush's terms or end the Debacle by announcing a date certain when the Debacle will not be funded.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/18/17031/1267
[McJoan] There's another option, one that we know now is supported by a majority (albeit slim) of Democrats in the House and Senate. Give the President his money now for the remainder of FY 2007, or for the next 9 months. Without benchmarks, without goals, waivable or otherwise. And, when offering this legislation, advise the President that this money should be used to plan the redeployment of troops out of Iraq, because after March 31, 2008 (in accordance with the Iraq Study Group) he won't get any more money.

http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2007/may/18/liberals
[Greg Sargent] A Democratic leadership aide tells us that Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Dem Rep. David Obey will be talking through the weekend to game out the next steps. Further talks with the White House are unlikely, at least this weekend, the aide says. So what do we make of the current political challenge facing Dems?

We checked in with a liberal House Dem staffer who is a sharp observer of Hill politics, and he gave us a surprisingly candid -- and dispiriting -- overview of the political situation. . .

Here's the situation in a nutshell, as best as we understand it. The White House says it simply won't accept any sort of timetable, even a waivable one. It says it won't accept any kind of benchmarks for progress in Iraq if there are any consequences for not meeting them. So aside from sending the bill back there are only two apparent possibilities left: Either the White House gives on one of these points. Or the Dem Congressional leadership caves and produces a bill funding the war until, say, September, with some sort of benchmarks but no accountability -- in other words, something that's effectively meaningless.

According to our Hill staffer, some liberals are beginning to fear that it will ultimately be the latter. They are persuaded that the Dem leadership will ultimately back down in hopes that other future legislative routes will prove more fertile.

"If this is what they go with, it begs the question, Why did we go through this whole exercise with the first supplemental and everything else?" our staffer asks. "What did we really accomplish?"

Worse, he says, aside from the fact that the benchmarks-with-no-accountability measure would be a substantive failure, it also contains a serious political pitfall. If the final compromise has (meaningless) benchmarks that the White House initially opposed, the possibility is that Republicans in Congress, by supporting such a measure, would be the ones perceived as having been the bridge of compromise between Congressional Dems and Bush.

"If the Republicans come across as brokering this deal, not only have we gained nothing, but they will have gained a lot," he says. "The Republicans will be the ones perceived to have brought Bush back into line. This is certainly not a gift we want to give them."

What about sending the same bill back to the President? According to our staffer, the perceived problem here is that House Dems have loudly proclaimed that a measure to fund the troops will have been created by Memorial Day. Recent polls suggest that Dems haven't done a good enough job explaining to the public that the Presidential veto -- not Congress -- is what's to blame for the lack of troop funding. So a repeat of the veto scenario is thus seeen as politically very risky, our staffer says.

"The storyline in the media would then be, `Dems fail to meet their own set deadlines, Dems in disarray,'" the staffer says. . . .

Another fight the Dems should not back down from

http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=398
[T]he White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy (pdf) declaring their opposition to a 3.5% pay raise for the troops and an additional $40 per month for widows of slain soldiers, as well as additional benefits for surviving family members of civilian employees and price controls for prescription drugs under TRICARE.

Today, Democratic Leaders issued a joint letter to President, calling on him to drop his opposition to Democratic plans to give troops the pay raise they deserve and increase benefits for surviving spouses of men and women in uniform . . .

Ahem

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/node/22671
[David Swanson] I object to the idea that the Dems should accuse Bush of "abandoning the troops." If we don't FOR CHRISSAKE STOP ONCE AND FOR ALL PRETENDING THAT WARS ARE FUNDED FOR THE TROOPS, WE WILL NEVER EVER END ANY WARS. Sorry for the caps, but I don't know how many times this has to be said or how to make it any clearer.

Pelosi promised the media today that "Our troops will be funded." This is UNADULTERATED FATALLY SELF DEFEATING BULLSHIT. Nobody is ever going to abandon the troops. They are either going to be left to kill and die and be wounded and traumatized in Iraq OR they are going to be brought safely home. There is no third possibility called "abandoning" or "not supporting" or "not funding" them.

If the peace movement keeps talking about "funding the troops" there will never be peace. Believe it or not - and I know this seems insane - there are some things we should NOT accuse Bush of.

The casualty figures that haven’t been counted among US military deaths in Iraq

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/19/world/middleeast/19contractors.html
Casualties among private contractors in Iraq have soared to record levels this year, setting a pace that seems certain to turn 2007 into the bloodiest year yet for the civilians who work alongside the American military in the war zone. . .

At least 146 contract workers were killed in Iraq in the first three months of the year, by far the highest number for any quarter since the war began in March 2003, according to the Labor Department, which processes death and injury claims for those working as United States government contractors in Iraq.

That brings the total number of contractors killed in Iraq to at least 917, along with more than 12,000 wounded in battle or injured on the job, according to government figures and dozens of interviews.

The numbers, which have not been previously reported, disclose the extent to which contractors — Americans, Iraqis and workers from more than three dozen other countries — are largely hidden casualties of the war. . .

The number of US Attorneys targeted for possible firing is now up to 30

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003250.php
[Paul Kiel] So now we know who, how, and when. But why? It's clear from local press reports that the vast majority of the U.S. attorneys once targeted for firing never heard any complaints from their superiors about their performance. So the search continues.

More numbers: http://www.motherjones.com/mojoblog/archives/2007/05/4459_the_numbers_add.html

The Daily Show nails Gonzales’ duplicity

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/18/the-daily-show-catches-gonzales-hypocrisy-on-mcnulty/

Why the Comey/Ashbrook story will have legs (if the press starts to pay attention to it)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/17/AR2007051701974.html
[WP] No one is asking Mr. Bush to talk about classified information, and no one is discounting the terrorist threat. But there is a serious question here about how far Mr. Bush went to pressure his lawyers to implement his view of the law. There is an even more serious question about the president's willingness, that effort having failed, to go beyond the bounds of what his own Justice Department found permissible. . . [read on]

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/05/17/nsa_follow_up/index.html
[Glenn Greenwald] To say that Alberto Gonzales' "lack of candor is no longer surprising" is to say that the Attorney General of the United States is a serial liar. Is that a state of affairs that we can just passively accept, leaving it up to George Bush to decide whether he will remove his most loyal follower as the country's chief law enforcement officer? If Bush decides (as he almost certainly will, for many reasons) to keep Gonzales, then do we just meekly accept the fact that we have an Attorney General who lies continuously -- not even with noble intentions, but merely to conceal his own wrongdoing and illegality and that of the President's? . . .

There is clear and definitive evidence of deliberate lawbreaking. In addition to Congressional investigations, there is simply no excuse for anything other than the immediate commencement of a criminal investigation by a Special Prosecutor. And the administration ought to be pressured every day to account for what it did here. This is not a one-day or one-week fleeting scandal. These revelations amount to the most transparent and deliberate crimes -- felonies -- by our top government officials, not with regard to private and personal matters but with regard to how our government spies on us.

Hiatt-like protests are welcome (even if inexcusably belated), but they must be accompanied by genuine and relentless demands for follow-up and accountability otherwise they will amount to nothing more than inconsequential rhetoric. The Attorney General lied continuously, and the administration concealed pervasive criminality at the highest levels of our government. Even Fred Hiatt says so. So now what?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200705180011?f=h_top
[Jamison Foser] Lawlessness: that's how the Post editorial board described the Bush administration in Wednesday's editorial about Comey's testimony -- "Bush administration lawlessness so shocking it would have been unbelievable coming from a less reputable source."

And that's the way the Post has described the Bush administration several times in the past. . .

But does The Washington Post actually care that the executive branch has engaged in years of lawlessness -- and lawlessness about important things like torture and spying on Americans? . . . The Post editorial board's reluctance to deal with the questions raised by its own statements -- what should the nation do about the president's lawlessness? -- and apparent lack of long-term (or even medium-term) memory are particularly breathtaking.

Most people, after concluding for the ninth time, that the executive branch is behaving in a "lawless" way, would begin to wonder what steps -- special counsel? congressional censure? impeachment hearings for Gonzales? for Bush? -- could be taken to force the administration to begin obeying the law.

Most people, after noting again and again and again that the administration is stonewalling and covering up legitimate inquiries into its actions, would realize that expecting the administration to be forthcoming is a fool's errand, and would begin searching for ways to compel the disclosure that isn't coming voluntarily. . .

It's simple, really: A news organization that believes the president is acting in a "lawless" way in ordering things like torture and "systematic human rights violations" and spying on Americans but does not dedicate overwhelming resources to pursuing every possible aspect of the story is failing its readers, and failing its profession.

http://mediamatters.org/items/200705170006?f=h_latest
ABC and CBS still have not reported -- on either their evening news or morning news broadcasts -- former deputy attorney general James B. Comey's account of what NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams May 15 called a "rare glimpse of a high-level, late-night power struggle" over the National Security Agency's warrantless domestic wiretapping program. . .

More: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/05/18/comey_testimony/index.html

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/006141.html

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/006140.html

Why the Bush gang says they can’t talk about it

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10843.html

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2007/05/18/whgonzales/index.html

The Bush gang continues to insist that no matter how little respect or confidence anyone of either party has for Alberto Gonzales, he’s staying

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003251.php
"It's important for any public official to have as much confidence as he can garner. And that's going to ebb and flow," Fratto counseled, "but it will not ebb and flow with this President and this Attorney General." . . . [read on!]

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10842.html
[Tony Fratto, the latest clown auditioning for Tony Snow’s big red nose] Q: Would the White House consider a vote of no confidence to have any procedural impact at all, or would you consider it an empty political stunt?

FRATTO: I think we would consider it to be just another political stunt. . . I think it adds up to the bottomless bag of tricks that Democrats in the Senate would like to pull out on a weekly basis, regarding the Attorney General. The Attorney General has the full confidence of the President . . .

More: http://www.first-draft.com/2007/05/today_on_holden_12.html

Or. . . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10833.html
[Steve Benen] For those keeping score at home, that’s 10 Republican senators who’ve publicly said they think it’s time for Gonzales to go, one way or another. . . The guy’s toast.

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/18/will-the-republicans-back-up-their-condemnations-with-a-vote-of-no-confidence/
[Emptywheel] Looseheadprop offered some thoughts this morning on the importance of next Wednesday's no confidence vote in the Senate. As she says, the point of the "meaningless political stunt" is to test whether we have the votes to impeach Gonzales. We need 66 votes, but with Joementum in our caucus and Senator Johnson still recuperating, that means we're looking for 18 votes from Republicans on Wednesday, assuming the rest of our caucus remains loyal (hopefully, the Blue Dogs will look at the way Gonzales and Bush used and abused Pryor's bipartisan good faith, and think seriously about supporting the no confidence vote). A formidable task, certainly. But when you consider how many Republicans have already voiced their disapproval of Gonzales, are hopelessly implicated in the USA Scandal, or are up for a tough re-election in 2008, we've got plenty to work with.

Unfortunately, Senator "Colonize Your Womb for the Fatherland," Coburn, has already backed off his tough statements on Gonzales, saying that while he thinks Gonzales should resign, he would vote against a no confidence vote. I guess we know how valuable Coburn's tough talk really is.

In the meantime, here are my evolving thoughts of who, in the Republican caucus, might be persuaded to use the no confidence vote as a graceful way to escort Gonzales out of the Justice Department. . . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/18/AR2007051801969.html
Even as he came under renewed political pressure in Washington this week, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales faced sharp criticism from many of his own U.S. attorneys at a private meeting in San Antonio, prosecutors who were there said.

At an executive session Wednesday during the Justice Department's annual U.S. attorneys conference, Gonzales met with most of the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys to apologize for the controversy over the firings of nine prosecutors last year and to attempt to shore up sagging morale.

More than a dozen U.S. attorneys spoke during the morning session, most of them expressing concern to Gonzales about the scandal's impact on their own offices and the overall image of the department, several participants said. . .

Alberto Gonzales, enabler

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/19/72727/7142

Well, I give them this: we haven’t been talking about Karl Rove for a while

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/18/alberto-gonzales-white-house-consigliere/
[Scarecrow] On MSNBC’s Hardball, Senator Schumer said he saw no purpose in recalling Gonzales to testify, because Gonzales would, as he had twice already, refuse to answer questions or claim he didn’t recall anything that mattered. Schumer understands the more Gonzales testifies, the more the media and public will conclude Gonzales is the issue, rather than the lawless regime for which he became loyal consigliere. . . [read on]

The Republican record on election fraud

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/18/85746/7741

Will we get a decent immigration bill out of this Congress?

http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/tapped_archive?month=05&year=2007&base_name=post_3752#016633

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_05_13_archive.html#1022581298263588549

In case no one has noticed, between the Reading First scandal, the student loan scandal, and now this, the Dept of Education has become quite the center for corruption in this administration

http://www.first-draft.com/2007/05/one_of_these_da.html
[ABC] The White House appointee in charge of the Education Department's troubled financial aid office took home $250,000 in bonuses, leading Democratic lawmakers to question what she did to deserve such lavish rewards. . .

The Bush bubble and what it means for the next Republican nominee for President

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/18/opinion/18krugman.html
[Paul Krugman] Mr. Bush has degraded our government and undermined the rule of law; he has led us into strategic disaster and moral squalor.

But the leading contenders for the Republican nomination have given us little reason to believe they would behave differently. Why should they? The principles Mr. Bush has betrayed are principles today’s G.O.P., dominated by movement conservatives, no longer honors. In fact, rank-and-file Republicans continue to approve strongly of Mr. Bush’s policies — and the more un-American the policy, the more they support it. . . .

There was a telling moment during the second Republican presidential debate, when Brit Hume of Fox News confronted the contenders with a hypothetical “24”-style situation in which torturing suspects is the only way to stop a terrorist attack.

Bear in mind that such situations basically never happen in real life, that the U.S. military has asked the producers of “24” to cut down on the torture scenes. Last week Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, circulated an open letter to our forces warning that using torture or “other expedient methods to obtain information” is both wrong and ineffective, and that it is important to keep the “moral high ground.”

But aside from John McCain, who to his credit echoed Gen. Petraeus (and was met with stony silence), the candidates spoke enthusiastically in favor of torture and against the rule of law. Rudy Giuliani endorsed waterboarding. Mitt Romney declared that he wants accused terrorists at Guantánamo, “where they don’t get the access to lawyers they get when they’re on our soil ... My view is, we ought to double Guantánamo.” His remarks were greeted with wild applause.

And torture isn’t the only Bush legacy that seems destined to continue if a Republican becomes the next president. . .

What we need to realize is that the infamous “Bush bubble,” the administration’s no-reality zone, extends a long way beyond the White House. Millions of Americans believe that patriotic torturers are keeping us safe, that there’s a vast Islamic axis of evil, that victory in Iraq is just around the corner, that Bush appointees are doing a heckuva job — and that news reports contradicting these beliefs reflect liberal media bias.

And the Republican nomination will go either to someone who shares these beliefs, and would therefore run the country the same way Mr. Bush has, or to a very, very good liar.

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/18/12297/5620
[McJoan] Bush's bubble is the base of the Republican party, the 28 to 30 percent who still approve of his job performance. Bush's bubble is the majority of the Beltway media--led by Broder. Bush's bubble is 98 percent of the Republican Congress, in both the House and the Senate, who continue to follow his lead, who continue to obstruct according to his vision, who would keep us in Iraq until we "win," even if that means another decade or two of treading water, sacrificing thousands more Americans lives, hundreds of thousand more Iraqi lives all in the vain attempt to not lose.

This is the Republican party we are dealing with. There may be plenty of nice, moderate Republicans out there, but they aren't the ones in power, and so far they are willing to be complicit to all of the ills manifest in the Bush administration; more, to emulate it and to see it as the key to retaining the White House. You need to look no further than Romney's and Giuliani's fervent embrace of torture, McCain's steadfast and ridiculous commitment to Iraq.

The American people rejected those politics in 2006, and will likely reject them again in 2008. But in the meantime, in the intervening 20 more months of Bush rule and too narrow Democratic majority in Congress, we've got to be fully aware of just who it is we're dealing with in the opposition. . .

Another reason why John McCain will never be President

http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/mccains-missed-votes-on-iraq-trigger-reid-rebuke-2007-05-17.html
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is the only presidential candidate in Congress to have missed a major vote on the Iraq war this year, and his absences are not sitting well with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

Liz Oxhorn, a spokeswoman for Reid, told The Hill, “Sen. McCain has spent considerable time defending the president on Iraq and catering to the Republican base on immigration, but has only managed to show up for four of the last 14 Iraq votes and parachute into [yesterday’s] immigration press conference at the last minute. Who is the real John McCain?” . . .

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/18/mccain-fbomb/
Busy campaigning for his presidential bid, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) has missed over 40 consecutive roll-call votes, going five straight weeks “without casting a vote on the Senate floor.”

Yesterday, after apparently skipping most of the extended closed-door White House/Senate immigration negotiations, McCain “suddenly re-emerged” to take part in the press conference announcing the deal.

This isn’t sitting well with McCain’s colleagues. Tonight, Fox News correspondent Major Garrett reported that “anger burst forth memorably and loudly” when Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) accused McCain of being “too busy running for president.” McCain responded by using “the f-word toward Cornyn” . . .

http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/5/18/23145/0473
[Jonathan Singer] Yesterday's issue of the Los Angeles Times contains an interesting profile of John McCain's health written by Ralph Vartabedian. Skipping past some of McCain's physical ailments and general problems associated with his fairly old age (at least for a presidential candidate), the article also focuses mental health, particularly his quickness to anger. . . .

More: http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-mccain17may17,1,3526425.story

Let’s see: Republican Congressman uses an earmark to get the government to build a commuter transit center near a bunch of property he owns – raising the value of said property. Think this would raise the interest of the House Ethics committee? Think again

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003246.php

Wolfie’s deal

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/05/18/wolfowitz_resigns_from_world_bank/
Wolfowitz will be able to collect a $400,000 performance bonus due him on June 1 . . . In the end, the 24-member bank board, in a statement that all but exonerated Wolfowitz, said, "He assured us that he acted ethically and in good faith in what he believed were the best interests of the institution, and we accept that. We also accept that others involved acted ethically and in good faith."

Bonus item: “It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt” [Mark Twain]

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/4047
[AP] Justice Clarence Thomas sat through 68 hours of oral arguments in the Supreme Court's current term without uttering a word. . . .

In nearly 16 years on the court, Thomas typically has asked questions a couple of times a term. . .

But the last time Thomas asked a question in court was Feb. 22, 2006, in a death penalty case out of South Carolina. A unanimous court eventually broadened the ability of death-penalty defendants to blame someone else for the crime. . .

A recent tally by McClatchy Newspapers underscored this point: Thomas has spoken 281 words since court transcripts began identifying justices by name in October 2004.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:01 AM

 
HIGH CRIMES

Bush thinks he can make the Comey/Ashcroft story go away by saying, “I’m not going to talk about it.” Think again

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/014199.php
[Josh Marshall] The funny thing about this dodge is that the president is saying not only that the nature of the program is highly classified and must be kept secret, which may be true, but that his apparent order for Gonzales and Card to go squeeze the semi-conscious John Ashcroft is also highly classified and must be kept secret. . . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10828.html
[Steve Benen] At the risk of sounding picky, that’s not good enough. When it came to the Plame scandal, Bush said he would refuse to answer questions because it was the subject of a criminal investigation. When the investigation ended, Bush said he would still refuse to comment, because he’s decided to treat it like an ongoing investigation.

But (alas) there is no special prosecutor investigating the president’s warrantless-search program. There’s no grand jury; there are no depositions; there are no suspects hiring defense attorneys. There are just questions about the latest in a series of White House scandals.

By saying he’s “not going to talk about it,” Bush is hiding behind the classified nature of a surveillance program — that he’s already acknowledged publicly. For that matter, the question doesn’t even involve the details of intelligence gathering; but rather just the process. Did the White House engage in activity that Bush’s Justice Department found to be illegal? Did the president dispatch Card and Gonzales to Ashcroft’s hospital bedside? . . .

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/i-know-you-are-but-what-am-i-by-digby-i.html
[Digby] Bush's answer (like most of Gonzales') is entirely unresponsive and should be greeted with howls of protest from the press and relentless pounding from the punditocrisy. This isn't some "investigation" about which Bush has "promised" not to comment, as he has claimed with previous scandals. This was a direct question about whether he ordered Card and Gonzales to go over to Ashcroft's room in the ICU to get him to sign off on a program that he had already said he would not sign off on.

That's key, you know, as to just how despicable this gambit was. Ashcroft had made it known that he would no longer sign off on this (or these) programs before he got sick. They were trying to get the man to sign something with which he disagreed while he was under heavy sedation in the ICU. And according to Comey, it was his impression that Bush had personally called Mrs Ashcroft to get her to let them in the room. How low is that? (And how important it was to them that they would even risk it for what would surely be a short period --- after all, Ashcroft would recover, and presumably would resent the fact that they had done this thing.)

In any case, Bush was deeply involved. . . .

http://www.slate.com/id/2166468/fr/rss/
It's only illegal when the president agrees it's illegal.
By Dahlia Lithwick . . . [read on]

More: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/4045

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/17/dropping-it-at-the-presidents-doorstep/

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10827.html

Time to start digging into what was really behind the power struggle over NSA surveillance. Some clues

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003242.php
[A TPM Reader] The first date to mark on your calendar, I think, is October 3, 2003. That’s when the Senate confirms Jack L. Goldsmith as the Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel. In June, with Goldsmith’s nomination before the senate, John Yoo had left his job as the deputy at OLC to return to his teaching gig at Boalt.

Fast forward to December 11, 2003, when Comey is confirmed as Deputy Attorney General. He immediately assumes a more aggessive posture than his predecessor, Larry Thompson. The Times reports this morning that “with Mr. Comey’s backing, Mr. Goldsmith questioned what he considered shaky legal reasoning in several crucial opinions, including some drafted by Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo.”

But that was just the beginning. Thompson had not been authorized access to the details of the NSA program. But, reports the NYTimes, “Comey was eventually authorized to take part in the program and to review intelligence material that grew out of it” (1/1/06). He set Goldsmith to the task of sorting through the program’s dubious legality. Goldsmith’s “review of legal memoranda on the N.S.A. program and interrogation practices became a source of friction between Mr. Comey and the White House,” the Times reports today. And we know from Comey’s testimony that by “the White House,” we mean, principally, Dick Cheney and David Addington. . . .

Up until this moment, Ashcroft had been signing off on the program every 45 days. That means his signature was last required in late January, shortly after Comey assumed his post, and perhaps even before he’d been authorized access to the program. Suddenly, the March 11 date comes into clearer focus. For the first time, trained and qualified attorneys within the Justice Department had conducted a careful review of the program. Comey took the evidence he had gathered to Ashcroft, as he testified on Tuesday: “A week before that March 11th deadline, I had a private meeting with the attorney general for an hour, just the two of us, and I laid out for him what we had learned and what our analysis was in this particular matter.” By the end of that meeting, Ashcroft and Comey had “agreed on a course of action,” to wit, that they “would not certify the program as to its legality.”

Thereupon follows the late-night drama that’s already been exhaustively chronicled. I’d simply note that one of the people in that hospital room was Goldsmith. On March 11, the President made the determination that the program was appropriate and lawful, and reauthorized it without Justice signing off.

On the morning of March 12, the president, faced with open revolt, backed down. The Times reported on what happened next last year: “The White House suspended parts of the program for several months and moved ahead with more stringent requirements on the security agency on how the program was used, in part to guard against abuses. The concerns within the Justice Department appear to have led, at least in part, to the decision to suspend and revamp the program, officials said. The Justice Department then oversaw a secret audit of the surveillance program” (01/01/06). Comey’s testimony refines that a little. He claims that it was a matter of weeks before the program was brought into compliance. . . .

What to make of this long narrative?

Simply this. The warrantless wiretap surveillance program stank. For two and a half years, Ashcroft signed off on the program every forty-five days without any real knowledge of what it entailed. In his defense, the advisors who were supposed to review such things on his behalf were denied access; to his everlasting shame, he did not press hard enough to have that corrected.

When Comey came on board, he insisted on being granted access, and had Goldsmith review the program. What they found was so repugnant to any notion of constitutional liberties that even Ashcroft, once briefed, was willing to resign rather than sign off again.

So what were they fighting over? Who knows. But there’s certainly evidence to suggest that the underlying issue was was whether constitutional or statutory protections of civil liberties ought to be binding on the president in a time of war. The entire fight, in other words, was driven by the expansive notion of executive power embraced by Cheney and Addington. And here's the kicker - it certainly sounds as if the program was fairly easily adjusted to comply with the law. It wasn't illegal because it had to be; it was illegal because the White House believed itself above the law. . . . [read on]

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/05/what-was-program-before-goldsmith-and.html
[Marty Lederman] What, indeed, was the nature of the "program" before Goldsmith, Comey and Ashcroft -- those notorious civil libertarian extremists -- called a halt to it, and threatened to resign if the President continued to break the law? And what was the nature and breadth of its legal justification? I am hardly alone in realizing that these are the most important questions arising from the recent Comey testimony. It's the question of the night, all over the Web. (When will the mainstream press catch on? And more importantly, as I asked in my last post -- When will the Congress insist on comprehensive and public hearings, both on this and on the legal support for the Administration's torture practices?)

Was it a full-bore data-mining program of some sort, akin to the TIA program that Congress had de-funded? (John Yoo suggests as much in his new book.) Something involving the FBI as well as the NSA (hence the central role of the FBI Director in the Comey narrative)? A program in which once a U.S. person was suspected of receiving a call from a suspected Al Qaeda individual, that U.S. person's calls were all monitored thereafter? These are among the theories receiving a good deal of speculation this evening. . . .

[NYT, December 2005] For the first time, the Justice Department audited the N.S.A. program, several officials said. And to provide more guidance, the Justice Department and the agency expanded and refined a checklist to follow in deciding whether probable cause existed to start monitoring someone's communications, several officials said. . . .

The C.I.A. seized the terrorists' computers, cellphones and personal phone directories, said the officials familiar with the program. The N.S.A. surveillance was intended to exploit those numbers and addresses as quickly as possible, they said. In addition to eavesdropping on those numbers and reading e-mail messages to and from the Qaeda figures, the N.S.A. began monitoring others linked to them, creating an expanding chain. . . .

[NB: If this is correct, you have a serious, serious issue. No longer was it enough that a “known Al Qaeda” figure had to contact you – if you had contact with someone who had contact with someone who had contact with someone. . . You can see the problem. If this turns out to be true, we’re talking meltdown temperature.]

More: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18719960/site/newsweek/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/05/17/BL2007051701234.html

The list of lawbreaking, lying, and misconduct by this gang just keeps growing. But nothing REALLY serious, like, say, getting a blowjob and then lying about it

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/17/162919/393

Want more outrage? Look at what Cheney’s people are saying about Plame now

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/17/AR2007051701400.html
Attorneys for Vice President Cheney and top White House officials told a federal judge yesterday that they cannot be held liable for anything they disclosed to reporters about covert CIA officer Valerie Plame or her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

The lawyers said any conversations Cheney and the officials had about Plame with one another or with reporters were part of their normal duties because they were discussing foreign policy and engaging in an appropriate "policy dispute." Cheney's attorney went further, arguing that Cheney is legally akin to the president because of his unique government role and has absolute immunity from any lawsuit.

U.S. District Judge John D. Bates asked: "So you're arguing there is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- these officials could have said to reporters that would have been beyond the scope of their employment," whether the statements were true or false?

"That's true, Your Honor. Mr. Wilson was criticizing government policy," said Jeffrey S. Bucholtz, deputy assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's civil division. "These officials were responding to that criticism." . . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/17/17214/6716
[Devilstower] The lawyers for the whole crew are claiming that it's okay for White House staff to say anything, true or false, with no threat of civil prosecution. Nice theory. Naturally, such privileges do not extend to the common folk. For Cheney, they're going further, claiming an immunity that in the past has been limited to the president. He could literally do anything, and you peasants would just have to live with it.

Better hide the shotgun shells. . . .

Well, that didn’t take long, did it?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10830.html
[Steve Benen] A few weeks ago, Gen David Petraeus told reporters about an important upcoming milestone in the administration’s war policy. “During Secretary Gates’ recent visit to Iraq,” Petraeus said, “we agreed that in early September, Ambassador Ryan Crocker and I would provide an assessment of the situation in Iraq with respect to our mission and offer recommendations on the way ahead. We will be forthright in that assessment, as I believe I have been with you today.”

Ever since, September has been circled on the political world’s calendar. . . . But all of this more or less falls apart if, in September, Petraeus doesn’t deliver much of an assessment.

[L]awmakers seeking political cover from Petraeus’ expected September report may now have to look elsewhere for help. The blog IraqSlogger is reporting that Petraeus tells them he won’t have had enough time by September to say “anything definitive.”. . .

In other words, it’s hardly a stretch of the imagination to guess what’s going to happen in four months — Petraeus will deliver an ambiguous report on political conditions in Iraq, soft-pedal violence and destruction, and insist that policymakers give the policy more time.

And what will congressional Republicans do then?

It’s a little late for the GOP to turn around and downplay September’s significance.

Congressional leaders from both political parties are giving President Bush a matter of months to prove that the Iraq war effort has turned a corner, with September looking increasingly like a decisive deadline.

In that month, political pressures in Washington will dovetail with the military timeline in Baghdad. Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commanding general in Iraq, has said that by then he will have a handle on whether the current troop increase is having any impact on political reconciliation between Iraq’s warring factions. And fiscal 2008, which begins Oct. 1, will almost certainly begin with Congress placing tough new strings on war funding.

“Many of my Republican colleagues have been promised they will get a straight story on the surge by September,” said Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.). “I won’t be the only Republican, or one of two Republicans, demanding a change in our disposition of troops in Iraq at that point. That is very clear to me.”

Trent Lott said he’ll need to see “significant changes” by September. John Boehner wants a change if the policy isn’t working “by the time we get to September, October.” Norm Coleman said, “There is a sense that by September, you’ve got to see real action on the part of Iraqis. I think everybody knows that, I really do.”

The two dozen names on the DOJ firing list. Who were they? What were their sins?

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003240.php

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_13.php#014205

Nope, I wouldn’t call this acting guilty, would you?

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003248.php
[Paul Kiel] The Washington Post reported this morning that Michael Elston, chief of staff to the deputy attorney general, had suggested five U.S. attorneys to be fired in November of last year, just a month before the firings.

Now Elston's lawyer is saying that you got him all wrong. Elston didn't mean for those U.S. attorneys to be fired. No. He was just passing along some names suggested to him by others. Totally different. . . . [read on]

“No confidence” in Gonzales? That’s being generous

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/17/washington/17cnd-gonzales.html
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales’s standing in Congress became even shakier today as Senate Democrats called for a vote of no confidence in him, and the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee and others predicted that the furor over Mr. Gonzales’s leadership of the Justice Department would end with his resignation. . . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10829.html
[Steve Benen] The White House will denounce it, of course, but on this, the president doesn’t get a vote.

It would almost certainly put most of the GOP caucus in an awkward position. Criticizing Gonzales is one thing, calling on the president to replace him is another, but voting for a no-confidence resolution is one step shy of impeachment. Will the Republican caucus embrace a man already exposed as a liar and probable law-breaker? Does the GOP dare filibuster? Would they have the votes to keep it up?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011335.php
[Kevin Drum] The way things are going, I'll be surprised if it doesn't command a two-thirds majority by the middle of next week. That's impeachment territory, if Bush and Gonzales decide to keep stonewalling.

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/014198.php

Will Bush ever let Gonzales go?

http://www.cqpolitics.com/2007/05/craig_crawfords_trail_mix_whit_1.html
[Craig Crawford] There is only one explanation left for George W. Bush’s determination to keep his attorney general: fear of the alternative. Alberto Gonzales has been discredited in so many ways that his unfailing loyalty to the president seems be his only remaining qualification for the job.

The president simply cannot afford to replace him with an independent-minded person who would be the only type confirmable by a Democratic-controlled Senate. . . .

Add it to the list

http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0516traveler-screening0516-ON.html
The Homeland Security Department is breaking the law by not telling the public exactly how personal information is used to screen international travelers, including Americans, congressional investigators said Wednesday. . . .

When Inspectors General go bad

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_13.php#014204

It gets worse (yes it does)

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/goodfella-by-digby-via-perlstein-i-see.html
[Digby] I see the Republicans can't find even one congressman to head committees who isn't implicated in a corruption probe. . . .

Always falling upward: Wolfie was a failure at the Defense Dept, and Bush eased him out by promising him a cushy World Bank job he wasn’t qualified for. Now he’s failed at that too. What next? FEMA?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/17/world/18cnd-wolfowitz.html
Paul D. Wolfowitz this evening ended weeks of furor over charges of favoritism toward a bank employee who is his female companion and announced his resignation as president of the World Bank, effective June 30.

The bank board backed away from threats to force Mr. Wolfowitz to resign for violating his contract, as a special investigative committee had concluded, and instead accepted his claim that his actions were honorably intended. . .

Bush opposes a Democrat-sponsored pay raise for the troops (yes, you read that right)

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10826.html

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/17/155412/988

The ethics bill: needs a lot of work

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/17/174226/147

The immigration bill: needs a lot of work

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/17/2296/09381

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/income_distribution_/2007/05/the_immigration_deal.php

On the road again. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_13.php#014203
McCain misses 42 Senate floor votes in a row. . .

Theocracy watch: James Dobson gives the kiss of death to Rudy Giuliani

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=55743

Can't wait, huh? Join the club

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2007/05/16/republican_blues_hit_capitol_hill.html
[Evans-Novak] "The poor Republican morale in Congress, particularly in the House, cannot be exaggerated. Party loyalists there -- we refer not only to moderates but staunch conservatives as well -- have turned their backs on President George W. Bush and admit that they cannot wait for him and his administration to leave town."

Bonus item: Quote of the day

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/014189.php
"The American people are understandably fearful about another attack like the one we sustained on Sept. 11, 2001. But it is the duty of the commander in chief to lead the country away from the grip of fear, not into its grasp." -- in today's Post, Charles C. Krulak, commandant of the Marine Corps, 1995 to 1999. Joseph P. Hoar, commander in chief of U.S. Central Command, 1991 to 1994.

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10831.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:45 AM

 
SICK BED

The story about Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card running to John Ashcroft in the hospital because Acting DOJ Director James Comey wouldn’t approve their illegal surveillance program (Ashcroft wouldn’t approve it either) is one of the emblematic accounts of who these people are and how they operate.

The White House is now trying to pooh-pooh the manifest desperation of this maneuver – but once again we get the sense that an even more serious skein of scandal lies hidden behind it

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/15/snow-ashcroft-brain/
As ThinkProgress noted, Comey testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee today that “given how ill [he] knew the attorney general was,” he was “upset” and “angry,” believing he had “witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man.”

At today’s press briefing, White House spokesman Tony Snow dismissed Comey’s testimony and the seriousness of Ashcroft’s condition. When CNN’s Ed Henry asked Snow if the White House had been trying to “take advantage of a very sick man” in “an end-run” to “try to get John Ashcroft to overrule James Comey” Snow replied, “Because he had an appendectomy, his brain didn’t work?” . . .

The White House refuses to acknowledge that its actions were potentially illegal. At that time, Ashcroft didn’t have any power because the powers of the attorney general had been transferred to Comey.

Moreover, Snow is downplaying the seriousness of Ashcroft’s health condition at the time. Ashcroft had been in intensive care at George Washington University hospital for “over a week” before Gonzales and Card paid him a visit. Mrs. Ashcroft had banned “all visitors and all phone calls.” Comey described Ashcroft’s condition on the day of Card and Gonzales’s visit:

Mrs. Ashcroft was standing by the hospital bed, Mr. Ashcroft was lying down in the bed, the room was darkened. And I immediately began speaking to him, trying to orient him as to time and place, and try to see if he could focus on what was happening, and it wasn’t clear to me that he could. He seemed pretty bad off.

Ashcroft’s chief of staff also personally requested that Comey “not resign until Mr. Ashcroft was well enough to resign with me. He was very concerned that Mr. Ashcroft was not well enough to understand fully what was going on.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/washington/16nsa.html
President Bush intervened in March 2004 to avert a crisis over the National Security Agency’s domestic eavesdropping program after Attorney General John Ashcroft, Director Robert S. Mueller III of the F.B.I. and other senior Justice Department aides all threatened to resign, a former deputy attorney general testified Tuesday.

Mr. Bush quelled the revolt over the program’s legality by allowing it to continue without Justice Department approval . . .

It doesn't get more dramatic than this. Watch it. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_13.php#014173

There’s more to this story. Something very, very wrong happened here, and we haven’t heard it all yet

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/05/16/nsa_comey/index.html
[Glenn Greenwald] The testimony yesterday from James Comey re-focuses attention on one of the long unresolved mysteries of the NSA scandal. And the new information Comey revealed, though not answering that question decisively, suggests some deeply troubling answers. Most of all, yesterday's hearing underscores how unresolved the entire NSA matter is -- how little we know (but ought to know) about what actually happened and how little accountability there has been for some of the most severe and blatant acts of presidential lawbreaking in the country's history. . .

Amazingly, the President's own political appointees -- the two top Justice Department officials, including one (Ashcroft) who was known for his "aggressive" use of law enforcement powers in the name of fighting terrorism and at the expense of civil liberties -- were so convinced of its illegality that they refused to certify it and were preparing, along with numerous other top DOJ officials, to resign en masse once they learned that the program would continue notwithstanding the President's knowledge that it was illegal.

The overarching point here, as always, is that it is simply crystal clear that the President consciously and deliberately violated the law and committed multiple felonies by eavesdropping on Americans in violation of the law. . . .

What more glaring and clear evidence do we need that the President of the United States deliberately committed felonies, knowing that his conduct lacked any legal authority? And what justifies simply walking away from these serial acts of deliberate criminality? At this point, how can anyone justify the lack of criminal investigations or the appointment of a Special Counsel? The President engaged in extremely serious conduct that the law expressly criminalizes and which his own DOJ made clear was illegal. . . [read on!]

Each of these entries adds a new piece to the puzzle.: http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/16/more-breadcrumbs-from-comey/

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_13.php#014172

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/16/115444/263

http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/0315nj1.htm

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10818.html

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/05/can-you-even-imagine-how-bad-it-must.html

Congress will investigate

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=ayWaK5oYVU4k&refer=home
Senate Democrats, spurred by revelations that then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales pressured hospitalized Attorney General John Ashcroft in 2004 to approve a secret spying program, are stepping up a probe of the Justice Department. . .

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/006125.html
[Laura Rozen] Listening to Comey's testimony again, how can the Senate Judiciary committee not invite to testify, and if need be subpoena Ashcroft, FBI Director Mueller, Andrew Card, and Gonzales and possibly Jack Goldsmith, Patrick Philbin and possibly Theodore Olsen about what transpired that night of March 11, 2004? And when is the Judiciary committee and/or Intelligence committees going to seriously investigate the warrantless domestic spying program and obvious questions over concerns senior DOJ officials had over its illegality? It seems plausible that Goldsmith becoming acting head of the OLC in October 2003 is what led to the DOJ's conclusion that the program as it was conducted did not have a legal basis. . . .

Did Gonzales lie (repeatedly)? Are there other questionable surveillance programs we haven’t heard about (yet)?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/16/16448/6257
[Senators, in a letter to Gonzales] On February 6, 2006, at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, you were asked whether Mr. Comey and others at the Justice Department had raised concerns about the NSA wiretapping program. You stated in response that the disagreement that occurred was not related to the wiretapping program confirmed by the President in December 2005, which was the topic of the hearing. . . .

Attorney General Gonzales. The point I want to make is that, to my knowledge, none of the reservations dealt with the program that we are talking about today. They dealt with operational capabilities that we are not talking about today....

I want to be very careful here. Because of course I am here only testifying about what the President has confirmed. And with respect to what the President has confirmed, I believe – I do not believe that these DOJ officials that you are identifying had concerns about this program.

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/16/swire-on-gonzales/
[Peter Swire] Gonzales’ answer suggests two possibilities.

1) Comey’s objections apply to the NSA warrantless wiretapping program that Gonzales was discussing. If so, then Gonzales quite likely made serious mis-statements under oath. And Gonzales was deeply and personally involved in the meeting at Ashcroft’s hospital bed, so he won’t be able to claim “I forgot.”

2) Perhaps Comey’s objections applied to a different domestic spying program. That has a big advantage for Gonzales — he wasn’t lying under oath. But then we would have senior Justice officials confirming that other “programs” exist for domestic spying, something the Administration has never previously stated.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/16/AR2007051602715.html
The Justice Department said yesterday that it will not retract a sworn statement in 2006 by Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales that the Terrorist Surveillance Program had aroused no controversy inside the Bush administration, despite congressional testimony Tuesday that senior departmental officials nearly resigned in 2004 to protest such a program. . .

More: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/what-could-possibly-be-so-bad-by-digby.html

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/16/171622/527

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003234.php
According to Sen. Leahy, Kyle Sampson has told congressional investigators that when Alberto Gonzales finally nixed the plan to permanently install Karl Rove's former aide [Tim Griffin] as a U.S. attorney without Senate confirmation, Rove's senior aide Sara Taylor was "upset." And according to Sampson's testimony, Gonzales didn't say no until late in the game -- when the U.S. attorney firings controversy was already gaining steam. That's not what Gonzales told Congress.

Fired US Attorney number 12?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_13.php#014186

Two more!

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_13.php#014185

The Justice Dept had a plan to fire more than two dozen US Attorneys

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/16/AR2007051602874.html
When shown the lists of firing candidates late yesterday, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), perhaps the most outspoken critic of the way Gonzales handled the prosecutor dismissals, said they "show how amok this process was."

"When you start firing people for invalid reasons, just about anyone can end up on a list," he said. "It looks like the process was out of control, and if it hadn't been discovered, more would have been fired." . . .

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_13.php#014187

Why letting McNulty go won’t help Gonzales

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/15/is-our-ag-learning/
[Eli] Ever since Tommy Franks called Doug Feith "The stupidest f-cking guy on the planet," an endless stream of Republican challengers have been vying to claim that mantle for themselves. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, if not the clear-cut winner, should at least be considered a very strong finalist for the honor. Bad enough that he didn't even try to make the politicization of the DOJ look good; bad enough that he didn't even try to lie to Congress convincingly, managing to piss off all but the most loyal Bushies on the Senate Judiciary Committee. But he doesn't even learn from his mistakes . . .

See, the problem with trashing someone on their way out the door is that you make it a lot harder for them to be a good soldier and keep their mouth shut. Not only does it amplify the bad blood, but it practically forces the trashee to speak out just to defend their own reputation. Gonzo's DOJ disparaged and threatened the fired US Attorneys, and as a result, some of them felt compelled to defend themselves, making an ugly situation even uglier. And now Gonzo has just repeated that mistake with McNulty, who is far more knowledgeable about how the firings went down than any of the USAs were. Indeed, I suspect that this might stimulate McNulty to dig a little deeper into his memories of where the names on the firing list came from, since he'll be wanting to prove his own non-responsibility a little more definitively. Brilliant.

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/progressreport/#3
McNulty, who in the 1990s worked for House Republicans during the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, provided a number of statements relating to the attorney firings that fueled the investigation. Privately, he blamed others in the department for "misleading him on the matter" and for keeping him out of the loop on the firings process. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) said McNulty is the wrong fall guy. "It seems ironic that Paul McNulty who at least tried to level with the committee goes while Gonzales who stonewalled the committee is still in charge." . . .

As Deputy Attorney General, part of McNulty's job was to oversee the nation's 93 U.S. attorneys. He and Gonzales approved the list of prosecutors to be dismissed last fall. Documents show McNulty also "attended numerous meetings about the prosecutors' firings - both at the Justice Department and the White House, including at least one that Rove attended." On Feb. 6, 2007, McNulty told a Senate panel that most of ousted prosecutors were fired for "performance-related" issues. But as the performance records of the fired attorneys became public, it was revealed that nearly all of them held positive job evaluations from the Department of Justice. McNulty appeared to know that not all the firings were based on performance. One fired U.S. attorney -- Nevada's Daniel Bogden -- said that in a phone conversation with McNulty prior to his firing, he was told performance "did not enter into the equation" as a reason for his firing. McNulty also told Congress that "the decision to fire the eight U.S. attorneys in December was made solely by the Justice Department. He was furious, aides said, after learning later that [Gonzales's chief of staff Kyle] Sampson had been talking to the White House about potential firings since at least January 2005. . . .

In his February testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, McNulty acknowledged during contentious testimony that fired-U.S. attorney Bud Cummins had been let go simply because the administration wanted to name former Republican National Committee operative Timothy Griffin in his place. In that hearing, Schumer asked, "So, in other words, Bud Cummins was fired for no reason. There was no cause?" McNulty answered, "No cause provided in his case, as I am aware of it." That revelation sparked additional inquiries, as Congress sought to determine whether the firings were based on illegitimate reasons. One day after his testimony, a Justice Department spokesman sent an e-mail to other aides saying Gonzales was "extremely upset" that McNulty acknowledged the true cause for the firing. Since that time, "there has been tension" between backers of McNulty and Gonzales loyalists, who blame McNulty "for accelerating the furor over the ousters by prompting prosecutors to speak openly about their dismissals." While McNulty's testimony "infuriated" Gonzales, "eventually, McNulty's position proved to be correct." . . .

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) said yesterday that key questions remain unanswered. "We continue to wait for answers: Who developed the list of the U.S. attorneys to be fired? How did U.S. attorneys end up on that list? What happened to the public corruption cases those U.S. attorneys were investigating at the time of their departures?" And as Congress seeks the answers to those questions, it will undoubtedly call upon Paul McNulty to help provide answers. "As we press on with our investigation, we look forward to his cooperation," said House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-MI).

Monica 2.0 to testify next Wednesday

http://www.speaker.gov/blog/?p=388

The Justice Dept stonewalls Congress

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/16/AR2007051602443.html
The Justice Department told Congress yesterday that a search of e-mails sent over 2 1/2 years turned up a single message in which the department's senior officials communicated with White House adviser Karl Rove about the dismissals of nine U.S. attorneys last year. . . .

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/05/16/rove.documents/index.html
The Justice Department on Wednesday told an angry Senate Judiciary Committee chairman it does not have documents described in a subpoena that demands all materials relating to Karl Rove's possible involvement in the U.S. attorney firings.

Instead, it said, Rove's lawyer must have them. . . .

More: http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003235.php

ANOTHER shoe to drop?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/014182.php
[Evans-Novak] Rove's former assistant, Susan Ralston, is currently seeking immunity to testify before Waxman's committee. Ralston is a former assistant to Jack Abramoff, the disgraced Washington super-lobbyist and Republican fund-raiser. . . . For Waxman, she is a link between Abramoff and Rove. Ralston was deposed behind closed doors prior to her request for immunity. According to her friends, she has nothing to say that would cause problems for Rove. . . .

Apparently the illegal use of private emails to circumvent federal disclosure laws is even more widespread in this administration

http://www.citizensforethics.org/node/28382

I think Bob Novak is perfectly right about this – but like Bob Woodward’s latest book, “State of Denial,” so different in tone from his first two, these comments are symptomatic of a press that glorified the brilliance of the Bush regime until things started to go bad, then SUDDENLY realized that Bush had brought into government a bunch of underqualified loyalists whose only distinction was fealty to the Bush-Cheney vision. That was apparent to lots of us at the time, folks!

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/14/novak-gonzales/
[Faiz] This weekend on Bloomberg Television, columnist Robert Novak offered the following “defense” of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:

He’s terrible. He shouldn’t be there. But there’s a lot of bad people in this administration.

Novak twice referred to the Attorney General as “poor Gonzales,” casting him as an unfortunate victim of congressional oversight. . . Democrats are “pounding on this poor Gonzales who never should have been in a high government post in the first place” in order to shift attention from the Iraq funding debate. But Novak then acknowledged that Republicans “think he ought to go, too.”

Novak said, “The president is stuck with these subpar people he brought up from Texas. That’s a failing on President Bush’s part.” . . .

NOW you tell us? Remember that John DiIulio nailed this at the very outset of the regime

http://www.ronsuskind.com/newsite/articles/archives/000032.html
[January 2003] "There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus," says DiIulio. "What you’ve got is everything—and I mean everything—being run by the political arm. It’s the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis." . . .

"I heard many, many staff discussions but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions," he writes. "There were no actual policy white papers on domestic issues. There were, truth be told, only a couple of people in the West Wing who worried at all about policy substance and analysis, and they were even more overworked than the stereotypical nonstop, twenty-hour-a-day White House staff. Every modern presidency moves on the fly, but on social policy and related issues, the lack of even basic policy knowledge, and the only casual interest in knowing more, was somewhat breathtaking: discussions by fairly senior people who meant Medicaid but were talking Medicare; near-instant shifts from discussing any actual policy pros and cons to discussing political communications, media strategy, et cetera. Even quite junior staff would sometimes hear quite senior staff pooh-pooh any need to dig deeper for pertinent information on a given issue."

The Bush gang signals that they’re ready to see Wolfowitz go, as long as he is allowed to resign with no reference to his misconduct. As if that will fool anyone

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/washington/16wolfowitz.html

Later: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070516/ap_on_go_ot/world_bank_wolfowitz;_ylt=AqIIBAeqizF9ebqzl2vmLbis0NUE
Embattled World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is negotiating an agreement to resign, according to an official familiar with the talks. . . .

Not the best outcome, but a step in the right direction

http://politicalinsider.com/2007/05/gop_lawmakers_draft_iraq_propo.html
"A small group of Republican senators, led by Virginia's John Warner, is coalescing around legislation that would threaten billions of dollars in U.S. aid to Iraq and make clear American troops will stay only as long as Baghdad lives up to its promises," according to the AP.

Sens. Susan Collins (R-ME), Olympia Snowe (R-ME), Norm Coleman (R-MN), Judd Gregg (R-NH) were working with Warner "to draft the legislation and were expected to support it."

"The GOP legislation does not go as far as many Democrats want, but it offers a sharp challenge to Bush's Iraq policy by members of his own political party. It also indicates the thinning patience of many GOP members on a deeply unpopular and costly war in its fifth year."

Why all the hush-hush about the new trade agreement? Here’s why

http://www.workingassetsblog.com/2007/05/breaking_emanuel_blocks_dem_de.html

The Republican pissing contest (aka, how they plan to run against Hillary)

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/getting-our-hair-mussed-by-digby-it-was.html
[Digby] It was quite interesting watching the Republicans debate down in South Carolina tonight. I think it's clear that this group has come to fully understand that winning the GOP nomination is all about the codpiece. These guys have just spent the last fifteen minutes of the debate trying to top each other on just how much torture they are willing to inflict. . . .

This debate is a window into what really drives the GOP id. . . .

Watch it: http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/05/15/gop-debate-ii-romney-double-guantanamo/

More machismo: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10809.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/15/211043/495

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/15/21490/7850

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/15/221539/002

Republican operative sues Media Matters on bogus charges, forcing them to spend money they don’t have on legal fees

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/15/174811/924

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:20 AM

 
MAN OVERBOARD!

I’ll be traveling in China for the next ten days, so Internet access may not be a daily thing. I will do my best to keep up with the blog – what an amazing time. And where to start?

The kind of people they are

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003221.php
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning, former Deputy Attorney General James Comey detailed the desperate late night efforts by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales and White House chief of staff Andrew Card to get the Justice Department to approve a secret program -- the warrantless wiretapping program.

According to Comey's testimony this morning, only when faced with resignations by a number of Justice Department officials including Comey, his chief of staff, Ashcroft's chief of staff, Ashcroft himself and possibly Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI, did the White House agree to make changes to the program that would satisfy the requirements of the Justice Department to sign off on it (Comey refused to name the program, but it's apparent from the context and prior reports that this was the warrantless wiretapping program).

The events took place in March of 2004, when the program was in need of renewal by the Justice Department. When then-Attorney General John Ashcroft fell ill and was hospitalized, Comey became the acting-Attorney General.

The deadline for the Justice Department's providing its sign-off of the program was March 11th (the program required reauthorization every 45 days). On that day, Comey, then the acting AG, informed the White House that he "would not certify the legality" of the program.

According to Comey, he was on his way home when he got a call from Ashcroft's wife that Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card were on their way to the hospital*. Comey then rushed to the hospital (sirens blaring) to beat them there and thwart "an effort to overrule me."

After Comey arrived at the hospital with a group of senior Justice Department officials, Gonzales and Card arrived and walked up to Ashcroft, who was lying barely conscious on his hospital bed. "Gonzales began to explain why he was there, to seek his approval for a matter," Comey testified. But Ashcroft rebuffed Gonzales and told him that Comey was the attorney general now. "The two men turned and walked from the room," said Comey.

A "very upset" Andrew Card then called Comey and demanded that he come to the White House for a meeting at 11 PM that night.

After meeting with Justice Department officials at the Justice Deaprtment, Comey went to the White House with Ted Olson, then the Solicitor General to the White House. He brought Olson along, Comey said, because he wanted a witness for the meeting.

But Card didn't let Olson enter and Comey had a private discussion with Card. This discussion, Comey testified, was much "calmer." According to Comey, Card was concerned about reports that there were to be large numbers of resignations at Justice Department. Gonzales entered with Olson and the four had an apparently not very fruitful discussion.

The program was reauthorized without the signature of the attorney general. Because of that, Comey said, he prepared a letter of resignation. "I believed that I couldn't stay if the administration was going to engage in conduct that Justice Department said had no legal basis."

At this point, according to Comey, a number of senior Justice Department officials, including Ashcroft, were prepared to resign. . . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10807.html
[Steve Benen] Got that? The surveillance was already underway without court approval, and then the White House decided it didn’t need the Justice Department either. The NSA program, at that point, was operating purely because the president said it could, despite the objections of the acting Attorney General.

Two other thoughts to consider:

1. I never thought I’d say it, but Gonzales has managed to make Ashcroft look like a man of integrity and principle.

2. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) responded to Comey’s story by asking again how how Gonzales could remain as the AG, since he evidently had so little respect for the rule of law.

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/006117.html
[Marty Lederman] "Most importantly: Can anyone think of any historical examples where the Department of Justice told the White House that a course of conduct would be unlawful (in this case, a felony), and the President went ahead and did it anyway, without overruling DOJ's legal conclusion?"

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/15/washington/15cnd-attorneys.html

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/15/153359/449

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011310.php
[Newsweek] President Bush, with his penchant for put-down nicknames, had begun referring to Comey as "Cuomey" or "Cuomo” . . .

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/05/15/comey/index.html
[Glenn Grennwald] Gonzales' yearlong effort to block Comey's testimony . . .

Gonzales tries to save himself by throwing McNulty to the wolves

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/politics/4806744.html
Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday he relied on his resigning deputy more than any other aide to decide which U.S. attorneys should be fired last year.

His comments came a less than a day after Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty announced he would resign at the end of the summer — a decision that people familiar with the plans said was hastened by the controversy over the purge of eight prosecutors.

"You have to remember, at the end of the day, the recommendations reflected the views of the deputy attorney general. He signed off on the names," Gonzales told reporters at a National Press Club forum in Washington. "And he would know better than anyone else, anyone in this room, anyone — again, the deputy attorney general would know best about the qualifications and the experiences of the United States attorneys community, and he signed off on the names." . . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10805.html
[Steve Benen] I can’t say I’m surprised — Gonzales gave up on the possibility of shame quite a while ago — but even reporters realize that the AG is playing fast and loose here. The AP noted that DoJ documents “show that [McNulty] was not closely involved in picking all the U.S. attorneys who were put on the list — a job mostly driven by two Gonzales staffers with little prosecutorial experience.”

I also loved Gonzales’ argument that McNulty “signed off on the names.” That’s true, but so did Gonzales.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/05/15/BL2007051501226.html
[Dan Froomkin] McNulty, widely considered to have played only a supporting role in the controversial firings of U.S. attorneys last year, did his bosses the kindness yesterday of citing "financial pressures" as his reason for abruptly ending his long career in public service in the midst of a scandal.

But Attorney General Alberto Gonzales wasted no time in planting the knife. Although Gonzales has previously been vague to the point of cluelessness about the genesis of the firings, suddenly this morning the ambiguity was gone.

[NB: Now, what will McNulty do to save his reputation? Stay tuned]

No, it definitely ain’t over yet

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003223.php

Let’s all remember, when the Republicans want to go after “voter fraud,” WHICH voters they are referring to

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_13.php#014150

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_13.php#014133

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/05/14/BL2007051400488.html

Our new War Czar

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/15/we-have-us-a-new-war-czar/
[Maj Gen Douglas Lute, August 24 2005] “I will tell you this, as the operation officer of Centcom, if a year from now I've got to call on all those army troops that Gen Schoomaker is prepared to provide, I won't feel real good about myself,” he said

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_05_13_archive.html#9190255286569492524
“We believe at some point, in order to break this dependence on the . . . coalition, you simply have to back off and let the Iraqis step forward.

“You have to undercut the perception of occupation in Iraq. It's very difficult to do that when you have 150,000-plus, largely western, foreign troops occupying the country.”

Paul Wolfowitz, tough guy

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2079878,00.html
Sounding more like a cast member of the Sopranos than an international leader, in testimony by one key witness Mr Wolfowitz declares: "If they f-ck with me or Shaha, I have enough on them to f-ck them too." . . .

F-cked: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/15/washington/15wolfowitz.html
A World Bank committee charged Monday that Paul D. Wolfowitz violated ethical and governance rules as bank president by showing favoritism to his companion in 2005. In response, the Bush administration mounted a last-ditch global campaign to save Mr. Wolfowitz from being ousted from office. . . .

Bonus item: Jerry Falwell, won’t be missed

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/he-thought-it-would-be-dramatic-by.html

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10806.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 5:48 PM

 
END GAMES

Sound bite slogans aside, does ANYONE really have a clear idea of what further fighting in Iraq is meant to accomplish?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/13/121118/466

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/iraq-delusion-by-tristero-what-is-it.html

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_13.php#014113

Be careful what you ask for

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/13/211915/297
[Mitch McConnell, R-KY] McConnell said some lawmakers in Iraq's parliament wanted a vote to ask the United States to leave.

"I want to assure you, if they vote to ask us to leave, we'll be glad to comply with their request," he said.

Coalition deaths in Iraq

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/05/casualty_rates.php
[Nick Beaudrot] [W]e are now in the most violent twelve-month stretch of the four year occupation of Iraq . . .

Will Bush face a revolt from his generals if he pushes the surge into next year?

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/13/generals-revolt/

The 11 congressional Republicans who went to tell Bush his Iraq policy was in serious trouble are just “the tip of the iceberg”

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_13.php#014111

Bill Kristol: “Stupid, dishonorable” – and he’s talking about the Republicans!

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Bill_Kristol_stupid_dishonorable_Republicans_wavering_0513.html

John McCain’s all-in decision to go with Bush on the Iraq war has cost him popular support and undermined his credibility. His stroll in the Baghdad market almost made him a laughingstock – and now he has made it worse

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_13.php#014108
"I'll be glad to back to that market -- with or without military protection and Humvees, etc."

Here’s one way to make sure the images of Iraq we see back in the US show “improvement”

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Iraq_to_bar_press_from_blast_0513.html
Iraq's interior ministry has decided to bar news photographers and cameramen from the scenes of bomb attacks, operations director Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf said Sunday. . . .

A must-read on the refugee crisis in Iraq: not just a disaster from a humanitarian standpoint, but a problem with serious long-term ramifications. Refugee camps are a prime recruiting ground for future radicals. Another present George and Dick have left for future presidents to deal with

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/13/111952/719

The fight to control Iraq’s oil production (thanks to Buzzflash for the link)

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2132574.ece

Josh Marshall has a good track record of sensing a Big Story hiding under a seemingly simple little story. Here’s his latest

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_13.php#014114
[Newark Star-Ledger] In an abrupt about-face, President Bush has decided against nominating Noel Hillman, a veteran prosecutor and now federal judge in Camden, to the seat on the 3d U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that was held by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Jr.

Hillman, a former assistant U.S. attorney in New Jersey and the lead Justice Department prosecutor in the Jack Abramoff Capitol Hill lobbying scandal, had full White House support and the backing of New Jersey Democratic Sens. Robert Menendez and Frank Lautenberg, and had successfully completed his FBI background check several months ago. But suddenly things changed.

"He is out," one knowledgeable source told The Auditor. The source added it had nothing to do with Hillman's qualifications, his ethics or his ability to do the job. . .

The reason for dropping Hillman remains a mystery, and both Hillman and the folks at 1600 Pennsylvania are staying mum. But speculation abounds . . . [read on]

How widespread has corruption become under the Bush regime? Frank Rich itemizes the crimes

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_13.php#014107
By my rough, conservative calculation -- feel free to add -- there have been corruption, incompetence, and contracting or cronyism scandals in these cabinet departments: Defense, Education, Justice, Interior, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, Health and Human Services, and Housing and Urban Development. I am not counting State, whose deputy secretary, a champion of abstinence-based international AIDS funding, resigned last month in a prostitution scandal, or the General Services Administration, now being investigated for possibly steering federal favors to Republican Congressional candidates in 2006. Or the Office of Management and Budget, whose chief procurement officer was sentenced to prison in the Abramoff fallout. I will, however, toss in a figure that reveals the sheer depth of the overall malfeasance: no fewer than four inspectors general, the official watchdogs charged with investigating improprieties in each department, are themselves under investigation simultaneously -- an all-time record.

Wrongdoing of this magnitude does not happen by accident . . . [read on]

Sure enough, it was Rove’s obsession with driving “voter fraud” cases that was behind the pressure on US Attorneys

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/13/AR2007051301106.html
Nearly half the U.S. attorneys slated for removal by the administration last year were targets of Republican complaints that they were lax on voter fraud, including efforts by presidential adviser Karl Rove to encourage more prosecutions of election- law violations, according to new documents and interviews.

Of the 12 U.S. attorneys known to have been dismissed or considered for removal last year, five were identified by Rove or other administration officials as working in districts that were trouble spots for voter fraud -- Kansas City, Mo.; Milwaukee; New Mexico; Nevada; and Washington state. Four of the five prosecutors in those districts were dismissed.

It has been clear for months that the administration's eagerness to launch voter-fraud prosecutions played a role in some of the firings, but recent testimony, documents and interviews show the issue was more central than previously known. The new details include the names of additional prosecutors who were targeted and other districts that were of concern, as well as previously unknown information about the White House's role. . . .

Rove, in particular, was preoccupied with pressing Gonzales and his aides about alleged voting problems in a handful of battleground states, according to testimony and documents. . .

Rick Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School who runs an election law blog, said that "there's no question that Karl Rove and other political operatives" urged Justice officials to apply pressure on U.S. attorneys to pursue voter-fraud allegations in parts of the country that were critical to the GOP. . .

Swopa’s smart: the biggest item in recent stories about DOJ nonsense is that “senior officials” are leaking the info. This suggests that some high-ranking professionals are fed up with the Bush gang’s efforts to turn federal prosecutors into functionaries of the Republican Party. I assume this means a steady stream of further revelations, until Gonzales is out and Rove’s role in revealed

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/4031

Is Greg Palast blowing smoke here, or does he really have something? (thanks to Avedon Carol for the link)

http://www.gregpalast.com/amy-goodman-and-greg-palast-moms-day-broadcast/
I have Karl Rove’s emails. No kidding. He and his team aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. They sent copies of their plans to GeorgeWBush.ORG instead of GeorgeWBush.COM addresses — and, heh heh, they ended up in my in-box. . .

The Goofus Files (musical edition)

http://bushconducts.notlong.com

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/13/1623/36673

CBS, once a proud news organization

http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/05/msm_rules_1.php
[Matt Yglesias] CBS officially doesn't care that one of its contributors [Lou Dobbs] is a liar; they say they hired him because a rival network hired Glenn Beck, so I guess they decided they needed a fool of their own. This is the kind of thing that makes it a little hard to take seriously the notion that the news biz was all about the unadorned pursuit of truth until bloggers ruined everything.

More: http://www.samefacts.com/archives/_/2007/05/its_official_.php

Bonus item: Monica Goodling, princess

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/13/face-the-snark-regent-alumni-edition/
Dear Mommy and Daddy. . . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 4:46 AM

 
BOMBING

This is going to be a pretty interesting test case of who’s actually in charge in Iraq

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070512/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_parliament_2
Iraq's parliament objected Saturday to the construction of walls around Baghdad neighborhoods . . . Construction of the walls — particularly in the Baghdad neighborhood of Azamiyah — has been criticized by residents and Sunni clerics who say it is a form of sectarian discrimination. Even followers of radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr complained . . .

Meanwhile, over in our other war . . .

http://www.slate.com/id/2166127/
[Conor Clarke] The main reason for high civilian casualties in Afghanistan seems to be the Americans' heavy reliance on airstrikes in the fight against the Taliban. It's pretty easy to see why high civilian casualties aren't making the NATO alliance or the Afghan government more popular. But the Times goes on to note that the deaths are also "exposing tensions between American commanders and commanders from other NATO countries," who have apparently never agreed on a strategy for fighting the war. . . .

Remember the story in 2004 when Bush suggested in a meeting with Tony Blair that bombing the tv station Al Jazeera would be a pretty neat idea? Here’s the aftermath

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/dont-they-know-hes-shameless-by-digby.html

Bush’s tin ear (thanks to John Aravosis for the link)

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/parvaz/315216_parvaz12.html

I count this as fired US Attorney #11 (the original 8 plus Graves, Yang, and now Warner)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.php#014096

More on the Monica Problem

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10783.html

It’s NOT just Monica: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/comstocks-little-goodling-by-digby-this.html

Will Gonzales survive?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/12/132445/761

Another voting fraud case the Republicans won’t be worried about

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.php#014102

Corrupt . . . and stupid

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.php#014097
[Rep. Paul Gillmor (R-Ohio)] . . . "There's nothing unethical or unusual," he told the paper. "It's all pretty much aboveboard."

Here’s how bad Republican corruption has become

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.php#014099
[Steve Benen] When Rep. John Doolittle (R-Calif.) was forced to give up his seat on the powerful House Appropriations Committee due to an acute case of Abramoff-itis, the GOP leadership had a chance to set things right by replacing him with a respected lawmaker of unimpeachable integrity. Instead the leadership tapped Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), who was himself recently named one of Congress' most corrupt lawmakers.

Calvert, of course, is the subject on an ongoing FBI probe of his own. As CREW's Melanie Sloan asked, "Why would the minority choose to replace one member under federal investigation with another member also under federal investigation?"

Some conservatives are starting to ask the same question. RedState, one of the leading far-right blogs, ran an item yesterday under the headline, "An Open Declaration of War Against The House Republican Leadership." . . . [read on]

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10784.html

Whee-hee!

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0507/3957.html
President Bush’s meeting with the 11 Republican House members grew out of a sudden decline in the party’s fortunes that has recently come into sharp relief. . .

Republican operatives and political observers say the party must act quickly, or face the prospect of a political wilderness not seen since Watergate. . . . [read on]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/12/AR2007051201436.html
Every few weeks, President Bush invites House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and their GOP counterparts to the White House for a discussion of Iraq and other issues of the day. By the accounts of those in the room, the meetings are gracious, formal -- and rarely productive. . . .

The meetings underscore the chasm that continues to divide the White House and Congress. . . The trouble for the White House is that increasingly, the mistrust may not be not limited to Democrats. As evidenced by a contentious Bush meeting last week with House moderates complaining about Iraq policy, Republican lawmakers are increasingly leery of a president whose war policies many believe are leading the party to ruin in the 2008 elections. The result is that the president finds himself in an uphill struggle not only to win a few domestic victories on his way out of the Oval Office but also to maintain necessary GOP support for continuing the war in Iraq. . . .

The kind of people they are

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.php#014098
[Steve Benen] When Greg Sargent first noted on Thursday that Rudy Giuliani's campaign cancelled an event at Deb and Jerry VonSprecken's family farm because they're not millionaires, he asked in his first paragraph, "[W]ill the haircut-obsessed political media cover it?" . . . [read on]

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/05/rudy_snubs_farm.php

John Edwards spends a lot of money for a haircut, and the Drudge-driven media goes ballistic over his supposed vanity and pretty-boy image. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney’s campaign puts out this flier, which THEY wrote and produced, and no one notices

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10780.html
[Garance Franke-Ruta] His promotional flyer says, “In this media-driven age, Romney begins with a decisive advantage. First, he has sensational good looks. People magazine named him one of the 50 most beautiful people in America. Standing 6 feet, 2 inches tall, Romney has jet-black hair, graying naturally at the temples. Women — who will play a critical role in this coming election — have a word for him: hot.” . . .

If Democratic campaign consultants can’t figure out how to have a field day with this, they all ought to just hang up their cleats and go home. . . . [read on]

More: http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/12/the-mitt-boy/

Time for a little Democrat-bashing: their lousy trade bill

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/12/wont-get-naftad-again/

More: http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/5/12/191957/962

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/12/details-of-trade-agreement-released/

Dems drop the ball on lobbying reform too

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011295.php

A shout-out to my readers in Bend, Oregon: a nice piece on the Bush family’s exploitation of the education issue (thanks to Buzzflash for the link)

http://www.bendweekly.com/Opinion/5627.html

Theocracy watch

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/13/business/13lobby.html
Religious organizations have long competed for federal contracts to provide social services, and they have tried to influence Congress on matters of moral and social policy — indeed, most major denominations have a presence in Washington to monitor such legislation. But an analysis of federal records shows that some religious organizations are also hiring professional lobbyists to pursue the narrowly tailored individual appropriations known as earmarks. . . Earmarks are individual federal grants that bypass the normal appropriations and competitive-bidding procedures. . . .

More thoughts on the press and the blogosphere

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/10/19404/2355

Sunday talk show line-ups

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/12/232314/697
* Meet the Press: Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)
* This Week: Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL); roundtable of Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts, and George Will; Brooke Shields
* Face the Nation: Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE); roundtable of Politico's Jeanne Cummings, NPR's Michel Martin.
* Fox News Sunday: Rudolph Giuliani (R-NY)
* CNN Late Edition: Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY); Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA); Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC); Max Cleland (D-GA); Iraqi dep. PM Barham Salih; roundtable of Ed Henry, John King and Dana Bash.

Bonus item: Pretzel logic

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.php#014101

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:46 AM

 
UNACCOUNTABLE

It’s all about the . . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/12/world/middleeast/12oil.html
Between 100,000 and 300,000 barrels a day of Iraq’s declared oil production over the past four years is unaccounted for and could have been siphoned off through corruption or smuggling, according to a draft American government report.

Using an average of $50 a barrel, the report said the discrepancy was valued at $5 million to $15 million daily. . . .

Ahhhh. The Bush gang is very, very unhappy with the 11 moderate Republicans who met with Bush to tell him he would lose more GOP support by Fall if the war in Iraq isn’t going any better, then went public about their “tough, frank” conversations with him

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/10/AR2007051000104.html
White House political adviser Karl Rove, furious that Republican moderates had divulged a confrontational meeting they had on Tuesday with Bush on the war, started yesterday with an angry conversation with the meeting's organizer, Rep. Mark Steven Kirk (R-Ill.), according to several GOP lawmakers. Dan Meyer, the White House's chief lobbyist, called the other participants to express the administration's unhappiness. . .

The heated meeting between the GOP moderates and Bush continued to reverberate through Capitol Hill yesterday, after several Republican conservatives told reporters that they shared the moderates' fears that the war is wrecking the party. "There is no liberal-conservative divide on Iraq," said one House GOP conservative, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of angering the White House further.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/washington/11cong.html
Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior White House official disputed the notion that Mr. Bush’s agreement to consider signing a bill with specific benchmarks for the Iraqis to meet was tied to Republican complaints that more pressure be brought to bear on the Iraqi government to make faster progress toward political reconciliation. . . . .

Some White House officials privately expressed displeasure Thursday that the concerns the Republican moderates raised with the president became public. Vice President Dick Cheney did not mince words in an interview with the Fox News Channel. “We didn’t get elected to be popular,” Mr. Cheney said. “We didn’t get elected to worry just about the fate of the Republican Party.”

Some lawmakers said they had lost patience not only with the war in Iraq, but also with the continuing legislative and political conflict in Congress as the two parties maneuver over the war.

“The Republicans should not be saying the Democrats don’t support the troops, nor should the Democrats be calling Republicans warmongers,” said Representative Jo Ann Emerson, Republican of Missouri and one of the 11 moderates who met with Mr. Bush on Tuesday. “Politics have taken over, and our soldiers deserve better.”

More: http://thehill.com/leading-the-news/bush-aides-berate-gop-members-2007-05-10.html

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10771.html

Or not . . . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/11/171230/684
Fully 67 percent of congressional Republicans say that even if conditions in Iraq have not improved significantly by September, Congress will still not pass legislation withdrawing U.S. forces out of Iraq. . . .

Let’s get surgier

http://voanews.com/english/2007-05-11-voa42.cfm
The U.S. commander in northern Iraq says he does not have enough manpower to secure the increasingly violent Diyala province. . . .

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011291.php

What Alberto Gonzales does (and doesn’t) know

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/10/AR2007051002119.html
[Dana Milbank] However befuddled the witness became, he was clearly confident that Bush would let him keep his job. In contrast to the man who took a beating before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month -- when even Republican senators disparaged him -- Gonzales literally laughed at his questioners yesterday. He chuckled while answering Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), and shook his head and grinned while listening to Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Keith Ellison (D-Minn.). The attorney general's coyness about the U.S. attorney firings enraged Robert Wexler (D-Fla.). "You know who put them on the list, but you won't tell us!" Wexler blurted out.

Gonzales only smiled. . . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10766.html
[Steve Benen] Gonzales simply doesn’t care anymore . . .

http://www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2007/05/11/gonzales_hearing/
[Joe Conason] What the six-hour hearing established most clearly is that most Republicans remain united behind Gonzales despite the clear evidence of his incompetence, dishonesty and contempt for Congress as an institution. . . [read on!]

“A Monica problem”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/12/washington/12monica.html
Two years ago, Robin C. Ashton, a seasoned criminal prosecutor at the Department of Justice, learned from her boss that a promised promotion was no longer hers.

“You have a Monica problem,” Ms. Ashton was told. . . “She believes you’re a Democrat and doesn’t feel you can be trusted.” . . .

Ms. Goodling would soon be quizzing applicants for civil service jobs at Justice Department headquarters with questions that several United States attorneys said were inappropriate, like who was their favorite president and Supreme Court justice. One department official said an applicant was even asked, “Have you ever cheated on your wife?”

Ms. Goodling also moved to block the hiring of prosecutors with résumés that suggested they might be Democrats, even though they were seeking posts that were supposed to be nonpartisan, two department officials said.

And she helped maintain lists of all the United States attorneys that graded their loyalty to the Bush administration, including work on past political campaigns, and noted if they were members of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group. . .

[NB: And we’re supposed to think she came up with this idea on her own? Why wasn’t she stopped? The answer is obvious, isn’t it?]

The “voting fraud” fraud

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003200.php
The White House really put the heat on. . . .

Here’s one voting fraud case they WON’T pursue

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/12/21815/3259

Why Todd Graves (#9) was fired

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/11/19610/1307

Bradley Schlozman tells Congress he can’t testify on the scheduled date. He has better things to do

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003207.php

Other coming attractions

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/11/2175/54578
[Kagro X] [W]here are we? Well, we're not getting any answers from DoJ, even though the answers appear painfully obvious. And next week is the deadline for compliance with the subpoenas for Karl Rove's U.S. Attorneys e-mails and Condi Rice's testimony on pre-war intelligence and "the sixteen words." . . . [read on]

Undoing the damage

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003204.php
[Paul Kiel] It's hard work for Democrats undoing the damage of the Patriot Act Reauthorization bill passed last year, a huge bill that contained a number of provisions that affected U.S. attorneys.

Last month, the Congress passed a bill reversing one of those provisions -- one that made it possible for the attorney general to indefinitely appoint U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation.

Now Four Democrats are trying to undo another of those little-noticed provisions -- one that made it possible for certain U.S. attorneys to pull double duty in the Justice Department leadership. . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/12/washington/12gitmo.html
The Justice Department yesterday withdrew one of its proposals to tighten restrictions on lawyers representing detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but said it would continue to press a federal appeals court for other limitations on the lawyers. . .

It’s just a matter of time, right?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/11/washington/11wolfowitz.html
European leaders have told the Bush administration that Paul D. Wolfowitz must resign as president of the World Bank in order to avoid a vote next week by the bank’s board declaring that he no longer has its confidence . . .

More: http://www.worldbankpresident.org/archives/000677.php

A new indictment in the Cunningham/Foggo/Wilkes scandal

http://www.fresnobee.com/384/story/47208.html
According to the new indictment, [CIA #3] Foggo provided Wilkes with "sensitive, internal information related to our national security," including classified information, to help him prepare proposals for providing undercover flights for the CIA under the guise of a civil aviation company and armored vehicles for agency operations. Foggo allegedly then pushed his CIA colleagues to hire Wilkes' companies without disclosing their longstanding friendship. . .

More: http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/006095.html

What’s happening with Scooter Libby’s sentencing?

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/11/libby-sentencing-news-update/

More: http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/3/6/215613/4042

How the “liberal” media treats anti-administration advocacy differently from pro-administration advocacy

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/05/cbs.php
[Greg Sargent] As MSNBC reported late yesterday, retired General John Batiste has been fired as an analyst for CBS News because he appeared in a VoteVets ad slamming President Bush and advocating for withdrawal from Iraq. . . .

When I asked CBS spokesperson Sandy Genelius to clarify which standards she was talking about, Genelius told me that CBS had "internal" standards that dictated against this sort of advocacy, which she defined as "expressing a public opinion that is coming from an advocacy point of view." She added: "You are not allowed to take a public position on an issue." Think Progress got a similar explanation from Genelius today.

But I've dug up something pretty interesting. On December 31, 2006 (via Nexis), the Brookings Institution's Michael O'Hanlon appeared on CBS as a "CBS News Consultant" -- the same type of arrangement Batiste had. O'Hanlon, however, has repeatedly "advocated" in favor of the "surge."

Here's an Op ed by O'Hanlon in The Washington Post called "A Skeptic's Case For The Surge" . . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/05/another_cbs_new.php
Okay, we have another CBS News Consultant who has repeatedly advocated in favor of President Bush's war policies, and against Congressional action -- Mideast scholar Fouad Ajami. . . .

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/11/135138/598

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10770.html

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/11/wallace-mccain/
CBS News has claimed that it fired Gen. John Batiste because he was engaging in “advocacy” that might hurt the credibility of his “analytical approach.” CBS has not expressed a similar level of concern with its other consultants, particularly former Bush aide Nicolle Wallace.

ThinkProgress has confirmed that Wallace serves as an informal advisor to the McCain campaign. As early as August 2006, the National Journal reported that Wallace was affiliated with the McCain campaign. . .

CBS does not appear to have been concerned that Wallace’s advocacy for McCain would impact her on-air analysis. But on at least two occasions — after the media reported she was affiliated with the campaign — Wallace appeared on CBS programming to boost John McCain . . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10774.html

Bonus item: Limbaugh billboard gets vandalized – and he reacts to it as if it were a terrorist act

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/11/late-nite-fdl-fauxtrage-deluxe/
"I think I'm the one that needs Secret Service protection," Limbaugh said. "All this talk about Obama and these presidential candidates. For crying out loud, I'm the one who needs it."

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:52 AM

 
MINCING WORDS

Bush suggests a “compromise” on “benchmarks,” but you need to have a glossary to see what he really means

“Benchmarks”: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/10/165116/936
Bush says, "sure I'll compromise," on benchmarks, as long as those benchmarks don't mean anything. The Democratic leadership responds. . . .

[Harry Reid] While we welcome the President's comments today, a bipartisan majority of Congress has already concluded that we need more than simple benchmarks without any consequences to accomplish this goal. . . .

[Nancy Pelosi] The President has long said he supports benchmarks; what he fails to accept is accountability for failing to meet those benchmarks. Benchmarks without consequences and enforcement are meaningless, a blank check.

“Compromise”: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/10/8514/55408
[Devilstower] (Noun) 1. A settlement of differences made by Democrats folding their tent and giving Republicans everything they want.

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10759.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/11/35115/5960

http://www.first-draft.com/2007/05/today_on_holden_7.html

The AP seems to be taking its talking points straight from Rove’s desk

http://www.americablog.com/2007/05/associated-press-smears-house-dems.html
[AP] The turnabout in Bush's position came as Republicans expressed anxieties about the war and the House was expected to pass legislation that would cut off funding for U.S. troops as early as July.

[NB: So, passing a bill that fully funds the war, with conditions, is undermining the troops. Passing a bill that fully funds the war for several months, with no conditions, but subject to renewal, is “cutting off” funding for the troops. Apparently, the only way to support the troops is to give Bush everything that he wants. Well, that’s what HE says]

Who voted how: http://www.americablog.com/2007/05/house-dems-pass-iraq-spending-bill-221.html

What will the Senate do? http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/11/11924/6947

They still want us to confuse Iraq and 9-11

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/10/19330/2361
[John Boehner, R-OH] "Every Member of this House voted for war in Iraq, except one."

[McJoan] You see, on the AUMF for Iraq passed on October 10, 2002, 126 Democrats voted "no."

The vote Boehner must have been thinking about was the vote to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Those Responsible for the Recent Attacks Launched Against the United States. That vote did indeed have just one dissenter, Barbara Lee.

Is the conflation of the two votes just a mistake by Boehner, or just part of the ongoing effort by Republicans to tie Iraq to 9/11?

“Gonzales is in his happy place”

http://www.slate.com/id/2165987/fr/rss/
[Dahlia Lithwick] Alberto Gonzales is in his happy place. He enters the hearing room in the Rayburn Building for his testimony before the House judiciary committee smiling the smile of a man who sleeps well each night, in the warm glow of the president's love. Gone is the testy, defensive Gonzales who testified last month before the Senate. Today's attorney general breezes into the chamber with the certain knowledge that having bottomed out in April, he has nothing left to prove. His only role in this scandal is as decoy: He's the guy who runs out in front of the hunters and draws their fire so nobody pays any attention to what's happening at the White House.

Gonzales seems to have made his peace with this. No more angry outbursts, no bitter attempts at self-justification. Instead, the AG answers some questions with a giggle and most others with the same old catchphrases we've heard so often: He has consistently failed to investigate any wrongdoing at the Justice Department out of "deference to the integrity of the ongoing investigations." The decisions about which U.S. attorneys made Kyle Sampson's magic list were the "consensus recommendations of the senior leadership of the department." Over and again, ever in identical language, Gonzales "accepts full responsibility for the decision" just as he insists that he played only a "limited role" in the decision-making. The fact that the attorney general can't even be bothered to pull out a thesaurus after all these weeks—even if only to create the illusion that these nonanswers come from him as opposed to a list of pre-approved talking points—reveals just how little he cares about what Congress and the public think of him anymore . . .

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011284.php

This headline was up at CNN, then pulled down

http://edition.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/05/10/gonzales.testifies.ap/
US attorneys probe shifts from Gonzales to Rove . . .

Murray Waas gives us another blockbuster, and once again suspicion turns to Karl Rove. Here there’s smoke, there’s fire, and there are three-alarm warning bells

http://news.nationaljournal.com/articles/070510nj1.htm
The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove's, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

The withheld records show that D. Kyle Sampson, who was then-chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, consulted with White House officials in drafting two letters to Congress that appear to have misrepresented the circumstances of Griffin's appointment as U.S. attorney and of Rove's role in supporting Griffin. . . .

Several of the e-mails that the Bush administration is withholding from Congress, as well as papers from the White House counsel's office describing other withheld documents, were made available to National Journal by a senior executive branch official, who said that the administration has inappropriately kept many of them from Congress.

The senior official said that Gonzales, in preparing for testimony before Congress, has personally reviewed the withheld records and has a responsibility to make public any information he has about efforts by his former chief of staff, other department aides, and White House officials to conceal Rove's role. . . .

That last paragraph makes this opening statement by Alberto Gonzales all the more interesting

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/10/so-what-should-they-be-asking/
[Christy Hardin Smith] My favorite Gonzales quote thus far comes from his opening statement: "Finally, recognizing my limited involvement in the process, a mistake that I freely acknowledge, I have soberly questioned by prior decisions. I have reviewed the documents available to the Congress." Because, you know, you wouldn't want to review ALL possible documents available, otherwise you might let something slip out that Congress hasn't yet been told. . . .

[NB: Mincing words, Gonzales didn’t say he had ONLY reviewed the documents available to Congress – he just said it in a way that deflected any attempts to get him to discuss OTHER documents. And for a man with such terrible powers of memory, wouldn’t you expect an honest person to review ALL relevant documents carefully to assist his recall?]

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003194.php
[Paul Kiel] The [Waas] story deals with two separate letters that the Justice Department sent to Congress about the firings.

The first was a January 31 letter to Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AK) assuring him that "not once" had the administration considered using the Patriot Act provision to install Tim Griffin, Karl Rove's former aide, as the U.S. attorney for Little Rock. The provision allowed the attorney general to appoint interim U.S. attorneys indefinitely without Senate confirmation.

Of course, Kyle Sampson had been pushing to use the provision for months -- and had communicated the plan to the White House.

But when it came time to answer questions about it, the White House signed off on a letter saying that they had never contemplated such a thing. And the withheld documents show that Christopher Oprison was the White House official who signed off on the letter -- that's funny because Kyle Sampson had layed out the plan to use the Patriot Act provision to appoint Griffin in an email to Oprison just a month before.

The second letter in the piece is a February 23rd letter to Congress that claimed that Karl Rove hadn't had any role in appointing Griffin. Fittingly, Oprison also signed off on that one -- even though Sampson had written him in an email in December that Griffin's appointment was "important to Karl."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto tells Waas that "Chris did not recall Karl's interest when he reviewed the letter."

But Fratto also says that "We have no record of that letter ever leaving the White House counsel's office." In other words, they never bothered to ask Karl Rove or any one in his office to check whether the statement was true. And they just forgot that Sampson earlier had boasted about Rove's interest. Huh. . . .

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011281.php

A process of consultation

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/washington/10cnd-gonzales.html
Mr. Conyers said. . . the Bush administration’s resistance to Congressional inquiries into the matter inevitably raises the question: “Who created the list, and why?”

Mr. Conyers reiterated his question, whereupon Mr. Gonzales said that his former aide, D. Kyle Sampson, was involved in “consulting with the senior leadership in the department” and that eventually a “consensus recommendation” was reached.

“O.K.,” an exasperated Mr. Conyers said. “In other words, you don’t know.” . . .

[NB: See the trick again? Gonzales didn’t say that Sampson consulted ONLY with Senior DOJ officials]

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003197.php
[Paul Kiel] Under questioning by Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA), Gonzales cited Kyle Sampson's consultation of then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey in early of 2005 as proof that there had been a process of consulting career Justice Department officials on their views of U.S. attorneys. Of course, Comey testified last week that he had not known that there was any sort of effort to target U.S. attorneys for removal when he offered his views to Sampson (views that Sampson totally ignored).

Gonzales admitted as much: "There were people that were being consulted... they may not have known they were providing information that would then form the basis of some kind of list."

So there you have it: Comey was part of a collaborative review process that he didn't know he was a part of. . . . [read on]

More: http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/10/8999/

Here’s what was REALLY going on

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.php#014074
[McClatchy] Only weeks before last year's pivotal midterm elections, the White House urged the Justice Department to pursue voter-fraud allegations against Democrats in three battleground states, a high-ranking Justice official has told congressional investigators.

In two instances in October 2006, President Bush's political adviser, Karl Rove, or his deputies passed the allegations on to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' then-chief of staff, Kyle Sampson. . . . [read on]

Bush was involved in US Attorney discussions

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Gonzales_contradicts_White_House_on_Presidents_0510.html
Weeks after the White House ruled out the involvement of President George W. Bush in any discussions on the firing of 8 US Attorneys, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said on Thursday morning that the President had discussed the matter with advisers in an October 2006 meeting. . .

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/10/the-liars-club/
[Jane Hamsher] I actually have sympathy for Abu and his elaborate work of fiction. When you're lying all the time it gets damn hard to keep your stories straight.

Number 10

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.php#014064
[Josh Marshall] Gonzales on why White House Counsel Harriet Miers wanted Lewis prosecutor Debra Yang fired: Because she was sensitive to Yang's financial situation and that she wanted a more lucrative job. Said Gonzales: "Ms. Miers may have known about Ms. Yang's concern about being able to remain on the job due to financial reasons." . . . Needless to say it's always helpful to fire someone when they're looking for more profitable employment. . . .

Oh, really? http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2007/05/04/debra-wong-yang-the-us-attorney-mess/
[WSJ] Debra Wong Yang, the former U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, resigned last October to join Gibson Dunn. Was she pushed out?

Maybe, suggests the NYT’s Adam Cohen. . . Yang wasn’t one of the eight ousted U.S. Attorneys, but the Times says the timing of her resignation raises serious questions. First, Yang was leading the corruption investigation of Republican congressman Jerry Lewis. Second, the Times cites evidence that then-White House counsel Harriet Miers asked DOJ staffers whether Yang could be forced out.

Yang’s joining Gibson Dunn also raises questions, writes the Times. The firm, which was defending Lewis in Yang’s investigation, was hired to be co-leader of the Crisis Management Practice Group with Ted Olson, a leading conservative lawyer who served as solicitor general in the Bush administration. Three questions, writes Cohen:

* Did Yang expect to lose her job, so she left to avoid being fired?
* Did Gibson Dunn dangle a rich financial package before Yang to get her out and to disrupt the investigation of Lewis?
* Or was the time of her departure coincidental, leaving for the private sector at the same time the White House was asking about the possibility of firing her?

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/013166.php

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/4/13/113048/369

Another look at “loyal” US Attorneys who didn’t make the cut list, performance issues aside

http://www.villagevoice.com/nyclife/0715,barrett,76328,15.html

It’s good that the Republicans have learned their lessons about legislators pressuring the Justice Dept on specific investigations: James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) does it IN PUBLIC

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003190.php

Doh!

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/10/i-think-i-may-be-aware-of-that/
[Gonzales] I think I may be aware of that.

More, much more

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/10/so-what-should-they-be-asking/
[Christy Hardin Smith] If the Committee has evidence that phone calls were made to pressure former USAs and AUSAs from cooperating with the Committee, I suggest a referral be filed for obstruction charges against those persons doing the pressuring. Because that sounds to me an awful lot like an attempt to obstruct the committee's investigation.

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003196.php
[Paul Kiel] During questioning from House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-MI) about David Iglesias' firing, Alberto Gonzales volunteered that Iglesias was added to the list on "Election Day, November." . . . [read on]

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003195.php
[Paul Kiel] Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC) gets the medal for the best line of questioning of the day so far, pressing Gonzales on the reason for John McKay's firing. . .

Watt pressed Gonzales on whether McKay had been removed because he'd failed to indict Democrats on voter fraud charges. Gonzales said no, but seemed to leave the door open for that possibility . . .

Yes, I agree that if in fact there was pressure put on McKay to investigate a case, which didn’t warrant an investigation [that would be improper]. But obviously there may be some circumstances where investigation may have been warranted. We’d have to look at the circumstances of the particular case.

He added that there had been "a great deal of concern with his efforts with respect to voter fraud," that he had received letters "from a number of groups and outside parties."

McKay has said that he didn't pursue criminal charges in the probe arising from the 2004 Washington gubernatorial election because there was "no evidence."

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003192.php
[Paul Kiel] Last night, we reported that Todd Graves, formerly the U.S. attorney for Kansas City, was asked to resign. Graves says that he refused to sign a Justice Department lawsuit against the state of Missouri to purge its voter rolls of potentially invalid voter names. (The department eventually lost the case.)

That's been floated as one of the possible reasons for his dismissal, since Graves' replacement, Bradley Schlozman had pushed the lawsuit from atop the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. Schlozman, an anti-voter fraud enthusiast, subsequently replaced Graves as the U.S. attorney there -- and did all he could to hype the cause.

But during his testimony today, Gonzales pushed back, saying that, after speaking with the current head of the Civil Rights Division, they hadn't been aware of "any concerns" from Graves or anyone in his office about the voter roll purge case. Gonzales didn't say why Graves had been asked to step down, however.

Earlier in the hearing, Gonzales appeared to offer an explanation for why he's only made reference to eight fired prosecutors, when in reality there were at least nine who were fired. Gonzales explained that those eight were fired "as part of this process." Graves was a special case, apparently.

Is this damning, or what?

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/10/gonzales-habeas-2/
[Amanda] Under the Bush administration, U.S. citizens can be detained as enemy combatants and arrested without being charged of any crime.

At today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) asked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales whether any U.S. citizens are “being held today, for over a month, who have been denied habeas corpus or access to an attorney.” Instead of giving an answer, Gonzales replied, “[Y]ou’re asking me a question I hadn’t really thought about.”

Sherman then followed up and asked whether there any “U.S. citizens being held now by foreign governments or foreign organizations, without access to attorneys, as a result of rendition.” Gonzales again said, “It’s just — quite frankly, I hadn’t thought about this.”

More: http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/10/203543/539

This White House is concerned about privacy: but only its own

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10756.html

Making the Republicans squirm on immigration

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/immigration_/2007/05/for_it_before_they_were_against_it.php
[Mark Kleiman] Reid is simply going to move the bill that passed the Senate last year, with 23 Republican votes. And some of the key GOP players who voted for, and even co-sponsored it, last year, are threatening to vote against it, or even filibuster it, this year. That includes not only Senator Straight Talk (who speaks with forked tongue) but Mel Martinez, installed by Bush as RNC Chair specifically to keep from losing the Latino vote, along with Lindsay Graham and Arlen Specter.

Are they going to look silly filibustering against something they sponsored last year, or what? . . .

More: http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/5/10/233855/905

Rudy Giuliani and “hillbilly heroin”

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/rudy_giuliani_/2007/05/rudy_giuliani_and_the_corporate_drug_pushers.php

Rush Limbaugh’s drug of choice: http://opioids.com/oxycodone/rushlimbaugh.html

http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1146487050585

Bonus item: Digby on the clannish insularity of the DC elite

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/who-do-they-think-they-are-by-digby-in.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:39 AM

 
SLIPPING AWAY

Boy, that September deadline didn’t last long, did it?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_05_06_archive.html#400730378446039630
[WP] U.S. commanders in Iraq are increasingly convinced that heightened troop levels, announced by President Bush in January, will need to last into the spring of 2008. The military has said it would assess in September how well its counterinsurgency strategy, intended to pacify Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, is working.

"The surge needs to go through the beginning of next year for sure," said Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the day-to-day commander for U.S. military operations in Iraq. . . .

Here’s a story you didn’t see on the evening news

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/09/iraqis-call-for-timetable/
AlterNet reports a significant development that has yet to be noted in the U.S. media — a majority of Iraqi parliament members have signed a petition calling for a U.S. withdrawal. . .

Bush thinks he’s still in control of events

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/09/AR2007050900797.html
President Bush would veto the new Iraq spending bill being developed by House Democrats because it includes unacceptable language restricting funding, White House press secretary Tony Snow said Wednesday morning. . .

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/9/112641/4211

http://www.americablog.com/2007/05/bush-threatening-yet-another-veto-he.html

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/9/12114/74873

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/09/8969/

Reality check

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/washington/10cong.html
Moderate Republicans gave President Bush a blunt warning on his Iraq policy at a private White House meeting this week, telling the president that conditions needed to improve markedly by fall or more Republicans would desert him on the war. . . .

Participants in the Tuesday meeting between Mr. Bush, senior administration officials and 11 members of a moderate bloc of House Republicans said the lawmakers were unusually candid with the president, telling him that public support for the war was crumbling in their swing districts.

One told Mr. Bush that voters back home favored a withdrawal even if it meant the war was judged a loss. Representative Tom Davis told Mr. Bush that the president’s approval rating was at 5 percent in one section of his northern Virginia district.

“It was a tough meeting in terms of people being as frank as they possibly could about their districts and their feelings about where the American people are on the war,” said Representative Ray LaHood of Illinois . . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/09/AR2007050902461.html
"It was a very remarkable, candid conversation," Davis said. "People are always saying President Bush is in a bubble. Well, this was our chance, and we took it." . . .

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/09/iraq-meeting/
One member of Congress called the discussion the “most unvarnished conversation they’ve ever had with the president,” and NBC’s Tim Russert said it “may have been a defining pivotal moment” in the Iraq debate. Russert described the conversation:

[O]ne said “My district is prepared for defeat. We need candor, we need honesty, Mr. President.” The president responded, “I don’t want to pass this off to another president. I don’t want to pass this off, particularly, to a Democratic president,” underscoring he understood how serious the situation was.

Brian, the Republican congressman then went on to say, “The word about the war and its progress cannot come from the White House or even you, Mr. President. There is no longer any credibility. It has to come from Gen. Petraeus.” . . .

[NB: I don't know how much credibility Gen Petraeus has either -- isn't it inevitable that he will say "there are signs of progress" (there are ALWAYS some signs of progress), and the surge needs more time?]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/09/AR2007050902145.html
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) condemned the Iraqi government for its failure to resolve security and political problems more expeditiously and predicted that, unless the current troop surge succeeds, U.S. policy will be changed by year's end either by President Bush or congressional action. . . .

"The Iraqi government hasn't done anything it said it would," McConnell said . . .

A huge challenge for Nancy Pelosi

http://electioncentral.tpmcafe.com/blog/electioncentral/2007/may/09/house_liberals_entertain_new_scheme_deauthorize_the_war
[Greg Sargent] Apparently some liberal members are batting around an idea which, while definitely a long shot, is interesting: To try to persuade the House Dem leadership to allow a House vote soon on whether to deauthorize the war, in a similar manner to the approach now favored by Hillary. . . .

http://www.americablog.com/2007/05/breaking-conservative-dems-expected-to.html
[John Aravosis] I just heard from an impeccable source that there is serious concern on the Hill that conservative Democrats in the House will vote with the Republicans to strip any and all restrictions from the Iraq supplemental [Thursday], effectively giving Bush all the money he wants with no restrictions and no effort to hold either him or the Iraq government accountable for anything. I.e., they will vote to continue this war along the same disastrous course because they're too afraid to challenge George Bush and his failed leadership.

Dick Cheney: has anyone with so much power been so spectacularly, repeatedly wrong without ever paying a price for it?

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/09/cheneys-last-visit-to-iraq-weve-turned-the-corner/
[December 2005] [A] Marine corporal told Cheney during a Q&A session: “From our perspective, we don’t see much as far as gains. I was wondering what it looks like from the big side of the mountain — how Iraq’s looking.”

“‘Well, Iraq’s looking good,’ Cheney responded. ‘It’s hard sometimes, if you look at just the news, to have the good stories burn through. Part of it is that what we’re doing here, obviously, takes time. From our perspective, looking back, as I say, to a year and a half ago, I think it’s remarkable progress. I think we’ve turned the corner, if you will. I think when we look back from 10 years hence, we’ll see that the year ‘05 was in fact a watershed year here in Iraq.‘

“Cheney…also discussed the possibility of American forces eventually withdrawing ‘to a few locations’ in Iraq, which would ‘reduce the total number of personnel we need here.’

“‘I think you will see changes in our deployment patterns probably within this next year,’ he said.”

Cheney returns to Iraq

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/05/09/BL2007050901236.html
[Dan Froomkin] U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker told reporters that one of Cheney's main goals was to pressure Iraqi leaders not to go on vacation for two months in the middle of what is shaping up to be a highly decisive summer.

Cheney is likely to be able to claim success on this front -- if no other. That's because signs are that his goal has already been accomplished

Michael Gordon writes in today's New York Times that Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie, who was in Washington yesterday lobbying American lawmakers, has already . . . "asserted that the Iraqi Parliament would abbreviate its traditional two-month summer vacation and take perhaps no more than a week off." . . .

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10746.html
[MSNBC] Cheney’s message with Iraqi leaders, according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters, was to be: “We’ve all got challenges together. We’ve got to pull together. We’ve got to get this work done. It’s game time.”

[Steve Benen] Well, that’s certainly good to know. After more than four years of sacrificing blood and treasure, our powerful VP wants Iraqis to know that now it’s game time. As if “the last four years have just been a scrimmage.”

http://www.first-draft.com/2007/05/the_training_wh.html
[May 19, 2004] President Bush sought to rally Republican lawmakers around his Iraq plan Thursday, saying Iraqis are ready to "take the training wheels off" by assuming some political power. . . .

"This has been a rough couple of months for the president, particularly on the issues of Iraq, and I think he was here to remind folks that we do have a policy and this policy is going to be tough," said Sen. Rick Santorum. "Things, as I think he commented, are very likely to get worse before they get better." . . .

"He talked about 'time to take the training wheels off,'" said Rep. Deborah Pryce. "The Iraqi people have been in training, and now it's time for them to take the bike and go forward."

Inside the Green Zone

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.php#014052
[AP] A sharp increase in mortar attacks on the Green Zone — the one-time oasis of security in Iraq's turbulent capital — has prompted the U.S. Embassy to issue a strict new order telling all employees to wear flak vests and helmets while in unprotected buildings or whenever they are outside. . . .

Listening to the commanders on the ground

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/9/10557/78720
In a stunning, new half-million dollar ad series from VoteVets.org being launched today, three retired Generals, two of whom were commanders in Iraq, directly take on the notion that the President listens to commanders on the ground in Iraq . . .

More: http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10748.html

On the heels of Tenet’s book, the Senate Intelligence Committee prepares to release a report on the manipulation of prewar intelligence

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/blogs/news_blog/070508/latest_prewar_iraq_intelligenc.htm

A new book out on US secret rendition and torture

http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/05/hbc-90000032
An interview with Tara McKelvey, Monstering: Inside America’s Policy of Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War

Restoring habeas corpus

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/05/09/habeas_corpus/index.html
[Glenn Greenwald] The Military Commissions Act of 2006 is, without question, the single worst law enacted during the Bush presidency, and is one of the most destructive laws passed in the last several decades. It is not merely a bad law. It vests in the President the power to detain people indefinitely with no meaningful opportunity to contest the government's accusations. That is the very power the Founders sought first and foremost to prohibit. . . . [read on]

More: http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/5/9/16315/54093

You betcha

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003182.php
[Seattle Times] "I think there will be a criminal case that will come out of this," McKay said during his meeting with Times journalists. "This is going to get worse, not better."...

McKay said he believes obstruction-of-justice charges will be filed if investigators conclude that the dismissal of any of the eight prosecutors was motivated by an attempt to influence ongoing public-corruption or voter-fraud investigations....

Additionally, McKay and Iglesias said they believe Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty lied under oath when they testified before Congress that the eight prosecutors were fired for performance-related reasons and because of policy disputes with Justice Department headquarters. . . .

The real Alberto Gonzales

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/9/174123/8505
[Seattle Times] [John] McKay said he began to have concerns about politics entering the Justice Department in early 2005, when Gonzales addressed all of the country's U.S. attorneys in Scottsdale, Ariz., shortly after he took over as attorney general.

"His first speech to us was a 'you work for the White House' speech," McKay recalled. " 'I work for the White House, you work for the White House.' "

McKay said he thought at the time, "He couldn't have meant that speech," given the traditional independence of U.S. Attorneys. "It turns out he did."

He looked around the meeting room and caught the eyes of his colleagues, who gave him looks of surprise at Gonzales' remarks. "We were stunned at what he was saying."

[McJoan] If Gonzales understood anything about being Attorney General, it was that he had to keep at least the appearance of independence from the White House. And it was all about that appearance in his opening statement at his confirmation hearing:

“With the consent of the Senate, I will no longer represent only the White House; I will represent the United States of America and its people.

I understand the differences between the two roles. . . .

And I feel a special obligation, maybe an additional burden coming from the White House to reassure the career people at the department, and to reassure the American people that that I'm not going to politicize the Department of Justice.”

The kind of man he is

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/014040.php
Gonzales 3.0: Blame it on Kyle Sampson . . .

More: http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003179.php

Hmmm. . . and who gave Kyle Sampson such authority?

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003181.php
Well, here it is, so you can read it yourself, the secret order signed by Alberto Gonzales in March of last year that gave Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling, two young aides with close ties to the White House, the power to hire and fire junior political appointees at the Justice Department . . .

More: http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003126.php

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/05/because-we-trust-kyle-and-monica-more.html
[Marty Lederman] Three weeks later, however, in a decidely non-public move, the AG re-delegated the responsibility -- not, this time, to the Number Two and Three officials in the department, but instead to the youth brigade. And, according to Waas, the purpose for this change in delegation was to ensure that the White House had much greater -- and more unilateral and less transparent -- decisionmaking with respect to DOJ employment decisions. . . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011274.php
[Kevin Drum] Since the White House clearly has the legal authority to be as involved as it wants to be in the hiring and firing of U.S. Attorneys, there's only one reason to try to cover it up: because something about that involvement was improper.

Let’s prove him wrong, shall we?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/washington/10gonzales.html
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales appears increasingly confident that he will survive the crisis over the dismissal of federal prosecutors, as White House aides who view him as a liability see little point in trying to persuade President Bush to push him out, administration officials and Republican allies said.

Though Mr. Gonzales is considered in Congress and in legal circles as an isolated and diminished figure, he has told aides he believes he has weathered the storm. He is expected to testify on Thursday . . .

The one question Gonzales will have to answer

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.php#014054
[GB] In your senate testimony you said you were sure that none of the attorneys were fired for improper reasons. Given your admitted lack of close scrutiny of the process for selecting which attorneys would be fired, why are you sure of this?

More: http://balkin.blogspot.com/2007/05/most-important-question-for-tomorrows.html

Number 9

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.php#014047
[Todd P. Graves, Missouri, forced to resign to make room for Bradley Schlozman]

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003180.php
Graves himself hasn’t said definitively whether he got the ax, but, in a statement released last night, he did say it was better to leave his post and “take a graceful exit than to do something that you should be ashamed of.” . . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.php#014042
[Josh Marshall] But here's one nugget that's really got me interested. By his own account, Sen. Kit Bond (R-MO) has known Graves was fired since March 2006. Meanwhile the Senate Judiciary Committee has been investigating the firings story for three months.

Graves's ouster is highly relevant to that investigation. Did Bond not share this information with the Committee? If not, why not? Did committee investigators know conclusively, as Bond did, that Graves was fired. And have they spoken to him since the news broke last night?

More: http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003183.php

The national press takes notice

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/09/AR2007050902718.html
The former U.S. attorney in Kansas City, Mo., Todd P. Graves, said yesterday that he was asked to step down from his job by a senior Justice Department official in January 2006, months before eight other federal prosecutors would be fired by the Bush administration. . . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/opinion/10thu1.html
As the United States attorney scandal grows, so does the number of prosecutors who seem to have been pushed out for partisan political reasons. . . .

Tom DeLay aide has cut a deal and is cooperating with prosecutors. You’re not out of the woods yet, Bugman

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.php#014039

An interesting political choice by Rudy Giuliani

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/10/us/politics/10giuliani.html
After months of conflicting signals on abortion, Rudolph W. Giuliani is planning to offer a forthright affirmation of his support for abortion rights in public forums, television appearances and interviews in the coming days, despite the potential for bad consequences among some conservative voters already wary of his views, aides said yesterday.

[NB: And he believes in evolution! And he doesn’t hate gays! Is this a suicide mission? I think he has concluded, rightly, that he’ll never have hard-core conservative support anyway, so he might as well pitch his case to Republican moderates and independent cross-over voters. Let the others run over each other in a race to the most far right position]

Cronyism and corruption in the Dept of Education (why should it be any different?)

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Reading-Conflicts.html
Officials who gave states advice on which teaching materials to buy under a federal reading program had deep financial ties to publishers, according to a congressional report Wednesday.

The report, compiled by Senate Education Committee Chairman Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., details how officials contracted by the government to help run the program were at the same time drawing pay from publishers that benefited from the reading initiative.

Kennedy's report added new detail to a conflict-of-interest investigation by the Education Department's inspector general, John Higgens, who earlier had found that the Reading First Program favored some programs over others and that federal officials and contractors didn't guard against conflicts. . . .

Bonus item: Another edition of “putting Bush on the couch” (thanks to David S. for the link)

http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/opinion/article2502215.ece
[Walter Ellis] The meltdown of the Administration of President George W Bush has reached such an embarrassing pace that people have begun to avert their eyes.

Few any longer believe a word the President says. It is assumed that he is living in a world of his own. At the same time, Bush has stopped listening to anybody except the voices in his head. . . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:14 AM

 
COME SEPTEMBER

Everyone is saying now that September will be the month when a decision is made about whether the surge is working, whether the Iraqi govt has achieved stability and legitimacy, etc. Or is this just kicking the can down the road one more time?

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003169.php
[Paul Kiel] Put a big, red circle around September on your calendar, reports The Washington Post, because that's President Bush's deadline to show substantial progress in Iraq.

Now, you've heard this before -- possibly as many as half a dozen times, depending on which pundit you trust to set crucial deadlines for the Iraq War. But, the Post wants you to know, the stars really are in alignment this time around . . .

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2007/05/08/BL2007050800898.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/9/03710/78139
[Meteor Blades] Forget what you previously heard that timetables undermine the troops, give a terrible advantage to the insurgents, and amount to a craven surrender in the Global War on Terror™. Those are Democratic timetables. What we have here are Republican timetables, which are patriotic, strategic and a wise conservation of U.S. military resources. This isn't "cut and run," no sirree. This is letting the Iraqis work things out for themselves. . . . [read on]

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011269.php
[Kevin Drum] I know, I know: counting on moderate Republicans to come to their senses is a sucker's bet. But there are a lot of things coming to a head this time: the initial progress report on the surge that's due in September, the looming 2008 elections, hardening public support against the war, and the likelihood that Iraqi politics will be as stalemated as ever when September rolls around. Wayne Gilchrest's "30 to 60" House Republicans who opposed the surge may have gotten bullied into voting against the timelines in last month's supplemental funding bill (see Dave Weigel's interview with Gilchrest over at Reason for more), but the pressure on them to face reality is going to keep increasing. They can't hold out forever.

But it would still be nice to pin them down on their positions ahead of time. . . .

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_05_06_archive.html#6186997357422128238
[Atrios] The WaPo is crystallizing September as the supposed Iraq drop dead date for Bush. But it won't be. A few more Republicans will be peeled off, but that's it. The major Republican presidential candidates will still be telling people that if we leave Iraq the terra ists will be hanging out at their local Applebees. Bush is going to cling to his pet war until the end. Movement conservatives will set up yet another stupid web site about victory. Bill Kristol and the rest of the conservative pundits will still be on board.

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/8/10297/07710
[Kagro X] Prediction: In September, the "debate" will be, "Do the long-term trends show enough progress to 'stay the course,' or even call for yet more troops to really 'nail it down' in Iraq?

Democrats: No!
Republicans: Yes! . . . [read on]

Here is a much better indicator of their intentions, I think

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/8/13257/84454
[Miss Laura] The Pentagon is telling 35,000 soldiers to prepare to deploy this fall. But, a Pentagon spokesman assures us, it means nothing . . . [read on]

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.php#014036
[Daniel Politi] The Pentagon was quick to emphasize yesterday's announcement doesn't mean a decision has been made on how long the "surge" will last. Commanders, once again, warned that violence is likely to increase in the coming months. So far the military has refused to release statistics on attack trends but one U.S. official said that, as a whole, "the number of attacks has stayed relatively constant." Although all the other papers mention the Pentagon announced that the 35,000 soldiers could be deployed to Iraq, the Post seems more certain and says the Pentagon announced the soldiers "will begin deploying to Iraq in August as replacements."

More: http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/5/9/261/15531

Here is an even better indicator of their intentions

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/08/rice-charlie-rose/
In an interview last night on the Charlie Rose Show, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pointedly said, “[O]ur friends in the [Middle East] need to know and the Iraqis need to know that we are not looking to leave Iraq.” “Ever?” Rose asked. Rice responded, “We are not going to leave an Iraq that is not capable of defending itself and with a foundation for future reconciliation.”

Rose then asked Rice if she believed she’ll have the support of the American people to continue the war. Rice claimed the American people are looking for “progress.” Rose replied, “But nobody can answer the question: If it doesn’t happen, what?” Avoiding discussion of a Plan B, Rice answered, “Charlie, because as the President said to you, we’re focused on having it happen.”

The people have spoken

http://cnnpoll.notlong.com
[Greg Sargent] Fifty four percent of Americans oppose President Bush's veto of Congress' Iraq withdrawal bill, and a solid majority wants Congress to send Bush another Iraq bill containing withdrawal timetables, according to a new CNN poll that has some really, really interesting numbers. . .

Why are the Dems reluctant to pass a short-term funding bill for the war, with a requirement that Bush report back to them about progress before giving him any more money?

http://shortterm.notlong.com

“The short leash” http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/5/8/184540/0544

http://www.americablog.com/2007/05/iraq-funding-plan-coming-together-in.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/8/20327/06879

Well, they told us things would get worse before they get better, so this is GOOD news, right?

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10740.html
[Steve Benen] Is it possible that there have been 27 U.S. military fatalities just in the first week of May? That seems heartbreakingly high, but it’s true.

[NB: When do we get to the “better” part?]

The flypaper theory returns

http://thinkprogress.org/2007/05/08/morris-iraq/
President Bush has repeatedly argued that the United States needs to “eliminate terrorist threats abroad, so we do not have to face them here at home.”

Last night on Hannity and Colmes, right-wing pundit Dick Morris also claimed that we need to keep U.S. troops in Iraq so that terrorists don’t come to the United States. But he argued that we need to put “Americans right within their [terrorists’] arms’ reach” so that they have the opportunity to “kill Americans” there. He added that therefore, “they don’t have to come to Wall Street to kill Americans. They don’t have to knock down the Trade Center. They can do it around the corner, and convenience is a big factor when you’re a terrorist.” . . . [read on]

More: http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=15304

Who we’re really fighting in Iraq (hint: it ISN’T Al Qaeda). Thanks to John W. for the link

http://www.juancole.com/2007/05/note-to-bush-and-edwards-on-how-there.html

Meanwhile: http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/070506/14alqaeda.htm
[O]ver the past year, U.S. intelligence agencies have completely revised their assessment of al Qaeda and reached an alarming conclusion: Bin Laden already has a safe haven-in Pakistan-and may be stronger than ever. . .

Convenient timing? The Fort Dix plot (no, it has nothing to do with Al Qaeda either)

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10735.html

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/014021.php

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/08/late-nite-fdl-outrage-in-a-can/

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/9/23721/29450

http://www.juancole.com/2007/05/ft.html

http://www.slate.com/id/2165899/fr/rss/

Here’s a name you’ve never heard. Why not?

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/08/would-you-hire-mr-rendition/
[Siun] On Wednesday at 2:30, the Senate Foreign Relations committee will consider the nomination for the new head of the State Department Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism . . . Dell L Dailey, currently the Director of the Center for Special Operations - the command responsible for "global operations and actionable intelligence" related to "high value targets."

Lt General Dailey was also the man in charge of Special Ops for the war in Afghanistan.

So Dailey, who has effectively been running the administration's Black Ops - including the program of extraordinary renditions - is now in line to take over the role at the State Department of overseeing and "improving" counterterrorism.

Dailey is also mentioned by Rumsfeld in an interview with Bob Woodward as "one or two of his key people" with whom "This President spent, you know, just enormous numbers of hours." deciding to invade Iraq.

Let's look a bit closer at Dailey . . .

Rats, sinking ship

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/3828401e-fd89-11db-8d62-000b5df10621.html
The Bush administration is facing growing difficulties in filling a rising number of high-level vacancies following a recent spate of senior departures.

In the last 10 days alone Mr Bush has lost four senior officials and more resignations are expected to follow. “I wouldn’t describe this as disintegration,” said one senior official. “But there are worrying large gaps opening up and it is very hard to recruit high-quality people from outside.” . . .

Will the Dems reinstate “habeas corpus” in the next Defense bill? You can help make it happen

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/8/223144/0333

Lesson One for Democratic governors: don’t be so unlucky as to have a natural disaster hit your state. The Bush people will screw you over, then blame YOU for it. Hmmm. . . . where ARE all those National Guard troops when you need them?

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/8/135246/8957

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10738.html

Tony Snow lies: http://www.first-draft.com/2007/05/snow_sebelius_a.html

http://www.first-draft.com/2007/05/today_on_holden_5.html

Alberto Gonzales returns for more testimony tomorrow. Here’s what awaits him

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.php#014035
[Josh Marshall] Since Alberto Gonzales is now among the political undead -- not alive, but unvanquishable in his own liminal existence -- I guess it can't be called a death of a thousand cuts. But there's still something almost lyrical in the campaign of leaks congressional investigators are putting in his path. . . .

Time now reports that Kyle Sampson told congressional investigators "three times in as many minutes that Gonzales was angry with McNulty because he had exposed the White House's involvement in the firings had put it's role "in the public sphere," as Sampson phrased it . . . .

ANOTHER fired US Attorney – and the reasons look just like all the other ones

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.php#014036

Expect to see Bradley Schlozman testifying in front of Congress on May 15

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003176.php
As laid out in a letter by Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) and ranking member Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) yesterday, the committee wants to question Schlozman about his efforts to push allegations of voter fraud while a political appointee overseeing the Civil Rights Division and later as a U.S. attorney in Kansas City. . . .

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.php#014029

http://www.correntewire.com/mcclatchy_reporting_bush_uses_criminal_justice_system_to_affect_election_outcomes

Paul Wolfowitz – this is hardly news – has no shame

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.php#014034

Today’s must-read from Glenn Greenwald: the Right and the rule of law

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/05/08/neocons/index.html

This is the THIRD time a phony, right blogosphere-driven “scandal” about Nancy Pelosi has been seized upon and given credibility by the AP – when will they learn?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/05/pelosi.php

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/8/18440/63368

http://mediamatters.org/items/200705080007

http://mediamatters.org/items/200705080014

CNN is getting what it deserves for giving a prime time slot to that hate-filled gasbag Glenn Beck

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2007_05_06_archive.html#8280025287239435345

http://www.americablog.com/2007/05/cnn-hate-host-glenn-beck-sees-ratings.html

Bonus item: George Bush vs. Harry Truman, steel-cage death match. Two men enter, one man leaves . . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/8/75236/36841

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:30 AM

 
BROKEN BEYOND REPAIR

And worse to come. . .

http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2007/04/its-working.html
[Robert Farley] Iraq Coalition Casualty Monitor has helpfully updated their recording system to take account of the Surge. US casualties since the beginning of the Surge are running at 3.14/day, which is the highest of any period since the end of major combat. . . .

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/4017
[LAT] A U.S. Army general on Sunday warned that American casualties would rise in the coming months. . .

Great, just great

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/05/07/iraq.sunnithreat/index.html
Iraq's top Sunni official has set a deadline of next week for pulling his entire bloc out of the government -- a potentially devastating blow to reconciliation efforts within Iraq . . .

More: http://www.juancole.com/2007/05/sunnis-threaten-to-pull-out-of-al.html

Protecting our troops

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2007-05-06-humvee-doors_N.htm
The Army is fixing the doors of every armored Humvee in combat in Iraq because they can jam shut during an attack and trap soldiers inside. . .

Another unexpected benefit of the Iraq war

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2007/05/07/spread_of_disease_tied_to_us_combat_deployments/
A parasitic disease rarely seen in United States but common in the Middle East has infected an estimated 2,500 US troops in the last four years because of massive deployments to remote combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan . . .

A Democratic compromise on an Iraq war funding bill with real teeth seems further off today

http://obeybill.notlong.com
[Greg Sargent] A House-backed plan to send President Bush a supplemental spending bill to fund the war only through July is not likely to get through the Senate, an aide to Senate Majority Leader Reid said today. . . .

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/7/17938/16679
[Greg Sargent] Just heard back from Reid spokesman Manley. It seems that the Senate hasn't ruled out this approach in general; just this specific one floated by Obey. Manley: "This is one of a number of options. There hasn’t been a decision on how to proceed"

The lies that took us to war (and Tenet’s whining, finger-pointing refusal to accept his role in them) – don’t miss it

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.php#014004
[Bush] “The terrorist threat to America and the world will be diminished the moment that Saddam Hussein is disarmed”

Watch Baghdad Tony explain how public opinion HASN’T turned against this war

http://www.first-draft.com/2007/05/today_on_holden_4.html
MR. SNOW: I think, as Americans -- you know, what's interesting is that, for instance, you take a look at some of the debate over the weekend, and you've got -- there seems to be a mind-set sometimes . . . [read on]

“He’s worse than Herbert Hoover”

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/7/14503/28176

Immunity for Monica 2.0, and hence testimony under oath, coming soon

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/07/AR2007050700751.html
Committee lawyers must now send an immunity request to a federal judge for approval. Once that deal is approved, Goodling would face a contempt order if she refused to testify. Her lawyer, John M. Dowd, said Monday she would testify under such a deal.

"She'll be honest and clear and she'll work very hard to answer all questions," Dowd said.

[NB: Oh-oh]

More: http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003164.php

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2007/05/07/goodling/index.html
[Alex Koppelman] A committee staffer tells Salon that Goodling's testimony may come as early as before Memorial Day.

The Dept of Justice Civil Rights division seems to have violated its own standards for hiring practices

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003160.php
[Paul Kiel] As Richard Ugelow, the former deputy section chief of the employment section in the Civil Rights Division puts it, "We would sue employers for having numbers like that." Ugelow, you might have guessed, is one of the dozens of career lawyers who have left the division in the past six years. . .

More on Schlozman: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_05/011259.php

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003167.php

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003168.php

More on the politicization of DOJ hiring policies

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/07/AR2007050701825.html

You couldn’t make it up . . .

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003166.php
[National Journal] Psst! Sources tell us that none other than Monica Goodling, former aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, was responsible for draping over the ample bosoms of the Art Deco statues in the Justice Department's Great Hall during the reign of the prim John Ashcroft. . . .

The cover-up continues

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/7/19736/89375

Wolfie could have saved himself a lot of trouble by just stepping aside quietly – didn’t he see he was starting a fight he couldn’t win? (Oh, sorry, that’s not his strong suit, is it?)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/07/business/07cnd-wolf.html
A committee of World Bank directors has formally notified Paul D. Wolfowitz that they found him to be guilty of a conflict of interest in arranging for a pay raise and promotion for Shaha Ali Riza, his companion, in 2005. . . .

The report, as transmitted to Mr. Wolfowitz, did not recommend a punishment for Mr. Wolfowitz. Bank officials, speaking anonymously because the proceedings are supposed to be confidential, said that the special committee was still working today on what to recommend.

It was not clear whether the committee, consisting of 7 of the bank’s 24 board members, would remove Mr. Wolfowitz from his post or, more likely, express a loss of confidence in his leadership in a manner that might persuade him to resign. Bank officials say that a majority of the bank board has concluded that he should go.

In another sign of Mr. Wolfowitz’s difficulties, his top communications aide, Kevin Kellems, resigned today, saying that “the current environment surrounding the leadership” at the bank made it “very difficult to be effective in helping to advance the mission of the institution.” . . .

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/2007/05/post_3627.html

Meanwhile: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/23b067b2-fcc9-11db-9971-000b5df10621.html
Paul Wolfowitz’s closest aide was involved in crafting an apparently misleading public statement on the Shaha Riza secondment for dissemination by World Bank spokespeople on an anonymous basis, the Financial Times has found.

The disclosure regarding Robin Cleveland came as the panel investigating Mr Wolfowitz’s role in awarding pay and promotion benefits to Ms Riza, his girlfriend, sent a copy of its findings to the bank president, and a second top aide, Kevin Kellems, resigned from the bank . . .

A deal in the works?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/washington/08wolfowitz.html
Leading governments of Europe, mounting a new campaign to push Paul D. Wolfowitz from his job as World Bank president, signaled Monday that they were willing to let the United States choose the bank’s next chief, but only if Mr. Wolfowitz stepped down soon, European officials said.

European officials had previously indicated that they wanted to end the tradition of the United States picking the World Bank leader. But now the officials are hoping to enlist American help in persuading Mr. Wolfowitz to resign voluntarily . . .

Romney: in trouble

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.php#014019

Giuliani: in trouble

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2007/05/07/giuliani_gave_to_planned_parenthood.html

McCain: in trouble

http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/5/8/14916/68784

Enjoying the Republican campaign for President? First, we had McCain and Giuliani, but they didn’t pass the litmus tests. Then Romney. Nope. Huckabee? Nope. Tommy Thompson? Huh? Duncan Hunter? WHAT? Tom Tancredo? Ha, ha. What happens when the next savior, Fred Thompson, is revealed to have feet of clay too? Up next: Newt Gingrich? (Don’t make me laugh.)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/07/AR2007050701225.html

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/7/121157/1450

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/06/AR2007050600914.html
[Bob Novak] "Will he announce?" asked the Lincoln Club of Orange County's publication in preparation for Fred Thompson's appearance at the organization's 45th annual dinner here Friday night. . . . In fact, he did not even hint at this prospect during a performance that was a letdown for the packed audience of conservative Republicans.

"It was not Reaganesque." "No red meat." "Too low key." That was the preponderant reaction I heard to Thompson's half-hour presentation (leavened by a few favorable comments, mostly by women, that he was more "statesmanlike" and "presidential" than the announced candidates). Lincoln Club members, like many conservative Republicans, have been unimpressed by the existing field of Republican hopefuls and envisioned Thompson as the second coming of Ronald Reagan. They did not get it Friday night. . . .

More: http://hotlineblog.nationaljournal.com/archives/2007/05/thompson_warns.html

The GOP, party of corruption and lies

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/07/the-rules-need-not-apply/

When will “serious” press analysts stop pretending that Fox News is a credible news organization?

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/05/07/olbermann_hume/index.html

Blogs, diversity, and politics: a symposium

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/07/zombies/

http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/7/103851/1816

http://www.mydd.com/story/2007/5/7/173615/3450

http://mydd.com/story/2007/5/7/121729/1823

Bonus item: Interesting chart -- Presidential approval ratings, since Truman

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/gwb_the_beloved_leader_/2007/05/comparative_presidential_job_ratings.php
[Mark Kleiman] Bill Clinton is the only President to finish with a higher rating than he started with. . . . Clinton also had the highest final rating, followed by Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Reagan. . . . [read on]

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:35 AM

 
AFTER THE DAMAGE IS DONE

When is a timetable not a timetable? When it’s from a Republican, of course

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/washington/07congcnd.html
The House Republican leader, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, warned today that unless progress is evident in Iraq by early fall, many Republican lawmakers would begin losing patience. . .

Mr. Boehner added, “By the time we get to September or October, members are going to want to know how well this is working . . .”

http://www.americablog.com/2007/05/rahm-responds-to-new-gop-timetable-for.html
[Rahm Emanuel, D-IL] "It's clear Congressman Boehner's new timetable for Iraq has less to do with the troops coming home, and has everything to do with his fear that House Republicans will be sent home."

More: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/6/204133/3506

(Still) Looking for Mr. War Czar

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/W/WAR_CZAR?SITE=VOICESD&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
So far, there have been no takers for the job.

"It's the nuttiest idea ever," said James Carafano, a defense expert at Heritage Foundation.

He said a war coordinator at the White House would be outside the regular chain of command. "It confuses lines of authority. It's like adding a fifth wheel on a car."

Trying to integrate government operations inside the White House is a prescription for disaster, he added.

"You're too far from the battlefield. You're in the wrong time zone. You can't make timely decisions. You don't have the staff," he said. "The administration will be over before they even have the communications and everything in place to do this."

For all the back-and-forth over who’s to blame for the failure to react to pre-9/11 warnings, there’s really only one person to blame

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2007/05/better-things-to-do-by-digby-i-have.html

The Niger uranium forgery – I know it sounds like an obscure footnote to the run-up to the Iraq War, but it really isn’t

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/4016
[Larisa Alexandrovna] [T]he NSC on order of the VP created an illegal channel of intelligence in the DOD in order to fabricate evidence to lead us into an illegal war . . .

Bradley Scholzman, foisted upon Missouri as a US Attorney, without Senate confirmation, filed indictments for voter fraud five days before the 2006 election. Doing so was a transparent effort to influence the outcome – and was in strict violation of DOJ policy. But it’s all okay because . . .

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003159.php
[Paul Kiel] We knew that when Schlozman was second in command of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division ('03-'06), he made a practice of hiring strong conservatives. As I reported a couple of weeks ago, a former attorney in the division says that Schlozman asked him whether a potential applicant was a Republican before considering interviewing him. . . .

And of course no piece on Schlozman would be complete without a mention of his precious ACORN indictments when he was the U.S. Attorney for Kansas City. Schlozman, you'll remember, rushed the indictments of four ACORN voter registration workers to land five days before the 2006 election.

The Justice Department is still desperately trying to portray the indictments as uncontroversial. As I reported Friday, the Justice Department's election crimes manual is crystal clear: "most, if not all, investigation of an alleged election crime must await the end of the election to which the allegation relates." And that's investigations -- an indictment, obviously, would be an even greater departure from policy.

But here's what the Justice Department told Savage:

The department said Schlozman's office got permission from headquarters for the election-eve indictments. It added that the department interprets the policy as having an unwritten exception for voter registration fraud, because investigators need not interview voters for such cases.

An "unwritten exception." How nice.

More: http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2007/05/06/missouri_attorney_a_focus_in_firings/

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_05_06.php#014000
[McClatchy] Congressional investigators are beginning to focus on accusations that a top civil rights official at the Justice Department illegally hired lawyers based on their political affiliations, especially for sensitive voting rights jobs.

Two former department lawyers told McClatchy Newspapers that Bradley Schlozman, a senior civil rights official, told them in early 2005, after spotting mention of their Republican affiliations on their job applications, to delete those references and resubmit their resumes. Both attorneys were hired.

One of them, Ty Clevenger, said: "He wanted to make it look like it was apolitical." . . .

Tim Griffin, the Karl Rove protégé foisted upon Arkansas as their new US Attorney, without Senate confirmation, is – under – investigation?!??!

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/4/221338/5335

[NB: Grain of salt time – this story is currently only based on this one report]

Health insurance for everyone?

http://www.slate.com/id/2165718/?nav=fix
[Daniel Politi] The LAT fronts news that a coalition of 36 companies, which includes some of the country's largest corporations, is planning to begin a new lobbying campaign that will call for medical insurance to be expanded to everyone. Under their plan, everyone would be required to have health insurance, which would be subsidized for those with low incomes. The new campaign is likely to aid efforts in states such as California, where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has called for an overhaul in healthcare laws. Accompanying the story, the LAT has a helpful rundown of the different proposals.

The arrogant, cliquish snobs of the DC permanent class still are sniffing their noses at Barack Obama (thanks to Buzzflash for the link)

http://www.correntewire.com/wapos_sally_quinn_calls_barack_obama_boy
[Sally Quinn] We don’t know who he is. Who are his people? Whom does he surround himself with? Whom does he listen to? Who gives him advice? . . . The more we see him in action, he’s still just campaigning. He still has the quality of an unknown. And as attractive and likable as Obama is, we still need references.

[NB: And who, you might rightly ask, is this self-appointed “we”?]

More: http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/may/05/sally_quinn_expresses_beltway_zeitgeist_again

He’s stupid, he’s mean, and nobody likes him

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/gwb_the_beloved_leader_/2007/05/beautiful_isnt_it.php

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/gwb_the_beloved_leader_/2007/05/worse_than_that.php

Theocracy watch: your tax dollars at work (thanks to Buzzflash for the link)

http://www.talk2action.org/story/2007/5/5/133827/0681
"The presenter and supervisor (must) possess an authentic relationship with Jesus Christ."

The Washington Post apologizes, after the damage is done

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/horsesmouth/2007/05/washington_post_4.php

I haven’t posted much on this, but here’s why the left blogosphere has such contempt for David Broder

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/06/late-nite-fdl-brodeski-beat-12-extended-remix/

Bonus item: The Dept of Justice Human Resource Handbook (thanks to Michael Froomkin for the link)

http://patriotboy.blogspot.com/2007/05/goofus-and-gallant-doj-human-resources.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 5:48 AM

 
STRAINING CREDULITY

The press just can’t keep their thumb off the scale – now it’s the DEMOCRATS who need to worry over Iraq war policy

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/04/AR2007050402262.html
But now that initial progress has foundered as Washington policymakers have been consumed with the debate over the Iraq war. Not a single priority on the Democrats' agenda has been enacted, and some in the party are growing nervous that the "do nothing" tag they slapped on Republicans last year could come back to haunt them. . . .

Why that’s a load of manure

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/013990.php
[Greg Sargent] Memo to media and pundits: The public wants Dems to be confrontational with Bush and the GOP.

More: http://cherrypick.notlong.com

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10717.html

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/05/with-friends-like-these-who-needs-enemies/

Yep, that wily Bush sure has turned the tables on them

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18505030/site/newsweek/
It’s hard to say which is worse news for Republicans: that George W. Bush now has the worst approval rating of an American president in a generation, or that he seems to be dragging every ’08 Republican presidential candidate down with him. . . . [T]he public’s approval of Bush has sunk to 28 percent, an all-time low for this president in our poll, and a point lower than Gallup recorded for his father at Bush Sr.’s nadir. . . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_04_29.php#013994
[Josh Marshall] Bush hits 28%. Clearly a perilous situation for the Democrats.

More: http://www.talkleft.com/story/2007/5/5/12925/20029

How low is 28%? http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/05/late-late-nite-fdl-tanking/

Meanwhile, in Iraq. . . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/04/AR2007050402359.html
Iraq is hemorrhaging doctors as violence racks the nation. To stem the flow, the Iraqi government has recently taken a cue from Saddam Hussein: Medical schools are once again forbidden to issue diplomas and transcripts to new graduates.

Hussein built a fine medical system in part by withholding doctors' passports and diplomas. Although physicians can work in Iraq with a letter from a medical school verifying their graduation, they say they need certificates and transcripts to work abroad. . . .

A prognosis: http://www.juancole.com/2007/05/guest-comment-iraq-prognosis-canny.html

Fighting over the blame for 9-11: don’t you guys see that for the rest of us, you’re ALL to blame?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/03/AR2007050301893.html
Tenet writes that he had received intelligence that day, July 10, 2001, about the threat from al-Qaeda that "literally made my hair stand on end."

According to At the Center of the Storm, Tenet picked up the phone, insisted on meeting with Rice about the threat from al-Qaeda, and raced to the White House with his counter-terrorism deputy, Cofer Black, and a briefer known only as "Rich B."

"There will be a significant terrorist attack in the coming weeks or months," Rich B. told Rice, and the attack would be "spectacular." Black added, "This country needs to go on a war footing now." . . .

http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/05/04/perle.tenet/index.html
Richard Perle said Friday that former CIA Director George Tenet is attempting to "shift responsibility" for his failure to anticipate the September 11, 2001, attacks and recognize the threat terrorists posed to the United States. . .

Sick, sick, sick

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2007_04_29.php#013993
[Josh Marshal] The Post has a run-down on the latest reports that the firing of US Attorney John McKay may have been tied to what Main Justice apparently believed was his over-zealous investigation of the assassination of Tom Wales, a federal prosecutor in McKay's office who was a big proponent of gun control laws.

DOJ spokesman Brian Roehrkasse explains why the DOJ failed to release documents that show that yet more of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's testimony to Congress was false.

It was, said Roehrkasse, an "inadvertent mistake."

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/04/AR2007050402169_pf.html

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/overblown_personnel_matter_/2007/05/too_bizarre_for_words.php
[Mark Kleiman] A U.S. Attorney got fired because he pushed too hard on the investigation of the murder of one of his line prosecutors? Please tell me this wasn't because the victim was a gun-control advocate and the political types were nervous about where the investigation might lead.

“A binder filled with White House e-mails”

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/05/instant-karma/
[Christy Hardin Smith] Hmmmm…a binder filled with White House e-mails. Firings closely coordinated with the President's staff. The mind boggles as to what has been left out of the discovery requests from Congress, doesn't it? Does Mr. Sampson still have possession of this binder? Were either McNulty or Margolis given copies? Has Gonzales seen it and, if so, why was this not disclosed fully and completely to the Senate or House Judiciary Committees? . . .

Morning, Karl. Executive privilege does not apply where a criminal investigation is warranted. Hope you are enjoying your day. Subpoenas, anyone? And how about a criminal investigation with a side of ethical violations? Suddenly that quick resignation of Harriet Miers is making a lot more sense — you cannot be legal counsel to the White House when you are potentially implicated in a conspiracy to obstruct a Congressional investigation, now can you?

And just so this doesn't get lost somewhere in the memory ether, remember the RNC scheme in 2004 to mangle voter registration in a number of battleground states wherein a GOP-tied firm was throwing away registration for Democrats? Whatever happened to that particular prosecution? Especially in Nevada? Hold onto your hats, kids, the ride just got bumpier.

“Eternal General” (thanks to Buzzflash for the link)

http://www.teambio.org/2007/05/alberto-gonzales-the-eternal-general-of-the-united-states/
[Steve O] You read the title correctly, the Commander Guy, called Gonzalez the “Eternal General” in recognizing his longtime friend at a Rose Garden celebration of Cinco de Mayo on Friday. Does this mean Gonzalez is never leaving office?

The official transcripts at whitehouse.gov were nicely cleaned up to say that he said “attorney general,” not “eternal general.” But recordings don’t lie.

Eternal?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/opinion/06sun1.html
[NYT] New reports of possible malfeasance keep coming fast and furious. They all seem to make it more likely than ever that the firings were part of an attempt to turn the Justice Department into a partisan political operation. There is, to start, the very strong appearance that United States attorneys were fired because they were investigating powerful Republicans or refused to bring baseless charges against Democrats. . . .

The Justice Department opened an internal investigation last week into whether Monica Goodling, a former senior adviser to Mr. Gonzales, applied a political screen to applicants for assistant United States attorney positions. That kind of political test would violate department policy, and possibly the law. . . .

The National Journal brought to light an “internal order” in which Mr. Gonzales gave Ms. Goodling and his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, the power to hire and fire many of the department’s top officials. His willingness to hand this authority off to two young, highly political staff members is further evidence that partisanship and not professionalism was the driving force in hiring and firing.

More testimony has also emerged that undermines the department’s weak claim that the prosecutors were dismissed for poor performance. . . .

Mr. Gonzales, Mr. Sampson and the others have given so many conflicting, barely credible stories for the firings that it is impossible not to suspect a cover-up. . . .

It is long past time for President Bush to fire Mr. Gonzales. But Congress, especially the Republicans who have dared confront the White House on this issue, should not be satisfied with that. There are strong indications that the purge was ordered out of the White House, involving at the very least the former counsel, Harriet Miers, and Karl Rove.

It is the duty of Congress to compel them and other officials to finally tell the truth to the American people.

My candidate to replace Gonzales (na ga ha pen)

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/05/i-miss-the-department-terribly/

So weird

http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/05/05/is-goodlings-attorneys-assistant-the-dcmadams-assistant/
Scandals collide! — the BushCo-rattling USAttorneys scandal may have intersected with the titillating DCMadam scandal. . . .

[A]ccording to "Above The Law", the DCMadam's assistant's day job was assisting the head of AkinGump's criminal litigation group, John M. Dowd, who represents Monica Goodling and wrote her Fifth Amendment letter to Henry Waxman. . .

Stop the presses: Paul Wolfowitz IS a liar!

http://www.samefacts.com/archives/corruption_in_washington_/2007/05/wolfies_coverup.php

Theocracy watch

http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/10711.html
[Steve Benen] Head Start is up for reauthorization. Republicans tried