This is weird
In a post tracing the origin of the phrase "criminalization of politics," Kevin Drum writes:At any rate, it's a phrase with a fine conservative pedigree, so I think we can expect to hear a lot more of it. What's more, since it was the stated reason for George Bush Sr. to pardon his pals in the Iran-Contra affair, who knows? Maybe George Bush Jr. will follow family tradition and use it as an excuse to pardon his pals in the Valerie Plame affair, whoever they might turn out to be. Stay tuned.
We read Political Animal all the time. Maybe that explains this. And it's not the first time, although we're too lazy to dig through our vast archive for another instance.
Stormy weather
Hinders blogging. This Samuel Alito sounds like a real reactionary, which is problematic. So much for the Gang of 14. Maybe he'll have a nanny problem or something.
Shrillness
Over at truthout.The record of policy failure is truly remarkable. It sometimes seems as if President Bush and Mr. Cheney are Midases in reverse: everything they touch - from Iraq reconstruction to hurricane relief, from prescription drug coverage to the pursuit of Osama - turns to crud. Even the few apparent successes turn out to contain failures at their core: for example, real G.D.P. may be up, but real wages are down.
Meta-blogging
When someone ends a post with "more soon," they should post more soon. Otherwise, they should write "more later."
SF honors Garcia
From the AP:SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Call it a "deadication." Jerry Garcia's hometown has named a 600-seat amphitheater in his memory. On the bill for the grand opening Saturday were Jefferson Starship, David Gans and master of ceremonies Wavy Gravy, who, like Garcia, has been honored with his own flavor of Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream.
The amphitheater is in a park in the same neighborhood where Garcia grew up and started his strumming.
On Wednesday, some of The Grateful Dead guitarist's artwork was installed at San Francisco City Hall as part of an inaugural exhibit for a new gallery. The exhibit includes drawings from Garcia's childhood and days as a student at The California School of the Arts.
Evil bastards watch
Replacing Scooter Libby as Snarl's chief of staff will be David S. Addington, the vice president's counsel.The task of summarizing the competing points of view in a draft letter to the president was seized initially by Addington. A memo he wrote and signed with Gonzales's name -- and knowledge -- was circulated to various departments, several sources said. A version of this draft, dated Jan. 25, 2002, was subsequently leaked. It included the eye-catching assertion that a 'new paradigm' of a war on terrorism 'renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners.'
A.k.a. the torture memo. The cream really rises in this administration, no?
That felt more like Lent than Christmas
Fitzmas was sort of a letdown. Guess we set our expectations too high. Maybe we'll still get Official A eventually. And even though there was an undersecretary of State involved, it wasn't the one we wanted, and he didn't do anything wrong. If Libby goes to trial, that should be fun. Will W let that happen? Or will he turn out to be like Dad after all? Stay tuned.UPDATE: Looky here.
Craig Cannon
Libby "indicted on perjury and other minor charges."
Why does Wall Street hate Scooter Libby?
Dow Jones Industrial Average up 172+ points. (Actually, it's attributed to better-than-expected GDP growth.)
Bloggered
Blogger is glacial right now.
Libby hit with five felony counts
So it begins:WASHINGTON (AP) -- Vice presidential adviser I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr. was indicted Friday on charges of obstruction of justice, making a false statement and perjury in the CIA leak case.
Karl Rove, President Bush's closest adviser, escaped indictment Friday but remained under investigation, his legal status a looming political problem for the White House.
The indictments stem from a two-year investigation by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald into whether Rove, Libby or any other administration officials knowingly revealed the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame or lied about their involvement to investigators.
The five-count indictment accuses Libby of lying about how and when he learned about Plame's identity in 2003 and then told reporters about it. The information was classified.
Any trial would shine a spotlight on the secret deliberations of Bush and his team as they built the case for war against Iraq.
Shorter 'Nightline'
W's having a shitty week.
Retraction
Clemons says story about new office leasing by Fitzgerald was wrong.
While we wait
Murray Waas in National Journal:Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, overruling advice from some White House political staffers and lawyers, decided to withhold crucial documents from the Senate Intelligence Committee in 2004 when the panel was investigating the use of pre-war intelligence that erroneously concluded Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, according to Bush administration and congressional sources.
All here. Gathering storm. Our joints ache for denouement.via Josh.
Channeling Tina Brown
From her Post column, which we hadn't read last night:Unlike Kenneth Starr's late, unlamented operation, neither Fitzgerald nor anyone around him leaks.
Our tax dollars at work
A day late, but:TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) -- Former FEMA Director Michael Brown said Wednesday he was asked to stay on the job another 30 days to help the agency complete its review of the response to Hurricane Katrina, a "completely legitimate thing to do."
Brown, who resigned under fire Sept. 12 after being heavily criticized for the slow reaction to the hurricane, told The Associated Press that he's also reviewing for the agency a large number of Freedom of Information requests dealing with the response.
Asked in a telephone interview if he expects to complete that work by the end of his second 30-day extension, Brown replied, "Absolutely. I'm motivated to wrap it up. I'm ready to move on."
So do so. That's $12,000 and change.
Bummer
We hope Fitzmas delayed isn't Fitzmas denied.A spokesman for the prosecutor said there would be no public announcements Thursday. The term of the grand jury that could bring indictments expires Friday.
Maybe someone will leak a hint. Didn't detect any in the linked AP thing.
Harriet Miers
AP here. Unqualified crony. Not wingnutty enough for the extreme right. Too enigmatic for the left. Curious timing. A bid to hijack the Fitzmas news cycle? The document request was just a smoke screen. Her replacement nominee will probably be some Roy Moore-like Promise Keeper type.
The 'Five O'Clock Follies' are back
KR's Joe Galloway:WASHINGTON - When you pay the sort of tuition that we Americans paid in Vietnam - 58,249 Americans dead and more than 300,000 seriously wounded - it would seem incumbent on us to remember the lessons we learned for at least a generation or two.
One important lesson was that using enemy body counts as a metric of success corrupts the system and makes liars out of soldiers and officers.
All here. Even at the age of 12 we knew the "Five O'Clock Follies" were bullshit.
Go-to guy Steve Clemons
From his sickbed. The beat goes on:Well, news has just reached TWN that Patrick Fitzgerald is expanding not only into a new Web site -- but also into more office space.
This Italian business is gonna take some time to sort out.
Out-of-control partisan prosecutor
Ken Starr. Seven, eight years ago, we could have expected a NYTimes or WaPo scoop right about now. Patrick Fitzgerald's shop doesn't leak much.
Glad somebody cleared this up
What was Fitzgerald talking to the judge about today? LATimes:A ... possibility was that Fitzgerald was seeking the judge's permission to extend the term of the grand jury. But people close to the case said they considered that unlikely.
Among other factors, they noted that the grand jury that Fitzgerald has been using has already been extended once, and that federal court rules do not provide for further extensions.
At the same time, it was possible that he was discussing with the judge using another grand jury to present his case, these sources said.
Thank you. Because Reuters, AP and others have repeatedly reported that it might be extended.
White House forced to reverse dumb policy
The Post:The White House reversed course today and reinstated a key wage protection for workers doing Hurricane Katrina reconstruction, bowing to pressure from a group of moderate House Republicans who argued that local residents were being left out of the recovery and that the Gulf Coast was becoming a magnet for illegal immigrants.
The Bush administration had decided in the days after Katrina devastated the region to waive the Davis-Bacon Act, a Depression-era law that guarantees construction workers the prevailing local wage when they're being paid with federal tax dollars. At the time, the administration insisted the waiver on hurricane-related work would save the government money and speed recovery efforts.
The move immediately came under vocal criticism from Democrats and labor unions. More quietly, a group of moderate Republicans -- many from districts in industrial areas with a high concentration of blue-collar workers -- began to lobby the White House and the congressional leadership for Davis-Bacon to be reinstated.
This morning, leaders of that group were summoned to the White House by Chief of Staff Andrew Card and told that the administration had changed its mind. The law goes back into effect Nov. 8, exactly two months after the original decision to suspend it.
That had to hurt. Now if they'll just reverse every other wrongheaded policy.
DeLay: my bad
So much money:WASHINGTON (AP) -- Rep. Tom DeLay has notified House officials that he failed to disclose all contributions to his legal defense fund as required by congressional rules.
The fund is currently paying DeLay's legal bills in a campaign finance investigation in Texas, where DeLay has been indicted, and in a federal investigation of Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff. The lobbyist arranged foreign travel for DeLay and had his clients pay some of the cost.
DeLay, R-Texas, has denied wrongdoing in both cases.
DeLay wrote House officials that he started an audit and it found that $20,850 contributed in 2000 and 2001 to the defense fund was not reported anywhere. An additional $17,300 was included in the defense fund's quarterly report but not in DeLay's 2000 annual financial disclosure report -- a separate requirement. Other donations were understated as totaling $2,800 when the figure should have been $4,450.
What's a few thou here and there?
Memory hole
President George W. Bush, March 6, 2003:Our mission is clear in Iraq. Should we have to go in, our mission is very clear: disarmament. And in order to disarm, it would mean regime change. I'm confident we'll be able to achieve that objective, in a way that minimizes the loss of life. No doubt there's risks in any military operation; I know that. But it's very clear what we intend to do. And our mission won't change. Our mission is precisely what I just stated. We have got a plan that will achieve that mission, should we need to send forces in.
via Progress Report.
The Poor Man Institute presents
Jeralyn has a theory
She thinks Rove might have made a deal to rat out others in exchange for leniency.
Culture of life
Why is the GOP so keen to kill people?If all 12 members of a jury in a capital case in federal court cannot agree on whether to impose the death penalty, a convicted defendant is automatically sentenced to life in prison.
But that may be about to change. A little-noticed provision in the House bill that reauthorized the antiterrorism law known as the USA Patriot Act would allow federal prosecutors further attempts at a death sentence if a capital jury deadlocks on the punishment. So long as at least one juror voted for death, prosecutors could empanel a new sentencing jury and argue again that execution was warranted.
They call themselves "pro-life." In fact, they're only pro-birth. After that, you're on your own.
Big Oil rakes in the windfall profits
Spends a little of it on PR campaign. The Post:Now, even as high gasoline prices continue to anger motorists and aggravate financial problems at General Motors Corp. and Ford Motor Co., the oil companies have begun to report record quarterly profit. Yesterday, British energy giant BP PLC reported a $6.53 billion third-quarter profit, up from $4.87 billion in the same period last year. And tomorrow, analysts expect Exxon Mobil Corp. to show that it earned nearly $9 billion over the past three months -- the largest corporate quarterly profit ever.
The API's guy says, "[M]ost consumers and lawmakers do not fully grasp how the energy industry works and why prices go up and down at the pumps." Yeah, right. "The largest corporate quarterly profit ever" is not that hard to grasp, dude.
No scoop for WaPo
The only news we detect in this report is that the grand jury must decide unanimously to indict.
No Fitzmas at washingtonpost.com yet
They'll have surely have something good within the hour, or we'll be surprised. They're really close to the vest before a scoop. Back to the game.
This works with our theory
LATimes:WASHINGTON -- Prosecutors investigating the leak of a CIA agent's identity returned their attention to powerful White House advisor Karl Rove on Tuesday, questioning a former West Wing colleague about contacts Rove had with reporters in the days leading to the outing of a covert CIA officer.
Special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald also dispatched FBI agents to comb the CIA officer's residential neighborhood in Washington, asking neighbors again whether they were aware — before her name appeared in a syndicated column — that the agent, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA.
Rove, Libby: obstruction, perjury, false statement? Novakula's original source, Mr. X: Intelligence Identities Protection Act violation. No partisan gunslinger?
It's almost Fitzmas Eve
So says Steve Clemons. Adding The Washington Note to links, too.Second thought: Actually, we guess, Santa comes tomorrow, but we don't get to unwrap our presents until Thursday.
More from Lawrence Wilkerson
In the LATimes, the chief of staff for ex-Secretary of State Colin Powell elaborates on his recent speech excoriating what he calls the Cheney/rumsfeld cabal.IN PRESIDENT BUSH'S first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security — including vital decisions about postwar Iraq — were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
One man's cabal is our junta.
2,000
Sad.BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The U.S. military death toll in the Iraq war reached 2,000 with the announcements Tuesday of three more deaths.
Iraq's constitution was adopted by a majority in a fair vote during the Oct. 15 referendum, as Sunni Arab opponents failed to muster enough support to defeat it, election officials said Tuesday.
A prominent Sunni politician called the balloting "a farce."
The Pentagon announced that Staff Sgt. George T. Alexander Jr., 34, of Killeen, Texas, died Saturday in San Antonio of injuries sustained Oct. 17.
Steve Clemons shares our Fitzmas wish
RIP Rosa Parks
An icon passes:DETROIT (AP) -- Nearly 50 years ago, Rosa Parks made a simple decision that sparked a revolution. When a white man demanded she give up her seat on a Montgomery, Ala., bus, the then 42-year-old seamstress said no.
At the time, she couldn't have known it would secure her a revered place in American history. But her one small act of defiance galvanized a generation of activists, including a young Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and earned her the title "mother of the civil rights movement."
Mrs. Parks died Monday evening at her home of natural causes, with close friends by her side, said Gregory Reed, an attorney who represented her for the past 15 years. She was 92.
Amoral sadists rule our country
Having granted themselves authority to torture anyone they want, the Cheney/Rumsfeld junta will resist relinquishing it. WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 - Stepping up a confrontation with the Senate over the handling of detainees, the White House is insisting that the Central Intelligence Agency be exempted from a proposed ban on abusive treatment of suspected Qaeda militants and other terrorists.
It's seems odd that they would so publicly fight for the right to torture. The only conclusion is that they're evil bastards.
Cheney told Libby
Looks like maybe unindicted co-conspirator status for Snarl.WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 - I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.
Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby's testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.
The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration's handling of intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program to justify the war.
Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.
Mr. Libby's notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson.
Merry Fitzmas to all
And to all a good night. Looks like goodies under the tree on the morrow.
'Criminalization of politics'
Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Fox host Sean Hannity and other conservatives are complaining bitterly about what they call the "criminalization of politics."
I agree, it's a problem. In fact, the sooner we run the criminals out of politics, the better.
Sounds like Luntz's work. The rest.
Wilma wrecks South Florida
Amazingly, only one death reported so far. Herald mainbar.
Are they all liars?
Or just their leaders?Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) was given considerable information about his stake in his family's hospital company, according to records that are at odds with his past statements that he did not know what was in his stock holdings.
Managers of the trusts that Frist once described as "totally blind," regularly informed him when they added new shares of HCA Inc. or other assets to his holdings, according to the documents.
Since 2001, the trustees have written to Frist and the Senate 15 times detailing the sale of assets from or the contribution of assets to trusts of Frist and his family. The letters included notice of the addition of HCA shares worth $500,000 to $1 million in 2001 and HCA stock worth $750,000 to $1.5 million in 2002. The trust agreements require the trustees to inform Frist and the Senate whenever assets are added or sold.
The letters seem to undermine one of the major arguments the senator has used throughout his political career to rebut criticism of his ownership in HCA: that the stock was held in blind trusts beyond his control and that he had little idea of the extent of those holdings.
Files show FBI misbehavior
The Post:The FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some U.S. residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight, according to previously classified documents to be released today.
Records turned over as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit also indicate that the FBI has investigated hundreds of potential violations related to its use of secret surveillance operations, which have been stepped up dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but are largely hidden from public view.
Whole thing. The potential for abuse of the Patriot Act has now been demonstrated.
Bernanke named Fed head
Story:WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush named top White House economic adviser Ben Bernanke as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board on Monday in place of near-legendary Alan Greenspan as the official in closest control of interest rates.
Being unqualified to comment, we'll just observe that Wall Street looks happy.
Someone's cranky
Thomas DeFrank of the Daily News reports:WASHINGTON - Facing the darkest days of his presidency, President Bush is frustrated, sometimes angry and even bitter, his associates say.
... Presidential advisers and friends say Bush is a mass of contradictions: cheerful and serene, peevish and melancholy, occasionally lapsing into what he once derided as the "blame game." They describe him as beset but unbowed, convinced that history will vindicate the major decisions of his presidency even if they damage him and his party in the 2006 and 2008 elections.
Keep making those good decisions, pal. We're counting on it.via Don.
What we want for Fitzmas
Let's revisit this:
It is still not publicly known who first told the columnist Robert D. Novak the identity of the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson. Mr. Novak identified her in a column on July 14, 2003, using her maiden name, Valerie Plame. Mr. Fitzgerald knows the identity of this source, a person who is not believed to work at the White House, the lawyers said.
We think Scooter Libby -- Salon says Rove -- was Novak's corroborating source. We believe Novak told Patrick Fitzgerald who this other senior administration official was. Judith F. Miller apparently got the name from someone besides Scooter. So who could it be? Didn't/doesn't work at the White House? Check. Senior administration official? Undersecretary of state for arms control at the time. Arms control? That was Plame's brief. Miller's too. Clearance to see classified State Department memo? You bet. Friendly with Miller? Visited her in jail. Connected to Cheney? Big time. Loaned him John Hannah, in fact. Called before grand jury? Unknown, but his ex-boss, Colin Powell, was.
More confirmation of what everyone knows
Larry Johnson says:The CIA field commander for the agency's Jawbreaker team at Tora Bora, Gary Berntsen, has finally got approval to publish his book, which will hit the streets on December 27, 2005.
Of course bin Laden was there, and Tommy Franks is a liar.via Atrios.
Cry us a river in Egypt
Public editor sees no future at Times for Miss Rum Amok: 
