JUSIPER
Monday, October 31, 2005
WP poll: Government ethics have declined under Bush
Amazing:
The poll, conducted Friday night and yesterday, found that 55 percent of the public believes the Libby case indicates wider problems "with ethical wrongdoing" in the White House, while 41 percent believes it was an "isolated incident." And by a 3 to 1 ratio, 46 percent to 15 percent, Americans say the level of honesty and ethics in the government has declined rather than risen under Bush.
In the aftermath of the latest crisis to confront the White House, Bush's overall job approval rating has fallen to 39 percent, the lowest of his presidency in Post-ABC polls. Barely a third of Americans -- 34 percent -- think Bush is doing a good job ensuring high ethics in government, which is slightly lower than President Bill Clinton's standing on this issue when he left office.
The survey also found that nearly seven in 10 Americans consider the charges against Libby to be serious. A majority -- 55 percent -- said the decision of Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald to bring charges against Libby was based on the facts of the case, while 30 percent said he was motivated by partisan politics.
"One thing you can't ever, ever do even if you're a regular person is lie to a grand jury," said Brad Morris, 48, a registered independent and a field representative for a lumber company who lives in Nashua, N.H. "But multiply that by a thousand times if you have power like [Libby had]. And if anybody wants to know why, ask Scooter. He's financially ruined; he'll be paying lawyers for the rest of his life."
Even some Republicans are concerned; of course, since they were uninformed enough to support Bush, one cannot expect them to know the facts or evaluate their seriousness:
Ellen Mulligan, 34, a Republican and part-time art teacher who lives in Hamden, Conn., was one of these. "If I understood what happened, Vice President Cheney's adviser spoke to his wife and then she leaked the secret," Mulligan said.
That is not an allegation in the indictment, but though Mulligan may not know exactly what happened, the scandal for her is both typical Washington and part of a broader pattern of ethical challenges in this administration. "My actual opinion is more, 'Here we go again.' Every administration has their secrets and has some corruption," she said. But she is disappointed with Bush on the ethics front. "I think Bush's actions in certain situations are pretty much unethical, [though] not illegal. . . . He's definitely not his father. His father seemed more wholesome, more down-to-earth."
8:17 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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U.S. ranked #44 in press freedom
It was #12 just two years ago, and the blame goes, apparently, to Patrick Fitzgerald for jailing Cheney's mole over at the onetime newspaper of record. That may or may not be fair; I have not really made up my mind about a reporter shield law, even though I am very grateful there wasn't one in Traitorgate.
Reporters sans Frontières might serve the public interest better if they also looked at the concentration of media ownership in each country as well as the extent to which economic profit is the primary measure of success in broadcast journalism. This country went to hell in the last five years not because the media lacked freedom but because it self-censored.
6:25 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Meet your new Supreme Court nominee
Here's the Scalito scuttlebutt:
ALITO WOULD OVERTURN ROE V. WADE: In his dissenting opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Alito concurred with the majority in supporting the restrictive abortion-related measures passed by the Pennsylvania legislature in the late 1980’s. Alito went further, however, saying the majority was wrong to strike down a requirement that women notify their spouses before having an abortion. The Supreme Court later rejected Alito’s view, voting to reaffirm Roe v. Wade. [Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 1991]
ALITO WOULD ALLOW RACE-BASED DISCRIMINATION: Alito dissented from a decision in favor of a Marriott Hotel manager who said she had been discriminated against on the basis of race. The majority explained that Alito would have protected racist employers by “immuniz[ing] an employer from the reach of Title VII if the employer’s belief that it had selected the ‘best’ candidate was the result of conscious racial bias.” [Bray v. Marriott Hotels, 1997]
ALITO WOULD ALLOW DISABILITY-BASED DISCRIMINATION: In Nathanson v. Medical College of Pennsylvania, the majority said the standard for proving disability-based discrimination articulated in Alito’s dissent was so restrictive that “few if any…cases would survive summary judgment.” [Nathanson v. Medical College of Pennsylvania, 1991]
ALITO WOULD STRIKE DOWN THE FAMILY AND MEDICAL LEAVE ACT: The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) “guarantees most workers up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave to care for a loved one.” The 2003 Supreme Court ruling upholding FMLA [Nevada v. Hibbs, 2003] essentially reversed a 2000 decision by Alito which found that Congress exceeded its power in passing the law. [Chittister v. Department of Community and Economic Development, 2000]
ALITO SUPPORTS UNAUTHORIZED STRIP SEARCHES: In Doe v. Groody, Alito agued that police officers had not violated constitutional rights when they strip searched a mother and her ten-year-old daughter while carrying out a search warrant that authorized only the search of a man and his home. [Doe v. Groody, 2004]
ALITO HOSTILE TOWARD IMMIGRANTS: In two cases involving the deportation of immigrants, the majority twice noted Alito’s disregard of settled law. In Dia v. Ashcroft, the majority opinion states that Alito’s dissent “guts the statutory standard” and “ignores our precedent.” In Ki Se Lee v. Ashcroft, the majority stated Alito’s opinion contradicted “well-recognized rules of statutory construction.” [Dia v. Ashcroft, 2003; Ki Se Lee v. Ashcroft, 2004]
6:22 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Sunday, October 30, 2005
The next Supreme Court appointment
Important as abortion and the right to privacy are, particularly in the limousine liberal blogosphere, Democrats might want to remind the electorate that the Supreme Court decided not only the 2000 election but a lot of bread and butter issues--and that GOP picks tend to side against the middle class.
6:37 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Saturday, October 29, 2005
Since we are all in a bit of a daze
This may be worth a read.
1:38 AM | Post or Read Comments (1)
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Friday, October 28, 2005
Not Fitzmas
Says Al Franken:
Happy Fitznukkah, Everybody!
That's right -- it isn't a one-day holiday like Fitzmas. This could go on and on. One day a great gift like Libby, the next day a pair of socks (Ari Fleischer), the next day, who knows: maybe an Xbox 360 (Karl Rove)! Maybe this can be dragged out until the 2006 midterms.
Anyway. Boy, did he lie! Wow. That. Is lying. Hoo boy.
And how about Rove telling the press he was going to have a great Friday and a great weekend? They can't even not lie about what kind of weekend they're going to have.
The only disappointment was the lack of a "treason" indictment. Looks like thirty years is the most Scooter will get. But who knows? He might get squeezed and end up ratting out the other guys, and get only eight to twelve.
It occurs to me that all of this may be about covering up the phony rationale for the march to war. One of you enterprising "bloggers" should look into that. Here's a clue: At one point, Cheney told Tim Russert, "there's no doubt that Saddam has reconstituted his nuclear program." If that statement could be proven false, that might provide the motive for smearing Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Flame.
6:18 PM | Post or Read Comments (1)
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Arianna prefers Fitz to Scooter
Why?
I’ll take “obstruction of justice is like throwing sand in the umpire’s eyes” over “aspens turn in clusters because their roots connect them” any day of the week.
6:16 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Libby, Rove and Miers
Word is that Libby will be indicted and that Rove won't but will remain in legal jeopardy. If so, that is the worst possible outcome for the Bush Administration. They will face the certainty of a Scooter Libby trial that will trigger a national reexamination of the lies that led to the war in Iraq. In the meantime, they will be waiting for the other shoe to drop on Rove. The infusion of "new blood" David Gergen and others have called for will be postponed, and the disarray in the White House will continue.
The country will suffer greatly for this,
Rasmussen says that that Bush's numbers, static for months, have begun descending in the last seven days, and that's because of a nearly twenty point drop in Republican support. Think about that. It couldn't have been Iraq that did it; last week was no worse than any other week there. Katrina occurred nearly two months ago; the dead bodies in New Orleans elicited little more than a yawn from steadfast GOP voters.
Many within the party believe Bush's decline among Republicans was caused by the Miers nomination. An administration under siege absolutely requires its base, because independents will abandon it. Clinton, you will remember, did not turn left until impeachment.
So expect a lurch rightward by an administration is already the nuttiest in American history beginning with an absolutely horrendous choice for the Supreme Court by early next week. With any luck Friday's news will help Democrats find their collective spine. They are going to need it.
2:21 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Fleitz
There is still a whole lot about Traitorgate that we don't know about.
12:35 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Thursday, October 27, 2005
See ya Freddy!
49% of Democrats support Bloomberg, while only 37% support the coalition-breaker who got the mayor his job. I do wish someone had been credible enough to hold Bloomberg accountable for some of his questionable decisions as mayor, not to mention his ties to Bush.
We can now say with certainty that Schumer protégé Anthony Weiner would have made a far superior opponent.
11:25 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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As I wrote when he was recess-appointed,
Thank God John Bolton is Ambassador to the United Nations. It will mean one more resignation down the road. Hubris, hubris, hubris .
10:44 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Sell your Treasuries tonight
Markets around the world are waiting on Fitzgerald too:
Any charges could create "political paralysis" at the White House, said Brian Dolan, head of currency research at New Jersey-based trading firm Gain Capital.
Charges would be "detrimental to the dollar, a psychological blow," said Alex Beuzelin, senior market analyst with Ruesch International in Washington. They would distract Bush from important economic issues like high energy prices, patches of slower growth and deficit reduction, he said.
The dollar's year-to-date run may be in jeopardy should confidence in Bush's ability to steer the economy be shaken.
A weaker dollar, because it cuts U.S. purchasing power, could raise inflation risks at a time that the Federal Reserve is working furiously to stamp out its spread from high energy prices.
U.S. bond yields could rise further if foreigners become less willing to hold so much U.S. debt, raising borrowing costs. Stocks, too, might suffer, but the damage would likely be less than in the "emotional" currency market that tends to be more politically sensitive, said Dolan.
"A spike in interest rates from current levels could potentially prick the housing bubble, which Fed Chairman nominee Ben Bernanke is convinced does not exist," said Peter Schiff, president of Euro Pacific Capital.
"If corporate malfeasance is bad for a firm's stock where senior executives run amuck, it should follow that government malfeasance should impact negatively a country's debt and currency," said David Gilmore, a partner in Connecticut-based currency consultancy FXA. "If it were only so easy ... exceptions are the rule not the exception."
"The key question for markets on pending indictments," said Gilmore, "is how far up the food chain they run?" [...]
More recent memory reminds that the dollar was hammered leading up to and in the immediate wake of the impeachment of President Bill Clinton on perjury and obstruction of justice charges tied to the cover up of his affair with intern Monica Lewinsky.
Over a five-day period in January 1998 that followed the first mention of Lewinsky on Internet gossip site, The Drudge Report, the dollar shed a swift 3.3% against the German mark, the pre-euro proxy for European currencies. The dollar reclaimed that decline during the following week.
The greenback fell over several days to a four-month low against the Japanese yen during December 1998, when the House approved two articles of impeachment against Clinton.
But that example differs from the current situation somewhat, says Dolan, because it directly touched the president.
If anything, investors are looking for any excuse to lighten some dollar holdings; it's made a six-week charge without much pause against the yen, to two-year highs, driven almost exclusively by bets for higher U.S. interest rates. The dollar is just off three-month highs against the euro.
But the dollar never gets too far from the albatross of a huge U.S. financial imbalance, one that relies on foreign savings - buying U.S. debt -- to fund a shortfall in trade. These factors pushed the dollar to its lowest ever against the euro in late 2004.
Ultimately, however, financial market focus will return to how aggressive the Federal Reserve will be with interest rates, Beuzelin said.
8:18 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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CBS News' new boss donated to George W. Bush in 2004
The $250 donation was discovered by blogger Michael Petrelis. Liberal media indeed.
7:33 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Pleas, please
Once again, enjoy the irony of sentencing guidelines being applied to GOP traitors.
5:47 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Hello, Democratic senators and congressman?
Time to speak out about this:
A reader points out this little graf down near the bottom of a Reuters article on Rove and his possibly-imminent indictment.
In advance of any possible indictment against Rove, his legal team consulted with former Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo on legal and public relations strategy, a source close to the matter said.
Carollo was named Director of Public Affairs at the Justice Department on September 23rd, 2003, just a few days before the CIA made its initial referral to the Justice Department for an investigation into the disclosure of Valerie Plame's identity.
I assume that that timing is merely a coincidence. Carollo had previously been Principal Deputy Director of Public Affairs since March 2002. But this does mean that Carollo was the top communications person at Justice and one of John Ashcroft's close aides during the entire time Ashcroft was supervising the investigation. And he remained so until about a year ago -- in other words, through most of the life of the Fitzgerald investigation. Now he's working for Rove, the target of the investigation.
5:41 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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"We are witnessing conservative criminals in politics"
That's what he should have said.
5:18 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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The best excuse possible
Most of Western Europe never wanted all those Eastern European nations in the EU in the first place-- one of the major reasons the votes on the confederation's constitution failed.
So Poland's right-wing new government's homophobia becomes the perfect opportunity to do 1) do the right thing while 2) preserving Western Europe's pride of place and cultural hegemony in the EU.
In a shot across the bows of arch-conservative Lech Kaczynski, the commission declared that all member states must abide by EU rules which protect minorities and block the death penalty.
Failure to comply could trigger a special process under the Treaty of Nice which deprives errant member states of their voting rights in ministerial meetings. "We are going to follow the situation very attentively," the principal commission spokesman, Jonathan Todd, said yesterday. [...]
European diplomats will be watching the negotiations carefully after the success of the new president, who made his name as mayor of Warsaw. A strongly conservative Catholic, he refused to allow gay pride marches and supports the death penalty.
Friso Roscam Abbing, the European commission's justice spokesman, warned the new president he must abide by article 6 of the Treaty of Nice, which says that all member states must protect minority rights and not impose the death penalty.
A failure to comply could trigger article 7, which allows the EU to deprive a member state of voting rights. This allows voting rights to be withdrawn if a member state is in "serious breach" of its obligations on human rights.
2:13 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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John Roberts kills the Blackberries!
Imagine the panic in official Washington if they all went dead just when indictments came out.
2:02 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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What It's Like
A terrific piece at TPMCafe by Paul Begala about what it's like to be at the White House in the middle of an investigation.
People are looking over their shoulders. The smart ones have stopped taking notes in meetings. The very smart ones have stopped using email for all but the most pedestrian communications. And the smartest ones have already obtained outside counsel.
When a White House is under siege, no one wants to talk to anyone. Literally, anything you say can and will be used against you. When you're in a meeting and you see one of your colleagues taking notes, you start to wonder how long it will be before you're interrogated based on her notes. Maybe she's doodling. Or maybe she's digging your grave. The mind tries to focus on the task at hand, but the grand jury is never far from your thoughts.
Compared to these folks, I had it easy. I'd never met Monica Lewinsky, had no knowledge of the affair, which took place when I was living in Austin, and I knew that neither I nor any of my colleagues were in Ken Starr's perverse crosshairs. The Fitzgerald investigation is very different. It's not about the President's extracurricular activities. It's about the essence of how the White House works - and the suggestion that this White House has become deeply corrupt.
If the waiting is as painful for the Bushies as I suspect it is, it's only because they know how terrible the toll will be when the truth comes out.
1:50 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Atrios gives the left a heart attack
Vicious and also insanely funny.
1:39 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Wednesday, October 26, 2005
Fitzgerald's slow squeeze is just beginning
Whatever happens between now and Friday:
...news has just reached TWN that Patrick Fitzgerald is expanding not only into a new website -- but also into more office space.
Fitzgerald's office is at 1400 New York Avenue, NW, 9th Floor in Washington.
What I have learned is that the Office of the Special Counsel has signed a lease this week for expanded office space across the street at 1401 New York Avenue, NW.
Another coincidence? More office space needed to shut down the operation?
I think not. Fitzgerald's operation is expanding.
11:46 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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How many ways can you get it wrong
Republican Catholics: Republicans first, Americans second, and Catholics last.
4:45 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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It's hard to know what happened over the last week
But I have to assume that the bottom has fallen out on Bush's approval ratings when even the Rasmussen poll has it at 41. Chris Bower's thoughtful analysis of the outfit's polling here.
2:55 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Conrad Burns
Hard to know whether this was a smart or dumb political move in a state that gave George W. Bush a 20 point victory.
2:44 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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CBS President replaces head of news division
In the company's unending quest for higher news quality, the replacement is the head of the sports division. Moonves acted in the TV movie, Enola Gay: The Men, the Mission, the Atomic Bomb.
"This has been a very difficult year for CBS News, for Andrew, for other people in CBS News," Mr. Moonves added, a moment later. "I think it was a mutual decision. Andrew's been head of CBS News for a long time, longer than anyone else in many years. It was just time."
And, Mr. Moonves added, "we had another extremely talented executive right down the hall."
Mr. McManus, who has been president of CBS sports since 1996, is the son of the legendary ABC sportscaster Jim McKay, whose legal name is McManus.
In an interview today, Mr. McManus said he faced a steep "learning curve," but said that there were many similarities between sports and news, not least the necessity of enlisting good story-tellers capable of working on deadline pressure and often live.
Good God.
2:36 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Waiting, waiting
In the meantime, this would be the best possible outcome: indictments of Rove and Libby followed by a new grand jury to investigate the Niger affair.
2:23 PM | Post or Read Comments (1)
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The end result of Bush's Middle East policy
The President of Iran will get away with this because the war in Iraq has made his nation the most powerful in the region. Disgusting:
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday that Israel should be ``wiped off the map,'' the official IRNA news agency reported.
Support for the Palestinian cause is a central pillar of the Islamic Republic which officially refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist.
"Israel must be wiped off the map,'' Ahmadinejad told a conference called ``The World without Zionism,'' attended by some 3,000 conservative students who chanted ``Death to Israel'' and ''Death to America.''
Under reformist President Mohammad Khatami, whose eight-year tenure ended earlier this year, Iran had shown signs of easing its implacable hostility toward Israel. Officials said Tehran might not object to a two-state solution if that was what the Palestinians wanted.
But Ahmadinejad, a former member of the hard-line Revolutionary Guards and traditional religious conservative, said there could be no let-up in its hostility to Israel.
"The Islamic world will not let its historic enemy live in its heartland,'' he said.
2:17 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Swiftboating of Fitzgerald inevitable
Says Caroline Daniel in the Financial Times:
Mr Bush has praised Mr Fitzgerald's deft handling of the inquiry, which could deflate any later attempts to paint him as a partisan prosecutor over-reaching his mandate.
However, Frank Luntz, Republican pollster and strategist. said: “If [Fitzgerald] indicts, they [the White House] will have no choice but to attempt to demonise him. I think that is going to be really, really tough.”
No, Frank Luntz. Evil acts are rarely inevitable; they ordinarily require choice and intention. However like the Swiftboating of Joe Wilson, any attempt to smear Patrick Fitzgerald will backfire, only much sooner.
3:51 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Plame was covert
Why was Fitzgerald trying to nail down this portion of the story? Drudge was hyping a Moonie Times piece as proof that she wasn't, but Media Matters debunked it long ago.
3:43 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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What can get you fired from the New York Times
People say Judy Miller should have been fired long ago for misleading a nation into a war with inaccurate reporting. But the New York Times recognizes true impropriety in Iraq coverage, and here is proof, from an April, 2005 piece by Howie Kurtz:
The New York Times is not always the most collegial place to work, but this story sets a new standard -- if the allegations are true, which remains in dispute.
The Times has fired Susan Sachs, its former Baghdad bureau chief. According to Times sources who insisted on anonymity because personnel matters are involved, the paper's management accused Sachs of writing to the wives of two other Times foreign correspondents, to say that their husbands were having affairs.
Sachs denied to management that she had written the letters, but she was accused of not telling the truth based on electronic information involving at least one follow-up e-mail she is said to have written, the sources said.
Sachs said earlier this week from Paris that she is determined "to clear my name" and get her job back.
"I absolutely deny, in the strongest terms possible, the accusations raised against me by the Times. I am totally innocent and I am fortunate that friends and colleagues who have known me and worked with me during my 32 unblemished years in journalism, are supporting me.
"The accusations have nothing whatsoever to do with the credibility of my writing, reporting and journalism, and I want to emphasize that during my long career, my personal honesty and my integrity have never been questioned. I am pained that the Times took the action it did, and I am confident that in arbitration or through other legal means, my absolute innocence in this matter will be confirmed and I will return to the job I love."
The paper declined to comment.
"We don't talk about individual personnel matters," said Executive Editor Bill Keller. The two foreign correspondents involved -- whom The Washington Post is not naming because the truth of the matter could not be verified -- did not respond to attempts to contact them by e-mail.
The Newspaper Guild is representing Sachs, who has worked for the paper since 1998, in her attempt to regain her job. "We believe in her," said Guild officer Bob Townsend.
3:16 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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A history lesson
Via Catullus on Kos. I am not expecting Cheney indictments this week, but that doesn't mean he isn't in some serious political hot water:
President Nixon was not at all shocked to learn that his vice president had become enmeshed in a bribery scandal in Maryland. At first, Nixon took the matter lightly, remarking that taking campaign contributions from contractors was "a common practice" in Maryland and other states. "Thank God I was never elected governor of California," Nixon joked with Haldeman. Nixon had quipped that Agnew was his insurance against impeachment, arguing that no one wanted to remove him if it meant elevating Agnew to the presidency.
Nixon's new chief of staff and "crisis manager," General Alexander M. Haig, Jr., was haunted by the specter of a double impeachment of the president and vice president, which could turn the presidency over to congressional Democrats. General Haig therefore took the initiative in forcing Agnew out of office. He instructed Agnew's staff that the president wanted no more speeches like the one in Los Angeles. He further advised that the Justice Department would prosecute Agnew on the charge of failing to record on his income tax returns the cash contributions he had received. Haig assured Agnew's staff that, if the vice president resigned and pleaded guilty on the tax charge, the government would settle the other charges against him and he would serve no jail sentence. But if Agnew continued to fight, "it can and will get nasty and dirty." From this report, Agnew concluded that the president had abandoned him. The vice president even feared for his life, reading into Haig's message: "go quietly--or else." General Haig similarly found Agnew menacing enough to alert Mrs. Haig that should he disappear she "might want to look inside any recently poured concrete bridge pilings in Maryland."
The coda to the Agnew saga occurred the following year, as Nixon's presidency came to an end. In June 1974, the besieged president dictated an entry in his diary in which he confronted the real possibility of impeachment. Nixon reviewed a series of decisions that now seemed to him mistakes, such as asking Haldeman and Ehrlichman to resign, appointing Elliot Richardson attorney general, and not destroying the secret tape recordings of his White House conversations. "The Agnew resignation was necessary although a very serious blow," Nixon added, "because while some thought that his stepping aside would take some of the pressure off the effort to get the President, all it did was to open the way to put pressure on the President to resign as well. This is something we have to realize: that any accommodation with opponents in this kind of a fight does not satisfy--it only brings on demands for more."
On August 9, 1974, Richard Nixon joined Spiro Agnew in making theirs the first presidential and vice-presidential team in history to resign from office.
Note that last Nixon remark. Even if Cheney is not among the indicted, the White House's power and legitimacy should be permanently weakened. All the more so if he is forced to resign.
3:08 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Traitorgate is much worse than Watergate
Arianna explains why.
2:51 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Eric Alterman chats with Bill Clinton
Delightful:
I went to the Four Freedoms ceremony at the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute in Hyde Park, NY on Saturday. The 2005 Laureates were:
Four Freedoms Medal - William J. Clinton
Freedom of Speech Medal - Tom Brokaw
Freedom of Worship Medal - Cornel West
Freedom from Want Medal - Marsha Evans
Freedom from Fear Medal - Lee Hamilton & Thomas Kean
At lunch, I got the requisite hug from Brother West, who packed more eloquence and inspiration into a single five minute speech than I could manage in a lifetime. I was pleased to see him cite Abraham Joshua Heschel as one of his heroes, together with King, Fannie Lou Hamer, Coltrane, and I forget who else. I also had a nice chat with the wife of the recipient of the Four Freedoms Medal, who was there as a supportive spouse and said nothing publicly. I then caught up with her (perennially mobbed) husband for a minute as he was walking out and told him, politely but pointedly, that it was “nice to see him giving the guy a little bit of hell for a change.”
This made him mad, and he stopped and gave me a little talking-to. He insisted that he had been attacking Bush’s tax cuts and foreign policies for more than two years, “but it is not up to me to make the media cover it.” I said I thought he had been awfully generous both about the war and about the self conscious effort of the Bush administration to destroy the accomplishments of his administration. He reiterated his angry criticism of the tax cuts and I said, well, you’re the ex-president, you can say whatever you want, unencumbered, and I wish you’d lay out the case of the other America to the world—the one for whom Bush doesn’t speak—and now constitutes a majority. Well, now he really got going, since you know, he didn’t disagree. He talked about his efforts to explain the nature of the American political division whenever he’s abroad, as he just returned from doing in China, but was also clearly miffed by my bringing up the Bush administration’s self-conscious efforts to dismantle his accomplishments. He took this a little more personally than I had intended it—I was thinking of things like an effective FEMA or expanded education and training programs for displaced workers. But he brought up a State Department program that was designed to give fellowships to Palestinians to study in America and had been named after him at the request of the Israelis and Palestinians who asked that it be set up. Not long ago, he said, someone at the State Department told him it had been shut down after two years because “they don’t want anything in this department named after you.” As I said, it wasn’t the point I intended, but it was a point….
2:08 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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I'd like to read this speech
I'm not sure I know what she's talking about, and we can't be sure that she does either, but it sure seems to confirm my suspicions that she is pro-life, anti-gay marriage but otherwise far more moderate than anyone Bush would replace her with.
.S. Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, in speeches a decade ago, said ``self-determination'' should guide decisions about abortion and also defended social activism, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday.
The speeches, which she provided to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, offer some of the clearest insights yet into Miers' thinking on contentious social issues that could come before the Supreme Court, the newspaper said.
Miers talked about abortion, the separation of church and state, and how the issues play out in the legal system in a 1993 speech to a Dallas women's group, the newspaper said.
``The underlying theme in most of these cases is the insistence of more self-determination,'' Miers said in an excerpt reported by the Post. ``And the more I think about these issues, the more self-determination makes sense.''
In speeches delivered when she was president of the Texas bar association, Miers also defended judges who order lawmakers to address social concerns, the newspaper said.
Miers also showed sympathy for feminist causes, referring to the ``glass ceiling'' faced by professional women and urged her audience to support female candidates, according to the report.
My guess is that if Miers is forced to withdraw, Bush will go way right. After tomorrow, and particularly if Cheney himself is implicated (whether or not he is directly indicted), he will need support from the GOP, since he won't have any in the middle. Evangelicals will be thrilled, but my guess is that Bush will be hoping that Democrats and blue state Republicans will kill the nomination.
Then he can finally nominate the Attorney General the third time around (provided Traitorgate hasn't exploded to a point that the press starts questioning the head start Gonzales gave Andy Card), which is probably what he wanted to do in the first place.
1:58 AM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Jeffrey Goldberg
The New Yorker interviews its own reporter, after the Scowcroft piece, in which he very elegantly explains the divisions between realists and neocons in GOP foreign policy circles.
It's worth noting that these are not the only two alternatives; it is absolutely possible to hate both Bush's foreign policies; in fact all the members of this blog do. Nonetheless, the Scowcroft interview is the one of the first major harbingers of the GOP foreign policy bloodletting we've been predicting for the last year.
10:54 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Not just perjury
Fitzgerald may want the harder charges. Looks like those GOP talking points about perjury should have been saved till after indictments came out:
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. [...]
More recent, Fitzgerald has appeared to turn his attention to possible perjury, obstruction of justice or conspiracy to violate laws prohibiting the distribution of classified secrets. [...]
"It appeared to me the prosecutor was trying to button up any holes that were remaining," a lawyer familiar with the case said. The lawyer asked not to be identified because of the sensitivity of the ongoing inquiry.
Specifically, investigators asked about Rove's July 2003 conversations with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper. [...]
The flurry of last-minute questioning struck some observers as a way for the prosecutor to test arguments that defense lawyers may have raised in the waning hours of the investigation to fend off charges.
Some of the questioning indicated that Fitzgerald may still be considering indictments on charges that some have viewed as too difficult to pursue, including a prosecution under a federal law that makes it a felony to reveal the name of a covert agent.
On Monday, two FBI agents, dressed in black, combed the northwest Washington neighborhood where Wilson and Plame live, flashing their badges and questioning neighbors about whether they knew about her affiliation with the CIA before she was exposed in an article by Novak in July 2003.
Critics of the leak investigation have argued that it was an open secret that Plame worked for the CIA; if many people knew that she worked for the agency, it would make prosecution under the 1982 law protecting covert agents impossible.
But neighbors contacted by The Times said they told the FBI agents that they had no idea of her agency life, and that they knew her only as a mother of twins who worked as an energy consultant.
The agents "made it clear they were part of the Fitzgerald investigation, and they were basically tying up loose ends," said David Tillotson, a Washington lawyer and neighbor, who was among those interviewed Monday.
"They really only had one interest, and that was to know whether Valerie's identity, on what she did for a living, was known prior to the Novak article. It seemed they were trying to establish clearly that prior to the Novak article she was not widely known on the cocktail circuit," Tillotson said. [...]
Some people familiar with national security investigations said they found this week's questioning to be curious at a time when Fitzgerald appeared to be wrapping up his investigation. They said establishing her covert status should have been a priority at the outset of the case; if her employer was already well known, the prosecutor would not have a case to bring under the agent-protection law.
10:20 PM | Post or Read Comments (1)
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Roll Call
Via Josh Marshall:
Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was spotted Tuesday at the law offices of Patton Boggs paying a visit to Robert Luskin, the eccentric (for Washington, D.C.) lawyer who represents Karl Rove
10:13 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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You know you're doing poorly
When you're a Republican president and even Fortune magazine snarks:
Whether it's a reflection of the current political weakness of the Bush administration or just another sign that you can't fight the Fed, the president's choice of Ben Bernanke to be the new Federal Reserve chairman is a remarkable victory of technocracy over politics.
This is a president who in his appointments has habitually favored political loyalty and personal rapport over qualifications and credibility, whose picks for top jobs have often stumped the odds makers.
Yet here he has gone and chosen a Fed chairman who for months has been touted as the most likely choice, a Princeton economics professor who is one of the world's foremost experts on monetary policy. Yes, Ben Bernanke is a Republican, and he has succeeded in keeping himself on the president's good side during four months as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers (chiefly by keeping his mouth shut in public, one assumes).
But Bernanke's decades of academic writings and his utterances during three years spent as a member of the Federal Reserve Board, from 2002 to 2005, indicate that he'll be the sort of Fed chairman who identifies far more closely with the institution he runs than with the administration that appointed him.
8:25 PM | Post or Read Comments (1)
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Wonkette
Killer:
Of course, all this harping on how Miers and Bernanke are different misses one crucial similarity: They both have beards.
8:12 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Annoying
So The New York Times, once the newspaper of record, made a BIG mistake yesterday:
According to the NYT, they made a mistake, Cheney was not under oath when he answered questions for Fitzgerald in June of 2004.
However, Jeralyn of Talk Left comes to the rescue in her comments over at the indispensable Firedoglake:
I don't think the oath matters. If he wasn't under oath, it's a false statement charge. If he was, it's a perjury charge. But both have the same penalty - 5 years.
Perjury in this kind of case, if it does not occur before the grand jury, requires two witnesses. Perjury before the grand jury, or a false statement charge, does not have that requirement.
Also, a putative defendant may be able to cure a perjurious statement before the grand jury by going back and 'fessing up, if it was not particularly material to the crime, as Rove may have done with his Matthew Cooper conversation, but that option does not appear in the false statement or general perjury statute.
8:10 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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The American people on Iraq
A Harris poll in today's Wall Street Journal.
1. 66% of Americans think Bush is only doing a fair or poor job in Iraq (16% say fair, 50% say poor)
2. 61% are "not confident" that U.S. policies in Iraq will be successful.
3. Was going to war against Iraq the right thing to do? 53% say no. Only 34% say yes.
4.
6:58 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Pinch and Judy
Lots of questions. But, asks, Arianna, can Pinch be ousted?
How likely is this? Extremely unlikely. "It would be unprecedented," a source familiar with the workings of the newspaper told me, "for the family, which has total control of the company, to abandon a fellow family member. That said, there is deep concern, everyone is worried about it and talking about it, and Arthur has to deal with it. The family's concern is so deep because the scandal affects the position of the Times as the preeminent news organization in the world -- which is the thing the family cares about more than anything. They are not about money, they are about the preeminence of the New York Times, and anything that jeopardizes that is very troubling to them."
The trust that was created in 1997 to preserve family control of the Times has, as its primary objective (as disclosed in a 2000 New York Times Company proxy statement): "to maintain the editorial independence and integrity of the New York Times and to continue it as an independent newspaper, entirely fearless, free of ulterior influence and unselfishly devoted to the public welfare." This is a lofty principle visibly betrayed by recent scandals.
And while the Sulzberger family may not care about money, the shareholders do -- and they control more than 80 percent of the New York Times Company's Class A stock. The family remains in control because it holds almost all the Class B voting stock, which allows them to elect 70 percent of the company's board.
This structure insulates an incompetent CEO -- but only up to a point. And the shareholders can't be happy with the latest quarterly results. The company's market cap, which was $6 billion in November 2004, dropped below $4 billion last week, its earnings fell by more than half in the last quarter, and there have been widespread layoffs (200 staff positions eliminated in the first half of this year, with an additional 500 cuts announced in September). And now Sulzberger's ham-fisted meddling in the newsroom has put the paper's greatest asset -- its reputation -- at grave risk.
6:54 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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So will we know tomorrow?
Or will we know Thursday:?
An uber-insider source has just reported the following to TWN (since confirmed by another independent source):
1. 1-5 indictments are being issued. The source feels that it will be towards the higher end.
2. The targets of indictment have already received their letters.
3. The indictments will be sealed indictments and 'filed' tomorrow.
4. A press conference is being scheduled for Thursday.
From the CBS Evening News:
CBS’ JOHN ROBERTS: Lawyers familiar with the case think Wednesday is when special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will make known his decision, and that there will be indictments. Supporters say Rove and the vice president’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, are in legal jeopardy. But they insisted today the two are secondary players, that it was an unidentified Mr. X who actually gave the name of CIA agent V alerie Plame to reporters. Fitzgerald knows who Mr. X is, they say, and if he isn’t indicted, there’s no way Rove or Libby should be. But charges may not focus on the leak at all. Obstruction of justice or perjury are real possibilities. Did Rove or Libby change statements made under oath? Did they deliberately leave critical facts out of their testimony or did they honestly forget? Some Republicans urged Rove to step down if indicted. Not a happy prospect for president Bush.
SCHIEFFER: John, I am very interested in Mr. X. Is there any clue or hint as to whether he be - maybe someone who outranks Libby and Rove or would he be a lower-ranking official?
ROBERTS: The best guess is that Mr. X, even though his name is not known and some people are just speculating on who he might be or she might be, is somebody who is actually outside the White House, and in that case would be of a lower rank that both Rove and Libby.
6:19 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)
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Raw Story: At least two indictments
I think we assumed as much at this point:
Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has decided to seek indictments in the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson and has submitted at least one to the grand jury, those close to the investigation tell RAW STORY.
Fitzgerald will seek at least two indictments, the sources say. They note that it remains to be seen whether the grand jury will approve the charges.
Those familiar with the case state that Fitzgerald may not seek indictments that assert officials leaked Plame's name illegally. Rather, they say that he will focus charges in the arena of lying to investigators. The sources said, however, they wouldn't rule out charges of conspiracy.
2:07 PM | Post or Read Comments (0)