It's late and I'm tired, but I can't let more time go by without saying this, because there probably isn't much time before Alberto "Torture Boy" Gonzales goes from being Attorney General to hiring criminal defense attorney. Yes, this about the US Attorneys scandal, and I want to point out some things I haven't seen pointed out elsewhere. Some of this involves the time of the firings, another reason for Dec. 7 to live in infamy. Beyond the tawdriness of doing this on Pearl Harbor Day, the fact they did this after the 2006 election shows they learned nothing from the election the acting president described as a "thumpin'". It also indicates they knew they were doing something that needed to be done in the dark, or they wouldn't have waited until after the election and the time when both media and public pay a lot less attention. Now that we know this was planned a long time before, all the way back to 2005, the timing is clearly deliberate.
One other point about the timing: it cam after Nancy Pelosi's pre-election pledge there would be no impeachment. I can see holding her and the Democrats to no impeachment for what was known before the election, and maybe even stretching that to apply the pledge to new information about scandals that had already broken. However, not only did the information about the scandal come out after the pledge, but the scandal itself occurred after the election, and surely isn't covered by the pledge -- though I would appreciate a clear statement to that effect from congressional leadership. Moreover, remember John Dean's contribution to the debate over whether to seek impeachment, that it need not apply only to Bush and Cheney, but to their underlings, like cabinet members. If Gonzales doesn't resign, impeach him. It appears he lied while speaking to the press, which should be an impeachable offense if proven, but he also appears to have lied under oath in congressional hearings, and lying to Congress is a felony, the legislative equivalent of perjury. He might have fired US attorneys in order to stop investigations of Republicans, and encouraged or even ordered groundless investigations of Democrats. If not legally obstruction of justice, it's sure a gross abuse of authority, and if not criminal at least impeachable.
This seems a propitious time to bring up again my argument that this is about the future as much as the present. Besides the need to keep US attorneys independent, people like Gonzales will be reappearing in government in the future if not disqualified, just like Iran-Contra conspirators have been able to haunt the executive branch again under Bush.
Getting into pure speculation, is this the scandal that brings down Torture Boy and maybe the acting president too? The digging is just starting. Despite the emphasis on prosecuting voter fraud by Democrats, the Republicans didn't find it. How many investigations were purely politically motivated? Should US attorneys who didn't get fired for being too independent therefore abuse their offices for partisan gain, and therefore deserve removal? What Republican corruption has gone uninvestigated, or had investigations cut off for partisan reasons? Carol Lam, for example, who convicted Duke Cunningham and just indicted Brent Wilkes and Dusty Foggo, was among those fired before she could indict Rep. Jerry Lewis. As bad as the culture of corruption got, maybe there's a whole lot more. Now that two Justice officials have resigned, Kyle Sampson, who was Gonzales' chief of staff, and Michael Battle, who made the phone calls to inform the fired attorneys, who else knew? What exactly did Gonzales know, and of course what did Bush know? Did they know which investigations would be stopped? At a state level, were congressmen and state party officials who sought firings trying to stop specific investigations? Did they abuse their offices by interfering with US attorneys? Sen. Pete Domenici has already hired the attorney who defended Cunningham. Presumably Rep. Heather Wilson has too.
Wouldn't it just be bizarre if the scandal that brings down this illegitimate administration isn't bungling 911, using torture, lying to start a war, exposing a CIA agent, or anything pre-election, but a scandal that occurred after the Republicans got bounced for their culture of corruption? Some people just won't learn. Then again, I've been saying that with the no-impeachment pledge, it would take something new to make impeachment happen. I just thought it would be an unauthorized attack on Iran.
March 9
If you've followed the aftermath of Ann Coulter's "faggot" remark, you've not only learned that this is the gay equivalent of calling blacks the N-word, but you've noticed some conservatives denouncing her and trying to distance themselves from her. One of those is Mitchell Pearlstein, president of Center of the American Experiment, a conservative think tank in Minneapolis. He used a column in today's Star Tribune to denounce Ann Coulter.
I'm glad Mitchell Pearlstein tried to distance himself from Ann Coulter's vileness (now if could start the equally venomous statements of Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, etc.), but in doing so he inadvertently showed how she could become a leading spokesman for conservatism.
When Pearlstein wrote, "Why was her jab at a joke so unacceptable? Because decent people just don't talk like that, or at least they shouldn't. And no, this is not because of overly sensitive, politically correct touchiness," he showed that in the conservative mind, being civil is merely being PC. No wonder they can tolerate so much incivility from other conservatives, at least when directed at liberals and Democrats.
Then there's this sentence: "Conservatives are more inclined than liberals to challenge emotionally saturated initiatives, such as the drive for same-sex marriage." Oh, so liberals are unable to see through emotions while conservatives think themselves rational. Even while claiming to denounce insults, Pearlstein throws them.
Sorry Mitch, Coulter is exactly the right person to represent conservatism. Maybe you need to think about how conservatives have produced people like her.
This is going off on a tangent, which is why I concluded my thought above instead of going into the elaboration Pearlstein added about gay marriage, but I'm going to answer it anyway. After using gay marriage as an example of "emotionally saturated initiatives" conservatives are more likely than liberals to challenge, he wrote, "There's not the smallest doubt in my mind that the overwhelming majority of us who oppose same-sex marriage do so honorably, as we simply (or not so simply) fear that such a radical change in our most important institution would not be in the best interests of society generally and children especially."
Fine, I have no problem believing most opponents of gay marriage do so honorably, but are they really rational? He said himself their opposition is based on fear, which sounds emotional to me, but let's show liberal broadmindedness and suppose he meant "fear" as in "have concerns". If he's rational, he'd show how gay marriage actually causes harm, not just suppose it does. He is running a think tank after all. Aren't think tanks supposed to go beyond supposing and into research and evidence? Funny thing, not to be too rational, but no one has ever shown how gay marriage hurts anybody. Feared harm, yes; shown harm, no.
March 8
For a recent DFL Links, I put together bullet points of the pros and cons of pursuing impeachment of the acting president and acting vice president. That would be Bush and Cheney, to those of you new to the blog. I call them "acting" because they stole both elections and are therefore just holding office until there is a legitimate president and vice president. Anyway, I tried to be as fair to the con side as I could being of the opinion impeachment is a screaming necessity. If you're a Bush supporter, the reason you won't see a con like "Bush is doing a lovely job" is this is inteneded for the debate among Bush opponents (not restricted to Democrats at all) on whether to pursue impeachment. There is a Word version here. Feel free to use it. Giving me credit for it would be nice though.
By the way, this DFL Links took place on February 27. In other words, before the Libby verdict, and there have subsequently been big developments in the scandals regarding the mistreatment of wounded soldiers at Walter Reed and the firing of US Attorneys for political reasons. There might be more bullet points to add.
PROS:
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CONS:
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March 7
If you're off on the loony right or listening to them, you may be confused about just what it was Scooter Libby did, besides put himself in a position to discover how people named "Scooter" fare in prison. The special prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, used a baseball analogy to explain perjury and obstruction of justice. I don't recall exactly what he said, so to paraphrase and to explain to non-baseball literate, suppose a player throws dirt in the umpire's face. He might well succeed in preventing the umpire from seeing the play. The umpire might have no way of knowing what happened or what the correct call should be, but he sure knows the player threw dirt in his face. Libby is the player and his lies are the dirt. Libby appears to have succeeded in preventing investigators from finding out just what Cheney did, but it's obvious he threw the dirt. Fitzgerald knew it, anyone following the case through the reality-based media knew it, and I suspect even the right wing knew it! on some level.
There are some interesting asides on the coverage of the verdict:
- On yesterday's Thom Hartmann Program, Victoria Jones from Talk Radio News mentioned that she was likely to win a pool among White House reporters. Few thought Libby would be convicted of anything. One wonders why so many of them missed so much. It's about 1:47 into the podcast into the Air America podcast.
- The AP report quoted juror Denis Collins. This was the quote as the story appeared on Yahoo and the Minneapolis Star Tribune : "There was a tremendous amount of sympathy for Mr. Libby on the jury. It was said a number of times, 'What are we doing with this guy here? Where's Rove? Where are these other guys?'" Collins said. "I'm not saying we didn't think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of. It seemed like he was, as Mr. Wells put it, he was the fall guy." The same story carried on the New York Post site left out "Where are the other guys?" The Post is sort of a print Fox News, and even owned by the same corporation. Why did they cut that part of the quote? Did they want their conservative audience to be ignorant of the suspicions regarding anyone but Rove, especially Cheney? Could it be Rove will be the next one sacrificed, and does Rove know this?
- Out of curiosity to see how conservative media were covering the story, I saw a bit of Hannity and Colmes, apparently without Colmes, or any rational voice. Hannity had a panel which included, I'm not kidding, Robert Novak. Yes, the pseudo-journalist who actually exposed Mrs. Wilson's identity was brought on the show for analysis. The panel was unanimous that Valerie Wilson wasn't undercover. The only evidence was that the jury asked for clarification on that point and the judge said it was irrelevant. No one used a bit of logic, that if she wasn't covert, the leak would have been tawdry maybe but in no way illegal, and the investigators were all people who had the security clearance to know whether she was covert or not. If she wasn't covert, no investigation. If you don't want to believe the Wilsons' statements, or former agents who worked with her, Fitzgerald's statement in the indictment that she was covert ("At all relevant times from January 1, 2002 through July 2003, Valerie Wilson was employed by the CIA, and her employment status was classified." ), at least use your head a bit.
March 2
Contact your US representative and tell them the Rush Holt bill to require paper trails with voting machines, though an improvement, is still fundamentally flawed. Brad Friedman has explained the misinformation and misplaced concerns protecting touchscreens from outright abolition, so I won't repeat it all, just highlight a couple things. He mentioned that paper trails will be counted only for recounts, so usually they won't ever be counted. I'll just go further and mention that if the voter doesn't get to see the printout and doesn't bother checking, then there's just two copies of an incorrect ballot. If the machine won't record a vote, then seeing the bad result on paper doesn't fix it. Voters in Sarasota last election reported that their congressional votes weren't being counted, but with the machines not saving them, a printout wouldn't have helped. The printout also doesn't help if the machines just don't work, or if lines are long because voters must have a machine. With optical scanners, the ballots can be filled in without the scanner working and scanned later, which is what Minnesota does with absentee ballots. If booths aren't available, voters willing to give up some privacy can use overflow tables, walls, any flat surface and thereby not have to wait in line maybe for hours.
Above all, don't take for granted the obvious idiocy of touchscreens will defeat them. It hasn't so far. Machine salesmen have proven pretty effective. Election officials haven't gotten the technical issues so far, so no reason they'll start now, especially if they have to admit they screwed up by spending a bunch of money on these machines. A Democratic Congress is a chance for improvement, but they still need to hear from us.
I saw the presidential campaign of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huccabee coming to an end on C-SPAN this evening. He was speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference. Two things told me he's going nowhere. The first was when C-SPAN put up a subtitle, if that's the right word, under Huccabee, mentioning not something about Huccabee, but that John McCain wouldn't be speaking at the event. The non-appearance of another candidate was more important than the speaking candidate. That's what you call getting no respect. Then there's losing respect, meaning I lost respect for Huccabee who has so far seemed like the one reasonable Republican candidate so far. He not only promised no tax increases whatsoever, he said he went to see Grover Norquist and hand over his signed anti-tax pledge. Did he prostrate himself and lick Norquist's shoes too? He did have a line that was clever. I'm paraphrasing, but it was something like most politicians are thermometers, but a leader is a thermostat. If I have to explain that line, then maybe it isn't so clever.
March 1
I recently received an e-mail hoax. I refer to one of those messages that gets forwarded repeatedly by people who don't stop to wonder why they're hearing this in an e-mail instead of an actual news outlet. This specific one repeats the long debunked claim that Citgo is changing its name to Petro Express to avoid a boycott by Americans who dislike Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. I bring this up not just to repeat the debunking, though I hope I can provide that service for readers who might receive this or a similar message, but to show some larger points: this is the sort of nonsense the right wing generates with remarkable alacrity; it gets traction because it keeps getting passed around in email and other forums, like talk radio, message boards, conservative web sites, and Fox News, by people who don't check it out or don't care if it's false; it's often easily debunked. On that last point, I'm not some genius who instantly recognized all the falsehoods. I put "citgo, petro express" in Yahoo, and got results that included repetitions of the falsehood, but also this page on About's Urban Legends site. It took not even a minute to find. According to the guide, the hoax was started by a Christian conservative group, the American Family Association. I'll give you a quick debunking guideline: when it comes from a conservative group with "Family" in the name, it's probably wrong.
The text of the message I received is below, and let me clarify the problem with the main point: Citgo is not changing its name to "Petro Express". Petro Express is a separate company. You might rightly guess much else of what you're about to read is false:
Chavez is NOW getting a Russian Weapons Factory built by Putin. The RUSSIANS are building an AK-47 Kalashnikov Assault Rifle factory in Venezuela , to give armament support to Communist Rebel groups throughout the Americas . Chavez NOW has IRANIANS operating his oil refineries in Venezuela for him. It is likely only a matter of time, if not already, before Chavez has Iranian-built LONG RANGE missiles, with a variety of warhead types aimed at: Guess Who? CITGO is NOW in the process of Changing Its Name to PETRO EXPRESS due to the loss of gasoline sales in the USA due to the recent publicity of ownership by Chavez of Venezuela . Every dollar you spend with CITGO or PETRO EXPRESS gasoline will be used against you, your basic human rights, and your freedoms. He will start wars here in the Americas that will probably be the death of millions of free people. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT because Chavez is starting to feel the loss of revenue from his holdings. HE OWNS CITGO. This is a very important move that everyone should be aware of. ANNOUNCED JUST RECENTLY, CITGO, BEING AWARE THAT SALES ARE DOWN DUE TO U.S. CUSTOMERS NOT WANTING TO BUY FROM "CITGO-CHAVEZ", HAVE STARTED TO CHANGE THE NAME OF SOME OF THEIR STATIONS TO: "PETRO EXPRESS" DO NOT BUY FROM "PETRO EXPRESS" EITHER!!! "PETRO EXPRESS" IS ALSO 100% OWNED BY "CHAVEZ." KEEP THIS MEMO GOING SO THAT EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT IS HAPPENING. BOYCOTT "CITGO" AND "PETRO EXPRESS" AND MAKE SURE THIS IS PASSED ON TO EVERYONE YOUR YOUR E-MAIL LIST IN THE UNITED STATES AND OUTSIDE OF AMERICA .How could you have known this was false? That's what search engines are for. I mentioned above how easy it was to find the debunking on About, but those who don't want to trust the Urban Legends guide could have done the research themselves. It took me seconds to put "petroexpress.com into my browser URL box, hit enter, click on the "about" link and see "Petro Express, LOCALLY OWNED AND OPERATED, [capitalization theirs] is a multi-store convenience chain in Charlotte, NC." What do you know, not owned by Citgo. Next, though it's common knowledge that Citgo is owned by the Venezuelan government, not by Chavez, you could have typed www.citgo.com into your browser and seen Citgo's about page.
It's veering near accuracy that Iran is now running Venezuela's refineries. Iran is building a refinery in Venezuela. How a refinery leads to Iran putting missiles in Venezuela is a bit of a leap. Admittedly it isn't an assertion of fact, but an opinion of what could happen. Nonetheless it falls apart easily. There isn't any evidence that Iran is seeking to place missiles in Venezuela. Iran's newest missiles have a range of 1500 miles, enough to reach Florida, but not the rest of the US.
There is a grain of truth to the claim Russia is building an AK-47 factory. Venezuela has bought many AK-47s, and it bought a license to build its own. Given the threat from the Bush administration, I call this prudence, and anyone who objects should also object the rifle factories in the US. Note also that Russia isn't building the factory, and has licensed other countries to make rifles. This isn't a unique arrangement.
This leads to the charge Chavez will start wars in the Americas. Based on...? It sounds alarming, like something an aggressive America-hating dictator could do, and, if that's close to your impression of Chavez, even believable. Putting aside the the questions of whether he's a dictator (complicated -- somewhat yes, somewhat no) and whether he hates America (Bush yes, the US poor to whom he donated oil during winters when prices were high, no), Chavez has not attacked anyone, nor supported any rebel groups. This charge is what is politely known as "the raving of a loony".
Please note too that these sources weren't hard to find. Though Iran and the AK-47 factory took a bit more work to track down, it still wasn't a lot. I found the IRNA site in one search on Lycos, and the AK-47 story through one search on Lycos, which linked to another site linking to the Seattle Times. One search on Topix.net found the St. Petersburg Times story. None of this is complicated.
