Murray Waas on Cheney's new chief of staff, David Attington, and his role in RoveGate

More from Murray. Read More......

Bush vetted next Supreme Court pick with Concerned Women for America

It's official. Harriet's replacement will be the radical right's candidate. So we go from a middle of the road Reagan Republican appointee, Sandra Day, to a far-right Terri Schiavo nutjob.

The American people didn't vote last November for more Terri Schiavos. Read More......

Rosa Parks lying in state, live online

Strikes me as a bit odd, being able to watch live footage of Rosa Parks' coffin lying in state. I mean, it's a good thing that people can pay their respects online, and it permits the entire world to be there, live, but still, something about this is odd.

Anyway, you can watch too via the Washington Post's Web site, the live video feed is their top story on the left-hand side of the page right now. Read More......

Sunday Night Open Thread

I'm feeling generous tonight Mr. President. You had a rough week last week, some (like your poll numbers) might even say your worst ever. So, I'll reccomend a shot instead of a girlie drink. It's how your administration looks right now:

Braindead

2 cl vodka
2 cl sweet and sour mix
2 cl triple sec
ice cubes

Fill the shaker half with ice cubes, and add the ingredients. Shake well. Serve in a shot glass.

Open thread away! Hitting into my Sunday night HBO. Read More......

E&P; on David Brooks' growing madness

It's good

Brooks’ latest work follows by just three days his column profiling Bush’s second-term malaise and how he can repeat the Reagan resurrection—-without once mentioning the war in Iraq. “The Bush administration is not in quite the same bind the Reagan administration was in,” he wrote. “There is no one big scandal.” Brooks willfully ignores that even if Plamegate is no Iran-contra, Bush is beset with a far worse scandal than anything Reagan faced: misleading his country into war, a war that is still going on, with no end in sight and American boys coming home in body bags almost every day.

Read More......

60 Minutes Open Thread

Use this thread to discuss the Wilson piece on 60 Minutes. Read More......

New Supreme Court nominee could come tomorrow

And Harry Reid is already sending out warning signals on Judge Samuel Alito, who has been dubbed "Scalia-lite":

A judge on the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Alito has been dubbed "Scalito" or "Scalia-lite" by some lawyers because his judicial philosophy invites comparisons to Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia's.

"That is not one of the names that I've suggested to the president," Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told "Late Edition" on CNN. "In fact, I've done the opposite. I think it would create a lot of problems."

Reid said Bush would be making a "mistake" were he to settle on a hard-liner simply to appease the far right in his party, especially after conservatives' wrath undermined Miers' nomination.

Bush is probably going to try to appease the hard right, they are all he has right now. Looks like the Democrats are ready for that fight. Read More......

Talk grows as to whether Bush should fire Rove

Of course, Bush would have to actually keep his word if he were going to fire Rove. And if we've learned anything this past year, it's that Bush's word is meaningless when cronyism comes into play.

Anyway, whether Karl should be fired is the talk of the day. Good.

Speaking of which: Tell me again WHY this man still has a codeword (we assume) security clearance? I had one of those clearances and I can tell you that were I ever under investigation for leaking the name of a CIA agent, there's a snowball's chance in hell that I've have been allowed to keep my clearances, let alone continue having access to some of the most highly classified intelligence in this country. It is simply outrageous that during wartime the Bush administration has such a lax attitude toward state secrets.

GOP: The Party of Treason. Read More......

Open thread

Just got back from a very nice brunch at a fellow blogger's place. Anything new and scary happening? Read More......

For us it may have been Fitzmas, for Time Magazine, it's Valentine's Day

Titled Mr. Fitzgerald Goes to Washington, Time sends Patrick Fitzgerald the biggest Valentine in the world:

Last summer in the Sierra Nevada in California, he wielded an ice ax to scale the treacherous slopes of Mount Whitney, at 14,491 ft. the highest peak in the lower 48 states. He has gone bungee jumping in New Zealand. He hang glides. All of which would be only mildly impressive if he weren't also scared of heights, notes David Kelley, a close friend and former colleague in New York. "He sees the challenge and wants to take it on," says Kelley.

Other than that hideously kiss up Entertainment-Tonight-style paragraph, the rest of the piece is pretty interesting.

I've been working on a bigger piece to digest last week, but it's going to take me a little while longer. Suffice to say I'm quite satisfied with the indictment of Scooter. As any scholar of war will tell you, it's always to your advantage when your enemy's camp is in disarray. With Scooter and Miers, it's a nice one-two punch of disarray.

And we're not done yet - it was just the first day of Fitzmas, just the Partridge in the Pear Tree. I can't wait for 5 gold rings (perhaps they are handcuffs?)! Read More......

Of course FItzgerald didn't charge anybody with violating the secrecy statutues - Libby obstructed the entire investigation

Fitzgerald mentioned this on Friday, but it's worth repeating, since the Republican surrogates are now suggesting that no "real" crime occured because Fitzgerald has yet to charge anyone with leaking classified information.

Scooter, and possibly others (Official A comes to mind), obstructed the investigation. They lied to the investigators and thwarted the effort of the investigators to find out the truth. It wouldn't be surprising that when the key witness is lying and refusing to come clean, to this day, that the investigation hasn't yet charged anyone with the underlying crime. I mean, duh. As Fitzgerald noted, this is why perjury and obstruction of justice are such serious crimes. Scooter is literally stopping Fitzgerald from finding out what happened. So to suggest that Scooter's apparently-successful (so far) effort to obstruct the investigation by lying somehow proves that Scooter and Rove didn't violate any secrecy laws, well, that's just absurd.

And Al Capone was innocent of being a mobster, by the way. After all, they only got him on tax evasion, so that proves the prosecutor concluded he was innocent of everything else. Read More......

Amb. Joe Wilson on CBS' "60 Minutes" tonight

Don't miss it. Read More......

Reid: Bush should apologize and Rove should resign

He's right. As Reid said this morning on ABC's "THIS WEEK," Bush and Cheney both came out and praised "Scooter," rather than apologizing for the crimes his own staff have committed. Shameful. Read More......

Senator Cornyn R-TX says it's okay for Karl and Scottie to talk

Senator Cornyn is on THIS WEEK this morning saying that Fitzgerald's investigation proves that Rove broke no laws and did nothing wrong.

Great, then the White House's surrogates are saying the investigation is over and Rove has been exonerated. And finally Karl and Scottie can come clean with everything they know that happened. Did Karl lie to Scottie? Did Scottie lie to the press and the country? Did the president lie when he said he wanted to get to the bottom of this and he already knew it was Karl? Did Cheney lie when he shut up for 2 years while he knew Scooter was the leaker?

Thank you, Senator Cornyn. We now know it's okay to demand answers from the White House since Karl has been "exonerated." Read More......

American's really don't trust Congress either

AP/Ipsos new poll has bad numbers for Congress on honesty and ethics. Not much of a surprise with DeLay and Frist in charge. The key is how the Democrats make it work for them:

Only one-third of Americans give Congress good ratings for its ethics and honesty, according to an AP-Ipsos poll that found more evidence of the public's longstanding disdain for the legislative branch of government.

Investigations of two top congressional leaders have drawn more attention to Congress' low standings, though analysts say other factors such as the Iraq war and gas prices are likely contributors to the dip this year in Congress' ratings.

Almost half in the poll, 45 percent, give Congress poor marks for its honesty and ethics, and 21 percent said congressional ethics were neither good nor poor.

Read More......

Sunday Morning Open Thread

What will this week bring? Read More......

The WMD threat in Jordan and other WMD lies

The Libby indictment is making plenty of people re-examine some of those terrifying WMD stories that have cluttered the media during recent years. Just like the WMD story from Iraq, guess what? Yep, same old, same old. The GOP crazies had been looking for stories that would scare the hell out of Americans and get them lined up behind their agenda and they needed something shocking to do this because how else could you mobilize support for such radical policies? With the absolute failure to deliver any results with WMD in Iraq, they tried (and still try) to locate and suggest other WMD threats around the world, preferably in locations and situations that are impossible to prove with Syria often making the list.

Almost forgotten in the pack of lies strategy has been scary story of a WMD plot in Jordan and talk of the 2 mile mushroom cloud. Perhaps the reason is has been forgotten is because again, it was a pack of lies meant only to scare people despite a lack of evidence of any serious WMD threat. Now that is it obvious to anyone not wearing blinders that the neocons have been manipulating the American public through the media to wreak fear across the land, the MSM is revisiting some of these so-called plots and exposing them for what they really are...lies.

Looks like the high times of the smear and fear crowd are slipping away. Read More......

Wash Post/ABC Poll: Bush's ethics worse than Clinton's, Approval rating at all-time low

I think the voters want a do-over.

And he's at a new all-time low in job approval.

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.

Good poll, across the board. Check it out. Read More......

Happy Day Before Halloween

Boo! Read More......