“Reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
“Reality has a well-known liberal bias.”
Watch Stephen Colbert’s routine at the White House Correspondent Dinner.
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750.
750.
The number of laws “President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey…since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution. Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ‘whistle-blower’ protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.”
VIDEO: Bodman Stumped Trying to Explain Bush Flip-Flop on Strategic Reserve
VIDEO: Bodman Stumped Trying to Explain Bush Flip-Flop on Strategic Reserve
In Sept. 2000, then-Gov. George W. Bush criticized President Clinton for proposing to use the strategic oil reserve in response to high prices:
The Strategic Reserve is an insurance policy meant for a sudden disruption of our energy supply or for war. Strategic Reserve should not be used as an attempt to drive down oil prices right before an election. It should not be used for short-term political gain at the cost of long-term national security.
Today on Meet the Press, Tim Russert asked Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to explain why President Bush broke his 2000 campaign pledge and announced he would stop filling the Strategic Reserve.
Bodman couldn’t keep his answers straight. First he said the decision was merely “symbolic.” Then he claimed it was actually meant “to make a contribution to the reduction of prices.” Then he suggested that Bush had indeed broken his campaign pledge, but that it was okay since it had been several years and “times are different.” Then he flipped again, saying Bush was justified because current gas prices constituted a “crisis.” Not ready for primetime. Watch it:
Full transcript below: More »
George Will: Tony Snow ‘Won’t Make a Particle of Difference’
George Will: Tony Snow ‘Won’t Make a Particle of Difference’
Today on ABC’s This Week, conservative pundit George Will said the appointment of new White House Press Secretary Tony Snow was an “aesthetic” fix for a “substance problem” and would do nothing to help the Bush administration. Watch it:
Transcript:
WILL: [Snow's appointment is] just what conservatives really want, is government by Fox News. But he’s a man of wit, charm, intelligence, goodwill and it won’t make a particle of difference. It really won’t. Because it’s not a communication problem. It’s a substance problem. Politics is about something. Now, this is an aesthetic improvement in that room in the White House, period.
VIDEO: Powell Says U.S. Went Into Iraq Without Enough Troops
VIDEO: Powell Says U.S. Went Into Iraq Without Enough Troops
In an interview aired today on Britain’s ITV, former Secretary of State Colin Powell said that the U.S. went into Iraq without enough troops. Powell said he always “favored a larger military presence.†Prior to the invasion Powell made the case to Rumsfeld and President Bush but was overruled. As a result Powell said we didn’t have “enough force there at the time to impose order.†Watch it:
Transcript: More »
Notification of ‘Target’ Status: Rove’s Red Herring
Notification of ‘Target’ Status: Rove’s Red Herring
On Wednesday, following Karl Rove’s fifth appearance before a grand jury, his lawyer Robert Luskin released a statement. Much has been made of this portion:
In connection with this appearance, the special counsel has advised Mr. Rove that he is not a target of the investigation. Mr. Fitzgerald has affirmed that he has made no decision concerning charges.
The United States Grand Jury Manual defines a “target†as “a person as to whom the prosecutor or the grand jury has substantial evidence linking him or her to the commission of a crime.†On Thursday, MSNBC’s David Shuster provided an important bit of context:
I don’t think there is any chance [Rove] will resign absent an indictment. Perhaps that’s why the stakes are so high. Scooter Libby only got notification that he was the target that very morning. He didn’t have time. It doesn’t look like Karl Rove will get advanced notification either if he gets indicted.
Karl Rove may or may not be indicted. But the fact that he hasn’t been notified that he is a target of the investigation should not provide him or his supporters much comfort.
100,000.
100,000.
Number of Iraqi families forced to flee their homes to escape sectarian violence.
Dr. Lester M. Crawford,
Dr. Lester M. Crawford,
the former FDA commissioner under President Bush, “is under criminal investigation by a federal grand jury over accusations of financial improprieties and false statements to Congress, his lawyer said Friday. … Dr. Crawford resigned in September, fewer than three months after the Senate confirmed him. He said then that it was time for someone else to lead the agency.” (Via Atrios)
BREAKING: Rove’s Legal Troubles More Extensive Than Previously Reported
BREAKING: Rove’s Legal Troubles More Extensive Than Previously Reported
It has been widely reported that Rove’s legal troubles center around his initial failure to tell prosecutors about his conversation with TIME Magazine’s Matt Cooper regarding Joe Wilson’s wife. In a new story, Murray Waas reports that Rove could also be in legal jeopardy based on the substance of what he said about his conversation with Cooper once he acknowledged it occurred. Here’s the critical point:
Rove testified to the grand jury that when he told Cooper that Plame worked at the agency, he was only passing along unverified gossip, according to people familiar with his testimony.
In contrast, Cooper has testified that Rove told him in a phone conversation on July 11, 2003, that Plame worked for the CIA and played a role in having the agency select her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, to make a fact-finding trip to Niger in 2002.
Cooper has also testified that Rove, as well as a second source — I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, then-chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney — portrayed the information about Plame as accurate and authoritative.
So there is a big difference between Rove’s version of the story and Cooper’s version of the story. If Fitzgerald establishes that Rove is the one not telling the truth, it could potentially form the basis of perjury or obstruction of justice charges against Rove.
In short: Rove’s in even more trouble than we thought.
Rush Limbaugh arrested
Rush Limbaugh arrested
on prescription fraud charges, Palm Beach County authorities tell CBS News.
UPDATE: Sun-Sentinel has more.
Goss denies that he partied with Wilkes.
Goss denies that he partied with Wilkes.
TPM Muckraker digs into reports that Goss may be implicated in the “free limousine service, free stays at hotel suites at the Watergate and the Westin Grand, and free prostitutes” provided by corrupt defense contractors. “This is horribly irresponsible. He hasn’t even been to the Watergate in decades,” a CIA spokeswoman said. “When I asked if Goss had attended Wilkes’ parties at the Westin or other locations, [she] repeated the denial. ‘It’s horribly irresponsible. Flatly untrue.‘”
Contrary To Administration Predictions, Iraq War Contributing To High Oil Prices
Contrary To Administration Predictions, Iraq War Contributing To High Oil Prices
In September 2002, when the price of gas was $1.40 per gallon, White House senior economic adviser Laurence Lindsey predicted regime change in Iraq would lower oil prices:
As for the impact of a war with Iraq, “It depends how the war goes.†But [Bush senior economic adviser Laurence Lindsey] quickly adds that that “Under every plausible scenario, the negative effect will be quite small relative to the economic benefits that would come from a successful prosecution of the war.â€
“The key issue is oil, and a regime change in Iraq would facilitate an increase in world oil,†which would drive down oil prices, giving the U.S. economy an added boost.
Today, with the price of gas now around $2.91 per gallon, the Associated Press reports that the Iraq war has contributed to high oil prices:
With oil prices above $70 a barrel fouling the world economy, dismay is focusing on Iraq, whose exports have slipped to their lowest levels since the 2003 invasion.
”Iraq could be making a tremendous difference,” said Dalton Garis, an economist at the Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi. Instead, its shortfall is ”a significant contributing factor to the high price of oil,” he said.
Russia Playing a Dangerous Game That Could Spark The Next War
Russia Playing a Dangerous Game That Could Spark The Next War
Russia announced this week that it would proceed with a plan to sell 29 sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles to Iran, spurning a call by the Bush administration to not “continue with the arms sale.â€
Rosa Brooks writes today in the Los Angeles Times that the Russian-Iranian deal is cause for alarm because it could precipitate the next war, a war between Iran and Israel. Brooks writes that Russia is playing a deceptive “double game†that could initiate such a war in the near future:
Russian leaders continue to mouth the usual diplomatic platitudes about democracy and global cooperation, but Russia is actually playing a complex double game. On Tuesday, Russia launched a spy satellite for Israel, which the Israelis can use to monitor Iran’s nuclear facilities. On the same day, Russian leaders confirmed their opposition to any U.N. Security Council effort to impose sanctions against Iran, and their intention to go through with the lucrative sale of 29 Tor M1 air defense missile systems to Iran.
Sergei Markov, a Russia expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, spoke this week about the dangers of the Russian missile deal:
[W]e realize perfectly well that as soon as Israeli intelligence gets information that the missiles have been dispatched to Iran, it is very likely that the missile attack against Iranian nuclear facilities will be launched particularly at that moment by Israel.
Brooks writes a regional war would draw the U.S. into the conflict, causing the entire Middle East to “implode,†terrorist attacks worldwide to increase further, and the U.S.’s global influence to wane. Andrei Piontkovsky, a Russian political analyst, believes Russia’s oil and gas oligarchs won’t shed any tears over a war in the Middle East, especially if it keeps oil prices high. More »
Colbert to Kristol: “How Is The New American Century?”
Colbert to Kristol: “How Is The New American Century?”
Last night of the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert sliced and diced prominent neo-conservative Bill Kristol on the Project For the New American Century, Iraq and Iran. Watch an excerpt:
Our favorite part:
COLBERT: How’s the New American Century? Looks good to me, right?
KRISTOL: I think it, I…I’m speechless.
COLBERT: Really?
KRISTOL: Yeah, we’ve sort of, the Project for a New American Century, we’re one of the few people…
COLBERT: Come on, it’s a terrific New American Century, right?
KRISTOL: Well, I think we’re doing ok.
We’ve posted the full transcript of the clip HERE.
“Five Congress members were willingly arrested
“Five Congress members were willingly arrested
and led away from the Sudanese Embassy in plastic handcuffs Friday in protest of the Sudanese government’s role in atrocities in the Darfur region. ‘The slaughter of the people of Darfur must end,’ Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), a Holocaust survivor…, said from the embassy steps before his arrest.”
UPDATE: PoliticsTV was on the scene. Watch the video.
‘As Many as a Half a Dozen’ Members of Congress May Be Involved in Prostitution Scandal
‘As Many as a Half a Dozen’ Members of Congress May Be Involved in Prostitution Scandal
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the FBI is “investigating whether two contractors implicated in the bribery of former Rep. Randall ‘Duke’ Cunningham supplied him with prostitutes and free use of a limousine and hotel suites.” The Journal also said the investigators are exploring “whether any other members of Congress” are involved.
Last night on MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, Dean Calbreath of the San Diego Union Tribune – which recently won a Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the Cunningham case – said that “as many as a half a dozen” members of Congress could ultimately be implicated in the prostitution scandal. Watch it:
UPDATE: More on the scandal at DailyKos.
UPDATE II: Even more at TPMMuckraker.
Transcript: More »
ThinkFast: April 28, 2006
ThinkFast: April 28, 2006
A pair of Bush administration terrorism reports are due out today. The State Department’s annual terrorism report finds that Iraq has become a safe haven for terrorists and has attracted a “foreign fighter pipeline” linked to terrorist plots, cells and attacks throughout the world. Meanwhile, a National Counterterrorism Threat Center report finds that terrorist incidents and deaths more than doubled in 2005.
$1.2 million: The collective debt owed by almost 900 battle-injured soldiers to the Department of Defense. These debts have “resulted in significant hardships” to the soldiers and their families, according to a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.
Senate trims the pork…err, seafood, out of the emergency supplemental bill. Senators succeeded yesterday in “killing funding for a seafood promotion program that had been tucked inside a bill for the Iraq war and further hurricane relief for the Gulf Coast.â€
Jack Abramoff’s lawyers claim the lobbyist is “broke.” But this month, Abramoff and his family spent a week at the oceanfront Turnberry Isle Resort and Country Club in Aventura, Florida, which charges a “minimum of $3,600 per adult for a nine-night Passover package.” Abramoff’s lawyers said the trip was paid for by “extended family.”
Facing a surge of anti-American sentiment in his country, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf insisted yesterday that he was not George Bush’s poodle. “When you are talking about fighting terrorism or extremism, I’m not doing that for the US or Britain. I’m doing it for Pakistan,” he said. “It’s not a question of being a poodle. I’m nobody’s poodle. I have enough strength of my own to lead.” More »
The Pentagon’s new press secretary
The Pentagon’s new press secretary
will be Eric Ruff. In 2004, Ruff accidentally left handwritten talking points for Secretary Rumsfeld and a map to Rumsfeld’s house at a Starbucks in Washington, DC. (HT: Muckraked)
“Public outrage, sporadic before, is growing
“Public outrage, sporadic before, is growing
over the continuing bloodshed in Darfur,” the New York Times reports. George Clooney, Russell Simmons, U.S. Olympic gold medal winner Joey Cheek, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and dozens of others will be joining Darfur rallies around the country on Sunday. As Clooney said today, “What we cannot do is turn our heads and look away and hope that this will somehow disappear. It’s the first genocide of the 21st century.“
Specter threatens to cut funding for NSA spying.
Specter threatens to cut funding for NSA spying.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said he wants answers from the White House about the legal justification for the warrantless spying program, and he is threatening to cut off funding for the National Security Agency until he gets them. “Institutionally, the presidency is walking all over Congress at the moment,†said Specter.
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