More evidence that indictments are coming

From the NYT:

The special counsel in the C.I.A. leak case has told associates he has no plans to issue a final report about the results of the investigation, heightening the expectation that he intends to bring indictments, lawyers in the case and law enforcement officials said yesterday.

The prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, is not expected to take any action in the case this week, government officials said. A spokesman for Mr. Fitzgerald, Randall Samborn, declined to comment.

Another week, I can't take this anymore! It's like the best-sex-ever going on a bit too long. Read the rest of this post...

Wholesale inflation jumps in September

The 1.9% jump last month was the highest since 1990 with Daddy Bush and just barely below the infamous 2.0% jump in 1974. High inflation must be something that runs in the family. Read the rest of this post...

Scooter has gotten himself in some BIG trouble

Murray Waas has a new piece at National Journal. Looks like next time Judy and Scooter exchange letters, their roles could be reversed. He'll be the one in prison:

As federal prosecutors in the CIA leak investigation reach the critical stage of deciding whether to bring criminal charges, they are zeroing in on contradictions between the testimony of I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney, and that of New York Times reporter Judith Miller, according to sources close to the investigation and attorneys for individuals enmeshed in the probe.

The prosecutors and the federal grand jury are also scrutinizing whether Libby, or his attorney, tried to discourage Miller from giving testimony to the grand jury, or tried to improperly influence what Miller would say if she testified, according to the same sources.

The grand jury has heard testimony from Miller and other witnesses that is at odds with Libby's testimony, according to the same sources. One crucial contradiction between Miller and Libby, the sources say, involves a July 8, 2003, breakfast meeting during which the two discussed Valerie Plame, the covert CIA operative whose identity was revealed a week later in a newspaper column and whose husband, Joe Wilson, was a critic of the Bush administration's Iraq policy.

The full article is worth a read....gives some great detail and insight in to why Libby is in serious, serious trouble. Read the rest of this post...

Target refuses to fill woman's prescription for emergency contraception

Target sucks.

From Planned Parenthood:

A 26-year-old Missouri woman was refused EC when she handed her prescription to a pharmacist at a Target store in Fenton, MO, on September 30. The woman was told by the pharmacist, “I won’t fill it. It’s my right not to fill it.” She was told that she could go to a local Walgreens instead. The woman said, “When the pharmacist told me she wouldn't [fill the prescription], I went from disbelief to shock to anger. I guess I'm still pretty angry. It seems unbelievable to me that a medical professional could/would deny access to a federally approved drug and impose their personal beliefs in a professional setting. I am also grateful that I did not need it filled at that time. I don't know how it would be if I had just been raped or if the condom broke and I was a feeling confusion and panic anyway -- and then was denied access and told to go across the street.”

The national headquarters of Target has not responded to three PPFA attempts to clarify its policy on pharmacist refusals.

Who's next?

- Target pharmacists who don't want to fill prescriptions for customers who killed Christ?
- Target pharmacists who only dispense HIV medicine to "innocent victims" of AIDS?
- Target pharmacists who want proof that women were really raped, and that they didn't "deserve it," before they sell them emergency contraception?
- Or how about Target pharmacists (or cashiers) who are simply Jehovah's Witnesses? Can they refuse to sell any medicine to anyone, even aspirin?

Read more about this growing outrage, read some more cases of prescription discrimination here, and get even more facts here.

Then do something about it. Read the rest of this post...

I'm interviewing blogger & Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers via IM later tonight...

Harriet Miers, proud founder of the Harriet Miers blog, has deigned to give AMERICAblog an online interview later this evening.

Sure, the witch sold us out and interviewed with The New Yorker first. (She told us last week that she couldn't do OUR interview until today because she was "busy" - busy, my scatalogy. She was just waiting for the New Yorker to scoop us. But we're not bitter. Perhaps she's still pissed at me about that RADAR column I wrote about her.)

Anyway, the interview is in a few hours and I'm looking for questions, good probing questions.

Got any? Best questions make it into my interview. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

These are going to be the BEST indictments - EVER! Read the rest of this post...

Larry Johnson's blog has a new tidbit....and it's really, really good

Big ole tip of the hat to Joe Pittsburgh at Kos for this tidbit from Larry Johnson's blog, No Quarter:

Had lunch today with a person who has a direct tie to one of the folks facing indictment in the Plame affair. There are 22 files that Fitzgerald is looking at for potential indictment . These include Stephen Hadley, Karl Rove, Lewis Libby, Dick Cheney, and Mary Matalin (there are others of course). Hadley has told friends he expects to be indicted. No wonder folks are nervous at the White House.

Okay, we hear lots of rumors about what's going on. In this situation, I like the source. I tend to think that a former intel guy like Johnson knows what a reliable source is. Read the rest of this post...

Did Harriet cooperate like Rove and Libby?

Scottie tells us that Harriet was ordered to cooperate with the special prosecutor, like everyone else:

Q Yes, Scott, you said that the President has directed the White House to cooperate fully with the investigation. So can you tell us whether Harriet Miers, in her connection with the White House, has been involved in any way with the leak investigation, or whether she's testified before the Fitzgerald grand jury?

MR. McCLELLAN: She has been -- carried out the direction of the President, just like the rest of us here, to cooperate fully with the special prosecutor. She has been White House Counsel during part of the time that this investigation has been ongoing. I'm not going to comment on the investigation, though, beyond that.

We need a better answer. I guess it all depends on what the definition of "cooperation" is. If you get hauled back time after time, like Rove and Libby because you left out salient info, are you cooperating? And, is that how Harriett cooperated?

See, most prosecutors consider telling the truth to be a factor in cooperating. Not all the rest of you there cooperated by telling the truth, Scottie. Is that good enough for the President? Read the rest of this post...

Rumors fly about Cheney possibly resigning

And the talk is that Condi would replace him.

Yep, the very-single, football-loving, "mildly pro-choice" Condi Rice.

LOL Read the rest of this post...

CNN NewsNight Covers Rove Story

Watched CNN's NewsNight New and Improved "With Aaron Brown and Anderson Cooper"

In a report "End Game?" Aaron Brown does some great reporting. In an almost five minute piece, Brown summarized the timeline of the Plame investigation hitting on all the key points. While I'm sure that some on the comments will find fault with it, I argue that they did a great job bringing the public up to date and covering the full scope of the investigation just up to the point of the larger conspiracy story that is still brewing. Which is EXACTLY where we want them to be.

We know from Matt Cooper and Time that Rove told Cooper about Plame. We have Judy Miller telling the Grand Jury that Libby told her (at least) about Plame, if not by name. That's a HUGE story unto itself, and the public, which has been paying little attention, now has plenty to sink their teeth into. If there is more, we'll find out later, right now we already have more than enough.

Following the set up piece, they went on to a whole bunch of interviews. Bob Bennett for nearly another five minutes, then Jeff Greenfield and Alex Jones, former Times reporter for four more. All in all, nearly 13 minutes of coverage. All about Plame. Six months ago, who would have thought... Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Markos mentioned last night on his blog something that I thought I had posted as well, but I hadn't (oh, the perils of blogging at 2am). Will Bush fire Cheney if Fitzgerald finds Cheney was one of the traitors involved in leaking Valerie Plame's covert identity? Read the rest of this post...

White House spokesman: Don't believe all the hype about Harriet being anti-abortion

First you read this paragraph, from ABCNews.com (which Joe cites below), and you get worried:

Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers pledged support in 1989 for a constitutional amendment banning abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, according to material given to the Senate on Tuesday.

But the you read the response from the White House and you realize everything's okay:

"A candidate taking a political position in the course of a campaign is different from the role of a judge making a ruling in the judicial process." said Jim Dyke, a White House spokesman.

You see, the White House is going out of its way to say that this is spurious evidence at best of Harriet Miers being pro-life.

Yep, that's what 39% in the polls does for you. The White House starts to undercut itself. Not that I believe a thing the WMD White House says about anything anymore. But it is funny, and weird, that they're intentionally undercutting the very message they need to get out to their base - that Miers will overturn Roe. Read the rest of this post...

By the time they came for me, they was no one left to defend me...

Oh, isn't it grand when the Bush White House is being destroyed by the very forces of evil it once helped create and foster? Look at who's leading the charge against Harriet Miers (or at least leading the charge in sowing doubt about her nomination):

- Ann Coulter
- Manuel Miranda (you'll remember him as the former Senate Republican staffer who had to quit after going into Democratic computer files and taking, and leaking, their internal memos on judicial nominations)
- Gary Bauer, with an assist from the men at the Concerned Women for America
- David Frum (the guy who coined "Axis of Evil")
- The American Conservative Union
- Rush Limbaugh
- The National Review

And on and on and on.

All those conservative mouth-pieces who have driven us nuts over the years, including people who should probably be spending time in jail, have now started eating their own. Kind of like those people in New York City who get lion cubs as pets and then, once they grow up, the cub mauls them.

Sad. But it serves them right. Read the rest of this post...

Harriet wanted to ban abortions

Candidate Harriet was staunchly pro-life:

Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers pledged support in 1989 for a constitutional amendment banning abortions except when necessary to save the life of the mother, according to material given to the Senate on Tuesday.

"If Congress passes a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution that would prohibit abortion except when it was necessary to prevent the death of the mother, would you actively support its ratification by the Texas Legislature," asked an April 1989 questionnaire sent out by the Texans United for Life group.

Miers checked "yes" to that question, and all of the group's questions, including whether she would oppose the use of public moneys for abortions and whether she would use her influence to keep "pro-abortion" people off city health boards and commissions.

But she's telling Senators no one knows how she feels on the issue??? Read the rest of this post...

Right Wingers raising money to stop Harriet

Oh, Harriet. Her former friends and colleagues are not showing her any love:

David Frum, the former White House speechwriter who helped coin the phrase “axis of evil,” is coordinating the anti-Miers fundraising effort.

The first phase of the campaign is estimated to cost between $50,000 and $100,000. Frum declined to comment on how or when the money might be spent, whether on newspaper, radio or Internet advertisements.

He said underwriters had expressed an interest in putting up the money and he had planned to go back to them when he and other strategists decided the best way to spend it.

He is teaming up with other conservatives behind the scenes to generate opposition to Miers’s nomination, which his former colleagues at the White House are straining to sell to the conservative base.

Read the rest of this post...

Open Thread

Any other day, having both Karen Hughes and Lynn Cheney on the Today Show would be too much to bear. But neither one looked all that happy. Wonder why.... Read the rest of this post...

"They have got a senior cooperating witness"

Hat tip to Raw Story who got the jump on this last night. The NY Daily News reports that Fitzgerald has "a senior cooperating witness" and Cheney is getting a very hard look:

A special prosecutor's intensifying focus into who outed a CIA spy has raised questions whether Vice President Cheney himself is involved, knowledgeable sources confirmed yesterday.

At least one source and one reporter who have testified in the probe said U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald is pursuing Cheney's role in the Valerie Plame affair.

In addition, at least six current and former Cheney staffers - most members of the White House Iraq Group - have testified before the grand jury, including the vice president's top honcho, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, and two top Cheney national security lieutenants.

Cheney's name has come up amid indications Fitzgerald may be edging closer to a blockbuster conspiracy charge - with help from a secret snitch.

"They have got a senior cooperating witness - someone who is giving them all of that," a source who has been questioned in the leak probe told the Daily News yesterday.

Who flipped? Love it when they turn on each other. Read the rest of this post...

99% in favor of Iraq "constitution" in some provinces

Hmm, interesting and oh so believable. What are the odds of hitting 99%? Read the rest of this post...

Greenspan finally recognizes economic impact of high energy prices

But don't worry, he'll cover himself with saying the opposite tomorrow, as he always seems to do. His term can't end fast enough. Read the rest of this post...

9 cases of mad cow in Idaho?

It sure looks like it. This is a classic example of the failures of self-regulation, a theme which the GOP always loves. In this case, it was Newt and his lot who couldn't take enough money from the cattle industry which broke with science and common sense and allowed the industry to police itself. The result has been outbreaks of e.coli and mad cow. The e.coli outbreaks have less to do with undercooking the meat and more to do with feces being spread in the meat due to the slaughterhouse conditions of self-regulation.

The mad cow problem is also connected to this new era of self-regulation, thanks to laws that allow the cattle industry to feed cattle, vegetarian animals by nature, leftover scraps of meat and ground bone (bone!) from animals including other cattle. One theory these days is that the sickness could have come from south Asia. How? Well, this modern technique of feeding cattle includes buying slop from anywhere in the world (it's cheaper than grain, easier than cattle roaming field eating natural grass) which includes dumps which are know to include dead human remains washed ashore after burials. The press has all too often talked about the problem in the UK and Europe, overlooking the reality that the same unhealthy and un-natural conditions that started this problem there are present and continue in the US.

Who would guess that the GOP turned the clock back 100 years on food safety for Americans? Self-regulation means no regulation. Why does the GOP hate Americans? Read the rest of this post...

Iraqi vote had unusually high "yes" tally

LOL I literally laughed out loud when I read this. Good God. Now the Bush people are throwing elections in Iraq. Well, he said we'd bring them a good old American-style democracy, and he did.

Iraq's election commission announced Monday that officials were investigating "unusually high" numbers of "yes" votes in about a dozen provinces during Iraq's landmark referendum on a new constitution, raising questions about irregularities in the balloting.

Civil war is my prediction. Read the rest of this post...