Late Night Open Thread

I bet it's been a long week already at the White House. Here's one before bed Mr. President. It's an AMERICAblog old-fashioned hat tip to the grand jury about to take your top general off the field:

Gent Of The Jury

Scale ingredients to servings
2 oz gin
1 1/2 tsp dry vermouth
3 cocktail onions (AMERICAblog variation - scale number of onions based on Administration members indicted)

In a mixing glass half-filled with ice cubes, combine the gin and vermouth. Stir well. Strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with the onions. Serve in a Cocktail Glass.

Open thread away. I'm feeling vindictive tonight. Blame John Stewart. Read the rest of this post...

Just last Friday, Rove's lawyer said Karl wasn't a target - now 5 days later, "no comment"

Last Friday:

"Not quite a year ago, I received oral and written assurances from the counsel that Karl is not a target of the investigation," Rove attorney Robert Luskin said Friday. "There is nothing I am aware of in the matters that have come to light since then that would change that."

Tonight:

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, declined to say whether his client had been contacted by Fitzgerald. In the past, Luskin has said that Rove was assured that he was not a target.

What's changed since Friday, Mr. Luskin? Read the rest of this post...

Very strange story. Suicide bombing at Univ of Oklahoma football game? Ties to 20th hijacker Moussaoui?

Someone just emailed me about this, and it is odd that we've heard nothing about this - those of us who live outside of Oklahoma.

Basically, some kid either blew himself up with a bomb, or got blown up near a bomb, right outside a University of Oklahoma football stadium full of people. The university and the feds are claiming it was just an isolated incident, the kid had no ties to terrorist organizations, etc. But the local news is now reporting that witnesses say the kid tried to get into the stadium with a big backpack, and when a security guard tried to look into the backpack, the kid bolted. (Video here on this aspect).

The bomber reportedly had a Pakistani roomate, who was taken into custody after the bombing and then released. And while that could be just a coincidence, an excellent blog in Oklahoma is reporting this:

Oklahoma News 9 is reporting that Hinrichs began attending the same Norman mosque once attended by convicted 9-11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui.

If true, that's quite interesting.

The blog further dissects the local news on this, and points out some glaring inconsistencies between the official story and what the media is turning up.

Maybe this was just a kid who killed himself, but it sure sounds like more than the authorities are letting on. Is any national media looking at this? Read the rest of this post...

Looks like there will be a decision shortly on Plame-gate indictments

So the rumors swirling around today may in fact be true. As you know, we reported earlier that there are rumors of impending indictments surrounding Plame-gate. We now find out that in fact the special prosecutor will make his decision in days. Interesting timing that we get this confirmation only hours after the rumors surfaced.

According to Reuters:

The federal prosecutor investigating who leaked the identity of a CIA operative is expected to signal within days whether he intends to bring indictments in the case, legal sources close to the investigation said on Wednesday.

As a first step, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was expected to notify officials by letter if they have become targets, said the lawyers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Fitzgerald could announce plea agreements, bring indictments, or conclude that no crime was committed. By the end of this month he is expected to wrap up his nearly two-year-old investigation into who leaked CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.

Earlier today, Raw Story reported that Karl Rove may have been named a target by prosecutors. That would be a very important development. Now, his lawyer, who repeatedly stated that Rove was not a target, isn't talking:

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, declined to say whether his client had been contacted by Fitzgerald. In the past, Luskin has said that Rove was assured that he was not a target.

Stay tuned...this is getting good. Read the rest of this post...

Halle-friggin-lujah!

Blogger died, across the board, took all of our blogs with it. It's back. We need to move to our own server, to avoid these ongoing glitches, but that will cost a LOT of money (it's not just the server, it's the bandwidth, tech costs of reproducing the blog and upgrading it, adding new features, etc.) Very annoying stuff. We've asked several big funders to help out. Waiting to hear their verdict...

Anyway, back to the madness. Read the rest of this post...

Speaking of indictments...

From AP:

The Bush administration's former chief procurement official was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury on charges of making false statements and obstructing investigations into high-powered Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The five felony counts in the indictment charge David H. Safavian with obstructing Senate and executive branch investigations into whether he aided Abramoff in efforts to acquire property controlled by the General Services Administration around the nation's capital.

I really hope he's still on the job. After all, Bush administration officials aren't expected to leave their jobs unless they're convicted. That is what the president said. Or is this guy a person of color too? Read the rest of this post...

Bush to give ANOTHER "major" speech about Iraq

Give it up, already. Read the rest of this post...

ABC News: Spy in the White House arrested

ABC just released an exclusive. A US Marine was working in the White House as a spy for the Philippines. He worked in the White House for 3 years, and most recently for Dick Cheney. He then stole classified documents and passed them to the Philippines opposition. He's a naturalized US citizen from the Philippines.

But I'm a bit confused. I thought President Bush's declared policy was that no one would be forced to leave the White House staff unless they were CONVICTED of the misuse of classified information? Yet this guy just got frog-marched out for an allegation - he's not been convicted of anything.

Maybe Bush meant no white people. Read the rest of this post...

Are 22 indictments imminent?

More rumors, from Radar:

The D.C. Rumor mill is thrumming with whispers that 22 indictments are about to be handed down on the outed-CIA agent Valerie Plame case. The last time the wires buzzed this loud — that Tom DeLay would be indicted and would step down from his leadership post in the House — the scuttlebutters got it right.

Can it be a coincidence that the White House appears to be distancing President Bush from embattled aide Karl Rove? “He’s been missing in action at more than one major presidential event,” a member of the White House press corps tells us.

If the word on the street is right a second time, we have a bit of advice for Rove: Go with vertical stripes, they’re way more slimming.

Read the rest of this post...

Pretty ballsy of Harriet Miers

Starting her own blog and all... Read the rest of this post...

Karen Hughes is back to her lying ways

What a surprise. Read the rest of this post...

The White House is hiding Karl Rove - they know something's coming...

I just talked to a source who told me that Karl Rove has been missing from a number of recent White House presidential events - events that he has ALWAYS attended in the past. For example, Rove was absent from yesterday's presidential press conference to promote Harriet Miers. These are the kind of events Rove ALWAYS attends, I'm told, yet of late he's been MIA each and every time.

My source tells me that the scuttlebutt around town is that the White House knows something bad is coming, in terms of Karl getting indicted, and they're already trying to distance him from the president.

Oh, God, you've been so good to us lately. Please give us this one more. Read the rest of this post...

Open Thread

Hearing anything interesting? Read the rest of this post...

HARRIET MIERS: "One of the guys. Always has been."

What kind of woman is Harriet Miers? Here is a choice perspective from a co-worker. From Texas Lawyer, December 16, 1996:

Miers played marathon games on the firm's softball team and is remembered as the first woman to take part in the firm's retreat at Possum Kingdom Lake. Despite some trepidation all around, the outing apparently went smoothly, and yes, Miers was given her own bedroom.

"She laughed with us and kidded with us. She was anything but overbearing," Locke Purnell shareholder Joe H. Staley Jr. says. "She just instantly was one of the guys. Always has been."

I bet Phyllis Schlafly is going to love hearing that.

PS Not that there's anything wrong with that. Read the rest of this post...

100 to 150 homes in black neighborhood of New Orleans still not searched for dead bodies

And they won't be. The feds have called off the searches, even though the homes reportedly stink of dead bodies.

Courtesy of your friendly neighborhood Bush administration. Read the rest of this post...

Sandra Day O'Miers

Plus ca change...

Flashback to 1981. It's long, read it.

President Reagan’s choice of Arizona Appeals Court Judge Sandra Day O’Connor to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court has astonished and dismayed a great number of conservatives, many of whom keep wondering how in the world he arrived at this particular selection for this most critical of judicial positions.

From a wide variety of viewpoints it seems wrong-headed. The president undoubtedly feels good about fulfilling his campaign pledge to name a woman at an early opportunity to the High Court and thus “dish the liberals,” as his political advisors keep gloating about, but did it have to be this woman? is what conservatives keep asking themselves....

In her 18 months on the Appeals Court, she has not ruled on the major kinds of issues she will have to face as a Supreme Court Justice. “We’re buying a pig in a poke,” said one conservative critic. “The Administration is asking us to accept her on faith, but why should this be the case for such a crucial appointment? Surely they could have done better.”

And take a look at O’Connor’s cheering section. Democratic Senators Teddy Kennedy (Mass.), Howard Metzenbaum (Ohio) and Alan Cranston (Calif.), three champion musketeers of the liberal-left, couldn’t have been more enthusiastic about her nomination. Rep. Morris Udall (D.-Ariz.), who may, if possible, tilt even further to port, waxed joyous. “I’m really quite pleased,” said Udall, “…If we’re going to have Reagan appointees to the Court, you couldn’t do much better.” Americans for Democratic Action spokesman Stina Santiestevan said she was “thrilled” at the choice, while Arizona’s ACLU Chairman Alice Bendheim thinks she’s going to work out just fine. Speaker Tip O’Neill believes this is the best thing that the President has done since he’s been in office....

The President has assured us that Mrs. O’Connor is personally opposed to abortion, that she finds it “abhorrent,” but that hardly tells us where she will line up judicially on the subject, since even most of the ardent pro-abortion advocates insist they are “personally” opposed to abortion as well.

But her views on abortion, others will insist (even many conservatives, we acknowledge), should not be the “litmus” test as to whether she should be selected. But surely, if keeping promises is the goal of the Reagan Administration, a nominee’s views on abortion should be as seriously weighted as the nominee’s gender, since the Republican Party platform bluntly says: “We will work for the appointment of judges at all levels of the judiciary who respect traditionally family values and the sanctity of human life,” and the President strongly defended that section of the platform in his Sept. 21, 1980, debate with John Anderson. And who has a better right to have their wishes embraced by the Administration—the Gloria Steinem crew or the right-to-life forces who tirelessly worked for Ronald Reagan?...

Though obviously bright and energetic, the 51 year-old O’Connor, especially when she served in the Arizona senate in the early 1970s, was not considered a conservative....

But, still, this is pretty thin gruel. President Reagan, for all his and is aides’ assurances, is asking conservatives to rally behind a highly uncertain trumpet. Mrs. O’Connor, of course, may turn out to be just what the doctor ordered. President Reagan, we concede, hasn’t yet been a bad judge of character, as the metamorphoses of Richard Schweiker and Terrel Bell attest. Yet Schweiker and bell and other Cabinet appointments can be fired if they don’t follow presidential orders. But once Mrs. O’Connor slips on that black robe, she cannot be budged from the bench.

Hence, if nothing else, the Judiciary members, especially the conservatives, owe it to their constituencies to thoroughly scrutinize Mrs. O’Connor’s record and philosophy, assuming she’ll finally admit she has a philosophy. What is so difficult to comprehend, however, is why the Administration, in making this weightiest of all appointments, selected a nominee of such murky ideological moorings.

Under a Reagan presidency we expected to see a major transformation in the High Court, a sea-change shift to the right. But that kind of alteration is not likely to come about with O’Connor-type appointments.

Conservatives—no, the country—have a right to expect better.

Atrios has more on the same subject. Read the rest of this post...

Uh, why is the "single" Ms. Miers wearing what appears to be a wedding ring?

While I'm sure lots of "single" people wear what appear to be wedding bands on their left hand ring-finger, uh, well, actually, I don't know a lot of single people who do that.

This is an enlargement of the now-infamous Aug, 6, 2001 photo, above, of Miers - what you see if her left hand.

We enlarge, you decide.



Read the rest of this post...

Miers is a 2008 GOP issue already

You know it's trouble for Bush when the headline reads "GOP presidential hopefuls cautious in stance on Miers." The 2008 GOP candidates, led by Sam Brownback from Kansas and George Allen are hedging their bets on Harriet, according to The Hill:

The tepid reaction from social conservatives in the Senate reflects unease among their interest-group allies, who fear that Miers may not be as conservative as some of the sitting judges they prefer.

Read the rest of this post...

DeLay says he aided his own indictment

In DeLay's world, telling the truth is a mistake. But it's only a mistake if the truth means you broke the law. So, keep talking Tom:

In his radio comments on Tuesday, Mr. DeLay offered a new insight on the case, saying he made a mistake in a voluntary interview with the prosecutor's office a few weeks ago that helped prompt the indictments.

He would not discuss his mistake in detail, but it apparently concerned the $190,000 check that is central to the case. Mr. Earle charges that the money, which included money from corporate interests in Texas, was turned over to the Republican National Committee with instructions to return $190,000 to designated candidates for the Texas Legislature. The accusation is that the transaction was intended to circumvent a prohibition on the use of corporate money in state races.

"I misspoke one sentence, and they have based all of this on one sentence," Mr. DeLay told Mr. Limbaugh. "They think that before the check was cut and sent to the national committee that I approved this check. I didn't know this went on until well after it happened."

Read the rest of this post...

George Will: No reason to trust Bush on Harriet

So, that press conference yesterday didn't win everyone over. George Will unloads in that condescending way of his:

Senators beginning what ought to be a protracted and exacting scrutiny of Harriet Miers should be guided by three rules. First, it is not important that she be confirmed. Second, it might be very important that she not be. Third, the presumption -- perhaps rebuttable but certainly in need of rebutting -- should be that her nomination is not a defensible exercise of presidential discretion to which senatorial deference is due.

It is not important that she be confirmed because there is no evidence that she is among the leading lights of American jurisprudence, or that she possesses talents commensurate with the Supreme Court's tasks. The president's "argument" for her amounts to: Trust me. There is no reason to, for several reasons.

He has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such abilities in the course of their pre-presidential careers, and this president particularly is not disposed to such reflections.

That's some tough stuff. Love it when the wingers fight among themselves.

It's also funny how the tide has turned on approving judges. The right-wingers castigated the Democrats who held up judicial nominations. Remember "Justice Sunday"? Now, it's just fine. Read the rest of this post...

Early AM Open Thread

Tough day for Bush yesterday as the Right's heads all exploded, huh? May we suggest that he start the morning off prepared for another tough day:

Explosion

Scale ingredients to servings
1 oz vodka
1 oz Cointreau® orange liqueur
1 splash Rose's® lime juice
13 oz pear cider

Pour the vodka, Cointreau and lime juice into a pint glass. Fill with a strong, sweet pear cider, or add to taste.

Starting the AM off with a pint glass, remember those days George? With this drink you can tell everyone it's pear juice!

Open thread away! Read the rest of this post...

Another offensive, targets slip away again

If we listened to the White House and their reports of how everything is going fine in Iraq, we might actually be wondering why the need for an offensive since it's all going so well. Just like about every other offensive in Iraq the targets blend into and disappear to fight another day. What kind of real progress is happening there? Read the rest of this post...

Plans for vote rigging in Iraq?

Heavens no, say it ain't so.

The UN on Tuesday sharply criticized the changes — which make it nearly impossible for the Sunni minority to defeat the charter at the polls — and warned that they violate international standards.

Iraq's Shiite-dominated parliament passed the new rules on Sunday, effectively closing the loophole that would have given the minority a chance of vetoing the constitution by getting a two-thirds "no" vote in three provinces even if it wins majority approval nationwide. Sunni Arabs have a sufficient majority in four of Iraq's 18 provinces.

But to defeat it, two-thirds of registered voters must vote "no" in at least three provinces. The interpretation raises the bar to a level almost impossible to meet. In a province of 1 million registered voters, for example, 660,000 would have to vote "no" — even if that many didn't even come to the polls.

The dispute over the rule changes threatens to deepen disillusionment with the political process among Sunnis, who make up the backbone of the insurgency.

Read the rest of this post...

So Bush knew for years about the avian flu threat and basically did nothing

This is the flu that could wipe out much of the planet. Good to know we have one of the top minds in the world running the White House. Read the rest of this post...