NYT: Karl and Scooter are in "serious legal jeopardy"

Fitzmas, Merry Fitzmas, when all your wishes come true... Read the rest of this post...

The Emergency Indictment Service is now live

This is a test of the Emergency Indictment System. The bloggers of your area in voluntary cooperation with the Federal, State and local authorities have developed this system to keep you informed in the event of an indictment. If this had been an actual indictment, the warning at the top of the left-hand column of this blog would have been followed by official information, news or instructions. This blog serves the entire blogosphere. This concludes this test of the Emergency Broadcast System.

(Major kudos to reader David of Princeton for coming up with the chart.) Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

I'm working on something fun. Read the rest of this post...

What's the best way to celebrate Fitzmas, or for our Jewish friends, Fitzukkah

I just got an email from a reader who makes a very good point. We have been recalcitrant in our party planning for the arrival of the "Great Indictment." So, without any further ado, here's the email I received. Suggestions are welcome:

I know it's still early but we need to get ready to celebrate, right? We need something to create a holiday feel. But I'm not artistic. Just thinking, colors? Thought about orange but too Halloweenish. Maybe black and white, as in stripes. How about a centerpiece? I'm totally lost here. The best I can come up with is an elephant in a cage. Holiday tradition? Maybe exchange wine and toast the holiday?? Perhaps a special meal or a party. I really want to decorate my living room, I just don't know how to make sure it exudes Fitzmas. You will be creating T-Shirts I hope. Maybe all your readers can pool their talent and come up with some great ideas.

Read the rest of this post...

Scooter Libby is screwed

(NB There's also this update from Murray Waas.)

I have the sense that all of these leaks pointing to Scooter may have been engineered to put pressure on him to blow the whistle on someone else - be that Rove, Cheney or who knows.

The evidence prosecutors have assembled in the CIA leak case suggests Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff sought out reporters in the weeks before an undercover operative's identity was compromised in the news media, casting doubt on one of the White House's main lines of defense.

For months, the White House and its supporters have argued top presidential aides did not knowingly expose Valerie Plame, the wife of administration critic Joseph Wilson, as a CIA operative.

At most, the aides passed on information about her that entered the White House from reporters, the supporters argued.

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald now knows that Libby met three times with a New York Times reporter before the leak of Plame's identity, initiated a call to NBC's Tim Russert and was a confirming source about Wilson's wife for a Time magazine reporter.

And in a new twist, presidential political adviser Karl Rove has testified that it's possible Libby was his source before Rove talked to two reporters about the CIA operative.

I especially like how Rove throws Libby under the bus. Again, it's very intriguing that that fact is coming out now. Sounds to me like someone wants Libby to wake up and realize that if he doesn't start talking, he's taking the fall for everyone, including people who have now set him up.

This is simply more fun than any of us deserve :-) Read the rest of this post...

Iceland Blogging Oct. 20

Well Rob in Baltimore is Rob in Reykjavik for a few days. While I'm having a great time, to be honest, missing O'Reilly on Stewart AND maybe being out of the country when Rove and Libby (and Cheney?) do the perp walk is really disappointing.

I'm here primarily for the music at the Iceland Airwaves festival. Started off the night with Benni Hemm Hemm (an interesting group with a ton of horns in addition to the standard rock fare - you can download a really odd song in MP3) and finished off the night at a club called NASA listening to Annie (the Norwegian Madonna I'm told). Last call weekdays is 1AM, so it was a relatively early night. On weekends last call, if there is one, is like 5AM.

Culturally, I've had an opportunity to meet and talk to only a few Icelandic folk. Pretty nice so far, but not quite the friendliest of peoples. (To be fair, there are a TON of annoying American hipster-wannabes here, so perhaps I'm being bunched in with them.) Reykjavik is an interesting place so far. Iceland reminds me a lot of other European countries (Iceland has a limited economic cooperation agreement with the EU, and was settled in the 900s by Norse). The hot water in our hotel smells like sulfur. (I'm assuming that it's natural geothermically heated water.) Smoking is EVERYWHERE. As someone who quit smoking a little more than a month ago, being surrounded by it all day all the time is a little frustrating.

So there you go, my first impressions of Iceland. I'll try and upload some pictures if I can find some server space to park them (we're beyond full here on Blogger). Read the rest of this post...

Tom Delay's arrest warrant on t-shirts, mugs, bags

Hey, it's the holidays :-) Of course we'd make this into a t-shirt, puhleez.



And don't forget our Fall Sale is going on until October 25. Read the rest of this post...

Target's CEO is a MASSIVE Republican

Now we know why the target is red.

And, we seem to be getting a clearer picture as to why Target has sided with the far-right Christian wackos, in permitting their pharmacists to turn you away because they think you're a sinner.

Over the years, Target CEO Robert Ulrich has donated:

- $71,353 to Republicans
- $3,660 to Democrats

Hmmm... that's interesting.

Perhaps my favorite donation is the $5,000 he gave just two months ago to a PAC named "Every Republican is Crucial."

Among other donations:

$1,000 to anti-gay bigot Mel Martinez, now the GOP Senator from Florida.
$1,000 to kinky-sex-cage-my-wife-please GOP Senate hopeful from IL Jack Ryan.
$3,000 to Bush-Cheney '04
$1,000 to Bush for President 2000
$1,000 to Elizabeth Dole for President 2000
$603 to the Republican National Committee
$1,000 to Robert Dole for President 1996

The only Dems he's given to in nearly 20 years, according to the online records, are Amy Klobuchar and Tim Penny from Minnesota. Yeah, big hitter's, those two.

Oh Target. Things were so much easier when you were nice people rather than intolerant red state Bible thumpers. Read the rest of this post...

This is, and isn't, Delay's mug shot

This is the real version:



This is MY version:

Read the rest of this post...

DeLay's been booked

UPDATE: The Smoking Gun says they have the mug shot here - unfortunately there are no numbers on it and no profile. Hmmm... Smoking Gun usually doesn't get it wrong.

"photographed, fingerprinted and released on bond" Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Have at it. Read the rest of this post...

Target now saying "screw you" if their pharmacist doesn't want to fill your prescription because "you're a sinner"

Well, Target has given its answer to customers who are concerned that Target pharmacists are refusing to fill prescriptions simply because they think you're a sinner. Target's answer? Go Cheney yourself.

An AMERICAblog reader just sent me this email they received from Target. I've spoken with Planned Parenthood and the email is legit. Target's response to PPFA and to its customers is that they stand by their pharmacists - if the pharmacist thinks you're a sinner they don't have to fill your prescription and can send you elsewhere.

From: Target.Response Target.Response@target.com
Date: Oct 20, 2005 7:18 AM
Subject: Filling Prescriptions at Target

Dear Target Guest,

Target places a high priority on our role as a community pharmacy and our obligation to meet the needs of the patients we serve. We expect all our team members, including our pharmacists, to provide respectful service to our guests, particularly when it comes to their health care needs.

Like many other retailers, Target has a policy that ensures a guest's prescription for emergency contraception is filled, whether at Target or at a different pharmacy, in a timely and respectful manner. This policy meets the health care needs of our guests while respecting the diversity of our team members.

Your thoughts help us learn more about what our guests expect, so I'll be sure to share your feedback with our pharmacy executives.

Thanks for taking the time to share your questions, thoughts and comments. I hope we'll see you again soon at Target.

Sincerely,

Jennifer Hanson
Target Executive Offices

Planned Parenthood has had other communications with Target. Target's policy is that the customer can go to hell if their pharmacist thinks you're a sinner. Target will let their pharmacist turn you away so that YOU have to go find another pharmacy, rather than their pharmacist getting another frigging job.

You have to love Target. They're willing to hire people who don't wan to do the very job they're applying for. And their own employee's bigotry and bias matters more to them than the emergency health needs of their own customers.

So let's ask Target if they also support the following Target employees:

- Check out clerks who verify how fat you are before selling you that package of potato chips?
- Pharmacists who don't want to fill prescriptions for Jewish customers who killed Christ.
- Pharmacists who don't want to help customers who worship a "Satanic counterfeit" (read: "The Pope," in fundie-speak).
- Pharmacists who only dispense HIV medicine to "innocent victims" of AIDS.
- Pharmacists who want proof that women seeking emergency contraception were really raped, and that they didn't "deserve it."
- Pharmacists (or cashiers) who are Christian Scientists - can they refuse to sell any medicine, even aspirin, to anyone?
- Pharmacists who won't sell birth control pills to unmarried women, condoms to unmarried men, or any birth control at all because God doesn't want people spilling their seed.
- Can fundamentalist Christian employees refuse to interact with gay people in any way, shape or form since gays are sinners, abominations, biological errors, and very likely pedophiles?

Target's contact info:

Call Target's press office (hey, we're new media, and this will get their attention FAR more than calling their stupid customer services number).

Message:
Why is Target supporting radical right bigotry against its own customers? How dare they tell us they won't fill our prescriptions because their pharmacists thinks we're sinner? Would they turn away Jews if their pharmacist were a conservative Catholic or Baptist? Would they turn away gays if their pharmacist thinks they're abominations? Would they turn away people with AIDS because, you know, they're hardly "innocent"? Demand answers.

Susan Kahn, 1-612-761-6735
Cathy Wright, 1-612-761-6627 or 1-847-615-1538
Paula Thornton-Greear, 612-696-3400
Carolyn Brookter, 1-612-696-6557

Read the rest of this post...

Bush calls treason "background noise"

I'm guessing the 2,000 dead American soldiers in Iraq, who still never got their body armor, are background noise too.

President Bush vowed Thursday to avoid the "background noise" of criminal investigations and other Republican political problems to focus on the nation's needs.

"The American people expect me to do my job, and I'm going to," the president said.

Actually, they expect you to tell the truth and act like a man when your top aides commit treason. Read the rest of this post...

Powell is hardly the world's most loyal soldier, please

Overall, this is a great article (Rob cites it in the post below). Colin Powell's former chief of staff just SAVAGES Cheney and Rummy. But then he says something that is simply untrue. Powell is upset at him for speaking up because Powell is the world's most loyal soldier.

Gag me.

Powell wasn't the world's most loyal soldier when he publicly took on his commander in chief in that commander's first days in office in early 1993. And he wasn't the world's most loyal soldier when he savaged that commander in his subsequent memoirs.

Colin Powell is many things, including an opportunist who got burned selling his soul to the devil, but a loyal soldier he is not. And frankly, I wonder how upset Powell really is that his close friend is spilling the beans on how all of this mess is NOT Powell's fault. Uh huh. Read the rest of this post...

POWELL CHIEF OF STAFF: Bush Government - "Cowboyism" and "Ineptitude"

From Newsday:

U.S. foreign policy is being made in secret by a small "cabal" of powerful people like Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, a former top Bush administration official charged yesterday.
...
Wilkerson said "we have courted disaster in Iraq, North Korea and Iran" and said that if there is another attack in the U.S. such as a nuclear explosion in a U.S. city "you are going to see the ineptitude of this government."

He accused President George W. Bush of "cowboyism" in dealing with foreign leaders and said that Cheney and Rumsfeld and others could not be kept under control by a president "not versed in international relations and not too interested in them either."

Read the whole thing - it's scathing. It gets into Rice and how she dealt with Bush, how integral Rumsfeld and Cheney are and why Powell doesn't talk. Read the rest of this post...

WaPo links Rove/Libby and has the whole cast

Washington Post has a long piece that expands upon the AP article that Chris posted below:

White House adviser Karl Rove told the grand jury in the CIA leak case that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, may have told him that CIA operative Valerie Plame worked for the intelligence agency before her identity was revealed, a source familiar with Rove's account said yesterday.

In a talk that took place in the days before Plame's CIA employment was revealed in 2003, Rove and Libby discussed conversations they had had with reporters in which Plame and her marriage to Iraq war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV were raised, the source said. Rove told the grand jury the talk was confined to information the two men heard from reporters, the source said.

Rove has also testified that he also heard about Plame from someone else outside the White House, but could not recall who.

The Post article gives a recitation of some key facts and it named a lot of names. All the key players in the Bush Admin. have been tainted by this scandal in some way. These are all the different players that appeared in today's article:

President Bush
Vice President Cheney
Karl Rove
Scooter Libby
John Hannah, "an aide to Cheney"
Ari Fleischer "former White House spokesman"
Mary Matalin, "a former top Cheney adviser"
Catherine Martin, "[Cheney's] former communications adviser"
Jennifer Millerwise, "[Cheney's] former spokeswoman"
Scott McClellan "spokesman"
Dan Bartlett "senior adviser"
Adam Levine "former communications aide"
Colin L. Powell "then-Secretary of State"
Stephen J. Hadley "Bush's national security adviser"
Andrew H. Card Jr. "Chief of Staff"
Condoleezza Rice "then-national security adviser" ,
Karen Hughes, "adviser"
Nicholas Calio "White House director of legislative affairs"
George J. Tenet "Former CIA director"
John E. McLaughlin "ex-deputy [CIA] director
Bill Harlow "CIA public affairs director"

The one name missing in the Post article is David Wurmser, a Cheney aide, who Raw Story reported is cooperating with Fitzgerald. Wurmser has ties to another Bush favorite:

Wurmser, Cheney’s Middle East advisor and an assistant to then-Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs John Bolton, likely cooperated because he faced criminal charges for his role in leaking Wilson's name on the orders of higher-ups, the sources said.

Anyone else missing? I didn't include Judith Miller and Novak because they didn't officially work for Bush, although they were part of the team. Read the rest of this post...

GOP postpones budget cuts and tax breaks

Interesting to see how the middle class is getting walloped once again by the "conservatives" yet the lucky 1% is about to get even more tax breaks. Well, at least it's all fair and everyone is pitching in for the good of the nation. Good luck in 2006 and don't forget to ride those presidential coattails. I hear Bush is a real vote-getter these days. Talk about the war too...another popular program for winning votes and looking macho. Read the rest of this post...

Bird flu death in Thailand, more suspected cases in Europe

Since the arrival in Turkey and Romania, suspected cases have also been reported in Greece, Macedonia and Russia. It is still early days with the virus impacting humans but it is anybodies guess when it will mutate and become considerably more dangerous. The big problem is that the rich countries are trying to stockpile the vaccine now, when the problem is starting to spread beyond SE Asia. The problem is that the vaccine is owned by Roche who are unable to just mix up a batch and deliver it. The vaccine takes many months to produce so even if they started today, they could not produce enough to meet global demand. Sure, through negotiations and pressure from world governments Roche will probably be convinced/paid to allow other drug producers to manufacture additional supplies but this too will take many months.

Once again, why did the Bush administration wait so long to start this process and set such low goals for something that will save Americans when the flu arrives? Read the rest of this post...

Thursday Morning Open Thread

Okay, you know something. Just tell. Read the rest of this post...

Rove and Libby were talking about discussions with reporters

Bush must not be satisfied with record low approval ratings and wants them to go even lower because when everything finally comes out it is going to be painfully clear that nobody in his team knows how to tell the truth, himself included. Has a president ever become a lame-duck so early in his second term?

Rove testified he told Libby about his contact with Novak about two days after it happened.

Libby's testimony stated that Rove had told him about his contact with Novak and that Libby had told Rove about information he had gotten about Wilson's wife from NBC's Tim Russert, according to a person familiar with the information shown to Rove.

Prosecutors, however, have a different account from Russert. The network has said Russert told authorities he did not know about Wilson's wife's identity until it was published and therefore could not have told Libby about it.

Prosecutors also have evidence that Libby initiated the call with Russert and had initiated similar contact with another reporter, Judith Miller of The New York Times, several weeks earlier.

Rove was pressed by prosecutors on several matters, including why he failed to mention during the first of his four grand jury appearances that he also had discussed the Plame matter with a second reporter, Matthew Cooper of Time magazine.

Rove testified during the first appearance about his contacts with Novak in the days before Novak wrote a column outing Plame's identity. When asked generally if he had conversations with other reporters in that session, he answered "no."

The e-mail jogged Rove's memory and during a subsequent grand jury appearance, he volunteered his recollections about his conversation with Cooper, and his lawyer provided the e-mail to prosecutors. Cooper also wrote a story about Plame.

Read the rest of this post...

Frist used stock sale cash for campaign

Looks like he was attempting to do some house cleaning on his Senate campaign fund to prepare for the big presidential run, which we all knew was going to be so hot. So when do we get to see his mug shot online as well? Sounds like we're going to have an entire collector's edition coming up soon with all of the gang. Boy, they were all so happy just a few months ago... Read the rest of this post...