Alito now says he didn't inhale

Just in from the Washington Post:

Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr. said yesterday that he did nothing improper when he ruled in cases involving two financial firms in which he held accounts, although he had told the Senate 15 years ago that he would step aside in matters involving the companies.

Alito, trying to quell conflict-of-interest issues raised by liberal opponents, said he had been "unduly restrictive" in promising in 1990 to recuse himself in cases involving Vanguard Group Inc. and Smith Barney Inc. After the Senate confirmed him as an appellate judge and when he subsequently ruled on routine cases involving the two companies, he said, he acted properly because his connections to the firms did not constitute a conflict of interest under the applicable rules and laws.

Unduly restrictive? What the hell does that mean? It means when he promised not to do something, under oath I believe, he didn't really mean it. That's what unduly restrictive means.

Son, promise you'll never lie to me. I promise, dad. But son lies to dad anyway. But under the new Alito standard, it's not really a lie. Son was simply being "unduly restrictive" when he promised he wouldn't lie. What kind of crap is that?

Is there anyone associated with this White House who doesn't lie and then turn the truth upside down in an effort to defend it?

Hey, Patrick Fitzgerald. Let Scooter go. He was simply being "unduly restrictive" when he swore on the Bible that he'd tell the truth.

And another thing. How can any Senator trust a single thing Alito now says during his confirmation? Sure, Alito said the other day that he has "great respect" for the precedent of Roe v. Wade. But just wait until after he's confirmed, overturns Roe, then tells us he was just being "unduly restrictive" when he mentioned that "great respect" thing.

Think about it. Alito didn't just go unduly restrictive once - he did it 3 times. He promised Congress THREE TIMES (under oath we presume) that he'd recuse himself from various cases, then each time he didn't. Three different times the guy outright lied.

Then again, maybe Alito didn't lie three different times to Congress. Maybe, as he said tonight, he simply got it wrong, albeit three different times. And maybe what happened here is that Alito simply screwed up his analysis of the law and regulations governing judges and ethics, and he totally botched the application of those judicial ethics laws to a specific fact pattern (in this case, his own), on three separate and rather high-profile occasions.

You see, Alito's not a liar. He's just an incompetent who can't put the law and the facts together to save his life. Now don't you feel better about him being nominated to the Supreme Court? Harriet's not looking so bad now, eh?

Again, is there anybody associated with President Bush who can simply tell the truth?

PS Maybe we can send Alito to those ethics classes the White House staff is taking this week... Read the rest of this post...

An open thread and a question

I'm heading to NYC tomorrow for a thing, and Joe is heading out of the country for a few days (for a thing), and when Joe is out and about he uses his Treo to post to the blog. At the very least, using Treo's Web interface, he can access posts that we've already written and have them saved, ready to go - obviously typing a full post is a bit more of a pain.

Anyway, I think I may need to finally get a PDA, and am wondering if anybody has any suggestions, Treo, Blackberry or what? I really want it for the easy of Web posting, though I'll use it check email too, and if need be, as a phone (though I have a perfectly nice cell phone now).

Any thoughts? And, how do you pay for these things anyway? I know the device can be a couple hundred bucks, but what's the monthly fee?

Consider this an opportunity for all the rest of you non-PDA folks to learn something as well :-) Read the rest of this post...

Judy Miller on CNN Groveling

Miller is was on CNN and I'm sure that the crocodile tears are just a moment away. My post about her from this morning.

Use this thread to discuss her appearance on Larry King. Read the rest of this post...

Hill GOPers are cracking up

Big setbacks for the GOP leaders in both the House and Senate today. They are falling apart before our eyes:

A battle between House Republican conservatives and moderates over energy policy and federal anti-poverty and education programs left GOP leaders without enough votes to pass a budget measure they had framed as one of the most important pieces of legislation in years. Across the Capitol, a moderate GOP revolt in the Senate Finance Committee forced Republicans to postpone action on a bill to extend some of President Bush's most contentious tax cuts.

The twin setbacks added to growing signs that the Republican Party's typically lock-step discipline is cracking under the weight of Bush's plummeting approval ratings, Tuesday's electoral defeats and the growing discontent of the American electorate. After five years of remarkable unity under Bush's gaze, divisions between Republican moderates and conservatives are threatening to paralyze the party.

A paralyzed GOP is one of the best things that can happen to our country. Read the rest of this post...

Rove's Utter Arrogance a Slap in the American Public's Face

Rove is was on C-SPAN giving his first speech since Libby's indictment. He's now preaching for the dismantling of the judicial branch in Goebbels-esqe rewriting of the purpose of the judiciary. This man is disgusting in his arrogance. Let's be clear:

One of the men who outted a CIA agent's name to the media and damaged our national security and intelligence gathering at a time of war is preaching about how we should interpret the Constitution.

Fuck off Karl.

UPDATE 1: C-SPAN has the Rove speech highlighted at the top of this page. Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Forgot about that Read the rest of this post...

Next up: Religious right wants to take away your right to a divorce

Joe (in DC) told me months ago that the goal of the religious right wasn't to target gay marriage, even though this is what they claimed. Rather, they want to ban divorce, Joe kept telling me. I wasn't sure he was right. Now it's clear from this article that he is.

Just like with abortion and contraception, the religious right is going to come into your nice cozy heterosexual married bedroom and tell you how to live. I interviewed a former lawyer with the American Family Association who told me that if he were a state legislator, he'd vote to ban all forms of oral sex between straight married couples in their own bedroom. How you like them apples?

You think this is just about gays getting married or women having abortions? Just wait. They came into Terri Schiavo's bedroom, they came into mine, and now they're coming into yours.

Welcome to our world. Read the rest of this post...

Frist says leaks pose greater threat to national security than whether any specific laws have been broken

Oh no, he's not talking about Scooter Libby and Karl Rove. He still thinks their national security leaks are a-okay. Remember, in those cases the only thing that matters is whether Rove or Scooter have "technically" broken the law or not.

In this case, Frist is talking about the presumed leak that led to the Washington Post writing about the US running secret gulag prison camps in Eastern Europe at former Soviet prisons.

According to Frist, the fact that this "secret" was leaked is far more important to national security than whether the US is violating international human rights conventions by running the camps.

So, remember kids. Break the law all you want. Just be sure you don't confess.

And this guy is the uber-Christians' pick for president? Some family values he's got. Torture: good. Discovering torture: bad.

From CNN.com:

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist says he is more concerned about the leak of information regarding secret CIA detention centers than activity in the prisons themselves.

Frist told reporters Thursday that while he believed illegal activity should not take place at detention centers, he believes the leak itself poses a greater threat to national security and is "not concerned about what goes on" behind the prison walls.

"My concern is with leaks of information that jeopardize your safety and security -- period," Frist said. "That is a legitimate concern."

Read the rest of this post...

House drops ANWR drilling provision

They're melting, melting... Read the rest of this post...

Media missing the point on Scooterlito lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee

We now know that at least three times Judge Alito told the Senate Judiciary Committee, under oath we assume, that he wouldn't hear cases involving certain companies, yet he went ahead and heard those cases anyway.

I'm concerned that the media is already misunderstanding this story.

While CNN's legal affairs expert, Jeffrey Toobin, just said that there does seem to be a distinction between what Alito said he'd do and what he actually did, Tobin then seriously misstated the entire problem.

Toobin said there are two issues here:

1. Whether it's prohibited for Alito to participate in a specific case; and

2. Whether there was some sort of computer glitch in the clerk's office that failed to notify Alito that he should have recused himself in the case.

But Toobin's description of the issues is missing the most important issue.

The issue here isn't whether Alito was or wasn't required, under court rules, to recuse himself from these cases. The issue is that Alito promised, seemingly under oath, NOT to hear these cases, period - but then went ahead and heard them anyway. That's a lie. It's also possibly perjury. And at the very least, it suggests he intentionally misled the Senate Judiciary Committee ON THREE SEPARATE OCCASIONS in order to get confirmed.

As for Toobin's second argument, that the reason the case came to Alito was perhaps a computer glitch, again that's not the issue. The question is not HOW the cases came to Alito, the question is WHY Alito didn't recuse himself, as promised under oath, AFTER the cases came to him, regardless of how they came to him.

In the Vanguard case, Alito went out of his way to argue that there was no reason he should have to recuse himself. Not only does that negate the computer glitch argument - it doesn't matter how Alito got the case, he was perfectly happy KEEPING the case and argued that he should keep the case. But what's more, Alito actually had the nerve to argue that there was no reason to recuse himself from this case when there was a very good reason - he had previously promised to recuse himself, under oath.

Again, it's nice to split hairs about whether Alito was "legally" required to recuse himself under court rules dealing with conflicts of interest, etc., but that's not the issue here. The issue is that Alito promised, we assume under oath, to recuse himself in order to convince Senators to confirm him. Then after Alito got confirmed - bam! - he turned around and broke his promise, and hear the case anyway. And not just once, but three times.

The man is a liar, quite possibly a perjurer, and at the very least he's someone with a proven track record of saying anything to Senators in order to be confirmed. There is now no reason any Senator should vote for Alito based on any testimony he gives before the Senate, or anything he says to them in private. Alito is not a man of his word.

Fool me once, shame on you.

Fool me twice, shame on me.

Fool me three times, you don't get confirmed to the Supreme Court - though you do get to work at the most senior levels of the White House. Read the rest of this post...

Specter concerned that Alito's lies to Senate Judiciary Committee have the potential to doom the nomination

Just now on CNN:

Arlen Specter, the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today was asked if he thinks the Vanguard matter is spiraling out of control and could endanger Alito's nomination. His response, quote: "I'm concerned it has potential, it may."

Vanguard is one of the companies Alito said (under oath, I presume) he'd recuse himself from, were any cases involving them to come before him, then he didn't. Read the rest of this post...

Scooterlito

Because whether you're a top White House official, or a nominee for Supreme Court justice, it doesn't matter what kind of lies you make up under oath so long as you're a Republican.

When other judges have submitted answers to written questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee during confirmation, those answers have been under oath. One assumes Scooterlito's written answers to the US Senate Judiciary Committee for his lower court nomination hearings - the ones where he repeatedly said he would recuse himself from cases, then after he was confirmed, he did the opposite - were as well. That's an outright lie in order to trick the Senators into confirming. One might even call that perjury.

So, the man is a liar, ethically challenged, and will say anything under oath to get confirmed.

In a written response to questions from the US Senate during his 1990 confirmation hearings to be an appeals judge, Samuel Alito promised: ''I would disqualify myself from any case involving my sister's law firm, Carpenter, Bennett & Morrissey of Newark, New Jersey." His sister left that firm in 1994, and she said yesterday that she joined McCarter & English in March 1994 -- about a year before the full court denied a rehearing in the bank-loan case.

Samuel Alito's promise to disqualify himself from hearing cases in which he faced a potential conflict of interest has become a focal point for Democratic critics as they prepare for his Supreme Court confirmation hearings in January.

In his questionnaire, provided to the Senate during his confirmation hearings as an appeals court judge, Samuel Alito cited four types of cases in which he would disqualify himself to avoid a potential conflict of interest: those involving Vanguard, in which he owned mutual fund shares; Smith Barney, his brokerage firm; First Federal Savings & Loan of Rochester, N.Y., which held his home mortgage; and his sister's law firm.

Alito ruled in a 2002 case in Vanguard's favor at a time when he owned between $390,000 and $975,000 in mutual fund shares from Vanguard.

He withdrew from the case after a complaint was filed by Shantee Maharaj, a Massachusetts woman who wanted Vanguard to give her the assets of her late husband's mutual funds.

Nonetheless, he wrote a letter to the chief circuit judge in 2003 complaining about the effort to remove him from the case. ''I do not believe that I am required to disqualify myself based on my ownership of the mutual fund shares," he wrote.

But of course, there are some Democrats who don't seem very troubled being lied to, under oath, by Alito repeatedly in an effort to trick them into voting for him. One such Senator is perennial waffler Kent Conrad (D-ND).

When Alito became a federal appeals court judge in 1990, he promised to recuse himself from cases involving Vanguard mutual funds, because he had personal investments through the company. Yet he participated in a case decided in 2002 involving Vanguard....

Sen. Kent Conrad, a North Dakota Democrat who met with Alito on Wednesday, said he shared his colleague's concerns about Vanguard, but his overall impression of Alito was favorable and he was unlikely to support any bid to kill the nomination.

Yeah, I mean, come on. Sure, Alito is willing to lie, and quite possible perjure himsel, committing a felony in the process, in order to trick Kent Conrad and other Senators into confirming him, but Kent Conrad is apparently impressed by those lies, they're actually quite favorable lies, so Conrad might support him anyway.

Another installment in Democratic profiles in courage.

PS And when it comes down to it. The Democrats have NO Right to criticize Scooter Libby and Karl Rove for lying under oath if they are willing to give Scooterlito a pass for doing the exact same thing. Read the rest of this post...

House GOP silences veterans groups

Why do Republicans hate the troops? Read the rest of this post...

Open thread

Good news day. Read the rest of this post...

Alito has a history of not keeping his word to the US Senate

Here's a question for Senators: If a nominee for Supreme Court already has a history of telling the US Senate one thing to get confirmed, then doing the exact opposite, when can you trust him?

When Alito became a federal appeals court judge in 1990, he promised to recuse himself from cases involving Vanguard mutual funds, because he had personal investments through the company. Yet he participated in a case decided in 2002 involving Vanguard.

Several Democrats have said they are troubled by this, though it is not clear whether it will emerge as a major issue in Alito's confirmation process.

How can this issue not emerge during the confirmation proceedings? What's most troubling, is that after Alito was pulled off the Vanguard case -- despite telling the Senate he would recuse himself -- he complained about it, according to the Boston Globe:

After Alito ruled in Vanguard's favor in the Maharaj case, he complained about her efforts to vacate his decision and remove him from the case, writing to the chief administrative judge of the federal appeals court on which he sat in 2003: ''I do not believe that I am required to disqualify myself based on my ownership of the mutual fund shares."

He told the Senate he would recuse himself, then he complains about it after he's busted?

This was not a small matter. What's worse, it looks like a pattern. Today, the Boston Globe, which has done great work investigating these discrepancies, reports on another situation where Alito said one thing to the Senate and did another:

Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr., who said in 1990 that he would disqualify himself from cases involving his sister's law firm, was a member of an appeals court that reviewed a 1995 case in which his sister's firm represented one of the parties, according to court records.

It is at least the third instance in which there is no indication the Supreme Court nominee recused himself from the kind of case he had promised a Senate committee he would avoid as a federal judge.

This is a very troubling pattern. It begs the question of how much Senators can trust what Alito tells them. Does Alito think that what he says to get confirmed doesn't matter once he's on the bench?

According to Reuters, Alito is spending a lot of time on the Hill telling Senators about "his respect for precedent" which is taken to mean he won't rush to overturn established cases like Roe v. Wade. Can those words be trusted? It is a big risk to confirm a justice who already has a history of not following through on promises made to the Senate. Read the rest of this post...

Even Rick Santorum is avoiding George "Typhoid Mary" Bush now

Wow. Nutjob cukoo Rick Santorum, who is in a very tough re-election battle, is now avoiding George Bush at public events.

When the leader of the Terri Schiavo wing of the Republican party is afraid to be seen with you, that's bad.

From AP

President Bush will appear at a Veterans Day event in Pennsylvania on Friday with the state's moderate Republican senior senator and a Democratic congressman but without the state's conservative junior senator, who is fighting a tough bid for re-election.

A prior commitment is keeping Sen. Rick Santorum, the Senate's No. 3 Republican, from joining Bush, said Robert Traynham, Santorum's press secretary....

When asked if Santorum was intentionally staying away from Bush, Traynham said, "The senator looks forward to having the president come to Pennsylvania as we get closer to next year's election."....

The news about Friday's schedule conflict comes one day after Republican Jerry Kilgore lost the Virginia governor's race to Democratic Lt. Gov. Tim Kaine. Bush did a last-minute campaign stop for Kilgore, and Democrats say Kilgore's loss is proof that voters are disenchanted with Bush and Republican policies.

Did you catch that? Santorum's spokesman refused to address the question of whether Santorum is avoiding the Bush. The appropriate answer for a Republican is "no, he's not avoiding the president." Yet, the spokesman didn't say that. Read the rest of this post...

Bush to launch propaganda campaign to justify Iraq war and leak-treason

CNN reports that the White House is launching a propaganda campaign to justify its decision to invade Iraq and to help make the case that Scooter and Rove didn't leak in order to deceive the public about the war. It's weird, very weird.

So, I figured it was time to remind everyone that if Bush didn't twist the intelligence, if he didn't desperately grab at straws to try to justify a war that was unjustifiable, then why did the Bush administration change its reason 27 times for why we were going to war in Iraq?

Let's revisit a few of those 27 ever-changing reasons Bush gave us for why we needed to get to war in Iraq, then tell me that this wasn't a man willing to say or do anything in order to invade:

1. War On Terror

2. WMD

3. Denied Access to Inspectors

4. Regime Change

5. Saddam Hussein is Evil

6. Curry Favor with the Middle East

7. Set an Example for Nations that Sponsor Terrorism

8. Liberate Iraqis

9. Iraq's Broken Promises

10. Revenge

11. Threat To the Region

12. Because We Can

13. Unfinished Business

14. For the Sake of History

15. Disarmament

16. Commitment to Our Children

17. Imminent Threat

18. Preserve Peace

19. Threat To Freedom

20. Link to al Qaeda

21. Iraq is Unique

22. Relevance of the United Nations

23. International Law

24. Saddam had an insatiable appetite for WMD

Read the rest of this post...

Washington Times slams Bush

Today's headline, front-page above the fold, in the Reverend Moon's right-wing mouthpiece says it all, "Bush 'sank' GOP in Virginia":

President Bush's sinking popularity helped seal Democrat Timothy M. Kaine's victory in Virginia's gubernatorial election Tuesday, politicians and pollsters said yesterday.

"We know that George Bush is just killing us," said Delegate David B. Albo, a Republican who narrowly defeated his Democratic challenger in Fairfax County. "His popularity just brought the ticket down. There's no other way to explain it."

The rats are leaving a sinking ship. They're blaming Bush, their fearless leader, for all their political troubles. It is amazing to see a reliable GOP cheerleader, like the Washington Times, eviscerate the President so blatantly. But they are reading the polls and it is scaring them:

Scott Rasmussen, president of the New Jersey-based polling firm Rasmussen Reports, said the voters who made up their minds just before Election Day -- about 12 percent of voters -- favored Mr. Kaine by 15 percentage points.

That suggests some voters were turned off by a last-minute visit by Mr. Bush on Monday on Mr. Kilgore's behalf. A Rasmussen survey of Virginia voters found that 51 percent approved of the president's performance. Nationally, Mr. Bush has registered a 37 percent approval rating.

"It was not a good year to run as a Republican in Virginia," said Mark Rozell, a public policy professor at George Mason University, adding that the Bush visit "probably backfired" and spurred Democrats to get out the vote.

What's more, the Rasmussen survey found that Mr. Kaine won 22 percent of the Republican vote.

Watch the GOP leaders in Congress try to ditch their President now. We can't let them. They own Bush and his policies and that is what 2006 has to be about. Read the rest of this post...

Miller is Done at the NY Times

Did your victory celebration cause a hangover? Do what professional alcoholics do -- drink more! From the AP:

Judith Miller, the New York Times reporter who was first lionized, then vilified by her own newspaper for her role in the CIA leak case, retired from the Times on Wednesday, declaring that she had to leave because she had "become the news."

Perhaps her aspens stopped turning in clusters because their roots were no longer connected? (Other than weak code, what the hell did that Libby letter mean?)

And then there's Judy's Story. You know the one that we're supposed to feel sympathetic about her and her plight? Well, like we all remember from the 8th grade lunch room, sometimes trying TOO HARD shows your weakness. From the Washington Post:

But her Treo's vibrating on her hip. It's a friend calling. "My fan club from Paris," she chirps into the phone, in English, before switching to a mix of French and Arabic.

It goes on like this for three hours. She answers questions -- or refuses. She turns the tables, asking about her interviewer's life. She takes calls. She grabs the tape recorder. She waxes eloquent, even in anger. At times, tears well up. There's something frantic about her -- not vulnerable, mind you, for that's the last thing she is.

"Oh. I've got to take this." She's reaching for the phone again. "It's my lawyer."

Can't you just see the look on her face, hand covering the mic on the phone, saying in hushed tones, it's my lawyer. That's when you know you're being played.

If you want to upchuck your breakfast, make sure you get to the end of the piece. There are a string of men that Judy is romantically linked to, and you can just imagine the two of them in bed together:

First, she lived with Wisconsin Democrat Rep. Les Aspin. Their relationship was well known. They entertained friends together. (Aspin died of a stroke in 1995.)
...
"There were regular stories about Judy Miller's tendency to get too close to sources and develop personal relationships," says Kovach, founding chairman of the Committee of Concerned Journalists, a media ethics group.

Eww. It's a good piece, read it all.) Read the rest of this post...

Open Thread

Start talking. Read the rest of this post...

China currency and "market forces"

John Snow was just in China and of course, like every good Bush borg, he likes to repeat the classic GOP line about letting "market forces" decide. Anyone who takes an honest look at the GOP America can clearly tell that "market forces" is perhaps the most cynical, fraudulent line in their arsenal these days. It sounds good on paper, but the reality behind it has nothing to do with market forces.

The new China is pretty slick with marketing and after barely adjusting the yuan-dollar rates earlier this year, they are now pitching the "we will let market forces decide" line with regards to any changes in their over-inflated currency. Why do I get the feeling that they learned well from Snow and the Bush borgs and that real market forces will have very little to do with the value of the yuan? With this kind of spin, it will be interesting to hear how the GOP reacts to this latest pitch out of Beijing. Read the rest of this post...

Blair loses major vote in Commons

Yesterday Blair lost his first substantial vote since 1997 when he tried forcing through legislation that would have allowed the police to hold suspected terrorists for up to 90 days. This vote was not even close perhaps signaling the beginning of the end for Bush's best friend. With more political battles coming for Blair and the public tired of his lies, the transition to Gordon Brown may be sooner than even Blair expected. Read the rest of this post...

Congress looking at curbing Patriot Act

Lamest duck ever. Read the rest of this post...