Thieves have targeted the Ohio Democratic Party headquarters this week, stealing a computer and a BlackBerry belonging to party chairman Denny White.

Columbus police say one or more burglars climbed a wall Monday night and crawled through an unlocked second-story window at the party headquarters about three blocks from the Statehouse.

The break-in occurred a week after Democrats began airing a 30-second T-V ad that links Republican officeholders with the state's failed $55 million rare-coin investment with GOP fundraiser Tom Noe.

Police say it is unclear if the theft had anything to do with politics, or the investigations into investments at the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation.

A Republican Party spokesman denies that the GOP had anything to do with the break-in.

...Dean is also the guy who made speaking up fashionable again for Democrats. And that is one reason his party is wagering on him. If Dean says things that are ill-considered, he also remains his party's leading rebel -- one with enough fresh fight in him to take on not only Republicans but also those change-resistant Democrats who would rather be titular heads of a dying party than less relevant figures in a renewed one. The hope for Democrats is: Dean will be the antidote for a party that is lacking a strong message and that needs somebody, anybody, to say something. Dean likes to quote his political hero, Harry Truman. "I don't give 'em hell," Truman said in 1948. "I just tell the truth, and they think it's hell." And the truth, as Dean sees it, is that mushmouthedness is killing the party, and so is voter neglect. "Somebody has to take those right wingers on," he says, "and I enjoy doing it."

Why would he want such a job? The short answer is that he was looking for work. And he's got the guts to try it. "I looked at the DNC chairmanship, and it ain't the presidency," he says, "but it was the best I could do, in order to contribute to making sure that this country got back on a path I think will lead to its greatness for another century, and not another 10 minutes."

Dean's motto could be the Gadsden flag's "Don't Tread on Me." He refuses to submit to the opinion of others, and he insists on leading by his own lights. He is an old-fashioned Yankee fiscal conservative with moderate social values, the strictly reared son of one of New York's first families, whose anti-Republican rhetoric comes from a genuine loathing of deficits and resentment of governmental intrusions. "They're undermining American values," he snaps. At times, he resembles the kind of Democrat that existed pre-Great Society, in the mode of Truman. Dean so identifies with Truman that he used to read from David McCullough's biography to his children, Anne and Paul, at bedtime. "He stood for common sense, common decency. He spoke the common tongue."

Then again, sometimes he doesn't resemble a Democrat at all. Sometimes he sounds like a Rockefeller Republican, who preaches individual rights "but also responsibilities." It's a Deanian irony that the only people he angers more than conservatives are liberals. In fact, Dean resists simple ideology or box politics. What to do with a pro-choice, civil-unions, fiscal-conservative, antiwar, NRA-endorsed law-and-order-pro-death-penalty Democrat who won't keep quiet? He's a maverick.

"Maverick just implies someone who doesn't toe the party line, and I don't," he says. "And I don't toe the expected line."

Adding to the growing intrigue in the Plame case, the grand jury investigating the leak of the covert CIA operative's name has subpoenaed a wide range of White House documents, including records of telephone calls from Air Force One and information relating to an internal working group dealing with Iraq, government sources confirmed to CNN on Friday.

"We are complying fully with the request from the Department of Justice," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters Friday.

Government sources told CNN the federal grand jury was seeking any information about contacts between White House officials and more than two dozen reporters. The grand jury also asked for a transcript of a briefing by former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer.

The subpoenaed information regarding telephone calls to and from Air Force One, sources said, covered July 7-12, while the president was on a trip to Africa. The requested transcript was from a briefing during that trip as well.

Newsday reported that two of the subpoenas dealt mostly with requests for information before and after the publication of Robert Novak's fateful July 14 column, which outed Plame.

Many of the documents subpoenaed Friday relate to the White House Iraq Group, a little-known task force. Newsweek reported that the group was created in August 2002.
The Newsweek report cites an earlier Washington Post article that lists senior political adviser Karl Rove, Bush advisers Karen Hughes and Mary Matalin, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney among the group's members.

I revealed in yesterday's taping of the McLaughlin Group that Time magazine's emails will reveal that Karl Rove was Matt Cooper's source. I have known this for months but didn't want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged into the grand jury.

McLaughlin is seen in some markets on Friday night, so some websites have picked it up, including Drudge, but I don't expect it to have much impact because McLaughlin is not considered a news show and it will be pre-empted in the big markets on Sunday because of tennis.

Since I revealed the big scoop, I have had it reconfirmed by yet another highly authoritative source. Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week. I know Newsweek is working on an 'It's Rove!' story and will probably break it tomorrow.

This is a very serious matter, and our administration takes it seriously. As members of the press corps here know, I have, at times, complained about leaks of security information, whether the leaks be in the legislative branch or in the executive branch. And I take those leaks very seriously.

And, therefore, we will cooperate fully with the Justice Department. I've got all the confidence in the world the Justice Department will do a good, thorough job. And that's exactly what I want them to do, is a good, thorough job. I'd like to know who leaked, and if anybody has got any information inside our government or outside our government who leaked, you ought to take it to the Justice Department so we can find out the leaker.

I have told my staff, I want full cooperation with the Justice Department. And when they ask for information, we expect the information to be delivered on a timely basis. I expect it to be delivered on a timely basis. I want there to be full participation, because, April, I am most interested in finding out the truth.

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson says he warned President Bush before U.S. troops invaded Iraq that the United States would sustain casualties but that Bush responded, "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."

White House and campaign advisers denied Bush made the comment, with adviser Karen Hughes saying, "I don't believe that happened. He must have misunderstood or misheard it."

Robertson's comments came to light on a day when Bush portrayed himself as an aggressive leader who understands the costs of the war on terrorism, while depicting opponent John Kerry as out of touch about the risks.

"The next commander in chief must lead us to victory in this war and you cannot win a war when you don't believe you're fighting one," Bush told hundreds of supporters in a farming community in Iowa, where he and Kerry are in a close race.

Robertson, in an interview with CNN that aired Tuesday night, said God had told him the war would be messy and a disaster. When he met with Bush in Nashville, Tenn., before the war Bush did not listen to his advice, Robertson said, and believed Saddam Hussein was an evil tyrant who needed to be removed.

"He was just sitting there, like, 'I'm on top of the world,' and I warned him about this war," Robertson said.

"I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, 'Mr. President, you better prepare the American people for casualties.' 'Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties.' 'Well,' I said, 'it's the way it's going to be.' And so, it was messy. The Lord told me it was going to be, A, a disaster and, B, messy."

Traveling with Bush in the Midwest, Hughes said political adviser Karl Rove was in the Feb. 10, 2003, meeting with the president and Robertson in Nashville, but Bush never said there wouldn't be casualties in Iraq.

"Obviously, we already had casualties in Afghanistan at the time. If you look at that, that (the comment) was not consistent with what was going on," she said.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, "Of course, the president never made such a comment."

Robertson released a statement about Bush late Wednesday in which he said, "I emphatically stated that I believe 'the blessing of heaven is upon him' and I am persuaded that he will win this election and prevail on the war against terror in order to keep America safe from her avowed enemies."

Earlier in the day, Mike McCurry, adviser to the Kerry campaign, said: "We believe President Bush should get the benefit of the doubt here, but he needs to come forward and answer a very simple question -- was Pat Robertson telling the truth when he said he didn't think there'd be any casualties or is Pat Robertson lying?"

...is it normal that members of the press know the answer to a major mystery but they withhold it, as a group, from the public? I thought their job was to reveal the answers to major mysteries. In fact, this seems like the scoop of the decade. Back in the day, reporters were racing to get the news of semen stains and talking points on the air mere seconds before their rivals. Now, they all keep quiet?

This is a very interesting professional and ethical question for the media.
Does the reporter's privilege extend to their friends? Here you apparently have quite a few members of the DC press corps with a piece of very juicy information (allegedly) about the most powerful political operative in the United States --- information that also has to do with an important matter of national security and a Justice department investigation. In some sort of friendship extension of the reporter's privilege they say nothing. Amazing.

And during the time they say nothing an election is held in which the political operative in question works feverishly to smear his client's opponent with scurrilous charges of borderline treason and cowardly behavior during wartime. The entire election is premised on the fact that the president, this man's client, is the only one capable of handling national security. His prior campaign had been waged with an overt promise to bring honor and integrity back to the White House. Still nothing.

Finally, when their friend seems headed to jail and his boss has agreed to turn over notes, they start to step up and reveal what they know.

Hookay. I think it's time to convene another conference on blogger ethics and professional journalistic standards. I get so confused about these things.

It began as a shouting match on a busy Capitol Hill street corner during the frenetic morning commute, a bike-vs.-car incident not uncommon in a big city.

But then the silver-haired, retired Navy lieutenant got out of his car, approached the red-headed ballet dancer riding a bike and allegedly shoved her to the ground, authorities said. He got back into his car and, as bystanders followed him, drove down the block to his nearby office, the bicyclist said.

The man was identified as Ted E. Schelenski, 64, vice president for finance and operations at the Heritage Foundation, a think tank that promotes conservative policies. He pleaded not guilty this week to a charge of simple assault.

The bicyclist, Kristin Hall, 23, said the trouble began about 8:30 a.m. June 14. She was riding on the sidewalk, about to turn onto the 300 block of Massachusetts Avenue NE, when a car stopped in front of her, blocking her path, she said. She stopped her bike and asked the man to move his silver Acura, she said.

But Schelenski wouldn't move, and the two yelled at one another, she said in an interview yesterday.

"It was some kind of road-rage nonsense," Hall said. "When he got out of the car, I told him: 'You're crazy! Get back in the car!' "

But Schelenski came at the 105-pound, communications assistant at the Academy for Educational Development and shoved her to the ground while she was still straddled on her bicycle, she said.

"I was pretty scraped up and bruised," Hall said. "And he just got back into his car and floored it. He took off."

I would love 'strict constructionist' or 'originalist' judges if that meant what I think it means. But it doesn't. When Dobson and the cultural conservatives talk about interpreting the Constitution, they mean they want a judge who will interpret it the same way the religious right interprets and quotes the bible- however it damned well pleases them as long as it fits the current political agenda.

If anyone really thinks Dobson and Tony Perkins care about the Constitution, they need to reassess their faculties. They care about the Constitution in the context that they think liberal activist judges are robbing them from what is rightfully theirs (and in fairness, sometimes they are right). What they really care about is displaying the Ten Commandments wherever and whenever because we are a "Christian Nation."

They care about inserting themselves into family matters of life and death. They care about keeping drugs out of your hands, even if they ease pain caused by illness. They care about treating homosexuals like second-class citizens. They care about prayer in school and keeping "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. They care about ending abortion. They care about making divorces really difficult to obtain. They care about inserting religion into schools and ending the teaching of evolution. They care about a whole host of things, but Constitutional deference is not one of them.

And if the Constitution strictly ruled against everyone of their wishes, and the citizens had a vote and laws were passed making gay marriage legal, abortion legal, etc., do you think they would just give up? Of course they wouldn't- they would try to change the Constitution through amendments. Can anyone else figure out why James Dobson supports a flag desecration amendment? The reason is simple- it is just another step in reshaping the country to their choosing.

It just is who they are- there can be no changing that. Debate doesn't work, as they only recognize brute political force. Have you ever tried to debate abortion with someone from the far religious right? There is no debate. If you agree to end partial-birth abortion, they won't be happy. If you enact strict and universal parental notification, it won't be enough. If you change it to one trimester only, that isn't enough. If you make abortion extremely difficult to obtain, if it is still elective, that won't be far enough. If every state but California outlaws all abortion, do you think all of a sudden they would embrace the Constitution and the rhetoric of 'states rights?' This isn't about compromise or the Constitution- this is about remaking the country in what they view as God's image.

So, with that in mind, it is a little silly to keep pointing to times when the Senate worked differently. These guys don't give a damn, and as we have seen, they are willing to break the Senate rules to get their way. They are perfectly willing to tank the party (or so they say) if someone like Gonzalez is nominated. They aren't going to be happy until they get everything they want, and they have $18 million and a lot of political clout lined up to make sure they get it.

This appointment represents the giant balloon payment at the end of the mortgage the GOP signed with the Cultural Right at least 25 years ago. Social conservatives have agreed over and over again to missed payments, refinancings, and in their view, generous terms, but the balance is finally due, and if Bush doesn't pay up, they'll foreclose their entire alliance with the Republican Party.

Sure, they care about other issues, from gay marriage to taxes to Iraq, but abortion is the issue that makes most Cultural Right activists get up in the morning and stuff envelopes and staff phone banks for the GOP. And for decades now, Republicans have told them they can't do anything much about it until they can change the Supreme Court. With a pro-choice Justice stepping down, the subject can no longer be avoided. And thanks to the Souter precedent (and indeed, the O'Connor and Kennedy precedents), there's no way Bush can finesse an appointment that's anything less than a guaranteed vote to overturn Roe.

Starting Friday, most Medicaid recipients in Mississippi will be limited to five prescription drugs at a time, with no process for appeal. The cap appears to be the most restrictive in the nation, but is just one of many measures being taken by states seeking to rein in soaring Medicaid costs.

It will hit hard for people like Erainna Johnson, 42, left legally blind by a stroke in 1997. She takes 19 medications - already more than the previous Medicaid limit of seven - relying on family members, her church and free samples from doctors to make up the difference. "Sometimes I just crack my pills in half, honestly," she said, sitting in the living room of her trailer here.

Mississippi is among many states moving aggressively to contain Medicaid costs, saying severe measures are necessary if the program is to continue. In Missouri, new cuts also took effect Friday in an effort to reduce the rolls; for example, a single mother of three in Missouri is now ineligible if she makes more than $350 a month. About a dozen states limit the number of prescriptions offered to adult patients, but almost all provide for an appeal process or allow doctors to override the limit.

In Mississippi, where more than a quarter of the population is on Medicaid, the cap includes a limit of two name-brand drugs. The only patients exempt from the rule are children, people in nursing homes and patients with H.I.V., who were given an 11th-hour reprieve because virtually none of the anti-viral drugs used were available in generic form.

Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican who backed steeper cuts to Medicaid than those enacted, said the Legislature had come up with the limit on prescription drugs on its own.

Now that Time Inc. has turned over documents to federal court, presumably revealing who its reporter, Matt Cooper, identified as his source in the Valerie Plame/CIA case, speculation runs rampant on the name of that source, and what might happen to him or her. Tonight, on the syndicated McLaughlin Group political talk show, Lawrence O'Donnell, senior MSNBC political analyst, claimed to know that name--and it is, according to him, top White House mastermind Karl Rove.

Here is the transcript of O'Donnell's remarks:

"What we're going to go to now in the next stage, when Matt Cooper's e-mails, within Time Magazine, are handed over to the grand jury, the ultimate revelation, probably within the week of who his source is.

"And I know I'm going to get pulled into the grand jury for saying this but the source of...for Matt Cooper was Karl Rove, and that will be revealed in this document dump that Time magazine's going to do with the grand jury."

Other panelists then joined in discussing whether, if true, this would suggest a perjury rap for Rove, if he told the grand jury he did not leak to Cooper.

President Bush ordered another shake-up of the nation's intelligence services yesterday, forming new national security divisions within both the FBI and the Justice Department and, for the first time, putting a broad swath of the FBI under the authority of the nation's spy chief.

Building on previous changes required by Congress, the reorganization cements the authority of the new director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, over most of the FBI's $3 billion intelligence budget. It also gives him clear authority to approve the hiring of the FBI's top national security official and, through that official, to communicate with FBI agents and analysts in the field on intelligence matters.

"Spies and cops play different roles and operate under different rules for a reason," said Timothy Edgar, national security counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "The FBI is effectively being taken over by a spymaster who reports directly to the White House. . . . It's alarming that the same person who oversees foreign spying will now oversee domestic spying, too."

Groups with names such as Raging Grannies, Gold Star Families for Peace and CodePink may not sound very threatening to our national security. Yet last month a special intelligence unit of the California National Guard was quietly tracking these groups as they prepped for an anti-war protest in front of the Capitol.
As the San Jose Mercury News reported Sunday, the California National Guard has established an "Information Synchronization, Knowledge Management and Intelligence Fusion" program. It's a legacy of Maj. Gen. Thomas Eres, the Guard leader who was forced to retire this month. The unit's purpose, according to the Guard, is to monitor, analyze and distribute information on potential terrorist threats.

Leaders of the California National Guard say the unit doesn't collect information on U.S. citizens. Maybe not, but it came dangerously close to crossing that line, if not charging across it, at the Mother's Day rally last month .

That's the rainy day when a few dozen Californians, including families of soldiers killed in the Iraq war, attended a rally outside the state Capitol. Three days beforehand, an aide in Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's press office had alerted the California National Guard to the coming protest, according to the Mercury News.

The Guard sprung into action.

"Sir," one colonel wrote to his boss, Col. Jeff Davis, who oversees the intelligence unit. "Information you wanted on Sunday's demonstration at the Capitol."

"Thanks," Davis replied, in an e-mail obtained by the newspaper. "Forwarding same to our Intell. folks who continue to monitor."

Guard officials say they did not send anyone to physically monitor the protest. They just kept tabs on it from a distance. A spokesman said the Guard would be negligent in not tracking anti-war rallies, which could easily escalate into a riot.

"Who knows who could infiltrate that type of group and try to stir something up?" said spokesman Lt. Col. Stan Zezotarski about CodePink and the Raging Grannies. "After all, we live in the age of terrorism."

THE American general who commanded allied air forces during the Iraq war appears to have admitted in a briefing to American and British officers that coalition aircraft waged a secret air war against Iraq from the middle of 2002, nine months before the invasion began.
Addressing a briefing on lessons learnt from the Iraq war Lieutenant-General Michael Moseley said that in 2002 and early 2003 allied aircraft flew 21,736 sorties, dropping more than 600 bombs on 391 “carefully selected targets” before the war officially started.



The nine months of allied raids “laid the foundations” for the allied victory, Moseley said. They ensured that allied forces did not have to start the war with a protracted bombardment of Iraqi positions.

If those raids exceeded the need to maintain security in the no-fly zones of southern and northern Iraq, they would leave President George W Bush and Tony Blair vulnerable to allegations that they had acted illegally.

Moseley’s remarks have emerged after reports in The Sunday Times that showed an increase in allied bombing in southern Iraq was described in leaked minutes of a meeting of the war cabinet as “spikes of activity to put pressure on the regime”.

Moseley told the briefing at Nellis airbase in Nebraska on July 17, 2003, that the raids took place under cover of patrols of the southern no-fly zone; their purpose was ostensibly to protect the ethnic minorities.

A leaked memo previously disclosed by The Sunday Times, detailing a meeting chaired by the prime minister and attended by Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, Geoff Hoon, the then defence secretary, and Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, chief of defence staff, indicated that the US was carrying out the bombing.

So the timeline now looks like this: 1) Nelson becomes aware of the Iowa fraud investigation in September of 2004. 2) Nelson secures loans from MetaBank as late as October of 2004. 3) Nelson files for bankruptcy in June of 2005.

In just the last year, the bank has gone through a name change. Previously known in various incarnations as First Federal Savings, First Midwest Financial, and Security State Bank, the company changed the name of all of their banking divisions to MetaBank this year.

The name change is significant because without being aware of it, you wouldn’t make the connection between MetaBank being named as Dan Nelson Automotive’s most significant creditor and the fact that South Dakota Senator John Thune sat on the board of First Federal Savings/First Midwest Financial/Security State Bank from January 27, 2003 until November 18, 2004. In fact, Thune sat on the Audit Committee for the institution. According to Personal Financial Disclosure Reports required by the Senate for candidates, Thune was in a fiduciary relationship with the institution by being paid $35,750 as a board member.

Now all of this doesn’t really mean a whole lot except for the fact that Thune and Dan Nelson, who owns 75% of Nelson Automotive, are close friends. So close that Nelson managed Thune’s first run for Congress in 1996. So close that Nelson contributed $9,000 to Thune’s campaigns over the years. Nearly half of that amount came into Thune’s coffers while Thune was serving on MetaBank’s board. Thune and Nelson are so close that a search of the Senator’s Federal Election Commission Reports show Thune disbursed funds to Dan Nelson Automotive in 2004 to the tune of nearly $90,000 for vehicle leases and renting office space.

A strange twist and side note to this discussion is that one of the properties where MetaBank holds a lien as part of the $30 million in loans was the very property Nelson was leasing to Thune — one of the members of the board of directors. Strange indeed.

Taking all of these facts into consideration, there are serious questions about the relationship between Thune and Nelson. Serious because it involves a United States Senator. Serious because it involves a bank in the middle of it all that is publicly traded on NASDAQ. Serious because Nelson was still borrowing money from MetaBank after Nelson was aware of an investigation into their business practices.

When Thune accepted a position on the Board of Directors and Audit Committee of MetaBank, did he disclose that he had a relationship with one of their significant customers and agree to recuse himself from matters regarding that customer? Should he have even done so? How about his duties on the Audit Committee? Did his duties there include overseeing any aspect of the lending process? Was he privy to Nelson’s financial status at all and if so, did he disclose any concerns to his employer or did he do nothing? As close as Thune and Nelson appear to be, one really has to wonder about all of these things because with what we know as fact, something just doesn’t look right.

Bush approval rating AFTER his 9/11 9/11 9/11 9/11 Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam Saddam You're Rocking the Boat speech: 43%

% of voters who would favor impeachment proceedings if it's found that Bush misled the nation about his reasons for going to war in Iraq: 42%.

% of voters in the South rating Bush's performance favorably: 51%

% of voters in "red states" who voted for Bush who now rate his job performance unfavorably: 50%

% of REPUBLICANS who favor impeachment of Bush is he is found to have misled the nation about his reasons for going to war in Iraq: 25%.

% of REPUBLICANS who would oppose impeachment if Bush were caught raping little boys and dismembering them in the choirloft: 33%. (Not really, but a full one in three would oppose impeachment even if Bush was found to have taken us to war on a lie)

All the attention has focused on Plame as victim, the CIA operative whose safety has been threatened and career compromised by being "outed" But most folks ignore her current role, as head of the CIA WMD desk. Now the current revised history from the Bush folks is that the CIA is responsible for overstating Saddam's WMD capabilities. But we know better. To understand this case you need to recall the political and intelligence context of the period just before and after the start of the war.

As confirmed by the Downing Street Memos, Bush was determined to take out Saddam, and the administration was "fixing" the intelligence to provide a justification. Unfortunately the CIA wasn't helping very much. While "everyone" "knew" that Saddam had WMD, the actual intelligence we had was really poor. Experts were sure that the evidence we ended up seeing like the aluminum "centrifuge tubes" for uranium enrichment, the Niger documents and the mobile biological labs were bogus, and the CIA didn't trust the human intelligence from Chalabi's gang of informers.

Since the CIA was shooting down reasons for war as fast as Chalabi could make them up, the Bushies (paticularly Cheney and Rumsfeld) set up the Office of Special Plans at DOD to "stovepipe" the good stuff and package it for public and international consumption. There were reports of "war" within the intelligence community between the CIA regulars and the prowar DOD. Plame was a top CIA WMD analyst. She was one of the generals on the other side.

Now the timing of the Plame leak is important. When he War began in March even skeptics expected Iraq had some WMD stockpiles. While there was some surprise that none were used, we saw throughout the fighting reports about potential exposure. When Bush declared Mission Accomplished on May 1 the official line was still that we expected to find large caches which were hidden before the war. The administration was counting on those discoveries to justify their manipulation of intelligence before the war.

Wilson's story started to reach the public in early June when it was reported that the CIA had a negative report on the now discredited Niger memos a year earlier. It blew up in early July when Wilson went public, and Novak published his column outing Plame on July 14 - Mission to Niger

At the time the administration was flush with success and still confident that they would find illegal weapons. They are sorting Washington into good guys (who supported the war) and bad guys (who questioned it). When Wilson came up they asked around "Who is this guy" and learned he was married to a CIA WMD analyst. That made him a bad guy, so they share the news with Novak, as a way of discrediting Wilson. It wasn't about retaliation, it was about tarnishing Wilson by tying him to the discredited antiwar faction at CIA. The White House knows Plame as an analyst who refused to support their prowar view. They have been fighting these internal battles for months; now that they have won the war those people are out. I doubt anyone even thought about her being covert.

Fast forward a year and things have changed. The War isn't looking like a slam dunk political winner, no WMD have been found, and folks are pointing fingers about how we could have been so wrong. The last thing in the world the Bushies want is an examination of the intelligence war between CIA and DOD. No indeed turns out it was actually CIA all along that was pushing the WMD story and the White House only doing what they thought they must in response to the flawed intelligence.

So when Patrick Fitzgerald shows up to investigate the outing of a CIA operative, the White House folks have a problem. They can hardly explain that they inadvertantly outed an agent because they wanted to link Wilson to a now discredited faction at CIA that thought there were no WMD because, well, that would mean the White House had manufactured intelligence to take us into an unnecessary and increasingly unpopular war. After all they were now blaming CIA for overstating the threat from Iraq's WMD.

What did they tell Fitzgerald's investigators? What was their Grand Jury testimony. Bet it was pretty hard to come up with a consistent story that wasn't a political disaster. How many lied?

What started as a potential case of intentionally leaking the identity of an agent has now become about perjury and obstruction of justice in an attempt to conceal White House involvement in fixing the intelligence that led to war. Cooper and Miller were all over the prewar intelligence beat, so they become keys to understanding how the White House went from propagandists fighting CIA skeptics over WMD to triumphal victors haranguing their doubtors to well meaning victims of bad intelligence. The Plame disclosure happened right in the middle of the transformation, which means that it draws attention to both the WH role in the fixing of intelligence and its efforts to deny that role.

Fitzgerald needs the reporters to contradict whatever whitewash the WH has come up with for this mess. Its not just the identity of the source, it is what the WH was saying and when that will show that they lied to Fitzgerald and the Grand Jury to cover up their manipulation of and lying about prewar intelligence. This is what happens when the administration's Orwellian alteration of history occurs in a venue where lying is a crime and providing talking points is conspiracy to obstruct justice.

When Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Judith Miller of The New York Times return late Wednesday afternoon to face the federal judge who ordered them to jail last fall for refusing to reveal confidential sources, two different outcomes may emerge.

While New York Times officials have maintained that Miller will not reveal the source who leaked to her the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame, a source close to Time Inc. told E&P that the company is considering handing over documents that would reveal the source.

Cooper declined to comment.

Ted Olson, the lead attorney for Time, would not confirm or deny that report, saying "decisions have not been made in terms of what Time will do if the judge reaffirms the order. Both Time and Matt Cooper are reserving judgment on what they will do. There is no point in making a decision before it is necessary."

Asked if Time Inc. was considering revealing the source, via documents, Dawn Bridges, senior VP for communications, declined comment.

A Republican congressman from North Carolina told CNN on Wednesday that the "evidence is clear" that Iraq was involved in the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001.

"Saddam Hussein and people like him were very much involved in 9/11," Rep. Robin Hayes said.

Told no investigation had ever found evidence to link Saddam and 9/11, Hayes responded, "I'm sorry, but you must have looked in the wrong places."

Hayes, the vice chairman of the House subcommittee on terrorism, said legislators have access to evidence others do not.

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, said that Saddam was a dangerous man, but when asked about Hayes' statement, would not link the deposed Iraqi ruler to the terrorist attacks on New York, the Pentagon and Pennsylvania.

"I haven't seen compelling evidence of that," McCain, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told CNN.

On Tuesday night, President Bush mentioned the September 11 attacks five times during his address on the war in Iraq, prompting criticism from congressional Democrats. (Full story)

The 9/11 commission, appointed by Bush, presented its final report a year ago, saying that Osama bin Laden had been "willing to explore possibilities for cooperation with Iraq" at one time in the 1990s but that the al Qaeda leader "had in fact been sponsoring anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan, and sought to attract them into his Islamic army."

Now raise your hand if you still think Karl Rove’s 9/11 remarks last week were unintentional.

Facing mounting U.S. casualties, an increasingly skeptical public, and a growing chorus of criticism (even within his own party), a confident and resolute President Bush last night directly tied the situation in Iraq to 9/11 and the war on terrorism. To illustrate this renewed focus, he made five direct references to 9/11 and two references to Osama bin Laden. But in both his inaugural and State of the Union addresses this year, he never mentioned Bin Laden. And although he did mention 9/11 in that State of the Union, he didn’t do so until more than half way through the speech.

Some quick questions: Will this new focus reverse poll findings like the one from USA Today/CNN/Gallup, which shows that 50% of Americans now see Iraq being completely separate from the war on terror? Can the Democrats reverse the political setbacks they’ve encountered when Bush wields his 9/11 credentials? And for how much longer will 9/11 continue to be the dominant political story in America?

Petty Officer Garcia said he thought the day when Iraqi soldiers could defend their country without help was not too far off.

"When I was there, they were very, very green," he said. "But they're smart, they learn very quickly, and from what I saw, they are eager to stand on their own."

Does he believe critics of the war who say Iraq had nothing to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon?

We did not expect Mr. Bush would apologize for the misinformation that helped lead us into this war, or for the catastrophic mistakes his team made in running the military operation. But we had hoped he would resist the temptation to raise the bloody flag of 9/11 over and over again to justify a war in a country that had nothing whatsoever to do with the terrorist attacks. We had hoped that he would seize the moment to tell the nation how he will define victory, and to give Americans a specific sense of how he intends to reach that goal - beyond repeating the same wishful scenario that he has been describing since the invasion.

Sadly, Mr. Bush wasted his opportunity last night, giving a speech that only answered questions no one was asking. He told the nation, again and again, that a stable and democratic Iraq would be worth American sacrifices, while the nation was wondering whether American sacrifices could actually produce a stable and democratic Iraq.

Given the way this war was planned and executed, the president does not have any good options available, and if American forces were withdrawn, Iraq would probably sink into a civil war that would create large stretches of no man's land where private militias and stateless terrorists could operate with impunity. But if Mr. Bush is intent on staying the course, it will take years before the Iraqi government and its military are able to stand on their own. Most important of all - despite his lofty assurance last night that in the end the insurgents "cannot stop the advance of freedom" - all those years of effort and suffering could still end with the Iraqis turning on each other, or deciding that the American troops were the ultimate enemy after all. The critical challenge is to gauge, with a clear head, exactly when and if the tipping point arrives and the American presence is only making a terrible situation worse.

PRESIDENT BUSH sought last night to bolster slipping public support for the war in Iraq by connecting it, once again, to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and to the war against terrorism. That connection is not spurious, even if Saddam Hussein was not a collaborator of al Qaeda: Clearly Iraq is now a prime battlefield for Islamic extremists, and success or failure there will do much to determine the outcome of the larger struggle against them. But Mr. Bush didn't explain how a war meant to remove a tyrant believed to wield weapons of mass destruction turned into a fight against Muslim militants, a transformation caused in part by his administration's many errors since Saddam Hussein's defeat more than two years ago. The president also didn't speak candidly enough about the primary mission the United States now has in Iraq, which is not "hunting down the terrorists" but constructing a stable government in spite of Iraq's sectarian divisions and violent resistance from the former ruling elite. It's harder to explain why Americans should die in such a complex and ambitious enterprise than in a fight with international terrorists, but that is the case Mr. Bush most needs to make.

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Once again, however, the president missed an opportunity to fully level with Americans, even though some of the hard truths he elided have been spelled out by his aides and senior military commanders. The insurgency, they have said, is not growing weaker; most likely, said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, it will never be defeated by American troops, and it will continue for many more years. Iraqi troops probably will not be ready to take over from U.S. units for several years, at least. For now, the combined U.S.-Iraqi force is nowhere near large enough to hold territory taken from the insurgents or to secure the country's borders. Yet Army and Marine units are being pressed into their third tours of duty, even as recruitment of fresh soldiers at home lags badly.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that most do not believe the administration's claims of progress, but a majority still is willing to support an extended stay by U.S. forces. If those forces are to succeed in the difficult months and years ahead, Mr. Bush will need to preserve and nourish that fragile mandate -- which will mean speaking more honestly to Americans than he did last night.

The summer of 2001 was declared "summer of the shark" despite the fact that the number of shark attacks wasn't abnormal. Then a little tragic event happened and they shut the hell up about sharks for a little awhile.

After weak prices in the 1990s due to oversupply, natural gas production in North America will probably continue to decline unless there is another big discovery, Exxon Mobil Corp.'s chief executive said on Tuesday.
"Gas production has peaked in North America," Chief Executive Lee Raymond told reporters at the Reuters Energy Summit.

Asked whether production would continue to decline even if two huge arctic gas pipeline projects were built, Raymond said, "I think that's a fair statement, unless there's some huge find that nobody has any idea where it would be."

Red flags flapping sharply in the wind signal our country is on the verge of a major political - and economic - setback.

We may now be only weeks away from a complete collapse of the Iraqi army and the withdrawal of British troops from Iraq in the face of overwhelming public pressure on Tony Blair.

That is a realistic projection based on the reports of two Washington Post reporters, whose dispatches from inside Iraqi Army units and U.S. units assigned to train and work with the Iraqi military have just been published.

What the Post reporters found was massive disenchantment on both sides: American forces bitterly disappointed with the Iraqi government forces, and Iraqi troops harboring similar feelings toward their American counterparts. Only a small percentage of all Iraqi troops are now estimated to be adequately trained to take over the defense of their country. Desertions are widespread.

More than 1,700 American men and women sent to Iraq have returned home in body bags thus far, and more than 7,000 have been critically wounded. War dead in total exceeds 25,000, including "collateral casualties." And the price tag for our military operations tops $200 billion - and counting.

Recent surveys in Iraq have shown that insurgents are overwhelmingly Iraqis, not foreign fighters. Few are associated with al-Qaida.

Since President Bush’s declaration that "major combat operations are over," three weeks or so after the U.S.-British assault on Baghdad, there has been one disingenuous statement after another from the White House, the State Department and the Pentagon.

Successive rationales for the war - finding Saddam’s cache of weapons of mass destruction, heading off an imminent threat to Israel and even to our own country, capturing Saddam and ending his bloody dictatorial reign, establishing democracy in Iraq - have been trotted out, and found to be seriously flawed or even outright wrong.

Interviews by the Post reporters show that many U.S. and Iraqi troops no longer know what they are fighting for.

The scandals of prisoner mistreatment at Abu Ghraib in Baghdad and at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, coupled with a burgeoning debt that likely will never be paid back by Iraqi oil and the Halliburton cost overruns ripping off the U.S. military by millions of dollars, have soured much popular support of the war.

With morale of our troops in the field trending lower by the week, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marines have missed their recruiting targets for the past four months straight. Unless something changes dramatically, a draft would seem unavoidable.

Conservative columnists and Republican members of Congress who voted for the war are now among those joining the chorus of criticism. The latest is Rep. Walter R. Jones, R-N.C., the very person who coined the term "freedom fries" for French fries served in the House cafeteria. He has matched Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., and others in calling for a deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq.

He also wants someone in the Bush administration "to be large enough to apologize for this war." So far, the silence from the White House has been deafening.

Overweight people who diet to reach a healthier weight are more likely to die young than those who remain fat, according to a study.
The finding needs to be backed up by further research before sweeping changes are made to public health strategies, the authors warn, but it highlights how poorly the long-term health effects of dieting are understood.

It is well proven that losing weight reduces the risk of heart disease and diabetes among the obese, but the new study suggests that dieting also causes physiological damage that in the long term can outweigh the benefits.

[snip]

The study, which was carried out in Finland, followed 2,957 overweight or obese people who had been screened to ensure they had no underlying illnesses.

Overweight people have body mass indexes (BMIs) greater than 25, while obese people have BMIs greater than 30.

Each participant was questioned about their desire to lose weight in 1975 and again in 1981. Records of their weight and general health were kept for the next 18 years, during which 268 of the participants died.

Analysis of the data showed that those who wanted to lose weight and succeeded were significantly more likely to die young than those who stayed fat.

"Healthy overweight or obese subjects who try to lose weight and succeed in doing so over a six-year period suffer from almost double the risk of dying during the next 18 years compared with subjects who do not try to lose weight and whose weight remains stable," said Dr Sorensen.

Those who gained weight also had a greater risk of dying young.

The researchers were unable to identify why the dieters were at a greater risk of dying younger, but believe it is caused by fat being lost from lean organs as well as other body tissues.

"Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right, and we are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law."

Washington has for the first time acknowledged to the United Nations that prisoners have been tortured at US detention centres in Guantanamo Bay, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq, a UN source said.

I think the issue that Senator Graham was raising is an interesting one, and that is the fact that the president and the attorney general of the United States made a decision at the very outset of the war that the war on terror was different from a normal war and a different--and the idea that we should use the Article III of the Constitution in the criminal justice system that we use for a car thief or a bank robber or a murderer in the United States for terrorists wouldn't work. And so they established military commissions as the method of dealing with terrorists. The purpose being with a car thief that you want to get them and punish him so they don't do it again. For the terrorist, you want to get them off the battlefield and you want to get information from them so that you know how you can stop other attacks.

The people, for example, in Guantanamo Bay, are Osama bin Laden's bodyguards. They're suicide bombers. They're terrorists. They're murderers and these are bad people. These are not good people. In fact, we've been releasing hundreds of them, and 11, 12 have already turned up back on the battlefield trying to kill innocent men, women and children.

Now, I happen to think that the president was right, that you do treat terrorists differently than you do people in the criminal justice system in the United States. And I think that the issue that Senator Graham raises is one that deserves debate and discussion. And I'm--this is--we're in a new era.