As I was, you were probably counting the delicious indictments poised to be handed out by Fitz. Rove, Libby, Bolton, Hadley, Rice[!],to name a few, with a dash of unindicted co-conspirators given to Dick and George. IDIOTS!

I figured who in this world knows the mind of devious republicans better than the devious republicans over in Freeperville.[no link, don't give them the hits] Could they be seeing something we're not? Something that is so far-fetched it's logical? Something so unconnected it's obvious? The answer is yes. And guess who they believe it goes back to? Were you thinking Hillary? You weren't? Well, they are. And the "logic" involved will blow your mind.

Which means - it was NOT LIBBY who gave her the information - IT WAS PROBABLY HILLARY. I believe that because Valerie Pflame Wilson and her husband were very close friends of Hillary (giving Hillary the opportunity to know that type of information - and because I believe Pflame was a stool pigeon for the Clintons - especially after Bush took office). The Wilsons were known for their fund raisers for the Clintons.

I also believe it was Hillary who prompted Valerie to suggest her husband for the trip to Niger.

Why do I think Hillary would suggest that ..?? Because of the Wilson's relationship to the Clintons, and the fact that Bubba was all over Europe trying to get other countries to VOTE AGAINST THE UNITED STATES .. and Wilson was the perfect stooge to pretend that when he went to Niger and FOUND NOTHING - thereby MAKING BUSH OUT TO BE A LIAR - ALONG WITH BLAIR.

Do you not feel like a complete simpleton after reading such a masterful and logical conclusion? What about the very real possibilty that Patrick Fitzgerald might be covering for Hillary!

So why would Fitzgerald go along with NOT questioning Miller about her other (real) sources, even if or especially if, it WAS Hillary? Is he stupid enough to try to cover for Hillary? Is he stupid enough to think it wouldn't come out eventually, thanks to inquiring minds like the Pajamadeen Freepers?

Thanks, indeed! Yes, it will "all come out", like sunflower seeds through a pigeon

By their logic, there is also someone else who is as guilty as the day is long. Did the name Joe Wilson pop into your mind? No? It should have because they have it all figured it. In fact, it's quite "simple."

It's so simple: Joe Wilson publishes his NYT op-ed, everybody in Washington says "Who the hell is this guy?" Anybody who has ever talked 5 minutes with Wilson knows he'll blab about his wife to anybody who will listen. The rumor spread throughout Washington and these reporters wanted Libby and Rove to "confirm" it even though the reporters themselves knew that Plame drove to Langley every day.

Conservatives may consider Harriet Miers the last straw.

But what will Harriet Miers consider the last straw with conservatives?

Maybe it will be Bork Borking her.
The old Supreme Court nominee reject rejected the new Supreme Court nominee, calling her "a disaster on every level" and "a slap in the face" to conservatives. Robert Bork complained to Tucker Carlson on MSNBC last night that Ms. Miers had "no experience with constitutional law whatever," that it was wrong for W. to choose a justice simply to have a woman's perspective and that conservative reaction veered between "disapproval and outrage."

WHAM! BLAM! POW!

Way to crack the gal right across the kisser, when she's already on the ropes from so much conservative wailing and gnashing of teeth.

[snip]

Conservatives are shocked to discover that President Bush has been stuffing his administration with cronies and mediocrities in important places? If Ms. Miers were a sworn foe of Roe v. Wade and an ardent advocate of originalism in constitutional jurisprudence, would the same conservatives be so sick about her qualifications? Clarence Thomas, after all, was anything but a leading light of American jurisprudence.

The New Republic this week chooses the biggest 15 hacks in the Bush administration, noting that "no administration has etched the principles of hackocracy into its governing philosophy as deeply as this one." Ms. Miers wins at No. 1.

W.'s case for her elevation is their closeness, because she is, as Alexander Hamilton put it, one of the "obsequious instruments of his pleasure."

W. is so loath to leave his little bubble - where caretakers tell him how brilliant and bold he is - that he keeps selecting the people in charge of the selection committees. It's just so much easier to choose a sycophant who's already in the room than to create one from scratch.

He used to disdain pointy-headed liberals from Yale, but now he's angry at pointy-headed conservatives demanding some sort of genius for the Supreme Court, rather than a den mother who did all of W.'s legal wet work and who prefers John Grisham to Leo Strauss.

While the Bushies have been trying to reassure the right that W. knows Harry's heart, that she's a good Christian church lady who will vote in a way that will please them, Harry is probably working herself up to a good grudge against all those meanies who are savaging her as a lightweight apple polisher. Imagine! After she rechristened herself midlife as born again and Republican for them.

Even if she was going to be a loyal conservative jurist before, why should she be now, after all the loathsome things they've said?

The old maxim goes that a neoconservative is a liberal who got mugged by reality. But if you're a conservative mugged by conservatives, neo and paleo, it may have the opposite effect and turn you into ... David Souter!!!!

President Bush's pick for the second-ranking position at the Justice Department abruptly withdrew his nomination Friday after facing weeks of questions over his ties to the lobbyist Jack Abramoff as well as his role in formulating policies for the treatment of suspected terrorists.

The nominee, Timothy Flanigan, a former deputy White House counsel who is now a senior lawyer at Tyco International, had been scheduled to face yet another round of questioning next week from senators who had grown skeptical about his nomination as deputy attorney general.

Of chief concern to Democrats and some Republicans was Mr. Flanigan's role at Tyco, where as its general counsel he oversaw Mr. Abramoff's work lobbying for the company, which is based in Bermuda, to retain its tax-exempt status.

On Oct. 24, 2003, the Washington Post reported that Rove and McClellan, among dozens of others, had submitted to FBI interrogation about the leaks. Two months later, the Post quoted administration officials saying that Rove had been among the very first people to be interviewed by the FBI in pursuit of information about the case.

Back then, Rove might well have assumed that the case would be buried without any undue inconvenience to him. The president had publicly predicted, after all, that the perpetrators of the leak were unlikely to be identified. There was no reason, at the outset, to think that an independent-minded prosecutor would take over from Ashcroft a few months later.

If Rove told the FBI agents the same story that he and McClellan were telling the press, then he might have set himself up for a felony charge of lying to a federal law enforcement official. And if he lied, then he need not have been under oath to have committed a crime.

Another intriguing possibility in the leaks case brings back the baroque personality of right-wing pressroom denizen Jeff Gannon, born James Guckert.

The New York Times reported Friday that in addition to possible charges directly involving the revelation of Valerie Wilson's identity and related perjury or conspiracy charges, Fitzgerald is exploring other possible crimes. Specifically, according to the Times, the special counsel is seeking to determine whether anyone transmitted classified material or information to persons who were not cleared to receive it -- which could be a felony under the 1917 Espionage Act.

One such classified item might be the still-classified State Department document, written by an official of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, concerning the CIA's decision to send former ambassador Joseph Wilson to look into allegations that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Niger. Someone leaked that INR document -- which inaccurately indicated that Wilson's assignment was the result of lobbying within CIA by his wife, Valerie -- to right-wing media outlets, notably including Gannon's former employers at Talon News. On Oct. 28, 2003, Gannon posted an interview with Joseph Wilson on the Talon Web site, in which he posed the following question: "An internal government memo prepared by U.S. intelligence personnel details a meeting in early 2002 where your wife, a member of the agency for clandestine service working on Iraqi weapons issues, suggested that you could be sent to investigate the reports. Do you dispute that?"

Gannon later hinted, rather coyly, that he had learned about the INR memo from an article in the Wall Street Journal. He also told reporters last February that FBI agents working for Fitzgerald had questioned him about where he got the memo. At the very least, that can be interpreted as confirming today's Times report about the direction of the case.

Poll: Groups Unhappy With Bush Performance

Evangelicals, Republican women, Southerners and other critical groups in President Bush's political coalition are worried about the direction the nation is headed and disappointed with his performance, an AP-Ipsos poll found.

[snip]

Only 28 percent say the country is headed in the right direction while two-thirds, 66 percent, say it is on the wrong track, the poll found.

"There is a growing, deep-seated discontentment and pessimism about the direction of the country," said Republican strategist Tony Fabrizio, who believes the reasons for their pessimism differ for those in one political party or another.

Among those most likely to have lost confidence about the nation's direction over the past year are white evangelicals, down 30 percentage points since November, Republican women, down 28 points, Southerners, down 26 points, and suburban men, down 20 points.

Bush's supporters are uneasy about issues such as federal deficits, immigration and his latest nomination for the Supreme Court. Social conservatives are concerned about his choice of Miers, a relatively unknown lawyer who has most recently served as White House counsel.

"Bush is trying to get more support generally from the American public by seeming more moderate and showing he's a strong leader at the same time he has a rebellion within his own party," Thurber said. "The far right is starting to be very open about their claim that he's not a real conservative."

The president's job approval is mired at the lowest level of his presidency — 39 percent. While four of five Republicans say they approve of Bush's job performance — enthusiasm in that support has dipped over the last year.

In December 2004, soon after his re-election, almost two-thirds of Republicans strongly approved of the job done by Bush. The AP-Ipsos survey found that just half in his own party feel that way now.

How dare you act shocked you spindly, little pimple: Dubya is doing nothing more than behaving exactly as the Evil Liberals warned all you mentally-underclocking 286 chipset Republicans he would behave.

Shit, why don’t you just do what you guys always do, George? Roll over, vomit out a few of the hundreds of gallons of Wormwood jizz that the Administration has shotgunned down your gullet, mop the Bushkkake off your face, get shakily back up on your hind legs, look owlishy all around with your hair still “Something About Mary” spikey from the latest load Dubya-mousse, stare into the camera with your haunted, blown-out, spoo-stung haint-eyes and say,

“…but...but...but...the Liberals.”

A proposed regulation which would allow pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions based on the druggists moral views could be used to deny HIV/AIDS patients live saving medication a health advocate warns.

The Wyoming Board of Pharmacy is considering the rule change amid pressure by conservative groups opposed to the sale of contraceptives and birth control pills.

But, the regulation could be used to deny service in many other areas critics charge.

"It is so broad, that any pharmacist with any personal belief that is contrary to any particular drug is allowed to refuse to fill a legal prescription," Pamela Reamer Williams, director of the Casper-based Wyoming AIDS Project told the Star-Tribune.

"Health care professionals are supposed to help. They're not supposed to judge."

Currently, pharmacists are allowed to refuse to dispense a drug if they think a prescription may harm a patient or if the patient is being overmedicated. But Wyoming law is silent on moral conflicts.

Reamer Williams said that the rule change could allow druggists to turn away people they thought were gay.

"It's no secret to any of us that there are people in this state who have religious and moral objections to homosexuality, and it's not just homosexuals in this state or anywhere else that are living with AIDS," Reamer Williams told the paper.

"Some of these are people who never shot drugs, never had sex outside of marriage, did absolutely everything that was the moral way to behave, and they still ended up with HIV."

The board will consider the rule change when it meets next month.

Yesterday, the same day New Yorkers were warned there was a "specific threat" of a bombing on their subways, President Bush delivered what the White House promoted as a major address on terrorism. It seemed, on the surface, like a perfect topic for the moment. But his talk was not about the nation's current challenges. He delivered a reprise of his Sept. 11 rhetoric that suggested an avoidance of today's reality that seemed downright frightening.

[snip]

He seemed to be reading from a very old and familiar script as he revealed that terrorists recruit "disillusioned young men and women," some of whom build weapons based on information available on the Internet. He shared his conviction that "it is cowardice that seeks to kill children and the elderly with car bombs." He said his team was "reforming our intelligence agency" and reorganizing government for "a broad and coordinated homeland defense."

Americans have seen the Department of Homeland Security in action for several years now, under two directors. The first, a former governor with whom the president had a good personal relationship, was an inept bureaucratic and political player who had a strange obsession with color-coded states of emergency. The current one was at the helm during the Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster in New Orleans, when that agency was overseen by an unqualified political appointee.

The administration is still trying to recover politically from Katrina. The hurricane was not just a bad stretch that could be cured by a promise of federal aid and a demonstration of presidential concern. The hurricane showed that despite four years of spinning, America is still unprepared for a catastrophe. It raised major questions about the caliber of people with whom Mr. Bush surrounds himself.

Ever since the terrorist attacks, the main thing Americans have wanted from Washington is a sense of safety. That takes more than hyperalertness to suicide bombing threats, important as that is. No matter what the terrorists are up to, it is not possible to feel safe if the federal government does not appear to know what it is doing on so many different levels.

[snip]

He seemed to be reading from a very old and familiar script as he revealed that terrorists recruit "disillusioned young men and women," some of whom build weapons based on information available on the Internet. He shared his conviction that "it is cowardice that seeks to kill children and the elderly with car bombs." He said his team was "reforming our intelligence agency" and reorganizing government for "a broad and coordinated homeland defense."

Americans have seen the Department of Homeland Security in action for several years now, under two directors. The first, a former governor with whom the president had a good personal relationship, was an inept bureaucratic and political player who had a strange obsession with color-coded states of emergency. The current one was at the helm during the Federal Emergency Management Agency disaster in New Orleans, when that agency was overseen by an unqualified political appointee.

The administration is still trying to recover politically from Katrina. The hurricane was not just a bad stretch that could be cured by a promise of federal aid and a demonstration of presidential concern. The hurricane showed that despite four years of spinning, America is still unprepared for a catastrophe. It raised major questions about the caliber of people with whom Mr. Bush surrounds himself.

Ever since the terrorist attacks, the main thing Americans have wanted from Washington is a sense of safety. That takes more than hyperalertness to suicide bombing threats, important as that is. No matter what the terrorists are up to, it is not possible to feel safe if the federal government does not appear to know what it is doing on so many different levels.

The New York City Police Department is investigating what it deems a credible tip that 19 operatives have been deployed to New York to place bombs in the subway, and security in the subways will be increased, sources told ABC News.

While the police department is taking the threat seriously, it is also urging the public not to be alarmed because – while the source is credible – the information has not been verified.

According to sources in intelligence, emergency services and police headquarters, when three Iraqi insurgents were arrested several days ago during a raid by a joint FBI-CIA team, one of those caught disclosed the threat. Because it slipped out during the arrest, the plot was deemed credible.

After several days of work, sources said, the NYPD is increasingly concerned because it has been unable to discredit the initial source and additional information from the source.

The 19 operatives were to place improvised explosive devices in the subways using briefcases, according to two sources.

The police are deploying additional officers, dogs and heavy weapons teams in subways and commuter rail terminals, sources said.

Department of Homeland Security sources told ABC News they are very doubtful the threat information is credible, though NYPD sources said the information continues to come in and is disturbing.

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, told the Associated Press, "Obviously, this is a significant threat."

Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer’s leaked identity but have warned they cannot guarantee he won’t be indicted, according to people directly familiar with the investigation.

The persons, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because of grand jury secrecy, said Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has not made any decision yet on whether to file criminal charges against the longtime confidant of President George W. Bush or others.

The U.S. attorney’s manual requires prosecutors not to bring witnesses before a grand jury if there is a possibility of future criminal charges unless they are notified in advance that their grand jury testimony can be used against them in a later indictment.

Rove has already made at least three grand jury appearances and his return at this late stage in the investigation is unusual.

The prosecutor did not give Rove similar warnings before his earlier grand jury appearances.

So Karl Rove is returning to testify before the grand jury investigating the outing of Valerie Plame, and he's doing so without any guarantee that Patrick Fitzgerald won't prosecute him. How big of a development is this? "Stunning," a former federal prosecutor tells us. "There is no reason for Rove to make this appearance unless he and his counsel believe he is at serious risk of indictment. None."

It's always risky to go before a grand jury. You can't take your lawyer into the room with you, and you don't know what the grand jury knows or doesn't know. It's especially risky if you've already testified once -- or, in the case of Rove, three times -- before: The odds of introducing inconsistencies into your testimony increase each time you give it. That's why, the former prosecutor tells us, a defense lawyer would advise his client to make a return appearance before the grand jury only in extreme circumstances.

New York University law professor Stephen Gillers offers a similar assessment to the Associated Press. He calls Rove's return trip to the grand jury room an "ominous sign" that suggests Fitzgerald "has learned new information that is tightening the noose" around Rove's neck. "It shows Fitzgerald now, perhaps after [Judith] Miller's testimony, suspects Rove may be in some way implicated in the revelation of Plame's identity or that Fitzgerald is investigating various people for obstruction of justice, false statements or perjury. That is the menu of risk for Rove."

It's possible, of course, that Rove is returning to the grand jury in the hope of saving someone other than himself. Conversely, it's also possible that he's testifying in the hope of implicating someone other than himself.

But what's clear, either way, is that Rove himself is now at risk of prosecution. According to the AP, Fitzgerald has sent Rove's legal team a letter in connection with his upcoming testimony in which the prosecutor says he can't guarantee that Rove won't be charged with a crime. The U.S. Attorneys Manual requires federal prosecutors to issue such a warning before anyone they consider a "target" or a "subject" of an investigation appears before a grand jury. As the manual explains, "target" is "a person as to whom the prosecutor or the grand jury has substantial evidence linking him or her to the commission of a crime and who, in the judgment of the prosecutor, is a putative defendant." A "subject" is "a person whose conduct is within the scope of the grand jury's investigation."

So is Rove a "target" or at least a "subject" now? We don't know for sure, but the fact that Fitzgerald felt compelled to give him a warning suggests that he might be.

After falling for two years, the share of income going to the richest slice of Americans - the top tenth of 1 percent - grew significantly in 2003 while the share going to 99 percent of Americans fell, tax data released yesterday showed.

At the same time, the effective income tax rates paid by the top tenth of 1 percent fell sharply, declining at more than 10 times the rate reduction for middle-class taxpayers, the new report, by the Internal Revenue Service, showed.

Overall incomes rose by 2.7 percent in 2003, compared with the previous year, the I.R.S. said. A quarter of this increase went to the top tenth of 1 percent, the 129,000 taxpayers with reported incomes of $1.3 million or more, an analysis of the data showed.

Prof. Edward N. Wolff, a New York University economist who studies wealth, contended that the data could be tied to stock market gains in 2003 and a sharp rise in the pay of chief executives while most workers' pay was barely keeping up with inflation.

The top 10th of 1 percent paid almost 23.6 percent of their reported income in income taxes in 2003, down from just under 27 percent in 2002. That is a decline of 3.4 percentage points. For taxpayers in the bottom 80 percent, the effective tax rates fall by three-tenths of a percentage point or less.

Only for those Americans in the top 1 percent, the nearly 1.3 million taxpayers who made at least $327,000, did incomes increase significantly more in 2003 than the rate of inflation. And this increase was concentrated within the top tenth of 1 percent. The income of that group grew by 9.5 percent in 2003 over the previous year while the rest of the top 1 percent had a gain of 3.7 percent.

For the bottom 99 percent of taxpayers, income rose by slightly less than 2 percent, which was below the inflation rate of 2.3 percent.

The top 1 percent of taxpayers received almost 17.5 percent of all income and paid a third of all income taxes in 2003, the I.R.S. found. The top tenth of 1 percent received 7.57 percent of reported income and paid more than 15.3 percent of all income taxes.

The share of all reported income reported by the top 1 percent of taxpayers increased by 0.57 percentage point, compared with 2002. Nearly all of this increase - 0.47 percentage point - went to the top tenth of 1 percent.

The top tenth of 1 percent had more income in 2003 than the poorest third of taxpayers, a group with 330 times the number of people, analysis of the data showed. This is a sharp change from 1979, the earliest year in the I.R.S. report, when the total income of the poorest third of Americans exceeded that garnered by the top tenth of 1 percent by 2.5 to 1.

The I.R.S. data tend to understate incomes for those at the very top because of different rules for reporting wages and capital gains, meaning the actual disparity was larger than the official data show.

President George W. Bush told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq - and create a Palestinian State, a new BBC series reveals.

In Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, a major three-part series on BBC TWO (at 9.00pm on Monday 10, Monday 17 and Monday 24 October), Abu Mazen, Palestinian Prime Minister, and Nabil Shaath, his Foreign Minister, describe their first meeting with President Bush in June 2003.

Nabil Shaath says: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"

Asked why he had not just killed himself when he saw debt mounting up, he explained that suicide barred him from heaven. He had a better chance of going to heaven if he murdered his family and then sought forgiveness. In fact, he fully expected not only to see all of them in heaven but that they'd have either forgiven him or would not know about the "tragedy that had happened," as he'd put it in his trial statement to the judge. He suspected they would all get along as before.

Simonson graduated from the University of Wisconsin law school in 1994 and served as legal counsel to Tommy Thompson while he was governor of Wisconsin from 1995 to 1999. Simonson then followed Thompson to Washington when the governor was appointed as head of HHS. Simonson’s bio at HHS states that “from 2001-2003, he was the HHS Deputy General Counsel and provided legal advice and counsel to the Secretary on public health preparedness matters. Prior to joining HHS, Simonson served as corporate secretary and counsel for the National Railroad Passenger Corporation (AMTRAK).”

Congressman Henry Waxman has recently pointed to Simonson as an example where Bush has “repeatedly appointed inexperienced individuals with political connections to important government posts, including positions with key responsibilities for public health and safety.”

In addition to being very close to Thompson, Simonson has given generously to the Bush political machine. The website, Political Money Line’s contribution database shows that he contributed $3,000 to various Bush-Cheney committees in the 2004 election cycle and gave $250 to the RNC. (Which for a $134,000 a year job is more than chump change.)

The Washington Drug Letter published an article in its December 2004 issue in which Hauer was harshly critical of Simonson:

Speaking as part of a biodefense panel in Washington, D.C. Dec. 15, Jerome Hauer, formerly the Assistant Secretary for Public Health Emergency Preparedness (ASPHEP) at HHS, said the $877 million contract awarded to VaxGen to produce a new anthrax vaccine was insufficient. He also insinuated poor policymaking has left the country vulnerable to terrorist attacks using weapons of mass destruction.

Hauer faulted the current management at the ASPHEP Office, including acting secretary Stewart Simonson, for not being better prepared to handle its duties. He called for the creation of a new federal office to coordinate U.S. biodefense activities.
. . .
“The decisions being made do not appear to have a sound basis,” said Hauer, currently senior vice president of government relations for consulting firm Fleishman-Hillard.

State Sen. Patricia Miller, R-Indianapolis, issued a one-sentence statement Wednesday saying: "The issue has become more complex than anticipated and will be withdrawn from consideration by the Health Finance Commission."

Miller said later that the issue of regulating assisted reproduction, just as the state regulates adoption, is multifaceted. She said there was not enough time for the committee -- a panel of lawmakers that meets when the Indiana General Assembly is not in session to discuss possible legislation -- to work through all of the issues involved by its next meeting Oct. 20.

"To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate?

"I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity.

In addition to this, it would be an efficacious source of stability in the administration. It will readily be comprehended, that a man who had himself the sole disposition of offices, would be governed much more by his private inclinations and interests, than when he was bound to submit the propriety of his choice to the discussion and determination of a different and independent body, and that body an entire branch of the legislature.

"The possibility of rejection would be a strong motive to care in proposing. The danger to his own reputation, and, in the case of an elective magistrate, to his political existence, from betraying a spirit of favoritism, or an unbecoming pursuit of popularity, to the observation of a body whose opinion would have great weight in forming that of the public, could not fail to operate as a barrier to the one and to the other.

"He would be both ashamed and afraid to bring forward, for the most distinguished or lucrative stations, candidates who had no other merit than that of coming from the same State to which he particularly belonged, or of being in some way or other personally allied to him, or of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure."