Labels: Knut

Labels: idiocy, wingnuttia

The former Massachusetts governor, who in his 1994 Senate bid pledged to be a more effective champion for gay causes than his Democratic rival, discussed gay marriage in an interview set to air Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes."

"This isn't just some temporary convenience here on Earth, but we're people that are designed to live together as male and female and we're gonna have families," he tells interviewer Mike Wallace, according to an excerpt CBS released Friday. "And that, there's a great line in the Bible that children are an inheritance of the Lord and happy is he who has or hath his quiver full of them."

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade

Labels: Generation X, war hawks

Labels: bloggers, Knut

Drug Enforcement Administration officials tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com Giuliani personally met with the head of the DEA when the DEA's drug diversion office began a criminal investigation into the company.

According to the book "Painkiller," by New York Times reporter Barry Meier, both Giuliani and his then-partner Bernard Kerik "were in direct contact with Asa Hutchinson, the administrator of DEA."

Hutchinson told the Blotter on ABCNews.com today that Giuliani asked for a meeting, "and we gave him a meeting." Hutchinson says he was aware the company was under investigation at the time, and "any time a company is under investigation I like to give them a chance to make their case."

Kerik told New York Magazine at the time that Giuliani had raised $15,000 in donations for a "traveling museum operated by the DEA."

Some officials told ABC News there were questions inside the agency of whether the donations were an attempt to influence the DEA.

Meier wrote that "with Giuliani now in the mix, the pace of DEA's investigation into Purdue's OxyContin plant in New Jersey slowed as Hutchinson repeatedly summoned division officials to his office to explain themselves and their reasons for continuing the inquiry."

Giuliani publicly praised the company, Purdue Pharma, when it hired him in May 2002 for an undisclosed amount. "Purdue has demonstrated its commitment to fighting this problem," he said, referring to the issue of drug addiction.

According to Giuliani Partners, Kerik, a New York City police commissioner under Giuliani, was in charge of helping Purdue improve security at the New Jersey plant.

Kerik left Giuliani Partners after disclosures he was under criminal investigation.

In hiring Giuliani, Purdue said, "Giuliani Partners is uniquely qualified" to address the issue of preventing drug abuse.

The Web site for Giuliani Partners lists Purdue Pharma as one of its current clients.

Labels: corporatism, corruption, greed, Rudy Giuliani

The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove's, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas

The withheld records show that D. Kyle Sampson, who was then-chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, consulted with White House officials in drafting two letters to Congress that appear to have misrepresented the circumstances of Griffin's appointment as U.S. attorney and of Rove's role in supporting Griffin.

In one of the letters that Sampson drafted, dated February 23, 2007, the Justice Department told four Senate Democrats it was not aware of any role played by senior White House adviser Rove in attempting to name Griffin to the U.S. attorney post. A month later, the Justice Department apologized in writing to the Senate Democrats for the earlier letter, saying it had been inaccurate in denying that Rove had played a role.

Brad Berenson, an attorney for Sampson, said in an interview that his client did not intend to mislead Congress. Sampson, he said, signed off on the February 23 letter based on representations made by the White House that it was accurate.

The withheld e-mails show that Sampson's draft was forwarded for review to Chris Oprison, an associate White House counsel, who approved the language saying that Justice was not aware of Rove having played any role in supporting Griffin. But an earlier e-mail from Sampson to Oprison that has already been made public indicates that the two men discussed Rove and then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers as being at the forefront of Griffin's nomination.

Several of the e-mails that the Bush administration is withholding from Congress, as well as papers from the White House counsel's office describing other withheld documents, were made available to National Journal by a senior executive branch official, who said that the administration has inappropriately kept many of them from Congress.

The senior official said that Gonzales, in preparing for testimony before Congress, has personally reviewed the withheld records and has a responsibility to make public any information he has about efforts by his former chief of staff, other department aides, and White House officials to conceal Rove's role.

"If [Gonzales] didn't know everything that was going on when it went down, that is one thing," this official said. "But he knows and understands chapter and verse. If there was an effort within Justice and the White House to mislead Congress, it is his duty to disclose that to Congress. As the country's chief law enforcement official, he has a higher duty to disclose than to protect himself or the administration."

Labels: Karl Rove, Prosecutorgate

It was August 2006 when one of the young Muslim men accused of plotting to kill soldiers at Fort Dix first broached the idea, according to the authorities. Talking to an informer who was secretly taping the exchange, the young man said that he thought he could round up six or seven other men willing to take part, and that a rocket-propelled grenade might be the most effective weapon, the authorities said.

And he had one more notion: He wanted the informer to lead the attack, according to a federal complaint. “I am at your services,” the young man is quoted as telling the informer, who had presented himself as an Egyptian with a military background.

That moment, recorded on tape and submitted in federal court this week in Camden, N.J., as the authorities charged six Muslim men in the plot, captures something of the complexity of using informers in terror investigations. The informer, sent to penetrate a loose group of men who liked to talk about jihad and fire guns in the woods, had come to be seen by the suspects as the person who might actually show them how an act of terror could be carried off.

Indeed, over the months that followed, as the targets of the investigation spoke with a sometimes unfocused zeal about waging holy war, the informer, one of two used in the investigation, would tell them that he could get them the sophisticated weapons they wanted. He would accompany them on surveillance missions to military installations, debating the risks, and when the men looked ready to purchase the weapons, it was the informer who seemed to be pushing the idea of buying the deadliest items, startling at least one of the suspects.

Labels: domestic terrorism, idiocy

Labels: cat blogging

Labels: Knut, polar bears

Participants in Tuesday's White House meeting said frustration about the Iraqi government's efforts dominated the conversation, with one pleading with the president to stop the Iraqi parliament from going on vacation while "our sons and daughters spill their blood." The House members pressed Bush and Gates hard for a "Plan B" if the current troop increase fails to quell the violence and push along political reconciliation. Davis said that administration officials convinced him there are contingency plans, but that the president declined to offer details, saying that if he announced his backup plan, the world would shift its focus to that contingency, leaving the current strategy no time to succeed.

Davis, a former chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, also presented Bush dismal polling figures to dramatize just how perilous the party's position is, participants said. Davis would not disclose details, saying the exchange was private. Others warned Bush that his personal credibility on the war is all but gone.

Snow, who sat in on the meeting in the president's private quarters, said it should not be overdramatized or seen as another "marching up to Nixon," a reference to the critical moment during Watergate in 1974 when key congressional Republicans went to the White House to tell President Richard M. Nixon that it was time to resign.

"This is not one of those great cresting moments when party discontents are coming in to read the president the riot act," he said. But Snow acknowledged that the meeting included some blunt, if respectful, discussion.

Davis stressed that Republicans will remain united against the Democratic bill in the House today. But the search for an exit is almost inevitable. "The key for everybody is to try to find a way to declare victory and get out of there," he said.

Labels: George W. Bush, Iraq, Republic Party

Itchmo has learned that the FDA has issued a surveillance order for Chinese vegetable proteins on May 1 — including corn gluten and wheat products — based on melamine contamination.

Despite repeated FDA statements saying that there is no risk to human health from contaminated pigs and chickens, the FDA surveillance order indicates otherwise. It states: Pregnant women should not perform this assignment. (Emphasis ours)

Melamine and additional related contaminants have been found in concentrations of up to 20% in analyzed samples. The MSDS for pure melamine is attached as Attachment B and includes warnings “to avoid breathing dust, avoid contact with eyes, skin and clothing”. Chronic exposure may cause cancer or reproductive damage.

Clearly, the FDA is concerned with the safety of their own staff’s exposure to melamine-tainted foods. Despite this warning, the FDA told the press and us yesterday that animals that ate tainted foods were safe for human consumption.

This PDF document contains the basis for FDA’s warning to it’s staff.

In fact, the Chinese factory that produced melamine-tainted wheat products was long associated with toxic symptoms. (Reg. required)

Labels: corruption, tainted pet food scandal

The chance that an Iraqi child will live beyond age 5 has plummeted faster than anywhere else in the world since 1990, according to a report released Tuesday, which placed the country last in its child survival rankings.

One in eight Iraqi children died of disease or violence before reaching their fifth birthday in 2005, according to the report by Save the Children, which said
Iraq ranked last because it had made the least progress toward improving child survival rates.

Iraq's mortality rate has soared by 150 percent since 1990. Even before the latest war, Iraq was plagued by electricity shortages, a lack of clean water and too few hospitals.

Labels: Iraq

Labels: 2008 election, bloggers, podcasts

France's next president Nicolas Sarkozy holidayed on Tuesday in Malta ahead of launching a radical reform programme, while back home cities across the country were hit by more violent "anti-Sarko" protests.

Sarkozy boarded a yacht in the Mediterranean island with his wife Cecilia and their 10-year-old son Louis on Monday at the start of a three-day break, far from the hectic post-election atmosphere in Paris.

The family arrived there on a private plane after the 52-year-old right-winger's election victory on Sunday. He won 53 percent of the votes to 47 percent for his Socialist rival Segolene Royal.

Sarkozy, who has relentlessly manoeuvred his way to power over the past five years, had pre-planned the break to recover from his gruelling campaigning and to mentally ready himself for France's highest office.

Labels: Slackers

I just have to say that this is STUNNING. Two months after first determining a problem with “wheat gluten flour” they only now determine it was really plain old wheat FLOUR? Anybody who has ever baked bread would have been able to tell the difference… the two products have different color and texture. Mix in a little water and rub it between your fingers, and you can tell the difference with your eyes closed.

Labels: corporatism, corruption, greed, tainted pet food scandal

Is al-Qaeda recruiting these doofuses just to lull us into a false sense of security? Or maybe they're Jon Stewart fans and want to provide him with fresh material? WTF?

Labels: Administration B.S., terrorism

Chevron, the second-largest American oil company, is preparing to acknowledge that it should have known kickbacks were being paid to Saddam Hussein on oil it bought from Iraq as part of a defunct United Nations program, according to investigators.

The admission is part of a settlement being negotiated with United States prosecutors and includes fines totaling $25 million to $30 million, according to the investigators, who declined to be identified because the settlement was not yet public.

The penalty, which is still being negotiated, would be the largest so far in the United States in connection with investigations of companies involved in the oil-for-food scandal.

The $64 billion program was set up in 1996 by the Security Council to help ease the effects of United Nations sanctions on Iraqi civilians after the first gulf war. Until the American invasion in 2003, the program allowed Saddam’s government to export oil to pay for food, medicine and humanitarian goods.

Using an elaborate system of secret surcharges and extra fees, however, the Iraqi regime received at least $1.8 billion in kickbacks from companies in the program, according to an investigation completed in 2005 by Paul A. Volcker, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve.

By imposing surcharges on the sale of crude oil, the Iraqi regime skimmed about $228 million from its oil exports.

A report released in 2004 by an investigator at the Central Intelligence Agency listed five American companies that bought oil through the program: the Coastal Corporation, a subsidiary of El Paso; Chevron; Texaco; BayOil, and Mobil, now part of Exxon Mobil. The companies have denied any wrongdoing and said they were cooperating with the investigations.

As part of the deal under negotiation, Chevron, which now owns Texaco, is not expected to admit to violating the U.N. sanctions. But Chevron is expected to acknowledge that it should have been aware that illegal kickbacks were being paid to Iraq on the oil, the investigators said.

The fine is connected to the payment of about $20 million in surcharges on tens of millions of barrels of Iraqi oil bought by Chevron from 2000 to 2002, investigators said.

These payments were made by small oil traders that sold oil to Chevron. But records found by United Nations, American and Italian officials showed that they were financed by Chevron.

[snip]

According to the Volcker report, surcharges on Iraqi oil exports were introduced in August 2000 by the Iraqi state oil company, the State Oil Marketing Organization. At the time, Condoleezza Rice, now secretary of state, was a member of Chevron’s board and led its public policy committee, which oversaw areas of potential political concerns for the company.

Ms. Rice resigned from Chevron’s board on Jan. 16, 2001, after being named national security advisor by President Bush.

Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman, referred inquires to Chevron.

Labels: Condoleeza Rice, corporatism, corruption, greed

We were at the airport. Just before we were due to leave, the entrance car park was hit by a car bomb.

US troops and private security forces who guard the perimeter locked the whole area down for the next four hours. No traffic was allowed in or out.

While we waited with scores of other vehicles, mortars were fired at the airport. Fortunately for us they landed on the other side of the runway, plumes of smoke shooting into the air.

You won't have heard about any of this because at the same time a series of other far more serious attacks was taking place.

One was at the Sadriya market in the city centre, where a massive car bomb killed more than 140 people.

[snip]

As we drove into the city, we counted six blast holes left by recent roadside bombs along just one 100-metre stretch of road.

A large patch of damaged, blackened Tarmac on a bridge spoke of another attempt to destroy a key crossing.

The Sunni extremists held to be responsible for these attacks seem to be making a mockery of the US and Iraqi security plan, which is now into its third month.

So far, their surge seems to be having more effect than the American one.

Last month alone there were more than 100 car bombings, and the number of attacks has continued at a similar rate so far this month. This indicates a high level of organisation.

This despite the fact that there are many extra US and Iraqi troops in the city now. There are more raids and patrols.

On our drive into the city, we encountered several Iraqi army checkpoints. But almost every vehicle - including ours - was being waved through.

Many new checkpoints have been set up across Baghdad.

But what is their purpose, many Iraqis ask, when they seem to stop so few people?

It is not always encouraging when they do - a couple of times we have been pulled over by Iraqi soldiers who ask us if we have any bullets to give them.

Labels: Iraq

The Pentagon announced yesterday that 35,000 soldiers in 10 Army combat brigades will begin deploying to Iraq in August as replacements, making it possible to sustain the increase of U.S. troops there until at least the end of this year.

U.S. commanders in Iraq are increasingly convinced that heightened troop levels, announced by President Bush in January, will need to last into the spring of 2008. The military has said it would assess in September how well its counterinsurgency strategy, intended to pacify Baghdad and other parts of Iraq, is working.

"The surge needs to go through the beginning of next year for sure," said Lt. Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the day-to-day commander for U.S. military operations in Iraq. The new requirement of up to 15-month tours for active-duty soldiers will allow the troop increase to last until spring, said Odierno, who favors keeping experienced forces in place for now.

"What I am trying to do is to get until April so we can decide whether to keep it going or not," he said in an interview in Baghdad last week. "Are we making progress? If we're not making any progress, we need to change our strategy. If we're making progress, then we need to make a decision on whether we continue to surge."

Labels: Administration B.S., George W. Bush, Iraq, terrorism

Levine recalls seeing some of the brothers shooting paintballs at trees in their front yard, an incident that seemed harmless at the time. Authorities say the group spoke of playing paintball as a training exercise for the attack.

Maybe it’s just me, but there seems to be considerably more caution in the blogosphere today over the announcement that the feds have arrested six men who were planning to attack soldiers at Fort Dix, New Jersey, than breathless reports yesterday that an explosion in a Las Vegas parking garage was a terrorist attack.

That is well and good, because the preliminary reports call to mind those feckless Miami-based terrorist wannabes who were going to take a bus to Chicago and blow up the Sears Tower. Or something.

These alleged terrorists had been under surveillance by the FBI for months, practiced by shooting paintball guns and real weapons in a rural area of the Pennsylvania Poconos and allegedly watched jihadist videos in which Osama bin Laden urged them toward martyrdom.

Captain Ed cut to the chase at Captain’s Quarters in noting that these guys do not appear to have the smarts of typical Al Qaeda operatives insofar as they made a videotape of their training sessions and then went to a retail store to get it made into a DVD.

Labels: Administration B.S., domestic terrorism, utter horseshit

This is absolutely ridiculous. It's always the victim's fault. Why can't these people ever just admit they're incompetent and can't run a government? (Rhetorical question.)

AP via HuffPo:

The White House fought back Tuesday against criticism from Kansas' governor that National Guard deployments to Iraq are slowing the response to last week's devastating tornado.

White House press secretary Tony Snow said the fault was Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius'.

In a spat reminiscent of White House finger-pointing at Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco after the federal government's botched response to Hurricane Katrina, Snow rapped Sebelius for not following procedure to find gaps and then asking the federal government to fill them.

"If you don't request it, you're not going to get it," he said.

One slight problem: Governor Sebelius did request it. In fact, she took her concerns to Bush personally in 2006:

Sebelius, a Democrat, has written the Pentagon twice and spoke about the issue at great length with Bush in January 2006 when they rode together from Topeka to a lecture in Manhattan.

"He assured me that he had additional equipment in his budget a year ago. What the Defense Department said then and continues to say is that states will get about 90 percent of what they had," Sebelius said. "Meanwhile, it doesn't get any better. I'm at a loss."

So apparently it doesn't matter if you "request it"; you're still not getting it. What's more, ThinkProgress notes three other times Governor Sebelius lobbied the Pentagon to replace missing equipment.

The governor is not to blame here. She didn't start the war, and she didn't decide to send to send the National Guard equipment to Iraq. And despite her constant efforts to get that equipment back in order to deal with disasters like last weekend's tornado, it's still her fault. Have they no shame? (Another rhetorical question.)

Labels: Administration B.S., idiocy, incompetence

Six men described by federal prosecutors as "Islamic militants" were arrested on charges they plotted to attack the Fort Dix Army base and "kill as many soldiers as possible," authorities said Tuesday.

Labels: blog

Consumers face little risk from eating pork, chicken and eggs from farm animals that ate feed mixed with pet food scraps contaminated by an industrial chemical, government scientists said Monday.

Mixing in material contaminated at low levels diluted it such that humans who eat the animals won’t be harmed, the scientists said.

“We literally found that the dilution is so minute, in fact in some cases you can’t even test and find melamine any more in that product,” Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said in Chicago, speaking to the Organic Trade Association.

The government also recommended lifting holds placed on some pigs and chickens after their feed tested negative for the chemical, melamine, and related compounds. Those animals may be slaughtered and enter the food supply, the Agriculture Department and Food and Drug Administration said.

Other animals, including some that ate feed that has tested positive for contamination, are likely to be held for another week pending completion of an assessment of the overall risk of the chemicals to animal health.

Melamine, used to make plastics, and the related compounds contaminated pet food that either sickened or killed an unknown number of dogs and cats. Scraps left over from the manufacture of that dog and cat food was sold for use in animal feed before the pet food was known to be tainted and recalled from store shelves.

Labels: corporatism, Cronyism, greed, tainted pet food scandal

The Senate Judiciary Committee asked Bradley Schlozman, a former senior civil rights attorney and U.S. attorney, to speak with investigators. The Justice Department, meanwhile, said it wouldn't try to prevent Congress from granting immunity to White House liaison Monica Goodling if she testifies before a committee.

Lawmakers want to talk to Schlozman and Goodling as part of an inquiry into whether the department played politics with the hiring and firing of department officials. The inquiry began as a question about whether U.S. attorneys - presidential appointees who serve as the top federal law enforcement officials in their state districts - were fired for political reasons.

It has grown, however, into an investigation of whether the agency let politics affect criminal investigations and whether officials made employment decisions for political reasons.

Lawmakers want to question Schlozman, who now works for the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, about a voter fraud lawsuit he filed against Missouri in the lead-up to the 2006 election. Committee members said they wanted to know whether Schlozman's predecessor was forced out for not endorsing that lawsuit, which was ultimately dismissed.

``The Committee would benefit from hearing directly from you in order to gain a better understanding of the role voter fraud may have played in the administration's decisions to retain or remove certain U.S. attorneys,'' Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., wrote in a letter co-signed by the committee's top Republican, Arlen Specter of New York.

The letter asked Schlozman to voluntarily submit to interviews and testimony and provide documents to the committee.

Dean Boyd, a Justice Department spokesman, said politics do not influence decisions about whether to bring a case.

``The Justice Department brings its civil actions and criminal prosecutions based on evidence, not on politics,'' Boyd said. ``We expect U.S. Attorneys to bring election and voter fraud cases where evidence of such fraud exists.''

Voting rights attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for prison time for the new US Attorney for Arkansas, Timothy Griffin and investigation of Griffin’s former boss, Karl Rove, chief political advisor to President Bush.

“Timothy Griffin,” said Kennedy,”who is the new US attorney in Arkansas, was actually the mastermind behind the voter fraud efforts by the Bush Administration to disenfranchise over a million voters through ‘caging’ techniques - which are illegal.”

[Hear Kennedy on Griffin, Rove and ‘caging lists’ below or here]

Kennedy based his demand on the revelations by BBC reporter Greg Palast in the new edition of his book, “Armed Madhouse.” On one page of the book, Palast reproduces a copy of a confidential Bush-Cheney campaign email, dated August 26, 2004, in which Griffin directs Republican operatives to use the ‘caging’ lists.

This is one of the emails subpoenaed by Congress but supposedly “lost” by Rove’s office. Palast obtained 500 of these, fifty with ‘caging’ lists attached.

‘Caging’ lists are “absolutely illegal” under the Voting Rights Act, noted Kennedy on his Air America program, Ring of Fire. The 1965 law makes it a felony crime to challenge voters when race is a factor in the targeting. African-American voters comprised the bulk of the 70,000 voters ‘caged’ in a single state, Florida.

Palast wrote in his book, “Here’s how the scheme worked. The Bush campaign mailed out letters,” particularly targeting African-American soldiers sent overseas. When the letters sent to the home addresses of the soldiers came back “undeliverable” because the servicemen were in Baghdad or elsewhere, the Republican Party would, “challenge the voter’s registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballots being counted.”

The Republicans successfully challenged “at least one million” votes of minority voters in the 2004 election.

Even if he loses, his friends say, he doesn't lose. He'll just change the score, or change the rules, or make his opponent play until he can beat him. "If you were playing basketball and you were playing to 11 and he was down, you went to 15," says [childhood best friend Doug] Hannah, now a Dallas insurance executive. "If he wasn't winning, he would quit. He would just walk off.... It's what we called Bush Effort: If I don't like the game, I take my ball and go home. Very few people can get away with that." So why could George get away with it? "He was just too easygoing and too pleasant."

Labels: George W. Bush, Republic Party

If the Bush administration was serious about saving lives, building U.S. credibility in the world, involving regional allies, and ending the Iraq occupation -- then they would put Dick Cheney back in his hidden location, lock the door from the outside and throw away the key.

Cheney should not be allowed anywhere near Middle East diplomacy. Any diplomatic effort that involves Dick Cheney will result in one thing and one thing only: more violence, more failure, more death.

An Icon of Violence
Of all the people in the world, today, there is not a single person who symbolizes the arrogance, violence and deceit of the Bush era more than Vice President Dick Cheney.

More than just a failed leader, Cheney has become an icon of violence -- a man whose name and face are synonymous with the an authoritarian view of politics rooted in the ignorant idea that unilateral force can sow everlasting peace.

There have been other icons of violence in history, but Cheney is the most dominant in today's world. Even more than Bush, who has become a symbol of a failed Machiavellian prince, Cheney iconic status is built on his soulless bureaucratic tenor, his relentless commitment to long-since-debunked propaganda, and his constant repetition of doomsday scenarios predicting nuclear Holocaust. Al this means that Cheney did not happen up on his iconic status by chance. He created it himself.

Is there anyone in America -- anyone in the world -- who does not know this about Dick Cheney? No. We all know it. Even in the vile and twisted tangle of the Bush White House, they all know what Cheney symbolizes in the world. They all know that no person is more hated, more distrusted than Dick Cheney. They all know that the world is waiting -- hoping -- not for Dick Cheney to take on a greater role in the mess of the Iraq occupation, but for Dick Cheney to just go away. Far, far away.

Despite all this, next week the White House will send the icon of violence on a diplomatic mission to the Middle East -- ostensibly, in Dana Perino's words, to "follow-up" on the diplomacy of the recent meetings in Sharm el Sheikh.

What a ridiculous idea. What a foolish idea.

Dick Cheney's visit to the Middle East will do to that region what saltwater does to an open wound, what gasoline does to an open flame. Cheney's visit will bring more pain, more flames, more bombs, more lost limbs, more piles of corpses, more puddles of blood, more destroyed Iraqi hopes, more destroyed U.S. military families.

Cheney's visit will send diplomatic efforts backwards, not forwards. It will destroy alliances, not build them.

The first step to ending the mess in Iraq is not to give Cheney a greater role, but to strip him of any role whatsoever.

Labels: Dick Cheney

"It's clear Congressman Boehner's new timetable for Iraq has less to do with the troops coming home, and has everything to do with his fear that House Republicans will be sent home."

Labels: Iraq

Deputy national security adviser J.D. Crouch II, who helped spearhead the recent policy review that led President Bush to send more U.S. troops to Iraq, announced yesterday that he will step down early next month, becoming the latest key aide to depart the White House at a critical juncture.

Crouch, the No. 2 official at the National Security Council, has been a pivotal figure on a series of difficult issues, including Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran and the detention policy for terrorism suspects. And it was his interagency group meeting at the White House complex for many weeks last winter that resulted in the ongoing troop buildup in Iraq, which has become the defining decision of the year for Bush.

In an interview, Crouch said he is leaving to devote more time to his family after six years in the administration. He expressed confidence that Bush's policy of trying to build democracy in Iraq and spread it around the world will ultimately pay off. "I worry about it," he said. "I think it's important to question your assumptions, always ask yourself if you're on the right track. But as I look at the agenda that the president has set out, I think it's the right agenda, and history will vindicate that."

Crouch becomes the second top official involved in crafting the new Iraq strategy to leave before it is clear if the new approach will work.

Labels: Administration B.S., chickenhawks, irresponsibility

Labels: blogging

Last week, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann delivered a special comment criticizing Rudy Giuliani for his recent partisan fearmongering. This week, he hosted MSNBC’s coverage of the Republican presidential debate.

Olbermann’s presence on debate night coverage angered the Giuliani campaign. The AP reports:

The Giuliani campaign privately expressed its concern to NBC News about Olbermann’s role in the days leading up to last Thursday’s debate. … MSNBC spokesman Jeremy Gaines said a Giuliani campaign representative had called NBC News to complain about Olbermann being part of the debate telecast following his commentary.

The Giuliani campaign has a right to make its complaints known, just as many on the left have raised arguments about the bias of Fox News’ participation in Democratic debates. But it’s the role of the media to place the story in its proper context, and the AP account fails to do that.

Blindly accepting the Giuliani campaign’s argument, the AP story singles out Olbermann for criticism. “Olbermann’s popularity and evolving image as an ideologue has led NBC News to stretch traditional notions of journalistic objectivity,” the story reports. It continues, “Even for television hosts unafraid to say what they think — Chris Matthews, for instance — there’s still a little mystery about what they’ll do inside a voting booth.”

The AP fails to note that another MSNBC host who was involved in debate night coverage — Joe Scarborough — campaigned for President Bush in 2004. Media Matters has noted that Scarborough also helped propagate partisan talking points. There is certainly no mystery as to who he voted for.

The issue here isn’t Olbermann, who fairly and ably quarterbacked the debate coverage. By uncritically reporting the Guiliani campaign’s argument, the AP engaged in the very bias that its report implies it is above.

Labels: Keith Olbermann, Rudy Giuliani

Even assuming the next president makes Lincoln look like a log, would you trust this country if you were a foreign leader, knowing that not only had it enabled a George W. Bush to run the show but, worse, never held either him or his administration accountable for its serial crimes and failures?

Labels: bloggers, George W. Bush

Labels: bloggers