17 July 2007

Massacres, car bombs, mutilations...

Dozens of Shiite villagers in the north were massacred by Sunni extremists, two officials said Tuesday, while a car bomb exploded across the street from the Iranian Embassy in the heart of Baghdad and killed four civilians.
...
Police Col. Ragheb Radhi al-Omairi said 29 members of a Shiite tribe were massacred overnight in Diyala province when dozens of suspected Sunni gunmen raided their village near Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles northeast of Baghdad. The dead included four women, al-Omairi said.
...
An Iraqi army officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not supposed to release the information, said the attack occurred in the village of Diwailiya and that at least 10 bodies were mutilated in the hour-long raid.

In Baghdad, the deadliest bombing occurred when a suicide driver detonated his vehicle near an Iraqi army patrol in Zayouna, a mostly Shiite area of eastern Baghdad, killing 10 people, including six civilians, police said.

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After declaring the filibuster unconstitutional, threatening to "blow up" the Senate over it's use, supporting the use of the "nuclear option" to defeat it, and loudly proclaiming the morality of an "up-or-down vote"... Senate Republicans now demand that the use of a filibuster become the rule when it comes to Iraqi-related votes...

Then:
Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS): “[Filibustering] is wrong. It’s not supportable under the Constitution. And if they insist on persisting with these filibusters, I’m perfectly prepared to blow the place up.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) spokesman: “Senator McConnell always has and continues to fully support the use of what has become known as the ‘[nuclear]’ option in order to restore the norms and traditions of the Senate.”

Now:
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell responded to Reid with a counteroffer: an automatic 60-vote threshold for all key Iraq amendments, eliminating the time-consuming process of clearing procedural hurdles. … [A]ll the controversial war-related votes held since Democrats took control of the Senate in January have required 60 “yeas” to pass.

“It’s a shame that we find ourselves in the position that we’re in,” McConnell said. “It produces a level of animosity and unity on the minority side that makes it more difficult for the majority to pass important legislation.”

Think Progress brings the goods...

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Turley On Countdown... via Crooks and Liars...

Turley: “The White House seems to be invoking executive privilege if anyone is within a twenty-five mile radius of the building. It’s as clever and as elegant as a meat cleaver. It is a rather bad way to go about this. Past presidents have compromised. On something like Tillman, I don’t think past presidents would have said ‘let’s fight this out.’”

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Ouch....

Rudy Giuliani - 21%
Fred Thompson - 19%
John McCain - 15%
Mitt Romney - 11%
Undecided / Someone New - 25%

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Between Abramoff and Purgegate... it's a wonder he has any contributors left...

Arizona Rep. Rick Renzi, dogged by legal woes, is running low on campaign cash, giving Democrats more hope that they can win his House seat.

Renzi, whose family business was raided by the FBI last April, ended the last quarter with $20,418 in the bank, according to campaign finance reports covering April 1-June 30. That is just one-quarter of the $80,000 he had on hand at the end of the first three months of the year.

He raised $41,664 during the quarter, a fraction of the $300,000 he raised during the same period in the last election cycle.

The report, filed Sunday with the Federal Election Commission, showed Renzi has spent $126,388 and owes $456,024.

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Oops...

We assess Lebanese Hizbullah, which has conducted anti-US attacks outside the United States in the past, may be more likely to consider attacking the Homeland over the next three years if it perceives the United States as posing a direct threat to the group or to Iran.

via TPM Muckraker

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As mentioned previously, the word "filibuster" seemed to have been banned by the traditional media ever since Republicans became the minority party. Astonishingly, ABC and Faux News broke the silence, and not so astonishingly, accused the wrong party of invoking a filibuster...

SAWYER: It certainly is. Senators facing an all-nighter now as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid vows to filibuster, talking all night to close out all topics besides a vote on Iraqi troop withdrawals.
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BARNES: All he's doing is filibustering his own bill, which Republicans said, "OK, agree to the 60-vote margin, bring up the bill tomorrow," you know, the Levin bill.

Media Matters has the video and transcript...

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Eighty dead, over 100 wounded in Kirkuk car-bombing...

At least 80 people were killed on Monday in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk in a coordinated attack by a suicide truck bomber in a crowded market and a separate car bomb parked on a busy street, police said.

South of Baghdad, thousands of U.S. troops swooped on a suspected al-Qaida in Iraq safe haven used to reinforce militants fighting in the capital, the military said.

Iraqi police said 136 people were wounded in the Kirkuk blasts and warned that the death toll could rise further.

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If at first you don't succeed... dig the hole deeper...

The U.S. military’s top general said Monday that the Joint Chiefs of Staff is weighing a range of possible new directions in Iraq, including, if President Bush deems it necessary, an even bigger troop buildup.

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Looks like the Saudis should be the target of Sleepy Joe's outrage...

Although Bush administration officials have frequently lashed out at Syria and Iran, accusing it of helping insurgents and militias here, the largest number of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq come from a third neighbor, Saudi Arabia, according to a senior U.S. military officer and Iraqi lawmakers.

About 45% of all foreign militants targeting U.S. troops and Iraqi civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia; 15% are from Syria and Lebanon; and 10% are from North Africa, according to official U.S. military figures made available to The Times by the senior officer. Nearly half of the 135 foreigners in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq are Saudis, he said.

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Bush listens to the generals.. as long as their opinion fits his agenda...

President Bush says that he should be trusted on military issues because he listens to his commanders. But he has a tendency to celebrate his generals when they're providing him political cover -- then stick a knife in their backs when they're no longer of any use to him.

Last week, Bush rejected any blame for the chaos that ensued in Iraq after the March 2003 invasion. So whose fault was it? Bush pointed the finger at Gen. Tommy Franks, the Central Command chief at the time. "My primary question to General Franks was, do you have what it takes to succeed? And do you have what it takes to succeed after you succeed in removing Saddam Hussein? And his answer was, yes," Bush said.

That's the same Tommy Franks to whom Bush awarded a Medal of Freedom in 2004.

And when virtually all of Bush military line of command, including the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, opposed his "surge" proposal late last year, Bush responded not by listening, but by removing the top two commanders responsible for Iraq and replacing them with more amenable leaders, including Army Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus.

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Josh at Talking Points Memo points out how the word 'filibuster' was commonly used with Democrats in the minority, but appears to be off-limits now that the Republicans find themselves in the minority...

Crooks and Liars has video of Durbin's speech calling-out McConnell..

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Poor fella...

At a press conference this afternoon, Sen. David Vitter broke his silence and spoke for the first time since he acknowledged being on the D.C. madam’s list. A remorseless Vitter attacked his “long time political enemies and those hoping to profit from the situation.” Vitter said he would not answer questions on the issue, claiming that “might sell newspapers but wouldn’t serve my family or my constituents well.”

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Looks like both senators from Alaska are tied into shady land deals...

Late last year, Alaskan real estate developer Bob Penney testified before a grand jury about his cozy relationship with Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK). But it looks like Penney also has financial ties with Alaska’s other senator: Lisa Murkowski (R). At around the same time, she quietly bought a prime piece of property along the bank of the Kenai River from Penney.

Because of Alaska’s weak records requirements, it’s unclear whether Murkowski got a special deal from Penney. The market value of the 1.27 acre plot is worth around $300,000, according to Kenai real estate agents and locals. Both Penney and Murkowski's office refused to reveal what Murkowski paid.

via TPM Muckraker

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It's tough to see your hero implode...

On the July 10 edition of MSNBC's Hardball, discussing that day's shake-up in Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign -- in which several high-profile aides left the campaign -- host Chris Matthews said, "Let me -- let me be -- let's get into the really worst part of my job, which is to talk about what happens if he does continue to sink."

Media Matters brings the goods...

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Think Progress runs down the constantly changing mission in Iraq...

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Blame the generals...

Almost every time President Bush has defended his new strategy in Iraq this year, he has invoked the name of the top commander, Army Gen. David Petraeus.
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Some of Petraeus' military comrades worry that the general is being set up by the Bush administration as a scapegoat if conditions in Iraq fail to improve. "The danger is that Petraeus will now be painted as failing to live up to expectations and become the fall guy for the administration," one retired four-star officer said.

Bush has mentioned Petraeus at least 150 times this year in his speeches, interviews and news conferences, often setting him up in opposition to members of Congress.

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16 July 2007

"So, because the president and the White House says that we're going to have chaos, it doesn't mean we're going to. Heaven's sakes, the Iraqis want us out of there. They think we're occupiers. And they said there's weapons of mass destruction. They said there's an al Qaeda connection. They continue to say for four -and-a-half years there's progress.

So why would I believe that there's going to be chaos just because they say it?"
-- Democratic Representative John Murtha

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Think Progress brings the goods...

The phone number of Jack Burkman, a conservative pundit and strategist, “appears in the database of phone records of the ‘DC Madam’” on 1/15/2006. Burkman, a former staffer for Rep. Rick Lazio (R-NY) and a Bush-Cheney ‘04 staffer, recently worked as a lobbyist for groups such as the Family Research Council, Caring To Love Ministries, and America’s Heros of Freedom.

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11 July 2007

Bush makes a 13-year old girl cry...

Only the questioner was a 13-year old blonde-headed girl, Jessica Hackerd, from Brecksville, Ohio, who immediately broke into tears after making her inquiry.

"Mr. President, I know immigration has been a big problem in the U.S. And what is your next step with the immigration bill?" Jessica asked Mr. Bush, during a question and answer period after a speech Mr. Bush gave to a Cleveland business group.

Mr. Bush's sarcastic reply -- a wry "yeah, thanks" -- drew laughter from the crowd of 400. But the attention caused young Jessica, who characterized herself in an interview afterward as very shy, to immediately tear up.

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Tough call -- but in this case.. my money is on lying...

Two senior Justice Department officials said yesterday that they kept Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales apprised of FBI violations of civil liberties and privacy safeguards in recent years.

The two officials spoke in a telephone call arranged by press officials at the Justice Department after The Washington Post disclosed yesterday that the FBI sent reports to Gonzales of legal and procedural violations shortly before he told senators in April 2005: "There has not been one verified case of civil liberties abuse" after 2001.
...
"This inconsistency is a disturbing addition to a growing list of misleading answers by the attorney general to questions from the Judiciary Committee, and it is unacceptable," Leahy said.

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Former Rove aide Sara Taylor sums it up nicely, albeit accidentally..

"I took an oath the president, and I take that oath very seriously," Sara Taylor said in answer to a question early in the hearing.

And right after a break, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) asked her if she was sure about that. "Did you mean, perhaps, you took an oath to the Constitution?" Leahy asked. It was a telling exchange. "I know that the president refers to the government being his government -- it's not," Leahy reminded her.

TPM Muckraker has the video...

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And the beat goes on...

Yesterday, NARAL discovered that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) had revised a government website, 4parents.gov, with biased and misleading ideological claims about abortion.
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The previous version of the site contained factual information about the rates of teen pregnancy. But these new “facts” on the site are misleading.
...
Yesterday, Richard Carmona told Congress that when he served as Bush’s Surgeon General, he was often muzzled and censored from speaking out on key issues, such as stem cell research and women’s issues. “Anything that doesn’t fit into the political appointees’ ideological, theological, or political agenda is ignored, marginalized, or simply buried,” said Carmona.

via Think Progress

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More votes on legislation have taken place the first six months of the new Democratic Congress than took place all of last year under Republican control...

To most Americans, they don’t look very busy. In fact, recent polls put their job performance rating at close to an all-time low.

But the reality — at least in the House — is that federal lawmakers have held more votes on legislation and other matters in the first six months of this year than they did during the entire 2006 session of the Republican-controlled 109th Congress. That was when GOP leaders decided to defer action to the 110th Congress, now controlled by Democrats, on most of the 2006 spending measures.

The House has held 600 roll call votes and six quorum calls so far this year, which puts the chamber well on its way to surpassing the 867 votes and 18 quorum calls Republicans held in 1995 after they assumed control of the House for the first time in 40 years.

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To avoid continuing to break the law, the FBI has proposed to sub-contract illegal domestic spying data to private firms..

A proposed new FBI program would skirt federal laws by paying private companies to hold millions of phone and Internet records which the bureau is barred from keeping itself, experts say.

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Claims military people make decisions on troop levels... unless they disagree with his (Cheney's) agenda...

President Bush, facing new pressure to start bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq, said Tuesday he won’t consider it until hearing a fresh assessment from his top commander there this fall.

“That’s what the American people expect. They expect for military people to come back and tell us how the military operations are going,” Bush said. “And that’s the way I’m going to play it as commander in chief.”

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Apparently our homeland security strategy generates from the gut...

Still, Chertoff said there are not enough indications of an imminent plot to raise the current threat levels nationwide. And he indicated that his remarks were based on “a gut feeling” formed by past seasonal patterns of terrorist attacks, recent al-Qaeda statements, and intelligence he did not disclose. There is an assessment “not of a specific threat, but of increased vulnerability,” he added.

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St. McCain is gonna need a miracle to pull this one out...

Sen. John McCain fired his campaign manager and chief strategist Tuesday, dissatisfied with lackluster fundraising and mixed messages coming from an unfocused leadership committee, a close friend and adviser told MSNBC.
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Days ago, the candidate laid off dozens of staffers after lackluster fundraising and excessive spending left him with just $2 million.

McCain raised just $11.2 million in the second financial quarter of the year, which ended June 30. That was less than the $13.6 million he brought in during the year’s first three months when he came in third behind Romney and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

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"Is it possible that just once some dirty fucking hippie who opposed this war could get some airtime?"
-- Duncan Black

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Things are going so swimmingly in Iraq, she was confined to the Green Zone...

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann continued to stand by President Bush's military surge in Iraq, two days after returning from a congressional trip that put her in the line of fire while visiting Baghdad.
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Security conditions in Iraq prevented Bachmann from meeting any Iraqis, leaving the Green Zone or staying in Iraq overnight. She and other congressional members were required to wear full body armor, including Kevlar helmets, during the entire trip, she said

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As mentioned previously, more proof he's on the wrong side of another issue...

Yesterday on CNBC, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) attacked Sen. Jim Webb’s (D-VA) amendment that would require troops to rest for as much or more time as they are deployed, claiming that it hurts the troops. But today the Military Officers Association of America — the largest and most influential association of military officers — sided with Webb and endorsed the bipartisan amendment.

via Think Progress

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Round One was a doozy.. looks like Moore tosses a shutout...

Dr. Sanjay Gupta today admitted that he was wrong about some of the facts in his CNN report on SiCKO -- a report that led Michael Moore to blast Wolf Blitzer. The e-mail exchange below, between Moore's team and Gupta's producer, shows that Gupta and CNN had the facts -- including the one he apologized for -- a full day before the Gupta piece first aired on AC360 on June 29 (following Moore's first appearance regarding SiCKO on Larry King Live), and a full 10 days before the network re-aired it preceding Moore's volatile July 9 appearance on The Situation Room.

Crooks and Liars has the video of Round Two...

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Apparently he was a frequent customer in New Orleans, as well...

U.S. Senator David Vitter visited a Canal Street brothel several times beginning in the mid-1990s, paying $300 per hour for services at the bordello after he met the madam at a fishing rodeo that included prostitutes and other politicians, according to Jeanette Maier, the "Canal Street Madam" whose operation was shut down by a federal investigators in 2001.
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At the New Orleans brothel, Maier said Vitter spent time with several women, but preferred one in particular named Wendy. She said all the girls that were with Vitter described him as a kind, respectful man, who did not talk down to them or use drugs.

"I'm not out to ruin a marriage, I'm out to save a man," Maier said. "I want his wife to know he's a good man, I want his children to know he's a good father. If he had sex out of wedlock, so what? At least he stayed with his children."

Update: Think Progress brings us more...

Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) first got his start in Congress after replacing former Rep. Bob Livingston (R-LA), who “abruptly resigned after disclosures of numerous affairs” in 1998. At the time, Vitter argued that an extramarital affair was grounds for resignation:

“I think Livingston’s stepping down makes a very powerful argument that Clinton should resign as well and move beyond this mess,” he said. [Atlanta Journal and Constitution, 12/20/98]

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Another example of Bush's War On Science...

The first U.S. surgeon general appointed by President Bush accused the administration on Tuesday of political interference and muzzling him on key issues like embryonic stem cell research.

"Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried," Dr. Richard Carmona, who served as the nation's top doctor from 2002 until 2006, told a House of Representatives committee.

"The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science, or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds. The job of surgeon general is to be the doctor of the nation, not the doctor of a political party," Carmona added.

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Senate Appropriations Committee cuts funding for Cheney's office...

Senate Democrats moved Tuesday to cut off funding for U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s office in a continuing battle over whether he must comply with national security disclosure rules.

A Senate appropriations panel chaired by Democratic Sen. Richard Durbin refused to fund $4.8 million in the vice president’s budget until Cheney’s office complies with parts of an executive order governing its handling of classified information.

At issue is a requirement that executive branch offices provide data on how much material they classify and declassify. That information is to be provided to the Information Security Oversight Office at The National Archives.

Cheney’s office, with backing from the White House, argues that the offices of the president and vice president are exempt from the order because they are not executive branch “agencies.”

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Think Progress updates us on the relevant issues...

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10 July 2007

Republican Senator David Vitter...

Sen. David Vitter, R-La., apologized Monday night for “a very serious sin in my past” after his telephone number appeared among those associated with an escort service operated by the so-called “D.C. Madam.”

Update: Atrios reports that Vitter happens to be Rudy's Southern Regional Chair...

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Not so good...

A progress report on Iraq will conclude that the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad has not met any of its targets for political, economic and other reform, speeding up the Bush administration's reckoning on what to do next, a U.S. official said Monday.

One likely result of the report will be a vastly accelerated debate among President Bush's top aides on withdrawing troops and scaling back the U.S. presence in Iraq.

The "pivot point" for addressing the matter will no longer be Sept. 15, as initially envisioned, when a full report on Bush's so-called "surge" plan is due, but instead will come this week when the interim mid-July assessment is released, the official said.

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Stops pretending he has the slightest connection to reality...

On Guantanamo:

“Our principal health problem down there is gain of weight, we feed them so well.”

On Iraq:

“80-90 percent of violence in Iraq is due to al Qaeda.”

On the CIA leak case:

“My contribution to this was to say to a reporter, which is a lesson about talking to reporters, the words ‘I heard that, too.’”

via Think Progress...

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Reagan-era DoJ attorney has had it with Bush's shenanigans...

As a longtime attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, I can honestly say that I have never been as ashamed of the department and government that I serve as I am at this time.

Read more! »

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This reminds me of the many skipped opportunites to kill/capture Zarkawi...

A secret military operation in early 2005 to capture senior members of Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas was aborted at the last minute after top Bush administration officials decided it was too risky and could jeopardize relations with Pakistan, according to intelligence and military officials.

The target was a meeting of Qaeda leaders that intelligence officials thought included Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s top deputy and the man believed to run the terrorist group’s operations.

But the mission was called off after Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, rejected an 11th-hour appeal by Porter J. Goss, then the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, officials said. Members of a Navy Seals unit in parachute gear had already boarded C-130 cargo planes in Afghanistan when the mission was canceled, said a former senior intelligence official involved in the planning.

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As mentioned previously, the Bush admin continues their strategy to run-out-the-clock when it comes to Purgegate...

President Bush invoked executive privilege Monday to deny requests by Congress for testimony from two former aides about the firings of federal prosecutors.
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In a letter to the heads of the House and Senate Judiciary panels, White House counsel Fred Fielding insisted that Bush was acting in good faith and refused lawmakers' demand that the president explain the basis for invoking the privilege.
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Leahy also questioned the explanation.

"I have to wonder if the White House's refusal to provide a detailed basis for this executive privilege claim has more to do with its inability to craft an effective one," he said in a statement.

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Ouch...

How about that. Comedian Al Franken has just announced on his blog that his Minnesota Senate campaign raised $1.9 million last quarter, outpacing his potential (and very vulnerable) 2008 GOP opponent, incumbent Norm Coleman, who raised only $1.6 million.

via TPM Cafe

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Reminiscent of Jon Stewart on Crossfire...

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Describes legislation that would increase mandatory time between deployments as "sniping"..

Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) appearing on CNBC this afternoon expressed his opposition to an amendment sponsored by Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA), which would require troops to rest for as much or more time as they are deployed. “Give the American soldiers a break,” Lieberman said. “It’s as if the American troops have the enemy on one side and Congress is sniping at their heels on the other side.”

Think Progress has the video...

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09 July 2007

Surge failing so badly, Iraqi leaders urge civillians to take up arms to defend themselves...

Prominent Shiite and Sunni politicians called on Iraqi civilians to take up arms to defend themselves after a weekend of violence that claimed more than 220 lives, including 60 who died Sunday in a surge of bombings and shootings around Baghdad.

The calls reflect growing frustration with the inability of Iraqi security forces to prevent extremist attacks.

The weekend deaths included two American soldiers — one killed Sunday in a suicide bombing on the western outskirts of Baghdad and another who died in combat Saturday in Salahuddin province north of the capital, the U.S. command said. Three soldiers were wounded in the Sunday blast.

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Not so good... according to Republican Senator Chuck Hagel...

"Seventy-four members of parliament have boycotted, as you say, the 275-member body. There's 12 ministers from the 38-member Cabinet no longer attending Cabinet meetings. There was an oil revenue law where they would share between Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites that was passed but without Sunni participation, which renders it virtually meaningless, and the agreement on the oil revenue part has still not been struck. So this is that fundamental question for the government of Nouri al-Maliki: Can he actually govern a unity government?"

and senior Iraqi leaders...

That has led senior Iraqi leaders to demand drastic change. CBS News has learned that on July 15, they plan to ask for a no-confidence vote in the Iraqi parliament as the first step to bringing down the government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Even those closest to the Iraqi prime minister, from his own party, admit the political situation is desperate.

"I feel there is no strategy, so the people become hopeless," said Faliy al Fayadh, an MP from the Dawa Party. "You can live without petrol, without electricity, but you can't live without hope."

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Truck bombing claims over 150 lives..

The death toll from a suicide truck bombing in a remote village in northern Iraq rose to about 150 on Sunday, making it one of the deadliest single bombings, if not the deadliest, since the 2003 invasion.
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Casualty counts were conflicting. Some officials put the death toll at 130 to 150, but Col. Abbas Mohammed Ameen, the police commander of Tuz Khurmato, a town about 15 miles away, said the final toll was 155 dead and 265 wounded. If that is correct, the Amerli attack would be the single worst bombing in the Iraq war, deadlier than the March truck bombing in Tal Afar that killed 152 people.

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06 July 2007

Not so good...

Nearly five months into a security strategy that involves thousands of additional U.S. and Iraqi troops patrolling Baghdad, the number of unidentified bodies found on the streets of the capital was 41 percent higher in June than in January, according to unofficial Health Ministry statistics.

During the month of June, 453 unidentified corpses, some bound, blindfolded, and bearing signs of torture, were found in Baghdad, according to morgue data provided by a Health Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information

In January, 321 corpses were discovered in the capital, a total that fell steadily until April but then rose sharply over the last two months, the statistics show.
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But the number of unidentified bodies found on the streets is considered a key indicator of the malignancy of sectarian strife. While the declining number of bombing victims suggests that efforts to control violence are showing some success, the daily slayings of individuals, in aggregate, speak to an enduring level of aggression.

"That's the cancer that keeps eating the neighborhoods," Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, said at a meeting with reporters Saturday. "It never stops. It's a tit for tat. It's a cycle of violence that has to be broken."

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Well said...

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Yep, if Florida Rep Robert Wexler is successful...

Rep. Robert Wexler says President Bush’s commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence “is nothing short of (a) political quid pro quo, and Congress must go on record in strong opposition.”

Wexler has drafted a resolution to censure Bush and plans to introduce it when Congress returns next Tuesday. A censure is a rare public reprimand but does not carry any other penalty.

House leaders could take the resolution directly to the floor, but that’s unlikely. More likely is that the resolution will be sent to the House Judiciary Committee of which Wexler is a member. Since this is a “sense of the House” resolution, it would not require Senate approval.

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According to Judge Walton, the supervised probation might have been wiped out with the commuted sentence...

When Bush announced his decision Monday evening, he emphasized that Libby still faced what the president characterized as a "harsh" sentence, and noted that he was leaving in place a $250,000 fine and two years of supervised probation. Yesterday, however, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, a Bush appointee, filed a court order saying that federal law "does not appear to contemplate a situation in which a defendant may be placed under supervised release without first completing a term of incarceration."

Walton asked prosecutors and defense lawyers to tell the court by Monday how they think the matter should be handled "in unusual circumstances such as these."

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BarbinMD from Daily Kos does the heavy lifting..

January

To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis.

February

They're in the process of finalizing a law that will allow for the sharing of all revenues among Iraq's peoples...making it clear to the Iraqi people that they have a stake in the future of their country by having a stake in the oil revenues.

March

As we help the Iraqis secure their capital, their leaders are also beginning to meet the benchmarks they have laid out for political reconciliation. Last month, Iraq's Council of Ministers approved a law that would share oil revenues among Iraqi people.

April

The Council of Ministers recently approved legislation that would provide a framework for an equitable sharing of oil resources

May

The council of ministers has approved legislation that would provide a framework for equitable sharing of oil resources. We strongly believe...that a good oil bill will help unite the country.

June

At home, most of the attention has focused on important pieces of legislation that the Iraqi Parliament must pass to foster political reconciliation -- including laws to share oil revenues...I speak to the Prime Minister and I speak to the Presidency Council quite often, and I remind them we expect the government to function, and to pass law.

July 3

...had phone calls with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the three members...They do report that they have now transmitted to the council of representatives, their legislature, the oil law, and are hoping quite soon to have a related piece of legislation, one that has to deal with the distribution of oil and hydrocarbon revenues, before the legislature quite soon.

July 4

Attempts to pass a key oil law sought by the U.S. were snarled once more Wednesday by deep differences among Iraq's Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish leaders, delaying parliament debate despite the prime minister's claims of a breakthrough.

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Are they talking about Libby Or Clinton?

Brownback

"By his words and deeds he chose to place himself above the law. By his words and deeds he has undermined the rule of law in America to the great harm of this nation. By his own words and deeds, he has undermined the truth-finding function of the judiciary, at great harm to that branch of our government. By his words and deeds, he had done great harm to the notions of honesty and integrity that form the underpinnings of this great republic."

McCain

"All of my life, I have been instructed never to swear an oath to my country in vain. In my former profession, those who violated their sworn oath were punished severely and considered outcasts from our society."

Hutchison

"The concept of equal justice under law and the importance of absolute truth in legal proceedings is the foundation of our justice system in the courts.

A hundred years from now, when history looks back to this moment, we can hope for a conclusion that our Constitution has been applied fairly and survives, that we have come to principled judgments about matters of national importance, and that the rule of law in American has been sustained."

nod Huffington Post

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Think Progress has the transcript and a revealing screen capture..

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I think lying has become so common among the radical right talking heads that it's become almost instinctive..

On the July 5 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, while discussing President Bush's commutation of former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's jail sentence, Neal Boortz falsely claimed that "Scooter Libby and Bill Clinton got sentenced and convicted for exactly the same crime.
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After Boortz made his false statement, a caller responded, "I don't remember Bill Clinton actually being convicted for perjury." Boortz told the caller: "I'm sorry, he was." When the caller stated that the Senate had acquitted Clinton on impeachment charges, Boortz repeated the falsehood a third time, saying: "We're talking about a criminal trial, sir. The verdict was guilty."

Later in the broadcast, during the "Information Overload" segment, Boortz repeated the falsehood again, stating, "Scooter Libby was convicted of the exact same thing that Bill Clinton was convicted of."

Media Matters has the audio..

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Josh at Talking Points Memo makes a convincing comparison...

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Median family income flat since 1973...

If the American dream means doing better than your parents did, then Mike Brockman's not living it. Single, with a 10-year-old daughter, he's a server at a Black Angus restaurant in Mesa, Ariz. His father at his age had a good, steady job as a machinist at TRW.

Today "there aren't the kind of jobs available you used to get with a high school education, and work yourself up," says Mr. Brockman. "Now you have to have training or experience to start — then you can work your way up from there."
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In some periods, the American dream has seemed more attainable than in others, says Mr. Jillson. Most recently, it was alive and well in the era from the end of World War II through the early 1970s.

But since 1973, median family income has been essentially flat, says Jillson. "This is one of those periods in American history when to many ... the American dream seems illusory," Jillson says.

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03 July 2007

Josh at Talking Points Memo

Many others will note this but I feel obliged to do so for the record. The real offense here is not so much or not simply that the president has spared Scooter Libby the punishment that anyone else would have gotten for this crime (for what it's worth, I actually find the commutation more outrageous than a full pardon). The deeper offense is that the president has used his pardon power to shortcircuit the investigation of a crime to which he himself was quite likely a party, and to which, his vice president, who controls him, certainly was.

The president's power to pardon is full and unchecked, one of the few such powers given the president in the constitution. Yet here the president has used it to further obstruct justice. In a sense, perhaps we should thank the president for bringing the matter full circle. Began with criminality, ends with it.

Paul Begala

Tough enough to execute Karla Fay Tucker -- and then laugh about it. Tough enough to sign a death warrant for a man whose lawyer slept through the trial -- and then snicker when asked about it in a debate. Even tough enough to execute a great-grandmother who murdered her husband -- after he abused her. A friend of mine at the time asked Bush to commute her sentence, telling him, "Betty Lou ain't a threat to no one she ain't married to." No dice.

Mr. Bush is tough enough to invade a country that was no risk to America, causing tens of thousands of civilian deaths and shedding precious American blood in the process. Tough enough to sanction torture. Tough enough to order an American citizen arrested and held without trial.

But if you're rich and right-wing and Republican, George is a real softie. As George W. Bush demonstrated in giving Scooter Libby a Get Out of Jail Free Card, he is only compassionate to conservatives.

What does it say about America in the age of Bush when Judith Miller spends more time in jail over the Valerie Plame smear than Scooter Libby?

Jeralyn Merritt

Bush didn't just reduce Libby's prison term to a lesser amount that was not, in his view, excessive. He eliminated it altogether.

While the Probation Report itself is not public, my review of the pleadings referencing it and the sentencing hearing transcript in the case indicates the Probation Department didn't recommend that Libby spend no time in jail. It found his sentencing guideline range to be 15 to 21 months (instead of 30 to 37 months) and it found the presence of factors that warranted the Judge considering departing below the guidelines. It stated that if the Judge agreed those factors were present and warranted a lesser sentence, the final sentencing range could (not should) drop to a level allowing for either a split sentence of prison and home detention or straight probation.

Craig Crawford

At the end of the day, only a journalist went to jail in the CIA leak investigation. President George W. Bush's commutation of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's jail sentence means that only reporter Judy Miller spent time in the slammer -- and that was for protecting Libby, the leaker. The former White House aide let Miller sit in jail for nearly three months last year without revealing to prosecutors that he was the source she was refusing to name. While Miller was no angel in this matter, she was not convicted of a crime. And Libby goes free despite being convicted and sentenced for perjury and obstruction of justice. The president now says jail would be an "excessive" punishment for Libby, but he showed no such concern when a reporter was incarcerated for protecting his White House. The most lasting legal significance of this case will be its chilling effect on journalists -- even on those who, unlike Miller, try to protect whistleblowers and other sources who are genuinely serving the public interest.

NY Times Editorial

Mr. Bush’s assertion that he respected the verdict but considered the sentence excessive only underscored the way this president is tough on crime when it’s committed by common folk. As governor of Texas, he was infamous for joking about the impending execution of Karla Faye Tucker, a killer who became a born-again Christian on death row. As president, he has repeatedly put himself and those on his team, especially Mr. Cheney, above the law.
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Presidents have the power to grant clemency and pardons. But in this case, Mr. Bush did not sound like a leader making tough decisions about justice. He sounded like a man worried about what a former loyalist might say when actually staring into a prison cell.

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Rundown of events...

2003:

_Jan. 28: President Bush asserts in his State of the Union address: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Read more! »

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I guess the Supreme Court and Dubya have different interpretations of what is "reasonable"...

The Supreme Court on Thursday made it harder for convicted criminals to argue on appeal that they should have received a lighter prison sentence than recommended by federal guidelines.

By an 8-1 vote, the justices rejected arguments by a North Carolina man who sought less time in prison, and ruled that a sentence within the range set out by the guidelines may be presumed by a federal appeals court to be reasonable.
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The ruling involved Victor Rita, who received 33 months in prison for making false statements during an investigation of illegal trafficking in machine gun kits. His sentence was at the bottom of the guideline range of 33 to 41 months.

Rita had sought a sentence lower than 33 months, based on his physical condition -- he has diabetes and other illnesses -- his likely vulnerability in prison and his military service in Vietnam and in Operation Desert Storm.

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02 July 2007

Libby spared prison...

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worst.president.ever

The reality has been daunting by any account. No modern president has experienced such a sustained rejection by the American public. Bush's approval rating slipped below 50 percent in Washington Post-ABC News polls in January 2005 and has not topped that level in the 30 months since. The last president mired under 50 percent so long was Harry S. Truman. Even Richard M. Nixon did not fall below 50 percent until April 1973, 16 months before he resigned.

The polls reflect the events of Bush's second term, an unyielding sequence of bad news. Social Security. Hurricane Katrina. Harriet E. Miers. Dubai Ports World. Vice President Cheney's hunting accident. Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay and Mark Foley. The midterm elections. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Alberto R. Gonzales and Paul D. Wolfowitz. Immigration. And overshadowing it all, the Iraq war, now longer than the U.S. fight in World War II.

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Will have to appeal from a prison cell..

A three judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia had denied former top White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby's request to remain free on bond pending the appeal of his conviction.

The panel said the request of the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney and assistant to President Bush did not show substantial "close" questions of law that "could be decided the other way."
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Last week the Bureau of Prisons designated Libby as federal inmate No. 28301-016 -- a number that will stay with him even after his release. Libby is the highest-ranking White House official ordered to prison since the Iran-Contra affair.

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Four years and 3,383 dead soldiers later...

"There are some who feel like that if they attack us that we may decide to leave prematurely. They don't understand what they're talking about, if that's the case.

Let me finish. There are some who feel like -- that the conditions are such that they can attack us there. My answer is, bring them on." -- Dubya 7/2/03

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Mark Steyn and other misguided radical righties have finally gone over the edge -- attempting to link the failed bombings in the UK to Michael Moore..

Would these be Doctors who work for the U.K. health care system so lavishly praised by Michael Moore? Are you sure that we can rule out poverty? If not poverty, how about frustration. Perhaps they are not Jihadists at all but simply men driven insane by their employer? Maybe Michael Moore has spawned an entirely new breed of suicide bomber — the alienated UK health care worker...

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"I'm more of a man than any liberal." -- Ann Coulter

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Lieberman's call for increased domestic spying is a winner, according to DHS Secretary Chertoff...

Yesterday, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) used the foiled terror attempts in London to call for greater domestic spying in the United States. “I hope these terrorist attacks in London wake us up here in America to stop the petty partisan fighting going on about…electronic surveillance,” Lieberman said, referencing the Senate Judiciary Committee’s recent subpoenas of documents related to Bush’s wiretapping program that the White House has refused to release.

Today, on Fox and Friends, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff echoed Lieberman’s call, arguing that Lieberman was “dead right” in calling for increased domestic surveillance:

CHERTOFF: I’m concerned about losing the tools that I can tell you we use every single day to catch the kind of plotting which we’ve just seen, obviously, give rise to the attempted bombings in London. I think Joe Lieberman is dead right.

Think Progress has the video...

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Lack of $$ results in staff reductions, pay cuts...

John McCain's campaign, trailing top Republican rivals in money and polls, is undergoing a significant reorganization with staff cuts in every department, officials with knowledge of the shake-up said Monday.

Some 50 staffers or more are being let go, and senior aides will be subject to pay cuts as the Arizona senator's campaign bows to the reality of six months of subpar fundraising, these officials said.

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Mass grave holding 35-40 bodies found in Anbar province... the model of success..

The U.S. military said it had found 35 to 40 bodies in a mass grave south of Falluja, in Iraq's Sunni dominated Anbar province.The discovery comes in a week in which the latest Iraqi government figures show the number of civilians killed in Iraq fell sharply.

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Iraqi minister accused of murder hiding out in Green Zone...

To excavate the depths of tragedy in Iraq, try this on for size: the attempted arrest of a minister accused of murdering another parliamentarian's sons is sparking the latest deterioration in sectarian relations. And the parliamentarian fears the Bush administration is helping the minister escape arrest in order to prevent the Maliki government from imploding.

Today the largest Sunni bloc in the Iraqi parliament, the Accordance Front, said that it was withdrawing its cabinet ministers -- including Iraq's defense minister -- to protest the attempted arrest of the outgoing culture minister, Asad Kamal al-Hashimi, an Accordance Front member. On Monday, Iraqi security forces executed a warrant issued by an Iraqi judge for Hashimi, who is wanted for the 2005 murder of the adult sons of Mithal al-Alusi, one of Iraq's most prominent secular, liberal politicians. Escaping a raid on his home, Hashimi fled to the al-Rashid hotel in the Green Zone, while his party blamed PM Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, of unfair treatment. (Maliki says he had nothing to do with the raid.)

TPM Muckraker has the details...

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To be honest.. I've lost count.. possibly the 9th DoJ official to resign?

A Justice Department official who was eyed as a possible replacement for one of several fired U.S. attorneys announced her resignation Friday.
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Brand was a member of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' leadership team. When officials were planning to fire U.S. attorneys in San Diego, San Francisco, Michigan and Arkansas, Brand was named as a possible replacement for Margaret Chiari in Michigan, according to documents released as part of a congressional inquiry.

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Extended and multiple deployments are devastating small business owners who are reservists..

Having served in Iraq, Dave Krasner is now back home in Boston, struggling to keep alive the small computer consulting company he left behind.

“I love my country. But what do I do now?” said Krasner, a National Guardsman whose firm was buried in debt while he was away at war for much of 2004 and 2005. “My credit was wrecked. The SBA (Small Business Administration) turned me down for loans. So have banks. I can’t face my children. They see me as a hero.”

The 35-year-old father of four is among a growing legion of reservists who have returned from deployments of up to 15 months to see their small businesses in trouble, if not dead.

“When a reservist has to shut his business down because his credit plunged while he was serving in Iraq, Washington isn’t keeping its promise to veterans,” said Sen. John Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat.

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Gauges success on Iraqis' happiness...

He called the measuring the level of violence in Iraq a “self-defeating approach to tracking results” and added, “What’s most important is do the Iraqi people feel better about today than they did about yesterday, and do they think tomorrow’s going to be better than today?”
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As a recent ABC News/BBC News poll found, “The optimism that helped sustain Iraqis during the first few years of the war has dissolved into widespread fear, anger and distress amid unrelenting violence“:

- 39 percent of Iraqis said they feel their lives are “going well,” compared to 71 percent in November 2005.”

- 40 percent of Iraqis said the situation in Iraq will be “somewhat or much better” a year from now, compared to 69 percent in November 2005.

- 26 percent of Iraqis said they feel “very safe” in their neighborhoods, compared to 63 percent in November 2005.

- 82 percent of Iraqis said they “lack confidence” in coalition forces.

- 69 percent of Iraqis said coalition forces make “the security situation worse.”

Think Progress brings the goods...

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