Enemy Combatant
Friday, October 28, 2005
After This, We'll Get Him To Reexamine The JFK Assassination
I've got to say -- I'm now watching Patrick Fitzgerald's press conference on CSPAN (I read the transcript earlier today), and he's been speaking extemporaneously for over an hour straight. I've seen him glance -- GLANCE, mind you -- at his notes precisely once. He is frighteningly methodical and scrupulous about his speech, and takes his oath as a prosecutor with deadly seriousness. But after untold years of watching plodding speeches read by politicians, what's bracing to me is the extemporaneous speaking, by a strong trial lawyer. Like John Roberts, he's glib, has an encyclopedic memory for his evidence, and is mindful of what he can and cannot say.
But I envision him at a game board with Bush, who's playing checkers, while Fitzgerald is playing "speed chess."
And quickly taking away all Bush's pawns, one by one.
What I Learned From Fitzgerald's Website
For those of you who simply can't wait another half-hour for the press conference, the Office of Special Counsel's website already has a press release posted about today's five-count indictment of Scooter Libby for perjury and obstruction of justice.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
THE NIGHT BEFORE FITZMAS
Twas the night before Fitzmas, and in the White House
Every one was scared shitless, and Bush was quite soused
The indictments were hanging like Damoceles' sword
As verminous oxen prepared to be gored
The perps were all sleepless, curled fetal in bed
While visions of prison cells loomed in each head
And Dick in his jammies, and George in his lap
Were sweating and swearing and looking like crap
When out on the web there arose such a clatter
The blogs and the forums were buzzing with chatter
Away to the PC Rove ran like a flash
He booted his browser and cleared out his cache
The rumors that flew through the cold autumn air
Made Dubya shiver with angry despair
When what to his horror-filled eyes did he spy?
A bespectacled man with a brown suit and tie!
With an impartial manner that gave Bush the shits
He knew in a moment it must be St. Fitz!
With unwavering voice, his indictments they came
He cleared out his throat and he called them by name:
Now Scooter, Now Libby,
Now Blossoming Turd,
Now Cheney, dear Cheney,
Yes, you are the third
To the bench of the court
Up the steps, down the hall
Now come along, come along,
Come along, all!
He then became silent, and went right to work.
He filed the indictments and turned with a jerk,
And pointing his finger at justice's scale
Said, "The people be served, and let fairness prevail."
He then left the room, to his team gave a nod
And the sound could be heard of a crumbling facade
And we all did exclaim, as he faded from sight,
"Merry Fitzmas to all, and to all a good night!"
- © 2005 Daryl W (t3poh)
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Pass The Popcorn
If it looks as if Cheney has to resign and Bush himself enters the Nixon danger zone, we'll hear the same frets and cries from the pundit shows about the country being torn apart and Americans losing faith in their government. But it isn't the country that will be torn apart by Plamegate any more than the country was torn apart during Watergate (which provided daily thrilling news entertainment value that bound citizens together); it's the Washington establishment that will be torn apart. And it should be torn apart. It's failed the country, and it's played by its own rules for too long, and "criminalizing politics" is exactly what should be done when political criminals deceive a nation into a war with Judith Miller serving as the Angie Dickinson to their Rat Pack and Richard Cohen auditioning for the part of Joey Bishop.
-- the always readable James Wolcott
Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Houston, We Have Coverup
If today's article in the New York Daily New is to be believed, Bush has known about Karl's little incontinence problem for two years, and has done nothing to oust the little classified leaker from the White House. We're back to fullbore Watergate now, with the need for impeachment proceedings to start, regardless of Patrick Fitzgerald's timetable for perp walks. As was said back then, "It's not the crime -- it's the coverup."
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
The Trouble With Harriet
is the same as in the 1955 Hitchcock classic: She (or at least her nomination) is very inconveniently dead, and by spectacle's end, everyone will think that he or she had a hand in it.
Bush has now botched a bad initial choice even further, by injecting her religious beliefs into the hearings. But since a number of GOP Senators can be expected to lose their religion over this one, I suggest that the Democrats break out the blowtorches, and go full Inherit The Wind on her ass, asking a lot of impertinent questions about her church practices -- Does she speak in tongues? Handle snakes? Roll in the aisles?
Did God make the world in six days, Ms. Miers? Did Jonah get swallowed by the Whale?
For liberals, the choice should be a no-brainer: Competency issues aside, we can't afford any more Executive Branch Davidians on the Court -- especially on the issue of detainee torture (or as I like to call it, "war crimes"). I recognize, however, that the tendency of certain Justices to confuse "President" with "King" can be expected to wax and wane in tandem with the Republican Party's electoral fortunes. For this reason, you can expect that Democratic Presidents will continue to be sued, while Republican Presidents won't even be questioned.
Saturday, October 08, 2005
Miller To Fitzgerald: Oh, You Mean That Treasonous Leak
If you've been following the Valerie Plame Wilson story closely, the last few weeks have posed some real head-scratchers: If Judith Fucking Miller is such a hotshot journalist, how come it took her nearly a year (ending in 85 days of incarceration!) to ask Scooter Libby enough followup questions to clarify his waiver of journalist-informant privilege so she could testify to Fitzgerald's grand jury about their conversations? And what to make of Judith's eleventh-hour "find" of notes she took about earlier conversations with Libby on the same topic? (Were they left in a pumpkin near a farmhouse, buried under Rose Law Firm billing records?)
Jane Hamsher over at firedoglake blog has some brilliant ideas about that -- a narrative thread that drops quite a few puzzle pieces into place, to give us a clearer picture:In a furious bout of post-prison housecleaning, Judy Miller just "happened" to find notes today from June 2003 when she spoke with Scooter Libby about Joe Wilson.Combined with the latest revelations that Karl Rove probably "pulled a Martha" by lying to the FBI in early interviews, the Miller-Libby scenario seem to buttress the scuttlebutt that we can expect the imminent announcement of as many as 21 indictments in the Plame affair, with a good number of Oval Office workers either in the dock or fingered as "unindicted co-conspirators." Somewhere in Hell, Nixon is laughing his ass off.
Of all the amazing discoveries. She's the fucking Indiana Jones of dust bunnies, that one.
* * * *
Suddenly Judy REMEMBERS her earlier "notes" and meeting with Scooter. I'm guessing the dog didn't just barf 'em up -- her attorney probably got a helpful memory-prodding phonecall from Fitzgerald, who probably knew Judy was going to lie her lying face off all along.
. . . Suddenly -- VOILA! -- a SLEW of people want to come in and spend quality time with Fitzgerald and the grand jury again. They are VOLUNTEERING. Because, as you know, testifying before Fitzgerald's grand jury is all the rage in DC these days, and everyone needs a hobby.
Friday, October 07, 2005
Bush To Country: Deja Boo!
Granted, the NYTimes and War Propogandist Judith Miller got some 'splainin' to do themselves, but I'd say the Times has this about right here:President Bush's Major Speech: Doing the 9/11 Time Warp Again
The speech came one day after the White House threatened to veto a bill onto which the Senate added a ban on the use of "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" against prisoners of the American government. This president could not find the spine to veto a bloated transportation bill that included wildly wasteful projects like the now-famous "bridge to nowhere" in Alaska. What kind of priorities does that suggest? If we ever needed the president to demonstrate that he has a working understanding of exactly where he wants to take this country, we need it now.
The president's inability to grow beyond his big moment in 2001 is unnerving. But the fact that his handlers continue to encourage him to milk 9/11 is infuriating. For most of us, the memories are fresh and painful. We mourn the people who died on Sept. 11, as we mourn Daniel Pearl and other Americans, not to mention innocents from other countries, who were murdered by terrorists. The administration's penchant for using them as political cover is offensive. It threatens to turn our wounds, and our current fears, into cynical and desperate spin.
The Grey Lady finally rouses herself from the delusion that Buscho's schtick don't stink. I'm sure she'll snap out of it soon.
Tuesday, October 04, 2005
It's Those Damned Tiresome Constitution Framers Again!
What could they possibly teach us now?
Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers, "The Appointing Power of the President," No. 76
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. . . . 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.
Thanks to Steve Clemons, at the Washington Note, for the heads-up.
Sunday, October 02, 2005
Mesopotamia
THEY shall not return to us, the resolute, the young
The eager and whole-hearted whom we gave:
But the men who left them thriftily to die in their own dung,
Shall they come with years and honour to the grave?
They shall not return to us, the strong men coldly slain
In sight of help denied from day to day:
But the men who edged their agonies and chid them in their pain,
Are they too strong and wise to put away?
Our dead shall not return to us while Day and Night divide —
Never while the bars of sunset hold.
But the idle-minded overlings who quibbled while they died,
Shall they thrust for high employments as of old?
Shall we only threaten and be angry for an hour?
When the storm is ended shall we find
How softly but how swiftly they have sidled back to power
By the favour and contrivance of their kind?
Even while they soothe us, while they promise large amends,
Even while they make a show of fear,
Do they call upon their debtors, and take council with their friends,
To confirm and re-establish each career?
Their lives cannot repay us — their death could not undo —
The shame that they have laid upon our race.
But the slothfulness that wasted and the arrogance that slew,
Shall we leave it unabated in its place?
-- Rudyard Kipling, 1917
