I just came from Kevin Drum’s place, where he links to the story about how Bush just ignored the facts. My thought was: how is it possible Bush did any of this himself? I had just read the Hertzberg piece linked by Digby a few minutes before. Bush is never focused on anything, nothing is done without The Dark One. This filled out what I initially suspected, thank you.

I don’t get to used analogy like this in my text, as a male I’d get hit for it pretty hard, it’s not something we can use. Pretty powerful stuff.

WTF does it mean that â€Bush respects the jury verdictâ€? He has essentially overturned the verdict, and has indicated that he is open to completely overturning it in the future.

If Bush truly respected the verdict he would have left it alone. When will our MSM learn to call a spade a spade?

Bush had been saying all along that he would not intervene in the case while it was being appealed. It is still being appealed, and then without any kind of justification, Bush interevened anyway citing his previous committment to not intervene while it is being appealed! Could it get any more bizarre?

Anonlymous Liberal had a scathing dissection of Bush’s statement here

The Referee trots away from the officials’ huddle to the center of the field and turns on his mic:

â€Round-mouthing by Isikoff. That’ll be 15 yards against the Goopers. First down for the Blogosphere!â€

You tell him, EW. Great job!

Isikoff’s dropped jaw moment was a long time coming and certainly worth the wait. Here’s to more of the same! Great job EW

The unintended hilariousness of the phrase â€intensely focused†coupled with â€Bush†has me stumped. On the one hand, the idea of Bush intensely focused on anything whatsoever is ludicrous. On the other hand, he would certainly be intensely focused on his own criminal activity and whether Libby revealed it at trial.

But â€delved into the details?†I don’t think so, Mikey.

â€Intensely focusedâ€? Well, there was the pig roast when he visited Angela Merkel…

I wish the Senate Judiciary Committee would call Harriet Grant and let Senator Whitehouse ask her (in proper legal ways) what she knows about the change in strategy at the Libby trial. She is a third party, and has no privilege that I can think of.

Ouch!!!! A piss smart slap down to six nines! Whew, EW. Ol’ mikey got your dander up! Attention all rove knob jobbers – Do not get on the wrong side of the wheel! Crunch – like a bug. Damn.

You wonder whether for Isikoff there is that moment in front of the mirror in the morning, catching his own eyes, thinking, â€Yes, that was pure stenography, it was my turn to put out the White House bullshit in undiluted form, and it compromises everything I learned when I went to journalism school but I have made my choices in this life and this is one and I am proud to stand my ground in front of God on this.â€

Or is he like, a closet drinker, beating his wife and just another turd like all the GOPers, who puts on one face in public and another when there’s no one else there, with no sense at all of what he is doing?

Oops, here’s the URL: http://politics.talk.newsweek&…..2#comments

Bill Kristol has a different tune:

“Here’s why the president acted the way he did. He knew Bill Clinton was joining Hillary in Iowa on July 4th. No, I’m serious,†Kristol said. “So on July 2d, Ed Gillespie, who’s a very canny Republican operator, said, Let’s pardon Libby. Clinton will rise to the bait, and we could spend the last half of the week debating the unbelievable Clinton pardons against the defensible Bush pardon.â€

That’s sounds more like Bushco.

http://thinkprogress.org/

Bush justice is a national disgrace

http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_6308408

As a longtime attorney at the US 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.

The public record now plainly demonstrates that both the DOJ and the government as a whole have been thoroughly politicized in a manner that is inappropriate, unethical and indeed unlawful. The unconscionable commutation of I. Lewis â€Scooter†Libby’s sentence, the misuse of warrantless investigative powers under the Patriot Act and the deplorable treatment of U.S. attorneys all point to an unmistakable pattern of abuse.

The sweeping, judicially unchecked powers granted under the Patriot Act should neither have been created in the first place nor permanently renewed thereafter, and the Act – which also contributed to the ongoing contretemps regarding the replacement of US attorneys, by changing the appointment process to invite political abuse – should be substantially modified, if not scrapped outright. And real, rather than symbolic, responsibility should be assigned for the manifold abuses. The public trust has been flagrantly violated, and meaningful accountability is long overdue. Officials who have brought into disrepute both the Department of Justice and the administration of justice as a whole should finally have to answer for it – and the misdeeds at issue involve not merely garden-variety misconduct, but multiple â€high crimes and misdemeanors,†including war crimes and crimes against humanity.

I realize that this constitutionally protected statement subjects me to a substantial risk of unlawful reprisal from extremely ruthless people who have repeatedly taken such action in the past. But I am confident that I am speaking on behalf of countless thousands of honorable public servants, at Justice and elsewhere, who take their responsibilities seriously and share these views. And some things must be said, whatever the risk.

russkirk,

These guys get paid for our eyeballs. Every post, every visitor, every link gets counted and used to pressure advertisers into paying even more for such scribblings in squid ink. Content isn’t as important as controversy in raising the number of readers or viewers.

The media does not serve the public, or the public’s interest. It serves advertisers… and stockholders watching the profit line as those advertising dollars drop like rose petals.

Individual writers and editors might feel some compunction to serve the truth in their reporting. However, in a culture where money is the standard of worth, the anointed reporters are the ones who prostitute themselves in the corporate temples.

John S. Koppel, thank you and all of the wonderful US attorneys who care about justice for the people! We sorely need government employees who know that they are public servants and who care about true justice. Between Gonzalez and the White House, many of us have lost all faith in our system. Thank you for speaking out for the people…

Marcy — thank you for expressing our outrage at Mikey’s contrived piece of disinformation charading as journalism…he is just one more bought-and-paid-for journalist hack employed by our corporate-media. Thank God we still have you — someone who sees and reports the truth!
Reading your blog is always a breath of fresh air.

EW YOU ARE THE DEAL! Way to go let’em have it with both barrels.Thanks for the tidbit about Libby being Rich’s attny. I did read that right did i not?

Thanks Boo Can’t believe I missed that, Duh

Mike is being stenographer to his White House sources again Cheney did not weigh in directly fot his righthand man yah right pull my finger did he even interview Cheney? If not its hearsay.

I remember when Hubris [co-authored by Isikoff] came out. I read it & thought it was good. What happened?

I also remember his â€participation†[gleeful participation] in Monicagate. So when I read Hubris I had trouble reconciling the two. And every time I’ve read him in Newsweek, he’s swung more to the Monicagate level.

And March, is there a link to your time on Sam Seder? I went to the site last night when this first came up but couldn’t find an;ything.

Is it because of Hubris, that Isikoff keeps being brought in as the â€expert†on the Libby trial, instead of marcy or his co-writer, david corn? This Newsweek piece sounds like something Deborah Howell would write for the lucky Washington Post readers. Anyone who’s been following the trial knows that Bush has been up to speed on the details all along. He was just trying to find the best solution to silence Libby. The ebb and flow of the Libby trial can be read as negotiations between Libby’s team and the White House.

We have a President who with this commutation has successfully obstructed justice in a case involving his own guilt – where is the outrage? Where is the press making the distinction between Clinton’s pardons, terrible as they were, they did not have anything to do with the many investigations during his Administration.

btw, Harriet works for Joe Biden on the Judiciary Committee.

Always remember: â€Spikey†Isikoff worked hand-in-hand with Matt Drudge, Ann Coulter (on whose state-of-the-art home audio system the Tripp tapes were most likely copied for blast-spamming to various ConMedia outlets) and Lucianne Goldberg, Tripp’s mentor (and who gave Isikoff his â€Spikey†nicknameâ€. He is a whore, always has been a whore, and always will be a whore, to the point where between his orally pleasuring Karl Rove and other parts of the permanent GOP infrastructure in DC and Big Media, and his openmouthed surprise that somebody like Marcy would be allowed to dope-slap him on national TV, I’m really surprised he hasn’t permanently dislocated his jaw.

’Give it to Mikey…he LIKES it!†Get up off your knees, you idiot.

â€Now wipe your chin, Mikey.â€

???

Totally uncalled for. A fellator of Isikoff’s experience will never have to wipe.

Emptywheel, even if Scooter’s sentence is commuted, couldn’t a future Democratic president remand him (and the rest of those who lied us into this war) to The Hague for war crimes trial? After all, we hanged Nazi Admiral Raeder for planning a war against countries that did not attack Germany; he had little direct involvement with concentration camps or crimes against humanity.

Re: Isikoff’s Worst ……………pardon the pun but he had it coming.

â€In part, Bush may have stopped short of a full pardon precisely to keep Libby and other White House aides away from Democrats on Capitol Hill.â€

I have read this sentence several times and to me the meaning appears to remain the same. Isikoff seems to be explaining to any reader who suspects that Bush/Cheney were involved in the CIA leak case, that the commutation of Libby’s prison time is an obstruction of justice, since the imprisonment was imposed by the judge to induce Libby to tell the truth, or at least part of it.

Why this sentence which contradicts just about everything else in the article? Is it just carelessness on Isikoff’s part? Or does he think his readers are too lazy to get that far in the article, or too stupid to suspect Bush/Cheney (pronounced “Bush-chneyâ€) I don’t think it’s any of these – I believe that Isikoff is keeping an “out†for himself. Should the truthiness gods fall, he would be able to point to this sentence and say, Look, the editors were pressuring me, but I knew perfectly well what the truth was, and any alert reader would have seen it.

I suspect that careful reading of other Isikoff articles, and perhaps articles by other practitioners of truthiness, might show similar evidence – that they knew the truth but were too cowardly to testify to it openly.

When such a statement is found, it could be used productively by writing a comment to the author, congratulating him/her for finally seeing the light. In this way even an article like Isikoff’s most recent, might be put to some good use.

Good lord have mercy, lots of newbies on the blog. Seems like a good sign to me. Anybody know are these all transplants from Dailykos, or are we picking up steam due to EW’s appearances of late?

Thank you, John Koppel, for writing that piece and bringing to our attention.

It takes courage to speak out, from within the government, against this administration — especially given it’s record of frequent and extreme vindictiveness. Good luck.