Or Maybe O'Hanlon Is the New Judy Miller
Because for the life of me, I can't understand how taking an "overly rigorous approach to the numbers" makes one "sloppy."
Yet according to Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow in foreign policystudies at the Brookings Institution who has closely followedstatistics on Iraq for years, the average number of daily attacks onIraqi civilians and US/allied forces has declined from 160 in August2006 to 120 in August 2007.
The ACLU Begins to Win Back Our Country
If you haven't given to the ACLU in a while, here's the donate button. The ACLU (with some help) has scored some important wins this week, starting with today's decision that National Security Letters are unconstitutional.
The ACLU said it was improper to issue so-called national securityletters, or NSLs -- investigative tools used by the FBI to compelbusinesses to turn over customer information -- without a judge's orderor grand jury subpoena.
General Petraeus Is the New Judy Miller
General Petraeus, lying to Congress is a crime.
Let's just repeat that fact over and over. Because that's what Petraeus is planning on doing on Monday, as Karen DeYoung (in an article buried on page A16) explains clearly. Go read the whole article, closely, for a description of the many methods of the Administration's hocus pocus.
Yet Another Whine about a Report Card
No, seriously. The GAO's report on DHS is really important evidence that Bush has done very little to make this country more safe. But I'm most struck by the fact that the DHS people quoted are making exactly the same complaint the military did last week, when GAO reported that Iraq has met few of its benchmarks (for the record, DHS seems to be doing somewhat better than Iraq, making at
The Purpose of Homeland Security
Silly GAO! Silly bloggers! The purpose of the Department of Homeland Security is not to gather together all the resources of homeland security in one coordinated whole. The purpose of DHS is not to improve off of our performance on 9/11. And so you really shouldn't worry too much about any silly little GAO report.
The GAO states that after the largest government merger in more thanhalf a century, the DHS met
No Senators Knew
There are a number of details that make Sidney Blumenthal's latest appear to be a happy coincidence of timing. Just after Bush biographer Robert Draper reports that Bush still claims to have believed--in April 2006--that Iraq had WMD, Blumenthal comes out with an article tying up a lot of loose ends on Saddam Hussein's Foreign Minister, Naji al-Sabri, proving Bush was briefed that Saddam did not have WMD.
On Sept.
Somebody to Fire!!!!
I'm thrilled with the news that George Bush just gave Barry Jackson a promotion.
Yesterday, President Bush named Barry Jackson to be Peter Wehnher’s replacement to run the White House Office of Strategic Initiatives.Jackson was the major White House strategist behind Bush’s failedSocial Security privatization ploy, and was one of the White Houseemployees discovered to be using RNC email accounts to e-mail an associate of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
That's because just
Republicans Back Sound Minimization Oversight
I'm watching HJC's first hearing on FISA Amendment, and I think the Republicans may be giving us a superb opportunity to address one of the big problems of the FISA Amendment.
You see, the Republicans have no fucking clue that the reason McConnell chose the Republican bill over the Democratic one is because it removed all oversight over minimization.
Thus far--and at 12:04 we've only had questions from 3 Republicans--Dan Lungren has already
The Decider on Iran
Aside from the boorishness of discussing more war with bread crumbs all over your chin, Bush's pathetic simplification of our relationship with Iran--in a monologue he calls "strategic thinking"--is pretty alarming, even coming from Bush.
"The job of the president," he continued, through an ample wad of breadand sausage, "is to think strategically so that you can accomplish bigobjectives.
Scottish Haggis and Wide Stance
Josh and his reader ask WTF is up with Arlen's support for Larry Craig.
TPM Reader BR wonders about Arlen: "What the hell isSpecter thinking? Is he trying to destroy the Republican party? Nothingcould be worse for them then drawing this out or attracting any furtherattention to the situation. Or did Specter offer friendly encouragementnot thinking Craig would take him seriously?
GAO Report: The Status of the Dispute
Okay, here's the Karen DeYoung report I was so impatient for yesterday. She lays out mostly the changes that I found here, ThinkProgress found here, and NSN found here.
A bleak portrait of the political and security situation in Iraq released yesterday by the Government Accountability Office sparked sharp protests from the top U.S.
Tommy K's Greek Vacation
As I suspected, Judge Burns was none too impressed that Tommy K's daughter bought Phillip Halpern's long-lost uncle's house with the ensuing benefit to Halpern of precisely nada.
Halpern, who had last seen his uncle in 1999, said in court papers hehad no knowledge of the deal and did not benefit in any way from it,and removing him or the office was not warranted.
On that matter, Burns agreed.
Still Holding My Breath for DeYoung and Ricks
[Update: Here's DeYoung's take.]
So I've been holding my breath to see what Karen DeYoung and Tom Ricks had to say about today's GAO report. After all, they were leaked the draft report last week, and they anticipated that BushCo might "soften" the report. Since there are clear signs the Administration did just that, I have been eagerly waiting for them to give us a catalog of the changes the Administration forced
The GAO Report Busts the Administration in Its Lies
I'm anxiously waiting the WaPo's analysis of today's GAO report. You'll recall the WaPo reported last week that someone had liberated a copy of the GAO to prevent BushCO from "softening" its conclusions. But the numbers suggest that some of the conclusions were softened: whereas on Thursday, the WaPo reported Iraq had met three and partially met two of the benchmarks, the GAO has since added two more partially met objectives--on
"One Bomb Away"
Glenn highlighted a part of the Jeffrey Rosen on Jack Goldsmith article that I wanted to return to:
[Goldsmith] shared the White House’s concern that the Foreign IntelligenceSurveillance Act might prevent wiretaps on international calls involving terrorists.But Goldsmith deplored the way the White House tried to fix the problem, whichwas highly contemptuous of Congress and the courts.
emptywheel's Continuing Obsession with Ed Gillespie
Via CREW, I see Ed Gillespie making grand promises that the GOP will have a scandal-free election in 2008.
Ed Gillespie, President Bush's counselor and a former chairman of theRepublican Party, acknowledged that ethical scandals have hurt the GOP.He predicted that by 2008, the party "will not have candidates who haveany kind of ethical considerations that will be a concern to thevoters."
Like CREW, I'm not holding my breath that the GOP will
Remember that Bankruptcy Bill We Passed...
To bail out those poor, helpless little credit card companies? Well, it's time to revoke it:
As subprime borrowers began to default on their mortgages in rapidlygrowing numbers this year, credit card issuers increased their effortsto sign up such customers with tarnished financial histories, accordingto a market research firm.
Direct mail credit card offers to subprime customers in the UnitedStates jumped 41 percent in the first half of this year, compared withthe first
Goldsmith's PR Campaign Begins
And so the man who began a silent revolt against BushCo's shredding of the Constitution begins to speak. The NYT has a long Magazine article on Jack Goldsmith reviewing the revolt and previewing Goldsmith's book, due to come out on September 17. The article provides details we've known in sketchy form before--like how the key decisions, prior to Goldsmith's arrival, were made by Cheney and Addington bypassing normal channels in the
War Council
If you haven't already read Pat Lang on Bush's surprise visit to Iraq today, do so now. For whatever PR value BushCo is trying to milk out of this visit (here's C&L with coverage), Lang is persuasive that the chief reason for the visit is to bring his war cheerleaders together to develop a game plan for the next few weeks.
Arrest John Boehner
The government's primary strategy, in responding to the ACLU's request for release of the FISC rulings disallowing parts of the Administration's domestic wiretapping program, is to argue that the ACLU doesn't have standing to ask for the documents. Only an aggrieved person can ask for such rulings, and even then, the aggrieved person cannot see the orders themselves that authorize domestic spying.
But there are two problems with that, it seems.