Well, the big news of the morning appears to be that John McCain has picked Palin as his running mate. I see this as a brilliant move; one sure to baffle Democrats and lead to victory for the Republicans in November. Palin is a fantastic writer, and his ribald sense of humor will surely offset the growing tendencies of John McCain to be a total angry, old prick. After witnessing the Obama acceptance spectacular last night, it was darn near impossible to envision what the GOP could do to regain some oxygen and momentum.

Boy, was I wrong. Naming Michael Palin, a founding member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, as McCain’s running mate was a stroke of genius that is sure to revive a rotting, dying campaign that….

What??? Oh, wait a minute. I am being corrected; it is not Michael Palin, it is Sarah Palin. Well, who the heck is she? Hmmm, Wiki says:

Born in Idaho and raised in Alaska, Palin played point guard on her high school’s basketball team. She was the 1984 runner-up in the Miss Alaska pageant, receiving a scholarship that allowed her to attend the University of Idaho, where she received a degree in journalism. After working as a sports reporter at an Anchorage television station, Palin served two terms on the Wasilla, Alaska, City Council from 1992 to 1996, was elected mayor of Wasilla (population 5,470 in 2000) in 1996, and ran unsuccessfully for Lieutenant Governor in 2002. She was elected Governor of Alaska in 2006.

NPR’s Linda Wertheimer was asked by the host of their coverage for her thoughts. Paraphrasing, she said:

“I can’t think of a VP candidate on either party’s ticket whose resume is so thin and weak. Given that McCain’s health is what it is, he’s said that his VP pick is perhaps more important than most presidential candidates. Given that, I just don’t get this choice.”

Wow. Palin really does have a pretty thin CV for the party that only yesterday was carping about Obama’s lack of experience. It does, however, set up a fantastic campaign slogan:

"Sarah Palin: She Hasn’t Been Indicted Yet!"

Of course, she is from Alaska, so that could change any second now. At least this is a well thought out, carefully planned, choice for McCain that will help him combat Obama’s energy policy. Wait, hold on, I am getting another call (these breaking news stories are tough I tell ya; hard work, hard work). Ooops, it turns out that Ms. Palin just a couple of weeks ago was profusely praising Obama’s energy platform; but worry not my friends, there has been an emergency purge of that fact from her website, apparently last night, so nobody should ever pick up on that little nugget. Except maybe, say, The Politico:

On August 5, she sent out a press release applauding Obama’s embrace of natural gas and his plan to give $1,000 tax rebates to deal with rising energy costs. The link to the press release isn’t working — it looks like it was removed from the site.

Well, as Michael Palin would say, "It’s only a flesh wound!"

Really, Sarah Palin is a wonderful candidate. Perfect for the position. Since she is not blonde, there is at least a 50:50 chance that McCain won’t be trying to nail her on the Straight Cock Talk Express.

In all seriousness, this is a joke. There were only two paths that the Republicans could take to actually try to win the election. They could either try to balance the ticket with some business acumen with Mitt Romney, hoping to lock up Michigan and the Mormon vote in the process, or they could go with the David Broder bipartisan wet dream of McCain-Lieberman and try to make a play for all the centrists on both sides of the party divide. Anything else just is not a credible effort. But with Palin, the GOP doesn’t tarnish any of their alleged leading figures with the potential humiliating disaster brewing for November, and they give some street cred for the future to what they view as their best female rising star. Palin is too young and off the radar to be hurt by even a drubbing in November; if it turns out more positive, or McCain pulls a victory rabbit out of his hat, so much the better.

One thing is for sure; this was not McCain’s pick. Anybody who has watched and known McCain over the years knows that he is an old school boys club type. There is no way in the world McCain, left to his own devices, would pick Sarah Palin. No way. Nope, this is a desperation play and tactical move for the future. The real plan is Petraeus in 2012. That is where the braintrust, such that it may be, is for the Republicans right now.

In the meantime, I will leave you with this strong argument for the strength of Sarah Palin’s bonafides. Heard this on NPR while driving earlier in the morning. I believe (not positive) the discussion point at that moment was how Palin would stack up considering that Obama had named Joe Biden as his VP nominee; the GOP "strategist" fired back to the effect that:

Palin will do great! She was voted Miss Congeniality you know!

That would have been in the 1984 Miss Wasilla contest. Hey! She played the flute too!

In 1984, after winning the Miss Wasilla contest earlier that year, Palin finished second in the Miss Alaska beauty pageant which won her a scholarship to help pay her way through college. In the Wasilla pageant, she played the flute and also won Miss Congeniality.

John McCain – Country First. Uh huh. More like the Geezer and the Tweezer.

With this joyous day for all, comes personal sorrow for one. As many of you know, I am an avid fan of Formula One Grand Prix. Most do not know why. My father passed away when I was quite young, and my mother never remarried. There were two family friends that I looked up to and respected as examples of what a man should be, and how they should conduct themselves. One earlier in my childhood, and one later as I progressed through high school and college. The latter passed away this morning and I have just been apprised of that. At this moment, I don’t know anything to do but write a short tribute and thank you to him.

The man is Philip Toll Hill. Phil was as unassuming a man as you could ever meet; yet larger than life itself. I have found one piece so far on the net to quote from, in the NYT:

Philip Toll Hill was born in Miami on April 20, 1927 to a prominent family. He was raised in Santa Monica, Calif., and studied business administration at the University of Southern California.

He quit school after two years and traveled to England, where he worked as a mechanic and then later as a driver. He landed a seat with Ferrari in 1955 for the 24 Hours of Le Mans. And when both Ferrari grand prix drivers, Luigi Musso and Peter Collins, died in separate races in 1958, Mr. Hill stepped into the most coveted seat in motorsports, driving for Enzo Ferrari.

In 1961, Mr. Hill won the Formula One championship by a single point over his Ferrari teammate, Wolfgang von Trips, who died in Ferrari’s final race of the year. Mario Andretti, who was born in Italy, is the only other American champion in Formula One.
…
“I’m in the wrong business,” Mr. Hill once said. “I don’t want to beat anybody, I don’t want to be the big hero.”

But Mr. Hill was the hero — and during the most dangerous era of Formula One. Death lurked around every corner and down every straight, and death played a part in his career, although he never had a serious injury. Along with his Formula One title, with Ferrari in 1961, he also won the 24 Hours of Le Mans three times and the 12 Hours of Sebring three times.

I met Phil through his wife Alma, who was one of my mother’s closest friends long before meeting and marrying Phil. They are literally the finest people I have ever met and known in my life. It was with Phil that I would go work with restoring antique and classic automobiles in Santa Monica during summers. You may recall a reference to this summer experience from this post.

Simply from osmosis I learned so much about all things mechanical and automotive, but more importantly, every aspect of life from Phil. Without ever trying to, he had as profound an influence on me, in so many ways, that it is hard to describe. I owe a debt of gratitude to this wonderful man. Phil is survived by Alma, son Derek, daughter Vanessa and step-daughter Jennifer.

So, as you cheer the truly transformational event tonight, and the nomination of Barack Obama is absolutely that, please also raise a glass in toast to Phil Hill, he was truly an American legend and lion, and he carried our colors to the world championship on the biggest of stages in world sport. Arrivederci my friend.

John McCain is famous for his symbiotic love affair with the national press. McCain plopped his raunchy carpetbag down in Arizona, married up the local liquor heiress and suckered her, her family and their friends into fronting every penny of his campaign for the elected office he felt he was entitled to, as a matter of right, for having been a prisoner of war. From that second forward, the press has slurped his fraudulent milkshake. A candy coated prick for the suckers in the press.

The MSM has fawned over him on the 2000 Straight Talk Express, cavorted at his backyard barbeques, and helped him cover his affairs and corruption. But the bloom may be coming off the faded, old, wrinkly rose. The new Time article from Jay Carney and Michael Scherer really shows how dramatically the relationship between McCain and the press has changed.

That was then:

For years, John McCain’s marathon bull sessions with reporters were more than a means of delivering a message; they were the message. McCain proudly, flagrantly refused direction from handlers, rarely dodged tough questions and considered those who did wimps and frauds. The style told voters that he was unafraid, that he had nothing to hide and that what you see is what you get.

This is now:

But his mood quickly soured. The McCain on display in the 24-minute interview was prickly, at times abrasive, and determined not to stray off message.

Boy howdy; Carney and Scherer weren’t kidding either. Check out this exchange:

TIME: There’s a theme that recurs in your books and your speeches, both about putting country first but also about honor. I wonder if you could define honor for us?

McCAIN: Read it in my books.

TIME: I’ve read your books.
McCAIN: No, I’m not going to define it.

TIME: But honor in politics?
McCAIN: I defined it in five books. Read my books.

McCain is so old, addled, and strung out on Karl Rove inspired message discipline that the closest he can come to any of his so called personal honor is to refer to some self aggrandizing fluffer books. Well, that is sure impressive. Or not. Really not.

But wait! There’s more! From that high point of intellectual discord, McCain goes on to deny the very things he has written in his precious "books" and said in the past. When hit with a direct quote he made in one of his rewritten histories, McCain suddenly claims he is misquoted and taken out of context lo those many years ago.

TIME: Jumping around a bit: in your books, you’ve talked about what it was like to go through the Keating Five experience, and you’ve been quoted as saying it was one of the worst experiences of your life. Someone else quoted you as saying it was even worse than being a POW …

McCAIN: That’s another one of those statements made 17 or 18 years ago which was out of the context of the conversation I was having. Of course the worst, the toughest experience of my life was being imprisoned, so people can pluck phrases from 17 or 18 years ago …

John McCain has always been an angry, mercurial, petulant and self serving man who believes that John McCain is entitled to say, do and take whatever John McCain wants and John McCain needs. In this regard, he has no honor, and no shame. Those of us native to Arizona, where we recognize a big prick when we see one, have always seen and known this about McCain, but when he is slipping so bad that he can no longer snow the national media, who he has affectionately, and truthfully, called "my base"; you have to wonder just how badly McCain’s faculties have, in fact, slipped.

With all the mistakes, lapses, confusion, and now this; is it a sign that McCain really is suffering from diminished capacity? Is this something the American public should know about? It very well may be. A friend of the blog that happens to be a psychiatrist, emailed the following:

Folks trying to cover for cognitive impairment will often use a very rigid response pattern. For people like McCain with pre-existing labile mood, the problem with this strategy is that the conflict it creates can easily elicit the mood lablity: hence the prickliness.

Maybe the national media should start asking some of these questions, the American public has a right to know. You have to read the full article, but it really shows McCain for what he is – a thuggish, surly, angry old man who is all ambition and no honor. Who’d a thunk it? Anybody who knows McCain, that’s who.

UPDATE: Is the Bush/Cheney clan so desperate to get another Republican, McCain, in the White House to succeed them (sure might come in handy to put an end to all the talk of investigations into criminal behavior that have been proposed by an Obama administration) that they are willing to start a mini-war to improve the odds? Turns out DFH bloggers are not the only ones thinking this might be possible. (h/t Noonan in comments) CNN is reporting that Vladimir Putin thinks so:

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has accused the United States of orchestrating the conflict in Georgia to benefit one of its presidential election candidates.

In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Matthew Chance in the Black Sea city of Sochi Thursday, Putin said the U.S. had encouraged Georgia to attack the autonomous region of South Ossetia.

Putin told CNN his defense officials had told him it was done to benefit a presidential candidate — Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama are competing to succeed George W. Bush — although he presented no evidence to back it up.

"U.S. citizens were indeed in the area in conflict," Putin said. "They were acting in implementing those orders doing as they were ordered, and the only one who can give such orders is their leader.

Well, it is safe to say that the Republicans have no compunction about using false war to put a mental incompetent in the White House. Pooty Poot thinks they are doing it again. Who knows, but he sure doesn’t have any less credibility that Bush, Cheney and Rove now does he?

We are now on the third day of the Democratic National Convention (DNC). I have watched most all of the major prime time speeches, thanks to the straight up coverage of CSPAN. That would correspondingly be of no thanks to the broadcast and cable networks, who cover so little of the convention itself that you wonder why they are there at all. The answer, of course, is that they are there because they think, in fact are convinced, that they are the story. The pompous, insipid and mindless babbling is simply pathetic beyond belief. It is torture to listen to.

My wife was, uncharacteristically, sitting with me watching most of Monday night’s festivities, and part of Tuesday’s including Hillary’s video tribute and speech. Her comment when asked to give her reaction on the convention was that whoever programmed the music for the event, and specifically for the intro and exit of the different speakers, should be taken out and flogged. Considering that horrid Muzak version of "You’re Still The One" that was played on either side of Ted Kennedy’s inspirational appearance, not to mention most other canned music I have heard, I agree. For the most part, it has been worse than I would expect from the Republicans, much less the Democrats. It is torture to listen to.

Sadly, that is, save for a fleeting reference by Dennis Kucinich, pretty much as close to the issue of torture as has been achieved at the DNC. The torture regime that has been instituted as the unabashed official policy of the United States is perhaps the single biggest and best example, part and parcel with the Iraq War, of the criminality and moral hell the Bush/Cheney Administration has plunged us into. It is what the rest of the world knows and sees, and what we must pull ourselves up from and rise above. Apparently it is just a little too uncomfortable for our elected leaders, party delegates and the Obama campaign to discuss though. "Change" for this crowd clearly does not include openly discussing the singularly important topic of US torture policy, the one thing that must be changed for the US to recover any global credibility.

There is another convention going on this week though, and it happens to be right here in Arizona. It is the annual convention of the American Legion. You know, the organization of veterans of the United States armed forces who served in wartime. And lo and behold they had Richard Bruce Cheney in front of them today, and had the temerity to bring up that which the folks at the DNC do not. The veterans that have fought, and lost their own doing so, for this country were hot under the collar about torture. From a CNN report:

Vice President Dick Cheney defended the Bush administration’s record on prisoner interrogations, telling a veterans’ group that its use of "alternative" techniques against suspects was legal and proper.

The local newspaper, the Arizona Republic, had this report:

The vice president prefaced his speech with a promise to avoid talk of the ongoing presidential campaign, though he reminded the group they had heard from “one of your own” the day before, GOP nominee-in-waiting Sen. John McCain.

Cheney used his remarks to the packed convention hall to review the Bush administration’s work on defense and foreign policy and to defend the president for some of his actions in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

“The war on terror is not a figure of speech,” Cheney said. “The only way to win is to go on the offensive and that is exactly what we are doing.”

He acknowledged mistakes, most notably the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib early in the Iraqi offensive. The people found responsible for those abuses were prosecuted, but “the misdeeds of the few should never be used to slander” those who did not break the law, he said.

Cheney also defended the Bush administration’s interrogation techniques, which critics say pushed and often broke through the boundaries of torture. The techniques were “entirely legal and proper and carefully reviewed by the Department of Justice,” Cheney said. “No nation in the world takes human rights more seriously than the United States.”

He voiced support for veterans’ issues, including a new GI Bill that offers education benefits similar to those given following World War II. Although Bush signed the bill, he had opposed it and threatened to veto the measure until it passed both houses of Congress with overwhelming majorities.

In remarks following Cheney’s, Sen. Jim Webb, D-Va., noted that McCain and other Republicans had characterized the new benefits as too generous.

Now, granted, it may have been an opportunity for Cheney to cluck his self serving rationalization, but the discussion was being had. And Jim Webb was there to discuss further and counter Cheney. The issue was broached and discussion had. Something that ought to be going on at the Democratic National Convention; but, to date, has not in any substantive fashion. The Democrats should be leading the discussion on torture, not shying away from it.

In case anybody here has forgotten that the issue roils on in the real world, here are a few recent reminders:

Judge fears secret Gitmo habeas hearings. –

A federal judge overseeing cases against dozens of Guantánamo Bay detainees said Wednesday that he fears the public — and the detainees themselves — will be locked out of the courtroom when evidence in the case is scrutinized for the first time.

Poland to investigate claims of secret CIA prisons.

Poland’s prime minister has requested an investigation into allegations there were secret prisons in the country used by the CIA to hold and question terror suspects between 2001 and 2004.

Algerian captive claims water torture at Guantanamo base.

An Algerian prisoner at Guantánamo Bay has accused his guards of using a form of waterboarding on him, his lawyer said Friday, marking the first allegation that the harsh interrogation technique was used at the U.S. military base.
…
Ameziane, who has been imprisoned at Guantánamo since February 2002 without being charged with crimes, told his lawyer Wells Dixon that guards at the base placed a water hose between his nose and mouth and ran it for several minutes. Ameziane said they repeated the procedure several times, nearly suffocating him.

”I had the impression that my head was sinking in water,” Ameziane, 41, wrote his lawyer in a letter. “I still have psychological injuries, up to this day. Simply thinking of it gives me the chills.”

According to Ameziane’s account, during the same alleged incident the guards applied pepper spray all over his body, hosed him down and left him shackled and shivering in wet clothes in front of an air conditioner in an interrogation room.

Two things have caught my eye this morning. The first is a report out of Denver about a group of four that have been arrested in a supposed plot to kill Obama. From the AFP:

US authorities were Tuesday investigating an alleged plot to kill Barack Obama as he claims the Democratic nomination later this week in Denver, after four people were arrested with a haul of weapons.
…
The plot was unraveled Sunday after a police officer spotted a truck driving erratically in a suburb of Denver, Colorado where the four-day convention is being held. "The sergeant discovered inside his truck a bullet proof vest, two rifles, ammunition, walkie talkies and drugs," Aurora police detective Marcus Dudley told reporters.

"Additional information was then developed which led to the arrest of others." The suspects were being held on drugs and weapons charges while the alleged plot was being investigated by the US Secret Service which protects the US president and White House candidates and the FBI and the joint terrorism task force.

One of the men arrested had to be taken to hospital after he jumped out of a sixth floor hotel room window in an attempt to flee police, Dudley said.

A fortuitous traffic stop for "erratic driving" just flat out screams "pretext stop". I will be shocked beyond belief if they had not been onto these guys through other means prior to the traffic stop. It is very hard to fathom that this all came out of a simple traffic stop. What exactly is "erratic driving" anyway? Speeding? Weaving? A bad turn? Red light violation? How did they come to magically search the vehicle from a mere traffic ticket stop? Are the Aurora cops doing a full felony inventory vehicle search on every traffic ticket they issue? How did they get to a hotel search where a guy is jumping out of a window so quickly? Naw, there is something else at play here, you can just smell it.

The next incident involves the scene in Minneapolis for the Republican National Convention. Hey, never let it be said that I am not fair and balanced. From Laura Flanders on the FDL front page:

"Our colleagues at the Glass Bead Collective, a group of video artists and documentarians, are in the Twin Cities to prepare for the Republican National Convention. They were swarmed by three police cars, detained and had all of their electronic gear, including laptop computers, videocameras and personal items were taken from them by Minneapolis police. No one was arrested. The stop and seizure was explained by police officers as related to Homeland Security and the Republican Convention."

No one wants any harm to come to Obama, and similarly, the GOP convention should be free from incident too. But when you reflect back on the wiretapping powers that we know have been ratified by Ms. Pelosi and our Congress, the mass information gathering and sharing as described in FISA Redux: Slippery Slope Part I and Part II, not to mention this report on databasing, you have to wonder about how heavy of a hand is at work around these conventions; not to mention the country in general. At what point have we given up too much to the police state for the last incremental bit of security and safety?

Well, here comes a new entry in the Captain Renault "I am shocked, shocked to hear of this" file. It turns out that Jose Rodriquez and the CIA are not the only ones that Cheney and Bush have ordered to destroy critical material evidence the subject of investigations into international terror cases. Nope; of course not. They have put their grubby little thumbs to the screws on the Swiss as well. From the startling new reporting in today’s New York Times:

The president of Switzerland stepped to a podium in Bern last May and read a statement confirming rumors that had swirled through the capital for months. The government, he acknowledged, had indeed destroyed a huge trove of computer files and other material documenting the business dealings of a family of Swiss engineers suspected of helping smuggle nuclear technology to Libya and Iran.

The files were of particular interest not only to Swiss prosecutors but to international atomic inspectors working to unwind the activities of Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani bomb pioneer-turned-nuclear black marketeer. The Swiss engineers, Friedrich Tinner and his two sons, were accused of having deep associations with Dr. Khan, acting as middlemen in his dealings with rogue nations seeking nuclear equipment and expertise.
…
The United States had urged that the files be destroyed, according to interviews with five current and former Bush administration officials. The purpose, the officials said, was less to thwart terrorists than to hide evidence of a clandestine relationship between the Tinners and the C.I.A.
…
Yet even as American officials describe the relationship as a major intelligence coup, compromises were made. Officials say the C.I.A. feared that a trial would not just reveal the Tinners’ relationship with the United States — and perhaps raise questions about American dealings with atomic smugglers — but would also imperil efforts to recruit new spies at a time of grave concern over Iran’s nuclear program.

So the prosecution and trial of the Tinner group, and related avenues into the depths of the spiderweb of influence and dealings of AQ Khan is lost. Good thing that our good allies against terror, the Pakistanis, have their thumbs on AQ Khan and are getting to the bottom of how Khan’s "rogue" network was able to operate. Eh, not so much. Now, we know that in the Bush Administration, all policy and interaction with Pakistan begins and ends with Dick Cheney. Kind of makes you wonder whether the Cheney Administration is behind the curious deal to let AQ Khan run free in life without even so much as having ever been debriefed as to what all he and his network had done to proliferate nuclear weapons and technology.

Go figure; the US and the long dark arm of Cheney looks to be leveraging the spring of AQ Khan too. From Gareth Porter via CommonDreams:

But the Bush administration chose to help Musharraf cover up that inconvenient fact. According to CIA Director George Tenet’s memoirs, in September 2003, he confronted Musharraf with the evidence the CIA had gathered on Khan’s operation and made it clear he was expected to end its operations and arrest Khan.

The following January and early February, Khan’s house arrest, public confession of guilt and pardon by Musharraf was accompanied by an extraordinary series of statements by high-ranking Bush administration officials exonerating Musharraf and the military of any involvement in Khan’s activities.

That whole scenario had been “carefully orchestrated with Musharraf”, Larry Wilkerson, then a State Department official but later Colin Powell’s chief of staff, told IPS in an interview last year. The deal that had been made did not require Musharraf to allow U.S. officials to interrogate Khan.

But the Bush administration apparently conveyed to the Pakistani military after that episode that it now expected the Musharraf regime to deliver high-ranking al Qaeda officials — and to do so at a particularly advantageous moment for the administration. The New Republic magazine reported Jul. 15, 2004 that a White House aide had told the visiting head of ISI, Ehsan ul-Haq, that “it would be best if the arrest or killing of any HVT [high value target] were announced on 26, 27 or 28 July.” Those were the last three days of the Democratic National Convention.

The military source added, “If we don’t find these guys by the election, they are going to stick the whole nuclear mess up our a**hole.”

Just hours before Democratic candidate John Kerry’s acceptance speech, Pakistan announced the capture of an alleged al Qaeda leader.

Wow. Yet another Captain Renault moment presents itself. Jeebus, is there any significant terror plot or network in the world that we are not either some type of clandestine part of or, alternatively, haven’t botched the prosecution of through torture, rendition and other immoral/illegal behavior? It is a rhetorical question. Donald Rumsfeld once famously mused about whether we even have the metrics to know whether we are preempting more than is being created when it comes to terrorism. I don’t know what kind of metrics and optics Rummy views through, but it is damn hard to contemplate any set that would yield a positive answer.

The masterminds behind 9/11 and al Qaida, bin Laden and Zawahiri, run free, the purveyors of nukes to Iran, Libya, North Korea, possibly Syria and who knows what other states and/or entities, AQ Khan and the Tinners, run free. You have to question whether the US, through the Cheney/Bush Administration, really wants to curtail these modalities of terror as opposed to merely reaping the giant whirlwind of profit from the constant chase. The Europeans have some questions too. Again, from the NYT article:

But in Europe, there is much consternation. Analysts studying Dr. Khan’s network worry that by destroying the files to prevent their spread, the Swiss government may have obscured the investigative trail. It is unclear who among Dr. Khan’s customers — a list that is known to include Iran, Libya and North Korea but that may extend further — got the illicit material, much of it contained in easily transmitted electronic designs.

The West’s most important questions about the Khan network have been consistently deflected by President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, who resigned last Monday. He refused to account for the bomb designs that got away or to let American investigators question Dr. Khan, perhaps the only man to know who else received the atomic blueprints. President Bush, eager for Pakistan’s aid against terrorism, never pressed Mr. Musharraf for answers.

“Maybe that labyrinth held clues to another client or another rogue state,” said a European official angered at the destruction.

The Swiss judge in charge of the Tinner case, Andreas Müller, is not terribly happy either. He said he had no warning of the planned destruction and is now trying to determine what, if anything, remains of the case against Friedrich Tinner and his sons, Urs and Marco.

Oh, wait, there is one more little part of this sordid story that is relevant to the denizens of this blog, and the expertise of the headmistress. So, what exactly were the Tinner clan doing in relation to the CIA? Well, one of the things involved the clandestine counterproliferation of nuclear weapons:

In 2000, American officials said, Urs Tinner was recruited by the C.I.A., and American officials were elated.
…
After the Tinners were arrested, Swiss and other European authorities began to scrutinize their confiscated files and to conduct wide inquiries. European investigators discovered not only that the Tinners had spied for Washington, but that the men and their insider information had helped the C.I.A. sabotage atomic gear bound for Libya and Iran. A former American official confirmed the disruptions, saying the technical architect of the operation was “a mad-scientist type” who took pleasure in devising dirty tricks.

An American intelligence official, while refusing to discuss specifics of the sabotage operation or the Tinners’ relationship with the C.I.A., said efforts to cripple equipment headed to rogue nuclear states “buy us some time and space.” With Iran presumably racing for the capability to build a bomb, he added, “that may be the best we can hope for.”

Well, that sounds suspiciously like "Operation Merlin" doesn’t it? In case you don’t recall Operation Merlin, Marcy wrote a wonderful piece about it and a fellow with a curious history known as Jerry Doe. The full background on Merlin is described in James Risen’s book "State of War", excerpted at length here in the Guardian.

One last parting shot, because I know you are already honing in on this question. Yep, it sure is amazing, isn’t it, that the Cheney/Bush Administration is willing to go to such extreme lengths to protect covert CIA assets that they will scuttle the Swiss, European and IAEA investigation of the biggest nuclear proliferation ring in the world, yet they blithely, and with no remorse whatsoever, out Valerie Plame and burn Brewster-Jennings and it’s assets and contacts? Shocking. But true. I’ll hazard a guess that Marcy will be stopping by to ante in on this story. Oh, and make sure you click the links and read both the NYT and CommonDreams pieces in full, they are worthy of a full read.

For so long now we have been eagerly awaiting the results on the DOJ IG/OPR investigation into the curious and unprecedented firing of nine US Attorneys by the Bush Administration. Heh, but will it ever really arrive? Will Karl Rove and Harriet Miers ever have to testify? Eh, I don’t know, you have to wonder after a while. One thing is clear though, just about all of the original explanations given by the Bush Administration have been discounted, if not disproved.

Much discussed are the cases of David Iglesias, Bud Cummins, Carol Lam and John McKay. But right now, I am more interested in three of the lesser discussed of the sacked USAs. Margaret Chiara, Tom Heffelfinger and Paul Charlton.

There have been many discussions, both here and across the blogosphere dissecting why these particular US Attorneys were fired. There have been many theories, and the bottom line is that there is probably no one grand unifying theory other than that the Bush Administration was manipulating the DOJ and the USA offices for various political hit jobs; i.e. multiple motivations. One of the ones we have gone into here is the interplay with Native American issues. And Chiara, Heffelfinger and Charlton were all, due to the nature of their physical jurisdictions, highly involved in Native American issues. Marcy has done recent posts calling into question the legitimacy of the stated basis for firing Chiara.

Over a year and a half has passed since Margaret Chiara was fired with a bunch of other US Attorneys–and we still have no good explanation why she was targeted. The apparent reason, though, is a rumor that she was having a gay relationship with an AUSA in her office, traveled with her on the government dime, and gave her preferential bonuses.

But today’s Monica Goodling report includes a denial from Chiara and the AUSA–Leslie Hagen–that they were in a relationship.

So, if the stated rationale for Chiara’s firing is in doubt, maybe we ought to give renewed consideration to the Native American aspects and implications. Marcy was on this early and hard with Native Americans And The USA Purge, Part I and Part II. Don’t hesitate to take a look back at those posts, they are pretty interesting.

The reason I come back to this area is that today’s Washington Post has a nice little article that similarly undercuts the stated rationale for the firing of Paul Charlton.

Justice Department officials have reversed course and approved a plea deal in a controversial death penalty case that may have prompted the firing of a U.S. attorney in Arizona nearly two years ago, according to court records and interviews.
…
Charlton had argued that the case was short on forensic evidence and was not suitable for what he called "the ultimate penalty." But officials in Washington overruled him in fall 2006, and he later became one of nine top prosecutors who were fired en masse that year. In congressional testimony last year, then-Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said Charlton’s reluctance to support the administration’s position on capital punishment in the case amounted to "poor judgment" and attracted criticism in the department’s political ranks.

It never made sense that Charlton was fired over one death penalty case up on the remote reservation. Charlton had never himself made any public issue of the case. And now the very acts of the Department of Justice give the lie to that as a basis for the firing of Paul Charlton. This plea deal would have been cut and the case over two years ago if Paul Charlton had not have been jerked around and then fired. The exact same factors mitigating against demand for the death penalty existed then as exist now. This plea deal in US v. Jose Rios Rico, was clearly the decision by the DOJ Main, who, when it was desired to fire Paul Charlton, had said something quite different:

In congressional testimony last year, then-Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said Charlton’s reluctance to support the administration’s position on capital punishment in the case amounted to "poor judgment" and attracted criticism in the department’s political ranks.

So he was fired according to Alberto Gonzales. Or, as has always been suspected, and as we have confirmed today by the WaPo’s reporting of the plea deal, not. So, why was Paul Charlton, not to mention the others, fired? It certainly was not the reasons testified to by Gonzales, Mercer, Sampson et. al testified to; will there be any repercussions for their false testimony? Where exactly is the IG/OPR Report anyway?

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If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break,
If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break,
When The Levee Breaks I’ll have no place to stay.

Cryin’ won’t help you, prayin’ won’t do you no good,
Now, cryin’ won’t help you, prayin’ won’t do you no good,
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to move.

In the face of what ought to be the most serious and profound Presidential election in the last 75 years, and with the opening of the Democratic Convention on the brink, it seemed appropriate to recalibrate for a moment. Over three days has been spent on the sophomoric PR stunt by the Obama campaign to play the Vice Presidential selection like some kind of two bit cross between a high school prom queen election and American Idol. "We’ll text our special friends first! You’ll be the first to know". Please. Spare me.

That is the good side; on the other there is some senile, angry, old, self-entitled curmudgeon that doesn’t even know how many houses he owns, nor what kind of car he drives. The media and, yes, even the blogs, lap this idiocy up like milk to starving kittens. Almost makes you wonder if something important hasn’t been forgotten in the headlong rush to inanity.

Hurricane Katrina formed over the Bahamas on August 23, 2005. Three years ago to this very day.

Katrina was the costliest and one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States. It was the sixth-strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded and the third-strongest hurricane on record that made landfall in the United States and caused devastation along much of the north-central Gulf Coast. The most severe loss of life and property damage occurred in New Orleans, Louisiana, which flooded as the levee system catastrophically failed, in many cases hours after the storm had moved inland. The hurricane caused severe destruction across the entire Mississippi coast and into Alabama, as far as 100 miles (160 km) from the storm’s center.

The storm surge caused severe damage along the Gulf Coast, devastating the Mississippi cities of Waveland, Bay St. Louis, Pass Christian, Long Beach, Gulfport, Biloxi, D’Iberville, Ocean Springs, Gautier, Moss Point, and Pascagoula. In Louisiana, the federal flood protection system in New Orleans failed in more than fifty places.

Nearly every levee in metro New Orleans breached as Hurricane Katrina passed east of the city, subsequently flooding 80% of the city and many areas of neighboring parishes for weeks. At least 1,836 people lost their lives in Hurricane Katrina and in the subsequent floods, making it the deadliest U.S. hurricane since the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane. The storm is estimated to have been responsible for $81.2 billion (2005 U.S. dollars) in damage, making it the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. (Information here culled from the Wiki Katrina entry, which is a superb reference.)

The devastation and desolation occasioned by Katrina struck a deep nerve in America. The despair played out in front of our eyes non-stop, in real time, on television. The powerful and overwhelming images portrayed every characteristic of the pathos and hopelessness of third world countries that we had become accustomed to seeing. But it was not a third world country on the other side of the globe, conveniently out of sight and mind. It was America. It was New Orleans. Birthplace and home of jazz and creole cooking; one of the most important sea ports in the country. Mouth of the Mississippi. It was us, it was our people; our mothers, fathers, sons and daughters.

Katrina was much more than that though. Katrina was the hot, sharp knife that filleted open, not just for the progressive activists that daily work the beat, but for all of the country, the cold and detached callousness, incompetence and strict focus on self serving greed of the Administration of George W. Bush. With the flood of Katrina came the real turn of the tide on the malicious cancer that has been the Bush/Cheney control of our country. The hellish wrongheaded blunder that is Iraq, the overarching albatross hanging around the neck that it is, still played out in a remote land, with aggrandized and propagandized reporting. The stench and the death were there, not here. Even the deaths of our own soldiers haven’t really etched into the surface of our consciousness; it has been a sanitized hell. Over there, not here.

But there was nothing antiseptic about Katrina and it’s aftermath. The caustic, toxic waters flowing through a great American city carried the death, despair and decay to all of us. They left an indelible and uncomfortable mark. An American Presidency born and sold through stagecraft and fraud instead of deeds. A Bush/Cheney Administration that had a long arm for taking from the American citizenry, but a pitifully short arm for giving.

The moment, however, does not seem to have lasted. The politicians went down to the bayou and made their speeches and promises. Bush invaded the grand symbolic heart of New Orleans, Jackson Square, and put on a stagelit production worthy of Leni Riefenstahl. Bush, predictably, stepped on the downtrodden people of New Orleans on the way to his propaganda moment, and then welched on all his rhetorical promises. John Edwards announced his candidacy from the wrecked ground of New Orleans’ Ninth Ward and built his entire "Two Americas" campaign theme on those images. Now both the Edwards medium and message are down the crapper with his political future, abandoned by him along the road of personal lust and indiscretion.

So, here we are three years later. The politicians have gone, the stagecraft moment having passed. The grand promises made by Bush, like so much else in his wake, broken. The Ninth Ward still a blighted mess with no rebuilding and it’s life as a community hanging by a thread. The population of New Orleans still down, with many of her people never to return home again. Worst of all, the city itself is still in peril from the very forces and neglect that took it down three years ago. In a fine work that is a must read in it’s entirety, AP/MSNBC reports:

Katrina’s storm surge laid bare the incomplete and inadequate work.

What happened? By 1968, a Congress worn down by the Vietnam war and economic turmoil began reining in spending; at the same time, the work met resistance from Louisiana politicians, communities, environmentalists and businesses fighting for individual interests.

For example, the corps scrapped a plan in the 1970s to build a floodgate at the entrance to Lake Pontchartrain out of concern that it would impede boats and marine life. Next, the alternate plan to build gates at the mouths of city drainage canals was rejected. Finally, the corps built floodwalls on the canals — and they broke during Katrina.

Can this sort of history repeat itself?

In a yearlong review of levee work here, The Associated Press has tracked a pattern of public misperception, political jockeying and legal fighting, along with economic and engineering miscalculations since Katrina, that threaten to make New Orleans the scene of another devastating flood.

Dozens of interviews with engineers, historians, policymakers and flood zone residents confirmed many have not learned from public policy mistakes made after Hurricane Betsy in 1965, which set the stage for Katrina; many mistakes are being repeated.
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"All the human instincts post-Katrina are the same (as) post-Betsy," said Oliver Houck, a natural resources law professor at Tulane University and longtime New Orleans resident who participated in many of the fights since Betsy.

Politicians have pushed for development in wetlands, undercut flood protection efforts with legislation and balked at paying for levee work.
…
"We keep building in holes, and contractors keep trying to move in and take advantage of a situation: They come in with a bunch of contractors, sell off property in low places, take their money and run," Sullivan said.

So, as we head into the big Democratic National Convention, lets reflect back on a defining moment, and what it meant. Because Katrina and the hell in the Big Easy is not something we should be shining on, putting behind us and forgetting. And it is not just New Orleans and the Gulf Coast either, there is a Katrina waiting to happen to every community and to every one of us. Spring flooding in the midwest, fallen bridges in Minnesota, fires in California, drought in Georgia. Our ecosystem is out of balance, and our infrastructure in severe need of repair. Now is not the time for idle chatter and twitter, it is not about houses and spouses. This country faces serious and huge problems, we need genuine leadership and substantive solutions. Just exactly what does it take to get that across to the people who would represent us that are gathered mile high in Denver Colorado? Because, we do not want a repeat of the two stooges at left, who were eating cake while America bled in Katrina.

NOTE: The video at the top is "When The Levee Breaks" set to still and video of Katrina. Very powerful, take a look.

Ill winds have been blowing through the Mississippi political and legal scene for a long time now. There is Trent Lott and his son-in-law Dickie Scruggs. A real soap opera there. Scruggs was a legal legend and one of the biggest, if not the biggest, Democratic donors in the state. Now he has pled guilty and Trent Lott has been implicated in the mess. Then there is the highly disturbing tale of Judge Wes Teel that Scott Horton has been doggedly following. Oh, yes, there was also the political persecution of attorney Paul Minor who, wouldn’t you know, was the other biggest Democratic donor in Mississippi. And, of course, there is the by now famous case of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman; which, although an Alabama case, has ties to Mississippi. Man, the Delta sure ain’t a safe place for Democratic lawyers, judges and politicians; guess I best stick to the desert here.

The common thread running through all these prosecutions is the selective targeting of Democrats by the hand of the politicized Bush Department of Justice. From Noel Hillman, the former head of the Public Integrity Section at DOJ Main in Washington, to Leura Canary, to Dunn Lampton, to Alice Martin. All Bush appointed prosecutorial political attack dogs. All tied to Karl Rove. By the way, if you are not familiar with all these stories, do click and read the links, you will find fantastic tales.

Oops, did I forget to mention the attempted take down of Mississippi Supreme Court Judge Oliver Diaz in the same situation that involved Paul Minor? Well, Judge Diaz and the Mississippi Malevolence is back in the news today. Turns out that when you are a centrist or progressive Supreme Court Judge in Mississippi (Diaz, by the way, was originally a Republican, but he was fair minded, and thus shifted), if the Right Wing hit squads can’t persecute you into prison, they simply prevent you from discharging your judicial duties and exercising your judicial discretion.

A jaw dropping report out today in the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal:

Something unusual happened Thursday at the Mississippi Supreme Court.

It may be the first time a majority of the justices voted to prohibit a colleague from publishing a dissent in a case.

In other words, Presiding Justice Oliver Diaz of Ocean Springs disagreed with a court decision and wanted to write about it. His fellow judges said, no, he couldn’t and they apparently stopped the court clerk from filing Diaz’s statement into the record.

Diaz’s document also wasn’t made available to the public, as every other order and dissent are.

"My job as a Supreme Court justice is to write opinions and dissents, when necessary," Diaz said later Thursday. "I was prevented from doing so by a majority of the court."
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Banning a justice from publishing his dissent is highly unusual, said a former state judge, who asked not to be identified.

Diaz speculates it "may be unprecedented in the history of American jurisprudence."

"I don’t know of any instance this has happened," said the judge with Supreme Court experience.

Oxford attorney Tom Freeland IV was not so circumspect with his reaction:

"I have been following the Mississippi Supreme Court closely for 25 years and I have never heard of such a thing," he said Thursday.

A look at Diaz’s dissent shows he argues the error of the court’s decision that the statute of limitations for wrongful death lawsuits begins at the time of the injury, not on the date of death.

"The obvious result is that a wrongful death action may expire before the decedent does.

"This judicially created rule is without foundation, and frankly, absurd," he adds in his seven-page document provided to the Daily Journal.

What is the background of the case the decision related to? The case at issue was a wrongful death lawsuit filed by an employee of the court against the Mississippi State Veterans Affairs Board. What the majority of the Mississippi Supreme Court, and they are all elected and extremely right wing Republicans, was doing is establishing supreme court precedence for the Republican tort reform lobby’s wet dream of having the statute of limitations for a wrongful death action start to run on the date of the initial injury. Even if the victim isn’t dead yet. And there you have it. Make a craven decision and prohibit any dissent; even by a fellow judge. Lovely.

UPDATE: rOTL in comments catches a case that I had pulled up and intended to include in this post and negligently forgot. It involves the patina of dirt and corruption that yet another Bush appointed US Attorney is maliciously trying to apply to former Mississippi Governor Ronnie Musgrove, who is making a very strong challenge for Trent Lotts’s old Senate seat this election, a seat that the Republicans are literally desperate to hold onto. From an op-ed in the local newspaper, the Greenwood Commonwealth, the paper’s editor relates:

When the Democrats and their attorneys began claiming last year that the Bush administration was using its prosecutorial might to target opposition candidates and their major financial supporters, I greeted the allegation with a skeptical eye.

I’m not so sure anymore.

This past week’s developments in the four-year-old investigation into the failed Mississippi Beef Processors plant seem timed to help derail Democrat Ronnie Musgrove’s bid to snatch one of the state’s two U.S. Senate seats from Republican hands.

Three Georgia businessmen, one by one over the course of four days, entered guilty pleas to federal charges arising out of the Yalobusha County beef plant’s quick and costly demise.

The three, all executives with The Facility Group of Smyrna, Ga., were largely left off the hook on the more serious charges that they had swindled the state out of at least $2 million and had left the plant’s vendors and contractors holding the bag.

Instead, they were allowed in a plea bargain to confess to trying to buy influence with Musgrove by steering $25,000 to the then-governor’s unsuccessful re-election campaign in 2003.

The orchestrated guilty pleas — and the prosecutors’ suggestion that more indictments could be forthcoming — are a boon to the campaign of Republican Roger Wicker, who was appointed to the vacant Senate seat in December but is considered vulnerable. They leave a cloud over Musgrove in voters’ minds and provide more fodder for negative campaign ads from the GOP camp, even though Musgrove has not been charged with any wrongdoing and there’s nothing in the court records to document he did anything illegal.
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Musgrove, though, was at most a minor player in the mess.

Yet the efforts to link him publicly to the corruption scandal — using the combined power of the federal prosecutors and a Republican state auditor — have intensified since Musgrove announced his intentions to challenge Wicker for the Senate seat.

The conspiracy theorists see a pattern. They cite the unrelated bribery convictions of Democratic former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman and Mississippi trial lawyer Paul Minor, a major donor to Democratic candidates, as earlier proof that political affiliation is determining who gets investigated and prosecuted by the Justice Department. That allegation is being looked at by congressional panels even while both convictions are on appeal.

The hand chosen Republican candidate, Wicker, has a powerful ally in the form of the US Attorney handling the matter, Jim Greenlee, who is a prior donor to Wicker’s congressional campaign. As Scott Horton notes:

In his speech last week to the American Bar Association, Attorney General Mukasey delivered this promise:

If anyone… is found to be handling or deciding cases based on politics, and not based on what the law and facts require, there will be a swift and unambiguous response.

The developments in Mississippi show exactly what Mukasey’s promise is worth.

No kidding.

Five days ago, in the post "FISA Redux: The Slippery Slope Becomes A Mine Shaft", we discussed the new set of domestic spying protocols that the Bush Administration is determined to entrench into law and practice before leaving office. The measures would:

…make it easier for state and local police to collect intelligence about Americans, share the sensitive data with federal agencies and retain it for at least 10 years. … would apply to any of the nation’s 18,000 state and local police agencies.

Criminal intelligence data starts with sources as basic as public records and the Internet, but also includes law enforcement databases, confidential and undercover sources, and active surveillance.

…also would allow criminal intelligence assessments to be shared outside designated channels … It turns police officers into spies on behalf of the federal government.

As if that wasn’t enough fun for one post, we also learned that Attorney General Mukasey

…would release new guidelines within weeks to streamline and unify FBI investigations of criminal law enforcement matters and national security threats.

Well, that didn’t take long. Guess what; they’re here. It is amazing how when it comes to protecting the rights and privacy of American citizens, the health and stability of the environment, the education of our children, and the care and compassion to military veterans, the Bush Administration produces nothing but bad faith delay, obstruction and, often, outright refusal to act. They are imminently capable, however, of moving with breathtaking alacrity when they sense the opportunity to seize unheard of domestic police state powers that undercut the Constitution, solely by Administrative fiat, and that fundamentally alter the way the American public exists in relation to it’s government in terms of their privacy and, in an existential sense, if not physical, their right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Here, courtesy of the New York Times, is the new joy the Attorney General is announcing to "protect yer freedums":

A Justice Department plan would loosen restrictions on the Federal Bureau of Investigation to allow agents to open a national security or criminal investigation against someone without any clear basis for suspicion, Democratic lawmakers briefed on the details said Wednesday.
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The senators said the new guidelines would allow the F.B.I. to open an investigation of an American, conduct surveillance, pry into private records and take other investigative steps “without any basis for suspicion.” The plan “might permit an innocent American to be subjected to such intrusive surveillance based in part on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or on protected First Amendment activities,” the letter said. It was signed by Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island. (emphasis added)

At first blush, you are tempted to think "this is the same thing we talked about last week, what’s new here?" But there is a significant difference. The provisions last week took the controls off of domestic intelligence gathering, created new roles for intelligence agencies and authorized greater coordination and sharing of intelligence information with state and local police agencies. The instant provisions remove the controls from the FBI/DOJ end of things, a separate, but critical distinction. Taken in total, however, the two announced sets of changes to domestic spying and surveillance rules create an unrestrained and unbound free for all for any and all governmental interests whether federal, state, local, or some combination thereof, to collect and retain effectively any and all information imaginable on American citizens.

There is a higher authority, all knowing and all powerful, that knows everything about everyone; and it isn’t god, it’s the government. That, however, is not even the most frightening aspect of this scheme. No, the worst part would appear to be that, from this mass database of everything, the government will be free to cherry pick unrelated, and indeed even innocuous, bits and pieces of information on an individual or group of individuals and cobble it together to imply suspicion sufficient to target said individuals and/or groups for formal criminal and national security investigations. This makes "Big Brother" look like an infant stepchild.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Not any more. Nope, the Fourth Amendment is so "pre 9/11". How quaint and archaic. 9/11 changed that. 9/11 changed everything. There was only one way for terrorism, whether it be from al Qaida, Iran, Iraq, or timbuktu, to destroy this country, and that was if we, ourselves, let the grip of abject terror and fear consume us from within and destroy our basic Constitutional ethic. The craven neocon authoritarians of the Cheney/Bush Administration have seen to it that just that result occurred. Heckuva job. Mission accomplished.

We have met the enemy, and it is us.