Bob Corker attacked the US automakers for months, arguing they had a failed business model. But as soon as bankruptcy looked likely, Corker suddenly remembered many of his constituents–the GM workers at Tennessee’s Spring Hill plant–work for one of those "failed" automakers. Since then, he’s been pitching the relative merits of Spring Hill. He has gone so far as to suggest that if anything were to happen to Spring Hill, it could only be because of politics.

With sweeping new power the White House will be deciding which plants will survive and which won’t, so in essence, this administration has decided they know better than our courts and our free market process how to deal with these companies.

It’s been a long time since Washington has seen the kind of kowtowing that’s about to occur among members of Congress trying to curry favor with the administration to keep plants in their states open, and it will be interesting to see if the administration makes these decisions based on a red state and blue state strategy or based on efficiency and capable, skilled workers at each plant. If they use the latter, our GM plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee should do very well.

It’s a nice narrative for Corker, one that absolves him of  any responsibility for talking the company into bankruptcy. Yet there’s a detail Corker doesn’t want you to know. 

It’s that the Spring Hill facilities have already been mortgaged away as collateral to secure credit.

Note that GM has approximately $29 Billion in debt; $7 Billion of which is secured by Saturn assets (including Spring Hill, TN plant). The government’s $13.4 Billion loan to GM is also considered secured debt, with a vast amount of assets up as collateral. [my emphasis]

In other words, politics will have nothing to do with the decision on whether or not to close Spring Hill (not that any of you would believe a word Corker says, anyway). That decision will be left entirely up to whatever buyer comes along and buys it, because it will be the first thing liquidated in bankruptcy.

I guess Corker should have thought of that before he joined the plantation caucus, huh?

Hiring someone who doesn’t know the difference between the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis to do crisis communications for big evil corporations?

I’ve got a feeling this may end badly. But we might get some laughs along the way.

Greg Sargent reports on Obama’s refusal to reveal whether he will support or oppose the State Secrets legislation in Congess. To which Mark Ambinder provides an even more telling response.

They no-commented me last week, and they’re stonewalling Greg Sargent this week: the White House refuses to say whether the President supports the State Secrets Protection Act in Congress.  As a candidate, Obama supported the principles espoused in a similar piece of legislation, but he did not sign on to the bill as a cosponsor.  My reporting leads me to believe that senior administration officials, including the White House counsel, Gregory Craig, oppose the current version of the legislation because they believe it would overturn an important, established precedent and weaken the ability of the president to protect national security. [my emphasis]

Yeah … Greg Craig … you think maybe he’s opposed to rolling back state secrets?

Mind you, Obama is 100% responsible for the policies his crappy advisors implement, so ultimately, Ambinder might as well have said, "Obama and his White House counsel" are opposed to the new bill. But Greg Craig was the guy reiterating the state secrets Bush had declared at a time before Eric Holder had been read into some of those questions. Greg Craig is the guy who refuses to go on the record to explain to what degree he’s got Obama following Bush on signing statements, too. 

Now, frankly, I don’t think it much matters what Clinton throwback Greg Craig (or for that matter, Obama) thinks about state secrets. As I suggested here and here, the courts are heading in precisely the same direction as Congress on this issue, and that’s before Vaughn Walker gets done with Obama’s Cheneyesque argumentation. So regardless of whether this is done via legislation or the courts, I suspect it will be done.

That said, Greg Craig has been a bumbling disaster since well before Obama won this election, putting a face of dishonesty on Obama’s stated better intentions. Along with this backwards embrace of state secrets, Obama’d do well to get rid of his reactionary White House counsel, too. 

Many of you who kept linking to the news on the cable cuts in CA’s South Bay were pointing in this direction. (h/t Susie)

This week in the San Francisco Bay Area, the fiber-optic cable network was purposely sliced at four distinct locations. Where a hacker cannot succeed, bolt cutters will do. Read more in The Wall Street Journal’s Digits blog. Once the cables were cut, Internet service was flaky for the region and completely out for 50,000 customers. On top of that, the landlines would not work and the cell-phone towers in the area went dead.  [snip] How much work would it take to find some choke points that you could cut for the purposes of disrupting data communications in an area? How would this affect the so-called smart grid? The peculiar nature of the four cuts around the Bay Area indicated to me that someone was mapping how they would affect the region, keeping in mind that by cutting the cable in key areas you might be able to take down half the country. If more cuts are made in the future, then someone is trying to reverse-engineer the network to find the most vulnerable points of disruption.

The MarketWatch article speculates that the intentional cuts were an attempt to map how to shut off parts of the system. But what it doesn’t question–but a lot of you already had–was whether these intentional cuts had anything to do with the cable cuts made in the Middle East last year, which took down Egypt and Pakistan, and much of the rest of the Middle East.

We know whoever cut the cables last year (intentionally or not or some combination thereof) demonstrated clear choke points in international internet traffic. Now is someone trying to do the same within the US?

I noted the other day that Timmeh (or, according to other coverage of this, Helicopter Ben) told the banks to keep their stress test results to themselves.

Well, apparently, stockholder and taxpayers are not the only ones left out of the secret. So is Congressional Oversight Board Chair Elizabeth Warren. In fact, she’s not even allowed to know the formulas they used to measuring the banks. (h/t My Philosophy at DKos)

Q: Do you have a clear sense of what the overall TARP plan at this point is supposed to do? Are you capable of summarizing what it’s supposed to be doing?

A: No. And neither is Treasury. Treasury has given us multiple contradictory explanations for what it’s trying to accomplish.

There’s a major problem and a minor problem. The minor problem is documentation. I’ve spent four weeks now looking for someone who can give me the details of the stress test so that we can do an independent evaluation of whether the stress test is any good.

We get: "someone will call [you] right back." Only the call doesn’t come.

Then again, I think it’s clear that Timmeh is trying desparately to prevent anyone from assessing whether the stress tests are worth a damn.

Which pretty much tells you what you need to know about them.

Update: Apologies to selise, whose diary on this I just saw.

There’s an aspect of the Louis Freeh interview on Frontline I find fascinating.

In defense of his client, Saudi Prince Bandar, on allegations that Bandar received billions in bribes associated with a huge BAE defense contract, Freeh mostly tries to pretend there’s a meaningful distinction between the Saudi family and high government officials in it. Thus, the plane and estate that Bandar got in connection with the BAE deal are actually government-owned facilities he has use of.

And conveniently, Freeh hasn’t looked at the Swiss Bank Accounts or the Yamamah contract, so he can’t comment on their legality.

But I’m also fascinated by a more subtle tactic Freeh uses–to implicate high ranking Americans (and Brits) in the use of the funds. 

He explains away that structure of the al Yamamah contract to Congressional intransigence during the Reagan Administration. Congress wouldn’t let the Administration sell planes to Saudi Arabia, so what was Reagan to do except encourage Margaret Thatcher to set up a big corrupt contract to bypass this restriction?

Freeh: In other words, the United States, was not able to sell the Saudis F15s, and I think you understand the origin to this contract. The King sent Prince Bandar, my client, to President Reagan with very specific instructions, “Buy F15s.” And of course the United States had armed the Saudi armed forces for the last 20 years before that.

President Reagan said to my client, “Congress will never approve the sale of F15s.” My client then went up to the hill, spoke to senior leadership on both sides of the aisle, and they said, “We can’t authorize the purchase of F15s by the King of Saudi Arabia.” He went back to President Reagan who said, “Go talk to Maggie Thatcher,” which my client did. That’s how Tornados and the treaty, not the contract but the treaty between the two countries, was originated.

He wanted to buy the planes in the United States.

[snip]

So there was only one bidder here by default and that was the British Aerospace Systems and the Toranado, at least as the contract began. So the way the treaty was set up, if the Ministry of Defense and Aviation wanted to purchase U.S. arms, U.S. arms could be purchased through BAE and DESO, which was the U.K. Ministry that did the purchasing, and that was sort of a way to purchase arms, transparent way to purchase arms, but in a way that did not deal with the objection of the U.S. Congress to the selling of American equipment to the Saudis.

While we knew that was the purpose of the contract, I still find it galling that Freeh dismisses Reagan’s effort to bypass Congressional restrictions so easily.

And then Freeh makes a point of listing the Presidents who flew on Bandar’s plane the plane the Saudi government allowed Bandar to paint and use almost exclusively. 

Louis Freeh: No, absolutely not, absolutely not. The plane was assigned to him. He traveled more than the Minister of Foreign Affairs because of the intricate relationship he had between three United States presidents, Lowell, and the King of Saudi Arabia. But the king used the plane, three of our U.S. presidents used the plane, prime ministers used the plane. The fact of the matter is, you know, whatever arguments and inferences you want to make, he did not own the plane.

I’m assuming the three Presidents were Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II. But is this news? I mean, last I checked, the President–whichever one you’re talking about–has his own plane, Air Force One. But apparently all our presidents make a habit of flying around on Bandar’s own plane.

Why?

In any case, I find Freeh’s inclusion of those two details rather curious. At one level, he spends a lot of time excusing the Brits for dismissing the investigation after Bandar threatened to stop cooperating on terrorism.

Louis Freeh: No, not necessarily. If the President of the United States told the FBI, maybe this former supervisor’s equivalent, “Look, I know this is an important criminal investigation but for political reasons and for foreign policy reasons, we don’t want the Department of Justice to continue the investigation because there are very dangerous and impactful consequences that will flow from that investigation” the prosecutor is required to close that investigation.

The prosecutor can’t conduct totally unrestricted inquiries particularly if it impacts on the national security or the foreign relations of a country. So I think that’s what happened in England, not in the United States by the way, and I don’t find that to be unusual, given my experience and given the sensitive issues that were involved in this case. 

At the same time, neither Lowell Bergman nor Freeh mentions the allegations that this contract created a slush fund used to fund covert operations.

Freeh seems intent in raising details of those ops–and implicating all our recent presidents in them–along with his more general defense of Prince Bandar.

So here’s a Happy Easter story of puppies and pirates.

There once was a Portuguese Water puppy that lived, for a time, with older cousins at a big estate in Hyannisport, MA. Because the puppy’s cousin’s people were Democrats, the puppy learned not only basic puppy manners, but also a fine respect for Democratic institutions, including social services, tolerance, and solidarity with other working breeds.

There came a time when that Portuguese Water puppy moved from the big estate in Hyannisport to a different big estate in the nation’s capital. At this new estate, there were no cousins for the puppy to play with, but there were two young girls who were just as much fun. The people at this new estate, like the ones at the old estate, valued those same Democratic principles, including solidarity.

At this new estate, though, the Portuguese Water puppy’s new people talked–even more than at the old estate–about big worries. Banks collapsing and people losing their jobs and their health care. And pirates.

The Portuguese Water puppy wanted to help its new people, particularly because, having learned the value of solidarity, he wanted to help the captain captured by pirates on the other side of the world. After all, who had more solidarity with a captain than a Portuguese Water puppy? 

So the puppy created a distraction.

He donned a rainbow lei (remember, those people at Hyannisport taught this puppy tolerance) and wowed the press. Everyone was talking about this new puppy in the estate in the capital. The two young girls finally had their puppy!

Even the pirates were distracted.

The puppy’s fellow seamen snuck in and rescued the captain held hostage on the other side of the world. 

And that’s how the Portuguese Water puppy reminded everyone to count their Easter blessings. Happy Easter, everyone!!

In my post on the dead-enders doing Dallas, I briefly noted an exchange between Rove and a former Tom Feeney staffer. The eye-popping part was Rove’s admission that he has a file on Feeney’s perceived disloyalty to Bush.  But just as interesting was the staffer, Jason Roe’s reminder to Rove that Bush owed his presidency to Feeney, the speaker of the FL House of Representatives during the 2000 recount.

Roe walked over to the table, "I’m Jason Roe."

Rove: "Oh, the famous Jason Roe."

Roe: "I don’t know that I’m famous, but I’m Tom Feeney’s former chief of staff, and I’m offended by your comments on Fox about Tom. You guys wouldn’t be in the White House without Tom. And you made these really degrading comments about him that offended a lot of people."

(Sidenote: Tom Feeney was the speaker of the Florida House of Representatives during the whole Bush/Gore 2000 recount.)

Rove: "Well, I have a file on the things Tom Feeney said about George Bush."

Roe: "That says more about you than me that you kept a file on Tom Feeney. This guy was so restrained in his desire to criticize the president — even against this staff’s advice." 

Rove: "I have a file."

Along with a bunch of other people, I nagged Brad Friedman, who has covered allegations that Feeney contracted with asked a software company in 2004 to rig touchscreen voting machines, to comment on the Roe reference. Brad separated out Feeney’s known role in 2000…

But as to the "You guys wouldn’t be in the White House without Tom" line, we don’t have any hard evidence of anything newly nefarious in that, given what is already on the public record concerning Feeney’s helping hand to Bush during the FL 2000 democracy abortion.

Amidst the 36 day battle following Election Day 2000 in the Sunshine State, Feeney, who was then Speaker of the FL House and arguably the second most powerful politician in the state (after Dubya’s brother Jeb, who was Governor at the time), made it clear that he was prepared to pass legislation in the Republican Florida House to grant all of Florida’s electors to George W. Bush no matter what the U.S. Supreme Court ended up deciding. As the state’s Constitution grants the power to determine Presidential Electors to the legislature, and that power has been passed on by them to the voting electorate, Feeney was prepared to take that power back for his buddy Dubya (Feeney had previously run as Jeb’s running mate in his unsuccessful 1994 bid for the Governorship), and select Bush’s electors by government fiat, no matter what the courts had determined.

Sleazy? Of course. We’d expect no less from Feeney. But nefariously illegal? Not really. But that, we suspect, is what Roe was most likely referring to in his comments to Rove.

Feeney had other roles to play, of course, in the theft of Florida’s 2000 election, according to the whistleblower Curtis who spoke of "exclusion lists" and the use of armed police at polling places in minority areas which, he says, "Feeney used to brag about".

..from the allegations of voting machine hacking that came out in 2004…

In his now fairly well known allegations against Feeney, first broken here in December of 2004, Curtis had alleged that Feeney first asked the CEO of the company where they both worked (Yang Enterprises Inc. — Curtis as computer programmer, Feeney as general counsel and registered lobbyist, even as he was also speaker of the FL House) for what amounted to a touch-screen vote-rigging software prototype, in "late September or October of 2000", according to his sworn affidavit [PDF]. That would have been just a month or two before the 2000 FL election, and the short demonstration program that Curtis says he created for him, wouldn’t likely have been in time to use for that November’s election. Furthermore, though a version of the program could easily have been adapted for use on central tabulating computers (the main vote counters), the progam was allegedly meant for use on touch-screen voting systems, which FL hadn’t yet been using at the time.

After the 2000 race however — where paper ballots were allegedly gamed in Palm Beach County, according to the stunning on-camera testimony of 7 former company employees from Sequoia Voting Systems who’d produced the bulk of the state’s punch-card paper ballots (broadcast video here) — Florida moved quickly thereafter to touch-screen voting systems across much of the state.

Thanks, Brad, for laying that out. Click through to Brad’s post for a review of still-unexplained issues with the 2000 election. 

Now, if Jason Roe has any further revelations about how Feeney helped out Bush, I’d be happy to hear it. 

Update: corrected some inaccuracies. Curtis alleged that Feeney asked Yang Enterprises to do the vote-rigging software in 2000, though there is no indication it was or could have been used in 2000. 

Image by isiria/Melange

Pirates! Arrrr, they’re teh new sharks matey. Scary! And we should rightly be worried about this pirate problem, because CNN, MSNBC and the print have been relentlessly telling us so. First it was the seizure of the quasi American flagged cargo ship Maersk Alabama, and now the pesky pirates have snared an Italian tugboat too.

Sara related some fascinating background on Maersk and its business:

…. part of Public Law 480 requires that food relief from US Agricultural surpluses, be carried in “American Bottoms” — and US Flagged and owned ships, all have union crews. This ship is owned by Moller/Maersk, which is a vast international Danish Company, but which bought an American Shipping Company, and thus is a bi-national corporation. When it carries American Humanitarian Relief Supplies, they must use a ship chartered in the US, US Flagged, and American Crew. Moller/Maersk is perfectly capable of changing the charter, flag, and crew if it is hired to deliver a non-restricted cargo. For instance, this is the Danish Shipping Company that “sold” Ollie North his ship for shipping the anti-tank weapons to Iran back in the middle of Iran Contra — the ship he took back to Denmark and parked once the story broke, and left the crew without paying their wages. Not covered in the US Press at all — the Danes had a nice little trial in a public court on the Island of Fyn, and took public testimony of all the seamen (all Danes) who were unpaid, and out spilled all the cargo’s they had hauled, and all their ports of Call. Not sure whether North ever paid his fines and got right with the Danish Seaman’s court. Moller/Maersk also was the primary contractor hauling arms to Central America back in the Reagan Days. They’ve done covert stuff for CIA for years.

Shipping, even through troubled waters like those near Somalia, is big business. Isn’t everything these days? Which brings me to the knee jerk question, one I am sure many have asked, of why these big global business ships do not simply arm themselves sufficiently to repel the rag tag Somali pirates? Seriously, the Maersk Alabama is 508 feet long and staffed by a trained and unionized crew, why can’t they fight off these pirates with AK-47s in rinky dink junks and skiffs? Insurance and regulatory liability concerns; and, it turns out, that appears to be a pretty valid explanation.

The Maersk Alabama is, as previously described, a 508 foot vessel, yet it is manned by a crew of only twenty. Between standing watch, operating the ship, and rotating downtime, there is not much capacity for defensive prowess. Even if the crew members were trained for armed confrontation, which they are not, there are not enough of them. Above and beyond that, however, are a broad range of issues militating against allowing a ship’s crew to fight back with arms:

…most companies fear crew arguments that turn heated would end in gunshot deaths. Furthermore, captured ships would yield more arms and ammunition for the pirates. Most crews would realize that deaths suffered by the pirates as they took a ship would cause retribution once the merchant ship was boarded. Moreover, port authorities do not want weapons aboard while in their territorial waters. If weapons are permitted on board (and that is extremely rare) then not just ammunition but also the firing pins have to be kept in three separate and locked locations. Thus reassembling and loading such weapons at sea would take so much time, the pirates might well have already taken the ship anyway.

All good points, but you know the international shipping business isn’t really worried about the health of its seamen. It is a risk management decision. When you take a look at the numbers, that is pretty defensible actually. Such was the basis of my use of the "sharks" analogy at the top of the post. It all sounds so alarming, and it is nice and shiny for news networks, Larry King and the like; but, all told, there is not that much "there" there. As an article from the US Naval Institute, discussing both piracy and terrorism, cogently states:

It is a nasty headache where it occurs, but its real effects on world trade and the movement of people are negligible.

That strikes me as about right. Of course, the flip side of that coin is that the insurance industry, which as we know is tethered to the Master Of The Universe financial industry, is likely getting rich off this. Of course they are:

Munich Reinsurance Co. expects insurance premiums against high sea piracy to rise, as well as the risk of piracy spreading in the world, the German company’s head of marine insurance Dieter Berg said.
…
At the moment the need from shipping companies for hijacking insurance is mainly because of the exposure to Somalia and Nigeria, he said.

Redirecting ships to pass by the Cape of Good Hope could cost a big container ship about $1 million more in costs compared with going through the Suez Canal, he said. The additional premium for every voyage though the Gulf of Aden is worth a couple of hundred thousand dollars, he said.

A U.N. source, speaking to Reuters before the conference, said the increase in the costs of ship insurance could reach 0.5% of ship values, which are typically between $10 million and $100 million.

Insurance has yet to show any sign of falling despite January’s easing in hijacking numbers, Mr. Mukandan said.

No. I don’t suspect the insurance is going down. It never does. Hmmmm, pirates or the bottom scraping scavengers that run the insurance and international risk conglomerates? Man, that is a tough call. Almost makes you want to sympathize with the pirates.

There are two notable details about this article on the reunion of the Bush dead-enders in Dallas to plan W’s legacy.

Dick Doesn’t Do Dallas

The first is the absence Peter Baker does note; apparently, Dick’s not doing Dallas.

Not coming to next week’s session is former Vice President Dick Cheney, who in the final days of the administration argued with Mr. Bush about his failure to pardon Mr. Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., who was convicted of perjury and other counts for his role in the leak of Valerie Wilson’s employment with the Central Intelligence Agency. Mr. Cheney later went on television to air his grievances with Mr. Bush, while also accusing Mr. Obama of endangering the country.

That is an approach Mr. Bush has rejected, telling aides that for now he is intent on giving his successor room to govern without criticism from him. Besides, he says, he is too busy in his own new life.

While I’m all in favor of flogging the "Cheney in a huff over Scooter" story (maybe it’ll spark some interest in why Cheney feels so strongly?), Cheney’s absence is more interesting, IMO, given his apparently recent decision to keep his records–and the loot he received as gifts while serving as the Fourth Branch–in the National Archives in DC rather than in the Bush Library.

Last fall, an architect for Bush’s library indicated that Cheney’s records and artifacts would be coming soon, but that apparently was a mix-up. Cheney wants them to remain in Washington as he writes his memoirs.

[snip]

During talks last year, the National Archives suggested that Cheney’s artifacts – like a set of gold Murano glass candlesticks and bowls from Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi – be sent to the Bush library. That way they could be displayed with Bush’s items, including the 9 mm pistol that Saddam Hussein held when captured by American soldiers in Iraq.

"The VP preferred to have the VP artifacts remain with the records," said Sharon Fawcett, assistant archivist for presidential libraries.

Plans for the Bush library at SMU include space for new collections, including Cheney’s archives. His official and personal records would need an estimated 6,000 cubic feet, according to the National Archives.

Last fall, e-mails between Bush architects and the archives, which ensures that the library meets federal standards, signaled that Cheney’s records would be coming to Dallas.

In October, one architect wrote to the archives: "We received a call from [George W. Bush Foundation president] Mark Langdale that the Vice Presidential holdings will now be located at the GWBPL [George W. Bush Presidential Library]" and asked for guidance to update the library’s designs.

But there was "a miscommunication," said Rob Saliterman, spokesman for the nonprofit Bush Foundation, which is in charge of building the library, museum and policy center.

I’m reading "miscommunication" here to be Cheney-speak for change of plans, or more likely, long-time deception about his real plans. But given Cheney’s repeated attempts to bypass the Presidential Records Act, particularly his attempts to have his emails, visitors, and classification actions hidden, I suspect his decision to keep his records in NARA reflects a desire to exercise continued control over access to them.

But it also means you’ve got Bush in Texas writing his memoirs using one archive, and Cheney in DC writing his own memoir using different archives.  I can’t wait to write the set of posts comparing the two memoirs, reflecting as they will two totally different archives about the events portrayed within them. I almost imagine that Bush is the one Cheney’s keeping his archives away from, lest he find out what really happened during his presidency.

A Legacy without a Brain

And then there’s the other notable detail: Baker’s complete silence about whether Rove will attend. 

Condoleezza Rice will be there. So will Karen Hughes and Dan Bartlett and Michael Gerson. And George W. Bush himself.

The old gang is getting back together next week in Dallas for a reunion of sorts, the Bush team’s first since leaving the White House. On tap is a dinner with the former president and a day-long discussion of the future George W. Bush Policy Institute.

Apparently, the Dallas News tried to answer the question Baker’s silence doesn’t address–though with no better luck. 

Those expected to attend include former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and media advisers Karen Hughes and Dan Bartlett.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney will not be there. It was unclear whether Karl Rove, a top Bush political adviser, would attend.

Now, unlike Dick, Karl is definitely still working on the George Bush legacy project. Witness his strong reaction to Joe Biden’s recollection of a meeting at which Biden warned Bush that the President might be a leader, but no one was following. 

"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden said, "’Well, Joe,’ he said, ‘I’m a leader.’ And I said: ‘Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.’"

Yesterday, Rove said the exchange was purely "fictional."

"It didn’t happen," Rove said in a taped interview (which appears below). "It’s his imagination; it’s a made-up, fictional world.

"He ought to get out of it and get back to reality," Rove added. "He’s making this up out of whole cloth."

"I hate to say this, but he’s a serial exaggerator," continued. "If I was being unkind I would say liar. But it is a habit he ought to drop."

And the best part is that the same Karl Rove that spread Cheney’s rumors that Valerie Plame had a low-level desk job at the CIA, and put up with Cheney’s claims that Iraq contributed to 9/11, is now lecturing that Vice Presidents shouldn’t lie or exaggerate. 

"You should not exaggerate and lie like this when you are the Vice President of the United States," he quipped.

Thanks, Karl. Glad to see your newfound concern about the veracity of the Vice President.

Of course, Karl might just be cranky. After all. On the same day Rove went after Biden, he also went after a Tom Feeney staffer in a restaurant, warning of his "file" measuring Feeney’s disloyalty. 

Though, come to think of it, Karl’s just about due for his little chat with the House Judiciary staffers, so maybe there’s a reason he’s so touchy. 

Still. Karl Rove is the man who created whatever historical profile George Bush has. And here they are, brainstorming ways to turn shit into gold. And they can’t even tell the press whether Bush’s brain is going to show up.

That says something, I think, about the future of Bush’s legacy.