Last fall, Jay Rosen wrote a post and I wrote a follow-up, both of which elicited much discussion. Jay quoted a member of the White House press corps explaining why the press corps continues to attend the White House press events even though they’re staged spin, rather than news. Here’s the exchange between Jay and the anonymous reporter.

Well, there are two phrases that I’d like to pass along to your readers. They mean more or less the same thing. “Body watch” means covering an event that will produce zero news on its own because you need to make sure the president doesn’t collapse. The other is SSRO — “suddenly shots rang out” — which is basically equivalent, just a bit more dramatic.

[snip]

When I emailed this to my friend, he asked whether we were responsible for the president’s safety, so I assume that others will have the same question. What we are responsible for is making sure that, if he collapses, or is shot at, we are in a position to get that information to our viewers/listeners/readers.

From what I know, a correct and concise statement of what the body watch is.

Think about how much JFK, RFK, MLK, Wallace, Squeaky, and Hinckley have shaped the logistical reality of White House coverage. The history of journalism is littered with stories of reporters who called it a day a bit too early, like the guy from the New York Times (if memory serves) who decided to head back to NYC hours before Wallace was shot. [my emphasis]

Basically, the press corps continues to attend all of Bush’s–or Presidential candidates’–events out of fear that something newsworthy might happen and they wouldn’t be present.

When I read this account of how the reporters covering the Hillary campaign learned of her RFK assassination comment–not to mention the fact that John McCain had a squamous cell carcinoma removed in February, in the middle of a Presidential campaign, without anyone reporting it–it made me want to further challenge the notion that the press corps has to follow the President–and Presidential candidates around–to make sure they, and not some random citizen with a video camera–reports on serious things that happen to the President.

Here’s how the NYT "covered" Hillary’s RFK comment (h/t Scarecrow).

In the morning the campaign, with its traveling press corps of about two-dozen reporters, photographers and camera operators, flew from Washington to Sioux Falls, S.D., to campaign in advance of the June 3 primary.

Mrs. Clinton had three events. First was a meeting with the editorial board of the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, which was live-streaming the interview, something a few newspapers just started doing in this election cycle.

The press corps, meanwhile, was on a bus from the airport to Brandon, a few miles away, to set up for her second event at a supermarket. (The media are sometimes in a different place from the candidate, usually when the event is private or small.)

Her interview began while we were on the bus, but Internet access was so poor, we could only pick up bits of her comments intermittently. We did hear her bat back reports that her campaign had made overtures to Senator Barack Obama’s campaign about some kind of deal for her to exit the race.

At the supermarket, we were ensconced in a café off the deli counter, where many reporters were writing about her denying the overtures while also trying to follow the live stream. Here, too, Internet access was spotty and the stream came over in choppy bursts.

Mrs. Clinton arrived from the newspaper in the midst of this, and began addressing a couple of hundred people who were seated adjacent to us, in the fresh produce section. Then our cell phones and Blackberries went off.

On the other end were editors who had seen a Drudge Report link to a New York Post item online. The Post was not with the traveling press _ and apparently had a decent Internet connection.

The initial N.Y. Post item read this way: “She is still in the presidential race, she said today, because historically, it makes no sense to quit, and added that, ‘Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June,’ making an odd comparison between the dead candidate and Barack Obama.”

So: the NY Post to Drudge to the editors to the reporters actually "traveling" with Hillary.

By way of comparison of how the blogosphere jumped on the story, here’s a John Aravosis post that describes his efforts to confirm this story–and, as a loud Hillary opponent, frankly turn it into news.

UPDATE: I just called the newspaper’s news room to inform them that they kind of have a huge scoop here if they can confirm. Their response: You can watch the video yourself it’s on our Web site. Uh, yeah, but is it true – did she say it? They don’t know. Nice. The Argus Leader didn’t sound very interested in finding out if they had a huge story on their hands, so who knows.

You can read the NY Post article and decide for yourself. I’m trying to listen to the interview now to find out what exactly she said and why.

The article just updated. Holy shit.

Hillary Clinton today brought up the assassination of Sen. Robert Kennedy while defending her decision to stay in the race against Barack Obama.

"My husband did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California. I don’t understand it," she said, dismissing calls to drop out.

Clinton made her comments at a meeting with the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader’s editorial board while campaigning in South Dakota, where she complained that, "People have been trying to push me out of this ever since Iowa."

Aravosis continued to update that post for two hours. One of the first recommended DKos diaries on the comment seems to rely on Aravosis and was posted sixteen minutes later. I don’t know whether Aravosis found the Post story himself or via Drudge.

Whether or not it was Aravosis or Drudge who decided this comment had to be a story (nice company, Aravosis), it was, at last according to both Aravosis’ account, some random guy reading the news who did so–he told them they might have a big scoop. And, ultimately, it was a newspaper reporter watching the live feed of an interview from someplace comfortable who first reported the comments–it was neither the press corp reporters who were traveling "with" Hillary nor editors of the Argus-Leader with whom Hillary was meeting.

Now I don’t mean to suggest that a comment about an assassination is as important an event as actual physical events undergone by the President or candidate–though that’s why I brought up the McCain carcinoma, which also went unnoted and, because of McCain’s success at managing the release of his own medical records, underplayed when discovered. But it is an event that–for better or worse, and I’ve got mixed feelings about that–has been deemed a very important campaign event. (I actually trust Rachel Maddow’s read on this the most–"this is a gaffe and a big mistake from a remarkably disciplined candidate"– since she has repeatedly defended Hillary against unfair attacks, but since she also has superb political judgment.)

There are some events that will be news independent of the editorial decisions surrounding them. But the coverage of the RFK comment affirms, I think, that news is rarely made in the presence of the press corps. It is "made" in the editorial decisions and by the blogger/Drudge publicity and the talking heads. That’s in no way an entirely good thing. But it does mean that one’s presence in the press corps largely means a reporter will only have privileged access to a media handler’s spin on a particular event, and not necessarily a better vantage on the event itself.

Update: Athenae addresses related issues: 

Which goes back to what we talk about here a lot, laziness and stupidity in addition to bias, as a media problem. The utter arbitrariness, in that what one person says passes without comment other than on the back pages of the Beaver County Tidbit (much to the chagrin of the Tidbit) and what someone else says gets blown up into a 24-hour Pig Fuck of a "firestorm," which incidentally if I never hear that word again … A bunch of things contribute to this: charged environment, relative stupidity of statement, availability of critics and ease of analysis with which to quickly put together a Sunday show, the latter being so much more crucial than people think. If you can’t get anyone on the phone to say "that was outrageous!" you can’t write a story about outrage.

I’m not defending her at all, at best it was a fucking dumbass thing to say and very uncool, at best. But the total lack of rules to this thing, the lack of dare I say it, standards to which journalists are always declaring they adhere, makes fighting back against it very difficult, and that’s a lesson that all Democrats should have learned four years ago, hell, eight years ago. It’s a lesson they’re going to need to learn damn quick in the coming months.

Though I would add that–as I think I’ve shown here–the arbitrariness is by no means limited to the journalists. The blogosphere is at least as much at fault here. 

Man, this is one big paragraph. Makes you want to, um, breathe.

But here’s the key point of the paragraph–the description of how BAE bribes to Bandar bin Sultan and others were laundered through some offshore accounts and then used to fund covert ops.

Remember, that the real story behind the BAE "Al Yamamah" scandal is that, under the arms-for-oil barter deal, the British accumulated well-over $100 billion, in off-the-books, offshore funds, that have been used to finance covert operations, for the past 23 years (the deal was first signed in 1985, and has been regularly updated ever since).

After which said long breathless paragraph goes onto insinuate that the BAE bribes might be tied to 9/11.

The other nagging matter around the BAE case is that Prince Bandar "inadvertently" helped finance the 9/11 attacks, through funds provided by him and his wife to two Saudi intelligence operative in California, who, in turn, bankrolled two of the hijackers.

Now, before we focus too closely on the 9/11 insinuation, first let’s consider a few other details. 1985, when these funds were set up, was actually before BCCI, the Pakistani bank that both the CIA and the Saudis used to launder money for covert ops, folded. I’m curious whether any of the "usual hedge funds, etc. in places like the Cayman Islands, BVI" in which the Saudis dumped their bribe receipts were BCCI accounts? And did they move from there to Riggs Bank, where the Saudis and General Pinochet were subsequently laundering their money?

Also, I’d sure like to know which covert ops these bribes funded. I’ve got one surefire guess though: the March 2004 coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea. After all, Mark Thatcher (Maggie’s kid) was involved in both: He was convicted for investing the plane the South African mercenaries used in their coup attempt (though he was given the favor of claiming it was just a big oversight). And he was cohabitating with the front companies involved in some of the bribery.

Early on, it was evident that BAE was discretely funneling money back into the kingdom by paying inflated rates for military construction projects to local contractors connected to members of the royal family. In addition, under the the Al-Yamamah offset arrangements, BAE was obliged to invest a percentage of its profits in Saudi Arabia, which was done through joint ventures with similarly well-connected local companies. Two key beneficiaries of these deals were Wafic Said, a Syrian-born businessman close to Sultan,[3] and Muhammad Safadi, a Lebanese businessman close to Sultan’s son-in-law, Prince Turki bin Nasser. Both became billionaires as a result.

While BAE steadfastly denied rumors that it had paid bribes in connection with Al-Yamamah, during the 1990s a number of smaller British arms companies acknowledged paying commissions to Saudi middlemen in order to win subcontracts. However, with the notable exception of a $98 million payment by the arms company BMARC,[4] most were small-scale and all were technically legal, as British anti-corruption legislation explicitly forbidding bribery of overseas officials did not come into force until 2002. More controversial was evidence that Saudi money was finding its way back to defense industry executives and British political figures. For example, Mark Thatcher (son of the former prime minister) and then-BAE chief Richard Evans were found to be living in luxurious residences owned by front companies registered at the same address (49 Park Lane) as Said’s offices in London.[5]

Here’s a post I did last year speculating that all this would come together.

The whole BAE thing blew up again last week while I was visiting. The short version is that Bandar Bush bin Sultan got caught with his hand in a very large cookie jar–to the tune of billions. But you’ll recall that I suggested we’d be hearing more about this scandal back back in December. Today, Isikoff and Hosenball reveal that this may relate to the Riggs Bank scandal from a few years back (though keep in mind–it’s Isikoff, so all the usual caveats about misleading half-truths apply).

Hundreds of pages of confidential U.S. bank records may be the missing link in illuminating new allegations that a major British arms contractor funneled up to $2 billion in questionable payments to Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan. The BBC and Guardian newspaper reported last week that BAE Systems made "secret" payments to a Washington, D.C., bank account controlled by Bandar, the longtime Saudi ambassador to the United States who is now the kingdom’s national-security adviser. The payments are alleged to be part of an $80 billion military-aircraft deal between London and Riyadh. Last week British Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged that his government shut down an investigation into the payments, in part because it could have led to the "complete wreckage" of Britain’s "vital strategic relationship" with Saudi Arabia. Before the U.K. closed the inquiry, British investigators contacted the U.S. Justice Department seeking access to records related to the Saudi bank accounts.

And you remember the Riggs bank scandal, don’t you? Where Bush crony Joe Allbritton and uncle Jonathan Bush oversaw a bank that was laundering money for Augusto Pinochet, Equatorial Guinea, and … the Saudis? Or rather, Bandar Bush bin Sultan? Riggs was a regular old BCCI, it turns out, only no one really bothered to investigate why it was laundering money for some of the biggest creeps in the world.

So let me just throw out a few more datapoints:

• Riggs leads to Equatorial Guinea, the same place where Margaret Thatcher’s son–one of the main beneficiaries of the BAE bribery–sponsored a coup … now where do you suppose he got the money to sponsor that coup?
• Cheney and Bandar have been freelancing on foreign policy of late. Of course, Congress is not paying for that free-lancing.

Some of the core tactics of the redirection are not public, however. The clandestine operations have been kept secret, in some cases, by leaving the execution or the funding to the Saudis, or by finding other ways to work around the normal congressional appropriations process, current and former officials close to the Administration said.

So where do you think Cheney and Bandar are getting the money?

Okay, I’m getting closer on that funding the Equatorial Guinea coup. So why would the Saudis want to fund a coup against one of the rising new state sources of petroleum? And if they’re willing to fund a coup against one country with tons of petroleum, might they fund coups against other countries with tons of petroleum?

I feel some breathless paragraphs coming on.

Okay. Now to 9/11.

Remember the reason why the Poodle spiked the British investigation into BAE’s bribery?

Via AmericaBlog, the Guardian reports that Bandar bin Sultan, adoptive member of the Bush family, is alleged to have threatened Tony Blair to convince him to spike the investigation into BAE-related bribery of Bandar.

Saudi Arabia’s rulers threatened to make it easier for terrorists to attack London unless corruption investigations into their arms deals were halted, according to court documents revealed yesterday.

Previously secret files describe how investigators were told they faced "another 7/7" and the loss of "British lives on British streets" if they pressed on with their inquiries and the Saudis carried out their threat to cut off intelligence.

Prince Bandar, the head of the Saudi national security council, and son of the crown prince, was alleged in court to be the man behind the threats to hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists. He faces accusations that he himself took more than £1bn in secret payments from the arms company BAE.

He was accused in yesterday’s high court hearings of flying to London in December 2006 and uttering threats which made the prime minister, Tony Blair, force an end to the Serious Fraud Office investigation into bribery allegations involving Bandar and his family. [my emphasis]

Now, it appears that Bandar threatened to "hold back information about suicide bombers and terrorists" in the UK–I don’t think this suggests that Bandar was going to direct terrorists to attack the UK. Here is what the Poodle said about the meeting:

The critical difficulty presented to the negotiations over the Typhoon contract … All intelligence cooperation was under threat … It is in my judgment very clear that the continuation of the SFO investigation into al-Yamamah risks seriously damaging confidence in the UK as a partner … I am taking the exceptional step of writing to you myself

And here is what the British Ambassador (to Saudi Arabia, I guess?) said to the Serious Fraud Office:

We had been told that ‘British lives on British streets’ were at risk … If this caused another 7/7, how could we say that our investigation was more important? … If further investigation will cause such damage to national and international security, [the head of the SFO] accepted it would not be in the public interest.

I’ll leave it at that.

Just one more thing. As you read Tim Shorrock’s book on how much of our intelligence we’re outsourcing, take note of how often he talks about BAE. For example, BAE was one of the founding members of INSA, the organization about which one intelligence veteran wondering,

"if INSA has become a way for contractors and intelligence officials to create policy in secret, without oversight from Congress."

BAE is one of those corporations working with our intelligence agencies to outsource intelligence to companies that largely escape Congress’ oversight. Feeling breathless yet?

A tiny bit of me (okay, miniscule) wishes that Rick Renzi were sticking around as a Congressman. That’s because, now that the government has tried to use wiretaps of conversations between him and his attorneys in his trial, Renzi might be motivated to champion legislation reaffirming the importance of attorney-client privilege.

Attorneys for Rep. Rick Renzi (R-Ariz.), who has been indicted on 35 federal corruption charges, filed a motion today asking a federal judge to exclude from trial a series of "at least 50" cell phone calls by Renzi that were recorded by FBI agents.

Renzi’s legal teams says that the calls should be privileged under attorney-client privilege, as well as the Speech or Debate Clause, a constitutional privilege that protects lawmakers and aides from legal action for legislative activities. Renzi is not raising a Speech or Debate claim on these intercepted calls yet.

"These privileged calls include conversations between Congressman Renzi and his criminal defense counsel and an attorney representing him in a Federal Election Commission (‘FEC’) proceeding. The privileged calls reflect discussions regarding legal strategy and core work product, including the direction of the investigation, witness interviews, DOJ strategy, Congressman Renzi’s recollection of relevant issues, and legal advice regarding theories of prosecution and applicable defenses," Renzi’s lawyers wrote. They are asking that the audio files and transcripts of the calls should be returned to Renzi’s control and a protective order should be granted to prevent prosecutors or anyone else from reviewing the calls.

It’s a problem that extends beyond corrupt Congressmen. Many of the lawyers defending detainees at Gitmo believe they are being wiretapped.

One lawyer for Guantánamo detainees said he replaced his office telephone in Washington because of sounds that convinced him it had been bugged. Another lawyer who represents detainees said he sometimes had other lawyers call his corporate clients to foil any government eavesdroppers.

In interviews and a court filing Tuesday, lawyers for detainees at Guantánamo said they believed government agents had monitored their conversations. The assertions are the most specific to date by Guantánamo lawyers that officials may be violating legal principles that have generally kept government agents from eavesdropping on lawyers.

“I think they are listening to my telephone calls all the time,” said John A. Chandler, a prominent lawyer in Atlanta and Army veteran who represents six Guantánamo detainees.

[snip]

Justice Department officials have said in the past that they had not used their terrorist surveillance powers to single out lawyers but that telephone “calls involving such persons would not be categorically excluded.

And the lawyers representing the al-Haramain charity know their conversations with their clients were being wiretapped via the warrantless wiretap program. But they can’t tell you about it, or they’d have to kill you … or something like that.

There’s a parable here somewhere. It goes something like, "First they took attorney-client privilege away from the alleged Islamic terrorists. And then they took attorney-client privilege away from crooked Congressmen. And then they took attorney-client privilege from vegans…."

I’ve got a deal to propose. If the Administration is so anxious to do away with attorney-client privilege, then they need to give up, at the same time, executive privilege. Deal?

Because he’s "dizzy."

Also revealed: He has occasional momentary episodes of dizziness, when he gets up suddenly. McCain first told a doctor about them in 2000 — a visit that also uncovered the melanoma — and intense testing concluded they were harmless vertigo. He didn’t report any episodes at his most recent exam.

So I guess in the McCain family, not only is John not the breadwinner of the family, but in spite of the fact that he has a beautiful blonde wife, he’s the dizzy one. 

As some of you have noted, the ACLU relaunched its blog this week in fine fashion–by hosting a symposium on torture with a bunch of bloggers and experts. They had posts from Glenn, Christy, McJoan, Nicole Belle, Jeralyn, and Digby.

Oh, and me! Here’s a bit of my post from yesterday:

On May 9, the Convening Authority for the Gitmo military commissions signed charges against five detainees alleged to be responsible for 9/11.  Yet, in spite of the fact that George Bush named Abu Zubaydah in a September 2006 speech in which he promised to "bring these people to justice," Zubaydah was not included among those charged. Zubaydah remains, more than six years after he was first detained, uncharged.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I think the military commissions are in any way adequate vehicles to try Gitmo detainees alleged be terrorists (a problem the ACLU has tried to address). But it seems that Zubaydah remains in limbo precisely because he embodies the failures of the nation’s embrace of torture.

[snip]

Now, perhaps the Administration plans to charge Zubaydah with something else. Perhaps they will justify their excuse for torturing him, that he was a high level operative. But thus far, the Administration seems more interested in hiding the real evidence on Zubaydah: that they tortured a man, and that torture proved useless.

Go read the rest. 

Apparently, Chairman Conyers received yet another letter from Robert Luskin claiming that Rove can spout off all he wants about his involvement (or not) in Governor Siegelman’s prosecution, but he can’t or won’t do so before the House Judiciary.

Conyers isn’t going to wait around for more of the same.

We were disappointed to receive your May 21 letter, which fails to explain why Mr. Rove is willing to answer questions in writing for the House Judiciary Committee, and has spoken on the record to the media, but continues to refuse to testify voluntarily before the Committee on the politicization of the Department of Justice, including allegations regarding the prosecution of former Governor Don Siegelman. Because of that continuing refusal, we enclose with this letter a subpoena for Mr. Rove’s appearance before the Committee’s Commercial and Administrative Law Subcommittee at 10:00 a.m. on July 10, 2008.

(Nice touch, Chairman Conyers, having the Subcommittee vote on it without, as far as I’ve heard, the news getting word.)

Now, as Conyers points out, this subpoena is a bit different than the subpoena that Harriet Miers blew off. For starters, Rove has been completely willing to answer questions in writing–and at least until now, he hasn’t asked Bush whether Bush wanted to protect the alleged conversations between Rob Riley and Rove and the Public Integrity Division of DOJ. And, as Conyers reiterates, Rove has been blabbing and blabbing and blabbing about this to the press, so it’ll be tough to argue that he can’t continue to blab under oath.

One more difference. I wonder how the Courts will feel about enforcing a subpoena issued by someone who said "Someone’s got to kick his ass"?

Just off the House floor today, the Crypt overheard House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers tell two other people: “We’re closing in on Rove. Someone’s got to kick his ass.”

Asked a few minutes later for a more official explanation, Conyers told us that Rove has a week to appear before his committee. If he doesn’t, said Conyers, “We’ll do what any self-respecting committee would do. We’d hold him in contempt. Either that or go and have him arrested.”

And finally, this weedy note. Apparently, Office of Professional Responsibility has informed the committee that it "has opened an investigation into" the politicized prosecutions of the Bush Administration.

Separately, Chairman Conyers recently received a letter from DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) indicating that the office has opened an investigation into allegations of selective prosecution of Siegelman and others.

Call me crazy, but it sounds like OPR is trying to stave off the Rove subpoena by claiming it has a prior investigation started.

Update: Or maybe I’m just being paranoid about the OPR investigation. I had remembered there was an earlier OPR investigation of Alice Martin that seemed, um, incomplete. But maybe under new management (Mukasey) and faced with the news that the prosecution did not turn over information that should have been turned over under Jencks, they decided to really do an investigation.

Update 2: This is kind of cool. CREDO called on its customers last month to encourage Marshall Jarrett to launch an investigation into the politicization of investigations.

So we here at CREDO picked this issue up, and in our April phone bills, urged our customers to send a letter to Dept. of Justice Counsel H. Marshall Jarrett and ask that he launch an investigation of apparent political motives in the selective prosecution of Siegelman.

Almost 20,000 of our customers sent hard-copy letters to Counsel Jarrett over the past several weeks…and just this morning, it was revealed that he has in fact initiated an investigation into the Siegeleman case from the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility.

I’m not surprised that the RNC is hiring former insta-US Attorney and expert vote cager Tim Griffin.

Indicating what lies ahead is the McCain campaign’s plan to bring in Tim Griffin, a protege of Karl Rove, who is a leading practitioner of opposition research — digging up derogatory information about opponents. Although final arrangements have not been pinned down, Griffin would work at the Republican National Committee, as he did in Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign.

I’m rather more struck by the timing.

Griffin’s return comes just days after Mark McKinnon, who refused to use smear tactics to campaign against Obama, stepped down.

More alarming still, it comes just days after Hans von Spakovsky, whom Bush had selected to be the FEC’s expert in disenfranchising brown people, gave up his bid for that position.

I guess the Republicans felt they couldn’t run this year without having somebody in charge of disenfranchising brown people.

All of which leaves me wondering. If Tim Griffin helps McCain win the Presidency using the same methods he did in 2000 and 2004, how will President McCain reward him? Will he try to illegally fire Justice Souter and replace him with Tim Griffin?

The Democratic Party’s charter requires that the Party:

Establish standards and rules of procedure to afford all members of the Democratic Party full, timely and equal opportunities to participate in decisions concerning the selection of candidates, … and further, to promote fair campaign practices and the fair adjudication of disputes. (Charter, Article I, Section 4)

Yet both the Democratic National Committee and the Michigan Democratic Party appear to be violating that requirement in their selection of which challenges to the MI Clusterfuck to hear at the May 31 Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting.

At least one group of ordinary Michigan citizens submitted a complaint that appears to fulfill all legal requirements. Yet the MDP has failed to follow its own rules on how to assist with and respond to that complaint–and it also did not comply with the requirement that it publish the names of those selected in the April 19 district conventions (which triggers a deadline for the submission of complaints). And the DNC will only hear the two state party-led complaints at the May 31 Rules and Bylaw Committee, thereby violating the requirement that "all members" of the party be able "to participate in decisions concerning the selection of candidates."

This complaint is similar to the petition I launched in April, in that its solution would reflect a compromise number between the results of the January 15 Clusterfuck and a 50-50 split: it works out to be the same 69-59 that the "Blue Ribbon Commission" has proposed. Also, like my petition, this complaint calls for the super-delegates to receive no vote.

But it’s different in two ways. First, it advocates giving MI’s elected delegates just half a vote each, not the full vote I suggested (in that respect, I like mine better, but then I didn’t get off my ass and file an official complaint; though this complaint has the advantage that it matches what the rules call for). More importantly, the complaint justifies its solution based on the MDP’s and the DNC’s own rules.

My favorite part of the petition is that it notes that, on March 26, a Court ruled the January 15 primary unconstitutional. That meant, the petition asserts, that the,

Michigan Presidential Primary of January 15, 2008, was "invalid, inoperable, and without effect." The result was non-binding.

And since the DNC’s own rules stipulate that,

Delegates shall be allocated in a fashion that fairly reflects the expressed presidential preference or uncommitted status of the primary voters or, if there is no binding primary, the convention and/or caucus participants. [my emphasis]

In the absence of a binding primary, the presidential preference must be judged by the preferences of the participants in "the convention and/or caucus." MI had district conventions, on April 19. And Obama supporters vastly outnumbered Hillary supporters–generally by at least 2 to 1, and in places by much greater margins. In other words, the legal preference of MI’s voters is that Obama–not Hillary–get the larger proportion of delegates.

Now, I don’t actually think that solution–any more than accepting the results of the Clusterfuck–is fair, though it does make for good legalese. The other proposed solutions, based on the fact that the MDP delegation allotments provide Hillary a much greater percentage of the delegates than her 55% vote total would dictate (for example, the allocation gave Hillary 80% of all alternate slots), are actually quite reasonable.

But the MDP and the DNC ignored it, in violation of their own rules.

Here’s the complaint and here are the rules on which it is based. I’ve seen a group of the notarized signatures to the petition. I won’t post those, since they include home addresses, but I will say at least one (I think two, actually) are officers in the 15th Congressional District Democratic Party, so this is not just a bunch of DFHs whning.

Note: see the update below for issues relating to the accuracy of this post as originally posted. I’ve retained what seems to be supported by other data: mostly that the CIA is trying to spin Foggo’s additional charges as proof of the Agency’s own ability to investigate itself, spin that the timing involved seems to belie.

A number of you have pointed out that Dusty Foggo got some charges slapped onto his existing indictment.

A federal grand jury has accused a former top CIA official of pulling strings to get a high-level CIA job for his mistress, as part of a new indictment against the official in an existing corruption case.

The new indictment against Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, a former No. 3 official at the spy agency and a onetime senior CIA ethics officer, alleges that he pressured CIA managers into hiring the woman after she was turned down for a position in the CIA’s general counsel office. He also allegedly made false statements about her qualifications, the indictment states.

Foggo, the CIA’s executive director from 2004 to 2006, specifically told agency officials he had a "special interest" in seeing the woman hired, and he later berated them when they initially rejected her application. "When the ExDir has a special interest, you had better take notice," Foggo told the general counsel’s staff, according to an indictment filed late Tuesday by the U.S. attorney’s office in Alexandria.

[Update: RJ Hillhouse has deleted the post that I linked to substantively here and–at her request, I’m removing the citation of her blogpost. Her note on why she deleted her blogpost is here. The substance of the text–which Hillhouse does not stand by any longer–included some history on earlier events potentially related to these new charges.]

What’s so hilarious about this is that–in Joby Warrick’s article–the CIA is spinning that Foggo’s additional indictments prove how good CIA is at policing itself.

The initial filing of criminal charges against Foggo in 2006 prompted questions about internal security at the CIA, which is supposed to have an elaborate system of checks to limit the risk of malfeasance by agency insiders. But agency officials insisted yesterday that the system works and said that the CIA has played a key role in investigating Foggo.

"It demonstrates a willingness by the CIA to investigate itself," said an official who declined to be identified by name because the charges have not been tried in court.

[text deleted, see above]

But that was, presumably, over two years ago, back before Foggo had to resign from the CIA and back before–over a year ago–Foggo was indicted for bribery.

And it has taken up until now–[text deleted]–to get added to Foggo’s indictment? That’s the CIA’s idea of being willing to investigate itself?

No wonder the CIA never did anything with its OIG conclusion that the CIA’s torture violated the Convention Against Torture. Apparently, none of the guys they tortured had any [someone] who could rat out the CIA.

How does one equate vegan potlucks with this restriction on permissible terrorist investigations?

Mere speculation that force or violence might occur during the course of an otherwise peaceable demonstration is not sufficient grounds for initiation of an investigation under this Subpart, but where facts or circumstances reasonably indicate that a group or enterprise has engaged or aims to engage in activities involving force or violence or other criminal conduct described in paragraph (1)(a) in a demonstration, an investigation may be initiated in conformity with the standards of that paragraph. [my emphasis]

I ask because apparently, Minneapolis’ Joint Terrorist Task Force is recruiting people to infiltrate vegan potlucks to look for potential–what?–tahini enthusiasts?–in advance of the RNC convention this fall.

Paul Carroll was riding his bike when his cell phone vibrated.

[snip]

When Carroll called back, Swanson asked him to meet at a coffee shop later that day, going on to assure a wary Carroll that he wasn’t in trouble.

Carroll, who requested that his real name not be used, showed up early and waited anxiously for Swanson’s arrival. Ten minutes later, he says, a casually dressed Swanson showed up, flanked by a woman whom he introduced as FBI Special Agent Maureen E. Mazzola. For the next 20 minutes, Mazzola would do most of the talking.

“She told me that I had the perfect ‘look,’” recalls Carroll. “And that I had the perfect personality—they kept saying I was friendly and personable—for what they were looking for.”

What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant—someone to show up at “vegan potlucks” throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between multiple federal agencies and state and local law enforcement. The effort’s primary mission, according to the Minneapolis division’s website, is to “investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines.”

Carroll would be compensated for his efforts, but only if his involvement yielded an arrest. No exact dollar figure was offered. [my emphasis]

Now, maybe the vegans we’ve got here in Michigan are dramatically different from those infesting Minnesota. But where I’m from, vegans tend to be fairly peaceful people. If they’re unwilling to steal a bee’s honey, I figure, they’re going to be unwilling to use force to make their point. So I’m really curious how this operation got beyond the "mere speculation that force or violence might occur" that the US Attorney’s own guidelines demands. And if you’re really intent on infiltrating groups of vegans in anticipation of a bunch of violence-loving Republicans coming to town, why use the JTTF? Last I heard, we were so threatened by terrorists that we had to give up all our phone data to AT&T. But now we’ve got time to infiltrate vegans.

I can only think of one explanation for this. Somehow, Rachel Paulose escaped the cubbyhole they’ve assigned her to in DC and returned to Minneapolis to continue doing absurd things with Minnesota’s federal law enforcement efforts.