Entries by emptywheel

Republican Self-Hate

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Crooks & Liars links to Bobo Brooks informing Chris Matthews that Republicans hate Matthews’ man-crush, President Bush.

BROOKS: Bush…you gotta remember though…a lot ofRepublicans hate Bush. I mean, we look..we talk about the Democrats,how they hate Bush, in private…

MATTHEWS: What do you mean, “hate Bush?”

BROOKS: They think Bush is incompetent and destroying their party.

Having just taped a Sunday show of my own (this one may be good–I’ll actually provide a link, but

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This Is What Nancy Should Have Done on FISA

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Josh marvels at the (big surprise) latest galling corruption from a member of the Alaska delegation: Don Young snuck an earmark into a 2005 bill after it had been passed by both houses of Congress, but before Bush signed it.

The ‘Coconut Road’ earmark wasn’t in the bill passed by the Houseand Senate.

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This Time, We’ll Bail Out the S&Ls without a Congressional Debate

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The former econ professor notes that we’re already bailing out big money:

Fed to the rescue. Aug. 10 (Bloomberg) — The Federal Reserve added $19billion in temporary funds to the banking system through the purchaseof mortgage-backed securities to help meet demand for cash amid a routin bonds backed by home loans to riskier borrowers.

The Fed accepted only mortgage-backed debt as collateral for thismorning’s weekend repurchase agreement.

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The Leak Wars: Revisiting the Pre-Indictment Leaks

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Since we’re talking about leaks in the Foggo-Wilkes trial, I wanted to return to the leaks leading up to the Foggo-Wilkes indictments. As a review, Wilkes lawyer Mark Geragos asked the court to dismiss the indictments, arguing that leaks just prior to the time Wilkes was indicted made it impossible for Wilkes to get a fair trial.

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The Leak Wars: Elston Accuses Lam

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I promised to come back and talk about those bits of the latest document dump that don’t support HJC’s allegations of a cover-up. In this post, I’m going to look at how DOJ tried to claim that Lam was responsible for leaks about her resignation. The discussion was a response to two local San Diego newspaper articles predicting Lam’s resignation.

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McConnell and Dick

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There are two stories out today claiming Mike McConnell, the Director of National Intelligence, is really wearing the pants in the Executive Branch’s dealings with intelligence. The NYT has McConnell describing tremendous pressure from Congress, yet insisting he got no pressure from the White House.

In an interview in his office, Mr.

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Brief Lies

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Joe at AmericaBlog says most of what needs to be said about this Eric Lichtblau article, which very gently call BS on White House attempts to discredit a James Risen article from the previous day.

Okay, the height of hypocrisy is anyone in the Bush administrationchallenging anything as “highly misleading.” Liars don’t have thestanding to call anyone else a liar.

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What If the Media Reclaimed Their Role as Fourth Estate…

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And nobody cared?

ThinkProgress has a great compendium of mainstream newspaper editorials criticizing the weekend’s FISA debacle. Just about every major paper in the US (with the notable exception of the Wall Street Journal) has come out against the new FISA law. I’m even on the same side of this issue as Fred Hiatt, which kind of scares me.

Which means the next six months will be a test of how irrelevant the

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Lurita Doan, Round 2043: Davis v. Bloch Edition

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Since I seem to be the only one interested in Lurita Doan now that Bush has apparently refused to fire her for clear Hatch Act violations, I thought I’d point out the interesting tidbit that shows up in a profile of Scott Bloch, the guy in charge of Office of Special Counsel, the office that carries out Hatch Act violations that Bush studiously ignores.

Meanwhile, the Doan matter is breeding some ironies.

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The Latest Email Dump: Growing Evidence of an Iglesias Cover-Up

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DOJ dumped another stash of emails while I was at YKos. Unlike the other late-in-the-scandal email dumps, this one doesn’t consist primarily of emails listed on Kyle Sampson’s list of withheld emails. These are new, previously unidentified emails. That’s not surprising, necessarily, since this dump comes from the Deputy Attorney General’s office, not the Attorney General’s office (where Sampson worked).

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