Paul Kiel has an important post on vote caging that raises one big question for me.

Kiel’s post quotes the RNC spokesperson as connecting the vote caging activities in Florida with allegations about ACORN registration drives.

In response to Palast’s story, the Republican spokeswoman denied ina statement that the list had been generated in order to challengevoters. But she went on to argue that Jacksonville “has been affectedby massive fraud efforts this year as a result of the work of ACORN, athird party organization supporting the Kerry campaign and theDemocrats.”

One of the wonderful prevarications offered by Brad Schlozman is that the ACORN investigation–which in MO found almost nothing and was self-reported–is national.

You’ll recall that Brad Schlozman indicted 4 former ACORN workers (oneof whose name he got wrong) for submitting fraudulent voter reginformation. Well, he strongly suggested that the indictments were notpart of a national investigation (a few Senators hammered him on thispoint–suggesting that, since the investigation was not national, itshouldn’t have been filed before the election). But, at the same time,Schlozman indicated over and over again that the investigation is national.

Does anyone get the feeling that a specious investigation into ACORN is serving as the basis for caging nationwide? Anyone have details of specious ACORN investigations in their local area? I know DeVos crony Secretary of State Land, in MI, has caging all set to go for 2008 (seriously). Is one of the new USAs in MI trumping up an investigation against ACORN to justify the caging?

David Shuster (and to a lesser degree Chris Matthews) is the one person in the MSM who recognized Dick Cheney for what he was early on. Which is why Shuster’s interview of Cheney-hack Ron Christie is so good. Shuster uses the Libby case to expose the problems with Cheney’s method of working around other cabinet members and he smacks Christie down, just as I would have done, by pointing out that Cheney probably ordered Libby to leak Plame’s identity.

But I’d like to highlight how Christie justified Cheney’s theories of the Fourth Branch of government.

The fact of the matter is that the Vice President of the United States is the one person who is in a position to give candid advice to the President of the United  States. He wants to ensure that there are certain barriers that are not overcome by those who just want to poke around and look for the sake of looking. There needs to be a certain amount of candor that that individual can have when advising the President.

This is my transcription, so I could be wrong. But I’m pretty sure that Christie claimed that Cheney was the only one who could give Bush candid advice.

Now, I know that accords perfectly with everything we’ve been reading in the WaPo series–Cheney has inserted himself in almost every decision making process to ensure that, at the very least, he gets the last word, if not the only word, on a particularly policy.

But it used to be that these kind of candid policy deliberations were protected by executive privilege.

Now I’m not sure if Christie is mouthing an organized talking point, but consider the implications. First, Cheney is trying to assert double-secret privilege as a way to protect the role he plays in the deliberative process. Since his conversations with Bush would presumably be covered by executive privilege, I can only assume that Cheney is asserting the Fourth Branch to protect everything else–the sausage that goes into his advice to Bush (such as his kitchen table economic cabinet stacked with privatizers and hacks).

Meanwhile, if Cheney is the only one who gives candid advice to Bush, couldn’t we simply do away with all other claims to executive privilege?

Cheney’s Fourth Branch theories increasingly look like a desperate attempt to avoid any Congressional oversight. But we ought to follow Rahm’s example, and take Cheney at his word. If Cheney’s the only one entitled to executive privilege, let’s strip it from everyone else, starting with David Addington and Alberto Gonzales.

Tom Maguire usually takes himself more seriously than this. After reading the WaPo’s series on Dick, he chose to ignore the widespread criticism on the part of hardcore conservatives of OVP’s dismantling of the Constitution and instead claim that the WaPo article was proof–proof at last!!!–that "Fitzgerald’s prosecution of Libby may have been politically motivated."

To prove that "Fitzgerald’s prosecution of Libby may have been politically motivated," Maguire ferrets out the abundant evidence that John Ashcroft didn’t get along with his Imperialness. He picks one event involving Ashcroft from 2001, another event involving the no-longer AG Ashcroft (and Gonzales) from 2005, then nods to the Comey hospital confrontation from March 2004.

All cited as evidence that "Fitzgerald’s prosecution of Libby may have been politically motivated"–that a guy who was not appointed or supervised by Ashcroft, who brought an indictment a year after Ashcroft’s resignation, was politically motivated.

Look. Using this evidence, you could (if you really wanted to) make the argument that Ashcroft’s decision to continue the investigation past Armitage’s confession and Libby’s first lies was political. You might argue that Ashcroft’s decision to–gasp!–recuse himself in December 2003 was political. (You’d of course have to ignore the centrality of Comey’s decision to appoint a real prosecutor, since that happened days after his own appointment; it–and his February clarification of the scope of Fitzgerald’s inevstigation–preceded the March 10 event Maguire cites.)

But then there’s the other problem. Maguire has found his evidence that this was a political prosecution–political for Ashcroft, mind you. Yet all the while, he’s making an argument that Fitzgerald operated with no effective oversight and therefore was unconstitutionally appointed. So apparently, Ashcroft simultaneously directed Fitzgerald to mount a political prosecution (even a year after he resigned), yet he had no legal authority over Fitzgerald in the least.

I’ve talked about Cheney’s and Addington’s Methods. Now I’d like to inventory the sources that Gellman and Becker used for their articles, as a way to understand where the shifting loyalties of the Administration lie. One thing that becomes clear by mapping this out is the centrality of Josh Bolten to many of the more damning accusations against Cheney. Thus, while these articles may reflect the fingerprints of Poppy (likely) or Scooter (implausible, IMO), I think it is primarily an attempt by the COS and possibly Condi to bring Cheney under control, aided by former Administration lawyers they know to have soured on Cheney’s ways.

The anonymous sources at the bottom serve as a way of filling out who the named sources are below. For a list of all the people mentioned in the articles, see this page.

John Ashcroft: John Ashcroft is a named source (albeit a vague one) for a key confrontation in Gonzales’ office and a likely unnamed source for some of the other disputes. It’ll be interesting to see if he increasingly makes such public comments, seeing as how his testimony before HPSCI the other day clearly backed up Comey’s.

James Baker: Is quoted in part two and shares his notes in part one (though the notes may come from someone’s library). Baker states clearly that Cheney has been about the accumulation of power.

Brad Berenson: Curiously, the designated GOP firewall defense lawyer is a boisterous source for these articles (though, from personal experience, I can attest he is approachable). He seems intent on minimizing his own role–and that of John Yoo (whom he calls a "supporting player").

Josh Bolten: Bolten seems to be an important source for these stories, which raises very interesting questions about Bush’s own view of the article. The quote that best sums up Bolten’s critical attitude towards Cheney’s power is this one: "The vice president didn’t particularly warm to that," Bolten recalled dryly. Bolten is, of course, describing how Cheney refused to play an ordinary VP role, with some apparent bemusement. There’s a later quote–The White House proposal, said Bolten, the chief of staff, "did not come out exactly as the vice president would have wanted."–that sounds like Bolten gloating.

David Bowker: Source for some of the issues affecting Powell.

Bryan Cunningham: Cunningham seems to be the source for the details about how Cheney and Addington bypassed Bellinger. He has left government to go into private consulting, so presumably his loyalties may be very anti-Cheney. Note that Bellinger himself is a Rice loyalist; if he is a source for this it would lend credence that she participated in this effort.

Gordon England: England describes his dismay about Addington’s maneuvers on torture.

Tim Flanigan: Flanigan offers nowhere near as many on the record comments as Berenson and Yoo. It may be he’s stuck in the position of defending the indefensible, and therefore remains more quiet. His most telling comment, however, is this one:

he still believes that Addington and Yoo were right in their"application of generally accepted constitutional principles." But heacknowledged that many battles ended badly. "The Supreme Court,"Flanigan said, "decided to change the rules."

That is, he’s just bummed (and talking) because Addington’s efforts backfired.

Mike Gerson: Mike Gerson is described as an opponent to black sites, yet describes Cheney’s motives favorably. There are a few more comments that similarly criticize Cheney while treating him as honorable which may come from him.

Bob Graham: There’s no surprise seeing Graham provide details about the domestic wiretap program. He is one source (potentially the only one) reporting on the first briefing on the program given by Cheney.

David Gribben: Curiously, the article describes David Gribben as a friend from grad school. It doesn’t mention he was also a Defense and Halliburton employee while Cheney was in charge, or that he was instrumental in the transition. Gribben’s named quote seems to defend Cheney’s method of sending "messages" while firing disloyal employees, which sure suggests Gribben remains loyal. As the one named OVP staffer in the article (Matalin aside) Gribben may be the source for some of the comments about Cheney’s intentions.

Mary Matalin: Matalin is one of the surrogates for Cheney and Addington (both of whom declined to be interviewed). She stresses how important Cheney is, without commenting on the legality or efficacy of what he has done.

Brian McCormack: McCormack is one of the many people that has moved from Cheney’s staff eventually onto Bush’s (which surely helps Cheney keep tabs). Curiously, McCormack moved through the corrupt world of Defense acquisitions before ending up in a public liaison function (which, according to Susan Ralston, works with outside constituencies, which means he may remain in the corrupt world of crony contracting. McCormack’s named quote is fairly vanilla, though he seems to be one of the few people who would talk about how Cheney set up his fiefdom even before Bush v. Gore was decided.

Alberto Mora: One of the military lawyers fighting back against Cheney, Mora is a likely source for some of the later meetings on torture.

Dan Quayle: Dan Quayle is a named source used to (humorously, IMO) depict how far out of the norm Cheney is. There are few interesting questions of loyalty in what he says.

William Taft: A Powell loyalist, Taft shows up admitting that he was an easy mark because he misunderstood the stakes of the fight.

John Yoo: Yoo is a named source for one incident where Cheney and Addington ignored his advice (not to spread the use of torture to the military). He may well be the source for some of the very detailed descriptions of the Addington/Yoo/Flanigan/Gonzales interactions.

Before I get too deep in the detail of today’s installment of WaPo’s series on Cheney, I’d like to remind you of a point I made in my Take Back America speech. While David Addington’s theories on executive power are tremendously dangerous, Addington does believe in the rule of law. He admitted in his Libby trial testimony, for example, that the "Treated as Top Secret/SCI" stamp that OVP had used with all the evidence turned over to investigators was not covered by the Presidents EO on classification. And he described scolding Dan Bartlett after the White House exonerated Libby and Rove publicly in Fall 2003. Whereas Alberto Gonzales appears to blithely transgress all normal legal limits on behavior (as when he coached Monica Goodling’s testimony), Addington respects those limits, so long as they don’t clash with the power of the presidency.

Which is why this passage from the WaPo article is so telling:

Flanigan said that Addington’s personal views leaned more toward Olsonthan against him, but that he beat back the proposal to grant detaineesaccess to lawyers, "because that was the position of his client, thevice president."

The issue was whether enemy combatants could have a lawyer represent them. And on that issue, Addington appears to have suppressed his own judgment (which sounds like a pragmatic judgment on how best to retain presidential powers) in favor of Cheney’s intractable stance.

Okay, now something totally frivolous about the Cheney piece (if you want real analysis, go here). The WaPo piece reveals Cheney’s secret service name:

"Angler," as the Secret Service code-named him,

Which is of course the name they’ve given the series.

Well, I think it perhaps ironic because, as I understand it, Cheney’s not that great a fisherman. At least that’s what a friend I was close to in the early 90s told me. You see, she (yes, she) fished against Cheney at the Jackson One Fly tournament. A whole day in a boat with no one else but Cheney (pre-Vice President days) and a guide. Now, my friend was a pretty good fly-fisher. Still, she kicked his ass.

Which I guess provides a nice irony to the title of the article. Here is Cheney trying to take over the world. But he–Angler–can’t even beat a girl in his eponymous sport!

Pity someone didn’t figure out he was a loser before the Iraq war.

Kagro X says almost all that needs to be said about BushCo’s claims that Bush intended to exempt he and Cheney from rules on classification. I’ll come back later to expand on Kagro’s point about the insta-declassification theory of leaking Plame’s identity. But for now, I’d like to make a teeny tiny point. Even according to BushCo’s own flack, the Executive Order doesn’t say, in writing, what Bush is now claiming: that Bush and Cheney are exempt from all rules on classification. Here’s Tony Fratto:

"We don’t dispute that the ISOO has a different opinion. But let’s bevery clear: This executive order was issued by the president, and heknows what his intentions were," Fratto said. "He is in compliance withhis executive order."

Fratto conceded that the lengthydirective, technically an amendment to an existing executive order, didnot specifically exempt the president’s or vice president’s offices.Instead, it refers to "agencies" as being subject to the requirements,which Fratto said did not include the two executive offices. "It doestake a little bit of inference," Fratto said. [my emphasis]

So we’re to understand for this EO, at least, we’re just supposed to trust Bush. We’re just supposed to believe that Bush means what he didn’t say.

But why would we believe that, coming as it does, from an Administration that has made a point on hundreds of occasions of providing a written statement telling you exactly how Bush interprets particular laws? We’re to believe, in spite of the record of Bush’s hundreds of signing statements, that BushCo doesn’t care about letting you know precisely how he understands a law.

Nut uh. It defies all logic to suggest that Bush’s expects his own EOs to achieve only "inferential" exactitude while he strives to insist on explicit descriptions of his interpretations elsewhere.

Sidney Blumenthal and I were apparently making the same point at about the same time. Not long after I argued, on a panel on the Imperial Presidency, that there are those within the Administration who believe in the rule of law and can therefore be mobilized against it, Sidney was finishing up his column making that point in much more comprehensive fashion.

In private, Bushadministration sub-Cabinet officials who have been instrumental informulating and sustaining the legal "war paradigm" acknowledge thattheir efforts to create a system for detainees separate from dueprocess, criminal justice and law enforcement have failed. One of thekey framers of the war paradigm(in which the president in his wartime capacity as commander in chiefmakes and enforces laws as he sees fit, overriding the constitutionalsystem of checks and balances), who a year ago was arguing vehementlyfor pushing its boundaries, confesses that he has abandoned his beliefin the whole doctrine, though he refuses to say so publicly. If he wereto speak up, given his seminal role in formulating the policy and hisstature among the Federalist Society cadres that run it, his rejectionwould have a shattering impact, far more than political philosopherFrancis Fukuyama’s denunciation of the neoconservatism he formerlyembraced. But this figure remains careful to disclose hisdisillusionment with his own handiwork only in off-the-recordconversations. Yet another Bush legal official, even now at thecommanding heights of power, admits that the administration’s policiesare largely discredited. In its defense, he says without a hint ofirony or sarcasm, "Not everything we’ve done has been illegal." Headds, "Not everything has been ultra vires" — a legal term referringto actions beyond the law.

The resistance within the administration to Bush’s torturepolicy, the ultimate expression of the war paradigm, has come to an endthrough attrition and exhaustion. More than two years ago, VicePresident Dick Cheney’s then chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libbyand then general counsel David Addington physically cornered one of thefew internal opponents, subjecting him to threats, intimidation andisolation.

Bill Mercer’s announcement that he’s stepping down is much more interesting than the other clique resignations for several reasons (thanks to TeddySF for the heads up). First, his "resignation" does not mean he leaves DOJ; rather, he simply avoids a nomination hearing. And that’s a nomination hearing that would have been challenging, to say the least.

William W. Mercer— who had been acting associate attorney general since September –withdrew his nomination for the job just days before he was scheduledto appear at a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing Tuesday.

[snip]

"After much consideration, I have concluded that it is highly unlikelythat both the Judiciary Committee and the Senate will take promptaction on my nomination in the near term, if ever," Mercer wrote.

[snip]

Justice officials said Mercer made the decision to withdraw, based onhis assessment of expected opposition from many Democrats and uncertainsupport from Republicans. No GOPmembers were expected to show up for Tuesday’s confirmation hearingbecause of the Senate immigration debate, one official said.

But note the word games! Mercer claims he was resigning because SJC wouldn’t act on his nomination–but there was a hearing scheduled for Tuesday, so it’s clear they were prepared to act on his nomination. Further, note that the official in the last paragraph here appears to be a Justice Department official. So while DOJ is spinning GOP Senators’ refusal to appear at a Mercer hearing as related to the immigration debate, that information is not coming from someone–such as a GOP Senator–who would know why the GOP was going to stand up Mercer.

Which all suggests we need to read this resignation as something different–not an attempt to leave DOJ, but a move to make sure Mercer can stay at DOJ, even if only in his role as USA for Montana. And I find that interesting for a few reasons–it raises questions about why it was so important for Mercer to remain USA in Montana, when he really hasn’t been focusing on his job there for about 3 years.

You may recall a theory I postulated a few weeks back that when Libby called Robert Grenier on June 11, 2003, he asked questions he already knew the answers to. He wasn’t really looking for information. Rather, he was hoping to get the information from a source he could use publicly; he was trying to get certain information about the Wilsons out while hiding Dick Cheney’s original source for the information (I’ll return to what I suspect was one of Cheney’s original sources for the information soon). Well, as I suggested in my first post on what Jeff Lomonaco and I found in the CIPA filings, there is further evidence of such an attempt to launder information. Before I show you one of three documents we found, let me remind you of the chronology:

June 8, 2003: Condi gets beat up on George Stephenopolous’ show when she claims no one knew the Niger claims were bunk

June 9, 2003: Libby relays to Cheney that Bush is interested in the Kristof article; that same day, Libby requests information from Craig Schmall on the intelligence, and Schmall sends three reports to Libby and John Hannah, to be delivered ASAP

Unknown day, almost certainly this week: Cheney shares information on the trip with Libby, telling Libby that Wilson’s wife works at CPD

June 10, 2003, late afternoon: The email below sent, along with a response

June 11, 2003, 12 PM: Libby in meeting with Marc Grossman where he probably gets a response on his inquiry about Wilson’s trip,

June 11, 2003, also 12PM, Cheney meets with John McLaughlin on Wilson trip

1:05 PM: Libby, Cheney, and Cathie Martin meet; during that meeting, Libby calls Robert Grenier to–he claims–gather preliminary information on Wilsons trip

The email below makes it almost certain that Cheney knew the information they said they were seeking from Grenier when they called him. That is, they were looking to use him to launder information about the Wilsons. The information Libby elicited from Grenier? That Plame worked at CIA and that State and DOD were interested in the Niger intelligence, as well as OVP.

The email below was sent late on June 10, among people at the CIA, in an attempt to answer very specific questions Cheney had asked, presumably of John McLaughlin. [Note, there are some transcription errors here; I’ll correct the obvious ones, and leave the ones I’m unsure about; I should have an actual document to link to in a few days.]