Posts

As some of you might remember way back, I first got sucked into the Plame investigation when Judy Miller was heading to jail. I found her appeal to a non-existent reporter's privilege a farce, given that her relationship with the Bush Administration had long dropped any pretense of journalism. So it may surprise you that I think Patrick Fitzgerald uses the wrong approach in his editorial lobbying against the shield law

Larry Craig, that's who. Shortly after a state judge denied his request to withdraw the Augustplea admitting to disorderly conduct, Mr. Craig said he had reversedhis previously announced decision to leave the Senate if he could notget the plea thrown out and would instead serve out his third term,which expires at the end of 2008.

We already lost Abu Gonzales, Karl Rove, Monica Goodling, Kyle Sampson, Brad Schlozman, and Michael Elston. And now we're losing Pete Domenici. Veteran Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) is expected to announce tomorrowthat he will retire from the Senate in 2008, according to severalinformed sources, a decision that further complicates an alreadydifficult playing field for Republicans next November.

So AT&T says they'll cut off your broadband if you say anything mean about them. But they say they don't really mean that. However, an AT&T spokesperson tells Ars Technica that thecompany has no interest in engaging in censorship but stopped short ofsaying that AT&T could not in fact exercise its ability to do so.

I've been meaning to go back to compare the chronology laid out by Dan Rather in his complaint as it pertains to Abu Ghraib with the chronology of the Taguba investigation and the Hamdi case. Two things stick out. First, Myers pretended to be ignorant of the details of the abuse on May 6, several weeks after he called Dan Rather personally to spike--or delay--the story.

Via chrisc, Judge Burns has severed the trials of Brent Wilkes and John Michael, on account of the health problems of the latter. Ajudge Monday severed the trials of ex-defense contractor Brent Wilkesand banker John Michael, who are charged in connection with thecorruption scandal that sent former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham toprison. U.S.District Judge Larry Burns postponed Michael's trial indefinitely afterattorney Raymond Granger said his client had been diagnosed with viralmeningitis.Pretrialmotions are scheduled

Paul Kiel reported this morning that Brent Wilkes doesn't want the government to mention the prostitutes that Wilkes engaged as part of his bribe scheme to influence Duke Cunningham (here's the filing). And if the Court doesn't exclude the testimony about prostitutes, Geragos threatens, he's going to haul the prostitute whose calendar has been submitted as a business record into court so he can delve into her record-keeping practices.

Walter Pincus analyzes one of the contracts that Henry Waxman is looking at to determine how much more Blackwater's mercenaries are costing us than a law-abiding US soldier. Pincus notes that Petraeus makes roughly $493 a day. This doesn't appear to include benefits; figuring benes make up 1/3 of someone's compensation--which in the private sector is often about right, but in the military is probably too small--then Petraeus might cost us,

I've got two small points to make about Sy Hersh's latest, which has been covered generally just about everywhere. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism. The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, thePresident and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign toconvince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threathas failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that