Interesting Timing
I'm not so much surprised that Scottish Haggis Specter has urged Pat Leahy to ask for a meeting with the White House to negotiate testimony of White House officials.
For the last several months, I have been seeking the voluntary cooperation of the White House with the efforts of the Senate Judiciary Committee to get to the bottom of the scandal surrounding the firing of so many of the United States Attorneys
Ghost Writing
I think it ought to be mandatory for everyone who reads this LAT article to also watch Bill Kristol on TDS. It's bad enough, after all, to learn that the Petraeus report we've all been waiting for might as well be called the Dick Cheney report.
Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S.
Pearlstine's Off the Record
I've been wavering about how much attention to give this book. In it, Norm Pearlstine, who was the editor in chief of Time Inc. when it fought Fitzgerald's subpoena of Matt Cooper, describes the whole process of fighting the leak. Most interestingly, Pearlstine describes how he came to believe that Time had to turn over Cooper's notes, not least because Time had no business defying an order of SCOTUS.
I'll just make
Privacy versus the Press
Judge Reggie is back in the news today, granting, in part, Steven Hatfill's pursuit of journalists' sources for information that he was the main subject of the FBI's anthrax investigation. Walton required the journalists themselves to give up their sources, but not the media companies.
Based on the foregoing analysis, the plaintiff’s Motion to Compel Further Testimony from Michael Isikoff, Daniel Klaidman, Allan Lengel, Toni Locy, and James Stewart [D.E.
Novak Mourns His BFF
Jeebus. Yesterday's departure press conference was unnecessarily weepy. But this is embarrassing.
The most useless speculation today in Washington is whom White House chief of staff Josh Bolten might choose to replace Karl Rove. He is genuinely irreplaceable.
The whole column is steeped in deep resentment, resentment of those Republicans who have suggested that getting rid of Rove will help the Administration.
Rove was a principal target of congressional Democrats even beforeFebruary 2005, when
Beached Whale
Funny. In the entire Peter Baker article entitled, "Rove: Departure Unrelated to Investigations," Peter Baker never once quotes Rove as saying, "my departure is unrelated to the multiple investigations in my conduct." Or anything similar. Sure, Rove talks a lot about Ahab and Moby Dick.
"I realize that some of the Democrats are Captain Ahab and I'm thegreat white whale," he said.
A Thousand Words
Remember this photo? This particular version is from Stephen Crowley of the New York Times--it's part of a slideshow they've got up to commemorate the demise of Turdblossom. Go look through the slideshow and tell me whether you think they're emphasizing the centrality of scandal to Rove's tenure (there's a hot picture of Rove and Luskin in there, for example, walking out of Prettyman).
Category Two Documents
Good thing Rove resigned and finally distracted me from my FISA focus, huh? And in the process of looking up something relating to Rove, I noticed these two letters between Conyers and the RNC (and the RNC's lawyer) regarding documents it won't turn over. Most of these documents fall into "category one;" that is, documents the White House has asserted privilege over.
"At 56 years old says he is done with political consulting"
I've laid out some possible reasons for Rove's resignation here. But I'd like to do a close reading of the WSJ story associated with the announcement, partly because I think it so fascinating that Rove would feel the need to pitch his own successes and failures on his way out the door.
The Investigations
Far and away the most interesting comment in the article, though, is this self-assessment from Rove:
His biggest error, Mr.
My Guesses on Why Rove Resigned
By now you've heard the news: Rove is stepping down. So here's my treatment of possible reasons why he's leaving, in reverse order of their likelihood:
Time with the Family
As he said to the WSJ, he wants to spend more time with this family. Of course, this is a load of horse puckey--if he had wanted to spend time with his family, he surely would have done it before his son went
TSP and FISA
Yup, still mono-focused on FISA, but mr. emptywheel is clamoring for dinner, so maybe once I step away from the computer, I'll remember all the other things I've been meaning to write on.
I want to object to the way Kevin Drum is referring to the new details of FISA:
Originally, FISA allowed warrantless wiretapping of anycommunication between two foreigners.
Feingold's Questions
I'm still working through AGAG's answers to a bunch of questions the Senate Judiciary Committee asked him last year (he only answered early this year). There's an exchange involving Russ Feingold that is, I think, very instructive for understanding the recent FISA amendment.
You indicated at the hearing that the Administration has agreed to “submit†the program to the FISA court to rule on it if Congress passes the bill the Administration
Warrantless Wiretapping and the IG Loophole
I'm working on a massive post on how the Administration has gamed the system to sustain their wireless wiretapping program. For the moment, though, I'd like to make a discrete point about the aborted Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) inevstigation into the program.
When Senator Spector asked Alberto Gonzales last year why BushCo refused to give OPR the clearance to investigate the wireless wiretapping program because OPR included many career employees,
What Happened to the FISC Appeal?
Both the WaPo and the NYT have stories today explaining how the crisis in the warrantless wiretap program got so bad that Congress got punked into passing a shitty bill. The story is simple, on its face. The FISC rejected a government subpoena in March, another in May, and those two rulings resulted in the government losing the ability to wiretap a great deal of foreign communication.
Two Rulings?
No wonder BushCo wanted oversight of FISA totally out of the hands of the FISC. If I'm reading this WaPo article correctly, there were actually two rulings that went against the Administration--one in March, and one in May.
But in a secret ruling in March, a judge on a special court empoweredto review the government's electronic snooping challenged for the firsttime the government's ability to collect data from such wires even whenthey
None of the Above
Here's the way I figure this math, from the Iowa Straw Poll.
They had 24,000 voters in 1999.
They wanted 20,000 voters today.
They got 14,000.
That says, presumably, the Iowa Republican Party wrote off 4,000 votes because Giuliani and McCain pulled out and Thompson's not in yet (24,000 minues 20,000).
But that still leaves 6,000 people (20,000 minus 14,000) they expected--and didn't get.
A Reverse F.U.
You know how Thomas Friedman's six months always seem to end up being indefinite forevers? Well, the reverse seems to be going on with Republican accusations that:
For months, congressional Democrats ignored warnings from Director ofNational Intelligence Michael McConnell that FISA's antiquatedprovisions were tying the hands of U.S. intelligence agencies fromcollecting against terrorist communications.
In fact, it appears that Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell actually sat on the information for months, from
Hoekstra's Leaks/Cheney's Leaks
Steven Benen writes most of the post I was going to write (thanks Steve!) in response to the news that Pete Hoekstra is a big fat hypocrite about intelligence leaks. Steve links to Justin Rood's coverage of Hoekstra leaking details about the supposedly secret intelligence budget; RawStory first noticed Hoekstra's leak.
Photographs
If you haven't already, go read Jane Mayer's article on our methods of torture. The short version: we're using psychological methods to impose "learned helplessness" and dependency, and as a result, we're getting some intelligence, a whole lot of garbage, and we're turning our own interrogators into moral zombies.
I wanted to focus on one aspect of the calculated humiliation she describes:
Well, Of Course
Holden asks:
They're just thinking of this now?
U.S.military intelligence officials are urgently assessing how securePakistan's nuclear weapons would be in the event President Gen. PervezMusharraf were replaced as the nation's leader, CNN has learned.
Key questions in the assessment include who would control Pakistan's nuclear weapons after a shift in power.
[snip]
The United States has full knowledge about the location of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, according to the U.S.
