Josh Marshall:
Very explosive news out of Italy today on the Niger/uranium front. More soon.

Read Full Post »

Raw Story:
Anticipating that indictments could come down against senior White House officials this week, House Democratic leaders have spent recent days devising a Caucus-wide plan to further highlight GOP ethical missteps and national security compromises, ROLL CALL will report in Tuesday editions, RAW STORY has learned. Excerpts:
Sources say House Democratic leaders have held several private [...]

Read Full Post »

Okay, it’s long. But it’s beautifully written, smart and thoughtful - like almost everything Will writes. So if you care about the future of newspapers (like I do), go read what he has to say today about saving the Philadelphia Daily News.
Will’s one of the best reporters around. Wish we could clone him…

Read Full Post »

You know what, and you know where. Drinking Liberally, 18th and Lombard, 6-9 .m. Oh, and did I mention the free wings?

Read Full Post »

Every time I see those dumb reporters leaning into a hurricane’s wind, it reminds me of my own hurricane story - Hurricane Donna, 1960.
That was a Category 5 storm, although I’m not sure how powerful it was by the time it hit the East Coast. All I know is, we still had to go back [...]

Read Full Post »

Larry Wilkerson, the Powell aide who told us in a speech last week that Cheney and Rumsfeld were part of a “cabal” running the country, expounds further in an L.A. Times op-ed this morning.
He concludes:
Today, we have a president whose approval rating is 38% and a vice president who speaks only to Rush Limbaugh [...]

Read Full Post »

Josh reminds us that Cheney lied to Tubby Tim Russert about not knowing anything about Joe Wilson.
This would have been three and a half months after Cheney reportedly received a detailed briefing on just what had happened from George Tenet.

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern tells us why Cheney had to be in the middle of [...]

Read Full Post »

I still get a little teary, every time I hear them read the story of Fitzmas.

Read Full Post »

Via Tbogg. Funny how much Jonah Goldberg is beginning to look like his nemesis - Michael Moore.

Read Full Post »

And the rain, which has been pouring down all day, is now hitting even harder. The rhythm of the falling rain against the air conditioner speeds up with the wind, falls back for a bit and picks up again. Cold and dreary…
Lots of changes in work, it’s extraordinarily stressful these days. Can’t talk about it [...]

Read Full Post »

Hey, let’s create an entire class that’s allowed to use torture:
WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 - Stepping up a confrontation with the Senate over the handling of detainees, the White House is insisting that the Central Intelligence Agency be exempted from a proposed ban on abusive treatment of suspected Qaeda militants and other terrorists.
The Senate defied [...]

Read Full Post »

Rosa Parks is dead.

Read Full Post »

So says the Times:
WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 — I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.
Notes of the previously [...]

Read Full Post »

A trusted Beltway source (no, really) tells me the indictments aren’t coming until Thursday or Friday.
Don’t you worry, kids. Fitzmas will be here before you know it.

Read Full Post »

Wait, I thought they told us this sort of thing didn’t happen:
The FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some U.S. residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight, according to previously classified documents to be released today.
Records turned over as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit [...]

Read Full Post »

Billmon tells us why we need to keep an eye on the new No. 2 at Justice.

Read Full Post »

Raw Story:
With the possibility of indictments just days away, sources close to the investigation into who outed covert CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson have provided RAW STORY a more detailed account into how and why Plame’s name was leaked and what role the Pentagon and the vice president’s office played.
Those close to the investigation say [...]

Read Full Post »

No, please, really. Stop doing your job, we’ll manage to struggle on as best we can:
“The President is just unhappy in general and casting blame all about,” said one Bush insider. “Andy [Card, the chief of staff] gets his share. Karl gets his share. Even Cheney gets his share. And the press gets a big [...]

Read Full Post »

Widely rumored, now confirmed. The UPI is reporting that, as I thought, this investigation is much wider than the Plame leak:
Two facts are, however, now known and between them they do not bode well for the deputy chief of staff at the White House, Karl Rove, President George W Bush’s senior political aide, not for [...]

Read Full Post »

Because of course he didn’t know a thing about it. And he’s still right:
WASHINGTON - Facing the darkest days of his presidency, President Bush is frustrated, sometimes angry and even bitter, his associates say. [...]
The President’s top political guru, Karl Rove, and Vice President Cheney’s right-hand man, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, are at the center of [...]

Read Full Post »

Three car bombs exploded at the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad - which is where the journalists stay. No link yet.

Read Full Post »

From Capitol Hill Blue, so the usual caveats apply:
Chief of Staff Andrew Card cancelled a weekend schedule of appearances and events to spend the weekend with Bush at Camp David and deliver the bad news personally, White House insiders tell Capitol Hill Blue.
With indictments expected against Lewis “Scooter� Libby, Vice President Richard Cheney’s chief of [...]

Read Full Post »

Rumplestiltskin is my name, straw to gold is my game:
WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 (UPI) — White House allies are crafting a response to possible indictments in the CIA leak case.
Officials suggested Sunday they would attack any criminal charges as a disagreement over legal technicalities or the product of an overzealous prosecutor, the New York Times reported.

Read Full Post »

From David Sanger at the Times:Few question that the name of a covert C.I.A. officer qualifies as an important secret:
Disclosure can get people killed. But that case is the exception, rather than the rule. In five years of covering national security issues at the Bush White House, I’ve seen classified information leaked or suddenly [...]

Read Full Post »

Nathan Newman:
But criminalizing information disclosure, except in EXTREME circumstances, is a recipe for unaccountable government where mistakes and evil deeds are buried under top secret classficiation.
When the indictments come down this week, I’ll enjoy the schadenfreude of watching the frog march of Bush officials, but in the long term it’s all bad news in [...]

Read Full Post »

It’s a start, but a $1000 deductible? Not good for most employees:
Wal-Mart, which has long been criticized for the benefits it offers to its workers, is introducing a cheaper health insurance plan, with monthly premiums as low as $11, that the company hopes will greatly increase the number of its employees who can afford coverage. [...]

Read Full Post »

So now we know:
A critical early success for Fitzgerald was winning the cooperation of Robert D. Novak, the Chicago Sun-Times columnist who named Plame in a July 2003 story and attributed key information to “two senior administration officials.” Legal sources said Novak avoided a fight and quietly helped the special counsel’s inquiry, although neither the [...]

Read Full Post »

Josh is trying to unravel this riddle:
It’s been variously reported and rumored that Patrick Fitzgerald has either cooperated with, received critical information from or even taken over Paul McNulty’s Franklin/AIPAC investigation in Northern Virginia.
My reporting and intuition tells me there’s real reason for skepticism on each of those counts. Yet I hear versions of [...]

Read Full Post »

Talk Left thinks it’s Rove cooperating with Fitzgerald, and not John Hannah.

Read Full Post »

Well, if you’re one of those people who still thinks we don’t need universal health care, you should probably read this.

Read Full Post »