More trouble for Bolton?

TPMCafe has a great look at what other trouble some of the players in the Plame/Rove/Libby/Bolton (insert next name here) scandal-in-the-making are looking at. It seems that there were forms filled out by Bolton that may not have been accurate. He may have just shot himself in the foot.

Follow the link for the full story.

Looks like the nomination hasn't really had an effect....

For Two Aides in Leak Case, 2nd Issue Rises - New York Times

By DAVID JOHNSTON

Published: July 22, 2005

This article was reported by David Johnston, Douglas Jehl and Richard W. Stevenson and was written by Mr. Johnston.

WASHINGTON, July 21 - At the same time in July 2003 that a C.I.A. operative's identity was exposed, two key White House officials who talked to journalists about the officer were also working closely together on a related underlying issue: whether President Bush was correct in suggesting earlier that year that Iraq had been trying to acquire nuclear materials from Africa.

Poor Karl and Scooter! They might just be in big trouble..... This is a great article and worth a full read. It has all of the meat you would want. This thing is leaking like a sieve.

Democrats not immune to graft...

CBS News | S.D. Mayor Convicted On First Day | July 18, 2005 18:30:14

(AP) A federal jury on Monday convicted San Diego's new acting mayor and a city councilman of taking payoffs from a strip club owner to help repeal the "no-touching" ordinance at nude clubs, the latest blow to a city already awash in scandal.

Michael Zucchet, who became interim mayor over the weekend, was found guilty of conspiracy, extortion and fraud on his first business day in office. He was immediately suspended from office, his attorney said.

Yep! He was convicted on his FIRST DAY AT WORK! I have absolutely no pity for thaese guys nor will I defend any of this behavior. I thought I was reading another story about Republicans and graft but the joke was on me. Both of the guys convicted yesterday were Dems.

No. I will not defend them at all. Shameful behavior is the same on both sides of the aisle. I hope they get locked up. What Bozos!

Polling into the toilet

ABC News: Poll: Many Doubt White House Cooperation in CIA Leak Probe

Analysis by GARY LANGER



July 18, 2005 — Just a quarter of Americans think the White House is fully cooperating in the federal investigation of the leak of a CIA operative's identity, a number that's declined sharply since the investigation began. And three-quarters say that if presidential adviser Karl Rove was responsible for leaking classified information, it should cost him his job.

Man! 25%. Seriously.

Krugman isn't going to get a xmas card this year....

My friend Quinn sent me this in email last night..... Holy crap! Krugman has gone off the reservation. I think I like this guy...

---

July 15, 2005


Karl Rove's America

By PAUL KRUGMAN

John Gibson of Fox News says that Karl Rove should be given a medal. I agree: Mr. Rove should receive a medal from the American Political Science Association for his pioneering discoveries about modern American politics. The medal can, if necessary, be delivered to his prison cell.

What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we're not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern.

I first realized that we were living in Karl Rove's America during the 2000 presidential campaign, when George W. Bush began saying things about Social Security privatization and tax cuts that were simply false. At first, I thought the Bush campaign was making a big mistake - that these blatant falsehoods would be condemned by prominent Republican politicians and Republican economists, especially those who had spent years building reputations as advocates of fiscal responsibility. In fact, with hardly any exceptions they lined up to praise Mr. Bush's proposals.

But the real demonstration that Mr. Rove understands American politics better than any pundit came after 9/11.

Every time I read a lament for the post-9/11 era of national unity, I wonder what people are talking about. On the issues I was watching, the Republicans' exploitation of the atrocity began while ground zero was still smoldering.

Mr. Rove has been much criticized for saying that liberals responded to the attack by wanting to offer the terrorists therapy - but what he said about conservatives, that they "saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war," is equally false. What many of them actually saw was a domestic political opportunity - and none more so than Mr. Rove.

A less insightful political strategist might have hesitated right after 9/11 before using it to cast the Democrats as weak on national security. After all, there were no facts to support that accusation.

But Mr. Rove understood that the facts were irrelevant. For one thing, he knew he could count on the administration's supporters to obediently accept a changing story line. Read the before-and-after columns by pro-administration pundits about Iraq: before the war they castigated the C.I.A. for understating the threat posed by Saddam's W.M.D.; after the war they castigated the C.I.A. for exaggerating the very same threat.

Mr. Rove also understands, better than anyone else in American politics, the power of smear tactics. Attacks on someone who contradicts the official line don't have to be true, or even plausible, to undermine that person's effectiveness. All they have to do is get a lot of media play, and they'll create the sense that there must be something wrong with the guy.

And now we know just how far he was willing to go with these smear tactics: as part of the effort to discredit Joseph Wilson IV, Mr. Rove leaked the fact that Mr. Wilson's wife worked for the C.I.A. I don't know whether Mr. Rove can be convicted of a crime, but there's no question that he damaged national security for partisan advantage. If a Democrat had done that, Republicans would call it treason.

But what we're getting, instead, is yet another impressive demonstration that these days, truth is political. One after another, prominent Republicans and conservative pundits have declared their allegiance to the party line. They haven't just gone along with the diversionary tactics, like the irrelevant questions about whether Mr. Rove used Valerie Wilson's name in identifying her (Robert Novak later identified her by her maiden name, Valerie Plame), or the false, easily refuted claim that Mr. Wilson lied about who sent him to Niger. They're now a chorus, praising Mr. Rove as a patriotic whistle-blower.

Ultimately, this isn't just about Mr. Rove. It's also about Mr. Bush, who has always known that his trusted political adviser - a disciple of the late Lee Atwater, whose smear tactics helped President Bush's father win the 1988 election - is a thug, and obviously made no attempt to find out if he was the leaker.

Most of all, it's about what has happened to America. How did our political system get to this point?

CNN.com - Watergate's John Dean on the CIA leak probe

CNN.com - Watergate's John Dean on the CIA leak probe - Jul 14, 2005

Damn! It looks like it might be getting a bit harder on ol' Rove out there. John Dean Nixon's counsel of Watergate fame, he spent four months in jail for it, has been conjucturing on what charges might be coming down the road. It dfoesn't look pretty....

Here' sthe choice quote:

DEAN: We can't tell on the facts we have alone whether we have a law that's been violated or which laws have been violated. The attention is focused on the CIA Identities Protection Act and that hasn't really been my concern.

I think probably the lawyers involved in this case are looking at the other potential concerns. You take the prima facie facts we have and this could very well be a couple statutes that are involved with Mr. Rove.

He could be, well, converting government information to his own political uses and putting it out, and that is a violation of the law. It could be the statute that got a lot of those of us involved in Watergate, which is if he is conspiring with others to do what he's not being paid as a government employee to do, which it would be in this instance, to leak information for political purposes. That in turn, could be a violation as well.

DOBBS: Effectively, fraud and conspiracy.

DEAN: Yes.

The mind boggles.

NOw to be fair there is no way to know if any of this will be true or (more difficult) provable, but it is a very different thing from an innocent gaffe.

Former Ambassador Wilson escalates the rhetoric in the war on the War

CIA agent's husband sees W. House cover-up on leak - Yahoo! News

By Sue Pleming Thu Jul 14,10:10 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The husband of a CIA agent whose identity was revealed amid debate over the Iraq war accused the White House on Thursday of being involved in a giant "cover-up" in the scandal and said President Bush should fire his top aide Karl Rove.

This is the beginning of an article that is one of many that have been circulating today in the media blackout surrounding the case at the White House. The use by Joe Wilson of the words "Cover Up" are going to get some lips moving over on the hill and at the WH I guarantee. I am actually very surprised that he has upped the ante in this fashion but I have to say I love his style.

I met the former ambassador last year on a swing through my hometown and was very impressed not only by his story but also in the matter of fact way he dealt with his allegations. He was not the foaming-on-the-mouth leftist that many in the rightwing blogoshpere have made him out to be. His reasons were clearly stated, in a way that tried to be as non partisan as possibe. I have to say that I was expecting more fireworks from his speech but he was "diplomatic" to a fault. Probably a feature of his former jobs in government.

It i smostly because of this respect for the diplomacy of the former ambassador that I am highly interested when he makes the claim of "cover up" as he is now. There is obviously more than enough public opinion to go along with him on this and just maybe the meme will break out of the washington only crowd and get some legs nationally. This sounds to me like a first shot in a rather remarkable war about the War. I hope that there are more.

I have never supported this Occupation nor the War in Iraq. I find them a massive distraction from the real business and a tragic wast of life and credibility for both the US and Iraq. I welcome any discussion that this new wrinkle brings to the national table. I just hope that we as a people can see what this war has been from the start: a self destructive boondoggle to garner votes and money for the president and his oil barron cronies.

The Asia Times Gets it.

Bush's 'brain' leaked: Did Bush know?
By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - Battered by sagging poll numbers, new doubts in the aftermath of the London bombings about the effectiveness of its "war on terror" and no let-up in the bad news out of Iraq, the White House has found itself this week embroiled in yet another controversy, one that threatens the credibility, if not the tenure, of the man widely known as President George W Bush's "brain".

Thanks to the disclosure of email messages from a Time magazine reporter to his editor, it is now known that, contrary to categorical assurances by the White House two years ago, Karl Rove, Bush's deputy chief of staff and top political adviser, leaked the identity of a covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer, the subject of a criminal investigation by a federal grand jury.

Ahh yes the forign press. The last bastion of hope in a free world. After all, our own press has been doing nothing but carrying the water for this administration.

BTW, Check out the graphic that they built for this story! It's awesome!

Rhenquist watch!

Chief Justice Rehnquist Hospitalized
: "KOMO NEWS ALERT: Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who has cancer, was hospitalized overnight Tuesday for fever, a spokeswoman said. Rehnquist, was taken to the hospital Tuesday night and 'was admitted for observation and tests,' Supreme Court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg said."