Politics

by Charles

The attacks are not fair, and it’s not a game. This is a war, and it’s a war that liberals and Democrats will lose if enough conservatives and Republicans stand up to it. As Paul Cella noted yesterday, Michael Steele’s political opponents have taken malice to a whole new level. When liberals believe that images such as this…

…are fair game, or when Steele is portrayed as a traitor to his race, then the gloves should come off.

(Update below the fold)

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by Edward

John Cole on RedState tries valiantly to save the GOP’s right to resuscitate the recently departed talking point that all Bush’s nominees deserve an up or down vote in the Senate, but it’s the most faithless sort of wishful thinking and as such deserves debunking. In response to this post by Kos, using the GOP’s own words against them, Cole takes out his hair-splitter and tries to find a difference in how the GOP derailed Harriet’s turn before the Judiciary Committee:

When Republicans and conservatives speak of a desire for an up or down vote for judicial nominees, it is born out of the frustration of the recent past in which nominees were bottled up in committee in perpetuity, were never given hearings, were never given a vote, and simply had their nomination blocked through procedural maneuvering. In fairness, this occurred under both Republican and Democratic Presidents, and in Senates led by Republicans and Democrats.

But that is not what happened in the Miers case, and to assert otherwise is to engage in a flight of fancy. A desire for an up or down vote for judicial nominees is in no way anathema to the desire (and, I might add, right) to loudly voice one’s displeasure with a nominee.

Harriet Miers was nominated to be an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. She was given a date for confirmation hearings (they were to begin on November 7th), she had meetings with Senators, she was filling out questionnaires for the Judiciary Committee. She would, one could safely assume, have had a vote in the Judiciary Committee at the commencement of the confirmation hearings, and predicated on the outcome of that vote, a vote would have been held in the Senate at large.

In other words, she was going to get her ‘up or down vote.’ There were no calls to ‘blue slip’ her, there was no move to filibuster her (indeed, the Gang of 14 stated they would break any filibuster attempts), there were no attempts at procedural moves to block her nomination, and she was not going to be bottlenecked in committee forever.

What’s most laughable about this is this bit: "she was going to get her ‘up or down vote.’ " It’s laughable because web site’s had been set up and the call went far and wide that what the base wanted was not an up or down vote but her nomination to be withdrawn. In fact, on the Withdraw Miers website, they list the folks calling for the withdrawal and list the Senators who had expressed "Reservations," long before the hearings had offered Harriet a chance to answer her critics, including

Senator Rick Santorum
Senator Sam Brownback
Senator Trent Lott
Senator George Allen
Senator Lindsey Graham
Senator Jeff Sessions
Senator David Vitter
Senator John Ensign
Senator John Thune

So who exactly is it in the GOP that still believes the President has the right to have his choice, his chosen nominee, receive an up or down vote? Cole would like you to believe they never stopped believing this was the proper process, but the evidence suggests otherwise.

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by hilzoy

From the NYT:

“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 undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby’s testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson’s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration’s handling of intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program to justify the war. Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

Mr. Libby’s notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson’s undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent’s identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent’s undercover status. It would not be illegal for either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby, both of whom are presumably cleared to know the government’s deepest secrets, to discuss a C.I.A. officer or her link to a critic of the administration. But any effort by Mr. Libby to steer investigators away from his conversation with Mr. Cheney could be considered by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, to be an illegal effort to impede the inquiry. (…)

The notes help explain the legal difficulties facing Mr. Libby. Lawyers in the case said Mr. Libby testified to the grand jury that he had first heard from journalists that Ms. Wilson may have had a role in dispatching her husband on a C.I.A.-sponsored mission to Africa in 2002 in search of evidence that Iraq had acquired nuclear material there for its weapons program. But the notes, now in Mr. Fitzgerald’s possession, also indicate that Mr. Libby first heard about Ms. Wilson – who is also known by her maiden name, Valerie Plame – from Mr. Cheney. That apparent discrepancy in his testimony suggests why prosecutors are weighing false statement charges against him in what they interpret as an effort by Mr. Libby to protect Mr. Cheney from scrutiny, the lawyers said.

It is not clear why Mr. Libby would have suggested to the grand jury that he might have learned about Ms. Wilson from journalists if he was aware that Mr. Fitzgerald had obtained the notes of the conversation with Mr. Cheney or might do so. At the beginning of the investigation, Mr. Bush pledged the White House’s full cooperation and instructed aides to provide Mr. Fitzgerald with any information he sought. The notes do not show that Mr. Cheney knew the name of Mr. Wilson’s wife. But they do show that Mr. Cheney did know and told Mr. Libby that Ms. Wilson was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency and that she may have helped arrange her husband’s trip.”

A few points:

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by Charles

We should be with Tom Coburn and the fourteen other Senators who voted "yes" on his small amendment to control spending (discussed here).  The fiscally responsible Senators:

Tom Coburn (R-OK) Russ Feingold (D-WI) Jon Kyl (R-AZ) Jim DeMint (R-SC) David Vitter (R-LA) Mary Landrieu (D-LA) John Sununu (R-NH) Lindsey Graham (R-SC) Richard Burr (R-NC) Wayne Allard (R-CO) Jeff Sessions (R-AL) Evan Bayh (D-IN) Mike DeWine (R-OH) Kent Conrad (D-ND) George Allen (R-VA)

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For those strange fools looking for von’s theory of Constitutional interpretation, it appears after the gap — originally written as a comment to this post by Professor Bainbridge (slightly edited below).

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by hilzoy

Since, for reasons I do not fully understand, I still have access to TimesSelect, here’s an excerpt from John Tierney’s column today:

“This case, if you can remember that far back, began with accusations that White House officials violated a law protecting undercover agents who could be harmed or killed if their identities were revealed. But it now seems doubtful that there was a violation of that law, much less any danger to the outed agent, Valerie Wilson.

The case originally aroused indignation because the White House appeared to be outing Wilson as part of a campaign to unfairly discredit her husband, Joseph Wilson, who accused the administration of ignoring his 2002 report debunking evidence that Iraq was trying to acquire material for nuclear weapons. But a Senate investigation found that his report not only failed to reach the White House but also failed to debunk the nuclear-material evidence – in fact, most analysts concluded the report added to the evidence.

So now the original justifications for the investigation have vanished, which is why I think of this as the Nadagate scandal. But the prosecutor has kept at it for two years. Besides switching to the vague law against disclosing classified information, he might indict Libby or Rove for perjury or obstruction of justice – crimes that occurred only because of the investigation.”

Wrong, Tierney. This case did not begin because of accusations that anyone had violated a specific law. It began with accusations that someone in the administration had outed an undercover CIA agent. Those accusations were true. The case aroused indignation not just, or even primarily, because the White House outed Plame to discredit Wilson, which is also true, whatever his report did or did not say. It aroused indignation because outing undercover CIA agents is wrong under any circumstances, and it’s especially wrong when it’s done not for some reason connected to the national interest, but for political gain. This justification has not “vanished”; it’s still in force, and it is why I have said that whether or not indictments are handed down, this administration acted contemptibly in outing Valerie Plame.

Do apologists for this administration really want to take the line that exposing intelligence assets for political gain is just one of those things that everyone in Washington does; that it’s no big deal? Do they really want to say that what the Republican party stands for is not restoring honor and integrity to the White House, not doing what it takes to keep America safe, not the sort of basic decency that would lead them to stick by people who put their lives on the line for their country, but this? Do they really want to try to rally people behind the slogan, “Compromising national security: everyone does it!” — ? (And for the record, everyone doesn’t. Just try thinking back to the last time an administration outed one of its own agents.)

The reasons why leaking Plame’s identity was wrong are not rocket science. They are obvious, at least if you understand basic moral values like loyalty, decency, and honor. And no party that claims to honor moral values should pretend that outing an undercover CIA agent is just business as usual.

Below the fold, I’m appending a long excerpt from a Stratfor report cited on dKos (h/t rilkefan), just in case Tierney or Richard Cohen or anyone like them should happen by and wonder what the big deal is. (It’s a long excerpt because the original is behind a wall.) It makes the issues very clear.

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by hilzoy

Billmon has an interesting post about his encounters with Andy Card, President Bush’s unlikely chief of staff, over the years. It’s the sort of thing I have always wished journalists wrote in the course of doing their jobs: what, exactly, did they think of the various people they dealt with, as persons? Billmon was underwhelmed by Card:

“When I interviewed him, I could tell fairly quickly that a.) he definitely wasn’t the sharpest chisel in the White House toolbox (and this wasn’t exactly the Leonardo da Vinci administration) and b.) he had only the vaguest understanding of what Rollins and company had been up to. Card, in other words, was the patsy in the deal — something he complained about quite openly when we spoke.(…) He struck me as a sad sack, a minor league patronage player who had already reached the level of his own incompetence. A future FEMA administrator, in other words.”

I’m writing this post, despite the fact that it will be almost as content-free as my last one, for two reasons. First, to recommend Billmon’s post to anyone who wants to know who is likely to be Bush’s right-hand man if Rove and Cheney go down. Second, because having read Billmon for quite a while, I am certain that this is the only time when I will be able to say, about anything he writes: well, I can top that.

Specifically: Billmon writes: “I first encountered Card when he was a special assistant in the Reagan White House — having arrived there as a Bush loyalist in 1983.” Well, I first encountered Card when he was a Massachusetts State Representative in 1976. (Not that I made nearly as much of my encounters as Billmon did.)

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by hilzoy

I can’t wait until the Plame story is over. Not only will I be able to stop wondering what will happen next, but Patrick Fitzgerald might actually tell his story to someone, and then I can learn the answer to the question: what, exactly, accounts for everyone so helpfully remembering conversations, emails, notes, and other things that had mysteriously slipped their minds until now? It’s all very interesting — and not just to me, but, apparently, to Fitzgerald. The WSJ reports that he is widening his investigation:

“There are signs that prosecutors now are looking into contacts between administration officials and journalists that took place much earlier than previously thought. Earlier conversations are potentially significant, because that suggests the special prosecutor leading the investigation is exploring whether there was an effort within the administration at an early stage to develop and disseminate confidential information to the press that could undercut former Ambassador Joseph Wilson and his wife, Central Intelligence Agency official Valerie Plame. (…)

Mr. Fitzgerald’s pursuit now suggests he might be investigating not a narrow case on the leaking of the agent’s name, but perhaps a broader conspiracy.

Mr. Wilson’s initial complaints were made privately to reporters. He went public in a July 6 op-ed in the New York Times and in an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” After that, White House officials, who were attempting to discredit Mr. Wilson’s claims, confirmed to some reporters that Mr. Wilson was married to a CIA official. Columnist Robert Novak published Mr. Wilson’s wife’s name and association with the agency in a column that suggested she had played a role in having him sent on a mission to Niger to investigate the administration’s claims.

Until now, Mr. Fitzgerald appeared to be focusing on conversations between White House officials such as Mr. Libby and Karl Rove, President Bush’s senior political adviser, after Mr. Wilson wrote his op-ed. The defense by Republican operatives has been that White House officials didn’t name Ms. Plame, and that any discussion of her was in response to reporters’ questions about Mr. Wilson, the kind of casual banter that occurs between sources and reporters. (…)

Lawyers familiar with the investigation believe that at least part of the outcome likely hangs on the inner workings of what has been dubbed the White House Iraq Group. Formed in August 2002, the group, which included Messrs. Rove and Libby, worked on setting strategy for selling the war in Iraq to the public in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion. The group likely would have played a significant role in responding to Mr. Wilson’s claims.”

And what, you might ask, was the White House Iraq Group?

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by Charles

But I’m leaning more toward the Rebel Alliance than the Loyalists.  Ed Morrissey describes the three camps of conservatives regarding the nomination of Harriet Miers, putting himself in the Trench-Dwelling Dogface category:

Despite our normal support for the president, we Dogfaces fail to recognize George Bush’s supposed brilliance in naming his personal lawyer to the bench, whatever Hugh Hewitt says. Even if Miers obviously has earned Bush’s trust, she just as obviously has done nothing remarkable to earn the trust of conservatives; being a mover and shaker in the American Bar Association doesn’t lend her much credibility among those who have watched that group get more and more politically activist in what we view as the wrong direction. Most of us have tired of the "trust me" approach. In short, we find ourselves with some sympathy for the Rebel Alliance.

However, we also see the realistic outcome of the bloody civil war that threatens to split the GOP over what clearly is a White House blunder — one compounded by White House adviser Ed Gillespie’s charging the Rebel Alliance with "sexism" at last week’s meeting. With important mid-term elections next year and at least one more Supreme Court opening likely during Bush’s term, we want to avoid a party schism that could make him a prematurely lame duck and hand the Democrats an opportunity to seize control of one or both houses of Congress.

It is undeniable that the undocumented and undistinguished Miers is a Bush crony, as Bill Kristol called her, and Bush’s pleas of "trust me" fall on deaf ears because he signed the campaign finance reform bill even though he proclaimed that he thought it was unconstitutional.  This is defending and upholding the constitution?  George Will is right.  Far as I’m concerned, because he violated his oath of office (among other multiple missteps large and small), he has lost the trust of many conservatives, myself included.  Bush should have nominated a notable conservative jurist, not a Mystery Date.  Bill Kristol is also right that Miers should fall on her sword.  Supporting her may not give Hugh Hewitt indigestion, but it sure makes me queasy.

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by hilzoy

I tried to hold out against TimesSelect. It annoys me, especially since there are only a few commentators I actually want to read, and yet if I sign up, I have to pay for the whole lot of them. (David Brooks? You must be kidding. The thought that it will be impossible for me to read him has always seemed to me one of the few upsides of TimesSelect.)

Nonetheless, a little over two weeks ago I signed up for their two week free trial. I cleverly marked down exactly when I had signed up, and in a moment of uncharacteristic organization, I actually cancelled it after about 45 minutes shy of two weeks. And yet I can still access their pages. This seems ominous to me. Are they going to try to pretend that I didn’t cancel after all? Having resisted the temptation to annoy myself by reading David Brooks for two weeks, am I not at least going to regain my cherished inability to read him? I don’t like the looks of this at all.

It did allow me to read Krugman today, though. It’s a good column, and it raises a good question. So that you can all benefit from my misfortune, excerpts below the fold.

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by Charles

Plenty of blame has been placed at the feet of the Bush administration for its slow and bureaucratic responses to Hurricane Katrina, and rightly so.  But what I don’t see is how the response was racist, and the comments alleging such by African American leaders, elected and otherwise, is both galling and dishonest. This is not to deny that racism still exists in the American south. I saw it personally, on numerous occasions in numerous homes over twenty years ago, and an ugly thing like racial bigotry takes a long time to go away. Generations. Yes, progress has been made, but there’s a long way to go.

The hurricane revealed quite a few things, one of them being that society can break down easily and quickly under the right (or wrong) circumstances. Another revelation was how quickly and reflexively race inciters got on the case and injected their vitriol into the situation. A few examples:

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