Ashcroft Recuses Himself From Leak Investigation

WaPo

Special proscecutors. More investigators. It couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of guys.

Dean predicts backers may stay home if he doesn't win the nomination

SF Gate

Howard Dean said Sunday that the hundreds of thousands of people drawn to politics by his campaign may stay home if he doesn't win the Democratic presidential nomination, dooming the Democratic Party in the fall campaign against President Bush.

"If I don't win the nomination, where do you think those million and a half people, half a million on the Internet, where do you think they're going to go?" he said during a meeting with reporters. "I don't know where they're going to go. They're certainly not going to vote for a conventional Washington politician."

..."I think eventually the nomination is going to be won by somebody with a positive agenda," Dean said. "What's happening is, in their desperation, those guys have thrown their positive agenda out the window. I can't imagine it's going to help them. It might hurt us but it can't help them."

He added: "If we had strong leadership in the Democratic Party, it would be calling the other candidates and saying somebody has to win here. If (former Democratic National Committee head) Ron Brown were chairman, this wouldn't be happening."

He's dead on here. Debra DeShong rejects this, saying Dem primary battles are all like this. Bull. The infamous Osama-Dean commercial comes to mind. There's been nothing in Democratic primary politics as publicly foul as that.

Yes, I'm a strong Clark supporter, and I'm pulling for him, and I hope Clark gets the nod. But if it's Dean, then I'll be working for Dean in the general, and these whiny little insider candidates had better get used to the idea. I'm beginning to wonder whether or not the DNP will just roll over and hand the election to Bush if Dean gets the nod from the voters.

On edit: JMM at Talking Points Memo has his take on this, and he has some good points to make. Dean's open talk is encouraging a split of the Democratic ticket, but it's a split that's coming from the other side of the party in my mind. Dean shouldn't feel entitled to the Democratic Party's full support right now, but the party leadership should do a better job of showing he'll get that support if he gets the nomination. Right now, I don't see that happening.

Wesley Clark on the Issues

General Wesley Clark for President - Official Campaign Web Site

The Clark website has redesigned its issues page, and it looks fantastic. You can choose your state from a map and see how Clark's plans will affect your region. You can download policy papers in PDF, or you can browse the various speeches and papers online. It's also tailored to specific American communities. Check it out.

Now It's a Scandal - New evidence that a House GOP leader offered a bribe

Timothy Noah, Slate

Let's just think about the number of criminal investigations surrounding the Republicans-In-Charge. The steadfast way in which they maintain the circled wagons seems incredible to me. It's as if with one single breach, their entire criminal enterprise will crash to the ground.

The House bribery scandal has DeLay written all over it, don't you think?

Hobbits have Bluegrass roots

Lexington Herald-Leader

"Imagine that," Barnett told Davenport. "You know, he used to have the most extraordinary interest in the people here in Kentucky. He could never get enough of my tales of Kentucky folk. He used to make me repeat family names like Barefoot and Boffin and Baggins, and good country names like that."

Out the window, Davenport said, he could see tobacco barns. And suddenly, the ways of the hobbits -- their country turns of phrase, their peculiar manners and their penchant for smoking -- came into focus. Davenport then conducted a little experiment and discovered something interesting: "Practically all the names of Tolkien's hobbits are listed in my Lexington phone book, and those that aren't can be found over in Shelbyville. Like as not, they cure pipe-weed for a living."

The Shire is a place in the imagination, of course, but it's nice to know some of the influences on its construction in Tolkien's mind.

Renaming Schools Named After Confederate Leaders

Yahoo! News - Educators Debate Efforts to Rename Schools


I grew up in Alabama and attended public schools, but the schools were all named after the community. First was Westside Elementary, on the west side of town. Then the elementary system was fully integrated in my fifth grade year (some African Americans lived on the west side and attended with us, but most were at US Jones Elementary across town). So for a year and a half, I attended US Jones. Then off to Demopolis Middle and High School (until the eleventh grade, when I headed off to Birmingham and the Alabama School of Fine Arts). So my community was less stubborn than others about the entire segregation question.

The high school in particular had integrated early on. I recall being told that several influential students remained in the public system when a white flight was threatened in Demopolis. They retained their friends and the public schools thrived.

We did have a white flight school, Demopolis Academy, and I attended the first grade there because I just missed the cutoff date being old enough for public schools. I can remember going to the 12th grade classroom before classes and reading to them from their textbooks. Perhaps I was a precocious little thing, but I wasn't reading at a 12th grade level by any means! Second grade took me straight to Westside, though I'm surprised that my "credits" transferred!

My personal feeling on all things Confederate is that these people should be honored by those who wish to honor them. I don't feel that need myself - they fought for their homes and their way of life, but both were maintained on the backs of slavery. Even those who had no slaves and fought for the South were fighting for an agrarian, slave-based economy. Still, they are the ancestors of many people in the South, and they deserve some respect for that, at least. But the schools would be better named after people who represent progress for the community, and not stagnation in the past.

There are plenty of African American leaders whose names could grace these buildings. Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth are just three names that come to mind. How about Helen Keller? Albert Einstein and Galileo are just as appropriate. Heck, I'd prefer to see Ronald Reagan's name replace every Confederate leader on a Southern school - at least they'd be updated.

But how to do it? Well, start talking about how it ought to be done. That's what's going on here, and the process will take care of itself.

Bad News and Good News in Plamegate

Leaks Probe Is Gathering Momentum (washingtonpost.com)

The bad news is I was way off in my predicative calendar. I thought Rove would have been gone by now. Nope!

However, progress is being made.

The Justice Department has added a fourth prosecutor to the team investigating the leak of an undercover CIA officer's identity, while the FBI has said a grand jury may be called to take testimony from administration officials, sources close to the case said.

Administration and CIA officials said they have seen signs in the past few weeks that the investigation continues intensively behind closed doors, even though little about the investigation has been publicly said or seen for months.

The CIA thinks classified information is still being released on Wilson and Plame. There's a place for powerful people who are this cynical and unrepentant, and people get frogmarched there every day...

Rush Spins His Medical Records Hearing

RushLimbaugh.com

Rush says that his privacy has been invaded because the DA's office didn't follow the appropriate procedure in obtaining his medical records - they used a search warrant instead of a subpeona. Rush confidently posts the transcript of the hearing on his website, but the transcript reveals a lot of things.

If the state had used the subpeona route, they first would have had to inform Rush of this, and give him the opportunity of a hearing on the matter. However, as the State's Attorney James Martz points out, Rush may not be the only one under investigation. The pattern of issued prescriptions indicates not only doctor shopping, but negligence on the part of each doctor. Each doctor was supplying a bit too much for legal purposes apparently, and so the state went with the harder route of proving probable cause (rather than mere relevance) to obtain a search warrant. This would protect the records should a subpeona hearing for Rush tip off the offending doctors, and the records be altered or destroyed before the subpeona could be issued.

The search warrant process would have preserved Rush's privacy in the investigation concerning the doctors. Rush has filed an appeal and the records have been resealed (although Rush is hopping mad because the State "rifled" through them when they had the legal right to do so).

Extra bonus - Rush's take on Wilma Cline:

MR. BLACK: The question is, is there a compelling State interest to this particular investigation? And I want to go back even further in time. Wilma Cline is a person who is one of the major witnesses in this case who was a housekeeper at one time for Mr. Limbaugh in his Palm Beach house. He did a background check of her and didn't find out that her husband was a convicted drug trafficker because he was living under an assumed name and was a fugitive from a federal conviction. While cleaning his house, she found out, which was easy to discover, that he had undergone a number of these medical procedures; that they had been unsuccessful; that he had received more and more pain medication. She and her husband decided to take advantage of this by blackmailing and extorting money from Rush Limbaugh.

Oh, the poor little Rushie. The mean old housekeeper found out he was addicted to the Oxy and blackmailed him over it.

If Rush had come clean immediately - shown right off the bat how many surgeries he'd had and how he'd gotten addicted, that most people on both sides of the aisle would have rushed to his defense, right wing demagogue or not. The case could have been made, and none of this would have happened. Instead, he told his blackmailer to go score him some more of the Oxy. Don't drop the soap, Rush...

On edit: World o' Crap does a much better blog on this than I did. Check it out...

"Is NO ONE Safe When Liberals Attack?"

Bernie got his shorts in a wad when Frank Rich used the term "homophobia"

Hehehehehe...Gotta love the Howler.

Check out the Democratic Ads

Clark's New Hampshire ad

It's a little bit Hollywood, but all the facts are true.

Dean's Iowa ad

Dean's use of the "I approve of this message" requirement is really good here. This ad could appear negative, but they do a good job of keeping the tone positive - always a plus in political advertising.

And did you notice that bat breaking? Dean asked for $360,000 in four days - he got it in two. Wow.

Choice Google Searches From Last Week

Still working on the AWOL Bush post. In the meantime, here are some of the Google searches that have led to this site in the last week.

Whose's running iraq

Who's teaching English out there?

link:www.netflix.com

Yes, I link to you - could that get me on the no-skipping-discs mailing list please?

frist poll "minority block"

Frist is my Senator. Good old Doctor Frist. Will he be the next silver-spooned chucklehead headlining the Republican ticket? You heard it here first.

take abb pledge chimp

If the Chimp would take the pledge, all our troubles would be over...

diebold voting machines snopes

The Snopes are running the Diebolds? No wonder this country is going to hell...

define forethought or malice

The Republicans in Florida, Election 2000.

dressing up games for christians

Hmmm. I don't recall Jesus advocating dressing up games. Sounds Pauline to me.

The Shorter Michael Jackson News Website

Michael Jackson (the Official Press Room)

I will win in court. Don't listen to what you're hearing in the press. That's all I'm allowed to say.

America Too Busy Watching Pop Crap to Mind the Government

Cat In The Hat Takes Top Box Office Spot

"We pitched it almost as a kid's version of Ferris Bueller's Day Off," Mandel said. "The book is a very perfect beginning, middle and end. We used it as a skeleton: Mom has to go out, kids are left home, cat comes to visit, house gets messed up, they kick out the cat, they clean it up, and get everything done before mom comes home."

For all you "Seuss purists" out there, the cat returns with his incredible cleaning machine and cleans everything in the house in the nick of time. The Cat in the Hat is an expression of the unleashed imagination, and there's no harm ever in unleashing your imagination. That's the point which Mandel has missed in this recap of the story.

"Kids are pretty much afraid of the Grinch, but you want them to like the Cat," he said. "Because, if you think about it, this is just a home-invasion story about a giant crazy cat who barges into the house and wrecks the place."

Grazer already has his writers working on a sequel.

"The sad thing is we took some things from The Cat in the Hat Comes Back, and now we have to write that," screenwriter Berg said. "There's not much left in that one other than the title now."

Boy, aren't you ready to line up for that one? Bleah.

Spend-and-Spend Republicans Mire Government in Deficit Spending

Washington Post

As Congress rushes to conclude its 2003 session, Republican leaders are trying to garner votes for controversial legislation by loading the bills with billions of dollars in added costs that analysts said would expand the budget deficit for years to come. The year-end binge has alarmed analysts in Washington and on Wall Street, coming as it does after three years of presidential and congressional initiatives that have both substantially boosted government spending and shrunk its tax base.

"The U.S. budget is out of control," the Wall Street investment firm Goldman Sachs & Co. warned Friday in its weekly newsletter to clients.

Financial responsibility means living within means. Out-of-control budgets need spending cuts and revenue increases. The GOP in power demonstrates neither of these traits.

The spending frenzy in the energy and Medicare bills is an egregious attempt to buy the Presidency for a second term on the backs of our children. Both bills are meant to be crowning jewels in Bush's campaign, and so his supporters have opened up an all-you-can-eat pork buffet to get the bills passed. Democrats who have picked up their gold-encrusted plate should understand that they are handing this country to the Republicans.

Sunset: An Interlude from Romans

I just saw the most magnificent sunset of my life.

I had been shopping for opening night gifts at Target. Somewhere close to the card section, I happened to spy a Thomas Kinkade painting. They're nothing but commericialized sentiment, as individual as a Big Mac. This particular print was of a snow-bound cottage in the forest (surprise, surprise), and was accompanied by a quote from the Master himself. It went something like this:

BEAUTY is found in the sheer EXPERIENCE of LIVING, and is cause for REJOICING.

That's right. His phraseology is as cloying as his artwork. Bleah.

So I headed home with my purchases, happily mocking the self-styled Painter Of Light. It must be silly to contemplate a dinner theater actor slamming Kinkade. But when I'm running around acting silly while people are digesting their lasanga, I don't pretend to be the Thespian of Light. So safe in my fortress of dryness, I traveled west through one of the more beautiful areas of Nashville, Belle Meade. As I turned onto Highway 70, my wry humor saw the real thing and hushed.

It had been raining all day, but the storm was now to the west of us. Behind me, the sky was clear and deepening into dark blue, but the wind-swept clouds were flinging a warm amber onto every surface. The wet road had melted into an avenue of gold. The mist droplets on my windshield had snatched sparkles from the sky, while a vista of bright blue was gleaming through the riot.

Only the fast-food signs and traffic lights of Bellevue could resist transcendence. This impious stand was futile, though; the vain enclaves of capital were passed in a moment. I drove to my apartment, scratched my cat's head while the computer started, and wrote this down.

During my drive, I contemplated the actual nature of beauty. It seems to me that the familiar viewed under a single unifying element is the true essence of beauty. By looking at the sides of the road, you could see each individual tree try to assert its own color against the dazzling sunset. But looking west, there was only dark yellow and shadow. There the immanent could give a shape to transcendence, but only on transcendence's terms. That interplay of familiar and glory is what arrests the soul in observation, and is the artist's laboratory. The focus-grouped fantasies of Kinkade don't have a fraction of the emotion of a Rembrandt. His works are shaped by the assembly line they spring from; that is the unifying principle of them all, and this is why Kinkade's paintings stink.

The second factor in beauty is rarity, you see. Never again will I see that sunset. And yet that very singularity was at one with a sense of free abundance. Tomorrow I may see another sunset, gorgeous in its own way as this one, and the next day, another. Who could have thought that ten minutes on Highway 70 could be so enchanting? This must be the second tension of beauty that art seeks to capture, the intersection of rarity and abundance, of precious and free. We have been given so much for such a little while. Art tries to remind us of this, to capture our thoughts and focus them on the reality of what we're experiencing.

But people don't usually pay to be challenged. They want the familiar and comfortable. A filling meal, a few laughs, and it's home to a wall full of sentimental goo. That's why we artists must be passionate about excelling in our art. Only the most ignorant or inured could glance stupidly at the Sistine ceiling. And can anyone resist a glorious sunset?

P.S. If you did go to the Kinkade site, I'm awfully sorry about that. Here's an antidote.

Blogging Light Until 24 Nov - Working on Major AWOL Bush Post

I'm also in the middle of opening a dinner theater farce, putting Bobbie's Dairy Dip to rest for the season, and gearing up to be Santa in a kid's Christmas show. I'm also making some chili (mm, mm, good).

I'm looking at the AWOL Bush evidence all over again. I'm willing to accept that Bush accumlated enough retirement points to be discharged honorably, but the available records show that he blew off his last two years in the Guard as much as possible. In fact, I think 1st Lt. Bush had a major fire lit under his pants in April 73. And the documents we have confirm that Bush was nowhere to be found around a Guard base for six unexcused months in 1972.

I'm hoping this will be the definitive word on Bush's Guard service, but to do it right will take some time. See you as I can until then...

More on Predicting the Election

Smirking Chimp Thread

talhazelden concludes that the Democratic candidate must be leading by at least 2.7% in the polls to clinch the election. I'd like to see that number a little bit higher, just so problems like Florida 2000 can't throw the election to the loser again.

Frist's Office Denies Tampering With Online Poll

Yahoo! News - Senate Leader Learns Lesson in Online Activism

The story says they denies "high-tech ballot rigging". What else can you call flipping questions back and forth to suit your desired answers? Senator Frist, we have screenshots! You lie and you lie!

Ding Dong, Roy Moore is Out

Court Orders Alabama's Chief Justice Removed from Bench

War Liberal's got full coverage, plus a couple of predictions: talk radio's the best bet for Moore, or maybe a Fox News post. My personal bet is the Trinity Broadcasting Network. He wouldn't stand out as such a looney there.

Bill Frist's Office Changes Poll Question on Site After Closing Poll!

Trouble in Texas

Sean says it all right here, with screenshots. It's despicable.

As Bill Frist's judicial slumber party took off in Washington, his official website sponsored a poll about the situation. But in a stunning display of pettiness, they solicited votes for one question, and then displayed the results under a different question.

The first question was this: Should the Senate minority block the body's Constitutional duty to provide the President's judicial nominees with an up or down vote?

Those in favor of the judicial nominees being blocked would have voted No, although they would have been wrong to do so. I would say that the minority has a Constitutional duty to take their "advice and consent" on such matters seriously. On several of Bush's deficient nominees, the minority has done so.

This is their Constitutional privilege, and denying them the power of filibuster strikes at the heart of the Constitution. Bill Frist's shameful power play should sober all Tennesseans as to the character of our representative.

When the poll closed after 106,285 votes, the Yes category led over the No category 54% to 46%. It's sad that around 50,000 people would deny a seminal Constitutional right to the minority party in the Senate, but there it was. But Frist's office had a plan.

They changed the question when reporting the poll numbers!

Now the question reads: Should the Senate perform its Constitutional duty to provide the President's judicial nominees with an up or down vote?

The question is clearly different, and now misleads about the real nature of the poll.

The poll, of course, was not scientific; it was done to promote the slumber party around the Internet. Liberal and conservative surfers alike will inform their friends about such polls and try to overwhelm the other side. It's a cybernetic tug-of-war.

But for Frist's office to play these kind of memory-hole games with the facts is beneath contempt. What ickle toady-toads they are...

Republicans Continue Obstinate Holdup of Senate Business

Yahoo! News - Senate Begins Around-The-Clock Debate on Judges

After this marathon fails to work, Bill Frist and other Republican congressional leaders will hold their breath until they turn blue.

Republicans also had cots placed in a room named for the legendary Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who in 1957 held the floor himself for a still-record nonstop 24 hours and 18 minutes in opposing a civil rights bill.

Honoring such an act should be a mark of shame for these people, but they just don't get it.

Still, I hope the Democrats are taking notes. If the Repubs can be this stick-in-the-mud about the Three Stooges, then they have no room to criticize anyone who won't get over the theft of Election 2000.

McDonald's McAngst over McJob in the Dictionary

BBC NEWS | Americas | McDonald's anger over McJob entry

McAngst: a misplaced and shallow focus of concern over a regretable situation.

McDonald's is upset that their "low prestige, low dignity, low-benefit, no future jobs" have inspired a neologism spoken enough to be printed in a collegiate dictionary, but they're not so upset that they're going to McDo anything about the actual jobs. That might affect the McBottom Line. No, they're just hoping to make the citation McAmScray.

Don't we deserve a McFreaking Break, already?

McPS: McDonald's letter deploring the dictionary citation cites some statistics that they believe to support their McCase.

Over a thousand people have moved up from the McJobs to management, which goes to show that the McJobs aren't dead-end. But then the letter states that the establishment has 12 million current employees, which when combined with past employees, must dwarf that "over a thousand" figure by five or six orders of magnitude.

Evidently, when looking at a empty glass with a water stain, McDonald's believes the glass to be McFull.

New Feature: Get Notified When I Actually Update the Site!

Yahoo! Group: boloboffingroup

By joining this group at Yahoo!Groups, you can receive an email whenever I update this site. I believe there's even an option to get a daily digest, so that if I update a lot in a day, you'd only get one email for the day.

Of course, it would be easier to xml me, but if you don't have a news aggregator, then the Yahoo! group is the best way to get me.

The Struggle to Expose Bush's Failures of Intelligence Continues: Memogate Be Damned

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) has been examining the use of intelligence by senior administration officials in the Bush White House. It was digging into the stovepiping of intelligence by "the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Secretary Bolton's office at the State Department". This was being pulled along by the Democratic members of the committee, but it had the cooperation of the majority chairman, Pat Roberts (R-KS).

No longer. Bill Frist, the Senate Majority Leader, has pulled the plug on the committee. The reason? A memo to the SSCI minority leader, John Rockefeller IV (D-WV) was stolen from his office. This memo outlined an plan for getting any evidence of "improper or questionable conduct by administration officials" into the public eye. It states its concern for operating within established guidelines for committee members, but the subject matter is clearly a weak spot for the Bush Administration. Since Frist knows just who to thank for his current leadership role in the Senate, the political battle lines have been drawn on the issue of Bolton's stovepipe.

The plan in the memo was to use Roberts' cooperation as far as it would go, then attach dissenting opinions that could be supported by the evidence to the final reports. This might have been enough to reopen the call for an independent investigation. Now Roberts will be completely uncooperative whenever the committee is allowed to reconvene.

It is therefore crucial that the Democratic members of the SSCI stick to their guns and work to dissent as strongly as possible from the final report. It appears that Rockefeller is doing just that:

After discussions with Roberts, the majority leader said that "the committee's review is nearly complete" and "we have jointly determined the committee can and will complete its review this year."

"They can't do that," Rockefeller said, noting that hundreds of pages of requested documents have recently been promised by the State Department and Pentagon and more interviews have been scheduled.

In addition, he noted that the final report from David Kay, who heads the CIA's search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, has not been completed. "What can we say about prewar intelligence without Kay's report?" Rockefeller asked.

Clearly Frist has put the kibosh on any further examination of the White House's handling of intelligence, and Roberts has agreed to this. His previous cooperation must, therefore, be the first item of dissent for the minority members.

Before he was strongarmed by the administration and its allies, Roberts agreed that the stovepiping was a proper subject for the committee's inquiry, and signed off on further requests for documents from the State Department and the Pentagon. Here's Roberts' stated perception of his role from his own Congressional website:

"As Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, my job is to ensure that our Intelligence Community has the ability to protect the nation from threats at home and abroad. It is my goal to see that our intelligence agencies have cutting edge collection capabilities and perform accurate analysis of intelligence information so that we can win the war on terrorism."

Pat Roberts

Senator Roberts, this administration bypassed the efforts of the Intelligence Community to accurate analyze the intelligence information, interfering with their ability to protect the nation from threats at home and abroad. Their efforts to collect and accurately analyze intelligence information was tossed aside by an administration bent on war. Have you now joined them in this dereliction of duty?

What about the requested documents and interviews that will now not be considered or even reviewed or conducted by the SSCI? This should be the second item of dissent. There is more work to be done, and this committee is not being allowed to do it. When the stovepipe was put into place, the people behind it became a part of the Intelligence Community, and thus fell under the jurisdiction of the SSCI's inquiries:

Created pursuant to S.Res. 400, 94th Congress: to oversee and make continuing studies of the intelligence activities and programs of the United States Government, and to submit to the Senate appropriate proposals for legislation and report to the Senate concerning such intelligence activities and programs. In carrying out this purpose, the Select Committee on Intelligence shall make every effort to assure that the appropriate departments and agencies of the United States provide informed and timely intelligence necessary for the executive and legislative branches to make sound decisions affecting the security and vital interests of the Nation. It is further the purpose of this resolution to provide vigilant legislative oversight over the intelligence activities of the United States to assure that such activities are in conformity with the Constitution and laws of the United States.

Jurisdiction of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence

When this administration bypassed the appropriate departments for analysis of intelligence, it fell into the jurisdiction of the SSCI.

Finally, the independent investigation must be called for immediately following the release of the report that Frist will manhandle out of the committee by year's end. It should be a bipartisan goal to see that our government doesn't act recklessly with biased and false information when the lives of our young men and women are on the line. Frist's stifling of appropriate inquiry by the SSCI shows just how political this fight for the truth has become, and the only recourse, barring the SCCI continuing its investigations unimpeded, is to have an independent investigation free from political influences.

As Mark 4:22 says: "Whatever is hidden away will be brought out into the open." Today, it's the stolen memo. Tomorrow, it will be the failings of the Bush administration. That is, if the nation's wounds ever stand a chance at being healed.

Smirking Chimp Regular: Prediction of Election Via Statistics

The Smirking Chimp

The poster's name is talhazelden, and there's some mighty impressive work at the thread. This is the chart that's stunning:



tal says that it's not all bad news, though. Many states are in play, and the real question for the Democratic party is this: what candidate can swing 41 electoral votes away from Bush? If we can keep the blue states and swing the weakest four red states away (Michigan, Arkansas, New Jersey, and Missouri), the election belongs to the Democratic Party.

It's also heartening to see Tennessee (the home state of your humble hobbit correspondant) is the sixth weakest red state. Can the trend be reversed? We'll see...