It’s Alito! Yeah So...Who’s Alito?

Today President Bush announced that his new nominee to the Supreme Court Justice would be Samuel Alito-55, currently a sitting judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.

Candidate Alito, graduate from Princeton and Yale Law School is well known as a strongly conservative judge who is sometimes called “Scalito” for his conservative record and his Italian heritage. He has been on the 3rd Circuit Court for 15 years. He has a long record for the Senate Liberals to evaluate so there should be no whining complaints from them about a lack of information on his background.

Judge Alito has acquired a reputation as a strong and intelligent voice on the court. He is considered to be as predictably Conservative as is Justice Scalia, but is considered to be less acerbic in demeanor, being generally less emotional and more polite than Scalia who is known for his sharp wit and stinging dissents.

As to the major issues, from his past court decisions:

• Roe v. Wade-He was the lone dissenter in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 1992. In which the 3rd Circuit Court struck down a Pennsylvania law requiring a married woman to notify her husband prior to having an abortion. The court’s decision was upheld by the SCOTUS in a 6-3 decision. The Justices supporting the decision were, O’Conner, Souter, Kennedy, Stevens, Blackmun, with Rhenquist concurring some and Scalia, White, and Thomas dissenting in part, and concurring in part.
• Civil Rights-In a sex-discrimination case Sheridan v. DuPont he dissented in his opinion by objecting only in the use of an absolute restriction: ”the majority here holds that when the plaintiff has made out a prima facie case and has offered enough evidence to support a finding that the explanation was pretextual, a defense motion for summary judgment or judgment as a matter of law must always be denied.” Judge Alito disagreed, stating that there are some occasions (by stare decisis) which contradict the use of the word always.
• Civil Rights-In Fatin v. INS he wrote the majority opinion stating that an Iranian woman could establish a valid claim for asylum by showing that she might be persecuted because of her gender, belief in feminism, membership in a feminist group, or failure to follow gender-specific laws such as those mandating she wear a veil in public.
• Civil Rights-In a freedom of speech case Saxe v. State College Area School District, he wrote the majority opinion striking down the schools anti-harassment rule restricting nonvulgar, non-school-sponsored speech posing no realistic threat of disruption to the learning environment.
• Civil Rights-In a sexual harassment/disabilities case, Shore Regional High School Board of Education v. P.S Alito wrote the majority opinion ruling that by not protecting a student from “severe and prolonged harassment” for not being athletically inclined, and because of his perceived sexual orientation the school failed to provide free access to education.
• Church-State “Separation”-He wrote a dissenting opinion in ACLU v. Schundler, supporting the right of a municipality to display a crèche and a menorah did not violate the Establishment Clause because it also incorporated secular features such as Frosty The Snowman and a banner proclaiming commitment to diversity.

Judge Alito has argued 12 cases before the Supreme Court. In his earlier career, Samuel Alito, Jr. began as a Law Clerk for Judge Leonard I. Garth of the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals 1976-77. He was named Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, 1977-81. He was then Assistant to the U.S. Solictor General for the Reagan Department of Justice ’81-85 and then was named as the Deputy Assistant Attorney General, again for the Reagan Justice Department ’85-87. From 1987 until he was seated on the bench of the 3rd Circuit Court in 1990, he was the U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey.

Basically what all this means is that Judge Samuel Alito, Jr. is imminently qualified to ascend to the Supreme Court of the United States. For the Democrats, this nomination is a nightmare. Why is that? Because he was unanimously approved by the Senate, including the extremists on the Left like Chuck Schumer, Ted Kennedy, Joe Biden, Patrick Leahy, Chris Dodd, and Harry Reid. So what are they going to object to now? We know that they will object to him and vote against him, they have already come out whining. Edward (the Killer) Kennedy said:

“Rather than selecting a nominee for the good of the nation and the court, President Bush has picked a nominee whom he hopes will stop the massive hemorrhaging of support on his right wing. This is a nomination based on weakness, not on strength...

“Although he is clearly intelligent and experienced on the bench, that is only the beginning of our inquiry. If confirmed, Alito could very well fundamentally alter the balance of the court and push it dangerously to the right, placing at risk decades of American progress in safeguarding our fundamental rights and freedoms...”

So now, Conservatives are not just “heartless” and “uncaring,” but now, according to “the Killer,” we’re actually “dangerous.”

Leakey Leahy stated:

“This is a needlessly provocative nomination. Instead of uniting the country through his choice, the President has chosen to reward one faction of his party, at the risk of dividing the country. Instead he should have rewarded the American people. America could have done better through consultation to select one of the many consensus conservative Republican candidates who could have been overwhelmingly approved by the Senate...

“With the announcement of Judge Samuel Alito to fill the position being vacated by Justice O’Connor, the White House failed to follow through with initial discussions and engage in meaningful consultation. The Democratic Leader of the Senate and I wrote to the President last week, urging him to pick one of the many qualified mainstream women and minority candidates who can win widespread bipartisan support in the Senate and among the American people. I regret that the President has not chosen the clear path of a consensus candidate to unite the American people and the Senate. The nation and the Senate would have overwhelmingly welcomed his choice if he had.”

What’s that Patrick? “Blah, blah, blah, talking points, talking points, blah, blah, blah. President Bush didn’t do what we told him to do!” Well what do you expect; they are just parroting what their extreme Left-wing boss, Ralph Neas of People for the American Way told them to say:

“President Bush put the demands of his far-right political base above Americans’ constitutional rights and legal protections by nominating federal appeals court Judge Samuel Alito to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor...

“Replacing a mainstream conservative like Justice O’Connor with a far-right activist like Samuel Alito would threaten Americans’ rights and legal protections for decades. Justice O’Connor had a pivotal role at the center of the Court, often providing a crucial vote to protect privacy, civil rights, and so much more. All that would be at risk if she were replaced with Judge Alito, who has a record of ideological activism against privacy rights, civil rights, workers’ rights, and more...

“President Bush wasn’t willing to stand up to the far right, so Americans must count on senators to stand up for the Constitution. Americans will have to live with the next justice long after President Bush has left office. It is senators’ duty not to act as rubber stamps for the President’s nominees, but to examine all the evidence about the nominee’s record and make an independent judgment. We are confident that a careful examination of Samuel Alito’s record and judicial philosophy will ultimately lead to his rejection by the Senate.”

This is the same garbage the extremists of the Left tried to fling at Roberts, and I predict it will have the same result. The Left can come up with no arguments to detract form Judge Alito’s qualifications; he is entirely qualified as to temperament and experience. His hearings will probably sound like Roberts Redux. They hope to stop his nomination be lying about his record as they have already begun to do on the People for the American Way webpage. Their only weapons are those with which we have become so familiar, lies, half-truths, twisted words, and personal attacks on him and his family. I hope this to be so because the more they show their true nature, the more they will alienate the American voters.

My prediction is a Senate Judiciary Committee Approval, probably along party lines maybe with a couple of Democrat votes. That will be followed by a filibuster by the most extreme liberals in the Democrat Left-wing which will be broken by the “nuclear option.”

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More Press Mountain Out of Scooter's Mole Hill

A Leak, Then a Deluge
Did a Bush loyalist, trying to protect the case for war in Iraq, obstruct an investigation into who blew the cover of a covert CIA operative?

By Barton Gellman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 30, 2005; Page A01

Air Force Two arrived in Norfolk on Saturday morning, July 12, 2003, with Vice President Cheney and his chief of staff aboard. They had come "to send forth a great American ship bearing a great American name," as Cheney said from the flag-draped flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan.

As Cheney returned to Washington with I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the two men spoke of the news on Iraq -- the most ambitious use of the war machine Reagan built two decades before. A troublesome critic was undermining a principal rationale for the war: the depiction of Baghdad, most urgently by Cheney, as a nuclear threat to the United States.

Defending the war became the animating priority aboard Air Force Two that day. According to his indictment on Friday, Libby "discussed with other officials aboard the plane" how he should respond to "pending media inquiries" about the critic, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Apart from Libby, only press aide Catherine Martin is known to have accompanied Cheney on that flight.

The crimes alleged in Libby's indictment would come later. But the flight from Norfolk marked a transition in the four-month slide from politics as usual -- close combat in defense of the president's policies -- to what a special prosecutor described as perjury and obstruction of justice. Summer would give way to fall before Libby reached the point of no return, with his first alleged lies to the FBI. But he skirted the line soon after stepping off the aircraft.

That Saturday afternoon, the indictment states, is when Libby confirmed for Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and disclosed to Judith Miller of the New York Times the classified fact that Wilson's wife, who was known as Valerie Plame, "worked at the CIA." Just over two weeks earlier, after a previous conversation with Cheney, Libby had told Miller more tentatively that Plame "might work at a bureau of the CIA."

It may never be clear what drove Libby, the most cautious of Washington insiders, to take such risks, ostensibly to protect the administration. In a news conference Friday, Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald described the question as unanswerable so far. "If you're asking me what his motives were, I can't tell you; we haven't charged it," Fitzgerald said. The obstruction of his inquiry, he said, "prevents us from making the fine judgments we want to make."

Libby's possible motive is only one of many unknowns left in the aftermath of Friday's indictment, which prompted the resignation of one of the most powerful figures in the White House and left the Bush administration reeling politically. Still to be determined is who first leaked Plame's name to syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak -- the original act that led to Fitzgerald's investigation -- and the roles of many other administration officials, including Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove.

Even so, the grand jury's 22-page indictment fleshes out a saga that has been largely shrouded for almost two years by grand jury secrecy. While Friday's disclosures allege no wrongdoing by Cheney, they place the vice president closer than has been known before to events at the heart of the case.

One notable disclosure is that Libby and Cheney made separate inquiries to the CIA about Wilson's wife, and each confirmed independently that she worked there. It was Cheney, the indictment states, who supplied Libby the detail "that Wilson's wife worked . . . in the Counterproliferation Division" -- an unambiguous declaration that her position was among the case officers of the operations directorate. That conversation took place on June 12, 2003, a month before the Norfolk flight and nearly two weeks before Libby first told a reporter about Plame's CIA affiliation.

Wilson was a former ambassador who traveled to Niger in February 2002 after Cheney requested elaboration on a Defense Department report -- based on erroneous information originating from the Italian security service -- that Iraq had an agreement to buy processed uranium ore, or "yellowcake." Upon his return, Wilson reported to CIA and State Department analysts that he had found no support for the allegation and had reasons to believe it was untrue. When the Bush administration nonetheless launched a public relations campaign that highlighted the uranium report -- most prominently in the president's State of the Union speech on Jan. 28, 2003 -- Wilson began raising questions among friends in government. In March, when the International Atomic Energy Agency exposed the documents as forged, a fact Wilson had not discovered, he began telling journalists in not-for-quotation interviews that the White House propounded a deliberate lie.

Wilson pressed himself fully into the spotlight in the late spring and early summer, a vulnerable moment for the president. The occupation of Iraq had turned unpredictably perilous, with casualties rising in an as-yet-unacknowledged insurgency and strong signs emerging that search teams were at a loss to discover evidence of "weapons of mass destruction."

The uranium claims had never been significant to career analysts -- Iraq had plenty already and lacked the means to enrich it. But the allegations proved irresistible to the White House Iraq Group, which devised the war's communications strategy and included Libby among its members. Every layman understood the connection between uranium and the bomb, participants in the group said in interviews at the time, and it was the easiest way for the Bush administration to raise alarms.

Really Barton, it was perfectly legitimate for the White House to defend its policies in Iraq from the lies, and make no mistake they were blatant lies, of Joe Wilson. Wilson was a political hack attempting to torpedo the Bush reelection campaign, and he was lying to do so. Those lies included his implication that he was sent to Niger by Dick Cheney and that he had debunked the French initiated, Italian executed, forged documents which he had never seen. As to your claim oft repeated by your allies in the Democrat Pary that this was an attack on Wilson using his wife, that doesn't hold water. Replying to an unprompted question from a reporter that you have heard something hardly adds up to a conspiracy to attack someones credibility. It's more reminiscent of the paranoid delusions of a disturbed has been mid-level ambassador.

Full Story: Barton's Bull

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Do We Really Need A Special Prosecutor?

Special Counsel's Value Is Upheld
Analysts Praise Probe's Autonomy

By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 30, 2005; Page A14

Whether or not special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald wins a conviction against former vice presidential adviser I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, legal analysts say he already may have proved what many once doubted: that the Justice Department can deal credibly with allegations of White House wrongdoing.

The CIA leak case in the Bush White House is the first high-level scandal since 1999, when the federal law that had authorized past independent counsel investigations had been allowed to lapse because of frustration by both Republicans and Democrats with past inquiries' cost, length and lack of accountability.

But, the analysts say, Fitzgerald's investigation has maintained its focus, there have been no leaks from his grand jury and he has shown restraint by indicting just one person so far -- declining even to name publicly other people he might have targeted. The main reason his 22-month investigation has gone on so long is that he spent months in a related court fight over the right to question reporters about their confidential sources.

Fitzgerald's appointment "eliminated the risks of the old independent counsel statute, and it's worked just beautifully," said John Barrett, a professor of law at St. John's University who served as a senior aide to Iran-contra independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh for five years. "It looks like a traditional, responsible, very aggressive but professional prosecutor's work."

The 1978 independent counsel law was enacted as a response to the 1973 "Saturday Night Massacre," in which President Richard Nixon ordered the firing of Archibald Cox, a Watergate special prosecutor who had been appointed by his own attorney general. That experience created a lasting concern about conflicts of interest within the executive branch.

Under the law, which was renewed every five years in slightly different versions, the independent counsel was appointed by a three-judge panel that was itself selected by the chief justice of the United States. The law survived a Supreme Court challenge from opponents who saw it as creating an unaccountable, fourth branch of government.

But after the Republican administration of President Ronald Reagan was bruised by Walsh's nearly seven-year investigation, and the administration of Democrat Bill Clinton was battered by Kenneth Starr's probe, Congress let the law expire in 1999.

And a damn good thing too. I do not believe we need to have "Special Prosecutors" fishing around for crimes which appear to have been created by the investigation itself. If they need to investigate a crime, the prosecutor needs to have a narrow scope of investigation focused only on the crime originally being investigated. As much as I dislike the fact that Louis Libby seems to have perjured himself in the Plame investigation, I am uncomfortable with the fact that the perjury came about due to the investigation and had nothing whatsoever to do with the original crime. This will lead to the criminalization of everything. Not good.

Full Story: Got You! Investigations

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Wishfull Thinking by Democrats Based On Dishonest Assessment

Conservatives' Tactics Against Miers May Backfire Next Time
Liberals Say the Rules Keep Changing

By Charles Babington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 30, 2005; Page A04

Conservative activists crippled Harriet Miers's Supreme Court nomination largely by challenging her judicial philosophy, debating the importance of her religious beliefs, demanding to see White House documents and derailing her before she reached a Senate vote. Those tactics may make it harder for them to defend President Bush's next pick, expected by many to be a solid conservative, according to a number of Democrats, independent analysts and even some conservative commentators.

They are struck by differences between the Miers nomination process and that of John G. Roberts Jr., who was confirmed as chief justice a month ago. When liberals mentioned a possible filibuster of Roberts, Republicans insisted on an "up-or-down vote," which Miers never received. Virtually all GOP senators defended the White House's refusal to surrender documents concerning Roberts, but some of them demanded comparable documents regarding Miers.

And whereas Republicans said Roberts's religious beliefs should not be a subject of Senate inquiry, Bush cited Miers's church affiliation and religious convictions as one of her chief qualifications. Now the Democrats may be in a stronger position to wage a filibuster or demand more detailed documentation and explanation of the next nominee's positions if they conclude he or she is out of the judicial mainstream.

"The Republican senators are changing every rule they attempted to set" in the Roberts confirmation, said Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), the Judiciary Committee's most senior member. "They flip-flopped on whether judicial philosophy and religious beliefs are appropriate" topics of Senate probing, he said. "And they flip-flopped on whether Harriet Miers deserved an up-or-down vote."

Marcia D. Greenberger, founder of the National Women's Law Center, said: "I don't know how people can, with a straight face, make some of the same arguments they made in the Roberts nomination after what they said so vociferously with Miers."

Some conservatives agree. Commentator Hugh Hewitt, in a New York Times op-ed column Friday, noted that several Senate Republicans campaigned in 2002 and 2004 on the "up-or-down vote" issue for judicial nominees. "Now, with the withdrawal of Harriet Miers under an instant, fierce and sometimes false assault from conservative pundits and activists, it will be difficult for Republican candidates to continue to make this winning argument: that Democrats have deeply damaged the integrity of the advice and consent process," wrote Hewitt, a law professor at Chapman University in California.

Many of his fellow conservatives reject this argument. "Harriet Miers was heading toward an up-or-down vote" when she decided to withdraw, said Brian McCabe, president of Progress for America, which backed Roberts and Miers. He said there was no talk of a filibuster -- in which 40 of the Senate's 100 members can prevent a question from reaching a vote.

Come on Charles. "Some conservatives agree?" Hugh Hewitt is not "some," but one. Most of us were willing to give Miss Miers her day in the sunshine, but our missgivings stemmed not from her religious beliefs, that was a red-herring put out there by the White House, nor from her philosophy (there were some who did question this). It stemmed from an apparent complete lack of qualifications for the position. Even Senator Specter, who Friday railed about not giving her a chance, said that she needed a crash course in Constitutional Law. That Senator is not what I would call a ringing endoresment. If Democrats choose to take this tack, they will have their posteriors handed to them for it.

Full Story: Dem Dreams

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Attention Conservatives, Support Your Troops!

Battling the Leftist Propaganda Machine

It's time to counter those anti-war Lefties once more. You can show your support by dropping by General Westley Clarke's WesPAC webpage and sending a message to your congressmen to support the effort to prevent Ed Schultz's radio program from being carried by Armed Forces Radio.

Of course this is exactly the opposite of the action intended by Westley Clarkes efforts, but as he is providing the vehicle to contact your representatives in Congress, and a form letter which you can edit to say whatever you wish, I see no reason not to use their facilities. Even better, you will recieve a thank-you e-mail from Wes Clarke.

The website provides direct e-mailing of your message to your people in Congress.

Of course you have to provide your home address and e-mail, but I like to get funny e-mails from idiot Liberals and Clarke is definitely one of those.

Here's the web address: WesPac

Have fun at their expense. I did. Oh yeah, do what I did, suggest that they add the Tony Snow show to the AFN broadcasts.

Remember you can say what you want and it goes out unfiltered.

Cheers!

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Less Wishful Thinking, More Objective Analysis Mr. Weisman

The Rift's Repercussions Could Last Rest of Term

By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 28, 2005; Page A08

The withdrawal of Harriet Miers's nomination to the Supreme Court yesterday was a triumph for conservative activists, but some of the drama's lead players said the bruising battle between erstwhile allies may have left scars for the remainder of President Bush's term.

Those who opposed Miers as insufficiently qualified and unreliably conservative said yesterday they would use their new zeal and organization to drive Bush not only to pick an outwardly conservative nominee but also to press a more conservative agenda through his last three years in office. Some accused those who stuck with Miers as showing themselves more loyal to the White House than their stated conservative principles.

Those who stuck with Miers warned that the White House will long remember the activists who turned on the president's nominee and are not likely to be receptive to their demands.

"This is an enormously significant event for conservatives, no doubt about that," said Manuel A. Miranda, a former top aide to Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), who led the conservative drive to scuttle Miers's confirmation. "It will be stamped across our foreheads for years: Which side were you on in the Miers fight?"

Without doubt, Miers's nomination stirred passions among conservatives that have lain dormant for much of the Bush presidency. Richard A. Viguerie, an architect of the conservative movement, said activists held their tongues for nearly five years as Bush expanded the federal role in education, imposed tariffs on imported steel, secured a prescription drug benefit for Medicare, and oversaw the rapid expansion of federal spending.

"But we did that because it was all about the courts, all about the courts, all about the courts," Viguerie said. "Then when he betrayed us on a Supreme Court nominee, that just woke us all up."

Sometimes it just escapes me how some of the guys keep their jobs. This "analysis" is so far off that it could pass for parody. This was no rift, it was a family squabble. The Republican Party emerges stronger and more united. Democrats are growing more and more desperate as they see their dreams of winning back the Congress and White House fade into the mist. As these minor bumps such as the non-crime of Valerie Plame Wilsons "exposure" and the trumped up charges against DeLay get resolved, the Democrats are going to come off as the petty, vindictive, haters they are.

Full Story: Republican Unity

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Courts Continue to Work Against Fair, Valid Elections

Voter ID Law Is Overturned
Georgia Can No Longer Charge For Access to Nov. 8 Election

By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 28, 2005; Page A03

In a case that some have called a showdown over voting rights, a U.S. appeals court yesterday upheld an injunction barring the state of Georgia from enforcing a law requiring citizens to get government-issued photo identification in order to vote.

The ruling allows thousands of Georgians who do not have government-issued identification, such as driver's licenses and passports, to vote in the Nov. 8 municipal elections without obtaining a special digital identification card, which costs $20 for five years. In prior elections, Georgians could use any one of 17 types of identification that show the person's name and address, including a driver's license, utility bill, bank statement or a paycheck, to gain access to a voting booth.

Last week, when issuing the injunction, U.S. District Judge Harold L. Murphy likened the law to a Jim Crow-era poll tax that required residents, most of them black, to pay back taxes before voting. He said the law appeared to violate the Constitution for that reason. In the 2004 election, about 150,000 Georgians voted without producing government-issued identification.

"Obviously, we're very pleased with the decision," said Daniel Levitas of the American Civil Liberties Union, which joined the NAACP and other groups in a federal lawsuit against the Georgia law. "It's especially timely to see the federal courts step in to protect the precious rights of voters. This decision confirms our contention that the Georgia ID law poses a constitutional hurdle to the right to vote."

State officials say they will challenge the decision by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that was handed down by Judges Frank M. Hull, Stanley F. Birch Jr. and Joel F. Dubina. Birch and Dubina were appointed by President George H. W. Bush, and Hull was named to the appellate court by President Bill Clinton. The case is being watched nationally as Republicans and Democrats in many states battle over who will be allowed on the voter rolls.

The Georgia ID law has been controversial from the day it was submitted in March. Conservative lawmakers said it was needed to limit elections fraud. Liberal lawmakers said that argument was a smokescreen masking another intent: to maintain Republican power in the state by diluting the minority vote, which typically goes to Democrats.

Democrats are ever reliable in working to undermine the electoral system using fraudulent voters. This 11th Circuit Court ruling needs to be slapped down. The integrity of our voter rolls is fundamental to the validity of our elections. Since we now know that the vast majority of voter fraud is committed by Demorats, it stands to reason that they would oppose any reasonable attempt to insure the integrity of the system.

Full Story: 11th Circuit-Fraud Okay

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Wide-spread Corruption In U.N. Dealings with Iraq

U.N. Panel Says 2,400 Firms Paid Bribes to Iraq
Oil-for-Food Program Report Alleges $1.8 Billion in Payments

By Colum Lynch
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 28, 2005; Page A16

UNITED NATIONS, Oct. 27 -- More than 2,400 businesses, including scores of international shell companies and major blue-chip European firms such as Siemens and DaimlerChrysler, paid nearly $1.8 billion in illegal kickbacks to the former Iraqi government through the U.N. oil-for-food program, according to a report by a U.N. committee investigating misconduct.

The 623-page report, which was presented Thursday by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker, the head of the Independent Inquiry Committee, is the most detailed account of how Iraq persuaded almost half of its 4,500 trading partners in more than 60 countries to circumvent U.N. sanctions by secretly channeling kickbacks into Baghdad-controlled Jordanian banks.

The report also shows how French and Russian diplomats, business executives, U.N. officials and anti-sanctions advocates, including a former Vatican official, either solicited oil trade from Iraqi officials on behalf of companies or benefited financially from the program.

After the report was released, Volcker and his top advisers pleaded with the 191-member U.N. General Assembly to change U.N. business practices to prevent future abuses. But he received a chilly response from Costa Rican and Mexican officials, who complained about not being formally given copies of the report. They also questioned why Volcker was raising the matter with the assembly when the Security Council bears primary responsibility for mismanaging the program.

Volcker said design and management failures that permitted the abuses in the oil-for-food program permeate the United Nations. He noted that the failure to institute administrative changes to confront the flaws will lead the world body to repeat its mistakes, further undermining its credibility.

The release of Volcker's fifth and final report marked the end of a $35 million, 18-month investigation into abuses in the United Nations's largest humanitarian program. U.N. investigators expect criminal prosecutors in the United States and other countries to follow up on the report's findings and investigate the firms and individuals named in the report.

Federal and state prosecutors in New York have already charged more than a dozen companies and executives with paying bribes to the former Iraqi government. The Securities and Exchange Commission is conducting its own inquiry into Iraqi businesses.

Texas oil tycoon Oscar S. Wyatt Jr., the former chairman of Coastal Corp., pleaded not guilty Thursday in New York to charges that he paid bribes. The report says Wyatt-controlled firms paid more than $7 million in illegal surcharges. Wyatt has denied wrongdoing through his attorney.

Iraq used its oil wealth to influence some countries' policies at the United Nations, rewarding Russia $19 billion in oil contracts and France $4.4 billion in deals, according to the report. The report notes that numerous U.S. companies, prevented from directly entering the trade, established subsidiaries in France to do business in Iraq.

I think these revelations more than explain the true reason that Russia and France were so inflexible in their opposition to Americas efforts against Iraq. All of the time we were seeking UN support for action against Saddam Hussein's government, the French and Russians were active lobbying against us. The French have now very clearly been exposed as more of an enemy than an ally. As a result of this information, they should be treated as a hostile nation and we should sanction them with trade restrictions and tarrifs.

Full Story: Our French "Allies" Exposed

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With Conservative Pick, President Will Rebound Quickly

A Weakened President Faces New Risks

By Dan Balz and Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, October 28, 2005; Page A01

President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers on Oct. 3 was made from a position of weakness by a White House beset by political problems and eager to avoid a fight over the Supreme Court. Twenty-four excruciating days later, the supposed safe choice crashed, exposing the president as even weaker than before.

Bush now has an opportunity to recover from one of the biggest political miscalculations of his term, the failure to anticipate the backlash Miers would cause with his own conservative base. But in repairing that breach, he risks a new confrontation with Democrats and further estrangement from the political center -- precisely the situation he hoped to avoid when he tapped his loyal and unassuming personal lawyer in the first place.

Few Republicans in Washington saw the timing of Miers's withdrawal as coincidental. With potential indictments of senior White House officials looming in the CIA leak case, the president could ill afford a sustained and increasingly raw rupture within the GOP coalition.

The Miers nomination was more than a humiliation for Bush, however. It was an episode that seemed wholly out of character with the president's style. No Republican president -- not even Ronald Reagan -- has catered to the right more methodically than Bush. But on a matter of first-order significance to many conservatives, the president let personal loyalty override what had been a central tenet of his political strategy.

Across Washington yesterday, there were all manner of explanations being offered: that special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald's leak investigation had distracted top advisers such as White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove; that growing insularity within the president's inner circle had skewed his judgment; that Bush had grown cocksure, blithely assuming conservatives would respect the choice because it came from him.

The uproar over Miers was distinctive in another way: The loudest opposition came from conservative intellectuals, not grass-roots activists. Bush's team managed at first to keep cultural and religious conservatives divided over Miers with aggressive lobbying of leading figures such as Focus on the Family's James C. Dobson, who endorsed Miers immediately. But they could not withstand the battering that came from opinion-shapers such as columnists George Will and Charles Krauthammer, Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol and former White House speechwriter David Frum. By the end, even Dobson announced he probably would have reversed course and opposed her.

Nor in the end could Bush stand up to the barrage of criticism coming from Capitol Hill, where the nominee's meetings with senators stirred unease about her prospects of surviving the grilling that was coming in confirmation hearings. Rarely has a nominee faced the kind of criticism that Miers heard from Republican leaders such as Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (Pa.).

This convergence of special factors in the Miers situation makes its long-term impact hard to predict. A number of Republicans said yesterday that, assuming Bush selects a new nominee widely judged to be well qualified, the damage may dissipate quickly. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) described Miers's withdrawal as "a speed bump" that will have no lasting significance. Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, said, "The sense was of disappointment, not of betrayal."

Far from being "weakened," this whole affair has strengthened the Republican party and the President because it reconfirmed that the strength of the party lies in its conservative base. Republicans again and again have to be reminded that "fortune favors the bold" and that they are most successful when they are unapologetically faithful to their conservative ideals. Everytime the Republicans attempt to reachout to the left, they get burned, and everytime they hold the line and stay truly conservative they win big.

Full Story: Apres L'Affair Miers

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Hooray! Now Bush Can Really Lay the Wood to the Left

Miers withdraws nomination

Thu Oct 27, 2005 9:37 AM ET
By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush's nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court, White House counsel Harriet Miers, abruptly withdrew from consideration on Thursday after fierce criticism from the right and the left about her credentials for the lifetime job.

Bush said in a statement he reluctantly accepted her withdrawal and would move in a timely manner to fill the vacancy left open by the pending retirement of Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.

In a letter to Bush released by the White House, Miers said she was concerned that the Senate confirmation process "presents a burden for the White House and our staff that is not in the best interest of the country."

Some opponents had mounted a campaign to force her withdrawal and some conservative senators had expressed doubts as to whether Miers was sufficiently conservative to move the divided nine-member high court firmly to the right.

Some Democrats were also skeptical about whether she was against a woman's right to abortion, a hugely divisive issue that could come before the Supreme Court.

As a reason for pulling out, Miers, 60, cited the need to maintain privacy of internal records of her White House service that members of Congress wanted to see but Bush wanted to keep confidential.

"I have been informed repeatedly that in lieu of records, I would be expected to testify about my service in the White House to demonstrate my experience and judicial philosophy," Miers wrote.

This is great news for Conservatives. Miers was far too much of an unknown quantity. Her nomination was one of President Bush's worst decisions, and now at last that has been rectified. Harriett Miers did the best thing for the Nation and the President. We should applaud her for her good judgment. Now Mr. President please nominate a strong, unapologetic Conservative like Janice Rogers Brown. Please, Please, Please, Janice Rogers Brown.

Full Story: Miers Graciously Bows Out

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Democrats Need To "Beware the Log In Their Own Eyes"

Democrats try on ethics issue for size
Republicans poised to counter any attacks with claims of their own

By BENNETT ROTH and SAMANTHA LEVINE
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - As Republican political troubles mount on the national scene, Democrats hope to pick up seats in Congress next year by portraying the White House and its allies as incompetent, corrupt and lacking in compassion for the poor.

Republicans, however, dismiss the Democratic strategy, arguing that their opponents have failed to offer any plans to deal with pressing issues.

If Democrats try to exploit the ethics issue, Republicans threaten to hammer away at the legal problems of Democratic lawmakers over the years.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., suggested at a news conference on terrorism Wednesday that the White House has mismanaged a range of issues.

"As with Iraq, as with Katrina, so too with fighting terrorism, the Bush administration does not have a plan," she said. "America can do better," Pelosi added, using the Democrats' new slogan.

Democrats, surrounded by victims of Hurricane Katrina, this week criticized efforts by Republicans to make deep cuts in social programs to pay for storm relief.

With the prospects of indictments of top White House officials in the leaking of the name of a CIA agent, Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean said his party will stop the "culture of corruption that the Republicans have brought to Washington and to statehouses all around the country."

Okay, if you don't like Biblical quotations, how about "People who live in glass houses..." I've been talking about this for some time. The corruption in the Democrat party is so prevalent that they are taking a big chance in using "corruption" as a central pillar of their campaigns. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Okay Pelosi, Dean, bring it on!

Full Story: Pot to Kettle "Your Black"

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I'm So, So, Happy That This Man Was Not Elected

Kerry Urges U.S. to Start Withdrawal From Iraq
Senator's Timetable Specifies 15 Months

By Chris Cillizza and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 27, 2005; Page A03

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) yesterday called for the withdrawal of 20,000 troops from Iraq by year's end as the first step in a proposal that would significantly reduce U.S. military forces in the region over the next 15 months.

Kerry offered a middle ground between those advocating an immediate drawdown of the more than 150,000 U.S. troops stationed in Iraq and the Bush administration, which has declined to set a timetable for a decreased U.S. military presence.

"The way forward in Iraq is not to pull out precipitously or merely promise to stay 'as long as it takes,' " Kerry said during an address at Georgetown University. "We must instead simultaneously pursue both a political settlement and the withdrawal of American combat forces."

Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004, is the highest-profile figure in either party to back a timetable for withdrawal in Iraq. Kerry's decision to announce his proposal comes amid a crop of national opinion polls showing the war growing increasingly unpopular among Democrats, independents and even Republicans.

Kerry is not the first Democratic senator to call for a phased pullout. In mid-August, Russell Feingold (Wis.) set December 2006 as the end date for a significant U.S. military presence in Iraq. Both Kerry and Feingold are weighing presidential runs in 2008.

Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), ranking Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, recently suggested developing a timeline for a contingent withdrawal plan designed to give Iraqis more incentive to take control of their country. His counterpart on the House Armed Services Committee, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-Mo.), has similarly suggested bringing U.S. troops home as Iraqi forces build.

Under Kerry's plan, the first wave of U.S soldiers would leave after Iraq's planned Dec. 15 parliamentary elections, with the "bulk of American combat forces" withdrawn by the end of 2006.

Bush administration officials and military commanders have strongly resisted the idea of setting any timetable, in part because the insurgency has remained active and large swaths of Iraq remain insecure. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has said any withdrawal will be "conditions-based," relying on the success of the Iraqi government, the status of the insurgency, and the strength of the Iraqi security forces.

Just imagine having a president whose vision has been shaped solely by our failure in Vietnam. His only understanding of warfare is that we should abandon our allies to their enemies out of political expediency. A President willing to abandon his position because of public reaction or more correctly the reaction of the press would be an unmitigated disaster. We don't need a President who would be ruled by the New York Times or by world opinion. Do we want the French to dictate American policy?

Full Story: Disaster Averted

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Heating Aid Program, Typical Government Program

Bid for More Home Heating Aid Fails in Senate

Associated Press
Thursday, October 27, 2005; Page A02

The Senate decided yesterday the money was not there for a substantial spending boost for the federal home heating program, deflecting arguments that soaring energy prices could force the poor to choose between heat and food this winter.

Senators voted 54 to 43 in favor of a proposal to boost the fiscal 2006 budget for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program from $2.2 billion to $5.1 billion. A 60-vote majority was needed to approve new spending not coupled with equivalent spending cuts.

Northern senators who pushed for increased spending for the program, led by Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), argued that low-income families would be particularly hurt by the surge in fuel costs.

People could have to "choose between keeping the heat on, putting food on the table or buying much-needed prescription drugs," Collins said. "No family should need to make such terrible choices."

Reed cited estimates that those who heat their homes with fuel oil will need $1,600 this winter, up $380, and the cost of using natural gas for heating could rise $500, to $1,400.

The Senate also defeated, 53 to 46, an alternative put forward by Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) that would have increased spending on the program by about $1.3 billion. The measure would have paid for the increase with an across-the-board cut of almost 1 percent in programs included in a $146 billion spending bill covering health, education and labor programs.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) said that education grants for low-income children would be cut by $118 million, affecting 37,000 youths, and that Head Start would lose $63 million.

It was the third time this month that Reed unsuccessfully offered a LIHEAP amendment to a spending bill. He said he would keep trying.

This is so very typical of government programs. Does anyone remember when this program was first created? It was going to be a temporary measure to assist those in the north who were faced with unprecedented increases in heating oil prices due to the Oil Embargo. That embargo ended two decades ago. There is nothing unexpected in the higher oil prices of today. This is another tax-money give away by those in Congress with socialist leanings which has metasticized into another entitlement.

Full Story: Senate Actually Acts Responsibly

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More Disappointing News for Democrats and MSM

The New Sunni Jihad: 'A Time for Politics'
Tour With Iraqi Reveals Tactical Change

By Ghaith Abdul-Ahad
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, October 27, 2005; Page A01

NORTH OF BAGHDAD -- For weeks before Iraq's constitutional referendum this month, Iraqi guerrilla Abu Theeb traveled the countryside just north of Baghdad, stopping at as many Sunni Arab houses and villages as he could. Each time, his message to the farmers and tradesmen he met was the same: Members of the disgruntled Sunni minority should register to vote -- and vote against the constitution.

"It is a new jihad," said Abu Theeb, a nom de guerre that means "Father of the Wolf," addressing a young nephew one night before the vote. "There is a time for fighting, and a time for politics."

For Abu Theeb and many other Iraqi insurgents, this canvassing marked a fundamental shift in strategy, and one that would separate them from foreign-born fighters such as Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian who leads the group al Qaeda in Iraq.

Two years of boycotting the process had only marginalized Sunnis while Iraqi's Shiite majority gained power. And Abu Theeb's entry into politics was born partly of necessity; attacks by Shiite militias, operating inside and outside the government security apparatus, were taking an increasing toll on Sunni lives.

So at 6:30 a.m. on the day of the referendum, Oct. 15, Theeb was already at the polling center in his village, which he had scouted out days in advance. Two of his fighters took up positions. Abu Theeb and the rest of the fighters, more relaxed, propped their Kalashnikov rifles against walls or placed them on tables.

"No one will attack," Abu Theeb assured a reporter. "I made sure some wrongdoers are protecting the school," he said, jokingly referring to al Qaeda loyalists. To head off any violence, he had co-opted the group by enlisting two of its supporters as his polling site guards.

Oh dear, what are the Democrat naysayers going to do? Drat, another sign of success in Iraq. First Democrats are forced to suffer through a record military victory, their only bright spot being the insurrection. Then they are made to live through the capture of Saddam Hussein. Following that is that danged first election, and the terrorists didn't even blow anyone up. Next they have to suffer the indignity of watching the free Iraqis approve the new constitution (all you can do is attempt to discredit the document). Your only bright spot is the certitude that the Sunnis aren't going to participate, and now this. DRAT!

Full Story: Sunnis Join In

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Last Minute Activity Indicates Desperation to Justify Investigation

Grand Jury Hears Summary of Case On CIA Leak Probe
Decision on Charges May Come Friday

By Carol D. Leonnig and Jim VandeHei
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, October 27, 2005; Page A01

The prosecutor in the CIA leak investigation presented a summary of his case to a federal grand jury yesterday and is expected to announce a final decision on charges in the two-year-long probe tomorrow, according to people familiar with the case.

Even as Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald wrapped up his case, the legal team of White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has been engaged in a furious effort to convince the prosecutor that Rove did not commit perjury during the course of the investigation, according to people close to the aide. The sources, who indicated that the effort intensified in recent weeks, said Rove still did not know last night whether he would be indicted.

Fitzgerald is completing his probe of whether senior administration officials broke the law by disclosing the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to the media in the summer of 2003 to discredit her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, an administration critic. The grand jury's term will expire Friday.

But after grand jurors left the federal courthouse before noon yesterday, it was unclear whether Fitzgerald had spelled out the criminal charges he might ask them to consider, or whether he had asked them to vote on any proposed indictments. Fitzgerald's legal team did not present the results of a grand jury vote to the court yesterday, which he is required to do within days of such a vote.

Yesterday's three-hour grand jury session came after agents and prosecutors this week conducted last-minute interviews with Adam Levine, a member of the White House communications team at the time of the leak, about his conversations with Rove, and with Plame's neighbors in the District.

Should he need more time to finish the investigation, Fitzgerald could seek to empanel a new group of grand jurors to consider the case. But sources familiar with the prosecutor's work said he has indicated he is eager to avoid that route. The term of the current grand jury has been extended once and cannot be lengthened again, according to federal rules.

The down-to-the-wire moves in Fitzgerald's investigation have made for a harrowing week at the White House, where officials are girding for at least one senior administration official to be indicted, according to aides.

What is it with the sudden rush to action by this Special Prosecutor? Is this a sign that he has nothing with which to validate his assignment? It is beginning to look like the Republicans were right in talking about token charges. Is it really a crime to make mistatements to a grand jury investigating a crime that never occurred? While it is true that perjury is a serious crime, how can you, in good concious, find someone guilty of lying about something that never occurred?

Full Story: Fitzgerald's Folly?

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Canadian Whine: Who Cares, Canada Needs Us More Than We Need Them

In Ottawa, Rice Seeks to Temper Bitterness About Bush Policies
Many in Poll See Americans As 'Rude, Greedy and Violent'

By Doug Struck
Washington Post Foreign Service
Wednesday, October 26, 2005; Page A10

TORONTO, Oct. 25 -- As relations between the U.S. and Canadian governments have increasingly soured, Americans here are being viewed with suspicion, derided in jokes and shunned as representatives of a sinister force.

One quick way for dinner speakers in Canada to win applause is to take verbal shots at the United States. President Bush is a frequent target of newspaper columnists. Pollster Michael Adams said Canadian views of the United States this month are the most unfavorable he has seen in 25 years. His findings coincide with the results of a survey of 17,000 Canadians in June by the Pew Research Center in which 53 percent viewed Americans as "rude, greedy and violent."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited Ottawa Monday and Tuesday to try to soothe the rancor. She spoke warmly of the friendship between the North American neighbors. "This is a relationship that is deep and broad and good," she said in an appearance Tuesday with Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew.

But her arrival served to remind Canadians of their irritation with the United States. In April, Rice pointedly canceled a visit to Canada as a diplomatic rebuke for its decision not to participate in the Bush administration's missile defense system. The decision broke a long tradition of visits to Canada by incoming secretaries of state.

The Toronto Star newspaper noted Monday that Rice visited 39 countries, traveled 167,366 miles and spent 357 hours in the air "before making the 90-minute hop to Ottawa."

Her presence this week also gave Prime Minister Paul Martin and members of Parliament an opportunity to state their grievances against the U.S. government.

Top on their list is the U.S. refusal to accept rulings under the North American Free Trade Agreement that the United States has illegally collected nearly $4 billion in tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber imports. The Bush administration views the issue as an arcane trade dispute and Rice asked Tuesday that Canadians "keep this in perspective." But to Canadians, it has become a searing symbol of arrogance and hubris by the Bush administration.

Blaring newspaper headlines have described the U.S. government as a "bully" and "outlaw." The national tenor was captured in a blunt question to Rice on Tuesday by a reporter in Ottawa: "If you don't live up to a decision with your closest neighbor, how will other countries around the world trust the United States?"

In response, Rice urged Canadians "not to speak in apocalyptic language," and she insisted the U.S. commitment "has been as good as gold."

Martin, though, has been persistent on the issue. "Friends live up to their agreements," he scolded when asked about the U.S. position in a news conference Monday. In a telephone conversation with Bush on Oct. 14, Martin rejected the president's request to negotiate the tariff issue, saying Canada "would not negotiate a win," according to an account by Martin's office uncontested by the White House.

Hey Martin, friends don't act snarky, sneer at, don't snipe behind their back, make cheap jokes at their friends. It's a two way street. How can you expect me to respect you if you show us no respect. Perhaps, if you were more respectful of your "friends," you would get more respect?

Full Story: Condi Soothes Canadian Hurt

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Brown Was Not Fired, He Was Planning to Leave Before Katrina

Brown Had Resignation Plans Before Katrina Hit

By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Michael D. Brown was days away from announcing plans to resign as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency when Hurricane Katrina hit Aug. 29, according to e-mails released by separate House and Senate investigations into the government's flawed response to the disaster.

Sen. Susan M. Collins (R-Maine), chairman of the Senate investigation, questioned whether Brown's status played a role in the response.

"The fact that it appears that Michael Brown was planning to resign may explain in part his curious detachment during the Katrina catastrophe," Collins said.

The e-mails also suggest that the administration knew Brown was on the verge of departing when he was recalled as head of the sluggish rescue and relief efforts for the New Orleans area.

Brown resigned on Sept. 12, but the Department of Homeland Security then contracted with him at his full $148,000-a-year salary to serve as a consultant on a review of the response to Hurricane Katrina. The consulting arrangement, initially set to end Oct. 10, has been extended by four weeks, department spokesman Russ Knocke said.

Collins was "surprised to learn" that Brown's consulting deal has been extended, she said, because Michael P. Jackson, deputy secretary of homeland security, told her it would last 30 days.

Knocke said Brown "is transitioning out of a job he held for three years, transferring relevant documents and data and his experiences at the agency."

Brown had privately shared his intentions with acquaintances, and FEMA announced in the aftermath of Brown's resignation that the director of the agency's recovery division, Daniel A. Craig, had also planned to leave a month later.

Brown had privately shared his intentions with acquaintances, and FEMA announced in the aftermath of Brown's resignation that the director of the agency's recovery division, Daniel A. Craig, had also planned to leave a month later.

In an Aug. 31 e-mail to FEMA aide James Tillie, Brown wrote, "I should have done my announcement a week early." That evening, Craig wrote to Brown: "We need to get this done right or neither of us are leaving on great terms . . . and we were days away."

Well this would explain his in attention to the aftermath of Katrina. Bush was ill-served by this man whose attention was obviously focused elsewhere.

Original Post: Michael Brown "Disinterested"

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Stephen, I Don't Want Your Opinion On How The Constitution Should Read

In Print: Bookends of Ideology

By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 26, 2005; Page A17

One of the Supreme Court's more interesting internal dynamics is the intellectual sparring between two former law professors, Justices Antonin Scalia and Stephen G. Breyer.

Scalia, the conservative, wants the court's interpretations of the law to stick as closely as possible to the text of statutes and the original meaning of the Constitution; Breyer, the liberal, argues just as forcefully that this approach is narrow and impractical. It's a battle of ideas that has been waged in their opinions, their remarks at oral argument -- even in a televised debate at American University in January.

Now Breyer has taken his side of the argument to the next level, publishing a book called "Active Liberty: Interpreting Our Democratic Constitution" about how justices should decide cases. It is based on speeches he gave as the Tanner Lectures on Human Values at Harvard University last year -- just as Scalia's 1997 manifesto, "A Matter of Interpretation: Federal Courts and the Law," was based on Scalia's 1994-1995 Tanner Lectures.

Breyer's thesis is that justices must be guided by the broad democratic purposes embodied in the Constitution's various provisions, rather than its words alone. As an example, he writes that campaign finance regulations are constitutional because they "help further the kind of open public discussion that the First Amendment seeks to sustain, both as an end, and as a means of achieving a workable democracy."

In an interview about his book, Breyer said that it is not a direct riposte to Scalia's but acknowledged, "I have to, of course, describe the views of those who disagree with my approach."

Stephen, when you achieve the brilliance of our founding fathers and have an equal understanding of government and how a republic should be run, then maybe I'll consider you qualified to edit their work.

Full Story: Breyer's Ego

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The Difference Between Lying and Forgetting

What's a Little Lying Between Friends?

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 25, 2005; 11:18 AM

"Some perjury technicality"?

Did Kay Bailey Hutchison really say that?

She must have. It was on "Meet the Press."

Is this the Republican strategy for dealing with any CIA leak indictments? Saying no real crimes were committed, just a teensy weensy bit of perjury? Turning Patrick Fitzgerald into Ken Starr?

I hasten to add that I have no idea whether anyone will be indicted. I've never met Pat Fitzgerald, and I had problems with the way he threatened reporters with jail, but as the U.S. attorney in Chicago who went after some Daley cronies, he has a sterling reputation.

It is true that prosecutors who can't prove the original crime often wind up bringing perjury and obstruction charges. But lying to investigators, or to a federal grand jury, strikes at the heart of the law-enforcement process. This happens to be the message that GOPers pounded over and over again when Clinton dissembled over Monica, so surely they take it seriously. Or is that only when a Democrat is president?

Hutchison likened the senior administration officials who might or might not be indicted to Martha Stewart, who was only charged with a cover-up (lying about insider trading is okay as long as you're not convicted of insider trading? Well, Martha did get two TV shows, even though one is tanking). The Texas senator also complained about "sort of a gotcha mentality in this country," which again, try as I might, I can't remember being a significant Republican complaint during the prosecutions of the Clinton years.

It instantly occurred to me that I might check what Sen. Hutchison had to say during the Lewinsky scandal. But in the blog world, somebody's already thought of your best idea five minutes ago. So before I could type in the Nexis search, I saw that Michael Crowley , on the New Republic's new group grope "The Plank," has this:

"Hmm . . . That's not the tune Hutchison was singing back when Bill Clinton was caught with his hands in the intern jar. Here's the February 13, 1999 Dallas Morning News:

" 'The principle of the rule of law-- equality under the law and a clear standard for perjury and obstruction of justice-- was the overriding issue in this impeachment,' said Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, who also voted 'guilty' on both counts."

Boy Howard, you reporters really have a problem with understanding the difference between intentionally deceiving a grand jury ("I did not have sex with that woman...")or a Senate Committee while under oath ("I don't recall that, Senator") and forgetting what you said the last time you were called before the grand jury months before, without the help of a lawyer to refresh your memory (in the Senate hearing you are allowed to have a lawyer present). Of course, if someone intentionally deceived the grand jury or special prosecutor, then they should throw the book at them. But what Kay Bailey Hutchison is correct.

Full Story: Kurtz's Confusion

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Cheney's Right: Boil These Animals in Oil

Cheney Plan Exempts CIA From Bill Barring Abuse of Detainees

By R. Jeffrey Smith and Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 25, 2005; Page A01

The Bush administration has proposed exempting employees of the Central Intelligence Agency from a legislative measure endorsed earlier this month by 90 members of the Senate that would bar cruel and degrading treatment of any prisoners in U.S. custody.

The proposal, which two sources said Vice President Cheney handed last Thursday to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in the company of CIA Director Porter J. Goss, states that the measure barring inhumane treatment shall not apply to counterterrorism operations conducted abroad or to operations conducted by "an element of the United States government" other than the Defense Department.

Although most detainees in U.S. custody in the war on terrorism are held by the U.S. military, the CIA is said by former intelligence officials and others to be holding several dozen detainees of particular intelligence interest at locations overseas -- including senior al Qaeda figures Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Abu Zubaida.

Cheney's proposal is drafted in such a way that the exemption from the rule barring ill treatment could require a presidential finding that "such operations are vital to the protection of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack." But the precise applicability of this section is not clear, and none of those involved in last week's discussions would discuss it openly yesterday.

McCain, the principal sponsor of the legislation, rejected the proposed exemption at the meeting with Cheney, according to a government source who spoke without authorization and on the condition of anonymity. McCain spokeswoman Eileen McMenamin declined to comment. But the exemption has been assailed by human rights experts critical of the administration's handling of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"This is the first time they've said explicitly that the intelligence community should be allowed to treat prisoners inhumanely," said Tom Malinowski, the Washington advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. "In the past, they've only said that the law does not forbid inhumane treatment." Now, he said, the administration is saying more concretely that it cannot be forbidden.

The provision in question -- which the Senate on Oct. 5 voted 90 to 9 to attach to its version of the pending defense appropriations bill over the administration's opposition -- essentially proscribes harsh treatment of any detainees in U.S. custody or control anywhere in the world. It was specifically drafted to close what its backers say is a loophole in the administration's policy of generally barring torture, namely its legal contention that these constraints do not apply to treatment of foreigners on foreign soil.

The House version of the appropriations bill contains no similar provision on detainee treatment, and lawmakers are to meet later this week to begin reconciling the conflict.

Cheney's meeting with McCain last week was his third attempt to persuade the lawmaker, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, to accept a less broad legislative bar against inhumane treatment. Cheney spokeswoman Lea Anne McBride declined to comment, saying, "the vice president does not discuss private conversations that he has with members [of Congress] . . . or information that may be exchanged with members."

She added that the intent of such meetings is usually "to build consensus on legislative issues, still in the policymaking process." CIA spokeswoman Jennifer Millerwise Dyck, a former Cheney aide, said the agency does not comment on the director's meetings.

Other sources said the vice president is also still fighting a second provision of the Senate-passed legislation, which requires that detainees in Defense Department custody anywhere in the world may be subjected only to interrogation techniques approved and listed in the Army's Field Manual.

This concept is absurd. We are not fighting a normal enemy here. These people have no compunction about using the most heinous forms of treatment of Americans they have in custody. It does not matter to them if we put their people up in the Waldorf Astoria, they are still going to brutalize and murder the Americans. They only see our good treatment of their people as a sign of our weakness. McCain needs to shut up and go home. He is a fool and an embarrassment to America. He served America and for that I thank him, but it does not entitle him to behave like an ass.

Full Story: They're Criminals not POWs

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Milbank and Pincus, Your Biases Are Showing

Husband Is Conspicuous in Leak Case
Wilson's Credibility Debated as Charges In Probe Considered

By Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, October 25, 2005

To his backers, Joseph C. Wilson IV is a brave whistle-blower wronged by the Bush administration. To his critics, he is a partisan who spouts unreliable information.

But nobody disputes this: Possessed of a flamboyant style and a love for the camera lens, Wilson helped propel the unmasking of his wife's identity as a CIA operative into a sprawling, two-year legal probe that climaxes this week with the possible indictment of key White House officials. He also turned an arcane matter involving the Intelligence Identities Protection Act into a proxy fight over the administration's credibility and its case for war in Iraq.

Also beyond dispute is the fact that the little-known diplomat took maximum advantage of his 15 minutes of fame. Wilson has been a fixture on the network and cable news circuit for two years -- from "Meet the Press" to "Imus in the Morning" to "The Daily Show." He traveled west and lunched with the likes of Norman Lear and Warren Beatty.

He published a book, "The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Betrayed My Wife's CIA Identity." He persuaded his wife, Valerie Plame, to appear with him in a January 2004 Vanity Fair photo spread, in which the two appeared in his Jaguar convertible.

Now, amid speculation that prosecutors could bring charges against White House officials this week, Republicans preparing a defense of the administration are reviving the debate about Wilson's credibility and integrity.

Wilson's central assertion -- disputing President Bush's 2003 State of the Union claim that Iraq was seeking nuclear material in Niger -- has been validated by postwar weapons inspections. And his charge that the administration exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq has proved potent.

At the same time, Wilson's publicity efforts -- and his work for Sen. John F. Kerry's presidential campaign -- have complicated his efforts to portray himself as a whistle-blower and a husband angry about the treatment of his wife. The Vanity Fair photos, in particular, hurt Plame's reputation inside the CIA; both Wilson and Plame have said they now regret doing the photo shoot.
The truth is Wilson is a publicity seeker.

Wilson's critics in the administration said his 2002 trip to Niger for the CIA to probe reports that Iraq was trying to buy uranium there was a boondoggle arranged by his wife to help his consulting business.

The Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial page, defending the administration, wrote yesterday that, "Mr. Wilson became an antiwar celebrity who joined the Kerry for president campaign." Discussing his trip to Niger, the Journal judged: "Mr. Wilson's original claims about what he found on a CIA trip to Africa, what he told the CIA about it, and even why he was sent on the mission have since been discredited."

Wilson's defenders say he is a truth-teller who has been unfairly attacked. "[T]he White House responded to Ambassador Wilson in the worst possible way," said Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) said at a Democratic gathering in July. "They did not present substantive evidence to justify the uranium claim. . . . Instead, it appears that the president's advisers launched a smear campaign, and Ambassador Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame Wilson, became collateral damage."

Before the Niger episode, Wilson was best known as the charg d'affaires in Baghdad, a diplomat commended by George H.W. Bush for protecting and securing the release of American "human shields" at the time of the Persian Gulf War. He was not known as a partisan figure -- he donated money to both Al Gore and George W. Bush in 1999 -- and says he was neither antiwar nor anti-Bush when he went to Niger in late February 2002.