Why being able to fill judicial posts

Gives the president so much power:

Yesterday, federal district Judge John D. Bates “dismissed a lawsuit filed by former CIA officer Valerie Plame and her husband [Joe Wilson] against Vice President Cheney and other top officials over the Bush administration’s” retaliatory leak of Plame’s identity. Bates’s decision yesterday is in line with a long record of injecting his personal political agenda into the administration of law.

This man has shielded the Bush administration in several lawsuits and was appointed to FISA where he promptly allowed the White House to continue its domestic spying program.

It's going to take years sifting out these clunkers in our judical system.

Oh Brave Sir Georgie

Attempts to tell us he is moving on:

At a news conference Thursday, Bush acknowledged publicly for the first time that someone in his administration perhaps leaked the name of former CIA officer Valerie Plame to the news media — an act that launched the criminal investigation that resulted in Libby's conviction.

"And, you know, I've often thought about what would have happened had that person come forth and said, 'I did it.' Would we have had this, you know, endless hours of investigation and a lot of money being spent on this matter?" Bush said.

"It has been a tough issue for a lot of people in the White House, and it's run its course, and now we're going to move on."

Interesting that what you just confessed to, Georgie, is illegal as hell. You can thank your dad for that.



But even the judge who passed sentence on Libby is stunned at Bush's action:

WASHINGTON — In an unusual expression of frustration, the judge who sentenced former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby to 30 months in jail, only to see the sentence commuted by President Bush, said he was "perplexed" by the act of clemency.

In his first public comments on the matter, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton took issue with Bush's statement that the prison sentence ordered for Libby last month was "excessive." Walton defended the sentence, saying that he followed established legal precedents as well as a strict interpretation of federal sentencing guidelines that has been supported by Bush's own administration.

Brave Sir Georgie ran away, he ran away, oh, he ran away..... but we are staying and checking for clues.

Terrible things, facts.

A smackdown on David Brooks by David Corn via Larry Johnson:
July 3, 2007

Mr. Brooks, our apologies. There was a snafu yesterday, and we neglected to send you the edited version of your latest column, which contained several queries from us. What appeared in today's Times was the copy you initially filed--with all those queries obviously unaddressed. Again, we apologize for the error and hope this did not cause you any trouble or embarrassment. For the record, below is the marked-up version of your column.

By DAVID BROOKS

In retrospect, Plamegate was a farce in five acts. The first four were scabrous, disgraceful and absurd. Justice only reared its head at the end. [Powerful opening. Setting the bar high. Must be proved.]

The drama opened, as these dark comedies are wont to do, with a strutting little peacock who went by the unimaginative name of Joe Wilson. [Pot calling kettle back, Mr. Brooks? Besides, do most "dark comedies" open with plain-named birds. Query Mr. Rich?]

Mr. Wilson claimed that his wife had nothing to do with his trip to investigate Iraqi purchases in Niger, though that seems not to have been the case. [Chronology problem? Mr. Wilson did not "open" this "comedy" with such a claim. He began the episode by publishing an op-ed--on the very same page your column appears--that accused the administration of having "twisted" the prewar intelligence. The issue of his wife's involvement in his mission to Iraq came later.]

He claimed his trip proved Iraq had made no such attempts, though his own report said nothing of the kind. [He did not claim his trip had "proved"--your word--the matter. He wrote that after speaking with past and present officials of Niger and "people associated with the country's uranium business," he had concluded that "it was highly doubtful that any such transaction had ever taken place." (We can forward you a copy of his op-ed.) And, as you know, columnists of the Times are not fact-checked. But we would point out that in his Times op-ed, Mr. Wilson did not claim, as you state, that "his trip proved Iraq had made no such attempts" to purchase uranium. He maintained that "there's simply too much oversight over too small an industry for a sale to have transpired." And--not to belabor what might be a fact-checking issue--according to a Senate intelligence committee investigation, the report written by the CIA on Mr. Wilson's trip "described how the structure of Niger's uranium mines would make it difficult, if not impossible, for Niger to sell uranium to any rogue states."]

Corn's response continues in its wonderfulness, pomposity pricked at every turn by needle sharp facts. I will now post a pic in honor of David Corn's brillance.



Thank you, sir. That was delicious!

The most glorious smackdown of Toensing,

The brilliant testimony of Valerie Plame, and the bringing to light more things to investigate for Henry Waxman. Emptywheel from Firedoglake:

Which leaves us, two days later, to reflect on what the Hearing accomplished. Importantly, Waxman gave Valerie Wilson an opportunity to correct, under oath, many of the fictions the right has propagated about her in the last four years. Just as importantly, the Hearing served to remind us (as Patrick Fitzgerald did in his closing statements) that Valerie Wilson is a person, not an argument. Not only does she have kids and a husband. But she used to have an important role in protecting our country from the proliferation of nuclear weapons. She served our country, and the gratitude our country showed her was to expose her, her family, her colleagues, and the assets she recruited to a great deal of danger.

But the hearing also did one more thing. It established uncontrovertibly that the White House did not follow statutes governing the unauthorized release of classified information. Regardless of what happens with the other materials Fitzgerald collected during his investigation, establishing that fact gives Waxman the ability to pursue more information. It took a matter of hours for Waxman to take the next step–asking Josh Bolten for a full accounting.

Update: Tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors notes how much Toensing actually didn't know.

Update: Silent Patriot at Crooks and Liars reminds Toensing what the word covert actually means and how it's not hard to find:

I am not a lawyer, but I tracked down the language of the law and it reads as follows:

FindLaw:

(4) The term "covert agent" means -
(A) a present or retired officer or employee of an
intelligence agency or a present or retired member of the Armed
Forces assigned to duty with an intelligence agency -
(i) whose identity as such an officer, employee, or member
is classified information, and
(ii) who is serving outside the United States or has within
the last five years served outside the United States;

I was wondering if you would be willing to explain why Ms. Plame was not "covert" despite her sworn testimony that (a) she was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency, (b) her identity was classified (as was confirmed during yesterday's hearing), and (c) she had indeed served overseas within the past five years. By the very definition of the law you helped craft, it would appear that she meets every qualification of a "covert" agent.

Oh my!

Turning up the heat:

Rep. Waxman wrote a letter to White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten asking him to explain why the White House failed to conduct any investigation following the disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson’s covert CIA employment. Read it here.

Randi Rhodes has been saying this for years

But the outing of Valerie Plame was also to take out her CIA company Brewster Jennings. Via Morse at Mock Paper Scissors:

According to U.S. intelligence sources, the White House exposure of Valerie Plame and her Brewster Jennings & Associates was intended to retaliate against the CIA’s work in limiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. WMR has reported in the past on this aspect of the scandal. In addition to identifying the involvement of individuals in the White House who were close to key players in nuclear proliferation, the CIA Counter-Proliferation Division prevented the shipment of binary VX nerve gas from Turkey into Iraq in November 2002. The Brewster Jennings network in Turkey was able to intercept this shipment which was intended to be hidden in Iraq and later used as evidence that Saddam Hussein was in possession of weapons of mass destruction. U.S. intelligence sources revealed that this was a major reason the Bush White House targeted Plame and her network.

(Update: Corrected link)

Waxman opens up hearings on the White House's outing of Valerie Plame

Cheney, Rove, Bush? Raise your right hand please...

Chairman Henry A. Waxman announced a hearing on whether White House officials followed appropriate procedures for safeguarding the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson. At the hearing, the Committee will receive testimony from Ms. Wilson and other experts regarding the disclosure and internal White House security procedures for protecting her identity from disclosure and responding to the leak after it occurred. The hearing is scheduled for Friday, March 16.

In addition, the Committee today sent a letter to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald commending him for his investigation and requesting a meeting to discuss testimony by Mr. Fitzgerald before the Committee.

The flow chart of impeachable offenses

Via Bryan at Why Now? Juan Cole has the timeline and photos of the Bush administration as they furiously beat the drum for war.

Excellently well done.

Nine myths about Scooter Libby and the Plame case you should expect to see in Republican talking points

Incoming about.....now: (My parentheses)

On March 6, a federal jury found former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby guilty on charges of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to federal investigators. In the wake of this decision, conservatives and other media figures can be expected to revive and advance numerous myths and falsehoods regarding the CIA leak case that have circulated throughout the media since Libby's indictment in October 2005.

In anticipation of this misinformation, Media Matters for America has listed those baseless and false claims likely to surface in the coming days and weeks:

(Here is a list, they explain in the post in great detail).

No underlying crime was committed. (False)
There was no concerted White House effort to smear Wilson. (False)
Libby was not responsible for the leak of Plame's identity. (False)
Libby merely "left out some facts." (False)
Libby's leak was an effort to set the record straight. (False)
There is no evidence that the Plame leak compromised national security. (False)
Fitzgerald is a partisan prosecutor. (False)
Fitzgerald exceeded his mandate in investigating violations beyond the IIPA. (False)
Plame's employment with the CIA was widely known. (False)

Closing statements of the Scooter Libby trial

By emptywheel at The Next Hurrah. Breaks down the power plays and manuevers by the opposing lawyers, their statements, actions and reactions:

Fitzgerald took Wells' mock outrage and mocked it right back. Not only did his judicious (ha! like that word) use of emotion grab the attention of the jury in a way that Wells' sustained faux outrage no longer could. But with just a few words, Fitzgerald managed to belittle the entire argument the Defense had been making.

But Fitzgerald wasn't done with reappropriating Wells' schtick. After doing a number of things with his rebuttal--finally establishing Valerie Wilson as a person, getting weedier than I have ever been, countering Jeffress' "Perry Mason moment" with his own, accusing Cheney of obstructing justice--Fitzgerald returned to his explanation of why obstruction was so important. He wasn't yelling, like Wells had done. Rather, he used the same barely controlled outrage voice he used in the press conference where he announced charges against Libby. His voice cracked, as it had before.

And he flipped Wells' outrage on its head. Rather than Libby as the aggrieved party, he put the American people in the role of aggrieved party. He picked up Wells' language about what Scooter deserved, and asked, "Don't the American people deserve the truth?!?!?!" Then he picked up Wells' language about "giving Scooter back" and flipped that too.

If as a result his wife had a job, she worked at CPD, She gets dragged into newspapers. People want to find out was a law broken when people want to know, who did it. What role did Defendant play. What role did VP play? He told you he may have discussed this with VP. Don't you think FBI desesrves straight answers. When you go in [that] jury room, your commonsense will tell you that he made a gamble. He threw sand in the eyes of the FBI. He stole the truth of the judicial system. You return [a guilty verdict] you give truth back.

It perfectly mirrored Wells' argument: Faux outrage, Real outrage; Libby and his family, Valerie and her live; Give Libby back ... or give the truth back.

No better way to put this trial--you can give Libby back, or the American people can have the truth back. Wow.

But never forget--it was all set up when Zeidenberg, not on anyone's radar as the alpha male in this trial, forced Ted Wells to defend himself, rather than defend Scooter Libby.

Pdfs of evidence in the Scooter Libby perjury trial

If anyone wants to see them.

Olbermann overview of the Libby perjury trial

The prosecution rests. List of who said what to whom at the end of the video.

The Scooter Libby perjury trial

is about to drag in the bear in a cage and a bunch of sticks.

Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake:

While tomorrow's release of the Scooter Libby grand jury tapes will no doubt be fodder for endless blog posts, they will be of no less interest to shrinks and dramatists. Over five and a half hours of the tapes played in court today, and although Libby's endless network of obfuscations at times became impenetrable, it was fascinating to watch his gradually dawning realization under Patrick Fitzgerald's relentless and dogged questioning that he was in fact screwed. Initially calm and self-assured, as Fitzgerald detailed one after another conversation in which Libby discussed Valerie Plame's identity with those who contradicted his claim of having heard the information first from Tim Russert, you could hear him start to slip. He grew foggy, his voice dropped, he became dour and tried to shift out from under Fitzgerald's painfully detailed questioning but there was no place to hide. Even hard core cynics in the media room were riveted.

The day started out with Judge Walton ruling that New York Times journalist David Sanger would be compelled to testify in Libby's defense. Somehow Sanger is supposed to say that he spoke with Libby during the time in question and since Libby didn't say anything to him about Valerie Plame this must be proof of…well, I don't quite know but Team Libby certainly seemed to think it was significant. Sanger's attorney was arguing against the appearance so an appeal is probably not unlikely, though one has to wonder how many New York Times reporters will go to jail, wallowing in melodrama in defense of Scooter Lilbby. I think we might already be at one too many.

The Great Undoing

The Bush administration, peopled as it is with ex-Nixon/Ford staffers, has done a wonderful play-by-play of Watergate. It isn't the crime, it's the cover-up that gets you.
Mustang Bobby:

For those of us who remember Watergate, it wasn't the "third-rate burglary" that brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon. It wasn't even the hush money paid to the burglars or the dirty tricks planned at the hands of G. Gordon Liddy in order to undermine the Democrats in the 1972 election. It was the cover-up that did them all in; the lying to the FBI, lying to Congress, and the obstruction of justice in the investigations that did it. The initial incident was nothing compared to the attempt to kill the result.

The same is true here. The leak of Valerie Plame's name, as odious and craven as it was in the attempt by the Bush administration to get back at someone for embarrassing the White House for calling them out on the infamous sixteen words, turns out to have been an inadvertant slip of the tongue by Richard Armitage, an innocuous public servant who, as far as anyone can tell, had no political motives when he did it. He just plain goofed. But given the paranoia and revenge-filled mindset of this White House, led by a president who can never make mistakes and enabled by willing toadys like Karl Rove within and the right-wing orcosphere without, it is not surprising that suspicion immediately fell on the higher-ups like Rove, Cheney, and even the president himself.

For a front row seat at the Great Undoing of the Glorious Neocon Rule, go to Firedoglake for the liveblogging of the Libby Trial.

The press suddenly realizes why blogs have become first choice sources of news and information

Because the so-called liberal media is a crock and anyone with a few brain cells could see lies and propaganda were being dispersed, that 'journalists' had become embarrassing White House lackeys, that no one was asking questions that demanded to be asked. Mainstream media just laid down and rolled over on command.

It apparently became clear to them when Cheney's former top press assistant Cathie Martin was on the witness stand what people who had been paying attention knew years ago.

Los Angeles Times:

Cheney's demonstrated proclivity for rhetorical bullying aside, dismissing legitimate questions growing out of such views in the fashion aired by CNN this week is an expression of contempt for public opinion itself.

There's no particular reason why malfeasant members of the press or those who merely are incompetent shouldn't be held in contempt. The news media, after all, are like every American institution, home to its share of idiots, poseurs, slothful time-markers and self-interested time servers. The problem is that Cheney and his former aides aren't simply contemptuous of the individual reporters or even of the press itself. They're contemptuous of the principle under which the free press operates — which is the American people's right to have a reasonable account of what the government does in their name.

The lesson to take away from this week's unintended seminar in contemporary journalism is that the vice president and his staff, acting on behalf of the Bush administration, believe that truth is a malleable adjunct to their ambitions and that they have a well-founded confidence that some members of the Washington press corps will cynically accommodate that belief for the sake of their careers.

It's a sick little arrangement in which the parties clearly have one thing in common: a profound indifference to both the common good and to their obligation to act in its service.

Washington Post's Dana Milbank who started off the article with the title: Memo to Tim Russert: Dick Cheney thinks he controls you:

It is unclear whether the first week of the trial will help or hurt Libby or the administration. But the trial has already pulled back the curtain on the White House's PR techniques and confirmed some of the darkest suspicions of the reporters upon whom they are used. Relatively junior White House aides run roughshod over members of the president's Cabinet. Bush aides charged with speaking to the public and the media are kept out of the loop on some of the most important issues. And bad news is dumped before the weekend for the sole purpose of burying it.
[snip]

Martin was embarrassed about the "leak" option; the case, after all, is about a leak. "It's a term of art," she said. "If you give it to one reporter, they're likelier to write the story."

For all the elaborate press management, things didn't always go according to plan. Martin described how Time wound up with an exclusive one weekend because she didn't have a phone number for anybody at Newsweek.

"You didn't have a lot of hands-on experience dealing with the press?" defense attorney Theodore Wells asked.

"Correct," Martin replied. After further questions, she added: "Few of us in the White House had had hands-on experience with any crisis like this."

(I find it very instructive she used the word 'crisis' to describe the Joseph Wilson counterattack.)

Anyway. To the mainstream media: Welcome to the party, pal!

Being set up by Bush

To take the fall is a family pastime. If you are no longer protecting the boy king, you get thrown under the bus. After six years, there are a lot of bodies under there.

Attorney Wells for Libby:

Attorneys for former White House aide ``Scooter'' Libby said Tuesday that Bush administration officials tried to blame him for the leak of a CIA operative's name to cover up for Bush political adviser Karl Rove's own disclosures.

Attorney Theodore Wells, in the opening statements of I. Lewis Libby's perjury trial, said Libby went to Vice President Dick Cheney in 2003 and complained that the White House was subtly blaming him for leaking Valerie Plame's identity to columnist Robert Novak.

``They're trying to set me up. They want me to be the sacrificial lamb,'' Wells said, recalling the conversation between Libby and Cheney. ``I will not be sacrificed so Karl Rove can be protected.''

Well...You got caught, Scooter. Now watch this drive...

How hard will it be to find a jury for Scooter?

Sinfonian at Blast Off! quotes the news:
"The defense faces a key challenge in picking a jury for this highly political case in a city where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans more than 9-to-1. Cheney is expected to be a defense witness."

The Libby lawyers ask questions

"Defense attorneys are even more pointed in their proposed questions. Among those on their list:

• "Based on what you know at this time, do you believe that the Administration misled the American people to justify going to war?"

• Have you been following any of the recent political scandals involving Jack Abramoff, William Jefferson, Tom DeLay, Cynthia McKinney, or Mark Foley?

• Do you have particularly strong feelings about the war in Iraq?

• Based on what you know at this time, do you believe that the administration misled the American people to justify going to war?"

Looseheadprop of Firedoglake offers a primer on the trial.

Christy Hardin Smith talks about Valerie Plame and the destruction of her career, and the men behind the exposure:
"For the Bush Administration, the message and the reality that they have created for themselves is everything — outside criticism is ignored or squashed as needed. Over and over again. Critics are silenced by any means necessary, and the consequences be damned. That Valerie Plame Wilson's network of agents and assets working on Iraqi and Iranian WMD matters was collateral damage? Well, that's the price to pay for political vengeance, now isn't it?

This is who is running our nation. This petty, vengeful, nasty cabal of neocon-men headed by Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby, David Addington, Karl Rove, the rest of the WHIG, and George Bush. Take a good, long, hard look at them square in the face of who they truly are through the lens of this single case — and then sit back and wait for the testimony to put an even more dismal picture into play.

This is about to be one helluva trial. But before we even get to it, shouldn't we all start asking all of the questions that we failed to ask in the run-up to Iraq before we get started on a war without end with Iran? Here, I'll start: is this a good idea for the long-term interests of the United States? If not, then why are we even thinking about it? "

Update: Murray Waas:

"On January 16, Libby will go on trial in the federal courthouse in Washington D.C. on five counts of lying to federal investigators, perjury, and obstruction of justice. He is accused of attempting to conceal his role, and possibly that of others, in leaking to the media that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA officer, and that she might have played a role in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Niger in 2002 to determine whether Saddam Hussein had attempted to procure uranium from Niger to build a nuclear weapon.

In attempting to determine Libby's motives for allegedly lying to the FBI and a federal grand jury about his leaking of Plame's CIA identity to journalists, federal investigators theorized from the very earliest stages of the case that Libby may have been trying to hide Cheney's own role in encouraging Libby to discredit Wilson, according to attorneys involved in the case.

Cheney is scheduled to be a defense witness in the Libby trial. Regarding this, a spokesperson for the Vice President says: "We've cooperated fully in this matter and will continue to do so in fairness to the parties involved.""

CIA says no to Plame book

Gee... I wonder why?