Category: Politics

John Dean, of all people, ought to know a thing or two about Presidents who break the law. So when he writes an article about the serious implications of President Bush’s consultation with a criminal defense attorney, it’s time to sit up and take notice.

Here’s the money quote:

Undoubtedly, those from the White House have been asked if they spoke with the president about the leak. It appears that one or more of them may indeed have done so.

Dean’s take on the situation is that if the President did not know anything about the leak, he wouldn’t need to call in outside counsel. The fact that he did so strongly suggests that he knew about the leak (emphasis added).

On this subject, I spoke with an experienced former federal prosecutor who works in Washington, specializing in white collar criminal defense (but who does not know Sharp). That attorney told me that he is baffled by Bush’s move – unless Bush has knowledge of the leak. “It would not seem that the President needs to consult personal counsel, thereby preserving the attorney-client privilege, if he has no knowledge about the leak,” he told me.

The question that remains to be answered is, in those immortal words: “What did he know and when did he know it?”.

The other important question that needs an answer: is the Plame investigation going to get anywhere significant before November?

Courtesy of Kevin Drum:

CLANCY ON WOLFOWITZ….From … Deborah Norville’s segment with Anthony Zinni and Tom Clancy last night:

Deborah Norville: What’s your impression of Paul Wolfowitz?

Tom Clancy: Is he working for our side?

As they say, ouch.

Update: Further reading of the Washington Monthly commentary on this item brought out that lovely (not!) meme, the “Jews Have Dual Loyalty” canard. Now I do not particularly like Wolfowitz, but I really hate it when people suggest that because someone is a Jew that their loyalties are questionable.

Despite this, I still think the original comment was funny in a snarky kind of way.

I didn’t have much to add to the noise about George Tenet’s retirement, but the news that a second senior CIA official is leaving makes you wonder what the heck is really going on…

James Pavitt, deputy director for operations, has announced his retirement. Apparently he was the guy in charge of human intelligence (AKA spies).

The repor insists that there’s no coincidences here, that this was all planned in advance, but I have got to wonder – why these two? Why now? What’s really going on here?

To follow up to my earlier post on more Administration lies and how the Washington Post is calling them on it, blogger Joel Carris deconstructs the responding spin.

Bush’s campaign released this statement on Monday rebutting the Washington Post article. It’s absolutely brilliant. What the campaign does here is they take multiple assertions from the article and meticulously show through a series of quotes and references how the Washington Post was exactly right in calling the statements misleading.

Hang on to your aspirin bottle, because there’s a torrent of minutia involved in the deconstruction. The long and the short of it is, the Post was right. The Administration lied their butts off and not even a mountain of spin can get them out of it.

I have to think long and hard about whether the new “Spirit of America” program is one worth supporting. On the face of it, the idea has merit. Ordinary Americans set aside their differences on the war’s merits and send Iraqis things to help rebuild their lives – items such as laptop computers, baseballs, and power tools. What’s not to like? Iraqis learn that Americans are not all evil and Americans get to help the Iraqi society rebuild.

The problem is, nothing is ever that simple.

If the issue was sending food to people who were starving – life and death issues – that would be different. Jewish law requires that you help people in genuine need. But someone whose main need is a toy is not someone in danger of starving to death. In cases like that, other considerations can come into play.

Here’s a what-if for you: What if ‘Spirit of America’ manages to make a significant improvement in Iraq between now and November? Enough so that swing voters who have been soured on Bush due to the war decide that they can still comfortably vote for Bush? We get 4 more years of liars who think laws don’t apply to them running our country and ruining our economy.

Is 4 more years of Bush a price worth paying to send Iraqis 2 tons of Frisbees?

Maybe I’m selfish. Maybe I’m cynical. But I am not going to join the chorus on this one just yet.

It’s been pretty well covered in the blogosphere already but I can’t resist the Washington Post article on the Bush team’s amazing run of negative campaign ads.

Three-quarters of the ads aired by Bush’s campaign have been attacks on Kerry. Bush so far has aired 49,050 negative ads in the top 100 markets, or 75 percent of his advertising. Kerry has run 13,336 negative ads — or 27 percent of his total. The figures were compiled by The Washington Post using data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group of the top 100 U.S. markets. Both campaigns said the figures are accurate.

Pandagon does the math for us (emphasis added):

An interesting thing about that number – if 13,336 is the number of negative ads Kerry has run and it’s 27% of his total, then Bush has run about as many negative ads (49,050) as Kerry has ads total (49,392). By any standard, that’s just ridiculous.

And it’s only Memorial Day. What’s the picture going to look like in September?