It is with tremendous sadness that we must convey
the news that Steve Gilliard, editor and publisher of The News Blog,
passed away June 2, 2007. He was 42.
To those who have come to trust
The News Blog and its insightful, brash and unapologetic editorial
tone, we have Steve to thank from the bottom of our hearts. Steve helped
lead many discussions that mattered to all of us, and he tackled subjects
and interest categories where others feared to tread.
Please keep Steve's friends and family in your
thoughts and prayers.
Libby is guilty. And he's going to be found guilty. The jury might not convict him on all counts, but he has no chance of surviving the perjury count that was proved beyond a reasonable doubt with Tim Russert's testimony.
The multi-million dollar defense, which provided no defense at all, did not call Libby to the witness stand for one very simple reason: Libby is very very guilty. Publicly, defense lawyers cling to the text book theory that the defendant has no burden of proof and that no negative inference should ever be taken when a defendant doesn't defend himself on the witness stand. Practically, every defense lawyer knows that the jury desperately wants to hear from the defendant and that the only reason not to put him on the stand is that he is soooo guilty that every answer he gives after his name will eradicate any shred of reasonable doubt. Think about it. Your whole life is at stake in the outcome of a criminal trial. You're innocent. And you don't testify in your own defense? Around the courthouse when defense lawyers are chatting about their cases, the only question they ask each other is can you put your guy on the stand? Those conversations always assume the defendant is guilty. The question is just about the degree of difficulty in presenting a defense.
Libby's defense gave up before the opening statements in the trial. They always knew Libby was too guilty to put on the witness stand. And they were never going to call the Vice President. Telling the judge that they were going to call Libby and Cheney was just a mirage they were trying to create to misdirect Patrick Fitzgerald's focus. I'd be shocked if Fitzgerald was fooled for even a second.
If Libby called Cheney, it actually would have hurt his defense and been a hostile act to the White House. Cheney would have been humiliated by Fitzgerald's cross-examination and Libby would have forever lost his chief pardon advocate in the White House.
From the start, Libby's hopeless courtroom defense has been about the pardon. Libby has conducted a defense that is very friendly to the White House. He has made it clear to the White House that he had the power to call the Vice President, but, good soldier that he is, he declined to put Cheney through that ordeal.
Last year, I told Keith Olbermann on MSNBC that Libby's highly publicized defense-fund fundraiser was really the first step in the pardon campaign. Libby is a very rich man. He didn't need the defense fund. He needed the public rally with Mary Matalin types walking the virtual red carpet on the way in singing his praises as a great public servant. Fred Thompson, the senator-actor, did a version of this at the trial--showing up, giving "moral" support, then offering his TV prosecutor view of how unfair the Libby prosecution is. Look for the popular TV prosecutor to play an important role in the pardon campaign.
Libby knows more than his lawyers do about the next stage of his legal proceedings. Libby helped obtain the sleaziest pardon that Bill Clinton issued on his way out of the White House. Clinton pardoned Libby's client, the fugitive billionaire Marc Rich, over the unanimous objections of the White House staff. When Cheney hand-delivers Libby's pardon application to President Bush, who is going to object?
Maybe Washington is a fairyland, but Bush would be committing political suicide if he pardoned Libby. The whole mess would be dragged to Congress and the starting point for impeachment. People are sick of Bush now. This kind of naked insiderism would cause the country to flip. Fitzgerald would testify, as to matters not now in evidence. Like about Dick Cheney. He might even be called up to the Hill.
People think "oh, no one would care". Wrong. It would be the rallying point for opposition against Bush. Support a traitor and get a pass?
I think he's been stringing Libby along. I don't see Rove siging up for the shit storm to follow. Americans do not like guilty people pardoned.
Congratulations to Victoria Toensing, former Reagan Administration Justice Department official, for plumbing new depths of delusion and crazed fantasies in her latest Washington Post op-ed. Ms. Toensing's piece--Trial in Error--should have been titled, "I Am Ignorant of Basic Facts". She offers up two special gems:
* Valerie Plame was not covert.
* Ambassador Joseph Wilson (Valerie's husband) misled the public about how he was sent to Niger, about the thrust of his March 2003 oral report of that trip, and about his wife's CIA status
Valerie Plame was undercover until the day she was identified in Robert Novak's column. I entered on duty with Valerie in September of 1985. Every single member of our class -- which was comprised of Case Officers, Analysts, Scientists, and Admin folks -- was undercover.
I was an analyst and Valerie was a case officer. Case officers work in the Directorate of Operations and work overseas recruiting spies and running clandestine operations. Although Valerie started out working under "official cover"--i.e., she declared she worked for the U.S. Government but in something innocuous, like the State Department--she later became a NOC aka non official cover officer. A NOC has no declared relationship with the United States Government. These simple facts apparently are too complicated for someone of Ms. Toensing's limited intellectual abilities.
She also is ignoring the facts introduced at the Libby trial. We have learned that Scooter Libby, Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer, and Richard Armitage told various members of the press that Valerie worked for the CIA. In fact Scooter Libby was the one who told Bush press flack, Ari Fleischer, about Valerie's covert status. Richard Armitage told Robert Novak (who confirmed the story with Karl Rove) and Novak ultimately exposed not just Valerie but her NOC cover company, Brewster Jennings. That leak by the Bush Administration ruined Valerie's ability to continue working as a case officer and destroyed an international intelligence network.
You do not have to take my word alone that Valerie was under cover. Other members of our training class also came forward in 2003 and vouched for Valerie's covert status--Jim Marcinkowski, Brent Cavan, and Mike Grimaldi. We appeared on Nightline three years ago, accompanied by another classmate who remains anonymous, and testified about our personal knowledge of Valerie's status as a covert CIA officer.
If they wanted to have a sympathetic jury, they should have moved the venue.
The Beltway Kool Kids Klub likes him. I think most of DC detests the whole lot.
It's really simple: Fitzgerald got Libby lying on tape. There is incontrovertable proof that Plame was undercover.
I hope they're wishing for a pardon.
Imagine public agitation for a pardon for a man who revealed an undercover CIA agent. Move on could dine out on that for months.
The government has several witnesses saying that Libby lied. Libby would be insane to subject himself to Pat Fitzgerald, and calling Cheney in his defense? No thanks.
He won't be participating in his defense, because he might add to his jail time.
His only hope is that, like with Oliver North, is that the jury sees him as a flunky and think Cheney is the one who belongs in jail.
BAGHDAD, Feb. 8 — Iraqi and American troops arrested the second highest official in the Iraqi Health Ministry on Thursday, charging that he funneled millions of dollars to rogue Shiite militants who kidnapped and killed Iraqi civilians.
The United States military said in a statement that the official was suspected of using his position to run a rogue unit of the Mahdi Army, the Shiite militia that claims loyalty to the cleric Moktada al-Sadr. The statement accused the official of flooding the Health Ministry’s payroll with militants, embezzling American money meant to pay for Iraq’s overworked medical system and using Health Ministry “facilities and services for sectarian kidnapping and murder.”
The military’s statement did not identify the official, but several Iraqi government officials said he was Deputy Health Minister Hakim al-Zamili, a Shiite with longstanding ties to the Sadr organization. An Interior Ministry official said the authorities in recent weeks had come to believe that Mr. Zamili was using government ambulances to ferry weapons and militants across Sadr City, hiding them from American raids.
I can safely conclude that American money killed Americans
WASHINGTON, Feb. 7 — While the diplomats and Foreign Service employees of the State Department have always been expected to staff “hardship” postings, those jobs have not usually required that they wear flak jackets with their pinstriped suits.
But in the last five years, the Foreign Service landscape has shifted.
Now, thanks to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the White House is calling for more American civilians to head not only to those countries, but also to some of their most hostile regions — including Iraq’s volatile Anbar Province — to try to establish democratic institutions and help in reconstruction. That plan is provoking unease and apprehension at the State Department and at other federal agencies.
Many federal employees have outright refused repeated requests that they go to Iraq, while others have demanded that they be assigned only to Baghdad and not be sent outside the more secure Green Zone, which includes the American Embassy and Iraqi government ministries. And while Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice maintained Wednesday that State Department employees were “volunteering in large numbers” for difficult posts, including Iraq, several department employees said that those who had signed up tended to be younger, more entry-level types, and not experienced, seasoned diplomats.
The reluctance highlights a problem with the administration’s new strategy for Iraq, which calls on American diplomats to take challenges on a scale unmatched anywhere else in the world, when the lack of security on the ground outside the Green Zone makes it one of the last places people, particularly those with families, want to go.
Steve Kashkett, vice president of the American Foreign Service Association, the professional organization that represents State Department employees, said that “our people continue to show great courage in volunteering for duty in Iraq.” But Mr. Kashkett added, “there remain legitimate questions about the ability of unarmed civilian diplomats to carry out a reconstruction and democracy-building mission in the middle of an active war zone.”
It's suicidal. If you can't make them go, they aren't.
Lamar Alexander (R-TN) Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) Thad Cochran (R-MS) John Cornyn (R-TX) Larry Craig (R-ID) Elizabeth Dole (R-NC) Pete Domenici (R-NM) Mike Enzi (R-WY) Lindsey Graham (R-SC) Chuck Hagel (R-NE) Jim Inhofe (R-OK) Mitch McConnell (R-KY) Pat Roberts (R-KS) Jeff Sessions (R-AL) Gordon Smith (R-OR) Ted Stevens (R-AK) John Sununu (R-NH) John Warner (R-VA)
Lookit here -- Chuck Hagel once again proves he's all talk, but when it comes time for action, he buckles.
Susan Collins of Maine and Norm Coleman of Minnesota both buckled to political reality -- they'll both be axed in 2008. But the rest of these guys? Dole, Warner, Cornyn, Smith (!), McConnell, Sununu, Demonici, Chambliss -- we'll make you regret this vote in 2008.
This was always the GOP's war, but now more than ever.
Not a single Democrat voted against cloture. Well, Harry Reid did, but that's a procedural step that allows him to bring up the legislation again at a later date. That's why we used to always see Bill Frist voting with Democrats every time the Dems defeated legislation in the the old Republican Senate. Lieberman, of course, voted with his soul mates on the wrong side of the aisle.
Republicans are so far gone on the issue, that Warner and Hagel voted to prevent debate on their own resolution.
So this "non-binding resolution" wasn't as useless as I thought. Now, we can beat Republicans over this vote for the next two years. Send them a big "thank you" present. Because of the Senate filibuster and presidential veto, It's near impossible for Democrats to end this war. But what we can and do, and should do, is keep bringing up these resolutions. Bring them all up -- the Kennedy measure, the Dodd measure, the Obama measure, and anything else lying around. Bring them up and keep forcing Republicans to stand with Bush in support of this war.
Because in 2008, we'll elect people who WILL end this war, from the White House, to the Senate, to the House. And the more Republicans obstruct even the most toothless "non-binding" half-measures to express disapproval on the war, the more the American people will see who will prolong the quagmire, and who will work to end it.
I think people misunderstand how I feel about the war. I am a pessimist, the worst will happen.
All this talk about electing people to end the war is so much nonsense to me. We don't have the luxury of time, we never did, but the recent Sunni offensive in Baghdad speeds things up. Even among the left, people assume that the American army can control things for two years.
I consider that foolish thinking. Sadr has reigned in his people and the Shia have paid for it in blood. That will not last forever.
The assumption is that we can keep things together and I don't think that is the case. The US Army is on a time clock which ends before 2008. It's falling apart as we speak. It has unreliable allies.
I don't disagree with Kos, nailing the Republicans is always good. But I think by June, it will be totally irrelevant. We will have far more pressing problems in Iraq than to worry about what Congress dpoes.
................. Mr. Biden is equally skeptical—albeit in a slightly more backhanded way—about Mr. Obama. “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” he said. “I mean, that’s a storybook, man.”
Dear Sen Biden.
Sen. Obama is the "first mainstream African-American who is articulate"?
I would expect a gradute of Columbia and Harvard Law who was a former law professor to be articulate. His race should have nothing to do with that.
Would you say that John Lewis is inarticulate? Or Keith Ellison?
Senator, anyone running for office is by definition articulate. Unless you can't see past skin color..
Are Albert Wynn and Maxine Waters dirty and dull?
Senator, the fact that you rely on stereotypes, not once but on several occasions, should render you unfit to be President.
Long-time Mahablog readers probably have noticed I am ambivalent about protest marches and demonstrations. Even though I take part in them now and then, on the whole I don’t think they have much of an effect.
Ah-HAH, you say. The immigration marches just showed you. So why isn’t the antiwar movement marching all the time?
Good question.
Sometimes it ain’t what you do, but the way that you do it, that matters. Some demonstrations have changed the world. But in my long and jaded experience some demonstrating is a waste of time. Some demonstrating is even counterproductive. What makes effective protest? I’ve been thinking about that since the big antiwar march in Washington last September (when I suggested some rules of etiquette for protesting). I started thinking about it more after Coretta Scott King died, and I saw photos like this in the newspapers:
What’s striking about that photo? Notice the suits. Yeah, everybody dressed more formally back in the day. But it brings me to –
Rule #1. Be serious.
The great civil rights marches of the 1950s and 1960s should be studied and emulated as closely as possible. People in those marches looked as if they were assembled for a serious purpose. They wore serious clothes. They marched both joyously and solemnly. They were a picture of dignity itself. If they chanted or carried signs, the chants or signs didn’t contain language you couldn’t repeat to your grandmother.
The antiwar protests I’ve attended in New York City, by contrast, were often more like moving carnivals than protests. Costumes, banners, and behavior on display were often juvenile and raunchy. Lots of people seemed to be there to get attention, and the message they conveyed was LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT HOW CLEVER I AM, not NO IRAQ WAR. Really. Some street theater is effective — I am fond of Billionaires for Bush — but most of the time street theater is juvenile and tiresome and reminds me of bad summer camp skits. Except raunchier.
Which takes me to – Rule #2. Be unified of purpose.
One of my ongoing gripes about antiwar marches is the way some groups try to tack their own agenda, which many others in the demonstration may not share, onto marches. International A.N.S.W.E.R. is a repeat offender in this category. Most of the marchers last September were in Washington for the sole purpose of protesting the war. But ANSWER hijacked CSPAN’s attention and put on a display so moonbatty it made The Daily Show; see also Steve Gilliard.
Message control is essential. During the Vietnam era, I witnessed many an antiwar protest get hijacked by a few assholes who waved North Vietnamese flags and spouted anti-American messages, which is not exactly the way to win hearts and minds –
Rule #3 — Good protesting is good PR.
I know they’re called “protests,” but your central purpose is to win support for your cause. You want people looking on to be favorably impressed. You want them to think, wow, I like these people. They’re not crazy. They’re not scary. I think I will take them seriously (see Rule #1). That means you should try not to be visibly angry, because angry people are scary. Anger is not good PR. Grossing people out is not good PR. Yelling at people that they’re stupid for not listening to you is not good PR. Screaming the F word at television camera crews is not good PR.
Rule #4 — Size matters.
Size of crowds, that is. Remember that one of your purposes is to show off how many people came together for the cause. But most people will only see your protest in photographs and news videos. More people saw photographs of this civil rights demonstration in August 1963 than saw it in person –
The number of people who marched for immigration reform over the past few days was wonderfully impressive. It’s the biggest reason the marches got news coverage. The overhead shots were wonderful. On the other hand, last September I wrote of the Washington march –
The plan was to rally at the Ellipse next to the White House and then march from there. Only a small part of the crowd actually went to the Ellipse, however. Most seem to have just showed up and either stayed in groups scattered all over Capitol Hill, or else they just did impromptu unofficial marches as a warmup to the Big March. … It would have been nice to get everyone together for a mass photo, but that didn’t happen. Too bad. It would have been impressive.
As I waited on the Ellipse I could see vast numbers of people a block or two away. The Pink Ladies had a big contingent and were busily showing off how pink they were — LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME LOOK AT HOW CLEVER I AM — but they seemed to evaporate once the official march started. (Re-read Rules #1 and #2.)
Anyway, as a result, there were no photos or videos to document for the world how big the crowd really was. You had to be there.
A sub-rule — IMO, an occasional REALLY BIG demonstration that gets a lot of media attention is way better than a steady drizzle of little demonstrations that become just so much background noise..
Rule #5 — Be sure your opposition is uglier/more hateful/snottier than you are.
In the 1950s and 1960s white television viewers were shocked and ashamed to see the civil rights marchers — who were behaving nicely and wearing suits, remember — jeered at by hateful racists. And when those redneck Southern sheriffs turned fire hoses and attack dogs on the marchers, it pretty much doomed Jim Crow to the dustbin of history. I think Cindy Sheehan’s encampment in Crawford last August, although a relatively small group, was such a success because of the contrast between Sheehan and the Snot-in-Chief cruising by in his motorcade without so much as a how d’you do. Truly, if Bush had invited the Sheehan crew over for lemonade and a handshake, the show would’ve been over. But he didn’t.
This takes us back to rules #1 and #2. You don’t win support by being assholes. You win support by showing the world that your opponents are assholes.
Rule #6 — Demonstrations are not enough.
It’s essential to be able to work with people in positions of power to advance your agenda. And if there aren’t enough people in power to advance your agenda, then get some. Frankly, I think some lefties are caught up in the romance of being oppressed and powerless, and can’t see beyond that.
Remember, speaking truth to power is just the first step. The goal is to get power for yourself.
By Megan Greenwell Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, January 28, 2007; Page A08
As the bulk of war protesters chanted "this is what democracy looks like" on the Mall yesterday, a few hundred gathered separately on the south edge of the Mall.
Members of the College Democrats of America mingled with the more radical Students for a Democratic Society and the Communist Youth Movement. Many held signs proclaiming themselves "another future leader against the war." Some danced. Some clapped. Others passed around a joint. Disparate in their affiliations, they were united in their chants: "College, not combat."
Since the war began nearly four years ago, many Vietnam-era antiwar activists have publicly lamented what they see as apathy among today's college students. They wonder whether the absence of a draft and a culture of pop music and reality television have distracted young people from civic responsibilities.
But among the hundreds of students on the Mall yesterday, dozens of whom drove all night to get to Washington for the protest, the prevailing sentiment was that their generation had been unfairly maligned and that the antiwar movement is growing stronger every day.
"I do think we're misrepresented as being lazy, ignorant and unaware of current events," said Sarah Searle, 19, a sophomore at the University of Virginia. "There's no huge movement going on like during Vietnam, but that doesn't mean we're apathetic."
The students at yesterday's protest noted that their efforts have not had the iconic touchstones of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when shootings at Kent State and the student takeover at Columbia University stirred U.S. consciousness. Still, there are signs, they said, of a building resistance to the war in Iraq and other U.S. foreign policy initiatives.
By CALVIN WOODWARD and LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writers 1 hour, 14 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Convinced this is their moment, tens of thousands marched Saturday in an anti-war demonstration linking military families, ordinary people and an icon of the Vietnam protest movement in a spirited call to get out of Iraq.
Celebrities, a half-dozen lawmakers and protesters from distant states rallied in the capital under a sunny sky, seizing an opportunity to press their cause with a Congress restive on the war and a country that has turned against the conflict.
Marching with them was Jane Fonda, in what she said was her first anti-war demonstration in 34 years.
"Silence is no longer an option," Fonda said to cheers from the stage on the National Mall. The actress once derided as "Hanoi Jane" by conservatives for her stance on Vietnam said she had held back from activism so as not to be a distraction for the Iraq anti-war movement, but needed to speak out now.
The rally on the Mall unfolded peacefully, although about 300 protesters tried to rush the Capitol, running up the grassy lawn to the front of the building. Police on motorcycles tried to stop them, scuffling with some and barricading entrances.
Protesters chanted "Our Congress" as their numbers grew and police faced off against them. Demonstrators later joined the masses marching from the Mall, around Capitol Hill and back.
United for Peace and Justice, a coalition group sponsoring the protest, had hoped 100,000 would come. Police, who no longer give official estimates, said privately the crowd was smaller than that.
As I was watching this, unimpressed with the t-shirts and silly slogans which seem par for the course, when I saw Jane Fonda, I shook my head. I thought "is this a person you really want to make a point with?"
Then I said, "fuck it. We're the majority, we're the ones in the right. Let them bring Jane Fonda on, because she's with 70 percent of the American people and only the freaks support Bush and his warmongering"
We need to act like Bush is the one outside the mainstream, supporting this insane war of his. Sean Penn, Jane Fonda and Susan Sarandon are standing with the American people
