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Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

“woke” is the new caravan.

You donā€™t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

The line between political reporting and fan fiction continues to blur.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape Americaā€™s future.

ā€œFacilitateā€ is an active verb, not a weasel word.

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How stupid are these people?

No one could have predicted…

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Iā€™m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

People are complicated. Love is not.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

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Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

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Reader Interactions

36Comments

  1. 1.

    ScottC

    I think it’s more like “Not dead, only resting”. With nothing new from the grand jury and Mother Sheehan give the news media something to do, the Plame case is on the back burner.

  4. 4.

    Mr Furious

    Sheehan and Pat Robertson are sucking up the oxygen right now. don’t worry, Plame will be back from the grave and ready to party as soon as there is something new to develop.

  5. 5.

    KC

    LA Times had a huge roundup of the story with some interesting WH insider leaks in it just yesterday. I thought this quote, was the most interesting:

    “With the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear our focus should have been on Wilson’s facts, not his conclusions or his wife or his politics,” said one official who was helping with White House strategy at the time.

  6. 6.

    KC

    Oh wait. Maybe this is why only the LATimes, way out here on the West Coast, has covered the Plame thing lately. Honestly, sort of disgusting, really.

  7. 7.

    Marcus Wellby

    Well it went back to be a “serious” story with some nuance (nuance is like kryptonite to our press). It was only fun for the media when they were throwing pointless “gotcha” questions at the moronic Scott McClellan.

    I.D., Lance Armstrong, missing women, squirrels on water skis — they are back to the issues that really impact America.

  8. 8.

    stickler

    Yeah, it’s not dead, it’s sleeping. Until a) we get indictments, or b) Fitzgerald calls it a day and goes home, the Plame case isn’t going anywhere. Not forward, not backward, and surely not “away.”

  9. 9.

    Tim F

    The LA Times.

    Most of the big advances were pushed by leaking and counter-leaking surrounding Matt Cooper’s revelations. Somebody in the WH, presumably Rove, leaked a bunch of smokescreen pieces, which pissed somebody with high-level access to the State Department and who was on Air Force One during the fateful flight to Africa (who could that be?). Person B, pissed off at person A’s ass-covering, counter-leaked some stories about Rove and Fleischer and the State Dept memo.

    If it wasn’t for this Rove-Powell catfight we wouldn’t have much to go on besides Cooper’s story, which by itself only tells us so much.

    Now everybody’s waiting for Miller to speak up or for the investigation to wrap up without her in October. There’s no reason to think that a methodical prosecutor like Fitzgerald will make any public move until then.

  10. 10.

    Joe Albanese

    Its quiet because the Sullivan investigation is not leaking anything at all. How ethical and professional of him. Now, contrast that with the Whitewater investigations.

    Ever hear of the saying, “the quiet before the storm”. The absence of any news should not be taken as if the problems for the bush team have gone away.

  14. 14.

    jobiuspublius

    I heard that Fitzgerald has a new boss, a friend of our Dear Leader. I wouldn’t be surprised to find Fitzgerald’s efforts sabotaged. I’m so cynical, I wouldn’t be surprised to find Fitzgerald’s joined the dark side. Look at Judge Cutie, ain’t he sweet?

  15. 15.

    ppGaz

    ā€œWith the benefit of hindsight, itā€™s clear our focus should have been on Wilsonā€™s facts, not his conclusions or his wife or his politics,ā€ said one official who was helping with White House strategy at the time.

    With the benefit of hindsight, can we just declare that this whole Bush administration thing was just a Mulligan?

  16. 16.

    jobiuspublius

    Hmm, is that a WH official admitting a mistake and Dear Leader is whistling the exact dam nonsense again? Hmm, Dear Leader must be planning one hell of a bait and switch.

  18. 18.

    Rick

    Hold ’em time for Fitzgerald. Fold ’em time appears to be approaching.

    Maybe for Miller, too. What’s she gonna due: “out” Rove.

    Cordially…

  20. 20.

    Geoduck

    I heard that Fitzgerald has a new boss, a friend of our Dear Leader.

    That rumor was making the rounds, but it didn’t happen. The job went to another careerist like Fitzpatrick.

    And, as everyone else has said, the main story will revive, one way or another, when Fitzpatrick wraps up his investigation.

  21. 21.

    Horshu

    This is not a case that is one or lost in the press or via pundits. It is a legal case involving federal authorities and a grand jury. Whether we think there was a crime, Plame was covert, Rove is lying, or it’s all going to go away is largely irrelevant. What matters is whether or not the grand jury will indict well-known members of the administration. If they do, it will be a big, lengthy story; if they don’t, it will be a big, short story, but rest assured the story is in indictments.

  22. 22.

    DougJ

    The media is so busy Bush-bashing over Cindy Sheehan, they can’t find the time to Rove-bash over Valerie Plame. They’ll come back to it when they get tired of Sheehan, if that ever happens. I’m less and less sure that it will. They are beating this one like a rented mule.

  23. 23.

    Harry Atkinson

    Wait’ll the indictments, John. It’ll be like the lead lid blowing off the top of a nuclear power plant. Bet the farm on it.

    In the meantime, check out Shrub’s 40% approval rating in the latest Gallup Poll. Plame or not, the Vacation Boy is becoming quite the pariah these days.

    http://www.gallup.com/poll/content/?ci=18148

  27. 27.

    Robert A. George

    Doug,

    To the extent my timeline “means” anything, it is just noting that questions about pre-war intelligence were consuming the UK and US government VIPs in mid-July ’03.
    The funny thing is that a certain NYT reporter seems to be the nexus — the common link to the UK government/media/legislative inquiry on pre-war intel and the current US government/media/grand jury/Plame scandal.

    The dates July 8 and 16/17 stand out. On the former, she meets with Lewis Libby. On the latter, she e-mails David Kelly in the UK telling him a “another member of your fan club” told her that Kelly’s did well in his testimony (which, by the way, helped undercut the credibility of the BBC’s Andrew Gilligan). Kelly writes back, talks of “dark actors,” wanders off and kills himself — an action that opens up a new inquiry — into the Blair government’s behavior in Kelly’s being ‘outed’ as the BBC source and subsequently forced to testify. (For good measure, Kelly’s body is found on the 18th: the same day John Bolton is interviewed by the State Department IG on, what else? Niger uranium.)

    I don’t know what all this means, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Miller’s “Zelig”/”Forrest Gump” appearance in this trans-Atlantic intel-inquiry double-header has something to do with why Patrick Fitzgerald has her behind bars.

    Um, OK, back to John’s blog! Thanks for your time!

  28. 28.

    ppGaz

    Apparently only 7 people signed up for this pro-Bush excursion, forcing the organizers to cancel the bus ride.

    That is ….. just wonderful. Were they Bush relatives? Homeless people offered $20 by some PAC minion?

  29. 29.

    Jack Davis

    It’s hardly surprising, as the Sheehan-Bush controversy has taken the little time the networks have left over from their godforsaken endless coverage of the Natalee Holloway mystery. Hardly a huge loss- who outside of Sean hannity doesn’t realize Rove is a slezeball?

  30. 30.

    HH

    Gee I seem to remember someone posting here right when the Plame/Rove allegations first hit, sarcastically remarking on how that Downing Street Memo story was going to take down Bush… wait a minute, I think that was me!

  31. 31.

    HH

    “the sad fate of the Brown County TX bus chartered to take Bush supporters to Crawford”

    Sshh, don’t tell him about Camp Qualls… he’s sleeping…

  32. 32.

    HH

    “The LAT just had a good summary piece.”

    Since when do “summary pieces” devoid of actual news get written months after the fact?

  33. 33.

    Peter Noonan

    Poor HH, like so many on the right, loves to repeat the dittobot mantra that such things as the Plame Affair, the Downing Street Minutes, Cindy Sheehan, inconvenient revelations regarding the War of the Phantom WMD, and various other occurences that have revealed the dishonesty and incompetence of the current administration, have disappeared with out any effect whatsoever on the nation’s political landscape and opinions.

    And, of course, anyone in touch with what is commonly believed to be reality can smell a whiff of bullshit on the air when such statements are repeated time and again by the usual suspects.

    New Gallup Poll: Bush’s Approval rating tumbles to 40%.
    New Harris/Wall Street journal Poll: Bush Approval also at 40%.
    New ARG POll: Bush’s Approval drops to 36%.

    Disappeared without effect? C’mon.

  34. 34.

    Tim F

    They buried the news. Someone from State is leaking again, this time underlining that they took pains to protect Plame’s ID and the classified memo until the political nudniks got ahold of it on Air Force One.

    Powell doesn’t want this story to die.

  35. 35.

    p.lukasiak

    The most interesting aspect of this story is that Judith Miller’s “sources” doubtless spoke to Fitzgerald and his people, and discussed their conversations with her.

    And we will doubtless find out what these “sources” said about those conversations at some point, leaving Miller in the position of either affirming them, or exposing them as lies. (Its difficult to believe that Miller will be able to get away with the excuse of “protecting her sources” once those sources are on record about their conversations with her.)

    Bottom line — Miller isn’t acting on principle by not disclosing conversations with “confidential sources”, because Fitzgerald already knows who those sources are, and has spoken to them about their conversations with Miller. Miller can only be protecting those sources from their own lies — and those lies will inevitable be exposed.

  36. 36.

    Jim Caputo

    Is there anyone in this country who loves Cindy Sheehan more than Karl Rove right now?

    The Plame case will be back as soon as Cindy’s Army gets done doing their job. If I were a Repug of the Kool-Aid drinking variety, I wouldn’t get too comfortable (hell, if I were a Repug of ANY variety I’d get my fucking head examined).

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