This is cool- a bunch of National Guard folks who are working in the Katrina aftermath have started a blog called Camp Katrina.
Check it out.
Archives for October 2005
Lots of Red Meat For the Partisans
Via Talk Left, we see the DC Rumor Mill is reporting that a number of indictments are going to be handed down in the Plame case:
The D.C. rumor mill is thrumming with whispers that 22 indictments are about to be handed down on the outed-CIA agent Valerie Plame case. The last time the wires buzzed this loud — that Tom DeLay would be indicted and would step down from his leadership post in the House — the scuttlebutters got it right.
Sweet mother of God that sounds like a lot of indictments, but hey, if they are guilty, my attitude remains ‘nail their asses to the wall.’ I don’t know if that means that that one person or several people will receive multiple indictments, or 22 people will be indicted, or what. Talk Left also has some clarifying terminology that you may find useful.
For the partisans on the right, Drudge is reporting some excerpts from former FBI Director Louis Freek’s new books that are going to get the Clinton bashing back into high gear:
In the book, “My FBI,” he writes, “The problem was with Bill Clinton — the scandals and the rumored scandals, the incubating ones and the dying ones never ended. Whatever moral compass the president was consulting was leading him in the wrong direction. His closets were full of skeletons just waiting to burst out.”
The director sought to distance himself from Clinton because of Whitewater, refusing a White House pass that would have enabled him to enter the building without signing in. This irked Clinton. “I wanted all my visits to be official,” says Freeh. “When I sent the pass back with a note, I had no idea it would antagonize the president,” he tells Wallace.
Returning the pass was only the start of the rift. Later, relations got so bad that President Clinton reportedly began referring to Freeh as “that F…ing Freeh.” Says Freeh, “I don’t know how they referred to me and I really didn’t care,” he says. “My role and my obligation was to conduct criminal investigations. He, unfortunately for the country and unfortunately for him, happened to be the subject of that investigation,” Freeh says.
In another revelation, Freeh says the former president let down the American people and the families of victims of the Khobar Towers terror attack in Saudi Arabia. After promising to bring to justice those responsible for the bombing that killed 19 and injured hundreds, Freeh says Clinton refused to personally ask Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah to allow the FBI to question bombing suspects the kingdom had in custody – the only way the bureau could secure the interviews, according to Freeh. Freeh writes in the book, “Bill Clinton raised the subject only to tell the crown prince that he understood the Saudis’ reluctance to cooperate and then he hit Abdullah up for a contribution to the Clinton Presidential Library.” Says Freeh, “That’s a fact that I am reporting.”
All of this is great news, because what, with the war in Iraq, the DeLay indictments the dual hurricanes, the Senate and the President wrangling over torture and abuse, the SCOTUS nomination, the rising gas prices and the soon to hit home heating costs, let’s face it- things were just getting a little too boring and a little too civil.
In all honesty, we are now to the point that sometimes I wake up in the morning, check the headlines, and get so overwhelmed I don’t know what to write about, leading invariably to someone accusing me in the comments of intentionally avoiding an issue.
Testing My Beliefs
Longtime Balloon Juice readers know that I am adamantly opposed to the death penalty for a variety of reasons (I would be for the death oenalty if I got to choose who received it, because I am always right, you know), but cases like this test my beliefs:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation said Wednesday it had expanded a New Jersey espionage investigation in an effort to determine whether one of its own agents, charged last month with spying for the Philippines, might have also had improper access to classified information while working in Vice President Dick Cheney’s office several years ago.
The F.B.I. agent, Leandro Aragoncillo, 46, of Woodbury, N.J., an American citizen who was born in the Philippines, was charged Sept. 12 with passing classified information to government officials in Manila.
The charges filed against Mr. Aragoncillo relate only to classified information that officials say he took from F.B.I. computers after joining the agency in July 2004.
But the investigation is widening, officials said, in light of the fact that he had worked for several years prior to joining the agency as a marine in the vice president’s office under both Al Gore and Mr. Cheney. Military aides usually hold security clearances.
ABC News reported Wednesday night that Mr. Aragoncillo was accused of stealing classified material from White House computers at the vice president’s office, including information damaging to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
On Wednesday, government officials said they had no corroboration that any material had been taken from the vice president’s office, but they acknowledged that investigators had been focusing on Mr. Aragoncillo’s work at the White House.
The White House refused Wednesday to comment on the case. “It is an ongoing investigation and, as such, all questions should be directed to the F.B.I.,” said Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman. Richard Kolko, an F.B.I. special agent, said, “We’re going to do a full investigation of the entire time he had access to any classified or sensitive information, and in the course of the investigation, we will do all due diligence to determine if any other improper activity occurred.”
If this Marine and later FBI agent was spying, and spying from the White House, I am hard pressed to argue against those who would want to line him up against a wall and shoot him dead. While I oppose the death penalty, when it comes to treason, my general attitude is try them, and if found guilty, let them hang by the neck until dead.
Good to Know
I guess it is nice to know that certain members of the Indiana state Republican party aren’t completely and totally batshit insane:
A controversial proposed bill to prohibit gays, lesbians and single people from using medical procedures to become pregnant has been dropped by its legislative sponsor.
State Sen. Patricia Miller, R-Indianapolis, issued a one-sentence statement this afternoon saying: “The issue has become more complex than anticipated and will be withdrawn from consideration by the Health Finance Commission.”
Miller had asked that committee — a panel of lawmakers who meet when the Indiana General Assembly is not in session to discuss possible legislation — to recommend the bill to the full legislature when it meets in January.
Under her proposal, couples who need assistance to become pregnant — such as through intrauterine insemination; the use of donor eggs, embryos and sperm; in vitro fertilization, embryo transfer or other medical means — would have to be married to each other. In addition, married couples who needed donor sperm and eggs to become pregnant would be required to go through the same rigorous assessment process of their fitness to be parents as do people who adopt a child.
Miller had earlier acknowledged that the legislation would be “enormously controversial.” It had already drawn fire from the Indiana Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood of Indiana.
We got a live one here, I think, and I hope Patricia Miller turns out to be as endlessly entertaining as Utah’s Chris Buttars.
More here.
A Great Day
This is spectacular news:
Defying the White House, the Senate overwhelmingly agreed Wednesday to regulate the detention, interrogation and treatment of prisoners held by the American military.
The measure ignited a fierce debate among many Senate Republicans and the White House, which threatened to veto a $440 billion military spending bill if the detention amendment was tacked on, saying it would bind the president’s hands in wartime. Nonetheless, the measure passed, 90 to 9, with 46 Republicans, including Bill Frist of Tennessee, the majority leader, joining 43 Democrats and one independent in favor.
More than two dozen retired senior military officers, including Colin L. Powell and John M. Shalikashvili, two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, endorsed the amendment, which would ban use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” against anyone in United States government custody.
It would also require all American troops to use only interrogation techniques authorized in a new Army field manual. It would not cover techniques used by the Central Intelligence Agency.
That is spectacular news. Our troops should never have been put in this position, and I am still unable to believe that no one has been held accountable for pas transgressions. Well, they did get criminal mastermind Lyddie England.
I will never vote for John McCain for his participation in creating McCain/Feingold, but he deserves the lions share of the credit for this. Thank you, Sen. McCain.
I Heart Howard Dean
This made my day:
On MSNBC’s “Hardball” yesterday, Dean sounded like the presidential candidate of yore, as he lashed an alleged “culture of corruption” in the Republican Party, said GOP leaders are putting money “in their own pockets,” and added that “I don’t think it’s very credible” that Vice President Cheney was not aware of the leaking of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity. During his broadside, he bemoaned how Bush’s “MO” is to “discredit your opponents and attack them personally.”
In one eyebrow-raising moment, Dean invoked a crude phrase usually reserved for the locker room when urging Bush to make public Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers’s White House records. “I think with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, you can’t play, you know, hide the salami, or whatever it’s called,” he said.
Bwahaha. What could he possibly have meant to say?
Why the Miers Pick Is Wrong
Matt Stinson, who I consider the best kept secret in the right wing of the blogosphere, nails it:
As much as I want to believe Patrick Ruffini’s declaration that Harriet Miers is a true blue conservative and that her confirmation would shift the Court to the right of the O’Connor era, this game of ideological vetting is rendered completely moot by one salient fact: it is not Miers’ lack of conservative bona fides but her lack of legal bona fides that has given conservatives pause…
This is not, lest talking points lead us in that direction, a masterstroke by the President and Karl Rove. (Conservatives must admit that the bloom has been off the Rove for many months now.) This is not leadership. Miers’ appointment has all the markings of a hastily-made decision that bestows a substantial benefit upon a friend of the President and (potentially) a substantial cost upon the Republic.
Read the whole thing. I am consistently amazed that more people do not link to and read Matt on a daily basis. Probably because he is too damned honest and principled.