This is an absolutely absurd sentence. I’m hoping Soonergrunt will discuss this in more detail.
Archives for March 2014
R.I.P, Lawrence E. Walsh
Always felt success of Iran-Contra coverup was a watershed in US history: Moment when nation collectively decided: OK, we're an empire now
— billmon (@billmon1) March 20, 2014
So if you want to know where the Iraq War conspiracy really started, the blatant obstruction of Walsh's Iran Contra probe is as good as any.
— billmon (@billmon1) March 20, 2014
From the Washington Post:
Lawrence E. Walsh, a New York corporate lawyer with impeccable Republican credentials who prosecuted several key players as independent counsel in the Reagan-era Iran-contra scandal, only to see the convictions overturned on appeal and many other officials pardoned, died March 19 at his home in Nichols Hills, Okla. He was 102…
In retirement, Mr. Walsh gained his greatest public profile. On Dec. 19, 1986, then-Attorney General Edwin Meese III appointed Mr. Walsh special prosecutor to launch an inquiry into what was considered at the time to be the worst government scandal since Watergate. Mr. Walsh spent nearly seven years and $39 million as the special prosecutor in the Iran-contra scandal.
With a deliberative approach to complicated details, he took on the task of investigating far-reaching evidence that the Reagan administration had illegally sold arms secretly to Iran to win the release of U.S. hostages in the Middle East and had given the proceeds to a rebel group known as the “contras,” who were fighting to overthrow the Marxist government of Nicaragua.
Congress also created a joint investigative committee that many believed would lead to Reagan’s impeachment.
The Iran-contra affair led to the dismissal of the president’s national security adviser, Navy Adm. John M. Poindexter, and Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, the National Security Council staff aide accused of masterminding the scheme.
Poindexter and North were among 14 officials who were criminally charged. They also were among the 11 convicted, although their convictions were set aside by appellate court decisions. Five — including former State Department official Elliott Abrams and former defense secretary Caspar W. Weinberger — were pardoned by President George H.W. Bush on Christmas Eve 1992.
Mr. Walsh concluded that there was “no credible evidence” that Reagan broke the law but that the president set the stage for the illegal activities of others…..
In his book “Firewall: The Iran-Contra Conspiracy and Cover-Up” (1997), Mr. Walsh maintained that the architect of the coverup was Meese, abetted by Bush, White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan, CIA Director William J. Casey, Weinberger and other top administration officials.
“What set Iran-contra apart from previous political scandals,” Mr. Walsh wrote, “was the fact that a cover-up engineered in the White House of one president and completed by his successor prevented the rule of law from being applied to the perpetrators of criminal activity of constitutional dimension.”
Still Spinning the Oldies
FL Senator Marco Rubio, desperately trying to regain “presidential timber” status with the bug-fuck crazy GOP base before male pattern baldness robs him of his chief political asset, dusts off the Domino Theory in a WaPo op-ed:
Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea is a direct challenge and long-term threat to the post-World War II international order for which the United States and our allies have made great sacrifices over the past seven decades. If Putin is allowed to take land from a neighboring nation through deceit and raw military force without serious consequences, the precedent could have global repercussions, including in Asia.
Some have suggested that Crimea is not worth triggering tensions with Russia, given other interests that are more important. While it is best to avoid conflict whenever possible, history shows that illegitimate aggressions that go unchallenged are a virtual guarantee of even more dangerous conflict in the future.
First of all, no one is suggesting a tension-free response to the Crimea annexation, you dishonest fuck – we’ve already suspended Putin’s Netflix account, for chrissakes! But you know what else history shows, Rubio, you ignorant fuck? That the Domino Theory was bullshit and that basing foreign policy on it violently ended millions of lives and ruined countless more. The ignorant, lying fuck-knuckle goes on:
I welcome the fact that Vice President Biden is in the region this week to bring a message of reassurance to our allies and partners. I hope those assurances include a specific and clear response to requests by Georgia and Ukraine for lethal military support from the United States. It is shameful that even as Russia attempts to carve up Ukrainian territory, Ukraine’s request for weapons, intelligence sharing and other assistance has been turned down by the Obama administration. We also need to deploy additional military assets and even U.S. personnel to our allies, including Poland and the Baltic states.
Military advisors and boots on the ground — what an original idea, tough guy! Only this time, let us know when the neo-con spawn have enlisted to lead the charge against the godless commies post-Soviet revanchists. The rest of us have invested enough blood, treasure and heartache in your global pissing contests. Fuckhead.
Working the Refs Pretty Hard
In which Mike Allen accidentally admits that “Conventional Wisdom” is whatever Republicans tell him. pic.twitter.com/FbJlqm6Ejr
— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) March 20, 2014
This is just one example of how the DC media is lapping up the “Senate will go Republican” narrative.
Also, does anyone really believe that Harry Reid will still have the filibuster if the Senate does go Republican?
Strong Oversight At the CIA
CIA Public Affairs Director in @USATODAY oped: "We believe in strong oversight" http://t.co/Lo5j7MvCCv
— Jason Leopold (@JasonLeopold) March 19, 2014
@matthewstoller @JasonLeopold CIA Director Stringer Bell: "Is you taking notes on a criminal fucking conspiracy??"
— billmon (@billmon1) March 19, 2014
From the NYTimes:
WASHINGTON — Both the Central Intelligence Agency and the Senate Intelligence Committee believe that laws may have been broken in their bitter dispute over top secret documents relating to the C.I.A.’s detention program and who has the right to read them.
The Justice Department could settle the matter. But, according to department officials, it has little enthusiasm for wading into the middle of a politically charged battle that has raised constitutional issues about the separation of powers and the scope of congressional oversight.
Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. seemed to reflect his department’s ambivalence when he noted on Wednesday that it receives many criminal referrals and often declines to investigate or prosecute…
But some senior lawmakers said last week that they would support having an independent investigator examine the allegations because the Justice Department should not be mediating a dispute between the executive and legislative branch.…
According to several people who have read the report, it concludes that the agency gained little valuable intelligence from its brutal questioning of Qaeda detainees, and that C.I.A. officials repeatedly misled the White House, Congress and the public about the value of the program.
The era after Sept. 11 is already one of the most closely studied periods of C.I.A. history, and it is not expected that the report will reveal previously undisclosed interrogation tactics or clandestine programs.
Rather, according to a former senior intelligence official briefed on the report, the agency’s objections have much to do with its tone, which the official described as prosecutorial…
ORLY?
Don’t be a fool and put your heart in a travelin’ man
Kay (not the front pager) asked a good question about out of area/out of network benefits:
What happens if you have an HMO or EPO and are injured/become ill while traveling? I have gone with the more expensive PPO for my employee coverage because my son lives in another state and we visit fairly often. I worry that something will happen while we are out-of-area and it will be as if we have no coverage. I really should contact the various insurers offered by my employer, but since you are here… How do HMOs and EPOs handle travelers?
There are two answers to this question. The first is the member/patient experience, and the second is the mechanics of the experience.
HMO/Point of Service/EPO won’t pay for routine out of network care. [Point of Service is very HMO-like without as much medical management built into it] For example,if you’re a diabetic, and there is an awesome endocrinologist that is out of network who you want to see for general management and care, you are SOL or at least cash out of pocket. In a PPO, the same out of network endocrinologist may see you and you’ll still be significantly cash out of pocket, but your insurance company will pay some of the listed fee.
Emergency care is different.
Don’t be a fool and put your heart in a travelin’ manPost + Comments (44)
This Topic Never Gets Old
I assume that a news start-up starting in a different place is probably going to suck at first and improve over time. What do you do, sir?
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) March 19, 2014
I agree with DougJ that if Silver fails, he will fail as a contrarian, and if Klein fails, he’ll fail as the next coming of David Broder. I agree with TimF that Pielke was a bad hire for Silver, and John is right that Ambrosino is a bad hire for Klein. And those two are not only bad hires but might be canaries in the contrarian/Slatepitch/sensible centrist coal mine.
That all said, these two ventures are, along with First Look Media, the only well-financed competition in our current media desert. They’ll exist in a market where the leading “liberal” newspaper felt it had to hire Ross Douthat to make sure the Times evenhandedly represented a viewpoint most recently seen at the Vatican Council of 1869. In their market, Richard Cohen still has a job, the Atlantic just hired David Frum, and even the Facebook-rich, supposedly liberal owner of the New Republic is unable to keep that publication from being what it’s always been. In that world, I’m willing to have a lot more than three days of patience with Silver’s new site while he figures out what he means by “data driven journalism”.
If what he means is that weak piece by Pielke, and this other even weaker piece about how the flight 370 will be found (apparently Bayesian statistics are involved, but I challenge you to figure out exactly how), then 538 won’t be long for this world. But maybe it means Harry Enten’s 15 tight paragraphs, backed by a wide-ranging look at polls and election history, about the political climate in Arizona. Or maybe it means a cogent, fact-based look at whether this winter really was that bad that doesn’t trot out a dozen hoary platitudes and is fairly free of anecdote. For some reason, our current media is incapable of reliably producing either of these types of stories, and if 538 can fill that void, they’ll probably do OK.
The problem that Silver and Klein face is that they’ve promised to do something extraordinary where just ordinary would probably be good enough. An independent 538 with a couple of other writers, and an independent Wonkbook free of the need to pretend that the Washington Post editorial board is anything but a bunch of loons, would have been a significant improvement in the current media landscape. My guess is that they couldn’t interest ESPN and Vox with such a ho-hum pitch. Still, in a world where the last “big” breakaway publication was Politico, which essentially promised to take the shittiest part of DC media culture, distill it down to the purest essence of fecal matter, smear it all over a webpage, and deliver every morning before the budding Penns and Shrums of Washington have had their Starbucks, I’m going to wait to pass judgment for a few months. Especially since almost any media outlet that focuses on data and close reading of public policy is a voice that will probably favor progressive policies on the whole.