Interesting op-ed piece in the WaPo on the Pakistani connection to the London bombings.
Matt Cooper on Meet The Press
Don’t forget- Cooper on MTP.
Oh No He Didn’t!
John Tierney just went and got himself in heap of trouble with the left:
We are in the midst of a remarkable Washington scandal, and we still don’t have a name for it. Leakgate, Rovegate, Wilsongate – none of the suggestions have stuck because none capture what’s so special about the current frenzy to lock up reporters and public officials…
The White House felon So far Karl Rove appears guilty of telling reporters something he had heard, that Valerie Wilson, the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV, worked for the C.I.A. But because of several exceptions in the 1982 law forbidding disclosure of a covert operative’s identity, virtually no one thinks anymore that he violated it. The law doesn’t seem to apply to Ms. Wilson because she apparently hadn’t been posted abroad during the five previous years.
The endangered spies Ms. Wilson was compared to James Bond in the early days of the scandal, but it turns out she had been working for years at C.I.A. headquarters, not exactly a deep-cover position. Since being outed, she’s hardly been acting like a spy who’s worried that her former contacts are in danger.
At the time her name was printed, her face was still not that familiar even to most Washington veterans, but that soon changed. When her husband received a “truth-telling” award at a Nation magazine luncheon, he wept as he told of his sorrow at his wife’s loss of anonymity. Then he introduced her to the crowd…
For now, though, it looks as if this scandal is about a spy who was not endangered, a whistle-blower who did not blow the whistle and was not smeared, and a White House official who has not been fired for a felony that he did not commit. And so far the only victim is a reporter who did not write a story about it.
It would be logical to name it the Not-a-gate scandal, but I prefer a bilingual variation. It may someday make a good trivia question:
What do you call a scandal that’s not scandalous?
Nadagate.
I wonder how many ways his name will be taken in vain at dKos.
Oh, btw- can someone help me out with something. Can someone tell me the origin and meaning of ‘adoring the codpiece’ or ‘worshipping the codpiece?’ I have seen this several times in the past few days, and I was just curious what it all meant.
Sanity… Sort Of
Everybody seems to want me to link to this Mark Kleiman piece which outlines a list of possible crimes that Rove et al. could be charged. In fact, so many people have linked it in the comments that my comments section might start getting technorati hits. Fine- linked, and duly noted.
Except, of course, I read Kleiman pretty much every day, so there was no real need to point it out, as I had alrerady seen it and not really thought much about it. While Mark’s suggestion(s) is wholly possible, I generally regard speculation about specific charges to be a tad premature at this point. All we have to date are what appear to be pro-Rove leaks and wild anti-Rove claims, so I am going to wait a little bit to see how this whole thing turns out.
Now, on to something Mark has said that I completely agree with:
Some folks who ought to know better, and others who clearly don’t know any better, have been tossing around the terms “treason” and “traitor” in connection with the White House efforts to burn Valerie Plame as a CIA officer.
Get a grip, people!
What Rove and his buddies did was despicable. It was unpatriotic. More likely than not, it was even criminal. But it wasn’t “treason,” and Karl Rove isn’t a “traitor,” either in plain English or in law.
In plain English, a traitor is someone who, for whatever reason, fights for or otherwise helps an enemy foreign power making war, or preparing to make war, on his country. Sometimes, it’s for money, as with Hansen and Ames. Sometimes it’s out of personal pique, as in the case of Benedict Arnold. Sometimes it’s ideological, as with the Rosenbergs.
Of course, as I jokingly acknowledged yesterday, the left is hardly on their own in this, and were the tables turned, the same sort of thing and probably louder would be going on from the partisans on the right. Not to mention that some on the right think Rove is worthy of a medal and the WSJ has hailed Rove as a hero.
The claims of treason and traitor are, of course, silly, but if this was James Carville under scrutiny, Sean Hannity would be livecasting his radio show from in front of the Grand Jury proceedings.
Muslim Outrage
It is nice to read the newspaper and find out that the international Muslim community is mad at something other than the United States and Israel:
Britain’s top Muslims have branded the London suicide bombings “utterly criminal, totally reprehensible, and absolutely un-Islamic”.
A joint statement of condemnation came as 22 leaders and scholars met at the Islamic Cultural Centre, in London.But Britain’s highest ranking Asian police officer, Tarique Ghaffur, says Muslims and their leaders must do more than just condemn the bombings.
Bomber Hasib Mir Hussain’s family said on Friday they were “devastated”.
Police in Egypt arrested chemistry student Magdi Mahmoud al-Nashar, 33, wanted in connection with the bombings.
At the meeting in London, Muslim leaders said there could never be any excuse for taking an innocent life, it said.
Good. While I, too, think that the long-term situation is not going to change until internal pressures from within the Muslim community alter the culture, I am getting a little tired of calls for Muslims to ‘condemn the bombings.’ Why? Two reasons.
First, it assumes that most Muslims don’t already find suicide bombing and the murder of innocents to be horrid. We don’t require every Catholic to condemn pedophile priests. We don’t require every Christian to condemn Falwell when he spouts off at the mouth about America deserving 9/11. We just sort of assume that is the default position for sane people.
Second, what is needed is not just loud and ritualistic condemnations. What is needed are affirmative steps to change the culture so that the minority view that violence is acceptable is simply eradicated.
Criminal Contempt
In other Plame news, it appears things might get tougher for Judith Miller:
Lawyers in the CIA leaks investigation are concerned that special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald may seek criminal contempt charges against New York Times reporter Judith Miller, a rare move that could significantly lengthen her time in jail.
Miller, now in her 10th day in the Alexandria jail, already faces as much as four months of incarceration for civil contempt after refusing to answer questions before a grand jury about confidential conversations she had in reporting a story in the summer of 2003. Fitzgerald and Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan have both raised the possibility in open court that Miller could be charged with criminal contempt if she continues to defy Hogan’s order to cooperate in the investigation of who may have unlawfully leaked the name of undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame to the media.
The unusual threat in the case underscores the sensitivity of an investigation that has reached the highest levels of the White House and the prosecutor’s determination to extract information from reluctant journalists even though he has yet to charge anyone with a crime. What secrets Miller can unlock for Fitzgerald — and the reasons he has so doggedly pursued her — have been a subject of considerable mystery.
My position is slowly morphing from one in which I felt it was wrong regardless the situation that Miller be jailed to one in which I believe Miller should be forced to tell whatshe knows.
Enron and the California Blackouts
If you see Gray Davis this week-end, stay out of his way:
More than four years after rolling blackouts and skyrocketing electricity bills shook California and the rest of the West Coast, the Enron Corporation finally settled claims that it played a major role in the energy crisis of 2000 and 2001.
Enron, the former highflying energy trader now operating under bankruptcy protection, announced yesterday that it had reached an agreement to pay as much as $1.52 billion to the State of California and other parties.
But actual payouts are likely to be only a fraction of that amount. Under the bankruptcy plan, Enron will pay unsecured claimants – and California is one of them – about 20 cents on the dollar on average, said Jennifer Lowney, a spokeswoman for Enron.
Enron and other power companies are accused of gouging consumers by artificially inflating electricity prices during the California energy crisis. The crisis led to billions of dollars of surcharges for consumers and businesses on the West Coast.
One of the fastest-growing companies in America in the 1990’s and a star on Wall Street, Enron collapsed into bankruptcy in December 2001 amid accusations of widespread financial irregularities and fraud. It is now facing an estimated $65 billion in claims from investors, consumers, employees and government agencies it defrauded. Against that, the company’s estate is valued at about $13 billion, and Enron has so far paid out $580 million to claimants in other cases, Ms. Lowney said.
They gamed the system and screwed over millions…