Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I wonder if trump will be tried as an adult.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

This blog will pay for itself.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

Let’s finish the job.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

People are weird.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

Trump’s legal defense is going to be a dumpster fire inside a clown car on a derailing train.

Dead end MAGA boomers crying about Talyor Swift being a Dem is my kind of music. Turn it up.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

Marge, god is saying you’re stupid.

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

Russia bombs Ukraine’s maternity hospitals; Republicans in the House can’t sort out supporting Ukraine.

The new republican ‘Pastor’ of the House is an odious authoritarian little creep.

The current Supreme Court is a rogue court. Very dangerous.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

…and a burning sense of injustice to juice the soul.

You are here: Home / Archives for Politics

More on the ‘Wall’

by | 17 Comments

This post is in: ,

Deborah Orin has an additional column on Clinton-era policies and terrorism:

PRESIDENT Bill Clinton’s team ignored dire warnings that its approach to terrorism was “very dangerous” and could have “deadly results,” according to a blistering memo just obtained by The Post.

Then-Manhattan U.S. Attorney Mary Jo White wrote the memo as she pleaded in vain with Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick to tear down the wall between intelligence and prosecutors, a wall that went beyond legal requirements.

Looking back after 9/11, the memo makes for eerie reading — because White’s team foresaw, years in advance, that the Clinton-era wall would make it tougher to stop mass murder.

“This is not an area where it is safe or prudent to build unnecessary walls or to compartmentalize our knowledge of any possible players, plans or activities,” wrote White, herself a Clinton appointee.

Again, while all the second-guessing is interesting (and goodness knows the Democrats would be trumpeting this were roles reversed), what is more interesting is why this is all coming out right now. Part of an August roll-out becuase of the slow news cycle? Part of a Plame/Rove pushabck? Or is the information just now becoming available?

More on the ‘Wall’Post + Comments (17)

The Roberts Conundrum

by | 18 Comments

This post is in: 

Looks like the base is pissed with reports there will be no vicious confirmation battle:

Major liberal groups accused Democratic senators yesterday of showing too little stomach for opposing John G. Roberts Jr.’s Supreme Court nomination, saying newly released documents indicate he is much more conservative than many people first thought.

The response was quick and pointed, as two key senators unleashed their sharpest criticisms yet of Roberts and sought to assure activists that the battle is far from over.

That would certainly explain this quote:

“All this talk about whether Democrats will support the Roberts nomination is laughably premature. The hearings have not even begun. The White House has so far refused to produce relevant documents, and the documents we have seen raise questions about the nominee’s commitment to progress on civil rights.

John Roberts must still persuade the Senate and the American people that he is a worthy replacement for Justice O’Connor and the jury is still out on that.”

Worthy replacement for O’Connor? I am a little rusty on the Constitution, but I don’t remember that aspect of the confirmation process.

The Roberts ConundrumPost + Comments (18)

New Life for “Able Danger?”

by | 11 Comments

This post is in: ,

This will certainly fan the flames for the next few days:

military intelligence team repeatedly contacted the F.B.I. in 2000 to warn about the existence of an American-based terrorist cell that included the ringleader of the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a veteran Army intelligence officer who said he had now decided to risk his career by discussing the information publicly. The officer, Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer, said military lawyers later blocked the team from sharing any of its information with the F.B.I.

Colonel Shaffer said in an interview that the small, highly classified intelligence program known as Able Danger had identified by name the terrorist ringleader, Mohammed Atta, as well three of the other future hijackers by mid-2000, and had tried to arrange a meeting that summer with agents of the F.B.I.’s Washington field office to share the information.

But he said military lawyers forced members of the intelligence program to cancel three scheduled meetings with the F.B.I. at the last minute, which left the bureau without information that Colonel Shaffer said might have led to Mr. Atta and the other terrorists while the Sept. 11 plot was still being planned.

“I was at the point of near insubordination over the fact that this was something important, that this was something that should have been pursued,” Colonel Shaffer said of his efforts to get the evidence from the intelligence program to the F.B.I. in 2000 and early 2001.

He said he learned later that lawyers associated with the Defense Department’s Special Operations Command had canceled the F.B.I. meetings because they feared controversy if Able Danger was portrayed as a military operation that had violated the privacy of civilians who were legally in the United States. “It was because of the chain of command saying we’re not going to pass on information – if something goes wrong, we’ll get blamed,” he said.

Read the whole thing, but what is noticable absent is any mention of Jamie Gorelick, who had other conflicts of interest that should have kept her off the 9/11 Commission.

At any rate, as with everything, there isthe story, and then there is the story pushing the story. Why is this coming out now? It will be interesting to see what happens next.

New Life for “Able Danger?”Post + Comments (11)

Bin Laden and the State Department

by | 25 Comments

This post is in: 

Interesting piece on 1996 State Department warnings about Bin Laden in Afghanistan:

State Department analysts warned the Clinton administration in July 1996 that Osama bin Laden’s move to Afghanistan would give him an even more dangerous haven as he sought to expand radical Islam “well beyond the Middle East,” but the government chose not to deter the move, newly declassified documents show.

In what would prove a prescient warning, the State Department intelligence analysts said in a top-secret assessment on Mr. bin Laden that summer that “his prolonged stay in Afghanistan – where hundreds of ‘Arab mujahedeen’ receive terrorist training and key extremist leaders often congregate – could prove more dangerous to U.S. interests in the long run than his three-year liaison with Khartoum,” in Sudan.

The declassified documents, obtained by the conservative legal advocacy group Judicial Watch as part of a Freedom of Information Act request and provided to The New York Times, shed light on a murky and controversial chapter in Mr. bin Laden’s history: his relocation from Sudan to Afghanistan as the Clinton administration was striving to understand the threat he posed and explore ways of confronting him.

Before 1996, Mr. bin Laden was regarded more as a financier of terrorism than a mastermind. But the State Department assessment, which came a year before he publicly urged Muslims to attack the United States, indicated that officials suspected he was taking a more active role, including in the bombings in June 1996 that killed 19 members American soldiers at the Khobar Towers in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.

Two years after the State Department’s warning, with Mr. bin Laden firmly entrenched in Afghanistan and overseeing terrorist training and financing operations, Al Qaeda struck two American embassies in East Africa, leading to failed military attempts by the Clinton administration to capture or kill him in Afghanistan. Three years later, on Sept. 11, 2001, Al Qaeda struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in an operation overseen from the base in Afghanistan…

Michael F. Scheuer, who from 1996 to 1999 led the Central Intelligence Agency unit that tracked Mr. bin Laden, said the State Department documents reflected a keen awareness of the danger posed by Mr. bin Laden’s relocation.

“The analytical side of the State Department had it exactly right – that’s genius analysis,” he said in an interview when told of the declassified documents. But Mr. Scheuer, who wrote a book in 2004 titled “Imperial Hubris,” under the pseudonym “Anonymous,” that was highly critical of American counterterrorism strategies, said many officials in the C.I.A.’s operational side thought they would have a better chance to kill Mr. bin Laden in Afghanistan than they did in Sudan because the Sudan government protected him.

“The thinking was that he was in Afghanistan, and he was dangerous, but because he was there, we had a better chance to kill him,” Mr. Scheuer said. “But at the end of the day, we settled for the worst possibility – he was there and we didn’t do anything.”

Bin Laden and the State DepartmentPost + Comments (25)

I Don’t Get It

by | 20 Comments

This post is in: ,

I don’t understand the administration position on this issue:

The Bush administration is objecting to the creation of a .xxx domain, saying it has concerns about a virtual red-light district reserved exclusively for Internet pornography.

Michael Gallagher, assistant secretary at the Commerce Department, has asked for a hold to be placed on the contract to run the new top-level domain until the .xxx suffix can receive further scrutiny. The domain was scheduled to receive final approval Tuesday.

“The Department of Commerce has received nearly 6,000 letters and e-mails from individuals expressing concern about the impact of pornography on families and children,” Gallagher said in a letter that was made public on Monday.

The sudden high-level interest in what has historically been an obscure process has placed the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) in an uncomfortable position. ICANN approved the concept of an .xxx domain in June and approval of ICM Registry’s contract to run the suffix was expected this week.

It seems to me this is precisely the sort of thing the governmentr would favor, as it would provide a relatively easy way to create filtering software and prevent children from viewing objectionable material. Unless of course, this is just moral posturing and that the real problem isn’t that pornographic materials exist and can be obtained by minors, but that pornographic materials exist at all. That wouldn’t be surprising, as this administration has show itself willing to treat adults like the government’s children on more than one occasion.

I Don’t Get ItPost + Comments (20)

Fox News Teaser

by | 37 Comments

This post is in: 

In between tossing and turning, staring at the ceiling, and swearing about not being able to fall asleep, I heard a teaser/promo (I am not sure what they are called in television) for Fox News regarding immigration/border security that ended with something like this:

“Illegal immigrants- violent, carrying disease, and with possible ties to terrorism?”

It was done with the normal booming sensationalist voice, and I have to state- I AM PARAPHRASING this because I was groggy from trying to sleep, and had turned the tv on to waste time. But I know the “violent, carrying disease, and with possible ties to terrorism?” part is mostly accurate.

Am I the only one who supports border security but finds this sort of approach a little troubling?

Fox News TeaserPost + Comments (37)

Roberts Confirmation ALL But Guaranteed

by | 21 Comments

This post is in: 

The Democrats aren’t even going to mount an opposition:

Democrats have decided that unless there is an unexpected development in the weeks ahead, they will not launch a major fight to block the Supreme Court nomination of John G. Roberts Jr., according to legislators, Senate aides and party strategists.

In a series of interviews in recent days, more than a dozen Democratic senators and aides who are intimately involved in deliberations about strategy said that they see no evidence that most Democratic senators are prepared to expend political capital in what is widely seen as a futile effort to derail the nomination.

Although they expect to subject President Bush’s nominee to tough questioning at confirmation hearings next month, members of the minority party said they do not plan to marshal any concerted campaign against Roberts because they have concluded that he is likely to get at least 70 votes — enough to overrule parliamentary tactics such as a filibuster that could block the nominee.

Now I am not Chuck Schumer or Pat Leahy, but 70 votes seems to mean pretty broad support consaidering the current political climate.

Right now, the only thing that interests me about this debate is which way Hillary votes, because that says more about the possible tone of the 2008 election than anything else. At least right now.

Roberts Confirmation ALL But GuaranteedPost + Comments (21)