This just in...

Your rights were showing and Congress took advantage by giving you a thermonuclear wedgie.

Mission Accomplished

"Say, how can I help my buddies?"

When major oil companies report their quarterly profits next week, they're once again expected to post record numbers. With crude trading around $60 a barrel, the oil industry is enjoying one of the biggest windfalls in its history. But as the industry looks for places to put that cash, it's finding it harder and harder to put funds to work finding new deposits of oil and natural gas.

By just about any measure, the past three years have produced one of the biggest cash gushers in the oil industry’s history. Since January of 2002, the price of crude has tripled, leaving oil producers awash in profits. During that period, the top 10 major public oil companies have sold some $1.5 trillion worth of crude, pocketing profits of more than $125 billion.

“This is the mother of all booms,” said Oppenheimer & Co. oil analyst Fadel Gheit. “They have so much profit, it’s almost an embarrassment of riches. They don’t know what to do with it."

Oh, I think they will invest it in some Bush Administration legal defense funds.

Family Values

I believe ths can be filed under, "I regret getting caught".

Rep. Don Sherwood, R-Pa., admitted in court papers filed Thursday that he had a five-year affair with a Maryland woman, but he denied abusing her, as she claimed in a $5.5 million civil suit.

The court papers were filed by Sherwood, R-Pa., in response to the lawsuit filed last month by Cynthia Ore, 29, of Rockville, Md. In it, she alleges that he brutally assaulted her and struck her on several occasions.

Sherwood, 64, denied in Thursday's filing that she lived at his Capitol Hill apartment as she had claimed in her suit. He said the affair ended Sept. 15 - the day police were called to Sherwood's apartment after Ore dialed 911.

I sure hope they never partied on the "Dukestir".

Future Prison Bitches

From the NY Times comes the story of two desperate hacks, closely connected in fellowship and decrepitude to the de jure and de facto President of the United States, working together to become the most insidious of traitors:

People who have been briefed on the case said the White House officials, Karl Rove and I. Lewis Libby, were helping prepare what became the administration's primary response to criticism that a flawed phrase about the nuclear materials in Africa had been in Mr. Bush's State of the Union address six months earlier.

They had exchanged e-mail correspondence and drafts of a proposed statement by George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, to explain how the disputed wording had gotten into the address. Mr. Rove, the president's political strategist, and Mr. Libby, the chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, coordinated their efforts with Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, who was in turn consulting with Mr. Tenet.

At the same time, they were grappling with the fallout from an Op-Ed article on July 6, 2003, in The New York Times by Mr. Wilson, a former diplomat, in which he criticized the way the administration had used intelligence to support the claim in Mr. Bush's speech.

The work done by Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby on the Tenet statement during this intense period has not been previously disclosed. People who have been briefed on the case discussed this critical time period and the events surrounding it to demonstrate that Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby were not involved in an orchestrated scheme to discredit Mr. Wilson or disclose the undercover status of his wife, Valerie Wilson, but were intent on clarifying the use of intelligence in the president's address. Those people who have been briefed requested anonymity because prosecutors have asked them not to discuss matters under investigation.

The special counsel in the case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, has been examining this period of time to determine whether the officials' work on the Tenet statement led in some way to the disclosure of Ms. Wilson's identity to Robert D. Novak, the syndicated columnist, according to the people who have been briefed.

It is not clear what information Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby might have collected about Ms. Wilson as they worked on the Tenet statement. Mr. Rove has said he learned her name from Mr. Novak. Mr. Libby has declined to discuss the matter.

The effort was striking because to an unusual degree, the circle of officials involved included those from the White House's political and national security operations, which are often separately run. Both arms were drawn into the effort to defend the administration during the period.

A loath that dare not speak their names. And at the same time the previously hinted to Bloomberg piece today:

Two top White House aides have given accounts to a special prosecutor about how reporters first told them the identity of a CIA agent that are at odds with what the reporters have said, according to people familiar with the case.

Lewis ``Scooter'' Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, told special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned from NBC News reporter Tim Russert of the identity of Central Intelligence Agency operative Valerie Plame, the wife of former ambassador and Bush administration critic Joseph Wilson, one person said. Russert has testified before a federal grand jury that he didn't tell Libby of Plame's identity, the person said.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove told Fitzgerald that he first learned the identity of the CIA agent from syndicated columnist Robert Novak, according a person familiar with the matter. Novak, who was first to report Plame's name and connection to Wilson, has given a somewhat different version to the special prosecutor, the person said.

These discrepancies may be important because Fitzgerald is investigating whether Libby, Rove or other administration officials made false statements during the course of the investigation. The Plame case has its genesis in whether any administration officials violated a 1982 law making it illegal to knowingly reveal the name of a covert intelligence agent.

So they were engaged in a rare bit of "super" coordinating, yet somehow learned Plame's names from the douchebag of liberty and Li'l Russ?

Riiiiight.

Golly, I wonder if there is anymore bad news for the GOP?

In another indication of how wide a net investigators have cast in the case, Karen Hughes, a former top communications aide to Mr. Bush, and Robert Joseph, who was then the National Security Council's expert on weapons proliferation, have both told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that they were interviewed by the special prosecutor.

Ms. Hughes is to have her confirmation hearing on Friday on her nomination to lead the State Department's public diplomacy operation.

Dayum!

What's that smell? Oh yes, it's the smell of Neocons soiling themselves

This would be a lovely story:

Bloomberg News has slotted a story alleging that senior Bush advisor Karl Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff 'Scooter' Libby provided false testimony to the special prosecutor to a Washington-based grand jury, RAW STORY has been told.

Patrick Fitzgerald, the Chicago special prosecutor appointed to investigate the outing of former covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson, may also be looking at whether other crimes -- such as perjury, obstruction of justice or leaking classified information -- were committed.

It's breaking tonight or tomorrow AM, sources say. Bloomberg has been among the head of the pack in breaking elements of the CIA leak scandal; they recently hired former Wall Street Journal editor Al Hunt.

Oh look, John Podhoretz just sharted.

I know this may be HARD but try to think for a moment...

Warren Bell, the kind of sloppy logic you'd expect from the recessive gene pool blog, in praising John Howard for this statement:

JOHN HOWARD RULES [Warren Bell]
Re: Australia, US, and UK involvement in Iraq. "Once a country allows its foreign policy to be dictated by terrorism, it's given the game away."
Posted at 11:07 AM

Think about the above statement and tell me how it does not describe Bush's foreign policy as sold to the public.

If you were capable of shame, you'd be overwhelmed with it by this point.

Wow, it's a genocidal nightmare, but in some ways it is just like home!

They should have brought Karen Hughes with them, she'd get her meaty paws on those dupes. It would be like a creating an firebreak of assholes.

Sudanese security manhandled U.S. officials and journalists outside a meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and President Omar Hassan al-Bashir on Thursday, prompting Rice to demand an apology.

"It makes me very angry to be sitting with their president and have this happen," Rice told reporters on her plane before leaving Khartoum for Darfur. Earlier, she told reporters she wanted an apology.

Sudanese guards and officials shoved U.S. journalists away from the Bashir meeting and slammed the wooden doors to his palace in their faces.

Some U.S. officials were also blocked for several minutes before the Sudanese agreed to allow Rice and aides in. The media was later allowed to witness briefly the talks.

Sudanese officials were not immediately available for comment on the scuffle.

For some reason that last line seems so obvious it makes me laugh.

I just hope there were not any secret memos on board.

We The People...Resolve To Stay Resolved

Lest anyone get the false impression that Murica does not keep its commitments, the House yesterday sent a message destined to spread across the world like a really greasy beer fart that we aren't leaving until the job is done.

The measure, approved 291-137, says the United States should leave Iraq only when national security and foreign policy goals related to a free and stable Iraq have been achieved.

"Calls for an early withdrawal embolden the terrorists and undermine the morale" of U.S. and allied forces and put their security at risk, the amendment to a State Department bill reads.

And in a less heralded part of the resolution was this big middle finger to Muslims the world over:

The GOP-controlled House also voted 304-124 to accept another contentious amendment stating that the detention and lawful interrogation of detainees at Guantanamo is essential to the war on terrorism. Some critics of reported prisoner abuse and lack of legal recourse for detainees have called for Guantanamo to be closed.

Boy am I glad that is cleared up; now we can get back to more important issues.

One more word on the Pincus piece

Two specific things come out of that article.

First, another clear demonstration that that idea that Valerie Plame was not "undercover" is ground into a fine dust.

Second, another freeper talking point, or Wall Street Journal Editorial argument, pretty much the same thing, has been that Wilson's conclusion about Iraq & Niger yellowcake was a lie. That too is blown up. As Susie Madrak notes:

It records that the INR analyst at the meeting opposed Wilson’s trip to Niger because the State Department, through other inquiries, already had disproved the allegation that Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. Attached to the INR memo were the notes taken by the senior INR analyst who attended the 2002 meeting at the CIA.

Bobo gets off

I truly think that today he wrote his column and promptly sought "release".

Sorry for the horrid image, but it surely seems likely. But, with just a tad of tweaking, it could have worked in any era, replace John B. Roberts with Roger B. Taney and see what I mean.


On second thought, maybe Davey had some assistance.


More ironic than usual, no?

Tit-for-Tat

I'M OUTING KARL ROVE'S WIFE!!!!

Who to my knowledge is in no way an intelligence operative, and given her marriage, I'm guessing there is little evidence of intelligence for that matter. They certainly seem a lovely couple, a lovely couple for attending a bear-bating:


Pretending he isn't balding.


The passion is just seeping out in this photograph...or is that puss?


Just who is "out" with who in this photograph is open to interpretation. But I'm guessing the proper title of this picture should be "Frumpy Bookends"


Proudly posing with Karl's "party pin" before selling state secrets to Prince Bandar.




Pictures from many non-protected sources thanks to Limajockey.

Teutonic Turd

As big a bomb as "Junior":

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's approval rating dropped to a new low even before a controversy developed about his hefty side income from fitness magazines, according to a poll released on Thursday.

Only 34 percent of adult Californians approve of the job Schwarzenegger is doing as governor, compared with 51 percent who disapprove, according to a survey by the Public Policy Institute of California.

The institute's poll mirrors sinking numbers in a Field Poll last month among registered voters which found approval dropped to 37 percent from 55 percent in February.

Photo from Kellytown.

Yes, about trying to change the spin...

Not working. Nominating Mr. "Whiter than White", "Blander than Bland", Mr. "I found two blonde Latin American kids I can dress up like Buster Brown on Easter" just isn't drawing away the attention like they hoped.

The proof?

Pincus on Page 1 of the Washington Post:

A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials.

Plame -- who is referred to by her married name, Valerie Wilson, in the memo -- is mentioned in the second paragraph of the three-page document, which was written on June 10, 2003, by an analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), according to a source who described the memo to The Washington Post.

The paragraph identifying her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the "secret" level, two sources said. The CIA classifies as "secret" the names of officers whose identities are covert, according to former senior agency officials.

Anyone reading that paragraph should have been aware that it contained secret information, though that designation was not specifically attached to Plame's name and did not describe her status as covert, the sources said.

So, who saw that memo and started calling folks, furthermore who called Karl and Scooter?

Bartlett? Fleischer? Gilligan?

Not drugged enough

Steve Gilliard shows us that fresh off outrage over the GOP admitting the bigotry of the "southern strategy", Rush Limbaugh has decided to move to outright stereotypical bigotry. When I wrote "move to", of course, I meant, "remain with".

One Less Scotty

*picture from here.

Like most of you, I'll always remember him from Jason of Star Command and Tarzan and the Super 7.

But with one less Scotty in the world, others get even more nervous...


Cannot defy laws of physics, nor speak with the pompetus of love


BTW, NTodd, who will someday engage in battle with me over the tastefully tattooed heart of Janeane Garofolo only to have her run off with Ezra Klein, reminds us that this is also the 36th anniversary of Apollo 11.

I believe a poorly endowed chair is in order...

Sometimes the jokes write themselves, from the intersection of Radioactive Hymen Street & Unable to Perform Avenue:

SO MANY SUBJECT-LINE OPTIONS... [K. J. Lopez]
Free College for Virgins.
Posted at 08:58 AM

You have to admit, she must be excited to finally see a school in which she could win a scholarship.


Thanks to commentor Jimmiraybob.

Was "Battleship Potemkin" ever a Musical?

Because I'd love to see this cast going down a large flight of stairs in a runaway pram.

MR. ROBERTS [Jonah Goldberg]

Last night at a small cocktail party I was chatting with Kate and a few others about the buzz over the news that Bush was going to appoint one of the female candidates. The consensus was that this was welcome news -- considering the alternative was Gonzales -- but wouldn't it have been nice if Bush had tagged a plain old really smart white guy? Picking a woman would have been cemented the identity politics nonsense just a bit further.

This conversation came to a fairly abrupt end when Paul Johnson, Mr and Mrs John O'Sullivan and the Podhoretzes started singing show tunes. I am not making this up.

Posted at 11:18 AM

Gee, John Podhoretz singing showtunes, he'd be a great Auntie Mame or Momma Rose.

You'll be swelled! You'll be lame!
You're an utter moron about Plame!
Drink cheap beer, eat a cow,
Jonah, everything's coming up Ho'sis

"Mommie, who's the dummy?"

"Quiet, can't you see your sister's terrified of him?


"Enough of this poopie head, I'm off to watch Sponge Bob!"


Now crying on the inside.


"So I ask you fellow diplomats, is it all agreed you want the No. 32? Remember that comes ONLY with Steamed Rice!"


"Can you believe I bounced another couple of checks yesterday?"


Taco Bell has given Dear Leader a personal W.M.D.!


"Look, once again Mr. Prime Minister, I apologize for the President continually trying to remove your headdress. Again, my humblest apologies."


Please god, is it too much to ask for 5 minutes of proper blood flow down there? Just a bit of inflation?"

Keep our eye on the ball

Not that I am suggesting giving Judge Roberts a free pass, but lets admit it, bland is bland. The time for getting worked up about this guy is as things emerge.

The Bush Administration is deservedly on the ropes, but not because of Bob, er, John Roberts, but because of Karl Rove and the Administration policies of lying and deceipt about war that we've known for a long time, but which the populace as a whole is waking up to at last.

Let's keep our eye on the ball.

And why exactly?

Because in my opinion the gingerbread house of Chimpy is about ready to crumble, as it should, built upon the foundation of war crime. If that happens, John Roberts will take care of itself. We need to push it over the precipice, and they are dangerously close -- and they know it, the entire GOP establishment knows it. Freeper, or moderate GOPer, they all know that desperate measures are necessary to save it. But they may not be able to, without making matters even worse for them.

We can see the writing on the wall if what Murray Waas reports is correct:

White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove did not disclose that he had ever discussed CIA officer Valerie Plame with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper during Rove’s first interview with the FBI, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The omission by Rove created doubt for federal investigators, almost from the inception of their criminal probe into who leaked Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak, as to whether Rove was withholding crucial information from them, and perhaps even misleading or lying to them, the sources said.

Also leading to the early skepticism of Rove's accounts was the claim that although he first heard that Plame worked for the CIA from a journalist, he said could not recall the name of the journalist. Later, the sources said, Rove wavered even further, saying he was not sure at all where he first heard the information.

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, has said that Rove never knew that Plame was a covert officer when he discussed her CIA employment with reporters, and that he only first learned of her clandestine status when he read about it in the newspaper. Luskin did not return a telephone call today seeking comment for this story.

As Digby notes, this is what ended up getting Martha Stewart entered in prison craft fairs.

After months and months of thinking that Bush and his cronies would never be "THAT" deceitful, the public is waking up and contemplating the truth that, yes indeed, Bush wanted this war by hook, crook, and whatever lie he could sell it on. And after Exhibit No. 1 being the lack of WMDs, Exhibit No. 2 being the now obvious lack of planning, comes the clincher the smoking gun, the deliberate outing of a CIA Operative as a means of punishing an ACCURATE critic of Bush's claims about African Yellow Cake purchases.

Using his right-hand (and entire brain) through the use of Rove (who it is also credibly reported was going completely out of his way to smear Wilson) to attack Wilson and expose Plame for partisan purposes is likely the last straw. If, in his initial FBI interview, Rove conveniently omitted talking to Matt Cooper, that is really, really bad news for Chimpy, and of course Rove. It exposes the malevolent tactics of a war crime for the utter immoral act as it is and shows that Bush is, in essense the murderer of tens of thousands in our names.

Combine that with the barely reported findings of John Zogby earlier this month, that 42% of the American public THEN believed that if evidence emerges that Bush misled the nation about Iraq they would support impeachment.

I'm pretty sure that the support of impeaching the Clenis was never anywhere near that high.

Eventually, even the media cannot ignore that shitstorm.

By the way, what are the odds that the media will make absolutely no analogy between how they were lied to and manipulated yesterday on who was getting appointed (the White House says its Clement, no they say its Brown, oops we meant Luttig, or maybe Gonzales...okay, its Roberts) and how they have been lied to about Iraq.

Apparently, White House access means repeatedly being happily lied to.

But the public is turning against Bush, there is no doubt of it, and if the truth finally wills out, as it normally does (though its admittedly always a slow starter) they will take eventual notice. And then its curtains for the GOP for quite some time.

UPDATE:

I bolded the portion of what Rove's lawyer has said so you can point out to any freepers that EVEN Rove's lawyer admits that Plame was, in fact, undercover. That will save you both time so he or she can move on to their next erroneous talking point.

While they strut and lie

About the Plame matter, as stated below it should be noted that more than just Valerie Plame was outed by Bob Novak, later he outed the shell-company she nominally worked for as an energy analyst, Brewster Jennings & Associates, a CIA front company.

The outing of Plame and the outing of her front company (which was actually exposed just by outing her really, its subsequent naming by Novak was just another pinch of douchebaggery) potentially exposed many, many CIA agents or contacts.

An excellent diary by Sherlock Google at the Daily Kos brings this home:

Pictured above is the CIA Memorial Wall to honor the agents killed in the line of duty. Below the stars is The Book of Honor, containing the names of de-classified agents and unnamed gold stars without names for the agents whose covers are still classified. Note that under 2003 there is a gold star with a blank space for a classified name. The other 3 agents in 2003 were killed in Afghanistan.

But the blank space for 2003 is intriguing. Could that be an agent who died as a result of the Plame Leak? It's pure speculation, but given what we know about the Brewster Jennings & Associates cover being blown, and that Tenet and Pavitt almost certainly gave Fitzgerald a full Damage Assessment on Brewster Jennings, a dead agent is a real possibility in the Plame case.

That may be why there were 8 pages redacted in the judge opinions by Tatel and Sentelle--for national security reasons, because the Brewster Jennings Damage Assessment is part of the case and still classified.

We may never know, but there is the empty space for a dead agent in 2003. They add the agent names into the Book of Honor the year after in an annual ceremony.

What's interesting is that the stars are in chronological order and Helge Boes was killed on Feb. 5, 2003, while Carlson and Mueller died on October 25, 2003.

So the unknown agent in between was killed sometime between Feb. 5 and October 25, 2003, while the Plame Leak was July 14 and Novak's Brewster Jennings Leak was July 22.

We may not know the circumstances of that anonymous CIA agents death, but undoubtedly Patrick Fitzgerald does.