Wednesday, July 13, 2005

The DSCC's Big Score   Chuck Schumer is making miracles happen.  He first proved to be a prodigious fundraiser in New York; and he's just one more proof of the truth that if you can make it there, you can make it anywhere.  Since he took over fundraising for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, he's managed to outraise the RSCC, currently led by Elizabeth Dole.  Even when Democrats controlled the Senate, they normally got badly beat in fundraising, sometimes by better than two to one.  Leading the RSCC successfully has traditionally been a way to rise through the Senate hierarchy faster than one's seniority would permit; it looks like that's not going to happen for Senator Dole.  So Senator Schumer is doing more than you might guess to make America a better place. 11:12:18 PM    comment []

Karl Rove, Traitor   In his column today, Jules Witcover, a middle-of-the-road columnist who formerly worked with Jack Germond, has joined the growing chorus of columnists and politicians both left and right, who say that someone like Karl Rove who has endangered our national security for any reason, let alone out of petty partisan animus, should be fired.  And let's remember, the very first person to say that any government official involved in the Plame leak should be fired was a Republican; actually, it was President George W. Bush.  I'd go further, though.  Karl Rove should be a pariah.  People of good will should walk across the street if they see him.  They should refuse him service in stores.  He should be banned from restaurants.  His friends should turn him away if he darkens their door.  They shouldn't spit on him if he was on fire.  Valerie Plame's job in the CIA was to try to retard the development of WMDs abroad.  Since he outed her as a covert agent, she cannot be as effective in that role.  If a WMD is used against America, it might not be his fault.  But then again, it might.  And we don't know how many foreigners who Plame cultivated to provide the US with intelligence have died because of Rove's leak.  But it's bound to be a number of them.  We also don't know how many foreigners who might have decided to provide the US with intelligence will not do so because Rove outed a CIA agent, and thus highlighted how vulnerable they might be if a Republican political operative decides he is displeased with the intelligence an agent provides. Technically, Karl Rove may not have committed any crime.  But in any meaningful sense, he's a traitor.  6:38:02 PM    comment []

Quote for the Day, 7/13/2005   "I pledge my ever-ending loyalty."   -Lenny Montana (Luca Brasi), The Godfather 4:33:33 PM    comment []

An Unwelcome Development   Jack Abramoff, the Al Capone of K Street, appears to have caught a break.  Two of Abramoff's associates, Sam Hook and his wife Shana Tesler, who had been subpoenaed, have left the country and moved to Israel for the rest of their lives before they had to testify.   Alyza Lewin said the timing of their move is purely a coincidence.  "They'll still be able to be reached.  They have every intention to continue to cooperate," Lewin said, speaking for them.  She had to speak for them.  Mr. Hook and Mrs. Tesler could not be reached. 1:13:34 PM    comment []

The Case for Rove is Absurd   The defense for Karl Rove is becoming increasingly desperate and unconvincing.  They point to the text of the email by Matt Cooper, "It was, [Karl Rove] said, Wilson's wife, who apparently works at the [Central Intelligence Agency] on wmd who authorized the trip."  They argue that Rove didn't actually name Ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife, why, he merely made it so a witless child could figure it out.  So he didn't technically break any laws by naming Plame.  They argue that there is no evidence he knew she was a covert agent; of course not.  He also didn't say he wanted to spend the rest of his life in jail.  He's simply revealed the identity of a CIA agent; and hey, who knew there were any covert agents at the CIA?  Why, that would require that Karl Rove had a thought in his head, and everyone knows he's dumb as a stump.  And then they go for what they view as their strongest argument...Karl Rove wasn't trying to reveal a CIA agent's identity, he did that carelessly, without even noticing (and do we want to see that sort of behavior from government officials?), in his effort to discredit Ambassador Wilson and his investigation of Iraqi WMD charges.  But that's absurd.  It's just silly.  The problem with that claim is that, even at the time, the evidence that Wilson had presented was undisputed.  The document showing nuclear material sales from Niger to Iraq was an obvious forgery, featuring a supposed signature of a Nigeran government minister who’d been out of office for years, that wasn't even on official government stationery.  Wilson pointed this out.  The other facts he had unearthed were equally undisputed.  To try to discredit Ambassador Wilson by suggesting a sort of nepotism got him the job would only make sense if the evidence he provided was less than perfectly accurate.  Years ago, I had a political science professor, who asked what proved a theory?  The answer, of course, is not that the theorist had credentials, or anything else but that it works; it fits all of the facts. Ambassador Wilson argued that the administration was relying on falsehoods and hyped intelligence to beat the drum for war with Iraq.  His theory fit all the facts then.  It fits all the facts now.  If his wife actually got him the gig investigating Iraq's potential for building WMDs, she could not be condemned, or he discredited, because of it.  She should have been promoted for making an appointment that provided intelligence more accurate than many of the Director of Central Intelligence's other agents were providing at the time.  So, because of the impossibility of discrediting Wilson, Karl Rove chose to exact revenge by disclosing Valerie Plame’s work for the CIA.  He cloaked it in an attempt to discredit Ambassador Wilson that he had to know was absolutely doomed to fail.  By revealing the identity of a covert agent in a casual, almost backhanded way, while simultaneously exercising scrupulous care to not actually using her name (one of the elements of the crime) but still making it ridiculously easy to find that name, Rove made it clear that he was conscious of the damage he was doing to a valued covert agent and to national security. He knew what he was doing.  He knew Plame was a secret agent.  He wanted to destroy, or at least cripple, her career.  He was indifferent to what that did to national security, or to the effort to protect America from the proliferation of biological and nuclear weapons; a Republican political operative cares not for such things.  Rove just didn't want to get thrown in jail for it. 10:50:51 AM    comment []