Wednesday, July 27, 2005

A Suspicious Donation?   Right-wing blogs have made much of a discovery that last year Valerie Plame gave money (a whopping $372) to America Coming Together, a liberal 527 organization.  At the time, she already knew that someone or some group of someones inside the White House had endangered national security by illegally leaking her identity.  And she gave money to a group trying to throw the Bush Leaguers out of office.  This donation doesn't mean she is liberal.  It doesn't even mean she wanted revenge.  It could simply mean that her tolerance level for treason is quite low. Plame made a political donation, something she made no secret of, and had every right to do.  Does that make it okay to damage national security because a guy came forward with the truth that Iraq never had a nuclear program?  You make the call. 7:06:59 PM    comment []

Games with Numbers   Reporters are doing strange and wondrous things with poll numbers lately.  50% of all Americans are seriously concerned over Karl Rove's treason, and this is being treated as a suggestion that it's somehow a minor matter.  At the same time, 44% of Americans support John Roberts' nomination for the Supreme Court, and this is treated as overwhelming support.  I note that I have seen almost nothing but positive press for the nominee, and already over a dozen ads in favor of Roberts, while I have seen little coverage of the nominee's actual legal beliefs, or of the administration's strenuous efforts to prevent anyone from gaining further insight into those beliefs, and no ads calling for the Senate to provide their Constitutionally-mandated advice. With the Democrats, so far, not laying a glove on Roberts, he can still only summon 44% support.  And this just as the White House has already been caught in a lie over the nomination (the Federalist Society nonsense)...this just as the White House begins casting a cloak of secrecy over the nominee's past actions, calling into deserved suspicion Robert's entire life.  While for the moment he has more supporters than active opponents, I would think that's a disastrous number.  When the fight is joined, few of the undecided are likely to become supporters. 4:03:45 PM    comment []

Is Bush Trying to Bring Down Roberts?   Every other Supreme Court nominee for decades and decades has released his tax returns for the past three years.  John Roberts is under White House orders not to do so.  And the government won't let the Senate see the legal opinions the nominee offered while he was Deputy Solicitor General.  And the nominee lied about his involvement in the Federalist Society, an organization in which he was not just a member but a leader. If I were conspiracy-minded, I might suspect that they are deliberately trying to botch the Roberts nomination to try to distract from the crimes of Karl Rove.  Come to think of it, it makes more sense than to believe they are really this incompetent.  The White House had to know that Roberts had belonged to the Federalist Society, but they lied about it and let him lie about it, when it would have done no harm to admit it.  They had to know it would look bad not to reveal his tax returns, but they went ahead with that, when it would do no harm to reveal them.  They had to know it looks like a massive admission of guilt to refuse to release his opinions as Deputy Solicitor General...well, there, it's almost certainly because he is guilty of opinions that would shock and horrify most Americans.  After all, there's some reason this guy got nominated by this administration, which has been the most hostile to civil liberties and the most hungry for increased federal power in our history. But the other moves are still so wildly incompetent, they seem to suggest genuine malice towards the President's nominee.  Either it's to distract from the Rove cover-up, or else they're trying to lose this one. 1:00:35 PM    comment []

Pataki Decides Not to Seek Fourth Term   Governor Pataki decided he didn't want to see his political career come to an abrupt conclusion with a humiliating defeat in a run for a fourth term as governor of New York, which looked like a distinct probability.  It was Mario Cuomo overreaching by seeking such a fourth term that plucked Pataki out of obscurity as a nonentity in the state legislature, and made him governor of New York.  Pataki announced he was not running for reelection yesterday night.  He has consistently trailed New York Attorney General Elliot Spitzer in the polls.  With Pataki out of the governor's race, there is no other Republican in the state with the stature and appeal to make a plausible run, though a crackpot billionaire (Tom Golisano) and the Republican Secretary of State Randy A. Daniels are likely to try.  A state Secretary of State holds an office of such unimportance that it is regarded at best as a stepping stone to a House seat, or maybe mayor somewhere (either of which tends to be a step up), if not simply the last job before political retirement, but the Republicans in New York are so thin of talent Daniels may well be the best they've got. A Pataki run for reelection next year would have tended to rule out a run for President, which he is now not only free to make, but likely to try.  Of course, the man is far too liberal to be nominated by Republicans nationally.  If McCain has problems with winning over Republican primary voters, then the far more liberal, and infinitely less charismatic, Pataki is liable to get burned in effigy.  But Pataki has been a politician for most of his life; if he doesn't become a Presidential candidate, all that's left, really, is that he become a lobbyist. As a governor, he knows how odious those guys can be. 9:12:42 AM    comment []

Quote for the Day, 7/27/2005   "It was the record that you needed to complete your punk collection. It was everything you wanted.  It was some source of affection."   -Tullycraft, "Stowaway"   I like the line because of the shock of recognition.  There've been times when an album seemed so perfect, it sort of felt like I'd never need to buy a new record again, there were songs to fill my every need.  And, yes, it was usually a punk record. 7:08:52 AM    comment []