Monday, October 03, 2005

"The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman." --Thomas Paine, The American Crisis  Hackett to Challenge DeWine for Senate Hackett: Winter Soldier by DAVID HAMMER, Associated Press Writer 44 minutes ago Paul Hackett, the Iraq War veteran from Cincinnati who was hailed by national Democrats for his narrow loss this summer in a heavily Republican House district, has decided to challenge Mike DeWine for U.S. Senate in 2006. Spokesman David Woodruff, who served as Hackett's campaign manager in his special election campaign for the 2nd District House seat against Jean Schmidt, confirmed Hackett's run Monday evening. Hackett had spent the last month hinting at a run against Ohio's senior senator, who is in his second six-year term. Hackett was flying back Monday evening from Washington after meeting with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada and the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, Woodruff said. Reid's spokeswoman, Tessa Hefen, would not confirm or deny the meeting Monday, but Woodruff later said Reid gave Hackett the confidence to run. "He found overwhelming support from the leaders of the Democratic Party, campaign organizations and staff," Woodruff said. DeWine campaign manager Matt Carle said DeWine has a a good record as a senator and "we look forward to presenting that record to the voters next year." Hackett drew national attention by earning 48 percent of the vote Aug. 2 in Ohio's 2nd District, which voted 64 percent for President Bush last year. Schmidt and other Republicans have said the summertime special election for the House should not be considered as a bellwether for other congressional elections. Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press 11:28:19 PM    comment []

"Being called partisan and vindictive by Tom DeLay is like being called ugly by a frog." --Travis County (Tex.) District Attorney Ronnie Earle Nailed Again! How's the Hammer hangin'? Grand Jury Re-Indicts DeLay on New Charge By APRIL CASTRO, Associated Press Writer A Texas grand jury on Monday re-indicted Rep. Tom DeLay on charges of conspiring to launder money and money laundering after the former majority leader attacked last week's indictment on technical grounds. The new indictment, handed up by a grand jury seated Monday, contained two counts. The money laundering charge carries a penalty of up to life in prison. Last week, DeLay was charged with conspiracy to violate campaign-finance laws. Defense lawyers asked a judge Monday to throw out the first indictment, arguing that the charge of conspiring to violate campaign finance laws was based on a statute that did not take effect until 2003 — a year after the alleged acts. The new indictment from District Attorney Ronnie Earle, coming just hours after the new grand jurors were sworn in, outraged DeLay. "Ronnie Earle has stooped to a new low with his brand of prosecutorial abuse," DeLay said in a statement. "He is trying to pull the legal equivalent of a 'do-over' since he knows very well that the charges he brought against me last week are totally manufactured and illegitimate. This is an abomination of justice." Earle's office did not return repeated phone calls from The Associated Press. In a written statement, the office outlined the new charges and possible punishments, but did not address criticism from DeLay's attorneys. Delay, 58, is the highest-ranking member of Congress to face criminal prosecution. House Republican rules forced him to temporarily step aside as majority leader while he fights the charges. DeLay and two political associates are accused of conspiring to get around a state ban on corporate campaign contributions by funneling the money through the DeLay-founded Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee to the Republican National Committee in Washington. The RNC then sent back like amounts to distribute to Texas candidates in 2002, the indictment alleges. DeLay attorney Dick DeGuerin said the money spent on Texas candidates was "lawfully collected from individuals who knew what they were contributing to." The indictment alleges that DeLay knowingly aided the transfer of the corporate money to help the GOP win a majority in the Texas Legislature. Once the Republicans had secured control of the Legislature, state lawmakers adopted a DeLay-engineered congressional redistricting plan that gave the GOP a stronger grasp on Congress as well. It was unclear when Delay would appear in court to face the new charges. No arraignment date had been set. DeLay's associates, John Colyandro of Austin and Jim Ellis of Washington, were each previously indicted on charges of conspiracy to violate campaign finance laws and money laundering. The judge who will preside in DeLay's case is out of the country on vacation and could not rule on the defense motion. Other state district judges declined to rule on the motion in his place. Two other members of Congress have been indicted since 1996. Former Rep. William Janklow (news, bio, voting record), R-S.D., was convicted of vehicular homicide and sentenced to 100 days in prison after his car struck and killed a motorcyclist in 2003. Former Rep. James Traficant, D-Ohio, was sentenced to eight years in prison after being convicted on charges from a 2001 indictment accusing him of racketeering and accepting bribes. Associated Press writers Suzanne Gamboa in Washington and Kelley Shannon in Austin contributed to this report. Copyright © 2005 The Associated Press 10:46:46 PM    comment []

Quote of the Day "I would like to believe he's sick rather than just mean and evil." --Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) on Big Dick Cheney    I don't know. . ."Mean and evil" works for me. 10:39:48 PM    comment []

The Wingnut Report. . . My occasional unearthing of web articles chronicling the ongoing malevolence of  Evangelical Christendom, Corporate Fascism, Faux News, Rush Limbaugh and His Shittoheads, and other Toadstools of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy:   The true wingnuts have been pretty quiet lately, so when one of their Hall of Famers gets let out of his cage it's a definitely a cause to take notice:   Ousted Ala. Justice to Run for Governor - - - - - - - - - - - - By PHILLIP RAWLS October 03,2005 | GADSDEN, Ala. -- Roy Moore, who became a hero to the Christian right after being ousted as Alabama's chief justice for refusing to remove a monument of the Ten Commandments from the courthouse, announced Monday that he is running for governor in 2006. Moore's candidacy could set up a showdown with Gov. Bob Riley, a fellow Republican, and turn the Ten Commandments dispute into a central campaign issue in this Bible Belt state. Two Democrats, Lt. Gov. Lucy Baxley and former Gov. Don Siegelman, are already running. The Republican and Democratic primaries are June 6. In 2000, Alabama voters elected Moore as chief justice of the state Supreme Court, and the next summer he had a 5,300-pound granite monument of the Ten Commandments installed in the rotunda of the state judicial building. A federal judge ordered Moore to remove the monument, but Moore refused. His fellow justices had the monument moved to a storage site out of public view. And in November 2003, a state judicial court kicked Moore out of office for defying the federal court. Moore took appeals all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and lost at every level. Since then, he has traveled the country, speaking to church and conservative groups and promoting his book about the controversy, "So Help Me God." Salon provides breaking news articles from the Associated Press as a service to its readers, but does not edit the AP articles it publishes. © 2005 The Associated Press   InAlabama, I'd give him pretty good odds.   Shouldn't That be "Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered?" If the Miers nomination has this dickhead in a funk, maybe the old girl might not such a lemon after all (I said "might". . .) Disappointed, Depressed and Demoralized A reaction to the Harriet Miers nomination. by William Kristol 10/03/2005 10:25:00 AM I'M DISAPPOINTED, depressed and demoralized. I'm disappointed because I expected President Bush to nominate someone with a visible and distinguished constitutionalist track record--someone like Maura Corrigan, Alice Batchelder, Edith Jones, Priscilla Owen, or Janice Rogers Brown--to say nothing of Michael Luttig, Michael McConnell, or Samuel Alito. Harriet Miers has an impressive record as a corporate attorney and Bush administration official. She has no constitutionalist credentials that I know of. I'm depressed. Roberts for O'Connor was an unambiguous improvement. Roberts for Rehnquist was an appropriate replacement. But moving Roberts over to the Rehnquist seat meant everything rode on this nomination--and that the president had to be ready to fight on constitutional grounds for a strong nominee. Apparently, he wasn't. It is very hard to avoid the conclusion that President Bush flinched from a fight on constitutional philosophy. Miers is undoubtedly a decent and competent person. But her selection will unavoidably be judged as reflecting a combination of cronyism and capitulation on the part of the president. I'm demoralized. What does this say about the next three years of the Bush administration--leaving aside for a moment the future of the Court? Surely this is a pick from weakness. Is the administration more broadly so weak? What are the prospects for a strong Bush second term? What are the prospects for holding solid GOP majorities in Congress in 2006 if conservatives are demoralized? And what elected officials will step forward to begin to lay the groundwork for conservative leadership after Bush? William Kristol is editor of The Weekly Standard. 5:53:21 PM    comment []

Malaise, Anyone? At least there's no disco revival. Yet. . .   The 2005 energy crunch feels a lot like the 1970s By Mark Clayton, Staff writer of The Christian Science MonitorMon Oct 3, 4:00 AM ET A year ago, firewood entrepreneurs Gary and Bruce Garner sold 1,000 cords of wood, for about $180 apiece. This year, sensing increased demand, they bumped up the price to $220. But they still ran out of wood in September - two months earlier than last year. Welcome to fall 2005, which is starting to look a lot like 1970s, when the aftermath of an Arab oil embargo crimped American energy consumption. True, recent gas lines in Houston and elsewhere were caused by hurricanes rather than government rationing. Still, there are numerous signs - from wood stoves to locking gas caps - that the public may be on the cusp of moving back toward a more energy-conscious lifestyle. "People seem more concerned now than they were back then," says Gary Garner, who began selling firewood with his brother in 1978, shortly before the second energy crisis. Other echoes of the 1970s include: • HearthStone, a Morrisville, Vt., wood-stove maker, has added a second shift to keep pace with demand. The company expects to ship some 15,00 stoves this year, 50 percent more than last year. • Stant Manufacturing Inc., in Connersville, Ind., has ramped up production of locking gas-caps by 50 percent nationwide, amid a raft of gasoline thefts. • Sales of high-tech stoves that burn wood pellets are up 60 percent. With heating-oil prices surging and natural-gas prices forecast to be up to 70 percent higher this year in some regions, homeowners are worried. But because there are far more alternatives than there were 30 years ago, "there's nowhere near the desperation there was back in the 1970s," says Paul Bartlett, sales manager at HearthStone. "People were really afraid back then." Others agree that public reaction is not as intense as it was in the '70s. But they also say that unless the government takes stronger steps to urge fuel efficiency and to curb demand - as in the 1970s - the nation could end up reliving past difficulties. Presidents Nixon, Ford, and Carter, for example, responded with a raft of energy-saving measures, from 55-miles-per-hour speed limits to higher mileage standards for cars, as well as public education campaigns to reduce energy consumption via actions like home insulation and caulking. "Don't be fuelish," went a catchphrase from a 1975 public-service ad, which still pops up today. Energy-awareness programs worked then and have since proven to reduce consumption, says Steve Nadel, executive director of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), a Washington-based advocacy group. For example, electricity use fell 6 percent in 2001 after California adopted a statewide awareness program. "If we did this nationwide, the country could cut demand for natural gas, gasoline, and coal and save billions," he says. Buried under billions of dollars in oil and gas subsidies in the recent energy bill was authorization for a tiny $90 million public-awareness campaign on energy efficiency. Will it be funded? Mr. Nadel isn't optimistic. Among the most significant steps taken in Washington during the 1970s was President Ford's mandate to Detroit to boost auto mileage. If the US required 40 m.p.g. fleet mileage by 2015, the nation could save $73 billion by 2020, ACEEE estimated this spring. That was based on Energy Department estimates of $1.55 per gallon. More savings would accrue is gasoline is at $3 a gallon. Despite the initial pain, 1970s energy-efficiency measures helped make America's economy more competitive, many economists say. Manufacturing efficiency boosted then still shows up today. The overall "energy intensity" of the economy - the amount of energy used to produce $1 of GDP - has fallen about 43 percent between 1973 and 2002, according to the Department of Energy. Even so, per capita energy use (think SUVs) has been rising since the mid-1980s. "The country spent about 20 years learning how to save energy and the next 12 years forgetting more than we ever learned," says Amory Lovins of the Rocky Mountain Institute, an energy think tank in Snowmass, Colo. Subsidies for fossil-fuel development, contained in recent energy legislation, will end up being a costly waste as the economy and the public move toward efficiency on their own, he predicts. Those on the front lines see early signs of change. In Fitchburg, Mass., outside the Greater Boston area, Bob Feen and his wife Wendy run Feen's Country Living, a store specializing in wood stoves. "People are feeling vulnerable and hostage to the oil companies," Mr. Feen says. On a typical Saturday, he often gives an impromtu lecture about wood stoves to 15 or 20 customers. On a recent Tuesday afternoon, he was on the phone urging a supplier to hasten a shipment of wood stoves. Meanwhile, in Wayland, Mass., Energy Unlimited of New England caters to an upscale suburban community. Business is hopping, with a steady stream of shoppers purchasing new wood stoves. "We're running out of some models," says Dave Pailler, a salesman. Beth Shiffler, poking her nose into a showroom filled with wood stoves, says she is here because the cost of her oil contract rose $90 a month from last year. "I like seeing the fire burning - and we'll save oil, too," she says. "That's it." Copyright © 2005 The Christian Science Monitor 2:08:10 PM    comment []

Grand Old Fuckups It seems a quaint notion now that Bush rode into the White House a promise to restore efficency and integrity to government. This is without a doubt the most bloated, inept and malicious federal bureaucracy we've ever had, and it's costing thousands of lives and billions upon billions of American dollars around the world. Can anyone who did so still justify their vote for Bush? I'm sure they can. Like their man in the White House, the hardcore Bush loyalist just turns a blind eye to reality. After all, in their America faggots will never be allowed to marry.      Pentagon report links Katrina, Iraq problems: paper An official U.S. report says that failure to plan and train properly has plagued U.S. efforts in Iraq, Afghanistan and most recently relief work to combat Hurricane Katrina, The Independent newspaper said on Monday. The British daily said the report by Stephen Henthorne, a former professor and adviser to the Pentagon, concluded that the poor response to Katrina mirrored earlier shortcomings in U.S. campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Failure to plan, and train properly has plagued U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, Iraq and now that failure has come home to roost in the United States," the confidential report said. The report was commissioned by the Pentagon to provide an "independent and critical review" of what went wrong after Hurricane Katrina swept ashore in September. "The one thing that this disaster has demonstrated (is) the lack of co-ordinated, in-depth planning and training on all levels of government, for any/all types of emergency contingencies," the report said. "Another major factor in the delayed response to the hurricane aftermath was that the bulk of the Louisiana and Mississippi National Guard was deployed in Iraq," it said. The report also blamed corruption and mismanagement by local government in New Orleans for diverting cash earmarked for flood prevention schemes to projects more likely to win votes. Henthorne is a former professor of the U.S. Army's War College and was a deputy director in the Louisiana relief efforts, the paper said. Copyright © 2005 Reuters Limited 10:48:50 AM    comment []

Plamegate: Will The Really Big Shit Hit The Fan? While Bush was wagging his latest dog of a Supreme Court nominee, some verrry interesting news on the Plame front:   Source to Stephanopoulos: President Bush Directly Involved In Leak Scandal Near the end of a round table discussion on ABC’s This Week, George Stephanopoulos dropped this bomb: Definitely a political problem but I wonder, George Will, do you think it’s a manageable one for the White House especially if we don’t know whether Fitzgerald is going to write a report or have indictments but if he is able to show as a source close to this told me this week, that President Bush and Vice President Cheney were actually involved in some of these discussions. This would explain why Bush spent more than an hour answering questions from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. It would also fundamentally change the dynamics of the scandal. President Bush could no longer claim he was merely a bystander who wants to “get to the bottom of it.” As Stephanopoulos notes, if Bush played a direct role it could make this scandal completely unmanageable. UPDATE: Crooks and Liars has the video. Filed under: Ethics Posted by Judd October 2, 2005 thinkprogress.org   Role of Rove, Libby in CIA Leak Case Clearer Bush and Cheney Aides' Testimony Contradicts Earlier White House Statement By Jim VandeHei and Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writers Sunday, October 2, 2005; A05 As the CIA leak investigation heads toward its expected conclusion this month, it has become increasingly clear that two of the most powerful men in the Bush administration were more involved in the unmasking of operative Valerie Plame than the White House originally indicated. With New York Times reporter Judith Miller's release from jail Thursday and testimony Friday before a federal grand jury, the role of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, came into clearer focus. Libby, a central figure in the probe since its earliest days and the vice president's main counselor, discussed Plame with at least two reporters but testified that he never mentioned her name or her covert status at the CIA, according to lawyers in the case. His story is similar to that of Karl Rove, President Bush's top political adviser. Rove, who was not an initial focus of the investigation, testified that he, too, talked with two reporters about Plame but never supplied her name or CIA role. Their testimony seems to contradict what the White House was saying a few months after Plame's CIA job became public. In October 2003, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters that he personally asked Libby and Rove whether they were involved, "so I could come back to you and say they were not involved." Asked if that was a categorical denial of their involvement, he said, "That is correct." What remains a central mystery in the case is whether special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald has accumulated evidence during his two-year investigation that any crime was committed. His investigation has White House aides and congressional Republicans on edge as they await Fitzgerald's announcement of an indictment or the conclusion of the probe with no charges. The grand jury is scheduled to expire Oct. 28, and lawyers in the case expect Fitzgerald to signal his intentions as early as this week. Fitzgerald is investigating whether anyone illegally disclosed Plame's name or undercover CIA job in retaliation against her husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV. In the summer of 2003, Wilson, a former diplomat, accused the White House of using "twisted" intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq. He claimed firsthand evidence: At the behest of the CIA, he had flown to Niger in February 2002 to investigate the administration's assertion that Iraq was trying to purchase uranium in the African nation for use in its nuclear weapons program. Wilson returned unconvinced the assertion was true. However, Bush himself made the charge in his 2003 State of the Union address, prompting Wilson to spread word throughout the government and eventually make public his rebuttal. Many lawyers in the case have been skeptical that Fitzgerald has the evidence to prove a violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which is the complicated crime he first set out to investigate, and which requires showing that government officials knew an operative had covert status and intentionally leaked the operative's identity. But a new theory about Fitzgerald's aim has emerged in recent weeks from two lawyers who have had extensive conversations with the prosecutor while representing witnesses in the case. They surmise that Fitzgerald is considering whether he can bring charges of a criminal conspiracy perpetrated by a group of senior Bush administration officials. Under this legal tactic, Fitzgerald would attempt to establish that at least two or more officials agreed to take affirmative steps to discredit and retaliate against Wilson and leak sensitive government information about his wife. To prove a criminal conspiracy, the actions need not have been criminal, but conspirators must have had a criminal purpose. Lawyers involved in the case interviewed for this report agreed to talk only if their names were not used, citing Fitzgerald's request for secrecy. One source briefed on Miller's account of conversations with Libby said it is doubtful her testimony would on its own lead to charges against any government officials. But, the source said, her account could establish a piece of a web of actions taken by officials that had an underlying criminal purpose. Conspiracy cases are viewed by criminal prosecutors as simpler to bring than more straightforward criminal charges, but also trickier to sell to juries. "That would arguably be a close call for a prosecutor, but it could be tried," a veteran Washington criminal attorney with longtime experience in national security cases said yesterday. Other lawyers in the case surmise Fitzgerald does not have evidence of any crime at all and put Miller in jail simply to get her testimony and finalize the investigation. "Even assuming . . . that somebody decided to answer back a critic, that is politics, not criminal behavior," said one lawyer in the case. This lawyer said the most benign outcome would be Fitzgerald announcing that he completed a thorough investigation, concluded no crime was committed and would not issue a report. The campaign to discredit Wilson's accusations came at a critical moment in the Bush presidency. It occurred a few months after the United States invaded Iraq and at a time when Bush, Cheney and the entire administration were under extraordinary pressure to back up their prewar allegations that Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons and was working on a nuclear weapons program. The Niger claim was central to the White House's rationale for war, and Wilson was on a one-man crusade to disprove it. Early on, his actions caught the eye of the vice president's office, which was often the emotional and intellectual force pushing the United States to war based on fears of potential weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Cheney and Libby were intimately involved in building the case for the war, which included warnings that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was actively pursuing nuclear weapons. Cheney's staff was looking into Wilson as early as May 2003, nearly two months before columnist Robert D. Novak identified Wilson's wife as a CIA operative, according to administration sources familiar with the effort. What stirred the interest of the vice president's office was a May 6 New York Times column by Nicholas D. Kristof in which the mission to Niger was described without using Wilson's name. Kristof's column said Cheney had authorized the trip. According to former senior CIA officials, the vice president's office pressed the CIA to find out how the trip was arranged, because Cheney did not know that a query he made much earlier to a CIA briefer about a report alleging Iraq was seeking Niger uranium had triggered Wilson's trip. "They were very uptight about the vice president being tagged that way," a former senior CIA official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. "They asked questions that set [off] a chain of inquiries." By early June, several weeks before Libby is said to have known Plame's name, the State Department had prepared a memo on the Niger case that contained information on Plame in a section marked "(S)" for secret. Around that time, Libby knew about the trip's origins, though in an interview with The Washington Post at the time, he did not mention any role played by Wilson's wife. By July 12, however, both Rove and Libby and perhaps other senior White House officials knew about Wilson's wife's position at the CIA and, according to lawyers familiar with testimony in the probe, used that information with reporters to undermine the significance of Wilson's trip. Staff writer Carol D. Leonnig contributed to this report. © 2005 The Washington Post Company 10:15:45 AM    comment []

If George W. Bush is The Most Brilliant Man She has Ever Met, What Does That Say About Her? Here we go again. Another unqualified, simpering crony. On the Supreme Court, no less.  George W. Bush is the most brilliant man she has ever met? RED FLAG! RED FLAG! RED FLAG! If the Democrats don't go after this one, I'm going back to the Greens.   Bush's Supreme Court pick: Harriet Miers George W. Bush has just nominated his White House counsel, Harriet Miers, to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the United States Supreme Court. Miers has no judicial experience -- she's never served as a judge, never argued a case before the Supreme Court -- but she does have this: more than a decade of service to George W. Bush. Miers served as Bush's personal lawyer when he first ran for governor in Texas, and she filled that role a second time when he ran for the presidency in 2000. When Bush came to the White House, Miers served as his staff secretary. When Alberto Gonzales was confirmed as attorney general earlier this year, Miers was named White House counsel. In that role, she has played a central role in helping to select and vet Bush's judicial nominees. What qualifies her for the bench? Bush ticked off a long ling of professional and civic accomplishments, and he said that he knows her "heart." But Miers' single most important qualification -- at least in the president's eyes -- may be her loyalty to him. "In the White House that hero worshipped the president, Miers was distinguished by the intensity of her zeal: She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met," David Frum noted the other day at National Review Online. "She served Bush well, but she is not the person to lead the court in new directions -- or to stand up under the criticism that a conservative justice must expect." In an unusually long announcement speech from the Oval Office, Bush seemed tense and preemptively defensive as he named his pick. With Miers at his side, he acknowledged that she had no prior judicial experience but explained that numerous other Supreme Court justices had arrived at the court without having served as judges first -- including the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist. -- Tim Grieve, Salon.com 10:07:48 AM    comment []