You know how Frist was saying that he was never aware of his stock holdings, so he can’t be held responsible for the tremendous profit he made on their sale based on what would generally be acknowledged as insider information?
Well, it turns out that, in the reality world, Frist was . . . uh . . . you know . . . aware of his stock holdings.
RonK at Next Hurrah has some thoughts about Fitzmas, scheduled (most say) to arrive this week:
The goose is cooked, the ox is gored, the chickens are coming home to roost. The kiddies are giddy with visions of sugarplums, marching frogs, TV specials, seasonal trappings and wrappings piled so deep you can’t find the dog in the living room.
Fitzmas is coming — all holidays rolled into one! The extravagance of Mardi Gras plus Thanksgiving plus Boxing Day plus Purim plus Halloween … the weightier meditations and rededications of 4th of July, Yom Kippur, New Year’s Eve, Good Friday, Memorial Day and Pesach (not to mention St. Swithin’s and Groundhog’s Days, with their traditional over-reading of omens).
Most of us celebrate the shallow Fitzmas, a fireworks-and-mincemeat festival of over-indulgence. Sweet revenge, fat targets, overcooked intelligence. Eat, drink and be merry, tomorrow we diet.
But I beg your indulgence for a note of perspective, a look at the deeper meanings of Fitzmas. Sure, the Big Day looms big … until you look at the monumental developments that surround it. Fitzmas is not the beginning nor the end, just one spike in a sawtooth chain of events that lashed back and wrapped around the ankles of reckless vandals who came to DC to tear the town a new one. (They’ll wish they’d stuck with ordinary hatchets.)
For starters, balance your expectations. Anticipation can bring disappointment, especially if you write too much detail into your Fitzmas Wish List.
- You don’t know who Fitzgerald will indict. I don’t know. He may not know … yet. A target-rich environment means immense discretion, not just in intensity (what to charge, to what degree, for what penalty) but tactical and even stylistic. Who will he turn against whom, and in what sequence? Public ambush, or slow, crushing constriction? Let them plead out and leave in disgrace, or lay out the whole record in formal court?
- First-round indictments will not be the last. Fitzmas is the first scouring breach of a system of levees that protected a regime sunk below ethical sea level. The first break leads to more breaks in quick succession, followed by slow, desperate struggles for survival … and for status among the ruins.
- Things take time. The first trophy kills strike fear into the unindicted, who become more malleable. Rats eagerly spill their guts, taking the story in unexpected directions. Whole new scandals may surface. Defensive facades will crumble as reliable retainers desert their posts, and a new generation of prosecutors, journalists and politicians gets the hang of the enterprise.
- Remember, too, the Joys of Fitzmas could be followed by the agonies of a Saturday Night Massacre or a Parade of Presidential Pardons.
Again, balance. Let’s not obsess on the Plame outing. They nailed Al Capone for tax evasion, but there are bigger crimes afoot. Burning a CIA NOC is only the tip of just one iceberg in a sea of troubles. America has been done real and enduring harm, on monumental scale, and the Plame Affair is a flyspeck in a shitstorm.
Fair enough.
Truth is funnier than satire sometimes:
You might have thought that the White House had enough on its plate late last month, what with its search for a new Supreme Court nominee, the continuing war in Iraq and the C.I.A. leak investigation. But it found time to add another item to its agenda – stopping The Onion, the satirical newspaper, from using the presidential seal.
The newspaper regularly produces a parody of President Bush’s weekly radio address on its Web site (www.theonion.com/content/node/40121), where it has a picture of President Bush and the official insignia.
"It has come to my attention that The Onion is using the presidential seal on its Web site," Grant M. Dixton, associate counsel to the president, wrote to The Onion on Sept. 28. (At the time, Mr. Dixton’s office was also helping Mr. Bush find a Supreme Court nominee; days later his boss, Harriet E. Miers, was nominated.)
Citing the United States Code, Mr. Dixton wrote that the seal "is not to be used in connection with commercial ventures or products in any way that suggests presidential support or endorsement." Exceptions may be made, he noted, but The Onion had never applied for such an exception.
Mmmmm. Maybe The Onion never sought an exception because nobody who reads The Onion could ever possibly think it was a commercial venture supported or endorsed by the President.
Moron.
The Onion was amused. "I’m surprised the president deems it wise to spend taxpayer money for his lawyer to write letters to The Onion," Scott Dikkers, editor in chief, wrote to Mr. Dixton. He suggested the money be used instead for tax breaks for satirists.
Heh. Even The Onion’s lawyers are funny.
** Use of the Presidential Seal in this post does not represent an endorsement by the President of the views contained herein. We just do it because it amuses us. Seriously. Plus, we’re kind of hoping to get a letter from the Justice Department.
I’m not sure who it was, but somebody expected that Republicans would downplay the possibility that members of the Bush Administration would be indicted for "only" perjury. Yet, when it was Clinton, perjury was a terrible terrible thing.
Well, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson wins the award. Via Think Progress, we learn what she said in February 1999:
[S]omething needs to be said that is a clear message that our rule of law is intact and the standards for perjury and obstruction of justice are not gray…. [O]ur system of criminal justice depends on people telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. That is the lynch pin of our criminal justice system and I don’t want it to be faded in any way.
But now, in light of the pending perjury indictments against members of the administration, perjury is reduced to a mere legal "technicality":
"…if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn’t indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars."
Flip. Flop. IOKIYAR (It’s Okay If You’re A Republican…)
Time to see what one of our favorite wingnut columnists thinks about this whole Miers nomination thing. So bring out Mrs. Kaye Grogan:
If President Bush picked Jesus Christ for the U.S. Supreme Court, the liberals would crucify him again.
You mean crucify Jesus again . . . right? As opposed to, you know, Bush? Because I don’t think we liberals crucified Bush before, so I don’t see how we could do it "again".
Come to think of it, I don’t think we liberals crucified Jesus either. At least I didn’t read about that at Daily Kos.
It is obvious no matter who the president selects to fill vacant spots on the high court there will be many who will insist they are not qualified, even if the nominees are overqualified. And since no one is perfect (except in their own eyes) the nay-sayers will press on intentionally trying to discredit everything and everybody associated with the Bush administration.
Unlike the conservatives who were so forgiving and supportive of Clinton, despite his flaws.
HA . . . as if they could do better!
That’s telling ’em, Kaye!
The liberals want justices legislating from the bench, who will make their own laws favoring their way-out agenda, while the conservatives want justices who will interpret the laws correctly and rule accordingly.
"Accordingly" to what?
And betwixt the two — common ground will never be reached.
‘Tis true. Methinks Kaye has a point.
Not only do I find it appalling that Harriet Miers has been attacked by the anti-Christian folks — I take it as a personal attack on all Christians. The anti-Christian groups are "infringing" upon the rights of Christians to worship freely.
Well, the people attacking Miers include such "anti-Christians" such as Alan Keyes, for whom you write your syndicated column.
Be that as it may, how does attacking an unqualified judge infringe on your ability to worship freely? I mean, if you are so inclined to worship Harriet Miers, criticism of her does not infringe your ability to do so. Yes?
This is a "blatant" disregard of Amendment I of the "Bill of Rights" where it states that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.
You heard it hear first, folks: Criticizing Harriet Miers violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amemdment. And why? Because Kaye takes such attacks as a "personal attack on all Christians".
It is also up to congress to protect the religious rights of Americans — but the silence is deafening in the "halls of Congress" as they avoid confronting the abuse of Christians at the hands of the "godless" folks.
I hate deafening silence. I "really" do. It’s so loud, I can "hardly" hear anything. Well, except the wails and cries of the Christians that I am abusing. They sure can scream in agony.
Let’s "dissect" in laymen’s terms what religious freedom means.
Yes, "let’s".
(1) Congress cannot establish a mandatory religion and force it upon the citizens. (2) People of faith have a right to worship freely and openly without any restrictions. (3) It is up to the leaders to see that these inalienable rights are not infringed upon.
It also means that people of NON-faith are free not to have religion imposed upon them by the government.
I find it amusing that the anti-God folks are still using the feeble excuse to take "under God" out of the "Pledge of Allegiance" making the ridiculous argument that saying God in the pledge establishes a religion by the government. Now, most of us know that these troublemakers know better, they are just trying to get rid of what they view as hindrances — so they can be bad little boys and girls.
Right. Because those two words in the Pledge ("under God") are the only thing that keeps us troublemakers from being bad people. We all know that prior to 1954 (the year that "under God" was inserted into the Pledge), the entire country was full of bad little boys and girls. Including, our founding fathers.
If the little "fly on the wall" at the meeting of the Democrats could talk, it might say…
WTF did I just read? The "meeting of Democrats"? A "fly on the wall"? A talking fly on the wall? I sometimes wonder what, if anything, is between betwixt Kaye’s ears.
If the little "fly on the wall" at the meeting of the Democrats could talk, it might say: "many of the Democrats are supporting Harriet Miers, because her nomination is sparking a belligerent attitude toward President Bush by many of the Republican conservatives, particularly the Christian Republicans. Besides, since when has the Democrats supported anything the Bush administration has proposed?"
Okay. So let me get this straight.
According to the talking fly, Christian Republicans are belligerant toward Bush/Miers, and many Democrats are supporting Miers. Yet, mere paragraphs before, Kaye found it "appalling that Harriet Miers has been attacked by the anti-Christian folks".
So Kaye/fly, I guess I’m confused. Are you saying that Christian Republicans are anti-Christian?
Wise fly I would say — now if only it could actually talk.
You are free to worship the almighty talking fly, Kaye. Unless we bad little liberal boys and girls change the Pledge.
No matter what President Bush does the anti-Bush activists are geared up in their determination to try and make him appear in a bad light.
Well, he is making our job easy.
In a memo to Condoleezza Rice where he jotted down that he may have to go to the bathroom during a meeting — a big deal was made about this. This is pathetic!
Ummmmm… weren’t we talking about Harriet Miers?
And no matter what he did during the hurricane disasters — he was ridiculed.
Well, he didn’t do anything during Katrina. Or for a while thereafter either. That’s why he was ridiculed.
If he didn’t jet down to New Orleans, every day he was thoughtless and ignoring the citizens, because many are black and poor.
No, he wasn’t thoughtless and ignoring the citizens every day. Not after it was pointed out to him.
If he went to New Orleans, he was just grandstanding for photo opts.
Or sometimes even photo ops.
This reminds me of a bad comedy routine orchestrated by the Democrats.
Everything that President Bush says in his speeches, Senator (D) Dick Durbin is waiting to rant and rave about what he (intentionally) views as discrepancies or misleading untruths.
Just lurking there, that Durbin. Always waiting for Bush to wrap up so he can (intentionally) point out where Bush was wrong. Tch!
God help us if Durbin was in control of something as serious as the Iraqi invasion or anything else of a substantive nature.
Right. Durbin would have screwed the whole Iraqi thing up. Unlike Bush.
Evidently, Durbin is oblivious to how his rants are publicly bringing into question his ability to be effective in any type of leadership.
Evidently.
If his primary goal is to set himself up to run for president — he might consider retiring from the political arena instead.
Duly noted.
It is painstakingly obvious that the Democrats view abortion and other privacy rights much more important than the actual knowledge of the law a potential judicial nominee may possess.
Oh, I’m sorry. Are we back to Miers now?
Good grief . . . just give Harriet Miers an up or down vote — and be done with it!
Apparently, Kaye thinks there is a "filibuster" happening now (a "filibuster" being something Kaye read about a few months back).
And that’s just my opinion!
Or an incongruous hodgepodge of opinions, as the case may be. Thank you for sharing, Kaye!
I haven’t joined the sudoku craze, but for those who have, did you know it is possible to play with pictures instead of numbers?
This, from Pandagon, really hurts to read:
"We’re proud of being white, we want to keep being white. We want our people to stay white … we don’t want to just be, you know, a big muddle. We just want to preserve our race."
— Thirteen-year-old Lynx Gaede, who, with her sister Lamb, are white nationalist singing group "Prussian Blue"Oy, this is sad and sick. It makes you want to hurl:
The girls from Bakersfield, Calif., have been performing songs about white nationalism before all-white crowds since they were nine.
…Lynx and Lamb have been nurtured on racist beliefs since birth by their mother April. "They need to have the background to understand why certain things are happening," said April, a stay-at-home mom who no longer lives with the twins’ father. "I’m going to give them, give them my opinion just like any, any parent would."
More to make you cringe…:
April home-schools the girls, teaching them her own unique perspective on everything from current to historical events. In addition, April’s father surrounds the family with symbols of his beliefs — specifically the Nazi swastika. It appears on his belt buckle, on the side of his pick-up truck and he’s even registered it as his cattle brand with the Bureau of Livestock Identification.
…Songs like "Sacrifice" — a tribute to Nazi Rudolf Hess, Hitler’s deputy Fuhrer — clearly show the effect of the girls’ upbringing. The lyrics praise Hess as a "man of peace who wouldn’t give up."
Earlier this month, I blogged a post entitled: "Who Is Larry Littwin And Why Should He Testify At The Miers Confirmation Hearings?"
I encourage you to read that link for the full story, but suffice it to say, Littwin is a guy who may have a lot of unpleasant dirt about The Texas Lottery Commission scandal and its relationship to certain cover-ups about Bush’s military record cover-up.
Well, Josh Marshall is reporting that Littwin is going to testify at the Miers hearings. Could be some major fireworks.
Unless, of course, the scuttlebutt is true that the White House will quietly withdraw Miers’ name.
Perhaps you once read about the time Dubya had a little scrape with his Dad:
There was at least one incident that his parents witnessed. When he was 26, he returned home inebriated one night to his parents’ home in Washington – with his then-teenage brother Marvin in tow – and plowed his car into a neighbor’s garbage can, dragging it down the street. When his father asked to see him, George W. challenged him to go "mano a mano" outside. The senior Bush promptly got his son a job at a social service program in Houston, helping underprivileged kids.
"My dad was not happy," recalled his sister, Dorothy Bush Koch, who witnessed the episode. "My dad did not think that was attractive or funny or nice."
Well, one wonders if Dubya and the senior Bush might come to blows again. Looks like the latest issue of The New Yorker is going to focus on Brent Scowcroft (NSA Chief of the Bush 41 Administration) and his harsh criticisms of the present administration. Ouch.
But there’s more, according to this source. The criticial article will also contain:
some incredibly juicy commentary from President George H.W. Bush on the performance of his son’s national security team.
Ouch again. Poor Daddy Bush may be taking little George to the woodshed.
As I’ve been suggesting, the fascinating thing about the Miers nomination is the way it forces politicians, pundits, and bloggers into uncharted territory, requiring them/us to think, whereas it’s normally enough just to react.
Speak for yourself, pal.
But it’s nice to see an actual admission that Powerline contributors don’t think before they opine.
Mier’s answer to the constitutional law question of her questionnaire is generating some press. I blogged about it two days ago (Miers Doesn’t Know Shit About Con Law). My law school prof chimes in here:
At one point, Miers described her service on the Dallas City Council in 1989. When the city was sued on allegations that it violated the Voting Rights Act, she said, "the council had to be sure to comply with the proportional representation requirement of the Equal Protection Clause."
But the Supreme Court repeatedly has said the Constitution’s guarantee of "equal protection of the laws" does not mean that city councils or state legislatures must have the same proportion of blacks, Latinos and Asians as the voting population.
"That’s a terrible answer. There is no proportional representation requirement under the equal protection clause," said New York University law professor Burt Neuborne, a voting rights expert. "If a first-year law student wrote that and submitted it in class, I would send it back and say it was unacceptable."
He would have, too.
On other Miers-related fronts, this is raising a few eyebrows:
Campaign records show Bush’s Texas gubernatorial campaigns paid Miers a total of $163,000 in legal fees, most of it for work done during the future president’s 1998 re-election bid.
***
Reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission show that two payments of $70,000 were made to Miers’ Locke, Purnell, Rain and Harrell firm in Dallas within a month of each other during the 1998 campaign. Another $16,000 in payments were made between March and December 1999.
The 1998 totals dwarfed the $7,000 Bush paid Miers’ firm during his first run for governor in 1994, and are extremely large for campaign legal work in Texas, an expert said.
"I’m baffled," said Randall B. Wood, a partner in the Austin firm of Ray, Wood and Bonilla, and former director of Common Cause of Texas. "I’ve never seen that kind of money spent on a campaign lawyer. It’s unprecedented."
***
Former Texas Land Commissioner Garry Mauro, a Democrat who was defeated handily by Bush in the 1998 campaign, said both the amount and the timing of the payments are curious. In late September, when Miers’ firm received the first of two $70,000 payments, Mauro said he trailed Bush in the polls by 35 points.
"If they’re spending that kind of money," said Mauro, now an Austin attorney who estimates he spent less than $20,000 on legal fees during the campaign, "they’re spending it to protect themselves from something."
C’mon. We all know what that "something" is. Bush’s past — his military record, drug use, etc. Let’s not be obtuse about this.
More butt-in-skys who think it is their calling to make everybody be like them:
ELLETTSVILLE, Ind. — An Ellettsville family whose home is decorated for Halloween contacted police after someone placed on its porch a flier that suggests Halloween praises the devil.
Dalene Gully said she took offense to the flier, which was placed outside her home by the House of Prayer Church of Bloomington.
"I started reading it, and I was very, very upset by it. I found it very accusatory and very threatening," Gully told RTV6’s Ben Morriston on Wednesday.
The church’s pastor, Larry Mitchell, said the people who left the flier would have preferred to talk with Gully, but she wasn’t there.
***
Mitchell said the church didn’t intend to upset the Gully family, but rather tell people that Halloween isn’t harmless fun.
"Halloween is not fantasy," Mitchell said. "We’re training up our children, and obviously this lady was trained up in this. Halloween seems like it is taking just as much prominence as Christmas."
I wonder where one goes to get "trained up" on Halloween.
I’m going to start using the phrase "Merry Fiztmas" too.
What do this newspaper editorial, this one, this one, and this one all have in common?
All of them are unsigned editorials, which makes it look like they’re original opinion pieces for each paper. (The Colorado Gazette even says it’s "our view.")
And they all happen to say exactly the same thing, beginning with this paragraph:
One of the smartest things President Bush did to reduce recovery costs in the aftermath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita was to suspend Davis-Bacon Act rules in the hardest hit states. But Congress is frantically trying to overrule the president, which would add billions of dollars to the already staggering recovery costs.
Amazing that newspapers from California, Colorado, and North Carolina could be channeling, simultaneously and in complete harmony, the Bush administration line for cutting wages for workers rebuilding the Gulf Coast.
Too busy to blog, but I’ll blogwhore a great post from The Abstract Factory entitled "The only debate on Intelligent Design that is worthy of its subject":
Moderator: We’re here today to debate the hot new topic, evolution versus Intelligent Des—
(Scientist pulls out baseball bat.)
Moderator: Hey, what are you doing?
(Scientist breaks Intelligent Design advocate’s kneecap.)
Intelligent Design advocate: YEAAARRRRGGGHHHH! YOU BROKE MY KNEECAP!
Scientist: Perhaps it only appears that I broke your kneecap. Certainly, all the evidence points to the hypothesis I broke your kneecap. For example, your kneecap is broken; it appears to be a fresh wound; and I am holding a baseball bat, which is spattered with your blood. However, a mere preponderance of evidence doesn’t mean anything. Perhaps your kneecap was designed that way. Certainly, there are some features of the current situation that are inexplicable according to the "naturalistic" explanation you have just advanced, such as the exact contours of the excruciating pain that you are experiencing right now.
Intelligent Design advocate: AAAAH! THE PAIN!
Scientist: Frankly, I personally find it completely implausible that the random actions of a scientist such as myself could cause pain of this particular kind. I have no precise explanation for why I find this hypothesis implausible — it just is. Your knee must have been designed that way!
Intelligent Design advocate: YOU BASTARD! YOU KNOW YOU DID IT!
Scientist: I surely do not. How can we know anything for certain? Frankly, I think we should expose people to all points of view. Furthermore, you should really re-examine whether your hypothesis is scientific at all: the breaking of your kneecap happened in the past, so we can’t rewind and run it over again, like a laboratory experiment. Even if we could, it wouldn’t prove that I broke your kneecap the previous time. Plus, let’s not even get into the fact that the entire universe might have just popped into existence right before I said this sentence, with all the evidence of my alleged kneecap-breaking already pre-formed.
Intelligent Design advocate: That’s a load of bullshit sophistry! Get me a doctor and a lawyer, not necessarily in that order, and we’ll see how that plays in court!
Scientist (turning to audience): And so we see, ladies and gentlemen, when push comes to shove, advocates of Intelligent Design do not actually believe any of the arguments that they profess to believe. When it comes to matters that hit home, they prefer evidence, the scientific method, testable hypotheses, and naturalistic explanations. In fact, they strongly privilege naturalistic explanations over supernatural hocus-pocus or metaphysical wankery. It is only within the reality-distortion field of their ideological crusade that they give credence to the flimsy, ridiculous arguments which we so commonly see on display. I must confess, it kind of felt good, for once, to be the one spouting free-form bullshit; it’s so terribly easy and relaxing, compared to marshaling rigorous arguments backed up by empirical evidence. But I fear that if I were to continue, then it would be habit-forming, and bad for my soul. Therefore, I bid you adieu.