No Rove Charges Over Testimony on C.I.A. Leak

Perhaps what happened is something like this. The matter was discussed in the oval office, the fact that Valarie Plame was vulnerable was pointed out, but the dangers of outing her argued against it. It would be prima fasciae evidence that a federal crime had been committed by someone in the government. (I see it as an uncharacteristic move for Rove. Why would someone so accomplished at destroying his political enemies, at no cost to himself, commit a federal crime so blatantly?)

Then the president, or the vice-president, got off his leash. Both have been known to speak out of turn and get themselves in trouble (especially Bush, who has a temper, and bad judgement). Perhaps one of them mentioned Plame to Judith Miller, or Novak, or one of the other WMD shills hanging around the White House press room.

At that point Libby and Rove had to leak it themselves, to establish that they could, if worst came to worst, take the fall for their boss.

Emphasize why this is a bad idea that will only hurt the Times. If you like the Times online edition and read it regularly, say so.

tselect@nytimes.com is their email address for questions pertaining to their new subscription-fee online service, which goes into effect tomorrow.

The email I wrote to them is below the fold.

How did they do that? The way we should have... by government-coordinated organizing in advance at the grass roots community level.

Read Marjorie Cohn's Sept 3 piece on it, "The Two Americas", if you haven't seen it.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/090305Y.shtml

And the Bush administration even rejected the Cuban offer of help after the fact. Some comparisons are two painful.

"Birth tax" is a clever framing. More musing on whether or not it will resonate with Americans, after the fold.

Never say the Bushies control all of the judicial branch. Sanity apparently persists, in pockets.

N Y Times article

entire article

Now we know how the Bushies plan to maintain their control in Iraq indefinitely, when the day comes that they are no longer running the administration.

Namely, the same way they plan to do so here in the US.

full article at the New York Times site and more below the fold...

You want to end terrorism? End unjust military occupations.

Then he reviews middle eastern history for us.

People need a sense of autonomy and dignity, and occupation produces helplessness and humiliation. Humiliation is what causes terrorism.

Cole has to be the best equipped observer of events there in recent years, and the most trenchant commentator. If you read his Informed Comment every day you will know more about what's actually happening in the region than you will ever learn from the mass media.

The piece is quoted more fully below the fold. But read it in its entirety.

Ossie Davis was a champion of social justice all his life, and a true progressive. Among his many other roles, he was co-chairman with Mike Farrell (of Mash fame) of the Committee to Save Mumia Abu Jamal. He was always there speaking at every peace and justice rally, with humor and passion. He goes back a long way, and he never faltered.

Death Blossoms - again.

Adam Hochschild, writing in the LA Times today, points out that one of the most effective political mobilizations of all time was the slavery abolition movement.

Now, that's what we need: a cause everyone who doesn't have horns and a forked tail can rally around.

What's the progessive's equivalent of slavery, today?

Read more, and take the poll...

Dear Mr. Olbermann,

You recently wrote here about:

"Two conflicting scholarly studies on the variance between the national exit polling and the presidential election results..."

My read of these studies is a bit different than yours. I do not think they are opposing.  Each reaches some useful conclusions and they do not actually conflict.

(more below the fold -- and take the poll!)

I love that guy. He just doesn't get intimidated by them. And why should he? Humor is so much harder to resist than spin.

Also available here.

Will the U.S. be defeated in Iraq before the election, or after it? That is the all-important question now. Not if, but when.

Fisk makes it plain the U.S. and Britian no longer control the country, period. Alawi is the mayor of parts of Baghdad, under siege. It is not getting better, it is getting worse day by day.

But is it getting worse fast enough to doom Bush's chances for reelection?

Dr. Malakoff spent at least $46,238 on Internet purchases of a narcotic nasal spray, Stadol, and other medications during a two-and-a-half-year period that ended in December 2001.

...he was permitted to continue working, they said, while undergoing treatment and monitoring, including urine tests, by an independent board.

But in May, when the board concluded that Dr. Malakoff was too impaired to care for patients, he was relieved of his position as director of the medical center's general internal medicine division....

All of us here, too close to all this madness, prone to oscillation between doomsday paranoia and wild hopes, should try to see America as clearly as our old friends do at this moment, and with as much balance.

Sabatier sees us as we are today, struggling to emerge from a profound shock. Dazed, but functioning. He argues against the errors of demonization, idealization, and despair.

It's good to have friends like this.

Not So Frivolous

Seems Bush's handlers picked a local doctor as a poster child because he was "driven out of private practice by frivolous malpractice suits", without bothering to do a background check. And he was, well, one of them.