Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Warlust Hardons (10:34 pm)

Mark Mazetti in the NY Times reports that “Some senior Bush administration officials and top Republican lawmakers” are anxious to get into another war - this time with Iran - and they are frustrated that the intelligence agencies are just not providing them with sufficient justification, dammit!. So the House Intelligence Committee, chaired by GOP hard-righter Peter Hoekstra, has issued a report complaining about the spy agencies’ “cautious assessments about Iran’s weapons programs.”

Mazetti writes:

The complaints, expressed privately in recent weeks… echo the tensions that divided the administration and the Central Intelligence Agency during the prelude to the war in Iraq.
(…)
The House Intelligence Committee report released Wednesday was written primarily by Republican staff members on the committee, and privately some Democrats criticized the report for using innuendo and unsubstantiated assertions to inflate the threat that Iran posed to the United States.
(…)
Some veterans of the intelligence battles that preceded the Iraq war see the debate as familiar and are critical of efforts to create hard links based on murky intelligence.

update:
Matthew Yglesias guesting at TPM has read the report and taken notice of the “missile range graphic” - which “shows the missiles being fired from Kuwait rather than, say, Iran” and “that the outer circles describes the range of a missile that doesn’t exist.”

Laura Rozen guesting for Kevin Drum observes the launch of “the marketing campaign against Iran.”

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

AT&T Admits Cooperating with NSA to Spy on Citizens, But Claims It’s Legal (8:56 am)

Declan McCullagh for CNET News.com reports:

James Cicconi, AT&T’s senior executive vice president for external and legislative affairs, said there is a “very specific federal statute” that the company followed when cooperating with the NSA that provides “black and white authorization.”
(…)
Because Cicconi was AT&T’s general counsel before the merger with SBC Communications, he would have been responsible for reviewing the legality of cooperating with the NSA. A longtime Republican, Cicconi worked as deputy chief of staff to President George H.W. Bush and as an assistant to President Ronald Reagan. He’s recently served as co-chairman of Progress for America, a prominent group devoted to electing Republican politicians.

Cicconi’s remarks—in response to a question at the Progress and Freedom Foundation’s annual summit here—seem to indicate that AT&T received formal authorization from the U.S. Department of Justice to authorize the program. The existence of such a letter has never been confirmed.

Cicconi may have been referring to an obscure section of federal law, 18 U.S.C. 2511, which permits a telecommunications company to provide “information” and “facilities” to the federal government as long as the attorney general authorizes it. The authorization must come in the form of “certification in writing by…the Attorney General of the United States that no warrant or court order is required by law.”

Just wondering, but if they have a damned letter, and it provides such clear cut legal permission, then why is the case still in court?

via Paul Kiel and Justin Rood at TPM Muckraker

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

No Second Term for Alaska Governor Frank Murkowski; He Came In 3rd in the GOP Primary (12:35 am)

Murkowski, who retired from the Senate in 2002 to become Governor of Alaska, then appointed his daughter to fill the vacant seat caused by his own resignation, was “stung by accusations of arrogance and stubbornness” in his loss, according to the report by Matt Volz for AP.

He also purchased a jet, even though his request for the aircraft was denied by both the federal government and state Legislature. Then there was the “partial shutdown of the Prudhoe Bay oil field, where production was cut in half earlier this month because of leaks and corrosion.” And Murkowski’s insistence that state government should not be in the business of physically monitoring the company’s facilities.

But the poor guy was “stung” by the accusations.

Murkowski, when in the Senate, sat on the committee investigating the suicide of Vince Foster. He made a big photo-op deal of waving around Foster’s briefcase, implying - but conveniently never specifying - that some dastardly covered up evil deed had been perpetrated against Foster by the Clintons - the incident duly reported with breathless accusatory tone by Mikey Isikoff, in Newsweek.

posted by Brian Zick | 1 comment

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Another Day, Another Display of GOP Favoring Media Bias (1:53 pm)

Pamela Leavey at the Democratic Daily reports on a press tele-conference call with John Kerry and Patrick Murphy, a week ago Friday, in which Kerry scolded the press for pushing GOP spin and failing to properly report what Democrats say. Reporter Jonathan Kaplan of The Hill did not take the criticism well, and said “Screw that and Screw him!! For Him to criticize us, it’s his own fault.”

The call was recorded and audio is available at the link.

Mike Conallen, the Chief of Staff of Republican Congressman Mike Fitzpatrick - Murphy’s opponent - had somehow got wind of the call, assumed the mantel of reporter earlier, and had asked Murphy some leading questions, upon which Kerry observed the questioning was a campaign impropriety by an opponent’s representative. Later, after his “Screw him” remark, when other callers demanded he identify himself, Kaplan is also heard saying “I shouldn’t have said that, because I’m going to get in trouble now,” followed by “Mike, are you gonna help me out here or what?”

via Kos

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

Monday, August 21, 2006

Fitzmas Update 8/21/06 (10:52 pm)

One of the few remaining mysteries (well, sorta) of the case has been resolved.
Woodward met with Armitage. And so Armitage was the first administration official to drop Valerie Plame’s name in connection with Joe Wilson’s Niger trip.
Matt Apuzzo and John Solomon for AP report:

Then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage met with Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward in mid-June 2003, the same time the reporter has testified an administration official talked to him about CIA employee Valerie Plame.

Armitage’s official State Department calendars, provided to The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act, show a one-hour meeting marked “private appointment” with Woodward on June 13, 2003.
(…)
Woodward has said Plame came up incidentally during an interview he was conducting for a book he wrote on the Iraq war. He said the source told him that Plame was a CIA analyst on weapons of mass destruction, and no evidence has emerged in public that Woodward’s source actually knew she had been a covert agent.

posted by Brian Zick | 1 comment

Brits Charge 11 In Airline Terror Case (10:38 pm)

Jennifer Quinn for AP reports:

Police found martyrdom videos and bomb-making components during the investigation of the alleged plot to blow up U.S.-bound jetliners, prosecutors said Monday in announcing 11 people had been charged with terrorism offenses.

Officials confirmed for the first time that the plot involved the manufacture of explosives, which were to be used to assemble and detonate bombs inside as many as 10 airliners. U.S. officials previously had said the plot appeared to involve mixing liquid-based chemicals to make explosives aboard the aircrafts.

—-
It remains to be seen for certain, but from the brief description it would appear there’s actually some substance to the case - unlike the hyped recent “aspirational” terrorist arrests in Miami and New York.

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

Monday Monday (8:58 am)

Gorby Trashtalks Bush & Cheney
Judy Mathewson and Todd Prince for Bloomberg report on comments made by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

Via HuffPo
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Right-Wingers Out of Control - In Japan This Time
Steve Clemons has a post on “Japan’s Right-Wingers Out of Control.” He reports on the hostility of conservative political ideologues towards facts and the historical record, “who want to take Japan back to the 1930s.” Steve really is discussing Japan politics straight up - he’s not drawing any parallels to conservative smear campaigns which might be seen and heard elsewhere on the globe.
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War Profiteering Okayed By Judge
Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker reports that a federal judge overturned a jury award of $10 mil against “defense contractor” Custer Battles. Paul links to the AP story by Matthew Barakat, who says:

But U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III, in a ruling made public Friday, ruled that Custer Battles’ accusers failed to prove that the U.S. government was ever defrauded. Any fraud that occurred was perpetrated instead against the Coalition Provisional Authority, formed to run Iraq until a government was established.

Ellis ruled that the trial evidence failed to show that the U.S. government was the victim, even though U.S. taxpayers ultimately footed the bill.

Alan Grayson, lawyer for whistle-blowers Robert Isakson and William Baldwin, said he would appeal. He faulted the Bush administration for creating the CPA in a manner that essentially allowed it to act as a money launderer for unscrupulous military contractors.

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Imagine/Walk on the Wild Side
Rx at thepartyparty.com has put music to a montage of clips of political faces.
Via Norm at onegoodmove , who also has the video.

posted by Brian Zick | 1 comment

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Quintessential Projection (11:04 pm)

In an AP report headlining Joe Lieberman’s rather unctuous suggestion that Rummy depart his current “grueling” assignment, there is this:
“Asked about Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who was quoted as saying that Lieberman echoes Republicans, Lieberman said it was “just plain politics by somebody who has ambitions of his own.”