Tuesday, November 28, 2006

President Asshole W. Pissypants, Shithead in Chief (8:39 pm)

At a private reception held at the White House with newly elected lawmakers shortly after the election, Bush asked Webb how his son, a Marine lance corporal serving in Iraq, was doing.

Webb responded that he really wanted to see his son brought back home, said a person who heard about the exchange from Webb.

“I didn’t ask you that, I asked how he’s doing,” Bush retorted, according to the source.

Webb confessed that he was so angered by this that he was tempted to slug the commander-in-chief, reported the source, but of course didn’t. It’s safe to say, however, that Bush and Webb won’t be taking any overseas trips together anytime soon.

via Josh Marshall

posted by Brian Zick | 9 comments

For GOP, Breaking Up with Abramoff Is Hard to Do (9:40 am)

Paul Kiel at TPM Muckraker reports on Jack Abramoff’s legacy of connections to Mel Martinez, the nominated successor to GOP party chairman (and Abramoff crony) Ken Mehlman.

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

The Daily Show on “Civil War” in Iraq (9:26 am)

Norm at onegoodmove has the video.

posted by Brian Zick | 1 comment

Pinochet Indicted for 1973 Murders (12:54 am)

Eduardo Gallardo for Raw Story reports:

SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) - Former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet was indicted Monday and ordered to remain under house arrest for the execution of two bodyguards of Salvador Allende, the freely elected Marxist president who was toppled in a 1973 coup.

The indictment came after Pinochet’s 91st birthday Saturday, which he marked by issuing a statement for the first time taking full political responsibility for abuses committed by his regime.

Monday’s indictment was the fifth time Pinochet has been put under house arrest on charges stemming from human rights violations during his 1973-90 dictatorship. The document was issued by Judge Victor Montiglio, the Supreme Court press office said.

Pinochet was stripped of his immunity from prosecution in the case last July.

posted by Brian Zick | 1 comment

Verizon Puts YouTube on Cellphones (12:27 am)

Yuki Noguchi for WaPo reports:

Internet video service YouTube is going mobile for the first time, launching a television-like channel featuring its most popular videos on Verizon Wireless cellphones.

Verizon Wireless is hoping to parlay YouTube’s reputation as the premiere Web site for posting and sharing homemade videos into success for its own mobile-video service by delivering YouTube clips to subscribers of its premium V Cast service starting next month.

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

Monday, November 27, 2006

Judy Miller Fails Again Pretending Obstruction of Justice Is Protected by the First Amendment (11:54 pm)

Miller is now 0 for 2 against Fitz in the Supreme Court.

Adam Liptak for the NY Times reports:

The United States Supreme Court refused yesterday to stop a federal prosecutor from reviewing the telephone records of two reporters for The New York Times. The records, the newspaper said, include information about many of the reporters’ confidential sources.
(…)
Yesterday’s order effectively allows the United States attorney in Chicago, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, to begin reviewing the records, which he has already obtained from the reporters’ phone companies, as early as this week.
(…)
The grand jury, in Chicago, is looking into who told the reporters, Judith Miller and Philip Shenon, about actions the government was planning to take in December 2001 against two Islamic charities in Illinois and Texas. The disclosures to the reporters, the government lawyers wrote on Friday, may have amounted to obstruction of justice.

In August, a three-judge panel of the federal appeals court in Manhattan ruled, 2 to 1, in favor of Mr. Fitzgerald, saying that the reporters were not entitled to shield their sources in the unusual circumstances of the case. The government contended that the reporters had tipped off the charities to the impending actions against them. The Times said the reporters had engaged only in routine newsgathering.
(…)
Ms. Miller, who retired from The Times last year after serving 85 days in jail in connection with an unrelated leak investigation also supervised by Mr. Fitzgerald, said the phone records by themselves might not satisfy the government.

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Greenwald on the Bubble People’s Vested Interest in Pelosi’s Choice for House Intel Committee Chair (12:44 pm)

Glenn observes

[W]hy would anyone think that Nancy Pelosi should choose Jane Harman to be the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, a key position for exercising desperately-needed oversight over the administration’s last two years of intelligence mischief and, as importantly, for investigating and exposing the administration’s past misconduct? She instinctively supports, or at least acquieses to, the administration’s excesses, and would be among the worst choices Pelosi could make.

Despite all of that, the mindless, petty Beltway media parrots continue to recite the adolescent-minded script that Pelosi is a vindictive, unserious and egomaniacal “girl” because she won’t bestow Jane Harman with the Chair of the Intelligence Committee.
(…)
There is no seniority on the Intelligence Committee, so Harman is not being “demoted” by being “denied” this seat. Hastings is not the “alternative,” since Pelosi can choose anyone she wants and, as far as I know, has never said that the “alternative” to Harman is Hastings. The media has just invented this dichotomy in order to foster the drama of the Serious/Substantive v. Frivolous/Bitchy choice they have decreed is what Pelosi must navigate.

At first I thought that the media’s obsession with smearing Pelosi was some combination of its adolescent cravings for cattle-like demonization of the unpopular, loser Democrats, combined with the surprisingly (at least to me) strong and obvious discomfort with a woman being this politically powerful in her own right, not dependent upon appointments or derivative popularity from political spouses. And there is definitely a lot of that... read more

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Bubble People Catching a Glimpse Outside the Bubble (8:48 am)

Josh Marshall reports that NBC has made an “editorial decision” to call the situation in Iraq a “civil war.”

update:
Think Progress has the video.