Friday, December 29, 2006

Net Neutrality Update (2:17 pm)

as a condition of AT&T’s merger with SBC, AT&T as agreed to net neutrality protections for 24 months or until net neutrality legislation is passed.

Tim Wu at Save the Internet has details.

posted by Brian Zick | 1 comment

Joe Lieberman Says More Dead Americans Need to be Sacrificed In Iraq for Bush’s Ego (9:20 am)

Lie berman’s op-ed in WaPo: Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy and Magic Beans do exist, and they will bring us Victory !!!

update:
more cogent analysis via Steve Soto:
Steve Clemons
Glenn Greenwald
Matt Browner Hamlin

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

Billmon: “That’s All Folks” (12:58 am)

William Montague - Billmon of “Whiskey Bar” - has gone offline. He was one of Kos’ first guest-posters at The Beginning. He has been a wonderfully passionate, creative and awesomely inventive blogger. He has received broad acclaim for his gifted perspicacity and communication talents. And he has won a great many hearts. The selfish among us cling to the hope he will return. There are a relatively few bloggers who have gained reputations for routinely exceptional performance, recognized for skills in information-gathering, or appreciated for the high literary quality or distinctive humor of their writing. Billmon’s “Whiskey Bar” posts have uniquely been political blogging as Art (with a capital “A.”)

More from:
Swopa at firedoglake
Paradox at The Left Coaster
Bernard at Moon of Alabama - the proxy site for Whiskey Bar comments - has a thread posted.

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

Woodward: Ford Pardoned Nixon as Favor to a Friend, Not for Good of the Nation (12:34 am)

Bob Woodward in WaPo reports more from his interviews with the deceased former President Ford:

During one of the darkest days of the Watergate scandal, Nixon secretly confided in Ford, at the time the House minority leader. He begged for help. He complained about fair-weather friends and swore at perceived rivals in his own party. “Tell the guys, goddamn it, to get off their ass and start fighting back,” Nixon pleaded with Ford in one call recorded by the president’s secret taping system.
(…)
But the tapes, documents and two lengthy recent interviews with Ford before his death this week, conducted for a future book and embargoed until after his death, show that the close political alliance between the two men seriously influenced Ford’s eventual decision to pardon Nixon, the most momentous decision of his short presidency and almost certainly the one that cost him any chance of winning the White House in his own right two years later. Ford became president on Aug. 9, 1974; he pardoned Nixon just a month later. “I think that Nixon felt I was about the only person he could really trust on the Hill,” Ford said during the 2005 interview.

Ford returned the feeling.

“I looked upon him as my personal friend. And I always treasured our relationship. And I had no hesitancy about granting the pardon, because I felt that we had this relationship and that I didn’t want to see my real friend have the stigma,” Ford said in the interview.

That acknowledgment represents a significant shift from Ford’s previous portrayals of the pardon that absolved Nixon of any Watergate-related crimes. In earlier statements, Ford had emphasized the decision as an effort to move the country beyond the partisan divisions of the Watergate era, playing down the personal dimension.

Via Josh Marshall

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

Thursday, December 28, 2006

Dead Political Cartoonist Herblock Guest Posts at Digby’s about Ford Pardoning Nixon (8:38 pm)

Excerpts from Herblock Special Report, first published in 1974.

Gerald Ford, in what columnist Mary McGrory called a Pearl Harbor “sneak attack on the due process and common sense,” sought to still conscience forever with a sudden stunning blow, just as Richard Nixon tried to do in his “Saturday Night Massacre.” Ford’s attempt, like Nixon’s failed. But he did enormous damage to the nation.
(…)
It is hardly vindictive to ask why men who betrayed positions of the highest trust should not even be required a guilty plea. It would be hardly a good precedent if those who achieved the highest offices were deemed immune to anything but the possible loss of those highest jobs.
(…)
The Gerald Ford — who, at the hearings on his confirmation to be Vice President, had said that “the public wouldn’t stand for” a possible Nixon pardon, and who only days earlier had said clemency would be reserved while the law went forward — this Gerald Ford now suddenly issued an irrevocable pardon to his predecessor for all offenses — known and unknown.

It was as if he regarded offenses against the public as none of the public’s business. In judging that Nixon had “suffered enough,” he punished still further an already suffering nation.

The New York Times said:

President Ford speaks of compassion. It is tragic that he had no compassion and concern for the Constitution and the Government of law that he has sworn to uphold and defend. He could probably have taken no single act of a non-criminal nature that would have more gravely damaged the credibility of his Government in the eyes of the world and of its own people than this unconscionable act of pardon.

The Library of Congress has an extensive collection of Herblock cartoons.

posted by Brian Zick | 2 comments

Bush Iraq Strategy: 3 Magic Wishes (But More Time Is Needed to Think Up What the Wishes Will Be) (3:34 pm)

AP reports:

President Bush said his meeting Thursday with national security advisers put him a step closer to making changes to U.S. strategy in Iraq, but that he will seek more advice before announcing a plan in January.

“We’ve got more consultation to do until I talk to the country about the plan,”

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

Reuters: “Bush to huddle with top advisers on Iraq strategy.” (9:44 am)

Apparently, this war strategy planning stuff just isn’t an important enough subject for Bush and his “advisers” to discuss on a regular basis. They have to take time out from their very important brush clearing, shoe shopping and public information suppression activities to have a special little get-together - about which they feel the need to make a big splashy announcement.

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

DA Declines to Prosecute Nevada Governor-Elect Gibbons on Assault Charge (8:24 pm)

Kathleen Hennessy for AP reports:

LAS VEGAS - Nevada Gov.-elect Jim Gibbons will not be prosecuted on allegations that he assaulted a cocktail waitress in a parking garage three weeks before the election, authorities said Wednesday.

There was insufficient evidence to prove criminal charges against Gibbons beyond a reasonable doubt, Clark County District Attorney David Roger said.
(…)
Chrissy Mazzeo, 32, had accused Gibbons of pushing her against a wall and propositioning her near a restaurant where the two had been drinking with friends Oct. 13, less than a month before Gibbons was elected.

An apparently distraught and disoriented Mazzeo made three 911 calls that night, saying she had been assaulted by the congressman.

Gibbons, 61, has said he merely caught Mazzeo when she tripped in the parking garage.
(…)
Roger said prosecutors will investigate separate allegations made by Mazzeo and her lawyers that people associated with Gibbons tried to interfere with the investigation by influencing Mazzeo’s testimony.
(…)
Mazzeo told The Associated Press Wednesday she did not believe justice was served.

“I actually even said that if he apologized to me, I would drop everything. And he wasn’t man enough to actually apologize. But he knows the truth and I know the truth,” she said.