Monday’s Mini-Report

November 12, 2007

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* Stability in Pakistan is still very far away: “The government of President Pervez Musharraf ordered the detention of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, blocking the former prime minister from leading a planned protest procession from Lahore into Islamabad on Tuesday to protest Musharraf’s declaration of emergency rule. Lahore police served the detention order on Bhutto early Tuesday at a house where she is staying after erecting barricades in the neighborhood and placing snipers on nearby rooftops.” The Musharraf government says it is protecting Bhutto for her own safety.

* I can only imagine what’s in there: “A federal judge Monday ordered the White House to preserve copies of all its e-mails, a move that Bush administration lawyers had argued strongly against. U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy directed the Executive Office of the President to safeguard the material in response to two lawsuits that seek to determine whether the White House has destroyed e-mails in violation of federal law.” What about the emails that have already been “lost”?

* A Veterans’ Day must-read: “Two lives blurred together by a photo.” A powerful piece about the “Marlboro Marine” and the LAT photographer who took his iconic picture.

* Call me overly sensitive, but it strikes me as rather crazy to ban veterans from a Veterans’ Day parade, just because they disagree with the Bush administration about the war in Iraq. Isn’t Veterans’ Day for all veterans?

* Liberal hawk Paul Berman is absolutely convinced that he was right about the war in Iraq all along. Thankfully, Matt Yglesias sets him straight.

* Another step backwards for political reconciliation in Iraq.

* Sullivan notes that the number of Americans who support impeachment is similar to the number of Americans who approve of Bush’s job performance. Are they both fringe positions?

* Brendan Nyhan thinks both sides are right in the Great Krugman-Brooks Feud of 2007. I still think Krugman has the upper hand, but Nyhan’s argument is reasonable enough.

* TPMM: “It’s official: embattled State Department Inspector General Howard ‘Cookie’ Krongard will finally testify before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee on Wednesday.” Given that Krongard, perhaps more than any other IG in the Bush administration, acts as if he’s allergic to accountability, the hearing will probably be pretty interesting.

* Speaking of muckraking, if you’ve heard bits and pieces about the breathtaking political corruption among Alaska Republicans, but don’t quite get the whole picture, the WaPo has a good front-page piece on the subject today: “Officially, the scandal has remained confined to Juneau, where Alaska lawmakers had grown so accustomed to operating under the presumption of impropriety that several of them embroidered ball caps with the letters CBC, for ‘Corrupt Bastards Club.’ But with signs that the investigation is brushing against Alaska’s lone congressman, Don Young (R), and its longtime and venerated senator Ted Stevens (R), residents of the Last Frontier are experiencing a rare spasm of soul-searching.”

* And in still more GOP-scandal news, remember Florida State Rep. Bob Allen (R), the anti-gay McCain co-chair who was arrested in a park soliciting gay sex? (He offered an undercover cop money so that he could perform oral sex. Allen later claimed he was afraid of black people in the park, which caused him to extend the offer.) He’s been convicted on one misdemeanor count of solicitation for prostitution. Allen is vowing an appeal.

* An encouraging ruling: “A federal judge has ordered an anti-abortion activist to remove Web site postings that authorities said exhorted readers to kill an abortion provider by shooting her in the head.”

* I wonder if Charles Krauthammer realizes what an embarrassment he is to himself.

* And finally, Al Gore has a cool new gig: a venture-capitalist firm focused on environmental solutions: “They argue that to halt global warming, nothing less will be required than a makeover of the $6 trillion global energy business. Coal plants, gas stations, the internal-combustion engine, petrochemicals, plastic bags, even bottled water will have to give way to clean, green, sustainable technologies. ‘What we are going to have to put in place is a combination of the Manhattan Project, the Apollo project, and the Marshall Plan, and scale it globally,’ Gore continues. ‘It’d be promising too much to say we can do it on our own, but we intend to do our part.'”

Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

“A federal judge Monday ordered the White House to preserve copies of all its e-mails, a move that Bush administration lawyers had argued strongly against. U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy directed the Executive Office of the President to safeguard the material in response to two lawsuits that seek to determine whether the White House has destroyed e-mails in violation of federal law.” What about the emails that have already been “lost”?

Yes, those “lost” ones. And how will anyone ever know if the White House doesn’t just trash the ones they don’t want anybody to see. Their strength is not a respect for the law. It would have been better for the judge to immediately demand their iPods, Blackberries, and the hard drives from their damned computers to get to the truth.

  • And this:

    Sullivan notes that the number of Americans who support impeachment is similar to the number of Americans who approve of Bush’s job performance. Are they both fringe positions?

    Steve, that Rasmussen poll is about impeaching Cheney.

    In 2005, this poll showed something quite different:impeaching BUSH:

    By a margin of 50% to 44%, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he lied about the war in Iraq, according to a new poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

    The poll was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs, the highly-regarded non-partisan polling company. The poll interviewed 1,001 U.S. adults on October 6-9.

    The poll found that 50% agreed with the statement:

    “If President Bush did not tell the truth about his reasons for going to war with Iraq, Congress should consider holding him accountable by impeaching him.”

    44% disagreed, and 6% said they didn’t know or declined to answer. The poll has a +/- 3.1% margin of error.

    http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/3528

  • CB – you’re so cynical: “A federal judge Monday ordered the White House to preserve copies of all its e-mails, a move that Bush administration lawyers had argued strongly against.

    I think the best quote from that article comes from one Ms. Fuchs:

    The judge’s order “should stop any future destruction of e-mails, but the White House stopped archiving its e-mail in 2003 and we don’t know if some backup tapes for those e-mails were already taped over before we went to court. It’s a mystery,” said Meredith Fuchs, a lawyer for the National Security Archive.

    Well, it’s only been 3 years since it happened and more than a year since Fitzgerald brought it to everyone’s attention. So what’s a mystery is why it’s still a mystery. Golly gee, I wonder how this could have happened!

    -Homer

  • I just had a “wake up moment” when a friend e-mailed something with the following quote from Noam Chomsky in it:

    If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.

    Boy, is that a hard one. But when I consider what he’s undergone over the past 30 years of assaults from the brownshirts, and he still says this, I guess I have no excuse.

    It’s like what Darth Vader says in Empire Strikes Back: “The Dark Side is easier.”

  • CB – The link you gave for the Veteran’s Day parade story takes me to a registration page. Here’s another if you want to swap: http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20071108-1043-ca-anti-warvets.html

    Isn’t Veterans’ Day for all veterans?

    That’s pre-9/11 thinking. Now Veterans’ Day is for veterans who support Bush. If they could work out how to do it, Labor Day would only be for workers who support Bush, Independence Day (When did it become “The Fourth of July?) would only be for Americans who support Bush and Memorial Day would only be for deceased soldiers who did or would have supported Bush.

  • Veterans? How long until “Fats” Limburger starts ranting about “phony veterans?”

    Pakistan: I’ve heard a bit of grumbling within what little is still seeping out through the media shutdown that the earlier “assasination attempt” on Bhutto was staged by the Musharraf camp. The current “for-her-own-protection” stunt (SNIPERS?!?) reeks of the same thing. Musharraf cannot afford to step down as army chief; the military is the only thing keeping him in power now. If he surrenders the Presidency, his successor will fire him outright; he’ll be forced to pull another “coup” to stay in power, and even Herr Bush will find it difficult to explain continued support.

    And Charles Krauthammer is such an embarrassing embarrassment to the embarrassment of Charles Krauthammer—that it might be considered an explicit form of masochism….

  • The government of President Pervez Musharraf ordered the detention of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, blocking the former prime minister from leading a planned protest procession

    I hope ol’ Pervy doesn’t have anything terrible in mind for Bhutto. Lahore is looking forbidding nowadays.

  • CB wrote:

    I can only imagine what’s in there: . . .

    CB, I don’t mean to rain on your parade, but I’m sure the pres has plenty of 30-60 year old grown boys around who take themselves quite seriously and, like second-nature, will counsel the president that anything that impugns the Pres’s national reputation is in-and-of-itself a threat to national security, likewise Hillary’s becoming President. They won’t be shy at all about destroying any real evidence of anything illegal.

  • Alaska lawmakers had grown so accustomed to operating under the presumption of impropriety that several of them embroidered ball caps with the letters CBC, for ‘Corrupt Bastards Club.’

    If I was an Alaskan, I’d be extremely insulted by that.

    Talk about a guy who should be pushing a mop for a living!

  • “Call me overly sensitive, but it strikes me as rather crazy to ban veterans from a Veterans’ Day parade, just because they disagree with the Bush administration about the war in Iraq. Isn’t Veterans’ Day for all veterans?”

    This is what drives me insane about the political discussions in this country. Sen. Clinton has one person on her campaign plant a question, which she may or may not have known about. The Bush administration cuts off access to those who disagree with it, both during the campaigns and after them; gives access to White House press briefings to fake news reporters; and uses figures that can at best be described as having only a tenuous connection to reality, just for starters. Yet people were acting like the two were remotely on the same level. Disagree with Clinton if you wish, but there’s simply no comparison.

  • Any REAL geek can tell you that e-mail never dies. There are backups, copies, copies of backups and copies of copies. And that goes for just about every desktop, server, mail hub, etc.. If it’s dangerous or embarassing, it should NEVER go into email.

  • Al Gore is like I want leaders to be like. He’s thinking up real solutions to real problems. He’s being brave enough to face something big that really needs facing, and putting together the solutions with the experts on the policy so it can be promoted.

    The Bushies on the other hand approach the terrorism problem in a way that would require us to practice genocide to solve it. Someone should point out to these people that they have to think up a way to appease the Muslims so they will be satisfied not committing acts of terrorism. Right now the Bushies have got the people of Iraq at the point of committing a bunch of terrorist attacks every single day. Way to tailor the solution to the problem, guys.

  • A Veterans’ Day must-read: “Two lives blurred together by a photo.” A powerful piece about the “Marlboro Marine” and the LAT photographer who took his iconic picture.

    Reading the part about this kid’s attempt to get members of Congress to realize the problems of PTSD really pissed me the fuck off. This ties in with CB’s earlier post about the problems returning veterans are facing, and the lack of support they are getting from their so-called “supporters”.

  • And just to see if we here at TCR can have two posts with over 100 comments:

    Ron Paul sucks. He’s nothing more than a warmed over circa-1996 Pat Buchanan.

  • Call me overly sensitive, but it strikes me as rather crazy to ban veterans from a Veterans’ Day parade, just because they disagree with the Bush administration about the war in Iraq. Isn’t Veterans’ Day for all veterans?

    OK, you’re overly sensitive — just not about that.

    Sullivan notes that the number of Americans who support impeachment is similar to the number of Americans who approve of Bush’s job performance. Are they both fringe positions?

    Yes. However there is one very important difference. One of these two groups is perhaps a little unrealistic but perfectly sane — arguably saner than all us smart pragmatists. The other is barking fruit bat loony.

  • CalD wrote:

    OK, you’re overly sensitive

    CB, you’re not overly sensitive. Beware of those trying to give you a complex.

    CalD wrote:

    Yes. However there is one very important difference. One of these two groups is perhaps a little unrealistic but perfectly sane — arguably saner than all us smart pragmatists. The other is barking fruit bat loony

    You could make the question about supporting impeachment more specific though, and then get different answers. If someone asked me if I support impeachment, I’d probably say yes. I wouldn’t mean that we should do it, I’d mean that I think Bush and Cheney have probably committed impeachable offenses, and that if we could prove that, we should try to get a vote on having an impeachment and we should publicly pursue support for impeachment, even if we have strong doubts about our chances of winning the vote. But if you asked me if I think we should actually try for an impeachment now, I’d say we don’t have enough evidence of an impeachable offense and that the focus should be on getting more evidence.

  • 18. On November 13th, 2007 at 7:37 am, Swan said:

    CalD wrote:

    OK, you’re overly sensitive

    Swan,

    How dare you quote half my sentence out of context. Who do you think you are, CNN? 😉

  • CalD, what do you think he’s overly sensitive about?

    I sure didn’t do any injustice to you or try to distort your comment. If you’re going to tell him he’s overly sensitive but not tell him why, it almost has to be just to give him a complex. It’s like saying to Steve Benen “Just shut up about all the stuff you complain about all the time, bitch.” You should watch your fucking mouth, CalD, and you should never write anything on the Internet ever again. A word to the foolish.

  • Oh stuff it, Swan. It was a joke, like when someone says, “Could you call me a cab?” and you say, “OK, you’re a cab.” Duh. And in fact you did quote half my sentence out of context in exactly the same way a certain cable news network recently did to the honorable speaker of the house. We all agreed was a bad thing but now you think it’s OK when you do it? Get over yourself.

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