We’ve heard a lot about Scandal Fatigue in the last couple of years. But these last few weeks, it’s gone beyond just fatigue. We’ve had something of an Issue Cyclone that has made it impossible to focus on anything.
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Hubris came out, revealing among other things that Armitage was Novak’s primary source and that Valerie Plame was a key C.I.A. operative in the search for W.M.D.’s in Iraq.
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The leaked National Intelligence Estimate
said that the War in Iraq made Terrorism worse, much worse.
- The John Bolton appointment to the U.N. didn’t happen.
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Clinton exposed how much the Administration ignored the pre-911 warnings.
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State of Denial further exposed the pre-911 warnings that were ignored, the meeting Rice had with Tennant that was never reported, and the extent to which the Administration hid how badly the war was going.
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Congress passed the Detainee Bill condoning torture and suspending habeas corpus.
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The Abramoff emails were released showing that the White House denials about him were false.
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Mark Foley was exposed as a sexual predator on Congressional Pages.
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The Foley misbehavior had been ignored by the Republican Congressional leadership – including Dennis Hastert.
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Meanwhile, the violence in Iraq is spiralling out of control.
hitting only the highlights. Any one of these things would’ve kept us all busy for weeks a few months ago. Now, in fact, the shelf life of these stories is now measured in days, sometimes hours. There’s a new fear – that these huge stories flash by so fast, the general public doesn’t have time to even register them.
But there are a couple of quieter issues that very much don’t need to fall through thr cracks between these other blockbuster stories.
Susan Ralston resigned today. Susan Ralston is Karl Rove‘s ‘Gal Sal’ who previously worked for Jack Abramoff. Seems she was in contact with her boss a lot – accepting favors, brokering information.see Rove aide resigns in fallout over Abramoff report- The Congressional Research Service Report about Bush’s abuse of Signing Statements to consolidate the power of the President.
Who would have ever imagined that we’d have too many stories to handle? and all reported in the media!
NJ: Rove Threw Bash at Signatures, Not Charged
By Paul Kiel – October 6, 2006, 5:03 PM
Whoops. Karl Rove threw a party for dozens of White House staffers at Jack Abramoff’s restaurant in January 2004, but was not charged, according to a new story in the National Journal (not available online).
The senior White House adviser only paid his tab at Abramoff’s Signatures restaurant this May, the magazine reports — after Abramoff had pled guilty to multiple felonies, including conspiracy to defraud the United States.
Approximately 50 operatives from Rove’s office attended the party, for which Rove was ultimately charged $995. NJ’s Peter Stone says they “munched on pricey hors d’oeuvres” as they listened to Rove give a pep talk. Rove made the reservation for the private room through Susan Ralston, his personal aide who resigned earlier today because of her ties to Abramoff.
An unnamed administration spokesperson told Stone that they tried to pay for the room — they really did — but somehow they were never charged:
When Rove’s office contacted Signatures the next day to inquire about the cost, the office was told that the bill came to $995.81, according to an administration spokesman. Rove and five of his deputies sent over their credit card numbers and assumed that the tab would be paid. But last May, more than two years later, after Abramoff had already pleaded guilty to three felonies, including fraud and conspiracy to bribe public officials, Rove’s office belatedly decided to double-check the status of the restaurant bill and learned that the credit cards had never been charged. With Signatures in liquidation, White House lawyers have in recent days found a way for the debt to be paid, a spokesman said: Rove will take care of it out of his own pocket.
Ethics rules bar White House officials from accepting gifts worth more than $20. The restaurant appears to have charged Rove $19.92 per event attendee.
The revelation comes after a congressional report last week that uncovered dozens of meetings between Abramoff’s lobbying team and Rove’s office. One email exchange released by the committee showed Ralph Reed saying that he’d successfully stifled a nomination at the Interior Department for Abramoff by talking with Rove.
A cyclone is right.
and spinning around in the eye is the documentary evidence that will prove treason.
Declassify the OSP section of PHASE II Rept. !!
While not as fearful as staying with the dunderheads we now have, there is the mounting fear of what (who) we are going to have to chose from to replace them. “The Devil you know vs. the Angel you don’t!” syndrome. I’m not at all confident that we won’t be going from the frying pan into the fire. God, I hope not!