I usually try to reference things I read when I talk about them, but this time, I’m going it on my own. There are multiple foci of activity within the Democratic Party, particularly in the House of Representatives, trying to figure out a way to go around President Bush on Iraq and begin to get […]
Reading all the blogs with the lawyers’ comments about the Libby Trial gave me a headache. It’s a mixture of their own personal bias plus punditing based on the history of American Juries plus a kind of divination that’s unfamiliar to me. Probably more interesting is my reactions to their spectulations. Two feelings predominate: "Oh […]
New "Baker-Christopher Commission" to Probe Constitutional Power Allocations on War-Starting, War-Waging, and War-Ending The University of Virginia’s Miller Center of Public Affairs — of which Philip Zelikow used to serve as Director before becoming Condi Rice’s Counselor — has announced the creation of a bipartisan commission that "will examine how the Constitution allocates the powers […]
Testimony from the Libby Trial by David Addington, Libby’s replacement as Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff and the legal guru [along with John Yoo] of their Unitary Executive mythology: Patrick Fitzgerald: Conversation about paperwork related to CIA employee spouse trip. Did you ever have a later occasion to discuss this? David Addington: Yes, right […]
Libby jury vigil: Not like electing a pope The jury is wearing jeans! The scuttlebutt raced like a battlefront bulletin Tuesday through the five dozen prosecutors, defense attorneys and reporters camped in the federal courthouse awaiting a verdict in the perjury trial of ex-White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. Most trial lawyers and reporters […]
I worry a lot about how quickly stories move from the front page to the trash. The one I was thinking about today was the IG Report on Douglas Feith. Feith has a Talking Point story that’s completely located in some fantasy land. The evidence against it is so overwhelming, known to anyone who has […]
Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post compiled the numbers for us today. I was wondering about these numbers Sunday when Condi was saying, "I can’t imagine a circumstance in which it’s a good thing that their [the Generals] flexibility is constrained by people sitting here in Washington, sitting in the Congress, trying to micromanage this […]
I kind of get it why Gore doesn’t want to enter the Presidential race, but I can’t exactly say why. I’ll bet he can’t either. Just because people want you to do something, doesn’t mean you should do it. Just because you can do something, doesn’t mean you should do it either. And just because […]
Smearing Like It’s 2003 By E. J. Dionne Jr. Even as jurors pondered whether Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff should be convicted for lying about what the Bush administration did to smear one of its critics, there was Cheney accusing another adversary of doing the work of the terrorists. The fabricate-and-smear cycle illustrated […]