JustOneMinute

Good Job By Borders CEO

The Borders Books CEO delivers a fine country a**-kicking to right-wing bloggers exhorting him to carry some obscure mag running the Mohammed cartoons.  But he manages to tell the folks on the right to "pound sand" in a friendly and upbeat way!

Memeorandum has the reax.  Since Charles Johnson of lgf is singled out, let's go there for an excerpt:

An Open Letter from ... uh ...

Heh™.

UPDATE at 3/31/06 1:30:57 pm:

And by the way, I don’t disagree with Gerard’s overall point. It shouldn’t be the responsibility of Borders Books to stand up against radical Islam..

UPDATE:  The AP picks it up.

Libby's Side - Response On Motion To Dismiss

The Libby defense team responds on their motion to dismiss the case - Libby_030331.pdf.

It is a 24 page .pdf file.

The initial motion to dismiss was discussed on Feb 24 here and here; the Fitzgerald reply and discussion are here.

For originalists, here are the the intial Libby filings, the Fitzgerald response (HTML) Fitzgerald Exhibits A-D, and Ex. E-G.

Now, if someone would be kind enough to read this and give me a headline...

MORE:  Pete Yost of the AP joins in.

What We Have Here Is A Failure To Coordinate

Prison laborers as a substitute for illegal immigrants?  Someone must be joking:

House conservatives emphasized such concerns at a news conference on Thursday. Worried that their party's leadership was weakening in its opposition to plans that would allow illegal workers to remain in the United States, more than a dozen House members staged a "Say No to Amnesty" event after Speaker J. Dennis Hastert suggested on Wednesday that the House might consider a temporary worker program.

Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Republican of California, dismissed arguments made by President Bush and business leaders who say the United States needs a pool of foreign workers. He said businesses should be more creative in their efforts to find help and suggested that employers turn to the prison population to fill jobs in agriculture and elsewhere.

"Let the prisoners pick the fruits," Mr. Rohrabacher said. "We can do it without bringing in millions of foreigners."

Let the prisoners pick the fruits - the nuts are already in Washington.

In a related piece, Paul Krugman continues his walking tour off of the Dem reservation with "The Road to Dubai (Suggested subtitle - Let's Go Over The Hill And See What's Dune).  Krugman begins with an attempt to re-connect with his base:

For now, at least, the immigration issue is mainly hurting the Republican Party, which is divided between those who want to expel immigrants and those who want to exploit them. The only thing the two factions seem to have in common is mean-spiritedness.

Republican "mean-spiritedness" will stand in stark contrast with Krugman's generosity of spirit and evasiveness on the tough questions.

But immigration remains a difficult issue for liberals. Let me say a bit more about the subject of my last column, the uncomfortable economics of immigration, then turn to what really worries me: the political implications of a large nonvoting work force.

About the economics: the crucial divide isn't between legal and illegal immigration; it's between high-skilled and low-skilled immigrants. High-skilled immigrants — say, software engineers from South Asia — are, by any criterion I can think of, good for America. But the effects of low-skilled immigration are mixed at best.

...But low-skilled immigration depresses the wages of less-skilled native-born Americans. And immigrants increase the demand for public services, including health care and education. Estimates indicate that low-skilled immigrants don't pay enough in taxes to cover the cost of providing these services.

...it's important to be intellectually honest, even when it hurts. Moreover, what really worries me isn't the narrow economics — it's the political economy, the effects of having a disenfranchised labor force.

Re: Intellectual Honesty, this admission of a linkage between income inequality and immigration seems to be a breakthrough for Krugman, for whom the connection has heretofore been invisible at his Times outlet.

But let's see his follow-up on the problem of disenfranchised workers:

Imagine, for a moment, a future in which America becomes like Kuwait or Dubai, a country where a large fraction of the work force consists of illegal immigrants or foreigners on temporary visas — and neither group has the right to vote. Surely this would be a betrayal of our democratic ideals, of government of the people, by the people. Moreover, a political system in which many workers don't count is likely to ignore workers' interests: it's likely to have a weak social safety net and to spend too little on services like health care and education.

...Of course, America isn't Dubai. But we're moving in that direction. As of 2002, according to the Urban Institute, 14 percent of U.S. workers, and 20 percent of low-wage workers, were immigrants. Only a third of these immigrant workers were naturalized citizens. So we already have a large disenfranchised work force, and it's growing rapidly. The goal of immigration reform should be to reverse that trend.

Emphasis added.  Is it obvious to all that stricter border control, employer sanctions, and/or expulsion of illegals would help reverse that trend?  Isn't that mean-spirited?

So what do I think of the Senate Judiciary Committee's proposal, which is derived from a plan sponsored by John McCain and Ted Kennedy? I'm all in favor of one provision: offering those already here a possible route to permanent residency and citizenship. Since we aren't going to deport more than 10 million people, we need to integrate those people into our society.

But I'm puzzled by the plan to create a permanent guest-worker program, one that would admit 400,000 more workers a year (and you know that business interests would immediately start lobbying for an increase in that number). Isn't institutionalizing a disenfranchised work force a big step away from democracy?

For a hard-line economic conservative like Mr. McCain, the advantages to employers of a cheap work force may be more important than the violation of democratic principles. But why would someone like Mr. Kennedy go along? Is the point to help potential immigrants, or is it to buy support from business interests?

Why would someone like Kennedy "go along"?  Why did all eight Democrats join four Republicans in voting the bill out of the Senate Judiciary Committee by a 12-6 margin - is that really just "going along"?  And after the modified amnesty for the 10 million or more illegal immigrants already here, just what does Prof. Krugman think will happen with future illegal immigration - should it be tolerated with illegal status, as currently, leaving millions of post-amnesty illegals disenfranchised (until the next amnesty!)?  Does he think illegal immigration will simply stop?  Does he support tougher border control, employer sanctions, or even just asking nicely for folks to stay in their own country?  My impression is that the guest-worker approach is an attempt to legalize the anticipated illegal flow, but perhaps Prof. Krugman will articulate an alternative vision in a subsequent column.

While we wait, here is a possible clue as to Kennedy's motivation - the strategy for Democrats seems to be to court the Hispanic vote while straining to avoid the alienation of their poor, native-born base, which presumably includes many African-American voters.  One likely tactic - be sure to scream "Republicans are racist" in order to keep the base at home.

And for Kennedy, there is the Irish thing as a bonus.

Thank You, Jeralyn

Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft is hosting the much-sought 42 page transcript of the Feb 24 Plame hearing.

A bit of background here and here.

Props To Josh Marshall

The NY Times splashes some ink on the good job done by Josh Marshall and others in debunking a funny photograph.  Here is the post that started it all [Nearly!], and his Busted!

There is a lot more on the propensity of Big Journos to rip off small journos - gee, tell Raw Story.

And no, we do not anticipate similar coverage for Powerline or Stephen Spruiell.

MORE:  Interesting - the Times had a more vivid experience with the ability of the blogosphere to ferret out a phony photo, but I don't recall them running an article lauding the bloggers in question.  Here is the original article, sans picture (which the archiving process often drops).

Immigration - Fissures Everywhere

Mickey points out that Paul Krugman has wandered off of the Dem reservation on some immigration questions (I alluded to this earlier in mocking Krugman's attempt to pin the Jobs Americans Won't Do fallacy on Bush).

And even the Times, in an article devoted to cracks in the Republican immigration facade, spends an entire paragraph on the challenges faced by the Democratic Party.  Let's repeat their extensive analysis here:

But the issue is a delicate matter for Democrats as well. Polls show large majorities of the public both support tighter borders as a matter of national security, and oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants. Many working-class Democrats resent what they see as a continuing influx of cheap labor.

So, Dems are bucking the polls, their labor base, and impoverished native-born Americans (some of whom are black).  Can they continue this lonely heroism through November?  Or will a nervpus [OK, nervous] John Kerry, to pick a name out of a hat, suddenly realize that, like the French, the Mexicans don't vote in our elections?

In a related puzzle, the Times repeats this CW:

Pollsters from each party say Hispanics, like other groups, typically rank immigration lower in importance than other issues, especially education. But they respond strongly when they believe the rhetoric surrounding the debate demonizes immigrants or Hispanics, as they did when Gov. Pete Wilson of California, a Republican, backed a 1994 initiative to exclude illegal immigrants from public schools and services.

Many analysts say the backlash from Hispanics wrecked the California Republican party for a decade.

Well, I have always believed that, but why would a Jersey guy know anything about the Left Coast?  Dale Franks disputes the CW as revisionist history, but I welcome all viewpoints.

Some background on Prop 187 is here; a Federal Judge tossed most of it in 1998.

Dan Walters of the Sac Bee recycles the CW from 1994 and relates it to Arnold's current situation (And Arnold speaks!).

In 2003 Debra J. Saunders, writing in the prestigious Weekly Standard, attacked the CW.

MORE:  Is Frist part of the solution or part of the problem?

 

Good Catch At Powerline

John H at Powerline has caught either the NY Times or the Washington Times in fantasy land in their reporting on Arlen Specter's recent NSA hearing.

The NY Times, which broke the NSA story and is angling for some Pulitzer prizes, led keen observers such as Kevin Drum to suggest that some former FISA judges considered the NSA program to be illegal.  (Note - I reject the possibility that Kevin saw through the Times caveats but is playing to his readership, Times-style.) [Further note - I STRONGLY endorse the suggestion that Kevin Drum was just having some fun with this, especially since he made that suggestion to me himself.]

But over at the Washington Times, judges are quoted with a starkly different view:

    A panel of former Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court judges yesterday told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee that President Bush did not act illegally when he created by executive order a wiretapping program conducted by the National Security Agency (NSA).
    The five judges testifying before the committee said they could not speak specifically to the NSA listening program without being briefed on it, but that a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not override the president's constitutional authority to spy on suspected international agents under executive order.
    "If a court refuses a FISA application and there is not sufficient time for the president to go to the court of review, the president can under executive order act unilaterally, which he is doing now," said Judge Allan Kornblum, magistrate judge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida and an author of the 1978 FISA Act. "I think that the president would be remiss exercising his constitutional authority by giving all of that power over to a statute."
    The judges, however, said Mr. Bush's choice to ignore established law regarding foreign intelligence gathering was made "at his own peril," because ultimately he will have to answer to Congress and the Supreme Court if the surveillance was found not to be in the best interests of national security.

The AP coverage does not resolve this, although they reiterate that the judges declined to venture an opinion on the specific NSA program.

Well, a hearing transcript is available at the Federal News Service.  I have inquired with them about pricing, but if a copy dropped in over the transom (or by email!), I would never tell.

UPDATE:  This is brutal - Stephen Spruiel of the NRO Media Blog has pored through the transcript and can't find support for the Lichtblau position assertion.

Powerline reaches a similar conclusion [with more here].

And I will run a different excerpt that reinforces the same point.  The witness is Magistrate Judge Allan Kornblum, who first got involved with these issues in the mid-70's.  In addition to his thoughts on Presidential power, Judge Kornblum was quite interesting on "probable cause" as it relates to foreign intelligence gathering, so I will put in an excerpt on that as well.  First, the constitutional question:

And I'll now just spend a few minutes talking about presidential authority.  Again, I'm not talking about the president's program.   

Presidential authority to conduct wireless surveillance in the United States I believe exists, but it is not the president's job to determine what that authority is.  It is the job of the judiciary. Just as the judiciary determines the extent of Congress' authority to legislate, so it determines the executive's authority to carry out his executive responsibilities.

The president's intelligence authorities come from three brief elements in Article II.  The executive power is vested exclusively in the president.  So is much of the responsibility as commander in chief, as well as his responsibility to conduct foreign affairs.  All three are the underpinnings for the president's intelligence authorities.

Most of the authority I see referred to in the press calls it inherent authority.  I'm very wary of inherent authority.  It sounds like King George.  It sounds like the kind of authority that comes to a head of a nation through international law.     

As you know, in Article I, Section 8, Congress has enumerated powers, as well as the power to legislate all enactments necessary and proper to their specific authorities.  And I believe that's what the president has:  similar authority to take executive action necessary and proper to carry out his enumerated responsibilities, of which today we're only talking about surveillance of Americans.

Again, I emphasize that it's the judicial decisions that define the president's authority.  These decisions predate the FISA statute. And I was reviewing the FBI and NSA applications for warrantless surveillance.   

Those surveillances by law were transferred to the FISA court in 1978, and actually when it began in May of '79.  However, the FISA statute has very specific definitions, and there are intelligence activities that fall outside the FISA statute.  Those activities went forward and have continued to this day and are still being done under the president's authority as set forth in the executive orders describing U.S. intelligence activities.        

There were three orders:  President Ford's order, 11905; President Carter's order, 12036; and the current order, 12333 (text here), which was issued by President Reagan in December of '81.

That order has been used by all of the presidents following President Reagan without change.  And I was responsible for processing those applications that go to the attorney general based on a delegation of authority.

I've asked the staff to give you a copy of the current executive order, and that's the authority that is being used today to some extent. 

The presidential authority that is being used today is being used unilaterally.  I think all of the judges agree with me that when the president operates unilaterally, his power is at its lowest ebb, as has been mentioned in judicial decisions. 

But when Congress passes a law, such as one authorizing the surveillance program targeting communications networks -- when the Congress does that and the judiciary has a role in overseeing it, well then the executive branch's authority is at its maximum.   

What that means is they can do things, I believe, under an amended FISA statute that they cannot do now.   

For example, the president's program says that the president reviews it every 45 days.  But I would think, if Congress authorized the program and the court oversaw it, that the surveillance programs could run for 90 days.

And on the meaning of probable cause:

As you know, the Fourth Amendment bars unreasonable searches and seizures, and the term "unreasonable" is the overarching concept.   
    
The substantive requirements of the Fourth Amendment are for probable cause and particularity.  The standard of reasonableness applies to both substantive provisions.  That is, what is probable cause and what is sufficient particularity are subject to the standard of reasonableness which the Supreme Court has indicated is subject to different standards; that is, the standards under the Fourth Amendment for criminal warrants, for arrest warrants may be different from those necessary for foreign intelligence collection, for counterintelligence investigations. 

...The Supreme Court said that the Fourth Amendment was highly flexible and that the standard for criminal -- what they called ordinary crimes, what I would call traditional law enforcement, need not be the same as that for foreign intelligence collection and that different standards for different government purposes are compatible with the Fourth Amendment.   
    
That decision served as the basis for the FISA statute.   

Who's The Prosecutor? (Ongoing...)

Another trial, another problem for the prosecution, another little mystery of journalism - just who is the prosecutor?

We noted something similar last week, but this time it is the Times which has suddenly gotten all discreet and switched over to a "Lots of the News That's Fit To Print" modality:

Illinois Trial in Graft Case Is Thrown Into Ferment

By JODI RUDOREN

CHICAGO, March 27 — A federal judge dismissed two jurors on Monday two weeks after the jury began deliberating in former Gov. George Ryan's corruption case, tossing into turmoil a trial that has stretched over six months.

The judge, Rebecca R. Pallmeyer of Federal District Court, said she had not made any decisions about whether to proceed and hoped to avoid a mistrial by replacing the two jurors with alternates.

But Mr. Ryan's lawyers objected to that prospect, arguing that "asking them to 'start deliberations anew' is asking the impossible."

The dismissals follow revelations in The Chicago Tribune last week that two jurors lied on questionnaires about whether they had criminal records, with one failing to disclose drunken-driving arrests that led to the revocation of his driver's license while Mr. Ryan, a Republican, was the secretary of state, whose office is responsible for such matters.

Hey, stuff happens.  But to whom did this stuff happen?   Don't bother reading the story - for some reason, the Times does not want to mention that their very special nemesis, Patrick Fitzgerald, is heading this up.  Maybe that fact is not of general interest; maybe staying on his good side side seems like a good strategy.  There's your Publisher's Handbook - Speak truth to power, unless the power is, well, powerful, and might subpoena your sorry reporters and slap them in jail.  In that case, discretion is the better part of valor.

Krauthammer Versus Fukuyama

In a column titled "Fukuyama's Fantasy", Charles Krauthammer accuses Francis Fukuyama of a "fabrication" in describing a Krauthammer speech to the AEI in Feb 2004:

It was, as the hero tells it, his Road to Damascus moment. There he is, in a hall of 1,500 people he has long considered to be his allies, hearing the speaker treat the Iraq war, nearing the end of its first year, as "a virtually unqualified success." He gasps as the audience enthusiastically applauds. Aghast to discover himself in a sea of comrades so deluded by ideology as to have lost touch with reality, he decides he can no longer be one of them.

...A very nice story. It appears in the preface to Fukuyama's post-neocon coming out, "America at the Crossroads." On Sunday it was repeated on the front page of the New York Times Book Review in Paul Berman's review.

I happen to know something about this story, as I was the speaker whose 2004 Irving Kristol lecture to the American Enterprise Institute Fukuyama has now brought to prominence. I can therefore testify that Fukuyama's claim that I attributed "virtually unqualified success" to the war is a fabrication.

Just for completeness, let's cut to the lead of Times article cited above:

The AP - "We Do Not Credit Blogs"

The AP announces its belief that they are free to plagiarize from anyone they consider to be a blog.  Suddenly a wave of nostalgia for Ben Domenech is washing over me as I try to remember why he was not suitable for the Washington Post.

I Am A First Class Citizen!

Via the first-class Matt Drudge:

        The Federal Election Commission decided Monday that the nation's new campaign finance law will not apply to most political activity on the Internet.

In a 6-0 vote, the commission decided to regulate only paid political ads placed on another person's Web site.

...Bloggers would be entitled to the same exemption from the campaign finance law that newspapers and other traditional forms of media receive.

"There will be no second class citizens among members of the media," Toner said.

   

Krugman - Out Of The Shadows On Immigration And Inequality

Paul Krugman, another Times pundit stranded on the Times Select Island known as "Lost", offers some thoughts on immigration, legal and otherwise.

We are particularly captivated by this passage, where the Earnest Prof briefly alludes to one of his pet topics, income inequality:

We shouldn't exaggerate these problems. Mexican immigration, says the Borjas-Katz study, has played only a "modest role" in growing U.S. inequality.

Believe it or not, Krugman's admission that immigration plays any role at all in income inequality represents a personal intellectual breakthrough.  He had a long NY Times magazine article in 2002 in which he presented his many thoughts on the topic.  Absurdly, the subject of immigration was never discussed, despite the fact that economists he lauded made much of the possibility that immigration was an important part of the statistical story.

But let's not get carried away with his new-found forthrightness - in his current column, Krugman is relying on the Borjas-Katz work on Mexican immigrants (here?), which, per Pew, are only about 60% of the total illegal immigrant population.  (Sorry, I am being hazy on the legal/illegal divide - presumably, low-skilled legal immigrants also depress wages and contribute to income inequality.)

And while on the subject of intellectual honesty, here is a good laugh-line from Krugman:

That's why it's intellectually dishonest to say, as President Bush does, that immigrants do "jobs that Americans will not do." The willingness of Americans to do a job depends on how much that job pays — and the reason some jobs pay too little to attract native-born Americans is competition from poorly paid immigrants.

Just guessing - we could spend all day finding other politicians making that very argument.  Some of them will even be advocates for the immigrant community.

MORE:  These NY Times searches are indicative, rather than definitive, but nonetheless:

Among Krugman's columns, only today's piece provides a hit on (inequality, immigration).  However, "inequality" returns 15 hits through March 27, 2006.

STILL MORE:  Don't exaggerate the importance of immigration, either - not even Greg Easterbrook believes his claim that "Factor out immigration and the rise in American inequality disappears.":

In recent weeks, a new book has challenged this conventional wisdom, calling it a statistical mirage, and its striking claim has begun to receive national attention. Among native-born Americans, lower- and middle-income families have actually received proportionately bigger raises than the wealthy, according to ''The Progress Paradox'' (Random House), written by Gregg Easterbrook, a Washington journalist. Only a great influx of immigrants - many of them poor, but richer than they were in their home countries - has made inequality appear to widen in the statistics, Mr. Easterbrook says.

''Factor out immigration,'' he writes, ''and the rise in American inequality disappears.''

The idea has echoed from the book into the pages of The Washington Post, The Chicago Sun-Times, The San Diego Union-Tribune, The Times of London and BusinessWeek magazine, among other publications. It seems like one of those facts that could rewrite conventional wisdom about the American economy.

It happens, however, not to be true.

The millions of immigrants who have entered the country in recent decades have indeed made inequality look larger than it otherwise would. But even among households headed by native-born Americans, the rich have done far better than others over the past 20 years - as well as over the past 30, 40 or 50 years, according to government statistics and the economists who study them.

...Mr. Easterbrook, a senior editor at The New Republic who is a visiting fellow at Brookings, acknowledged last week that he had gone too far in the book. His discussion of inequality occupies a very small part of ''The Progress Paradox,'' he said, and he was mainly arguing that immigration played a role in the rise in inequality. ''Even if there were not that increase in immigration, there would certainly be a rise in inequality,'' he said in an interview. ''I did a poor job of writing that page.''

Clarice Feldman On "The Potemkin Prosecution"

Regular readers here will recognize frequent commenter Ms. Feldman immediately - she writes at The American Thinker about the problematic prosecution of I. Libby Lewis.

Opinions - For Trained Professionals Only!

Tom Elia mocks Molly Ivins so we don't have to.  From her latest:

Bloggers are not news-gatherers, but opinion-mongers. I have long argued that no one should be allowed to write opinion without spending years as a reporter -- nothing like interviewing all four eyewitnesses to an automobile accident and then trying to write an accurate account of what happened. Or, as author-journalist Curtis Wilkie puts it, "Unless you can cover a five-car pile-up on Route 128, you shouldn't be allowed to cover a presidential campaign."

Oh, gosh.  I haven't covered a five-car pile-up, but I have blogged on Maureen Dowd, so I guess I'm ready.

Ms. Ivins, whose theme is the problematic business cliamte for newspapers, also amuses with this:

I've thought for years that newspapers should all be owned by nonprofits.

Headed that way!

UPDATE:  More swimming against the tide.  But which tide?

UNFORGIVEN: Maybe the subtle Molly Ivins had someone other than bloggers in mind - what well-known pundit is neither a reporter nor capable of covering a five car pile-up without blaming Bush?

It's Hard Out Here For A Black Man (Cont.)

The Times follows up on last Tuesday's gloomy statistical portrait of black men in America with an op-ed piece by Harvard sociology professor Orlando Patterson.  His theme - people are unwilling to invoke cultural explanations:

SEVERAL recent studies have garnered wide attention for reconfirming the tragic disconnection of millions of black youths from the American mainstream. But they also highlighted another crisis: the failure of social scientists to adequately explain the problem, and their inability to come up with any effective strategy to deal with it.

The main cause for this shortcoming is a deep-seated dogma that has prevailed in social science and policy circles since the mid-1960's: the rejection of any explanation that invokes a group's cultural attributes — its distinctive attitudes, values and predispositions, and the resulting behavior of its members — and the relentless preference for relying on structural factors like low incomes, joblessness, poor schools and bad housing.

Prof. Patterson cites "Black Males Left Behind" and alludes to "Reconnecting Disadvantaged Young Men".  He then offers this:

This is all standard explanatory fare. And, as usual, it fails to answer the important questions. Why are young black men doing so poorly in school that they lack basic literacy and math skills? These scholars must know that countless studies by educational experts, going all the way back to the landmark report by James Coleman of Johns Hopkins University in 1966, have found that poor schools, per se, do not explain why after 10 years of education a young man remains illiterate.

Nor have studies explained why, if someone cannot get a job, he turns to crime and drug abuse. One does not imply the other. Joblessness is rampant in Latin America and India, but the mass of the populations does not turn to crime.

And why do so many young unemployed black men have children — several of them — which they have no resources or intention to support? And why, finally, do they murder each other at nine times the rate of white youths?

What's most interesting about the recent spate of studies is that analysts seem at last to be recognizing what has long been obvious to anyone who takes culture seriously: socioeconomic factors are of limited explanatory power. Thus it's doubly depressing that the conclusions they draw and the prescriptions they recommend remain mired in traditional socioeconomic thinking.

How Green Was My Gas Tax?

The NY Times reports on a shocker from green and liberal Oregon - high gasoline prices and the state gasoline tax are encouraging folks to shift to more fuel-efficient cars; this has been reducing state collections from the gas tax, a trend which is projected to continue for the foreseeable future (i.e., until at least next Tuesday), or 2025 as they would have it.

In response to this, and as a sop to liberals worried that Big Brother is not watching them closely enough, Oregon is studying a "vehicle miles traveled tax" which will be calculated by the installation of a GPS tracking system in each Oregonian's new car.

Yes, there are privacy concerns.  And yes, a flat mileage tax does not encourage a switch to fuel efficient cars.  But apparently, the good people of the great state of Oregon have balked at higher gasoline taxes, so deep thinkers in the state government have persuaded themselves that maybe they can ease the pain for people being asked to part with more of their money if they re-structure the tax this way.

CBS covered this last year; Wired had coverage three years ago.

The Times only names the Oregon State University professors involved with this project in a photo caption, so the archived article may be a bit baffling on that point; the relevant Beavers are Davids Kim and Porter.

For detail-divers there are lots of detail on implementation, phase-in, and the privacy issue are in this March 2006 report prepared by the Road User Fee Task Force.

My two cents - this sounds like an expensive and complicated mechanism for raising taxes.  It is also too transparent - since (per the recommendation) people will pay the mileage tax at the pump, they will be quite conscious of any tax hike, and the motivation of the exercise seems to be to disguise the collection of higher taxes.

In addition (and the Times does not address this) my guess is that fuel efficiency tends to be positively correlated with vehicle size.  If, I say *IF* wear and tear inflicted on the road is also so correlated (i.e., a Suburban does more damage than a Civic to road surfaces) than the current gasoline tax is more "fair" than a miles-driven tax.  That said, the opportunity for congestion-pricing with the GPS system is appealing.

The wittiest line in the article comes from the manager of the program:

It is too early to know whether such a system would discourage people from buying fuel-efficient vehicles. Mr. Whitty said he had heard of some drivers of fuel-efficient vehicles being upset. Others, though, were feeling guilt about having paid fewer taxes than most drivers, he said.

Never underestimate the power of liberal guilt.  However, my guess is that this proposal goes DOA.

If Nominated I Will Run... For Cover

The short, happy life of Ben Domench as a WaPo blogger has ended, although he continues to have wonderful prospects as a future president of Russia.  Glenn Reynolds and Joe Gandelman have more than enough coverage.

But enough about the past!  Glenn Reynolds floats a Jeff Goldstein balloon and both Max Sawicky and Brad DeLong offer kind words in suggesting that yours truly would be the conservative blogger the Post is seeking.  However... I think the WaPo might need a bit more clarity in their strategy those idea would work.  This came from Howard Kurtz:

Jim Brady, executive editor of Washingtonpost.com, said Domenech was hired because "we were completely unrepresented by a social conservative voice."

If they really are looking for a social conservative, that should prick the inspired Jeff Goldstein boomlet and scuttle me as well.

However, it is a delightful thought, and thanks.

The PDBs Would Have Been Easier

Let's post some recent court filings in the Libby case - apparently, re-creating the daily  intelligence briefing received by Mr. Libby is quite a chore.  And an interesting point emerges - the White House is not, at this point, making any broad executive privilege claims about the intelligence briefings.  They make clear that they expect to claim privilege on some of the material after it is compiled, but they keep hope alive that some of the material will be available for a trial.

Here, Ms. Van Dorn of the CIA explains the effort involved in complying with the prospective court order to re-create the daily briefings delivered to Mr. Libby by the CIA.  Apparently, voluminous files are kept in support of the President's Daily Brief; however, other officials get different briefings, and the supporting documentation may be spread across several agencies.

We also have Special Counsel Fitzgerald's take on the situation, and the order that the judge issued after hearing from both sides (Draft version here).

Jason Leopold - Keep Hadley Alive!

Jason Leopold has an article suggesting that Stephen Hadley of the NSC may be the mystery source for Bob Woodward in the Plame leak.  Since Mr. Leopold is working off the transcript of the Feb 24 hearing where this was discussed, he ought to be able to address this bit of puzzlement - per the WaPo, 

Defense attorneys in yesterday's hearing described the official as someone who did not work at the White House... .

Is it possible that Libby's attorney's are being cute  - maybe as Deputy National Security Advisor, Hadley had an office in the EOB across the way from the White House.  Anyway, the transcript might clear up the context in which this comment was made, and give it a bit more (or less) weight, since the attorneys are less likely to spin the judge than to spin reporters ("Defense attorneys in yesterday's hearing" is ambiguous - does it mean "Defense attorneys said it during the hearing", or "Attorneys who were at the hearing told reporters later...").

Rick Ballard with MJW and Emptywheel have both been puzzling over the Armitage question; I will be entering an indeterminate period of radio silence (or, in Bauer-speak, "going dark").

Background to the "It's Armitage" case is here.  And the recent defense filings certainly featured both Hadley and Armitage, so maybe the defense is keeping options open.

Why Should You Care About Reporters' Reading Disabilities?

Last weekend Tim Rutten of the LA Times asked and answered the following question:
"Why should you care about reporters' rights?"

Let's excerpt his answer:

IS there really any reason for you to care that lawyers acting for Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, this week served subpoenas on the New York Times, Washington Post, Time magazine and at least four journalists?

...Libby's lawyers say that defending their client against charges he lied to a federal grand jury probing the leak of former CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity to reporters requires that they be allowed to question New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof, former Times reporter Judith Miller, Time's Matthew Cooper and NBC News Washington bureau chief Tim Russert. They also want to see any notes, e-mails, memoranda, draft articles or any other documents these journalists' news organizations may have relating to their work on the Plame story.

Miller, you'll recall, never actually wrote a story about the former agent. Her lawyer, Robert S. Bennett, said it was "highly likely" that Miller would fight the subpoena, which he called "entirely too broad."

Broad hardly begins to describe it. This thing is wider than your Aunt Margaret's rear end. This is no legitimate defense request for exculpatory information; it's a fishing expedition. Don't look for its inspiration in the common law, but in Dickens' Mr. Micawber: "Something, my Dear Copperfield, will turn up."

This is not part of a legitimate defense?  I urge Mr. Rutten to read the indictment of Mr. Libby as prepared by special Counsel Fitzgerald.  If he so occupies himself, he will quickly see that all four of these reporters are mentioned in it, and that the interactions of Mr. Libby with Judy Miller, Tim Russert, and Matt Cooper form the basis of the perjury and obstruction charges.  Yet Mr. Rutten thinks that the defense should not be allowed to chat with these star witnesses for the prosecution?  Ridiculous.

Ridiculous, but not surprising - as Tim Rutten himself once wrote, "It takes a strong stomach to plunge into the sea of malice, mendacity and misrepresentation that now churns around the affair of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV and his wife, Valerie Plame."

Anyone Can Make A Mistake

Anyone can make a mistake.  In fact, they are so common that it hardly seems to be necessary to mention the person who makes one - that, at least, seems to be the principle guiding the MSM as they dance around (and with) a particular figure they know and fear.

Let's start with the denouement, from the Saturday WaPo:

Charges Against Cowles Dropped
U.S. Court Clears Local Executive

Charges have been dropped against Northern Virginia businessman Frank L. Cowles Jr., who was arrested in November on allegations of conspiring to defraud a hedge fund out of $25 million.

A U.S. District Court judge in Chicago dropped criminal charges against Cowles on March 1 after the U.S. attorney's office there filed a motion to dismiss. Cases continue against two men who were charged with Cowles for allegedly defrauding a Chicago-based fund.

...

"For someone who has been absolutely clean and honorable all my life, the charges came as quite a blow," Cowles, 76, said in a telephone interview.

"The only thing I've ever had on my record is three speeding tickets when I was 18," he said. "After a very, very exhaustive 3 1/2 -month investigation, they came up with the right conclusion."

Cowles's attorney, Robert D. Luskin of the law firm Patton Boggs in the District, said the complaint against Cowles was a mistake and that his client had been the victim of a scheme that cost him a great financial loss.

"This was a mistake," Luskin said. "The person that was thought to be the predator was actually the prey."

Plamaniacs recognize Robert Luskin's name - he is Karl Rove's attorney in what is inaptly called the Valerie Plame leak investigation ("Inapt" because the actual leak seems to have dropped off the prosecutor's radar).

But is there another name Plamaniacs might recognize in this story?  There would be, if the WaPo would print it; golly, they weren't this coy when the case was filed last November:

U.S. Arrests Three In Hedge Fund Case

Frank L. Cowles Jr. is known in the Northern Virginia business community as the owner of car dealerships and a founding director of Virginia Commerce Bank in Arlington. Now, at age 76, he is facing allegations of a criminal conspiracy to defraud an Illinois hedge fund out of $25 million.

Cowles was arrested at his Scottsville horse farm last week and released on $1 million bail, said Randall Samborn, a spokesman for Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the U.S. attorney in Chicago. Cowles made his first appearance in U.S. District Court in Chicago on Thursday.

In a criminal complaint filed by Fitzgerald on Tuesday, Cowles was accused of lying to a hedge fund manager, who was not identified, about the nature of a $25 million investment. According to the complaint, Cowles and two associates induced the hedge fund manager to make the investment, promising 10 percent profit per week in a deal that they claimed was being overseen by a Federal Reserve administrator.

Well hello, St. Patrick!  And Cowles was accused of lying!  And Luskin got him off!  You can't make this stuff up.  Well, eventually I will see if I can find some court documents, but this is pretty funny, and has to affect the odds of Fitzgerald seeking a rematch with Luskin over Rove.

But let's not single out the WaPo for unusual discretion - the LA Times seems to have developed a preference for job titles over names as well, although this is from last month:

Secret Data Exposed in Terrorism Case
Federal officials erred in releasing intelligence documents to an Islamic charity's defense team.

Federal officials in Dallas mistakenly disclosed classified counter-terrorism information in a breach of national security that could also threaten one of the country's biggest terrorism prosecution cases, newly unsealed court records show.

The blunder exposed secret wiretap requests that commonly include classified information from U.S. agencies, foreign intelligence reports and confidential sources.

The criminal case involves officials of the Texas-based Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, a now-defunct Islamic charity with alleged ties to terrorists. Its assets were frozen by the Treasury Department three months after the Sept. 11 attacks.

What?  That sounds like a real breach of national security - who was in charge of that investigation, anyway?  The LA Times won't say, but Josh Marshall knows.

Look, I understand why the media want to stay on his good side, but c'mon - report the news.

BLOGGING TIPS:  If TopSecretK9 is a regular commenter, you can be a blogger too.

MORE:  Here is the initial complaint against Cowles.

Byron York On The Latest Libby Filings

Byron York discusses the latest Libby filings in the Plame case.  We have links to the filings and lots of excerpts here.

Let's also include this MSNBC article, which touches on the question of the Woodward/Armitage connection:

Krugman - Kidding?

Perhaps Andrew Sullivan can award Paul Krugman some sort of "Ostrich" award - the level of denial or duplicity in this column is inexplicable.  His theme is (Brace yourself!) the ongoing failure of the Bush Administration, but get this:

Mr. Bush, of course, bears primary responsibility for the state of his presidency. But there's more going on here than his personal inadequacy; we're looking at the failure of a movement as well as a man. As evidence, consider the fact that most of the conservatives now rushing to distance themselves from Mr. Bush still can't bring themselves to criticize his actual policies. Instead, they accuse him of policy sins — in particular, of being a big spender on domestic programs — that he has not, in fact, committed.

Before I get to the bogus issue of domestic spending, let's look at the policies the new wave of conservative Bush bashers refuses to criticize.

Mr. Bush's new conservative critics don't say much about the issue that most disturbs the public, the quagmire in Iraq. That's not surprising. Commentators who acted as cheerleaders in the run-up to war, and in many cases questioned the patriotism of those of us who were skeptical, can't criticize the decision to start this war without facing up to their own complicity in that decision.

Huh?  As if torn from today's headlines, I tore this story from last week's headlines:

Supporter's Voice Now Turns on Bush

By MICHIKO KAKUTANI

"America at the Crossroads" serves up a powerful indictment of the Bush administration's war in Iraq and the role that neoconservative ideas — concerning preventive war, benevolent hegemony and unilateral action — played in shaping the decision to go to war, its implementation and its aftermath. These arguments are made all the more devastating by the fact that the author, Francis Fukuyama, was once a star neoconservative theorist himself, who studied with or was associated with leading neoconservative luminaries like Paul D. Wolfowitz, William Kristol, Albert Wohlstetter and Allan Bloom, and whose best-selling 1992 book, "The End of History and the Last Man," was celebrated (and denounced) as a classic neoconservative text on the end of the cold war and the global march of liberal democracy.

Indeed, "America at the Crossroads" represents the latest and most detailed criticism of the Bush administration's war in Iraq — delivered from a conservative point of view. With it, Mr. Fukuyama, who teaches at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, joins a growing number of conservatives, including William F. Buckley Jr., George F. Will, Bruce Bartlett and Andrew Sullivan, who have voiced doubts about the war. 

Not a bad list.  Here is George Will; William Buckley; and Rob Bartlett (Fine, here is the other Bartlett, or at least, two book reviews).  Andrew Sullivan's change of heart is well known.

Now, in the case of Bruce Bartlett, the book reviews suggest that he may not be a vigorous war critic, although there are hints of his concern, and he was pretty skeptical even in June 2004 (it's hard to believe his confidence has risen subsequently).  But as for the others, whatever is Krugman thinking about?

Well, he was on this theme of attacking the conservative critics of Bush a few weeks back as well - maybe he is holding out for an apology, or roses, or something. 

And while he waits, I guess he is just going to make stuff up.  Whatever.

MORE:  "Commentators who acted as cheerleaders in the run-up to war, and in many cases questioned the patriotism of those of us who were skeptical...".

Dare I ask for cites?  I'm curious to see if any A-list names appear; Coulter, Limbaugh, and Hannity are not who I am looking for.

UPDATE:  I should have taken the fifth!  Instead, Andrew Sullivan railed against a fifth column.  Hat tip to Tejano C.

How We Might Learn To Stop Worrying And Love The Mullahs

David Sanger of the Times continues his helpful series on Iran and its nuclear aspirations.

It's Hard Out Here For A Black Man

The Times has a frightening article about the plight of black men in America:

BALTIMORE — Black men in the United States face a far more dire situation than is portrayed by common employment and education statistics, a flurry of new scholarly studies warn, and it has worsened in recent years even as an economic boom and a welfare overhaul have brought gains to black women and other groups.

Focusing more closely than ever on the life patterns of young black men, the new studies, by experts at Columbia, Princeton, Harvard and other institutions, show that the huge pool of poorly educated black men are becoming ever more disconnected from the mainstream society, and to a far greater degree than comparable white or Hispanic men.

...These were among the recent findings:

¶The share of young black men without jobs has climbed relentlessly, with only a slight pause during the economic peak of the late 1990's. In 2000, 65 percent of black male high school dropouts in their 20's were jobless — that is, unable to find work, not seeking it or incarcerated. By 2004, the share had grown to 72 percent, compared with 34 percent of white and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts. Even when high school graduates were included, half of black men in their 20's were jobless in 2004, up from 46 percent in 2000.

¶Incarceration rates climbed in the 1990's and reached historic highs in the past few years. In 1995, 16 percent of black men in their 20's who did not attend college were in jail or prison; by 2004, 21 percent were incarcerated. By their mid-30's, 6 in 10 black men who had dropped out of school had spent time in prison.

¶In the inner cities, more than half of all black men do not finish high school.

Here are more shocking factoids:

With the shift from factory jobs, unskilled workers of all races have lost ground, but none more so than blacks. By 2004, 50 percent of black men in their 20's who lacked a college education were jobless, as were 72 percent of high school dropouts, according to data compiled by Bruce Western, a sociologist at Princeton and author of the forthcoming book "Punishment and Inequality in America" (Russell Sage Press). These are more than double the rates for white and Hispanic men.

...Among black dropouts in their late 20's, more are in prison on a given day — 34 percent — than are working — 30 percent — according to an analysis of 2000 census data by Steven Raphael of the University of California, Berkeley.

Let's close with a tribute to Academy Award winners Three 6 Mafia:

Terrible schools, absent parents, racism, the decline in blue collar jobs and a subculture that glorifies swagger over work have all been cited as causes of the deepening ruin of black youths. Scholars — and the young men themselves — agree that all of these issues must be addressed.

Murtha On The NSA

Rep. John Murtha spoke with Tim Russert on Meet The Press.  The primary topic was Iraq, but the interview ended with this exchange about the NSA program:

MR. RUSSERT: Senator Russ Feingold, Democrat from Wisconsin, said the president should be censured for eavesdropping on telephone and computers of—by Americans. Would you support such a censure?

REP. MURTHA: Well, if it were illegal, it, it’s certainly something we have to look at. I, I think there’s—I, I don’t know enough about the issue. Even though we have complete responsibility for, for oversight and, and funding, funding it. I had a briefing the other day, I’m satisfied the safeguards that are in place are significant, but we have to look at whether it’s illegal or not. I, I’m hesitant to say the president ought to be censured before a committee looks at it and really investigates it and comes up with some real conclusions.

Breathing fire.

MORE:  Before the editor got to it, the last line was "Breathing fire, or passing gas?"  Maybe I should fire the editor.

And no, there was nothing on his recent subpoena in the Libby case.  Imagine my surprise.

Going For The Gold, Metaphorically

Anne Kornblut of the Times puts her Metaphor Masher on hyper-drive and writes about Barack Obama specifically, and "golden boys" generally (but don't call him "boy").

I'll let my friends on the left enjoy reveries of Barack '08, but let me just pick out a few metaphors gone awry:

"The ones who have been successful were very focused in understanding where they wanted to go, and had a good strategy to get there," Professor West said. "You can't wait too long because golden boys only last so long and then they start to tarnish. And then they just become one of the pack, and there's nothing special about them."

Gold does not tarnish.

Mr. Obama is most directly comparable to John F. Kennedy, whose youth, dashing looks and captivating speaking skills catapulted him to national stardom in 1956, when, as a first-term senator, he campaigned for the vice presidential nomination; four years later he was elected president. His assassination in 1963 raised him to the category of permanent golden status among Democrats.

Of course, that was time when it was easier to sparkle.   

Gold does not sparkle.

Ms. Kornblut leaves 'em laughing with an Obama joke, as will I:

Mr. Obama did not return a call seeking comment, but in his Gridiron speech, which brought down the house, he tweaked the press for its fawning coverage so far — a recurring theme he has hit upon in response to an excessive crush of media attention from the start of his political career.

"I want to thank you for all the generous advance coverage you've given me in anticipation of a successful career," Mr. Obama said. "When I actually do something, we'll let you know."

Start Me Up

Fred Barnes explains how the Republican strategists are going to whip me into a frenzy of pro-Republican fervor this summer:

There's another part of the 2006 Republican strategy. This spring and summer, Republican leaders in the Senate and House plan to bring up a series of issues that are popular with the Republican base of voters. The aim is to stir conservative voters and spur turnout in the November election. Just last week, House Majority Leader John Boehner and Whip Roy Blunt met with leaders of conservative groups to talk about these issues.

House Republicans, for their part, intend to seek votes on measures such as the Bush-backed constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, a bill allowing more public expression of religion, another requiring parental consent for women under 18 to get an abortion, legislation to bar all federal courts except the Supreme Court from ruling on the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance, a bill to outlaw human cloning, and another that would require doctors to consider fetal pain before performing an abortion.

Do I really not see any token tax relief in that list?  And the NRA had, as of December, an urgent bill - surely they are not to be overlooked in the summertime pandering.  Otherwise, what can I say about that legislative list except, wow, how has the republic endured?

Well, I assume (on no evidence) that we will be seeing a spate of "Bush has turned the tide" stories this summer and fall, and the economy seems to be in great shape, so my current prediction for the fall election is that Dems will be disappointed.

FWIW - at TradeSports, the Reps are given an 80% chance of keeping the Senate, and a 58% chance of keeping the House.

The State Of Iraq

The Times continues their series of reports on the state of Iraq from Michael O'Hanlon et al of the Brookings Institute.

In the concluding paragraph we get this:

All that said, according to public opinion polls, more than 60 percent of Iraqis (though very few Sunni Arabs) remain bullish on the future.

Folks who click on the graphic will also learn that 87 percent of Iraqis favor a "concrete timetable for US withdrawal", up from 76 percent a year ago (but possibly within the sampling error of the poll, I'll guess).

The "tough love" timetable strategy - announce a withdrawal plan and challenge the Iraqis to form a government and train the heck out of their security forces - looks like a proposition that will become increasingly popular in the US. 

Don Rumsfeld has a guest piece in today's WaPo that dances around that issue:

The rationale for a free and democratic Iraq is as compelling today as it was three years ago. A free and stable Iraq will not attack its neighbors, will not conspire with terrorists, will not pay rewards to the families of suicide bombers and will not seek to kill Americans.

Though there are those who will never be convinced that the cause in Iraq is worth the costs, anyone looking realistically at the world today -- at the terrorist threat we face -- can come to only one conclusion: Now is the time for resolve, not retreat.

Consider that if we retreat now, there is every reason to believe Saddamists and terrorists will fill the vacuum -- and the free world might not have the will to face them again. Turning our backs on postwar Iraq today would be the modern equivalent of handing postwar Germany back to the Nazis. It would be as great a disgrace as if we had asked the liberated nations of Eastern Europe to return to Soviet domination because it was too hard or too tough or we didn't have the patience to work with them as they built free countries.

I have no problem with his re-statement of the urgency of the mission, but
"retreat now" is not exactly what is meant by "set a concrete timetable".

The NY Times editors also chime in with a policy prescription that is, hmm, unclear:

For the present, our goal must be to minimize the damage, through the urgent diplomacy of the current ambassador and forceful reminders that American forces are not prepared to remain for one day in a country whose leaders prefer civil war to peaceful compromise.

I don't know how that differs from our current course - maybe they have in mind that the  ambassador should reverse the order of hand-wringing and brow-furrowing.

Since I have stumbled onto this editorial, let me point out a surprise, an outrage, and an annoyance.  Surprise first - they are bashing Rumsfeld for the initial mis-steps in Iraq rather than Bush:

Chances are that at the time George W. Bush did not have an inkling of how badly he was being served by the decision makers at the Pentagon. But the fact that Mr. Rumsfeld continues to hold his job tells us that Mr. Bush doesn't care, that he prefers living in the same dream world that his secretary of defense inhabits.

I found this "Wasn't our problem" bit about life for Iraqis under Saddam to be outrageous:

It's true that many Iraqis are better off. Others are in far worse straits — their homes have been ruined, their relatives killed, their jobs evaporated and their ability to walk the streets in safety obliterated. Women's rights are being threatened in the south, and sectarian warfare has put families with mixed Shiite-Sunni ancestry at risk in their own neighborhoods. It is hard to quantify relative degrees of misery and pain in these circumstances. But unlike the horrors of Saddam Hussein, the horrors of the present can be laid at America's doorstep.

Oh, stop - just for starters, who was responsible for keeping the (fraying and disastrous) UN sanctions in place?

And I find their conclusion, which amounts to "Don't vex me with the other bad choices, I am unhappy with this one", to be annoying:

While we are distracted by picking up the pieces, there is no time to imagine what the world might be like if George Bush had chosen to see things as they were instead of how he wanted them to be three years ago. History will have more time to consider the question.

Look, there may well have been supporters of this invasion who thought that the war would be, for lack of a better phrase, a good thing.  But I think that most war supporters thought that it was the best of a bunch of bad choices. To dismiss those choices as irrelevant is, in one sense, absolutely right - we are where we are, and we have to get this right (I assume that that message does not apply to any of the NeverMoveOn.org crowd still intent on re-fighting the "Lied about the intelligence" brawl of 2003).

However, as a matter of both politics and logic, Bush supporters are going to point to the possibility that, as of late 2002 with Iraq, all paths forward led to trouble.  For the Times to attempt to dismiss that as irrelevant is understandable as a matter of politics and editorial positioning, but it is not accurate.

MORE: Let's keep Rumsfeld's biggest booster in the mix.

Roots

Mark Coffey presents the manifesto for the internet age.

Many Are Called

The AP presents the witness list being mooted by Libby's side in the Plame leak investigation [and follows up with more detail here].  Did you guess these names?

Potential witnesses in the upcoming criminal trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, as referenced in court papers by Libby's lawyers. The trial is scheduled for January:

_Richard Armitage, former deputy secretary of state.

_Ari Fleischer, former White House press secretary.

_Marc Grossman, former undersecretary of state for political affairs.

_Colin Powell, the former secretary of state.

_Karl Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff.

_George Tenet, the former CIA director.

_Joseph Wilson, a former U.S. ambassador.

_Valerie Plame Wilson.

_Stephen Hadley, the president's national security adviser. Libby's lawyers said Hadley may offer important testimony about discussions within the administration concerning the need to rebut Wilson's statements about his trip to Africa and its conclusions. In addition, said the defense, Hadley was active in discussions about the need to declassify and disseminate the prewar national intelligence on Iraq and had numerous conversations with Tenet. Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has said he plans to focus on Libby's disclosure of certain portions of the NIE to New York Times reporter Judith Miller, disclosures Libby told the grand jury he was authorized to make by his superiors.

_A CIA briefer referred to in the indictment, though not by name. The court papers identify the person as "Craig Schmall, Peter Clement or Matt Barrett." The indictment says that on June 14, 2003, Libby expressed displeasure to the briefer that CIA officials were making comments to reporters that were critical of the vice president's office and discussed with the briefer Wilson and Plame in the context of Wilson's trip in 2002 to the African nation of Niger.

_A senior CIA official referred to in the indictment, "who may be either Robert Grenier or John McLaughlin." Grenier at one time was the CIA's top counterterrorism officer. McLaughlin was deputy director of the CIA. The indictment says Libby spoke to the official on June 11, 2003 about the circumstances of Wilson's trip to Africa and was told that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and was believed responsible for sending him on the trip.

_Former CIA spokesman Bill Harlow. Libby's court filing says the defense team believes that Harlow is the unidentified government official in the indictment who told Catherine Martin, assistant to the vice president for public affairs, that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA and advised Libby of it.

While on Bill Harlow, the filing also says that:

At trial, the defense may question Mr. Harlow about whether the CIA made any serious efforts to prevent the disclosure of Ms. Wilson’s employment status, which the government alleges was sensitive and classified.

Oh my, how covert was Valerie Plame and why didn't the CIA press office exert itself a bit more to protect her secrets - why didn't they call Novak's publisher, for example?

I don't know if Joe and Valerie Wilson can be called "surprise witnesses", but their story may be interesting.  And where are those court papers?  Developing...

Here we go:

(1) the Motion To Compel is a 39 page .pdf;
(2) the Exhibits are a 46 page .pdf;
(3) the Proposed Order is a 4 page .pdf

I have no doubt that the argumentation is fascinating, but folks in a hurry might just skip to the proposed order, which includes little jaw-droppers like this demand for:

Djerejian On Iraq

Belgravia Dispatch on the wreck in Iraq:

Our force posture in country has become more and more conservative of late, and, yes, this has helped save coalition lives. But let's not kid ourselves about the result. Ralph Peters can drive around for an afternoon and report to the know-nothings at home that all is swell, but the reality is that we are too often relinquishing the battle space to militias, terrorists, neo-Baathists, and others.

...And we've put insurgents under real pressure through most of Anbar province these past months too. But never with overwhelming force, the fundamental precept of the Powell Doctrine. Never convincingly enough to keep them from moving to another area of operations, resting, regrouping--the better to allow them to continue to mount a resilient insurgency. And, of course, there has been the rise in strength of Shi'a militias (not to mention Kurdish ones), albeit the gates of hell haven't opened yet as Sistani continues to call for restraint (god help us if he loses his patience, or succumbs to the pressure borne of the "Sistani is Sleeping" grafitti being spotted on Baghdad streets).

...In good time, I will write my personal mea culpa in this tragic affair. I had greater faith in this Administration, and they have let us down time and again. But it's too easy to say it would all have been OK but for the dumbies who effed up the show. People who supported the war, and there were many of us (on both sides of the aisle, lest we forget), had to keep in mind the abilities of those charged with prosecuting it, and the resources that would be brought to bear. We knew the Powell Doctrine had been shunted aside in favor of utopic transformationalist nostrums, and we knew that some who were listened to in the leading counsels of power had memorably declared the effort would be a cakewalk. We should have smelled the danger signals better, and we deserve the scorn of those who were against this effort from the get-go, at least those who honestly believed we were doing the wrong thing rather than just opposing anything the horrible Bushies would bring to the plate.

...Still, whatever you make of the lack of WMD, of the bungled first two years of the occupation, of Rumsfeld's immense hubris and ignorance, it's now all spilt milk. Now we have to move forward and salvage the situation. We need a new War Secretary, of course, but our President appears too bovinely stubborn to realize this. We also need to stay in country, and continue to view this as a generational committment. If we leave Iraq tomorrow, or scale back to well below 100,000, the country will explode.

...Suzanne Nossel has recently written that the only thing worse than a civil war in Iraq is a civil war in Iraq with 130,000 plus US forces in country. I'm not so sure. I heard George Packer (author of the superb Assassin's Gate) last night here in NYC convincingly sketch out just how rapacious the deep hatred many Shi'a harbor for their heretofore Sunni oppressors. It will be ugly, very ugly, if the Americans go.

...So I'm sorry to be so very dreary, but I see no option but for the US to stay in country likely through the end of Bush's term and beyond at troop levels likely above 80,000 even in late '08/early '09. Otherwise we will have made a mockery of our policy objectives in that country and indeed the region. We will have betrayed our own ideals, the lives of our lost soldiers, and countless Iraqis as well. We will have failed, dismally. Can not the world's leading superpower do better?

Well, let's note that Bush-Cheney '08 won't be expecting his check.

These Times Demand The Times

The Times retracts its story about the abused Abu Ghraib prisoner:

n the summer of 2004, a group of former detainees of Abu Ghraib prison filed a lawsuit claiming that they had been the victims of the abuse captured in photographs that incited outrage around the world.

One, Ali Shalal Qaissi, soon emerged as their chief representative, appearing in publications and on television in several countries to detail his suffering. His prominence made sense, because he claimed to be the man in the photograph that had become the international icon of the Abu Ghraib scandal: standing on a cardboard box, hooded, with wires attached to his outstretched arms. He had even emblazoned the silhouette of that image on business cards.

The trouble was, the man in the photograph was not Mr. Qaissi. [Editors' Note, Page A2.]

That said, this editor's note contains a comedy classic:

...A more thorough examination of previous articles in The Times and other newspapers would have shown that in 2004 military investigators named another man as the one on the box, raising suspicions about Mr. Qaissi's claim.

They should have believed their own reporting!  Here we go, from May 22, 2004:

The testimony also gave identities to those who for the most part have remained nameless victims. Abdou Hussain Saad Faleh testified that he was the prisoner in the photograph showing a man standing on a box, his arms outstretched and his body draped with a blanket.

''Then a tall black soldier came and put electrical wires on my fingers and toes and on my penis, and I had a bag over my head,'' he told investigators. ''Then he was saying, 'Which switch is on for electricity?' ''

Look, it is an understandable mistake - the rest of us don't have a lot of confidence in the Times, either, so why should they?

MORE:  Folks struggling for a mnemonic to remember the name of the guy who was *really* in the photograph might hit on "Sad Fella".  Just a thought.

UPDATE:  The Captain takes no prisoners, but I quibble with this, from his intro:

The Times had reported that Ali Shalal Qaissi was the victim of American abuse and ran a lengthy profile about his efforts to ensure that Americans would no longer torture innocent Iraqis. Well, Qaissi was innocent, all right -- in fact, he was never there:

Well, Qaissi was at Abu Grhaib, and was even photographed in a hood, he just was not in the famous photo.  Well, that is assuming the Times has finally gotten it right:

Certainly, he was at Abu Ghraib, and appears with a hood over his head in some photographs that Army investigators seized from the computer belonging to Specialist Charles Graner, the soldier later convicted of being the ringleader of the abuse.

However, he now acknowledges he is not the man in the specific photograph he printed and held up in a portrait that accompanied the Times article. But he and his lawyers maintain that he was photographed in a similar position and shocked with wires and that he is the one on his business card. The Army says it believes only one prisoner was treated in that way.

Hmm, it appears that I have a similar quarrel with Tigerhawk:

Thing is, Qaissi wasn't there.  Somebody was there, but it wasn't the man who told the Times' credulous Mr. Fattah that he "never wanted to be famous, especially not in this way." Whoever it was who suffered so, it wasn't the lying weasel about which the Grey Dufus wrote this:

Let's not turn the Times embarrassment into our own, gents.

Deja Vu All Over Again

Ramesh Ponnuru and Matt Yglesias are slugging it out on Social Security, and every prudent blogger will want to check their timestamps - incredibly, the new posts are from 2006.

Matt reintroduces one of my obsessions from 2005, to wit, the non-linkage between economic growth and return on capital.  And since his post is titled "THE CRITICISM SHALL NEVER DIE!", I would suggest that it speaks poorly for the self-correcting nature of the blogosphere:

Strictly speaking, the Bush plan did not, in fact, depend for its financing on a bogus projection about stock-market returns...  But bogus projections about stock-market returns played a crucial role in the plan as well.

...It involved asserting that future stock market investments would grow at an annual rate of seven percent. That figure, in turn, came from the historical rate of return on stock investments. The problem, however, is that the entire Social Security "crisis" was premised on the notion that due to slower population growth, future GDP growth will be lower than was past GDP growth. If future GDP growth is, indeed, lower, then future stock market growth will be lower, too. It was only by relying on two different and inconsistent sets of economic projections that they were able to make privatization look like a good deal.

Emphasis added - this was a key oversimplification also made by Paul Krugman when he described Dean Baker's criticism of the Social Security Trustees projections.  Here is Krugman:

Schemes for Social Security privatization, like the one described in the 2004 Economic Report of the President, invariably assume that investing in stocks will yield a high annual rate of return, 6.5 or 7 percent after inflation, for at least the next 75 years. Without that assumption, these schemes can't deliver on their promises. Yet a rate of return that high is mathematically impossible unless the economy grows much faster than anyone is now expecting.

"Mathematically impossible" was simply not accurate, as Krugman eventually acknowledged.  And after much to-ing and fro-ing, Krugman, DeLong and Baker produced a paper [KrugmanDeLongAssetReturnsGrowth] the gist of which seemed to be, the return to equity is difficult to predict and may or may not be related to GDP growth, particularly as GPD growth itself can be broken down into population growth and productivity growth:

Section VIII provides our conclusions. We conclude that if economic growth over the next century falls as far as forecasts like those contained in the Social Security Trustees Report (2005) are envisioning, then it is possible but not likely that asset returns will match historical experience. If the stock market today is significantly overvalued and about to come back to earth, if the distribution of income undergoes a significant shift away from labor and toward capital, or if the United States massively boosts its national savings rate and runs surpluses on the relative scale of pre-World War I Britain for more than twice as long as Britain did—then a growth slowdown need not entail a significant reduction in asset returns. But these seem to us to be possible scenarios, not the central tendency of the distribution of possible futures that is a real economic forecast.

Even that was derided by Greg Mankiw, formerly of the CEA.

And there hedged conclusion includes the possibility of income undergoing "a significant shift away from labor and toward capital".  But how significant a shift are we talking about?  I ran some numbers here, and the results are far from outlandish - we are talking about a re-allocation of the GDP pie of around 2% from labor to capital; if capital's share of the GDP pie rises from 5% to 7% while labor falls from 60% to 58%, it is Mission Accomplished for Big Business and their shareholders.

And is that sort of re-allocation plausible?  Let's ask Paul Krugman if corporations might be able to raise profits while holding the line on compensation.  Here he is in 2003:

Commerce Department figures reveal a startling disconnect between overall economic growth, which has been impressive since last spring, and the incomes of a great majority of Americans. In the third quarter of 2003, as everyone knows, real G.D.P. rose at an annual rate of 8.2 percent. But wage and salary income, adjusted for inflation, rose at an annual rate of only 0.8 percent. More recent data don't change the picture: in the six months that ended in November, income from wages rose only 0.65 percent after inflation.

... Historically, higher productivity has translated into rising wages. But not this time: thanks to a weak labor market, employers have felt no pressure to share productivity gains. Calculations by the Economic Policy Institute show real wages for most workers flat or falling even as the economy expands.

...So if jobs are scarce and wages are flat, who's benefiting from the economy's expansion? The direct gains are going largely to corporate profits, which rose at an annual rate of more than 40 percent in the third quarter. Indirectly, that means that gains are going to stockholders, who are the ultimate owners of corporate profits.

Or, in his recent column on rising income inequality, Prof. Krugman informed us that:

What we're seeing isn't the rise of a fairly broad class of knowledge workers. Instead, we're seeing the rise of a narrow oligarchy: income and wealth are becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small, privileged elite.

...A new research paper by Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, ''Where Did the Productivity Growth Go?,'' gives the details. Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year. So being in the top 10 percent of the income distribution, like being a college graduate, wasn't a ticket to big income gains.

Should we be worried about the increasingly oligarchic nature of American society? Yes, and not just because a rising economic tide has failed to lift most boats.

And here we go from Oct 2005:

There was a time when the American economy offered lots of good jobs -- jobs that didn't make workers rich but did give them middle-class incomes. The best of these good jobs were at America's great manufacturing companies, especially in the auto industry.

But it has been a generation since most American workers could count on sharing in the nation's economic growth. America is a much richer country than it was 30 years ago, but since the early 1970's the hourly wage of the typical worker has barely kept up with inflation.

The contrast between rising national wealth and stagnant wages has become even more extreme lately. In 2004, which was touted both by the Bush administration and by Wall Street as a year in which the economy boomed, the median real income of full-time, year-round male workers fell more than 2 percent.

Now the last vestiges of the era of plentiful good jobs are rapidly disappearing. Almost everywhere you look, corporations are squeezing wages and benefits, saying that they have no choice in the face of global competition. And with the Delphi bankruptcy, the big squeeze has reached the auto industry itself.

This is an interesting example of compartmentalization by Krugman specifically, or by the left more broadly.  For purposes of the Social Security debate, it was absurd to think that rapacious corporations could use the threat of outsourcing and reliance on Republican tax breaks to boost their profitability.  But away from the Social Security debate, such a outlook is utterly plausible.

Please - pick a view.

MORE:  I offer a longish description of the mathematical trap into which Krugman fell in "Does Your Model Have HAIR?"  And there is more where that came from.

My guess as to why people's intuition fails them on this point is that, for companies and the economy, higher growth is routinely associated with a higher stock market.  The missing link is that "higher growth" really means Higher than EXPECTED growth - try to imagine what would happen to Google if they announced revenue increases of "only" 30% when folks are looking for 50% growth.

I should also add that Profs. Krugman, Baker and DeLong were gracious enough to acknowledge me in their paper, which pleased me no end and will surely startle my grand-kids someday.

LEST WE FORGET:  Let's applaud Matt for consistency - he offered the same defense of the "low growth/low return" theory back in Feb 2005.

My impression is that almost everyone learned something, and most of us learned a lot during the Social Security brawl.  That said, in his feb 2005 post his discussion of transition "costs" as they relate to the unfunded liability is, hmm, absurd?  Well, let's say, weak:

Assume there was no unfunded Social Security liability (easiest to make this assumption by assuming the demographic shifts come out differently) and Social Security is a fully-funded pay-as-you-go pension plan. Now assume you decide to privatize it for workers under the age of 55. Again, for simplicity's sake let's say you're fully privatizing. Some percentage X of the under-55 workforce decides to enter the private accounts system. That means payroll tax revenues are immediately reduced by X percent. Expenditures, however, are exactly the same. Ten years later when the first worker who was 54 on Zero Hour retires, expenditures start to fall because people who took private accounts don't get benefits. The vast majority of retirees, however, are still drawing full benefits because they were 55 or older on Zero Hour. It's not until everyone who was 55 or older on Zero Hour is dead that the system is back in balance. Note that this will take a long time. Bush wants to calculate the transitions costs over the ten years following the passage of legislation. But not only is this misleading because of the phase-in, it's misleading because ten years has no significance. The transition costs will extend about fifty years forward from Zero Hour until the last of the legacy retirees is dead.

The fact that, under our simplified model, Social Security had no unfunded liabilities is totally irrelevant. Bush proposes to eliminate the unfunded liabilities by reducing the liabilities (liberals favor a plan more weighted toward increasing the funds), which is nice. But the transitions costs are -- as our thought experiment shows -- new costs that arise on top of the unfunded liabilities. They are not the price you pay to eliminate the liabilities.

Huh?  Just what is a "fully funded pay as you go" plan, as per his initial assumption?  If the plan is fully funded, then (we presume) it has accumulated a huge surplus in anticipation of the eventual retirment of today's workers.  As current workers divert their payroll taxes to private accounts, the fully-funded "trust fund" will make up the shortfall to current and imminent retirees.

Or, if it and always has been a pay as you go plan, then there is a huge unfunded liability that will simply be recognized sooner by the switch to private accounts.

But the thought experiment proposed by Matt hardly proves that the transition represents some *new* "cost", or a new financing obligation, or anything else.

PICS OR IT DIDN'T HAPPEN: I got a mention in an early draft but was dropped from the final version.

 

"A Billowing White Flag" - Or Is It A Towel?

The formal introduction of the NSA Surveillance bill by four Republican Senators has driven Georgia10 at DKos to near-poetry:

Meet the four horsemen of the Constitutional apocalypse: Republican Senators Mike DeWine, Olympia Snowe, Lindsey Graham, and Chuck Hagel. "Apocalypse, what hyperbole!" you say.  But how else to label the fact that these four Senators will bring to the Senate a billowing white flag of surrender, and a crown for their King?

A billowing white flag!  Or is it a towel?  The NY Times seems to be throwing it in, at least with respect to Don Quixote Feingold:

We understand the frustration that led Senator Russell Feingold to introduce a measure that would censure President Bush for authorizing warrantless spying on Americans. It's galling to watch from the outside as the Republicans and most Democrats refuse time and again to hold Mr. Bush accountable for the lawlessness and incompetence of his administration. Actually sitting among that cowardly crew must be maddening.

Maddening, indeed - how much more gratifying to sit amongst the cowardly crew that has offered zero follow-up on the news that Libby's defense has subpoenaed the notes of Judy Miller *and* Nick Kristof.  But I digress:

Still, the censure proposal is a bad idea. Members of Congress don't need to take extraordinary measures like that now. They need to fulfill their sworn duty to investigate the executive branch's misdeeds and failings. Talk about censure will only distract the public from the failure of their elected representatives to earn their paychecks.

Well at this point, Sen. Feingold '08 has sufficiently poisoned the atmosphere that Democratic calls for an investigation will be dismissed as a partisan attempt to pave the way for censure, impeachment, disembowelment, and decapitation (not necessary in that order).  And Rep spinners will point to the infamous Rockefeller staff memo highlighting just that approach.

Oh, well.  Mark Coffey has more, and Marty Lederman has suggestions for the bill title; I favor "Did We Enact FISA?  Just Kidding! Act of 2006", but I could get behind the "Nobody Here But Us Chickens Act of 2006" as well.

Well, don't say I didn't say so - I said weeks ago that after a phase of hopeful posturing, Congress would throw in their cards - as with the Dubai deal, the overriding imperative in Congress is to appear Tough on Terror.  Of course, with Dems the Dubai deal was a double play - they could be Tough on Terror (Well, Arabs, anyway, but in Dem-world that was the same thing) *and* Tough on Bush.

The NSA deal presents a fork in the road for the Democratic leadership, since, to public appearances, Tough on Terror is not wholly consistent with Tough on Bush.  No worries - if disappointing the base was not a hale and hearty tradition amongst Democratic "leaders", we would see a lot more Congressional pressure for gun control, gay marriage, and abortion rights, to pick a few   The folks at the top know their base represent views that are unelectable and out of touch, so they will move on.

UPDATE:  You've been blogging (or reading them) for too long if you remember the Four Horseman of the Ablogalypse.  And where are they now?

Waiting For St. Patrick

Back on Feb. 23, the Libby defense team filed a motion to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that Special Counsel Fitzgerald's appointment was unconstitutionally broad.  We had discussion here and here, and this is the filing itself.

As best we can tell from the court docket, Mr. Fitzgerald was scheduled to respond by St. Patrick's Day.  Of course, that deadline may have been extended by the judge, but we are keeping an eye on PACER anyway.

For anyone so inclined (and setting up a PACER account is E-Z; c'mon, this is America, where the people watch the government!), this case is proceeding through the District of Columbia, and the case number is: 1:05-cr-00394.

Meanwhile, enjoy the traditional green bagel.

AND AWAY WE GO:  Extra-Special Counsel Fitzgerald filed three documents:

Fitzgerald's response is a 34 page .pdf. [Copy/paste HTML version here, with thanks to Rick Ballard]

Exhibits A to D are: (18 pages)

Ex. A - the Dec 30 2003 letter from Acting Attorney General Comey appointing Fitzgerald (Available at the Fitzgerald website).

Ex. B - the Feb 6, 2004 letter clarifying Fitzgerald's power (see below, or the Fitzgerald website).

Ex. C - an Aug 12, 2005 letter from Deputy Attorney General Comey to Associate Deputy Attorney General Margolis with this baffling passage:

By virtue of the authority vested in me as Deputy Attorney General under the law, including 28 CFR 0.15(a), I delegate to you all of my authority as Acting Attorney General with respect to that investigation and Mr. Fitzgerald's service as Special Counsel, as delineated in that correspondence.  This delegation to you in no way retracts or modifies the scope of the prior delegations of authority to Mr. Futzgerald.

Since Mr. Fitgzerald had been previously delegated the authority of Acting AG, and this does not limit his authority, what does it mean?  I don't know, but since Comey stepped down a week later, this must be a transfer of authority saying that Margolis is now in charge of Fitzgerald, to the extent anyone is.

Ex. D - a transcript of the Dec 30, 2003 DoJ press conference at which Mr. Comey announced the appointment of Mr. Fitzgerald.

Exhibits E to G: (35 pages)

Ex. E - a transcript of  Fitzgerald's Oct 28, 2005 press conference (also here).

Ex. F - an affidavit from Mr. Comey explaining his thought process in appointing Mr. Fitzgerald.  I laughed out loud at his description of the telepathic, empathetic appointment:

In addition, although the Special Counsel was delegated approval authority with respect to specific actions such as issuing media subpoenas, granting immunity, or taking appeals, it was my intention that the Special Counsel would follow substantive Department policies concerning such specific actions, as he was obliged to do as an employee of the department.  To the best of my knowledge, the Special Counsel shared each of these understandings and knew of the intended limits on his authority.

Fitzgerald knew those letters weren't worth the paper they were written on!  Uh huh - I smell fear.  I also have a recollection from reading through (IIRC) the Miller opinion that Fitzgerlad alluded to the fact that he is not bound by the DoJ regs - tracking that down would be a silver bullet.  [I seem to have misremembered; with the second Cooper subpoena (which ultimately led to Karl Rove), it appears that  Fitzgerald did not name an official in the subpoena, but invoked the "exhaustion" exception in the guidelines.

Oh, this affidavit is a comedy classic - Mr. Comey also explains that what he said at the Dec 30 press conference about Fitzgerald's broad authority was "perhaps inadvertently demonstrating the perils of  giving a 347 word extemporaneous answer at a press conference".  I.e., what he wrote doesn't count, and what he said doesn't count - Mr. Fitzgerald knew what he meant, and that is what counts.

Mr. Comey cites US Code 28, Section 509, 510, and 515 as his legal authority for the delegation.

Ex. G - an affidavit from Mr. Fitzgerald in which he asserts that he understood that he was bound by DoJ guidelines. 

FROM THE TIME VAULT:  This affidavit from Fitzgerald in Aug 2004, related to the Miller subpoena, is gold:

I have not been appointed pursuant to Title 28, United States Code, Part 600, which is the provision allowing the Attorney General to appoint an attorney outside the Department of Justice to investigate and prosecute certain matters.  In fact, the authority delegated in this case is in many respects broader than the authority conferred by the latter provision as I need not seek approvals prior to significant investigative or prosecutive steps.

Or, from pargraph 5:

Thus, as Special Counsel I serve as the functional equivalent of the Attorney General on this matter.

[Upon further research, I see that the Libby team already had these excerpts in their original submission.  Well, I am seeing them as if for the first time.]

UPDATE:  With thanks to Rick Ballard, let's put this in the "Too-Independent Prosecutor" mix: the Feb 6, 2004 letter from Acting Attorney General Comey (Ashcroft was recused on this case) clarifying Fitzgerald's authority:

At your request, I am writing to clarify that my December 30,2003, delegation to you of "all the authority of the Attorney General with respect to the Department's investigation into the alleged unauthorized disclosure of a CIA employee's identity" is plenary...

and more importantly:

Further, my conferral on you of the title of "Special Counsel"in this matter should not be misunderstood to suggest that your position and authorities are defined and limited by 28 CFR Part 600.

28 CFR Part 600 is right here, and is the rules set up by the DoJ for Special Counsels.

Now, as we have noted, the DoJ guidlines are guidelines, not law.  Just because Comey did not follow them, it does not follow that Fitzgerald's appointment is unconstitutional, illegal, or contrary to previous court opinions.  In fact, even if these regulations had been followed, the defense might have been able to challenge them for failing to clear some constitutional or legal hurdle.

However - there was a fair amount of litigation about independent prosecutors in the 80's and 90's, and courts have expressed some ideas about what is and is not acceptable.  One presumes that the DoJ lawyers who drafted these guidelines paid close attention to those opinions.  One may also presume that Comey paid them no heed at all, based on this letter anyway, and this letter, plus the Dec 30 2003 letter, seem to be all we have establishing Fitzgerald's authority.

Let's just leaf throught the guidelines and notice how much supervision a "Special Counsel" might have experienced, relative to Fitzgerald's situation:

Sec. 600.6  Powers and authority.

Subject to the limitations in the following paragraphs, the Special Counsel shall exercise, within the scope of his or her jurisdiction, the full power and independent authority to exercise all investigative and prosecutorial functions of any United States Attorney.

Fitzgerald was delegated the power of the Attorney General, not "any United States Attorney".

Sec. 600.7  Conduct and accountability.

(a) A Special Counsel shall comply with the rules, regulations, procedures, practices and policies of the Department of Justice...

(b) The Special Counsel shall not be subject to the day-to-day supervision of any official of the Department. However, the Attorney General may request that the Special Counsel provide an explanation for any investigative or prosecutorial step, and may after review conclude that the action is so inappropriate or unwarranted under established Departmental practices that it should not be pursued. In conducting that review, the Attorney General will give great weight to the views of the Special Counsel. If the Attorney General concludes that a proposed action by a Special Counsel should not be pursued, the Attorney General shall notify Congress as specified in Sec. 600.9(a)(3).

(c) The Special Counsel and staff shall be subject to disciplinary action for misconduct and breach of ethical duties under the same standards and to the same extent as are other employees of the Department of Justice. Inquiries into such matters shall be handled through the appropriate office of the Department upon the approval of the Attorney General.

(d) The Special Counsel may be disciplined or removed from office only by the personal action of the Attorney General....

I don't get the impression that Fitzgerald was subject to any of these rules - if so, they are not in his founding documents.  Whether that creates a fatal constitutional flaw is up to the courts.  My prediction - Judge Walton will punt this to a higher pay grade, probably by ruling in favor of Fitzgerald but expediting an appeal.

A Fine Day For The Irish

And a Happy St. Patrick's day to all.  We're a day late with this, but yesterday's Times described the still-striong influence of the Irish on American politics.  The gist - certain politicians are happy to get behind immigration reform as long as they can be seen to be benefiting smiling Irish faces, rather than Hispanic ones:

Showtime - Libby Subpoenas Reporters

From the Times we learn that the Libby team has subpoenaed notes and other material produced by Judy Miller and Nick Kristof; they also report that Matt Cooper and Tim Russert have made the first cut:

Lawyers for I. Lewis Libby Jr., a former aide to Vice President Dick Cheney who faces charges of obstruction of justice, served subpoenas on Tuesday on The New York Times Company and a former reporter for The Times, Judith Miller.

The subpoenas seek documents concerning the disclosure of the identity of an undercover C.I.A. operative, Valerie Wilson. Mr. Libby has been charged with lying to a grand jury about how he learned about Ms. Wilson's identity.

Ms. Miller testified before the grand jury last fall, after having served 85 days in jail to protect a confidential source later revealed to be Mr. Libby. She also provided the grand jury with edited notes of her interviews with Mr. Libby. Ms. Miller retired from The Times in November.

The new subpoenas seek her notes and other materials, including any other documents concerning Ms. Wilson prepared by Ms. Miller and Nicholas D. Kristof, an Op-Ed columnist for The Times; drafts of a personal account by Ms. Miller published in The Times in October concerning her grand jury testimony; documents concerning her interactions with an editor of The Times; and documents concerning a recent Vanity Fair article on the investigation.   

A lawyer for Mr. Libby, William H. Jeffress Jr., would not say whether other reporters and news organizations had been subpoenaed. Matthew Cooper of Time magazine and Tim Russert of NBC News have received subpoenas, their representatives said.

Why no separate subpoena for Nick Kristof?  A guess - Judy Miller got a separate subpoena because she is no longer a Times employee.

No word yet on subpoenas for Andrea Mitchell, Walter Pincus, Bob Novak, Bob Woodward, or others.

UPDATE:  From CNN:

Jeffress [a lawyer for Libby]  said more subpoenas likely would be issued, but would not name the targets or say when those might be sent.

UPDATE 2:  The AP adds some cryptic details:

The subpoena to the Times also calls for:

_Documents of contacts between any Times employee and any of eight people, including then-CIA Director George Tenet and then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, regarding Joe Wilson.

_Documents concerning a recent Vanity Fair article in which Miller said she talked to many people in the government about Plame.

_Drafts of a personal account by Miller, published in the Times, about her grand jury testimony.

_Documents regarding Miller's interactions with a Times editor in which Miller may have been told to pursue a story about Joe Wilson and a trip he made to Niger on behalf of the CIA.

"Any Times employee", who contacted any of eight people including Tenet and Fleischer about Joe Wilson?

Won't that be the whole Washington desk, just to start?

BONUS:  The Libby team responded to Fitzgerald's filing requesting the right of the prosecution to file motions ex parte (which I take to mean, directly to the judge without alowing the defense to see it).  [6 page .pdf] [YARGB delivers the HTML version for cut/paste.  Thanks much].  [AP coverage] The defense vigorously pursued a point I noted earlier (in MORE)- one of Fitzgerald's arguments was that Libby could not be trusted with classified info, given the circumstances of the leak situation.

Oh, the defense went off on this: they noted that the government "continues to talk out of both sides of its mouth on this issue", since Fitzgerald is refusing to disclose anything about Ms. Plame's classified status by arguing that her status is not mentioned in the indictment and is not relevant to the perjury and obstruction charges.

The defense also amplifies a point made by Fitzgerald in an earlier filing when he wrote that "To date, we have no direct evidence that Libby knew or believed that Wilson's wife was engaged in covert work."

In the current filing, the defense says that "As far as we can tell from the allegations of the indictment or from discovery, there is no evidence to support a contention that Mr. Libby knew Ms. Wilson was employed in any capacity other than an analyst whose identity is neither secret nor sensitive."

At some point, Fitzgerald will probably need to address the question of Ms. Plame's actual status, and what Libby knew about it - this ties in to whether there was any underlying crime for Fitzgerald to have been investigating, and to Libby's motives to lie.

Now The Times Catches Bradlee

David Johnston of the Times is a day behind Diamond Jim Vandehei of the WaPo, but he gets on the Vanity Fair - Ben Bradlee story:

Ex-U.S. Official Called Likely Leak Source

By DAVID JOHNSTON

WASHINGTON, March 14 — A former executive editor of The Washington Post was quoted in a magazine article published Tuesday as saying that Richard L. Armitage, a former deputy secretary of state, likely was the official who revealed the identity of the intelligence officer at the center of the C.I.A. leak case to Bob Woodward, an editor and reporter for The Post.

Benjamin C. Bradlee, the Post editor who guided Mr. Woodward's Watergate reporting, is quoted in the article about the leak investigation in the April issue of Vanity Fair as saying, "That Armitage is the likely source is a fair assumption."

Mr. Johnston had no more luck getting a comment from Richard Armitage than Diamond Jim did:

Mr. Armitage has not commented on the matter. On Tuesday, he did not return a reporter's phone call.

Mr. Johnston also takes a stab at the consternation caused by Mr. Bradlee's apparent back-pedaling in his chat with the WaPo, which reported this:

In an interview yesterday, Bradlee said he does know the identity of Woodward's source and does not recall making that precise statement to a Vanity Fair reporter. He said he has no interest in unmasking the official who first told Woodward about Plame in June 2003.

"I don't think I said it," Bradlee said. "I know who his source is, and I don't want to get into it. . . . I have not told a soul who it is."

Emphasis added to "precise".  Here is Mr. Johnston:

In an interview, Mr. Bradlee said that he had been told about Mr. Woodward's source although he did not recall saying the exact words attributed to him by the Vanity Fair reporter. Mr. Bradlee said his information about Mr. Armitage was imprecise, although he said Mr. Armitage's identification as Mr. Woodward's source was "an inference that could be drawn."

A spokesman for Vanity Fair defended the accuracy of the quotes, saying that the author of the article, Marie Brenner, said that she had tape recorded Mr. Bradlee's comments.

Well, if Mr. Bradlee is quibbling about the precise words, that is not any sort of a denial at all.

Finally, Mr. Johnston amuses us with this cautious phrasing (emphasis added):

The question of who told Mr. Woodward about the intelligence officer, Valerie Plame Wilson, is one of the lingering mysteries of the C.I.A. leak inquiry.

In an article last November, Mr. Woodward said he would not name his source, but he has written that the person who told him about Ms. Wilson was a former or current government official and longtime source who told him about her in an offhand manner at the end of a lengthy interview.

In part, Mr. Woodward's disclosure was important because he said the interview with the source occurred in June 2003, which meant he may have been the first reporter to learn of Ms. Wilson's identity, weeks before she was named in a newspaper column by Robert D. Novak.

Fine, I am sympathetic to the Times' desire to avoid embarrassing themselves in the same manner as Special Counsel Fitzgerald, who lost track of his qualifiers at his Oct 2003 press conference and declared that Lewis Libby was "the first official to disclose this information outside the government to a reporter."

However, I would like to think the Times has a more subtle motive, and is smoothing the path for a bombshell announcement from Nick Kristof.  Of course, Judy Miller never could remember all of her sources and conversations, either, so maybe that is something else the Times has in mind.  Perhaps we will all have to wait for the trial.

Iran - Moderates Emerging?

The NY Times follows yesterday's Wash Times with its own story about the emergence of Iranian moderates unnerved by their country's confrontation with the United Nations over its nuclear program:

In Iran, Dissenting Voices Rise on Its Leaders' Nuclear Strategy

By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

TEHRAN, March 14 — Just weeks ago, the Iranian government's combative approach toward building a nuclear program produced rare public displays of unity here. Now, while the top leaders remain resolute in their course, cracks are opening both inside and outside the circles of power over the issue.

Some people in powerful positions have begun to insist that the confrontational tactics of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad have been backfiring, making it harder instead of easier for Iran to develop a nuclear program.

This week, the United Nations Security Council is meeting to take up the Iranian nuclear program. That referral and, perhaps more important, Iran's inability so far to win Russia's unequivocal support for its plans have empowered critics of Mr. Ahmadinejad, according to political analysts with close ties to the government.

One senior Iranian official, who asked to remain anonymous because of the delicate nature of the issue, said: "I tell you, if what they were doing was working, we would say, 'Good.' " But, he added: "For 27 years after the revolution, America wanted to get Iran to the Security Council and America failed. In less than six months, Ahmadinejad did that."

One month ago, the same official had said with a laugh that those who thought the hard-line approach was a bad choice were staying silent because it appeared to be succeeding.

As usual in Iran, there are mixed signals, and the government does not always speak with the same voice.

The Times is not hyperventilating with optimism:

"There has been no sign that they will back down," said Ahmad Zeidabady, a political analyst and journalist. "At least Mr. Khamenei has said nothing that we can interpret that there will be change in the policies."

But, he said, "There is more criticism as it is becoming more clear that this policy is not working, especially by those who were in the previous negotiating team."

There are also signs that negotiators are starting to back away, however slightly, from a bare-knuckle strategy and that those who had initially opposed the president's style — but remained silent — are beginning to feel vindicated and are starting to speak up.

From their conclusion:

There is a consensus here that Iran has many cards to play — from its influence with the Shiites in Iraq to its closer ties to Hezbollah in Lebanon, to the prospect of using oil as a weapon. But the uncertainty of appearing before the Security Council, and the prospect of sanctions, has led some here to begin to rethink the wisdom of fighting the West head-on, analysts said.

Professor Hadian said he believed that for Iran to fundamentally change course the situation for Iran would have to first grow much worse.

"There are concerns to keep the situation calm," said Mr. Zeidabady, the journalist. "We have received orders not even to have headlines saying the case has been sent to the Security Council. Although the situation is very critical, they want to pretend that everything is normal. They do not want to show the country is coming under pressure and lose their supporters."

Feingold's Latest Proposal - Censure The Democrats!

Feingold '08 continued to rally its target audience with a bold new proposal which complements his effort to censure President Bush - now he wants to censure the Democrats:

Feingold Accuses Democrats of 'Cowering'

WASHINGTON -- Wisconsin Sen. Russell Feingold accused fellow Democrats on Tuesday of cowering rather than joining him on trying to censure President Bush over domestic spying.

"Democrats run and hide" when the administration invokes the war on terrorism, Feingold told reporters.

Feingold introduced censure legislation Monday in the Senate but not a single Democrat has embraced it. Several have said they want to see the results of a Senate Intelligence Committee investigation before supporting any punitive legislation.

Republicans dismissed the proposal Tuesday as being more about Feingold's 2008 presidential aspirations than Bush's actions. On and off the Senate floor, they have dared Democrats to vote for the resolution.

As to Sen. Feingold's observation that Democrats "run and hide", Dana Milbank provides more details here (oops, here we go):

Democratic senators, filing in for their weekly caucus lunch yesterday, looked as if they'd seen a ghost.

"I haven't read it," demurred Barack Obama (Ill.).

"I just don't have enough information," protested Ben Nelson (Neb.). "I really can't right now," John Kerry (Mass.) said as he hurried past a knot of reporters -- an excuse that fell apart when Kerry was forced into an awkward wait as Capitol Police stopped an aide at the magnetometer.

Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) brushed past the press pack, shaking her head and waving her hand over her shoulder. When an errant food cart blocked her entrance to the meeting room, she tried to hide from reporters behind the 4-foot-11 Barbara Mikulski (Md.).

"Ask her after lunch," offered Clinton's spokesman, Philippe Reines. But Clinton, with most of her colleagues, fled the lunch out a back door as if escaping a fire.

The courage to lead.

As an aside, Barack Obama, the non-reader noted above, picked up the much-sought endorsement of Maureen Dowd for 2008 (yes, as President!).  He has, Ms. Dowd informs us, a compelling personal story, is even older than JFK, and can deliver a funny speech.  She does not suggest this slogan (but she could have!): "Barack: A stand-up guy who can do stand-up".

Walter Pincus Knew Nothing About Valerie Plame?

Can it be true that the nearly-omniscient Walter Pincus of the WaPo was not aware that Valerie Plame, Ambassador Wilson's wife, was at the CIA during the "Summer of Leaks" when Matt Cooper, Judy Miller, Bob Novak, and Bob Woodard were in the know?  Did he really only learn about this on July 12, 2003?

Hmmph.  I have long suspected (point 3) that his earlier statements left him plenty of wiggle room to stun a packed courtroom with the news that he had received a leak about Ms. Plame in mid-June, about the time that Bob Woodward did.

But a Pincus push-back is underway.  The CJR runs a piece telling us this:

Then, on July 12 — two days before the immortal column in which Robert Novak mentioned that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA — Pincus was on the phone with a person he describes as an administration official (and not Lewis Libby). They were talking about a somewhat different topic, and then the official began to complain about the attention that Wilson’s arguments had been receiving. Didn’t Pincus know, the official said, that Wilson’s wife was at the CIA, and that she had cooked up the Niger trip? “It was, ‘Why are you writing about it? It’s a boondoggle. She arranged it,’” Pincus recalls.

This July 12 conversation, Pincus says, was the first time he ever heard of Valerie Plame’s CIA employment. (In previous accounts, he has not been entirely explicit about that point.) He says he has no recollection of Woodward’s mentioning Plame in the newsroom the previous month. He also says that while he was reporting the lengthy June articles on prewar intelligence, he discussed Wilson’s Niger report with members of several federal agencies. Some of those sources criticized the report on various grounds, Pincus says, but “not one person mentioned Wilson’s wife.”

And there's more!  In a Vanity Fair article available on your newstands now, Mr. Pincus says that he only learned that Joe Wilson had a wife when he got involved with a July 3 picnic at the Wilsons.

Well, here is what Mr. Pincus originally wrote in Oct 2003 to get himself a subpoena:

On July 12, two days before Novak's column, a Post reporter was told by an administration official that the White House had not paid attention to the former ambassador's CIA-sponsored trip to Niger because it was set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction. Plame's name was never mentioned and the purpose of the disclosure did not appear to be to generate an article, but rather to undermine Wilson's report.

Folks who are determined to parse Mr. Pincus' latest pronouncement may wonder whether "the first time he ever heard of Valerie Plame’s CIA employment" means, "The first time I heard she was at the CIA", or "The first time I heard she was an analyst working on WMDs".

However, the news that Mr. Pincus was unaware that Joe Wilson was married until about July 3 is a bit of a poser.

Well, he can push back all he wants - I'll bet he still gets a subpoena, since Libby's team seems to be worried about neither time nor money.

El Arbusto Es Ladrón

The AP makes me laugh.

Byron York On The Plame Referral

Byron York continues his fine work on the Plame case with an overview of the process that led to a criminal referral from the CIA to the Dept. of Justice.

The annotated Byron York reader (available here!) includes the following:

(1) A link to the letter to John Conyers from the CIA describing the process as it unfolded from their perspective;

(2) A link to the court opinion and Fitzgerald's filing cited in Mr. York's article;

(3)  A mention of the tidbit that the political firestorm broke after news of the criminal referral was leaked to Andrea Mitchell, who has not left this story.

(4)  A summary of the key points of the referral (h/t PollyUSA).

MORE:  Wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then:

Let's go through the referal criteria and mock the CIA!  From Fox:

The standard list of information, approved in 1969 by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, that the Justice Department (search) required the CIA (search) to provide before deciding to pursue a criminal investigation into the leak of a covert operative's name.        

The CIA provided its answers last week. They were not made public.

The information asked:

1. Date and identity of the article or release disclosing the classified information.

Easy - the Novak column on July 14, 2003.  Or, add the Pincus story from June 12, 2003 and the Kristof column from May 6, 2003 for discussing the classified Wilson trip to Niger.

2. Specific statements which are classified and whether the data was properly classified. 

Let's assume they focused on the Plame outing - was her status properly classified, or was she classified only because of bureaucratic inertia?  Fitzgerald won't release information addressing this point.

3. Whether the classified data (search) disclosed is accurate.   

Novak was close enough for government work - certainly, Plame was employed by the CIA.

4. Whether the data came from a specific document and, if so, the origin of the document and the name of the individual responsible for the security of the classified data disclosed.   

Don't ask - apparently, the Wilson-Plame connection was widely known within the State Dept.  As to her specific function at the CIA - well, the notion that she was a covert operative may have come from a CIA leak similar to the one reported by Andrea Mitchell (and echoed by Reuters) on July 8, 2003.

5. The extent of official dissemination of the data. 

Does "official disemmination" include Aldrich Ames selling her name to the Russkies?  Probably not.

6. Whether the data has been the subject of prior official releases.

Hmm, was it "official dissemination" when the CIA accidentally outed her to Cuba?  Allegedly, let me add. 

7. Whether the prior clearance for publication or release of the information was sought from proper authorities.   

Don't ask.  Bob Novak called the CIA press office, which failed to either dissuade him, or call his publisher as a follow-up.

8. Whether the material or portions thereof or enough background data has been published officially or in the press to make an educated speculation on the matter possible.

I'll accept that publishing that Ms. Plame is with the CIA links her to the CIA.

9. Whether the data can be declassified for the purpose of prosecution and, if so, the name of the person competent to testify concerning the classification.   

This hurdle has been cleared, in part - obviously, Libby's team is looking for other classified info as well.

10. Whether declassification had been decided upon prior to the publication or release of the data. 

Don't ask - Fitzgerald refuses to release any data about her employment status.  We have wondered, since Ms. Plame was reportedly in transition to a liason function with State cover, whether there was a plan to de-classify her at some future date.

11. What effect the disclosure of the classified data could have on the national defense.   

Don't ask - Fitzgerald is refusing to provide an CIA damage assessments to the defense.

I'm just guessing here, but I bet the prosecution really does not want to hand over that referral.  But I bet Jon Stewart could find some great material in it.

S-P-U-D (Ongoing...)

A while back we mocked the Congressional posturing on the NSA warrantless eavesdropping situation as reminiscent of the childhood game of "SPUD".  You remember - in SPUD, a ball gets tossed in the air and everyone runs away. Wel, in Congress, responsibility and accountability get tossed in the air, and folks head for the exits.

In the latest go-around, Russ Feingold positioned himself nicely for 2008 by staking out a position only a certain segment of the left could love - "Hey, gang, let's censure the President for trying too hard to protect us!"  NO, that's not what Feingold said!  But its what polls say people are hearing, and you can't fight the polls if you're a Dem "leader".

Was it a surprise that Dems backpedaled?  Of course not - talk is cheap, but votes are hard.

What's next?  Per Matt Drudge, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist plans to continue to chant "Bring it on".  I imaging that any day now, Dems will respond, "We already brought it, did ya blink and miss it?"  Or something.

MORE:  More.

UPDATE:  The Times describes the reaction of Senate Democrats to Feingold's censure proposal.  (Ooops, bad link, try here).  More shock and horror from the left with Greenwald and firedoglake, whose readers are urged to call their Senator:

Don’t let them hide in the bunker while Feingold is out there fighting.

Exactly!  Don't let them position themselves for their political future when Feingold is out positioning himself for his!

I Want To Believe (Ongoing...)

From the Wash Times on Iran:

Tehran elite turning on extremist presidency

By John R. Bradley
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
March 14, 2006  

TEHRAN -- Iran's clerical and business establishments, deeply concerned by what they see as reckless spending and needlessly aggressive foreign policies, are increasingly turning against President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
    Within this context, many see the president's long-running confrontation with the United States and Europe over Tehran's nuclear program as an attempt to demonize the West and distract the Iranian public from pressing domestic problems.
    A relatively small group of extremists "at the top of the government around the president" are seeking to benefit from a crisis with the West, because "that way they will be able once again to blame the West for all of their problems," said Mousa Ghaninejad, the editor of Iran's best-selling economics daily newspaper, Dunya Al-Eqtisad.

And from the conclusion:

The clerical establishment has close ties with the capitalist class and is said to be appalled at the rapid slide of the economy since Mr. Ahmadinejad's inauguration. The clerics are also thought to be deeply apprehensive about the president's aggressive foreign policy.
    Mr. Ghaninejad said that by confronting Iran over its nuclear program, the West was in fact throwing a lifeline to Mr. Ahmadinejad.
    "If they keep piling on the pressure, Ahmadinejad will become a national hero," the newspaper editor said.
    "Let the Iranians deal with him. If you leave him alone, he will become a bankrupt politician within a year. With greater pressure, only the extremists will benefit."

Who knows?  But it is a reminder both that the time estimates for Iran to complete its nuclear program are important, and that the US strategy (at least at times) does seem to rely on splitting the Iranian government from the Iranian people.

Armitage Woodward's Source? "A Fair Assumption"

Vanity Fair will have a story about Plamegate by Marie Brenner, but Matt Drudge is already there:

THE WASHINGTON POST's famous Watergate editor Ben Bradlee claims that it was former State Department Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage who was the individual who leaked the identity of CIA official Valerie Plame.

In the latest issue of VANITY FAIR: "Woodward was in a tricky position. People close to him believe that he had learned about Plame from his friend Richard Armitage, Colin Powell's former deputy, who has been known to be critical of the administration and who has a blunt way of speaking. 'That Armitage is the likely source is a fair assumption,' former WASHINGTON POST editor Ben Bradlee said."

'I had heard about an e-mail that was sent that had a lot of unprintable language in it.'"

We eagerly await a bootleg copy of the article.

As to the case for Armitage, let's review - when the story broke that Bob Woodward had received a leak about Valerie Plame in mid-June, a number of news services contacted Administration officials and sought their comment or denial as to whether they were Woodward's source.  CNN and the WSJ noted that Richard Armitage, former Deputy Secretary of State, was conspicuous by his absence; the NY Times (see UPDATE) also splashed some ink on the reasons to suspect Armitage.  Very briefly, Armitage was in the loop on the Plame connection to the Wilson trip, and was a long-time source for Woodward's books.

Isikoff and Thomas of Newsweek also pointed to Armitage.

From another direction, court documents were recently released which discussed the sources for Woodward and Novak source but with names redacted.  Two researchers tackled this, EmptyWheel from the left and MJW from the right, and you can't fight MicroSoft Word - Armitage is a good fit for the redactions.

Well - a recent court hearing strongly suggested that Woodward and Novak shared a non-White House source - Special Counsel Fitzgerald is concealing the name to avoid sullying the mystery person's reputation, since he does not face charges.

Baffling - a mystery source outed Plame to two different reporters and "forgot" to mention his leak to Woodward in his initial interviews with investigators and in his grand jury testimony.  One might have thought this chap had both harmed national security and impeded the Fitzgerald investigation.  Yet his reputation must be preserved!

We can't wait to see Vanity Fair.

UPDATE:  OK, we have seen Vanity Fair - save yourself the newsstand price, unless hot pics of Natalie Portman are your cup of tea - Matt Drudge squeezed the juice with that paragraph.  However, Armitage gets a mention elsewhere in the story as Woodward's source, and no other names are offered.  As bonus speculation, the Vanity Fair reporter did speak to Woodward, so I presume Woodward did not engage in a vigorous wave-off of the Armitage speculation.  That said, Woodward probably settled for an icy stare and "No comment about my sources".

And more - you may have thought you knew Richard Armitage, but you don't know... oh, never mind.

THE WAPO JOINS IN:  Diamond Jim Vandehei enters the fray:

Vanity Fair is reporting that former Washington Post executive editor Ben Bradlee says it is reasonable to assume former State Department official Richard L. Armitage is likely the source who revealed CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob Woodward.

In an article to be published in the magazine today, Bradlee is quoted as saying: "That Armitage is the likely source is a fair assumption." Armitage was deputy secretary of state in President Bush's first term.

In an interview yesterday, Bradlee said he does know the identity of Woodward's source and does not recall making that precise statement to a Vanity Fair reporter. He said he has no interest in unmasking the official who first told Woodward about Plame in June 2003.

"I don't think I said it," Bradlee said. "I know who his source is, and I don't want to get into it. . . . I have not told a soul who it is."

...

Beth Kseniak, spokeswoman for Vanity Fair, said the reporter who wrote the story, Marie Brenner, was traveling in India and was unavailable for comment.

Bradlee, currently Post vice president at large, said he learned the source's name from someone other than Woodward. Woodward said he did not reveal the source to his friend and former boss.

"He is not in the management loop on this," Woodward said. "Maybe he was alerted from somebody else, if he in fact did learn" the source's name.

Woodward and Bradlee refused to disclose the source's name. Armitage did not return phone calls requesting comment.

William F. Buckley A Neo-Con?

Per David Sanger of the NY Times, National Review founder William Buckley is a neo-conservative.  My goodness - the Times coverage of the Conservative Beat is looking even sillier than usual.

From Mr. Sanger's third paragraph:

But it [President Bush's warnings against isolationism]  accelerated even before the Dubai ports deal was derailed by members of his own party, and before an unexpected uprising began among some neo-conservatives, who are now arguing that Iraq, while a noble effort, has turned into a failed mission that must be abandoned.

And who does Mr. Sanger eventually cite as evidence of this neo-con revolt?

When Mr. Bush gave a set of speeches on Iraq in December, the calls to pull out were mostly from the left. Now, a rising chorus of neo-conservatives, who urged Mr. Bush to topple Mr. Hussein, say that, having liberated Iraq, the rest is up to the Iraqis.

"The administration has, now, to cope with failure," William F. Buckley Jr. wrote in February. "The kernel here is the acknowledgment of defeat."

Whoa.  The Buckley a neo-con?  Let me help - On Iraq, Mr. Buckley would normally be put among the paleo-cons, which has nothing to do with being a paler, older guy.  The Captain grappled with Mr. Buckley's recent column on Iraq last February; it is worth noting that in March 2003 Mr. Buckley was quite cautious on the "spreading democracy" scheme and held the view that the success of the venture would ultimately depend on the Iraqis:

What Mr. Bush proposes to do is to unseat Saddam Hussein and to eliminate his investments in aggressive weaponry. We can devoutly hope that internecine tribal antagonisms will be subsumed in the fresh air of a despot removed, and that the restoration of freedom will be productive. But these concomitant developments can't be either foreseen by the United States, or implemented by us. What Mr. Bush can accomplish is the removal of a regime and its infrastructure. The Iraqi people will have to take it from there.

Maybe Mr. Sanger was thinking of Francis Fukayama.

UPDATE:  Once a neo-con, always a neo-con - here is Mr. Sanger writing the next day:

Monday's speech was in the same vein, but Mr. Bush was clearly seeking to manage expectations and answer a new group of critics — neoconservatives who have said that because Iraq is now liberated, it is up to the Iraqis themselves to defend the country and piece together a government acceptable to all factions. Among them have been William F. Buckley Jr. and Francis Fukuyama, who have expressed doubt about the speed with which the Iraqis will embrace democratic change.

Keep it up, and Mr. Buckley will be a neo-con.  After all, if it appears in the tightly edited Paper of Broken Record, it must be true.

Ongoing Evolution

Nicholas Wade of the Times follows up on the story from Tuesday about the ongoing evolution of the human species:

The Twists and Turns of History, and of DNA

EAST ASIAN and European cultures have long been very different, Richard E. Nisbett argued in his recent book "The Geography of Thought." East Asians tend to be more interdependent than the individualists of the West, which he attributed to the social constraints and central control handed down as part of the rice-farming techniques Asians have practiced for thousands of years.

A separate explanation for such long-lasting character traits may be emerging from the human genome. Humans have continued to evolve throughout prehistory and perhaps to the present day, according to a new analysis of the genome reported last week by Jonathan Pritchard, a population geneticist at the University of Chicago. So human nature may have evolved as well.

If so, scientists and historians say, a fresh look at history may be in order. Evolutionary changes in the genome could help explain cultural traits that last over many generations as societies adapted to different local pressures.

Trying to explain cultural traits is, of course, a sensitive issue. The descriptions of national character common in the works of 19th-century historians were based on little more than prejudice. Together with unfounded notions of racial superiority they lent support to disastrous policies.

But like phrenology, a wrong idea that held a basic truth (the brain's functions are indeed localized), the concept of national character could turn out to be not entirely baseless, at least when applied to societies shaped by specific evolutionary pressures.

In a study of East Asians, Europeans and Africans, Dr. Pritchard and his colleagues found 700 regions of the genome where genes appear to have been reshaped by natural selection in recent times. In East Asians, the average date of these selection events is 6,600 years ago.

 

How Covert Was Valerie Plame (IV)?

We have asked before, how covert was Valerie Plame?  But let's add a second question - how much of a clown show is the CIA?  John Crewdson of the Chicago Tribune offers interesting evidence on both questions.

First, on the broader question of the CIA covert clown show:

Internet blows CIA cover

It's easy to track America's covert operatives. All you need to know is how to navigate the Internet.

By John Crewdson

WASHINGTON -- She is 52 years old, married, grew up in the Kansas City suburbs and now lives in Virginia, in a new three-bedroom house.

Anyone who can qualify for a subscription to one of the online services that compile public information also can learn that she is a CIA employee who, over the past decade, has been assigned to several American embassies in Europe.

The CIA asked the Tribune not to publish her name because she is a covert operative, and the newspaper agreed. But unbeknown to the CIA, her affiliation and those of hundreds of men and women like her have somehow become a matter of public record, thanks to the Internet.

Sidebar: Notice how that works - the CIA asked the Chi Trib not to publish her name and they withheld it.  Funny how the CIA press office couldn't find the magic words ("Please"?) with Bob Novak on the line.

Right, then - on to the specific question of Valerie Plame, also addressed by the intrepid Mr. Crewdson in a different story:

Plame's identity, if truly a secret, was thinly veiled

BY JOHN CREWDSON

Chicago Tribune

WASHINGTON - The question of whether Valerie Plame's employment by the Central Intelligence Agency was a secret is the key issue in the two-year investigation to determine if someone broke the law by leaking her CIA affiliation to the news media.

Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald contends that Plame's friends "had no idea she had another life." But Plame's secret life could be easily penetrated with the right computer sleuthing and an understanding of how the CIA's covert employees work.

When the Chicago Tribune searched for Plame on an Internet service that sells public information about private individuals to its subscribers, it got a report of more than 7,600 words. Included was the fact that in the early 1990s her address was "AMERICAN EMBASSY ATHENS ST, APO NEW YORK NY 09255."

A former senior American diplomat in Athens, who remembers Plame as "pleasant, very well-read, bright," said he had been aware that Plame, who was posing as a junior consular officer, really worked for the CIA.

According to CIA veterans, U.S. intelligence officers working in American embassies under "diplomatic cover" are almost invariably known to friendly and opposition intelligence services alike.

"If you were in an embassy," said a former CIA officer who posed as a U.S. diplomat in several countries, "you could count 100 percent on the Soviets knowing."

That last bit about the porous cover of CIA officers ties in with this article by Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA case officer now with the AEI.

Let's have a second sidebar on behalf of the "Keep hope alive" gang that believes Special Counsel Fitzgerald is still working on the Really Big Case with Impending Momentous Revelations - just because an online subscription service had this Plame info in 2006, it does not follow that they had it in 2003.  Just saying.

What else does Mr. Crewdson offer us?

Two years later, when Plame made a $1,000 contribution to Vice President Al Gore, she listed her employer as Brewster-Jennings & Associates, a Boston company apparently set up by the CIA to provide "commercial cover" for some of its operatives.

Brewster-Jennings was not a terribly convincing cover. According to Dun & Bradstreet, the company, created in 1994, is a "legal services office" grossing $60,000 a year and headed by a chief executive named Victor Brewster. Commercial databases accessible by the Tribune contain no indication that such a person exists.

Another sign of Brewster-Jennings' link to the CIA came from the online resume of a Washington attorney, who until last week claimed to have been employed by Brewster-Jennings as an "engineering consultant" from 1985 to 1989 and to have served from 1989 to 1995 as a CIA "case officer," the agency's term for field operatives who collect information from paid informants.

On Wednesday the Tribune left a voice mail and two e-mail messages asking about the juxtaposition of the attorney's career with Brewster-Jennings and the CIA. On Thursday, the Brewster-Jennings and CIA entries had disappeared from the online resume. The attorney never returned any of the messages left by the Tribune.

"Not a terribly convincing cover".  The Boston Globe had similar reporting in Oct 2003, headlined "Apparent CIA front didn't offer much cover".

As to the "now you see it, now you don't" online resume, that almost surely refers to this story (dredged up by TS9):

Plame's employer, Brewster-Jennings, apparently has never tried very hard to hide its activities. Former employees like Jean C. Edwards and Robert Lawrence Ellman even advertise their association with the company on the Internet! They were doing so before Brewster-Jennings and Valerie Plame came to light and they still are.

...Plame's employer, Brewster-Jennings, apparently has never tried very hard to hide its activities. Former employees like Jean C. Edwards and Robert Lawrence Ellman even advertise their association with the company on the Internet! They were doing so before Brewster-Jennings and Valerie Plame came to light and they still are.

Edwards, in her resume on the website of the Washington, D.C., law firm Akerman Senterfitt, says she worked for "Brewster-Jenning [sic] and Associates" in Boston as a consultant from 1985 to 1989.

She worked for Brewster-Jennings from 1985 to 1989?  Per both Mr. Crewdson and the Globe, the firm registered with Dun and Bradstreet in 1994.

As to her resume - here is the Google cache of the non-airbrushed version with the Brewster-Jennings reference; here is the revised version (PollyUSA provides links and commentary, and says she saved a screenshot of the oldie - that cache won't last forever.)

Robert Ellman apparently revised his bio as well - here is the cached version (via MayBee), and the current effort.

Hmm, did these two really react that quickly to a few hits on the traffic monitor (noticed only by the site administrator), and a bit of publicity in a nearly-invisible outlet?  Or might someone be spoofing someone else - the original story is at what would normally be considered a left-wing site.  Trust No One.

Well, these two disappearing resumes are an interesting sidelight, but hardly critical to the main theme.  We will let Mr. Crewdson tell us what it means:

Libby's lawyers, who now question whether Plame's CIA employment really was secret at the time Novak's column appeared, have asked a federal judge to provide them with documents that bear on that issue.

If Plame's employment was not a legitimate secret, and if the national security was not harmed by its disclosure, Libby's lawyers argue, their client would have had no motive to lie about his conversations with reporters.

Fitzgerald has told the court he does not intend to introduce evidence showing that Plame's career, the CIA's operations or the national security were harmed by the disclosure of her CIA affiliation.

Nor, apparently, does Fitzgerald intend to charge the secret source who leaked to Woodward in mid-June, leaked to Bob Novak in July, and forgot to mention the Woodward conversation to investigators or in his testimony.  Mightn't one think that such a man obstructed the investigation and harmed national security with his repeated leaking?  Presumably Fitzgerald knows best.

As to the identity of the secret source, here is some forensic typesetting analysis of a redacted court document suggesting that Richard Armitage, former Deputy Secretary of State, is a good fit.

UPDATE:  Mr. Crewdson was involved in outing some secret CIA planes in Jan 2005 (the Times provided a comprehensive summary).

And the ubiquitous Larry Johnson responds to the ""Internet blows CIA cover" article, apparently without even reading it:

Okay Mr. Crewdson (the author of this nonsense). Please search the internet and identify 100 CIA officers for me. Go ahead. Give it a shot. Oh, I forgot, first you need a name. You do not just enter a random name and come up with a flashing sign that says, "this guy is CIA".

Well, Mr. Crewdson claims to have identified over 2,600 CIA officers (not all of whom are covert).  Is it Mr. Johnson's view that he winnowed this down from a list of 20,000 or 30,000 random names in the news?  Per the article, the actual process seemed much simpler - the online service had apparently compiled a database of CIA employees:

When the Tribune searched a commercial online data service, the result was a virtual directory of more than 2,600 CIA employees, 50 internal agency telephone numbers and the locations of some two dozen secret CIA facilities around the United States.

As to the specific case of Ms. Plame, any intel service that was intrigued to learn, via his July 6 op-ed, that Joe Wilson did consulting work for the CIA would have been likely to do a bit of research into the background of both Wilson and his wife. Such an investigation would have led quickly to the mysterious Brewster-Jennings, thanks to Ms. Plame's on-line filing with the FEC.

BATTLE ROYALE:  Larry Johnson and Chi Trib deputy managing editor Jim warren slug it out on "Scarborough Country" on March 13.  From LexisNews:

SCARBOROUGH: No doubt about it. It`s certainly a long way from what we see on TV when we watch "24." Larry Johnson, you are skeptical, why?LARRY JOHNSON, FORMER CIA AGENT: It`s a goofy article. What they imply in "Tribune" is that just go onto Google, go on to Lexis-Nexis, go onto Choicepoint autotrack. And just pick a name out and all of a sudden, it will tell you that they`re with the CIA.The methodology they used, and ask Jim about this, they were able to take, for example, the indictments that were handed down in Italy that identified about 24 people. And admittedly that was lousy tradecraft on the part of the CIA. But using that information backwards to identify companies, individuals. But at no time are you able to go anywhere on the Web and find somebody that says, hey, this is an undercover CIA operative.The way these operatives are outed is what happened in the case of Valerie Plame. She was outed by the administration. Once her name was out there and the company she worked for, it then enabled people to go out and do some of the work that Jim .

SCARBOROUGH: Larry, we got 2,600 CIA employees that are out there. You have some undercover people out there.

JOHNSON: Joe. Joe. No, Joe, what you have 2,600 employees, most of whom are not undercover.

SCARBOROUGH: But there are some covert people, according to the "Chicago Tribune". And Jim, let me ask you about it .

JOHNSON: How do they know they know they are covert? Because here`s nowhere on the Web. Joe, hang on for a second. There`s nowhere on the Web that you are going to find a list of people that says, "Hi, I`m an undercover operative."

SCARBOROUGH: Well, of course, you are not! That`s why you have Pulitzer Prize winning guys piecing things together. That`s not what I`m saying. And that`s not what the "Chicago Tribune" said. Jim Warren, how do you respond to these attacks?

WARREN: Well, obviously, we could not, for a variety of grotesquely obvious reasons get into the specific methodologies we used. There was a substantially greater amount of information and discoveries that we made that we did not put in the newspaper and having been involved in the editing of this and knowing the amount of time that the lawyers spent on this, I can assure you everything that we wrote in the stories is absolutely correct. And in due respect to Mr. Johnson, he simply doesn`t know what`s talking about.

JOHNSON: No, sir. You are absolutely wrong.

WARREN: He doesn`t know what he`s talking about when he raises criticisms of the piece.

JOHNSON: That`s absolutely wrong. I do know what I am talking about. I work with these databases on a daily basis. I defy you. Come out and give me a name right now of somebody that`s not undercover that you can just pick out and automatically go there without having that name first divulged by a public source.

WARREN: Joe, Joe, I mean, that sounds dramatic, as a challenge but obviously one for lots of reasons that we`re not going to do that.

Well, does Larry Johnson thinks the Admin leaked the name of Brewster-Jennings?  He
says this:

The way these operatives are outed is what happened in the case of Valerie Plame. She was outed by the administration. Once her name was out there and the company she worked for, it then enabled people to go out and do some of the work that Jim .

The more prosaic truth is that Ms. Plame identified her employer as Brewster-Jennings on a publicly available FEC filing detailing a 1999 contribution to Al Gore.

MORE:  Mr. Crewdson got two other bylines on Saturday: