From Holden: CNN: BREAKING NEWS President Bush “reluctantly” accepts Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers’s request to withdraw her nomination. I for one had hoped that Miers would hang on a bit longer. Chimpy did us a great service by nominating her and shattering his base. His next choice might be the winger we fear, but on the other hand with Karl Rove busy fending off Fitzi and the White House in disarray he might blow it a second time. Continue reading The Wages of Incompetence

From Holden: Looks like Lester Crawford was forced from his post as head of the EPA FDA because he hid assets from the government, assets in the form of stock in corporations his agency regulated. Dr. Lester M. Crawford, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, or his wife sold shares in companies regulated by the agency in 2004, according to financial disclosure forms. The sales may have played a role in Dr. Crawford’s sudden resignation from the agency last month after only two months as its leader. The latest disclosure form, signed by Dr. Crawford on June … Continue reading A Confederacy of Criminals

From Holden: The Republicans are tapping the federal coffers to help the super-rich again. A little-noted provision in the tax relief package to aid victims of Hurricane Katrina is shaping up as a windfall for charity and a drain on government coffers. It allows donors who make cash gifts to almost any charity by the end of this year to deduct an amount equal to virtually 100 percent of their adjusted gross incomes, double the normal limit of 50 percent of income. The tantalizing prospect has set off a financial scramble among some wealthy donors and charities vying for their … Continue reading Another Budget Buster

“What I do know is that this belonging and caring is what our games are all about; this is what we come for. It is foolish and childish, on the face of it, to affiliate ourselves with anything so insignificant and patently contrived and commercially exploitative as a professional sports team, and the amused superiority and icy scorn that the non-fan directs at the sports nut (I know this look — I know it by heart) is understandable and almost unanswerable. Almost. What is left out of this calculation, it seems to me, is the business of caring — caring … Continue reading Haphazard Flight

Go read Ntodd. A. Continue reading The Last Full Measure Of Devotion

I went looking for this today, after explaining to a non-pol friend precisely why Karl Rove was as loathed and despised as he is. Link: And after Mr. McCain’s 2000 campaign, Mr. Weaver’s allies say, Mr. Rove ran him out of the party. Mr. McCain said Mr. Weaver was “blackballed by the White House and the Republican establishment,” and McCain aides told The Observer that after Mr. Bush took the White House, his staff told members of Congress not to hire Mr. Weaver. “Rove made it clear that if you want help from this President in your campaign, you’ll be … Continue reading Small Men

From Holden: First up in today’s gaggle coverage, Scotty must be letting the strain show. Q Scott, with what looks like indictments pending in the CIA leak investigation, what’s the anxiety level like here at the White House? What’s the atmosphere in the hallways? [snip] Q What’s the anxiety level like as you wait through this process to see what’s going to happen? MR. McCLELLAN: Well, we’ve got a lot of work to do, and so we don’t have a lot of time to sit back and think about those things. Q So you’re losing yourself in your work, is … Continue reading Today on Holden’s Obsession with the Gaggle

From Holden: More angry Chimp photos from today’s speech to the Economic Club of Washington. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque AFP/Jim Watson Continue reading This President Will Get A Lump of Coal

From Holden: Bob Geiger, who through either guts or insanity posts his photo on his YellowDogBlog, has caught the fever. Welcome to the obsessive club, Bob. There’s plenty of gaggle for everyone. Continue reading Bob’s Obsession

From Holden: Criminy! I happend to catch Chimpy’s speech before the Economic Club in Washington at lunch today. Nothing new, just his old camapaign pseech plus a few lines from his Social Security bit from last spring. But the delivery — angry, petulant, combative. Yelling about congress passing his energy bill, screaming about No Child Left Behind. Here are a few images from the speech. Does this look like a happy man to you? REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque Continue reading President Sour Puss

From Holden: Better late than never I suppose. New York Times reporter Judith Miller has begun discussing her future employment options with the newspaper, including the possibility of a severance package, a lawyer familiar with the matter, said yesterday. Link via Raw Story. Continue reading Buh-Bye Judy

From Holden: I was struck by a paragraph in Arianna’s latest Plame post this morning. After getting a fumbling cipher like George W. Bush elected president, the powers-behind-the-throne must have believed they were untouchable and could get away with anything — including lying about WMD, outing a CIA agent, and, perhaps, lying to a special prosecutor. Yes. Of course. Senior Assministration Officials believed that they could do no wrong, were above the law. Why Abu Al Gonzales said as much, concluding in the Bybee memo that in a time of war the President could declare any law unconsitutional. The executive, … Continue reading Above the Law

“The last time Mars swung so close to Earth, Hindu seers foretold of war, European astrologers predicted love and Germany reported a rash in UFO sightings. Thus is the spell cast by planetary alignment, so extreme predictions and odd events seem entirely possible this week as Mars and Earth edge together once more.” MARS, MY LITTLE BITCHES! A. Continue reading It’s A Sign

From Holden: Man, it’s fun watching the Republicans squirm over Harriet Miers. The drumbeat of doubt from Republican senators over the Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers grew louder Tuesday as several lawmakers, including a pivotal conservative on the Judiciary Committee, voiced concerns about her selection. Emerging from a weekly luncheon of Republican senators in which they discussed the nomination, several lawmakers suggested that as Ms. Miers continued her visits on Capitol Hill, she was not winning over Republican lawmakers. “I am uneasy about where we are,” said Senator Jeff Sessions, an Alabama Republican on the Judiciary Committee who … Continue reading Mild About Harry

“This country is an idea. And one that’s lit the whole world for two centuries. And treason against that idea is not just a crime against the living. This crime holds the graves of people who have died for it. Who gave what Lincoln called the last full measure of devotion.” — The West Wing There are 2,000 soldiers who died for what Cheney, Rove, Libby, Feith, Rice, Hadley, Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld wrought. That’s what the Plame case is about. It is about why we went to war, and how, and who suffered and died, and the lies that were … Continue reading Somebody’s Going To Jail

From Holden: Uh-oh. Cheney is toast. How do I know that? Flash back to September 16, 2003: Q On the Robert Novak-Joseph Wilson situation, Novak reported earlier this year — quoting — “anonymous government sources” telling him that Wilson’s wife was a CIA operative. Now, this is apparently a federal offense, to burn the cover a CIA operative. Wilson now believes that the person who did this was Karl Rove. He’s quoted from a speech last month as saying, “At the end of the day, it’s of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl … Continue reading Today on Holden’s Obsession with the Gaggle

From Holden: Just in case you doubted that the McCain Amendment was really necessary. Autopsy reports on 44 prisoners who died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan indicate that 21 were victims of homicide, including eight who appear to have been fatally abused by their captors, the American Civil Liberties Union reported Monday. The abuse involved cases in which detainees were smothered, beaten or exposed to the elements, sometimes during interrogation. Many of these cases had been brought to light previously but now have been confirmed through U.S. military autopsies. Some of the deaths followed abusive interrogations by elite … Continue reading Tortured to Death

From Holden: Consumer Confidence slammed into a two-year low this month. Consumer confidence unexpectedly fell to a two-year low in October as higher energy prices left Americans with less to spend, raising concern that retail sales will slow during the holiday shopping season. The Conference Board’s consumer confidence index fell to 85 from 87.5 in September, the New York-based research group said today. [snip] “The consumer has finally been shaken,” said Ellen Beeson, an economist at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi Ltd. in New York. “If folks are unsure what the future is looking like over the next few months, they tend … Continue reading A Vote of No Confidence for My Bush Boom

From Holden: Sources tell Raw Story that they’re a done deal. Continue reading Indictmets!

From Holden: 1999 It’s worse than Vietnam in oh so many ways. “The nearly 2,000 Americans killed in combat (1,998 on October 24, 2005) in Iraq since 2003 are more than were lost in Vietnam combat in the first four years of U.S. combat (1961-1965, when just over 1800 died). This total is more than were lost in the last two years of combat (1971-1972, when just over 1600 died),” recounts Maurice Isserman, co-author of “America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s.” “Today public opinion polls show that the percentage of Americans who believe that it was a mistake … Continue reading Meanwhile, In Iraq

From Holden: The Bush Assministration sure does love their torutre. The Senate defied a presidential veto threat nearly three weeks ago and approved, 90 to 9, an amendment to a $440 billion military spending bill that would ban the use of “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” of any detainee held by the United States government. This could bar some techniques that the C.I.A. has used in some interrogations overseas. But in a 45-minute meeting last Thursday, Vice President Dick Cheney and the C.I.A. director, Porter J. Goss, urged Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican who wrote the amendment, to support … Continue reading Come On, Can’t We Torture A Little Bit?

Rest in peace, Rosa Parks: Rosa Lee Parks, whose refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man sparked the modern civil rights movement, died Monday. She was 92. Mrs. Parks died at her home during the evening of natural causes, with close friends by her side, said Gregory Reed, an attorney who represented her for the past 15 years. A. Continue reading Some People Are What The Times Demand

From Holden: They had an interesting game of Bop Scottie in the gaggle today. What makes it even more interesting to me are the phrases that the White House chose to emphasize in the transcript. Helen – start your engine. Go ahead, Helen. Q You were going to make a statement, White House statement on the approach of the 2,000 Americans dead in Iraq at the earlier briefing, didn’t you? At the gaggle? MR. McCLELLAN: Do you have a question? Q The question is, what is the feeling about that? And also, does the President approve now of finally telling … Continue reading Today on Holden’s Obsession with the Gaggle

I haven’t read Wonkette in a while, mainly because there’s a lot of effing blogs out there and I was reading them instead. This reminds me why I used to like her: You know what makes total sense? If, as the subject of an investigation into smearing administration critics, you go out and smear the investigator. Because that doesn’t make you seem like a vindictive little fuck or anything. I’d say that’s as good a response as any to whatever post-Fitzmas nonsense the Republicans dish out. A. Continue reading p3wned

To counteract the general low level of my blood pressure around here lately, my good friend Mike sends this. The council has hired a fledgling newspaper called Newark Weekly News to publish “positive news” about the city — and will pay $100,000 over the next year for it. Newark Weekly News owner Howard Scott said he’s doing nothing more than providing a service, the same way large newspapers are paid to print the legal advertisements that municipalities are required by law to publish. “Do we have critical reporters on staff? No. Do we have investigative reporters? No,” Scott said. “Our … Continue reading Good News

From Holden: The Plame case is about them, too. The human toll for the U.S. military in the Iraq war is not limited to the nearly 2,000 troops deaths since the March 2003 invasion. More than 15,220 also have been wounded in combat, including more than 7,100 injured too badly to return to duty, the Pentagon said. Thousands more have been hurt in incidents unrelated to combat. [snip] Military statistics showed that while 23 percent of U.S. troops wounded in combat in World War Two died and 17 percent in the Vietnam War, 9 percent of those wounded in Iraq … Continue reading The 2,000 and The 15,000

From Holden: And in the White House, Many creatures were stirring, Including Karl Rove, the louse. Continue reading ‘Twas the Night Before Fitzmas

Stay safe, everybody in South Florida. A. Continue reading Wilma

Atrios: When the Fitz hits the fan we can expect the Right to react as it’s been trained to act in such situations, like a cornered feral animal. It’s a moment where the mainstream media should consider whether it’s time to, once again, hand their pages and airtime over to the Barbizon School of Former Prosecutors Defense Lawyers and other such partisan hacks or whether they choose to cover things with a bit of dignity. Captain Future: If there are indictments, this could lead to an even greater scandal than Watergate. Even if the whole matter doesn’t go that far–all … Continue reading Blowback

From Tena: NTodd at Dohiyimir, (citing Wampum), shows us Kay spreading her legs for her preznit once again: Perjury, Rule Of Law, Duckspeak Over at Wampum, we see Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (R-TX) is of two minds when it comes to politicians lying under oath.  First, let’s revisit what she said during the Clinton Era of Peace and Prosperity: The edifice of American jurisprudence rests on the foundation of the due process of law. The mortar in that foundation is the oath. Those who seek to obstruct justice weaken that foundation, and those who violate the oath would tear the … Continue reading Kay Bailey Hutchison is a lying Republican ho’, and my senator