From Holden: My post regarding Harriet Miers’ PAC giving $1000 to Hillary Clinton in 2000, which I called “Harriet, We Hardly Knew Ye”, went up at 5:15 PM EDT. Last night I cruised over to Daily Kos where I found that little Kos had written a post about the Harriet-Hillary conection that concluded with the line, “Harriet, we hardly knew thee…” Kos posted his missive at 3:18 PM PDT (6:18 PM EDT), just over an hour after my post appeared. My title was a reference to the 1972 bestseller Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye: Memories of John Fitzgerald Kennedy by … Continue reading You’re a Bit of a Tool, Aren’t You Markos?

In a move which should come as no surprise to anyone, I hereby declare that I completely agree with Oliver: The solution to what ails the Democratic party is not lurching left or right on issues. Here’s a piece of information I’ve uncovered: people don’t vote on issues. Let me refine that – aside from partisans, Americans don’t vote on issues. On the right, you will roast if you don’t march with Dobson and the Chamber of Commerce. On the left, your goose is cooked if you don’t support Choice and worker’s rights. But beyond that, we as a nation … Continue reading Windsurfing

Jesus. But the coverage of the “old conservative lion” stopped being quite such a fuzzy delight on Sept. 11. That was the day that The N&O ran not one but two book reviews on Helms’ memoir. It made the book review section look like a mutant version of Doctor Dolittle’s pushme-pullyou: “Debating Jesse: Does Sen. Helms’ memoir whitewash his past … Or remind readers of his powerful principles?” The first review was commissioned from prominent North Carolina historian Timothy B. Tyson. It was simultaneously elucidating and blistering–doing everything a book review should do. Tyson carefully read the book. Then he … Continue reading “Balanced”

Scout has an update on the Katrina body search sitch. A. Continue reading Number The Dead

From Holden: I don’t imagine the wingnuts will stand for this: A Federal Elections Commission report obtained by WND columnist Jerome Corsi shows her law firm’s political action committee contributed $1,000 to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s senatorial campaign committee, after she personally contributed $415 to the same PAC. Lock Liddell’s PAC supported 13 other Democrats that same year, including $500 to Nicholas Lampson, a candidate running against Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas. The law firm also backed Rep. Richard Gephardt of Missouri’s re-election bid in 2000. Other Democrats supported by the firm’s PAC included Louisiana’s Sen. Mary Landrieu and Rep. William … Continue reading Harriet, We Hardly Knew Ye

From Holden: CNN’s source says the Office of the Special Counsel is wrapping it up: Sources have said that after this appearance [before the Grand Jury by Karl Rove], it’s expected prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will want “nothing further.” Those same sources said they are “not at all surprised” by the wide range of legal options Fitzgerald is pursuing. One source said, “I don’t see it as an evolution or broadening of the probe. It’s building a case.” And check out this lame defense from Rove’s attorney Robert Luskin. “Karl has truthfully told everyone who’s asked him that he did not … Continue reading Frog March By Friday?

From Tena: Newt Knows: Support Miers, Don’t Oppose, from The Conservative: Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich knows who should and should not be supporting and opposing the confirmation of White House Counsel Harriet Miers to be the next Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court. If you favor judicial activism and secular extremism, you should be horrified by Harriet. And opposing. Desperately. If you favor the God-given rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, you should be very happy with Harriet. And supporting. Enthusastically. If you preferred another, or even lots of others, because you … Continue reading The Newt Knows

This time to Dan Lavoie at The Daily Southtown, where I used to annoy the editors and call it work: “Everybody pulls at a different piece of thread,” she said of the bloggers. “That’s the useful thing about it. They can sit there and obsess. They give a voice to people and information that otherwise wouldn’t have gotten exposure.” Hantschel hopes her book — and the rest of the series — will help expose some of the stories behind the national news sound bites. And, she hopes, her book will bring some more readers into the rapidly expanding world of … Continue reading Another Thank You

From Holden: When Elisabeth Bumiller and Richard Stevenson reported in the NYTimes on September 15 that Karl Rove was leading Katrina recovery efforts many on the left complained but no one disputed the story. Republicans said Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush’s chief political adviser, was in charge of the reconstruction effort, which reaches across many agencies of government and includes the direct involvement of Alphonso R. Jackson, secretary of housing and urban development. After all, it was Bumiller who reported Chimpy’s IPod playlist, with access like that who could dispute the Karl in … Continue reading Hustling Rove to the Sidelines

This post is a few weeks old but something in it struck me and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since: Well, you know what. 6 billion people around the globe deserve freedom. It doesn’t mean I’m going to pay for all of them to have it, and it also doesn’t mean I’m willing to die for their freedom. My freedom, yeah. My country’s, sure. Everybody’s? Not so much. There’s a limit to what one country can do, and since when did Republicans decide that it was time for America to save the entire world? … Continue reading For Whose Freedom Must We Die?

I’m really loving the perfume from this place lately. I’m allergic to their cinnamon oil, but everything else is yummy. Check ’em out if you like that sort of thing. A. Continue reading Girly Shopping Post

Because watching the reruns made me realize how much I missed my crazy space show, and reading this over at Television Without Pity (I know I know, fascist internet dictatorship, whatever, their Galactica recapper’s really good) reminded me of the conversations we have here on Saturdays: I bring this up because so much of this episode is a compare-and-contrast on the ways that being homeless has made the two ships crazy. For Galactica, it’s been about losing a little bit of protocol in exchange for becoming a family of survivors — the only human beings in the universe except for, … Continue reading Just For The Frack Of It: A Galactica Thread

Or, why this AP story is as full of shit as Holden’s pony stable. First, the headline: Rove Says He Wasn’t Involved in CIA Leak You read that, then you read the first graf of the story: White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove told President Bush and others that he never engaged in an effort to disclose a CIA operative’s identity to discredit her husband’s criticism of the administration’s Iraq policy, according to people with knowledge of Rove’s account in the investigation. Two entirely different things, aren’t they? The head could just as easily have been “Some People … Continue reading Wake Me Up When The Indictments Come

From Holden: Here’s a gaggle bombshell for you: Rove is out. Q One more, more or less unrelated. It’s been reported in several places that Rove is the point man to taking charge of the hurricane recovery. Is that the case? MR. McCLELLAN: No. That’s false. Q Is there such a person? MR. McCLELLAN: I don’t think anyone ever checked that. It just was one of those things that started appearing, and no one ever bothered to check it. Q Is anyone in charge? MR. McCLELLAN: The President. Sounds like Abu Al Gonzales has some Brownie in him. Q Scott, … Continue reading Today on Holden’s Obsession with the Gaggle

From Holden: Chimpy’s job approval rating is down to 39% in the latest AP-Ipsos Poll: Only 28 percent say the country is headed in the right direction and two-thirds, 66 percent, say the country is on the wrong track, the AP-Ipsos poll found. Those most likely to have lost optimism on that score include several groups that supported Bush in his re-election: white evangelicals, down 30 percentage points; Republican women, down 28 points; Southerners, down 26 points, and suburban men, down 20. [snip] Almost two-thirds of Republicans strongly approved of the job done by Bush in December 2004, soon after … Continue reading Sparkle Pony Power!

From Holden: Harriet Miers does indeed have a paper trail and it’s catching up with her. President Bush praises Harriet Miers as an opponent of legislating from the judicial bench, but as a corporate lawyer she lobbied then-Gov. Bush to let the Texas high court rather than the Legislature decide if attorney fees should be limited. In the process, Miers unleashed a verbal assault on trial lawyers who typically file lawsuits and whose cases sometimes land in the U.S. Supreme Court, where Bush now has nominated her to serve. She suggested they were ”greedy” and had ”brought shame” on Texas. … Continue reading Miers Hearts Legislating from the Bench

As someone whose ass has been pulled out of the fire by more than one copy editor, I have to say, Mickey’s really outdone himself in terms of assholitude this time: I admit, I have a natural enmity with copy editors. My position: A good copy editor will make your copy better–but only on rare occasions will it be enough better to justify the delay and hassle, let alone the copy editor’s salary. And good copy editors are hard to find–the best quickly move on to other jobs these days. Those that stay, especially in big organizations like the LAT, … Continue reading Kaus

To my dear friend Mike, who wrote a great story about Special Plans for my ex-newspaper: Hantschel was approached by Tom Sumner, editor of the Informed Citizen series, who asked if she would be interested in editing an installment of a series of books that collects writing from liberal blogs on a particular subject. “He asked me to give him some subjects I’d be interested in working on; I suggested Douglas Feith, about whom I’d written a couple of bits for my own blog, First Draft,” said Hantschel. She sifted through more than 100 entries from more than 50 blog … Continue reading Thank You Note

From Holden: If the Globe and the Enquirer are correct, it’s former. The Prime Minister also brought up some issues of concern to the people of Hungary, one of which, of course, is visa policy. He understands that his job, when talking to the President, is to — is to say, the people of my country — which he did — are concerned about the visa policy. Continue reading Drunk or Stupid: Does It Matter?

From Holden: That’s my calculation of the costs of Chimpy’s War on Terra based on the latest Congressional Research Service figures. The Bush administration is spending about $7 billion a month to wage the war on terror, and costs could total $570 billion by the end of 2010, assuming troops are gradually brought home, a congressional report estimates. The paper by the Congressional Research Service underscores how the price tag has been gradually rising for the war in Iraq. A year ago, the Pentagon was calculating its average monthly costs in that conflict at below $5 billion — an amount … Continue reading It Comes To Roughly $157,000 Per Minute

From Tena: Dear Editor: Here we are again. You’ve run a statement by Michelle Malkin. So I am forced to remind you again that Michelle Malkin is an avowed racist. She has written a book advocating concentration camps and profiling of people based solely on their race and religion. She has no opinions about anything that I am interested in. She is a racist, out and out, and I don’t appreciate seeing her face or her statements in my damn newspaper. Stop printing Michelle Malkin’s useless uninformed and racist dribble. You are vouching for her legitimacy every time you do … Continue reading It never ends

From Holden: Unka Karl: “Hey, I can see my cell from here.” REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque Continue reading Caption Contest

From Holden: Yeah, yeah, everyone is going to blame September’s disappointing job numbers on Katrina and Rita. But let’s face it: the economy was in a downward spiral before either hurricane struck, and the combination of high energy prices and drunken-sailor spending at the fedreal level is taking its toll. Payrolls fell by 35,000 in September. That marked the first decline since May 2003, when the labor market was struggling to get back on its feet after being set back by the 2001 recession. The drop in September was the largest since a decline of 54,000 jobs in April 2003. … Continue reading The Second Bush Recession

From Holden: I call tipping point. “I don’t know if I have the moral authority to send troops into combat anymore,” a senior American general recently told United Press International. He knows what his power means — that on his word hundreds or thousands of young men would step into danger. “I’m no longer sure I can look (a soldier or a Marine) in the eye and say: ‘This is something worth dying for.’” Continue reading Those Wack-o Anti-War Commanders on the Ground

Stripe attempts to work through the current cold front by hiding out with his little plush friend. A. Continue reading Friday Ferretblogging

From Holden: Mohamed El Baradei wins the Nobel Peace Prize. Mohamed ElBaradei and International Atomic Energy Agency, the nuclear watchdog agency he heads, won the 2005 Nobel Prize for Peace today. The Norwegian Nobel Committee called ElBaradei “an unafraid advocate” for nuclear nonproliferation “at a time when the threat of nuclear arms is again increasing.” [snip] Despite the fact that the U.S. helped install ElBaradei in his job 8 years ago, ElBaradei’s refusal in 2003 to confirm White House allegations that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein had rebuilt his nuclear weapons program lost ElBaradei the U.S. support he had enjoyed. In an … Continue reading In Your Face, Neocons!

From Holden: Judy may join Karl. Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald may also call New York Times reporter Judith Miller to appear again before the grand jury to answer additional questions about her conversations Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, people close to the case said. “Karl, what did Scooter say to you?” “Judy, what did Scooter say to you?” Continue reading The Cool Call-Back Club

why Jon Carroll and I should not be joined in holy matrimony: I understand and approve of a reporter going to jail to protect her sources. The reporter has made a promise, and she needs to abide by her promise. (There are, of course, exceptions, even as there are exceptions to doctor-patient confidentiality.) I can even see the philosophical argument that a promise is a contract between an individual and his honor, not between an individual and another individual, and no one can release you from a sacred pledge. But that’s clearly not the position that Miller is taking. I … Continue reading If There Be Any Reason

From Holden: Popcorn or Champagne? Stephen Gillers, a New York University law professor, said it was unusual for a witness to be called back to the grand jury four times and that the prosecutor’s legally required warning to Rove before this next appearance is “an ominous sign” for the presidential adviser. “It suggest Fitzgerald has learned new information that is tightening the noose,” Gillers said. “It shows Fitzgerald now, perhaps after Miller’s testimony, suspects Rove may be in some way implicated in the revelation of Plame’s identity or that Fitzgerald is investigating various people for obstruction of justice, false statements … Continue reading What’ll It Be?

From Holden: In today’s gaggle coverage the last will be first. I say that because the very last series of questions in Scottie’s hoe-down today focused on the Plame investigation, and that’s what everyone wants to hear about so I moved it to the lead-off position. Q Has any member of the President’s staff informed him that in recent days they have become a subject of the CIA leak investigation? MR. McCLELLAN: First of all, that’s an ongoing investigation, too, and the President directed that we cooperate fully with that investigation. As part of cooperating fully, that means not commenting … Continue reading Today on Holden’s Obsession with the Gaggle