From Holden: Late night fun. Late Show with David Letterman, CBS: — “Good news, ladies and gentlemen, we have finally located weapons of mass destruction: It’s Dick Cheney.” — “But here is the sad part — before the trip Donald Rumsfeld had denied the guy’s request for body armour.” — “We can’t get (Osama) bin Laden, but we nailed a 78-year-old attorney.” — “The guy who got gunned down, he is a Republican lawyer and a big Republican donor and fortunately the buck shot was deflected by wads of laundered cash. So he’s fine. He took a little in the … Continue reading Letterman and Leno on Cheney

From Holden: The ABA says Chimpy must seek approval for his warrantless eavesdropping, and calls Abu Gonzales arguments bullshit. Democratic and Republican attorneys overwhelmingly approved a resolution Monday urging President Bush to seek approval behind the closed doors of a courtroom before engaging in any more eavesdropping on international telephone calls. “I want the president to listen to terrorists as much as he does,” former Miami federal prosecutor Neal Sonnett said. “We stand shoulder to shoulder with the president in our desire to fight terrorism in this country and around the world. But . . . we cannot allow the … Continue reading Shorter ABA: Gonzo is Full of Shit

From Scout: I was getting set to liveblog Chertoff’s appearance before the Senate Committee hearing on Katrina and found out it has been Postponed. I’m trying to find out why. Anyone know whats up? From the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Govermental Affairs… Title: **POSTPONED** Hurricane Katrina: The Homeland Security Department’s Preparation and Response Date: 2/14/06 Time (EST): 10:00 AM Place: Dirksen Senate Office Building, Rm. 342 This hearing has been postponed. A new date and time will be posted as soon as it becomes available. image Witnesses Panel 1 The Honorable Michael Chertoff , Secretary of Homeland Security … Continue reading Chertoff Appearance Postponed

From Holden: Dick Cheney’s illegal quail hunt tragedy has sucked all the attention from the photo of George Bush shaking the hand of one alleged felon while the admitted felon Jack Abramoff looks on, during a meeting the White House had claimed Abramoff had not attended. But today the AP is back on the story, this time focusing attention on Karl Rove’s ties to Abramoff. The White House said Monday night that Rove remembers meeting Abramoff at a 1990s political meeting and considered the lobbyist a “casual acquaintance” since President Bush took office in 2001. [snip] Three former business associates … Continue reading When Will Dick Cheney Pop A Cap In Jack’s Ass?

If you’re in the Madison, Wisconsin area tomorrow, I’ll be reading from this book: at the Wil-Mar Comunity Center, 953 Jenifer St., Madison, WI 53703 at 6:30 p.m. The event is sponsored by the Madison Area Peace Coalition and Rainbow Bookstore Cooperative. /pimping A. Continue reading A Reminder

From Holden: On Saturday Dick Cheney shot someone else’s mouth off for a change and the gagglers want to know what happened. Q Scott, do you think that the shooting accident involving the Vice President on Saturday should have been disclosed to the public on Saturday? MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I think that the first priority was making sure that Harry Whittington, Mr. Whittington was getting the medical care that he needed, and I think that’s where everybody’s attention should have been focused and was focused when the hunting accident took place. [snip] Q Well, I assume that people — he … Continue reading Today on Holden’s Obsession with the Gaggle

From Holden: I’m sure this collection will grow over the next few months. Bush with Tom Noe. Bush with Jack Abramoff [Bonus: Bush with indicted tribal official.] Continue reading The Bush/Indicted Bush Pioneer Photo Collection

From Holden: Via Jane Hamsher, Cheney was uncooperative with authorities after shooting a 78-year-old man in the face with a shotgun. CBS News White House correspondent Peter Maer reports Texas authorities are complaining that the Secret Service barred them from speaking to Cheney after the incident. Kenedy County Texas Sheriffs Lt. Juan Guzman said deputies first learned of the shooting when an ambulance was called. Kenedy County, Texas, ain’t exactly Bush country, seeing as how Bush lost to Kerry there in 2004. Continue reading Cheney Wouldn’t Talk to the Authorities

From Holden: The Cheney/Libby/Rove outing of Valerie Plame did inestimable damage to this country’s national security. The unmasking of covert CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson by White House officials in 2003 caused significant damage to U.S. national security and its ability to counter nuclear proliferation abroad, RAW STORY has learned. According to current and former intelligence officials, Plame Wilson, who worked on the clandestine side of the CIA in the Directorate of Operations as a non-official cover (NOC) officer, was part of an operation tracking distribution and acquisition of weapons of mass destruction technology to and from Iran. Speaking under … Continue reading Yet Another Winger Meme Dies A Welcome Death

Brave Jim Brady of the Washington Post drags out some more excuses so he can shoot them dead in the alley: Instead of mollifying angry readers, the clarification prompted more than 400 additional comments over the next five hours, many of them so crude as to be unprintable in a family newspaper. Out in the Web woodshed, a handful of bloggers called me gutless or a puppet; some of them compared me to assorted body parts and characterized me as the worst person to come along since, well, Deborah Howell. And any nasty posts I didn’t see myself, my friends … Continue reading Sir_Robin @ WashingtonPost.com

From Holden: Wow. Cheney waited a good six hours before telling the president or his aides that he had shot a man. And even then he did not tell Bush personally. President Bush did not learn for several hours that Vice President Dick Cheney was the shooter in a hunting accident in South Texas on Saturday afternoon that left a prominent Austin lawyer and Republican campaign supporter wounded by shotgun pellets in the neck, shoulder and chest, the White House said today. In a news conference with the White House press corps, Scott McClellan, the president’s spokesman, said he himself … Continue reading Did Cheney Try To Hide The Shooting From Bush?

From Scout: Two Louisiana Democrats have released a 57 page supplement to the House report on Katrina which criticizes the House Committee for stopping short of answering important questions and demanding accountability. The Times Picayune reports that Reps. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, and William Jefferson, D-New Orleans say… the House panel should have demanded the ouster of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and should have subpoenaed documents from the Bush administration. Snip They said that the lack of cooperation left four key questions about the role of the White House unresolved: — How did top White House officials respond to Brown’s … Continue reading Chertoff Should Resign

From Holden: They certainly are. They railed against President Bush’s immigration plan, jeered his budget, condemned his domestic surveillance operation, and bemoaned the prolonged U.S. involvement in Iraq. Such sentiments could probably be heard on any Bay Area street corner, but the past few days they came from a gathering of several thousand conservative Republicans in Washington who voiced alarm that their president had strayed from his conservative moorings. [snip] Faced with threats to the GOP majority and less than 36 months remaining in Bush’s presidency, participants expressed dismay that Republicans had not taken full advantage of their electoral clout, … Continue reading The Right is Revolting!

From Holden: Jonah Goldberg has been hobbled! No, not by his pants falling down around his ankles like the last time. ARGH [Jonah Goldberg ] The worst thing to happen to me in 2006 was that my access to an outstanding academic database expired. A friend let me use his account, but it ended with the calendar year. JStor, proquest, Project Muse: all gone. I hadn’t realized how much I relied on that stuff. Blegging for specific articles is useful and appreciated, but you really find the best stuff when you just go fishing for it. That’s all over now. … Continue reading Crisis in Winger Punditry

From Holden: It has become obvious that Chimpy’s Liberty Library Tower terror story was rushed out as a defense of his illegal warrantless spying without much thought beforehand by the Bush Assministration. Here again is Frances Fragos Townsend, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, describing the plot last week. Khalid Shaykh Muhammad was the individual who led this effort. He initiated the planning for the West Coast plot after September 11th, in October of 2001. KSM, working with Hambali in Asia, recruited the members of the cell. There was a total of four members of the cell. … Continue reading The Library Tower ”Plot”: Unraveling the Lies

From Holden: It has become obvious that Chimpy’s Liberty Library Tower terror story was rushed out as a defense of his illegal warrantless spying without much thought beforehand by the Bush Assministration. Here again is Frances Fragos Townsend, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, describing the plot last week. Khalid Shaykh Muhammad was the individual who led this effort. He initiated the planning for the West Coast plot after September 11th, in October of 2001. KSM, working with Hambali in Asia, recruited the members of the cell. There was a total of four members of the cell. … Continue reading The Library Tower “Plot”: Unraveling the Lies

From Holden: At least when Chimpy had his hunting mishap he only killed a member of a protected species. Six years earlier, while campaigning against incumbent Gov. Ann Richards, Bush thought it would be a great photo opportunity to show the people of Texas that he was the bold epitome of Lone Star Macho, a fearless take-charge kind of guy who could sight-in on any kind of problem. So, he and his gaggle of aides staged a dove hunt to attract the reporters and photographers. He flushed that bird. He looked. He aimed. He shot. Blasted that dove right out … Continue reading Republican Hunting Flashback

From Scout: It isn’t perfect and it is only a start but this is good news for NOLA. And ya gotta LOVE the name of Nagin’s plan to buy out home owners In a major development that could at last provide definitive options to New Orleans-area homeowners sitting in limbo, the leaders of the five metropolitan parishes hardest-hit by Hurricane Katrina have signed on to a plan to offer owners of flood-damaged houses the choice of a buyout at full, pre-storm market value or a renovation grant to cover most repairs. The program, which New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has … Continue reading Some GOOD News for NOLA for Once

Let’s see here … this Internet thinks I’m damn sexy. This Internet wants to have my baby. And this Internet says I remind it of Harry Truman. Wow. A. Continue reading Happy Howard Photo

Echidne: I don’t know. If there are two types of news, the ones about the dog who bit a man and the man who bit the dog, then we are surely getting the latter type in the crime reporting that suddenly swamps the media. But will that make us believe that men biting dogs is a common and serious problem? Echidne’s reminded me of the seventeen hundred things I’ve always hated about this goddamn trade. A couple of years back, after the Steve Bartman baseball fiasco, there was a huge journalism debate. Should the Chicago papers have named the poor … Continue reading Men Biting Dogs

From Scout: Below I posted a story from the Times Leader on the federal prosecution of a man who allegedly attempted to “provide material aid to al-Qaeda.” It’s a convoluted story that includes an FBI sting in which Shannen Rossmiller, a part time Montana judge and member of 7 Seas Global Intelligence was used to lure the man. The Times Leader says “She was working for the FBI.” The Spokeman Review.com reports on Rossmiller and 7 Seas in a May 2004 article entitled “Terrorist Hunters Get Mixed Review…. “They” are a little-known group of seven civilians — unpaid, volunteer terrorist-hunters … Continue reading More Warrentless Government Spying?

From Scout: The House Committee investigating Katrina will be issuing a “blistering” report according to WaPo. This was a Republican committee as Democrats had boycotted the investigation out of concern of a whitewash. WaPo noted….. But it is an unusual compendium of criticism by the House GOP, which generally has not been aggressive in its oversight of the administration. WaPo reports….. The 600-plus-page report lays primary fault with the passive reaction and misjudgments of top Bush aides, singling out Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security Operations Center and the White House Homeland Security Council, according to a 60-page … Continue reading “Katrina Was a Failure of Initiative”

From Scout: When I have pause to be concerned of a terrorist attack I wouldn’t say I have this ‘Al Qaeda’ in mind. From the Times Leader…. Michael Curtis Reynolds says he’s a patriot.Federal authorities say he’s a terrorist. The FBI believes that the unemployed Wilkes-Barre man tried to conspire with al-Qaeda to wreck the American economy. Agents say Reynolds plotted to blowup the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, a Pennsylvania pipeline, and a New Jersey refinery. The sensational allegations, disclosed in a federal transcript obtained by The Inquirer on Friday, reveal a convoluted plot that includes cyberspace intrigue, an elaborate FBI sting, … Continue reading Is this the Al Qaeda You Fear?

From Scout: Police officers, firefighters and EMS personnel (about 700 total) may be homeless when the cruise ship Ecstasy on which they have been living leaves New Orleans after Mardi Gras… Hundreds of New Orleans police officers — possibly as many as 500 — will be without a home when they finish their shifts on Mardi Gras if FEMA continues to have problems either supplying trailers or ensuring those trailers have power and other necessities, the director of the New Orleans Police Foundation said Friday night. The cruise ship Ecstasy, where the officers are residing, is scheduled to leave New … Continue reading More NOLA Homeless

From Scout: The criminal justice system in New Orleans has in effect shut down…. The New Orleans criminal justice system, severely crippled by Katrina, inched perilously close to a complete shutdown Friday when a district judge suspended all cases in his section assigned to the cash-starved and attorney-depleted public defender’s office, setting a legal precedent that probably would affect the entire criminal court. Criminal Court Judge Arthur Hunter ruled that the Orleans Parish Indigent Defender Program can no longer adequately represent poor defendants in his section. The other 11 New Orleans judges are expected to follow, potentially affecting thousands of … Continue reading NOLA Courts Shutting Down

From Scout: The NYT ran an article today that dealt with the account of FEMA official Marty Bahamonde who did a fly over of New Orleans on Monday August 29 and discovered the levee break. The NYT in a separate page has excerpts of Bahamonde’s testimony. He relates in it that when he returned from the flyover he immediately made 3 calls to 1) Michael Brown 2) FEMA’s front office and 3) FEMA’s Public Affairs. In his testimony he relates… That third call was to set up a conference call with FEMA Operations in Headquarters, the Emergency Response Team-National (ERT-N) … Continue reading Pushback

There’s my girl.

You know the drill. Come inside and discuss how the show seems to be getting back on track. Spoilers lurk.

Continue reading “Hostage Situation: Saturday Galactica Thread”