I’m scheduled to be on Madison, Wisconsin’s WORT 89.9 FM tomorrow between noon and 1 p.m. CST to talk about the upcoming book event next week. You can listen to the show, A Public Affair, here. A. Continue reading Listen

This is a post to remind you to look at the message above. It’ll stay up there while Scout’s fundraising drive is underway. I’m gonna throw some cash her way later tonight and I’d encourage you to do the same. Look. We talk a lot about how to improve journalism on this site. One of the things I’ve loved best about this blog is that the conversation is almost always productive, the criticism constructive. People who come here know stories, they recognize when the tales are well told, and they’re not averse to praising work done well as often as … Continue reading *points upward*

From Holden: AP Photo/Pool, Jason Reed ThinkProgress has the video. Continue reading Sing It, Brother!

From Holden: A quickie gaggle aboard Air Force One today en route to the funeral of Coretta Scott King. Q [D]id the President take a bipartisan approach and reach out to Coretta Scott King ever, to talk to her about issues of race, particularly, maybe around Katrina, before Katrina happened, maybe? MR. McCLELLAN: Well, look, this is a day to celebrate her life and talk about her — Q In that context. MR. McCLELLAN: — talk about her many contributions. Certainly they talked about issues that were priorities to both of them when they visited, and how we could work … Continue reading Today on Holden’s Obsession with the Gaggle

From Scout: There are many reasons I object to Bush’s faith based initiative only one of which is the many accounts of corruption. Here are 2 examples. The Washington Post reports on this faith based scam for profit…. SALT LAKE CITY — A rehabilitation program at a church is facing allegations it forced people to work as telemarketers for 28 cents an hour under the threat they could go back to jail. Snip The men were sent to the program by judges or state agencies for substance abuse rehabilitation. A department report said they were paid about 28 cents an … Continue reading Cashing In

From Holden: Water shortages in and around Baghdad are worse than ever before. Residents of Baghdad’s suburbs have been experiencing serious water shortages for a month due to poor infrastructure, leaking pipes and wastage, according to experts. [snip] Nearly half a million people have been affected by the scarcity. In some areas, water is available for only a few hours at night and for less than two hours during the day in other areas. Nearly 300 water tanks have been distributed by the government and the Iraqi Red Crescent Society in various areas of the capital. Some residents, however, must … Continue reading Better Off Under Saddam

From Scout: Now THIS will be interesting…. John and Gannon/Guckert on the same panel. via Pam’s House Blend who also has Joe “Tessio” Lieberman To wit I add….. Joementum: “Can you get me off the hook? For old times’ sake?” Democrats Everywhere: “Can’t do it Joey” Continue reading Oh Boy…..

From Scout: Michelle Goldberg of Salon.com has been in New Orleans recently to report on recovery efforts. Her first report on housing is now posted at Salon.com. Homelessness looms large for many with FEMA set to end hotel payments for most today, Feb 7 and virtually all in March……. Feb. 7, 2006 | NEW ORLEANS — Without having a lot of money, it’s almost impossible to find a place to live in New Orleans. People who came here after Hurricane Katrina, seeking rebuilding jobs, figured they could rent apartments or cheap rooms. But there’s little housing to be had in … Continue reading Homeless in NOLA

From Holden: So says one of the generals to whom Chimpy claims to listen. A senior U.S. officer admitted Monday that the presence of more than 300,000 foreign troops in the Middle East, most of them American, was a “contributory factor” to instability in the region. The admission was made by Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt – a key strategist in the U.S. Central Command covering the Middle East – as he spelled out the American military’s plan to “reposture” its forces over an area stretching from Egypt in the west to Pakistan in the east, and from Kazakhstan in the … Continue reading US Forces Help Destablize Middle East

From Holden: I was interested to read Scout’s post this morning about Karl Rove threatening the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Congressional sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president. The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November. Wow, all those Republicans on the committee who are running for re-election in November must be scared. Both of them. That’s right, only two Republican committee members, Mike DeWine of Ohio and John Kyl … Continue reading Karl Gums the Republicans

From Holden: The NYTimes editorial page has never suckled at Bush’s teat. Here’s a bit from today’s piece on Chimpy’s new budget proposal. President Bush’s $2.77 trillion budget is fiction masquerading as fact, a governmental version of the made-up memoirs that have been denounced up and down the continent lately. The spending proposal is built around the pretense that the same House and Senate that are set to consider a record deficit of $423 billion will now impose a virtual freeze on everything other than Pentagon and homeland security outlays. The budget writers even fantasized an end to Social Security’s … Continue reading A Tale of Two Titties

From Holden: Carter weighs in. “Under the Bush administration, there’s been a disgraceful and illegal decision — we’re not going to the let the judges or the Congress or anyone else know that we’re spying on the American people,” Carter told reporters. “And no one knows how many innocent Americans have had their privacy violated under this secret act.” Carter made the remarks at a union hall near Las Vegas, where his oldest son, Jack Carter, announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate. The former president also rebuked Attorney General Alberto Gonzales for telling Congress that the spying program is … Continue reading The Ex-Presidents

From Scout: Via Huffington Post……. The White House has been twisting arms to ensure that no Republican member votes against President Bush in the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation of the administration’s unauthorized wiretapping. Congressional sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president. The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November. Snip Over the last few weeks, Mr. Rove has been calling in virtually every Republican on the Senate committee as well as the … Continue reading Being Karl’s Bitch

From Scout: The Boston Globe has an article on Jack Abramoff’s days as chairman of the College Republicans. His money pleas unheeded, Abramoff spent the next four years, from 1981 to 1985, bypassing the RNC chain of command — the organization legally responsible for the College Republicans — to build his own financial juggernaut to advance the group’s hard-right agenda, according to memos from College Republican files and interviews with GOP officials involved. Snip Under Abramoff, the College Republicans office quickly became a nesting ground for hard-right believers. The new team, allies recalled, berated Republican moderates as “Bushyites” — a … Continue reading They Should Have Seen It Coming

From Scout: Sen. Leahy did a great job in his questioning of Gonzales today. He hit him with the chair. Continue reading Mr Gonzales Meet The Chair

From Holden: Today on Holden’s Obsession with the Gaggle Helen Thomas raises the specter of the “I” word. Q Does the President think he should obey the law? He put his hand on the Bible twice to uphold the Constitution. Wiretapping is not legal under the circumstances without a warrant. MR. McCLELLAN: Well, I guess you didn’t pay attention to the Attorney General’s hearing earlier today, because he walked through very clearly the rationale behind this program. And, Helen, I think you have to ask are we a nation at war — Q There is no rationale to disobey the … Continue reading Today on Holden’s Obsession with the Gaggle

Something Mike DeWine said this morning gave me a terrible premonition about how this is gonna go down should these hearings get hairy. DeWine was mostly taking the pissy line that Bush cut Congress out of the picture by overriding statute on his own instead of asking Congress to grant him more authority. But beneath that was a hypothetical for Gonzales: What if you came to Congress and asked us to vote on legislation that would make warrantless domestic spying legal? And Gonzales not only didn’t seem surprised, he seemed to welcome the idea. I hope I’m wrong, Gonzales’ little … Continue reading What’s Coming

Watch the Gonzales testimony here. Leahy just laid down an awesome smackdown. He was asking when the president issued his first authorization for wiretapping, and pressing Gonzales on which law, PRECISELY, allowed the president to ignore the law. Gonzales stumbled and bumbled and finally pulled out the old “I’ve got to have my staff look it up” defense. Gonzales then pulled out the “9/11” defense, and Leahy just snapped that “I was there during that attack and I joined my fellow Democrats and Republicans in giving the president the tools he needed” to find Bin Laden, “the man who attacked … Continue reading Leahy!

Derek Powazek, who did the amazing Justly Married photos of same-sex weddings in San Fran, has an Iraq war series. A. Continue reading Naked As We Came

Atrios: The point is that the deterrence that kept a few thousand ICBMs coming our way from the Soviet Union should also work with smaller state nuclear powers, with the added benefit that “mutually assured destruction” simply becomes “assured destruction” – theirs, not ours. There’s no reason, absolutely no reason, why what I’ve bolded above can’t be the narrative we use to combat the bullshit issuing from the White House in the coming months. There’s no reason, absolutely no reason, we can’t turn to the Reagan-revering section of the public and say, “We want to adhere to the policy set … Continue reading The Narrative

From Scout: I made this a few weeks ago when I was feeling snarly towards the Wingnuts/Christian Right/Bush administration. I wanted to pip them a bit and get in their faces so to speak…… Music is Jill Sobule Continue reading I Kissed A Girl

From Scout: There’s a snarky article by Mark Leibovich in WaPo about Bill Frist’s trip to New Hampshire entitled “Dr. Frist to N.H., Stat”…… He is here, in the Granite State, to nurture the GOP at its grass roots, he says. Never mind that this is his second visit in three months to the state that boasts (and boasts and boasts) the First-in-the-Nation you-know-what. He might as well be here for the stuffed mushrooms “All the questions I get up here about running for president,” are premature, says Frist in an interview, unprompted by any such question. “You know, people … Continue reading Cat Killer Comes A Calling

Laurie King on writing: Generally, I don’t do a lot of rewrite-as-you-go. I write the stuff as a first draft, knowing it’s awful, allowing myself to just write crap, so long as I’m writing. Sometimes it’s necessary to stop what I’m doing and go back a chapter or six in order to work out my thoughts on a character or a plot development, since it’s nearly impossible for my mind to make any sense of an outline. I don’t think in outlines, I think in story lines, and although I may occasionally sketch out how I see the story developing, … Continue reading Process Stories

Context, from Glenn Greenwald: Regarding the hearings themselves, I have a lot of trepidation about what will happen on Monday, to be honest. Democrats are clearly scared of this issue. They believe that Republicans are going to accuse them of “wanting to give Al Qaeda our playbook” (a phrase several different people used independently) and that those tactics will work to obscure the real issues here. They seem — at least to me — to be more frightened than impassioned, more worried about how to avoid looking like Al Qaeda allies than how to question Gonzales in order to prove … Continue reading A Short Message To All Democrats, Ever

Spoilers for the episode lie within. Enter or be fracked.

Continue reading “Fire Bad, Starbuck PRETTY! The Galactica Thread”