Right Wing Nut House

Pity the poor lefties who have leapt upon the resignation of CIA Chief Porter Goss like a pack of ravenous beasts, hungry for scandal and scalps, all the while frantically trying their best to connect dots that may or may not exist only in their fevered imaginations.

In truth, I haven’t seen this much wild speculation on the left since the Jeff Gannon/Guckert episode when the primary question asked in all seriousness by liberals was “Who did Gannon sleep with at the White House in order to get a press pass?” At that time, the dots used to connect Mr. Gannon - a conservative by day and possible gay prostitute at night - to any number of White House big shots up to and including the President, were laid out in exacting patterns of irrefutable stupidity, an exercise in paranoia and wishful thinking so profoundly laughable as to make the entire episode a revelatory metaphor for Bush Derangement Syndrome.

The Goss resignation carries with it the potential for the same kind of out of control miasmic obscurance of the facts in order to advance a theory that may or may not hold any water. In this case, it is the tenuous connection of Mr. Goss to the scandale du jour involving disgraced ex-Congressman Duke Cunningham, his crony Brent Wilkes, and so called “hospitality suites” at the Watergate hotel where liquor and cigars mixed with poker and prostitutes in an all too familiar Washington combination that involved Congressmen and government bureaucrats engaging in the typical manly-man pursuits of bluffing, raising, and fixing federal contracts.

The fact that dozens of current and former Members of Congress as well as others in the defense establishment attended these soirees has much of official Washington playing the “Name that John” game. Beyond that, there is the serious matter of how Mr. Wilkes was able to win defense and intelligence contracts and whether the use of prostitutes constituted a bribe of federal contract officials.

The FBI seems to be zeroing in on one such contract let by the CIA for $2.1 million involving Wilkes’s company ACDS, Inc. and the #3 at the Agency, Porter Goss’s good friend Dusty Foggo. Mr. Foggo was promoted to his position of Executive Director (a post that oversees contracts for the Agency) when Goss was appointed DCIA following a stint as supervisor of CIA Iraq contracts, a not insignificant position but nevertheless, his elevation raised many eyebrows. The Agency’s Inspector General has begun a separate investigation of the Wilkes contract which is standard procedure when questions are raised by law enforcement officials about a CIA employee.

Mr. Foggo has admitted attending the Wilkes parties at the Watergate but has denied any wrongdoing. Goss has denied ever attending the parties.

And there you have the bare bones of a scandal that I’m sure will be busting out all over around Memorial Day if not sooner. It appears that Mr. Wilkes is cooperating with the FBI and that there may be records of which Congressmen took advantage of Mr. Wilkes’ hospitality via a limo service that could have a connection to the hookers.

Sounds juicy doesn’t it? The problem for the left is how to get beyond the denial of Porter Goss and prove him a liar. To that end, their basic logic goes something like this:

1. Foggo knew Wilkes.
2. Foggo likes to play poker and smoke cigars
3. Foggo partied with Wilkes.
4. Goss knew Foggo.
5. Goss likes to play poker and smoke cigars
6. Goss is a lying S.O.B.

And that’s pretty much it. In order to believe that Goss is embroiled in the Hookergate scandal (I prefer “Watergate Redux” myself) you have to believe that simply by virtue of his close association with Mr. Foggo and that he along with most of the male population of the United States likes to play poker and smoke cigars, he is a liar and guilty as sin.

I am in awe of the cyberian logic used by the left in this case, a clear cut example of jumping to conclusions based on something that probably isn’t there. After all, if Hookergate was indeed the reason for Goss being forced out, I hardly think the President would have taken the time to give him a White House sendoff. Those kind of images come back to haunt, something that I’m sure brand new White House Press Secretary Tony Snow would have been able to tell the President.

No, I like my first take on this yesterday; that it was White House politics that led to Goss’s suddent departure. The West Wing had decided to back Negroponte in his turf battles with the intel agencies which made Goss a nuisance and expendable to boot. Couple that with the whiff of scandal emanating from his close associate Mr. Foggo (which gave Goss’s enemies fuel for the fire when they use the same kind of innuendo employed by the left in this case) and you have a perfectly logical and reasonable explanation for Goss’s departure. That, plus the fact that Mr. Goss himself probably wanted to leave sealed the deal.

Reading more than this into his resignation takes a certain kind of disassociation from reality that the “Reality Based Community” has justly become famous for.

After a little more than a year and a half of dealing with charges of politicizing the agency, sinking morale, and a too aggressive posture on leaks, DCIA Porter Goss has resigned.

CIA Director Porter Goss resigned unexpectedly Friday, leaving behind a spy agency still battling to recover from the scars of intelligence failures before America’s worst terrorist attack and faulty information that formed the U.S. rationale for invading Iraq.

It was the latest move in a second-term shake-up of President Bush’s team.

Making the announcement from the Oval Office, Bush called Goss’ tenure one of transition.

“He has led ably,” Bush said, Goss at his side. “He has a five-year plan to increase the analysts and operatives.”

[snip]

He came under fire almost immediately, in part because he brought with him several top aides from Congress who were considered highly political for the CIA.

He had particularly poor relations with segments of the agency’s powerful clandestine service. In a bleak assessment, California Rep. Jane Harman, the Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat, recently said, “The CIA is in a free fall,” noting that employees with a combined 300 years of experience have left or been pushed out.

Some quick observations and questions:

* It’s no secret that the operations branch of the Agency was angry and bitter at Goss. Within a month of taking charge, Goss forced out the #2 and #3 people at CIA including the Director of Operations and his deputy. This cleaning house was seen by many in the operations branch as a political hatchet job although Goss had come to office with a mandate from the President to try and fix what any fair minded person would have to admit was a dysfunctional organization. When it became clear who would obstruct him in this task, Goss took action.

* We on the right will probably make much of the fact that the resignation of Goss has come so soon following the firing of leaker Mary McCarthy. While its possible there may be a connection, I would have to say at this point that the move has more to do with internal White House politics where Goss obviously lost out. His allies were few and far between and if the President gave Chief of Staff Bolten carte blanche to clean house, Goss was going to be toast. Even Republicans in Congress were grumbling about Goss.

* On the other hand, the left will be playing up the possibility that Goss is going to be caught up in “Hookergate.” They will point to Goss’s close aide and #3 at the agency Dusty Foggo being under investigation by the Agency’s IG as well as the FBI for possible contract irregularities (Foggo was in charge of CIA contracts). Foggo’s relationship with Duke Cunningham conspirator Brent Wilkes is being put under the microscope as well as his connection to the “Poker Room” at the Watergate Hotel sponsored by Wilkes and where the FBI is investigating the possible employment of prostitutes to bribe federal officials. This is also an unlikely reason for his resignation as the investigation of Foggo has been going on 3 months and has not revealed anything illegal to date. But is it possible that the investigation of Foggo has given the White House the jitters? Bolten may figure why take the chance?

* Goss’s efforts to reform the agency hardly made a dent in the year and a half of his tenure. It is clear that many in the Agency see themselves above elected officials and therefore do not need to defer to their judgement. How widespread this attitude is came out in the defense of Mary McCarthy by active duty personnel. With few exceptions (if MSM reports can be believed), there was great sympathy for what she did. And we have the evidence of the last three years where the leaking of classified data in order to undermine Administration policies became so commonplace that a recent trip by the head of Israel’s Mossad to Washington and his conferring with our intelligence people on Iran’s nuclear abilities was considered remarkable because the news leaked from Israeli sources. The fact is, in retrospect, Goss may have not been precisely the man that Bush was looking for although it’s hard to fault his effort.

Goss did start the ball rolling on leak investigations - a ball that continues downhill and may yet yield more surprises. It is perhaps unfortunate that the DCIA got caught up in Josh Bolten’s broom that appears about ready to sweep away Secretary of the Treasury Snow next.

And it’s also a pity that those who continue to leak classified information for whatever reason - out of a misplaced sense of patriotism or out of pure partisanship - will be staying while Goss will be going. Perhaps who ever succeeds Goss will take it upon themselves to have the leakers follow the Director out the door.

UPDATE

I’m not going to give much reaction from the right. Allah has that covered nicely over at Hot Air, a site that seems to be starting to find a nice niche in the blogosphere - A/V plus a blog aggregator. Sort of a one stop shop for writing ideas and interesting links.

Also at Hot Air is an interesting link to a Time Magazine article that echoes my thoughts above; that a White House faction led by Negroponte forced Goss out.

Ever since John Negroponte was appointed Director of National Intelligence a year ago and given the task of coordinating the nation’s myriad spy agencies, he has been diluting the power and prestige of the best known of them all, the Central Intelligence Agency. From day one, he supplanted the CIA Director as the President’s principal intelligence adviser, in charge of George W. Bush’s daily briefing. Other changes followed, all originating in the law that created the DNI — and all traumatic for CIA fans. But now, in a little noticed move, Negroponte is signaling that he is moving still more responsibility from the CIA to his own office, including control over the analysis of terrorist groups and threats….

This is akin to getting kicked in the stomach for the DCIA. Once all powerful, he was going to be reduced to being an errand boy, shuffling reports and analysis between Langely and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Quite a comedown, that.

Former intel pro Spook86 has the McCarthy angle - and a chilling one at that:

What disturbs me about the Goss resignation is the possibility that internal battles may have worn down the director, and eventually convinced him to throw in the towel. It’s no secret that Goss has been fighting pitched battles against staffers who oppose Bush Administration policies, and the new management team at the CIA. Goss recently fired CIA officer Mary McCarthy for unauthorized contacts with the press, and there are hints that other agency staffers may be implicated as well. But earlier this week, the CIA launched an investigation of the agency’s #3 official–a Goss appointee–in connection with the bribery scandal that sent former Congressman Randy “Duke” Cunningham to federal prison. Given the timing–and announcement–of the inquiry, there was some belief that the probe was something of a “counter-attack” by agency’s anti-administration cabal.

Spook is blaming jousting inside the Agency which very well could be the truth. However, the investigation of Foggo has been going on since late February which would seem to discount the pushback against Goss for the McCarthy investigation. This is not to say that the anti-Bush faction didn’t make Goss’s life hell these last few months but it does limit the scope of what they could have done to put pressure on him to leave.

On the other hand, as I predicted above, the left is all agog over the possibility that Goss is hip deep in Hookergate. They practically have him in bed with his very own Fanne Fox/Sherry Rowlands not to mention giving the government away on a silver platter to Dick Cunningham’s conspirators.

Wonkette informs us that the Washington Post has an “exclusive” story coming up tonight that will probably start connecting some dots between Goss and another Cunningham crony Mitchell Wade as well as increase speculation about other connections to Hookergate. Sounds to me like someone at the Post as a bad case of Pulitzer fever but nothing is impossible at this point.

My own guess is that the Post story won’t go half as far as the left is drooling for but at the same time will go twice as far as the right is willing to stomach. In other words, it won’t tell us too damn much, probably regurgitating what’s been churning on lefty blogs for the past 10 days or so.

Donald Rumsfeld told a bald faced lie yesterday. In the process of telling the lie, the Secretary of Defense showed that public officials still don’t get it, that with the advent of the internet and its powerful search engines, every utterance made in public yesterday can be recalled immediately and compared for accuracy today.

This familiar fact is not being absorbed by the political and journalistic elites, nor by academics, celebrities, and business leaders who continue to supply the fodder for ravenous blog beasts who delight in pointing out discrepancies, flip flops, prevarications, and misstatement of facts in the words of the high and mighty.

Are our elites really that clueless? The short answer is yes. Those of us who spend a lot of time on the net tend to forget the truly revolutionary nature of the New Media. We take so much for granted we naturally assume that everyone is as plugged in as we are. Hence, when the Secretary of Defense denies making a statement that has been highlighted about a dozen times in various postings on blogs, forums, chat rooms, and the growing number of E-Zines, we are surprised that someone could still not be aware that the rules have changed and that public officials can easily be held accountable for what they’ve said in the past.

Rumsfeld’s folly occurred yesterday at a forum in Atlanta where the Secretary was supposed to be talking about security issues but instead found himself continuously having to deal with the “speaking truth to power” crowd and other free speech advocates - the “free speech for me but not for thee” nitwits who are too dense to realize the snickering irony inherent in their “protests.” Constantly interrupted with attempts to shout him down (something Rumsfeld has evidently gotten used to), it was in the Q & A session where Rumsfeld unleashed his whopper.

Somehow, rogue ex-CIA agent Ray McGovern had been invited to the event. McGovern you may recall is on the steering committee of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), the group which has carried out an insurgency against the Bush Administration during a time of war that in another age, at another time, would have led to the satisfying spectacle of McGovern and many of his friends in VIPS swinging from a White Oak tree for treason. McGovern has also advanced the theory that the United States government was involved in the attacks of 9/11 and has urged active duty intelligence officers to leak classified information to the press.

The fact that he is a hero on the left shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. And the fact that he was in attendance at this forum in the first place proves that the disruptions and protests were about as spontaneous as Saturday night sex for an old married couple. This was a planned op carried out to maximize media exposure not to mention the goal of embarrassing the Secretary of Defense.

They needn’t have bothered because Rumsfeld embarrassed himself. During the question and answer session. Mr. McGovern got a hold of the mike and began to fire questions at the Secretary:

Rumsfeld: …it appears that there were not weapons of mass destruction there.

Rumsfeld: My words-my words were that-no-no, wait a minute–wait a minute. Let him stay one second. Just a second….

For the record, here’s the familiar exchange between ABC’s George Stephanopolous and Rumsefeld on March 30, 2003:

MR. STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, weapons of mass destruction. Key goal of the military campaign is finding those weapons of mass destruction. None have been found yet. There was a raid on the Answar Al-Islam Camp up in the north last night. A lot of people expected to find ricin there. None was found. How big of a problem is that? And is it curious to you that given how much control U.S. and coalition forces now have in the country, they haven’t found any weapons of mass destruction?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Not at all. If you think — let me take that, both pieces — the area in the south and the west and the north that coalition forces control is substantial. It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

The irony here is that McGovern was accusing Rumsefeld of “lying” in 2003 while the Secretary ended up lying about actually telling the truth. What was the truth? That Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George Bush, the overwhelming majority of analysts in our intelligence community, the intelligence agencies of the western world, Hosni Mubarak, the Emir of Kuwait, Vladmir Putin, and Saddam Hussein himself all believed there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

To accuse someone of lying when they believe what they are saying is true is idiocy. Does a child lie when he talks about Santa Claus coming on Christmas eve? According the left, the answer is yes. The child believes whole heartedly in Santa Claus and talks about him as if he is a real person. But for the left, this doesn’t matter. The child is lying through his teeth and should be “called out” for his prevarications.

This ground has been covered thoroughly in the past three years. The American people made their determination about these “lies” in the election of 2004, rejecting the leftist interpretation of the “truth.” And this is why Rumsfeld’s lie about what he said back in 2003 (and given the wide play those words have received over the past three years I find it highly unlikely that the Secretary did not recall exactly what he said) was so unnecessary but perhaps indicative of the state of the executive branch of government in modern America.

The inability of public servants to admit to mistakes has gotten to the point of surrealness. There is something dreamlike about Rumsfeld’s continuing defense of the Pentagon’s performance and assessment of what has been happening in Iraq. It isn’t just a matter of Pollyanish briefings about the capabilities of the Iraqi army (although there has been marked improvement in the last 6 months) or about the level of sectarian strife (100,000 people fleeing from the violence and dozens of bodies being found every day). Rumsfeld’s folly extends to decisions made going all the way back to the beginning of the war starting with the number of troops that would be needed to pacify the country following the overthrow of Saddam. Despite the lawlessness that plagues Iraq to this day, the Secretary of Defense refuses to admit error in this regard.

The explanation that criticism would be overwhelming if he did so doesn’t hold water. Taking responsibility for your mistakes is part of the job - or at least it used to be part of the job for public servants. I distinctly remember the first time I realized that the rules had changed. It was following the total, unmitigated disaster at Waco and the deaths of 76 members of the Branch Davidians, 27 of whom were children. Attorney General Janet Reno should have been fired for her actions and the actions of her subordinates in the botched operation. Instead, President Clinton kept her on.

At the time, I racked my brains trying to think of any other President who would have kept an official who had committed such grievous errors in judgement. Certainly none come to mind even today. An important dynamic of executive leadership changed at that point; the fact that public officials are ultimately responsible for the results of their actions, not just their good intentions.

For Rumsfeld, the results have been less than adequate since Saddam’s statue was toppled. The Secretary may be a good manager. His ideas about a transformational military may prove to be inspired genius. And the performance of the troops under his command has been uniformly spectacular. But his refusal to acknowledge mistakes and adapt to new realities on the ground in Iraq has been a disaster. The insurgency, so long unacknowledged or shrugged off as Saddam bitter enders, was allowed to grow in strength until it has metastasized and will now require a monumental effort by the new Iraqi army to cut it out of the body politic. This inability to recognize the tribal and clannish nature of the insurgency despite being told repeatedly by his commanders of these facts on the ground has caused more problems than necessary to our troops.

Rumsfeld’s lie yesterday about something he didn’t have to lie about points to this changed dynamic in Washington that extends all the way to the office of the President. Accepting responsibility for mistakes both of omission and commission is necessary for our public servants. The American people recognize this which is why they are almost always quick to forgive an official who admits mistakes and apologizes. How and why this tradition has been lost probably has a lot to do with the polarization of our politics and the rabid, open hostility of the media to this President and his policies. But this really is no excuse. The people have shown that they are perfectly capable of making up their own minds about our leaders, even when they get most of their information through the prism of a press suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome. George Bush’s re-election proves that point in emphatic fashion.

The Secretary’s lie will not get him fired. But given Rumsfeld’s performance over the last few years, perhaps it should.

I disagree with those on the right who are skewering Stephen Colbert for his performance at the White House Correspondents dinner on Saturday night. Much of it was actually pretty funny. It’s just a pity that Colbert, in his ignorance, never realized that people were laughing at him rather than at what he was saying.

Full Fledged Moonbattery is the only way to describe Colbert’s performance. All the canards were there; Iraq, WMD, the press as White House lap dogs(??), Bush the stupid, Bush the incompetent, Bush as Machiavelli (the stupidity of trying to show Bush as both dumb and evil genius lost on the clueless Colbert), as well as the usual jokes that liberals find funny about 9/11, religion, and ordinary Americans.

The left, of course, is in rapture over Colbert’s “speaking truth to power.” I always have to scratch my head in wonderment over this little prevarication by the liberals. Does anyone seriously believe that the “power” to shape debate, set the national agenda, color the personalities, and make or break the politicians resides with conservatives? Who are they trying to kid?

If, in fact, their little fantasy about being the underdog in our national life was true, Bush’s popularity would be soaring, no one would be questioning the rationale for going to war in Iraq, government’s response to Hurricane Katrina would be seen as a success, and Bush would have won an historical landslide in 2004.

The fact that none of the above is true gives the lie to the left’s crocodile tears about the White House and Washington press corps being lap dogs of the Administration. But it is best not to disturb the liberals when they’re on a roll. Mounting the battlements of democracy and waving the bloody shirt is so much a part of their self-image that to burst their fantasy about not possessing the levers of power that allows them to pretty much have their way may cause serious damage to their delicate, albeit inflated psyches.

What the left - especially the netnuts - are complaining about is that the press refuses to “investigate” their wacky conspiracy theories. Who did Jeff Gannon sleep with in the White House? Which of Diebold’s executives are going to be charged with rigging the election of 2004? How many anti-war activists have been put in concentration camps? What is Bush’s timetable for establishing a theocratic dictatorship? Probably the same timetable for establishing a military draft.

This is why the left was swooning over Colbert’s performance. Here’s a sample of reactions:

The few glimpses that we have of the audience shows that the tension was extremely high - I don’t think any of them were expecting such a pointed, hard-hitting attack on Bush camouflaged as humor.
Colbert deserves the highest possible praise.
Finally someone with big enough balls to tell it as it is - it made me ashamed of our cringing Dems in Congress.
The MSM, which was mightily indicted by Colbert, is trying to sweep the whole thing under the carpet and is at present in hiding.

That last criticism about the MSM “trying to sweep the whole thing under the carpet” has to do with stories about the dinner that highlighted the President’s performance rather than Colbert’s tirade.

That’s right. They actually believe that the performance of a comedian (and not a very good one at that) was more significant than what the President of the United States did. “Reality Based Community” indeed.

Peter Dauo writing at Huffpo:

It appears Mash’s misgivings about press coverage are well-placed. The AP’s first stab at it and pieces from Reuters and the Chicago Tribune tell us everything we need to know: Colbert’s performance is sidestepped and marginalized while Bush is treated as light-hearted, humble, and funny.

Imagine that! How dare they cover what the President did at the expense of the man who was “speaking truth to power!”

Colbert,heed my warning. Do not fly in any small planes like JFK Jr.,Paul Wellstone,or the ex governor of Missouri who was running against Ashcroft for the senate,and whose name I am blocking.

More moonbattery from people who just aren’t happy unless the whole world is against them. And, of course, risking your life to SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER!”

Oh. My. F**king. God. I would love to see some reaction photos of bush and his bitch-wife, Laura from that dinner…

On that subject, here is what “speaking truth to power” means when addressing the First Lady of the United States:

And I just like the guy. He’s a good joe. Obviously loves his wife, calls her his better half. And polls show America agrees. She’s a true lady and a wonderful woman. But I just have one beef, ma’am.

I’m sorry, but this reading initiative. I’m sorry, I’ve never been a fan of books. I don’t trust them. They’re all fact, no heart. I mean, they’re elitist, telling us what is or isn’t true, or what did or didn’t happen. Who’s Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was built in 1914? If I want to say it was built in 1941, that’s my right as an American! I’m with the president, let history decide what did or did not happen.

Unfunny, tasteless, and even though I’m being a little old fashioned here…impolite.

Much more can be found at the Democratic Underground, a site I refuse to link after they published personal information of their political opponents.

It’s really a shame that the people who are admiring Colbert’s performance don’t have a clue as to what real political satire is all about. For that, you would first of all need sense of humor, something most liberals do not possess (except in a deranged sort of way like finding it funny when a child pulls the wings off of grasshoppers). Real satire can be found in the performances of comedians like Mort Sahl, the Smothers Brothers, Billy Crystal, and the great Jonathan Winters who know where the boundaries of taste are located. None of those gentlemen would have made a joke including 9/11 and the victims of Katrina:

I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound — with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

A good satirist would never include the victims of tragedy - especially such soul searing events like 9/11 and Katrina - as props for an attempt at humor. Pretty sickening.

All in all, Colbert’s scattershot performance (some of his jokes were indeed, quite funny) fell flat as satire because he couldn’t get past his obvious hatred of the President. He came off mean rather than funny.

And no one likes a meany. Even one who “speaks truth to power.”

UPDATE

Goldstein:

My thoughts: the fawning reaction coming from many on the anti-Bush bandwagon is, unfortunately, par for the course these days—as is the celebration of Colbert’s “bravery,” especially when there are no real consequences for engaging in meanspirited political humor other than, say, being thought a dick.

Ends justify the means, man. Ends justify the means…

Billy Sol Estes we’re proud of ya son.
Hey! Billy-Billy, Hey! Billy-Billy, Billy.
Ya had to be Texan to do what you done.
Hey! Billy-Billy, Hey! Billy-Billy Sol.

While other kids saved up their nickels and dimes
For ice cream, candy, and fudge.
Well Billy saved too and when he had enough,
He bought him a fed-er-al judge.

(”The Ballad of Billy Sol Estes” by Phil Ochs)

Face it friends, they just don’t make scandals like they used to.

For all of Bill Clinton’s antics in the oval office as well as his, shall we say, questionable business practices (wish I could deduct $25,000 in interest on a loan I never paid back), his kind of scandalizing was pretty routine; a little venality here, a little immorality there. In the end, it proved hardly enough to inspire a great folk artist like Phil Ochs to write a song in homage to the sheer brazenness and utter amorality of his rather mundane adventures.

No, Ochs needed scandalizing of truly titanic proportions. And in the last 100 years, there is only one man in or out of government that can claim the mantle of scandal magnet extraordinaire. That man was Billy Sol Estes.

Estes’s scandalizing wasn’t just shockingly corrupt. It was sublime in its evil excesses. Stealing, influence peddling, bribery, and even murder was connected to Estes and his cotton schemes. Using his influence gleaned from being a friend of Vice President Lyndon Johnson (how close a friend is debated to this day) Billy Sol Estes swaggered around Washington like a Texas Don, a cowboy mafioso who, the evidence tells us, bought at least 3 Department of Agriculture employees - perhaps even the Secretary at that time Orville Freeman - as well as throwing his weight around on the hill.

Here are some details courtesy of Wikpedia and are generally confirmed by other sources:

In the late 1950s the US Department of Agriculture began controlling the price of cotton, specifying quotas to farmers. This limited overall production and Estes’ businesses suffered. He responded by expanding into cotton production himself. Over the next few years he developed a massive fraud, claiming to grow and store cotton that never existed, then using the cotton as collateral for bank loans. During this same period he became involved in Texas state politics and made political contributions to US senator and later Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

On June 3, 1961, Estes’ local contact at the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, Henry Marshall, was found dead in his car (reportedly with five gunshot wounds) on a remote part of his own ranch. Attributing Marshall’s death to carbon monoxide poisoning brought about from a hose attached to the exhaust pipe of his car, local Justice of the Peace Lee Farmer ruled Marshall had killed himself and the body was buried without an autopsy. The suicide verdict was later overturned.

On April 4, 1962 Estes’ accountant, George Krutilek, was found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. Krutilek had been questioned by the FBI about Estes the day before.

As a result of these deaths and an investigation into his business practices, on April 5, 1962 Estes and several business associates were indicted by a federal grand jury on 57 counts of fraud. Estes was accused of swindling many investors, banks and the federal government out of at least twenty-four million dollars through false agricultural subsidy claims on cotton production and the use of non-existent supplies of anhydrous ammonia fertilizer as collateral for loans. Two of Estes’ associates, Harold Orr and Coleman Wade, were also indicted but died of carbon monoxide poisoning (apparent suicides) before they went to trial. Estes was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to eight years in prison. He was eventually found guilty of additional federal charges and sentenced to fifteen years in prison.

Although never accused of killing anybody, it is rather strange that Ole Billy seemed to leave a trail of dead bodies from Texas to Washington.

Bill Sol was also rumored to have set up a “love nest” where Congressmen could come and relax, have their pick of some truly exotic beauties (including an East German spy that President Kennedy eventually dallied with), probably enjoying a little Texas barbecue washed down with copious amounts of bourbon and branch.

Evidently, no one could throw a party like Billy Sol.

I bring the adventures of Billy Sol Estes up because the corruption scandal involving disgraced Republican Congressman Duke Cunningham has taken a bizarre turn as the FBI is now apparently investigating “hospitality suites” set up at the Watergate Hotel by Cunningham accomplices, all the better to “entertain” Congressmen and their staffs. Indications are that the “entertainment” included prostitutes and could extend back 15 years, involving dozens of Congressmen.

I daresay that the spate of revelations in this matter has several members sweating, perhaps even leading to some belated apologia to their wives. The fact is, there have been rumors of several such operations around Washington for years. If true, I would think that others (if there are any others) would shut down pronto.

My understanding when I worked around the Hill was that lobbyists would rarely offer such “perks” to members in Washington. Rather, such offerings were made on junkets and other trips like speaking engagements and the like. The reason is becoming obvious to Mr. Cunningham’s associates; the chances of keeping a secret in Washington is directly proportionate to how juicy the information is and what the potential is for getting back at your enemies.

The news that Porter Goss may be caught up in this sex sting is both interesting and not surprising. Goss is rattling a lot of cages at the CIA, not to mention carrying out an aggressive campaign against leakers.

Now before you lefties have a knipshit, I have every reason to believe any investigation of Goss is probably genuine. What I question is the speculation regarding his “activities” being leaked at this time. Pretty damned convenient, no? In fact, if I were the suspicious sort, I’d mention that it’s damned peculiar timing and that the hint regarding his involvement (”including one person who now holds a powerful intelligence post”) seems to be the only mention of someone specific being investigated in the whole operation.

Even Tim at Balloon Juice points to a possible alternative name; Goss’s #3 at the Agency:

Porter Goss inexplicably chose Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, a close friend and business associate of MZM’s Brent Wilkes, as his #3 man in CIA with a portfolio including appropriations. That seems like quite a boon for a firm whose niche consisted of inappropriately influencing lawmakers towards awarding it black defense- and intelligence-related contracts. Where did Goss meet Foggo? The shortest path between the two passes through MZM’s Watergate bacchanialiae.

Sorry Tim, I’m not drinking that much kool-aid. Foggo oversaw CIA contracts in Iraq which is no small potatoes. It’s no more a surprise regarding Foggo’s upward mobility at the CIA than Mary McCarthy’s meteoric rise from analyst to NIO. Politics seems to trump smarts at the CIA even under Goss which is disappointing but hardly earthshattering news. And the fact that the CIA IG has been investigating Foggo and his ties to the dirty contractors since early March would seem to indicate that he is the target mentioned in the article not Goss.

If this scandal pans out, it should prove to be pretty sordid but hardly the stuff of legend. For that, we would need to resurrect the memory of old Billy Sol Estes and his Texas sized malfeasance. To date, we’re not even close on this one.

After I wrote my review of the film United 93 this morning, I was pretty drained emotionally. In fact, I didn’t think there would be anything that would be able to pique my interest and motivate me to write about for the rest of the day.

Good thing I happened to run across Slate’s Dana Steven’s review of the same film. There’s nothing like reading full blown, to the max idiocy to get the blood pumping to my brain and get my fingers itching to do a little keyboard solo on someone who exhibits as much jaw-dropping cluelessness as Stevens.

If you are one of those who saw United 93 and are keenly disappointed that Director Greengrass failed to turn his project into a 90 minute brief to prove the incompetence and evil of the Bush Administration, you would think Ms Stevens a genius rather than the pouting philistine that she appears to be. In truth, Stevens review is illustrative of a view quite prevalent on the left that, in essence, boils down to this: Things would have been different if you know who had been President.

The convoluted reasoning behind this notion rests with the hypotheses that 1) 9/11 was Bush’s fault; 2) the situation was made worse by the incompetence of the President; and 3) the government worked much better the previous 8 years and the gaffes, goofs, confusion, and panic were solely the result of the government going to hell and a handbasket during the 8 months of the Bush Administration.

Oversimplification?

I hope I don’t sound like a cynic with a heart of lead when I say that United 93, as grueling as it was to sit through, left me feeling curiously unmoved and even slightly resentful. At some point, Greengrass’ exquisite delicacy and tact toward all sides—the surviving families, the baffled air-traffic controllers, even the hijackers themselves—began to smack of political pussyfooting. What is Greengrass actually trying to say about 9/11? That it was a terrible day on which innocent people suffered and died? That the chaos and shock of that morning’s events (skillfully evoked via hand-held camera and real-time pacing) kept anyone, even the air-traffic controllers who watched the hijackings unfold, from understanding what was going on until it was too late?

First of all, yes Dana you “sound like a cynic with a heart of lead” since you asked. And that “political pussyfooting” (nice touch including the hijackers although one gets the impression you have more sympathy for them than you do the controllers) which we take to mean the director’s reluctance to assign “blame” was, of course, the entire rationale for the film. Sorry you missed it.

As politicized as the 9/11 Commission eventually became in its public sessions, the final report had much to say about why the entire United States government froze up into one massive ball of ice. Much of it was institutional. Some of it, like FAA protocols for dealing with hijackings were hopelessly inadequate to deal with what happened on 9/11. From the report:

“In sum, the protocols in place on 9/11 for the FAA and NORAD to respond to a hijacking presumed that:

* the hijacked aircraft would be readily identifiable and would not attempt to disappear;
* there would be time to address the problem through the appropriate FAA and NORAD chains of command; and
* hijacking would take the traditional form: that is, it would not be a suicide hijacking designed to convert the aircraft into a guided missile.

On the morning of 9/11, the existing protocol was unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen.” (emphasis mine)

“In every respect” would seem to take in the alternative history scenario of Bill Clinton to the rescue although people like Stevens never seem to let such mundane details like, you know, actual facts get in the way of a good anti-Bush rant.

One might ask why government was so unprepared for the disaster but this would bring up some royally uncomfortable verities about the way the United States snoozed its way through the entire 1990’s (George Bush #41 included), something Stevens and her ilk have no stomach for doing. It is much easier to simply blame it all on Bush with any alternate telling of the myth akin to breaking a commandment (that is, if lefties believed in such things).

Stevens’ complaints don’t end there:

United 93 is no Schindler’s List, relying on characterization and storytelling to draw viewers into identifying with an otherwise unimaginable horror. If anything, Greengrass’ agenda is an anti-identificatory one. If the Spielberg of Schindler’s List is a wheedling seducer, Greengrass is a chillingly precise archivist. He never cuts away to the families of the Flight 93 passengers, arriving home to listen to their heart-rending voicemail messages. He never visits the inside of the three planes that did crash into buildings that day; we’re aware of their fate only through the words of the air-traffic controllers, some clips of CNN news coverage, and one terrifying stock shot of the plane hitting the second tower. He barely even names the passengers—an hour into the movie, I still hadn’t figured out which one was Todd Beamer—and makes a point of stressing their utter unspecialness, their glazed stares and dull in-flight chatter. The suspense, such as it is, is purely negative—we know in advance what will happen to Flight 93, so the maddeningly slow burn of the film’s first hour (Businessmen heft suitcases! Flight attendants chat about condiments!) serves only to torment us with the anxiety of the inevitable.

Note to Dana: MAKE YOUR OWN GODDAMN MOVIE ABOUT FLIGHT #93 IF THAT’S THE WAY YOU FEEL ABOUT IT!

There is nothing more annoying than a “woulda, shoulda, coulda” critic who doesn’t possess an ounce of talent to actually make a film themselves but who is more than willing to tell a director how he should have made his. The movie Stevens is proposing Greengrass make is so far removed from the director’s vision that it makes her pouty, foot stomping tirade about what’s missing from U-93 sound like someone running their fingernails across a blackboard. Absolutely hopeless.

It’s fair game to criticize a director for an unfulfilled vision or a lazy vision, or even for having no vision at all. But to actually posit the notion that a critic’s judgement on what vision the director should have had as legitimate criticism smacks of pure politics to me.

And if that doesn’t convince you of the political motivations of Steven’s disguised critique of U-93, try this:

In the last five years, “9/11″ has become a generic brand name for terrorism, its sky-high recognition quotient useful for ginning up support for any and all manner of belligerent causes. The closest this film ever comes to a political statement—and possibly the only laugh line in the movie—is the snappish question of a beleaguered official: “Do we have any communication with the president at all?” Greenglass may not want to come right out and say it, but the audience’s weary chuckle made it clear: As we slog into the fourth year of the war being waged in 9/11’s wake (and, at least in part, in its name), there’s still no satisfactory answer to that question.

Yes, “9/11″ (the quote marks are a nice touch - as if only a few deluded souls care about it in any context at all) is very useful for “ginning up support” for “belligerent causes” - kinda like war except you and the other misanthropes on the left don’t really believe in that kind of nonsense. To you and your ideological brethren, what happened that day was more about skewering Bush than anything untoward that happened to the United States. It’s sickening.

As far as the “joke” about communications with the President, here’s more from the 9/11 Commission:

The NMCC learned of United 93’s hijacking at about 10:03.At this time the FAA had no contact with the military at the level of national command. The NMCC learned about United 93 from the White House. It, in turn, was informed by the Secret Service’s contacts with the FAA.225

NORAD had no information either. At 10:07, its representative on the air threat conference call stated that NORAD had “no indication of a hijack heading to DC at this time.”226

Repeatedly between 10:14 and 10:19, a lieutenant colonel at the White House relayed to the NMCC that the Vice President had confirmed fighters were cleared to engage inbound aircraft if they could verify that the aircraft was hijacked.227

The commander of NORAD, General Ralph Eberhart, was en route to the NORAD operations center in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, when the shootdown order was communicated on the air threat conference call. He told us that by the time he arrived, the order had already been passed down NORAD’s chain of command.228

It is not clear how the shootdown order was communicated within NORAD. But we know that at 10:31, General Larry Arnold instructed his staff to broadcast the following over a NORAD instant messaging system: “10:31 Vice president has cleared to us to intercept tracks of interest and shoot them down if they do not respond per [General Arnold].”229

More inconvenient facts regarding what was happening in the government that day. The answer to the question “Do we have any communication with the President at all?” was a resounding yes. The coordination between NORAD and the FAA was, as shown earlier, entirely inadequate to deal with the situation. The audience chuckling is much more indicative of the success that Stevens and others have had in perpetrating the myth of Bush incompetence that day than what really happened, something that Greengrass wasn’t interested in portraying anyway.

Yes we should be upset with our government for the way 9/11 was handled. It was incompetent. It was negligent. It was without question a disaster. But the exact same thing would have happened regardless of who was President. To say otherwise isn’t speculative, it’s a deliberate falsification of what we know from history.

If Stevens didn’t like U-93 that is her right. But to turn a movie review into a diatribe against the Bush Administration only makes her look like an idiot who doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

The following is fiction and meant as satire. Any resemblance between what is written and real, live, people is entirely coincidental except, of course, when it isn’t.

ONCE UPON A TIME there was a King named Berrywart. King Berrywart ruled the people of Unis, a relatively small kingdom located somewhere near France. Where exactly the French won’t say having been defeated in battle many times by the King’s small, but vicious army of armored marmosets and pike carrying ostriches. Many a battlefield had been well fertilized with the contents gleaned from French pantaloons left behind in retreat after retreat by the Grand Armée.

But French bashing is not really part of our fable. I just threw it in there because it’s fun.

King Berrywart had enormous problems. Some clever lad had constructed a vehicle that used turnip juice as fuel. The turnipmobile changed everyone’s way of life in Unis. No longer did people walk to the market. Now they drove their vehicles. This presented difficulties because parking became a bitch downtown plus have you ever smelled burning turnips?

Needless to say, with the immense popularity of the turnipmobile, the production of turnips became a top priority in the Kingdom. Several very clever peasants banded together in a loose alliance and essentially took over the entire production of turnips. They forced other peasants who were growing turnips out of business by charging a pittance for turnip juice, thus making it impossible for the smaller turnip growers to make a profit. They were absolutely ruthless.

These clever peasants also controlled the process which turned turnips into turnip juice. And while they competed amongst each other for customers, they were able to keep the price of turnip juice stable by refining just enough juice to satisfy the ever growing demand of the people for fuel.

The peasants became very rich. They wore rags imported from France. They lived in the finest of mud huts with floors made from the softest straw. The results were predictable. Other peasants who did not produce turnips and were forced into wearing old rags imported from Uruguay and living in small, dank, mud huts with dirt floors were jealous. They grumbled darkly about “conspiracy” and complained about the smell.

Now there were two political parties in Unis. For a long time, the Demon party controlled the Commons with the Pibble party in opposition. And while the Demons took campaign contributions from the rich peasants, they enacted all sorts of laws to make their lives and livelihoods difficult. First, in order to improve the parking downtown, the Demons imposed a tax on juice at the turnip press. The Demons built several parking garages (which almost immediately began to fall apart thanks to bid rigging, payoffs, shoddy materials, and an incompetent builder whose only qualification was that he was the brother in law of the head of the Demon party). Then they passed regulations that forced the rich peasants to remove the bad smell from the turnip juice when it burned. This proved to be easier said than done and their costs to refine turnip juice skyrocketed.

Of course, the rich peasants were forced to pass on these increased costs to the people of Unis. Not only that, they were forced to cut back production of turnips due to other regulations passed by the Demon controlled Commons. They were told they couldn’t grow turnips in certain fields because it spoiled the view of the mountains for some wealthy friends of the Demons. This forced the rich peasants to increase their yield per acre of turnips which added to the cost of the juice.

Then, a group of poor peasants petitioned the Commons to have the rich peasants remove several of the refining facilities because they were unsightly and smelled very, very bad. Always willing to pander to the voters (it’s how they stayed in power for so long), the Demons forced the refineries to close. And when the rich peasants asked if they could build other refineries to replace them, the Demons laughed them out of the Commons.

Needless to say, the rich peasants had to keep raising the price of turnip juice just to maintain their profits.

Finally, a new day dawned in Unis as the Pibble party wrested control of the Commons from the Demons. Seen as the rich peasant’s best friends, the Pibble party promised all sorts of relief for the their friends in the turnip business. They promised to let them grow turnips in fields that blocked the view of the mountains for some of the Demon’s wealthy contributors. They promised to ease up on the smell regs. They promised a lot but nothing ever came of their promises.

Time passed. The world changed. Now everyone was driving turnipmobiles. The rich peasants were forced to import more and more turnip juice from abroad just so that the people of Unis could be supplied with the vital fuel. But the supply from abroad was unreliable. Some peasants in far away Dinnerplate were willing to pay more for turnip juice so more supplies from abroad went there rather than Unis. Since the rich peasants had to buy turnip juice at the inflated price, the cost of juice at the press in Unis started to skyrocket.

This proved too much for the poor peasants in Unis who demanded that the Pibble party do something - anything - to bring the cost of turnip juice down. The Demons, seeing an opening, skewered the Pibble party for allowing the rich peasants to make enormous profits. Rather than try and explain that the rich peasant’s profits were necessary so that more domestic turnips could be grown and refined, the Pibble party turned on the rich peasants and demanded an investigation. The rich peasants were a little bemused. After all, it was the Commons that had forced this situation on everyone with their stupid, shortsighted, and ignorant turnip policies.

King Berrywart was befuddled. A former turnip grower himself, he sympathized with the rich peasants but was also sympathetic to his friends in the Pibble party. “We must give the people relief!” he cried. “We will give one hundred wartmarks (known as “wammers”) to all taxpaying citizens of Unis to help in this crisis.”

The kingdom’s economists did a double take when Berrywart made that announcement. They tried to follow the logic of Berrywart’s thinking but were unable to do so. Berrywart wanted to collect the tax on turnip juice, have the Kingdom’s tax bureaucrats count it, and then have them issue one hundred wammers to each taxpaying citizen? The economists figured such a program would cost at least 133 wammers per citizen which would add to the already ballooning deficit being run by the Kingdom. Why not just suspend the tax, they wondered?

Meantime, the Demons had a better idea (politically speaking, that is). If the Pibble party could pander to the people then the Demons could up the ante. “Let’s tax the excess profits on turnip juice,” they cried triumphantly. This had the advantage of playing to the ignorance of the people of Unis about how turnips are grown and refined while making them sound like they’re “doing something about the problem.”

Of course, all the scheming and planning by the Pibbles and the Demons did not produce one additional drop of turnip juice. So the price remained high. And the people?

The people of Unis took out their frustrations at the polls in November. And which party do you think suffered the most?

UPDATE

Powerline has the skinny on the Republican “plan” to save the nation.

UP TO 20,000 KNOXVILLE RESIDENTS TURNED OUT TO WELCOME HOME TENNESSEE’S 287TH REGIMENTAL COMBAT TEAM FROM IRAQ

It was almost a year ago that we were subjected by the press to non-stop, wall to wall coverage of the vigil outside of the President’s ranch by that Maven of Peace, that Rosa Parks of the Anti-War Movement, that Mother of Moonbats Cindy Sheehan.

We were told at the time that, like a comet that portends the future, Sheehan’s mass movement would sweep aside George Bush and the Republicans while bringing the troops in Iraq home. This unstoppable mass of humanity would be a powerful force for change that was growing every day and one might as well stand in front of a freight train as try and stop it.

But something strange happened on Mother Sheehan’s ride toward immortality; hardly anyone else got on the train with her:

CINDY SHEEHAN MARCHES TO THE WHITE HOUSE WITH THE REST OF HER MASS PROTEST MOVEMENT

To this day, Sheehan is still a player in search of an audience, still desperately seeking attention as saner liberals tip toe away in embarrassment having once supported her. The fact that her unhinged rhetoric (she once called New Orleans “an occupied city”) has made her a laughingstock on the right still doesn’t seem to stop the media from writing glowing paeans to her and her cause.

I bring this up because yesterday, the residents of Knoxville showed Sheehan and all the other lefties what a real mass movement is: patriotic Americans welcoming home troops and thanking them for a job well done:

Up to 20,000 people turned out Saturday for a parade to welcome home the National Guard’s 278th Regimental Combat Team, providing a big-city atmosphere powered by small-town values.

The rains that had been pelting the region ceased and the clouds gave way to bright sunshine for the two-hour Celebrate Freedom Parade 2006 through downtown Knoxville.

“What a great sight this is on the street today,” said Gov. Phil Bredesen as he reviewed the 2,500 members of the 278th standing in parade formation wearing their camouflage uniforms. As governor, Bredesen is commander of the Tennessee National Guard.

Bredesen said the men and women of the 278th who were deployed to Iraq for a year represent “what is the very best of our state and the very best of our nation.”

“I thank you for your courage and sacrifices,” the governor told the soldiers. “You left as trained citizens and you came back as warriors.”

Kudos to the Governor and the residents of Knoxville for showing the rest of America how to really support the troops.

Hopefully, this will give other cities and towns the idea to show our heroes how much we truly appreciate their sacrifices and respect the job that they and their comrades still in harms way are doing to advance the cause of freedom in Iraq.

And then there is this from a father who lost a son in Iraq who came out to welcome home his dead son’s friends and comrades:

Gary Lee Reese Sr., of Ashland City, Tenn., lost his 22-year-old son Sgt. Gary L. Reese Jr. on Aug. 13, 2005, to a similar [IED] device. Serving in Iraq, Reese said, provided his son a perspective on life he never would have gained otherwise.

“I think the soldiers saw that these people should have the opportunity to have what we have,” Reese said. “He stood up for the right thing, and I’m very proud of that,” Reese said. He added he rarely saw a picture of his son in Iraq without children surrounding the soldier.

“Those little kids who got to know Lee knew he wasn’t there to teach them how to strap bombs on. He was there to help them have what he has.

“I know his life wasn’t wasted because he gave those children an opportunity see who the good guys are and who the bad guys are.”

We’ll give John Hinderaker the last word:

Amid all of the adoring publicity that is lavished on extremists like Cindy Sheehan, or malcontents like the seven now-famous generals, couldn’t the dominant media find just a moment to take note of Mr. Reese’s inexpressibly noble perspective on his son’s life and death?

Oh, the perilous, evil times in which we live.

The current escalation in the war between liberals and conservatives just took a very nasty turn as far left websites have published personal information, including the address and exact location, of Michelle Malkin’s house. The stated purpose was revenge: Malkin published the contact information contained in a press release from a University of California-Santa Cruz student group who physically threatened and violently intimidated military recruiters who had come on campus to participate in a job fair. The young military men were forced to leave fearing for their safety as well as the safety of anyone who may have been able to run the gauntlet of shouting, spitting, pushing leftist lickspittles who were trying to impose their idea of “free speech” on those who may have been a little more open minded about that alien concept in wishing to see the recruiters. (I would think anyone with courage enough to endure those kind of hardships just to see military recruiters should have been signed up pronto).

It is unfortunate that these facts have been drowned out by the subsequent brouhaha over Malkin’s publishing the student’s contact information. Or perhaps not. Lefty websites ignored the free speech implications of the UCSC incident until Ezra Klein came out with his best imitation of Joe “Have you no shame” Welch. His curious use of the euphemism “slug” to describe Malkin was probably appreciated by Michelle in that lefties routinely use very personal anatomical descriptives in referring to her. Klein’s dramatic, chest thumping denunciation of Malkin for publishing a press release was extraordinarily revealing. The student “protest” (assault) was just harmless fun! They’re “undergraduates,” for Gosh sakes.

And then, the jaw dropper:

Malkin has already done grievous harm to an idea. I went to UC Santa Cruz. It’s entirely possible I was friends with some of those Malkin has placed in danger. It’s a school filled with young, idealistic kids determined to save the world, feeling their way through uncertain thickets of ideology and unfamiliar collections of ideas, and naive about the dangers of direct political action outside a university’s protected confines. That, after all, is what college is about — providing a protected space for young adults to experiment, learn, try out ideas and identities. If they made a mistake attaching their home numbers to a press release, it’s understandable — forgive them father, they know not what they do.

Malkin lays claim to no such ignorance. A skilled and experienced rhetorical warrior, she saw the pale, white flesh of their throats and lunged. The vicious always seek out the weak. Rather than forgive their poorly-written, too-revealing press release, she published their oversight, opening them to danger and harm. If any of these students are hurt by a crazed Malkinite, the blood will drip from her hands, the guilt will burden her shoulders. But forgive her just the same, for there is nought else she can do.

Oh puh leeze!

Did anyone else laugh out loud when reading “she saw the pale, white flesh of their throats and lunged?” That’s not hyperbole. It’s juvenile. One might expect to see something like that in the diary entry of a 12 year old girl.

And the idea that college “provides a protected space” so that these students can violently intimidate people they disagree with is one of the most outrageous ideas I’ve ever heard. Yes, let them protest the recruiters visit. Let them stand outside the venue and spout their slogans, wave their signs, even try and shame people who wish to visit the recruiters. But to physically insinuate themselves to prevent people from seeing the recruiters in the first place is wrong - wrong for anyone, of any age, in any place, at any time. And throwing rocks, slashing tires, pushing, shoving, spitting, and threatening violence are not the acts of innocents. They are the acts of criminals.

Of course, we’re now beyond the debate about what went on at UCSC and into the bloody aftermath; Malkin’s publishing the press release containing the telephone numbers of those poor, innocent college students. This is something Malkin does quite often. She publishes contact information of school principals, corporate CEO’s, college professors, local elected officials, and anyone and everyone who demonstrates either extraordinary cluelessness or a particular bias against conservatives. It is the fact that she encourages her readers to initiate contact that has lefty blogs up in arms.

The default position of Klein, et al is that because there is a minuscule percentage of Malkin’s 144,000 daily readers who are in desperate need of psychological help, she should have refrained from publishing the contact numbers of the students. This brings up a fascinating question; are bloggers responsible for the actions and attitudes of their readers? Are novelists? Are newspapers, screenwriters, and anyone else whose writings see the light of day responsible if some wacko makes a threatening phone call?

John Aravosis agrees with Klein; absolutely yes:

Malkin, on the other hand, has posted the phone numbers and email addresses of college kids on her uber-trafficked site, and the kids are now getting deluged with hate. It’s wrong, in terms of sicing your audience on kids. It’s also wrong in terms of once kids are getting death threats and they ask you to stop, you really ought to stop (hell, even for adults, if things start to get THAT out of control, you really ought to reconsider your activism strategy). Not dig in your heels in order to prove some bizarre, and rather sick, point.

And finally, having her audience call these kids is a rather bizarre, and I’m not convinced defensible, practice. It’s one thing to call a corporation to complain about their sponsorship of x, y or z. But having your audience call up individual activists and yell at them because of a protest they held, that seems to start bordering on creepy and un-democratic.

In a demented sort of way, Avarosis has a point. Even though the last I heard, none of the students had been in contact with Malkin and asked that she remove the information (the same info is still available on at least three lefty websites), from my own personal point of view, once I heard that they were receiving death threats, I probably would have pulled the information. In the end, one does have a modicum of responsibility not only toward people who read your site but also anyone affected by what’s on it. It’s ridiculous to believe that Malkin deliberately set out to injure these idiot kids by publishing their little mimeographed press release. But once it became clear that some of her readers had crossed the line, I personally would have pulled the information without comment or notice.

That said, what do you make of people publishing Malkin’s home address and the location of her house?

The crickets are chirping on the left as only one blogger has mentioned the outing of Malkin’s personal information - and that was to simply tweak Jeff Goldstein’s nose. Goldstein applauds Malkins defiance of her tormentors and adds this:

So. I am now calling for the very public condemnation and ostracizing of those who would post satellite photos and personal addresses of a their political opponents on the web. I am also calling for the public condemnation and ostracizing of those hyperpartisan bloggers / media figures who condone or applaud such actions.

Jeff Goldstein is absolutely correct. The potential damage this practice could do to political speech demands that left and right make this a line of demarcation - a “line of death” to cross. Anyone, be they right or left who crosses this line should be immediately de-linked. Anyone who still links to the offending site should also be delinked. Anyone who links a post from the offending site (even to make sport of it or to criticize it) should be delinked.

For that reason, I am going to delink the Democratic Underground from my sidebar (as soon as I can figure out how to do it). And I am putting on notice anyone who still has them on their blogroll by this time next week will also be delinked. This includes numerous righty bloggers who link to them under the rubric of “The Enemy” or “The Left.”

And no, I will not delink Malkin even though some apparently have. The difference between what she did and what the DU crew did is night and day. Publishing a press release is one thing. Inviting people to physically harass someone is quite another.

This kind of thing must be nipped in the bud now before it gets out of control.

UPDATE

If you know of other lefty websites who published this information or linked to it, please let me know who they were.

Also, an absolute must read by The Anchoress: Judas and the Cult of Malevolent Mendacity.

It is very difficult to examine Carl Bernstein’s lengthy piece in Vanity Fair calling for a Senate investigation into the policies of the Bush Administration if, for no other reason, than trying to figure out the author’s purpose. There are times when Bernstein seems to be advocating the formation of a Senate Committee a la the Senate Watergate Committee (indeed, he cites the Ervin Committee endlessly as an example of good, bi-partisan government at work) and then there are times when he seems to be saying that we should simply skip the investigation and go right to impeachment.

Clearly, Bernstein was torn between trying to write an overview of what troubles him about the Bush Administration (and not coincidentally, Congressional Republicans) and a bill of particulars for impeachment and conviction of the President. In that respect, the article comes off as a vicious partisan attack, repeating every opposition charge made against the President over the last five years. Some of Bernstein’s charges actually border on the surreal as in his blaming Bush for “losing” New Orleans, as if the President could have held back the flood waters or moderated the winds of hurricane Katrina in some way. Botching the recovery is a legitimate criticism. Blaming the President for the weather is silly.

That said, Bernstein’s indictment cannot be easily dismissed. Nor should it be. Thoughtful Republicans, as Bernstein points out, have raised serious questions about many of the particulars the author uses to illustrate what he and the Democrats consider to be Administration malfeasance. Specifically, the roots of detainee abuse, the questionable legality of the NSA intercept program (of which no one can make a definitive legal judgement due to a lack of specifics), the continuing controversy over pre-war intelligence and whether it was “twisted” or simply mistaken, and a host of other issues that Bernstein says requires a bi-partisan Senate investigating Committee to examine.

Bernstein is dreaming if he actually believes it is possible for such a Committee to be formed by Republicans. He is being equally frivolous if he thinks that Senate Democrats would demonstrate even the minimum amount of bi-partisanship required not to turn the workings of such a committee into a three ring circus. And he cannot be serious in comparing the Senate Watergate Committee from 30 years ago - a time that the saw the three major networks taking extraordinary care in their coverage of the Committee’s deliberations - with any such committee convened today where cable news, Comedy Central, MTV, CMT, Pat Robertson, and even Al Gore’s Current TV would all be vying for audience and attention.

The world of news and news gathering have undergone a revolution since Watergate with not only the proliferation of news outlets but the way in which news itself is covered. I cannot imagine investigative hearings of the kind envisioned by Mr. Bernstein not degenerating into the most vile media spectacle of the age, a feeding frenzy that would render any judgement made by such a committee suspect in the eyes of most fair minded Americans.

Even more worrisome is the absolutely chilling effect such hearings would have on the Office of the President. There are legitimate questions regarding the questionable use of executive power by the Bush Administration. Only the most partisan Republican could say otherwise. It is part of the democratic process that these questions be asked, debated, agonized over, and examined closely for any actual abuse. But in an age of terror where a strong Chief Executive is absolutely essential to protect the homeland, can we afford another emasculation of Presidential powers as occurred in the wake of Watergate? Some of what President Bush has done to wage war against Islamic jihadists has stretched his enumerated and implied constitutional powers to the limit. For this reason, a serious examination by Congress may, in fact, be necessary to resolve questions of legality so that future Presidents will have the freedom - or be constrained as the case may be - to act surely and decisively on our behalf to protect us without worrying about whether the House Judiciary Committee will seek to throw him out of office.

In this respect, I agree with Bernstein that the Republican Congress has failed miserably. The last 5 years have seen the Congress abrogate its responsibilities as overseers of the American republic. Charges of corruption in war contracts, Katrina contracts, the waste of taxpayer’s money in both of those enterprises, and a lack of curiosity on the part of Congress to delve deeply into issues like domestic spying, detainee abuse, the war between the White House and the CIA, the Saddam documents, and even the leaking of classified materials that Mr. Bernstein applauds but which only the most rabid Democratic partisan would see as harmless to our national security.

But nothing happens in a vacuum. And the fact of the matter is, we live in a time when the opposition party simply cannot be trusted to maintain even the appearance of impartiality if such hearings were to convene. If this sounds like both parties are at fault for the current state of affairs, so be it. Both sides are being driven by rabid partisans that make up their respective base of support. This kind of polarization simply was not present 30 years ago when the Watergate Committee hearings convened and would today lead to judgements by a similar kind of investigative committee suspect in the eyes of nearly half of the electorate regardless of what evidence emerged or conclusions reached.

For Bernstein’s part, he makes many compelling arguments for investigating the President while at the same time offering some of the flimsiest evidence for impeachment:

Perhaps there are facts or mitigating circumstances, given the extraordinary nature of conceiving and fighting a war on terror, that justify some of the more questionable policies and conduct of this presidency, even those that turned a natural disaster in New Orleans into a catastrophe of incompetence and neglect. But the truth is we have no trustworthy official record of what has occurred in almost any aspect of this administration, how decisions were reached, and even what the actual policies promulgated and approved by the president are. Nor will we, until the subpoena powers of the Congress are used (as in Watergate) to find out the facts—not just about the war in Iraq, almost every aspect of it, beginning with the road to war, but other essential elements of Bush’s presidency, particularly the routine disregard for truthfulness in the dissemination of information to the American people and Congress.

The first fundamental question that needs to be answered by and about the president, the vice president, and their political and national-security aides, from Donald Rumsfeld to Condoleezza Rice, to Karl Rove, to Michael Chertoff, to Colin Powell, to George Tenet, to Paul Wolfowitz, to Andrew Card (and a dozen others), is whether lying, disinformation, misinformation, and manipulation of information have been a basic matter of policy—used to overwhelm dissent; to hide troublesome truths and inconvenient data from the press, public, and Congress; and to defend the president and his actions when he and they have gone awry or utterly failed.

This “How often do you beat your wife, Mr. President” approach may score points in partisan Democratic circles but can hardly be taken seriously in any other context. For instance, the idea that dissent from Bush Administration policies has been overwhelmed is laughable. And hiding “inconvenient” facts and data from the press? This is an impeachable offense? Lying to Congress or concealing information from them would be a crime. Spinning data to put the best possible face on the news is an art form, one of the truly regrettable aspects of the modern presidency. Each succeeding Administration over the last 25 years has sought to manage the press and the information available to it. The idea of making such a practice grounds for impeachment is ridiculous.

Having said that, Mr. Bernstein’s point regarding the lack of understanding of how several high profile failures of the Bush Administration came about are good ones. Examining the decision making process and even second guessing executive department decisions is a legitimate function of Congress that Republicans have ignored. This is simply bad government and conservatives who care about this country should be outraged at the lackadaisical way in which Congress has gone about the vital business of oversight during the Bush Administration. They demonstrated no such reluctance during the Clinton years.
And while politics certainly plays a role in such decisions, oversight responsibilities even of the majority party must be embraced if for no other reason than to maintain the separation of powers between Congress and the Executive.

Will such investigations lead to the impeachment of the President? Here’s Bernstein’s summary of the charges:

Most of what we have learned about the reality of this administration—and the disconcerting mind-set and decision-making process of President Bush himself—has come not from the White House or the Pentagon or the Department of Homeland Security or the Treasury Department, but from insider accounts by disaffected members of the administration after their departure, and from distinguished journalists, and, in the case of a skeletal but hugely significant body of information, from a special prosecutor. And also, of late, from an aide-de-camp to the British prime minister. Almost invariably, their accounts have revealed what the president and those serving him have deliberately concealed—torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, and its apparent authorization by presidential fiat; wholesale N.S.A. domestic wiretapping in contravention of specific prohibitive law; brutal interrogations of prisoners shipped secretly by the C.I.A. and U.S. military to Third World gulags; the nonexistence of W.M.D. in Iraq; the role of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney’s chief of staff in divulging the name of an undercover C.I.A. employee; the non-role of Saddam Hussein and Iraq in the events of 9/11; the death by friendly fire of Pat Tillman (whose mother, Mary Tillman, told journalist Robert Scheer, “The administration tried to attach themselves to his virtue and then they wiped their feet with him”); the lack of a coherent post-invasion strategy for Iraq, with all its consequent tragedy and loss and destabilizing global implications; the failure to coordinate economic policies for America’s long-term financial health (including the misguided tax cuts) with funding a war that will drive the national debt above a trillion dollars; the assurance of Wolfowitz (since rewarded by Bush with the presidency of the World Bank) that Iraq’s oil reserves would pay for the war within two to three years after the invasion; and Bush’s like-minded confidence, expressed to Blair, that serious internecine strife in Iraq would be unlikely after the invasion.

But most grievous and momentous is the willingness—even enthusiasm, confirmed by the so-called Downing Street Memo and the contemporaneous notes of the chief foreign-policy adviser to British prime minister Tony Blair—to invent almost any justification for going to war in Iraq (including sending up an American U-2 plane painted with U.N. markings to be deliberately shot down by Saddam Hussein’s air force, a plan hatched while the president, the vice president, and Blair insisted to the world that war would be initiated “only as a last resort”). Attending the meeting between Bush and Blair where such duplicity was discussed unabashedly (”intelligence and facts” would be jiggered as necessary and “fixed around the policy,” wrote the dutiful aide to the prime minister) were Ms. Rice, then national-security adviser to the president, and Andrew Card, the recently departed White House chief of staff.

Bernstein sets the impeachment bar extremely low which, in my mind, destroys his entire critique. “Misleading” the country in the lead up to the war would seem to be his most serious charge. But relying on the so called Downing Street “memos” would be problematic in the extreme. What exactly does” fixed” mean? And Bernstein’s characterization of intelligence and facts being “jiggered as necessary” is pure partisan spin.

This is not the only partisanship shown by Bernstein in the article:

Is incompetence an impeachable offense? The question is another reason to defer the fraught matter of impeachment (if deserved) in the Bush era until the ground is prepared by a proper fact-finding investigation and public hearings conducted by a sober, distinguished committee of Congress.

We have never had a presidency in which the single unifying thread that flows through its major decision-making was incompetence—stitched together with hubris and mendacity on a Nixonian scale. There will be no shortage of witnesses to question about the subject,…

The “question” of whether or not incompetence is an impeachable offense is ludicrous and if any Congressional investigation were to take it up would be grounds for committing the bunch of them. This is simply not serious and Bernstein should know it.

And Bernstein’s constant, annoying comparisons to Watergate smack of a certain kind of triumphalism on his part that dilutes his main arguments. Nixon’s impeachable offenses were committed against domestic political opponents. Bush’s transgressions - if any there be that would rise to the level of impeachment - would be against the enemies of the United States except for the question of the Administration’s pre war activities and the pushback against Joe Wilson’s lies (which should also be seen in context of the partisan warfare being carried out by the CIA against the White House).

But it is at the end of his piece that Bernstein proves he’s learned very little in 30 years:

After Nixon’s resignation, it was often said that the system had worked. Confronted by an aberrant president, the checks and balances on the executive by the legislative and judicial branches of government, and by a free press, had functioned as the founders had envisioned.

The system has thus far failed during the presidency of George W. Bush—at incalculable cost in human lives, to the American political system, to undertaking an intelligent and effective war against terror, and to the standing of the United States in parts of the world where it previously had been held in the highest regard.

There was understandable reluctance in the Congress to begin a serious investigation of the Nixon presidency. Then there came a time when it was unavoidable. That time in the Bush presidency has arrived.

Contrary to what Bernstein and the press have believed for 30 years, the “system” failed in that President Nixon was hounded to resign rather than go to trial in the Senate where he almost certainly would have been convicted. Our “system” does not include the press having the power to change who is President. That power is constitutionally reserved for the Congress. And George Bush is suffering from an excess of “hubris and mendacity on a Nixonian scale?”

The author’s crack about our “standing in the world” also shows a total lack comprehension on Bernstein’s part. This is part of the myth surrounding 9/11 where everyone supported us until George Bush blew it and made everyone mad at us. The outpouring of sympathy for the American people was unprecedented following 9/11. And so was the feeling of satisfaction on the part of even our closest allies that the government of the United States had suffered a blow. Former Ambassador to Great Britain Phillip Lader was reduced to tears on the BBC program Question Time 2 days after 9/11 by people in the audience who jeered and slow handclapped when he tried to defend American policy.

Is Bernstein correct? Is it time to investigate Bush? If there was a way it could be done that would guarantee even the appearance of fairness, I would be for Congress looking into some of the more problematic areas of the Bush Administration’s habit of sidling up to the line of legality with regards to the exercise of executive power. But since there is no way such an investigation wouldn’t degenerate into a simple exercise in partisanship, why bother? If the Democrats take control of Congress, they will have such a partisan investigation. And unless some “smoking gun” can be found that shows the President committing outrageously illegal acts, there is no way Bush would ever be convicted.

Bernstein’s article, a combination of thought provoking analysis and partisan hackery, should at least act as a catalyst for a discussion that is long overdue by Republicans regarding the state of their own house. Something must be done if the party is going to maintain not only its majority status but also the confidence of the American people. We might start by taking a hard look at the people currently in leadership positions and hold them accountable for their actions.

UPDATE

Ralph Luker makes the same point I made here about the danger of impeachment becoming a regular feature in Washington when there is divided government:

Of course, impeachment proceedings begin in the House of Representatives, not the Senate, but holding impeachment proceedings in the second terms of two presidents in a row would set a terrible precedent for the future of the American presidency. Two recent presidents have set some bad precedents, themselves, however; and there seems to be no other remedy short of enduring another 2½ years of this.