Right Wing Nut House

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

The withdrawal of Harriet Miers to be Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States was due in no small part to a tiny, but very influential group of conservative writers and thinkers who viewed the nomination of the President’s personal lawyer as a betrayal of both conservative principles and the President’s own election year promise to nominate strict constructionists to the high court. And now that these advocates have succeeded, the question must be asked of them: What have you gained?

The President has been humiliated and weakened. Democrats have been strengthened and emboldened. The conservative movement is in disarray. And the chances of actually confirming one of their favorites - either Judge Janis Rogers Brown or Priscilla Owens - are about as likely as my pet cat Snowball being capable of reciting the Gettysburg Address.

In fact, I am hard pressed to think of anything the opponents of Miers have gained either for themselves or the conservative movement. Putting on a brave front and declaring that the withdrawal of Miers is a victory for conservative principles is wishful thinking. A fat lot of good those principles will do you when the fallout from this Presidential humiliation depresses turnout in next year’s election and hands the Senate to the Democrats. Of course there are other factors at play when it comes to elections but for good or ill, the base of evangelical Christians who have been the President’s strongest supporters - and the most difficult voters to get to the polls in the first place - were the biggest and most enthusiastic supporters of the nomination. They may decide that their interests lie elsewhere on election day.

I can understand the comeback from Miers’ opponents that the President himself is to blame for nominating her in the first place. There is much truth in that statement as I devoutly wish the President could have seen his way clear in nominating a Brown, an Owens, or a Luttig. Any of those worthies would have been a fine choice for conservatives. Such a selection would have been praised and eagerly supported by the very same folks who opposed the Miers nomination.

But politics is the art of the possible. I daresay that prior to the Miers nomination, it would have been a bruising, uphill battle to get 50 votes for one of those nominees in the Senate. And, since it is extremely likely that the Democrats would desperately oppose the nomination of any conservative of that stripe given that their base would be insistent on countering any move that had the slightest chance of putting a Justice on the Supreme Court who would tip the balance against Roe v Wade, the only option available to the Republicans in the Senate would be the use of the so-called “nuclear option” to break a left-wing filibuster.

Would Majority Leader Frist have the 51 votes necessary to break the log jam? If he couldn’t get the caucus to vote for it last May prior to the deal on lower court nominations made by the so-called “Gang of 14,” how could they possibly believe that Frist would have the votes now? The President is weaker. Republicans are weaker. And we’re that much closer to the 2006 mid terms. Every poll taken on the use of the nuclear option has shown a clear majority of Americans opposed to it. And it is not at all clear that Republican moderates like Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Lincoln Chaffee, and others wouldn’t oppose both the nomination of a Pro-Life candidate and the use of the nuclear option to end any filibuster.

Now the withdrawal of Miers has made the nomination of any strong conservative extremely problematic. Democrats smell blood in the water and, given the President’s weakened position,would feel no compunction about a filibuster, daring Republicans to break it. There is little doubt that the left-wing base of the Democratic party would hold their Senator’s feet to the fire in order to prevent at all costs the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice who would vote to overturn Roe. It is the Ur issue for almost all the interest groups who spend so much in “independent” ads on behalf of Democrats.

And yet, the Miers opponents have not seemed to grasp the fact that by opposing her nomination and now causing her withdrawal, it has cut the legs from underneath the President and the party at a crucial time. Is there much doubt as to the timing of Mier’s withdrawal what with the Special Prosecutor’s indictments coming today? The President, as all Presidents must do, has cut his losses by accepting (or asking for) the withdrawal in order to clear the decks to face what is going to clearly be the crisis of his Presidency. These indictments will dominate the news for weeks. And if what I’ve heard coming from Administration surrogates over the past few days about how the charges will not be serious, that the crime of outing a covert CIA agent has been proven wrong, then the White House is seriously underestimating the impact these indictments will have on voters.

Fairly or unfairly, Republicans are in no position to talk about perjury being an inconsequential criminal act. No matter the whys and wherefores of the charges, the American people would see any such effort by Republicans to paint the transgressions of Libby, Rove and the rest as a case where “everybody does it” or worse, “it’s not that serious of an offense” as rank hypocrisy given the Clinton troubles.

The President may have lanced a boil on his Administration by killing the Miers nomination but at what cost? Given that the nomination of a strong conservative is not in the offing, who are we likely to get?

It would have to be someone who has already been vetted for the high court since the White House plans on announcing another choice as early as this weekend. And like it or not, the demands of “diversity” on the court by both the press and the Democrats resonates with a majority of Americans. Plus, it is apparent that the President would love to nominate the first Hispanic Justice. If not a woman, then how about Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez?

These same conservatives who opposed Miers have largely made it clear that Gonzalez would be unacceptable. The Attorney General supports affirmative action and is identified as a moderate on some social issues. Sound familiar? If you thought you heard the same things about Harriet Miers you are correct. Gonzalez would be grilled mercilessly by Democrats on the Judiciary Committee over the so-called “Torture Memos” where, in the first days of the War on Terror the Administration was groping for a policy on detainees and the memos offered options and opinions on what was legal and what should be done. But in the end, like Justice Roberts, Gonzalez may be able to garner enough Democratic votes to kill any possibility of a filibuster.

This is what the President needs at this moment; a slam dunk, fairly easy win. Conservatives have stepped up the rhetoric over the last 24 hours and seem eager for a fight. But did it ever occur to them that maybe the President isn’t quiet as enamored of the idea of going to war with the Democrats in the Senate? Perhaps the President is interested in getting some of his dormant legislative agenda enacted for this term? Any long, drawn out fight in the Senate over a Supreme Court nominee would derail the efforts to reform social security, enact tax reform, or any number of other issues near and dear to the President’s heart.

The clock is ticking on the Presidency of George Bush. I’m sure he is painfully aware of that fact. The derailment of the Miers nomination has speeded up that clock which is now ticking toward a day when the President’s power to affect that national agenda is severely limited by his lame duck status.

While the President’s troubles are not all of their doing, the opponents of the Miers nomination have been most unhelpful. And the fact that they have gained little but ideological satisfaction from their actions makes me question whether or not they truly realize the damage they have done to the Presidency of a man they still profess to support and admire.

As Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald methodically goes about the business of deciding whether to indict one or more White House officials in L’Affaire d’Plame, it is becoming increasingly clear that no one is going to jail for telling reporters that Ambassador Joe Wilson’s wife convinced the CIA to send him on a mission to Niger to give his consulting business a boost. Rather, it appears that in what can only be described as the cruelest of ironies, Scooter Libby and perhaps (although not very likely) Karl Rove will be charged with crimes related to the investigation of the leak.

Libby especially is in jeopardy thanks to his too cozy relationship with New York Times reporter Judith Miller. It appears that Libby is a typical Washingtonienne, a gossip extraordiaire who cultivates his relationship with reporters by passing along juicy personal tidbits about players in both politics and the bureaucracy. The cozy breakfasts, the intimate lunches, perhaps even the late night cocktails at the Mayflower Hotel bar or some other quiet corner of Washington are the standard venues for the purveyors of this gossip. For people like Libby, it gives them a special thrill when they see the tidbits published in important papers like the Washington Post or New York Times - almost as if their names were in the paper. At the very least, they know that the gossip mongers will then be speculating about who let that particular cat out of the bag and the cycle repeats itself.

Only this time, Libby has apparently not been able to keep the timeline regarding his gossip mongering straight. Or, just as likely, he fudged that timeline a bit to protect his boss, the Vice President, from being dragged into the leak investigation in the first place. Either way, it appears that Mr. Libby is toast. This article in today’s New York Times reports that Vice President Cheney knew about Joe Wilson’s wife almost a month before Wilson went public with his tantrum against the administration for not recognizing his brilliance in cracking the Niger-Iraq uranium caper:

. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby’s testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson’s husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration’s handling of intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program to justify the war.

Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

Mr. Libby’s notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson’s undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent’s identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent’s undercover status.

A couple of things to note from this article. The fact that Cheney probably asked Tenet about Plame makes perfect sense when one considers the circumstances surrounding Joe Wilson’s curious campaign for recognition and self-aggrandizement in the months following his trip to Niger.

By Wilson’s own admission, he had been shopping the story of his Niger trip to reporters for months before his OpEd in the Times:

I was determined that the story was going to have to get out. I did not particularly want the story to have my name on it. I wanted the U.S. government to say what they said on July 7, that the 16 words should never have been in the State of the Union address. So I began responding to reporters’ inquiries, but always on background. I didn’t want the publicity, but more to the point, there is a nasty habit in Washington of attempting to destroy or discredit the message by discrediting the messenger, and it was important to me that the message have legs before those who would want to discredit the messenger found out who the messenger was. So I spoke to a number of reporters over the ensuing months. Each time they asked the White House or the State Department about it, they would feign ignorance. I became even more convinced that I was going to have to tell the story myself.

Now, put yourself in the White House’s shoes. Here you have this loose cannon running around town 1) blabbing about a classified matter, and 2) spreading falsehoods about what actually happened. As early as May, Wilson had succeeded in getting Administration critic Nicholas Kristoff of the New York Times to write a column about his “secret” trip to Niger in search evidence that Iraq tried to buy yellow cake uranium to restart their nuclear program. Kristoff, with his ties to several current and former CIA employees - many of whom have turned out to be partisan Democrats - had been getting selective, cherry picked leaks for months regarding the CIA’s innocence in telling the Administration of Iraq’s WMD capability. This fit in perfectly with Kristoff’s invented narrative that the Administration had “twisted” intelligence to make the case for war with Iraq.

As if to confirm what I have been writing about for months regarding this bureaucratic war between the White House and the CIA, the Washington Post, on the eve of the probable indictments of Administration officials in the Plame case, have finally come out and given context to the entire matter by showing that the Administration push-back against the CIA and not any personal motive of revenge against Wilson was the reason officials tried to discredit him:

The alleged leaking of a CIA operative’s name had its roots in a clash over Iraq policy between White House insiders and their rivals in the permanent bureaucracy of Washington, especially in the State Department and the CIA.

As the investigation into the leak reaches its expected climax this week with the expiration of the grand jury’s term, the internal disputes have been further amplified by a recent string of speeches and interviews criticizing the administration’s handling of Iraq, including by former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, the former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and State Department diplomats, and other officials involved in the early efforts to stabilize Iraq.

The article glosses over the election power play made by a group of CIA partisans - probably centered in Valerie Plame’s WINPAC division at the CIA - who sought to interfere in the election of an American President by selectively leaking information about the Iraq WMD to friendly reporters. All along, we’ve gotten hints that have led to speculation that the real reason for Wilson’s trip (besides his wife’s attempt to help get his fledgling consulting business get off the ground) could have been an attempt to embarrass the President. My friend AJ at Strato-Sphere, who has been on top of this case from the outset, has a link to a UPI report that show Fitzgerald was investigating the source of the so-called Niger forgeries; documents that purported to show Iraqi attempts to buy Niger yellow cake.

What makes this effort by Fitzgerald significant is Joe Wilson’s public claim that he knew they were forgeries because “the dates and names” were wrong. Only one problem there: Wilson never saw the Niger forgeries:

Wilson has also armed his critics by misstating some aspects of the Niger affair. For example, Wilson told The Washington Post anonymously in June 2003 that he had concluded that the intelligence about the Niger uranium was based on forged documents because “the dates were wrong and the names were wrong.” The Senate intelligence committee, which examined pre-Iraq war intelligence, reported that Wilson “had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports.” Wilson had to admit he had misspoken.

“Misspoken” may be the understatement of the week. Wilson out and out lied. What is curious is where he would have gotten that information because indeed, the documents list as Prime Minister of Niger someone who had been out of office for years. In other words, Wilson did not “misspeak” anything; he was simply repeating what he had been told by someone with access to the secret documents. The fact that he falls asleep every night next to someone with access to that classified information should tell you all you need to know about Wilson’s role in this entire affair.

In short, Wilson has been acting like the classic CIA errand boy - a conduit to the outside world who can leak to reporters all sorts of classified information while shielding his masters at the CIA from charges that they violated their oaths not to reveal the nation’s secrets. He has perhaps proved himself a little more flamboyant than his friends at the agency would have preferred with a photo spread in Vanity Fair not to mention a book deal and appearances on every political talk show in Christendom. But he has served his purpose well.

How far Fitzgerald will go in his indictments remain to be seen. He could only charge Libby with making false statements and obstruction. Or, if the Special Prosecutor is going to cast a wider net, he may simply drag 5 or 6 Administration officials before a judge on conspiracy charges. Even though no crime was committed in outing Plame, Fitzgerald may try to make a case that there was a conspiracy to keep him from finding out who said what to whom. If that is the case, expect the worst if you’re a Republican and euphoria if you’re a Democrat.

Deyan Sudjic is the architectural critic for The Guardian’s Observer Magazine and is considered one of the doyens of the architectural world.

He is also a member in good standing of that amorphous group of international elitists who have discovered that their purpose in life is to tell the rest of us how truly insignificant and banal is our existence - probably because we don’t recognize their brilliant intellects and breathtaking cleverness.

In fact, Sudjic is so clever that when writing this OpEd in Sunday’s New York Times, he tied himself into rhetorical knots in his attempt to connect opponents of the so-called “Freedom Center” at Ground Zero to Nazis, Mussolini, and Imelda Marcos:

Messrs. Pataki and Bloomberg may or may not know it, but they are following a trail that takes them right back to the pyramids, not to mention mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, who bankrupted his country building ever more elaborate palaces, and Imelda Marcos, whose passion for monumental architecture was vastly more expensive than her better-known enthusiasm for footwear.

The use of an obscure historical figure like King Ludwig to chastise critics of the Freedom Center is a perfect example of how elitists like Sudjic try and show how vastly superior they are to the rest of us. And it underscores the problem with Mr. Sudjic’s editorial; by trying to connect opponents of the Freedom Center to dictators and tyrants, Mr. Sujdic obscures the fact that Governor Pataki made his decision to abandon the Center based on good old fashioned democratic politics. The fact is, the organized effort to toss that monstrous affront to the memory of the victims who lost their lives on 9/11 was solidly grounded in something elitsts always have a hard time understanding: The Will of the People.

Sudjic doesn’t have a clue. He tries to compare Pataki’s decision to ax the Freedom Center with former Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s meglomaniacal attempt to rebuild the state capitol of Albany:

During his 18-year campaign to turn Albany into a Brasília-on-the-Hudson as some sort of bereavement therapy for his dashed White House ambitions, Rockefeller spent hour after hour looking in awed wonder at renderings of a city of dazzling white marble towers rising from the ruins of some 2,000 perfectly good homes he had ordered torn down.

In late 1962, hours before Rockefeller was to finally unveil to the press the big model of his project (and it was as much his creation as that of his court architect, Wallace Harrison) he was observed frantically trying to remove the tiny pieces of affordable housing at the margins of the mock-up, for fear it would spoil the look of his utopia.

Mr. Pataki made his most recent mark on ground zero because he objected to what the Freedom Center might or might not contain, not because he was displeased with the design of the Norwegian architecture firm Snohetta. Nonetheless, he swept the project off the board with just as regal a gesture as Rockefeller’s.

This last paragraph is curious. After telling us that Pataki nixed the Freedom Center for reasons entirely different than Rockefeller’s ambitious decisions regarding the remaking of Albany, Sudjic then asks us to ignore that fact in favor of his theme that Pataki is a acting in a “regal” manner…just like Rockefeller!

This would be true if Pataki believed in the Divine Right of Kings and acted like an annointed sovereign in asking that the Freedom Center be moved to more appropriate climes. What’s that you say? Pataki was elected by the people of New York? The organized campaign, led by Debra Burlingame whose brother was the pilot of Flight #77 that flew into the Pentagon on 9/11, was supported by an extraordinarily broad-based coalition. Not just conservatives but more significantly, several groups that represent families of the 9/11 fallen took up the cause to keep the Ground Zero Memorial from being hijacked by the anti-American left. To try and posit the notion that Pataki was acting like a king or a dictator is ridiculous:

Saddam Hussein, following in the footsteps of Hitler and Mussolini, was a determined builder. It was only his decision to invade Iran that stopped him from building a state mosque in Baghdad designed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown. And his Mother of all Battles Mosque, designed so that the dimensions of the minarets and fountains are a semiotic reference to the dictator’s day of birth, has an unfortunate echo in the symbolism of the Freedom Tower, which is to stand at 1,776 feet, marking a different sort of birthday altogether.

Leave it to an elitist to compare July 4th with Saddam’s birthday. There is no other way to put it; only an idiot makes such a comparison. Only someone without a shred of common sense not to mention historical perspective can make such a statement with a straight face. It underscores what the Freedom Center, in fact, will be. It will glory in comparisons such as this one to the detriment of both America’s image and historical fact.

Finally, Mr. Sudjic bemoans the loss of architectural coherence to the project:

The electricity, alas, has long since faded away. What makes the rebuilding of ground zero so difficult a project is the ambiguity about who is guiding the architectural symbolism. The rhetoric is that the client here is that wonderful amorphous mass, the public. The reality, however, is that ground zero is being shaped in private by Mr. Pataki’s often arbitrary and incoherent decisions, by the wishes of the developer, Larry Silverstein, and sometimes by the brute force of the security consultants whose interventions have a tendency to sweep away the obfuscation about the nature of the project.

Is it any wonder things have reached a state of inertia? Somebody needs to impose his will, and the only one with a mandate and money to do so is Governor Pataki. He should stand up and acknowledge that ground zero will be rebuilt in his image, just as Nelson Rockefeller did with Albany. I have no illusions that he will make all, or even any, of the right decisions. But his attaching his name indelibly to the project would at least concentrate his mind on setting things back in motion at New York’s most sacred ground.

The rebuilding of Ground Zero is an enormous project. It is something akin to building a small town, so widespread and total was the devastation caused by the collapse of the towers. Everything from sewers and electrictiy to subways and other infrastructure projects are necessary so that life can return to that part of Manhattan. The Ground Zero Memorial is a tiny part of the enterprise. Even if one were to include the Freedom Center with the memorial, the cost would be a beggar’s portion of the total.

The centerpiece of the project is the aforementioned Freedom Tower. While the skyscraper has had design problems from the beginning - most notably as Mr. Sudjic mentions, security issues - Governor Pataki has exercised his authority as holder of the purse strings in a restrained manner. This has led to competing visions of the massive building and what it represents. But it is important to remember that the entire project (overseen by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation) is costing tens of billions of dollars. The Memorial, the Freedom Center, and even the Freedom Tower taken together still amounts to only a fraction of the monies to be spent in “rebuilding” Ground Zero. The rest of the massive project continues apace and is being obscured by arguments over the meaning and architectural asthetics of these designs.

What elitists like Mr. Sudjic object to is the intervention of amateurs like you, me, and even Governor Pataki in this debate. Only the learned, the cultured, should debate the merits of one design over another. In short, only our betters have the wisdom, the insight, and the special knowledge to tell us what we should think about how buildings should relate to our everyday lives. The 9/11 Memorial was nearly stolen by people like Mr. Sudjic because we almost believed them. It took the widows and loved ones of the victims of that horrible day to remind us what freedom is and how it should be exercised.

News that will surely disappoint the Kos Kids, DU denizens, and others on the unhinged left; they are going to have to wait a while to celebrate any indictments in L’Affaire d’Plame:

The special counsel in the C.I.A. leak case has told associates he has no plans to issue a final report about the results of the investigation, heightening the expectation that he intends to bring indictments, lawyers in the case and law enforcement officials said yesterday.

The prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, is not expected to take any action in the case this week, government officials said. A spokesman for Mr. Fitzgerald, Randall Samborn, declined to comment.

A final report had long been considered an option for Mr. Fitzgerald if he decided not to accuse anyone of wrongdoing, although Justice Department officials have been dubious about his legal authority to issue such a report.

By signaling that he had no plans to issue the grand jury’s findings in such detail, Mr. Fitzgerald appeared to narrow his options either to indictments or closing his investigation with no public disclosure of his findings, a choice that would set off a political firestorm.

With the term of the grand jury expiring Oct. 28, lawyers in the case said they assumed Mr. Fitzgerald was in the final stages of his inquiry.

The focus of Mr. Fitzgerald’s inquiry has remained fixed on two senior White House aides, Karl Rove, who is President Bush’s senior adviser and deputy chief of staff, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., who is Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff. Both had conversations with reporters about a C.I.A. officer whose name was later publicly disclosed.

It is not clear whether Mr. Fitzgerald has learned who first identified the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, to the syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak in July 2003.

Some of the lawyers in the case say Mr. Fitzgerald seems to be wrestling with decisions about how to proceed, leaning toward indictments but continuing to weigh thousands of pages of documents and testimony he has compiled during the nearly two-year inquiry.

So not only will there be no final report - at least in the formal sense - there will be no indictments this week. This may in fact be damaging to the mental health of our leftist friends who are so beside themselves with anticipation over possible indictments in the case that they have wet their pants, their beds, and the high chairs they sit in to eat their granola and nuts.

Their incontinence notwithstanding, according to this Murray Waas piece in the National Journal, Fitzgerald has narrowed the scope of his inquiry to the following:

1. The substance of the June 23, 2003 meeting between Times reporter Miller and Scooter Libby where, according to Miller’s notes, Libby mentioned Wilson’s wife Valerie Plame and her employment at WINPAC - the CIA’s arms control and WMD monitoring group - and was apparently a pre-emptive strike by the Veep’s office to counter leaks by Ambassador Wilson who had spent months shopping his charges of White House malfeasance on WMD intel to any and every reporter who would listen to him.

The problem for Libby? Either he didn’t mention the meeting in his grand jury testimony or didn’t say that it was the first time he had mentioned Plame’s name.

Possible Charge: Perjury

2. Substance of a July 8th breakfast meeting between Libby and Miller:

Libby and Miller’s two-hour breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington, D.C., on July 8. Libby has told federal investigators, according to legal sources familiar with his testimony, that he told Miller at the meeting that he had heard that Wilson’s wife had played a role in Wilson’s being selected for the Niger assignment. But Libby also testified that he never named Plame nor told Miller that she worked for the CIA, because either he did not know that at the time, or, if he had heard that Plame was a CIA employee, he did not know whether it was true.

Miller’s grand jury testimony as well her notes on the July 8 meeting contradict Libby’s version. Miller’s notes indicate that Libby did indeed tell her that Plame worked for the CIA. Her notes said, according to Miller: “Wife works at Winpac.” Asked for an explanation by the grand jury, Miller has said she testified she knew that Winpac meant Weapons Intelligence, Non-Proliferation, and Arms Control. That was a CIA unit tracking chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons proliferation.

The problem for Fitzgerald here is that Miller has testified she is certain that while Plame’s name came up, she is unclear in what context (did she herself bring up Plame’s name?)

Possible Charge: Perjury

3. A third area of interest to Fitzgerald is the series of communications between Libby’s attorney Joseph Tate and Miller’s attorney Floyd Abrams. Was the waiver given by Libby to Miller so that she could testify last year coerced? Was Tate, on behalf of his client, trying to influence Miller’s testimony? Did Tate leak the grand jury testimony of Libby in hopes that Miller would corroborate his story?

Here is another conundrum for Fitzgerald as all of the lawyering back and forth smacks of both parties hearing what they wanted to hear. Miller’s situation was complicated by the fact that Abrams was an attorney representing the Times. Later, she acquired the services of a personal attorney, Democratic mouthpiece Robert Bennett who has since given the most one-sided renderings of these conversations to date. Tate has all but called Bennett a liar and even Abrams has contradicted some of Bennett’s spin. Read the Waas piece for all the ins and outs of this confusing muddle but in summary, it would seem there is a huge gray area that Fitzgerald is trying to sort through to determine if any lawbreaking occurred.

Possible Charges: Perjury, Obstruction of Justice, Witness Tampering

4. The fourth area of Fitzgerald’s inquiry has to do with the circumstances surrounding the release of Judith Miller from jail. It involves a letter sent by Abrams to Tate in which Abrams (apparently looking to make a record) accuses Tate of warning Miller not to testify last year because the waiver he gave at the time was coerced. Tate has hotly denied both the substance and the inference of Abrams letter to the prosecutor.

Possible Charge: Witness tampering

5. Another letter, this time the personal one sent by Libby to Miller telling her it was okay to testify. Just to show that when you are enmeshed in the wheels of justice that it is best to keep both your mouth and pen shut, Libby’s personal reminisces about their conversations are being construed as a possible tipoff to Miller about what he said before the grand jury. Even Bob Bennett thinks that Libby wasn’t trying to tip Miller off but rather was just being chatty.

Possible Charge for being Chatty: Witness Tampering

6. Finally, the night before Miller was set to testify before the grand jury, a source “sympathetic” to Libby sought out three separate news organizations and spilled the beans about what Libby told the grand jury. Fitzgerald may want to know if Libby was behind the leaked testimony and whether he hoped to influence Miller’s testimony.

Possible Charge: Obstruction of Justice. Witness Tampering

Do you notice anything strange about the focus of Fitzgerald’s inquiry? Most of what Fitzgerald is looking at occurred in the context of getting Judith Miller out of jail!

Um…correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t this an inquiry into the outing of a covert operative? That aspect of the case seems to have fallen by the wayside due to the fact that it is now almost certain that no laws were broken in outing Valerie Plame - although a despicable act in and of itself for which the perpetrators should be fired forthwith. But it appears at least in Mr. Libby’s case that much of his exposure is a result of trying to clarify his waiver to Miller so that she could testify before the grand jury.

It would be ironic indeed if Libby was indicted because of the goings on surrounding Judith Miller who was ostensibly trying to protect him in the first place and whose stay in the hoosegow was probably unnecessary from the outset.

Another thing you might have noticed about the focus of Fitzgerald’s investigation is the absence of any scrutiny of the man the left has apoplectic fits over, Karl Rove. Is Rove in the clear? It would seem so although anything is possible.

Finally, I find it hugely ironic that once again, government officials have shown that they never, ever, learn anything from past probes of this nature. How much easier for Libby if he had been 100% truthful from the outset? And Rove himself wouldn’t have had to sweat bullets about being indicted if he had come clean to both his boss the President and been more specific about his conversations with Time Magazine reporter Matt Cooper.

And Fitzgerald? He’s decided that in order to justify 22 months of investigation into what was apparently a non-criminal act, he must indict people who can be charged for faulty memory or the actions of their attorneys and surrogates. In the Special Prosecutor’s case, better to shoot the horse after the barn door has already been closed rather than let the animal go.

UPDATE

Tom McGuire has much more insight into the Waas piece. His take is that Libby is all but being measured for a prison jump suit. Given that Mr. Libby apparently perjured himself regarding the June 23 meeting, it still begs the question as to how Fitzgerald views any kind of conspiracy charges - something Waas never mentions in his article. Was it conspiracy or just a general Administration wide push back against the CIA for their partisan antics? Since no crime was committed in the first place in outing Plame, conspiracy in that regard may be off the table although conspiracy to obstruct justice may still be in the offing if the reports we hear about Cheney aid John Hannah and his cooperation with Fitzgerald are true.

Kevin at Wizbang is advocating a constitutional change that would limit a President to one six-year term:

Perhaps it’s time to look seriously at changing the Presidency to a single 6 year term. You have to go all the way back to the Eisenhower administration to find a two term Presidency that didn’t go to hell (in the form of investigations, impeachment, or resignation) in the final years of their second term. Sure we’d have to live with future Jimmy Carter’s for a couple extra years, but it might be a gamble worth taking…

By the same token, such a move would deprive us of a Reagan for two extra years. Besides, somehow the idea of not having a President to stand for re-election diminishes democracy in my mind. Maybe not substantively, but perceptions are important also and a one term President almost smacks of an elected monarch to me.

Some of my righty friends who have been telling me for months that Rove, Libby, et. al. will not be indicted in Affaire d’Plame have been whistling past the graveyard. As I’ve said on more than one occasion, Special Prosecutors don’t sit around for 22 months without indicting someone.

A parallel would be what went on with the Manhattan Project during World War II. The government had spent billions (back when billions actually meant lots and lots of money) developing an atomic bomb. But as the “gadget” got closer to completion, some scientists began to have second thoughts about even setting it off.

Enter Leslie Groves who had been in charge of building the Pentagon which at the time was one of the biggest construction projects in human history. Groves had a Roman Catholic’s sense toward taxpayer money - the people paid for a show and they were going to get one by hook or by crook. Groves ended up managing the mini-mutiny by placing a couple of scientists on the targeting committee and then tried convincing Harry Truman that the taxpayers would boil him in oil if the bomb wasn’t used against Japan.

This little by play has been used by revisionist historians to supposedly show that President Truman wanted to use the bomb because of the enormous cost involved that had to be justified to the American people. Anyone who has read anything about Harry Truman knows that to be a crock, as the Missourian was much more worried about facing the mothers, fathers, and wives of men who would have been lost in an invasion of Japan if he had not used the bomb. Truman was convinced if it came out after the war that he could have ended the conflict a full year earlier if he had used both “Fat Man” and Little Boy,” he would probably have been impeached.

The point being, that Fitzgerald has to have a scalp or two to hang on the wall. If he thinks he has a conspiracy to out Valerie Plame, he could cast a wide net indeed, capturing at the very least Scooter Libby and perhaps even Karl Rove, although it appears that Rove is not a target.

And then there was this curiosity about where Fitzgerald was going with the investigation:

Evidence is building that the probe conducted by Patrick Fitzgerald, special prosecutor, has extended beyond the leaking of a covert CIA agent’s name to include questioning about the administration’s handling of pre-Iraq war intelligence.

According to the Democratic National Committee, a majority of the nine members of the White House Iraq Group have been questioned by Mr Fitzgerald. The team, which included senior national security officials, was created in August 2002 to “educate the public” about the risk posed by weapons of mass destruction on Iraq.

Mr Fitzgerald, who has been applauded for conducting a leak-free inquiry, has said little publicly about his 22-month probe, other than that it is about the “potential retaliation against a whistleblower”, Joseph Wilson. After Mr Wilson, a former ambassador, went public with doubts about the evidence that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons, the name of his wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA official, was leaked to reporters.

“According to the Democratic National Committee…??” Wha? Who? WTF? Since when has the DNC been a reliable source of news out of the Special Prosecutor’s office?

At any rate, I have no doubt he has talked to the Iraq Survey Group. That would make perfect sense if he has another candidate for the perp walk; how does an indictment of Joseph Wilson, III grab ya?

Fitzgerald may just throw up his hands, indict the lot of them (including Judith Miller) and let the courts sort it out. After all, Wilson has admitted to leaking classified information himself which may explain the interviews with the ISG. Perhaps Fitzgerald was trying to ascertain just how classified Wilson’s trip was so that he can decide if the former ambassador illegally leaked info to Nicholas Kristoff of the Times back in May - more than 2 months before his OpEd appeared in that publication.

Speaking of curious, what’s with E.J. Dionne? Is he off his meds again?

We are on the verge of an extraordinary moment in American politics. The people running our government are about to face their day — or days — in court.

Those who thought investigations were a wonderful thing when Bill Clinton was president are suddenly facing prosecutors, and they don’t like it. It seems like a hundred years ago when Clinton’s defenders were accusing his opponents of using special prosecutors, lawsuits, criminal charges and, ultimately, impeachment to overturn the will of the voters.

Clinton’s conservative enemies would have none of this. No, they said over and over, the Clinton mess was not about sex but about “perjury and the obstruction of justice” and “the rule of law.”

The old conservative talking points are now inoperative.

Huh? I have yet to hear a single Republican say a word in support of the idea that outing a CIA agent should not be punished severely be the target Rove, or Libby, or any other Administration official. Not. A. One.

So where does he get “The old conservative talking points are now inoperative…?” The fact that the Cavalcade of Comedy involving Keystone Cop Ronnie Earle down in Texas and his continuing easter egg hunt for first, a grand jury sufficiently ignorant of the facts to indict Tom Delay a second time (after the first one didn’t quite take, it not being a crime in 2003 to do what Delay did in 2002) and second, to search for a document that the bumpkin told the grand jury he had in his possesion but has since, er…vanished. If that’s history, it’s more like Mel Brooks than Richard Brookhesier.

Unlike Clinton’s wild-eyed apologists who yelped for years that selling the office of the President for first, campaign contributions and then to build the ugliest Presidential Library in America was only a venal sin (kind of like thinking impure thoughts about Mary Wilson in 8th grade but not doing anything about it), conservatives have said in no uncertain terms what would happen if Rove or Libby, or anyone else was indicted. It’s just that, being conservatives, our equanimity about waiting for the Special Prosecutor to actually charge someone - anyone - with a crime can be misinterpreted. Wait and see is a good attitude to have when the political fires are being stoked by a bunch of morons who actually believe that voting machines in Ohio were hacked to give Bush the election last November.

Predictably, the Kos kids are all aflutter with anticipation. It’s actually quite entertaining. If Fitzgerald were not to indict any of the biggies, can we imagine the meltdown over at Kos Kingdom and other lefty sites?

This diary post at Kos has some advice for those who can’t stand the suspense:

10. Put down the caffeine: For the next 48 hours, cleanse your body of java, aspartame, splenda, and whatever other shit you’ve been putting in your system. Your body will be producing more adrenaline during Fitzmas than it did when you were a hormone-crazed teenager, so don’t fuel the fire.

1. Enjoy the moment: Take a DEEP breath, and savor the fact that you’re witnessing history being made. The outing of Plame was a vicious act, but nothing will be as sweet as watching justice being served.

Whatever the outcome, I can’t see the Kos kids being very happy. After all, Bushitler is there for three more years - plenty of time for them to have more apoplectic fits over Bush successes in Iraq and other spheres.

UPDATE

John Cole is actually worried about the mental health of the moonbats if Fitzgerald doesn’t indict anyone. I would say, for the reasons annunciated above, not to worry John. But it’s a pity that those lefties don’t appreciate you for your concern, John. Tomorrow, they’ll just be back to blasting you.

IN ONE OF THE MOST SIGNIFICANT ACTS IN THE HISTORY OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION, MARTIN LUTHER NAILS HIS HERETICAL 95 THESES TO THE DOOR OF A CHURCH IN WITTENBERG, GERMANY

I confess to being something of a heretic regarding this whole “Porkbusters” crusade that is being championed by some of the heavy hitters in the Shadow Media.

What am I saying? Not just some of the biggest but the biggest conservative websites around. Glenn Reynolds, Ed Morrissey, and Michelle Malkin, are promoting the idea that if enough bloggers can find specific instances of “pork” in the federal budget and have their Congress Critter commit to cutting that spending request from the budget, the cost of rebuilding several thousand square miles of United States territory along the Gulf Coast can be offset and the budget deficit can be reduced.

First, let me congratulate those worthies for initiating and supporting this exploration of the capabilities of the New Media. In all seriousness, unless we try and understand just what the blogosphere can and can’t do, we’ll never get a handle on what is real and what is an illusion about blogs. Perhaps a campaign like this will actually define the political part of the conservative blogosphere in that it will measure true political influence in Washington and in the nation at large.

That said, this is an effort doomed to fail from the start. It isn’t just that most of the “pork” to be cut, even if taken together, represents a painfully small pittance when placed against what actually needs to be spent to make the Gulf Coast whole again. The entire “Porkbusters” campaign misses the point of what the federal budget is and what it represents.

I hope you are not naive enough to believe that the federal budget is even remotely related to what we generally think of as our own household budgets. In real life, we have a certain amount of money coming in and another amount that goes out. Hopefully, after the numbers are tallied there is even a little left over to put away for our retirement.

But the federal budget is not real life. It represents the dreams, the hopes, the desires - both noble and base - of 270 million of our fellow citizens. The long and short of it is one man’s pork is another man’s bread and butter. And while it may be tempting in carrying the metaphor even farther by stating that the two together make a BLT, it isn’t that simple either.

I have no doubt that if we look closely enough at the budget, we’ll experience many “aha!” moments where we will find several million dollars to build a bridge to nowhere. Or several hundred thousand dollars to construct a Post Office for a town of 12 people. Or a couple of million to redecorate the offices of top bureaucrats. Or, if we’re really looking with gimlet eyes at the whole budget, we could probably find a couple of billions to cut from the Department of Defense.

The same could be said for every other department of government. Great red swathes could be cut through the federal budget, inking out programs for rich corporations, anti-poverty NGO’s, as well as various freaks, bunkum scientists, and just plain charlatans.

In the end, you would barely scratch the surface of what would be needed to offset Katrina spending over the next few years. And the dent made in the budget deficit as a whole would be a joke.

And the fault, dear Brutus, is not in the Congress but in ourselves. The fault lies in our own expectations for what government should be doing for us. It lies in what we think government is capable of doing for all of us. And it lies in our own projected aspirations of what we think freedom and democracy are in this modern, industrialized, urban country of ours.

This is not a political dispute as much as it is a clashing of dreams. In perusing NZ Bear’s excellent web pages on the work being done by hundreds of individual bloggers in ferreting out spending they see as wasteful, I am struck by how cavalierly people wish to cut transportation funds. Now clearly, in legislation that proposes spending as much money as the transportation bill, there are literally billions of dollars being spent that would have a hard time passing the rancid bacon smell test. But what most of my conservative and libertarian friends fail to grasp is that almost every one of those projects represents the dreams of individual communities to improve the quality of life just a tiny bit or, more fundamentally, the return of a small portion of monies the people send to Washington to redeem expectations that people have of the federal government.

I’m sure my libertarian friends would point out that those expectations are unrealistic and should be discouraged or even changed. I would say go ahead, be my guest. Don Quixote needs some companionship. For in order to change those expectations, you must not only elect representatives that will reflect your desire for reform but you must also change the fundamental relationship in the United States between the people and the government as it exists in the 21st century.

If you are so inclined, might I suggest you attempt something more simple at first? Like, say changing the gravitational constant of the universe?

Simply put, only national defense is more important in America than building or improving roads and transportation. In a continental nation, road building is an Ur issue, as vital to small and medium sized communities as it is to large cities and the nation as a whole. Trying to pick out “unnecessary” road building projects is an exercise in futility. An outsider looking at any specific project has no clue about local conditions that may have necessitated the request in the first place. What looks like pork to some means something entirely different to the people directly affected.

This is not to say that there aren’t thousands of projects that are wasteful from the perspective of those who wish to place the good of the nation above the good of individual communities. Or even that opposition in communities to specific projects that will tear up green spaces (although this is done less and less recently) or allow property to be seized by local government to make room for these roads and improvements shouldn’t be looked at carefully. But it should be noted that the ancillary benefits including job creation, reduced traffic congestion, and safer travel are rarely mentioned when talking about a particular project’s designation as pork. I daresay few who propose such cuts are qualified to make that kind of analysis so that this kind of criticism is, in the end, an exercise in sophistry.

The Transportation Bill is part of the federal government’s discretionary spending as opposed to the mandatory spending on entitlements. For FY 2006, discretionary spending represents approximately 1/3 of the entire $2.5 trillion dollar budget request. Even if we were to freeze discretionary spending at last year’s levels, we would save barely $30 billion dollars - a good start but hardly the meat and potato cuts necessary to affect the amount that will be needed to rebuild a large part of three states, not to mention the reconstruction of a modern, industrialized city like New Orleans. Only cuts in basic entitlements like food stamps, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), housing, and most important of all Social Security will reductions be significant enough to make a difference in both hurricane rebuilding and the budget deficit in general.

And here is where the budget leaves the realm of what is real and enters the stratosphere of hopes and dreams, expectations and necessity.

There is a story told by David Stockman, Ronald Reagan’s OMB Director, of how he tried to show the President how hard it was to cut entitlements. Stockman, a former Congressman and a man with a nimble and penetrating intellect, was charged with turning Reagan’s campaign rhetoric about cutting the fat from the budget into reality. In the course of educating the President, he gave Reagan a list of programs and asked him to check off which one’s should be cut. When he got the paper back he made some quick calculations and showed Reagan that he had just cut less than 10% necessary to reduce the then ballooning budget deficit.

The story proves it is one thing in the abstract to advocate cutting programs for all but the “deserving” poor while it is quite another to actually change the relationship between government and the people. For what makes entitlements almost impossible to cut is contained in their very name; the government comes up with criteria of eligibility and as long as you meet that criteria, an individual or family is “entitled” to receive that benefit. It doesn’t matter if we’re at war. It doesn’t matter if we have massive budget deficits as far out as can be projected. As long as a citizen (and, of course, non-citizens as well) qualify under the law, the government is obligated to dispense the benefit.

And while it may seem easy to simply change the criteria of eligibility, in practice it is a virtual impossibility. For example, in order to deal with the crisis of social security solvency in the past, Congress has responded by usually raising the age of retirement so that today, one cannot receive full benefits from social security until age 70. But Congress cannot raise the age fast enough to keep up with the longer life spans experienced by the American people. Hence, our current crisis and one that requires even more fundamental tinkering with the system in order to avoid catastrophe.

And if all this isn’t enough to torpedo any kind of blogosphere-wide effort to cut the budget, there is always the politics of the budget to consider. You may notice how many of those Congressmen and Senators who have responded to the questionnaire say that it is important to cut spending but that most spending bills they vote on contain both elements they support and parts they oppose. This makes it virtually impossible for Congress to cut much from the budget as those bills represent deal making both in conference between the House and the Senate as well as in the cloakroom between parties so that the bill would garner as much support as possible. If these elements were not present, the federal government would come to a standstill and no spending bills would have a chance of passing. The art of politics has always been the art of what is possible. Perhaps a line-item veto for the President would solve such an impasse, but it is doubtful whether enough Congressmen and Senators could be found to support the emasculation of their own power. And it is by no means certain that such a measure would be constitutional under the separation of powers articles.

So while I applaud the effort of the blogosphere to take on the federal budget, I question whether such a project could even partially succeed. It may be that even tens of thousands of citizen journalists are no match for the tens of millions of Americans who would be directly affected by the kinds of cuts being proposed.

UPDATE

Jon Henke and I were on the same wavelength this morning. The difference is that John, being much smarter than I am (that’s okay, I’m better lookin’), actually has some common sense ways to change the dynamic of the budget debate as well as some very interesting thoughts along the lines that I was struggling to elucidate; that there must be a change in the relationship between citizens and their government.

That’s very nice, but—like Porkbusters—it’s the tip of the iceberg. Without structural reform, they’re merely playing at the corners of the budget. As Steve Verdon wondered, “Where was this kind of drive a year ago, or for that matter from the day Bush opened up the Federal coffers and started spending like a heroin junkie with a major jones? I’ll tell you where, nowhere. Nobody cared. Nobody will care in a few more weeks”. John Cole wrote of Porkbusters, “it is a short-term gimmick, when what is needed is a long-term shift in attitudes about spendings, taxes, and priorities”.

RTWT.

Also, Matthew in the comments points out that there is no such program as AFDC any longer. It has been replaced by something called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), which replaced AFDC in 1996.

Thanks to Matthew for the correction…I’ve been away from Washington for 15 years and it shows sometimes…

As Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald readies his indictments against probable targets Lewis I. “Scooter” Libby and Karl Rove, the unfortunate truth is that any criminal proceedings against these or other current and former White House officials will validate the partisan political tactics used by the CIA to undermine the Bush Administration’s case for war.

This was not a case of a faction at the CIA resisting White House blame shifting. It was not a case of “setting the record straight” or “protecting the integrity” of the CIA. It was a case of naked, power politics played out at the highest levels of government as a small, partisan group of CIA analysts and operatives sought, through the use of selected leaking of cherry-picked information to friendly reporters, to influence the Presidential election of 2004.

As this Daily Telegraph article points out, the succession of leaks by CIA officials (or surrogates like Joe Wilson) had one goal in mind; to bring down the Bush Administration:

A powerful “old guard” faction in the Central Intelligence Agency has launched an unprecedented campaign to undermine the Bush administration with a battery of damaging leaks and briefings about Iraq.

The White House is incensed by the increasingly public sniping from some senior intelligence officers who, it believes, are conducting a partisan operation to swing the election on November 2 in favour of John Kerry, the Democratic candidate, and against George W Bush.

Jim Pavitt, a 31-year CIA veteran who retired as a departmental chief in August, said that he cannot recall a time of such “viciousness and vindictiveness” in a battle between the White House and the agency.

Whether Valerie Plame was an “analyst” or an “operative” in the CIA may be relevant to any criminal indictments regarding the leaking of her name. But in the CIA’s war against the Bush Administration, the fact that she worked for a division of the Agency that was doing most of the leaking of cherry-picked reports and analyses showing Saddam not to be a threat should be the focus of the “why” in the scandal.

Joe Wilson was sent by his wife’s superiors to Niger supposedly at the behest of Vice President Cheney, to discover whether or not the Iraqis were trying to buy yellowcake uranium in order to reconstitute their nuclear program. It was the most curious “fact-finding” trip in history. Wilson sat in a hotel while a succession of current and former Niger government officials were paraded before him each solemnly telling him that the charges were false, that the Iraqis had never asked the Niger government to circumvent international restrictions and sell them the uranium.

It was never explained why a group of Iraqi “businessmen” had met with former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki in 1999:

The intelligence report indicated that former Nigerien Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki was unaware of any contracts that had been signed between Niger and any rogue states for the sale of yellowcake while he was Prime Minister (1997-1999) or Foreign Minister (1996-1997). Mayaki said that if there had been any such contract during his tenure, he would have been aware of it. Mayaki said, however, that in June 1999, [redacted] businessman, approached him and insisted that Mayaki meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss “expanding commercial relations” between Niger and Iraq. The intelligence report said that Mayaki interpreted “expanding commercial relations” to mean that the delegation wanted to discuss uranium yellowcake sales. The intelligence report also said that “although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to the UN sanctions on Iraq.” [page 43]

Maybe the Iraqis were interested in importing cowpeas.?

The Wilson trip stinks to high heaven of a set up. Talk about predetermining the outcome of intelligence! It seems incontestable that the group in the Agency working for the ouster of President Bush knew full well what the result of Joe Wilson’s trip to Niger would be. One pertinent question might be to ask why did they choose to send a retired, minor diplomat to do a job that could have been done by any number of other current State Department or even Agency people whose contacts were as good or better than Mr. Wilson’s?

The answer is that the cabal would have been unable to control someone else’s reporting on the matter of Iraqi attempts to buy uranium. Wilson was the perfect errand boy. He was also to prove over the next several months to be something of a loose cannon and a self-aggrandizing, vainglorious blabbermouth. In this interview with LA Weekly, Wilson admits he was shopping the story of his trip long before either the Nicholas Kristoff piece of May 6, 2003 where the Niger trip is first mentioned in print or Wilson’s own OpEd in the New York Times that led to the outing of his wife:

So I spoke to a number of reporters over the ensuing months. Each time they asked the White House or the State Department about it, they would feign ignorance. I became even more convinced that I was going to have to tell the story myself.

That was probably part of the set-up all along. As we know now, no one at the White House or State Department knew of Mr. Wilson’s trip to Niger or what he found out there.

There are numerous questions associated with the entire Niger caper that will probably never be answered satisfactorily: Who forged the documents used by the British and passed along to the US that indicated Saddam was attempting to purchase the yellowcake in the first place? Why wasn’t Wilson’s report passed on to the Vice President, the man who Wilson ostensibly went to Niger for in the first place? Did Wilson use his contacts with the media to pass along other classified information given to him by his wife that were damaging to the President’s campaign?

When it comes to the CIA and its numerous leakers, it appears that Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald has a blind spot. And because of that, the cabal that worked to defeat the President last November will probably be toasting their success later this week when indictments are handed down.

Conservatives are outraged once again that the Nobel Prize for Literature has gone to a stark, raving, drooling moonbat. British playwright Harold Pinter is the latest old time socialist to receive the prestigious award and righty web sites are full of examples of Pinter’s outrageous and unreasoning hatred of the US.

Yes, the Nobel Committee is made up of a bunch of Anti-American jackasses who apparently live for sticking it to the United States with their selections - especially in the arts and the over-hyped “Peace Prize.” The poorly named award has gone recently to some of the most clueless denizens of the fever swamps as well as some of the most anti-peace thugs around. In the last 15 years, the prize has gone to Yassar Arafat (baby killer), Kofi Anan (corrupt, cynical exploiter), Jimmy Carter (No. Words. Necessary), and Mikhail Gorbechev who received the prize the same year that 10,000 Russian citizens were incarcerated in lunatic asylums not because they were mentally ill but because they disagreed with him.

But I would say to my righty friends that when it comes to awarding a prize to Harold Pinter, the Nobellers have hit the jackpot for once.

Pinter’s politics have nothing to do with the way the man revolutionized the English speaking stage. His sparse use of dialog and frequent pauses as well as the sheer ordinariness of his characters which sometimes masked a degeneracy of unfathomable depth, shocked audiences in the 1950’s. Here is critic Martin Eslin:

“Every syllable, every inflection, the succession of long and short sounds, words and sentences, is calculated to nicety. And precisely the repetitiousness, the discontinuity, the circularity of ordinary vernacular speech are here used as formal elements with which the poet can compose his linguistic ballet.”

Pinter achieved this effect by doing some unusual first hand research. As a young, struggling playwright in the 1950’s, he would spend countless hours in the park just sitting on a bench and listening - really listening to the way people talk. He was especially fascinated with the wordplay between older couples whose monosyllabic questions and responses held much deeper meaning than just the words themselves. The result was sheer brilliance, a combination of free verse and dialog so bitingly ordinary that the incongruity between the situations the characters found themselves in - usually something dark, menacing, and unknowable - and the spare, barest of bones language made for a sometimes shocking, sometimes sublime night of theater.

More than most, Pinter’s plays are best judged when performed rather than simply read. This is because of the playwright’s deliberate use of “the pause.” In many plays where stage directions are written into the script by the author, the results are desultory or, more likely logical outgrowths of dialog between characters (ex.: “Mary looks at paper, frowns, then looks at Mark”).

Pinter’s frequent and planned use of pauses - actually writing into the script “short pause” or “long pause” - establishes a rhythm for the actor that allows the unnatural dialog to flow. The pauses are as much a part of character development as anything else in the script and, at the time, was truly innovative.

His characters are simple, lower middle class Brits usually with family “issues” - some of them bizarre or surreal. In The Homecoming (1963) we find a long lost son coming home to a father and two brothers ( a boxer and a shadowy low life). He brings his enigmatic wife with him and by the end of the play, the father and the low life are negotiating with the woman to become a quasi-prostitute/mother to the dysfunctional group. When performed well, the play is both laugh out loud funny and shocking in its implications.

Critics at first were universally negative. But theatergoers both in Britain and the United States were starved for something different than the relentlessly up-beat musical comedy and the boilerplate dramas and melodramas of the post war period. As a result, Pinter’s plays were like a splash of ice cold water on a hot day - a bracing and sometimes exhilarating experience. As the years went by, Pinter dramas have gone Hollywood (with uneven results) and the playwright himself has written some screenplays such as The French Lieutenant’s Woman. But in the end, Pinter’s brilliant originality and revolutionary use of language established the playwright as one of the most dynamic forces of the English speaking theater in the 20th century.

Is Pinter worthy of a Nobel Prize? For the totality of his work, yes. In the last 20 years however, Pinter has become something of a caricature of himself and his plays and other writing output (he has published an anthology of rather insipid and obscure poetry) have degenerated into political screeds against capitalism, the west, and especially the United States. But I can’t imagine what the theater would be like today without his contributions from the 1950’s to the 1970’s.

The question arises should we condemn authors and artists for their politics even if their work is a cut above brilliant? I find such a construct puzzling. Just because John Updike is a loony lefty that doesn’t make Rabbit Run any less of a joy to read. And Joan Didion’s essays are achingly well written despite a political content that runs to the left of Marshall Tito. Can we accept talent and beauty in art despite disagreeing with the artists personal politics?

I would think that this would be the essence of artistic expression and criticism. Although a good case can be made that the more conservative authors and artists - or at least artistic endeavors that express conservative themes - are deliberately censored and given short shrift in a world dominated by liberal purveyors and critics of many artistic forms, should this lessen our enjoyment and appreciation of artistic expression even by people whose extremist views are totally at odds with ours?

Personally, I would find such a world very limiting and boring. Consequently, we should pity liberals who refuse to see the brilliance of a Tom Wolfe or even Ayn Rand, whose books have inspired several generations of conservative thinkers and writers. By rejecting art based on the artist’s politics, we are only hurting ourselves.

And so, I congratulate the Noble Committee for recognizing the brilliance of Harold Pinter. However, I wonder if for next year’s peace prize, we couldn’t actually get someone who, you know, actually works for “peace” and not “surrender” or the “peace of the grave” like Yassar Arafat. Maybe they should consider a liberator, someone who has freed 25 million people from the clutches of two of the most bloodthirsty and oppressive regimes in history. Do you think it’s possible…

Maybe when hell freezes over.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin rounds up reaction to Pinter’s Nobel Prize on the right with a link to an interesting Roger Kimball piece in The New Criterion. I think Roger speaks for a lot of conservatives who are simply sick and tired of the relentless anti-Americanism, especially in international organizations.

Joe Gandleman agrees with the award although his support is more tepid and more the result of resignation that the prize was in fact awarded for Pinter’s virulent anti-Americanism.

Roger Simon also believes the award is “well deserved” and makes the same point I did about the body of Pinter’s best work decades behind him.

I can’t decide whether Al Gore is a certifiable loon or certifiably insane. Not that it matters. The former Vice President, current owner of a TV station absolutely no one watches, and erstwhile inventor of the internet has had a very tough time of it since his close loss in the Presidential election of 2000. The trauma seems to have initiated delusional episodes that every once in a while manifest themselves in drooling, spittle-flying tirades against America before a bevy foreigners, global warming advocates, and jihadi appeasers around the world.

I suppose everyone has to make a living - even former Vice Presidents who almost have to purchase air time on TV to get noticed. Oh for the good old days when the world press hung on almost every word he uttered, breathlessly waiting for the next nugget of wisdom to flow from his usually confused and illogical mind. Nowadays, he’s got to compete for attention with a slew of other anti-American zealots. Even Europeans and B-List celebrities receive more ink for their incoherent rants against the United States than the man Bill Clinton called “The most effective Vice President in history.” Given that FDR’s Vice President John Nance Garner once compared his office to a “warm bucket of sh*t,” I guess that makes Al Gore the biggest overflowing commode to ever serve as second bananna . (Is that what Gore means when he talks about the left as ” a movement?”)

Be that as it may, Mr. Tidy Bowl was in Stockholm, Sweden yesterday to give a speech before an economic forum. Now a Democratic politician speaking at a European economic conference is like a jackass giving a speech at a convention of mules; something akin to the ignorant lecturing the emasculated. And what the Dishonorable Mr. Gore had to say about his own country on foreign soil only proves that when it comes to showing off one’s anti-American bona fides, never let it be said that a homegrown leftist loon was ever outdone in exhibiting hatred of the US by a bunch of European socialist lickspittles. Here, in the best tradition of Orson Scott Card and other counterfactual history novelists, is America ruled by Algore I:

When asked how the United States would have been different if he had become president, though, he had harsh criticism for Bush’s policies.

“We would not have invaded a country that didn’t attack us,” he said, referring to Iraq. “We would not have taken money from the working families and given it to the most wealthy families.”

“We would not be trying to control and intimidate the news media. We would not be routinely torturing people,” Gore said. “We would be a different country.”

Gore did not elaborate. But last year, he blamed Bush administration policies for the inmate abuse scandal at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

About the only thing I agree with in that snippet is that last part about America being “a different country” if Mr. Snooze Alarm had been able to convince a few more Floridians that handing him the keys to the White House wouldn’t have been an absolute catastrophe. Given the rather indifferent way in which the Clinton-Gore crew treated Osama Bin Laden and the poor, misunderstood jihadis and other enemies of the United States (how many times did Yassar Arafat stay overnight at the White House?) it seems certain that by this time in a Gore presidency, there would have been some kind of feel-good sit-down with al Qaeda and their apologists from around the world. This would have resulted in some kind of retreat by the US from the Middle East and other areas where the holy warriors want to establish a 21st century version of What’s my Caliphate?

Actually, I think that it might be interesting to play a little counterfactual game ourselves and fantasize about President Al Gore addressing the very same group of European dummypuppens:

Thank you for your kind welcome. I’m glad to be here in Sweden where that famous army knife was invented. After I became the very first Eagle Scout in American history, I have many fond memories of using the corkscrew on that wonderful tool to carve the faces on Mount Rushmore.

In closing, I’d like to thank the entire European community for serving as a model for my Administration. In short, we couldn’t have done it without you.

The fallout from the political assault on the Bush Administration by the MSM and the left following Hurricane Katrina is spreading to Asia as politicians and press organs in Pakistan seek to make President Musharraf pay the same political price paid by President Bush for the perceived sin of “not caring” about the victims of a natural disaster.

President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said his government was doing its best to respond to the crisis. He had appealed for international help, particularly cargo helicopters to reach remote areas cut off by landslides.

“We are doing whatever is humanly possible,” Musharraf said. “There should not be any blame game. We are trying to reach all those areas where people need our help.”

Anyone who doesn’t think ordinary people - not to mention governments - from around the world don”t watch CNN International or other warmed-over western news reports should listen to this poor fellow who was forced into looting just to survive:

“We haven’t eaten anything for two or three days. The shops are closed and we haven’t got anything from the government,” said a 20-year-old man who refused to identify himself as he ferreted away stolen goods. “We are desperate and hungry.”

Sound familiar?

And here is what happens when aid is distributed the way that critics of the Administration’s Katrina efforts at the Superdome and Convention Center in New Orleans thought was necessary:

In the first major influx of aid, about 10 trucks brought by Pakistani charities and volunteers rumbled into Muzaffarabad early Tuesday. Attempts by relief workers for an orderly distribution dissolved into chaos, as residents scuffled for cooking oil, sugar, rice, blankets and tents.

The same thing happened with every truck, every helicopter that was ferrying aid to these devastated locations. It is why international aid organizations refuse to deliver assistance to areas where there is no local security; people die in these life and death fights for food.

More similar complaints voiced by ordinary people in Pakistan with those expressed by American journalists in New Orleans:

“If the government has devoted its efforts to rescue a few hundred people stuck under the rubble of one building in Islamabad, why has it then completely ignored this badly afflicted area where tens of thousands of people have been killed and injured?” one unidentified survivor told Aljazeera.

The Kashmir earthquake measured a devastating 7.6 on the Richter scale. That makes this particular earthquake the 4th largest on record. The temblor initiated rock slides and mudslides along the narrow, unpaved mountain roads that connect rural parts of the Kashmir with Islamabad, itself hard hit by the disaster. No military on the planet - not even the American military - could supply the kind of relief by air that would make a difference for the 2.7 million people affected by the disaster. And with 40,000 people injured - many of them with broken bones and other crushing injuries that would necessitate surgery to repair internal damage - there is no evacuation plan or rescue scenario that could possibly help more than a fraction of those who need assistance.

It would appear that we have entered an era where a government’s response to natural disasters will be critiqued based on some pie in the sky notion of what some all powerful government should be doing rather than what can humanly be done under the circumstances. Ignorant reporters and suffering victims are least able to objectively assess any kind of governmental response to a large natural disaster since they are stuck with a grasshopper’s view of the relief effort.

A case in point would be the press obsession with what was going on at the Convention Center in the aftermath of Katrina. While conditions at the Center were uncomfortable and people were hungry - and in a few cases dehydrated - rescuers were working frantically to save the lives of nearly 10,000 people stranded on rooftops, on balconies, and even in the attics of houses. The heroic efforts of the Coast Guard, the Louisiana Fish and Wildlife Commission (whose more than 300 boats began rescuing these people night and day almost before Hurricane force winds died down) as well as the National Guard troops, New Orleans Fire and Rescue teams, and even the much maligned (deservedly so) New Orleans Police Department saved thousands upon thousands of lives. But to hear the press tell of it, nothing was happening much to save the poor, black people of New Orleans.

I doubt whether we will be able to regain any kind of perspective on what a natural disaster actually means for people who must endure one. They will no longer be seen as acts of God but rather opportunities for a political opposition to skewer the party in power as the inevitable delays, screw-ups, mistakes, and mismanagement are highlighted and shown as indicative of the incompetence of national leaders. One consequence of Katrina and other disasters like the earthquake in Kashmir will be what I choose to call “The Chicago Effect.”

The great Chicago snowstorm of 1979 overwhelmed the ability of both the city’s snow removal equipment to remove the white stuff as well as the city’s disaster management bureaucracy to deal with the crisis. The resulting political firestorm cost then Mayor Michael Bilandic his job. Incoming Mayor Jane Byrne went out and bought enough snow removal equipment to handle the same kind of snow fall in the future. The problem is that much of that equipment would sit idle for decades because the kind of snowfall experienced by the city that caused the political upheaval comes along perhaps 3 times every hundred years.

So the question arises; do you plan for a “normal” sort of hurricane which governments at all levels respond to fairly efficiently or do you pre-position supplies, have the National Guard (or, more ominously the regular army) on standby, and have all the apparatus needed to deal with a major catastrophe like Katrina ready to go at a moment’s notice? The latter would be ruinously expensive and might be used once every thirty years. But it might head off criticism of the party in power that not enough was done prior to a Katrina-like disaster.

Chalk up one more casualty to Katrina; common sense reaction to an act of God.