Right Wing Nut House

I refuse to take a back seat to anyone in my support for constitutional principles. No lefty, no privacy advocate, no civil liberties absolutist, and certainly no smarmy, self righteous, sickeningly smug Executive Editor of a newspaper like the New York Times and its cowardly editor Bill Keller can look me in the eye and accuse me of less. Those who question my support for those principles know nothing of me, my past, my passions nor my sincerity.

I have questioned many of this Administration’s anti-terrorist measures and am troubled by the accumulation of power by the executive branch - a process, I might add, that both the President and Vice President have stated on numerous public occasions their intent to justify and continue. They have made no secret of their goal to, in their words, “bring the constitution back in balance,” a state of affairs they attribute to the stripping of executive power by Congress following Watergate. I look at these statements and some of their actions with the jaundiced eye of a conservative who remembers what untrammelled executive power is capable of when used by men whose primary goal is not preservation of the nation but preservation of their own personal, privileged positions in power.

I have wrestled with with these issues on a case by case basis as any thinking American should. This lets out the overwhelming majority of liberals whose knees automatically jerk and whose heads explode with every revelation of government trying to figure out if there is someone out there trying to blow me to smithereens. They are not serious people and should never, ever be trusted with anything more important to national security than running the local YMCA.

This most recent attempt by the New York Times and others to throw a body block against the Administration to spring al-Qaeda for an open field run at the United States is so far beyond the pale that any attempt to justify their actions only reveals them to be as clueless about national security as they are partisan in their political beliefs.

Indeed, this jaw dropping “explanation” by Times Executive Editor Bill Keller reaches heights of hubris and arrogance not seen since the days of Hearst, McCormick, and other press barons who believed they, not the elected representatives of the people, ran the country:

Bill Keller, the newspaper’s executive editor, said: “We have listened closely to the administration’s arguments for withholding this information, and given them the most serious and respectful consideration. We remain convinced that the administration’s extraordinary access to this vast repository of international financial data, however carefully targeted use of it may be, is a matter of public interest.”

There are many, many things “in the public interest” that I would love to see splattered all over the front pages of the Times. For instance, I would find it irresistible to know what was in the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) from the CIA each day, wouldn’t you? I would love a transcript of the private briefing listened to by the President. What questions did he ask? What were the spook’s sources? And while we’re at it, I would find it fascinating to get the CIA’s take on the situation inside Syria or what’s the real scoop on President Ahmadinejad of Iran. Is he really as loony as he sounds? Or is it all an act?

Talk about “public interest!” The Times would sell a gazillion copies if they printed that stuff. Of course, I’m not saying the Times is quite so irresponsible as all that. But the point needs answering.

Where does one draw the line on “public interest?” Does the Times have the obligation to disclose its internal debates that went into the decision to out this particular program? Do its editors and writers have an obligation to fan out and appear in public forums like the cable nets and talk radio shows to explain their rationale for publicizing a program that even they admit in their 5,000 word article is legal?

Keller is a coward. And his refusal to appear on shows like Hugh Hewitt’s program only leaves the impression that he knows what he did is unjustifiable under any doctrine that includes “the public’s right to know” or that the Times was acting in the even more problematic “public interest.” The reporters on the piece are less responsible but should still demonstrate a little backbone and come out from behind the Time’s firewall and explain themselves.

Patterico wrestles with the legal implications:

As to the separate question of whether these folks can and/or should be criminally prosecuted, I haven’t made up my mind. I lean toward the conclusion that prosecutions are possible and wise. But it’s not as obvious as you might think. In the context of the current situation, the answer may seem obvious. But it is easy to imagine other situations where it is not.

The boys at Powerline are much more certain about what should be done:

It is unfortunately past time for the Bush administration to enforce the laws of the United States against the New York Times. The Times and its likeminded media colleagues will undoubtedly continue to undermine and betray the national security of the United States until they are taught that they are subject to the same laws that govern the conduct of ordinary citizens, or until an enraged citizenry decides, like Bill Keller, to take the law into its own hands and express its disagreement some other way.

From a purely practical point of view, making Keller and the Times reporters do the perp walk would cause a constitutional crisis no matter how “legal” the prosecutions would be or how justifiable they would be under the present circumstances. Nearly every media outlet in the country would condemn it and it would certainly set off a Congressional row. It may actually end up being much more trouble than those gentlemen are worth. In fact, the prosecutions may have the opposite effect that Powerline envisions. Just to prove how brave they are, journalists would take it upon themselves perhaps to publish all sorts of classified information, daring the Department of Justice to prosecute them.

What we can do is being done - flood their inboxes with mail and condemn their actions with all the moral outrage we can muster. It won’t change a thing with regards to this story. But it may make Keller and the Times think a little harder next time about publishing national security secrets.

UPDATE

Patterico has cancelled his subscription to the Los Angeles Times, one of three papers who broke the story yesterday. The other two were the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal.

He pointed out to the subscription specialist who tried to talk him out of cancelling that he wasn’t doing it because he disagreed with the newspaper. And anyone who has read Patterico’s year end summaries of what the LA Times has done knows that he has plenty of ammunition there. Rather, he cancelled because he cannot abide by the paper’s decision to publish details of the top secret program:

I told the man that officials from the Bush Administration had begged the newspaper’s editors not to print this story, but the editors ran the story anyway. I told him that I think publishing the story was completely irresponsible, totally lacking in any justification, and has posed a threat to the safety of our country. And I just can’t continue to subscribe to a newspaper that would do such a thing.

This is another way to make newspapers think twice about publishing such stories. Hopefully, many more will follow his example.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

There are many observers of the New Media who believe that blogs or other on-line communities will one day replace the mainstream media as the best way to transmit news and information to the American public. The rationale behind this revolution is that collectively speaking, bloggers are wiser, less prone to error, and when that error is discovered, ruthless in correcting the mistake.

The key, as new media herald Jeff Jarvis preaches, is content. With millions of on-line participants in the process, content will cease to be of paramount importance and instead, the community itself will emerge as both arbiter and disseminator of what we now consider “news.” No more gatekeepers. No more “reporters.” In this brave new world, the act of sharing information itself through “linking” and other technological innovations will supplant the old paradigm of a small elite who writes, edits, and prints (or broadcasts) the news.

I have tremendous respect for Jarvis and others of his ilk who have devoted considerable thought to the new media and where it might be headed. And in the end, he may be proved a true prophet of the new age, a voice in the wilderness who pointed the way toward a bright future of citizen participation in the political conversation of the nation as we’ve never seen before.

Frankly, I don’t buy it. And judging by the burgeoning controversy surrounding Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos, the biggest liberal blogger on the planet, we may in fact be witnessing something of an earthquake that will alter the blogging landscape, changing the public’s perception of these on-line journals from fiercely partisan, independent voices to little more than pale echoes of the political parties they support.

More than 50 million Americans get most of their news and information from the internet with 13 million people counting themselves as readers of blogs. What makes politicians salivate about bloggers and blog readers is simple; they are comparatively rich. Surveys show that 43% of this group make over $90,000, with almost 70% enjoying annual incomes in excess of $50,000.With that kind of money to be had for the taking, insiders from both parties have begun to reach out to bloggers in earnest. And it isn’t just politicians. Adapting the adage “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” mainstream media outlets have begun to cater to bloggers as well. Most on-line editions of major newspapers now feature one or more blogs of their own as well as blog friendly features like tags for articles that help with identifying issues as well as listings on blog aggregators like Technorati.

The result of all this attention has been a phenomenal increase in advertising revenues for bloggers from a variety of sources. Herein lies the makings of controversy for Kos and I suspect other influential bloggers. All of that ad revenue has brought increased scrutiny of the Daily Kos universe by the mainstream press. And what they are beginning to uncover smacks of influence peddling, “pay for play” by politicians on the Kos website, and perhaps most interestingly, a network made up of the biggest, most influential liberal blogs with Moulitsis himself cracking the whip and ruthlessly enforcing a kind of orthodoxy of thought thanks to his control of a liberal ad network to which bloggers subscribe.

As with any media story, one must look at the sources and motivations of the people and outlets digging up this kind of dirt. If these revelations came only from right wing media outlets or talk radio, they could be more easily dismissed as just part of the normal background noise indicative of the usual partisan bickering. But some of what is being reported comes from the nominally liberal New Republic and the New York Times – hardly bastions of the right wing noise machine. And the details that are emerging, while revealing nothing illegal, certainly call into question Mr. Moulitsas’ ethics and thus, the ethics of all bloggers.

The controversy centers mostly around Moulitsas’ relationship with his friend, business partner, and recent co-author Jerome Armstrong. As the conservative site RedState has reported, there appears to be a correlation between candidates who hire Armstrong to work on their campaigns and favorable attention paid to those candidates on Daily Kos, a blog that garners more than 500,000 readers a day. Normally, this wouldn’t raise many eyebrows. Kos himself worked for the Howard Dean campaign and fully disclosed the fact that he was being compensated by the candidate. But what has some tongues wagging is Kos’s apparent support for the Presidential aspirations of Virginia Governor Mark Warner, a moderate Democrat who recently hired Armstrong as an internet consultant.

Further, during the recent YearlyKos convention in Las Vegas, Governor Warner spent a reported $50,000 on an open bar reception for attendees while delivering a rousing speech denouncing President Bush and the Republicans. Moulitsas, whose support of far left candidates have included other Armstrong clients like Representative Sherrod Brown who is running against Senator Mike DeWine in Ohio, has recently said that the moderate Governor Warner “bears watching” while praising his electability for President.

There is no evidence that any money changed hands between Armstrong and Moulitsas as a quid pro quo for pimping Brown, Warner, or any other politician’s candidacy on the Daily Kos website. But the appearance of impropriety is there. And legitimate questions arise in this regard when examining the background of Jerome Armstrong and his history with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

In a complex stock touting scheme, Armstrong was paid $20,000 to push a stock on investment message boards without disclosing he was being paid to do so. The SEC got Armstrong to cease his activities on behalf of the stock and had him agree to a permanent injunction that forbade him from touting stocks in the future. In addition, the SEC is still considering whether or not to levy monetary penalties against him.

The connection between Armstrong’s stock touting and Kos’s candidate pimping is made by RedState:

It’s hard to say that Armstrong’s conduct in the BluePoint case can be separated from his employment by the Warner campaign – if anything, what he did in 2000 bears a striking resemblance to what numerous people have noted in the netroots with candidates: money goes to Armstrong, and hype emerges around his favored candidates, and – if the Howard Dean campaign is any indication – what’s left at the end is a bunch of promoters and consultants who made a bunch of money and an audience of true believers who got left with nothing. In other words, it appears that Warner may be using Armstrong for a function similar to one which ran Armstrong afoul of the law in the first place.

If this were Moulitsas’ only problem, he could probably brush it off as a media campaign carried out by conservatives to discredit him. But the revelations about an email list of top liberal bloggers with Moulitsas as putative leader, as well as his board membership on the top liberal blogad network, could really have an impact on his credibility outside of his leftist readership.

The New Republic’s Jason Zengerle has uncovered a network of liberal bloggers who keep in touch through an email list known as “Townhouse” and who, according to Zengerle, coordinate their blog activities. He quotes from an email sent by Kos about the Armstrong controversy where Kos asks the group to keep quiet about it:

My request to you guys is that you ignore this for now. It would make my life easier if we can confine the story. Then, once Jerome can speak and defend himself, then I’ll go on the offensive (which is when I would file any lawsuits) and anyone can pile on. If any of us blog on this right now, we fuel the story. Let’s starve it of oxygen. And without the “he said, she said” element to the story, you know political journalists are paralyzed into inaction.

Thanks, markos

This kind of coordination in and of itself is not shocking. What is apparently out of the ordinary is the fact that Moulitsas sits on the board of directors of an blog advertising group known as Advertising Liberally, a group that pays liberal bloggers for ads.

Along with Armstrong and MyDD’s Chris Bowers, Kos runs a BlogAds advertising network called Advertising Liberally, to which a number of “Townhouse” members belong. (If you want a fuller understanding of how BlogAds advertising networks operate, and how they allow lower-traffic blogs to gain more clout with advertisers by combining their traffic, read this piece.) Therefore, Kos (along with Armstrong and Bowers) gets to decide which blogs belong—and don’t belong—to Advertising Liberally, which means a lot of these blogs’ financial health hinges upon staying in Kos’s good graces. Is it any wonder they’re so obedient?

That may be true, although from my own personal experience, very, very few people are going to get rich by featuring advertising on their blogs. That said, it is the appearance of control that is the issue here. And even though there may be some bloggers on the Townhouse list who have criticized Moulitsas in the past and not suffered any consequences, there is the very real possibility that many of the smaller liberal blogs would feel compelled not to upset their blog patron lest they lose whatever meager earnings they squeeze out of their websites, or their imaginative dreams of future success as a major blogger.

In short, this is not so much Kos cracking the whip to keep people in line but rather the reluctance of many on the left to challenge his position and authority.

From my own perspective as a blogger, I think that while appearances are important, Moulitsas has done nothing wrong nor has he operated in an unethical manner. The email list is titillating but hardly the stuff of conspiracy. And as far as the blogad controversy, unless your blog has a fairly large presence, your remuneration will be so small that most bloggers wouldn’t think twice about speaking their mind if they believed Kos was wrong. The threat of Moulitsas pulling their ads is therefore not credible.

What all of this does point to is the imminent demise of blogs as we have come to know and love them. Blogs are about ready to hit the big time. It is expected that most competitive campaigns will spend tens of millions of dollars on internet advertising before the November elections, a large chunk of that on political blogs. What will all of this money do to Blogland?

We will probably see a stratification process as money flows to larger blogs and smaller websites scrambling for the remainder while the owners harbor dreams of making it big. And this presents a whole series of problems with blogs themselves and what we who write them are becoming.

In order to get a nice chunk of that ad money, smaller sites must grow. And the surest way to grow one’s blog is by being a good writer and participating in controversy. I don’t deny that one of my motivations for writing this piece is that people who read this site and others are interested in the Kos case. But what this kind of thinking reveals on my part and on the part of political bloggers in general is a thirst for the controversies and scandals that rock politics on a regular basis and appeal to the lowest common denominator in readership.

In this respect, we are little better than the “old” media in that the drive for readership and notoriety is becoming paramount. Gone are the days when many of us simply blogged for the sake of writing and sharing information. And while there are still thousands of bloggers who enjoy blogging for its own sake, for many of us, it has become a competitive enterprise, a stepping stone to bigger and better things.

Will success spoil the blog and the blogger? Even if it does, there will be someone and something to take its place. The only thing we can be certain of is that the pace of change in this on-line world is greater than in any other mass medium in history. Where it will be five years from now is anyone’s guess.

blog posts on Kos at The Truth Laid Bear

For a party that has made a lot of noise over the last three years about what a mistake we’ve made in Iraq, how immoral it is being there, how Bush lied and misled the country into war, and what a tragedy all our young men dying in a lost cause is, the Democratic party in the Senate rolled over and whimpered today like the whipped curs they truly are.

In an 86-13 vote, the Senate turned back a proposal from some Democrats that would require the administration to withdraw all combat troops from Iraq by July 1, 2007, with redeployments beginning this year.

Minutes later, the Senate rejected by 60-39 the proposal more popular with Democrats, a nonbinding resolution that would call for the administration to begin withdrawing troops, but with no timetable for the war’s end.

As I pointed out here, their position is immoral. Not having the political guts to declare that the war is a total failure, a massive defeat for the US and that we should leave immediately before another American soldier loses his life, they opt instead for the kind tortuous withdrawal that hides their belief that the war is lost while at the same time giving aid and comfort to the enemy and demoralizing our troops.

In short, they are giving us the worst of both worlds; defeatism and cowardice.

If the war is lost, what is the point in staying one minute longer? Iraqi stability? Baloney! If you’re going to set an arbitrary timetable for withdrawal regardless of what the security situation is in Iraq, what in God’s name is the difference between withdrawing immediately and withdrawing one year from now? I’ll tell you the difference. The difference is more dead American soldiers one year from now while you’re slapping yourselves on the back, congratulating yourselves for having put one over on the electorate.

Both resolutions presented by the Democrats were exercises in wishful thinking. Kerry’s resolution calling for withdrawal a year from now is a chimera, a fantasy that seeks only to embarrass Bush and is not grounded in either reality or military strategy. The Levin alternative was even worse. It was such a milquetoast resolution, it was in danger of disintegrating while the clerk was reading it.

Both resolutions failed to note the most important consequence of enacting them; Democratic Senators going on record believing that the war is lost. Funny how that got lost in the shuffle. There is nothing wrong or even unpatriotic in believing the war is lost. It is dishonest not to come out and say so - especially when your rhetoric over the last 3 years has made it absolutely crystal clear that you believe the war has been lost already.

If you believe that the war is not lost and are still supporting this resolution, then one can come to no other conclusion that you wish the US to be defeated. We used to call that treason but today, it guarantees you an appearance on Meet The Press.

War is about victory or defeat. Those are the choices. When history came calling today, the Democrats tried to split the difference between the two and hope at the same time that by November, either the voters will have forgotten or that things will have gotten worse in Iraq as the insurgents, emboldened by the thought of a Democratic takeover, ratchet up the violence there in hopes of swinging the election to their patroni in the Senate.

It would have been politically unpalatable to do so, but if the Democrats had insisted en masse on an immediate pullout of American troops, they at least would have been standing on firm moral ground. But their weasel resolutions only served to make them look like spineless jellyfish, unwilling to stand up for their true beliefs.

The lot of them - those that are running - should be soundly defeated in November.

UPDATE

Allah has the Senate roll call and points out that Kerry’s resolution gained 6 votes compared to last week for pushing back the deadline for withdrawal six months.

Now that’s what I call a “nuanced” vote.

Also, surprised to see “Dugout” Mark Dayton voting against his own caucus and siding with the Republicans. The other Dem defectors are all predictable including poor Joe Lieberman who is in the primary fight for his life with the Kos Kreature Ned Lamont. Joe has been bleeding lib support (despite a very high ADA rating) thanks to the netnuts who are stinking up the Nutmeg State like they were cartons of rancid egg nog left over from last Christmas, flooding the airwaves and phone lines with anti-Lieberman ads. It seems to be having its intended effect as Lamont - a nobody that Kos has apparently anointed in his “Anybody but Lieberman” campaign - creeps into the high 30’s and low 40’s.

I expect Lieberman to win whether he runs as a Democrat or independent. As a member of the truly loyal opposition, he is an indispensable man. I know that if I lived in Connecticut, I’d vote for him myself.

The votes for this week’s Watchers Council are in and the winner in the Council category was ME! for my post “Spinning their Way to Defeat in November.” Finishing second was “Outer Darkness” by Gates of Vienna.

Coming out on top in the Non Council category was A Newer World’s “One Liberal’s Argument for Still Staying in Iraq.”

If you’d like to participate in the weekly Council vote, go here and follow instructions.

In the end, Team USA showed that despite an increase in the talent and skill of its roster, it still has a long way to go to compete on the world stage.

The individual skills of US players by and large are inferior to not only the very best players, but the rest of the world in general. This lack of skill is hidden when we play against the relatively week Caribbean and Central American teams during World Cup qualifying rounds. But when playing against sides that play disciplined, close defense, the individual weaknesses of the US team are exposed and exploited much to our detriment.

The 2-1 loss to Ghana is illustrative of both this lack of skill and the inferiority of our coaching. Most observers think that Bruce Arena was badly outcoached against the Czechs. And the curious lethargy of Team USA on offense during most of the tournament can be directly traced to his insistence on playing Brian McBride alone up top where he forces the mediocre striker to make plays all by himself while dropping his best skilled player, Landon Donovan, into a roaming midfielder role who then must depend on crisp, accurate entry passes that simply were not there the entire tournament. Known as a great motivator, Arena’s boys never had the sense of urgency that may have made them competitive in either the Czech or Ghana losses. It looked like they were playing at altitude so slow a foot they appeared.

Perhaps there is no US player who disappointed more than Donovan. He was invisible for long stretches. But the same could be said for Beasley and McBride as well. In Donovan’s case, so much was expected of him that one could fairly say that his effort and performance was far below world class standards. He has eschewed playing in Europe for the last few years. Now it would be an open question whether or not any decent European club would want him.

Nothing should be detracted from the play of Ghana. The Black Stars flew around the field playing with an energy and abandon that made the US side look for all the world like they were stuck in the mud by comparison. But their next opponent is Brazil, a match that should be entertaining but one where the Stars will be huge underdogs. By any stretch, the Ghanaians are the surprise of the tournament.

I will continue to write occasionally about the Cup over the next fortnight. And I plan on doing a report card this weekend, grading the individual American players and reflecting on the future of Team USA as well as soccer in America.

Senator Rick Santorum is in a race for his political life. This could explain why he is trumpeting a 2 year old report he requested to have declassified that confirms the fact of chemical weapons found in Iraq.

There are several caveats that have to be listed when discussing this report. First, there’s nothing new in it:

The U.S. military announced in 2004 in Iraq that several crates of the old shells had been uncovered and that they contained a blister agent that was no longer active. Neither the military nor the White House nor the CIA considered the shells to be evidence of what was alleged by the Bush administration to be a current Iraqi program to make chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.

Last night, intelligence officials reaffirmed that the shells were old and were not the suspected weapons of mass destruction sought in Iraq after the 2003 invasion.

Secondly, I agree with Allah who says simply “WMD is WMD, but finding a shell here and there when Iran’s about to get the bomb next door leaves me somewhat … underwhelmed.”

Third, the WMD argument ended years ago. Despite tantalizing evidence that Saddam moved his stockpiles to Syria and Lebanon prior to our invasion as well as anecdotal evidence of Russian collusion in spiriting WMD out of the country, from the standpoint of making a difference in the minds of the American people, this most recent evidence of Iraqi WMD will hardly be a blip on most people’s radar.

To be sure, the MSM at least gives the appearance that it is taking no chances that this story will change anyone’s mind on the war or on the President. One would think that a Senator reading from a declassified report on the Senate floor that our forces found 500 artillery shells containing deadly chemicals might be considered in some quarters to be news. The New York Times doesn’t even mention it. And even more curiously, the Washington Post buried the story by their national security correspondent Dafna Linzer on Page 10 (I wonder when the last time Linzer had his byline buried that deep in the paper?). And just to feed my conspiratorial nature even further, WaPo no longer links to the story in their on-line edition. I had to retrieve it by going through my “history” this morning.

But even if this was front page news, the political impact would be negligible. The politics of the war have moved beyond WMD and the liberation of Iraq and now center on the ongoing occupation and insurgency. We could find hundreds perhaps even thousands more of these pre-Gulf War chemical munitions and there still would be no impact on the President’s popularity or Republican chances in November. The fact is, the narrative of the war has been appropriated by the President’s political enemies. “Bush lied, people died” still resonates with a sizable portion of the electorate, judging by the numbers we see about support for the war as well as the fact that a majority of Americans see the war as a mistake and not worth the cost. And for that to change, the political and security situations in Iraq will have to improve dramatically. Or, underground bunkers filled with WMD created after the Gulf War would have to be discovered in Iraq or elsewhere.

This is the unfortunate dynamic at work when the politics of the war is assessed by voters. I am heartened to see Republicans standing behind our troops and the President this week as they beat back attempts by the Democrats to cut and run. I think it reflects good instincts about where the American people stand on the war. Even if they think it may have been a mistake to invade in the first place, I think that voters still believe that there is no substitute for victory and that the Democrat’s plan smacks of defeatism. I also think that the debate this week in Congress shows that the tipping point is far from being reached and that Democrats who seek to make their critique of the war an issue in November do so at their own peril.

This may change over the summer and into the fall if the Iraqi government fails to get its act together and the carnage continues. But at the moment, the Democrats, it seems to me, may have miscalculated. It should be interesting to see how many of them support Kerry’s resolution on withdrawal in the Senate. If Reid can’t get half his caucus to support the measure, it would indicate to me that the Democrats also see their harsh critique of the war as a loser of an issue and will back off unless the situation on the ground changes for the worse.

From an historical standpoint, the issue of WMD may be important. But politically, it’s a non-starter. What the American people want is not confirmation of the justification for going into Iraq but rather progress by the Iraqi government that would help get us out.

That spells victory both for our troops and for Republicans in November.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin links to Powerline who received an interesting email from NRO’s Michael Ledeen:

Please point out to your readers that Negroponte only declassified a few fragments of a much bigger document. Read the press conference and you will see that Santorum and Hoekstra were furious at the meager declassification. They will push for more, and we all must do that. I am told that there is a lot more in the full document, which CIA is desperate to protect, since it shows the miserable job they did looking for WMDs in Iraq.

The CIA may not be very good at intelligence work. But when it comes to protecting their behinds in turf wars, there appears to be no agency better at putting their own narrow interests ahead of the national good.

Sorry for the inconvenience. My site was down for about an hour and a half earlier today.

Every time it happens, I begin to wonder why liberals hate me so. Obviously, the down time is the result of a leftist conspiracy. And one of these days, I’m gonna prove it…

First, I’ll have to buy some more Reynolds aluminum. Liberals broke into my house and stole it all.

This will be something of a confessional post in that I have seen the error of my ways and wish to make amends.

For all the times I referred to liberals as “loons,” I am heartily sorry for having offended thee.

For all the times I have called liberals “lickspittles,” I am heartily sorry for having offended thee.

For all the times I have referred to the left as “a gaggle of idiotic, self-important nitwits,” I am heartily sorry for having offended thee.

I could go on and on, of course, But like a sex addict who has forgotten the names of most of their scores, the herculean effort required to recall all the slights, the insults, the downright nasty things I’ve said about liberals over the years would tax the memory of an elephant and the patience of a conservative trying to explain capitalism to a lefty.

OOOPS! There I go again. I’m sorry, that one kind of slipped out. I wonder if there’s something I can take to help with the withdrawal symptoms…

If only I had realized how thin skinned my leftist brothers and sisters truly were, I would never have tried to marginalize them politically by coming up with ever more hurtful and inventive invective to describe their cockamamie ideas or unpalatable personalities in such a way as to cause the kind of psychic pain evinced in this post from Hume’s Ghost at Unclaimed Territory.

This is life altering stuff. Maybe I’ll run away in shame and join a Zoroastrian monastery. Maybe I’ll join the Peace Corps. Or the Foreign Legion.

I’ll have to stop laughing first:

Not too long ago a friend of mine told me she was trying to become more politically informed. To do so, she continued, she had begun reading Ann Coulter’s How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must). Think about that for a moment. This was an individual who did not know much about politics, was a non-ideological independent and the first person she could think of to learn more about politics from was a hate-mongering hack. This should have never happened, because Coulter should have been exposed for the vile, bigoted, intellectually bankrupt propagandist that she is by journalists a long time ago. In this regard, my friend was failed by a mainstream media which is more interested in using Coulter as a figure to drive up ratings than they are in doing their jobs of promoting a responsible national discourse.

First of all, I’m calling out the poster as a prevaricator. If there is anyone in America so stupid, so naive as to think that they can become “more politically informed” by reading Ann Coulter, I will eat my size 11B Floresheim Wingtips. How about picking up a frickin’ newspaper? Or a magazine?

No, sorry - I don’t buy it. That “friend” is a figment of the poster’s imagination. And only an idiot liberal would believe that anyone with half a brain would fall for such a transparent literary device.

Yes Coulter is vile. Bigoted? Perhaps. Intellectually bankrupt? Hardly. Coulter may be many things but even her enemies concede she has a first class mind. Certainly she’s smarter than the bozo who wrote this post in that Coulter would never underestimate the intelligence of her readers the way this fellow has by simply making stuff up.

But why invent someone so stupid? Why someone who has the brains of a marmoset and the political awareness of my pet cat Aramis?

SO THAT THE LIBERAL CAN RIDE TO THE RESCUE AND SAVE HER!

This is why I respond to Coulter and her apologists like Malkin, because I don’t want their hate corrupting people like my friend. In the comments of Glenn’s post, I linked to this entry I had previously written about why eliminationist rhetoric is not a joke as an explanation of why I write about extremists. You’ll notice that it contains a link to a post that Alonzo Fyfe wrote after his wife was sent an e-mail from a co-worker which fantasized about the deaths of liberals. The co-worker thought it “too good not to pass along.”

We must answer Coulter and her ilk, because unanswered their hateful rhetoric creeps into society, meant to divide us from our friends, family, and fellow Americans. The reason these pundits are incapable of disagreeing with someone without first labeling an opponent as liberal, Democrat, socialist, far left, moonbat, communist etc. (and the same can go for those who do the reverse) is because their tribal binary logic requires them to identify an outgroup, a “them” to be excluded, or worse, eliminated.

Wait a minute….hold the phone. My tribal binary logic circuits are corrupted. I wonder if Rush Limbaugh has a spare?

I should point out that there is nothing hateful in calling someone a liberal, or a moonbat, or a socialist, or even a Democrat. And while “eliminationist” rhetoric is vile and disgusting, only certain types of polemicists use it - those without the intellectual gifts to form complete sentences or close their mouths when breathing. As for the vile “jokes” coming from the likes of Coulter, Savage, Randi Rhodes, and half the posters at the Democratic Underground, poor taste in humor is not a danger to the republic. I would suggest the poster grow up a little and recognize that jokes about assassinating the President or Supreme Court judges are impolitic and ignorant - not yet crimes in America, though give liberals 20 years and they very well could be.

Few people on the web are more shallow in their thinking than Glenn Greenwald, quoted admirably here along with “The Propaganda Critic” who instructs us What It All Means:

This is why Glenn discovered that he was a “leftist” and/or a “liberal” for his opposition to the Bush administration. Sarcastically explaining this tactic, Glenn wrote

[T]hey label the argument and the person making it “leftist” and “liberal” and - presto! - no more need to address the arguments or consider its substance because it’s all been shooed away with one fell swoop of name-calling cliches.

In a post commenting on this I noted that the name-calling tactic is actually a common propaganda technique. The Propaganda Critic website describes name-calling thusly:

The name-calling technique links a person, or idea, to a negative symbol. The propagandist who uses this technique hopes that the audience will reject the person or the idea on the basis of the negative symbol, instead of looking at the available evidence.

Sorta like calling me a “racist” or a “fascist” because I disagree with you. But liberals are above that sort of thing, right? I mean, it’s not like calling me a racist in order to delegitimze any countervailing arguments made in opposition to the dominant leftist worldview is the same thing. Coming from someone who obviously speaks with superior moral authority on the subject of race having felt the black man’s pain and sympathized with the oppressed, any arguments that run counter to the prevailing liberal position on race can automatically be tossed into the intellectual dustbin.

What. A. Crock.

And then, to prove how really clueless the author of this shallow piece of drivel truly is, I present Exhibit 15:

The rhetoric of these media transmitters, both by repackaging extremist views for mainstream consumption and by engaging in the ritual defamation of those with whom they disagree, serve to shift mainstream political discourse towards the extreme. I’m passing over this subject briefly but will direct your attention to Dave Neiwert’s seminal essay Rush, Newspeak, and Fascism: An exegesis (from which the transmitters link is taken) which exhaustively explains why and how American values are being transformed and corrupted by the right-wing extremism that the likes of Coulter and Malkin help to diffuse into every day discussion.

That’s right. No, you did not read it wrong. The author of a post skewering conservatives for name calling has approvingly linked to a post that refers to conservatives as fascists.

I am at a loss for words in trying to describe that kind of ignorance. It is beyond belief, beyond rationality. What’s worse, is that the post he links to by Dave Neiwert contains the jaw dropping notion that modern conservative issues have been stolen (or “transmitted”) from neo-Nazis and the Kluxers.

I took the time to debunk Neiwert’s idiocy here. I’ll give you the money grafs:

It is monstrous calumny to accuse conservatives thusly. Especially dressing his screed up, as Mr. Neiwert does in this piece, as some kind of psychological analysis of the motivations and deeply held beliefs of conservative bloggers. At bottom, the way conservatives are attacked in this piece says more about the arrogant, smug, self-righteous, self congratulatory left than it does about the people it seeks to deliberately defame.

What are we really discussing here? Nothing less than the ability to debate public policy issues without one side having recourse to use blood libel terms like “racist” in order to delegitimatize the thoughts, words, and deeds of one’s opponent. This is the reason “race” as a matter of public policy cannot be discussed rationally. The left starts with the premise that any deviation from its base assumptions on race is non-negotiable – an advantage they see as set in stone as the Ten Commandments. Hence, one cannot discuss reforming affirmative action because to do so is, by definition, racist.

Finally, not content with throwing a tantrum about conservative name calling (and then identifying conservatives as fascists) only one thing remains to be done in order to completely legitimize his argument; he must make liberals victims:

Coulter talks about “liberals” the way racists talk about blacks, the way the Nazis talked about Jews. Her “jokes” are predicated on the notion that the elimination of a set of humans are funny, her “jokes” are funny the way anti-Semitic “jokes” like this were funny, which is to say, they are not not funny. They are disgusting and deadly serious.

In the clip of her appearance on the Tonight Show, Coulter mentioned that she let her “smartest liberal friend” whom she told would be “smarter than any liberal I’m going to be on tv with” read her book. Could her bigotry be any plainer? Substitute in any other group that’s been hated against in history and see how that sentence sounds.

Where does one begin to deconstruct this bilge? Why would we want to substitute the word “liberal” for the word “Jew” or “black” or any other racial or religious group ? How can anyone be so incredibly arrogant and self-righteous to think that mocking someone for their political beliefs are in any way, shape, or form similar to making fun of one’s race?

This is identity politics run wild. It should now be out of bounds to criticize or make fun of a liberal because he’s a…a…LIBERAL!

I’m convinced that the author of this piece is not serious, that all this highfalutin language and flowery rhetoric is just an exercise in comedy writing. May I suggest that if the poster wants to audition for the Stephen Colbert show that he pick another subject, something more illustrative of his talent and peculiar intellectual gifts.

I hear they have an opening at Hallmark Cards.

UPDATE: 6/22

To all those who have taken me to task in the comments (and especially Mr. Ghost who authored the the original piece) you have a point of sorts when you criticize me for engaging in the very thing I am criticizing in the author’s piece.

The point of my piece was not to point out that “liberals do it too” - and if you could put yourself in my shoes for a few hours and have to read the vile, disgusting, ignorant claptrap I get in comments and emails you’d know that, in fact, they do it in spades. What disgusted me about Mr. Ghost’s piece was his puerile attempt to put a psychological gloss on his critique. That, and the usual liberal whining about mean, nasty Republicans spreading hate when all the left wants to do is spread love and understanding.

BULLSH*T!

Politics is a game for grown ups. To equate making a joke about the intellect of liberals (people laughed at that statement on the tonight show - it was a joke Mr. Ghost) with the stereotyping of blacks and Jews is outrageous demagoguery and an extraordinarily cynical attempt to piggyback the faux, hand wringing, whining left on the victimhood of the truly oppressed. It is wrong. It is identity politics at its worst. Not content with calling people Nazis, now people like Mr. Ghost wish to enable the left to do it and then be able to cry “Victim” if someone dares respond.

It won’t wash. And even though most conservative bloggers don’t bother with in-depth fisking of people like Glenn Greenwald, Jane Hamsher, Bilmon, Neiwert, and the cadre of liberals who regularly accuse conservatives of being hateful, seeing it as an exercise in futility, I firmly believe that a record must be made that attempts to counter their illogic, misrepresentations, and even out right lies. At the very least, it lets them know that someone besides their fawning, drooling, mouth breathing fans are watching.

UPDATE II: BOZO SPEAKS

Dave Neiwert has joined the fray with a typical post that misrepresents everything I say while claiming that he doesn’t think conservatives are fascists - they just walk, talk, think, breathe, eat, and fornicate like them:

Moreover, as I went on later to explore in depth, mainstream conservatism is not fascist in the classic sense; what it has done, instead, is gradually adopt a series of appeals and memes that are classically fascist, but overall it lacks certain major traits, especially the violent thuggishness that really is the beating heart of fascism.

Note, also, that while Moran is grossly mischaracterizing what I wrote, he neglects to provide his readers any link to the work in question so that they may judge for themselves the accuracy of his charge. This kind of brain-dead dishonesty is something I’ve encountered before with right-wing bloggers, and again lays waste to the rosy-lensed notion that the blogosphere is “self-correcting.”

Did I mischaracterize what he wrote here?

What was most disturbing was, even in 2000, the way the mainstream conservative agenda was beginning to resemble the politics of longtime racists like David Duke and Richard Butler, the Aryan Nations leader: bashing welfare recipients, attacking affirmative action, complaining about “reverse discrimination,” calling for the elimination of immigrants. Since then, this trend has only accelerated, to the point that old-fashioned haters like Duke and the National Alliance are finding their ranks thinned by followers who just become Republicans.

I see the error of my ways. I’m just not nuanced enough of an intellect to detect the subtle differences in logic on display here. Republicans believe what David Duke believes but hey! They’re not racists. Even if Duke defectors are now mainstream Republicans, I’m still not calling Republicans racists, says Davey.

What a joke.

And, of course, I linked to the post that quote came from at the very top of my piece debunking his childish, amatuerish, and vapid attempts at psychoanalyzing conservative motivations. The fact that Davey and Mr. Ghost both are oblivious to their stupidity only makes their earnestness and seriousness all the more laughable.

“There is no substitute for victory.”
(Douglas MacArthur)

Anytime, anyplace Americans are sent to fight, there must be clearly defined strategic goals that, once reached, constitute the essence of victory. Any other reason to put our men and women in harm’s way must be considered immoral. You cannot ask people to fight and die for anything less than recognizable and measurable strategic yardsticks which would constitute ultimate triumph.

The Iraq War has always been, to my mind, a close call which is why readers of this site have seen my support waxing and waning over the last two years. Achieving the goals of overthrowing Saddam and negating his ability to deliver WMD to terrorists (or, originally, to find and destroy the WMD) were noble and achievable goals, met in spectacular fashion by our military. But that third strategic goal of creating a democracy smack dab in the middle of jihad country to serve as an example to others in the region (its very democratic nature posing a threat to the autocracies and dictatorships in the Middle East) has proven to be depressingly elusive.

The litany of mistakes made by the Administration of George Bush in trying to achieve this last goal is long. But that statement is made with 20/20 hindsight. Each step taken seemed reasonable at the time. As in every war ever fought, mistakes are too numerous to count. And I daresay that there is ample evidence that for every mistake ever made in any war, there were voices warning of dire consequences if that particular plan were followed. Just as there were voices warning of catastrophe when there was a spectacular success. Funny how we never hear of the naysayers when that happens.

Viet Nam was, at bottom, an immoral war because the United States was asking its young men to fight and die not to win but to avoid losing. This was clear as early as 1968 when President Johnson halted the bombing and sought peace talks. In practical terms, it meant that 22,000 more American soldiers were killed between 1968-73 in a war that we had no intention of achieving victory. Our leaving in 1968 would not have altered the final outcome. All we did was kill hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians and those thousands of additional American boys. The “peace treaty” that the North Vietnamese broke the minute they thought they could get away with it only put a disastrous coda on a war fought in what we can see with 20/20 hindsight was the wrong place at the wrong time.

Would it have been better to leave in 1968? My own personal feeling is that if we had pulled out then, we would have saved lives and perhaps avoided the worst of the rending, tearing battles that made the 1960’s and 70’s so turbulent. As long as we had no intention of fighting through to victory - and there was no definition of victory ever announced in the first place - there was no sense keeping men there to die.

This is apparently the rationale being used by anti-war Democrats as they seek to put a “timetable” for withdrawal before the Senate this week:

Trying to bridge party divisions on the eve of a Senate debate, leading Democrats called Monday for American troops to begin pulling out of Iraq this year. They avoided setting a firm timetable for withdrawal but argued that the Bush administration’s open-ended commitment to the war would only prevent Iraqis from moving forward on their own.

Coming the week after partisan and often angry House debate over the war, the Senate proposal, a non binding resolution, was carefully worded to deflect any accusations that the Democrats were “cutting and running,” as their position has been depicted by Republicans. The Democrats behind the measure did not even use the word “withdrawal,” and talked about how to guarantee “success” for Iraq, not about any failures of the war.

Weasel words from weaselly men and women. Using as a cover the idea that the Iraqis can get along without us if only we tell the government when we’re leaving and how many of us will be going (strangely forgetting that the insurgents will get the exact same information and adjust their activities accordingly), the Democrats are engaging in an exercise of breathtaking immorality.

Any timetable for withdrawal necessarily obviates any thought of victory. And if you don’t believe that victory is achievable then clearly you believe we have lost already. Trying to split the difference between victory and defeat in war is not possible. One side wins and one side loses. Hence, by offering this “timetable,” the Democrats are saying that we have lost the war and should leave in order to cut our losses.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with this position, by the way. It is defeatist. It is cowardly. But there is nothing necessarily incorrect in admitting defeat and pulling out.

But what makes the Democrats position immoral is that they are not advocating this timetable to get our troops out of harms way as fast as possible. In fact, they are terrified of the political consequences of doing so. Instead, they opt for the Viet Nam approach. According to them, the war was a mistake to begin with, it was fought incompetently, it was illegal, and we’ve already lost since there’s no way we’re ever going to say that George Bush won the war. But instead of advocating an immediate withdrawal of all American forces, we are going to advocate that more young men die in a losing cause just so that we don’t appear to be “cutting and running” and thus, lose badly at the polls in November.

If there has been a more cynical, immoral ploy in the last half century of American politics, I can’t think of it.

The Democrat’s supporters on the far left have no such timidity. They state in no uncertain terms that the war is lost and that the troops should come home immediately. Bully for them. In this, they show more guts than their representatives in Congress. Of course, it’s easy to have guts when your sitting on your fat ass in an air conditioned room at mommy’s house pecking away at a keyboard about how the country is turning into a dictatorship and whining about the war. Real patriots would have been off their duffs long ago, filling American jails to overflowing with their bodies as they did everything in their power to stop what they considered an immoral war.

Why are the Democrats so scared of cutting and running? Are they afraid the Republicans will make political capital out of this position? It’s not like they can make a case that they want to “win” the war. In fact, their advocacy for withdrawal before the job of helping the Iraqis with their security problems is done proves that they have no interest in victory. Their leading spokesmen have declared the war “unwinnable” and therefore already lost. Not standing behind that principle smacks of both political cowardice as well as having a depraved indifference to the lives of American soldiers.

Are they right? Is the war already lost?

What is happening in Iraq at this moment is deadly chaos. A memo from our embassy in Baghdad tells the horrific details of life in the capitol city:

* Two of the three female Iraqis in the public affairs office reported stepped-up harassment since mid-May….”some groups are pushing women to cover even their face, a step not taken in Iran even at its most conservative.” One of the women is now wearing a full abaya after receiving direct threats.

* The overall environment is one of “frayed social networks,” with frequent actual or perceived insults. None of this is helped by lack of electricity. “One colleague told us he feels ‘defeated’ by circumstances, citing his example of being unable to help his two-year-old son who has asthma and cannot sleep in stifling heat,” which is now reaching 115 degrees.

* Another employee tells us that life outside the Green Zone has become ‘emotionally draining.’ He lives in a mostly Shiite area and claims to attend a funeral ‘every evening.’”
Fuel lines have grown so long that one staffer spent 12 hours in line on his day off. “Employees all confirm that by the last week of May, they were getting one hour of power for every six hours without.

While all of the “evidence” in the embassy memo is anecdotal, the information jibes with other sources about the almost total breakdown in society that has occurred in the last several months since the bombing of the Samarra Shrine. Hundreds of thousands have either fled the country or have left their homes in fear of being murdered or kidnapped. There are problems with militias, with training Iraqi security forces, with corruption, with the dual loyalty of some to both Iraq and Iran, and of course, the insurgency itself.

Daunting problems, indeed. But do they add up to defeat with no prospect of turning the situation around? Emphatically no. And while there may be days where Iraq takes one step forward and two back, there are also days where the opposite is true and real progress is made. The point is, that some trends - especially political ones - are moving in a positive direction. And I have a hunch about this fellow Prime Minister Maliki. I think he will surprise. He seems very determined to succeed as well as being committed to the Constitution. If we can stay long enough, I think there is a very real chance that by election day, there will be ample evidence that things are flowing in the right direction.

So what the Democrats want to do is snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Just when most of the political pieces to the puzzle are in place, they want to yank the rug out from underneath the Iraqi government and leave them to the tender mercies of the insurgents. And the way they advocate doing it will only mean more Americans dying in what they consider a lost cause.

Having the courage of one’s convictions seems to be lacking on the Democrats’ side of the aisle. Will none of them stand up for what they truly believe? Or will they hide behind weasel words in hopes that no one notices how truly wretched they are

In some ways, I feel badly for Marc Ash, Executive Director of Truthout.Org.

Thanks to Jason Leopold, he finds himself in quite a pickle. You may recall last May 13th that Mr. Leopold wrote in Truthout that Karl Rove had been indicted, that he had told the President that he would resign, that his lawyer Mr. Luskin met for 15 hours with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald the previous Friday, and that God didn’t make little green apples and it don’t rain in Indianapolis in the summertime…

All of this was to be splashed across the front pages of America’s newspapers and become fodder for the screamers on cable news within 48 hours. When the 48 hours came and went, we heard from Truthout that it must have been “business hours.” And when the 48 business hours came and went, I was half expecting the folks at Truthout to tell us that they had it wrong, it was actually doggie hours Fitzgerald was working on.

Needless to say, Leopold and Truthout became something of a laughingstock on the right with Jeff Goldstein satirizing the situation unmercifully. (Yeah, I know. The words “Goldstein” and “mercy” used together where a lefty loon like Leopold is concerned is a little farfetched.)

Then, in what has to be considered one of the most striking examples of the Gods piteously toying with us mortals, playing us for the fools we truly are, the night before Fitzgerald informed us that Fitzmas had been cancelled due to his refusal to indict The Evil One, Marc Ash wrote in Truthout that they were standing by their man Jason and that we were right and the whole rest of the world was nuts.

They based this defiant conclusion on their anonymous sources who were insisting that Rove indeed was being measured for the orange jumpsuit and a curious “sealed indictment” (whether it is an indictment is a matter of dispute) that came for the same grand jury that Fitzgerald has been manipulating (as all prosecutors do) for months.

I would have loved to have seen the look on Ash’s face less than 24 hours later when Rove’s attorney announced that Fitzgerald was not going to indict his client. Again, Truthout was left with egg on its face and its bare bottom exposed for all the world to see. One would think these developments would bring a quick and contrite mea culpa from Ash and Truthout. After all, this would be the responsible thing to do, something that any publication with an ounce of integrity would do in a heartbeat.

I guess that lets out Truthout.

In a series of startling development yesterday and last night, after a week of silence on the matter, Marc Ash came out with both barrels blazing, insisting that his anonymous sources were right, that Truthout was right, that Leopold was right, and that the facts themselves were somehow wrong.

He granted an interview to Justin Rood of TPM Muckracker, a much more responsible lefty journal, and insisted, like Kevin Bacon in Animal House, that “all is well:”

So does Truthout stand behind Leopold’s reporting — or does it “defer. . . to the nation’s leading publications”?

Ash doesn’t seem to think it’s an either/or proposition. “There is a perception here that Jason misreported facts, didn’t report facts accurately, wasn’t candid with his editors. None of that is true,” he told me. Right now, the publication is “reviewing all our sources. . . and trying to confirm, confirm, confirm.”

One would think before going to print with the biggest story of the young century that a responsible publication would have already tried to “confirm, confirm, confirm” but, hey! That’s just me. I mean, I could have gone with my bat boy story a couple of weeks ago but couldn’t confirm that the little bugger was actually related to James Carville. Looks like Weekly World News scooped me again.

Also in the interview with Mr. Rood, Ash made the rather tactful assertion that his staff is in hysterics:

“We’re suffering from hysteria here,” Ash said of the reaction to the mainstream press accounts which appear to contradict Leopold’s reporting. “And I don’t find that attractive and I don’t find it in the best interests of our readers. We are expressly endeavoring to mitigate hysteria,” said Ash.

One wonders if by “hysteria” Ash means that Truthout’s employees are rolling around on the floor laughing uncontrollably or shaking with palsied fits at the prospect of actually having to go out and get a job somewhere.

And don’t you just love “endeavoring to mitigate” the panic? Reminds me of the scene in the film Outlaw Josey Wales” where Chief Dan George playing the Indian Lone Watie was describing a meeting between the President of the United States and the Cherokee Chiefs who had come to Washington to negotiate. Watie says that the President told them to “Endeavor to persevere:”

LONE WATIE: We thought about it for a long time, “Endeavor to persevere.” And when we had thought about it long enough, we declared war on the Union.

Ash has apparently decided to declare war based on this defiant missive he published last night:

After spending the past month retracing our steps and confirming facts, we’ve come full circle. Our sources continue to maintain that a grand jury has in fact returned an indictment. Our sources said that parts of the indictment were read to Karl Rove and his attorney on Friday, May 12, 2006. Last week, we pointed to a sealed federal indictment, case number “06 cr 128,” which is still sealed and we are still pointing to it. During lengthy conversations with our sources over the past month, they reiterated that the substance of our report on May 13, 2006, was correct, and immediately following our report, Karl Rove’s status in the CIA leak probe changed. In summary, as we press our investigation we find indicators that more of our key facts are correct, not less.

That leaves the most important question: If our sources maintain that a grand jury has returned an indictment - and we have pointed to a criminal case number that we are told corresponds to it - then how is it possible that Patrick Fitzgerald is reported to have said that ‘he does not anticipate seeking charges against Rove at this time?’ That is a very troubling question, and the truth is, we do not yet have a definitive answer. We also continue to be very troubled that no one has seen the reported communication from Fitzgerald to Rove’s attorney Robert Luskin, and more importantly, how so much public judgment could be based on a communication that Luskin will not put on the table. Before we can assess the glaring contradiction between what our sources say and what Luskin says Fitzgerald faxed to him, we need to be able to consider what was faxed - and in its entirety.

What appears to have happened is that - and this is where Truthout blundered - in our haste to report the indictment we never considered the possibility that Patrick Fitzgerald would not make an announcement. We simply assumed - and we should not have done so - that he would tell the press. He did not. Fitzgerald appears to have used the indictment, and more importantly, the fear that it would go public, to extract information about the Plame outing case from Rove.

Mark Coffey, in his usual calm, collected, and understated manner, responds:

In other words - we weren’t wrong! We’re heroes! Don’t you see, you fools? It was us - we forced Rove’s hand! We control space and time! Bwwwaaaaahaaaaaaahaaaaaa! And you thought we would apologize! And how do we know? By relying on our original mistaken sources and a sealed case with contents we have no earthly way of knowing about! BWAAAAHAAAAAHAAAA!
Suckers…

Yeah, well…I think that covers most everything.

The sane left is a little more circumspect:

Truthout claims that their sources for this information are “career federal law enforcement and federal government officials.” Truthout also claims that their senior editors have confirmed all this with their sources. They’re not just relying on Jason Leopold.

Is this true? I don’t have a clue, but I figure I should pass along the latest scuttlebutt regardless. And for what it’s worth, there is one thing that makes me wonder if Rove is really in the clear: the fact that he refuses to make public the letter from Fitzgerald saying that he “does not anticipate seeking charges” against Rove at this time. Rove’s spokesman says they won’t release the letter because they have an agreement with Fitzgerald that they “wouldn’t disclose direct communications or any documents between his office and ours.” This is a pretty laughable excuse, and it’s hard not to wonder just what’s in that letter that they don’t want anyone to see.

I suppose following the orders of a Special Prosecutor not to release direct communications between his office and Rove’s attorney could be considered “laughable” if there was no possibility that by disobeying that order you could find yourself once again in the prosecutor’s sights. That would seem to include Kevin Drum in the laughing category but not Luskin or Rove.

Regardless, Drum points out that Truthout is relying on “career federal law enforcement and federal government officials” and not just Leopold. I would wager that somewhere in the mix of sources for Leopold’s article are Larry Johnson and/or Ray McGovern. Given the violent reaction that Johnson had to the news Rove would not be indicted as well as his assuring the left in the immediate aftermath of the May 13th article that all was well, that Fitzmas was on the way, one wonders whether or not Larry the Loon had a personal stake in that story being true.

While some on the left continue to “wait and see” about the Rove indictment until Fitzgerald makes a formal announcement, Ash actually upped the ante by stating that it is possible Rove flipped on Cheney:

Our sources provided us with additional detail, saying that Fitzgerald is apparently examining closely Dick Cheney’s role in the Valerie Plame matter, and apparently sought information and evidence from Karl Rove that would provide documentation of Cheney’s involvement. Rove apparently was reluctant to cooperate and Fitzgerald, it appears, was pressuring him to do so, our sources told us.

In other words, Fitzy dangled the sealed indictment in front of Rove and threatened him with it unless he rolled on Cheney.

Interesting speculation. That’s not what the original Truthout article said nor did the follow-up article mention it either. I guess in this case, third time’s the charm. And lest ye be unbelievers in this matter, I would like to point out that every responsible individual who has covered the Plame affair has said that it would be a huge stretch for Fitzy to go after Cheney. And the fact that Rove is still working at the White House would seem to indicate that either Cheney has a death wish or that once again, Ash is talking out of his nether regions.

This is actually sort of a sad story in a way. Marc Ash has been had. And he is either too stupid or too naive to see it. Or, he may know the story is wrong but is scrambling to save the reputation of himself and his publication.

If I were him, I wouldn’t worry about that. As long as he keeps up with the Bush-bashing, he’ll have a massive audience. For on the left, sometimes leaving the “Truthout” really doesn’t matter.

UPDATE

Can you stand more Goldstien?

Of course, I suppose I should mention, for purposes of full disclosure, that it is TruthOut who has exonerated itself—citing the accuracy of its own earlier reporting as proof that its earlier reporting was, in fact, completely accurate. But then, that’s just nitpicking, really—and we shouldn’t get hung up on the niceties of the reasoning when what is at stake here is speaking Truthiness to Power, namely, the now-confirmed (albeit not yet quite “confirmed” confirmed) revelations that Karl Rove is a fat-assed liar who drove his own mother to suicide and who flipped on Dick Cheney.

And when the world sees Evil Dick with a pair of teardrop tats lifting weights in a federal pen alongside those Enron bitches, Jason Leopold will laugh and laugh and laugh!

Given the proclivities of Mr. Leopold, perhaps he will be spotting for his new buddy Karl?