Blue text is my own commentary.
Violet text is the blog quote of the day.
Here's where the action is on The Blogs this weekend, just go to Josh Marshall's TPM blog for researching the latest DOJ Document dump, it is "The Place To Be" to help sort through the mountains of information the DOJ expected would stall the process. But the internet, and particularly blogs like Marshall's, have blown that out of the water by prospecting these information mines out in short order, utilizing their extensive and eclectic blog readership as their eyes and ears and minds for research. Once again, this newest of all mediums, and the inheritor of the 4th Estate, the "Blogosphere," has stood forth to become an historic and revolutionary tool of democracy.
DOJ Document Dump Muckraking Thread
By Josh Marshall,
April 27, 2007, 6:29 PM
"A big new bundle of documents just got dumped by the Department of Justice. Here's a link to the documents in PDF form at the House Judiciary Committee website. As per our routine in recent document dumps, if you'd like to help us cull through the mails and reports, use this thread to share your findings with us and other TPMm Readers."
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/003116.php#comments
LARRY JOHNSON SLAM-DUNKS TENET !!!
If you're not familiar with Larry's view on Tenet's performance as director of the CIA, check out "Give the Medal Back, George." Larry also reports that he and other former CIA employees are composing a letter to be released to the media on Tenet's 549-page book, “At the Center of the Storm,” coming out on Monday. The former CIA members will ask Tenet to return the now-infamous Medal Of Freedom awarded Tenet by President George W. Bush after Tenet's resignation from the CIA. The group will also ask Tenet to give a meaningful portion of his earnings from his book to the families of military members killed or wounded in Iraq.
http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/04/larry_johnson_s.html
THE BUSH WARS
Saudi security officials said Friday that they had broken up a vast terrorist ring, arresting 172 men who planned to blow up oil installations, (no wonder they are considered such a danger to the Saudis, they know what matters in the Middle East...OIL!!!) attack public officials and military posts, and storm a prison to free terrorist suspects. The wide-ranging plot was uncovered over seven months, officials said, as one lead yielded another, allowing authorities to seize a cache of weapons buried in the desert and more than $5.3 million in cash. The government referred to the ring as a “deviant group,” the phrase often used to describe the ideology of Al Qaeda. ...Officials said that the suspects had trained abroad, in Somalia, Afghanistan and especially Iraq. The chaos in Iraq has fueled radical ideology among the region’s youth, while providing an environment for militants to train, analysts here said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/world/middleeast/28saudi.html?th&emc=th
In interviews over the past week, the officials made clear that the White House is gradually scaling back its expectations for the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki. The timelines they are now discussing suggest that the White House may maintain the increased numbers of American troops in Iraq well into next year. That prospect would entail a dramatically longer commitment of frontline troops, patrolling the most dangerous neighborhoods of Baghdad, than the one envisioned in legislation that passed the House and Senate this week. That vote, largely symbolic because Democrats do not have the votes to override the promised presidential veto, set deadlines that would lead to the withdrawal of combat troops by the end of March 2008.
(If Bush can't have "Victory" then his minions will just re frame what "Victory"means, to match the existing mess!!!)
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/washington/28prexy.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin
At least five people were held for years at Guantanamo Bay prison partly because they allegedly had ties to Pacha Khan Zadran , an Afghan warlord who had clashed with US troops -- though Zadran himself was never sent to Guantanamo Bay... The story of Zadran's audacious rise from a renegade who attacked US troops and Afghan civilians to a respectable role in Afghan politics highlights a double injustice that prevails today in Afghanistan: Powerful warlords accused of grave abuses have risen to the highest level of government here, while some villagers accused of far less serious offenses have languished for years in US custody at Guantanamo Bay. "This is the whole problem with Guantanamo," added Vincent Warren , executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which coordinates the legal representation of detainees. "In Afghanistan, being picked up often had more to do with your relationships with rival factions . . . than any real link to Al Qaeda."
http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2007/04/28/others_languished_as_warlord_rose_as_ex_warlord_advanced_others_languished
WOLFOWITZ' WORLD BANK WOES
A World Bank committee investigating president Paul D. Wolfowitz has nearly completed a report that it plans to give the institution's governing board, concluding that he breached ethics rules when he engineered a pay raise for his girlfriend, three senior bank officials said Friday. Friday evening, the committee was debating whether to explicitly recommend that Wolfowitz resign, according to the sources, who spoke on condition they not be named, citing an ongoing probe into leaks.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/26/AR2007042602710.html?nav=rss_politics
from the NYTimes Editorial Pages
It is hard to figure out what Paul Wolfowitz is telling himself as he wages an unseemly fight to hang on to his job as head of the World Bank. Any hope he had of reforming the bank has evaporated in the face of allegations of conflicts of interest and undeniably poor judgment. Any hope of expiating his sins for the disastrous Iraq war have also disappeared as once again he stubbornly denies reality and the damage that denial is causing to his reputation and to the bank’s ability to do its work. In the latest no-confidence clamor, some 40 members of the bank’s anti corruption team warned that their ability to do their work, Mr. Wolfowitz’s signature priority, “is eroding in the face of legitimate questions from our clients about the bank’s ability to practice what it preaches on governance.” "...Mr. Wolfowitz’s battle to hang on is doing even more damage, roiling the staff, wasting top officials’ energies and further alienating big donors. At a meeting with his top managers last week, Mr. Wolfowitz said he wanted to regain their trust. That is no longer possible. The best thing he can do for the bank, the country and himself is to step down."
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/28/opinion/28sat2.html?th&emc=th
ROVE WATCH
A House committee chairman asked 27 federal departments and agencies yesterday to turn over information related to White House briefings about elections or political candidates, substantially widening the scope of a congressional investigation into the administration's compliance with the law that restricts partisan political activity by government employees. Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, made the requests after the White House acknowledged that aides to Karl Rove, President Bush's chief political adviser, had presented 20 briefings on the "political landscape" to senior federal appointees, last year and this year. An undetermined number of briefings were held in previous years, a spokesman said. (Anyone who thinks Rove did not intentionally "walk the line" in this matter is ignoring his historic hubris. Rove really believed the gravy-train would forever flow. When his prognostications that Republicans would retain control of Congress proved disastrously wrong, Rove's mystical, infallible genius was finally faulted, shattered by a populist wave that installed the Democrats into leadership in both Houses. Rove broke the law, all the while assuming no oversight would ever be leveled at his actions, wilfully establishing his own interpretations of the law, tweaked with a Machiavellian hand to match their necessity, re framing the labels to circumnavigate the Hatch Act. Rove forged ahead with the politicization of the entire Executive Branch in expectation of a thousand years of Neocon-Republican Rule, ala Rove.
... the mighty fall hard, especially when they topple from an arrogant precipice of their own making.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/26/AR2007042602710.html?nav=rss_politics
DOJ SCANDAL KEEPS GROWING TENTACLES
The White House told a Republican member of Congress last summer about its plans to fire a U.S. attorney in Arkansas and replace him with a former aide to presidential adviser Karl Rove, but it did not tell Democratic lawmakers, according to a new Justice Department e-mail released yesterday. The White House called Rep. John Boozman (R-Ark.) "and pretty much told him what they are doing with this appointment and how they are going about it," according to a July 6 e-mail from Bud Cummins, then the U.S. attorney in Little Rock.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/27/AR2007042702112.html?nav=hcmodule
The Documents Not Turned Over
by Marci Wheeler at The Next Hurrah
Last night, DOJ provided Congress with a list of Kyle Sampson documents it wasn't going to turn over. They begin on December 19, not long after the firings, and continue until March 8, when Sampson resigned. The withheld emails suggest some of the key issues the WH is trying to hide, particularly:
Harriet Miers' involvement in the Cummins firing
Efforts to pretend Gonzales had not told Pryor Griffin would be appointed with or without Senate approval
The exchange between Domenici and Iglesias leading to the latter's firing
The real reason behind Chiara's firing
Efforts to withhold James Comey and the DOJ clique's testimony from Congress http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2007/04/the_documents_n.html
This is a very comprehensive overview of "what's missing" and what they refuse to turn over, and as usual, omission speaks louder than inclusion in these document dumps. Marci is the author of Anatomy of Deceit, an intimate look into the pundit/politics cocktail-party crowd that meets every night in DC and determines what we will read and hear and watch on our wayward, bought and sold-mainstream media.
Which brings us to the Blog Quote of the Day
from Eli at Firedog Lake;
"And what was the result? Unless you're one of the have-mores, it's (The Bush Administration) been an unmitigated, omnidirectional disaster. The Republicans and the media were able to keep the extent of the fiasco hidden (see "Anatomy of Deceit" above) from the casual observer in 2004, but by 2006 it was visibly seeping out from under the carpet. Now that the Democrats have the keys to the oversight committees, they are peeling the carpet back faster than the Bushies can shovel. Not only are they exposing the corruption and outright criminality of the Bush Administration, but they are exposing all of the Congressional Republicans who blocked oversight as accessories after the fact. And, of course, Iraq continues to be an unwinnable deathtrap which the Republicans want to keep us in forever."
http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/04/27/is-our-electorate-learning-and-the-post-im-not-smart-enough-to-write/
SCANDAL OF THE WEEK:
CONDI RICE'S STAFFER JUMPING SHIP OVER SEXCAPADES!!
Randall L. Tobias, the deputy secretary of state responsible for U.S. foreign aid, abruptly resigned yesterday after he was asked about an upscale escort service allegedly involved in prostitution, U.S. government sources said. Tobias resigned after ABC News contacted him with questions about the escort service, the sources said. ABC News released a statement last night saying Tobias acknowledged Thursday that he had used the service to provide massages, not sex. Tobias has been Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's point man in an ambitious effort to overhaul how the U.S. government manages foreign aid, a key part of her "transformational diplomacy" agenda. Just two days ago, President Bush lauded Tobias for his work in the administration leading "America's monumental effort to confront and deal with the HIV/AIDS epidemic on the continent of Africa."
(Hypocrites!!! How many more scandals will we uncover? Or is the corruption so deep and systemic, will we find these "artifacts" at every level of our investigations? It just seems to go on and on. Makes me wonder, is this what happens when "what goes around comes around" while you're still in the room? Maybe right now Bush wishes he'd lost the last time around, but his corporate pals at Exxon and Diebold just weren't about to let that happen, YET, they've got some $4 gasoline they want to sell us before we grow the cajones to change our usage habits and develop better alternatives...)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/27/AR2007042702497.html?referrer=email
THE ENVIRONMENT
The Interior Department will announce a proposal Monday to allow oil and gas drilling in federal waters near Virginia that are currently off-limits and permit new exploration in Alaska's Bristol Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, according to people who have seen or been told about drafts of the plan. The department issued a news release yesterday that was lacking details but said that it had finished a five-year plan that will include a "major proposal for expanded oil and natural gas development on the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf." Department officials declined to describe the plan. (another victory for Halliburton) Richard Ayers of the environmental group Virginia Eastern Shorekeeper said he was concerned about development along the state's lightly populated Atlantic shoreline. He said he was worried that oil drilling would create boomtowns, a new influx of people and pollution. The Virginia shore is dotted with barrier islands and lagoons, most of them largely unspoiled. The Virginia coast has been designated a World Biosphere Reserve by the United Nations, and a National Natural Landmark by the Interior Department. "This is one of the few places on the East Coast that just never got developed," Ayers said. "A disturbance of any magnitude would be something the place hasn't seen since the '30s," when a hurricane hit the area. (now they have to worry about Hurricane Cheney and his Texas/Dubai-based drilling company bubbas, looks like the tobacco good-old-boys have finally married-up to the oil good-old-boys, those Virginians have always had a hankerin' for Texans.)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/27/AR2007042701611.html?referrer=email
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