Chris Boese's Weblog

What? The Attorney General LIED?! What was your first clue?

I intimated that Gonzales was lying in my previous post here. It was simply beyond unlikely that the Attorney General was NOT involved in the firing of that many high profile political appointees. I mean, if he were not behind the firings, then he'd have to be one of the most incompetent AGs in the history of the office, for dereliction of duty on tasks that should NOT be delegated down the chain (and as it turns out, were tasks actually dictated straight from the White House).

I say, don't even let him resign. Fire his ass.

Did Gonzales really think his ex-aide would watch his March 13 presser and then take on the task of CYA on his behalf? Or does he just like wearing egg on his face to CYA for HIS boss?

Link: Ex-Aide Says Gonzales Was Involved in Firings - New York Times.

March 29, 2007

Ex-Aide Says Gonzales Was Involved in Firings

By DAVID STOUT and BRIAN KNOWLTON

 

WASHINGTON, March 29 — The former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales testified today that contrary to Mr. Gonzales’s earlier assertions, the attorney general was involved in discussions to fire United States attorneys.

“I don’t think the attorney general’s statement that he was not involved in any discussions about U.S. attorney removals is accurate,” the former Gonzales aide, D. Kyle Sampson, said under questioning at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.

“I don’t think it’s accurate,” Mr. Sampson repeated under questioning by Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, the panel’s ranking Republican. “I think he’s recently clarified it. But I remember discussing with him this process of asking certain U.S. attorneys to resign, and I believe that he was present at the meeting on Nov. 27.”

It was disclosed last week that Justice Department documents showed Mr. Gonzales to be present at the Nov. 27, 2006, session in which the firing of federal prosecutors was discussed. That disclosure seemed to contradict Mr. Gonzales’s assertions at a March 13 news conference that he was not involved in talks about letting the prosecutors go.

“So,” Senator Specter went on, “he was involved in discussions, contrary to the statement he made in his news conference on March 13?”

“I believe — yes, sir,” Mr. Sampson replied.

The testimony of Mr. Sampson, a loyal aide to Mr. Gonzales until his recent resignation, could create grave problems for the attorney general, who is already under fire from Democrats and some Republicans for the way the dismissals of the prosecutors were carried out.

Even those Republicans who have so far been loyal to Mr. Gonzales have complained that the dismissals were accompanied by poor communications and poor explanations, points that even President Bush has conceded. With new doubt cast on Mr. Gonzales’s candor, or at the very least his memory, support for him could further erode, despite President Bush’s insistence that he wants his old friend from Texas to stay on.

Under questioning from Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, Mr. Sampson said he did not recall a single instance in which someone from the Bush administration suggested removing a United States attorney for “an improper reason.” But over all, the questions and answers cast Mr. Gonzales in an unflattering light.

Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, pursued a line of questioning similar to Mr. Specter’s, and with similar results. Mr. Schumer recalled Mr. Gonzales’s statement of March 13 that he “never saw documents” related to the impending dismissals and “we never had a discussion about where things stood.”

“Was that statement accurate?” Mr. Schumer asked.

“I don’t think it’s entirely accurate, what he said,” Mr. Sampson replied. He went on to say that he did not know if the attorney general had seen dismissal-related documents, but that he was sure Mr. Gonzales was involved in discussions about the firings early on.

As for the Nov. 27 meeting, Mr. Sampson said he did not recall it clearly.

“But,” Mr. Schumer persisted, “your recollection is, he did speak at the meeting?”

“Yes,” Mr. Sampson said.

“O.K.,” Mr. Schumer said. “Now that in itself says a whole lot.”

Mr. Gonzales’s early accounts were further undermined in an exchange between Mr. Sampson and Senator Herb Kohl, Democrat of Wisconsin.

“Now, this is hard to believe,” Mr. Kohl said. “Either the attorney general was simply absent as manager of the Justice Department or he’s not been candid with the American people about his participation in the firings. Which one is it, or is there some other explanation?”

“Well,” Mr. Sampson replied, “as I said in a previous answer, the attorney general was aware of this process from the beginning in early 2005. He and I had discussions about it during the thinking phase of the process.” The attorney general’s involvement continued until the list of dismissals was final, Mr. Sampson said.

[...]

Democrats in particular expressed deep doubt at Mr. Sampson’s argument that politics were not involved in the dismissals. “In the last seven weeks, we’ve learned that Attorney General Gonzales was personally involved in the firing plan, after being told that he wasn’t,” Mr. Schumer said. “We’ve learned that the White House was involved, involved, after being told that it wasn’t; we’ve learned that Karl Rove was involved, after being told that he wasn’t,” the senator said, alluding to the president’s chief political adviser. “And we have learned that political considerations were very important, after being told that they weren’t.”

[...]

 

For all you cheeseheads out there... it's CheddarVision!

Tune in to the CheddarVision online TV station, where you can watch cheddar cheese AGE in real time!

Link: cheddarvision.tv | Live Cheddar Cheese direct from the Westcountry.

Rat poison found in pet food, official says - CNN.com

OK, this is pretty frightening. I use one of the brands of dog food that is on the list, Nutro. While I mostly use the dry food, I often get 1-2 cans of the wet. Last I remember doing so was back in February, so of course I don't have those cans any more, to check to see if they're on the list.

My dog is doing OK, tho, or seems to be. But I am concerned because I'm still feeding her from the big bin of dry Nutro food, although I've mixed in a bag of another kind now. It's just such a freaky thing. Not sure if I should throw the dry stuff out or not. Anybody want to offer some advice? What would you do?

Link: Rat poison found in pet food, official says - CNN.com.

Rat poison found in pet food, official says

POSTED: 1:12 p.m. EDT, March 23, 2007

ALBANY, New York (AP) -- Rat poison has been found in pet food blamed for the deaths of at least 16 cats and dogs, a spokeswoman for the State Department of Agriculture and Markets said Friday.

The toxin was identified as aminopterin, state Agriculture Commissioner Patrick Hooker said in a statement. Aminopterin is used to kill rats in some countries but is not registered for that use in the United States, according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

The officials did not say how they believed it got into the pet food. (Watch why devastated pet owners are suing )

The substance was found at a level of at least 40 parts per million in tested cat food samples, according to Donald Smith, dean of Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine.

Aminopterin, also used as a cancer drug, is highly toxic in high doses. It inhibits the growth of malignant cells and suppresses the immune system.

The Food and Drug Administration has said the investigation was focusing on wheat gluten in the food. Wheat gluten itself would not cause kidney failure, but the common ingredient could have been contaminated by heavy metals or mold toxins, the FDA said.

[...]

Fortran: one of those events that deserves to be marked

I think it is safe to say that to some extent, we all stand on the backs of the work of John W. Backus. It helps we got the silicon chip from the alien spaceships and all... but hey, humans can talk to the chips now, and they don't have to use machine code.

On the other hand, the difficulty of Fortran was one reason I DID NOT go into computer science in college, where my dormmates who did had to study Fortran, and, unfortunately, deal with stacks and stacks of punch cards. Nope, that was not a field that even remotely interested me. I'd played with the punch cards a bit in high school, enough to do "Hello World," and that was enough for me.

I'm only here thanks to the grace of Steve Jobs, but I am glad of it anyway, and glad for those friends from college who got way better jobs than I did, for all their Fortran knowledge.

Link: John W. Backus, 82, Fortran Developer, Dies - New York Times.

John W. Backus, 82, Fortran Developer, Dies

By STEVE LOHR

Published: March 20, 2007

I.B.M.

John W. Backus in the late 1990s. Fortran was released in 1957.

John W. Backus, who assembled and led the I.B.M. team that created Fortran, the first widely used programming language, which helped open the door to modern computing, died on Saturday at his home in Ashland, Ore. He was 82.

[...]

Fortran, released in 1957, was “the turning point” in computer software, much as the microprocessor was a giant step forward in hardware, according to J.A.N. Lee, a leading computer historian.

Fortran changed the terms of communication between humans and computers, moving up a level to a language that was more comprehensible by humans. So Fortran, in computing vernacular, is considered the first successful higher-level language.

Mr. Backus and his youthful team, then all in their 20s and 30s, devised a programming language that resembled a combination of English shorthand and algebra. Fortran, short for Formula Translator, was very similar to the algebraic formulas that scientists and engineers used in their daily work. With some training, they were no longer dependent on a programming priesthood to translate their science and engineering problems into a language a computer would understand.

In an interview several years ago, Ken Thompson, who developed the Unix operating system at Bell Labs in 1969, observed that “95 percent of the people who programmed in the early years would never have done it without Fortran.”

[...]

In the Fortran project, Mr. Backus tackled two fundamental problems in computing — how to make programming easier for humans, and how to structure the underlying code to make that possible. Mr. Backus continued to work on those challenges for much of his career, and he encouraged others as well.

[...]

Mr. Backus was a bit of a maverick even as a teenager. He grew up in an affluent family in Wilmington, Del., the son of a stockbroker. He had a complicated, difficult relationship with his family, and he was a wayward student.

In a series of interviews in 2000 and 2001 in San Francisco, where he lived at the time, Mr. Backus recalled that his family had sent him to an exclusive private high school, the Hill School in Pennsylvania.

“The delight of that place was all the rules you could break,” he recalled.

After flunking out of the University of Virginia, Mr. Backus was drafted in 1943. But his scores on Army aptitude tests were so high that he was dispatched on government-financed programs to three universities, with his studies ranging from engineering to medicine.

After the war, Mr. Backus found his footing as a student at Columbia University and pursued an interest in mathematics, receiving his master’s degree in 1950. Shortly before he graduated, Mr. Backus wandered by the I.B.M. headquarters on Madison Avenue in New York, where one of its room-size electronic calculators was on display.

When a tour guide inquired, Mr. Backus mentioned that he was a graduate student in math; he was whisked upstairs and asked a series of questions Mr. Backus described as math “brain teasers.” It was an informal oral exam, with no recorded score.

He was hired on the spot. As what? “As a programmer,” Mr. Backus replied, shrugging. “That was the way it was done in those days.”

Back then, there was no field of computer science, no courses or schools. The first written reference to “software” as a computer term, as something distinct from hardware, did not come until 1958.

In 1953, frustrated by his experience of “hand-to-hand combat with the machine,” Mr. Backus was eager to somehow simplify programming. He wrote a brief note to his superior, asking to be allowed to head a research project with that goal. “I figured there had to be a better way,” he said.

Mr. Backus got approval and began hiring, one by one, until the team reached 10. It was an eclectic bunch that included a crystallographer, a cryptographer, a chess wizard, an employee on loan from United Aircraft, a researcher from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a young woman who joined the project straight out of Vassar College.

“They took anyone who seemed to have an aptitude for problem-solving skills — bridge players, chess players, even women,” Lois Haibt, the Vassar graduate, recalled in an interview in 2000.

Mr. Backus, colleagues said, managed the research team with a light hand. The hours were long but informal. Snowball fights relieved lengthy days of work in winter. I.B.M. had a system of rigid yearly performance reviews, which Mr. Backus deemed ill-suited for his programmers, so he ignored it. “We were the hackers of those days,” Richard Goldberg, a member of the Fortran team, recalled in an interview in 2000.

[...]

 

 

Blackwater and Jeremy Scahill: pretty amazing reporting

Jeremy Scahill is making the rounds, and I hope to get in to see him speak at an event tomorrow, now that his book is coming out from Nation Books. I just heard an extended interview with him on the Democracy Now podcast, and Amy Goodman will be moderating the talk tomorrow.

I've been obsessing on Blackwater for some time now, but Scahill has really done the kind of research I was hungry for, and I'm really impressed to hear about the backgrounds of both Erik Prince and Cofer Black, and their excursions and interests in Afghanistan, Somalia and Chile. Just fascinating, the timing on some of this stuff, and 9/11. And Blackwater in New Orleans too.

The question is, is Blackwater the new global Brown Shirts?

I have got to read this book! I think I'll get a signed copy tomorrow.

Link: Bush's Shadow Army.

This article can be found on the web at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070402/scahill

Bush's Shadow Army

by JEREMY SCAHILL

[from the April 2, 2007 issue]

Jeremy Scahill reports on the Bush Administration's growing dependence on private security forces such as Blackwater USA and efforts in Congress to rein them in. This article is adapted from his new book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army (Nation Books).

On September 10, 2001, before most Americans had heard of Al Qaeda or imagined the possibility of a "war on terror," Donald Rumsfeld stepped to the podium at the Pentagon to deliver one of his first major addresses as Defense Secretary under President George W. Bush. Standing before the former corporate executives he had tapped as his top deputies overseeing the high-stakes business of military contracting--many of them from firms like Enron, General Dynamics and Aerospace Corporation--Rumsfeld issued a declaration of war.

"The topic today is an adversary that poses a threat, a serious threat, to the security of the United States of America," Rumsfeld thundered. "It disrupts the defense of the United States and places the lives of men and women in uniform at risk." He told his new staff, "You may think I'm describing one of the last decrepit dictators of the world.... [But] the adversary's closer to home," he said. "It's the Pentagon bureaucracy." Rumsfeld called for a wholesale shift in the running of the Pentagon, supplanting the old DoD bureaucracy with a new model, one based on the private sector. Announcing this major overhaul, Rumsfeld told his audience, "I have no desire to attack the Pentagon; I want to liberate it. We need to save it from itself."

The next morning, the Pentagon would be attacked, literally, as a Boeing 757--American Airlines Flight 77--smashed into its western wall. Rumsfeld would famously assist rescue workers in pulling bodies from the rubble. But it didn't take long for Rumsfeld to seize the almost unthinkable opportunity presented by 9/11 to put his personal war--laid out just a day before--on the fast track. The new Pentagon policy would emphasize covert actions, sophisticated weapons systems and greater reliance on private contractors. It became known as the Rumsfeld Doctrine. "We must promote a more entrepreneurial approach: one that encourages people to be proactive, not reactive, and to behave less like bureaucrats and more like venture capitalists," Rumsfeld wrote in the summer of 2002 in an article for Foreign Affairs titled "Transforming the Military."

Although Rumsfeld was later thrown overboard by the Administration in an attempt to placate critics of the Iraq War, his military revolution was here to stay. Bidding farewell to Rumsfeld in November 2006, Bush credited him with overseeing the "most sweeping transformation of America's global force posture since the end of World War II." Indeed, Rumsfeld's trademark "small footprint" approach ushered in one of the most significant developments in modern warfare--the widespread use of private contractors in every aspect of war, including in combat.

The often overlooked subplot of the wars of the post-9/11 period is their unprecedented scale of outsourcing and privatization. From the moment the US troop buildup began in advance of the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon made private contractors an integral part of the operations. Even as the government gave the public appearance of attempting diplomacy, Halliburton was prepping for a massive operation. When US tanks rolled into Baghdad in March 2003, they brought with them the largest army of private contractors ever deployed in modern war. By the end of Rumsfeld's tenure in late 2006, there were an estimated 100,000 private contractors on the ground in Iraq--an almost one-to-one ratio with active-duty American soldiers.

[...]

The often overlooked subplot of the wars of the post-9/11 period is their unprecedented scale of outsourcing and privatization. From the moment the US troop buildup began in advance of the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon made private contractors an integral part of the operations. Even as the government gave the public appearance of attempting diplomacy, Halliburton was prepping for a massive operation. When US tanks rolled into Baghdad in March 2003, they brought with them the largest army of private contractors ever deployed in modern war. By the end of Rumsfeld's tenure in late 2006, there were an estimated 100,000 private contractors on the ground in Iraq--an almost one-to-one ratio with active-duty American soldiers.

To the great satisfaction of the war industry, before Rumsfeld resigned he took the extraordinary step of classifying private contractors as an official part of the US war machine. In the Pentagon's 2006 Quadrennial Review, Rumsfeld outlined what he called a "road map for change" at the DoD, which he said had begun to be implemented in 2001. It defined the "Department's Total Force" as "its active and reserve military components, its civil servants, and its contractors--constitut[ing] its warfighting capability and capacity. Members of the Total Force serve in thousands of locations around the world, performing a vast array of duties to accomplish critical missions." This formal designation represented a major triumph for war contractors--conferring on them a legitimacy they had never before enjoyed.

[...]

In the ensuing years the company has become one of the greatest beneficiaries of the "war on terror," winning nearly $1 billion in noncovert government contracts, many of them no-bid arrangements. In just a decade Prince has expanded the Moyock headquarters to 7,000 acres, making it the world's largest private military base. Blackwater currently has 2,300 personnel deployed in nine countries, with 20,000 other contractors at the ready. It has a fleet of more than twenty aircraft, including helicopter gunships and a private intelligence division, and it is manufacturing surveillance blimps and target systems.

In 2005 after Hurricane Katrina its forces deployed in New Orleans, where it billed the federal government $950 per man, per day--at one point raking in more than $240,000 a day. At its peak the company had about 600 contractors deployed from Texas to Mississippi. Since Katrina, it has aggressively pursued domestic contracting, opening a new domestic operations division. Blackwater is marketing its products and services to the Department of Homeland Security, and its representatives have met with California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The company has applied for operating licenses in all US coastal states. Blackwater is also expanding its physical presence inside US borders, opening facilities in Illinois and California.

[...]

 

To counter the persistent right-wing Plame-spin, once and for all

It is now in the public record, with the wording directly approved by the head of the CIA, General Hayden, on precisely HOW high-level and covert Valerie Plame's job was, before she was deliberately exposed as part of Karl Rove/Scooter Libby's smear campaign against her husband, Former Ambassador Joe Wilson.

I'm not hopeful the right-wing spin-meisters are fully able to deal with black and white text on the page/screen literalism, but the public record is the public record. Those who care about credibility will take note!

Link: Opening Remarks: Valerie Plame Testifies Before Congress - washingtonpost.com.

Transcript

Opening Remarks: Valerie Plame Testifies Before Congress

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Hearing on CIA Identity Leak

CQ Transcripts Wire
Friday, March 16, 2007; 11:51 AM

MARCH 16, 2007

SPEAKERS:

REP. HENRY A. WAXMAN, D-CALIF. CHAIRMAN

REP. TOM LANTOS, D-CALIF.

WITNESSES:

VALERIE PLAME WILSON,

[*]

[...]

As the chief investigative committee of the House of Representatives, our role is fundamentally different that Mr. Fitzgerald's. It's not our job to determine criminal culpability, but it is our job to understand what went wrong and to insist on accountability and to make recommendations for future -- to avoid future abuses.

WAXMAN: And we begin that process today.

This hearing is being conducted in open session. This is appropriate, but it is also challenging. Ms. Wilson was a covert employee of the CIA. We cannot discuss all of the details of her CIA employment in open session.

I have met, personally, with General Hayden, the head of the CIA, to discuss what I can and cannot say about Ms. Wilson's service. And I want to thank him for his cooperation and help in guiding us along these lines.

My staff has also worked with the agency to ensure these remarks do not contain classified information.

I have been advised by the CIA and that even now, after all that has happened, I cannot disclose the full nature, scope and character of Ms. Wilson's service to our nation without causing serious damage to our national security interests.

But General Hayden and the CIA have cleared these following comments for today's hearing.

During her employment at the CIA, Ms. Wilson was undercover. Her employment status with the CIA was classified information, prohibited from disclosure under Executive Order 12958.

At the time of the publication of Robert Novak's column on July 14, 2003, Ms. Wilson's CIA employment status was covert. This was classified information.

Ms. Wilson served in senior management positions at the CIA, in which she oversaw the work for other CIA employees and she attained the level of GS-14, Step 6, under the federal pay scale.

Ms. Wilson worked on some of the most sensitive and highly secretive matters handled by the CIA.

Ms. Wilson served at various times overseas for the CIA.

WAXMAN: Without discussing the specifics of Ms. Wilson's classified work, it is accurate to say that she worked on the prevention of the development and use of weapons of mass destruction against the United States.

In her various positions at the CIA, Ms. Wilson faced significant risks to her personal safety and her life. She took on serious risks on behalf of our country.

Ms. Wilson's work in many situations had consequence for the security of her colleagues, and maintaining her cover was critical to protecting the safety of both colleagues and others.

The disclosure of Ms. Wilson's employment with the CIA had several serious effects. First, it terminated her covert job opportunities with the CIA. Second, it placed her professional contacts at greater risk. And third, it undermined the trust and confidence with which future CIA employees and sources hold the United States.

This disclosure of Ms. Wilson's classified employment status with the CIA was so detrimental that the CIA filed a crimes report with the Department of Justice.

As I mentioned, Ms. Wilson's work was so sensitive that even now she is still prohibited from discussing many details of her work in public because of the continuing risks to CIA officials and assets in the field and to the CIA's ongoing work.

WAXMAN: Some have suggested that Ms. Wilson did not have a sensitive position with the CIA or a position of unusual risk. As a CIA employee, Ms. Wilson has taken a lifelong oath to protect classified information, even after her CIA employment has ended. As a result, she cannot respond to most of the statements made about her.

I want to make clear, however, that any characterization that minimizes the personal risk of Ms. Wilson that she accepted in her assignments is flatly wrong. There should be no confusion on this point.

Ms. Wilson has provided great service to our nation and has fulfilled her obligation to protect classified information admirably. And we're confident she will uphold it again today.

Well, that concludes the characterizations that the CIA is permitting us to make today.

[...]

Yellowstone gets a hot throbbing bulge, and the Grand Tetons need a support bra

Live action at Yellowstone (over the past 20 years, just a blink of an eye in volcano years), which is starting to do the supervolcano version of heavy breathing, leaving the poor Tetons acting like over-50 heaving bosoms after reading a torrid romance novel!

Someone needs to blow some cold air over those Tetons, a good Arctic blast, to get them to perk up!

Woo woo!

Link: Activity discovered at Yellowstone supervolcano - LiveScience - MSNBC.com.

Activity discovered at Yellowstone supervolcano

Caldera bulged and deflated significantly during study period

Wyoming's Teton Range looms behind a Global Positioning System antenna in Jackson Hole.

View related photos

Jamie Farrell, University of Utah

By Sara Goudarzi

Staff Writer

Updated: 2 hours, 6 minutes ago

One of the largest supervolcanoes in the world lies beneath Yellowstone National Park and scientists say activity there is increasing.

Though the Yellowstone system, which spans parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho, is active and expected to eventually blow its top, scientists don’t think it will erupt any time soon. Supervolcanoes can sleep for centuries or millennia before producing incredibly massive eruptions that can drop ash across an entire continent.

Yet significant activity continues beneath the surface. And the activity has been increasing lately, scientists have discovered. In addition, the nearby Teton Range, in a total surprise, is getting shorter.

[...]

For the past 17 years, researchers used GPS satellites to monitor the horizontal and vertical motion of the Yellowstone caldera — a huge volcanic crater formed by a super-eruption more than 600,000 years ago.

[...]

The 45-by-30-mile caldera bulged and deflated significantly during the study period.

“We think it’s a combination of magma being intruded under the caldera and hot water released from the magma being pressurized because it’s trapped,” said lead study author Robert Smith from the University of Utah. “I don’t believe this is evidence for an impending volcanic eruption, but it would be prudent to keep monitoring the volcano.”

[...]

Data shows that the caldera floor sank 4.4 inches from 1987 until 1995. From 1995 until 2000, the northwest rim of the caldera rose about 3 inches, followed by another 1.4-inch rise until 2003. Then between 2000 and 2003, the caldera floor sank a little more than an inch.

And then from 2004 to 2006 the central caldera floor rose faster than ever, springing up nearly 7 inches during the three-year span.

“The rate is unprecedented, at least in terms of what scientists have been able to observe in Yellowstone,” Smith said.

[...]

Typically, when a big earthquake takes place on a normal fault such as Teton, the ground is pulled apart. This kind of extension or stretching causes valleys to drop downward and mountains to rise upwards. Thousands of earthquakes over millions of years built the mountains that comprise the Teton Range today.

But recent measurements showed a different trend. Researchers found that just the opposite is happening with Jackson Hole — the valley below the Teton. The valley is rising up slowly and the mountains are dropping down.

[...]

What the researchers think is happening, on a short-term basis at least, is that the bulging Yellowstone hotspot north of the Tetons is pushing against the north edge of Jackson Hole and jamming it against the mountains. (This is also causing the southwest part of the Yellowstone plateau, under the hotspot, to slide downhill at a rate of one-sixth of an inch each year.).

“The textbook model for a normal fault is not what’s happening at the Teton fault,” Smith said. “The mountains are going down relative to the valley going up. That’s a total surprise.”

[...]

So let me see if I get this right... Yellowstone's bulging hotspot is going down on Jackson Hole... but in the meantime, it's jamming itself against those not-so-perky Tetons...

Sounds to me like there are some geographic fixtures with a little too much pent-up primal earthy energy, in need of some release!

Whose fault do you think this is, anyway?!

Admit to misleading Congress, and you get to keep your job?

Have you ever heard of anything so outrageous? It was the language used that set me off. Since when is DELIBERATELY MISLEADING CONGRESS just a "mistake?" Whoops, I had a little accident? The dog piddled on the floor, but didn't really mean to do it? I spilled my milk. Yeah, that's right up there with, "Oh-oh, I think I just misled Congress! Now how did I let that happen?"

The other thing that gets me, back with the old GOP Congress, was their tendency NOT to swear in these guys when they'd come and testify, saying, essentially, "Oh, we know they'd never lie to us, so there's no reason to swear them in. It just takes too much time." Yeah, right. And gives them an excuse to cross their fingers behind their backs.

There's a DAMN good reason to  swear in these cabinet officers and political appointees, and that's because WHEN they do lie, they can be held accountable for it more easily.

Was that GOP Congress a bunch of bonafide suckers or what?!

Link: Gonzales rejects calls for resignation; e-mails show 2-year plan to oust prosecutors - U.S. Politics - BostonHerald.com.

Gonzales rejects calls for resignation; e-mails show 2-year plan to oust prosecutors

By Associated Press

Wednesday, March 14, 2007  - Updated: 03:19 AM EST

WASHINGTON - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales rejected growing calls for his resignation Tuesday as scores of newly released documents detailed a two-year campaign by the Justice Department and White House to purge federal prosecutors.

Gonzales acknowledged his department mishandled the dismissals of eight U.S. attorneys and misled Congress about how they were fired. He said he was ultimately to blame for those ”mistakes” but stood by the firings.

"I acknowledge that mistakes were made here,” Gonzales told reporters at a news briefing after he canceled an out-of-town trip. ”I accept that responsibility.” He promised changes "so that the mistakes that occurred in this instance do not occur again in the future.”

[Yeah, I bet you promise. Does your promise have any more weight than when your office originally misled Congress?  Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice... don't get fooled again.]

He focused on his department’s dealings with Congress concerning the firings rather than the actual dismissals - which Democrats have suggested were politically motivated - and the planning behind them.

”I believe very strongly in our obligation to ensure that when I provide information to the Congress that it’s accurate and that it’s complete. And I am very dismayed that that may not have occurred here,” he said.

Gonzales also accepted the resignation of his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson. The aide, along with then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers, had begun discussing possible firings of U.S. attorneys in early 2005, according to e-mails released Tuesday.

[And we could have had Harriet Miers in the Supreme Court. Now isn't that a comforting thought?]

[...]

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales speaks during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, Tuesday. (AP)

Gonzales, himself a former White House counsel, has been friends with President Bush for years, going back to when he served as Bush’s secretary of state in Texas. Bush retains full confidence in the attorney general, said spokesman Dan Bartlett, traveling with Bush in Mexico.

"He’s a standup guy,” Bartlett said of Gonzales.

[Yo Alberto! I'd be happy to accept YOUR resignation too. He's a standup guy, all right. All that means is that he sometimes stands up when he lies to Congress.]

Democrats clamored for Gonzales’ to resign. Republicans also said they were outraged at being misled over the circumstances of the firings. GOP Rep. James Sensenbrenner, a Judiciary Committee member, said the situation could cause Gonzales to ”die by a thousand cuts.”

For nearly two months, Democrats have accused the Justice Department of playing politics with the prosecutors’ jobs. They suggested some of the U.S. attorneys were fired for either investigating Republicans or failing to pursue cases against Democrats.

Several ousted prosecutors have told Congress they were improperly pressured by Republicans on pending cases.

Top Justice officials, including Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, have maintained in congressional testimony the dismissals were based on the prosecutors’ performance, not politics. The fired prosecutors headed the U.S. attorneys’ offices in Albuquerque, N.M.; Grand Rapids, Mich.; Las Vegas; Little Rock, Ark.; Phoenix; San Diego, San Francisco and Seattle.

The e-mails released Tuesday revealed that the firings were considered and discussed for two years by Justice Department and White House officials. The issue first arose in a February 2005 discussion between Sampson and Miers, officials said. At the time, Miers suggested the possibility of firing all 93 U.S. attorneys. Such purges of the political appointees often come at the beginning of a new president’s administration, not midway through.

The e-mails show Sampson discouraged the across-the-board housecleaning but began a review to weed out prosecutors whom the administration deemed to be performing poorly.
In a Sept 13, 2006, e-mail to Miers, Sampson listed one prosecutor, Bud Cummins in Little Rock, as ”in the process of being pushed out.” Five others - in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, San Diego and Seattle - were listed as U.S attorneys ”we should now consider pushing out.”
[...]
Sampson then drew up an elaborate five-step plan to replace the targeted prosecutors with as little political fallout as possible, which he sent in a Nov. 15, 2006, e-mail to Miers, deputy White House counsel William K. Kelley and McNulty.
[...]

"We’re a go for the US Atty plan,” Kelley wrote in a Dec. 4, 2006, e-mail to Sampson and Miers. ”WH leg, political, communications have signed off and acknowledged that we have to be committed to following through once the pressure comes.”

The term ”WH leg” refers to the White House office of legislative affairs, which deals with Congress. Copies of dozens of Sampson’s e-mails to various White House and Justice Department officials were released by Congress and the Justice Department.

They also included documents from J. Scott Jennings, the White House deputy political director, who e-mailed Sampson about the Little Rock prosecutor’s replacement from an address with a ”gwb43.com” domain name. That domain is registered to the Republican National Committee, according to a Network Solutions tracking system.

Cummins told television station KTHV in Little Rock on Tuesday: ”It’s a serious mistake to allow the political people from the White House and other parts of government to get inside the doors of the Department of Justice. There are huge issues at stake there and I’m afraid it’s happened now and the damage is done.”

Democrats on House and Senate judiciary panels said they would subpoena Miers, Rove and other White House and Justice Department officials if necessary to have them testify about the reasons for the firings.  

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., renewed his call for Gonzales to resign and was joined by a host of other Democrats, including national party chairman Howard Dean and presidential hopeful John Edwards of North Carolina.
"This purge was based purely on politics, to punish prosecutors who were perceived to be too light on Democrats or too tough on Republicans,” Schumer said. ”Attorney General Gonzales has either forgotten the oath he took to uphold the Constitution or just doesn’t understand that his duty to protect the law is greater than his duty to protect the president.”

[...]

Republicans also joined in the criticism.

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., said the dismissal of the U.S. attorney in Las Vegas was ”completely mishandled by the United States attorney general.” And Sensenbrenner warned that the Justice Department was ”going to have to come up with some answers” in explaining the firings.
"If they don’t, they’re going to lose everyone’s confidence,” Sensenbrenner said. ”What I’d like to hear is the truth.”

[I sure hope Sensenbrenner isn't holding his breath.]

 

I've been quietly admiring the courage of CNN Headline News's Thomas Roberts for more than a year now...

And I'm very pleased to now feel comfortable doing so publicly!

What he did took guts, and made me proud to work with him. He may not know how many of his colleagues felt that way as well, but I do know a number of folks have told him privately. Now I know he'll be getting that feedback in public as well.

Link: TV anchor: I was sexually abused by Catholic priest - CNN.com.

TV anchor: I was sexually abused by Catholic priest

More on CNN TV: Thomas Roberts discusses his abuse by a Catholic priest in a special edition of "Anderson Cooper 360°" tonight at 10 ET.

POSTED: 12:55 p.m. EDT, March 12, 2007

By Thomas Roberts
CNN

Editor's note: Thomas Roberts has been a Headline News anchor since 2001. In this story, he discusses being sexually abused by a Catholic priest as a teenager.

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- I became a victim of sexual abuse at the age of 14; the abuse lasted three years. It took me nearly 20 years to gather the strength to help put my abuser behind bars. Now, a year after "justice" was done, I am ready to tell my story publicly in ways I never have before.

[...]

Link: What's Happening at CNN: Thomas Was Scared When Approached to Tell His Story.

Thomas Was Scared When Approached to Tell His Story

Sins of the Father aired last night on CNN. SOTF detailed the abuse HLN anchor Thomas Roberts was subjected to by a Catholic priest. Yesterday Roberts wrote an article on CNN.com about his ordeal and described how he felt when he was approached by Anderson Cooper to do a story on it:

This story is so layered. For a long time, I couldn't talk about it without crying. But a year ago, CNN Anchor Anderson Cooper and CNN Senior Producer Charlie Moore approached me about telling and following my story. I was scared. I was scared of being so honest and televising this journey.

What would people think? Would I ruin my career? But I came to the conclusion that I will not be scared anymore. I will not be scared of telling the truth because it might be uncomfortable for people to hear.

If this story compels even one person to seek help for being sexually abused, then it is all worth it. All it takes is telling one person. From there, strength grows and you can tell a second person and so on. Then you can finally have control of your life back.

 

Vice President's Former Chief of Staff is Guilty!

The jury just found Scooter Libby guilty on four of the five counts against him!

He's planning an appeal. But this is still a very GOOD day! And I have to echo the statement of the jurors below, who were apparently sympathetic to Libby. They pegged him as a scapegoat, and noted that the info couldn't have gotten out if it hadn't been deliberately leaked by SOMEONE, several someones, it seems.

When will they get their day in court?

Link: Libby guilty on 4 of 5 counts - CNN.com.

Libby guilty on 4 of 5 counts

Story Highlights

• Libby faces 25 years in prison, $1 million fine
• Libby attorney says appeals planned
• President Bush says he's saddened by verdict
• Vice President Dick Cheney's ex-aide lied about outing of CIA operative

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been found guilty on four of five counts in his perjury and obstruction of justice trial.

Libby was convicted of:

• obstruction of justice when he intentionally deceived a grand jury investigating the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame;
• making a false statement by intentionally lying to FBI agents about a conversation with NBC newsman Tim Russert;
• perjury when he lied in court about his conversation with Russert;
• a second count of perjury when he lied in court about conversations with other reporters.

Jurors cleared him of a second count of making a false statement relating to a conversation he had with Matt Cooper of Time magazine.

Libby, 56, faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and a fine of $1 million. A hearing on a presentencing report is scheduled for June 5.

CNN senior legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said, "He is virtually certain to go to prison if this conviction is upheld."

[Yeah, unless he's somehow, miraculously pardoned, by his bosses, thus revealing that he was doing what they wanted him to do. But if that happens, I'd have to wonder if anyone linked too closely to the Bush administration could ever get elected or re-elected to anything.]

[...]

As he walked into the courtroom to hear the verdict, Libby was calm and smiling, "there was almost a swagger," CNN's Brianna Keilar reported.

As the verdicts were read, Libby blinked and "it seemed as if he was somewhat surprised," Keilar reported.

[...]

A statement from lawyers representing Plame and Wilson said the couple was pleased by the verdict and believed justice had been served.

But the Wilsons said they would continue to pursue a civil case against Cheney, Libby, Bush's adviser Karl Rove and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage.

"The criminal trial was about whether or not Mr. Libby obstructed justice and committed perjury by lying to FBI agents and the grand jury about the fact that he had disclosed to reporters that Valerie Wilson worked for the CIA.

"The civil suit, on the other hand, hinges on whether or not the defendants violated the constitutional rights of Valerie and Joe Wilson by making those disclosures in a concerted effort to retaliate against Joe Wilson for revealing the falsity of the president's rationale for the Iraq war," the statement said.

One juror, Denis Collins, said "there was a tremendous amount of sympathy for Mr. Libby on the jury.

"It was said, 'Where's Rove, where are these other guys?'

"We're not saying that we didn't think Mr. Libby was guilty of the things we found him guilty of. It seemed like he was the fall guy," Collins said.

[...]