Day: July 10, 2005

Former Miami Herald columnist Dave Barry happened to be in England during the bombings, and has posted several great entries to his blog on the subject. I found this one particularly interesting.

Last night we went to see the musical production of “Mary Poppins,” which is quite different from the movie, and astonishingly good. If this show gets to New York, it will be huge, one of those shows that runs forever.

The theater had been closed the night before because of the bombings, but last night the house was full. We stood for a minute of silence in honor of the bombing victims, and then the show, as shows must, went on.

The show goes on everywhere here: The underground is running again, and people are resuming their lives. I remain awed by how calmly Londoners have handled the terrorist attack. I believe that one reason for this is that the British TV news people have displayed less excitability and hysteria than American TV news people displayed in response to the Michael Jackson verdict.

Our TV reporters, and really most of the members of our press, have been such a disappointment during all the W years, starting with election night 2000. I grew up with Uncle Walter, then lived my idealistic years (my teens) when investigative reporting was considered a noble and valiant calling. Somewhere along the way Geraldo Rivera morphed into Geraldo, and CNN paved the way for Fox News.

Howard Troxler, in the St. Petersburg Times summed up the state of the press – and the government’s view of it – in America today, starting with a quote from the special prosecutor in the Miller/Cooper/Rove case:

“Journalists are not entitled to promise complete confidentiality – no one in America is.” – special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald

I have no doubt that Patrick J. Fitzgerald, who got an American newspaper reporter thrown in jail this week, truly believes that “no one in America” is entitled to keep anything secret from the government.

I do doubt, however, whether he understands the scope of the power that he has now claimed on behalf of the crown.

No one in America!

No one may refuse to answer when the all-powerful government demands it!

Does he mean it?

Does he mean that the government is entitled to force ministers to inform against sinners, doctors against patients, lawyers against clients, wives against husbands, children against parents?

No one in America.

On Jan. 16, 1787, Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and future president, wrote a letter expressing his beliefs about a free press.

The only possible check on the abuse of government power, Jefferson wrote, is informed public opinion. But the citizens cannot stand up to the government unless they are armed with a free press. This led to Jefferson’s famous conclusion:

“Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Of course, the person who blew Plame’s cover, Robert Novak, isn’t even being asked to reveal his source, let alone threatened with imprisonment. I have to wonder if it’s because Miller is so much more of a reliable martyr, as portrayed by James Wolcott in his stunningly fabulous and prescient book, “Attack Poodles.” Are they going after Judy because they know she will take that bullet, and ask for another, before giving them up for the petty, vindictive sleezes they are?

Although Troxler gives Miller the benefit of the doubt, he also puts the responsibility where it really belongs.

But this “crime,” if one exists at all, was committed by the government itself. The perverse claim here is that the government can commit an act, then “investigate” it, and jail reporters for not “cooperating.”

You think this is partisan? Go ahead. Feel free to believe that it’s okay under a Republican president to throw the New York Times in jail. Just be sure you’re comfortable with giving the same power to a future President Hillary Clinton, or whichever Democrat sneaks back into the White House first, over Fox News.

This is July, the month of Independence. This is not a month for kings.

No one in America, the king’s prosecutor now claims. But he is wrong.

As you’ve probably read, Karl Rove now says he did not “knowingly” reveal the secret identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson to journalists in 2003. The word “knowingly” is key because if you knowingly reveal the identity of a secret operative, it’s treason. If you do it unknowingly, you’re in the clear.

Knowingly or not, Rove was fully aware that Plame’s purview at the CIA was intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. Considering the importance of the search for WMD to national security, Rove had to know that outing Plame might cause serious damage to the spy agency’s efforts. Apparently, he did not care.

Unfortunately, the breach caused by revealing Plame’s identity turned out to be much bigger than the outing of a single intelligence officer:

Not only was Plame’s cover blown, so was that of her cover company, Brewster Jennings & Associates. With the public exposure of Plame, intelligence agencies all over the world started searching data bases for any references to her. Damage control was immediate, as the CIA asserted that her mission had been connected to weapons of mass destruction.

However, it was not long before stories from the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal tied Brewster Jennings & Associates to energy, oil and the Saudi-owned Arabian American Oil Company, or ARAMCO. [The company was named for the late] Brewster Jennings [who was] a founder of Mobil Oil company, one of Aramco’s principal founders.

… Brewster Jennings was, in fact, a well-established CIA proprietary company, linked for many years to ARAMCO. The demise of Brewster Jennings was also guaranteed the moment Plame was outed.

Brewster Jennings was set up by the CIA to collect intelligence about ties between groups involved in smuggling nuclear material to countries such as Israel and Pakistan. The unmasking of this secret effort tipped off the smugglers and drove them deeper underground.

Loss of the Brewster Jennings’ survelliance arguably makes it more likely that terrorists are assembling a nuclear “dirty bomb” now that might explode in a world capitol one day soon.

So here’s the question, why does this man still have a job? And here’s another: Why isn’t he in jail?

Once again we find ourselves faced with a serious question about the performance of a high-ranking Republican: Did Karl Rove inadvertently breach national security or did he do it on purpose?

Note: See this newer post to read the raw notes of Time Magazine reporter Matt Cooper’s 2003 conversation with Rove in which Rove told Cooper that Joe Wilson’s wife was a CIA expert on WMD.

Not only is there much to support a theory that genetics prevents any member of the Bush from admitting mistakes, this same postulated strand of DNA also keeps them from saying they’re sorry, or acknowledging they’re vindictive (tell me why we are in Iraq again?), overblown morons with supernatural powers of denial.

Jeb’s All-Star Vendetta Against Michael Schiavo is surely an integral part of the hypothesis.

Naples (Florida) News guest editorial:

At every stage of the Terri Schiavo case Jeb Bush has been wrong and the husband of the comatose woman and the local, state and federal courts, who supported Michael Schiavo, right.

The Florida governor and his allies in trashing the courts and the poor woman’s right to privacy, the Senate and House Republican leaders, Bill Frist and Tom DeLay, were conclusively and, one could only hope, for the last time proved wrong again last month when the medical examiner released the results of his autopsy…

There, you would have thought, the matter would rest.

But the implacable governor had one more shot at Michael Schiavo in his arsenal. Still unwilling to let go, he asked a state’s attorney to launch a criminal investigation into alleged discrepancies in the time of her collapse…

The state attorney assigned two experienced prosecutors to the probe and their findings were released Friday… They re-plowed…all evidence and found no justification “to use our investigative powers to perpetuate suspicion where, despite extended litigation and a detailed autopsy, we have no proof to suggest that a crime has occurred.”

Wow. That’s pretty definitive. Embarrassing for Jeb, but maybe he could still come out holding his head up by saying something about his heart being in the right place, or that at least now the Schiavo and Schindler families can move forward, or even just something philosophical about the nature of life. So what did he in fact say when he announced this was the end of the whole mess, that he would let it go now?

Palm Beach Post:

“It’s done,” Bush told reporters at a hurricane briefing early Friday afternoon. “Sad tragedy. Horribly sad.”

Asked to elaborate, he said, “I think it’s pretty clear — sad tragedy. That’s what I mean. It’s a sad tragedy that this woman starved to death.”

Did you get that? The tragedy here is that Teri Schiavo was taken off life support – after a decade and a half, with no chance of recovery. That’s the big tragedy.

Congress needs to pass emergency legislation prohibiting any member of the Bush family from further reproducing until science can ensure the gene pool will be safe from whatever mental disorder plagues Jeb, W, Barb, George H.W., Neil, and the whole defective lot.

Great guest editorial by Bud Hendershot in my local paper.

Recently the U.S. Senate voted on a bill that would ban the EPA from accepting data from companies who use intentional pesticide dosing of human beings as part of their studies…

It seems that chemical companies have been paying people to ingest pesticides. The subjects include pregnant females, and the fetuses they carry. According to the Wall Street Journal, these tests are designed by pesticide manufacturers to “prove” the safety of their products, in hopes of weakening EPA regulations regarding pesticide use on U.S. crops.

…By a vote of 60-37, senators voted to prohibit the EPA from accepting, considering, or relying on chemical industry studies involving intentional dosing of human subjects. Who voted against this bill? Thirty-seven senators, all Republicans, including Mel Martinez. So did the very sanctimonious Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania; a man who never met a fetus he didn’t like.

Apparently, poisoning fetuses is a-ok with these senators. Just don’t abort them.

Interestingly, a subset of the 37 senators who voted against the protection of fetuses (and the already born) also voted against a recently passed anti-lynching bill [Editor’s note: actually, they just didn’t vote in favor of it] You’d think being against lynching would be a no-brainer for any senator, “pro-life” or not, right?

…[Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN)] is the perfect representative of this crew…He is vehemently anti-abortion. He spent weeks grandstanding to keep a brain-dead, blind woman alive, so full of life’s “sanctity” is he. Yet he loves the death penalty and supports the war (as long as it is fought by other people’s sons and daughters).

Lynching and pesticides? Fine by Frist! The contradictions are dizzying.

Thankfully, the Congress is busy with other important business, namely a Constitutional Amendment to prohibit Flag Burning. Yes, that is a critical problem these days. You can barely cross the street without tripping over burning flags, right?

With 1,700 soldiers dead in Iraq and a host of other tiny little problems, it’s good to see our government focusing on legislation that truly impacts our daily lives. Flag burning. It makes you angry enough to want to dose somebody with pesticides and lynch ’em, doesn’t it?