Tag: Impeachment

Congressional Dems Request Formal Investigation into Ashcroft’s Role in Bush CIA Leak Scandal

Jon Ponder

Raw Story:

Congressman John Conyers (D-MI) and Congressman Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) will be issuing a formal request for an immediate investigation with the US Inspector General’s office into John Ashcroft – former US Attorney General, Raw Story has learned.

The request – released to Raw Story – cites conflict of interest on the part of Ashcroft in his failure to promptly recuse himself during the initial investigation into the outing of CIA agent Valerie Wilson. Ashcroft was US Attorney General at the time.

If You Got the Money, Honey, Bush Has the Time

Trish

Things Bush doesn’t have time to do:

1. Ask Karl Rove if he blew Valerie Plame’s CIA cover

2. Meet with Cindy Sheehan

3. Attend a single funeral for any of the fallen in the Iraq war

Things Bush has all the time in the world to do:

1. Entertain big-buck supporters on the ranch

St. Petersburg Times reporter Adam Smith’s blog noted that Bush and Karl Rove provided a leisurely barbecue lunch in Crawford to a group of Florida “Regents” flown in for the occasion. Regents are those who gave at least $25,000 to the Republican Party during the 2004 election.

Thanks to Florida Politics for calling this to our attention.

If It Wasn’t Cheney or Valerie Plame, Who Sent Joe Wilson to Niger?

Jon Ponder
Rove, Scooter Libby, Ari Fleisher and others had an irresistable impulse to smear Joe Wilson simply because he dared to challenge them in public, and even though they and their Dear Leader were, in fact, wrong.

After President Bush was caught lying in his 2003 State of the Union speech about Saddam’s nuclear capabilities – the infamous “16 words” about Niger and yellow cake uranium – a Rovian blame game was contrived that successfully confused and blurred the responsibility for the falsehood in the minds of the media and the rest of us.

(Ultimately, the Administration laid the blame on Stephen Hadley, an assistant to Condi Rice, who was National Security Adviser at the time. In classic Bush fashion, rather than being punished, Hadley was promoted. He was given Rice’s job when she moved over to State.)

However, a secondary blame game also ensued that has still not been resolved – and that has now become a central issue in the investigation into the Bush CIA Leak scandal, according to the Washington Post:

The origin of Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV’s trip to Niger in 2002 to check out intelligence reports that Saddam Hussein was attempting to purchase uranium has become a contentious side issue to the inquiry by special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald…

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Congressional Leaders Will Pursue Ball Player’s Alleged Perjury While Ignoring Bush’s Lies to Congress

Jon Ponder
After what happened in the fall of 2002 and the winter of 2003, seeing Congress rise to protect its honor from the likes of Rafael Palmeiro is side-splittingly hilarious comedy. It’s like hearing a toothless, 55-year-old Bushwick Ave. whore complain—10,000 blowjobs later—that her date didn’t bring her flowers. And they want baseball to apologize?

The recent revelation that a baseball player named Rafael Palmeiro allegedly lied during a Congressional hearing while giving testimony about his use of steroids has been one of those stories that just seems like filler to me – stuff they talk about because August is a slow news month.

I mean, really, who cares if million dollar babies in the sports world shoot up? If these jokers are your kids’ role models, then you suck as parents.

But now comes word that two wingers in the Congress – Rep. Thomas Davis, chair of the House Committee on Government Reform, and Sen. Jim Bunning, a wacko of the first order from Kentucky (both Gops, natch) want to go after this guy for giving false testimony to Congress.

As Matt Tabbi brilliantly points in New York Press, these guys are breaking audacious new ground in the annals of hypocrisy by going after a ball player while ignoring the lies that President Bush has told to Congress that have led to the deaths of tens of thousand of U.S. servicemembers and innocent people:
[…]

Scooter Libby Said He Met with Judith Miller about Plame

Jon Ponder
The new disclosure that Miller and Libby met on July 8, 2003, raises questions regarding claims by President Bush that he and everyone in his administration have done everything possible to assist Fitzgerald’s grand-jury probe.

American Prospect has a new leak in the Bush CIA Leak investigation – this time not from Karl Rove’s attorney but from “legal sources familiar with” the testimony of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

[Libby] has told federal investigators that he met with New York Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003, and discussed CIA operative Valerie Plame, according to legal sources familiar with Libby’s account.

The meeting between Libby and Miller has been a central focus of the investigation by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald as to whether any Bush administration official broke the law by unmasking Plame’s identity or relied on classified information to discredit former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson, according to sources close to the case as well as documents filed in federal court by Fitzgerald.

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Poll: More Horrendous News for Bush – 61% Say He’s Bungled Iraq

Jon Ponder
Bush’s approval ratings have dropped to 42 percent; 51 percent of Americans say they disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job as president.

Newsweek:

As U.S. troops endured a deadly week in Iraq, 61 percent of Americans polled say they disapprove of the way President George W. Bush is handling the war in Iraq, according to a new NEWSWEEK poll. Thirty four percent say they approve. This is Bush’s lowest rating on Iraq and the first time it has dropped below 40 percent in the NEWSWEEK poll. And 50 percent of those polled say the United States is losing ground in its efforts to establish security and democracy in Iraq; just 40 percent say the U.S. is making progress there…

Meanwhile, Bush’s approval ratings have dropped to 42 percent; 51 percent of Americans say they disapprove of the way Bush is handling his job as president. Bush’s approval ratings reached a high of 88 percent in his first term, in the month after the September 11 attacks. Forty-two percent is his low.

Grieving Mother Leads Anti-War Protest at Bush’s Ranch

Jon Ponder

Associated Press:

The angry mother of a fallen U.S. soldier staged a protest near President Bush’s ranch on Saturday, demanding an accounting from the president of how he has conducted the war in Iraq.

Supported by more than 50 shouting demonstrators, Cindy Sheehan, 48, told reporters, “I want to ask George Bush: Why did my son die?”

Sheehan arrived in Crawford aboard a bus painted red, white and blue and emblazoned with the words, “Impeachment Tour.”

Her son, Casey, 24, was killed in Sadr City, Iraq, on April 4, 2004. He was an Army specialist, a Humvee mechanic…

[Sheehan] led a caravan of about 20 vehicles down a winding road toward Bush’s ranch. The group stopped along the way and sheriff’s deputies advised them that if they wanted to go farther toward the ranch, they would have to walk in a ditch along the road.

The marchers walked about half a mile until the deputies stopped them, saying that they had violated their instructions by walking on the road itself instead of staying in the adjacent ditch.

Sheehan protested, saying she had not walked on the road. The deputies refused to let her go farther.

The protesters then began chanting, “W killed her son.”

Novak Became Fair Game After He Broke His Silence on Plame

Jon Ponder

Jay Rosen at PressThink has a good analysis of the imbroglio that led to the on-air meltdown of rightwing propagandist Bob Novak earlier this week.

Rosen points out that in the two years since he published the name of CIA spy Valerie Plame, Novak had maintained a strict policy of not commenting on the case – until last Monday when Novak broke his silence – in his own column – to deny assertions by Bob Harlow, a former CIA official, who said he warned Novak not to publish Plame’s name in his July 2003 column. Novak complained in his column on Monday that the CIA official had not warned him enough. (He should have said, “Bob, Plame’s identity is extra-super-secret,” we suppose.)

Here’s Rosen’s reasoning:

Novak, in order to counter the suggestion that he had been properly warned but went ahead anyway — which he said would be “inexcusable for any journalist and particularly a veteran of 48 years in Washington” — decided to take up his pen. Ladies and gentlemen, he said, people have got to know whether their columnist is a crook. Or a jerk. Or a tool. Did I go ahead with the name of a CIA covert operative despite being warned? No, I did not.

Old Novak rules: sorry fellas, can’t talk. New rules: Novak chooses when. When to take the Fifth on advice of counsel, when to ignore counsel and respond to the news with his own explanations of what happened to reveal Plame’s name.

This, I believe, is the real cause of Thursday’s break down of professional discipline on air. The legitimacy of Novak’s exemption from questioning had collapsed earlier in the week. Ed Henry knew it and was ready with that news. Novak was not ready to receive it. So he invented an out.

Bush on Marine Deaths: War Is ‘Grim’ – I’m Going on Vacation!

Jon Ponder

“Make no mistake about it, we are at war,”
President Bush said yesterday, as he began the record-breaking 51st vacation of his presidency.

He was reacting – obliquely, as ever – to the news that a Marine amphibious assault vehicle patrolling during combat operations in the Euphrates River valley hit a roadside bomb, killing 14 Marines from the same Ohio battalion that lost six men two days ago.

Mr. Bush also said, “The violence in recent days in Iraq is a grim reminder of the enemies we face.”

We would simply ask: A reminder for whom, Mr. President?