Slouching Donkey, Lying Elephant

Hesiod jumps the shark

Hesiod not only jumped the shark, he sailed right over it, landed in the pool, and started splashing around to get its attention while calling it nasty names.

At issue is a post he made about Colin Powell's recent dishonest whoring for the Bush Administration. The text of the post is as follows:

This is pretty vile, at face value. Later, after receiving a whole lot of deserved flak for the post in his comments, Hesiod clarifies the point he was trying to make:Similar arguments are made in his comments, and at the comments over at Tacitus. What it essentially boils down to is this: Hesiod was trying to make the point that Powell was once an honorable man, and that his continued dishonesty in service of Bush's lies gives him the appearance of a racist caricature which, Hesiod is presumably implying, Powell should be above.

Bullshit. Nonsense. Codswaddle. Puckernuts. This is rationalization of the highest order.

Only one question need be asked of Hesiod in order to puncture his justifications for using this kind of rhetoric: what criticism would he have leveled at Powell for his dishonesty and political whoring, had Powell not been black?

Hesiod has offered no satisfactory answer for this question--and it, or variations on it, have been asked of him several times. He has offered defensive rationalizations when he should be offering an apology to his readers. In the realms of civil discourse, there is no room for crafting your attack on someone on the basis of their race, regardless of the point you're trying to make.

Edit: Tacitus cuts straight to the heart of the issue using far fewer words than I just did:

Doodles of Mass Destruction

During the run-up to the Iraq War, it was fashionable on the right to be dismissive or even insulting towards the UNMOVIC inspectors and Blix's team. Despite having blustered and fought tooth and nail to get Saddam to let the inspectors in, once they were in and were uncovering very little, the tactic shifted from demands that Saddam be held accountable to UN-monitored verification of his disarmament to snide and often blatant dismissals of the competence of Blix's team. After all, we /knew/ that Saddam had "produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas." We /knew/ that he was "building and hiding weapons that could enable him to dominate the Middle East and intimidate the civilized world". If the UN weapons inspectors were turning up nothing, than this was evidence not only of Saddam's duplicity, but of the incompetence of the inspectors: war was inevitable.

We now know the truth about Iraq's weapons programs--they existed on paper, the things of fantasy dreamed up by men whose stock in trade included deceiving their own leader about just what they had accomplished. These dreams amounted to little more than sketches on scrap paper: doodles of mass distraction.

Meanwhile, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace released a report today that confirmed what Scott Ritter and many respected and informed sources were saying all along: that Iraq's WMD capabilities were largely eliminated by the end of the first Gulf War and the inspection regimes which followed, and that there was no credible intelligence to support the Administration's politically-driven assertions that Iraq posed an imminent threat to the United States. The Administration, of course, is in full spin mode over this.

I still wonder how it is possible for anyone to defend, with a straight face, the Bush Administration's repeated claims that they knew not only what /specific/ types and amounts of WMDs Saddam had, but exactly where they were. These claims are impossible to reconcile with the inability of our armed forces, which now have strategic control over the country, to find so much as one single canister of VX or mustard gas, one single gram of anthrax. Our concern over Hussein's purported nuclear program is impossible to reconcile with the fact that US forces went for more than six months without bothering to secure seven of Iraq's nuclear power plants. And the WMD boogeyman that was used to sell this war to the American public--this war that could not wait a few more months, this was that had to happen /right now/ because of what a grave threat Saddam posed to the US--has been slowly ditched by the administration in favor of a fluffier humanitarian rationale. And the astounding thing is that the media is /letting them get away with it/--the press blithely reports everything the Bush Administration says as facts, without pointing out the way the administration's rhetoric has changed and evolved each time their current talking points have been proven to be demonstrably and conclusively without any basis in fact.

At some point, these facts are going to come out, and enough blood is going to be in the water that the press--who largely follow the prevailing winds of public opinion in what they cover, rather than contributing to it--will seize on the indefensible and inconsistent history of the Bush Administration's claims about Iraq. At some point, this country will wake up and realize, as a whole, that they have been lied to. Not on the level of a man lying about a blowjob. Not on the level of a man lying about whether or not he'd raise taxes. Not even on the level of lying about crooked tactics used against one's opponents. The American public will realize that they were lied to, repeatedly and pointedly, about matters of critical national security. They will realize that they were lied to about the fundamental facts on which they were supposed to base committing our armed forces to war.

For lies of this magnitude, there is no defense. There is only, provided justice is done, a prison cell.

Edit: Trickster, one of the guest bloggers over at Tacitus, weighs in on the question of the Bush Administration's dishonesty.

Shoddy Reporting

Via Andrew Sullivan comes this little tidbit from Iraq Now:

I was originally going to post a link to this UK Guardian article listing the casualties of the war among the media—under a heading like “They Also Serve,” or something like that. That is, until I came across this contemptible lie:

The killing of Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana, who was shot dead by US troops in August for filming outside an Iraqi prison, provoked outrage. Journalists who were with Dana accused US soldiers of behaving in a "crazy" and negligent fashion.

Here's a news flash for you guys: Mazen Dana was killed when he went downrange during a firefight, turned around, hefted something on his shoulder, and foolishly aimed it in the direction of a tank’s gunnery optics.

Note to the Guardian: when you print knee-jerk bullshit like this without taking the time to look into it and find out the actual circumstances of death, you lose credibility and make it that much more difficult to take anti-war arguments and actual real-world examples of Army excesses seriously.

A little integrity from the media, please.

Dean/Who '04?

There's been a great deal of discussion in the blogosphere lately about who Dean should choose as his running mate. This, of course, presupposes that Dean will get the nod for the Democratic nomination--which, while extremely likely at this point, is not yet a done deal. Nevertheless, given his momentum and the way most of the rest of the candidates seem to be polling at or below the Sharpton line, I don't think it's too early to start considering this.

Kos, in particular, seems to be of the opinion that once Dean gets the nomination, he should pick General Wesley Clark as his running mate. This is based largely on the perception that Clark shores up Dean's weaknesses, and vice-versa. There is a certain degree of truth to this: Clark's biggest strength as former NATO Supreme Allied Commander is foreign policy creds; this is perceived as one of Dean's weaknesses as former governor of Vermont. Clark is also perceived as more centrist than Dean, and to a certain degree appeals to Southern voters.

I have very little against Clark as a candidate. I don't think he's the best one we can offer, and like most of them I have some policy agreements and disagreements with him. Ultimately, if he gets the nomination, I'll vote for him with no reservations or feelings that mine is a "lesser evil" vote. But taking him on as a VP would be throwing away some much better possibilities:

• Bill Richardson, Governor of New Mexico. A former UN Ambassador with the experience and connections to help mend fences with all those whose rugs we've been crapping on in the last few years. He has Washington experience, he's Latino, and the state of New Mexico has been trending Democratic recently--Richardson on the ticket would help it go blue this year.
• Bob Graham, former candidate for the '04 race. He has a lengthy history of Senate experience, and is a former Governor of Florida--an extremely popular Governor at the time, as well. This could very well help tip Florida into the blue column this year--which, while possible without Graham, would be much more doable with him, and would be huge.

A number of other names have been floated, some of them good, and some of them bad. But all of the suggestions I've seen so far, including Clark, have one thing in common: they're all choices based on criteria that give Dean an increased edge in the GE.

For Clark, it's primarily about shoring up foreign policy. With Richardson, it's the minority vote and the prospect of tipping the scales in states like Arizona and New Mexico. With Graham, it's Florida and the "Southern" vote.

But when you take all of these into account, Clark's more than anything else boils down to nothing more than a "policy" bump. It's about an issue--foreign policy--and it's an issue that I'm convinced Dean can run convincingly on his own merits, and his own message. The others all bring something far more substantial to the table: a very tangible edge in specific states and voting demographics which will be crucial swing points in the election.

Furthermore, Richardson and Graham have one crucial attribute which Clark lacks: Washington political experience. This is one of the most critical strengths that Dean will require from his VP. Dean has a lot of great ideas, and the bully pulpit of the Oval Office will allow him to implement some of them. Simply having him in office will be an improvement. But when it comes to passing legislation and undoing some of the worst damage of the Bush administration, remember that for the first two years of his presidency, Dean will have to run everything past a Congress over which the GOP still has an absolute stranglehold. Any judicial appointments which Dean puts forth will be viciously and relentlessly stonewalled by DeLay and company.

In order to be effective, a Dean presidency must--absolutely MUST--have a VP who is capable of liaising with and coaxing/slapping the legislature into line. Without someone in the VP slot who has experience interfacing with Congress, Dean will spend the first two years--if not his entire term--crippled legislatively.

While I'm not blind to the potential benefits that Clark brings, especially in an era where national security is a more important voter issue than ever, I think most of the other choices bring far more to the table in places where we need them far more.

Bush the... Progressive?

Bear with me on this one, folks. I realize the title borders on apostasy.

Via Katherine over at Obsidian Wings (to whom I seem to be linking a lot these days) comes a really fantastic post over at Pandagon. I concur with Katherine--read it all.

The thrust of Ezra Klein's post is essentially that the Republicans have set themselves up for failure in a big way by pretending to be progressives. They're attempting to have it both ways: they portray themselves as conservatives to their traditional base, while buying swing votes with programs like Medicare and NCLB that appear to appeal to progressive or even liberal values.

Ezra's money quote comes in these last two paragraphs here:

So you know Bush isn’t a very good liberal and you know he isn’t a very good Republican. In fact, he’s a bad Republican pretending to be a liberal for the cameras. So what does that mean? Well, since he has the full support of his party on all his initiatives it means that the Republicans have ceded the ground on virtually every important issue that the US Government deals with. Let that sink in for a moment. Republicans are getting elected by promising to protect the environment, strengthen entitlement programs, conduct humanitarian interventions, back Democratic security initiatives, and support public schools. They are getting elected by pretending to be Democrats, albeit Democrats who wear cowboy boots. They have nothing left.

Sure, they can drag their feet and do bad jobs of making liberal bills, but they have lost all the arguments. Once a Democrat gets into the Presidency the public is not only used to, but thinks there’s a bipartisan consensus on, environmental protection, entitlement programs, and pretty much everything else liberals want to do. That clears the way for an exceedingly powerful and unexpectedly sweeping progressive agenda once a Democrat gets into office. And Republican intransigence on these issues could very well lead to an electoral route, as the public punishes Congressional Republicans for blocking the nationally agreed upon agenda. The election strategy the Republicans are using is leaving them a hollowed out shell, supporting the other side’s agenda and losing on all the guns they stick to (the public doesn’t support tax cuts that bust the budget, drilling in Alaska, or unilateralism abroad; remember, tolerance is different than support). So mourn our forests, stamp your foot at pollution, but don’t fret too much – the Republicans are sitting atop a house of cards and the wind is beginning to blow.

There's room for argument in a lot of this, but Ezra's right on the money with a lot of it. When Dean routs Bush from office in 2004, watch for the GOP to start backpedaling on many of the arguments they themselves have made in the last few years--and watch for a possible electoral backlash in 2006 when they realize the American public want a /real/ progressive agenda.

Reagan Jr. Slams Bush

What an amazing Salon article to wake up to: the son of former President Ronald Reagan, icon of the conservative movement, has unleashed his tongue on the Bush Administration. This is not particularly surprising if you think about it: the Bush Administration's attack on traditional Reagan conservatism is broad and unrelenting. Their only nod to "conservative" values seems to be their pandering to the religious right and their passion for tax cuts.

Reagan is more than just the icon of the conservative movement. He's something akin to a personal hero to many conservatives. Many of them rationalize the Iron/Contra fiasco in similar terms that many liberals rationalize Bill Clinton's perjury, and when you set that one little niggling issue aside, Reagan /was/ the absolute picture of conservatism. Which means that in its attempts to sell Bush as a "compassionate conservative", the GOP has also been attempting to bill Bush as the ideological heir to Reagan. Nothing could be further from the truth, and Reagan Jr. exposes this for the lie that it is:

"The Bush people have no right to speak for my father, particularly because of the position he's in now," he said during a recent interview with Salon. "Yes, some of the current policies are an extension of the '80s. But the overall thrust of this administration is not my father's -- these people are overly reaching, overly aggressive, overly secretive, and just plain corrupt. I don't trust these people."

Neither, if Ron's account is accurate, does his mother Nancy, the former First Lady.

Reagan's parents were notoriously remote from their four children. Ron Jr. reportedly had the closest relations with his parents and he remains close with his mother, Nancy Reagan, who as the keeper of the Reagan flame is often called upon to dedicate public sites bearing her husband's name. Reagan says his mother shares his "distrust of some of these [Bush] people. She gets that they're trouble in all kinds of ways. She doesn't like their religious fervor, their aggression."

Reagan says his family feels particularly alienated from the Republican Party over its opposition to embryonic stem cell research, which could have significant benefit for Alzheimer patients like his father. "Now ignorance is one thing, ignorance can be cured. But many of the Republican leaders opposing this research know better, people like [Senate Majority Leader] Bill Frist, who's a doctor, for God's sake. People like him are blocking it to pander to the 20 percent of their base who are mouth-breathers. And that's unconscionable -- there are lives at stake here. Stem cell research can revolutionize medicine, more than anything since antibiotics."

The GOP will dismiss much of this, claiming (with some truth) that Ron does not speak for his father--or worse, alleging that Ron Jr. is carrying the flag for the Democrats and joining in the tide of "Bush-hatred" so often derided in the left. This is hardly the case.

Reagan, who says the label "progressive" would fit him, does not belong to a political party. "I'm certainly not a Republican; I couldn't belong to any party that had leaders like Tom DeLay. And the Democrats are too busy trying to out-Republican the Republicans."

I'd love to vote for this guy. Unfortunately, he has no aspirations to politics.

His father entered politics at a relatively late stage in his life, after careers as a sports broadcaster, actor and General Electric pitchman. Has Reagan ever considered running for office? No, he insists, "I have no political ambitions. For one thing, I'm not interested in raising all that money. It's just not the life I want to lead.

Ron Jr. is worth keeping an eye on. I doubt we'll see his mother become as outspoken on the matter, but if the Bush team starts playing up the Bush-as-Reagan-ideological-heir angle in the 2004 election, I would not be surprised if the shocker of the campaign was the former First Lady telling conservatives to Just Say No to George W. Bush.

Duplicate comments

Ever since I set up the site, MT has had a habit of posting at /least/ two or three duplicates every time someone comments--not to mention taking forever to post said comment.

I'm aware of it and I'm sure it's something to do with the web host, but I'll be damned if I know how to fix it. I'm looking into it, through--in the meantime, if anyone has any information, feel free to let me know: sdle [at] ayashi {dot} net.

Robertson: God will anoint Bush

Straight from the fair and balanced reporting of Fox News, this is too funny to pass up:

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson said Friday he believes God has told him President Bush will be re-elected in a "blowout" in November.

"I think George Bush is going to win in a walk," Robertson said on his "700 Club" program on the Virginia Beach-based Christian Broadcasting Network, which he founded. "I really believe I'm hearing from the Lord it's going to be like a blowout election in 2004. It's shaping up that way."

Moe Lane of Obsidian Wings had this to say about Pat's prayerful prediction:

It'd be worth a close election (as long as Bush still wins it, of course) just to watch old Pat try to wiggle out of it afterwards: the problem with guys like Robertson is that when he reads the Old Testament he spends too much time in Leviticus and not enough in either Job* or Ecclesiastes.

Moe can be forgiven for his taste in presidential candidates for that line, and for pointing out this zinger in the article in question from The Rev. Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State:

In a reference to Bush's political adviser, Lynn said, "Maybe Pat got a message from [Bush adviser] Karl Rove and thought it was from God."

Bush/Hitler comparisons?

Over at Tacitus and Drudge much foaming at the mouth is occurring over ads submitted to the Bush in 30 Seconds contest. I noticed that of all the conservatives I read, only Dan Drezner has so far had the integrity to acknowledge that the GOP is equally susceptible to violations of Godwin's Law:

Dean wants to muzzle his Democratic competitors, too. He believes the Democratic National Committee should shut them up. His followers try to intimidate other presidential aspirants by surrounding the cars delivering them to their rallies and chanting to drown out their speech. Of course, Dean denies any foreknowledge or blame.

These are the techniques employed by Hitler's Brownshirts. Had Goebbels enjoyed access to the internet, he would have used the same swarm tactics as Dean's Flannelshirts.

Of course, the RNC and the right-wing blogosphere are livid over the MoveOn submission. Apparently drawing historical comparisons between 1930s Germany and contemporary America are absolutely ridiculous.

Well, of couse they are--Hitler, after all, won a plurality of the vote.

UPDATE: Moe at Obsidian Wings joins in the denunciation of the Peters column. It's reassuring to see that people like that are apparently as far on the fringe of the right as the people doing the MoveOn ads in question are on the left.

Another update: The incomparable Billmon weighs in.

The AP and journalism

Via dKos, the AP is starting to get really shoddy. Atrios has been giving a lot of virtual ink to the journalistic slant of Nedra Pickler, one of the AP writers whose style would seem more appropriate on the editorial page. But this time she's gone beyond slant and hit pieces and blatantly misquoted Dean:

"I opposed the Iraq war when everyone else up here was for it," said the former Vermont governor, invoking the anti-war position that helped fuel his 2003 transformation from asterisk in the polls to front-runner.

This makes it appear as if Dean is misrepresenting the positions of the other candidates who opposed the war and painting everyone with a broad brush. A simple perusal of the debate transcript, however, reveals the full quote and its context:

The proper role of the federal government in education is not to pass bills like No Child Left Behind. I have two big policy differences with almost everybody up here. I opposed the Iraq war; with the exception of Dennis and Carol, everybody else supported it.

I opposed No Child Left Behind; I don't know how Carol would have voted, but I -- everybody else supported it.

This could conceivably be taken as an innocent mistake--but it's not. If you read the AP Wire, watch Nedra's stories. They are consistently written with the kind of editorial slant that would be expected of Fox News, but which are wholly inappropriate in the AP, which in its mission statement claims that "[n]ews bearing the AP logotype is expected to be accurate, balanced and informed."

This isn't the only place where the AP dropped the ball on their debate coverage Sunday, either. Also off the AP Wire and via dKos is this blatant hit piece by Calvin Woodward, which contains the following gem of objectivity:

For a brief time in their debate Sunday, Democrats seemed to be hewing to a New Year's resolution to stick more carefully to the facts on taxes, the budget and more. But old habits die hard.

Apparently old habits die hard for Woodward, too, since according to The Daily Howler, he's been at this for a while:

There simply can't be an easier job than being a Washington journalist. Under the current rules of the game, any time you have nothing to say, you can type up the "Gore embellishes" story. You throw together some jumbled version of favorite alleged misstatements by Gore. On October 5, for example, the AP's Calvin Woodward sampled the genre. Early on, he offered this:

WOODWARD: Whether claiming to have been an inspiration for a "Love Story" character years ago or recently recalling the strains of a childhood song that wasn't written until he was grown, Gore has tended to go off track on peripheral things.

Woodward's passage is simply astonishing. Author Erich Segal told the New York Times (three years ago!) that Gore was a model for the Love Story character. Woodward's implication that Gore embellished this simply flies in the face of reality. And Gore has explained that the "childhood song" remark was a joke (made to a labor audience that is plainly heard laughing on the videotape). Woodward doesn't even mention that, to let readers judge the facts for themselves. When the Washington press corps tells treasured old tales, they tend to serve up "novelized" news—stories in which favorite tales are shaped to be pleasing and simple-minded. The Gore embellishment story is one of their favorites. As Woodward does, they'll routinely embellish the facts themselves, just to keep stories lively and pleasing.

Most national papers carry AP stories, and most have a Wire Editor (or one of their regular Editors doing double duty) whose job it is to decide which of the many AP stories makes it into print. When you notice things like this, call the paper and demand that they print stories which adhere to higher standards of journalistic integrity. You can also register your disapproval of this kind of nonsense with the AP directly:

AP National Desk: 212-621-1600
The National Editor's name is Mark Kennedy--demand to speak with him; don't let a clerk brush you off.

You will also want to register your disapproval (politely but firmly) through email:
Nedra Pickler: npickler@ap.org
Calvin Woodward: cwoodward@ap.org
Be sure to cc: anything you send to either of them to info@ap.org as well.

UPDATE: The AP has issued a correction to the Pickler story. According to many of the posters at dKos, the person answering the phones at the AP got so sick of getting calls that by midday she was tersely telling people to email their complaints and hanging up on them.

We did it. YOU have the power to hold the press accountable for their reporting.

Plame investigation gathering steam

After months of silence in the press, this week has held some very important developments in the ongoing Justice Department investigation into who leaked the name and occupation of former CIA operative Valerie Plame. After Republicans fiercely denied the need for Ashcroft to recuse himself and appoint a special prosecutor, Ashcroft has finally done precisely that:

"The issue surrounding the attorney general's recusal is not one of actual conflict of interest that arises normally when someone has a financial interest or something. The issue that he was concerned about was one of appearance. And I can't go beyond that," Comey said at a news conference.

"The attorney general, in an abundance of caution, believed that his recusal was appropriate based on the totality of the circumstances and the facts and evidence developed at this stage of the investigation," he said. "I agree with that judgment."

Take careful note of that bit in the second paragraph. There has been much ado in the blogosphere in the last few days about it--with Democratic punditry eager to point to it as anything from Ashcroft being sanguine about having covered his boss's tracks, to a clear signal that they've uncovered something unsavory.

While I think the former is speculation that delves into tinfoil hat territory, the latter rings true with me--especially given the breaking news that's hitting the wire now.

FBI investigators looking into the criminal leak of a CIA agent’s identity have asked Bush Administration officials including senior political adviser Karl Rove to release reporters from any confidentiality agreements regarding conversations about the agent. If signed, the single-page requests made over the last week would give investigators new ammunition for questioning reporters who have so far, according to those familiar with the case, not disclosed the names of administration officials who divulged that Valerie Plame, wife of former ambassador Joe Wilson, worked for the CIA.

Reporters are unlikely to feel obligated to "honor" such a waiver, however--especially if they believe the waivers were signed under duress.

It's plain that White House officials are under some pressure to sign the documents. "They can't refuse," said one individual who's familiar with the case. "The worst thing to be accused of here is not cooperating with the investigation."

Time broke the story, and now WaPo and Reuters has picked it up. Each of them offer some new insights that the admittedly spare Time piece lacks, however. WaPo, especially, has what I think is one of the most crucial new bits of information buried just below their lede:

The official said that several aides to President Bush whose names have come up in interviews with FBI agents will be asked to sign a one-page form giving permission for journalists to describe any such conversations to investigators, even if the journalists promised not to reveal the source.

Think about that one for a moment. It could easily be a red herring; it could very well mean nothing. But coming two days after Ashcroft's out-of-the-blue recusal and appointment of a special prosecutor, it is no real stretch to say that the names of /several aides to President Bush/ coming up in /interviews with FBI agents/ is extremely important. Also in the WaPo story is another piece of information which shows just how far this waiver goes:

The form states that it is the wish of the White House official that "no member of the media assert any privilege or refuse to answer any questions" about the leak, according to a copy of the form obtained by NBC News.

So what does this all mean?

First of all, it raises some interesting First Amendment questions regarding the sanctity of "reporter's privilege". It is undeniably desirable for reporters to be able to assure their sources of confidentiality--this provides the protection and reassurance that whistleblowers need in order to come forth. If reporters start making a habit of divulging sources, or a precedent is set allowing the government to set a low bar for requiring them to do so, it jeopardizes one of the underpinnings of our free press--and thereby, our democracy. It should never--not ever--be done lightly.

But that is not the same thing as saying that it should not ever be done. At some point we must ask ourselves: what greater good is a journalist serving by protecting his source? At what point does refusing to divulge a source--a source who /by the very act of confiding in the reporter/ committed a crime--become morally or ethically comparable to the crime itself? At what point does reporter's privilege become aiding and abetting?

Put another way, let's take this to an extreme. Let's say the source is a serial killer and rapist. The reporter knows who he is, knows where he is, and the killer has confided the details of his crimes to said reporter. Is this reporter morally and ethically bound to protect his source, even though his source is the vilest sort of danger to society? If the answer is--as I believe it must be--no, then a reporter's privilege is not absolute and inviolate, and we should not treat it as such--but should instead consider it on a case by case basis.

In this case, someone within the Bush Administration--possibly more than one person--has outed the identity of a CIA operative. Her area of work was in Weapons of Mass Destruction--arguably one of the most sensitive and important areas of national security. Revealing her identity has most likely compromised sources and methods, cast a shadow of suspicion over everyone with whom she has ever interacted, and has outed a CIA front company--with the possible side effect of outing other operatives who've worked under that front, and initiating a ripple effect that could cost lives and harm our ability to counter the proliferation of WMDs.

If we stipulate that all of the above is true, can anyone mount any moral or ethical defense for protecting the identity of the person who committed this crime? Because even if you do not accept the validity of the above collateral damage and blowback from this crime, there is no doubt whatsoever that it is a crime--despite the most recent spin cycle ("Really, we didn't /know/ she was undercover, so it wasn't a crime!") that Josh Marshall and others have so effectively debunked.

One thing's for certain: this investigation certainly isn't going away. If this week is any indicator, it's been percolating along quite well, and is just now starting to gather steam. I predict that by Spring, if not sooner, we're going to see charges filed against at least one person in the Bush Administration.

And Bush is going to find out that while steam can obscure, it also burns.

Hiatus

My apologies for the long hiatus. I had planned on doing a lot of writing over Christmas break--along with many other things--but the flu had other ideas.

If you have not yet gotten a flu shot, and you have the opportunity--/do so/. This year's flu is incredibly debilitating. It is quite possibly the worst illness I've ever had, and definitely the worst flu or cold.

I've got a number of links piling up in my outbox to blog about, so expect a return to the world of the living fairly soon--I'm almost over this thing.