Roberts is Confirmed, so Why Does Bush Keep Talking About it?

Less than a week after his nomination for the Supreme Court, it's obvious that Roberts is headed for a successful appointment. The only major issue between him and the bench is the fact that he has almost no public paper trail revealing his judicial thinking, but he has an enormous paper trail in the Executive Branch: 1981-82, Aide to Attorney General William French Smith; 82-86, Aide to White House counsel Fred Fielding; 89-93, principal deputy solicitor general for Bush I. That's 11-12 years writing legal opinions for the Executive Branch -- all of which Bush had access to in making his decision. Compare that with 1.5 years on the D.C. Circuit, which is the paper trail the Senate has to examine his Judicial thinking. Executive privelige will keep the Senate from obtaining copies of Roberts' writings during those 12 years. It's safe to say that Bush knows every nuance of Roberts' judicial bent. The Senate cannot know it.

So, Bush's candidate will get onto the court, and I expect he'll be exactly the kind of Justice Bush's supporters want to see.

My point: this nomination is over.


So why is Bush still talking about it? Answer: to change the subject from the real subject: The Plame Affair.

Bush Always Knew About the Conspiracy In His Administration

The force of Derek's posts below is so convincing, it bears repeating.

Bush is playing poker with us -- holding cards, and looking over his shoulder is Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Stephen Hadley, Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan. All of them are looking at his hand and saying the exact same things: "never said her name", "only if leaked classified information". Some of them are even bluffing: "had no involvement".

Now, we can't prove what's in that hand -- but we are hearing them all speak with the same voice, with the same words, because they are all playing the same hand. The President has always known, and he's helping them forward the conspiracy and obstruction. Anyone who plays poker can see that.

The important question which remains is - how do you get to see the cards?

Bush knew about Rove & Plame - Part 2

Since my last post on this subject, the President has finally made public reference to his 2003 pledge to lay off any members of his Administration involved in revealing the identity of a CIA covert operative - and her various front companies and all related government agents - to the world for the sake of a political vendetta.

What the President says now is that he will fire anyone found to have "committed a crime." (As Josh Marshall put it, he's set a high bar for his staff: no felons.) What he said then was that he would fire anyone found to have "leaked classified information." This is a revealing retreat on his part, mainly because the leaking of classified information is not itself a crime. Some news reports of the President's statement have claimed that he was clarifying (or "narrowing") his earlier position. Since the two statements refer to disjoint types of action, however, this cannot be the case.

As I pointed out in my earlier post, the President's statements - both directly and through spokesman Scott McClellan - have mirrored Karl Rove and his lawyer's justifications in near-eerie fashion throughout this scandal. His new position hews to this pattern, since obviously, Rove and his lawyer still hope to beat the rap, even though it is now public knowledge - not even denied by them - that Rove was involved in compromising Plame's covert status. They can maintain this hope because the governing statute sets a high bar for conviction; in any case, the wheels of justice grind exceeding slow.

We thus have four independent lines of argument that Bush knew - in 2003 - that Rove had played a role in compromising Plame's status:

1. His invocation of the phrase "classified information" in 2003, which was designed by Rove to exclude his own actions (see my previous post);
2. His lack of action in response to the revelation of Matthew Cooper's testimony about Rove. This absence of action confirms that the original pledge was not meant to apply to Rove;
3. His new statement, which appeals to an external standard for the first time, rather than referring to what actually happened (one presumes that the President can ask for the truth from his trusted aides);
4. His new statement, which retreats from the "classified information" standard, which would now very clearly indict Rove (who was too clever by half with that initial framing).

Simply because it is so hard to get one's head around, I'll say it again: The preponderance of the evidence implies that the President has, knowingly and for almost two years now, participated in keeping this traitor employed, with your tax dollars and a security clearance, in his Administration.

The White House Cover Up

Fitzpatrick is looking at Four Incidents of obstruction of Justice, two involving Rove, one involving Scooter Libby, and one involving Ari Fleishcer:

* White House chief political strategist Karl Rove reportedly told the grand jury that he first learned of Valerie Plame's identity from columnist Robert Novak -- but Novak's version of the story is that Rove already knew about her when the two spoke.

* Rove didn't mention his conversation with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper to investigators at first and then said it was primarily about welfare reform. But Cooper has testified that the topic of welfare reform didn't came up.

* Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby apparently told prosecutors he first heard about Plame from NBC's Tim Russert, but Russert has testified that he neither offered nor received information about Plame in his conversation with Libby.

* And former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer apparently told prosecutors that he never saw a classified State Department memo that disclosed Plame's identity, but another former official reportedly saw him perusing it on Air Force One.

Civil Liberties for Security

As has always been said, ultimately, we will give up our civil liberties for security. After all, what do you have to hide?

Bloomberg: "Are they intrusive? Yes, a little bit. But we're trying to find the right balance."

Bush knew about Rove & Plame in 2003

Recall how in parsing the President's and Scott McClellan's statements in 2003 and 2004, we were all puzzled by their repeated invocation of the phrase "leaking classified information" when referring to the identification of Valerie Plame Willson as a CIA operative. For example:

George W. Bush - 30 September 2003 - "I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action."

Scott McClellan - 7 October 2003 - "If someone leaked classified information, the President wants to know. If someone in this administration leaked classified information, they will no longer be a part of this administration, because that's not the way this White House operates."

This behavior seemed bizarre under the circumstances since the charge itself - knowingly revealing the identity of a CIA operative - makes no explicit reference to classified information. So why were Bush and his spokesperson treating this as just another leak?

At the time some thought this might be a clever attempt to broaden the outrage over a compromise of our national security into a full attack on government leaks, which have a tendency to embarass the Executive Branch more often than not. "Perhaps the Administration will use the scandal to push for an Official Secrets Act!" we thought.

In retrospect, though, I think this actually reveals that Bush and McClellan knew that Rove had been talking to reporters about Plame. Note how Rove & Luskin have recently been splitting this exact same hair between talking about Plame and "leaking classified information." Rove said that he "didn't know her name and didn't leak her name" (CNN, 31 July 2004) and Luskin now says that "Rove did not mention her name to Cooper" (Washington Post, 10 July 2005). This line of defense has even been refined to "Rove learned about Plame from a reporter" by several Rove loyalists. The explicit inference being that if reporters were giving this information to Rove, it could not be counted as classified information.

Various observers have suggested that Luskin has been neglecting his duties to his client by persisting in contorted and quickly-refuted non-denial denials. However, what if Luskin has been taking his talking points - even his very words - directly from Rove? It certainly sounds as if Bush and McClellan in 2003, and Luskin now, have been working from the same playbook.

If true, this is really quite stunning. For two years, our President has known that his Deputy Chief of Staff was involved in the revelation of a covert CIA operative's identity, and has done nothing about it.

At the same time, it explains why he is refusing to do anything about denying this traitor a government salary - or even a security clearance - now, when everyone else knows it as well.

Man Beats his Wife, Now Only 3 Nights A Week!

If a man came home drunk 4 nights a week and beat his wife, would it be good news if he "slashed" that number from 4 nights a week to 3 nights a week?

Heck no.


So why does Bush think it's good news that the deficit is going to be $333B instead of $427B?

Is The White House Involved in a Cover-Up?

Looks like Rove identified Mrs. Wilson as a CIA operative to Time's Matthews and, by implication, to Novak. McCLellan denied Rove had any involvement in that sorry episode, back in October 2003. Now, McClellan won't even talk about it. Neither will Bush. Both have shut up, because it's been made public that Rove had big BIG involvment in that sorry episode.



So what is a cover-up? Usually, it's when the White House won't talk about what it has done, because what it has done was illegal.

Here, what Rove did was illegal. And the White House won't talk about it.

Sounds like Bush and McClellan are leading a cover-up.

Rove Gave Novak The Name?

Rove has been running around saying "I never said her name." A statement which is ridiculous as one to clear him of identifying a covert CIA operative, since he clearly said "Joseph Wilson's Wife" was CIA, and we here in the US aren't polygamists.

Even more interesting, though, is that, in the very first article which came out about the leak, Novak states clearly he was given the name:

From Talking Points Memo: "The first newspaper report on the Plame outing was written by Timothy Phelps and Knut Royce in Newsday on July 22nd, 2003, about a week after Novak's column first ran.

The story's lede read: 'The identity of an undercover CIA officer whose husband started the Iraq uranium intelligence controversy has been publicly revealed by a conservative Washington columnist citing 'two senior administration officials.''

As you'd expect from that introduction, the whole focus of the article was Novak's exposure of an 'undercover' or covert agent. And the article, as you might also suspect, had a number of quotes from Wilson and others arguing for how damaging it was to have revealed the identity of a covert agent.

They interviewed Novak too. And this was his response: 'I didn't dig it out, it was given to me. They thought it was significant, they gave me the name and I used it.'"

Same TPM reference above: it appears the prosecuter may be investigating conspiracy which includes Novak and his White House Sources.

University Admittance Gender Discrimination

You know how it goes -- it's the old story of one particular group not having the same natural abilities of another, so you see what used to be objective criteria get slanted, and bent. This is exactly what is happening in Canada, where University admission standards are being relaxed to let in more men.

White House Reporters Openly Mocking Scott McClellan

Today during the press breifing, reporters in the White House got so fed up with the administration's stonewalling the Karl Rove issue that they took to openly mocking the spokesperson about his lack of credibility.

Press Briefing by Scott McClellan: "Q Does the President believe that it is outrageous for a Los Angeles advertising man to be conducting a campaign to persuade the town selectmen of Weare, New Hampshire, to approve the building of a hotel on the land where Justice Souter's house is located? Or does he regard this as an historic irony resulting from Souter's vote in the case of Kelo versus the City of New London --

MR. McCLELLAN: I haven't seen anything on it. Jim, go ahead.

Q You didn't see anything on it? You'd like to evade this one, wouldn't you.

MR. McCLELLAN: No, I haven't seen anything on it, Les. I like to see reports before I comment on it.


Q No, it's the other ones he's trying to evade.


Q -- on why you can't answer Ed's question about whether -- generally speaking, whether the administration has a credibility problem. I think a lot of people are tuning in, wondering, can we trust what this White House says, can we trust what Scott McClellan says.

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes.

Q I'm not talking about the case. Can you just address -- do you feel like there's a credibility problem?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think you all in this room know me very well. And you know the type of person that I am. You, and many others in this room, have dealt with me for quite some time. The President is a very straightforward and plainspoken person, and I'm someone who believes in dealing in a very straightforward way with you all, as well, and that's what I've worked to do.

Go ahead, Carl."

NYTimes tastes blood

With one of their journalists in jail protecting a White House Senior Administration official who broke the law to get political revenge, I think the NYTimes is tasting a bit of blood. I suspect that, unlike past situations, they aren't going to give the WHouse a pass on this one. And here, today, a the NYTimes reports that a journalist twice asked Bush if he was going to fire Rove, during a photo op. Bush sat in stony silence.

Krugman endorses The Onion's prophetic wisdom

In Krugman's article today, he says that no one said it better than The Onion on Jan 18, 2001: Un-Spin the Budget - New York Times: "'We must squander our nation's hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent,'" "And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it."

Mr. Cooper, Karl Rove on Your Cellphone?

Not quite. NYTimes reports how Matt Cooper got the specific waiver from his source -- now known to be Karl Rove -- which permit him to completely reveal their conversation. No, Karl Rove didn't call Matt Cooper on his cell phone and say, "Gosh, Matt, this is silly. You go ahead and testify, I release you from your pledge of confidentiality to me."

Seems Matt Cooper's lawyer read the Wall Street Journal that morning, and Rove's lawyer was quoted as saying "If Matt Cooper is going to jail to protect a source, it's not Karl he's protecting." And that was it. Cooper and his lawyer took that to mean that Karl Rove had released him from confidentiality.

Of course, the same release should also apply to Judith Miller, you'd think. Miller didn't see it that way.

Senate Back In Session; Bolton Still Unemployed

Yesterday, July 8th, marked the end of
the US Senate's July 4th recess, the first recess following the Democrats' successful filibuster of John Bolton's nomination to the UN. The recess offered Bush an opportunity to slip Bolton in, using the constitutionally protected "recess appointment" -- where Bush can place someone in office if the opening happens while the Senate is in recess, thus sidestepping their "Advise and Consent Power". While the wording of the constitution there implies that the appointment can only be made if the vacancy occurs while the Senate is not in session, this apparently has always been interpreted by both the Seante and the President to apply to any nomination which is open at all during a Senate recess -- thus, giving the President some leeway in forcing an appointment through. The appointment is effective only until the next elected congress takes their positions (January 2007 for the present group), so Bolton would have to stand down with a year to go in the Bush Presidency -- but, nonetheless, that's a good 1.5 years of uninterrupted Bolton in the UN, instead of 2.5 years. Like he couldn't get done in 1.5 years what he wants to do in 2.5?

But, Bush didn't do it. He's let Bolton's nomination languish, even through a recess. So what's the plan here, fellas? We going to put someone in at the UN, or are we going to let this nomination fiasco hang out? Seems to me keeping the wound festering only hurts the Bushies, and helps the Dems -- a constant reminder of Bush's arrogance of position, and his poor judgement in picking subordinates.

Judith Miller Stupidly Seeks Martyrdom

What the heck? Matthew Cooper says his source contacted him today and released him from his bond to keep the source confidential; so, Cooper's talking.

Judith Miller of the NYTimes is NOT talking, and is now in jail. Which means either her source is a different one from Cooper's (and so didn't release her, too), or she's just sitting in prison seeking journalistic martyrdom.

Whatever. Journalists who are told by a judge that the leak promoted no national benefit should be compelled legally to talk; and other journalists should recognize that this is not a violation of professional ethics. Keeping confidential the identity of a US government employee who uses the journalist to make public damaging information about a private citizen with the exclusive intent of punishing the citizen serves no ethical purpose. Journalists who do this consent to being weapons of political warfare, and no more. That's not good for the Republic.

Bush daughter Barbara is said to "volunteer" in S. Africa

She's been there six weeks. But, funny thing, none of the 20 hospital employees interviewed had seen her. And the Nurse's Supervisor at the children's burn unit where it's said she works, says she might have been there, but couldn't be certain, because none of the volunteers ever sign in.

Is little Barbara following in her father's "Alabama National Guard" footsteps? US Army no longer good enough to go AWOL with, she had to do it to a children's burn unit in South Africa?

Rove Is The Plame Leaker

Daily Kos gives the transcript for the McLaughlin Group; Lawrence O'Donell revealed that the Time Magazine papers, turned over to the Grand Jury, finger Karl Rove.

Bush's Supreme Court Candidate: John Ashcroft

Of course, Bush hasn't announced the candidate yet. This is just my flier.

Any why wouldn't W. appoint him?


He's got bona fide conservative credentials. Is known to be deeply religious. Has a JD from Chicago (BS from Yale, '64), was Governor of Missouri for 8 years, US Senator from Missouri, and has served as Attorney General.

Just my flier.

Does O'Conner's Resignation Require A Change In Bush's Tactics

As a swing vote on the court, O'Conner's resignation represents an opportunity to take additional ground in the important conservative battles.


Had Rehnquist retired (and he may yet), the opportunity was to lose a conservative vote on the court.