will be Eric Ruff. In 2004, Ruff accidentally left handwritten talking points for Secretary Rumsfeld and a map to Rumsfeld’s house at a Starbucks in Washington, DC. (HT: Muckraked)
“Public outrage, sporadic before, is growing
over the continuing bloodshed in Darfur,” the New York Times reports. George Clooney, Russell Simmons, U.S. Olympic gold medal winner Joey Cheek, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL), Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), and dozens of others will be joining Darfur rallies around the country on Sunday. As Clooney said today, “What we cannot do is turn our heads and look away and hope that this will somehow disappear. It’s the first genocide of the 21st century.“
Specter threatens to cut funding for NSA spying.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter said he wants answers from the White House about the legal justification for the warrantless spying program, and he is threatening to cut off funding for the National Security Agency until he gets them. “Institutionally, the presidency is walking all over Congress at the moment,” said Specter.
Karl Rove “now more worried,
not less, that he is going to get indicted,” MSNBC reports. UPDATE: The grand jury meets again on Friday.
VIDEO: O’Reilly Attacks Newspaper Editor Who Died Four Years Ago
On April 15th, the Syracuse Post-Standard published a satirical editorial which made a passing reference to the sexual harassment suit Bill O’Reilly settled in 2004. O’Reilly was not amused.
Soon after the editorial appeared, he added the Post-Standard to his list of “Media Operations That Traffic in Defamation.” O’Reilly escalated the fight (which he alone is waging) one step further on Monday’s edition of The Factor. During his Talking Points Memo, he put the pictures of Stephen Rogers and Mark Libbon up on the screen, called them “villians,” and guided viewers to their office contact information “should you want to speak with them.” Watch the clip HERE:
But SweetJesusIHateBillOReilly noticed an important detail: Stephen Rogers is deceased. (He passed away in November 2002 at the age of 90. That’s his picture above.) O’Reilly meant to blast his son and current publisher of the Syracuse Post-Standard, Stephen A. Rogers.
Have you no shame, Mr. O’Reilly?
House Conservatives Abandon Ethics Reform, End Debate on Bill With No Vote
Earlier this week, the Washington Post described the conservative-backed lobbying reform bill that was moving through the House:
If the Senate-passed measure was a disappointment, the House version is simply a joke — or, more accurately, a ruse aimed at convincing what the leaders must believe is a doltish public that the House has done something to clean up Washington.
Today, unexpectedly, House leaders “abruptly called off” debate over the bill. Their reasoning: it was too strong. (They claim it’s okay because the public doesn’t actually mind corruption.) A look at just how strong is too strong for conservatives on ethics reform:
- Weak Earmark Reform: The bill would “require appropriations bills to identify the lawmakers responsible for each spending earmark.” Appropriations chairman Rep. Jerry Lewis (R-CA) called out conservatives on their half-hearted reform package, saying it should be broadened to include earmarks in tax and authorization bills as well. This was too strong for the House leadership — a large reason debate was cut off today.
- No Restrictions on Lavish Gifts: The bill would “leave the current gift limits unchanged.” Additionally, the House Administration committee rejected an amendment that would have made it illegal for lawmakers and their staffs to knowingly accept gifts from lobbyists or agents of foreign governments.
Right-Wing Bloggers Give ThinkProgress Advice About Tony Snow
According to right-wing bloggers, publishing our compilation of Tony Snow’s harsh criticism of President Bush was a huge mistake. A superior strategy would have been to “be silent” or “praise Snow for being a good guy.” Here’s the National Review’s Jonah Goldberg:
I don’t think many people have realized how the left blew it in its response to his appointment. The Center for American Progress and others immediately dug up every negative thing Snow ever said about Bush. This was precisely the stuff they should have downplayed. Instead, by doing this, they established Tony’s credibility and integrity… If [they] had been smart, they would have just let the whole thing go as ho-hum and praised Snow for being a good guy.
Powerline’s Paul Mirengoff seconds that emotion:
On the one hand, the Bush-haters at John Podesta’s think tank couldn’t resist digging up every negative comment Snow has ever made about the Bush administration. Not only did this help establish Snow’s credibility and integrity, as Goldberg notes, but it also signaled to the conservative base that this is a good and meaningful selection…. Once in a while, it doesn’t hurt to be silent or non-committal.
It’s facinating that, according to Goldberg and Mirengoff, the way to establish “credibility and integrity” is to call President Bush “an embarassment” and “impotent.”
Senate Cover-up Committee update:
Last month, Pat Roberts (R-KS) promised to complete a draft “statements” section of the Phase II investigation into manipulated pre-war intelligence by April 5. “You’ll no doubt be surprised to hear this, but guess what: It didn’t happen. Wendy Morigi, a spokesperson for Senator Jay Rockefeller, the committee’s ranking Democrat, acknowledged…that committee members hadn’t yet received the draft.”
Bush Picks SVP of Multibillion-Dollar Firm to Head Small Business Administration
The stated goal of the Small Business Administration is to “strengthen the nation’s economy by aiding, counseling, assisting and protecting the interests of small businesses.”
President Bush this week nominated Steven Preston as the new SBA head, continuing his legacy of appointing individuals to oversee agencies they will try to destroy. Preston “does not have experience running a small business,” and currently serves as a senior vice president of a “multibillion-dollar corporation” called ServiceMaster which is known for bullying small businesses:
[Preston's] resume shows he has no experience as an entrepreneur and comes from a company with a reputation as a bully among some small-business owners.
“The small-business community’s been fighting ServiceMaster for years,” says Harry Alford, president and chief executive of the National Black Chamber of Commerce. Alford says ServiceMaster was active — and successful — in getting the government to cap the small-business set-asides in the lawn-care industry.
Thankfully for him, Preston has the one job qualification that matters: he is a self-described “committed” partisan and “Bush loyalist.”
The Gaping Hole In Rove’s Defense
Yesterday, Karl Rove testified for almost four hours before a federal grand jury about his previous statements pertaining to the leak of an undercover CIA agent’s identity. Rove offered this stunning defense:
Rove’s testimony focused almost exclusively on his conversation about Plame with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper in 2003 and whether the top aide later tried to conceal it, the source [close to Rove] said. Rove testified, in essence, that “it would have been a suicide mission” to “deliberately lie” about his conversation with Cooper because he knew beforehand that it eventually would be revealed, the source said.
Rove wants the grand jury to believe that he wouldn’t have lied in 2003 about his role in the Plame affair because he knew journalists would ultimately tell the truth. But in fact, President Bush and the White House believed in 2003 that journalists would remain silent about the case and would refuse to name their sources:
“I have no idea whether we’ll find out who the leaker is — partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers.” [Bush, 10/7/03]
Rove was first interviewed by the FBI around the same time that Bush made this statement. All throughout late-2003 (when Ashcroft was still heading the investigation), the White House had reason to believe that the Plame investigation was not going to seek the testimony of reporters. Recall, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was not even appointed until the beginning of 2004. The Philadelphia Inquirer reported it wasn’t until 2004 that journalists were contacted to testify.
The evidence suggests that when Rove testified in October 2003, he did not believe Matt Cooper would be ultimately be forced to testify against him in July 2005.
