Weekend Open Thread
* The hotly-anticipated release of the CIA’s 2004 torture report that will raise questions about torture’s effectiveness and legality — which was set for today but postponed — has been pushed back only one week, a source familiar with the process tells me. That means the target day is now next Friday.
* A funny catch by Think Progress: Michael Steele says health care reform is “not that complicated,” adds that all you have to do is give health care to the uninsured! Presto, problem solved! And much more. Audio here.
* A smart and overlooked point from David Kurtz about the John Ensign mess.
* Duncan Black notes that the bipartisan group of Senators who have banded together to seek health care consensus have named themselves, intriguingly, after the Iraq invasion — the “coalition of the willing.” As Black says, an instant classic in the annals of branding…
* John Aravosis is not at all sold on the Obama administration’s plans for a peacemaking powwow with gay rights groups.
* Top White House advisers are now actively working to fix the DOMA mess.
* Administration lawyers are also working to make nice.
* The ACLU, which has been pushing for the declassification of the CIA torture report, unleashes a blistering statement in response to the news of the delay:
We can only hope that this delay is a sign that the forces of transparency within the Obama administration are winning over the forces of secrecy and that the report will ultimately be released with minimal redactions. The CIA should not be permitted to use national security as a pretext for suppressing evidence of its own unlawful conduct.
* An amazing torture catch by Jason Linkins.
* Why won’t critics of Obama’s approach to Iran even try to rebut his actual argument in favor of not being seen as “meddling”?
* Andrew Sullivan urges Obama to keep treading cautiously.
* And I won’t be posting this weekend, so please consider this an open thread. Have a great weekend. Back first thing Monday morning.
The homepage of this blog is here. RSS feed here. Twitter feed here. Email me here.
Check this out – you won’t believe it:
“Justice Department lawyers told the judge that future presidents and vice presidents may not cooperate with criminal investigations if they know what they say could become available to their political opponents and late-night comics who would ridicule them.
“If we become a fact-finder for political enemies, they aren’t going to cooperate,” Justice Department attorney Jeffrey Smith said during a 90-minute hearing. “I don’t want a future vice president to say, ‘I’m not going to cooperate with you because I don’t want to be fodder for ‘The Daily Show.’”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/19/justice-department-worrie_n_218015.html
The DOJ doesn’t want to release the Cheney torture documents cause Jon Stewart might make fun of Cheney and/or the DOJ and/or whomever.
Just wow!
great, Tena, thanks. Added just now.
Hmmm, still no word on Froomkin. Greg, I’m disappointed you have failed to address this.
Greg probably has a gag order on Froomkin because he works for them. WaPo. I toyed with the idea of boycotting all WaPo products yesterday, but Greg is too good and he isn’t a co-opted MSM type. I’ll just have to pretend Greg doesn’t work for the neocon enabling evil empire. And I’ll stay away from Politico, too. John Harris is one of the bad guys.
Because they’re getting tired of trying to head-butt their way through so many brick walls?
The Crist/Rubio thing…(comments worth attending to) http://blogs.tampabay.com/buzz/2009/06/rubio-crushes-crist-in-pasco-straw-poll.html
Only for you, Bernie, would I follow a Tampa Bay link about Charlie Crist, but I did owe it to you since read about Pawlenty. And anyway, these Republican wunderkind are so fascinating.
you read, you read . . .
“Hmmm, still no word on Froomkin. Greg, I’m disappointed you have failed to address this.”
Yep – the silence is deafening.
Nicole – Glenn Greenwald has a good piece about Froomkin and what happened:
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/index.html
it’s still really shocking to me that they fired Dan. I can’t believe it.
Tena, thanks for great Greenwald link. I’ve read everything I can on the firing and found Ezra Klein’s (another WaPo resident) particularly un-insightful, but at least he said SOMETHING:
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http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2009/06/dan_froomkin.html
Tena: Paul Krugman’s astute analysis:
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http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/the-froomkin-firing/
Refusing to comment on things you’ve agreed not to is generally held admirable. Kind of expected, actually. You don’t see KO getting anywhere near Morning Joe DoucheBorough (h/t Jon Stewart).
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So you can’t get WaPo stuff here. That’s usually only a small fraction of things worth covering. You can’t do everything. What you do find here is merely Very Good Stuff. I know, life is hard.
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Ya gotta leave something for the other blogs to cover.
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How about, if they know what they say could be used against them. (They do have to be told their Miranda rights.)
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Or even simpler, if they know what they say could indict them.
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Still shorter, if they know they have committed crimes.
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XLNt link, Bernie. Thanks! From the link…
So Rubio beats Crist in the GOOPer primary, then gets creamed in the general.
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(Hmmm… having trouble remembering who’s in it for the Dems…)
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Very cool Krugman link, Nicole. Thanks. Krugman’s article links to a Michael Calderone post on Politico:
Yeah, Kris, I know the cost of that half-GiB clogging up your disk drives is a real drag on your bottom line.
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Hey, I’ve got a deal for ya. . . . I’ve got an extra 4-GiB USB stick you can have. Lemme know where to send it!
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Question: If there were a Lying Liars Alliance, would its acronym LLA be pronounced en español, Ya! ???
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Oops… I forgot to include any referent to the quote source in one of my comments above.
Tena’s comment above linked to a HuffPo post with this quote:
DoJ attorney Jeffrey Smith tells the court: … future presidents … may not cooperate with criminal investigations if they know what they say could become available …
So, future presidents might not commit crimes if they knew they could get in trouble for them? I shudder at the thought.
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Aaarghh! It hurts my eyes to look at the blob that last post came out as. Lemme try again…
Oops… I forgot to include any referent to the quote source in one of my comments above.
DoJ attorney Jeffrey Smith tells the court: … future presidents … may not cooperate with criminal investigations if they know what they say could become available …
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So, future presidents might not commit crimes if they knew they could get in trouble for them? I shudder at the thought.
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Not sure if any of you folks follow the Brit press. Today’s Guardian has some excellent reporting on the run up to the Iraq war (deceits, misrepresentations, lies) and in the context of the Brit inquiry on these issues (guess who wants them kept private)…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/21/iraq-inquiry-tony-blair-bush
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/21/iraq-war-inquiry-politics
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2009/jun/20/iraq-war-inquiry-brown-blair
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2009/jun/21/iraq-inquiry-secrecy-uturn
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jun/21/iraq-inquiry-philippe-sands
Additionally, for delicious schadenfreude fun (if you despise Berlusconi a fraction as much as I do) there’s this latest in his on-going **** highjinks scandal… http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/jun/21/berlusconi-italy-barbara-montereale
Berlusconi, of course, managed to gain and regain political power through his wealth and broad media holdings in Italy. I was just looking through the wikipedia entry on him to refresh my memory re these holdings when I bumped into this compelling bit of data…
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“On the television interviews program Porta a Porta, during the last days of the [2001] electoral campaign, Berlusconi created a powerful impression on the public by undertaking to sign a so-called Contratto con gli Italiani (English: Contract with the Italians), an idea copied outright by his advisor Luigi Crespi from the Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America introduced six weeks before the 1994 US Congressional election.[16] The earliest precedent for such a contract was one made by Adolf Hilter during his second electoral oral campaign in 1932.”
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I’d known that Berlusconi had borrowed from Newt. I hadn’t known who Newt had as his model.
And…re the motives for war on Iraq and Alan Greenspan’s too obvious confession, “the Iraq War is largely about oil.” there’s this cheery bit… http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/oil-rush-scramble-for-iraqs-wealth-1711570.html
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Let me add, as a sort of thought-experiment… if the State of Israel had been formed in some geographic location which had no proximate oil reserves, how tight would the US/Israeli relationship be?
“Let me add, as a sort of thought-experiment… if the State of Israel had been formed in some geographic location which had no proximate oil reserves, how tight would the US/Israeli relationship be?”
It’s a good question. We’ve claimed from the start that we had a moral obligation to the state of Israel, stemming from WWII and the Holocaust and I think regardless of location, we would have supported the state. Whether we would have remained in that tight of a relationship is open to discussion I suppose.
But I think we would always have given lip-service to the moral obligation, because we still do.
Ok I have been without internet for a week and I am now on friggin overload. How could health care reform take a hit because of a bogus CBO report, Dan Froomkin get fired, Iran go to hell in a handbasket, the IG report get pushed back, and neocons start cheering for the Iranian people all in the one week that I happened to be SOL? Sigh
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Well I am back but its going to take me a long time to catch up with what in the hell has been going on. I missed you guys and I will be back to throwing out random thoughts probably tomorrow. Have a good rest of your weekend.
Warm welcome back SG. I wondered what happened. Thought you had taken a holiday or was so frustrated that you took some time off. Look forward to your posts: always pungent and to the point. Cheers.
Re Froomkin… I think this is very good… http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/06/19/washpost/index1.html
SGW — was wondering where you were. Welcome back.
Thanks Kathleen.
And thanks also vic.
Sg – Thank goodness you didn’t sign up with another outfit for money or something. You’re very much needed on the team here.
ditto all — SG, great to have you back. You were seriously missed.
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