Month: August 2005

Calling In The Leadership

Oh, this is rich. DC MediaGirl (via the Daoureport) says that Michele Malkin is having a fit because Hollywood and LiveAid hasn’t stepped into the breach in New Orleans. Apparently, Hollywood should hold fundraisers while disasters are still unfolding. They shouldn’t even have a day or two to plan them — entertainers should immediately rush to the closest TV studio and just start singing and dancing as fast as they can. I presume that Malkin feels this should be done in lieu of actual disaster relief by Big Govmint, which is the root of all evil after all.

DC media Girl also points out Dear Leader was attending birthday parties and strumming the guitar while untold numbers were dying along the gulf coast. But then, it isn’t actually his job to deal with disasters. He was waiting for Tom Hanks and Goldie Hawn to take the lead on that.

This is a really unfair rap on the entertainment community. They are a lot of things, but ungenerous in disasters, they aren’t. They always step up in times like this and I have absolutely no doubt they are planning to do it right now.

When’s the last time the wealthy media punditocrisy held a fundraiser for victims of anything, by the way?

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Game Cancelled

BagNews Notes has the most interesting take on the compelling images of New Orleans: he looks at pictures of the refugees at the Superdome and observes:

Beginning with the weekend evacuation, one unstated subtext running through much of the reporting involved the disparate prospects between rich and poor. In many accounts, for example, the more well-to-do were securing refuge by way of upper-floor hotel rooms, or escape via rental cars and long-haul taxi rides.

On the other hand, those of modest mean mostly headed for the football stadium.

In looking through the painful photos coming out of this ravaged city, I was particularly struck by the scenes shot at the New Orleans Superdome — which seemed to have transformed, almost overnight, into the world’s largest disaster shelter.

Besides people trying to adapt to the building as living quarters, what I found ironic was the fact that this was the only way the lower income evacuees — not to mention the needy or indigent — would ever get close to these field level seats.

The pictures coming out of New Orleans are all horrible. But the income disparities among the citizens are brought into stark relief by this tragedy. Everyone is affected of course, but those who had little to begin with are truly left with less than nothing now. A whole lot of people who were hanging by a thread already just dropped into total despair. That dimension of the tragedy really makes my heart ache.

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Reason #673

Bush gives new reason for Iraq war
Says US must prevent oil fields from falling into hands of terrorists

By Jennifer Loven, Associated Press | August 31, 2005

CORONADO, Calif. — President Bush answered growing antiwar protests yesterday with a fresh reason for US troops to continue fighting in Iraq: protection of the country’s vast oil fields, which he said would otherwise fall under the control of terrorist extremists.

The president, standing against a backdrop of the USS Ronald Reagan, the newest aircraft carrier in the Navy’s fleet, said terrorists would be denied their goal of making Iraq a base from which to recruit followers, train them, and finance attacks.

”We will defeat the terrorists,” Bush said. ”We will build a free Iraq that will fight terrorists instead of giving them aid and sanctuary.”

[…]

At the naval base, Bush declared, ”We will not rest until victory is America’s and our freedom is secure” from Al Qaeda and its forces in Iraq led by Abu Musab alZarqawi.

”If Zarqawi and [Osama] bin Laden gain control of Iraq, they would create a new training ground for future terrorist attacks,” Bush said. ”They’d seize oil fields to fund their ambitions. They could recruit more terrorists by claiming a historic victory over the United States and our coalition.”

That’s a pretty good spin on the “no blood for oil” theme, you have to admit. It brings together the boogeyman and high gas prices in one neat package.

I guess we are now fighting Osama bin Laden for control of Iraq. Considering how badly we are doing there, I don’t think this is the best way to frame it. They seem to be winning.

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The Big Easy’s Got The Blues

Commenter antifa wrote in another thread on Sunday night:

I called Mama Marisol, got her on her cell phone. She had her crystal ball in the front seat, and she was ‘leavin-leavin, cher.’

Heading up Basin Street past St. Louis 1, she saw all the skeletons sitting on top of their tombs, rolling their bones and readin’ em, shakin’ their heads at her.

This won’t end well.

Mama marisol was right, cher. This is terrible.

If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break
And the water gonna come in, have no place to stay

Well all last night I sat on the levee and moan
Thinkin’ ’bout my baby and my happy home

If it keeps on rainin’, levee’s goin’ to break
And all these people have no place to stay

Now look here mama what am I to do
I ain’t got nobody to tell my troubles to

I works on the levee mama both night and day
I ain’t got nobody, keep the water away

Oh cryin’ won’t help you, prayin’ won’t do no good
When the levee breaks, mama, you got to lose

I works on the levee, mama both night and day
I works so hard, to keep the water away

I had a woman, she wouldn’t do for me
I’m goin’ back to my used to be

I’s a mean old levee, cause me to weep and moan
Gonna leave my baby, and my happy home

*by Kansas Joe McCoy and famously covered by Led Zeppelin.

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Comic Designer

I haven’t weighed in on the recent Bell Curve wars (although Atrios reprised some of my former comments this week-end) because it just gets so tiring. But as I read some of the recent discussion of Intelligent Design, it struck me that we are seeing a clash of the psuedo-sciences coming on the right that could be very fun to watch.

You see, the racist Bell Curve people are ardent adherants of evolution; one of their primary wingnut funded institutions is called The Charles Darwin Research Institute. When you go to the site, you will see that it opens with a stirring defense of the theory of evolution and natural selection. As you read down you see its true agenda:

Based on his readings and his personal experiences of exploring Southwest Africa, Galton concluded that the average mental ability of Africans was low, whether they were observed in Africa or in the Americas. In Descent, Darwin acknowledged Galton’s work and also accepted the importance of the brain-size differences reported between Africans and Europeans by Paul Broca and other nineteenth- century scientists.

Modern studies confirm Darwin and Galton. The races do differ in average brain size and intelligence. The racial gradient in average intelligence and brain size increases from Africans to Europeans to East Asians.

This institute is run by J. Philippe Rushton, who is best known for his hypothesis that men with bigger penises and women with big breasts and buttocks have smaller brains and are therefore biologically inferior. He is famous for saying in an interview: “It’s a trade-off: More brain or more penis. You can’t have everything.”

In 2003, he became head of the nazi-founded Pioneer Fund which also supports such racist and sexist luminaries as Richard Lynn of the recent “women are dumber than men” study. Both of these alleged scientists’ work are positively referenced in The Bell Curve.

Unsurprisingly, Bell Curve authors Murray and Hernstein (and contributor Lynn) all pretty much agree with Rushton that large black dicks are a very serious threat to western civilization. Because of their large dicks and big tits, you see, blacks are more promiscuous and therefore have a different “reproductive strategy” that undermines our culture by overpopulating it with more big dicks and more big tits rather than the small dicks of white men like Murray, Hernstein, Rushton and Lynn.

They fail to explain why such a reproductive strategy would actually be inferior in their Disney version of Darwin’s big adventure, but they do set forth a very novel explanation as to why having a very small dick is a good thing. (I wonder if any woman (or man) has ever bought that line.)

Anyway, none of these dummies for Darwin, many of whom have followers in the white supremecist creationist crowd (as well as the long standing approbation of such cultural icons of dick as Andrew Sullivan) can sign on to the new fundamentalist chic of the moment — ID. Without evolution, a tiny tiparillo is just a tiny tiparillo.

So what happens when the Bell Curve meets up with the Discovery Institute? Will the racist Darwinians have the nerve to ask why the “Intelligent Designer” came up with the really, really fucked up idea that the big brained white guys like them got the tiny penises and the small brained, big dicked blacks got all the big-titted, hot assed women? Will the Discovery Institute fellows feel compelled to drop their pants to prove that the IDer in chief knew what he was doing?

I sense a monumental crack-up among the racist wingnuts. It’s either god or monkeys — with their inferior manhoods hanging (ever so slightly) in the balance.

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Awesome Chutzpah

It looks as though the Republicans are trying out a new play. If it works in this out of town try-out, will it be long until we see it on the national stage? From Josh Marshall:

Gov. Ernie Fletcher(R) of Kentucky and a slew of people from his adminsitration have been embroiled for some time now in a big government personnel scandal. And he just called a press conference and basically pardoned everybody.

I think this is what Republicans call decisive leadership.

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Angry Mad Props

Everybody’s talking about the Iraqi woman, Safia Taleb al-Suhail (who Bush used as a prop last year at the SOTU) saying that the new constitution is a setback for women’s rights:

“When we came back from exile, we thought we were going to improve rights and the position of women,” she said. “But look what has happened — we have lost all the gains we made over the last 30 years. It’s a big disappointment.”

But she’s not the only one. Kevin at Catch spotted another prominent Iraqi woman who has been used as a convenient prop by the Bush adminsitration. She is now disillusioned with what the US as well. Here’s Bush on March 3rd, 2004:

PRESIDENT BUSH: I want to thank my friend, Dr. Raja Khuzai, who’s with us today. This is the third time we have met. The first time we met, she walked into the Oval Office — let’s see, was it the first time? It was the first time. The door opened up. She said, “My liberator,” and burst out in tears — (laughter) — and so did I. (Applause.)

Dr. Khuzai also was there to have Thanksgiving dinner with our troops. And it turned out to be me, as well. Of course, I didn’t tell her I was coming. (Laughter.) But I appreciate that, and now she’s here again. I want to thank you, Doctor, for your hard work on the writing of the basic law for your people. You have stood fast, you have stood strong. Like me, you’ve got liberty etched in your heart, and you’re not going to yield. And you are doing a great job and we’re proud to have you back. Thanks for coming. (Applause.)

Here’s what Dr. Kuzai told the NY Times on August 24:

“This is the future of the new Iraqi government – it will be in the hands of the clerics,” said Dr. Raja Kuzai, a secular Shiite member of the Assembly. “I wanted Iraqi women to be free, to be able to talk freely and to able to move around.”

“I am not going to stay here,” said Dr. Kuzai, an obstetrician and women’s leader who met President Bush in the White House in November 2003.

We are so very noble.

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Judy In Da Skies

Arianna has a great pithy take on the NY Times ever more pathetic editorial attempts to persuade their readers that something terrible has happened to Judith Miller who is now in her 55th *gasp* day of confinement. (Even as her husband is telling all their friends that Judy is having the time of her life in jail.)

The crux of the editorial is a ludicrous attempt to show that a worldwide outpouring of support for Miller has created a veritable Judy Tsunami heading toward Pat Fitzgerald and the Alexandria Detention Center, ready to sweep her to freedom.

The proof? Well, according to the Times “a Paris-based journalists’ organization” sent around “an impressive petition” last week in support of Miller that was signed by “prominent European writers, journalists and thinkers including Gunter Grass, Barnard-Henri Levy, the French philosopher, and Pedro Almodóvar, the Spanish filmmaker”.

Forgive me if I have my doubts about how well-versed in the intricacies of the Plame case — and Judy Miller’s role in it — Messrs. Grass, Levy, and Almodóvar are. Which do you think is more likely, that someone put a petition in front them and said “The Bush administration is throwing reporters in jail, please sign!” or that, after contemplating the latest revelations about Scooter Libby’s early-July breakfast schedule, John Bolton’s Plamegate memory lapses, and the eight pages of redacted material in Judge Tatel’s ruling, the trio was convinced that Miller doing time for refusing to come clean and move the investigation forward is, in the words of the petition, “a miscarriage of justice”?

But the John Hancocks of Grass, Levy, and Almodovar are not the only evidence of the Judy Tsunami cited… oh, no — far from it! To buttress its argument, the Times once again drags out the backing of Bob Dole (gee, Bob Dole, maybe I should rethink this!) and the “poignant case” of “reporters in Pakistan — Pakistan, mind you” who “took time out from their own battles to send messages of support”. That really is poignant. And utterly pointless. It sheds absolutely no light on the key issue here: whether Judy Miller acted as a professional journalist or as an advocate who perverted the nature of journalism.

It’s interesting to chart the shift in the Times’ rhetoric from its first “defending Judy” editorial to this latest, clammy iteration. At least that maiden voyage, back on July 7th, included the “frank” admission that “this is far from an ideal case” — indeed, that its details are “complicated” and “muddy”. But even as those details — and Miller’s role in Plamegate — have grown more complicated and more muddy in the ensuing weeks, the Times’ position has become more simplistic: Judy is a martyr. Bob Dole and Gunter Grass and some guys in Pakistan (mind you) agree. Case closed.

The fact that they have to bring up Bob Dole again at all is just embarrassing. You could still see the words ” first amendment yadda, yadda, yadda” erasures on the thing. His op-ed was a babrely disguised hit piece on Pat Fitzgerald, based on nothing.

But Arianna leaves out my favorite part of the editorial today:

As Jack Nelson, a veteran journalist for The Los Angeles Times, wrote recently: “Without leaks, without anonymity for some sources, a free press loses its ability to act as a check and a balance against the power of government.” He cited Watergate, Iran-contra and President Bill Clinton’s lies about Monica Lewinsky. If Judith Miller loses this fight, we all lose. This is not about Judith Miller or The Times or the outing of one C.I.A. agent. The jailing of this reporter is about the ability of a free press in America to do its job.

Can anyone tell me what is wrong with that paragraph and why it is self-refuting?

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Got Morals?

Peter Daou has written a very interesting piece today about how the left and right philosophically differ on Iraq. He points out the overlooked fact that the left views the war from a moral standpoint — indeed, the left views our relationship with the world from a moral standpoint — while the right sees both those things from a material standpoint. It seems obvious now that he’s brought it up, but I’ve never actually thought about it quite that way before:

The right (broadly speaking) can’t fathom why the left is driven into fits of rage over every Abu Ghraib, every Gitmo, every secret rendition, every breach of civil liberties, every shifting rationale for war, every soldier and civilian killed in that war, every Bush platitude in support of it, every attempt to squelch dissent. They see the left’s protestations as appeasement of a ruthless enemy. For the left (broadly speaking), America’s moral strength is of paramount importance; without it, all the brute force in the world won’t keep us safe, defeat our enemies, and preserve our role as the world’s moral leader…..

War hawks squeal about America-haters and traitors, heaping scorn on the so-called “blame America first” crowd, but they fail to comprehend that the left reserves the deepest disdain for those who squander our moral authority. The scars of a terrorist attack heal and we are sadder but stronger for having lived through it. When our moral leadership is compromised by people draped in the American flag, America is weakened. The loss of our moral compass leaves us rudderless, open to attacks on our character and our basic decency. And nothing makes our enemies prouder. They can’t kill us all, but if they permanently stain our dignity, they’ve done irreparable harm to America.

I think this is an good way for liberals to think about our government and how the world works. And it can even be done in simple, common sense terms that may just resonate with those who wonder what it is we stand for. And aside from the fact that an amoral superpower is a country not worth living in and one that shames all of us who live within it, moral authority leads to material good as well. A great country behaving in an immoral way makes that country weaker, not stronger. Allies mistrust it and are reluctant to join forces. Enemies are emboldened, not cowed, because they see the country behaving in an almost desperate fashion and perceive that it is much weaker than it is. And when leaders of the most powerful country in the world leave the impression that they care nothing for the world’s opinion, the world begins to see that country as a potential enemy instead of a friend.

People are naturally suspicious of power and because of that it behooves us to ensure that others can trust us and rely upon us behave morally and ethically. Breaking treaties, throwing off old friends and partners, ignoring our own constitution and the rule of of law creates an impression that the United States is unreliable, immoral and aggressive. It makes us less safe. Only shallow people think that our country can fight off the whole world. Only delusional people would want us to try. Our moral authority is not an impediment that we can or should toss off when it is inconvenient. It is an absolutely nevessary component of our national security.

We are in the middle of a great culture war in this country in which liberals are continually accused of being immoral and indecent by people who profess to hold strong religious beliefs. These morals, however, are almost exclusively confined to personal sexual matters and seem only to apply to the conduct of individuals in their private lives. They seem to have nothing to say about our government conducting itself without regard to morality whenever it is convenient. (Indeed, we have just witnessed one of the most prominent religious moralists in the country calling for our government to assassinate the leader of an oil rich country because it would save money.)

After the last election I read many pieces in which religious people advised that Democrats had to begin speaking in religious terms and appeal to voters on a moral basis. It was immediately assumed that this should be done in exactly the same way that the Republicans do, using their definition of morality. But I would suggest that we should make our own case for moral values — as a government and a nation. It is there that we will find common ground among truly religious people and non-religious people of all stripes. And it is there that politics and morality are appropriately and necessarily linked in a free and democratic society.

If I had been polled after the last election I might very well have said that moral values were a primary reason for my vote. I found the conduct of this war deeply immoral. And I also believe that this immorality makes us less safe. If Democratic politicians want to run on restoring moral values in government they can count me in. I’m a proud member of that moral values crowd and I’ll happily hold hands with any religious person who wants to join me.

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Tim Russert For Best Actor

Following up on Michael Wolff’s Vanity Fair piece, Media Matters points out that Time magazine withheld information from the public and wrote articles that can only be described as cover ups in the Plame affair.

After speaking to Rove, Cooper sent an email to Michael Duffy, Time’s Washington bureau chief, relating what Rove had told him about Wilson’s wife and saying that Rove had spoken on “double super secret background.” The next day, Cooper spoke to Libby, who confirmed Plame’s identity. Two days later, Robert D. Novak’s infamous column revealing Plame’s identity appeared.

[…]

Duffy, Cooper, and Time not only failed to inform their readers in July 2003 that they were part of the story, but they continued to report on the leak without offering that information for more than a year. In addition to two stories in October 2003, Time wrote about the leak again on January 12, 2004.

I’ve been shocked by this since the beginning. But it’s not just Time that’s done this. An equally egregious example is none other than the Monsignor — Tim Russert. He too was subpoenaed and has since acknowledged that he spoke with Lewis Libby during the period in question. NBC released this very lawyerlike statement after he spoke with the special prosecutor that raises as many questions as it answers:

Mr. Russert told the Special Prosecutor that, at the time of that conversation, he did not know Ms. Plame’s name or that she was a CIA operative and that he did not provide that information to Mr. Libby. Mr. Russert said that he first learned Ms. Plame’s name and her role at the CIA when he read a column written by Robert Novak later that month.

If Bill Clinton had issued that statement, Father Tim would have been all over it for weeks. When parsed it can only lead to one conclusion. NBC’s lawyers carefully left the door open for it to be revealed that Russert knew that Joe Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA and that he told Libby that. All this statement says is that he didn’t know her name or that she was undercover.

But strangely Tim Russert has never been asked by anyone to explain that statement even as he discussed this case many times on Meet The Press. During the same period that Duffy was writing articles in which he failed to reveal Time’s role in the story or the fact that he knew that the white house was lying outright, Russert was hosting hour long shows on the topic and never revealing that he was one of the journalists called — even as he grilled Novak and leaned on other reporters to reveal their sources!

These are some of Russert’s questions to Wilson, Novak and “the roundtable” from the October 5th, 2003 transcript of Meet The Press right after it was revealed that the Justice department was going to investigate the leak:

Russert: Was there a suggestion that this was cronyism, that it was your wife who had arranged the mission?

Gosh, I don’t know Tim. You talked to Lewis Libby. Was there? Or were you the one who told Scooter that Joe Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA?

Russert: What did journalists tell you that the White House officials were saying to them?

Wilson: Four days after Bob Novak’s article came out, which outed my wife, I was—I started receiving calls from journalists and news agencies saying, first, that “The White House is saying things about you and your wife that are so off the wall we can’t even put them up,” followed by, over the weekend—so that would have been five or six days after the Novak article —a respected journalist called me up and said, “White House sources are telling us that this story is not about the 16 words”—even though the administration had acknowledged they should not have been in the State of the Union address—”this story is about Wilson and his wife.” And finally, on Monday, a week after the Novak article, I received a call from a journalist who told me, “I just got off the phone with Karl Rove. He says that your wife is fair game.”

Russert: This was all after the Novak column appeared?

You tell us Tim. We know you spoke to Scooter before the Novak column came out, but did anybody call you afterwards? Do you know of any other reporters who were called?

Russert: Why would this official happen to have known that Ambassador Wilson’s wife was a CIA agent?

Novak: Well, I think senior officials know everything, don’t they?

Russert: Do you find that curious?

Novak: No. I don’t think so.

One of Novak’s sources was Lewis Libby whom you also spoke with in the same period. Did you tell Libby that Wilson’s wife was an employee but not that she was an agent? Your carefully worded statement certainly raises suspicions that you did. Is it possible that you told Libby that Wilson’s wife was CIA and he pretended that he didn’t know? Or are you saying that he really didn’t know she was an agent?

Russert: When you say that it was not a partisan gunslinger, does that rule out Karl Rove?

Did it rule out Libby, the official you spoke with at the same time as Novak?

Russert: Let me turn to The Washington Post. And, well, one last thing before I—do you regret printing her name… Did you have any sense when you were being told this and you were typing it in your computer, “My God, the person that told me this may be committing a crime”?

Did you have any sense when you grilled Novak that you were leaving out a whole bunch of information about your own role in this story? Did you think “my God, I and everyone else in this room are play-acting and in doing so are betraying our profession and holding the public in total contempt?”

Russert: Let me turn to The Washington Post. Dana Priest, last Sunday you wrote a story on the front page which said this: “A senior administration official said that before Novak’s column ran, two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson’s wife. …‘Clearly, it was meant purely and simply for revenge,’ the senior official said of the alleged leak.” What do you make of that? What was going on?

Tim, you are a Washington journalist who we know spoke with Scooter Libby before Novak’s column ran. What did you think was going on?

Russert: In your story, you say a senior administration official said that two White House officials which sent off an awful lot of people in this town scurrying, saying, a senior administration official, as opposed to White House official, this must be the CIA at war with the White House.

You are one of the scurriers. How many other reporters know a lot more than they are telling? Can you give us names? Are they protected under the reporter’s privilege too?

Russert: Bob Novak, many people have come up to me on the street and said, “Why doesn’t Bob Novak simply identify who his sources are? He knows who told him. Just say—pick up the phone, call the Justice Department, go on television and say, ‘This is who committed this crime’?”

Why don’t you just come clean and tell your audience that you and the people sitting around your roundtable are all putting on performances worthy of Meryl Streep and calling it news?

Russert: David Broder, explain to our viewers what you have observed, and why journalists have this code where they simply will not divulge their sources.

Broder: The principle is pretty simple. It is the government’s responsibility to keep the government’s secrets secret. It is not the press’ responsibility. Our inclination, once we have information, is to try to verify it, to amplify as much as we can, the background and the context. But our basic obligation, then, is to share information with the public.

Except, of course, in situations like this where the story involves the press corps itself — two of the principle players are right here! — and where its access to important Republican officials is at stake. Then you feel free to stage a revival of Waiting For Godot on the set of Meet the Press and pretend that you are asking questions that others pretend to answer.

Russert: Bill Kristol, who used to work for Vice President Quayle, now runs The Weekly Standard magazine, has written a long essay where he said the president has taken too passive a stance in this situation, that he should call in his top senior aides and demand to know exactly what happened, and then take action, fire them…David, observing the administration, what should the president be doing now, and how much disarray are we watching?

Broder: Well, I was at the Democratic National Committee meeting yesterday where Al Sharpton said the president is moonwalking this question, and I think he’s got it about right. It is hard to believe that if the president, when he was dealing with a finite universe of possible leakers, did not really put the heat on, that he couldn’t get an answer to his question…

Russert: What do you think, Bob Novak?

Novak: I don’t know. I’m in an impossible position on this and I…

Russert: That’s why you’re here.

What do you think Tim? You’re in the same impossible position Novak is. You know who the leakers are — one of them, at least, spoke to you around the same time he spoke to Novak? Why are you so cocky? Don’t you find it the least bit uncomfortable suggesting that the president should fire the people who you are protecting — while failing to inform your audience of what you know?

Give yourself a treat and read the whole transcript to get the full flavor of the utter phoniness of that show. And I think you’ll particularly enjoy the end when Bob Novak get’s all self-righteous about Democrats smearing Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

That show was in October of 2003. By that time everyone knew the score. Russert pretended to put on his inquisitor’s robes and pretended to interview Novak. Novak pretended that he didn’t know that Russert knew much more than he was saying and played the role of the injured journalist throwing himself on the first amendment pyre. Priest knew the real story of the internecine war between the CIA and the administration over the WMD and Broder knew that the president wasn’t going to try to “find out” who the leakers were because he knew that the leakers were close associates of the president — who very likely already knew.

We, the idiot Americans, watched their little pageant having no idea that the whole thing was a farce put on purely for the benefit of the poor deluded public.

Tim Russert still has never said what he knows although there is no obvious reason why he shouldn’t. If reporters’ highest principle is to protect their sources rather than aid a grand jury investigating a crime, then they must also agree that they cannot then use the excuse that their lawyers or the prosecutor has requested they not speak of what they know. You can’t have it both ways.

At the very least reporters should not be allowed to go on television or write stories in which they are participants and not reveal that. Nor should they be allowed to stage little pageants in which everyone involved is pretending that they don’t know what they know. That’s not journalism. (Or is it?)

Russert recently came back to this story on Meet the Press and in a most bizarre fashion “admitted” that he was involved in the story. Here’s how he did it:

Let me turn to the CIA leaked case investigation. There have been numerous newspaper reports that the investigation is now focusing on perhaps perjury as opposed to the leak because the leak is difficult to prove under the law. What we know so far is that in terms of journalists, Walter Pincus and Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post, Russert of NBC, Matt Cooper of Time magazine have all testified, either in deposition or before the grand jury. We assume Robert Novak has testified because Judy Miller of The Times who didn’t testify is in jail. And there’s been numerous newspaper reports that there’s a difference between the testimony of some of the reporters and Scooter Libby of Vice President Cheney’s office and Karl Rove of President Bush’s office. Bill Safire, what do we make of all this?

Can you believe it? “There have been numerous newspaper reports that there’s a difference in the testimony of some of the reporters and Scooter Libby.” And who do you suppose is one of those reporters? Tim Russert!

None of the crack reporters on the roundtable even come close to asking about it or commenting on it. They just pretended that it was perfectly normal for Russert to talk about himself in the third person and reference stories in which he’s the primary player and pretend otherwise.

But here is the real kicker:

MR. RUSSERT: There has to be an original source, somebody.

MR. GREGORY: Yes.

MS. TOTENBERG: Right.

MR. RUSSERT: Even if it came from a reporter…

MR. GREGORY: Right.

MR. RUSSERT: …the reporter got it from someplace.

MS. TOTENBERG: Right. And…

MR. RUSSERT: But I was asked what I said. I did not know

Russert seems to have forgotten himself for a minute there. Once he realized what he’d gotten himself into, he quickly answered with a nonsensical “I was asked what I said. I did not know.”

The question of the “who was the original source for the reporter” is a question that someobody should have asked him a long time ago. (It doesn’t just apply to Judith Miller.) NBC’s heavily lawyered press release is very suspicious and leads one to conclude that Russert may have told Libby that Wilson’s wife worked for the CIA. He should have been pinned down on that. And if it’s true, the natural follow-up is “who told Russert?”

The rest of the panel knew better than to pursue that line of questioning with the King of the Kewl Kids. They just adjusted their Kabuki masks and went back to the dance.

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