Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The Great And Powerful Left

by digby

I just saw a truly depressing interview with Dennis Miller. He says that he isn’t going to be like the left and try to make Obama fail the we did to Bush and claims that he hopes to be a fervent Obama supporter four years from now.

The reason that’s depressing is because it means that he’s probably going to try to slither back over to the liberal side. It’s not entirely surprising. It’s the smart career move for sleazy political opportunists and there is no more sleazy a political opportunist than Dennis Miller.

And speaking of the hateful left, Atrios had an interesting Deep Thought the other day:

Remember when the obnoxious tone of anonymous blog commenters on liberal blogs was going to doom the Democratic party forever? Good times

Actually, we’ve moved up. As hard as it is to believe, this story about liberal bloggers destroying the CIA by tanking the good soldier John Brennan’s nomination just won’t go away. CNN was running it all day:

MALVEAUX: There’s still a conspicuous hole in Barack Obama’s national security team, the case of the vanishing CIA chief. Did bloggers force the president-elect’s choice to go away?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: While the president-elect is on holiday in Hawaii, he may be taking some time to mull possible candidates for CIA chief. And he may be mindful about reaction on the blogs, given what happened to his first choice.

Our Brian Todd is here.

Brian, this opening in Obama’s national security team really seems to be a hot topic in the blogosphere. Tell us why..

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It certainly has been, Suzanne, and it has got people using a term called “blogocide.” I had never heard that one before. That’s because there are implications that bloggers caused the demise of Obama’s first nominee as CIA director. The transition team says that’s nonsense.

But the political ramifications of this post are significant right now. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

TODD (voice-over): In an otherwise well-received transition, one prominent hole remains. The Obama team is still looking for a CIA director.

Former top counterterrorism official John Brennan withdrew his name, citing “strong criticism in some quarters prompted by my previous service with the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Some liberal bloggers had blasted Brennan’s past support for rendition, the capturing and transporting of terror suspects to other countries for interrogation and detention. Some also claimed Brennan supported harsh interrogation techniques, which he strongly denied.

Two knowledgeable sources tell CNN the Obama team pressured Brennan to withdraw. Obama transition officials say it was his own decision.

Was this nomination torpedoed by blogs?

JEFF STEIN, NATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR, “CONGRESSIONAL QUARTERLY”: I don’t think the bloggers knocked him out, so much as that they realized they would have to have a fight at his confirmation hearing.

TODD: Analyst says, if Brennan didn’t support harsh interrogation, his overall ties to the post-9/11 era at the CIA, with the prewar intelligence flap and all the controversial tactics in the war on terror, would have made him tough to confirm.

Human rights officials are throwing down their gauntlet.

ELISA MASSIMINO, CEO AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, HUMAN RIGHTS FIRST: It really is incumbent on the incoming administration to choose people for those slots who don’t have any baggage from the previous policies and can demonstrate a clear break from those policies.

TODD: Elisa Massimino says that doesn’t mean everyone who served in the CIA then should be automatically disqualified. But analysts say it will be hard to find a really qualified spy chief who doesn’t have some tie-in to that period.

A former CIA officer says, if the Obama team can find someone like that:

TYLER DRUMHELLER, FORMER CIA CHIEF OF EUROPEAN OPERATIONS: They have a unique opportunity to make changes now in the agency, the way the agency fits in to the intelligence community, get back to the real core mission of the service, to recruit agents and have — collect intelligence through classic espionage.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TODD: Tyler Drumheller says the ideal person for that would be, not a former analyst, but someone from the operations side of the CIA, the division that actually carries out missions in the field. So, the challenge right now for Obama’s team, find someone like that who is not associated with the controversies of the past eight years.

Suzanne, it’s going to be a very tall order. That really narrows the field.

MALVEAUX: OK, Brian Todd, thank you so much.

First, I have never really bought the idea that bloggers actually tanked this nomination. (If we had that kind of power, do you think we’d be faced with Rick Warrens greasy visage on inauguration day?) So this insistence among the press, and presumably their sources at the agency, is a bit hard to swallow. Indeed, the report itself, which they teased with the headline “was Barack Obama’s first choice to be CIA chief torpedoed by bloggers? all day, pretty much says it’s bs.

I would not be surprised if the Obama team told Brennan that was the reason. (They deny it, so there’s no clear answer.) But frankly, this story just doesn’t make sense no matter how you look at it. If the Obama team wanted to drop Brennan, let’s hope they used a more believable excuse than “bloggers” made them do it. If Brennan believed them, then it shows that he is far too gullible to be the head of the CIA. And if people in the CIA are using this as a way to make Obama look weak or foolish, they are being unpatriotic asses.

And then there’s the press. They get the story wrong over and over and over again. This is a Fox story which CNN has decided is juicy enough for them to flog with a Fox style misleading headline all day long. There’s just no end to it, despite the fact that Glenn Greenwald and others have been very precise in their criticisms of Brennan, never once implying that anyone who was in the CIA during the Bush administration is disqualified.

I have to say that it’s more than a little bit disconcerting if anonymous members of the CIA are focusing their ire on liberal bloggers. Considering the vast powers of the agency, it has a tinge of a threat to it. As I pointed out before, liberal bloggers have long defended the CIA’s analyses and never held the torture and rendition regime against the rank and file, while the right wing was defaming them at every turn, blaming them for 9/11 and the failure of Iraq.

But Brennan was at the top of the food chain and he made statements after he left the agency indicating he supported some aspects of the program. To those of us who believe that torture, Guantanamo and rendition are serious threats to national security as well as an immoral degradation of American ideals, it’s important that Obama not send the wrong signals to the world by appointing someone who has made such public statements.

I suspect that’s the same conclusion the Obama transition team came to as well, which is why they made it clear that he wasn’t going to be chosen. Whether they rather lamely blamed bloggers or Brennan just seized upon some criticism he read while googling his name isn’t particularly relevant. But the fact that members of the CIA are still obsessing over this and using Fox and the NY Daily News and now CNN to pimp this story is fairly creepy. The Obama administration should clear this up. This is a typical bureaucratic power play, but allowing the CIA to blame political bloggers for ruining their careers is nothing to fool around with.

Update: And “clearing it up” like this is the exact opposite of the right thing to do. If “pro-Brennan” members of the Obama transition team are also blaming bloggers, then the team has a problem. I don’t know who tanked Brennan, but the fact that a whole bunch of people are still whining about bloggers doing it a solid month after it happened strikes me as a sign that something’s amiss.

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Kitsch Overload

by digby

I know I’m dead inside and all, but I just don’t think I can take any more of this Obama kitsch. First it was this infomercial, featuring the opening lines, “Now you can own a piece of history commemorating the day the world changed forever. His confident smile and kind eyes are an inspiration to us all…” (I particularly like the nice white family sitting around the coffee table featuring the plate, saying “I never thought this day would come,” which strikes me as more than a little bit creepy.)

Now we have this hideous junk being sold to people who probably can’t afford it:

Be among the first to have this sought-after coin collection, celebrating the most significant event in Presidential Elections since the Founding Fathers established our great country.

“The day the world changed forever…the most significant event in presidential elections since the Founding Fathers established our great country.” A bit over the top, don’t you think? This is an historic election, but I don’t think it changed the world forever.

I guess all this commercial adulation just makes me nervous. After all, it was just three years ago that we had this stuff all over the place:

President Bush is a Leader who has the courage to lead. It is political courage. It is not poll driven it is conviction driven. It is consistent and does not change because of pressure or threats of political survival. It is reconfirmed every day. It differs from combat courage in that it is thought oriented not reaction oriented. Combat courage does not necessarily translate into political courage. Combat courage is admirable and you only know if you have it when you are in combat. President Bush has demonstrated that he has political courage and this is why he was re-elected. By owning a bust of President Bush, Commander in Chief you will be making a statement and in a politically charged environment, it takes courage.

I’m not generally a superstitious person, but I could be easily convinced that the more presidential kitsch the worse the backlash.

And anyway, as some friends pointed out to me yesterday, if the president’s image is going to be a commodity, shouldn’t the taxpayers get the money? If Elvis’s heirs get a percentage of every set of salt and pepper shakers sold with his picture on them, shouldn’t the treasury get a piece of presidential knick knacks?

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Insider Culture

by digby

Dean Baker wrote an interesting piece this week about the fact that the only two regulators over the past decade who actually did their jobs were women. He speculates that it was because they weren’t members of the boys club.

He uses Bernard Madoff’s scheme as an example:

If we needed any further evidence that the financial industry suffered from too much deference to insiders, Bernard Madoff filled the gap. He apparently ran a simple-minded Ponzi scheme for 30 years, stealing tens of billions of dollars from wealthy individuals, private charities and even large banks.

When some investors and reporters raised suspicions about Mr. Madoff, no one bothered to seriously investigate because he was such a good guy. After all, he belonged to all the right clubs, generously supported charities and was even a founder of the Nasdaq.

The regulators don’t investigate respectable people like Madoff, and this is precisely the problem.

I would suggest that the political world suffers from exactly the same insider culture — with exactly the same results.

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Welcomed With Flowers, Sweets And Prescriptions

by dday

I suppose I shouldn’t be alarmed by this, but I have to confess to being a little taken aback by the snickering and high-fiving in the blogosphere over the CIA’s attempt to curry favor with Afghan tribal leaders by offering them Viagra.

The Afghan chieftain looked older than his 60-odd years, and his bearded face bore the creases of a man burdened with duties as tribal patriarch and husband to four younger women. His visitor, a CIA officer, saw an opportunity, and reached into his bag for a small gift.

Four blue pills. Viagra.

“Take one of these. You’ll love it,” the officer said. Compliments of Uncle Sam.

The enticement worked. The officer, who described the encounter, returned four days later to an enthusiastic reception. The grinning chief offered up a bonanza of information about Taliban movements and supply routes — followed by a request for more pills.

There’s a certain logic to using personal items as barter (or bribery, if you prefer) for warlords and tribal leaders to extract information about the Taliban insurgency. At the same time, does anyone credibly think that those four women this guy is married to are entirely willing spouses, and the consequent sex performed as a result of the Viagra entirely consensual? One of the most persistent problems in Afghanistan – indeed, one of the ostensible reasons used by people like Laura Bush to justify the invasion beyond the need to root out al-Qaeda – is the terrible life circumstances for women. I fail to see how use of erectile dysfunction pills created by men and for men improves their quality of life. Megan Carpentier gives the explanation with which I concur:

SPENCER: So what should we understand to be the anticipated effects on Afghan women of this Viagra-based counterinsurgency effort?

MEGAN: Well, one could argue that by supplying the aging warlords with Viagra, you are depriving their wives of a needed and biologically expected semi-permanent respite from performing unwanted sexual acts that would otherwise be forced upon them. In the interests of fairness, I suppose its possible that these warlords attempt to treat their wives with the utmost care and respect and provide them with sexual satisfaction instead of using them as living, visible extensions of their power over people that the warlords can additionally stick their dicks into.

SPENCER: But that’s not where we should take this discussion! Are we in a situation where the expected consequence of the CIA Viagra program is marital rape? Should everyone who isn’t Dennis Prager find this problematic?

MEGAN: Well, are we in a situation where we would deny that such is a possibility? I don’t think we make good policy by ignoring the consequences, nor am I saying that giving the dudes Viagra is not preferable to giving them, say, weapons. But is it possible that we’re providing them with the means to force themselves on their wives (who likely had no choice in being their wives) that nature has otherwise denied them? Yes. Plus, I did have to go find a way to relate it to women’s issues […]

SPENCER: Right, but now that we’ve got that covered: what should we do next? Stop the program?

MEGAN: Well, I’m not exactly one to go around advocating marital rape. Nor are — one assumes — operatives on the ground in any position to survey the wives of the warlords to determine whether the dick pill sex is consensual or wanted. Nor do the women in question have the vocabulary — culturally speaking, that is — to likely describe the sex as coercive or forced. In a society in which wives are expected to submit to their husbands and sex is not intended for their benefit or pleasure, nor are their moods or desires taken into account, they probably wouldn’t consider a formerly impotent husband with a handful of Viagra and some impotent time to make up for much more than their unlucky lot in life. And, if the benefit — as you stated above — is not only that the formerly impotent husband doesn’t take said impotence out on our troops but also refrains from taking it out physically on the wives, are they substantively better off being unhappily sexed than physically beaten? The fact that women in America have those choices and the freedom to think about them is a great thing, and handing out or not handing out Viagra to impotent warlords doesn’t give Afghan women those choices or freedoms. Nor does allowing a Taliban or al Qaeda-led insurgency to win back the government. But that doesn’t mean that our choices should remain unexamined.

There’s a top-rated diary on Daily Kos right now entitled Dennis Prager Endorses Marital Rape. Somebody explain to me how the CIA isn’t doing functionally the same thing.

And there’s a larger point. We barge into foreign societies without a coherent understanding of the underlying culture and try to use whatever means to get the locals on our side, and the unintended consequences that result are never examined either before or after the fact. They are considered prices to be paid for “success,” whatever that means. I think it’s actually fairly impossible for me to determine the full effects of giving Viagra to Afghan warlords, in much the way that introducing a change in where a butterfly flaps its wings in the past can alter the future. But I’m fairly certain that those effects are completely ignored by the elites who think they can control events thousands of miles away through little inducements and bribes. I haven’t read all of
Legacy of Ashes but I wonder if I’d find anything if I searched the index for the part where anyone games out the ripple effects of the agency’s actions. Probably not.

Maybe what should be considered, instead of the boner pills, is why we’re in Afghanistan in the first place. Rather than social engineering, we could use local law enforcement and intelligence sharing to limit or remove the capacity of anyone in the region striking beyond their borders, and we allow local and regional actors to determine their own way forward instead of arrogantly assuming we know what’s best for these people, and trying to install a central democracy where none has ever existed. Alternatively, we could figure out what other drugs they might like.

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Your Daily Blago

by digby

The press seems to have decided on one of the subplots to the Blago storyline: Obama didn’t adequately answer the press’s “questions” (and treated them very badly in their estimation) resulting in Obama failing the most important test of any presidency — scandal management. Of course, there’s no way for him to have passed the test, but that’s beside the point.

Random MSNBC Host: The story’s still alive, it may be because it’s the holidays, but it also calls into question how they do crisis management and just what was going on back then in Illinois.

And while most Republicans are following Newtie’s unctuous talking points and slobbering all over Obama as if he’s the second coming of Ronald Reagan, there are some who can’t help but blurt out their fondest hopes and dreams:

Republican strategist Ben Porrit: Well if you look back to 2005 when a scandal plagued the Bush administration you could look at one parallel and that is that president Bush and president elect Obama had an electoral mandate to govern and this negatively affects their ability to do that. This is ammunition for critics and political opponents where they raise speculation and try to crystallize conspiracy theories into facts. When you live in a age where your ability to govern is affected by every political poll that comes out, there’s certainly going to be some negative connotations to this and his ability to effectively implement his agenda.

I assume the scandal he speaks of is Plame, but it could be any number of things, depending on how you define scandal. but the man inadvertantly committed honesty. If they can make that happen, they will be very happy.

On CNN this morning Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorff actually had to explain how this scandal is different than the Ken Starr investigations that led to Clinton’s impeachment. (He wasn’t very convincing.) We are 25 days from Obama’s inauguration.

Blagojevich’s lawyer said today that he wants the impeachment committee (or whatever it’s called) to subpoena Rahm, Jarret and others. Oy. But you can’t blame him. After all, they will supposedly say that there were no discussions of quid pro quos. Meanwhile, Fitzgerald will probably fight it to preserve his case.

And it all adds up to the gasbags continuing to bloviate and speculate. And their daily bloviation and speculation will be seen as further proof that Obama is terrible at crisis management.

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Algiers Point Update

by dday

Following up on a previous item about white vigilante killings of black residents in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Police Superintendent of New Orleans says he is “looking into” the allegations. Given the seriousness of that statement, I’m certain it’ll be entirely thorough.

In a press release sent to the media and local government officials, Riley said, “he is currently looking into the allegations, and asked if anyone has substantial information relative to any incidents of this type call to the New Orleans Police Department Bureau of Investigations.” […]

Riley said the NOPD was unaware of this violence prior to the story’s publication. The department, according to Riley’s statement, “did not receive any complaints or information to substantiate any of the allegations of racial conflicts or vigilante type crimes in the City of New Orleans including the Algiers Point on the west bank of the City.”

That’s just simply not true. Not only did the authors of the recent report contact the NOPD during the 18-month investigation, but this is not a new story. It was featured in the Spike Lee documentary “When The Levees Broke,” for example.

Needless to say, I’m unimpressed that Riley will be “looking into” the incidents, but public pressure will likely leave him no choice. If you haven’t yet, sign the Color of Change petition.

…here’s the companion video to the Nation/Pro Publica story.

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Tasers Across The Pond And Everywhere

by digby

Finally, someone has written a thoughtful argument against tasers in a mainstream newspaper. It’s in Britain, but they are on verge of going full taser, so it’s right that they should be discussing it. It’s more than we ever did here in the US.

Johann Hari:

Daniel Sylvester can’t forget the night the police fired 50,000 volts of electricity into his skull. The 46-year-old grandfather owns his own security business, and he was recently walking down the street when a police van screeched up to him. He didn’t know what they wanted, but obeyed when they told him to approach slowly. “I then had this incredible jolt of pain on the back of my head,” he explains. The electricity made him spasm; as he fell to the ground, he felt his teeth scatter on the tarmac and his bowels open. “Then they shot me again in the head. I can’t describe the pain.” (Another victim says it is “like someone reached into my body to rip my muscles apart with a fork.”) The police then saw he was not the person they were looking for, said he was free to go, and drove off. This did not happen in Egypt or Saudi Arabia or any other country notorious for using electro-shock weapons. It happened in north London and, if the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, has her way, it will be coming soon to a street near you. In Britain there are 3,000 police officers trained to use Tasers as part of specialised armed response units, but Smith has fired a jolt forward. She wants there to be 30,000 Taser-carrying officers, authorised to use them against unarmed citizens, including children. These “stun-guns” fire small metal darts into your skin, and through the trailing wires run an agonising electric current through your body. Smith is right to say that the police face a growing threat of violence, and these heroic frontline officers must have the means to defend themselves. She’s also right to argue it better to use a Taser than to use a gun. But the police can already swiftly call out armed response teams, equipped with Tasers and firearms. If we move beyond this to a widespread culture of assault by electricity, it will only endanger the police – and the rest of us.Smith wants Tasers to be distributed well beyond the ranks of specially trained firearms officers, but Tasers can kill. Amnesty International has just published a report showing that, since 2001, 334 people have died in the US during or just after Tasering. Jarrel Gray was a partially deaf 20-year-old black man involved in an argument in the street in Frederick County, Maryland, when the police approached him and ordered him to lie on the ground. He didn’t hear them – so they Tasered him. As he lay paralysed on the ground, they told him to show his hands. He couldn’t obey. They Tasered him again. Jarrel died in hospital two hours later. Ryan Rich was a 33-year-old medical doctor who had an epileptic seizure while driving his car on a Nevada highway. He crashed into the side of the road. The police smashed a window to get into the car and Ryan woke up, startled. The police officer reacted by Tasering him repeatedly. Only when they were handcuffing him did they notice he was turning blue. He was dead before he got to hospital. The coroner noted dryly that the Taser “probably contributed” to his death. Taser International’s brochures claim their weapons have “no after-effects.”There may, in fact, be even more deaths than are recorded. Taser International has responded to medical examiners saying their weapons kill not by changing their weapons, but by suing the medical examiners. After the chief medical examiner of Summit Country, Ohio, ruled that Tasering caused the death of three young men, they sued her, and she was forced to remove the conclusions from her reports. The president of the National Association of Medical Examiners says Taser International’s behaviour is “dangerously close to intimidation”. Yet Smith appears still to be taking the corporate propaganda of Taser International – who dominate the international stun-gun market – at face value. The company are startlingly glib when their spiel begins to crumble. A recent scientific study conducted by biomedical engineers for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation found that nine per cent of the guns give a far larger electric shock than advertised. Some sent a 58 per cent higher voltage through the victim’s body. Steve Tuttle, the vice-president of Taser, responded: “Regardless of whether or not the anomaly is accurate, it has no bearing on safety.” The UK Defence Scientific Advisory Council has warned there is research suggesting that Tasers could cause “a serious cardiac event” when fired at children. But still Smith won’t compromise. Everyday on-the-beat policing does not happen in the tightly controlled scenarios imagined by the Home Office. It is messy and scrappy and carried out at high speed by people who are frightened and coursing with adrenaline: some 90 per cent of Tasered people in the US are unarmed. Matthew Fogg, who led a SWAT team in the US, warns that Tasers create a culture where “if I don’t like you, I can torture you”.

Read the whole thing.

Sadly, we have yet another statistic:

A naked man who was banging on doors and windows at a northside apartment complex died Wednesday after being shocked by Tasers at least three times during a confrontation with Harris County sheriff’s deputies, authorities said. About 4 a.m., deputies received calls from residents at the apartments in the 200 block of Dominion Park near Kuykendahl. Investigators said the 46-year-old man was randomly knocking on doors and windows and yelling while walking around the complex. At one point, he kicked open a front door and briefly went inside an occupied apartment, officials said. The resident “did not know who he was,” said Lt. John Legg of the Sheriff’s Office. The first deputy arrived within minutes. “He was immediately confronted by the suspect, who ran toward his patrol car, opened the front passenger door and climbed in,” Legg said. The deputy ordered the man out, but the man ignored his commands, yelling and flailing his arms, Legg said. “He was incoherent,” the lieutenant said. “The deputy said his eyes appeared glassed over.” The deputy’s Taser had little, if any, effect, officials said. After the man got out of the patrol car and pulled out the stun gun’s prongs, the deputy fired it again while struggling with the man, officials said.

Autopsy ordered

Another deputy arrived and ordered the naked man to back away, then used his Taser, investigators said. Deputies were then able to handcuff the man, officials said. He appeared to be unresponsive when paramedics arrived, officials said. They performed CPR en route to Memorial Hermann Northwest Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

Torturing and killing the mentally ill with tasers is becoming commonplace. There must be a better way.

h/t to many readers for both of these articles.

Lovin Obama

by digby

It seems that everywhere I turn professional Republicans are falling all over themselves about how much the love our president elect. While I don’t doubt that many GOP members of the public are enthusiastic, let’s just say I’m a little bit skeptical that all these beltway insiders are being altogether sincere in their praise.

Newtie started the trend with his little scold to the RNC about the Blogjevich controversy, which I explained here. It’s a ploy, don’t believe it. When you see snakes like Alex Castellanos saying this, watch your back:

MALVEAUX: He’s an electrifying figure. He does have celebrity status as we’ve seen. How does he use that to his advantage as president? How does he turn all that attention and magnetism that surrounds this figure and become an effective communicator reaching out to the American people?

CASTELLANOS: It’s such a great gift. Reagan had it, John F. Kennedy had it. It’s become very valuable to a country when it’s uncertain about its future. How does he use it? Look at the way he’s using it now. There was interesting research done that said the president’s job is to be half late night talk show host, half Moses. He gathers the country together, share the common stories of the country, then say here is where we’re going to go. How does he use this stature, celebrity, you inspire? You don’t stop campaigning because just the campaign is over. You still communicate regularly with the country. It’s not about policy. Say, hey, here is the future. We’re going to go over here. Follow me. He’s doing that, and I think that’s an important part of leadership in this uncertain world.

That’s the guy who did the infamous “rats” ad in the 2004 election. The look on his face was so sour, you could see he was going to have to have a stiff shot after the show to wipe the taste of those words out of his mouth. He’s the guy who said that calling Hillary Clinton a bitch was just a descriptive term. If anyone thinks this guy (or Pat Robertson) has been converted, think again. They are doing this for political purposes. They want to make sure that he owns the next couple of years, which are likely to be very tough. They will obstruct, of course, but all this happy talk is a pretense designed to appease the masses who are hoping against hope that Obama can turn this ship around.

(Again, I’m not suggesting that a regular people don’t love Obama. Obviously they do and it’s a huge advantage. but I certainly hope that nobody is fooled that professional political assassins like Castellanos are caught up in it.)

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RIP Santa Baby

by digby

The great Eartha Kitt passed away today. Nobody did it better.

Here she was just two years ago at the age of 79:

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Error Message

by digby

In case anyone’s wondering why Bush retracted the pardon of his contributor’s son, it’s not because he had an attack of conscience or even because it looks bad politically to pardon a mortgage scammer.

It’s sadly because the pardon would have made it harder for the Republicans to tank Eric Holder’s nomination on the basis of the Marc Rich pardon. One of their most substantial hissy fits was that that Holder signed off on it when it hadn’t gone through proper channels (something that was not unprecedented then either.) It turns out that this Bush pardon was granted under similar circumstances.

Remember, Rove is orchestrating the Holder strategy and he’s made clear that the Rich pardon is going to be at the center of it.

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