Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

He’s Gonna Hold His Breath Til He Turns Blue

Via Liberal Oasis, here’s the latest from rightwing land on the new supreme nomination:

“Shell shocked,” “confused,” “stumbling,” “full of doubt.” These are all words I have heard used to describe the current White House effort to find Sandra Day O’Connor’s replacement. Batchelder, Williams, and Owen have all been interviewed, but the process continues to sputter along.

Several have told me not to buy into the Miers trial balloon. It is, I’m told, just that — a trial balloon. Another tells me, “The President wants Gonzales. That’s what is dragging this thing out. They’re sending out people to say he is conservative as if by telling us that enough we will say, ’sure, he really is one of us.’ That is not going to happen.”

The process is still moving. Those I have talked to in the past twenty-four hours tell me we should expect a minority or woman. The odds are that it will be a woman. Sykes’s name has gotten little play in the past twenty-four hours and Luttig’s name has gotten none. Larry Thompson’s name continues to surface. One person disputes all my sources and tells me that Thompson, not Clement, was the almost pick last time.

The jury is still out on the nominee. Says one from a phone call this morning, “The White House has gone into second guess mode. They want another Roberts, an enigma who will slip through and turn out to be a conservative. They are second guessing their picks. That, I would think, increases the chances of a Thompson or a Gonzales — someone the President’s gut tells him is conservative. My gut tells me we have to keep the pressure on or we’re [screwed].”

They don’t want to put another woman on the court. Not really. The conservative Sandra Day O’Connor, who was personally distraught at the idea that Bush might not have won the 2000 election and made sure he was installed anyway, is now seen as some sort of left wing bra burner on the right. Clearly, women can’t be trusted.

This is not an accident. There is a serious movememnt afoot to denigrate women’s issues, and therefore, pressure Bush not to nominate another woman. Check out this story by Dahlia Lithwick on the “chick-baiting” that’s going on around this supreme court nomination:

A few weeks ago I suggested that race and gender should not be the only—or even the primary—filter through which we consider Supreme Court nominees. I rejected the arguments that minority candidates serve as proxies for minority views (whatever those might be), or that they create the appearance of a court that “looks like America.” I was wrong. We need another woman on the Supreme Court. And while we’re at it we need a few more women on the Senate judiciary committee.

[…]

I wonder why both Ginsburg and O’Connor—who differ on virtually everything—feel so strongly that there should be two women on the Supreme Court that they’d use their offices to publicly urge the president to appoint one.

And I can’t help but wonder if it has anything to do with the ways in which gender politics are starting to infect our discourse about the courts. Consider this commentary by Bruce Fein this week in the Washington Times: Fein lines up Hillary Clinton, Dianne Feinstein, and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, then levels potshots at them as believers in Supreme Court justices as “apostles over the law” because of their concern for John Roberts’ positions on women’s and civil rights. Oddly enough, Patrick Leahy, Joseph Biden, Chuck Schumer, Ted Kennedy, and the other male Senate Democrats who called for Roberts’ views in this area are never mentioned.

Mark Steyn is positively bilious about this feminization of the Democrats in the Washington Times on Monday. Again Feinstein (and only Feinstein) is blistered for wanting to hear Roberts “talking to me as a son, a husband and a father.” For which Steyn’s prescription is that she “get off the Judiciary Committee and go audition for ‘Return To Bridges Of Madison County,’ or ‘What Women Want 2’ (‘Mel Gibson is nominated to the Supreme Court but, despite being sensitive and a good listener, is accused of being a conservative theocrat’).”

And here’s George Will this week, also taking his nasty stick to Sen. Feinstein: “Dianne Feinstein’s thoughts on the nomination of John G. Roberts as chief justice of the United States should be read with a soulful violin solo playing, or perhaps accompanied by the theme song of ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show.’ Those thoughts are about pinning one’s heart on one’s sleeve, sharing one’s feelings and letting one’s inner Oprah come out for a stroll.” Will’s contempt for Senate efforts to know something about the next chief justice’s “temperament and values”—to understand his heart—is absolutely laser focused on the senator from California. Odd. Never a mention of Biden, Schumer, Mike DeWine, and Dick Durbin—each of whom similarly deployed the language of hearts and feelings in their questioning of Roberts.

Now, I am not come today to praise Sen. Feinstein. Her performance during those hearings probably set the women’s movement back a decade. From her ingenuous “Now, I’m not a lawyer …” questions to her tendency to turn even declarative sentences into halting questions, she hardly projected the air of mastery and confidence I’ve seen in her in the past. I’m not sure I can sign off on her self-appointed task of representing all 145 million American women at the hearings. I can’t even get behind her efforts to force a clearly private man into vomiting up mawkish personal revelations onto the hearing-room floor.

But I do wonder why it became so very easy to blast only the woman who wanted to cut through Roberts’ repeated claims to be a lean, mean law-making machine. I wonder why the woman who worried about his aloofness and disconnection from poverty or suffering was singled out for derision. Is it because the stereotype of the pathetic, whiny, “but how do you feel” nag fits so much better if the asker is wearing curlers and a housecoat? Is it a cynical effort to paint all women as hysterics or merely all Democrats as women? Or is it, in the end, the consequence of having only one woman on the committee?

I’m sure it’s just an accident that Fein, Steyn (weird name-coincidence or conspiracy?), and George Will each singled out only Feinstein as their judiciary committee poster-person for the strange quest-for-feeling that characterized the Roberts hearings. But it certainly evokes something Ginsburg mentioned in her remarks yesterday at Wake Forest. According to the report, she noted that “she started in law school in the 1950s—a time when law students and law practitioners were predominantly male. She said she felt pressure to excel, to break the stereotypes about women. … ‘You felt like all eyes were on you. If you gave a poor answer in class, you felt like it would be viewed as indicative of all female students.’ “

Imagine being judged and ridiculed as a lightweight, when—as sole representative of your gender—you feel you must defend the achievement of all women. The solution for both Ginsburg’s problem and Feinstein’s is simple: Give the critics more targets. Load up the courts and Congress with enough women, and then maybe blaming them for being women in the first place will stop sounding like a legitimate critique.

Is it a cynical effort to paint all women as hysterics or merely all Democrats as women?

It’s both. And one follows from the other. Lithwick says she’s sure it’s just a coincidence, but it isn’t. These things don’t come out of nowhere on the right.

One thing I hope that people think a little bit about is that this distaste for women’s issues is one that can easily be internalized on both sides of the political fence. Indeed, it already has in some ways. This, like race, is much simpler for the right to deride than it is for the left to defend. These are complicated issues. Nonetheless, we have no choice. It is the essence of what we stand for — liberty, equality. It doesn’t get much simpler than that.

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Grey Lady Down

Dan Kennedy writes about Michael Isikoff taking TIME and the NY Times to task for not following up on the Plame story. Isikoff has a very checkered past in these matters, but in this case he is correct. The fact that TIME and The NY Times dropped the ball on these stories because their reporters refused to reveal their sources is really unconscionable. They should have pursued the stories more vigorously, not less.

If a reporter has a confidential source who is giving them backround information, they are supposed to, you know, go look for things like documents and other witnesses so they can actually publish a story. Matt Cooper, to his credit, did at least write one story and he took the proper inference from the leak — that the white house was trying to discredit Wilson. The magazine then failed to properly follow-up and even withheld evidence in fear of swinging an election!

Miller never writing a story at all and the Times treating the whole thing like a pile of stinking garbage in which they didn’t want to dip their finely manicured hands is just shocking.

Arianna excoriates both today and asks the following very pertinent questions:

And so we don’t forget what this story is really about, and given that the aluminum tubes crap that Miller put on the front page of the New York Times was being heavily promoted by Cheney, how much of that bogus information came to Miller via Libby?

And here are a few questions for the Times:

Had a Plame/Wilson story been assigned to Miller or not?

What, if anything, did she say about the story to anyone at the paper at the time… and what did they say back?

Why did the Times hold back the story about Miller’s release and let multiple other news sources scoop them? Were they trying to miss the evening news cycle and avoid the overnight thrashing their spin has rightly received?

It would be nice if they spent the same amount of time handwringing about this as they did that puerile stunt by Jayson Blair, but I’m not holding my breath. When a newpaper is partially responsible for sending a country to war on false pretenses, they tend to circle the wagons. I thought the days of William Randooph Hearst were long dead history, but maybe not so much.

Update:

Just to be clear — in my post below where I say that Libby’s lawyers had better shut up, it was not because I thought their version of events with respect to the waivers was necessarily correct or incorrect. It was because it’s never a good idea for lawyers to anger witnesses who are going to appear before a grand jury the next day.

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Fat Lady Clearing Throat, Not Singing

It’s kind of painful watching people talk about Libby and Miller this morning on television when it’s clear that they are just riffing. Jonathan Alter is a smart guy, but his main talking point (on MSNBC) is whether Fitzgerald will issue a report that “rebukes” Rove and Libby for discussing a CIA employee even though they didn’t do anything illegal. He seems to be resigned to the fact that there will be no indictments.

There does seem to be an emerging conventional wisdom (among my commenters at least) that Fitz will not indict. The fact that he doesn’t intend to ask Miller about anyone but Libby feels like some sort of capitulation but let’s keep in mind that any thoughts we had that he wanted to ask about anyone but Libby were always pure speculation. There was nothing in any of his court filings that indicated he wanted anything other than to question her about one specific person — Libby. The court issued its contempt order based upon that request alone.

There was never any reason to believe that Fitzgerald wanted to discuss Judy’s other sources, only that Judy didn’t want to discuss her other sources with Fitzgerald. We may never know what motivated her to become the Martyr of Times Square (Hat tip Billmon.) She’s a drama queen of the highest order and probably had a whole list of reasons. But Fitz has said from the beginning that he needed her testimony for one specific purpose and perhaps we snould believe that.

People are also saying that Judy will simply lie. To that I reiterate what I wrote in the post below. She never wrote a story so someone had to have told Fitzgerald that Judy and Libby spoke. Nobody knows who that was. Maybe it was Libby. Maybe it was someone that Libby told. Maybe it was someone Miller told. Judy cannot be sure what Fitzgerald knows or who he talked to. It would be very, very risky for her to lie.

Lifted from the comments down page, here’s some intersesting speculation from Emptywheel of The Next Hurrah (one of the best Fitzgerald kremlinologists in the blogosphere) about what Fitz might have and what Judy might bring to the table:

What did Fitz get?

Proof that Libby’s notes have been tampered with.

Notes that say WHIG carried out a plot to get Wilson (the conspiracy angle that gets Dick).

The crucial link in the chain of custody of the information.

Why did he agree to avoid other sources?

Because he already has the evidence. Before subpoenaing a journalist, you have to prove the journalist is the only source of the information. Someone else had/has that info for Fitz, so he doesn’t need Judy for it. (Although she’s going to look stupid in court when someone from the Times gets up and talks about her receiving some stuff from Bolton, but not testifying herself. But looking stupid never seemed to be a problem for her.)

The notes are clearly key:

“One set of documents that prosecutors repeatedly referred to in their meetings with White House aides are extensive notes compiled by I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff and national security adviser. Prosecutors have described the notes as ‘copious.’” [New York Times, 2/10/04]

It would be pretty to think that Judy might have notes that conflict with Libby’s about the famous WHIG meeting that Joe Wilson wrote about in his book. That’s what people have been waiting for.

For those who would like a quick refresher in who the administration players in this are and how they fit into the story as we know it, here’s Think Progress’ handy little primer.

(My good buddy Jim Wilkinson doesn’t appear, but I have a feeling that he’s lurking in this story somewhere too. He was a member of WHIG.)

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Judith Iscariot

Murray Waas reports on why Miller’s testimony is important to Fitzgerald:

What is perhaps left out of news accounts tonight is that Miller’s testimony is central to whether special Fitzgerald brings criminal charges against I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Cheney. Libby was unwavering in telling prosecutors and the FBI that he knew nothing of Plame’s covert work for the CIA, even though he spoke to Miller about at length about her and her husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV. Whether that account is truthful is something only both Miller and Libby know. Miller’s testimony on that issue will be central to any final disposition of the criminal probe, sources close to the investigation have told me for some time now.

Just in case Judy didn’t know what Libby would like her to say to the Grand Jury, the Washington Post helpfully printed it up for her:

According to a source familiar with Libby’s account of his conversations with Miller in July 2003, the subject of Wilson’s wife came up on two occasions. In the first, on July 8, Miller met with Libby to interview him about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the source said.

At that time, she asked him why Wilson had been chosen to investigate questions Cheney had posed about whether Iraq tried to buy uranium in the African nation of Niger. Libby, the source familiar with his account said, told her that the White House was working with the CIA to find out more about Wilson’s trip and how he was selected.

Libby told Miller he heard that Wilson’s wife had something to do with sending him but he did not know who she was or where she worked, the source said.

Libby had a second conversation with Miller on July 12 or July 13, the source said, in which he said he had learned that Wilson’s wife had a role in sending him on the trip and that she worked for the CIA. Libby never knew Plame’s name or that she was a covert operative, the source said.

Miller is a made man. Why would Fitzgerald think she would tell the truth when it’s clear that Libby wants her to testify on his behalf?

Because somebody else has already spilled the beans. How else did Judy come to Fitzgerald’s attention in the first place?

Asked why prosecutors sought Miller’s testimony when she never wrote a story about Plame, Times attorney Floyd Abrams said, “We don’t know, but most likely somebody testified to the grand jury that he or she had spoken to Judy.”

Neither Miller or Libby can be absolutely sure what that person told the Grand Jury because neither of them can be absolutely sure that the other one didn’t tell someone about their conversation. Who knows how many people could have testified before the grand jury about Miller and Libby?

One thing is certainly clear. Fitzgerald doesn’t trust Judy as far as he can throw her. Here’s what he said about her in court when she was asking for home detention:

The question is whether Miller would defy a final court order and commit the crime of contempt and thereby obstruct an investigation of persons who may have compromised classified information.

She has no idea what he knows. She would be an idiot to lie.

One other thing to keep in mind. For those of us who are looking for him to broaden the scope of this investigation and look into a larger set of issues surrounding the Iraq lies, if Fitzgerald hands down indictments it is only a first step. Indictments tend to focus the mind, I would think. Perhaps some people will have more to say when they are faced with serious legal trouble.

And it would certainly explain the dismal political performance of the white house lately if high level advisors have been too busy negotiating plea bargains for themselves to keep a close eye on Junior.

update: Via Anonymous Liberal I see that there is some dispute emerging about this waiver business that I hadn’t heard before:

Also of note, is this conflicting account of the original waiver given by Libby to Miller over a year ago. First, from the Post.

[J]oseph Tate, an attorney for Libby, said yesterday that he told Miller’s attorney, Floyd Abrams, a year ago that Libby’s waiver was voluntary and that Miller was free to testify. He said last night that he was contacted by Bennett several weeks ago, and was surprised to learn that Miller had not accepted that representation as authorization to speak with prosecutors. “We told her lawyers it was not coerced,” Tate said. “We are surprised to learn we had anything to do with her incarceration.”

But we get this from the New York Times:

On Thursday, Mr. Abrams wrote to Mr. Tate disputing parts of Mr. Tate’s account. His letter said although Mr. Tate had said the waiver was voluntary, Mr. Tate had also said any waiver sought as a condition of employment was inherently coercive.

If Abrams is telling the truth, then Libby apparently did not give Miller the kind of waiver that she required. If Tate told Abrams that the waiver Libby signed was “inherently coercive,” then Abrams and Miller were correct to interpret that conversation as not amounting to a free and voluntary waiver. How else were they supposed to interpret such a comment?

Libby’s lawyers probably should shut their mouths.

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Welcome To Our World

Hunter at Daily Kos responds to the delicate pearl clutchers of the right who find themselves simply overwrought at the shocking prospect of all these corruption scandals being exploited for partisan gain. If there’s one thing they have never been able to abide it’s despicable underhanded politics. What is this world coming to?

Well…

Welcome to the world of the politics of personal destruction, you tubthumping, chin-jutting, Bush humping gits. Welcome to the nasty and partisan world that Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, and a legion of insignificant lowest-rung toadies like yourselves nurtured into fruition daily with eager, grubby hands, and now look upon with dull-faced faux horror.

[…]

Step back from the edge? You poor boy, asleep in the back of the car the whole trip, finally waking up and wondering where you’re at.

Swift boats. Aluminum tubes. Niger uranium. “Mushroom clouds”. Whitewater.

Vince Fucking Foster.

You can’t even see the edge from here. You left it behind a hundred miles back.

So don’t give me chest-thumping crap about civil wars, if your politicians are indicted. Don’t give me visions of a lake of fire, if all those who find you loathsome refuse to suck at your teats of scientific ignorance in the name of religion, racism in the name of freedom, and corruption in the name of the New World Order.

Get used to the world you have created, and the stench your worshipped heroes have unleashed.

Hear hear.

And might I just add … Republicans impeached a duly elected president over a trivial sexual matter and one year later installed a moron in the presidency by one vote on the Supreme Court. Handwringing from the likes of them about partisanship is a truly impressive and unprecedented act of phony, shit-eating Phariseeism — which is really saying something.

Just in case there’s been a massive memory loss on the right, here’s a little trip through the wayback machine:

In arguing for impeachment and against censure, Republican members of Congress have hinted at a trove of still-secret, non-Monica-related documents about President Clinton’s sexual misconduct. “Before people look to cut a deal with the White House or their surrogates … it is my hope that one would spend plenty of time in the evidence room,” said House Majority Whip Tom DeLay. “If this were to happen, you may realize that 67 votes may appear out of thin air. If you don’t, you may wish you had before rushing to judgment.”

kar·ma

1.The total effect of a person’s actions and conduct during the successive phases of the person’s existence, regarded as determining the person’s destiny.

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Idiot Abroad

Ezra Klein once asked something to the effect of “why would Bush send a seven foot tall white woman to aid our public face in the Islamic world?” It’s a good question, but more importantly, why would you send a seven foot tall white woman who speaks like a 6th grader to aid our public face in the middle east and convince the entire world that all Americans are as dim-witted as the president and that Osama bin Laden is right?

Sid Bumenthal puts it like this:

This week, Hughes embarked on her first trip as undersecretary. Her initial statement resembled an elementary school presentation: “You might want to know why the countries. Egypt is of course the most populous Arab country … Saudi Arabia is our second stop. It’s obviously an important place in Islam and the keeper of its two holiest sites … Turkey is also a country that encompasses people of many different backgrounds and beliefs, yet has the — is proud of the saying that ‘all are Turks.'”

Hughes appeared to be one of the pilgrims satirized by Mark Twain in his 1869 book, “Innocents Abroad,” about his trip on “The Grand Holy Land Pleasure Excursion.” “None of us had ever been anywhere before; we all hailed from the interior; travel was a wild novelty to us … We always took care to make it understood that we were Americans — Americans!”

If you would like to read some commentary that makes George W. Bush sound downright erudite, check out Hughes’ entire statement:

UNDER SECRETARY HUGHES: We’re going to be visiting, as you know, three unique and very important countries, three countries we have a very strong partnership with one of them. We also face very significant public diplomacy challenges in one of them. One of my missions is to go to listen. I hope to listen, to seek to understand, to show respect. Listening is a two way street, and so I hope that those people I meet will also return that open spirit and be willing to listen. I’m going to take a lot of questions, I’m going to participate in a lot of give and take and I hope they’ll be willing to listen to my discussion (inaudible).

[…]

I just wanted to talk a little bit to answer your questions about, kind of, my approach. As I said I view this trip as the beginning of a new dialogue that is very much people driven — public diplomacy is people-driven and it’s policy driven, because our policies affect people’s lives. I don’t see this as a matter of opinion polls or public relations, I see this as a matter of policy. That’s really what drew me to public service in the first place. When I first decided to leave reporting and go to the political process it was because I realized that the decisions made in the political process made a very real difference peoples lives. So when I talk about people I’m talking about policies, I’m talking about our policies and the impact they have on people. I think that’s what we’ve got to focus on here. I also — I go as an official of the United States government, but I’m also a mom, a working mom, and so I hope that I could help, in some places, put a human face on America’s public policy.

[…]

… just one of the points that we’re going to make as we meet with people is, is talk about our American story and how it’s a collective story that’s written by individuals. We all have unique stories to tell. My own background as a granddaughter of a Pennsylvania coal miner and a Kentucky railroad worker. Dina, of course came here from Egypt, and we’re very proud that our first stop in Egypt we’re going to be taking someone who I think Egypt is very proud of Dina, the fact that she emigrated from Egypt as a young child, and has risen to the highest levels of our American government, and that’s a wonderful American story.

Karima has her own American story. She is the daughter of a Palestinian father and a German mother and I’m sure that Bill has some part of an American story, although I haven’t heard it yet (laughter) I’m sure he will be glad to share it with you. He currently lives in Wisconsin and I don’t know what his family roots are.

When she isn’t talking about being a mom, which she seems to think is a unique and important qualification for being the voice of American public diplomacy, she’s actually advancing jihad. From the Blumenthal piece:

Hughes’ simple, sincere and unadorned language is pellucid in revealing the administration’s inner mind. Her ideas on terrorism and its solution are straightforward. “Terrorists,” she said in Egypt at the start of her trip, “their policies force young people, other people’s daughters and sons, to strap on bombs and blow themselves up.” Somehow, magically, these evildoers coerce the young to commit suicide. If only they would understand us, the tensions would dissolve. “Many people around the world do not understand the important role that faith plays in Americans’ lives,” she said. When an Egyptian opposition leader inquired why President Bush mentions God in his speeches, she asked him “whether he was aware that previous American presidents have also cited God, and that our Constitution cites ‘one nation under God.’ He said, ‘Well, never mind.'”

With these well-meaning arguments, Hughes has provided the exact proof for what Osama bin Laden has claimed about American motives. “It is stunning … the extent [to which] Hughes is helping bin Laden,” Robert Pape told me. Pape, a University of Chicago political scientist who has conducted the most extensive research into the backgrounds and motives of suicide terrorists, is the author of “Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,” and recently briefed the Pentagon and the National Counterterrorism Center. “If you set out to help bin Laden,” he said, “you could not have done it better than Hughes.”

Pape’s research debunks the view that suicide terrorism is the natural byproduct of Islamic fundamentalism or some “Islamo-fascist” ideological strain independent of certain highly specific circumstances. “Of the key conditions that lead to suicide terrorism in particular, there must be, first, the presence of foreign combat forces on the territory that the terrorists prize. The second condition is a religious difference between the combat forces and the local community. The religious difference matters in that it enables terrorist leaders to paint foreign forces as being driven by religious goals. If you read Osama’s speeches, they begin with descriptions of the U.S. occupation of the Arabian Peninsula, driven by our religious goals, and that it is our religious purpose that must confronted. That argument is incredibly powerful not only to religious Muslims but secular Muslims. Everything Hughes says makes their case.”

We know what happened when Bush put poor little Brownie in charge of federal disaster response and it wasn’t pretty. We’re going to be lucky if “Hurricane Karen” doesn’t set off WWIII.

She’s off to a good start.

The good news is that she’s listened and she’s learned and she’s bringing back to the White House some incredible insights:

Ms. Hughes promised to take what she learned from hearing dissenting views back to Washington. She was struck, she said, when a Turkish official told her to try to imagine the situation of Iraq, a next-door neighbor, sliding into possible civil war and engulfing Turkey from the perspective of “the common Turk.”

“I will be sure to bring that message back to President Bush when I get back to Washington,” she said.

Heavy.

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The Big Squeeze

So Judy got her super-duper-double-special waiver finally and was sprung. Of course, it makes no more sense today than it did two months ago but the NY Times is intent upon keeping up the fiction for their intrepid girl reporter:

… the discussions were at times strained, with Mr. Libby and Mr. Tate asserting that they communicated their voluntary waiver to Ms. Miller’s lawyers more than year ago, according to those briefed on the case. Mr. Libby wrote to Ms. Miller in mid-September, saying that he believed her lawyers understood that his waiver was voluntary.

Others involved in the case have said that Ms. Miller did not understand that the waiver had been freely given and did not accept it until she had heard from him directly.

What a bunch of crap. Here’s the nut:

In written statements today, Ms. Miller and executives of The New York Times did not identify the source who had urged Ms. Miller to testify. Bill Keller, the executive editor of The New York Times, said that Mr. Fitzgerald had assured Ms. Miller’s lawyer that “he intended to limit his grand jury interrogation so that it would not implicate other sources of hers.”

Mr. Keller said that Mr. Fitzgerald had cleared the way to an agreement by assuring Ms. Miller and her source that he would not regard a conversation between the two about a possible waiver as an obstruction of justice.

First of all, why is Bill Keller involved in this to this degree? He’s her editor, not her lawyer. Was he involved in the negotiations or is he reporting the story? If it’s the latter, why would that be? Don’t they have any reporters who can interview Judy and get the facts?

More importantly it seems obvious now that Jeralyn was right; Judy’s real issue was being asked about her other sources under oath. It looks like they came to some sort of agreement about that. (No Bolton?)

It also appears at least possible that Fitzgerald was threatening to charge both Libby and Miller for obstruction of justice for talking to one another — whether that referred to the conversation noted in the article between the two of them and their lawyers this month or an earlier conversation is unclear.

The question is what Fitzgerald got in return for agreeing not to ask Judy about her lovers ..er sources. And don’t think he didn’t get something in return.

In case anyone’s wondering if Fitzgerald is really the tough guy everyone thinks he is, check out this story from last week about the Governor George Ryan trial in Illinois. You’ll notice that he flipped Ryans “political son” by arresting his mistress and squeezing her until she convinced him to testify:

Whether the jury believes Fawell, given his previous vow never to testify against Ryan and subsequent flip-flop when prosecutors put heat on his fiancee, is important for Ryan’s defense.

“I’m still not overly comfortable with participating,” Fawell told a federal judge last Oct. 28 during a teary testimonial to try to keep his mistress-turned-fiancee, Andrea Coutretsis, out of prison. “I don’t relish testifying against George Ryan.”

Fawell, 48, was once the heir to DuPage County political royalty. His mother is Beverly Fawell, a former state legislator. His father is Bruce Fawell, a former chief judge in the county. And his uncle, Harris Fawell, was a respected congressman from Naperville.

Scott Fawell rose through the GOP political ranks rapidly, serving as a driver for then-U.S. Sen. Charles Percy, lobbyist for the tollway authority and campaign operative for then-Gov. Jim Thompson. He ended up working for then-Lt. Gov. Ryan, and helped Ryan win a close race in 1990 for secretary of state.

Ryan rewarded him with the chief of staff job and then the nearly $200,000-a-year plum of running the agency that oversees McCormick Place and Navy Pier.

So if Ryan indeed has figurative bodies buried somewhere, as prosecutors allege, Fawell is in position to know the location. He gave prosecutors a 45-page sworn statement.

Fawell talked about special secretary of state office leases prosecutors say Ryan illegally steered to co-defendant Warner. He also took yearly vacations to Jamaica with Ryan, trips a businessman who got an office lease would reimburse the duo for, according to prosecutors.

Among other things, Fawell also supposedly knows about alleged selling of low-digit license plates for campaign contributions. He helped set up a scheme in which secretary of state workers would do campaign work on state time, prosecutors say. And when it came time to cover up the illegal political activity, prosecutors likely will try to prove Fawell told Ryan about massive document-shredding that was going on.

A jury found Fawell guilty for his part in the corruption scandal. He’s serving a 6¨-year sentence at a federal work camp in Yankton, S.D.

Fawell, however, gave his testimony to prosecutors reluctantly, a fact that Ryan’s defense team undoubtedly will bring to jurors’ attention.

“I’m not going to sell myself out just to save myself,” Fawell said after his sentencing in late June 2003. “I’m not sitting on any bomb of George Ryan’s. I’m not going to go in there and make up stories about him just to save myself, which unfortunately that’s the game (prosecutors) like you to play.”

That, however, was before Fitzgerald’s office charged Coutretsis, formerly of Long Grove. Coutretsis, a mother of two and Fawell’s one-time assistant at McPier, faced a prison sentence for perjury before persuading Fawell to turn on Ryan. In return, she could get six months or probation. Fawell could get six months shaved off his sentence.

Do you think that Fitzgerald was impressed with Judy’s “principles” or her desire for a super-special-in-person-blood-oath waiver from Scooter? Right. He didn’t do this for meaningless testimony or just for fun. He got something important.

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Keep Your Children Out Of The Room

I spoke too soon when I said earlier that there have been no blow jobs in Washington since the Honor and Integrity crowd took over.

I just watched Brit Hume “interview” Tom DeLay.

Update: Oh Jesus, Chris Matthews just performed a full-on deep-throat on the Hammer.

It’s a rather unorthodox “interviewing” technique to make your interviewees argument for him by never shutting up and only allowing him to nod in agreement while you rake his enemies over the coals on his behalf. But then, they don’t call ’em mediawhores and pre$$titutes for nothin’.

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Librulism ‘R Us

In case you are tired of hearing me rail on about racism and other topics that make people uncomfortable, check out this extremely well-reasoned argument by Scott Lemiuex of Lawyers, Guns and Money on the topic of abortion.

I plan to take up the subjects of animal rights and freeing Mumia, so be warned…

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Criminals Much?

So, we have a federal probe implicating the president’s number one political advisor and the vice president’s chief of staff in the violation of laws protecting CIA agents and possibly lying to federal investigators.

We have a multi-pronged investigation into a lobbyist who happens to be a very close associate of Tom DeLay,Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed, Karl Rove and the entire Republican leadership going back to their youth as members of the College republicans. This lobbyist is now implicated in a mafia murder plot and has been arrested on charges affiliated with that crime.

A member of the Bush administration who is a good friend and associate of all of the above was arrested this week for lying to the Feds about his good friend the lobbyist.

The majority leader of the Senate is now officially under investigation by the SEC and federal prosecutors for insider trading involving potentially many millions of dollars.

The majority leader of the House was just indicted by a Texas Grand jury for violating laws prohibiting the use of corporate money in campaigns.

I am so relieved that the Republicans restored honor and integrity to Washington. There hasn’t been even one blow job in that town since they took power.

Update: Oh and that reminds me — David Drier is now the majority leader of the House of Representatives.

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