My friend Mike Luckovich asks the only relevant question.

Interesting:

With charges expected as early as Wednesday, federal officials investigating the exposure of CIA operative Valerie Plame conducted last-minute interviews with her neighbors and associates of Karl Rove and other top White House aides, lawyers said on Tuesday.

Marc Lefkowitz, who lives across the street from Plame, told Reuters two FBI agents asked him on Monday if he knew about Plame’s CIA work before her identity was leaked to the press in 2003. Lefkowitz said he told them: “I didn’t know.”

Two lawyers involved in the case said such questioning could indicated that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald intended to charge administration officials for the leak itself, in addition to possible charges for easier-to-prove crimes like perjury and obstruction of justice.

If you’ve followed this story as reflected in the crazy funhouse mirror world of the right wing we-create-our-own-reality circuit, you know that everyone already knew that Valerie Plame was married to Joe Wilson, why it’s in Who’s Who for chrissakes.

In other words, as I’ve mentioned a time or two, the righties have been trying to conflate knowledge of Valerie Plame’s existence on the planet Earth with knowledge of her status as a CIA agent since this whole story first broke. I actually noticed one of the inexplicably popular Yoostabee bloggers bringing up the Who’s Who canard as recently as a week or two ago. All of which brings us back to the Eternal Question–are they lying, or simply so stupid that it’s a wonder they manage to get up out of bed in the morning without hurting themselves?

We’ll find out how this all plays out soon enough. But one of the delights of watching it unfold has been the obvious extent to which Patrick Fitzgerald is umimpressed by–or, more accurately, oblivious to–the fantasy worlds of the right. Try to pretend that “everybody knew she was married to Joe Wilson” = “everybody knew she was a CIA agent”? Well, our wonderfully plodding prosecutor will send agents out to ask the neighbors if they did in fact know of her true employment. And as it turns out, they didn’t.

What an astonishing surprise.

Some good news from the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies:

Clancy and Margo DuBos always knew that Gambit Weekly would return. “There was never a nanosecond of doubt that we were coming back,” explains Clancy, who, along with his wife, is co-owner of the New Orleans alternative weekly that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. “Never. Never.”

It’s easy to understand why. The couple have spent most of their adult lives working at the paper, where they began as employees in the early 1980s. By June of 1987, Margo had moved through the ranks to become Gambit’s publisher, and four years later, she and Clancy purchased the paper from Landmark Communications. Margo reflects on her first years at the then burgeoning weekly with fondness: “Everybody did everything and we loved it. We just thought it was so cool that we were doing this job that was so important. The [readers] appreciated another paper in the community and another voice.”

As Margo describes it, the initial years at Gambit were characterized by “a lot of needs and not a lot of people.” It took a great deal of tenacity and ingenuity to lift the paper to the level of success it maintained prior to that late August day when Katrina made landfall. But with nearly two and a half decades invested in the publication, even a catastrophic natural disaster would do little to discourage the DuBoses from returning to what had become their life’s work. “We’re about to celebrate our 25th anniversary [at the paper]. How could I work that hard and get the company where it is and walk away from that? It was just unfathomable to me to try and comprehend,” says Margo.

Hurricane Katrina may have left Gambit’s Mid-City office submerged under more than two feet of water, but on November 1, the award-winning paper will be back in print.

Here’s wishing them the best.

Given the rather shabby sendoff I received after deciding to pack it in at the American Prospect last year, I can’t say I’m terribly pleased to open my mailbox and find that they are still featuring my work prominently in their subscription solicitations. (I gave them permission to do this a few years ago, but didn’t intend for it to be open-ended.) It’s still a fine magazine, but anyone who subscribes hoping to see more of my work will be sorely disappointed.

As you’ve certainly noticed, the Plame investigation has renewed interest in Judy Miller’s Iraq reporting. I’m not entirely sure how right-wingers reconcile their conception of the Bush-hating media with the undeniable fact that Miller’s terrible reporting helped substantially in whipping up support for the war, especially among the so-called liberal hawks of the intellectual/managerial class. (Something I previously discussed in this cartoon from 2004.)

Peter Daou:

MICHELLE MALKIN WADES INTO THE GUTTER: The blog world is certainly not for the political faint of heart. Personal attacks, harsh language, and hyperbole are routine. But in this post, Michelle Malkin sheds every last vestige of decency: “THE GHOULS OF THE LEFT - They support the troops…by partying over their deaths.” Her post links to a Little Green Footballs entry that makes the same odious argument, namely that this group is throwing “parties” on the day that we cross 2000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq.

Here’s how the actual events are described: “Events to mark the 2,000th reported U.S. military death will range from candlelight vigils to public actions that illustrate the size of the death toll.” Surely, these aren’t “parties.” I spent years in Beirut, I lived and breathed war, I watched friends get blown to pieces, I’ve seen horrors I hope Malkin never has to see. Those who are fighting to stop this war deserve the utmost respect, whether or not you agree with their politics. Prominent bloggers like Malkin should know better than to soil our public discourse with this kind of garbage….. Rant over.

The eternal question with Malkin and her ilk is, of course, whether they are stupid or lying. Is Malkin really unable to comprehend the distinction between somber reflection and gleeful celebration? (In which case, she must really get confused each year on dates like September 11 and December 7.) Or is she–perish the thought–deliberately misrepresenting the truth in order to score cheap rhetorical points? Actually in this case, there’s probably a third alternative to “stupid” or “lying”: “both of the above.”

Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government’s foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday.

In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.

“Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.”

* * *

Mr Wilkerson said his decision to go public had led to a personal falling out with Mr Powell, whom he served for 16 years at the Pentagon and the State Department.

“He’s not happy with my speaking out because, and I admire this in him, he is the world’s most loyal soldier.”

Among his other charges:

–The detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was “a concrete example  of the decision-making problem, with the president and other top officials in effect giving the green light to soldiers to abuse detainees. “You don’t have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you’ve condoned it.”

–Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and now secretary of state, was “part of the problem”. Instead of ensuring that Mr Bush received the best possible advice, “she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president.”

–The military, particularly the army and marine corps, is overstretched and demoralised. Officers, Mr Wilkerson claimed, “start voting with their feet, as they did in Vietnam. . . and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel.”

Mr Wilkerson said former president George H.W. Bush, “one of the finest presidents we have ever had,” understood how to make foreign policy work. In contrast, he said, his son was “not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either.”

More.

Vice-President Dick Cheney and a handful of others had hijacked the government’s foreign policy apparatus, deciding in secret to carry out policies that had left the US weaker and more isolated in the world, the top aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed on Wednesday.

In a scathing attack on the record of President George W. Bush, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to Mr Powell until last January, said: “What I saw was a cabal between the vice-president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.

“Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences.”

* * *

Mr Wilkerson said his decision to go public had led to a personal falling out with Mr Powell, whom he served for 16 years at the Pentagon and the State Department.

“He’s not happy with my speaking out because, and I admire this in him, he is the world’s most loyal soldier.”

Among his other charges:

–The detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was “a concrete example  of the decision-making problem, with the president and other top officials in effect giving the green light to soldiers to abuse detainees. “You don’t have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you’ve condoned it.”

–Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and now secretary of state, was “part of the problem”. Instead of ensuring that Mr Bush received the best possible advice, “she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president.”

–The military, particularly the army and marine corps, is overstretched and demoralised. Officers, Mr Wilkerson claimed, “start voting with their feet, as they did in Vietnam. . . and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel.”

Mr Wilkerson said former president George H.W. Bush, “one of the finest presidents we have ever had,” understood how to make foreign policy work. In contrast, he said, his son was “not versed in international relations and not too much interested in them either.”

More.

A couple of weeks ago, the Washington Post ran a good piece showing the real life consequences of Bush’s decision to suspend Davis-Bacon on post-hurricane reconstruction projects: A small, minority-owned business in New Orleans initially got a contract to provide electricians (to a larger, Alabama-based company working for Kellogg, Brown & Root). But the NOLA company, Knight Enterprises, hired local workers and paid union wages — $22.09 per hour, plus health benefits. Other companies, paying $14 an hour, with no benefits, came in, and Knight lost its contract. The local employees were replaced by out-of-state workers.

It gets worse:

An electrician and foreman with Knight Enterprises cried as he recounted how his team of workers were kicked out of government tents by an out-of-state firm and forced to sleep in their cars.

"Most of our workers, some of whom had lost their homes to the two hurricanes (Katrina and Rita), were sleeping in their personal vehicles and showering in a car wash located on base," Mike Moran said.

So much for helping Katrina’s victims.

Now, about the workers who have replaced the locals:

Housing for workers often lacks running water and contractors have failed to provide food, training and wage rates as promised, James Hale, vice president with the Laborers’ International Union of North America, told a policy conference of opposition Democrats in the US Senate.

In one case, workers had not been paid for three weeks and at another site there were allegations that security guards were mistreating laborers, said Hale, who supported his allegations with photographs.

Many of the out-of-state workers are, unfortunately, used to this kind of treatment, and facing problems of their own:

Local Hondurans, who comprise the city’s largest Latino population, report being the object of the anger from blacks and whites, who fear losing their livelihoods to low-wage Latino workers. Zapotec-speaking Oaxacan Indians walk the streets of New Orleans and elsewhere throughout Louisiana and Mississippi after being threatened with deportation and kicked off local military bases, where they worked for local contractors without getting paid.

Latinos in the Gulf region are being racially profiled by local and federal authorities, says Victoria Cintra of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, one of the only organizations addressing Latino immigrant concerns in the region. Cintra believes the Bush administration’s suspension of the Davis Bacon Act, which requires payment of prevailing wages, along with its temporary removal of documentation requirements on I-9 forms has strained race relations by lowering wages and fostering competition between groups.

"The Bush administration is inviting Latino workers to New Orleans and the south without creating conditions to protect them," says Cintra, who recently provided a tent to more than a dozen unpaid Oaxacan worker in New Orleans. "These workers are extremely vulnerable."

Senate Democrats are, to their credit, trying to publicize this outrage. The press is showing about as much interest as you might expect. Apparently there’s nothing here to make Anderson Cooper cry.

A couple of weeks ago, the Washington Post ran a good piece showing the real life consequences of Bush’s decision to suspend Davis-Bacon on post-hurricane reconstruction projects: A small, minority-owned business in New Orleans initially got a contract to provide electricians (to a larger, Alabama-based company working for Kellogg, Brown & Root). But the NOLA company, Knight Enterprises, hired local workers and paid union wages — $22.09 per hour, plus health benefits. Other companies, paying $14 an hour, with no benefits, came in, and Knight lost its contract. The local employees were replaced by out-of-state workers.

It gets worse:

An electrician and foreman with Knight Enterprises cried as he recounted how his team of workers were kicked out of government tents by an out-of-state firm and forced to sleep in their cars.

"Most of our workers, some of whom had lost their homes to the two hurricanes (Katrina and Rita), were sleeping in their personal vehicles and showering in a car wash located on base," Mike Moran said.

So much for helping Katrina’s victims.

Now, about the workers who have replaced the locals:

Housing for workers often lacks running water and contractors have failed to provide food, training and wage rates as promised, James Hale, vice president with the Laborers’ International Union of North America, told a policy conference of opposition Democrats in the US Senate.

In one case, workers had not been paid for three weeks and at another site there were allegations that security guards were mistreating laborers, said Hale, who supported his allegations with photographs.

Many of the out-of-state workers are, unfortunately, used to this kind of treatment, and facing problems of their own:

Local Hondurans, who comprise the city’s largest Latino population, report being the object of the anger from blacks and whites, who fear losing their livelihoods to low-wage Latino workers. Zapotec-speaking Oaxacan Indians walk the streets of New Orleans and elsewhere throughout Louisiana and Mississippi after being threatened with deportation and kicked off local military bases, where they worked for local contractors without getting paid.

Latinos in the Gulf region are being racially profiled by local and federal authorities, says Victoria Cintra of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance, one of the only organizations addressing Latino immigrant concerns in the region. Cintra believes the Bush administration’s suspension of the Davis Bacon Act, which requires payment of prevailing wages, along with its temporary removal of documentation requirements on I-9 forms has strained race relations by lowering wages and fostering competition between groups.

"The Bush administration is inviting Latino workers to New Orleans and the south without creating conditions to protect them," says Cintra, who recently provided a tent to more than a dozen unpaid Oaxacan worker in New Orleans. "These workers are extremely vulnerable."

Senate Democrats are, to their credit, trying to publicize this outrage. The press is showing about as much interest as you might expect. Apparently there’s nothing here to make Anderson Cooper cry.

Rush Limbaugh, being interviewed by Sean Hannity on Fox last night:

The Democratic party’s stuck in the past. Their presumed glory years are Watergate and Iraq, and they can’t look forward, they don’t look forward…

It took me a second: Watergate and Iraq? Does he mean the first Iraq war? Does he somehow think that was such an unpopular war that…

Oh. He meant to say Watergate and Vietnam. But for some strange reason, Iraq and Vietnam are categorized in the same little subfolder in his brain.

Wonder why that is?