Author: Greg Saunders

I dunno about you guys, but I find it embarrasing to think that we live in a country that’s so self-obsessed that every mass tragedy is followed up with a story about how many Americans were affected. Knowing the national identity of the people affted by yesterday’s mass murders changes nothing about the way I feel. Every death is tragic.

Rumsfeld has some homework to do (via Kos) :

Under a little-noticed provision of the defense spending bill passed by Congress in May, Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld has until July 11 to send Capitol Hill a “comprehensive set of performance indicators and measures of stability and security” two years after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

If and when it comes in, it could do much more than the president’s Tuesday night speech at Fort Bragg to provide a factual basis for judging how close we may be toward reaching our goals in Iraq.

In that address, Bush once again demolished a straw man, denouncing any talk of a deadline for withdrawal of U.S. and coalition forces and any timetable for phasing them out. While public support for a pullout has grown, almost no one in Congress is advocating such a step.

What serious people are asking of the administration is a set of yardsticks by which the situation is Iraq can be realistically measured — and accountability established for a strategy to reach those goals. That is something the president has refused to provide.
. . .
The information required is specific and detailed. It includes measures of the security environment, including the number of engagements per day, the count of trained Iraqi forces and more. It orders up indicators of economic activity. It directs Rumsfeld to provide — either in public or in classified annexes — an estimate of U.S. military forces needed in Iraq through the end of calendar 2006 and the criteria the administration will use to determine when it is safe to begin withdrawing forces.

It should be reiterated that the failure to provide this information is a federal crime. That is, assuming that the Congress is serious about ensuring that the Bush Administration keeps their promise to provide metrics by which we can judge their performance. Considering the partisan irresponsibility of the current leaders of the legislative branch, I think its safe to assume that this deadline will pass without notice. After all, we’re still waiting for them to start Phase II of the pre-war intelligence investigation.

Here’s how the SCOTUS fight‘s gonna go down (via Matt) :

While some focused on whom Bush’s choice will be, others mapped out strategy for the period after he decides. Senate Republicans made plans to begin hearings as quickly as possible after the nomination, focused not on the candidate’s positions on hot-button issues but on legal credentials.

A Republican planning document provided to The Washington Post described the need to avoid disclosing the nominee’s “personal political views or legal thinking on any issue.”

This is the exact same tactic they’ve taken with the seven (of more than 200) judicial nominees that the Democrats blocked. In the face of perfectly acceptable questioning, they refuse to respond and declare the Democrats to be obstructionists. They’ll probably get away with it this time too, since even when the Democratic cooalition is its strongest, there are still enough DINOs in the Senate to break a filibuster.

The only way the GOP can get the American people to go along with their plans is through lies, rhetorical misdirection, and stonewalling. Cowards.

It’s official! Karl Rove is the man who leaked the identity of an undercover CIA agent who specialized in weapons of mass destruction :

I revealed in yesterday’s taping of the McLaughlin Group that Time magazine’s emails will reveal that Karl Rove was Matt Cooper’s source. I have known this for months but didn’t want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged into the grand jury.

McLaughlin is seen in some markets on Friday night, so some websites have picked it up, including Drudge, but I don’t expect it to have much impact because McLaughlin is not considered a news show and it will be pre-empted in the big markets on Sunday because of tennis.

Since I revealed the big scoop, I have had it reconfirmed by yet another highly authoritative source. Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week. I know Newsweek is working on an ‘It’s Rove!’ story and will probably break it tomorrow.

In other news, Aldrich Ames is spending the rest of his life in prison for revealing the names of undercover CIA agents.

Considering the enormity of the nuclear proliferation threat that we currently face and the fact that this leak happened in the middle of a war that was ostensibly about stopping the spread of WMD’s, Karl Rove deserves nothing less than to join Benedict Arnold and Julius Rosenberg in the history books as men whose names are synonymous with “traitor”. And anyone who helped cover up for these crimes should join Rove in jail or on the gallows. This not only means the occupants of the West Wing (every one of whom should be subjected to a polygraph test) but the partisan cowards in Congress who have shirked their constitutional duty in order to protect a treasonous scumbag.

As far as the right-wingers are concerned, I’ll be eagerly awaiting your condemnation of Rove. Considering how quick you are to judge any liberal criticism of the execution of these twin wars as “undermining the war effort”, you’re now faced with evidence that one of the most powerful Republicans in Washington actively worked to undermine the effort to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Motives are irrelevant (both Rove’s for leaking and yours for helping cover-up). If you’re serious about the very real threat of terrorism to the United States, then you’ve got to be honest enough to admit that spreading the name of CIA agents through the press could seriously harm our ability to stop terrorists from getting their hands on nuclear material.

Still waiting for more evidence? Well, let’s just hope the smoking gun against Karl Rove and his accomplices doesn’t come in the form of a mushroom cloud…

From a CNN interview this morning, guess who’s still got a chip on his shoulder?

KAGAN: Interesting person to talk to on the phone right now. Robert Bork on the phone, somebody who got almost to the Supreme Court. The judge nominated in 1987, a nomination that did not work out in the way that Judge Bork, I think, you would have liked.

Your comments today on Sandra Day O’Connor and her legacy on the court, please.

JUDGE ROBERT BORK, FMR. SUPREME COURT NOMINEE: Well, she’s a very nice person, but she is — as a justice, she has been — they call her the swing vote. That’s true. But that means that she didn’t have any reaffirmed judicial philosophy.

However, on the crucial cultural question, she has lined up with the liberal side on abortion, on affirmative action, homosexual normalization and so forth.

KAGAN: Excuse me. Judge Bork, do you think it’s fair to say she didn’t have an judicial philosophy? Perhaps that she didn’t have the same judicial philosophy that you share. But she probably — she possibly had a more moderate philosophy and was expressing that as a swing vote on the high court.

BORK: I think that referring to a moderate philosophy and a conservative philosophy and so forth is quite wrong. The question is, those judges who depart from the actual Constitution, and those who try to stick to the actual Constitution.

She departed from it frequently. So that I wouldn’t call that moderate^[1]. I would call it unfortunate.

So dissenting from the conservative view on abortion, affirmative action, and the like is tantamount to departing from the Constitution? I like this guy a lot better on the phone than on the bench. How do you feel about the justice who took your spot, Judge Crybaby?

KAGAN: A lot of people — a lot of conservatives do wish that you had been confirmed and serving on the high court. Instead, it’s been Justice Kennedy, who has been more moderate than a lot of people think.

BORK: I wish you would stop using the word “moderate.” But go ahead.

KAGAN: Well, no. What would you use? How would you compare what Justice Kennedy has done instead of perhaps what you have done if you had been on the court.

BORK: I would call it activist.

Boo-frickin’-hoo. Any advice for a future nominee, Poopyhead?

BORK: I — you know, they’re going to — they’re going to insist upon answers to questions, “How will you vote on this? How will you vote on that?” Which I think is a very unfortunate practice, but that’s what they are doing now in the Senate.

KAGAN: So would you tell a nominee not to answer those questions?

BORK: Either to find a way not to answer it on the grounds that they shouldn’t be answered, or to give straightforward answers, which will mean that he will line up a lot of opposition.

Stonewalling on questions is one piece of advice that Bush judicial nominees don’t need, but thanks anyways. Dust off those anti-coathanger signs folks, you’re gonna need them.

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^{1 : You can see my take on the “moderate” issue here.}