THIS MODERN WORLD

If everything he did was aboveboard and beyond reproach, why has the administration consistently lied about it for two years?

(Occam’s razor is a useful tool, though rightwingers often seem unaware of its existence.)

Good to see the FBI has them:

WASHINGTON, July 17 – The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected at least 3,500 pages of internal documents in the last several years on a handful of civil rights and antiwar protest groups in what the groups charge is an attempt to stifle political opposition to the Bush administration.

The F.B.I. has in its files 1,173 pages of internal documents on the American Civil Liberties Union, the leading critic of the Bush administration’s antiterrorism policies, and 2,383 pages on Greenpeace, an environmental group that has led acts of civil disobedience in protest over the administration’s policies, the Justice Department disclosed in a court filing this month in a federal court in Washington.

There are two possibilities here. One, the FBI is engaging in domestic surveillance of the president’s political adversaries. Two, some pigeon-brained Freeper at the FBI genuinely believes that the ACLU is a terrorist organization. In either case, they’ve obviously wasted substantial resources which might otherwise have been used to, oh, I don’t know, track actual terrorists. Someone should lose their job, but probably won’t.

…is the sound of last week’s Republican talking points crashing to the ground:

Mr. Cooper said in his article that Mr. Rove did not mention the name of Mr. Wilson’s wife, Valerie Wilson, or say that she was a covert officer. But, he wrote: “Was it through my conversation with Rove that I learned for the first time that Wilson’s wife worked at the C.I.A. and may have been responsible for sending him? Yes. Did Rove say that she worked at the ‘agency’ on ‘W.M.D.’? Yes.

Stay tuned for this week’s newly retooled efforts.

…on the same topic: here’s an adaptable fellow. Chocolate rations are up!

A craigslist posting, forwarded by a reader:

We Need Blog Writers

Date: 2005-07-16, 11:32AM EDT

Mention our clients on your Blog and earn $5 per post. You will receive up to two a day. Email me the URL to your Blog and when you are approved we will start sending you topics.

Thanks,
Brian

I’ve said it many times, but it really is astonishing to see what passes for thought among the right wing bloggers. Now that the White House disinfo campaign is in full gear, our friends on the right are obediently parroting the latest party line — it was actually the media which leaked Plame’s name.

Whatever.

As Billmon has also noted, this time around it really doesn’t matter what tune the pebble-brained chorus is singing. This isn’t another situation in which the side that shouts the loudest wins. This is a legal investigation, instigated at the request of the CIA and being pursued by a very determined prosecutor. And I doubt the latter spends a lot of time worrying about what bloggers think.