April 07, 2006

4/4: Giving Everyone Fitz

Today's lead story is, of course, ex-Cheney CoS Scotter Libby's testimony before the CIA leak grand jury. Once we get past the initial excitement of the "Bush leaked!" headlines and subsequent nitpicking of the MSM, the main issue among bloggers seems to be whether Pres. Bush's authorizing the leaking of classified information constitutes proper declassification, and also whether that selective leaking is appropriate. What follows below is just a small sampling of the swarm that developed after the story broke, with more sure to come.

Elsewhere, an on-again, off-again immigration deal left conservatives furious at their own party and ganging up on a possible WH '08er. The left, meanwhile, remains concerned about immigration reform, but where conservatives have coalesced behind a few ideas, lefties seem headed down a number of logical paths. Finally, AG Alberto Gonzales' testimony leaving the door open for the Bush admin to tap phone conversations contained solely within the U.S. has the left up in arms. This story, it seems, can only get bigger.

Some of the reaction to the news: Taylor Marsh: "Russ Feingold's censure resolution is not only seeming smart, but down right modest." Gay Patriot: "[T]his does not nail the president in the least. It merely shows him authorizing the release of information which would serve to discredit a dishonest critic." Booman Tribune: "Libby's claim that Bush declassified the information prior to his meeting with [New York Times' Judy] Miller is nonsense. As far as Miller was concerned, nothing was ever classified." Talk Left: "So will Libby's defense be that he was only a small part of a much bigger effort to use classified information for political purposes, a variation of the Oliver North defense? And if so, in that effort to direct heat up the chain, what will [U.S. Atty. Patrick] Fitzgerald do about the two at the top of this effort as we get closer to trial?" Instapundit: "The latest 'Bush leaked' story ... is basically a 'spoiling attack' by the NYT and other media who fear subpoenas in the Libby case. As with all their efforts on this front, it's likely to backfire. The more they say that leaks are bad, even as they rely on politically motivated leaks from insiders for their bread and butter, the more vulnerable they become." State Of The Day: "The next move is all [VP] Cheney's. He is next in line to take the fall. After today's revelation, the only way to get the president off the hook is for Cheney to say he lied to Libby about having presidential authority. Of course, this is a lie."

Moderate Voice says the story "more than ever points out that the administration clamps down on leakers who are 'whistleblowers' but uses leaks when it suits their political purposes." Among things to be taken away from the story: "This administration does not just have a credibility problem, it has a credibility catastrophe." Also: "Bush is now in the 'loop' on these allegations. The stories point out that he didn't violate any law -- but he can't talk about how leakers hurt the government if he is actively involved himself in leaking when it suits his political purposes." Tom McGuire details how the headlines don't quite match the story. "So Bush authorized an informal release of some part of the NIE to one reporter a week before portions were made public. Commence impeachment hearings!" Earlier, he tried to fit the pieces together to see how it fits in with Fitzgerald's overall case. Unclaimed Territory: "So let's assume, for the moment, that Libby's testimony is accurate. That would mean that the President, instead of following normal declassification procedures and publicly releasing a redacted version of the NIE, authorized an aide to present a cherry-picked and manipulated version of that document to a friendly New York Times reporter on deep background. That aide then passed along the highly misleading information and asked that it be attributed to a 'former Hill staffer.' That may not be illegal, but it is sure as hell unethical."

Andrew Sullivan first wrote at a post titled "Bush Nailed." "Cheney's judgment in this matter is extremely odd. Who really cared about Joseph Wilson's op-ed? Why the extreme defensiveness and then recklessness of the [ex-CIA officer Valerie] Plame leak? We're either talking extreme hubris here, or someone who felt he had a lot to hide. Or an admixture of the two." After being picked apart by other bloggers, Sullivan later writes: "Make your own mind up. But it seems to me that a president who routinely decries leaking of classified information has now been revealed as someone who purposefully and with premeditation leaked classified information, gave his veep special clearance to do so, and did so during a very heated debate about possible malfeasance with respect to pre-war intelligence handling."

More from the right: Matt Margolis: "Just another case of Democrats trying to make a mountain out of a molehill." USS Neverdock: "In a nutshell, anti-Bush agents in the CIA and other intelligence agencies were leaking selective intelligence to the media in an attempt to undermine the administration. The Left wing media calls them heroes. In an attempt to get the truth out, the adminstration declassifies the intelligence so the public can decide for themselves. The Left wing media calls this a scandal." Austin Bay: "The entire flap relies on mixing terms and "misunderstanding by innuendo" -- a technique of demagoguery, not journalism. The flap is yet more evidence that the national press is more interested in playing "gotcha" with the Bush Administration than reporting the news."

American Street: "This may cause people to wonder if former Chief of Staff Andrew Card's resignation didn't come at just the right time." Meanwhile, Think Progress notes that at the WH briefing, "there wasn't a single question" about the report. Informed Comment: "George W. Bush faces the weight of a long Asian land war gone badly wrong, just as Johnson did. And he faces the charges of high-level corruption and illegal wiretapping that dogged Richard Nixon.

As said earlier, the crux of the debate is whether or not the info that Libby leaked was classified, or if Bush's authorization made it de facto declassified. This boils down to another question about executive authority. Byron York: "Yes, it was classified, although it would later be declassified. But it should be remembered that when the president decides to make something public, then it can be made public." Also at The Corner, Cliff May adds: "If the President of the United States doesn't have the power to declassify information -- who does? The Pope? The ACLU? The Daily Kos?" Firedoglake: "[F]or all those agencies whose job it is to protect our nation's security secrets: how are they supposed to know what is or is not classifed information if George Bush only tells Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby when he's decided to declassify something? Doesn't that seem more than a little odd to anyone else -- let alone outside the boundaries of normal procedures?" Josh Marshall: "Even with the president, there are procedures he needs to go through. ... What we appear to have here in the Libby case is a one-off declassification. The president didn't really declassify anything. He authorized Libby to show classified material to Judy Miller or whomever else." As for lower ranking officials, Georgia10 posits: "They're 'entrusted' with national secrets and are 'delegated' authority by the President. But such authority rests only in the President. Keep that in mind as we now go through President Bush's executive orders on classification."

The Carpetbagger Report makes the required Watergate analogy. He adds: "The White House's claim is, not surprisingly, that if the president leaks something, it's no longer classified. Bush, in other words, is one-man declassification machine. The argument is odd, but even if it's taken at face value, it's worth noting the way in which the new revelations conflict with the president's own previous comments on leaks." Power Line tries to set the record straight as they see it: "In the summer of 2003, as noted above, the administration was besieged with leaks from liberals in the CIA and elsewhere, as well as op-eds by the likes of [Amb.] Joe Wilson, that misrepresented the state of the intelligence prior to the Iraq war. In order to deal with these false claims, the administration declassified the 2002 intelligence estimate. ... The 'leak' that you're reading about in headlines today was simply the permission given to Scooter Libby to describe the contents of the consensus intelligence estimate a few days before it was officially declassified." Captain's Quarters: "The media had demanded answers to the charges leveled by Wilson and his supporters, and those answers were found in the NIE. The decision to declassify it and publish it came as a result of that demand. Once the decision is made to declassify information, it can be released in any number of ways. This was both leaked and openly presented in the same fortnight." TBogg thinks that sort of reaction amounts to a "he made me do it" defense: "So, you see, it was unfair of Joseph Wilson to force them to break the law and besides they were going to release all of the information eventually, so no harm, no foul." Kevin Drumm tries to piece together the timeline: "his doesn't make sense. Documents are either declassified or they're not, and the president can either declassify them with a mere verbal flick of his wrist or he can't. Which is it?" The Jawa Report: "Unusual threats often call for unusual responses. It's also highly unusual for the President's administration to come under attack from a cabal of renegade bureaucrats within the Central Intelligence Agency."

Legal Fiction takes a big picture look, bringing in also the Patriot Act, enemy combatants and torture issues. "The tie that binds each and every one of these positions is that, in each one, the executive alone gets the final say on the scope of its power." The latest news "shows that the administration was abusing its power. In doing so, it completely undermined the argument that it can be trusted with the expansive powers it claims to possess."

Our coverage yesterday of a deal struck in the Sen over comprehensive immigration reform was called "Deal? Or No Deal?" We were just trying to be cute, but at press time the agreement that had been hammered out had just failed a key Sen test vote and is soon to be off the table, per the New York Times and Reuters. According to the NYT, the deal's "prospects for passage grew more uncertain as Republicans and Democrats clashed late into the night over parliamentary procedure." Even before the deal fell apart, most on the right weren't happy with the compromise, with most linking to the Washington Post's description of the deal. Righty Captain's Quarters: "The lack of detail signals that the compromise may be little more than an easy way out of a contentious battle." Michelle Malkin questions the GOP's role in the Sen: "Can you spell c-a-v-e-i-n?" Right Wing News calls it "the GOP's Illegal Immigration Sell-Out." Iowa Voice calls it both a cave-in and a sell out. John O'Sullivan Lefty Taylor Marsh sums up the left's perspective on the matter: "Republicans seem hell bent on screwing immigrants and Americans, only this time they're doing it simultaneously ... and we didn't even get a kiss." Aside from that sentiment, the left offers a variety of opinions on what the deal meant. Middle Earth Journal thinks the bill is flawed to begin with: "We can only hope that the wingnut xenophobes in the House will stick to their guns so this totally impractical and unmanageable bill will never see the light of day." TalkLeft compares old versions of the bill to the Hagel-Martinez version the Sen is working on. The Heretik thinks other factors are at work in the wheeling and dealing: "Give me your compromise, give me your huddled senators yearning to campaign for President." And Ezra Klein thinks a bill's doomed to failure because of a required conference cmte with the House.

Senate Maj. Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) posted an update on the bill's progress last p.m. Riehl World View responds: "Good thing he has a third career path." Hugh Hewitt, Riehl World View and The Real Ugly American similarly consider Frist to have hurt himself politically. So does lefty Blue Crab Boulevard. Confederate Yankee even coins a new word: "Fristed."

Betsy and The Moderate Voice also post on the matter. Legal Fiction asks: "Is the 'learning English' requirement constitutional? I'm not a big equal protection scholar, so I don't know if the 'disparate impact' aspect continues to have any teeth." Power Line has a poll asking readers where priorities lie on immigration reform.

The latest Fox News poll shows Bush sliding down the poll-rating slope again. This month, only 36% of voters approve of his performance, down from 39% in mid-3/06, and 53% disapprove. AP's Fournier comments on an AP/Ipsos poll showing approval also at 36%. The left, needless to say, jumps all over the ratings. Daimnation, noting Congressional generic ballot number: "If the Democrats can put together something like the Republicans' 'Contract With America' campaign in 1994, major changes could be coming." Left Coaster, Tennessee Guerilla Women, Bring It On!, Middle Earth Journal and Oliver Willis all chip in. Protein Wisdom notes and analyzes the Fox Poll's immigration questions.

Also 4/6, Bush spoke to a crowd in Charlotte, NC, and took questions. One questioner, Harry Taylor, vented about a number of topics, concluding: "I would hope, from time to time, that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself." Washington Post reports. Vox Mia supports Taylor, and offers its own Separated at Birth. Norwegianity: " Harry Taylor was brave and principled but -- as is usually the case -- he was terrified, his voice cracked and I'm sure he wishes today he had said several things better. It's not easy to face down the President of the United States in a room full of his supporters." Shotgunfreude just loves the guy. Taylor received kudos from the liberal blogosphere, including Peppered Jane's "Gold Star of the Week," and Le Carnet De Ma Planete calls him one of "mon heros du jour." Blue Crab Boulevard doesn't think Taylor's "challenge" was all that impressive.

AG Alberto Gonzales testified before the House Jud Cmte 4/6 and left open the possibility that Bush could authorize warrantless wiretaps on phone calls made within and confined to the U.S., the first time the admin. has acknowledged that such a program is possible in their legal opinion. Washington Post has the story, and like previous debates over wiretapping, many bloggers are up in arms over the matter. Liberty Street sums up Gonzales' testimony: "Just another day in the office, helping his boss to subvert the Constitution and end the American experiment with democracy." Corrente: "These guys have no limits or boundaries at all. That means they're already doing warrantless domestic surveillance--with the targets presumably taken from their list of traitors and possible traitors, which probably includes, oh, the entire Beltway and who hasn't actually sworn fealty to Bush's person, at this point." TalkLeft notes that even Jud Cmte chair Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) wasn't buying Gonzales' testimony. AMERICAblog thinks Sensenbrenner's objections help Dems. SusanG and Atrios also offer comments on Sensenbrenner. Kevin Drum sees the continued slide down a slippery slope: "Once the public accepts the idea that domestic-to-international calls can be tapped at the whim of the administration -- without a warrant and without bothering to show probable cause -- they're a lot less likely to be upset at the prospect of domestic-to-domestic calls being tapped too. The frog is simmering." Obsidian Wings agrees: "A few short years ago, when conservatives were claiming that returning Elian Gonzales to his father was a harbinger of tyranny, one might have expected some real outcry at anything remotely resembling this revelation. Now, it's just normal." Firedoglake renews her call: "Who in their right mind is making the argument that this President is not deserving of censure?" Mcjoan has similar feelings.

Supporters of resigning Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX) crashed a press conference held by ex-Rep. Nick Lampson (D), who's running for DeLay's TX 22 seat, at which Lampson called on TX Gov. Rick Perry to hold a 5/13 special election to fill DeLay's seat. According to the AP, the protest was organized by ex-DeLay manager Chris Homan. Juanit'as Beauty Salon (and it actually is a beauty salon, apparently) has pictures of the presser and Homan's email to his troops. State of the Day is the first to make Third Reich comparisons. Mcjoan calls DeLay's supporters "shameless." NewDonkey and Wonkette comment. == Blue Crab Boulevard is skeptical that the incident is all it's cracked up to be. == Preemptive Karma comments on Perry's decisions and the state of the race, as does Off the Kuff, Swing State Project, Corrente

Yesterday, NBC said "The View"'s Meredith Viera will replace soon-to-be CBS anchor Katie Couric on "Today." Soon after, Newsbusters posted photos and quotes from Viera at/about an antiwar protest before the RNC in NYC in 8/04. Junk Yark Blog: "That these rallies are usually organized by the violent Communists of International ANSWER -- the same people who have organized the May Day Hispanic strike -- never seems to bother people like Meredith Viera. Or the allegedly unbiased news networks that employ them."

Columbia Journalism Review's blog posted a report 4/6 that we found interesting. The post cites an investigation by the Center for Media and Democracy, which found that local TV news stations, where most Americans still get their news, routinely air "video news releases" from corporations and other groups and pass them off as original reporting. Of course, the video news releasers aren't going to cry foul; that's their message! So why aren't local political parties taking advantage of lazy reporters? NRO's Media Blog comments.

Yesterday's Thought of the Day identified the scary as anything scenario of cockroaches that make group decisions. Today's Lest We Forget brings you a life-imitates-art story, brought to our attention by Blue Crab Boulevard: There is apparently a giant rabbit on the loose in Felton, in Northern England. Reuters reports that villagers are trying to shoot the "brute."

Posted by at April 7, 2006 01:53 PM