Author: Tom Kertes

Here’s what at stake with the Alito nomination:  The Congress and the President will gain power. Ordinary Americans will lose power.

A strategy for the next nomination: Dems go nuclear
Now that Miers is out, it’s time for the Democrats to get tough.  My advice: Block the next nominee as being too far right no matter who that person is.  Start planning a filibuster now – regardless of the nominee. Five minutes after Bush announces the nominee the Dems should say Bush nominee ___ (fill in the blank) is D.O.A. as far as Senate Democrats are concerned.

It doesn’t matter who Bush actually nominates. Bush could nominate Thurgood Marshall from the dead and the Dems should proceed as planned.  “Marshall’s a radical right-winger.  The president is cowing to special interests of extremists.  We won’t stand for a radical conservative like Marshall.”

Seattle’s The Stranger offers a look into a recent speech given by Joe Wilson at a Seattle event:

People told [Wilson] over and over: “Thank you so much.” They were thanking him for writing an Op-Ed in the New York Times in July of 2003, titled “What I Didn’t Find in Africa.”

It showed that the Bush administration’s pre-war claims about Iraq trying to purchase “yellowcake” uranium from Niger were bogus, or as he put it, “twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.” By undercutting a central rationale for the war–that Iraq was on the verge of sending a nuclear “mushroom cloud” to America–Wilson’s Op-Ed began a cascade of events: Retaliation from the White House, the outing of his CIA-agent wife by columnist Bob Novak, the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate the outing, the jailing of Times reporter Judith Miller as part of that investigation, and now, reports say, a raft of imminent indictments that could shatter the Bush administration.

Not only does the article provide some insight into Wilson’s role in carrying the mantle against Bush’s violations of power, but it also provides a good summary (above) of the bigger story to Plamegate: the White House lied about its reasons for going to war is now paying the price.  Too bad over 102,000 Iraqis and Americans had to pay with their lives, but at least some justice may be coming for those most repsonsible.

Cross posted: Political Porn

The real story of Plamegate is told in these 3 paragraphs from a hard-hitting Knight Ridder story:

CIA officer Valerie Plame was outed in an apparent attempt to discredit her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, after he challenged President Bush’s allegation in his 2003 State of the Union speech that Iraq had tried to buy uranium for nuclear weapons from the African nation of Niger.

A Knight Ridder review of the administration’s arguments, its own reporting at the time and the Senate Intelligence Committee’s 2004 report shows that the White House followed a pattern of using questionable intelligence, even documents that turned out to be forgeries, to support its case – often leaking classified information to receptive journalists – and dismissing information that undermined the case for war.

The State of the Union speech was one of a number of instances in which Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and their aides ignored the qualms of intelligence professionals and instead relied on the claims of Iraqi defectors and other suspect sources or, in the case of Niger, the crudely forged documents.

Extremists of all sorts feed off of each other.  The extremists in the US now have more reason to to call for another war in the Middle East.

The President of Iran has, according the UK’s Independent, “stirred up a diplomatic storm and risked further isolating his country by saying that Israel should be ‘wiped off the map.”

First, when a nuclear power (or a country that wants to be one) says “off the map” we should worry.  Nuclear powers must be mature and grown up enought to not say such things.  Since we know that Isreal is a nuclear power, it’s a dangerous thing when Heads of State talk of wiping out nearby countries.

It was not long ago that the US was abuzz about Bush’s plans to invade Iran.  Indeed, Hersch said that were already conducting operations in Iran.  With the hardliners on both sides keeping tensions high, the world is a less stable place.  An invasion of Iran is now a more possible thing.

I wonder if Bush’s domestic crisis is contributing to this kind of rhetoric from Iran.  Bush is weak, and so too is the US.  We failed in Iraq, and Bush got caught lying to the world for his invasion.  He’s now as weak as ever, which may make other leaders think it’s a good time to flex a bit.

But with Bush, this is a bad idea.  He’s a weak-bully, the kind of person who attacks as much out of weakness as out of strength.  Challenge his narrow worldview, and he will choose to self-distruct rather than accept defeat.

We should be worried about anything that contributes to the Middle East heating up.  And we should look towards ourselves for some of the reasons why.  Since we’ve now got a colony smack in the middle of the region, like it or not, what goes on there involves us.

Cross posted: Political Porn