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Archives for April 2006

The Draft

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Arguably the most important weekend for football fans savethe Superbowl, the draft was this weekend. While my gut instinct is to draft linmen in rounds 1-3, no mater what, the Steeelrs always draft the best player possible. It seems this time, they decided to make some bold moves and took Santonio Holmes. My only concern about him is hish height, as I like having big targets, but it sure looks like this guy is the real deal.

The Steelers also picked up Anthony Smith and Willie Reid. That means two things:

1.) I will spend the next two years accidentally calling people Santhony or Antonio.
2.) We will b e drafting linemen today.

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Hookergate Heats Up

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Overnight we have learned quite a lot more about the “hospitality suites” that defense contractor MZM, Inc. maintained for Randy “Duke” Cunningham and an unknown number of other libidinous lawmakers.

First, via Josh Marshall’s new muckraking operation it appears that Mitchell Wade operated his sex ring for over 15 years. That stretches back into the Democratic Congressional era so no doubt the list of people who will soon have a serious chat with their wives (and their lawyers) includes lawmakers from both parties.

Several of Wilkes’ former employees and business associates say he used the hospitality suites over the past 15 years to curry favor with lawmakers as well as officials with the CIA, where both Wilkes and Wade sought contracts.

Wilkes hosted parties for lawmakers and periodic poker games that included CIA officials as well as members of the House Appropriations and Intelligence committees. Cunningham, who sat on both committees, was a frequent guest, according to some of the participants in the poker games.

Next, CIA Chief Porter Goss may have some explaining to do:

I’ve learned from a highly-connected source that those under intense scrutiny by the FBI are current and former lawmakers on Defense and Intelligence comittees — including one person who now holds a powerful intelligence post. [emphasis added]

Porter Goss inexplicably chose Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, a close friend and business associate of MZM’s Brent Wilkes, as his #3 man in CIA with a porfolio including appropriations. That seems like quite a boon for a firm whose niche consisted of inappropriately influencing lawmakers towards awarding it black defense- and intelligence-related contracts. Where did Goss meet Foggo? The shortest path between the two passes through MZM’s Watergate bacchanialiae.

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“It’s Just a Flesh Wound…”

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Looks like the Discovery Institute fools are still at it:

The Discovery Institute is finding some good in the December ruling by a federal judge that intelligent design could not be taught in a Pennsylvania school district.

“The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) sued to keep a few students in Pennsylvania from hearing about intelligent design, and as a result, they made sure everyone in the world heard about it,” said Stephen Meyer, director of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, which produces studies and reports about intelligent design.

Publicity wasn’t the only benefit of U.S. District Judge John Jones’ ruling. The decision five months ago is helping this Seattle think tank refine the way it promotes intelligent design as a challenge to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Bruce Chapman, founder of the institute which is the country’s primary supporter of intelligent design, said Jones’ ruling, which equated intelligent design with biblically based creationism, has been misread.

“We have problems on both sides,” he said. “There is no doubt that many conservative and liberals alike – if they have not studied the matter – mix up the science issue with religion.”

Putting aside the fact that if ANYONE is trying to mix religion and science, it is the folks pushing a view that an ‘intelligent designer’ created everything, I find it personally amusing that they consider this a PR ‘win.’ This Seattle Times piece shows a much more chagrined Chapman:

“Dover is a disaster in a sense, as a public-relations matter,” said Bruce Chapman, a former Seattle city councilman and founder of the Discovery Institute, the country’s primary supporter of intelligent design. “It has given a rhetorical weapon to the Darwinists to say a judge has settled this,” he said.

It ain’t over till it’s over, right, Bruce? This also startled me:

Leading conservative commentators — including talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh and syndicated columnist Cal Thomas — say the judge’s decision shows that intelligent design is a failed strategy in the effort to bring religion into the public schools.

“Let’s make no mistake,” Limbaugh said on his radio show. “The people pushing intelligent design believe in the biblical version of creation. Intelligent design is a way, I think, to sneak it into the curriculum and make it less offensive to the liberals.”

Rush Limbaugh, making sense.

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Bush on Immigration

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This is an interesting nugget:

President Bush generally favors plans to give millions of illegal immigrants a chance at U.S. citizenship without leaving the country, but does not want to be more publicly supportive because of opposition among conservative House Republicans, according to senators who attended a recent White House meeting.

Several officials familiar with the meeting also said Democrats protested radio commercials that blamed them for Republican-written legislation that passed the House and would make illegal immigrants vulnerable to felony charges.

When this administration is finally over, and historians look back, it will be interesting to look at Bush’s writings and find out what he actually belived in, and what he just went along with out of pure political calculus. I have never thought of Bush as a hater, racist, gay-basher, etc., and it will probably turn out that my instincts are correct. I am also not naive enough to think that this is the first President to ever allow political considerations to sway his behavior. It just seems that with Bush, that seems to be the case a helluva lot more than I would like.

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Illicit Sex

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Some of you may feel disappointed that scandals in the modern Republican era have mostly involved corrupting the levers of government for profit and partisan gain. Where’s the sex? You almost miss the days when reputable papers ran red with tales of Bill Clinton, Bob Packwood and Newt Gingrich crossing swords. Ken Starr’s angry 500-page coda practically came with a brown paper wrapper. There’s something cold about a party that transgresses for profit/partisan gain, and never for sex.

It appears that Randy “Duke” Cunningham, the most awe-inspiringly corrupt politician in recent memory, and his equally-audacious defense-contracting partner-in-crime Mitchell Wade have ended our long, sad drought of illicit government sex. From today’s WSJ:

Federal prosecutors are investigating whether two contractors implicated in the bribery of former Rep. Randall “Duke” Cunningham supplied him with prostitutes and free use of a limousine and hotel suites, pursuing evidence that could broaden their long-running inquiry.

Besides scrutinizing the prostitution scheme for evidence that might implicate contractor Brent Wilkes, investigators are focusing on whether any other members of Congress, or their staffs, may also have used the same free services, though it isn’t clear whether investigators have turned up anything to implicate others.

…Meanwhile, prosecutors are looking at whether they can make corruption cases against other lawmakers based on Mr. Wilkes’s campaign contributions to them. But lawyers expert in campaign-finance and criminal law say such cases are far more difficult to prove than those involving outright bribery. The government must show a direct “quid pro quo” that a lawmaker has taken action on a particular bill solely because of a campaign contribution.

Proof of the prostitution scheme, on the other hand, could provide potentially damaging evidence that Mr. Wilkes had taken illegal steps in exchange for legislative favors, people involved in the investigation said.

I doubt that MZM, Inc. kept an entire suite of “hospitality rooms” at the Watergate Hotel exclusively for Duke Cunningham. If this story breaks further somebody will have some ‘splaining to do to their “family values” constituency.

BTW, of course it had to be the Watergate.

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We Have To Stop Meeting Like This

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Patrick Fitzgerald will meet today with his grand jury investigating the Plame story, and he is bringing a friend:

WASHINGTON – Top White House aide Karl Rove arrived at the federal courthouse Wednesday for his fifth grand jury appearance in the Valerie Plame affair.

…Earlier Wednesday, Rove consulted with his private lawyers in preparation of his afternoon grand jry appearance. People familiar with the case, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because of grand jury secrecy, said Rove was to answer questions about evidence that has emerged since his last grand jury appearance last fall.

That new evidence includes information that Rove’s attorney had conversations with Time magazine reporter Viveca Novak during a critical time in the case.

Months before Rove acknowledged speaking to Cooper about the CIA status of Plame, Novak told Rove’s lawyer the White House aide might have disclosed Plame’s CIA work to Cooper.

Fitzgerald has told Rove’s legal team recently that he has not made any decision on whether to charge the presidential aide and Rove hasn’t received a target notification that would indicate he is likely to be indicted, the people said.

His grand jury appearance comes a week after Rove, the architect of Bush’s election victories, gave up his policy duties at the White House as part of an administration remake to return him to a fulltime focus on politics.

Consensus opinion at the moment holds that Rove gave up his policy portfolio so that he would be a step or two away from the oval office when feds come to take him away, but that is only because I have not read many reactions from the right. Tom Maguire will doubtlessly weigh in soon about how this helps the White House.

In general I refuse to get very excited about the Plame story because anybody who does eventually go down will spend a year and a half appealing the verdict and then walk off with a presidential pardon. In the following ten or twelve years Lewis Libby and whomever else will collect ideological welfare checks from some partisan thinktank, and then when a suitable number of news cycles have come and gone they will find a happy home Elliot AbrahamsAbrams-style in some future administration. Being disgraced is not much of an impediment for people who do not feel shame.

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Tony’s New Job

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Bush announced that Tony Snow will be his new press secretary:

President Bush announced his new White House press secretary on Wednesday: former Fox News host Tony Snow.

“As a professional journalist, Tony Snow understands the importance of the relationship between government and those whose job it is to cover the government,” Bush said during a White House appearance.

Snow replaces Scott McClellan, who announced last week he would step down during a West Wing makeover by Josh Bolten, the new White House chief of staff.

Snow, 50, was a weekend news anchor and political analyst for the Fox News Channel, which he joined in 1996. He also hosted “The Tony Snow Show” on Fox News Radio.

Some quick thoughts:

1.) I have no idea what would motivate ANYONE to be the WH press secretary for ANY administration.

2.) Why anyone would want to be the press secretary for THIS administration makes even less sense.

3.) I would have chosen someone who was not affiliated with Fox news, for the obvious reasons.

4.) I haven’t seen anyone do it yet, but I am sure by this time next week I will be ready to slug people who use the phrase ‘snow job’ and think they are being clever.

That having been said, Tony Snow didn’t seem like a crazy person on the news shows I have seen him do, but I have heard him be occassionally hacktacular on his own show. I guess we will find out and see which Tony Snow we get.

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Open Thread

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Guys, please bear with me. I am just swamped trying to get things done, and I am having major problems with one of my projects- leading to about 80 students who can not view their final exams yet. A disaster, in other words.

I will be back, I swear. I hate finals.

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Lateral Move

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White House flack to become White House flack. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

Bush will not salvage his presidency by firing his press secretary, not unless the Defense Secretary, the Secretary of Homeland Security and probably the Vice President follow McClellan out the door, but it will not hurt to bring on a press secretary who has enough art to make bullshit taste like something other than dirt and fermented hay.

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Your Hate Magnet Du Jour

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Congratulations to Mary McCarthy, this week’s rightwing hate magnet. Whether or not she committed a crime remains to be seen, but you can practically smell the flopsweat as the rightwing blogosphere dances chanting around her burning effigy in an effort to drive away unpleasant visions of a fading party and a presidency sunk beyond repair.

Don’t get me wrong, McCarthy appears to have committed a breach of some sort (although she now denies it, see link at bottom) and will likely face more retribution for her actions than simply losing her job. That is fine with me, as far as I am concerned anybody who breaks the law should be ready to go to jail. If you broke the law for what you see as a good reason, fine, go to jail and feel good about it. Movement-wise jail did no harm to Martin Luther King or Ghandi. It is also fine with me if rightwingers want to spin elaborate theories in which every one of their hated enemies will get sucked into a web of conspiracy and go down en masse. Good luck with that guys, I’m sure that those Wilson indictments are just around the corner.

Apparently among other crimes McCarthy gave money to the Democratic party. Score one for the Partisan Activist smear. By the same logic convicted spy Larry Franklin must damn the entire neoconservative circle in which he ran, correct? The Wolfowitzes and Perles who feted Franklin and treated him like a cherished pal must answer for their questionable connections. Hearings, I say, we need hearings! Or not. You see, Larry Franklin was a Republican so what he did was ok, and even if it somehow hurt America it certainly does not say anything bad about Republicans even though he was tightly knit into their leading circle. Just one low-ranking bad apple. It makes no sense to exonerate Franklin’s friends and indict McCarthy’s, but good luck telling that to someone when they have a good simmering hate on.

Another logical pretzel holds that America does not really disappear foreign suspects into gulag-style prisons that operate outside any sort of legal oversight, but McCarthy damaged American security by making people think that we do. Huh? If you want to hang her for treason, as some commenters and a particularly frothy emailer clearly do, then you have to figure that she damaged actual operations. You can’t have it both ways.

Anyhow the NYT story casting doubt on the prisons story comes to no conclusion for or against – the official claiming to have found no incontrovertible proof has hardly claimed that they do not exist, and his opinion appears far from unanimous among commissioners. Eventually the truth will out and somebody will be proven wrong, but the facts remain too unclear to justify the joyous dancing that the article engendered.

***

Other points on the same subject:

Note the sadly unsurprising way that the president has set about to clean up the intelligence service:

The White House also has recently barraged the agency with questions about the political affiliations of some of its senior intelligence officers, according to intelligence officials.

That’s right folks, the real problem with intelligence is that it is not partisan enough. I suppose that with Iran we won’t have those pesky dissenters getting in the way of a unanimous threat assessment they way they did with Iraq.

Finally, this will undoubtedly provide more meat for the partisan frothing. Rand Beers indeed.

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Our Leadership In A Nutshell

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If you missed 60 Minutes this weekend rest assured that they remain the same nest of anti-American terrorist-lovers, or whatever we call people with the temerity to criticize the president. An extended interview with Tyler Drumheller, a 26-year veteran of the agency and former director of European operations, uncovered at least two extremely interesting bits of information.

First, the most important prewar intelligence coup that you never heard about:

[T]he CIA had made a major intelligence breakthrough on Iraq’s nuclear program. Naji Sabri, Iraq’s foreign minister, had made a deal to reveal Iraq’s military secrets to the CIA. Drumheller was in charge of the operation.

“This was a very high inner circle of Saddam Hussein. Someone who would know what he was talking about,” Drumheller says.

Talk about credible sources. Did the White House know that we had such a high-placed informant? You bet:

According to Drumheller, CIA Director George Tenet delivered the news about the Iraqi foreign minister at a high-level meeting at the White House, including the president, the vice president and Secretary of State Rice.

At that meeting, Drumheller says, “They were enthusiastic because they said, they were excited that we had a high-level penetration of Iraqis.”

With every level of our administration on tenterhooks, the Iraqi foreign minister delivered his bombshell:

What did this high-level source tell him?

“He told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction program,” says Drumheller.

If you guessed that our leaders’ “enthusiasm” would not survive having their preconceived notions contradicted, congratulations:

“The group that was dealing with preparation for the Iraq war came back and said they’re no longer interested,” Drumheller recalls. “And we said, ‘Well, what about the intel?’ And they said, ‘Well, this isn’t about intel anymore. This is about regime change.'”

“And if I understand you correctly, when the White House learned that you had this source from the inner circle of Saddam Hussein, they were thrilled with that,” Bradley asked.

“The first we heard, they were. Yes,” Drumheller replied.

Once they learned what it was the source had to say — that Saddam Hussein did not have the capability to wage nuclear war or have an active WMD program, Drumheller says, “They stopped being interested in the intelligence.”

Condoleeza Rice responded to the story by insisting that we had “other sources.” That’s right, we had Curveball.

There you have everything that you need to know about our leadership in one tidy anecdote. When they found out that we had turned the best-placed informant imaginable they practically soiled themselves in anticipation, until they heard what he had to say. Then his testimony suddenly seemed less interesting than the latest brain dropping from some serial-fabricating expatriate who couldn’t be bothered to keep his multiple stories straight.

When it came to promoting the Iraq war positive information couldn’t make it to the press fast enough. Pesky concepts like declassification and dissenting analysts just seemed to go up in smoke when pro-war leakmeisters like Judith Miller or your average stenographer at FOX came calling. Somehow negative information like Sabri’s testimony never received the same celebrity treatment.

CNN puts a finer point on it:

CBS said the White House declined to respond to the charge and that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said Sabri was just one source and therefore not reliable.

But Drumheller said it was not unusual for the administration to rely on single-source stories when those stories confirmed what the White House wanted to hear.

He cited a report the CIA received in late 2001 that alleged Iraq had bought 500 tons of uranium-containing compounds from Africa.

“They certainly took information that came from single sources on the yellowcake story and on several other stories with no corroboration at all,” he said.

The second important revelation from Sunday’s interview is that it was a revelation at all. As Josh Marshall points out we have had two major investigations into pre-war intelligence, one hand-picked by the president (the Robb-Silbermann commission) and one run Pat Roberts, whose shameless toadying embarrasses even the right-wing editorial board of the Wichita Eagle. It makes no sense that two separate commissions tasked with investigating prewar Iraq intelligence would both fail to mention America’s single most important intelligence coup from the prewar period. Either the respective chairmen of both commissions are mind-bogglingly stupid, or else the goal of illuminating took a backseat to covering up.

Josh Marshall confirmed that both commissions repeatedly interviewed Drumheller about Sabri, so stupid is not an option.

POSTCSCRIPT – can you guess which dishonest credibility smear Drumheller’s attackers will choose? As always the choices are Partisan Activist, Mentally Imbalanced, Disgruntled Ex-Employee and Promoting a Book.

Hint: he has a book coming out.

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Friday Beer Blogging – They Don’t Make It Like This Anymore

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Some of the enthusiasm for historical brewing comes from the misplaced assumption that what people drank in the days before quality control or geographic competition did not taste like fermented cardboard tinged with nightshade. Some of it did, especially brews made in remote habitations where people had little choice over what to ferment and how. In many other cases modern brewers can only recover a fraction of a long-lost recipe, the written part, and they lose the fine details honed through hundreds of years of continuous experimentation. Naturally in brewing the magic (or the undrinkable medicinal backwash flavor that seemed to come from nowhere) lives in the details. For example absinthe (.PDF, and the host may or may not have scanned it legally). Chicha may or may not fall under that category; the ethnobotanist admitted that he may have made a mistake. To be fair though the stuff that Peruvians enjoy today can itself be a pretty caustic brew. As with anything taste-related your mileage may vary.

Once in a while a brewer rebuilds a recipe that keeps the original magic and goes down easy on a modern palate – Dogfish Head, who make perfectly-good-to-superlative ales when they’re not brewing history, rebuilt an enjoyable ale from pottery scrapings taken from the Phryngian tomb of King Midas himself, dated 700 BC. Thanks to Dogfish head’s hard work you can take a sensual tour of history’s biblical era, or you can just have a pleasant lightish ale with honey notes and a champagne effervescence to go with a pizza. We will see whether Dogfish Head’s next project, an excursion to the very dawn of civilization itself, holds up as well.

It always pleases me to find another member of the exclusive club of historical brewers, particularly someone who approaches it with the enthusiasm and professional spirit of archaeologist Merryn Dineley of Manchester. Wikipedia’s entry on Scottish ales provides a brief but intriguing glimpse into what Dr. Dineley does:

Brewing in Scotland goes back at least 5,000 years. Archeologist Merryn Dinsley, of Manchester University, has suggested that one of the buildings uncovered at Skara Brae could have been a brewery, producing ale from malted spelt, flavoured with meadowsweet in the manner of a Kvass or Gruit made by various North European tribes including the Celts and the Picts. By analysing remains found inside one of the Grooved ware pots, Merryn Dineley was able to reconstruct this beer which she named Grooved Ware Beer.

Grooved Ware Beer (extremely palatable!, according to this writer) gets its name from the unique pottery made by the neolithic inhabitants of the oldest known settlement in the Orkney Isles, a collection of stone huts dating to 3,215 BC and likely built on the foundations of an even earlier settlement.

All but one of the stone huts followed a consistent pattern, with a stone hearth at the center for cooking and heating and cupboards along the wall. The unusual hut which caught Dineley’s eye had a different layout and a number of rocks which had been deformed by repeatedly heating in a fire and then dunking in water, suggesting that the building may have served as some sort of workshop. In fact the heat-treated rocks may not have been the point of a workshop but a byproduct of something else – heating a rock and dropping it in a tub of water seems like an excellent way to boil water if one does not have access to metalware. Dineley analyzed the ‘grunge’ from a drain and found all of the necessary components for a brew made from malted spelt and meadowsweet in the place of hops, an approach for bittering and preserving beer that has persisted in Scotland until modern times.

The Sunday Independent (UK) ran a bit more about Dineley’s work in a piece found here behind a subscription wall but liberally excerpted here:

It tastes like what? Real ale fans in Orkney will take authenticity to its furthest extreme today by supping “stone-age” beer flavoured with dung.

The neolithic ale has been scientifically recreated, complete with original farmyard flavours, after historians discovered what they claim is a 5000-year-old pub and brewery on the islands.

..Merryn Dineley, a historian from Manchester University and chief brewer of the ancient liquor, insists that the dung is an essential component of the original flavour. “It’s quite delicious, actually,” she claims, hoping that visitors to this weekend’s Orkney Science Fair will agree. There’s no escaping the dung [derived from the ancient way of firing pottery], but she has at least removed the deadly nightshade, henbane and hemlock found in the original recipe.

“There’s no doubt these neolithic people were fermenting alcohol from grain,” she said. “In fact I think they were making barley malt for brewing before they thought about grinding up grain for bread.”

The science of history only gains so much from people who read the texts, digest what they find and put their reactions into a book or paper that somebody else will read, digest and respond in writing. Important in their own way are the folks like Merryn Dineley who lay out the stone slabs and re-brew the old recipes in order to find out not only where and when we lived, but how.

cheers!

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