Oops.

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Fitzgerald announced that his investigation is continuing before a new Grand Jury. Apparently Mr. Woodward's testimony gave him food for thought.

Turdblossom is not yet in the clear, and we may yet find the truth before that good Republican, OJ Simpson, finds Nicole's real killer.

S_A_M

The point is settled
 

You know how you keep saying stuff is a fact or proven, then when pressed you link a blog?

Should we dismiss you as a liar lacking credibility?

The point is settled
 

Hmm. If I say "yes," then I win, right? And yet I think there's a trick somewhere . . . . .

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Pincus is going down.

(As you read this, keep in mind that this is the PB, not the FB.)

To end the weak.
 

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What you said was if a Republican lied under oath, his party would force him to resign. They lied under oath.

You can backpedal all you want, but your post speaks for itself and it was bullshit.

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Like Clinotn was acquited, right? Right Hank?

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Do you really believed he lied? I don't think you or any of the pols really believe that. And that is what is so infuriating about this whole thing. It is completely undermining our efforts in Iraq and around the world.

I have no problem with an honest policy debate - i.e., should we stay or should we go and if so, when. But the Dems and some GOPs are conflating the question of whether we should have gone in the first place with should we be there now. They are clearly two different questions and the ramifications of not distinguishing between the two, IMO, will be ugly.

Interesting
 

This may not be an issue in Alaska, but congressmen, as opposed to senators, do care just where in the state the funds are spent.

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This is what I said:

If a Republican had lied under oath, especially in the way Clinton did the Republicans would have forced him to resign. Just the same way Livingston was forced to resign. If Bush I had done what Clinton did he would have had no Republican support.

I can't believe you made me look that up. And yes if a Republican president lied under oath on tape in front of a federal judge he or she would be toast.

In addition, if a Republican president got caught having an affair in office and lied about they would also probably be toast.

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I believe that Cheney decided to attack Iraq and Bush followed his lead. I think that they took some incredible liberties with the intelligence data. Whether they engaged in deliberate misrepresentation or read the gaps in the data in a way that served their desired outcome, I don't know.

I know for a fact that the Administration presented the sketchy knowledge they had to the public as being far more definitive and certain than it was. Is that dishonest? Yes, clearly. Is it lying? Minds could differ.

However, my comment was directed to Hank, who suggested that the fact that Fitzgerald didn't indict Scooter and Turd Blossom for knowingly outing a covert CIA operative means that they did nothing wrong. Implied in Hank's post was the dismissaal of their lying to a grand jury as unimportant, or just a technicality.

My reply just pointed out a parallel with Bill Clinton. He wasn't charged with any real crime, other than lying under oath. And the Senate acquitted him of that charge.

All that aside for the moment, what really offends me is the notion that a criticism of the Bush Administration is somehow unpatriotic, and that the exercise of my First Amendment rights is undermining America.

I submit that Cheney, Bush, and Karl Rove, in adopting an "our President, right or wrong" attitude are what undermines American effectiveness and credibility. The existence of secret prisons undermines our global effectiveness and credibility.

And what's more, in the present circumstances, the Republican majority in the House, with their one-sentence resolution, is trying to destroy the ability of the House to honestly debate whether or not we should remain in Iraq, as proposed by Rep. Murtha. That's what is undermining Congress's credibility at home and undermining our ability to determine the proper course of action.

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As Mark Schmitt said in the thing I linked to, asking the question about whether he lied misses the larger point. They made up their mind about what to do, and then cherry-picked facts and evidence to support it. If they lied, it was because they went too far in selling what was a shaky case. But the more fundamental problem was not the misrepresentation -- it's that these clowns settled on an Iraq policy, and a war, without caring about the actual facts. Yielding the mess we have now.

I agree completely. I obviously think it was a mistake to go in, but now that we are there, we need to figure out how best to handle the situation, and I am not convinced -- yet -- that this means withdrawal. OTOH, it's clear that the presence of our troops is aggravating some problems, and the Iraqis may not get as serious about solving their security problems as long as we are there to keep shooting at the insurgents. (The same people who love to talk about the disincentives created by welfare seem to have a very hard time understanding this.)

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i'm just quoting this to preserve it. I think once you sober up, you'll realize it is hateful to several groups of people, and probably the dumbest thing you've posted to boot.

I know if I didn't quote it, you'd have edited it out once you come down.

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There is no doubt whether he lied misses any relevent point at all. It is just something Dems like to focus on to so they can complain when it is completely irrelevent. What makes it even more pathetic is that it is not even true that he did lie.

Whatever was done before the war does not change the fact of where we are. It is a sunk cost and only morons and irresponsible people focus on why we got in the first place. The point is we are there and what is the next step. That is the discussion for adults. To focus on this other stuff does no one any good.


We do not need to figure anything out. For better or for worse the Bush administration is in charge. The only thing the loyal? opposition needs to worry about is are there actions helping or making the situation worse.

At this point I don't hear much of anything come out of any Democrats mouth in Washington that is helping the situation.

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I think it's clear that they wanted to go in pre-9/11, but for the same reasons they proferred post. I believe they honestly believed Saddam was a real threat and needed to be deposed. 9/11 gave them all the momentum they needed to carry it out. But I really can't blame Bush. Per the Woodward book, he was being told by his minions that it was a "slam dunk." Hearing that type of evidence, it would have been gross mismanagement not to do something.

I agree about the incentives, but that has to be weighed against actual readiness. Pulling out completely would be a catostrophic mistake. Drawing down may give the incentives needed.

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Real threat to whom? The suggestion that Hussein was a threat to us was always a joke.

And Tenet clearly told Bush what he wanted to hear. Part of leadership is figuring out how not to make sure that you're not just hearing what you want to hear.

And per the Woodward book, Bush's people were also telling him that they'd been looking for years and had never found any WMD. That he chose to believe Tenet, and not Franks (?), is at the heart of the problem.

Yes.

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when I read spank kicking Ty's butt like this i remember when I signed my son's team up for a b-ball league that was too weak. I thought it would be challenging, but our guys just kicked ass every game by bunches. In the end it made them weaker because they got used to winning without having to work hard. They thought wins were easy to come by.

Anyway, when i see spank dismember Ty I think of that. can't you guys find someone who can at least give Spank a challenge? Maybe you can hire Carville to show up occassionally, I bet he;s available nowadays.

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You wouldn't call Murtha a coward, but you wouldn't waste anytime trying to understand what he was saying, either.

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Just for the moment, assume with me that he did lie. If so, why is it that you think Clinton should have been prosecuted for lying under oath, but that Bush's lies -- albeit not under oath -- are just water under the bridge? Do you just assume that our leaders lie all the time, except when they're under oath? If so, that's pretty pathetic.

If the war was a screaming success right now -- I know that's hard to imagine, but try -- I don't think you'd be saying, so Bush won the war, big deal; he still needs to make the case for the rest of his program on its own merits.

If the only question on the table is, what do we do with the Iraq mess, maybe so. But we live in a democracy, and that's not the only question on the table.

Please think about the role of the opposition in a democracy. If need be, read Chuck Hagel's most recent speech. (He strikes me as your kind of guy.)

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Huh?

You say we shouldn't just leave. Aren't you disagreeing with him?

And guess what. the fact that someone served in the military, and with honors, does not make them an expert in political decision making or global strategy.

To put it in terms you might understand- would you let one of your slip and fall plaintiff's decide when a major company should settle a toxic tort claim?

sure he has been in court, but he doesn't see the big picture maybe.

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I'd take Murtha's many credentials about things military over yours.

I don't think we should just pull out, but then neither does he, apparently. He wasn't one of the 3 votes on the resolution yesterday.

I disagree with most of the people who are saying we should just get out because I think they're focusing more on our part of it, and not on where that leaves Iraq. But I have about zero confidence at this point that the administration -- and, in particular, Rumsfeld -- has a viable strategy, or could distinguish one from their own asses.

And since this administration is famously disinclined to listen to what anyone else has to say, including the views of Democrats, career government officials, area experts, or anyone who knows anything, I think it's kind of funny that Spanky thinks everyone else should just go on being quietly ignored. If you put the very best people in charge of the situation there, perhaps something could be salvaged.

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spank seems to be hooked up. What bloggers should he tell Bush to put in charge?

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How about Chuck Hagel, John Warner or John McCain? They're Republican Senators, not bloggers, but they would have a shot at the sort of minimal competence we all should expect.

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Clinton looked straight into the camera and said "I did not have sex with that women". I could care less. Doesn't bother me. There are many things I want out of a president, but being honest, especially when it comes to national security, is not one of them.

What is pathetic is you expect a president to be honest all the time. A president that was obsessed with the truth would be a very bad president, and it shows a shocking lack of sophistication on you part that you don't understand that.

No it is not the only question on the table, but when it comes to the Iraq war, the only question on the table is what should we do now. The fact that the Dems are bringing up other issues about the war shows they are putting their own political agenda above the welfare of the Iraqi people and our soldiers who are in harms way. Their creation of this myth about Bush lying is only helping the enemy.


The problem here is that I have thought about it and you clearly have not put much thought into it. Hopefully my above comments will make you see the error in your thinking.

P.S. When you make statements like this "Please think about the role of the opposition in a demcracy" I hope you are jokeing around, because if not it shows a shocking combination of ignorance and arrogance. If you are trying to make a point: make it. There are many people whose advice I would entertain on what to think about, but it shocks me to think that you would think you are one of those people.

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If you think it was OK for Bush to lie to the country to lead it into war, why not just say so instead of continuing to talk about Clinton? I'm not defending Clinton.

No, it shows that we live in a democracy. Those of you who think that those principles are something to be dragged out every two years on Election Day and otherwise ignored are, thankfully, a minority in this country. Most of us expect our leaders to tell the truth, especially when they are asking young men and women to sacrifice their lives for the rest of us.

You're actually going to have to include some content in your posts if you want them to convey anything.

Spanky, you're more fun to talk to than Hank because you actually bother to include some substance and thinking in some of your posts, but when you get lazy and rest on the condescending attitude, it doesn't work for you.

What do you think congressional Democrats should be saying and doing re the war and Iraq? (Answer as an American citizen, not a Democrat or Republican.)

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Do you know what hypocrit means?

You never have included substance. Unless you mean linking to DU- inspired bloggers is an intellectual call out.

I once engaged with substance- I found no response.

I admit my every PB post is simple DADA, yet they have all the "substance" of yours/ You have no room to omment. the on;y person putting actual substance down is Spank/

You. ain't. substance. My daughter has a more thoughtful blog than you.

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Link, please.

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sounds fair. But first i need you all to pm me your real names and homes so i can check the Meagan's law list.

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First, I dispute your main point - that we have a "mess" now. We have free elections in Iraq, we have plastic shredders shredding plastic, and we have the beginnings of a move towards democracy and, hopefully (and in my mind, likely) more stability in the entire region. That would be invaluable all by itself. Remember Bush telling us, pre-invasion, that this was going to be a long, costly, drawn-out process? I do - explicitly. Remember how many times various anti-wariots called it a quagmire? I can't - too many. Yes, the mad killers are still bombing in defense of their fucked-up service to some hallucination of gawd or ala or whatever, but, given their record world-wide in the last several years, why would you assume they wouldn't simply be jihading all over the globe anyway? I'd rather see them wiped out in one area, as it makes for more efficient disposal.

Second, what you just described is what everyone does to get their way in our system. Look at the numbers put out by the R's and the D's to support anything - take SS privitization, for example. Both sides put out numbers that were, at best, fanciful. Both sides chose to present those facts that best supported their desires, and ignore the ones that militated against them. Did Bush do just such a selling job in service to what he wanted to do in Iraq? Yep. Didn't the anti-warites do their own version of the anti-sell at that same time? Yep. Remember the vote after the dust settled? We're in Iraq. Want real lies? Look at "the new hawk" Murtha, and the coordinated response by the D's calling him just that. That's not even spin - that's outright lying. Geez, for an honorless cohort to call another cohort honorless is just so much fun to watch.

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When you brother was on the roof, did you think that pulling down the ladder would make him taller?

more funneze
 

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By this metaphor, getting the Iraqis to take over the counter-insurgency has always been a pipe dream.

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We can talk about elections, but we indisputably have less stability in Iraq and in the region. Iraq's borders and existence are in question now.

If everyone had known this was how things would look, there would have been very little support for an invasion.

Maybe it will still come to a decent outcome, but I doubt it. I guess I'm being conservative instead of hopeful.

Bush put out fanciful "facts" when he did his selling job of the war. But it's OK because everyone does it. Got it. I'm appalled, but I've got it. Me, I prefer my democracy somewhat more Madisonian, but I guess I'm just old-skool that way.

If I ever change my mind, you can tell me where to get my "Bush Lied -- So What?" bumpersticker.

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Correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds a lot like you just agreed with a lot of what I posted,

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Roosevelt saying he would do whatever he could to keep us out of war. Nixon saying he had a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam. All this stuff I don't care about. I don't care about a president lying to get us into a war, I just care whether the war is a good idea.



I am sorry but I think that is really naive. When it comes to national security President have to play games and tell lies. If they do not then they aren't good statesment. Luckily, I can't think of a single president since 1932 that has been honest with the American public about national security.



If you are going to fight a war, then fight to win. We need to send more troops.

Once we have made a decision to go in we have to take responsibility for it. We need to spend more money fixing the countrys infrastructure.

The future well being of Iraq is not worth a single american life.

We should pull out now even though that will hurt the Iraqi people. Strategically we have no interest in Iraq. Foreign policy can not be based on altruism.

Is this true: Ann Coulter claims.....
 

Ann Coulter claims that:

"As noted here previously, George Clooney's movie "Good Night, and Good Luck," about pious parson Edward R. Murrow and Sen. Joseph McCarthy, failed to produce one person unjustly accused by McCarthy. Since I described McCarthy as a great American patriot defamed by liberals in my 2003 book, "Treason," liberals have had two more years to produce a person — just one person — falsely accused by McCarthy. They still can't do it."

There has to be someone. Isn't there?

Liberals and Dems take note.......
 

This is how you critisize the Republican party............


Grand Old Spenders

The storm-tossed and rudderless Republican Party should particularly ponder the vote last week in Dover, Pa., where all eight members of the school board seeking reelection were defeated. This expressed the community's wholesome exasperation with the board's campaign to insinuate religion, in the guise of "intelligent design" theory, into high school biology classes, beginning with a required proclamation that evolution "is not a fact."


But it is. And President Bush's straddle on that subject — "both sides" should be taught — although intended to be anodyne, probably was inflammatory, emboldening social conservatives. Dover's insurrection occurred as Kansas's Board of Education, which is controlled by the kind of conservatives who make conservatism repulsive to temperate people, voted 6 to 4 to redefine science. The board, opening the way for teaching the supernatural, deleted from the definition of science these words: "a search for natural explanations of observable phenomena."


"It does me no injury," said Thomas Jefferson, "for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." But it is injurious, and unneighborly, when zealots try to compel public education to infuse theism into scientific education. The conservative coalition, which is coming unglued for many reasons, will rapidly disintegrate if limited-government conservatives become convinced that social conservatives are unwilling to concentrate their character-building and soul-saving energies on the private institutions that mediate between individuals and government, and instead try to conscript government into sectarian crusades.


But, then, the limited-government impulse is a spent force in a Republican Party that cannot muster congressional majorities to cut the growth of Medicaid from 7.3 to 7 percent next year. That "cut" was too draconian for some Republican "moderates." But, then, most Republicans are moderates as that term is used by persons for whom it is an encomium: Moderates are people amiably untroubled by Washington's single-minded devotion to rent-seeking — to bending government for the advantage of private factions.


Conservatives have won seven of 10 presidential elections, yet government waxes, with per-household federal spending more than $22,000 per year, the highest in inflation-adjusted terms since World War II. Federal spending — including a 100 percent increase in education spending since 2001 — has grown twice as fast under President Bush as under President Bill Clinton, 65 percent of it unrelated to national security.


In 1991, the 546 pork projects in the 13 appropriation bills cost $3.1 billion. In 2005, the 13,997 pork projects cost $27.3 billion, for things such as improving the National Packard Museum in Warren, Ohio (Packard, an automobile brand, died in 1958).


Washington subsidizes the cost of water to encourage farmers to produce surpluses that trigger a gusher of government spending to support prices. It is almost comforting that $2 billion is spent each year paying farmers not to produce. Farm subsidies, most of which go to agribusinesses and affluent farmers, are just part of the $60 billion in corporate welfare that dwarfs the $29 billion budget of the Department of Homeland Security.


Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation reports that Congress responded to the Korean War by setting priorities, cutting one-fourth of all non-war spending in one year . Recently the House failed to approve an unusually ambitious effort to cut government growth . This is today's ambitiousness: attempting — probably unsuccessfully — to cut government growth by $54 billion over five years.


That is $10.8 billion a year from five budgets projected to total $12.5 trillion, of which $54 billion is four-tenths of 1 percent. War is hell, but on the home front it is indistinguishable from peace, except that the government is more undisciplined than ever.


Gerard Alexander of the University of Virginia wonders whether conservatives' cohesion is perishing because it was a product of the period when conservatives were insurgents against dominant liberals. About limited-government conservatism, he says:


"Perhaps conservatives were naive to expect any party, ever, to resist rent-seeking temptations when in power. Just as there always was something fatally unserious about socialism — its flawed understanding of human nature — is it possible that there has also been something profoundly unserious about the limited-government agenda? Should we now be prepared for the national electoral wing of the conservative movement — the House and Senate caucuses and executive branch officials — to identify with legislation like the pork-laden energy and transportation bills, in the same way that liberals came to ground their identities in programs like Social Security?"


Perhaps. But if so, limited-government conservatives will dissociate from a Republican Party more congenial to overreaching social conservatives. Then those Republican congressional caucuses will be smaller, and Republican control of the executive branch will be rarer.

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Iran-Contra suggests otherwise.

Is this true: Ann Coulter claims.....
 

How about Fred Fisher, the Hale & Dorr lawyer who was accused by McCarthy of being a communist because he volunteered for the National Lawyers Guild? (This accusation is what led Joseph Welch to say "have you no sense of shame?" to McCarthy during the Army hearings.)

Spanky, I suggest that you read a book by famed trial lawyer Louis Nizer called "The Jury Returns." He represented a radio entertainer named John Henry Faulk whose career was destroyed when an anti-communist pressure group succeeded in getting his sponsors to drop him and CBS to fire him. http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/.../FF/ffa36.html