Meet your new thread, same as the old thread.

[SlaveNoMore]

Gattigap
Yet here that approach can have consequences.

WaPo

• Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) said he plans to propose next week, as part of a spending bill for executive operations, a measure to place a hold on funds for Cheney's office and official home until he clarifies to which branch of the government he belongs. Emanuel acknowledged that the proposal is just a stunt, but he said that if Cheney is not part of the executive branch, he should not receive its funds. "As we say in Chicago, follow the money," he said.

Cheap political theater? Absolutely. But it's great. Suck it, Cheney.

Gattigap

ETA: Why is it great? Because, among other things, Cheney's going completely nuts with this secrecy stuff.

• Stealth is among Cheney's most effective tools. Man-size Mosler safes, used elsewhere in government for classified secrets, store the workaday business of the office of the vice president. Even talking points for reporters are sometimes stamped "Treated As: Top Secret/SCI." Experts in and out of government said Cheney's office appears to have invented that designation, which alludes to "sensitive compartmented information," the most closely guarded category of government secrets. By adding the words "treated as," they said, Cheney seeks to protect unclassified work as though its disclosure would cause "exceptionally grave damage to national security."
  
  A document from the Office of the Vice President is stamped "Treated as Secret/SCI" Across the board, the vice president's office goes to unusual lengths to avoid transparency. Cheney declines to disclose the names or even the size of his staff, generally releases no public calendar and ordered the Secret Service to destroy his visitor logs. His general counsel has asserted that "the vice presidency is a unique office that is neither a part of the executive branch nor a part of the legislative branch," and is therefore exempt from rules governing either. Cheney is refusing to observe an executive order on the handling of national security secrets, and he proposed to abolish a federal office that insisted on auditing his compliance.

So suck it again, Cheney.

Gattigap

Dissent.

Cheney is about the only clear thinker in this administration of ne'er-do-wells, and I wish for godssakes you guys would come through on this Bush impeachment promise.

[Diane_Keaton]

Originally posted by taxwonk
Even if you do prefer the Sig to a Glock Model 19.

I would go with the Glock if it was strapped to a hot guy. In the spirit of bipartisanship, of course.

Within limits of course.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Given that John Edwards' hair has gotten so much more attention than Rudy Giuliani's skipping of Iraq Study Group meetings, and that there's been no attention to the fact that Giuliani has no Iraq policy and ducks questions on the subject, one might start to wonder whether he'll get any critical media attention. One test will be whether this story, which I didn't know about five minutes ago, gets any play.



Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic

Bernie Kerik was a canary in a coal mine. If Hillary did something like this, you'd have to go to Mongolia to miss the story, but will Rudy skate?

Rudy isn't skating. There's just so much else salacious about Rudy that this little tidbit doesn't reach the top of the pile. Rudy's in shit up to his eyeballs. They're going to jump all over him with this and much more at the right time.

Now is not the right time. Hillary's got it all planned out. Just you watch.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by ltl/fb
We understand it, and we are smart enough to know it doesn't play well in the press. Or, that if you have two things you are up against, and you can get out of one only if A is true, and you can get out of the other only if Not A is true, then perhaps either A or Not A will be res judicata, or whatever that's called?

But mostly, it's the disgust that people have when someone tries to pull this shit that I think, historically, will be dispositive.

History won't be treated badly or kindly by history because history is based on records. He leaves nothing but myth and conjecture about whether he had his hand inside Bush's back like Senor Wences.

Bush takes the fall. Dick's no fool. The mess gets chalked up to Bush's inexperience and lack of talent instead of what it was - Cheney's and Wolfowitz's and the rest of the meocons' huge gamble.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Which meme? The skipping-the-ISG-meetings-to-cash-in meme or the harboring-child-molesters meme?



How would he know? He blew off all the meetings? 'Cause he's that serious about fighting terrorism.

Just to be clear -- I would like Rudy's politics if he weren't such an authoritarian jackass. Any animus I have for him is personal, not political.

When was the last time you were at a meeting where anything was accomplished? Now consider - this is a meeting of wonks and political hacks. You're really shredding him for taking the "gimme and executive memo" route on this? Or are you seriously of the belief that what was said at these things is something Rudy could not glean from other channels or did not know already? To accept your criticism on this I have to eat a lot of assumptions. I'll put your point in the "Unproven/Unable to Be Proven" bracket.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
The Rs have always been deeply conflicted about the first amendment - there are the Sebby's, unreservedly committed to free speech, and then there are the Hanks, the Bushes, and the Falwells of the world.

I'm not an R. I've just voted that way for money reasons.

[LessinSF]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Cheney is about the only clear thinker in this administration of ne'er-do-wells. . ..

He may be one of the brightest, but: (1) he (and the other neocons) has been proven wrong so many times and so often that I cannot but think that his intelligence was somewhere hijacked and subjugated to his ideology; (2) and this most recent position vis-a-vis his office demonstrates that he has lost it - at this point, he would shoot Alito with birdshot if and when he rules that the VP's office is somehow (I know it is a reach) governed by the rules that govern every other fucking office in the West Wing.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
I'm not an R. I've just voted that way for money reasons.

Money 1, Principles 0. Got it.

[Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Money 1, Principles 0. Got it.

Preserving wealth isn't a principle?

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
Preserving wealth isn't a principle?

Make that Money 2, Principles 0.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Make that Money 2, Principles 0.

But if you have lot of money, you can buy really good principles.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
Money 1, Principles 0. Got it.

Did I ever hide that? When it comes to government, it's picking one lying scumbag over another, both owned by the same interests. It's illogical to do anything but take the best $$$ option. I am principled, but in politics, there are no principles or principled choices. I'd love to elect Ron Paul. It isn't happening.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
But if you have lot of money, you can buy really good principles.

As the limousine liberals of the Democratic Party show with glaring examples daily.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by LessinSF
He may be one of the brightest, but: . . . (2) and this most recent position vis-a-vis his office demonstrates that he has lost it - at this point, he would shoot Alito with birdshot if and when he rules that the VP's office is somehow (I know it is a reach) governed by the rules that govern every other fucking office in the West Wing.

I don't know about that. You seem to be presuming he believes the argument and considers it a winner. I'd tend to think he was looking for positions that are at least facially legally defensible, because any dispute (even when it finally went public) would likely not get resolved until after he was out of office. So, he will have succeeded in his principal goal -- historical secrecy as to what HE did -- even though future VP's go back to normal procedures.

S_A_M

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by sebastian_dangerfield
As the limousine liberals of the Democratic Party show with glaring examples daily.

How did I get stuck being a Taurus liberal?