I didn't know wingnuts were so interested in ethics scandals.

Maybe Eddie can turn his attention to similar matters (free registration required) here at home next.

One ticked-off Canadian responds to Eddie's post (Robert at My Blahg):

... But here's what I want to know. How is it that the conservatives can endlessly blather on about the rule of law, but whenever it gets in their way they so easily thrust it aside? There is a publication ban, ordered by a court of law, in place. And just because this pondscum doesn't reside in this country does not mean he has any moral authority to break it. The testimony will become public knowledge so there is simply no reason for the rush. ... [more]

Well, my guess has been that the mantra of American wingnuts is, "Rule of law for thee, not for me."

I will admit that this news was not on my radar. So, for more background on what is being called the "Sponsorship Scandal," here's a few, quick references to get everyone up to speed, sans the American wingnut slant:

Gomery Commission website (Canadian government)
Federal sponsorship scandal (CBC)
Recent news items (Google News, Canada)

I do not intend to step past Canada's publication ban here (other than what Eddie has spouted), since it does not seem to be unreasonable considering, as Robert indicated, the testimony will be made public. I should mention here that I do feel uncomfortable supporting what I see as a limitation on free speech, even though I understand the context and the temporary nature of it.

WMD - One astute finding.

Unfortunately, it didn't come from the recent presidential commission report:

Article on the WMD Commission (Empire Notes):

... Instead of impeachment proceedings for Bush, we saw a very skillful bureaucratic maneuver that killed two birds with one stone -- deflection of attention and also an attack on the CIA, seen as an institutional obstacle to implementation of the Cheney-Rumsfeld-neoconservative foreign policy agenda. The check provided by the CIA is a pragmatic, not a moral one, but if heeded might have kept the administration out of embarrassing adventures like support for the military coup attempt in Venezuela and perhaps even out of the more than two-year-long occupation of Iraq. ... [more]

Deflect attention. Blame others. Sounds like Standard Operating Procedures for this administration. As usual, it raises more questions than it answers:

Intel report could give allies pause (Chicago Sun-Times):

The latest intelligence-failure report to land on President Bush's desk raises serious questions about his policy of preemptive action against potential foes.

How can he order such strikes if he doesn't have solid information? ... [more]

Now there's a good question.

The New York Times offers up one take on the commission:

A Profile in Timidity

Reporting from an undisclosed location...

... it's Dick Cheney!

Wa-a-a-aitaminute... Just where is that "undisclosed location" anyway?

As if this hasn't been done before. Ahh... Cheap thrills are sometimes the best thrills.

South Park Dubya.

Heh. It's funny how a little free time can cause so much mayhem.

"WMD? No... we didn't say that there were WMD in Iraq... uhhhh... well, I didn't say it... The intelligence was flawed, but we thought it was good... uhhhh... what I mean is... fool me onc-- (no, don't go there again)... uhhh... (Oh, I know!)

Social Security is in a crisis... I mean, it's in a problem, but the American people must recognize that I think it's a problem. I have a plan... sorry, no details, but I have a plan to solve the problem. Details? Well... My math is fuzzy... no, wait, uhhh... that was Kerry... (no, he flip-flopped), I mean, that was Gore... uhhh... (damn, this isn't working... must hold more 'conversations' with my supporters).

I want a 'culture of life,' with the death penalty and lawful torture to enforce it. That's it... a 'culture of life.' Those reports from Iraq about malnourished children misses out on the good news... uhhh... We will capture and kill... uhhh... Let freedom reign.

I have to go, now. Got some brush to clear in Crawford. God (that's my God) bless (my unquestioning supporters in) America."

The real me, South Park version.

Unfortunately, they didn't have motorcycle helmets, but it comes pretty close:

Make your own South Park self-image (or of friends, family, or your favorite politicians) here.

DeLay calls for an investigation.

In a not-so-surprising act of over-the-top chutzpah that is sure to cause mental whiplash to anyone with a mild sense of irony, Mr. Buck-the-House-Ethics-Committee himself wants a committee set up to investigate others:

DeLay Wants Panel to Review Role of Courts (Washington Post):

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.), under fire from Democrats for what they consider threatening remarks about federal judges, plans to ask the Judiciary Committee to undertake a broad review of the courts' handing of the Terri Schiavo case, his office said yesterday. ...

And why, you may ask, does he want this investigation? Well...

DeLay issued a statement asserting that "the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior." He later said in front of television cameras that he wants to "look at an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the president."

In other words, some in the judiciary may be found to have a strong backbone of state and federal constitutional integrity, which DeLay must see as a personal affront to his efforts "to rule the world, Pinky."

Personally, I think DeLay is more like Pinky... NARF!

Sidenote: What is it with wingnuts, along with some Lefties, that leads them to forget that there are. other people besides "men" in government and civil society?

Q&A; needed on Yucca Mountain QA

I would think that no one who is interested in the Yucca Mountain storage facility for nuclear waste will appreciate learning that something rotten is happening in the state of Energy Department analysis.

E-Mails Reveal Fraud in Nuclear Site Study (New York Times):

... One analyst wrote that a computer program had generated data he could not explain, so he withheld it from the quality assurance department, known as QA.

"Don't look at the last 4 lines. Those are a mystery," wrote the scientist, who the subcommittee said was an employee of the United States Geological Survey, a part of the Interior Department. "I've deleted the lines from the 'official' QA version of the files."

"In the end I keep track of 2 sets of files, the ones that will keep QA happy and the ones that were actually used," he wrote. The message was dated November 1999. ...

WMD, nuclear waste storage, 9-11 intelligence, Social Security proposals... More and more it appears that the general thrust of the Bush administration's message to the American public begins, "Yours is not to question why..."

I, for one, am interested in some answers.

Friday Cat Blogging No More!

Miro has resigned from Yowling from the Fencepost, citing that he wants to "spend more time with his family." A new, interim mascot has been appointed and this site will be renamed "Barking at the Fencepost."

Yoshi is far less critical than his predecessor.

(For the apoplectic, please check today's date)

WMD - The headline can't even begin to do this issue justice.

So.... Once again the underlings are to blame, while the higher-ups get off scott free.

WMD Commission Releases Scathing Report (Washington Post):

Panel Finds U.S. Intelligence on Iraq's Weapons Was 'Dead Wrong'

Funny, I know I heard others say this long before the presidential commission's report. I'm almost positive I heard this said before the war, too.

Too often I read news reports that lead me to think that this administration is untouchable. It can make totally erroneous claims such as "There are WMD in Iraq. We must invade." and go about their business unchallenged afterwards. It can control access to supposedly public events as it did in the election last year and in the "conversations" on scrapping Social Security (Bush only does one-way conversations and only with his most sycophantic supporters). It sneaks propaganda into the media by faking news reports to make its policies look good and sees no problem with it. This administration also relies on radical conservatives in Congress and the media to shout down even its mildest, most thoughtful and articulate critics.

By my recollections, democracy never looked like this. Fascism, however, did have some parallels.

WMD - Way to go Froomkin!

Nothing like a little bit of recent history to complicate the White House's damage control efforts:

White House Gets a Pass (Washington Post):

The commission that President Bush appointed to determine how intelligence on Iraqi WMDs could have gone so wrong is spreading blame just about everywhere but the White House.

Here, from the full text of the unclassified version of the report released this morning, is Conclusion 26: "The Intelligence Community did not make or change any analytic judgments in response to political pressure to reach a particular conclusion, but the pervasive conventional wisdom that Saddam retained WMD affected the analytic process."

The commission acknowledges this: "Many observers of the Intelligence Community have expressed concern that Intelligence Community judgments concerning Iraq's purported WMD programs may have been warped by inappropriate political pressure."

A footnote helpfully sources some of those concerns, and I have hyperlinked it for your reading pleasure: "Senator Carl Levin, 'Buildup to War on Iraq,' Congressional Record (July 15, 2003) at pp. S9358-S9360; Walter Pincus and Dana Priest, 'Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure from Cheney Visits,' Washington Post (June 5, 2003) at p. A1; Nicholas D. Kristof, 'White House in Denial,' New York Times (June 13, 2003) at p. A33; Jay Taylor, 'When Intelligence Reports Become Political Tools . . . ' Washington Post (June 29, 2003) at p. B2; Douglas Jehl, 'After the War: Weapons Intelligence; Iraq Arms Critic Reacts to Report on Wife,' New York Times (Aug. 8, 2003) at p. A8; Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus, 'As Rationales for War Erode, Issue of Blame Looms Large,' Washington Post (July 10, 2004) at p. A1; Glenn Kessler, 'Analyst Questioned Sources' Reliability; Warning Came Before Powell Report to UN,' Washington Post (July 10, 2004) at p. A9; T. Christian Miller and Maura Reynolds, 'Question of Pressure Splits Panel,' Los Angeles Times (July 10, 2004) at p. A1; James Risen and Douglas Jehl, 'Expert Said to Tell Legislators He Was Pressed to Distort Some Evidence,' New York Times (June 25, 2003) at p. A11; Robert Schlesinger, 'Bush Aides Discredit Analysts' Doubts on Trailers,' The Boston Globe (June 27, 2003) at p. A25; Seymour M. Hersh, 'The Stovepipe,' The New Yorker (Oct. 27, 2003) at p. 77."

The commission concludes otherwise...

Has the presidential commission produced a 700-page doorstop? We'll need to read it and find out.

But wait! There's more:

Well, what about the charge that in the run-up to war in Iraq, Bush and Cheney and others gravely mischaracterized and overstated the intelligence they were given? (See, for instance, the House Democrats Web site, Iraq on the Record.)

Not our purview, says the commission. Here's Footnote 830: "Our review has been limited by our charter to the question of alleged policymaker pressure on the Intelligence Community to shape its conclusions to conform to the policy preferences of the Administration. There is a separate issue of how policymakers used the intelligence they were given and how they reflected it in their presentations to Congress and the public. That issue is not within our charter and we therefore did not consider it nor do we express a view on it."

Of course it wasn't. That might have led the commission to find something it wasn't supposed to find, like the truth.

To all my friends who have criticized my Mac...

... I found a very helpful and concise guide to working productively on a computer that is not a Mac.

How to repair a PC

I never thought that light blue geekazoid shorts could ever be considered "adequate clothing" for such a job, or any job, for that matter.

Iraq - No good news for Iraqi children.

I'd say this is probably one of those "unknown unknowns" Don Rumsfeld and others in the administration would rather not know much about:

Child malnutrition soars in Iraq (Melbourne, Australia - The Age):
The war in Iraq and its aftermath had almost doubled malnutrition rates among many Iraqi children, a United Nations specialist on hunger told the world's major human rights body today.

Acute malnutrition rates among Iraqi children under the age of five nearly doubled late last year to 7.7 per cent, from four per cent after Saddam's ouster in April 2003, said Jean Ziegler, the UN Human Rights Commission's special expert on the right to food.

Malnutrition, which is exacerbated by a lack of clean water and inadequate sanitation, is a major child killer in poor countries. Children who manage to survive are usually physically and mentally impaired for the rest of their lives and are more vulnerable to disease.

Acute malnutrition signifies that a child is actually wasting away. [more]

Nearly one out of ten children in Iraq are malnourished? Under our watch? Yo, Mr. "Culture of Life" President, here's an opportunity to practice what you preach.

WMD - Ex post facto-a-go-go.

Why does this read like closing the intelligence barn door after the warhorse got out?

Dissent on Intelligence Is Critical, Report Says (Washington Post):

A presidential commission assigned to look into the intelligence failures leading up to the Iraq war will recommend a series of changes intended to encourage more dissent within the nation's spy agencies and better organize the government's multi-tentacled fight against terrorism, officials said yesterday.

In a report to be made public tomorrow, the officials said, the panel will propose more competitive analysis and information-sharing by intelligence agencies, improved tradecraft training, more "devil's advocacy" in the formation of national intelligence estimates and the appointment of an intelligence ombudsman to hear from analysts who believe their work has been compromised. [more]

To think, if we had some of that "devil's advocacy," we might have saved about 15,000 to 150,000 lives so far -- American (1,500) and Iraqi casualties (not fully known, but it is substantial) so far -- and a few hundred billion dollars, of which some of that could have been used for a number of domestic and foreign policy initiatives, including possibly strengthening far more peaceful initiatives toward helping Iraqis establish their own, democratic and popularly supported, government.

I know. I know. That last part was somewhat Pollyannish, but so was the idea from Bush and Company that the American war in Iraq would be a cakewalk, that they would welcome us with open arms, that Iraq could pay for the cost of the war, occupation and rebuilding out of their oil revenues, and that a freely elected, democratic government could be put in place by us under the conditions of occupation and magically receive popular support.

Hey, if neo-cons can play the Pollyanna card, then so can I. Mine just doesn't involve casualties of war or overtones of American hegemony.

Bush - Soon.

If there is one word that deserves a pointed question demanding a specific response, it is "soon." That question should be, "How soon?" To say "soon" could imply that there are a few loose ends to tie up before showing a final product, or it could mean that all a person has are only a few loose ends and not much else.

Case in point:

Bush Says He Expects New Iraqi Government Soon (Reuters):

President Bush predicted on Tuesday Iraq's parliament will choose a new government soon, despite chaos that erupted between Iraqi lawmakers trying to reach agreement in Baghdad in only their second meeting.

In a speech in the White House Rose Garden, Bush spoke optimistically about the future of Iraq and said it would serve as an example of freedom in "a long-troubled part of the world."

"The trend is clear, freedom is on the march," Bush said.

Soon? How soon? Well, Bush doesn't do specifics, unless you want to hear him tell you for the umpteenth time about how Social Security is a "problem" thirty or forty or fifty years (or not) down the road. But have no fear, the president has spoken. When he says "soon," he means "soon." Soon means, ummm, well, I suppose it means whatever you want it to mean.

Am I being unfair? Ask the Iraqis who voted in the January 30th elections and are still waiting for a government to form. I imagine many of them are feeling that the restoration of their lives to some semblance of normality cannot come soon enough.

There will be wingnuts.

Wow, I have no idea, but I think that somebody has been playing the "drinking game" version of Risk a bit too much.

There Will Be War (Adam Yoshida):

It should be clear, even to a blind man, that we're building towards something with China. China's demand for resources appears to be growing at a geometric rate. The date at which its economy is anticipated to be larger than that of the United States is forever inching forward. And, if one thing is certain, it is this: there will be war.

I don't know if it will be the nukes-flying, carriers-sinking sort of war that many of us fear in the dead of the night. But I know there will be war. More than that, I think we're already in one. ... [there's more, but it reads like Newt Gingrich's attempt at fiction, only without the "pouting sex kitten" who just happens to be a Nazi spy]

Sounds more like a wingnut warrior fantasy than a thoughtful consideration of international relations and geopolitics. But what do I know? I'm just one of those people in the reality-based community. I just study what's going on in the world. Yoshida seems to make it up from whole cloth.