An absolutely classic and devastating segment from last night's Daily Show featuring a relentless --- if greatly deserved --- reaming of the as-yet unimpeached Dick Cheney by Jon Stewart.

Must-see video is at RAW STORY courtesy of David Edwards.

*** Special to The BRAD BLOG
*** by Libby/CIA Leak Trial Correspondent Margie Burns

As noted in an earlier post, the Libby defense team has emphasized memory lapses in the first three prosecution witnesses, government figures who placed Libby at the nexus of information about Joseph Wilson’s wife. Probing, sometimes repetitiously --- or so it seemed to me, sitting in Courtroom 16 --- for variable or incomplete memories took up much of the first two days of the Libby trial, now in its third day.

This line of attack has already been picked up by rightwing media outlets, including a gloating article posted this morning by Byron York at the National Review and another on a rightwing web site called "America Thinks."

More insidiously, the same line is seeping from some large media outlets. The Los Angeles Times ran an article today saying that the "memory defense" is aided by the government witnesses' own memory lapses, and the Baltimore Sun reports that the "'busy man' defense gains some ground". The local (D.C.) ABC television station presents a more balanced report, but very brief.

As it turns out, the memory defense at this stage of the Libby trial is not supposed to be used under judicial guidelines. Former prosecutor Christy Hardin Smith, also present in Courtroom 16 yesterday, points out that for Libby’s lawyers to plead shortness of memory, Libby himself has to take the stand as a witness, because it is his memories that are being referenced. The unremitting focus on witness memory for the entire day Wednesday seems to have resulted in a ruling from the judge that there will be no 'memory defense' allowed in the closing argument unless Libby does take the stand . . .

At the turn of the new year, we dubbed 2007 "The Year of Accountability." So, let it begin.

Two announcements were released today concerning upcoming oversight and investigative hearings in Congress on Bush Administration policy. If you can imagine such a thing.

In the House, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee --- the one which would lead the way concerning any Articles of Impeachment for a sitting U.S. President or Vice-President --- announced today that hearings would be held next Wednesday in the committee on "Presidential Signing Statements under the Bush Administration: A Threat to Checks and Balances and the Rule of Law?" (Complete media release, with details, scheduled witnesses, etc. at end of this article.)

In the Senate, Russ Feingold (D-WI) will chair Judiciary Committee hearings on "Congress's Power to End a War." In a media advisory just released, (posted in full below) Feingold refers to Congress's "power of the purse to redeploy our troops safely from Iraq so that we can refocus on the global terrorist networks that threaten our national security."

"This hearing will help inform my colleagues and the public about Congress’s power to end a war and how that power has been used in the past," Feingold is quoted in the release. As well, he promises to to introduce new legislation to do exactly that in the Senate. "I will soon be introducing legislation to use the power of the purse to end what is clearly one of the greatest mistakes in the history of our nation’s foreign policy," the senator said.

Neither of the Constitutionally mandated oversight hearings will be held in a basement broom closet, but rather in proper Congressional Hearing Rooms.

UPDATE 8:22pm PT White House says they "will cooperate." Of course they will.

The complete media releases from Conyers and Feingold, with dates, times, locations, and expected witnesses, follow below...

With more than 5600 words in his State of the Union speech, Bush couldn't cobble together five or six of them to thank our 1.6 million new American Veterans? Let alone recognize the continuing horrors they face and what our country plans to do to help them?

A press release from the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America find that pretty crappy. So do we.

Why does George W. Bush hate our troops?

It also appears that Libby's Defense is preparing to go against the White House, according to their opening statement. Or, at least they seem to be claiming he was worried about being thrown under the bus to protect Rove...

Full MSNBC story, plus video, here...

FireDogLake is live blogging their notes on the scandal from inside the courtroom. Coverage of Prosecutor Fitzgerald's opening here..., Defense Attny Wells opener here....

Treacherous Republican wordsmith/pollster/spinman Frank Luntz sinks to new depths in pretending to offer "advice" for the Democratic Party in a condescending little screed posted at Huff Po on Sunday.

I'll let you make what you will of the bulk of his self-serving nonsense. But setting aside Luntz's apparent inability --- rather transparently, I'll add, for someone whose business is supposedly language --- to keep himself from using the pejoratively intended "Democrat" when he means "Democratic," I'll focus on only one major point.

For a man who damned well understands the importance of words he sure did manage to drop one huge rhetorical and literal LIE smack-dab into the middle of his editorial. He writes:

Of course, that's not "exactly" what Boxer said to Rice at all. Nor is it even close to what she said. What she said was EXACTLY:

Further, Luntz twists his disingenuous knife by adding:

Speaking of "cheap shots", if Luntz doesn't know by now that the phony non-incident he describes as having "made even the most hardened Washington insiders cringe" is little more than the Luntzian creation of White House spokeshole Tony Snow as aided and abetted by both the wingnut media and the NYTimes then he shouldn't be allowed in public, much less on Huff Po.

For the record, we covered the disingenuous brouhaha from the get-go as it sprang from a call we made for a Congress member to ask the White House about the casualty estimates for their Iraq "surge plan" (a Luntzian turn of phrase if we've ever seen one). As it turns out, they didn't bother to make any. Or so Condi claimed during the Senate hearings. (More relevant links to the notable points in our coverage are below.)

Shame on Luntz for purposely misleading readers. Shame on Huffington Post for giving a platform to an out-and-out liar. I don't care how much undeserved "celebrity" the man can claim, nor how much "the other side" should be heard from. If "the other side" is going to simply lie, then there is no reason that anyone, much less Huffington Post, should give them a platform to do so.

UPDATES:

• To HuffPo's credit, they have cross-posted this blog item.
• BRAD BLOG Guest Blogger Alan Breslauer calls to our attention one of his blog items from last summer highlighting a video clip of Luntz demonstrating yet more disingenuousness, along with Alan's personal observations of Luntz who was both a professor of his and, apparently, a frat house drinking buddy...

PREVIOUS RELATED BRAD BLOG ARTICLES:

• Brad Calls on Congress to Ask White House About Casuality Estimates for 'Surge'
• Rice Claims White House Made no Casualty Estimates for Troop Escalation Plan in Response to Boxer's Senate Inquiry
• NYTimes Ignores News, Falls for White House Spin on Boxer/Rice Exchange
• Washington Times Outdoes Them All in Misreporting Boxer/Rice Exchange
• VIDEO - Finally! A Media Outlet CORRECTLY Covers Rice Admission That White House (Supposedly) Made No Casuality Estimates for Iraq Escalation Plan

Guest Blogged by DES

At The BRAD BLOG we prefer a splash of snark with our morning coffee (helps take the edge off), and today we are pleased to direct your attention to a veritable feast of snark with a big dollop of snotty on the side, courtesy of the fine folks at The BEAST.

They've graciously offered a list of their favorites for The 50 Most Loathsome People in America, whose loathsome-osity crossed that invisible barrier of taste and public tolerance to STFU status (in their opinion) in the preceeding year. Among so many prospects, how do they manage to limit it to just fifty? Sad to say that we were unaware of The Beast's compilations in previous years, but we look forward to catching up. Snark is a dish that never gets cold.

While we heartily disagree with some of their choices (would you expect anything less?), these are a smattering of our favorites, including Limbaugh, Abramoff, Coulter, Bush...

In response to Condi Rice's recent comments before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the Iraqi government was working on "borrowed time," Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said:

I wish the Bush Administration would stop supporting al-Qaeda with their irresponsible rhetoric.

Do they not know we're at war? Have they forgotten what happened on September 11th, 2001? Why do they hate America?

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer

On Saturday, there was a death "surge" in Iraq as at least 25 U.S. troops were killed on a single day in the worst one-day death toll for our troops since the start of the War.

Meanwhile, as Bush prepares to serve up another 21,500 American troops to Iraq, it's worth taking a look at who the hell came up with the "augmentation" plan in the first place, what it said before the Bush spin machine grabbed hold of it, and what the plan's author has had to say since Bush revealed it to the country on January 10, 2007.

According to Fred Barnes, Fox "News" perennial and editor of The Weekly Standard and as confirmed by the BBC, Washington Post and The Economist, Bush's new and improved plan for Iraq is based on a 50-page report written by retired General Jack Keane and Frederick Kagan, a "military academic" at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). The report does, in fact, read much like Bush's proposal. With one small exception. As Barnes points out, the Keane/Kagan plan originally "envision[ed] a temporary addition of 50,000 troops".

With that in mind, here are some excerpts from the report, a television appearance and other media authored by Frederick Kagan over the last two months --- beginning before last November's election, well prior to Bush's announcement of the new scheme --- along with a couple of guest appearances by Surge Master Bill Kristol...

Guest Blogged by Alan Breslauer
Hopefully this mashup evidences the insanity of George W. Bush's Iraq policy. Lies, incompetence and just plain scary - do you live on this planet - quotes are a recipe for continued disaster in Iraq. Sadly, even if the Bush were right about the consequences of leaving, it still would be our only option as long as he remained Commander In Chief. With no credibility left, the only place anyone is likely to follow the President is to the Hague. Somehow, some way, we must end the war and the Bush presidency before he and the neocons 'make the peace' with Iran.

It's now just over a year to the day since we first described the now-disgraced and now-former Congressman Bob Ney (R-OH) as the "Soon-to-be-Indicted Bob Ney" in our exposé connecting the dots between him, his former Chief of Staff turned Diebold's top lobbyist on Capitol Hill, David DiStefano, Jack Abramoff's Greenburg Traurig firm and the whole Help America Vote Act (HAVA) sham which Ney pushed through Congress via his crooked chairmanship of the U.S. House Administration Committee.

Back then, few had heard of him. But today, Ney was convicted and sentenced to 30 months in the federal pen after pleading guilty to "illegally accepting trips, meals, drinks, tickets to concerts and sporting events and other items worth tens of thousands of dollars in return for official acts performed for lobbyist Abramoff and his clients."

Ney's long-overdue trip up the river comes despite defense pleas for mercy and sentencing to rehab in light of their claims that it was the evil bottle that dunnit. As ever, Ney continues to avoid taking responsibility. Happily, the judge didn't buy it. Oh, well. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

As a felon, Ney will no longer be able to vote in the state of Ohio, even as America will be stuck with his disastrous and cynical HAVA legislation for years. And despite House Democrats' plans to remove pensions for convicted members, apparently the action will not be retroactive. So Ney will get to retain his $29,000 annual pension from the House. Forever. Nice work if you can get it.

Anyway, another one bites the dust. Now, about the soon-to-be-indicted George W. Bush...

In a harshly worded fund raising letter sent to members of John Edwards's 2008 presidential campaign e-mail list late this afternoon, his new Campaign Manager, former Congressman David Bonior (D-MI), holds little back in his sharp criticism of both George W. Bush and Democratic members of Congress for their Iraq War policies and politics. (Email posted in full at end of this article.)

The email --- with the eye-popping, if impolitic, subject line "Total Bull" --- first takes aim at Bush's recent pronouncements, as reported by U.S. News and World Report and elsewhere after Bush's appearance on CBS' 60 Minutes last Sunday, "that Congress does not have the power to stop his proposed escalation of the war in Iraq."

"That's bull," Bonior writes before going on in the email to criticize his former Democratic colleagues in Congress, taking them to task for their failure to "step up to the plate and use their power to stop the president from escalating the war."

"I can assure you that Congress does have the power to stop this escalation," says the 26-year former Congressman.

"Some [in Congress] are calling for symbolic statements that do nothing to stop the escalation," he writes. "If you hear a member of Congress say 'non-binding resolution,' then you're really hearing them say 'pass the buck.'"

"And some members of Congress are waiting for --- well, we don't know what they're waiting for."

Citing Edwards's position "calling on Congress to stand up and take responsibility by using its power to prevent this war from getting any worse," Bonior goes on to announce the campaign's plan to run a full page ad in Roll Call, with a petition against the escalation and the "tens of thousands" of signatures from supporters who've signed it. The e-mail asks supporters to contribute money as well towards purchase of the ad.

Edwards's short petition, which can be signed here, calls on Congress to block funding for Bush's escalation plan. It reads in full:

LATE RELATED-ISH UPDATE: First Zogby poll out of Iowa shows Edwards leading the Dem pack with 27%. Far ahead of "second tier dog-fight" between Obama, Hillary, and home state Gov. Vilsack. No big surprises on the Republican side with McCain and Giuliani duking it out, though Newt coming in an eyebrow-raisingly close third place. (Thanks reader TC for the tip.)

The e-mail sent to supporters via the JohnEdwards.com mailing list follows in full below...

Finally! A media outlet which appropriately covered the news from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing last week in which Rice claimed the White House made no estimates for the potential change in casualty rates that may come from their plan to send 21,500 more troops to Iraq.

Over the weekend The McClaughlin Group focused on --- and showed the video of --- the actual newsworthy exchange between Sen. Barbara Boxer and Rice, if you can imagine such a thing.

If you can't, that video is here for you on the right. (Hat-tip Alan Breslauer)

Yes, the Washington Times' Tony Blankley tried mightily to turn the topic to the phony, non-existent "attack" that the White House, and their sycophants in the media from the wingnut blogs all the way over to the NYTimes fell for, but he was fairly well shut down by both Eleanor Clift and Pat Buchanan. But given Wash Times' extraordinarily and purposely twisted "reporting" we saw over the weekend ("Democrats" suggested "the secretary's childlessness, race and sex are to blame for mistakes in Iraq," distorted the White House Organ and Tony Snow's old stomping ground), we're not surprised at Blankley's attempts to do the WH's bidding.

It's only a shame that Lawrence O'Donnell wasn't sitting in with 'The Group' this week.

Yes, O'Reilly keeps up the disingenuous (or uninformed, take your pick) attacks as he was on all morning about Boxer's non-existent "attack" on Rice, as if any such attack actually occurred, on his Radio Factor. Hey, Bill: You can read the transcript of the exchange here, or you can look at the actual video above. Or you can continue to misinform your listeners and viewers. Either way, I continue to make myself available to you if you wish to interview me on the matter, as I'm the guy who originally wrote the question that Boxer asked.

Beyond that, perhaps the tide is turning as folks are beginning to see this whole shameless phony Rightwing twist/smear for what it really is. Nora Ephron over at HuffPo, after pointing out apparently-not-"outrageous"-at-all comments made Laura Bush about Condi before year's end --- "Dr. Rice, who I think would be a really good candidate, is not interested. Probably because she is single, her parents are no longer living, she's an only child. You need a very supportive family and supportive friends to have this job." --- goes on to give us a peek at "Condi's Diary."

By way of necessary reminder, here's the way Boxer actually prefaced her question about WH casualty estimates (or the apparent lack thereof):

As you see, she said nothing about Rice not having the moral authority to make such choices, didn't attack her childlessness or her singleness or her sex or her race or anything at all, as has been wildly, widely, and wholly inaccurately "reported" by Wash Times, O'Reilly, Snow and friends...

A sample from "Condi's Diary" by Nephron follows below. The full, informative piece of satire is here...

PREVIOUS RELATED BRAD BLOG ARTICLES:

• Brad Calls on Congress to Ask White House About Casuality Estimates for 'Surge'
• Rice Claims White House Made no Casualty Estimates for Troop Escalation Plan in Response to Boxer's Senate Inquiry
• NYTimes Ignores News, Falls for White House Spin on Boxer/Rice Exchange
• Washington Times Outdoes Them All in Misreporting Boxer/Rice Exchange

Since it should have always been front and center --- but even the New York Times succeeded in fellating the White House by ignoring the news this week --- here is that news once again:

* * * The White House failed to make any casualty estimates before committing another 20,000+ U.S. troops to War in Iraq, according to the Secretary of State. * * * (transcript)

The news, which The BRAD BLOG covered almost exclusively, came in reply to a direct question from Sen. Barbara Boxer during last Thursday's oversight hearings on Iraq Policy when Condoleezza Rice came to Capitol Hill to argue in favor of the White House's new escalation plan.

But as Boxer's critical direct question evoked Condi's stunning answer --- which, if true, reveals a remarkable delinquency and breathtaking lack of support for U.S. troops by this White House --- was subsequently all but ignored by the media both on the Right and the supposedly not-on-the-Right. After White House spokeshole/MVP Tony Snow gave his cue to attack the messenger to avoid the message, all of his media tools lined up behind him and performed admirably in the service of disserving America.

But among fierce competition this week, the Biggest Tool of the Week Award must be given to one of the White House's very own publications, The Washington Times.

In "reporting" on this statement made by Boxer during the exchange with Rice on Thursday...

...The Washington Times' and their "reporter" Charles Hurt topped the rest of the wingnut and non-wingnut media by turning it into the following remarkable opening graf from their front page propaganda piece on the phony, White House created "outrage" by Saturday...

Wow! Now that's some impressive work! Give that Tony Snow a raise!

All the other men and women in America who helped him --- for free --- give them a one-way ticket to Gitmo, since clearly they hate both America and the troops attempting to defend her.

Remind us again why Impeachment is "off the table"? Is it because Tony Snow says so? If so, we understand completely. We hope he'll let us know when it's okay to proceed.

The New York Times today joins the White House, the disingenuous Rightwing media and blogs, and even several unnamed supposed non-Rightwingers in purposely misconstruing Sen. Barbara Boxer's question to Condi Rice at last Thursday's Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Bush's new policy to escalate troop commitment in Iraq.

I reported on the controversy over the phony Boxer/Rice brouhaha yesterday here, after originally calling on a Congress member to ask the very question that Boxer asked (and which the Times ignored) last Sunday and again after Bush's speech on Wednesday night in the face of his supporting, yet callous, comments on the new policy that "we must expect more Iraqi and American casualties."

If the way in which the Times twisted the facts of the event was unintentional, the only alternative then is that the reporters who covered it, Helene Cooper and Thom Shanker, and the editors who allowed the article to go through, are utterly incapable of even the simplest intelligent analysis of a critical and relevant news event and, frankly, shouldn't be working for a paper as still-important to this country as the New York Times.

Picking up on the phony controversy over the prelude to Boxer's question of whether the White House had "an estimate of the number of casualties we expect from this surge?" --- the stunning answer from the Secretary of State, if she's to be believed, is that no, they did not --- the Times joined Fox "News" and NYPost and the other wingnut outlets in both twisting Boxer's comments and forwarding the unsupported notion that there was some sort of personal slur built into them.

The Times quotes Boxer's "offending" phrase --- one that even Rice admits not being offended at, until after the White House Press Secretary, Tony Snow, suggested the comments were "outrageous" later on --- as follows:

Wow! The height of personal rudeness! Boxer really smacked down Rice for not being married and having no children! A comment which several suddenly-"feminist" Rightwing outlets characterized as "One Great Leap (Backwards) for Womankind!" just after Snow coincidentally called it a "great leap backward for feminism" in his official response.

Problem is, the way the Times characterized the "controversy" in the graf reposted above leaves out the rest of Boxer's comment and thus takes it completely out of context. Here's what she actually said in the lead-up to her important all-but-ignored question and response from Rice:

Even Rice admitted in her comments to the Times that "It didn't actually dawn on me that she was saying, 'you don’t have children who can go to war'."

Of course it didn't actually "dawn on" you, Ms. Rice. Because it didn't actually happen that way.

At least until Tony Snow took the opportunity to brilliantly turn the focus away from both Rice's answer revealing that the White House hadn't bothered to measure the cost in increased deaths to U.S. troops before announcing their new policy ("Senator, I don't think that any of us, uh, have a number. That, of expected casualties.") and from the fact that both Republicans and Democrats alike on the Senate committee were highly critical of the White House escalation plan for the Iraq War.

Snow's comments, of course, were the marching orders to the various Rightwing outlets who were all too happy to twist Boxer's comments in the very same way. They all "reported" the exchange in the same phony context the following day (as I previously described here.)

While attacking the messenger to completely distract from the message is a time-honored and well-expected tactic from this White House and their sycophantic supporters, it continues to be distressing to see the once-great "Paper of Record" irresponsibly pick up that ball and run in the same disingenuous direction. Who needs Judith Miller?

To make matters worse, not only did the Times manage to only quote the mangled "analysis" of "Conservative" blogs and commentators in their coverage of the exchange, they even misrepresented a group which, at the first blush of the Times description of them, would seem indicate that they would have been an ally of Boxer's.

Appearing to defect from support of the Democratic Senator is a group called Project 21. The Times characterized the statement of a member of the group this way...