Guest Blogged by Margie Burns...

The wealth of material on Sen. John McCain's Veep pick, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, just keeps getting richer. Apparently the old saying that you can never be too rich or too thin applies to resumes.

Last night, Brad covered a wide-range of recently emerging issues and concerns about Palin --- and McCain's judgment in having chosen her --- and asked whether she can even survive on the ticket through November 4th. Today, the New York Times front pages an Elisabeth Bumiller report revealing that McCain seems to have only begun vetting Palin last week, after his two preferred selections, pro-choice advocates Sen. Joe Lieberman and Gov. Mark Ridge, were nixed by the party's right wing.

So as Republicans scramble to vet their choice far too late, additional revelations continue to emerge (notably, beginning in the blogosphere, long before the MSM finally catches up.) The latest latest comes via Liz Arnett at Daily Kos, and includes videos in which the Alaska governor is seen as a member and supporter of the fringe Alaskan Independence Party (AIP), which aspires to secession from the union.

Steve Benen regards this latest information about Palin's past as perhaps "the most politically detrimental" of all the recently emerging discoveries about the little-known-until-now Governor of Alaska...

*** Special to The BRAD BLOG's D.C. Correspondent, Margie Burns

Washington, D.C. -- U.S. District Court Judge Henry H. Kennedy held a hearing this morning on a motion filed by attorneys representing detainees being held in Guantanamo. Following reports in the New York Times and the Washington Post that CIA videotapes of ‘harsh interrogations’ of detainees had been destroyed, apparently by the CIA, possibly under administration approval, attorneys David Remes and Marc Falkoff filed an Emergency Motion [PDF] for inquiry into the preservation of documents relating to prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay.

Before Judge Kennedy and a courtroom packed with journalists,

• Lawyers for the detainees are asking the court to schedule a hearing for inquiry into whether the government is preserving evidence relating to detainees. Attorney David Remes expressed concern that the destruction of the two videotapes, as reported, may not be the full extent of the evidence destroyed...

Guest Blogged by BRAD BLOG's D.C. Correspondent, Margie Burns

It was a big day on Thursday in the national capital, with several flaming surges hitting the news at once – the Washington Post hooking up with the MSM campaign to put “Hillary” over the top before the magic deadline of October 15 (more on that later, elsewhere); Rep. Henry Waxman and the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee holding a powerful hearing on Iraqi corruption; the blocking of Hans von Spakovsky's nomination to the FEC; and discussion of a proposed federal shield law for journalists (full text of bill here), which was reported out of the Senate Judiciary Committee today to the full Senate.

While I was able to sit in for hearings on two of the items above, space and time regrettably being constraints, I'll cover only the proposed shield law for the moment. Right up top, I have to say that I have qualms about it. A real leak, by a whistleblower exposing a crime or some danger to the public, is one thing. But protecting journalists from exposing a politically motivated ‘source’ trying to plant misinformation is another. This bill, as it was debated in committee and written about in papers yesterday, might equally protect both, if it protects either...

Guest blogged from DC by Margie Burns

(NOTE: Margie will appear on today's Peter B. Collins Show as Guest Hosted by Brad Friedman, to discuss this article.)

Team Bush began describing candidate George W. Bush as a “compassionate conservative” in 1998, when Bush began his open run for president, as opposed to the behind-the-scenes operation that had begun with his first run for governor of Texas in 1994. By the time the 2000 presidential campaign was in full swing, probably every American with a television had heard the label. In fact, as the actual election approached, the Bush campaign often took to preferring “reformer with results” --- reacting to a margin of diminishing returns for “compassionate conservative.”

Where did they get the “compassionate conservative” label? Hardly anyone would remember or notice in 1998, but the New York Times had run it front-page on August 7, 1978, when Pope Paul VI died and the Times ran his photograph, captioned prominently as a “Compassionate Conservative,” above the fold. Originally the phrase was a genuine tribute to honor a man who by all accounts deserved it (see below). Its recycling by the Bush campaign was a tactic designed to help Bush seem ‘centrist.’

But a 1978 issue of the Times was not the first step in resurrecting "compassionate conservative" as a campaign slogan...

Guest blogged from DC by Margie Burns

Listening to Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) for fifteen minutes is worth a week of the para-discourse from elsewhere on national television. Feingold said on Meet the Press this morning that he will introduce a resolution to censure George W. Bush “in a few days.”

The censure resolutions will focus on two huge issues:

• Bush's process for getting us into the war in Iraq, including misleading statements and misuse of intelligence before the war; and
• “the outrageous attack on the rule of law,” including illicit electronic surveillance and other surveillance, and administration approval of torture. “This administration has assaulted the constitution,” Feingold said briskly.

Feingold said that he has talked with the Democratic leadership about the resolution, adding that it might provide an opportunity as well for Republicans uncomfortable with the administration but unwilling to use impeachment.

Questioned by Tim Russert about whether the resolution would pass, Feingold said basically we’ll see how it goes. He commented, “There’s a lot of support in the country for actually impeaching the president and the vice president.”...

Guest blogged from DC by Margie Burns

These are interesting times. A short update on the most recent legal motions in the Libby case:

As we know, in a Grant of Executive Clemency on July 2, George W. Bush commuted all prison terms for I. Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby. The grant states that it leaves “intact and in effect the two-year term of supervised release, with all its conditions, and all other components of the sentence.”

What with Libby not having served any time, Judge Walton, the trial judge in the Libby case, ordered input from prosecution and defense on the question of whether there could be any “release” – and consequently any “supervised release,” i.e. probation.

First response came from Fred Fielding, Esq., now Counsel to the President. Fielding was the man who helped Nixon negotiate the shoals of the Watergate investigation --- speaking of no jail time --- concluding with Nixon’s resignation followed in short order by a presidential pardon even without a conviction – and, according to Nixon and then-President Gerald Ford, without even a request for a pardon. One sees why Fielding would be welcome aboard the current White House.

Guest Blogged by BRAD BLOG D.C. Correspondent Margie Burns

Looking into the combination high-level and shadowy backstory of Marc Rich, pardoned unpardonably by former President Clinton on the latter’s last day of office, will throw further light on the longterm Libby-Cheney relationship.

While this little item below went rapidly down the memory hole, back in early 2001 (very early) the incoming Bush administration made little noise (very little, very quickly ceased) about revoking Rich’s pardon. No public emphasis by the administration that Libby, the new chief of staff for Cheney and Special Assistant to Bush, had recently been Marc Rich's attorney for twelve years.

The following short 2001 article was published in Globes Publisher Itonut, ‘Israel’s Business Arena’ [online]...

Guest blogged by Margie Burns.

President Bush's "Statement by the President on Executive Clemency for Lewis Libby" says that

Bush goes on to mention specifically the only remaining elements of legal punishment, probation and a fine of $250,000.

Now it looks as though even these two residual sanctions on Libby may turn out to be nonexistent.

On July 3 (yesterday), Judge Reggie B. Walton, the trial judge, issued a new order in the Libby case. Noting that probation appears to be defined by law as "supervised release after imprisonment" and that the president had commuted all of Libby's imprisonment, the judge said that the law,

Blogged from D.C. by Margie Burns

In a pretty spectacular peroration tonight, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann delivered a ten-minute indictment of the president and vice president and asked Bush to perform one last act of patriotism: resign.

Complete transcript here, video at left.

Saying “Even Richard Nixon knew it was time to resign” and adding that Nixon’s resignation, belated though it was, ranked as one final action of nonpartisanship, Olbermann urged George W. Bush to emulate Nixon, “not for self, not for party,” but for the country.

Olbermann also prefaced his speech, in one of several promotional moments, with the comment that “No one is holding their breath on this, but frankly, were Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush true patriots, they would resign.”

Guest blogged from D.C. by Margie Burns

The total commutation of Libby’s sentence should put an end to any questions, if any remain, about whether the Bush-Cheney cabal is completely crooked.

Briefly: the published statement for public consumption that the president found Libby’s sentence “excessive” is transparently false. If he had merely found the sentence excessive, he could have commuted it PARTLY. Two and a half years could have been reduced to two, or to one and a half, or to one year. It could have been drastically commuted to six months, or to three months.

That did not happen. Instead, George Walker Bush elevated smarmy propagandists like Byron York over federal judges. He elevated Charles Krauthammer over three U.S. Circuit Court Judges appointed by three former presidents. (Not that Krauthammer’s first reaction after Libby was indicted was to defend Libby. Au contraire: Krauthammer took the line, on ABC’s Inside Washington, that Libby’s actions were the work of one man, namely Libby. Neocon loyalty at work – until the echo chamber pulled Krauthammer back in line.) Bush elevated rightwing talk show hosts, the creepy National Review, Fox television and Rupert Murdoch's media empire and the now-moribund PNAC over the U.S. justice system.

Typical for him, that.

Guest blogged from D.C. by Margie Burns

Beneficiary of yet another political outing, the Washington Post ran an article on Thursday June 21, 2007, titled “Political Hiring in Justice Division Probed,” strongly alleging further personnel atrocities committed in the DOJ by former Civil Rights Division administrator Bradley Schlozman.

Not to throw the baby out with the bathwater --- this is not a defense of Schlozman --- but regrettably all the allegations were made by unnamed sources. So who are the unnamed administration sources, and why are they engaging in this maneuver?

Here, along the lines of the "numbers" speech by Erin Brockovich as played by Julia Roberts, is the rundown:

Number of grafs, total, in the two-page article: 29. Number of named sources: 2. (See below.) Number of items attributed to unnamed sources: at least 17. Number of unnamed sources, total: uncertain, but ranging from at least 6 to perhaps at most 16.
0
Graf 2: “ . . . according to four lawyers who said they heard the account from Dugan.”

Graf 3: “In another politically tinged conversation recounted by former colleagues, . . .”

Graf 4: “That account was challenged by six officials in the division who said in interviews that they either overheard him . . .”

Graf 14: “Appellate lawyers said that before Schlozman arrived, the small staff enjoyed a collegial work environment . . .”

Guest blogged from D.C. by Margie Burns

Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty returned to testify before Congress one more time today, but without shedding much new light on the much-criticized firings and hirings, alleged to be politically motivated, in the Department of Justice.

The Subcommittee on Commercial and Administrative Law of the House Judiciary Committee, in another attempt to extract some truth about the DOJ personnel matter, held a hearing with McNulty as the sole witness. Under polite, soft-spoken but excruciatingly poignant questioning by Committee Chair John Conyers (D-MI), McNulty did clarify one thing: indeed it does seem that his part of the DOJ has done very little about “caging.”

Caging, as Rep. Cannon (R-UT) helpfully pointed out, “is a term of art in mailhouses” – it refers to the place where letters go when they have no address, all batched up in a separate room.

As Conyers gently reminded the audience, “caging” in the context of elections “is not an issue of the mail at all.” Voter caging, in the context of elections, means blocking voters out – choosing whole lists of voters whose vote will be challenged, chosen by whom and the criteria for challenge enunciated by whom, under this administration, still not fully explained.

Actually, not explained at all. Though it wasn't for Conyers' lack of trying to get information from McNulty about it...

Guest Blogged by The BRAD BLOG's D.C. Correspondent Margie Burns

Those separate email accounts – email accounts held by people working in the White House and the Office of the Vice President, often with security clearances, but not “.gov” accounts – now threaten to become bigger news. Those alternate accounts, as we know now from work done by the House Judiciary Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the new report from the House Government Reform and Oversight Committee, both potentially and actually allowed WH and DOJ and OVP personnel to communicate ‘off the books’ up to a point. While theoretically still bound by the rules for preserving presidential records (see below) the 88 government officials with email accounts provided by the Republican National Committee could move with electronic fluidity from their official to their partisan political duties, and back again, with remarkably little scrutiny for the entire four years of Bush’s first term.

So any correspondence about --- for example --- Chandra Levy and Gary Condit, 9/11 and Iraq, anthrax mailings and Judith Miller, will remain lost from public view until the advanced technology of un-deleting can sweep it up from the bottom of whatever files it has been submerged in to date.

Tabling for now such topics as political motivation in the firing and hiring of US Attorneys, the immediate question is, exactly how EARLY did administration personnel start using these alternate email accounts?...

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

From Prettyman Courthouse, DC, for the bail hearing today of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, where I sat in on the hearing on motions for his pending appeal. Those motions, to keep him free on bail, were unsuccessful as the judge ruled against the defendant.

Approximately 11:30 this morning, U.S. District Court in DC, Judge Reggie B. Walton: “In the interest of full disclosure,” Walton says quietly, “and this may be a sign of the times we live in,” in the wake of his ruling which sentenced Libby to prison, “I have received a number of angry, mean-spirited phone calls and letters regarding the sentence” – “including wishing bad things on me or my family.” – “At first I threw them away, but then I got more letters, even more hateful than the others.” So now, “I’m preserving them – in the event that something does happen [some harm to the judge, presumably]” – the perps can be caught.

The times we live in, indeed. Chalk another smarmy mark up for the noise machine.

On to the bail hearing today: the judge refers to a lengthy footnote in the most recent defense motion which lists a number of convicted criminals who are out on bail – “that list of people out on bail, in white-collar crime cases” [everybody from Martha Stewart on down, out on bail while pursuing appeal] – “I hope that footnote is in there not just because of some assumption that people released pending appeal will include all white-collar defendants.” – “I can’t buy in on that,” Walton says, taking the position that white-collar defendants should be treated the same way as blue-collar defendants, and neither kind of defendant should count automatically on being released on bail pending appeal...

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

On November 29, 2005, the Boston Globe ran a nice Letter to the Editor by Mr. Ralph West of Philly, under the headline “REMOVE CANCER IN ADMINISTRATION”:

Mr. West's concerns may now have come to fruition, The BRAD BLOG has learned, as "a Robert Bork" has emerged --- in fact, Robert Bork himself --- along with eleven other law professors from some of the nation's most highly regarded law schools, and Pepperdine, to file an amici brief in the Scooter Libby perjury and obstruction of justice case in order to argue that the Special Prosecutor's assignment to the case was unconstitutional...