Palin's Investigations

I saw the whole 18 minutes on David Shuster, and if listen carefully, getting through the incoherence, a pattern becomes clear. Just as people say JFK's entire inaugural was about the Cold War, her entire press conference address was about the investigations of her going in on Alaska. From the opening lines to the end, the recurring theme was that because she was the GOP VP nominee, the national media and liberals have descended on Alaska and begun one fraudulent investigation after another, costing taxpyers millions. And the vultures won't stop until she quits, so she's leaving for the goood of Alasaka. Therefore, quitting in the face of numerous ethics investigations becomes an entirely selfless gesture on her part.

Make of that what you will.

ONLY FOLLOWING ORDERS

(AP) - ROME JUNE 30 -- A former CIA agent on trial for the alleged kidnapping of a Muslim cleric and terror suspect in Milan acknowledged in an interview published Tuesday that he had a role in the operation but insisted he was only following orders. Italy's Il Giornale daily published a rare interview with Robert Seldon Lady,
the CIA Milan station chief at the time of the 2003 disappearance of Egyptian cleric Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, from a street in the northern city. "I am not guilty. I am only responsible for following an order I received from my superiors,"
Lady was quoted as saying by Il Giornale:
"It was not a criminal act. It was a state affair."

Obama Press Conference - June 23, 2009

Obama Press Conference
June 23, 2009
***************************

Obama: Ok I want to say at the outset that of course I condemn the psychotics beating protestors in Iran and there is a retrograde group of knuckleheads who want to claim the US is interfering in the Iran and inciting violence and seize their country and overthrow their government - I am talking of course about the Republican party

Now I also want to talk about something equally controversial - windows and windmills - let me give a shout out to Waxman and Dingell and that guy on the agricultural committee

AG guy: woo hoo that’s me

Obama: and thirdly of course I want to talk about health care and how it can be free if we just stop giving out those free pens to doctors and lollipops for ever child?? I don’t fucking think so!

Now I know many Americans are happy that they have any health insurance at all, but you should know eventually health care costs will exceed the entire federal budget and then the sun will go nova and swallow up the earth

Q: will you still talk to Iran what with all the killing?

Obama: well sure it looks bad but I don't hate the Persians or their wacky religion all I want is for them to pull their godamm heads out of their asses

Nico Suave!

Nico: i have a question from a genuine Iranian - when do plan on betraying the brave Iranians?

Obama: whoa hold on there Nico - I didn't observe the election and it's not for the U.S. to say who won

Nico: awwwww

Obama: but look if you want to know who won an election you don’t look to see who has the best bat-wielding motorcycle riding maniacs

Mel Gibson: shit!

Q: Grade the Fed for me

Obama: I won't say anything bad about Bernanke - however he is a idiot and this is all his fault

Q: oh ok then

Obama: since then he has done a good job of taking the heat for me so that's good

Obama: hells my dog Bo got a credit card with a $5,000 limit!

Q: wow

Obama: I know! I'm not paying for his night out on the town with some bitch he met on Petfinder!

Q: Bailouts?

Obama: if we had more laws in place before maybe this wouldn't have goddamm well happened!

Q: what took you so long to express your meaningless outrage about an election in a far-off country where we have a history of illegal interference?

Obama: because I'm not a total dumbass and didn't want to give the Iranian government ammunition!

Q: that's Reagan's job

Obama: exactly!

Q: will you still invite Iranian officials over for the 4th of July?

Obama: if they want to - I'm serving hot dogs and beer

Q: Will a public plan destroy America?

Obama: Look dipshit premiums are doubling every 9 years - at this rate they will swallow the whole planet!

Obama: oh I know everyone is worried about the deficit - well guess what fuckers it's because we have really high costs and a shitty system with 47 million uninsured

Q: oh

Obama: i want to cut costs, treat people, and spend money efficiently

Q: like how?

Obama: like take it away from insurance companies who waste it on trips to Vegas - yeah i said it Goodman!

Obama: jesus h christ you've got people out there who think they are insured and suddenly they're out 50,000 motherfuckin dollars!

Q: woo

Obama: so I'm talking about disciplining those fucking insurance companies - I'm gonna get medieval on their asses!

Obama: I mean why not offer people the choice of care that fucking members of Congress get!!

Q: but that will drive private bloodsuckers out of business

Obama: well fuck if they can't compete with the government who they say can't do anything right then maybe they fucking suck

Chocolate Chip!

Chip: My friend Lindsay says you are timid and weak and John McCain says you are gay

Obama: what do you think Chippy?

[ full bore glare]

Obama: Lindsay said i was weak? that fish writsted freak?

Chip: well...

Obama: Look I'm the fuckin’ President and Lindsay is a big baby and by the way if I took the side of the protestors the regime would say there were being paid by the CIA

Chip: so what you said just now helps the regime!

Obama: oh fuck off

C Todd!

Todd: aren't you surrendering to the regime?

Obama: hey i know you have the attention span of a puppy on crack but I don't - next question!

Tappy!

J-Tapp: will you sign a public plan or not?

Obama: that's your fucking question?

J Tappp: no I have another

Obama: who the fuck are you Tip Tap the ombudsman?

Tapp: ok Spock won't you drive poor little businesses out?

Obama: don't snark me dood

Obama: Look we all know insurers only have one job - take your money today and tell your to fuck off tomorrow

But look if you believe in the free market and then what the fuck are you worried about?

Tapp: but you promised that employers would keep health insurance forever

Obama: no I never did

Tapp: i know that

Q: you signed an anti-smoking bill - will the bill you signed stop you from smoking?

Obama: oh i see you think you're very clever

Q: no it's a serious question

Obama: no it wasn't and you know it - Macarena!

Macarena: talk to me about Chile

Obama: i like mine with beans, meat, and a lot of heat

Q: no the country

Obama: oh that - hey Chile may bail out California which would be awesome

Q: Brazil?

Obama: well that's very different - their President has the full Brazilian which is very cool

Hans: do we need another stimulus?

Obama: hey I've said it before - no on knew just how shitty Bush's economy was and we still haven't recovered

Obama: my stimulus is working and it will keep working but we are after all in a little Depression

Now I watch Chris Matthews moan about poll numbers and I say hey fucker we're doing everything we can but I don't blame people for being unhappy - I mean just look at Jon and Kate - this is a tough time in America!

April: black Americans are living through a real Depression dood if you won't help who will!?

Obama: Pete Hoekstra's never wins at video poker so he knows how they feel

April: true

Obama: but never fear we are training young people to text and e-mail

Suzanne: did you see the video of Neda??

Obama: yeah it's not as much fun as all the cat videos on YouTube

Suzanne: will you let people in Iran vote?

Obama: i support freedom of speech unlike some previous administrations I could mention - but this is about Iran not America and as Martin Luther King said the Justice League will prevail!

He Just Needed to Spend Father's Day Alone

SC Governor's Whereabouts Unknown, Even to Wife

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — Where is South Carolina's governor?

Gov. Mark Sanford's wife said Monday the two-term Republican chief executive has been gone for several days and she doesn't know where. Sanford's staff won't say where he is. First lady Jenny Sanford tells The Associated Press her husband said he needed time away from their children to write something. She says she's not concerned. Sanford earned a reputation as the nation's most vocal anti-bailout governor by refusing $700 million in federal stimulus money for schools
until he lost a court battle earlier this month.

Spokesman Joel Sawyer says Sanford was taking time to "recharge" after his failed fight. Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer said he didn't know
where Sanford is but said he had not been put in charge.

That's a little strange.

Sharon Theimer Writes Attack Editorial

Sharon Theimer of the Associated Press writes an editorial which includes this about Sonia Sotomayor:

She climbed her way up through New York's Democratic power structure boosted by its ultimate brokers over those years
— Gov. Mario Cuomo, Mayor Ed Koch, Sen. Daniel Patrick
Moynihan and District Attorney Robert Morgenthau.
That's the access of a partner in a corporate law firm,
not a kid from the South Bronx.

This is so ridiculous it can only be the product of utter ignorance or bias. Given the tenor of piece, a shoddy hit job, I assume it's bias. Not racial or sexual, but clearly Theimer has a story she wanted to tell and made the facts fit the narrative. It's also possible, of course, that she knows nothing of how politics works, and assumes only corporate lawyers have their careers boosted by politicians. In fact, those men she names all started, like Sotomayor, relatively poor and unconnected, (except for Morgenthau) and through hard work and getting known and making connections, got into the positions they held and in turn helped others on their way up.

She did go to Princeton and Yale, is smart and able and accomplished, which may also have had something to do with her great sucess. Just a thought.

That apppears not to have occurred to Theimer, who is continuing a proud tradition of fairly stupid analysis pieces from the Associated Press, whose Washington bureau chief was probably so busy exchanging e-mails with Karl Rove and how to secure a Republican victory in 2004.

Your Congress at Work

S. 1044
To preserve the ability of the United States to project power globally.

S. 1048
To amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to extend the food labeling requirements of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act of 1990 to enable customers to make informed choices about the nutritional content of standard menu items in large chain restaurants.

H.J.Res. 52
Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to temporarily fill mass vacancies in the House of Representatives and the Senate and to preserve the right of the people to elect their Representatives and Senators in Congress.

“Immediately after taking the oath of office, an individual who is elected to serve as a Senator or Representative in Congress shall provide the applicable House of Congress a list of at least three designees, ranked in order of preference, to take the individual’s place in the event the individual dies, becomes incapacitated, or disappears prior to the expiration of the individual’s term of office.”

Backup Congress! I love it!

H.J.Res. 53
Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States relating to Congressional succession.

________________________________________
“ Section 1. No person shall be a Representative who has not selected and been elected together with an Alternate Representative.

H.Con.Res. 131
Directing the Architect of the Capitol to engrave the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag and the National Motto of “In God we trust” in the Capitol Visitor Center.
Stages:

S. 1081
To prohibit the release of enemy combatants into the United States.

S. 1100
To provide that certain photographic records relating to the treatment of any individual engaged, captured, or detained after September 11, 2001, by the Armed Forces of the United States in operations outside the United States shall not be subject to disclosure under section 552 of title 5, United States Code (commonly referred to as the Freedom of Information Act).

S.Res. 158
To commend the American Sail Training Association for advancing international goodwill and character building under sail.

Jeff Stein, Jane Harman and Porter Goss - What is the Truth?

Jeff Stein of CQ appears to very upset that people are saying some unkind things about Porter Goss and his friends in the intelligence community. At his blog post from May 1, He rails against “conspiracy theories,” and “wild imaginations,” and complains that people have been misrepresenting what he’s been writing. It's as if people just don’t understand that his piece was supposed to be an anonymous hit job on Jane Harman, and they’ve been twisting it around to make his good friend Porter Goss seem like the bad guy! Stein has had to resort to using ALL CAPS to make people understand how innocent Goss is.

Stein says one writer asked "Why Did Goss finger Jane Harman?"
Stein writes: “Well, the short answer is that he didn't, as was made plain in my stories, which were corroborated by the New York Times and Washington Post.”

Stein:
“The drift of the latest commentary on the case is that Porter Goss, the former Republican congressman who headed the CIA during 2004-2006, was out to "get" Harman, his Democratic nemesis on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, when he was its chairman.”

"According to my sources and theirs, Goss was duty bound to notify congressional leaders that Harman had become enmeshed in a national security investigation, and that the FBI intended to question her about a wiretapped conversation she had with a suspected Israeli secret agent."

I like the passive voice there. But how did Harman “become enmeshed in a national security investigation?”

According to Stein’s original story on April 19, Harman is said by “former national security officials to have been picked up on a court-approved NSA wiretap directed at alleged Israeli covert action in Washington.”

So some anonymous national security officials may have overheard Harman, and informed the Dept. of Justice, and some other anonymous national security officials told Stein about it.

Maybe some, maybe all, of these anonymous officials work for Porter Goss. But maybe not. After all, he says there were from the NSA, not the CIA. So how did Porter Goss get involved at all?

Stein says that some people are now claiming that “Goss sought approval to pursue an investigation from both former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and former National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, but was rebuffed."

This is incorrect, says Stein.

“No. Goss sought clearance merely to NOTIFY then-House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi that Harman had been heard making potentially prosecutable statements on the wiretap.”

Furthermore, of course, the CIA has no power to "investigate" Harman, or anyone in the U.S., in the usual sense of the word.

Goss is an innocent bystander, you see, a stickler for the law who just wanted to notify Denny and Nancy, not the FBI or Justice.

Stein:
"Over at The Cable, Laura Rozen endowed the CIA director with even further power and motivation to "go after" Harman, writing, "Goss's decision to authorize a FISA warrant that would tap a former fellow lawmaker and rival seems potentially troubling."

"It would indeed be troubling if that were in fact what Goss did. But the problem with Rozen's assertion is that Goss had no power to "authorize a FISA warrant." As Rozen must know, that power belongs to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act court, upon petition by the Justice Department.”

True, but this is highly disengenuous, since an application for a FISA warrant had to go through, and be approved by, Porter Goss on its way to the FISA court, which never turns down an application. (It never got as that far, because Gonzalez didn't pursue it).

But Stein left out of his original story the most interesting part: how did a conversation of an American, “overheard” on an NSA wiretap, initiate a non-investigation investigation? The answer doesn’t have to be sinister, but it might tell us whether proper procedures were followed, what the motivations of the people involved were, and who was “out to get” who.

On April 19, Stein wrote that after Bush DOJ lawyers, that oh-so-trustworthy, ethical crowd, somehow got their hands on the NSA transcripts with Jane Harman, they wanted to start an investigation.

Stein writes:
“First, however, they needed the certification of top intelligence officials that Harman’s wiretapped conversations justified a national security investigation."

"Then-CIA Director Porter J. Goss reviewed the Harman transcript and signed off on the Justice Department’s FISA application, two sources said."

"Goss, a former Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, deemed the matter particularly urgent because of the high rank of Harman, a Democrat, on the Intelligence panel.”

Ok, so maybe Goss was more than a bystander.

But is it true “they needed the certification of top intelligence officials” to investigate Jane Harman? No, it is not true.

Why couldn’t they get a Title III warrant like normal people? Why did these (also unnamed) officials want to go to a Foreign Intelligence Court to wiretap a Congresswoman? Doesn’t that take the “foreign” out of foreign intelligence??

Anyway, Goss did indeed approve of the FISA wiretap of his former fellow member of Congress, and deemed it “urgent.” Sadly for Goss, though, the investigation never happened.

Stein says:
“[Laura] Rozen further muddies the issue by referring to "DOJ's burgeoning investigation into Harman." Not only was a Justice Department "investigation" of Harman not "burgeoning," it had not even begun, as I and others have reported, based on first-hand sources.“

Gee, I wonder how Laura Rozen got the impression there was a “burgeoning investigation?” Maybe because the whole point of Stein’s article was to imply there was an alleged ironclad case against Harman before Gonzalez got involved and stopped it.

On April 19 he wrote this: “Justice Department officials decided there was sufficient evidence to initiate an FBI investigation of Harman. But at the last minute, Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales aborted the plan….”

And this: “Another piece of news is that contrary to reports the Harman investigation was dropped for lack of evidence…”

And this: “Gonzales, President George W. Bush’s top counsel before becoming attorney general, who intervened to stop the Harman probe…”

And this: “As for there being no evidence to support the FBI probe the source with first-hand knowledge of the wiretap transcript called that “bull****.”

And this: ”Justice Department attorneys in the intelligence and public corruption units who read the transcripts decided that Harman had committed a crime...”

And this: “The Justice Department attorneys were prepared to pursue a case against Harman…”

And this: “Pelosi and Hastert were never notified and the investigation of Harman was effectively dead.”

Sure sounds like an investigation to me.

Heck, even in the May 1 post blasting Laura Rozen, where he writes, “The Justice Department was investigating secret Israeli operations in the United States, not Harman. (And now even that investigation has evidently come up empty).”

He also writes:

“Back in 2005, however, what the congresswoman was overheard saying to the wiretap target was troubling enough to prompt an investigation of her.”

Stein’s original desperation to imply that there was an investigation of Harman, and then later deny it heatedly, is odd.

Stein concludes, rather defensively:
“Everything else written about hidden agendas in this case is speculation, which, by the looks of instant commentary on the AIPAC case, will undoubtedly continue to take the place of reporting on this sordid affair.”

Indeed, it is speculation and it sordid. Since we have no idea who Stein’s sources are, all we can safely say is that we are getting selective and I might add, patently illegal, leaks from probable-NSA wiretaps, overhearing people they weren’t even investigating, clearly designed to make it look like Rep. Harman did something when no investigation was ever started, or if it was, didn’t go very far. And Harman never did get to Chair that Committee.

Quite frankly, Stein seems pretty desperate to cover for Porter Goss and the other Gosslings, almost to the point of advocacy. Which is interesting.

On April 19 Stein wrote:
"The first director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, opposed an FBI investigation of Harman, according to officials familiar with his thinking, and left it to Goss or FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III , to decide what to do."

Goss was head of the CIA. As Stein correctly points out, he should have no role at all in a criminal investigation of an American.

So why did the director of national intelligence leave it up to the head of the CIA “what to do” about a Democratic Congresswoman?