Have you been wondering what brilliant legal strategy Dick Cheney's former Chief of Staff Scooter Libby will be using to escape charges without implicating the White House? Well, he's retained a memory loss expert as a consultant. The expert will most likely testify that Libby suffers from memory loss, and therefore can't remember what he did or said. He does not remember if he leaked the name of a CIA operative as part of a White House plot for revenge. He does not remember if he lied to investigators about it. He does not remember if today is Tuesday. It's all just slipped his memory. I wonder how the Ann Coulter's and Bill O'Reilly's of the world are going to spin this in Bush's favor.
The Daily Nightly - MSNBC.com

It looks like the liberal traitors have infiltrated the United States military, as 72% of soldiers now want the U.S. to pull out of Iraq within a year. Only 1 in 5 want to "stay as long as they are needed," which is the current Bush plan. 42% are not clear what the U.S. mission in Iraq is. This could be bad news for Republicans, who have been trying to sway public opinion for the war, claiming that even though bad information was used, the end result was for the best. That view could also be threatened by the fact that Iraq is on the brink of civil war. It sure makes it harder to claim that we made their lives better when they've taken sides against one another, and many more are dying now then when they were under Saddam's tyrannical regime.
Zogby International

President Bush's job approval rating has reached a dismal 34%, the lowest rating in recent history. It seems that everyone has a beef with the President these days. Republicans (and most Democrats) are not happy with his secret Dubai ports deal, while everyone pretty much agrees that the Iraq War, which by all accounts was started by the Bush administration and their misinformation campaign, is now an utter failure. Even those who once claimed that it was for the best that we freed the Iraqi people from the rule of a tyrant are starting to realize that we made the situation much worse, as the country is now on the brink of civil war.
Bush job rating falls to all-time low: poll - Yahoo! News

Katherine Harris has been accused of accepting illegal campaign funds... again. Mitchell Wade, a defense contractor, admitted that he donated more than $1 million in bribes to various Republican politicians. He hoped the funds would benefit MZM Inc. Harris was also in trouble for accepting illegal contributions 10 years ago, when an insurance company was the guilty donor. In that case, the addresses on the checks were changed to make it harder to trace back to an illegal donor. Harris claimed she thought they were changed because "they preferred street addresses to post office boxes". Yeah, right.
State: Harris received illegal funding in earlier case

Does anyone actually believe that the Bush administration used illegal intelligence-gathering methods, such as the NSA wiretaps, to thwart terrorism, and not to gain information on political enemies? It has been revealed that Federal agents have been keeping tabs on anti-Bush peace organizations since 9/11, including Raging Grannies, a group of elderly women against the war in Iraq. The government claims they suspected those women were plotting to disrupt Navy ships. Yeah, right. How long are we going to allow this to happen? This isn't about Republicans vs. Democrats anymore. It doesn't matter which side you're on, and what "team" you want to win. The fact is the president has set up a federal government that is too corrupt to remove from power. They have all the muscle, and they've actually convinced most of America that this is the way it should be. We think we are much safer with Bush in power, but are we? How many Americans died from terrorism during the 8 years of Clinton? Hmmmm, first trade center bombing plus Oklahoma City (I'll count it, even though the terrorist was not foreign) plus USS Cole plus a few other incidents = 400 to 500, give or take. What happened on Bush's clock (just 5 1/2 years so far)? 9/11, failed war in Iraq (just in case any of you still think we brought democracy there, watch a better news station. They are on the verge of civil war), anthrax in the mail, and literally hundreds of anti-American attacks throughout the world. Add that to the fact that most of the world now hates America now more than ever. Thanks for making us safer, Mr. President.
Peace Groups Under Watch

Visiting the Freedom Towers, which will be built at the site of Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center buildings formerly stood, will require a iris scans, thumb print analysis, and walking within sight of face recognition cameras. Politicians feels this will make the area safe from terrorists, probably because it will keep just about everyone from visiting. The World Trade Center towers did not have most of this technology, although I'm told there was a facial recognition camera that was working on 9/11, but it had a software glitch and was unable to read the nose on a 747.
Smart Cameras, Guards to Protect WTC Site - Yahoo! News

Tom Delay has come out with his "final word" on Jack Abramoff, saying that any assertion that he was close friends with the lobbyist is untrue. I have said that they were friends, which I suppose makes me a liar. It also makes Tom Delay a liar, as he called Abramoff "one of my closest and dearest friends" in a speech in 1997.

It must be hard for Mr. Delay to keep up with all his lies while facing criminal prosecution. He's probably also getting sick of waking up every morning and eating his own excrement for breakfast.

By the way, the note where Delay asserts that he was not close friends with Abramoff was in an official note to his constituents, and the speech where he claimed Abramoff was one of his closest and dearest friends is available on video tape. I expect The Daily Show to be airing it soon, because we all know Fox News isn't going to do it.
Think Progress » DeLay Writes Letters: It’s “Absolutely Untrue” That Abramoff Was “A Close Friend”

The Bush administration admits now that the President did not know about the United Arab Emirates port deal until after it had already been made. I don't know about you, but I'm getting really sick of this "aw shucks, I guess we should have known, but oh well, what can you do?" attitude of the White House. Every week this administration is either involved in a major scandal or they make a really stupid mistake that puts Americans in peril, but nobody is willing to come down on them. When are we going to stop continually forgiving this boy-president and start holding him accountable for his many mistakes?
CBS 42: Austin's Source for Breaking News, Weather, and Sports: Bush Didn't Know About Port Deal

Dick Cheney is in more trouble today, and it has nothing to do with his weekend quail hunting mishap. New evidence shows that the Vice President lied to federal investigators and also gave false information during testimony before a grand jury. Both of those charges could spell an end to his vice presidency.

Dick Cheney testified that his office was not the source of the Plame leak, and the first he heard of Plame was from Chief of Staff Scooter Libby. Libby testified to the exact opposite, and the evidence suggests he was telling the truth. In addition to this crime, Cheney's office could also be in trouble for deleting emails relating to the investigation. It is illegal to knowingly destroy evidence that could be used as part of a criminal investigation. It seems that only emails relating to the Plame affair were deleted, showing that those doing the deleting knew what they were doing.

Cheney is also not the only one whose job is in jeopardy. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' office has not turned over many emails that could be relevant to the investigation and implicate the Vice President. Gonzales, who was been widely criticized by legal experts across the country for the NSA wiretapping scandal and his general lack of knowledge of the law, likely holds (or once held) evidence that could implicate himself and even President Bush in the Plame affair.
Daily Kos: State of the Nation

More connections keep on coming out of the woodwork tying the President with indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. It seems that in 2002, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad paid Abramoff $1.2 million to arrange a meeting with President Bush, with hopes of repairing relations with the United States.

Abramoff made contact with Bush's Chief of Staff Karl Rove at least 4 times, eventually getting the Prime Minister an invitation to the White House.

The Malaysian government had established a bad reputation during the 1990's, as the Clinton administration chastised them repeatedly for civil rights violations and anti-Semitism. With the help of Abramoff and Alexander Strategies, which is run by embattled representative Tom DeLay (Republican, Texas), the Malaysians were able to erase years of violations and public relations nightmares with just $1.2 million.
Abramoff Bragged of Ties to Rove - Los Angeles Times

Conservative columnist Ann Coulter has committed a third degree felony by knowingly falsifying her address and voting (no doubt right down the GOP line) in the wrong precinct during last week's Palm Beach council elections.

Instead of giving the address of her home, she wrote down the address she used to have her mail forwarded to before moving to Florida from New York a year ago. She did not own the home at that address, and never lived there.

Coulter is lucky this happened in Florida, where no prominent Republican can be charged with a crime, and election-rigging is seen as a sport of the wealthy, no different than polo or quail hunting.
Ballot botch: Coulter votes in wrong precinct

Have you ever wondered who has to foot the bill when the president starts a campaign to promote his policies, such as social security reform, anti-abortion and anti-gay legislation, and his "War on Terra"? Well, you do, that's who. American tax dollars have been funding President Bush's $1.6 billion campaign to promote his programs since 2003.

Maybe Bush should try adopting better policies, rather than spending loads of money to fool people into thinking his horrible (and sometimes illegal) policies are worthy.
News

Former VP Chief of Staff Scooter Libby has testified that he was authorized by Vice President Dick Cheney to disclose classifed information to the press for the purpose of defending President Bush's war in Iraq. This is perhaps the first time someone from within the administration has admitted that someone from the top authorized the release of information for the specific purpose of spreading the Bush administration's policy. Until this time, they have always said that information was leaked on accident, and it was in the interest of national security to not talk any more about it. Yeah right, looks like national security was about the last thing on this administration's mind.
NATIONAL JOURNAL: Cheney 'Authorized' Libby to Leak Classified Information (02/09/2006)

Presidential Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president in judicial hearings that will question whether the NSA wiretapping system Bush secretly established was illegal.

I think what Karl Rove is doing should be illegal. It's one thing to have a vis-a-vis with votes between senators or representatives, but it's quite another to have a member of the executive branch threatening to cut off funding from the GOP if the legislative branch votes a certain way.

That's extortion in my book, and it's probably just one more sign that the even the White House recognizes that the wiretapping program was illegal. That is something I've never doubted. The law is fairly black and white here, and what the president did was illegal, and a very serious crime. The president continues to claim he did it for good reasons, spying on terrorist who could hurt this country. I question this, because the program has spied on thousands of people, and led to just a couple arrests of suspected terrorists. No convictions have come out of this program.

The White House refuses to reveal who was spied on, but is it not reasonable to believe they used this program to spy on political rivals? If that's the case, how has the president used the program to make sure his bills get passed, or even worse: did the president use the program to help his own re-election in 2004, or the election of many other GOP senators and representatives (which have now voted in 2 conservative Supreme Court judges)? THAT is how serious this issue is. The president could have been using this program to effectively load our government with conservatives. He has certainly achieved this goal, and with the GOP in control, is there any way to bring him down? From where I sit, it seems like he blatantly broke the law to gain power, and now he has enough power to be above the law, an absolute untouchable, the likes of which this country has never seen before.
Insight

Just as everyone probably suspected, Jack Abramoff and President Bush were much closer than the President wants everyone to believe. Emails reveal that Abramoff and the President met at least 12 times, and Abramoff was even invited to the President's ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Think Progress » EXCLUSIVE EMAILS: Jack Abramoff Describes Relationship With President Bush

An American citizen who was born in India was detained while exiting the State of the Union speech last Tuesday. Apparently, Secret Service police thought he looked similar to a man on their watch list.

This is a bit strange, because they should have easily been able to identify the man by asking who invited him. That just happened to be prominent Florida Democrat Alcee Hastings. Everyone at the State of the Union speech is either a member of the press, an elected official, or a guest of an elected official. It seems odd that the Secret Service would go out of their way to compare attendees to their watch lists, and even stranger that they would question a possible match for over an hour. How hard does it take for them to identify a person who is a personal guest of a politician?
TIME.com: The State of the Union's Mystery Suspect -- Page 1

An American citizen who was born in India was detained while exiting the State of the Union speech last Tuesday. Apparently, Secret Service police thought he looked similar to a man on their watch list.

This is a bit strange, because they should have easily been able to identify the man by asking who invited him. That just happened to be prominent Florida Democrat Alcee Hastings. Everyone at the State of the Union speech is either a member of the press, an elected official, or a guest of an elected official. It seems odd that the Secret Service would go out of their way to compare attendees to their watch lists, and even stranger that they would question a possible match for over an hour. How hard does it take for them to identify a person who is a personal guest of a politician?
TIME.com: The State of the Union's Mystery Suspect -- Page 1

Senator Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania has become the first prominent Republican official to call the Bush administration's NSA domestic spying program illegal, saying the President's reason for spying with warrants were 'unrealistic'.

This is bad news for the President, as Arlen Spector is not just any Republican senator. He is the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, meaning he has the power to demand certain documents relating to the program, something Democrats, who have almost all been critical of the program, do not have in their power.
GOP senator calls spying reasons ‘unrealistic’ - U.S. Security - MSNBC.com

Oops, another Downing Street memo has made it to the press, this one showing that there was little evidence against Saddam Hussein to justify the war, and Prime Minister Tony Blair committed to the war and then tried to lure Saddam and his government to do something to give them a reason for it.
Blair hit by new leak of secret war plan - Sunday Times - Times Online

Convict-turned-columnist Oliver North struck back at comments by CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour, who said the war in Iraq has "turned out to be a disaster," among other things. North goes on to praise the journalists of past wars, such as Ernie Pyle, who praised the work done by American troops and ignored the brutal reality of war.

North seemed to pick a poor time to attack journalists in Iraq, as just last week ABC anchorman Bob Woodruff was seriously injured by a roadside bomb. Many other journalists have been very near attacks that resulted in fatalities. Yet North claims today's journalists are not close enough to the war to see all the great things we are doing.

I think North is lucky he's politically connected and is able to work freely as a columnist today, because in other countries his actions during the Reagan administration would have him still rotting away in prison, or, in some places, executed a long time ago.
The Pen and the Sword

It looks like the GOP still can't count votes properly, as their first vote in the House of Representatives to determine their new Majority Leader ended with more votes cast than there are Republicans in the House. Of course, this is just their party voting, so there is no criminal wrong-doing here, but if they keep selecting criminals to lead them I think this will become their official logo before the end of the year:

Election Update: Do-Over on First Ballot

It what might be remembered as one of the all-time fastest turn-arounds from State of the Union promise to breaking that promise, President Bush's energy secretary said today that when the president said we'd cut oil imports by 75% by the year 2025, he did not mean it literally. He actually "meant" that we'd replace some current energy needs with alternative fuel.

No freakin' duh we're going to use more alternative fuel. We are also going to be increasing our energy needs as the population increases. Setting a goal of cutting foreign oil consumption by 75% should have led to major changes in energy extraction and use, with help from the government. By immediately retracting this statement, the president basically has said that we are addicted to oil, and that's just the way he and his friends like it.
MiamiHerald.com | 02/02/2006 | Bush aides clarify statements about oil

Vice President Dick Cheney violated the White House email policy when he deleted his emails in 2003 right at the outbreak of the Plame CIA leak scandal. Why did Cheney chose that particular time to ignore White House email policy? Was his inbox just too full? Was he getting too many spam emails and he just decided to nuke the whole thing?

It seems kind of odd to me that a VP would go out of his way to violate a policy he had been briefed on several times at the moment he learned that the press knew of a scandal involving the leak of a CIA operative, a leak that we now know was connected to his office, and his chief of staff Scooter Libby.
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall February 1, 2006 01:20 PM