So Scooter has been indicted and resigned. Gee, could Preznit Pompous Prevaricator have been any bigger of a fucking liar two years ago? It's probably been a well-known fact within the West Wing that Scooter was lying and leaking simultaneously, and yet as the CNN clips showed over and over again there was Bunnypants getting all deer-in-the-headlights about anyone in his Truth, Justice and The American Way Gang being involved. You know, other than being involved all the way up to the top of their heads.

So, with the trial, it's a sure bet that Crashcart's gonna get called...everything that Scooter did, he did with the acquiescence of his boss. They set out to go to war together, if by "going to war together" you mean sitting behind a desk and sending young Americans off to die for nothing. They fabricated their cover stories together for the war and probably later for Scooter to fall on his sword. Now the big question: will the 1600 Crew try and "close" the trial on "National Security" grounds to keep from being embarrassed? I would not put it past them.

Fitzgerald came off looking like an absolute choir boy. Any smears that the republican noise machine tries to throw at him won't stick. If they go after Joe Wilson, then at Scooter's trial, any mud they try and toss at him is going to not only fall off, but fly back and hit them...because Joe Wilson was right.

The PNAC case for war was one of the factors that brought Scooter Libby down today. Beloved Leader wanted Texas-style Justice against Saddam because he (1) tried to kill his daddy and (2) put daddy's face on the floor of the Al-Rashid hotel lobby, I believe. Both humiliations he had to avenge at whatever cost to his Texas-sized Ego with his Topo-Gigio Courage. So he was a receptive vessel for the PNAC schemes of Libby and his fellow war-mongers.

As cliche as it is to say this, remember that no one has ever been held accountable for the escape of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. And the liablility for the unprovoked invasion of Iraq and ultimately the deaths of Americans, Iraqis and others may now becoming home to roost with the 1600 Crew because they were so desperate to hide their motives for war they got caught in their web of deceit.

Will the trial of Scooter Libby end the war in Iraq? No. But it may finally bring an awareness of how wrong it is and that there was no compelling National Security or Defense interest in invading a country that posed no immediate threat. The only mushrooms PNAC was interested in were the ones they kept us under in the dark. They knew there were no mushroom clouds coming from Iraq, Wilson told the truth about it, and Libby tried to shut him down by discrediting him, and the indictments today say he lied about that.

Happy Fitzmas. Indeed.

So, is the descent of Preznit Scratched Teflon becoming inevitable? Apparently the Virginia republican goobernatorial candidate can't find time to show up with Bunnypants in Norfolk. Here's their excuse:

He (Trent Duffy - ed.) noted that the speech would focus on terrorism. "The president's event is not a political rally. It's an official event."

Kilgore press secretary Tim Murtaugh echoed that.

"We really wouldn't be invited to a presidential event," he said. "They keep the political events and the presidential [events] separate. We appreciate the president's support."

That doesn't even pass the smell test. Kilgore doesn't want a Preznit Bottom Feeder appearance in the last 10 days before the election. After all, one incompetant per stage show is enough, and by all accounts those two empty suits on stage togehter and someone is likely to mistake a campaign event for a suit sale.

How long after the unsealing of indictments (if any) will it be before the somewhat paper-trained attack dogs of Preznit Shits Where He Eats will be out there decrying "Judicial Terrorism"?

Let's face it, the most successful word in the 1600 Crew vocabulary is "Terrorist" or the variant "Terrorism", add that to their already focus-grouped word "Judicial" and baby you've got an attack strategery worthy of Stalin.

Popcorn and galoshes please...the show's about to start, and it's gonna get deep.

Not being a lawyer or anything I was pondering this: if they indict Rove, Libby and name Cheney and one or two others as "unindicted" co-conspirators (yes, you know who I mean), couldn't they seek a prosection under RICO if not the espionage acts? I mean if they formed a criminal conspiracy to lie and suppress evidence or give false statements and can be shown to have acted in concert (like they never, ever talk to each other, right?), wouldn't RICO be an option?

I mean, this is a criminal enterprise...it would be only fitting. IMHO.

Apparently the Irani government is trying to get a rise out of everyone who is not an adherent of Islam. I think they can reasonably check that action item off their their to-do list:

Several world capitals have condemned Iran's leader for saying Israel should be "wiped off the map," and Israel's vice premier has called for Tehran to be expelled from the United Nations.

During a meeting with protesting students at Iran's Interior Ministry, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad quoted a remark from Ayatollah Khomeini, founder of Iran's Islamic revolution, that Israel "must be wiped out from the map of the world."

But wait, it's almost better...this just in from the Israelis:

Israel's Vice Prime Minister Shimon Peres said Iran should be expelled from the United Nations.

"Since 1945, the establishment of the United Nations, no head of state which is a member of the United Nations ever called for the destruction of another member of the United Nations, publicly and clearly, as the president of Iran did," said Peres, a Nobel peace laureate.

Gee Shimon, I'll take Mess O'Potamia for $1000 please.

She's gone. Not the old Hall and Oates standard either. Harriet has withdrawn. So, it is SCOTUS interruptus after all...

President Bush on Thursday accepted the withdrawal of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, according to a statement from the White House.

In the statement, Miers said her nomination presented a "burden for the White House."

On Wednesday, White House spokesman Scott McClellan dismissed the suggestion that senators have been reluctant to come out in support of Miers because they are unimpressed with her as a nominee.

Hurricane Katrina and Brownie...the gifts that keep on giving.

Michael D. Brown was days away from announcing plans to resign as director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency when Hurricane Katrina hit Aug. 29, according to e-mails released by separate House and Senate investigations into the government's flawed response to the disaster.
...
"The fact that it appears that Michael Brown was planning to resign may explain in part his curious detachment during the Katrina catastrophe," Collins said.
...
Brown had privately shared his intentions with acquaintances, and FEMA announced in the aftermath of Brown's resignation that the director of the agency's recovery division, Daniel A. Craig, had also planned to leave a month later.

In an Aug. 31 e-mail to FEMA aide James Tillie, Brown wrote, "I should have done my announcement a week early." That evening, Craig wrote to Brown: "We need to get this done right or neither of us are leaving on great terms . . . and we were days away."

And now we know he's a fucking liar.

That's Two Thousand Americans who did not have to lose their lives.

There is no celebration at the number 2000. Only sadness for the lives they will never live.

Anyone want to bet that on the Fitzmas Day (or Patranakka, if you prefer) the 1600 Crew announces

• the capture of bin Laden
• the capture of the #2 al-Qaeda guy in Iraq
• the retirement of Darth Dick
• the invasion of Syria
• the invasion of Venezuala
• the nationalization of The New York Times
• that Harriet Miers is stepping aside, and Neil Bush will be nominated in her place, because of his long-time relationship with the Preznit and his moral fiber

Incoming....

Back in that Other Country, you know the one that harbored the men who actually attacked us in 2001. The spreading of Freedoms and Democracies is apparently not going so well over there.

For the first time since the fall of the Taliban's Islamic government four years ago, a journalist has been convicted by a Kabul court under the country's blasphemy laws.

Ali Mohaqiq Nasab, the editor of a monthly magazine for women called "Women's Rights," was sentenced Saturday to two years in prison by Kabul's primary court. The sentence will automatically go to appeal.
...
The prosecutor called for the death penalty, accusing the editor of apostasy, the abandonment of the faith, so the sentence appeared to have been a compromise. But it is a reminder that Afghanistan is still ruled by the Islamic legal code, Shariah, and that on issues of religion, conservatives are determined to enforce it.
...
This is not the first time that accusations of blasphemy have been raised against editors and writers under Mr. Karzai's government, but until now Mr. Raheen has managed to discourage convictions by the conservative judges and members of the Supreme Court.

"I don't want any kind of damage to the freedom of speech," he said. "I have been working very hard on this."

He added, "There are always some fanatics behind these things and they take sides very quickly."

I guess that Preznit Short-Bus Rider couldn't be bothered with actually spreading Freedoms and Democracy to Afghanistan. After all, the opium kick-backs laundered through his warlord buddies are probably pretty lucrative, and gee, why bother snatching victory from the jaws of defeat, he's never done it before, why start now?

In a hundred years historians will be sure to mark up the Invasion of Afghanistan as yet another of Preznit Elusive Success's many, many failures...and the first that fucked up a country. Followed by Iraq and sadly US.

Commenter Danny had an interesting point in my "Judging Judy" post. He's right, we don't want to so discount the quote unquote Main Stream Media so that they all become a parody of Fox News, with their fax machines being converted to LAN-based mail relays from the Press Office of the 1600 Crew or any future administration.

Instead, I would hope that the media organizations who are not touched as deeply by the Judy Miller scandals from WMD stenography to Sleeping with Scooter, whether figuratively or whatever, take a long hard look at their news-gathering and journalistic practices overall and make adjustments to keep then next Miss (or Mr) Run Amok from showing up in their newsrooms. It would be deeply embarassing for them, I'm sure, though if it happened not undeservedly so, but worse it would provide exactly the further devaluation of the trust we all once had in the Fourth Estate to be fair arbiters of information, something the Times stopped being when they allowes Miller to practice stenography at at the salary of a Pulitzer-prize winning "investigative" reporter. From the last line of her biography:

She lectures on the Middle East, Islam, national security, and terrorism.

I guess that the headiness of access to all the "secrets" that never existed made her become what she is today, or perhaps she never really was all that and more, but just put on a really, really good front.

MoDo, as has been reported around blogtopia nails St Judy of the Gutters to the stake. The locals are out gathering pulp for fuel now. Apparently, St Judy is under the impression that she's a credible reporter on issues of minor import, like National Security.

Judy's stories about WMD fit too perfectly with the White House's case for war. She was close to Ahmad Chalabi, the con man who was conning the neocons to knock out Saddam so he could get his hands on Iraq, and I worried that she was playing a leading role in the dangerous echo chamber that former Senator Bob Graham dubbed "incestuous amplification." Using Iraqi defectors and exiles, Mr. Chalabi planted bogus stories with Judy and other credulous journalists.

Even last April, when I wrote a column critical of Mr. Chalabi, she fired off e-mail to me defending him.
...
Judy told The Times that she plans to write a book and intends to return to the newsroom, hoping to cover "the same thing I've always covered - threats to our country." If that were to happen, the institution most in danger would be the newspaper in your hands.

Hey, maybe she can do her "rehabilitation" in one of those high-priced CPA jobs through the Heritage Foundation, if they are still passing those out. Maybe she could be the senior economic minister for Tikrit, where I'm sure the local indigenous persons would welcome her with open arms. No, really.

1. Phase II
   
2. P.U.
   
3. When will it start?
   
4. A question...
   
5. Well, with maybe one exception...
   
6. Awww, Harriet, say it ain't so...
   
7. republican understatement award
   
8. Two Kay
   
9. Spinning the news cycle
   
10. Meanwhile, in Forgotten Land...