Conservation at its finest.  Kudos to the enterprising photographer who snapped Denny Hastert getting out of his hydrogen-powered prop vehicle and getting back in that good old gas guzzler of an SUV.  Seems they were doing a press conference at a local gas station talking about our current energy problems, although if its the gas station I'm thinking of, they pretty much could have walked back to Capitol Hill because they were only a few blocks away...not to mention that Metro line nearby? 

(via Ezra at Tapped)

The President usually puts me at a loss but has anybody noticed that his preferred governing style seems to be, "Give me the powers of a Monarch and despite my record so far I'll save the day."   I'm surprised he hasn't just declared that rising gas prices are part of the War on Terror and declared Congress' authorization of force legislation allows him to unilaterally set fuel standards. 

BTW, did anyone else laugh when Bush said in this piece, "... I intend to use it wisely if Congress will give me that authority"? 

Did anybody notice something strange about this piece in TPM Muckraker?  No, not the fact that a lobbyist ran a hooker ring/poker party out of the Watergate geared toward servicing members of Congress or the fact that the current CIA chief and his #3 likely met at Mr. Wilke's party.  No, the oddest statement in this piece comes from former Congressman Charlie Wilson (D-TX) who quote, "says he was there, although he never stuck around for the women."  "Good-time Charlie" Wilson not staying around for the ladies?  I know the man has slowed down in his later years, but anyone whose read Charlie Wilson's War would have a hard time believing that statement.   

Ever wonder why the White House always remains so cocksure of itself and/or out of touch with the national mood in general?  Well, maybe its because nobody there watches anything but Fox News.  Check out this exchange between Scott McClellan and a reporter complaining that he can't get anyone at the White House to turn to another news channel, even on Air Force One!

I'm not sure I get it?  Bill Frist puts forth a GOP plan to give everyone a $100 gas rebate check...did somebody just pull that number out of thin air or something?  For my family, that would amount to maybe 40% of what we spend on gas EVERY MONTH.  How is a one-time $100 rebate suppose to help anyone?  Seriously!  Maybe we should just look at it as an attempted bribe, or something?  The worst part is they've come up with a dumb idea because in an election year they're under pressure to look like they care, but then they came up with a plan that makes them look even more out of touch with what most American's are going through than if they proposed nothing at all!

In only five years, FEMA went from being an example of a well-run and effective federal agency to so broken that the Senate committee investigating the government's response to Hurricane Katrina says scrap the whole damn thing and start over.  Just one more thing to remember when assessing the leadership and management abilities of our "CEO President."

Fitzgerald goes before the new grand jury for the first time since December 7, 2005.  Expect a Friday announcement of an indictment of the the right-hand man of the President of the United States.  The fun's just getting started.

I'm with John: If Tony Snow were to be named White House Communications Director it wouldn't be much of a change from his current position at Fox News.

The core problem in the Iran nuclear situation is Iran's objective need for nuclear weapons.

Okay, I don't know how big the Vatican is, but we are currently building a walled compound of 21 buildings spread out over 104 acres in a section of the Green Zone in Baghdad that will have its own military force, self-contained utilities and a population of over 5,500 people which we will soon call the U.S. Embassy, Iraq.  Excuse me, can you say ten times the size of the typical US embassy compound, six times larger than the United Nations compound and roughly two-thirds the sized of the National Mall in D.C.!?!?  

Now, I understand how the size of this new embassy complex pretty much shows that Iraq is supremely messed up and its still too dangerous for most American civilians to go outside the Green Zone, but how do you build something so obtrusively large and representative of our continued control of the country and not undermine the authority of whatever government might eventually be formed by the Iraqis? 

Who in the hell came up with that plan?  Anybody???   

Those are the words of Lt. Col. Chris Pease, deputy commander for Iraqi police training in east Baghdad after admitting that sectarian militia death squads are not only active but have infiltrated his police force and for the most part his hands are tied.   

Let's see, an average of 85 bodies a day come into the Baghdad morgue, most killed execution style and showing signs of torture, now multiply that by seven days a week, four weeks a month and 12 months a year....and that's just Baghdad!  Iraq is starting to put up the kind of monthly death statistics we haven't seen since the twenty years of violence in Lebanon or more recently Bosnia, but somehow if we don't see major urban combat with artillery battles between militias we can pat ourselves on the back and breathe a heavy sigh of relief that we don't see any sort of civil war going on.

At the core of the Bush administration's illegal eavesdropping on the American public's telephone calls is a black box called the Narus STA 6400.  The manufacturer, Narus, is a company that provides software programs for internet billing and tracking which has now branched out into the area of survellance.  The company's own webpage tells you what you need to know:

As the foundation for the industry’s most advanced IP security, intercept and traffic classification applications, NarusInsight is unique in its ability to simultaneously provide deep packet inspection from layer 3 to layer 7 and complete correlation across every link and element on the network. NarusInsight provides carriers with the flexibility and superior price performance benefits associated with deployment either at the network edge, the high-speed core or both simultaneously.

The core of the survellance operations is the Narus Insight Intercept Suite:

[The] capabilities include playback of streaming media (i.e. VoIP), rendering of web pages, examination of e-mail and the ability to analyze the payload/attachments of e-mail or file transfer protocols. Narus partner products offer the ability to quickly analyze information collected by the Directed Analysis or Lawful Intercept modules. When Narus partners’ powerful analytic tools are combined with the surgical targeting and real-time collection capabilities of Directed Analysis and Lawful Intercept modules, analysts or law enforcement agents are provided capabilities that have been unavailable thus far.

That's right, using these tools, the government can look at your email and its attachments, listen in to your internet telephone calls and see everything you are searching.

But Narus isn't only helping the U.S. control communications, its also helping Communist China do the same by allowing the Communist party to close off access to internet telephone calls in Shanghai.

How does our government use the device?  Read the affidavit of an AT&T technician who worked with the NSA to install the equipment:

In 2002, when I was working in an AT&T office in San Francisco, the site manager told me to expect a visit from a National Security Agency agent, who was to interview a management-level technician for a special job. The agent came, and by chance I met him and directed him to the appropriate people.

In January 2003, I, along with others, toured the AT&T central office on Folsom Street in San Francisco -- actually three floors of an SBC building. There I saw a new room being built adjacent to the 4ESS switch room where the public's phone calls are routed. I learned that the person whom the NSA interviewed for the secret job was the person working to install equipment in this room.

While doing my job, I learned that fiber optic cables from the secret room were tapping into the Worldnet circuits by splitting off a portion of the light signal. . .   I also saw design documents dated Jan. 13, 2004 and Jan. 24, 2003, which instructed technicians on connecting some of the already in-service circuits to the "splitter" cabinet, which diverts some of the light signal to the secret room. The circuits listed were the Peering Links, which connect Worldnet with other networks and hence the whole country, as well as the rest of the world.

One of the documents listed the equipment installed in the secret room, and this list included a Narus STA 6400, which is a "Semantic Traffic Analyzer". The Narus STA technology is known to be used particularly by government intelligence agencies because of its ability to sift through large amounts of data looking for preprogrammed targets.

My job required me to connect new circuits to the "splitter" cabinet and get them up and running. While working on a particularly difficult one with a technician back East, I learned that other such "splitter" cabinets were being installed in other cities, including Seattle, San Jose, Los Angeles and San Diego. . . Based on my understanding of the connections and equipment at issue, it appears the NSA is capable of conducting what amounts to vacuum-cleaner surveillance of all the data crossing the Internet -- whether that be peoples' e-mail, Web surfing or any other data.

This is how your government spies on you and everyone else on the planet.

Rick Perlstein--always relevant:

"Building a progressive idea structure" ain't the problem. It's recovering the progressive foundation. Do that, and we are unfuckwithable.

The Democrats pay a huge long-term price for those Democrats who let that bankruptcy bill go through. The Republicans understand us better than we understand ourselves. When we are not credible defenders of the economic interests of ordinary Americans, we amount to little. When we are, we're a nuclear bomb to the heart of their coalition.

Democratic congressmen can do that, for example, by making a credible collective pledge that if you vote Democrat enough you will never pay another medical bill as long as you live. You really think people wouldn't stop voting Republican then?

This guy should be running the party.

Ed Kilgore gives us a pretty good summary of how the Senate immigration bill compromise fell through and highlights the unmistakable lack of leadership from both Senator Frist and the White House.  I guess when you say you'll go to bat for something and don't, or promise you can get the votes and don't, things like this happen?

Newt joins the club.

The S.S. Titanic starts to take on water:

But in the new Post-ABC News poll, completed Sunday, 50 percent of respondents said they trusted the Democrats to better handle the immigration issue, while 38 percent trusted Republicans. A third of Americans approved of the president's handling of the immigration issue, while 61 percent disapproved. Only his handling of gas prices showed lower approval ratings.

Nothing more thrilling than seeing the G.O.P. decide to pick on those who are supposedly helpless--undocumented workers--only to have those who are supposed to be helpless stand up and fight for themselves.

And the money goes to former prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega:

 We now have sufficient information to frame the Final Jeopardy! question. This is it:

Is a President, on the eve of his reelection campaign, legally entitled to ward off political embarrassment and conceal past failures in the exercise of his office by unilaterally and informally declassifying selected -- as well as false and misleading -- portions of a classified National Intelligence Estimate that he has previously refused to declassify, in order to cause such information to be secretly disclosed under false pretenses in the name of a "former Hill staffer" to a single reporter, intending that reporter to publish such false and misleading information in a prominent national newspaper?

The answer is obvious: No. Such a misuse of authority is the very essence of a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States. It is also precisely the abuse of executive power that led to the impeachment of Richard M. Nixon.

Max Sawicky caught this ABC News article in which an Administrations spokesman claims that since the President has the authority to declassify something it basically means by definition he can't be considered a leaker... "It's like accusing a shopkeeper of shoplifting from himself" we're informed.  What it is is abuse of the classification system for political ends and their defense rests on the kind of legalistic hairsplitting that the media used to pound the Clinton Administration over. 

What happened here?  The President didn't authorized that the entire NIE paper be declassified and shown to the media and the general public, he authorized select "favorable" passages be made available to one "friendly" reporter in hopes of deflecting political criticism of his decisionmaking leading up to the Iraq war. 

Moreover, he was so confident that what he was doing was correct, within his inherent powers and done according to all previously established protocols that he avoided all previously established protocols and neglected to inform various intelligence officials (CIA, NSA, etc.) of his decision. 

Furthermore, since he was in the right, instead of directly and personally providing this friendly reporter (ie. Judith Miller) with said NIE passages or even showing copies of the "declassified" passages to a national television audience, he took it a step further and decided that information should first pass through his Vice President and then the Vice President's Chief of Staff before it got to the reporter. 

Finally, the friendly journalist who received the scoop did not mention that she got the information directly from the President, Vice-President or the VP's Chief of Staff when she used this information in her reporting. 

If this is on the up and up and proper why does it seem like there was a conscious effort to keep the President's role in it all so insulated?  Also, are you telling me something was declassified and given to only ONE reporter, who doesn't have any sort of security clearance to begin with?  Seems like an awful lot of sneaking around and obfuscation for something that isn't a leak, wouldn't you say? 

This might be one of those days that people remember in history.

The New York Times: 

In Court Filings Cheney Aide Says Bush Approved Leak

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said he did not know what Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was talking about when she said last week that the United States had made thousands of "tactical errors" in handling the war in Iraq, a statement she later said was meant figuratively.

Speaking during a radio interview on WDAY in Fargo, N.D., on Tuesday, Rumsfeld said calling changes in military tactics during the war "errors" reflects a lack of understanding of warfare.

She's not the only one who lacks an understanding of warfare, Don.

The people who released footage of Saddam Hussein's dead sons are alarmed that Iraqi insurgents would release video of the Apache helicopter they shot down and the two American pilots they killed.  Oh the irony.

Well, Mr. Delay has saved himself from a "bruising" (please?) reelection fight that would have been quite tame compared to his upcoming legal battles.  Saying one's been undone by rabidly partisan Democrats means you never have to say you're sorry and so goes Tom.  Then again, when the people who ran your congressional office, a number of good friends (ie. campaign contributors and lobbyists) have been convicted of a variety of bribery and public corruption charges, and oh, by the way they're all suddenly wanting spill to the Feds, its gonna be really hard not to say that you didn't notice anything was wrong.  Watch his retirement speech and tell me the man doesn't seem more than a little nervous.  Whatever happens to Tom Delay from here on out its worth remembering that the Republican Party that holds Capitol Hill is Tom Delay's Republican Party, he built it, paid for it, and gave it its corrupt "ends justify the means" ethic and although the man is gone, his stench remains. 

 What is hard to believe is that by stepping down Delay can just convert his campaign chest into a legal defense fund?  Did those contributors give money to Mr. Delay with the thought of helping him avoid criminal prosecution?  Do you think most of the people that gave the man money did so knowing it would cover his legal bills?  I don't, nor should they, the man has his own money and plenty of fat-cat friends he's done favors for for years that he can go to if he needs it.  Knowing him he'll even raid one of those phony charity organizations he's set up for the money, but please, just leave the political contributions and contributors out of it.  If anything Democrats should introduce legislation to overturn any such provision in federal law as soon as possible because it in effect endorses all the crap Mr. Delay has pulled over the years. 

Make the Delay Republican Party vote to protect their man one more time... you know they want to and I can't think of a better opportunity to put their lack of principle or integrity in perspective.

Eschaton reports that Tom Delay told Chris Matthews that he's withdrawing from his re-election race and CNN has confirmed it.

Let's see, that's $200 million divided by 20 clinics over 2 years...so ten clinics per year at a cost of $10 million each and 122 that were never finished? 

Makes me wonder how the rebuilding of New Orleans is gonna go?

Update (4/4/06):  Christy Hardin Smith over at Firedoglake notes that Parsons is ranked no.2 in the amount of dollars received for contracts in Iraq in Afghanistan, after KBR/Halliburton, of course.

Atheist: America's most hated non-religious minority.

big picture:  Not always as promising as those who don't want to talk about the details would have you believe.

bombing campaigns:  Tend to be the next logical step when all other tactics have failed.

censure: One of the least consequential statements of Congressional displeasure.  Synonymous with "impeachment" as currently used.

civil war: You know it when you see it...except in cases where you need to officially deny it.

dead bodies:  Horrible.  Continue to get in the way of more favorable coverage of the situation in Iraq.

energy prices:  What goes up evidently stays up.

fiscal conservatism: Given a bad name by all those routinely referred to as "fiscal conservatives".

Hamas:  Inadvertent beneficiaries of "Democracy on the March" in the Middle East.  Terrorists. 

illegal:  Complicated issue.  Often confused with a situation in which one ignores or purposely breaks laws as enacted by Congress or other legislative bodies. 

immigration reform:  Evidently only applicable to undocumented immigrants from Mexico and Central America.

Istanbul:  What Baghdad would look like if there weren't any car bombings and assassination attempts.  See "dead bodies" or "civil war".

John McCain: Always principled.  Evidently holds the only legitimate claim to term "bipartisanship" on Capitol Hill.  Media darling.

lobbying reform:  Another worthy effort undone by the reformers.

multi-generational commitment:  A term once reserved for social welfare programs but more recently describes the President's position on Iraq.

New Orleans:  Not as compelling a disaster as previously thought.  Current estimates of 25 years to rebuild a major American city put further strain on the term "American Ingenuity".

plagiarism:  Not as big a career killer as previously thought. 

progress:  Great buzzword.  Much kinder in the abstract as opposed to any actual effort at objective measure. 

radical base:  Commonly used to describe those passionate partisans who are pandered to come election time but avoided at all costs afterwards.  Not applicable to the Republican Party.

revisionism:  Inflammatory charge used to attack critics when a previously reported official version of events doesn't actually pan out.

sectarian violence:  Much more palatable description of "civil war", than "civil war".

strategic errors:  Not to be confused with the cumulation of thousands of "tactical" errors.  Think "big picture".