President Bush's former spokesman, Scott McClellan, will testify before a House committee next week about whether Vice President Dick Cheney ordered him to make misleading public statements about the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's identity.
McClellan will testify publicly and under oath before the House Judiciary Committee on June 20 about the White House's role in the leak and its response, his attorneys, Michael and Jane Tigar, said on Monday.
In his new book, "What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington's Culture of Deception," McClellan said he was misled by others, possibly including Cheney, about the role of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in the leak. McClellan has said publicly that Bush and Cheney "directed me to go out there and exonerate Scooter Libby."
And according to Think Progress, the White House is worried:
On NBC’s The Chris Matthews Show today, Time magazine assistant managing editor Michael Duffy said that the renewed attention to the scandal is causing White House lawyers to be “very concerned”:
DUFFY: White House lawyers are concerned, very concerned, now that Scott McClellan’s book has led Henry Waxman and John Conyers to take another look at the Valerie Plame business. There may be hearings. Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald may be called. Just another way in which a Democratic Congress might make a difference during the fall.
Chairman Waxman and Ranking Member Davis issued a proposed Committee report on White House contacts with Jack Abramoff that concludes that Mr. Abramoff had personal contact with President Bush, that high-level White House officials held Mr. Abramoff and his associates in high regard and solicited recommendations from them on policy matters, that Mr. Abramoff and his associates influenced some White House actions, and that Mr. Abramoff and his associates offered White House officials expensive tickets and meals.
The White House had stronger ties to disgraced superlobbyist Jack Abramoff than it has publicly admitted, according to a draft congressional report released Monday.
President Bush met Abramoff on at least four occasions the White House has yet to acknowledge, according to the draft report by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
And White House officials appeared as comfortable going to Abramoff and his lobbyists seeking tickets to sporting and entertainment events, as they did seeking input on personnel picks for plum jobs, the report found.
President Bush himself met Abramoff on at least six occasions, the report said, citing White House documents; the White House had previously acknowledged only two.
The chairman of the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee predicts U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss will be part of the firewall the party wants to build against Democratic control of the White House and both chambers of Congress.
U.S. Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., set a minimum on the number of seats the party must control, 41.
And why is 41 the magic number? Ensign explains:
"With 41 votes in the U.S. Senate, you can (1) block bad legislation, and (2) you can make the majority respect the minority's rights. And you can help craft good legislation," Ensign said. "If the Democrats were able to get to 60 votes - literally even if they get to 57-58 votes because they always seem to pick off a couple or three Republicans on a lot of votes - and if they win the White House ... they will be able to do pretty much whatever they want."
From TPM:
So if the Dems can't get to a 60-seat super-majority, the GOP will have won. Talk about lowering the bar.
Do you know when the last time the minority party had 41 votes or less?
According to this site from the US Senate, you have to go all the way back to the mid-70s to see numbers this bad. The Republicans in the Senate during the 94th Congress (1975-1977) held only 38 seats. Things didn't change for the 95th Congress (1977-1979) - they still held only 38 seats. Their fortunes improved a bit in the 97th Congress (1979-1981) as they moved up 3 seats to 41.
If the GOP is thinking that their "firewall" is a number not seen since the Watergate backlash, they're in deep doo-doo for sure.
For those of you who don't regularly read Duncan Black's indispensable Philly-based blog, you should know that Atrios regularly criticizes Washington Post Editorial Fred Hiatt for any number of journalistic sins.
I am sure he'd have a field day with today's editorial.
As I've just declared it's Pittsburgh for Philadelphia--Primanti's for Geno's--Steelers for Eagles day here at 2PJ, I'll have a go at the editorial.
Hiatt finds less there than meets the eye (or at least he shows us all what he thinks is enough for us to believe that there's less there than meets the eye).
For example he writes:
But dive into Rockefeller's report, in search of where exactly President Bush lied about what his intelligence agencies were telling him about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, and you may be surprised by what you find.
On Iraq's nuclear weapons program? The president's statements "were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates."
That's from page 15. What Hiatt leaves out tells you what the lie was. Here's the complete sentence:
Conclusion I: Statements by the President, Vice President, Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor regarding a possible Iraqi nuclear weapons program were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates, but did not convey the substantial disagreements that existed in the intelligence community.[emphasis added]
And what were some of those statements? On October 7, 2002 President Bush said this (page 5 of the report):
The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists...Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.
On page 8 we can read this:
In April 2001, the CIA noted that Iraq's attempts to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other dual-use equipment suggested that a reconstitution effort might be underway.
And a few sentence later:
The Defense Intelligence Agency produced several similar assessments in 2002, noting in a May 2002 report that "Although there is no firm evidence of a current nuclear weapon design effort, we judge that continued procurement of dual-use nuclear-related items, key personnel assigned to nuclear weapon-capable sites, construction at nuclear facilities, and Saddam's interactions with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission all indicate that Saddam has not abandoned the nuclear weapon program.
What follows immediately is the part that was left out of Hiatt's spin:
The Department of Energy (DOE) disagreed with the CIA's conclusions regarding the aluminum tubes, and assessed that it was more likely that the tubes were intended for a different use, such as a conventional rocket program. Based on other evidence, including Saddam's meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, and possible attempts to procure uranium from Niger, the DOE assessed in July 2002 that Saddam Hussein might be attempting to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program, but suggested that the evidence was not conclusive.
And then thre's this:
The Department of State's Bureay of Intelligence and Research (State/INR) disagreed with the CIA that Iraq had restarted a nuclear weapons program, and concurred with the DOE that the aluminum tubes were probably intended for other purposes.
And so on. Here's the rest of the Conclusion I paragraph:
Prior to October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, some intelligence agencies assessed that the Iraqi government was reconstituting a nuclear weapons program, while others disagreed or expressed doubts about the evidence. The Estimate itself expressed the majority view that the program was being reconstituted, but included clear dissenting views from the State Department's Bureay of Intelligence and Research, which argued that aluminum tubes sought by Iraq were probably not intended for a nuclear program.
What Hiatt spins out of his discourse is the fact that the administration failed to mention any dissent from the story they wanted to make sure we all believed. Even if there was evidence supporting what they said, the fact that they hid the evidence that didn't is enough for us to say, without any doubt: THEY LIED.
Just a little fact-checking to do in this week's column - you'll see it in a bit.
And there's not much in this column as Jack's just putting in his two cents for who should be Senator McCain's running mate. I'll save you some time: He thinks it should be the current Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin. Jack's description:
At 44, Sarah Louise Heath Palin is both the youngest and the first female governor in Alaska's relatively brief history as a state. She's also the most popular governor in America, with an approval rating that has bounced around 90 percent.
This is due partly to her personal qualities. When she was leading her underdog Wasilla high school basketball team to the state championship in 1982, her teammates called her "Sarah Barracuda" because of her fierce competitiveness. Two years later, when she won the Miss Wasilla beauty pageant, she was also voted Miss Congeniality by the other contestants.
Sarah Barracuda. Miss Congeniality. Fire and nice. A happily married mother of five who is smart and drop dead gorgeous.
But it's mostly because she's been a crackerjack governor, a strong fiscal conservative and a ferocious fighter of corruption, especially in her own party.
Just some background on the 49th state. While it's HUGE (by my math, Alaska is about the size in square miles of Texas, California, Montana and Utah - combined), the population is only about 683,000. In contrast, Pittsburgh has a population of just over 300,000 and Allegheny County about 1.3 million. Nearly twice as many people in Allegheny County as there are in the whole state of Alaska.
Alaska also represents 3 electoral votes. With Governor Palin's sky high (and they really are) poll numbers I guess Jack thinks it's a shoe in she'll be able to deliver on those 3 electoral votes come November.
Actually, I do need to do a wee bit of fact-checking on Jack. He writes:
"The landscape is littered with the bodies of those who have crossed Sarah," pollster Dave Dittman told The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes.
And here's the original from The Weekly Standard (it's from 7/16/07, by the way):
In the roughly three years since she quit as the state's chief regulator of the oil industry, Palin has crushed the Republican hierarchy (virtually all male) and nearly every other foe or critic. Political analysts in Alaska refer to the "body count" of Palin's rivals. "The landscape is littered with the bodies of those who crossed Sarah," says pollster Dave Dittman, who worked for her gubernatorial campaign. [emphasis added]
Isn't that something that Jack should probably have pointed out? The statement may indeed be true, but without those six words one might be left with the notion that Mr Dittman is a disinterested observer, that he's more or less objective, that he doesn't have a vested interest in the discussion.
Running down the quotation in The Weekly Standard, I stumbled across something else. It's pretty obvious where Jack got some of his research on Governor Palin. It's more or less directly from Fred Barnes. Check out what Jack wrote again:
When she was leading her underdog Wasilla high school basketball team to the state championship in 1982, her teammates called her "Sarah Barracuda" because of her fierce competitiveness. Two years later, when she won the Miss Wasilla beauty pageant, she was also voted Miss Congeniality by the other contestants.
Now take a look at what Barnes wrote in 2007:
Gov. Palin grew up in Wasilla, where as star of her high school basketball team she got the nickname "Sarah Barracuda" for her fierce competitiveness. She led her underdog team to the state basketball championship. Palin also won the Miss Wasilla beauty contest, in which she was named Miss Congeniality, and went on to compete in the Miss Alaska pageant.
But goshers that's close! Shouldn't Jack have added a few "According to Fred Barnes..." qualifiers in there? It would look less like he's passing this stuff off as his own.
He's also none-too-clear in another place:
Kimberley Strassel of the Wall Street Journal said Mr. McCain should run against a corrupt, do-nothing Congress, a la Harry Truman. If he should choose to do so, Ms. Palin would make an excellent partner.
Aside from the completely laughable proposition that the current Congress is corrupt and "do-nothing" (as opposed to say, the last Republican-led, Mark Foley corrupted, real-life do-nothing Congress), can someone please read through the column and tell me where Strassel even mentions Governor Palin?
Bottom line. Palin is also a two term Mayor, one term Governor of a state with a population smaller than that of Allegheny County. Isn't one of the criticisms of the Democratic Candidate that he doesn't have enough experience? Never mind. Such subtlety is usually lost on Republicans. It's certainly lost on Jack.
There's also another reason why Governor Palin might not want to be McCain's VP: She gave birth only seven weeks ago.
Doesn't Jack Kelly believe in maternity leave? He'd have a sitting Governor with a new 2-month old flying across the country in what has to be the most grueling campaign schedule on the planet.
Remember this? It was from February of this year and it pointed out that while Melissa Hart had declared her intention to run for Representative Jason Altmire's seat a few months earlier, her website hadn't been updated. In fact it hadn't been updated since before the 2006 election.
First off, her website's been updated. Oh, frabjous day!
In any event, Dennis Roddy (who, while usually shorter than me, is still wicked-smaht) has a compare and contrast column on the Altmire-Hart race.
Some highlights:
Two years out of Congress and looking for a way back in, former Rep. Melissa Hart, R-Bradford Woods, says she now wishes she'd cast a few budget votes differently, but believes a head-to-head comparison with the man who ousted her now works in her favor.
"I think we'll now have an opportunity with a record and a record to actually see two very different people," Ms. Hart said. "This is a choice election, not a change election."
Ms. Hart's comments came yesterday during a sometimes-contentious meeting with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial board.
Must've been a fun meeting. That middle sentence came as a surprise. Seeing that Hart's party's presidential candidate has said otherwise. From Time.com:
Tuesday night, John McCain, who turns 72 in August, began making the case that the answer to all those questions is yes. With Barack Obama running on the slogan "Change We Can Believe In," the four-term Senator from Arizona might have chosen to avoid the reform motif entirely, to run instead on "experience" or "leadership." But he and his campaign have decided they have no choice but to embrace the idea that voters want change above all. They also believe that Obama is the chimera of change, while McCain can actually deliver it. "This is, indeed, a change election," McCain said in New Orleans, the second time in two months that he's chosen that Katrina-ravaged city to make a point of distinguishing himself from George W. Bush. "But the choice is between the right change and the wrong change; between going forward and going backward." [emphasis added]
Perhaps Missy didn't get the memo that day.
In any case, it's still an uphill battle for Missy.
Point one - According to the Cook Report from June of 2008 detailing competitive House races, the Representative Altmire's district (PA-04) is still in the "leans Democratic" (meaning it's a competitive district, but the Democrats have the advantage).
Point two - According to the OpenSecrets.Org, as of April 2 of this year, Altmire has raised $1.6 million of which he's spent $359,000 leaving him with about $1.3 million cash on hand. Hart, on the other hand, has raised only $529,000 and spent $143,000 leaving her with $393,000 cash on hand.
He's got a tad over $1.3 million, she's got a skosh below $400,000. It's pretty close to a 4-to-1 ratio in funds.
Can Missy expect any help from the NRCC? Sad to say, but probably not. According (again) to Opensecrets.org, the NRCC has only about $6.7 million on hand while the DCCC (it's counterpart from the Democratic Party) has a whopping $45.3 million on hand.
The delegates (super and otherwise) have spoken. The math is done. There's no need to revisit it.
Senator Barack Obama will be the Democratic nominee for the Office of the President of the United States.
It was a hard-fought contest and some harsh things were said by both sides and so emotions may still be a little raw on both sides (even on this blog). Fact of the matter is that in this contest between two Democrats, one Democrat won and one Democrat lost. This is one reality that's not going to change.
There'a another reality that isn't going to be changing, either - Senator John McCain is the Republican candidate. He's still there. The big race is not over, in fact it's only just begun. We should be looking at the positions he's taken in his campaign.
[He] believes Roe v. Wade is a flawed decision that must be overturned, and as president he will nominate judges who understand that courts should not be in the business of legislating from the bench.
Constitutional balance would be restored by the reversal of Roe v. Wade, returning the abortion question to the individual states. The difficult issue of abortion should not be decided by judicial fiat.
However, the reversal of Roe v. Wade represents only one step in the long path toward ending abortion. Once the question is returned to the states, the fight for life will be one of courage and compassion - the courage of a pregnant mother to bring her child into the world and the compassion of civil society to meet her needs and those of her newborn baby. The pro-life movement has done tremendous work in building and reinforcing the infrastructure of civil society by strengthening faith-based, community, and neighborhood organizations that provide critical services to pregnant mothers in need. This work must continue and government must find new ways to empower and strengthen these armies of compassion. These important groups can help build the consensus necessary to end abortion at the state level. As [he] has publicly noted, "At its core, abortion is a human tragedy. To effect meaningful change, we must engage the debate at a human level."
That's something to ponder. A vote for John McCain will be a vote to endanger the privacy protections guaranteed by Roe v Wade.
Our freedom is curtailed no less by an act of arbitrary judicial power as it is by an act of an arbitrary executive, or legislative, or state power. For that reason, a judge's decisions must rest on more than his subjective conviction that he is right, or his eagerness to address a perceived social ill.
Which acts as a nice back drop to this new McCain flip-flop from today's New York Times:
A top adviser to Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team.
In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. McCain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance.
Mr. McCain believes that “neither the administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the A.C.L.U. and trial lawyers, understand were constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001,” Mr. Holtz-Eakin wrote.
What was that again about the "arbitrary executive"?
John McCain - we don't need another four years of Bush policies.
On OffQ this past Friday, Local Attorney Heather Heidelbaugh said, when the topic of the evening's discussion turned from Scott McClellan's book to the run-up to the War in Iraq:
Again we're talking about "there was no weapons of mass destruction." Everyone agrees, all the Democrats, all the Republicans, George Tenet of the CIA who was appointed by George Clinton, everyone agrees that everyone believed--
At that point, the ever-vigilant John McIntire corrected Attorney Heidelbaugh on her (relatively minor) musical gaffe. It wasn't George Clinton, (the master of funk) who appointed George Tenet, but Bill Clinton, President of the United States.
--everyone believes that Saddam Hussein had biological and chemical weapons. And they believed he was capable of making a nuclear weapon within a year. Everyone believed that. And it did - yes, yes, yes, there's no question about that. And it did in fact turn out to be incorrect that he was able to build a nuclear weapon.
Later, speaking on what the general mood of the culture believed just after 9/11, she said:
We believe that Saddam Hussein has these weapons of mass destruction and we do not want to be in a position where we are attacked and so we should affirmatively step forward.
Now we can't fault Heidelbaugh for not knowing last week what is now known this week. And I think it's fair to say that what she believes to be true is a good example of how well the propaganda program from the current administration worked. Heather Heidelbaugh is certainly an intelligent person (certainly smarter than me, that's fer darn shure). For someone as so sharp to be taken in so completely only shows how good the propaganda was.
And what's known now that wasn't known then? From the McClatchy papers:
A long-awaited Senate Select Intelligence Committee report made public Thursday concludes that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made public statements to promote an invasion of Iraq that they knew at the time were not supported by available intelligence.
The Bush administration misused intelligence to build a case for the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the Senate Intelligence Committee said in a report issued Thursday.
The White House exploited its ability to declassify intelligence selectively to bolster its case for war, the committee chairman, Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV, D-West Virginia, said in the report.
Senior officials disclosed and discussed sensitive intelligence reports that supported the administration's policy objectives and kept out of public discourse information that did not, he said.
The report also found that the administration misled the American people about contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.
U.S. President George W. Bush and his top policymakers misstated Saddam Hussein's links to terrorism and ignored doubts among intelligence agencies about Iraq's arms programs as they made a case for war, the Senate intelligence committee reported on Thursday.
The committee’s report cited some instances in which public statements by senior administration officials were not supported by the intelligence available at the time, such as suggestions that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda were operating in a kind of partnership, that the Baghdad regime had provided the terrorist network with weapons training, and that one of the Sept. 11 hijackers had met an Iraqi intelligence operative in Prague in 2001.
But the report found that on several key issues, including Iraq’s alleged nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs, public statements from Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and other top officials before the war were generally “substantiated” by the best estimates of the intelligence agencies, though the statements did not always reflect the agencies’ uncertainty about the evidence. All the weapons claims were disproved after invading troops found no unconventional arsenal and little effort to build one.
Even that last part - about how their statements were "substantiated" - does not bode well for them. The next phrase - about how they did not always reflect any agencies' uncertainty - points as well directly to their dishonesty. If they didn't always point out how much "uncertainty" there was about what they were saying, they were presenting something as true that they knew wasn't true.
Statement from Senator Hillary Clinton to her supporters:
Dear _________,
I wanted you to be one of the first to know: on Saturday, I will hold an event in Washington D.C. to thank everyone who has supported my campaign. Over the course of the last 16 months, I have been privileged and touched to witness the incredible dedication and sacrifice of so many people working for our campaign. Every minute you put into helping us win, every dollar you gave to keep up the fight meant more to me than I can ever possibly tell you.
On Saturday, I will extend my congratulations to Senator Obama and my support for his candidacy. This has been a long and hard-fought campaign, but as I have always said, my differences with Senator Obama are small compared to the differences we have with Senator McCain and the Republicans.
I have said throughout the campaign that I would strongly support Senator Obama if he were the Democratic Party's nominee, and I intend to deliver on that promise.
When I decided to run for president, I knew exactly why I was getting into this race: to work hard every day for the millions of Americans who need a voice in the White House.
I made you -- and everyone who supported me -- a promise: to stand up for our shared values and to never back down. I'm going to keep that promise today, tomorrow, and for the rest of my life.
I will be speaking on Saturday about how together we can rally the party behind Senator Obama. The stakes are too high and the task before us too important to do otherwise.
I know as I continue my lifelong work for a stronger America and a better world, I will turn to you for the support, the strength, and the commitment that you have shown me in the past 16 months. And I will always keep faith with the issues and causes that are important to you.
In the past few days, you have shown that support once again with hundreds of thousands of messages to the campaign, and again, I am touched by your thoughtfulness and kindness.
I can never possibly express my gratitude, so let me say simply, thank you.
First the trainwreck. The good folks over at the National Review didn't seem to like it very much, bless their hearts. Here's Mark Levin:
Not to offend those who might be offended, but this speech is a mash and tough to digest. You have to get through the self-congratulatory praise of independence and commander-in-chief pose from the Senate, then you have to try to follow the inconsistency of some of his big-government ideas vs. his anti-big-government rhetoric, and his inconsistency even on his supposed strength — the surge in Iraq vs. closing GITMO and conferring additional rights on the detainees. I am also put off by some of the anti-Bush stuff. Distancing himself from Bush is one thing, but he almost exclusively (as best I can tell) criticizes him, giving Bush little credit (tax cuts, Supreme Court appointments and yes, the surge, which Bush ordered not McCain).
Substance aside, Obama crushed McCain in all other ways that matter. Aesthetically, politically, rhetorically etc, it boiled down to Godzilla versus Bambi. And, amazingly enough, McCain was Bambi.
McCain's speech was creaky, ungracious, and unnecessary. I never understand why politicians don't take the opportunity, when so easily presented, to simply be gracious and hold their fire. Watching McCain, I couldn't help but think of the astonishing contrast Barack's triumphant speech to a massive and adoring crowd will be. It was not a comparison McCain should have invited.
It would have been more statesmanlike — precisely the profile McCain is attempting to craft — to acknowledge this historic moment in American politics. A major party is on the cusp of selecting an African American to be their nominee for President of the United States. It's a tribute to America that we've come this far. It would have been magnanimous to leave it at that, and wait until tomorrow to declare with enthusiasm and relish, "It's on!"
Watch it (if you can) and decide for yourself:
Next there's Senator Clinton's speech:
The text can be found here. Johnny Mac had this to say about her speech:
That was, quite simply, the rudest most ungracious exit speech that wasn't an exit speech in modern political history.
Go read the rest of it. No punches are pulled, no faces are saved, no ambiguity about what McIntire's thinking.
And finally, Senator Obama's speech: The text can be found here.
“This has been a remarkable, competitive primary process that in the long run will be good for the Democratic Party. It produced millions of new registered voters, and it helped both candidates hone their campaign strategies and improve their prospects for the general election campaign. As a result, Senators Clinton and Obama are both stronger campaigners today than they were at the beginning of the primary season.
“We had two great candidates – both intelligent, articulate, and qualified to be President of the United States. I have tremendous respect and affection for both these candidates.
“I said from the beginning that I’d let all the states have the opportunity to vote and influence the outcome before making my decision. I believed that the most important thing our party could get out of this primary was an open and transparent process that reflected the will of the Democratic voters. I think the Democratic Party has accomplished this, and it’s clear to me that Barack Obama has won this nomination fair and square.
“Senator Obama has secured a majority of pledged delegates and was the choice of the majority of people I’m proud to represent in Pennsylvania’s 14th Congressional District. Consequently, Barack Obama will have my vote in Denver and my enthusiastic support in the general election this fall.
“Both Barack Obama and John McCain are patriots and dedicated public servants, but their policy differences are strong and clear. I believe that Senator Obama would pursue domestic and foreign policies that promote the interests of all Americans, while Senator McCain’s policies would leave us worse off at home and less safe abroad. The American People deserve a full discussion of the policy differences between these two candidates before they cast their votes. I hope that the upcoming presidential campaign will focus on these issues rather than personal attacks and innuendo.”
One down, one to go. What about Congressman Altmire?
Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.) said he was encouraged on Monday to back Obama now, and while the uncommitted freshman member will not support a candidate until later this week, he expects other lawmakers to endorse on Tuesday.
Someone please check on Oklahoma State Representative Sally Kern. She's the one who asserted, back in March, that the Pittsburgh City Council was been "infiltrated by gays."
Well this news is probably going to send her into fits of apoplectic homophobic fits. From today's P-G:
Pittsburgh Councilman Bruce Kraus proposed rules for domestic registry of unmarried couples today, in a move that would tweak the way city benefits are governed, and would allow any two unrelated city residents to make a "declaration of mutual commitment" indicating that they "contribute mutually to each other's maintenance and support."
Take a look how the P-G describes it. It seems benign and fair:
The legislation would allow any two city residents -- unmarried people of the same or opposite sex, cohabitating seniors or friends, to name a few -- to report to the city Personnel Department and present documents indicating "mutual responsibility." People who are related closely enough that they can't marry under state law would be ineligible.
Couples would have to show three such documents, which can include loan papers, utility bills, insurance policies, wills, powers of attorney, contracts, motor vehicle titles, bank or credit account statements, or evidence of mutual child care responsibility.
They then would be certified as domestic registrants, until one party either presented an affidavit terminating the relationship or died.
Regardless of what else it says, the self-appointed guardians of morality will pounce on this because it will allow "teh gays" to have a shot at an equal shot at cohabitation.
And as we all know, those same guardians can not allow that. It's against Leviticus 17:22 and all that.
Barack Obama effectively clinched the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday after a grueling marathon, based on an Associated Press tally of convention delegates, becoming the first black candidate ever to lead his party into a fall campaign for the White House.
Campaigning on an insistent call for change, Obama outlasted former first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in a historic race that sparked record turnout in primary after primary, yet exposed deep racial and gender divisions within the party.
The tally was based on public declarations from delegates as well as from another 15 who have confirmed their intentions to the AP. It also included 11 delegates Obama was guaranteed as long as he gained 30 percent of the vote in South Dakota and Montana later in the day. It takes 2,118 delegates to clinch the nomination.
Hillary Rodham Clinton will concede Tuesday night that Barack Obama has the delegates to secure the Democratic nomination, campaign officials said, effectively ending her bid to be the nation's first female president.
Obama is 40 delegates shy of clinching the nomination, but he is widely expected to make up the difference Tuesday with superdelegate support and votes in South Dakota and Montana. Once he reaches the magic number of 2,118, Clinton will acknowledge that he has secured the necessary delegates to be the nominee.
However (and there always seems to be a "however" these days):
The former first lady will stop short of formally suspending or ending her race in her speech in New York City.
And later:
The advisers said Clinton has made a strategic decision to not formally end her campaign, giving her leverage to negotiate with Obama on various matters including a possible vice presidential nomination for her. She also wants to press him on issues he should focus on in the fall, such as health care.
Then there's this from Terry McAuliffe. He was on the Today show this morning and TPMCafe is reporting that this exchange occurred:
QUESTION: If Barack Obama reaches that number today or tomorrow do you believe that Sen. Clinton is prepared to concede?
McAULIFFE: Yeah, I think that if Sen. Obama gets the numbers, I think Hillary Clinton will congratulate him, and call him the nominee.
If all this is true, the first thing I have to do is to go buy Maria a beer.
Sen. Hillary Clinton's is "absolutely not" prepared to concede the race for the Democratic presidential nomination to Sen. Barack Obama, her campaign chairman said.
Terry McAuliffe rejected as "100 percent" incorrect an Associated Press report that Clinton is preparing to acknowledge that Obama has the delegates to win the nomination Tuesday night as the five-month Democratic primary process comes to a close.
Obama "doesn't have the numbers today, and until someone has the numbers the race goes on," McAuliffe told CNN.
Jack Kelly's column this week is another edition in the right-wing "Obama's gaffes" talking points.
This is the second week in a row that Commando Kelly's pushed this particular rhetorical button.
Let's start with the headline of the piece:
Obama generates even more gaffes than Dan Quayle
And a number of paragraphs down the page, we find Kelly's deconstruction of the "Quayle is a Dunce" meme:
Dan Quayle was just 41 and looked younger when George H. W. Bush plucked him from relative obscurity to be his running mate. Journalists portrayed Mr. Quayle as inexperienced and not too bright, an image cemented on June 15, 1992, when, while officiating at a spelling bee in Trenton, N.J., he corrected a 12-year-old's spelling of "potato," telling the boy there was an "e" on the end.
Mr. Quayle was wrong, but not terribly. "Potatoe" was an accepted spelling through the 19th century, and the error was on a cue card provided by school authorities. But journalists needed no further proof that Dan Quayle was a dunce.
Actually, Quayle himself has a slightly different take on it. Paul Mickle of the Trentonian writes:
Quayle ruefully reported on a Washington Post article that suggested the Trenton flub got such wide media play because "it seemed like a perfect illustration of what people thought about me anyway.’’
So it didn't start with the potato(e) gaffe.
In any event, Kelly's apologia for Quayle's gaffe doesn't ring true for two reasons; 1) Quayle wasn't born in the 19th century and 2) if he indeed knew how to spell "potato" why didn't he just go with what he knew to be true? Blaming it on the cue cards he was handed is no help.
What a waste it is to lose one's mind. Or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is.
I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change.
The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century.
And so on. By the way Mickle also writes:
The media’s "obsession with my small verbal blunders went beyond the bounds of fairness,’’ Quayle wrote in his book.
So perhaps I am being unfair. But in the spirit of Vice-President Quayle's assertion that media obsession on "small verbal blunders" is beyond the bounds of fairness, let's return to Jack Kelly's column. He summed up last week's column with this:
In last week's column, I twitted Mr. Obama for saying he'd campaigned in 57 states, for not knowing that his home state of Illinois borders on Kentucky and for claiming the Cuban Missile Crisis (October 1962) was defused by President Kennedy's summit meeting with Nikita Khruschchev (June 1961). Earlier, Mr. Obama said 10,000 people were killed when a tornado struck Greensburg, Kansas, last year (the death toll was 12), and assumed Afghans speak Arabic (they don't).
Last week I took apart the Khruschev/Castro thing. When you look at what Obama actually said:
This whole notion of not talking to people, it didn't hold in the '60s, it didn't hold in the '70s, it didn't hold in the '80s, it didn't hold in the '90s against much more powerful adversaries, much more dangerous adversaries. I mean, when Kennedy met with Khrushchev, we were on the brink of nuclear war. When Nixon met with Mao, that was with the knowledge that Mao had exterminated millions of people.
you're left with the question, "Where on God's Own Earth did Jack Kelly get that Obama said that the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 was diffused by the Kennedy Khrushchev Summit of June 1961?"
Can anyone at the P-G answer me that? I know you guys read this blog down there.
Let's take a look at the "gaffe" about Kentucky. Jack chides Senator Obama:
...for not knowing that his home state of Illinois borders on Kentucky...
But yet, when you take a look at what Obama actually said:
“What it says is that I’m not very well known in that part of the country,” Obama said. “Sen. Clinton, I think, is much better known — not only because of her time in the White House with her husband — but also coming from a nearby state of Arkansas.”
In that quotation, Obama is saying that while he's not well known in and around Kentucky, Senator Clinton is better known for two reasons; 1) the years she spent as first lady when her husband was the President of the United States and 2) the years she spent as first lady when her husband was Governor of of the nearby state of Arkansas.
Where is the discussion on borders?
I'll ask it again - doesn't anyone fact-check Jack Kelly down there on the Boulevard of the Allies?
Next we get to the 57 states thing. Take a look at the actual event. You might have to turn up the volume a bit. Pay attention to what you hear after he mentions the "57 states." It's laughter. It was a joke. Does Jack Kelly really think that a sitting US Senator really thinks there are 57 states?
Let's move onto so some other gaffes. The Tornado - 10,000 deaths. Here's how the AP told the story:
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Barack Obama, caught up in the fervor of a campaign speech Tuesday, drastically overstated the Kansas tornadoes death toll, saying 10,000 had died.
The death toll was 12.
This overshadowed what was probably the point of the story, that the Kansas National guard had been depleted due to the Iraq war. And then in the same article, we find this:
As the Illinois senator concluded his remarks a few minutes later, he appeared to realize his gaffe.
"There are going to be times when I get tired," he said. "There are going to be times when I get weary. There are going to be times when I make mistakes."
A correction a few minutes later. Now about the translators in Afghanistan. ABC reported that:
Obama posited -- incorrectly -- that Arabic translators deployed in Iraq are needed in Afghanistan -- forgetting, momentarily, that Afghans don't speak Arabic.
"We only have a certain number of them and if they are all in Iraq, then its harder for us to use them in Afghanistan," Obama said.
The vast majority of military translators in both war zones are drawn from the local population.
Naturally they speak the local language. In Iraq, that's Arabic or Kurdish. In Afghanistan, it's any of a half dozen other languages -- including Pashtu, Dari, and Farsi.
No sooner did Obama realize his mistake -- and correct himself -- but he immediately made another.
Curious that Jack didn't add that last part - probably because he'd have to point out that when Obama makes a gaffe, he corrects himself.
Next onto the Concentration Camp story. This is Jack Kelly at his most deceptive. As a reminder here's what he writes:
Speaking in New Mexico, Mr. Obama seemed not to understand Memorial Day honors those who died in war, and claimed his uncle was one of the soldiers who liberated the Auschwitz concentration camp. Since Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army, and Mr. Obama's mom was an only child, this is unlikely.
When this misstatement was spotted by bloggers, the Obama campaign said the senator had in mind his great uncle, Charles W. Payne, who, the campaign said, had served in the 89th Infantry Division, which liberated Ohrdruf, a slave labor camp that was a satellite of Buchenwald. This explanation has satisfied most journalists. But Charles W. Payne is not listed on the roster of the 89th Infantry Division, perhaps because the Kansas State Historical Society says Charles W. Payne entered the Navy on Nov. 10, 1942.
Sounds pretty cut and dried, don't it? But when dealing with the generally fact-free zone that usually occupies Jack Kelly's columns, it's never ever cut and dried.
First off, notice now Jack phrases it:
...the Obama campaign said the senator had in mind his great uncle, Charles W. Payne, who, the campaign said, had served in the 89th Infantry Division...
The Obama campaign now says that Obama was referring to his great-uncle on his mother's side, and the camp in question was not Auschwitz, but Ohrdruf, which was part of the Buchenwald camp system in Lower Saxony. Ohrdruf was the first camp to be liberated by the Americans on April 4, 1945, and it was visited a week later by Generals Eisenhower, Patton, and Bradley. Eisenhower later wrote to his wife that he "never dreamed that such cruelty, bestiality and savagery could really exist in this world."
The campaign declined to release the name of Obama's great-uncle, apparently because he is an elderly man who does not want to be disturbed by reporters. Obama spokesman Tommy Vietor said that he served in the 89th Infantry Division which crossed the Rhine river in March 1945. [emphasis added]
As we'll see in a bit, by Thursday, this changes. There's this from Politifact.com:
The Obama campaign did not provide any documentation to confirm that Charles T. Payne, 83, served in the 89th Infantry Division in April 1945. And we wanted more than their word. [emphasis added]
That's right, you know where I'm going here, don't you. Look at the middle initial of Mr Payne. Jack Kelly says it's a "W" and politifact says it's a "T".
So Jack Kelly would be absolutely correct if he were to say that Charles W. Payne wasn't among those who liberated Ohrdruf. Too bad he's not the right Charles Payne.
Jack Kelly's whole argument about Great Uncle Payne being in the Navy and not the Army collapses completely with that. He had to have known about it as the correct information was published on Thursday:
His name, according to the Obama campaign, was Charles T. Payne.
I'll say it again, doesn't ANYONE FACT-CHECK JACK KELLY?
Especially in a column about how one presidential candidate is a "one-man gaffe machine."
One thing I wanted to point out here was that when Senator Obama makes a gaffe, the correction usually comes a short time later. Contrast this with a recent gaffe of Senator McCain's - one where he refuses to admit he's wrong.
One last time: DOESN'T ANYONE FACT-CHECK JACK KELLY AT THE P-G?
First, the DNC Rules & Bylaws Committee Meeting. From New York Times:
To jeers and boos that showcased deep party divisions, Democratic Party officials agreed Saturday to seat delegates from the disputed Florida and Michigan primaries at the party’s convention in August but give them only half a vote each, dealing a setback to Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
The agreement, reached by the rules committee of the Democratic National Committee behind closed doors and voted on publicly before a raucous audience of supporters of the two candidates, would give Mrs. Clinton a net gain of 24 delegates over Senator Barack Obama. But this fell far short of her hopes of winning the full votes of both delegations and moved the nomination further out of her reach.
She now lags behind Mr. Obama by about 176 delegates, according to The New York Times’s tally, in the final weekend of campaigning before the nominating contests end.
The Clinton folks are definitely not happy.
The deal prompted one of her chief advisers, Harold Ickes, a member of the rules committee himself, to declare that Mrs. Clinton’s fight may not be over, even though Mr. Obama’s advisers say he is only days away from gaining enough delegates to claim the nomination.
“Mrs. Clinton has instructed me to reserve her rights to take this to the credentials committee,” Mr. Ickes said before the final vote, raising the specter of a fight until that committee meets. His words drew cheers from Clinton supporters, including many who yelled, “Denver! Denver! Denver!” — implying that the fight could go all the way to the convention in that city.
Mr. Ickes said the outcome for Michigan was a hijacking of voters’ intent because it assigned delegates to Mr. Obama even though he did not win them as his name was not on the ballot.
Mrs. Clinton has kept her counsel about what she might do to draw her campaign to a close. But when the rules committee of the Democratic Party divided up delegates from Michigan and Florida on Saturday night, Harold Ickes, a committee member and Clinton adviser, said she was reserving the right to contest the decision into the summer.
Still, despite the fireworks, Mrs. Clinton’s associates said she seemed to have come to terms over the last week with the near certainty that she would not win the nomination, even as she continued to assert, with what one associate described as subdued resignation, that the Democrats are making a mistake in sending Mr. Obama up against Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.
Her associates said the most likely outcome was that she would end her bid with a speech, probably back home in New York, in which she would endorse Mr. Obama. Mrs. Clinton herself suggested on Friday that the contest would end sometime next week.
But that is not a certainty; Mr. Obama’s announcement on Saturday that he would leave his church was just another reminder of how events continue to unfold in the race. She has signaled her ambivalence about the outcome, continuing to urge superdelegates to keep an open mind and consider, for example, the number of popular votes she has won. Gov. Phil Bredesen of Tennessee, a superdelegate who has been at the forefront of calling for uncommitted Democrats to make a choice soon after the last vote, said in an interview that Mrs. Clinton called him last week and urged him to “keep an open mind until the convention.”
Outside the Rules And Bylaws Committee meeting, things got ug-ug-ugly. From the New Republic:
Howard Dean may hope that the "healing will begin today," but two blocks away from the northwest Washington Marriott where the DNC's Rules and Bylaws Committee is meeting right now to try to figure out Florida and Michigan, the Hillary protesters are occupying an utterly alternate (and healing-free) universe: a universe in which one of the big lawn rally's speakers yells that the Democratic Party no longer is in the business of "promoting equality and fairness for all"; in which a Hillary supporter with two poodles shouts, "Howard Dean is a leftist freak!"; in which a man exhibits a sign that reads "At least slaves were counted as 3/5ths a Citizen" and shows Dean whipping handcuffed people; and in which Larry Sinclair, the Minnesota man who took to YouTube to allege that Barack Obama had oral sex with him in the back of a limousine in 1999, is one of the belles of the ball.
With half a dozen flat screen televisions turned to CNN, it was not difficult to ascertain just where the political and emotional center of the crowd stood. A table of three women did not deal in discretion. A sampling of their punditry:
"[Obama] is a cult. His campaign is an anti-woman cult."
"I will actively campaign against him."
"You know who is backing him is George Soros. It'll be George Soros, not Obama, who is running the country."
"South Dakota is totally rigged for Obama because of Tom Daschle. Obama's going to win South Dakota because he's buying it and rigging it."
"[Obama] is a socialist! You know what the Nazi Party was before it was the Nazi Party? It was the Socialist Party."
Then there's this clip that Stein found at firedoglake: I don't really need to comment on any of this, do I?
Looks like a deal on Florida was made last night. From the Huffington Post:
Two sources, including a high-ranking official with the Florida delegation, have confirmed that the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee (RBC) reached an agreement last night and will seat the state's entire delegation but give each delegate half a vote. The result would be a net gain of 19 delegates for Sen. Hillary Clinton, though there is no word yet on how the superdelegates from the state will be allocated. It is, the official says, a compromise that Sen. Barack Obama will be willing to make. "There will be theater but not much fight."
Representative Robert Wexler of Florida spoke to the Committee as a representative of the Obama campaign. From Talkingpointsmemo:
It's official: The Obama campaign is supporting a compromise for Florida that would seat all the delegates at half a vote each -- giving Hillary a net gain of 19 delegates.
Obama's representative at the Rules meeting, Florida Rep. Robert Wexler, just endorsed the idea during his presentation.
"Senator Obama should be commended for his willingness to offer this extraordinary concession," Wexler said, adding that he's offering this concession "in order to promote reconciliation with Florida voters."
Now the big issue is Michigan. Looks like there's a deal being made there, too. From The Huffington Post:
Sources with knowledge of the RBC's inner dealings say a compromise is being crafted in which all of the candidates who took their names off of the state's ballot would voluntarily agree that the now-uncommitted delegates would go to Obama, after which the state's entire delegation would be seated.
The proposal, which two sources confirm has been discussed, would stand the greatest chance of passing: it would pacify Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, who has demanded that his state's non-sanctioned January primary be fully honored; and it would circumvent the Clinton campaign's insistence that party rules prevent simply assigning all of Michigan's uncommitted delegates to Obama.
As background, Senator Clinton "won" that "primary." Here are the results from CNN. If the above holds, then Senator Clinton would be given 55% of the delegates and Senator Obama 40%.
I don't know exactly how that would translate into delegates, however.
I'll be on OffQ tonight - sitting in for Valerie McDonald Roberts.
That's 7:30pm on WQED-13.
This will be the first time I'll be on when I get to sit next to the Macyapper himself, John McIntire (unless of course, someone else is sitting in for him).
I know he's a Ca-NAY-djen (from New Brunswick, doncha know) but he and Jane Fonda did make the beast with two backs during the filming of Klute, just so you know.
By the way, if you don't know what is meant by "beast with two backs" go read Othello, Act I, scene 1 line 126. If you still don't get it, go find a missionary to show you.
Well anyway, the original Benjamin Frankin Pierce chimes in on Senator Clinton:
It is incomprehensible to me that Mrs. Clinton can seriously be touting the notion, with the support of the punditocracy of CNN and Fox, that she is leading in the popular vote and should therefore be seriously considered as the most electable candidate in the November election. She's including those who voted for her in Florida and Michigan's name recognition ballot saying that to exclude them would be to disenfranchise them. What about the Democrats in Alaska, American Samoa, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Dakota, Nebraska, Washington, Hawaii and Wyoming who did not cast ballots because they were playing by the pledged delegates playbook and voted by caucus. What about them? Certainly if the rules are going to be changed and judgment is based on the 'popular' vote those voters in the eleven caucus states and Samoa will be disenfranchised. What about them?
And what about us? What about the American people? Haven't we had enough of Mrs. Clinton's mad antics in her pursuit of the realization of venal personal ambition; her 'say anything, do anything, no matter what' effort to manipulate our all too willing media to gull this country's populace into believing that her wretched illegitimacy is indeed legitimate. How much mendacity do we have to suffer, how much brazenness do we have to swallow before someone, anyone, has the decency, the common sense, to relieve us of this terrible trifle, this pathetic madness?
It's not even in the bookstores yet (that won't happen until June 2) and it's already creating a firestorm for dubya and his administration. I thought it might be good to take a look at some revelations from the book.
In Iraq, Bush saw his opportunity to create a legacy of greatness. Intoxicated by the influence and power of America, Bush believed that a successful transformation of Iraq could be the linchpin for realizing his dream of a free Middle East. But there was a problem here, which has become obvious to me only in retrospect...Bush and his advisers knew that the American people would almost certainly not support a war launched primarily for the ambitious purpose of transforming the Middle East.
[snip]
Rather than open this Pandora's box, the administration chose a different path -- not employing out-and-out deception but shading the truth; downplaying the major reason for going to war and emphasizing a lesser motivation that could arguably be dealt with in other ways (such as intensified diplomatic pressure); trying to make the WMD threat and the Iraqi connection to terrorism appear just a little more certain, a little less questionable, than they were; quietly ignoring or disregarding some of the crucial caveats in the intelligence and minimizing evidence that pointed in the opposite drection; using innuendo and implication to encourage Americans to believe as fact some things that were unclear and possibly false (such as the idea that Saddam had an active nuclear weapons program) and other things that were overplayed or completely wrong (such as implying Saddam might have an operational relationship with al Qaeda).
I'll take it one step further than McClellan here. By trying to make a case "a little more certain" they were lying. Even if everything they said was the absolute truth (which, as wel all know, it wasn't) by presenting something to be true when they knew it wasn't cleart that it was true, that's a lie.
A lie that lead to 4,000+ American servicemen and women dying.
On the leaking of Valerie Plame's name to the press
And McClellan recalled a day in April 2006, when the unfolding perjury case against Libby revealed that the president had secretly declassified portions of a 2002 intelligence report about Iraq's weapons capabilities to help his aides deflect criticism that his case for war was weak. Some of the most high-profile criticism was coming from Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson.
The president was leaving an event in North Carolina, McClellan recalled, and as they walked to Air Force One a reporter yelled out a question: Had the president, who had repeatedly condemned the selective release of secret intelligence information, enabled Scooter Libby to leak classified information to The New York Times to bolster the administration's arguments for war?
McClellan took the question to the president, telling Bush: "He's saying you yourself were the one that authorized the leaking of this information."
"And he said, 'Yeah, I did.' And I was kind of taken aback," McClellan said.
I was curious to see what event that was in April, 2006. As far as I can tell, it was this one at Central Piedmont Community College.
Curious thing happened at that Town Hall meeting - Harry Taylor happened:
Then came Taylor, 61, a commercial real estate broker, who got Bush's attention from the balcony.
"You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that," Taylor told him. "But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food."
Bush interrupted with a smile. "I'm not your favorite guy," he joked, provoking laughter.
"What I want to say to you," Taylor continued, "is that I, in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by, my leadership in Washington."
Many in the audience booed.
"Let him speak," Bush said.
"I feel like, despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration," Taylor added.
Bush took it in stride but offered no regrets. In response, he dealt only with the National Security Agency program to eavesdrop without court approval on telephone calls and e-mails between people inside the United States and people overseas when one person is suspected of terrorist ties.
"I'm not going to apologize for what I did on the terrorist surveillance program, and I'll tell you why," Bush said, launching into his explanation of how he approved the program to avoid another Sept. 11. "If we're at war," he said, "we ought to be using tools necessary within the Constitution on a very limited basis, a program that's reviewed constantly, to protect us."
So in the same day he's crowing about committing a felony (and that is what he did by bypassing the FISA court with his warrantless wiretapping) he admitted to Scott McClellan that he authorized releasing Valerie Plame's name to the press.
McClellan tracks Bush's penchant for self-deception back to an overheard incident on the campaign trail in 1999 when the then-governor was dogged by reports of possible cocaine use in his younger days.
The book recounts an evening in a hotel suite "somewhere in the Midwest." Bush was on the phone with a supporter and motioned for McClellan to have a seat.
"'The media won't let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumors,' I heard Bush say. 'You know, the truth is I honestly don't remember whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back in the day, and I just don't remember.'"
"I remember thinking to myself, How can that be?" McClellan wrote. "How can someone simply not remember whether or not they used an illegal substance like cocaine? It didn't make a lot of sense."
Bush, according to McClellan, "isn't the kind of person to flat-out lie."
"So I think he meant what he said in that conversation about cocaine. It's the first time when I felt I was witnessing Bush convincing himself to believe something that probably was not true, and that, deep down, he knew was not true," McClellan wrote.
"And his reason for doing so is fairly obvious — political convenience."
So let's assume dubya was telling the truth there. That meant he was so drunk he had no idea he was committing a felony.
