O'Reilly: I'm going to take 'em down!

Crooks & Liars has some hilarious audio of the Falafel King
freaking out on his daily radio show. Apparently, he’s mad
as hell and he’s not going to take it anymore.

Bill, I know I’m just a small player in the vast left-wing
conspiracy. But I hope you’ll consider including TCS in a
future rant or enemies list.

Bombs Away!

Seymour Hersh has written another must-read article for
The New Yorker. He claims there are plans in the White House
to begin pulling troops out of Iraq next year -- only to be
replaced with increased airstrikes.

A key element of the drawdown plans, not
mentioned in the President’s public statements,
is that the departing American troops will be
replaced by American airpower. Quick, deadly
strikes by U.S. warplanes are seen as a way to
improve dramatically the combat capability of
even the weakest Iraqi combat units. The danger,
military experts have told me, is that, while the
number of American casualties would decrease
as ground troops are withdrawn, the over-all
level of violence and the number of Iraqi fatalities
would increase unless there are stringent
controls over who bombs what.

But even more disturbing are Herh’s latest insights into the
mind of our Commander-in-Chief.

Current and former military and intelligence
officials have told me that the President remains
convinced that it is his personal mission to bring
democracy to Iraq, and that he is impervious to
political pressure, even from fellow Republicans.
They also say that he disparages any information
that conflicts with his view of how the war is
proceeding.

Bush’s closest advisers have long been aware of
the religious nature of his policy commitments. In
recent interviews, one former senior official, who
served in Bush’s first term, spoke extensively about
the connection between the President’s religious
faith and his view of the war in Iraq. After the
September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the former
official said, he was told that Bush felt that “God put
me here” to deal with the war on terror. The
President’s belief was fortified by the Republican
sweep in the 2002 congressional elections; Bush
saw the victory as a purposeful message from God
that “he’s the man,” the former official said.
Publicly, Bush depicted his reelection as a referendum
on the war; privately, he spoke of it as another
manifestation of divine purpose.

What is it now, Pilgrim... your conscience?

The truth is -- I broke the law, concealed my
conduct, and disgraced my high office. I know
that I will forfeit my freedom, my reputation,
my worldly possessions, and most importantly,
the trust of my friends and family.

Some time ago, I asked my lawyers to inform
the U.S. Attorney Carol Lam that I would like to
plead guilty and begin serving a prison term.
Today is the culmination of that process. I will
continue to cooperate with the government’s
ongoing investigation to the best of my ability.

- Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham (R-CA)

As the Duke rides off into the sunset -- or a prison cell,
take a moment to test your knowledge of current events.

Can you match the following elected officials with their
corresponding scandals?


1. Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tennessee)
2. Rep. Tom Delay (R-Texas)
3. Gov. Bob Taft (R-Ohio)
4. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-California)


A. Convicted, four first-degree misdemeanors, misuse of
state funds/ethics violations.

B. Subject of ethics probe for accepting salary from two
men’s fitness magazines while in office.

C. Subject of Securities and Exchange Commission
investigation for insider trading.

D. Indicted, one count of criminal conspiracy, two counts
of money laundering.



Check your answers with this handy scorecard.

Email your results to TCS and a random winner
will receive a new car!*

(Special thanks to salon and Wayne Madsen Report)

* Not really random. Actual prize may vary.

Sharp Cheese

Frank Rich:

If Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney believe they were truthful
in the run-up to the war, it's easy for them to make
their case. Instead of falsely claiming that they've
been exonerated by two commissions that looked into
prewar intelligence - neither of which addressed
possible White House misuse and mischaracterization
of that intelligence - they should just release the rest
of the President's Daily Briefs and other prewar
documents that are now trickling out. Instead,
incriminatingly enough, they are fighting the release
of any such information, including unclassified
documents found in post-invasion Iraq requested from
the Pentagon by the pro-war, neocon Weekly Standard.

Michael Kinsley:

Interestingly, the administration no longer claims that
Hussein actually had [nuclear or chemical] weapons at
the time Bush led the country into war in order to
eliminate them. "The flaws in the intelligence are plain
enough in hindsight," Cheney said on Monday. So-
called WMD (weapons of mass destruction) were not
the only argument for the war, but the administration
thought they were a crucial argument at the time. So
the administration now concedes that the country
went to war on a false premise. Doesn't that mean
that the war was a mistake no matter where the false
premise came from?

Classic Candymen

Did President Bush actually consider bombing a TV news
network as part of his global war on criticism -- er, terrorism?

Seems a bit drastic, don’t you think?

Then again, I can think of a few talking heads I wouldn’t mind
seeing blown to tiny bits -- or at least beaten senseless with
a giant, inflatable, corporate trademark -- whilst delivering
their latest piece of hard-hitting journalism.

NBC did not interrupt its broadcast of the
Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade [thursday]
to bring viewers the news that an M&M
balloon had crashed into a light pole, injuring
two sisters.

In fact, when the time came in the tightly
scripted three-hour program for the M&Ms'
appearance, NBC weaved in tape of the balloon
crossing the finish line at last year's parade -
even as the damaged balloon itself was being
dragged from the accident scene. At 11:47
a.m., as an 11-year-old girl and her 26-year-
old sister were being treated for injuries, the
parade's on-air announcers - Katie Couric, Matt
Lauer and Al Roker - kept up their light-hearted
repartee from Herald Square, where the parade
ends.

"Will these classic candymen get out of this
delicious dilemma?" Mr. Roker asked, referring
not to the accident but to the premise of the
attraction, a red M&M's attempt to save his
yellow counterpart, who had been blown from
the basket of a hot-air balloon.

Time to Leave

Paul Krugman writes:

The fact is that we're not going to stay in Iraq until we
achieve victory, whatever that means in this context.
At most, we'll stay until the American military can take
no more.

Mr. Bush never asked the nation for the sacrifices -
higher taxes, a bigger military and, possibly, a revived
draft - that might have made a long-term commitment
to Iraq possible. Instead, the war has been fought on
borrowed money and borrowed time. And time is
running out. With some military units on their third tour
of duty in Iraq, the superb volunteer army that Mr.
Bush inherited is in increasing danger of facing a
collapse in quality and morale similar to the collapse of
the officer corps in the early 1970's.

So the question isn't whether things will be ugly after
American forces leave Iraq. They probably will. The
question, instead, is whether it makes sense to keep
the war going for another year or two, which is all the
time we realistically have.

Pessimists think that Iraq will fall into chaos whenever
we leave. If so, we're better off leaving sooner rather
than later. As a Marine officer quoted by James Fallows
in the current Atlantic Monthly puts it, "We can lose in
Iraq and destroy our Army, or we can just lose."

No Way Out

photo: Reuters

"I was trying to escape. Obviously, it didn't work."

What About Bob?

This [Plame leak] investigation... has cast a
constant searchlight that the White House
can't turn off the way it has succeeded in
turning off the press. So their methodology
and their dishonesty and their disingenuousness
-- particularly about how we went to war -- as
well as their willingness to attack and rough up
people who don't agree with them are now there
for all to see.

- Carl Bernstein

Carl Bernstein has kept a low-profile since Watergate -- at
least when compared to his former partner at the Washington
Post, Bob Woodward. In the years since All the President’s Men,
Woodward has authored many best-selling books, including
two that cover the current Bush administration. His uncanny
ability to obtain access to the highest government officials
(and get them to speak on the record) give his work instant
“must-read” status for Washington insiders and political
junkies alike.

But some folks -- like the Village Voice -- have noticed that
Bob's been acting a bit strange lately.

On October 27, Woodward appeared on CNN's
Larry King Live and pronounced that the current
Plamegate scandal in the White House was
really much ado about nothing.

Here are some of his words: "First of all, this
began not as somebody launching a smear
campaign. . . . When the story comes out, I'm
quite confident we're going to find out that it
started kind of as gossip, as chatter, and that
somebody learned that Joe Wilson's wife had
worked at the CIA and helped him get this job
going to Niger to see if there was an Iraq-Niger
uranium deal.

"And there's a lot of innocent actions in all of
this. . . . Well, this is a junkyard dog prosecutor
and he goes everywhere and asks every
question and turns over rocks, and rocks under
rocks, and so forth. . . . I think it's quite possible,
though probably unlikely, that he will say, you
know, there was no malice or criminal intent at
the start of this. Some people kind of had
convenient memories before the grand jury.

"Technically they might be able to be charged
with perjury. But I don't see an underlying crime
here, and the absence of the underlying crime
may cause somebody who is a really thoughtful
prosecutor to say, you know maybe this is not
one to go to the court with."

Is this the same Bob Woodward whose
Watergate scoops were dismissed by Richard
Nixon's press secretary, the late Ron Ziegler, as
piddling stories about a "third-rate burglary"?
Doesn't Woodward remember the reaction by
many in the White House press corps, who
initially sneered at the story and brushed it off
as the fevered product of two lowly cityside
reporters covering crime and the courts—which
is what Woodward and Bernstein were at the
time?

On Wednesday, the other shoe dropped...

Washington Post Assistant Managing Editor Bob
Woodward testified under oath Monday in the CIA
leak case that a senior administration official told
him about CIA operative Valerie Plame and her
position at the agency nearly a month before her
identity was disclosed.

In a more than two-hour deposition, Woodward told
Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald that the official
casually told him in mid-June 2003 that Plame
worked as a CIA analyst on weapons of mass
destruction, and that he did not believe the
information to be classified or sensitive, according
to a statement Woodward released yesterday.

Fitzgerald interviewed Woodward about the
previously undisclosed conversation after the official
alerted the prosecutor to it on Nov. 3 -- one week
after Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis
"Scooter" Libby, was indicted in the investigation.

Citing a confidentiality agreement in which the
source freed Woodward to testify but would not
allow him to discuss their conversations publicly,
Woodward and Post editors refused to disclose the
official's name or provide crucial details about the
testimony. Woodward did not share the information
with Washington Post Executive Editor Leonard
Downie Jr. until last month, and the only Post
reporter whom Woodward said he remembers telling
in the summer of 2003 does not recall the
conversation taking place.

Et tu, Bob?

Arianna Huffington writes, “Hear that hissing noise? That’s
the sound of the air being let out of Woodward’s reputation.”

Or could it be a sigh of relief from Bill Keller and the New York Times?

Joe Conason writes a fitting epitaph for this once-great
Icarus of American journalism:

With his relentless pursuit of "access," the literary
formula that has brought him so much money and
fame, Woodward placed book sales above
journalism. Boasting of his friendly relationship with
the president who facilitated his interviews with
administration officials, he now behaves like the
journalistic courtiers of the Nixon era.

To those who have observed Woodward's career
since the glory of Watergate, including readers of his
many bestselling books, the change in his role and
outlook have long been obvious. For him, the
cultivation of high-ranking sources is the very
essence of journalism. And while there is no question
that reporters owe a duty of confidentiality to their
sources, it is also true that they owe candor to their
colleagues and transparency to their readers.

Sadly, Woodward not only served as a silent
accomplice of the Bush White House in its attack on
Plame and her husband, Joseph Wilson, but went
much further by publicly criticizing special counsel
Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of that attack -- and
suggested repeatedly, up to the eve of the indictment
of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, that the investigation
should be curtailed. Now, instead, his own admission
of involvement may have figured in Fitzgerald's
indication Friday that he plans to call a new
grand jury in the case.

But I wouldn’t worry too much, Bob.

I’m sure Judy will save a spot for you at Fox News.

Judy, Judy, Judy

Further proof that denial ain’t just a river in Egypt…


First, Jay Rosen tackles Sulzberger's interview with
Charlie Rose:

Realists didn't expect him suddenly to trash Judy
Miller, or admit that the Times strategy was a
huge mistake. I tuned in to see how he responded
to events that overcame his arguments. In this
sense the Rose interview was a basic test of
maturity -- and diplomacy -- for a chief executive
in a very public jam.

What he told us on Charlie Rose was (in so many
words) "You are all mistaken. There were no events
that overcame my arguments. I am not in any public
jam."

Of course, it’s not too difficult to pull off a BS spin-job
when you’re dealing with a self-absorbed, light-weight like
Rose -- who always allows his guests “to confide as little as
they wish without risking his reprimand as long as they allow
him to ask his tortured, show-off, preening questions.”

But Judy wasn’t so lucky with her interview on NPR’s
On The Media.

BOB GARFIELD: - to put the question in plain
language, Judy, were you played for a chump by these
sources, Ahmed Chalabi in particular?

JUDITH MILLER: You know, first of all [LAUGHS] I-I'm
not going to be insulted by your question, but I
think that the sources that I relied on were reliable.
They had been reliable in the past. I'm not going to
discuss who they were, though many of them were
actually identified by name in my stories. Moreover,
those stories were heavily edited. They just didn't
dance their way into the New York Times. As the
editor's note acknowledged, everybody's wrong if
your sources are wrong.

And that’s not even the best part.

You can hear the interview and read the full transcript, here.

That Sinking Feeling

Frank Rich writes:

When people in power get away with telling bigger and
bigger lies, they naturally think they can keep getting
away with it. And for a long time, Mr. Bush and his
cronies did. Not anymore.

The latest numbers from Newsweek:

36% of Americans approve of Bush’s job performance
68% of Americans dissatisfied with direction of the country
42% of Americans believe Bush is honest and ethical

And so we have a president desperately trying to change the
subject, confuse the issues, and attack the critics -- a group
that now includes Rick Santorum.

In a speech in Philadelphia, Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa.,
criticized how the war has been presented to
Americans — both by the media and the White House.
Afterward, Santorum said the war has been "less than
optimal" and "maybe some blame could be laid" at the
White House. "Certainly, mistakes were made,"
Santorum said.

The San Francisco Examiner adds:

GOP Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, a prominent
conservative and member of the leadership, faces a
double-digit deficit in most polls. He cited a scheduling
conflict Friday for his decision to skip a Veterans Day
event in Pennsylvania that featured Bush.

Free advice for Republicans -- and some Democrats:

You probably shouldn’t wait until the ship is completely
underwater before finding a lifeboat.

Sacre Bleu!

The last time we checked in with our TCS European
correspondent, he had just narrowly escaped getting
blown to bits in the London Underground.

Now we find him at an undisclosed location in northern
France where his earnest attempts at finding peace and
quiet have once again been shattered by civil unrest.

* * *

You know things are bad in your country of residence when
the headline on CNN reads, "Fewer cars burned last night."

And so it is that the French nation has to accept that they
too have a racial divide. Nicholas Sarkozy -- the minister
tipped to be the next French president -- last week told the
press the people responsible for the riots were "scum who
should be hosed down." He has yet to apologize and the
French arab and muslim teenagers have yet to stop burning
things.

Last year, some areas of the French government tried to
ban the wearing of headscarves or the hajib that
muslim women and girls are required to wear to protect
their modesty. Never mind the debate of whether women
being told what to wear is cool or not -- is it really
anyone's business outside of their faith?

Anyway, the muslim community was up in arms at their
young girls having to go to school without them -- the
justification being that the French government did not want
religious beliefs being espoused in school by the kids. Yet
christian kids were allowed to continue wearing necklaces
with Jesus on the cross.

In the arab/muslim/black poor communities in France
there is 50% unemployment and the young people
interviewed stated they were often refused work because
of their ethnicity. Now the government is claiming those
arrested for rioting will be deported. Great. France has
lots of land borders, so getting back in for them is very
easy -- and this time they will be really pissed.

It doesn’t take a genius to see where this will end up.
With any luck the French people themselves will voice a
sensible opinion and someone in government will listen
and act. I hope so.

- T.

* * *

Thanks mate. Good luck with that new summer
home in Fallujah.

Open Mic: Yeats is Greats

Hey, Hey they're The Speakers!

The Speakers are a lo-fi, new-folk duo from California.
Their latest CD is a collection of songs with lyrics by
William Butler Yeats. Brian Miller and Peter Musselman
say they were inspired by the Irish poet's turn-of-the-century work because it sounded like country songs.

It's Official

Judy is out the door.

Arnold is on the ropes.

Republicans are in a tailspin.


And in case you haven’t heard...

All eight members up for re-election to the Pennsylvania
school board that had been sued for introducing the
teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to
evolution in biology class were swept out of office
[tuesday] by a slate of challengers who campaigned
against the intelligent design policy.

Not a bad week, don’t you think?

Heroes & Villains

At some point in the 20th century, our perception of good
and evil underwent a radical change.

Indeed, at the very heart of the modernist movement lies the
notion that good and evil cannot be so easily separated and
defined -- as one would find in a traditional melodrama or
fairytale. Every human being has the capacity for good or evil
(so we believe) and it is unrealistic to portray any character as
simply a hero or villain.


Unless they are a member of The Beach Boys.

Beach Boys member Mike Love has filed a lawsuit
against former band mate Brian Wilson over Smile,
the famously unfinished Beach Boys opus that Wilson
completed and released on his own last year to much
acclaim, and at Love's expense.

The suit, filed in federal court in Los Angeles, alleges
that the promotional blitz by Wilson "shamelessly
misappropriated Mike Love's songs, likeness, and the
Beach Boys trademark, as well as the Smile album
itself," per court papers obtained by City News
Service.

. . .

Love, who cowrote and sang lead on many early
Beach Boys classics, alleges that the publicity
campaign for Wilson's solo Smile negatively affected
sales of Beach Boys albums. Particularly aggrieving
Love was Wilson's decision to give away more than
2.6 million copies of a Beach Boys' compilation disc in
an edition of Britain's Mail on Sunday newspaper.

Love's suit seeks damages amounting to "millions of
dollars in illicit profits," claiming the campaign diluted
the Beach Boys' brand name, and addition $1 million-
plus for international advertising "designed to correct
the effects of its unfair competition and infringing
uses." Other defendants include the Mail on Sunday
and Sanctuary Records Group.

For the casual fans who haven’t been keeping score for the
past forty years, here’s a quick recap:


BRIAN WILSON: Boy genius. Musical mastermind.
Wrote, produced and performed some of the greatest
pop songs ever committed to vinyl. Admired by everyone
from The Beatles to Leonard Bernstein for elevating rock
music into a serious art form. Overcame an abusive
father, mental illness and drug addictions without any
trace of bitterness. Among friends, family and fans his
reputation for having a generous, compassionate soul
ranks somewhere between that of Will Rogers and the
Dalai Lama.

MIKE LOVE: Cousin. Bandmate. Songwriting partner
who wrote lyrics to The Beach Boys biggest hits of the
1960’s. Artistic philosophy is best described by his own
infamous quote to Brian: "Don't fuck with the formula."
Short-sighted, narrow-minded approach to music-making
became primary obstacle to Brian’s progressive ideas. As
a result, Brian shelved Smile, retreated to his bedroom
and The Beach Boys quickly became an out-of-touch,
obsolete musical force. [farce?] In the nearly four decades
that followed, he continued to consolidate his power within
the band, gradually transforming The Beach Boys into
the soulless, traveling jukebox oldies show it is today.
Often appears bitter and jealous in interviews, claiming
he has never received the credit and compensation he
deserves. Endless series of excessive lawsuits,
behind-the-scenes backstabbing and bizarre public
behavior has earned him the eternal disdain of most of
his peers, bandmates and former fans.

And he is a Republican.

Tortured Logic

My grief lies all within,
And these external manners of lament
Are merely shadows to the unseen grief
That swells with silence in the tortured soul.

- W.S.

Call me crazy -- better yet, call me an American -- but
I can’t help thinking that this country is more than a little
fucked up when the President of the United States has
to explicitly announce, "We do not torture."

If that’s true Mr. President (despite plenty of
contradicting evidence, like this) maybe you should
remind your vice-president. This is one memo he
doesn’t seem to have gotten.

Just last week, Cheney showed up at a Republican
senatorial luncheon to lobby lawmakers for a CIA
exemption to an amendment by Sen. John McCain
(R-Ariz.) that would ban torture and inhumane
treatment of prisoners. The exemption would cover
the CIA's covert "black sites" in several Eastern
European democracies and other countries where
key al Qaeda captives are being kept.

Cheney spokesman Steve Schmidt declined to
comment on the vice president's interventions or to
elaborate on his positions. "The vice president's
views are certainly reflected in the administration's
policy," he said.

Eric Alterman adds:

(And don’t forget, they still haven’t released the
worst photos from Abu Ghraib.)  It’s sick and
disgusting and it's Bush Administration policy. 
I’ve said it before and I fear I have to say it
again.  If you support Bush, you support
torture.  Deal with it.

Karl Klassified

A wise philosopher once said...

Come on guys, it’s so simple.
Maybe you need a refresher course.

And in today’s Los Angeles Times...

An intelligence analyst temporarily lost his top-secret
security clearance because he faxed his resume using a
commercial machine.

An employee of the Defense Department had her
clearance suspended for months because a jilted
boyfriend called to say she might not be reliable.

An Army officer who spoke publicly about intelligence
failures before the Sept. 11 attacks had his clearance
revoked over questions about $67 in personal charges to
a military cellphone.

But in the White House, where Karl Rove is under
federal investigation for his role in the exposure of a
covert CIA officer, the longtime advisor to President
Bush continues to enjoy full access to government
secrets.

Hey! It’s all ball bearings nowadays.

Cheesy News Network

CNN has been a slow-motion train wreck ever since
Jon Stewart pulled back the curtain and verbally sucker
punched Tucker Carlson. Thus ended Crossfire.

The latest out the door is Aaron Brown, an anchor best
described by another Daily Show regular, Stephen Colbert:
“I love that Aaron Brown, the way he sucks the flavor
out of every word... and I love the way he mulls.
No one mulls the news like Aaron Brown.”

But apparently there just isn’t any room left at the
24 hour news network for all that sucking and mulling.

Jonathan Klein, the president of CNN/U.S., said
today that he and Mr. Brown had mutually agreed
that Mr. Brown would leave the cable news
network because the new CNN lineup left "no
options" for a program that would include Mr.
Brown. "It is, unfortunately, a zero-sum game," Mr.
Klein said.

Dude, I hate those zero-sum games. I always seem to
lose those.

Mr. Klein complimented Mr. Brown, who is 56,
saying, "He is a first-class news talent, no question."
He added, "He is really a doll to work with." But
Mr. Klein repeated that CNN simply had no
program to offer Mr. Brown. "There are only so
many hours in the course of a day," he said.

But you did a heck of a job, Brownie.

The realigned CNN lineup will place Mr. Cooper's
program "360," which had previously run at 7 p.m.
Eastern time weeknights, in the 10 p.m. time period
that had been occupied for the last four years by
Mr. Brown's program, "Newsnight." Mr. Cooper's
program will also expand to two hours, from 10
until midnight. CNN has experimented with that
two-hour format over the past month, with Mr.
Cooper joining Mr. Brown to serve as co-anchor of
the program.

The audience levels for that program have
increased markedly in the last month, a
development that CNN attributed to Mr. Cooper's
presence. In the 7 p.m. hour, where Mr. Cooper had
previously worked, CNN will insert the final hour
of its three-hour-long "Situation Room" program
with Wolf Blitzer. That program has been running
from 3 to 6 p.m. Eastern time each weekday. Now it
will run from 4 to 6 p.m., leading into an hourlong
newscast anchored by Lou Dobbs, with Mr. Blitzer
coming back at 7 p.m. for one more hour.

It certainly is hard to see where they could have fit
Brown in that lineup. I mean, three hours barely
scratches the surface of the wit and wisdom that is
Wolf Blitzer. And you’ve got to make room for Cooper,
he’s an actual celebrity.

Mr. Klein also noted that Mr. Cooper has started to
turn up as a character satirized on "Saturday
Night Live" on NBC, a development that he said
was "a sure sign" that people were becoming more
aware of him.

Did we mention Mr. Klein is the president of CNN?

Okay. Just checking.

Mr. Vice-President, your pants are on fire.

Raw Story reports:

The indictment against Cheney’s Chief of Staff,
I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, clearly states that Cheney and
Libby discussed Plame’s undercover CIA status and
the fact that her husband, former Ambassador Joseph
Wilson, traveled to Niger to investigate claims that
Iraq tried to acquire yellowcake uranium from the
African country in early June of 2003.

Yet the following month, Cheney and then-White
House press secretary Ari Fleischer asserted that the
vice president was unaware of Wilson’s Niger trip,
who the ambassador was, or a classified report Wilson
wrote about his findings prior to the ambassador’s
July 6, 2003 op-ed in the New York Times.

We now know, courtesy of the 22-page Libby
indictment, that Cheney wasn’t being truthful. Cheney
did see the report; he knew full well who Wilson was.
He also knew that the CIA arranged for Wilson to
travel to Niger, and he personally sought out
information about Wilson’s trip to Niger, was briefed
about the fact-finding mission, and even obtained
classified information about Plame’s covert CIA status.
He also came to know one other important nugget:
that Plame may have recommended her husband for
the trip.

Perhaps the vice-president could clear things up by
answering a few questions.

Big Brother is Surfing

I received this email yesterday from a fellow cheese-lover.

Hey K.

A friend at work told me about an old girlfriend who was
able to find his current address by accessing his driver’s
license on the internet. I didn’t believe it was possible,
until he showed me the website. Fuck! Did you realize
that the government keeps a record of every license in
the country on the web -- and anyone can see it?!

Thanks, Homeland Security!

Fortunately, you can click an option to have it removed
(which I did immediately). I recommend you and your
family do the same.

- J.


Yikes. Thanks for the tip.