Month: April 2006

Fitz in retreat . . .

. . . from his claim that Scooter Libby knew he was to tell NYT’s Judith Miller that the declassified intelligence report had as a “key judgment” that “Iraq was ‘vigorously trying to procure’ uranium,” as Fitz — Prosecutor Patrick, rattler of Mayordaley II’s cage as in John Kass today — told the court last week, in his special prosecutor life in Washington. 
 
He should have said Libby knew he was to pass on “some of the key judgments of the NIE, and that [italics added] the [declassified report] stated that Iraq was ‘vigorously trying to procure’ uranium” and he asked the judge to make the correction in his filing.
 
Do not feel bad if you don’t get the importance of all this, any more than if you can’t follow Fitz vs. Libby in general, which is based not on doing what he’s supposed to have lied about but on his supposedly lying about it. 
 
But if Fitz did things this way — skinning back on what fed a media frenzy only days earlier — in Chicago, he would not have Daley worried about him as Kass says he is today.
 
I still think he’s in over his head with this one and should get back to Chicago immediately.

Fitz in retreat . . .

. . . from his claim that Scooter Libby knew he was to tell NYT’s Judith Miller that the declassified intelligence report had as a “key judgment” that “Iraq was ‘vigorously trying to procure’ uranium,” as Fitz — Prosecutor Patrick, rattler of Mayordaley II’s cage as in John Kass today — told the court last week, in his special prosecutor life in Washington. 
 
He should have said Libby knew he was to pass on “some of the key judgments of the NIE, and that [italics added] the [declassified report] stated that Iraq was ‘vigorously trying to procure’ uranium” and he asked the judge to make the correction in his filing.
 
Do not feel bad if you don’t get the importance of all this, any more than if you can’t follow Fitz vs. Libby in general, which is based not on doing what he’s supposed to have lied about but on his supposedly lying about it. 
 
But if Fitz did things this way — skinning back on what fed a media frenzy only days earlier — in Chicago, he would not have Daley worried about him as Kass says he is today.
 
I still think he’s in over his head with this one and should get back to Chicago immediately.

St. Edmund rising

St. Edmund RC Church — Oak Park’s oldest, it says on a sign out front (apparently antedating St. Catherine of Siena’s move from Pine & Washington many years ago) — has reduced its debt from $1.1 million to $375,000 in a year, says the pastor Fr. John McGivern in the bulletin.  He’s been there 18 months.  Weekly collections etc. mean no debt is being incurred.  Fr. McG cites “some very generous donors, the reallocation of some underutilized funds . . . two bequests, and the fine fiscal management of the [parish] Finance Council.”
 
Donors can set up automatic direct debit and automatic credit card contributions, so “you’ll never have to worry about your weekly envelopes again!”.
 
A recent “Elegant Evening at the [Brookfield] Zoo netted $66,000.  Weekly collections have to average $13,500.  Apparently they have been at that level, in view of ongoing lack of indebtedness. 
 
All Oak Park should be glad about this.

Times, they are not changing

It took eight (8) paragraphs for NY Times to identify as a Democrat the WVa congressman who steered $1/4 mill to five of his very own non-profits, though early in a story is the usual place.  Not to mention his senior-Dem status on the gosh-darn ETHICS COMMITTEE.  Two days EARLIER, Wall Street Journal had put him on Appropriations (?), where with Sen. Byrd’s help he earmarked lotsabucks for friends and allies. Tsk, tsk.  It’s the paper of record?  Or broken record?  Dennis Byrne has it.

Times, they are not changing

It took eight (8) paragraphs for NY Times to identify as a Democrat the WVa congressman who steered $1/4 mill to five of his very own non-profits, though early in a story is the usual place.  Not to mention his senior-Dem status on the gosh-darn ETHICS COMMITTEE.  Two days EARLIER, Wall Street Journal had put him on Appropriations (?), where with Sen. Byrd’s help he earmarked lotsabucks for friends and allies. Tsk, tsk.  It’s the paper of record?  Or broken record?  Dennis Byrne has it.

Stricken

Sometimes a column lead gets me all choked up, like this one from Chi Trib’s Dawn Turner Trice:

One of the things that has struck me most about the immigration reform rallies in Chicago and other cities has been the large number of students participating.

What really does it for me is my keen, abiding interest in what strikes Dawn Turner Trice.  I wake up wondering about it.  It’s a good thing too, because otherwise I would not read her column.

Stricken

Sometimes a column lead gets me all choked up, like this one from Chi Trib’s Dawn Turner Trice:

One of the things that has struck me most about the immigration reform rallies in Chicago and other cities has been the large number of students participating.

What really does it for me is my keen, abiding interest in what strikes Dawn Turner Trice.  I wake up wondering about it.  It’s a good thing too, because otherwise I would not read her column.

Tangled web

“That Fitzgerald is one helluva digger, able to ferret out this stuff that was in the headlines [three] years ago…”

says a Power Line correspondent that sent on a July 20, 2003 AP story “Declassified CIA documents on Iraq show divided intelligence community” and one the day before by Knight-Ridder, “Bush releases excerpts of top-secret Iraq report” meaning Special Prosecutor Patrick, who has done great things in Chi-town, putting bad guys away from feeding too voraciously at the public trough — they overdid it, you see — but may, just may be in over his head in his Plame-Wison-gate prosecution of Cheney’s top dog.

The stories, says PL, 

show what we all know: the release of the NIE [Natl Intell Estimate] report was part of an attempt to quell the political uproar that was starting to build over what Bush did and did not know before the war. The stories also show that the “leak,” while criticized for being “selective,” included the State Department minority opinion — material more than sufficient for most MSM [main stream media] stories written after the briefing to be negative! 

What’s new in the Fitzgerald brief

is that President Bush, according to Cheney according to Libby, authorized the release of the NIE report ten days earlier than the July 18 briefing that was widely reported [italics added], and that they disclosed it to Judith Miller, who didn’t write about it.

Ah-hah!

But Bush had nothing to do with the NYT-Miller part, authorizing de-classifying and releasing the NIE report, but that’s all — which is not surprising, unless you think he’s hands-on in such matters, in which case Harvard B-School should ask for his diploma back.  This is from today’s story in, yes, NYT.

Tangled web

“That Fitzgerald is one helluva digger, able to ferret out this stuff that was in the headlines [three] years ago…”

says a Power Line correspondent that sent on a July 20, 2003 AP story “Declassified CIA documents on Iraq show divided intelligence community” and one the day before by Knight-Ridder, “Bush releases excerpts of top-secret Iraq report” meaning Special Prosecutor Patrick, who has done great things in Chi-town, putting bad guys away from feeding too voraciously at the public trough — they overdid it, you see — but may, just may be in over his head in his Plame-Wison-gate prosecution of Cheney’s top dog.

The stories, says PL, 

show what we all know: the release of the NIE [Natl Intell Estimate] report was part of an attempt to quell the political uproar that was starting to build over what Bush did and did not know before the war. The stories also show that the “leak,” while criticized for being “selective,” included the State Department minority opinion — material more than sufficient for most MSM [main stream media] stories written after the briefing to be negative! 

What’s new in the Fitzgerald brief

is that President Bush, according to Cheney according to Libby, authorized the release of the NIE report ten days earlier than the July 18 briefing that was widely reported [italics added], and that they disclosed it to Judith Miller, who didn’t write about it.

Ah-hah!

But Bush had nothing to do with the NYT-Miller part, authorizing de-classifying and releasing the NIE report, but that’s all — which is not surprising, unless you think he’s hands-on in such matters, in which case Harvard B-School should ask for his diploma back.  This is from today’s story in, yes, NYT.

Horrible

John Kass goes after Bush as Commander in chief of leaks, comparing him to the Arkansas Word Splitter.  But look at it this way: The nasty boy Joe Wilson, a schemer of the first water, goes public in that East Coast Paper of ill repute, initials NYT, with public statement misleading public about what’s going on with Sadaam and uranium, etc., and Bush wants to call him on it. 
 
Does he go on air with a fingering of Schemer Joe, whose own official report gives the lie to his East Coast Paper report?  No, it’s beneath him, but in the war of words that hurt the war effort he should be shot down.  It’s done to him via Cheney and a man named Scooter, though that’s what Prosecutor Fitz has to prove (I think: it get murky here, what with ancillary charges having moved front and center), and to defend self Libby wants to know what Fitz has and describes what he wants, and it says President B. has declassified stuff to shoot down bad info — in the usual Wash. way, without which East Coast Paper and others could not survive, giving it to reporters on background w/permission to use. 
 
It’s a horrible thing, to be sure, that there’s a political angle here — Wilson Scheming, East Coast Paper loving it, etc., White House countering — but such things do happen, and Wash.-based and other reporters will simply have to live with it, shocked though they may be.  In fact, the whole thing may be a wake-up call to them to play things down the middle and stop grinding axes, but I doubt it.