Karl Rove nosed his Jaguar out of the garage at his home in Northwest Washington in the predawn gloom, starting another day in which he would be dealing with a troubled Supreme Court nomination, posthurricane reconstruction and all the other issues that come across the desk of President Bush's most influential aide.
But Mr. Rove's first challenge on Wednesday morning came before he cleared his driveway: how to get past the five television crews and the three photographers waiting for him. He flashed his blinding high beams into the camera lenses and sped by.
That is the way things are for the Bush White House these days. The routines are the same. But everything, in the glare of the final stages of a criminal investigation that has reached to the highest levels of power in Washington, is different.
Mr. Rove is scheduled to testify before a federal grand jury on Friday, the fourth time he will have done so in the case, which centers on the disclosure of an undercover C.I.A. officer's identity.
The above is from Richard W. Stevenson's "Jitters at the White House Over the Leak Inquiry" in this morning's New York Times. Lot of anonymice with Clinton people thrown in for 'perspective.' (Yeah, right.) We'll note this:
Mr. Bush joked late last year with Matthew Cooper, a reporter for Time magazine, about why Mr. Cooper was not yet in jail for fighting a subpoena demanding that he testify about a conversation with a source who later turned out to be Mr. Rove. These days, though, the leak investigation is almost never spoken of openly within the West Wing, and certainly not made light of, administration officials say.
Bully Boy & Coopy yucking it up. Those were different times. Late last year. That would be what, October 2004? Before the election at any rate. When brave Matt Cooper could have written something. But didn't. Didn't write about Rove until things got serious for Cooper, until Cooper was looking at jail time.
You can never know what will or won't impact an election. But it certainly did work out well for Bully Boy that Cooper played I've Got A Secret from 2003 until 2005. Was special access granted for those who sat on it? Did they think they'd get special access?
What exactly did they think they were doing? Cooper's position wasn't a First Amendment one. He suddenly announces a new disclosure that doesn't appear to have existed. Then he can finger Karl Rove.
Friends of Cooper who pretend to get worked up about the 2004 election (over and over) always manage to give Cooper a pass. Usually that means spending a lot of time sliming Joseph Wilson. That no one questions this when they also pass themselves off as Democrats is surprising. Some of the loudest lectures come from Cooper friends. They'll lecture about ___ or ___ and tell you how the press (meaning reporters which they aren't) made a mockery of the election. But never name Coops. It's interesting.
Probably, they should move on to a different topic (both to comment on publicly and on the party circuit) because people are starting to catch on and they are starting to whisper about why these strong, brave voices still stay silent on Cooper?
It's because he's their friend and because of who is married to. They're willing to spend time (and time!) sliming Wilson and they certainly want people to take them seriously as "strong voices for the Democratic Party," as voices that can be trusted.
They talk about the right-ward tilt of the media or some other topic always griping that reporters aren't honest. (Reporters as opposed to journalists or any other monicker -- they generally go after the mainstream reporters.) And they present themselves as brave people who will speak out. But cat got their tongues when their friend Matt Cooper sat on information for two years. Cat got their tongues when they had a perfect example of a reporter (who didn't make the First Amendment argument past the very real threat of jail) with information damaging to the White House sat on it for two years. They who rip apart many arguments (certainly Joe Wilson's) didn't have the need to rip apart the weak "I got a message from my source just today!" nonsense announced on the court room steps.
I'm really not in the mood to deal with Stevenson. He may have written a good article, he may have written a bad article, a pedistrian one, whatever. I don't know. I see this article (by someone who is presumably a reporter) and just think of our "journalists" and others who aren't reporters and traffic in something else while they slam this person or that for their bias but they don't get honest about the fact that they're tight with Cooper and whether their need to cover for Cooper is the main motivation behind their attacks (from the left and "left") on Wilson.
I'm too bothered by the "journalists" to evaluate reporter (or "reporter") Stevenson or his article. (I'm trying to be very clear that my criticism of the ones who remained silent doesn't apply to Stevenson who is supposed to be a reporter as opposed to commentators and others of that ilk -- those are the ones I'm slamming.)
What nasty note did one of them write in 2004 during the election to justify their actions? Something about (pulling a Hillary) "this ain't about baking cookies, this is serious!" How serious was it, the election of 2004? Not serious enough for them to call their own friend on the fact that he spoke to Karl Rove about Valerie Plame in 2003 and he waited until 2005, after that non-cooking baking election, to get honest.
Excuse me, in terms of one person, the comment wasn't bake cookies. It was bake cupcakes. It was a firey speech, about how someone else was more interested in protecting their friends, but this brave voice was interested in the truth and "repulsed" by the 2000 election and anyone else who was going to stand tall and brave (like the speaker) could go bake cupcakes.
I'll assume that speaker had a sweet tooth and needed to bake cupcakes instead of addressing their friend Matt Cooper.
That's probably why they pull "the nothing to say" about Plamegate currently. Those brave voices, those in it to win it voices, who are strangely silent right now.
Cooper's lucky he has friends who will stand by him (and rip apart Wilson) but I'm not sure the public is served by that.
None of this is meant as a defense of the mainstream reporters (those who report on stories to be clear) which is certainly ripe for criticism. But it is meant to say that "brave voices" going silent should be noted. Watch and see what they waste your time with today and over the weekend.
(And for those wanting a humorous critique of some at the Times, check out Betty's latest
"Thomas Friedman's Silence and Suicide Attempt.")
Lloyd e-mails to note Matthew Rothschild's "George Mason Student Busted for Anti-Recruiting" (McCarthyism Watch, The Progressive):
Tariq Khan is a junior at George Mason University in Virginia. An Air Force veteran at 27, he has strong views about the Iraq War and about military recruitment on campus.
He went to the trouble of making up his own anti-recruitment pamphlet, which he entitled "Three Good Reasons Not to Join the Military." Those reasons, he says, are: first, you have to submit to authoritarianism; second, you have to commit human rights violations; and third, you have to risk your own life for leaders you might not respect or trust.
For the last two semesters, Khan says he has kept these pamphlets with him on campus because he's never sure when the recruiters will be there.
And so on September 29, when he saw the Marine recruiters had set up a table in the Johnson Center on campus, Khan decided to stand nearby.
"I got out an 8 ½ by 11 piece of paper, which I had written on: 'Recruiters Lie. Don't Be Deceived.' And I taped it to my chest," Khan says. "I was standing about four feet from the Marine recruiting table. I wasn’t blocking access or anything."
Khan says that someone from the Johnson Center staff came up to him and told him he couldn't be there.
Rod e-mails to note today's scheduled topics for Democracy Now!:
Friday, October 14: TBA We will be discussing the upcoming vote on the Iraqi Constitution with leading Iraqi feminist Yannar Mohammed and the latest developments in Syria with Political Science Professor Bassam Haddad. We will also talk with one of the local organizers of the Millions More Movement, Larry Hamm.
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