Here's what the New York Times tells you today.
David Johnston's"New Details Revealed on C.I.A. Leak Case" tells you that the court documents reveal Scooter Libby learned of Valerie Plame from Dick Cheney. Libby still claims it was from Tim Russert and Russert still claims that's not the case. From the article:
Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff told prosecutors that Mr. Cheney had informed him "in an off sort of curiosity sort of fashion" in mid-June 2003 about the identity of the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak case, according to a formerly secret legal opinion, parts of which were made public on Friday.
The newly released pages were part of a legal opinion written in February 2005 by Judge David S. Tatel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. His opinion disclosed that the former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby Jr., acknowledged to prosecutors that he had heard directly from Mr. Cheney about the Central Intelligence Agency officer, Valerie Wilson, more than a month before her identity was first publicly disclosed on July 14, 2003, by a newspaper columnist.
"Nevertheless," Judge Tatel wrote, "Libby maintains that he was learning about Wilson's wife's identity for the first time when he spoke with NBC Washington Bureau Chief Tim Russert on July 10 or 11." Mr. Russert denied Mr. Libby's account. Ms. Wilson is married to Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who has criticized the Bush administration's Iraq policy.
Billie notes Rachel L. Swarns' "Halliburton Subsidiary Gets Contract to Add Temporary Immigration Detention Centers:"
The Army Corps of Engineers has awarded a contract worth up to $385 million for building temporary immigration detention centers to Kellogg Brown & Root, the Halliburton subsidiary that has been criticized for overcharging the Pentagon for its work in Iraq.KBR would build the centers for the Homeland Security Department for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space, company executives said. KBR, which announced the contract last month, had a similar contract with immigration agencies from 2000 to last year.
So Halliburton's gotten a new contract (probably no bid). Why? Because of the wonderful job they've done in Iraq? Don't kid yourself. But where is this "unexpected influx of immigrants" coming from? Does that bother you? The fact that Homeland Security will be over them? Where is the influx coming from?
Ponder. And wonder if Bully Boy's going to scapegoat undocumented workers (which is bad enough) or if the I'm-above-the-law Bully Boy has something else in mind?
Stepping away from the Times. This is an e-mailed entry. Did you notice that? If you did, the good news is that this made it onto the site. Here's the bad news. No Ruth.
Not this morning. Not because of Ruth. She did her entry.
There are too many problems with Blogger/Blogspot this morning. This entry was done in the program and disappered while publishing (with a "post not found" message that's new to Blogger/Blogspot -- I've seen all the error messages). Last night, forget about posting anything because I couldn't log in. (Though I wasted two hours repeatedly trying.)
Betty, according to Mikey Likes It!, was able to log in, to write a post, and when she'd try to publish, she kept getting a message to wait ten minutes over and over.
I have no idea what's going on but I do know that it's a waste of time to keep trying to do entries when Blogger/Blogspot keeps losing them. I've spent three hours this morning trying to do entries and copying and pasting Ruth's e-mailed one in. That's all the time I'm giving this morning.
My apologies to Ruth.
The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com. You'll note no tags. You may also note that there are no links except to articles from the paper. I've done all that repeatedly this morning, I'm not in the mood to continue foolishly wasting time.
Shirley note: I'm publishing this within Blogger because it may be about to disappear from the site. Martha and Dallas are working on links and tags for Ruth's Morning Edition Report. UK Computer Gurus and myself are attempting to find out what's going on with Blogger. C.I. is in DC for The World Can't Wait rally along with Wally, Kat, Dona, Jim, Ty, Ava and Jess. UK Computer Gurus are also attempting to help Betty get her post from last night posted. The time stamp on the original post was 4:06 am. I'll put 4:10 am on this one because UK Computer Gurus want to see if the original immediately vanishes when this one goes up.
