Headline: A Politician Does a Very Bad Thing; America Outraged

Oooh, stay away from this one. This is going to be nothing but bad news.

On the other hand:

Headline: Partisan Hatchet-Men and Smear-Merchants Leak Very Sensitive Information About Something You Shouldn't Worry About; A Nation Fumes at the "Timing" of Release

READ THAT ARTICLE, BABY! Once you get through the tendentious "what sort of a world is it when law enforcement officers and prosecutors leak information about the crimes they're working on to the press, of all people" narrative of the first thirty paragraphs, you can be guaranteed of something juicy, although vaguely worded, in the final paragraphs 31 and 32.

Gee, how is it I know so much about the Plame investigation? I have read, for example, that the prosecutors had determined that the person who leaked to Bob Novak probably worked in the office of the Vice President; I've heard the name "Scooter Libby" leaked more times than I care to count.

And yet I've never read one headline questioning the "timing" of such leaks, nor tut-tutting the fact that such information was leaked at all. No, in that case, the story is the leak itself.

But it's a little bit different when there's a scandal that harms liberals, isn't it? Suddenly, the only story is how this terrible story came into the notice of the press, and how terrible it was someone fed this to a reporter. (Which is sort of a strange position for a reporter to take, it seems. Sort of like bear getting extremely pissed off about how all these goddamned salmon got stocked in this river.)

RatherBiased, a site I've got to add to my sidebar, tips me to this subtle Dan Rather intro to the main Berger story on last night's news:

Sandy Berger, who was National Security Adviser under President
Clinton stepped aside today as an adviser to Senator John Kerry. CBS's John
Roberts reports this was triggered by a carefully orchestrated leak
about Berger and the timing of it appears to be no coincidence.

Notice that this intro -- this verbal headline, if you will -- contains absolutely no reference to the actual crimes committed by Berger. The only crime hinted at is the crime of Conspiracy of Republicans (Allegedly) Talking to Reporters.

In the First Fucking Degree, baby.

Sandy Berger was forced to step down as an advisor to Kerry... because of a "carefully orchestrated leak." A leak about what? Never mind that. Didn't you hear? Someone might have leaked to the press, and get this, they might have had personal or even political motives for doing so.

Outrageous!

RatherBiased has searched for Rather's previous uses of the phrase "carefully orchestrated leak."

What do you think he found? Since 1990, Rather's used the phrase 4 times. All four times he used it in reference to a scandal that hurt Democratic politicians.

One example:

Vice President Gore is also on the spot tonight over a new, carefully
orchestrated leak involving accusations about Gore's past campaign
fund-raising practices. A Justice Department official is calling for an
independent investigator in the case." --CBS Evening News, June 22, 2000.

He's got three more. The boy's gots the mad Lexis/Nexus skillz.

And Rather seems to be guessing rather than reporting, anyway. Lawrence O'Donnell says that the leak actually came entirely from Sandy Berger and Lanny Davis. He says that everything we've read so far can be attributed directly to them.

Davis caught wind of the investigation, his theory goes, and Davis demanded that Berger out himself now -- and not in October, which O'Donnell stressed was the "timing" Bush would prefer -- and then step aside. He also cited Lanny Davis' own book, which says something to the effect that the only thing you control in a scandal is the timing of the disclosure.

But even if this was leaked by Republicans-- so fucking what? Are we not allowed to leak? Why is it that there are thousands of leaks about Abu Ghraib, the 9-11 commission, Niger-uranium claims of Joe Wilson, the Plame investigation etc., and in these cases, the motives or political leanings of the persons leaking the information is never so much as mentioned, never mind being made the headline bullet-point Main Thesis of the story?

The press only gets scoops via leaks. If it's pubically announced, it's not a scoop. Leaks happen hundreds of times a day in Washington DC alone. And yet, despite the press' reliance on deliberate, politically-motivated or personal-agenda-type leaks for the product they produce, they suddenly damn the practice.

But only when the scandal hurts a liberal politician.

Let's be adults here. I have no doubt that the Bush Administration has an interest in promoting this story. Leaking it. Although I agree with Lawrence O'Donnell-- I think Bush should have waited until October. And, if he had his druthers, he would have waited until October.

But let's assume that Bush chose this timing, and he chose this timing to hurt Kerry.

Precisely what timing should he have chosen? Timing that would have done as little damage to Kerry as possible?

Are you serious? Why, on earth, would he want to "time" a leak so as to help his political opponent? Is that the standard now required of Republicans, and Republicans only?

Let's talk about the timing that Kerry would have preferred-- he'd have preferred the timing of the leak to be sometime after, oh, November 3rd or so.

Is that timing to be preferred to the actual timing? If so, why? When did the media suddenly become an institution committed to the suppression of important information until after election day has passed?

Oh, right. It becomes such an institution when a scandal is about to sting its preferred candidate in the ass.

Posted by: Ace at 01:02 AM | Comments (9)
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Let us dispense of the claims, "ridiculous on their face" (sic), that Berger stole codeword-classified top secret documents "inadvertantly."

Even Joshua Micah Cougar Mellencamp Marshall admits that Berger's behavior is "inexplicable," which is partisan, defensive way to say "his behavior cannot be explained by anything other than deliberate and premeditated criminal intent, and that his motives for engaging in such willfully, knowing criminal behavoir are frankly too embarassing and damaging for me to even speculate about, so I'll refer to all this top-secret-document-thieving-behavior under the gauzy, vague, and even slightly cute rubric of being 'inexplicable.'"

On Scarborough Country tonight, reliably partisan Democratic strategist/spinner Lawrence O'Donnell admited that Berger's acts could not reasonably be explained away as anything other than deliberate and intentional. (He also strongly made the case that it was the Democrats -- specifically Lanny Davis of Clinton-defending fame-- who leaked this story, along with Berger himself; I'll have that transcript for you the moment it's posted.)

So let us put claims about "inadvertancy" aside as "ridiculous on their face" (sic). We'll leave such childish things to those who have the right childlike mindset for them, such as Eleanor Clift, Chris Lehane, Paul Krugman, Maureen Dowd, and the entire editorial and reportial staff of the New York Times.

Then: Why?

There are five possible motives. This is all speculation, note; unlike Joshua Micah Cougar Mellancamp Marshall, I don't claim that conspiracy theories are fact until, oh, say, the charging of conspiracy counts against named defendants. But these seem to me to be the most likely candidates for motive.

And let me say something up-front: Although I refer to some motives as "innocent," in fact none of this behavior is innocent at all. "Innocent" is used in a relative sense. Berger did not "innocently" stuff documents into his trousers and socks, nor did he "innocently" "discard" a top-secret, codeword-classified memo that he stole from the National Archives.

Berger deliberately -- and criminally; feloniously in fact -- stole these documents. And then, by his own admission, he "inadvertantly discarded" one codeword-classified memo. He not only broke the law deliberately, he then engaged in the very end-result the law is intended to protect against, to wit, moron National Security Advisors taking top-secret documents home with them and then putting them in the trash, froim which anyone could take them.

Unless Berger cops to shredding or burning the document -- and I don't think he will, as that will be pretty hard to explain in court-- that means he stole a top-secret document and then either lost it or "inadvertantly discarded" it in the trash, where any spy or hacker could find it. And yes-- hackers and spies do engage in "dumpster diving" in order to discover documents just like this one.

It may be unlikely that spies went through his trash on the nights that the document resided there, thanks to his "inadvertant" national-security breach; but then, he was both a former NSAdvisor and an "informal advisor" to someone who may the the next President of the United States. This man's trash is just the kind of trash foreign spies are most interested in.

If we're lucky, then no one discovered the document. But the whole point of the restrictions on handling top-secret information is to avoid relying on mere luck to keep our documents secret.

At any rate. Those lengthy caveats aside, here are the Big Four Possible Motives for Berger's Crimes:

1) It's All About the Comfy Couch. This is the motive most favored by Democrats, because it seems to be the most "innocent" (using that word advisedly, note). Sandy Berger deliberately stole top-secret national-security documents from the high-security area they were kept in because he didn't fancy the chair and desk provided for him on-site and wanted to bring his homework, well, home with him, and pour through it at his leisure, perhaps while watching re-runs of Becker.

This is the most innocent, but it is still blazingly criminal activity, especially because, by his own admission, he then "inadvertantly discarded" at least one of these documents, possibly putting it into the hands of foreign enemies. Or at least acting with willful negligence in allowing that possibility.

But at least he merely jeopardized our country's national security for an understandable reason, to wit, the need to sit his fat, fishwhite ass down on a nice fluffy cushion while preparing his 9-11 testimony.

Arrogance? You want to talk about arrogance? This man decided (under this, the most favorable of theories) that national-security laws just didn't apply to him because he craved the comforts of home and hearth.

And this is the most innocent, most forgiveable interpretation. The rest are worse.

As Christopher "Vincent Coccoti" Walken said in True Romance: "That ain't any kind of fun, but what I have to offer you, that's as good as it's gonna get. And it won't ever get that good again."

2) Berger's Big-Advance Book Bonanza. Simple: Berger stole notes and documents in order to make copies of them, so that he would have source material available when writing his memoirs. While direct quotes probably wouldn't make it into the book, he might hint to publishers that he had juicy top-secret stuff to write about, driving up his advance.

This isn't really innocent at all, given that this theory implies that Berger intended to keep his stolen notes and memos, rather than simply reading through them and then sneaking them back into the files; or, perhaps, that he would return everything, but only after photocopying the stolen top-secret material which, I'm guessing, is a crime in and of itself. Those who write laws tend to write the law to make every possible step in the furtherance of a crime a separate crime in and of itself.

3) A Spy in the House of Moore. This one's simple, and obvious, and already well-speculated about. Berger stole secret documents in order to have the best possible evidence in hand when he briefed Kerry. He wanted to tell Kerry -- and perhaps show Kerry -- all the top-secret information that could either be used to hurt Bush, or could be used to hurt Clinton and therefore Kerry.

I don't know about this one. If true, it's quite bad. But I doubt it's true. As a general matter, no one gets this lucky, and I just can't wrap my head around the idea of Bush getting so lucky as to have his opponent knowingly engaging in espionage against the very government he seeks to head.

4) Security-Risk Study Group. This one's also pretty bad, and I think more likely; so I think this possibility is far worse than the last. In this theory, Berger took documents and classified notes home with him because he had to. (Unlike in theory one, which is sort of hard to believe because there was no compelling reason to commit a major federal felony.)

In this theory, he had to steal the notes, because he planned on sharing them with his lawyers and strategists, who would brainstorm with him about how best to refute/rebut the most damaging questions from the 9-11 panel. His lawyers/strategists/spinners/political hacks weren't cleared to see the documents themselves, of course, and therefore he had to bring them home in order to share them with the Security-Risk Study Group.

Now, under this theory, Berger doesn't plan to destroy evidence or the like, and he doesn't plan to give the documents to some hostile foreign power. He does, however, deliberately share the information with unauthorized persons, compounding his original crime, and in fact committing a more serious one.

How likely is this? I don't know. It seems to be taking an awful risk for some outside imput, but then, all possible motives involve taking an enormous risk with a possibility of 10 years of jail-time for some rather minor advantage.

Except for the last theory, that is.

5. He took the documents for the simplest reason, and the only one which seems to make sense, given the risks he was running: He took the documents so that others wouldn't see them.

The Talking Points on this one are that such motives are "ridiculous on their face" (sic), because (it is alleged) copies of all the stolen documents exist.

But this theory isn't ridiculous at all; in fact, it's the defenses that are "ridiculous on their face" (sic).

But more on that later.

When later?

Next post down later. This post is already long enough.

Posted by: Ace at 10:51 PM | Comments (9)
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There's an old saying: Never ascribe to malice what can be explained by simple incompetence or coincidence.

There are a couple of problems with this rule. For one, it apparently hasn't been in operation through Bush's term; regarding Bush, everything is explained as resulting from both malice and incompetence. (I don't know about coincidence.)

For another, it's not so much a rule as a caveat. And it's missing a key caveat of its own. It should read: Never ascribe to malice what can be more reasonably explained by simple incompetence or coincidence.

"More reasonably" is the key. If a man is having an affair, takes out a big insurance policy on his wife, has a bunch of unexplained phone calls to seedy areas, has a bunch of big unexplained withdrawals from his banking accounts, and then his wife "coincidentally" turns up dead, executed gangland-style with two shots to the back of the head, one would say that the "incompetence" or "coincidence" explanations begin to look a tad unlikely -- no one gets this lucky -- and that a more likely explanation is that all these facts are in fact connected -- by malicious intent.

Berger and his defenders are relying upon claims of "incompetence" and "coincidence." He "sloppily" stuffed top-secret documents into his socks. He "accidentally" slipped top-secret memos into his leather portfolio. He then "inadvertantly discarded" a top-secret document.

How many accidents and coincidences are legal defenses allowed before becoming "ridiculous on their face" (sic)?

Perhaps this is all a mix of incompetence and coincidence. However, one begins to wonder if these facts aren't more reasonably explained by conscious design.

As you're probably aware, these memos reportedly contained embarassing information about Clinton's handling of terrorism and security. How embarassing? Worth-destroying-embarassing? I don't know, and the only people who do know aren't talking-- yet.

But maybe Sandy Berger took the memos because he intended to. And then maybe Sandy Berger destroyed a memo because he intended to.

Sandy Berger's defenders have an alibi against this theory. Or so they say. They claim that Berger couldn't possibly have taken these memos in order to destroy them or hide them from others, because copies of these memos exist. Since copies exist, therefore he could not accomplish any favorable result by stealing the documents. Therefore, he couldn't have stolen documents and destroyed/"discarded" at least one of them in order to prevent them from being discovered.

Q.E.D. Or not.

This defense is bullshit. The fact that the defense is bullshit doesn't mean that the theory is correct, of course. The theory is probably not correct, because, well, it's just too delicious to be dreamed; but even still, these defenses are "ridiculous on their face" (sic).

This theory relies upon an unstated assumption: There is no reason to steal or hide or destroy a document unless doing so makes it impossible for one's opponents to see.

If that assumption isn't true, the theory falls apart. Berger's spinners say he couldn't have tried to hide these documents, because there was no way to make it impossible for others to see them; the existence of other copies would always make it possible for someone else to see the documents.

But do people only conceal evidence when doing so makes it impossible that one's opponents will see the evidence?

Prosecutors are required by law to disclose exculpatory information to the defense. But they frequently do not-- at least not until forced to by an angry judge.

They will sometimes claim that exculpatory information is actually meaningless or inculpatory, and thus not required to be disclosed. They will claim they never saw the information at all, thus relieving them of the duty to disclose. They will sometimes attempt to slip in a report which damages their case in a blizzard of thousands of meaningless pages of testimony and reports, in the hopes that, while they are technically providing the evidence to the defense, there's only a small chance the defense will actually find the one needle in the paperwork haystakc.

They will, in short, do an awful lot of things to avoid giving some evidence to the defense.

But they usually won't actually destroy evidence that hurts their case; few want to risk jail by taking that drastic step. Instead, they simply make it as hard as possible for the defense to see the information; they make it as unlikely as possible the defense will ever so much as hear about the evidence.

The prosecutors haven't made it impossible for the defense to receive the evidence. The evidence still exists, somewhere, in a file or in a desk or in an evidence lock-up. The defense can still get its hands on it-- if it specifically knows what to ask for, and demands specifically that it turned over.

And then convinces a judge of the need to have the evidence.

Now, if prosecutors sometimes bend or break the law to make it merely difficult, albeit not impossible, for their opponents to receive evidence helpful to their case and harmful to the prosecutors', why can't Sandy Berger?

Let us stipulate that there were other copies of these memos available elsewhere. (Although, as we're dealing with top-secret codeword-classified information, there wouldn't be many copies-- the whole idea is to have just a few copies one can keep track of.)

But Sandy Berger stole the copies which were actually available for the 9-11 commission (and those who would testify before it) at the National Archives.

Wouldn't the absence of the documents from those files have made it less likely that they would be read?

Yes yes, if someone noticed a missing memo -- or a missing early draft to a memo -- they might notify the custodian and ask for a new copy. But that assumes they 1) notice at all and 2) think the memo is interesting enough to bother with and then 3) actually follow-up on the lost document.

Should any of these steps be missed, the document wouldn't get read.

Bear in mind-- we're talking about tens of thousands of pages of documents here. Unless someone knew they were specifically looking for this particular memo-- there's a good chance they'd never read it, even though they technically could have read it, had they known enough to ask about it and follow-up.

One last point: All the theories-- except this one --are sort of hard to believe because they have Sandy Berger risking 10 years in a federal prison in order to achieve some minor personal benefit.

They don't seem to make sense for that reason. The risk far exceeds the potential benefit.

Only in this last theory is the benefit -- denying a smokin'-gun memo to the Republicans -- anywhere near equal to the risk.

Again, that doesn't make this speculation true. Sandy Berger might merely be an arrogant imbecile who broke the law because he thought, hey, he's fuckin' Sandy Berger, right?

But let's stop with the "Sandy Berger just couldn't have intended to perform all the actions he actually did perform" crap. He could have, and until he offers an accounting of his "inexplicable" behavior that actually makes sense, I'm not inclined to rule anything out, and neither should anyone interested in our national security.

Posted by: Ace at 10:03 PM | Comments (2)
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Read it and smile:

To expand on the post below, all the supposed nefarious motives I've heard for this seem ridiculous on their face (sic).

...

The thought that Kerry needed Sandy Berger to pilfer one of Richard Clarke's after-reports about the millenium terror alerts to get whatever boilerplate he discussed at this particular press conference is truly ridiculous.

Let me get this straight: this guy

thinks these "nefarious motives" are "ridiculous on their face" (sic).

Let's check out some of Joshua Micah Cougar Mellancamp Marshall's recent claims. The ones he didn't find so "ridiculous on their face" (sic-- yeahp, I'm going to keep writing "sic" everytime I quote him).

Here, Joshua Cougar Mellancamp suggests, via his typical sarcastic (but not funny) cocksucker method, that the Pentagon's accidental destruction of hundreds of military records in the early nineties while transerring them from magnetic tape to computerized form was done deliberately in order to protect Bush from the AWOL charge.

Are the suggestions of such "nefarious motives" also "ridiculous on their face" (sic)? Apparently not.

I cannot, of course, catalogue his various claims that Bush deliberately lied about Iraq's WMD... an especially odd charge, given that if Bush knew he was "lying" about WMD, he also knew that his "lie" would be revealed to the world just in time for the 2004 election.

Kind of a strange lie. I could see lying before an election, with the idea of the lie being revealed after the election. But lying about such a matter knowing in advance it will be revealed as a lie well before your re-election?

"Ridiculous on their face" (sic)? Apparently not.

How about Halliburton? You all know the story-- Dick Cheney's payments from Halliburton were fixed in 2000; he cannot make more money, nor make less, no matter how Halliburton's business dealings pan out in the future.

And yet Dick Cheney, only because he's "friends" with Halliburton executives, decided to give them all a big juicy corrupt payoff despite the fact that he himself could not profit from the payoff.

Again, an odd sort of charge. An unlikely "favor" one would do for his "friends." But liberals of course believe all this bullshit, because liberals subscribe to the theory:

A friend will help you move.

A best friend will help you move a body.

But a Republican "friend" will help you secure a corrupt contract and then launch an illegal war based on a deliberately false pretext, resulting in thousands of deaths, in order to get you 5% more on your yearly bonus but without any chance of being personally bettered by the deal.

For the love of everything holy. I wish Republican "friends" could be counted on to do such favors. Do any of you think I'd be doing this bullshit if my "Republican friends" were willing to start illegal wars to help me?

Now-- are these claims of "nefarious motives" also "ridiculous on their face" (sic)?

Nope. Not ridiculous at all.

Bear in mind-- Josh Marshall is currently criticizing Republicans for sensationalizing this scandal in order to "distract" us all from substantive policy debates. We should be having substantive debate "on the issues," he whines; but this small-bore scandal, involving unproven charges against one (high-ranking) man, is "distracting" us from having that debate.

As they say: A whole bucketfull of irony spilled, and yet not one drop splattered on Josh Marshall.

Posted by: Ace at 09:59 PM | Comments (5)
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They don't note that Wilson is an unrepetent liar, and they are grudging about confessing that Bush might have gotten this one right, but unlike the New York Times, they've decided to end the embargo on the obvious.

Posted by: Ace at 01:39 AM | Comments (11)
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Someone else noted the transparency of Josh Marshall's "what I object to is the timing of this leak" defense. I'd like to give credit, but I forget where I saw it.

At any rate, Serial Spinner Josh Marshall is rather blase about the crime committed here; he's only concerned about Sandy Berger's lousy politics (i.e., why didn't he tell Kerry or absent himself from his campaign) and the "timing" of the leak.

He's pretty darn sure it's all Republican dirty-trickery. After all, the 9-11 report and the Democratic convention are coming up. This leak is obviously timed to "distract" us from the real news.

Questions for Mr. Marshall:

1. Please offer us all a date between now and November 2 when such a leak would not have "distracted" us from other news/other events which you would deem much more important.

If it's the timing you object to, please offer a date upon which the news could have been released that would not have caused you to complain. If there is no such date, then it is clearly not the "timing" you object to at all. If that is the case, then you object not to the "timing" of this leak, but to the fact that the public has been informed about this matter at all.

2. If you think the information should have never been released -- or at least not before the elections -- please explain your reasons for believing that the general right of the public to receive information is suddenly outweighed by the partisan needs of the Democratic Party.

We've had leaks regarding the Plame investigation. I don't seem to recall your being upset by those leaks; nor did you argue such leaks "distracted" us from other news.

Is it simply the case that leaks that hurt Democrats are "bad" while those that hurt the Republicans are "good"? What accounts for this curious politically-sensitive judgment regarding the value of leaks?

3. The upcoming 9-11 report has already been much-reported on, thanks to numerous leaks before its official publication. Were all of those leaks "distractions" from other news as well?

4. Everything that hurts Democrats is claimed, by you, to be a "distraction" from what the public should be focusing on. But every news is a "distraction" from other news, in the sense that all news competes with all other news for attention.

Please explain your belief that this news is of such a low order of importance that it it "distracts" from all other news and thus is insignificant compared to all other news. Is this news, for example, of less significance than Britney's latest wedding? Is there no less-important news that the Berger scandal can and should crowd out in the public's attention?

5. Political conventions are notoriously news-free events. They've become mere pageants, as some call them. Please explain why we should say the Berger scandal "distracts" us from the news-free Democratic pageant, rather than the news-free Democratic pageant distracting us from the Berger scandal.

Can you offer actual argument for your implicit belief that a former National Security Advisor stealing codeword-classified documents is less important that the upcoming political pageant?

6. Is the Plame non-scandal similarly a "distraction" from the real news? If that news is so important as to not be a "distraction," but indeed news worth examining, please explain your reasons for believing so.

Posted by: Ace at 10:42 PM | Comments (18)
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He made this announcement on Special Report With Brit Hume tonight. He says that they're constantly finding new caches of weapons, and they expect (or at least fear) that there are many more such weapons to be found in Iraq.

You will not be shocked to learn that Google and Yahoo searches produce no recent print-medium hits on keywords associated with this.

I didn't find an article on it even on FoxNews. Which sort of doesn't surprise me. There's a reason the Fox higher-ups have to issue specific directives to their employees regarding how to cover news in a fashion which isn't full of knee-jerk partisan liberal bias-- because the dirty little secret is that FoxNews, like most other media organizations, is staffed almost entirely by liberals.

If you don't specifically tell them "Give the discovery of 35 Sarin and/or Mustard-Gas shells prominent reporting," they won't do so.

The best I can do is link this old New York Sun article about his previous announcement of 10-12 such shells.

If you do find an article about this, let me know. My Googling/Yahooing skills are not, as the kids say, of the "mad" variety.

Question of the Day: What number constitutes a "stockpile"? One would think that any time you're above 20 or 30, you're in at least small-stockpile territory.

I want the liberals to give us a number, now. Because, a month from now, when we've discovered 60-100, I don't want to hear that a "stockpile" has now been redefined to be whatever number we have not yet reached.

Posted by: Ace at 10:10 PM | Comments (91)
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And the minstrels rejoiced.

The Democrats are past-masters are spinning scandals. They know that they must have successive fall-back positions waiting for when their current defenses fail. Thus, during Lewinskygate, we went rather smoothly from "Monica is a lying stalker/It never happened" to "Monica is an abused victim of prosecutorial miscoduct/it doesn't matter if it happened or not" in the time of a week. Not one Democratic spinmeister so much as blinked or flinched when abruptly switching the Defense of the Day.

The current Berger defense is "it was all an accident." This is hard to believe, since it happened repeatedly, and Berger put codeword-classified documents into places one normally doesn't "accidentally" deposit printed material.

The only time I can remember ever having documents stuffed into my shorts or my socks was when I was sneaking porn past my mom. I don't think I'd've had the chutzpah to tell Mother that I was "inadvertantly" toting a copy of Gent in my jockstrap.

Now, she's no FBI investigator, but I think Mom could have seen through that carefully-crafted cover story.

The next Sandy Berger defense can be seen taking shape over at Josh Marshall's site. He doesn't actually announce this defense yet; he doesn't dare to. He's just preparing you for it. He doesn't want to make this defense until it's necessary, but one can already see him setting up the sandbags and machine-guns at the next bastion.

The next defense will be: Berger was required to (fudge alert!) gently contort the law in order to secure an adequate defense against the lies and highly-partisan leaks of the Bush Administration. He needed the documents to rebut the highly-selective leaking and declassification of information to advance the Bush agenda.

In other words, in order to comply with Truth (capitalized deliberately), he had to, ahem, bend the Law, which in this case is an ass, because it works to damage Democrats.

I can already smell this one a mile off.

Trouble is, Josh Marshall has already declared himself quite the bear on the technical letter of national security law. I seem to recall him dismissing, rather conetmptuously, the notion that the law was unfairly protecting a political partisan appointed largely due to nepotism and therefore could and should be, err, gently contorted in order to make the necessary disclosure that Joe Wilson's partisan-hack paper-pusher of a wife got him a job for which he was simply not qualified.

In that case, Marshall was quite firm: No claims of partisanship or unfairness could work to justify a violation of national security law. If you broke the law, you must be prosecuted and jailed, no matter what your subjective beliefs about whether your actions might be justified.

In the coming weeks, however, we'll see Marshall suddenly become quite a bit more latitudinarian, as William F. Buckley Jr. might say, on this question.

Posted by: Ace at 09:45 PM | Comments (5)
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PowerLine thinks he's found the miscreants.

I have to say that based on the picture, they don't look especially threatening. Then again, an accoustic guitar could make Mike Tyson look like a pussy.

And, in fairness, I wasn't sitting in an airplane with these guys as they took eight billion trips to the bathroom, either. That could make them look a little more menacing.

Posted by: Ace at 10:52 AM | Comments (23)
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Sci-Fi Channel documentary on M. Night Shymalan just completely made up "disturbing secret" about, and feud with, the director.

In related news, the Sci-Fi Channel was just appointed Foreign Minister of France.

Thanks to CalGal from The Perfect World.

Posted by: Ace at 10:40 AM | Comments (3)
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