Good News And Less Good News From New Mexico Primaries Tuesday

Mostly better than Republicans: Pelosi, Schumer, Lujan

Three predictions: 1- Teresa Leger Fernandez, who just won the Democratic primary in New Mexico's 3rd district (the seat Ben Ray Luján is leaving for his Senate run, will be sworn into Congress next January, if we still have a functioning democracy. The PVI is D+8 and in 2016 Trump was crushed there (36.7% of the vote). 2- Leger Fernandez will have the comfy congressmember job for decades. 3- Leger Fernandez will never accomplish anything in Congress.

Last August, in looking at the NM-03 primary, I wrote that I had high hopes that Valerie Plame, who has certainly served the country well, might be the progressive I was looking for but... I still wasn't sure enough to recommend her endorsement by Blue America. She told me she backed the Green New Deal, banning the sale of assault weapons and Medicare-for-All, adding the caveat "for those who want it." I hoped all cycle she would see the light and that we could endorse her. Never happened. She lost to Leger Fernandez, despite outraising her significantly:

My friends in the state suggested Teresa Leger Fernandez was the progressive in the race but everything about her website screamed an identity politics, DCCC-EMILY's List nothing-candidate. There was no way to get in touch with her on the site-- usually a good indication a candidate is a corporate shill. There was no issues page, which is 100% pure DCCC-EMILY's List. And the website is just all about her, or her idea of how she wanted to present herself to voters. It was all "me! me! me!" and nothing about what she was supposedly offering the people in the district. Her intro video didn't say a damn thing about how she's likely to behave in Congress. Will she be like the 2 other New Mexico Reps, Deb Haaland, whose voting record is an "A" or like Xochitl Torres Small, whose voting record is an "F." I noted that "It makes a difference."

In their cheer-leadery election wrap-up on Wednesday, The Intercept found other results to cheer about in New Mexico.

In New Mexico, an all-women slate of progressives challenged five recalcitrant incumbents under the banner of a coalition dubbed “No Corporate Democrats.” Four of the five women ousted long-serving members of the state Senate who had stood in the way of the progressive agenda for years in this deep blue state. Another allied progressive, who wasn’t officially part of the coalition, unseated an anti-choice Democrat. The defeated incumbents include state Senate leadership figures.

Eric Griego, New Mexico state director for the Working Families Party, which had backed the progressives, said their victories are the “last gasp” of the moderate, corporate wing of the party on a state and local level. He noted that these victories build on the gains progressives made in the 2018 wave elections, when one of the longest-serving members of the state House of Representatives, conservative Democrat Debbie Rodella, was defeated by Susan Herrera.

“With them gone, we think this is going to open up a lot of really, really monumental legislation that the state has needed for generations,” Griego said. The progressives’ priorities include fully funding early childhood programs, releasing the state’s dependence on oil and gas, and repealing an arcane law that criminalizes abortion, he added. “The other really big one is potentially expanding the social safety net whether it’s healthcare or childhood education.”

An unprecedented number of absentee ballots has led to delays, so the votes are still being counted, but the Working Families Party declared victory in all five races Wednesday afternoon.

Siah Correa Hemphill, an educator and school psychologist, won overwhelmingly in District 28, unseating state Sen. Gabe Ramos. In District 38, Carrie Hamblen, a pioneer in New Mexico’s fight for LGBTQ rights and marriage equality, is locked in a tight race against Senate President Pro Tempore Mary Kay Papen. Ballots are still being counted in the extremely close race, with Hamblen leading by about 139 votes as of Wednesday afternoon.

In District 35, Neomi Martinez-Parra has a nearly 10 percentage point lead over state Sen. John Arthur Smith, who has been in office since 1989 and serves as the head of the Senate Finance Committee. Pam Cordova, a retired educator, also appears to be on track to victory, leading state Sen. Clemente Sanchez by over 1,000 votes, as of Wednesday morning. Cordova was backed by local labor groups and unions, EMILY’s List, and U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich.

Noreen Kelly, a Navajo elder and environmental activist who ran with No Corporate Democrats, is the only candidate on the slate who lost. She jumped in late in the race, formally launching in March, and struggled to get her campaign off the ground.

Leo Jaramillo, chair of the Rio Arriba County Commission, wasn’t officially on the No Corporate Democrat slate, but his victory is being celebrated by the Working Families Party and other allied progressive groups. Jaramillo defeated five-term incumbent state Sen. Richard Martinez, an anti-choice lawmaker who was also one of four Democrats to vote against New Mexico’s “red-flag” gun law, in District 5. The embattled state senator had faced calls to step down after being convicted and jailed for drunk driving last year. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham asked Martinez to resign from his seat, saying he was “obligated to reflect on his actions and how best to reconcile them with his position as a public servant in the state Legislature, in particular his status as chairman of an influential committee,” but no personal reckoning had taken place.

Oil and gas companies, which wield enormous influence over the state’s budget and politicians, pumped at least $1 million into New Mexico’s state Senate races, including Chevron Oil spending $700,000 in support of the incumbents. But some of the challengers, like Jaramillo and Correa Hemphill, had garnered broader coalitions of support across the progressive wing of the party and with top Democrats like Lujan Grisham and Heinrich. To help boost the candidates, the WFP joined other groups in making tens of thousands of calls, sending out mail, and investing in radio and texting.

The No Corporate Democrats coalition was modeled after New York’s No IDC coalition, which in 2018 unseated conservative Democrats who were allied with Republicans, known as the Independent Democratic Conference. Progressives in New Mexico were tasked with the challenge of branding incumbents that work with Republicans, Griego said. Despite pushing candidates in a few risky, tough races, the coalition, which included reproductive rights groups, environmental groups, and the nonprofit organization OLÉ, pulled it off.

Good! Meanwhile New Mexico will send a less progressive/more establishment delegation to DC next year--just one progressive (Haaland) out of the 5, which includes a very conservative Blue Dog and, mostly, careerist politicians who don't do much-- neither good nor bad-- for their communities. Replacing the most progressive member, Senator Tom Udall, will be a big zero-- Ben Ray, a complete waste of a Senate seat-- and exactly what Schumer demanded. I suppose that's the best most Americans can hope for from the elected leaders.

NM-03 Could Be One Of The Most Important Battleground Districts For Progressives In 2020-- If There's A Progressive Running

As you can see from the map above, New Mexico has 3 congressional districts. NM-01 is basically Albuquerque (most of Bernalillo County) and its surroundings in much less populated Sandoval (blue), Torrance (red) and Santa Fe (red) counties. The PVI is D+7 and Obama won it with big margins both times he ran. Hillary didn't do nearly as well but still beat Trump convincingly-- 51.6% to 35.1%. Bernie won the primary in 2016 and didn't just beat Hillary but also beat Trump. In fact, Bernie beat all the Republicans combined. The congressional seat was open in 2018 and a stalwart progressive, Deb Haaland won the primary and then the general-- 59.1% to 36.3%.

NM-02 is most of the southern half of the state and it leans red. The PVI is R+6. Obama lost it narrowly both times and then Trump clobbered Hillary 50.1% to 39.9%. There are 19 counties or pieces of counties in the district. The biggest (by far) is Doña Ana (Las Cruces, north of El Paso)-- which is also the bluest-- and the only other county with much of a population is way up in the Albuquerque area, Valencia, which also swings blue. Other than that though, it's a pretty red district.The next 4 biggest counties are all overwhelmingly red: Otero, Chaves, Eddy and Lea. It was a super-close race in 2018-- the seat was open-- but a really bad Blue Dog, Xochitl Torres Small, narrowly beat Republican Yvette Herrell, 101,489 (50.9%) to 97,767 (49.1%), Torres Small is a disaster and her strategy is to vote like a Republican in the hope of luring Republican voters and while praying the Democratic base either doesn't notice or just figures that as terrible as she is, she'll be better than a Republican... even if just fractionally.

And that brings us to the bluest district in the state, NM-03 in the north. It includes Santa Fe, Rio Rancho, Clovis, Gallup, Los Alamos, Taos and Farmington and has a solid D+8 PVI. Obama kicked ass both time he ran-- first with 61.2% and then with 57.5%. But even when New Mexicans had to decide who was the lesser of two evils, Hillary beat Trump 51.8% to 36.7%. The district is around 40% Hispanic, 38% white and 17% Native American with a big Navajo population as well as Pueblos and Apaches.

The congressman since 2008 has been Ben Ray Luján, just a dull careerist and hereditary politician-- his dad, Ben Luján, was speaker of the state House-- with no strong beliefs and no backbone. He's running for the U.S. Senate, so leaving the NM-03 seat empty. In a strong blue district, this is a perfect opportunity to replace a waste-of-a-seat member with a strong progressive. But, for some reason, as far as I've been able to determine, there isn't one running. There are 10 Democrats running (an 11th, Rob Apodaca withdrew Thursday) and another 9 considering running. Yesterday an ex-Democrat, former Santa Fe County Commissioner Harry Montoya, filed FEC papers to run for the seat as well.

The dumb-narrative in the district is that the Democrats there are conservative so a progressive can't run. Oy, is that dumb! Does that mean the Democrats there don't want dental insurance included in Medicare? Does it mean they don't want to see the age for Medicare gradually lowered until it includes everyone? Does that mean they don't want to save the planet from Climate Change? Does it mean they oppose free public colleges? Does it mean they oppose raising the minimum wage to a living wage? Polling has consistently shown that the Democrats in NM-03 very much want all of those things-- and want them, strongly. It's why Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver is running on them and it's why Luján, who has consistently opposed every progressive proposal introduced into Congress, immediately started signing on as a co-sponsor to all of them as soon as Maggie's platform was released.

But the dumb-narrative persists, primarily because dumb-media and dumb-politicians repeat it over and over. It doesn't mean anything substantive but it's how nothing politicians like Luján keep getting elected and reelected. With so many candidates, it's going to be a tough nut to crack in terms of figuring out who's who and what they stand for. Remember this Chris Hayes suggestion? This district is the polar opposite-- all noise, no meat.

I had high hopes that Valerie Plame, who has certainly served the country well, might be the progressive I was looking for but... still not sure-- although, when I spoke to her yesterday, she told me she backs the Green New Deal, banning the sale of assault weapons and Medicare-for-All, adding the caveat "for those who want it." Most of my friends in the state have suggested Teresa Leger Fernandez is the progressive I'm looking for but everything about her website screams an identity politics, DCCC-EMILY's List nothing-candidate. There's no way to get in touch with her on the site-- usually a good indication a candidate is a corporate shill. There is no issues page, which is 100% pure DCCC-EMILY's List. And the website is just all about her. It's all "me! me! me!" and nothing about what she's offering the people in the district. She released this intro video this week. It doesn't say a damn thing about how she's likely to behave in Congress. Will she be like Deb Haaland, whose voting record is an "A" or like Xochitl Torres Small, whose voting record is an "F." It makes a difference.





UPDATE: Progressive

This guy Kyle Tisdel sounds good. He's seriously running on the Green New Deal and all the issues around it. I should talk with him.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Valerie Plame knows treachery and treason. She experienced it first hand at the grubby little paws of Scooter Libby and his boss Dick Cheney (and other Bush staff) when they deliberately betrayed her cover as one of our agents. Libby took the fall. Cheney still roams free, unpunished for this and other crimes. We will probably never know how many or Plame's pro-American contacts and informants died because of the betrayal. It's the stuff of spy novels, except that it happened in the real world.

To top it off, Fake President Trump pardoned Scooter Libby almost as soon as he could. Perhaps in his mind he thought he was setting a precedent of pardoning people for treason. Perhaps he thought putting the idea of pardons for treason out there would come in handy at some rapidly approaching future date. Maybe he wants to sell hats that say "Pardons For Treason" or the pardons themselves. He could open up a Trump Pardon Booth in the Rose Garden. Looks like there could be quite a line, a line that would, if we had a real justice system, extend at least all the way to the Capitol Building.

Valerie Plame has seen a lot. She knows Nixon and Reagan never faced trial for their treason, blatant screaming treason performed just in the service of getting elected in the first place. So, it's unlikely that Trump needed a treason pardon precedent for himself, although in his obviously demented brain, who knows what he was thinking, if thinking is even a concept in the mind of Trump at this point. As evidenced by his tweets and other public statements, it's more of a reptilian just react kind of thing with him.

I like tonight's meme. It's good to hear from people who have been there. I do have one minor issue with Valerie Plame though. You see, I think she has insulted the maggot community. Maggots can actually perform useful services for humanity. For instance, if you were marooned in some remote location, far from any medical help, and, you were afflicted with a case of gangrene, a handful of carefully placed maggots will eat up the infection quite quickly. Good to know, eh? Funny, maybe maggots and those who use them are smarter than us. We're just letting America's infection turn into a great festering inland sea of steaming puss and, eventually, kill us.

Bob Novak (1931-2009): R.I.H.*

by Ken

So Bob Novak has gone to his reward -- presumably, the torments of hell for all eternity. (Could we maybe make it two eternities?)

Good riddance. Novak was an ideological zealot of the Far Right masquerading as a journalist. He was a bully, a thug, and a serial liar whose agenda was built on a volcano of (well-earned) self-loathing -- he seems just naturally to have assumed that the world at large was as irredeemably savage and hateful as the heap of toxic sludge he saw whenever he looked in a mirror.

And that has nothing to do with his outing of Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA agent -- except insofar as his entire career establishes him as just the sort of sleazeball who would commit an act of treason for the sake of punishing Joe and Valerie Wilson, two people who had served their country honestly and admirably while he struggled with the torments of his ideological delusions and vendettas.

Right-wing campground HumanEvents.com has a tribute to this cancer by Karl Rove crony Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, the former Reader's Digest editor who was unleashed on the Voice of America and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting by the Bush regime, with a mandate to transform them into puppet propaganda outlets for the Far Right. That's right, he's the genius who on his own say-so, and without even disclosing it to his board, spent $10K of CPB money to get the goods on that scourge of the hate-mongering right-wing loons Bill Moyers, the fairest and least corruptible soul in the journalism racket.

Of course for people like Tomlinson and Rove and Novak, concepts like truth, fairness, and incorruptibility appear literally beyond the capacity to comprehend. I begin to wonder, could it be an actual defect in the brain architecture?

Here are some of the comments added to the Tomlinson blowjob of Novak:

"Wow, this is sad news indeed. American journalism has lost one of its giants."

"RIP Bob: You are home with Jesus. What a wonderful and honest reporter. He lived the words. The truth will set you free."

"We lost a giant in political journalism today and a proud Fighting Illini! Rest in peace, Bob."

In fairness, a saner commenter notes: "He stopped being a journalist when he outted a undercover CIA agent for political reasons. Journalism lost nothing today." In truth, any journalistic impulse Novak ever possessed had long since been subordinated to his ideological zealotry and hooliganism.

With the following comment, however, I can at most quibble:

"One of the great conservative voices is gone. Requiescat in pace."

A "great conservative voice"? Yes, I'll buy that. (If I were a conservative I would be offended, on the ground that surely somewhere there must be a "voice" speaking from reason and a quest for truth. But by the standard of available conservative voices, yeah, our Bob was aces.) Just understand that this is rather a different thing from journalistic greatness or journalistic integrity. But this commenter makes no such claim.

The one thing I would have to quibble with in this comment is the R.I.P. crap.

*I say R.I.H.: Rot in hell.


OUR BOB'S, UM . . . NO, NOT FINEST . . .
ER, MOST NOVAKIAN MOMENT?



To this day, I can't begin to guess what was going on in our Bob's head at that moment. But then, that was -- as I just wrote to Howie, who dug this clip out -- a very strange head.

#

The clock is ticking. Is there anything we can do about the criminals Chimpy the Prez and "Big Dick" Cheney? (Tick-tock, tick-tock.)

"That Cheney, by his own admission, had revised the talking points in an effort to have the reporters examine who sent Wilson on the very same day that his chief of staff was disclosing to [NYT reporter Judith] Miller [Valerie] Plame’s identity as a CIA officer may be the most compelling evidence to date that Cheney himself might have directed Libby to disclose Plame’s identity to Miller and other reporters.

"This new information adds to a growing body of evidence that Cheney may have directed Libby to disclose Plame’s identity to reporters and that Libby acted to protect Cheney by lying to federal investigators and a federal grand jury about the matter."

-- investigative reporter Murray Waas,
in a report this week on Crooks and LIars

by Ken

At least the lords of Ruddigore, under the term of their Witch's Curse, only had to do one crime a day, once every day, forever. (Okay, to be technical, the terms of the curse were "one crime or more," but a mere onespot would get the job done.) Whereas the Bush regimista have spent night onto eight years now committing every war crime they could wrap their heads around and shredding the Constitution.

I would include "shredding the economy," but again, to be technical, this was done under the terms of "Republican governance," much of which is not -- astonishingly enough -- strictly speaking illegal. Of course that still leaves a goodly amount of plundering and profiteering that clearly falls on the far side of the law, and should certainly be available for inclusion on anyone's master list of "high crimes and misdemeanors" -- the constitutional specification for impeachment, of course.

Is there anything we can do here?

It's not a matter of retribution or "getting even." There's an important principle at stake. Because while the judgment of history on these people is likely to be fierce, that really isn't enough. The principle is that when you allow crimes to go unpunished, that tends not only to legitimize the behavior but to encourage the criminals and the people who follow them to do even worse stuff.

I'm not smart enough to know in what form the perpetrators of the Bush regime's crimes can still be held to account. In retrospect it becomes ever clearer that both Chimpy the Prez and his master, "Big Dick" Cheney, should have been impeached. Now we know that hindsight is 20/20, but this isn't just retrospective wisdom. Since it became clear the kind of extremist, law-be-damned regime this was going to be, there have been plenty of people shouting for impeachment, both before and after then-incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi famously declared it "off the table."

But hold on before jumping all over Speaker Pelosi. I am not at all saying that her political calculation was necessarily wrong. The fact is that a movement for impeachment against the president and vice president (and it would have crucial to do both, ideally in the same time frame, not only as a matter of basic criminal justice, but as an assurance that in the admittedly unlikely event that the president was actually removed from office, that office wouldn't simply have been turned over to that spawn of Satan . . . I mean to the vice president) wouldn't have gotten anywhere.

Even in the regime's second term, as it began falling apart, and then starting in 2007 with the Democrats in nominal control of both houses of Congress, there would have been no support from Republicans (and remember that what drove Richard Nixon out of office was growing Republican support for impeachment and almost surely, if he had allowed it to come to that, for conviction) and probably not all that much support from congressional Democrats, among whom impeachment was considered risky, dirty-fucking-hippie-type behavior.

Some observers said, "So what? It's important to get some kind of official condemnation of the regime's high crimes and misdemeanors on the record. And perhaps so. But consider, might it not have been worse to have an impeachment movement flicked off, for permanent dismissal as a partisan witchhunt? In other words, a larger version of the charge routinely hurled at the hardy band of Democratic House and Senate committee chairmen who actually tried to investigate even a tiny bit of the regime's rampant lawlessness after the congressional takeover?

Which hasn't entirely prevented additional investigations and revelations from materializing. And in just the last couple of weeks we've had Big Dick's almost certainly legally self-incriminating statements about his role in making possible the regime's use of waterboarding, which got Rachel Maddow all excited, and which Sen. Carl Levin for one agreed needed to be investigated to get the information on the record.

And just a few days ago crackerjack reporter Murray Waas dropped the bombshell on Crooks and Liars from which I've quoted above. Drawing on "a still-highly confidential FBI report," Waas reports that Big Dick admitted to federal investigators "that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light," acknowledging "that in drawing attention to Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s Africa trip reporters might also unmask her role as CIA officer."

I don't know what to do about this, but I have a pretty good idea of the consequences of doing nothing. Tick-tock, tick-tock.

#

Looks like Irving "Lewis" Libby plans to twiddle his thumbs till he gets an outright pardon--as Chimpy the Prez makes his White House final exit?

"We remain firmly convinced of Mr. Libby's innocence," attorney Theodore Wells said Monday. "However, the realities were, that after five years of government service by Mr. Libby and several years of defending against this case, the burden on Mr. Libby and his young family of continuing to pursue his complete vindication are too great to ask them to bear."
--from Matt Apuzzo's AP report, "Libby to Drop Appeal in CIA Leak Case"

Well, that's one way of looking at it, but the reality seems to be more that the most our Irving could have gotten out of an appeal was a new trial for his role in blocking the investigation of the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA agent, which after another extended period was unlikely to result in a cushier sentence than the $250K fine already paid for him by Republican Friends of Crime Inc. and the 30-month prison sentence that Chimpy the Prez commuted in July. In fact, by the time of Irving's next sentencing Chimpy would likely be out of the White House, with any luck facing a lifetime's worth of criminal charges for a tiny portion of the murder and mayhem perpetrated by his regime, and a likely Democratic successor would be most unlikely to sign onto the GOP's Coddle Our Favorite Felons (COFF) program.

Which means that, legally speaking, it's all over now except the inevitable pardon from Chimpy the Prez which was presumably the price of our Irving's silence regarding all he knew about the Bush regime's criminal rampages.

The bright spot is that once the paperwork is properly shuffled, there will no longer be any ongoing legal proceedings to provide cover for the felonious overlords of the Bush regime to withhold comment on the entire shameful episode of their punitive partisan political outing of an American undercover agent. (Does anyone doubt that if the affiliations had been reversed, the Democratic perpetrators would by now be on Death Row, if not already executed?)

In other words, as an e-correspondent put it today, from this point on:

"Any journalist interview with any White House witness in the Plame matter needs to lead front and center with questions about Plamegate."

#

McCLELLAN FINGERS BUSH, CHENEY, ROVE, LIBBY... IMPEACHMENT STILL OFF THE TABLE, MS. PELOSI?

Lucas got it exactly right over at the Battle School. Scott McClellan's bean spilling today goes right to the heart of Bush Regime competence... uh, incompetence. McClellan's new book is making waves today-- and probably something worse than waves over among the den of vipers still holding the White House.

He is quite clear that Libby and Rove lied about outing Valerie Plame and he puts the blame exactly where it belongs-- even beyond where cowardly Democrats like Nancy Pelosi put it: Bush and Cheney.

In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, McClellan recounts the 2003 news conference in which he told reporters that aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby were "not involved" in the leak involving operative Valerie Plame.

"There was one problem. It was not true," McClellan writes, according to a brief excerpt released Tuesday. "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest-ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice president, the president's chief of staff [Andrew Card] and the president himself."

At what point do wonderers start wondering if Ms Pelosi's insistence that impeachment is off the table mean that she is an accomplice to their criminal behavior. I'm there.

McClellan isn't doing interviews today and the hack who replaced the hack who replaced him, Dana Perino, has "no comment." Scotty's book, What Happened comes out in April.

Apparently now is the time, "now" being after a lucrative book contract:




UPDATE: VALERIE REACTS

"I am outraged to learn that former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan confirms that he was sent out to lie to the press corps and the American public about two senior White House officials, Karl Rove and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby who deliberately and recklessly revealed my identity as a covert CIA operations officer.

Even more shocking, McClellan confirms that not only Karl Rove and Scooter Libby told him to lie but Vice President Cheney, Presidential Chief of Staff Andrew Card, and President Bush also ordered McClellan to issue his misleading statement. Unfortunately, President Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's felony sentence has short-circuited justice.

Vice President Cheney in particular knew that Scooter LIbby was involved because he had ordered and directed his actions. McClellan's revelations provide important support for our civil suit against those who violated our national security and maliciously destroyed my career."

WAS IT ONLY ROVE AND CHENEY OR WAS BUSH PART OF THE WHOLE PLAME AFFAIR AS WELL? AN IMPEACHMENT HEARING IS NEEDED TO GET TO THE ROOT OF ALL THIS

By commuting his sentence Bush has guaranteed that Libby has no incentive to cooperate with the Federal Prosecutor in getting to the underlying crime, a crime many would describe as treason during wartime. (I'm a big death penalty fan and I know many of my friends are but I just wanted to get that out there.) This morning Marcy did a column for the Guardian that elegantly lays out all the ways not just Cheney, but Bush himself, were complicit, and even central, to the case, Just Another Obstruction of Justice. She ends her column with what Bush would like to be the end of this sordid affair but which should be a new and fresh beginning for the American people and their lame representatives in Congress (who still insist impeachment is off the table):

There are many unanswered questions about the roles of the president, the vice president, and Libby in the leak of Valerie Plame's identity. Did Bush really ask Libby to take the lead on all this? Did the president declassify Plame's identity so Libby could leak it to the press? Did Cheney learn-- and tell Libby-- that Plame was covert? Those questions all point squarely at Bush and Cheney personally. But because of Bush's personal intervention, he has made sure that Scooter Libby won't be answering those questions anytime soon.

Most Americans feel justice has not been served and that Bush has indeed, as he promised, "taken care" of the leakers in his administration. The only people who have expressed joy, as far as I've seen are Republican lobbyist and backroom dealmaker Freddy Thompson (who says he would have given Libby a full pardon, once again sending voters a clear signal that he is indeed the least fit of all the GOP candidates running for the worthless Republican presidential nomination), Giuliani and Libby himself. Presumably Rove and Cheney, if not happy, are breathing easier knowing that they've avoided prison again. While Hate Talk Radio hosts exult, editorial writers are not happy about Libby's Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card. Even Bob Novak admits that virtually no one else is happy about this mess.

Marcy was on CBS News yesterday helping mainstream television viewers understand what the case was all about. Hopefully it's a story that will be repeated over and over until Nancy Pelosi stops protecting George Bush and Dick Cheney:




UPDATE: IMPEACH?

Emotionally, we all think Bush and Cheney should be-- at least-- impeached, Digby included. But Digby examines the impeachment prospects for Bush and Cheney beyond the primal and emotional responses. Sigh.

SO IS CHENEY GOING TO PRISON NOW? HOW ABOUT BOB NOVAK? SOMEBODY?

Both Joel Seidman at MSNBC and Dan Froomkin at today's Washington Post are reporting what has been widely known by everyone with a 3-digit IQ who's been paying attention to the Valerie Plame case: she was a covert CIA agent when Cheney's shop decided to out her to Bob Novak and other right-wing media tools. But like John Amato says, Now it's official. And now it looks like Pat Fitzgerald may well wind up indicting Cheney after all!

Special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald has made it clearer than ever that he was hot on the trail of a coordinated campaign to out CIA agent Valerie Plame until that line of investigation was cut off by the repeated lies from Vice President Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Libby was convicted in February of perjury and obstruction of justice. Fitzgerald filed a memo on Friday asking U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, who will sentence Libby next week, to put him in prison for at least two and a half years.

That's all you get for treason these days? Two and a half lousy years? What happened to firing squads and gallows? I thought these wingnuts loved capital punishment. Oh... not for themselves?

Despite all the public interest in the case, Fitzgerald has repeatedly asserted that grand-jury secrecy rules prohibit him from being more forthcoming about either the course of his investigation or any findings beyond those he disclosed to make the case against Libby. But when his motives have been attacked during court proceedings, Fitzgerald has occasionally shown flashes of anger -- and has hinted that he and his investigative team suspected more malfeasance at higher levels of government than they were able to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

In Friday's eminently readable court filing, Fitzgerald quotes the Libby defense calling his prosecution "unwarranted, unjust, and motivated by politics." In responding to that charge, the special counsel evidently felt obliged to put Libby's crime in context. And that context is Dick Cheney.

And it always has been. Cheney told Libby that Plame was a secret CIA agent and Cheney told Libby to disclose that information to hack reporters and was Cheney part of-- actually directed-- the cover-up that followed the White House's outing of her.

Fitz: "To accept the argument that Mr. Libby's prosecution is the inappropriate product of an investigation that should have been closed at an early stage, one must accept the proposition that the investigation should have been closed after at least three high-ranking government officials were identified as having disclosed to reporters classified information about covert agent Valerie Wilson, where the account of one of them was directly contradicted by other witnesses, where there was reason to believe that some of the relevant activity may have been coordinated, and where there was an indication from Mr. Libby himself that his disclosures to the press may have been personally sanctioned by the Vice President."

Libby gets sentenced June 5, a week from today. Will the judge allow him to remain out of prison while he appeals. Umm... is he a rich, well-connected white Republican male? And even if he gets thrown in the pokey, anyone wanna take bets that Bush pardons him within hours?

WE NEED A WOMAN PRESIDENT; HOW ABOUT VALERIE PLAME?

I got to know Joe Wilson because he's been an avid Blue America supporter and comes to our weekly Saturday afternoon sessions at Firedoglake. He seemed to know all the candidates we invited on for chats because he had been in their districts campaigning for them. Small world. And then one evening at dinner Jane introduced me to Valerie. What a charming and astute woman-- as the whole world saw today. And what a great side by side comparison: Valerie Plame for the forces of Truth, Decency and Humanity and that hideous harridan Victoria Toensing diGenova for the Dark Side.

I was driving home from a meeting today and I heard a discussion on the radio about Waxman's hearings today. Arianna Huffington and Bob Scheer were brilliant and factual; the right-wing propagandist, Tony Blankley-- Newt Gingrich's former professional flack, currently spinning tall tails for the Regime at the Moonie Times-- had nothing to say so made a snide remark about Valerie's hair being dyed. That was the only thing the far right could say about Valerie's devastating testimony today, anything, anything, anything to get off the topic of treason. For regardless of proven liars and gossip mongers like Toensing and her professional character assassin husband Joe DiGenerate and a slew of right wing professional propagandists* masquerading as journalists, the CIA gave the committee a written statement that ends whatever debate there ever was on this: Valerie Plame was a covert secret agent at the time that the Regime decided to illegally reveal her identity. That's a serious crime, a very serious crime for which Bush, Cheney, Rove need to be put in prison.

Perhaps, before we delve into today's revelations, you'd like to sit back and watch little video to get relaxed first?




Odd that neither the rubber stamp Republican Congress nor, odder still, the White House ever bothered to even investigate. Of course, they already knew exactly what they would find if they did. And they sure didn't want to find that-- despite the pack of lies Bush told the public about "huntin' down the leakers." So the hearing kicks off with the star witness, the incredible Ms Plame, a true, unsung American heroine. And she got right to the point: she was a covert C.I.A. agent. She testified that her cover was "carelessly and recklessly" blown, destroying her cover for political purposes.

"I felt like I had been hit in the gut," Plame said of the moment she learned her name and agency affiliation had been published in a July 14, 2003, column by Robert D. Novak. The conservative columnist attributed the information to two senior administration officials, who were later identified in court as Richard L. Armitage, then the deputy secretary of state, and Karl Rove, a senior adviser to President Bush who currently serves as his deputy chief of staff.

"I could no longer perform the work for which I had been highly trained," the willowy blonde former CIA officer told the committee. "I could no longer travel overseas or do the work . . . which I loved. It was done."

The Regime opposed allowing him to testify, but when threatened with a subpoena they relented and Dr. James Knodell, director of the Office of Security at the White House, proved most informative. He admitted to the committee that he was unaware of any internal investigation into the leak of Valerie's identity.


Republican business tycoon/TV personality, Donald Trump, pictured here with Republican presidential contender Rudy Giuliani (not in South Carolina) is just another American fed up with all the lies and filth seeping pouring out of the Bush Regime this week.

Donald Trump has two words for the Bush Administration: "You're fired."

The business mogul didn't hold back in criticizing the administration in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer Friday, calling President Bush, "probably the worst president in the history of the United States."

He labeled former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld a "disaster," and accused Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice of "never making a deal." He also charged Vice President Dick Cheney of sugarcoating the conditions in Iraq.

"I don't know if they're bad people. I don't know what's going on. I just know they got us into a mess, the likes of which this country has probably never seen," Trump said. "It's one of the great catastrophes of all time."

Jane and her crew have spent the most time on the Plame case, know all the main figures and have the most comprehensive news and analysis. Today there are half a dozen great stories. I'd recommend starting with Marcy's late afternoon piece and working your way backwards.





*So, who were the pet Regime "journalists" who pushed out the Rove talking points that Valerie Plame wasn't a cover CIA agent?
L.A. Times' Jonah Goldberg- "Wilson's wife is a desk jockey and much of the Washington cocktail circuit knew that already. Jonah didn't mention (in the National Review) that Rove wrote that for him.

Fox's laughable Mort Kondracke- "I frankly don't (sic) think since Valerie Plame was not a covert officer that there was a crime here." Mort didn't mention that Rove wrote that for him.

Robert Novak (AKA- The Dark Prince), who still hasn't be arrested or charged with treason in this case for some reason- "No evidence that she was a covert agent was ever presented to the jury."

Fox's resident moron, Hannity- "She did not meet the criteria, in any way, shape, matter or form as a cover agent." (And he saw a James Bond film once.)

And, of course, professional liar-for-pay, Victoria Toejam (in the Washington Post)- "Plame was not covert. She worked at CIA headquarters and had not been stationed abroad within five years of the date of Novak's column."