Tread lightly on the things of earth

I’m fascinated like a rabid news junkie following the finally-escalating CIA / White House / Wilson / Plame / outing-a-CIA-agent leak / coverup story, which is now all over the place online, in the papers, and on the Sunday AM talk shows. (See links sideblog — contents currently listed in main page left sidebar — for some of the emerging online stories.)

Disclaimer: I’m widely read but not particularly politically savvy (read Joshua Michael Micah Marshall’s Talking Points Memo for someone who is).

But I don’t think anyone needs much savvy to see the significance of this story:

1. At least two senior White House/Administration officials outed undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame via Robert Novak at the Washington Post in his July 14 column, Mission to Niger.

   This is a federal felony offense. And it’s arguably real treason — it risks national security and people’s lives — rather unlike Ann Coulter’s nonsensical understanding of treason.

2. Plame was allegedly outed as revenge against Ambassador Joseph Wilson for consistently publicizing that the Iraq/Niger yellowcake uranium purchase claim was bogus both before and after Bush used it as a reason for war in his SOTU speech.

   (Wilson is the diplomat sent to determine the claim’s veracity; Plame is Wilson’s wife. I noted a bit of this in my July weblog entry on these SOTU “16 words” and a sideblog entry on Wilson.)

3. The White House did nothing/denied/covered up — or, impossible to rule out yet, planned — this criminal act.

Ironically, outing a CIA operative is a felony offense because George H.W. Bush worked tirelessly to make it one. In fact, as Atrios points out, GHWB said of this kind of offense (on 26-Apr-1999) —

Even though I’m a tranquil guy now at this stage of my life, I have nothing but contempt and anger for those who betray the trust by exposing the name of our sources. They are, in my view, the most insidious, of traitors.

[Much quality linkage provided by Jeanne at Body and Soul]

2003-09-30 update: William Rivers Pitt takes no prisoners in his review and assessment of what’s going on in TomPaine.com essay The Most Insidious of Traitors (also archived at Truthout).

2003-10-01 update: On yesterday’s Newshour with Jim Lehrer, former undercover CIA analyst Larry Johnson says —

Let’s be very clear about what happened. This is not an alleged abuse. This is a confirmed abuse. I worked with this woman. She started training with me. She has been undercover for three decades, she is not as Bob Novak suggested a CIA analyst. …

So the fact that she’s been undercover for three decades and that has been divulged is outrageous because she was put undercover for certain reasons. One, she works in an area where people she meets with overseas could be compromised. When you start tracing back who she met with, even people who innocently met with her, who are not involved in CIA operations, could be compromised. For these journalists to argue that this is no big deal and if I hear another Republican operative suggesting that well, this was just an analyst fine, let them go undercover. …

This is not about partisan politics. This is about a betrayal, a political smear of an individual with no relevance to the story. Publishing her name in that story added nothing to it. His entire intent was correctly as Ambassador Wilson noted: to intimidate, to suggest that there was some impropriety that somehow his wife was in a decision making position to influence his ability to go over and savage a stupid policy, an erroneous policy and frankly, what was a false policy of suggesting that there were nuclear material in Iraq that required this war. This was about a political attack. To pretend that it’s something else and to get into this parsing of words, I tell you, it sickens me to be a Republican to see this.

[clued by Daily Kos]

And from my cube comes a mighty Duh. I never before realized this:

Using an appropriate browser bookmarklet, you can observe the effect of CSS style definition changes rendered in real time.

At least with this tool combo —

• Mac OS X 10.2.6
• Mozilla 1.4
• Jesse Ruderman’s “edit styles” bookmarklet as provided by Simon Willison, Using bookmarklets to experiment with CSS

— a click of the “edit styles” bookmarklet in a browser window opens another window containing a copy of the open page’s governing stylesheet. Make style definition changes to that open stylesheet text and you see the changes rendered live in the browser window. When satisfied with the result, copy-and-paste the modified stylesheet text into the real stylesheet file.

I can’t believe I’ve let this bit of designing efficiency sit under my nose all this time. If this bookmarklet works in IE, too, this should really cut down the number of CSS tweak iterations needed to accommodate IE/Win’s CSS borkage.

I’m always glad when radical coolness rears its lovely head, even when I’ve been really slow to recognize it.

Thanks, Simon and Jesse.

Concerning Bill O’Reilly’s March promise to “apologize to the nation, and … not trust the Bush Administration again” if no weapons are found in Iraq, jefff comments (at dKos) —

If I heard [O’Reilly] apologize for this mistake, the first thing I’d do is take off my pants so that they wouldn’t get in the way of the monkeys flying out my butt.

I laughed so loud my work colleagues said, “Don’t hurt yourself over there.”

2004-02-10 update:
My chin is on my desk! Ass-monkeys fill the skies!

O’Reilly actually apologizes as promised:
Pundit O’Reilly Now Skeptical About Bush.

Credit where due: Bravo, Bill.

The world is changing.

Howard Dean in a Tuesday “Boston Tea Party” campaign speech (WaPo) —

“This democracy and the flag of the United States do not belong to Rush Limbaugh, and Jerry Falwell, and Tom DeLay, and John Ashcroft, and Dick Cheney,” Dean said as he listed prominent conservatives. “This flag and this country belong to us and we want our country back.”

Damn straight.

What’s called for, IMO, is a national exorcism. These guys front a principality of darkness, and it’s outstayed its welcome. Bring on the pea soup if you must, but it’s time to go.

A recipe for leadership disaster:

Bush said he insulates himself from the “opinions” that seep into news coverage by getting his news from his own aides. He said he scans headlines, but rarely reads news stories.

“I appreciate people’s opinions, but I’m more interested in news,” the president said. “And the best way to get the news is from objective sources, and the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what’s happening in the world.”

Mr. Bush, the people on your staff are likely to be the least objective sources you have. Many have a vested interest in telling you exactly what you want to hear. Or, perhaps more to the point, in telling you exactly what they want you to think, since they know you don’t do any cross-checking against other sources.

I have long maintained that anyone with a decent computer and a fast Internet connection (and maybe an ability to read quickly) can be better informed about world events — and the reasons and motivations behind them — than the president of the United States is.

As extremely unlikely as this sounds — and it sounded impossible to many of my conservative friends whose early-on argument(s) for war rested on the belief that “the president knows things we don’t know, so we just have to trust him” — empirical evidence supports my hypothesis: The words and actions from Mr. Bush and his administration again and again reveal a startling lack of awareness of world facts/figures/feelings, an awareness that’s attainable for anyone who reads far and wide.

Here, I am left to infer, is one child who was left behind.

[via Daily Kos]

2003-09-24 update: No sooner than I imagined Mr. Bush as a grown-up child who’s been left behind, I’m referred to this astonishing psychological assessment that compares George to Tom Hanks’ character in the movie Big. Fascinating reading.

Later … OTOH, after just watching the long-since TiVo’d closing episodes of last season’s The West Wing, I’m reminded I’m not willing to take on a presidential level of responsibility (assuming there’s any significant correlation between drama and reality on that score). So now my hardwired INFP empathy’s kicking in and I’m willing to cut the White House folks some slack.

I’ll still be proceeding full tilt toward getting Dr. Dean elected next year, though.

Still later … OTTH, given the extent of these White House occupants’ lies and malfeasance, I should probably take the more forcible stance of James Carville who said, “When your opponent is drowning, throw the son of a bitch an anvil.”

There are enough tough guys and gals around to hurl anvils at deserving SOBs that maybe I can weave into empathetic mode from time to time and still succeed at pushing the fight forward. :-)

I really, really like William Rivers Pitt’s definition of a patriot’s duty:

The duty of a patriot in this time and place is to ask questions, to demand answers, to understand where our nation is headed and why. If the answers you get do not suit you, or if they frighten you, or if they anger you, it is your duty as a patriot to dissent. Freedom does not begin with blind acceptance and with a flag. Freedom begins when you say ‘No.’

Context: We have a patriotic duty to stand against the USA Patriot Act. (Citizens in hundreds of U.S. communities — who recognize unconstitutionality when they see it — are doing just that.)

On a related note, cartoonist Mark Fiore entertainingly blasts John Ashcroft’s Patriot Act Summer Tour.

More seriously, Walter Cronkite minces no words about the USA Patriot Act, saying, “In his 2 1/2 years in office, Attorney General John Ashcroft has earned himself a remarkable distinction as the Torquemada of American law.”

I really want to add my 2¢, but each time I try I have to keep striking out uncharitable words like stupid and clueless concerning anyone’s support for these thugs now that so much about them is out in the broad light of day. So I’d rather wait until I can be a bit more constructive than that.

2003-09-25 update: Meteor Blades articulates the constructive reframe I’m looking for: Bush supporters aren’t stupid and clueless; they’ve been betrayed.

Like many people, I’m trying to figure out why, after so many months of successfully misleading the U.S. public into believing there was a connection between Iraq and 9/11 (such that 7 of 10 Americans still gullibly think that connection exists), Bush & Co. would suddenly admit “there has been no evidence that Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.”

Refer to yesterday’s Bush Disavows Hussein-Sept. 11 Link (WaPo) or Bush: No Proof of Saddam Role in 9-11 (AP).

Surely this ongoing 9/11→Saddam Hussein→”Let’s roll” popular opinion redirect has been one of the most successful applications ever of Huxley’s Brave New World hypnopaedic maxim, “62,400 repetitions make one truth.”

And now they’re pulling the plug? Now that’s news.

Billmon, Kos, and others are putting forth their ideas as to why they’re admitting this now.

My idealist side wants to think they’re finally coming ‘round to some honesty. But my skeptical side wins out; I think they’re simply continuing their habit of lying big on the front page and then retracting the lie in small print on an inside page so as not to upset their internal sense of “moral” weight and balance. “See? No lie — all canceled out.” Meanwhile, all most people see and remember is the front-page headline.

But why “spin different” now, precisely? This is interesting to watch.

One of my favorite chapters in Al Franken’s current bestseller, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right, is now online: The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus.

I am struck again by how searing this cartoon is. It highlights more effectively than a whole lotta preachin’ (IMO) that this is indeed the “Jesus” many in the Christian Right have fallen for, and that he is emphatically not the Jesus of history, scripture, church tradition, or present reality.

[via Tristero]