A federal judge in South Carolina said the U.S. must charge or free Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen held as an enemy combatant since his arrest in 2002 on suspicion he plotted to explode a radioactive ``dirty bomb'' in the U.S.

The ruling is the latest blow to the Bush administration's policy of holding enemy combatants indefinitely and without traditional legal rights. Padilla challenged his detention after the Supreme Court last June rejected the administration's argument it can hold accused terrorists without giving them a chance to argue their innocence. The Justice Department will appeal today's decision, said spokesman John Nowacki.

The U.S. ``has not provided, and this court has not found, any law that supports the contention that the president enjoys the inherent authority'' to hold Padilla, U.S. District Court Judge Henry F. Floyd wrote in his opinion.

link

Here's hoping Padilla wasn't tortured while in US custody. If he was he'll not only walk away, he'll be a billionaire. Or he'll get offed by the CIA. There's always that...

"My six years as governor of Texas have been invaluable to me as I carry out my duties as the presidency [sic]."

via Dan Froomkin

He even tried to stir up controversy during the telecast- he had this up for nearly an hour:

Then he changed it to:

Still, only one man could muster any outrage- Matt Drudge.

I imagine he's currently sitting in his closet in his house in Miami with a half-bottle of Grey Goose- rocking back and forth, his hat clutched to his chest, weeping uncontrollably. Well, that's what I'd be doing if I sucked as hard as he does.

SUCKING HARD...


Update:
Here are Rock's comments on Bush from last night:

"A lot of people like to bash Bush. I'm not going to bash Bush here tonight. I saw 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' I think Bush is a genius. I think Bush did some things this year nobody in this room could do -- nobody in this room could pull off.

"Bush basically reapplied for his job this year. Now, can you imagine applying for a job, and while you're applying for that job, there's a movie in every theater in the country that shows how much you suck at that job? It'd be hard to get hired, wouldn't it? Now I watched 'Fahrenheit' and I learned some stuff, man. And Bush did some things you could never get away with at your job, man. Never, ever ever. You know, when Bush got into office, they had a surplus of money. Now, there's like a $70 trillion deficit.

"Now just imagine you worked at the Gap. You closing out your register and it's $70 trillion short. The average person would get in trouble for something like that, right? Not Bush. No. then -- then, he started a war. That's cool. Support the troops. He started a war.

"Now, just imagine you worked at the Gap. You're $70 trillion behind on your register. And then you start a war with Banana Republic, 'cause you say they got toxic tank tops over there. You had the war. People are dying. A thousand Gap employees are dead, that's right, bleeding all over the khakis. You finally take over Banana Republic. And you find out they never made tank tops in the first place."

(I don't have a cat.)

Liebly:

You're an Ashcroft! No, you're the Ashcroft!

Imagine hearing that exchange in a movie -- you'd think that Hollywood had come up with a crazy new insult. Well, it turns out that some airline passengers watching the Oscar-nominated film "Sideways" on foreign flights are, in fact, hearing "Ashcroft" as a substitute for a certain seven-letter epithet commonly used to denote a human orifice.

The Post's Monte Reel, based in Buenos Aires, tells us he heard the former attorney general's name substituted at least twice in "Sideways" dialogue when he watched the film earlier this week on an Aerolineas Argentinas flight to Lima, Peru. The movie was shown in English and the dubbing was done "in the actual voices of the actors," Reel reports. Star Thomas Haden Church utters the A-word.

Profanity is typically cut from in-flight movies to make them suitable for general audiences, but how did the studio come up with "Ashcroft"? Hoping for enlightenment yesterday, we queried Fox Searchlight Pictures, the studio behind "Sideways." A spokeswoman initally e-mailed us to say she had "all the info" about dubbing, then failed to respond to our followup questions.

Ashcroft did not return our phone message, but we're certain he was busy and not just being an . . .

Media Matters has the clip.

Pussies.

Maybe FOX News is next.

Here are a couple more clips from FOX & Friends- I've come to realize that if I ever run out of things to post I can turn on FOX News for five minutes- problem solved.

One hitch- I'm allergic to bullshit, so I can't watch too often...

Here's the first clip- my take on the F&F crew's snow-job on Bush's Europe visit.

Just a few minutes later they're talking about Bush's bizarre statement the other day (time zones confound me... might have been yesterday, coulda been tomorrow...) to the effect that that rumors that we're invading Iran are ridiculous, but, yes, we'll probably invade them... That's a relief.

Here's the second clip.

Here's an awesome rant from last Friday's season premiere of Real Time with Bill Maher.



Bill brings up a great point- I always wondered what the next generation would do to shock their parents... Elvis had his horrible, sinful hip movements in the '60s, evil hair bands like Winger converted all the kids to Satanists in the '80s, Marilyn Manson was Marilyn Manson in the '90s... I knew something was coming, and I thought I was ready.

I thought wrong.

The latest youth rebellion is the anti-rebellion- the belief that dissent is un-American.

In my opinion, that's scarier than all the Elvis gyrations, hair band Satanism, and Marilyn Manson self-mutilation put together...

I saw a few minutes of FOX & Friends one morning last week and there were so many things wrong with this little segment that I thought it deserved further analysis-

Here's the result.

Jimmy Kimmel has a weekly feature called "This Week In Unnecessary Censorship" - never fails to crack me up:

link


And here's another short clip from Jimmy's Friday monologue where he takes a look at Bush in a recent press conference:

link

They still don't get it.

It's not about digging into his personal life- none of the information he posted to the web could conceivably be considered personal... The moment you upload a picture of yourself with a boner on your gay prostitute web site you're expectation of privacy is gone. He may consider it a mistake from his past, but that would hold more water if his man-whore sites weren't still active.

By the way, if Sean Hannity were currently prostituting himself out on a web site (other than FOXNews.com) I'd expect we'd hear about it quicker than we learned Guckert was doing it.

Here's the video.

I hope to catch up on some videos this weekend- This was a great segment from Tuesday's Daily Show with Jon Stewart- Iraqi Election results, religion's disturbing role in our government, and a nice reminder how much the Iraq war was predicted to cost the American taxpayers.

link

Shocking!

Here's a telling quote, from a piece by Howard Kurtz:

It may be difficult to find any witness among her reporter colleagues to testify that Miller was actually "reporting" or "doing research" on Plame in that mid-July 2003 timeframe, when Miller and her paper were under fire for seriously botching the Iraq WMD case. No one I have talked to remembers such an effort

Link

link

Media Matters cleans his clock again.

link

So far no pictures of Bush rubbing Negroponte's melon.



But you can tell he's just dying to...

Dan Froomkin gives us a look at the recent ruling in the Intimigate case:

The multi-part ruling itself is worth a look.

The most fascinating part, sadly, is what's missing -- material presumably "redacted" because it deals with secret grand jury testimony.

Judge David S. Tatel wrote a 41-page concurring opinion. On page 30, a little more than halfway down the page, it reads: "With respect to Miller, * * * * * [REDACTED] * * * * *"

The rest of page 30 is blank. So are pages 31, 32 and 33. Part way down page 34, the opinion reads: "Regarding Cooper, * * * * * [REDACTED] * * * * *"

The rest of page 34 is blank. So are pages 35, 36, 37 and 38.

Towards the top of page 39 it picks up again: "In sum, based on an exhaustive investigation, the special counsel has established the need for Miller's and Cooper's testimony. Thus, considering the gravity of the suspected crime and the low value of the leaked information, no privilege bars the subpoenas."

Well... based on that kind of evidence I don't see how anyone could argue. I mean literally, there's no way to argue against a blank page.

To be honest, I think the country would be safer with Judith Miller locked up (and not pumping up Iranian spy Chalabi)- but that's not how our country works. Freedom of the press is more important- I just wish our press was worthy of the rights they were given in the Constitution.

Yikes:

David Qualls, who joined the Arkansas National Guard for a year, is one of 40,000 troops in Iraq who have been informed that their enlistment has been extended until December 24th, 2031. "I've served five months past my one-year obligation," says Qualls, the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the military with breach of contract. "It's time to let me go back to my life. It's a question of fairness, and not only for myself. This is for the thousands of other people that are involuntarily extended in Iraq. Let us go home."

via Fark

The Bush administration is fighting the former prisoners of war in court, trying to prevent them from collecting nearly $1 billion from Iraq that a federal judge awarded them as compensation for their torture at the hands of Saddam Hussein's regime.

The rationale: Today's Iraqis are good guys, and they need the money.

link

I think this guy is on to something.

I remember seeing the video of this:



You could see the guy just seething in the background as Bush moved along the line.

I wouldn't want that dork touching my head- when did he decide this was appropriate behavior?

Does he pull that shit with Pootie-poot?

CBS reports that another missile defense test failed today. Well, there's another wasted $85 million ... does the president realize that could build at least four schools? ... or fund an entire HIV prevention program for a major city? ... or save some whales? This, of course, doesn't include the roughly $10 billion a year being spent on the program.

Here's the best part of the article, which details how the interceptor missile didn't even launch:

No date for the next test has been announced. It is unclear how continued test failures would affect two experimental interceptor bases in Alaska and California.

Those two bases, Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., are positioned to oppose the threat of attack from North Korea. Both are still classified as experimental but, officials say, they could fire interceptors in an emergency.

The Pentagon has not declared those bases "operational," but officials say they would work anyway once certain mechanical blocks are removed from the interceptors themselves. Six interceptors are at the Alaska site, with two more in California as a backup. Up to 10 more will go into silos in Alaska this year, officials say.

Great news! If North Korea does decide to hurtle a nuke our way, we can rely on a multi-billion dollar defense system that is thwarted by rain. This article, from Business Week, dissects the program and includes the lovely detail that even in the 5 out of 8 successful tests, our missiles were basically screaming at the interceptors to hit the mark. BW reports:

What's more, every time there is an attempt to intercept a missile, the target carries a beacon to tell the interceptor where it is -- a service an enemy isn't likely to offer.

I think this lays to rest question of why James JD Guckert used a fake name while working at/for the White House.

My reasons for using a fake name aren't nearly as exciting, but I'll point out I'm not in the White House press room. Neither is Lexington Steele for that matter.

So similar, in fact, so as to be the same site...

As dug up by The Brad Blog:


I can hear the Cons now- "See? They're in it together? Axis of evil! Axis of evil! INVADE!"

Now Bush gives us the budgetary landmine:

For President Bush, the budget sent to Congress last week outlines a painful path to meeting his promise to bring down the federal budget deficit by the time he leaves office in 2009. But for the senators and governors already jockeying to succeed him, the numbers released in recent days add up to a budgetary landmine that could blow up just as the next president moves into the Oval Office.

Lovely.

Rice not only ignored the 9/11 warnings, she lied to Congress about it.

Result: Promoted..

Clarke runs around with his hair on fire in August of '01 warning of an impending attack.

Result: Forced out and smeared by the White House.

link

I wonder if Drudge hasn't posted anything about the Gannon story because it hits too close to home.

And by "too close to home" I mean "too close to the closet in his home"

...and by "too close to the closet in his home" I mean the actual closet where Drudge keeps his fake-ass journalistic credentials in the form of that stupid fucking hat.



Just sayin' is all.

Bush moping around today:

War got you down?

Crashing the Social Security system not as easy as you thought it was going to be?

No more easy questions in your press briefings?

I know it's not all those dead soldiers weighing on your conscience... causing deaths never bugged you none.

Disturbed about all those countries that have gotten nuked up lately?

Worried 'bout all those indictments headed your way?

What about those war crimes allegations?

Regret about not letting Rummy go?

Could it be that all the lying is finally taking it's toll? I mean... I would think it would be soul crushing to have to lie every day all day... but maybe that's just me.

I put two and two together.

Update: I managed to figure this one out a full half hour after the news had been posted on the web. Not too shabby, eh?

Here's the Jeff Gannon/White House Plant segment from last night's Countdown with Keith Olbermann. I thought this was a pretty good look at the White House Planted Reporter story. Includes an interview with Post (and actual) reporter Dana Milbank.

I watched Countdown last night because I saw Olbermann had updated Monday's O'Reilly football exaggeration story on his weblog and added some details- he didn't really go into it on the show, but he put it all in this post.

Rep. Slaughter asks Bush "Wassup with that whole Gannon thing?"

Wednesday, February 9, 2005

The Honorable George W. Bush

President of the United States

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

In light of the mounting evidence that your Administration has, on several occasions, paid members of the media to advocate in favor of Administration policies, I feel compelled to ask you to address a matter brought to my attention by the Niagara Falls Reporter (article attached), a local newspaper in my district, regarding James "JD" Guckert (AKA Jeff Gannon) of Talon News.

According to several credible reports, "Mr. Gannon" has been repeatedly credentialed as a member of the White House press corps by your office and has been regularly called upon in White House press briefings by your Press Secretary Scott McClellan, despite the fact evidence shows that "Mr. Gannon" is a Republican political operative, uses a false name, has phony or questionable journalistic credentials, is known for plagiarizing much of the "news" he reports, and according to several web reports, may have ties to the promotion of the prostitution of military personnel.

Several weeks ago when it was revealed that radio/TV host Armstrong Williams had received payment from your Administration in exchange for his vocal support of the 'No Child Left Behind' initiative, I was stunned. For years now I have been leading the fight in Congress for fairness and accountability in the media; the Williams revelation only underscored the need for a media that has integrity, is balanced and expresses the local interests and concerns of its consumers.

Since that time, two more members of the media have been found to have received money from your Administration in exchange for their vocal, yet undisclosed support of Administration policies.

And just this morning we have learned that "Mr. Gannon" has resigned his post at the, so called, Talon News amid growing concerns over his controversial background and falsified qualifications. In fact, it appears that "Mr. Gannon's" presence in the White House press corps was merely as a tool of propaganda for your Administration.

Mr. President, I am sure we both agree the White House Press Corps is an honored institution in America that should be beyond the scope of partisan meddling, and that a free and independent media is the cornerstone of our success as a democracy. Likewise, I am sure we can both agree the American people have the right to expect that journalists who question their President everyday are experienced, independent, and perhaps most importantly, unbiased in their approach.

I was already concerned about what appears to be an organized campaign to mask partisan propaganda as legitimate news by your Administration. That we have now learned this same type of deception is occurring inside the White House briefing room itself is even more disturbing.

That is why I am asking you to please explain to the Congress and to the American people how and why the individual known as "Mr. Gannon" was repeatedly cleared by your staff to join the legitimate White House press corps?

Mr. President, your Administration has driven the so-called "values" debate in this country. But the most important value for those of us in public service should always be honesty and integrity, particularly when considering the manner in which we conduct our affairs of state.

I would appreciate your prompt response on this matter.

Respectfully,

/LMS

Louise M. Slaughter

Ranking Member, House Committee on Rules

Meanwhile right-wing weblogs are eerily silent on their boy Gannon, and Talon has apparently pulled not only Gannon's articles but articles with different by-lines which of course raises all kinds of facinating questions.

...and just when it was getting interesting.

link

"Jeff Gannon" Headshot:

AOL Profile:

Are both pictures White House Plant "Jeff Gannon" AKA JD Guckert?

Meanwhile, DailyKos reports that "Jeff Gannon"/JD Guckert owns the following domain names:

• jeffgannon.com
• Hotmilitarystud.com
• Militaryescorts.com
• Militaryescortsm4m.com

Developing... HARD!

via Atrios and Kos

Media Matters has the transcript from Keith Olbermann's Countdown:

OLBERMANN: We segue now into our nightly roundup of celebrity and entertainment news, "Keeping Tabs." And it turns out the 2005 Super Bowl was not entirely scandal-free. This year's wasn't about the commercials, the halftime show or even the Philadelphia Eagles' pathetic clock management. It was about the Super Bowl program and Bill O'Reilly. The Fact or Fiction host and noted loofah user wrote the so-called end piece of the score card sold at yesterday's little game. He waxed poetic about the inspiration that his own football career at Marist College in New York provided observing that he once punted a ball backwards. But that, quoting here, "I won the national punting title for my division as a senior." O'Reilly concludes that "I guess you could say the end zone was the beginning of the no-spin zone."

But Mr. O'Reilly has done a little spinning of his own here. Others might call it resume padding. The football office at Marist told me today that football was not a varsity sport there until 1978 -- seven years after O'Reilly graduated. When he played, it was a so-called club sport where players paid all their own expenses, and schedules and, most importantly, statistical record keeping were haphazard.

So when he says he was the top punter in his division in the country in 1970, it does not mean what it sounds like. He was not in the NCAA Division I or II or the smaller-college NAIA Division I or Division II. O'Reilly in Marist played in something called the National Club Football Association. So writing in the Super Bowl program that you won the punting championship in your division would be like me writing in one of my articles in one of the World Series programs that I led the nation's high school baseball players in on-base percentage in 1973.

I did, too. My on-base percentage that season was 1,000. I came to bat once and got hit in the backside with a pitch.

A year after the FCC logged more than 500,000 complaints over Jackson's exposed breast at the Super Bowl halftime show, the governmental watchdog had received exactly two complaints by Monday afternoon over McCartney's fully clothed set.

In both cases, viewers complained of being "bored" by McCartney's 12-minute, four-song showcase of Beatles and Wings classics, including "Hey, Jude," FCC spokeswoman Rosemary Kimball said Monday.

link

I think McCartney's great, but make that three complaints... I fell asleep in my nachos.

Remember last year's big Janet Jackson comeback? What happened there? I think she had an album come out and it died, and that New Kid On The Block that ripped her top off hasn't been heard from since... not that I'm complaining.

How out of touch is MTV if that was their way of kicking off 2004?

That's alls I'm sayin'...

There is nothing you can say that can change my mind- we clearly have a retard running the country.

Because the -- all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those -- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be -- or closer delivered to what has been promised.

Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the -- like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate -- the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those -- if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.

link via Digby

During Fox's Pregame show:


link
Gawker has more background.

John Dean:

I have little doubt that one of my former Nixon White House colleagues is history's best-known anonymous source — Deep Throat. But I'll be damned if I can figure out exactly which one.

We'll all know one day very soon, however. Bob Woodward, a reporter on the team that covered the Watergate story, has advised his executive editor at the Washington Post that Throat is ill. And Ben Bradlee, former executive editor of the Post and one of the few people to whom Woodward confided his source's identity, has publicly acknowledged that he has written Throat's obituary.

I didn't even know Diane Sawyer was sick.

All right... for reals now, I wonder how Fred Fielding is doing?

Just a short clip from the 2/4/2005 episode of The Late Show with David Letterman.

link

I'm not quite sure what to make of this yet, but it gives us some perspective- this US-approved scheme dwarfed the U.N. Oil for Food scandal.

From CNN:

Estimates of how much revenue Iraq earned from these tolerated side sales of its oil to Jordan and Turkey, as well as to Syria and Egypt, range from $5.7 billion to $13.6 billion.

This illicit revenue far exceeds the estimates of what Saddam pocketed through illegal surcharges on his U.N.-approved oil exports and illegal kickbacks on subsequent Iraqi purchases of food, medicine, and supplies -- $1.7 billion to $4.4 billion -- during the maligned seven-year U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq.

link

I wonder if FOX News will ever bother reporting on this one...

I don't know about that... looks more like "currently being penetrated smile" than "satisfied smile."

Just throwing out a suggestion for how he should be referred to from now on...

Froomkin's been writing about Gannon for a while and Media Matters has been all over it- I think it's finally starting to snowball...

Great segment from last night's Daily Show with Jon Stewart- coverage of the G.I. Joe doll held hostage in Iraq- includes a live report from Stephen Colbert in Baghdad.



link

Best line: "Have we lost Jon?"

It appears there were some flaws in the president's speech last night. Eric Uramsky, at Slate.com, cites Washington Post associate editor Robert Kaiser's response to the question in a Web chat, "Anything [the president] said strike you as objectively untrue?" He responded, in part:

Yes. Bush often describes a world whose features are all highly debatable, if not simply invented. He proposes "a comprehensive health care agenda" that will leave perhaps 50 million Americans without health insurance. Is that comprehensive in any meaningful sense? He promises big economic benefits from legal changes, "tort reform," that independent economists say cannot have more than a small economic effect even if enacted, which is not likely. [And] he promises to increase the size of Pell Grants, not noting that they have shrunk far below the level he promised when he came into the White House.

It ends with, "Thank you, and may God bless America."

So, I guess my hosting company had an issue with me running a torrent tracker on the site...

Good to know.

MeFi:

What if Bush has been right about Iraq all along? [...]By now, you might have even voted against George Bush -- a second time -- to register your disapproval. But after watching Sunday's election in Iraq and seeing the first clear sign that freedom really may mean something to the Iraqi people, you have to be asking yourself: What if it turns out Bush was right, and we were wrong? It's hard to swallow, isn't it?[...]
posted by Postroad at 7:39 AM PST (179 comments total)

I've been saying this ever since Colin Powell went to the UN and told the world how awesome it would be if Iraq had democracy.
posted by ignu at 7:44 AM PST on February 2

Was the Iraq war a mistake? Of course it was. There's no doubt about that. Anyone that tells you different is likely on Bush's payroll.

Of course, we have quotes from the White House on this very topic before this Orwellian reimagining of history:

"We have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said last week. "This is what this war was about and is about."

link

Republicans are incredibly tacky.

It's an obvious conclusion.

Look at Bush- he's got a chunk of the World Trade Center in his office.

Only thing is, when you've got an uneducated populace, tacky works.

In case you missed it, Crooks and Liars has the video.