Here, I'll save the trolls a bunch of time:

I blame . . .

[ ] the welfare state!

[ ] local officials!

[ ] environmentalists!

[ ] meddling activist judges!

I interpreted "October, all over" to mean that in October hurricanes are all over the place...

2007 is the first time we'll have a chance at impeaching Dubya. And then only if the 2006 elections go WAY better than expected.

Stefan: You forgot:

[ ] Hillary!

Whoops, I missed the post boundary there. Ignore that first part.

Arrest warrant issued for DeLay
A routine step before court appearance

And $10,000 bail to go with the mug shot and prints.

Regrettably, $10K for DeLay is petty cash from his campaign funds.

You know, I meant to post that first message in the Hurricane thread, but it fits here too.

That's . . . sad.

Josh Marshall now has this:

All day we've been discussing Tom DeFrank's article in today's Daily News which reports that President Bush has known about Karl Rove's role in the Plame leak for two years.

But this site points out that this sure seems to contradict what Murray Waas reported not long ago over at National Journal ...

In his own interview with prosecutors on June 24, 2004, Bush testified that Rove assured him he had not disclosed Plame as a CIA employee and had said nothing to the press to discredit Wilson, according to sources familiar with the president's interview. Bush said that Rove never mentioned the conversation with Cooper.

Now, don't lose sight of the fact that we're stacking a lot of 'ifs' on top of each other here. But we do have two articles from well-credentialed journalists pointing to two alleged facts -- one, that President Bush knew in late 2003 that Rove was involved and that Rove had told him he was involved; two, that a year later President Bush denied Rove had told him he was involved in an interview with the special prosecutor.

If both those 'facts' bear out, someone's in a lot of trouble, no?

Lots of trouble, I think.

It has the same feel that Watergate did...when this tangled web is unwound, what else will be lurking within?

Am I right in thinking that outing Plame and then trying to cover it up could be considered treason?

" . . . what else will be lurking within?"

I'm waiting for Rove to shed his human form and announce that he is actually Subversion Unit K'aRRL, and before fleeing via the subether rift under his desk swear he'll be back, on the bridge of the flagship of a R.O.V.E. planetary harvesting squadron.

But neat shit like that never happens. He'll just get pardoned and go back to fundraising.

>The wild card, again, involves what John Hannah has told Fitzgerald.

This presumably would not be John Hannah the celebrated Scots actor...

I'd like to think Bush was going to be in political trouble, but aren't Congress and the Supreme Court still solidly on his side?

Stefan & PJ, you both forgot:

[ ] The Clenis™!

Lori: It could be... as it might be seen as providing aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States.

I'm not sure but what a clever defense attorney might not be able to say no specific enemy was intended to be the beneficiary, and so it doesn't quite rise to the standard the Constitution demands, I'll bet a determined prosecutor could get a judge to uphold an indictment.

Probably not for treason. The relevant point is 'adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort'. A crucial part of a treason case is motive - 'adhering', etc. It's a stretch to suspect that the motives for blowing Valerie Plame's cover included an intent to help the enemies of the United States. For more on treason, see:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/constitution/html/art3.html

The most relevant case law seems to be Haupt v. United States.

Jim, you put it best

"If denying that you got a blowjob is an impeachable offense, what’s this?"

A pity that's a bit long for a bumpersticker....

Denying that you got a blowjob isn't an impeachable offense. Doing so under oath is, though. There are a subset of people (which includes me) that couldn't care less about politicians and blowjobs, but are offended by politicians who prevaricate under oath, even about trivial things like blowjobs.

That said, officials in the current adminstration are lying about things that actually matter, and any sign that it's going to cost them is OK with me.

It's probably not John Hannah, the Hall of Fame football player, either.

It's amusing to me that every other reference I've seen to the name puts in the disclaimer about the actor, while I immediately thought of New England Patriots football.

EEEK, I hope I didn't post a blank.

And it's no, nay, never (clap, clap, clap) no, nay, never no more (clap clap) that I'll play the wild Rover, no never, no more.

Whatever they can make stick to the bahstad, I'll appreciate getting him out. If it sinks the whole administration, it will be peachier still, even though I'm not certain that the vacuum will be filled with like-minded felons that are appointed, not elected. So that option is kind of scary.

What is the plan of succession? Like that of a nuclear war that cuts off Washington?

Kind of long for the days when our president's main misdemeanor was doing an intern. sigh.

Treason.
Traitors.
The definition of "top secret information" involves something like "information which if released could cause exceptionally grave damage to the United States of America. Outing covert agents and causing their operations to be outed, puts lives at risk, dries up information sources, and can cause Exceptionally Grave Damage.

The spiteful vengeful Bush Executive Branch has presided over a collection of debacles

--an FBI which explicitly ordered agents smelling what had the odor of grave threats to the populace and well-being of the USA, to drop all investigation of the foreign nationals the agents were rightfully suspicious of--"mistakes" which cased the deaths of thousand of people, the destruction of some of the highest priced property in the USA with how many buildings flattened and how many others which were wrecked so badly they had to be flattened the rest of the way, the destruction of tends of thousands of jobs and hundreds of thousand to millions more jobs as fallout when the initial tens of thousands evaporated with the destruction of the office buildings and many of the businesses with offices in or which did business as business associates and suppliers and vendors and service providers to the businesses in the destroyed buildings and the people who had worked in those sitesthreats foreign threats,
-- destruction of the environment and the release of higher levels of mercury into the air to poison children and make them ill,
-- breathtaking levels of corruption involving everything from Chinese spying to Jack Abramoff,
-- putting religion into politics and shoving aside another object to theocracy,
-- placing people of astonishing levels of lack of cognizance and competence into critical positions of national responsibility in organizations such as FEMA,
-- corruption with the healthcare industry and making FDA decisions based in influence peddling, job offers apparently for FDA employees to retire to private industry, and making decisions against drugs based on specific religions' values which clash with the majority of the citizenry's religious values and beliefs,
-- corruption regarding defense contractors leading to aircraft leases instead of purchase with the person making the decision getting a high paying position at the company leaving the government,
-- a war on the rights of women and minorities for getting equal pay and opportunity and rolling back all the advances since the 1950s and eliminating the data collection system which provided the data to measure the economic status of women and minorities compared to white Protestant males for pay, perks, and promotion rates,
-- policies that are a throwback to European robber barons and aristocracy who were above the law and whom all the tax money went -to- from everyone else,
-- war on the poor as above.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Libby, Rove, etc., are blots against the US Constitution and Bill of Rights in their words and actions.

I wonder if Cheney will turn on Bush...

But a blowjob is, like, sodomy. I mean, homosexuals do that. We can't permit that sort of thing in the White House.

mythago: But a blowjob is, like, sodomy. I mean, homosexuals do that. We can't permit that sort of thing in the White House.

Oh my God. Do you mean that awful Clinton was teaching that young woman to emulate a gay man?! Is there no end to Democratic depravity?

IIRC, the line of succession after the VP runs:

Speaker of the House: Hastert

President Pro Tem of the Senate: Stevens

Secretary of State: Condolezza Rice

Then down throught the rest of the Cabinet.

I hope that folks are paying attention to the speech former Powell aide and State Department Chief of Staff, Lawrence Wilkerson gave y'day. It's a doozy. Here's a few snippets from Steve Clemons post over at the cafe at talkingpointsmemo.com:

Oct 20, 2005 -- 09:42:39 AM EST

I want to lay out a few short excerpts of his talk here as I think that they are stunning, provocative revelations.

Some selections:

On President George H.W. Bush --

Practical experience, sitting at the right hand of a very powerful Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff [inaudible - noise] and watching probably one of the finest Presidents we've ever had, that's how I feel about George H. W. Bush, exercise one of the greatest adeptnesses at foreign policy I've ever seen.
So many things happened in George H. W. Bush's 4 years that I think when historians write about it with dispassion 25, 30 years from now, they're going to give that man enormous credit for knowing how to make the process work. Took him a while, took them about 9 to 10 months to get their act together. But once they did, they worked very well.

On why Wilkerson is going public --

On the other hand, as a practitioner and as a citizen of this great republic, I kind of believe that I have an obligation to say some of these things and I believe furthermore that the people's representatives over on the Hill in that other branch of government have truly abandoned their oversight responsibilities in this regard and have let things atrophy to the point that if we don't do something about it, it's going to get even more dangerous than it already is.

On what the "framers" of the 1947 National Security Act attempted to do to prevent another concentration of power and secrecy under a future FDR-like president --

But these were probably some people who I think rivaled those who got together that hot summer in Philadelphia and put together the Constitution. We have had some peaks and valleys in our history, but I think post-World War II and World War II itself was a peak and we had some really good people thinking hard about these issues. And one of the things that they probably wouldn't tell you if they were here today, unless they had a few drinks, and Harry Truman would have had a few, is that they didn't want another FDR.
They did not want another Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They even amended the Constitution to make sure they didn't get one for more than 8 years. But they didn't want the secrecy.

They didn't want the concentration of power. They didn't want the lack of transparency into principle decisions that got people killed. Even though they've been successful in arguably one of the greatest conflicts the world has seen. And so they set about trying to insure that this wouldn't happen again.

I don't think even his critics would have argued that FDR wasn't a brilliant politician and a brilliant leader. But let's think about it for a moment. If you're one of the framers. How often does America get brilliant leaders? Put them down on paper. I can count them myself on one hand.

You can perhaps count them on 2 hands and make persuasive arguments for the additions. I prefer one hand. So we need a system of checks and balances and institutional fabric that can withstand anybody, or at least nearly so. You laugh, but I'm not trying to solicit your laughter.

I think it's a real problem in our democracy. You have to have a system that is so elastic, so resilient, so able to take punches that at one time one branch can supplant another or one branch can come up and check another. It's the old business of checks and balances. If you concentrate power and you do it in a way that is not that different from the way Franklin Roosevelt concentrated it, but you don't have someone who is brilliant [inaudible] the utilization of that power, you've got problems.

On why secrecy is the wrong path when making decisions that involve sending men and women to die --

We need something like that today. Let me tell you why I say that. Decisions that send men and women to die, decisions that have the potential to send men and women to die, decisions that confront situations like natural disasters and cause needless death or cause people to suffer misery that they shouldn't have to suffer, domestic and international decisions, should not be made in a secret way.
That's a very, very provocative statement, I think. All my life I've been taught to guard the nation's secrets. All my life I have followed the rules. I've gone through my special background investigations and all the other things that you need to do and I understand that the nation's secrets need guarding.

On why "cabal"-led government does not work --

You've probably all read books on leadership, 7 Habits of Successful People, or whatever. If you, as a member of bureaucracy, do not participate in a decision, you are not going to carry that decision out with the alacrity, the efficiency and the effectiveness you would if you had participated.
When you cut the bureaucracy out of your decisions and then foist your decisions on us out of the blue on that bureaucracy, you can't expect that bureaucracy to carry your decision out very well and, furthermore, if you're not prepared to stop the feuding elements in that bureaucracy, as they carry out your decision, you're courting disaster.

And I would say that we have courted disaster, in Iraq, in North Korea, in Iran, generally with regard to domestic crises like Katrina, Rita and I could go on back, we haven't done very well on anything like that in a long time. And if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence. Read it some time again.

I just use it for a tutoring class for my students in the District of Columbia. Forced me to read it really closely because we're doing metaphors and similes and antonyms and synonyms and so we're...read in there what the founders say in a very different language than we use today. Read in there what they say about the necessity of people to [inaudible - background voice] tyranny or to throw off ineptitude or to throw off that which is not doing what the people want it to do.

On George Packer's book and how he got it "right" --

Read George Packer's book The Assassin's Gate if you haven't already. George Packer, a New Yorker, reporter for The New Yorker, has got it right. I just finished it and I usually put marginalia in a book but, let me tell you, I had to get extra pages to write on.
And I wish, I wish I had been able to help George Packer write that book. In some places I could have given him a hell of a lot more specifics than he's got. But if you want to read how the Cheney Rumsfeld cabal flummoxed the process, read that book. And, of course, there are other names in there, Under Secretary of Defense Douglas [inaudible], whom most of you probably know Tommy Frank said was stupidest blankety blank man in the world. He was. Let me testify to that. He was. Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man.

And yet, and yet, after the Secretary of State agrees to a $400 billion department, rather than a $30 billion department, having control, at least in the immediate post-war period in Iraq, this man is put in charge. Not only is he put in charge, he is given carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw themselves in a closet somewhere. That's not making excuses for the State Department.

That's telling you how decisions were made and telling you how things got accomplished. Read George's book. In so many ways I wanted to believe for 4 years that what I was seeing, as an academic, what I was seeing was an extremely weak national security [inaudible]. And an extremely powerful Vice President and an extremely powerful in the issues that impacted him, Secretary of Defense, remember a Vice President who's been Secretary of Defense, too, and obviously has an inclination that way and also has known the Secretary of Defense for a long time, and also is a member of what Dwight Eisenhower wanted that God bless Eisenhower in 1961 in his farewell address the military industrial complex and don't you think they aren't the [inaudible] today in a concentration of power that is just unparalleled. It all happened because of the end of the Cold War.

These selections above are from the aforementioned Financial Times transcript.

Later today, The Washington Note will post the transcript of the rest of his speech not covered as well as all of the Q&A, which is incredibly provocative and important.

But other things that are important to note include:

On detainee abuse --

10 years from now, we will be ashamed of what we allowed to happen.
On the norms of fighting wars --

A radical change in the nature of the enemy does not mean or require a radical change in the nature of America.
More on the torture of detainees --

The General (Colin Powell) and I knew -- as military men -- that you don't have pervasive behavior in the ranks unless you condoned it.
From my notes, Larry Wilkerson said that creating the Directorate of National Intelligence and organizing the Department of Homeland Security the way it was done do not solve the essential problem that bureacratic pieces were not communicating with each other. He argued that a cabal of decision-making between Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld alienated the bureaucracy. The response, Wilkerson said, should not be adding more layers to the bureaucracy -- it should be forcing a process of communication and coordination.

He said that what makes him most sick is that "America is paying the consequence" for this breakdown in process and for the actions and behavior of this cabal.

He said that Condoleeza Rice, at the beginning of her tenure at NSC, was either an extremely weak National Security Advisor -- or was an operator who decided to forego her responsibilities of organizing options (including dissent) for the President to consider and rather packaged information, squelched dissent, that affirmed Bush's views and reinforced the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal in order to "build intimacy" with the President.

There is much more that I can add but need more time to step back and weigh the significance of this valuable revelations.

I asked Wilkerson what price he had paid for his candor, and he responded that he had paid a high price in that his relationship with Colin Powell had been seriously impacted. Powell is the "world's most loyal soldier" according to Wilkerson.

That said, however, after listening first hand to this talk and exchanging views with Wilkerson these last couple of months, I believe every word he has said -- and believe that he is making these statements in the belief that they may help bolster those who believe in a more transparent government and who want to preserve democracy -- particularly in times of national crisis.

My guess is that Wilkerson's views and comments are a compilation of the shared views of Colin Powell and Richard Armitage, both of whom will not challenge the President publicly. That is clear.

Lawrence Wilkerson, however, has had enough of the silence and personally fears for the future of the country given the miserable military and economic portfolio that Bush has wrought -- and the utter incompetence of national responses to crises.

Wilkerson deserves our respect and thanks for taking the brave steps he has taken.

http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/20/94239/203

But he praises George W. Bush, and not as "the noble Brutus has said," either.

A "leader" who fills the organization he is the head of with vindictive mean-spirited intolerant fanatical single-minded ideologues, cronies, incompetents, lickspittle loyalists, and other syncophants and party line plutocrats whose values don't include honest and open dispute and disagreement instead of brownnosing and carrying out orders with never a protest or disagreement, is no "finest" anything, except for a highly developed example of a piece of stinking scum... Hubris Boy make Freddie Wang's destruction of Wang Computers look like excellent leadership. Nobody got -killed- in the collapse of Wang (unless there were suicides...), no shooting wars started, no IEDs were used, no religious fanatics made and carried out threats agains barbers, wine sellers, women, no rapes and kidnappings occurred, no one was arrested in the night silently and flown off to unspecified countries in North Africa or Asia to be tortured and "interrogated" and disappeared without warrants, lawyers to represent them, or notification to their relatives and phone call access....

Paula, of course he praises him. Of course he piles it on. If he didn't, current Bush supporters would simply believe he'd turned traitor and would ignore everything he has to say. Many of them still will, but this way, he may get through to a few.

He didn't praise George W. Bush. He praised George H. W. Bush.

Lori - when does it get to Laura Roslin?

The line of succession runs down through the Cabinet, in chronological order of the departments. The Cuban-born guy (Agriculture?) and Chao at Labor are foreign-born and thus ineligible.

The Cold War/nuclear-decapitation-of-Washington thinking was that if we ever ran out of Cabinet Secretaries, whatever congressfolks that survive could caucus and elect themselves a new Speaker, who would then be next in line. I don't know as this was ever formally written into law.

The line of succession is one of my favorite bugs in the US Constitution: the Const. explicitly says that a person can't hold positions in the executive while they're in Congress. Therefore, a sitting Speaker can't take the oath as President. So he has to resign his congressional seat first. But: then he's not the Speaker, and thus not in the line of succession....

Fortunately, it's never been put to the test.

Therefore, a sitting Speaker can't take the oath as President. So he has to resign his congressional seat first. But: then he's not the Speaker, and thus not in the line of succession....

I suppose he could resign immediately before taking the oath. "I, [fill in blank], do resign as member of Congress and do solemnly swear...." I'm not really crazy about any of the GOP at the top in Congress; they all seem to be compromised in one or another way. (Makes me wish for the good old days when alcohol and the oppoosite sex were the worst we needed to expect of them.)

Xopher: In a galaxy far far away.

Marilee: Drat! She's just the kind of leader we need now.

Today's news:
Cover-Up Issue Is Seen as Focus in Leak Inquiry
As he weighs whether to bring criminal charges in the C.I.A. leak case, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel, is focusing on whether Karl Rove, the senior White House adviser, and I. Lewis Libby Jr., chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, sought to conceal their actions and mislead prosecutors, lawyers involved in the case said Thursday.

Among the charges that Mr. Fitzgerald is considering are perjury, obstruction of justice and false statement - counts that suggest the prosecutor may believe the evidence presented in a 22-month grand jury inquiry shows that the two White House aides sought to cover up their actions, the lawyers said.

It could effectively behead this administration, as it appears that Rove and Libby are the guys running the /a/s/y/l/u/m/ show.

We've all heard of Mob bosses who were able to run their criminal empires from inside prison. Is there any reason to think Rove can't do the same?

"Is there any reason to think Rove can't do the same?"

I think his career is over the moment he puts on the orange jumpsuit. Even Republicans have their limits. Many of them may even be relieved.

But if he manages to stay a playa . . . that's a sign that maybe it's time to consider leaving the country.

And all is not well on a different front:

Times Editor Expresses Regrets Over Handling of Leak Case

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
Published: October 22, 2005

Bill Keller, executive editor of The New York Times, told the newspaper's staff yesterday that he had several regrets over his handling of Judith Miller, the Times reporter who spent 85 days in jail for refusing to testify before a grand jury in the C.I.A. leak case.

In a memorandum sent to the staff while he was traveling overseas, Mr. Keller said he wished he had "sat her down for a thorough debriefing" after Ms. Miller had been subpoenaed as a witness in the investigation into the leaking of the name of a C.I.A. operative.

In his first direct criticism of Ms. Miller, Mr. Keller said she "seems to have misled" the newspaper's Washington bureau chief, Philip Taubman, when she was asked by Mr. Taubman if she was one of at least six Washington journalists who had reportedly been told that Valerie Plame was a C.I.A. operative.

And, he wrote, had he known of her "entanglement" with I. Lewis Libby Jr., chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, he might have been more willing to explore compromises with the prosecutor investigating the case.

Mr. Keller also said he had missed "what should have been significant alarm bells" about Ms. Miller's involvement in the C.I.A. leak case. One, he wrote, was that he did not know "Judy had been one of the reporters on the receiving end of the anti-Wilson whisper campaign." Joseph C. Wilson IV, a former ambassador who criticized the Iraq war, is married to Ms. Plame.

It did seem a bit strange that an experienced reporter would not have a source attached to notes like "Valerie Flame". Isn't that one of the first things they're supposed to learn: to keep track of who said what, when? (I suspect she still hasn't come clean.)

Patrick Fitzgerald has added a Special Counsel Invesigations PDF on his website.

The spin part of the cycle begins:
Republicans Testing Ways to Blunt Leak Charges

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 - With a decision expected this week on possible indictments in the C.I.A. leak case, allies of the White House suggested Sunday that they intended to pursue a strategy of attacking any criminal charges as a disagreement over legal technicalities or the product of an overzealous prosecutor.

Sen. Hutchinson (R-Tex) was on one of the Sunday morning pundit shows yesterday, explaining how today, perjury wasn't really a crime.

Whereas six short years ago, she voted to impeach Pres. Clinton on a charge of perjury.

I had to cut 'way back on watching these shows, because I keep putting my foot through my TV set.

Bob: It's really interesting watching them changing their tune when it's their president involved. Or at least their party.

I wonder what makes them think that the definition of perjury has changed? Because I'm sure the law hasn't.

Indicted Libby Resigns as Cheney's Chief of Staff

WASHINGTON -- Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, one of the most trusted and powerful aides in the White House, was indicted today on charges of obstruction of justice, making false statements and perjury in a case that goes to the heart of the Bush administration's reasons for invading Iraq.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BULLETIN (AP) -- I. Lewis Libby has resigned his White House position.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The five counts were handed up by a federal grand jury, as the panel's term expired.

Rove is reportedly not out of the target zone yet. Don't throw any major celebrations.

Again with the "of the chain" stuff. If only Karl Rove were as easy to get rid of as this spam.