Free Republic

Now I read that Matt Cooper’s (the journalist who received Rove’s so-called ‘leak’) wife is Mandy Grunwald; media consultant and campaign advisor to both Bill and Hillary Clinton......

Could minor Ambassador Joe Wilson himself have been the source in blowing his own Wife's "cover" (even if she had not been a covert CIA agent at the time of the alleged "leaks")? It is distinctly possible, (though it may be unlikely that Joe Wilson himself directly was NY Times Judith Miller's source), since Joe Wilson himself evidently routinely bragged openly to strangers about her CIA employment, prior to such "cover" being "blown" in the press. Here's an example of Joe's apparently routine and open bragging about Valerie being a "CIA agent," which became known directly to me over a...

David Corn responding to Clifford May's column in National Review. Blah, blah, blah. Unconvincing. Those of you following this closely will want to read it for clues, but I'm only going to post what (to me) was the big news: Here's another fact that may interest anyone who thinks May might have a point:Number of times I've been contacted by Patrick Fitzgerald, interviewed or contacted by his investigators, and called before the grand jury: 0. What the h*ll is this? David Corn published an article only two days after Novak's column that exposed Plame in far greater detail than Novak...

An interesting post by Cliff May: "This morning, I have a piece up elsewhere on NRO showing that The Nation’s David Corn--not syndicated columnist Bob Novak--was the first to reveal that Valerie Plame was an undercover operative. It further suggests that David did so based on information provided to him by none other than Joseph C. Wilson IV. While working on that piece, I had an exchange with David and, with his permission, I thought I’d share that with you. Dear David: I have a question--one you may not be willing to answer but I’m curious so let me try:...

"The fact is, Karl Rove did not leak classified information." So said Ken Mehlman, head of the Republican Party. "I didn't know her name. I didn't leak her name." So said Karl Rove of Valerie Wilson/Plame last year on CNN. "He did not tell any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA." So said Robert Luskin, Rove's attorney, after Newsweek reported Rove had been a source for Time magazine's Matt Cooper but before Newsweek revealed a Cooper email that said Rove had told Cooper that "wilson's wife...apparently works at the agency on wmd issues." The White House may be...

Bush Gives the UN the Finger Mon Mar 7, 4:55 PM ET Add to My Yahoo! Op/Ed - The Nation David Corn If you were sitting in the Oval Office and George W. Bush asked, "Hey, tell me, who could we appoint to the UN ambassador job that would most piss off the UN and the rest of the world," your job would be quite easy. You would simply say, "That's a no-brainer, Mr. President, John Bolton." And on Monday Bush took this no-brain advice and nominated Bolton to the post, which requires Senate confirmation. Bolton is the rightwing's leading...

<p>The emails keep pouring in with this plea: Investigate Gannongate! These messages are obviously part of a campaign among liberal Internet activists who believe the controversy concerning Jeff Gannon (aka James Guckert) has not received sufficient media attention. Gannon/Guckert was a conservative reporter for a marginal news outfit who obtained a daily pass to the White House press office and who also apparently was seeking customers as a gay, military-oriented prostitute. Serious questions do remain as to why and how the Bush White House's press operation granted access to Gannon/Guckert, a correspondent for the Talon News. Should a fellow with a fake identity--and a questionable background--be allowed into presidential press conferences? Talon News was connected to GOPUSA, an organization run by Texas-based Republican activist Bobby Eberle, and Gannon/Guckert routinely asked softball questions of Bush's press secretaries during their daily White House briefings. But throughout this scandal, I have wondered if the Gannon affair may be smaller than it seems. I expressed several concerns in an earlier column. Still, in response to the emails, I decided to heed the call and look further. What I found leads me to ask--gasp!--if Gannon/Guckert, on a few but not all fronts, has received a quasi-bum rap.</p>

Here's a piece that might irritate our fellow bloggers--especially the folks who uncovered (so to speak) Jeff Gannon's secrets. I just posted it in my "Capital Games column at www.thenation.com. (If you've already seen it, scroll down to other original items on this blog, including a posting on Howard Dean's latest dumb remark.) In brief, I'm being a worrywart about the journalistic implications of the Gannon affair, and I note that two key aspects of the story--that Gannon is a gay GOP hypocrite and that Gannon was handed classified information regarding the Wilson leak investigation--are not fully supported by the...

In recent weeks, John Kerry has been conducting a public quasi-postmortem, granting media interviews in which he largely defends his performance on the presidential campaign trail. Of course--and I don't mean to be snide; I've always had a liking for this cerebral fellow who took on the CIA over the contra war--he has not identified any major mistakes committed by himself or the campaign. But to come across as credible, he has had to concede there were some errors. For instance, he acknowledges communications within the campaign sometimes were problematic. This led, according to Kerry, to the infamous episode in...

Oh, sure, David Corn -- odious, carping leftist that he is -- engages in desultory sniping, but there isn't much he can say but that Bush's SOTU speech was a huge success, and the Democrat response painful. I'm only posting a few short quotes to give the flavor. If you don't want to give The Nation the pings, you can read Corn's review ("Capital Games") at CBS here. Or don't give CBS the pings either and trust me that I'm giving you pretty much all of the (relatively) non-dreary and/or schadenfreud worthy quotes. Oh, yeah, there is one funny bit...

"You've just witnessed the beginning of the end of the Bush administration!" So shouted a Kerry aide as I stumbled out of the spin alley set up in the University of Miami's Wellness Center after the end of the first face-off between George W. Bush and John Kerry. Such exuberance was perhaps overstated but understandable. Kerry had more at stake this evening. A poor showing would have placed him in a position from which a come-from-behind victory would have been a hard-to-conceive possibility. But with a viable performance--in which he demonstrated he knows the facts and he knows his own...

Please shut up, Terry McAuliffe--that is, about George W. Bush and his missing-time in the Texas Air National Guard. I keep receiving press releases from flacks at the Democratic Party about Bush's Guard service (or lack thereof). For instance, moments before John Kerry delivered a major speech on September 20 that refocused his campaign with a blast against Bush's war in Iraq, the Democratic National Committee press office emailed me and other reporters an invitation to participate in a conference call with McAuliffe on Bush and the Guard. The call was scheduled to occur in the middle of Kerry's speech....

Chairman McAuliffe, Please Shut Up Sept. 24, 2004 This column from The Nation was written by David Corn. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please shut up, Terry McAuliffe -- that is, about George W. Bush and his missing-time in the Texas Air National Guard. I keep receiving press releases from flacks at the Democratic Party about Bush's Guard service (or lack thereof). For instance, moments before John Kerry delivered a major speech on September 20 that refocused his campaign with a blast against Bush's war in Iraq, the Democratic National Committee press office emailed me and other reporters an invitation to participate in a...

Please shut up, Terry McAuliffe--that is, about George W. Bush and his missing-time in the Texas Air National Guard. I keep receiving press releases from flacks at the Democratic Party about Bush's Guard service (or lack thereof). For instance, moments before John Kerry delivered a major speech on September 20 that refocused his campaign with a blast against Bush's war in Iraq, the Democratic National Committee press office emailed me and other reporters an invitation to participate in a conference call with McAuliffe on Bush and the Guard. The call was scheduled to occur in the middle of Kerry's speech....

Can't Rich Lowry debate? David Corn is creaming him. Get with it Rich!!!!

"I can't believe they're doing it again, and getting away with it." So said a Republican strategist not keen on George W. Bush, referring to the attack being waged against John Kerry. "The Bush gang did it to John McCain four years ago. They're doing it now to Kerry. They're like the mob." Moments earlier, as delegates filed into Madison Square Garden for Night Three of the GOP convention, I encountered several Republicans who had worked on the McCain campaign in 2000 during the South Carolina primary. It was there that pro-Bush forces mounted the foulest political battle of recent...

New York ON A THURSDAY they had the book party. It was a simple affair: just family, friends, coworkers, and journalists. They came to Ambassador Joseph Wilson's house, nestled in the ritzy Palisades neighborhood of Northwest Washington, to celebrate the release of his first book, The Politics of Truth. One thing Joe Wilson keeps track of is his "Notoriety Quotient," or the amount of attention he receives from the media. And that Thursday it seemed to be on the rise. For the past week The Politics of Truth was mentioned in the same breath as Ron Suskind's The Price of...

Debating the President's WarBy Jamie GlazovFrontPageMagazine.com | February 17, 2004 Frontpage Debate has the pleasure of welcoming, from the Left, David Corn, the Washington editor of The Nation magazine and the author of The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception; from the Right, we are joined by Joel Mowbray, a syndicated columnist and the author of Dangerous Diplomacy: How the State Department Threatens America's Security. Frontpage Magazine: Mr. Corn and Mr. Mowbray, welcome to Frontpage Debate. I think a good way to begin would be discussing the recent developments in Iraq. How do you see...

Trust Buster By Godfrey Hodgson, THE LIES OF GEORGE W. BUSH Mastering the Politics of Deception By David Corn Crown. 337 pp. $24 George Washington, at least according to Parson Weems, never told a lie. Subsequent presidents, as David Corn admits, have not always lived up to his standard. In a rich gallery of examples, we remember Lyndon Johnson (the Gulf of Tonkin), Richard Nixon ("I am not a crook"), Ronald Reagan ("I did not trade arms for hostages"), George H.W. Bush ("Read my lips: no new taxes") and, of course, Bill Clinton ("I did not have sexual relations with...

Is the President a Pathological Liar? Bush’s unhealthy relationship with reality by David Corn It was a set-up question. Conservative radio talk-show host Michael Medved was trying to bait me, to push me into saying something so out of whack about the commander in chief that I would destroy my own credibility before the audience of his nationally syndicated show. It was a ruse I’ve become quite familiar with in recent weeks, since I published a book demurely titled The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception. In scores of media interviews, right-wing hosts have pressed me...