Free Republic

Weeks ago, I obsessed on a political point: would President Barack Obama mobilize his millions of voters to apply political pressure on Washington to pass his policy initiatives. At that time, the stimulus package was the top item on his agenda, and the White House was not doing much to activate the Obama millions to boost support for the legislation in Congress. As the stimulus fight proceeded, Organizing for America, the spin-off of the Obama presidential campaign, did zap out an email to its list of 13 million and asked those supporters to hold house parties to discuss the recovery...

David Corn seems to have had an allergic reaction to Gov. Sarah Palin's op-ed in favor of opening up a small portion of ANWR for drilling. Corn opines: This was his (sic) first stab at being a serious policy person since her unsuccessful vice-presidential bid. And it was swing and a big miss--for multiple reasons.The first "reason" Corn gives is that the governor's opinion piece was published, not by a newspaper from New York or D.C., but the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. To liberal elitists of Corn's ilk, nothing worthwhile can come from flyover country. He must believe that the issue and...

The more things change, the more they stay . . . well, you know. And looking at President-elect Barack Obama's top appointments, it's easy to wonder whether convention has triumphed over change -- and centrists over progressives. A quick run-down: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who supported the Iraq war until she initiated her presidential bid, has been handed the Cabinet's big plum: secretary of state. And Bush's second defense secretary, Robert Gates, will become Obama's first defense secretary. The Obama foreign policy adviser regarded as the most liberal in his inner circle, Susan E. Rice, has been picked for the...

The Obama transition office announced on Wednesday that the president-elect will send two representatives to meet with delegates attending the G-20 economic summit being held this weekend: former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, a Democrat, and former Congressman Jim Leach, a Republican. The pair, according to a press release, will hold "unofficial meetings to seek input from visiting delegations on behalf of the President-elect and Vice President-elect." Afterward, Albright and Leach will brief Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Leach is both a curious and obvious choice. First, the obvious: he's a Republican who led the Republicans for Obama effort during...

Washington Dispatch: The Iraq general's testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee was predictable: progress is real, we must stay the course. But committee Democrats missed an opportunity to undercut the White House story. By David Corn April 8, 2008 As General David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday and pitched a story of success in Iraq, a news update flashed on the television screen: Sadr threatens to end cease-fire. Meaning that civil war between the Shiite-dominated government of Baghdad and the Shiite movement led by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr could...

Now that he has his moment in the political spotlight, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee does not want his days at the pulpit to be scrutinized. As Huckabee has surged to the front of the Republican pack in Iowa, his religious views have drawn media and voter attention. After all, Huckabee, a former Baptist pastor, has been campaigning as a "Christian leader." But he has vacillated on how far to interject faith into politics. At an early debate, he indicated he does not believe in evolution, but at a more recent debate, when he was asked by Wolf Blitzer if...

"Why did this hearing, er, er, er..." I was approaching an aide to a Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which had minutes earlier completed a three-hour session with Attorney General John Ashcroft, and I was trying to ask a question politely. "Suck?" the aide said. I nodded. There was no denying it. This much-ballyhooed face-off between Ashcroft and Senate Democrats was more fizzle than sizzle. The Democrats had called Ashcroft before the committee to discuss the civil liberties implications of various Bush antiterrorism initiatives, most notably military tribunals for suspected terrorists who are not US citizens, the ...

What Valerie Plame Really Did at the CIA (excerpt)Her specific position at the CIA is revealed for the first time in a new book, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, by the author of this article and Newsweek's Michael Isikoff. The book chronicles the inside battles within the CIA, the White House, the State Department and Congress during the run-up to the war. Its account of Wilson's CIA career is mainly based on interviews with confidential CIA sources. The Novak column triggered a scandal and a criminal investigation. At issue was whether...

Plamegate: 25 Lingering QuestionsBy Fedora (The first four questions and answers below were previously posted as Was Plame Covert? A Review of Isikoff and Corn's Hubris.) I recently finished reviewing Michael Isikoff and David Corn’s Hubris (New York: Crown Publishers, 2006) to see what it adds to the current state of knowledge in the Plamegate investigation. Here I will present my findings in the form of a list of questions and answers focusing on loose ends and other points of interest in the case. I will list the questions first so that individual readers may more easily scroll down to...

David Corn of "The Nation" was just on Fox, scolding viewers for trying to enjoy the holidays while we are at war in Iraq. Picking-up on the New York Times' latest rant, Corn glared into the camera and grimly reiterated the message from "Putz" Sulzberger and his staff of leftist trust babies: 'How dare you shop and enjoy the holidays while we are involved in a war of which we at the Times personally disapprove?' LOL! And "Don't Tread on Me!"

John Aravosis is yapping up a storm, and letting out details he doesn’t quite comprehend are (a) not common knowledge and (b) implicate him as working to orchestrate Foleygate in the media. It is important to note all the activity in July of 2006 regarding the non-salacious emails between Foley and a Page from Louisianna (aka, the LA Page). I have done numerous posts on these emails (the last one here with back referencing links). Reader TopSecretK9 as reminded me of this Aravosis comment when he admitted in October that he had the Foley Emails in July and mentioned he...

The publication of Hubris is filled with irony for David Corn, Washington editor of the left-wing Nation magazine. He was present at the creation of the Valerie Plame "scandal," which the enemies of George W. Bush hoped could bring down a president. Nobody was more responsible for bloating this episode. Yet Corn is coauthor of a book that has had the effect of killing the story. Thanks to Corn's intrepid coauthor, Newsweek investigative reporter Michael Isikoff, Hubris definitively revealed then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage as my source that Joseph Wilson's wife, Valerie, worked for the CIA and suggested her...

From a List to a GOP Civil War? Copies of The List (see below) have been sent by gay politicos to a variety of social conservative groups that look to the Republican Party to make their religious right dreams come true. The recipients include the Christian Coalition, Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council, the Alliance for Marriage, Concerned Women of America, the Eagle Forum, and the Southern Baptist Convention. Officials at most of these groups have had something to say about homosexuality and gay rights in the wake of the Mark Foley scandal. What's the point? The senders--gay...

Was Plame Covert? A Review of Isikoff and Corn's HubrisBy Fedora I recently finished reviewing Michael Isikoff and David Corn’s Hubris (New York: Crown Publishers, 2006) to see what it adds to the current state of knowledge in the Plamegate investigation. Here I will present my findings in the form of a list of questions and answers: 1. What did Valerie Wilson aka Valerie Plame do at CIA?According to Isikoff and Corn (12-13, 283-286), after Plame graduated from the CIA’s training program, she began working with the CIA Directorate of Operations’ European Division in the Cyrus/Greece/Turkey area in the late...

September 28, 2006This Is What Waterboarding Looks Like As Congress has debated legislation that would set up military tribunals and govern the questioning of suspected terrorists (whom the Bush administration would like to be able to detain indefinitely), at issue has been what interrogation techniques can be employed and whether information obtained during torture can be used against those deemed unlawful enemy combatants. One interrogation practice central to this debate is waterboarding. It's usually described in the media in a matter-of-fact manner. The Washington Post simply referred to waterboarding a few days ago as an interrogation measure that "simulates drowning."...

There’s also this to add to Victoria Toensing’s persuasive response to David Corn’s tortured logic: Corn does indeed begin his now notorious piece with a question: Did senior Bush officials blow the cover of a US intelligence officer working covertly in a field of vital importance to national security—and break the law—in order to strike at a Bush administration critic and intimidate others? It sure looks that way … But he doesn’t end the piece with a question. He ends it with an accusaiton and a slander:: The Wilson smear was a thuggish act. Bush and his crew abused and...

"When Richard Armitage finally acknowledged last week he was my source three years ago in revealing Valerie Plame Wilson as a CIA employee, the former deputy secretary of state's interviews obscured what he really did," Bob Novak claims in a column set for Thursday release. Novak, attempting to set the reocrd straight writes: "First, Armitage did not, as he now indicates, merely pass on something he had heard and that he 'thought' might be so. Rather, he identified to me the CIA division where Mrs. Wilson worked, and said flatly that she recommended the mission to Niger by her husband,...

In the spring of 2002 Dick Cheney made one of his periodic trips to CIA headquarters. Officers and analysts were summoned to brief him on Iraq. Paramilitary specialists updated the Vice President on an extensive covert action program in motion that was designed to pave the way to a US invasion. Cheney questioned analysts about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. How could they be used against US troops? Which Iraqi units had chemical and biological weapons? He was not seeking information on whether Saddam posed a threat because he possessed such weapons. His queries, according to a CIA officer...

On July 14, 2003, a Robert Novak column in The Washington Post outed the CIA-agent wife of vociferous Bush administration critic, Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson. Thus was born the "Plame Affair" which quickly became a morality tale of how an out of control Bush Administration would do anything to justify its war in Iraq. A mere three days later, journalist David Corn, summarized the allegations that would color reporting on the Iraq War for the next three years and eventually lead to the indictment of a top aide to the vice president for lying to a grand jury: ((((THE OLD...

August 29, 2006, 8:24 a.m. Rove and Libby: Hubris Authors Never Contacted UsThe CIA-leak investigation book -- without two key figures By Byron York Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, the new book by the Nation’s David Corn and Newsweek’s Michael Isikoff, is the most in-depth single account yet of the CIA-leak investigation. But representatives of two central figures in the case, former Cheney chief of staff Lewis Libby and top White House aide Karl Rove, say the authors never got in touch with them, much less interviewed them, for the...