Tweety

I always wondered why Atrios and others called Chris Matthews "Tweety".

Quick, Enemy of the Good

I see that Bush is planning on nominating someone to the Supreme Court more quickly than he intended. This is probably due, in part, to the flap over Karl Rover outing a CIA agent.

Hurring this process can't be such a great idea for Bush. I hope they have the same person vetting the justice nominee as they had checking up on Bernard Kerik.

And then they push the vettor to hurry up.

A Voice of the CIA

If you've wondered what a rank-and-file CIA person thinks of the Plame affair, you should stop in at TPMCafe.com, where ex-CIA agent Larry Johnson is a guest blogger. He currently has three posts up, and they're all informative both about the facts of this case and the larger issues of how Rove has hurt national security. The link above may not last long so I'll link to all three of his posts below, in reverse chronological order:

1. Mr Bush, Have You No Shame?
   
2. The Intelligence Challenge: Can We Trust Our President? [The meat of this post is a statement made in a Capital Hill hearing in October 2003 made by several people who worked with Plame at the CIA.]
   
3. The Big Lie About Valerie Plame
   

He shoots down most of the Republican echo chamber talking points, including "Wilson said Cheney ordered him to go to Niger" [False.] "But Saddam was trying to buy uranium from Niger!" [False.] "Plame was the one who sent Wilson to Niger!" [False.].

In addition to Johnson's contributions to correcting falsehoods in Republican talking points, it's also helpful to get a feeling for how CIA agents past and present feel about the whole disgusting business. Not happy in the least.

Highly recommended in addition to your other Plame-related readings. And, to top it all off, he's a registered Republican.

Hah!

Uggabugga has a decent bumper sticker idea. But an anonymous commenter there has an even better one:

"Who do I have to blow to get a president impeached?"

What Crappy Idiots

One major thing wrong with the Iraq debacle was the utter incompetence of the Bush Administration, as evidenced by the nutcases they sent over there.

From a Larry Diamond OpEd, excerpted at TAPPED:

TAPPED: June 2005 Archives:

One young political appointee (a 24-year-old Ivy League graduate) argued that Iraq should not enshrine judicial review in its constitution because it might lead to the legalization of abortion.

Make sure to populate the US people in Iraq with those who think preventing abortion is the most important thing in the world.

Infuriating and idiotic.

Someone had a good putdown in reply, but a good retort doesn't make up for those dead and maimed due to idiocy like the above.

A much more senior Iraqi interlocutor (a widely experienced Iraqi-American lawyer) became so exasperated with the young man's audacity that he finally challenged him:

'You must have thoroughly studied the history of the British occupation of Iraq.'

'Yes, I did,' the young American replied proudly. 'I thought so,' said the Iraqi, 'because you seem determined to repeat every one of their mistakes.'

You can't trust these idiots to do anything important. Except, I guess, have an echo chamber that gets idiots elected.