The Sgt. Shultz Defense

"I know nothing. I see nothing." I can't recall. Give me the job. This seems to be a Bush trend.

The Other March to Quebec

Will be out in December and with an identical page count as my book. I'll be reading oh so closely.

Hapless Toad

"The Department of the Interior determined that the plan would endanger the arroyo southwestern toad, which Judge Roberts would later call -- in a light turn of phrase that is one of his traits -- 'a hapless toad that, for reasons of its own, lives its entire life in California.'"

Many of us Californians feel "hapless." Discussion is here.

The court denied en banc a rehearing of the case on the behalf of the petitioner in this case the developer. Roberts dissented e.g. in favor of the developer on the grounds of inconsistency with a supreme court precedent, but I don't see the comparison in the cases stare decisis he cites. Save for Judge Sentelle neither did the DC Circuit. The thought process being such a toad is not commerically viable, but fences are. I get it just fine.

Roberts and the Toad

Roberts apparently voted against the Arroyo toad in one of his cases. Since these creatures are my business, and the concessions needed to protect them are minute, I find those who think it's a no brainer to be pious and self-interested. A toad here, a frog there and there goes the neghborhood. Actual case to come.

Slam at Amazon

For the fool's who slam-review books without reading them based on personal disagreements with me online take heed. Sometimes criticism like this: "Descriptions of the beautiful areas are adjective-free" aren't what they intended.

"But what's most shocking about the book is its lean, adjective-free style. The Sun Also Rises is Hemingway's masterpiece." David Laskin

I'll take that similarity any day.

The Evidence

On Roberts is here.

Evil Cabal

The Federalist Society is only such if you consider wingnut whackjob ideas not right for the country. Is that evil? I doubt it, personally, stupid sure, and possibly scary in a McCarthyite sort of way but then Manuel Miranda in the WSJ coined the term himself? Hint: it wasn't the Democrats cited by Mr. Miranda. Typical wingerville script: find disagreement; insert evil theme; declare conspiracy by the opposition. Sorry Charlie. This fish is the Barracuda that it appears to be: Roberts is a Bush family crony and a Federalist Society alter boy. Defend it based on ideas not name calling Mr. Miranda. It's the ideas stupid.

Plame (cont'd)

"Certainly O'Rourke never bothered to read the Intelligence Identities Protection Act," writes Joe Conason in Salon, "which covers any agent who operated covertly within five years before her identity was unlawfully exposed. And despite his exciting sojourns overseas, it doesn't seem to have occurred to him that whether he knows (or thinks he knows) the identity of CIA station officials working under "official cover" in some countries, he still wouldn't have a clue about those working under "nonofficial cover" (like Valerie Wilson). Perhaps neither O'Rourke nor his editors at the Weekly Standard understand the difference between the two kinds of agents, but then basic ignorance never discourages verbal flatulence at that fine publication."

Facts never get in the way of any conservative conclusion. Even in retrospect. That's the true marvel of it in a sad deluded sort of way.

Oh Yeah Ben?

Plame CIA classmate Larry Johnson refuting Stein and his parrot Sen. Roberts of Kansas. What's the matter with Kansas? They elect idiots for one thing. That's bad for America. It makes us appear stupid to the world.

Ben Stein's OP-ED

So according to the gushing worship service to George Bush on CBS (the liberal network) Ben Stein warns Bush not to be like Nixon, whose only crime according to Stein, was offering up aids to the liberal wolves. Apparently he did nothing else wrong. To Stein, Valerie Plame was a desk jockey and not covert. Never mind the documentation by the CIA itself. Who can trust them? This is the type of conservative blind whack job ideology we've come to know and marvel at. Facts have no meaning in this Private(north)Idaho, where Stein bought a house with the rest of the right-wing nutjobs. You're home.

Cross Town Traffic

Richard Reeves is on the mark. I've lived in LA since 1996.It's so bad now you can't get anywhere. So I don't try. Christ, in the last year it was hard to get from Sunland to Northridge on the 210 and 118 freeways. In LA this is considered the "sticks." So, I'm working in Idaho for the summer. Hey, someone has to do it.

Chinese Economics

Courtesy of reporter extrordinaire Greg Palast :

Yes, China is adopting elements of "capitalism." And that's the ugly part: real estate speculation in Shanghai making millionaires of Communist party boss relatives and bank shenanigans worthy of a Neil Bush.

It is not the Guangdong skyscrapers and speculative bubble which allows China to sell us $162 billion more goods a year than we sell them. It is that China's government, by rejecting free-market fundamentalism, can easily conquer American markets where protection is now deemed passe.

And that is why the yuan has kicked the dollar's butt.

America's only response is to have Alan Greenspan push up real interest rates so we can buy back our own dollars the Chinese won in the export game. The domestic result: US wages drifting down to Mexican maquiladora levels.

Am I praising China? Forget about it. This is one evil dictatorship which jails union organizers and beats, shackles and tortures those who don't kowtow to the wishes of Chairman Rob -- Wal-Mart chief Robson Walton. (Funny how Mr. Bush never mentions the D-word, Democracy, to our Chinese suppliers.)

Class dismissed.

He's a Democrat!

Joe Wilson that is. Officials in the White House at the time report this week that "Karl Rove was so adamant about smearing CIA agent Valerie Plame's husband that even White House aides were taken aback. When one asked him why, Rove replied simply: 'He's a Democrat.'"

The paragraph identifying her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the "secret" level, two sources said. The CIA classifies as "secret" the names of officers whose identities are covert, according to former senior agency officials.

Anyone reading that paragraph should have been aware that it contained secret information

Reports the Washington Post from the State Dept. memo reportedly the source of the information.

Well, anyone but Rove. When you're the president's right-hand Rasputin it's SOP.

The Bench

What we need to know about a nominee for the Supreme Court is what their judicial reasoning entails. What logic path do they use to arrive at their opinions? Because that's what they are: a personal opinion based on the law and the facts. Some with certain ideological leanings suspend logic for belief. It has been my experience that conservatives do this by definition, or default if you will. They favor some facts over others that carry more weight, yet go against their beliefs. This will be tough for America now, as we have a battle over ideas and logic paths now. "Legislating from the bench" is any decision a conservative doesn't like. All decisons at this level amount to a legislation by proxy.

And the Nominee Is?

A wingnut of course. With the wingnut of all time as president why should anyone expect anything else. I sure didn't. Let the battle begin.

Church/state? Environmental regs? Reproductive rights? His thin record show he's against them. Regression is the conservative credo. Going back to Dred Scott and the like is not the prescription for the future. Protect the rich only and toss the rest is the wrong course. Souter strikes me as the right direction. This guy is a plant; A federalist society golden boy; a recent judge with no record to speak of. The agenda is clear.

Matt Cooper Reports

Time correspondent Matthew Cooper said he told a grand jury last week that Rove told him the woman worked at the "agency," or CIA, on weapons of mass destruction issues, and ended the call by saying "I've already said too much."

No amount of up-is-downism spin from puppetmaster Ken Mehlman can undo this. Sqirm you worms squirm.

Rove's World

Mr. Rove also understands, better than anyone else in American politics, the power of smear tactics. Attacks on someone who contradicts the official line don't have to be true, or even plausible, to undermine that person's effectiveness. All they have to do is get a lot of media play, and they'll create the sense that there must be something wrong with the guy.

I mean he studied under Donald Segreti for Christ's sake. Hell, lies work on the vulnerable American public. They always have.

Vanity Publicity

Some warrior anti-pod publisher folks are up in arms about this mainstream reference to Publishamerica. After reading it I'm not. The reviewer from the Detroit Free Press is simply using them and authorhouse as examples of a growing pod slushpile dished to reviewers by the authors. We know the vanity publishers wouldn't be bothered. The moral is this: when anyone can do it, the value drops to next to nothing.

Plame Leak II

Larry Johnson doesn't buy the lying wingnut crap that Mrs. Wilson wasn't covert for years a priori. The followers of Bush are akin to a cult: No amount of truth serum is enough.

From today's LA Times:
"Although Rove was an advisor ostensibly working behind the scenes, his name continued to be associated with public controversy. During George H.W. Bush's second presidential campaign, Rove was fired from the campaign team because of suspicions that he had leaked information to columnist Robert Novak — the same columnist who first reported Plame's CIA role in 2003, citing anonymous administration sources."

Print-Non-Demand

Well the whiners reading Pod-dy-mouth bombarded her with e-mails requesting she kill the comments. Since I was the focus of their collective ire, I suppose I should thank her, but I won't. The trolls who attacked me there were relentless and the rest clueless and she did nothing. She's right: it's better not to read them. What's certain is no one ever will in print that's for sure. Onward indeed. Good riddance. Think they'll glean anything from this article? I doubt it.

Follow the Leaks

Says Journalist Robert Parry. Boy howdy. With the Bushes it always comes down to smear all comers then hide the trail. Doesn't look like that's going to work this time.

Punching Judy

Richard Reeves says what I've been thinking for sometime on this bizzare story. Why not Novak? Because he's with them.

They still tell stories here in Sag Harbor about David Frothingham, the first editor of the first newspaper here, The Long Island Herald. He was an enemy of Alexander Hamilton and of President John Adams. One day, so they say, he was dragged away and deported, never to be heard from again. Actually, the paper was shut down under the Alien and Sedition Act of 1798 for "malicious writing about the government of the United States." Judy Miller is just the best known of the ordinary citizens being sent to jail for malicious thinking about our emerging police state.

Rove Nailed

The first leak about valerie Plame came from Karl Rove. David Corn has it here.

Terrorism

Contrast this academic thesis that most of Al Queda's suicide attackers are from Persian Gulf countries where America has a military presence as the root cause of the terrorism, including 9-11, with the hick thematic emotive blindness of country singer Darryl Worley author of Have You Forgotten. "They said don't worry about Bin Laden," Worley sings. They did? Oh contraire Darryl. "They" said get Bin Laden and not Hussein who had nothing to do with this. This is the kind of disconnect that illustrates how "red state" Americans have no clue about what's going on here and abroad. They'll get it later rather than sooner I fear.

River of Not-Many-Return

Spring Chinook salmon that is. I fished the upper Salmon River today and caught a fiesty nine-inch steelhead. Then I stopped at the hatchery and took a look at the vestigial salmon run. 650 total fish returned from the ocean. Of those about 150 were wild self-reproducing fish. There are extremely low numbers that reflect a population on life support. Dams, over-grazed spawning habitat in the Sawtooth Valley are the culprits. Fixing it is our job as knowledgeable scientists and citizens who are stewards of the Earth. We do it despite our leadership, who caters to the destruction factors. This can change.

Endangered Act

"The law, and our environment, deserve far better than the guerrilla warfare with which the opponents of the Endangered Species Act have tried to undermine it."

As a fish biologist I highly concur with the editorial.

PBS Liberal Bias Report Flawed

Ya think? This is a generic wingnut take on things, people and subjects that don't reflect their own extreme bias. The lens is cloudy alright but it's not PBS that has the problem.

Perfect Killer

Looks like another blockbuster from Lewis Perdue: Perfect Killer Can't wait to read it.

More Science Shenanigans

At NOAA again.

Hemingway's Final Home

Is indeed impossible to see from anywhere in Ketchum, Idaho today. There are so many mansions built across the river that everything to the West is obscured except Mt. Baldy the ski area. The level of development is unreal. Massive money. The Hemingway House is to the left all by itself on 13 empty acres. Now THAT is historic in its own right. May it remain ever so. It would qualify for the National Register of Historic Places on two counts; construction and significant person. It looks like this.

Plame Leak

For Cooper and Miller (the latter never wrote story on this topic) it's Karl Rove, according to Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC, and producer of The West Wing. Who knows who it was for the perpetually immune Robert Novac, the author of the "real" story. I guess he's not liberal so not under scrutiny. Christ.

Publishing Advice

JIm Butcher provides this axiom and it's a good one:

Here's the secret of how to get published: keep going.

There is an enormous weedout factor for wannabe writers. The good news is that you aren't competing with every published schmoe out there. You're only up against the rest of the wannabes, and it's like the old axiom about being chased by a grizzly bear. You don't have to run faster than the bear to get away. You just have to run faster than the guy next to you.

Keep trying when the guy next to you quits in disgust. Keep writing when the girl next to you sobs and throws her manuscripts into the fire. Keep conducting yourself like a professional, and you'll get someone to believe that you are one.

If you're lucky, maybe even yourself.

Troll Policy

Anonymous trolls who come here only to hurl personal insults heed this warning: You and your ilk are not welcome. I will squash you like the insects you are. Get out and stay out. Speech was never free. It had to earned.

War on Science

Chris Mooney has a new book coming up and it's sure to be a good one. Sure he's a young Yalie but he gets it.

Bush League Science

Birmingham, Alabama journalist and blogger extrordinaire Glynn Wilson writes on the scientific shillery by the Bush administration. He credits me for a contribution to the topic, which I follow closely since 1) it's my business, and 2) I work for the Bush administration. Boy that's scary. Wilson broke the Bush Air National Guard story last year. He's the real deal. Salute.

It's O'Connor

Let the games begin.