Wednesday, January 02, 2008 - Posts
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I am not sure Mukasey had any choice, Emily. The op-ed in today’s New York Times by Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton, the co-chairmen of the Sept. 11 commission, was a clarion call for just such an investigation. Here you have the bipartisan pronouncement that, in no uncertain terms, both the CIA and the White House obstructed the commission’s work and lied about it: “[G]overnment officials decided not to inform a lawfully constituted body, created by Congress and the president, to investigate one the [sic] greatest tragedies to confront this country. We call that obstruction.”
Unlike so many of the other Bush-related scandals that have seemed to just dry up or blow over, the destruction of the torture tapes looks more and more like a serious criminal act. If the White House and the CIA deliberately lied to and concealed evidence from the Sept. 11 commission, as well as various trial courts, John Durham, tasked with heading up this investigation, will be looking at very serious charges.
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A couple of weeks ago, I criticized Attorney General Michael Mukasey for stonewalling Congress over its investigation of the destroyed CIA tapes, and for apparent flaws in the structure of the internal Justice Department probe. I'm feeling better about him today, because the AG has opened a criminal investigation into the tapes (until now, what was going on was a preliminary look into whether there should be such a criminal investigation). Mukasey has appointed a Connecticut federal prosecutor, John Durham, to take the lead in the case, which should mean greater independence from DoJ. These are good moves—both for finding out what actually happened (the NYT has gotten that off to an impressive start) and for restoring the department's Gonzales-battered integrity.
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With all due respect to Slate's cover pieces today, and Jodi Kantor's piece in the NYT, I am not moved by all the violin playing for poor disenfranchised Iowa voters. Yes, the caucus set-up stinks if you can't get out of working the evening shift or are out of state or too sick to get out of bed. But come on, the rest of you people, go caucus! I know it means leaving your house on a cold evening, and that it can take a couple of hours for Democrats. But the campaigns are offering food, babysitting, and snow shoveling for your driveways. They've spent tens of millions of dollars courting you—as much as $150 per caucus-goer on ads for Democrats and $105 for Republicans—and now the whole country is waiting to see which suitor you'll pick. All of this rebounds to your state's benefit. And yet the last time both parties held caucuses, in 2000, all you could manage was a measly 6 percent turnout of eligible voters?!? Come on, folks, if you deserve to go first because of your great civic tradition, then get out there and show us you've got one. Especially if you live in Eldora, the precinct I'm planning to cover Thursday night.
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Via Talking Points Memo, some video of Hillary Clinton arguing this morning that caucusing is particularly hard for women—who see voting as something private and are uneasy standing up and talking about their candidate of choice. It sounds some familiar notes—about women and public speaking and women and politics in general—but I wonder if it’s true. And even if it is true, I wonder if it helps Clinton to say it?
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