Don't miss Arianna's post on Judy Miller. Follow up with "Miller's Big Secret" by Dan Froomkin. Then, all together: "WTF?"

 

[Judy Miller update: Was Judy holding out for assurance Fitzgerald wasn't going to pursue her bogus WMD claims?]

 

Now, if you missed Hunter's brilliant rant "Bush Supporters of the Far Right: Cries from the Lake of Fire" read it right now so that you can follow the rest of this post.

 

The rightie slammed by Hunter in the rant rebutted by whining about nasty remarks made about him "by Kossacks."  Here's the follow up, or the rebuttal of the rebuttal, by RNinNC:

[The rightie] has listed some UGLY comments that he supposedly culled from responses to Hunter's diary. Problem is, I skimmed ALL of the responses, and found none of them. I looked in Hidden Comments, I even tried to search the comments of the User's he cited. Only one of them even existed, and he had no comments listed on his user page.

In rebuttal to the rebuttal to the rebuttal, the rightie says he didn't say the ugly comments were posted on Daily Kos. The comments were, he clarified, received in email. However, in his original post he said the comments were made "by Kossacks," meaning members of the regular Daily Kos posting community, a charge the rightie cannot prove. And the rebuttal post was titled "From Daily Kos, With Love." You see the problem.

 

And ain't nothin' in the nasty comments that were any nastier than comments I've received from righties. Considering that righties occasionally get my phone number and scream obscenities at me over the phone, I'd say I've had it worse.

 

Conclusion: Righties are weenies.

 

More recently, the weenie complained that people on Air America Radio were threatening to beat him up. You can listen to audioclips on the weenie's site and giggle. But remember that Hunter's original post came about because this same weenie threatened a civil war and said Democrats had better start accepting Republican rule "before things get really bad." And on Air America, Mike Malloy said the weenies needed to be responded to in kind.

 

Proving once again that weenies can dish it out, but they can't take it.

 

And notice something else? At no time did the weenie attempt a substantive rebuttal of what Hunter wrote. He just started whining about how mean the ol' bad "Kossacks" were.

 

(Weenies--try to complete the following sentence: "If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the ________________.")

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His indictment is an indictment of the whole way the Republican Party operates. The central theme of DeLay's tenure has been to break down barriers to greater corporate influence in American politics.

Some of these barriers are mere social norms. It once was considered completely beyond the pale to, say, threaten political retribution against corporations that give donations and lobbying jobs to the other party. DeLay and his "K Street Project" made this a regular practice.

Some of these barriers are formal rules that lack the force of law. The House of Representatives forbids its members from accepting trips from lobbyists. DeLay regularly accepted such trips, financed through transparent front groups.

And some of these barriers are actual laws. Texas law forbids the use of corporate money in elections. DeLay allegedly masterminded a scheme whereby corporations would donate money earmarked for Texas races to the Republican National Committee, which would then pour the money into the Texas races.

The central vision of DeLayism is of a political system whereby business gains almost total control over the Republican agenda, and in return the GOP gains unlimited financial influence over the electoral process.

The indictment of Tom DeLay challenges a system of power. It is a blow against a national political machine that blurs the lines between parties, interest groups and the relentless pursuit of political money.

Defenders of politicians under attack typically say, no matter what the abuse is: "But everybody does it." That excuse does not work here. DeLay, who was forced to step down as House majority leader, was a pioneer in something entirely new: a fully integrated political apparatus that linked Republican Party committees, lobbyists, fundraisers, corporations, ideological organizations and the process of governing itself.

Last year, conservatives fumed when the Motion Picture Assn. of America hired Bill Clinton's former Agriculture secretary, Dan Glickman, to run its Washington office. Afterward, Republicans removed tax-relief provisions for the film industry from a pending tax bill. Later, Glickman hired prominent Republicans, including a senior aide to House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert.

Many of the Republicans who have taken lobbying and trade association jobs recently owe their positions to GOP benefactors in Congress. About two dozen former DeLay staffers work as lobbyists. In these jobs, they often have access to funds they can use as donations to campaigns and conservative causes. The corporate world also supplies contacts in congressional districts that can help Republican candidates with grass-roots campaigns.

The Bush administration has sought to take advantage of these ties in building unified support for judicial nominees, the president's Social Security proposal and, more recently, immigration overhaul — issues that in the past did not draw much trade association activity. DeLay and other GOP leaders used business contacts to push for passage in 2003 of the new Medicare prescription drug benefit, which was a priority of the pharmaceutical industry.

E.J. Dionne explains,

The corporations that forked over the cash to DeLay's PAC did so not because their hearts were filled with affection for those particular Texas legislative candidates but because they recognized DeLay's power over federal legislation. It put an innovative gloss on one of the oldest rules in politics: Power begets money, which begets more power, which begets more money.

That's why this case cannot be viewed apart from other aspects of the DeLay empire. He extended his influence by muscling lobbying firms to hire Republicans of his choosing and to ostracize Democrats. DeLay's majority happily invited lobbyists in to help write bills. The Medicare prescription drug benefit is far more expensive than it has to be because of big concessions to drug companies and HMOs. Tax bills are littered with very specific loopholes to benefit very specific interests.

One can imagine corporate boards having the final word even over matters of war and peace, with wars approved or denied depending on their profit potential, not on whether national security requires them. (Hey, wait a minute ...)

The Kool-Aiders will defend this mess as "pro-business." But when big-money corporations can pay Congress to crank out "boutique" legislation, it turns the Right's beloved rhetoric about "free markets" and "invisible hands" on its head. In this case, the only reason the "hand" is invisible is that it operates in the dark. I don't think that's what Adam Smith had in mind.

See also:  "The Dispensable Man"; "Immoral Majority"; "The Hammer Falls."

Update: Good resource at The Left Coaster--"Tom DeLay's Culture of Corruption and Criminality."

Update update: This is from the New York Daily News:

President Bush hit the political panic button yesterday, calling a strategy session with top Republicans to salvage their shredded agenda.

A day after House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was indicted, and with Hurricane Katrina and the Iraq war hanging over him, Bush convened the summit with new House Majority Leader Roy Blunt, House Speaker Dennis Hastert, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist and a few others.

"The Republican Congress is united," a defensive Bush spokesman Scott McClellan said earlier. "We are going to press ahead on important priorities."

But the leaders, who ordinarily speak to the press after such confabs, ducked out a White House side door.

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Mr. Fitzgerald has said that obtaining Ms. Miller's testimony was one of the last remaining objectives of his inquiry, and the deal with Ms. Miller suggests that the prosecutor may soon bring the long-running investigation to an end. It is unknown whether prosecutors will charge anyone in the Bush administration with wrongdoing.

The agreement that led to Ms. Miller's release followed intense negotiations between Ms. Miller; her lawyer, Robert Bennett; Mr. Libby's lawyer, Joseph Tate; and Mr. Fitzgerald. The talks began with a telephone call from Mr. Bennett to Mr. Tate in late August. Ms. Miller spoke with Mr. Libby by telephone earlier this month as their lawyers listened, according to people briefed on the matter. It was then that Mr. Libby told Ms. Miller that she had his personal and voluntary waiver.

But the discussions were at times strained, with Mr. Libby and Mr. Tate asserting that they communicated their voluntary waiver to Ms. Miller's lawyers more than year ago, according to those briefed on the case. Mr. Libby wrote to Ms. Miller in mid-September, saying that he believed her lawyers understood that his waiver was voluntary.

Others involved in the case have said that Ms. Miller did not understand that the waiver had been freely given and did not accept it until she had heard from him directly.

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Roberts is icumen in,

Lhude sing goddamn.

His second-term agenda is in shambles. His spending plan for Hurricane Katrina has torn his party apart. Support for his increasingly unpopular war is eroding. His political capital is spent.

And now he's lost his Hammer.

 For President Bush, who was already seeing his influence wane in Congress, yesterday's indictment of Rep. Tom DeLay -- forcing the iron-fisted House majority leader to step down from his leadership post -- was an enormous blow.

 Furthermore, DeLay's troubles add to the sense that the Republican Party and the White House are under siege, plagued by missteps and ethics scandals.

Froomkin goes on to provide an overview of the many "GOP Is Screwing the Pooch" stories in newspapers today. There's one piece he missed, though, by WaPo's Terry Neal.  Neal advises Tom DeLay and his supporters not to rely to much on the "my enemies are out to get me" strategy. 

Buried under a sea of political scandal in the late 1980s and early 1990s, congressional Democrats often evoked the same defense. And it didn't work ....

... The reason was simple: It is entirely possible both that your enemies are out to get you and that you did exactly what you are being accused of doing. The two concepts are not mutually exclusive.

The fat lady ain't sung yet.

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You might want to know why the countries. Egypt is of course the most populous Arab country ... Saudi Arabia is our second stop. It's obviously an important place in Islam and the keeper of its two holiest sites ... Turkey is also a country that encompasses people of many different backgrounds and beliefs, yet has the -- is proud of the saying that "all are Turks."

 

Hughes seems to be less an ambassador than a missionary. A 19th century missionary, to be specific; the kind of well-meaning rube who preached to the simple native swarthy people about Jesus and hygiene and covering body parts. This was usually right before the Great White Investors moved in and sent the simple native swarthy people off to dig for diamonds or harvest sugar cane or whatever. 

 

That approach may work in America--in Red states, anyway--but it seems Middle Easterners don't care for it much. They find it patronizing and an insult to their intelligence. And they've got the oil (nyah nyah nyah). The Great White Investors have to kiss up to them. 

 

Still, Hughes gave it her best shot. In Saudi Arabia she boldly questioned the ban on women driving cars. She explained to an Egyptian that the phrase "one nation under God" is in the U.S. Constitution (betcha didn't know that). But most of all, Hughes's message is that everything is better in America, and the simple native swarthy people would be so much happier if they'd just give up their simple native swarthy ways and try to be more like us.

 

Oddly, this expression of compassion seems to anger the Middle East more. Go figure. Sidney Blumenthal writes,

With these well-meaning arguments, Hughes has provided the exact proof for what Osama bin Laden has claimed about American motives. "It is stunning ... the extent [to which] Hughes is helping bin Laden," Robert Pape told me. Pape, a University of Chicago political scientist who has conducted the most extensive research into the backgrounds and motives of suicide terrorists, is the author of "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism," and recently briefed the Pentagon and the National Counterterrorism Center. "If you set out to help bin Laden," he said, "you could not have done it better than Hughes."

Pape's research debunks the view that suicide terrorism is the natural byproduct of Islamic fundamentalism or some "Islamo-fascist" ideological strain independent of certain highly specific circumstances. "Of the key conditions that lead to suicide terrorism in particular, there must be, first, the presence of foreign combat forces on the territory that the terrorists prize. The second condition is a religious difference between the combat forces and the local community. The religious difference matters in that it enables terrorist leaders to paint foreign forces as being driven by religious goals. If you read Osama's speeches, they begin with descriptions of the U.S. occupation of the Arabian Peninsula, driven by our religious goals, and that it is our religious purpose that must confronted. That argument is incredibly powerful not only to religious Muslims but secular Muslims. Everything Hughes says makes their case."

Back to Karen's Crusade ... er, tour. It appears she hit a snag in Turkey. Instead of cherry picking Hughes's audience itself, the U.S. Embassy asked a Turkish group called Ka-Der, which supports women running for office, to provide a guest list. They must've figured activist Middle Eastern ladies would feel awed and humbled just to be in the presence of the Great White Woman Who Wears Pantsuits, so pre-screening wasn't necessary.

 

Guess again. In the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler writes that the activist ladies tore Hughes a new one.

"War makes the rights of women completely erased, and poverty comes after war -- and women pay the price," said Fatma Nevin Vargun, a Kurdish women's rights activist. Vargun denounced the arrest of Cindy Sheehan, the mother of an American soldier killed in Iraq, in front of the White House this week.

Hughes, who became increasingly subdued during the session, defended the decision to invade Iraq as a difficult and wrenching moment for Bush, but necessary to protect the United States.

[Note that Hughes didn't explain how or why the Iraq War was necessary to protect the United States. This is disappointing; at this point I'd pay money to hear anyone in the Bush Administration even try to explain why the Iraq War was necessary to protect the United States.]

"You're concerned about war, and no one likes war," Hughes said. But "to preserve the peace, sometimes my country believes war is necessary," she said. She also asserted that women are faring much better in Iraq than they had under the rule of deposed president Saddam Hussein.

"War is not necessary for peace," shot back Feray Salman, a human rights activist. She said countries should not try to impose democracy through war, adding that "we can never, ever export democracy and freedom from one country to another."

Tuksal said she was "feeling myself wounded, feeling myself insulted here" by Hughes's response. "In every photograph that comes from Iraq, there is that look of fear in the eyes of women and children. . . . This needs to be resolved as soon as possible."

Why do they hate America? Suzanne Fields explained in the Washington Times that for Muslim women "freedom is frightening." Or maybe they think Karen Hughes is frightening. To me, the women of the Middle East seem keenly interested in freedom... from war, from want, and from the Bush Administration. 

 

Update: See "Karen of Arabia" by Juliette Kayyem at TPM Cafe.

 

Update update: JimmyJeff says Hughes was "ambushed" by the Turkish activist ladies! Snort.

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Conservatives, enraged by talk of spending $200 billion on the Hurricane Katrina recovery, are calling on the leadership to slow down popular programs and to find spending cuts to offset the expenses. But congressional leaders have rejected most of the conservatives' entreaties.

Just before Pence gave his toned-down speech, a fellow member of the Republican Study Committee, lunching with reporters at Charlie Palmer Steak, accepted that Congress would not find cuts to pay for the $62 billion spent so far on Katrina -- much less the $250 billion more that Louisiana wants from the feds. If "we find $20 billion in offsets, we'll probably declare victory," said the congressman, who spoke on the condition that he not be named.

OK, so we'll borrow the money from China. But look at where the money is going--

As fiscal hawks surrendered, would-be government contractors were meeting in the Hart Senate Office Building to figure out how to get a share of the money. A "Katrina Reconstruction Summit," hosted by Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) and sponsored by Halliburton, among others, brought some 200 lobbyists, corporate representatives and government staffers to a room overlooking the Capitol for a five-hour conference that included time for a "networking break" and advice on "opportunities for private sector involvement."

With Gulf Coast governors pressing for action, Senate Finance Committee members complained Wednesday that the Bush administration is blocking a bipartisan $9 billion health care package for hundreds of thousands of evacuees from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita....

 

...Sen. Charles Grassley (news, bio, voting record), R-Iowa, chairman of the committee, said four or five senators have been blocking action on the bill after the Bush administration raised objections to provisions that would extend Medicaid coverage to thousands upon thousands of adults who otherwise would be uninsured, including those whose applications have been rejected in Louisiana.

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A Texas grand jury on Wednesday charged Rep. Tom DeLay and two political associates with conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme, an indictment that could force him to step down as House majority leader.

DeLay attorney Steve Brittain said DeLay was accused of a criminal conspiracy along with two associates, John Colyandro, former executive director of a Texas political action committee formed by DeLay, and Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay’s national political committee.

What about DeLay’s House Majority Leader gig? The plan is for DeLay to “temporarily” relinquish the post. DeLay gets to keep his seat in Congress, though.

More stuff from WaPo:

DeLay, 58, also is the center of an ethics swirl in Washington. The 11-term congressman was admonished last year by the House ethics committee on three separate issues and is the center of a political storm this year over lobbyists paying his and other lawmakers’ tabs for expensive travel abroad.

Wednesday’s indictment stems from a plan DeLay helped set in motion in 2001 to help Republicans win control of the Texas House in the 2002 elections for the first time since Reconstruction.

A state political action committee he created, Texans for a Republican Majority, was indicted earlier this month on charges of accepting corporate contributions for use in state legislative races. Texas law prohibits corporate money from being used to advocate the election or defeat of candidates; it is allowed only for administrative expenses.

With GOP control of the Texas legislature, DeLay then engineered a redistricting plan that enabled the GOP take six Texas seats in the U.S. House away from Democrats--including one lawmaker switching parties--in 2004 and build its majority in Congress.

Let’s hope this is just the warmup … Josh Marshall writes,

So let's see.

House Majority Leader Indicted for Criminal Conspiracy.

Senate Majority Leader the target of an increasingly serious probe of potential insider trading.

Rumors of October Rove indictment in the Plame case.

Is this a problem yet?

Heh.

Update: Via Atrios, if convicted the Bugman could face up to two years incarceration.

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