Open Thread

No cord or cable can draw so forcibly, or bind so fast, as love can do with a single thread. --Robert Burton

Open Thread

No cord or cable can draw so forcibly, or bind so fast, as love can do with a single thread. --Robert Burton

Late Night

This open thread has been sponsored by the Coca Cola corporation.

Egypt

Horrible:

CAIRO, Egypt -- A series of explosions, including four car bombs, struck luxury hotels in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheik early Saturday, killing at least 45 people, witnesses and police said.

Saturday's explosions _ the deadliest attack in Egypt in nearly a decade _ shook windows more than five miles away. Smoke and fire rose from Naama Bay, a main strip of beach hotels in the desert city at the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, which is also popular with European and Israeli tourists, witnesses said.

Certainly this will get less coverage than the bombings in London, despite that the fact that in many ways the bombings in Egypt might actually have greater long term significance. I'm not saying that's necessarily "right" or "wrong," but I do think that responsible news outlets should at least have an understanding of why they will give it significantly less coverage.

Odds of this Story Showing Up on CNN?

Link:

A young, pregnant, single mom from South Philadelphia is missing and police say she could be in danger.

No one has seen Latoyia Figueroa (right), 24, since Monday, when she didn't pick up her seven-year-old daughter from day care.

Police lieutenant Frank Vanore:

"Right now we have more questions than answers. Miss Figueroa is employed by a center city restaurant. She has not been to work in several days. She has not utilized her cell phone."

Let's hope she's ok.

Open Thread

Better thread than dead.

Winning Elections

It feels like November 2006 is a long time from now, but it's amazing how time flies. I'm certainly not going to do the hard sell on fundraising for candidates any time soon (the Paul Hackett special election on August 2 was of course an exception). And, my default position is to stay out of any seriously contested primaries, though that isn't necessarily an unbreakable rule. On the other hand helping to finance candidates early gives them more free time to press the flesh and as they have to spend less time in the coldcall fundraising dungeon.

I've added Lois Murphy to my list of candidates, which you can find in the link to the left. Murphy's running in PA 6 against the odious Jim Gerlach. Gerlach just had a fundraiser with Karl Rove so you know he puts his personal political concerns over the national security of this country. Murphy only lost by about 7,000 votes in '04, with at least one local network affiliate calling the race (incorrectly) for her.

As I said, it's too early to get into high gear for the long hard slog to '06. I don't intend to be pushing the fundraising. But, if ever you're feeling the need to do something to help and have a few extra dollars in your pocket, the link will be there...

Sources

Steve Clemons:

TWN has just learned from a highly placed source -- and in the right place to know -- that John Bolton was a regular source for Judith Miller's New York Times WMD and national security reports.

The source did not have any knowledge on whether Bolton was one of Miller's sources on the Valerie Plame story she was preparing, but argues that he was a regular source otherwise.

O'Reilly's Court of the Living Dead

Hilarious.

Friday Cat Blogging

Gizmo edition:

Eye on the Ball

Larry Johnson to give tomorrow Democratic radio address. Transcript follows:

"Good morning. I'm Larry Johnson, an American, a registered Republican, a former intelligence official at the CIA, and a friend of Valerie Plame.

I entered on duty at the CIA in September 1985 with Valerie. We were members of the Career Trainee Program. Senator Orin Hatch wrote the letter of recommendation for me which I believe that helped open the doors to me at the CIA.

From the first day we walked into the building, all members of my training class were undercover, including Valerie. In other words, we had to lie to our family and friends about where we worked. We could only tell those who had an absolute need to know where we worked. In my case, I told my wife.

I knew the wife of Ambassador Wilson, Valerie, as Valerie P. Even though all of us in the training class held Top Secret Clearances, we were asked to limit our knowledge of our other classmates to the first initial of their last name.

So, Larry J. knew Val P. rather than Valerie Plame. I really didn't realize what her last name was until her cover was betrayed by the Government officials who gave columnist Robert Novak her true name.

I am stunned that government officials at the highest level have such ignorance about a matter so basic to the national security structure of this nation.

Robert Novak's compromise of Valerie led to scrutiny of CIA officers that worked with her. This not only compromised her "cover" company but potentially every individual overseas who had been in contact with that company or with her.

We must put to bed the lie that she was not undercover. For starters, if she had not been undercover then the CIA would not have referred the matter to the Justice Department.

Val only told those with a need to know about her status in order to safeguard her cover, not compromise it. She was content with being known as an energy consultant married to Ambassador Joe Wilson and the mother of twins.

I voted for George Bush in November of 2000 because I was promised a President who would bring a new tone and a new ethical standard to Washington.

So where are we? The President has flip-flopped on his promise to fire anyone at the White House implicated in a leak. We now know from press reports that at least Karl Rove and "Scooter" Libby are implicated in these leaks and may have lied during the investigation.

Instead of a President concerned first and foremost with protecting this country and the intelligence officers who serve it, we are confronted with a President who is willing to sit by while political operatives savage the reputations of good Americans like Valerie and Joe Wilson.

This is wrong and this is shameful.

We deserve people who work in the White House who are committed to protecting classified information, telling the truth to the American people, and living by example the idea that a country at war with Islamic extremists cannot focus its efforts on attacking other American citizens who simply tried to tell the truth.

I am Larry Johnson.

Thank you for listening.

Audio here.

Waxman Hearing

On about 4:00, CSPAN 1.

Luskin

O'Donnell on Luskin.

It Depends On The Meaning Of Peruse

I think Ari's got problems.

2 Years

I can learn a lot from reading my own archives. I can't believe this damn Wilson story (and the Iraq war, for that matter) are two years old.

Larry Johnson testified this morning. Here's what he said.


Here's what he said almost two years ago:

This not an alleged abuse. This is a confirmed abuse. I worked with this woman. She started training with me. She has been under cover for three decades. She is not as Bob Novak suggested a "CIA analyst." Given that, i was a CIA analyst for 4 years. I was under cover. I could not divulge to my family outside of my wife that I worked for the CIA unti I left the Intelligence Agency on Sept. 30, 1989. At that point I could admit it. The fact that she was under cover for three decades and that has been divulged is outrageous. She was put undercover for certain reasons. One, she works in an area where people she works with overseas could be compromised...

For these journalists to argue that this is no big deal... and if I hear another Republican operative suggesting that, well, this was just an analyst. Fine. Let them go undercover. Let's put them go overseas. Let's out them and see how they like it...

I say this as a registered Republican. I am on record giving contributions to the George Bush campaign. This is not about partisan politics. This is about a betrayal, a political smear, of an individual who had no relevance to the story. Publishing her name in that story added nothing to it because the entire intent was, correctly as Amb. Wilson noted, to intimidate, to suggest that there was some impropriety that somehow his wife was in a decision-making position to influence his ability to go over and savage a stupid policy, an erroneous policy, and frankly what was a false policy of suggesting that there was nuclear material in Iraq that required this war. This was about a political attack. To pretend it was something else, to get into this parsing of words.


I tell you, it sickens me to be a Republican to see this.

Even Newsmax was annoyed once upon a time.

The burgeoning flap over the leaking to the press of the name of a CIA agent - a clear and serious violation of federal law - is a serious, serious legal and political problem for the Bush White House.

Good Advice

From Aravosis.

Hit Iran

Scary, if true.

Moon Over Iowa

Hilarious.

The Walrus

Did Bolton testify or not? hmmm...

Woof

It takes a hypocrite. PDN columnist destroys little Ricky:

Here's what Santorum wrote about giving financial aid to poor single moms:

"The classic example of the failure of liberal social and economic policy is the Great Society welfare programs... . Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC), as welfare was known until 1996, put government in the role of family breadwinner."

Clearly, Rick has a problem with paying moms to have babies, and frankly, I do too.

But here's what he wrote regarding his demand that government increase the child credit and tax deduction for parents with kids: "The government actually provides less help the more children you have. The opposite should be true, and I am working on some amendments to fix this inequity for large families. (OK, I admit that with six kids of my own at home, I'm biased; but the tax code really has it in for big families.)"

What I suspect he's really saying: An out-of-work mom with more kids than she can afford doesn't deserve the government's help. But a middle-class senator with more kids than he can afford sure does!

Where he sometimes gets help instead: Santorum told the New York Times that his parents help him out financially. "They're by no means wealthy - they're two retired VA [Veterans Administration] employees - but they'll send a check every now and then. They realize things are a little tighter for us."

Except that he makes $162,000 a year. I'll bet a welfare mom of six kids could live very well on that, so why is a 47-year-old man hitting up his elderly parents for cash? Or asking for tax breaks?

But at least his folks have the money to lend him. That's because both his parents receive pensions. Why? Santorum grew up in a two-career family - a kind of family he deplores in his book as being obsessed with giving their kids "things" instead of time!

"Children of two parents who are working don't need more things. They need more us!" he writes in his book.