Many of us have had a hard time crediting the claim that Judy Miller had any more reason to believe Scooter Libby's second voluntary waiver of privilege was any more 'voluntary' than his first one. And now, it seems, we have some tangible evidence to back up that suspicion.
According to a story out this afternoon from Reuters, Libby "got a push from a prosecutor before telling New York Times reporter Judith Miller that he wanted her to testify."
The article describes the particulars. But, in sum, Patrick Fitzgerald contacted Libby's lawyer and said he'd really "welcome" Libby giving Miller yet another waiver, with the case coming to a close and all.
One can't really blame Fitzgerald. It's the prosecutors job after all to squeeze these guys and get all the information he can using the looming threat of indictment to secure as much assistance as possible.
So Fitzgerald you can understand. And Libby too. After all, by all accounts he's looking at a felony indictment coming down the pike. So you try to be as helpful as you can to the guy who has your fate in his hands.
But what about Miller? Her claim that she didn't crack now seems, well ... like a crock. This 'voluntary' doesn't seem any different from the first 'voluntary'. And 'voluntary' has, of course, a withered meaning when it's the prosecutor calling for volunteers.
It seems a lot more like she just got tired of sitting in jail.
Or, some other jeopardy not yet spelled out made her give up the game.
--Josh Marshall
Department of wonderfully fortuitous note-keeping ...
New York Times reporter Judith Miller discovered notes from an earlier conversation she had with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff and turned them over the prosecutor investigating the leak of a covert CIA operative's identity, legal sources said on Friday.
Judy, Judy, Judy ...
--Josh Marshall
Special Bush administration hack crib sheet! Don't be the last one to know. Now with extra hacklicious morsels!
--Josh Marshall
Bammo!
Flanigan withdraws his name from consideration for Deputy Attorney General.
The upcoming Judiciary Committee hearing into his business dealings with Jack Abramoff must not have seemed like a lot of fun.
--Josh Marshall
Question: Anyone willing to lay down odds on whether Harriet Miers will ever be seated on the Supreme Court?
And as long as we're at it, which senator is going to stand up and demand to receive the secret Dobson Briefing?
Late Update: More here from The Hotline on the Dobson Briefing.
--Josh Marshall
More crackerjack reporting from the Washington Times.
Today's Times runs a piece with the headline "DeLay accuses Earle of taking corporate funds."
The relevant passage reads ...
Rep. Tom DeLay said District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who is prosecuting him for trying to involve corporate money in Texas politics, has taken such contributions himself."It's real interesting he has this crusade against corporate funds. He took corporate funds, and he's taken union funds, for his own re-election. That's against the law," Mr. DeLay told The Washington Times yesterday.
A review of Mr. Earle's campaign-finance filings in Texas shows that he has received contributions from the AFL-CIO, including a $250 donation on Aug. 29, 2000. He also has received contributions listed on the disclosure forms only as coming from the name of an incorporated entity, often a law firm.
Mr. Earle has said repeatedly that state law bars corporate and union contributions. Attempts to reach Mr. Earle yesterday for comment, including a phone message left on his assistant's voice mail detailing Mr. DeLay's charge, were unsuccessful.
The story seems like it has real punch until you realize that the Times decides not to tell its readers that the statute doesn't cover law firms.
The law (see page 24) says ...
§ 253.091. Corporations Covered This subchapter applies only to corporations that are organized under the Texas Business Corporation Act, the Texas Non-Profit Corporation Act, federal law, or law of another state or nation.
Texas law firms are incorporated under the Texas Professional Corporation Act.
A bit further down in the statute they make it even more clear ...
(a) For purposes of this subchapter, the following associations, whether incorporated or not, are considered to be corporations covered by this subchapter: banks, trust companies, savings and loan associations or companies, insurance companies, reciprocal or interinsurance exchanges, railroad companies, cemetery companies, government-regulated cooperatives, stock companies, and abstract and title insurance companies.
And if that <$Ad$> weren't enough the friends of the Times and DeLay at this Texas anti-trial lawyer site say it explicitly: "These corporations are restricted from contributing directly to candidates. Law firms, however, do not have the same impediments to contributions, leaving trial lawyer firms free to contribute as much as possible to their favorite candidates."
I don't know whether the claim about union contributions is equally silly (Late Update: Yep, turns out it is. See here.) I'll leave that to folks in Texas who know the statute better. But what does seem pretty clear is that Mr. DeLay made an intentionally misleading accusation. And the good folks at the Times just decided to go along for the ride.
Shocking, just shocking ...
Late Update: It seems I didn't fully plumb the depths of the dishonesty of DeLay and his enablers at the Times. Stakeholder has more.
--Josh Marshall
I know everyone is atwitter at the moment over today's events and poring over the just-published pieces in the Times (an outfit still in denial about its institutional guilt) and the Post about the Rove-Fitzgerald developments. But I would like to take a moment to remind everyone of the severe health risks associated with schadenfreude toxicity (ST), in both its chronic and acute forms. It doesn't take a lifetime of exposure to guilty pleasure at the suffering of others. In rare cases, even a few hours of euphoria watching poetic justice being meted out to evil-doers can prove fatal. Today walking down Sixth Avenue, in fact, I saw several apparently healthy and able-bodied Democrats just go poof! into thin air. Even a few Republicans who just believed in good government were taken ill. It can happen that quick.
--Josh Marshall
A longtime reader gently, or not so gently, puts me in my place ...
Don't be a lawyer! This is simple. The manual is not law, it is a manual. Prosecutors need to avoid being accused of abuse of grand jury process. Rove has testified so often to this grand jury they must be bored with him. There's no chance of abuse. So why is he testifying again? Because the case has gotten refined. Now it is about conspiracy. It is about the cover up not the crime. I assume. So he's come in to explain what he knew, when he knew it, how he didn't really cover up. Grand jurors will ask him q's. So will prosecutor. Record will be made. Then they can indict him if they want. Simple.
'nuff said.
--Josh Marshall
More on the topic of the day: 'target letters'.
Like many other bloggers and reporters, I've spent a good bit of time this afternoon reading over the section of the US Attorney's Manual that deals with grand juries.
I had read over 9-11.153 earlier today, in addition to a bunch of other sections. But I don't think I caught its significance on the first run through.
A source, who is an attorney with relevant knowledge, tells me that there are many cases where a target letter simply isn't required. And this person points to 9-11.153, which does seem to say pretty clearly that Rove's is one of those cases.
I quote (emphasis added) ...
9-11.153 Notification of TargetsWhen a target is not called to testify pursuant to USAM 9-11.150, and does not request to testify on his or her own motion (see USAM 9-11.152), the prosecutor, in appropriate cases, is encouraged to notify such person a reasonable time before seeking an indictment in order to afford him or her an opportunity to testify before the grand jury, subject to the conditions set forth in USAM 9-11.152. Notification would not be appropriate in routine clear cases or when such action might jeopardize the investigation or prosecution because of the likelihood of flight, destruction or fabrication of evidence, endangerment of other witnesses, undue delay or otherwise would be inconsistent with the ends of justice.
Add here the standard preface that I'm not a lawyer. And many errors are possible when a layman cherry-picks portions of a legal code or manual without reading the thing in its entirety. But this seems to be the portion of the manual which outlines cases where a 'target letter' is called for. And if I'm not mistaken, Rove has already testified three times.
So are we even sure Fitzgerald is under any obligation at all to send one to Karl?
--Josh Marshall
Roll Call (sub. req.): On October 18th, the Senate Judiciary Committee wil hold hearings on Deputy Attorney General nominee Timothy Flanigan's ties to Jack Abramoff. Flanigan will attend and Roll Call reports that Tyco has waived the attorney-client privilege Flanigan invoked to avoid answering Abramoff questions in his September 29th appearance.
--Josh Marshall
A bit more parsing of Ronald "GB" Luskin's remarks on whether Karl Rove is a 'target' of the Fitzgerald investigation -- under the known bamboozler's standard of 'strict scrutiny' (KB-triple-S) noted below.
First off, is it a legal requirement that you get a 'target letter' before you get indicted? Many press outlets are claiming that it is. For instance, CNN says, "Rove would first have to receive what is known as a target letter if he is about to be indicted."
As near as I can tell, though, that is simply false. There's no legal requirement that you get a letter before you get indicted. Standard procedure, yes. A requirement, no.
As for parsing of Luskin's remarks and the significance of a letter (see below), several sources confirm that for a known bamboozler like Luskin, his statements are basically meaningless. Notification that you're a target can be oral. And the letter probably wouldn't be sent to Rove himself but rather to Luskin. So even if Fitzgerald sent a letter Karl Rove wouldn't have received it. Suffice it say that Luskin's statement gives him plenty of wiggle room.
As for what this all means, basically what we have here is Rove's attempt to go in and make his own case directly to the grand jury, going over Fitzgerald's head, as it were. My sources tell me that such a strategy is the equivalent of a Hail Mary pass, the sort of choice that only makes sense as one source told me, in situations "where the indictment is as bad as the conviction" -- something that certainly applies to Rove.
--Josh Marshall
The crafty ways of our man, Robert "Gold Bars" Luskin, lawyer for tadpole-on-deck Karl Rove.
As we noted a short time ago, the AP is now reporting that Karl Rove has availed himself of a last-minute and seemingly last ditch effort to avoid indictment.
Yesterday Luskin cut some blood loose in the water when he refused to deny that Rove had received a 'target letter'. In the past, Luskin had quite volubly insisted that Patrick Fitzgerald had assured him that Rove was not a target. But no more.
Today he told the AP: "I can say categorically that Karl has not received a target letter from the special counsel. The special counsel has confirmed that he has not made any charging decisions in respect to Karl."
Here Luskin appears to be availing himself of the transitive property of hyper-parsification. To any reasonable person Luskin's statement should settle the matter of whether Rove is a target. But Luskin's own record of slithery parsification forces us to assume that these words are carefully chosen to conceal rather than elucidate. If you come from the con interp world, think of this as the journalists' version of 'strict scrutiny' which is called for in the case of a bamboozler like Luskin.
With that in mind, Luskin's second sentence means nothing. Being a target may mean you're likely to get indicted. But it doesn't mean that the prosecutor has decided that in fact you will be indicted. So that's just a showy statement that means nothing. Then there's the matter of the letter. Karl hasn't gotten one. Luskin earlier approach was to say that Fitzgerald had assured him that Rove was 'not a target'. Now we're hung up on the letter.
Can you be notified that you're a target in any way beside a letter? I really don't know. But it's hard to see where a prosecutor wouldn't cross every t and dot every i in a case of such import.
--Josh Marshall
Karl plays for time. AP: "Federal prosecutors have accepted an offer from presidential adviser Karl Rove to give 11th hour testimony in the case of a CIA officer's leaked identity but have warned they cannot guarantee he won't be indicted, according to people directly familiar with the investigation. The persons, who spoke only on condition of anonymity because of grand jury secrecy, said Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has not made any decision yet on whether to file criminal charges against the longtime confidant of President Bush or others."
--Josh Marshall
More Grade A Freeh Bashing: Advance word on Arch-Failure Louis Freeh's new book apparently has Freeh complaining that it was hard for him to get anything done because Bill Clinton, the president and his nominal boss, was such a source of scandal and bad acts.
Drudge quotes him saying: "The problem was with Bill Clinton -- the scandals and the rumored scandals, the incubating ones and the dying ones never ended. Whatever moral compass the president was consulting was leading him in the wrong direction. His closets were full of skeletons just waiting to burst out."
Aren't there some logical problems with this excuse making?
How is it that Bill Clinton was such a bad actor that Freeh couldn't get anything else done because he had to spend so much investigating him and yet Freeh never caught him doing anything? Which of Clinton's associates did Freeh indict?
Think about it. Either Freeh is just as big a buck-passer and liar as we think or he is a self-confessed incompetent. It's genuinely funny.
Even if you want to consider Bill Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky as a legitimate legal bad act, Freeh didn't have anything to do with catching him on that one. Give the credit where it's due: that was the work of Republican political operatives.
Can't Freeh keep himself busy as chief bill collector for the credit card companies?
--Josh Marshall
Reuters: "Top officials who managed U.S. reconstruction projects in Iraq have been hired by some of the same big companies that received those contracts and which are now involved in a rush of deals to rebuild after Hurricane Katrina."
--Josh Marshall
So Arch-Failure Louis Freeh is coming out with a book, apparently aimed largely at attacking Bill Clinton. I assume we're going to get a lot of stories about how Freeh was perhaps the worst manager the FBI ever had? Didn't believe in using computers to aid crime fighting? Was a complete zero in fighting terrorism?
Who cares about Bill Clinton. Let Freeh attack him all he wants. Truly, who cares? But Freeh is a walking glass house. Please everyone collect your rocks.
--Josh Marshall
Andrew Sullivan has the full round-up on last night's Senate vote banning the US military from using torture (torture or quasi-torture, call it what you want) anywhere in the world. Now he's posted the names of the nine senators who weren't willing to vote against torture.
--Josh Marshall
Someone who'd like to testify at Harriet Miers confirmtion hearings?
Late Update: Apologies, the server linked to here seems overwhelmed and for the moment isn't working.
--Josh Marshall
Is RoBold the snitch?
Ever since Travis County DA Ronnie Earle indicted Tom DeLay on the initial charge of conspiracy, and especially since he heaped on two more indictments based on "additional information" he received last weekend, DeLay watchers have been reading the tea leaves trying discern who might have agreed to testify against Mr. Big.
In today's Roll Call, there's an article (sub.req.) by John Bresnahan, devoted almost entirely to the voluble denials from DeLay's alleged co-conspirators Jim Ellis John Colyandro, each insisting that they haven't cut a deal.
But sticking out like a sore thumb in Bresnahan's piece is the second graf which reads ...
A lawyer for a third DeLay associate who also is under indictment in the Texas probe, Warren RoBold, did not return calls seeking comment on whether he is cooperating with Earle’s investigation.
RoBold isn't quite the insider that Ellis and Colyandro are. So perhaps he's decided it's time to cut his losses, turn the tables and nail the hammer?
--Josh Marshall
Not a sexy topic, but way more important than you might think: the decline of Congressional oversight. It's one of Congress's key roles in our system of checks and balances. But it's a role that has largely been abdicated by the Republican Congress. During the 1990s, the sort of meticulous but often unsexy work of oversight of the executive branch departments and agencies was pushed aside to make way for high-octane but mostly nonsensical scandal investigations. Under Bush, it's been shunted aside even more because serious oversight sounds too much like criticism, which must of course be avoided at all costs. The Post has a nice, though too brief, piece on the subject.
--Josh Marshall
There were rumors flying around all day today that Plame prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was about to indict one or more White House officials, perhaps as early as today. The 'today' part obviously didn't pan out. But an article from Reuters, which hit the wires little more than an hour ago, seems to have nailed down some outlines of those rumors. At a minimum they seemed to grab on to the tail of the same animal.
Reuters makes clear that what Fitzgerald is going to do (indict, strike plea bargains, do nothing) isn't clear. But he's expected to do whatever it is he intends to do "within days."
Another tale zipping around email boxes was that Karl Rove had received a "target letter" a standard precursor to an indictment, but one I thought you got more than like a day in advance of the big day.
Here's what Reuters came up with, it seems trying to nail down that part of the story ...
As a first step, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was expected to notify officials by letter if they have become targets, said the lawyers, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter....
The inquiry has ensnared President George W. Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby. The White House had long maintained that Rove and Libby had nothing to do with the leak but reporters have since named them as sources.
Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, declined to say whether his client had been contacted by Fitzgerald. In the past, Luskin has said that Rove was assured that he was not a target.
Libby's lawyer was not immediately available to comment.
As a friend of mine said today, sagely: we'll know soon enough.
Late Update: The fact that the president has decided to schedule a "major speech" on Iraq and terrorism, apropos of more or less nothing, would seem to suggest some bad coming down the pike. On the other hand, he seems to schedule these speeches about twice a month nowadays.
--Josh Marshall
It's seems that we're divided into two camps when it comes to the news on Avian Flu coming out of Southeast Asia: those who are worried silly about it and those who just haven't heard the news yet. Perhaps worried silly is an overstatement; but it's scary stuff. And along those lines here's a post which suggests (much too persuasively for comfort) that the guy in charge of flu pandemic response at HHS may be another Michael Brown in the making. Perhaps we can send this guy packing before he does a heckuva job on all us.
--Josh Marshall
More from the AP ...
The Bush administration's former chief procurement official was indicted Wednesday by a federal grand jury on charges of making false statements and obstructing investigations into high-powered Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff.The five felony counts in the indictment charge David H. Safavian with obstructing Senate and executive branch investigations into whether he aided Abramoff in efforts to acquire property controlled by the General Services Administration around the nation's capital.
Both probes looked into an August 2002 golf outing that Safavian took to Scotland with Abramoff, former Christian Coalition executive Ralph Reed, Rep. Bob Ney, R-Ohio, and others.
More soon<$NoAd$>.
--Josh Marshall
Alexander Hamilton vs. George W. Bush. Kate reports, you decide.
Late Update: David Sirota has even more on the Hamilton-Bush smackdown.
--Josh Marshall
From the AP ...
Tom DeLay deliberately raised more money than he needed to throw parties at the 2000 presidential convention, then diverted some of the excess to longtime ally Roy Blunt through a series of donations that benefited both men's causes.When the financial carousel stopped, DeLay's private charity, the consulting firm that employed DeLay's wife and the Missouri campaign of Blunt's son all ended up with money, according to campaign documents reviewed by The Associated Press.
Jack Abramoff, a Washington lobbyist recently charged in an ongoing federal corruption and fraud investigation, and Jim Ellis, the DeLay fundraiser indicted with his boss last week in Texas, also came into the picture.
Round and round it goes, where it stops <$NoAd$> ...
--Josh Marshall
Al Gore gave a speech this morning on the decline of the media, public discourse in America, and the threat both hold for the future of American democracy. See the transcript here.
--Josh Marshall
From reader emails, it seems there were more than a few who took my comments yesterday about Miers to mean that I think that Dems should support her. I'm not sure how that meaning got across. But if it did, mark it down as my not being clear enough when I was thinking out loud.
My point was to note the real possibility that Miers could be knocked out only to be replaced by a genuine extremist who would likely be voted through without much difficulty by Senate Republicans.
Extremist versus hacklicious toady, sort of sums up the choices that may be on offer.
Along those lines, Sen. Lott now puts himself down as leaning against.
--Josh Marshall
Rep. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is telling leading Dems he's in the race against Sen. DeWine in Ohio, will announce this week.
--Josh Marshall
From Roll Call (sub.req.): "Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) questioned Tuesday whether Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers has a 'firm commitment' to what he called the framers’ 'original intent' of the Constitution, saying that President Bush’s knowledge of her “heart” didn’t end the need for tough questioning."
I was thinking yesterday about the Miers nomination. And it occurred to me that while President Bush may not be world's most brilliant man, as Miers has claimed, he may have an unintended knack for irony.
In the case of John Roberts the president served up a nominee who was pretty clearly a down-the-line conservative but also, in the sense of value-neutral credentials and qualifications, certainly qualified for the job. With Miers, you have someone with what might be real moderate tendencies, but also someone who on pretty much every count seems unqualified for the position.
So what to do?
Certainly one thing to do is sit back and relish the brewing fight between the principled wingnuts and the confirmed Bush toadies. At the same time, it must be occurring to at least some Dems that, at least in ideological terms, they could likely do far worse than Miers. In any case, set that all aside and focus on the fact that Miers has been involved -- often deeply involved -- in pretty much everything that the White House has been trying to keep secret for going on five years. That should make for interesting questioning.
--Josh Marshall
With all the speculation and contention about the three indictments Travis County Prosecutor Ronnie Earle has secured against Tom DeLay, it's easy to forget one point: the Earle investigation was supposed to be the one DeLay squeaked by on, the lesser of the two ethical-legal sandtraps on his politico-personal horizon.
Whatever the disposition of the Texas indictments, most Republicans will now tell you, privately, that they don't expect DeLay ever to recover the Majority Leader's office. But even if he manages that highly improbable early knock-out blow in Texas, he's still got the Abramoff case waiting.
The news out of the UK this week -- that DOJ officials asked their counterparts in England and Scotland to do follow up interviews about DeLay's activities on his Abramoff trips -- is another sign that he's at the center of the Abramoff investigation. That's where his real problems have always been.
--Josh Marshall
So Hacket is in against DeWine next year. I wonder if that means Brown is definitively out.
--Josh Marshall
Lawyers, ethics watchdogs, hill staffers and you at home can help with some open-source investigative reporting. As you know, Jack Abramoff rented skyboxes at several DC area sports and entertainment complexes, which he used to dole out favors, goodies and fundraising assistance to Republican members of Congress and their staffs. Recently I've been working my way through records from Preston Gates (Abramoff's firm before he decamped to Greenberg Traurig) which detail which staffers and members got tickets to what events, who they brought with them and so forth.
Now, for instance, below is a roster from Abramoff's assistant Susan Ralston which goes in to who got to go to the "WWF Raw is War" event on October 2nd, 2000. (Click here to see the full size copy just added to the TPM Document Collection.)
This one includes staffers from Reps. Forbes, Lazio, Pombo, Green of Wisconsin, McKeon, Blunt, Sens, Smith and <$Ad$> Chafee, and one staffer from the House Rules Committee, Celeste West.
So a few questions.
For you Hill folks, how commonplace is this up there -- a lobbyist who routinely gives free tickets to ball games and concerts and even professional wrestling events to staffers from the offices of helpful members of Congress?
Several of the staffers on the roster for the "WWF Raw is War" shindig show up getting skybox tickets again and again just during 2000. A lawyer familiar with the Preston Gates records and the Abramoff skybox operation says there's no sign any of them ever reimbursed or paid for the tickets. So how does that square with Congressional ethics rules? A problem?
--Josh Marshall
DeLay beats the rap on a technicality?
A new piece just out from the Austin American-Statesman provides more details. According to the new article, the original indictment was flawed (a claim pushed by the defense, but contradicted by other published reports: see below). The conspiracy statute in question didn't come into effect until 2003. So the prosecutors, it seems, reindicted DeLay under a different statute, but on the same facts.
See the piece for more details.
On the contrary, the Houston Chronicle interviews a law prof at UT who says that DeLay's lawyers' contention that the original indictment is flawed is itself bogus ...
George Dix, a professor at the University of Texas School of Law who is an expert in criminal law and procedure, said he doesn't believe changes made to the Texas election code by the 2003 legislature have any effect on the conspiracy charge.The penal code's conspiracy charge allows for the charge if the defendants allegedly conspired to commit any felony, including an election code felony.
Just because the election code was "silent" on the penal code provision until 2003, it doesn't mean it wasn't a valid charge before 2003, Dix said.
"To me it just says, 'We really mean what we said implicitly before,' " Dix said.
More soon.
--Josh Marshall
A second DeLay indictment: Money Laundering.
Details soon.
Late Update: More from the AP.
Later Update: Also note this clip from a piece in the Austin American-Statesman that ran only a bit earlier this afternoon ...
A criminal conspiracy charge against U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay should be dismissed because conspiracy laws did not apply to the state election code during the 2002 election, DeLay's lawyers argued in a brief filed today. The filing represents an attempt at a quick knockout of the case against DeLay, who was indicted last week by a Travis County grand jury. The term of the grand jury ended last week and a deadline to indict DeLay might have expired since then.DeLay's lawyer Dick DeGuerin said "rumors are flying" that prosecutors were trying to find a sitting grand jury, who hadn't heard any of the DeLay case, to return a new money-laundering indictment. In a letter to Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, DeGuerin said DeLay is withdrawing his waiver of the statute of limitations to investigate him. Last month DeLay signed that waiver in an attempt to head off an indictment.
A lot obviously happened today. I'm sure we'll <$NoAd$> hear more soon.
--Josh Marshall
The Post is debuting a new blog today. And the author, Chris Cillizza, says that Rep. Sherrod Brown (D) may be reconsidering his decision not to challenge Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine (R) next year.
Republicans have taken two tough blows of late on the Senate recruiting front. Gov. John Hoeven won't run against Sen. Conrad in North Dakota. And just today we hear that Rep. Capito won't run against Sen. Byrd.
I was more than a bit stunned a few weeks back when I heard that Rep. Brown wasn't getting into the race against DeWine because, as I was telling a friend yesterday, the only explanation I could see was that Brown, a shrewd pol, simply wasn't confident he could win. And that told me that DeWine was a lot more formidable than his anemic poll numbers would indicate.
If Brown's reconsidering, it could be yet another (albeit more indirect) sign that smart Republicans see the writing on the wall for next year.
--Josh Marshall
Writing on the wall and corks poppin' at Byrd HQ. Roll Call reports (sub.req.) that Rep. Capito (R-WV) won't challenge Sen. Byrd next year.
--Josh Marshall
Several readers have called my attention to the passage in the president's statement this morning in which he praises Miers' pro bono work for "Exodus Ministries". These readers have pointed out that Exodus is an organization dedicated to bringing "freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ." (Exodus is referred to either as 'Exodus' or 'Exodus ministries'.) But a quick look around the web also shows another group called Exodus Ministries which works with ex-prison inmates to prevent their falling back into lives of crime. The organization's website identifies it as "a non-denominational Christian organization established to assist ex-offenders and their families become productive members of society by meeting both their spiritual and physical needs." This latter group is Dallas-based (where Miers is from). So it seems there's a decent chance that it is the latter group she did work for. In any case, worth clearing up.
Late Update: I'm told Scott McClellan has now confirmed that it's the ex-prisoner ministry and not the ex-gay one.
--Josh Marshall
As with Justice Roberts, I think I'll probably leave most of the talking about Harriet Miers to the folks over at Supreme Court Watch. But a few thoughts to kick things off.
First, not being a judge, in itself, doesn't seem like that big a deal to me. Many law profs who get nominated to the bench have never been judges. And more relevant to this case, there's been a reasonably broad bipartisan call in recent years to get 'a politician' on the Court. And the whole point, in that case, is that the person not come from the bench or even be too deeply entrenched in the legal profession. Finally, as we've seen, pretty often it turns out that these nominees have only been circuit court judges for maybe a year or two prior to their appointment. And in the grand scheme of things, that amounts to little more than a bit of batting practice before going up to the plate.
The key that this nomination should and, I suspect, will turn on is that the she fits the Bush administration mold -- she's a loyalist through and through. The lack of any other clear qualifications for the job becomes clear in that context.
The Post says this morning ...
Miers came with him to the White House in 2001 as staff secretary, the person who screens all the documents that cross the president's desk. She was promoted to deputy chief of staff before Bush named her counsel after his reelection in November. She replaced Alberto R. Gonzales, another longtime Bush confidant, who was elevated to attorney general.
Matt Yglesias finds this quote from David Frum ...
In the White House that hero worshipped the president, Miers was distinguished by the intensity of her zeal: She once told me that the president was the most brilliant man she had ever met.
Sounds like a keeper, don't she?
Presumably she's been involved in some fashion or another in everything the White House has been involved in over five years and intimately involved in every legal decision in 2005.
Game on.
--Josh Marshall
