David Neiwert documents the irony of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III accusing anyone of bigotry given his own checkered history. The question today is will Sessions continue his self defeating assault on Judge Sotomayor today?
I'll be live blogging the proceedings, both here and at Talk Left. NOTE: When I live blog, I do not provide stenography but instead comment on notable events (at least those things I find notable.) The live blog will be below the fold.
The answer is yes - Sessions calls her a bigot. Thank you Beauregard.
The New York Times loves stenography, and their CIA beat writer Mark Mazzetti does a great job, doing what he's told. Award-winning investigative blogger Marcy Wheeler points out why his work is so misleading:
Pelosi agrees that she and Goss were briefed on the program and, generally, that they discussed techniques. She even agrees that waterboarding was mentioned; the phrase "waterboarding was not being employed" certainly counts as a mention of waterboarding.
But see what number 5 doesn't say? It doesn't say, "those techniques had already been employed." "Were to be employed," a prospective use of waterboarding, not "had been employed," a past use of waterboarding.
Now, Mark. If you want to continue doing Porter's bidding, you're going to have to go back to him--I'm sure you've got him on speed-dial?--and get a stronger statement from him. But as things stand today, Porter Goss' statement is completely consistent with Nancy Pelosi's. The CIA, when it briefed Goss and Pelosi in 2002, did not tell them they had already been using waterboarding with Abu Zubaydah.
As a spook stenographer, Mark, I'm sure you're familiar with the National Security Act, but if you need a primer, why not read about it on the pages of the NYT? You'll see that the National Security Act requires the Administration inform Congress--arguably, the entire intelligence committees--about their covert ops. Requires. But instead, what happened here is that CIA took up torturing, and then, when they "briefed" Pelosi and Goss on it in September 2002, they didn't tell them they were already doing it. They didn't get around to revealing that until five months later--and six months after they had gotten into the torture business.
That is a violation of the law--some might even consider it news. But not the NYT!!! Nope, the NYT is going to keep recycling Porter Goss' carefully parsed statements and imply they refute Nancy Pelosi when they don't. The NYT is going to obsess over the fact that a staffer told Nancy Pelosi something that CIA should have told her almost a year earlier.
But the NYT is not, apparently, going to tell its readers that the CIA broke the law.
And what the hell is wrong with this country that the complicit media is now savaging Nancy Pelosi instead of those responsible for these war crimes? If she did know about torture (and she denies she did), why would she be the target instead of the war criminals who implemented this evil policy? Nope, the corporate media is consistent: It's only a crime if a Democrat does it!
That's why Pelosi is being savaged while war criminal Dick Cheney is still invited onto news shows to share his wisdom.
And if you want to look for complicity, the New York Times need look no further than the closest mirror.
Un-fricking-believable. Bush, talking to ABC's Martha Raddatz, does a Cheney on the lies leading up to the Iraq invasion and the messy misadventure of the occupation:
BUSH: One of the major theaters against al Qaeda turns out to have been Iraq. This is where al Qaeda said they were going to take their stand. This is where al Qaeda was hoping to take–
RADDATZ: But not until after the U.S. invaded.
BUSH: Yeah, that’s right. So what? The point is that al Qaeda said they’re going to take a stand. Well, first of all in the post-9/11 environment Saddam Hussein posed a threat. And then upon removal, al Qaeda decides to take a stand.
With a few notable exceptions like Helen Thomas, Bush's press conferences have not generated the indignation he so richly deserves from a largely quiescent White House press corps that needs government inspectors and Congressmen to tell it when it can be surprised and even occasionally indignant.
But it is still surprising that so many reporters can be polite and deferential with someone who has turned the US Federal Reserve into a giant Ponzi scheme and broken the world's strongest economy. They defer humbly to someone who has contrived the deaths of 4,200 US servicemen and women in Iraq. It even failed to follow through on questions about the president's murky military record with the Texas Air National Guard while his peers were dying in Vietnam. This intrepid press
corps showed no compunction in following in minute detail Clinton's screwing
around, but kept silent as Bush screwed entire nations.
Last week, a Senate report pointed the finger directly at Bush and his senior officials for authorising - indeed, ordering - torture and abuse of detainees. But no one threw any shoes.
It is that fawning quiescence that allowed Bush to tell Bob Woodward: "I'm the commander – see, I don't need to explain – I do not need to explain why I say things. That's the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don't feel like I owe anybody an explanation."
I'll give the Newshogger's Journalist of the Year Award to the first reporter to say to Dubya "You're the President, so what? You work for us, you're not the king."
