President Bush

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November 19, 2009 CNN
Predator Drone airstrikes have increased under President Obama



Bill O'Reilly asks Lou Dobbs if Obama is the "Devil"."

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It didn't take Lou Dobbs long to appear on Fox News, and Bill O'Reilly was the joyful host. He initially tried to get Dobbs to slime over his departure, but Dobbs said that in all his years he was never told what to do or say and was never "talked to" about how he ran his show. As the interview wound down, Bill needed something a little juicy, so instead of asking Dobbs how he felt about Obama's policies so far, he phrased it as if President Obama will eat your babies, corrupt your spirit and lure you to sell your soul.

O'Reilly: Barack Obama, is he the devil?

Dobbs: He's not the devil, but he is certainly the man who is not making it easy to understand why he is making the public policy choices that he is. There has to be a better understanding from and can only from his expression to the American people, what is taking so long for his decision on Afghanistan. Why is it so necessary to turn 1/6th of the economy into the United States government, which has not showered itself with glory.

O'Reilly: So you don't think he's Satan, but you think he's mismanaging the country at this point.

Dobbs: I think, absolutely.

O'Reilly: OK, sorry I put words in your mouth.

Dobbs: No, I was excited. It was a pretty good choice.

Yeah, Bill. You only asked him if Obama was the Devil. What a jackass. And Dobbs just loved Obama being compared to Satan. Well, Dobbs should try and be the teabagger King. He'll fit right in. Maybe Tancredo can help on his campaign. he mimics every anti-Obama slur there is.

I think BillO is watching the CW's show "Supernatural". What a despicable way to ask Dobbs about Obama. Hey Lou, is President Bush the savior? Well, he sure is. If only those evil liberal devil worshipers would go away and let him blow up the entire Middle East, I believe the country would be better off, Bill.


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Right wingers have been doing their damnedest since the Fort Hood shootings last week to use them as an excuse to attack Muslims and generally do their favorite schtick, aka fearmongering.

Yesterday, during the Fox News broadcast of the memorial service for the victims at Fort Hood, Fox contributor Bill Sammon took this the next step: He began openly referring to the Fort Hood case as a "terrorist attack" and actually compared it to Oklahoma City and 9/11:

Sammon: I think it's really going to be key to see the tone and tenor of the Commander in Chief when he addresses this crowd. Because it's actually a very important moment in his presidency.

Think about this. This is the first time that he's going to be responding in a major way to, really the first major act of terrorism against the United States on our soil. And there's some similarities and some analogies to when President Clinton addressed the nation after Oklahoma City, to when George W. Bush went to address the nation from Ground Zero -- both of those times, just like this, were early on in the presidencies, and really, in those earlier two examples, to some extent, they were, uh, forums in which the presidents sort of found their voices, especially if you think about Ground Zero, where President Bush had trouble sort of presenting a real strong, uh, public face for the first couple of days, and then he went to Ground Zero and said, 'I can hear you, and pretty soon the people here are going to hear from all of us.'

So it's an important moment when a president addresses the nation in the wake of a terrorist act against U.S. interests.

Throughout the day Fox was running a logo calling the event "Attack on Fort Hood," and featuring investigative reports suggesting that the shooter, Nidal Hasan, was acting at the bidding of radical imams -- even though none of the evidence so far actually concretely shows that Hasan was acting as an Islamic terrorist.

Indeed, most of the evidence so far seems to indicate this was a militarized case of "going postal" -- which is always a horrific thing, but lacks the political/ideological component that always defines real acts of terrorism.

President Obama, in fact, has been urging the public not to leap to unwarranted conclusions about the shooter's motives. Looks like Fox News and Bill Sammon have decided to just ignore that advice. After all, they have an agenda to push.


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I hadn't seen Eric Burns, the president of Media Matters, on TV previously, but he appeared on Countdown with David Shuster yesterday, and finally said what has needed saying for some time:

Fox News is not a news source. It's a political propaganda operation. And it needs to be treated that way.

Shuster and Burns were launching off Fox's most ludicrous recent endeavor to smear the Obama administration, by using videos of schoolchildren to charge that Obama wants to "indoctrinate" them. As they discuss, this is so hypocritical and absurd that it's hard to believe anyone actually is buying it:

SHUSTER: So explain to me, why is it indoctrination when kids sing about President Obama, but it's patriotism when kids sing about President Bush and FEMA?

BURNS: Well, David, it's not indoctrination to anybody except Karl Rove, Josh Bolten, Roger Ailes -- the rest of the Bush administration in exile over at Fox News, because they are trying to push a political agenda. And they're trying to destroy this administration, and they'll use any means necessary to do it.

And just to give you a little example of this, James O'Keefe, who is the author of one of the suspect ACORN videos that there have been a lot of questions surrounding, told Chris Wallace recently on Fox News that he was employing tactics that would, quote, "destroy his political enemies." So that's what this is about.

There's nothing abnormal about folks talking and children learning about their president and learning to be -- learning about their democracy through talking about the president. I did it when I was a kid.

Then they got to what this is really all about:

SHUSTER: And is that the general theme here with the right-wing media, I mean, undermining the president by manufacturing controversies, because many of the actual Obama policies are favored by the majority of Americans?

BURNS: Absolutely. We've seen it day after day. You know, Glenn Beck is the smearer in chief over at Fox News. And we see new charts, you know, documenting some new vast conspiracy theory every day, new attacks, and it's a constant barrage.

And I'll tell you, this right-wing noise machine has been ginned up. It's never been more ferocious, and their goal is simple -- as Rush Limbaugh stated at the beginning of the year -- they want Obama to fail. Roger Ailes said that this is the Alamo for conservatives and that Fox is the voice of the opposition.

So, this is no longer a news organization. This is a political organization, and their aim is to destroy a progressive policy agenda. They'd rather win in the ballot box than see any sort of real debate on health care. It's a real shame.

Every liberal who even considers going on Fox to act as props for their propaganda machine should stop and think again.

Moreover, every consumer of the news -- conservative, centrist, or liberal -- needs to understand that Fox is not a reliable source of information.

Mainstream media in general have become less reliable, but most of them strive to be factually accurate, even if they skew ideologically somewhat. But this skew has more to do with framing and news selection than the actual reporting.

This is not the case at Fox. It deliberately broadcasts falsehoods and fake information to serve its ideological agenda.

No doubt this makes the Kool-Aid drinkers of the right happy. But for anyone else -- particularly anyone who relies on accurate information for their business or occupation or the livelihoods -- Fox News is a wasteland or outright disinformation that anyone with smidgen of intelligence will avoid.

We need more people like Eric Burns making this point.


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Facebook Obama polla_03949.jpg

A poll that appeared on Facebook which asked if President Obama should be murdered was pulled and now the U.S. Secret Service is investigating.

The U.S. Secret Service is investigating an online survey that asked whether people thought President Barack Obama should be assassinated, officials said Monday.

The poll, posted Saturday on Facebook, was taken off the popular social networking site quickly after company officials were alerted to its existence. But, like any threat against the president, Secret Service agents are taking no chances.

"We are aware of it and we will take the appropriate investigative steps," said Darrin Blackford, a Secret Service spokesman. "We take of these things seriously."

The poll asked respondents "Should Obama be killed?" The choices: No, Maybe, Yes, and Yes if he cuts my health care.

The question was not created by Facebook, but by an independent person using an add-on application that has been suspended from the site.

President Obama will never allow himself to comment on this hatred, but this is serious stuff. If a poll like this was discovered when Bush was in office, it would be FOX News' number one story for weeks and weeks and would probably end up on Meet the Press in a roundtable discussion that would go something like: Should President Bush be worried? And are left-wingers fomenting this hate? I think the Secret Service has its hands full, that's for sure.


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Michael Steele seems to have a problem recognizing racism. Steele does the apples to oranges game and tries to compare what was done to President Bush when those silly lefties were calling him names for dropping bombs on a bunch of people's heads that were never a threat to the United States and lying to the country about that non-existent threat, to what's going on now with President Obama.

Steele says that the "adults in the room need to step up, and I think the adults are myself and President Obama, two African American men at the top of the political structure of this country who can say with some degree of experience and clarity that this is not the context in which we need to have a debate on health care or any issue facing America".

Michael Steele knows full well that President Obama cannot say what Jimmy Carter just said because if he did, the wingnuts would go into full attack mode just as they are right now with President Carter. And of course this is not the context that we need to be having a debate on health care. It is the context the GOP wants us to be having a debate on to "blacken" up President Obama or they wouldn't have put someone with a track record like Joe Wilson up to his stunt on the House floor during President Obama's address to Congress.


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Howard Kurtz asks his panel of the editor of The New York Times Week in Review and The New York Times Book Review Sam Tanenhaus, the Christian Broadcasting Network's David Brody and the Washington Post's Ceci Connolly what they think of the right wing's preemptive freak out over President Obama's speech to school children last week.

Tanenhaus says it is an indication of what he calls "the death of conservatism" which is the theme and name of his book.

Brody thinks the President has a "perception problem". Hmmmm.... I wonder what might have contributed to that. The media overplaying the right wing screechers that should otherwise be dismissed couldn't have possibly contributed to that, could it David?

And Ceci Connolly says the "media are addicted to conflict". And don't blame them for feeding us crap on a daily basis since that 24 hour news cycle is so hard to fill up. Well here's a thought. Why not fill it with something besides crap? Somehow Amy Goodman manages to find an hours worth of news every day that you guys can't find the time to report on in that 24 hour cycle. Imagine that. I would imagine that a good deal of our readers here at Crooks and Liars could recommend more stories that are worth reporting on than there would be time for in the 24 hour news cycle, even on a "slow day".

I'd like to think that Sam Tanenhaus' observation is the correct one and that this over the top rhetoric does mean the death of the conservative movement, but our "mainstream media" along with a lot of other powerful forces are going to do their best to make sure it doesn't happen any time soon.

Transcript below the fold.

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David Sirota takes on Florida GOP Chairman and Obama school speech fear monger Jim Greer on Don Lemon's weekend show on CNN. This time the topic is the collective freak out by people at these Tea Bag protests now that the scary black man has been elected.

Sirota asks Greer where the protests were when Bush was trampling all over our constitution and running up the deficit and you've just got to love Greer's response here -- deflect and denial.

First Greer cites Bush's terrible poll numbers and tries to conflate the protests going on now to the people protesting the Iraq War, who as Sirota correctly points out were completely different protesters and not the people taking to the streets now.

After admitting that they are different people Greer tries to paint the Tea Baggers as just every day Americans from all political walks of life, and not the fringe right of the conservative movement.

Then Greer tries to pretend that race isn't part of the problem with these protesters, which Don Lemon calls him out for.

LEMON: David, what's happening here?

SIROTA: Well, again, I think that there's a segment of the population that does not want to accept President Obama as a legitimate president. And I think that you can tell that this is really a partisan lynch mob by understanding that these people were not out making the exact same criticism of President Bush. Where were the people who were worried about the constitution when President Bush trampled the constitution with the Patriot Act? Where were these people talking about government spending when President Bush inflated the deficit to record proportions?

LEMON: Jim, that's a good question.

SIROTA: Where were they?

GREER: Well, I think you saw where they were when the polls showed that unfortunately from a Republican standpoint, President Bush was down in the 20s. I mean, the American public -

SIROTA: Where were the protests?

GREER: Well, you know, there were people protesting President Bush because I saw them quite often as I traveled the country.

SIROTA: Do you think conservative tea partiers are protesting --

LEMON: I do have to say no that people did protest the Iraq war. I saw a lot of that. I covered a lot of it.

GREER: A lot of that.

LEMON: People said they had pictures of President Bush. They hung things of him in effigy. They put it in on fire, lit them on fire. So there were things, but they were protesting a war, and that they were looking for evidence that never turned up. So it's kind of a different thing, but he was protested.

SIROTA: Those are different protesters.

GREER: Where we are today --

Well, they may be different protesters, but you asked me, where were they? And there were people protesting President Bush. Where we are today, Don, David, is that this administration has tried to radically change the role of government in our daily lives and the role of government in major industries that have made this country great. And that is why Americans, not just Republicans, but Americans are frustrated. They can't get answers to their questions. They're concerned about President Obama's views of what America should look like today and what it will look like in the future. And they just reject that. And they're angry. They're frustrated because it's not the America that they brought up to have great respect for, and they're concerned.

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Bernard Goldberg was on The O'Reilly Factor last night touting his hot new scoop in the long-running controversy over George W. Bush's military service in the Texas Air National Guard:

Until now, the controversy over the Rather/Mapes story has centered almost entirely on one issue: the legitimacy of the documents – a very important issue, indeed. But it turns out that there was another very important issue, one that goes to the very heart of what the story was about – and one that has gone virtually unnoticed. This is it: Mary Mapes knew before she put the story on the air that George W. Bush, the alleged slacker, had in fact volunteered to go to Vietnam.

Who says? The outside panel CBS brought into to get to the bottom of the so-called “Rathergate” mess says. I recently re-examined the panel’s report after a source, Deep Throat style, told me to “Go to page 130.” When I did, here’s the startling piece of information I found:

Mapes had information prior to the airing of the September 8 [2004] Segment that President Bush, while in the TexANG [Texas Air National Guard] did volunteer for service in Vietnam but was turned down in favor of more experienced pilots. For example, a flight instructor who served in the TexANG with Lieutenant Bush advised Mapes in 1999 that Lieutenant Bush “did want to go to Vietnam but others went first.” Similarly, several others advised Mapes in 1999, and again in 2004 before September 8, that Lieutenant Bush had volunteered to go to Vietnam but did not have enough flight hours to qualify.

This information, despite the fact that it has been available since the CBS report came out four years ago, has remained a secret to almost everybody both in and out of the media — one lonely fact in a 234- page report loaded with thousands of facts, and overshadowed by the controversy surrounding the documents.

There's only one problem with this: These claims were nothing new. In fact, it had been reported by the Washington Post back in 1999 -- in a story that Goldberg in fact cites in his piece. Here are the relevant grafs:

Four months before enlisting, Bush reported at Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts to take the Air Force Officers Qualification Test. While scoring 25 percent for pilot aptitude – "about as low as you could get and be accepted," according to Martin – and 50 percent for navigator aptitude in his initial testing, he scored 95 percent on questions designed to reflect "officer quality," compared with a current-day average of 88 percent.

Among the questions Bush had to answer on his application forms was whether he wanted to go overseas. Bush checked the box that said: "do not volunteer."

Bush said in an interview that he did not recall checking the box. Two weeks later, his office provided a statement from a former, state-level Air Guard personnel officer, asserting that since Bush "was applying for a specific position with the 147th Fighter Group, it would have been inappropriate for him to have volunteered for an overseas assignment and he probably was so advised by the military personnel clerk assisting him in completing the form."

During a second interview, Bush himself raised the issue.

"Had my unit been called up, I'd have gone . . . to Vietnam," Bush said. "I was prepared to go."

But there was no chance Bush's unit would be ordered overseas. Bush says that toward the end of his training in 1970, he tried to volunteer for overseas duty, asking a commander to put his name on the list for a "Palace Alert" program, which dispatched qualified F-102 pilots in the Guard to the Europe and the Far East, occasionally to Vietnam, on three- to six-month assignments.

He was turned down on the spot. "I did [ask] – and I was told, 'You're not going,' " Bush said.

Only pilots with extensive flying time – at the outset, 1,000 hours were required – were sent overseas under the voluntary program. The Air Force, moreover, was retiring the aging F-102s and had ordered all overseas F-102 units closed down as of June 30, 1970.

In other words, if Bush actually did volunteer for Vietnam duty, he did so secure in the knowledge there was no chance he'd actually be called upon. That is, he was talking big talk, once again, knowing full well he'd never have to back it up.

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Ron Reagan Jr. and Joan Walsh on Hardball reminding Chris Matthews that reality seems to have a liberal bias. As they both point out, once again, the Villagers were wrong, and the "loony left," as the media likes to dismiss any of us as, were right.

I disagree with both of them on one point, though. There is nothing "honorable" about what Tom Ridge is doing. He didn't quit and speak up when he was first asked to do this. And now that he's got a book to sell, suddenly he's feeding the public some half truths about what went on to gin up some interest in it.

Glenn Greenwald and Marcy Wheeler have had a bit of an interesting exchange with The Atlantic's Marc Ambinder over his reaction to Ridge's latest revelation that are well worth the read on the topic of how the Villagers treat the left.

Greenwald: Fringe leftist losers: wrong even when they're right:

Just as is still commonly said about opponents of the Iraq War (even though they were right, they were still wrong and unSerious because their motives were bad), Ambinder acknowledges that Bush critics were right that the terror alerts were being manipulated for political ends (he has no choice but to acknowledge that now that Ridge admits it), but still says journalists like himself were right to scorn such critics "because these folks based their assumption on gut hatred for President Bush, and not on any evaluation of the raw intelligence." As always: even when the dirty leftist hippies are proven right, they're still Shrill, unSerious Losers who every decent person and "journalist" scorns.

Wheeler: Ambinder: Sorry I Was So Stupid, But I Was Right To Be Stupid:

Mark Ambinder takes the opportunity of Ridge's confirmation that the terror alerts were one big political game to claim he was justified in believing that we DFHers were wrong about the alerts--and in doing so, demonstrates what is so wrong with so much of Village journalism.

Be sure to check out the rest of both posts if you haven't already. Reagan and Walsh should read them as well if they haven't. By showing such deference to Ridge they're simply feeding into the narrative they're attempting to beat back here.


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On three separate Fox News programs yesterday -- on Neil Cavuto's show, on Sean Hannity, and on Greta Van Susteren -- the hosts specifically referred to the Democrats' decision to go through "reconciliation" sessions to settle on the final form of the health-care legislation as "the nuclear option."

Eh?

Now just a gol-darned minute. The "nuclear option" always referred to the possibility of permanently changing Senate rules regarding filibusters so that the minority could not use it so readily to frustrate majority-approved legislation -- and it was an invention of Republicans who were considering bringing it against Democrats.

No such steps are being considered here.

Instead, we're seeing the health-care legislation go through the "reconciliation" process, which assures that it will only need 51 votes to pass. This is a long-established Senate procedure, and was indeed used frequently by Republicans when they controlled the Senate from 2001-2006.

Media Matters has the complete rundown.

Republicans repeatedly used reconciliation to pass former President Bush's agenda. Republicans used the budget reconciliation process to pass Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts as well as the 2005 "Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act." The Senate also used the procedure to pass a bill containing a provision that would permit oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. (The final version of that bill signed by Bush did not contain the provision on drilling.)

These people never quit when it comes to twisting reality for their agenda, do they?


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Cheney Begins Writing His Tell-All Memoirs

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August 13, 2009 MSNBC HARDBALL

O'DONNELL: Welcome back to HARDBALL.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is writing his memoirs. And "The Washington Post" reports that the one-time master of secrecy will reveal his grievances with his boss, former President George W. Bush, and detail their heated arguments in full.

Someone who attended a recent Cheney gathering described Cheney's disappointment with Bush and said, in the second term, Cheney felt Bush was moving away from him. He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that.

The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him-or, rather, Bush had hardened against Cheney's advice. He had showed an independence that Cheney didn't see coming.

Tom DeFrank is the Washington bureau chief of "The New York Daily News," and Pat Buchanan is an MSNBC political analyst.

Tom DeFrank, what do we make of this? Is Dick Cheney ready to violate his omerta, his blood oath of science?

TOM DEFRANK, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, "NEW YORK DAILY NEWS": Well, I think he is, up to a point. I guess I think that he's going to show a little leg. He's certainly going to-going to deal with the differences between himself and President Bush, especially in the second term.

But I-I suspect that Cheney is not going to be particularly personal about his view of President Bush. I was in contact this afternoon with somebody who is very familiar with both the book and Cheney's view, and I'm told that the "Washington Post" story, in this view, distorts both Cheney's view of President Bush and what he intends to do in the book.

We will just have to see.

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NBC caught a man outside the NH town hall with a gun strapped to his leg. It appears to be legal as long as it's not concealed in Portsmouth. And get this. He's on private property and if the owner of the property consents then he can carry the cannon on his leg. What's weird about that is the private property is a church. A man of GOD thinks it's swell to let this man carry a loaded weapon on church grounds. What would Jesus think?

Carlos: You're saying a guy has a gun in the open and we already know there are concerns about every president 's safety, but certainly this president...and the guy's just being allowed to stay there, is that right?

Allen: The Chief of Police, I just asked him because I was amazed too, but apparently the law allows this man to be here as long as the gun is not concealed, it is registered to him apparently and he's on private property on a church ground...

Do you think anybody would be allowed to be near President Bush who had a huge gun strapped on his leg? I doubt that, but this is the country the right wing wants us to live in. And if Sen. John Thune had his way, it wouldn't matter what NH law said if the state that this man came from did let you walk around with a gun. Unbelievable.


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This has been long overdue. From Murray Waas:

In an appointment that senior Justice Department officials say demonstrates the Obama administration’s commitment to reversing the Bush administration’s politicization of the Department, a U.S. attorney fired by President Bush was reappointed to his old job on Friday.

Daniel Bogden, who was fired in the fall of 2006 by the Bush administration as the U.S. attorney in Nevada, was offered his old job back by President Obama, and was formally nominated on Friday.

Bogden’s confirmation by the Senate is all but assured: He has spent his entire adult life in government service, and as a former U.S. attorney was confirmed by the Senate previously. He was also thoroughly vetted for his new position by the White House Counsel’s office prior to his most recent nomination, even though he was vetted during his first appointment as U.S. attorney by the Bush administration. Moreover, he has the backing of both his home-state senators: Harry Reid, a Democrat, and John Ensign, a Republican. That Reid is a Senate Majority Leader, and that Reid personally suggested to the President that Bogden get his old job back probably, won’t hurt matters.

Ironically, Bogden’s formal reappointment as U.S. attorney comes exactly one day after former Bush political adviser Karl Rove gave sworn testimony before the House Judiciary Committee regarding the firings of Bogden and eight other U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration. A federal grand jury is currently investigating whether Bush administration officials and members of Congress obstructed justice in pressing for one or more of the firings, and also, whether they misled Congress as to why the prosecutors were fired.

Bogden’s firing in the fall of 2006 is referred to by many in the Justice Department as the firing that came about as a result of some sort of Immaculate Conception: For two years, the Justice Department’s two watchdog agencies, its Inspector General and Office of Responsibility, spent 18 months investigating the firings of the nine U.S. attorneys. When it came to Bogden, however, the investigators were not only unable to determine why he was fired, but even who ordered his firing. Every single Justice Department official and Bush administration official interviewed by investigators disclaimed responsibility for his firing. Isn't that typical Bush/Cheney dealings?

Bogden’s appointment to his old job by Obama appears to a historical first: He will be the first U.S. attorney to be appointed and fired by the same President, only to be appointed U.S. attorney again by another President. How strange it all is and I believe as time goes by we'll see a lot more of these "irregularities" pop up, don't you think?
(co-written by David Neiwert)


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Ed Schultz Show: Dick Cheney's Last Stand

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July 23, 2009 MSNBC

SCHULTZ: Welcome back to THE ED SHOW.

Dick Cheney pleaded, cajoled, and even pestered President Bush to pardon convicted former chief of staff Scooter Libby. Cheney argued, "We don`t want to leave anyone on the battlefield."

The president wouldn`t do it. "TIME" magazine has an explosive front- cover story showing just how much Dick Cheney put on the line for Scooter.

It was "... a crusade for Cheney, who seemed prepared to push his nine-year-old relationship with Bush to the breaking point and perhaps past it."

Joining me now is Michael Weisskopf. He co-wrote the story and is a senior correspondent for "TIME" magazine.

Mr. Weisskopf, good to have you with us tonight.

As a journalist, this had to be kind of a fun story to do, wasn`t it?

MICHAEL WEISSKOPF, SR. CORRESPONDENT, "TIME": Dealing with the Bush administration has always been like chipping rock, Ed. And so it was a hard story to get, and -- but it was gratifying.

SCHULTZ: What was the most startling piece of information that you came across that you think is going to be a real interesting point for the American people who are fascinated with exactly how that administration was run, the nuts and bolts of it?

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