CapitalistImperialistPig

Via Josh Marshall , Laura Rozen connects two important dots in the Cunningham -US Attorneys - Gonzales - Rove mystery: From 1991 to 1993, a young lieutenant commander in the Navy Reserve was working as a program manager in a Pentagon intelligence office. His name was Mitchell John Wade. His boss, the assistant secretary of defense for command, control, communications and intelligence, was Duane P. Andrews. Andrews's job at the Pentagon was essentially to serve as intelligence advisor to the secretary of defense. The secretary of defense at the time was someone that Andrews knew well and respected immensely: Dick Cheney... Among the many lingering unanswered questions on this aspect of the case is who, in May 2002 -- just two months in advance of Wade getting the White House contract -- facilitated MZM getting authorized to be a federal supplier in the first place. This was done through a small branch of the Department of the Interior called the Minerals Management Service. That se...

Are you one of the 140,000 Americans who has been conscripted by the FBI to spy on your fellow citizens? Well, you couldn't tell us if you were, could you? - that's one of the thoughtful provisions of the USA Patriot Act. We now have a pretty good idea what Bush saw when he looked into Putin's eyes and liked what he saw: a fellow fascist. The Inspector General of the Justice Department, which apparently has so-far escaped complete corruption by Bush, Rove, and Gonzalez, recently revealed that the FBI has been flagarantly abusing its powers to issue so-called "National Security Letters" and also lying in its required reporting of same to the Congress. Any American who cares about freedom, for themselves or their children, ought to read this Washington Post Story by a recipient of such a letter. Three years ago, I received a national security letter (NSL) in my capacity as the president of a small Internet access and consulting business. The letter ordered me to ...

The email trail and much else suggests that Harriet Miers, Karl Rove, Attorney General Gonzalez and his principal deputies engaged in a conspiracy to obstruct justice. That charge may be hard to prove, but there is also plenty of evidence that Gonzalez and McNulty lied to Congress. The real question now is whether throwing a couple of more perps overboard can keep this leaky ship afloat.

The right-wing media (I mean the WP, NYT, CNN) have been a bit slow to pick up on this, but I suspect the fallout from the US Attn firings could be big. Two members of Congress are already on the hook for trying to interfere in a criminal investigation, and there are hints that this could go much higher. Josh Marshall has the story. ... let's be clear about one thing. I suspect many of the press lords haven't awoken yet to the potential magnitude of this story. The Iglesias story could drag down a member of Congress. On its own though it's a small matter. What makes it a big deal is that it's the tell about what happened in San Diego.