Month: July 2007

Bush Admits White House CIA Leak. Well isn’t that sporting of him.

WASHINGTON — President Bush acknowledged publicly for the first time Thursday that someone in his administration “perhaps” leaked the name of a CIA operative, although he also said he hopes the controversy over his decision to spare prison for a former White House aide has “run its course.”

“And now we’re going to move on,” Mr. Bush said in a White House news conference.

Okay, so it is true that “Scooter” Libby was convicted of obstruction of justice, perjury, and making false statements to federal investigators, and not of revealing the identity of a covert CIA operative. But wasn’t that last charge more or less implicit, alleging that Libby’s statements to the FBI about Valerie Plame were false in large part because he had known she was an operative, and because he had revealed that fact to reporters or knew who had? There doesn’t appear to be a whole lot of “perhaps” about it any more.

Remember, also, that Bush has not pardoned Libby, only commuted the sentence, which implies that he believes the conviction should stand. Of course, there are lots of other, more likely reasons why Bush would want to stop short of a full pardon — Libby stays out of jail this way, and he can’t be forced to testify against anyone else in the administration — but, on the public face of it at least, he’s still acknowledging that, yes, Lewis Libby is a criminal.

And even if Bush had pardoned him, or Libby had never been convicted, isn’t the possibility that someone in the White House perhaps leaked the identity of a covert operative still worth looking into? Isn’t it right that we send someone to prison for that if we can?

What Bush is saying, essentially, is this: yeah, somebody in the administration may have committed a serious federal crime, endangered the life of a woman and the security of the nation for cheap political gain, but hey, we’re movin’ on. I mean, heck, it’s not as if Valerie Plame actually got killed because of any of this! And the White House didn’t really gain from her being outed. So it’s all basically a wash, right? Movin’ on.

Via fellow capper Xigeous, I learn of the upcoming CBS reality show, Kid Nation:

Forty plucky kids ranging in age from 8 to 15 spend 40 days without parents or Playstations in Bonanza City, M.M., a ghost town where they try to build a community that works, cooking their own meals, hauling their own water, clearning their own outhouses and even running businesses such as the root beer-dispensing saloon. They also elect four peer leaders who will pass laws and set bedtimes. No one is “voted out” at the town meeting that closes each episode, but any kids who have had enough can simply raise their hands and leave. How many will stick it out?

It’s like Lord of the Flies meets Deadwood!

Things I learned from today’s Writer’s Almanac:

  • Henry David Thoreau was born David Henry Thoreau. Seriously? Reversing his first two names was the best pen name he could come up with?
  • George Eastman called his camera “the Kodak because it was easy to remember, difficult to misspell, and it meant nothing, so it could only be associated with his product.”
  • Pablo Neruda was born Neftali Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. If he’d been Thoreau, his pen name would have been Ricardo Reyes Neftali Basoalto, I’m sure.