Bush has refused to speak about the CIA leak investigation or the impending trial of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the former vice presidential chief of staff who was indicted in the case. But the president said he believes that DeLay is not guilty -- weeks before his trial is expected to begin.

It is highly unusual for a president to express an opinion on a pending legal case. Richard M. Nixon, for instance, was widely criticized for declaring Charles Manson "guilty, directly or indirectly" of murder while Manson's trial was ongoing.
...
Bush dismissed rumors that Rumsfeld will leave his post early next year. Asked if Rumsfeld will stay through the second term, Bush said: "Well, end of my term is a long time, but I tell you, he's done a heck of a good job and I have no intention of changing him."

Reuters: "In an interview with Fox News, Bush said his relationship with Cheney had "only gotten better," and he remained "very close" to Rove, who could face charges in the criminal investigation into the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity."
...
Bush said he was not that familiar with the federal investigation into the dealings of Jack Abramoff, a once-powerful lobbyist who also had links to DeLay.
"But it seems like to me that he was an equal money dispenser, that he was giving money to people in both political parties," Bush said. 12.15.2005 "U.S. Auto Industry Wants Health Care in Canada" by Rep. Jim Mcdermott

12.13.2005 "Bush can settle CIA leak riddle, Novak says" By Rob Christensen, Barbara Barrett, Jane Stancill and Dan Kane

Newspaper columnist Robert Novak is still not naming his source in the Valerie Plame affair, but he says he is pretty sure the name is no mystery to President Bush.

"I'm confident the president knows who the source is," Novak told a luncheon audience at the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh on Tuesday. "I'd be amazed if he doesn't."

"So I say, 'Don't bug me. Don't bug Bob Woodward. Bug the president as to whether he should reveal who the source is.' "

Redstate.org "It stands to reason, given his very early involvement in the case and his extensive network throughout the Bush Administration, that Bob Novak knows a thing or two about what really went down.

So why would he say something like this publicly? Is Bob Novak off the reservation? "

(Some see the glass half empty.)

WHEN a government substitutes propaganda for governing, the Potemkin village is all. Since we don't get honest information from this White House, we must instead, as the Soviets once did, decode our rulers' fictions to discern what's really happening. What we're seeing now is the wheels coming off: As the administration's stagecraft becomes more baroque, its credibility tanks further both at home and abroad. The propaganda techniques may be echt Goebbels, but they increasingly come off as pure Ali G.
...
The more we learn about such sleaze in the propaganda war, the more we see it's failing for the same reason as the real war: incompetence. Much as the disastrous Bremer regime botched the occupation of Iraq with bad decisions made by its array of administration cronies and relatives (among them Ari Fleischer's brother), so the White House doesn't exactly get the biggest bang for the bucks it shells out to cronies for fake news.
...
And the president's latest Iraq speeches - most recently about the "success" stories of Najaf and Mosul - still don't stand up to the most rudimentary fact checking.

"Law firm says filed suit against Diebold"

A law firm said it filed suit on Tuesday against Diebold Inc. (DBD.N: Quote, Profile, Research) alleging the voting-machine maker lacked sufficient internal controls, was unable to be confident in the quality of its voting machines and made misleading statements about its condition.

The complaint alleges that defendants violated provisions of the United States securities laws causing artificial inflation of the Company's stock price. According to the complaint, during the Class Period, the Company lacked a credible state of internal controls and corporate compliance and remained unable to assure the quality and working order of its voting machine products. It is further alleged that the Company's false and misleading statements served to conceal the dimensions and scope of internal problems at the Company, impacting product quality, strategic planning, forecasting and guidance and culminating in false representations of astonishingly low and incredibly inaccurate restructuring charges for the 2005 fiscal year, which grossly understated the true costs and problems defendants faced to restructure the Company. The complaint also alleges over $2.7 million of insider trading proceeds obtained by individual defendants during the Class Period.
Finally, investors learned the truth about the adverse impact of the Company's alleged defective and deficient inventory-related controls and systems on Diebold's financial performance. As a result of defendants' shocking news and disclosures of September 21, 2005, the price of Diebold shares plunged 15.5% on unusually high volume, falling from $44.37 per share on September 20, 2005, to $37.47 per share on September 21, 2005, for a one- day drop of $6.90 per share on volume of 6.1 million shares -- nearly eight times the average daily trading volume. Here

"Diebold CEO resigns after reports of fraud litigation, internal woes" by John Byrne

The chief executive officer of electronic voting company Diebold who once famously declared that he would "deliver" Ohio for President Bush has resigned effective immediately, RAW STORY has learned.

"The board of directors and Wally [O'Dell] mutually agreed that his decision to resign at this time for personal reasons was in the best interest of all parties," the company's new chairman said in a statement.

"EXCLUSIVE: SECURITIES FRAUD LITIGATION TO BE FILED WITHIN THE HOUR AGAINST DIEBOLD, INC!" Bradblog

U.S. District Judge Stanwood Duval ordered the disaster response agency to pay for storm victims' rooms for at least two weeks once a decision is made on granting them rental housing assistance or until Feb. 7, whichever comes first. The agency had planned to stop subsidizing hotel rooms for evacuees on Jan. 7, in an effort to push them into longer-term housing, which it says is better for them and less costly to the government.

Duval's order applies to thousands of the estimated 85,000 evacuee households whose housing aid applications FEMA has not yet processed. He also called on FEMA to publicize its reversal of strict rules that denied aid to thousands of other evacuees, describing FEMA housing policy shifts as "eccentric and bizarre."
...
Lawyers for the U.S. government argued that "citizens have come to think of every problem in the United States as a federal problem and that the federal government is responsible for them," Duval wrote. But, he added, "certainly in this instance, by law and mandate, the federal government is responsible."

A union-supported group, Wake Up Wal-Mart, has released a TV ad accusing Wal-Mart of violating religious values, backed by a letter from religious leaders attacking the retail giant for paying low wages and offering poor benefits. The letter declares that “Jesus would not embrace Wal-Mart’s values of greed and profits at any cost.”

You may think that this particular campaign – which has, inevitably, been dubbed “Where would Jesus shop?” – is a bit over the top. But it’s clear why those concerned about the state of American workers focus their criticism on Wal-Mart. The company isn’t just America’s largest private employer. It’s also a symbol of the state of our economy, which delivers rising G.D.P. but stagnant or falling living standards for working Americans. For Wal-Mart is a huge and hugely profitable company that pays badly and offers minimal benefits.

The contentiousness also reached Washington, where the Justice Department approved the plan although staff lawyers concluded that it diluted minority voting rights.

12.9.2005 "Freedom Ride" By Aaron

Today was supposed to be Deborah Davis' day in court. The Feds staged a tactical retreat and dropped the charges while insisting their unconstitutional policies would continue unabated. More

In late August 2005, after twenty years of service in the field of military procurement, Bunnatine ("Bunny") Greenhouse, the top official at the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in charge of awarding government contracts for the reconstruction of Iraq, was demoted. For years, Greenhouse received stellar evaluations from superiors -- until she raised objections about secret, no-bid contracts awarded to Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR) -- a subsidiary of Halliburton, the mega-corporation Vice President Dick Cheney once presided over. After telling congress that one Halliburton deal was "the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career," she was reassigned from "the elite Senior Executive Service... to a lesser job in the civil works division of the corps."

When Greenhouse was busted down, she became just another of the casualties of the Bush administration -- not the countless (or rather uncounted) Iraqis, or the ever-growing list of American troops, killed, maimed, or mutilated in the administration's war of convenience-- but the seemingly endless and ever-growing list of beleaguered administrators, managers, and career civil servants who quit their posts in protest or were defamed, threatened, fired, forced out, demoted, or driven to retire by Bush administration strong-arming. Often, this has been due to revulsion at the President's policies -- from the invasion of Iraq and negotiations with North Korea to the flattening of FEMA and the slashing of environmental standards -- which these women and men found to be beyond the pale.

Since almost the day he assumed power, George W. Bush has left a trail of broken careers in his wake. Below is a listing of but a handful of the most familiar names on the rolls of the fallen. Here

Speaking in Washington just before she left for Europe, she defended the renditions as a necessary part of the US ``war on terror''.

She made it absolutely clear that the US government had the knowing cooperation of the relevant EU governments, or at least of their intelligence services, in these shuttle flights.

It must have felt very satisfying, but she will regret saying it before the end.

What she said was completely true, of course. You can't have all those flights going through the airports of sovereign states without the knowledge and permission of the host governments, even if they choose not to inquire too closely into what the planes are carrying. By highlighting their complicity in the renditions, Ms Rice made it very likely that there will now be judicial or parliamentary inquiries in these countries to probe the extent to which their governments knew _ or chose not to know _ what was going on.

Meanwhile, Ahmad Chalabi, the Pentagon’s former favourite to run Iraq, was appointed chair of the Energy Council, which replaced the Supreme Council for Oil Policy as the key overseer of energy and oil policy. Back in 2002 Chalabi had famously promised that “US companies will have a big shot at Iraqi oil. Here

James Ridgeway: "it's all about the oil."

• Baghdad Burning
• Billmon
• Carpetbagger
• Christian Coalition Ratings
• Steven C. Clemons
• Digby
• Maureen Dowd
• Drudge
• Gen. JC Christian, patriot
• The Huffington Post
• Headingleft, Sander and Aaron
• Memeorandum
• No More Mister Nice Blog
• Ed Perlmutter's Home Page
• Publius
• Talking Points Memo
• Wikipedia
• Farid Zakaria

Guantanamo ... Social Security ... Wilson/Plame Timeline ... Judicial Nominations

The Scalito, Mafia PDF

Alphabet Soup

The Project for the New American Century's Statement of Principles, and its pre-2000 writings about Iraq.

The U.S. Constitution
See also

Civil Disobedience, by Henry David Thoreau

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