Armitage was the leaker?

According to CNN, former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage was Bob Novak's original source for the identity of Valerie Plame. [CNN] Armitage - Colin Powell's close friend and right-hand man, who resigned shortly after Powell did in 2005 - was never closely aligned with the Cheney/Rove crowd, and it is extremely hard to imagine him cooperating in some kind of plot to out Plame in retaliation for her husband's criticisms of the administration's WMD claims. Instead, Armitage apparently leaked her identity accidentally:

The Armitage connection to the Novak column is also outlined in a new book, titled "Hubris," by Michael Isikoff and David Korn.

In the book, Armitage is quoted as telling former Assistant Secretary of State Carl Ford that "I'm afraid I may be the guy that caused this whole thing." [CNN]

The Intelligence Identities Protection Act only applies to intentional leaks of a covert agent's identity, and Patrick Fitzgerald, special counsel in the leak investigation, has said that he will not prosecute Armitage.

"Sources: State Department Official source of Plame leak" [CNN]
"The Wilson-Plame-Novak-Rove Blame Game" [FactCheck.org]

Newspapers observe Katrina anniversary

Major newspapers across the country are commemorating the one-year anniversary of the Katrina catastrophe with a wealth of fascinating multimedia offerings. The New Orleans Times-Picayune is probably the best source, and the newspaper's website is loaded with maps, video and audio clips, and archived articles (the lead story in the paper's August 30, 2005 edition bears the concise headline "CATASTROPHIC"). The New York Times' interactive satellite photo map is pretty incredible, too.

There's constant debate over whether newspapers will become irrelevant in the new media environment. As long as they continue to provide this much quality information about major issues and events, the answer is no.

The Times-Picayune's Katrina coverage [NOLA.com]
New York Times' satellite photo map [New York Times]

Emissions trading takes center stage in California

In California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democrats in the legislature are at an impasse over several aspects of a bill to limit state's contribution to global warming - which, believe it or not, represents 12% of the world's total greenhouse gases. [Los Angeles Times] At the heart of the debate is Schwarzenegger's proposal to create a cap-and-trade emissions market.

In a cap-and-trade emissions market, a government regulatory agency sets emissions standards and grants polluters a certain number of emissions credits, with the overall emissions level dropping over time. If a company surpasses the mandated emissions level, it can buy additional emissions credits, and if it is below that level, it can sell their emissions credits to other companies on the market. The goal of a cap-and-trade system is to create a market-based financial incentive for companies to limit their emissions, and the approach has produced results in the EPA's acid rain reduction program and in several European programs. A number of major industrial polluters have already voluntarily joined the Chicago Climate Exchange, a private exchange which many see as a model for an eventual federal carbon emissions trading program. [Fortune]

Among the criticisms of the current California bill are that it would be difficult for a single state to successfully monitor a cap-and-trade program without other states participating, and that there is no assurance that the companies would even be allowed to participate in such a program without violating applicable federal laws. [CBS News] As a result, some environmentalists fear that passing the cap-and-trade bill will not accomplish anything, and that traditional emissions standards are a safer approach for the state. Some local environmental groups in heavily polluted areas are opposed to cap-and-trade systems completely, because they may not result in lower local emissions, even if they can help decrease the state's overall emissions. [CBS News] Finally, business groups have objected on the argument that the bill would force business out of the state.

"Emission Bill Sets of Clash in Sacramento" [Los Angeles Times]
"Global Warming Bill Stalls in California" [CBS News]
"For sale: Pollution" [Fortune]

UPDATED 9/1/06:

Good news! The cap-and-trade emissions bill passed yesterday. Whether one state can effectively run a cap-and-trade system remains to be seen, but creating a market mechanism to fight global warming is a brilliant idea, and Gov. Schwarzenegger and the California legislature deserve credit for forging a compromise and pushing forward in this area.

"California takes on global warming" [CNN]

The Jill Carroll Story: an instant classic

If you haven't been reading Jill Carroll's serialized account of her 82 days in captivity, drop whatever you're doing and start reading it now. Carroll's account of her experience as a hostage in Iraq - which is introspective, quirky, and at times, absurdly hilarious - reads like a reality TV show set in the Sunni Triangle.

This is easily one of the most fascinating things I have ever read.

Excerpt from "Part 8: A New Enemy":

Not all their explosives were offensive weapons. At least one of my guards - Abu Hassan, a serious man - wore a suicide vest inside the clubhouse.

One night, he was leaning over a little gas-powered stove, cooking eggs and potatoes in oil, and then he sat back and pushed the open flame away, saying something like, "Oh, have to be careful!"

The suicide vest was under his shirt, sort of swinging back and forth. He was afraid the fire would ignite the explosives. And if it did, we'd all be dead.

"Hostage: The Jill Carroll Story" [Christian Science Monitor]

Finally, Lieberman calls for Rumsfeld's resignation

Today, Joe Lieberman called for Donald Rumsfeld's resignation. [AP] What I don't understand is why he's waited until now. It has been more than two years since the editors of The Economist called for his resignation with their dramatic "Resign, Rumsfeld" cover. [Economist] And it has been more than a year and a half since Rumsfeld himself admitted that, during the Abu Ghraib scandal, he asked the President whether he should resign on two separate occasions. [CNN]

Don't get me wrong - I don't think that Lieberman adjusting his political stances based on his constituents' beliefs constitutes a "flip flop" of any sort. The whole purpose of a representative democracy is that the voters' opinions will have a strong influence on elected officials' political stances. That said, if Lieberman is going to call for Rumsfeld's resignation, he might as well go ahead and admit that the whole war was a bad idea. My recommendation? Just admit that we should have listened to Brent Scowcroft, one of President George H. W. Bush's top military advisors during the first Gulf War, when he warned us: "Don't Attack Saddam." [Wall Street Journal]

Federal judge: NSA's domestic spying program is unconstitutional

A federal judge has ruled that the NSA's warrantless "wiretapping" program is unconstitutional, and ordered an immediate halt to the program. [CNN]

PDF of the decision [uscourts.gov]

UPDATED 8/18/06:

President Bush says that those who have hailed the decision "simply do not understand the nature of the world in which we live." [New York Times] Or is the problem that President Bush simply does not understand the nature of the constitutional republic in which we live?

New 9/11 phone calls released

Today, the FDNY released 1,600 phone calls made to New York's emergency services on the morning of September 11, 2001. [New York Times] One of the calls released by the New York Times is the devastating call from Melissa Doi, who was trapped in the South Tower, to 911:

The recordings released today were edited to remove the voices of civilians calling the 911 system, as the court ordered on privacy grounds. As a result, those calls contain only the operators’ responses. Calls made by government employees — including firefighters — contain both sides of the conversation.

There is one exception: a call made by Melissa Doi, who was trapped in the south tower. It includes four minutes of her voice because it was introduced as evidence during the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui. In the call, Ms. Doi tells the operator she believes she is dying, and asks the operator to call her mother. Although the call lasted some 24 minutes, only 4 minutes were put into evidence; the remaining 20 released today contain the 911 operator’s voice as she tries to console Ms. Doi, who apparently died while on the phone. [New York Times]

MP3: Melissa Doi's call to 9/11 [New York Times]
"In New 9/11 Tapes, Glimpses of Loss, Struggle, and Valor" [New York Times]

Seymour Hersh: Watching Lebanon

Hersh tells us what insiders have told him about the war between Israel and Lebanon:

"Watching Lebanon" [The New Yorker]

How coupon fraud funds terrorism

Today, BoingBoing covered a fascinating story from DealDude, a coupon blog, on the link between coupon fraud and terrorism.

"Terrorists fund attacks using coupons" [BoingBoing.net]
"The Deal Dude salutes the FBI" [DealDude.com]
Senate Testimony: "Consumer Coupon Networks in the United States - the Terror Connection" [fas.org]

Foiled terror plot resembles Bojinka

The New York Times points out that the foiled terror attack targeting transatlantic flights closely resembles the Bojinka plot, a pre-9/11 plot by Al Qaeda to blow up planes over the Pacific. [NY Times] According to the Times article, "Bojinka" is Serbo-Croation for "big bang," although Khalid Sheikh Mohammed told the CIA it was a "nonsense" word.

The Bojinka plot was discussed in the 9/11 Commission Report, and is first mentioned on page 147. [9/11 Commission Report, p. 147] Vivisimo's search engine for the report lists all of the instances of the word "Bojinka" in the report. [Vivisimo 9/11 Report Demo]

"Plot Echoes One Planned by 9/11 Mastermind in '94" [NY Times]

Bush administration seeks to amend the War Crimes Act

Excerpt from the Washington Post's article:

The Bush administration has drafted amendments to a war crimes law that would eliminate the risk of prosecution for political appointees, CIA officers and former military personnel for humiliating or degrading war prisoners, according to U.S. officials and a copy of the amendments.

Officials say the amendments would alter a U.S. law passed in the mid-1990s that criminalized violations of the Geneva Conventions, a set of international treaties governing military conduct in wartime. The conventions generally bar the cruel, humiliating and degrading treatment of wartime prisoners without spelling out what all those terms mean.

The draft U.S. amendments to the War Crimes Act would narrow the scope of potential criminal prosecutions to 10 specific categories of illegal acts against detainees during a war, including torture, murder, rape and hostage-taking.

Left off the list would be what the Geneva Conventions refer to as "outrages upon [the] personal dignity" of a prisoner and deliberately humiliating acts -- such as the forced nakedness, use of dog leashes and wearing of women's underwear seen at the U.S.-run Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq -- that fall short of torture.

"War Crimes Act Changes Would Reduce Threat Of Prosecution" [Washington Post]

NY Times: "Revenge of the Irate Moderates"

The NY Times' editorial page characterized Ned Lamont's victory over Joe Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary as the "Revenge of the Irate Moderates" (apparently, "outraged" was already taken). The point of the editorial is that it is absurd to claim that Lamont's primary victory represents some kind of dramatic shift to the left - instead, the results show how far out of touch Lieberman has been with his own state. And they're one hundred percent right.

Lamont, a cable television executive whose great-grandfather was once chairman of J.P. Morgan & Company, has been criticized for running primarily on the Iraq issue. But that's how a representative democracy is supposed to work - at the end the day, the major issues of the day must come first. When it came to Iraq, Lieberman not only failed to admit that he had been wrong - which every single member of Congress should have admitted by now - but he even went as far as to suggest that critics of the President's foreign policy were hurting the country. In December 2005, Lieberman said:

"It is time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge that he will be Commander-in-Chief for three more critical years, and that in matters of war we undermine Presidential credibility at our nation's peril." [lieberman.senate.gov]

Lieberman's statement directly contradicts the Teddy Roosevelt quote I have had at the top of this blog for two years (a statement which, incidentally, Roosevelt made during World War I); like many of his neoconservative allies, Lieberman seems to genuinely believe that citizens are a pesky inconvenience, rather than the bedrock of a true democracy. As the New York Times editorial points out, Lieberman never stood up to the Bush administration's continual abuses of power:

The rebellion against Mr. Lieberman was actually an uprising by that rare phenomenon, irate moderates. They are the voters who have been unnerved over the last few years as the country has seemed to be galloping in a deeply unmoderate direction. A war that began at the president's choosing has degenerated into a desperate, bloody mess that has turned much of the world against the United States. The administration's contempt for international agreements, Congressional prerogatives and the authority of the courts has undermined the rule of law abroad and at home.

Yet while all this has been happening, the political discussion in Washington has become a captive of the Bush agenda. Traditional beliefs like every person's right to a day in court, or the conviction that America should not start wars it does not know how to win, wind up being portrayed as extreme. The middle becomes a place where senators struggle to get the president to volunteer to obey the law when the mood strikes him. Attempting to regain the real center becomes a radical alternative. [NY Times]

In those two concise paragraphs, the Times editorial makes the point I've been trying to make with this blog during the last two years. We should not define "liberal," "moderate," and "conservative" based on what cable news commentators and the two parties' strategists tell us. Instead, American politics should be discussed in the context of American history.

"Revenge of the Irate Moderates" [NY Times]

An Israeli calls for an end to the neoconservative nightmare

Earlier this year, political scientist Francis Fukuyama wrote a reassuring op-ed piece for the New York Times titled "After Neoconservatism," which was something of an executive summary for his book "America at the Crossroads."

Today, one of Israel's major newspapers published a similar editorial by an Israeli policy wonk, calling for a return to sanity on the part of American and Israeli policymakers:

"Ending the neoconservative nightmare" [Haaretz.com]

Vanity Fair releases NORAD tapes from 9/11

Vanity Fair has obtained 30 hours of recordings from the control room of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) on the morning of 9/11/01. The author, who served as an executive producer for the film United 93, attempts to reconstruct the morning's events, and the article is accompanied by links to audio files of key consersations. I haven't had a chance to read the entire article yet, but this is definitely a major addition to the public's information concerning NORAD's response.

"9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes" [Vanity Fair]