Tom Maguire points out Tim Russert's "problem"

Tom Maguire has a damning piece about Tim Russert and his role in the Plame case. There now seems to be evidence that Lewis Libby's story is not so far wrong as Patrick Fitzgerald suggests. Apparently Lewis Libby had called Tim Russert to commplain about a piece on Hardball:

Working independently, these two came to the same conclusion - Mr. Libby's ire was *probably* raised by a Chris Matthews rant from July 8 on - have you guessed? - Lewis Libby, Joe Wilson, and Niger.

My, my. Was Mr. Russert chatting about Joe Wilson and the Niger trip with Mr. Libby? Two people make the case, and I'm sold. Now, why did no one at NBC break that? And does it affect anyone's sense of the plausibility of Libby's story? Surely if Messrs. Libby and Russert were talking about Wilson, it is more likely that his wife was mentioned than if they were talking about New York Yankee baseball. And it is certainly more plausible that mr. Libby had an honest memory lapse, or a bit of confusion, if he really did talk with Mr. Russert about Joe Wilson.

This *suspected* linkage will come as a bit of news to Mr. Duffy at TIME, who reported that Mr. Libby "confected [the Russert conversation] out of whole cloth". Perhaps the cloth was not quite so whole.

Kevin Drum says that exposing Valerie Plame was not a crime

Kevin Drum, writing at The Washington Monthly makes it clear that he doesn't think much of someone exposing Valerie Plame's role at the CIA, but he says that it wasn't a crime. Kevin concludes:

So her identity was classified, but had she served outside the United States during the five years prior to her outing in 2003? She was based in Brussels in early 1997, but as Vanity Fair reported last year:

In 1997, Plame moved back to the Washington area, partly because...the C.I.A. suspected that her name may have been on a list given to the Russians by the double agent Aldrich Ames in 1994.

So for the six years previous to 2003, Plame was based in the U.S., not overseas. And legally, as far as IIPA is concerned, that means she wasn't covert.

And that's the most likely reason that Fitzgerald didn't indict anyone for the actual act of leaking Valerie Plame's name. As reckless as it was — and Fitzgerald made it crystal clear that he did think it was reckless — he probably decided on technical grounds that he wouldn't have been able to successfully win a conviction under either of the applicable statutes.

Marc Cooper thinks that Dick Cheney's fingerprints are all over the outing of Valerie Plame

Marc Cooper thinks that he has the outing of Valerie Plame all figured out. He sees Vice-President Dick Cheney's fingerprints all over the place. You might extrapolate from that and suspect that Lewis Libby was trying to obscure that fact. The problem with that is that the Vice-President seems to have testified openly about what happened, so what is the deal? Libby is reportedly a sharp lawyer, and how would he have gotten caught in such a trap? Marc writes:

Appearing on CNN’s Larry King show, David Gergen, simply said: "Because if there are indictments, it will not only be people close to the president, the vice president of the United States, but they will raise questions about whether criminal acts were perpetrated to help get the country into war."

Precisely. The essence of Plamegate can now be boiled down to two words: Dick Cheney. After the first whiff that Joe Wilson was going to somehow contradict the administration snow-job on Iraqi WMD, Dick got the ball rolling. Hoping to roll righ over Wilson. He shared his info on Wilson’s wife with his handmaiden Mr. Libby, and told him to scoot right to the task of discrediting the former Ambassador. It was not a crime for Cheney to know of Valerie Plame’s job, nor to pass that info along to Scooter. But it was a conspiracy to defraud the American people of the truth in a quest to stampede them into a war. A war that has become a fiasco. Says Andrew Sullivan:

“From the evidence we now have, it seems crystal clear to me that Libby knew he was out of line when he leaked the Plame name, and perjured himself to protect himself and the real source of the leak, Cheney. He gambled that the reporters wouldn’t squeal; and that he could cleverly spin his phone conversations so that the information seemed to come from reporters, not him. The question now is whether he will now turn against his colleagues and master to save his own skin. This story is just beginning. Ultimately, it’s about Cheney.”

Hugh Hewitt's interview with Andrew McBride

Hugh Hewitt interviewed Andrew McBride about the indictment of Lewis Libby, today. RadioBlogger has the transcript. Andrew McBride praised Patrick Fitzgerald, but the whole business comes across as politically motivated. Fitzgerald couldn't indict anyone for outing Valerie Plame Wilson, as there seems to have not been a crime committed. He desperately wanted one or more top Republican scalps, so he found one.

The Democrats are fixated on goofy stuff

The Democrats are convinced that a crime was committed by "outing" Valerie Plame Wilson. All the public information indicates that she was no longer under cover. We haven't seen anything that would change that impression. It seems that even if no crime was committed, Karl Rove is bad and should be punished on general principles. Scooter Libby is being prosecuted for allegedly lying about a non-crime. It still seems that Joe Wilson lied about not being recommended by his wife to go do a non-investigation in Niger. The CIA disregarded his report, but he leaked it to the press, anyway, to do damage to the President and his administration. The New Donkey blogger writes:

Having just watched, along with the whole hep political world, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's press conference, I think you can boil off the legalese and go with his baseball metaphor for what he was saying about the strange decision to prosecute someone for lying about a crime for which no one has been indicted.

"Scooter" Libby (nicknamed, ironically, after baseball great Phil "Scooter" Rizutto) is, according to Fitzgerald, the guy who threw sand in the umpire's face when the dark-robed arbiter was trying to figure out why the pitcher threw at the batter's head.

This implies that (1) the investigation may have in fact determined who leaked Valerie Plame's name, even though key issues like the "pitcher's" motives and knowledge about Plame's undercover status have been so far obscured, making an indictment impossible; (2) Libby's real crime was to throw the investigation off course until the Grand Jury commission expired; and most importantly (3) the underlying crime is still under investigation, and could be exposed by new information or by disclosures Libby now makes at trial, or in order to cop a plea.

If that's right, and especially if Fitzgerald is implying that Libby deliberately lied to protect somebody else, then another big shoe could later drop, even if it occurs after Fitzgerald's investigation is concluded.

Razib has a good piece called "Clash on Crank"

Gene Expression has been diving deep into technical genetic jargon, lately, so I was glad to see a piece of more general interest again for readers like me. Razib has a post "Clash on Crank" that he wrote about an article that he had received:

A few weeks ago, one Randall Parker forwarded me this article, Historian challenges assumptions about religious conflicts, which claimed to "debunk" the "clash of civilizations" narrative. Brian Catlos asserts:

"Where my research and data leads, though not intentionally, is to debunk the notion of a conflict of civilizations--a conflict between groups of people who identify themselves as Christians, Jews, or Muslims and who articulate their struggle as a result of ideology and national identity," said Catlos. "Rather what's really behind history and contemporary human affairs is the interest of relatively small groups who often interact without regard to ideologies, national, or religious boundaries."

Razib says that Catlos was a debunking of Samuel Huntington's work:

I thought that it would be prudent to reread Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of the World Order by Samuel Huntington, as Catlos' contention seemed to be in response to the null hypothesis elaborated in this book a decade ago. I did read Huntington's book when it came out...but I thought a refresh was timely, especially in light of changes in the order of the world since 9-11, and my own personal exploration of cognitive science over the past 3 years might give me a different perspective on the arguments in Huntington's book.

Razib concludes:

The irony about Clash of Civilizations is that conflict between civilizations is only worthy of study because Huntington passionately cares about the core values of the West, pluralism of ideas, individuality and basic human rights. His message is clearly aimed at waking up the West, and arguing that the Western Moment is over, that the dream of a Universal Civilization as depicted in Francis Fukuyama's The End of History and the Last Man has not, and will not, be validated. I think Huntington is too pessimistic. I have covered many topics in this post, so I won't elaborate why I think Westernization is a reality, but I do think that the world is being unified by a common Western matrix, though there are regional flavors and variations. But Huntington's message is that the ultimate threat comes from the lack of focus and passion that he perceives in the West, the unilateral cultural disarmament in the face of non-Western memes and the evisceration attemped from within by an assorted motley. I believe how the West responds will help determine what shape the coming Universal Civilization takes. The reality is that in the West vs. the Rest, the Rest are simply epiphenomena who will help shape the temporary dynamic. But epiphenomena can be a short term bitch.

Christopher Hayes' review of No Right Turn in the Washington Monthly

Christopher Hayes has a review in the Washington Monthly of the book No Right Turn, by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson. The basic thesis is that the country has not become more conservative. The Republicans are just more efficient at tactical politics, and, in fact, are cheating. If they would only play fair, the Democrats could win (perhaps I am not being fair). I was tempted to quote the article, but it is probably off limits. Hacker and Pierson do hold the Democrats, and their constituents responsible, at least in part, for this situation. The bottom line is that the Democrats need to get themselves together enough to start winning more elections, if they are to regain power.

Peggy Noonan has a piece in Opinion Journal

RealClearPolitics.com has a link to Peggy Noonan's piece in the OpinionJournal. Her piece is called "A Separate Piece: America is in trouble--and our elites are merely resigned". I probably cannot quote from the piece, so I will summarize it as minimally as possible. Essentially, the best and brightest in our country, "the elites", are resigned to what Peggy calls "the trolley going off the tracks". The elites have made "a separate peace" and are sitting back, waiting for the collapse. It reminds of the Ron Goulart stories. What he wrote about in his post-collapse books was a satirical look at what could happen after the United States "went out of business" (Cloggie.org has a review of After Things Fell Apart).

Our buddies on the right

Hugh Hewitt writes about the damage done by those on the right who have picked on the Harriet Miers nomination to attack her and the President:

One of the great ironies of this disastrous embrace of the tactics of the left is that it comes only weeks and indeed days after repeated warnings by Justice Scalia of just such abuses. Scalia's August 30th Madison Lecture at my law school addressed these issues, and he referred to them on MSNBC as well, answering Maria Bartiromo's question about whether he could be confirmed again with "I don't know, but I wouldn't want to go through it today [laughs]. I’ll tell you that much. It has become politicized."

Yesterday I quoted the Wall Street Journal's quote from the Cato Institute's Roger Pilon:

"This woman has demonstrated almost nothing that would indicate she is either one of us or up to the job." (Emphasis added.)

In reseaching this post, I found Roger Pilon's forward to the latest edition of Supreme Court Review, wherein he writes:

"The problem with going down that political road, however, is its potential for undermining the rule of law, for turning everything into politics. At the extreme, for example, both the president and the Senate might demand that a nominee pass a so-called ideological litmus test as a condition for being nominated or confirmed -- the idea being to try to bind him to deciding future cases in accordance with his answers on the test. Were that approach to prevail -- and we are already part way there -- the independence of the judiciary would be seriously compromised as judging would no longer be a function of dispassionate and apolitical reason but of nomination and confirmation politics. That political process would determine the legal process, in effect, rendering the latter a sham."

I cannot reconcile Mr. Pilon's strong statements against the nominee (though I do not believe he has called for withdrawal prior to the hearings) with this warning, but I also cannot reconcile Judge Bork's condemnation of her with Judge Bork's introduction to the new book ke edited and released this summer, or David Frum's leadership of the new organization attacking Miers with his July 4 description of a potential Miers nomination.

All no doubt have explanations which deserve a careful hearing, of course, and they may even be persuasive.

But I don't think it is possible to deny that the assault on Miers has given the left a sword of incredible sharpness for use in future judicial battles. The Gang of 14 did incredible damage in May, but it was possible to recover from that set-back because conservatives did not abandon their argument for an up or down vote after a hearing. Now many have. The list of conservatives publicly urging a hearing and an up-or-down vote for Miers is very short indeed. Perhaps that will change.

I had reluctantly concluded yesterday that Harriet Mier's nomination was dead

After reading this note by Jonathan Last, at Galley Slaves, I reluctantly concluded the Harriet Miers nomination was dead. I have supported her nomination, but I have been increasingly concerned that there were too many negatives about her. I think that she is politically astute enough to realize that the best thing would be to withdraw, so she did.

Tom Maguire on "Baby Steps Towards the Truth"

Tom Maguire writes at JustOneMinute about the mainstream media's gradually coming clean about Joe Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame Wilson.

Walter Pincus of the Washington Post prints a bit of a Wilson-basher today. Why do we care? The current Plame leak coverage has settled on the theme that the White House was determined to "discredit" Wilson. In that context, an understanding of the White House motive might be enriched if the media admitted that Wilson lacked credibility, and that "discrediting" him amounted to correcting the record.

He concludes:

Today, the Times has a modest breakthrough as they confront their tortured past while discussing the timing of the conversation between Libby and Cheney about Wilson and his wife:

On June 12, 2003, the day of the conversation between Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby, The Washington Post published a front-page article reporting that the C.I.A. had sent a retired American diplomat to Niger in February 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq had been seeking to buy uranium there. The article did not name the diplomat, who turned out to be Mr. Wilson, but it reported that his mission had not corroborated a claim about Iraq's pursuit of nuclear material that the White House had subsequently used in Mr. Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.

An earlier anonymous reference to Mr. Wilson and his mission to Africa had appeared in a column by Nicholas D. Kristof in The New York Times on May 6, 2003. Mr. Wilson went public with his conclusion that the White House had "twisted" the intelligence about Iraq's pursuit of nuclear material on July 6, 2003, in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times.

My goodness. It seems finally to have dawned on the Times editors that they can not continue to cover this story under the pretense that Joe Wilson sprang from the earth, fully grown, with his op-ed on July 6.

Will the Times ever get around to acknowledging that much of the material presented by Kristof was not accurate? Will they acknowledge that one possible motivation for the White House attack on Wilson's credibility was that Wilson was not credible?

One day at a time at the Times.

An interesting piece on Justice Stephen Breyer

The New Yorker has a piece about Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. Besides informing us about Justice Breyer and his background, we read about his proposal for a "progressive revival". In many ways, I would place him at odds with the radical left fringe that is the Democratic Party in 2005. They main difference is that he is cordial and willing to work with those with different views. He also respects the work of Congress, and votes to uphold their work more than any other justice.

Scott Johnson has a piece from Major E. in Iraq

Scott Johnson posted a piece on Powerline by Major E., who is in Iraq. I was heartened by Major E.'s report on the attacks, yesterday, and the overall Iraqi progress. I actually heard in the news that the terrorist attack failed, so some good news gets through the filter:

"By now, I am sure that many of your readers have seen the eye-catching video of multiple vehicle bombs detonating in front of a Baghdad hotel. Since it is being broadcast all over the airwaves, I just wanted to remind readers that even though it was an apparent public relations success for the terrorists, the attack was a failure in military terms."

Wizbang: the ironies of Plamegate

Kevin Aylward, writing at Wizbang, tells of the ironies of Joe Wilson telling lies, and Bush officials being indicted for telling the truth.

Another week goes with no news from Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald in the investigation into the Valerie Plame leak case. Just because there's no hard news, that has stopped speculation from running rampant.

He quotes the Wall Street Journal:

• The Wall Street Journal highlights one ironic twist of the whole affair,

  Mr. Wilson's original claims about what he found on a CIA trip to Africa, what he told the CIA about it, and even why he was sent on the mission have since been discredited. What a bizarre irony it would be if what began as a politically motivated lie by Mr. Wilson nonetheless leads to indictments of Bush Administration officials for telling reporters the truth.

The current state of NPR

I have long been an NPR listener. Last year, I gave up on listening to it. This year, I had experimented with listening, again, but I have largely backed off. The "national feed" has become "extremist left wing radio". At times, you could call it "hate radio". One of the worst examples was when Jeff Chester appeared on "On the Media", as I have previously mentioned.

The local station had gone through a format change to pretty much only having the nationally produced talk radio. In the past, they had a locally produced folk and blues programming. When they did away with that format, it pretty much killed off the locall music scene. In its place, we had to listen to extremist talk radio. What made it all the more galling is to know that it was receiving federal funding.

Marc Cooper thinks that the Bush administration is about to collapse

Marc Cooper's take on the political situation is that the Bush administration is about to collapse. He points to the Rove/Libby business. I am not so sure that he isn't just suffering from wishful thinking by one of my favorite lefties (I happen to be center-right). In any case, he writes:

As recently as one week ago I got into a heated argument with some people I know who still cannot believe – who won’t believe—that this administration has crashed. So pathetic, so impotent, so fearful and downright paranoid has become much of the American left that it cannot yet bring itself to comprehend that the Bush White House is going down in ignominy.

The only remaining question is: just how much of a political catastrophe is George W. Bush facing? Is it going to be a mere Category Five, Katrina-like debacle? Or are we looking at a full-blown Watergate-class political holocaust?

That’s the debate. That’s the suspense. There is no going back.

There is only a possibility of slowly sliding into oblivion or, conversely, roaring right over the cliff. Is Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald merely going to drill hole in the White House boat? Or is he going to dive-bomb it? Just ask Pat Buchanan, one of Watergate’s front row observers:

“…My guess is that there are multiple indictments coming, for lying to investigators, perjury, obstruction of justice, and disclosure of national security secrets for political purposes. And maybe conspiracy…”

Cars

I am interested in the fact that the Volkswagen Passat has become a model for other cars. The first was the Nissan Altima. Following that, in a modified and improved form, is the Nissan Maxima. Now, the Ford 500 is the latest car to copy the Passat, but they have succeeded in producing a poor copy. The reason simply may be that the look is starting to be dated. I agree that the Taurus 2000 design was looking dated. That was especially true since the car was already just and updated version of the earlier design (the "small" Taurus from circa 1996).

Tom Maguire on Valerie Plame Wilson's covertness

Tom Maguire, writing at the JustOneMinute blog, has a long piece about just how covert Valerie Plame Wilson was:

The always astute Mickey Kaus argues (How Dems Could Blow Plamegate) that the Democrats should resist the temptation to turn the Plame investigation into a trial of the war in Iraq, and focus on the harm done to national security by the outing of a covert agent:

...while Dems might get a majority of Americans to agree that the Iraq War was a bad move, they'd get about 95% to agree that compromising covert American agents is a bad move. Why not make the latter the issue?

Since Special Counsel Fitzgerald is contemplating a similar question as he weighs indictments, let's address this central question - how covert was Valerie Plame?

Tom Maguire goes on with:

And Fitzgerald [the prosecutor] has all those memos, because he knows an aggressive defense will raise this point at trial, right? Sure, just as the press has reported on the many changes at the CIA press office following the Plame debacle. Or not. I am guessing here, but I bet that Fitzgerald has nothing from the CIA on this, and is troubled by it.

So, let's try for a positive case - if we accept for a moment that the neither the CIA nor Wilson were acting in a manner consistent with Valerie's cover being a deep secret, can we establish a reason for that? Sure - per Nick Kristof, Ms. Plame was, in fact, believed to have been compromised by Aldrich Ames in 1994; her operations were, as best as possible, wound down, and by 2003 she was in transition to a liaison function.

And per Bill Gertz of the Wash Times, the CIA accidentally outed Ms. Plame themselves:

In a second compromise, officials said a more recent inadvertent disclosure resulted in references to Mrs. Plame in confidential documents sent by the CIA to the U.S. Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy in Havana.

The documents were supposed to be sealed from the Cuban government, but intelligence officials said the Cubans read the classified material and learned the secrets contained in them, the officials said.

Jack Kelly on the goofiness that is the conservative wing of the Republican party

Jack Kelly is a sharp guy, who is also a conservative. There are loads of self-styled elitist conservatives, of the Bill Kristol type. They have almost uniformly "gone off the deep end". Except for their opposition being the Democrats, you would wonder how they have won anything. Jack Kelly writes:

the early Christmas present they've been given. And the Harriet Miers nomination is a gift that keeps on giving. We conservatives are in a bus, heading for a cliff. Nobody seems to be steering, and most want to tromp down on the gas pedal.

Conservatives have engaged in lemming-like behavior before. The last time was the impeachment of President Clinton. He did perjure himself before a grand jury, which presidents ought not to do. But even if the half-eaten remains of small children had been found in the Oval office, the Senate would never have voted to convict Clinton, so his impeachment was an exercise in futility. A very unpopular exercise in futility, one which cost the GOP seats in the House and Senate in the 1998 congressional elections.

Every development in the Miers saga has been depressing.

Like just about everyone, I was disappointed that the president didn't nominate someone with stronger legal credentials and a more clear conservative record.

But I've been more appalled by the vicious, childish reaction to the nomination by many conservatives. I am not pro-Miers. I don't know enough about the woman to have a firm opinion. But I am, in Hugh Hewitt's formulation, anti-anti-Miers. Neither Bush nor Miers deserve absolute trust. A Supreme Court nomination is far too important for that. But on judicial nominations, Bush has earned, and Miers deserves, the benefit of the doubt until she's had the opportunity to speak for herself.

Instead, we've had a churlish, childish display which demonstrates why conservatives are not in the majority, and why we soon will be a smaller minority.

This sounds very bad, as described by Ed Morrissey

Ed Morrissey has contacts. That has apparently allowed him to write about what has been happening at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA):

An intelligence agency, full of cronies who all botched their respective roles during the decades preceding and years after September 11th, thought they could handily weather the Able Danger storm. When it became clear that the ship was about to capsize, they all couldn't move fast enough for the life rafts. Not like they would have much to worry about given the tendency to not punish intelligence officers for negligence, but then the DIA isn't the CIA, and military officers (like Jacoby) have the UCMJ to worry about.

It sounds like a whole host of people want out of the DIA. Just as with the weird allegations used against Shaffer, this portrait -- if accurate -- begs the question of what the DIA dreads so much. Exposure and embarrassment? Or something worse?

Vi Adkins has a transcript of Curt Weldon's latest media appearance, an interview with Sean Hannity, at QTMonster.

So Tim Russert told Lewis Libby about Valerie Wilson?

Tom Maquire thinks that Lewis Libby might have heard about Valerie Plame Wilson from Tim Russert, of all people.

Well, if Mr. Waas is correct that Libby's testimony is that he first learned about Ms. Plame (or Wilson's wife) from Russert, the June 23 meeting with Miller, and Libby's possible reluctance to see Ms. Miller testify on that point, may be backbreakers for Libby.

Ms. Miller said this about Libby and Wilson's wife at the June 23 meeting:

Soon afterward Mr. Libby raised the subject of Mr. Wilson's wife for the first time. I wrote in my notes, inside parentheses, "Wife works in bureau?" I told Mr. Fitzgerald that I believed this was the first time I had been told that Mr. Wilson's wife might work for the C.I.A. The prosecutor asked me whether the word "bureau" might not mean the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Yes, I told him, normally. But Mr. Libby had been discussing the C.I.A., and therefore my impression was that he had been speaking about a particular bureau within the agency that dealt with the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons. As to the question mark, I said I wasn't sure what it meant. Maybe it meant I found the statement interesting. Maybe Mr. Libby was not certain whether Mr. Wilson's wife actually worked there.

So somehow Libby had hints, and either told or asked Ms. Miller on June 23 about Wilson's wife, but did not "learn" that the wife was at the CIA until Russert told him? That is a compelling defense.

Marc Cooper opposes the Plame investigation

While Marc Cooper doesn't mind seeing the players we know about getting slammed, just on general principles, he is opposed to anything intended to stifle the free flow of information from the press, whether he likes the particular players or not. Marc concludes:

Legal precedents and original intentions – like some Supreme Court Justices—sometimes have an odd and unpredictable future. When the Intelligence Identities act was passed, it was intended to be a sledgehammer against leftist critics of the CIA, a lethal barrier to former, dissident agents outting their secret former colleagues. Who could have guessed its first use would be two decades later to wallop none other than the right-wing political heirs of the Dear Departed Gipper? And what, then, will become of the precedents established in the Plame case? Will we be applauding five years from now when some well-intentioned shlub reporter and faceless courageous government bureaucrat are slammed into jail for exposing official wrongdoing? You tell me.

So what are they going to do? Vote Democratic?

Tapscott's Copy Desk has a piece about Conservative groups wanting the Republicans to cut more spending. My reaction is: what are they doing to do, if it doesn't happen? Vote Democratic?

"Our government has become so entangled in the forest of deficit spending that it seems to have lost any sense of discretion," says ACU's chairman David Keene. "Plans to offset federal spending on Katrina disaster relief and reconstruction such as the recent proposals made by the House Republican Study Committee, as well as the proposals put out forward by Speaker Hastert and Majority Leader Blunt are a good start. But, organizations like ACU, Heritage, and the Club for Growth are concerned that these measures will do little to really reduce the out-of-control spending and $7.99 trillion federal debt. Much more must be done."

Michelle Malkin on the Oklahoma bomber story

Michelle Malkin writes that coverage of the Oklahoma bomber by the mainstream media shows a bias against bloggers. It also has obscured the truth about what is known. She quotes John Hinderaker commenting on the Wall Street Journal piece that attempted to paint the bomber as a lone suicide:

John Hinderaker at Power Line, also cited in the WSJ article, gives the paper (which did not contact Power Line for comment) a well deserved slap worth quoting here at length:

There are two intractable facts that suggest that there was more going on here than an "individual suicide." The Journal acknowledges both facts, but fails to deal with them. The first fact is that additional explosives were found in Hinrichs' apartment:

In fact, authorities did find, in Mr. Hinrichs's bedroom, additional explosive material. They detonated them at the police firing range the next day, jolting the city again.

Given that Hinrichs had enough explosives left in his apartment to "jolt the city," isn't it reasonable to wonder whether more was going on here than an "individual suicide"?

A useful resource: QuirksMode

The QuirksMode website is a useful resource for anyone doing web development, but especially for those trying to achieve a degree of cross-browser compatibility. The site is the product of Peter-Paul Koch, who lives in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. I am currently doing a great deal of Javascript and CSS work, so Google searches often point to QuirksMode. Right now, perhaps due to my limitations, Mozilla Firefox seems balky, while IE6 behaves as I would expect any browser to do.

David Adesnik (Oxblog) comments on Daniel Drezner's situation

David Adesnik, one of the Oxblog bloggers, comments on Daniel Drezner's situation:

BLOGGING AND TENURE: Daniel Drezner reflects on what has been going through his mind this past week, after learning that he won't be staying at Chicago. One has to wonder about a profession that treats its extraordinary young talents in such a capricious manner.

Dr Z is still blogging at "Abstract Software Development Language"

I have been remiss in not checking on Dr. Z's writing, lately. He is still blogging at Abstract Software Development Language. He had modified how content is displayed, so it does not have a conventional blog look. He is writing about a more diverse set of topics, as there was one from two weeks ago about Outsourcing and Law. Also, there is one post from late September called Eventually, the Laws of Science will Prevail. I am glad to know that Dr. Z is still writing.

Daniel Drezner on tenure rejection

It has been a week since Daniel Drezner found out that he didn't get tenure at the University of Chicago. He has a piece that he wrote with that week of perspective. He started off by writing:

Seven days later....

Among the things I've learned in the week after tenure rejection:

1) It's good to have the blog. I very much appreciate the thoughts expressed in the comments section -- the depth of the response has been overwhelming, a nice salve on what remains an open wound.

[Yeah, but you expected the kind words, right? That's why you posted, right?--ed. The primary reason I posted was that I knew the decision would slowly ripple through the very small world of IR scholars. Since a decent chunk of that world peruses the blog, it was a quick and easy way to avoid repeating the following kind of awkward phone conversation:

Oklahoma: Link or no Link?

Mark Tapscott, who is apparently from Oklahoma, writes more about the OU bomber. He writes:

"Cole said from what Hernandez told him, Hinrichs was not involved in a terrorist organization, and there is no evidence to support rumors that he had recently developed Islamic ties."

Other than it being Cole saying it, there is still nothing new in that statement.

Then comes this graph, which is third from the bottom of the story:

"There is no reason to believe there is a conspiracy," he said. "I asked (Hernandez) specifically if Hinrichs tried to enter the stadium. He said it was unlikely, but wouldn't confirm or deny it."

Read that again. Asked by a Member of Congress if Hinrichs tried to get into Oklahoma Memorial Stadium, the FBI Agent in Charge said it was "unlikely." No wonder he wouldn't "confirm it or deny it." They don't know. "Unlikely" is another way to say "We don't think so but we can't be sure."

If the FBI isn't certain about this issue, how can they be so absolutely certain that Hinrichs had no terrorist links whatsoever?

The only new information I see in this story from the OU Daily is the chief FBI man won't confirm or deny a basic fact in assessing if Hinrichs had terrorist intentions.

Marc Cooper is one of those gleeful lefties

Marc Cooper is one of many lefties who have the gut feeling that they have the President and Republicans on the run. Marc writes:

"Business Is Good"

Blogging will be light through the weekend as I'm in Arizona working on some border stuff.

Meanwhile, I was talking on the phone yesterday to a friend who works for a research institute in Washington D.C. "Business must be great for you journalists," he said to me. "Seems like everything's coming apart at the same time."

Indeed. I'm used to following several story lines at once, but events are conspiring to make that as difficult as ever.

Just keeping up on the Judith Miller/Karl Rove/Libby Scooter/Valerie Plame story alone requires a road map, a scorecard, a crystal ball and a secret decoder ring. Patrick Fitzgerald's probe is quickly coming to a head and, frankly, I'm going to be damn disappointed if some big trees don't come crashing down. How do I know how to evaluate Arianna's claim that major news organizations are about to tie Cheney to the federal probe? I'm going to sit here and watch with the rest of you.

Yes, our lefty buddies don't like Vice-President Cheney.

Powerline on the political situation

While the Liberals are exultant in the flap over Harriet Miers, it is not clear that there is much substance behind the situation. John Hinderaker asks:

The question remains, though, what is fueling this liberal triumphalism? The answer, no doubt, is President Bush's falling poll ratings. Another one came out today, showing the President at a record low for his Presidency. It seems that Bush's poll numbers have been in a steady decline almost from the day of his second inauguration. This, fundamentally, is what has the left dancing in the streets.

But are Bush's numbers really that bad? His current Real Clear Politics average stands at 41.7% approval. That is at or about the low point in nearly five years in office. How does it compare to other presidents' lowest poll ratings? Actually, it's not bad. Here are the low approval ratings for the last seven presidents:

*Johnson: 35% *Nixon: 24% *Ford: 37% *Carter: 28% *Reagan: 35% *Bush I: 29% *Clinton: 37%

Yes, that's right: Every president since 1963 has had approval ratings, at one time or another during his administration, at least five points lower than Bush's current nadir.

An IED was found in Los Angeles

Charles Johnson, writing at Little Green Footballs, reports that an IED was found in Los Angeles:

Meanwhile, in Westwood near UCLA: Explosive found at Midvale. (Hat tip: Ethel.)

A calm and quiet Westwood was briefly disrupted Friday afternoon when the Los Angeles Police Department bomb squad inspected and detonated an explosive device found within the Midvale Plaza apartment complex on the 500 block of Midvale Avenue.

After responding to a call made at 11:13 a.m., the bomb squad arrived at 527 Midvale Ave. to find “an improvised explosive device” in the building’s open-air courtyard, said Grace Brady, a spokeswoman for the LAPD.

No injuries were reported, but authorities have been slow to release details about the incident and the device.

We can be greatful that, so far, the bombing campaign started in Oklahoma has not done any more harm than it has (University of Oklahoma, Georgia Tech, and now UCLA).

Are we into the Ramadan offensive?

Michelle Malkin says that the latest incident involving explosives occurred at Georgia Tech, this morning.

Checking it out (from WXIA-TV in Atlanta via Drudge):

Three explosive devices found in a courtyard between two Georgia Tech dormitories on the East Campus Monday morning were part of a "terrorist act," an Atlanta police official said.

One of the devices exploded, injuring the custodian who found them inside a plastic bag. Two others were detonated by a bomb squad.

One of Michelle's commentors wrote:

Jason Smith: Is this the great Ramadan offensive?

Marc Cooper asks a question about Democrats

Marc Cooper asks on what basis that the Democrats can claim that simply by expressing their progressive policy stands, they can win elections? He makes that point that the only Democrats elected to the presidency after President Kennedy (45 years ago) were Southern conservatives:

Is it true that Democrats lose elections because they are not sufficiently populist? Would they enlarge their vote, motivate those who usually don’t vote, and sweep into office if they took the unabashedly liberal, or progressive positions, on health care, education and more heavily taxing the rich?

Along with a lot of my friends, I’d sure like to think that is true. It’s what liberal politicians –dead and living—from Paul Wellstone to Howard Dean to Russ Feingold meant when they have said they represent “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.”

It’s what Robert Borosage, of the left-of-center Progressive Majority argued recently in The Nation.

For these liberal and progressive Democrats, their blood enemies are the conservative or so-called "centrist" Democrats grouped in the Democratic Leadership Council. The DLC types argue, meanwhile, the opposite case i.e. that the only hope Dems have is to firmly occupy the middle ground and cede nothing to the left. The most recent broadside from these quarters was issued by former Al Gore confidant Elaine Karmach and Clinton domestic policy adviser William A. Galston.

We saw the Wallace and Gromit movie, tonight

I am not an unbiased observer, as I am a Wallace and Gromit fan. We saw the new, feature length movie "WALLACE AND GROMIT: THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT". We laughed quite hard. My wife commented that the most interesting aspect to her is how expression is portrayed by the eyes and mouths. The characters are what interest me. Lady Tottington was great. She has wonderful hair and her mouth is very expressive. The scope of the movie almost reminded me of the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy (although maybe it was just the British accents). Box Office Mojo says that they blew away the competition, this weekend.

More Bill Dyer on elitist complaints

The Harriet Miers nomination has smoked out the elitist crowd on the right. In this case, our elitist buddies on the left are much more accepting than the NRO types. Bill Dyer has a piece that was in response to a John Podhoretz (JPod) email response.

Pod promptly responded to my wee-small-hours post and my associated email to him about Harriet Miers' op-eds with his customary grace and wit — but in a way that nevertheless disappoints. Her op-eds read, he says, "like all 'Letters from the President' in all official publications — cheery and happy-talky and utterly inane."

Well, yeah. That's sorta because they were, indeed, "letters from the president" written for the bar journal. "They offer no reassurance that there is anything other than a perfectly functional but utterly ordinary intellect at work here." Well, yeah. But "perfectly functional intellect" is pretty much exactly what we want, and all anyone has any reason to expect, from a bar president writing in a bar journal; anyone's writing for United States Reports can reasonably be predicted to be different and more profound, just as the issues being written about are different and more profound. Can you point me to a state bar president in history who's used his "letters from the president" column to perform some stunning new synthesis of constitutional theory? You fault her for being appropriate exactly why?

*********

What's very frustrating to me is how the goalposts keep moving on this nomination, and it's my own team that's doing it. (I say "my team," I actually mean "what I thought, apparently wrongly, was a team, and the one I've always thought I was on.")

We are not being attacked for something we did

Marc Cooper makes the point that, whatever the effect of what he considers to be misplaced policy decisions, that Al Qaeda and their like will attack us, regardless of our policies.

I was talking to some friends today who were poking great fun at the disconnect between the Feds and New York officials over the possible terrorist threat to the Big Apple’s subways.

I told them I failed to see any humor in the situation. They failed to see my point: Just because George W. Bush highjacked the Islamo-fascist threat to justify the war in Iraq, doesn’t mean that threat isn’t real. And mortal.

Al Qaeda and similar armed religio-fascist groups are not just a bogeyman invented by neo-cons to stampede the public (as hard as they might try).

Our leftist buddies are backing the people who want to kill or enslave them, in particular. Cindy Sheehan can be forgiven as an ignorant boob, but people like George Galloway should know better.

This mistaken – and extremely dangerous—notion was ably taken apart recently by leftist writer and journalist Sasha Abramsky in an essay on Opendemocracy.net

(I have excerpted what Marc has in his much longer piece)

Please read Sasha’s entire essay before commenting.

He’s absolutely spot-on arguing that precisely because Bin-Ladenism is committed to combatting the very notion of an open, liberal society, too much of the activist left’s post-911 response has been “woefully, catasrophically inadequate.”

When ordinary Americans worry that their cities, ports or subways might be bombed by suicidal fanatics, it’s laughable and insulting to tell them that if they would just help put an end to U.S. imperialism the whole problem would go away.

Christopher Hitchins on Bali and Jihad

Christopher Hitchins has a piece at Slate about the whole question of Islamic Jihad, its purpose and whether our policies have influenced it. The question is raised due to the last attack in Bali. He says that Bali is a target, partly because of its largely Hindu population and partly due to its attraction to tourists. He also points out the connection to East Timor. The Australians had helped to preserve East Timor against aggression, so that made them a target. He also points out the effort to kill the UN representative who had helped to extract East Timor from the Indonesian grip. That effort was successful in Iraq. The goal of the jihad is the establishment of a new Caliphate, worldwide.

Bill Dyer (BeldarBlog) answers Charles Krauthammer

Charles Krauthammer has a negative piece about Harriet Miers. Bill Dyer rightly answers Charles's question:

WaPo columnist Charles Krauthammer, normally remarkably thoughtful and open-minded but always eloquent, disappoints me in his column today on the Miers nomination by asking this very good question without bothering to pause to consider its answer:

There are 1,084,504 lawyers in the United States. What distinguishes Harriet Miers from any of them, other than her connection with the president?

Well, sir, I have your answer right here, 'cause not a single other one of those 1,084,504 lawyers can say they've been —

• counsel to the President and to the governor of one of the most populous states, along with having competently executed several other high-level White House staff positions;

• president of both the state bar association in the Nation's second largest state and of one of its most respected and active local bar associations, as well as having led valiant efforts to return a dysfunctional American Bar Association back to its roots of apolitical service to the profession and public;

• long-time managing partner of an extremely well regarded large Dallas-based law firm, which then became a successful 400+ lawyer statewide powerhouse after she oversaw a successful cross-state merger with a Houston-based firm of comparable size and reputation;

• an accomplished courtroom lawyer, praised with words like "very good, cool, deliberate, poised, effective" by the judges before whom she's appeared, with experience at both the trial and appellate level in both state and federal courts, capable of personally attracting repeat engagements from sophisticated clients like Microsoft and Disney, and regularly listed among the top 50 or 100 American lawyers in listings complied by national legal periodicals;

• a law clerk for two years for a respected federal district judge, providing further insights into federal trial practice of a sort that no current member of the Court can claim;

• a published member of, and then an articles editor for, the top law journal at her law school, noted for its comprehensive coverage of Texas law; and

• a "very thoughtful, very good student" who made "top marks" and could be counted on to give "solid, intelligent answer[s]" to "critical question[s]," according to a professor of hers, nationally recognized as an expert in business law, who 35 years after teaching her pronounced himself filled with "great satisfaction" to see her nominated to the Court.

Dr. Krauthammer's question also seems to assume that "her connection with the president" is a negative factor. Instead, it reflects the fact that based on years of close dealings with her, the President says he's more sure, based on personal knowledge of her, that she won't turn into "another Souter" than he could be with respect to anyone else he might have nominated — thus allowing him to keep his campaign promises about judicial nominees. He made those as his personal promises to the voters; why, now, is he being faulted and accused of "cronyism" for trying to fulfill those promises on the basis of his personal knowledge of and confidence in this nominee?

Jack Kelly changed his mind about Harriet Miers

Jack Kelly is now much more positive about Harriet Miers than he was when she was first announced. The difference is what we now know about her from knowledgable bloggers such as Bill Dyer.

His nomination of Harriet Miers may tell conservatives

something bad about President Bush. Conservative reaction to the nomination tells me lots that ugly about us.

The first thing I've learned from this controversy is that if I were in a foxhole with someone from the National Review crowd, I'd be alone in that foxhole after the first shot was fired. When the going gets tough, they head for the hills, with a few snarky comments.

The objections of the NR crowd, and of George Will, who I think jumped the shark with this column, I summarize as, Harriet Miers is unqualified because:

1. We haven't heard of her.

2. She didn't go to an Ivy League school.

3. She made her living practicing law, not writing about the practice of law.

4. She's old, and isn't as pretty as Joy Clement or Janice Rogers Brown.

5. She's very close to President Bush.

6. Some Democrats -- such as Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid -- like her. Consequently, her appointment

7. May deprive us of the battle royale with the Senate libs many of us have been craving.

Bill Dyer on Randy Barnett's comments about Harriet Miers

Bill Dyer, writing at BeldarBlog, has nailed Professor Randy Barnett, who blogs at the Volokh Conspiracy, on his comments about Harriet Miers.

If you have any doubt that much of the opposition to the Miers nomination is generated by reflexive elitism, I humbly submit these comments by Randy Barnett, the Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Law at Boston University School of Law, whose anti-Miers WSJ op-ed I criticized on similar grounds earlier this week:

I do not expect any president to know enough about judicial philosophy to pick judges on his own. I expect him or her, however, to appoint advisers who do know about such matters and follow their advice.

Catch your breath, and then re-read that closely. "Any president," sez the good professor. I suppose that would include, for example, Duke Law grad Richard Nixon, Yale Law grad Jerry Ford, Yale Law grad Bill Clinton, and all of our 23 other lawyer-presidents (including that Lincoln fellow, who didn't go to law school at all!).

The American Princess on Harriet Miers

The American Princess blogger (E. Zanotti) approves of Harriet Miers. She has a post called "Some Stealth Nominee", where she writes:

But I have had a little time to dig up a little on the "stealth nominee."

Lets just say, she's my girl. All the way. Certainly, before Monday, Harriet Miers was someone I looked up to, but today, she is someone that not only do I want to be, I am proud of being like.

First off, Ms. Miers and I see eye to eye on a very important issue.

We both lost our way, found our path, and found our religion and our politics.

She decided that she wanted faith to be a bigger part of her life," Hecht said. "One evening she called me to her office and said she was ready to make a commitment," to accept Jesus Christ as her savior and be born again, Hecht said. Miers became an evangelical Christian and began identifying more with the Republican Party than with the Democrats who had long held sway over Texas politics.

But that's not it. Harriet and I are on the same wavelength when it comes to another very important issue. The life issue. In fact, we are both anti-choice extremists.

I guess this isn't going to persuade the secular, center-left types who have been our allies.

I find the Conservative whining about Harriet Miers to be very offputting

All I can say is "quit whining". Harriet Miers is a native of Dallas. She served on the city council 10-15 years ago. As Bill Dyers writes, she worked for a distinguished law firm with top-flight clients. She was president first of the Dallas bar association and then the Texas bar association. She has served in government, at the highest levels, for the last 4-1/2years. She may not fit some elitists' concept of what an associate Supreme court justice needs to be, but the claims that she is not qualified are bogus. Bill Dyer, writing at BeldarBlog, shows that in many ways, she is more qualified than John Roberts. I am also getting tired of hearing a certain sort of conservative whine about this administration and the Republican party. OK. Go ahead and vote for the Democrats. That would be really great. You will get what you deserve. If you don't like how things are going, get involved and see if you can shape an party in your mold that can get elected and do good things. Otherwise, keep quiet. I'm talking about law professors and big time bloggers who say that they do not like President Bush and the Republican big spending. So, in response they elect the Democrats, just as the Democrats have moved to the far left. I suppose that they will be small spenders?

A lot of the buzz about Harriet Miers seems to be anti-Texas-bias

Bill Dyer, writing at BeldarBlog, corrects what Rich Lowrey wrote at The Corner at NRO. I have become increasingly angry at the tone of the criticism of Harriet Miers. I suspect it is largely the anti-Texas bias that we see from people on the coasts (and law professors). Bill writes:

Writing yesterday on NRO's The Corner blog in a short post entitled "Deplorable," NRO editor Rich Lowry quoted a "a very pro-Bush legal type" in part as follows:

Says Miers was with an undistinguished law firm; never practiced constitutional law; never argued any big cases; never was on law review; has never written on any of the important legal issues. Says she's not even second rate, but is third rate.

I emailed Mr. Lowry with my reactions, and he's usually been very generous and fair in responding to my emails and posts as time permits. For whatever reasons, though, I haven't yet gotten either a response or a correction out of him on this, so I'm posting here in more detail to point out that his "very pro-Bush legal type" doesn't know squat. He's just dead wrong on some of his facts, and very confused on others. And by uncritically republishing this correspondent's comments, Mr. Lowry has done both Ms. Miers and The Corner's readers a serious disservice.

I also count myself as a "very pro-Bush legal type," but unlike Mr. Lowry's source, I'm not anonymous, and my own pedigree and credentials as a knowledgeable Texas practitioner are available for anyone to assess. If his source wants to go public, I'd be delighted to debate him on any of the points I'm about to make, because they're all based on my personal knowledge, and I'm quite confident Mr. Lowry's source must either lack that knowledge or is just being very loose with the truth.

The failed suicide bomber in Oklahoma

Kevin, writing at Wizbang has more on the failed suicide bomber in Oklahoma. I don't know anything about Kevin's source on this, but if it is true, it could be the first wave of a new offensive of the worst sort:

Northeast Intelligence Network is reporting that the suicide bomber outside Saturday's OU/Kansas football game appears to have been planning something bigger than just his own solitary death.

Law enforcement sources close to the Northeast Intelligence Network have confirmed that search and seizure warrants were served today upon the residence of the "suicide bomber," 21-year-old Joel Henry Hinrichs III of Colorado Springs, CO, who was a resident of the Park View Apartments on campus. Speaking strictly "off the record," the officials stated that they recovered "a significant amount" of Islamic "Jihad" type literature, some possibly written in Arabic, along with the suspect's computer. Some of the documentation included material on how to construct bomb-making vests.

Bill Dyer (Beldarblog) approves of Harriet Miers

Bill Dyer, writing at BeldarBlog, has a long post about President Bush's appointment as an associate justice to the Supreme Court. Bill starts off by writing:

Harriet Miers may be virtually unknown to you. But she isn't to Dubya — and that's the main point of her nomination.

With even a half-hour's worth of hindsight, I declare myself unsurprised that the President chose Ms. Miers. It's absolutely consistent with his appointment style for other positions going back to his days as governor of Texas: George W. Bush has consistently preferred those who are well known to him, of proven qualities and proven loyalty, over perhaps bolder or more popular choices with flashier résumés.

Bill concludes:

By objective standards, Harriet Miers has been among the few dozen most successful lawyers in private practice in the United States. Filter the Y-chromosome bearers out of that group and you're down to a couple dozen or less. Filter that group for significant public and governmental experience and we're down to a very small handful. And filter that small handful for lawyers in whom George W. Bush already has boundless personal confidence from first-hand experience, and your Venn diagram just has a one-member set left: Harriet Miers. Those are not inappropriate criteria, folks. From an overall viewpoint, using any reasonable criteria, she's qualified enough. But using those particular criteria, she's uniquely qualified.

Would I have picked her? Probably not. But she hasn't been my lawyer, and I'm not the President. If I were the President, and I wanted to make a safe play — a non-Souteresque woman — I might very well have picked someone like her, though. And so I will happily support this nomination, and I wish Ms. Miers good luck, fortitude, and grace in the confirmation process.

Marc Cooper says "Let the games begin"

Marc Cooper has a piece about a friend of his, Michael Balter, who thinks that the debate between Intelligent Design and Evolution should be taught in schools, since the evolution argument could win on the facts, if they were presented.

My old pal, Michael Balter, now a Paris-based author and journalist has got a great piece in this Sunday's Los Angeles Times. Michael's essay has particular resonance because he's not only a correspondent for Science magazine, but he also writes from a leftist, secular vantage point.

Yet, Michael argues, why not let the theory of Intelligent Design be taught in schools along with Darwin? Says Balter:

Most scientists don't want any debate. Many view intelligent design as simply a new and more sophisticated attempt — "the thinking man's creationism," as Science magazine put it — to slip old-time religion into the classroom. They maintain that the theory of evolution, in particular natural selection, is so well supported by the evidence that it is the consensus scientific view. As such, it deserves a monopoly in school curricula...

Marc concludes with the rest of the quote, with a comment:

The history of the theory of evolution is one of bitter debates between religion and science, and the debates continue today...

...The best way to teach the theory of evolution is to teach this contentious history. The most effective way to convince students that the theory is correct is to confront, not avoid, continuing challenges to it...

...Given the opportunity to debate, scientists should say: "Bring it on."

I have to say, as not only a secularist, an atheist and a downright anti-theist, I love this piece. Michael's absolutelty right. Let the games begin. Meanwhile, I'm gonna sit up in this tree and finish my banana.

If what Drudge is reporting about Donald Sutherland is true...

My advice for Donald Sutherland is to "get a life". This is based on the story from Matt Drudge about Donald Sutherland's recent interview with the BBC. Donald Sutherland apparently has a severe case of Bushitis. Namely, Donald Sutherland has totally lost his marbles and is transferring his worst fears to President Bush. These are the worst fears of an extreme lefty: the country might actually embrace center-right politics and reject the politics of ANSWER, George Soros, and the goofball lefties in Hollywood. There is a real danger that these maniacs will totally wreck the Democratic party at a time when we need a reasonable opposition party to keep the Republicans "honest", and to engage in debate from a center-left position.

This story is amazing and terrible

Bill Dyer, writing at BeldarBlog, tells a horrific tale of life in the jurisdiction of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. He did not find the story, but he is helping to make the story known. I have an idea that the right people will learn of this story, due to the efforts of bloggers.

Greg Costikyan has left Nokia and has started Manifesto Games

Greg writes at his blog about a competition to design a logo for his new venture, Manifesto Games. You can also redesign his website. The idea is to develop for an open platform, not for consoles. This is the Indy gaming initiative that parallels Indy initiatives in other media. The Manifesto Games front page says:

Building a Path to Market for Independent Games

The machinery of gaming has run amok. Instead of serving creative vision, it suppresses it. Instead of encouraging innovation, it represses it. Instead of taking its cue from our most imaginative minds, it takes its cue from the latest month's PC Data list. Instead of rewarding those who succeed, it penalizes them with development budgets so high and royalties so low that there can be no reward for creators. Instead of ascribing credit to those who deserve it, it seeks to associate success with the corporate machine. It is time for revolution. -- The Scratchware Manifesto

PC Gamers of the World Unite! You Have Nothing to Lose But Your Retail Chains!