~ Eh, small world, small conspiracy. || WMD Forgery: Get A CLUE

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/007185.php
(December 06, 2005 -- 03:45 PM EST // link)

Eh, small world, small conspiracy.

This news has been out for a few weeks and I just hadn't noticed. But the Scooter Libby Legal Defense Fund is being headed up by none other than Mel Sembler, the Cheney-fan and the big-ticket GOP fundraiser from Florida who was the US Ambassador to Italy when all the secret meetings took place and when the forged uranium papers showed up at the US Embassy in October 2002.

Since I've reported on this story for almost two years and am still writing a series on it, I need to say explicitly that I've never seen any evidence tying Sembler to any bad acts related to the forgeries. So the 'conspiracy' crack is mainly a jest. But there's a lot that's still really murky about what was happening at the US Embassy in Rome after 9/11 with the forgeries and other matters. That was on Sembler's watch. And Libby's bad acts stem from the whole forgeries bamboozlement. (Whacking Wilson was part of the larger White House effort to keep the forgeries scam covered up -- a cover up that's still underway.)

So Sembler just seems like a pretty big part of this story to be collecting money for the one person under indictment for their role in it.
-- Josh Marshall

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http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/2005/12/ramsey-clark-true-heroism.html

Clark, at the age of 77, is currently risking his life in order to represent Saddam Hussein for free in Hussein's criminal trial in Iraq. Clark's rationale for doing so is clear and noble:

All men, he said, deserved a fair trial, even history's worst criminals. "Suppose Hitler had survived," he said. "It seems to me that it would have been absolutely critical to give him a fair trial, to let him call witnesses and cross-examine the hell out of them." He added, "If you don't do that, historical truth will be distorted."

I'm far from a fan of Clark's political opinions, which are often inane and obsessively anti-American. But put those political views to the side. Here, Clark is risking his life in order to perform a service that is absolutely indispensable in promoting American objectives in Iraq -- namely, ensuring that Saddam Hussein receives a fair trial. Rather than praising Clark for these extreme risks and sacrifices, certain strident pro-war bloggers (including those who, most disgracefully, are lawyers and should especially know better, such as the dependably sneering Powerline warriors) are sitting in their houses behind their computers castigating Clark as some sort of anti-American coward and traitor.

Clark is risking his life by promoting American efforts to bring democracy to Iraq, while these blogger/lawyers risk nothing, ever -- and yet, to them, it is Clark who is the traitorous, despicable coward and they who are the powerful, chest-puffing heroes.

Now that all of our other pre-war justifications for the war have worked out somewhat poorly,
====================
Shorter Nick Kristof http://www.atrios.blogspot.com/

Link:

The Hubris of the Humanities

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

Published: December 6, 2005

The evolution debate is a symptom of something more serious: a profound illiteracy about science and math as a whole.
.../... not here

Because the only "intellectuals" I know are the ones who are my colleagues in the Times newsroom, it's apparent to me that intellectuals are basically total idiots.

Money paragraphs:

A year ago, I wanted to ornament a column with a complex equation, so, as a math ninny myself, I looked around the Times newsroom for anyone who could verify that it was correct. Now, you can't turn around in the Times newsroom without bumping into polyglots who come and go talking of Michelangelo. But it took forever to turn up someone confident in his calculus - in the science section.

...

But there's an even larger challenge than anti-intellectualism. And that's the skewed intellectualism of those who believe that a person can become sophisticated on a diet of poetry, philosophy and history, unleavened by statistics or chromosomes. That's the hubris of the humanities.

Shorter Atrios:

Uh, Nick, who the fsck are the people "who believe that a person can become sophisticated on a diet of poetry, philosophy and history, unleavened by statistics or chromosomes."

===============

Seeking Answers from Viveca Novak

Jane's on fire today with questions for Viveca Novak about her relationship with Karl Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin.

...what exactly was your relationship with Robert Luskin? We will do you the courtesy of presuming you were not buttering each other's toast at the St. Regis like Scooter and Judy, but where does it fall along the continuum, say, from narc/snitch to "let's load up on Manhattans and hit the handbag sale at Barney's?"

Jane has 15 detailed questions for Viveca. I'll add one more:

Why did Bob Woodward choose you and Time Magazine over his own paper and every other reporter in town for his exclusive story on why his source came clean to Fitzgerald?

12:03 PM | Permalink | Valerie Plame Leak

======================
http://maxspeak.org/mt/

THEY'RE NOT ZOMBIES;
THEY'RE VITALITY-CHALLENGED

At the urging of Atrios, I watched "The Homecoming" on Showtime last night. It was funny the way a cream-pie attack (which I do not endorse) on Ann Coulter is funny. Which means not all that much.

Naturally the wingnuts are spinning it as an attack on the troops as "zombies." Even the film's creator succumbs to this wholly inappropriate terminology.

I happen to be an expert on zombies, owning every single one of the George Romero (Night of the Living Dead, etc.) oeuvre. I also work near K Street. The soldiers in the film are undead, sure, but they are not zombies.

Zombies have only the faintest glimmer of consciousness, and their sole animating force is consumption. In other words, they're a lot like Republicans. They live off the flesh of others. It is interesting when they show a slight flash of marginally higher consciousness, but that is the exception to the rule. Mainly they lumber about like oafs looking for somebody to take a bit out of. Did I cover the G.O.P. angle? I think I did.

By gigantic contrast, the undead vets in Dante's film can speak and reason. They are selfless and moved by high moral purpose. Their devotion is embodied in the manner of their final death: when their idealistic quest -- to vote -- is realized, they fall down really really dead. Not zombies. And of course there is no allusion to still-living soldiers at all.

To review. Living soldiers, o.k. Undead veterans, not zombies. InstaPundit readers, zombies.

Some actual amateur aesthetic commentary: the film is a naive progressive wet-dream, and not because of the undead thing. (Everybody knows the undead will be coming around, sooner or later.) Even its creator seems to acknowledge this. It was a way to vent, like blogging. The bad people die after all their black secrets are revealed. If only those secrets could be exposed, everything would be all right.

If only it were so.