Novak Diagnosed With Brain Tumor

Chicago Sun-Times: Sun-Times columnist Robert Novak says he has brain tumor

Maybe he really didn't realize he hit the homeless man with his car last week.

Douchebag of Liberty* Hits 86 Year Old Homeless Man In Crosswalk, Drives Away

Wednesday rightwing columnist Robert Novak -- the man who outed spy Valerie Plame -- hit a pedestrian with his car. According to eyewitness reports, the man was walking in a crosswalk. He landed on the windshield of Novak's car and rolled off, and 77-year-old Novak drove on. A bicyclist -- who happens to be a lawyer who formerly worked in the Justice Department -- chased Novak down and blocked his car so that he was forced to stop.

The lawyer who stopped Novak said the man he hit went up on the hood and was splayed on the windshield; there was no way Novak didn't realize he hit someone. The man, it turns out, was an 86-year-old homeless man. The impact of the collision dislocated his shoulder.

DC police detained Novak for about an hour and shockingly only gave him a $50 ticket for failure to yield. Not hit & run? Leaving the scene? Why didn't they pull his license immediately? Why wasn't he given a breathalyzer and a drug test? Why didn't they confiscate his cell phone to find out if he was on the phone (or his Blackberry) when the collision occurred? The man had just hit another human being and drove away. Either he was callous and should have been arrested, or he was so inattentive behind the wheel of his car that he hit someone and didn't know it. In that case his license should have been seized. There's no way a person hits your car and you don't know. I've hit birds and felt the impact.

* Douchebag of Liberty is what Jon Stewart dubbed Novak after he outed Valerie Plame.

WaPo: Novak Cited for Hitting Pedestrian

WaPo: Man Hit by Novak Has Hurt Shoulder but Is 'Doing Fine'

Fun Fact

If you leave a comment on a Robert Novak column in the Washington Post calling him a traitor, it will be deleted. See here; note that the first commenter states: "Can we once discuss the merit of the article without all that pointless name-calling, however justified it may be?"; this is in reference to several traitor comments which the Post removed.

However, if you leave a comment calling President Bush Chimpy McFlightsuit, that comment is OK. See here, 6th comment down.

I thought you would want to know.

Valerie Plame on C-Span Right Now

Tune in.

C-SPAN live feed.

Why There Will Be Frogmarching

Murray Waas in National Journal gives a little more background about the Plame outing:

Why Novak Called Rove

Ironically, the materials prepared for Rove in advance of the conversation had nothing to do with Valerie Plame, the CIA officer whom Novak would identify -- using Rove as one of his sources -- as an "agency operative" in a July 14, 2003, column.

Instead, the voluminous material on Rove's desk -- including talking points, related briefing materials, and information culled from confidential government personnel files -- involved a different woman: Frances Fragos Townsend, a former senior attorney in the Clinton administration's Justice Department whom President Bush had recently named to be his deputy national security adviser for combating terrorism.

Bush had personally assigned Rove to help counter what the president believed to be a "rearguard" effort within his own administration, by persons unknown, to discredit Townsend and derail her appointment, according to White House documents and accounts given by former and current officials.

I Just Want a Little Frogmarching for Christmas

Byron York in National Review today:

Will Rove be Indicted?
As rumors fly, here is what is known at this point.

This part is hilarious:

Still, it's possible Fitzgerald will forge ahead, in part because his much-publicized, two-year investigation has so far produced relatively meager results. After intense probing, and working with virtually unlimited power and discretion, the hard-charging prosecutor has succeeded in indicting one person, Libby, although not for an underlying offense, and disrupting or marring the careers of journalists Judith Miller, Cooper, Woodward, and, most recently, Time's Viveca Novak. Some Fitzgerald watchers find it difficult to believe that he will close up shop and go home with a record like that.

Now, how exactly has Fitzgerald "disrupt[ed] or marr[ed]" the careers of Judith Miller (who went to jail to protect a source she ... couldn't remember, after royally screwing up the WMD/Iraq story), Cooper (what, it screwed up his life to get subpoenaed?), Woodward (revealed for the Bushco court stenographer he is) or Novak (revealed confidential information to a source then lied to her editors about it).

Oh, that's right, he hasn't.

And Byron? When a prosecutor indicts someone for obstruction of justice, it's because they've obstructed investigation into the underlying offenses. If there hadn't been obstruction, the prosecutor would have been able to indict on the underlying offenses. Duh.

Frogmarching, soon, I think.

Traitor Karl at his Repulsive Worst

Did you, like me, scoff when Arianna Huffington announced her celebrity group blog?

Nobody's laughing anymore. It pays to have correspondents who get into the best parties.

Rove Off The Record On Katrina: The Only Mistake We Made Was Not Overriding The Local Government...

Karl Rove, President Bush's top political advisor and deputy White House chief of staff, spoke at businessman Teddy Forstmann's annual off the record gathering in Aspen, Colorado this weekend. Here is what Rove had to say that the press wasn't allowed to report on.

On Katrina: The only mistake we made with Katrina was not overriding the local government...

On The Anti-War Movement: Cindy Sheehan is a clown. There is no real anti-war movement. No serious politician, with anything to do with anything, would show his face at an anti-war rally...

On Bush's Low Poll Numbers: We have not been good at explaining the success in Iraq. Polls go up and down and don't mean anything...

On Iraq: There has been a big difference in the region. Iraq will transform the Middle East...

On Judy Miller And Plamegate: Judy Miller is in jail for reasons I don't really understand...

On Joe Wilson: Joe Wilson and I attend the same church but Joe goes to the wacky mass...

In attendance at the conference, among others were: Harvey Weinstein, Brad Grey, Michael Eisner, Les Moonves, Tom Freston, Tom Friedman, Bob Novak, Barry Diller, Martha Stewart, Margaret Carlson, Alan Greenspan, Andrea Mitchell, Norman Pearlstein and Walter Isaacson.

Yes, repulsive Karl actually said those things while bodies, barely alive and mostly dead, were being pulled from houses in New Orleans.

Were intrepid "journalists" Tom Friedman, Bob Novak, Margaret Carlson or Andrew Mitchell going to tell you about this little soiree? About what was said while they were schmoozing with the man behind the curtain? Nope.

Journalism is dead. Long live the corporate media. Thank God for blogtopia (yes! skippy invented that term!)

Traitor Bob Walks

Novak Walks Off Live CNN Program

Robert D. Novak, the syndicated columnist whose unmasking of a C.I.A. operative touched off an investigation about a possible leak, stalked off a live appearance on CNN yesterday afternoon after James Carville, the Democratic strategist, accused him of trying to make a particular point "to show these right wingers" that he had "backbone" and was "tough."

The moderator of the program, Ed Henry, later said on the air that he had warned Mr. Novak that he planned to ask him "about the C.I.A. leak case."

***********

After Mr. Carville tried to interrupt Mr. Novak twice, Mr. Novak said: "I know you hate to hear me. But you have to."

Mr. Carville interrupted again, saying of Mr. Novak, "He's got to show these right-wingers that he's got backbone."

A moment later, Mr. Carville said directly to Mr. Novak: "The Wall Street Journal editorial page is watching you. Show them you're tough."

Mr. Novak responded with a profanity, before telling Mr. Carville: "I hate that. Just let it go."

He stood up, removed his microphone and walked off.

Novak's exact quote was: "Well, I think that's bullshit. And I hate that. Just let it go."

If you're a TV sort, it's worth staying up until 11:30 p.m. for the re-run of last night's Daily Show on Comedy Central. Jon Stewart was positively gleeful as he showed Novak cursing and walking off, again and again.

Bush Taps White Man

So it's John Roberts for the SCOTUS job. James Dobson of Focus on the Family is happy, so we know he's baaaaaaaad. (Steve Gilliard calls Dobson "Focus on the Fuhrer", hehehe)

One Partisan Hack for Another tells us that Roberts worked for the RNC on the 2000 Florida recount (makes him a friend of John Bolton), was one of Ken Starr's deputies under HWBush, and was one of Reagan's White House counsels.

The New York Times, Scrutinizing John Roberts, says we don't know enough about the guy & the Senate must question him closely. Hah, good joke, as that's snowball in hell unlikely. Who on the Judiciary Committee will do the questioning? Those jamokes couldn't cross-examine a mynah bird that could only say yes.


And, obviously, the timing of the nomination is meant to take the heat off Traitor Karl Rove. Looks like Karl could be looking at his own Camp Cupcake as it appears he lied to FBI investigators when he was first interviewed:

An Unlikely Story
Karl Rove's alibi would be easier to believe if he hadn't hidden it from FBI investigators in 2003.

White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove did not disclose that he had ever discussed CIA officer Valerie Plame with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper during Rove’s first interview with the FBI, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The omission by Rove created doubt for federal investigators, almost from the inception of their criminal probe into who leaked Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak, as to whether Rove was withholding crucial information from them, and perhaps even misleading or lying to them, the sources said.

Also leading to the early skepticism of Rove's accounts was the claim that although he first heard that Plame worked for the CIA from a journalist, he said could not recall the name of the journalist. Later, the sources said, Rove wavered even further, saying he was not sure at all where he first heard the information.

How many crimes does Traitor Karl have to commit for Commander Codpiece to fire him? Let's see, treason and lying to federal investigators seem serious enough to me.

Rove must go.

Lesser Frogmarch

New York Times Reporter Is Jailed for Keeping Source Secret

Hard to feel great sympathy for Judith Miller. She should have been frogmarched off the premises of the New York Times once they realized how biased her reporting was leading up to the war in Iraq. Instead they published a wimpy 'ooh, we were wrong, sorry' piece without even mentioning that the majority of their 'we were wrong' articles were written by Miller. (for a dissection of the Times non-mea culpa mea culpa, read Alexander Coburn's "Maybe We Did Screw Up...a Little")

Will her good friend Ahmed Chalabi come to visit her in jail? Bob Novak-ula? (When I was a kid, he was "No Facts", of "Errors and No Facts", but since his old partner Rowland Evans retired he's become even more sinister.)

Now those are a couple of guys who should be in jail.

A girl can dream, can't she?

Oh What A Tangled Web We Weave

when first we practice to deceive. {always thought this was Shakespeare, but the internets reveal it to be Sir Walter Scott (Marmion, 1808)}


Who Told Rove?

One of Digby's commenters points the finger at John Bolton:

As long as we're enjoying ourselves speculating about frog marching and the like, here's an interesting theory from super-smart commenter Sara:

Has anyone here carefully read Joe Wilson's Book?

He provides plenty of carefully crafted information -- for example see p. 443-445.

Wilson indicates that the work up on him beginning March, 2003, turned up the information on Valerie -- which was then shared with Karl Rove who then circulated it through Administration and neo-Conservative circles. He cites conservative journalists who claimed to have had the information before the Novak column.

So the question is -- in the work-up process beginning about March 2003, who had the information re: Plame?

I think it was John Bolton. At the time he was State Department Deputy Secretary with the portfolio in WMD and Nuclear Proliferation. Assuming that Valerie Plame's identity was that of a NOC (No Official Cover) the information about her would have been highly classified, compartmentalized, and only those with a need to know would know. Bolton's Job probably gave him that status. However to receive it he would have to sign off on the classification -- that is he would have to agree to retain the security the CIA had established.

At the time, Bolton had two assistants who also worked in the White House in Cheney's office, David Wurmser and John Hannah. Their names have been around as the potential leakers -- Hannah if you remember is the guy who kept putting the Yellow Cake back in Bush's speeches even though Tenet had demanded it be removed.

So -- I think we have a game of catch going on here -- or maybe some version of baseball, and the scoring is Bolton to Wurmser and Hannah, to Cheney (and/or Libby) to Rove.

I suspect getting Rove on Perjury is more or less step one in walking back the path of the ball.

Lest there be any doubt about Bolton's true calling, remember, he was king of the Florida Recount.

Stay tuned, folks, it's going to be quite the ride.

Rove Crime: Perjury?

Via Atrios, TalkLeft has a good discussion of what Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald may be trying to get with those reporter's notes:

What Does the Government Really Want from Miller and Cooper?

Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald has stated in court pleadings that he already knows the identity of Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper's sources regarding the senior white house official who leaked the identity of CIA operative Valerie Plame to Robert Novak.

Miller did some reporting for a story but never wrote an article. She has maintained she intends to go to jail rather than reveal her source -- though Fitzgerald has indicated in court filings that he already knows that official's identity.

So, why is it so necessary for them to provide the information?

As the Wapo article suggests, the investigation has moved from one involving the identity of the White House official to one involving perjury - i.e., a cover-up. The source may have been questioned in front of the grand jury and lied.

Knowing the identity of the source is not enough for a perjury conviction. There must be two witnesses to the perjurious statement. Telephone records would not be enough, because they only provide the number dialed, not the identity of the person speaking. Matthew Cooper's and Judith Miller's e-mails and notes may provide that corroboration.

Two witnesses to get Rove for perjury. Because he said this:

I don't know who the White House official is, but the higher up he is, the more likely the prosecutor would want two live witnesses, not just documents, to support a perjury charge. What do you think of this possibility, from American Prospect in 2004?

Rove also adamantly insisted to the FBI that he was not the administration official who leaked the information that Plame was a covert CIA operative to conservative columnist Robert Novak last July. Rather, Rove insisted, he had only circulated information about Plame after it had appeared in Novak's column. He also told the FBI, the same sources said, that circulating the information was a legitimate means to counter what he claimed was politically motivated criticism of the Bush administration by Plame's husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson.

President Clinton was suspended from the practice of law by the State of Arkansas for five years for perjury, and disbarred by the Supreme Court. And his perjury had nothing to do with the workings of government, or intelligence, or national security.

As Joe Wilson has been hoping, “[W]e can get Karl Rove frogmarched out of the White House in handcuffs." Would there be a perp walk more sweet for Democrats?

Disinformation

The 2004 Falsies Awards: Remembering the people and players responsible for polluting our information environment.

Interesting list of media foibles in 2004. But where is the New York Times Ahmed Chalabi-loving Judith Miller? Bob (Traitor) Novak? The media's fawning coverage of the Swift Boat Liars? Bill O'Reilly buying back the tapes of his you-say-loofah I-say-falafel conversations? Actually, Faux News Channel alone could fill an entire Top Ten list.

Inquiring minds want to know.