miserable failure

* simbaud: "the judge who presides over Mr. Libby's arraignment will be Reggie Walton, the same fellow who earlier affirmed the "state secrets privilege" in upholding the government's gag order against 9/11 whistleblower Sibel Edmonds."

* "A USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll taken Friday through Sunday shows that a solid majority of Americans, 55%, now judge Bush's presidency to be a failure." (link)

* nyt ed: "Iran has a nuclear weapons program."
good fucking grief

* "But according to Hersh, the Mehlis report is built on the same anemic foundations as Powell's UN presentation in February, 2003. "He is relying on intercepts of an unnamed source inside the Iranian air force, someone without inside stuff. It's not empirical." On the basis of this thin evidence, he says, the Bush administration is campaigning at the UN for sanctions on Syria." (link)
sanctions are the least of my concerns.

*e.j.dionne:

"Fitzgerald has made clear that he wants to keep this case going if doing so will bring us closer to the truth. Lawyers not involved in the case suggest that the indictment was written in a way that could encourage Libby, facing up to 30 years in prison, to cooperate in that effort.

But there is a catch. If Libby, through nods and winks, knows that at the end of Bush's term, the president will issue an unconditional pardon, he will have no interest in helping Fitzgerald, and every interest in shutting up. If Bush truly wants the public to know all the facts in the leak case, as he has claimed in the past, he will announce now that he will not pardon Libby. That would let Fitzgerald finish his work unimpeded, and we would all have a chance, at last, to learn how and why this sad affair came to pass." (link)