Newseum creates shrine to Tim Russert

Washington, D.C.'s Newseum has opened an exhibit that contains an exact replica of the late Tim Russert's office at NBC.

The NBC Washington bureau chief and legendary moderator of Meet the Press died in June 2008 of a heart attack at age 58.

The office has been recreated to look as it did on the day he died, complete with family photos, favorite books and Buffalo Bills pennants. It will be on display through 2010.

The exhibit also features Russert's desk piled high with newspapers and research binders and a wooden sign for his staff that reads "Thou Shalt Not Whine."

Thou Shalt Not Whine. That's so awesome.

I wonder if this shrine to Russert, that icon of whine-free journalistic fortitude, contains any symbols of his actual approach to the craft. For example, his default position when talking to high government officials:

My personal policy is always off the record when talking to government officials unless specified.

Great stuff, especially if you're a government official trying to influence the media narrative without leaving any fingerprints. Good ol' Tim Russert was happy to help out by keeping all conversations off the record unless you gave him permission to quote you. Now, that's some hard-hitting journalism.

So is this:

This delicious morsel about the "Meet the Press" host and the vice president was part of the extensive dish Cathie Martin served up yesterday when the former Cheney communications director took the stand in the perjury trial of former Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Flashed on the courtroom computer screens were her notes from 2004 about how Cheney could respond to allegations that the Bush administration had played fast and loose with evidence of Iraq's nuclear ambitions. Option 1: "MTP-VP," she wrote, then listed the pros and cons of a vice presidential appearance on the Sunday show. Under "pro," she wrote: "control message."

"I suggested we put the vice president on 'Meet the Press,' which was a tactic we often used," Martin testified. "It's our best format."

The Newseum exhibit should definitely include a playback loop of all of Cheney's MTP appearances before, during, and after the invasion of Iraq. Only then will visitors get an accurate picture of Tim Russert, whom the Bush administration considered its most reliable media stooge.

Cheney

Shorter Cheney: 9/11 scared the @%$! out of me, I broke the law, please don't put me in jail, and Obama is a poopy-head.

Big Time Endorsement - Cheney ties McCain even tighter to the wost presidency in recent history

While I was watching this clip, I kept expecting McCain to run up on stage, tackle Cheney, and stuff a hand towel in his mouth.

Five years after the invasion, American politicians still must make 'surprise' visits to Iraq

Just days after John McCain snuck into Baghdad for a surprise visit, Vice President Dick Cheney snuck into Iraq for a surprise visit .

 

Cheney took the opportunity to praise a reduction of violence that has occurred since Bush escalated the conflict by sending 30,000 additional troops last year.  However...

For security reasons, Cheney officials divulged few details about the vice president's schedule and asked reporters not to report on his location until he had moved on to another. Cheney was expected to make stops throughout the country, speak to troops and spend time with other Iraqi leaders.

Cheney's motorcade zigzagged through Baghdad to meetings as helicopter gunships circled overhead. Explosions were heard in parts of the city, but none were near the vice president.

The irony is not lost on Iraqis.

 "Unfortunately," said Faleh Hassan Shansal, a member of the parliamentary bloc loyal to radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada Sadr, "all American politicians and leaders sneak into Iraq in the darkness, without letting anyone know."

They have to do that, of course, because otherwise they would get killed.

For his part, Cheney conceded that there is still "a lot of difficult work" to do in Iraq.  That was gracious of him, considering that by  every benchmark that he and Bush established, the "surge" has failed.  The goal of sending 30,000 additional troops was not to bring about a tactical and temporary reduction in violence.  The goal was to give the Iraqi government time to make significant strides toward national political reconciliation.  This is not happening.

[Gen. David Petraeus], who is preparing to testify to Congress next month on the Iraq war, said in an interview that "no one" in the U.S. and Iraqi governments "feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation," or in the provision of basic public services.

Not to worry, though.  John McCain's plan is to continue the occupation for at least another 95 years.  That should be plenty of time for the Iraqis to work out their differences so our troops can come home.

Maybe by then American politicians will even be able to make scheduled visits to Baghdad in the light of day.

Darth Cheney

Paul Krugman compares Dick Cheney to Darth Vader, and Cheney comes up short.

Back when Hillary Clinton described Dick Cheney as Darth Vader, a number of people pointed out that this was an unfair comparison. For example, Darth Vader once served in the military.

Here’s another reason the comparison is invalid: the contractors Darth Vader hired to build the Death Star actually got the job done.

A State Department project manager banished from Iraq by the U.S. ambassador and under scrutiny by the Justice Department continues to oversee the construction of the much-delayed new American embassy in Baghdad from nearby Kuwait, State Department officials disclosed Thursday.

James L. Golden, a contract employee, is still managing the $740 million project, said Undersecretary of State Patrick Kennedy, the department’s top management official.

Busnness as usual for the gang that couldn't shoot straight.

If you haven't been reading Krugman's blog, by the way, you're missing a treat. The format fits him like a glove.

'You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.'

I wish the braintrust at NRO would pick up that old dictionary off the floor that they are using as a doorstop, crack it open, and turn to the entry for the word "peace."

NRO: Bush, Cheney deserve Nobel Peace Prize.
Commenting on Vice President Cheney’s latest threat toward Iran, National Review Online’s Tom Gross declares that Cheney and President Bush are “deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize” for their belligerent posturing:

They are super-mean about them now, but maybe, just maybe, one day peaceniks in America and Europe will recognize George W. Bush and Dick Cheney as the men who prevented World War Three. Surely then they would be deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize?

The NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez also encourages Lynne Cheney to run for President.

I mean, look, I am willing to engage anybody in a discussion as to whether Al Gore deserved his Nobel Peace Prize. I think he did, but I recognize that people of good will can disagree on this point.

But to argue that Bush and Cheney have earned one? For starting wars?

I think this would be a good time to stop sniffing glue, folks. Seriously, you'll never get sober until you admit you have a problem. Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

President Cheney

This is the scariest headline of the day, so far.



How many bombs could be dropped on Iran in the space of two hours? Not many, I hope.

Dick Cheney; Andrew Sullivan

Andrew Sullivan does not want the Unitary Veep impeached.

Conservatives should be more outraged by his assault on the law, the constitution and individual liberty. He's also clearly a war criminal - a knowing enforcer of torture and abuse of military detainees. We once executed Nazis for the same techniques as Cheney has approved and enforced. I don't want to see him impeached. I want to see him prosecuted under American and international law as a criminal.

Well said.

Dick Cheney - Unitary Vice President

I wasn't going to say anything about this, but with the establishment media finally noticing that Dick Cheney considers himself a government unto himself, I want to correct the record about who knew what and when.

There is a bit of triumphalism taking place over the fact the blogs picked up on Cheney's bizarre Unitary Theory of Vice-Presidential power a whole five months before it became front-page news.

Two bloggers whom I respect immensely, and in whose mighty company I barely consider myself blogger, have been writing about this. A couple of days ago, Digby wrote:

Talking Points Memo, a real live journalistic endeavor, broke the story of Cheney's bizarre theory that he is a fourth branch of government accountable to no one, not even the president back on February 4th. A bunch of blogs picked it up and pontificated about it. It seemed to me like a pretty big deal:

I had always known that Cheney was running the show, but I assumed he did it purely by using the power of the executive branch and manipulation of the presdient. I had no idea that he might have secretly carved out a previously unenumerated institution that derives its power from both the legislative and executive branches. What in the hell has really been going on in this administration?

And on Saturday, Josh Marshall wrote at TPM:

One of the angles that's gone largely unnoticed about all of this is that it's actually old news. Cheney started holding himself out as some kind of unaccountable, pseudo-fourth branch of government way back in February. The blogs noticed, and explained how crazy the argument is, but the media yawned. No one pushed the White House to explain, the Republican-led Congress barely lifted an eyebrow, and everyone just moved on, satisfied that Dick Cheney had established his own superbranch.

It's interesting -- and if anyone can explain the reasoning, I'm all ears -- but the same important story that was ignored in February is suddenly fascinating in June. The same questions that bloggers asked then are unexpectedly interesting to everyone else now.

With all due respect to Josh and Digby, Dick Cheney was acting all high-and-mighty long before February of 2007, and at least one blog took notice of it before then, as well.

In 2001, Cheney's office began exempting itself from reporting requirements regarding the vice president's travel on the grounds that the Office of the Vice President was "not an agency of the executive branch." The practice was noted by the Center for Public Integrity in November, 2005. At that time, I wrote:

The vice president's office is not an agency of the executive branch? Then, what is it? Does Cheney really fancy himself co-president as so many of his critics characterize him? This would explain a lot.

It would explain, for example, why Cheney assumed the authority to order military planes to shoot down civilian aircraft on September 11, 2001. It would explain why, this October, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan gave the impression that he did not have the authority to answer questions on behalf of the vice president.

Q Given the fact that the Vice President did say publicly in September of 2003 that he never knew about Joe Wilson or who sent him, as John points out, and now there appears to be information to contradict that, how do you explain that contradiction?

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, there's an ongoing investigation. There are many facts that are not known. I would encourage you not to engage in speculation. And on top of that, if there's any additional information that the Vice President's Office wants to provide you, you can direct questions there. But the policy of this White House has been not to comment on this investigation while it's ongoing. And it has been that way for some time.

This curious remark by McClellan makes perfect sense if, as reported, Cheney has established that his office is not an agency of the executive branch of the United States government.

Of course, if it is not, one could be forgiven for wondering just what on earth it is.

Later that month, when the Washington Post picked up the story about Cheney's travel records, I wrote:

The bottom line is that, in his obsessive pursuit of secrecy, Cheney is forcing American taxpayers to pick up the tab for travel that should be paid for by non-federal government organizations.

Also of interest, and as we noted in our earlier post, is the contention that the V.P.s office is not an agency of the Executive Branch of the United States government. One wonders, then, how Cheney can claim executive privilege in refusing to answer questions about his Energy Task Force.

As you can see, the Unitary Theory of Vice-Presidential Power was already old news when Josh and the rest of the blogosphere finally took notice in February, 2007.

Now that the establishment media have finally noticed, it's really old news. It's still big news, though, and I'm glad they caught up.

U.S., Iran talk about Iraq

Wait a minute. How can this be?

American and Iranian officials spoke briefly Friday at a regional conference here on the Iraq situation, in a rare direct conversation between representatives of the two antagonistic nations.

Ryan Crocker, the United States ambassador to Iraq, said that he and David Satterfield, the senior adviser on Iraq to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, had an impromptu three-minute discussion with an Iranian deputy foreign minister. Rice and Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, did not participate.

Crocker would not say what was discussed, except that the conversation was limited to the situation in Iraq.

I thought we didn't talk to evil. Is Iran not evil anymore, or has the Bush administration decided there is some benefit in communicating with our adversaries?

I hope nobody tells Dick Cheney about this. Somebody could get shot in the face.

The Aristocrats

This is absolutely brilliant.

Thanks, but no thanks

If I was Barney, I'd steer clear of George W. Bush's boots for the next couple of days.

Congressional Dems have told the president what he can do with his "invitation" to come to the White House and "discuss" their bills to fund his war.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, speaking Tuesday at a news conference in San Francisco, forcefully rejected Bush's invitation -- as had Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada several hours earlier at a Capitol appearance.

"What the president invited us to do is to come to his office so that we could accept, without any discussion, the bill that he wants," Pelosi said. "That's not worthy of the concerns of the American people. And I join with Sen. Reid in rejecting an invitation of that kind.

"Leader Reid and I have long said to the president (that) we want to talk to you -- the American people want us to work together. They want us to fund the troops, they want us to wind down this war. And let's work together to do that," she said.

That "invitation" was a breathtaking strategic mistake on the president's part. It reeks of a freelance operation. He had to have issued it in complete defiance of what Rove and Cheney were telling him. It was an unmistakable sign of weakness. If his position on this matter were stronger, he never would have reached out to the Democrats this way. What an embarrassment. He is probably punching through the sheetrock tonight.

Cheney; Limbaugh

I was thinking about Dick Cheney's appearance on Rush Limbaugh's show on Thursday.

Obviously, it was a pre-emptive strike timed to put the administration's spin on the Pentagon report discrediting once and for all any suggestion of collusion between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. But as I thought about it, the real purpose of the appearance just astonished me.

There is no way that Bush and Cheney are ever going to win back the trust of the Americans who have abandoned them. That ship has sailed. All they have left is the 29-to-33 percent who will never, ever, ever turn who have not turned their backs on them so far, and who they must keep from ever doing so. They need to hold on to that hard core of authoritarian followers who are still willing to believe anything and everything they say. And that, of course, is what Cheney was doing on Limbaugh's show on Thursday. Those people are Limbaugh's audience, so if you want to reach them, that's where you have to go.

So, there Cheney is flogging once again the implication, upon which they sold the invasion of Iraq, that there was an operational relationship between that country and al Qaeda.

Think about -- just to give you one example, Rush, remember Abu Musab al Zarqawi, a Jordanian terrorist, al Qaeda affiliate; ran a training camp in Afghanistan for al Qaeda, then migrated -- after we went into Afghanistan and shut him down there, he went to Baghdad, took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq; organized the al Qaeda operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene, and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June. He's the guy who arranged the bombing of the Samarra Mosque that precipitated the sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni. This is al Qaeda operating in Iraq. And as I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq.

Unless he is literally, clinically deranged, there is no way that Cheney does not know that the Saddam/al Qaeda "link" is utter nonsense. But there he is, lying. He knows he's lying, and so does Limbaugh. And yet, these two pillars of morality and virtue, these good shepherds of the Republicanist flock, are sitting there gleefully and enthusiastically exploiting the key emotional weakness which infects the members of their political base. They are affirmatively making fools of their most reliable supporters with the most shameless of falsehoods. They do it without reservation and without compunction.

The cynicism of these people is just breathtaking.

Cheney; Bushes

I'd say the president dodged a bullet on this one. Literally.



The last time Dick Cheney hid out in the bushes, somebody got shot in the face.

Seriously, though... what on earth? Lurk much?

Why is the vice president hiding out in the bushes at the White House monitoring the president's press conference? That's the oddest thing I've seen so far this year.