This is round two of Frist vs. Lott - the "fracas in the caucus!" Frist wants to find the dirty leakers who outed our tortures, Lott says it was probably some Republican Senator - like maybe one from, say, Tennessee . . .

What are your predictions for the third and final round?

If this were the plot of a hollywood movie, no one would buy it. Unbelievable! I thought Frist was more savvy than this. We Dems can just sit back and watch them destroy themselves.

Steve,

How could you enjoy yourself in Berlin leaving us here to tackle Chalabi? I envy you! Remember me at Brandenburger Tor or Alexanderplatz. Have a good time a safe trip back home!

Mustafa

Best story of the day:

"Bush, who appeared almost playful, fastened the heavy medal around Muhammad Ali's neck and whispered something in the heavyweight champion's ear. Then, as if to say "bring it on," the president put up his dukes in a mock challenge. Ali, 63, who has Parkinson's disease and moves slowly, looked the president in the eye -- and, finger to head, did the "crazy" twirl for a couple of seconds.

The room of about 200, including Cabinet secretaries, tittered with laughter. Ali, who was then escorted back to his chair, made the twirl again while sitting down. And the president looked visibly taken aback, laughing nervously.
"

Oh, by the way, your Republican "moderate", Lindsay Graham has just see the Senate vote up his amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill which denies the right of habeus corpus relief to "enemy combatants" detained at Gitmo and elsewhere if so classified as such by the Executive Branch. Here is the good "moderate" explaining his reasons for the amendment"

"For 200 years, ladies and gentlemen, in the law of armed conflict, no nation has given an enemy combatant, a terrorist, an al-Qaida member the ability to go into every federal court in this United States and sue the people that are fighting the war for us," Graham told his colleagues.

No one has yet pointed out to the good "moderate" that no detainee yet has been convicted of being any of the above, that "enemy combatant" is a Bush administration contrivance, having no standing in international law, and that in fact several hundred detainees (his "enemy combatants, terrorists, al-Qaida members") have already been released from the concentration camps without comment. And this bozo has the cheek to run around Washington bleating about the McCain "no-torture" amendment.

It is both hilarious and pathetic watching the republican reich and the neo-fascists in the Bush government run amock like chickenhawks with their heads cut off.

The Ali moment is priceless.

The thin veneer of credibility and trust formally masking the Bush government warmongers and profiteers has crumbled into dust. All that remains visible now are a shamed and toxic government and truculent republicans desperate and tarnished with scandals, failures, deceptions, abuses, betrayals, and slime. The masquarade ended badly revealing the emperor has no cloths. The dirty tricks are exposed and no longer potent, and all the king horses and all the kings men, cannot put the Bush government back together again.

Yet, it is a time of dire vigilance for Americans, - because the neo-fascist cabals that ruthlessly hurled America into a bloody, costly, noendinsight war of choice, dishonored and betrayed the public trust, and perverted our laws and principles are capable of almost anything.

You're wrong, Susie, we can't just sit back and watch. If you hadn't noticed yet, Frist's views are becoming pretty common these days.

We live in a country today where the Senate majority leader can publicly state that he doesn't care whether this country is setting up secret torture chambers around the world. Is he worried about being shamed, ridiculed or treated like a pariah? Of course not. Meanwhile, a charlatan, who may well be an Iranian spy is invited back with open arms to address some of the key strategists of the Republican party. Could you imagine Democratic leaders lining up to hear a speech by Hugo Chavez?

At the same time the vice-president is openly lobbying for a torture-exemption for the CIA, the president asserts the unfettered right to strip American's of their citizenship and even the "moderate" Senator Graham writes legislation to strip habeus corpus rights from the accused.

Remember too that even after it became completely obvious that we were running a torture chamber at Abu Ghraib, Senator Kerry hardly mentioned during his campaign. Apparently, he didn't think it was a winning issue.

Do you really think we'll win this argument just by sitting back and watching the show?

The guy is on the senate select commitee for intelligence oversight isn`t he? What else is he supposed to say? "Gee first I heard of it, sounds bad, shame I can`t do anything about it"?

The CIA has been warning about this and rapports of people freezing to death in afghanistan tend to get distributed. If only becouse people like frists worry about "the loss of an intelligence asset".

The CIA and its friends are doing a great job making sure none of the stuff hurled at bush and cheney sticks to them the way the 911/gee-no-wmd stories did. For exmaple, all of a sudden these stories pop up:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1638857,00.html
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2005/11/levin110605.html

Intelligence people appear to have been fed up with being blamed for white house mistakes for a while now and apperantly now there is room for "we did warn them" stories.

So even if he ignored the post abu graib rumours in say, the washinton post, and the human rights organisations and goverments whose citizens where kidnapped and kept in these prisons then he still would have known for a while now. What can he say? "I knew but now it hit the washington post front page I will start to ask some questions any day now"... that really doesn`t sound presidential now does it?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15981-2004May10.html
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/PDF/EndingSecretDetentions_web.pdf
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/us_law/PDF/behind-the-wire-033005.pdf
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1390256,00.html

Also, it would be interesting to see for far he comes in a presidential race, his base doesnt seem to mind a little torture http://people-press.org/reports/tables/242.pdf

I will be at the Council on Foreign Relations to welcome DVP Chalabi (barring any brush fires at work) carrying this sign:

http://demo.alloy.com/creative/chalabi/thankYouWeb.jpg

I plan to arrive at 3:00. I'll be in an orange jacket.

Well said, Steve. I've been been trolling for a while, and linked to you a few times on my blog. I'm quite glad that people like you exist.

Did the catkiller get pelted with rotten eggs and tomatoes? If not, he didn't get the reception he deserved....