Category Archives: Politics: Tinfoil

The Washington Note posts a transcript of the Cheney interview. Others will doubtless post on the serious stuff: the sycophantically and powder-puff nature of the questions, the failure to engage the big issues of the day like torture, the odd and unconvincing explanation for the delay in going public, the failure to engage the issue of who told what to whom when, and especially the failure to ask whether Cheney ever spoke to Bush about the shooting. (Not the mention the question of whether Texas follows the year-and-a-day rule.)

Instead, I’m going to focus on a triviality: Here’s how Cheney sets the scene,

It’s in south Texas, wide-open spaces, a lot of brush cover, fairly shallow. But it’s wild quail. It’s some of the best quail hunting anyplace in the country.

Wild quail? I thought these were pen-raised birds like in the famous 2003 hunt,

In December of 2003, he went (via Humvee) to a pheasant shooting party in Pennsylvania at the Rolling Rock Club. Gamekeepers there released some 500 pen-raised pheasants from nets, and Cheney’s party, which included former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Roger Staubach and U.S. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) as well as several influential Republican fundraisers, shot 417 of them. Cheney himself got at least 70. Apparently that wasn’t enough slaughter, because after lunch the group went after pen-raised mallard ducks.

So which was it, wild or domestic?

(Incidentally, a quick hunt suggests that Texas does not mechanically follow the year-and-a-day rule, but I’m not a Texas lawyer.)

Secrecy News, the cool new blog from the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy, has a great tidbit for the tinfoil-deprived:

The Mystery of the Two James Baker Statements: In a 2002 statement presented to the Senate Intelligence Committee, James A. Baker of the Justice Department Office of Intelligence Policy and Review questioned the constitutionality and the necessity of a proposal by Senator Mike DeWine to lower the legal threshold for domestic intelligence surveillance of non-U.S. persons from “probable cause” to “reasonable suspicion.”

But for yet unknown reasons, Mr. Baker’s remarkable statement is found in two distinct versions.

“If we err in our analysis and courts were ultimately to find a ‘reasonable suspicion’ standard unconstitutional, we could potentially put at risk ongoing investigations and prosecutions,” Mr. Baker said in the more expansive version of his statement.

Moreover, “If the current standard has not posed an obstacle, then there may be little to gain from the lower standard and, as I previously stated, perhaps much to lose.”

Yet even as Mr. Baker was expressing concerns about lowering the probable cause threshold, the government was doing precisely that in the NSA domestic surveillance activity.

Baker’s testimony was highlighted last week by blogger Glenn Greenwald and cited in the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Strangely, however, the testimony in which Mr. Baker presented those concerns cannot be found anywhere on the public record except for the Federation of American Scientists web site.

The testimony that is posted on the Senate Intelligence Committee web site does not contain the three paragraphs in which Mr. Baker questions the propriety of going beyond the probable cause standard as proposed by Senator DeWine.

Likewise, only the truncated version of Mr. Baker’s testimony was archived in the Nexis database and published by the Government Printing Office in its printed hearing record.

Pretty spooky, eh?

Digby thinks that GW Bush has lost face too often.

I would never post this had it not come from that paragon of right-of-center respectability, UCLA Law Prof. Stephen Bainbridge. But since it does, I cannot resist:

Bush: Commie Dupe? Here at ProfessorBainbridge.com, we dote on conspiracy theories. So we were amused by science fiction writer Charles Stross argument “that George W. Bush is a communist dupe.” Or, more precisely, a dupe of a conspiracy of a cabal that has combined “the Shachtmanite version of Trotskyism” and “right-wing crypto-Nieztchian philosopher Leo Strauss.” It would seem to explain a lot.

Of course, Prof. Bainbridge also mentions in the comments to that item that “here at ProfessorBainbridge.com we were very taken with Cthulhu’s slogan in the 2004 Presidential race: ‘Why settle for the lesser of two evils?'” … so be forewarned….

Note to media: This report in a tabloid is false. Even my brother calls it “utterly scurrilous”. And it bears no connection whatsoever to this sartorial incident.

Note to all: Having looked at a video of the speech, I don’t think the photo of Bush’s mis-buttoned shirt linked to above is a photoshop job. But as regards the Bush-is-drinking-again story, the Enquirer is not to be trusted. Even if it did break the Monica Lewinsky story. Or, maybe, especially since…

Note to lawyers and law students: On the other hand, if you would like a good lawyer’s hypothetical, try Dwight Meredith at Wampum on the poor fit of the XXVth Amenment to problems of substance abuse in the White House. Nice exam question for someone.