Nancy: "If you want to reduce our dependence on foreign oil and therefore improve our national security situation, you can't do it if you're a Republican because you are too wedded to the oil companies. We have two oilmen in the white house.
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"The logical follow-up from that is $3 a gallon gasoline. There is no accident. Tt is a cause and effect. A cause and effect. How dare the president of the United States make a speech today in April, many, many, many months after the american people have had to undergo the cost of home heating oil...read on"

As Atrios says: "You're going to feel like a total loser when all the cool kids are talking about it and you don't have it."

Support one of our own. Pre-order today.

UPDATE:

He was # 16 when I started this thread. Let's get him up to # 1.

Murray Waas nails Pat Roberts. When are the investigations coming for him? Don't hold your breath.

"On March 20, 2003, at the onset of military hostilities between U.S. and Iraqi forces, Roberts said in a speech to the National Newspaper Association that he had "been in touch with our intelligence community" and that the CIA had informed President Bush and the National Security Council "of intelligence information from what we call human intelligence that indicated the location of Saddam Hussein and his leadership in a bunker in the suburbs of Baghdad."

The former intelligence officials said in interviews that Roberts was never held accountable for his comments, which bore directly on the issue of intelligence-gathering sources and methods, and revealed that Iraqis close to Hussein were probably talking to the United States.

These former officials contrasted the Roberts case with last week's firing of CIA officer Mary O. McCarthy, as examples of how rank and file intelligence professionals now have much to fear from legitimate and even inadvertent contacts with journalists, while senior executive branch officials and members of Congress are almost never held accountable when they seriously breach national security through leaks of information....read on

People taking action. Read Pachacutec's whole post:
"Roots Project New York members had been trying for over a week to make an appointment to meet with staff in both (Clinton & Schumer) of their senators’ offices. Here’s their summary of their attempts on April 21st to visit the people who ostensibly work for them...

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"People are getting together to overturn the politics of vacuity in many ways, but if you’d like to join your own in-state neighbors in the Roots Project, send an email to stateproject at gmail dot com with (only!) your home state in the subject line....read on"

Greenwald discusses his new book. We have nothing comparable to the right wing noise machine that gets their books out and promotes them endlessly. Heck, the think tanks buy them by the boat loads just to give them away as promotions. How many times have you seen the "Conservative Book Club" promotion of five books for a dollar? Then the Mark Levins' of the world are billed as a "best selling" author. We really need to support our new writers as they emerge.
Please consider pre-ordering Glenn's book.

Zbigniew Brzezinski:

"Iran's announcement that it has enriched a minute amount of uranium has unleashed urgent calls for a preventive U.S. air strike by the same sources that earlier urged war on Iraq. If there is another terrorist attack in the United States, you can bet your bottom dollar that there will be also immediate charges that Iran was responsible in order to generate public hysteria in favor of military action. But there are four compelling reasons against a preventive air attack on Iranian nuclear facilities:...

1. In the absence of an imminent threat (with the Iranians at least several years away from having a nuclear arsenal), the attack would be a unilateral act of war.

If undertaken without formal Congressional declaration, it would be unconstitutional and merit the impeachment of the President. Similarly, if undertaken without the sanction of the UN Security Council either alone by the United States or in complicity with Israel, it would stamp the perpetrator(s) as an international outlaw(s).read on"

Will this be a trend as the '06 election approaches? Dana (convicts can pick fruit) joined Wolf Blitzer, and explained why he refused to meet with the President in California yesterday.
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Blitzer: President Bush talked up immigration once again today in California, and the Republican Congressman from that district was conspicuously absent. Dana Rohrabacher strongly disagrees with Mr. Bush on many of the immigration reform proposals he has put forward. So he made a point of skipping the event, effectively snubbing the leader of the nation and his own party

Rohrabacher: Well, to be fair about it, it's the next district over. My district line starts a few miles away from where the president was actually speaking. However, let me note that my lack of attendance had more to do with my respect for the president. I certainly agree with him on most of the issues. I respect and appreciate his leadership on most issues.

But I so strongly disagree with him on this illegal immigration issue that I felt it would be more respectful for me to stay away rather than to show up and look glum and refuse to applaud and things like that."

Ari Berman says:

"Is Rohrabacher insinuating that Jack Abramoff is less toxic than President Bush?"

Now that Mary McCarthy has "categorically denied" disclosing classified information on Bush's secret prisons, the political debate shifts a bit. Instead of assuming that McCarthy was responsible for leaks, we now have to wonder why, exactly, CIA Director Porter Goss sacked a veteran intelligence analyst. It's too soon to say with any certainty whether Goss, who personally oversaw the investigation into this leak, was driven by partisan motivations, but there's reason to believe the director of central intelligence was not acting on principle. After all, McCarthy was a Democrat and hold-over from the Clinton years -- and Goss is a former House Republican who has tried to purge top-ranking CIA officials of anyone who wasn't loyal to Bush. Let's not forget this Newsday report from November 2004 and how it might apply to the McCarthy controversy.

The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President George W. Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources. "The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda." (emphasis added)

And now we're supposed to believe that Goss, whose history of rigid partisanship is overwhelming, ran a fair and objective investigation of McCarthy? Please.

-- Guest Post by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report

Keith had on Andrea Mitchell and Ex-CIA officer Melissa Boyle Mahle, to dig a little deeper on the Mary McCarthy story.
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Andrea says that Mary did meet reporters, but says she didn't leak classified information. The story unfolds.

Ex-CIA officer Melissa Boyle Mahle who maintains close contacts with CIA insiders reports that the leak investigation is considered to be a "witch hunt" by many inside the agency.

The reaction from some right wing bloggers over this story really goes beyond the pale. They think that-I kid you not-the secret prisons were all a cover to draw out leakers from the agency. Mark Kleiman digs up the facts. You have to read the post. It's some of the biggest conservative sites promoting this crazy idea.

( h/t David Edwards for the vid)

Agitprop: Whitewash alert...James Baker on a "fact-finding" mission to Iraq for G-Dub

The Progressive: 15-year-old web animation artist is the recipient of ugly emails from wingnut "patriots."

James Dobson would like to shut the doors of public education...only by not giving a damn about religion can America save itself from damnation...a chaplian's view of torture

We hear a lot from the Bushistas and their Stepford supporters about "supporting the troops." Here's what that really looks like.

Tristram Shandy: Conservobloggers seem determined to marginalize Osama bin Laden. Looks like he won't be "dangerous" again until they catch him.

Brandoland: Another installment of "Big Conservative Babies"