Name Change?

One of the things that stood out in today's New York Times article about Joe Wilson/Valerie Plame is that the article refers to her as Valerie Wilson throughout. I've run a google search to check whether they've ever done this before. As best I can tell, they haven't; they've referred to her consistently as Valerie Plame. Why the switch?

Could it be that they are trying to add credibility to their story that a State Department memo, rather than journalists, was the source of Rove's information? The blatantly obvious flaw in their previous story was that said State Department memo referred to her as Valerie Wilson, a name no one involved in this case has ever used to refer to her. How could Rove have learned the woman's name from this State Department memo, if the name he "outted" was Plame and the memo never uses that name?

Judge Roberts

I don't know much about Roberts, but I like his response to Sen. Schumer, found at Townhall.com:

My own judicial philosophy begins with an appreciation of the limited role of a judge in our system of divided powers. Judges are not to legislate and are not to execute the laws. . . . My judicial philosophy accordingly insists upon some rigor in ensuring that judges properly confine themselves to the adjudication of the case before them, and seek neither to legislate broadly not to administer the law generally in deciding that case.

Deciding the case . . . . requires an essential humility grounded in the properly limited role of an undemocratic judiciary in a democratic republic, a humility reflected in doctrines of deference to legislative policy judgments and embodied in the often misunderstood term “judicial restraint.” That restraint does not mean that judges should not act against the popular will. . . .[T]he framers expected them to be discerning the law, not shaping policy. That means the judges should not look to their own personal views or preferences in deciding the cases before them. Their commission is no license to impose those preferences from the bench.

This answer did not satsfy Schumer, of course; he voted against him for the appeals court. Schumer, et al, are committed to an unconstitutional policy-making role for the courts.

I'd like to hear more about Roberts's hermeneutic: that's the key! That and the fortitude to remain committed to it.

Debunking NYT's Wilson Nonsense

Captain's Quarters points out errors and omissions in today's New York Times story about Wilson, speculating that a State Department memo may actually have been Rove's source of information about Valerie Plame rather than journalists. The Captain, however, saves to the end the most obvious error: the memo had Valerie Plame's name wrong.

But along the way, he highlights yet again the 9/11 commission report exposing Joe Wilson's lies.

Update:

Good summary of Wilson/Plame story Linkfest: Plame/Wilson Spins Out of Control (HT: Instapundit)

ABC on Bib Laden/Sadam Connection

Now this, found on Power Line, is really amazing: tape from an ABC story in 1998, when the Democrats claimed there was a link between Bin Laden and Sadam Hussein. Now, the Democratic/MSM story line is that Bush made the whole thing up. As I said, yesterday about the NYT, they have no shame.

Despicable Headline

I've previously commented on how subscribing to the New York Time turned me into a more active conservative. I've reacted to their blatant bias. No where is this more obvious than in their headlines. Often the headlines distort and sensationalize the story. Today's headline on Karl Rove is a great example: Rove Reportedly Held Phone Talk on C.I.A. Officer. The headline makes it seem that Rove initiated a conference call to spread information about a CIA officer, he "held a phone talk." But what did he really do, according to the story? He answered the phone. A reporter called him. He answered it. The reporter steered the conversation to Wilson, shared gossip about his wife, and Rove said, "I heard that, too." This is "holding a phone talk?" The New York Times' headline writers have no shame.

Weren't they going to try to recapture some of their old credibility, as the "paper of record?" This is not the way to do it!

Not a Clandestine Officer

Here is the transcript of Wolf Blitzer's interview with Joe Wilson. Note especially the following exchange:

BLITZER: But the other argument that's been made against you is that you've sought to capitalize on this extravaganza, having that photo shoot with your wife, who was a clandestine officer of the CIA, and that you've tried to enrich yourself writing this book and all of that.

What do you make of those accusations, which are serious accusations, as you know, that have been leveled against you.

WILSON: My wife was not a clandestine officer the day that Bob Novak blew her identity.

This is typical Wilson: he wants to have it both ways. He advocates firing Rove for blowing the cover of a clandestine officer, but, then, when he might be criticized he admits she was not a clandestine officer at all. Joe Wilson has been exposed repeatedly as a liar, motivated solely by attacking Bush.

There is no scandal here. Even if Rove did name Plame, which by Cooper's account he didn't, he did nothing wrong. Plame was not a clandestine officer.

If there ever was a question about liberal bias in the media, this manufactured scandal settles it. NPR was feverish this morning in propagating this non-story.

Update from the Washington Post:

Sources who have reviewed some of the testimony before the grand jury say there is significant evidence that reporters were in some cases alerting officials about Plame's identity and relationship to Wilson -- not the other way around.

Clueless about Economics

More irony from Hillary Clinton. In the Aspen speech in which she accused Bush of being clueless, she demagogued, the 'ups and downs of the global oil market cost the U.S. economy $7 trillion last year . . . almost enough to pay off our entire national debt.' The problem with this is that our total GDP in 2004 was only $11.735 trillion. Energy goods accounted for $250 billion.

Her cluelessness about basic economics is scary! She must be working with Paul Krugman.

The Karl Rove Pseudo-Scandal

The Power Line guys have posted today's WSJ editorial on the so-called Karl Rove scandal, making it avaliable without registration. They also link to several of their previous stories on the same topic. It's a good refresher on the basics of the Valerie Plame/Joe Wilson affair.

It was Mr. Wilson, who first "outed" himself as a CIA consultant in a melodramatic New York Times op-ed in July 2003. At the time he claimed to have thoroughly debunked the Iraq-Niger yellowcake uranium connection that President Bush had mentioned in his now famous "16 words" on the subject in that year's State of the Union address.

Mr. Wilson also vehemently denied it when columnist Robert Novak first reported that his wife had played a role in selecting him for the Niger mission. He promptly signed up as adviser to the Kerry campaign and was feted almost everywhere in the media, including repeat appearances on NBC's "Meet the Press" and a photo spread (with Valerie) in Vanity Fair.

But his day in the political sun was short-lived. The bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report last July cited the note that Ms. Plame had sent recommending her husband for the Niger mission. "Interviews and documents provided to the Committee indicate that his wife, a CPD [Counterproliferation Division] employee, suggested his name for the trip," said the report.

The same bipartisan report also pointed out that the forged documents Mr. Wilson claimed to have discredited hadn't even entered intelligence channels until eight months after his trip. And it said the CIA interpreted the information he provided in his debrief as mildly supportive of the suspicion that Iraq had been seeking uranium in Niger.

About the same time, another inquiry headed by Britain's Lord Butler delivered its own verdict on the 16 words: "We conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that 'The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was well-founded."

In short, Joe Wilson hadn't told the truth about what he'd discovered in Africa, how he'd discovered it, what he'd told the CIA about it, or even why he was sent on the mission.

Andrea Mitchell reluctantly admitted on MSNBC this past weekend that it was alreeady generally known among the news media that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA, so Karl Rove certainly did not out Ms. Plame to anyone. Even the Newsweek article makes it clear that Rove didn't know the woman's name nor her role at the CIA. Even if he did, it's clear, even as admitted by the NYT and WaPo that no crime was committed. Why then this feeding frenzy over Rove?

My own suspicion is that Judith Miller, or some other reporter, was Cooper's primary source for the Plame/Wilson connection; Cooper took Rove's innocent statements as confirmation of the connection; and the MSM is now trying to pin this on Rove.

Ultimately, the NYT's position is untenable. On the one hand, they have argued that no crime was committed, and they celebrate Miller's integrity for not revealing her source. On the other hand, they are going after Rove as "the source" and claim that he ought to be fired for this "crime." The NYT is trying to manufacture a scandal out of nothing.

Bork about the Supreme Court

Bork had a great editorial on Sunday: "The combination of absolute power, disdain for the historic Constitution, and philosophical incompetence is lethal."

Mark R. Levin on Judicial Nominees on National Review Online

I agree with Mark R. Levin:

"We conservatives didn't pick this fight, but we must win it. It began with the assault on Bob Bork, and too many sat passively while it happened. Meanwhile, President Clinton's activist nominees, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, both sailed through the confirmation process. They weren't smeared. Their video-rental records weren't combed through. Their trash cans weren't searched. Witnesses weren't called to testify with phony stories about pubic hair on coke cans. But now is the time to put an end to this. Thanks to the Left and its insistence on judicial supremacy, the constitutional, economic, cultural, and political stakes are too high to ignore."

neo-neocon

This blog is new to me. I'm starting to see links to it on many sites. The author's journey from liberal to conservative makes for very interesting reading.

Why the Battle for the Court Will Be Nasty

I'm eager to start blogging again, especially about Supreme Court nominees, but it will take us some time to get out from under all our boxes. In the meantime, here is a great article by Brian C. Anderson, author of South Park Conservatives, about nomination nastiness.

I have not read many of Sandra Day O'Connor's opinions; I found her concurring opinion in Lawrence v. Texas almost incoherent. Here's to getting a more rigorous, consistent thinker on the court!

Moved!

We've passed another milestone in pursuing my career change: we're now in Louisville. We closed on our new house last Thursday and moved in on Friday. We still have unpacked boxes all over the place. This house is much smaller than our home in Connecticut. Even though we got rid of alot of our stuff, we still have too much. It will take us some time to figure out where to put it all.

Independent-mindedness

I find Juan Williams's contributions to Fox News mildly amusing. I especially enjoyed his very passionate exclamation, today, about the three Republicans who at "at last" showed some independence of mind by voting against William Pryor. He often portrays Republicans as incapable of independent thought. Not once does it ever occur to him that only one Democrat, Ben Nelson (D, Nebraska) voted against their party line.

No Smoking Gun

Some great lines in an editorial about the Downing Street Memo by Michael Kinsley, today:

Developing a paranoid theory and promoting it to the very edge of national respectability takes a certain amount of ideological self-confidence. It takes a critical mass of citizens with extreme views and the time and energy to obsess about them. It takes a promotional infrastructure and the widely shared self-discipline to settle on a story line, disseminate it and stick to it.

Kinsley focusses only on the hearsay nature of this evidence: the memo is a summary of a discussion of C's impressions of the impressions of others of Bush's possible attitude. But Kinsley still accepts the weird and illiterate interpretation of the word "fixed" to mean "changed."

Did Kerry really release Navy records?

So, Kerry's must be covering something up. For a month he claimed to have signed the form, but then it turned out he hadn't mailed it. He's spent years trying to figure out how to have it both ways, again: signing the form without actually disclosing any information.

Chicago Sun Times:

There is nothing magic about signing a SF 180,' said former Naval Judge Advocate General Mark Sullivan. 'It is sort of like your checkbook. You can fill out a check for one dollar or a million. It is the same check form.'

'And the Globe story says Kerry sent it to the Navy Personnel Command, which is only a limited storage location. So it is not surprising that the Globe then notes that what they received was largely 'duplication' of records previously released. The Navy Personnel Command primarily stores a subset of service records rather than a person's full military records. There is no doubt there are a lot of after-action records missing from what Kerry has released,' said Sullivan.

Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs has already found a discrepancy confirmed by the Department of the Navy of 'at least a hundred pages' missing from those already disclosed by Kerry.

So how an SF 180 is filled out is as important as signing it. But no one in the press has yet claimed to have seen a copy of Kerry's SF-180. When asked if she had a copy of Kerry's SF 180, the Globe's Managing Editor Mary Jane Wilkinson said, 'I haven't seen it, and I don't know if anyone here has.'

Anything but the Bible!

Students at Karns Elementary School in Knoxville, TN, are allowed to read anything but the Bible during recess.

Intolerance in the Bible Belt:

Instead of bullying, fighting or other typical recess pastimes, Luke Whitson was reading. But his choice of literature has stirred the constitutional and cultural sensitivities of a public school principal.

Karns Elementary School Principal Cathy Summa 'abruptly interrupted certain fourth-grade students while they were in the midst of a Bible discussion during recess, demanded that they stop their activity at once, put their Bibles away and, from that point forward, cease from bringing their Bibles to school.' So, the Pentagon buys Korans and prayer carpets for Islamist terrorists, but a fourth-grader isn't allowed to read the Bible during recess? What wonderful ways our society condones stupendous hypocrisy.

The Knoxville school system argues that recess is not 'free time,' during which, apparently, students are considered out of the classroom environment and allowed to engage in harmless pursuits, like playing, gossiping and -- yes -- reading.

It's a fine mess that liberal activists have made for us: Defend the right to practice all religions -- except Christianity. They fight to fund government agencies that support artists who dip the cross in urine or splatter Mary with cow feces, but call upon the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions whenever a Koran is accidentally "kicked." It's unfortunate that young Luke has received such an early lesson in liberal intolerance.

From the Washington Times editorial page. Text of the Alliance Defense Fund's complaint is here.

Economists Set Priorities to Combat Disease and Poverty

The Copenhagen Consensus assesses the cost/benefit of investments in development projects addressing ten major challenges in the world, characterizing them as very good, good, fair, and bad. Projects to combat AIDS/HIV are very good, ranking as the highest priority; the Kyoto protocol is a bad investment with very high cost and little benefit. They also consider guest worker programs to be a bad investment.

The link to the .pdf file with their full list is here.

CFJ Reply to Boxer

The Committee for Justice has a response to Sen. Boxer's accusations against Janice Rogers Brown, yesterday.

108 Died In U.S. Custody

I was shocked when Ceci Connelly claimed on Fox News Special Report that close to 100 Iraqi and Afghani detainees have been murdered by U.S. troops. She is the least capable of the commentators on Special Report, so my expectations are always low when she's on. Last night was especially poor. She fumbled often, able only to cite Abu Ghraib as evidence for widespread, systemic abuse. Under some pressure, she claimed that 100 murders elsewhere have been documented.

I have been searching for such documentation. The closest thing I can find is this March story from CBS News, saying that 108 have died while in U.S. custody. However, this number includes those who died from natural causes, and the second sentence in the story says that one quarter of these may have been caused by abuse. These cases warrant investigation.

This is much more consistent with the number I've read previously, 27. It'll be interesting to see if there is any follow up on this tonight.