by TChris

Scooter Libby’s arraignment, where he is likely to enter a plea of not guilty, has been scheduled for Thursday. Vice President Cheney today replaced Libby with two staff members:

Cheney picked David Addington to serve as his chief of staff and John Hannah to take over Libby's duties as assistant to the vice president for national security affairs.

As TalkLeft noted here, Addington “attended strategy sessions in 2003 on how to discredit Wilson when the former ambassador publicly charged that the Bush administration misled the country in pushing its case for war,” and he “played a leading role in 2004 on behalf of the Bush administration when it refused to give the Senate Intelligence Committee documents from Libby's office on the alleged misuse of intelligence information regarding Iraq.” Addington seems to be Libby’s “mini-me,” and Hannah was also involved in the Plame outing, a fact that TalkLeft discusses here and here. Their new roles assure that it will be business as usual in Cheney’s office.

The Times UK First Post has an excellent analysis of George Bush today. His uninspired appointments are indicative of a President who has run out of energy.

Having won two presidential elections and fought two unending wars, President Bush has run out of energy. Instead of the bouncing enthusiasm of happier days, his subdued manner indicates a loss of interest in the presidency itself, a desire to go home and rest.

He also has no honorable exit.

Think Progress quotes GW law prof Jonathan Turley on the nomination of Sam Alito to the Supreme Court. Crooks and Liars has the video:

JONATHAN TURLEY: He’s the top choice for particularly pro-life people. Sam Alito is viewed as someone who is likely to join the hard right in likely narrowing Roe and possibly voting to overturn Roe.

...There will be no one to the right of Sam Alito on this Court. This is a pretty hardcore fellow on abortion issues.

by TChris

David Corn asks: “Did Cheney know Plame was undercover?” Noting that the Libby indictment doesn’t answer the question, Corn probes Cheney’s role in the scandal:

As the Post piece notes, on July 12, 2003--six days after Wilson published his op-ed--Libby apparently discussed with Cheney what he should say to reporters, particularly Matt Cooper, about the Wilson imbroglio. The indictment does not disclose what Cheney said to Libby at this point. But the next day, Libby confirmed for Cooper that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA. Would Libby have done so had Cheney told him to be careful not to identify a DO [Operations Directorate] officer when discussing the Wilson affair with reporters? Perhaps so. But it's not unreasonable to wonder if Libby was--inadvertently or knowingly--spreading classified information about an undercover officer with the tacit or explicit consent of his boss.

Corn joins others in demanding that Cheney give a full accounting of the role he played in the outing of Valerie Plame. More on Cheney's role here and here.

by TChris

U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman in Manhattan will begin hearing evidence today in a challenge to New York City’s random search of bags carried by subway riders.

The New York Civil Liberties Union, which brought the lawsuit on behalf of several subway riders, said in court papers filed last week that its own survey from Aug. 25 to Sept. 16 of 5,500 subway turnstile entrances found a total of 34 searches underway. It said the search program in the 468 subway stations serving 26 train lines "has no meaningful value in preventing the entry of explosive devices into the system by the terrorists the NYPD is attempting to thwart."

The City counters that random searches deter terrorism because a terrorist will never know whether he’ll be searched. The risk of being searched is so low, however, that only the most timid of terrorists would worry about detection. Balanced against their negligible benefit, the random search of bags carried by individuals who have done nothing to raise a suspicion of wrongdoing is an unnecessary offense to the privacy of passengers.

by TChris

To avoid playing the president's game by allowing the Alito nomination to distract from the Bush administration's other blunders, it's worth noting that -- just days after the Pentagon urged the media to ignore the milestone of 2,000 dead American soldiers in Iraq -- the death toll has increased to 2,023.

The six deaths [Monday] bring the number of U.S. soldiers to have died in Iraq this month to 90, the highest number of American deaths there since January when 107 Americans were killed.

by TChris

Hoping to regain the support of his base while provoking a fight that will distract the media from his scandal-ridden administration, President Bush announced the nomination of Judge Sam Alito Jr. to the Supreme Court. This is the reaction of People for the American Way:

“Justice O’Connor had a pivotal role at the center of the Court, often providing a crucial vote to protect privacy, civil rights, and so much more. All that would be at risk if she were replaced with Judge Alito, who has a record of ideological activism against privacy rights, civil rights, workers’ rights, and more.”

Murray Waas and Paul Singer, writing at the National Journal, have more on Cheney Counsel David Addington and his involvement in the Valerie Plame probe. They state that Addington did nothing criminally wrong. But, there are other issues.

Sen. Jay Rockefeller does not sound pleased with Addington, who has been mentioned in recent weeks as a likely replacement for Libby as Cheney's Chief of Staff.

by TChris

"Republicans close to the White House" tell the Washington Post that President Bush is "poised" to announce tomorrow the candidate who will replace Harriet Miers as the candidate to replace Justice O'Connor. Quick action, calculated to distract the news media from the Plame investigation, may also be calculated to consolidate the Republican Party behind a nominee who is trusted to advance a conservative agenda.

The Post article and this NY Times article short list the usual suspects. Both place Samuel Alito Jr. at the top of the list. From Wikipedia:

His ideological likeness to United States Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia has earned him the nickname "Scalito."

If Bush does announce a name tomorrow, will it supplant the Plame story, or (with the encouragement of bloggers) will the media be motivated to cover both stories with equal vigor?

Josh Marshall finds an archived version of today's Washington Post article on Lexis-Nexis that is different than the first edition of the article. The difference is this sentence which did not make it into the final version:

On July 12, the day Cheney and Libby flew together from Norfolk, the vice president instructed his aide to alert reporters of an attack launched that morning on Wilson's credibility by Fleischer, according to a well-placed source.

Why is this critical? Jane at Firedoglake thinks it means that Ari Fleischer was Robert Novak's source. Anonymous Liberal analyzes another part of the article and concludes that Ari Fleischer was Walter Pincus's source. While I think it's possible that Fleischer was Novak's source, providing information he learned from Libby at lunch on July 7, I don't think he was Pincus's source. In any event, I think the removed sentence from the WaPo article is significant for another reason. It seems to be another link in the chain of available information that says the attack on Wilson could have been ordered by Cheney -- and that may be the reason it was deleted from the final version of the article.

As Buzzflash writes,

Holy Batman! The Mainstream Press is Even Sounding Grim on the Busheviks, "Dark days: Singed by the special prosecutor and rattled by the Harriet Miers mess, Team Bush is in turmoil."

There is a huge sea change going on in the MSM. Check out Newsweek's Flying Blind and The TimeonLine article Bush Got Whacked. The Washington Post features a similar article and notes that Bush's approval ratings are at the lowest of his presidency.

Michael Isikoff writes in Newsweek (as I speculated most recently yesterday) that Novak's source cooperated with Fitzgerald and got a pass.

Thanks to Ian of The Political Teen for putting up the video of this morning's Reliable Sources blogger segment featuring Instapundit Glenn Reynolds, Reporter bloggerRoger Simon (not this Roger Simon) and me. The topics were the war in Iraq, Harriet Miers and Fitzgerald's indictment of Scooter Libby.

You can watch it here.