I haven't connected the dots in a while, but now reading that Cheney was in on the discussions about Wilson's article published the week before Novak's column, it's time for another go at it.

First up: The New York Times reports:

A lawyer who knows Mr. Libby's account said the administration efforts to limit the damage from Mr. Wilson's criticism extended as high as Mr. Cheney. This lawyer and others who spoke about the case asked that they not be identified because of grand jury secrecy rules.

On July 12, 2003, four days after his initial conversation with Ms. Miller, Mr. Libby consulted with Mr. Cheney about how to handle inquiries from journalists about the vice president's role in sending Mr. Wilson to Africa in early 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq was trying acquire nuclear material there for its weapons program, the person said. In that account, Mr. Cheney told Mr. Libby to direct reporters to a statement released the previous day by George J. Tenet, director of central intelligence. His statement said Mr. Wilson had been sent on the mission by C.I.A. counter-proliferation officers "on their own initiative."

by Last Night in Little Rock

Robert William Bennett two days ago proved he was a bigot as noted here. Not to be outdone by the controversy raging around him that he remains completely oblivious to, he goes to the friendly forum of FoxNews with Hannity & Colmes where the questions will be slow pitches he can hit out of the park. Instead, he leans into the pitch and gets beaned. For such a smart man, he sure can act like a dumbas*.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The NY Times reports tonight for Saturday's paper that the Bush Administration's Buying of News by Bush's Aides Is Ruled Illegal by "making payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party" according to federal auditors.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The intrepid folks at the FBI made a not so surprising admission: They have intercepted wrong numbers in PATRIOT Act wiretaps, so reports MSNBC tonight.

Say Hello to Allan Lichtman - political historian and the Democrat's expert witness in the Texas re-districting case - and many such cases before that. He's running for the Senate in Maryland, for the seat being vacated by Sarbanes.

He's also written this article on the DeLay Indictment, based on his experiences in the Texas re-districting case. He didn't send a link to the arcticle, so I'm assuming he wanted me to reprint it:

A few weeks ago I wrote that my 9 month old Dell desktop's hard drive crashed out of the blue. It had my last 9 months of work on it.

Dell replaced it and then I had to decide whether to try a data recovery service to try and restore the files on the old one. They ran the drive and it had 130,000 errors on it but they could find 20 MG of data, which included some valuable stuff for--like old TalkLeft files that are no longer on the server, my Quicken files, my newer client files and my pictures. So, I told them to go ahead.

It cost $1,250.00 for the restore and another $100 for an 80 GB USB hard drive which I'm about to hook up and see how usable the files are. Bottom line: Back up your stuff. $1,350.00 could have bought me a new laptop or a vacation. Now I'll get neither. It sucks that I had to spend it for this. But, it's my own fault for not taking the time to back up onto a cd-rom or dvd.

It's back to work for me, here's a space for you.

This is why lawyers don't want their clients to give TV interviews.

The Houston Chronicle reports Tom Delay said in media interviews that he hadn't been asked to speak to the grand jury. His lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, tells it a bit differently:

In a Wednesday night appearance on MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, he said Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle never talked to him or asked him to testify. "Never asking me to testify, never doing anything for two years," DeLay said in the interview. "And then, on the last day of his fourth or sixth grand jury, he indicts me. Why? Because his goal was to make me step down as majority leader."

On Thursday, DeLay said in another broadcast interview that he was under the impression that he wasn't going to be indicted because he hadn't been called to testify before the grand jury. "I have not testified before the grand jury to present my side of the case, and they indicted me," said DeLay, according to the Associated Press.

Dick DeGuerin says:

DeLay actually was invited to appear before the grand jury, where he would have been under oath. The Houston attorney was not yet on the legal team when DeLay was asked to appear, but he said other attorneys advised him not to testify — a decision DeGuerin supports.

Judith Miller appeared before the grand jury today - for four hours . I'm been offline (just stopped in here for a minute) but I see Digby's on fire again. [link fixed.] Read all the posts and Tom Maguire at Just One Minute and Anonymous Liberal too.

Arianna writes that the plot thickens and wants to know what Miller is hiding.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The Nation's website late yesterday posted an interesting article: DeLay Indictment: Beyond Damage Control? The bottom line: He has nothing to lose, and the target for the media should be the jury pool. An interesting read from a different perspective.

Even better, however, is ThinkProgress.com's Tom DeLay Exercises His Right To Incriminate Himself with a video link.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The Oregon Supreme Court held yesterday that its State Constitution protects live adult entertainment shows and dancing, also voiding a 4' limitation. City of Nyssa v. Dulforth.

by Last Night in Little Rock

The ABA Journal eReport issued today says that a random survey of 1016 Americans (not including Lousiana, Mississippi, or Alabama because of Katrina) finds that half of the respondents believe there is a "judicial activism crisis."