Bill Moyers

talks with Jon Stewart

BILL MOYERS: You've said many times, "I don't want to be a journalist, I'm not a journalist."

JON STEWART: And we're not.

BILL MOYERS: But you're acting like one. You've assumed that role. The young people that work with me now, think they get better journalism from you than they do from the Sunday morning talk shows.

JON STEWART: I can assure them they're not getting any journalism from us. We are, if anything — I do believe we function as a sort of editorial cartoon. That we are a digestive process, like so many other digestive processes that go on. The thing about you know, there's a lot of young people get this and you know, young people get that from me. People are very sophisticated consumers of information, and they're pulling all different things.

It's the same argument people say about the blogs. The blogs are responsible. No, they're not. The blogs are like anything else. You judge each one based on its own veracity and intelligence and all of that. And if you like, you could cherry pick only the things that you agree with from various things. Or, if you want, you can try and get a broader perspective, or you can find people who are absolutely out of their minds, or find people that are doing incredibly complex and interesting and urgent journalism. And the same goes for our show. It's a prism into people's own ideologies, when they watch our program. This is just our take.

Arrest Made in Austin Women's Health Center Bomb

Austin-American Statesman

Charged in the crime was Paul Ross Evans, who lives in northeastern Travis County and has been to prison on burglary and robbery charges.

[snip]

The National Abortion Federation is trying to determine whether Evans has been to the clinic in the past or made any threats against area clinics, said Vicki Saporta, president of the federation, an association of 400 abortion providers, including the Austin clinic.

Saporta said abortion providers "remain on an elevated alert . . . to make sure that we don't have somebody else who would commit a copycat crime."

Evans has been charged with three federal crimes that accuse him of using weapons of mass destruction, attempting to damage a building used in interstate commerce and attempting to damage a facility because it provides reproductive health services.

Arrest affidavit (pdf)

friday random ten

Photo by Ryan McManus

Early Bird Edition


"Governing Takes Brains" - McCarthy [The Enraged Will Inherit the Earth]


"Ruby Tuesday" - The Rolling Stones [Singles 1965-1967 (2004)]

"Syd Barret Blues" - The Black Angels [Dead Bees Sampler #4 (2005)]


"Psychoticbumpschool"" - Bootsy Collins [Stretchin' Out (In Bootsy's Rubber Band) (1976)]


"Blue Boy" - Orange Juice [NME C81 (1981)]


"Death By Blonde" - DeVotchKa [Una Volta (2003)]


"Driver's Seat" - Sniff 'n' the Tears [Fickle Heart (1978)]


"Mercury" - Kristin Hersh [Works In Progress Volume Three: 2002-2003]


"Jimmy Jimmy" - The Undertones [The Undertones (Remastered 2003)]


"Border Contry" - Swell Maps [...In "Jane From Occupied Europe" (1991)]

listen

Domestic terrorist hits Austin

Device at women's health clinic was an explosive, sources say (Austin-American Statesman)

A package found Wednesday in the parking lot of a South Austin women's clinic contained an explosive device, four sources familiar with the investigation said today.

Local and federal authorities are planning a news conference at 2 p.m. to discuss the investigation, which will be headed by federal officials.

[snip]

The package was found about 2 p.m. Wednesday in the parking lot of the Austin Women's Health Center at 1902 S. Interstate 35, north of Oltorf Street. The clinic provides services including abortion.

UPDATE:

A package found Wednesday in the parking lot of a South Austin women's clinic contained an explosive powder, authorities said today.

Austin police said the device could have caused serious injury or death had it detonated before a clinic employee discovered it and notified authorities.

"The device was a dangerous device," David Carter, an Austin assistant police chief, said at a press conference this afternoon. "We believe it was capable of detonation."

He declined to be more specific. Officials have not commented on any possible suspects or motives and have not said what else was in the device.

Tom Tomorrow

mistakes and misjudgments

Condi Edition

OSLO, Norway - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday she has already answered the questions she has been subpoenaed to answer before a congressional committee and suggested she is not inclined to comply with the order.

[snip]

Rice noted that she had been serving as President Bush's national security adviser during the period covered by the panel's questions and stressed the administration's position that presidential aides not confirmed by the Senate cannot be forced to testify before Congress under the doctrine of executive privilege.

Flashback to Watergate

executive privilege

A constitutional doctrine that can be used to cloak criminal actions.

The Nixon administration expanded the doctrine most dramatically when John Mitchell’s successor as Attorney General, Richard G. Kleindienst, told a Senate panel on April 10, 1973, that executive privilege applied to all 2.5 million employees of the executive branch—and that if Congress didn’t like it, it could impeach the President. (This was well before the possibility of impeachment seemed serious to most people.)

Nixon, announcing his decision on April 29, 1974, to release the initial batch of White House transcripts—1,254 pages’ worth—justified executive privilege by saying: “Unless a President can protect the privacy of the advice he gets, he cannot get the advice he needs. This principle is recognized in the constitutional doctrine of executive privilege. … I consider it to be my constitutional duty to defend this principle.”

Behind closed doors Nixon and his aides discussed the concepts in less elevated terms. Thus Ehrlichman advised the President on March 22, 1973, that in some circumstances “you could even screw executive privilege.” Later in the same meeting Haldeman warned Nixon: “On legal grounds, precedence, tradition, constitutional grounds and all that stuff you are just fine, but to the guy who is sitting at home who watches John Chancellor. … he says, ‘what the hell’s he covering up, if he’s got no problem why doesn’t he let them go talk.’”

Such conversations led Leon Jaworski, the second special prosecutor on the case, to conclude, as he wrote in his memoir, The Right and the Power, that “the tapes showed that ‘national security’ and ‘executive privilege’ were not used in their true meaning at the White House but were cynical devices to hide the facts.” The United States Supreme Court agreed, deciding 8-0 on July 24, 1974, in United States v. Nixon that the President had to surrender the most damaging tapes (including those at variance with so many of his previous statements) because “the generalized assertion of privilege must yield to the demonstrated, specific need for evidence in a pending criminal trial.”

Blockh to investigate Rove

LA Times

Most of the time, an obscure federal investigative unit known as the Office of Special Counsel confines itself to monitoring the activities of relatively low-level government employees, stepping in with reprimands and other routine administrative actions for such offenses as discriminating against military personnel or engaging in prohibited political activities.

But the Office of Special Counsel is preparing to jump into one of the most sensitive and potentially explosive issues in Washington, launching a broad investigation into key elements of the White House political operations that for more than six years have been headed by chief strategist Karl Rove.

The new investigation, which will examine the firing of at least one U.S. attorney, missing White House e-mails, and White House efforts to keep presidential appointees attuned to Republican political priorities, could create a substantial new problem for the Bush White House.

First, the inquiry comes from inside the administration, not from Democrats in Congress. Second, unlike the splintered inquiries being pressed on Capitol Hill, it is expected to be a unified investigation covering many facets of the political operation in which Rove played a leading part.

"We will take the evidence where it leads us," Scott J. Bloch, head of the Office of Special Counsel and a presidential appointee, said in an interview Monday. "We will not leave any stone unturned."

Bloch declined to comment on who his investigators would interview, but he said the probe would be independent and uncoordinated with any other agency or government entity.

Limelite over at Daily Kos digs up some dirt on Scott J Bloch, Office of Special Cover-Ups

trailer trash

Black Mantis


Hippy Bastards From Hell


Cong of the Dead


Hobo With a Shotgun


Queens of the Street

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