NOTE TO READERS: I will be in Europe through August 8. My blogging may be sporadic. See below.

NY TIMES QUOTE OF THE DAY:

From NASA after last night’s announcement that the space shuttle would be grounded:

“We decided it was safe to fly as is. Obviously, we were wrong.” Recall the email to this blog by Dale Howard from Tulsa on the morning of the launch. It was at the time, a lonely dissent, not a story that most of the media picked up on in the celebratory “we are back in space” coverage.

“This morning’s decision to launch has been heavily criticized. For example, Joseph Gutheinz, retired agent in NASA’s inspector general office, is quoted as saying “It is clear to me that NASA continues to put mission over safety” (Tulsa World, 7/26/03).

“We shall see the results of NASA’s decision in a short while. Stay tuned.”

FORGET THE TERROR WAR
SHUTTLE GROUNDED
PEARL SUSPECT SNATCHED

Say goodbye to the GWOT–the Global War on Terror. It is apparently over because the idea is not playing well in the polls. That war’s mission has now been revised with a new enemy that its likely to prove more popular better in the media. (and in the mind of Thomas Friedman.) Call it “violent extremism” a concept that is at once vaguer and more pervasive and something that violent extremists on all sides can understand..Bush Aide Karen Hughes now has to sell the new war and help us forget the old. Down with VE’s –repeat after me.

Get Them Violent Extremists. Its probably easier. And who are they? Fox’s Bill O’Reilly named some in a recent outburst of bloated Bill-sized baloney as passed on by FAIR:

“You must know the difference between dissent from the Iraq War and the war on terror and undermining it. And any American that undermines that war, with our soldiers in the field, or undermines the war on terror, with 3,000 dead on 9/11, is a traitor. Everybody got it? Dissent, fine; undermining, you’re a traitor. Got it? So, all those clowns over at the liberal radio network, we could incarcerate them immediately. Will you have that done, please? Send over the FBI and just put them in chains, because they, you know, they’re undermining everything and they don’t care, couldn’t care less.”

CAFTA WINS IN HOUSE

Note the margin in the Central America not so Free Trade Agreement vote. The Washington Post calls it an “eke.”

“GOP Struggles to Eke Out 217-215 Victory on CAFTA ”

SPEAKING OF MS. HUGHES

RawStory reports:

Senior Bush adviser Karen Hughes, headed to confirmation in the full Senate for the State Department’s top public relations post, provided a terse two sentence answer to questions submitted by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) about her role and knowledge about the outing of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, RAW STORY has learned.

Kerry’s line of questioning focused on whether Hughes knew Wilson was a covert operative, and whether she had ever spoken with Bush adviser Karl Rove about the agent.

“Hughes response was curt: “Because of my ongoing contact with the White House, I was interviewed as part of that investigation and was happy to cooperate, as I noted in my Senate Foreign Relations Committee questionnaire. As you know, these questions relate to an ongoing criminal investigation. I believe that I should honor the prosecutor’s request not to discuss this matter until he has completed his investigation.”

The Chronology

Steve Souza of fakemedia.us passes this item along:

”Concerning the Rove leak, and Gonzales, no one seemed to pick up on the story that their was probably more than 12 hours for the Bush cronies. Maybe up to 4 days!

“Here is the transcript of MSNBC countdown with OLBERMANN on Monday July 25th.

OLBERMANN: Boom, indeed. And there is another potentially explosive question to ponder tonight. What if that gap between when the counsel’s office first knew that the investigation was at least imminent and when White House staff members were told not to destroy any documents was more than just 12 hours?

“The timeline we have now: Monday evening, September 29, 2003, about 8:00 o’clock, Mr. Gonzales gets the official word from Justice. Literally minutes later, say, 8:05, he told Mr. Card. Tuesday morning, September 30, 2003, about 8:00 AM, he told everybody else.

“But September 29 was probably not the first time he’d heard about the investigation, the story first reported on Friday night, September 26, by Alex Johnson and Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC.com, nearly 72 hours earlier, making the gap until staffers were told 84 hours. Alex and Andrea wrote at that time the CIA had asked the Justice Department to „investigate allegations that the White House broke federal laws by revealing the identity of one of its undercover employees in retaliation against the woman’s husband, a former ambassador who publicly criticized President Bush’s since-discredited claim that Iraq had sought weapons-grade uranium from Africa, NBC News has learned.”

ROBERTS WATCH:

Sorry I missed this earlier. Check out Howard Kurtz’s piece in the Washington Post on just how devious, slick and right wing Justice Roberts is. As he notes, this perspective is not being communicated on TV.

TORTURE IS NOT US

FAS reports:

“Some of the bluntest criticism of Bush Administration policy on military interrogation of detainees comes from within the military itself.

“In a debate on the Senate floor yesterday, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC) introduced several “recently declassified” internal memoranda from various Navy Judge Advocate General personnel.

“Basically these memos are telling us that the proposed interrogation techniques dealing with the war on terror, suggested by the Department of Justice, sent over to Department of Defense, were such a deviation from the normal way of doing business that it would get our own people in trouble,” Sen. Graham said.

“It was such a deviation from the normal way of doing business that we would lose the moral high ground in fighting the war on terror,” he said.

“Senator Graham spoke in favor of an amendment (no. 1557) to the Defense Authorization Act that he co-sponsored with Senator McCain and others to establish uniform standards for the interrogation of detainees held by the U.S. military.”

http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2005_cr/s072505.html

WAR POWERS: DECIDING TO USE FORCE ABROAD

The process of authorizing the decision to go to war is reexamined in a new report by a bipartisan commission which generally concludes that Congress must be more assertive in exercising its constitutionally mandated role.

“Congress must perform its constitutional duty to reach a deliberate and transparent collective judgment about initiating the use of force abroad except when force is used for a limited range of defensive purposes.”

See “Deciding to Use Force Abroad: War Powers in a System of Checks and Balances,” The Constitution Project, June 29, 2005:

http://www.constitutionproject.org/wp/WarPowers_final.pdf

PROVOS TO CHANGE POLICY

Irish Republican News reports: “Preparations are underway for a landmark statement by the Provisional IRA, announcing an end its armed struggle for a united Ireland and agreeing to turn to political methods.

“New-York businessman Niall O’Dowd, who said he had been briefed on the contents of the statement, described it as “a truly historic moment in Irish history”.

“The statement is a response to an appeal to the IRA by Sinn Fein
President Gerry Adams, who called for the IRA to move into a new mode so that the struggle could be “taken forward by other means”.

“Mr Adams asked the IRA: “Can you take courageous initiatives which will achieve your aims by purely political and democratic activity?”