Why does the Times even run campaign-staff-written propaganda pieces from the candidates in the first place?

Arrogance heaped on arrogance. New York Times op-ed editor David Shipley nixes John McCain's rebuttal opinion piece — Drudge broke this news and notes that the paper ran Barack Obama's op-ed piece, "My Plan for Iraq," less than a week ago.

OK, first of all, these aren't written by the candidates. They're written by the campaign staffs.

Second, why let the candidates spar this way instead of devoting your precious space to interpretation of their propaganda.

And giving dwindling news-hole space — don't kid yourself, editors, op-ed space is news-hole space — for propaganda purposes is ludicrous. Pravda used to do the same thing back in the Soviet daze, allowing various party officials to exhort the masses about various five-year tractor-factory plans. Community papers all over the U.S. (those that still survive) do this crap all the time, letting various county commissioners or mayors plug their own projects.

Op-eds can be useful. Greg Mitchell at E&P pointed out on July 6 that it was Valerie Plame hubby Joe Wilson's Times op-ed five years ago, "What I Didn't Find in Africa" that kicked off Plamegate.

But Joe Wilson wasn't a pol, let alone a presidential candidate.

In any case, Timesman Shipley was so gentle with McCain's staff, e-mailing them, as Drudge wrote: "I'm not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written."

What Shipley meant was: 'Rewrite this piece of shit because we at the Times set the rules on the Iraq debate.'

Not just for kids: a parody of the self-parody administration

Fight off your recession and read this requiem for a lightweight: Goodnight Bush, a parody to end all self-parody presidencies.

It's almost time to say "good night" to George W. Bush, and Erich Origen and Gan Golan pronounce the laugh rites over the administration.

Bush's favorite kiddie book in times of crisis may be The Pet Goat, but mine is now Origen and Golan's Goodnight Bush, which sends the regime up to the moon in the same way that Ralph Kramden was always threatening to do to wife Alice.

This is a very funny book, even if it may induce nightmares instead of sweet dreams. Cute illustrations abound: a refinery plume, piggy war profiteers, a spilt glass of water with Katrina victims floating in it.

The text is warm and fuzzy — not as fuzzy as Bush's brain but warmer than Cheney's heart:

See Dick run. See Dick run away. See Dick run away finally.

And see the book's website here.

Spare us the comparisons between John Durham — the newly named special prosecutor of Interrogate, the CIA tapes scandal — and Plamegate prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

The Washington Post succumbs to this typical piece of journalist b.s., noting this morning:

That's the easiest trick in political journalism: Get a quote from someone who shares the small, local stage with Durham — and who doesn't know whether Durham can handle the big stage — and run with it, instead of doing some serious checking to see whether Durham has any frame of reference in dealing with national and international crimes, criminals, and cases. The Post does at least add that caveat:

Durham made his bones by prosecuting GOP Connecticut governor John Rowland for sleazy business dealings. Rowland wound up exiting Hartford and entering prison for a short bid.

Fitzgerald, on the other hand, had vast experience in national and international cases before he tried to hound Scooter Libby. He prosecuted the plotters of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

The new attorney general, Mike Mukasey, knows the difference. He presided over that WTC case. But as Bill Kunstler pointed out at the time (read my earlier item here), Mukasey should have recused himself (because he's a fundamentalist Jew) from presiding over the case, which, after all, was against fundamentalist Muslims.

Unfortunately, Durham comes with the recommendation of Kevin O'Connor. Who he? Again from the Post:

Durham is supposedly a guy who's tough on violent criminals. That really sets him apart from other prosecutors. Dealing with White House schmucks is another matter altogether. And this is a monumental chore that requires some nuanced pressuring of true heavyweight schnooks. As this morning's New York Times story says:

Don't expect much, and don't expect it soon.

Still secret: Corruption in the White House.

Over at Secrecy News, the indefatigable Steven Aftergood has posted a heretofore secret study of Iraqi government corruption.

Even though the Nation's David Corn already wrote about the study, I can't say it would be much of a surprise anyway: The investigating agency, the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, knows a lot about corruption.

Anyway, the report notes:

Sounds like the White House. U.S. congressmen and various public-interest groups got nowhere when they tried to probe Dick Cheney's "energy task force" early in the Bush regime.

And the White House has continually tried to call a halt to the excellent investigative work by Stuart Bowen on corruption in Iraq.

It took a British NGO, Christian Aid, to break the news a few years ago that Jerry Bremer, the Barney Fife of Baghdad, couldn't explain why $9 billion in Iraqi oil revenue was missing.

Besides that oil-for-slush scandal, we're still waiting to see those millions of White House e-mails the regime is withholding that relate to various scandals. Then there are the missing-weapons scandal and the various KBR scandals — you get the picture.

In any case, this new report on corruption inside Iraq's puppet government is still worth reading. It turns out that we really have planted a seed of our own form of democracy over there.

As far as Bush's bitches are concerned, Scooter Libby's release from the threat of prison is da shizzit. I mean, now presidential dawg Miss Beazley can resume playing with her Scooter.

But keep in mind that Libby's trial revealed just how certain it is that Libby was simply Dick Cheney's bitch in the Plamegate scandal and that Cheney ran roughshod over everyone — Bush included — in his quest to get even with CIA agent Valerie Plame's husband, Joe Wilson, for blowing the whistle on the regime's lies about Iraq before the unjustified invasion. Yeah, and just as Miss Beazley is Bush's bitch, Bush is Cheney's.

Don't revisit the whole damned mess. Just take a look at "Trial reveals White House secrets," a concise wrapup of the Libby trial from last March by the BBC's Richard Allen Greene:

Greene neatly and quickly laid out the story and pointed out, in case you've forgotten amid the flurry of stories focusing on Libby's freedom, that

Libby himself testified that Cheney had been "upset" and "disturbed," Greene noted. Just think how much more Libby knows and much more willing he would have been willing to talk if he'd actually been thrown into prison for a while.

As it was, Libby revealed quite a lot during the trial — including something that many of us already knew: that Cheney, not Bush, is the most powerful person in the Bush regime. Greene noted:

And this administration and its GOP flunkies in Congress are so upset about leaks? Please.

Now some of you will point out that it wasn't Libby but rather Richard Armitage who outed Plame as a CIA agent.

That makes the Libby case even more intriguing: If he didn't obstruct justice and lie to cover up the leaking of Plame's name, then what was he covering up?

The details of Cheney's pre-war machinations will eventually come out. Too bad Libby didn't get a chance to sit in a jail cell and start thinking about rolling over — not with Miss Beazley but on top of his boss Cheney.

President George W. Bush, showing more mercy to a felonious liar who hadn't yet served a day in prison than to the scores of prisoners (some of them mentally ill or retarded) whom he ordered killed while the hangingest governor in U.S. history, commuted Scooter Libby's sentence Monday evening.

Too bad — for Libby, that is — because the panel of federal judges that had been selected to hear his appeal included David Sentelle, who notoriously let another high-placed liar, John Poindexter, off the hook for running the illegal Iran-Contra scheme. (Read David Greenberg's excellent and concise 2002 reprise of that sorry episode.)

Libby, former chief of staff to the most powerful person in the U.S. government, might very well have won his appeal with Sentelle on the panel.

This way, however, Libby is spared prison time while his appeal would have been heard. My guess is that he will continue on his current roll and that down the road his conviction in the Plamegate scandal will wind up being somehow expunged.

In any case, here's how Libby would have looked in official military POW garb, straight out of an Army field manual, FM 3-19.40: MILITARY POLICE INTERNMENT/RESETTLEMENT OPERATIONS (the uniform, sans Libby's head, is here at John Pike's globalsecurity.org). If Libby had gone to jail or prison, he wouldn't have been issued this, but he deserved to for aiding our enemies — after all, Libby, acting on behalf of U.S. CEO Dick Cheney, recklessly outed CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Bush's handlers spent much more time figuring out how to let Libby off the hook than Bush and his lamest of lame ducks, AG Alberto Gonzales, spent on all of the death row inmates whose appeals for mercy or clemency were summarily rejected after only cursory reviews.

As I noted in December 2004, excellent journalists like Alan Berlow detailed Bush's sorry execution of his job as Texas governor:

Oh, but the Libby case had everyone at the White House worried. As Leonard Doyle of the Independent (U.K.) reports this evening from D.C.:

Whereas this way, the commutation of Libby's sentence did nothing more than show disrespect for the U.S. justice system.

So Scooter Libby has to report to prison. Judge Reggie Walton gave him up to a couple of months to do so, and that's plenty of time for the Bush regime to figure out a way to pardon him.

My only problem with Walton's decision today is that he agreed with Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald that Libby "is not a danger to the community." He's more dangerous than a piece of yellowcake.

The unfortunate fact, as I noted a short time ago, is that Libby's not a flight risk.

Anyway, Walton also said, according to ABC News, that there is "not a likelihood it [his conviction] will be overturned."

Don't be too sure of that. The "Free Libby" crowd is just getting started.

Hurry, hurry! You don't have much time to check out Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's response to Scooter Libby's plea to stay out of jail pending appeal.

Fitzgerald's brief isn't; it's 43 pages. But it does have a note of compassion. Well, just a footnote of compassion, anyway. At the bottom of the second page:

Too bad. Wouldn't it be better if Libby did flee D.C.?

We'll find out soon whether Scooter Libby will stay out of jail pending appeal, but it's too bad for him that Paul Wolfowitz can't return the huge favor that Libby did him not so many years ago. Yeah, Wolfie already wrote a letter in support of Scooter, but that was nothing.

The way the real story of Libby's big favor to Wolfie goes, according to Sameer Dossani at worldbankpresident.org, Libby tried to stop Wolfie's wife, Clare Selgin Wolfowitz, from pointing out Wolfie's rep as a womanizer. Here's Dossani:

One of the most prescient pieces about this — even the headline was on the mark: "Will a British divorcee cost 'Wolfie' his job?" — was done by Sharon Churcher and Annette Witheridge in the Mail on Sunday (U.K.), back in March 2005 when Wolfie was first shuttled from the Pentagon to the World Bank.

Ex-Clinton operative Sidney Blumenthal recounted the tale more recently by dipping back into history, but without the exact same Libby angle:

In case you've forgotten about Wolfie's role in the Iraq debacle (which is key to understanding Libby's own role in covering up the plotting of the Iraq debacle), here's Juan Cole in a Salon piece he wrote last month:

To further connect the dolts, please recall Mylroie's close link to disgraced Times reporter Judy Miller, which I wrote about it in October 2005: "Reporter Falls Off Scooter." Judge Reggie B. Walton will write the last sentence of this saga later today. Pardon me: Not the last sentence.

Scooter Libby's fan club includes people with vast experience in presidential pardons. And why not? His work on behalf of fugitive financier Marc Rich was the basis of Rich's outrageous pardon in late 2000 by Bill Clinton.

Fundraisers for both Clintons — Hillary and Bill — were also connected to Rich. The financier and his wife Denise poured in huge sums to both Clintons. Supposedly, Libby asked Hillary buddy Denise Rich to lobby Bill for the pardon.

So, consider Libby's current position: Convicted of obstruction of justice and lying while you're the top aide to the most powerful vice president in U.S. history? No problem.

Scooter was Rich's lawyer for 10 years, and you know what happened to Rich: Clinton pardoned him, and the aptly named Rich paid $100 million to get his charges dropped.

During hearings in early 2001 on the Rich pardon, Libby was already Dick Cheney's top aide, so Republicans and Libby's lawyer pals who also worked for Rich frantically argued that Libby hadn't had anything to do with the pardon. Don't believe it.

Considering that we've been at war all these years since then — longer than our involvement in World War II — you're forgiven if you've forgotten about Rich. Like Cheney, he's no ordinary goniff. He fled the U.S. in 1983 for Switzerland while being prosecuted for not only tax evasion but also for making illegal oil deals with Iran.

One of Libby's advocates in the letter-writing campaign publicly released by Judge Reggie B. Walton was New York lawyer Robert F. Fink, who helped secure Rich's pardon. In the pre-pardon days, Fink and Libby worked closely together on Rich's case, Fink wrote. But by the time earnest negotiations started for the pardon, Libby was working on the incoming Bush regime's transition team. Fink's letter, which calls Scooter "a model for the legal profession," notes:

Technically, Fink is probably right — at least by lawyer standards. But Henry Waxman, the California Democratic representative who has been an admirable gadfly since the start of the Bush regime, begged to differ back in March 2001.

During hearings on the disgraceful pardon of Marc Rich, Waxman insisted on having the chance to grill Libby, the newly appointed top aide to Cheney, about the pardon. Waxman noted during a March 1, 2001, hearing:

Later in the hearing, Waxman had this exchange with Jack Quinn, the pal of the Clintons who led the pardon push for Rich:

As it turned out, Bill Clinton himself had publicly said, in a February 18, 2001 op-ed in the New York Times, that Libby agreed with the pardon of Rich. Here's the part that drew howls from the newly installed Bush regime:

Despite the howls, there's no doubt that Libby's argument on behalf of Rich was the basis for the pardon. Here's a lengthy exchange between Waxman and Libby later in the March 1 hearing in which Waxman nails that point:

So, in the eyes of ultimate lawyer Scooter Libby, Marc Rich was a victim of a wanton government prosecution.

With this kind of experience in pardons, Libby's a cinch for one himself.