WaPo's Cohen Trivializes Plamegate

WaPo's Cohen Trivializes Plamegate

Richard Cohen is placing the Washington Post's egregious mistakes in failing to place serious questions about the pre-Iraq War debate on their front pages on some kind of moral and ethical plane with Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation into the outing of Valerie Plame. Cohen is presenting a journalistic case meant to demean and dismiss the special investigation of the lead-up to the outing of the CIA agent.

On Plamegate, Cohen is virtually telling the tight-lipped Fitzgerald to "call the whole thing off..." before Cohen (or anyone) has a full understanding of the status of the legal case.

He's telling us we should fugghedabouddit before we know what we're supposed to be fuggheddin'!

I can hardly believe my eyes.

I have no idea what Fitzgerald will do. My own diligent efforts to find out anything have come to naught. Fitzgerald's non-speaking spokesman would not even tell me if his boss is authorized to issue a report, as several members of Congress are now demanding -- although Joseph E. diGenova, a former U.S. attorney in Washington, tells me that only a possibly unprecedented court order would permit it. Whatever the case, I pray Fitzgerald is not going to reach for an indictment......If anything good comes out of the Iraq war, it has to be a realization that bad things can happen to good people when the administration -- any administration -- is in sole control of knowledge and those who know the truth are afraid to speak up.

Cohen is trivializing the Plame leak - while accusing Fitzgerald (blindly - as he is not privy to inside information) of bringing trivial charges. It makes no sense. After the Iraq War lies, this Cohen example is the kind of "journalism" I thought we were moving away from. Scooter Libby's lies are intertwined with lies by the Bush administration to the American people about the Iraq War. Richard Cohen may not want to know - or perhaps he's got his panties in a wad because he can't get close enough to the inside on this story - but most Americans would like to know - and have every right to know who's been lying and conspiring against good Americans like Joseph Wilson who called a corrupt administration on one of their lies, only to have them out his wife, a CIA agent. I'd love to see some real, material, meaty indictments come down and end this "business-as-usual" attitude in Washington, D.C. - the attitude that everybody plays dirty, and so jaded are some of these "cocktail-party" journalists that, when a CIA agent's identity is deliberately played with as loose and fast as you can play, it's supposed to make no difference. That's disgusting.

Richard Cohen would rather champion the cause of fellow cocktail-party journalist Judy Miller (who fed us total crap disguised as truthful/credible journalism herself in the lead-up to the Iraq War) than to champion the rule of law. Blechhh! Get me my barf bucket.

Wall Street's Latest Recruit: John Edwards

Wall Street's Latest Recruit: John Edwards

Business Week is reporting that 2004 Democratic candidate for Vice-President John Edwards has joined Fortress Investment Group, where he will serve as a part-time global dealmaker. He will do part-time work as a senior advisor. Business Week reports that, as such, he will be "providing support in developing investment opportunities worldwide and strategic advice on global economic issues," [qoted statement from Edwards spokesperson Kim Rubey.]

More from the Triangle Business Journal.

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In political news, Sen Edwards went out to show support for the New Jersey gubernatorial campaign hopeful Senator Jon S. Corzine in Newark yesterday.

Mr. Corzine's event, a luncheon at the Theater Square Grill at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, included similar oratory in a more upscale setting. About 150 people paid $1,500 a plate for the luncheon, which was organized by the state's Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee. Senator Corzine did not attend - he had previous engagements farther south, according to his campaign - but several speakers lauded the candidate's efforts. Mr. Edwards said New Jersey would not be able to find a better governor. "I have seen up close, when no one else was looking," he said, "the kind of strength, character and leadership that Jon Corzine possesses."

Sen Edwards has also shown support for NYC mayoral hopeful and fellow Democrat Fernando (Freddy) Ferrer this week in New York.

[Michael Bloomberg's] opponent in the mayoral race, Fernando Ferrer, made campaign appearances over the last two days accompanied by former Senator John Edwards, part of an effort to give his campaign national support, in the face of polls suggesting increasing difficulties for Mr. Ferrer......

.........Mr. Edwards, who became the Democratic vice presidential nominee, delivered a rousing speech on Tuesday before delegates of 1199 S.E.I.U., the powerful health care workers' union, that cast the campaign as part of a national movement aimed at expanding economic opportunities for the poor and the working class.

"It makes our country better and stronger when we lift up and empower those who are struggling every single day," Mr. Edwards said, tying his remarks to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and calling the organized labor movement one of the most powerful antipoverty programs in history. "Nobody understands that better than Freddy Ferrer, right? He has lived it his entire life."

John Edwards is by far the best candidate the Democrats could field in 2008

The Poverty Trap

The Poverty Trap

Detroit editor Keith A Owens describes how poverty becomes a trap. He says:

Like a whole lot of people I’ve had more than a few run-ins with being broke and wondering how I was going to pay the rent, how I was going to keep the lights on, the water on, etc. Even though that’s no fun, I can always fall back on the advantages I had growing up — such as a good education. I also have friends and family who have access to resources. I know a lot of people who know a lot of other people who can tell me where to go or who to see to straighten a particular situation out. Many of these people I’ve met as a direct result of my education and my upbringing....As tough as things have sometimes gotten, I’ve usually — though not always — been able to concoct some sort of patchwork backup plan that could keep me and mine from falling off the edge and into the abyss. I’ve sometimes had to remind myself — and Katrina forced me to — that I still have access to resources that so many of the evacuees never, ever had.

AP writer Anthony Alfieri writes about Our silence in the face of squalor:

More than a century ago, in Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman condemned this peculiar brand of American silence. He wrote: ``I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame; . . . I observe the slights and degradations cast by arrogant persons upon laborers, the poor, and upon negroes, and the like; . . . All these -- All the meanness and agony without end, I sitting, look out upon, See, hear, and am silent.''

A hundred years of silence is enough.