I was making notes on some of yesterday's developments on the
Plame thread, which I gotta stop doing or we'll confuse ourselves.
It's fascinating to watch what's happening at
TPMuckraker -- the original comments thread is partway down the main page now, but I keep hoping they will pick some more nuggets out to highlight.
ePluribus Media have made the document dump searchable, and
jukeboxgrad has created files that are searchable and smaller.[/URL] So, for anyone wanting to read all those emails ... :wink:
But a lot of people are, which as Cliopatria says is putting the hive mind out ahead of any reporters who aren't checking the hive.
Depending on the analysts you read, though, the confrontation between the White House and the two judiciary committees can look more or less imminent, more or less fraught, more or less modest for the time being. There are a lot of cheerleaders out there, but, for example,
Kagro X at dKos thinks that the White House may be able to get away with stonewalling, given the Supreme Court, and if Congress loses a showdown over this case, they will have been checked on several others:
Realize that the resolution of this stand-off will determine the extent to which the Congress is able to investigate everything that's still on their plate. If they lose this showdown, they lose their leverage in investigating NSA spying, the DeLay/Abramoff-financed Texas redistricting, Cheney's Energy Task Force, the political manipulation of science, the Plame outing... everything.
And that's why Bush is playing it this way. Remember, too, that his "administration" is populated by Watergate and Iran-Contra recidivists, chief among them Dick Cheney, who has wanted to relitigate the boundaries of executive power since forever. Cheney and others on the inside believe that this time, with a friendlier judiciary, these issues can be decided the "right" way, overturning the victories won against Richard Nixon's insane theories of executive power.
Their thinking is that they'll either win it in courts, or run out the clock trying.
And the day they get five Justices to say they're right, everything you thought you knew about checks and balances becomes wrong.
I think that's the worst-case scenario, but it's a caution amid the cheerleading. We'll see what Mr Conyers does today.
I can hardly believe that Fred Fielding is still the front man for the stonewalling. Gosh: that takes me back, but then so does John Conyers.
