contributions

I’d like to request that you as editor of the Rutland Herald and your staff keep your eye on the ball in the next weeks as the Karl Rove scandal continues to unfold. This is, in my opinion, the most important story in a decade.
This story comes at a time when news organizations will be challenged to keep telling the truth. There are those who will try to distract us and dismiss this story as "old news." Your readers don’t think so. We count on you to tell the truth and consider the (…)

According to the Washington Post, columnist Bob Novak was told by the CIA’s spokesperson that Karl Rove’s story was wrong. Wilson was not sent by his wife to Niger and she was still a covert agent whose name should not be disclosed. [Washington Post, 7/27/05] Nevertheless, Novak still disclosed the agent’s name and went with Rove’s story.
"How far will the Bush smear machine go?" said Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. "Novak knew all this and still published his story. (…)

The Rove Scandal Train is picking up momentum. Just ask Scottie McClellan, who is starting to look more and more like Ron Ziegler with every passing press briefing.
Actually, two separate Rove trains have left the station (and, no, this isn’t going to be one of those old algebra problems they used to give us): the legal train and the political train - heading along two very separate tracks.
But it’s now clear that the White House damage-control team has decided to try to link the two. (…)

As the Official Story of the killing of Jean Charles de Menezes develops, it gets weirder and weirder:
1.The police were staking out the block of flats in which he was living because the address had been found in documents left in one of the abandoned rucksacks that didn’t blow up in the last series of attacks. That’s a good place to leave the address of your safe house!
2.There were eight separate flats in the block, and he did not look like any of the suspects, but the police decided (…)

Summary:
Attorney General and former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales has admitted that he told White House chief of staff Andrew Card about the impending Justice Department investigation into the Valerie Plame leak a full 12 hours before he directed his staff to secure any materials related to the case. This introduces the very plausible scenario of Card informing Karl Rove and others ahead of time, giving them the opportunity to “prepare” for the investigation.
White House does not (…)

You hear it at least once a week: The plaintive moan of a fellow American befuddled by our nation’s odd sense of priorities. It comes out this way: “I can’t believe they tried to impeach Clinton for Monica and yet this gets nothing!”
“This” being, among other things, the WMDs, the Iraq invasion, 25,000 Iraqi civilians dead, Halliburton’s theft of American tax dollars, Bush family connections to Saudis or cartels, the plundering of the environment, armor and supplies for fighting (…)

The Source Beyond Rove
By ROGER MORRIS Former NSC staffer
"We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
It was September 2002, and then-National Security Advisor, now-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was fastening on CNN perhaps the most memorable and frightening single link in the Bush regime’s chain of lies propagandizing the war on Iraq. Behind her carefully planted one-liner with its grim imagery was the whole larger hoax about Saddam Hussein possessing or about to (…)

Barring disclosure that he is a closet transvestite with a penchant for setting fire to nursing homes, John Roberts appears certain to be confirmed as an associate justice of the U. S. Supreme Court. But even if he should fail, he will still have performed yeoman service for the Cheney/Bush administration.
DAVID ROSSIE Commentary
By agreeing to have his name put forward to replace Sandra Day O’Connor on the high court, Roberts enabled the embattled Karl Rove to escape from our television (…)

OUTING PLAME....Two years ago, when the Valerie Plame affair first surfaced, the conservative response was largely one of yawning silence. Still, the conservatives who did speak up mostly conceded that, yes, if someone in the White House exposed the identity of a CIA agent, it was a bad thing to do. And if it was done as part of a political campaign to discredit a critic, it was an especially bad thing to do.
During the past month, however, the growing evidence that someone in the White (…)

U.S. SUPREME COURT Roberts had larger 2000 recount role The role of U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts in the 2000 election aftermath in Florida was larger than has been reported. Roberts helped prepare the Supreme Court case. By MARC CAPUTO mcaputo@herald.com
TALLAHASSEE - U.S. Supreme Court nominee John Roberts played a broader behind-the-scenes role for the Republican camp in the aftermath of the 2000 election than previously reported — as legal consultant, lawsuit editor and prep (…)