---

It’s Subpoena Time

For months, senators have
listened to a parade of well-coached Justice Department witnesses
claiming to know nothing about how nine prosecutors were chosen for
firing. This week, it was the turn of Bradley Schlozman, a former
federal attorney in Missouri, to be uninformative and not credible. It
is time for Senator Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Judiciary
Committee, to deliver subpoenas that have been approved for Karl Rove,
former White House counsel Harriet Miers and their top aides, and to
make them testify in public and under oath.

Mr. Schlozman was appointed United States attorney in Missouri while
the state was in the midst of a hard-fought Senate race. In his brief
stint, he pushed a lawsuit, which was thrown out by a federal judge,
that could have led to thousands of Democratic-leaning voters being
wrongly purged from the rolls. Just days before the election, he
indicted voter registration workers from the liberal group Acorn on
fraud charges. Republicans quickly made the indictments an issue in the
Senate race.

Mr. Schlozman said it did not occur to him that the indictments
could affect the campaign. That is hard to believe since the Justice
Department’s guidelines tell prosecutors not to bring vote fraud
investigations right before an election, so as not to affect the
outcome. He also claimed, laughably, that he did not know that Acorn
was a liberal-leaning group.

Mr. Schlozman fits neatly into the larger picture. Prosecutors who
refused to use their offices to help Republicans win elections, like
John McKay in Washington State, and David Iglesias in New Mexico, were
fired. Prosecutors who used their offices to help Republicans did well.

Congress has now heard from everyone in the Justice Department who
appears to have played a significant role in the firings of the
prosecutors. They have all insisted that the actual decisions about
whom to fire came from somewhere else. It is increasingly clear that
the somewhere else was the White House. If Congress is going to get to
the bottom of the scandal, it has to get the testimony of Mr. Rove, his
aides Scott Jennings and Sara Taylor, Ms. Miers and her deputy, William
Kelley.

The White House has offered to make them available only if they do
not take an oath and there is no transcript. Those conditions are a
formula for condoning perjury, and they are unacceptable. As for
documents, the White House has released piles of useless e-mail
messages. But it has reported that key e-mails to and from Mr. Rove
were inexplicably destroyed. At the same time, it has argued that
e-mails of Mr. Rove’s that were kept on a Republican Party
computer system, which may contain critical information, should not be
released.

This noncooperation has gone on long enough. Mr. Leahy should
deliver the subpoenas for the five White House officials and make clear
that if the administration resists, Congress will use all available
means to get the information it needs.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Who’s Got My Extra: Bill Kreutzmann

Bill Kreutzmann, Fort Point, San Francisco, November 1965. Photo by Herbie Greene

For today’s edition of Jerry Garcia
extras, we have an extended jam from Grateful Dead drummer Bill
Kreutzmann, featuring unpublished stories of the first time Kreutz laid
eyes on Garcia, house cleaning on acid and scuba diving. Check your
regulator and get wet.

When I was 15 or 16, my father bought a five string banjo. He
didn’t get into it, so he put in an advertisement to sell the
thing and this guy comes to the door to buy it and it’s Garcia.
That was the first time we ever met. He was hanging out in Palo Alto
with the beatniks. He grew up in San Francisco where his mother owned a
bar. That world tends to make you grow up a lot faster than a
protective home life in Palo Alto. I left home when I was 16, I
couldn’t stand my parents fighting and all that. I wanted to play
music, so I left.

Later [Garcia] was playing in Palo Alto at a club called the Tangent on
University Avenue. I would go there by myself to see what was going on.
He had the jug band—Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug
Champions—and he was playing banjo in that. Bob Weir was playing
guitar and Pigpen was playing washtub bass and I think [Robert] Hunter
was playing something too, probably guitar. I sat there in the audience
and I said, Man, I would follow this guy anywhere. And then not very
long after that I got a phone call and it was him or Bobby and they
said, “Do you want to play drums? We’re switching to
electric.” I was a drummer in Palo Alto. I was always into rock
music, but it was a switch for those guys. It was after Dylan changed
and went electric. I just played with every band that I could get my
hands on, when you first start you say yes to everything.

Early on, before it became impossible, [Garcia] would help people that
were ODing on psychedelics. He would sit down and take the time to talk
to them. Then it became, Holy shit there is not enough hours in the day
to do that. That is probably where that reputation got started, him
being a guru or father figure or whatever. He was a really gentle neat
guy. He had the most loving eyes. He would look at you and you would
feel nothing but love.

When he and I would get high on acid way back in Palo Alto we would
usually end up cleaning house, just me and him. It was the end of the
trip and you’ve come way down, so you want to put it all back
together.

Me and Jerry got certified [for scuba diving] in ’87 together at
Jack’s Dive Locker [in Hawaii]. Before our tests or anything
we’re just diving and having fun, and another dive instructor
comes up to our group and asks Garcia for an autograph under the water.
The reason I moved over here [to Hawaii] is that him and I had a pact
that when the band stopped playing, when there was no more Grateful
Dead, we would both buy places over here. I just kept the promise. The
bands after he left, like the Other Ones, just weren’t the same.
Great players, but they never did the songs quite like he did them.

I was living in Mendicino when my girlfriend called and said he died
and I flipped. I went into shock. I knew he was trying to go clean at
the Betty Ford Center, and he came back and something happened. When
you do stuff like that to your body, all your organs get weak. His body
was ready to go, doggonit. He had kicked a few other times. and one
time he had kicked and we were playing a show at the Shoreline
Ampitheatre near Palo Alto, and he was really wired and it was like
razorblades on your backbone or something. He played so great. He
leaned over and said, “Billy, I’m so nervous.” And I
was like, “You are playing your fucking ass off, shut up.”
I was hoping he would stay like that, but unfortunately that drug pulls
too strong.

I think if he had gotten himself clean again, which it looked like he
was trying to do, he probably would have stopped playing in the
Grateful Dead because I don’t think he really liked the Grateful
Dead at the end there. That’s my honest feeling. I think he was
doing it for money, I didn’t feel he was doing it for the fun
anymore, I don’t think any of us were. I think the last five
years in that band were kind of wasted. You can’t capture the
magic in a box, even if there wasn’t drug problems with any of
the band members and everybody was perfect. The art kind of leaves. The
muse kind of pulls its energy out. My feeling was that he was always
going to play with another band.

Posted in Music | 06/06/2007

Powered by ScribeFire.

We are the mighty Police and we  are totally at sea.”

“It usually takes about four or five shows in a tour before you get to the disaster gig,” Police drummer Stewart Copeland writes on his blog
(yes, he has a blog). “But we’re The Police so we are a
little ahead of schedule.” Thus reads the self-eviscerating post
in which the drummer describes exactly how bad the band’s
much-heralded reunion shows have been sounding to him. He explicitly
details his take on the band’s second major reunion show in
Vancouver with a blow-by-blow of his onstage musings (read Charles
Cross’ review of the first show here). Oh, and he calls Sting a “petulant pansy.” Here are our favorite snippets from Copeland’s post:

• “I collect myself in the dark and
  start to warm up the gong with a few gentle taps. But I’m
  overdoing it. It’s resonating and reaching it’s crescendo
  before the stage has fully reached its position. Sort of like a
  premature ejaculation. There’s nothing for it so I take a big
  swing for the big hit. Problem is, I’m just fractionally too far
  away and the beater misses the sweet spot and the big pompous opening
  to the show is a damp squib. Never mind.”
  

• “I stride manfully to my drums. Andy
  has started the opening guitar riff to MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE and the
  crowd is going nuts. Problem is, I missed hearing him start. Is he on
  the first time around or the second? I look over at Sting
  and he’s not much help, his cue is me – and I’m lost.
  Never mind. “Crack!” on the snare and I’m in, so
  Sting starts singing. Problem is, he heard my crack as two in the bar,
  but it was actually four – so we are half a bar out of sync with
  each other. Andy is in Idaho.”
• “There is just something wrong. We
  just can’t get on the good foot. We shamble through the song
  [”Synchronicity”] and hit
  the big ending. Last night Sting did a big leap for the cut-off hit,
  and he makes the same move tonight, but he gets the footwork just a
  little bit wrong and doesn’t quite achieve lift-off. The mighty
  Sting momentarily looks like a petulant pansy instead of the god of
  rock.”
• “We get to the end of the first verse
  and I snap into the chorus groove — and Sting doesn’t.
  He’s still in the verse. We’ll have to listen to the tapes
  tomorrow to see who screwed up, but we are so off kilter that Sting
  counts us in to begin the song again. This is ubeLIEVably lame. We are
  the mighty Police and we are totally at sea.”
• “In rehearsal this afternoon we
  changed the keys of EVERY LITTLE THING and DON’T STAND SO CLOSE
  so needless to say Andy and Sting are now on-stage in front of twenty
  thousand fans playing avant-garde twelve-tone hodgepodges of both
  tunes. Lost, lost, lost. I also changed my part for DON’T STAND
  and it’s actually working quite well but there is a dissonant
  noise coming from my two colleagues.”
• “When we meet up back-stage for the
  first time after the set and before the encores, we fall into each
  other’s arms laughing hysterically. Above our heads, the crowd is
  making so much noise that we can’t talk. We just shake our heads
  ruefully and head back up the stairs to the stage. Funny thing is, we
  are enjoying ourselves anyway. Screw it, it’s only music. What
  are you gonna do? But maybe it’s time to get out of
  Vancouver…”

Powered by ScribeFire.

Denny Doherty, a founding member of the 1960s folk-pop
band the Mamas and the Papas, died yesterday at his home in
Mississauga, Ontario. He was 66.

The cause was not immediately known, his daughter Emberly said. But
she said her father had recently suffered kidney failure after surgery
for a stomach aneurysm.

With chiming guitars and rich, meticulous harmonies that could be
tinged with darkness, the Mamas and the Papas became one of the most
popular and influential American bands of the era between the Beatles’
arrival and Woodstock. Their enduring hits, like “California Dreamin’,”
“Monday, Monday” and “Dedicated to the One I Love,” mixed the gentle
jangle of folk with a rock backbeat and sweet, layered pop vocals.
NYTimes:

Powered by ScribeFire.

Daily Kos :: How much do you hate Chris Matthews

How much do you hate Chris Matthews
the violent fantasies are uncontrollable	7 votes – 21 %
As much as a case of herpes with diahrrea	4 votes – 12 %
Just the diahrrea	6 votes – 18 %
Oh, he’s just an entertainer!	3 votes – 9 %
“May he piss a kidney stone through his hard-on”	12 votes – 37 %

Powered by ScribeFire.

Plame was ‘covert’ agent at time of name leak

Newly released unclassified document details CIA employment

By Joel Seidman

Producer

NBC News

Updated: 4:24 p.m. ET May 29, 2007

WASHINGTON
– An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame’s
employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time
today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald,
indicates that Plame was “covert” when her name became public in July
2003.

The summary is part of an attachment
to Fitzgerald’s memorandum to the court supporting his recommendation
that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Vice President Cheney’s former top aide,
spend 2-1/2 to 3 years in prison for obstructing the CIA leak
investigation.

The nature of Plame’s CIA employment never came up in Libby’s perjury and obstruction of justice trial.

Undercover travel
The
unclassified summary of Plame’s employment with the CIA at the time
that syndicated columnist Robert Novak published her name on July 14,
2003 says, “Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employee for who the CIA was
taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to
the United States.”

Plame worked as an
operations officer in the Directorate of Operations and was assigned to
the Counterproliferation Division (CPD) in January 2002 at CIA
headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

The
employment history indicates that while she was assigned to CPD, Plame,
“engaged in temporary duty travel overseas on official business.”
The report says, “she traveled at least seven times to more than ten
times.” When overseas Plame traveled undercover, “sometimes in
true name and sometimes in alias — but always using cover — whether
official or non-official (NOC) — with no ostensible relationship to
the CIA.”

Criminal prosecution beat national security
After
the Novak column was published and Plame’s identity was widely reported
in the media, and according to the document, “the CIA lifted Ms
Wilson’s cover” and then “rolled back her cover” effective to the date
of the leak.

The CIA determined, “that the
public interest in allowing the criminal prosecution to proceed
outweighed the damage to national security that might reasonably be
expected from the official disclosure of Ms. Wilson’s employment and
cover status.”

The CIA has not divulged any
other details of the nature of Plame’s cover or the methods employed by
the CIA to protect her cover nor the details of her classified
intelligence activities. Plame resigned from the CIA in December
2005.

Plame and her husband, former
Ambassador Joseph Wilson have filed a lawsuit against four current or
former top Bush administration officials, including Vice President Dick
Cheney, accusing them and other White House officials of conspiring to
destroy her career at the CIA.

‘I felt like I had been hit in the gut’
In
March at a House of Representatives hearing, Plame testified saying,
“My name and identity were carelessly and recklessly abused by senior
government officials in both the White house and the State Department”

She described how it felt to see her true identity exposed in the morning paper, her career destroyed she said.

“I felt like I had been hit in the gut, it was over in an instant, I immediately thought of my family’s safety.”

Plame’s
identity was leaked to reporters in 2003, after her husband began
criticizing the Bush administration. She claims her constitutional
rights were violated by the administration and is demanding
compensation.

No leak charges
Several
administration officials, including Libby, former State Department
official Richard Armitage and Bush advisor Karl Rove, disclosed Plame’s
identity to reporters.

No one was ever
charged with the leak of Plame’s name itself, which would have been a
crime only if someone knowingly gave our information about someone
covered by a specific law protecting the identities of covert agents.

Fitzgerald
wrote last week in the 18-page memo, “Particularly in a case such as
this, where Mr. Libby was a high-ranking government official whose
falsehoods were central to issues in a significant criminal
investigation, it is important that this court impose a sentence that
accurately reflects the value the judicial system places on
truth-telling in criminal investigations.”

The
special counsel recommended to the judge that Libby not receive any
leniency, because, he writes, “He has expressed no remorse, no
acceptance of responsibility, and no recognition that there is anything
he should have done differently – either with respect to his false
statements and testimony, or his role in providing reporters with
classified information about Ms. Wilson’s affiliation with the CIA.”

Libby
was convicted in March of four of five felony counts against him. He is
scheduled to be sentenced on June 5th before U.S. District Judge Reggie
Walton.

Joel Seidman is an NBC producer, based in Washington.

© 2007 MSNBC Interactive© 2007 MSNBC Interactive

var url=location.href;var i=url.indexOf(‘/did/’) + 1;if(i==0){i=url.indexOf(‘/print/1/’) + 1;}if(i==0){i=url.indexOf(‘&print=1’);}if(i>0){url = url.substring(0,i);document.write(‘

URL: ‘+url+’

‘);if(window.print){window.print()}else{alert(‘To print his page press Ctrl-P on your keyboard nor choose print from your browser or device after clicking OK’);}}

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18924679/

Powered by ScribeFire.