For those looking for recent transcripts relating to Able Danger and Curt Weldon !QT Monster has the transcript of Weldon on Sean Hannity’s radio show yesterday and on Rush Limbaugh’s show.

The Plame News is typical: the media drooling over the possibility that Rove or Libby or more could be indicted. This NYTimes piece runs on rumors by “lawyers involved in the case”. It claims to have ‘new’ information on what Fitzgerald is considering for charges:

Among the charges that Mr. Fitzgerald is considering are perjury, obstruction of justice and false statement…

from which they then jump to

counts that suggest the prosecutor may believe the evidence presented in a 22-month grand jury inquiry shows that the two White House aides sought to cover up their actions, the lawyers said.

I was listening to the news on this subject last night with total disdain for the TV news media (since they are so far behind the blogosphere), when the lovely wife pointed out that conspiracy, etc had to relate to a crime. Two people talking about the biggest issue of the day (Iraq and WMDs), discussing a recent angle (Kristof and Pincus stories on forged documents) and what happened is not a conspiracy to commit anything but the truth. From that point it is hard to say there was obstruction or false statements or perjury. These all assume at their base a cover up. To misstate or not recall discussions of truth, later corrected with contemporaneous information to jog a memory is not a crime.

One bit of news in the article is the alleged statement by Fitzgerald he will not make a decision until next week. You need to take all this with a huge grain of salt – these lawyers represent interests since they will not go on the record due to their involvement, representing potential indictees, on the case. Stunningly (not), the news media conveniently omits the one source of the Wilsons’ names and status well before the Wilson article – themselves.

Kristof spilled the beans in his May 6th article when he said his sources for the forged document charge were present at the debriefing (held at the Wilsons’ home). Of the four, only the Wilsons would have pushed the erroneous forged document charge. Pincus made the exact same mistake a few weeks later.

So the NYTimes and Washington Post knew of Wilson and his wife. Why this takes two years is beyond me.

BTW – Mac Ranger has an excellent bio on Pincus here (worked for CIA!) and addresses this same NY Time story here. Tom Maguire has his say here.

Now onto real news. A US Senator has won the lottery – really!

In what could be another outbreak of career bureaucrats attacking the political appointee manager, we have FEMA staff conveniently blaming Michael Brown for not knowing something Louisiana officials are responsible for telling him. While the post and CYA staffers are saying Brown ignored it, my bet is Nagin and company told him they had it under control and did not need to do anything. BTW, check out the timeline:

Marty Bahamonde, sent to New Orleans by Brown, said he alerted Brown’s assistant shortly after 11 a.m. that Monday with the “worst possible news” for the city: The Category 4 hurricane had carved a 20-foot breach in the 17th Avenue Canal levee.
…
Bahamonde said he called Brown personally after 7 p.m. to warn that 80 percent of New Orleans was underwater and that he had photographed a 200-foot-wide breach.

And what was Brown to do? Was he to order the evacuation of the city? He does not have the authority to do that. Nagin knew and Nagin directs FEMA’s resources. The media is pathetic on this subject and is risking the lives of future victims with their partisan myopia.

Poor E.J. Dionne – he doesn’t know VA very well. We are forward looking. We look forward to taking all the violent criminals off the streets and applying the maximum penalty for those who thirst on the blood of others. We can abort an innocent young human guilty of nothing but bad timing, but we cannot destroy an animal who kills our children after raping them?

And finally some well overdo shield laws for gun manufacturers to protect them from trivial law suits.