From ABCNews ...

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader's quixotic presidential campaign says it submitted about 5,400 signatures to get on the Michigan ballot, far short of the required number of 30,000. Luckily for him, approximately 43,000 signatures were filed by Michigan Republicans on his behalf, more than meeting the requirement.

Speaks for itself.

Idiots ...

A good editorial from Ha'aretz on Ariel Sharon's misguided call for the Jews of France to emigrate en masse to Israel.

Harry Jaffe has an interesting piece in the Washingtonian about the declining circulation of the Washington Post.

That might not sound like such a big surprise since the decline in newspaper readership in the face of competition from electronic media is almost a cliche. Yet, Jaffe notes that the Times, the Boston Globe and USA Today are all gaining readers. And according to statistics Jaffe cites, the Post was one of only two papers in the top ten nationwide to lose circulation last year.

The article speculates on, but doesn't quite arrive at an explanation of why this is happening. And the thrust of the piece is that Post management can't figure it out either.

The broad story seems to be that the newspaper world, which was once built on big city newspapers, is polarizing towards a crop of, in effect, national newspapers and a larger universe of much smaller ones that are intensely local in their focus. The Post, for a series of reasons, seems to be getting caught betwixt and between by that polarizing trend.

One personal note, though, that I should add. I'm sometimes caustically critical of the Post -- particularly a few specific reporters and members of the editorial page. And I've always had an instinctive preference for the New York Times, though I freely grant that's in part a matter of cultural prejudice of a sort. When I'm travelling or getting on a train and want something to read, for instance, I'll almost always grab the Times rather than the Post.

Yet, writing TPM day in and day out for years now has given me a certain brass-tacks way of evaluating the quality of reportage over time. Allow me to explain. I do a fair amount of original reporting for this site. But most of what I do is, inevitably, a matter of mining other news sources for bits and pieces of information and piecing them together with other pieces of information, showing too-little-noticed connections or explaining or trying to interpret their meaning.

Over time you get a good sense of which news outlets consistently generate new information and which don't. And by this measure -- on the issues I follow closely, which I'd say are foreign policy, defense policy, intelligence and national politics -- the Post consistently outclasses the Times, particularly on the first three topics. When it comes to who's generating fresh information rather than summarizing the story a few days later or relying on hand-fed stories, my experience putting together this site tells me I usually end up finding new information -- which stands up over time -- in the Post.

Needless to say there are a number of Times reporters on these topics who are first-rate, peerless and a number at the Post who, to put it coarsely, suck. But on balance -- and to some degree to my surprise -- that's my experience.

A different take (see post from last night) on what the new presidential Air National Guard payroll records mean -- this from Reuters: "Some of President Bush's missing Air National Guard records during the Vietnam War years, previously said to be destroyed, turned up on Friday but offered no new evidence to dispel charges by Democrats that he was absent without leave."

Of course, the fact that the White House has wrangled this issue down to poring over a million different records that I myself can hardly keep track of means they've largely neutralized this issue through that classic Washington method of the death of a thousand docs.

An article in the Post reports that a special prosecutor in Mexico, Ignacio Carrillo Prieto, has asked a judge to issue an arrest warrant for former Mexican President Luis Echeverria. The charges involve an attack in 1971 in which security forces killed at least thirty student protestors in Mexico City.

As the article notes, "bringing charges against Echeverria also marks a milestone in Mexico's efforts to investigate the government's so-called dirty war against pro-democracy activists from the 1960s to the 1980s."

What strikes me though is that the crime he would be charged with is "genocide."

I know the definition of 'genocide' is a highly contested matter -- in philosophical, political and legal contexts -- particularly in emerging international law. The term can be highly mutable. And, of course, withholding the term 'genocide' in no way mitigates or excuses state-terror or political murders used as a tool of repression. But its use in cases such as these seems to blur it almost beyond recognition.

Merriam-Webster defines the term as "the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political, or cultural group."

A couple weeks ago we noted reports that a group of payroll records, which might have clarified President Bush's Guard service during a part of 1972, had been "inadvertently destroyed" in a tragic microfilm accident.

That grabbed my attention because from my history research days I knew that the sort of microfilm accident described is exceedingly rare. Indeed, this is the reason so many institutions still use microfilm, even though its been around for something like a century -- because of its excellent archival value, which for various reasons still far outpaces various new digital storage media.

Today though we have an example of just how archival microfilm is. Even after having been destroyed, the files in question managed to turn up at the Pentagon late Friday afternoon.

Now that is archival!

In any case, as announced this afternoon the announcement that the documents in question had been "inadvertently destroyed" itself turned out to be the product of an "inadvertent oversight." (And, no, in case you're wondering, I'm not making this up. Those are quotes.)

And the AP has written the story up with this lede ...

The Pentagon on Friday released newly discovered payroll records from President Bush's 1972 service in the Alabama National Guard, though the records shed no new light on the future president's activities during that summer.

A Pentagon official said the earlier contention that the records were destroyed was an "inadvertent oversight."

Like records released earlier by the White House, these computerized payroll records show no indication Bush drilled with the Alabama unit during July, August and September of 1972. Pay records covering all of 1972, released previously, also indicated no guard service for Bush during those three months.

The records do not give any new information about Bush's National Guard training during 1972, when he transferred to the Alabama National Guard unit so he could work on the U.S. Senate campaign of a family friend. The payroll records do not say definitively whether Bush attended training that summer because they are maintained separately from attendance records.

I have to say that I think I'm with Atrios on this one: I don't understand.

I concede the point that payroll records may have been wrong, or rather simply not have recorded times when the future president showed up for duty. But no new information? These new documents seem to provide at least some added confirmation that the president never showed up for drills as he said he did, right? What am I missing?

Recently, many TPM readers have written in to tell me that they thought the broadside of attacks against Joe Wilson might be timed to blunt, head off, or someway affect expected indictments in the Plame affair. I discounted that notion -- in part because it wasn't that clear to me that the administration had much to worry about in that regard. The Journal has made it pretty clear they'd like to use the recent furor to get friends in the Vice President's office off the hook. But whatever you think of Joe Wilson, the White House -- and conservatives generally -- have plenty of reasons for trying to discredit him besides the the Fitzgerald investigation.

Now, though, I'm not so sure.

Today there's an article in the Washington Times entitled 'CIA officer named prior to column'. The article says that Plame's name was twice compromised prior to the Novak column -- once by a Russian spy in 1990s and then again in a snafu when a bundle of documents sent to the U.S. Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy in Havana were sent unsealed, and apparently read by the Cubans.

First of all, this isn't even news -- at least not the more sensational example.

As was reported here and elsewhere almost a year ago, Plame's identity may have been compromised by CIA arch-turncoat Aldrich Ames. My understanding is that there was a range of agents and assets that the CIA wasn't sure Ames had compromised or not. And she was in that category, thus leading her bosses to avoid placing her and others in her position in more vulnerable positions. As for the other example, I've never heard of it before.

These are interesting details, to be sure. But if you read the article the angle of the piece is definitely along line of arguing that this undermines any legal case against the potential leakers.

To quote the last three grafs of the piece ...

However, officials said the disclosure that Mrs. Plame's cover was blown before the news column undermines the prosecution of the government official who might have revealed the name, officials said.

"The law says that to be covered by the act the intelligence community has to take steps to affirmatively protect someone's cover," one official said. "In this case, the CIA failed to do that."

A second official, however, said the compromises before the news column were not publicized and thus should not affect the investigation of the Plame matter.

There does seem to be a rush of articles aimed not simply at discrediting Wilson but specifically at arguing that there is no legal basis for a prosecution of the folks who leaked Plame's name. Who's so concerned? It makes me wonder.

A difference of opinion between Tucker Carlson <$NoAd$>and the 9/11 Commission ...

There is nothing random about the documents he took. Berger stripped the files of every single copy of a single memo which detailed the Clinton administration's response to the Y2K terror threat.

Tucker Carlson
Crossfire
July 22nd 2004

Then there's 9/11 Commissioners Gorelick and Gorton ...

DOBBS: Let me ask you, not necessarily directly on point, but certainly related. Sandy Berger, the former head of the national security -- national security adviser under the Clinton administration, accused of, and admitting taking classified documents from the National Archives, those notes, whether copies or originals still unclear. Did the commission review that material, to what -- can you shed any light on what happened there? Slade Gorton, first.

GORTON: Well, we can't shed any light on exactly what happened there and on Sandy Berger's troubles with the Justice Department and the Archives. What we can say unequivocally is we had all of that information. We have every one of those documents. All of them have -- are infused in and are a part of our report.

DOBBS: So the commission was denied no information as a result of whatever Sandy Berger did or did not do at the National Archives?

GORTON: That's precisely correct.

GORELICK: And we have been so assured by the Justice Department.

Dobbs, Gorton & Gorelick
Lou Dobbs Tonight
July 22nd 2004

Hmmm.

Dick Cheney, the multilateral <$NoAd$>years ...

BERNAMA
THE MALAYSIAN NATIONAL NEWS AGENCY
KUALA LUMPUR, April 20, 1998

Former United States Defence Secretary Dick Cheney today hit out at his government for imposing unilateral economic sanctions like the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act, saying they have been "ineffective, did not provide the desired results and a bad policy".

"I have made it clear that our (the US unilateral) sanctions policy is wrong," he said when asked to comment on the Iran-Libya Act which contains provisions for sanctions to be imposed by the US against foreign companies making investment beyond US$20 million a year in the oil and gas sector of the targeted countries.

Malaysia, which is against the extra-territorial law, has said that Petronas and other Malaysian companies will continue to invest abroad despite the US threat of sanctions under the Act.

Petronas is currently involved in a US$2 billion gas field project in Iran undertaken jointly with SA Total of France and Gazprom of Russia.

Speaking to reporters after calling on Datuk Seri Dr Mahathir Mohamad at the Prime Minister's office here, Cheney, who is now the chairman and CEO of Halliburton, said: "The US needs to be much more restraint then we have been in terms of pursuing unilateral economic sanctions."

Cheney, who served under the Bush administration between 1989 and 1993, however said the multilateral economic sanctions imposed by the international community on Iraq were "appropriate".

"I disagree with the current law (Iran-Libya Sanctions Act) but my company will comply with the rule (Act)," he said.

He said he also disagreed with the unilateral economic sanctions imposed on Myanmar and Arzerbaijan.

See this article for more on the grand jury investigation into whether Halliburton broke the Iranian sanctions law.

For what it's worth, I think the promiscuous use of unilateral economic sanctions probably is a bad idea -- an example of the capricious and shortsighted use of American power that limits our ability to deal forcefully with real problems by antagonizing allies and frittering away diplomatic capital with silliness like the continuing sanctions against Cuba, among other examples.

Do permissive social policies make you taller? Does eating herring do it?

According to Reuters: "The Dutch are nearly four inches taller on average than the British and Americans, and almost six inches taller than they were four decades ago."

Who leaked on Sandy?

Yesterday I was discussing with a friend whether the leak seemed more likely to be a Republican leak or a Democratic one (his view). The latter possibility is not as far-fetched as it might sound: the idea would be that some Democrat found out and realized it would be better to get the story out now than, say, at the end of October.

I've thought from the beginning that this looked like a political leak from the Republican side. And, as I told my friend yesterday, I think subsequent events tend to strengthen that assumption.

Here's my take ...

Clearly, no one in-the-know breathed a word of this until a couple days ago -- as the Kerry campaign found out to its own moritification. Yet from the moment the story broke every paper seems to be finding multiple sources who are willing to talk freely about minute details of the case. Look over at Google News and you'll see that even the Akron Gazette and the Curryville Crier seem to be getting hourly exclusive scoops.

In my experience criminal investigations aren't nearly that porous -- with multiple sources talking to multiple publications, and all on cue -- unless someone on the inside has greenlighted the leaks. What's more, if the law enforcement officials and political appointees hadn't been talking up until this point, why would they be chattering so loud now just because some obscure Dem happened to go to John Solomon with a preemptive strike?

Here's a question -- not a rhetorical one, but an actual one. Is there any sort of definitive reporting on whether the documents Berger is alleged to have taken from the National Archives were originals or copies?

The one thing I'm certain about in this Berger matter is that I really wish the folks investigating his case were investigating the Plame case because if that investigation leaked as much as this one does my life over the last year would have been quite a bit easier.

Possible Bush slogans ...

1. Not as terrible as it could have been!

2. Four more years and we'll be safe!

3. Peace!

4. Incompetence and exaggeration, not bad-faith or lying, as shown in two recent reports!

5. Are you better off today than you would have been today assuming that that idiot Al Gore had won four years ago and he was president instead of me?

And, of course, now even Erskine Bowles has his own campaign weblog.

Hmmm. Imagine that. Senior officials at the White House Counsel's Office (perhaps understandable) and "several top aides to" the president (not so understandable) were given a heads-up about the Berger investigation months ago.

So says the Times.

Meanwhile, the Post has a tangled article about how Archives staffers allegedly became suspicious of Berger while he was reviewing the documents and even started monitoring him. Calling the piece 'tangled' isn't necessarily a criticism. The reporters clearly have two very conflicting versions of events and are trying to explain both -- and point out the ways they contradict. The piece reads as if the authors' themselves are uncertain which version to credit. What's also clear from the Post article is that not only law enforcement officials but also one 'government source' are leaking like crazy about this story.

The story the leakers tell in the Post story certainly seems hard to reconcile with inadvertence.

Finally, USA Today says that FBI agents involved in the case didn't think the whole thing was particularly serious.

Finally a case President Bush is eager to see investigated. Bush on Berger: "This is a very serious matter that will be fully investigated by the Justice Department."

As we said earlier, desperate.

Winning campaigns don't put the candidate in the mud.

Apropos of my earlier post about Republican <$NoAd$>desperation, here's Charlie Cook of the Cook Report on the state of the presidential race ...

Last week in this space, I discounted the widely held view that the knotted polling numbers between Bush and Kerry meant that the race itself was even. I argued that given the fact that well-known incumbents with a defined record rarely get many undecided voters -- a quarter to a third at an absolute maximum -- an incumbent in a very stable race essentially tied at 45 percent was actually anything but in an even-money situation. "What you see is what you get" is an old expression for an incumbent's trial heat figures, meaning very few undecided voters fall that way.

......This is certainly not to predict that Bush is going to lose, that this race is over or that other events and developments will not have an enormous impact on this race. The point is that this race has settled into a place that is not at all good for an incumbent, is remarkably stable, and one that is terrifying many Republican lawmakers, operatives and activists. But in a typically Republican fashion, they are too polite and disciplined to talk about it much publicly.

For more on this point see Ruy Teixeira's Donkey Rising blog.

From a Press Release just out from Speaker Hastert ...

Speaker Hastert on Congressional Investigation Regarding

National Security and Sandy Berger

(Washington D.C.) Speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert (R-IL) today made the following statement:

"Like many Americans concerned about our national security, I look forward to learning more from the House Government Reform Committee's investigation into the wayward actions by Sandy Berger. The American people deserve to know why Mr. Berger apparently skirted the law and removed highly classified terrorism documents, purportedly in his pants, from a secure reading room at the National Archives and then proceeded to lose or destroy some of them.

"How could President Clinton's former National Security Advisor be so cavalier?

"Was Mr. Berger trying to cover-up key facts regarding intelligence failures during his watch?

"What happened to those missing documents?

"Whose hands did they fall into?

"What kind of security risk does that pose to Americans today?

"I know Chairman Tom Davis (R-VA) will work to get the full truth of what really happened and help all of us better understand why Sandy Berger, a person who should fully understand the gravity and importance of sensitive national security materials, would operate with such overt negligence and apparent disregard for the law."

Any Democrat has to see red when <$Ad$>reading those words -- in fact, I'm tempted to say anyone with more than a bit of decency.

But I post them because critics of the administration, whatever their anger or indignation over those comments, should actually greet all this with a smile.

There's no doubt this Berger imbroglio has thrown the Dems seriously off message for a couple days. And it's embarrassing. There's no denying it. But Hastert's words are those of folks who are desperate -- real desperate. Folks looking at November 2nd, not liking at all what they see, and casting about for anything that will change the political lay of the land.

It's cornered, wounded animal time.