We’ve got the ‘complaint’ in the Joe Wilson suit posted in our document collection, all 23 pages of it.
We’ll have our analysis of what it contains up momentarily. Share your thoughts here.
Update: Here’s our rundown of what the suit is about.
More questions for Novak, from his tell-all.
And don’t forget this TPM golden oldie, which shows pretty conclusively that Novak lied about his use of the term ‘operative’, all for the purpose of covering up the culpability of his sources.
Imagine that.
Ivo Daalder responds to my post yesterday about our policy toward North Korea. Turns out, yes, our policy toward North Korea is a fraud.
That is a bit weird.
TPM Reader DK points me to this article by Jonathan Landay on the White House’s agreement to submit its warrantless wiretap program to thes scrutiny of the FISA court. Here are the second and third grafs (italics added) …
By having the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court conduct the review instead of a regular federal court, the Bush administration would ensure the secrecy of details of the highly classified program. The administration has argued that making details of the program public would compromise national security.
However, such details could include politically explosive disclosures that the government has kept tabs on people it shouldn’t have been monitoring.
Pretty high up in the piece that’s quite a throaway line if that’s all it is. After all, the details could have included evidence of life on Mars too. Hell, anything’s possible.
It sounds like Landay’s pointing to the possibility that the White House has been using the program to monitor political opponents. (I’m not sure how else to interpret that line.) And you get the sense he’s doing more than speculating.
Always one of the very best, Anthony Shadid reports from Beirut. Give this a read. Very nuanced and detailed.
Late Update: More commentary on the situation in Lebanon from Ha’aretz.
Charges of being “evil” are leveled against a New York Senate candidate — but this time, they’re not aimed at Hillary Clinton. That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.
Finally. Mark Schmitt says what needs to be said about the Lieberman-Lamont race. Sorry to the gunners on both sides. But there aren’t enough bloggers or blog readers in Connecticut to pull an unknown challenger to even in a primary challenge against a three-term incumbent senator. This is about Connecticut.
I think David Ignatius strikes the right balance, understands the interplay of factors in what’s now playing out in Lebanon. We don’t know whether Iran ‘green-lighted’ the Hezbollah incursion into northern Israel a few days ago, as some are suggesting, with little or no direct evidence. But it is quite foolish to see what happened as an isolated incident, or merely a tit for tat with over what’s happening in Gaza. There is an Iran-Syria axis. They are patrons of Hamas and Hizbollah. And everything here is connected. Our muscling with the Iranians over their nuclear program and the bedeviled situation in Iraq. These are all pieces on the same chessboard. Events transpire on many levels. And have many causes. But I think it is correct to see a good part of this as the soundings of groups allied with Syrian and Iran, and to a degree acting in concert with him, to strike a new balance of power in the region (in the context of Israeli withdrawals from occupied territory, growing Iranian power and American distraction and enervation in Iraq.)
With that said, I think Israel is entirely within her right to react strongly to these provocations.
But what you have every right to do isn’t always wise to do, as Ignatius explains. A strong response is probably a prerequisite from the Israelis. But it’s not sufficient and it can easily backfire. For the Israelis and for the US. They risk slipping into the same quicksand they did almost twenty-five years ago. Outside powers — and that means the US and Europe — have to be involved here.
(ed.note: Nothing like a post on the Middle East to raise the temperature of the email in box. If you disagree, I’d love to hear from you. I’ve been set straight by dissenting emails many times before. But attacking emails will just be ignored.)