Alright. What does it mean? Not exactly sure.
John Negroponte is resigning as Director of National Intelligence and becoming Deputy Secretary of State.
The DNI position is a new one. So it’s hard to say where it rates. But it’s hard for me to see where this isn’t a substantial come down in seniority. And what does it say about the position of DNI? I suspect that is the story here.
Parody-proof at any speed … (from The Hill)
Washington Sports and Entertainment, which owns the Washington Wizards basketball team and Verizon Center, yesterday blasted Democratic plans to kill a sports ticket loophole from lawmakersâ $50 gift limit, saying it would damage an important local business.
âWe support the concept of full and open disclosure on the part of lobbyists and lawmakers to comply with ethics standards,â said Matt Williams, senior vice president at WS&E. âHowever, we oppose a total ban on all corporate entertainment opportunities. And this ban of tickets to sporting events as gifts will cause a negative impact on our business.
âProbably more than any other franchises in professional sports, Washington, D.C.-area teams count business from lobbyists as a contributing factor to our bottom line. This ban will certainly negatively affect the business we do with one of the major industries in our region â the federal government.â
Abe Pollin, head of WS&E, may be especially chagrined by the public-sector smack-down because, by his own count, he spent $220 million to build the Verizon Center, which has spurred a boom of development in the Capitolâs Penn Quarter.
Reminds me of the old days of Pollin-Abramoff-DeLay shindigs.
Yes to the Surge? Or No? Or, okay, escalation. Have an opinion on this one? As we mentioned a while back, Sens. McCain and Lieberman are heading across town to the American Enterprise Institute on Friday to roll out their ‘surge’ plan to send a few tens of thousands more troops to Baghdad to crush the Mahdi Army. Make no mistake: this event is the official ‘surge’ roll-out.
Now it turns out that MoveOn is sponsoring a protest at the event at noon on Friday.
Now, I’ve seen protests outside AEI before. So if experience is any guide, they’ll probably have a few goons on loan from Ahmed Chalabi or someone like that to manhandle anyone who actually tries to make it in as a member of the public or just toss them out the closest window. So this will probably just be a down on the sidewalk outside the building. But you’ll get to see all the key regime changers and probably Joe and McCain and all the other PNAC folks. So if you’re going to be in DC, stop by. It’s right near the corner of 17th & M.
At least if this is a topic that matters to you.
So they really did turn him over to the Mahdi Army.
The latest line from Maliki/al Rubaie and Co. …
“There was an infiltration at the execution chamber.”
Echoing those accusations, a senior Interior Ministry official said the hanging was supposed to be carried out by hangmen employed by the Interior Ministry but that “militias” had managed to infiltrate the executioners’ team.
“The execution was carried out by militias and outsiders. They put aside the team from the Interior Ministry that was supposed to carry it out,” the official said.
At this point, do we just officially call it a lynching? Of course, that doesn’t take into account the very real possibility that this is no more true than yesterday’s silly excuse that al Jazeera had infiltrated the execution chamber.
And does this perhaps get us toward an answer to our earlier question, Why the Rush? We know that Maliki is highly dependent on al Sadr and the Mahdi Army (the folks the ‘surge’ is supposed to crush). If it’s really true that Saddam was handed over to MA fighters to be executed rather than Interior Ministry officials, was that the rush? Did al Sadr and Co. make Maliki an offer he couldn’t refuse? Did they demand that Saddam be turned over to them — and now — for execution? Was that why he was pulling so many strings and cutting so many corners?
Good to know who you’re dealing with.
Saddam prosecutor Munkith al-Faroon, who pleaded with the members of the execution team taunting Saddam at the execution, yesterday recanted his claim that Iraqi National Security Advisor al Rubaie was one of the two governmental officials videotaping the execution with his cell phone.
Today he’s saying that there actually weren’t any people in the execution chamber taunting Saddam and hailing Moktada al-Sadr. The taunts, he now says, came from outside the execution chamber.
Must be fun to be him right now.
And yesterday’s reports that a guard had been arrested over the video tape? Maliki advisor Sami al-Askari tells Reuters, no, didn’t happen.
White House: What’s so bad about a little taunting? That and other news of the day in today’s Daily Muck.
You think a little thing like a gift ban is going to stop them?
Lobbyists brainstorm on ways to circumvent Democratic reforms.
Big Oil and kickbacks (and sex?) — oh my! Welcome to the Interior Department’s Minerals Management Service.