Harry fucking Reid is something else, man. Dude made a very risky move today, but given the poll numbers on Administration honesty and the hard-right Alito smackdown offered by Bush Co to take news cycle pressure off Plamegate, I think he's made the right choice.
Jay Rockefeller's been pushing the shambling corpse of Senator Roberts to get Phase II of the intelligence investigation--looking into whether or not the Administration faked, manipulated, or exaggerated pre-war intelligence--into gear since, oh, I don't know, months before the election last year? And nothing has happened. Roberts stonewalled until after the election (with good reason for his party) and then decided to sit on it because no one could tell him "boo." I was sorely disappointed to have to return to the Liberry because watching Roberts' inchoherent "explanation" for the delay of Phase II was vastly entertaining. As was the replay of Frist's hissy fit earlier when Reid unleashed his own nuclear option.
Watch for a holy shit-storm of spin by both sides; it's already hitting hard. I saw an hour of MSNBC on my dinner break and things are ugly.
Mort Zuckerman can suck my root. After what we know from Sy Hersch about Cheney's WHIG crew, after what we know about Judy Miller and Chalabi and their neo-con orgy with the Cheney Rummy cabal, after what we know about Plamegate, Zuckerman still had the gall to claim that even to question whether or not there was spin of the intelligence by this Administration was absurd. What a tool. This is the "analyst" MSNBC hires to explain things to Norah O'Donnell?
I'm telling you--reading Chomsky's analyses of the media coverage of Vietnam and Watergate and the cases for war in previous conflicts up to Iraq I has been invaluable. I spent half my 20s reading his work, and that "course in intellectual self-defense" has paid off. All of this is according to script, and is not surprising in the least given what Chomsky has documented in the past.
Reid's action today was not according to script, and I'm beginning to admire him a great deal.
