First off: McClellan admits that Libby and Rove lied to him about their involvement in the Plame leak.

Second, obviously, 9/11 was used as a political tool to turn the administration into a permanent political campaign, and to achieve goals that they had wanted before 9/11. And Bush asked Rumsfeld to update his plans for an Iraq war in *November 2001*.

Olbermann describes McClellan's work as at times almost poetic: he claims Bush had "a philosophy of coercive democracy," and McClellan admits that said coercion has harmed the image of the U.S.

* * *

Update: First time on the recommended list. Thank you, everyone. :)

Also, for those of you who missed it the first time around--and it just ended a moment ago--you'll get a second chance to see it at 10 PM. I strongly suspect it will also find its way to the Countdown web site in the near future.

Sorry for the breaking-type diary, but I figured this is worth pointing out:

Scott McClellan will be joining Keith Olbermann, in studio, tomorrow, Thursday night, at 8 PM. Needless to say, this promises to be TiVo-worthy television.

I'll have more to say a little later tonight, but I figured this was worth the heads-up.

As you might have heard, MSNBC is reporting that on January 9, February 21, and March 14 of this year, Senator Obama's passport file was breached, by three different individuals. (The details online are rather sketchy; Keith Olbermann has been doing yeoman's work on Countdown tonight, going for nearly an hour now without so much as a commercial break. CNN and Faux News are, unsurprisingly, not covering this.) Moreover, Obama was apparently just notified today of these breaches of his privacy. Needless to say, Obama and his staff are outraged.

UPDATE (9 PM): Barack Obama is on Larry King Live right now--and his first question is about the possibility of a redo in Michigan and Florida.

Personally, though, I hope that Obama seizes this opportunity that has been presented to him. I'll explain on the flip.

I live in CT, and I've been bombarded with those *#@% Defense of Democracies ads for both Chris Murphy and Joe Courtney. And, quite frankly, I've had enough of it.

I was actually planning to write a LTE about the hypocrisy of McCain, but I figure that, given the airtime this ad is getting--an average of once every half-hour, if not more--that it might be a good idea to send this one first.

I have the letter below the fold. Any advice you can give on improving this, I'd greatly appreciate it.

Yes, 20+ states had primaries. And Obama won in landslides in some states, Clinton won big in others, yada, yada, yada. Same can be said for the (R) side of the slate: Romney, Huckabee, McCain, yada, yada, yada. But I think something that hasn't gotten nearly enough play from the media is the total number of votes being cast, not merely the record increases. (After all, it doesn't do Democrats much good if turnout doubles from 100,000 to 200,000 in a state where there are 500,000 Republicans voting.)

This was published on Think Progress a few minutes ago.

Importantly, it passed 83-14, which means it's a vetoproof majority--so, assuming Bush vetoes it for some reason that makes sense only to him, it can make it through a second time. (It'd be wonderful if someone tried to filibuster that vote. . . .).

Even better news on the flip.

This was based on a comment in another thread, about how the poster's cousin, nearly ready to return from war, was killed trying to help his fellow comrades.

That comment reminded me of the story of Brian Freeman, who was killed in an ambush a few months ago, shortly after he met with John Kerry.

But I want to go back, for a moment, to World War I, to show just how #%#@%ing insane continuing this war could be.

On a post at MyDD.com, DemocraticAvenger posted a list of Congresscritters who accepted money from (or gave to) Mark Foley. Since one of those Congressvermin represents me, I figured I should show my appreciation. You can see my draft of a LTE below the fold; I'd like to send it this (Sunday) evening or tomorrow (Monday) morning.

Any suggestions for improving it would be vastly appreciated.

On Friday night's ~Countdown~, Keith Olbermann pointed out--to the surprise of everyone here, I'm sure--that the torture "compromise" is essentially an appeasement. In other words, Bush can say and do whatever he wants, just as he always has.

I have one simple question that I'd like to see asked of George W. Bush. Amazingly, it's not one I've seen or heard mentioned anywhere. I admit it would probably take guts for anyone to actually ask it, but I can't see any answer to it helping Bush in the minds of rational human beings.

The betting money appears to be on Karl Rove finally getting indicted.

But what does that mean for Bush, for Congress, and for the country? It depends on what happens after the indictment gets handed down. There are really three possibilities.

This will probably seem a bit early, but, the way I see it, anything that helps knock Republicans out of Congress is a good thing.

The idea for this letter came to me while I was in my car this morning. My aim should be fairly obvious from the first line; (un)fortunately for me, my Congresscritter is Nancy Johnson (R-Pharma).

The rest is on the flip. . . .

Perversely, one of the reasons that gas prices are going up--any questions of profiteering put aside--is that consumers are pushing up demand. An article from my hometown paper noted:

Here's a truly horrifying article: a far too high percentage of Americans are using credit cards to pay for gasoline. [Emphasis mine.]

Convenience stores, which sell about three-quarters of all gasoline sold in the nation, have seen the use of credit cards for motor fuel purchases rise to 70 percent of all gasoline purchases from about 54 percent last year, according to the industry group. [. . .]

There's more. . . .

Well, if Pat Robertson can support assassinating Hugo Chavez, then obviously the Bible must support it.

And, wouldn't you know it, I found an obscure version of the Ten Commandments that supports it.

I had to do a bit of translating, so there might be the occasional error here and there. . . .

See it on the flip.

The bad news: Miss Guilty-Until-Proven-Innocent is drawing higher ratings than ever.

The good news:

Grace an Answer to CNN/HN's Prayers

<hr>CNN Headline News, which has never attracted a million viewers to any of its regular programming, may be about to do so. Nancy Grace has been nudging that mark closely in recent days, including Friday when she attracted 942,000 viewers, according to Inside Cable News. Her numbers thereby topped those of each of the regular CNN channel's primetime personalities except Larry King, who drew 1.08 million viewers. Grace also appeared to be cannibalizing the audience for Paula Zahn Now, which airs at the same time. Zahn's numbers were the lowest of the night for CNN, 437,000 viewers -- fewer than half the number for Grace.

So, she may be doing gangbuster ratings for cable, and doing unimaginable harm to the justice system, but at least she's not helping Time Warner's bottom line. . . .

What is wrong with the Bush administration? They would actually veto [i]the Defense appropriation bill[/i] because of anti-torture rules?

You know, I'd love to see that happen. Just picture this. . . .

To quote Slacktivist:

"Reagan's Bind" describes the conundrum in which one is unable to explain or defend one's actions except by ascribing them to either: A) malicious intent; or B) glaring stupidity and/or incompetence.

Or, in even plainer language, "sir, are you a crook or an idiot?"

More in extended.

It's rare that I agree with John Tierney, but his editorial on the War on Drugs is spot on:

What followed was a legal saga pitting Mr. Paey against his longtime doctor (and a former friend of the Paeys), who denied at the trial that he had given Mr. Paey some of the prescriptions. Mr. Paey maintains that the doctor did approve the disputed prescriptions, and several pharmacists backed him up at the trial. Mr. Paey was convicted of forging prescriptions.

He was subject to a 25-year minimum penalty because he illegally possessed Percocet and other pills weighing more than 28 grams, enough to classify him as a drug trafficker under Florida's draconian law (which treats even a few dozen pain pills as the equivalent of a large stash of cocaine).

More . . .