Dear Walt,

I understand the poet Michael Palmer wrote a letter to you a couple years ago* in which he informed  you of our failure to achieve the vision you penned 120 years ago in your poem, "America:"

Centre of equal daughters, equal sons,
All, all alike endear’d, grown, ungrown, young or old,
Strong, ample, fair, enduring, capable, rich,
Perennial with the Earth, with Freedom, Law and Love,
A grand, sane, towering, seated Mother,
Chair’d in the adamant of Time.

As a reminder, Walt, this is how Mr. Palmer explained our dilemma to you in his missive:

I don’t know whether you keep abreast of the news, Walt, but it is not good.  The current administration, a dungheap of pious hypocrites and liars, has used the pretext of the war against terror to dismantle the founding principles and values of the republic and to abrogate international treaties.

PLEASE, ONLY RECOMMEND LIVE BLOG I here:LIVE BLOG I

Today's event is the Heartland Democratic Presidential Forum

On Saturday, we go to Iowa for a Democratic Presidential candidates forum hosted by a group called the Center for Community Change. This LIVE event will give grass-roots organizers a chance to question five of the leading presidential candidates.

Bush's own words and the timeline below convince me that Frank Rich's assertion that instigation of "a conspiracy that was not at all petty: the one that took us on false premises into a reckless and wasteful war in Iraq," and the trashing of Mr. Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, "to protect that larger plot," involved none other than George W. Bush himself.

Judge for yourself on the flip...

I don't write many diaries and this one may not qualify under community standards, but I hope you'll indulge me because I've had all I can takes and I can't takes it no more!

You've seen the many media polls, I'm sure, in which the question has been posed "Did Al Gore deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?", but this one, published by Montana news station KPAX, takes the proverbial cake.

On July 3rd, Judge Reggie B. Walton directed the parties in USA v. Libby to submit their positions regarding a discrepancy between the pResident's Grant of Executive Clemency, which commuted Libby's prison sentence but left intact his supervised release, and the meaning of 18 U.S.C. Section 3583, which appears to disallow supervised release without completion of incarceration.  In  my previous diary, I provided details of Libby's and Fitz's Briefs and the White House Opinion Letter filed on July 9th for Judge Walton's consideration.

Today, Judge Walton ruled.

A letter written by Fred Fielding, WH counsel, to Patrick Fitzgerald and cc'd to Judge Walton has been entered on the case docket in USA v. Libby.  Lysias also helpfully pointed out in a comment below that the text of the letter can be viewed on TPM Muckraker.

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UPDATED:PATRICK FITZGERALD has now filed his Response to Judge Walton's request with the Court.  Fitz' conclusion: "...it is the government's position that the defendant is subject to the two-year term of supervised release, the supervised release term began on July 2, 2007, and the defendant must report to the Probation Office immediately." Some quotes from Fitz's brief are in this comment.
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UPDATED AGAIN: Libby's response to Judge Walton has been filed.  Read it in this diary comment.

Bush's own words and the timeline below convince me that Frank Rich's assertion here
that instigation of "a conspiracy that was not at all petty: the one that took us on false premises into a reckless and wasteful war in Iraq" and the trashing of Mr. Wilson and his wife "to protect that larger plot" involved none other than Bush himself.

Judge for yourself on the flip...