The Daily Background

Remember that time when the President of the United States nominated his totally-unqualified personal attorney to the US Supreme Court, and she was forced to withdraw her nomination after being scoffed at by Republican-controlled Senate? Yeah… not too sure what he was there. Today is Hariet Miers’ last day in the White House.

‘08ers
Today in Presidential hopeful news? Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) is set to officially announce his official campaign for the official website. Officially. We’ll see how much press he gets from his announcement (and by “much” we mean “little”).

Also in ‘08er news, John Edwards will be in New Hampshire today, making a campaign stop or two. I know somebody who may be attending one of his events, and I will hopefully have some exclusive photos from it later today. Maybe.

Libby, Libby, told a fibby
Yesterday, Judy ‘I am the beacon of journalistic integrity because I needlessly spent 85 days in prison; all worship me‘ Miller testified that Libby told her about Plame’s identity as early as June 23rd 2003, and again on July 8th. The day before that, Ari ‘even more bald than you remembered me from my Press Secretary days‘ Fleischer testified that Libby told him about Plame on July 7th.

All of this is mounting up to provide considerable evidence that Libby lied to federal investigators when he told them, under oath, that he learned about Plame’s identity for the first time days later, on July 10th from Tim Russert of NBC News. You can’t exactly leak something if you don’t technically know about it yet.

Libby’s defense is of course that he simply forgot that he was leaking Plame’s identity like a bucket made of swiss cheese prior July 10th when he claims he first learned about Plame from Russert. This seems to be more and more implausible, day by day and witness by witness. The question of the day is- will anybody corroborate Libby’s version of events? Libby’s own version of events doesn’t corroborate his own version of events.

Global warming in the news
With a major international report authored by the world’s leading climate scientists expected to contain the most grim warnings about global warming set be released this Friday, several government-employed scientists in the States have testified before a House committee, saying their work was buried, spun, and covered-up by the White House.

Amid allegations of Administration censorship and political pressure to change or water-down findings, a new report by a whistle-blower protection group, indicates that nearly 60% of government scientists in climate-related fields have “personally experienced such an incident [of cover-up or suppression] in the last five years.”

Pander bears
On the Senate side, the Committee on the Environment and Public Works (chaired by Senator Boxer, and outspoken environmental advocate) discussed the competing measures which would regulate emissions from the largest polluters in the country. Funniest thing about the discussion? Reuters puts Republican reaction to Democrats stance on global warming this way, according to Reuters: “Panel Republicans warned that mandatory carbon caps could hurt the U.S. economy, and accused Democrats of pandering to voters ahead of the 2008 election.”

Pandering to voters? How dare politicians do things that voters actually want, like tackle problems such as global climate change! Doing what voters want is just cheap political pandering! How dare they do what voters want! Those cheap panderers!

Filed under: Z-TDB Blog