Congrats to all, for daring to be self-employed. I tried a bit-a that – drove myself & probably a few others nuts!

Guaranteed mixed bag.
At least you don’t have to answer to someone else.
But of course you’re harder on yourself than anyone else would be.
Then there’s the guilt-trip.
But then there’s the personal control over the schedule.
But then… But then…

THANKS, wonderful gang, for CHOOSING to donate part of your valuable time to this incredibly worthy cause!
YES! I mean it. No kidding.

Part of the refrigerator-art in our house is a photo of a small country church. On the announcement board out by the road is this simple, wonderful message:

“We Don’t Do Guilt”

If I were you, I’d make a copy of that sign & set it on your computer table. ;->

N.B. No margins were injured by the construction of this message.

*xyz @ 91

Joe Buck @ 88

I heard an NPR story on the trial this morning. It did have some interesting information and raised some issues I haven’t seen here, like that the jury candidates seem to be about 80% white, even though the DC population is majority black, and why is this? Also, that almost every black jury candidate had had negative experiences with law enforcement (e.g. the guy who was arrested four times, and all four cases were mistakes that led to no charges). Her focus seemed to be on what the process says about Washington, the usual “small town” kind of thing.

But then the reporter took an odd shot at “bloggers”, saying that bloggers were claiming that the fix was in because Walton was a Republican appointee originally, and I don’t recall ever seeing such a claim on Firedoglake. Nothing else was said about bloggers other than this.

You can disregard any portion of a mainstream media report that starts out with “some bloggers say”.

The mainstream media in its reporting tends to either (i) pick the looniest ideas from the most random bloggers, in order to paint the entire blogosphere as occupied with conspiracy theorists and tinfoil hat wearers or (ii) use references to blogger opinions to incorporate their own editorial feelings into its straight reporting, just as Fox news uses the expression “some say” before launching into its latest smear of the Democratic party or its candidates.

The NPR story you mentioned is an example of item (i) above.

For an example of item (ii), you can look at the news coverage of the Rose Bowl, where the commentators used references to “bloggers” to introduce their own commentary about the possibility that Lloyd Carr should be fired as Michigan’s coach. It was clear that the commentators just wanted to gossip about Lloyd Carr’s job security and they were using “some bloggers say” as their excuse for introducing the issue.

Just to clarify, there is a distinction between references to “bloggers” generally and references to specific bloggers. If it is the latter, then my observations above are not applicable.

You could also consider he is using a comment to a blog as a reference to paint the “group.”

Thanks for the comments relating to rulings from the bench, etc.
MR. LIBBY’S PROPOSED JURY INSTRUCTION ON CLASSIFIED INFORMATION (scroll down to the end)

In other words: “If he seems ’shifty’ on the stand, he’s probably just following instructions not to discuss National Security sensitive material – so – nevermind”

hey marcy! nice write up about you in the ann arbor news!

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THanks for the link–yes, it is nice. Particularly since the A2 News has a bit of a righty bent to it, particularly for a city full of hippies.

Topanga-lib @ 40

Markus Q has an intersting point but I would like some info on the finer points as I am new to some of this not having found you all until this fall and my brain is a little hazy from the weekend. So a quick reminder: What is the NIE and how is that important to Libby et al?

NIE = National Intelligence Estimate; a document that is supposed to sum up what the US knows about the world around it. As a consequence, it is classified.

It enters into this case in at leat three ways that I know of.

1. Portions of it were selectively leaked (”cherry picked”) by the administration to support the war, and these and other hand-picked portions were shown to congress, leading to the (false) claim that “congress voted for the war knowing everything we did” — generally accompanied by the claim that the administration also knows more than everyone else.

2. Team Libby would presumably like to include this and many other unrelated-except-for-timing items to bolster their greymail “I forgot” defense.

3. Libby’s testimony / defense narrative on the handling of the NIE is also arguably self contradictory or may point to novel theories about how delegatible the ability to declassify things is.

–MarkusQ

I’d alter number 3 as follows:

Libby had a note that Dick ordered him to leak something to Judy Miller on July 8. He said he was ordered to leak the NIE. That story is completely implausible. Thicker bullshit than they gave us to get us into the war. Therefore, it seems very likely (very very very likely) that Libby was ordered to leak something else, such as, say, Plame’s ID.

David Kay on Condi -

from Frontline’s The Dark Side (Cheney)

” Quite frankly, the thing that I find hardest to understand in this entire story where was the national security adviser, Condi Rice? She should immediately have said to the any DCI, not just George Tenet, anyone who did that in the Oval Office, “No, you go back and you come back with a better case. Here are the doubts the president’s expressed. Let’s see what’s there.” But it was allowed to slide. Here again, I think it was allowed to slide because “We all knew he’s got weapons”.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/…..cript.html

loved, loved, loved when they shipped him over there and all of Wingnutostan was touting his cred – only to find upon his return that he hated america

hackworth @ 16

Catherine Martin is someone with whom I am least familiar in this tangled web of deception and obfuscation. Any pointers? I missed that part in class.

VP’s spokesperson. She told Libby about Plame’s status shortly before he started leaking wildly. She was witness to his phone call to Cooper. And she was part of a conversation on July 12 in which they strategized responses.

Could Ms. Martin be the mysterious immunized witness?

Bionic @ 77:

Alan Keyes, A native-born African-American who ran against Obama for the Senate seat, argued in the campaign along the same lines. That argument obviously fell on deaf ears, however. Obama was born in the United States. He is therefore not an African immigrant.

Americans under 27 years old are the most ethnically and racially diverse group in the world. That generation compels a recalibration of issues of race and ethnicity in the context of globalization. But all that is a topic for another thread, if it ever comes up.

I wasn’t suggesting he was an immigrant, but the fact that his father was one does play a part in his world view. I agree that the old ideas of black and white divisions that America holds so dear have to be recalibrated.

I would hope people would be more interested in hearing what candidates have to say and looking at what they have done than vote for the convenient cardboard cutout that media likes to use to represent them.

Oh wait. I just remembered Lieberman.