Bad Deeds for 11-20-2007

Bush, Cheney, Rove and Others Passed Along False Information Says Former White House Press Secretary – President Bush, Karl Rove, and other top administration officials were involved in misleading the White House press corps about the outing of ex-CIA agent Valerie Plame, a forthcoming book from former Press Secretary Scott McClellan alleges:

The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby.

There was one problem. It was not true. I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President’s chief of staff, and the president himself.

Republican Front-Runners Turn Down Opportunity to Blog for Veterans – An organization representing veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan launched a new blog Tuesday, which will feature posts from some of the top presidential candidates. Only one GOP contender — maverick Ron Paul — responded to VoteVets.org’s invitation to blog while five Democratic candidates answered the organization’s call. VoteVets is a technically non-partisan group, but it works closely with mostly Democratic congressional candidates and aims to elect lawmakers who are “critical of the execution of the war in Iraq.”

The organization hopes its blog, VetVoice.com , becomes a clearinghouse for discussion of veterans’ issues as the presidential campaign continues. Posts will be added to the site throughout the day Tuesday from Paul and Democratic candidates, Bill Richardson, Chris Dodd, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

“It’s heartening to know that the candidates who are posting think military and veterans issues are important enough to warrant a post on this new blog,” Brandon Friedman, an Iraq and Afghanistan veteran, and vice chairman of VoteVets.org, said in a news release. “VetVoice.com, we hope will become the hub on the web for those concerned about military and veterans’ issues, and where people can take a critical look at these issues, and proposed solutions. There’s no better way to kick it off than to begin with posts from those who are seeking to be our Commander in Chief.”

More Fear Mongering: The Internet Will Crash Soon If We Don’t Give the Telecom Companies What They Want – The Internet will start crashing down around us by the year 2010, David Lieberman writes, citing a recent “study” by Nemertes Research. The reason for our demise? We dastardly Net users have gone too far. By taking control of our own media, users are straining the Net to the limit. The only way to save the Internet from the coming “exaflood,” the report concludes, is to pay more federal money to the likes of AT&T and let them gut Net Neutrality protections so they can fix the problem. In their ceaseless efforts to become the gatekeepers to what we do online, the phone and cable companies funnel money to unscrupulous think tanks, which, in turn, churn out research, painting a picture of Internet Armageddon that can only be averted by giving the telcos exactly what they want: more money and control. Nemertes is a wind-up research group funded by the Internet Innovation Alliance, a group underwritten by AT&T.

A Bad Investment – Where do we invest in the future of energy?

Bush’s Mideast Conference: No Entrance Strategy – The good news is, the administration is now poised to hold a major Middle East peace conference. The bad news is, no one seems to have any idea who’s coming, when they’ll meet, or what they’ll do. But no conference date has been set. No invitations have been issued. And no one really agrees on what the participants will actually talk about once they arrive at the Naval Academy for the meeting, which is intended to relaunch Bush’s stillborn “road map” plan to create a Palestinian state. “No one seems to know what is happening,” one senior Arab envoy said last week, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid appearing out of the loop. “I am completely lost.”

Regards,

Jim