RAGGED THOTS

Let us count the ways:

1) Cancelling AND not giving Sharpton, Rep. Charlie Rangel (who represents Harlem) and Co. a heads-up... Is Bloomberg obligated to let Al Sharpton know what he's about to do to avoid racially-charged situations? Well, no. But why operate that way during your entire first term -- such as notifying Sharpton immediately after the most recent Howard Beach racial incident? He acted similarly in the accidental rooftop shooting of black youth in January, 2004.

2) Speculating at yesterday's press conference that supporter Rev. Floyd Flake's criticism Tuesday was a result of his not having received his"bullet points." Ah, treat the pastor of the city's largest black congregation like he's some campaign staff lackey who forgot to follow his stage directions. Good move!

3) At the same press conference, Sharpton jabs Sharpton on his legal residence, "Look, I can't even figure out where Rev. Sharpton votes." (The broader gossip is that Bloomberg's team was responsible for planting the stories questioning Sharpton's legal residence in Wednesday's papers in the first place).

So much for the nearly four years of a symbiotic relationship Bloomberg had with Sharpton. Worse, how wonderful to give the gasping-for-breath Ferrer campaign a lifeline when they needed it most.

Bloomberg has enough money so he can buy so much ads that he will be able to ride out this flap. But any plan he might have had to get record numbers of black voters for a Republican mayoral candidate has officially gone out the window.

As a black supporter of Bloomberg's said, "If the mayoral swing vote were Italians and a debate was scheduled for Bay Ridge (Brooklyn), a cancellation would look like a slap to the whole community. Same thing here. The black vote was up for grabs in this election. This is an unnecessary self-inflicted political mistake."

# posted by Robert A. George @ 9:45 AM

Richard Sambrook, director of the BBC World Service and Global News Division, told a conference the broadcaster's prominent use of video and other material contributed by ordinary citizens signaled that the BBC was evolving from being a broadcaster to a facilitator of news.

"We don't own the news any more," Sambrook said. "This is a fundamental realignment of the relationship between large media companies and the public."

# posted by Robert A. George @ 12:26 AM

[A]fter letting the Harriet Miers news digest for the day and while rocking my toddler to sleep, I suddenly had an epiphany of what troubles me about this nomination.

The problem is that no one really knows what her epiphany was and what it was that drew her to the Republican Party and to Conservative principles. Every one of us who is active in the party knows exactly when it was that we identified ourselves as Republicans and we also know numerous other times through our development when these beliefs were solidified and challenged.

For many of us who came of age during the Reagan years, I think it is very proper of us to look at Ms. Miers and wonder what it is that causes her to define herself and align herself with the Republican Party.

Additionally, there are many out there who were long time Democrats, the so-called Reagan Democrats that still voted for some Democrats, but for whom Reagan was the shifting point in their political views. It is not apparent from what has been written so far that Ms. Miers was even a Reagan Democrat, for she backed Al Gore and supported the DNC as late as 1988. In 1988, she was forty-three years old. Few people at that age shift their political view points. Parties may move towards people in their forties and fifties [causing a Zell Miller or Ralph Hall to feel that the 'party was leaving them'], but they rarely move to a party [even Hall stayed a Dem until the 2002 redistricting forced him to switch]. If she was a Conservative Democrat, please tell us why she donated to the DNC and to Al Gore and effectively turned her back on the Reagan Revolution. Did she support the Reagan Revolution? Was she drawn to Goldwater in the 1960’s and 70’s when she obviously was in the prime of her intellectual development? If not Goldwater and Reagan, who were her early political intellectual influences?

I fear that Ms. Miers, while a skilled lawyer, lacks a sense of the greater purpose and of the principles that motivate many of us to forgo more lucrative opportunities to advance the cause of the party and of our ideas. It would appear that Ms. Miers has been driven through life by a desire to succeed in the legal profession and to break through barriers that needed to be broken, but at what point were her goals and objectives anything but the advancement of her own career? Were the donations to Democrats a play of political expediency designed to advance personal or rofessional goals?

Additionally, at what point did her career or a case take on a larger purpose? And more importantly, can she see the larger purpose and the big picture that every decision that she will face on the Court will be part of?

So kind of like that scene at the end of the movie Working Girl when Philip Bosco’s character Oren Trask asks Sigourney Weaver’s character Katherine Parker, what was the inspiration for her idea of merging Trask Enterprises with Metro Media, and all she can answer is “Jack help me out…” I want to ask and hope that someone asks Ms. Miers what her epiphany was and why it is she considers herself a Republican or a Conservative.

I hope that we get a better answer than “help me out…”

# posted by Robert A. George @ 8:30 AM

Libby had a second conversation with Miller on July 12 or July 13, the source said, in which he said he had learned that Wilson's wife had a role in sending him on the trip and that she worked for the CIA. Libby never knew Plame's name or that she was a covert operative, the source said.

This is interesting, because if we go back to our timeline tracking the furious developments that were going on in both the U.S. and the U.K., we note that July 12, 2003, was the one of the two days not really accounted for in previous news stories. In between the first and second times Miller and Libby spoke, the following things occurred:

• On July 9, in the UK, Blair’s government has orchestrated the outing of scientist David Kelly as the source of BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan’s explosive report that the Blair government “sexed-up” its Iraq intelligence dossier. In the U.S., Robert Novak talks with Karl Rove (Wilson’s op-ed had appeared three days before).
  
• On July 11, George Tenet releases a statement asserting that the “16 words” about yellowcake uranium shouldn’t have been in the president’s State of the Union address. The same day, Karl Rove talks to Matt Cooper about, among other things, Joseph Wilson and his wife.

Which makes The Post’s conclusion somewhat odd. In the original story posted on the Web, Friday, September 30, the paper's final paragraph reads:

“Miller's role had been one of the great mysteries in the leak probe. It is unclear why she emerged as a central figure in the probe despite not writing a story about the case.”

In the full story in Saturday's paper, that passage is no longer there. Instead, there is the less speculative: "Miller never wrote an article on the matter."

Yet, even editing out the earlier passage, the question hangs in the air: Why was Miller behind bars for three months concerning sources to a story which that she never wrote about?

The answer is obvious: Judith Miller emerged as a central figure because she MADE herself a central figure and, arguably, BECAUSE she didn't "writ[e] a story about the case." This is the Judith Miller who, four days later, wrote words of encouragement to British scientist David Kelly: “David, I heard from another member of your fan club that things went well for you today. Hope it's true, J.”

These don't seem like the words of a disinterested journalist. These are the words of someone who has some sort of interest in how a witness performs in a parliamentary hearing.

How is it that – two years later and after Judith Miller has spent 90 days in jail for refusing to cooperate with a criminal investigation – not one media organization has deemed it important to wonder: Who is the other “member of [Kelly’s] fan club”? Is it Scooter Libby? Is it John Bolton (who visited Miller in jail and we know was questioned by the State Department Inspector General the same day Kelly’s body was found)? Is it someone else? If it is indeed an American, exactly what is that person's interest in a British Parliamentary inquiry?

Judith Miller is the missing link between two different investigations. She’s not a mere reporter. How do we know? Because, she has “reported” none of this.

Despite these multiple conversations with Libby, Miller never wrote about Joseph Wilson.

Despite the fact that she revealed the content of her e-mail to her Times editors – and one of her colleagues wrote about her receiving the “dark actors” e-mail – she never was inclined to pursue what drove a major source of hers to suicide.

Despite the fact that both Wilson and Kelly were critical actors in twin transatlantic challenges to the integrity of government assertions in the run-up to the Iraq War, Miller never offered even an analysis of what was occurring – even though it is clear that she was in close contact with individuals close to both controversies.

Despite the fact, that the challenges were about validity of intelligence related to weapons of mass destruction – journalistic turf that she had made her own in The New York Times.

And Miller wrote nothing about this in the days following either the Wilson op-ed (published in her own newspaper) or the suicide of an individual with whom her e-mail indicates she shares a familial intimacy that goes beyond the usual reporter-source relationship (“Hope it’s true, J.”)

Isn’t this peculiar?

And, again: WHO is the “member of [David Kelly’s] fan club” in a position to tell Judy Miller that “things went well for” him in his testimony on July 16th?

Upon which side of the Atlantic was that person?

The question is, will the true story ever come out?

If what Miller says is true in terms of the concession that Patrick Fitzgerald made to get Miller’s testimony, the answer may be – probably not.

According to the transcript of her press conference after being released, Miller states:

Once I got a personal voluntary waiver [from my source], my lawyer...approached the special counsel to see if my grand jury testimony could be limited to the communications with the source from whom I had received that personal and voluntary waiver. The special counsel agreed to this, and that was very important to me...

...I know what my conscience would allow. And I was -- I stood fast to that.

Well isn't that interesting? Given that we know that her source (Lewis Libby) had essentially given her a full waiver a year before, the only thing that was different was that Fitzgerald finally allowed Miller to dictate the scope of the investigation! Wow!

A Washington observer with a keen sense of history told me, "That's like when Woodward and Bernstein expected Hugh Sloan, Treasurer for CREEP and former Halderman aide, to name names to the initial Watergate grand jury but he didn't. "Woodstein" were stunned and pissed off at Sloan until they learned the initial prosecutor never dreamed to inquire about anything beyond the the seven burglars."

If Fitzgerald made this major concession to Miller, he may have made it impossible to get a clear picture as to the full motives of the White House with respect to Joseph Wilson.

If that interest extended across the Atlantic into the BBC/Blair contretemps (and given Miller's role in both of them, that is not too wide a leap), Miller may have succeeded in shutting down that particular avenue.

NEXT: A deeper reading of the parallel challenges to the transatlantic "official stories."

UPDATE: Welcome Hullaboo readers! Feel free to be alternately intrigued and appalled by the various stuff you might encounter in these parts.

# posted by Robert A. George @ 2:00 AM