how can I love you if you won't lie down



* New York Times. excerpt:

"In July 2003, Mr. Wilson wrote an Op-Ed article in The Times that described how he had been sent by the C.I.A. to investigate a report that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Niger. He said he had found no evidence to support the claim of a uranium purchase, or even a serious attempt to negotiate one, and that he had reported this to Washington. That is entirely accurate. Mr. Rove knew it when he spoke to Mr. Cooper, and he tried to give the impression that Mr. Wilson was an unreliable person who had been sent to Niger only because of his wife's influence. In fact, Mr. Wilson had excellent credentials for the mission, and the entire Niger story had already been pretty thoroughly debunked by the time Mr. Cooper and Mr. Rove spoke.

"What really bothered Mr. Rove was Mr. Wilson's view that the administration had deliberately twisted the intelligence on Iraq and that Mr. Bush had misled Americans about the need for war. We don't know whether top officials heard about Mr. Wilson's findings and ignored them, or whether the findings never reached the upper levels - at the time, dissenting views on Iraq were not getting much of an airing in the administration. There's a lot we don't know about this case. But these things are clear:

• Journalists should not tailor their principles to the politics of the moment.

• Coerced waivers of confidentiality are meaningless.

• Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction."

* the rude pundit:

"Had we destroyed Atwater through, perhaps, an investigation of his consulting firm’s relationship with a man who looted Medicare funds, we wouldn’t be discussing Karl Rove, who took the lessons of Atwater’s savagery and interwove policy manipulation into it. See, whereas Atwater’s primary (though not exclusive) influence was in campaign mode, Rove has merged the tactics of brutally dishonest campaigning with the work of the executive branch and made them the modus operandi for the White House. (This is not to mention the relationship between Atwater and young George, Jr., who was Atwater's 'minder' back in 1988 and learned a bit about manipulation and duplicity from Atwater.)

"You know what? If Karl Rove is ever put into a cell, the Rude Pundit doesn’t want it to be with some three-strikes-and-yer-out, beefed-up Texas drug mule who needs some flabby cheeks to call his own. No, the Rude Pundit wants the slime-covered skeleton of Lee Atwater thrown in there with Rove. He wants Rove to have to stare, endlessly, into those empty cavities where eyes once were, smelling the fecund dirt scent, the foul and everlasting odor of rot and decay. Just to let him know that he, too, shall pass."

* Short quicktime homemovie: 7 words you can't say in kindergarten. take a look.