Roscoe's Blog

Judith Miller, Free at Last

After 85 days in jail for refusing to disclose her sources on the Valerie Plame investigation, NYT reporter Judith Miller has finally agreed to testify.  We are being told (by Miller's lawyer, natch) that she agreed only because the source she was protecting,  I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby (and how has a man with such a silly name risen to a prominent position in the U.S. Government), has waived any right to confidentiality.

Well, I didn't get it.  Everyone knew that Libby was a source on the Plame thing.  Moreover, Libby also had given her the waiver over a year ago.  What changed, we are told, was Libby's recent assurance to her attorney that the waiver was really voluntary.

That, frankly, is silly.  Are we to believe that Robert Bennett let his client sit in the can for almost three months without picking up the phone, calling Tate, and asking if Scooter really meant it?  And how was any of this secret, given that Scooter had already disclosed that he spoke with Miller about Plame?  For Heaven's sake, he testified in the  grand jury about his conversations with her.

So people are puzzled.  Some of the more cynical think that Miller wanted to go to jail for the publicity and to prove what a First Amendment hero she was.  But that doesn't sound right either.  But this paragraph in the Post provides a clue:

But [Miller Attorney] Abrams said in an interview yesterday that Fitzgerald made a recent and important compromise. The prosecutor would narrow his questions to Libby, which he had not been willing to do when Abrams approached him about the idea last year. Sources close to Miller said she had numerous government sources she wanted to protect, but Libby was the only one relevant to the Plame investigation.

So there is another source (or sources), and Miller agreed to testify only after the prosecutor agreed he would limit his questioning to Scooter.   The prosecutor, Fitzgerald, rolled over on this one because the Grand Jury's term was about to end (on October 16).

So if the "did Scooter really mean it about the waiver" story is bunk, then who is Miller protecting?  Maybe her real source for the Plame leak (Scooter never even knew Plame's name).  Maybe she was protecting herself; avoiding giving testimony about who tipped her off about a planned FBI raid on an "Islamic charity". 

At any rate, we aren't going to find out what is going on by listening to what her lawyers tell us.  (And a hat tip to Powerline).

Never Mind

Remember all that nonsense in the prior post about keeping an open mind about the Delay indictment?  Never mind.  According to Byron York, Ronnie Earle, the Travis County prosecutor behind the indictment allowed a film crew to have "extraordinary access" to the investigation.  According to the film makers, the movie:

[F]ollows maverick Austin DA Ronnie Earle’s investigation into what really happened when corporate money joined forces with relentless political ambitions to help swing the pivotal 2002 Texas elections, cementing Republican control from Austin to Washington D.C.

Allowing a film maker access during the investigation of a crime?  If I had tried that stunt back when I was prosecuting cases I would have been on the sidewalk with my walking papers.  This sounds more and more like a publicity stunt masquerading as a prosecution.

The Delay Indictment

Tom Delay has been indicted for conspiracy to violate Texas laws regarding campaign funding.  A copy of the indictment is here.  Apparently, Texas law prohibits corporate contributions to candidates, and Delay is accused of helping to evade the law by running the corporate contributions through a PAC he controlled.

The question on everyone's mind is whether the indictment is the result of a real criminal investigation or a political witch hunt.   It's not fair to dismiss the actions of prosecutor Ronnie Earl out of hand; while I am a Republican, it would not stun me to learn that some Republicans are guilty of corruption.   We can't assume that just because Delay is "one of us" he walks with the Angels (think O.J. for a minute) or that the prosecutor is guilty of political pandering just because he is a Democrat.

That being said, there are a couple of things.  First, everyone should remember, and a lot of news stories leave this out (like the Los Angeles Times, natch) that Ronnie Earle is the same guy that got egg on his face over the prosecution of Kay Bailey Hutchinson.  The charges against Hutchinson were similar technical violations of campaign finance laws, and Earle dismissed his case on the courthouse steps (after jury selection went "badly" and the Judge refused to make an advance ruling on the admissibility of evidence).   In hindsight that case looked somewhat like a political hatchet job.  Basically, I would feel a lot better about this indictment if it were being handled by the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Texas.

Second, while my information is limited to the indictment and the news reports, it does not appear that Delay was involved in an overt act in furtherance of the conspiracy.  In non lawyer terms, while the indictment alleges that Delay "agreed" to participate in the scheme, it does not allege that he actually took any actions in furtherance of the scheme.  Therefore, unless Earle has some insider who will testify (credibly) about conversations where Delay was directing this thing (and the indictment does not so allege), the case against him is pretty thin.

But I guess we shall see.

I have no idea what is going on at this site, but I laughed for about five minutes.

Very touching story out of South Bend.   Notre Dame's new coach, Charlie Weis is not only a pretty good coach, but he has a lot of heart.  I guess I have to climb on the bandwagon.

Politicizing a Disaster

Hurricane Rita hasn't even hit yet, and already the jerks for whom there is nothing more important than politics are out, blaming Bush for the recent spate of powerful hurricanes.  According to Brit Sir John Lawton, chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, "[t]he increased intensity of these kinds of extreme storms is very likely to be due to global warming."  And Sir Lawton is quick to see a silver lining in the massive homelessness and loss of life that Rita is likely to cause - it's all Bush's fault:

Referring to the arrival of Hurricane Rita he said: "If this makes the climate loonies in the States realise we've got a problem, some good will come out of a truly awful situation."

A couple of points about this mean spirited nonsense.  First, of course, while there is evidence that the earth is getting a very little bit warmer, the notion that anything we are doing can cause or alleviate the problem is, at best, a theory.  There have been extreme temperature cycles in the past, well before there were any SUVs around to "cause" global warming.

Second, as I have noticed in the past, the global warming guys tend to take every bit of unusual weather, from warm winters, cold winters, droughts or excessive rainfall and blame it on global warming (i.e. George Bush).  But it seems we never hear the consequences of global warming in advance .  In other words, I didn't hear any of the global warming types warning us of the  powerful hurricanes we were going to get because of our failure to sign the Kyoto Treaty, at least  before we actually started getting powerful hurricanes.

Which is why I tend to go with Colorado State's William Grey who, according to CNN,  predicted back in 1995 that we entering a period where we could expect more severe hurricanes.   He and his fellow "loonies" believe that the current run of hurricanes is due to naturally occurring cycles.  According to Max Mayfield over at the National Hurricane Center, we have had other periods of severe hurricanes in the past, and it just happens to be our turn again:

"The increased activity since 1995 is due to natural fluctuations (and) cycles of hurricane activity driven by the Atlantic Ocean itself along with the atmosphere above it and not enhanced substantially by global warming," he testified.

Not only does Grey discount the impact of global warming on all of this, but he has some harsh words for these guys like Lawton who are in the business of distorting their science for short term political gain:

"There are all these medicine men out there who want to capitalize on general ignorance on this subject," he said.

"With all the problems in the world, we shouldn't be dealing with this."

A Space Elevator Now

As an old (and I mean "old" in the  "boy, that geezer sure is old" sense) fan of  science fiction, one of my big disappointments has been mankind's failure to explore and colonize space.  When 2001: A Space Odyssey came out in '68 my junior high science class took a trip to N.Y. to see it.  The movie showed commercial space travel, a working space station, a moon colony and exploration of the outer planets.  At the time none of this seemed an unreasonable goal by the beginning of the next century.

Now it is 2005 and we are still futzing around in low earth orbit, trying to get the space shuttle to work and wondering if we should bother returning to the moon.

Part of the problem, of course, is that we turned space exploration over to a big inefficient government bureaucracy.    But not everything is NASA's fault, at the end of the day the real rock in the middle of the stream is the earth's gravity well.  It simply costs too much to get people and cargo into orbit with conventional rockets.  We throw away tons of material and fuel to get a few  pounds into orbit, I mean it would take a half billion dollar space shuttle launch to put an Escalade into orbit (which I use as an example because firing SUVs into space would not be a greater waste of money than most of what NASA does these days).

Which is why I am so tickled with the  idea of a "space elevator", invented by SF author Arthur C. Clarke in the 1979 novel "Fountains of Paradise".    It was impractical then, but Bradley Carl Evans tells us that new discoveries in materials puts the elevator at the cutting edge of what we are capable of doing right now.

Mr. Evans thinks we can build the gadget for 10 billion dollars, and he is probably dreaming.  But when you think of the money we are spending on Katrina relief and Iraq, the cost of a working space elevator would be relatively small.   And it would have the potential to open up the solar system for all the cool stuff; mining the asteroids, orbital solar power collectors, moon colonies.  It would be geek heaven.  More importantly, we could finally break free of this globe we have been squatting on since we learned to squat.

So sign me up.  (Hat tip to Glenn Reynolds).

The Latest from Arianna

Remember Arianna Huffington's "SUV Drivers Support Terrorist" ads?  Well, Mr. KABC and Michelle Malkin have the goods on her being picked up at the  San Fransisco airport by the Mother-Of-All-SUVs, the Chevy Suburban:

It gets better.  Arianna was in SF to speak at the Sierra Club's national summit.  In fact, it was the Sierra Club that sent this monster among SUVs to fetch Ms. Huffington for the event.

The Sierra Club is now saying that it regrets the choice of vehicle.  In fact, all it really regrets is being caught doing what rich liberals always do, pronouncing standards for us members of the lumpen proletariat that they have no intention of following.

As for Arianna, the only thing I have never gotten about her is how it is that there are still people who think her opinion about anything at all is important to anyone at all.

Roberts Hearing Roundup

About the only thing we learned about Roberts during the hearing--other than that he has a sense of humor--is that he is a master of appearing to say something while actually saying nothing at all.  Look--for example--at his exchange with Senator Feinstein about the Commerce Clause. 

She was whining that the Supremes had struck down two laws, one involving guns in schools (Lopez) and one involving "violence against women" (Morrison), for not having a sufficient interstate nexus to be within the Federal government's power to regulate commerce.  After bloviating for a bit about all the dead children that the Rehnquist Court apparently didn't care about, she asked Roberts for his views on the scope of the Commerce Clause.  Here was his reply:

ROBERTS: Well, of course, I've tried to avoid saying whether I agree or disagree with particular cases, but I would point out in this area in particular, I think it's very important to look at the most recent case, which is the Raich case, the medical marijuana case, because the argument was that these two decisions that you are talking about, that were the first in the 60 years, Lopez and Morrison, the argument there was based on Lopez and Morrison -- Congress lacks the power in this area.

And what the Supreme Court said in the Raich case, which I think is very important, it said there are a lot more precedents on the commerce clause besides Lopez and Morrison.

And the appropriate way to regard those is two decisions in more than 200-year sweep of decisions in which the Supreme Court has given extremely broad -- has recognized extremely broad authority on Congress's part, going all the way back to Gibbons v. Ogden and Chief Justice John Marshall when those commerce clause decisions were important in binding the nation together as a single commercial unit.

So, again, without commenting on whether particular decisions are correct or not, I do think it's important to recognize that the court itself in its most recent decision has said, you need to focus on the broad sweep and not just on those two decisions.

Everyone see this?  Roberts says one or two absolutely true things about what some cases say, without saying a single thing about what his own opinions are.  But, by mentioning some language from a case talking about the broad scope of the commerce power he--without saying anything about whether he agrees with that case--gives an answer that satisfies Feinstein.  And he did this sort of thing for days, practically at will.

Some conservatives and libertarians are concerned about his answers.  I admit if you weren't paying attention, you would think he came across as a pretty liberal guy.  Well, I once briefly worked with him, and heard him talk about arguing before the Supreme Court.  He said that you have to figure out which votes you need (i.e. which justices aren't already in your camp but might be swayed) and pitch your argument at them. 

Roberts was doing precisely this, he knew the republicans were all going to vote for him, and so he made moderate type noises in the hopes of attracting a democrat or too.  But all the while he was really saying nothing at all about what he thought about anything.  Sure, it was a lot more satisfying to hear Judge Bork taking the liberals to school during his confirmation hearing.  But where is Judge Bork today?

All this was noted by the folks over at the New Republic, who complain that if this is what hearing of the future will be like, there really isn't much point in holding hearings.    But I disagree, if we didn't learn anything about Roberts (other than that he is really, really smart, which we already knew), we learned about how dumb some of our senators can be.

Did I say dumb?  How about pompous, and arrogant and dumb?   Ann Althouse puts together a montage of some of the more grippingly bad performances put on by some members of the "Worlds Greatest Deliberative Body."    Or how about Herb Kohl and his "what will the Supreme Court do for the hurricane victims" or that pair of windbags Biden and Kennedy?   Hopefully the result of the hearing will be that Roberts gets his job but the public demands a smarter senate.

Pledge Ruled Unconstitutional Again

Today in Sacramento, a Federal district judge declared that the Pledge of Allegiance is  unconstitutional because of the inclusion of the two words "under God".  The man behind the lawsuit was our old friend Michael Newdow, the atheist who earlier brought the same case on behalf of his daughter. 

The Supreme Court had reversed the Ninth Circuit decision in Newdow's favor in the first case, on the ground that he lacked standing.  The Supremes said that Newdow himself wasn't harmed by the kids reciting the pledge and that, under California law he could not assert his daughter's rights in the matter.  The Supreme Court noted that the daughter's mom had full custody,  and that according to her the kid had no problem with saying the  Pledge. 

Newdow brought his new lawsuit on behalf of two families who apparently (they are not identified) are ag'in their children having to utter the hated words  "under God" .   Carter appointee Judge  (and whatever follows the phrase "Carter appointee Judge . . ." is almost never anything good) Lawrence Karlton--according to news stories--stated that he was bound to rule in Newdow's favor by the Ninth Circuit decision in the earlier case.

That, of course, is the part that I don't get.   Under Article III of the constitution, the federal courts may only decide a "case or controversy".   A "case or controversy" only exists if the litigants have "standing" (i.e. they have a personal stake in the outcome of the case).  The Supreme Court has held that Newdow did not have standing in the earlier case, and as such it wasn't a "case or controversy" and the Ninth Circuit was without judicial power to issue an opinion.

In effect, then, the prior case never really happened and Judge Karlton clearly should have known that.  Which leads me to believe that either (1) I am missing something obvious (which happens), (2) Judge Karlton got this one wrong in a very big way, or (3) the press reports are not correctly reporting the basis of Judge Karlton's decision  (also been known to happen, even with all those editors).

I guess we shall see.