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Quick round up
- It’s now six nights of rioting in Paris.
- Secret CIA detention camps around the world. I’m reminded of Wretchard’s line one time that when Truman ordered Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombed, he had “the sand” to do it under his own name.
- I finally got the proper wireless adapter for my Tivo, which I got to work without incident. Sadly it uses Wep, but with 3-4 totally unprotected networks around me I would imagine I’m not worth pursuing.
- It’s amazing how much lists and visual sign of progress can affect one’s mood.
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Before I forget to post about these
From an Agitator post about a senator naming a building after himself (much like Cynthia McKinney and Memorial Drive).
It’d be swell to see the GOP sweeped out 1994-like next year. Not that the Democrats would be any better — or worse. I’d just like to see the Republicans get smacked around a little for their arrogance. But it won’t happen. They’ve (a) passed incumbent-protecting McCain-Feingold, and (b) gerrymandered the bejesus out of the congressional map to make sure they’re immune from accountability.
He leaves out the Roe Effect but beyond that has it about right. When will people come around to term limits?
And infrared sniper detection is cool.
You would think that five nights of rioting in Paris would be bigger news, but you’re wrong. You would also think that people would bring up the fact that the rioting is happening in Algerian immigrant neighborhoods but it seems to be not that way.
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Happy Halloween
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Weird
I have no idea what to make of this. Russia does seem to be on quite a slide though, even with high oil prices. The rest of the former Soviet block seem to be doing better, at least anecdotally.
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Thoughts on the CIA
From Instapundit
THE BIG LOSER in the Libby affair, it would seem to me, is the CIA. At least it will be if anyone pays attention.
Consider: Assuming that Valerie Plame was some sort of genuinely covert operative — something that’s not actually quite clear from the indictment — the chain of events looks pretty damning: Wilson was sent to Africa on an investigative mission regarding nuclear weapons, but never asked to sign any sort of secrecy agreement(!). Wilson returns, reports, then publishes an oped in the New York Times (!!) about his mission. This pretty much ensures that people will start asking why he was sent, which leads to the fact that his wife arranged it. Once Wilson’s oped appeared, Plame’s covert status was in serious danger. Yet nobody seemed to care.
This leaves two possibilities. One is that the mission was intended to result in the New York Times oped all along, meaning that the CIA didn’t care much about Plame’s status, and was trying to meddle in domestic politics. This reflects very badly on the CIA.
The other possibility is that they’re so clueless that they did this without any nefarious plan, because they’re so inept, and so prone to cronyism and nepotism, that this is just business as usual.
All of which is true. How valuable could the information have been if they sent some retired guy to have coffee with mining officials. He also notes revisionism occurring.
More thoughts from Tom MacGuire.
This is not to say that Libby or whoever shouldn’t be going to prison, but it does point out that there are still structural problems that remain. Come to think of it those problems have probably only gotten worse now that the national intelligence system is more centralized.
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Times
From my place to the Airport (picking up Mark) – Door to curb – 22 minutes. Memorial Drive can be quite a timesaver. That was without really speeding too.
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Interesting post from Wretchard
In this post about violence against Coptic Christians in Egypt, for some reason I was reminded of the old Conan the Barbarian comics (from the 70s, when it was good).
For some reason the notion of diverse groups of civilizations and barbarians has always had great allure to me. I’m not sure why.
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Libby
As you might could guess, I’m a bit let down by this whole Libby business. While it does involve perjury, (yay irony!) I don’t think it’s got the potential let us have prosperous gridlock and partisanship for the next few years.
It’s still surprising that people are taking what Joe Wilson said at face value, particularly the “it was impossible for uranium to get out of Niger (a third world country) because corporate safeguards were in place” bit. Also, the indictment would seem to make clear that no original crime (i.e. outing a covert CIA agent) was committed.
Also unmentioned by most commentators is the fact that Libby was the lawyer of fugitive billionaire Marc Rich, who was pardoned by Bill Clinton but still remains wanted for other crimes elsewhere. He was also mentioned in the UN Oil for Food scandal.
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Victory!
Miers withdraws!
Now Janice Rogers Brown perhaps?
Curiously this was not buried during the weekend.
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Cold and overworked
When was the last time it was in the mid 30s in October in Georgia? Weird.
And I’ve already worked eight hours today, and it’s not even 9:00 yet. Blech.