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Showing posts from February, 2007

Wish you were here

If you're in Michigan and you're reading this on Saturday afternoon, you are NOT here. Why? You're missing one helluva gig! Senator Carl Levin gets us fired up and ready to take on the war machine in the Sentate. At the Blogger Caucus, Emptywheel demonstrates her ability to talk as rapidly with her hands as she live blogs from the Libby trial media room at Prettyman Courthouse. And look who else made it to Michigan -- Brian Keeler, a.k.a. NYBri, here to talke about Blue Tiger Dems and The Albany Project. Wow, two DailyKos rockstars here in one room! (Um, Emptywheel is still talking with her smokin' live blogging technique.) And Senator Stabenow launches this bash with a collection of some of the finest Democrats this country has taking the stage with her, including Rep. Sander Levin, Rep. John Conyers, and Rep. John Dingell. Wow. Critical mass of progressive brain power here.

Libby Trial: Closing Arguments

A shout out to folks popping in from the FireDogLake live blogging coverage of the U.S. v. Libby trial! For the link to primer including glossary of terms, see link at the left , conveniently located under the shameless plug for FDL's live blogger Marcy Wheeler's book, Anatomy of Deceipt. Sales through that link support FDL. May justice be served and the good guys win, for once. EDIT: Some of the FDL regulars (or irregulars, as the case may be) have been chatting about placing bets on the outcome. Go ahead, lay your bets in comments. Is Libby guilty or not guilty? How many counts and which counts, if guilty? I'll start: I think guilty on all five counts of perjury, false statements and obstruction. Any male senior administration official who remembers more about a Miami Dolphins game than an attractive, blonde, deepest cover CIA agent with two babies at home needs a good whack along side the chops anyhow, at the very least.

Saving our heritage - saving the wild UP

This is part of the watershed above Big Bay, on the way to Marquette, only a handful of miles as the crow flies from the Yellow Dog Plains. The area has a diverse range of environments, from moist freshwater creek beds in deciduous forests to dry, sandy near-alpine-like conditions in higher elevations with older conifer growth and younger brushy areas developing into new jack pine stands. And this is what I used to do as a kid, here in the same stream beds, looking for salamanders and tiny brook trout and crawfish and bugs as if they were gold nuggets. It's rare to run into somebody out here, and when you do, they are fishing, hunting, berry picking, logging, or heading back to town with whatever they caught, picked or logged. I think this is Eagle Rock, only a stone's throw from the area where Kennecott Mines wants to mine for nickel sulfide. Not clear in this picture taken on a hazy afternoon is a large outcrop of bluestone and granite on which perch some conifers, reachin

Breaching the barrier: Christy Hardin Smith on reporters' privilege

FireDogLake's Christy Hardin Smith had an excellent and highly educational post up this past Tuesday tackling Judy Miller, former journalist for The New York Times. You'll recall that Miller wrote a number of pieces that fueled the run-up to the Iraq War, based on information that was inadequate; if you don't recall Miller, you'll be reminded by this evening's news as she will take the stand today in the U.S. vs. Libby trial. Christy's post serves as an excellent backgrounder on Miller prior to her testimony today. The concept of reporters' privilege has been discussed extensively because of Miller's jailing for refusing to testify to the federal Grand Jury investigating the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame. Miller claimed reporters' privilege – a subset of the First Amendment protections of free speech – as well as a lack of release by her source, Lewis “Scooter” Libby. (Libby has been a target of of umbrella investigation, and is being