Month: May 2006

The WSJ has the money quote:

Neither Mr. Goss, 67 years old, nor President Bush, who accepted the resignation during a brief White House announcement Friday, gave any reason for the surprise exit. (Read the full text of their statements.) But it comes after the once highflying agency has been eclipsed in the post-9/11 shake-up of the intelligence community and the creation of a White House-based National Intelligence directorate under John Negroponte that had sapped power from the Central Intelligence Agency chief. More recently, the agency has been rocked by a controversy over intelligence leaks.

The agency also has been drawn into a federal investigation of bribery that has sent former Rep. Randall "Duke" Cunningham to prison. Just this past week, the CIA confirmed that its third-ranking official, a hand-picked appointee of Mr. Goss, had attended poker games at a hospitality suite set up by a defense contractor implicated in the bribing of former Rep. Cunningham. Friday, people with knowledge of the continuing Cunningham inquiry said the CIA official, Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, is under federal criminal investigation in connection with awarding agency contracts.

Dusty Foggo. Tom Wolfe, are you now scripting reality?

Not some crazed lefty. The man who demanded that Rumsfeld answer the questions we all want to have answered turns out to be the man who gave former president George H. W. Bush his daily intelligence briefing. And he was right in the exchange; and Rummy was factually wrong. Yep: Rumsfeld lied. Quelle surprise.

The data are really quite remarkable. Here are two graphs, cited by Mark Blumenthal and created by Charles Franklin here and here.

Then there’s this downhill slalom:

Franklin comments:

I was frankly shocked at the above results. Other presidents have suffered low approval ratings, and President Bush still stands above the lows of four of the ten other post-war presidents. But I had not appreciated how much the current approval is below other mid-term approval ratings, even without extrapolating current trends. We have simply never seen a president this unpopular going into a midterm election.
I will be surprised if the current rate of decline continues. But I will also be surprised by a sustained upturn at the rate of November-January. Either would be an extreme outcome. But approval between the upper 20s and lower 30s seems entirely plausible. There is no precedent for a midterm with approval at those levels.

I’m predicting that the Democrats will win back both Houses this fall. Of course, no one should under-estimate the idiocy and incompetence of the Democratic party. But they have stiff competition on both those fronts these days.

It tells you not much. The full background on Hookergate, in which Goss, or his staffers, may be embroiled, is here. Republican spin can be found here. I find it underwhelming. The suddenness of this departure, its Friday afternoon timing, and the absence of any obvious cause suggests there is more to emerge. My sources tell me: much more.

Yes, it’s bad if U.S. Representative Patrick Kennedy got preferential treatment by the cops after a driving accident caused by substance abuse of some kind. There seem to be inconsistencies to his story. But he has acknowledged his addiction problem; he is going into rehab; and Kennedys have human rights too. They’re human beings as well as celebrities and politicians. I guess I’m biased because I’m old friends with some members of the family. But I have deeply admired how some Kennedys have sustained sobriety. It’s not easy for addicts. And as a society, we should do more to support sobriety and less to demonize and criminalize addicts. Patrick deserves no legal special treatment; he shouldn’t be let off the hook if he did something wrong. But he also needs help. I hope he gets it.

(Photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP.)

From the latest AP-Ipsos poll:

Forty-five percent of self-described conservatives now disapprove of the president … A whopping 65 percent of conservatives disapprove of Congress … Even 31 percent of conservatives want Republicans out of power.

What took them so long?

The rumors are swirling. The CIA is in open revolt, and that might have something to do with it. But the hottest rumors have to do with the Duke Cunningham scandal. Josh has more. There’s some important background reporting on the struggle between Goss and Negroponte here. Stay tuned …

The real Republican split on immigration is a geographical one, Ryan Sager argues. Money quote:

Back in December of 2005, Survey USA tracked views on immigration in all 50 states. In West Virginia, 60 percent of respondents agreed that "immigrants take jobs away from Americans." The picture was the same throughout most of the South: In Alabama, 56 percent agreed, Arkansas 53 percent, Mississippi 53 percent, South Carolina 53 percent.

Meanwhile, only 33 percent in New Mexico agreed that immigrants take away American jobs. In Arizona it was 42 percent, Colorado 44 percent, Nevada 44 percent and California 30 percent.

The South is a very difficult base to manage. Like a cuckoo, it tends to kick other allies out of the nest, be it a Democratic nest in the past or the Republican nest now.

The religious head of Iraq’s Shiite population, Ayatollah Sistani, recently issued an edict calling for the brutal murder of all gay people in Iraq. "The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing," this spiritual leader declared. Shiite militias are apparently making good on the fatwa. According to the Independent in London:

A number of public homophobic murders by the Badr militia have terrified Iraq’s gay community. Last September, Hayder Faiek, a transsexual, was burnt to death by Badr militias in the main street of Baghdad’s al-Karada district. In January, suspected militants shot another gay man in the back of the head.

The most recent is the point-blank shooting of a 14 year-old boy for having gay sex:

Ahmed Khalil was shot at point-blank range after being accosted by men in police uniforms, according to his neighbours in the al-Dura area of Baghdad… Ali Hili, the co-ordinator of a group of exiled Iraqi gay men who monitor homophobic attacks inside Iraq, said the fatwa had instigated a "witch-hunt of lesbian and gay Iraqis, including violent beatings, kidnappings and assassinations". "Young Ahmed was a victim of poverty," he said. "He was summarily executed, apparently by fundamentalist elements in the Iraqi police."

I have yet to hear anything from the major national gay groups. Surprise! Alas, I don’t expect the Bush administration to protest this – because they need Sistani so badly. But they should.