The Libby-Cheney Connection

More indispensable reporting from Murray Waas on the Libby trial. Money quote:

In the fall of 2003, as a federal criminal probe was just getting underway to determine who leaked the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame to the media, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the then-chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, sought out Cheney to explain to his boss his side of the story.

The explanation that Libby offered Cheney that day was virtually identical to one that Libby later told the FBI and testified to before a federal grand jury: Libby said he had only passed along to reporters unsubstantiated gossip about Plame that he had heard from NBC bureau chief Tim Russert.

The grand jury concluded that the account was a cover story to conceal the role of Libby and other White House officials in leaking information about Plame to the press, and indicted him on five felony counts of making false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice.

At the time that Libby offered his explanation to Cheney, the vice president already had reason to know that Libby’s account to him was untrue, according to sources familiar with still-secret grand jury testimony and evidence in the CIA leak probe, as well as testimony made public during Libby’s trial over the past three weeks in federal court.

Yet, according to Libby’s own grand jury testimony, which was made public during his trial in federal court, Cheney did nothing to discourage Libby from telling that story to the FBI and the federal grand jury. Moreover, Cheney encouraged then-White House press secretary Scott McClellan to publicly defend Libby, according to other testimony and evidence made public during Libby’s trial.

Did Libby invent a story to protect Cheney from liability? Was Cheney a de facto accessory to perjury? I’m convinced Fitzgerald smells something big here. So do I.

Love, Doubt, Children

Hugsandyhuffakergetty

Here's Sam Harris's latest letter to me. It begins:

Hmm…I'm afraid you chased a few red herrings in your last essay. I did not, for instance, beckon you to a world of my delusions, perfectly free of contingency. Nor did I claim that science is the gateway to such a world. I merely asked you to imagine what it would be like if our discourse about ethics and spirituality were as uncontaminated by cultural prejudice as the discourse of science already is. You appear to have misread me. Consequently, much of your last essay targeted terrain that I have never thought to occupy. I did hear some bomb-blasts in the distance. They were magnificent.

You are, of course, right to point out that science is beholden to the limits of human cognition (though it has begun to escape some of these limits with the aid of computers). Our cognitive horizons are clearly bounded by our neurophysiology, and our neurophysiology is a consequence of our evolution on this earth-which, as you know, is teeming with slithering contingencies as far as the eye can see. The point that I was trying to make is that science is not nearly as beleaguered by contingency as religion is. And this is what is so right with science and so wrong with religion. Needless to say, the discourse of science already exists, and it already functions by norms that are quite alien to religion. If applied in religion, these norms would leave very few traditional doctrines still standing. But contrary to your fears on the matter, this would not make religious music, art, or architecture any less beautiful.

This brings me to a related topic of confusion: there is nothing "purely rational" about the world I am advocating. Your comments seem to invoke a stark opposition between reason and emotion that I do not believe exists (and which now seems quite implausible at the level of the brain). The feeling we call "doubt" can be considered an emotion, and this is this feeling that prompts me to object to much of what you have written over the course of our debate. Could I find your reasoning doubtful without the feeling doubt? I don't know. But it has long been clear that people with neurological injuries that impede certain aspects of emotional processing fail at a variety of reasoning tasks. More to the point, perhaps, I do not think there is anything unreasonable about love, or about valuing love, or indeed, about valuing it above most (perhaps even all) things. While love is not reducible to reason, it is not in conflict with it either. So I think it is time we retire facile oppositions between cold rationality and juicy aesthetics, between truth and beauty, between reason and emotion, etc.

Regarding the fate of our children …

It continues here.

(Photo: Rebecca Jones hugs her dad Staff Sgt. Robert Jones during a homecoming ceremony for members of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force February 15, 2007 at Camp Pendleton, California. By Sandy Huffaker/Getty.)

Happiness Is Nixon

Beyond priceless 1972 Nixon re-election ad and jingle. Sing along!

Readers are hereby invited to find other YouTubes of excruciating or wonderful political advertizing from presidential campaigns in the past. As we head into another election season, it’s worth innoculating ourselves with a bit of ad-irony from history. Please write "Campaign Ad Schlock" in the contents line of your emails.

Right-Wing Recriminations

The post-2006 bitterness deepens. And no one has made bitterness more of a vocation than Richard Viguerie. Road-testing Rudy among the Christianists continues here. Has any pre-primary season on both sides been this much fun? Or this fluid? I guess I’m revealing my politically dorkish leanings, but I’m riveted by the almost endless possibilities in a wide-open race with so many variables at play.

Face of the Day

Aerosmithclairegreenwaygetty

Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler performs on stage at an exclusive gig to promote ‘Hyde Park Calling’ at The Hard Rock Cafe on February 19, 2007 in London, England. The event, presented by Hard Rock, is set to take place on June 23 and 24 this year and the band will headline on the second of the two days at their first UK concert date in 8 years.

(Photo by Claire Greenway/Getty)

Long Weekend Catch-Up

Yes, I know some of you were actually vacating over the weekend, but the blog wasn’t. A quick catch-up, if you’re interested in what you missed: Benjamin Franklin disagrees with Sam Harris; Mark Steyn appears to endorse "culling Muslims"; what Barack Obama has in common with the new Tory leader in Britain, David Cameron (who’s on track to be the next prime minister); and Mitt Romney’s anti-atheist bigotry. Enjoy.

Why You Can Be So Nasty

The short answer: You can’t see me. Money quote:

Research by Jennifer Beer, a psychologist at the University of California, Davis, finds that a face-to-face guidance system inhibits impulses for actions that would upset the other person or otherwise throw the interaction off. Neurological patients with a damaged orbitofrontal cortex lose the ability to modulate the amygdala, a source of unruly impulses; like small children, they commit mortifying social gaffes like kissing a complete stranger, blithely unaware that they are doing anything untoward.

Socially artful responses emerge largely in the neural chatter between the orbitofrontal cortex and emotional centers like the amygdala that generate impulsivity. But the cortex needs social information — a change in tone of voice, say — to know how to select and channel our impulses. And in e-mail there are no channels for voice, facial expression or other cues from the person who will receive what we say.

This is the downside, and I have had my fair share of online embarrassments over the years. But there is also an upside. My own experience with this blog is that anonymous emails are also a way for people to express their own thoughts more candidly and fearlessly than they might if they had to look me in the eye. My email in-tray each day – several hundred messages from all over the world – is a cornucopia of brutal insults, bigotry, scatology – and astonishingly articulate and honest expressions of thought, experience and opinion. I’ve learned that you can only have the good if you also have the bad. And one reason why I haven’t (yet) added comments is that by reproducing almost exclusively the good on the blog, I tend to encourage more of the better kind of candor.  From descriptions of how one feels in showers to expressions of faith to memoirs and reminiscences, the candor of the internet is a gift as well as a curse. It is one of the most treasured gifts I’ve received since starting this blog seven years ago. I don’t mind being flamed, if that’s a side-effect.