here.

Schumer has clearly lost his marbles. I always thought he chose his words carefully along with his leftist alies in the media at MSNBS and Kos and MoveOn. But I guess not. On a lame news day as Friday, he goes out with his sad drivel after the Justice Roberts and essentially calls him a lair.

Are my old friends from New York THAT leftist and they cant recall such a loon that puts the Democrat Party’s interest in front of the country? What an embarassment he is and NY is becoming because of him.

 UPDATE:  Here’s Michelle Malkin’s excellent post on this last night. She’s included a quote from Sen. Robert Byrd during the Alito hearings  that shows how much on an island  Schumer might just be.

Demonstrating a continuation of a technique used last week when the President met only with conservative commentators, a phone  conference was held today with conservative bloggers. Here’s Rick Moran of the American Thinker and Ed Morrissey of Captain’s Quarters.

JD help break the Scott Thomas story. Here’s his blog

I have no idea what Bob Raissman is getting at this morning. I know that I’m biased, but I think the Mets TV crew of Gary Cohen, Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez are just terrific. Forgive my nostalgia, but listening and seeing them reminds me personally of a very happy time in my life. Ron and Keith engage each other and sound to me just like they would in the clubhouse, the dugout or some of the lighter moments on the team charter. I would think that many Mets fans like this personal touch. But maybe I’m just a sentimental sap, too. I for one, hope they never change.

UPDATE: I’m not alone it seems. Go over and vote at Metsblog . Good job, AD!

Three seperate committe hearings took place in congress yesterday.The central component was our governements ability to use technology to listen in on the conversations and communications of terrorists who are looking to kill Americans-of any ethnic or political stripe.

Heaven knows its easy to get mixed up with all the different terms-NSA-TSP-illegal wiretaps-warrantless wiretaps. But maybe thats what Dems want. Keep people confused and lets just keep banging the President over the head asserting he’s breaking the law.

They’ve been successful so far. But yesterday, while two of tghe hearings were all about gotchya’s, one house committe featured Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell’s testimony. This from the WSJ this morning:

Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell more or less admitted the problem last week, albeit obliquely, when he told the Senate that “we’re actually missing a significant portion of what we should be getting.” That’s understating things. Our sources say the surveillance program is now at most one-third as effective as it once was.

While the WSJ puts a little blame on the administration for giving into political pressure and giving into the political climate, they say this:

The Administration wants Congress to modernize FISA in two crucial ways: First, by allowing NSA to track on a real-time basis these foreign calls that may be routed through the U.S., and in some cases allowing warrants to be sought after the fact. Our spooks would still be accountable, but they’d also be able to act quickly to defend the country. Second, the White House is requesting liability protection for telecom companies that cooperate with the wiretap program. Neither of these changes should be at all controversial–and we’re confident they’d have overwhelming public support if the issues were understood.

Yet for six months Senate Democrats have resisted these legal changes to make Americans safer. Incredibly, they are fronting for their trial lawyer campaign donors in blocking liability protection. Their counteroffer is to have the federal government supplant the companies as the defendants in any wiretapping lawsuits, as if any such lawsuits were justified. Why are Democrats letting trial lawyers interfere with a vital intelligence operation?

Meanwhile, Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy is holding any wiretap legislation hostage to his demand for Administration documents related to the program. This is part of the Democrats’ political exercise to claim that Mr. Bush has somehow broken the law by allowing the wiretaps. Backed by grandstanding Republican Arlen Specter, in short, Mr. Leahy is more interested in fighting over how the program began than in allowing it to continue today.

Democrats in both houses have been using these issues that members of the Bush Administration are tasked with to catch them in a perjury trap. The AP story that a lot of folks bit on yesterday that declared that FBI Director Mueller as evidence. Senated Dems even went so far as pushing for a special prosecutor to go after Alberto Gonzales for perjury. But with the actual evidence before them in the House, Dems knew they couldn’t make the political hay that the Senate was.

At least a few Democrats realize they may be setting themselves up for trouble if there’s another terrorist attack. House Intelligence Chairman Silvestre Reyes wrote to Mr. Bush last week saying he was “very concerned” about the program and urging the Administration to “devote all the resources necessary to ensure that we are conducting maximum surveillance of the terrorist target abroad.”

Mr. Reyes went on to note that “FISA does not require a warrant for communications between two individuals outside the United States. If clarifications to the law are necessary, we are prepared to deal with this.” That’ll serve Mr. Reyes well as political cover if the next 9/11 Commission asks who ruined the terrorist surveillance program. But if he’s serious about national security, he should send his next letter to Senate Democrats.

Democrats have had the upper hand with all this, but it may well be that the call for a special prosecutor for Gonzales might be the pinnacle. To his credit, Arlen Specter went to the media after the Dems announced their call for a SP and slamed them. The PR efforts by the WH have been stepped up of late and Republican members of both houses have shown that for once, they’ll hit back.

UPDATE: National Review has an editorial today titled, ‘Perjury Trap” thats also a must read.

Senator Specter of Fox New this evening said that he does not support the special prosecuter and says that Senator Schumer was only interessted in getting headlines. Good for you, Senator. Sorry for getting it wrong earlier.

The NY POST headline, “FBI Director Contradicts Gonzales“, is not backed up in its own story. The Laura Jakes Jordan and Laurie Kellerman story breathlessly opens:

The head of the FBI contradicted Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ sworn testimony and Senate Democrats requested a perjury investigation Thursday in a fresh barrage against President Bush’s embattled longtime friend and aide.

But fails to attempt to even support  or even address the contradiction assertion until NINE paragraphs later. The two write this:

The head of the FBI contradicted Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ sworn testimony and Senate Democrats requested a perjury investigation Thursday in a fresh barrage against President Bush’s embattled longtime friend and aide.

Then they contradict themselves in  the next paragraph:

Mueller was not in the hospital room at the time of the dramatic March 10, 2004, confrontation between Ashcroft and presidential advisers Andy Card and Gonzales, who was then serving as White House counsel. Mueller told the House Judiciary Committee he arrived shortly after they left, and then spoke with the ailing Ashcroft.

Huh? He wasn’t even  in the room and you assert in your story he contradicted Gonzales? They justify their overreach in this brief ambiguous exchange Beteen Sheila Jackson Lee and Mueller under testimony in the House.

“Did you have an understanding that the conversation was on TSP?” asked Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas in a round of questioning that may have sounded to listeners like bureaucratic alphabet soup.

“I had an understanding the discussion was on a NSA program, yes,” Mueller answered.

Jackson sought to clarify: “We use ‘TSP,’ we use ‘warrantless wiretapping,’ so would I be comfortable in saying that those were the items that were part of the discussion?”

“The discussion was on a national NSA program that has been much discussed, yes,” Mueller responded.

The NSA, or National Security Agency, runs the program that eavesdropped on terror suspects in the United States, without court approval, until last January, when the program was put under the authority of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.

This is tortured gotchya at its finest. Gonzales never said the conversation had not been about NSA or the verbage Lee is using, TSP. Even a non-lawyer as myself knows that in court this would be heresay. How this is a contradiction should be beyond anyone.

One wonders how the AP writers created this angle in the first place. But with the AP clearly looking to advance stories against the administration, its small wonder they are marching in step with the Dem narrative here.

It seems that with the Plame-Wilson affair discredited, Senate Dems are turning to persecute Al Gonzales by calling for a special counsel to ladvance perjury charges against him. It appears to be a tortured argument at best as it hinges most strongly on a mere difference of recollections between Gonzales, a former acting AG who’s proved to be too cozy with Chuck Schumer in Dick Comey and a memo which doesn’t discredit Gonzales at all.

Mac Ranger writes this:

In spite of this unbelievable coup by Senate Democrats conspiring with rogue DOJ officials to unseat AG Alberto Gonzales, the President will hold fast and is right to do so. Gonzales isn’t going anywhere.

In nearly six months of hearings based on nothing except the hate of Democrats for President Bush, they have uncovered nothing at all in the so-called US Attorney scandal. Not one shred of evidence showing anything other than politics as usual, political appointees work at the pleasure of the President - period.

After his testimony, Senator Leahy is now hinting perjury charges again AG Gonzales based on what he and his cronies see as conflicting testimony. Others, such as the legal eagles at Powerline are responding to this fallacious charge this morning so there is no need for me to respond, other to agree that there was no conflict in the testimony and Leahy and his gang know it.

And now the lawyers at Powerline say this of the memo and conclude:

This document was created after controversy developed over the international terrorist surveillance program. In response, I assume, to a request from Congress, the memo lists all dates on which Congressional leaders were briefed on the TSP. This, the AP says, “contradicts Gonzales’s testimony,” but of course it doesn’t. The memo doesn’t say that the only program discussed at the meeting was the TSP, nor does it say that the TSP was the one on which the Justice Department (Ashcroft and Comey) had suddenly changed its mind, leading to the famous hospital visit. The document, as described by the AP, confirms Gonzales’s testimony that he met with Congressional leaders shortly before visiting the hospital; to the extent that the AP describes it, it does not contradict the Attorney General’s testimony.

This is really something of a mystery. When Comey testified before the Judiciary Committee, he refused to name the surveillance program at issue. In this post, I wrote that it was obviously the terrorist surveillance program. But that assumption may have been wrong.

It wouldn’t be hard to figure out whether the program about which DOJ changed its mind was the international terrorist surveillance program, or something else. There is a paper trail of legal memos, etc., on the subject, and a considerable number of people know the answer to the question, including at least one unimpeachable source, John Ashcroft. Given those facts, it is hard to see why Gonzales, or anyone else, would lie about the identity of the program, as the AP accuses Gonzales of doing. Given Comey’s refusal to name the program and Ashcroft’s public reticence on the subject, the only information we have is Gonzales’s testimony that it was something else. But, as I say, this is a mystery that wouldn’t be hard to solve.

It looks as if Senate Dems led by Leahy and Schumer are going with this perjury game again as they did when they tried to ensnare Karl Rove and Dick Cheney in  the Plame-Wilson fraud. Too bad Arlen Spector is going along as it brings his personal motives into question again. But this is the same playbook Senate Dems used in Plame-Wilson, and Republican members of the committee need to call them on it.

From The Plank at the New Republic:

My Diarist, “Shock Troops,” and the two other pieces I wrote for the New Republic have stirred more controversy than I could ever have anticipated. They were written under a pseudonym, because I wanted to write honestly about my experiences, without fear of reprisal. Unfortunately, my pseudonym has caused confusion. And there seems to be one major way in which I can clarify the debate over my pieces: I’m willing to stand by the entirety of my articles for the New Republic using my real name. 

I am Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp, a member of Alpha Company, 1/18 Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, First Infantry Division.

My pieces were always intended to provide my discrete view of the war; they were never intended as a reflection of the entire U.S. Military. I wanted Americans to have one soldier’s view of events in Iraq.

It’s been maddening, to say the least, to see the plausibility of events that I witnessed questioned by people who have never served in Iraq. I was initially reluctant to take the time out of my already insane schedule fighting an actual war in order to play some role in an ideological battle that I never wanted to join. That being said, my character, my experiences, and those of my comrades in arms have been called into question, and I believe that it is important to stand by my writing under my real name.

–Private Scott Thomas Beauchamp

Me thinks the last paragraph excessively santinomius among other things.

So does Michael Goldfrab

That Beauchamp chose to reveal himself at this point also seems a bit disingenuous, since the military has already launched an investigation and, courtesy of JD Johannes, we’d already identified his unit four days ago. If we’d gotten that much information, it was only a matter of time before somebody besides his editors started asking him “hard questions.”

We still want to know:

1) Dates. When did he mock the woman at the mess hall? When was the soldier wearing and playing with the child’s skull? With dates, these incidents can be verified.

2) Names. He can argue that he would get the dog-killer in trouble by naming him, but how about the names of soldiers who witnessed the event at the mess hall and those who saw the guy with the kid’s skull? Real live witnesses can verify the incidents.

BlackFive is a little less, well, subtle while providing more background on Private Beauchamp.
 

Tonight’s win against the Pirates marked the 100th game of the season, leaving 62. They’ll go by quickly to us fans with the beginning of school and the football season.

But the Mets are where they want to be and thats in first with the best record in the league. And they are five games up on the secong place Braves. This is the widest of leads in the NL-more goods news.

So of any team in the NL, the Mets are best placed to make the play-offs.  Too many teams will have to out play the Mets to knock them out.

Its looking like the deadline will pass without a trade and the team’s fortunes will rest on the backs of who are in the organization now.