Or maybe it’s just the Company knows where their children live.

There’s nothing like having your grandkids picked up at school and dropped off at their parents’ house by KBR security to make you think about things.

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky

A detailed evisceration of the deceitful WaPo article has been made and I won’t repeat it here.

The arch-conservative Bush apologist Phoenix Woman also has something to say about spreading right-wing slurs, and the always foolish Emptywheel debunks claims about Pelosi’s position on Harman. Seems I’m not the only mental defective around.

As for this particular erroneous Digby followup:

”I realize that Porter Goss and others are likely trying to taint Democrats with their own bad acts by leaking this information. “ But no, actually; Goss and Shelby, the toadies who started this cascade of lies, are just that; Liars. They made up a story about Pelosi, one that is wholly inconsistent with the facts as presented in the story itself and Digby along with others in the Despise Pelosi Club bought it hook, line and sinker.

”But sadly, these Democrats actually do seem to be complicit.” These Democrats? Harmon and Rockefeller certainly, have at them, please, be my guest. But what evidence is there that Pelosi had any hand in it? The lies of Goss and Shelby, woven together by a couple of administration toads at the Washington Post? Seriously? There were only four people in that room in September 2002, and neither Graham nor Pelosi recall anything at all about waterboarding or torture. So who should we believe, Pelosi and Graham or Goss and Shelby? Apparently Digby and some others have chosen to put faith in, of all people, Porter Goss.

“If it’s the case that they have been being blackmailed with this information all these years, then Goss was quite foolish to show his cards.” Indeed, very foolish; so foolish that it makes no sense whatsoever. What does make sense is that there never was any blackmail; Goss and Shelby are lying now, trying to stir up trouble for Pelosi and shift blame and attention from themselves. Thanks ever so for assisting them.

“Now these Democrats have little to lose by revealing what they know, and they should.” And they have, Graham and Pelosi both saying they weren’t briefed on anything that sounded like torture. Why do Digby, and you, persist in believing an unattributed claim in an article written by Administration hacks based on the claims of Porter Goss and Dick Shelby? As to Harmon and Rockefeller, they have also made public their actions and inactions; they deserve the condemnation they have gotten.

“There is nothing stopping Speaker Pelosi from holding hearings on the tapes and the torture regime as a whole.” Other than the law, which apparently is something worth enforcing if it suits your agenda and something to be ignored if it does not. The whole truth about what the CIA has been up to will not come out under this administration and everyone knows it. Calling for hearings that can’t be productive is to call for a fool’s errand.

The Bush administration is to blame here, along with the Blue Dogs. Keep the focus and ire directed on them instead of chasing off after every red herring BushCo throws out. We can, and should, do better than this.

KB: Do you have specific information on the security arrangements for Pelosi’s grandchildren? If so, fascinating; please provide a reference.

The Krongards.

Blackwater and CIA.

One of the Krongards commits perjury in Committee and the news like this starts coming out later in the week.

Contractors inspecting contractors, running unchecked all over Iraq doing who knows what. The CIA didn’t handle the itnerrorgations, contractors did. That was the torture loophole.

Blood brothers covering one another’s tracks by the CIA position of a Krongard.

In fact, we raised the issue. I think it a legitimate concern.

After all, if Cheneyburton’s willing to start a war to steal a few trillion from the Treasury, kill a million innocents, and ruin the greatest nation in the world, what’s a little anthrax? Or extortion.

It certainly raised your blood pressure, though, Sparky.

No, I have no evidence, I only raise the possibility. But somebody has to ask the questions, no? Although it seems, time and time again, you’d prefer no one did.

I’d like to think it’s because you wish there really were genuine leaders to follow.

I think again you’re mistaken.

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky

You get full credit for the blackmail suggestion, for all it’s worth. I never said Goss made the claim; only that it is absurd to think – as Digby wrote – that it is true and Goss somehow let it slip out. No blackmail. No participation or acquiescence by Pelosi in torture. The whole WaPo article was a handout from BushCo that WaPo printed as dictated. That much of the Left picked it up and repeated it without any critical analysis is what I find both offensive and bewildering, and what I am objecting to. If someone wants to attack Pelosi, do so for something she’s actually done and not for lies spun by Porter Goss.

No opposition to questions, none at all, although my personal preference is that they have some connection however tenuous to reality; a limitation, to be sure.

I find your aversion to leadership equally puzzling; it seems to me a useful convention for cooperatively managing the necessary affairs of large groups, especially oh say of 300 million people. Have you a suggestion for a functional group management system that does not include leadership – and therefore leaders? Please explain.

As to my view on political leadership, once again you have only to ask and I will tell you; no need to speculate. I’m not much of a follow-the-leader person. I got thrown out of the Boy Scouts at 13 for organizing a strike over who should have control over how to spend dues money, the troop membership or the Scoutmaster; nothing has changed since.

I see elected officials and political appointees as hired help, nothing derogatory implied or intended. We put them on, pay them something and if they do a good job they get to stay on. If they don’t work out then we should boot them out when their contract is up and get someone new. (They can get fired for cause but that’s more difficult, and should be.) To the extent that the system is dysfunctional it is the fault of the electorate; with voter registration at 70% of those eligible and actual turnout around 50%, the number of willfully disfranchised far exceeds those excluded by trickery. Sitting on your ass is no way to effect change, and if people can’t be bothered to show up then power will flow to those who do – not a complicated system after all.

Thanks for asking after my blood pressure, no problem there; you take care with yours, hear?

In a Republic, we elect representatives to do the hard work of running the country. These officials in the Executive and Legistlative branch are entrusted with our collective security and commonwealth. As such, part of their job is responsibility to the electorate.

That’s us.

Now a lot of people- maybe you- feel that it’s just too complicated for us civilian types to decide what is after all good for us.

I would disagree. I would suggest that indeed, government is a difficult job. I would suggest that in fact it is such a bad job nobody sane would actually want to go around deciding what other people should be doing.

I can understand the motivation of responsibility. I can understand the desire to protect others. But I know how these motives can be twisted into self interest without the authority figure even realizing what they’re doing.

On one level, those who would rule instead of govern are easier for intelligent people to deal with. You almost always know they’re up to no good. It’s easy to find their criminal fingerprints on whatever they do.

Authoritarians who insist they’ve got my best interest at heart arouse my suspicions. Particularly when they’re unwilling to be open about their actions. The whole concept of insider baseball is not what a Republic is all about.

That’s about as straight an answer as you’re likely to get from me. But if you haven’t noticed by now, that’s the way most of us here feel, I think. Leaders lead by leading, by going first and doing the hard work and showing us the way to be.

They aren’t leaders, or authority, because of their self-touted intelligence and expertise, or wealth, or position, or their uniform, or their badge, or their gun.

They’re leaders because they lead. Al Gore has been a leader. But the minute he starts playing insider baseball again with the likes of Joe Lieberman (although I don’t think he’ll ever do quite that again), he isn’t.

But there’s a flip side to that. Li’l Boots has never been a leader. He’s only been a cheerleader for the Shadows. He’s always been a figurehead, while the people who have led the march into the valley of death have usually avoided the spotlight, light being deadly to servants of darkness.

No Hell below us
Above us, only sky