Scott McClellan did his first ever bookstore gig on Tuesday night at Politics & Prose, the popular independent book retailer in Washington, DC.

Since I’m in DC at the moment, I figured—what the hell—why not stop in? Judging by my admittedly unscientific pre-talk survey, the jammed to the rafters crowd—(an hour before the 7 pm event, all the seats and most of the standing room was already filled)—like me, seemed to be there primarily out of curiosity..

In person, McClellan looks softer, rounder, and even more man-out-of-his-depth-ish than he does in his TV appearances. Had he not helped promote the most disastrous and costly foreign policy blunder of our lifetime, he’d be a likable enough sort. The youngest of four, he still has the aura of the baby of the family, a nice, good-humored mamma’s boy. (His mother is Texas politician Carole Keeton Strayhorn, a former mayor of Austin.)

Some of his forty-minute talk was nothing we haven’t already heard on interview venues ranging from Bill O’Reilly to the Daily Show

McClellan talked about his surprise at “the scorched earth policy.…based on an orchestrated effort to discredit me…”

(Oh, really? So…Bush Co’s reaction to Richard Clark and the like didn’t give him a clue that the White House tends to take poorly to criticism from within?)

Yet, interestingly it seems that now that he’s had some time to adjust to the initial media frenzy following his book’s publication, his language in describing his time in the White House—and his relationships with its inhabitants—has gradually become stronger and angrier.

For instance, although initially McClellan seemed to go out of his way to excuse President Bush from any kind of wrongdoing, on Tuesday night, he talked about Bush as the most “controversial and polarizing president in recent history,” and that there was “no counterbalancing influence in the White House. It was always about campaigning and shaping the media narrative…” not “about solving problems.”

“I trusted the president and his advisers [in the run up to the war]. That trust, I now believe, was misplaced.”

(Uh, yeah.)

And about the run-up to the Iraq war:

“We packaged the intelligence and ignored anything that was contradictory.”

When the Q & A period came, I asked him if there was anything that he knew that might cause the president to march out executive privilege to keep him from his planned June 20 testimony in front of the House Judiciary Committee.

He thought a moment. “Well,” he said, “they might ask me about something that’s not in the book like the U.S. Attorneys. And even though I was no longer press secretary then….” and he let his voice trail off.

But McClellan also told us very clearly that he was instructed by the White House to “vouch for Scooter Libby,” the way he had already “vouched for Karl Rove.”

“I was completely lied to by both Karl and Scooter.”

So does this amount to additional acts of obstruction of justice? That, evidently is what Committee chair, John Conyers wants to find out.

(NOTE TO JOHN CONYERS: Dude probably doesn’t know anything earth-shattering about the attorney scandal, but as long as he’s under oath, it doesn’t hurt to ask.)

Interestingly, the two big applause lines of the night had nothing to do with McClellan himself, or George Bush. The first came when he mentioned Barack Obama. “He talks about wanting to change Washington culture,” said McClellan. “It’s something I’ve been very intrigued by, watching his campaign.”

And then later, when he was asked about the upcoming presidential race, he said,

“I think this is a very important election.” A pause. “And certainly all the advantages are with Senator Obama.”

The bookstore crowd roared its approval, and McClellan hastily added, “I’m not saying that’s an endorsement.”

But by that time, people were lining up for book signings ….and seemed no longer to be listening.

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PS: GO LAKERS!!!!!!!!!!!! 87-81! Woooo-hoooo!!!! Back in the series!

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UPDATE: Maureen Dowd has an interesting column on the issue in Sunday’s paper. (You’ll be happy to note that her tone and her assessment are far less high decibeled than mine or Keith Olbermann’s, yet some of her points are the same.)

I’ve been sitting with this for the past 24 hours, trying to wrap my mind around what Hillary Clinton could have been thinking. Her campaign says that people are making too much of the Robert Kennedy assassination remark made to the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader’s editorial board, that she was simply trying to make the point that sometimes the nomination isn’t settled until the very end, and so this is why she stays in, because it ain’t over ’till it’s over.

Look, we can all understand a slip made in the exhaustion of a campaign of this length and intensity. ( I am thankful daily that my life is not spent in front of a microphone. It wouldn’t be terribly pretty.)

But then we find that Clinton made nearly the identical statement previously to Time magazine….. we have another kind of situation altogether.

Look: I don’t know what she meant by saying such a damn fool thing. Frankly, I don’t think we need to care what Clinton meant by it. (The more one tries to parse the statement, the more unpleasant the speculation becomes.) But to say it at all, to invoke the specter of the assassination of a front-running democratic candidate—-not once but twice—-given the unspoken fear about Obama’s safety that runs silently through the minds of many in this country, is beyond stupid.

It is willfully reckless.

The fear that Barack Obama could be shot is the topic that, in the past, most of us in the media or in the blogging world have chosen not to mention in public. Frankly, we didn’t want to put ideas into anybody’s head.

But the worry is there.

Since the beginning of Obama’s candidacy, I’ve heard the fear stated over and over, in a variety of circumstances, voiced by people ranging across a broad spectrum–both Obama’s supporters and not. I’ve heard it particularly in LA’s urban neighborhoods where violent death is all too real a threat.

So what is the bottom line in all this? For me—and I am betting for the Obama camp—one thing is now extremely clear:

Hillary Clinton cannot possibly be Obama’s running mate. The VP slot is now off the table.

The Robert Kennedy remark was the deal breaker.

Why? Because despite the fact that Clinton is enormously bright, enormously capable, enormously talented, and that she brings with her a huge and loyal following, when it comes anyone and anything that stands in the path of her reaching her political goals, she is not to be trusted. She has proven that fact repeatedly.

Yet everything else Clinton has done or said up until now can arguably be classified as allowable within the bounds of hardball politics.

Not this time.

The assassination remark is more than out of bounds. It is dangerously irresponsible. In the heat of a campaign, you are allowed to say things that might threaten somebody’s political future. You are not allowed to say things that could indirectly trigger a threat to their physical safety. Not ever. For any reason.

If I were Michelle Obama, I would do whatever is necessary to keep Hillary off my husband’s ticket.

And, trust me, dear ones, we don’t need to have a conversation with Barack’s ferociously savvy and loyal wife to know that, if Clinton as VP was ever an option, as of yesterday, that option is gone for good.

What Keith Olbermann said.

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Tim Rutten has written well and wisely of Ted Kennedy in this morning’s LA Times. Here’s a bit of what he wrote:

“…..A new world, surely, and one he helped usher in. But also one that seems to be unfolding without three qualities that distinguished Kennedy’s long service.

The first is empathy. It’s shocking just how tenuous belief in the possibility of empathy as a public emotion has become. Kennedy’s brother, Bobby, was fond of quoting the ancient Greeks. One of them, Thucydides, once was asked, “When will there be justice in Athens?” He replied, “There will be justice in Athens when those who are not injured are as outraged as those who are.”

If Ted Kennedy’s 46 years in the Senate have stood for anything, it is for the enduring power of that antique insight. He is a rich, wonderfully connected Boston Irishman, and yet his life’s labors have been on behalf of blacks and women and Latinos, for people who sweated for a minimum wage and couldn’t pay their sick child’s doctor’s bill and asked for nothing more than a public school good enough to give their child a fair foothold on the ladder’s next rung. Their slights and injuries were his own.

Today, increasing numbers of Americans and their politicians are lost to narcissism and its communal expression — identity politics. We believe that no one can feel our pain but us, and we care for none outside our tribe. Kennedy’s career has been a half-century reproach to that crabbed notion of the American condition. He believed unshakably in solidarity and the common good, and if that now seems quaint, the fault — and the loss — is ours and not his.

[SNIP]

Finally, one of the reasons Kennedy’s Senate comrades will feel his departure so acutely is that he always stood for a civil partisanship. There was no more committed liberal Democrat in that chamber.

A struggle with Kennedy was a bare-knuckle fight to the finish, but always according to traditional politics’ version of the Marquess of Queensberry Rules. It was never personal, and differences never precluded friendship, which is why the senior Massachusetts senator could work with George Bush or John McCain or Orrin Hatch, and will leave office with a record as one of the most effective lawmakers of all time. Nothing deforms our contemporary politics in quite the way the loss of Kennedy’s old-fashioned civility does…..

I met Ted Kennedy only once. Years ago.

I wasn’t sure I liked him.

But his presence was enormous.

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Iraqi interpreter masking identity, photo by Ann Scott Tyson


When the first phase of the war in Iraq was over, and the occupation began, the United States turned to Iraqis for myriad forms of help. We needed people as translators, teachers and to fill various other staff positions. Thousands upon thousands of Iraqis stepped forward to offer their services.

In the last few years, those same Iraqis have been targeted for death, their family members threatened. Many have already been killed. Most have fled the country and are temporarily as refugees in countries like Jordan and Syria. They have applied to come to the U.S.

But the US, who was eager to use their services, is far less eager to help them in return, according to last night’s 60 Minutes story titled The List.

Here’s some of the text of the opening:

The refugee crisis in Iraq is among the biggest humanitarian emergencies in the world. Millions of Iraqis have fled the war, many marked for death because they worked for the United States. They were translators, office workers, many other things, but now the enemy has branded them as collaborators.

When that happened in Vietnam, the U.S. brought more than 100,000 refugees to the states. But today, the U.S. government, which was so desperate for Iraqi workers, is not so eager to help them now.

….One young American named Kirk Johnson has jumped into this breach. All he wanted to do was rescue one of his Iraqi co-workers. When he did, a thousand more pleaded for help and Johnson began “the list.”

“The people on my list have been tortured, they’ve been raped, they’ve lost body limbs. There’s one guy on my list who’s been thrown out of a moving vehicle. And all of this because they helped us. They came every single day to try to pitch in, in our efforts there,” Johnson tells [Scott] Pelley.

Johnson says we owe these Iraqis “speedy resettlement” in the United States.

The U.S. failed to grant that speedy resettlement. So Johnson has taken it upon himself to plead the cases of some of an estimated 100,000 Iraqis who worked for America.

So far, Johnson has been able to help 86 of the refugees. That leaves only about 99,914 to go.

For more details, check out The List Project.

A year ago, a lot was written on this issue, like this from CNN, and here’s an Op Ed by Johnson written last year for the New York Times. And, George Packer reported on the issue a in 2007 for the New Yorker.

A year later, little has changed.

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This weekend’s Must Read Story Award goes to…….

….The piece on the cover of Sunday’s New York Times titled Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand.

Admittedly, for the grudge-holding among us, talk from the NYT about military and foreign policy analysts with agendas still brings up unpleasant memories of Judy Miller. Yet this is a very well-researched and extremely unsettling story that deals with the near wholesale co-opting of many of TVs regular talking heads.

Here’re a few ‘graphs to give you an idea of what the article explores:

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

[SNIP]

Five years into the Iraq war, most details of the architecture and execution of the Pentagon’s campaign have never been disclosed. But The Times successfully sued the Defense Department to gain access to 8,000 pages of e-mail messages, transcripts and records describing years of private briefings, trips to Iraq and Guantánamo and an extensive Pentagon talking points operation.

These records reveal a symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated.

Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.”

Though many analysts are paid network consultants, making $500 to $1,000 per appearance, in Pentagon meetings they sometimes spoke as if they were operating behind enemy lines, interviews and transcripts show. Some offered the Pentagon tips on how to outmaneuver the networks, or as one analyst put it to Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, “the Chris Matthewses and the Wolf Blitzers of the world.” Some warned of planned stories or sent the Pentagon copies of their correspondence with network news executives. Many — although certainly not all — faithfully echoed talking points intended to counter critics.

There’s much, much more. It’s reading that packs an unpleasant wallop….and is very much worth your time.

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One of the genuine joys of the crazed, often incredibly petty and seemingly unending election season has been seeing the enormous voter turn-out—at both ends of the age spectrum. People turned off to politics since the Vietnam era now feel energized. College students and 20-somethings who previously felt completely left out of the political world have suddenly become impassioned. Some of them have come out for Hillary, others for Barack.

But which ever candidate you support, it’s hard not to be heartened by the record turnouts that the two history-making Democratic candidates have inspired.

At least so one would think.

Then I came into possession of an audio recording in which, at a small, private fund raiser, Hillary Clinton expressed her antipathy toward the Democratic activists who showed up in gushers and torrents to vote and/or caucus all across America in great numbers—IF those voters and caucus-goers happened to favor someone other than….well…. her.

The story I wrote about what Clinton said, the context, and reactions from both MoveOn and the Clinton camp, is posted on the Huffington Post and it’s getting a fairly strong reaction.

But here’s the main Clinton quote in question. (The audio is also over at Huff Post.)

“Moveon.org endorsed [Sen. Barack Obama] — which is like a gusher of money that never seems to slow down,” Clinton said to a meeting of donors. “We have been less successful in caucuses because it brings out the activist base of the Democratic Party. MoveOn didn’t even want us to go into Afghanistan. I mean, that’s what we’re dealing with. And you know they turn out in great numbers. And they are very driven by their view of our positions, and it’s primarily national security and foreign policy that drives them. I don’t agree with them. They know I don’t agree with them. So they flood into these caucuses and dominate them and really intimidate people who actually show up to support me.”

This is one of the biggest problems a great many of us have with Hillary. Despite her considerable talents, there’s a With-Me-Or-Against-Me quality that never seems to go away.

By the way, yesterday I told both of my USC journalism classes about the story that might be in the offing and my students had terrifically smart and insightful things to say during a very lively discussion about how such stories should be best and most ethically handled. I’m proud of each one of them. If they are the future of journalism, we’re in very good shape.

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Here are some of the more interesting reactions to the Hillary post:

MyDD.….LA Times Top of the Ticket…Ben Smith at Politco….Raw Story, the Wall Street Journal Blog…

I understand Keith Olbermann just mentioned it, but I didn’t hear it.

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PS: The editors at Huff Post tell me I should encourage people to DIGG the article. So, I guess, do so if you’re over there and feel so moved.

PPS: Among the reactions that have come in so far to the Huff Post piece, I’m told that there several emails from Clinton staffers who said that, while they weren’t thrilled to see the article, that at least they felt the issue was handled fairly. Whether or not I succeeded (and despite the fact that, as is well known here, I’m an Obama supporter) I tried my damnest to do just that.

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650,000 Americans are paroled from prison each year. Within 12 months, around half will be back behind bars.

Yesterday George Bush signed into law a long-stalled piece of legislation called the Second Chance Act of 2007, which, as Catholic Charities USA’s press release put it, is an important first step in “reducing recidivism, promoting public safety in communities, addressing the barriers faced by offenders exiting the prison system, and helping to reduce poverty in our country.”

It’s a good bill and could make a real dent in the incarceration statistics that have become a national crisis—- if congress decides to fully fund the thing.

Credit where credit is due, George Bush suggested the concept in his 2004 State of the Union speech when he proposed a “prisoner re-entry initiative to expand job training and placement services, to provide transitional housing, and to help newly released prisoners get mentoring, including from faith-based groups. America is the land of second chance,” said Bush, “and when the gates of the prison open, the path ahead should lead to a better life.”

Well, yes.

But there was never enough support in Congress to pass the bill until recently. The Republicans ignored it and the Dems didn’t do much better. Finally in the last few months it picked up enough momentum to sail through.

Here’s what Bush said when he signed it:

The country was built on the belief that each human being has limitless potential and worth. Everybody matters. We believe that even those who have struggled with a dark past can find brighter days ahead. One way we act on that belief is by helping former prisoners who’ve paid for their crimes — we help them build new lives as productive members of our society.

The work of redemption reflects our values. It also reflects our national interests. Each year, approximately 650,000 prisoners are released from jail. Unfortunately, an estimated two-thirds of them are rearrested within three years. The high recidivism rate places a huge financial burden on taxpayers, it deprives our labor force of productive workers, and it deprives families of their daughters and sons, and husbands and wives, and moms and dads.

Our government has a responsibility to help prisoners to return as contributing members of their community. But this does not mean that the government has all the answers. Some of the most important work to help ex-convicts is done outside of Washington, D.C., in faith-based communities and community-based groups. It’s done on streets and small town community centers. It’s done in churches and synagogues and temples and mosques.

Very nicely put.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day.

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There’s a lot in the weekend’s papers and around the blogs that should not be missed.

*The LA Times has an important editorial about the necessity to define and standardize just what we mean when we say “drop out,” so that school districts (LAUSD a notable example) can no longer play Hide the Dropout. The Times rightly gives credit to US Education Secretary Margaret Spelling for calling for the standardization.

*On Saturday, Glenn Greenwald at Salon notes the frequency with which the media mentions Barack Obama’s bowling score and the fact that the Clintons are rich, but how comparatively rarely our media managed to comment on the declassification of John Woo’s torture memo that makes clear that the Bush administration “…declared the Fourth Amendment of the Bill of Rights to be inapplicable to ‘domestic military operations’ within the U.S.

*The LA Times also has a smart and thoughtful Op Ed by novelist Rabih Alameddine about the dangerous and prejudicial way we use the words “God” and “Allah” in this country.

*But for me the weekend’s most upsetting and essential read is the report in the New York Times that Army leaders are worried about the mental health of our troops when they are subjected to repeat tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Here are some relevant clips:

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It seems that tonight Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are both attending the same rubber chicken dinner at a sold out event in Butte, Montana.

I happen to like Butte a lot (I stayed there twice this summer, as those readers who caught my crazed road postings might remember). Butte’s a blue collar Democratic stronghold, the biggest in the state. But it’s not got the same crowd you’d find in, say, Detroit, or Denver, or Miami, or Philadelphia.

Heck, you can’t even quite equate it with the rest of Montana,. It’s Butte, home of the open pit mine and the War of the Copper Kings. In short, a town with which one would be wise not to trifle.

With this in mind, Montana blogger Kate Jalton, who lives in Butte, has put together a handy list of ten do’s and don’t’s, to guide Hillary, Barack and their respective big city staffers, around any pesky….uh…pit falls. I offer in a slightly snipped version below. You can find the full list, in all its glory, right here.

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TEN TIPS FOR SURVIVING YOUR TRIP TO BUTTE

10) In case you haven’t heard, Butte is a tough town. Brass knuckled, ball busting, fist fighting, look at me the wrong way and I’ll put your ass in ICU kind of tough. Even other Montanans are afraid of us, and Montanans don’t scare so easy.

9) Have a firm handshake. This is critical. If you have any doubts as to the firmness of your handshake, practice with your friends. Because being told by every copper miner, welder and rancher that you shake hands like a girl (even if you are a girl) is embarrassing.

8.) Butte is a meat-centric universe. Our contributions to the culinary world include pork chop sandwiches and pasties (meat and potatoes wrapped in bread). So, if you’re a vegetarian, or worse a member of the Hezbollah-like splinter faction known as vegan, you should bring food from home.

(And if you’re a carnivore make sure to order your steak rare or medium rare. Only pussies order their beef well-done.)
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On Wednesday, the LA City Council passed a resolution that asks Federal law enforcement to mind its own damn business when it comes to medical marijuana.

More accurately, the resolution supports the state in its push to get the Feds to back off. Last August, the Council tried on its own when it passed the an ordinance to regulate and oversee the medical marijuana trade in LA, and politely asked the DEA to stop launching 100-agent raids on lawful clinics. But the DEA blithely ignored the request and kept on raiding the marijuana clinics anyway. “We’re just enforcing the law,” DEA spokeswoman Sara Pullen told me when I reported on the issue last summer for both WLA and the LA Weekly.. (I believe I mentioned to Pullen that I could personally point out a couple of meth-dealer locations, the raiding of which might be a better use of her agency’s time, but she declined to take me up on the offer.)

With Wednesday’s resolution, sponsored by Dennis Zine, Janice Hahn, and Bill Rosendahl, (the lone No vote from Greig Smith) the Council is trying a new strategy by calling for support of California State Senate Joint Resolution 20. The state resolution asks the President and Congress to enact legislation to require the DEA and all Federal agencies and departments to “respect the compassionate use laws of states”. SJR 20 also requests Federal law enforcement to enforce Federal medical marijuana laws in a manner consistent with the laws of the State of California.

California Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act, was passed 12 years ago, yet still the DEA continues to raid clinics, and arrest patients, although the charges rarely stick.

As recently as last month, I talked to a med marijuana patient who, in the course of a routine traffic stop, was asked by two LA sheriff’s deputies if he had any drugs or alcohol in his car. The man had just come from purchasing his month’s supply and answered honestly. Yes, he said, he did have a small amount of marijuana, but he had a prescription for the stuff and handed the officers both his just-purchased weed and his official state card. (Yeah, the guy was a real patient with a real medical condition, not a scammer just wanting to smoke out) The cops confiscated the weed and wrote up a misdemeanor citation meaning the guy had to take off work and show up in court. The judge promptly dropped the case as soon as the proper paperwork was produced. “Oh, yeah we get these all the time,” the bailiff told the man, explaining that the judge usually dropped the charges forthwith if the prescription was legit.

Meanwhile we have overcrowded courtrooms and a state, county and city budget crisis. So does this seem like a good use of your tax dollars?
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