…and gets in some nice shots on the rump neocons in the process:

New York Times Magazine: After Neoconservatism

Fukuyama was part of the neocon chorus for an Iraqi intervention immedieately after 9/11. On 9/20/2001, he signed a letter to President Bush stating in part:

We agree with Secretary of State Powell’s recent statement that Saddam Hussein “is one of the leading terrorists on the face of the Earth….” It may be that the Iraqi government provided assistance in some form to the recent attack on the United States. But even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.

So big Dick admits to Brit Hume in his Fox News interview he drank “one beer” at lunch “several hours” before shooting his buddy in the face. Joe Strupp and Greg Mitchell, in anEditor and Publisher story dated Feb. 14, have Katherine Armstrong tripping all over herself trying to deny that anybody had been drinking that day. (Armstrong owns the “ranch” where the shooting ocurred.)

Oh, okay, “there may have been beer in coolers but she didn’t think anyone who was hunting that day had any,” write Strupp and Mitchell, who also note:

CNN today reports that Armstrong had told CNN she never saw Cheney or Whittington “drink at all on the day of the shooting until after the accident occurred, when the vice president fixed himself a cocktail back at the house.”

So the critical players in the story are admitting drinking ocurred on the day of the shooting, before and after the fact. Could this explain Cheney’s reticence in calling the authorities? Holy shit, what a story that would be!

Update: David Corn has a nice summary of the inconsistencies in the various versions of the story. Also, David Sanger and Anne Kornblut have decent coverage in the New York Times.

Carol D. Leonnig reports in today’s
Washington Post that Scooter already has implicated Dick
Cheney in the Plame leak probe.

This was originally reported by Murray Waas in the National
Journal.

David
Corn writes that Libby’s defense strategy may be to request
loads of classified evidence from the CIA in the hopes of being denied
access. The hope is that then the judge will agree to dismiss the case.

It’s a risky strategy, and it shows what a strong case Fitzgerald probably has.

I don’t know how I missed this. Oh, I know, it was barely covered in the “liberal media” It’s all over the blogosphere, though, and there’s a nice summary at axisoflogic.com

With George Bush in the audience for Coretta Scott King’s funeral, the Rev. Dr. Joseph Lowry let it rip.

“We know now there were no weapons of mass destruction over there,” he said, prompting a standing ovation. “But Coretta knew and we know that there are weapons of misdirection right down here. Millions without health insurance. Poverty abounds. For war billions more but no more for the poor.”

You can see a short video at ThinkProgress.org.

Errin Haines, in an AP story, noted that Lowry’s quote was a “takeoff on a line from a Stevie Wonder song. The comment drew head shakes from Bush and his father as they sat behind the pulpit.”

The president’s budget is a disgrace, in case you haven’t been paying attention. Billions slashed from popular programs for the poor. Tax cuts for the rich. Phantom revenue from proposed drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And still an enormous defecit.

“The problem that has no name—which is simply the fact that American women are kept from growing to their full human capacities—is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease.”

—Betty Friedan, 1921-2006

She died on her 85th birthday. May she rest in peace.