Stars come out in support of Iran nuclear deal.

Courtesy of The Guardian: 

The actors Morgan Freeman, Jack Black and Natasha Lyonne have leant their support to Barack Obama’s nuclear agreement with Iran. 

 The stars feature in a new video designed to help persuade legislators to get the agreement through Congress when it goes to the vote in September. Alongside them are an eclectic mix of camera-friendly experts including ex-CIA agent Valerie Plame, Queen Noor of Jordan and retired US Ambassador Thomas R Pickering, who urge Americans to support the agreement lest they wind up “super dead”.

Okay well Morgan Freeman played the only god that I kind of believed in so  if he says it's a good deal than who am I to argue?

Oh and there is also support from most American Jews, 100 former American Ambassadors, and 60 national security leaders.

But who needs them, when you have Morgan "freaking" Freeman?

Like me did you find yourself wondering what Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson thought of Dick Cheney's new book? Well thanks to Lawrence O'Donnell now you can find out.

Part One:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Part Two:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Wow!  I did not realize how much I had missed Lawrence O'Donnell while he was taking an extended leave of absence after the death of his mother.

 I am very glad that he is back on the air.

Stephen Colbert is learning a lot about Karl Rove by reading his book. Mostly what a huge liar he is.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Karl Rove's New Book
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Skate Expectations

Yeah essentially what you learn is that everything Rove writes is bullshit. Of course Stephen says that in a much more humorous fashion.

22 million missing Bush administration e-mails found!

White House computer technicians have found 22 million e-mails that were believed to have been lost during President George W. Bush’s administration, according to the Associated Press.

The discovery was announced Monday by the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which filed lawsuits against the Executive Office of the President (EOP) in 2007 for the e-mails.

The two groups had initially filed a Freedom of Information Act request for e-mails in the wake of a scandal involving the Justice Department, which had fired U.S. attorneys around the country in an apparent political bid to rid the department of prosecutors who didn’t adhere to the White House’s conservative agenda. The missing emails were also potentially crucial to the investigation into the Valerie Plame-CIA leak scandal.

The groups eventually filed lawsuits after the EOP revealed that it had lost about 5 million e-mails from its servers between January 2003 and July 2005 because the e-mails had not been archived properly per the Presidential Records Act. Among other things, CREW sought records about the EOP’s e-mail management system, about retained and missing e-mails and about any audit reports that might have revealed potential problems with the e-mail system.


The newly discovered e-mails were apparently mislabeled and were recently uncovered by contractors hired by the White House. The e-mails will eventually be made available to the public after they are archived through the National Archives and Records Administration.

These e-mails suddenly disappeared when Patrick Fitzgerald was attempting to discover what Dick Cheney knew about the Valerie Plame affair. The excuse was ridiculous ("the process by which e-mail was being collected and retained was primitive and the risk that data would be lost was high."), and the cover up obvious to anybody who was really paying attention. By this time the Bush administrations lies and obfuscations were becoming legendary, but still they were able to keep Fitzgerald from obtaining e-mails that may have resulted in Dick Cheney facing criminal charges.

Well now we have them, and I for one really want to know what they say. And if what they reveal will result in anybody in the Bush administration finally facing justice.

The Prince of Darkness dies.

I disliked Bob Novak immensely, especially after he outed Valerie Plame in retribution for her husbands article identifying that the Bush administration knew that Hussein had not tried to purchase uranium form Nigeria.

He famously stormed off of the "Inside Politics" set when James Carville said: "He's gotta show these right-wingers that he's got backbone, you know. The Wall Street Journal editorial page is watching you. Show 'em you're tough."

Novak may have at one time been a good reporter, but he sold his soul to the Right Wing and continued to carry water for them right up to the end of his career. He put out every lie and bullshit story that they asked him to, and did not seem to be bothered by it in the least.

What a waste of what could have been a valuable reporter.

His life story whould be a lesson to the likes of Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, and Glenn "Sob sister" Beck.

George Bush is still actively impeding justice.

President Bush has asserted executive privilege to prevent Attorney General Michael Mukasey from having to comply with a House panel subpoena for material on the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity.

A House committee chairman, meanwhile, held off on a contempt citation of Mukasey — who had requested the privilege claim — but only as a courtesy to lawmakers not present.

Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, rejected Mukasey's suggestion that Vice President Dick Cheney's FBI interview on the CIA leak should be protected by the privilege claim — and therefore not turned over to the panel.

"We'll act in the reasonable and appropriate period of time," Waxman, D-Calif., said. But he made clear that he thinks Mukasey has earned a contempt citation and that he'd schedule a vote on the matter soon.

"This unfounded assertion of executive privilege does not protect a principle; it protects a person," Waxman said. "If the vice president did nothing wrong, what is there to hide?"

I don't truly think that Bush understands what "Executive Privilege" means.

He believes he can simply invoke it to hide the crimes committed by his staff from being prosecuted. And isn't he the same person who believed that "it is not torture if the United States does it"?

I think it is well past time for George W. Bush to get schooled on how justice works in the United States of America.

Ex-White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan spills the beans!

President Bush, Karl Rove, and other top administration officials were "involved" in misleading the White House press corps about the outing of ex-CIA agent Valerie Plame, a forthcoming book from former Press Secretary Scott McClellan alleges.

"The most powerful leader in the world had called upon me to speak on his behalf and help restore credibility he lost amid the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," writes McClellan. "So I stood at the White house briefing room podium in front of the glare of the klieg lights for the better part of two weeks and publicly exonerated two of the senior-most aides in the White House: Karl Rove and Scooter Libby."

But his press performances weren't based on the facts, McClellan continues.
"There was one problem. It was not true," he writes. "I had unknowingly passed along false information. And five of the highest ranking officials in the administration were involved in my doing so: Rove, Libby, the vice President, the President's chief of staff, and the president himself."

You know I have always felt a little sorry for Scott McClellan. He always looked overwhelmed by the job of defending the President's decisions to a press corps that could smell blood in the water.

And the fact that he is willing to put in print just how deceitful and manipulative Bush and his cabinet were just makes me feel bad for calling Scott "Puffy McMoonface".

Scot has certainly earned my respect for not continuing to cover for this criminal President and his administration. I can only hope that there are many more to follow.

And I am going to buy his book, "What Happened", just to show my support for anybody with the balls to criticize this bunch of assholes after being off the koolaid for a while.

Valerie Plame, the CIA agent outed by the Bush administration, has a book coming out Tuesday.

Four years after her CIA cover was blown in a newspaper column, Valerie Plame is settling scores with the Bush administration, Republican lawmakers and the journalists involved in the White House leak scandal.

Plame writes about the leak, the fallout and the perjury trial of former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby in her memoir, "Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House." The book is to be released Tuesday.

She offers harsh words for President Bush, whom she assails for administration "arrogance and intolerance." She also said criticism of her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, was a "dress rehearsal" for the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth effort that impugned Sen. John Kerry's war record during his failed presidential campaign in 2004.

"It was classic Karl Rove: go after your enemy's strong point," Plame writes, saying Bush's former political adviser was behind both efforts. "In Joe's case it was that he told the truth; in Kerry's case, it was his exemplary military service."

I am NEVER going to get through all of these books that keep coming out!

However I just have to have this one. I followed this case much too closely to not see it to its conclusion. (And she is soooo attractive!)

According to recently unclassified CIA documents, Valerie Plame was indeed a "covert" agent when she was outed by the Bush administration.

An unclassified summary of outed CIA officer Valerie Plame's employment history at the spy agency, disclosed for the first time today in a court filing by Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, indicates that Plame was "covert" when her name became public in July 2003.

The unclassified summary of Plame's employment with the CIA at the time that syndicated columnist Robert Novak published her name on July 14, 2003 says, "Ms. Wilson was a covert CIA employee for who the CIA was taking affirmative measures to conceal her intelligence relationship to the United States."

Plame worked as an operations officer in the Directorate of Operations and was assigned to the Counterproliferation Division (CPD) in January 2002 at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

The employment history indicates that while she was assigned to CPD, Plame, "engaged in temporary duty travel overseas on official business." The report says, "she traveled at least seven times to more than ten times." When overseas Plame traveled undercover, "sometimes in true name and sometimes in alias -- but always using cover -- whether official or non-official (NOC) -- with no ostensible relationship to the CIA."

I, and my fellow liberal bloggers, have made this point repeatedly over the last several years but those bloggers on the other side of the ideological aisle have constantly made the case that she was not covert.

Now when I have been mistaken I have owned up to my mistakes. I just have to wonder if those right wing bloggers will have that same sense of honor.

And what of the right wing pundits? I just heard Pat Buchanan less then two weeks ago say that Plame was not covert, and there are many more who have tossed this particular Republican lie into various conversations. Will they also come forward and admit that they were either misinformed or outright lying?

Well I will certainly not be holding my breath.