Sen. Arlen Spector (R-Penn) has joined the voices calling for John Ashcroft to recuse himself from the CIA leak investigation. Ashcroft employed possible suspect and White House aide Karl Rove during a number of campaigns prior to his appointment as A.G.

The Guardian is reporting that the White House censored and edited an EPA report on global warming so much as to completely undermine the scientists’ findings, apparently because “global warming” isn’t part of the GOP platform.

It’s a shame how things like science can get in the way of politics, isn’t it?

In the days and weeks ahead, I suspect we’ll hear calls for an independent counsel to investigate the Wilson/Plame affair. I’m just as certain that the GOP will insist that such a thing is not needed, that we can trust Ashcroft and his existing criminal investigation, and that there’s no reason to worry.

When they say that — and they will — consider these quotes from GOP legislators concerning possible campaign fundraising law violations and the conflicts of interest involved in the Justice Department investigating a sitting president. Then consider which is the greater sin: campaign finance violations, or outing a covert operative of the CIA?

Slacktivist — a fine site worth visiting frequently — has a nice rundown of the Administration’s efforts since the weekend. His post title says it all: “Smear, smear again.” Smearing Wilson is just a bit difficult, though, since he has served Democratic and Republican administrations with distinction, and was singled out for praise by the other President Bush.

The Feds are invoking PATRIOT in letters to journalists insisting that they retain all their materials related to the Adrian Lamo hacking case (Lamo gained notoriety for breaking into companies’ systems, and then offering to help fix the holes he exploited; Lamo turned himself in on September 9). An FBI spokesman stated that “all reporters who spoke with Lamo” should expect such letters.

This flies in the face of traditional subpoena power, and in fact may well be in violation of the DOJ’s own guidelines, not to mention New York law. Of course, that those so notified aren’t allowed to tell disclose that they’ve been contacted, so these actions by the Feds are only now coming to light. The best part may well be that they’re using clauses of the Act designed to apply to ISPs and the like, not journalists (the specific language is apparently “providers of electronic communication”). More coverage here.

This time, it’s Federal judges from both parties, including Rhenquist.

After a long conversation at dinner when I suggested there was little to be optimistic about in the current political landscape, I came home to discover that the CIA has asked the Justice Department to investigate the White House in the “let’s-blow-the-CIA-agent’s-cover” scandal I noted here months ago, and which the mainstream media essentially ignored. The CIA has no enforcment powers of its own, but it surely has done its own investigation or it wouldn’t be hassling Herr Ashcroft. Of course, emnity between the CIA and 1600 Pennsylvania is no secret; the spooks from Langley have been somewhat marginalized by the neocon “don’t bother us with the facts” worldview pervasive in the West Wing, and have resisted providing intelligence to support assumed conclusions (instead of, say, gathering intelligence and acting on what one discovers).

In case you’re confused, the precis is this: columnist Robert Novak named Valerie Plame as a covert CIA operative in his column, apparently tipped off by (unnamed) senior officials in the White House. This woman was the wife of Joseph Wilson, who was dispatched to Niger in 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq had tried to obtain uranium — and who discovered that, well, there was no real evidence that they had. Never mind that; of course; the administration used the Niger story as part of its smoke-and-mirrors cassus belli for invading Iraq. Wilson publically criticized the administration for using this dubious and ultimately unsupportable claim, and smart money says they outed Plame in retaliation, and the Post (see link below) even has a source saying so:

A senior administration official said two top White House officials called at least six Washington journalists and revealed the identity and occupation of Wilson’s wife. That was shortly after Wilson revealed in July that the CIA had sent him to Niger last year to look into the uranium claim and that he had found no evidence to back up the charge. Wilson’s account eventually touched off a controversy over Bush’s use of intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq.

In any case, Novak did indeed name her, and was apparently correct — the CIA has been doing damage control. Wilson himself said in an August 21 forum in Seattle that he believes White House adviser Karl Rove is the culprit, and that he’d like “to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs.”

The Talking Points Memo interview with Wilson is here (PDF link). TPM’s post on this is here, and is worth reading as well. More coverage:

• CBS News
• New York Times (nogators/nogators, as always)
• Washington Post
• Time

Now: what happens next?

There’s another site up at BlackBoxVoting.com (as opposed to .org) that covers much of the same stuff, and appears to also be a promotional effort for Harris’ book. Check it out.

In other news, Maryland is planning to approve a contract (NYT link; nogators/nogators) for the Diebold machines despite a STATE OF MARYLAND report detailing a host of security flaws. Good God.

Remember that story I noted yesterday, about the Diebold election machine problem? And how Bev Harris had unearthed company memos more or less admitting how wholly fscked the system is, and that they didn’t care? If not, go read it again; I’ll wait.

Bev Harris’ site is shut down today, courtesy of Diebold. This ought to tell you something, and it’s not something good.

Salon is running an interview with Bev Harris, a writer who has spent a great deal of time investigating the electronic voting industry for her upcoming book, “Black Box Voting.” In the course of her investigation, she uncovered confidential memos that Diebold has attempted to copyright rather than disavow; this is most disturbing, since they describe a level of security I wouldn’t use for Nogators, let along our country’s voting systems.

Oh yes: these things are already being used in 37 states. This has got to stop. Any voting system MUST be both tamper resistant and auditable; Diebold offers no features in either department, and is aggressively attempting to avoid doing so. Moreover, there’s an utter lack of security in their product that they know about, but refuse to fix. People need to know this.

The Sacramento Bee is running a long piece on the erosion of our personal freedoms and civil liberties at the hands of Ashcroft, et. al., since 9/11. The news isn’t good. (via Electrolite)

The Bush folks have been suggesting that their critics were engaging in “revisionist history” in some of their complaints about the WMD search, the threat of Iraq, etc. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian McPherson explores what this means in his September column from the American Historial Association’s journal, Perspectives. (via Electrolite)

Former US Senator Max Cleland has a scathing editorial in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the quagmire that could be Iraq. Cleland was hounded from office by a chickenhawk Republican for being “soft on the military.” It should be noted that Cleland knows Vietnam rather well, since he lost two legs and an arm there.

“Now hold on a minute, Mr. Gator Man! Who the hell is this Cincinnati person?”

Well, I’ll tell you. Actually, I’ll just point you at this article, and all will be revealed. Therein you will find this bit as a footnote, which provides a convenient rundown of the generals in our history who have sought or achieved the Oval Office:

The president generals are George Washington, Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, Franklin Pierce, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, and Dwight Eisenhower. Unlike the other six, who were famed for their battlefield achievements, Pierce, Hayes, Garfield, and Harrison were not known for their military records. Generals who have lost general elections include Lewis Cass, Winfield Scott, George McClellan, and Winfield S. Hancock. Douglas MacArthur and Al Haig are among the generals who planned presidential runs but never got close to the November ballot.

Everybody, I reckon, knows about the 9th Circuit’s ruling halting the California recall, and how their ruling cites Bush v. Gore. Slate’s running this commentary, which is pretty darn funny without being terribly partisan either way.

Joey deVilla (aka Accordian Guy) has an excellent rundown of what’s going on in lay terms. Read this.