Keith weighs in on the Anniversary, and holds nothing back. Watch or read the whole thing.

Pro-torture, Imperial-presidency fan and one-time administration attorney John Yoo is apparently opposed to separation of powers.

Atrios points us to this excerpt from Al Franken’s book. Al’s a leftie, but everything in this summary is verifiable as far as I can tell. The bullet points:

• The Clinton administration was becoming more and more convinced that AQ and OBL were going to be a big problem, so they created a far-reaching plan for their destruction. This plan was completed after the election, but before GWB’s inaugural.

• Rather than hand Bush a fait accompli war, they instead passed on the plan.

• The outgoing Clinton people put together multiple briefings for the incoming Bush people, including some comprehensive discussions of terror, OBL, and AQ. Said Sandy Berger, “I believe that the Bush administration will spend more time on terrorism in general, and on al Qaeda specifically, than any other subject.”

• Impressed by his antiterror knowledge and bona fides, the Bush administration asked key counterterror bulldog Richard Clarke to stay on. Still, the impression the outgoing Clinton people had seems to have been that the Bush people thought they were obsessed with terrorism, and didn’t take the warnings seriously.

It gets worse. Of course, you knew that already.

Omnibus Morning Post:

• ABC may be backing off and has stated they’ll make some changes to the 9/11 movie to remove some of the “inaccuracies” (i.e. “lies”). It remains to be seen how much they can actually polish this turd, though. We expect it’ll still amount to GOP propaganda.

• The Senate has, at long last, passed the pork database bill. This, at least, is good news.

• Some attorneys and prominent GOP leaders are a bit upset about Bush’s proposal to try detainees in “tribunals” without allowing the accused to see the evidence against them. The unspoken bit in this move by Bush is that he’s obliquely admitted that he’s maintained secret CIA prisons to avoid US laws and jurisdiction. That’s illegal, and there ought to be repurcussions.

• Bush’s bill attempting to retroactively legalize his warrantless wiretapping has stalled in the Senate due to insufficient support.

We don’t usually cotton to the jokers over at Vanity Fair, but this little stunt may cause us to re-evaluate our stance.

Scholastic has dropped its planned teaching aides for the 9/11 “docudrama” and replaced them with materials stressing critical thinking and media literacy.

9/11 commission member Richard Ben-Veniste slams ABC over their falsehood-filled docudrama; there’s video.

Also, Kos has more on how far Disney is in bed with RoveCo. There’s an ongoing pattern of ABC kowtowing to right-wing interests and ignoring progressive concerns. Once again: What Liberal Media?

They’re assuring the right-wing blogosphere that the film will run as-is, and that “the message of the Clinton administration failures remains fully intact.” They’ve also refused to allow those maligned by the film — President Clinton, Madeleine Albright, etc. — to see advance copies of the work despite their clear willingness to share it with any right-winger with a domain name (or Oxy addiction).

Oh, and it gets worse. MediaMatters notes that the ABC-sponsored teaching materials accompanying this box of tripe falsely suggest that Iraq had WMD, and link Iraq to 9/11. Yeah, you read that right: ABC is lying to schoolkids about actual history.

Via ThinkProgress:

Last night on MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, Roger Cressey — a top counterterrorism official to Bush II and Clinton — blasted ABC’s docudrama “The Path to 9/11.” Cressy said “it’s amazing . . . how much they’ve gotten wrong. They got the small stuff wrong” and “then they got the big stuff wrong.” He added that a scene where the Clinton administration passes on a surefire opportunity to take out bin Laden is “something straight out of Disney and fantasyland. It’s factually wrong. And that’s shameful.” (emph. added.)

They’ve got video. If you haven’t already, go tell ABC what you think of this crap.

TruthOut has a couple pieces in their archives noting Clinton’s actual antiterror steps. The Right loves to assert he didn’t do anything, or didn’t do enough, when it came to bin Laden, but the facts disagree.

Starting in 1995, Clinton took actions against terrorism that were unprecedented in American history. He poured billions and billions of dollars into counterterrorism activities across the entire spectrum of the intelligence community. He poured billions more into the protection of critical infrastructure. He ordered massive federal stockpiling of antidotes and vaccines to prepare for a possible bioterror attack. He order a reorganization of the intelligence community itself, ramming through reforms and new procedures to address the demonstrable threat. Within the National Security Council, “threat meetings” were held three times a week to assess looming conspiracies. His National Security Advisor, Sandy Berger, prepared a voluminous dossier on al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, actively tracking them across the planet. Clinton raised the issue of terrorism in virtually every important speech he gave in the last three years of his tenure. In 1996, Clinton delivered a major address to the United Nations on the matter of international terrorism, calling it “The enemy of our generation.”

From here

Also, from a rundown of specific steps taken by the Clinton administration:

Roger Cressy, National Security Council senior director for counterterrorism in the period 1999-2001, responded to these allegations in an article for the Washington Times in 2003. “Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda,” wrote Cressy. “As President Bush well knows, bin Laden was and remains very good at staying hidden. The current administration faces many of the same challenges. Confusing the American people with misinformation and distortions will not generate the support we need to come together as a nation and defeat our terrorist enemies.”

Measures taken by the Clinton administration to thwart international terrorism and bin Laden’s network were historic, unprecedented and, sadly, not followed up on. Consider the steps offered by Clinton’s 1996 omnibus anti-terror legislation, the pricetag for which stood at $1.097 billion.

Now, could he have done more? Sure. Probably so. But the idea that he did nothing, or acted contrary to our interests, or was somehow derelict in his duty on this point is pure fantasy.

Strong beer, but spot on, again, as he is wont to be. This week Bush joined his Defense secretary in linking those who would question his policies with those who failed to corral the Nazis prior to World War II. This absurd and cynical ploy included an attempt to poison the very notion of “media” for his listeners — or, at least, those feebleminded enough to fall for it.

Crooks and Liars has both the video and the transcript of Olbermann’s response. I urge you to at least read what he has to say.

He begins:

It is to our deep national shame — and ultimately it will be to the President’s deep personal regret — that he has followed his Secretary of Defense down the path of trying to tie those loyal Americans who disagree with his policies — or even question their effectiveness or execution — to the Nazis of the past, and the al Qaeda of the present.

Today, in the same subtle terms in which Mr. Bush and his colleagues muddied the clear line separating Iraq and 9/11 — without ever actually saying so — the President quoted a purported Osama Bin Laden letter that spoke of launching, “a media campaign to create a wedge between the American people and their government.”

Make no mistake here — the intent of that is to get us to confuse the psychotic scheming of an international terrorist, with that familiar bogeyman of the right, the “media.”

The President and the Vice President and others have often attacked freedom of speech, and freedom of dissent, and freedom of the press.

Now, Mr. Bush has signaled that his unparalleled and unprincipled attack on reporting has a new and venomous side angle:

The attempt to link, by the simple expediency of one word — “media” — the honest, patriotic, and indeed vital questions and questioning from American reporters, with the evil of Al-Qaeda propaganda.

That linkage is more than just indefensible. It is un-American.

Turns out, they’re planning on making it look even more like a documentary by running it without commercials, and Scholastic is even providing a teacher’s study guide to accompany the film so that schoolchildren can discuss this pack of lies in the classroom as though it were a definitive historical account. Gotta start that indoctrination early!

Seriously, this thing is fucked. Richard Clarke — who knows a thing or two about terrorism, bin Laden, and what’s actually been done — points out what bullshit is in this film. Scenes like that are clear fabrications (the refutation is in the public record!) designed to lay the blame for this not at Bush’s administration — which pointedly ignored a daily briefing called “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Within US” — but instead at the Right’s favorite whipping boy, Bill Clinton. This, of course, despite the briefing the Bush folks got from Clinton’s antiterror squad (including Clarke) as well as Clinton’s own strikes against Bin Laden during his administration (for which he was lambasted by the Right, natch). We quote:

The actual history is quite different. According to the 9/11 Commission Report (pg. 199), then-CIA Director George Tenet had the authority from President Clinton to kill Bin Laden. Roger Cressy, former NSC director for counterterrorism, has written, “Mr. Clinton approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda.”

ABC, obviously feeling the heat, is seriously stonewalling the folks raising questions about this piece of tripe. In response, Firedog Lake has a list of questions they’d like answers to, though we’re sure ABC will remain silent. We do wonder, however, whether this clearly political film will trigger any sort of equal time claims.

ThinkProgress has a page up to help you tell ABC what you think about their blatantly political film, and the harm it can do to our sadly undereducated nation. Use it.

ABC plans to run a “docudrama” about the run-up to 9/11 that exonerates the current administration (despite their utterly failure to take seriously the warnings of the outgoing staff as well as the briefings received months prior to the event) and lays the blame wholly at Clinton’s feet (despite the strikes he ordered, dismissed by the GOP at the time as “Wag the Dog politics”). Needless to say, we’re sure this will contribute to the absolutely astounding level of ignorance of the American people.

Olbermann takes Rumsfeld to the woodshed on Rumsfeld’s recent suggestion that those who question the Administration’s behavior are somehow confused, immoral, or disloyal. As always, eloquent and spot fucking on.

CNN is reporting that it may have been Richard Armitage who leaked (purportedly inadvertantly) Valerie Plame’s name (but not status) to Robert Novak. Armitage was a vocal critic of the Administration’s policies in Iraq, and left his post in the State Department after Bush’s first term.

Novak’s July 14, 2003, column cited two unnamed Bush officials as sources for the information about Plame — which, regardless of source, Novak was clearly publishing for partisan reasons; the entire point of the column was to discredit Plame’s husband, who had been debunking the whole “yellowcake” idea in the press.

Upshot: if the Administration isn’t behind the leak or its confirmation, well, good for them. We’re afraid the laundry list of grievances against this most mendacious of mobs, however, is still plenty long, and there’s no shortage of crimes for which many in this White House should, but probably won’t, stand trial.

Wonkette reports it’s Senator Tubes holding up the budgetary transparency bill. Both sides of the political blog world have been trying to figure out who the anonymous member was stopping this legislation, and it turns out it the pork king from Alaska. What a fucktard. Does no one in Alaska watch the fucking news? This douchebag is more embarrassing than even my home state’s legislative team.

A man in Baltimore was arrested for stealing his own car in a particularly egregious case of “DWB.” Despite having clear title to the vehicle, it was apparently the testimony of the owner of the stolen car (a Cadillac of a different color) that got him off.

Even so, here’s the real kicker: “police sold Spence’s car at auction two months before his day in court.” Yup: his lawfully purchased car was grabbed and sold by the state despite the absence of any crime.

Jackasses. We need a clear and national reexamination of the forfeiture laws in this country; police cannot be allowed to get away with behavior like this.