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.

In the wake of the recent unfriendly court rulings on Bush’s novel approach to Constitutional law and human rights, Administration lawyers have been working overtime to pass laws designed to immunize the Administration and its minions against war crimes prosecutions:

In June, the Supreme Court (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld) placed commander in chief Bush and the top of his policy-making chain of command in jeopardy for the treatment of their suspected-terrorist prisoners in Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan and elsewhere.

So much has happened since June—the Middle East war, the civil war in Iraq, and the plot to blow up multiple U.S.-bound passenger planes—that most Americans have only a hazy idea of this Supreme Court decision that blew up the administration’s grand strategy for extracting information from its prisoners around the world by any means necessary.

But quietly, in fear of that ruling, the administration has drafted two changes—in the War Crimes Act and in our treaty obligations under the Geneva Conventions—to foreclose any prosecutions of the Bush high command. The goal is to get these amendments passed by the Republican-controlled Congress before the midterm elections that could put the Democrats in control of the Senate or otherwise significantly increase their power in Congress as a whole.

Says Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice: “This bill can . . . in effect immunize past crimes. That’s why it’s so dangerous.” As Fidell also told the Associated Press, the intent is “not just protection of [high-level] political appointees but also CIA personnel who led interrogations”—including in their secret prisons.

That’s right. Having blatantly violated the principles we hold dear as a nation, not to mention the Geneva Conventions, they’re now scrambling to save their asses now that it looks like all their shit is coming home to roost.

More:

Here, specifically, is how the Bush high command is trying to escape the consequences of the Supreme Court’s stinging reprimand. One proposed amendment would forbid any prisoner to use the Geneva Conventions as a source of rights in any American court. But—as National Public Radio’s Ari Shapiro points out—the administration’s lawyers claim that this restriction “does not affect the obligations of the United States under the Geneva Conventions.” Huh? I’d like to see White House press secretary Tony Snow handle that yo-yo if anyone in the White House press corps knows enough to ask the question.

The second amendment the Bush team wants Congress to push through would change our War Crimes Act, which calls for the prosecution in our civilian courts of those who commit war crimes. The amendment would exclude from prosecution those who’ve violated a section in the War Crimes Act that references this language from Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions prohibiting “at any time and in any place whatsoever . . . outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment.” (This would also expunge the much publicized language of the McCain Amendment to the Detention Treatment Act of 2005.)

Pay attention. These are dark days for our Republic, but enough attention focussed on stunts like these can help save us.

Remember how, on primary election day, his Joe2006 site went down? Remember how they made much noise about blaming the Lamont campaign, and how they insisted they were going to file criminal charges?

Yeah, for the most part that’s horseshit. Their site went down because their tech people were idiots. Now they’re trying to hire a new tech staff, and they’re being given the cold shoulder by two prominent Democratic tech firms. Said Blue State Digital: “Thank you for your inquiry about Blue State Digital’s technology services. Unfortunately, we cannot be of service to the Lieberman campaign. We work exclusively with Democratic candidates.”