Cheney, Wilson, Novak and Perjury

Sounds like a law firm, but the AP has an article up about a summary of an FBI interview with VP Dick Cheney back in 2004. They were trying to figure out who leaked Valerie Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak. Lying under oath to a federal agent is a crime, and to avoid it, deponents are advised to say they "don't remember" rather than flatly deny something. And the AP article takes Cheney to task for this:

Cheney's denials that he talked about Plame are among the few things in the lengthy interview with the FBI that Cheney appeared certain about. He repeatedly said he could not recall key events. Among them, he said he did not recall discussing Wilson's wife with Libby before her CIA employment was publicly revealed by conservative columnist Robert Novak in mid-July 2003.

Problem is, we now know that Cheney's answers were mostly truthful: he was asked if he mentioned Valerie Plame's name to Karl Rove. He answered that he didn't remember mentioning her name to Rove. In fact, it now seems certain that he did not mention her name to Rove. The AP article sounds skeptical; how could Cheney not remember these key points? Well, the obvious answer to that is that we now know that these things never happened. Cheney never mentioned Plame's name to Rove, so how could he be expected to "remember" something that never happened?

The AP article never mentions Richard Armitage, the man who was the real source for Novak's article. It was Armitage who told Novak that Plame was a CIA analyst; not "Scooter" Libby, not Cheney and not Rove.

Cheney did the right thing by saying he did not remember giving Plame's name to Rove; after all, if Rove had told the FBI that Cheney did in fact give him Plame's name, and the prosecutor decided to believe Rove, because it moved the ball down the field, then Cheney could be charged with perjury, even though he told the truth.

Ridiculous article that conceals as much as it reveals.

Here's a link to the CNN story in which Armitage admits all.

Nation's Boyfriends Reluctant to Move In

h/t TSLR.

It's A Corvair, That's What It Is!

I drove one of those things once. This one must be, oh, forty-five years old.

Spotted this one in my 'hood this afternoon.

Two Views On Afghanistan

And they're pretty much the same:

What if we shrink our presence in Afghanistan? Won’t Al Qaeda return, the Taliban be energized and Pakistan collapse? Maybe. Maybe not. This gets to my second principle: In the Middle East, all politics — everything that matters — happens the morning after the morning after. Be patient. Yes, the morning after we shrink down in Afghanistan, the Taliban will celebrate, Pakistan will quake and bin Laden will issue an exultant video.

And the morning after the morning after, the Taliban factions will start fighting each other, the Pakistani Army will have to destroy their Taliban, or be destroyed by them, Afghanistan’s warlords will carve up the country, and, if bin Laden comes out of his cave, he’ll get zapped by a drone.

I beg to differ. I think that when bin Laden comes out of his cave and declares victory, he'll immediately be murdered by rivals, saying, "Who are you to declare victory? You hypocritical, cowardly bastard! You hid in a cave for eight years while we did all the fighting!"

Link.

And this:

The highly decorated general sat opposite his commander in chief and explained the problems his army faced fighting in the hills around Kabul: “There is no piece of land in Afghanistan that has not been occupied by one of our soldiers at some time or another,” he said. “Nevertheless much of the territory stays in the hands of the terrorists. We control the provincial centers, but we cannot maintain political control over the territory we seize.

“Our soldiers are not to blame. They’ve fought incredibly bravely in adverse conditions. But to occupy towns and villages temporarily has little value in such a vast land where the insurgents can just disappear into the hills.” He went on to request extra troops and equipment. “Without them, without a lot more men, this war will continue for a very, very long time,” he said.

These sound as if they could be the words of Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, to President Obama in recent days or weeks. In fact, they were spoken by Sergei Akhromeyev, the commander of the Soviet armed forces, to the Soviet Union’s Politburo on Nov. 13, 1986.

Link.

From My Cold, Green Hand ...

Would a cup of Starbuck's be sufficient to cause Margaret Hamilton to melt-down? Not if she had her flintlock!

"Alcohol Is A Stupidity Force-Multiplier."

Quote of the day, from TOTWTYTR.

(Too Old To Work, Too Young To Retire)

Crunchy 5.56-millimeter Goodness

A Marine's account of an ambush in Iraq:

I flipped the selector switch on my M-4 rifle from SAFE past FIRE to BURST. I had never been allowed to use BURST mode during training. This seemed like an appropriate time to start. I peered through my EOTECH optical sight, looking for the source of the fire. I heard a Marine from First Recon open fire with his M-249 SAW machine gun from the roof of the house, applying 800 rounds per minute of crunchy 5.56-millimeter goodness to some unknown target. From my vantage point I could only see some houses about 300 meters distant, but no muzzle flashes or indications of the gunfire. I considered putting suppressive fire on the rooftops of the buildings, which was the most likely location of our assailants. However, I could not positively identify my target, and our rules of engagement required that before I opened fire.

NYT.

Intergalactic Race Ends in a Virtual Tie

Albert Einstein still champion.

Astronomers said the gamma-ray race was one of the most stringent tests yet of a bedrock principle of modern physics: Einstein’s proclamation in his 1905 theory of relativity that the speed of light is constant and independent of its color, or energy; direction; or how you yourself are moving.

NYT.

Funny!

Don't miss this post at Say Uncle.

I laughed out loud for nearly a minute.

Well, nearly.

But once you run out of fireballs and atlatls, what then?

Classical Breakfast

Oatmeal and coffee while listening to The Four Seasons (Vivaldi) and Der Rosenkavalier (one o' them Strausses, Ah fergit which one).

Shanktified! Ha! I'm still chuckling. Java-lanche!

Meanwhile, outside, the wind howls and the rain pours.

That'll Buff Right Out...

Comment from "SGB" in Tallahassee.

Three burst chambers? Wha...?

h/t Say Uncle.

Mug-A-Lanche!

Caleb stops a knife-wielding wacko with a hot cup o' java and a cold steel Beretta. Nobody hurt. Knife-wielding wacko still at large. Thankfully, so is Caleb!

Stop by and wish him well.

"Shanktified." Is that a real word?

100 Kilometers

Thursday was another brilliant, warm fall day, so out the door I scrambled, returning home nearly seven hours later, having covered just over 62 miles.


Saw some cool stuff, including two of these:
Just sunning themselves on the road.

And this guy, who was determined to cross the trail and somehow avoid the speeding bicycles:

A sharp-tailed hawk flew down right in front of me and seized a tiny vole, or some such creature, then flew away, so close that I could have reached up and grabbed his talons.

Sheba the Queen of Milepost 13 was also holding Court, and receiving affection from her minions.

Another 3,000 calories burned.

Saddest Mugshot Ever

What did she do?

h/t Clayton Cramer.

Unintended Consequences, Part MCVII

Oh, the irony here is so delicious!

Animal Rights Activist Refuses to Let Bow Hunter Retrieve Dead Deer (L.A. Times)

After shooting the deer, the hunter tracked it onto private property. He knocked on the front door and asked permission to retrieve the deer. The property owner, Lynn Gorfinkle, who is CEO of the Animal Rights Alliance, refused. Here's my favorite part:

So the carcass remains in the Gorfinkles' yard, where it has been since Oct. 2. Lynn hopes that other animals will eat it because it is too big to bury.

"If someone's going to eat that deer, I want it to be natural predators, not some hunter," she said.

Her actions, meanwhile, may mean the death of another deer. "Since the hunter did not recover the deer, he did not need to tag it and it doesn't count toward his bag limit," [DEP spokesman] Dennis Schain told Outposts.

h/t Snowflakes In Hell.

Dogs And Cats Living Together ...

... human sacrifice! Mass hysteria!

I missed this report from 2007 - NRA teams up with ACLU:

In a report issued in February, the Texas affiliate of the National Rifle Association joined the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition “to spotlight unlawful, unnecessary governmental encroachment on average law-abiding citizens.”

The report, “Above the Law: How Texas prosecutors are placing their own judgment over that of the Legislature and the law of the land,” found that district and county attorneys had instructed police officers to “unnecessarily” interrogate drivers and arrest them or take their weapons, “even if they are legally carrying the gun.”

“It’s all the self-interest of the job,” said Scott Henson, a civil liberties advocate and blogger who wrote the report. Mr. Henson contends that police officers are opposed to citizens’ carrying guns and that prosecutors depend on gun charges to strengthen weak cases and prompt plea bargains.

Great Ride

Today was a perfect biking day. High 69 degrees, winds calm, clear sky. I rode out to milepost 26 and back, a round trip of 60 miles. Took six hours, plus an hour for lunch. I probably burned close to 3,000 calories.


As usual, Sheba the Queen of Milepost 13 was on patrol.


A happy cat and a warm spot of sunlight.

Ahhhhhh!

World's Youngest Terrorist

She's on the No-Fly List. She's four years old.

h/t The Volokh Conspiracy.

A Unique M1 Garand

Well, possibly.
The photo caption says:

Garand Mle 1936
Mounting in English beech of 1942.
The weapon was parachuted has the resistance "of Glières", close to Annecy, in 1943
It does not have markings of American property.
Photos send by "Alain"

If verified that would be outstanding. Unfortunately, there is no close-up photo of the receiver.

La Glorieuse Pipe Gun

Those Belgians have all the fun! This one fires .22 - the tiny pin in the stem is the trigger.

More hidden guns.

h/t Say Uncle.