Berger Update

WKYT is adding their voice to this Beger business:

“WASHINGTON Political veteran David Gergen says former national security adviser Sandy Berger ‘would never do anything to compromise’ U-S security.”

Oh, really? Tell me; Might he do something to protect his current and former bosses, or, for that matter, himself?

Newsmax points out this morning that this isn’t the first time he’s had to do some fnacy footwork:

In September 2002, he flatly denied during sworn congressional testimony that the government of Sudan had ever offered to turn over Osama bin Laden to his boss, Bill Clinton.

It gets better. Says Newsmax, in part:

“…Berger had a tougher time a few months later during an interview with WABC Radio’s Steve Malzberg, who grilled him on Clinton’s February 2002 admission that the Sudanese offer was indeed real.”

…

“I’ve seen [Clinton’s] quote,” he told Malzberg. “And I think at the time there was some examination of whether or not he could be held here if, in fact, we had an opportunity to get him. And the judgment was that we didn’t have any basis to hold him here at that time.”

But Berger insisted that the Clinton administration’s conclusion that it couldn’t detain bin Laden “was not pursuant to an offer by the Sudanese.”

“The Sudanese never offered to give him to the United States,” he insisted. “This is something I’ve gone back to check very carefully on. No one knows of any such offer.”

Now; What would the chances be, do you suppose, of the documents in question being ones regardsing the offer from the Sudanese that supposedly never happened?

Another speculation I’ve seen floated; Is this Hillary in action?
Remember; Hillary wants to run for Presdent. If Kerry by some extremely bad luck for America, manages to get elected, Hillary can’t run in ’08, and will likely NEVER get a shot at the presidency. Can this be aimed at tarring Kerry with a conspiracy brush?

It’s an interesting thought, nearly on par with simply criminal cover-up attempts on the part of former Clinton staffers…but it seems either way, Kerry’s got serious credibility issues.

Issues, which of course the so-called mainstream newspapers aren’t touching. CNN ignored the story on their air today, and on their web site. Can you imagine this story not getting ‘wall to wall’ coverage, if this were a Republican? I can’t.

Boortz notes this point this morning, too.

What if it had been Bill Frist, or Tom Delay or some other Republican that had done this.  It would be the top story of every newscast, the Democrats would be calling for that person’s arrest and screaming for an independent counsel.  The media would be polling the public….”do you think Republicans are trying to hide something when they steal classified documents?”  There would be no presumption of innocence, there would be no waiting for the investigation to be completed before passing judgment.

Boortz is willing to accept that there may be an explaination for all of this that is far more innocent. I’m not. I mean, comon, Neal… you really think with this guy’s record, this is the act of an innocent?

I’m willing to give the Democrats exactly as much leeway as they gave THEiR opponants. And given the history of the lies and coverups of Democrats these last 20 years, and given what’s riding on this, for everone involved, it’s the only reasonable way to proceed.

Allow me to be the first to say this;

I want this guy dragged up before the 9/11 commission, since this clearly is in their purvue. I want an independant council investitating this one.  What was in the missing documents? Who did it expose? How much did John Kerry know about this? Would the info in those documents swing public opinion against the Democrats, and therefore was this theft an attempt to swing the election by less than honest means?

These are questions that need answers.

Finally, Chris Muir makes note of this in his strip, called “Day By Day” this morning.

Great stuff.

But not, to my mind, as great as seeing Josh Marshall go into denial. (In fairness, Marshall, to his credi,t is the only lefty blogger I’ve seen to even make mention of Berger). Says Marshall:

“The whole thing seems almost inexplicable.”

Well, that’s just it, Josh, it’s VERY understandable. Indeed, the only way it’s inexplicable is if you take on faith that Berger, and the rest of the Clinton Democrats have never dealt in “nefarious” activity.

How about geting into reality with the rest of us, Josh?

Update:

Interesting that as of this writing, neither the White House, nor the Kerry summer camp has actually responded to this story. Mostly, this is because they feel no pressure from the “news” people. Yet.

The Kerry workers are I would guess, particularly working in a fever trying to figure how to spin this one. It’s not really in the papers, (they’re just getting around to it) and not on the tube, save for FNC. However, a couple insiders have suggested it’ll be all over all of them by tonight.  After all, the AP didn’t release the story until *after* the Evening News pushes last night. since then, the NYT,NYP, WaPo, and USAT all have back chatter stories… nothing front page, yet, though. Blogdom appears to have beaten them all to the punch.

When it does hit tonight, the Democats will want to have a defensive argument ready. I can predict how this is going to go; The Democrats will point to the upcoming Donkey convention on Boston, and claim the timing of the story coming out is questionable.

That argument isn’t going to sell, however. This is a fire that won’t go out soon, I think.

Jen over at A Collection of Thoughts:

“Wesley Blake Edwards, brother of wannabe VP John Edwards, pleaded innocent today in a Colorado Courtroom to the charge of driving under the influence and was released on $5,000 bail. He was allowed to return to his home in Fuquay-Varina, NC”

This is shaping up to be a classic Democratic Ticket, isn’t it? A top of the ticket who still can’t figure out what he wants to be when he grows up… whose only answer to all of the problems in the world is to turn the United States, it’s most powerful freedom defender, over to the demonstrably corrupted UN.

He’s been supported by every communist and every tinpot dictator in the world, and yet claims he’s American.

He’s voted against supporting our troups time and again, yet has voted against funding them at every chance he’s ever had.

The high level advisor of this candidate is clearly guilty of felonious behavior, as noted below.

His daughter shows up to official functions in outfits that would make Madonna blush.

He’s got a VP whose only claim to fame is his being a trial lawyer. It’ll be great for monetary donations from the ATLA, but he and his VP pick are both so disconnected from real people as to be laughable were it not so tragic. As to that baby faced VP, members of his family seem to suffer from Billy Carter Syndrome.

I mean, who couldn’t vote to put all that into the White House? It’s all the best of the Democrat party rolled into one fetid package.

But the DO have great hair….

AP is reporting

WASHINGTON – President Clinton (news – web sites)’s national security adviser, Sandy Berger, is the focus of a criminal investigation after admitting he removed highly classified terrorism documents from a secure reading room during preparations for the Sept. 11 commission hearings, The Associated Press has learned.

Berger’s home and office were searched earlier this year by FBI (news – web sites) agents armed with warrants. Some drafts of a sensitive after-action report on the Clinton administration’s handling of al-Qaida terror threats during the December 1999 millennium celebration are still missing.

Berger and his lawyer said Monday night he knowingly removed handwritten notes he had taken from classified anti-terror documents he reviewed at the National Archives by sticking them in his jacket and pants. He also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio, they said.

Of course the memos inquestion involved the 1998 PDB which gave President Clinton a far more detailed look at the 9/11 plans than Mr. Bush EVER had. So, Berger takes them.

Oh, and he tried to destroy the docs as well, according to the report. Gee. Now why would he do that, do you suppose? Trying to protect the Democrats including the current Presidential Ticket, I wonder?

Hmmm. Well, consider;
Berger is now John Kerry’s chief foreign policy advisor…. Hmmmm…

What do YOU think?

So, Global warming is the cause of all these climactic problems?
Nope.  Another leftist myth dies the death it richly deserves.

The fact is, that man has nothing at all to do with the climate changes we’ve seen of late.
FuturePundit links an excellent report, which says in part:

“The team studied sunspot data going back several hundred years. They found that a dearth of sunspots signalled a cold period – which could last up to 50 years – but that over the past century their numbers had increased as the Earth’s climate grew steadily warmer.
…

Sunspots have been increasing in number as the Earth has been getting warmer.

Over the past few hundred years, there has been a steady increase in the numbers of sunspots, a trend that has accelerated in the past century, just at the time when the Earth has been getting warmer.

Variations in sunspot activity are probably behind the increases and decreases in solar radiation and consequence changes in Earth’s climate.”

Wouldn’t an increase in sunspots, aside from raising the earth’s temp readings, also cause the ozone layer to be somewhat depleted?

Read the whole thing.

The bottom line here is the evdience is in, and the enviro-wacko crowd should be told to go pound sand. Their BS complaints and chicken-little posturing have cost us enough lives and money already.

What will be interesting is the reaction of the enviro-wacko left.
Assuming they have the guts to react at all.

One Fine Jay suggests the NAACP has come full circle:

Kweisi Mfume, Julian Bond, and the rest of the NAACP leadership who engage in vile, hostile rhetoric — the kind of rhetoric that Pres. George W. Bush declined to bless with his presence — have taken the civil rights movement full circle by discriminating against their own. They exhibit the kind of intolerance that their predecessors railed against, and there is nothing, nothing, that they can do to escape the irony and hypocrisy that they exhibit.

Ain’t it the truth, Jay.

Michelle Malkin complains she’s been having some problems with SiteMeter, and reports she’s taken it off her site.

“I note for the record that I took Sitemeter off my site about three weeks ago because it was publishing traffic numbers phonier than Enron’s. I think it wiped out about a week’s worth of visits for some reason. I e-mailed Sitemeter for help and they never wrote me back. So I took it off the blog”

Can’t say as I blame her much. I’ve not been very happy with the numbers here, either. I recognize that things will vary some but please explain to be why my hit numbers for Sundays are so abysmal.. and why, for example, about half of my own attempts at the site never seem to show up on SiteMeter. If it’s dropping me so often, I know darned good and well it’s dropping others.

I’m keeping it at the moment, because the TTLB system is tied to it. But I can be talked out of that, as well. And it won’t take much.

InstaGlenn points up an article in the NY Post this morning, that suggests this busienss with the UN being dirty in the oil for food progam may be the least of the concerns:

Says the POST:

“American officials believe that millions of dollars Saddam Hussein skimmed from the scandal-plagued U.N. oil-for-food program are now being used to help fund the bloody rebel campaign against U.S. forces and the new Iraqi government, The Post has learned.
U.S. intelligence officials and congressional investigators said last night that the ‘oil-for-insurgency link’ has been recently unearthed in the numerous probes now under way into the giant U.N. humanitarian program, in which Saddam is believed to have pocketed $10.1 billion through oil smuggling and kickbacks from suppliers. ”

…
U.S. intelligence officials believe a portion of the funds in these hidden accounts — possibly millions— is now being used to fund the Ba’athist guerrillas responsible for much of the postwar violence against coalition troops, sources said.
…
Congressional investigators have uncovered hundreds of documents in recent weeks that detail how top officials in Saddam’s regime directed companies bidding on contracts for oil or humanitarian goods to pay “after-sales fees” — or kickbacks — of up to 10 percent of each contract.

Says Glenn:

We should send Kofi a bill.

No, Glenn.
An eviction notice, under armed threat would be better.

PS: Is this the same UN that John Kerry wants us to be bowing to regards Iraq and Terroism?

Some nice comments this morning in my mail, regarding BitsBits, since I put it up on Sunday. Some 26 people wrote to send their kind comments and suggestions. Thanks.

And as for some of the specific comments, yes, the same page set up can be confusing. My thought was to change the background color of BitsBits, to, say, light blue. Or a pale yellow… justdiferent enough to remind you the context… but layoutwise, similar enough where you don’t think it’s a whole different place. I’m looking at this and may make those alterations today sometime.

As to comments there; I’m looking at that, as well. I’ve tried Blogger’s native comments code and am not fully happy with the flexability of it, (particularly as regards user control) but I’m thinking it’s the way I’m using it.  We’ll see.

The slightly angering part about all of this is that I’d not have had to resort to teh second sub-domain had Google encoded a category seperator into their system.  Are you listening, Blogger?

(shrug) This will do, for now.

This will grow and change, over time, I’m sure. But here’s how I envision this;
This should still be the first place you come, going forward. When I post a long form editorial, I’ll link it from here.

Of course you’re welcome to jump around the rather largish arcives..

Simple enough?

Dodd Harris fills us in

The Instant one links several who are examining this trainwreck in action.

It’ll be interesting to watch the Democrats try to spin this event.

The new addition is complete…

I’ve got most everything I’d planned to put into BitsBits from the archives… looks like around 60 posts, now the 100 I mentioned before. Most of the difference is because the links in some of the older items are deadsville. (Shrug)

I’ve changed the links off the homepage to point both BitsBits and BitsBlog to the respective Blogspot addresses.

I’ve added Icons for both BitsBits and BitsBlog to the right column, so you can navigate between them.

I’ve left the old addresses up for a while, since the search engines haven’t picked up the Blogspot addresses yet, and that’s critical to hitcounts. I’ll be deleting most of the Bits on the Roadrunner address sometime in the 3rd quarter.

I’ll be turning on the Comments section soon as I figure out how to get the CSS adapted for the purpose.

Be sure to check out the extensive archive while on the BitsBits section.
And drop me some mail with your thoughts.

I’ve got most everything I’d planned to put into BitsBits from the archives… looks like around 60 posts, now the 100 I mentioned before. Most of the difference is because the links in some of the older items are deadsville. (Shrug)

I’ve changed the links off the homepage to point both BitsBits and BitsBlog to the respective Blogspot addresses.

I’ve added Icons for both BitsBits and BitsBlog to the right column, so you can navigate between them.

I’ve left the old addresses up for a while, since the search engines haven’t picked up the Blogspot addresses yet, and that’s critical to hitcounts. I’ll be deleting most of the Bits on the Roadrunner address sometime in the 3rd quarter.

I’ll be turning on the Comments section soon as I figure out how to get the CSS adapted for the purpose.

Be sure to check out the extensive archive while on the BitsBits section.
And drop me some mail with your thoughts.

Discussion time, as we head to the next election:

I’ve been called a great many things politically, most of them inaccurate.

But this subject came up elsewhere, and I thought I’d re-post my comments here, since it’s as close as I’ve bothered to write to the subject of what constitutes the original purpose of government, and in fact what the actions of a legit government are.

I am not a conservative per se’ not in the sense that we think of such today. I am, rather, a social conservative, which is a different animal altogether. I have a different view from any of the ‘established’ groups as to the legit purpose of government. That’s because all of them have drifted away from it. And yes, I recognize this is NOT going to make me very popular. So be it. Any time you tell someone they’re screwing up, you’re not going to be popular with them.

So what is the purpose of government, anyway? No, I don’t mean what it evolved into, I mean rather it’s original purpose… the reason the concept of governments of any kind were even conceived of.

Some submit that government exists to protect privileges of a few, preserving a state of injustice for the majority.

Others hold the somewhat more optimistic view that the purpose of the state is to protect rights and to preserve justice. It appears to me that those questions form the arguments among the proponents of liberalism, libertarianism, socialism, conservatism and fascism, all at once.

I submit that all these four basic positions miss the point, because they generally don’t remember who it was who invented the concept of government…government of any kind, I mean… in first place. I should point out that in general, the ones who get it the closest are conservatives, but they are not spot on, either.)

Libertarians, mostly suggest, along with Jefferson, that “No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.”, and that therefore, government exists for only one purpose, and that is to secure the unalienable rights of its citizens against violation.

Well… This is fine as far as it goes, but it ignores who created the concept of rights, and it thereby misses utterly, the best path to protect such rights. In doing so it ironically denies it’s adherents such protection.

And of course each of these groups has tended to abuse the power of government for their own ends.

To the end of answering overriding question of the purpose of government, (And thereby the question of what government needs to be doing today, and not doing, to remain legit) with any logic, we need to ask a few more questions:

1: Who invented the concept of government?

2: What purpose would that entity have had in such creation?

One way we can answer those two questions at once, would be to look at what existed as the most powerful force before government was invented, and therefore what was the most likely inventor of government: CULTURE.

If we make the logical assumption that governments were originally created by the individual cultures, then it follows that each culture constructed their respective governments in their own image… governments that best reflected and advanced each culture’s interests.

The original purpose of government, therefore, is to protect, nurture and defend, and if possible expand the influence of, the culture that gave it life. As such, to the greatest of degrees possible, each government’s laws, on the whole, were the culture, codified. It follows, then, that any government holding to the original purpose of government will perform this task.

Now, notice I said to the greatest degree possible. I freely admit… Trumpet, even, that there are no perfect governments, no perfect laws. No law, or government can ever capture in amber, a culture. Cultures are far more complex than any law, however written, can encompass. So it is that laws cannot be the end-call and be-all to a culture, or to a country. Laws when taken too literally and made to apply to all events uniformly, can instead of being just, will instead dispense injustice. It is said that in hell, there will be law and policy and little else. Yet, this imperfect tool did at least manage to provide a mechanism toward the intended purpose… The furtherance of the culture that founded said government. This understanding that there is imperfection in government implies that other values should supersede governmental power when the tool of government doesn’t fit the task at hand well. I submit the highest value applied here should be the values of the culture, not that of the law.

(Which, I would argue is why there are judges which read not only the wording of the laws but then intent of them.)

Now, I hear some of you balking at this, suggesting the right of the individual are paramount; a noble sentiment. But consider this immovable fact:

Rights are not universal.

Yep. That’s what I said…Read it again, just to be sure.

Rights are not universal.

Clearly, this will raise many questions on the part of some. This should answer most;

When Jefferson wrote that “WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT” he was not speaking a universal truth at all. The operative word in that phrase is “WE”.

Rather than talking about a universal point of view, a universal truth, if you will, he was instead talking about the point of view of WE the new American culture. With this angle, many of the long-held myths about rights tend to disappear.

Consider; if it was in fact a universal truth that all men were created equal, it wouldn’t have been such a radical idea, for the time, much less then to now. Last I checked, it is quite true that a vast majority still do not consider these as any kind of truth, universal or otherwise; they consider them to be anything BUT self-evident. Royalty still exists, as do class structures, and slavery, as well.

Again, I say…Jefferson was speaking of the point of view of OUR culture, not that of others.

The fact of the matter is that RIGHTS ARE A CULTURAL CONCEPT, and are nigh on meaningless outside that construct. Once the culture is allowed to fall to the law, even in an attempt to impose rights where they do not exist, what happens to real rights, which are a cultural concept?

When one says “freedom”, the question should be ‘freedom from what’? The answers that come back will invariably be cultural in nature. They do not make any sense outside that environment.

As I’ve said, the law and government has been abused by some, it has moved away from that intended purpose of supporting the existing culture. They are in fact being used by the left to alter that morality, to alter that culture, and when that happens, the fall of the government cannot be far behind… and the fall of the culture itself beyond that, becomes a larger possibility. Often as not, the downfall of that culture is what they have in mind.

That said, Culture is by far a more powerful force than government, over time. Indeed; Where governments have gotten themselves into problems over the centuries, is invariably where governments have tried to alter the culture artificially, by means of law. Culture eventually triumphs.

Take communism, as an example. Communism attempts to over-ride the culture and basically outlaw many facets of it.

But, (and this is important) everywhere you saw Communism.. Russia, Cuba, Korea, East Germany you saw the same treacherous *political* ideology, not the cultural values of those societies. And in those places where communism has been overthrown, the former USSR for example, the original culture invariably springs back to life.

This affects the concept of what is being called Multi-culturalism, as well. Governments that seek to mandate multi-culturalism do not last. Again, the USSR is a fair enough example.

Now, some would, because of those abuses as I mentioned, like to see all governments fall. They feel that governments have no legit purpose. I suggest this is short-sighted, and seeks, in the case of our republican form of government, to remove the only tool available to the end of supporting rights.

The worst of the abusers of government in our country, our culture, given these original purposes, are on the left end of the spectrum. The most visible American mainstream political group that works against these original purposes of government are the Democrat Party.

Now these are basics, and do not explore such things as taxes for example… and I’ll do this at need. But I’ve given you much to chew on and respond to; which I will ask you to do; Discuss in the comments section, or (given the size limits on my comments section) send me an e-mail, and I’ll post it from here as an update.

OK… the new site for BitsBits, my collection of long-form editorials, is online and working, though I ahve much in the way of update and custom CSS HTML to do. So far, I’ve put a fair number of archival posts up… Nothing major big just now, and not very much from what’s on the old site. But some of them go back to 99 and even to 98. Yes, I’ve been doing this a while.

I’ll change the links in the right column later once I get close to what I’m looking for in the long form. But perhaps you’ll be interested to have a peek at what I’m setting up there?

Here’s your link

UPDATE:

I’ve got perhaps 100 of my long-form Bits online. Not bad for an afternoon’s work. There’s likely to be several errors, particulalry in the formatting. I’ll get ’em fixed, of course.

In going over the older stuff it’s amazing to me how many of them speak directly to the political fight just now. Have a look, please, and feel free to make suggestions, and feedback.

Housekeeping notes:

None of the changes I’m talking about involve BitsBlog. The changes are I’m speaking of here are BitsBits, which are the long form comments I usually post weekly. (Follow the link on the upper right to find the current BitsBits)

With some recent advanacements in the blogger.com site, I’ve decided to move my long-form stuff off of my RoadRunner web space and to Blogger. I’m in the process of setting up the new site for this, and it’ll take some time to do. I’m going to see if I can keep the old URLs active and link them to the new locations on Blogger… I’m still getting large numbers of hits from the older stuff particularly the Kerry writeups. Don’t want to lose those hits.

What this will do is allow me some added space on the local Roadrunner drives. I’ll use the RR account as a place to keep the graphics for both Blogger accounts… at least that’s the way I have it figured.
Let you know as we go, here.

UPDATE:
I’ve started work on moving some of my archived stuff, dating back to 1998 and before, up to the present. Looks like it’ll be around a gig or so of space, all told. Some of this stuff hasn’t ben online for years. I should be opening up the as yet under construction site in the next few days.