Letters to the Editor
susan sunflower
Published Letters: 1374 Editor's Choice: 29
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As I understand it, yes, think about how many people had clearance to KNOW -- for certain -- that Plame was a covert agent ...
[Read the article: Right-wing noise machine: Plame not covert]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]that's obstacle #1 .... obstacle #2, is to prove that that person DELIBERATELY, WITH INTENT outed this person's covert status ...
This statute is not about repeating gossip ... it is about someone with sufficient clearance to KNOW the names of individuals DELIBERATELY blowing their cover ...
It's very hard to prove what someone "knew" and in this case where there was quite a little gossip mill (Novak had, was it 3 sources?) buzzing ... it would be very hard to prove, for instance, that Dick Cheney (who doubtless insists of access even to things he should not want, like NOC lists) in mentioning Valerie Plame to Dick Armitage INTENDED for Plame's status to be blown ...
Dick Armitage, in repeating Cheney's gossip, as I understand it would not be liable because he did not have clearance or access to PROOF of Plame's status ....
Again, this is NOT about repeating gossip ... it is about the DELIBERATE OUTING of COVERT agents .... not CIA employees (of whom there are hundreds and/or thousands who are NOT covert) ...
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I think that unless you can prove that Cheney had access to classified documents containing Plame's status,
[Read the article: Right-wing noise machine: Plame not covert]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]read them, absorbed them and repeated them with INTENT ... it's going to be rough sledding ...
If say, Cheney, merely repeated office gossip from Tenant, that Plame was or had been CIA and worked on weapon proliferation (or something both vague and detailed like that, approximating Novak's blurb), he could still claim to have just "repeated gossip" because he had not been given clearly labeled "classified information" ...
Everyone agrees that it is and has always been a badly written statute, very very very difficult to prosecute...
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It has to do with criteria for federal prosecution ... and it was designed with big fish in mind ...
[Read the article: Right-wing noise machine: Plame not covert]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]it's not about an accidental slip of the tongue and the like ...
there are, doubtless, plenty of internal mechanisms to deal with chatty-cathies and gossips like Armitage (he admitted to being an inveterate gossip)... that have nothing to do felony prosecution and jail time.
The "smoking gun" for me has always been the question of who actually had provable access to covert and/or NOC status ...
but, regardless, splashing the information about as "gossip" would make proving a genuine leak damn near impossible ...
like the stopped clock, sometimes "gossip" is accidentally accurate ... or so one could argue.... smirk smirk ... plausible deniability is all that's required.
Gossip about who works for "the agency" is common -- I can think of several prominent journalists who have often been said to have ties.
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Barry McAffrey on NPR this morning said that **maybe** we'd see some "meaningful*" results by January ...
[Read the article: The slow road to "progress"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]or, in other words, also known as, "before the first primary" ... and/or "well after the next funding battle" ...
* I can't recall his exact word ... but he meant that results before then, like results **now**, were likely to not be meaningful ... if you know what I mean and I think you do ;-))
There is significant psychological power/dominance in being the one holding the dictionary and defining, re-defining and then redefining as needed just about anything they please .... as-if.
Democrats waffle at their peril.
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Normally, I'd assume this cat had already been fixed, but this is SYA ... and there's no mention of any before/after ... so...
[Read the article: I hate my cat!]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]get the cat fixed PRONTO ... in order for the cat to be adopted or sheltered, it needs fixing.
Second, yes, a Cat Dancer or The Bird (a wonderful collection of feathers on a string) and one-on-one sessions can have two different effects, from my experience ... the first is exercise and stimulation, of course, but the other I have seen with a few neurotic cats is that it "lets them forget themselves" for a moment or two, getting them out of the tense, coiled, defensive posture.
Third, in my experience cats usually bond with ONE person more than anyone else ... one of you NEEDS to self-designate at this cat's PERSON and devote, again, one-on-one grooming time, periodic acknowledgement of existence, in addition to feeding. I've known couples who were so busy and into each other that the cat was almost always an intrusion ... and was left alone for virtually days on end, anxious and abandoned.
I also agree that medication may help break a cycle or may be needed long term. Some combination of physiology and environment has this cat extremely anxious and wound-up and feeling threatened.
Good luck. Regardless of how you feel about neutering, the cat will need to be fixed to be sheltered ...
It sounds as if your cat is AT LEAST as miserable as you are.
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re Berger Devine Yaeger: How brain dead, inexperienced, wet-behind-the-ears do you have to be to not AT LEAST ask permission before posting such renderings???
[Read the article: But they were such nice plans]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I smell cronyism ... no one qualified would be so dumb ...
Seriously, this is a GOVERNMENT contract (isn't it? or have we outsourced so some new level I cannot imagine) .... Aside from it being a SECRET --- EMBASSY --- IN A VERY HOT WAR ZONE ... I doubt that publishing renderings of the new outpatient clinic (not to mention any military installatio) in Biloxi or other domestic hinterlands would be "okay" without permission
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yes, and anything behavior that's not ACTUALLY illegal is acceptable behavior, right? especially if you don't get caught ...
[Read the article: Al-Qaida does it, too]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]and Watergate was no big deal because such things happen in every election ... apparently most of the time they "get away with it" -- the fluke, apparently, was getting caught.
The sad thing is that this form of rationalization (I won't call it "reasoning") is so common as to pass without comment as "popular opinion" and/or "conventional wisdom" -- not deep but, amazingly, not ridiculed.