That's really quite an accomplishement. The whole reason he was appointed in the first place was his record of limited investigations.

First on the list, of course, was Iran/Contra, in which Hamilton was complicit in the coverup at the pre-emptive stage, as then AP report Robert Parry--who essentially broke the story--recalled in a book tour speech back in 1994:

http://www.webcom.com/~lpease/collections/conspiracies/parryspeech.htm

So this was what was happening by the Summer of '86, when Barger and I finally did a story - we had 24 sources by this point - it was getting silly, you know? You know, it wasn't like two sources, or three sources, we were up to 24, and some of them named, and we did this story in June of '86 where we laid a lot of it out - we didn't have all of it, I'll grant - we didn't know about Secord's flights, but we had Rob Owen, and we had Jack Singlaub, and we had how the intermediaries were moving the weapons and so forth. So we get to this point, and we put this story out, and finally Congress - which had been very afraid of touching this - the democrats were extremely timid - finally Lee Hamilton, who was then Chairman of the Senate [sic--actually HOUSE] Intelligence Committee takes our little story with the rest of the Intelligence Committee over to the White House and they sit down with Ollie North and they say, "Colonel North - we have this story that says you're doing these things which are kind of illegal, uh, what about it?" He said, "It's not true," they said "Thank you," and they went back to Capitol Hill. And I get a call from one of Hamilton's aides, and he told me, he said - I'll never forget this, because it was probably my worst moment in the whole Iran Contra Scandal - I get this call from a Democratic aide who tells me that Lee Hamilton has looked into my story, and he had a choice between believing these honorable men at the White House or my sources and it wasn't a close call.

Then, of course, Hamilton chaired the Select Committee to Investigate Iran-Contra. Before it even convened, Democrats promised that "no one's talkng about impeachment," which, of course made it vastly easier for those involved to construct strategies to shift blame and stiffle the truth.

And, finally, there's Hamilton's obstruction of a complete investigation of the October Surprise--the Reagan/Bush campaign's treasonous deal-making with Iran, keeping Americans held hostage, so that Carter could be defeated--also reported by Robert Parry:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2007/121907.html

Similarly, the Democratic congressional leadership ignored the flood of incriminating evidence pouring into the “October Surprise” task force in December 1992.

Chief counsel Lawrence Barcella told me later that he urged task force chairman Lee Hamilton to extend the investigation several months to examine this new evidence of Republican guilt, but Hamilton ordered Barcella simply to wrap up the probe with a finding that the Reagan-Bush campaign had done nothing wrong.

What was in the Russian report? Parry explains:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/archive/xfile1.html

To the shock of the task force, the six-page Russian report stated, as fact, that Casey, George Bush and other Republicans had met secretly with Iranian officials in Europe during the 1980 presidential campaign. The Russians depicted the hostage negotiations that year as a two-way competition between the Carter White House and the Reagan campaign to outbid one another for Iran's cooperation on the hostages. The Russians asserted that the Reagan team had disrupted Carter's hostage negotiations after all, the exact opposite of the task force conclusion.

As described by the Russians, the Carter administration offered the Iranians supplies of arms and unfreezing of assets for a pre-election release of the hostages. One important meeting had occurred in Athens in July 1980 with Pentagon representatives agreeing "in principle" to deliver "a significant quantity of spare parts for F-4 and F-5 aircraft and also M-60 tanks ... via Turkey," according to the Russian report. The Iranians "discussed a possible step-by-step normalization of Iranian-American relations [and] the provision of support for President Carter in the election campaign via the release of American hostages."

But the Republicans were making separate overtures to the Iranians, also in Europe, the Russians claimed. "William Casey, in 1980, met three times with representatives of the Iranian leadership," the Russians wrote. "The meetings took place in Madrid and Paris."

At the Paris meeting in October 1980, "R[obert] Gates, at that time a staffer of the National Security Council in the administration of Jimmy Carter and former CIA director George Bush also took part," the Russians said. "In Madrid and Paris, the representatives of Ronald Reagan and the Iranian leadership discussed the question of possibly delaying the release of 52 hostages from the staff of the U.S. Embassy in Teheran."

Hmmm. Sure sounds like treason to me.

So, fast forward to now, and... Lee Hamilton, Shocked! Shocked!

What's a mother to do?

"In order to save the Democratic Party, it was necessary to destroy it."

Yeah, that's the ticket!

Homer voice: Pesky voters (Grrr...)

Lisa: Dad!

A new survey of American Jewish opinion, released by the American Jewish Committee, demonstrates several important propositions: (1) right-wing neocons (the Bill Kristol/Commentary/ AIPAC/Marty Peretz faction) who relentlessly claim to speak for Israel and for Jews generally hold views that are shared only by a small minority of American Jews; (2) viewpoints that are routinely demonized as reflective of animus towards Israel or even anti-Semitism are ones that are held by large majorities of American Jews; and (3) most American Jews oppose U.S. military action in the Middle East -- including both in Iraq and against Iran.

It really is just that simple.

Strike, schmike!

The slogans just write themselves.

Real men trust only their fears!

So I'm rather pleased at how she's turned out. Her and Sandra Oh in the same cast? Pretty fuckin amazing.