NONE DARE CALL THIS TREASON?
Memo Suggests Intel Committee Dems Misuse Their Posts for Anti-Bush Strategy

Well, someone came close to calling it that; namely Democratic Senator Zell Miller (D-GA), who has long been a critic of the far-left faction which has taken over his party. Miller refers to it as "treason's first cousin."

This past Tuesday, ABC Radio talker Sean Hannity received from an inside source on Capitol Hill a fax of a memo drafted by someone working for Sen. Jay Rockfeller (D-WV) outlining a suggested plan for Democratic members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to use their both positions and sensitive intelligence data in order to undermine the Bush admistration.

Following is a transcript of that memo as read on the air by Hannity:

We have carefully reviewed our options under the rules and believe we have identified the best approach. Our plan is as follows:

1) Pull the majority along as far as we can on issues that may lead to major new disclosures regarding improper or questionable conduct by administration officials. We are having some success in that regard.

For example, in addition to the President's State of the Union speech, the chairman [Sen. Pat Roberts] has agreed to look at the activities of the office of the Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, as well as Secretary Bolton's office at the State Department.

The fact that the chairman supports our investigations into these offices and cosigns our requests for information is helpful and potentially crucial. We don't know what we will find but our prospects for getting the access we seek is far greater when we have the backing of the majority. [We can verbally mention some of the intriguing leads we are pursuing.]

2) Assiduously prepare Democratic 'additional views' to attach to any interim or final reports the committee may release. Committee rules provide this opportunity and we intend to take full advantage of it.

In that regard we may have already compiled all the public statements on Iraq made by senior administration officials. We will identify the most exaggerated claims. We will contrast them with the intelligence estimates that have since been declassified. Our additional views will also, among other things, castigate the majority for seeking to limit the scope of the inquiry.

The Democrats will then be in a strong position to reopen the question of establishing an Independent Commission [i.e., the Corzine Amendment.]

3) Prepare to launch an independent investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the administration's use of intelligence at any time. But we can only do so once.

The best time to do so will probably be next year, either:

A) After we have already released our additional views on an interim report, thereby providing as many as three opportunities to make our case to the public. Additional views on the interim report (1). The announcement of our independent investigation (2). And (3) additional views on the final investigation. Or:

B) Once we identify solid leads the majority does not want to pursue, we would attract more coverage and have greater credibility in that context than one in which we simply launch an independent investigation based on principled but vague notions regarding the use of intelligence.

In the meantime, even without a specifically authorized independent investigation, we continue to act independently when we encounter footdragging on the part of the majority. For example, the FBI Niger investigation was done solely at the request of the vice chairman. We have independently submitted written requests to the DOD and we are preparing further independent requests for information.

SUMMARY: Intelligence issues are clearly secondary to the public's concern regarding the insurgency in Iraq. Yet we have an important role to play in revealing the misleading, if not flagrantly dishonest, methods and motives of senior administration officials who made the case for unilateral preemptive war.

The approach outlined above seems to offer the best prospect for exposing the administration's dubious motives.

DID SADDAM TRY TO OFFER PEACE AT THE LAST MINUTE?
That's What ABC News and the New York Times Would Like You to Believe

But as with all other stories, this one has at least two sides to it, as reported by Fox News in reply to the Establishment Media's reports this morning:

Messages from Baghdad, first relayed by [businessman Imad] Hage in February to an analyst in the office of Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy and planning, were part of an attempt by Iraqi officers to persuade the Bush administration to open talks through a clandestine channel, people involved in the discussion told the Times.

One U.S. official told Fox News that while there were numerous offers and leads as the war neared, they were all thoroughly investigated and it was determined that they weren't in a position to deliver anything that would have been acceptable to the United States.

Additionally, this official says there were several attempts to meet with Iraqi intelligence officers, but each time, those officers were no-shows.

The attempts were portrayed by Iraqi officials as having Saddam's endorsement, but it was not clear if American officials viewed them as legitimate.

...[Pentagon advisor Richard] Perle told the [New York] Times in Wednesday's story that he was dubious Saddam would make legitimate proposals in such a circuitous fashion. "There were so many other ways to communicate," he said. "There were any number of governments involved in the end game, the Russians, French, Saudis."

So things may not be quite as the P. T. Barnums of American journalism would have them appear. Taking their version uncritically may be akin to buying used stock from Enron.

A VICTORY FOR TERRI'S PARENTS:
Bob and Mary Schindler's latest challenge to Michael Schivo's Custody Upheld

Associated Press reports (see full article HERE):

A state circuit judge Wednesday refused to block an effort by the parents of a brain-damaged woman to try to get her husband removed as her legal guardian. Attorneys for Michael Schiavo now have to respond in court to charges in the petition that he withheld proper care and therapy from his wife, Terri Schiavo, and that he has a conflict of interest because he's in a romantic relationship with another woman.

Bob and Mary Schindler, parents of Terri Schiavo, asked Circuit Judge George W. Greer to appoint Terri's brother or sister as guardian instead.

Schiavo had asked for the Schindler's request to be dismissed, but Greer refused.

DOIN' THE JACK CHICK SHUCK-N-JIVE AGAIN!
The Boston Globe's Charles Pierce Dives Headfirst Into the Know Nothing Pool...

...with this amazing Conspiracy Theory. We suspect that Mr. Pierce wears a Tin Foil Hat to keep out those brain-washing rays emanating from the Vatican's string of Mind Control Satellites. How else would he be able to expose this nefarious plot?

Our iniitial observations of Mr. Pierce's effort to lift the cover from the Giant Global Papist Conspiracy:

(1) Mr. Pierce forgot to bring Robert Hanssen into his article, and made only a passing reference to Richard Scaife.

(2) Mr. Pierce completely forgot to mention how Opus Dei has been assigned by the Vatican to assassinate the leaders of the Priory of Sion in order to protect the Top Secret that Jesus Christ was married to Mary Magdalene.

In our opinion, there is simply no excuse for Mr. Pierce's neglect of these important facts. Therefore, we recommend that his bosses yank his Know Nothing Party Yellow Jouralism license post-haste.

In any case, Catholic blogger Dale Price skillfully debunks Pierce's in his masterful point-by-point rebuttal.

TERRI'S PARENTS ON LARRY KING LIVE:
Bob and Mary Schindler to Appear on CNN Program Friday

According to Fr. Rob Johansen, Larry King has agreed to have Terri's parents on his show this Friday (Nov.7) at 9:00 p.m. to respond to accusations made against them by son-in-law Michael Schiavo and his lawyer George Felos.

Apparently, King also waived his demand for an exclusive interview, which would have prevented the Schindlers from appearing on other programs.

DOIN' THE JACK CHICK SHUCK-N-JIVE:
ABC News' Latest Foray Into Things Catholic....

...was, as expected, disappointing as news and history, but made for great Know Nothing yellow journalism.

Moreover, ABC's "documentary" Jesus, Mary, and DaVinci turned out to be a one-hour infomercial for Dan Brown's blatently anti-Catholic novel The DaVinci Code, summarized in our Oct. 31 blog below and skillfully debunked by Envoy Magazine writers Carl E. Olson and Sandra Miesel, who also wrote a similar critique for Deal Hudson's Crisis monthly journal.

Some initial takes on ABC's nonsensical presentation:

(1) To her credit, ABC News reporter Elizabeth Vargas admitted that Brown's theory that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and fathered a child with her has little or no credibility.

BUT...

(2) Vargas failed to dig into Brown's nonsensical Priory of Sion claim, which he lifted en toto from the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, one of whom Vargas interviewed in her program with a string of softball albeit somewhat skeptical questions.

Had Vargas done even a little homework via Google she would have quickly discovered that, as we noted below on Oct. 31, the Priory of Sion was not, as Brown claims, an ancient secret society --of which Leonardo was supposedly a member-- set up to protect the "true" identity of the "Holy Grail." Nor are the Priory's "ancient secret documents" which Brown referred to and relies upon for his "theory" the least bit authentic. According to New Age writer Robert Richardson, by no means a sycophant of the Vatican:

...The Grail is not a bloodline. This false story originated in reams of fraudulent documents created by an extreme right-wing French sect. The group responsible for these fictions, calling itself the "Priory of Sion" and claiming an ancient esoteric lineage, has kept its own authentic history carefully hidden. How it constructed its fraud has not been revealed. It is long past time for the light of truth to reveal the "Priory of Sion" and the fictional bloodline it has promoted for what they are really are -- a fraud...

(3) MUST every network which produces any program touching on either ancient church history or Catholicism always trot out Gnostic "gospels" advocate Elaine Pagels and off-the-wall uber-lib dissident Catholic priest Richard McBrien, as well as the nearest Liberal Establishment Protestant?

How come they never interview bona fide orthodox Catholic biblical scholars or historians, or at least bona fide conservative Protestant or Orthodox biblical scholars or historians like N. T. Wright or Juroslav Pelikan? (The only conservative they interviewed was some guy from Dallas TS whom we never heard of. Whoopee.)

(4) The addition of Margaret Starbird to Vargas' cast of characters is interesting in and of itself:

Apparently reporter Vargas just took at face value Starbird's claim to be a "Christian scholar" and never bothered to check Starbird's professional background as an expert in ancient Christianity and church history. The author of such books as The Goddess in the Gospels: Reclaiming the Sacred Feminine and Magdalene's Lost Legacy: Symbolic Numbers and the Sacred Union in Christianity and The Tarot Trumps and the Holy Grail --all pushing a fanciful Gnostic-feminist revisionism of ancient Christianity and the pre-Nicene Church-- Starbird is a quasi-"Christian" ex-Catholic New Age writer with no academic credentials as either an historian or a biblical scholar.

(5) Last but not least, Dan Brown's absurdly bigoted and extremist anti-Catholic statements --such as his nonsense statement that the Catholic Church of Leonardo's time equated science with heresy-- clearly demonstrated what he really is:

The Jack Chick of the New York Times Best Seller List.