I’m still tickled over Karl Rove’s claim the other day for Dubya the Bookworm. Poor ol’ Karl — dude tells a whopper like that in WSJ, and two days later here comes Vanity Fair to pwn him with:
Richard Clarke, chief White House counterterrorism adviser: We had a couple of meetings with the president, and there were detailed discussions and briefings on cyber-security and often terrorism, and on a classified program. With the cyber-security meeting, he seemed—I was disturbed because he seemed to be trying to impress us, the people who were briefing him. It was as though he wanted these experts, these White House staff guys who had been around for a long time before he got there—didn’t want them buying the rumor that he wasn’t too bright. He was trying—sort of overly trying—to show that he could ask good questions, and kind of yukking it up with Cheney.
The contrast with having briefed his father and Clinton and Gore was so marked. And to be told, frankly, early in the administration, by Condi Rice and [her deputy] Steve Hadley, you know, Don’t give the president a lot of long memos, he’s not a big reader—well, shit. I mean, the president of the United States is not a big reader?
Any of y’all who are reading VF ‘s oral history of the Bush Years, feel free to ooo-and-wow over other favorite passages here. And to think, these are just a few highlights . . .
This is totally unrelated to this thread. Sez here (Tupelo paper) that Leslie Bowlin has been returned to the Mississippi parole board. You may recall that Les was sentenced to Life + 25 for kidnapping and rape, and Gov. Mushmouth “furloughed” him home to his momma and daddy in Louisiana. Sure makes me wonder ….
Thanks for the update, Ben. I assume he’s made his slow way back to Parchman by now.
Not so fast, Lo … Bowlin apparently is under jurisdiction of the state parole board, which also explains why he doesn’t grace MDOC’s facebook. Life + 25 and he gets paroled: the inmates control the asylum. Mississippi has no meaningful state government … might as well appoint a federal receiver or commissioner to run this place.
So where else might they have him stashed right now, Ben?
Who knows. He may be roasting marshmellows at the Governor’s Mansion. Or on his way to Dallas for the Cotton Bowl. How do we hold the prison system and the parole people responsible for this? Maybe all meetings of the parole board oughta be broadcast live on MPB.