I really don't have a lot to say here myself except that it is becoming increasingly clear that the Bush administration obviously has no compunction about exercizing its power to punish its "enemies."

It seems that James Moore, the award-winning journalist who authored the best-selling book "Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential," has found himself on the infamous "no-fly" list -- a list that is free of oversight and immune from appeal.

Does the Bush administration really consider Moore a terrorist, or is it just that they want to inconvenience him for daring to take on George W. Bush and Karl Rove?

Here is his story in his own words, as posted at the Huffington Post:

[From the diaries by susanhu. Can October come soon enough?]

"Saint Judith Miller" - The Latest NY Times Editorial Rant

It seems hardly a week goes by without a New York Times editorial lamenting the ongoing imprisonment of their "star" reporter, Judith Miller, jailed for refusing to cooperate with the Federal Grand Jury probing the outing by members of the Bush administration of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame, wife of the Niger yellow-cake hoax whistleblower JosephWilson.

Today's latest rant, Bad Company, likens Saint Judy to the journalists imprisoned for purely political reasons by the Communist government of China. Such comparisons are an insult to the readers of The New York Times, and are part of an ongoing effort by Times Editorial writers to obfuscate the facts surrounding the jailing of Ms. Miller.

BELOW, more excerpts from the NYT editorial, and my commentary:

George W. Bush has received nothing but bad news from the pollsters of late as his job approval ratings have tumbled over his perceived mishandling of the situation in Iraq, the economy, Social Security, and most recently the federal response to Hurricane Katrina. But ever since September 11, 2001, Bush has had the confidence of the American people when it came to protecting us in the war against terror.

Now it would appear that public confidence in the president is crumbling on the terror front as well, at least that is what the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll suggests:

(I post this despite there being another diary already up that deals with the same subject. I think the two approaches to the same topic are different enough so as not to conflict with each other).

Can I believe my eyes and ears. Can George W. Bush actually be taking responsibility for a failure? In a joint press conference today with the President of Iraq, Mr. Bush took on an air of contrition not at all in character for the swaggering "bring `em on" president.

Brian Williams posted a blog at the NBC News site yesterday innocuously titled: Making the Quarter rounds. It that is almost as staggering in its naïveté as it is frightening in the message it contains...

We are torturing children at Abu Ghraib, and the Bush Administration does not want to be held accountable. Please read to the end to see the horrific accounts of the suffering we are inflicting on ten year olds.

Two Republican Senators roused the ire of the White House last week by pushing for legislation that would have set rules for the treatment and interrogation of terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. Senators John McCain of Arizona and Lindsay Graham of South Carolina introduced the legislation on Monday July 25 and tacked it onto the $491 billion 2006 Defense bill.

Said McCain on the Senate floor: "What we're trying to do here is make sure there are clear and exact standards set for interrogation of prisoners ... To fight terrorism, we must obtain intelligence, but we have to ensure that it's reliable and acquired in a way that's humane."

It doesn't sound like a big deal. After all we have long been assured by the Bush Administration and by the military that incidents of torture and abuse that have occurred at places like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraeb prison were aberrations by a small group of soldiers operating on their own, and that this in no way reflected U.S. policy. ... BELOW:

Perhaps you can recall way back on July 8, 2005 when Maj. Gen. William Webster, head of the 30,000 U.S. and foreign troops and 15,000 Iraqi soldiers known as Task Force Baghdad announced triumphantly, via a video-teleconference interview from Baghdad,  that the insurgency in the Baghdad area under his control had been all but vanquished.  "The ability of these insurgents to conduct sustained high-intensity operations, as they did last year -- we've mostly eliminated that",  proclaimed the general in his widely covered press conference.

[From the diaries by susanhu.] Last Saturday, July 16th, two interesting events occurred. First I read on Bradblog that Symantic had, for the past week, been blocking all e-mail that either came from or mentioned in its text "afterdowningstreet.org." I was skeptical, but shortly thereafter I received my first e-mail from this group in a week, and it had been sent three days earlier. Concerned, I sent e-mails both to Comcast Abuse, and to Comcast customer care seeking confirmation or denial that this had indeed occurred, and if the former, requesting an explanation. I received auto-responses promising that a personal response would follow. It never came.

This diary was just posted at TPM Cafe

Josh Marshall intros it and links to it at his primary web site, Talking Point Memo

"LARRY JOHNSON IS a retired CIA officer who was a classmate of Valerie Plame's when both entered the CIA in the mid-1980s. Johnson just did a guest post over at TPMCafe in which he explains the damage that was done when administration officials revealed Plame's identity, who's lying and who's not."

In past diaries I have opined that Judith Miller's refusal to testify before the grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame affair is rooted not in her desire to protect confidential sources, but rather in her belief that she herself is a target of the investigation facing possible indictment. I believe that the evidence in support of this theory is more in evidence every day.

While the Iraqi insurgency rages on, it appears all is suddenly well in Baghdad.

I keep reading about how Judith Miller is upholding some noble journalistic principle by refusing to divulge her sources to the grand jury investigating the Valerie Plame leak. The problem is she has invoked no such privilege.

Early reports out of London yesterday morning indicated that Scotland Yard was alerted to an impending terror attack shortly before it occurred, and that a warning to the Israeli Embassy resulted in Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in London for a conference, remaining in his hotel room instead of attending a meeting.

Back on February 26, 1998 a lengthy piece appeared in the New York Times:

How Iraq's Biological Weapons Program Came to Light
By WILLIAM J. BROAD and JUDITH MILLER
The New York Times
February 26, 1998