The new co-chair -- Laurence Silberman

[grasswire]

You'd better educate yourself about this man, now the co-chair of the commission to investigate intel.

He's a highly partisan GOP fixer.

Laurence Silberman was one of the three-judge panel who removed Robert Fiske from the Whitewater investigation and appointed Kenneth Starr.

Silberman is a founder of the Federalist Society -- that hothouse funded by Richard Mellon Scaife that turns out such luminaries as Ann Coulter.

Silberman was involved in the absolution of Oliver North.

He was part of the get-Clinton group that met at the home of Barbara Olson to weekly discuss progress in the coup attempt against WJ Clinton.

He is scum. Dirtbag, anti-democratic scum.

Don't let the media portray him as an honorable man.

[Doctor_J]

1. Yawn

you didn't really think this would be on the square, did you?

[devilgrrl]

2. In others word ho-hum...

Your indifference has been noted.

[grasswire]

8. no

I didn't think it would be on the square.

But it's important to have the facts at hand to be able to educate people who are less informed who MIGHT think it's on the square.

When your co-worker mentions the commission, you'll be able to tell him about the background of the co-chairman.

[Doctor_J]

11. No flame intended

this is just about the way i figured it would go. All we need is a headline, "Bush appoints commission to investigate Bush".

[Nite Owl]

3. Knew that name rang

a bell. Thanks for the refresher.

[Neecy]

4. but...but...but...

John King on CNN has been assuring us all what an honorable, respected guy Silberman is.

Then again, King has spent the last half hour spinning so hard for Rove that there's a little dog in Kansas who's about to land in Oz.

[Cooley Hurd]

5. King also described him as "interesting"

That's an understatement! He's a 'puke of the worst kind!!!

[yellowcanine]

6. Well this does indicate one thing

The fact that Shrub would dare to appoint someone like Silberman demonstrates that he is scared shitless about this. I don't think the work of this commission matters. The truth will come out. Besides, at some point even the Silbermans are going to realize that if they don't get into a lifeboat the Shrub Titanic will take them all down.

[Bandit]

7. I'm flabbergasted that his sidekick Robert Bork isn't included

:shrug:

[finecraft]

9. Silberman...Ashcroft enabler

http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/03/02/18.html

(snip)..."And when a lower court unanimously ruled that Ashcroft had exceeded his authority in assuming broad wire tap powers, who was one of the three judges that said he was acting within his powers? Why, Laurence Silberman. Silberman sits on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, the final court decision making stop in deciding what powers the Bush administration can assume in violating our Constitutional rights. The Washington Post, in an editorial last year noted, "Yesterday the court of review sprang to life, overturning a lower FISA court decision and handing Attorney General John D. Ashcroft a major victory -- one that significantly changes the rules under which sensitive surveillance is conducted in this country." The Post blamed Congress for the problem, even though the lower court had ruled against Ashcroft and had taken the unprecedented step of releasing a dossier of wiretapping abuses by the Justice Department."

[JHB]

10. Read "Blinded by the Right"

Silberman and his wife took David Brock under their wing when he was in his worst "right-wing attack hack" days, so he gives an up-close-and-personal account of them before he grew a consience. Silberman advised Brock on his articles and book attacking Anita Hill.

Silberman wasn't merely "involved" with North's abbsolution, he ran the three-judge panel that threw out North's conviction. One of the other judges was David Sentelle, who also was put on the Whitewater panel to throw out Fiske and appoint Starr (and give him free reign).

He was an undersecretary of labor under Nixon, a foreign policy advisor to the Reagan campaign, and is even mixed up in the 1980 "October Surprise" business.

[yellowcanine]

12. Yep - I am surprised Sentelle and Royce Lamberth aren't on the commission.

Then Bush could have had a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy Trifecta; Silberman, Sentelle, Lamberth

[xray s]

13. Josh Marshall nails it

http://talkingpointsmemo.com /

On the one hand, the president has some reputable Dems down on the list. But Democrats who had much of any experience of Washington in the 1990s aren't going to be overly impressed with its being headed up by Judge Laurence H. Silberman, who was one of the key operators in the right-wing onslaught against Bill Clinton.

Start with this article by Jonathan Broder in Salon in 1998, from which we excerpt the two lead grafs ...

The roster of combatants in the brawl between Kenneth Starr and President Clinton has now expanded to include a conservative federal judge and friend of Starr who has stunned even battle-weary Washington insiders with his intemperate attack on Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno.
As part of the federal appellate panel that refused to hear the administration's arguments to prevent Secret Service agents from testifying last week, U.S. Judge Laurence H. Silberman wrote a scathing opinion that accused Reno of acting not on behalf of the U.S. government, but in the personal interests of President Clinton. Then, using language seldom seen in the federal judiciary, Silberman questioned whether Clinton himself, by allowing his aides to attack Starr, was "declaring war on the United States."

And then proceed from there to this interview with David Brock, who discusses Silberman's involvement -- while a sitting federal judge -- in much of Brock's anti-Clinton shenanigans from the early and mid-1990s. Again, a brief excerpt ...

Yes he was a sitting judge. For example, they reviewed in draft the galleys of that book. And so it certainly went beyond a reporter-source relationship. And coming out of that, Judge Silberman became a mentor to me and was someone who I relied on, as well as Ricky, for political advice while I was at the American Spectator pursuing a lot of the anti-Clinton stories. When Ricky Silberman left the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, she founded, or was one of the co-founders, of the Independent Women's Forum -- it was actually her idea. And it was actually Ricky Silberman's idea to approach Ken Starr to file that friend-of-the-court brief in the Paula Jones case. And Ricky knew the Jones case was simply payback for the Anita Hill affair. She thought, wouldn't it be delicious that Clinton would now be accused of sexual improprieties in the same way that Clarence Thomas had been? Judge Silberman played an absolutely key role at a critical juncture.

[outinforce]

14. Is This The Same Guy Who

was President of Boston University?

[JHB]

15. That's John Silber

Not the evil "grudge judge"