Wonkette

• Rice makes surprise visit to Beirut. [WSJ]

• Before Rice left Washington, she and Bush met with Saudi diplomats, who encouraged them to push for a cease-fire. They continue to refuse. [NYT]
• “The American Bar Association said Sunday that President Bush was flouting the Constitution and undermining the rule of law by claiming the power to disregard selected provisions of bills that he signed.” [NYT]
• The Department of Homeland security will give itself a makeover, “sharply cutting emergency cash assistance for victims of major disasters, and more carefully controlling access to free hotel rooms.” [NYT]
• Mid-term elex: “If Democrats in the House gain 15 seats — a number that analysts in both parties say is within reach — Republicans will relinquish power there for the first time since 1994. In the Senate, Democrats need to gain six seats to take control — a more remote prospect, but by most estimates a plausible one.” [WP]

Where have you been of late, orange days? MORE »

Earlier this afternoon, homeland security hottie Frances Townsend graced our television screens, to outline federal government preparations for a possible outbreak of pandemic flu. We were alerted to this development when our traffic spiked, due to Google searches for “frances townsend” and “frances townsend pics.”

The Times offers this account of the federal plan:

Although the federal government will stockpile 75 million doses of antiviral drugs and 20 million doses of vaccine to combat any outbreak of pandemic flu, local governments and individual communities will have to shoulder most of the burden in battling the disease, the White House said today.

Translation: “Good luck, kids, you’re on your own! This is not going to be another Hurricane Katrina, where the federal government gets blamed for everything. Fault your state and local governments instead.”

After the jump, a few more comments on the federal plan (such as it may be).

MORE »

Okay, we kinda dropped the ball on this one (and were properly chided for doing so at a party we just returned from). We asked you for interesting information about Brian J. Doyle, the Department of Homeland Security official who was arrested on charges of using a computer to seduce a child. You sent us a number of juicy tips, which we meant to publish, but then, well, mostly forgot to publish (except for this post). Perhaps we were overly cautious, handling the story with kid gloves given the lurid nature of the allegations.

The story has run its course for the most part, and now that Brian Doyle is no longer a DHS official — he resigned last Friday, after initially being placed on administrative leave — it may lie beyond the purview of this blog. The governmental or political angle is dissipating; it is becoming a run-of-the-mill story about a middle-aged man trying to pick up an underaged girl over the internet

But since a number of you went to the trouble to share tidbits of gossip and information with us — including some of you who know Brian Doyle personally — we pass them along after the jump, for what they might be worth.

MORE »

Yes, we know all about the purported White House gossip posted over at Something Awful (and picked up by Daily Kos, among other places). We’ve known about if for a while now, but we’ve been holding off on doing anything with it because we can’t tell how much of it is factual and how much of it is satirical or apocryphal. Here at Wonkette, we’re all about factual accuracy.

But since so many of you have emailed us about it, we’ll blog about it, just to stem the flow of messages. In case you’re not familiar with it, Something Awful is a comedic community website, with a huge and intensely loyal message board community. Last week, a community member called “Martin Random” posted a long thread of what he called “Secrets from Inside the White House.”

Excerpts from the lengthy thread, accompanied by our comments, appear after the jump.

MORE »

As you might have expected, we are all over the story of Brian J. Doyle, the DHS official who was arrested last night on charges of using the internet to seduce a 14-year-old girl (who turned out to be an undercover agent). Now we’d like some help from you, our readers — specifically, those of you who know or have worked with Brian Doyle. MORE »

(And no, we’re not talking about Chertoff — he just looks creepy.) MORE »

MORE »

This news wasn’t exactly a surprise to us: MORE »

Yes, we did mention this in passing in this morning’s Daily Briefing. But we’d be falling down on the job if we didn’t say a little more: MORE »

* White House waited over 14 hours before disclosing Cheney’s hunting accident; it’s “highly unusual, if not unprecedented, for the White House to allow a private citizen serve as its de facto spokesman.” [WP, NYT, USAT]
* Scott McClellan faced “the media equivalent of birdshot.” NBC’s David Gregory during the gaggle: “Don’t accuse me of trying to pose to the cameras. Don’t be a jerk to me personally when I’m asking you a serious question.” [WP, NYT]
* Administration vows to reform FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security to prevent future failures. Michael Chertoff: “I am accountable and accept responsibility for the performance of the entire department, good and bad.” [WP, W$J]
* Draft United Nations report sharply criticizes treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba: “The U.S. government should either expeditiously bring all Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial. . . or release them without further delay.” [WP]
* Administration spent $1.6b on public relations contracts from 2003 to mid-2005. [WP]

MORE »

Michael Chertoff knows that children are our future. That why he wants to scare the shit out of them with the Department of Homeland Security’s new just-fer-kidz preparedness campaign “Ready Kids” (cute font, etc.). MORE »

We know know what Sally Quinn does in those hours when she’s not being the fabulous semi-employed spouse of Ben Bradlee: She’s about two Reynold’s Wrap-tubes short of being a member in the tin foil hat brigade, an ultra-prepared, paranoid (”Federal emergency authorities ‘not only lie, they don’t tell the truth.’”) urban survivalist who always carries a “N95 particle mask” and a jar of peanut butter. (Kinky.) On Monday, apparently between Chalabi-stalking appointments, she gave a talk to the Citizen’s Association of Georgetown, and she made it clear the lengths to which she’ll go to ensure her household is adequately prepared: “[S]he’d tried putting an N95 on Sparky, her now-deceased Shih Tzu, but it didn’t work.” We’re sure she’ll get right on a solution. Meanwhile, one quibble: Quinn has designated her laundry room as emergency shelter because it’s “easy to seal off.” However, “her food supply is heavy on the beans, ‘because they’re nutritious.’” No doubt, but sealing off a room full of people eating mostly beans? Maybe that’s what the masks are for. MORE »

We had thought that portraying al Qeada terrorists as ineffectual Dilberts, slogging away at jihad like it was just another TPS report, was a misguided sitcom premise. Now the strange case of Ahmed Omar Abu Ali suggests that the world-wide terror network has both a real morale problem and employees possessed with all the enthusiasm of the graveyard shift at Kinko’s. Abu Ali, under arrest for a plot to assassinate the President, said that his plan was foiled not by the Department of Homeland Security but by his cohorts’ fondness for “sleeping and idle chit-chat.” Abu Ali was, by contrast, a real go-getter:

According to the court papers, Abu Ali was asked: “Were you tasked to assassinate the president?” MORE »