Reuters strikes again:

President Bush said on Monday his administration would fire anyone found to have committed a crime in a federal investigation of the leak of a covert CIA agent’s name, shifting from a broader vow to simply dismiss the leaker.

The thing is, Bush never made such a “broader vow.” Scott McClellan did, back in 2003, and it’s perfectly valid to bring that up (after all, McClellan speaks for the White House) — but you gotta be specific, and you gotta get your facts straight. And the fact is that Bush himself has, to my knowledge, always included the “if they committed a crime” caveat in his public statements about this. Here’s his oft-quoted September 2003 statement:

There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington. If there’s leaks out of my administration, I want to know who it is, and if the person has violated the law, the person will be taken care of.

There’s no excuse for blatant hypocrisy and bald-faced lies at the highest levels of government, which I continue to believe the Bush Administration is guilty of (pending further reading on the topic). There’s also no excuse for shoddy journalism, which Reuters is definitely guilty of here. And if you’re anti-Bush and thus are tempted to simply not care, consider this: every time a mistake like this goes uncorrected, it only strengthens the Bush Administration’s case that this (and every other accusation against them) is part of some liberal-media conspiracy. Your credibility is on the line, MSM, so for the love of God, get it right!

After pummelling the Yucatan Peninsula overnight, Hurricane Emily is back over open water. She’s weakened from a Category 4 (155 mph at her peak, 135 mph at landfall) to a Category 2 (estimated at 100 mph, pending reconnaissance data), but she’s expected to re-strengthen over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The big question now is, where will she go next?

The official forecast track puts Emily about 100 miles south of the Texas/Mexico border late tomorrow night, but Hurricane Watches are in effect all the way northward to Baffin Bay, Texas (and all the way southward to Cabo Rojo, Mexico), just in case.

Texas, uncharacteristically, finds itself hoping for a leftward turn. (Ahem.) Tracing Emily’s motion on the satellite loop, the center of the storm presently appears to be making a beeline for Brownsville — but the NHC says that’s just a wobble:

A weakness on the western edge of the ridge may induce a small northward component temporarily. However…the weakness is forecast to be replaced by a ridge which eventually will force Emily to move on a more westward track beyond 24 hours.

Even so, folks in the Hurricane Watch area in south Texas should be preparing for the possibility of a landfalling major hurricane in about 36 hours, just in case the forecast is wrong and the “small northward component” doesn’t abate.

UPDATE: Data from the recon plane indicates that Emily has weakened to a minimal Category 1 with 75 mph winds, according to the 1:00 PM EST advisory. It is still expected to re-strengthen, and could become a major hurricane again before landfall, but it’ll have an uphill climb.

At this very moment, Category 4 Hurricane Emily is making landfall near Cozumel on the Yucatan Peninsula.

No wonder my computer has been excruciatingly sluggish lately…

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I’d like to take the time, if I may, to put in a shameless plug for my new online bookstore, The Umpire’s Bookshelf. Presently, I do not have an actual webpage of my own to use, but I am using Amazon.com’s Marketplace to list and sell my items. Most of the books are political science, but all of you ND Law folks might find some of them interesting, and if you look closely, there are actually a few basic law books in there, too. Of course, there’s much more than just political science stuff, including some history and some fiction. So take a look … And pass this site along to anyone you might think would like it!

Oh, I almost forgot… gotta post the results of our Harry Potter “death pool”! They’re after the jump… (SPOILER ALERT!!!)

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I just finished Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (26 hours and 27 minutes after it was released — not bad, considering I slept for 12 hours last night!), and in contrast to Becky, who thought the book was like a bad orgasm, I quite liked it. I still think Book #4 (Goblet of Fire) was my favorite, but I liked this one at least as much as Book #5 (Order of the Phoenix).

I might post more of a review later, or at least a few more detailed thoughts… or I might wait until I’ve read it again (which is to say, until I’ve read all six books in sequence)… but either way, at this particular moment, I’m about ready for bed. G’nite all!

Hurricane Emily is still Category Four as of 10:00 PM EST, despite another precipitous pressure drop, but according to the NHC, “Some fluctuations in strength are expected… and Emily could become a category five hurricane at times… during the next 24 hours.”

The discussion has more, including this observation: “It is still to soon… however… to determine if landfall on the North American mainland will occur in northern Mexico or in Texas.”

UPDATE FROM THE WEBMASTER: At the risk of thoroughly pissing off my darling fiancee, I’ve taken the liberty of moving this entire post into the Extended Entry section (a.k.a. “after the jump”), since it starts off with an analogy that is not exactly family-friendly…

So, two warnings: PARENTAL DISCRETION IS ADVISED with regard to what follows, and also, it contains MAJOR SPOILERS about the plot of Harry Potter 6!!! (Or at least, Becky says it does; I haven’t read the spoiler portion yet, and won’t until I finish the book.)

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Initial reports suggest Emily will stay a strong Cat. 4, and will not be upgraded to Cat. 5. Eye on the Storm has the latest.

In other news, Becky and I have changed our plans, deciding at the last minute to skip the Venetian Festival and stay home reading Harry Potter. :)

UPDATE: According to Eye, “Pressure is nine millibars lower, but wind observations remain the same. Unless the pressure trend reverses itself, we could be in the situation of where the wind observation is behind the pressure observation (i.e. the winds are becoming stronger, but we haven’t observed it yet). If the wind is indeed trailing pressure, then Emily will be observed as a category five this mission… we shall see…”

I haven’t been paying any attention to Hurricane Emily since midnight, as I’ve been totally engrossed in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, but I just looked at the latest advisory and — HOLY CRAP! — she’s at 155 mph, on the verge of Category 5 status. Take a look at the satellite views:

Emily’s current estimated intensity, 155 mph, is based on the data from the last reconaissance aircraft to enter the storm, at around noon EST. According to the discussion, “There is a possibility that Emily has gotten stronger since the aircraft left the storm.” Even a tiny amount of strengthening would bump this monster hurricane up to Category 5 intensity, which begins at 156 mph. But the NHC is going to wait for solid data from another recon plane before upgrading Emily to the highest level on the Saffir-Simpson Scale. Another flight is scheduled for around 7:00 PM EST… so, stay tuned.

Already, she is the strongest July hurricane in the history of the Atlantic basin, surpassing the previous record-holder, Hurricane Dennis.

The forecast track calls for a devastating direct hit on the Yucatan Peninsula from a borderline Category 4/5 hurricane late Sunday night or early Monday morning.

P.S. Eye of the Storm wrote, at 5:43 PM EST, ” This certainly looks like a category five hurricane. We will know for sure about one hour from now…”

Stay tuned to Eye of the Storm for the latest, as I’ll be away from my computer for the rest of the evening.

Ms. Wilson was compared to James Bond in the early days of the scandal, but it turns out she had been working for years at C.I.A. headquarters, not exactly a deep-cover position. Since being outed, she’s hardly been acting like a spy who’s worried that her former contacts are in danger.

At the time her name was printed, her face was still not that familiar even to most Washington veterans, but that soon changed. When her husband received a “truth-telling” award at a Nation magazine luncheon, he wept as he told of his sorrow at his wife’s loss of anonymity. Then he introduced her to the crowd.

And then, for any enemy agents who missed seeing her face at the luncheon but had an Internet connection, she posed with her husband for a photograph in Vanity Fair.

Mr. Wilson accused the White House of willfully ignoring his report showing that Iraq had not been seeking nuclear material from Niger. But a bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded that his investigation had yielded little valuable information, hadn’t reached the White House and hadn’t disproved the Iraq-Niger link - in fact, in some ways it supported the link.

Mr. Wilson presented himself as a courageous truth-teller who was being attacked by lying partisans, but he himself became a Democratic partisan (working with the John Kerry presidential campaign) who had a problem with facts. He denied that his wife had anything to do with his assignment in Niger, but Senate investigators found a memo in which she recommended him.

Karl Rove’s version of events now looks less like a smear and more like the truth: Mr. Wilson’s investigation, far from being requested and then suppressed by a White House afraid of its contents, was a low-level report of not much interest to anyone outside the Wilson household.

So what exactly is this scandal about? Why are the villagers still screaming to burn the witch? Well, there’s always the chance that the prosecutor will turn up evidence of perjury or obstruction of justice during the investigation, which would just prove once again that the easiest way to uncover corruption in Washington is to create it yourself by investigating nonexistent crimes.

For now, though, it looks as if this scandal is about a spy who was not endangered, a whistle-blower who did not blow the whistle and was not smeared, and a White House official who has not been fired for a felony that he did not commit. And so far the only victim is a reporter who did not write a story about it.

Courtesy of the New York Times, fresh crow–or newt, as it were–is now being offered for all of you who have been up in indignant arms about Karl Rove and the Valerie Plame kerfuffle. As usual, the line forms on the Left.

Heeere we go! The Harry Potter Cam is up and running, and I’m about to start reading the Half-Blood Prince. Woohoo!

How fast will my reading go? Well, last time, I finished the first 675 pages of the book in less than 24 hours, and finished the whole book (870 pages total) within 48 hours. This time, the book is only 672 pages long — but my first-day reading clip probably won’t be quite as fast, since Becky and I are planning to go to the Venetian Festival tomorrow evening. We’ll see.

I’ll post updates below, after the jump. WARNING: Spoilers possible!!!

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