As has been widely published, President Bush has been consulting a lawyer in anticipation of being questioned by prosecutors in the Valerie Plame investigation. The White House has declared that this is a "routine precaution". Capitol Hill Blue, however, reports a few details which I have not seen included in the wire service stories:


If these reports are true, President Bush is (at the very least) an accessory to a felony compromising our national security. No wonder he's seeking legal advice.

A group of former intelligence officers, dissatisfied with the Justice Department probe, asked that Congress begin its own investigation as long ago as last January. I'd say it's time Congress reinstituted the Office of the Independent Counsel...

I was just speaking with Mike in Savannah (the America's Debate server is apparently down and I was calling to see if that was the case or if I was just having a local problem) and he gave me an update on the National Security State's incursions into The Hostess City of the South.

As Jaime has mentioned, in preparation for the G-8 summit next week at Sea Island (about eighty miles away), a large-scale video surveillance system has been set up in Savannah. There's no word on how many cameras are up, where they are located, or what areas are covered, but the system is capable of monitoring several square miles. In addition, a number of helicopters and military jets have been flying low over downtown and buzzing the building in which she works and there's apparently an enormous mobile police trailer outside the Federal Courthouse. She also mentioned that the engines on the choppers the Coast Guard will use for summit have dangerous power-loss problems. In 2003, there were thirty-seven in-flight power-loss incidents and, as of March 1, there have been sixty-seven incidents this year. Great.

Gov. Perdue has declared a state of emergency in six counties and deployed the state National Guard. Now, Mike tells me, they've moved over 20,000 security officers into the city - increasing Savannah's population by better than 10%. However, it is only estimated that there will be about 10,000 protesters in the area for the event. This means that security will outnumber those exercising free speech by more than two-to-one. Is this precedented??

Let's just hope that they're a bit more temperate than they were for the summit in Genoa three years ago, where one demonstrator was shot and killed. Carol Bass of the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition said they've been trying to emphasize the "peaceful, educational" nature of the protests "within the context of the authorities scaring everybody to death". As the police chief of Glynn County has already characterized the demonstrators as a threat - "I can't predict where these anarchists will go to disrupt neighborhoods" - it's hard to tell what might transpire. Maybe a few Coast Guard choppers will crash into a rally or two...