corrente

Two real good reasons to go read Juan Cole today. First off, he's got an explosive hint that the delays in the Plame case (and others) are not due to Patrick Fitzgerald et al being pokey. He claims inside sources:

(via Juan Cole)

Several high-profile FBI investigations, in which substantial progress have been made, may well have been put on hold by the Bush administration for political reasons. That is, it has been alleged to me that the White House may have leaned on the FBI-- not to drop the investigations but to postpone some key arrests until after the November elections.

Secondly, part of the same piece but worthy of separate mention, he makes a terrific preemptive strike on the meme that's starting to be in circulation--to whit, that to criticize the PNAC/neocon/American Enterprise Institute cabal is to be anti-Semetic. This accusation is, needless to say, a crock, and he calls it what it is: playing the race card:

Warning: The text below will use the word "Neoconservative." In my lexicon, a Neoconservative is a person from a social group that typically voted Democrat before 1968 but now votes Republican.

Some have attempted to argue that the very term "Neoconservative" is a code word for derogatory attitudes toward Jews. This argument is mere special pleading and a playing of the race card, however, insofar as only a tiny percentage of American Jews are Neoconservatives, and only a tiny percentage of Neoconservatives are Jews. The Neoconservative movement is an example of what social scientists call cross-cutting cleavages, which are multiple loyalties and identities typical of complex urban political societies.

He's got a link to a discussion of the "cross-cutting cleavages" thing, which I haven't read yet so will avoid commenting upon except to point out that it would be a terrific slogan for a maker of women's undergarments.