Would you believe (Maureen Dowd reports) that Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginny,  held a dinner at the Supreme Court Thursday for the Tinseltown terror brigade. Rush Limbaugh, who said that Dick Cheney and Rummy were huge fans of "24," was master of ceremonies for the panel, titled,     "24" and America's Image in Fighting Terrorism: Fact, Fiction or Does It Matter?"  This must be where the reality was created that produced the Miami-based "Al Qaeda" wannabees who were arrested for accepting subsidies from the FBI to realize their aspirations. Fact or fiction. Does it matter?

"24" fans keep the rest of us posted because it is possible that there the Cheney-Rumsfeld plan for the middle east will be revealed in the fullness of time.

I just knew that Mark Chassin would keep on doing good.  Here is a terrific story for health policy buffs to read.  I find it reassuring that some the best policy minds in the field are still trying to develop essential approaches to dealing with at least parts of our health care delivery system.  This particular report deals with Medicaid and hospital ERs.

The WSJ today also reports on volume purchases of presciption drugs by "big buyers". 

The One Percent Doctrine,  Ron (we create our reality) Suskind, reviewed this morning by Michiku Kakutani in the New York Times quotes so much of the book that you'll wonder why the Elisabeth Bumiller continues to sit on what she must know. Now it's too late for her. All she will be able to write about will be how mad W is over this book.

The CIA's name for Vice is Edgar as in Bergen, the guy with the puppet - W - on his lap.  And here I thought George was the decider, silly me. 

In the event that you have not yet turned on a radio, read a paper or looked at your computer, here's her opening graph:

The title of Ron Suskind's riveting new book, "The One Percent Doctrine," refers to an operating principle that he says Vice President Dick Cheney articulated shortly after 9/11: in Mr. Suskind's words, "if there was even a 1 percent chance of terrorists getting a weapon of mass destruction — and there has been a small probability of such an occurrence for some time — the United States must now act as if it were a certainty." He quotes Mr. Cheney saying that it's not about "our analysis," it's about "our response," and argues that this conviction effectively sidelines the traditional policymaking process of analysis and debate, making suspicion, not evidence, the new threshold for action.

The book casts Tenet as a pathetic figure, a doormat, now and then.

FYI Washington Post Review by Barton Gellman.

On the Chris Matthews Show Sunday, June 18, the conversation between the host and two of his guests, Joe Klein and Andrew Sullivan, both of Time Magazine turned to Vice Cheney and the Wilson-Plame affair.  The remarks made by Klein at the beginning and end of the part of the transcript below bear careful scrutiny. 

 Mr. KLEIN: Right. The guy who should be fired over this is Cheney. He was the guy who was completely obsessed with Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame during this month, and the most important thing to remember about this is that while
the White House was obsessed by this, in early June 2003, the president, vice president, Rumsfeld, were being briefed for the first time on the fact that we had a full-blown insurgency in Iraq and they chose to spend their time dealing with this nonsense rather than the war. This is the greatest disgrace of this administration.

... MATTHEWS: OK. OK. OK, let me ask Joe. You cover campaigns. Had this broken in, say, October 2004, right before the presidential election--that the president's chief political kick, Karl Rove--his "brain," as some people call him--and the chief of staff for the vice president--very politically involved here--all were leakers. In a case where the president said he would fire any leakers and hadn't. Would this have brought John Kerry through victory in, say, Ohio? Would it have given him enough electoral votes to win this thing.

Mr. KLEIN: Well, the Kerry campaign staff probably would've been still selling health care and education reform. It could've been very big. I think it could've been very important.

MATTHEWS: So the president's silence on this was helpful?

Mr. KLEIN: Yes.

MATTHEWS: The fact that his guy was privately admitting to the prosecutor and the grand juries that he was a leaker, but the president wasn't saying that publicly, that--what we call it in economics, market discrimination, where only certain people get the truth...

Mr. SULLIVAN: Well, this is complicated for people. You know, who is Valerie Plame? Was she really undercover? There's all--aren't you--it's too complicated of a story for it to be a knockout.

MATTHEWS: It's not complicated. It's about why we went to war and the cover-up of the case before...

Mr. SULLIVAN: You have to take a long time to make that case, Chris. I think it's relatively persuasive, but it's not a knockout, politically. It really isn't. And it never will be.

Mr. KLEIN: There is one statistic from that month that is crucial. That month, June 2003, they sent 1200 people over to look for weapons of mass destruction. Twelve hundred intelligence officers. At that same moment, General Ricardo Sanchez, in Baghdad, had 27 people trying to figure out who the insurgency was. That is the disgrace of this administration.

MATTHEWS: So in order to--they'd rather make their case than win the war?

Mr. KLEIN: Absolutely.

What a coincidence that they should be talking about this, a day or two after Ron Suskind's "The One Percent Doctrine" reveals how much Vice Cheney is in charge.