Ny Neighbor - The Squirrel

I have a large window in the front of my house that overlooks my front porch and the neighborhood. Every morning I open up the drapes and drink coffee while I watch the news and what is going on outside. There is a large fir tree to the left of my porch. For the last 3 days there has been a little squirrel that runs along the porch fence, back and forth about every 2 minutes. He goes down into my garden, picks up a bunch of leaves and runs back up, across the fence and jumps on the tree and climbs way up beyond where I can see him. No doubt he is building a nest. I really love watching him. He is very fast as long as I stay on the couch, but if I stand up and move just a little towards the window, he is a little more cautious. I looked under the tree but I can’t see the nest, the tree is too full.

This may be the same one that I watched last summer take a few bites from the wood top of the stairs. He put a nut under the top! (see the picture of the bites).

I also watched him a few weeks ago, he had a peanut and dug into the snow and dropped it in. I went out to see for sure and sure enough there it was.

Nature in my Neighborhood

I live 1/2 block from the Chicago River. I have a back room where my washer & dryer (and pantry) is. The windows face the deck. I went in to do a load of laundry and there was a morning dove on the railing. I ran back to get my camera, but had to shoot through and dirty window and screen.

Then I took Charlie for a walk. I have always loved trees and they look like sculptures right now. I took some photos of the ones I thought looked magnificent. Lastly there is one photo of the prairie grasses, which will be burned off in a few weeks to allow for new.

Scooter Libby

This week's conviction of Lewis "Scooter" Libby for perjury will surely give the CIA some measure of vindication. But what about the people that exposed Valerie Plame in the 1st place? Remember that she was exposed shortly after her husband Joe Wilson wrote a column criticising the war

According to TIME MAGAZINE: My comments in Blue:

That's because in the course of the Libby investigation and trial, the CIA effectively lost the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. In deciding not to charge Libby or anyone else in the administration with exposing a covert operative, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald all but proclaimed the act virtually unenforceable. If it had any teeth, Fitzgerald would have used it not only against Libby but also Karl Rove and Undersecretary of State Richard Armitage, the two who leaked Plame" s name in the first place. Or even possibly Washington Post columnist Bob Novak, who first published it.

And let there be no doubt about it: according to press reports, all three knew exactly what they were doing. Despite what they may claim, Rove and Armitage either knew Plame was under cover, suspected she was, or should have assumed she was. As for Novak, the CIA asked him not to print the name, but he did anyway, apparently deciding he would decide who the CIA should have under cover and who it shouldn't. Armitage admitted he told someone in the press.

Let's also not forget that in 1982 there was a good reason Congress overwhelmingly passed the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, which was intended to prevent anyone from systematically exposing operatives as part of a campaign to harm national security. In 1975, the Greek terrorist group November 17 assassinated the CIA chief in Athens, not long after he was exposed in the press. In the 70's a former CIA officer, Philip Agee, was systematically exposing CIA personnel overseas, probably at the behest of Cuba. If Agee's campaign had been picked up by the rest of the press, the CIA would have had to close its doors.
Unlike other agencies working overseas, the CIA depends on cover. It is impossible for CIA employees to work in the world's hot spots or really almost anywhere if their names are in the press. Walking around Baghdad with a scarlet CIA tattooed on your forehead is the quickest way to get killed.

Public exposure of its operatives will have a cascading effect. We should count on CIA sources — most of whom are foreign and vulnerable to arrest or much worse — having closely watched the Libby/Plame affair. They now are going to ask themselves, if the CIA cannot protect one of its own, why should we be expected to protect them?

There was always a doubt about just how much teeth the Intelligence Identities Protection Act had. Now we know.