Washington, DC — Lewis Libby, an interesting Republican with a free spirit, is known to enjoy the reputation of being a long time Colorado ski bum who likes to swill a little tequilla and write novels. It is also said that Scooter likes to listent to a little Grateful Dead every now and then.

With Washington on the edge of its seat just after 12 noon waiting for the Fitzgerald indictment to come down on Libby, an excellent album review of “Garcia Plays Dylan” from Des Moines Register music critic Kyle Munson just crossed over the electronic transom.

DC Spectator just ordered this excellent highly recommended album for Libby off of Amazon.com and is being sent to Libby’s home address. Hope he gets it and hopes he enjoys it.

Here’s the review:

Garcia covers Dylan’s music in his style
By KYLE MUNSON
REGISTER MUSIC CRITIC

October 25, 2005

Casual fans of either Bob Dylan or the Grateful Dead could be forgiven for fatigue this fall from hearing
about these American icons.

Dylan’s towering legacy as a peerless songwriter and cultural revolutionary has been rehashed yet again (gloriously so) in Martin Scorsese’s recent “No Direction Home” documentary.

And the pace with which archival Dead recordings has been released has only intensified this year — more installments in the “Dick’s Picks” and “Pure Jerry” series, more concert DVDs, more downloads at Dead.net, etc.

But where Dylan’s pen met the Dead’s continuously recording tape machine is worth a listen in the new two-CD set, “Garcia Plays Dylan” — 15 previously unissued live cuts (more than two hours’ worth) from not only the Dead, but also the side projects of late Dead singer-guitarist Jerry Garcia.

Start with Garcia’s blistering guitar solo in the opening track, “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry,” backed by Merle Saunders’ organ in 1973 in San Francisco. If that sounds plodding or drowsy to your ears, then this isn’t the set for you. Garcia, probably the most consistent source of Dylan covers in concert until his death in 1995, excelled at adapting his boogie-shuffle groove to the likes of “Tangled Up in Blue.” He also could deepen the emotional resonance in Dylan’s songs with his soulful tenor and signature guitar.

“Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” stretches past 17 minutes on this set as shimmering gospel by Garcia and his band (recorded in 1976, with background singer Donna Godchaux).

The tracks included span most of Garcia’s career, from 1973 up to a July 8, 1995, recording of “Visions of Johanna” by the Dead in Chicago — the next-to-last Dead show before Garcia’s death. Recording quality varies but always is adequate, and who’s more intimate with tape hiss than a Deadhead? Blair Jackson’s liner notes help illuminate Dylan and Garcia as peers who inspired each other.

Of course this isn’t the first Dead-Dylan merger on record. “Dylan & the Dead” in 1989 was the uninspired document of the actual pairing of the two acts on tour. And last year’s “Postcards of the Hanging: The Grateful Dead Perform the Songs of Bob Dylan” was a single-CD, 11-song compilation from the vault.

“Garcia Plays Dylan” trumps both of those previous releases. A broader view across two CDs offers better perspective (no surprise for the godfathers of the jam scene). But also, it always seemed that many of Garcia’s finest Dylan covers were captured with his own bands rather than as part of the Dead machine.

Washington, DC — The Los Angeles Times, itself a generally dysfunctional publication yet blessed by a number of excellent reporters, primarily in the Sacramento statehouse bureau, gets it right regarding how the New York Times and Judy Miller have really F’d up when it comes to maintaining credibility in the context of journalism in general and reporting protocol in particular:

EDITORIALS
Source of frustration

October 18, 2005

JUDITH MILLER IS OUT OF PRISON, no longer a martyr to the 1st Amendment, and on Sunday she broke her long public silence with a first-person account in the newspaper she works for, the New York Times. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that she and her employer have abused the public’s trust by manufacturing a showdown with the government.

The newspaper once claimed that Miller’s willingness to go to jail rather than talk to the grand jury in the inquiry into the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity was a badge of honor. Yet journalists from other news outlets appeared before the grand jury after receiving waivers releasing them from the promise of anonymity they had offered their sources. The Times alone insisted that such waivers were not enough and that it alone would stand up to an overreaching prosecutor.

This page expressed skepticism about such claims and, to its credit, the Times on Sunday published a full account of Miller’s saga. What the story reveals isn’t the Times’ higher allegiance to the 1st Amendment, but its higher tolerance for the antics of a rogue reporter.

It was irresponsible for the Times to avoid inquiring further into Miller’s dealings with Lewis Libby, the vice president’s chief of staff, both in her reporting and in determining whether she had his blessing to testify. But her editors seemed all too willing to go along with whatever Miller wanted, even after they removed her from the “weapons of mass destruction” story because they no longer trusted her judgment. One example of that poor judgment (to put it charitably): She agreed to Libby’s request to be cited in stories as a “former Hill staffer,” a rather deceptive description for the vice president’s chief of staff.

The larger concern, however, is not Miller’s dysfunctional relationship with her editors but the damage she and her newspaper may have done to the principle they said they were defending: the importance of a free and independent press. The details of the Miller case (at least those that the paper has made public) reveal not so much a reporter defending a principle as a reporter using a principle to defend herself. There is still no satisfactory explanation, for instance, of why she changed her mind after 85 days in jail and decided to reveal her source.

Anonymous sources are often necessary; they make possible many articles about government or corporate misconduct. Yet the credibility of such sources — and, by extension, of the newspapers that use them — can be hard to measure. Leakers are almost always motivated by something other than a commitment to the truth. When reporters agree to withhold a source’s name, they have an obligation to place the information they receive from that source in context. If journalists expect the public to take their work seriously, then they must be more careful about how they go about it.

Washington, DC — New York Governor George Pataki, considering a run for the White House, will make his first 2005 campaign appearance in New Hampshire on October 23rd when he stumps with a Manchester mayoral hopeful. Other appearances are pending.

Meanwhile, Pataki will also be heading back to Iowa for the third time in four months, when he will
deliver the keynote address to the Clinton County GOP dinner.

The New York Governor, who had a highly visible and successful Iowa trip in September, would need a strong finish in the 2008 Iowa caucus — third place would do it — to get some mojo going for NH, where he would be expected to do well considering the state’s regional proximity to New York.

A veteran GOP operative based in Concord, NH says Pataki is well suited to the retail nature of campaigning in the state, and that while he is not yet highly visible in the Granite State, activists are curious about his potential candidacy.

Washington, DC — The Inside the Beltway GOP infighting and backbiting hasn’t been this bad since President George H.W. Bush opted to forego his ‘read my lips’ campaign promise and raise taxes in 1990, but it might even be on the cusp of getting worse.

Today’s ABC News Note sums up both the paranoia and the stakes:

Today’s Miers stories push towards trouble; today’s Fitzgerald stories push towards high drama, higher tension, and deep, dark foreboding.

The pair of condundra may well determine whether Bush continues to live under the golden fluffy cloud that has followed him all his political career, or whether his luck has finally run out.

And with Tom DeLay under a cloud at least for the time being, the K Street lobbying scene is also scrambled, with a number of former DeLay staffers-turned-lobbyists looking over their backs for the knives of GOP colleagues (mostly those close to new “temporary” Majority Leader Roy Blunt (R-MO)eager to move up the ladder.

Despite the fact the DeLay crowd — “DeLay Inc.” — is putting up a brave front publicly, they know instinctively that others are already measuting the drapes of their corner offices. What a town.

Washington, DC – Regardless of one’s opinion of Tom Delay, the overtly aggressive and high visibility press strategy he and his handlers have employed to combat his “criminal indictment” at the hands of Travis County prosecutor Ronnie Earle has been impressive.

Immediately following his indictment, DeLay held a Capitol Hill news conference, blasted Earle, stated his innocence, and took no questions. Perfect — pictures and a counterattack to balance out the story.

Following his Capitol Hill news conference, DeLay completed interviews on CNN, Fox News
and MSNBC, during which he repeated his personal denunciations of Earle, in addition to portraying himself as a victim of concerted Democratic effort to undermine his political standing.

DeLay also held a conference call that day with local reporters in Texas, followed by radio interviews on national and Texas radio stations. And Roll Call notes that even as he was shifting operations from the Majority Leader’s suite in the Capitol to his personal office in the Cannon House Office Building, DeLay kept up the media blitz with more TV and radio interviews, which included additional appearances on Fox, a session with the Christian Broadcasting Network and still more radio interviews.

On Friday morning, after meeting with House GOP leaders, DeLay flew to Texas and held a rally with supporters at the Hess Club in Houston, which dominated the local news. He then returned to Washington to prep for an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” with Chris Wallace.

Despite the deep hole he’s in, DeLay couldn’t possibly be doing a better job of keeping Earle on the defensive as well as staying even or one step ahead of the news cycle by offering fresh comments and attacks.

A strategy of this nature is directly contrary to the advice always tendered by the defense lawyers who fear providing more grist to prosecutors through unforced errors committed during interviews. Kudos to Kevin Madden, DeLay’s new press secretary, and the communications strategists behind the press offensive. Now the challenge is maintaining the pace, and waiting and hoping for a new, significant news event to crowd out their story — providing time to rest, recalibrate and reload.