It appears that the oil executives who testified before Congress, not under oath, may have lied. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) asked a pointed question.

Toward the end of the hearing, Lautenberg asked the five executives: “Did your company or any representatives of your companies participate in Vice President Cheney’s energy task force in 2001?” When there was no immediate response, Lautenberg added: “The meeting . . . ”

“No,” said Raymond.

“No,” said Chevron Chairman David J. O’Reilly.

“We did not, no,” said ConocoPhillips chairman James Mulva.

“To be honest, I don’t know,” said BP America chief executive Ross Pillari, who came to the job in August 2001. “I wasn’t here then.”

“But your company was here,” Lautenberg replied.

“Yes,” Pillari said.

Shell Oil president John Hofmeister, who has held his job since earlier this year, answered last. “Not to my knowledge,” he said.

I would like to read the full transcript, to make sure that these remarks aren’t being exerpted out of context, but if they are presented accurately in this story, it’s a big deal, because at least according to MSNBC this is false information. Why would they say this if it weren’t true? And also relevant, though I’ve not seen a huge firestorm about it, is why did Ted Stevens (R-AK) decide to not swear these guys in in the first place?

If I weren’t trying to finish up some things before the Thanksgiving week holiday, I would dig around more. If you have more relevant info, email me and I’ll add a link to your blog.

UPDATE: Democrats react.

Senate Democrats demanded that oil company executives who testified last week about skyrocketing energy prices reappear before lawmakers and testify under oath, after news reports raised questions about the truthfulness of their testimony.

I’m not sure that’s completely necessary, though obviously it helps the Democrats politically to try to disparage Cheney in the process. Lying to Congress (link via Lex) in itself carries pretty stiff penalties, even without having been under oath. The real question for me is not whether their lie was told under oath, but whether or not they lied (under oath or not), and if so why?

Amen, Bryan.

The whole page looks like that, nonsensical capitalization, bolding everywhere, no links. No links! This is the internet, Republicans. Let readers fact-check you and prove to themselves that what you’re saying is true. And give bloggers an easy route to linking the quotes on their own sites. You know, or at least hope, that bloggers will do just that–copy/paste the quotes from your page and put them on their own pages. Make it easy for them by giving them the links.

And the same goes for their eCampaign emails.

Open Source Media (formerly, PajamasMedia) has launched!

LaShawn is liveblogging the event.

Kevin is too and doesn’t quite get it.

Neither does Jarvis.

Ditto for Krempasky:

But in the end - even though many bloggers signed up for this new enterprise early on - I think the bulk of those were motivated by trust in the influential priciples and a healthy competitive streak. The chance to stand on the same pedestal as the New York Times surely appeals to the little guy. And unfortunately - those bloggers interested in a new business model still don’t seem to have any more answers than they did this morning.

MORE: Solomonia has photos. Kim Weinstein recaps her panel appearance, where she joined Never the Bride in a bit of a discussion about fashion. Yes, fashion. And then of course, there was the Manolo, the third person shoe blogger. And here’s Roger L. Simon.

UPDATE AGAIN: James Joyner is really scratching his head. He wonders how it is that it’s called “open source” and yet there is a restrictive copyright notice. He also notes: “It’s also rather ironic given that someone else already owns the name “Open Source Media.”

Here is the other OSM

Hm. A company that used to call itself Pajamas Media now calls itself Open Source Media, which is — scroll down to our legal notice — kind of exactly what we call ourselves. They’ve collected $3.5 million in venture capital, and, to celebrate their re-naming of our already-named name, they’re holding an event at the Rainbow Room.

Dennis the Peasant has the details on the Open Source Media service mark.

Homocon has an extensive roundup, and Houblog has an open letter.

It seems that OSM is not off to a rousing start. It seems maybe they should have stuck with Pajamas Media.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: OSM responds to the controversy surrounding their name.

We are OSM. A gentleman named Christopher Lydon has an excellent web site called Open Source. He uses that as his corporate name, but not as his trade name. His URL is RADIOopensource, and he’s given up opensourcemedia.net – which we and our lawyers confirmed before we chose our name.

His trade name is Open Source – and Open Source alone. He’s filed a trademark application under Open Source alone, not Open Source Media.

Our trade name is OSM, and please note that we have a TM after OSM, not after Open Source Media. We consider Open Source Media to be a description of what we are and do, not a trade name.

US Central Command is trying to spread the word about their website. Go check it out when you get a chance. It features news and photos from Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom.

H/T via email SPC Claude Flowers.

I don’t listen to country music that often, but sometimes I fire up my Windows Media Player and hit a random country station just for fun. I just got through two songs, both of which are GREAT. Maybe I’ll listen more.

Tracy Byrd: The Truth About Men is absolutely hilarious.

We don’t like to go out shoppin’,
We don’t care what’s on sale.
We just want to sit with a bag full of chips,
Watchin’ the NFL.

…

Well, that’s the truth about men.
Yeah, that’s the truth about us.
We like to hunt and golf on our days off,
Scratch, an’ spit, an cuss.

…

We hate watchin’ “Steel Magnolias”.
We like “Rambo” an’ “Die Hard 4″.
Jump up and down like fools when we see the new tools,
At the Home Depot store.

It was followed immediately by this Clay Walker song titled “A Few Questions.”

How in this world can we put a man on the moon,
And still have a need for a place like St Jude’s?
And why is one man born,
In a place where all they know is war?
An’ a guy like me,
Has always been free.

An’ how can two people who built a lovin’ home,
Try for years an’ never have a child of their own?
When somewhere out there tonight,
There’s a baby no-one’s holdin’ tight:
In need of love.
To me, that don’t add up.

But I wasn’t there the day you filled up the oceans.
I didn’t get to see you hang the stars in the sky.
So I don’t mean to second guess you,
Or criticise what I don’t understand.
These are just a few questions I have.

An’ why did my cousin have to die in that crash?
A good kid, only seventeen, I still wonder ’bout that.
It seems unfair to me,
Some get the chance to chase their dreams,
An’ some don’t.
But what do I know?

I wasn’t there the day you filled up the oceans.
I didn’t get to see you hang the stars in the sky.
So I don’t mean to second guess you,
Or criticise what I don’t understand.
These are just a few questions I have.

Why do I feel like you hear these prayers of mine.
When so many oughta be ahead of me in line?
When you look down on me,
Can you see the good through all the bad?
These just a few questions I have.

I don’t have time today to keep up with the Plame developments, but the fact that Woodward was told two years ago by a different senior administration official (ie not Libby, not Rove) apparentyl has everyone even more confused.

Paul at Wizbang says:

It appears that after almost 2 years of Fitzgerald investigating (and who knows how many million dollars) he is no closer to understanding who told what to whom than I am.

Maguire says this proves Fitzgerald was wrong.

As noted by Libby’s counsel, that does not jibe well with the assertion made by Mr. Fitzgerald at his press conference that “In fact, Mr. Libby was the first official known to have told a reporter when he talked to Judith Miller in June of 2003 about Valerie Wilson.” (But give Fitzgerald props for qualifying this with “known to”).

This disclosure by Woodward raises many questions, starting with, why is he only coming forward now, and why is the “senior Administration official” only coming forward now.

But then you go the other side of the world and they’re convinced this hangs Libby. Here’s FireDogLake, arguing Libby is willing to take the perjury trial over an espionage trial, and that’s why he lied.

This certainly makes one’s head spin. This is a deeply tangled web that I think may yet lead to surprising places…

UPDATE: Sister Toldjah points out that the original allegation being investigated has officially been put to bed.

This just puts another nail in the coffin on the allegations that a CIA agent was “deliberately outed” in order to put her and her family in harms way as ‘revenge’ towards Joe Wilson for his NYTimes opinion piece.

And an ARC writer thinks he knows who the Woodward’s source was.

Betsy Newmark, guest blogging for Michelle, wonders about an indictment for a journalist at the Post.

So, if Woodward and Pincus both testify to different memories of their conversations, how is that different from Libby and Russert both testifying to different memories of their conversations? If we can believe that the great Bob Woodward is misremembering when he told someone something, isn’t it possible that Tim Russert could misremember something, too? Or that Scooter Libby could? Why is one discrepancy worthy of indictment and the other one chalked up to “confusion about the timing”?

And Decision ‘08 also wonders about Powell.

Captain Ed thinks the indictment will be withdrawn.

The Left will have to go back to the drawing board, and I suspect that Fitzgerald will eventually withdraw the indictment.

So does Tapscott.

Steven Clemons says Woodward crossed lots of lines.

And Beltway Pinto Beans thinks the source is Cheney.

Raw Story claims attorney’s “close” to the investigation say it was Stephen Hadley.

Jeffrey Toobin at The New Yorker has revealed the identity of the anonymous blogger A3G behind the popular, if “snarky,” judicial blog “Underneath Their Robes.” David Lat agreed to “come clean.”

In the autobiographical section of the blog, A3G says that she attended an Ivy League college and a top-five law school, clerked for a federal appellate judge, and had several interviews for clerkships on the Supreme Court—“but they ended in tragedy (i.e., with her not getting a job with the Supremes).” She goes on, “Article III Groupie then went to work for a large law firm in a major city, where she now toils in obscurity. During her free time, she consoles herself through the overconsumption of luxury goods.”

In real life, A3G is a thirty-year-old Newark-based assistant U.S. attorney named David Lat. “The blog really reflects two aspects of my personality,” he said over lunch recently. “I am very interested in serious legal issues as well as in fun and frivolous and gossipy issues. I can go from the Harvard Law Review to Us Weekly very quickly.” Lat, who has a boyish face, lives in Manhattan and commutes to New Jersey, and he writes his blog entries in his spare time. Like A3G, he graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School, and he worked briefly at a big New York law firm. Although his current job as a prosecutor has required him to pare back his life style, he says, “I still hoard toiletries from luxury hotels all over the world.” Lat interviewed for a Supreme Court clerkship, with Justice Antonin Scalia, but he didn’t get it.

If you want to know what Alito has to say about it, check out his blog. ;-)

But after the “outing,” UTR disappeared from the web. And the New York Times picked it up.

“It’s fair to say that it came as a great surprise to many people in the U.S. attorney’s office that David was the author of the blog,” said an official who insisted on anonymity, saying the situation was novel and under investigation.

Half Sigma digs:

If he’s lucky, he’ll get fired and then obtain a real job where he can contribute to society.

WaPo has the story too. (Via Skeptic’s Eye)

The American Princess wants to pick up the slack. Betsy is sad.

This sort of goes back to what we posted a couple of weeks ago about anonymity on the web.

Bad: Spending four weeks setting up Dominoes in a world record bid.
Worse: Random house sparrow knocks them over.
Worst: Killing the bird and being prosecuted because it is a protected species.

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands (AP) — The Dutch animal protection agency demanded prosecution Tuesday for the shooting of a sparrow that knocked over 23,000 dominoes during an attempt to set a world record.
The ill-fated bird flew into an exposition center Monday in the northern city of Leeuwarden, where employees of TV company Endemol NV had worked for weeks setting up more than 4 million dominoes in an attempt to break the official Guinness World Record for falling dominoes.

The common house sparrow — of a species on the national endangered list — was chased into a corner and shot by an exterminator with an air rifle.

“Under Dutch law, you need a permit to kill this kind of bird, and a permit can only be granted when there’s a danger to public health or a crop,” said agency spokesman Niels Dorland. “That was not the case.”

UPDATE: You can offer your condolences for the sparrow here. Seriously.