| |
 |
|
(JavaScript Error)
|
| Archives |
|
|
|
|
Subscribe
|
| Now you
can subscribe to this blog and receive new blogs direct to
your email! |
|
RSS/XML Syndication
| |
|
|
|
|
Video: Alternative
Views
|
|
Censured Casualties
features rare footage
of war crimes against the Iraqi people suffered during
and after the Gulf War. The footage is from former Attorney
General Ramsey
Clark in his attempt to document the injustice
of United States military actions in the region.
|
|
|
Video: Alternative
Views
|
|
Another Unknown
War
features a film on the
struggle of the indigenous people of West Papua to remain
sovereign in the face of an Indonesian invasion backed
by world capital. Footage of Noam
Chomsky on Western involvments in the region and
the relation to East Timor.
|
|
|
Doug's New Books & Related
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
TV/Radio
|
|
|
| |
 |
| |
|
|
|
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Monday, January 30, 2006
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sunday, January 29, 2006
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Debate on Climate Shifts to Issue of Irreparable Change
have we reached tipping point to global warming? will there be irreparable damage to environment because Bush administration not only failed to do anything positive about environmental protection but unleashed multiple destructions of the earth?
Debate on Climate Shifts to Issue of Irreparable Change
|
|
|
Bob Herbert: 'United States is faced with a chief executive who can do no right'
George W. Bush, wrong on every major issue and an Abject Failure
The Smirking Chimp: "Bob Herbert: 'United States is faced with a chief executive who can do no right'"
|
|
Thursday, January 26, 2006
|
Peter Daou: The triangle: 'Matthews, Moore, Murtha, and the media'
good analysis of how media framing of political narratives of the moment benefit the Bush administration
The Smirking Chimp
|
|
|
Sydney H. Schanberg: 'The unseen war in Iraq'
fabled war reporter indicates how the real war in Iraq, the US Air War, is largely invisible....
The Smirking Chimp
|
|
|
Al Gore, Sundance's Leading Man
Al Gore, a tireless educator on dangers of Global Warming, time is running out to deal with this problem....
Al Gore, Sundance's Leading Man
|
|
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
|
Bush the Incompetent
No doubt about it, Bush is one of the most incompetent Presidents in US history and Incompetent will be part of his legacy....
Bush the Incompetent
|
|
|
Mr. Abramoff's Meetings
Even the Washington Post is making clear that Abramoff had close relations with Rove and possibly Bush; unpacking this could do the villains in....
Mr. Abramoff's Meetings
|
|
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
|
Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
Latest on Bush administration scandals from Salon:
"
GOP congressman: Abramoff a "partisan, conservative Republican activist"
Well, you can give him points for honesty.
At a time when his party and some in the press are still trying to argue that the Jack Abramoff scandal is a bipartisan affair, Rep. John Doolittle -- a California Republican said to be under investigation in the case -- says he always thought of Abramoff as "a friend" for one simple reason: "I liked him, frankly, because he was a partisan, conservative Republican activist."
As the Sacramento Bee reports, Doolittle made the comments during his first extended interview on the Abramoff case since he was implicated in it a year and a half ago. The eight-term congressman consented to talk with Tom Sullivan, a conservative radio talk show host on the Sacramento station that gave Rush Limbaugh his start, only after Sullivan offered to tape the interview in advance and let Doolittle kill it if he didn't like how it turned out.
As you might expect, the interview wasn't exactly probing. While Sullivan didn't stoop to praising his guest for his altruistic ways, as Chris Matthews did for Tom DeLay Monday, he did give him a platform for distancing himself from the confessed felon of a lobbyist. "I've probably had about a million dollars' worth of negative publicity here locally, not to mention across the United States, where someone has put my name out there saying I'm one of [the lawmakers under investigation]," Doolittle said. "But I don't believe that. I think the fact they haven't contacted me should be a pretty good indicator. If there's any truth to that, come investigate me. Come contact me, because I know what the truth is, and I'll come out with a clean record."
As the Bee reports, Doolittle's campaign committees received $4,000 from Abramoff himself and almost $140,000 more from his clients and associates. The Associated Press says that Doolittle used Abramoff's luxury skybox at the MCI Center in Washington without initially reporting it, and that his wife and his former chief of staff both worked for the lobbyist. The grand jury investigating the Abramoff case has subpoenaed records from Doolittle's wife's company, and at least one House Republican has said that Doolittle has some explaining to do, especially if he wants to hold onto his spot on House Republican leadership team.
In another sign that he has slipped off the talking points, Doolittle suggested that he was unimpressed with the calls for ethics reform. "Our leaders think we have to show that we're doing something," he said in the interview. "This is about appearance. Those ethics reforms that are being proposed in my opinion have almost no bearing on whatever happened in the Abramoff matter, and I'm not sure they're terribly wise things to do."
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [12:05 EST, Jan. 24, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
A hole in the president's Katrina defense
On Sept. 1, 2005, as much of New Orleans sat under water, George W. Bush appeared on "Good Morning America" to defend his administration's flat-footed response to Hurricane Katrina. "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees," he said.
We knew then that it wasn't true -- experts had warned for years that the city's levees would stand no chance against a large storm -- but we didn't know whether that knowledge had been delivered to the White House. Now we do. As the New York Times reports today, the Homeland Security Department warned the White House at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29 -- which is to say hours before Katrina struck New Orleans -- that "any storm rated Category 4 or greater will likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching."
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [10:05 EST, Jan. 24, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
For Bush's spying program, a bad poll, a new name and some false facts
There's a new poll out on the president's warrantless spying program, and the results aren't so pretty for the White House. Fifty-one percent of Americans think the Bush administration was wrong to intercept conversations of U.S. citizens without warrants, and 58 percent say it's time to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate.
Of course, the poll was taken before George W. Bush unveiled a shiny new name for his spying program yesterday. "Warrantless spying on American citizens" was always a little unwieldy, so -- as the Associated Press reports -- the president is now calling it his "Terrorist Surveillance Program."
If only it were as simple as that. The president and his supporters say that most Americans would want to know if someone inside this country is talking with members of al-Qaida. About that, we have no doubt. We also have no doubt that if administration officials had gone to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court and said, "Hey, we have probable cause to believe that Mrs. Johnson in Sioux Falls has been ringing Ayman al-Zawahiri," a warrant would have issued forthwith.
But that's not what they did. They simply helped themselves to the authority to eavesdrop and didn't bother asking for a warrant, first or after the fact. And while the White House insists that it can be trusted to protect Americans' civil liberties all by itself, Gen. Michael Hayden -- the president's No. 2 man on intelligence -- pretty much conceded Monday that the National Security Agency wasn't, in fact, using the legal standard that the FISA court would have applied if the NSA had asked for a warrant as the law requires.
As Editor & Publisher has it, Knight Ridder reporter Jonathan Landay asked Hayden during a talk at the National Press Club Monday about the "probable cause" standard set forth in the Fourth Amendment. Hayden interrupted him. "No, actually -- the Fourth Amendment actually protects all of us against unreasonable search and seizure."
Landay: "But the --."
Hayden: "That's what it says."
Landay "But the measure is 'probable cause,' I believe --."
Hayden: "The amendment says 'unreasonable search and seizure.'"
Landay: "But does it not say 'probable --.'"
Hayden: "No. The amendment says ... 'unreasonable search and seizure.'"
Landay: "The legal standard is 'probable cause,' General ... And a FISA court, my understanding is, would not give you a warrant if you went before them and say 'we reasonably believe'; you have to go to the FISA court, or the attorney general has to go to the FISA court, and say, 'We have probable cause.' And so what many people believe -- and I'd like you to respond to this -- is that what you've actually done is crafted a detour around the FISA court by creating a new standard of 'reasonably believe' in place of 'probable cause' because the FISA court will not give you a warrant based on 'reasonable belief,' you have to show 'probable cause.' Could you respond to that, please?"
Hayden: "Sure. I didn't craft the authorization. I am responding to a lawful order. All right? The attorney general has averred to the lawfulness of the order. Just to be very clear -- and believe me, if there's any amendment to the Constitution that employees of the National Security Agency are familiar with, it's the Fourth. And it is a reasonableness standard in the Fourth Amendment."
For those keeping score at home, the Fourth Amendment says: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
It was an embarrassing episode for a man who once assured us that we shouldn't be concerned about the spying program because nobody's calls were monitored unless a "shift supervisor" at the NSA signed off first. But Hayden's constitutional dipsy-doodle wasn't the only truth-challenged moment for the Bush administration Monday.
Defending his spying program in a talk at Kansas State University Monday, Bush said: "You know, it's amazing that people say to me, 'Well, he was just breaking the law.' If I wanted to break the law, why was I briefing Congress?" But Bush didn't "brief Congress" on the spying program; members of his administration chose to brief only a handful of members of Congress, a decision that the Congressional Research Service says was probably, in and of itself, a violation of the law.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [09:13 EST, Jan. 24, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Are Libby's lawyers teeing up a pardon?
When the Bush administration needed a face-saving way to extract itself from the Harriet Miers nomination, it picked a fight over White House documents, immediately declared the conflict irreconcilable, then thanked Miers for withdrawing in order to avoid a constitutional crisis.
Was Scooter Libby paying attention?
On Friday, attorneys for Dick Cheney's former chief of staff said that they'll need to subpoena reporters -- lots and lots of reporters and the newspapers and magazines and TV networks for which they work -- in order to defend Libby against criminal charges in the Valerie Plame case. And earlier today, they said they're also going to need to get into some classified material, possibly about the work Plame was doing for the CIA, during the course of any trial in the case.
Maybe it's all on the up and up, steps Libby's lawyers honestly believe they'll need to take to make sure their client gets a fair trial. But it's hard not to notice what the two issues -- subpoenas for reporters and the request to use classified information -- have in common: They'll prompt legal disputes that will slow the proceedings considerably, and they'll raise questions about the relative merits of prosecuting Libby, protecting reporters from inquisitive lawyers and keeping classified information classified.
In other words, they'll set up exactly the same sort of dynamic that gave George W. Bush an out for withdrawing Miers' nomination. Now, Libby can't just withdraw himself from the criminal case against him. But if he thinks there's any hope that Bush will pardon him someday, he has every interest in dragging his case along -- and keeping himself out of federal prison -- for just as long as he can. Libby's lawyers' request to use classified information certainly serves that goal; as the Associated Press notes, the request launches "a highly secretive court process that could bog down the case." And together with the notice that they'll be seeking testimony from reporters and the companies that employ them, the request does something else: By inserting issues of press freedom and national security into the middle of the case, Libby's lawyers have given Bush a reason for saying that the nation would be better off he just set Scooter free.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [15:47 EST, Jan. 23, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Bush and Abramoff: Photos don't lie, but did the White House?
So here's a question somebody ought to ask Scott McClellan today: Are the chairmen of Texas Indian tribes usually invited to White House Chanukah parties?
As we noted earlier today, Time says it has now seen five photographs of George W. Bush and Jack Abramoff together. McClellan said last week that Abramoff had visited the White House for a few "staff-level meetings" and a couple of Chanukah parties. And indeed, several of the photos Time has seen are of the sort that could have been taken at a White House holiday party: one of Bush and Abramoff in front of a blue drape, a few of Bush and Abramoff and various Abramoff kids.
But then there's the picture of Bush, Abramoff, a couple of unidentified men and Raul Garza Sr., the blue-jeaned and bolo-tied chairman of the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe, a Texas Indian tribe Abramoff represented.
It sure doesn't sound like a snapshot from a Chanukah party, and it isn't. The photo seems to have been taken during a May 2001 event in which Bush met with tribal leaders at the Old Executive Office Building -- a meeting arranged with the help of both Abramoff and Grover Norquist. As we noted the other day, Lou Dubose described such a meeting in a June 2005 article in the Texas Observer. The White House has said that its records don't show that Abramoff was in attendance. Time says that the photograph and three sources who were at the meeting all say otherwise.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [12:52 EST, Jan. 23, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
The ombudsman makes a case for truthiness
Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell admitted Sunday that she was wrong when she said, in a previous column, that Jack Abramoff "made substantial campaign contributions to both major parties."
"He didn't," Howell says now.
She could have gone on to lay out the truth.
She didn't.
Saying that Abramoff "didn't" make "substantial campaign contributions to both major parties" doesn't quite capture the exclusivity of Abramoff's devotion to the GOP -- or the enormity of the error that Howell made the first time around. It's not just that Abramoff didn't make "substantial campaign contributions to both parties." It's that, as Bloomberg News reported the other day, Abramoff gave more than $127,000 to Republican candidates and committees between 2001 and 2004 and exactly no dollars to Democrats during that same period of time.
Howell doesn't get into any of that in her column. She never says that Abramoff gave absolutely nothing to Democrats himself. Instead, Howell defends the essential truthiness of her original charge by saying that Abramoff "directed his client Indian tribes to make campaign contributions to members of Congress from both parties." Now, people can argue about whether money that Abramoff "directed" is as tainted as money Abramoff gave out of his own pocket. The Bush-Cheney campaign doesn't seem to think so: It's giving up $6,000 in campaign contributions that came from Abramoff, his wife and an Indian tribe, but not an additional $100,000 that Abramoff raised for the president's reelection effort.
But even if you assume, as Howell seems to, that the money is all equally dirty, there's a question of magnitude here that Howell doesn't address. Abramoff's Indian clients were only slightly less one-sided than Abramoff himself when it came time to dole out political cash. Bloomberg analyzed campaign contribution reports and came to the conclusion that between 2001 and 2004, Abramoff's Indian clients were the only ones among the top 10 tribal donors who gave more to Republicans than to Democrats. So yes, Abramoff may have been "directing" his tribal clients to give money to Democrats, but isn't it funny how they still gave most of their money to Republicans rather than to Democrats when other Indian tribes were making the opposite choice?
To be fair to Howell, she does acknowledge now that the Abramoff case isn't a "bipartisan scandal." "It's a Republican scandal," she says, "and that's why the Republicans are scurrying around trying to enact lobbying reforms."
But to be fair to Howell's critics, that isn't anything like the way she characterized the Abramoff case in her first column -- the one in which she invoked memories of Monica Lewinsky, said that Abramoff had "made" major contributions to both parties, said that Democrats Harry Reid and Byron Dorgan had "gotten Abramoff money," and said that while the Post's reporting hasn't put Democrats "in the first tier" of people under investigation "so far," readers hoping to see Democrats implicated in the scandal should "stay tuned" because the "story is nowhere near over."
Howell portrays herself as mystified by the virulent reaction that column drew, and she says that her plan going forward is to "watch every word." Before she does that, she might take one more look back and -- in a third try at setting the record straight -- explain in full the real facts that the words and the tone of her first column obscured.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [11:56 EST, Jan. 23, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
The lobbyist, the president ... and a photographer
Two White House Hanukkah parties and "just a few staff-level meetings"? Time magazine says it has seen five photographs of George W. Bush with Jack Abramoff, suggesting "a level of contact between them that Bush's aides have downplayed."
-- Tim Grieve"
Salon.com Politics War Room Politics
|
|
|
Conservative Alumnus Pulls Offer to Buy Lecture Tapes - New York Times
McCarthyite slimer withdraws offer to pay students to spy on faculty in face of threats of legal retaliation, bad media coverage, loss of even conservative support, and well-organized forces against him; today the UCLA Faculty meets to decide next steps....
Conservative Alumnus Pulls Offer to Buy Lecture Tapes - New York Times
|
|
Monday, January 23, 2006
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The President's End Run
meanwhile even the neocon-infested Washington Post sees that Bush's spy program is illegal and his "justification" for the spying is flim flam
The President's End Run
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Attacks Strain Efforts On Terror
Afghanistan is unravelling: Bush didn't put enough US and coalition troops on the ground and bin Laden and top Taliban and al Qaeda leaders got away, leaving them to eventually regroup.....
Attacks Strain Efforts On Terror
|
|
|
Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
latest buzz about the photos, Alito philisbuster and Rove's waiting for the indictment.
"Two White House Chanukah parties and "just a few staff-level meetings"? Time magazine says it has seen five photographs of George W. Bush with Jack Abramoff, suggesting "a level of contact between them that Bush's aides have downplayed."
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [10:01 EST, Jan. 23, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Facing the truth about Alito and Roe
Somebody asked us the other day if we believed in litmus tests for Supreme Court nominees. What we said was that we believed in honesty. If George W. Bush is nominating Supreme Court justices without regard to their views on abortion, isn't it odd that all three of his nominees so far have expressed strong antiabortion views in the past? John G. Roberts once wrote that Roe v. Wade was "wrongly decided and should be overruled." Harriet Miers once wrote that she would "actively support" a constitutional amendment outlawing abortion. And Samuel Alito once wrote that he "personally" believed "very strongly" that "the Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."
But we're supposed to believe that the president has no litmus test on abortion? And that his nominees have "open minds" now? Please. During her confirmation hearing, Ruth Bader Ginsburg said unequivocally that she believed the Constitution guaranteed the right to an abortion, and senators were free to vote on her nomination with that fact on the table. Why couldn't Alito deal with the issue in a similarly straightforward fashion? Because 56 percent of the country wouldn't want him confirmed if it were clear that he would overturn Roe v. Wade.
So Alito never explained his views on Roe during his confirmation hearing and rebuffed some follow-up questions on the subject Friday, leaving the senators who will vote for him -- at least the ones whose political futures require some votes from the center -- free to disclaim responsibility for putting what seems like a surefire anti-Roe vote on the court.
"But he said he had no agenda!" "But he said that Roe was a precedent!" "But he said he'd have an open mind!" That's what they'll say when they discover that Justice Alito has just voted to overturn Roe. But thanks to two new shots of honesty -- one inadvertent, one not -- it just got a little harder for pro-choice Republicans Arlen Specter, Lincoln Chaffee, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to maintain the plausible deniability they'll need for a yes vote now and the right to outrage later.
The first came from Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. Although Frist's office insists that Alito is a "mainstream" jurist who won't legislate from the bench, the majority leader himself offered a somewhat different characterization of the nominee while giving some Republican Party activists a private tour of the Senate Friday night. Alito, Frist told them, is the "worst nightmare of liberal Democrats."
Now, why would that be? The New York Times' editorial board fills in the blanks this morning. In an editorial calling on senators to vote down Alito's nomination, the Times says that there is "every reason to believe" that Alito "would quickly vote to overturn Roe v. Wade." The Times doesn't reach that conclusion in spite of Alito's responses during his confirmation hearings; it reaches them, at least in part, because of them. As the Times says, Alito's "long paper trail and the evasive answers he gave at his hearings" make it awfully hard to reach any other conclusion about him.
The issue is joined, even if some senators need to pretend that it isn't. Sunday was the 33rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and antiabortion groups will mark the date today, as they always do, by crowding the Metro and then the National Mall with themselves, their children and thousands of pictures of bloody fetuses. (At a march in Texas over the weekend, a girl who looked to be about 10 or 12 carried a sign that said, "Please don't kill me, Mommy.") They're the noisy manifestation of what's at stake in the Alito vote. Over the weekend, the Los Angeles Times called attention to the quieter one: "Taking direct aim at Roe vs. Wade," lawmakers in Indiana, Ohio, Georgia and Tennessee are proposing "broad restrictions on abortion, with the goal of forcing the U.S. Supreme Court -- once it has a second new justice -- to revisit the landmark ruling issued 33 years ago today."
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [08:58 EST, Jan. 23, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Could there still be a filibuster in Alito's future?
Conventional wisdom -- including our own -- says the Democrats aren't going to filibuster the nomination of Samuel Alito. Dick Durbin says not so fast.
According to a report in the Chicago Sun-Times, the Democrat from Illinois thinks a filibuster is more likely than he did just a few days ago. "A week ago, I would have told you it's not likely to happen," Durbin said Thursday. "As of yesterday, I just can't rule it out. I was surprised by the intensity of feeling of some of my colleagues."
Durbin, who has announced that he'll vote against Alito, said he still doesn't know whether opponents of the nomination have the votes to pull off a filibuster. "It's a matter of counting," he said. "We have 45 Democrats, counting [independent] Jim Jeffords, on our side. We could sustain a filibuster if 41 senators ... are willing to stand and fight. We're asking senators where they stand. When it reaches a critical moment when five senators have said they oppose a filibuster, it's off the table, it's not going to happen. But if it doesn't reach that moment, then we'll sit down and have that conversation."
The Senate Judiciary Committee will vote -- probably along party lines -- on Alito's nomination Tuesday. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist will likely put the matter before the full Senate on Wednesday. So far, only one Democrat, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, has announced that he'll cross over to support Alito. But even if the rest of the Democrats stick together in opposition to Alito, there's a big difference between casting a futile no vote and going to the mat on a filibuster.
Can Durbin round up 40 colleagues who are willing to take that step? He says he won't know until he knows. We say, don't hold your breath.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [15:15 EST, Jan. 20, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
For Rove camp, the wait is a drag
We hate to give credence to the notion that men like to see others suffer, but we had a hard time shedding any tears as we read the Wall Street Journal's "Washington Wire" this morning. Noting that we haven't heard much from special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald lately, the Journal's John Harwood says that Karl Rove's camp is "frustrated by uncertainty over his status" in the Valerie Plame case.
-- Tim Grieve
, Jan. 20, 2006] "
Salon.com Politics War Room Politics
|
|
|
TIME.com: When George Met Jack -- Jan. 30, 2006 -- Page 1
Abramoff and Bush photos are about to circulate; while its well known that Rove and JACKabramOFF go way back and that Abramoff has been often to the White House so very no one has really gone into the Bush-Abramoff-Rove connections. In fact, these guys, DeLay, Cheney, Ney et al are at the heart of the corrupt Republican money machine that solicits money from lobbyists and corporations and pays back with laws, tax and regulatory break, contracts and legisltation. Its the sleaziest most corrupt White House in history and only the tip of the iceberg is exposed. Oh, and wait for Fitzgerald to come down on Rove and other White House insiders.....
TIME.com: When George Met Jack -- Jan. 30, 2006 -- Page 1
|
|
Thursday, January 19, 2006
|
|
|
|
|
Leahy Says He'll Vote Against Alito - New York Times
a vote for scAlito is a vote against Roe vs Wade, for the imperial presidency and a rightwing Reich; anyone who votes for him should be dishonored forever, kudos to Sen Leahy
Leahy Says He'll Vote Against Alito - New York Times
|
|
|
Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
Latest political buzz from Salon=
"
The arms race on ethics reform
The Republicans and the Democrats have unveiled their competing proposals for ethics reform, and now they'll play a game of "Quien es Mas Macho?" with them. It's not much of a contest: As the Washington Post reports today, the "Democratic plans go further than the Republicans' proposals."
The plan House Speaker Dennis Hastert proposed Tuesday would prohibit members of Congress from accepting free meals or travel from a lobbyist -- but not, as the Post reports, if the meals and travel come at the same moment that the lobbyist is making a contribution to the member's campaign. It's a loophole that all but swallows the rule, and it's not the only oddity in the Republicans' ideas about how to respond to the Jack Abramoff scandal. As Roll Call has reported, some in the GOP want to use lobbying reform as a vehicle for clamping down on money from 527s. While it's true that such groups help offset the Republicans' fundraising advantages, we must have missed the news stories about the Democratic members of Congress and Democratic lobbyists who have pleaded guilty in corruption schemes involving money from MoveOn.org.
The proposals Democrats described Wednesday get closer to the problems at hand. They would prohibit members of Congress from accepting any gifts from lobbyists, end the Republicans' "K Street Project" and require members to come clean when they're negotiating for jobs in the private sector. The Democrats' proposals would also end some of the worst abuses inside Congress itself. In a move to crack down on "earmarks" that are inserted into bills in the minutes before their passage, the Democrats would require that all legislation be made available to the public at least 24 hours before any vote. And in order to prevent Republicans from single-handedly rewriting legislation in House-Senate conference committees, they would require that such sessions be held in the open and with the participation of members from both parties.
While these latter reforms may be one step removed from the heart of the Abramoff scandal, Norman Ornstein and Thomas Mann argue pretty persuasively today that this sort of one-two punch is needed if Washington is really going to change. "The problem starts not with lobbyists but inside Congress," they write, detailing the ways in which Republicans in Congress have, over the last five years, routinely "violated" the "regular order" in ways that "mark a dramatic break from custom." Ornstein and Mann cite a string of abuses: roll-call votes that stretch on for hours so that Republican leaders can strong-arm members into voting their way; rules that prohibit amendments and stifle debate; and massive bills -- and earmarks in them -- that are brought to the floor without any notice, then rammed through without much debate.
As the parties squabble over their competing reform proposals, the GOP will argue -- as it already is arguing -- that Democrats are equal offenders. But Ornstein and Mann, who together have watched Congress for more than three decades, say that the problems have increased dramatically under the reign of the Republicans. "We saw similar abuses leading to similar patterns of corruption during the Democrats' majority reign," they write. "But they were neither as widespread nor as audacious as those we have seen in the past few years. The arrogance of power that was evident in Democratic lawmakers like Jack Brooks of Texas -- the 21-term Democrat who was famed for twisting the rules to get pork for his district -- is now evident in a much wider range of members and leaders, who all seem to share the attitude that because they are in charge, no one can hold them accountable."
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [12:11 EST, Jan. 19, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Another chance for a chicken hawk
Poor Jonah Goldberg.
The National Review editor and Los Angeles Times columnist has taken a lot of grief for advocating the war in Iraq without volunteering to fight it himself. Goldberg has defended himself -- "I'm 35 years old, my family couldn't afford the lost income, I have a baby daughter," he wrote last year -- but his only real friend is time: Goldberg turns 36 in March, which would put him beyond the Army's cutoff age for new active-duty recruits and out of the path of continuing scorn.
Or at least it would have. As the Associated Press reports today, the Army's recruiting woes have led to a new law that will raise the top age for active-duty recruits from 35 to 42. That gives Goldberg and other chicken hawks his age six more years in which they can sign up for the war they've been happy to have others fight.
But really, why wait that long? Forty-two U.S. soldiers have died in Iraq already this month, and recruiters are waiting by their phones to hear from their replacements.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [11:06 EST, Jan. 19, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
The "best person" he could find?
We don't have any doubt that George W. Bush will pick the "best person" he can find to serve as the new chief financial officer for the Department of Homeland Security. And if that "best person" just happens to be the brother of an informal advisor to the president who has been implicated in the Jack Abramoff scandal, well, life is full of funny coincidences, isn't it?
With a tip of the War Room helmet to Josh Marshall, we note word that the president plans to name David L. Norquist as the new CFO for DHS. As UPI reports, Norquist is the younger brother of Grover Norquist, the antitax crusader who would like to see the federal government shrunk down so small you could drown it in a bathtub, just as soon as he and Abramoff are done profiting from it.
To be fair, Grover Norquist's little brother seems more qualified for his job than some of the other appointees Bush has installed at DHS recently. Earlier this month, the president named, by way of a recess appointment, a lawyer named Julie Myers to lead DHS's Immigration and Customs Enforcement section. Her primary qualification: She is the daughter of former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Richard Myers and the wife of the chief of staff for Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff. Norquist, by contrast, can actually claim some credentials for his new job at DHS. He is currently the deputy undersecretary of defense for budget and appropriations affairs, and he worked previously in other money posts at the Pentagon and as a staffer on the House Appropriations Committee.
Still, Washington is full of people who know how to count money, and you'd think that a White House that's still stonewalling reporters on its contacts with Abramoff would be able to find one a little farther removed from the fray.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [09:54 EST, Jan. 19, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Report: Bush's spy briefings appear to have been illegal
The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has just issued its second report on the Bush's administration's warrantless spying program. Like Al Gore, it suggests that the Bush administration broke the law by assuming for itself the power to spy on American citizens without approval or adequate oversight from Congress.
When the CRS issued its first report on the National Security Agency program earlier this month, it took issue with the legality of the spying program itself. It weighed the legal justifications the attorney general and other administration officials have advanced for the program, and it found them to be not "well grounded" in the law.
In its second report, issued Wednesday at the request of Rep. Jane Harman, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, the CRS says that the administration's decision to brief only a handful of members of Congress about the NSA program appears to have violated the National Security Act.
That law generally requires the White House to keep all members of the House and Senate Intelligence committees "fully and currently informed" on intelligence activities. There's an exception for "covert actions." But as USA Today reports, the CRS says that it probably doesn't apply to the NSA program. A "covert action" is defined as one whose existence the government would deny if it were revealed. When the New York Times revealed the existence of the NSA program, the president and others in his administration admitted that it existed.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [08:59 EST, Jan. 19, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
He forgot to mention Syria
Did somebody say something about hazy memories?
White House press secretary Scott McClellan was asked today about the Bush administration's rendition of detainees to Syria. McClellan said he'd never heard of such a thing. "You've never heard of any allegations like that?" a reporter asked. "No," McClellan said, "I've never heard that one. That's a new one." Told that U.S. renditions to Syria had been "well publicized," McClellan sneered, "What, by bloggers?"
Well, not exactly. As Think Progress points out, the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Associated Press and the New Yorker have all written about U.S. renditions to Syria. Moreover, the Justice Department is currently fighting a lawsuit filed on behalf of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen who says U.S. authorities sent him to Syria after taking him into custody at a New York airport.
We're sure McClellan will look into it all and get back to us with a "very thorough report" soon.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [16:41 EST, Jan. 18, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Does anyone remember Jack Abramoff?
Not so long ago, Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum ran weekly meetings aimed at spreading the power of the GOP by placing loyal Republicans in the top lobbying jobs on K Street. Santorum used to defend the meetings -- "The K Street project is purely to make sure we have qualified applicants for positions that are in town," he once told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette -- but now he seems to have a hard time remembering them. "I don't know what you mean by Senate liaison to the quote, 'K Street Project,'" Santorum told reporters Tuesday. "I'm not aware of any Senate liaison job that I do for the K Street Project."
Maybe he's not the only one with a memory problem.
As we noted earlier today, White House press secretary Scott McClellan promised reporters a couple of weeks ago that he'd put together a "very thorough report" on Jack Abramoff's contacts with the White House. When asked about that report Tuesday, McClellan said that he wouldn't be providing any detailed information after all: Abramoff had attended two White House Chanukah parties and "just a few staff-level meetings," McClellan said, and if reporters wanted to know more they'd have to ask more specific questions first.
So, OK, here's one. Did the president of the United States meet with Jack Abramoff on May 9, 2001? And if so, is that one of those "staff-level" meetings that you just mentioned?
Taegan Goddard's Political Wire calls our attention to a June 2005 piece in the Texas Observer in which Lou Dubose says that Abramoff and some of his Indian clients met with Bush in the Old Executive Office Building on May 9, 2001. It wasn't a one-on-one meeting, Dubose says, but it sure was an expensive one: Dubose says Abramoff charged his clients $25,000 for about 15 minutes of face time with the president.
The story of the meeting isn't exactly airtight. Dubose says that one of the tribal leaders involved previously denied participating in a meeting with Bush, and his evidence that the meeting actually happened seems to be secondhand. But with memories growing suddenly hazy and the White House refusing to produce logs that would show Abramoff's comings and goings, stories like this one may be as close as we'll get to the truth.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [14:52 EST, Jan. 18, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
A cautionary tale about judges who say they have "no agenda"
As we noted earlier today, Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson says he's going to vote to confirm Samuel Alito because he's got to "take him at his word" that he would "not bring a political agenda to the court."
If Nelson is interested in a cautionary tale about that sort of thinking, he might touch base today with Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden. When John G. Roberts was making courtesy calls on senators over the summer, Wyden tried to suss out how the nominee might rule on a legal challenge to Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law. As the folks at BlueOregon report, Wyden left his meeting with Roberts feeling pretty good about what he had heard.
Wyden told the Oregonian that he was confident that Roberts would maintain a limited view of federal power and hopeful that he would rebuff the Bush administration's attempts to override Oregon law. While the two didn't discuss the physician-assisted suicide case directly, Roberts told Wyden that, on end-of-life questions, he would "start with the supposition that one has the right to be left alone." Wyden was impressed. "I think that's what the people of Oregon have said, that this is not something where government should be intruding," he said.
Wyden voted for Roberts when his nomination came to the Senate floor. But when the Supreme Court handed down its decision Tuesday upholding Oregon's physician-assisted suicide law, Roberts was on the other side of the issue. It was the first dissenting vote from the new chief justice, and one that left him aligned with two other justices who insisted, as nominees, that they had no political agenda: Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [11:29 EST, Jan. 18, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Jack Abramoff sings, and Scott McClellan dances
The White House is doing its best to distance itself from GOP lobbyist and confessed felon Jack Abramoff: When the president was asked about Abramoff the other day, he said that he's "not all that familiar with a lot that's going on over at Capitol Hill." But you don't need to walk the halls of Congress to catch sight of Abramoff: The Bush "Pioneer" has had plenty of contacts with the Bush administration over the years, and he has been known to spend some time at the White House itself.
How much time and with whom? Those seem like reasonable questions, but they're ones the White House doesn't seem much interested in answering.
On Jan. 4, a reporter asked Scott McClellan whether the White House would release logs showing Abramoff's comings and goings. McClellan said he was "checking into" it. On Jan. 5, another reporter asked McClellan whether he had any "update" on "Abramoff visits to the White House, beyond the three parties that he attended." McClellan said he didn't have the information yet but assured everyone that it was coming. "I'm making sure that I have a very thorough report back to you on that," McClellan said. "And I'll get that to you, hopefully very soon."
McClellan finally got back to reporters on the question Tuesday, but not with the "very thorough report" he had promised. Asked about a Democratic demand that the White House come clean on its Abramoff dealings, McClellan told reporters that he had already done so. "I've already indicated to you a general description of any contacts that were there," he said. Reminded that he had promised a little more, McClellan said that Abramoff had attended two White House Chanukah parties -- not three, as he'd said earlier -- and that Abramoff had participated in a "just a few staff-level meetings in addition to those."
Staff-level meetings? With whom? When? On what subjects? McClellan wouldn't say. "I don't get into discussing staff-level meetings," he said. Why not? "Well, if you bring something to my attention ... I'll be glad to look into it. If you've got something specific, I'll be glad to take a look into it."
OK then, a reporter said, did Abramoff ever meet with Karl Rove?
McClellan's response: "We don't -- we don't ever tend to get into those staff-level meetings."
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [09:28 EST, Jan. 18, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
A Democrat defects on Alito
George W. Bush loves to trot out a Democrat -- or a dead Democrat or a pseudo-Democrat or a former Democrat or whatever -- whenever he can find one who seems to agrees with him. Remember how Bush kept bringing up Joe Lieberman on the subject of Iraq last month? How he invoked the names of Bill Clinton, John Breaux, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and even FDR as he pushed for the privatization of Social Security last year? How the Bush-Cheney campaign rolled out the ever-so-slightly unhinged Zell Miller again and again during the 2004 presidential race?
Ben Nelson, prepare for your day in the sun.
The junior senator from Nebraska has just become the first Democrat to say that he'll vote to confirm Samuel Alito to a seat on the Supreme Court. "I came to this decision after careful consideration of his impeccable judicial credentials, the American Bar Association’s strong recommendation and his pledge that he would not bring a political agenda to the court," Nelson said in a statement issued by his office.
Nelson knows that Alito won't bring a political agenda to the court -- all signs in his record notwithstanding -- because, well, because Alito said he wouldn't bring a political agenda to the court. "I have to take him at his word at the moment," Nelson said in an interview with Fox News.
Maybe it's worth mentioning at this point that both Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas assured senators during their confirmation hearings that they had "no agenda," either. But maybe it's also worth mentioning that to the extent that Scalia and Thomas and Alito have an agenda, it's one that Nelson probably likes: A self-described "pro-life" politician, Nelson has compiled a voting record during his six years in the Senate that puts him pretty much eye-to-eye with the religious right on the issue of abortion.
And maybe it's worth mentioning that Nelson is up for reelection this year, that he's running in a state that Bush carried by 33 points in 2004, and that it was clear that Nelson's Republican challenger -- whoever it ends up being -- would have used a vote against Alito as a reason for Nebraskans to vote against Nelson. Nelson, a member of the "Gang of 14" that helped scuttle the nuclear option last year, probably can't expect any campaign help from the commander in chief. But a "heck of a job, Benny" from the president now could pay some dividends for Nelson in Nebraska come November.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [09:00 EST, Jan. 18, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Dick Cheney and the disease of kings
We always knew that Budweiser was the "King of Beers," but we'll confess that we didn't know until today that gout is sometimes known as the "disease of kings." The reason, according to the American College of Rheumatology: Gout has "long been erroneously associated with the kind of overindulgence in food and wine only the rich and powerful could afford."
We bring you this medical moment not just to reveal our own shortcomings on things rheumatological but, rather, because there's a fellow in Virginia who figures that it explains the White House silence on whatever medical condition ails Vice President Dick Cheney.
James Putney -- the vice president of a consulting firm in Richmond, a former aide to Republican Sen. George Allen and a gout sufferer himself -- says that he's sure that Cheney has gout but won't admit it publicly because it would reinforce everything everyone suspects of the veep. "The liberal press will shriek, 'Aha! The King's Disease!'" Putney tells the Washington Times. "Of course, they will work overtime to further portray Cheney as an elitist: one-half of the 'Bush-Cheney Monarchy.'"
With all due respect to Mr. Putney's medical expertise, we're not sure that any overtime work would be required to prove that charge.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [16:57 EST, Jan. 17, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Roberts and Scalia, peas in a pod?
During his confirmation hearing, John G. Roberts declined to say whether he thought families, rather than state legislatures, ought to be making end-of-life decisions for loved ones. "Well, Senator," Roberts said as he brushed away a question from Joseph Biden, "that does get into an area that is coming before the court."
The soon-to-be chief justice was referring to Gonzales v. Oregon, a case in which the Bush administration argued that the attorney general has the power to trump state law and effectively outlaw physician-assisted suicide. Roberts wasn't about to comment about the case during his confirmation hearing, but we know how he thinks about it now: just like Antonin Scalia.
The Supreme Court handed down its decision in Gonzales v. Oregon today. A six-judge majority rejected the Bush administration's attempt to outlaw physician-assisted suicide in Oregon and took the Justice Department to task for attempting a "radical shift" of power from the state to the federal government. Three justices dissented: Scalia, Clarence Thomas and -- in his first turn on the losing end of a case since becoming chief justice -- Roberts.
Roberts didn't write his own dissenting opinion, but he joined Scalia's. Scalia said that the six justices in the majority may have reached their conclusion based on "a feeling that the subject of assisted suicide is none of the federal government's business." While he said it was "easy to sympathize" with that view, he said the federal government has long intruded into areas once thought to be the province of the states. Thus, he said, "Unless we are to repudiate a long and well-established principle of our jurisprudence, using the federal commerce power to prevent assisted suicide is unquestionably permissible."
That doesn't sound much like the kind of federalism-based argument that supporters of Roberts and Scalia advocate, but it sure leads to the answer the Bush administration wanted. And if that sort of results-oriented judging sounds familiar to you, maybe it should.
-- Tim Grieve
Salon.com Politics War Room Politics
|
|
|
Salon.com | Republicans gone wild
here's the most report on JACKabramOFF and how he is completely connected to the corrupt Republican establishment, by Sidney Blumenthal=
Republicans gone wild"Ethics reform" gestures and suddenly hazy memories can't hide the truth: Abramoff is an integral part of the GOP machine that revved up with the '94 "revolution."
By Sidney Blumenthal
Jan. 19, 2006 Hardly anyone in the Republican Party, in Congress or at the White House, seems to recall ever having met Jack Abramoff. Collective amnesia has suddenly descended upon the capital. The super-lobbyist, whose plea bargain with prosecutors requires the extensive naming of names of members of Congress, staffers, ex-staffers, lobbyists, friends, colleagues and his own personal assistants, is spending his days racking his memory for details of their relationships that may become the basis for bills of indictment.
Abramoff, who pleaded guilty to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials, has left a trail of hard evidence in addition to his sworn confessions. At the end of every business day his former assistant wrote a summary of all his contacts and their conversations, e-mailed it to him and carefully saved it; these documents mapping the days and ways of Jack Abramoff are now in the hands of the prosecutors. (Abramoff's former assistant, Susan Ralston, moved seamlessly from his employ to the White House to become Karl Rove's assistant, where she regularly vetted supplicants to Rove through Grover Norquist, Abramoff's longtime political associate and business partner.)
Abramoff's appearance at the federal courthouse in Washington on Jan. 3 attired in black fedora and black trench coat, like an old-style "Mustache Pete" Mafioso, was bizarre but brilliant self-casting. He was not only his own producer but also his own dresser. In fact, Abramoff loved to recite lines from "The Godfather." One of his favorite bits was Michael Corleone's reply to a politician seeking a cut of his illegal businesses: "Senator, you can have my answer now if you like. My offer is this: nothing."
Abramoff's theatricality is intertwined with his politics. The graduate of Beverly Hills High School is the son of the president of the franchises division of the Diners Club and close to Ronald Reagan's kitchen cabinet of California millionaires. The father financed young Jack's takeover of the College Republicans. After depleting the treasury of Citizens for America, a conservative group founded by drugstore mogul Lewis Lehrman, Abramoff produced a violence-packed, B-grade Cold War movie, "Red Scorpion." With the capture of Congress by the Republicans in 1994, he hustled to Washington for the barbecue.
For more than a decade, Abramoff ran wild. From the offices of two major law firms, Preston Gates & Ellis and Greenberg Traurig, he traded in politicians and clients with abandon. He used false charities and phony think tanks, doled out all-expenses-paid trips, and opened his own Capitol Hill steakhouse called Signatures, where he picked up congressmen's tabs, to become wealthy and influential. He moved effortlessly from being a "friend of Newt," former Republican Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, to being a "friend of Tom," former Republican House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. His associates from his College Republican days, Grover Norquist and Ralph Reed, were his musketeers. Reed, former president of the Rev. Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition, became Abramoff's instrument for buying and manipulating leaders of the religious right to grease his elaborate schemes to bilk Indian tribes that had hired him to help them win approval of their casinos. These were just a few of the Abramoff ploys now being untangled by prosecutors.
In his brazenness, extravagance and heedlessness, Abramoff was one of a kind. Almost all lobbyists earning the kind of money he raked in follow the Washington rule of melting into the scenery. But Abramoff is not simply unique; he is also symptomatic. Abramoff's crimes are not illustrations of Washington generically gone haywire. He was not an accident waiting to happen. Nor was he just the latest in a dime-a-dozen scandals. Nor does he represent the vice of both parties. Above all, what he is not is a lobbyist who "bought Washington."
Abramoff has been an integral part of the Republican political machine that has flourished since the 1994 takeover. He has created vast slush funds at the disposal of DeLay (for example, the U.S. Family Network, financed by Russian oil tycoons), worked hand in glove with DeLay's political operatives, and supported the Republican congressional leadership with funds and favors. Abramoff's lobbying and politics are inextricable, one and the same, allowing him to simultaneously serve as a valuable member of the Republican machine and be out for himself. He was not the most significant player; nor was his tens of millions more money than bigger figures made. (Haley Barbour, former chairman of the Republican National Committee and former senior partner of a major Washington law firm, and currently governor of Mississippi, comes to mind.) But Abramoff, more than those with more influence or wealth, has the distinction of being the culmination of the recent history of the Republican Congress.
The Abramoff affair is the greatest congressional scandal in American history since the Crédit Mobilier. In 1873, a congressional investigation revealed that the holding company of the Union Pacific Railroad had dispensed stock to 30-some members of Congress; two were censured, none indicted. Undoubtedly, the punishments arising from the Abramoff affair will be more extensive than those from the Crédit Mobilier.
The latest Republican talking point on Abramoff is: I can't recall. DeLay had previously called him a "close personal friend." But an article last month in the Washington Post strangely reported: "The two met at a DeLay fundraiser on Capitol Hill in 1995, according to a former senior DeLay aide. The aide recalled that Edwin A. Buckham, then DeLay's chief of staff, told his boss: 'We really need to work with Abramoff; he is going to be an important lobbyist and fundraiser.' DeLay, a Christian conservative, did not quite know what to make of Abramoff, who wore a beard and a yarmulke. They forged political ties, but the two men never became personally close, according to associates of both men." The anti-Semitic undercurrent of DeLay's revisionism in his belated effort to distance himself is a piquant touch.
On Tuesday, in his first press conference of the new year, at his Capitol Hill office, Speaker Dennis Hastert described Abramoff as completely unfamiliar: "Well, you know, a year ago most people around Congress couldn't tell you who Jack Abramoff was and didn't know who his associates were or what connections there are." Meanwhile, that same day, at the briefing conducted by the White House, press secretary Scott McClellan gave murky explanations of Abramoff's dealings at the Bush White House. Abramoff had been one of Bush's top fundraisers (designated a "Pioneer" for raising more than $100,000 for the reelection campaign), been a member of the transition team for the Department of the Interior, and billed two tribal chiefs $25,000 for a White House lunch and meeting with President Bush. McClellan conceded Abramoff had been invited to a couple of Chanukah parties. At his Jan. 5 press briefing, when asked about Abramoff's participation in staff meetings, McClellan had said, "I'm making sure that I have a thorough report back to you on that. And I'll get that to you, hopefully very soon." Asked again by a reporter, "Who was in the staff meetings?" McClellan replied, "I don't get into discussing staff-level meetings." Thus Abramoff's history, and that of the Republicans, are being distorted, airbrushed or stonewalled.
In 1994, the law firm of Preston Gates & Ellis sent out a press release hailing its new partner, Jack Abramoff, who "developed and maintains strong ties to Speaker Newt Gingrich." National Journal reported: "The GOP victories in 1994 transformed [Abramoff] into a valuable asset as law firms recruited activists with connections to the new Gingrich team."
Gingrich, representing a congressional district of suburban white flight from Atlanta, touted himself as a cosmic thinker and Napoleonic military strategist. On a large easel, in one of his lectures, he described himself as "Teacher of the Rules of Civilization." Born Newt McPherson, Gingrich was the stepson of an abusive Army officer. He married one of his high school teachers and later handed her divorce papers in her hospital room while she was recovering from cancer surgery. He left teaching at West Georgia College to enter politics. A secret 1960s wannabe, he identified the enemy as "the Great Society countercultural model" and the goal as a Conservative Opportunity Society (the name of a group he founded).
The House Republican whip, Dick Cheney, quietly sponsored Gingrich's rise. Gingrich's method was to accuse congressional Democrats of scandal and manipulate the press into covering it. "I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don't encourage you to be nasty," he said. And he boasted, "We are engaged in reshaping the whole nation through the news media."
After Gingrich whipped up a commotion against Democratic House Speaker Jim Wright, forcing his resignation over a union's bulk buying of copies of his memoir, Gingrich's staff was caught smearing the new speaker, the gentlemanly Tom Foley, as a closest gay, which he was not. Then Gingrich fostered a furor over the House members' bank, a kind of credit union from which they had always drawn loans against their paychecks. It was, political scientist Nelson Polsby wrote in his book "How Congress Evolves," "a comic-opera fiasco that the news media, skillfully abetted by a group of enthusiastic Republican members, pumped up into a Wagnerian Götterdämmerung." Several of Gingrich's Republicans were caught up in this pseudo-scandal and quit Congress, but he was willing to step over their bodies.
After the Republican sweep in 1994, Gingrich held a mad celebration featuring people dressed as the cartoon Power Rangers and Rush Limbaugh. One new Republican member, Sonny Bono, who had fallen from grace as a celebrity, warned Gingrich to guard against hubris.
The failed professor, now speaker, sent his aides and followers for training to U.S. Army training and doctrine centers at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and Fort Monroe, Va., and called himself CEO. He suffered from mood swings of extreme highs and lows, bouncing from grandiose schemes to uncontrollable sobbing. He instructed his aides, "You guys have to tell reporters if they're going to cover the Republicans now, they need a romantic view of history."
Almost at once, he took a $4.5 million book advance from Rupert Murdoch's publishing house, HarperCollins, and just as quickly in the resulting controversy was forced to give it back. For Murdoch, the ridiculously exorbitant advance was chump change, considering his stake in telecommunications legislation.
DeLay, a former exterminator from Sugar Land, Texas, who referred to the Environmental Protection Agency "Gestapo," was the new House Republican whip. What became the K Street Project, melding Republicans and lobbyists, was launched immediately, in January 1995. Initially, DeLay called it Project Relief. He gathered 350 industry lobbyists to work closely with his staff to write legislation to halt regulation. "They have the expertise," DeLay explained about the lobbyists who were recruited to draft bills he proposed. Even before the Republicans had won control in 1994, DeLay met for lunch with 30 or 40 corporate lobbyists every Tuesday in the boardroom of the Independent Insurance Agents of America. These lobbyists financed his race for Republican whip, and even before the brand-new Congress met to vote on its leadership, DeLay had wrapped up his position. Among the Republican leaders, he was the only one with his own independent power base. And Project Relief made its power felt at once. Within a month after the new Republican Congress was sworn in, it voted for a 100-day moratorium on all federal regulation of industry.
DeLay compiled a book listing every industry political action committee, more than 400, marked either "friendly" or "unfriendly," depending on their contributions. "See, you're in the book," he said to one lobbyist as he showed him his PAC listing. DeLay kept the book on a coffee table in his office. On the wall hung a bullwhip. He was the enforcer of Gingrich's rule: "If you want to play in our revolution, you have to live by our rules." In 1995, DeLay met privately with more than 400 of the Fortune 500 companies, explaining why it was in their interest to abide by "our rules." By then, the Republicans had raised twice the amount of campaign money as the Democrats. The tobacco companies topped the big givers.
Project Relief morphed into the K Street Project. "We don't like to deal with people who are trying to kill the revolution," DeLay said. Law firms, trade associations and industries that hired Democrats were ostracized. "You need to hire a Republican," DeLay told these Washington outfits. And the business groups also had to kick in campaign money, lots of it. DeLay personally sent letters to PACs telling them exactly how much money they had to contribute and to which Republican candidates and committees. The K Street Project merged corporate interests with the Republican Party; served as an employment agency for activists and staffers, who were turned into lobbyists; and converted the lobbyists into writers of legislation, and the service sector of Washington into a bank for the party.
In November 1995, Gingrich demanded that President Clinton agree to massive cuts in Medicare and nearly equally massive regression tax cuts for the wealthy, and when Clinton refused, he shut down the federal government, for the first time in U.S. history. Medicare, he was quoted as saying, should "wither on the vine." Then, after reopening the government and conducting negotiations with Clinton, Gingrich forced another shutdown. "I don't care what the price is," he said. But the consequence was his discrediting. Most of the "Contract With America," the manifesto the Republicans ran on in 1994, was never enacted.
In 1996, the House Ethics Committee found that Gingrich had made false statements to it in the course of an investigation, fined him $300,000 and issued an official reprimand. It was the most severe penalty ever levied against a speaker. Gingrich's scandal involved crossing the wires of his intellectual vanity with his special interests. And it was related to the government shutdown he had insisted on.
Gingrich used tax deductions to finance political operations run through his political action committee, GOPAC, and think tank, the Progress and Freedom Foundation. One of these operations was a lecture series he taped, titled "Renewing American Civilization." Among GOPAC's biggest donors was J. Patrick Rooney, chairman of the Golden Rule Insurance Co. (Rooney's daughter served as GOPAC's deputy finance director.) Golden Rule sought the privatization of Medicare and its replacement by "medical savings accounts." In his "college course," Gingrich even included a promotional film for MSAs produced by Golden Rule.
In 1997, the other Republican leaders attempted a coup to replace Gingrich. DeLay gave his assent to the plot but lay in the background. But the putsch failed, and Gingrich demanded that its leader, rising young star Rep. Bill Paxon of New York, resign from the House. Days later, a bright young journalist, Sandy Hume, of the Hill newspaper, who had used Paxon as his source to disclose details of the coup, committed suicide. Hume, it was said, was despondent over having been arrested for drunken driving.
Gingrich, at low ebb, grasped onto the impeachment of President Clinton as his lifeline. He pressed it as the No. 1 issue in the 1998 midterm elections, but the Republicans lost five seats in the House. The public was simply opposed to an impeachment. Within two days, Gingrich resigned as speaker. The Republican leadership, especially DeLay, did not believe Gingrich was tough enough to push forward against Clinton. "I melt when I'm around him," Gingrich confessed to his second wife about Clinton. For more than a year Republicans sent a bodyguard, hardliner Richard Armey, to accompany Gingrich on all trips to the White House, fearing that Gingrich would compromise. Some of the Republicans also were privy to the information that Gingrich was personally vulnerable: His mistress was on the House payroll. And a few months after he quit as speaker, Gingrich told his second wife in a telephone call that he was leaving her.
Rep. Robert Livingston of Louisiana became acting speaker, but not for long. On the day of impeachment, Dec. 19, 1998, he resigned when pornographer Larry Flynt threatened to release sex tapes of his extramarital affairs. Livingston was a capable deal maker, but he was gone before he arrived.
The new speaker, Dennis Hastert, a former high school wrestling coach from Illinois, was DeLay's sock puppet. DeLay had coerced impeachment, threatening moderates with far-right primary opponents, and it left his power among House Republicans unimpaired. If anything, his ability to intimidate members was augmented.
Gov. George W. Bush of Texas positioned himself in his presidential campaign as a voice of reason and moderation, unblemished by the Republican Congress. He picked a strategic fight with DeLay over the earned-income tax credit for the working poor in order to assert his credentials as a "compassionate conservative." It was clear who was not compassionate.
Once Bush was elected, the Republican Congress, especially the House, became his essential prop of power. In the House, there is no actual legislative process. The workweek is typically only two days, like that of a small, minor state legislature. The Rules Committee forbids members from altering bills on the floor. Votes are blocked on bills that have bipartisan support, such as an extension of unemployment benefits that is opposed by a majority of the Republicans. Bills are crafted in the dead of night, behind closed doors, by a select group of Republican leaders, often without floor debate. The Boston Globe, in a 2004 series on the influence of lobbyists, reported that "on the Medicare and energy bills, businesses and other groups who reported lobbying on the two measures spent a staggering $799,091,391 in efforts to influence lawmakers, frequently employing former members of Congress, former staff members, and relatives of lawmakers to lobby on the bills." In addition, the Globe reported, the Republican Congress added "3,407 'pork barrel' projects to appropriations bills for this year's federal budget, items that were never debated or voted on beforehand by the House and Senate and whose congressional patrons are kept secret."
When it appeared that a Medicare bill would be defeated on the floor, Hastert kept debate open for three hours beyond its stipulated limit. DeLay twisted the arm of Rep. Nick Smith of Michigan, promising him $100,000 in campaign contributions for his son, who was running for Congress, if he would switch his vote. Smith changed from "yea" to "nay." Smith confessed to the allegation of bribery and then withdrew the confession. Nonetheless, the Ethics Committee, which DeLay has attempted to shut down, delivered a "public admonishment" to DeLay.
This month, DeLay resigned his post as majority leader under the strain of his criminal trial in Texas and the Abramoff revelations. In Texas, DeLay has been indicted for illegally siphoning corporate funds into state political campaigns. By using his political action committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, as a conduit, he financed races in the Texas Legislature; then the Legislature, at his prompting, redrew congressional districts, removing Democrats from their seats and padding the Republican majority in the House. Last month, the Washington Post disclosed that Justice Department lawyers had found that DeLay's scheme violated the Voting Rights Act, disenfranchising black and Hispanic voters, but Bush administration officials overruled them.
In the battle of succession to DeLay, DeLayism will triumph. The leading candidate for majority leader, Rep. Roy Blunt of Missouri, is so close to lobbyists that he left his wife to marry the lobbyist for Altria, the company that owns Philip Morris. In 2002, he inserted a provision into a homeland security bill to increase the penalties for selling stolen cigarettes. Blunt's son happens to be a lobbyist; his other son is the Republican governor of Missouri. He stands for nothing but business as usual. His challenger, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, runs a group called the K Street Cabinet. In 1995, on the floor of the House, Boehner handed out checks from tobacco lobbyists to Republican members, something he says he regrets.
The House Republicans this week relaunched themselves as champions of reform, presenting a program to clean up the stain left by Abramoff and DeLay. Their proposal, however, would not prevent members from accepting meals and travel from lobbyists so long as they were linked to campaign fundraising. But such a program cannot distract from the spectacle about to unfold.
The Abramoff affair is only at its start, and numerous members of the Congress and prominent Republican lobbyists and operatives may well and soon be ensnared. Behind closed doors, Abramoff and his partner Michael Scanlon, DeLay's former communications director, are singing.
Historians in the future will examine the implications and nuances of the Abramoff affair, the K Street Project and the trajectory of the Republican Congress from the dawn of its "revolution" to its Thermidorian dusk. For now, however, the matter is in the hands of the prosecutors.
-- By Sidney Blumenthal
Salon.com Republicans gone wild
|
|
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
|
|
|
|
|
Gunmen, Car Bombs Kill Nearly 50 in Iraq
mayhem of the day in Iraq; ABC news reported yesterday that insurgents are now shooting stinger missles and rigged IED devices at US heliocopters
Gunmen, Car Bombs Kill Nearly 50 in Iraq
|
|
|
Harvey Wasserman: 'The latest Bush mega-catastrophe is now pharmaceuticals'
another Bush catastrophe, how many screwups can a system take?
The Smirking Chimp: "Harvey Wasserman: 'The latest Bush mega-catastrophe is now pharmaceuticals'"
|
|
Tuesday, January 17, 2006
|
Linda Bilmes & Joseph Stiglitz: 'War's stunning price tag'
Bush's war is leading to possible financial ruin...
The Smirking Chimp: "Linda Bilmes & Joseph Stiglitz: 'War's stunning price tag'"
|
|
|
|
|
|
Saturday, January 14, 2006
|
Jennifer Senior: 'John Bolton: 'Ugly American' tells it like it is'
John Bolton aka the Ugly American
The Smirking Chimp
|
|
|
War, Trials, Leakers, Investigations, Packed Courts, and a Constitutional Crisis
If we had a real government, we'd be in constitutional crisis
The Smirking Chimp
|
|
|
Ray McGovern: 'Proof Bush deceived America'
growing evidence of immensity of Bush administration deception of America on Iraq; lying to Congress on this issue would be an impeachable offense...
The Smirking Chimp: "Ray McGovern: 'Proof Bush deceived America'"
|
|
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
|
|
|
|
|
Bob Fitrakis: 'Did the NSA help Bush hack the vote?'
perhaps Bush's Web of Evil is all connected-- from spying to vote hacking....
The Smirking Chimp
|
|
|
ZNet | Iraq | A Formula for Slaughter
Most are still not aware that current US military policy in Iraq is largely Air War with attendent slaughter of innocents....
ZNet Iraq A Formula for Slaughter
|
|
|
ZNet | Iraq | Pacifying Iraq: Insurgent Scenarios
Tom Hayden sees possible roads to peace and security in Iraq but does the Bush administration really want a solution or continued control of Iraqi oil and US military bases....
ZNet Iraq Pacifying Iraq: Insurgent Scenarios
|
|
|
Salon.com News & Politics | War Room
Salon analysis of Alito hearing=
"
On abortion, what's good for the goose is ... well, never mind
At Samuel Alito's hearing, Sen. Lindsey Graham just finished lecturing Democrats who, he says, are putting too much emphasis on abortion in considering the nomination of Judge Alito. "I know that abortion is important," Graham said. "It's important to me, and it's important to you. But we can't build a judiciary around that issue."
Fair enough -- single-issue voting leads to all sorts of problems -- but where was Graham when his Republican colleagues were torpedoing the nomination of Harriet Miers because her position against abortion wasn't clear enough for their tastes?
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [17:06 EST, Jan. 11, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Alito makes the case against himself
We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
Defending his refusal to offer his current view on Roe v. Wade, Samuel Alito just said that litigants who bring the issue of abortion before the Supreme Court in the future have "a right" to have their case heard by justices with open minds, "and that means people who haven't announced in advance what they think about the issue."
The problem, of course, is that Alito has already "announced in advance" what he thinks about the issue. In his 1985 application for a political appointment in the Justice Department, Alito suggested that he "personally" believed "very strongly" in the positions he had advanced in the Solicitor General's Office -- in particular, the argument that the "Constitution does not protect a right to an abortion."
Alito won't say whether he still believes what he believed in 1985 because, he says, it would be the "antithesis" of a fair legal system if judges told litigants that they'd made up their minds before a case is even heard. But isn't it equally antithetical if the judge has already made up his mind but pretends that he hasn't?
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [15:47 EST, Jan. 11, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
And now, a word from John Ashcroft
It's hard to know what Republicans thought they had to gain by trotting out John Ashcroft during a break in Samuel Alito's confirmation hearing today: Anybody who might be swayed by Ashcroft's endorsement of the nominee is surely in his camp already.
So it's not surprising that the reporters gathered outside the hearing room weren't all that interested in asking Ashcroft to expound on his view that America is lucky to have a judicial nominee like Alito. They were interested, however, in hearing what Ashcroft had to say about George W. Bush's program of warrantless spying on American citizens. The president has said that administration attorneys repeatedly vetted and approved the spying program, but the New York Times says that one senior Justice Department attorney objected to the program, prompting White House Chief of Staff Andy Card to seek approval from Ashcroft while he was in the intensive-care unit at George Washington University Hospital.
It's not clear what Ashcroft told Card about the spying program that day, and it's still not clear what Ashcroft thinks about it now. Asked about it today, the former attorney general said: "I believe that there are times when the clear authority of the president, in line with the Constitution and in line with the authorization to use force, is to conduct surveillances in the national interest to preserve and protect our national security." But then he added: "This is not to say that there are no limits on a president. The president is limited by the Constitution just as are members of the Congress and members of the judiciary. But there are clear responsibilities and duties of the president to act to secure the nation and some of those include surveillances. I am not going to talk about particular surveillance programs. I will not talk about programs which I believe are necessary to our defense."
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [14:04 EST, Jan. 11, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Alito falters on CAP, and Specter and Kennedy explode
Ted Kennedy and Arlen Specter just came to blows, at least of the verbal kind, over Kennedy's attempt to obtain more information about Samuel Alito's involvement in the conservative group Concerned Alumni of Princeton.
In his 1985 application for a political appointment in Ronald Reagan's Justice Department, Alito called attention to his membership in the group as a way to bolster his conservative bona fides. "As a federal employee subject to the Hatch Act for nearly a decade, I have been unable to take a role in partisan politics," Alito wrote then. "However, I am a lifelong registered Republican and have made the sort of modest political contributions that a federal employee can afford to make to Republican candidates and conservative causes ... I am a member of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy and a member of the Concerned Alumni of Princeton University, a conservative alumni group."
In testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Alito said that he had "racked" his memory about CAP and has "no specific recollection of that organization." Kennedy served a reminder on Alito today, reading him excerpts from a CAP publication in which authors railed against minorities who demand to be hired simply because they're minorities and suggested that members of a gay-rights group at Princeton volunteer for scientific experiments that had been carried out on monkeys.
Alito said he wasn't familiar with such writings and didn't agree with the views expressed in them. So why did Alito join CAP, and why was he so proud of his membership that he listed it on his job application in 1985? Alito said Tuesday that he probably joined CAP "around" the time he completed his job application, and he probably did so out of concern over Princeton's decision to bar ROTC from its campus. But Kennedy pointed out that ROTC was back on campus at Princeton long before the mid-1980s -- and didn't seem to be much of an issue for CAP at that time.
Alito didn't have much in the way of answers to any of that, and Kennedy -- saying that Alito's testimony didn't "add up" -- suggested that the Judiciary Committee go into executive session to decide whether to subpoena documents about CAP. Specter responded with sudden anger, saying that Kennedy had never raised the issue with him before. Kennedy said that he sent Specter a letter on Dec. 22 in which he asked that the committee seek such documents. Specter suggested that he'd never received it.
Kennedy said he would appeal Specter's refusal to entertain a motion to subpoena the documents and would do so again and again and again until Specter acted. Specter shot back that he hadn't ruled against anything yet, then reminded Kennedy that he's not in charge. "I'm not going to have you run this committee," Specter said.
Specter eventually gaveled the conversation to a close, but Kennedy got the last word, for now: Just as the committee broke for lunch, he established that Specter's office had, in fact, received his request by introducing into the Congressional Record a copy of the letter it had sent in response.
At a press briefing a few minutes later, Kennedy made it clear that the letter from Specter's office had, in fact, rejected his request that the committee subpoena the CAP documents. He added: "It's extraordinary to me that this nominee can remember all 67 of his dissents in great, great detail, but he's still mystified about an organization that he used in his job application."
Update: The Specter-Kennedy dust-up ultimately seems to have been much ado about very little. In this afternoon's hearing session, Specter said his staff has followed up with the man who holds the records in question, and that he's happy to turn them over to the committee without the need for a subpoena.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [13:10 EST, Jan. 11, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Asked but not answered
Can Samuel Alito answer a question?
Of course he can. He can answer Republican Sen. Sam Brownback when he asks if the Constitution says that a retiring justice has to be replaced by a justice with a similar ideology. (It doesn't.) He can answer Republican Sen. Tom Coburn when he asks why he wants to be a Supreme Court justice. (It's a chance to serve his country.) And he can answer when Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions asks whether judges should make up their minds about cases before they hear oral argument. (They shouldn't.)
But when a Democrat puts a question to Alito about a matter of substance, the nominee seems to find himself constitutionally incapable of giving a direct answer. Consider the following exchange in which Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy tried to get Alito to offer his opinion on Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, a case in which Sandra Day O'Connor and Clarence Thomas offered starkly different views of a president's authority during wartime. Leahy asked Alito, "Which one is right -- Justice O'Connor or Justice Thomas?" Alito responded by explaining, at length, that O'Connor wrote the opinion for the majority in the case. Yes, Leahy said, but which opinion "do you personally agree with"? Alito launched into an explanation of the way in which he believes the war power is divided between the executive branch and Congress. Leahy complained that Alito still wasn't saying which opinion he favored. "I'm trying to explain my understanding of the division of authority in this area," Alito said.
Leahy moved on to other areas, but Alito continued to dodge his inquires. Leahy asks Alito if the president is free to violate acts of Congress. Alito says that the president is obliged to comply with the dictates of the Constitution. Leahy asks if the president can take it upon himself to decide that an act of Congress is unconstitutional. Alito says that, if a legal case ultimately arises out of such a decision, a court would get the final say.
There are words there, but there are no answers. A skilled questioner might have pursued Alito further, pinning him into an ever smaller box until he had to answer the question or make it obvious to everyone present that he was dodging. Patrick Leahy said, "Thank you."
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [12:03 EST, Jan. 11, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Alito goes Clintonian on Roe
As the third day of Samuel Alito's confirmation hearing began this morning, Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin asked the nominee if he considers Roe v. Wade to be "settled law." As he has on so many other things, Alito responded to the question without really answering it.
"If 'settled' means it can't be reexamined, that's one thing," Alito said. "If 'settled' means it is a precedent entitled to respect as stare decisis. . . then it is a precedent that is protected, entitled to respect under the doctrine of stare decisis in that way."
The structure of Alito's equivocation rang a bell with us, as it should have with Republicans who were once up in arms over a similar statement made by someone else. During Bill Clinton's grand jury testimony in 1998, the president said, famously and not unreasonably, "It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is." Then he added: "If 'is' means is and never has been, that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement."
That wasn't good enough for Republicans who pushed for Clinton's impeachment. Why should Alito's equivocation on Roe be good enough now?
-- Tim Grieve
Salon.com News & Politics War Room
|
|
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
|
Michael T. Klare: 'Losing the war on terrorism: Our incompetent Commander-in-Chief'
Meanwhile, the Bush-Cheney Gang is losing the War on Terror due to their incompetence and obsession with economic and political power on the home-front....
The Smirking Chimp
|
|
|
The Smirking Chimp
Here's the Real Story: Will JackGate take down the GOP? And what's with that mobsteresque jacket and big fedora hat in his court appearance that is now Abramoff Icon and butt of comedy?
The Smirking Chimp
|
|
|
In Abramoff Case, Most See Evidence of Wider Problem
Yesterday there were TV reports that Abramoff is just middle man; will they be able to connect Rove and Bush administration to the scandals, squeezing money from lobbies and corporations to pay for Republican policies and finance elections; the whole Bush-Cheney-Rove is an extortion racket, if this is revealed they could go down....
In Abramoff Case, Most See Evidence of Wider Problem
|
|
|
Lobby Firm Is Scandal Casualty
A piller of the GOP goes down: without its pay and play scams from lobbies and corporates the Repugs cannot finance their realm of corruption, empire, and power; this is a big blow to Rove's dream of a permanent Republican majority....
Lobby Firm Is Scandal Casualty
|
|
Monday, January 09, 2006
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Thursday, January 05, 2006
|
Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
latest on rightwing looneytalk, Bush scandals and the Abramoff case that has the bad guys sweating big time from Salon:
"Pat Robertson: God is punishing Ariel Sharon
Pat Robertson will die some day. When he does, we'll all be at a loss -- not because we'll miss him, necessarily, but because we won't have him around to explain why God took him.
On his television show today, the Christian conservative suggested that Ariel Sharon's dire medical condition -- as well as the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin -- should be seen as a sign of God's displeasure with those who would "divide" Israel.
"I am sad to see him in this condition," Robertson said of Sharon. "But I think we need to look at the Bible and the Book of Joel. The prophet Joel makes it very clear that God has enmity against those who 'divide my land.' God considers this land to be his. You read the Bible, he says, 'This is my land.' And for any prime minister of Israel who decides he going carve it up and give it away, God says, 'No. This is mine.'"
Although Robertson insisted that Sharon is a "delightful person to be with," he said that God is sending a clear message by striking him down. "He was dividing God's land, and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU, the United Nations or United States of America. God said, 'This land belongs to me, you better leave it alone.'"
Maybe we're just insufficiently religious to understand things the way that Robertson does. We can understand why people look to God for answers and explanations when a child dies in a freak accident, when a young mother or father is killed in a war started on false pretenses, or when a tsunami wipes out entire parts of the world. Say what you will about his politics, Ariel Sharon is a 77-year-old man with a recent history of medical problems. His death, if it comes, will not be any great metaphysical mystery. What is a mystery is why anyone takes Pat Robertson seriously anymore.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [16:13 EST, Jan. 5, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Dick Cheney, domestic spying and "false comforts" before 9/11
We've always thought it odd when the White House accuses its critics of having a "pre-9/11 mentality" or a "pre-9/11 mind set." While members of the Bush administration insist that the president is doing everything in his power -- and then some -- to protect Americans from a terrorist attack now, they seem to gloss over the fact that George W. Bush was in power "pre-9/11" himself.
Dick Cheney was at it again Wednesday. Speaking at the Heritage Foundation -- Cheney said he saw a lot of "old friends" in the room, and we're sure he did -- the vice president warned of the dangers of returning to the "false comforts of the world before September 11th, 2001."
To be fair, the Bush team had been in office only eight months and change before al Qaida struck in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. But that was long enough for Cheney and others to hear dire warnings from Richard Clarke; long enough for John Ashcroft to develop budget priorities for the Department of Justice that didn't include counter-terrorism efforts; and long enough for U.S. intelligence agencies to work up a Presidential Daily Brief headlined, "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S." Bush got that alert on Aug. 6, 2001, then took the afternoon off to go fishing.
Cheney didn't say anything about any of that Wednesday. Instead, he defended all the things that the president and his administration began doing right after the terrorists struck. In the process, at least by implication, Cheney admitted that the administration's pre-9/11 efforts weren't good enough. Defending the post-9/11 executive order in which Bush authorized warrantless spying on American citizens, Cheney said, "If we'd been able to do this before 9/11, we might have been able to pick up on two hijackers who subsequently flew a jet into the Pentagon." The suggestion: The Bush administration was somehow powerless to listen in on the phone calls of would-be terrorists in the pre-9/11 days.
But as we've noted before, the Bush administration was indeed "able to do this before 9/11." If the administration wanted to listen in on the phone conversations of suspected al-Qaida members lurking in the United States before 9/11, all it had to do was ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for a warrant to do so. It didn't even need to ask first: The law allowed the administration to start listening first and seek a warrant after the fact.
Moreover, if the Bush administration's theory of presidential power is right, Bush had inherent authority as commander in chief to waive the warrant requirement whenever thought national security interests might justify doing so. That means he could have issued his executive order on Jan. 21, 2001, on Aug. 6, 2001, or on any of the 200 or so other days that passed between the afternoon he took office and the morning that the planes struck. He didn't.
"False comforts"? Yes, Mr. Vice President, we've heard about those.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [14:02 EST, Jan. 5, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
This just in: Bush listens
Josh Marshall caught a "well, duh" headline on the Washington Post's Web site the other day: "DHS To Base Grants on Risk." As Marshall put it, the idea that homeland security money should be directed to where it's actually needed ought to be about as novel as the notion that firefighters might respond first to buildings that are, you know, burning. Of course, the world of Washington doesn't always work in ways that a mere mortal might expect. Since 9/11, homeland security money has gone to all sorts of places -- hello, Wyoming! -- that probably aren't on any short lists floating around the caves of Pakistan.
The Department of Homeland Security is now fixing to remedy that with a new plan aimed at getting money to the parts of the country where terrorists seem most likely to attack. But just as we digest that news, along comes another amazing-but-true headline from the World Wide Web: "Bush Listens to Suggestions on Iraq."
Well, Katy bar the door.
Just as we'd like to think that homeland security grants might be going to places where they're needed, we'd like to feel confident that the president of the United States listens all the time to suggestions about a war that has claimed nearly 2,200 American lives and killed untold thousands of Iraqis. The reality, of course, is that he doesn't. The ever-shrinking nature of the president's bubble has been well documented. It seems pretty clear that the only advice the president is getting on Iraq comes from the same folks who got the country into the war there in the first place.
The White House knows that the Bush bubble -- or, more accurately, the image of it -- has to be burst. Although the president's approval ratings have ticked up ever so slightly from their lows of last year, the White House seems to understand that the president needs to do a better job of making it clear that he feels our pain. He couldn't bring himself to meet with Cindy Sheehan over the summer -- he said he had a life to live -- but he was quick out of the box this week to express his sympathies for the common folk who lost family members in that mine disaster in West Virginia.
And this morning, the president made a big made-for-TV show of meeting with a collection of former secretaries of state and defense to talk about the war in Iraq. After the session was over, Bush thanked everyone for coming and said that he took their advice "to heart." Then he articulated his strategy for Iraq, exactly the same strategy that he has been articulating all along. We wouldn't expect this president -- or any president -- to change his ways on a matter of war in the course a single meeting. But coming out of his meeting with Madeleine Albright and Robert McNamara and Colin Powell and all the rest, Bush gave no hint that their words had had any effect on him at all. Bush listened to suggestions, all right. Whether he heard them is another question entirely.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [12:02 EST, Jan. 5, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Who needs Congress, anyway?
Although the Senate Judiciary Committee will begin confirmation hearings for Samuel Alito next week, the full Senate doesn't return to work for one more week or so. Members of the House of Representatives won't return to work in Washington until the end of the month.
But really, why bother? With the Bush administration seemingly determined to assume all powers of the government for itself, it's a wonder that members of Congress bother to show up for work at all. First -- well, it's not first, but it's first among recent developments -- we learned that George W. Bush had taken it upon himself to authorize spying on American citizens without the warrants Congress required under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Then we learned that, in the face of a rather unequivocal ban on torture passed by Congress, the president would deem himself free to ignore the ban whenever he thought doing so might "assist" in the war on terror.
Now comes news that the president has started the new year by making what the Washington Post calls a "raft" of recess appointments aimed at circumventing the need for Senate confirmation of presidential appointees.
Among the nominees who apparently couldn't stand the wait the normal constitutional process requires is Julie Myers, whom Bush installed as the new head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement section of the Department of Homeland Security. Myers' nomination was going to face stiff opposition from senators who believed she wasn't qualified; even right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin has suggested that Myers' nomination is a crony deal and a "bad joke." While Myers has little experience with customs or immigration issues, she is the niece of former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Richard Myers and the wife of the chief of staff for Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff.
Also on the raft: Tracy Henke, whom Bush installed as executive director of the Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness. Getting Henke through the Senate might have proved inconvenient, too: She's apparently the Justice Department official who insisted that politically embarrassing data about racial disparities in law enforcement traffic stops be deleted from a Justice Department report on the subject.
And then there's Hans Von Spakovsky, to whom Bush just handed a seat on the Federal Election Commission. Von Spakovsky is apparently one of the political appointees in the Justice Department who overruled staff attorneys and analysts who concluded that Tom DeLay's Texas redistricting plan shouldn't be approved because it violated federal law.
There are 14 more where those came from. Perhaps one among them might mention to their new boss the concept of separation of powers.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [09:46 EST, Jan. 5, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Spying, CNN and the Kerry campaign: Is there a there there?
It gets curiouser and curiouser.
As we noted Wednesday, AMERICAblog's John Aravosis noticed an odd moment in Andrea Mitchell's interview this week with New York Times reporter James Risen: While interviewing Risen about his new book and revelations that George W. Bush authorized warrantless spying on American citizens, Mitchell asked Risen if he had any information suggesting that CNN's international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, "might have been eavesdropped upon." Risen said he didn't. But as Aravosis surmised, the question certainly suggested that Mitchell did.
Right about the time Aravosis' theory started floating through the blogosphere, somebody deleted Mitchell's question and Risen's answer from the transcript posted on MSNBC's Web site. We said we'd like to hear an explanation, and TVNewser actually went to the trouble of getting one. "Unfortunately this transcript was released prematurely," reads a statement TVNewser says it got from NBC. "It was a topic on which we had not completed our reporting, and it was not broadcast on 'NBC Nightly News' nor on any other NBC News program. We removed that section of the transcript so that we may further continue our inquiry."
Assuming the statement is legitimate, that sure seems to us like a long way of saying, "Yeah, we're looking into the possibility that the Bush administration was eavesdropping on Christiane Amanpour."
Now, it's probably time for a deep breath and some patience here. What we've got here is some reading between the lines, and it's about a question, not an answer. But as we said yesterday, if the answer is ultimately answered in the affirmative -- that is, if the Bush administration has indeed been listening in on Amanpour's phone -- the implications are enormous. We don't much like the idea that the government might be listening in on the conversations of a reporter. And Amanpour isn't just any reporter: She is married to Jamie Rubin, a State Department spokesman under Bill Clinton and a foreign policy advisor to John Kerry's presidential campaign. If the Bush administration was listening in on Amanpour's phone, was it listening when she talked with her husband? Was it listening when he might have used her phone himself?
Again, what we've got here are hints about a question. We're a long way from an answer. But when you start circumventing Congress and the courts and begin to spy on Americans in a way that you insist you aren't, you invite questions like these. And along the way, you invite people to think about the last time some people who worked for a president tried to spy on the opposition.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [09:09 EST, Jan. 5, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Was the NSA listening?
Does NBC's Andrea Mitchell know something about the Bush administration's domestic spying program that the rest of us don't? As AMERICAblog's John Aravosis notes, Mitchell put a question to the New York Times' James Risen Tuesday that suggests that she might.
In an interview with Risen, Mitchell asked if he had any information suggesting that the National Security Agency has been eavesdropping on CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour. Risen said he hadn't heard that. Has Mitchell heard something to that effect, or was she just using Amanpour's name as the example of what might have gone wrong with the spying program?
We don't know the answer to that, and neither does Aravosis. But as Aravosis notes, the implications of tapping Amanpour's phone lines could be enormous. There's the chilling thought that government officials might be listening in on the conversations of a reporter, and then there's this: Amanpour's husband, who like any husband might have had occasion to use his wife's phone, happens to be Jamie Rubin, the former Clinton administration official who served as a foreign policy advisor for John Kerry's presidential campaign.
Update: As several readers note in the comments below, the exchange between Mitchell and Risen about Amanpour has rather mysteriously disappeared from the transcript of the interview posted on the MSNBC Web site. If MSNBC has an explanation for why Mitchell's question and Risen's answer have disappeared, we'd sure like to hear it. Did Mitchell not ask the question -- that seems unlikely, doesn't it? -- or does someone at MSNBC just wish she hadn't?
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [15:33 EST, Jan. 4, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
As Washington quakes, a pundit yawns
The president didn't mention the Jack Abramoff case during his brief public appearance today. And although Dick Cheney is giving a speech to the Heritage Foundation right now, each time we turn up the sound on the TV he seems to be saying something about 9/11. So in an effort to learn a little about the right's take on the Abramoff affair, we just checked in on the Corner at the National Review Online. The word there: yawn.
Jonah Goldberg, NRO regular and newly minted Los Angeles Times columnist, proclaims himself "not that interested" in the Abramoff case. "There are lots of important stories that I can't get worked up about," Goldberg writes. "This is one of them." He says he'll get himself interested if it turns out that the "Kosites and Tapped crowd are right and this has major political legs or if some important politicians go down because of what Abramoff tells the prosecution."
For now, Goldberg says, the Abramoff case is just "your basic K Street corruption story." He says he wasn't all that interested in such stories when Bill Clinton was president, and he's not all that interested in them now. "My attitude is shame on the guilty parties and get back to me when there's something interesting to discuss."
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [15:09 EST, Jan. 4, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
The Abramoff investigation: How wide, how high?
At a press conference Tuesday, the chief of the Justice Department's criminal division said that the Jack Abramoff corruption scheme is "very extensive" and that prosecutors would follow it "wherever it goes."
How far -- and how high -- is that? Abramoff and his business partner, Michael Scanlon, have already admitted their guilt. Prosecutors have already charged David Safavian, the Bush administration's chief procurement official. And in court documents filed Tuesday, Abramoff implicated, albeit not by name, Ohio Rep. Bob Ney as well as Tony Rudy, a former aide to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
Beyond that, it's anybody's guess, and it seems that everyone has one.
The New York Times, relying on the word of "participants in the case," says that the Abramoff investigation encompasses "dozens of political operatives, including former congressional aides and lobbyists," and that Abramoff's testimony "reaches into the executive and legislative branches and appears to be drawing an ever-tighter ring of evidence" around DeLay and other "senior congressional Republicans." The Washington Post says that Abramoff has agreed to provide information and testimony about "half a dozen House and Senate members" as well as congressional staffers, executive branch officials and other lobbyists. Knight Ridder says the investigation is "thought to involve up to 20 members of Congress and aides and possibly several administration officials."
Those may sound like big numbers, but not if you read the Wall Street Journal this morning. The Journal says that Abramoff claims to have "information that could implicate 60 lawmakers." At the same time, however, the Journal suggests that prosecutors are interested in a somewhat smaller subset than that: Citing the word of "lawyers involved in the case," the Journal says prosecutors are "looking at" Abramoff's dealings with Ney and "at least three other members of Congress and more than a dozen current and former congressional aides."
Those are the numbers. What about the names? There's Ney and almost certainly DeLay, who once called Abramoff one of his "closest and dearest friends" and whose former aides, including Scanlon, are everywhere in the investigation. The Journal and others have reported previously that investigators are looking into Abramoff's dealings with California Rep. John Doolittle, who received contributions from Abramoff and whose wife was hired by an Abramoff foundation, and Montana Sen. Conrad Burns, who has received approximately $150,000 in Abramoff-related contributions.
That's four, two short of "half a dozen" and dozens short of the 60 lawmakers the Journal says Abramoff can implicate. As Abramoff said in his plea agreement Tuesday, he hasn't yet revealed -- at least not publicly -- all that he knows about criminal activity. Stay tuned.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [13:44 EST, Jan. 4, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Abramoff cash and Bush-Cheney '04: Now who's living in a "glass house"?
As we noted earlier today, Jack Abramoff wasn't exactly the "equal money dispenser" the president and the Republican spin machine would like to make him out to be. As Bloomberg News does the math, Abramoff gave more than $127,000 to Republican candidates and committees between 2001 and 2004. His contributions to Democrats and their committees during those years: Zilch.
In order to make the case that Democrats share the taint of the disgraced lobbyist and former College Republicans president, you've got to argue that contributions from Abramoff's associates and clients carry the same sort of smell as contributions from Abramoff himself. There may be some truth to that: If the allegations against and admissions by Abramoff are to be believed, he bought off Republican Rep. Bob Ney using his clients' money as well as his own. But if that's the argument GOP spinners want to make -- that money from Abramoff's associates and clients is just as dirty as money from Abramoff himself -- then somebody had better tell the White House and the spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee. As the Associated Press is reporting, Abramoff raised at least $100,000 for Bush-Cheney '04, but the campaign is giving up only $6,000 of it -- money contributed by Abramoff, his wife and the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan.
What about the rest of the money -- somewhere around $100,000 that Abramoff raised for the Bush-Cheney campaign but didn't contribute himself? "At this point, there is nothing to indicate that contributions from those individual donors represents anything other than enthusiastic support for the BC-04 reelection campaign," says Republican National Committee spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [12:13 EST, Jan. 4, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Torture ban? What torture ban?
When George W. Bush and John McCain went before the TV cameras last month to say that they'd worked out a deal on the torture ban McCain had proposed and the White House had long resisted, Bush said that, together, they had "made it clear to the world that this government does not torture and that we adhere to the international convention of torture, whether it be here at home or abroad."
But as the Boston Globe reports this morning, the president seems to have undone that rather unequivocal stand when he signed the McCain measure into law late last week. In his signing statement, Bush said that he shall "construe" the ban "in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the president ... as commander in chief." That's the same "constitutional authority," you may recall, that the White House has cited in justifying Bush's decision to authorize warrantless spying on American citizens in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
A senior administration official tells the Globe that the White House considers itself bound by the torture ban but that a situation could arise in which Bush might decide to disregard it in the interests of national security. It's an exception that swallows the rule, of course: Unless U.S. personnel are mistreating detainees solely for sport, isn't there always a "national security" justification that could be offered for torturing someone believed to be connected to terrorist activites?
"The whole point of the McCain Amendment was to close every loophole," Marty Lederman, a Georgetown University law professor and former Justice Department lawyer, tells the Globe. "The president has re-opened the loophole by asserting the constitutional authority to act in violation of the statute where it would assist in the war on terrorism." NYU law professor David Golove puts its more bluntly: "The signing statement is saying, 'I will only comply with this law when I want to, and if something arises in the war on terrorism where I think it's important to torture or engage in cruel, inhuman, and degrading conduct, I have the authority to do so and nothing in this law is going to stop me.'"
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [11:35 EST, Jan. 4, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
When checks and balances are quaint
Shortly after the New York Times broke the news that the Bush administration has been engaged in warrantless spying on American citizens, the White House assured us all that we had nothing to worry about: Although the National Security Agency was spying on Americans in violation of an act of Congress and without a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, no eavesdropping ever occurred unless somebody got approval from a "shift supervisor" at the NSA first.
We didn't find that entirely comforting: With all due respect to the middle managers of the federal government, a shift supervisor at the NSA isn't exactly a disinterested party and isn't much at all like the impartial federal judges who are supposed to be signing off on such things. But even if we had been able to get our minds around the idea of the NSA as some sort of one-stop shopping for the checks and balances required by the Constitution and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, we'd have some additional cause for concern now: As the New York Times reports today, officials at the NSA may have launched at least some aspects of their secret domestic spying program even before they got approval from George W. Bush.
The revelation is hinted at in some previously classified and highly redacted correspondence between House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the former head of the NSA who is now Bush's No. 2 intelligence official. In a letter to Hayden written exactly one month after the attacks of 9/11, Pelosi asked "whether and to what extent the National Security Agency has received specific presidential authorization for the operations you are conducting." Hayden's response: The NSA was acting on its own. "I used my authorities to adjust NSA's collection and reporting," he said.
Bush did not sign his executive order authorizing the spying program until early 2002. In the interim, Congress adopted the Patriot Act, a measure that, as former NSA chief Bobby Inman notes, would have been the logical home for congressional authorization for the domestic spying program if the Bush administration had bothered to ask Congress for the power it assumed for itself.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [10:13 EST, Jan. 4, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Abramoff an "equal money dispenser"? Not exactly
When George W. Bush was asked about Jack Abramoff a couple of weeks ago, he said: "It seems like to me that he was an equal money dispenser, that he was giving money to people in both political parties."
It might have seemed that way to the president because that's the spin his party, and more than a few members of the press, continue to lay out for the public. In a section of its Web site called "Glass Houses," the National Republican Senatorial Committee claims that 40 of the 45 Senate Democrats have "taken money from Abramoff, his associates or his Indian tribe clients." Appearing on "Hardball" -- where host Chris Matthews has portrayed corruption as a bipartisan problem -- the New York Times' Anne Kornblut said last month that Abramoff "donated to Democrats." The Times reports today that while Abramoff is "most closely linked to Republicans," "many" Democrats "benefited from his largesse." And while the Washington Post focuses today on the way in which Republicans are trying to distance themselves from the disgraced lobbyist, it warns that "Democrats could be ensnared by the Abramoff case, as well."
So what's the truth?
So far as anyone can tell -- and the anyones here include the National Journal, Bloomberg News and Media Matters, among others -- Jack Abramoff himself hasn't given a dime to any Democrat in Congress. That said, Abramoff's associates and clients have given money to politicians from both parties. Greenberg Traurig, the law firm for which Abramoff worked, has doled out money on both sides of the aisle, as have the Indian tribes Abramoff represented. But as Bloomberg noted, Greenberg Traurig is a big firm with interests beyond those involving Abramoff. And some of the political contributions Abramoff's Indian clients made to Democrats came before Abramoff was representing them; once Abramoff began lobbying on their behalf, Bloomberg found, the Indian tribes gave a smaller percentage of their contributions to Democratic lawmakers.
What does it mean? As a political matter, the Abramoff scandal lives in the heart of the GOP. Abramoff is a Republican through and through -- a former president of the College Republicans, a Bush-Cheney Pioneer, a close, personal friend of Tom DeLay's -- and his own campaign contributions reflect that fact. As a legal matter, the scandal could indeed hurt members of Congress from both parties. As Abramoff's admissions about his dealings with Ohio Rep. Bob Ney seem to suggest, you can buy yourself a politician with someone else's money just as easily as you can buy one with your own.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [09:22 EST, Jan. 4, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Abramoff: There's more where that came from
We've just made our way through the 29-page plea agreement Jack Abramoff signed today. There's a lot in there -- Abramoff's promise to cooperate with federal prosecutors, hints about the kind of sentence Abramoff will ultimately get, and detailed admissions about the ways in which Abramoff cheated his clients even as he was paying off a member of Congress on their behalf.
It's intriguing reading for anyone, at least once you get past the legal boilerplate at the beginning, and it winds up with a real cliffhanger for members of Congress who might be sweating just a little now. "The preceding statement is a summary, made for the purposes of providing the court with a factual basis for my guilty plea to the charges against me," Abramoff writes. "It does not include all the facts known to me concerning criminal activity in which I and others engaged."
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [16:38 EST, Jan. 3, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Abramoff says he's sorry; who's next?
Memo to California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher: The next time you're about to open your mouth in defense of a friend, make sure he's not about to plead guilty to federal criminal charges.
In the Washington Post over the weekend, Rohrabacher portrayed his pal Jack Abramoff as the victim of bad press. "I think he's been dealt a bad hand and the worst, rawest deal I've ever seen in my life," Rohrabacher said. "Words like bribery are being used to describe things that happened every day in Washington and are not bribes."
We'd say, "Tell it to the judge," only there's no need for that. In Washington this afternoon, Abramoff pleaded guilty to criminal charges of conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion. It's not "bribery" per se, but it's awfully close. Among the allegations Abramoff admitted: He and his co-conspiractors provided a member of Congress "a stream of things of value" in exchange for official acts that would benefit Abramoff, his clients and his business.
Abramoff said all the things he was supposed to say today. He said he was sorry; he said that his remaining days -- and at 47, he will have a lot of them -- will be filled with regret; and he said that he'll hope to "earn forgiveness from the Almighty and those I've wronged or caused to suffer."
For that, Abramoff may need to wait in line. Abramoff isn't the first figure to go down in the federal criminal investigation surrounding his lobbying activities. His business partner, Michael Scanlon, pleaded guilty in November. And he won't be the last. If the criminal charges filed against Abramoff are any clue, prosecutors will move next against Rep. Bob Ney, the Ohio Republican who isn't identified by name in the indictment but is plainly the unidentified "Representative #1" who is alleged to have agreed to help Abramoff and his clients in exchange for that "stream of things of value."
But as we noted earlier today, the criminal information filed against Abramoff speaks of "public officials" and "members of Congress," suggesting that there's more than one Bob Ney waiting to hear from prosecutors. The Washington Post provides some clues as to who's next. Tom DeLay will obviously be a focus. If Ney received "a stream" of things of value from Abramoff, DeLay wallowed in an ocean of them: trips to the Mariana Islands, the former Soviet Union and the United Kingdom and more than $70,000 in campaign contributions from Abramoff, his associates and his clients.
The Post says that prosecutors are also interested in the dealings of Edwin Buckham and Tony Rudy, both of whom served as top aides to DeLay, and J. Steven Griles, a former deputy Interior secretary who received a job offer from Abramoff as the lobbyist was working the department on behalf of his Indian clients. The Post notes that Montana Sen. Conrad Burns and California Rep. John Doolittle, both Republicans, also have close ties to Abramoff, and that business dealings involving the wives of Doolittle and DeLay could spell trouble for them.
It's not clear how much talking Abramoff has done so far, nor is it clear when he'll be finished. After Abramoff entered his guilty plea today, U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle said she'd hold off on any discussion of Abramoff's sentence until he's done cooperating with federal prosecutors. For Republicans in Washington, 2006 is already looking like a very long year.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [14:02 EST, Jan. 3, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Abramoff to plead guilty, cooperate in Washington probe
Jack Abramoff is a very busy man.
The Associated Press has the latest: Abramoff has struck deals in both criminal cases in which he's implicated -- the business fraud case in Florida and the lobbying case in Washington -- and will enter guilty pleas in both.
In the Florida case, the AP says, Abramoff will plead guilty to two criminal charges related to his purchase of the SunCruz cruise-ship company. In Washington, Abramoff will plead guilty to charges of conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion related to his activities as a leading Republican lobbyist.
In the criminal information filed against Abramoff in Washington today -- the one to which he will, presumably, enter a guilty plea -- prosecutors say that Abramoff and his co-conspirators "would offer and provide things of value to public officials, including trips, campaign contributions, meals and entertainment in exchange for agreements that the public officials would use their official positions and influence to benefit" Abramoff's clients and business.
Specifically, prosecutors allege that Abramoff and his co-conspirators provided "a stream of things of value" to a member of Congress. In exchange for those "things of value," prosecutors say Abramoff sought and obtained from the member of Congress an agreement that he perform a "series of official acts" aimed at assisting Abramoff, his business and his clients.
Although the member of Congress is identified only as "Representative #1," the mystery man is pretty clearly Robert Ney, the Republican representative from Ohio. And although no other member of Congress is singled out in the charges filed against Abramoff today, there certainly seem to be more coming. Sources have said that the Justice Department is looking at Abramoff's ties to as many as 20 members of Congress and aides. And the criminal charges refer repeatedly to "members of Congress" and "public officials," terms that sure sound plural to us.
-- Tim Grieve
Salon.com Politics War Room Politics
|
|
|
Salon.com Politics War Room | Politics
latest on rightwing looneytalk, Bush scandals and the Abramoff case that has the bad guys sweating big time from Salon:
"Pat Robertson: God is punishing Ariel Sharon
Pat Robertson will die some day. When he does, we'll all be at a loss -- not because we'll miss him, necessarily, but because we won't have him around to explain why God took him.
On his television show today, the Christian conservative suggested that Ariel Sharon's dire medical condition -- as well as the 1995 assassination of Yitzhak Rabin -- should be seen as a sign of God's displeasure with those who would "divide" Israel.
"I am sad to see him in this condition," Robertson said of Sharon. "But I think we need to look at the Bible and the Book of Joel. The prophet Joel makes it very clear that God has enmity against those who 'divide my land.' God considers this land to be his. You read the Bible, he says, 'This is my land.' And for any prime minister of Israel who decides he going carve it up and give it away, God says, 'No. This is mine.'"
Although Robertson insisted that Sharon is a "delightful person to be with," he said that God is sending a clear message by striking him down. "He was dividing God's land, and I would say woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the EU, the United Nations or United States of America. God said, 'This land belongs to me, you better leave it alone.'"
Maybe we're just insufficiently religious to understand things the way that Robertson does. We can understand why people look to God for answers and explanations when a child dies in a freak accident, when a young mother or father is killed in a war started on false pretenses, or when a tsunami wipes out entire parts of the world. Say what you will about his politics, Ariel Sharon is a 77-year-old man with a recent history of medical problems. His death, if it comes, will not be any great metaphysical mystery. What is a mystery is why anyone takes Pat Robertson seriously anymore.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [16:13 EST, Jan. 5, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Dick Cheney, domestic spying and "false comforts" before 9/11
We've always thought it odd when the White House accuses its critics of having a "pre-9/11 mentality" or a "pre-9/11 mind set." While members of the Bush administration insist that the president is doing everything in his power -- and then some -- to protect Americans from a terrorist attack now, they seem to gloss over the fact that George W. Bush was in power "pre-9/11" himself.
Dick Cheney was at it again Wednesday. Speaking at the Heritage Foundation -- Cheney said he saw a lot of "old friends" in the room, and we're sure he did -- the vice president warned of the dangers of returning to the "false comforts of the world before September 11th, 2001."
To be fair, the Bush team had been in office only eight months and change before al Qaida struck in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. But that was long enough for Cheney and others to hear dire warnings from Richard Clarke; long enough for John Ashcroft to develop budget priorities for the Department of Justice that didn't include counter-terrorism efforts; and long enough for U.S. intelligence agencies to work up a Presidential Daily Brief headlined, "Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S." Bush got that alert on Aug. 6, 2001, then took the afternoon off to go fishing.
Cheney didn't say anything about any of that Wednesday. Instead, he defended all the things that the president and his administration began doing right after the terrorists struck. In the process, at least by implication, Cheney admitted that the administration's pre-9/11 efforts weren't good enough. Defending the post-9/11 executive order in which Bush authorized warrantless spying on American citizens, Cheney said, "If we'd been able to do this before 9/11, we might have been able to pick up on two hijackers who subsequently flew a jet into the Pentagon." The suggestion: The Bush administration was somehow powerless to listen in on the phone calls of would-be terrorists in the pre-9/11 days.
But as we've noted before, the Bush administration was indeed "able to do this before 9/11." If the administration wanted to listen in on the phone conversations of suspected al-Qaida members lurking in the United States before 9/11, all it had to do was ask the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for a warrant to do so. It didn't even need to ask first: The law allowed the administration to start listening first and seek a warrant after the fact.
Moreover, if the Bush administration's theory of presidential power is right, Bush had inherent authority as commander in chief to waive the warrant requirement whenever thought national security interests might justify doing so. That means he could have issued his executive order on Jan. 21, 2001, on Aug. 6, 2001, or on any of the 200 or so other days that passed between the afternoon he took office and the morning that the planes struck. He didn't.
"False comforts"? Yes, Mr. Vice President, we've heard about those.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [14:02 EST, Jan. 5, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
This just in: Bush listens
Josh Marshall caught a "well, duh" headline on the Washington Post's Web site the other day: "DHS To Base Grants on Risk." As Marshall put it, the idea that homeland security money should be directed to where it's actually needed ought to be about as novel as the notion that firefighters might respond first to buildings that are, you know, burning. Of course, the world of Washington doesn't always work in ways that a mere mortal might expect. Since 9/11, homeland security money has gone to all sorts of places -- hello, Wyoming! -- that probably aren't on any short lists floating around the caves of Pakistan.
The Department of Homeland Security is now fixing to remedy that with a new plan aimed at getting money to the parts of the country where terrorists seem most likely to attack. But just as we digest that news, along comes another amazing-but-true headline from the World Wide Web: "Bush Listens to Suggestions on Iraq."
Well, Katy bar the door.
Just as we'd like to think that homeland security grants might be going to places where they're needed, we'd like to feel confident that the president of the United States listens all the time to suggestions about a war that has claimed nearly 2,200 American lives and killed untold thousands of Iraqis. The reality, of course, is that he doesn't. The ever-shrinking nature of the president's bubble has been well documented. It seems pretty clear that the only advice the president is getting on Iraq comes from the same folks who got the country into the war there in the first place.
The White House knows that the Bush bubble -- or, more accurately, the image of it -- has to be burst. Although the president's approval ratings have ticked up ever so slightly from their lows of last year, the White House seems to understand that the president needs to do a better job of making it clear that he feels our pain. He couldn't bring himself to meet with Cindy Sheehan over the summer -- he said he had a life to live -- but he was quick out of the box this week to express his sympathies for the common folk who lost family members in that mine disaster in West Virginia.
And this morning, the president made a big made-for-TV show of meeting with a collection of former secretaries of state and defense to talk about the war in Iraq. After the session was over, Bush thanked everyone for coming and said that he took their advice "to heart." Then he articulated his strategy for Iraq, exactly the same strategy that he has been articulating all along. We wouldn't expect this president -- or any president -- to change his ways on a matter of war in the course a single meeting. But coming out of his meeting with Madeleine Albright and Robert McNamara and Colin Powell and all the rest, Bush gave no hint that their words had had any effect on him at all. Bush listened to suggestions, all right. Whether he heard them is another question entirely.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [12:02 EST, Jan. 5, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Who needs Congress, anyway?
Although the Senate Judiciary Committee will begin confirmation hearings for Samuel Alito next week, the full Senate doesn't return to work for one more week or so. Members of the House of Representatives won't return to work in Washington until the end of the month.
But really, why bother? With the Bush administration seemingly determined to assume all powers of the government for itself, it's a wonder that members of Congress bother to show up for work at all. First -- well, it's not first, but it's first among recent developments -- we learned that George W. Bush had taken it upon himself to authorize spying on American citizens without the warrants Congress required under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Then we learned that, in the face of a rather unequivocal ban on torture passed by Congress, the president would deem himself free to ignore the ban whenever he thought doing so might "assist" in the war on terror.
Now comes news that the president has started the new year by making what the Washington Post calls a "raft" of recess appointments aimed at circumventing the need for Senate confirmation of presidential appointees.
Among the nominees who apparently couldn't stand the wait the normal constitutional process requires is Julie Myers, whom Bush installed as the new head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement section of the Department of Homeland Security. Myers' nomination was going to face stiff opposition from senators who believed she wasn't qualified; even right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin has suggested that Myers' nomination is a crony deal and a "bad joke." While Myers has little experience with customs or immigration issues, she is the niece of former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Richard Myers and the wife of the chief of staff for Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff.
Also on the raft: Tracy Henke, whom Bush installed as executive director of the Office of State and Local Government Coordination and Preparedness. Getting Henke through the Senate might have proved inconvenient, too: She's apparently the Justice Department official who insisted that politically embarrassing data about racial disparities in law enforcement traffic stops be deleted from a Justice Department report on the subject.
And then there's Hans Von Spakovsky, to whom Bush just handed a seat on the Federal Election Commission. Von Spakovsky is apparently one of the political appointees in the Justice Department who overruled staff attorneys and analysts who concluded that Tom DeLay's Texas redistricting plan shouldn't be approved because it violated federal law.
There are 14 more where those came from. Perhaps one among them might mention to their new boss the concept of separation of powers.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [09:46 EST, Jan. 5, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Spying, CNN and the Kerry campaign: Is there a there there?
It gets curiouser and curiouser.
As we noted Wednesday, AMERICAblog's John Aravosis noticed an odd moment in Andrea Mitchell's interview this week with New York Times reporter James Risen: While interviewing Risen about his new book and revelations that George W. Bush authorized warrantless spying on American citizens, Mitchell asked Risen if he had any information suggesting that CNN's international correspondent, Christiane Amanpour, "might have been eavesdropped upon." Risen said he didn't. But as Aravosis surmised, the question certainly suggested that Mitchell did.
Right about the time Aravosis' theory started floating through the blogosphere, somebody deleted Mitchell's question and Risen's answer from the transcript posted on MSNBC's Web site. We said we'd like to hear an explanation, and TVNewser actually went to the trouble of getting one. "Unfortunately this transcript was released prematurely," reads a statement TVNewser says it got from NBC. "It was a topic on which we had not completed our reporting, and it was not broadcast on 'NBC Nightly News' nor on any other NBC News program. We removed that section of the transcript so that we may further continue our inquiry."
Assuming the statement is legitimate, that sure seems to us like a long way of saying, "Yeah, we're looking into the possibility that the Bush administration was eavesdropping on Christiane Amanpour."
Now, it's probably time for a deep breath and some patience here. What we've got here is some reading between the lines, and it's about a question, not an answer. But as we said yesterday, if the answer is ultimately answered in the affirmative -- that is, if the Bush administration has indeed been listening in on Amanpour's phone -- the implications are enormous. We don't much like the idea that the government might be listening in on the conversations of a reporter. And Amanpour isn't just any reporter: She is married to Jamie Rubin, a State Department spokesman under Bill Clinton and a foreign policy advisor to John Kerry's presidential campaign. If the Bush administration was listening in on Amanpour's phone, was it listening when she talked with her husband? Was it listening when he might have used her phone himself?
Again, what we've got here are hints about a question. We're a long way from an answer. But when you start circumventing Congress and the courts and begin to spy on Americans in a way that you insist you aren't, you invite questions like these. And along the way, you invite people to think about the last time some people who worked for a president tried to spy on the opposition.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [09:09 EST, Jan. 5, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Was the NSA listening?
Does NBC's Andrea Mitchell know something about the Bush administration's domestic spying program that the rest of us don't? As AMERICAblog's John Aravosis notes, Mitchell put a question to the New York Times' James Risen Tuesday that suggests that she might.
In an interview with Risen, Mitchell asked if he had any information suggesting that the National Security Agency has been eavesdropping on CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour. Risen said he hadn't heard that. Has Mitchell heard something to that effect, or was she just using Amanpour's name as the example of what might have gone wrong with the spying program?
We don't know the answer to that, and neither does Aravosis. But as Aravosis notes, the implications of tapping Amanpour's phone lines could be enormous. There's the chilling thought that government officials might be listening in on the conversations of a reporter, and then there's this: Amanpour's husband, who like any husband might have had occasion to use his wife's phone, happens to be Jamie Rubin, the former Clinton administration official who served as a foreign policy advisor for John Kerry's presidential campaign.
Update: As several readers note in the comments below, the exchange between Mitchell and Risen about Amanpour has rather mysteriously disappeared from the transcript of the interview posted on the MSNBC Web site. If MSNBC has an explanation for why Mitchell's question and Risen's answer have disappeared, we'd sure like to hear it. Did Mitchell not ask the question -- that seems unlikely, doesn't it? -- or does someone at MSNBC just wish she hadn't?
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [15:33 EST, Jan. 4, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
As Washington quakes, a pundit yawns
The president didn't mention the Jack Abramoff case during his brief public appearance today. And although Dick Cheney is giving a speech to the Heritage Foundation right now, each time we turn up the sound on the TV he seems to be saying something about 9/11. So in an effort to learn a little about the right's take on the Abramoff affair, we just checked in on the Corner at the National Review Online. The word there: yawn.
Jonah Goldberg, NRO regular and newly minted Los Angeles Times columnist, proclaims himself "not that interested" in the Abramoff case. "There are lots of important stories that I can't get worked up about," Goldberg writes. "This is one of them." He says he'll get himself interested if it turns out that the "Kosites and Tapped crowd are right and this has major political legs or if some important politicians go down because of what Abramoff tells the prosecution."
For now, Goldberg says, the Abramoff case is just "your basic K Street corruption story." He says he wasn't all that interested in such stories when Bill Clinton was president, and he's not all that interested in them now. "My attitude is shame on the guilty parties and get back to me when there's something interesting to discuss."
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [15:09 EST, Jan. 4, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
The Abramoff investigation: How wide, how high?
At a press conference Tuesday, the chief of the Justice Department's criminal division said that the Jack Abramoff corruption scheme is "very extensive" and that prosecutors would follow it "wherever it goes."
How far -- and how high -- is that? Abramoff and his business partner, Michael Scanlon, have already admitted their guilt. Prosecutors have already charged David Safavian, the Bush administration's chief procurement official. And in court documents filed Tuesday, Abramoff implicated, albeit not by name, Ohio Rep. Bob Ney as well as Tony Rudy, a former aide to former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay.
Beyond that, it's anybody's guess, and it seems that everyone has one.
The New York Times, relying on the word of "participants in the case," says that the Abramoff investigation encompasses "dozens of political operatives, including former congressional aides and lobbyists," and that Abramoff's testimony "reaches into the executive and legislative branches and appears to be drawing an ever-tighter ring of evidence" around DeLay and other "senior congressional Republicans." The Washington Post says that Abramoff has agreed to provide information and testimony about "half a dozen House and Senate members" as well as congressional staffers, executive branch officials and other lobbyists. Knight Ridder says the investigation is "thought to involve up to 20 members of Congress and aides and possibly several administration officials."
Those may sound like big numbers, but not if you read the Wall Street Journal this morning. The Journal says that Abramoff claims to have "information that could implicate 60 lawmakers." At the same time, however, the Journal suggests that prosecutors are interested in a somewhat smaller subset than that: Citing the word of "lawyers involved in the case," the Journal says prosecutors are "looking at" Abramoff's dealings with Ney and "at least three other members of Congress and more than a dozen current and former congressional aides."
Those are the numbers. What about the names? There's Ney and almost certainly DeLay, who once called Abramoff one of his "closest and dearest friends" and whose former aides, including Scanlon, are everywhere in the investigation. The Journal and others have reported previously that investigators are looking into Abramoff's dealings with California Rep. John Doolittle, who received contributions from Abramoff and whose wife was hired by an Abramoff foundation, and Montana Sen. Conrad Burns, who has received approximately $150,000 in Abramoff-related contributions.
That's four, two short of "half a dozen" and dozens short of the 60 lawmakers the Journal says Abramoff can implicate. As Abramoff said in his plea agreement Tuesday, he hasn't yet revealed -- at least not publicly -- all that he knows about criminal activity. Stay tuned.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [13:44 EST, Jan. 4, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Abramoff cash and Bush-Cheney '04: Now who's living in a "glass house"?
As we noted earlier today, Jack Abramoff wasn't exactly the "equal money dispenser" the president and the Republican spin machine would like to make him out to be. As Bloomberg News does the math, Abramoff gave more than $127,000 to Republican candidates and committees between 2001 and 2004. His contributions to Democrats and their committees during those years: Zilch.
In order to make the case that Democrats share the taint of the disgraced lobbyist and former College Republicans president, you've got to argue that contributions from Abramoff's associates and clients carry the same sort of smell as contributions from Abramoff himself. There may be some truth to that: If the allegations against and admissions by Abramoff are to be believed, he bought off Republican Rep. Bob Ney using his clients' money as well as his own. But if that's the argument GOP spinners want to make -- that money from Abramoff's associates and clients is just as dirty as money from Abramoff himself -- then somebody had better tell the White House and the spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee. As the Associated Press is reporting, Abramoff raised at least $100,000 for Bush-Cheney '04, but the campaign is giving up only $6,000 of it -- money contributed by Abramoff, his wife and the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan.
What about the rest of the money -- somewhere around $100,000 that Abramoff raised for the Bush-Cheney campaign but didn't contribute himself? "At this point, there is nothing to indicate that contributions from those individual donors represents anything other than enthusiastic support for the BC-04 reelection campaign," says Republican National Committee spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [12:13 EST, Jan. 4, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Torture ban? What torture ban?
When George W. Bush and John McCain went before the TV cameras last month to say that they'd worked out a deal on the torture ban McCain had proposed and the White House had long resisted, Bush said that, together, they had "made it clear to the world that this government does not torture and that we adhere to the international convention of torture, whether it be here at home or abroad."
But as the Boston Globe reports this morning, the president seems to have undone that rather unequivocal stand when he signed the McCain measure into law late last week. In his signing statement, Bush said that he shall "construe" the ban "in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the president ... as commander in chief." That's the same "constitutional authority," you may recall, that the White House has cited in justifying Bush's decision to authorize warrantless spying on American citizens in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
A senior administration official tells the Globe that the White House considers itself bound by the torture ban but that a situation could arise in which Bush might decide to disregard it in the interests of national security. It's an exception that swallows the rule, of course: Unless U.S. personnel are mistreating detainees solely for sport, isn't there always a "national security" justification that could be offered for torturing someone believed to be connected to terrorist activites?
"The whole point of the McCain Amendment was to close every loophole," Marty Lederman, a Georgetown University law professor and former Justice Department lawyer, tells the Globe. "The president has re-opened the loophole by asserting the constitutional authority to act in violation of the statute where it would assist in the war on terrorism." NYU law professor David Golove puts its more bluntly: "The signing statement is saying, 'I will only comply with this law when I want to, and if something arises in the war on terrorism where I think it's important to torture or engage in cruel, inhuman, and degrading conduct, I have the authority to do so and nothing in this law is going to stop me.'"
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [11:35 EST, Jan. 4, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
When checks and balances are quaint
Shortly after the New York Times broke the news that the Bush administration has been engaged in warrantless spying on American citizens, the White House assured us all that we had nothing to worry about: Although the National Security Agency was spying on Americans in violation of an act of Congress and without a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, no eavesdropping ever occurred unless somebody got approval from a "shift supervisor" at the NSA first.
We didn't find that entirely comforting: With all due respect to the middle managers of the federal government, a shift supervisor at the NSA isn't exactly a disinterested party and isn't much at all like the impartial federal judges who are supposed to be signing off on such things. But even if we had been able to get our minds around the idea of the NSA as some sort of one-stop shopping for the checks and balances required by the Constitution and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, we'd have some additional cause for concern now: As the New York Times reports today, officials at the NSA may have launched at least some aspects of their secret domestic spying program even before they got approval from George W. Bush.
The revelation is hinted at in some previously classified and highly redacted correspondence between House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the former head of the NSA who is now Bush's No. 2 intelligence official. In a letter to Hayden written exactly one month after the attacks of 9/11, Pelosi asked "whether and to what extent the National Security Agency has received specific presidential authorization for the operations you are conducting." Hayden's response: The NSA was acting on its own. "I used my authorities to adjust NSA's collection and reporting," he said.
Bush did not sign his executive order authorizing the spying program until early 2002. In the interim, Congress adopted the Patriot Act, a measure that, as former NSA chief Bobby Inman notes, would have been the logical home for congressional authorization for the domestic spying program if the Bush administration had bothered to ask Congress for the power it assumed for itself.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [10:13 EST, Jan. 4, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Abramoff an "equal money dispenser"? Not exactly
When George W. Bush was asked about Jack Abramoff a couple of weeks ago, he said: "It seems like to me that he was an equal money dispenser, that he was giving money to people in both political parties."
It might have seemed that way to the president because that's the spin his party, and more than a few members of the press, continue to lay out for the public. In a section of its Web site called "Glass Houses," the National Republican Senatorial Committee claims that 40 of the 45 Senate Democrats have "taken money from Abramoff, his associates or his Indian tribe clients." Appearing on "Hardball" -- where host Chris Matthews has portrayed corruption as a bipartisan problem -- the New York Times' Anne Kornblut said last month that Abramoff "donated to Democrats." The Times reports today that while Abramoff is "most closely linked to Republicans," "many" Democrats "benefited from his largesse." And while the Washington Post focuses today on the way in which Republicans are trying to distance themselves from the disgraced lobbyist, it warns that "Democrats could be ensnared by the Abramoff case, as well."
So what's the truth?
So far as anyone can tell -- and the anyones here include the National Journal, Bloomberg News and Media Matters, among others -- Jack Abramoff himself hasn't given a dime to any Democrat in Congress. That said, Abramoff's associates and clients have given money to politicians from both parties. Greenberg Traurig, the law firm for which Abramoff worked, has doled out money on both sides of the aisle, as have the Indian tribes Abramoff represented. But as Bloomberg noted, Greenberg Traurig is a big firm with interests beyond those involving Abramoff. And some of the political contributions Abramoff's Indian clients made to Democrats came before Abramoff was representing them; once Abramoff began lobbying on their behalf, Bloomberg found, the Indian tribes gave a smaller percentage of their contributions to Democratic lawmakers.
What does it mean? As a political matter, the Abramoff scandal lives in the heart of the GOP. Abramoff is a Republican through and through -- a former president of the College Republicans, a Bush-Cheney Pioneer, a close, personal friend of Tom DeLay's -- and his own campaign contributions reflect that fact. As a legal matter, the scandal could indeed hurt members of Congress from both parties. As Abramoff's admissions about his dealings with Ohio Rep. Bob Ney seem to suggest, you can buy yourself a politician with someone else's money just as easily as you can buy one with your own.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [09:22 EST, Jan. 4, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Abramoff: There's more where that came from
We've just made our way through the 29-page plea agreement Jack Abramoff signed today. There's a lot in there -- Abramoff's promise to cooperate with federal prosecutors, hints about the kind of sentence Abramoff will ultimately get, and detailed admissions about the ways in which Abramoff cheated his clients even as he was paying off a member of Congress on their behalf.
It's intriguing reading for anyone, at least once you get past the legal boilerplate at the beginning, and it winds up with a real cliffhanger for members of Congress who might be sweating just a little now. "The preceding statement is a summary, made for the purposes of providing the court with a factual basis for my guilty plea to the charges against me," Abramoff writes. "It does not include all the facts known to me concerning criminal activity in which I and others engaged."
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [16:38 EST, Jan. 3, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Abramoff says he's sorry; who's next?
Memo to California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher: The next time you're about to open your mouth in defense of a friend, make sure he's not about to plead guilty to federal criminal charges.
In the Washington Post over the weekend, Rohrabacher portrayed his pal Jack Abramoff as the victim of bad press. "I think he's been dealt a bad hand and the worst, rawest deal I've ever seen in my life," Rohrabacher said. "Words like bribery are being used to describe things that happened every day in Washington and are not bribes."
We'd say, "Tell it to the judge," only there's no need for that. In Washington this afternoon, Abramoff pleaded guilty to criminal charges of conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion. It's not "bribery" per se, but it's awfully close. Among the allegations Abramoff admitted: He and his co-conspiractors provided a member of Congress "a stream of things of value" in exchange for official acts that would benefit Abramoff, his clients and his business.
Abramoff said all the things he was supposed to say today. He said he was sorry; he said that his remaining days -- and at 47, he will have a lot of them -- will be filled with regret; and he said that he'll hope to "earn forgiveness from the Almighty and those I've wronged or caused to suffer."
For that, Abramoff may need to wait in line. Abramoff isn't the first figure to go down in the federal criminal investigation surrounding his lobbying activities. His business partner, Michael Scanlon, pleaded guilty in November. And he won't be the last. If the criminal charges filed against Abramoff are any clue, prosecutors will move next against Rep. Bob Ney, the Ohio Republican who isn't identified by name in the indictment but is plainly the unidentified "Representative #1" who is alleged to have agreed to help Abramoff and his clients in exchange for that "stream of things of value."
But as we noted earlier today, the criminal information filed against Abramoff speaks of "public officials" and "members of Congress," suggesting that there's more than one Bob Ney waiting to hear from prosecutors. The Washington Post provides some clues as to who's next. Tom DeLay will obviously be a focus. If Ney received "a stream" of things of value from Abramoff, DeLay wallowed in an ocean of them: trips to the Mariana Islands, the former Soviet Union and the United Kingdom and more than $70,000 in campaign contributions from Abramoff, his associates and his clients.
The Post says that prosecutors are also interested in the dealings of Edwin Buckham and Tony Rudy, both of whom served as top aides to DeLay, and J. Steven Griles, a former deputy Interior secretary who received a job offer from Abramoff as the lobbyist was working the department on behalf of his Indian clients. The Post notes that Montana Sen. Conrad Burns and California Rep. John Doolittle, both Republicans, also have close ties to Abramoff, and that business dealings involving the wives of Doolittle and DeLay could spell trouble for them.
It's not clear how much talking Abramoff has done so far, nor is it clear when he'll be finished. After Abramoff entered his guilty plea today, U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle said she'd hold off on any discussion of Abramoff's sentence until he's done cooperating with federal prosecutors. For Republicans in Washington, 2006 is already looking like a very long year.
-- Tim Grieve
Print Email
Permalink [14:02 EST, Jan. 3, 2006]
Post a comment Read comments
Abramoff to plead guilty, cooperate in Washington probe
Jack Abramoff is a very busy man.
The Associated Press has the latest: Abramoff has struck deals in both criminal cases in which he's implicated -- the business fraud case in Florida and the lobbying case in Washington -- and will enter guilty pleas in both.
In the Florida case, the AP says, Abramoff will plead guilty to two criminal charges related to his purchase of the SunCruz cruise-ship company. In Washington, Abramoff will plead guilty to charges of conspiracy, fraud and tax evasion related to his activities as a leading Republican lobbyist.
In the criminal information filed against Abramoff in Washington today -- the one to which he will, presumably, enter a guilty plea -- prosecutors say that Abramoff and his co-conspirators "would offer and provide things of value to public officials, including trips, campaign contributions, meals and entertainment in exchange for agreements that the public officials would use their official positions and influence to benefit" Abramoff's clients and business.
Specifically, prosecutors allege that Abramoff and his co-conspirators provided "a stream of things of value" to a member of Congress. In exchange for those "things of value," prosecutors say Abramoff sought and obtained from the member of Congress an agreement that he perform a "series of official acts" aimed at assisting Abramoff, his business and his clients.
Although the member of Congress is identified only as "Representative #1," the mystery man is pretty clearly Robert Ney, the Republican representative from Ohio. And although no other member of Congress is singled out in the charges filed against Abramoff today, there certainly seem to be more coming. Sources have said that the Justice Department is looking at Abramoff's ties to as many as 20 members of Congress and aides. And the criminal charges refer repeatedly to "members of Congress" and "public officials," terms that sure sound plural to us.
-- Tim Grieve
Salon.com Politics War Room Politics
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tuesday, January 03, 2006
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Smirking Chimp
Bob Parry discusses Bush's long and pierce war on truth in The Smirking Chimp
|
|
|
|
|
|
Monday, January 02, 2006
|
Iraq Oil Minister Resigns Under Pressure
Iraq Oil Minister Resigns Under Pressure
despite his resounding failure in Iraq election Chalabi is named Oil Minister despite his criminal record, these people know no shame
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Muslim Scholars Were Paid to Aid U.S. Propaganda - New York Times
Muslim Scholars Were Paid to Aid U.S. Propaganda - New York TimesNow it comes out that Muslim ideologues were paid by the Bush administration to write propaganda, just as neocons were at home; we the people pay for propaganda, a new twist! Happy new propaganda era!
|
|
Sunday, January 01, 2006
|
|
|
|
|
George W. Bush as the New Richard M. Nixon: Both Wiretapped Illegally, and Impeachably
George W. Bush as the New Richard M. Nixon: Both Wiretapped Illegally, and Impeachably
John Dean, Worse than Watergate, sees Bush as ripe for impeachment; in fact, in his book Dean claims that Bush broke the law on invading Iraq and that this too is an impeachable offense; in fact, the only was to ameliorate the chaos in Iraq is to impeach Bush and Cheney, only a new regime will be able to find a solution to the Iraq morass....
A Happy New Year would be one without Bush, Cheney, and Rove.... for starters...
|
|
