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$18
By James Oakes
$10.67
$23
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By Eugene Robinson — The federal manslaughter indictment of five Blackwater Worldwide security guards for the horrific massacre of more than a dozen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad may look like an exercise in accountability, but it’s probably the exact opposite.
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By Eugene Robinson — Remember that long-ago news conference when George W. Bush couldn’t think of any mistakes he had made? Unbelievably, he still can’t.
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By William Pfaff — The evidence suggests that American policy under Barack Obama will be a continuation of the neoconservative foreign policy of the Bush administration, given a human face.
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By Marie Cocco — Over the past 10 months, as the hemorrhage of jobs began to push the national unemployment rate toward its October level of 6.5 percent, about 3 million Americans were thrown off the insurance rolls or had their incomes fall so much that they became eligible for Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
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By Joe Conason — When the journalistic pack bites into a tasty cliché, they often refuse to let go, lazily chewing and regurgitating a phrase like “team of rivals” long after the flavor is gone.
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Fresh off his official introduction as the current and future secretary of defense, Robert Gates took questions at the Pentagon on Monday about his party affiliation, President-elect Barack Obama and his outlook on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
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Barack Obama’s fondness for Clinton retreads and his choice of Hillary Clinton as secretary of state took many by surprise, but we might have seen it coming. This debate skirmish before last year’s Iowa caucuses has turned out to be remarkably prescient.
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By Joe Conason — Barack Obama’s appointees will implement the Obama program, not only because that is what he tells them to do but because that is what they have come to believe is best for the country.
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USAF / Tech. Sgt. Jerry Morrison
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Multiple news outlets, from ABC to Fox, now confirm that Robert Gates will retain his post as secretary of defense for at least the first year of the Obama administration. The president-elect will roll out Gates and his other hawks during a national security team unveiling next week.
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AP photo / Brennan Linsley
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In yet another decision that chips away at the Bush administration’s withering theory of executive dominance, a federal judge ruled Thursday that the evidence presented against five Algerians—who have been in U.S. custody since 2001—was insufficient, freeing the detainees from the bowels of the prison at Guantanamo.
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By Joe Conason — If the prospect of appointing Hillary Clinton as secretary of state irritates the Obama base, what will they make of keeping the man who has executed President Bush’s policies at the Pentagon?
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The host of “The Colbert Report” asks a vetting veteran of the Clinton administration, “What if you have a dark secret, but also an unquenchable thirst for power?”
Posted on Nov 19, 2008
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Flickr / marcn
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Sen. Ted Kennedy has asked Sen. Hillary Clinton to take up an important post shaping landmark health care legislation. The offer comes as Clinton reportedly weighs continuing her work in the Senate against joining Barack Obama’s administration as secretary of state.
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DoD / Tech. Sgt. Jerry Morrison, USAF
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The Financial Times is reporting that Barack Obama is keen to have Robert Gates stay on as defense secretary. The paper says the two are currently negotiating their differences, but then that’s the whole point: Obama wants people who disagree with him in his Cabinet.
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AP photo / Susan Walsh
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According to multiple reports, Barack Obama has settled on Eric Holder as his attorney general. So who is he? Holder has been a deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration, a U.S. attorney, a judge, a prominent Washington lawyer and one of the advisers responsible for Obama’s VP vetting. He would be the first black attorney general and happens to rock a fairly impressive mustache.
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One-hundred-and-four retired admirals and generals have signed a statement calling on the military to allow gay soldiers to serve openly. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” has lost support since the Clinton administration originally negotiated the compromise, but Barack Obama will likely avoid resurrecting one of his predecessor’s biggest headaches.
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Flickr / seiu_international
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Here’s a summary of the day’s Clinton watch via Political Wire: The Guardian says she’ll definitely take the job that The Washington Post reports she may be up for. All eyes now turn to Bill, who’s Global Initiative, huge personality and international superstardom complicate the vetting process. Update: Oy vey.
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change.gov
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Barack Obama and John McCain have both made a big fuss about working with the opposition, so the cooperative theme of their meeting on Monday, something of a tradition among presidential rivals, was no surprise. But will McCain really help Obama? “Obviously,” says Mr. Arizona.
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World Economic Forum
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While many of us are still celebrating Barack Obama’s historic victory, rumors of a major buzzkill are flying: Lawrence Summers, a Clinton-era treasury secretary and deregulation enthusiast, is said to be the front-runner to take over the Treasury Department.
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house.gov
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Just a day after winning the presidency, Barack Obama has started hiring. Rep. Rahm Emanuel, one of the architects of the Democrats’ congressional majority, is in line to be chief of staff. Sen. Chuck Hagel, the anti-war Republican, could be named to a Cabinet post, while Sen. John Kerry is said to be after the secretary of state job. Updated yet again.
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Some African-Americans in Alaska have questions, which they pose to journalist Max Blumenthal in this clip from his series of video shorts on Alaska’s governor, about Sarah Palin’s administration with regard to its hiring practices and activities (or lack thereof) involving Alaska’s black community.
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AP photo / Al Grillo
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By G.W. Schulz, Center for Investigative Reporting —
When Sarah Palin brags about the self-reliance of her state, she doesn’t mention the mobile command communications vehicle, bought with federal dollars to help keep her home town of 7,028 safe from terrorism. Thanks in part to an anti-terrorism bonanza, Alaska is one of the greatest per-capita beneficiaries of federal funding among the 50 states.
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While the McCain campaign is doing everything it can to distance itself from the presidency of George W. Bush, “SNL” still managed to imagine how an endorsement from the commander in chief would go, and how gosh-darn down-home a Bush/Palin administration might really have been.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Each campaign has given voters ample notice about the inclinations, temperaments, habits, philosophical leanings and advisers they would bring to the White House. That’s enough.
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Washington Post / Melina Mara
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Continuing investigation of the 2006 firings of nine federal prosecutors has uncovered new leads that directly involve White House staff and lawyers in the scandal. The unsurprising kicker is that Bush administration officials refuse to talk further about their role in the firings, and key documents have been redacted to a level “virtually worthless as an investigative tool.”
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White House / Eric Draper
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How would the president rate the government’s response to Hurricane Gustav? In a word: “Excellent.” Eager to escape the shadow of Katrina, which has come to symbolize the incompetence of his administration, Hurricane George made landfall in Louisiana Wednesday for some hands-on disaster relief.
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AP photo / Janet Hamlin, Pool
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Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden’s former driver, has been sentenced by a military jury to five and a half years in prison—most of which he’s already served in detention. The prosecution wanted his sentence to be 30 years or longer, but it needn’t be too upset: The military has said it can hold Hamdan indefinitely if it feels like it. Hamdan’s lawyers are expected to appeal.
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thewe.cc
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The International Court of Justice on Friday requested the U.S. not execute five death-row inmates in a decision that will put both the U.S.‘s controversial capital punishment policy and its historic rejection of international legal bodies in the global spotlight.
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White House / Chris Greenberg
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Bush’s former press secretary was never shy about his cancer, but friends and colleagues alike were surprised by the news of his death Saturday. As the president’s mouthpiece, Snow knew scorn, but he also had the respect of a number of his critics. As The Nation’s John Nichols elegizes, he brought “a measure of dignity” to the Bush administration.
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Last week Rep. John Conyers tried to get a straight answer out of John Yoo, the former Bush administration lawyer who argued that the president had a legal right to order torture. The spectacle of Yoo equivocating over whether the president could have someone buried alive is something to behold.
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Flickr / YouLocalDave
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The theory that the Bush administration wanted Iraq for its oil has just gotten a major boost. It turns out that the U.S. State Department sent over a team of lawyers and consultants to help the Iraqi government work out several high-profile no-bid contracts with five Western oil giants.
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The former head of U.S. Central Command who retired after an Esquire magazine article alleged he was the man standing between President Bush and war with Iran speaks to PBS’ “Now.” Fallon, who acknowledges “I’m not a very shy guy,” all but admits that he did indeed disagree with the administration.
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White House Photographers
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Scott McClellan takes the Bush administration to task in his new memoir, but he had quite a different tune when he was the president’s mouthpiece. Here’s what he had to say about Richard Clarke’s post-administration book: “Well, why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner?” Why, indeed, Scott?
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White House / Eric Draper
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Scott McClellan was one of George W. Bush’s most loyal aides, so it is surprising to learn that he savages the president and his administration in his new memoir. Among other bombshells, McClellan refers to the administration’s “propaganda campaign” to sell the war and accuses Karl Rove and Scooter Libby of meeting in secret during the Plamegate scandal in order to get their stories straight.
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By Marie Cocco — The comment was outrageous, but it was not the least bit surprising. A psychologist responsible for assessing returning war veterans for post-traumatic stress disorder—a psychological ailment that could entitle them to monthly disability payments—told staff members not to diagnose the illness because to do so would increase the government’s costs.
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Flickr / feverblue
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The plight of the polar bear has come to represent the real-world impact of the climate crisis, so it is only fitting that the Bush administration had to be ordered by a court to make a decision on the endangered status of the species. After years of delay, the Interior Department finally classified the animal as threatened, but also promised to fight any meaningful protection.
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AP photo / Bullit Marquez
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The Center for Investigative Reporting —
Two investigative reports uncover the Bush administration’s efforts to suppress legal proceedings against high-ranking Chinese officials—former Trade Minister Bo Xilai and Beijing’s Olympic Organizing Committee President Liu Qi—accused of torturing religious group members.
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By Marie Cocco — The same kinds of mismanagement and dysfunction that are at work in Iraq continue to plague veterans when they seek medical care at home.
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By Andy Borowitz — The president has confirmed that his gutting of the Endangered Species Act is part of a broader plan to phase out the environment entirely by the time he leaves office.
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Adm. William Fallon, head of the U.S. Central Command, resigned on Tuesday, explaining that his reputation as an obstacle to President Bush’s military designs had become too much of a distraction. Fallon was often reported to be a thorn in the side of the president and his other military advisers, a role both the admiral and administration officials strongly deny.
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“Here is the deal: By any objective measure U.S. policy towards Cuba over the last 50 years has been a failure,” says Rep. Jim McGovern, who organized a bipartisan effort to pressure the Bush administration to rethink Cuba policy in light of Fidel Castro’s resignation. But according to Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, America’s attempts to isolate Cuba economically and diplomatically won’t go away “any time soon.”
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AP photo / Emilio Morenatti
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The death of Benazir Bhutto in December, tensions within the country and concerns over President Pervez Musharraf’s leadership (and his regime’s relationship with the U.S. government) registered in a loud and clear message from Pakistanis at the polling booths Monday: Musharraf is standing on shaky ground.
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news.bbc.co.uk
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It’s safe to assume that the people currently advising Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on foreign policy will continue to do so if their candidate is elected. So what approaches can we expect from an Obama or a Clinton administration? There are some bad apples in either bunch, but Foreign Policy in Focus says the company Obama and Clinton keep largely parallels their votes on the war.
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Rudy Giuliani has made much of his time as mayor of New York, but a growing number of his former lieutenants are speaking out about his dictatorial ways. As one former city commissioner put it: “People used to say that if Mayor Koch said, ‘Let’s kill all 12-year-olds, everyone working around him would freely tell him, ‘You’re crazy,’ but if Mayor Giuliani said it, then everyone would say, ‘Brilliant, Rudy! Have you thought of killing 13-year-olds, too?’ ”
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time.com
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I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby has made the “tactical” decision to drop his appeal. After all, why spend millions of dollars in legal fees when you still have friends in high places? President Bush earlier commuted Libby’s sentence, keeping the former Cheney aide out of prison but leaving him with a criminal record and a fine. The White House won’t comment on whether Bush intends to pardon Libby.
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A day after the release of the National Intelligence Estimate assessment on Iran’s purportedly halted nuclear weapons program, President Bush once again demonstrated his well-practiced ability to repurpose facts or opinions to better serve his administration’s aims.
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Rachel K. Paulose, the youngest U.S. attorney, who came to symbolize the administration’s preference for political loyalty over ability, has been recalled to Washington from her post in Minnesota, where her office reportedly is in turmoil. She once claimed she was politically persecuted because she was a conservative and a Christian.
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AP photo / Ron Edmonds, File
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It’s really only a matter of time, after a member of the current administration steps down, before he or she re-emerges on the political and/or cultural scene. Take Karl Rove, for example, who, not to be relegated to some contrived yet lucrative “consulting” position (not yet, at any rate), will write about the upcoming elections for Newsweek.
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nytimes.com
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Michael Mukasey has been sworn in as U.S. attorney general, a day after 53 senators decided that a man who doesn’t know what torture is should have the job. But the real blame—for anyone who objects to the confirmation, that is—should be reserved for Democrats Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein, who made Bush’s day when they gave Mukasey the green light.
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