|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Eliza Griswold
By Richard Ellis
$19.11
$20
|
|
|
|
|
President Richard Nixon’s White House tapes have truly become the political gift that keeps on giving, even after all these years. Take this latest timely treat, for example, that ABC News’ indefatigable research team rooted out like keen-nosed truffle pigs.
|
|
In 2005, the Justice Department issued two secret opinions on torture that endorsed and protected the administration’s desire to use physically and psychologically traumatizing interrogation techniques. Then-Deputy Attorney General James Comey reportedly warned his colleagues that they would be “ashamed” when their work became public.
|
boston.com
|
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may be persona non grata at the Vatican. When Rice swung through Italy in August, she gave notice ahead of time about her hopes to meet with Pope Benedict XVI, but the pontiff’s camp politely rebuffed her request, explaining that he was on holiday.
|
iraqfact.com
|
By Robert Scheer — The latest Blackwater USA scandal, in which privately contracted American security troops gunned down innocent bystanders in Baghdad, might cause the Iraqi government to finally give firms like Blackwater their marching orders—if only it could command the power to order these mercenary operations out of the country.
|
news.bbc.co.uk
|
France’s foreign minister has issued an alarming warning over Iran’s nuclear program: “We have to prepare for the worst, and the worst is war,” Bernard Kouchner said. Those are troubling words coming from a recently elected conservative French government that has tried to buddy up to the White House. It makes us wonder what he knows that we don’t.
|
|
Opening his testimony before Congress on Monday with the insistence, “I wrote this testimony myself,” and adding that his Iraq progress report hadn’t been vetted in advance, Gen. David Petraeus trotted out figures and charts to argue that “the military objectives of the surge are, in large measure, being met.”
|
law.harvard.edu
|
Truthdig tips its hat this week to Jack Goldsmith, who speaks out about his experiences during his nine-month tenure as head of the Office of Legal Counsel during a crucial phase of the Bush presidency in 2003-4 in his troubling and illuminating new book, “The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration.”
|
|
The White House plans to ask for an additional $50 billion to fund the troop “surge” in Iraq. That may seem like peanuts when you consider the $607 billion in annual Defense Department and Iraq/Afghanistan supplemental funds, but it’s a sign that the administration is politically confident it can extend the surge through next spring. Plus, it’s money that could be used for something silly, like building schools.
|
|
By Marie Cocco — With Alberto Gonzales’ resignation, the president has lost not only a buddy willing to humiliate himself before Congress but a loyal agent who, whether knowingly or not, helped co-opt the federal government.
|
nytimes.com
|
Alberto Gonzales is stepping down, but he and the White House may still have to face the music. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid showed no sign of backing down following the resignation announcement: “Congress must get to the bottom of this mess and follow the facts where they lead, into the White House.”
|
|
By Andy Borowitz — The satirist opines that the Bush adviser had some help from steroids in setting records as a divider and dirty trickster.
|
|
In an apparent effort to keep the estimated 5 million missing White House e-mails missing, the Justice Department is claiming that the White House Office of Administration, which handles IT support for the executive branch, is not covered by freedom-of-information law. Press-freedom advocate Lucy Dalglish notices a trend: “When they don’t want to comply with the law, they just shamelessly argue they are not subject to the law.”
|
AP Photo / Evan Vucci
|
President Bush attempted to exercise spin control to smooth over his relationship with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki on Wednesday, emphasizing the Iraqi people’s claim on their own government after his comments a day before seemed to signal his displeasure with Maliki’s leadership.
|
AP Photo / Mark Humphrey
|
By Scott Ritter — Although Karl Rove is stepping down, the real menace in the White House is staying on. Dick Cheney, Ritter argues, more than Kim Jung Il or Osama bin Laden, is the greatest threat to American and international security in the world today.
|
|
The innovator of the Snow job says he’ll be leaving the White House before George W. Bush, but it won’t be for health reasons: “I’ve told people when my money runs out, then I’ve got to go.” Press secretary Tony Snow’s spintastic rhetorical flair will surely be missed by a president always in need of damage control and a blogosphere that has grown attached to those “did he just say that?” moments.
|
|
A new Clinton campaign ad has the White House crying foul, and Clinton crying “Tough!” The commercial features the candidate saying that struggling families and troops are “invisible” to the president. Deputy press secretary Dana Perino said the claim is “outrageous” and that “it is unconscionable that a member of Congress would say such a thing,” which prompted this retort from Clinton: “Not only have I said it and am saying it, I will keep saying it because I happen to believe it.” Update: video added.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Karl Rove set out to build an eternal Republican majority. In the end, he managed two terms for a mediocre president.
|
AP Photo / Manuel Balce Ceneta
|
Karl Rove has announced his intention to resign at the end of August, saying simply, “I just think it’s time.” The man who came to be known as “Bush’s brain” has been widely held responsible for both the president’s electoral successes and the nation’s deep divisions.
|
|
About a year ago, the president came down with an unconfirmed case of Lyme disease, the White House has said. Spokesman Scott Stanzel said the ailment wasn’t disclosed to the public because Bush had already had his physical and “It’s not uncommon for the president to have tick bites when he’s out biking.” That’s just gross.
|
|
A flurry of legislative activity over the weekend left a mixed bag of progress and surrender. While the House voted to require clean-energy standards for the first time and cut oil industry tax breaks, enough Democrats caved to the White House to pass the president’s preferred FISA rule changes.
|
AP Photo / Ron Edmonds
|
As Republicans’ fealty flags and suspicions multiply about Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ trustworthiness, what could possibly be preventing Gonzales from losing his job? Here are a couple of educated guesses from Time’s Massimo Calabresi.
|
|
Bush lackey Scott Jennings gives Sen. Pat Leahy the broken-record treatment, which has become so familiar. Witness Leahy’s frustration break as Jennings refuses even to describe his duties: “Let’s not be too contemptuous of this committee. ... You work at the White House. You’re paid for by taxpayers. You work for the American people. I’m just asking you what kind of work you do.”
|
|
Gordon Brown has made an effort to keep alive the long-distance love affair between Downing Street and the White House, saying on Sunday that the world owes the U.S. a debt “for its leadership in this fight against international terrorism.” It should be noted that one of Brown’s ministers recently said Anglo-American foreign policy would not be “joined at the hip.”
|
|
By Andy Borowitz — The satirist reports that Vice President Dick Cheney, having briefly assumed Bush’s duties while the president underwent a routine colon procedure June 21, told reporters the next day that he “enjoyed the downtime immensely.”
|
|
Visitors to the White House are now affronted with a new kind of conservatism: a dress code. Facing stricter guidelines than at the Vatican, tour seekers are now subject to the following rules: no jeans, sneakers, shorts, mini-skirts, T-shirts and tank tops and, especially, no flip-flops.
|
left: wonkette.com / right: thenextleft.com
|
The House Judiciary Committee has voted to hold former White House counsel Harriet Miers and former White House chief of staff Joshua Bolten (pictured above) in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify on the firing of U.S. attorneys. The measure will now move to the full House.
|
|
House Oversight Committee Chairman Henry Waxman and his Republican committee colleague Rep. Tom Davis are putting pressure on the White House and the Defense Department to hand over records about the death of Pat Tillman. The administration has been keeping the documents secret, citing its executive confidentiality prerogative.
|
AP Photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
|
Patrick Cockburn —
Scrambling to shore up support for the Iraq war, President Bush has released a report claiming progress has been made. To many, it seems that the administration is playing its last cards. Patrick Cockburn, in an article originally published in Britain’s The Independent, analyzes the situation.
|
AP Photo / File
|
Lady Bird Johnson, widow of President Lyndon B. Johnson, died Wednesday at 94 at her home in Austin, Texas.
|
AP Photo / Charles Dharapak
|
President Bush has told his former White House counsel, Harriet E. Miers (pictured), not to even appear before the House Judiciary Committee in its investigation into the firings of U.S. attorneys, the committee chairman said Wednesday. The panel was to hear from Miers on Thursday.
|
|
In an incendiary report Tuesday to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona (who served from 2002 to 2006) pointed a finger at the Bush administration for prioritizing politics over truth.
|
|
By Andy Borowitz — In a bold new strategy to avoid a congressional subpoena, Vice President Dick Cheney today declared himself a national monument.
|
nytimes.com
|
Just hours after a federal appeals panel told I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby to go directly to jail without passing go, President Bush stepped in to commute his sentence, thus setting the former Cheney aide and star of Plamegate free. Libby will still have to pay a $250,000 fine, so look for him on the lecture circuit.
|
dailylobo.com
|
Ousted U.S. Attorney David Iglesias says he believes he was fired, in part, for failing to meet the obsessive demands of a nonprofit organization with ties to the Republican Party that allegedly sought to limit the voting rights of minorities. Is there a more heinous political practice than the disenfranchisement of minority voters after so long a struggle?
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Just say no. The Senate’s Democratic majority—joined by all Republicans who purport to be moderate—must tell President Bush that this will be the answer to any controversial nominee to the Supreme Court or to the appellate courts.
|
tdhstrategies.com
|
The president is sick and tired of those Democrats and their pesky checks and balances and will not allow his aides to testify, as summoned, before the Senate. Bush and his legal team are relying on executive privilege—the notion that what happens in the White House stays in the White House. But Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy isn’t buying it.
|
|
The Senate Judiciary Committee is going big-game hunting with a slew of subpoenas related to the Bush administration’s controversial eavesdropping program. Chairman Patrick Leahy has signed subpoenas for Dick Cheney’s office, the White House, the Justice Department and the National Security Council.
|
|
By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Quietly, the real debate over Iraq is beginning. It’s not about whether the United States should pull out troops. That is now inevitable. The real challenge is to figure out the right timetable for withdrawal, whether a residual force should be left there, and which American objectives can still be salvaged.
|
|
The House has voted to lift a ban on aid, including contraception, to family planning clinics and organizations that perform abortions. The measure would still block the direct funding of abortions, but Republicans opposed to the bill say sending condoms to the clinics would give them more resources to perform abortions.
|
|
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has sworn in a new government that excludes Hamas, a move praised by both the U.S. and Israel. But the emergency government is likely to preside only over the West Bank because Hamas—which Israeli officials described as a “terrorist entity”—retains control of Gaza.
|
news.bbc.co.uk
|
Outgoing Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace says he did not resign voluntarily, but “I’ve been told I’m done.” Defense Secretary Robert Gates openly admitted that he would not seek another term for Pace in order to avoid a difficult confirmation. Pace has been closely tied to the Iraq war and its fortunes from the start, and only made matters worse recently with a public declaration of homophobia.
|
needlenose.com
|
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and President Bush are determined to push through the ailing immigration reform bill, despite heavy opposition from both sides of the aisle. Reid, who has partnered with Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, said Democrats would work through the July 4 recess if necessary.
|
AP Photo / Charlie Riedel
|
By Eugene Robinson — Here’s a surprise: Remember how we were told that if we just waited until the fall, we’d see that George W. Bush’s “surge” was working in Iraq? Well, now it turns out that we shouldn’t expect answers in September after all.
|
|
By Marie Cocco — Now that there will be no vote of “no confidence” in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, we must ask an impertinent question: What, exactly, are we supposed to have confidence in?
|
|
National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell, with the blessing of the White House, will rewrite the Reagan-era executive order that defines the function of the United States’ many spy agencies and prohibits espionage against Americans. While critics concede that the order is out of date, they worry that an administration with a fondness for spying on its own might seize the opportunity to trample on a few civil liberties.
Posted on Jun 12, 2007
READ MORE 
|
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|
The IRS and the Real Scandal
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
