Day: December 3, 2007

Chairman Waxman Asks Mukasey to Intercede in Bush-Cheney Obstruction on CIA Leak Case

Jon Ponder

The White House is blocking efforts by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald to present evidence he collected in the CIA Leak investigation to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, according to the committee’s chairman, Henry Waxman (D-Calif).

Prompted by Scott McClellan’s statement last month asserting that top White House officials, including George Bush and Dick Cheney, were complicit in an effort to deceive the public about the leak, Rep. Waxman has written to Attorney General Michael Mukasey urging him to convince Bush to release the evidence.

In his letter, Rep. Waxman points to a strikingly parallel precedent from the Clinton administration:

“[There] is direct precedent for the production of these records to the Committee. During the Clinton Administration, the Justice Department provided the Committee with dozens of FBI 302 reports of interviews with White House officials. No White House official — including the President and the Vice President — was exempted from the production. Among the White House officials whose FBI 302 reports were provided to the Committee were President Clinton, Vice President Gore [and 10 other top White House officials, including current and former chiefs of staff].

Fitzgerald’s notes from his interviews with Bush and Cheney are of particular interest. Lying to federal prosecutors is a felony, so if they gave statements that contradict McClellan’s, a new investigation would likely be triggered.

Complete text of letter follows, via BuzzFlash.com:

[…]

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

Make no laws whatever concerning speech, and speech will be free; so soon as you make a declaration on paper that speech shall be free, you will have a hundred lawyers proving that “freedom does not mean abuse, nor liberty license”; and they will define and define freedom out of existence.

— Voltarine de Cleyre (1866-1912) American radical poet, essayist

Bush Re-hires Wolfowitz, Puts Him in Charge of Arms Control Advisory Board

Jon Ponder

Sometimes a Medal of Freedom Just Isn’t Enough

In Bushworld, incompetence must be rewarded (in order to prevent the incompetent ex-employee from writing a tell-all book):

Nearly three years after Paul Wolfowitz resigned as deputy Defense secretary and six months after his stormy departure as president of the World Bank — amid allegations that he improperly awarded a raise to his girlfriend — he’s in line to return to public service.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has offered Wolfowitz, a prime architect of the Iraq War, a position as chairman of the International Security Advisory Board [ISAB], a prestigious State Department panel, according to two department sources who declined to be identified discussing personnel matters. The 18-member panel, which has access to highly classified intelligence, advises Rice on disarmament, nuclear proliferation, WMD issues and other matters.

“We think he is well suited and will do an excellent job,” said one senior official.

Right. What harm could he possibly do as head of this group:

The Secretary of State’s International Security Advisory Board, formerly called the Arms Control and Nonproliferation Advisory Board (ACNAB), provides the Department with independent insight and advice on all aspects of arms control, disarmament, international security, and related aspects of public diplomacy. The ISAB is sponsored and overseen by the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security. The Board provides its recommendations directly to the Secretary of State. The Board currently has 18 members and is chartered to have up to 25. Board members are national security experts with scientific, military, diplomatic, and political backgrounds. The Board meets in a plenary session on a quarterly basis.

The position was previously held by former lobbyist and U.S. senator, Fred Thompson, who is currently a Republican candidate for president.

Kiss ‘n’ Tell: Got Me Some of that Larry Lovin’

Buck Banks

It was probably inevitable. The Idaho Statesman, the newspaper that originally broke the story of Sen. Larry Craig’s arrest in an airport restroom for soliciting an undercover cop, has published the names of four gay men who claim to have had sex with Craig, been solicited by him or experienced “unusual attention” from Mr. Wide Stance.

David Phillips. Mike Jones. Greg Ruth. Tom Russell.

Four gay men, willing to put their names in print and whose allegations can’t be disproved, have come forward since news of U.S. Sen. Larry Craig’s guilty plea. They say they had sex with Craig or that he made a sexual advance or that he paid them unusual attention.

They are telling their stories now because they are offended by Craig’s denials, including his famous statement, “I am not gay, I never have been gay.” Those words, spoken on live national TV on Aug. 28, are now memorialized on a just-released-for-Christmas Talking Senator Larry Craig Action Figure.

OK, so there’s no video, photos or other hard evidence that backs up what the four men say. However, the Statesman has investigated and reports that there’s nothing to disprove what the men say, either:

But the Statesman’s investigation, which included reviews of travel and property records and background checks on all five men, found nothing to disprove the five new accounts. The men offer telling and sometimes similar details about what happened, or the senator’s travel records place him in the city where sex is alleged to have occurred, or his accusers told credible witnesses at the time of the incident.

Needless to say, neither Larry the Love Machine nor his spokespeople would speak to the Statesman. However, a couple of concerned Idahoans did leave comments on the story. Here are the musings of someone who calls itself “PaulTheWasherWoman”:

I still can’t understand why gay men can’t be senators. Just what is it about this all makes it so he can’t continue. Nothing, that’s what. All this does is show the rest of the country that Idaho is either mormon controlled or neo-nazi controlled or whatever. In any case it completely sucks for our image as a state.

‘Nuff said.

Thanks to Bush & GOP, U.S. Debt Is Growing at $1 Mil Per Minute

Jon Ponder

This ought to drive a stake through the heart of the myth that Republicans are fiscally conservative.

According to the Associated Press, after seven years of mismanagement by George Bush and 12 years of Republican dominance of the Senate and control of the House, the national debt of the United States is now expanding by $1.4 billion per day and $1 million per minute:

What’s that mean to you?

It means almost $30,000 in debt for each man, woman, child and infant in the United States…

[The] government is fast straining resources needed to meet interest payments on the national debt, which stands at a mind-numbing $9.13 trillion.

By the time Bush is scheduled to leave office in January 2009, the debt will be $10 trillion, which is $10,000,000,000,000.00.