Day: November 3, 2005

Delay Aides Helped Indicted Lobbyist Abramoff

Jon Ponder

Coinkydinks: Follow the money, via the Associated Press:

Investigators have unearthed e-mails showing Rep. Tom DeLay’s office tried to help lobbyist Jack Abramoff get a high-level Bush administration meeting for Indian clients, an effort that succeeded after the tribes began making a quarter-million dollars in donations.

Tribal money went both to a group founded by Interior Secretary Gale Norton, the Cabinet secretary Abramoff was trying to meet, as well as to DeLay’s personal charity.

“Do you think you could call that friend and set up a meeting,” then-DeLay staffer Tony Rudy wrote to fellow House aide Thomas Pyle in a Dec. 29, 2000, e-mail titled “Gale Norton-Interior Secretary.” President Bush had nominated Norton to the post the day before.

Rudy wrote Abramoff that same day promising he had “good news” about securing a meeting with Norton, forwarding information about the environmental group Norton had founded, according to e-mails obtained by investigators and reviewed by The Associated Press. Rudy’s message to Abramoff was sent from Congress’ official e-mail system.

Within months, Abramoff clients donated heavily to the Norton-founded group and to DeLay’s personal charity. The Coushatta Indian tribe, for instance, wrote checks in March 2001 for $50,000 to the Norton group and $10,000 to the DeLay Foundation, tribal records show.

The lobbyist and the Coushattas eventually won face-to-face time with the secretary during a Sept. 24, 2001, dinner sponsored by the group she had founded.

Abramoff’s clients were trying to stop a rival Indian tribe from winning Interior Department approval to build a casino.

Jeb Tries to Outdo Big Bro at Hiring the Underqualified

Trish

In another wanton display of sibling rivalry, Jeb is out to show W that he’s got nothing on Jeb, unqualified-and-crony-hiring-wise. The Gainesville Sun is reporting that Florida’s new education chancellor was a two-for-one deal, with her husband thrown in for good measure.

The Department of Business and Professional Regulation hired Dennis Yecke last month. He is being paid $102,000 a year in his new position, about $5,000 more than the person who previously had the job. Yecke’s wife, Cheri Yecke, was named chancellor of the state’s K-12 schools in August and began her job last month. She is making $152,000 a year…

While she was education commissioner in Minnesota, her husband was appointed to an $84,000 position as a deputy commissioner with the state’s economic development agency. That appointment by Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty came during a hiring freeze, leading Democrats to rip his appointment.

”It’s just old-fashioned nepotism,” said Minnesota state Rep. Loren Solberg in a 2003 news release.

Cheri, who was forced to resign as head of education in Minnesota after her inability to separate church and state got out of hand, was the best person Jeb could find in all the land to run education in Florida. With a new report out that Florida ranks last in graduation rates for the second year in a row, at 56.8% (the national average is 71.5%), it’s not a stretch to think this woman really does represent the best and brightest to Jeb.

But her husband? Even some Republicans are skeptical.

”I find it hard to believe in the whole state of Florida we didn’t have somebody” qualified for the job, [Sen. Nancy Argenziano, R-Dunnellon] said. Requests to speak with Cheri Yecke were declined…Requests to speak with Dennis Yecke also were declined.

Poll: Scooter, We Hardly Knew Ye

Buck Banks

From National Journal’s PollTrack (edited):

Chumpin’ for Cheney: Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, pleaded innocent today to five felony charges of lying to investigators about leaking the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame. But a new CBS News poll shows that the public is unsure what to make of Libby or the allegations against him:

  • 54% said they don’t know enough about the case to judge the validity of the charges
  • 39% said the charges were likely true
  • 70% either didn’t know enough about Libby to form an opinion of him or didn’t know how they felt about him
  • 86% said the CIA leak investigation is an important matter
  • 61% said the charges against Libby are serious enough to merit criminal prosecution
  • 51% believed the case was politically motivated
  • 43% regarded the investigation as a serious matter involving the honesty of the Bush administration
  • 51% were unsure of Karl Rove’s role in the leak
  • 14% said Rove likely did something unethical and 8% said he probably acted illegally
  • 19% said Rove had done nothing wrong
  • Nearly two-thirds said they suspected that someone in President Bush’s administration was responsible for the leak
  • Bush’s approval rating hit an all-time low of 35% for the CBS poll

E-Mails Show Brownie Worse Than We Imagined

Buck Banks

Heckuva job: The House panel investigating the government’s response to Hurricane Katrina has released some e-mail exchanges that A) contradict what FEMA Director Michael Brown said in his testimony before investigators, and B) make him appear even more ineffectual than we thought.

The Department of Homeland Security has provided more than 1,000 pages of requested e-mails to the committee. They involve Brown’s actions serving as what DHS’s “battlefield commander” on the ground in the days following the Gulf Coast disaster on Aug. 29.

Some of the e-mails provided by DHS and released Wednesday by the committee indicate that Brown had no appreciation for the situation and was completely clueless about what he was supposed to do:

For example, on Aug. 31 Brown received an e-mail from Marty Bahamonde, one of the only FEMA officials on the ground in New Orleans, saying “the situation is past critical.” Bahamonde said hotels were kicking people out, thousands were gathering in the streets with no food or water, and medical patients were going to die within hours.

“We are out of food and running out of water at the [Louisiana Superdome], plans in works to address the critical needs,” Bahamonde wrote.

Brown replied four minutes later: “Thanks for the update. Anything specific I need to do or tweak?”
[…]

Bush Administration Stonewalling Investigators on Katrina Documents

Buck Banks

House panel fed up with feds: In a scenario eerily reminiscent of the 9/11 Commission’s difficulty in piercing the administration’s cone of silence, a House panel investigating the government response to Hurricane Katrina may have to resort to subpoenas to shake loose neceaasry info.

According to GovExec.com, House lawmakers investigating the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina threatened Wednesday to subpoena the White House and key federal agencies for documents, saying a lack of information is hindering their already time-constrained investigation.

Lawmakers on a special House committee examining the events leading up to and following the hurricane said they have yet to receive key documents and e-mails from the administration. Chairman Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va, said the committee will use “whatever means possible” to get the documents.

“If we don’t get them, I’m not hesitant to issue subpoenas,” Davis said. “There are simply too many gaps in the picture we have at this point that we can’t draw complete conclusions.”

“We’re not going to be stonewalled here,” Davis added.

The commission investigating the 9/11 terrorist attacks had similar complaints about the administration’s failure to supply requested documents. The commission finally had to issue three subpoenas to the Federal Aviation Administration, the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the city of New York.

The House committee is scheduled to complete its work and issue a report on its findings and recommendations by mid-February.

The committee has yet to receive requested e-mail exchanges and communications involving White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Army Corps of Engineers Commander Lt. Gen. Carl Strock and Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt, said Rep. Charles Melancon, D-La.

“The continued failure of administration officials to comply with these requests will impede congressional oversight of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina,” Melancon said. “The credibility and thoroughness of the congressional investigation into the response . . . will hinge on access to key documents and communications.”

Melancon technically does not serve on the committee because Democrats have refused to appoint members, saying that an independent commission is needed. Melancon and a few other Democrats, however, have been voluntary participants.

Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Ind., noted that the committee also has yet to receive requested communications from the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

The committee originally requested all documents by Oct. 14, but Davis extended that deadline to Oct. 27. Davis said he expects to receive “a substantial production” of documents from the White House today.

Fighting Cocks Spreading Bird Flu in Thailand

Buck Banks

Losing battle: The illegal movement of infected poultry, especially fighting cocks and ducks, has helped spread the bird flu virus to seven provinces in Thailand, officials announced on Wednesday Nov, 2, 2005.

In the latest outbreak of the H5N1 virus, which has killed 13 Thais, laboratory results confirmed the virus in chickens and pigeons in the central province of Ang Thong, the Department of Livestock Department said on its Web site, .

Six of the seven infected provinces were clustered in central Thailand, with the other, Kalasin, in the northeast, where fighting cocks might have caught the deadly disease from those in the infected central region, livestock officials said.

“Kalasin, which had outbreaks last year [2004] from fighting cocks, is very far from the infected central region,” Livestock Department chief Yukol Limlaemthong said.
[…]

At Princeton, Alito Defended Gay Rights, Right to Privacy

Jon Ponder

Gay friendly? “In college, Samuel Alito led a student conference that urged legalization of sodomy and curbs on domestic intelligence, a sweeping defense of privacy rights he said were under threat by the government and the dawning computer age,” reports the Associated Press.

“Very few people were standing up for gay Americans 34 years ago.”

President Bush’s choice for the Supreme Court, in a report written years before ubiquitous personal computers made electronic privacy the everyday concern it is now, warned of the potential for abuses by officials and companies collecting data on individuals.

Three decades before the Supreme Court decriminalized gay sex, Alito declared on behalf of his group of fellow Princeton students that “no private sexual act between consenting adults should be forbidden.” Alito also called for an end to discrimination against homosexuals in hiring.

As a federal appellate judge, Alito has built a scant record on gay-rights issues and a mixed one, at best, on privacy matters generally, in the view of civil liberties advocates who are still examining his opinions.

But they saw in the 1971 report a prescient thinker taking on issues ahead of their time, including the need for computer encryption, stronger oversight of domestic intelligence and curbs on the surveillance powers of states.

David Smith of the Human Rights Campaign, a national gay organization, said, “If these are his views today – and there is no indication they are not – it’s a hopeful sign that may provide some insight into his philosophy. This isn’t pop-the-champagne-cork time. His views need to be explored… [but] very few people were standing up for gay Americans 34 years ago.”