Tag: Fox News

Adviser: As President, Obama Would Only Prosecute ‘Egregious’ Bush Crimes

Jon Ponder

Presidencies are about looking forward, not backwards, so it was predictable that Barack Obama would signal that, if elected, he would have little interest in prosecuting the criminal acts of the current administration.
If Nixon had been imprisoned, it’s doubtful that 30 years later Dick Cheney would have opted to exchange his seat as the head of Halliburton, where he was free to rape and pillage the world with impunity, for the vice presidency, where his power would have been constrained by the U.S. Constitution.
As predictable as Obama’s position is — John Kerry would likely have held the same view under similar circumstances, and certainly John McCain supports it — it is deeply troubling because of the seriousness of the crimes in question, which include lying to Congress about the rationale for war, authorizing torture, betraying a covert CIA agent, criminal negligence in the response to Hurricane Katrina, spying on Americans without warrants, using the Justice Department as the political enforcement arm of the Republican National Committee, election fraud and consorting with corrupt lobbyists, just for starters.

At the Netroots Nation meeting in Austin last weekend, Chicago Law School professor Cass Sunstein, an informal adviser to Obama, warned liberal activists not to expect Barack Obama, if he is elected, to prosecute Bush crimes unless the crimes are what Sunstein described as “egregious”:

[Sunstein] urged caution in prosecuting criminal conduct from the current administration, while also noting that egregious crimes should not be ignored. Prosecuting government officials risks a “cycle” of criminalizing public service, he argued, and Democrats should avoid replicating retributive efforts like the impeachment of President Clinton — or even the “slight appearance” of it.

The fatal flaw in Sunstein’s formulation is that, in fact, there has not been a “cycle of criminalizing public service.” There has been one system of high accountability for Democrats and another system that allows Republican White House officials to escape any sort of accountability whatsoever.

While dozens of Clinton White House officials were dragged before Republican-controlled congressional committees hundreds of times for matters as petty as an investigation into the Clintons’ cat, none of which resulted in a charge of wrongdoing — and Clinton himself was more than held accountable for the crime of lying about an extramarital affair in a deposition for a civil lawsuit — Bush, Cheney and their associates have not been held accountable for a whole host of deliberate criminal acts, especially including lying to Congress and the American people about their reasons for the invasion and occupation of Iraq, which was by all measures an “egregious” abuse of power that has resulted in the deaths of over 4,000 U.S. troops and hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis.

[…]

Rice Refuses to Say She’ll Vote for McCain

Trish

Hmmm. I thought it was a given she was voting a straight Republican ticket this fall. Evidently not, and the fact that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice isn’t willing to say she will vote for McCain speaks volumes about her party’s candidate.

“Have you decided who to vote for?” CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked in an interview that aired Sunday on “Late Edition.”

“Wolf, uh, yes,” Rice said.

Asked if she wanted to share her decision, Rice simply responded, “No.”

In the wide-ranging interview, Rice praised Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign and said having him as the Democratic presidential nominee has been “great for our country.”

“I do think it says that we’ve come a long way,” she said when asked to respond to comments from her predecessor Colin Powell, who congratulated Obama for knocking down barriers for African Americans.

And as she declined to admit she’s voting for Obama (I assume), Rice made it clear she would never want to be McCain’s number two.

“I tell everybody who will listen … look, I’ve done my part, and I’ve got six months to sprint to the finish, and then I have other things that I want to do,” she said.

Florida’s Economy Tanks as Governor and Girlfriend Party in Europe

Trish

Photo from the governor’s web site. Caption reads, “Governor Charlie Crist and Carol (sic) Rome with His Royal Highness, Charles Philip Arthur George, The Prince of Wales.”

Floridians who still read a morning newspaper drank their coffee over this bad news.

Florida’s economic slump is worse than state economists had predicted earlier this year, and now they say it’ll last about six months longer than previously expected.

Their February outlook had been for recovery to start about a year from now, but a new update says things probably won’t begin turning around until the end of 2009.

“It’s a bit more bleak than it was originally,” legislative economist Amy Baker said Thursday.

Carole Rome’s engagement ring

The housing market, which boomed bigger in Florida than the rest of the country, went bust-er here as well. Dried-up credit wells mean less businesses willing to take risks in the state. Tourists are staying home because of their own money woes, which leave them unable to afford the gas or airfare to come here, or the prices once they arrive. After all, one-day tickets to Disney’s Magic Kingdom are $71 each for ages 10 and up, and that’s just for park entry. A hamburger and soda will run you at least $10.

So it’s not looking good if you’re a Floridian…unless you’re Charlie Crist or his fiancee, Carole Rome. While we get the bad news back home, they’re whooping it up in Europe, schmoozing with royalty, ambassadors, and the media. In what is billed as an economic development mission, the governor and his intended are having a blast on the taxpayer’s dollar.

Rome’s soon to be ex-husband was said to be divorcing her for her profligate ways and expensive tastes. Charlie Crist, longtime “bachelor” and a lifer on the public dole, doesn’t even own a house. But thanks to people like me — and her willingness to marry a man long reported to be gay — Carole can live in the governor’s mansion and spend summers in Europe.

Republicans are great at lecturing the rest of us to pull our weight so government won’t have to provide for us. Are they thinking if we did, there would be more there for them?

Gawd Help Us: Bill Clinton Threatening to Campaign for Obama

Trish

Good lord. Bill Clinton, whose performance on the campaign trail for the former First Lady was in large part to blame for her missing her party’s nomination, is threatening to “help” Barack Obama.

Former President Bill Clinton said Thursday he’s prepared to hit the campaign trail on behalf of Barack Obama as soon as the presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee asks him to.

“Whenever he asks — that is, we had a good talk, and he said he wanted me to campaign with him, and I said I was eager to do so,” Clinton told reporters in New York Thursday. “He’s busier than I am, with politics anyway, so I just told him that whenever he wanted to do it, I was ready.

“So it’s basically on their timetable, he’s got a lot of things to do between now and the convention,” the former president added. “I’ll do whatever I am asked to do, whenever I can do it.”

Obama will, of course, have to accept the offer. Let’s just hope that Bill sticks close to the program he’s given and doesn’t try to explain possible sniper fire in Bosnia, say.

Troy King, Allegedly Outed McCain State Chairman, Was Client of Gay GOP Consultant Killed in Double-Murder Suicide Last Year

Jon Ponder

The McCain campaign’s Alabama chairman, Attorney General Troy King, the virulent homophobe who is the subject of rumors that his wife discovered him having sex with another man, was a client of Strategum USA, the consulting firm of Ralph Gonzalez, a closeted gay GOP political operative who was killed last summer in a double murder-suicide in his home in Orlando.

Birmingham News August 27, 2007:

Consultant dead in murder-suicide did work in Alabama

The Republican political consultant who died in an apparent double murder-suicide in Florida late last week had several Alabama clients, including Attorney General Troy King.

Ralph Gonzalez, 39, president of The Strategum Group, was found dead Thursday along with his roommate, David Abrami, 36, and a friend, Robert Drake, 30, according to The Associated Press.

A motive has not been determined, and weapons and signs of a struggle were found in the house.

The Web site for Gonzalez’ firm lists among its Republican clients King, Jefferson County Commissioner Jim Carns, and four other legislative and judicial candidates from Alabama.

The Strategum Group produced a flier in a state legislative race in 2005 saying Democratic candidate Gloria Dolbare supported same-sex marriage. The flier said “Let Gloria Dolbare know God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve!” and depicted two smiling men on a porch holding hands.

The Alabama Republican Legislative Committee reported paying Strategum $3,144 for the advertising on behalf of Dolbare’s opponent Nick Williams. Williams won race for House District 65.

In January, the Orlando police released their final report, which according to the Orlando Sentinel, ascribed no motive for Jason Drake’s murder of Gonzalez and Abrami or his own suicide.

On Friday, the McCain campaign quickly scrubbed all references to Troy King from its website.

One of Strategum’s highest profile clients was Rep. Tom Feeney, the scandal-plagued Florida Republican, who, as the Florida Speaker of the House played a minor but key role in helping George W. Bush steal the 2000 election, and who could probably tell the McCain campaign a thing or two about scrubbing websites.

H/t: Michelle L

Florida Democrats Can Stop Holding Their Breath; the Whole State is Turning Blue

Trish

It’s been a long time since Democrats in Florida were allowed to use the same restrooms or lunch counters as Republicans but that day appears to be returning. New voters in the state are registering donkey by a ratio of nearly 10 to 1.

Democrats have posted even greater gains statewide, up 106,508 voters from January through May, compared with 16,686 for the Republicans.

Political scientist: “New voters tend to identify with the hot party at the time”

Republicans aren’t going down quietly, however.

State Rep. Ellyn Bogdanoff, R- Fort Lauderdale, was blunt: Republicans need to do a better job.

The registration numbers “got my attention; I’ll be calling our party chairman this afternoon,” she said.

Unfortunately, already-registered elephants aren’t changing teams.

Michael Martinez, an associate professor of political science at the University of Florida, said there aren’t many people shifting from the Republicans to the Democrats. But the allegiance of first-time voters is significant.

“New voters tend to identify with the hot party at the time. In the 1980s, a lot of new voters were identifying with Reagan, because he was sort of the hot commodity,” Martinez said.

Waxman Schedules Vote on Contempt Charge against Attorney General Michael Mukasey

Jon Ponder

Via BuzzFlash.com. On Tuesday, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, announced that he has scheduled a vote for July 16 on whether to charge Attorney General Michael Mukasey with contempt of Congress.
“[There] were no “agreements, conditions and understandings between the Office of Special Counselor the Federal Bureau of Investigation” and either the president or vice president “regarding the conduct and use of the interview or interviews.”
— Patrick Fitzgerald
Mukasey has refused to comply with the committee’s subpoena for FBI transcripts of a June 2004 interview with Dick Cheney about the leaking of the identity of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

The administration has asserted that Cheney’s interview cannot be shared with Congress. However, Waxman has confirmed that the interview was not covered by a secrecy agreement, primarily because it was part of grand jury inquiry into the leak.

The confirmation comes from Patrick Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the leak investigation:

I can advise you that as to any interviews of either the president or vice president not protected by the rules of grand jury secrecy, there were no “agreements, conditions and understandings between the Office of Special Counselor the Federal Bureau of Investigation” and either the president or vice president “regarding the conduct and use of the interview or interviews.”

The committee is looking into allegations that Cheney directed the unmasking of Plame, a specialist in the black market for terror weapons, because her husband, Joe Wilson, had criticized him in a newspaper.

In early 2007, Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, was found guilty of obstructing the inquiry by lying to investigators.

2004 Redux: Republicans Try to Sell Flip-Flop Angle

Trish

Republicans, lacking any other strategy, are determined to recycle the one that might have won them the election in 2004.* Sen. Joe Lieberman led the charge on ABC’s This Week, calling Sen. Barack Obama a flip-flopper so many times I wanted to slap him on the back to make his needle jump forward.

Lieberman listed every position Obama has spoken about recently as ones where he flip-flopped in order to pander to voters, even his stand on the death penalty for child rapists. But as Andrew Sullivan and anyone who read The Audacity of Hope knows, Obama, the father of two young girls, has always favored the death penalty in such cases and said so clearly in that book.

“While the evidence tells me that the death penalty does little to deter crime, I believe there are some crimes–mass murder, the rape and murder of a child–so heinous, so beyond the pale, that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment.”

Obama’s position on Iraq is not the same as McCain’s. It’s the same as Obama’s and it has been from the get-go.

But it was the attempt to hang the flip-flopper label on Obama about Iraq that really made Lieberman appear ridiculous. With former Army Ranger Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) calmly noting that Obama is departing not in the least from previous promises to end the American occupation of Iraq, wide shots showed Lieberman huffing and puffing and fairly rolling his eyes. When it was his turn to speak, he almost shouted his flip-flop rhubarb. Then George Stephanopoulos asked Lieberman a very good question. Why, if Obama’s position is now truly the same (and therefore correct) as McCain’s, as Lieberman insisted, should people vote for McCain? I thought Lieberman might lose it.

But Obama’s position is not the same as McCain’s. It’s the same as Obama’s and it has been from the get-go.

En route to a speech in St Louis…the Senator told reporters on his plane that the news cycle his comments caused was perplexing.

“I was a little puzzled by the frenzy that I set off by what I thought was a pretty innocuous statement, which is that I am absolutely committed to ending the war,” he said.

Obama reiterated his commitment to his withdraw plan again. “I will call my joint chiefs of staff and give them an assignment and that is to end the war,” he said. “I think what’s important is to understand the difference between strategy and tactics. I have always believed that our invasion of Iraq was a strategic blunder.”

He continued, “The tactics of how we ensure our troops are safe as we pull out, how we execute the withdrawal. Those are things that are all based on facts and conditions, and you know I’m not somebody who, unlike George Bush, is willing to ignore facts on the basis of my preconceived notions…”

Sen. Obama — who plans a trip to Iraq this month — took issue with reporters who “finely calibrated” his statements, and specific words, on his Iraq War plan. “I wasn’t saying anything that I hadn’t said before,” Obama said.

“I don’t think in anyway it is inconsistent with prior statements and doesn’t change my strategic view that this war has to end and that I am going to end it as president,” he repeated again.

If only that would end the flip-flop charges. But the Republicans have nothing else — at least not yet — so they’re going to see if they can manipulate us again like they did last time. I’m tired of it already.

* If you believe they won in 2004 despite evidence to the contrary in Ohio.