3.15.2007 2007 Pig Book Summary

The 2007 Congressional Pig Book Summary gives a snapshot of each appropriations bill and details 24 of the juiciest projects culled from the complete Pig Book. (.pdf) Viva Norm

3.15.2007 Aborted DOJ Probe Probably Would Have Targeted Gonzales By Murray Waas, National Journal

Shortly before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush last year on whether to shut down a Justice Department inquiry regarding the administration's warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, Gonzales learned that his own conduct would likely be a focus of the investigation, according to government records and interviews.

Bush personally intervened to sideline the Justice Department probe in April 2006 by taking the unusual step of denying investigators the security clearances necessary for their work.
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When it was disclosed in July that Bush himself had halted the OPR investigation, White House press secretary Tony Snow said that the president's decision was justified because the eavesdropping program was already subject to other executive branch oversight. "The Office of Professional Responsibility was not the proper venue for conducting that." Snow also said that the president's denial of the security clearances was warranted because "in the case of a highly classified program, you need to keep the number of people to it tight for reasons of national security, and that was what he did."
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In contrast, Jarrett noted, the administration promptly approved "the Criminal Division's request for the same security clearances for a large team of attorneys and FBI agents that was investigating who initially leaked details of the NSA eavesdropping program to The New York Times."

People can howl all they want about how well the economy is doing. The simple truth is that millions of ordinary American workers are in an employment bind. Steady jobs with good benefits are going the way of Ozzie and Harriet. Young workers, especially, are hurting, which diminishes the prospects for the American family. And blacks, particularly black males, are in a deep danger zone.

A screaming baby girl has been forcibly weaned from breast milk and taken, dehydrated, to an emergency room, so that the nation’s borders will be secure. Her mother and more than 300 other workers in a leather-goods factory in New Bedford, Mass., have been terrorized ­ subdued by guns and dogs, their children stranded at school ­ so that the country will notice that the Bush administration is serious about enforcing immigration laws. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of poor Americans, lacking the right citizenship papers, have been denied a doctor’s care so that not a penny of Medicaid will go to a sick illegal immigrant. More

Also passed by the House by a 331-94 margin, despite another veto threat, was a bill aimed at bolstering protections of government whistleblowers who report wrongdoing, especially those with private contractors and national security and scientific agencies.

A third bill, which passed 308-117, was aimed at speeding requests for government information made under the Freedom of Information Act. The White House stopped short of threatening to veto it but said it could not support the bill.

In mid-December 2006, Mr. Gonzales’s aide, Mr. Sampson, wrote to a White House counterpart that using the Patriot Act to fire the Arkansas prosecutor and replace him with Mr. Rove’s man was risky ­ Congress could revoke the authority. But, he wrote, “if we don’t ever exercise it, then what’s the point of having it?”

If that sounds cynical, it is. It is also an accurate summary of the governing philosophy of this administration: What’s the point of having power if you don’t use it to get more power?

"I mention all this because, here and there, you read comments about the prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald and how much he damaged the First Amendment by sweating a bunch of journalists. Please. It's more like he lanced some kind of infectious boil."

via Digby who was quoted by John Amato, who brings in the question of Andrea Mitchell, via Silent Patriot

The Bush administration measures all moves on the basis of what, from their vantage point, is "within our discretion " -- the word used here in reference to legal latitude of choice -- better known as loopholes (just short of impeachable).

The next time we elect a President, we should consider not his or her "discretion" in this sense or in terms of political expediency, but "discretion" having to do with the capacity to make judgments based on human decency.

... Gonzales' top aide, chief of staff Kyle Sampson, announced his resignation Tuesday.
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An official said Sampson resigned after acknowledging that he did not tell other Justice officials who testified to Congress about the extent of his communications with the White House, leading them to provide incomplete information in their testimony, according to an official who spoke on condition of anonymity because Sampson has not announced his departure.

In the case of the fired U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, it is almost the ultimate hypocrisy, short of the Iraq War, and every other lie the White House has told. Tim Griffin, the replacement U.S. Attorney, has been implicated in voter fraud in the stolen Florida Presidential election in 2000.
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Griffin's role in "push polling" for Rove is well documented on the Internet, so he could not hide it: see, e.g., Time.com and BBC.

This is about a story that for some crack-pot reason is not getting written up by the national media, even though if you do just a mite of googleing, you'll discover that the Right Wing has long had the story, but gotten no traction on it. To read all the bloody details, what you do is google the two names, Alan Placa and Rudy Giuliani, and you can read about it for hours, should you have a taste for Priestly Pedophilia and the investigations of recent years thereof. I'll sketch an outline of the story here.

Given the reports lately about the Bush administration neglecting injured troops and sending additional soldiers into combat without the necessary equipment, I suppose it was only a matter of time before the two narratives were combined — sending injured troops into battle without the protection they need.

Under a 2006 federal law, the Deficit Reduction Act, most people who say they are United States citizens and want Medicaid must provide “satisfactory documentary evidence of citizenship,” which could include a passport or the combination of a birth certificate and a driver’s license.

Some state officials say the Bush administration went beyond the law in some ways, for example, by requiring people to submit original documents or copies certified by the issuing agency.
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Dr. Martin C. Michaels, a pediatrician in Dalton, Ga., who has been monitoring effects of the federal rule, said: “Georgia now has 100,000 newly uninsured U.S. citizen children of low-income families. Many of these children have missed immunizations and preventive health visits. And they have been admitted to hospitals and intensive care units for conditions that normally would have been treated in a doctor’s office.”
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The principal authors of the 2006 law were Representatives Charlie Norwood and Nathan Deal, both Georgia Republicans. Mr. Norwood died last month.

Chris Riley, the chief of staff for Mr. Deal, said the new requirement did encounter “some bumps in the road” last year. But, he said, Mr. Deal believes that the requirement “has saved taxpayers money."

3.12.2007 Hastings Should Step Down from House Ethics Committee Pending Probe

Mr. Cassidy’s call to Mr. McKay -- at Rep. Hastings’ behest -- violates chapter 7 of the House ethics manual, which prohibits members from contacting executive or agency officials regarding the merits of matters under their formal consideration. House rules also state that if a member wants to affect the outcome of a matter in litigation, the member can file a brief with the court, make a floor statement, or insert a statement into the Congressional Record. Directly calling officials to influence an on-going enforcement matter is not an option.

The announcement comes amid a major overhaul at Halliburton, which is spinning off its defense-contracting subsidiary, KBR, into a separate company.
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One Washington corporate lobbyist said: "I think it ensures that there will be some interesting oversight hearings," since Democrats have been unhappy with Halliburton's no-bid contracts and what they believe is its poor performance.

The lobbyist, who requested anonymity so he would not jeopardize relationships with his clients, said the move raises several questions, among them how much did Halliburton receive in incentives to move to Dubai and what does it do to the company's tax structure.

"If there's a huge tax shift, then it's taking money from U.S. taxpayers while they're taking no-bid contracts," the lobbyist said.

... the pardon is a must for Mr. Bush. He needs Mr. Libby to keep his mouth shut. Cheney's Cheney knows too much about covert administration schemes far darker than the smearing of Joseph Wilson. Though Mr. Libby wrote a novel that sank without a trace a decade ago, he now has the makings of an explosive Washington tell-all that could be stranger than most fiction and far more salable.

During the hearing on his nomination as attorney general, Alberto Gonzales said he understood the difference between the job he held ­ President Bush’s in-house lawyer ­ and the job he wanted, which was to represent all Americans as their chief law enforcement officer and a key defender of the Constitution. Two years later, it is obvious Mr. Gonzales does not have a clue about the difference.
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On Thursday, Senator Arlen Specter, the senior Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, hinted very obliquely that perhaps Mr. Gonzales’s time was up. We’re not going to be oblique. Mr. Bush should dismiss Mr. Gonzales and finally appoint an attorney general who will use the job to enforce the law and defend the Constitution.

3.10.2007 The Inuits speak about global warming (Here) and (Here)

3.10.2007 Missing Tape of Padilla Interrogation Raises Questions

U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke was incredulous that anything connected to such a high-profile defendant could be lost.
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Defense lawyers say brig logs indicate that there were 72 hours of Padilla interviews that either were not taped or for which tapes may be missing. Natale said it seems unlikely that any interrogation session with Padilla was not videotaped "when he was videoed taking showers."

"Until we get a clear and credible answer from the Bush administration on who made the decision to fire these U.S. attorneys and why they did it, we will continue our investigation," Conyers said in a statement.

Said Sanchez: "The threshold for cooperation in Washington used to be `Trust, but verify.' We are sending these letters today because, at this point, we'd be happy just to verify."

That the FBI is abusing its NSL power is entirely unsurprising (more on that below), but the real story here -- and it is quite significant -- has not even been mentioned by any of these news reports. The only person (that I've seen) to have noted the most significant aspect of these revelations is Silent Patriot at Crooks & Liars, who very astutely recalls that the NSL reporting requirements imposed by Congress were precisely the provisions which President Bush expressly proclaimed he could ignore when he issued a "signing statement" as part of the enactment of the Patriot Act's renewal into law. Put another way, the law which the FBI has now been found to be violating is the very law which George Bush publicly declared he has the power to ignore.
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When a country is ruled by an individual who repeatedly and openly arrogates unto himself the power to violate the law, and specifically proclaims that he is under no obligation to account to Congress or anyone else concerning the exercise of radical new surveillance powers such as NSLs, it should come as absolutely no surprise that agencies under his control freely break the law. The culture of lawlessness which the President has deliberately and continuously embraced virtually ensures, by design, that any Congressional limits on the use of executive power will be violated.
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And what is done with the information obtained by the FBI? It is stored on government data bases which thousands of government employees can access via Norm

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales learned of the findings three weeks ago and "was incensed when he was told the contents of the report," according to a Justice Department official.

The FBI improperly and, in some cases, illegally used the USA Patriot Act to secretly obtain personal information about people in the United States, underreporting for three years how often it forced businesses to turn over customer data, a Justice Department audit concluded Friday.

Officials said they could not be sure of the scope of the violations but suggested they could be more widespread, though not deliberate.

Gonzales ... called the issue an "overblown personnel matter."

3.8.2007 BOB HERBERT:

There is something profoundly evil about a country encouraging young men and women to go off and fight its wars and then shortchanging them on medical care and other forms of assistance when they come back with wounds that will haunt them forever.

That’s something most Americans never thought their country would do.

3.7.2007 Christy Hardin Smith smells the ComPost"

3.7.2007 NYT Editorial:

We also do not understand why the federal prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, chose to wage war with the news media in assembling his case, going so far as to jail a Times reporter, Judith Miller, for refusing to reveal the name of a confidential source.

3.7.2007 Borat seen as human rights victim by U.S. government

The 2006 report, released in Washington on Tuesday by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, criticized the real Kazakhstan, a vast oil-producing Central Asian state, for increased restrictions on freedom of speech and other abuses.
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The report also listed military hazing, torture by police, unhealthy prison conditions, arbitrary arrests, restrictions on freedom of assembly, domestic violence against women, people trafficking and "severe limits on citizens' rights to change their government" as areas of concern.

THE GLOVE FITZ!

3.6.2007 Casualties of the Budget Wars By Paul D. Eaton, a retired Army major general

Congress must increase financing for research into traumatic brain injuries, the signature malady of this war. Unbelievably, in its Pentagon appropriations bill for 2007, Congress cut in half the financing for the Army’s main research and treatment program on brain injury (which, no surprise, is at Walter Reed).

There is a clear and growing body of evidence that at least three of these firees were canned for not allowing politics to dictate their prosecution of political corruption cases. Or, to put it more bluntly, for not indicting enough Democrats or indicting too many Republicans. Which is to say they were fired for not perverting justice.

As much as you are comfortable doing so, play head games with your opponent. You are writing as a sort of friend, a concerned member of the public who wants to save your addressee future embarrassment, both personal and professional. An openly angry letter can be dismissed out of hand, but a letter that whispers persuasively to a person about their own fears and feelings of inadequacy can keep them awake at night for years to come. Yay!
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Telling a person that they're a scum-sucking, worthless waste of good protein whose highest ambition in life should be to become good compost may make you feel better, but it will do nothing to change that person's performance.

3.6.2007 U.S. attorney worried 'gloves would come off' over criticism of ouster By Marisa Taylor, McClatchy Newspapers

Also on Monday, Michael Battle, the Justice Department official who oversees the U.S. attorney’s offices, resigned. In January, Battle sent an e-mail to all U.S. attorneys announcing that he'd be leaving and sent a more detailed e-mail to his immediate staff in February with his departure date, a Justice Department official said.

On Dec. 7, Battle told most of the U.S. attorneys that they were to be fired. Former prosecutors said that Battle told many of them he didn’t know why they were fired, but the orders came from “on high.”

... anyone connected with this needs to be asked what contact they had with Karl Rove on this — because this whole political smarm operation reeks of a Turdblossom Special.

Veterans Talk of "Neglect," Bush Tries To Focus Debate on "Conditions" In his radio address this week, President Bush mentioned his commitment to "care" for injured veterans, but it is clear that his framing strategy is to focus the debate on the "conditions" of the buildings and to minimize the denial of care with deceptive references to "bureaucratic delays":

3.4.2007 Army Times

Committee Chairman Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and national security and foreign affairs subcommittee Chairman Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., said they want Weightman to testify about a memo written in September by Garrison Commander Peter Garibaldi to Weightman.

In a letter from the committee to Weightman, the members said the Garibaldi memo “describes how the Army’s decision to privatize support services at Walter Reed Army Medical Center was causing an exodus of ‘highly skilled and experienced personnel.’ ... According to multiple sources, the decision to privatize support services at Walter Reed led to a precipitous drop in support personnel at Walter Reed.”

The committee’s letter also noted that Walter Reed awarded a five-year, $120 million contract to IAP Worldwide Services, which is run by Al Neffgen, a former senior Halliburton official.

and: "How much do right-wing blogs care about the treatment of our troops?"

3.5.2007 FDA Rules Override Warnings About Drug Cattle Antibiotic Moves Forward Despite Fears of Human Risk By Rick Weiss, Washington Post Staff Writer

"If we have no susceptibility problem, why do we need one more new drug?" asked James E. Leggett Jr., a professor of medicine at Oregon & Science University, whom the FDA brought in as a consultant on the cefquinome question.

The panel also learned that the disease would be a relatively minor issue but for the stressful conditions under which U.S. cattle are raised, including high-density living spaces and routine shipment on crowded trains for hundreds or thousands of miles. Those "production dynamics" suppress the animals' immune systems, explained feedlot consultant Kelly Lechtenberg of Oakland, Neb., and virtually guarantee that bovine respiratory disease will be a major problem.

Yet Stephen Sundlof, head of the FDA's Veterinary Medicine Center, told the panel members that under agency rules they should ignore those issues and consider only the language in Guidance #152.
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Concerned that the FDA is poised to approve cefquinome, Congress's only microbiologist recently wrote to the agency.

"Given the recent outbreaks of E. coli and other food borne illnesses across the nation, it is hardly the time to ignore the advice of scientists, and potentially impair our ability to treat deadly infections," wrote Rep. Louise M. Slaughter (D-N.Y.), who chairs the House Rules Committee.

See also: "Dick Cheney’s Dangerous Son-in-Law" (Here)

3.4.2007 "Bush Family's Prosecutor Games" By Robert Parry

3.4.2007 Must Read NYT editorial:

Today we’re offering a list — which, sadly, is hardly exhaustive — of things that need to be done to reverse the unwise and lawless policies of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

3.3.2007 "Officials in the U.S. military, from the Pentagon on down, tried to thwart reporters for the L.A. Times who uncovered deaths and possible torture of detainees in Afghanistan." (Here)

3.3.2007 White House Backed U.S. Attorney Firings, Officials Say By John Solomon and Dan Eggen

At least five of the prosecutors, including Iglesias, were presiding over public corruption investigations when they were fired, but Justice Department officials have said that those probes played no role in the dismissals.
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(Attorney David C.) Iglesias has alleged that two unnamed New Mexico lawmakers pressured him in October to speed up the indictments of Democrats before the elections. Domenici has declined to comment on that allegation.

See also: Why has the administration fired U.S. attorneys with sterling track records? To make room for its political loyalists, critics say, and exert its last shred of control. By Mark Follman, Salon

More recently, U.S. attorney Carole Lam, who is best known for nailing corrupt Republican Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham and his partners in crime, was replaced on Feb. 15 by Karen P. Hewitt, who according to a Justice Department press release, "will serve on an interim basis until a United States Attorney is nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate." According to an Op-Ed in Monday's New York Times, Hewitt has a résumé with "almost no criminal law experience" and is a member of the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group.
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Realistically, federal appointments are never apolitical. But while U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president, they are traditionally recommended by federal judges and senators from the regions they serve, and are ultimately confirmed by the Senate. But thanks to a change put into the Patriot Act by Pennsylvania Republican Arlen Specter when it was reauthorized in late 2007, Gonzales and the White House gained the power to fill vacancies with interim appointees who can hold office for indefinite terms.

Prosecutors in the corruption case against Poway defense contractor Brent Wilkes and former CIA official Kyle “Dusty” Foggo asked a judge yesterday to limit dissemination of intelligence secrets that, if made public at trial, could damage national security.

2.28.2007 "Government by Law, Not Faith" NYT OpEd

The Supreme Court hears arguments today in a case that could have a broad impact on whether the courthouse door remains open to ordinary Americans who believe that the government is undermining the separation of church and state.

The question before the court is whether a group seeking to preserve the separation of church and state can mount a First Amendment challenge to the Bush administration's "faith based" initiatives. The arguments turn on a technical question of whether taxpayers have standing, or the right to initiate this kind of suit, but the real-world implications are serious. If the court rules that the group does not have standing, it will be much harder to stop government from giving unconstitutional aid to religion.