Via Brad DeLong … Something to keep in mind as you read the news stories about intelligence reports indicating that Iran had stopped its nuclear program some years ago: When George Bush started rattling the saber at them over their nuke program…he knew there wasn’t one…
Robert Waldmann points out that corrupt Washington Post stenographers Peter Baker and Robin Wright know how to write an honest, factual lead paragraph–they just usually choose not to:
By Peter Baker and Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, December 4, 2007; Page A01
President Bush got the world’s attention this fall when he warned that a nuclear-armed Iran might lead to World War III. But his stark warning came at least a month or two after he had first been told about fresh indications that Iran had actually halted its nuclear weapons program.
Now that is what I call a lead*. The contrast couldn’t be more sharp with Baker’s recent effort to thoroughly inform all readers who get to paragraph 8 that Karl Rove is a liar about which I posted at the linked post…
Oh…and here’s the pathetic Washington Post headline that Waldmann is referring to:
Rove’s Version of 2002 War Vote Is Disputed
By Peter Baker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 1, 2007; Page A06
Former White House aide Karl Rove said yesterday it was Congress, not President Bush, who wanted to rush a vote on the looming war in Iraq in the fall of 2002
As numerous people on the net have pointed out…Rove’s version is a flat-out lie. To say it is "disputed" would, in any reality but a beltway journalist’s indicate that there is some way of honestly disputing it and there isn’t. It’s classic, vapid, idiotic, brain dead "he said, she said" journalism. How about "Death Of George Washington Over 200 Years Ago Is Disputed" What the fuck?
A government money market debacle unfolding in Florida is raising questions about former governor and presidential brother Jeb Bush’s possible involvement in the mess.
Florida froze withdrawals from a state investment fund earlier this week when local governments withdrew billions of dollars out of concern for the fund’s financial stability.
In the past few days, municipalities have withdrawn roughly $9 billion, nearly a third of the $28 billion fund (which is similar to a money market fund) controlled by the Florida’s State Board of Administration (SBA). The run on the fund was triggered by worries that a percentage of the portfolio contained debt that had defaulted.
That would be the sub-prime mess…or as people are referring to it these days, the Big Shitpile…
A majority of this paper was sold to SBA by Lehman Brothers. Bush, as the state’s top elected official, served on a three-member board that oversaw the SBA until he retired as governor in January. In August, Bush was hired as a consultant to the bank. Lehman spokesperson Kerrie Cohen, speaking on behalf of Bush, said they had no comment and would not say when the bank had sold Florida the paper. SBA did not return calls.
While SBA wouldn’t confirm, Bloomberg reported the amount of debt in default is around $900 million.
Edward Siedle, a former Securities and Exchange Commission attorney who investigates money management wrongdoing and has worked on behalf of several Florida public pension funds, thinks this is just the tip of the iceberg. He expects problems with defaulting debt to crop up in public funds across the country, especially in states with disclosure laws weaker than Florida’s.
The state is now trying to pull together a committee of investors over the weekend to find a solution…
WASHINGTON, Sept. 20 — The Senate approved a resolution on Thursday denouncing the liberal antiwar group MoveOn.org over an advertisement that questioned the credibility of Gen. David H. Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq.
MoveOn.org, with 3.2 million members, has become a powerful force in Democratic politics and the advertisement it paid for, which appeared in The New York Times, has come under sharp attack from Congressional Republicans and others as unpatriotic and impugning the integrity of General Petraeus.
Damn those dastardly democrats! Impugning the integrity of a war veteran! Is there no low they won’t sink too!!!
Like…oh…this for instance…?
At a White House news conference, President Bush called the advertisement disgusting and said it was an attack not only on General Petraeus but also on the entire American military.
I got your disgusting right here Junior…
You want a civil debate on the issues? Fuck Off! pls? kthxbye…
You have to think that there are people in Washington, almost certainly among the punditboro, now thinking to themselves that Nixon should have just pardoned the Watergate Burglars immediately…then he wouldn’t have needed to worry about burning his secret White House tape recordings because the investigations would have ground to a halt.
But back then Nixon would have still had to worry about impeachment in a way Bush never will. The republican party hadn’t yet sunk into the depths it has today. Today, if Bush was caught stuffing money he’d just stolen from a bank into the g-string of a 12 year old pole dancer (of either sex) on the White House lawn the republicans wouldn’t impeach him. If Bush walked out of the White House and shot a random tourist in the head the republicans wouldn’t impeach him. There’s no way they’re going to let him be impeached over the Scooter Libby affair.
Many others will note this but I feel obliged to do so for the record. The real offense here is not so much or not simply that the president has spared Scooter Libby the punishment that anyone else would have gotten for this crime (for what it’s worth, I actually find the commutation more outrageous than a full pardon). The deeper offense is that the president has used his pardon power to shortcircuit the investigation of a crime to which he himself was quite likely a party, and to which, his vice president, who controls him, certainly was.
The president’s power to pardon is full and unchecked, one of the few such powers given the president in the constitution. Yet here the president has used it to further obstruct justice. In a sense, perhaps we should thank the president for bringing the matter full circle. Began with criminality, ends with it.
Here on the Times Oped page you’ll see David Brooks column claiming that the information Joe Wilson brought before the public four years ago turned out to all be a crock, a bunch of lies. And we’ll let Brooks’ scribble be a stand-in for what you will hear universally today from the right — namely, that just as Scooter Libby was charged with perjury and not the underlying crime of burning an American spy, the deeper underlying offense, the lie about uranium from Africa, didn’t even exist — that at the end of the day it was revealed that Wilson’s claims, which started the whole train down the tracks, were discredited as lies.
You’ll even hear softer versions of this claim from mainstream media outlets not normally considered part of the rump of American conservatism.
There aren’t many subjects on which I claim expertise. But this is one of them. I think I know the details of this one — both the underlying story of the forgeries and their provenance and the epi-story of Wilson and Plame — as well as any journalist who’s written about the story. The Fitzgerald investigation is probably the part of it I know the least about, comparatively. (It is also incumbent on me to say that in the course of reporting on this story over these years I’ve gotten to know Joe Wilson fairly well. And I consider him a friend.)
And with that knowledge, I have to say that the claim that Wilson’s charges have been discredited, disproved or even meaningfully challenged is simply false. What he said on day one is all true. It’s really as simple as that.
Really. The entire Wilson/Plame affair is a textbook example of how the republican party Mighty Wurlitzer operates, hand in glove with the Washington press and the Washington punditboro. Never mind talk radio. This was an inside job. The beltway cool kids have been as unanimous in calling for Scooter’s pardon for obstructing justice in the case of outing a CIA agent as political retribution, as they were in calling for Clinton’s head for obstructing justice over a blow job.
There’s a tendency, even among too many people of good faith and good politics, to shy away from asserting and admitting this simple fact because Wilson has either gone on too many TV shows or preened too much in some photo shoot. But that is disreputable and shameful. The entire record of this story has been under a systematic, unfettered and, sadly, largely unresisted attack from the right for four years. Key facts have been buried under an avalanche of misinformation. The then-chairman of the senate intelligence committee made his committee an appendage of the White House and himself the president’s bawd and issued a report built on intentional falsehood and misdirection.
No one is perfect. The key dividing line is who’s telling the truth and who’s lying. Wilson is on the former side, his critics the latter. Everything else is triviality.
Garrison Keller was right: they’re republicans first and Americans second. Not just the men in power, but their courtiers in the news media and the punditboro. When they tell you that the break president Junior gave Scooter Libby is no big deal they are looking you right in the eye and lying through their teeth. It is exactly as Joshua Marshall says it is: "…the president has used his pardon power to shortcircuit the investigation of a crime to which he himself was quite likely a party, and to which, his vice president, who controls him, certainly was." And that crime wasn’t a blow job in the White House, it was damage to our intelligence gathering abilities, done for the sake of silencing a critic, sending a warning to others, and bringing the intelligence community to heel. When you see one of these gutter crawling thugs solemnly saluting the flag this Forth Of July, and speaking of the patriotism, and their love for America, remember it.
The prosecutor in the Plame case, Fitzgerald, issued the following statement regarding Bush’s commutation of Libby’s sentance…
We fully recognize that the Constitution provides that commutation decisions are a matter of presidential prerogative and we do not comment on the exercise of that prerogative.
We comment only on the statement in which the President termed the sentence imposed by the judge as “excessive.” The sentence in this case was imposed pursuant to the laws governing sentencings which occur every day throughout this country. In this case, an experienced federal judge considered extensive argument from the parties and then imposed a sentence consistent with the applicable laws. It is fundamental to the rule of law that all citizens stand before the bar of justice as equals. That principle guided the judge during both the trial and the sentencing.
Although the President’s decision eliminates Mr. Libby’s sentence of imprisonment, Mr. Libby remains convicted by a jury of serious felonies, and we will continue to seek to preserve those convictions through the appeals process.
Bush, through his press secretary, has indicated he may pardon Libby outright. Look for that to happen if Libby keeps loosing his appeals. Expect the Washington press to rejoice if he does.
At the nadir of his presidency, George W. Bush is looking for answers. One at a time or in small groups, he summons leading authors, historians, philosophers and theologians to the White House to join him in the search.
Over sodas and sparkling water, he asks his questions: What is the nature of good and evil in the post-Sept. 11 world? What lessons does history have for a president facing the turmoil I’m facing? How will history judge what we’ve done? Why does the rest of the world seem to hate America? Or is it just me they hate?
These are the questions of a president who has endured the most drastic political collapse in a generation. Not generally known for intellectual curiosity, Bush is seeking out those who are, engaging in a philosophical exploration of the currents of history that have swept up his administration. For all the setbacks, he remains unflinching, rarely expressing doubt in his direction, yet trying to understand how he got off course.
Well when you nail your compass needle down, staying on course is pretty much a matter of dumb luck George. And while dumb you are, dumb and lucky you never were. Otherwise your rich father and his cronies wouldn’t have had to save you from from jackass self over and over again.
These sessions, usually held in the Oval Office or the elegant living areas of the executive mansion, are never listed on the president’s public schedule and remain largely unknown even to many on his staff. To some of those invited to talk, Bush seems alone, isolated by events beyond his control, with trusted advisers taking their leave and erstwhile friends turning on him.
"You think about prime ministers and presidents being surrounded by cabinet officials and aides and so forth," said Alistair Horne, a British historian who met with Bush recently. "But at the end of the day, they’re alone. They’re lonely. And that’s what occurred to me as I was at the White House. It must be quite difficult for him to get out and about.
That’ll happen to people who would rather have sycophants then real friends. You’re the golden boy, right up ’till the moment you’re not. Then you’re nobody.
I’m From The Government And I’m Here To Give You The Finger…
President Junior. Loyalty for him runs only one way…
The White House fought back Tuesday against criticism from Kansas’ governor that National Guard deployments to Iraq are slowing the response to last week’s devastating tornado.
White House press secretary Tony Snow said the fault was Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’.
In a spat reminiscent of White House finger-pointing at Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco after the federal government’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina, Snow rapped Sebelius for not following procedure to find gaps and then asking the federal government to fill them.
The difference here of course is that the governor of Lousiana is a Democrat, and the city of New Orleans was mostly black, and it’s pretty damn obvious that Bush and Rove didn’t give a rat’s ass about New Orleans for those very reasons. But…Kansas? Okay, now we really get to see the squalid, petty core of the man who the republican powers that be practically hand picked to be president of the United States. But millions of True Red White and Blue American red staters saw the perfect reflection of their own inner values and moral character, and voted for him estatically…
What you get in exchange for being a loyal republican one-hundred percent American supporter of George Bush, is the benefit of not being put on his petty shit list. That’s it. That’s the only thing you get for kissing his ass year after year. A hearty handshake and a smile that couldn’t be less genuine if it was painted on a brick and the benefit of not being on his shit list. This spoiled, cheapshit good-for-nothing is the bastard he is, probably because he never had to learn how to make friends with anyone. Bullying everyone into cooperating with him is the only way he knows how to deal with people.
And much of red state America saw in him the same cheap resentments they hold within themselves and they voted for him in droves, not because they thought he was the better man but precisely because they knew he wasn’t, and putting him in the White House was as close as they could come to putting their thumbs in the eyes of the rest of America. How pleasurable it must have been, to hear all those blue state voices howling in pain after he was elected. Twice. Oh yes…they were all predicting that nothing good would come of it, that President Codpiece would be a disaster. But so what? It won’t be a disaster for the republican heartland. Just those damn liberals, those damn elitists, those damn dirty hippies, all those pregnant welfare moms, all those uppity coloreds, and those god damn faggots. Their cities can go to hell as far as we’re concerned…
…what is that to us? But when you give power to a man who thinks he’s entitled, he’s going to act like he thinks he’s entitled to use it as he damn well pleases. And now you’re on his shit list too, because you dared to complain.
It’s said that propaganda doesn’t fool anyone, so much as allow people to fool themselves. Ronald Reagan got himself elected saying "The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, `I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’" For years now the talk radio babblers have been telling the Constituency Of Resentment that "Government Isn’t The Solution, It’s The Problem". And of course it was…it had to be…once Uncle Sam Uncle Sam started telling them that they had to start treating the coloreds, and their women, with respect and even a little basic human decency. Next thing you know it’ll be the faggots too. Fuck that shit. So they put a cheap bar stool loudmouth asshole in the Whitehouse with the same contempt for government they had. Which was great…just great…as long as it was only cities full of darkies in states with democratic governors that had to suffer for it.
Except now it isn’t.
"I don’t think there is any question if you are missing trucks, Humvees and helicopters that the response is going to be slower," she said Monday. "The real victims here will be the residents of Greensburg, because the recovery will be at a slower pace."
Sebelius said about half the state’s National Guard trucks are in Iraq, equipment that would be helpful in removing debris, and that the state is also missing a number of well-trained personnel.
"The issue for the National Guard is the same wherever you go in the country. Stuff that we would have borrowed is gone," she said
Maj. Gen. Tod Bunting, the state’s adjutant general, said the Kansas National Guard was equipped at only about 40 percent of its required levels, down from the 60 percent that it had at the start of the war.
Well you got what you voted for: a government that doesn’t work…a government that Can’t Help when you need it to, because Junior needs his toys over in Iraq, because it was either put the likes of him in power, or let the darkies, the heathens, the women, and the faggots have a share in the American Dream too.
With Congress and the White House in tense negotiations over the next $100 billion for the next six months in Iraq, we take time out today to celebrate the fourth anniversary of Andrew Natsios’ appearance on ABC’s Nightline.
On April 23, 2003, host Ted Koppel invited Natsios, then the director of the U.S. Agency for International Development, on the program to talk about the Bush administration’s estimate of the cost of rebuilding Iraq.
Younger readers may not remember Koppel, who’s retired now. They may also be somewhat confused by the assumption, universally reported back in April of 2003, that the U.S.-led coalition had "taken control of Baghdad." After all, just yesterday Gen. David Petraeus said that three months of a security "surge" had produced only modest progress in its effort to, well, take control of Baghdad.
TED KOPPEL (Off Camera): Well, it’s a, I think you’ll agree, this is a much bigger project than any that’s been talked about. Indeed, I understand that more money is expected to be spent on this than was spent on the entire Marshall Plan for the rebuilding of Europe after World War II.
ANDREW NATSIOS: No, no. This doesn’t even compare remotely with the size of the Marshall Plan.
TED KOPPEL (Off Camera): The Marshall Plan was $97 billion.
ANDREW NATSIOS: This is $1.7 billion.
TED KOPPEL (Off Camera): All right, this is the first. I mean, when you talk about 1.7, you’re not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is gonna be done for $1.7 billion?
ANDREW NATSIOS: Well, in terms of the American taxpayers contribution, I do, this is it for the US. The rest of the rebuilding of Iraq will be done by other countries who have already made pledges, Britain, Germany, Norway, Japan, Canada, and Iraqi oil revenues, eventually in several years, when it’s up and running and there’s a new government that’s been democratically elected, will finish the job with their own revenues. They’re going to get in $20 billion a year in oil revenues. But the American part of this will be 1.7 billion. We have no plans for any further-on funding for this.
Since then, "the American taxpayers" have spent at least half a trillion dollars — at least five times the total cost of the Marshall Plan. Chunks of money several times greater than Natsios’ figure have simply gone missing and the monthly cost to the U.S. is more than $8 billion.
In 2006, President Bush appointed Andrew Natsios as the administration’s special envoy to Darfur.
Dig it. More money then they told us the war would cost, has simply gone missing. The Monthly cost of the war is several times larger then what they told us the war would cost. They’re fighting on Capital Hill right now over a Supplemental Budget that is bigger then the total cost of the Marshal Plan.
And you thought it was about the oil. Mission Accomplished.
…and discover that most of my adult life was all a dream and it’s still 1974…
Shades of Rose Mary Woods? An 18 day gap?
I think a commenter in our document dump research thread may have been the first to notice that the emails released by the Justice Department seem to have a gap between November 15th and December 4th of last year.
(Our commenter saw it late on the evening of the dump itself — see the comment date-stamped March 20, 2007 02:19 AM in the research thread)
The firing calls went out on December 7th. But the original plan was to start placing the calls on November 15th. So those eighteen days are pretty key ones.
Earlier in the day, Bush held a National Security Council meeting on the war. He was to discuss the latest developments by secure videoconference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki at 9:40 a.m. (1440 GMT), said spokeswoman Dana Perino.
Then at 11:30, the president will make a statement on the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq in the Roosevelt Room. It will last about five minutes and he will take no questions," she told AFP by telephone.
On the other hand, when has this spoiled brat ever suffered being questioned?
President Bush on Saturday challenged lawmakers skeptical of his new Iraq plan to propose their own strategy for stopping the violence in Baghdad. "To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible," Bush said.
This from the man who just weeks ago received the Iraq Study Group Report, which did exactly that, and which he reportedly called a "flaming turd". Okay…fine…he doesn’t like what they’re proposing. But why lie about it?
Well for one thing, because for six years going on seven now, he’s been able to lie through his teeth about damn near anything he’s wanted to and the press never called him on any of it. But mostly, it’s just junior doing what he’s always done all his damn life…shifting the blame elsewhere.
I’m seeing chatter making the rounds on the blog nets now, about how those of us who opposed this war from the beginning, those of us who felt it would turn out as badly as it now, unmistakably has, were nonetheless wrong anyway, no matter how right we were, because we based our opposition on our dislike of Bush.
Well…duh! I said early on that I could imagine one of any dozen or so other possible presidents, including republicans I absolutely detest, who if they’d made the case for Iraq I’d have gritted my teeth and reluctantly gone along with it. But from the start the problem was that it was Bush. Anyone taking even a little peek into that toxic waste dump that was his resume before 2000 could have seen this coming. Bush, let alone the right wing machine that pushed him on America, was not trustworthy. Period.
And now…thousands of dead Americans, a foreign policy in ruins, a lost American city, trillions of dollars in debt, a constitution in tatters and our moral standing in the world in the gutter later…the rest of you know it too.
Why on earth couldn’t you people see what this man was made of before you voted him into the highest office in the land? Twice for fuck’s sake!? Why couldn’t you just use a little basic common sense and…LOOKOUT, THE GAYS WANT TO BAN BIBLES AND MARRY EACH OTHER!!!
The break happened not long after a boozy election-night wake for Blount, who lost his Senate bid to the incumbent Democrat, John Sparkman. Leaving the election-night "celebration," Allison remembers encountering George W. Bush in the parking lot, urinating on a car, and hearing later about how he’d yelled obscenities at police officers that night. Bush left a house he’d rented in Montgomery trashed — the furniture broken, walls damaged and a chandelier destroyed, the Birmingham News reported in February. "He was just a rich kid who had no respect for other people’s possessions," Mary Smith, a member of the family who rented the house, told the newspaper, adding that a bill sent to Bush for repairs was never paid. And a month later, in December, during a visit to his parents’ home in Washington, Bush drunkenly challenged his father to go "mano a mano," as has often been reported.
Around the same time, for the 1972 Christmas holiday, the Allisons met up with the Bushes on vacation in Hobe Sound, Fla. Tension was still evident between Bush and his parents. Linda was a passenger in a car driven by Barbara Bush as they headed to lunch at the local beach club. Bush, who was 26 years old, got on a bicycle and rode in front of the car in a slow, serpentine manner, forcing his mother to crawl along. "He rode so slowly that he kept having to put his foot down to get his balance, and he kept in a weaving pattern so we couldn’t get past," Allison recalled. "He was obviously furious with his mother about something, and she was furious at him, too
They put a whining rich man’s brat, full of self pity and a grandiose sense of his own entitlement into the White House. They picked him because they knew he appealed to a large swath of their base: small minded bigots also full of self pity and a grandiose sense of their own entitlement. Then, to their growing apprehension, he put his hands on the levers of the most powerful economy and military in the world and proceeded to act like a whining rich man’s brat, full of self pity and a grandiose sense of his own entitlement. Did they think he would stop now that he’s left a staggering trail of wreckage and lost American lives in his path? You don’t understand. The man who couldn’t even bring himself to say the words "shame on me" while reciting the old proverb, "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" is not to blame. It’s never his fault. Nothing is ever his fault…
Nine days after Zelikow’s resignation the Iraq Study Group report was released. Informed correspondents of the Washington Post and New York Times related in conversation that Bush furiously called the report "a flaming turd," but his colorful remark was not published. Perhaps it was apocryphal. Nonetheless, it conveyed the intensity of his hostile rejection. Still, Scowcroft and Baker, like Vladimir and Estragon in "Waiting for Godot," waited for Rice.
…
The president had become enraged at the presumption of the Baker-Hamilton Commission even before its members gave him their report.
Rice was supposed to be the one to get Junior to see reality. But it seems she’s sized him up a tad better then the Wise Old Men of Washington. He’s going to do what he damn well pleases, and throughout his life everyone who has ever known him knows this one fact above all else: you’re either with him or against him. Loyalty to junior doesn’t mean you tell him what he doesn’t want to hear when he needs to hear it anyway. It means you flatter him, agree with everything he says and does, and most of all, take the blame for him when he makes a mess of things. Rice probably figured, correctly, that siding with the Wise Old Men of Washington now would incure junior’s wrath. Junior does not tolerate disloyalty.
Rice, who had fallen into radio silence, canceling a scheduled speech on "transformational diplomacy," finally intervened. When the U.S. military commanders in Iraq and U.S. ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad protested against a rush by the Iraqi government to hang Saddam Hussein, Rice overrode their objections and gave the signal to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to proceed.
Maliki’s management and subsequent defense of the gruesome circus surrounding Saddam’s execution disabused any illusion that he could act in the larger Iraqi national interest rather than as a political representative of Shiite sectarianism. He is to his marrow a creature of the Dawa Party, founded by Muqtada al-Sadr’s father, and his alliance with al-Sadr. While the intent of the surge is to revitalize the Maliki government, that government cannot and does not wish to be reformed. The problem is not merely that Maliki is a weak political leader, or that his political coalition wouldn’t permit it, or that his Iranian sponsors wouldn’t allow repudiation — all of which are indisputably true. The irreducible reason is that Maliki exists only to achieve Shiite control, and if he did not he would not exist. There is no other Maliki. Nor can Bush invent one.
But none of this matters. What an escalation will do is give junior time to do what he has done all throughout his life, pass the problem onto someone else. First there will be his troop buildup. Then it has to be given time to work. And by the time it’s staringly obvious to even a brick that it isn’t working, the next election cycle will be upon us. Bush can claim that he’s left a structure in place that will lead to success in Iraq and bring peace to the middle east…if only the new administration follows it. And then he’s out the door, and shed of the consequences. The blame for loosing Iraq will belong to the next administration, to someone else. At least, he can always say so. And so can his loyal base. Someone else is always to blame. But that’s not what you should be paying attention to…
The Wise Old Men of Washington…the power brokers…the insiders…and their ass kissing media sycophants…the ones who cherry picked him to be the republican nominee in 2000. The ones who figured he’d be their boy, appeal to the base, and usher in a permanent republican majority. They thought he would take the escape hatch they built for him. They thought he would take the chance they offered him to withdraw and save face. They thought he would listen to them. They really thought he would listen to them.
President Bush has quietly claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant, the Daily News has learned.
The President asserted his new authority when he signed a postal reform bill into law on Dec. 20. Bush then issued a "signing statement" that declared his right to open people’s mail under emergency conditions.
That claim is contrary to existing law and contradicted the bill he had just signed, say experts who have reviewed it.
Bush’s move came during the winter congressional recess and a year after his secret domestic electronic eavesdropping program was first revealed. It caught Capitol Hill by surprise.
"Despite the President’s statement that he may be able to circumvent a basic privacy protection, the new postal law continues to prohibit the government from snooping into people’s mail without a warrant," said Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), the incoming House Government Reform Committee chairman, who co-sponsored the bill.
Experts said the new powers could be easily abused and used to vacuum up large amounts of mail.
"The [Bush] signing statement claims authority to open domestic mail without a warrant, and that would be new and quite alarming," said Kate Martin, director of the Center for National Security Studies in Washington.
"The danger is they’re reading Americans’ mail," she said.
"You have to be concerned," agreed a career senior U.S. official who reviewed the legal underpinnings of Bush’s claim. "It takes Executive Branch authority beyond anything we’ve ever known."
A top Senate Intelligence Committee aide promised, "It’s something we’re going to look into."
Well, so what? You can’t impeach him unless the republicans go along with it and swear to God if Bush was caught with a pistol in his hands robbing a bank, they’d tell you that the president has the right to rob banks in the name of national security because 9-11 changed everything.
Good thing it’s not a democrat doing this or the news media would be having kittens right now.
But the president’s performance this week — his refusal to impose any deadlines on Mr. Maliki to start reconciliation talks and break with the militias, and his refusal to give the Pentagon a deadline to stand up an effective Iraqi Army — tells us once again that Mr. Bush does not listen.
That does not bode well for James Baker and the Iraq Study Group, which, according to reports, is likely to call for some pullback of American combat troops along with more aggressive regional diplomacy. Yesterday, Mr. Bush seemed eager to preempt that advice, brushing off suggestions that he talk directly to Iran and insisting that there would be no “graceful exit” from Iraq.
Mr. Bush’s lack of curiosity was well known even before he became president, but as time has gone on and bad news has mounted, that disinterested quality has turned into a stubborn refusal to hear bad news. The country simply cannot afford it any longer. Three years of having Mr. Bush trust only his gut has plunged Iraq into bloody chaos and done untold damage to America. There needs to be an urgent change in policy.
Fat chance.
This administration has been orchestrating a foreign policy disaster of epic proportions, and history will remember both that the president failed to hear the warning bells and that many others failed to ring them loudly enough.
Chocolate Roulade (Christmas Log): Soft Ganache Frosting with a Chocolate Sponge, Meringue Mushrooms, Magnolia Leaves in White Chocolate, Raspberries.
Mini Tartlettes.
Pecan Pie, Lemon Meringue Pie, Orange Chiffon and Chocolate Boston Cream Pie.
Chocolate Truffles.
Homemade, Bittersweet Chocolate Ganache.
Long Stem Strawberries with Dark Chocolate Dipping Sauce.
Warm Macintosh Apple Cobbler With Oatmeal Crumble.
Pumpkin Trifle.
Spiced Pumpkin Mousse with Whipped Cream and Shaved Dark Chocolate.
Look…I don’t begrudge the rich and fabulous their high life. What’s mine is mine and what’s yours is yours and that’s fine with me. But given the unmitigated failures of this man and his administration, never mind the relentless corruption, all this is just plain obscene. If Bush had only kept America more or less on the same course that Bill Clinton had left it in, with a budget surplus, a good economic outlook for the future, and a decent regard for human rights both here and abroad, I’d offer to wash his fucking dishes. But he’s been a complete disaster. He didn’t earn any of this.
This blog is powered by WordPress and is hosted at Winters Web Works, who also did some custom design work (Thanks!). Some embedded content was created with the help of The Gimp. I proof with Google Chrome on either Windows, Linux or MacOS depending on which machine I happen to be running at the time.
