Border Security

This illustrates the futility of trying to maintain a strict border, while providing a nice opportunity to laugh at the president.

Olbermann Crushes Giuliani

Just Watch

Someone's Going Under the Bus...

Yesterday the House Judiciary Committee voted to give Alberto Gonzales’ ex-aide Monica Goodling immunity from prosecution. If you’re not up on the story, here it is in a series of links.

Monica Goodling threatens to plead the fifth if she is subpoenaed by Senate Judiciary Committee regarding the eight fired U.S. Attorneys.

She was the highest official to plead the fifth since Oliver North during Iran-Contra, and she is the highest official in the Justice Department to have ever done it. Not surprisingly, she resigns.

To compel her testimony the committee voted to give her immunity.

So she has a pretty interesting past. Basically, she’s a life long Christian conservative, who went to Pat Robertson’s law school, that school has sent over 150 Evangelical Christian Political Activists into our government’s federal bureaucracies. She rapidly rose through the ranks of the Justice Department, ending up as one of Alberto Gonzales’ top aids.

Here she is looking delighted to be squeezed by Rove

So what is she going to say? Will she stay loyal? Will she take the fall Oli North style? She’s so young, taking the fall seems particularly costly for her. But if she doesn’t give them any crime she’s committed, she should expect a perjury charge for lying about the fifth. So it’s basically a question of who she implicates in her testimony. Since she plead the fifth, I’m guessing she’s going to gush. If she was staying loyal, she would go in front of the panel and magically forget Alberto style, no need to pull your constitutional rights. Can you imagine any strategic advantage to pleading the fifth if you’re tying to cover up a political power grab? I can’t see it. There is an advantage to pleading the fifth if you did something wrong and don’t have confidence in your boss’s ability to cover it up. So maybe we’ll get lucky, maybe she’ll provide substantive evidence of Alberto Gonzales’ GOP inspired redesign of the justice department. Hell maybe she’ll even squeal on Rove. I can’t imagine he didn’t make a number of sweaty, beady eyed sexual advances. We’ll find out soon…

The Biggest Fish of All

The Office of Special Counsel is a tiny section of the executive branch tasked with protecting civil service workers from their bosses. Basically they protect whistleblowers, sift through sexual harassment and discrimination claims, and investigate violations of the Hatch Act. It is this last duty that brings the Office of Special Counsel to Karl Rove, chief republican strategist. It seems the pudgy master-mind made a series of politically charged power point presentations to top bureaucrats around the executive branch. The leaders of these federal bureaucracies are all appointed by the President. The presentations gave polling updates in key races around the country, and officials were reminded that actions they took have electoral consequences. Rove was pressuring the federal bureaucracy to take political action in favor of Republicans in “key states”. Those bureaucracies are paid for by ALL OF US, not just republicans. This is another case of the Bush administration politicizing bureaucracies to ensure their grip on power. This attempt feels like something Darth Vader or Adolph Hitler would do, not something that happens in America. Some officials brought this all to light by complaining to the Office of Special Counsel. The department announced today that it would begin an investigation into Rove regarding these presentations and his role in the firing of U.S. Attorney David Iglesias.

When I first heard this, I was a little giddy. I’ve been frustrated as recent investigations have pointed to Rove as playing some part, but each time he has managed to escape serious scrutiny. In the Plame investigation, Libby’s defense was that he was the fall guy for Rove, but the case offered little in specific actions by Rove. Additionally, this latest U.S. Attorney scandal has been dotted by appearances of Roves name in the media. While he has been rumored to have been the origin of the idea to fire the attorneys, he hasn’t been linked with any evidence. Partly because of the millions of e-mails he deleted that now escape federal investigators. This latest investigation is the first one to target Rove specifically. So perhaps it will be the most successful in uncovering evidence of his roles in these scandals.

I thought all this, before I researched what the Office of Special Counsel (OSC) was, and more importantly, who heads the department. To begin with, this is an office within the executive branch. So it’s not congressional in nature, and can’t be seen as coming from “outside” the administration. Bush’s own branch of government is investigating Rove. That has some minor perks; Rove/Bush can’t claim this is a politically motivated investigation. But it also has a massive downside, since the OSC is under Bush’s authority; he appointed its department head.

His name is Scott J. Bloch. Before being head of the OSC he was a lawyer in Kansas and he served on the Justice Department’s Task Force for Faith-based and Community Initiatives. His record at the OSC has been marred by a series of scandals.

- He failed to enforce Executive Order 13087 issued by Bill Clinton. The order adds sexual orientation to the list of protected classes in discrimination rules. As a result federal employees cannot be discriminated against based on their sexual orientation. Bloch stopped enforcing the rule. Homosexual whistleblowers were not protected and Bloch removed every appearance of “sexual orientation” from complaint forms and the department’s website. Bush claims to support the executive order, but has failed to take any action against Bloch. If he were under Clinton he would have been fired and his position filled by a more cooperative person. Bush stated publicly that he supported the executive order but did nothing to remove Bloch or ensure enforcement of the order. Why wouldn’t Bush punish Bloch? The only reason I can imagine is that he privately supported removing protections for Gay federal employees, but did not want the political firestorm of explaining that position. Enter Bushy Scott Bloch. He gets to have his cake and eat it too. All the bigotry of exclusionist institutions none of the accountability.

- He retaliated against people in his office who “disagreed with his politics”. This lead to an investigation of him and his department by The Office of Personnel Management. In that investigation, he has been accused of intimidating underlings and avoiding scrutiny. This investigation is still on going. That’s right, the person who is charged with getting to the bottom of Karl Rove’s political malfeasance is in fact just another Republican minion who has been doing their dirty work since he was appointed in 2003

So what is going on here? Why would a political hack start an investigation against the biggest fish of all in the Republican Party? It seems he was compelled to, David Iglesias has already said that he filed a complaint which he believes was partially responsible for starting the Rove investigation. So Bloch was forced to start the investigation, his office has been under scrutiny for years for the parade of scandals he has been involved in, and he knew that at this point in Washington there are serious repercussions of failing in one’s duty. If that’s the case what kind of investigation are we going to see here? Will it exonerate Rove of wrongdoing preemptively casting a vote in his favor as he is undoubtedly investigated in larger scandals? Another possibility is that he will doggedly pursue Rove until his office finds evidence of wrongdoing? Even if they do, the most severe punishment the OSC can hand out is recommending that Rove be terminated. RECOMMEND, is the key word, Bush doesn’t have to replace him, and he’s already failed to replace Rove after it was shown that he had some part in the Plame leak. So pretty much this investigation doesn’t matter. It either won’t be able to do anything, or it won’t be a real investigation. The only possible positive outcome is that the investigation, while trying to appear legitimate, uncovers real evidence that can be used in larger investigations. But with Bush loyalist Scott Bloch at the helm, the chances of that are pretty slim.

The Hair Controversy

I was listening to my local “liberal” talk radio, KTLK 1150, when their new drive-time host “Mr. K” started discussing the controversy over John Edward’s haircuts

Apparently, he has a Hollywood stylist fly out to him and cut his hair, travel expenses and all it totals $400.00 a pop. He charged two of them, surprise-surprise, to the organization that is trying to get him elected, his campaign. Now apparently people are pissed off that he didn’t pay for them personally, and his campaign already has said it was a mistake and John is already going to pay for them. All of this capitulation makes it seem like something bad happened here. But what exactly is the problem?

Whether or not he has a political campaign he has to have a haircut, therefore he should pay for it.

Wrong, while it is true that he always needs a haircut, the extraordinary cost of the haircut is completely the result of his campaign. His haircut could have cost him $15.00 at Fantastic Sam’s but why would he endanger his campaign by allowing an inexperienced, low-paid, low-skilled, hair stylist to touch his hair. A bad hair cut could literally RUIN his campaign. Now I’m not endorsing our candidate centered politics, just the opposite, they are to blame completely.

Candidate centered politics forces all of the attention on the personality and charisma of the presidential candidates. This phenomenon gave JFK the debate victory over Nixon (Maybe its not such a bad thing…). Radio listeners thought Nixon won handedly, but anyone who watched on TV saw that Nixon was sweating, and had a five-o-clock shadow. Compared to the made-up JFK it was easy to see who America should trust, if you watched the debate on TV you had a better chance to think JFK won.

From that point on looking good was a necessity for candidates, some blame TV, but it’s obviously the American public’s fault. Our need to follow a handsome charismatic leader is exactly what handed Bush the Whitehouse in ’04, and even worse than that it can obscure the issues in any campaign. When we talk about John Edwards’ hair or whether or not Kerry looks French, we’re feeding into the monster of candidate centered politics.

Such attention to looks and photogenic quality breeds the atmosphere where a $400.00 dollar haircut seems like a wise investment. But paradoxically, Candidate centered politics also engendered this news story and all the outrage it may cause. Because we are so concerned with the personalities of our leaders, as opposed to their political ideas, we report on trivial superfluous details, like the price of their hair-cut. As opposed to all the good reasons to hate John Edwards.

1. Voted for Iraq
2. Voted for the Patriot Act
3. He didn’t kick Cheney’s ass in the VP debates
4. He's a LOSER
   

Those are all great, ideological reasons to dislike John Edwards, and each of them is more convincing than his hair bill.

MoveOn.org Town Hall Metting on Iraq

I sat down today and listened to the Virtual Town Hall Meeting put on by MoveOn.org on April 10. You can download an mp3 of it by right-clicking here, and selecting save as. If you would rather listen to a particular candidate, you can go here, MoveOn.org separated the 88 minute long event by candidate and question, allowing you to listen to only the candidate you want and only the responses you’d like to hear.

It was the first of three such virtual town halls, and the subject was Iraq, chosen by MoveOn.org’s member-base. The other two virtual town halls will focus on global warming and healthcare. The structure of the town hall was simple, one question was asked to each of them, and then each candidate was asked two additional questions specific to the candidate and again chosen by MoveOn.org members. The universal question was, “What is the best and fastest way to get out of Iraq?” The candidates chose to answer the question on a variety of levels, from continuing congressional pressure to kill funding and end the war, all the way to committing more to interstate organizations to increase world peace.

Essentially, their answers can be condensed into the following chart. They each had an opportunity to address four questions about their Iraq policy. Where the chart says, “Didn’t Specify” it should be understood to mean that the candidate simply didn’t address the topic in his three and a half minute answer, most candidates who didn’t address some issue were discussing the problem at a different analytical level, and shouldn’t be necessarily viewed as “dodging the question”. For example, Joe Biden spent a large portion of his time discussing needed reforms in the Iraqi government, and as a result mentioned nothing about a residual force needed in Iraq. While that is an interesting question that I would ask him, I don’t believe he deliberately avoided the question. Anyway, here’s the chart.

	Start Withdrawal When:	Get Out By:
Obama	May-07	Mar-08
Clinton	90 days	Mar-08
Richardson	Doesn't Specify	Jan-08
Kucinich	Start Now	Doesn't Specify
Dodd	Start Now	Mar-08
Biden	90 days	Mar-08
Edwards	Start Now	Doesn't Specify

	Residual Force?	Residual Bases?
Obama	Doesn't Specify	Doesn't Specify
Clinton	Temporary	Temporary
Richardson	None	None
Kucinich	UN Peace Keepers	None
Dodd	Feingold-Reid	Feingold-Reid
Biden	Doesn't Specify	None
Edwards	Doesn't Specify	Doesn't Specify

*Feingold Reid does not specify a date for all US forces to be withdrawn, it allows a small force to remain there for specific purposes, such as anti-teorrorism.

Almost all mentioned engaging traditional enemies in the region, and using diplomacy to help secure and rebuild Iraq. Interesting energy independence was only brought up twice, By Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson, both of who suggested a national “Apollo-Program” for energy independence.

Each candidate also answered two more questions, but they were individualized for each candidate, and as a result there wasn’t wide overlapping that allows any systematic analysis. As an overall judgment, I was surprised that Obama didn’t sound better, although he proposed an adequate plan for Iraq, it wasn’t punctuated by innovative solutions as some of the other plans were. The stand out as far as I’m concerned, was Dennis Kucinich. Perhaps its just the first time I’ve ever heard anything from him that I didn’t watch come out of his elfish, petite body, perhaps it was because his view is by far the most radical and revolutionary, or perhaps they are just good ideas consistent with world peace. He emphasized America reengage the international community, sign on to important international accords, become more interdependent and above all to learn from our mistake in Iraq. He preached about ending preemption, and about world peace being possible through interstate cooperation. His body may be small but his ideas were the largest there. I wonder if he has potential to be tapped as a vice-presidential candidate. I can’t imagine he’ll win much support in the crowded field, but his ideas may be worth something.

I really think the low point of the debate was Biden’s “Then What?” idea. He essentially lambasted the other candidates for not having a plan once the troops are withdrawn. His plan is to federalize the Iraqi government, and allow each sect to have control over their region. So Sunni’s are protected by Sunni police, and Kurdish schools are taught by Kurdish Teachers. Its not a bad idea, these kinds of ethnic conflicts have been brought to peaceful resolutions by territorial segregation, but then rival states share borders and continued resentment could lead to future conflict, as we have seen in the case of India and Pakistan. But the largest flaw of his proposal is fundamental in nature, he isn’t Iraqi. We’ve done enough meddling in Iraqi affairs, dictating their government to them will not be successful in restoring peace. Biden is trying to be Iraq’s George Washington, which is a useful role, but certainly one that ought to be filled by an Iraqi. It is the only way the government will have any legitimacy, and any failures arising from ethnic conflict will be at the very least Iraqi failures.

Below you’ll find embedded links of each candidates answer to the first question.

John Edwards

Joe Biden



Dennis Kucinich



Bill Richardson



Hillary Clinton



Chris Dodd



Barack Obama

Charge Sampson, Fire Rove, Impeach Bush!

Here and above is a four minute video of the first Whitehouse response to the “millions of missing e-mails” report issued by the group called the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

What’s crazy about the Whitehouse’s response is that they aren’t denying it. They just said they didn’t do it on purpose. Think about that… If we assume the Whitehouse deliberately deleted incriminating e-mails, then the risk of being caught deleting them is less dangerous then the contents of the e-mails being made public.

Under what circumstance does that make sense given the SHITSTORM this is becoming? What could be in those e-mails? The minimum guess is that they were using the political RNC accounts to conduct official Whitehouse business, a violation of the Hatch Act. Anyone found doing this must be statutorily fired, we’re looking at you Rove.

Probably more likely, the deleted e-mails had evidence that the Whitehouse was in close consultation regarding the firings of the eight ousted U.S. Attorneys. The e-mails could show that Karl Rove initiated the idea and Alberto Gonzales and his staff carried out the work.

Newly released e-mails show that Kyle Sampson's testimony in the Senate Judicary Committee is incorrect. Sampson said,

"With the exception of Bud Cummins, none of the U.S. attorneys was asked to resign in favor of a particular individual who had already been identified to take the vacant spot. Nor, to my knowledge, was any U.S. attorney asked to resign for an improper reason. U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president and may be asked to resign for almost any reason with no public or private explanation."

From Here

If there were any lists or discussions of Bush friendly attorneys to take the spots of the to-be-fired attourneys, There would be a case for perjury. According to new e-mails Sampson pointed to five Bush friendly replacements for working U.S. Attourney's months before the firings (Here).

Worse yet the e-mails could contain things we can’t even imagine. The behind the scenes, underground, e-mails of Karl Rove to the inner circle of the Bush Administration? Imagine what those are full of. Specific plans to capitalize on 9-11 in political speeches leading up to the war, Instructions to create the Rumsfeld led “Office of Special Plans” to ‘create’ intelligence to sell the war, who knows maybe memos from Cheney commanding pressure be put on Iraq's Governemnt to give away their oil to western oil companies. If it’s shit like that, we’re talking impeachment, or at least we need to be talking about impeachment.

But we may not even need crazy resurrected e-mails to get an impeachement. It’s a crime just to have them disappear like this. The Presidential Records Act (PRA) of 1978 makes all records of the office of President and Vice President the property of the Public. It charges the President himself with the responsibility of keeping those records. The mere fact that “millions” of e-mails are missing may be enough to impeach the President in violation of this act. I don’t know if its impeachable, but perhaps they could establish a pattern.

"Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case, disclosed last year that some White House e-mails in 2003 were not saved as standard procedure dictated."

"Robert Luskin, personal attorney for Rove, told CNN Friday that he "has no reason to doubt" Fitzgerald's assertion that some White House e-mail was missing."

From Here

Seems to me with a little digging thanks to subpoena power, the congress can get elbow deep into scandal. And the congress seems like its up to the challenge,

"Sen. Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, accused the White House of trying to hide messages on the Republican Party system related to the firing of the U.S. attorneys, which has stirred up a hornet's nest on Capitol Hill."

"Sen. Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, accused the White House of trying to hide messages on the Republican Party system related to the firing of the U.S. attorneys, which has stirred up a hornet's nest on Capitol Hill.

"You can't erase e-mails, not today," said Leahy, D-Vermont. "They've gone through too many servers. They can't say they've been lost. That's like saying, 'The dog ate my homework"

From Here

Being able to prove intent on a high level might be impeachable, not to mention what we would find out if some hacker or tech-wiz digs up those e-mails. So dig, Dig for Impeachment!

Micro Post

Here is a cool link I came across while stumbling, not presidential but important to American Values. It has to do with the rising use of para-military tactics in police enforcement. Usually these tactics are tied to the war on drugs.

With Baited Breath….

President Bush’s long time friend and current Attorney General, Alberto “Berty” Gonzales is headed to Congress next Tuesday to testify regarding the firings of eight US Attorneys. Yesterday, Congress issued a subpoena for hundreds of additional documents from the justice department, without the thousands of redactions and edits that plagued the first batch released voluntarily. The White House has signaled thU.Sat it’s going to fight the subpoena, proving once again that secrecy and loyalty beat out the public interest in this Administration. We’re headed towards a possible constitutional showdown regarding the powers of the President.

Link Here

What is anomalous is why the White House does not abandon him. Even Newt Gingrich has broken the eleventh commandment saying “This is the most mishandled, artificial, self-created mess”. If party loyalists such as Gingrich aren’t convinced that its worth the fight, then why is the President (or more likely his advisors) convinced? If we assume that the firings were motivated by partisan politics, and I don’t think that’s a wild assumption, what might Bush do? He has two options, support his friend or throw him under the bus. But how would either of those choices affect the White House? To answer that question, it is important to realize that Gonzales is not just the attorney general. He’s been with the president since he was governor of Texas, and Berty managed to leverage that relationship into the top law enforcement job in the country. Someone this tight with the president is bound to be in on a number of secrets, including the true source of the attorney firings. Thus, the President wouldn’t succeed by jettisoning Gonzales. Aside from damaging the fabric of continuity that holds the Bush Empire together (namely political loyalty) discarding Gonzales would probably piss him off after a lifetime of service. The White House’s short term gains realized by axing the scandalous attorney general would be eaten up and overwhelmed by the damage a crossed and vengeful Berty would be able to inflict. Therefore the President must back up his friend. There isn’t a choice for him.

The next stage of the game is whether or not the documents will be released and whether or not they will include direct evidence linking the firings to political motivations. If they are released and do contain evidence, then what will happen to Berty? I believe at that point the political gains of defending him will pale compared to the costs. He will step down from his plum appointment in government, tight lipped and answering what he must to not be held in contempt of Congress, and then he will step into a plum appointment in the business sector closely tied to the Bush family. It is the only method Bush has left to him to reward Berty for his loyalty and it will be a sad day for America. I guess we’ll have to wait and see regarding the documents and Alberto Gonzales’s testimony next Tuesday. I wait with baited breath for the latest proof that this administration has next to no accountability, no sense of wrong doing, and values political loyalty over sound policy.

War Coverage Documentary

Here is a great BBC documentary about the coverage of the Iraq war. The documentary points out the absence of bloodshed and carnage when the war is reported on in the UK and America. Parts are violent and very disturbing, but it makes a fundamentally sound point. When media censors pictures of violence and gore from their reporting they work to further their governments cause of supporting the war. By not allowing scenes of unjustifiable destruction to be shown, the media pushes the bloody realty of war out of the public's view. While this documentary focuses on Britain’s news coverage, the root of the problem from the American side is likely our for-profit media that puts a premium on profitability as opposed to actual news. When news editors have the choice to shock and horrify people with the truth of Iraq, they realize that people don't want to see it. In TV land want translates directly into ratings, which translate directly into money. By creating the advantage for watchable news over informative news, commercial media blinds us to the suffering war causes and is complicate to its continuation.

A Bad Week For John McCain.

April 1

While on a trip to Baghdad to monitor the progress of the ‘surge’, McCain took a walk through a marketplace. It was the same marketplace that was torn apart by bombings last February that killed at least sixty one people. He claimed that his stroll gave him confidence in the new Baghdad security plan saying,

“There were thousands of people just walking the streets. It was very encouraging to me.” He continued, “’Never have I been able to go out into the city as I was today,”

link

April 6

He failed to mention that he was accompanied by over a hundred U.S. Soldiers, a handful of attack helicopters, sniper teams and a bullet proof vest.

One might wonder how McCain could say things are improving given the massive amount of security he needed. Baghdad residents do not have access to the military security that U.S. Senators do, and that might just have been the message we would have heard if McCain was as dedicated to “Straight-Talk” as much as his bus claims he is.

McCain was forced to apologize for the statements after a week of being hounded by the media. In a 60 minutes interview he said,

“Of course I am going to misspeak and I’ve done it on numerous occasions and I probably will do it in the future, I regret that when I divert attention to something I said from my message, but you know, that’s just life.”

link

April 2

While the bloggers fought it out over McCain’s deceptive endorsement of the Surge, his first quarter presidential campaign fundraising numbers came in. He raised only $12.5 million. Compared to $15 million raised by Rudy Giuliani, $23 million for Mitt Romney, $26 million for Hillary Clinton, and $25 million raised by Barack Obama. Placing him dead last among the front runners. This report effectively kills his status as the “one to beat” among the GOP candidates. His campaign said they had “hoped to do better”.

Link

Link

April 7

Just when you might expect McCain to retreat from his position on the Iraq War, (given the reaction to his comments regarding the success of the surge and his dwindling financial support for his Pro-Bush candidacy) he did the exact opposite. He plans to spend the next week selling his campaign on the need to win the Iraq war. While hitching his wagon to this star seems like a blissfully ignorant move, McCain believes the issue will “define his candidacy”. I believe this is the last time we’ll think of McCain as a serious presidential contender. While the Iraq war is important, the status quo, which he has been advocating, is neither publicly supported nor effective. The support for the Iraq war is hovering within five points of the worst it has ever been, and according to a CBS news poll, a majority of the public believes the United States should set a timetable for withdrawal.

Link

Link

The bottom line is, in order to make a winner out of any Iraq policy, he needs to split with the current administration and their 'been-there, done-that' Iraq policy. For the last couple of months he has been the strongest supporter of the surge outside the Whitehouse, this coupled with his politically motivated assessment of security in Baghdad shows people he is not the straight-talking maverick he was in the 2000 campaign. The Straight-Talk express has stalled and it is being towed by the eleventh amendment of GOP loyalty. While that may guarantee him no “black-baby” ads during the primary, it will not win him votes from the general public. Therefore, barring any massive policy splits with the Whitehouse, the McCain candidacy is dead.

FIRST POST OF THE NEW BLOG!

Welcome to 'At The Pleasure of the President...'! This is a political blog focusing on the executive branch of our government. While non-presidential news will occasionally make it on this blog, the main course will be news from the White House. But not just AT the White House, news from people working towards the White House will also appear, the primaries are a year away and already the field is heating up. It should be an exciting time for news. I hope you'll visit regularly.