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Real "Advise And Consent"
Armando over at DailyKos posted this article from Yoo and Paulsen at the LA Times. Let's ignore the snarky implication of "Where were these guys on Robert's?", and move forward to what is obvious--that this is the approach the Senate should be taking on all nominees.
The administration's stealth strategy assumes that it is improper for senators to ask, or for a nominee to answer, a question about Roe vs. Wade or any other substantive constitutional question. This has things exactly backward. The Constitution not only permits such questioning, it arguably requires it. Although the Constitution makes judges independent after appointment, it sets up an explicitly political appointment process before a judge is approved. Why on Earth would determining a nominee's approach to interpreting the Constitution be thought to be out of bounds, before giving her a lifetime appointment to do exactly that?
Is there any line of inquiry that the Constitution does not permit? Yes. It would be improper to try to exact a pledge as to how a nominee will rule in future cases. As long as the inquiry stops short of that, it does not violate the Constitution's protection of judicial independence, nor does it violate judicial ethics. Parties before the courts are entitled to judges who will consider their cases without bias. But they are not entitled to judges who have no views of the law. An open mind is one thing; an empty head is another.
Well said.
The "Oh no! Karl may get served" panic is setting in at the WH. Fitzmas is definitely in the air......
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9757854/
Post-Rove thinking under way at White House
Bush administration mulls effects of CIA leak case
________________________
However, you do have to hand it to the Repubs on the team mentality they have in crisis. This is how the story ends...
"Another former administration official said the key to the future for the White House will be restoring unity within the party. "Everyone in the Republican Party needs to figure out how to stick together and get things done in a constructive manner," he said. "That hides all sorts of fault lines."
_____________
And that people is the true key to past GOP success. Dems have not figured out how to really stick together to hide the fault lines that will honestly always be there. You pick a candidate too liberal, the conservative Dems have issues and are vulnerable to GOP pickup. You pick a candidate to moderate or conservative and the hard left stays home or flirt with Nader. It's not that the Repubs don't have similar issues, they just hide them better. Something alot of online activist Dems need to work on.
Please check out karen's fabulous picture on the front page.
There is a similar title on the front page of HuffPo, but their picture from AP ain't NOTHIN" compared to our own intrepid White Photog on the scene, Karen.
Culture of Corruption crumbling as aides find the backbone to speak out...
Aide Says FEMA Ignored Warnings
Testimony Covers Communication as Levees Breached
By Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 21, 2005; Page A01
For 16 critical hours, Federal Emergency Management Agency officials, including former director Michael D. Brown, dismissed urgent eyewitness accounts by FEMA's only staffer in New Orleans that Hurricane Katrina had broken the city's levee system the morning of Aug. 29 and was causing catastrophic flooding, the staffer told the Senate yesterday.
Marty Bahamonde, sent to New Orleans by Brown, said he alerted Brown's assistant shortly after 11 a.m. that Monday with the "worst possible news" for the city: The Category 4 hurricane had carved a 20-foot breach in the 17th Avenue Canal levee.
~snip~
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/20/AR2005102000858.html
Colonel Finally Saw Whites of Their Eyes
By Dana Milbank
Thursday, October 20, 2005; A04
As Colin Powell's right-hand man at the State Department, Larry Wilkerson seethed quietly during President Bush's first term. Yesterday, Colonel Wilkerson made up for lost time.
He said the vice president and the secretary of defense created a "Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal" that hijacked U.S. foreign policy. He said of former defense undersecretary Douglas Feith: "Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man." Addressing scholars, journalists and others at the New America Foundation, Wilkerson accused Bush of "cowboyism" and said he had viewed Condoleezza Rice as "extremely weak." Of American diplomacy, he fretted, "I'm not sure the State Department even exists anymore."
And how about Karen Hughes's efforts to boost the country's image abroad? "It's hard to sell [manure]," Wilkerson said, quoting an Egyptian friend.
The man who was chief of staff at the State Department until early this year continued: "If you're unilaterally declaring Kyoto dead, if you're declaring the Geneva Conventions not operative, if you're doing a host of things that the world doesn't agree with you on and you're doing it blatantly and in their face, without grace, then you've got to pay the consequences."
With Bush's approval ratings dropping below 40 percent, the administration's vaunted loyalty and party discipline are suffering. David Frum, a former White House speechwriter, is campaigning against confirmation of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. Bruce Bartlett, who worked for the president's father, was fired by his think tank this week because he is publishing a book titled "Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy."
~snip~
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/19/AR2005101902246_pf.html
Anyone want to claim this Congressman as their own?
Democrat forces US House vote on Bush wage order
Thu Oct 20, 2005 7:33 PM ET
By Peter Szekely
WASHINGTON, Oct 20 (Reuters) - A Democratic lawmaker on Thursday moved to force a showdown in the Republican-led House of Representatives over President George W. Bush's order to allow contractors to cut the wages of Hurricane Katrina clean-up workers.
Rep. George Miller of California filed a measure under a never-before-used parliamentary procedure that would require a House vote on whether to overturn Bush's Sept. 8 order allowing federal contractors to pay workers in hurricane-ravaged states less than local prevailing wages.
Miller's maneuver under the 1976 National Emergencies Act requires a vote by Nov. 4 on an issue that has Democrats united and Republicans divided.
If Republican leaders fail to hold a vote on Miller's joint resolution by Nov. 4, the act allows him to demand that one be held within three days, according Miller spokesman Tom Kiley.
Because no one has ever used the emergencies act's "fast track" procedure to force a vote, Kiley could not rule out some unforeseen parliamentary obstacle by Republican leaders. But he added, "It's hard to imagine what they'd come up with."
Miller, the ranking Democratic on the House Education and Workforce Committee, filed a bill in September to overturn Bush's executive order. Despite its 203 co-sponsors -- all House Democrats and one independent -- there is no assurance that Republican leaders would have allowed the 435-member body to vote on second-guessing a Republican president.
But another 37 House Republicans recently wrote Bush to ask him to reinstate the prevailing wages required under the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act.
Kiley said he was optimistic that many of those Republicans would join Democrats in voting to overturn Bush's order. Senate Democrats are considering a similar maneuver, Kiley said.
~snip~
http://today.reuters.com/PrinterFriendlyPopup.aspx?type=bondsNews&storyID=uri:2005-10-20T233429Z_01_N20248882_RTRIDST_0_HURRICANES-WAGES.XML
more Culture of Corruption and Cronyism...
from today's Wapo
Danger Point In Spy Reform
Getting intelligence right is a life-or-death matter for America, and so far, it's only partly right. The "Gosslings" have made a mess at the CIA.
By David Ignatius
Friday, October 21, 2005; Page A23
The most dangerous moment in any transition is halfway through, when the old structure is badly weakened but the new one isn't yet strong enough to carry the load. That's where the Bush administration stands in its incomplete effort to restructure the intelligence community.
The intelligence reshuffle was the product of two warring impulses that have been apparent in this administration's foreign policy from the start -- a "realist" support for strong, independent spy agencies and a "neoconservative" mistrust, bordering on outright hatred, of the CIA as a supposed obstacle to the president's goals.
The intelligence-reform impulse led President Bush, after some foot-dragging, to back the recommendations of the bipartisan Sept. 11 commission by creating a director of national intelligence to oversee the nation's 15 spy agencies and appointing veteran diplomat John Negroponte to fill the post. But before the new structure was in place, the president tapped Republican Rep. Porter Goss as director of the CIA. Goss was accompanied by a team of right-wing congressional staffers, quickly dubbed the "Gosslings" at Langley, who set out to cuff the CIA's headstrong Directorate of Operations into line.
The aim was to revitalize U.S. intelligence. But rather than consolidate and streamline the overlapping agencies, the new system has added even more boxes to the organization chart. The result has been a further layering of the intelligence community's bureaucracy and further demoralization among career intelligence officers. "Adding more layers causes indecision and confusion in the ranks, and leads to a wait-and-see, risk-averse attitude," warns Richard Stoltz, a former head of the CIA's clandestine service.
~snip~
The really dangerous problems, though, lie in the heart of the CIA -- the Directorate of Operations (DO), which recruits the spies and runs the covert actions. The Gosslings have made a real mess of things, driving out a half-dozen top officers, most recently the DO's No. 2 official, 35-year veteran Robert Richer. Why these inexperienced congressional staffers thought they had better judgment than career professionals, many of them former military officers, is beyond me.
I'm told that Goss has now gotten warnings from the White House that he should clip the wings of the head Gossling, his chief of staff, Patrick Murray. Goss should heed that advice before even more officers quit in disgust at the political meddling. And Goss himself may be part of the problem. His laid-back style (liaison meetings with foreign intelligence services on Tuesdays and Thursdays only, please) is said to have led Negroponte to tell one colleague that Goss was still working a "congressional schedule."
The half-baked intelligence reorganization should go back in the oven. Negroponte, supported by President Bush, must finish the process -- and consolidate this overlayered bureaucracy. Getting intelligence right is a life-or-death matter for America, and, so far, it's only partly right.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/20/AR2005102001637.html
Three Marines, one soldier killed in Iraq
Close to 2,000 U.S. troops killed since March 2003 invasion
Updated: 9:17 a.m. ET Oct. 21, 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Three U.S. Marines were killed by a roadside bomb west of Baghdad and in a separate attack a U.S. soldier was killed in Hit, northwest of the capital, the U.S. military said on Friday.
The latest deaths bring the number of U.S. servicemen and women who have died in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to at least 1,992.
The U.S. military said the three Marines had been on patrol when their vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device.
“During the subsequent engagement, Marines killed two insurgents and detained four others suspected of involvement in the attack,” the statement said.
The soldier killed in Hit died of wounds sustained in “an indirect fire attack,” a term usually applied to mortar or rocket attacks.
BREAKING: DeLay’s Lawyer Lies About MoveOn
Tom DeLay’s attorney, Dick DeGuerin, claims that the judge presiding over DeLay’s criminal case in Texas, Bob Perkins, should be disqualified. A central part of his claim is that an organization that Perkins has donated to in the past, MoveOn, is selling t-shirts with Tom DeLay’s mug shot:
DEGUERIN: The latest thing on MoveOn.org’s website, they are trying to raise money by selling t-shirts with Tom DeLay’s mug shot on the t-shirts. And I just don’t think that it looks right for the judge sitting on Congressman DeLay’s case to have contributed to an organization such as that.
According to MoveOn’s Washington director Tom Mattzie, this claim is false. Mattzie told ThinkProgress this morning that MoveOn has “never sold any t-shirts with Tom DeLay’s mug shot” on their website or otherwise. You can go to their website and see that he’s right.
Nevertheless, the media is already picking it up DeGuerin’s comments as if they were true. From the Associated Press:
The judge, Bob Perkins, has been a contributor to Democratic causes. DeLay’s attorney pointed out Friday that those causes include MoveOn.org, which is now selling a T-shirt with DeLay’s picture on it.
Dick Degurin wasn’t immediately available for comment. We’ll update you if he gets back to us.
Miers Firm Received Bush Campaign Payments
By FRANK BASS
ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON (AP) -
George W. Bush's rising political fortunes provided a windfall for Harriet Miers' law firm.
Campaign records show Bush's Texas gubernatorial campaigns paid Miers a total of $163,000 in legal fees, most of it for work done during the future president's 1998 re-election bid.
Some senators are planning to explore Miers' legal work for Bush during her confirmation process to be the newest Supreme Court justice, but the White House says it won't release any memos detailing that work.
"I think people across the country recognize the importance of attorney-client privilege," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
Reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission show that two payments of $70,000 were made to Miers' Locke, Purnell, Rain and Harrell firm in Dallas within a month of each other during the 1998 campaign. Another $16,000 in payments were made between March and December 1999.
The 1998 totals dwarfed the $7,000 Bush paid Miers' firm during his first run for governor in 1994, and are extremely large for campaign legal work in Texas, an expert said.
"I'm baffled," said Randall B. Wood, a partner in the Austin firm of Ray, Wood and Bonilla, and former director of Common Cause of Texas. "I've never seen that kind of money spent on a campaign lawyer. It's unprecedented."
more...
http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/bw-scotus/2005/oct/21/102107194.html
Please check out karen's fabulous picture on the front page.
There is a similar title on the front page of HuffPo, but their picture from AP ain't NOTHIN" compared to our own intrepid White Photog on the scene, Karen.
Posted by: Casey Morris at October 21, 2005 10:47 AM
Why THANK YOU, Miz Casey!
But I just got lucky--noting the dark foreboding cloud drifting ominously over the White House just as the World Can't Wait people were breaking down after another successful day of speaking truth to power...
We all have noted the silent but potent sense of panic that seems to emanate from the building. Yesterday the Secret Service cleared the entire park, ostensibly because of a "strange odor", but actually because a long line of black vans and limos had to exit the White House.
We hoped it was heading for lawyers' offices.
Christine and I have been holding candlelight vigils from 6-8 pm at the same location, and so we and the WCW people have had similar experiences of speaking directly to people wandering by to just witness the quiet sense of conflict within. It feels like a witnessing too. Occasionally, we each find ourselves turning towards the large white structure, and noting the surrealness of what we can observe, while pondering the next few weeks and what they will bring.
We all get the willies.
Many are simply drawn to the location and so, even though it is cold and gray today, and rain is in the forecast, and Samuel Barber's "Adagio for Strings' is playing on the sound system of the coffee shop I am in as I write this, I am going to shut down and head home for the camera. to try and document what well may be the beginning of the end of the Bush regime. Who the hell knows?
Witnessing. It's what for breakfast, today, and for the next weeks.
Don't forget to take action though. We need to keep on them. All the time.
Anyone want to claim this Congressman as their own?
Posted by: dwahzon at October 21, 2005 10:58 AM
He WAS my Congressman in 2000! I lived in his district. I miss those days...
Brand new post from John Conyers on dailykos
Nonpartisan GAO Confirms Security Flaws in Voting Machines
by Congressman John Conyers
Fri Oct 21, 2005 at 08:50:27 AM PDT
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report today I requested with other Members Of Congress. In sum, the GAO found that "some of [the] concerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes." GAO found that these concerns "merit the focused attention of federal state and local authorities responsible for election administration."
What does this mean? Much has been made about this issue during the 2004 Ohio election debaclehere on DailyKos and elsewhere, however, this is the first time Congress' investigatory arm has weighed in on the problems with our voting machines. The GAO studied the work of others and ultimately put their stamp of approval on it. That lends important credibility to the cause of election reform generally, aand more specifically to requiring that every machine have a voter verified paper ballot that is used in election days audits and, if discrepancies are found in those audits, becomes the official record for the election.
~snip~
More specifics about what GAO found: Serious problems were identified regarding the security control system, access controls, hardware controls, and the voter-verified paper audit trail system. Among the security shortcomings identified by GAO:
~snip~
go here to see the list from the GAO report:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2005/10/21/115027/30
Anyone want to claim this Congressman as their own?
Posted by: dwahzon at October 21, 2005 10:58 AM
FE SAYS PROUDLY: Rep. Miller represents Solano and Contra Costa counties, which are right next door to my county, Alameda, which has a different Congressperson by the name of:
Ms. Barbara Lee.
You know the dictum about the military-industrial war complex... Here it is in action as reported by William Arkin of the Washington Post in his Early Warning column.
Tommy Franks: Paid Patriot
Retired Gen. Tommy Franks -- nominee to be czar of just about everything; Midland, Texas high school graduate one year ahead of First Lady Laura Bush; Republican Convention speaker; Presidential Medal of Freedom wearer and frequent public reader of the Constitution -- has been caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
The Southern New Jersey Courier-Post reported this week that veterans were angered and initially taken aback when they learned that almost $25,000 in taxpayer money was being used to help pay Franks's $75,000 speaking fee for an upcoming October 29 appearance in Camden.
Since his withdrawal from the military in 2003, Franks has been on the speaker circuit. A quick check on the web found him giving speeches at the Networked Economy Summit (October 2003), National Association of Chain Drug Stores Foundation (December 2003), American Farm Bureau (December 2003), Los Angeles University of Judaism’s 2004 Public Lecture Series (February 2004), International Futures Industry Conference (March 2004), TechNet International 2004 (May 2004), Bethesda Foundation (May 2004), Florida Forum (October 2004), Independence Bowl Foundation (December 2004), Credit Union National Association Governmental Affairs Conference (February 2005), Country Radio Broadcasters, Inc. (August 2005), The Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation (September 2005), and the Community Bankers Association of Oklahoma (September 2005).
HIS APPEARANCES ARE OPEN TO PRINT PRESS ONLY -- NO RADIO OR TELEVISION -- AND TAPE RECORDERS ARE NOT ALLOWED. [caps added]
In May, the Tampa Bay business journal reported that Franks was sharing his artillery expertise by joining the board of directors of Outback Steakhouse, where he is getting $60,000 in cash and stock, as well as $100,000 in restricted stock.
~snip~
go here to read more and see the long list of other retired military officers now cashing in:
http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2005/10/tommy_frank_pat.html#more
BREAKING: DeLay's Lawyer Lies About MoveOn
Posted by: monkey at October 21, 2005 11:43 AM
Correct. MoveOne is not selling DeLay mug shot t-shirts. To get your DeLay mug shot t-shirt, you'll have to go to Cafe Press (scroll down a bit):
http://www.cafepress.com/thewhitehouse/866007
DEVELOPING STORY ON CNN: Police to disrupt suspicious package near Capitol
Truth or fiction?
Did anyone else see this October 12 article: The Nexus of Politics and Terror by Keith Olbermann on the 'coincidence' of 'terror events' - a change in alert status, an alert, a warning - by this administration immediately following a political downturn for the administration?
Bloggermann identifies the last 13 of these 'coincidences' here:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9665308/
Goodwill Envoy Hughes Claims Saddam Hussein Gassed 'hundreds of Thousands' of Iraqis
Skip directly to the full story.
By Chris Brummitt Associated Press Writer
Published: Oct 21, 2005
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - U.S. envoy Karen Hughes on Friday defended Washington's decision to go to war against Iraq in front of a skeptical audience, saying Saddam Hussein had gassed to death "hundreds of thousands" of his own people. A State Department official later said she misspoke about the number.
Hughes, undersecretary of state for public diplomacy, made the comment before a group of Indonesian students who repeatedly attacked her about Washington's original rationale for the war, Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction. No such arms were ever discovered.
"The consensus of the world intelligence community was that Saddam was a very dangerous threat," Hughes said days after the ousted dictator went on trial in Baghdad on charges of murder and torture in a 1982 massacre of 148 Shiites in the town of Dujail.
"After all, he had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people," she told a small auditorium with around 100 students. "He had murdered hundreds of thousands of his own people using poison gas."
Although at least 300,000 Iraqis are said to have been killed during Saddam's decades-long rule - only about 5,000 are believed to have been gassed to death in a 1988 attack in the Kurdish north.
Hughes twice repeated the statement after being challenged by journalists. A State Department official later called The Associated Press to say she misspoke. The official, who was traveling with Hughes, spoke on condition of anonymity because the official was not authorized to talk publicly to the media.
more...
http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGBFUQSI2FE.html
Rice: Syria Must Be Held Accountable
By GEORGE GEDDA, Associated Press Writer
22 minutes ago
TUSCALOOSA, Ala. - The international community must find a way to hold Syrian authorities accountable for the death of a leading Lebanese reformer, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday.
Rice said she was deeply troubled by a U.N. report implicating Syria in the killing last February of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
Rice spoke to reporters after the release of a report by U.N. investigator Detlev Mehlis that established a clear link between Syrian officials and their Lebanese allies in Hariri's murder. She declined to discuss next steps, beyond saying that some kind of international mechanism must be established to ensure that Syria is held accountable.
Rice said there is strong support among U.N. members for an extension of Mehlis' mandate, perhaps until Dec. 15.
"Accountability is going to be very important for the international community," she said.
At the State Department, spokesman Adam Ereli declined to say what course of action the Bush administration might take. But when asked if military force would be used against Syria, he said, "We are seeking a diplomatic solution to this problem."
more...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051021/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_syria
Miers is no O'Connor...
O'Connor Calls for Clearer Detainee Rules
WEST POINT, N.Y. - Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on Thursday spoke out for clearer and more high-minded rules governing the detention and interrogation of prisoners in the war on terrorism.
Addressing cadets at West Point, O'Connor said incidents from Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba have shown confusion among soldiers and the need for guidance.
While the Supreme Court has ruled that prisoners should have a meaningful opportunity to challenge indefinite detention, O'Connor said the court should not and cannot give broad answers to policy questions.
The president and Congress have done little to date to clarify the situation, she said.
However, she cited fundamental national values that the rules should reflect, citing "belief in protecting the basic humanity of all people, including our adversaries. We will not stoop to the atrocities of some of our adversaries."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/west_point_o_connor
October 21, 2005
Kansas High Court Rejects Harsher Sentencing for Gay Teens
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 12:58 p.m. ET
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) -- Kansas cannot punish illegal underage sex more severely if it involves homosexual conduct, the state's highest court ruled unanimously Friday in a case watched by national groups on both sides of the gay rights debate.
The Supreme Court said in a unanimous ruling that a law that specified such harsher treatment and led to a 17-year prison sentence for an 18-year-old defendant ''suggests animus toward teenagers who engage in homosexual sex.''
''Moral disapproval of a group cannot be a legitimate state interest,'' said Justice Marla Luckert, writing for the high court.
The defendant, Matthew R. Limon, has been behind bars since he was convicted in 2000 of performing a sex act on a 14-year-old boy. Had one of them been a girl, the state's ''Romeo and Juliet'' law would have dictated a maximum sentence of 15 months.
The court said Limon should be resentenced within 30 days as if the law treated illegal gay sex and illegal straight sex the same, and it struck language from the law that resulted in the different treatment.
''We are very happy that Matthew will soon be getting out of prison. We are sorry there is no way to make up for the extra four years he spent in prison simply because he is gay,'' said Limon's attorney James Esseks, of the American Civil Liberties Union's Gay and Lesbian Rights Project.
National health groups and the National Association of Social workers had filed legal arguments supporting Limon's position. A conservative law group, Orlando, Fla.-based Liberty Counsel, helped prepare written arguments from 25 legislators in support of the law.
Limon and the other boy, identified only as M.A.R., lived at a group home for the developmentally disabled. In court, an official described M.A.R. as mildly mentally retarded and Limon as functioning at a slightly higher level but not as an 18-year-old.
Limon's attorneys described the relationship with the younger boy as consensual and suggested that they were adolescents experimenting with sex.
Attorney General Phill Kline's office has described Limon as a predator, noting that he already has two similar offenses on his criminal record. Kline contended that such a behavior pattern warranted a tough sentence and that courts should leave sentencing policy to the Legislature.
His office had no immediate comment on the ruling.
Kansas law prohibits any sexual activity involving a person under 16, regardless of the context. The 1999 ''Romeo and Juliet'' law specifies short prison sentences or probation for sexual activity when an offender is under 19 and the age difference between participants is less than four years -- but only for opposite-sex encounters.
A lower court had said the state could justify the harsher punishment as protecting children's traditional development, fighting disease or strengthening traditional values.
Friday's ruline said the Kansas law was too broad to meet those goals.
''The statute inflicts immediate, continuing and real injuries that outrun and belie any legitimate justification that may be claimed for it,'' Luckert wrote.
Posted by: Karen at October 21, 2005 11:53 AM
More on White House Watch:
Andy Card has cancelled his weekend trip to Rhode Island for fundraising.
According to a spokesperson, "Mr. Card HAD to be at CampDavid this weekend at the request of the President".
I see. Chief of Staff summoned to Camp David for the weekend.
White House Watch will be updated when we get,um, an update.
White House Watch:
Via Froomkin, via AmericaBlog:
Guess who got his website up overnight?
http://www.usdoj.gov/usao/iln/osc/index.html
DeLay Watch:
Last month I donated money to blog buddy, Majikthise, to help her get a ticket to cover the Delay perp walk and photograph it.
She has just put up a few photos and a report.
http://majikthise.typepad.com/photos/tom_delay_perp_walk/index.html
Friday humor:
A woman in a hot air balloon realized she was lost. She lowered her altitude and spotted a man in a boat below. She shouted to him, "Excuse
me, can you help me? I promised a friend I would meet him an hour ago, but I don't know where I am."
The man consulted his portable GPS and replied, "You're in a hot air balloon, approximately 30 feet above a ground elevation of 2346 feet above sea level. You are at 31 degrees, 14.97 minutes north latitude and 100
degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude.
She rolled her eyes and said, "You must be a Democrat." "I am," replied the man. "How did you know?" "Well," answered the balloonist, "everything you told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to do with your information, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've not been much help to me."
The man smiled and responded, "You must be a Republican." "I am," replied the balloonist. "How did you know?" "Well," said the man, "you don't know where you are or where you're going. You've risen to where you are, due
to a large quantity of hot air. You made a promise that you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but, somehow, now it's my fault."
This sounds like the same old stary for Karen Hughes--getting blasted again in yet another "American goodwill-building" tour of Muslim countries. This time, Indonesia:
Indonesians Challenge US Envoy in Lively Exchange
Tomi Soetjipto
Friday, October 21, 2005 by Reuters
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/1021-05.htm
JAKARTA - U.S. goodwill envoy Karen Hughes got a earful from a group of mostly female Indonesian Muslim students on Friday, who expressed anger at the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and attacked Washington's foreign policies.
U.S. Undersecretary of State for Public Diplomacy Karen Hughes (R) speaks during a discussion with a group of Indonesian Muslim students at the Syarif Hidayatullah University in Jakarta October 21, 2005. U.S. goodwill envoy Hughes got an earful from a group of mostly female Indonesian Muslim students on Friday, who expressed anger at the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq and attacked Washington's foreign policies. REUTERS/Crack Palinggi
Tasked by U.S. President George W. Bush to polish America's image overseas, the undersecretary of state for public diplomacy is in Jakarta to meet leading Muslim clerics and students during a tour of the world's most populous Muslim nation.
"Why does America always act as if they were the police of the world?," Barikatul Hikmah, a 20-year-old student at the Syarif Hidayatullah University asked Hughes.
Lailatul Qadar, a petite 19-year-old student wearing colorful headscarves, added: "It's Bush in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and maybe it's going to be in Indonesia, I don't know. Who's the terrorist? Bush or us?"
The U.S. embassy organized the session with some 15 students at the university, a moderate Islamic center of learning that has received U.S. funding and which produces some of the country's most influential Muslim thinkers.
Hughes, who was largely composed and subdued during the session, defended the invasion of Iraq as necessary to protect the United States following the September 11, 2001, attacks because the administration saw Saddam Hussein as a security threat.
"After all he had used weapons of mass destruction against his own people like he murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people using poison gas against them," she said.
"After September 11, the leaders of America had to look at the threat of the world in a very different way ... I think you have to understand the horror and the shocks that Americans went through."
Saddam Hussein is expected to face charges over a poison gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988 which killed about 5,000 people. He has said the deaths were the result of a battle nearby with Iranian forces, which also used gas.
Kurdish leaders say that during more than two years of oppression up to 200,000 Kurds were killed in purges and military campaigns, including the Anfal offensive in the late 1980s.
Saddam has also been accused of war crimes committed during Iraq's eight-year war with Iran, which he launched in 1980, in which both sides are accused of using chemical weapons.
FOCUS ON IRAQ
Most of the handpicked students who spoke at the one hour session in Jakarta focused on Iraq.
Indonesia has long had strong relations with the United States and is a key ally in the war against terrorism, especially in the wake of bomb attacks on Indonesian soil by Islamic militants linked to al Qaeda.
But Indonesian Muslims deeply opposed the invasion of Iraq and Bush has been the target of protesters' anger during periodic demonstrations against U.S. policies. Many accuse the U.S. government of also showing favoritism toward Israel.
Hughes is a close confidante and image-shaper of Bush with no previous experience in foreign diplomacy other than accompanying him abroad during trips in the first years of his presidency. On a five-day visit to Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey last month -- her first trip in the new job -- she also heard frank views from women in those countries.
Hughes is scheduled to visit Malaysia after Indonesia.
Another female student at the session said Iraqis should decide for themselves in their own time whether they wanted to establish a democratic government.
"Your country's foreign policy has created hostilities among Muslims," the student said.
Hughes' visit comes as the United States tries to limit damage from television images appearing to show U.S. soldiers burning the corpses of two Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and using the incident for
propaganda.
She was not asked about the incident at the university.
White House Watch will be updated when we get,um, an update.
Posted by: Casey Morris at October 21, 2005 01:50 PM
I cannot remember a time when so many were so pregnant with anticipation.
During the election year, I listened to some kind of dark music: Radiohead, Underworld, Massive Attack (all British) - sort of had a premonition that they wouldn't let Kerry win because he was too positive and life-affirming.
Now this morning on the way to work, http://www.kexp.org (local alternative station) played an interesting remix of one of Radiohead's songs that started off with a bunch of samples of W saying things like "terra" and "weapons" - I was looking for info on it on-line and came across this interesting review, on a site that talks of progressive music for progressive Muslims.
http://www.muslimwakeup.com/main/archives/2003/07/progressive_mus.php
I think without the internet I'd give up .. so nice now to see plans for a vigil once fatalities reach 2000 (reported) in Iraq, even though it's so tragic - just to see that so many people realize how horrendous and needless.. & also gratified to see the planning going on for a "walkout" on Nov. 2 by students opposed to the war & to recruitment for the military in schools.
Then the indictments coming down - just as heavy things drop because of gravity, houses of cards fall eventually. Maybe good these clowns are in office, exposed for all to see.