Bush, Roberts and Government Secrecy

Ken AshfordBush & Co., Courts/Law, Supreme CourtLeave a Comment

The Bush White House is once again play hide-and-seek, this time with memos written by Supreme Court nominee John Roberts.  While they are turning over some documents from Roberts’ past, they are refusing to turn over documents from 1989 to 1993, when Roberts was deputy solicitor general.  The stated reason?  Attorney-client privilege.

A-C privilege is a sticky wicket, but it makes for a poor excuse in this case.  For one thing, as even conservatives acknowledge, the privilege belongs to the client, not the lawyer.  This means the A-C privilege is meant to protect the client, not the lawyer.  So I had to laugh when I read this from RedState.org’s Pejman Yousefzadeh.  He acknowledged that the privilege belongs to the client, but then writes:

Without the shield of privacy that is traditionally afforded to interoffice memoranda, lawyers will be deterred from spelling out their views and analysis in the honest manner that is necessary to ensure the most accurate appraisal possible of important legal issues.

Yup, the “shield” protects “lawyers” all of a sudden.

But let’s focus on the statement again and ask a simple question:  Is it even true?

Suppose you are a lawyer in the solicitor general’s office, and you are asked to render a legal opinion on an “important legal issue” to your client, the United States of America.  Aren’t you going to render your views and analysis “in an honest manner” regardless of whether or not that information becomes public?  After all, if you honestly argue that the Constitution says X, and you back it up in an internal memo, why would you change that view if you thought the public was going to read that memo?  You wouldn’t!

But Yousefzadeh’s comment demonstrates the dichotomy between the public face of the government and inner workings of the government.  It is a tacit acknowledgement that the government we see is a mere facade, and that what is REALLY going on should be secret.  It reveals the distrust that the Bush government has for the people of America—why would they go to such lengths to hide things from us?

Mind you, we’re not talking about classified information or anything else where there is a present national interest in keeping it hush-hush (although this administration, when it suits them, don’t care about that either).  We’re talking about a government lawyer’s professional opinions, derived from case law and other things in the public domain.  Revealing the legal viewpoints of a Supreme Court nominee are certainly pertinent to a full and fair hearing on his nomination.

This administration seems to forget that they are public servants.  Their role is to serve the people, not themselves, not their party, not their own ideology.  It is in the national interest that we, through our elected representatives, know as much as we can about a man who may play a pivotal role, as a Supreme Court justice, in our futures. 

So why the shadows?

We’ve see it all the time from this administration—Cheney refusing to reveal what was said when he met with oil executives to hash out a national energy policy; secret no-bid contracts being given to preffered corporations like Halliburton; attempts to keep disturbing photos from the public eye (caskets, Abu Ghraib)—the list goes on and on.

As reported here:

For the first time, a majority of Americans, 51%, say the Bush administration deliberately misled the public about whether Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction — the reason Bush emphasized in making the case for invading. The administration’s credibility on the issue has been steadily eroding since 2003.

If the Bush Administration wants to regain its trust with the American people, perhaps it should not be so secretive—or more accurately, selectively secret—about what it knows, and should be more open.  American people will forgive flaws and mistakes, but not attempts to hide them.  Or, as the saying goes, “it’s not the crime; it’s the cover-up”.  So why is Bush & Co. covering things up?  What will it take before they stop playing public-manipulation games, and just put their cards on the table?  Do they hate an open form of government, or what?

Kerry Was Right; Bush Was Wrong

Ken AshfordBush & Co., War on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

. . . about the “war on terror”

"I will use our military when necessary, but it is not primarily a military operation. It’s an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement, public-diplomacy effort.  And we’re putting far more money into the war on the battlefield than we are into the war of ideas. We need to get it straight."

— John Kerry, April 13, 2004, Meet The Press

Remember how the delusional comic-book-reading right lambasted Kerry over that?  Now read this:

Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the National Press Club on Monday that he had “objected to the use of the term ‘war on terrorism’ before, because if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution.” He said the threat instead should be defined as violent extremists, with the recognition that “terror is the method they use.”

Although the military is heavily engaged in the mission now, he said, future efforts require “all instruments of our national power, all instruments of the international communities’ national power.” The solution is “more diplomatic, more economic, more political than it is military,” he concluded.

WMDs, national security, social security—I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of watching Repubs riding the learning curve to get to the same place that the rest of us were several years ago.

Bush Pulls Access To Classified Info

Ken AshfordBush & Co., PlamegateLeave a Comment

Not pulled from Rove, but from certain members of Congress.

The date was 10/5/01, and here’s the executive order in which he does it.

What prompted such an action?  Well, apparently, some lawmakers had told the Washington Post that they had been informed that more terrorist attacks were likely, a conjecture derived from intelligence documents.  Bush couldn’t have things like honest intelligence agency assessments leaking out to the sheeple, so he yanked lawmakers’ access, saying:

We can’t have leaks of classified information.  It’s not in our nation’s interest.

So . . . rightly or wrongly, Bush limited access to classified information.  Not only was there no crime, but no investigation of a crime either.  “It’s not in our nation’s interest”, he said.  So why the double standard when it comes to Karl Rove and Scooter Libby?  Does partisan politics trump “national interest”?

With this White House, you bet it does.

Liberation?

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

It looks like the women of Iraq will have LESS freedoms now than they did under Saddam.  Speaking about Iraq’s new constitution, the AP writes:

Most worrying for women’s groups has been the section on civil rights, which some believe would significantly roll back women’s rights under a 1959 civil law enacted by a secular regime.

You would think that those who claim we went into Iraq to “liberate” the Iraqi people would be up in arms about this.  But what is the right-wing blogopshere saying?

[*chirp, chirp*]

Of course, we also have done a fine job of showing what humane creatures democracy fosters—like our quaint ways of raping boys and trying to pretend that we didn’t.

Lying As A Natural Habit

Ken AshfordBush & Co., Supreme CourtLeave a Comment

So Scottie sez that Supreme Court nominee John Roberts “doesn’t recall ever paying dues or being a member” of the conservative Federalist Society.

But John Roberts himself said that participatws in Federalist Society events and gave speeches for the organization.  And the Washington Post reported Monday that it had obtained from a liberal group a 1997-98 Federalist Society leadership directory listing Roberts, then a partner in a private law firm, as—not only being a member—but being a steering committee member in the group’s Washington chapter.

Now, personally, I don’t think it means a wit whether Roberts was a member or not.  I don’t LIKE the Federalist Society, but membership alone is about as disqualifying as a membership in the ACLU.

My issue deals with the White House lying.  Why do we get distortions from the White House on, it seems, everything?  Do these people know hoe to be honest and direct, or are they simply too pre-conditioned to shade the truth?

Quote Of The Day

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

By mid-June, the Iraqi forces had been given 306 million rounds of ammunition, roughly 12 bullets for each of Iraq’s 25 million people. But when one senior American officer involved was asked whether the Americans might end up arming the Iraqis for a civil war, he paused for a moment, then nodded. “Maybe,” he said.

But you really should read the whole article for the full flavor of the Iraqi mess:

As Iraq resumed its sovereignty after the period of American occupation, the new American team that arrived then, headed by Ambassador John D. Negroponte, had a withering term for the optimistic approach of their predecessors, led by L. Paul Bremer III.  The new team called the departing Americans “the illusionists,” for their conviction that America could create a Jeffersonian democracy on the ruins of Saddam Hussein’s medieval brutalism.

The Illusionists.  Sound like a good name for a band.  They should open for The Reality Based Community.

But here’s an example of why things are shitty in Iraq:

There have been persistent reports, mostly in Baghdad, of Shiite death squads in police uniforms abducting, torturing and killing Sunni Arab clerics, community leaders and others. In Baghdad, a police commando unit composed mainly of Shiites raided a hospital two weekends ago and abducted 13 Sunni men accused of being insurgents. Sixteen hours later, the bodies of 10 were delivered to a morgue, the victims of suffocation in a locked metal-topped police van in a temperature nearing 120 degrees.

Even the new Iraqi forces, hailed by the Bush administration as the key to an eventual American troop withdrawal, seem as likely to provoke a civil war as to prevent one. The 170,000 men already trained are dominated by Shiites and Kurds, in a proportion even higher than the 80 percent those groups represent in the population. Though there are thousands of Sunni Arabs in the forces, including some generals, Iraqi units that are sent to the worst hot spots are often dominated by Shiites and Kurds, some recruited from sectarian militias deeply hostile to Sunni Arabs.

Oh, remember the days when all of them threw roses at our feet?

The 12 Hour Gap

Ken AshfordPlamegateLeave a Comment

People are asking good questions:

What did White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card learn from Alberto Gonzales and when did he learn it…and what did he do with that knowledge? . . . Alberto Gonzales admitted that he called Andrew Card right after he was notified that the Justice Department had opened its investigation of the Plame leak…even though he formally notified The White House staff 12 hours later.

[Source]

And in the 12 hour interval, how many Blackberries and emails were the subject of erasing?  Just wondering….

The Voice of the Iraqi People (or “The Voice of the Iraqi People”)

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

Talk about echo chambers.

Someone at CNN noted that the U.S. military is apparently recycling quotes attributed to the Iraqi people.  For example, when a car bomb went off yesterday in Baghdad (killing 25 liberated Iraqis), the U.S. military released a news statement which contained this passage:

“‘The terrorists are attacking the infrastructure, the ISF and all of Iraq. They are enemies of humanity without religion or any sort of ethics. They have attacked my community today and I will now take the fight to the terrorists,’ said one Iraqi man who preferred not to be identified."

And when there was a car bomb that went off earlier this month (killing several liberated Iraqi children), after which the U.S. military released a news statement which contained this passage:

“‘The terrorists are attacking the infrastructure, the children and all of Iraq,’ said one Iraqi man who preferred not to be identified. ‘They are enemies of humanity without religion or any sort of ethics. They have attacked my community today and I will now take the fight to the terrorists.’"

Looks like a cog broke in the military propaganda machine.  Read more from CNN.

White House Purges?

Ken AshfordBush & Co., History, IraqLeave a Comment

It seems that some of the press gaggles archived on the White House website have, um, gone missing. 

For example, you can no longer access the press gaggle where Ari Fleischer says:

But there’s a bigger picture here, and this is what’s fundamental—the case for war against Iraq was based on the threat that Saddam Hussein posed because of his possession of weapons of mass destruction, chemical and biological, and his efforts to reconstitute a nuclear program. In 1991, everybody in the world underestimated how close he was to getting a nuclear weapon. The case for going to war against Saddam is as just today as it was the day the President gave that speech.

Read more.

What does this remind me of?

Oh, yeah.

BEFORE:

Stalin1

AFTER:

Stalin2

Heh Photo

Ken AshfordPlamegateLeave a Comment

This photo was taken in 2003.  Rove and Novak.

Rovenovakpals3

Rove’s button says—I’m not making this up—“I’m a source, not a target”.

“O, Arturo, prince of irony . . .”

For The Last Time, Plame Was Covert

Ken AshfordPlamegateLeave a Comment

A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked “(S)” for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials.

***

The paragraph identifying her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the “secret” level, two sources said. The CIA classifies as “secret” the names of officers whose identities are covert, according to former senior agency officials.

[Source]

Another R.I.P.

Ken AshfordPopular CultureLeave a Comment

TV Dinner Inventor Gerry Thomas Dies

Gerry Thomas, credited with inventing the TV dinner more than a half-century ago and giving it its singular name, has died at the age of 83.

Thomas died Monday, Terry Crowley at Messinger Mortuary said Wednesday. He had a long bout with cancer, relatives told The Arizona Republic.

Thomas was a salesman for Omaha, Neb.-based C.A. Swanson and Sons in late 1954 when he had the idea of packaging frozen meals in a segmented tray.

[Source]

Thomas will be buried in —

Funeral services will be held at —

The family has requested that —

Oh . . . I’m too tired to come up with a punchline . . . So, go for it.

Weu_junk05

Rove Being Investigated . . . For Lying To The FBI?

Ken AshfordPlamegateLeave a Comment

Inside sources are saying so:

White House deputy chief of staff Karl Rove did not disclose that he had ever discussed CIA officer Valerie Plame with Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper during Rove’s first interview with the FBI, according to legal sources with firsthand knowledge of the matter.

The omission by Rove created doubt for federal investigators, almost from the inception of their criminal probe into who leaked Plame’s name to columnist Robert Novak, as to whether Rove was withholding crucial information from them, and perhaps even misleading or lying to them, the sources said.