Cheney of Command
Posted: Thursday, June 28, 2007 11:14 AM by Countdown
Some of what we're working on for tonight...
Here's why many Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee might have voted to issue subpoenaes to the Bush administration, giving the effort broad bipartisan support. Previously, they may have been laboring under the misapprehension they hadn't been allowed to do so. Okay, not really, but in an interview with NPR this morning, Judiciary Committee
Chairman Patrick Leahy said that when Republicans had control of the committee last year, and then-Chairman Arlen Specter tried to issue subpoenaes in a similar
matter, Vice President Cheney paid a visit and told the Republicans on the committee they weren't ALLOWED to issue subpoenas, legally. Naturally, they caved under the pressure. Sen. Leahy also said that, by his count, the White House had ignored nine previous requests for documents related to President Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program.
If you think the White House is going to answer THOSE subpoenaes, today was the deadline for the White House to hand over documents linked to Harriet Miers and Sara Taylor in the firing over federal prosecutors. That deadline has come and gone. Guess what the White
House is asserting as its basis for withholding them? Executive privilege. Too easy.
One of the U.S. attorneys fired last year testified yesterday that Attorney General Gonzales considers 5 to 10 minutes an "extensive, unusual" amount of his time to devote to the decision of whether a man should be put to death. Even in a case where a body had not been recovered. That Mr. Charlton asked to meet with Mr. Gonzales, to ask him to reconsider, amounted to insubordination.
NICE WORK IF YOU CAN GET IT
Its Cheney series may be over, but in today's Washington Post we learn how a $2M no bid contract from the Department of Homeland Security ended up costing taxpayers $124M... all of it, going to the company Booz Allen Hamilton, that was merely supposed to fill a temporary staffing hole. This might have been the problem: The paper says taxpayers paid Booz Allen workers hourly rates that ranged from $42 to $383 an hour.
DAN'S DO-OVER
In an interview GQ magazine, outgoing White House counselor Dan Bartlett, with only one week left on the job, shares his one big regret: “There was never a more benign incident that turned into a bigger messaging problem than ‘Mission Accomplished.’ It set the wrong tone for what became a protracted, difficult mission. If there was ever a do-over, that would be
it.” And as for what former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld has said about the phrase/banner? Bartlett continues: “There was a comment Rumsfeld made in one of those books where he claimed that he took the phrase mission accomplished out of the speech itself but that he
couldn’t get the banner pulled down. That’s just wrong. I went back and looked at every draft of the speech. That phrase was never in it.” Countdown thinks many would argue with Mr. Bartlett on his assessment of the use of 'Mission Accomplished' as benign.
GRANITE STATE FOR GORE
Al Gore has the lead in the New Hampshire, and he isn't even running. As for the likelihood of a Gore candidacy, in the Sunday New York Times magazine last week, his daughter Kristin said he describes himself as "a recovering politician ... on Step No. 9 and he doesn't want to risk a relapse."
Among those definitely in the race, Senator Obama kept pace with Senator Clinton's fundraising prowess for the second quarter... something all but unthinkable at the start of this campaign.
WHY DO REPUBLICANS HATE THE TROOPS?
A House hearing yesterday investigating whether the surge in Iraq is working, instead became an excuse for Republicans on the committee to investigate whether Major General John Batiste is a true Republican, because he has criticized the war and their support of
it in tv ads for VoteVets.org. Looking out for the troops, nowhere near as important as looking out for number 1.
