Gonzales to resign.
*** Update ***
Best quote so far from the blogosphere- Steve Clemons:
The inevitable certaily does take a long time in this administration.
by John Cole| 27 Comments
This post is in: Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
Gonzales to resign.
*** Update ***
Best quote so far from the blogosphere- Steve Clemons:
The inevitable certaily does take a long time in this administration.
by John Cole| 14 Comments
This post is in: Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
The thing to take away from this post by Jacob Sullum is that the Bush administration’s concession that it classifies information that presents no security risk at all but that would be politically damaging to the president. Actually, it’s worse than that. They think that any information that could be politically damaging to the president by definition is a threat to national security. They’re using the classification of information to hide evidence of wrongdoing in the White House. And that they’ll declassify the same information when doing so would be politically advantageous to the president.
***Meanwhile, the Department of Justice is claiming that the White House Administration Office is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act, a claim that would be farcical if it weren’t so flippin’ scary.
It also raises the question: If the adminstration office of the highest position in government–the office through which most White House information passes–is immune from the Freedom of Information Act, exactly what is the Freedom of Information Act for?
Silly Radley. The dhimmocrats are worse!
by John Cole| 27 Comments
This post is in: Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
Also wrong. Who would have thunk it?
A historian quoted by President Bush to help argue that critics of the administration’s Iraq policy echo those who questioned the U.S. effort to bring democracy to Japan after World War II angrily distanced himself from the president’s remarks Thursday.
“They [war supporters] keep on doing this,” said MIT professor John Dower. “They keep on hitting it and hitting it and hitting it and it’s always more and more implausible, strange and in a fantasy world. They’re desperately groping for a historical analogy, and their uses of history are really perverse.”
***Dower was decidedly unhappy with his 15 minutes of fame. “I have always said as a historian that the use of Japan [in arguing for the likelihood of successfully bringing democracy to Iraq] is a misuse of history,” he said when notified of the Bush quote.
He immediately directed me to a November 2002 New York Times op-ed where he outlined 10 reasons why “most of the factors that contributed to the success of nation-building in occupied Japan would be absent in an Iraq militarily defeated by the United States.”
Helping to rebuild a constitutional representative government (which is what we’re actually talking about) in a place that has already had one is immensely easier than laying a foundation on the sand of a political culture unsuited to such government. The social, political and economic structures of modern Japan made it vastly different from Iraq, c. 2003, and made it much more able to resume its constitutional parliamentary government. Japan’s cultural and ethnic homogeneity, its long history as a unified state, and the unifying symbol of the emperor all combined to make postwar Japan as unlike Iraq as could be imagined. So many of the conditions that explain Japan’s success after the war do not exist in Iraq. It is simple realism to acknowledge that two radically different societies are, in fact, radically different, and the development of democratic institutions in one may be impossible while it is possible in the other.
We are rapidly approaching the point that when the President addresses the nation, the only accurate and honest portion of the speech is when he states ‘Good morning.’ And since he is still in charge of things, even that is debatable.
Enough about Vietnam. What About Bush’s Japan Reference?Post + Comments (27)
by John Cole| 8 Comments
This post is in: Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
And the winner is- AG Gonzalez!:
NUMBER ONE WORST PROSECUTOR IN THE COUNTRY: THE WINNER IS U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL ALBERTO GONZALES
Alberto Gonzales – The Attorney General (AG) of the United States, in Washington D.C., Alberto Gonzales, earns the first place on our list of ten worst prosecutors in the United States for being what many have called the worst AG in our nation’s history. His involvement in the firings of nine United States Attorneys and the politicization of the Justice Department form the basis for which he was selected as the worst prosecutor in the United States in 2007. When he testified in front of the U.S. Congress, he allegedly committed perjury by his false statements, inconsistent statements, and all of his “I don’t knows.” Members of his own Department of Justice and the Head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, have contradicted his testimony. Even Arlen Specter, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee considers Gonzales to be a liar. Gonzales may be the target of a major investigation by a Special Prosecutor; he continues to be the subject of Congressional investigations, and should be investigated by the Integrity Office of the United States Department of Justice, and the State Bar of Texas Office of the Chief Disciplinary Counsel for his unethical actions while White House Counsel and Attorney General. Maybe Gonzales also earns this top spot by how United States Senator Charles Schumer sums up listening to the testimony of Gonzales under oath: “He tells the half-truth, the partial truth and anything but the truth.” Other than that, he has been a model government lawyer.
By comparison, disgraced and disbarred Mike Nifong of Duke Lacrosse fame is deemed to be only the third worst prosecutor in the country. At least one branch of this administration is striving for excellence. (via Scott Horton)
by John Cole| 45 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
Vietnamese are pissed off at Bush’s Vietnam remarks:
People in Vietnam, where opposition to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq is strong, said Thursday that Mr. Bush drew the wrong conclusions from the long, bloody Southeast Asian conflict.
“Doesn’t he realize that if the U.S. had stayed in Vietnam longer, they would have killed more people?” said Vu Huy Trieu of Hanoi, a veteran of the communist forces that fought American troops in Vietnam. “Nobody regrets that the Vietnam War wasn’t prolonged except Bush.”
He said U.S. troops could never have prevailed here. “Does he think the U.S. could have won if they had stayed longer? No way,” Trieu said.
Vietnam’s official government spokesman offered a more measured response when asked at a regular media briefing to comment on Bush’s speech to American veterans Wednesday.
“With regard to the American war in Vietnam, everyone knows that we fought to defend our country and that this was a righteous war of the Vietnamese people,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung said. “And we all know that the war caused tremendous suffering and losses to the Vietnamese people.”
We’ll file this under diplomacy.
by John Cole| 32 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity, War, Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
Yesterday, Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Bob Corker (R-TN) returned from a brief trip to Iraq, proclaiming that they saw “clear success” on the ground. But their definitive claims of witnessing success were seriously undermined by their traveling partner, Sen. George Voinovich (R-OH), who admitted to reporters that the senators had only spent 10-14 hours in total in Iraq.
Is this really just a game to all these guys?
Maybe this is why he was only there for 10-14 hours. It was all he needed.
by Tim F| 14 Comments
This post is in: Republican Crime Syndicate - aka the Bush Admin.
Kevin Drum summarizes:
Here’s the new press policy at the NHTSA, the federal agency in charge of auto safety. (1) Agency experts are no longer allowed to talk to reporters on the record. (2) The communications office (!) is not allowed to talk to reporters on the record. (3) The agency’s administrator is not available to talk on the record about the policy barring staffers from talking on the record. (4) Her chief of staff explained to a reporter that “we were finding a lot of stuff did not need to be on the record,” but then insisted that this statement itself was off the record.
Double yoi.