U.S. & Local Politics

Journeys of a shared life - The Boston Globe

As the oldest son, Tagg Romney commandeered the way-back of the wagon, keeping his eyes fixed out the rear window, where he glimpsed the first sign of trouble. ”Dad!” he yelled. ”Gross!” A brown liquid was dripping down the back window, payback from an Irish setter who’d been riding on the roof in the wind for hours.
As the rest of the boys joined in the howls of disgust, [Mitt] Romney coolly pulled off the highway and into a service station. There, he borrowed a hose, washed down Seamus and the car, then hopped back onto the highway. It was a tiny preview of a trait he would grow famous for in business: emotion-free crisis management.

And veritably Bush 43-like powers of self-criticism and error correction.

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Not surprisingly, Jefferson maintains his innocence and claims that a precedent-setting raid of his Capitol Hill office was unconstitutional because it trampled on congressional independence and violated the constitutionally established separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.

A federal judge authorized last year’s 18-hour FBI search—the first ever at a Capitol Hill office–which led to the seizure of records, equipment and other incriminating evidence. Last month Jefferson argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia that the raid was unconstitutional.

Judicial Watch filed an amicus brief stating that the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause, which protects members of Congress from “intimidation by the executive and accountability before a possible hostile judiciary,” does not make the search of Jefferson’s office unconstitutional. The Speech or Debate Clause, the brief states, only protects members of Congress conducting legislative actions.

This does raise an interesting constitutional issue. Personally, I don’t want to see the FBI tromping all over Capitol Hill. But by the same token, Eliot Ness should not be completely forbidden to act. If only Alberto Gonzales was Eliot Ness…

Technorati Tags: FBI, Speech or Debate Clause, William Jefferson, Eliot Ness

I was a day late on this, but in this case, at least, better late than never.

‘Mistakes’ Made on Prosecutors, Gonzales Says - New York Times

He said he had rejected an earlier idea, which the White House attributed to Ms. Miers, to replace all 93 United States attorneys, the top federal prosecutors in their regions. “I felt that was a bad idea,” Mr. Gonzales said, “and it was disruptive.”

Replacing all 93 U.S. attorneys is not just a bad idea. It is a virtually treasonous idea. What an awful precedent that would set … completely politicizing the criminal justice system. May Harriet Miers rot in well deserved oblivion for proposing this assault on the Constitution.

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DenverPost.com - Norton will join Royal Dutch Shell
Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton will join oil giant Royal Dutch Shell as a general counsel in its exploration and production business in mid-January, working primarily out of Colorado.

Norton, who stepped down from Interior in March, is a longtime Colorado resident who served two terms as state attorney general in the 1990s. During her tenure at Interior, she drew fire from environmentalists and praise from industry groups.

Shell said in a statement Wednesday that Norton, 52, will “provide and coordinate legal services” for its unconventional-resources unit, which is developing and testing proprietary technology to recover oil from shale and extra-heavy oils.

What’s really remarkable about this is that she’s going from a Cabinet job where she reported directly to the President of the United States and was in the line of succession, to a non-management job in a minor subsidiary of Shell. Hard to tell, but looks like she’s at least three layers down.

That tells us where Shell thinks the US government ranks in the big scheme of things….

If I did these things, I would be in jail. Why isn’t Sandy Berger in jail?

The non-coverage of this story still seems awfully fishy…

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Clinton’s national security adviser removed classified documents from the National Archives, hid them under a construction trailer and later tried to find the trash collector to retrieve them, the agency’s internal watchdog said Wednesday.

The report was issued more than a year after Sandy Berger pleaded guilty and received a criminal sentence for removing the documents.

Berger pleaded guilty to unlawfully removing and retaining classified documents. He was fined $50,000, ordered to perform 100 hours of community service and was barred from access to classified material for three years.

Officials told The Associated Press at the time of the thefts that the documents were highly classified and included critical assessments about the Clinton administration’s handling of the millennium terror threats as well as identification of America’s terror vulnerabilities at airports and seaports.

Inspector General Paul Brachfeld reported that National Archives employees spotted Berger bending down and fiddling with something white around his ankles.

The employees did not feel at the time there was enough information to confront someone of Berger’s stature, the report said.

Later, when Berger was confronted by Archives officials about the missing documents, he lied by saying he did not take them, the report said.

Brachfeld’s report included an investigator’s notes, taken during an interview with Berger. The notes dramatically described Berger’s removal of documents during an October 2, 2003, visit to the Archives.

Berger took a break to go outside without an escort while it was dark. He had taken four documents in his pockets.

“He headed toward a construction area. … Mr. Berger looked up and down the street, up into the windows of the Archives and the DOJ [Department of Justice], and did not see anyone,” the interview notes said.

He then slid the documents under a construction trailer, according to the inspector general. Berger acknowledged that he later retrieved the documents from the construction area and returned with them to his office.

“He was aware of the risk he was taking,” the inspector general’s notes said. Berger then returned to the Archives building without fearing the documents would slip out of his pockets or that staff would notice that his pockets were bulging.

The notes said Berger had not been aware that Archives staff had been tracking the documents he was provided because of earlier suspicions from previous visits that he was removing materials. Also, the employees had made copies of some documents.

In October 2003, the report said, an Archives official called Berger to discuss missing documents from his visit two days earlier. The investigator’s notes said, “Mr. Berger panicked because he realized he was caught.”

The notes said that Berger had “destroyed, cut into small pieces, three of the four documents. These were put in the trash.”

After the trash had been picked up, Berger “tried to find the trash collector but had no luck,” the notes said.

Significant portions of the inspector general’s report were redacted to protect privacy or national security.

Obama seeks to settle racial doubts - Tom Curry - MSNBC.com

WASHINGTON - If the Democrats choose Sen. Barack Obama to be their presidential nominee in 2008, will his skin color and his name cost him enough votes to lose the election? Signaling that he knows this worry is on some Democrats’ minds, Obama addressed the issues of skin color and identity during his tour of New Hampshire last weekend.

The terrible thing is that he’ll never know if race was an issue unless he wins.

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Olympic bomber: Supermax is driving me insane - CNN.com

FLORENCE, Colorado (AP) — Olympic bomber Eric Rudolph laments in a series of letters to a newspaper that the maximum-security federal prison where he is spending the rest of his life is designed to drive him insane.

“It is a closed-off world designed to isolate inmates from social and environmental stimuli, with the ultimate purpose of causing mental illness and chronic physical conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and arthritis,” he wrote in one letter to The Gazette of Colorado Springs.

Rudolph wrote that he spends 23 hours a day in his 7-by-12-foot cell, his only exercise confined to an enclosed area he described as a “large empty swimming pool” divided into “dog-kennel style cages.”

“Using solitary confinement, Supermax is designed to inflict as much misery and pain as is constitutionally permissible,” he wrote in a letter.

Excellent.

Technorati Tags: supermax, Eric Rudolph

Think Progress » CQ Analyst Suggests ‘Rumsfeld’s Leaving Is Just The Beginning,’ Cheney Might Be Next

Appearing on MSNBC this afternoon, Congressional Quarterly political analyst Craig Crawford speculated that, as “neocons are heading for the hills,” Dick Cheney may be the next to leave the administration. He claimed the Vice President’s “authority is waning, if not gone.” “And my point is why would he want to stick around in this environment?” he asked. “All I’m seeing is a man getting isolated more and more.”

If you read the full transcript below, Chris Matthews rightly suggests that Crawford is an idiot.

Fearless Voices | Bella DePaulo: Barack Obama for President? Who’s the Decider? | The Huffington Post

Colin Powell, had he run in 2000, was poised to be the ultimate uniter. He was a Republican embraced by Democrats, and an African-American adored across the lines of color and creed. In a nation never quite at peace with issues of race, the mere presence of an African American atop the Republican ticket could have offered hope for a better and less fractious country. Instead, the 2000 election split the electorate nearly down the middle, and the candidate with the short end of the popular vote took the White House. Four years later, even more Americans were passionate about politics, but as many seemed driven to the polls by scorn for the opposing candidate as by unmitigated devotion to their own.

When I hear scholars and pundits claim that single men lead “warped lives” until they marry and become magically transformed, and when I read that bachelors “eat poorly, carouse too much, drive too fast,” and when I am treated to the thousandth rendition of the morality tale of how a young and foolish George W. Bush was saved from a life of alcoholism and recklessness by the firm admonitions of wife Laura, I remember Colin and Alma Powell. I think about what might have been, had it not been for the restraint of a spouse.”

This is absolutely ridiculous. So it’s Alma Powell’s fault? Because she asserted herself in an eminently sane and humane way?

Technorati Tags: obama, colin powell, alma powell