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The Daily Muck
Rep. Henry Waxman still wants emails. This time, he's asking Fred Fielding for RNC emails from current and former White House officials. He's asking specifically for email regarding Cheney's energy task force, but also for any email related to any investigation prior to March of this year. The deadline is August 17th. (Politico)
Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), who championed the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, said Tuesday that he will personally review Senate testimony of the two justices in order to see if their recent Supreme Court decisions conflict with promises and opinions they made in the Senate. Specter’s inquiry comes after the court has reversed long-standing precedents. (Politico)
Bechtel, an independent contractor with $1.8 billion in Iraq reconstruction contracts, has failed to meet its goals on over half of the projects it agreed to in contract, while several other projects have been canceled or reduced in scope. Guess that's what happens when USAID assigns only two overseers to a contract with 24 projects and over 150 subcontractors. (NY Times)
Bribery: a family affair. That’s true for a Texas family that has taken millions in bribes from contractors who were hoping to acquire military contracts for Iraq’s reconstruction. The sister of Maj. John L. Cockerham was the third person charged in connection with the case, following the arrests of Maj. Cockerham, an Army contracting and procurement officer, and his wife. No contractors have been named in the case. (AP)
Republican and Democratic leaders alike are hoping to rush through a long-delayed ethics bill before the upcoming August vacation. Before they can do that, they have to clear their biggest hurdle: Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). (Congressional Quarterly)
The U.S. has made it easy for the Iraqis to "stand up" when we stand down in a few years. That's because we are making sure they aren't burdened down by any weaponry or body armor. The Iraqi ambassador yesterday lamented the fact that since 2003, Iraq has been willing and eager to update its military arsenal, but the U.S. has been slow to sell. (U.S. News)
Federal Election statues allow candidates to fly charter planes, provided they reimburse the jet's owner the equivalent of a first class plane ticket. The massive discrepancy in value saves huge amounts of money for the campaigns, but it can sometimes put jet-laden supporters in awkward situations. (NY Times)
A new study released by a West Point think tank has labeled 95% of the detainees in Guantanamo "potential threats" to American interests in a study meant to turn the tide of public dissent against the current detentions. (NY Times)
Comments (19)
Jake D. wrote on July 26, 2007 10:00 AM:I knew backing Specter over Toomey was a bad choice. You see, even I am critical of Bush or some things ; )
petewsh61 wrote on July 26, 2007 10:22 AM:Should Specter find any conflict between Justice's testimony and current rulings, what can he and the Senate do about it?
peter wrote on July 26, 2007 10:42 AM:to answer petewsh61:impeach.
JNagarya wrote on July 26, 2007 11:00 AM:as with many government jobs, that is an option.
Should Specter find any conflict between Justice's testimony and current rulings, what can he and the Senate do about it?
Posted by: petewsh61
Date: July 26, 2007 10:22 AM
Impeach. Read the Constitution for yourself.
SueB wrote on July 26, 2007 11:01 AM:Today's Daily Digest had this: "Plus, NASA scientists have the best excuse ever to explain stolen hardware." I have been unable to find this article anywhere on the TPM sites. Searching "NASA" brings up the article from the other day about the meetings to support Republicans in danger of losing their seats, nothing more recent than that.
Nelly Bly wrote on July 26, 2007 11:04 AM:I don't have time at the moment to research the West Point think tank referred to above,the Combating Terrorism Center (link below), but I am interested in whether it is funded by the DoD.
As an aside, the CT Center has a notice on the first page of the website about its Chair, General (Retired) Wayne A. Downing dying on July 17 from a sudden illness.
regular lurker wrote on July 26, 2007 11:36 AM:Combating Terrorism Center
Lt. Col. Joseph H. Felter, director
There's info over at wikipedia. The center is only a few years old, created after 9/11 with private funding.
They've certainly wasted no time promoting the crap out of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combating_Terrorism_Center
Nelly Bly wrote on July 26, 2007 11:51 AM:More on the Combating Terrorism Center:
According to the Center annual report for the summer-fall of '06 (link below), the Center is a privately-funded center within the U.S. Military Academy's Department of Social Sciences. Ross Perot and George Gilmore are listed as initial supporters
The Center does not appear to registered as a non-profit business in any state nor are 990s online at the Foundation Center's 990 Finder.
I'd like to know if contributions to the Center are tax-deductibel even though the Center does not appear to be a legitimate non-profit.
slb wrote on July 26, 2007 12:37 PM:Good ol' Arlen, always getting greatly concerned about the lock on the barn door only after all the horses have fled. Too late now, Senator! He's only doing a bit of CYA to try to mollify the moderate supporters he has betrayed.
Impeach? Well, you can call for the impeachment of a judge for just about anything, I guess. But I think it would be very bad precedent indeed to try to impeach judges because you don't like the decisions they have rendered. You can't very well ask for guarantees as to how a judge will rule on a case he has not even heard yet, and any judge who would make such a guarantee would not be someone you would want on any court.
Unless you can unearth convincing evidence that Roberts's or Alito's testimony was perjured, or you can point to things they have done since their elevation to the Court that amount to serious breaches of judicial ethics, impeachment would not be appropriate.
slb wrote on July 26, 2007 12:40 PM:Come to think of it, if we are going to impeach anyone over this, perhaps the good people of Pennsylvania should start with Sen. Specter himself.
Hah! SC = "snake" How appropriate!
slb wrote on July 26, 2007 12:57 PM:>> Federal Election statues allow candidates to fly charter planes <<
Statute -- the word is "statuTe"!
Nelly Bly wrote on July 26, 2007 1:25 PM:The Combating Terrorism Center instructs people interested in supporting the Center to contact Wayne Richardson at the Association of Graduates, (845)446-1553, waynerichardson@usma.edu.
I am going to write to Mr. Richardson and ask him about the tax deductibility of contributions to the Center and ask if the Center is registered as a non-profit anywhere.
Nelly Bly wrote on July 26, 2007 1:28 PM:Oops! Wayne Richardson at wayne.richardson@usma.edu
ohiomeister wrote on July 26, 2007 1:36 PM:I agree with the troll. The PA GOP should have nominated Toomey in the GOP primary, and then we'd have another Democratic Senator.
Politico fails to accurately recount what Lieberman did. He voted for cloture on Alito, i.e. against a filibuster, which was the only vote that mattered.
Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) said at the time that he, too, found Roberts' statements "reassuring" and voted to confirm him. He voted against Alito.
"Oh, sure," Lieberman said Tuesday when asked whether he is concerned about the court's treatment of precedent. "I am interested in what Arlen has to say."
Paranoid yet? wrote on July 26, 2007 1:50 PM:Good Work, Nelly!
Tell us more.
Hardheaded Liberal wrote on July 26, 2007 2:31 PM:The NYTimes observes that the recently released CTC study appears to be part of a counter-attack by the Bush administration on critics of the war in Iraq and the detainees at Gitmo.
The authors of the CTC report state that "this report does not reflect the official position of the Combating Terrorism Center, the United States Military Academy, the U.S. Army nor the Department of Defense." I guess that's because the CTC is privately funded. The report sure is the official position of the loyal Bushies, though!
As to the academic quality of the CTC authors, I could not get any sense of their real qualifications.
One of the other staff (Asso Prof of Poli Sci @ USMA) does look like a bona fide expert.
"Dr. James JF Forest is the Director of Terrorism Studies and Associate Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Military Academy. He was selected by the Center for American Progress and Foreign Policy Magazine as one of "100 of America's most esteemed terrorism and national security experts" and participated in their Terrorism Index study of June, 2006."
johnnydoughey wrote on July 26, 2007 2:34 PM:Anyone believe, like me, that if the major contracting funds were cut off, the Republicans and Democrats alike would all vote for pulling out of Ira$?
johnnydoughey wrote on July 26, 2007 2:50 PM:Follow the money, folks... even for wars...
If you notice from the article on Bechtel, the corporation is not at fault... it is the overseers. Bechtel can' be responsible for not doing the job it got paid $1.8 billion for. It's the fault of those who were supposed to catch them!
Jane wrote on July 26, 2007 2:59 PM:BTW: $1.8 billion would pay for 90,000 home to be fully solar powered and self sustaining. The $11 billion unaccounted for would allow half a million to be powered. If we cut our defense budget to $200 billion a year (that's 25% of the entire world's defense budget) ALL of our homes could be fully self sufficient in 10 years, with the ability to charge our electrical grid for industrial use.
Of course, it won't be done, because, when all is said and done, there just isn't any money in it...
Issuing an opinion without precedential value is a serious breach of ethics. Justice for one, not for all.
This would reach some but not all of the current Justices.
If the Justices chosen by Bush/Rove/Cheney are of like caliber to his other appointments --Katrina, Iraq, etc. -- we have a real problem.