Global Warming

White House To Allies: Tell Us Why We Shouldn't Regulate Carbon. No Really, Tell Us. Please.

Zachary Roth | November 28, 2008, 10:09AM

It may seem like President Bush has all but stopped doing his job lately. But his White House is still working as hard as ever at blocking efforts to fight global warming.

Case in point -- the Washington Post reported Wednesday:

Last week, the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs sent an e-mail to mayors reminding them that time was running out if they wanted to comment on the proposal the administration issued in July, which laid out how the government might curb greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. A 2007 Supreme Court decision required the Environmental Protection Agency to issue such a ruling, but the White House made it clear in its e-mail that it does not think that is a good idea.

The email, sent by Jeremy Broggi, the office's associate director, clearly encourages the mayors to express opposition to limits on greenhouse gases. It says:

At the time, President Bush warned that this was the wrong way to regulate emissions. [House Energy and Commerce Committee] Chairman John D. Dingell called it 'a glorious mess. And many of you contacted us to let us know how harmful this rule would be to the economies of the cities and counties you serve.

It then links to a blog post by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a staunch opponent of efforts to regulate emissions, arguing that caps on greenhouse gases "will operate as a de facto moratorium on major construction and infrastructure projects." And it reminds recipients that the comment period for the rule-making closes November 28th.

"It appears there is no bottom to the administration's pit of disdain for regulating greenhouse gases," William Becker, of the National Association of Clean Air Agencies, told the Post.

Hard to put it better than that.

George Bush

Report: Bushies Who Approved Torture Likely Won't Get Pre-Emptive Pardons

Zachary Roth | November 25, 2008, 5:34PM

The White House is unlikely to grant sweeping pardons to former Bush administration officials who may have encouraged or enabled torture in approving harsh interrogation methods for terror suspects, reports the Wall Street Journal.

Some Republicans have been pushing for President Bush to grant the pardons before he leaves office. But White House officials point to opinions put out by the Justice Department that supported the administration's methods, and say that pardons -- which would no doubt draw fire from congressional Democrats and other administration critics -- are unnecessary.

It's unclear whether the incoming Obama administration intends to prosecute officials from the CIA, DOJ, and other government agencies who approved the harsh methods. A spokesperson for the Obama transition team told the Journal: "No decisions about interrogation issues will be made before the full national security and legal teams are in place."

But some congressional Democrats, as well as liberal legal scholars, have called for such prosecutions, over activities including water-boarding and the NSA's warantless wiretapping.

Duke Cunningham

Petition Seeking Pardon For Cunningham Has Just 13 Signatures After Three Years

Natalie Sherman | November 25, 2008, 2:30PM

The clock's running out on the Bush administration, which leaves just 56 days for the president to wipe criminal slates clean. Former California GOP congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham officially filed for a presidential pardon back in July, but sympathy for the man one author dubbed the "most corrupt congressman in history" appears pretty lackluster.

We noticed that there are only 13 signatures on an online petition designed to demonstrate public support for a pardon, even though it was posted nearly three years ago -- just two days after Cunningham pleaded guilty to accepting more than $2.4 million in bribes.

The 66-year-old, who has a history of prostate cancer, was later sentenced to 100 months in prison.

Fred Johnson III is listed as the organizer of the petition. Mr. Johnson did not respond to an e-mail, sent through the petition site, asking for his thoughts on Cunningham's odds. We'll settle for yours.

George Bush

Ex-Bush Aide Charged With Stealing Taxpayer Money

Zachary Roth | November 25, 2008, 11:16AM

A former White House aide has been charged with stealing thousands of dollars of federal money that was intended to promote democracy in Cuba, reports the Washington Examiner.

Felipe Sixto was charged with stealing from the Center for a Free Cuba, a non-profit organization, both while he worked there from 2005 to 2007, and after he went to work in the White House last year.

In March of this year, we noted that Sixto had resigned from the White House after the allegations first surfaced. He had been working there as a special assistant to the president in the office of inter-governmental affairs.

Mack Whittle

Whittle Was On McCain's South Carolina Finance Team

Zachary Roth | November 20, 2008, 1:25PM

Mack Whittle was a member of John McCain's South Carolina finance team for the Arizona senator's recent presidential bid, and was on the finance committee for South Carolina senator (and McCain pal) Lindsey Graham's 2002 Senate campaign. Whittle also raised money for George Bush's run in 2000.

That's according to a press release sent out by McCain's campaign in March 2007, and reported by the States News Service (via Nexis). It lists 40 members of the finance team, including:

Mack Whittle of Greenville, CEO of the South Financial Group. Bush Fundraiser 2000. Graham for Senate Finance Committee 2002.

Whittle also serves on the board of the University of South Carolina, according to published reports.

And according to the transcript (via Nexis) of an October 22 conference call with reporters, Whittle will remain on South Financial's board. On the call, Whittle said: "I have a three-year term on the board, and I just plan on continuing to serve out that term."

Whittle retired late last moth with an $18 million severance package. South Financial recently received $347 million in bailout money.

Late Update: In 2003, Bush also appointed Whittle a member of the Advisory Committee on the Arts, says this White House press release.

Justice Department

Will Eric Holder Shift Justice Away From The Bush Model?

Natalie Sherman | November 19, 2008, 4:24PM

Barack Obama looks likely to pick Eric Holder -- who during the Clinton administration held the number two post at Justice -- to be his next attorney general.

Under Bush, as TPMmuckraker has chronicled, the department was subjected to an unprecedented degree of politicization, and generally exhibited a striking lack of independence from the priorities of the White House -- problems for which ex AG Alberto Gonzales, who had been George Bush's personal attorney in Texas, was ultimately forced to resign.

So we've combed through Holder's record of public comments to see whether, on these crucial issues, he seems likely to continue what Bush started, or to reverse it. Here's what we found:

For one thing, unlike Gonzo -- and despite Holder's failure to stop Clinton's last-minute pardon of the financier Marc Rich, for which he's already begun receiving heat -- he doesn't seem likely to be the president's stooge.

As The American Lawyer wrote in a profile this year, Holder was independent enough that he advised then-AG Janet Reno to allow the widening of Ken Starr's investigation into the Monica Lewinsky affair -- which ultimately led to Clinton's impeachment.

And in a 2006 interview with National Journal for a story about Gonzales' performance as AG, Holder called the attorney general "the one Cabinet member who's different from all the rest." He continued: "The attorney general serves first the people, but also serves the president. There has to be a closeness, at the same time there needs to be distance."

Holder also seems less willing than his potential predecessors under Bush to take an expansive view of presidential power.

In 2004, Holder told CNN:

"If you're going to listen in on attorney/client conversations, as we did in the Clinton administration, the difference was we asked a judge to authorize it as opposed to simply saying we in the executive branch by ourselves can do this without any supervision by a judge. You also need to report to Congress on a regular basis to let them know what you're doing under the act."

Two months later, introducing (pdf) Al Gore at an American Constitution Society (ACS) discussion of "Institutionalized Dishonesty in the Bush Administration," Holder observed:

Military success and respect for civil liberties can -- and in fact, they must -- coexist. In achieving victory, we must not lose our nation's soul.

He added:

And we must also be mindful of the tactics we employ because the contemporary world, and ultimately history, will judge us only--not only by the magnitude of our inevitable victory, but also by the manner in which it was won.

And this June, in another speech at ACS, he spoke out against the Justice Department's stance on torture and the Geneva Convention:

I never thought I would see the day when a Justice Department would claim that only the most extreme infliction of pain and physical abuse constitutes torture and that acts that are merely cruel, inhuman and degrading are consistent with United States law and policy, that the Supreme Court would have to order the president of the United States to treat detainees in accordance with the Geneva Convention, never thought that I would see that a president would act in direct defiance of federal law by authorizing warrantless NSA surveillance of American citizens. This disrespect for the rule of law is not only wrong, it is destructive in our struggle against terrorism.

Still, as Salon's Glenn Greenwald has noted, Holder hasn't always taken that position. In January, 2002 -- admittedly, during a period when 9/11-induced panic was prompting a lot of otherwise smart people to take a hard line on these questions -- he told CNN:

One of the things we clearly want to do with these prisoners is to have an ability to interrogate them ... Under the Geneva Convention ... you are really limited in the amount of information that you can elicit from people.

In other words, despite some blemishes, it seems likely that under Holder, DOJ will begin a much-needed shift back towards being the non-partisan, independent law enforcement agency that, until Bush, it was known as.

George Bush

Dems Bash Burrowing Bushies

Zachary Roth | November 19, 2008, 10:38AM

Yesterday we flagged a Washington Post report about the "burrowing" of Bush administration political appointees into career jobs at various departments -- most prominently Interior -- where it will be difficult for the incoming Obama administration to dislodge them.

Bush certainly didn't invent what's sometimes called the "headless nail" phenomenon, but he's taking a bit of heat for the news nonetheless. Yesterday, reports the Post in a followup, Democratic senators Chuck Schumer and Diane Feinstein wrote in a letter to the White House:

Today's report reveals that senior members of your administration are undermining your public commitment to ease the transition by reorganizing agencies at the eleventh hour and installing political appointees in key positions for which they may not be qualified," they wrote. "We respectfully urge you to stand by your public commitment to a smooth transition by directing executive agencies immediately to halt any conversions of political appointees to career positions.

And White House press secretary Dana Perino was forced to deny that there's an orchestrated effort to embed loyalists in the bureaucracy.

But there's evidence that the burrowing under Bush has been extensive, and hasn't just been confined to the administration's waning days. The Post adds:

The Government Accountability Office has long tracked such political-to-career conversions, and it reported in May 2006 that during the first four years of the Bush administration, 144 political appointments were converted to career positions. Thirty-six were at the Health and Human Services Department, 23 were at the Justice Department, 21 were at the Defense Department and 15 were at the Treasury Department.

It'd be nice to know just which Bushies have already embedded themselves in those departments. We'll see what we can find out...

Indefinite Detentions

Suit Charges U.S. Using Other Countries To Indefinitely Hold Terror Suspects

Zachary Roth | November 18, 2008, 11:14AM

The ACLU is today filing a suit alleging that the Bush administration has asked other countries to hold terror suspects whom the U.S. lacks the evidence to charge.

The poster boy for the case is Naji Hamdan, an American Muslim, who, reports McClatchy, has been held for nearly three months in the United Arab Emirates without charges, access to a lawyer, or contact with his family.

"If the U.S. government is responsible for this detention and we believe it is, this is clearly illegal because our government can't contract away the Constitution by enlisting the aid of other governments that do not adhere to the Constitution's requirements," an ACLU spokesperson told McClatchy.

An FBI spokesman said: "The FBI does not ask foreign nations to detain U.S. citizens on our behalf in order to circumvent their rights."

Hamdan served on the board of a Los Angeles mosque, and had originally been questioned by the FBI about possible ties to Osama Bin Laden as early as 1999. He moved with his family to the UAE in 2006, and was arrested by local law enforcement in August of this year.

Hamdan's family, which is bringing the lawsuit, says he's no friend of OBL. "Naji hates war. He hates what happened on September 11. He hates terrorism," his wife told McClatchy.

George Bush

Could Bush Invoke Executive Privilege After Leaving Office?

Zachary Roth | November 13, 2008, 4:50PM

The New York Times today raises the notion that after leaving office, George W. Bush may claim that executive privilege still applies, allowing him and members of his administration to continue to frustrate Congressional efforts to gain access to information on issues ranging from harsh interrogation tactics to the U.S. Attorney firings scandal.

Congressional Democrats, as well as outside watchdog groups, say they are determined to go on pursuing investigations into Bush administration malfeasance on these and other matters.

The Times explains that if Barack Obama, after taking office, decides to release information from his predecessor's tenure, Bush could file a lawsuit claiming executive privilege. The dispute would likely go to the Supreme Court, and there appears to be little precedent that would guide a ruling.

Harry Truman made such a post-hoc claim of executive privilege in 1953, when subponaed to testify before a congressional committee about why he had appointed a suspected communist to the IMF. The committee backed down, meaning the claim became a historical precedent -- and was subsequnetly invoked by Richard Nixon, while still president in 1973, when he refused to cooperate with the committee investigating Watergate.

But a lawyer who helped hastily put together the argument on Truman's behalf today tells the Times: "I think, legally, we wrong."

Senate Judiciary Committee

Senate Dems To White House: Preserve Records (Especially You, Cheney)

Zachary Roth | November 13, 2008, 2:33PM

Democrats from the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees last week sent a letter to the White House demanding that it preserve all records produced by the Bush administration. The letter expressed particular concern that the office of Vice President Cheney would not comply with the law.

The letter, sent by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Sen. John D. Rockefeller of West Virginia and Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, asks White House counsel Fred Fielding to detail steps being taken to preserve White House documents and hand them over to the National Archives and Records Administration.

And it asks whether Fielding has investigated a Washington Post report that the White House has kept some presidential orders off it records, in a safe in the office of the vice president's lawyer.

Cheney's office is separately involved in a lawsuit brought by the watchdog group CREW, which is seeking to ensure that all vice presidential records are made available to the public.

The Democrats' letter cites that litigation, noting, "the declarations filed in that case by the Office of the Vice President raise serious concerns about its interpretations of the (Presidential Records Act)."

The law requires all presidential and vice presidential records to be transferred to the National Archives as soon as the president leaves office.