George Bush: June 2009 | TPMMuckraker

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George Bush: June 2009

Zachary Roth | June 16, 2009, 6:06PM

Harriet Miers, the former White House counsel under President Bush, has finally testified, behind closed doors, as part of Congress's investigation of the US attorney firings, reports FOXNews.com.

That raises an obvious question: When will Karl Rove do the same? Rove's lawyer, Robert Luskin, told TPMmuckraker last month that he expected Rove to testify in early June. But today Luskin did not immediately return our call.

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Topics: George Bush, Harriet Miers, House Judiciary, John Cornyn, Justice Department, Karl Rove, U.S. Attorneys

Barack Obama

Obama Admin Mimics Bush Again: White House Records Are Secret

Zachary Roth | June 16, 2009, 10:03AM

Add another (perhaps more minor) entry to the list of ways in which the Obama administration is mimicking its predecessor on issues of transparency.

MSNBC.com reports that the Secret Service has denied the news outlet's request for the names of visitors to the White House since President Obama was sworn in. It also denied a narrower request by the good-government group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington for records of visits by coal executives.

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Topics: Barack Obama, George Bush, Torture

Barack Obama

CIA Stance On Torture Tape Docs Suggests Obama's New Open Government Era Won't Materialize

Zachary Roth | June 9, 2009, 1:49PM

It's looking more and more like Barack Obama's pledge to usher in a new era of openness in government may well go unfulfilled.

Yesterday, administration lawyers cited national security concerns to argue that Bush-era documents detailing the videotaped interrogations of detainees should not be released. And in the wake of that news, open-government advocates are reluctantly acknowledging that, despite Obama's campaign promises, his approach to secrecy on issues of national security will likely not depart significantly from that of George Bush.

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Topics: Barack Obama, CIA, CIA Tapes, George Bush, State Secrets, Torture, Wiretapping

Alberto Gonzales

DOJ Torture Emails: How The Times Could Have Reported The Story

Zachary Roth | June 8, 2009, 1:01PM

Over the weekend, the New York Times reported that Justice Department lawyers agreed in 2005 that harsh interrogation techniques were legal. The impact of the story -- which was based largely on email messages written at the time by James Comey, then a high-ranking Justice Department official -- has been, it seems, to bolster the Dick Cheney position in the ongoing torture debate in Washington.

But the Times also, to its credit, released Comey's emails in full, allowing us all to make our own judgments about what they show. And after a close look at the emails, it seems clear that the paper could have used them to write a very different story -- with a very different effect on the public debate.

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Topics: Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, Dick Cheney, George Bush, Harriet Miers, Justice Department, Steven Bradbury, Torture

Barack Obama

Nadler To Hold Hearing On State Secrets

Zachary Roth | June 1, 2009, 6:47PM

We've told you about one way in which President Obama has so far continued his predecessor's tactics: by invoking the state secrets privilege to argue for the dismissal of lawsuits in the war on terror.

And now Congress will consider reforming the State Secrets Act, in an effort to make it more difficult to invoke it when national security concerns are not truly at take.