Conyers isn’t quite as reliable as Henry Waxman in calling a hearing approximately 5 work hours after a big scandal. But is reliable in actually calling the hearing (which means Rove should get his invite in about a day and a half):

I write to invite you to appear before the Committee on the Judiciary at our May 6 hearing scheduled to explore issues regarding the nature and scope of Presidential power in time of war and the current Administration’s approach to these questions under U.S. and international law. Among the subjects likely to be explored at the hearing are United States policies regarding interrogation of persons in the custody of the nation’s intelligence services and armed forces, matters addressed in some detail in opinions that you authored during your service as Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel. Given your personal knowledge of key historical facts, as well as your academic expertise, your testimony would be invaluable to the Committee on these subjects.

I understand that, in discussions with my staff, you have expressed reluctance to testify voluntarily on such matters. I am hopeful that you have reconsidered that stance, however, given your extensive public comments on these very issues. For example, on April 3, 2008, Esquire magazine published an interview in which you made frank and on-the-record comments regarding the origination, drafting, and scope of OLC interrogation memoranda. Similarly, you provided on-the-record comments on the recently released March 2003 interrogation memorandum to the Washington Post just last week, describing that document as “near boilerplate” and asserting that, in pulling back from the analysis in that memorandum, the Department had “ignored [its] long tradition in defending the President’s authority in wartime.” Overall, you have made such extensive public comments on these and related matters, that it is extremely difficult to understand why you would continue to decline to present your views to the Committee.

To the extent you have raised concerns with my staff that some questions on these matters might call for responses that you believe would be covered by executive privilege or that would implicate executive confidentiality interests, I am confident such concerns can be effectively managed in a setting where you are voluntarily appearing before the Committee. Indeed, just two months ago, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Office of Legal Counsel Steven Bradbury testified before the Committee on many legal issues raised byadministration policy on the interrogation of detainees. If the current head of OLC was able to testify on these matters, and especially given that OLC’s current interrogation memoranda remain classified unlike at least some of the opinions that you authored, I can see no principled basis on which you might decline to appear. [my emphasis]

It’s about time Congress started calling on these people’s willingness to say in public, not under oath, what they should be saying to Congress.

This is a nice touch, too:

And I am sure that, from your prior service as General Counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee, you would agree that it is the unique responsibility of Congress, the representative branch, to explore such issues and to bring relevant information to light. As you once wrote,”Congress’ power to conduct such inquiries inheres in its power to study and pass legislation, and it has used this power from the very beginning of the Republic to investigate maladministration in the Executive Branch, to determine whether social conditions require new legislation, and to review the success of existing laws.” [my emphasis]

Someone in HJC is having a lot more fun on the job of late.

The nice thing about having two full days of Dog N Pony show is that you can keep it on in the background, like Muzak, and still feel like you participated. I’ve seen some–but not all–of today’s testimony.

The weird thing about the Dog N Pony is the way the upcoming elections really challenge the message discipline of the Republicans. Susan Collins sounded almost sane. John Cornyn sounded like he’s gonna get beat by Rick Noriega. And Joe Lieberman–safe from any upcoming challenge–sounded like the biggest Republican. John McCain even sounded stern and concerned and managed to avoid mentioning his 100 year plan. Republicans and Democrats alike rightly asked why, with $105/barrel oil, we’re still funding Iraq’s redevlopment–a question Petraeus and Crocker were unable to answer satisfactorily.

Kudos to Hillary for promoting herself to honorary co-Chair in order to give (as Thomas Ricks dubs it) the third opening statement of the hearing; presumably Obama will do the same this afternoon.

The other thing about these hearings (and the Iraq war generally) is you never know who will really shine. I liked Claire McCaskill’s line of questioning (she was incredulous when Petraeus declared Maliki the victor in his recent debacle in Basra), but I would have liked to see her press Petraeus some more. My prize for the best questioner–at least for the morning–is a tie going to Evan Bayh (whom I saw) and Jim Webb (whom I missed, but whose questioning Spencer Ackerman captured nicely). Both pointed out that Petraeus’ take on the overall value of staying in Iraq really didn’t account for our commitments elsewhere, most importantly on the border of Paksitan, where the guys who hit us on 9/11 still run free. Here’s Spencer’s description of Webb’s question:

Webb’s concerned about overstretch and the strain of the war’s required deployments on military readiness. He was incredulous: there’ll be 10,000 more troops in Iraq after the surge than there were there before? Quickly he moved to the wages of decreased readiness, noting that Al Qaeda continues to rebuild itself in Pakistan, implying that we won’t be able to meet needed challenges there. "The concern I have with keeping that level force in iraq, looking at these other situations, particularly Afghanistan… I’m curious at the level of agreement in [your] plan [comes from] the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff?"

Petraeus didn’t want to touch that. All he said was that Admiral Fallon, the former head of Central Command, and Admiral Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were "fully informed." Webb and Petraeus gave each other what looked to me like thousand-yard stares. Webb promised that next week he’d ask Mullen that question.

Other than that, I’d like to highly recommend the liveblog of Thomas Ricks, my favorite "real" journalist to pick up the art of liveblogging. Ricks caught the thick tension between Joementum and the Democrats:

I don’t know if it is visible on television, but it looked liked there was a lot of teeth-gritting going on just now among the five Democrats sitting on the left side of the hearings as their erstwhile colleague (and vice presidential nominee)–Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) –lectured them on how much better the war in Iraq is going. Why wouldn’t they just be "honest," he asked?

[snip]

I’m not a political reporter, but I had to think that part of [Hillary’s statement on the irresponsibility of not considering withdrawal] was aimed at Sen. Joe Lieberman. Didn’t the Clintons help him in his recent re-election effort? I forget.

I suspect Sen. Clinton just hates being called irresponsible. If she got elected president, that might replace "inappropriate" as Washington’s favorite word.

And he has what (thus far, though it’s still early) the most astute observation of the day:

Also, where does a senator from Mississippi [Roger Wicker] get off invoking President Lincoln’s perseverance in the Civil War?

I guess Wicker isn’t as deftly thinking of his November election as Susan Collins.

"…because we’re too busy stonewalling."

That appears to be DOJ’s currently operative excuse explaining why it has yet to respond to Congressional inquiries, some of which are three years old.

Justice Department spokesman Peter Carr said that officials spend "an enormous amount of department time and resources" responding to congressional inquiries, and that they have replied to more than 500 questions from lawmakers this year. "We agree that there is always room for improvement in our effort to be responsive to Congress," Carr said.

At the same time, he said, many requests cover sensitive issues that require cutting through a thicket of pending lawsuits and classified documents, as well as checking with other government agencies and the White House. All those efforts can interfere with prosecutors’ day-to-day work, he added.

"The people in the department who must answer these inquiries are many of the same people who are making key operational decisions in the war on terrorism," Carr said.

[snip]

More than a dozen senior Justice Department officials resigned last year as congressional and internal probes of political interference intensified, adding to the disarray at Washington headquarters. In 2007, officials spent 30,000 hours responding to Congress over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, the department said.

500 questions!!! In three months, really?!?!? Well golly. I can see how that would be really taxing. That’s an average of five whole questions a day! And how many people does DOJ employ, handling those five questions a day?

And as to the 30,000 hours responding to Congress–how much of that time includes the many brainstorming sessions at which Gonzales’ clique invented new excuses for firing excellent US Attorneys? Had DOJ simply admitted, in January, that the Bush Administration had fired nine US Attorneys for political reasons, DOJ could probably have saved two thirds of those hours.

Aside from all of Peter Carr’s whining about five questions a day, this article does include one more wrinkle in the back-story to the release of the Torture Memo.

Justice Department officials have said that they deserve credit, however, for releasing — last Tuesday — a 2003 opinion approving harsh military interrogation tactics. "Following a request of Senator Levin, DOD [the Defense Department] conducted a declassification review and determined that it would be appropriate to declassify the memorandum at this time," Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said.

"The public disclosure . . . represents an accommodation of Congress’s oversight," he added. But the American Civil Liberties Union, which had sued to obtain the document under the Freedom of Information Act, maintains that it was released "as the result" of that lawsuit, and that otherwise its existence would not be public.

It appears that, before the ACLU got the Torture Memo from DOJ via DOD, Carl Levin had forced DOJ to do a classification review of the document. This is classic Levin MO, using bureaucratic means to force something like the Torture Memo out into the open. I find it more interesting, though, because of the inquiry into detainee abuse we’ve recently learned about. I presume Levin got a copy of the then still-classified memo as part of that inquiry and determined, as Marty Lederman did, that there was not one single legitimate reason to keep the memo classified. So–at least according to Brian Roehrkasse–Levin requested a classification review and, voila! The DOJ was then forced to turn the memo over to ACLU.

Which tells you two things. One, Carl Levin may be honing in on that memo in his secret inquiry (which itself should be public). And two, Brian Roehrkasse and Peter Carr count the time spent reviewing the classification of opinions that should never have been classified in the first place among the ways in which they heroically try to meet the onerous demands of Congress.

Scott Horton has more on the news that Jim Haynes has lawyered up–borrowing Dick’s trusty lawyer–in the face of scrutiny from Armed Services. Scott seems to imply that Armed Services is closing in on Haynes on perjury charges.

I’ve been looking into this trying to get a sense of what, exactly, the Armed Services Committee is so eager to discuss with Haynes. Two possibilities emerge.

First is the subject that Isikoff identifies: committee staffers have been carefully assembling secondary accounts concerning Haynes’s role in the process of authorizing highly coercive interrogation techniques, in preparing memoranda, and in soliciting memoranda to cover his advice from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. Haynes’s relationship and dealings with OLC are drawing particular attention. Similarly, staffers are looking very carefully at Haynes’s prior appearances before the Committee, as well as his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee in connection with his nomination to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

My hunch is that the facts and circumstances surrounding the preparation of the two “torture memoranda,” which I have dubbed Yoo Prime (August 2002) and Yoo Two (March 2003) will be right in the center of questioning. Something that Haynes said, it seems, doesn’t sit right with the investigators.

The second matter is Haynes’s role in restructuring the Military Commissions at Guantánamo and tasking prosecutors and the legal advisor to the convening authority. This is the point on which the president of the New York City Bar, apparently now joined by other bar associations, is pressing for Haynes’s examination under oath. Accusations come from the former chief prosecutor, Colonel Morris Davis, among others. Davis has recently stated that he is prepared to submit to a lie-detector test about the matter. Haynes has refused to make public comment, offering only a bland statement that he “disputes” Davis’s charges through a Pentagon public affairs spokesman. [my emphasis]

That would be just like a Bush Court nominee, to lie under oath (something even Scottish Haggis has insinuated Alito has done). Guess it’s time to review that transcript.

The Davis testimony is likely not perjury–while DOD has issued a statement that Davis’ allegations are bunk…

Reached for comment, Defense Department spokesperson Cynthia Smith said, "The Department of Defense disputes the assertions made by Colonel Davis in this statement regarding acquittals."

…that statement was not, after all, under oath or to Congress.

But if Levin confirms that Haynes did rig the Gitmo tribunals, one would hope that would be enough to scuttle the hearings–at least the rigged hearings as currently constituted.

Karl says he’ll testify.

As Governor Siegelman states, bring him in, let him swear on a bible and either testify or lie under oath.

Rove has, of course, reportedly lied under oath on two other occasions, once in Texas and once in the CIA leak case. He’s probably thinking "three’s a charm."

But let’s do it, this time, in front of the teevee cameras. I’m sure Artur Davis–of Alabama–would welcome Karl’s testimony. And while he’s there, you might ask him all the questions about the USA purge he has refused to answer.

We’ve discussed the quiet omnipresence of Terry O’Donnell on this blog several times before. O’Donnell is, of course, Dick Cheney’s long-time personal lawyer. We know that David Addington informed Cheney when he discovered the "meatgrinder" note in the evidence being turned over to the FBI in the CIA Leak Case. We also know that O’Donnell took the lead on efforts to convince DOJ not to indict James Tobin–even though O’Donnell was not one of the named Williams & Connolly lawyers representing Tobin.

If the Tobin example didn’t already make it clear that O’Donnell’s job is not just to keep Cheney–but to keep the entire top Bush Administration out of jail–consider this news.

Terry O’Donnell is now representing the former General Counsel for DOD, William Haynes.

The panel notified the Pentagon in early February that it wanted to question Haynes. Before receiving any response, investigators learned on Feb. 25 that Haynes was leaving for Chevron in San Francisco. "How often does somebody like that give two weeks’ notice and leave town?" said one government source familiar with the sequence of events.

Haynes’s departure initially raised concerns about obtaining his testimony without a subpoena, especially after the panel learned that he had retained top criminal defense attorney Terrence O’Donnell, who represented Cheney during the Valerie Plame leak investigation. But O’Donnell told NEWSWEEK that Haynes has agreed to be interviewed, adding that the committee’s probe "had nothing to do" with his resignation.

This mind-boggling news appears in an Isikoff story about a secret Senate Armed Forces investigation into abuses of detainees in DOD custody (recall that Carl Levin Chairs Armed Forces and John McCain is the ranking member–which itself is cause for discussion).

Not surprisingly, Isikoff doesn’t bat an eye about the fact that the Vice President’s personal lawyer is now representing the guy at DOD who is at the nexus of policies permitting torture, the guy who stands between the policies at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, and Rummy and Dick. Isikoff doesn’t consider the tremendous conflict that O’Donnell is likely to have, representing both the legal facilitator of the torture and the mastermind of the whole damned Unitary Executive itself.

Once again, this Administration appears to be defending itself as a collectivity. And once again, it appears that Dick has himself well-insulated from his own illegal actions.

Update

Alright. I’ve got to hit two more things that I find to be mind-boggling about this.

First, I take solace that this investigation is being done at Armed Forces. Carl Levin has none of the gelatinous character that Jay Rockefeller has–so I’m glad that he’s leading the investigation rather than Levin’s colleague at SSCI. But consider what it means that John McCain–the guy who led the limited reveal investigation of Jack Abramoff–is the Ranking Member on this committee. At the very least, this investigation should not be conducted under the veil of secrecy.

Second, consider Terry O’Donnell’s own resume. O’Donnell and Dick go back to the Nixon Administration together. But they really got chummy when O’Donnell himself was General Counsel of DOD when Dick was Secretary of Defense. That makes all of these relationships: Dick to O’Donnell his former GC, Dick to O’Donnell his personal lawyer, O’Donnell to Haynes, his successor as Republican DOD GC, Dick to Rummy to O’Donnell to Haynes almost too close to fathom.

Update: Dick’s resume corrected per Bushie. 

The news that McCain called his wife a "trollop" and a "cunt" …

The Real McCain by Cliff Schecter, which will arrive in bookstores next month, reports an angry exchange between McCain and his wife that happened in full view of aides and reporters during a 1992 campaign stop. An advance copy of the book was obtained by RAW STORY.

Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain’s intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain’s hair and said, "You’re getting a little thin up there." McCain’s face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." McCain’s excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.

… makes me wonder the following:

• Has John McCain ever called Vicki Iseman a trollop and a cunt? Not that I’m suggesting they slept together, of course. It just seems like a remarkably effective way to do what his campaign tried to do in 1999–convince Iseman stop hanging around with McCain once and for all.
• George Bush has been famous for his, um, deft handling of his female counterparts–most notably Angela Merkel. Is this kind of treatment what McCain plans to use to go Bush one better in the realm of diplomacy?
• Did John Kerry ever call his wife, Theresa Heinz Kerry, a trollop and a cunt? I’m guessing the answer’s no. Aside from the snuggly image Kerry and his wife always presented when they campaigned together in 2004, Theresa was willing to contribute a sizable chunk of her fortune to Kerry’s presidential campaign; Cindy McCain seems to have lost her interest in contributing her fortune to support McCain’s ambition … oh, somewhere around 1992.
• How will Phyllis Schlafly and Kate O’Beirne spin McCain’s treatment of his spouse as a victory for women’s rights?
• Do McCain’s staffers call him a "trollop" when he plasters on makeup for televised appearances? Can we call him a "trollop" when he wears make-up (preferably from some distance)?
• Do you think Meghan McCain will blog this story?

Tell me. When you saw this headline in the WaPo today, who did you think wrote the story?

Bush Aides Put Upbeat Spin on Summit

Dan Froomkin, perhaps?

Nope. It was an AP story, tracing, in detail, the Administration’s efforts to get the press to back off its conclusion that Bush’s summit with Vladimir Putin was a disaster.

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — White House officials waged an extraordinary campaign during an 11-hour Air Force One flight to put a positive spin on the outcome of Sunday’s summit talks between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Four times on the long flight back to Washington from Sochi, Russia, Bush aides trooped back to the press cabin to make the case that the summit had turned out well, particularly on missile defenses.

It was the heaviest lobbying campaign veteran reporters could recall ever occurring on the president’s plane. Press accounts of the summit had been sent to Bush’s plane and administration officials thought they were too negative. Clearly, Bush’s aides were disappointed.

Some of the officials’ statements were on the record. Some of them were off-the-record _ not to be used _ or on "deep background" _ not to be attributed to anyone in the administration. Some were on "background" _ to be attributed to a senior administration official. It was hard keeping track of the conditions.

[snip]

There had been an anticipation in the White House press corps that Bush would invite reporters up to his conference room on the plane to reflect on the trip, as he has done on occasion. Four additional reporters were allowed to fly back with Bush, heightening those expectations. But it did not happen and White House officials did not dispute that Bush was steamed with the coverage.

AP reporter Terence Hunt goes on to explain the Administration’s desperate efforts to get Putin to agree to say Bush Administration efforts at assuaging his concerns about the missile defense plans for Europe have, indeed, assuaged his concerns. He describes Stephen Hadley going to absurd lengths to redefine the definition of what success looks like.

Wow. Imagine such reporting on the machinations aboard Air Force One if it had come from the week of July 7, 2003 (though, to be fair, Matt Cooper tried to write just such an article, though without the necessary cooperation of John Dickerson).

My only complaint about this article (an admittedly churlish one) is that it doesn’t, then, explore why Bush went to such lengths to try to spin the press. The America news public, after all, ought to think about what it means that Bush is insisting Russia has agreed to the construction of a missile defense system in Europe when–Putin has made crystal clear–Russia has only agreed to Bush’s pathetic fig leaf intended to cover up just how deep Russia’s disapproval for the missile defense system really is.

The story is–as Hunt has shown well–that the Administration wants to pretend the summit was something it wasn’t. But it’s also why the Administration is so desperate to pretend it scored a victory when it hasn’t–and what the implications are for long-term stability in Eastern Europe.

Oh, this should be fun. Bush chose today to send the Colombia Free Trade pact to Congress today, just one day after Mark Penn’s former contract with Colombia led to his firing resignation forfeiture of his Chief Strategist title with the Clinton campaign. I especially like this bit:

The president also has said that failing to approve a free-trade deal with Colombia would have the effect of encouraging Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez’s anti-American regime and casting the United States as untrustworthy and impotent across South America.

You see, I’m not convinced that Penn was fired resigned gave up his title because he mis-stated Clinton’s stance on the Colombia Trade pact.
If he had gone that far off the reservation, after all, you’d think he’d have been fired outright. So this may be just cover–to prevent unions from balking at Penn’s comment. Or a slap on the wrist, to ensure that Penn doesn’t speak out again in the remaining time of the campaign. Or, it could be that Penn doesn’t want responsibility for what’s going to happen in the next several weeks of the campaign. Or, it could be an attempt on Penn’s part to regain the business with Colombia.

But one thing’s clear. Anything short of a full end of the relationship between Penn and Clinton suggests only lukewarm disapproval that his meeting with the Colombians was reported in the press. Take that to mean what you will.

So now, after Democrats had hoped that Bush wouldn’t make the Senate vote on the pact, he’s doing just that.

Moreover, Democratic leaders balked at forcing the matter to a vote.

I can see why, when the economy is tanking and the country is being devastated by foreclosures and Wall Street is getting addicted to public financing, Bush would think the most important way to spend the Senate’s time is to consider sending more jobs to places where environmental regulations and pesky unions won’t trouble the captains of capitalism.

But I’m particularly intrigued that Bush is turning the US-Colombia pact into an issue of Chavez. Bush would love to start war-mongering against Chavez, along with Iran, and you could argue the Administration and its Colombian allies have already started doing just that. Of course, the US could make no credible military threat against Venezuela right now–we’ve squandered that ability in Iraq.

So instead, Bush is now going to push a Trade Pact with Colombia that we can’t afford and we don’t want (though Mark Penn does, which should be all the proof you need of its senselessness), all so he can try to prove he’s more manly that a Latina American caudillo who doesn’t want to share his oil.

Since I lauded Colonel Pat Lang the other day, and since I fear he interpreted my comment that "Lang’s acerbic commentary lacks all of [Dana] Priest’s balance and moderation" as a critique, I feel duty-bound to link to his post today, riffing on the WaPo timeline describing the Administration’s evolving stance toward torture and the Constitution.

I thought that I had known some tough, ruthless "customers" over the decades, but now I see that they were mostly "wusses."  All those Special Forces soldiers and intelligence people, they just did not "measure up" as tough guys compared to Washington lawyers like the ones cited in this article.

Modern day "Torquemadas" in single needle suits and hand made English shoes.

One must wonder if was mere ambition or a convicion of the rectitude of illegal search and seizure inflicted on American citizens that apealed to these lawyers more in writing these papers.

I suspect that it was ambition.

To make all this even more bitter, the plan clearly was to use American soldiers to do much of this.  (Irony Alert) How grand an idea! In this in way American soldiers could be trained to think that such behavior is appropriate.

Nope. "Lacking all of Dana Priest’s balance and moderation" was definitely not intended as a critique.