You know, I really like Claire McCaskill–a heck of a lot more than I like Tweety.

But when you watch the way her jaw sets as Tweety keeps mentioning the reasons why Dean would be a natural choice for HHS: his work blazing the way for Obama and people like McCaskill herself, his medical background, I gotta say I’m with Tweety on this one.

Why not Howard Dean?

From today’s press briefing (via email):

Q That doesn’t say who decided that this was the best move. And if I could just follow up quickly. Are there other nominees out there with tax problems that we don’t know about?

MR. GIBBS: The President is quite confident in the people that serve in this White House and serve in this administration; that we’ve put a standard of ethics and accountability that’s unseen and unmatched by any previous administration in our country’s history.

Again, Senator Daschle — as it relates to your first question, Senator Daschle decided to remove his name from consideration and remove his nomination for Secretary of Health and Human Services.

Q What about —

Q Robert, a question —

MR. GIBBS: I’m sorry —

Q Are there other nominees with tax problems?

MR. GIBBS: The President is confident in the people he’s chosen to serve in government.

Well, I guess Woodward had himself a little scoop, huh? Who knew I was the only one out here who actually paid my taxes. Do you guys pay your taxes? Any of you want to be a Cabinet Secretary?

I’m not so much interested in the news that Rahm is apparently breaking code by living in Rosa DeLauro’s basement. (h/t scribe)

Rahm Emanuel, Barack Obama’s right-hand man, lives in a basement apartment on Capitol Hill rented to him by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro. Just one problem: He’s not allowed to live there.

That’s what private investigator Joseph Culligan discovered after asking questions of D.C. officials. A zoning administrator responded to Culligan’s inquiry and told him that DeLauro’s house at 816 E. Capitol St. NE was listed as a single-family dwelling, and as such, could not be rented out.

After all, plenty of people in DC–starting with Norm Coleman–have more legally questionable housing arrangements. 

I’m much more interested in who is paying private investigator Joseph Culligan to snoop on Rahm (and DeLauro). 

A number of people have pointed to this important Gareth Porter article describing an insubordinate attack on Obama’s plan to withdraw from Iraq in 16 months.

A network of senior military officers is also reported to be preparing to support Petraeus and Odierno by mobilizing public opinion against Obama’s decision.

[snip]

The source says the network, which includes senior active-duty officers in the Pentagon, will begin making the argument to journalists covering the Pentagon that Obama’s withdrawal policy risks an eventual collapse in Iraq. That would raise the political cost to Obama of sticking to his withdrawal policy.

If Obama does not change the policy, according to the source, they hope to have planted the seeds of a future political narrative blaming his withdrawal policy for the "collapse" they expect in an Iraq without US troops. 

One aspect of the article has been underplayed in coverage of this insubordination: the centrality in this plot of Jack Keane.

The opening argument by the Petraeus-Odierno faction against Obama’s withdrawal policy was revealed the evening of the January 21 meeting when retired army General Jack Keane, one of the authors of the Bush troop-surge policy and a close political ally and mentor of Petraeus, appeared on the "Lehrer News Hour" to comment on Obama’s pledge on Iraq combat troop withdrawal. 

[snip]

Keane, the army vice chief of staff from 1999-03, has ties to a network of active and retired four-star army generals, and since Obama’s January 21 order on the 16-month withdrawal plan, some of the retired four-star generals in that network have begun discussing a campaign to blame Obama’s troop withdrawal from Iraq for the ultimate collapse of the political "stability" that they expect to follow the US withdrawal, according to a military source familiar with the network’s plans. 

But what really hasn’t gotten enough attention, IMO, are the ties between Keane and Dick Cheney.

Ever since he began working on the troop surge, Keane has been the central figure manipulating policy in order to keep as many US troops in Iraq as possible. It was Keane who got Vice President Dick Cheney to push for Petraeus as top commander in Iraq in late 2006 when the existing commander, General George W. Casey, did not support the troop surge. 

Now, as Porter suggests,  Keane’s role in the surge and his relationship with Cheney is best chronicled in Woodward’s most recent book. As I have shown, that chronicle ignores Cheney’s role in the formulation of the Iraq policy. So it presents Keane as getting involved in the surge first in his role as a member of the Defense Policy Board–where he served with a bunch of other Neocons. Woodward then depicts Keane joining the push for the surge at AEI, too, which mysteriously got a bunch of information that even Keane appears to have suspected had been leaked to AEI. And only after three months of involvement (according to Woodward’s story), does Keane first brief Cheney and Bush on December 11; this is after Cheney had been summoned to Saudi Arabia and ordered to undercut the Iraq Survey Group report, and after the report itself was released on December 6. Yet suddenly–again, according to Woodward’s narrative–Cheney embraced Keane’s plan and Keane himself. From that point forward, when Keane wanted to undercut plans at the Pentagon, he had to do no more than call Cheney’s then-National Security Advisor, John Hannah, to put words challenging opposing plans into Cheney’s mouth. Every time Petraeus wanted to bypass the chain of command, Keane went back-channel though Cheney.

Keane briefed Vice President Cheney on his trip, establishing a secret backchannel line of communication–Petraeus to Keane to Cheney to Bush–around the chain of command. 

And that chain of command Keane and Petraeus were bypassing was often–according to Woodward–Bob Gates, particularly at times when Gates endorsed policies closer to those Obama now espouses, including gradual withdrawal. Cheney also followed Keane’s bidding to thwart others–Admiral Fallon, the Joint Chiefs, Condi Rice–perceived to be insufficiently supportive of Petraeus. When Admiral Mullen tried to cut off Keane’s clearance to travel to Iraq, Cheney’s office reinstated it. And, as recently as April, Keane worked with Cheney in promoting Petraeus to CentCom and replacing him with Odierno, all in the context of trying to tie a Democratic administration to their–Keane’s and Cheney’s–intransigence in Iraq.

Let’s be frank about what’s happening here. We are going to have a new administration. Do we want these policies continued or not? Do we want the best guys in there who were involved in these policies, who were advocates for them? Let’s assume we have a Democratic administration and they want to pull this thing out quickly, and now they have to deal with General Petraeus and General Odierno. There will be a price to be paid to override them.

Now, Woodward’s book (which crafts Keane as the hero that saved our efforts in Iraq) suggests Keane’s efforts to keep us in Iraq came first, only later followed by Cheney’s championing of those efforts. There are reasons to believe that is nothing more than craft, the latest narrative Woodward got paid to tell. And even pretending that Woodward’s suppression of Cheney’s role in crafting the surge strategy is accurate, Woodward clearly shows that Keane’s efforts to tie us down in Iraq were a joint effort conducted with Dick Cheney.

So what is Dick Cheney’s role in publicly undercutting the current President of the United States? Is Cheney still doing the oil companies’ bidding to make sure our military protects their investments in Iraq?

Sure, perhaps this attack on Obama is no more than Petraeus’ god-father, Keane, making sure Petraeus’ project in Iraq is either successful–or blamed on a Democrat. But given the fact that Cheney and Keane have spent the better part of the last two years working to ensure we remain stuck in Iraq, I’d suggest we ought to look closely at Keane’s role and even further than that to find the source of this insubordination.

A number of people have pointed to this important Gareth Porter article describing an insubordinate attack on Obama’s plan to withdraw from Iraq in 16 months.

A network of senior military officers is also reported to be preparing to support Petraeus and Odierno by mobilizing public opinion against Obama’s decision.

[snip]

The source says the network, which includes senior active-duty officers in the Pentagon, will begin making the argument to journalists covering the Pentagon that Obama’s withdrawal policy risks an eventual collapse in Iraq. That would raise the political cost to Obama of sticking to his withdrawal policy.

If Obama does not change the policy, according to the source, they hope to have planted the seeds of a future political narrative blaming his withdrawal policy for the "collapse" they expect in an Iraq without US troops. 

One aspect of the article has been underplayed in coverage of this insubordination: the centrality in this plot of Jack Keane.

The opening argument by the Petraeus-Odierno faction against Obama’s withdrawal policy was revealed the evening of the January 21 meeting when retired army General Jack Keane, one of the authors of the Bush troop-surge policy and a close political ally and mentor of Petraeus, appeared on the "Lehrer News Hour" to comment on Obama’s pledge on Iraq combat troop withdrawal. 

[snip]

Keane, the army vice chief of staff from 1999-03, has ties to a network of active and retired four-star army generals, and since Obama’s January 21 order on the 16-month withdrawal plan, some of the retired four-star generals in that network have begun discussing a campaign to blame Obama’s troop withdrawal from Iraq for the ultimate collapse of the political "stability" that they expect to follow the US withdrawal, according to a military source familiar with the network’s plans. 

But what really hasn’t gotten enough attention, IMO, are the ties between Keane and Dick Cheney.

Ever since he began working on the troop surge, Keane has been the central figure manipulating policy in order to keep as many US troops in Iraq as possible. It was Keane who got Vice President Dick Cheney to push for Petraeus as top commander in Iraq in late 2006 when the existing commander, General George W. Casey, did not support the troop surge. 

Now, as Porter suggests,  Keane’s role in the surge and his relationship with Cheney is best chronicled in Woodward’s most recent book. As I have shown, that chronicle ignores Cheney’s role in the formulation of the Iraq policy. So it presents Keane as getting involved in the surge first in his role as a member of the Defense Policy Board–where he served with a bunch of other Neocons. Woodward then depicts Keane joining the push for the surge at AEI, too, which mysteriously got a bunch of information that even Keane appears to have suspected had been leaked to AEI. And only after three months of involvement (according to Woodward’s story), does Keane first brief Cheney and Bush on December 11; this is after Cheney had been summoned to Saudi Arabia and ordered to undercut the Iraq Survey Group report, and after the report itself was released on December 6. Yet suddenly–again, according to Woodward’s narrative–Cheney embraced Keane’s plan and Keane himself. From that point forward, when Keane wanted to undercut plans at the Pentagon, he had to do no more than call Cheney’s then-National Security Advisor, John Hannah, to put words challenging opposing plans into Cheney’s mouth. Every time Petraeus wanted to bypass the chain of command, Keane went back-channel though Cheney.

Keane briefed Vice President Cheney on his trip, establishing a secret backchannel line of communication–Petraeus to Keane to Cheney to Bush–around the chain of command. 

And that chain of command Keane and Petraeus were bypassing was often–according to Woodward–Bob Gates, particularly at times when Gates endorsed policies closer to those Obama now espouses, including gradual withdrawal. Cheney also followed Keane’s bidding to thwart others–Admiral Fallon, the Joint Chiefs, Condi Rice–perceived to be insufficiently supportive of Petraeus. When Admiral Mullen tried to cut off Keane’s clearance to travel to Iraq, Cheney’s office reinstated it. And, as recently as April, Keane worked with Cheney in promoting Petraeus to CentCom and replacing him with Odierno, all in the context of trying to tie a Democratic administration to their–Keane’s and Cheney’s–intransigence in Iraq.

Let’s be frank about what’s happening here. We are going to have a new administration. Do we want these policies continued or not? Do we want the best guys in there who were involved in these policies, who were advocates for them? Let’s assume we have a Democratic administration and they want to pull this thing out quickly, and now they have to deal with General Petraeus and General Odierno. There will be a price to be paid to override them.

Now, Woodward’s book (which crafts Keane as the hero that saved our efforts in Iraq) suggests Keane’s efforts to keep us in Iraq came first, only later followed by Cheney’s championing of those efforts. There are reasons to believe that is nothing more than craft, the latest narrative Woodward got paid to tell. And even pretending that Woodward’s suppression of Cheney’s role in crafting the surge strategy is accurate, Woodward clearly shows that Keane’s efforts to tie us down in Iraq were a joint effort conducted with Dick Cheney.

So what is Dick Cheney’s role in publicly undercutting the current President of the United States? Is Cheney still doing the oil companies’ bidding to make sure our military protects their investments in Iraq?

Sure, perhaps this attack on Obama is no more than Petraeus’ god-father, Keane, making sure Petraeus’ project in Iraq is either successful–or blamed on a Democrat. But given the fact that Cheney and Keane have spent the better part of the last two years working to ensure we remain stuck in Iraq, I’d suggest we ought to look closely at Keane’s role and even further than that to find the source of this insubordination.

As Jane has reported, Tom Daschle has withdrawn from consideration to be HHS Secretary.

Which leaves a spot open for someone who has thought a lot about how to get Americans health care and a proven leader.

How about Howard Dean?

If you’re interested, there’s a Facebook group where you can show your support for Dean for HHS.

 I can’t imagine Rahm would ever let this happen. But then, the whole appointment process under Rahm hasn’t been operating so smoothly now, has it?

Nancy Killefer just withdrew her nomination to be OMB’s Chief Performance Officer because of tax problems. That makes three top Obama appointees–Tim Geithner, Tom Daschle, and Killefer–who seem to be discovering tax problems rather late in the game.

But of course, someone had already discovered these problems at least ten days ago–or that’s what I assume from this Woodward clip from January 25. At that point, Woodward (in his inimitable "I used to be a journalist but now I’m just the world’s best paid gossip" way) was already predicting we’d see more tax problems beyond Geithner (and, of course, we’re still waiting for the nannies). 

So who told Woodard? Does he have a mole in the Obama vetting process? Why would Obama’s vetters pick Woodward, of all people?

Or is Woodward getting this stuff from somewhere else, perhaps from some of his crack (ha!) sources in the Bush White House?

I’m really happy to see that DOJ has re-hired Leslie Hagen, the woman who was falsely tied to Margaret Chiara in the US Attorney firing scandal. But I’m a little curious about the timing.

On Monday, the Justice Department undid a small part of the damage that top officials caused in a scandal of politicized hiring and firing during the Bush administration. The department rehired an attorney who was improperly removed from her job because she was rumored to be a lesbian.

NPR first broke the story of Leslie Hagen’s dismissal last April, and the Justice Department’s inspector general later corroborated the report. Now, Hagen has returned to her post at the department’s Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys.

In 2006, Hagen was the liaison between the main Justice Department and the U.S. Attorneys’ committee on Native American affairs.

[snip]

Last year, the Justice Department posted Hagen’s old job again. The department conducted a national search. Applications came in from around the country. After several rounds of interviews, Hagen eventually won the job.

The paperwork makes it official as of Monday, Feb. 2. Hagen now has her old position back, but this time it’s a little different. Her contract no longer comes up for renewal every year. Now, the job is permanent.

This appears to be effectively a re-hired based on a national search, and not the Mukasey (or Filip, as Acting AG) undoing some of the damage that the Gonzales DOJ did.

And speaking of Gonzales, there’s one more part of this that will make you spit: as NPR points out, Hagen has had to pay her own legal fees throughout this process.

Nobody official from the department ever apologized to her for what happened. She still owes thousands of dollars in attorney fees, and the Justice Department has refused to pay those bills.

Meanwhile, you and I are paying Gonzales’ legal fees, so he can defend himself against charges that he politicized hiring by–among other things–okaying Hagen’s firing because she was alleged to be a lesbian.

The Justice Department has agreed to pay for a private lawyer to defend former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales against allegations that he encouraged officials to inject partisan politics into the department’s hiring and firing practices.

Lawyers from the Justice Department’s civil division often represent department employees who’re sued in connection with their official actions. However, Gonzales’ attorney recently revealed in court papers that the Justice Department had approved his request to pay private attorney’s fees arising from the federal lawsuit.

Something’s wrong with this picture.

From Murray, over at TPM:

Karl Rove will cooperate with a federal criminal inquiry underway into the firings of nine U.S. attorneys and has already spoken to investigators in a separate, internal DOJ investigation into the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, his attorney said in an interview.

Rove previously refused to cooperate with an earlier Justice Department inquiry into the firings. The Justice Department’s Inspector General and its Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) said in a report released last September detailing their earlier probe of the firings of the U.S. attorneys that their investigation was severely "hindered" by the refusal by Rove and other senior Bush administration officials to cooperate with the probe.

Rove’s attorney, Robert Luskin, said that Rove, however, will cooperate with a federal criminal probe of the firings being led by Nora Dannehy, the Acting U.S. Attorney for Connecticut who was selected by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey to lead the investigation. Dannehy has recently empaneled a federal grand jury to hear evidence in the matter.

Luskin told me that Rove had earlier not cooperated with the Inspector General and OPR probe into the firings because "it was not his [Karl’s] call… it was not up to us decide." Luskin said that Rove was directed by the Bush White House counsel’s office not to cooperate with the Inspector General and OPR.

Regarding the more recent probe by Dannehy, Luskin said: "I can say that he would cooperate with the Dannehy investigation if asked."

In recent days, according to legal sources, two former Bush White House officials, including one former aide to Rove, have been contacted by investigators working for Dannehy and asked for interviews. One of the two has agreed to be interviewed.

Note, at least according to this, Rove has not yet been asked to talk to the grand jury–two former White House staffers have. If I had to guess, I’d say Sara Taylor (who was a Rove aide) and Chris Oprison or William Kelley (who both worked in the White House Counsel office) are good candidates for the two officials who have already been contacted by Dannehy’s investigation (Scott Jennings is another Rove aide who testified). Taylor, of course, previously shielded much of her testimony before the Senate by invoking executive privilege (which was when Bush panicked and made sure Harriet wouldn’t undergo the same process). 

We finally have a new Attorney General.

The no votes include (roll call here):

Barrasso
Brownback
Bunning
Burr
Coburn
Cochran
Cornyn
Crapo
DeMint
Ensign
Enzi
Kaybee Hutchison
Inhofe
Johanns
McConnell
Risch
Roberts
Shelby
Thune
Vitter
Wicker