Archive for category: emptywheel

During the book salon chat on The Wrong Stuff yesterday, we discussed the House Intelligence Committee report on how Duke Cunningham managed to scam so much money for his friends. Lo and behold, the LAT has a long article on it today (hat tip Kentucky Jelly). The report, though, is pretty disappointing. If Congressional Intelligence Committees are good at one thing, after all, it is scoping investigations to hide the dirt.

The report’s principal author said in an interview that the terms underwhich he was hired to conduct the investigation prevented him fromexamining lawmakers’ roles.

"There was an agreement as to what they wanted to look at, and that wasnot anything that could be looked at under the sun," said MichaelStern, a former attorney in the House counsel’s office who was hired bythe committee to lead the internal probe. "The language did not includethe culpability or potential involvement of other members."

Stern said that the full, 59-page report he prepared a year ago wasclassified, but that he also provided the committee a 23-page versionthat had been scrubbed of classified material. The Times obtained thedeclassified version.

Nevertheless, Pete Hoekstra throws a fit every time we get close to declassifying the complete report.

Congressional sources said Reyes and other Democrats had initiallyvoted to let other members of Congress see the document, but reversedcourse after a fierce protest by the panel’s ranking GOP member, PeterHoekstra of Michigan.

Who uses lizard logic to claim the report shows nothing of interest:

Jamal Ware, a spokesman for Hoekstra, stressed that the investigationfound no wrongdoing by staffers or other members, and said the findingswere never intended to be released.

After all, if the report was scoped to exclude any inquiry into members roles, then it’s not surprising that the report found no wrongdoing by staffers or other members, right?

Of all lawmakers, though, it seems clear the report stayed furthest away from Peter Goss’ role.

I did a post last year, not long after Dick Cheney shot an old man in the face, tracing the ties between the Armstrong family and Republican corruption. I showed how Anne Armstrong has been present at all the big-name Republican scandals going back to Watergate.

(Later in the same post, I showed how Anne’s daughter Katharine, always seems to be present when Bush is pitching an illegal war.)

That post focused primarily on the long-term connections between Cheney and the Armstrong family, right through the days when Cheney launched Halliburton’s KBR unit onto the military gravy train. But the post noted, too, that the Armstrongs have been equally tight with Karl Rove over the years.

And apparently, one of the finds from the recently-released Nixon materials shows how far back this relationship goes.

Tucked away inside 78,000 pages of documents from the Nixon administration, released by the National Archives earlier this week, is a little gem: a strategy memorandum from the man who would go on to become the architect of President Bush’s rise to political power.

Mr. Rove, then a 22-year-old aide on Capitol Hill, was planning a run to become chairman of the College Republicans, a position he would ultimately win twice. So he wrote to Anne Armstrong, then counselor to Nixon. Mrs. Armstrong had been co-chairman of the Republican National Committee, and therefore Mr. Rove’s ultimate boss the previous year when he was executive director of the college group.

In the memorandum, he thanked her for “taking time out of your busy schedule” to talk with him, and offered up his musings — in the form of a nine-page typed outline — on how to strengthen the Republican Party by motivating students.

“Appreciate anything you might be able to do for me,” he wrote, on simple stationery with only his name, Karl C. Rove, at the top. “I have taken the liberty of enclosing the rough outline of my platform. Of special interest is the ‘New Federalism Advocates’ mentioned in the campaign section.”

The memo is, as Stollberg notes, a strategy document detailing the ways in which College Republicans can support larger RNC campaign efforts. But it also a strategy document laying out several initiatives–things that reek of Grover Norquist and wingnut welfare–that have been the key to recent Republican success. Rove talks about:

• Professionalizing the College Republicans and earning legitimacy within the GOP
• Requiring all Republicans to adopt “New Federalism” that advocates
  • Decentralization of Federal power
  • Limitation of federal power
  • Challenging the “proper role” of government
• Developing Republican spokesmen within the academic community
• Developing a “talent bank” to put on workshops within the academic community
• Mobilizing college Republicans in “state legislature” schools to focus on state races
• Providing training in “practical politics” (precinct training)
• Developing materials to be distributed in college PoliSci classes to “place GOP oriented materials into student hands”

The memo lays out many initiatives that would professionalize the College Republicans and would spread wingnut welfare to campus efforts.

The memo is instructive not just because it traces Rove’s ties to Texas’ big money back over 30 years. A lot of these are things the Democrats still haven’t implemented. This is what it takes, folks.

If the hapless Democratic Congress ever gets around to an investigation through which they can ask Reggie to turn over the CIA Leak case grand jury materials.

But for now, I’d say he’s still cranky, wouldn’t you?

In commuting the defendant’sthirty-month term of incarceration, the President stated that thesentence imposed by this Court was “excessive” and that two years ofsupervised release and a $250,000 alone are a “harsh punishment” for anindividual convicted on multiple counts of perjury, obstruction ofjustice, and making false statements to federal investigators. Althoughit is certainly the President’s prerogative to justify the exercise ofhis constitutional commutation power in whatever manner he chooses (oreven to decline to provide a reason for his actions altogether), theCourt notes that the term of incarceration imposed in this case wasdetermined after a careful consideration of each of the requitestatutory factors, and was consistent with the bottom end of theapplicable sentencing range as properly calculated under the UnitedStats Sentencing Guidelines.

Indeed, onlyrecently the President’s Attorney General called for the passage oflegislation to “restore the binding nature of the sentencing guidelinesso that the bottom of the recommended sentencing range would be aminimum for judges, not merely a suggestion,” a stance that is fullyconsonant with the policies of this Administration as a whole. Inlight of these considerations, and given the indisputable importance of“provid[ing] certainty and fairness in sentencing . . . [and]avoid[ing] unwarranted sentencing disparities,” it is fair to say thatthe Court is somewhat perplexed as to how its sentence could beaccurately be characterized as “excessive.”[my emphasis]

In the meantime, I’m not holding my breath on the hapless Congress.

The NYT reports that Sara Taylor will come before the SJC today and testify about some things.

Sara Taylor, the former White House political director, has agreed toanswer some questions as a “willing and cooperative private citizen,”during testimony about the United States attorney firings last yearwhen she appears before the Senate Judiciary Committee later today.

But, as a former presidential adviser, she will also honor thepresident’s invocation of executive privilege to keep quiet about“White House consideration, deliberations, or communications, whetherinternal or external, relating to the possible dismissal or appointmentof United States attorneys,”according to a written copy of her opening statement provided by herlawyer’s office. Those parameters were set forth in a letter to Ms.Taylor’s attorney, W. Neil Eggleston, from the White House counsel,Fred F. Fielding.

Now, seeing as how the defining character of human beings is our ability to communicate, I don’t see how, if Sara Taylor refuses to testify about "communications, whether internal or external," we’re going to get much information. This news seems to support Kagro X’s argument–that they’re trying to muddy the waters about where contempt of Congress starts.

Though the power of the various subspecies of executive privilege to prevent witnesses — especially former WhiteHouse officials — from testifying is Read more →