When it was announced Sunday that President Obama had decided against appointing an "Auto Czar", instead opting for a panel of Administration financial experts including, but not limited to, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, National Economic Council Director Lawrence Summers and Ron Bloom, it pretty much signaled that the Administration was going to continue to work with GM as an existing, functioning entity instead of forcing them into bankruptcy.

Monday night, that was borne out. From Reuters:

The U.S. government will release $4 billion in additional aid to General Motors Corp (GM.N) on Tuesday as planned, a White House aide said on Monday, ahead of the deadline for the automaker to submit a new survival plan.

The aide said GM’s smaller rival Chrysler LLC’s request for additional aid would be treated as a new request and dealt with separately.

GM is seeking concessions from the United Auto Workers union and creditors under the terms of its $13.4 billion federal bailout. It must submit a restructuring plan to U.S. officials on Tuesday showing how it can cut costs and pay back the loans.

Now that does not mean that the moment is over for GM, far from it. The company still has ongoing crucial negotiations with the auto workers union (UAW) that must be completed, and must formally submit its grand restructuring plan. The plan will not be fully known until officially submitted and made public, which is likely not to occur until the markets close tomorrow, but early details reveal a framework for a radically different General Motors in the future:

G.M. will file what is expected to be the largest restructuring plan of its 100-year history on Tuesday, a step it must take to justify its use of a $13.4 billion loan package from the federal government.

The plan will outline in considerable detail, over as many as 900 pages, how G.M. will further cut its work force, shutter more factories in North America and reduce its lineup of brands to just four, from eight, according to executives knowledgeable about its contents. The remaining core brands will be Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC and Buick.
…
The plan will also probably include revisions in executive compensation and targets for cutting dealers and brands like Saturn and Pontiac.

Similar discussions are underway with Chrysler, which also has a deadline tomorrow to submit its restructuring plan; details of the plan or government commitment are not yet forthcoming.

Here it is, another glorious President’s day, and wouldn’t you know it world leaders are exchanging presents. And Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has sent one President Obama’s way:

President Hugo Chávez handily won a referendum on Sunday that will end presidential term limits, allowing him to run for re-election indefinitely and injecting fresh vibrancy into his socialist-inspired revolution.

The results, coming after voters had rejected a similar effort by Mr. Chávez just 15 months ago, pointed to his resilience after a decade in power, as well as to the fragmentation of his opposition, which as recently as November had won key mayoralties and governorships.

The vote opens the way not only for Mr. Chávez to run for a new six-year term when his current one expires in 2013, but could also bolster his ambitious agenda as an icon of the left and a counterweight to American policies in Latin America.

It also creates a new foreign policy challenge for the Obama administration, strengthening a leader who has made a career of taunting and deriding the United States, even though Mr. Chávez just this weekend seemed to open the door for a different relationship.

Chavez is not going away anytime soon, and with the petro status of Venezuela remaining significant, both as to the US and as a vehicle for Chavez to spread influence in Latin America, Barack Obama needs to fashion a coherent policy for Latin America as a whole and Venezuela in particular. President Obama has shown a refreshing tendency in foreign policy to address glaring problems head on and, unlike the previous Bush Administration, actually use intelligence instead of muscle.

A heavy fist and a thumbed nose was about all the subtlety George Bush showed in his Latin American foreign policy; it is time for that to change. With the decline and fall of Fidel Castro in Cuba, and brother Raul being both slightly more progressive and not long for office himself, coupled with Chavez’s newfound extended lease on power and inability to know what to do the Obama agency of change, it is time for a new direction on both. We don’t need to all be best friends, but we need to quit being intransigent enemies for the sake of nothing more than needing to make each other a villain to play off of. President Obama can stop the stupid; he should.

I had this post mostly written as a screed against Greg Craig, who appeared to be caving again on Obama’s stated principles on presidential privileges. But after checking with three data points, I’m not so sure what is going on.

I covered the first data point on Friday: John Conyers’ letter, dated Friday, to Bob Luskin, refusing to give Rove yet another delay until such time as he feels the whim to testify before HJC.

I also cannot agree to your request for a delay to accommodate Mr. Rove’s schedule. As you know, the deposition was originally scheduled for February 2. On January 29 I in good faith acceded to your request for a delay since you were scheduled to be out of town at the time and requested more time to prepare. I also notified your office of the new February 23 date at that time. Thus, absent an actual commitment by Mr. Rove to comply with the subpoena, I am not in a position to agree to yet a further delay. In essence, given Mr. Rove’s public statements that he does not intend to comply with the subpoena, I am puzzled as to why Mr. Rove needs a mutually convenient date to appear.

The letter suggested that as of Friday, Conyers was unwilling to wait until the Appeals Court ruled on the Miers/Bolten (with Rove added) suit–he wanted to get a date with Rove for a week from Monday.

But then there was this report, revealing that Greg Craig is trying to make a deal.

White House lawyers and representatives for former president George W. Bush are engaged in discussions that could clear a path for congressional testimony by onetime Bush aide Karl Rove, three sources familiar with the talks said yesterday. 

[snip]

"The president is very sympathetic to those who want to find out what happened," Craig said in a statement yesterday. "But he is also mindful as president of the United States not to do anything that would undermine or weaken the institution of the presidency. So, for that reason, he is urging both sides of this to settle."

There’s a CBS report on this statement–but the reporter seems to be confused as much by the underlying issues as by Craig’s ambivalence. Both, however, suggest that Craig is granting Rove’s position with entirely too much credibility. Further, it hints that Craig might try to defend the utterly ridiculous absolute immunity claim so as to not "weaken the institution of the presidency." If that is true, then Craig apparently believes relying on a Steven Bradbury opinion–he of legal opinions that have apparently been found bogus and unethical by OPR–that contradicts even William Rehnquist’s rather audacious claim is worth it to avoid "weaken[ing] the institution of the presidency." If Craig is really defending the absolute immunity claim here, he will match Alberto Gonzales’ cravenness as White House Counsel.

But then there’s this CQ report (h/t MadDog).

Justice Department lawyers have asked the D.C. Circuit for more time for defendants in a House Judiciary Committee lawsuit to file their opening brief in the appellate case.

The defendants’ opening brief was due Feb. 18, but they’ve asked the D.C. Circuit for an extension to March 4 — in part to give negotiations toward an out-of-court settlement a chance to bear fruit.

"Negotiations are now ongoing," Justice Department lawyers wrote in the motion, adding that "these tripartite discussions have been complicated and time-consuming," but that "the requested 14-day extension is appropriate to permit these negotiations an opportunity to succeed, potentially obviating the need for this Court to address the sensitive separation-of-powers questions presented in this appeal."

[snip]

The D.C. Circuit is likely to grant the extension, for two reasons: House lawyers are okay with it; and when it comes to executive-legislative disputes, courts usually do everything they can to encourage the two sides to work things out on their own. [my emphasis]

Let’s work backwards here, from the news that house lawyers have agreed to the delay. That means they believe there’s an upside to waiting. Partly, that suggests Craig has already endorsed conceding enough that might convince the HJC lawyers to put aside several really important principles, including the principle that aides fired by a former president over a year a half ago should not be able to blow off Congress at his whim, a principle with which even this Court is likely to agree.

CQ also suggests that Holder’s DOJ asked for a delay only partly to give negotiations some time to move foward. I can’t find the motion (and I’m packing up for a road trip), but I do wonder what they other reasons for the delay are. The crappy CBS piece had said that Greg Craig was still reviewing "the question of executive privilege" (whatever that means).

A White House spokesman says the Counsel’s Office is still studying the question of executive privilege. 

So it may mean that Craig pushed the delay to assess how crappy Rove’s claim, in particular, is here. I’m also hoping that the delay may extend long enough for the molasses-like confirmation process to get around to Dawn Johnsen, who likely would have a thing or two to say about Steven Bradbury’s audacious claim of absolute immunity for fired aides of former Presidents. 

In other words, we don’t really know what this means until we get clarification on what other reasons Obama’s DOJ asked for that delay.

But I find one thing rather interesting. Conyers wrote his letter at a time when–clearly–this negotiation was fairly well advanced. In it, he spoke with renewed vigor of contempt charges.

Finally, conducting a voluntary deposition under these circumstances could simply serve to further delay matters beyond the nearly two years I have been waiting, since the Committee could not then be in a position to utilize contempt or other enforcement mechanisms in response to any improper refusal to answer questions.

That is, Conyers spoke with some anticipation of contempt at a time when he was in deep negotiations with Obama’s lawyers.

I’m trying to get some clarification on these issues. But until then, I’m not sure what to make of these negotiations.

As you may have seen last night, one of the more challenging questions for Obama came from the HuffPo’s Sam Stein, who asked Obama if he supported a Truth Commission.

Sam’s still busy with this story, today reporting that Leahy says Congress will go forward even without the support of Obama.

Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy and White House Chief Counsel Greg Craig discussed on Tuesday the Senator’s proposal to set up a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate potential crimes of the Bush administration.

"I went over some of the parameters of it and they were well aware at the White House of what I’m talking about," Leahy told the Huffington Post. "And we just agreed to talk further."

[snip]

Leahy did add an important ripple to the story in the interview with the Huffington Post: Congress will likely proceed with investigations regardless of whether Obama is on board.

"Oh yeah," Leahy said when asked if he would go forward without Obama’s endorsement. "I think the Senate and the Congress as whole has an oversight responsibility that has to be carried out here anyway. Now it is much easier with the cooperation of the administration. A lot of things with the subpoenas I issued the past few years, we got a lot of information but a lot of it was held back."

[snip]

"What I would much rather see is to see us working together," said Leahy. "We have a common interest, both the Congress and the administration to get this thing worked out … In this instance, this is so important that our common interest is to get the truth out."

And in related news, Russ Feingold has joined the 22 other Members of Congress who have voiced their support for such a Commission.

I applaud Senator Leahy’s leadership in proposing the establishment of a truth and reconciliation commission. Getting all the facts out about what happened over the last eight years is a crucial part of restoring the rule of law. As President Obama and Attorney General Holder have said, nobody is above the law. There needs to be accountability for wrongdoing by the Bush Administration, including the illegal warrantless wiretapping and interrogation programs. We cannot simply sweep these assaults on the rule of law under the rug. [my emphasis]

I’m guessing Russ will not only support this Commission, but he’ll be one of the first reminding AG Holder that "nobody is above the law."

A number of you have been talking in threads about this WaPo article describing the NSC’s "expanded" power.

President Obama plans to order a sweeping overhaul of the National Security Council, expanding its membership and increasing its authority to set strategy across a wide spectrum of international and domestic issues.

The result will be a "dramatically different" NSC from that of the Bush administration or any of its predecessors since the forum was established after World War II to advise the president on diplomatic and military matters, according to national security adviser James L. Jones, who described the changes in an interview. "The world that we live in has changed so dramatically in this decade that organizations that were created to meet a certain set of criteria no longer are terribly useful," he said.

[snip]

The new structure, to be outlined in a presidential directive and a detailed implementation document by Jones, will expand the NSC’s reach far beyond the range of traditional foreign policy issues and turn it into a much more elastic body, with Cabinet and departmental seats at the table — historically occupied only by the secretaries of defense and state — determined on an issue-by-issue basis. Jones said the directive will probably be completed this week. 

I actually think this is a good thing–indication that Obama will not view national defense to be exclusively a military thing. How much better off will we be, for example, if Steven Chu is at the table with Bob Gates and James Jones and Hillary Clinton when they’re discussing energy issues and climate change? I’d like to have the Nobel Prize winning scientist participating, thank you, and this reorganization appears designed to do just that. 

Today, Jones described some of these changes in a speech at the Munich Conference on Security Policy (via email). Here are the bits addressing changes to the NSC:

I would like to take just a moment to speak to you about his approach to national security and in fact international security and the role that I see the National Security Council playing. First and foremost the President’s strategic approach will be grounded in the real understanding of the challenges we face in the 21st century. We must simply better understand the environment that we are in. The President, if nothing else, is a pragmatist. He knows that we must deal with the world as it is. And he knows that the world is a very different place than it was just a few years ago. As he said in his inaugural address, the world has changed and we must change with it. And we certainly agree that the world is a multipolar place in the time frame of the moments we are in.

It is hard to overstate the differences between the 20th and the 21st centuries. We have already experienced many, many differences in the 21st century. When this conference first met, everything was viewed through the prism of the Cold War. And in retrospect, life was simpler then. It was certainly more organized. It was certainly more symmetric.

Year in and year out, the strategic environment was fairly consistent and predictable. Threats were "conventional." The transatlantic security partnership was largely designed to meet the threats of a very symmetric world. It was reactive. The NATO partnership was conceived to be a defensive and fairly static alliance. And I spent a good deal of my career in uniform serving within this framework. But to move forward, we must understand the terms national security and international security are no longer limited to the ministries of defense and foreign ministries; in fact, it encompasses the economic aspects of our societies. It encompasses energy. It encompasses new threats, asymmetric threats involving proliferation, involving the illegal shipment of arms and narco-terrorism, and the like. Borders are no longer recognized and the simultaneity of the threats that face us are occurring at a more rapid pace.

And as the President has detailed, a comprehensive approach to our national security and international security in the 21st century must identify and understand that the wider array of existing threats that threaten us. To name a few:

• Terror and extremism has taken many lives and on many continents across the globe.
• The ongoing struggle in Afghanistan and the activity along the Pakistani border is an international security challenge of the highest order.
• The spread of nuclear and chemical biological and cyber-technologies that could upset the global order and cause catastrophe on an unimaginable scale is real. It is pressing and it is time that we dealt with it.
• The overdependence on fossil fuels that endangers our security, our economies, and the health of the planet.
• Protracted tribal, ethnic, and religious conflicts.
• Poverty, corruption, and disease stands in the way of progress and causes great suffering in many parts of the world.
• Narco-terrorism that provides the economic fuel for insurgencies.
• And an economic crisis that serves as the foundation of our strength.

This list is by no means exhaustive. The challenges that we face are broader and more diverse than we ever imagined, even after the terrible events of 9/11. And our capacity to meet these challenges in my view does not yet match the urgency of what is required. To be blunt, the institutions and approaches that we forged together through the 20th century are still adjusting to meet the realities of the 21st century. And the world has definitely changed, but we have not changed with it. But it is not too late, and this is the good news.

In our country, one of the institutions that is changing is the National Security Council, which like so much of our national and international security architecture was formed in the wake of World War II and during the Cold War. So let me say a few words about what the National Security Council does and how President Obama has asked that I approach my job as National Security Adviser. The President has made clear that to succeed against 21st century challenges, the United States must use, balance, and integrate all elements of national influence: our military and our diplomacy, our economy and our intelligence, and law enforcement capacity, our cultural outreach, and as was mentioned yesterday, the power of our moral example, in short, our values. Given this role, the NSC is by definition at the nexus of that effort. It integrates on a strategic sense all elements of our national security community towards the development of effective policy development and interagency cooperation. But to better carry out the president’s priorities, the National Security Council must respond to the world the way it is and not as we wish it were. And it must consider the fusion of our national priorities within the broader international context and interest. The NSC’s mission is relatively simple. It should perform the functions that it alone can perform and serve as a strategic center – and the word strategic is operative here – for the President’s priorities.

To achieve those goals we will be guided by several principles. As one of our great comedians in the United States, Groucho Marx, once said, "These are our principles. And if you don’t like them, we have others."

First, the NSC must be strategic, as I mentioned. It is easy to get bogged down in the tactical concerns that consume the day-to-day conduct. As a matter of fact, it is much more enjoyable to be involved at the tactical level. But we won’t effectively advance the priorities if we spend our time reacting to events, instead of shaping them. And that requires strategic thinking. The National Security Council I think is unique in its ability to step back and take a longer and wider view of our American national security and our role in the shared context of our international security as well.

Second, the NSC must manage coordination across different agencies of the government – increasing numbers of agencies. We have learned the hard way that this has real implications, both in terms of how policy has developed in Washington and how it is in fact executed. The NSC must therefore function as a strategic integrator by doing several things. One, by ensuring that dissenting views are heard and considered throughout the policy-making process. Two, by monitoring policy implementation to ensure that agencies are coordinating effectively in the field, and that the President’s priorities are being carried out in practice. Third, the NSC must be transparent. We serve the President. We also serve other principal agencies of our government. And that’s why I am committed to managing a process that is as open as possible so that we forge policies that are widely understood throughout our government by our people and by our partners around the world. Fourth, the National Security Council must be agile. We face nimble adversaries and all of us will have to confront fast-moving crises – from conflict and terrorism to new diseases and environmental disasters. To keep pace, we will have to move faster in developing policy and priorities than did our predecessors. The world is a smaller place. Communications is more rapid. And therefore our reactions must be swifter. And we must be able to communicate rapidly throughout the government and around the world in order to effectively respond.

And finally, the National Security Council must adapt to evolving challenges. There are traditional priorities that we will manage. But we must also update our outlook and sometimes our organization to keep pace with the changing world. To give you just a few examples, the NSC today works very closely with President Obama’s National Economic Council, which is led by Mr. Larry Summers, so that our response to the economic crisis is coordinated with our global partners and our national security needs. The NSC has worked closely with the White House Counsel’s office as we implement the President’s orders to ban torture and close the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. The National Security Council is undertaking a review to determine how best to unify our efforts to combat terrorism around the world while protecting our homeland. And this effort will be led by Mr. John Brennan.

The National Security Council will be at the table as our government forges a new approach to energy security and climate change that demand broad cooperation across the U.S. Government and more persistent American leadership around the world. And the NSC is evaluating how to update our capacity to combat the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction while also placing a far higher priority on cyber security.

There is no fixed model that can capture the world in all of its complexity. What’s right today will have to be different four years from now or eight years from now. And that’s precisely the point. The NSC’s comparatively small size gives it a unique capacity to reinvent itself as required and to pivot on the key priorities of our time.

Can’t say I’m crazy about narco-terrorism being lumped in there (because in the Western hemisphere that’s often a coded way to attack populist regimes). But it’s high time poverty around the world became an issue deemed worthy of the attention of the NSC. To say nothing about our addiction to fossil fuel.

Earlier this morning, Looseheadprop wrote about the case of Binyam Mohamed, the British subject tortured at the hands of the United States at Gitmo, including having his genitals carved selectively with a scalpel. The Mohamed case is of critical significance for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that there was an oral argument in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco this morning that was to provide a crucial test of the new Obama Administration’s willingness to continue the Bush policy of concealing torture, wiretapping and other crimes by the assertion of the state secrets privilege.

From an excellent article by Daphne Eviatar at the Washington Independent at the end of January:

President Obama’s sweeping reversals of torture and state secret policies are about to face an early test.
…
The test of those commitments will come soon in key court cases involving CIA “black sites” and torture that the Bush administration had quashed by claiming they would reveal state secrets and endanger national security. Legal experts say that the Bush Department of Justice used whatʼs known as the “state secrets privilege” – created originally as a narrow evidentiary privilege for sensitive national security information — as a broad shield to protect the government from exposure of its own misconduct.

One such case, dealing with the gruesome realities of the CIAʼs so-called “extraordinary rendition” program, is scheduled for oral argument before a federal appeals court in early February. The position the Obama administration takes in this case may be the first major test of its new policies on transparency in government.

Mohamed v. Jeppesen Dataplan, Inc. involves five victims of CIA rendition, or “torture by proxy,” as itʼs also known. Abducted abroad, the men were flown by the CIA to cooperating countries whose agents interrogated them under torture. Because federal officials are usually immune from lawsuits, the men later sued the private aviation data company, Jeppesen — a subsidiary of Boeing, one of the largest federal defense contractors — that
knowingly provided the flight plans and other assistance necessary for the CIA to carry out its clandestine operations.

Well, the news being reported out of Courtroom One in San Francisco is not good and indicates that the Obama Administration has continued the walk of the oppressive shoes of the Bush/Cheney regime and has formally continued the assertion of state secrets.

The best hope for transparency on torture cases, wiretapping cases, and a whole host of illegal Bush/Cheney conduct was for Obama to pull back on the previous policy of concealment via the assertion of state secrets. From the official press release of the ACLU, and their attorney Ben Wizner who argued the case this morning:

The Justice Department today repeated Bush administration claims of “state secrets” in a lawsuit against Boeing subsidiary Jeppesen DataPlan for its role in the extraordinary rendition program. Mohamed et al. v. Jeppesen was brought on behalf of five men who were kidnapped and secretly transferred to U.S.-run prisons or foreign intelligence agencies overseas where they were interrogated under torture. The Bush administration intervened in the case, inappropriately asserting the “state secrets” privilege and claiming the case would undermine national security. Oral arguments were presented today in the American Civil Liberties Union’s appeal of the dismissal, and the Obama administration opted not to change the government position in the case, instead reasserting that the entire subject matter of the case is a state secret.

The following can be attributed to Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU:

“Eric Holder’s Justice Department stood up in court today and said that it would continue the Bush policy of invoking state secrets to hide the reprehensible history of torture, rendition and the most grievous human rights violations committed by the American government. This is not change. This is definitely more of the same. Candidate Obama ran on a platform that would reform the abuse of state secrets, but President Obama’s Justice Department has disappointingly reneged on that important civil liberties issue. If this is a harbinger of things to come, it will be a long and arduous road to give us back an America we can be proud of again.”

The following can be attributed to Ben Wizner, a staff attorney with the ACLU, who argued the case for the plaintiffs:

“We are shocked and deeply disappointed that the Justice Department has chosen to continue the Bush administration’s practice of dodging judicial scrutiny of extraordinary rendition and torture. This was an opportunity for the new administration to act on its condemnation of torture and rendition, but instead it has chosen to stay the course. Now we must hope that the court will assert its independence by rejecting the government’s false claims of state secrets and allowing the victims of torture and rendition their day in court.”

In fairness, the Obama DOJ may view this as protecting information on rendition flights, not details of torture; however, the result is the same, and just as heinous. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

I just got this email:

Marcy —

President Obama recorded a video to speak directly to you about his economic recovery plan.

America is facing an urgent and unprecedented challenge. The economic crisis requires bold and immediate action.

Watch President Obama’s video and share it with your friends and family:http://my.barackobama.com/recoveryvideo

And I’ve also gotten friends inviting me in the last week to watch some other Obama videos together–that is, I’ve been invited to House Parties to discuss this. That means people are doing just as Obama (or David Plouffe) asks in their email alerts.

But I still haven’t been invited to call my Senators or Congressman (all of whom, granted, have voted for stimulus, but Debbie Stabenow voted for a stupid Tom Coburn amendment forbidding any stimulus money being used for musems and parks–I do plan on chatting with her about that and if you’re a Michigander, you should too!). Nor have I been invited by Barack Obama to call Sanctimonious Joe’s latest gang–Joe, Haggis, the Bad Nelson, and Susan Collins–to ask why they’re opposed to funds that will help states avoid cutting back necessary services, or why they’re opposed to constructing schools.

Mobilizing the millions of people on Obama’s email list is great. But isn’t it better to mobilize them to do the same thing the wingnuts are mobilizing their people to do–talk to members of Congress? Wouldn’t it be better to use that list to press for a more progressive (and effective) stimulus package?

Apparently, they’ve sent Joe Biden out to drum up some excitement for the stimulus package. Sending him to do so at a train station that would be upgraded under the stimulus package? A nice touch. (via email)

Mr. Mayor, thanks for the passport to get in town here. And, Governor, it’s a delight to be with you. And Ben Cardin pointed out — Senator Cardin — the things that Joe Biden knows this, and Joe Biden knows that. Joe Biden knows you’re freezing. (Laughter.) Joe Biden knows that pretty soon you won’t be able to even move your pens. So I figure if I talk long enough you won’t be able to report a thing I say. (Laughter.)

But, ladies and gentleman, I’ll be straight to the point. Thanks for coming here today. And as we stand here today, it’s an understatement to say the economy is in trouble and the need is urgent. Quite simply, we cannot wait. We cannot wait another two weeks, three weeks, four weeks. We cannot wait.

Our economic recovery package that’s now before the Senate will put us back on track to create and save 3 to 4 million jobs. And right here in Maryland, a paper released by the National Economic Council this week shows that the plan would create or save 70,000 jobs, Governor. That’s 70,000 people here in the state who won’t go through the pain and suffering of a job loss.

But this is only going to happen if and when we pass our recovery act. And Ben assures me he’s going to leave the frigid temperature here to go the warm halls of Congress and the Senate and get that done tonight or tomorrow. But quite frankly, folks, it’s only going to work if we make those investments we need, not only in generating employment immediately, but also investing in an economy of the 21st century.

By boosting paychecks through the Make Work Pay tax cuts, we’re going to put money in the pockets of middle-class people immediately. By making a down payment on the smart grid, we’re not only going to invest in moving towards a new energy future, we’re going to invest in clean energy. We’re going to invest in creating jobs that are going to not be able to be exported. They’re going to continue to grow. By weatherizing and retrofitting thousands of facilities, we’re going to modernize over 10,000 schools in America. We’re going to put money where we need it, in our nation’s infrastructure.

Over $100 billion of this money is dedicated to infrastructure projects, many of which are ready to go right now. The point that Ben made, literally the spade can be turned or the steps can be pulled up the moment the Governor gets the money, because already the blueprints are done, the contractor ready to be let. We’re going to move immediately.

Laurel [Train Station, in Laurel, MD) is one of the thousands of rail and commuter stations all over the country where we need to make these improvements, creating jobs and creating a better transportation system for the 21st century. Over 400,000 jobs nationally will be created by the infrastructure investments that the Congress, God willing, is going to pass and the President is going to sign into law very shortly. Rebuilding train stations in my state and here, like this very one we’re doing now, repairing roads, bridges, waterways, ports; investing — investing — in infrastructure that can carry the economic growth of the 21st century.

Now, we’re here today not because Laurel is different from so many other places like it, but rather because it’s typical of the sort of work we need to be doing in this country to rebuild the infrastructure and restart our economy. These are projects and critical needs that have been ignored for too long, and they are the backbone of building the economy for the future.

Now, there are some in Washington who still haven’t gotten the message. Maybe they don’t understand that America has lost almost 2 million jobs in the past four months — 2 million jobs in the past four months; 30,000 jobs lost right here in Maryland in the last four months. Maybe they don’t understand that we’re in the midst of the worst economic recession in decades. Maybe they don’t understand that the American people voted for and want change now, not tomorrow.

We can’t go back to the failed approaches of tax breaks alone as the answer to our economic problems. The President and I support tax relief for the middle class. And the recovery act includes a down payment on those tax relief — that tax relief. But the republic — but the recovery act has to include prompt and substantial investment in job creation by building the economy of the 21st century.

So my message today is this: The economic policies of the past eight years are proven failures. The nation’s economy is hurting. It needs action now. And we can’t think small. We can’t stand by and do nothing and we can’t repeat the failures of the past. The Obama administration has asked the Congress to finish its work by the President’s Day recess, by this weekend. And it’s imperative — it’s imperative — that we meet this deadline.

The American people are looking for us to act. And the time for us to do that is now. And the time for me to give you some relief from the cold is now, as well. The good news is I can take a couple questions. The bad news is you’ll probably have to ask them.

In addition to signing SCHIP yesterday, Obama sent this memo to the current Acting Secretary of Health and Human Services, ordering him to withdraw two Bush-era letters imposing limits on states’ SCHIP programs, particularly with regards to income eligibility standards.

On August 17, 2007, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) issued a letter to State health officials limiting the flexibility of States to set income eligibility standards for their SCHIP programs. On May 7, 2008, CMS issued a subsequent letter restating the policy set forth in the August 17, 2007, letter.

The August 17, 2007, letter imposes additional requirements that States must meet in order to cover children under SCHIP plans, including plans that CMS had previously approved. These requirements have limited coverage under several State plans that otherwise would have covered additional, uninsured children. As a result, tens of thousands of children have been denied health care coverage. Unless the August 17, 2007, letter is withdrawn, many more children will be denied coverage.

By this memorandum, I request that you immediately withdraw the August 17, 2007, and May 7, 2008, letters to State health officials and implement SCHIP without the requirements imposed by those letters. 

I raise this not just to point to Obama’s efforts to make sure as many kids can be covered as possible. I do so to point to how Obama would get the Bush dead-enders to implement his policies at a time when Obama’s appointees are not yet in place.

We’ve been discussing Obama’s inaction on several key issues–notably warrantless wiretapping and, yesterday, on torture. While Obama can’t blame inaction in the Binyam Mohammed case on delays on his nominee getting approved, since Hillary is in place, we had a lengthy discussion about what Obama would have to do to implement his policy in a department–like DOJ at the time when the al-Haramain filings were submitted–where he did not yet have his nominee in place.

This memo gives us an idea of what Obama would have to do, I guess: send a damn letter to the Acting Secretary of the department, and order him to do what you want.

Which of course raises the question: if all it takes are one-page memoranda, then where are they on other key policy issues?

Andy Card is deeply offended that Barack Obama works in shirt sleeves, and not a coat and tie.

"There should be a dress code of respect," Card tells INSIDE EDITION. "I wish that he would wear a suit coat and tie."

[snip]

"The Oval Office symbolizes…the Constitution, the hopes and dreams, and I’m going to say democracy. And when you have a dress code in the Supreme Court and a dress code on the floor of the Senate, floor of the House, I think it’s appropriate to have an expectation that there will be a dress code that respects the office of the President."

I agree with dakine that it is preferable to have a President, in shirt sleeves, working to protect the Constitution, rather than thugs in suit and tie, shredding it.

For myself, if I have a choice of an administration where everyone wears suits and ties and are all buttoned up while they destroy the country and the Constitution (but they look professional while doing so!) or an administration that takes off their coats and gets to work and actually does something to benefit most of the country, I will choose the latter hands down every time.

But I’m also wondering about Card’s misplaced focus on etiquette. Here he is, beating up Obama for his dress code, and ignoring a gross breach of etiquette–one that probably puts our country at some risk, in that it fosters gross insuburdination. As Lawrence O’Donnell explains to David Shuster, former Administration officials simply do not criticize the capabilities of their successors. It is not done.

No former Vice President has ever questioned the ability of the current Administration to protect the United States. This is something for which unprecedented is a mild word.

Yet somehow, Andy Card is able to overlook Cheney’s gross breach of etiquette even while bitching about Obama’s shirt sleeves.