I dannae if the ship of state could take any more…As suspected, the continuing White House shakeup claims another victim in press secretary Scott McClellan. (Text of statement.) Also, Rove got reassigned from policy to politics, but that sounds like more of a cosmetic switch than anything else.
Tag: Republicans
Or else you gotta stay all night.
“Bolten told the staff that ‘if you’re thinking about leaving at some time in the future, now would be a good time to do it,’ the press secretary said.” The Dubya administration preps for a house-cleaning.
Breaking News: Rain is wet.
Sit down before you read this one, folks. In the well-duh dept., the Post front-pages the following story today: “Anger at Bush May Hurt GOP at Polls.” Really? Who woulda thunk it? Next you’ll be telling me that Santorum might be going down too.
The Abramoff Inbox.
“‘Do not allow…my name to appear anywhere,’ Abramoff wrote to a colleague at his then-law firm, Greenberg Traurig. He e-mailed his wife: ‘When you are in the room with David and the other GSA folks, identify yourself as Pam Alexander or Pam Clarke. David [Safavian] does not want Abramoff used in the meeting.'” The WP publishes excerpts of e-mail traffic between Casino Jack and David Safavian, one of his men in the Dubya White House, and the details run from the sketchy to the mundane. (“He added that he was e-mailing from Signatures, and ‘I love those tempura tuna rolls!’“)
Prank Call! Prank Call!
“You have somebody who’s committing a felony, and he’s calling [the White House] during the planning, the execution and when it’s falling apart.” The Dubya administration gets in even more legal trouble after it’s discovered that, while an illegal plan to block Democratic phone banks in New Hampshire during the 2002 gubernatorial race was being carried out, its instigator, Dubya campaign op James Tobin, called the White House political affairs office 22 times in 2 days. (Looka has more.) Of course, clogging phone banks isn’t the first political dirty trick New Hampshire has ever seen — let us take a moment to reflect on the Gore campaign’s disgusting anti-Bradley traffic jam in 2000 — but that doesn’t make Tobin’s — and possibly the White House’s — actions any less reprehensible…or criminal.
If It’s Sunday, Arlen’s Angry.
“I think that there has to be a detailed explanation precisely as to what Vice President Cheney did, what the president said to him, and an explanation from the president as to what he said so that it can be evaluated.” In keeping with a recent pattern of talking tough on the Sunday shows (no doubt to impress his independent-minded Pennsylvania constituents) while pretty much folding like an accordion in Senate committee, Arlen Specter says he want answers from Bush and Cheney regarding the recent Libby leak disclosure. Update: Dubya responds.
Twilight of the Right?
In somewhat related news, the administration’s freefall in the polls continues, with even conservatives now admitting that Dubya is quacking like a lame duck. Meanwhile, some congressional Republicans begin to hear strains of 1994 in their own corruption and excess. And, with the Christian Coalition also nearing the End of (its) Days to boot, one has to wonder: Could we Dems ask for a more favorable electoral terrain against the Dubya-DeLay GOP heading into this November? And when are our party leaders going to rise to this opportunity and start offering a vision of leadership the American people can get behind?
Climate Control.
The WP files another dispatch regarding Dubya’s war on science: “Employees and contractors working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, along with a U.S. Geological Survey scientist working at an NOAA lab, said in interviews that over the past year administration officials have chastised them for speaking on policy questions; removed references to global warming from their reports, news releases and conference Web sites; investigated news leaks; and sometimes urged them to stop speaking to the media altogether. Their accounts indicate that the ideological battle over climate-change research, which first came to light at NASA, is being fought in other federal science agencies as well.”
Five and In.
The Senate reaches a compromise on immigration reform that splits the middle between the Frist-Tancredo hardliners and the Kennedy-McCain moderates. “Under the agreement, the Senate would allow undocumented workers a path to lawful employment and citizenship if they could prove — through work stubs, utility bills or other documents — that they have been in the country for five years. To attain citizenship, those immigrants would have to pay a $2,000 penalty, back taxes, learn English, undergo a criminal background check and remain working for 11 years.” But critics argue that the five-year distinction is a hard one to determine or enforce, and has been since it was first put into law in 1986. Update: Things fall apart.
The Leaky Cauldron.
While Dubya and the GOP continue to smear and threaten the whistleblowers who exposed this administration’s recent egregious violations of civil liberties — the warrantless wiretaps or the secret gulags, for example — papers filed by Plamegate prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald disclose that Scooter Libby was actually told to leak classified information to the press by Dubya and Cheney (although not necessarily the identity of Valerie Plame.) “Libby said he understood that ‘he was to tell [Judith] Miller, among other things, that a key judgment of the NIE held that Iraq was “vigorously trying to procure” uranium,’ Fitzgerald wrote.” Replied DNC chair Howard Dean today, “The fact that the president was willing to reveal classified information for political gain and put the interests of his political party ahead of America’s security shows that he can no longer be trusted to keep America safe.” At the very least, given his own penchant for selective leaking, it means Dubya is being a tremendous hypocrite every time he starts equating whistleblowers with terrorist sympathizers, and that his repeated promise to find the leakers in his administration is roughly equivalent to OJ’s hunt for the real killers. Update: ABC’s John Cochran and Salon‘s Farhad Manjoo break down the implications. Update 2: Fitzgerald makes a correction.