More on Darth - Froomkin on Friday

i missed this last friday, but, as usual, dan froomkin's insight is not to be missed...

Perhaps Cheney is rejecting this oversight because he doesn't want people to know what he and his aides have been doing with classified information. Or perhaps he believes in principle that he shouldn't be subject to constraints that apply to others in the executive branch. Maybe both. I'm betting on both.

[...]

As I wrote in my March 31, 2006, column, investigative reporter Murray Waas has developed a compelling case that the use and abuse of classified information has been key to the White House's success not only in contriving a bogus case for war in Iraq, but in keeping charges of deception from becoming a major issue in the 2004 election -- and, arguably, to this day.

[...]

Also, starting in early 2003, Bush granted Cheney broad new powers to personally classify and declassify material, as I wrote in my Feb. 17, 2006 column. Bush's move, ironically, came in the very same order that Cheney is now in part resisting.

On March 25, 2003, just days after ordering U.S. troops into Iraq, Bush signed an executive order amending Executive Order 12958, which President Clinton had signed in 1995, and which laid out a host of rules about the classification and declassification of secret information.

[...]

But Bush did make one major change: Giving the vice president all the same classification powers as the president. Clinton's order had assigned those powers only to the president, agency heads and their specifically designated subordinates. Bush's order added one more party: The vice president. Or, in the precise and possibly telling words of the order: "[I]n the performance of executive duties, the Vice President."

[...]

[W]ouldn't it be in character for him and his top aides to maneuver to establish the vice presidency as a uniquely powerful and unconstrained force?

well, of COURSE, it's in character, perfectly in keeping with the megalomaniacal and fundamentally evil nature of the man... why would we expect anything less...?

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

'S funny,wherever I look, there's a Rove

you keep it comin', murray... i'm counting on you to finally blow this thing wide open...

The Bush administration has withheld a series of e-mails from Congress showing that senior White House and Justice Department officials worked together to conceal the role of Karl Rove in installing Timothy Griffin, a protégé of Rove's, as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

and, if you happen to stumble across a pistol that's still warm...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Now, all Gonzo's "I don't recalls" make sense

emptywheel comments on the bombshell murray waas dropped yesterday...

So, too, does this put Gonzales in an awfully awkward position. All that forgetfulness, all the claims that he was only marginally informed make sense, now. But they make sense for the very good reason that Gonzales was marginally informed only after being very well informed that he was about to become very marginally informed. His lack of recall looks all the more pathetic the more deliberate it appears.

yeah, i was saying the same thing yesterday after reading murray's article...

delegating away your hiring and firing authority, particularly when it's to relatively inexperienced staff political operatives and it involves the selection of highly experienced professionals, is bad enough on its face, but when those inexperienced staff are being used as a cover so that the REAL deciders in the white house are shielded, that's bad, real bad... no wonder leahy had a fit...

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments

Echoing Atrios on the latest DOJ bombshell

atrios...

Oh My

murray waas...

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales signed a highly confidential order in March 2006 delegating to two of his top aides -- who have since resigned because of their central roles in the firings of eight U.S. attorneys -- extraordinary authority over the hiring and firing of most non-civil-service employees of the Justice Department.

[...]

A senior Justice Department official, who did not know of Gonzales's delegation of authority until contacted by National Journal, said that it posed a serious threat to the integrity of the criminal-justice system because it gave Sampson, Goodling, and the White House control over the hiring of senior officials in the Justice Department's Criminal Division, which oversees all politically sensitive public corruption cases, at the same time that they held authority to hire and fire U.S. attorneys.

[...]

A senior executive branch official familiar with the delegation of authority said in an interview that -- as was the case with the firings of the U.S. attorneys and the selection of their replacements -- the two aides intended to work closely with White House political aides and the White House counsel's office in deciding which senior Justice Department officials to dismiss and whom to appoint to their posts. "It was an attempt to make the department more responsive to the political side of the White House and to do it in such a way that people would not know it was going on," the official said.

profmarcus...

OH MY...!

damn... talk about incriminating...!

Submit To Propeller
Tweet

[Permalink] 0 comments