Fornits
General Interest => Let's talk about the weather... => Topic started by: SyN on September 15, 2005, 10:38:00 PM
-
They want this to make us forget that Karl Rove betrayed america, endangerd lives all just to get revenge on people telling the truth.
-
True---he is a treasonous bastard.
-
:nworthy:
Ministers say that they teach charity. That is natural. They live on hand-outs. All beggars teach that others should give.
--Robert G. Ingersoll, American politician and lecturer
-
Arianna Huffington: Karl Rove's Big Easy
Fri Sep 16
Creating an independent, bipartisan commission to look into what went so horribly wrong with the response to Katrina is not only an idea supported by an overwhelming majority of the American people -- including 64% of Republicans -- it?s also, inarguably, the right thing to do.
After all, we?re not talking about a witch hunt to ferret out which public officials should be pilloried in the public square (although surely more than a few members of the administration deserve a good thrashing -- uh, I mean Medal of Freedom) but a chance to make sure that the same mistakes aren?t made when the dreaded next terrorist attack hits us. If we look at Katrina as a very wet dry run for our response to Hurricane Osama, an independent commission should have been empanelled the second the bodies started piling up in New Orleans.
And it?s not like this kind of fast-track fact-gathering is without precedent. The first of nine investigations into the failures that led to Pearl Harbor convened 11 days after that attack. And LBJ created the Warren Commission seven days after President Kennedy was assassinated.
But a full, public, and unbiased accounting is the last thing the White House and its Congressional allies want. Hence Wednesday?s straight party line vote. Not surprisingly, the GOP prefers the fox guarding the henhouse approach of having a Republican-controlled Congressional panel investigate Katrina.
Of course, we?ve seen this foot-dragging, stonewalling, anything-to-avoid-looking-in-the-mirror tactic before. It took 14 months -- and a candlelight vigil outside the White House by the 9/11 families -- before Bush finally relented and the 9/11 Commission was created. Is that kind of public shaming what it?s going to take to get to the truth about Katrina? If so, let?s not wait 14 months to have the families of Katrina?s victims gather outside the White House demanding answers.
There is too much at stake to let Bush and the GOP Congress play politics with our lives.
And speaking of playing politics, I love how the news that Karl Rove has been placed in charge of the reconstruction effort was buried in the ninth paragraph of a twelve paragraph New York Times story on Bush?s big speech.
This assignment proves that despite the president?s lofty rhetoric about ?building a better New Orleans?, his main concern is stanching his political bleeding. Let?s be honest, when it comes to large-scale efforts like this, Ol? Turd Blossom isn?t exactly Gen. George Marshall, who, before devising the Marshall Plan, had, among other things, been responsible for deploying over eight million soldiers in WW II.
Rove?s genius (aside from a Mensa-level mastery of dirty trickery) is for using imagery, spin, and atmospherics to turn political liabilities into political opportunities.
So here is the White House?s Katrina Plan in a nutshell: block any independent examination of its failings, put the Einstein of damage control in charge of reconstructing New Orleans, keep the dead bodies out of sight, try to get away with general platitudes and palliatives, offer watered-down acceptances of ?responsibility? while trying to pin everything you can on local yokels and fall guys like Brownie, and let Bush?s corporate cronies get fat on hefty no-bid reconstruction contracts.
So get ready for the New New Orleans -- Karl Rove?s Big Easy -- featuring the Halliburton French Quarter, the ExxonMobil River (formerly the Mississippi), Lake MBNA (formerly Pontchartrain), and Eli Lilly music (formerly jazz).
With deals like that shimmering on the horizon, it?s no wonder the president?s pals in Congress are doing everything they can to throw a monkey wrench into House Democrats? efforts to investigate the Plamegate scandal, and the Boy Genius? involvement in it -- shooting down a pair of bills that would have required Antonio Gonzalez and the Justice Department, and Condi Rice and the State Department to turn over all documents and information pertaining to the outing of Valerie Plame.
God forbid! Mustn?t allow anything to get in the way of Reconstruction Karl?s efforts to rebuild the president?s poll numbers, eh?
Copyright © 2005 HuffingtonPost.com
-
and guess who is now calling the shots over THIS tragedy, non other then......
-
Huffington is generally a moron, but, boy, did she nail this one dead square...
-
"Karl Rove, the architect. But he's not really an architect, is he?"--Bill Maher to guest Sen. Charles Schumer re: Karl Rove as head of the NOLA reconstruction effort.
Who wants to bet they build a damned planned community around a theme park and call it better, a la Centro Ybor? Vain are the thousand creeds that move men's hearts, unutterably vain, worthless as wither'd weeds.
--Emily Bronte
-
Professional punchery. I like it.
-
-
House Republicans derail probes of Plame affair
by Murray Waas
September 16th, 2005 3:10 PM
Republicans on three separate congressional committees this week derailed three formal "resolutions of inquiry" by Democrats that would have required the Bush administration to turn over sensitive information and records relating to the outing of CIA officer Valerie Plame.
Had the resolutions of inquiry been adopted, they would have led to the first independent congressional inquiries of the Plame affair, and perhaps even the public testimony of senior Bush administration aides such as Karl Rove, the White House deputy chief of staff, and I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, the chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, about their personal roles.
As things currently stand, a special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, continues to conduct a grand jury investigation of Rove, Libby, and other White House officials, but the public has gained scant insight into what, if anything, that inquiry has uncovered.
Votes on all three House committees this week were along strictly partisan lines. The House Select Committee on Intelligence voted 11-9 on Thursday to adversely report H. Res. 418, which would have opened a formal inquiry by Congress of the Plame affair. The House International Relations Committee voted 26-21 against the same resolution one day earlier. And the House Judiciary Committee voted 15-11 on Wednesday as well against launching an inquiry.
Republicans argued that any vote in favor of the resolution might impair Fitzgerald?s ongoing probe. In the case of the House Intelligence Committee, they were aided when, at the very last minute, the Justice Department informed the committee that Fitzgerald himself opposed any independent inquiry by Congress at this point.
In a letter to the committee, dated September 14, William E. Moschella, an assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, wrote: "Mr. Fitzgerald has advised that production at this time of the documents responsive to H. Res.418 and the other resolutions, and any attendant hearings, would interfere with his investigation. Accordingly, we request that the committee report adversely H. Res. 418."
Democrats, however, pointed out that Congress engaged in its own extensive formal investigations of Watergate and Whitewater even while special prosecutors conducted criminal inquiries.
Representative John Conyers of Michigan, the ranking Democrat and former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, made just that point during the debate, telling his colleagues:
"Let us not forget the endless hearings in this committee and others on alleged Clinton-Gore campaign finance violations, the Whitewater claims, and Clinton White House Travel Office firings. These were matters all under Justice Department review at the time of our hearings.
"Finally, I must remind my colleagues of the numerous House and Senate hearings on Watergate that were simultaneous with the Justice Department's own investigation."
In making the case for the resolutions, Conyers also cited a recent Voice story about the rationale for appointing a special prosecutor. The article disclosed that Justice Department officials made that crucial move because investigators had serious concerns that then attorney general John Ashcroft continued to receive regular briefings about the inquiry despite the fact that Karl Rove?a close personal and political friend of Ashcroft?had become a subject of the probe. The story quoted senior law enforcement sources as saying that Ashcroft continued the briefings even after he was told investigators firmly believed that Rove had withheld important information from them during an FBI interview.
Conyers questioned the Justice Department's handling of the Plame investigation prior to Fitzgerald's appointment virtually since its inception, alleging that Bush administration officials botched the initial stages of the inquiry, or perhaps even purposely stymied the efforts of investigators:
"The purpose of this resolution is to get to the bottom of what happened and why the Justice Department slow-walked the investigation at the beginning. We know that, despite [initial] urgent pleas from the CIA for a criminal investigation into the leaker, the Justice Department and White House dragged their feet. The Department then waited three days before notifying the White House of the breach and subsequent investigation. The White House then waited an additional 11 hours before telling staff to preserve evidence."
Conyers wasn?t done there:
"We now know that then attorney general John Ashcroft insisted on being briefed on Department interviews of Mr. Rove that were conducted in connection with the leak. He did so despite his own long-standing ties to Mr. Rove; Mr. Ashcroft had paid Mr. Rove almost $750,000 for work on several campaigns. That Mr. Ashcroft eventually recused himself demonstrates there were conflicts of interest with his continued involvement."
A Justice Department spokesman did not return telephone calls for comment either on Wednesday or Thursday. Ashcroft also declined to comment.
The House Armed Services Committee will be soon the fourth congressional committee to consider the matter. Their vote is scheduled for September 20. But it's similarly unlikely that any Republicans will break ranks and vote in favor an inquiry.
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0538,waas,67952,2.html (http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0538,waas,67952,2.html)