president bill clinton

Raw Story has the full transcript, but here are the parts that stuck out to me:

Karl Rove has described his three and a half hour fifth meeting with a grand jury as "hell," and is more worried about being prosecuted than ever, MSNBC is reporting.

The three and a half hour duration is considered highly unusual for a fifth appearance before a grand jury, MSNBC's David Shuster reported. Shuster will be giving an updated report at 7pm EST.

One MSNBC commentator claimed that the fifth appearnce also ties the record held by Betty Currie, former President Bill Clinton's personal secretary.

Also not boding well for Rove is the fact that the grand jury plans to meet tomorrow. Some are speculating that an indictment for Rove may be handed up tomorrow, though others have claimed such a fast turnaround time is unlikely.

...SNIP....

Since the guilty plea of Jack Abramoff there has been a lot of back and forth
discussion in the White House Press room regarding the President's acquaintances
with Abramoff. Scott McClellan has tried hard to deny any such meetings yet
reporters like David Gregory have been hard to fire back and try to get answers.

One of McClellans's defenses has been there are no photos of Bush and
Abramoff together. Yesterday that defense seemed to have some holes in it when

Washontonian reported they had scene photos of the two together:

If the White House can’t find the photos, prosecutors already know where
to look. The Washingtonian has seen five photos of the President with
Abramoff or his family. One photo shows the President and Abramoff shaking
hands at a meeting in the Old Executive Office Building, where a
bearded-Abramoff introduced Bush to several of the lobbyist’s
native-American clients.

View complete article
here.

That article did not get much attention yesterday because it wasn't reported
on by the mainstream media. Well today that changes.
Time
magazine is now reporting that the photos do exist:

The

Boston Globe hit a home run today. In an article titled "Congress Reduces
Its Oversight Role" they highlight how Republicans in Congress ignore their very
duty as given to them in our constitution.

WASHINGTON -- Back in the mid-1990s, the Republican-controlled House of
Representatives, aggressively delving into alleged misconduct by the Clinton
administration, logged 140 hours of sworn testimony into whether former
president Bill Clinton had used the White House Christmas card list to
identify potential Democratic donors.

In the past two years, a House committee has managed to take only 12
hours of sworn testimony about the abuse of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib
prison.

The jarring comparison reflects the way Congress has conducted its
oversight role during the GOP's era of one-party rule in Washington.

While congressional committees once were leaders in investigating the
executive branch and powerful industries, the current Congress has largely
spared major corporations and has done only minimal oversight of the
Republican administration, according to a review of congressional documents
by The Boston Globe.

An examination of committees' own reports found that the House Government
Reform Committee held just 37 hearings described as ''oversight" or
investigative in nature during the last Congress, down from 135 such
hearings held by its predecessor, the House Government Operations Committee,
in 1993-94, the last year the Democrats controlled the chamber.

Party loyalty does not account for the difference: In 1993-94, the
Democrats were investigating a Democratic administration

In 1992 when Bill Clinton became our President, he was
faced with a load of problems. The top two were a budget that was in a record
deficit and dealing with a post cold war world. While dodging almost every kind
of bullet the right shot at him, he succeeded in both.

It’s no secret the right had to go on the offensive and
start attacking him with everything from “shady” real estate deals right down to
a blow job. They went as far as voting for impeachment because of the President
lying under oath and committing perjury, something that Karl Rove may have done
and the right now views as a minor crime.

Now Reuters is reporting that Bill Clinton is holding a
private summit this September in order to deal with the woes that are facing
this world. They include everything from terrorism to poverty.

Here is the entire article as published via Yahoo and can
be viewed
here:

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton says he is intent on
finding ways the private sector can solve some of the world's most pressing
problems from poverty to terrorism.

As host of a meeting in New York later this year of private
and public sector leaders, Clinton said in an interview with Reuters on Tuesday
there are plenty of problems governments simply cannot address.

"What I'm trying to do is figure out what private sector
people can do," said Clinton, 58, who left office in 2001 after eight years in
the White House which saw the longest-ever U.S. economic expansion but were
dogged by personal scandal.

"It's unrealistic to think all the world's problems will be
solved only by government actions," he said at his home in suburban New York.