president bush

Remember the failed Bernard Kerik nomination to run homeland security? Guess who was pushing the nomination through, regardless of legal troubles?

When former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani urged President Bush to make Bernard B. Kerik the next secretary of homeland security, White House aides knew Kerik as the take-charge top cop from Sept. 11, 2001. But it did not take them long to compile an extensive dossier of damaging information about the would-be Cabinet officer.

They learned about questionable financial deals, an ethics violation, allegations of mismanagement and a top deputy prosecuted for corruption. Most disturbing, according to people close to the process, was Kerik's friendship with a businessman who was linked to organized crime. The businessman had told federal authorities that Kerik received gifts, including $165,000 in apartment renovations, from a New Jersey family with alleged Mafia ties.

Alarmed about the raft of allegations, several White House aides tried to raise red flags. But the normal investigation process was short-circuited, the sources said. Bush's top lawyer, Alberto R. Gonzales, took charge of the vetting, repeatedly grilling Kerik about the issues that had been raised. In the end, despite the concerns, the White House moved forward with his nomination -- only to have it collapse a week later.

Wow no wonder Gonzales deserves to remain as our nation's top law enforcement official. He is great at judging people.

Could it really be so?

The head of the federal office responsible for providing women with access to contraceptives and counseling to prevent pregnancy resigned unexpectedly Thursday after Medicaid officials took action against him in Massachusetts.

The Health and Human Services Department provided no details about the nature of the Massachusetts action that led to Dr. Eric Keroack's resignation.

Just five months ago, Keroack was chosen by President Bush to oversee HHS' Office of Population Affairs and its $283 million annual budget. The pick angered Planned Parenthood and other groups that support abortion rights, which viewed him as opposed to birth control and comprehensive sex education. Keroack had worked for an organization that opposes contraception.

"Yesterday, Dr. Eric Keroack alerted us to an action taken against him by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' Office of Medicaid. As a result of this action I accepted his resignation," Dr. John Agwunobi, assistant secretary for health, said in a terse statement Thursday evening.

There is no word yet as to the action taken against Keroack or any details of it. This could become interesting. We have seen Bush officials resign before only to get in hotter water later.

The Democrats want to give the citizens of Washington D.C. the basic democratic right the rest of the country enjoys - representation in Congress, but Bush is ready to put a stop to that:

The White House on Tuesday threatened to veto legislation giving the District of Columbia a vote in the House, possibly prolonging a two-century-long wait for representation in Congress.

The bill, the White House said in a statement, violates constitutional language saying the House should be made up of representatives chosen by the people of the states. “The District of Columbia is not a state,” it said, and if the legislation reaches President Bush's desk, “his senior advisers would recommend that he veto the bill.”

The House is to vote Friday on the legislation that would give a vote to the D.C. delegate while creating, until the 2010 census, a new at-large seat for Utah.

Why does Bush hate democracy so much? This excuse is really lame. If we are going to say that, then we should revoke the representatives from Kentucky and Virginia, as they are commonwealths and not states. How would Bush feel about that happening to two big red "states"? Perhaps the Democrats should fight back with threatening to remove the representation of these two states.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to authorize more subpoenas in the U.S.A. purge. Five of the subpoenas are targeting Justice Department officials.

In the wake of this growing scandal, we also find out from Murray Waas that Bush worked to shut down another investigation that may have targeted Gonzales:

Shortly before Attorney General Alberto Gonzales advised President Bush last year on whether to shut down a Justice Department inquiry regarding the administration's warrantless domestic eavesdropping program, Gonzales learned that his own conduct would likely be a focus of the investigation, according to government records and interviews.

Bush personally intervened to sideline the Justice Department probe in April 2006 by taking the unusual step of denying investigators the security clearances necessary for their work.

It is unclear whether the president knew at the time of his decision that the Justice inquiry -- to be conducted by the department's internal ethics watchdog, the Office of Professional Responsibility -- would almost certainly examine the conduct of his attorney general.

Yes - the showdown is heating up. The next big question is rather the White House will let Karl Rove testify. If he doesn't I would accept that as an admission of guilt from Bush and that is grounds to immediately start impeachment hearings.

Think back to the surge debate last month. The Republicans took to the floor of the House and stood tight with talking points in hand. They had their little "war" room set-up to counter any Democratic argument and acted like they knew all the inside mumblings of the execution of the surge. One of those big talking points was "give the President the 6 months he needs to make the plan work".

Well we are now over a month into the plan and we heard this week that the surge could now take over a year. If that isn't enough, now we got the number of troops being needed for this "surge" being increased by almost 50%:

President Bush asked Congress on Saturday for $3.2 billion to pay for 8,200 more U.S. troops needed in Afghanistan and Iraq on top of the 21,500-troop buildup he announced in January.

Bush wants Congress to fund 3,500 new U.S. troops to expand training of local police and army units in Afghanistan. The money also would pay for the estimated 3,500 existing U.S. troops he already announced would be staying longer in the region to counter an anticipated Taliban offensive in Afghanistan this spring.

In Iraq, most of the additional troops would help with the latest Baghdad security plan, which is getting under way in the capital. The money would pay for 2,400 combat support troops, 2,200 military police forces and 129 troops for reconstruction teams.

So did Bush try to sugar coat his surge number when he addressed the nation in January? We hear that this surge is working so great, so why do we need such a drastic increase only a short time into it?

Our military is already broken. We are not able to handle any situations that come up. This isn't some left-wing conspiracy; it is the realization of many on the left and right as well as military leaders. So how does Bush respond? He tries to further the damage he has done to our once mighty force.

That is the headline of an AP article today. At first read you start to think "great - here we go again with pork barrel spending". It sends a feeling of "bridges to nowhere" encompassing my body. But when you read the article, you find out that is not the case at all.

While Democrats try to restrict how President Bush can spend the $100 billion he wants for Iraq, they also hope to load his measure up with $10 billion in add-ons — from aid for avocado growers to help for children lacking health insurance.

Lawmakers also hope to add money for drought relief in the Great Plains, better levees in New Orleans and development of military bases that are closing down.

The expected battle with the White House over the add-ons is getting far less attention than debate over Iraq, but it could reveal a lot about how much Democrats will be able to rewrite the Republican president's budget later this year.

I do have to say this is a good move. Will Bush veto the very bill to fund his surge? Think of the political backfire on that. This is a good reason for not having a line-item veto power for the President, all though I bet he tries to do so with his signing statements. What ever happens, this will be interesting to follow.

And by terrorist #1 I mean Joe Lieberman. He is trying to hijack the Democrat's majority by threatening to switch sides if the Democrats try to restrict funds to the war. Well the Democratic leadership in the Senate is going a step further. They are now working on legislation to re-examine the 2002 authorization to go to war:

Determined to challenge President Bush, Senate Democrats are drafting legislation to limit the mission of U.S. troops in Iraq, effectively revoking the broad authority Congress granted in 2002, officials said Thursday.

While these officials said the precise wording of the measure remains unsettled, one draft would restrict American troops in Iraq to combating al-Qaida, training Iraqi army and police forces, maintaining Iraq's territorial integrity, and otherwise proceeding with the withdrawal of combat forces.

As I said in my earlier post - good riddance Joe. If the Republicans want to filibuster everything then we don't need the majority. Actually this could become a blessing to the Democrats in 2008. Let the Republicans regain control of the Senate this year and screw it up even more and we got a new campaign motto in 2008. Hey - we only need to pick up 1 seat, and considering most seats up are Republicans we should have no problem with that.

Around the blogosphere Taylor, Howie, Jane, Chris and Nichole all weight in on this.

This is a clip from FOX's new show, "The Half Hour News Hour", their "competition" to The Daily Show:

Oh this is going to be a massive bomb. The first reviews are out and they are very un-raving. First from the TV Gal Blog on the Seattle PI-

A few television series simply aren't worth profound analysis. It could be that the odds of their survival look so incredibly low, and the creative effort that went into producing seems so shoddy, that the energy it would take to expend coming up with zingers describing its overall failure would be better spent doing something else. (In my case, I'd rather pack to leave town.)

OUCH! But there is more. Hal Boedeker of the Orlando Sentinel has his own take on the new show: