Why Bush's commute was really a pardon
It's all about cause and effect.
SCOTUSblog explains it for us:
The federal judge who sentenced former vice presidential aide I. Lewis Libby for lying to federal investigators and a grand jury on Tuesday raised the possibility that Libby might not have to serve two years on "supervised release" after all. In a two-page order (found here), U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton told lawyers on both sides to file briefs on the issue by Monday.
When President Bush in granting clemency on Monday nullified the 30-month prison sentence Walton had imposed, the President said he would leave intact the part of the sentence that required two years of supervised release -- a form of probation. But Walton on Tuesday noted that the federal law governing such a requirement states that it is to be served "after imprisonment."
Expect Libby's lawyers to argue that it would be unprecedented for their client to go on "supervised release" if he never went to jail. They will want the probation waved.
Even if the probation is waved, Libby still has to pay the $250,000 fine. However, Libby's friends, such as Fred Thompson, are continuing to raise money for him -- which would more than cover the cost.
Bush will not even need to pardon Libby at all. He already has been pardoned. He is not going to jail. He might not serve probation. His friends will help him pay the $250,000 fine. So Justin was correct in reporting on Monday that Libby succeeded in "Getting Off 'Scoot' Free."
Sicko inspires grassroots action in Dallas cinema
Here's a first-hand account of a trip to see Michael Moore's Sicko in a suburban mall in Dallas, in which the audience of conservative cowboys were converted to health-care activists:
When the credits rolled the audience filed out and into the bathrooms. At the urinals, my redneck friend couldn’t stop talking about the film, and I kept listening. He struck up a conversation with a random black man in his 40s standing next to him, and soon everyone was peeing and talking about just how fucked everything is.
I kept my distance, as we all finished and exited at the same time. Outside the restroom doors… the theater was in chaos. The entire Sicko audience had somehow formed an impromptu town hall meeting in front of the ladies room. I’ve never seen anything like it. This is Texas goddammit, not France or some liberal college campus. But here these people were, complete strangers from every walk of life talking excitedly about the movie. It was as if they simply couldn’t go home without doing something drastic about what they’d just seen. My redneck compadre and his new friend found their wives at the center of the group, while I lingered in the background waiting for my spouse to emerge.
The talk gradually centered around a core of 10 or 12 strangers in a cluster while the rest of us stood around them listening intently to this thing that seemed to be happening out of nowhere. The black gentleman engaged by my redneck in the restroom shouted for everyone’s attention. The conversation stopped instantly as all eyes in this group of 30 or 40 people were now on him. “If we just see this and do nothing about it,” he said, “then what’s the point? Something has to change.” There was silence, then the redneck’s wife started calling for email addresses. Suddenly everyone was scribbling down everyone else’s email, promising to get together and do something… though no one seemed to know quite what.
I've seen this movie twice now -- once by downloading it from The Pirate Bay and once in the cinema, and it was incredibly moving and inspiring both times. This is the must-see movie of the summer. Link (via Making Light)
See also:
Moore's "Sicko" leaks onto P2P
Google to HMOs: pay us and we'll defuse "Sicko"
More on Google vs Sicko
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi
Australia 'has Iraq oil interest'
| Australia has about 1,500 military personnel in the Gulf |
Australian Defence Minister Brendan Nelson has admitted that securing oil supplies is a key factor behind the presence of Australian troops in Iraq.
He said maintaining "resource security" in the Middle East was a priority.
But PM John Howard has played down the comments, saying it was "stretching it a bit" to conclude that Australia's Iraq involvement was motivated by oil.
The remarks are causing heated debate as the US-led Iraq coalition has avoided linking the war and oil.
Oil concerns
Australia was involved in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and has about 1,500 military personnel still deployed in the region.
There are no immediate plans to bring them home.
In comments to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Mr Nelson admitted that the supply of oil had influenced Australia's strategic planning in the region.
"Obviously the Middle East itself, not only Iraq but the entire region, is an important supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of the world," he said.
"Australians and all of us need to think what would happen if there were a premature withdrawal from Iraq.
"It's in our interests, our security interests, to make sure that we leave the Middle East, and leave Iraq in particular, in a position of sustainable security."
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Brendan Nelson |
This is thought to be the first time the Australian government has admitted any link between troop deployment in Iraq and securing energy resources.
But Prime Minister John Howard was quick to play down the significance of his defence minister's comments.
"We didn't go there because of oil and we don't remain there because of oil," he told a local radio station.
"A lot of oil comes from the Middle East - we all know that - but the reason we remain there is that we want to give the people of Iraq a possibility of embracing democracy," he added.
Opposition criticism
Opposition politicians, though, have chastised Mr Howard's government over the comments.
"This government simply makes it up as it goes along on Iraq," Labor leader Kevin Rudd told reporters.
Anti-war protesters say the government's admission proves that the US-led invasion was more of a grab for oil rather than a genuine attempt to uncover weapons of mass destruction.
But ministers in Canberra have brushed aside the criticism, saying they remain committed to helping the US stabilise Iraq and combat terrorism.
They have also stressed that there will be no "premature withdrawal" of Australian forces from the region.
Republican Senators May Back Contempt Charge
By Elana Schor
The Hill
Tuesday 03 July 2007
As Democrats tangle with the White House over executive privilege, Senate Republicans must decide whether to block a criminal contempt charge against the administration or allow it and thus bring the constitutional clash before a federal judge.
Both chambers' judiciary committee chairmen have given the White House a July 9 deadline to explain in detail its executive-privilege claim to withhold subpoenaed documents on the mass firing of U.S. attorneys. If their deadline is not met, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) likely will pursue a contempt citation - and some Republicans are unlikely to bail out President Bush.
Sen. John Cornyn (Texas), vice chairman of the GOP conference, told The Hill on Friday that he thinks Republican cooperation with a criminal contempt finding will be required.
"It's just a formal process that sets up a legal challenge," Cornyn said. "We've got to cut out some of the politics and get this to the courts."
One Senate GOP aide, requesting anonymity, agreed that Republicans might approve a contempt finding as a procedural step. Should the White House continue to resist the subpoenas, only one of the two chambers has to approve a criminal citation before the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia can empanel a grand jury.
Yet the spectacle of Republicans turning on President Bush by finding his advisers in contempt could rub salt in the wounds of an already riven GOP. Senators who have blasted the U.S. attorneys investigation as a partisan charade would have an especially difficult time staying silent on a resolution of contempt.
"There isn't a Republican in Congress who's not thinking long and hard about how they can be a loyal member of the party and at the same time be faithful to their oath of office as a member of Congress," said Douglas W. Kmiec, professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine Law School and head of the Office of Legal Counsel under President Reagan.
Complicating the dilemma, several Senate Republicans have suggested letting the judiciary resolve the executive privilege dispute, setting themselves up for a Democratic campaign to support a criminal contempt finding.
"At the end of the day, this will be settled by the courts," Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) said.
"I think this is an issue that's going to be handled by the courts," agreed Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.).
"In the end, the courts will decide this anyway," said Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.), who has called for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's resignation in response to the firings.
"We can't have a Congress that's constantly bringing administration officials in to harass them," said Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.). "But it's a matter for the courts."
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) called a contempt vote "the last thing the country needs," but advised lawmakers to "let the courts fight this out."
In fact, two equally difficult options exist for Democrats to enforce the subpoenas without a chamber-wide contempt vote, according to former House general counsel Stan Brand. Senators can either pass a jurisdictional bill to send the dispute to court or ask the sergeant at arms to arrest White House officials named in the subpoenas and use a habeas corpus motion to bring the case before a judge.
Citing the precedent of a 1982 contempt citation, however, Brand noted another problem: "The U.S. attorney won't necessarily bring this matter to a grand jury. So it could be an act of futility."
In 1982, during current White House Counsel Fred Fielding's first stint in the position, the U.S. attorney declined to bring a contempt charge against a Reagan administration official, instead seeking an injunction against the House. But Leahy has predicted that the capital's sitting U.S. attorney would be hard-pressed this year to ignore a criminal finding.
The U.S. attorneys probe, which hinges upon Democratic allegations of improper politicization at the Department of Justice, has played out largely on the committee level up to this point. In addition, the complex legal questions surrounding the subpoenas are prompting many Republican senators to keep their powder dry, criticizing neither Democrats nor the Bush White House.
There is also the issue of timing: If the matter goes to the courts, it is unlikely to be resolved soon, perhaps winding down past the 2008 election.
"It's only theoretical at this point, so I wouldn't opine one way or the other," Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said.
Sen. Mel Martinez (Fla.), who is also chief of the Republican National Committee, called the investigation "all politics," but added, "I'm not sure how I'll deal with this."
Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) similarly declined to discuss his approach to the contempt vote, calling it "too big a leap to take at this time. I'm not ready to jump to conclusions."
Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) said he is unlikely to support a contempt finding but added that he would need to look more closely at the situation.
Meanwhile, a second subpoena standoff may be in store for the Senate as Leahy awaits a July 18 deadline for documents relating to the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program. But Kmiec, the former Reagan administration counsel, sees a possible Republican endgame: support contempt in the U.S. attorneys inquiry, but defend White House prerogatives on the eavesdropping summonses.
"While it's true that the [attorneys] subpoenas relate to a core executive power … the executive has not done a good and sufficient job of explain[ing] why the dismissals were undertaken," Kmiec said.
By contrast, said Kmiec, the wiretapping inquiry may run into a stronger case for executive privilege due to the wartime and national-security context. By showing some "reasonableness" on the attorneys issue, Republicans could convince a few Democrats to join them in shunning a contempt finding for the second round of subpoenas, he added.
The White House did not return a request for comment on Fielding's response to next week's deadline. A senior administration official, briefing reporters last Thursday, declined to address the scenario of a contempt citation.
No Quick Debate in Iraq On Oil Law
By Mussab Al-Khairalla and Ahmed Rasheed
Reuters
Wednesday 04 July 2007
Iraq's parliament might take a week to start debating a key draft oil law, officials said on Wednesday, as complaints from Shi'ite and Sunni Arab politicians and Kurdish authorities signaled its passage could be rocky.
Washington has pushed Iraq for months to speed up passage of the law and other pieces of legislation seen as vital to curbing sectarian violence and healing deep divisions between majority Shi'ites and minority Sunni Arabs.
Presentation of the draft to parliament after the cabinet approved it on Tuesday was a big step towards meeting a key political target set by the United States.
But Mohammed Abu Bakr, head of parliament's media office, said the law had first to go to the energy and oil committee.
"We need seven days to get the draft on the agenda of parliament to discuss it," he said.
In fresh violence, a suicide car bomber killed seven people on Wednesday, including three policemen, when he drove into a police patrol that had pulled up at a restaurant for lunch in Baiji, 180 km (120 miles) north of Baghdad, police said.
American soldiers backed by war planes killed 25 gunmen during a clash in Diyala province north of Baghdad, the military said. It said fighting took place during a three-day operation that ended on Monday. It did not specify the day of the clash.
The oil law is intended to ensure a fair distribution of the world's third largest oil reserves, which are located mainly in the Shi'ite south and the Kurdish north of Iraq.
Sunni Arabs, the backbone of the insurgency, live mainly in central provinces that have little proven oil wealth and have long feared they would miss out on any windfall.
Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki should have enough support in the 275-member parliament to get the law passed. But in a sign of trouble, the movement of anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said it had rejected the draft.
Sadr's bloc, which has 30 parliamentary seats, said the law must state that no contracts may be signed with firms from countries with troops in Iraq, an official said.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) said it had not seen nor approved the draft.
"We hope the cabinet is not approving a text with which the KRG disagrees because this would violate the constitutional rights of the Kurdistan region," the KRG said in a statement.
Iraq's cabinet originally approved the draft in February but faced stiff opposition from Kurdistan, which felt it was getting a raw deal.
The draft, which has not been made public, decides who controls Iraq's reserves and aims to provide a legal framework for foreign investment. The Kurds had previously said some of the law's annexes were unconstitutional.
Another complication could be Sunni Arab politicians, who have voiced concern about foreign domination of the industry.
Saleem al-Jubouri, spokesman for the main Sunni Arab bloc, the Accordance Front, said his group believed the cabinet had agreed to the changes too hastily and would seek amendments, although he added it was not trying to derail the measure.
The bloc is boycotting cabinet and parliament meetings over what it says is unfair treatment of its members.
Meanwhile, a hardline Sunni Arab clerical body, the Muslim Scholar's Association, issued a fatwa or religious edict saying the draft was "religiously prohibited" because it would allow foreigners to exploit Iraq's oil wealth.
A companion draft law that covers revenue sharing and which has been agreed by the Kurds would be approved by the cabinet soon and submitted to parliament next week, officials have said.
Parliament is running out of time to debate and approve the oil laws and other measures aimed at ensuring Sunni Arabs are cemented in the political process. It has extended its current session to the end of July, before legislators take a month off.
That leaves little time before the U.S. military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker have to present a much-anticipated report to Washington in the middle of September on Iraq's security and political progress.
House Balks at Bush Order for New Powers
By Jim Abrams
The Associated Press
Tuesday 03 July 2007
Washington - President Bush this month is giving an obscure White House office new powers over regulations affecting health, worker safety and the environment. Calling it a power grab, Democrats running Congress are intent on stopping him.
The House voted last week to prohibit the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from spending federal money on Executive Order 13422, signed by Bush last January and due to take effect July 24.
The order requires federal officials to show that private companies, people or institutions failed to address a problem before agencies can write regulations to tackle it. It also gives political appointees greater authority over how the regulations are written.
The House measure "stops this president or any president from seizing the power to rewrite almost every law that Congress passes, laws that protect public health, the environment, safety, civil rights, privacy and on and on," said Rep. Brad Miller, D-N.C., its sponsor.
"OIRA has quietly grown into the most powerful regulatory agency in Washington," the House Science investigations subcommittee, chaired by Miller, said in a report in April.
The administration contends Bush's order merely strengthens a similar directive issued by President Clinton in 1993 giving the White House budget office oversight of federal agency rulemaking.
Andrea Wuebker, a spokeswoman for the Office of Management and Budget, which manages the White House regulatory affairs office, said the order, along with an OMB good guidance bulletin, "will help increase the quality, accountability and transparency of agency guidance documents."
Bush's executive order:
- Requires agencies to identify "market failures," where the private sector fell short in dealing with a problem, as a factor in proposing a rule. The White House regulatory affairs office is given authority to assess those conclusions.
- States that no rulemaking can go forward without the approval of an agency's Regulatory Policy Office, to be headed by a presidential appointee.
- Directs each agency to provide an estimate of costs and benefits of regulations.
- Requires agencies to inform the White House regulatory affairs office of proposed significant guidance documents on complying with rules. Critics say this will create a new bottleneck delaying the issuance of guidelines needed to comply with federal regulations.
"This can only further delay implementing health, safety and environmental protections," said Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, a private watchdog group that joined numerous labor and good-government groups, including the AFL-CIO, Public Citizen and the Union of Concerned Scientists, in opposing Bush's order.
Miller tried unsuccessfully at a hearing in April to persuade the White House regulatory affairs office's former acting administrator, Steven Aitken, to reveal what private groups might have been involved in rewriting the Clinton-era order.
Aitken stressed that the Clinton order also used market failure as a criteria in advancing new rules and directing agencies to appoint regulatory policy officers, many of whom were political appointees. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., backed Aitken up at the hearing.
"The pattern is that we are challenging the president's authority, hoping to find a mistake and then making a lot of political hay about it," Rohrabacher said.
The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service noted in an analysis last February that President Reagan made the White House regulatory affairs office the central clearinghouse for substantive rulemaking, reviewing 2,000 to 3,000 proposed regulations per year. With Clinton's 1993 order, White House reviews of proposed regulations dropped to between 500 and 700 a year, the researchers said.
Bill Kovacs, vice president for regulatory affairs with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said the White House's regulatory affairs office now has about 35 people to keep track of the 4,000 rules federal agencies issue every year.
"It's only reasonable that you have some way of monitoring what your agencies are doing," Kovacs said, adding that the White House needs to assert control over the process.
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The House bill is HR 2829.
Text of Jan. 18 Executive Order 13422: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news
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Turns out Fred Thompson has a long history of helping the insiders. He's especially adept at helping those under investigation for serious crimes against the Constitution and betraying we the people.
I'm shocked! Shocked.
| Thompson tipped off the White House that the committee knew about the taping system and would be making the information public. In his all-but-forgotten Watergate memoir, "At That Point in Time," Thompson said he acted with "no authority" in divulging the committee's knowledge of the tapes, which provided the evidence that led to Nixon's resignation. It was one of many Thompson leaks to the Nixon team, according to a former investigator for Democrats on the committee, Scott Armstrong , who remains upset at Thompson's actions. "Thompson was a mole for the White House," Armstrong said in an interview. "Fred was working hammer and tong to defeat the investigation of finding out what happened to authorize Watergate and find out what the role of the president was." ... .. Not all would put a heroic sheen on Thompson's Watergate role |
So the man who wants to be president was a rat for Richard Nixon.
Having lived through Watergate, I find this incredibly disturbing. It illustrates to me a penchant by old Fred to support an executive branch that is an authority unto itself, not unlike Mr. Bush, though you'd have to have a Cheney type in place to make it complete.
Red flags, people. Big, bold red flags on Fred.
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