Could It Be More Obvious That The White House Has Been Lying?

The U.S. Attorney firing scandal grew out of something that, if addressed in an honest manner, would perhaps have raised a few eyebrows but would likely have been dismissed as "politics as usual... at least under Bush." You know, "Sure, we fired U.S. Attorneys for political reasons, but that's our constitutional right and they're poliitical appointees anyway."

Instead it's been an exercise in obfuscation, but one that has attempted to point fingers away from direct involvement by the White House. With Harriet Miers refusing to obey a subpoena to testify before Congress on a claim of executive privilege - a claim which of itself belies the idea that the White House was not involved in the firings - Bush is now asserting an "I'm completely above the law" concept of what executive privilege entails.

Bush administration officials unveiled a bold new assertion of executive authority yesterday in the dispute over the firing of nine U.S. attorneys, saying that the Justice Department will never be allowed to pursue contempt charges initiated by Congress against White House officials once the president has invoked executive privilege.

This will likely end up being resolved by the courts, and I'm sure Bush hopes that process is slow, but isn't it time to stop giving him the benefit of the doubt? If the White House were being even slightly honest about the firings, it wouldn't be necessary to throw up so many smokescreens, or so flagrantly flout the Constitution.

Another Disaster Relief Scandal

CJR Daily congratulates the AP for covering a neglected story:

A disaster relief company that took supplies that were supposed to go to Sept. 11 rescuers at the World Trade Center escaped punishment after the government discovered its own employees had stolen artifacts from ground zero, once-secret federal documents show.

* * *

The FBI developed evidence from whistleblowers that the company had dispatched trucks to the warehouse and loaded hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of donated bottled water, clothes, tools and generators to be moved to Minnesota in a plot to sell some for profit, the records show.

Better a cover-up than a scandal, right?

New from HUD - Subsidies for Bridges in Brooklyn

There has been some controversy over an account related by Secretary Alphonso Jackson of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, in which he related how he was going to award a lucrative contract to a person but changed his mind when that person expressed that he did not like President Bush.

"He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years," Jackson said of the prospective contractor. "He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something ... he said, 'I have a problem with your president.'

"I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'I don't like President Bush.' I thought to myself, 'Brother, you have a disconnect -- the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn't be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don't tell the secretary.'

"He didn't get the contract," Jackson continued. "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe."

Jackson doesn't deny saying it - he just says that it didn't happen, and he put the joke in the first person to make it funnier. Joke? That's what Jackson's spokesperson, Dustee Tucker, told the Chicago Tribune:

"You know when you tell a joke you put yourself in first person, for delivery," she said. "You say I was on this train and so and so did this even if you know it wasn't a train. The secretary was putting himself in that first person to make the story more effective...

Wow. He's a funny guy. This part of the explanation is more telling:

"So he was offering an anecdote to say, this is how politics works in DC. In DC people won't just stab you in the back, they'll stab you in the front. And so the secretary's point was a hypothetical, what he said was an anecdote. It did not happen."

Oh... so it didn't happen, but it could have happened had somebody been so foolish as to express disagreement with President Bush, and thus it was important to advise the members of the Dallas Real Estate group that they shouldn't disclose any dislike for Bush if they want government contracts.... with some other agency where this could happen (if things like this happened, but they don't). (Are your eyes rolling yet?)

According to that Tribune piece,

The main message Tucker wanted to leave me with was that Jackson didn't yank anyone's contract because he vehemently disagreed with the Bush administration. Several times she said Jackson had nothing to do with contracting. That was done elsewhere in the department.

And certainly it is impossible that anybody in the agency would be influenced by the position of the Secretary, let alone take instruction from the Secretary.

Does he need a better story? A better spokesperson?

"That was a prostitute?"

Looking at reports of the Duke Cunningham bribery scandal, that the lubrication^[1] of certain Members of Congress and their staffs^[2] involved the provision of prostitutes, I can't help but think of Neil Bush....

The Bush divorce, completed in April after 23 years of marriage, was prompted in part by Bush's relationship with another woman. He admitted in the deposition that he previously had sex with several other women while on trips to Thailand and Hong Kong at least five years ago.

The women, he said, simply knocked on the door of his hotel room, entered and had sex with him. He said he did not know if they were prostitutes because they never asked for money and he did not pay them.

"Mr. Bush, you have to admit it's a pretty remarkable thing for a man just to go to a hotel room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her," Brown said.

"It was very unusual," Bush said.

One would hope that the defense contractors in the Duke case had their prostitutes wear some sort of ID, such that the people at the parties didn't suffer from similar confusion....

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Footnotes

1. No pun intended.

2. No pun intended. Really. Why don't you believe me?