Rove Can Claim Privilege Only When Asked About Bush

By GottaLaff

As usual, Bush is off limits:

Are any subjects off limits?

The scope of the interviews will be limited to: (1) facts relating to the evaluation of, decision to dismiss, or decision to replace the former U.S. Attorneys in question; the alleged decisions to retain certain U.S. Attorneys; and any allegations of selective prosecution related thereto; and (2) testimony or representations made by Department of Justice officials to Congress on the U.S. Attorneys matter. For the period beginning on March 9, 2007 (the date of the Committee's first written demand for information from the White House), interviews will not include the content of conversations involving: (i) Mr. Rove and members of the White House Counsel's office; or (ii) Ms. Miers and members of the White House Counsel's office. In the case of Mr. Rove, the interview also will include facts relating to the prosecution of Alabama governor Don Siegelman.

And when can Rove and Miers claim executive privilege?

As to official privileges, counsel will direct witnesses not to respond to questions only when questions relate to communications to or from the President or when questions are outside the scope of questioning set forth above.

You can see a copy of the agreement here.

My frustration level just rose again.

White House Counsel Greg Craig Asked to ‘Step Down’ regarding BushCo matters

By GottaLaff

It's getting messy:

North Alabama attorney and GOP whistle-blower Jill Simpson is asking that White House Counsel Greg Craig recuse himself from consulting with President Obama on his legal position over executive privilege in the case of Karl Rove, the former political adviser to President Bush who is still defiance of a Congressional subpoena to testify about his role in the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and other crimes.

Citing the Rules of Professional Conduct for lawyers, Ms. Simpson’s attorney Priscilla Black Duncan writes in a letter dated Feb. 22 that Craig should “step down” from his position as White House Counsel, “at least in all matters dealing with the Bush administration.”

In what appears to be a clear conflict of interest, Craig represented Rove in his recent book deal, while Craig’s law partner, close associate and mentor, Emmet Flood, is representing Bush in executive privilege matters before the Washington D.C. Court of Appeals, where Bush administration officials have been charged with the political firings of U.S. attorneys for failing to act on orders to prosecute Democrats prior to elections.

Furthermore, Craig had been in contact with Ms. Simpson on the pretense of possibly representing her in her testimony before the House Judiciary Committee legal team a year and a half ago, but declined to represent her only after getting her to reveal her entire case against Mr. Rove. [...]

Ms. Simpson also demands to know the identities of anyone contacted about the recommendation to seek legal services from Washington attorney David Laufman, also known as “Bush’s Cleaner,” or Montgomery Republican Tommy Gallion, who after months of intensive discussions with Ms. Simpson, indicated he was in regular contact with President Bush on her case.

Gallion has repeatedly declined to answer my direct questions about Bush’s knowledge of the Siegelman case.

If Bush was as interested in the case as Gallion indicated to Ms. Simpson, that would place him directly in the loop in the political prosecution of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman. Perhaps Congress should also considering issuing a subpoena to Bush himself to testify under oath, since he refuses to allow Rove to testify, claiming staff executive privilege in his case.

The full letter is here. Original story link.

H/t: Dr. President

Obama to reverse Bush executive orders

By GottaLaff

How do you spell relief? O-B-A-M-A. I previously posted about the President-elect's intention to close Gitmo. Here's more about his efforts to eradicate a few of Georgie's smelliest, most vile stains, such as those pesky signing statements:

President-elect Barack Obama is expected to move swiftly to reverse executive orders regarding torture of terror suspects, the military prison at Guantanamo Bay and other controversial security policies, sources close to his transition said, in dramatic gestures aimed at reversing President Bush’s accumulation of executive power.

Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) said he’s been informed that President Obama will support his proposed legislation to make public some opinions from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, which issued some of the Bush Administration's most sweeping claims of executive power. Obama also has promised to limit President Bush's practice of using "signing statements" to amend legislation.

Remember those pundits who wondered aloud if P.E. Obama would be able to resist taking advantage of some of that excess power that Bush bestowed upon himself? There's their answer.

Obama aides didn't respond to requests for more detail, but the president-elect campaigned against what he called Bush’s abuse of executive authority.

"I was a constitutional law professor, which means unlike the current president, I actually respect the Constitution," Obama told an audience at a campaign fundraiser in 2007.

I.... I'm... experiencing something new. Something... strange. I... I... I feel my lungs taking in air. I'm... starting to breathe again.

Obama also defended a president’s right to use signing statements to clarify law, but he criticized Bush’s “clear abuse of this prerogative” to undermine laws he didn’t like.

"He is definitely going to handle signing statements in a very different fashion than Bush," said Norm Ornstein, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. "He'll issue some, no doubt, but he'll do it on a limited basis, and in a much more constrained way - he won't be saying, 'I refuse to execute this portion of the law,' for example."

The piece goes on to list John Podesta, Eric Holder, and Dawn Johnsen as choices that are giving a lot of people, yours truly included, a reason to live again.

"I was pleasantly surprised that Obama seems to have picked a head of the Office of Legal Counsel who is willing to tie his hands," said Gene Healy, a vice president at the libertarian Cato Institute.

According to the article, Obama would most likely use his executive powers for domestic matters, like the economy:

"On the one hand, he's dialing back some of the national security powers that have been controversial over the last eight years," said Cato's Healy. "On the other hand, he seems very comfortable redesigning the economy by executive fiat."

I can't help but believe that someone as knowledgeable of the, you know, Constitution, would also make it a priority to glue it back together rather than continue to stomp all over what's left of its tattered little remnants.

VIDEO: Blanket pardons would be 'final nail in Bush's coffin'

By GottaLaff

In keeping with my earlier post about the corrupt Bush administration, here are Rachel and Jonathan Turley discussing the mistake the Bush administration made in not knowing the deadline to slip through last minute regulations, and whether Bush will try to give blanket pardons at the end of his term:

Bush, Out of Office, Could Oppose Inquiries

By GottaLaff

Is there no end to this?

When a Congressional committee subpoenaed Harry S. Truman in 1953, nearly a year after he left office, he made a startling claim: Even though he was no longer president, the Constitution still empowered him to block subpoenas... As Congressional Democrats prepare to move forward with investigations of the Bush regime, they wonder whether that claim may be invoked again. Topics of open investigations include the harsh interrogation torture of detainees, the prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman of Alabama, secret legal memorandums from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel and the role of the former White House aides Karl Rove and Harriet E. Miers in the firing of federal prosecutors.

Obama has reservations about pursuing too many investigations.

But even if his administration rejects the calls for investigations, Mr. Obama cannot control what the courts or Congress do. Several lawsuits are seeking information about Bush policies, including an Islamic charity’s claim that it was illegally spied on by Mr. Bush’s program on wiretapping without warrants.

And Congressional Democrats say that they are determined to pursue their investigations — and that they expect career officials to disclose other issues after the Bush administration leaves. “We could spend the entire next four years investigating the Bush years,” Mr. Whitehouse said.

But if Mr. Obama decides to release information about his predecessor’s tenure, Mr. Bush could try to invoke executive privilege by filing a lawsuit, said Peter Shane, a law professor at Ohio State University.

Supreme Court much?

But the Supreme Court has never made clear how far a former president may go in trying to block Congressional demands for documents and testimony — or what happens if a president disagrees with a predecessor about making information public.

“There is no relevant precedent on the books,” Mr. Shane said.

Ladies and gentleman: The next Precedent of the United States.

Sidebar: If we started the impeachment process, we could at least prevent him from pardoning. Just a thought.

Bush III/Cheney II: Palin's missing e-mails

By GottaLaff

Let me preface this post with the following: I've been at work for a few hours and came back to Comments that suggested we write about Sarah Palin because she scares us. No. Please, give us a little more credit than that.

Want to know why I write about her? First, because when we look to our news sources, she is what we find 90% of the time.

But the other reason is this: She's half of the team we're up against. The popular half. During the primaries, it was all McCain/Mitt/Thompson/Giuliani posts all the time, and there were no complaints. Now it's about Palin, because she's new and a lot of information is coming out about her, nearly hourly. There are only so many Obama videos we can put up.

Being afraid is a lot different than going on the offensive. If that's a problem for some of you, then by all means, skip this post. Bush III/CheneyII:

Via Huffington Post. From the “Where Have We Heard This Before?” file, Mother Jones reports that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is withholding more than 1,000 emails from its response to an open records request from Andrée McLeod, a “self-described independent government watchdog.”

From the Mother Jones blog:

[McLeod] requested copies of all the emails that had been sent and received by Ivy Frye and Frank Bailey, two top aides to Palin, from February through April of this year. McLeod, a 53-year-old registered Republican who has held various jobs in state government, suspected that Frye and Bailey had engaged in political activity during official business hours in that period by participating in a Palin-backed effort to oust the state chairman of the Alaska Republican Party, Randy Ruedrich. (Bailey has been in the national news of late for refusing to cooperate with investigators probing whether Palin fired Alaska’s public safety commission because he did not dismiss a state trooper who had gone through an ugly divorce with Palin’s sister.)

McLeod received four boxes of emails, which did not contain evidence of the wrongdoing McLeod suspected.

But more intriguing than any email correspondence contained in the four boxes was what was not released: about 1.100 emails. Palin’s office provided McLeod with a 78-page list (PDF) cataloging the emails it was withholding. Many of them had been written by Palin or sent to her. Palin’s office claimed most of the undisclosed emails were exempt from release because they were covered by the “executive” or “deliberative process” privileges that protect communications between Palin and her aides about policy matters.

But the subject lines of some of the withheld emails suggest they were not related to policy matters. Several refer to one of Palin’s political foes, others to a well-known Alaskan journalist. Moreover, some of the withhold emails were CC’ed to Todd Palin, the governor’s husband. Todd Palin—a.k.a. the First Dude—holds no official state position (though he has been a close and influential adviser for Gov. Palin). The fact that Palin and her aides shared these emails with a citizen outside the government undercuts the claim that they must be protected under executive privilege.

Palin’s non-compliance with the open government laws of her home state would appear to run counter to the McCain campaign’s espoused platform of reform and transparent government.

According to Sunshine Review, a Website advocating open government, a 2007 review by the Better Government Assn. and the National Freedom of Information Coalition gave Alaska a score of three — out of a possible 100 — for its responsiveness to freedom-of-information requests. Of course, Palin was in office for less than a year when that study was completed, but given that she is presenting herself as a government reformer, one would expect her to hold herself to a higher standard than that of her predecessors.

After years of the Bush administration’s stonewalling on the fate of millions of internal emails, Palin’s behavior as governor should probably raise some eyebrows.

I will not ignore stories about somebody who may become the next president of the United States, should the (god forbid) president die. I will, however, continue to push the meme Bush III/Cheney II. Hopefully, it will catch on.