Quick, call hell to see if it's frozen over

From The Atlantic;

No less an authority figure than Karl Rove has warned Republican operatives from demagoguing Barack Obama's middle name. […]

At a closed door meeting of GOP state executive directors in late January, Rove said the safest way to refer to Obama would be to use his honorific, “Sen. Obama.” […]

The context was, you're not going to stigmatize this guy. You shouldn't underestimate him," one of the executive directors said. Rove said that the use of "Barack Hussein Obama" would perpetuate the notion that Republicans were bigoted and would hurt the party.

Don’t know if I find it interesting or worrisome that I’m on the same wavelength about something that Karl “Palpatine” Rove is.

And when the voice of reason in the republican party is Karl Rove, you know things have gotten topsy-turvy…

Perhaps we should look outside to see if pigs are flying…

FEMA's screw-ups continue

As mentioned this morning, FEMA hasn’t finished screwing Katrina survivors just yet… now it’s because the trailers they put people in have levels of formaldehyde that was 75 times the recommended maximum for U.S. workers…

And it seems that FEMA not only suppressed warnings from its own field workers about health problems, but they had prior evidence that the people using the trailers would get sick;

“A trail of e-mails obtained by investigators shows that the agency’s lawyers rejected a proposal for systematic testing of the levels of potentially cancer-causing formaldehyde gas in the trailers, out of concern that the agency would be legally liable for any hazards or health problems. As many as 120,000 families displaced by hurricanes Katrina and Rita lived in the suspect trailers, and hundreds have complained of ill effects.”

Lovely… three months after reports of the hazards first surfaced a FEMA logistics expert said that FEMA’s legal department advised officials to not do testing for hazardous materials, because it would “imply FEMA’s ownership of this issue.”

On June 27, 2006, a Slidell man was found dead in his trailer after complaining about the formaldehyde fumes. In a conference call to discuss the death, 28 officials from six different agencies recommended that the circumstances be investigated and trailer air quality be subjected to independent testing.

FEMA lawyers rejected those suggestions…

So let me see if I have this right… the Bush(whacked) Administration put people in government trailers with toxic gas… despite warnings of such… and didn’t follow-through on suggested health tests all so they could avoid court troubles…

This on top of the well-known fact that the administration all but ignored these same people in the midst of a natural disaster.

My God… it’s almost hard to believe that this administration could be this callous… but then I think about Bush’s track record and it all makes sense.

But now, thankfully, and after six years of gop-led ignorance, we finally have a (Democratically-controlled) Congress that is more than willing to conduct oversight hearings on FEMA…which is, naturally, causing a LOT of people at FEMA to scramble like mad to keep up appearances.

And this past week, on the eve of a hearing by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, FEMA “suddenly” reversed course on the issue and said it has asked federal health officials to help conduct a new assessment of conditions in trailers.

Too little… too late…

The revelations of the agency’s earlier position of ignoring the problem has come to light, and it’s attracted some very harsh criticism… some very harsh bi-partisan criticism.

Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-CA) decried what he called FEMA’s indifference to storm victims and said the situation was “sickening.” He said the documents “expose an official policy of premeditated ignorance” and added that “senior officials in Washington didn’t want to know what they already knew, because they didn’t want the legal and moral responsibility to do what they knew had to be done.”

Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (r-VA) said FEMA had obstructed the 10-month congressional investigation and “mischaracterized the scope and purpose” of its own actions. “FEMA’s reaction to the problem was deliberately stunted to bolster the agency’s litigation position,” Davis said. “FEMA’s primary concerns were legal liability and public relations, not human health and safety.”

It’s about time someone in Congress got these people’s backs…


Let’s hope we’re not too late…

A Disturbing Saga

The story that came out of James Comey’s testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday is, if nothing else, disturbing.

To summarize a long story, Comey was acting Attorney General in early 2004 after John Ashcroft was hospitalized. Long story short, Comey was hesitant to reauthorize the NSA domestic spying program. Then-White House COS Andy Card and then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales literally went to Ashcroft’s hospital room, shortly after he had had surgery, in order to get him to approve the program and override Comey’s decision.

Ashcroft, naturally groggy after surgery, balked… and led the White House to approve its own domestic surveillance program despite DOJ objections.

The scene unfolded like a movie:

Comey learned, Ashcroft's wife who was at his bedside, that Gonzales and Card were on their way to the hospital. He immediately ordered his driver to turn around and head to the hospital with sirens blazing. He calls the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, who promised to meet him at the scene. Comey gets out of the car and literally runs up the stairs to Ashcroft's room. The head of the FBI orders the agents outside Ashcroft's door to not allow Comey to be removed from the room under any circumstances. Comey tries to explain the situation to a clearly groggy and disoriented Ashcroft, but mnutes later, Gonzales and Card arrive entering the room with papers in hand, without acknowledging Comey's presence. After hearing Gonzales' spiel, Ashcroft finds the strength and temporary focus to sit up and coherently explain to Gonzales why the program is illegal. He then says that it doesn't matter what he thinks anyway because he, at the time, was not the Attorney General and he points to Comey and said; “he's the Attorney General.” Card and Gonzales storm out of the room and soon thereafter Comey gets a call from an irate Card who demands that he come to the White House. Comey tells him: “After what I just witnessed, I will not meet with you without a witness, and I intend that witness to be the solicitor general of the United States," with which Card replied; “What conduct? We were merely there to wish him well.”

You can read the whole transcript HERE.

But the story didn’t end there as the “sickbed visit” was only the beginning of a tense and dramatic showdown between the White House and the Justice Department. According to Comey, the issue was only resolved after Bush overruled Gonzales and Card, and that didn’t happen until Ashcroft, Comey, Mueller and their aides prepared a mass resignation.

Which also suggests that the NSA’s domestic spying program went of for several weeks without DOJ approval.

That’s disturbing and stressing enough, but also consider how John Ashcroft was eventually replaced by one of the men that tried to convince him to sign an important legal document that contradicted the reasoned legal opinion of the Justice Department and whom had neither the official authority nor the legal capacity, due to his heavily-medicated state, to sign.

Think about that for a second. This man essentially took advantage of a man who had just had surgery… and that “man” is now our Attorney General.

What an absolute fucking disgrace…

So what can we take from this example of a pathetic and desperate man?

For starters, that Alberto Gonzales acted in a manner that is, at the very least, ethically questionable. Not only was Gonzales trying to circumvent James Comey's lawful authority as the acting AG, but he was also looking to have a person who had just had major surgery the day before and was heavily-medicated, execute a legal document… a very important legal document at that. Sounds to me that that is something that can get attorney disbarred.

Another? The implication that Robert Mueller didn’t trust Card nor Gonzales as he gave instruction to the agents outside Ashcroft's room to not allow Comey to be removed, implying that he was worried about what could happen in the room if there weren’t ant witnesses. Good to know that someone who didn’t have the trust of the FBI director would become the U.S. Attorney General, which I think speaks volumes about Gonzales and the way he does things and the person he is.

And finally, that the White House was willing to authorize a program that the Justice Department, including the Attorney General, the Deputy Attorney General, the head of the OLC, and the FBI Director, had determined to be illegal.

But as startling as it was to hear this story, there’s something else we shouldn't forget…

We shouldn’t forget that we, the American people, should have known about this story a long, long time ago…

Let the pandering begin...

It’s “official”... John McCain (R-AZ) is running for President... everyone hide...