Bush Nominates Harriet Miers to replace O'Connor
Posted By: Libby on 2005-10-03
In Reply to:
I'll be very interested to hear more about her. So far, I've learned that she contributed to Al Gore's campaign and was also involved with Legal Aid in the past. Either Bush is coming to his senses or this is merely another example of his ongoing cronyism. In this case, his cronyism just might actually finally benefit the American people this time.
Bush picks White House counsel for Supreme Court
If confirmed, Harriet Miers would succeed O'Connor
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush nominated White House counsel Harriet Miers on Monday to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor.
Miers, 60, was the first woman to head the State Bar of Texas. She has never been a judge.
An outspoken supporter of the Bush administration, she was a leader of its search for potential candidates to fill Supreme Court posts. A White House official said that at the same time, Bush considered her as a nominee without her knowledge.
In a televised announcement from the White House, Bush called Miers exceptionally well-suited for the high court. Miers has devoted her life to the rule of law and the cause of justice, he said.
He called on the Senate to review her qualifications thoroughly and fairly and to vote on her nomination promptly.
Miers said she was grateful and humbled by the nomination. ( Watch: Miers has no judicial experience -- 2:30)
It is the responsibility of every generation to be true to the founders' vision of the proper role of the courts in our society, she said.
If confirmed, I recognize that I will have a tremendous responsibility to keep our judicial system strong and to help ensure that the courts meet their obligations to strictly apply the laws and the Constitution. ( Watch Bush nominate Miers to the Supreme Court -- 9:09)
If the Senate confirms Miers, she would join Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the second sitting female justice on the bench. O'Connor became the court's first female justice in 1981.
Dinner offer
Bush offered her the job Sunday night over dinner in the White House residence, White House sources said.
During the summer, a vetting process for Miers took place once the president began considering her.
Bush took seriously suggestions by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, and ranking Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vermont, that the president consider candidates from outside the appellate courts, the sources said.
Miers, 60, who has never been a judge, was the first woman to serve as president of the State Bar of Texas and Dallas Bar Association. She also was a member of the Dallas City Council. ( Profile)
More recently, Miers helped lead the administration's search for potential candidates to fill Supreme Court posts.
At the same time, a White House official said that Bush considered her as a nominee without her knowledge.
Reacting with caution
Initial reaction to Miers' nomination was cautious. ( Watch senators react to Miers' nomination -- 3:49)
Harriet Miers is an intelligent lawyer who shares the president's judicial philosophy, said Leonard Leo of the conservative Federalist Society.
She has demonstrated that in her capacity as White House counsel and a senior administration official as well as an active member of the organized bar.
Quietly, some conservatives involved in the White House's nominee selection consultation process said they are concerned with Bush's pick.
The reaction of many conservatives today will be that the president has made possibly the most unqualified choice since Abe Fortas who had been the president's lawyer, said conservative activist Manuel Miranda of the Third Branch Conference, referring to President Lyndon B. Johnson's pick to the high court in 1965.
The nomination of a nominee with no judicial record is a significant failure for the advisers that the White House gathered around it. However, the president deserves the benefit of a doubt, the nominee deserves the benefit of hearings, and every nominee deserves an up-or-down vote.
The Concerned Women for America, another conservative group, also took a wait-and-see approach on Miers.
We give Harriet Miers the benefit of the doubt because thus far, President Bush has selected nominees to the federal courts who are committed to the written Constitution, said Jan LaRue, chief counsel of the group. Whether we can support her will depend on what we learn from her record and the hearing process.
One Republican official said that many had expectations that Bush's pick would be a known conservative, adding that he was surprised by the president's choice.
Republicans were hoping for a clear conservative, the official said. It's going to be heavy lifting for us and the White House.
Another conservative source who was involved in the selection consultation process said Miers was not a big surprise and that she had always been someone under serious consideration.
She's a good conservative, the source said. She does share the president's views about law and public policy. But she is not well-known, which is going to be part of the challenge.
Democrats on the the Senate Judiciary Committee reacted cautiously to Miers' nomination, but they did not immediately oppose it.
It is too early to reach any firm judgment about such an important nomination, Leahy said in a statement, noting Miers long ties to President Bush. It is important to know whether she would enter this key post with the judicial independence necessary when the Supreme Court considers isues of interest to this Administration.
My first reaction is a simple one: It could have been a lot worst, Sen. Charles Schumer of New York, one of the Demcrats on the committee, said. ... The president has not sent us a nominee that we've rejected already.
Schumer continued, There's hope that Harriet Miers is a mainstream nominee. ... Given the fact that the extreme wing of the president's party was demanding someone of fealty to their views, this is a good first day in the process that begins to fill the seat of Sandra Day O'Connor.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, another Democratic committee member and its only woman, said she was happy that a woman was nominated to replace the outgoing O'Connor but wanted to know more about Miers' views on privacy and other issues.
This new justice will be critical in the balance with respect to rulings on congressional authority, as well as a woman's right to privacy, environmental protections, and many other aspects of constitutional law in the United States, Feinstein said.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, was complimentary of Miers.
I like Harriet Miers, Reid said in a statement. As White House counsel, she has worked with me in a courteous and professional manner. I am also impressed with the fact that she was a trailblazer for women as managing partner of a major Dallas law firm and as the first woman president of the Texas Bar Association.
Pivotal replacement
The choice to replace O'Connor, a key swing vote, could be pivotal. ( Full story)
The announcement came shortly before justices were to begin a new term with new Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who is the youngest member of the high court.
The term is expected to include rulings on several controversial cases, said Edward Lazarus, a Supreme Court legal analyst. ( Case list)
This is a situation where, from the very moment the justices start back up in October, they're going to be very divided, said Lazarus, who authored Closed Chambers, a book on the justices. It's going to be a lot of friction inside the building.
O'Connor announced her retirement in July. Bush initially chose Roberts for her seat, but the September 3 death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist changed the White House's strategy.
O'Connor has said she will stay on until she is replaced, making her role in the upcoming term unclear. Under court rules, a justice's vote does not count until a ruling is issued, a process that can take weeks or months.
Many legal scholars question whether O'Connor would want to continue hearing cases if her replacement takes over before rulings are issued, thereby negating her vote.
CNN's Dana Bash contributed to this report. |
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Find this article at:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/03/scotus.miers |
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Falsified Bush Bio approved by Harriet Miers?
From http://www.send2press.com/newswire/2005-10-1017-006.shtml
Opinion & Commentary
Falsified Bush Biography Found on State Department Website (Approved by Harriet Miers?)
Edited by Carly Zander
Mon, 17 Oct 2005, 03:58 EDT
LOS ANGELES, Calif. (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) -- On September 29, 2005, investigative journalist Hugh E. Scott found a White House biography on the Internet that claimed President Bush had flown Texas Air National Guard F102 interceptors almost six years when the actual time was 27 months. The text contained other exaggerations as well, says Scott.
Scott discovered the falsified document on a website maintained by the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi. On October 6, when he accessed the website again, Bush's biography had been deleted. Scott believes emails he sent two days before to newspapers in Washington, DC, alerted the White House and it sanitized the Hanoi website. However, the corrective action came too late. During his first visit, Scott made a printout of the 3,900-word document and mailed copies to friends for safekeeping.
Previously, in February 2004, he found an identical phony Bush history on another State Department website. To validate the smoking-gun evidence of White House skullduggery, Scott called the Boston Globe. Impressed, it reported his discovery the next morning, on 02/28/04, under the headline, Bush Bio on Web Inflates Guard Service, and gave him credit as the source.
Based on research for a forthcoming book about the president, Scott contends that Bush's longtime legal advisor, Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, helped write the bogus bio for use in his 2000 primary campaign against Arizona Senator John McCain. For certain, charges Scott, Miers approved George W.'s 1999 autobiography, A Charge to Keep, which covered up missed Guard drills in 1972 and his grounding that same year for failing to take a mandatory pilot medical exam.
Miers also approved the official White House biography posted on its website after the 2001 inauguration. The text claimed President Bush had operated ANG interceptors from 1968 to 1973, even though he was grounded on August 1, 1972.
Following publication of contradicting information by the print media, the White House changed the bio to read George W. served as an F102 pilot in the Texas Air National Guard.
Scott uncovered the Hanoi embassy bio while searching the Internet for other erroneous Bush histories. So far, he has found 12 biographical sources, ranging from InfoPlease to The Book of Knowledge and Encyclopedia Americana, that falsely state the president flew F102 jets in 1973.
For more information about the Hanoi embassy bio and to see a copy, visit Scott's website, www.King-George.biz or contact Hugh E. Scott at 805-498-8249.
Harriet Miers - Bush's newest *faith-based initiative*
At first I thought this was just an example of cronyism, considering that Bush paid Miers $19,000 in 1998 to assist in his National Guard AWOL debacle/scandal.
But after painfully watching his press conference this morning, I realized he was speaking in code about the fact that she isn't going to change her views on abortion. It's no secret she's pro-life. It's also no secret that so-called pro-lifers in the past have resorted to murdering abortion doctors in an attempt to stop abortion.
They will stop at nothing.
Including a faith-based Supreme Court Justice.
Kiss America GOODBYE.
P.S. to gt: Hi! 
Harriet Miers withdraws nomination...
Harriet Miers: Antonin Scalia in sheep's clothing
Harriet Miers: Antonin Scalia in sheep's clothing
October 11, 2005
By nominating Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, President Bush has put forth a total unknown. A blank slate. A cipher. Not even the president knows where she stands on the issues because he never asked her.
That's what the White House wants you to think. Don't you believe it.
Of course, if you listen to most conservatives, Harriet Miers is as dangerous as a card-carrying member of the ACLU. I'm disappointed, depressed and demoralized, huffed the Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol. Her qualifications for the Supreme Court are nonexistent, puffed former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan.
Nonsense.
Make no mistake about it. This decision is too important. Replacing William Rehnquist with John Roberts was a wash. It's this appointment, to fill the shoes of swing-vote Sandra Day O'Connor, that will determine the future direction of the Supreme Court. Karl Rove never would have let George Bush nominate Miers if he didn't know she agreed with Bush on every issue.
It's not hard to figure out how Bush decided on Miers. If elected president, he promised in 2000, he would appoint to the Supreme Court justices like extreme conservatives Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas. John Roberts didn't fit the bill, so Bush knew he had to deliver this time around. But he also knew any one of the names on the conservatives' wish list -- Michael Luttig, Edith Jones or Janice Rogers Brown -- would stir up a firestorm in the Senate, which Bush wanted to avoid.
So Bush came up with Plan B, as brilliant as it is diabolical: Nominate someone who is every bit as conservative as Luttig, Jones or Brown, privately, but who is a complete mystery, publicly. And that's Harriet Ellan Miers. The perfect stealth candidate. Antonin Scalia in sheep's clothing.
In case you still harbor any doubts about her right-wing credentials, here's final proof. After four days of complaints from the far right, Karl Rove got on the phone to leading conservatives, starting with James Dobson, head of Focus on the Family. Rove convinced him to support Miers, Dobson confirmed, by giving him confidential information on her religious beliefs. Miers, like Bush, is an evangelical Christian.
Notice how the White House plays the religion card both ways. It was wrong for Democrats to raise the fact John Roberts is a Catholic, they argued, just one month ago.
Notice also what their doing so tells us about Harriet Miers. She's a soul mate of James Dobson, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. She's anti-choice, anti-stem cell research, anti-separation of church and state, pro-school prayer and pro-teaching intelligent design in public-school science classes. She's way out of the mainstream.
So what are Democrats waiting for? They know enough about Miers already to merit all-out opposition -- including the filibuster, if necessary. And they'd better act fast.
If Harriet Miers is confirmed, we'll be yearning for the good old days of moderate William Rehnquist.
Bill Press is host of the nationally syndicated Bill Press Show. His e-mail address is: bill@billpress.com.
Special Offer: Get 2 Weeks of Daily sunday delivery Free when you buy 13 weeks.
©The Shreveport Times
October 11, 2005
Bush paid Harriet $19,000 in 1998 re his Guard AWOL status
Guess he owes her big time, huh?
I happened to find this link, which provides a LOT of interesting facts about Bush.
http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/jphuck/Book4Ch.3.html
Bush first became concerned about his alleged AWOL status in 1998, when he was running for a second term as governor, about allegations that he was given preferential treatment to land a slot in the Air National Guard. So he retained an attorney, Harriet Miers who was paid $19,000 to investigate the issue. She and her aides concluded that Barnes had helped Bush land a slot in the Air National Guard in 1968 after being lobbied by Adger. Miers spoke with Barnes who acknowledged that he had never talked to Bush’s father about asking for the favor. Adger was already deceased, and since that time Barnes passed away. Bush knew that he was off the hook.
Miers: Margaret Carlson & James Dobson know. Why doesn't Bush?
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000039&refer=columnist_carlson&sid=ajuZsQQbuwl4#
With Miers, Bush Gets Fifth Vote Against Roe: Margaret Carlson
Oct. 5 (Bloomberg) -- What if former President Bill Clinton had nominated his White House counsel, Bernie Nussbaum, to the Supreme Court? I can hear Bill Frist now. What does Slick Willy think he's doing -- filling a job at FEMA?
At first glance, there seems to be no other reason for Harriet Miers's nomination to the Supreme Court other than that she is President George W. Bush's Bernie Nussbaum. The notion that a careerist corporate lawyer would have risen to the top of Bush's list if she weren't down the hall is preposterous.
Unlike famous self-selector Dick Cheney, no one suspects the modest Miers looked in the mirror and saw the best replacement for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor staring back at her. Only Bush could see the ``heart'' and ``character'' in Miers that made her the perfect selection. She's been his consigliore, fixer and confidante for more than two decades, and she thinks the way he does.
The fact that Miers is a woman helps enormously. It looks as if Bush listened to wife Laura, who publicly suggested he should replace a woman with a woman. It's far more likely that Laura publicly suggested it because he already had decided to do so. The choice prompts automatic praise from some liberals, excites Democratic Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and placates Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein.
Bush's Wants
And notice how tongue-tied a potential critic, Senator Edward Kennedy, was two days ago trying to criticize her.
Miers satisfies a number of Bush's proclivities: his inability to distinguish an insider job from an outside one (White House counsel is the most partisan legal job in government), his desire to reward loyalty and his love of surprise.
Ambitious Republicans should be on notice that the best way to get ahead in the Bush years is to work anonymously inside. It was only because the White House floated Miers's name that she was on anyone's list.
This is not to say that Miers isn't a decent, competent (she may be a crony, but she's no Michael Brown) and respected person. She's devoted to her mother and brothers, a regular churchgoer, an early riser, an avid celebrator of birthdays.
Up the Ladder
In Dallas, she broke the glass ceiling for female lawyers (although she lived the life of a nun to get there). After meeting Bush in 1989, she represented him in matters ranging from his purchase of a fishing cottage in East Texas to questions about his National Guard service.
At the same time, she climbed a steep corporate ladder, becoming co-manager of a huge Dallas firm and chairwoman of the Texas Bar Association, specializing in commercial transactions for large corporations.
She served on the Dallas City Council and headed the Texas Lottery, where, some say, she cleaned up Powerball. She moved with the president to the White House, where the only complaint against her was that she lingered over paperwork too long.
She became counsel to the president when Alberto Gonzales was promoted to attorney general. Gonzales is another loyalist who proved himself to Governor Bush by speed-reading through death row appeals in Texas and redefining torture in the White House for purposes of allowing more of it in Iraq. With her nomination, Miers has gotten an even bigger promotion than her predecessor.
Shocked Conservatives
Some conservatives are loudly shocked that Bush ignored the long list of known quantities among conservative jurists in the mold of his favorites, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. It depressed Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol. Rush Limbaugh was so agitated Cheney gave him an interview to calm his listeners.
What those conservatives are missing is what Dr. James Dobson, chairman of Focus on the Family, and Jay Sekulow, chief counsel to the American Center for Law & Justice, see in Miers: a fifth vote for overturning Roe v. Wade. Bush even got Dobson's approval beforehand.
Like Bush, Miers had a late-in-life born-again moment, joining a conservative evangelical church in Dallas where she taught Sunday School.
In an interview in yesterday's Dallas Morning News, Miers's former campaign manager, Lorlee Bartos, said Miers told her when running for city council in 1989 that she had been ``pro-choice in her youth.'' Then, according to Bartos, Miers said she underwent ``a born-again, profound experience'' that caused her to change her mind and oppose abortion.
Keeping the Promise
That conversion fits with her $150 contribution to Texans United for Life in 1989 and her successful effort to get the American Bar Association to move from support for abortion rights to neutral in 1991. After the ABA switched back to a pro- abortion-rights position, Miers in 1993 failed in a bid to have the endorsement put to a vote of the full membership.
At his press conference yesterday, Bush claimed that in all the years he's known Miers he never learned her view on abortion. Dobson and Sekulow will have their hands full reassuring the base about that comment. It's one thing for Chuck Schumer to be left in the dark, quite another for Bush to say he purposely kept himself there.
Didn't he promise the base he'd turn the light on and give them a selection sure to reverse Roe?
I think he has. This time he's tricking Harry Reid.
I used to think the younger Bush was like his dad on abortion -- pro-life for purposes of getting elected, pro-choice otherwise. But I now see him as a victim of Stockholm syndrome, adopting as his own view that of his right-wing captors. My money is on Dobson knowing what Bush claims not to. Assuming Miers is confirmed, it won't be long before we all know.
To contact the writer of this column:
Margaret Carlson at mcarlson3@bloomberg.net
Last Updated: October 5, 2005 00:16 EDT
Sandra Day O'Connor speech
Apparently only NPR and Olbermann covered this.
Audio here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5255712
Former top judge says US risks edging near to dictatorship
· Sandra Day O'Connor warns of rightwing attacks
· Lawyers 'must speak up' to protect judiciary
Julian Borger in Washington
Monday March 13, 2006
Guardian
Sandra Day O'Connor, a Republican-appointed judge who retired last month after 24 years on the supreme court, has said the US is in danger of edging towards dictatorship if the party's rightwingers continue to attack the judiciary.
In a strongly worded speech at Georgetown University, reported by National Public Radio and the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, Ms O'Connor took aim at Republican leaders whose repeated denunciations of the courts for alleged liberal bias could, she said, be contributing to a climate of violence against judges.
Ms O'Connor, nominated by Ronald Reagan as the first woman supreme court justice, declared: We must be ever-vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary.
She pointed to autocracies in the developing world and former Communist countries as lessons on where interference with the judiciary might lead. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.
In her address to an audience of corporate lawyers on Thursday, Ms O'Connor singled out a warning to the judiciary issued last year by Tom DeLay, the former Republican leader in the House of Representatives, over a court ruling in a controversial right to die case.
After the decision last March that ordered a brain-dead woman in Florida, Terri Schiavo, removed from life support, Mr DeLay said: The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behaviour.
Mr DeLay later called for the impeachment of judges involved in the Schiavo case, and called for more scrutiny of an arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the president.
Such threats, Ms O'Connor said, pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedom, and she told the lawyers in her audience: I want you to tune your ears to these attacks ... You have an obligation to speak up.
Statutes and constitutions do not protect judicial independence - people do, the retired supreme court justice said.
She noted death threats against judges were on the rise and added that the situation was not helped by a senior senator's suggestion that there might be a connection between the violence against judges and the decisions they make.
The senator she was referring to was John Cornyn, a Bush loyalist from Texas, who made his remarks last April, soon after a judge was shot dead in an Atlanta courtroom and the family of a federal judge was murdered in Illinois.
Senator Cornyn said: I don't know if there is a cause and effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country ... And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters, on some occasions, where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in violence.
Although appointed by a Republican, Ms O'Connor voted with the supreme court's liberals on some divisive issues, including abortion, making her a frequent target for criticism from the right. After announcing that she intended to retire last year at the age of 75, she was replaced in February this year by Samuel Alito, who is generally regarded as being more consistently conservative.
In her speech, Ms O'Connor said that if the courts did not occasionally make politicians mad they would not be doing their jobs, and their effectiveness is premised on the notion that we won't be subject to retaliation for our judicial acts.
See Lurker's post on Maryscott O'Connor...sm
The following is Lurker's post from the conservative board in response to a comment about a extremist liberal blogger. Funny how the writer of the article on Maryscott O'Connor say she's angry, but I'm sure he thinks Ann Coulter is just spitting the truth.  But I agree with you Lurker. Much better things to expend energy on than extremist on either side.
Great post! I thought the people who just frequent the liberal board would like this.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
LURKER: In this time of real crises, many many many real crises, why would some woman's blog be of importance to anyone other than those who frequent it? This type of venting and ranting has been going on for quite some time on talk radio and now in blogs, on both sides. I just don't listen to any of it, right or left. One of my biggest pet peeves is screaming and degrading rhetoric, from anyone, about anything. Who cares what this woman does, or Cindy Sheehan or the ever popular #1 offender Michael Moore. These are individuals expressing their freedom of speech just as Rush, Grover and Coulter do. Just turn it off.
Of concern to me is outsourcing, the bond we are building with China (how can our administration tout Christianity and do business with those who murder their own people over religion, who force abortions, who plan parenthood better than anyone I have ever heard of, limiting births to 1 child, promoting abortion if that 1 child is a girl and on and on.
Of concern to me is Wal-Mart for many reasons, but on the China note, Wal-Mart gets 70% of its products from China. The other 30% come from 70 different countries, some of whom have oppressive dictatorships and harbor terrorists like the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia. Wal-Mart lobbied to NOT have goods go through additional safety measures at ports of entry because it would cut into their profit margin.
I am concerned that fewer and fewer people have health insurance or jobs or homes and will never have a home or afford insurance even if they manage to find a job.
I am concerned that this administration touts its Christianity while treating the least of its people so shabbily.
I am concerned that generals are speaking out about the inefficacy of this war and the stubborn refusal of Bush or Rumsfeld to do anything about it.
I am concerned that this administration is even thinking of going into Iran.
I am concerned that so many of our elected officials are involved in lies, coverups and that CEOs of corporations can steal the pensions of hundreds of people and don't have to pay it back...5 or 6 people go to country club prison for a couple of years, brush up on their tennis game and 100s of 50+ people have lost everything and they don't have time to make it up, (nor should they have to).
I am concerned that people all over our planet are dying from starvation and dehydration and disease.
I am concerned about what we have done to our own planet over the last 150 years in terms of depleting our resources.
I am concerned about this administration using Christianity as a reason to behave so un-Christianly. I believe that were Christ to sit in on a couple of cabinet meetings He would be appalled. There is the Bible cherry-picking...they can quote whatever serves them but dismiss what does not. What happened to every 50 years the wealth is redistributed amongst the people, every 7 years debts are forgiven. Who deleted or amended the 10 commandments. Thou shalt not kill...except when blah blah blah. Though shalt not steal....except blah, blah blah. If there was any thread continuing throughout the gospel of Christ it is the treatment of the poor. In the end we will be judged not on our military brilliance, our power or money but on how we, as a nation, treated the least among us.
Most of all I am concerned about apathy.
There is much to worry about and pray about and much still that can be done. I just do not see blogs as up there in the top 2,000.
Replace all your dems with you. Do not group all...sm
the posts on this board to one party or the other. Whenever a lone person posts something that you don't agree with, you attribute it to all democrats. We do not all think alike. That is the wonderful thing about us, we do not march in step, we march to different drummers to a common cause.
Replace Republican with Jewish and think...
Germany. Do you really hate a group of people that much? Really?? That you want to go down the marxist path of quashing or belitting any kind of dissent or disagreement? I thought liberals were all about the right to dissent! Oh...what on earth am I thinking? They are for THEIR right to dissent and dam* anyone who doesn't agree with them.
that's what I always said, but with 1 correction: Replace 'Islamist'
with:
Radical, Militant Fundamentalist
because 'Islamist' is a recently coined expression.
Miers
Hmmm..I have had a problem since seeing the notes Miers wrote Bush and the cute birthday cards..I have worked for many, IMHO, powerful doctors and I have adored/has crushes on a few..I have given them gifts and cards for holidays and birthdays, however, I never would have given a card such as Miers gave Bush, nor written notes like she wrote..You must keep a separation between boss and employee, especially if the boss is married..This is cronyism at its best. However, I am looking forward to the hearings on her nomination as I want to see what she is all about and what she has to offer for a life time job..
Miers was the bestest choice.
If Bush nominated someone like, uh, Pat Robertson, dem dare dumb liberals mighta caughted on more quicker. This way, evangelicals rule and everyone else can go to... well... you know where.
A new strike aginst Harriet
It seems that Mier's family made quite a profit on some real estate deal in Texas but did not pay fees and taxes and owe the state of Texas about $26,000. So we have Harriet in trouble with Texas and with the neocons, we have DeLay and Frist with insider trading and money laundering. We have Rove and Libby on outing CIA personnel and we have Cheney and Libby for pushing a war they had decided to fight before 2000 on trumped up intelligence and forged documents. Have I missed anyone?? The weeks to come will be very interesting. If any of this is true (the war part) it will be the biggest thing to hit our government ever. The Watergate coverup was bad but the actual event they were covering up was not that big a deal. And with Clinton, 1 man having sex in the oval office isn't anything to write home about either, again the coverup much worse than the actual event, nor was Whitewater which was investigated ad nauseum with no results whatsoever. But this Iraq thing, thousands and thousands of people have died needlessly. Thousands have been tortured needlessly. If, and I say if, the Iraq charges prove to be grounded in fact, we are in for a bumpy ride. If they are not, and the outing, insider trading, money laundering, unqualified cronyism are true, the shakedown will destroy this administration.
Yeah, he should have appointed Harriet Myers! nm
x
Bush aides challenge Biden's boasts of Bush slapdowns.
Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the veracity of Vice President Joe Biden's claim this week of having privately castigated Bush, who does not remember the incident or an earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush.
Biden spokesman Jay Carney declined to specify the dates of his boss's purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.
"The vice president stands by his remarks," Carney told FOX News without elaboration.
Those remarks include a shot that Biden took at Bush on Tuesday.
"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden told CNN, "'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said: 'Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'"
That exchange never took place, according to numerous Bush aides who also dispute a similar assertion by Biden in 2004, when the former senator from Delaware told scores of Democratic colleagues that he had challenged Bush's moral certitude about the Iraq war during a private meeting in the Oval Office. Two years later, Biden repeated his story about dressing down the president.
"When I speak to the president - and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff," Biden said on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" in April 2006. "And the president will say things to me, and I'll literally turn to the president, say: 'Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don't know the facts?' And he'll look at me and he'll say - my word - he'll look at me and he'll say: 'My instincts.' He said: 'I have good instincts.' I said: 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough.'"
Bush aides now dispute the veracity of both assertions by Biden.
"I never recall Biden saying any of that," former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said after reviewing detailed notes of Bush's White House meetings with Biden, which include numerous direct quotes from Biden. "I find it odd that he said he met with him alone all the time. I don't think that's true."
Fleischer said that whenever Bush met with Sen. Biden, the meeting also included a congressional counterpart so as to not "antagonize" the House.
Karl Rove, former White House political adviser, also was skeptical of Biden's claim to have spent "a lot of hours alone" with Bush.
"I remember checking on such a Biden exaggeration while at the White House and no one witnessed the meeting and his comments in remotely the same way," Rove said.
Candida P. Wolff, Bush's White House liaison to Capitol Hill, said the only meetings she remembered between Bush and Biden also included other lawmakers. She said such meetings were held in the Cabinet Room or the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, not the Oval Office, and certainly did not last for "hours."
"The president would never sit through two hours of Joe Biden," Wolff said. "I don't ever remember Biden being in the Oval. He was such a blowhard on all that stuff - there wasn't a reason to bring him in."
Andy Card, former White House chief of staff, reviewed the two Biden claims and said: "This does not ring true to me. I doubt that it happened."
A spokesman for Bush declined comment, although a person close to the former president said Bush does not remember either episode.
This is not the first time the veracity of Biden's assertions has been challenged. In 1988, he dropped out of the presidential race after being accused of plagiarizing British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. The Washington Post also cited "the senator's boastful exaggerations of his academic record."
Last year, liberal Slate magazine recalled that "Biden's misdeeds encompassed numerous self-aggrandizing thefts, misstatements, and exaggerations that seemed to point to a serious character defect."
Also last year, Biden came under fire for telling a questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.
"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube in July. "Number one, you take all the troops out -- you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."
But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."
Biden went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.
"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."
Seven weeks after claiming to have been "shot at" in Iraq, Biden again raised eyebrows with another story about his exploits in war zones -- this time on "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where my helicopter was forced down."
"If you want to know where AL Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."
But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February 2008. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Sens. Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.
"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."
Bush aides challenge Biden's boasts of Bush slapdowns.
Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the veracity of Vice President Joe Biden's claim this week of having privately castigated Bush, who does not remember the incident or an earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush.
Biden spokesman Jay Carney declined to specify the dates of his boss's purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.
"The vice president stands by his remarks," Carney told FOX News without elaboration.
Those remarks include a shot that Biden took at Bush on Tuesday.
"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden told CNN, "'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said: 'Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'"
That exchange never took place, according to numerous Bush aides who also dispute a similar assertion by Biden in 2004, when the former senator from Delaware told scores of Democratic colleagues that he had challenged Bush's moral certitude about the Iraq war during a private meeting in the Oval Office. Two years later, Biden repeated his story about dressing down the president.
"When I speak to the president - and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff," Biden said on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" in April 2006. "And the president will say things to me, and I'll literally turn to the president, say: 'Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don't know the facts?' And he'll look at me and he'll say - my word - he'll look at me and he'll say: 'My instincts.' He said: 'I have good instincts.' I said: 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough.'"
Bush aides now dispute the veracity of both assertions by Biden.
"I never recall Biden saying any of that," former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said after reviewing detailed notes of Bush's White House meetings with Biden, which include numerous direct quotes from Biden. "I find it odd that he said he met with him alone all the time. I don't think that's true."
Fleischer said that whenever Bush met with Sen. Biden, the meeting also included a congressional counterpart so as to not "antagonize" the House.
Karl Rove, former White House political adviser, also was skeptical of Biden's claim to have spent "a lot of hours alone" with Bush.
"I remember checking on such a Biden exaggeration while at the White House and no one witnessed the meeting and his comments in remotely the same way," Rove said.
Candida P. Wolff, Bush's White House liaison to Capitol Hill, said the only meetings she remembered between Bush and Biden also included other lawmakers. She said such meetings were held in the Cabinet Room or the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, not the Oval Office, and certainly did not last for "hours."
"The president would never sit through two hours of Joe Biden," Wolff said. "I don't ever remember Biden being in the Oval. He was such a blowhard on all that stuff - there wasn't a reason to bring him in."
Andy Card, former White House chief of staff, reviewed the two Biden claims and said: "This does not ring true to me. I doubt that it happened."
A spokesman for Bush declined comment, although a person close to the former president said Bush does not remember either episode.
This is not the first time the veracity of Biden's assertions has been challenged. In 1988, he dropped out of the presidential race after being accused of plagiarizing British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. The Washington Post also cited "the senator's boastful exaggerations of his academic record."
Last year, liberal Slate magazine recalled that "Biden's misdeeds encompassed numerous self-aggrandizing thefts, misstatements, and exaggerations that seemed to point to a serious character defect."
Also last year, Biden came under fire for telling a questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.
"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube in July. "Number one, you take all the troops out -- you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."
But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."
Biden went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.
"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."
Seven weeks after claiming to have been "shot at" in Iraq, Biden again raised eyebrows with another story about his exploits in war zones -- this time on "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where my helicopter was forced down."
"If you want to know where AL Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."
But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February 2008. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Sens. Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.
"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."
Bush aides challenge Biden's boasts of Bush slapdowns.
Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the veracity of Vice President Joe Biden's claim this week of having privately castigated Bush, who does not remember the incident or an earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush.
Biden spokesman Jay Carney declined to specify the dates of his boss's purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.
"The vice president stands by his remarks," Carney told FOX News without elaboration.
Those remarks include a shot that Biden took at Bush on Tuesday.
"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden told CNN, "'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said: 'Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'"
That exchange never took place, according to numerous Bush aides who also dispute a similar assertion by Biden in 2004, when the former senator from Delaware told scores of Democratic colleagues that he had challenged Bush's moral certitude about the Iraq war during a private meeting in the Oval Office. Two years later, Biden repeated his story about dressing down the president.
"When I speak to the president - and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff," Biden said on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" in April 2006. "And the president will say things to me, and I'll literally turn to the president, say: 'Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don't know the facts?' And he'll look at me and he'll say - my word - he'll look at me and he'll say: 'My instincts.' He said: 'I have good instincts.' I said: 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough.'"
Bush aides now dispute the veracity of both assertions by Biden.
"I never recall Biden saying any of that," former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said after reviewing detailed notes of Bush's White House meetings with Biden, which include numerous direct quotes from Biden. "I find it odd that he said he met with him alone all the time. I don't think that's true."
Fleischer said that whenever Bush met with Sen. Biden, the meeting also included a congressional counterpart so as to not "antagonize" the House.
Karl Rove, former White House political adviser, also was skeptical of Biden's claim to have spent "a lot of hours alone" with Bush.
"I remember checking on such a Biden exaggeration while at the White House and no one witnessed the meeting and his comments in remotely the same way," Rove said.
Candida P. Wolff, Bush's White House liaison to Capitol Hill, said the only meetings she remembered between Bush and Biden also included other lawmakers. She said such meetings were held in the Cabinet Room or the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, not the Oval Office, and certainly did not last for "hours."
"The president would never sit through two hours of Joe Biden," Wolff said. "I don't ever remember Biden being in the Oval. He was such a blowhard on all that stuff - there wasn't a reason to bring him in."
Andy Card, former White House chief of staff, reviewed the two Biden claims and said: "This does not ring true to me. I doubt that it happened."
A spokesman for Bush declined comment, although a person close to the former president said Bush does not remember either episode.
This is not the first time the veracity of Biden's assertions has been challenged. In 1988, he dropped out of the presidential race after being accused of plagiarizing British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. The Washington Post also cited "the senator's boastful exaggerations of his academic record."
Last year, liberal Slate magazine recalled that "Biden's misdeeds encompassed numerous self-aggrandizing thefts, misstatements, and exaggerations that seemed to point to a serious character defect."
Also last year, Biden came under fire for telling a questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.
"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube in July. "Number one, you take all the troops out -- you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."
But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."
Biden went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.
"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."
Seven weeks after claiming to have been "shot at" in Iraq, Biden again raised eyebrows with another story about his exploits in war zones -- this time on "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where my helicopter was forced down."
"If you want to know where AL Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."
But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February 2008. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Sens. Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.
"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."
Bush aides challenge Biden's boasts of Bush slapdowns.
Aides to former President George W. Bush are challenging the veracity of Vice President Joe Biden's claim this week of having privately castigated Bush, who does not remember the incident or an earlier episode in which Biden claims to have similarly rebuked Bush.
Biden spokesman Jay Carney declined to specify the dates of his boss's purported Oval Office scoldings of Bush. Nor would he provide witnesses or notes to corroborate the episodes.
"The vice president stands by his remarks," Carney told FOX News without elaboration.
Those remarks include a shot that Biden took at Bush on Tuesday.
"I remember President Bush saying to me one time in the Oval Office," Biden told CNN, "'Well, Joe,' he said, 'I'm a leader.' And I said: 'Mr. President, turn and around look behind you. No one is following.'"
That exchange never took place, according to numerous Bush aides who also dispute a similar assertion by Biden in 2004, when the former senator from Delaware told scores of Democratic colleagues that he had challenged Bush's moral certitude about the Iraq war during a private meeting in the Oval Office. Two years later, Biden repeated his story about dressing down the president.
"When I speak to the president - and I have had plenty of opportunity to be with the president, at least prior to the last election, a lot of hours alone with him. I mean, meaning me and his staff," Biden said on HBO's "Real Time with Bill Maher" in April 2006. "And the president will say things to me, and I'll literally turn to the president, say: 'Mr. President, how can you say that, knowing you don't know the facts?' And he'll look at me and he'll say - my word - he'll look at me and he'll say: 'My instincts.' He said: 'I have good instincts.' I said: 'Mr. President, your instincts aren't good enough.'"
Bush aides now dispute the veracity of both assertions by Biden.
"I never recall Biden saying any of that," former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said after reviewing detailed notes of Bush's White House meetings with Biden, which include numerous direct quotes from Biden. "I find it odd that he said he met with him alone all the time. I don't think that's true."
Fleischer said that whenever Bush met with Sen. Biden, the meeting also included a congressional counterpart so as to not "antagonize" the House.
Karl Rove, former White House political adviser, also was skeptical of Biden's claim to have spent "a lot of hours alone" with Bush.
"I remember checking on such a Biden exaggeration while at the White House and no one witnessed the meeting and his comments in remotely the same way," Rove said.
Candida P. Wolff, Bush's White House liaison to Capitol Hill, said the only meetings she remembered between Bush and Biden also included other lawmakers. She said such meetings were held in the Cabinet Room or the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, not the Oval Office, and certainly did not last for "hours."
"The president would never sit through two hours of Joe Biden," Wolff said. "I don't ever remember Biden being in the Oval. He was such a blowhard on all that stuff - there wasn't a reason to bring him in."
Andy Card, former White House chief of staff, reviewed the two Biden claims and said: "This does not ring true to me. I doubt that it happened."
A spokesman for Bush declined comment, although a person close to the former president said Bush does not remember either episode.
This is not the first time the veracity of Biden's assertions has been challenged. In 1988, he dropped out of the presidential race after being accused of plagiarizing British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. The Washington Post also cited "the senator's boastful exaggerations of his academic record."
Last year, liberal Slate magazine recalled that "Biden's misdeeds encompassed numerous self-aggrandizing thefts, misstatements, and exaggerations that seemed to point to a serious character defect."
Also last year, Biden came under fire for telling a questionable story about being "shot at" in Iraq.
"Let's start telling the truth," Biden said during a presidential primary debate sponsored by YouTube in July. "Number one, you take all the troops out -- you better have helicopters ready to take those 3,000 civilians inside the Green Zone, where I have been seven times and shot at. You better make sure you have protection for them, or let them die."
But when questioned about the episode afterward by the Hill newspaper, Biden backpedaled from his claim of being "shot at" and instead allowed: "I was near where a shot landed."
Biden went on to say that some sort of projectile "landed" outside a building in the Green Zone where he and another senator had spent the night during a visit in December 2005. The lawmakers were shaving in the morning when they felt the building shake, Biden said.
"No one got up and ran from the room-it wasn't that kind of thing," he told the Hill. "It's not like I had someone holding a gun to my head."
Seven weeks after claiming to have been "shot at" in Iraq, Biden again raised eyebrows with another story about his exploits in war zones -- this time on "the superhighway of terror between Pakistan and Afghanistan, where my helicopter was forced down."
"If you want to know where AL Qaeda lives, you want to know where bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me," Biden bragged to the National Guard Association. "Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down, with a three-star general and three senators at 10,500 feet in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are."
But it turns out that inclement weather, not terrorists, prompted the chopper to land in an open field during Biden's visit to Afghanistan in February 2008. Fighter jets kept watch overhead while a convoy of security vehicles was dispatched to retrieve Biden and fellow Sens. Chuck Hagel and John Kerry.
"We were going to send Biden out to fight the Taliban with snowballs, but we didn't have to," joked Kerry, a Democrat, to the AP. "Other than getting a little cold, it was fine."
Yeah right. Served under Reagan, Bush I and Bush II
x
Stop bringing up Bush - this post was not about Bush
I even said we have had some good presidents and some bad ones, but this post was not about Bush. It was about Obama. Yes Bush was one of the worst presidents I'm not arguing with you on that one, but everytime anyone brings up something about our current president they are shot back with Bush this or Bush that and on things that have nothing to do with what the current topic is about. Again, this was not about Bush. It was about Obama.
Oh, more "blame Bush" - except Bush didn't send these out, now did he?
Here's a news flash for you since you apparently haven't heard: BUSH IS NOT IN OFFICE and just today Gallup did a poll showing that THE MAJORITY OF AMERICANS THINK OBAMA SHOULD START TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR WHAT HAPPENS ON HIS WATCH.
G E T A C L U E.
Bush is gone, YEA!!! and yeah, it could darn well be Bush! LOL.
Chimp boy!! But, the cartoon is NOT about Bush, now is it? Give me a break.
George Bush HIMSELF makes it so easy to make fun of George Bush!!!! oh where would I start, so litt
nm
Yes, Bush and Bush alone did this whole mess all my himself
Your speaking as though nobody else had a hand in this, just Bush nobody else. Last I knew we had a democratic congress and they are the ones who got us into this mess. Time to put fault where it belongs - congress. Bush is only a talking head.
Bush....they will still blame Bush.
nm
Corporation owned media does not bash Bush, they bash those that bash Bush.sm
Google Bush and vote fraud and there is tons of information about how many Americans 'voted' for Bush. Poor us and poor troops.
bush says....
bush says we are safer cause of our Iraq war..No way..we have created a culture of American haters.a culture of terrorists against America due to this so wrong war..hopefully the Downing Street Memo and the people now realizing we have sacrified too much will be the downfall for the warmonger in the White House..
Bush
He is shrub, chimp boy and many other names I cant post here but which I call him at home and among friends..oh yeah, dufus, jerk, imbecile...
As soon as Bush went from
"Anyone in my office involved with a leak will be fired" to "Anyone who is found guilty of leaking," I figured he had a handle on what the decision is going to be by the special prosecutor, who, incidentally, was appointed by BUSH.
I guess time will tell if justice truly does prevail.
Bush makes Nixon look like a choir boy.
Bush's oil? sm
Well, you all have blamed Bush for everything except original sin. I guess that is next. Thank the environmentalists partly for the mess we are in with oil. And stop deifying Chavez. He is not a good person.
No, Bush, you certainly are no FDR!
No One Can Say They Didn't See It Coming
By Sidney Blumenthal
Salon.com
Wednesday 31 August 2005
In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.
 |
 |
A New Orleans resident waded through floodwaters coated with a fine layer of oil in the flooded downtown area on Tuesday, August 30, 2005. |
|
|
Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.
A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.
The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation.
The Bush administration's policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised no net loss of wetlands, a policy launched by his father's administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.
In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. There's no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection, said one of the report's authors. The chairman of the White House's Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as highly questionable, and boasted, Everybody loves what we're doing.
My administration's climate change policy will be science based, President Bush declared in June 2001. But in 2002, when the Environmental Protection Agency submitted a study on global warming to the United Nations reflecting its expert research, Bush derided it as a report put out by a bureaucracy, and excised the climate change assessment from the agency's annual report. The next year, when the EPA issued its first comprehensive Report on the Environment, stating, Climate change has global consequences for human health and the environment, the White House simply demanded removal of the line and all similar conclusions. At the G-8 meeting in Scotland this year, Bush successfully stymied any common action on global warming. Scientists, meanwhile, have continued to accumulate impressive data on the rising temperature of the oceans, which has produced more severe hurricanes.
In February 2004, 60 of the nation's leading scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, warned in a statement, Restoring Scientific Integrity in Policymaking: Successful application of science has played a large part in the policies that have made the United States of America the world's most powerful nation and its citizens increasingly prosperous and healthy ... Indeed, this principle has long been adhered to by presidents and administrations of both parties in forming and implementing policies. The administration of George W. Bush has, however, disregarded this principle ... The distortion of scientific knowledge for partisan political ends must cease. Bush completely ignored this statement.
In the two weeks preceding the storm in the Gulf, the trumping of science by ideology and expertise by special interests accelerated. The Federal Drug Administration announced that it was postponing sale of the morning-after contraceptive pill, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of its safety and its approval by the FDA's scientific advisory board. The United Nations special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa accused the Bush administration of responsibility for a condom shortage in Uganda -- the result of the administration's evangelical Christian agenda of abstinence. When the chief of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in the Justice Department was ordered by the White House to delete its study that African-Americans and other minorities are subject to racial profiling in police traffic stops and he refused to buckle under, he was forced out of his job. When the Army Corps of Engineers' chief contracting oversight analyst objected to a $7 billion no-bid contract awarded for work in Iraq to Halliburton (the firm at which Vice President Cheney was formerly CEO), she was demoted despite her superior professional ratings. At the National Park Service, a former Cheney aide, a political appointee lacking professional background, drew up a plan to overturn past environmental practices and prohibit any mention of evolution while allowing sale of religious materials through the Park Service.
On the day the levees burst in New Orleans, Bush delivered a speech in Colorado comparing the Iraq war to World War II and himself to Franklin D. Roosevelt: And he knew that the best way to bring peace and stability to the region was by bringing freedom to Japan. Bush had boarded his very own Streetcar Named Desire.
--------
Sidney Blumenthal, a former assistant and senior advisor to President Clinton and the author of The Clinton Wars, is writing a column for Salon and the Guardian of London.
Bush's war
We are going to deal with the homecoming veterans of Iraq, their mental and physical troubles, for decades to come. I remember when I was a teenager, there was a man who lived down the street from my best friend where we all hung out..He would sit on his stoop. We would go up to the fence and ask him questions..He was spaced out, shaking, stared into space..We, as punky kids, thought it was funny..Later I found out, he was suffering from *shell shock*, post traumatic stress disorder..FROM WWII..He had never recovered..This was in the 1960's and he still was suffering..OMG..I also have a friend who was in Vietnam and he has never been the same after he came home in 1969..These returning vets are gonna experience hell on earth and we along with them..This war did not have to happen..this was an unnecessary war..a war of convenience, of profit and we will pay the price..Not Bush or his cronies, they will be insulated, locked away in their gated communities counting their money..We the working and caring American people, both democrat and republican, will pay the price..The only difference is democrats will admit it, republicans will still try to make excuses for Bushs war.
What? Not Bush?
Nobel Peace Prize 2005: Venezuelan President Hugo
Chavez makes the final list
VHeadline commentarist Carlos Herrera writes: The
Nobel Commission for the Peace Prize has received 199
nominations including Colin Powell, the U2 singer Bono
and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
It's Bush's
I wonder how much Bush (i.e. you and
me as TAXPAYERS) pays Faux News for its' *fair and balanced* reporting.
Ya gotta laugh at the morons who actually BELIEVE this nitwit, though!
Bush
Is he president Bush or dictator Bush? How can he expect to form a democracy in Iraq when at the very same time tear ours apart? What message is his administration trying to send to the terrorist now? We must make sure this does not slide by and be forgiven, not this time, Mr. Bush has gotten away with so many lies and then said I made a mistake. He is like the boy who cried wolf. When we let him get away with this illegal spying, and not even in the least way seeking a legal solution for doing it over 4 years! This is not acceptable, this is the highest disgrace of all of his disgraces done to our country. This is one nation under God, not George Bush. My new name for him is King George because his mindset is that of a dictator not a president. We need to clean up our own democracy before go around setting examples for other countries to do the same.
Bush
We should all be thankful that Bush was re-elected, I cannot imagine Kerry as President of the U. S. and now it looks like Hillary Clinton is going to run for President. If anyone votes for her they would have to be nuts. Cannot imagine getting Billy living back in the White House. If Hillary cannot control her own husband, how is she going to run the U.S.???????
Bush is doing no different
He's not targeting people paying off J.C. Penny Bills, Sears Cards etc. That's just ridiculous. Your argument about Bin Laden would work if he was the only terrorist in the world. You can't Monday morning quarterback in the War on Terror. Bush is not the first person to do this, and he won't be the last. This whole issue is just bizarre, and people who seem to be pro-terrorist are more bizarre.
Bush is not above the law...sm
Glad to see some of his fellow republicans are bringing this to the light for him.
Bush would never be a
Democrat. There is no money in it and he couldn't fake the compassion required.
But...I think that the Bush Adm.
is not the only president adm. this happens or will happen under.
The other ones will not bring back the American worker when China will make something for 10-cents and we make it for 10-dollars. All this outsourcing is here to stay. Sad to say.
SO DID BUSH!!!!!
x
if only Bush had
succeeded in passing his privitization of Social Security. Then we would be seeing all you gung-ho True Believer Repubs freaking out at the devastation of your retirement money. You would have to walk the walk instead of pontificating endlessly on your favorite subjects - scarey terrorists, Ayers, socialism, Salinsky, yak, yak, yak. It would serve ya all right.
Just saw this on TV and it's thanks to Bush sm
4 million more people this year from last year are on food stamps... twice as many people as 2005 are on food stamps.... say what you want but this is UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF G W BUSH and McCain voted with him 90 percent of the time. Not only that but McCain admitted during the run for candidacy that he knows nothing about the economy. I saw and heard it with my own senses. He said he doesn't know much about the economy.
People get $101 a month in food stamps and that only covers food, no toothpaste or toilet paper. You repubs act like it's moochers but these are newly impoverished people who had jobs last year and the year before. Wake up is all I can say.
Stop hating and pay attention.
oh get over bush would ya?
is out the door. as much as i dislike bush, he did not create all of this mess and i would rather have another 8 years of him in office and would feel way safer at night than i would with obama. you all can go on and on about how mccain s like bush, blah blah blah.... i disagree. i didn't vote for bush but i would vote for him over obama that is how strongly i feel that obama is so full of hot air. i just cannot believe how many people have their blinders on.
Never said I liked Bush but as other
posters have said, "He is our president and we should respect him" (in response to posts about O.
I disagreed with a lot of Bush's policies, but at least he stood up for the country for 911 (and let's not get into an argument over that). It's all been hashed over and over and over.
There's no winning any argument, just opinions on this board and that's mine.
One More WSJ about Bush
Maybe this will open some eyes, but I doubt it.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122584386627599251.html
Sorry, but Bush kept us from
Not many other presidents went through as much as Bush did in office. The 9/11, Katrina, Rita. Stopping a war on our own land, etc. I can't imagine what Kerry would have done after 9/11.
Way to go Bush! (sm)
You can now add another 9500 people (from DHL) to your list of unemployed citizens. You just keep sitting up there doing nothing while the country crashes around you. Awesome!
Go Bush!
Don't let those old ugly homeless people get in the way of your master plan. You sit there and stand firm for what you believe in--help thyself. And if those pesky reporters aren't on the straight talk express with ya, well you can just send them to Gitmo.
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