What Did Bush Tell Gonzales? It Ain't Pretty...

Bush and Gonzales: Who told whom to do what and when? Photo by Joshua Roberts-Pool / Getty Images.

Sources say Alberto Gonzales now claims that President Bush personally directed him to John Ashcroft's hospital room in the infamous wiretap renewal incident—and that in another instance the President asked him to fabricate fictitious notes.

By Murray Waas / September 26, 2008

In March 2004, White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales made a now-famous late-night visit to the hospital room of Attorney General John Ashcroft, seeking to get Ashcroft to sign a certification stating that the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program was legal. According to people familiar with statements recently made by Gonzales to federal investigators, Gonzales is now saying that George Bush personally directed him to make that hospital visit.

The hospital visit is already central to many contemporaneous historical accounts of the Bush presidency. At the time of the visit, Ashcroft had been in intensive care for six days, was heavily medicated, and was recovering from emergency surgery to remove his gall bladder. Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey has said that he believes that Gonzales and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, who accompanied Gonzales to Ashcroft’s hospital room, were trying to take advantage of Ashcroft’s grievously ill state—pressing him to sign the certification possibly without even comprehending what he was doing—and in the process authorize a government surveillance program which both Ashcroft and the Justice Department had concluded was of questionable legality.

Gonzales has also told Justice Department investigators that President Bush played a more central and active role than was previously known in devising a strategy to have Congress enable the continuation of the surveillance program when questions about its legality were raised by the Justice Department, as well as devising other ways to circumvent the Justice Department’s legal concerns about the program, according to people who have read Gonzales’s interviews with investigators. The White House declined to comment for this story. An attorney for Gonzales, George J. Terwilliger III, himself a former deputy attorney general, declined to comment as well.

Although this president is famously known for rarely becoming immersed in the details—even on the issues he cares the most about—Gonzales has painted a picture of Bush as being very much involved when it came to his administration’s surveillance program.

In describing Bush as having pressed him to engage in some of the more controversial actions regarding the warrantless surveillance program, Gonzales and his legal team are apparently attempting to lessen his own legal jeopardy. The Justice Department’s inspector general (IG) is investigating whether Gonzales lied to Congress when he was questioned under oath about the surveillance program. And the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is separately investigating whether Gonzales and other Justice Department attorneys acted within the law in authorizing and overseeing the surveillance program. Neither the IG nor OPR can bring criminal charges, but if, during the course of their own investigations, they believe they have uncovered evidence of a possible crime, they can seek to make a criminal referral to those who can.

In portraying President Bush as directly involved in making some of the more controversial decisions about his administration’s surveillance program, Gonzales may, intentionally or unintentionally, be drawing greater legal scrutiny to the actions of President Bush and other White House officials. And what began as investigations narrowly focused on Gonzales’s conduct could easily morph into broader investigations leading into the White House, and possibly leading to the appointment of a special prosecutor.

Dan Richman, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan and professor at Columbia Law School, told me that Gonzales appears to be attempting to walk the thin line of taking himself out of harm’s way while at the same time protecting the president, a strategy that very well could work: “I think he is serving his own purposes and the White House’s purposes,” Richman says.

According to Richman, by invoking Bush’s name and authority, Gonzales and his legal team are making it more difficult for investigators to seek a criminal investigation of his actions, or for other investigators to later bring criminal charges against him: “The clearer it is that Gonzales did what he did at the behest of the president of the United States, the safer that he [Gonzales] is legally,” says Richman. At the same time, by saying that he is advising the president, Gonzales also makes it easier for those at the White House to claim executive privilege if they do indeed become embroiled in the probe.

Moreover, according to one senior Justice Department official, Gonzales, his legal team, and the White House also know that Justice’s IG and OPR are unlikely to press senior White House officials, let alone the president, to answer their questions.

But this legal strategy could also backfire.

One scenario feared by the White House is that the IG or OPR could send a public report to Congress concluding that Gonzales or some other official may have committed a crime. At a minimum, that would make the conduct of Gonzales, or of any other official deemed to be under suspicion, the subject of a criminal investigation.

Read all of it here.

Source / The Atlantic

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SPORT : "I Don't Care If I Never Get Back"

Dubya : Keeping His Eye on the Ball
By Dana Milbank / July 17, 2008

[Last Thursday] was another day of turmoil in the capital. The Federal Reserve chairman again tried to reassure jittery markets. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said he wanted more troops in Afghanistan to put down the growing insurgency. And just before 4 p.m., President Bush stepped onto the South Lawn for what he called a "historic" moment.

"Play ball!" cried the commander in chief.

Leaving his cares behind, Bush then sat down for more than an hour to watch 6- and 7-year-olds play T-ball, to unveil a "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" postage stamp, and to lead the crowd in singing that anthem with the majesty of "Hail to the Chief."

Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack.

I don't care if I never get back.

The president had reason to be sincere about that last line. Earlier in the day, the administration announced the highest inflation rate in a quarter-century. His aides worked to steady Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the tottering mortgage giants. And Bush, at 28 percent approval in the polls, seems to have abandoned any hope of a home run that could solve domestic economic problems or the wars overseas.

But by one measure, Bush remains more enthusiastic than ever: his role as the nation's chief cheerleader. Yesterday's T-ball game, the 19th of his presidency -- followed by a dinner last night in honor of Major League Baseball, the third of his presidency -- brought to at least 95 the number of sporting-related events he has participated in during his time in the White House. He has done no fewer than 18 such events so far this year -- already passing his previous record of 13 in both 2001 and 2007.

The 95 sports events (with hundreds of athletic teams) are more than double the number of Cabinet meetings Bush has held (45), more than quadruple the number of meetings he has had with Russia's Vladimir Putin (22). The 19 T-ball games he has held are more than twice the number of meetings he has had with China's Hu Jintao (nine). And the three dinners he has held in honor of professional baseball are nearly equal to the five state dinners he has hosted during his entire presidency.

These are the stats kept by CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller, the world's most devoted chronicler of presidential comings and goings. By his reckoning, the only activity that seems to rival the president's love of sports is his love of fundraising. Bush has attended 322 fundraisers since taking office.

Fundraising, however, is work. For a president facing little good news at the office, sport is pleasure. For Bush, former owner of baseball's Texas Rangers, it began in March 2001, when, in the presence of Hank Aaron, Stan Musial and others, he launched the White House T-ball league. Since then, athletes have passed through the White House by the hundreds. Last month, Bush welcomed 20 college teams at once, including the University of Maryland Eastern Shore women's bowling team, the UCLA women's water polo team, and the Penn State men's and women's volleyball squads.

Bush has even taken his love of sport abroad, watching a T-ball game in Ghana this year. But sometimes his enthusiasm causes an errant shot. Given a basketball at the White House by Shaquille O'Neal, Bush tried to dribble the ball, but it didn't bounce. Shooting hoops with children in Northern Ireland last month, he came up with an air ball and a missed layup.

But Bush keeps playing -- and because he's the president, everybody plays along. Workers set up bleachers, picnic tables, refreshment stands, a home-run fence and painted base paths on the South Lawn for yesterday's "All-Star Game." Country singer Kenny Chesney sang the national anthem. Current and past baseball greats Ryne Sandberg, John Smoltz, Kevin Millar and Rick Monday served as coaches, former Nationals manager Frank Robinson acted as commissioner, and ESPN's "Mike and Mike" handled the play-by-play.

The enthusiastic president arrived early. "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this historic occasion," Bush said before leading the players in the Little League Oath. Bush, in short sleeves and a cowboy belt, then took a seat in the fourth row of the stands to watch as each player was introduced by favorite food and movie ("Jack likes ice cream and 'Curious George' ") before taking a turn at the plate.

The game must have looked familiar to Bush in these final months of his presidency: dropped balls, swings and misses, and players running every which way. But in T-ball, at least, "absolutely no score will be kept," as Mike and Mike put it, "and everyone will leave as a winner."

At the end of the game, Bush joined a large chipmunk named Dugout on the field to hand out baseballs to the players. But even on the South Lawn, he found that his popularity went only so far. A young girl named Emily from Kentucky, apparently afraid to meet the president and the chipmunk, ran crying from the field when Bush tried to present her with a ball.

Undeterred, Bush lingered to sign baseballs and pose for pictures. He was in no hurry: His next big event, the Major League Baseball dinner in the State Dining Room, wouldn't start for two more hours.

Source / Washington Post / h/t Bad Attitudes

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Time for a Grand Inquest into Bush's High Crimes

Impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson.
We have witnessed a staggering
abuse of power by the president
By Robert L. Borosage / June 24, 2008

One of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's first acts upon taking the gavel was to rule impeachment off the table. She wanted Democrats to focus on challenging the president on the war and on kitchen table concerns -- from energy to education to health care. With Democrats now enjoying an increasing margin in generic polls and looking towards gaining seats in both the House and the Senate, the strategy certainly hasn't hurt politically.

But the constitutional implications are far more disturbing. This was dramatized as the Congress debated the FISA reform legislation that will provide retroactive immunity to the telecommunications companies for warrantless interception of the conversations of Americans -- and by implication, retroactive acceptance of the president's authority to order such wiretaps.

We have witnessed a staggering abuse of power by this president. Even former Bush Justice Department officials now charge President Bush with trampling the Constitution. Bush has claimed the prerogative to declare an endless war without congressional approval, to designate someone an enemy without cause, to proceed to wiretap them without warrant, arrest or kidnap them at will, jail them without a hearing, hold them indefinitely, interrogate them intensively (read torture), bring them to trial outside the US court system. He claims that executive privilege exempts his aides -- even the aides of his aides and his vice president's aides -- from congressional investigation. He claims the right to amend or negate congressional laws with a statement upon signing them. And much more.

Even this Supreme Court, stacked with activist right-wing judges enamored of executive national security powers, has rebuked the president on some of these claims, particularly around the treatment of allegedly enemy combatants. But many of Bush's claims will escape judicial determination.

And there is the rub. According to the leading case on presidential powers, if Bush's extreme assertions of power are not challenged by the Congress, they end up not simply creating new law, they could end up rewriting the Constitution itself, altering the Constitutional division of powers by establishing the president's claims as constitutional powers that the Congress or the Courts may not infringe.

The Steel Seizure case -- Youngstown Sheet and Tube v Sawyer, 343 US 579 (1952), remains the leading case on presidential power. In Youngstown, a six member majority of the Court joined in overturning Truman's executive order nationalizing the steel plants to end a strike during the Korean War. Justice Black wrote the opinion for the Court, but the historically influential opinions were penned by Justices Robert H. Jackson and Felix Frankfurter, both Democratic appointees. Frankfurter laid out the argument for a sort of common law of constitutional amendment:

Deeply embedded traditional ways of conducting government cannot supplant the Constitution or legislation, but they give meaning to the words of a text or supply them. It is an inadmissibly narrow conception of American constitutional law to confine it to the words of the Constitution and to disregard the gloss which life has written upon them. In short, a systematic, unbroken, executive practice, long pursued to the knowledge of the Congress and never before questioned, engaged in by Presidents who have also sworn to uphold the Constitution, making as it were such exercise of power part [343 U.S. 579, 611] of the structure of our government, may be treated as a gloss on "executive Power" vested in the President by 1 of Art. II.

In Youngstown, Jackson concurred, arguing that the president's powers vary as to whether he acts with congressional authority (his greatest power), in the absence of it, or in opposition to it:

When the president acts in absence of either a congressional grant or denial of authority, he can only rely upon his own independent powers, but there is a zone of twilight in which he and Congress may have concurrent authority, or in which its distribution is uncertain. Therefore, congressional inertia, indifference or quiescence may sometimes, at least as a practical matter, enable, if not invite, measures on independent presidential responsibility. In this area, any actual test of power is likely to depend on the imperatives of events and contemporary imponderables rather than on abstract theories of law.

When a president egregiously abuses his power -- particularly in areas relating to the rights of American citizens -- remedies are often difficult. The Supreme Court is reluctant to arbitrate a power struggle between two co-equal branches. That is why the Constitution prescribes the specific remedy of impeachment for crimes and abuses of power -- High Crimes and Misdemeanors -- and empowers the House and Senate to sit in judgment whether the actions are to be accepted or condemned.

What the Court said in Youngstown is that if presidents assert a prerogative -- like the power to make war without a congressional declaration -- systematically, with unbroken regularity, with the knowledge of the Congress and are never questioned -- then that practice becomes a Constitutional power that cannot be infringed upon by the Congress or the Courts.

Thus, Congress must formally object to President Bush's abuses or it risks by "indifference or quiescence" contributing to the powers of our imperial presidency.

When Pelosi took impeachment off the table, it was reduced to being a rhetorical protest vehicle for progressives like Dennis Kucinich or Russ Feingold. But Congress need not convict President Bush to impeach him for High Crimes and Misdemeanors. And arguably, the House need not even impeach the president to hold a Grand Inquest into the powers that he has claimed, registering a formal objection to them. The Judiciary Committee in the House should formally convene that Inquest, no matter what the decision is on impeachment. For if Pelosi's sensible political judgment results, as it has to date, in a show of congressional "inertia, indifference or quiescence," the Democratic majority in Congress may have gained a dozen seats at the cost of relinquishing its own powers, and putting the rights of Americans at risk.

Source. / The Huffington Post

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