Category: White House

Update on Gregg as Commerce Secretary

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It appears that Judd Gregg is demanding a promise that anyone who the (Democratic) governor appoints would caucus with the Republicans, and the word is that the rather Broderiffic Governor of New Hampshire, John Lynch would likely do this anyway.

Screw it. Why give a ‘Phant a leg up in the 2010 election in a state that is increasingly blue.

Update:

OK, the NY Times is reporting that there is a rumor that former NH Senator Warren Rudman would be appointed as a caretaker:

But there are no guarantees that Mr. Lynch would pick a Democrat: New Hampshire prizes its political independence, and the governor is a moderate. Some analysts say he could turn to a well-regarded Republican — former Senator Warren Rudman has been mentioned — to serve as a kind of caretaker to fill out the remainder of Mr. Gregg’s term, which expires at the end of 2010.

This might work, as Rudman is fairly clearly a vote against cloture almost all the time, and he won’t run in 2010.

The Road to 60 Through the Commerce Department?

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We are hearing reports that New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg (R) is being considered for Secretary of Commerce.

This is interesting for a number of reasons:

  • Secretary of Commerce is typically low profile, the last, and possibly only “Rock Star” Secretary of Commerce was Herbert Hoover.
  • Gregg is a sitting senator in a state that has become reliably blue, so this might be preferable to his standing for election in 2010.
  • The governor of New Hampshire is John Lynch, who is a Democrat, and would likely appoint a Democrat to the post.

If this is true, then, once the Norm Coleman clown show is done, we would have 60 votes against a filibuster, assuming, of course, that Joe Lieberman doesn’t knife the Dems in the back.

Speaking of Insubordination

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The presiding judge at Gitmo, Army Colonel James Pohl, is refusing to suspend one of the trials, and has scheduled the arraignment for February 9:

Hours after taking office last week, Obama ordered Guantanamo prosecutors to seek 120-day delays in all pending cases to give his administration time to decide whether to scrap the widely criticized tribunals created by the Bush administration to try suspected terrorists outside the regular U.S. court system.

But the judge, Army Colonel James Pohl, said the law underpinning the tribunals gives the presiding judges sole authority to delay cases. He ruled that postponing proceedings against Abd al Rahim al Nashiri would harm the public interest in a speedy trial.

Note that al Nashiri appears to be one of the “high value” defendants who was water boarded, and he has been held for over 5 years…so much for speedy trials.

Seriously, Bush and His Evil Minions™ did their level best to politicize every level of government, including the military.

This will be poisoning the military and the civilian bureaucracy for decades to come.

Obama Needs to Tell Ray Odierno to STFU

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Because it’s clear that General Odierno is doing his level best to box Obama in on Iraq:

Among those consulted by the president was Gen. Ray Odierno, the top commander in Iraq, who has developed a plan that would move slower than Mr. Obama’s campaign timetable, by pulling out two brigades over the next six months. In an interview in Iraq on Wednesday, General Odierno suggested that it might take the rest of the year to determine exactly when United States forces could be drawn down significantly.

This is borderline insubordinate.

A president needs his generals to tell him, and congress, the truth, but you don’t want them spouting off to the press in order to make your job more difficult.

If this is not slapped down now, it will only get worse.

White House Denies Non-Prosecution Promise

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An unnamed Holder aide is denying that he made any promise not to prosecute torture:

Eric Holder has not made any commitments about who would or would not be prosecuted. He explained his position to Senator Bond as he did in the public hearing and in his responses to written questions.

So it appears that Kit Bond’s statements to the Washington Times are now in dispute.

I really think that Eric Holder and Barack Obama both need to publicly disavow the news report.

Eric Holder Just Became a War Criminal, Will Barack Obama Follow? [With Update: Senate Dems Deny]

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Update: Democratic members of the Judiciary Committee have just denied that Holder said any such thing. I’d like to see Holder deny this too.

If this report in the Washington Times is accurate, Eric Holder just agreed not to prosecute people who engaged in torture:

Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond, a Republican from Missouri and the vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said in an interview with The Washington Times that he will support Eric H. Holder Jr.’s nomination for Attorney General because Mr. Holder assured him privately that Mr. Obama’s Justice Department will not prosecute former Bush officials involved in the interrogations program.

Mr. Holder’s promise apparently was key to moving his nomination forward. Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee voted 17-2 to favorably recommend Holder for the post. He is likely to be confirmed by the Senate soon.

Sen. Bond also said that Mr. Holder told him in a private meeting Tuesday that he will not strip the telecommunications companies that cooperated with the National Security Agency after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks of retroactive legal immunity from civil lawsuits–removing another potential sticking point among GOP senators.

When the United States ratified the Convention against Torture in 1994, it created an obligation to affirmatively act to prevent torture, and to prosecute torturers and co-conspirators through, “effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction,” including taking steps to “ensure that all acts of torture are offenses under its criminal law”.

If the report is true, and note that it’s the Washington Times quoting Kit Bond, so the possibility that the reporter or the Senator is lying is most assuredly non-zero, so, Holder could have said something as innocuous as, “There is such a thing as prosecutorial discretion,” and Kit Bond could have related this as, “there will be no prosecutions.”

Certainly, the Republicans have in the past fabricated promises in the hope that they would become accepted as the status quo…..It’s called poisoning the well.

That being said, if what Mr. Bond related is a true description of the discussions, then Eric Holder has entered into an illegal conspiracy to coverup torture, which is, under the convention against, a violation of the Convention against Torture in and of itself.

The pertinent sections of the convention are below (all emphasis mine, and but I’m an engineer, not a lawyer, dammit!*):

Article 2
  1. Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
  2. No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
  3. An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.

Article 4
  1. Each State Party shall ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law. The same shall apply to an attempt to commit torture and to an act by any person which constitutes complicity or participation in torture.
  2. Each State Party shall make these offences punishable by appropriate penalties which take into account their grave nature.
Article 5
  1. Each State Party shall take such measures as may be necessary to establish its jurisdiction over the offences referred to in article 4 in the following cases:
    1. When the offences are committed in any territory under its jurisdiction or on board a ship or aircraft registered in that State;
    2. When the alleged offender is a national of that State;
    3. When the victim is a national of that State if that State considers it appropriate.
  2. Each State Party shall likewise take such measures as may be necessary to establish its jurisdiction over such offences in cases where the alleged offender is present in any territory under its jurisdiction and it does not extradite him pursuant to article 8 to any of the States mentioned in paragraph I of this article.
  3. This Convention does not exclude any criminal jurisdiction exercised in accordance with internal law.
Article 7
  1. The State Party in the territory under whose jurisdiction a person alleged to have committed any offence referred to in article 4 is found shall in the cases contemplated in article 5, if it does not extradite him, submit the case to its competent authorities for the purpose of prosecution.
  2. These authorities shall take their decision in the same manner as in the case of any ordinary offence of a serious nature under the law of that State. In the cases referred to in article 5, paragraph 2, the standards of evidence required for prosecution and conviction shall in no way be less stringent than those which apply in the cases referred to in article 5, paragraph 1.
  3. Any person regarding whom proceedings are brought in connection with any of the offences referred to in article 4 shall be guaranteed fair treatment at all stages of the proceedings.

*I LOVE IT when I get to go all Doctor McCoy!!!

Because They Still Won’t Vote For It

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So while Barack Obama is meeting with Republicans to get support for the stimulus package, John Boehner has already instructed his caucus not to vote for it.

A bright spot in all this is the report that Obama told the ‘Phants at a meeting to go pound sand on low income tax cuts.

They are claiming that it’s “Welfare”, though Ronald Reagan called it the “Earned Income Tax Credit,” and strongly supported it.

H/t Americablog for the pic.

I Hope That He is Not Serious

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In his confirmation hearings, Timothy “Eddie Haskell” Geithner aggressively supported a strong dollar policy.

I understand that this is the conventional wisdom, because much of the money made in Wall Street comes from borrowing cheaply and lending expensively, because the strong dollar policy makes it an attractive reserve currency, but in the long run it’s unsustainable.

He probably had to say it. I just hope that he’s not another Bob “Under Investigation for Insider Trading” Rubin about this.

BTW, the Senate Finance Committee voted in favor of his appointment by 18-5 and sent him to the Senate floor.

Good News from the White House

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New executive orders from President Barack Obama, directing that the Guantánamo Bay dentition facility and the CIA’s Gulag Archipelago of secret prisons be closed within a year.

He also ordered, “ll federal agencies and departments on Tuesday to stop any pending regulations until they can be reviewed by incoming staff.”

It’s nice to have people in the White House who aren’t, you know, irredeemably evil.

But I still want war crimes prosecutions.

This Should Get Interesting

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It appears that now that Bush and His Evil Minions&trade are on their way out, judges are getting rather a bit more aggressive, or maybe the wheels of justice are just grinding slowly, and have caught up with reality, because Judge HenryKennedy Jr. of the US District Court for DC has just told the White House to turn over all computer storage devices in their possession, and to open up their PCs to forensic investigation, in order to support lawsuits involving the Iraq War and the Valeria Plame outing.

The judge wants all the emails.

What’s more, it appears that someone was actually looking for them, because Helen Hong, a lawyer for the DoJ civil division just said that they have found the backup tapes with the emails in question.

It’s always the tapes, isn’t it.

Pass the popcorn.

On Centrism

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Words I never sought that I would say, but this is a great editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

Thomas Frank calls centrism a “chump’s game”, and notes that the “triangulation” of Bill Clinton and his ilk did nothing but allow the radical right wing to move the “center” further right.

Mr. Frank is right, and here is my favorite bit:

And centrism’s achievements? Well, there’s Nafta, which proved Democrats could stand up to labor. There’s the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. There’s the Iraq war resolution, approved by numerous Democrats in brave defiance of their party’s left. Triumphs all.

Histories of conservatism’s rise, on the other hand, often emphasize that movement’s adherence to principle regardless of changing public attitudes. Conservatives pressed laissez-faire through good times and bad, soldiering on even in years when suggesting that America was a “center-right nation” would have made one an instant laughingstock.

Confirmation Hearings Today

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I’m not following this particularly closely, as I believe that the overarching policy will be coming from Barack Obama, but we had the two big ones today, Holder and Clinton.

Regarding Holder, he has said that he will review the determination not to prosecute Bradley Schlozman, who clearly lied to Congress, though I would still expect not to see a prosecution.

More heartening is that he explicitly said that water-boarding is torture.

I expect the Republicans to continue to fling poo, but I think that he will be approved.

Also, the Foreign Relations Committee voted for Clinton as Secretary of State 16-1 with Senator “Diaper” Vitter voting against.