Shorter Bush White House

I am the law!!!!

The White House, moving toward a constitutional showdown with Congress, asserted executive privilege Thursday and rejected lawmakers' demands for documents that could shed light on the firings of federal prosecutors.

President Bush's attorney told Congress the White House would not turn over subpoenaed documents for former presidential counsel Harriet Miers and former political director Sara Taylor.

"With respect, it is with much regret that we are forced down this unfortunate path which we sought to avoid by finding grounds for mutual accommodation," White House counsel Fred Fielding said in a letter to the chairmen of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. "We had hoped this matter could conclude with your committees receiving information in lieu of having to invoke executive privilege. Instead, we are at this conclusion."

The Bush administration's definition of mutual accomodation is the same as its definiton of bipartisanship: you accomodate us.

Boy am I glad Henry Waxman is around.

Kagro X discusses some options.

Racism Is Not Dead

Anyone who says otherwise is either ignorant or... a racist.

In September 2006, a group of African American high school students in Jena, Louisiana, asked the school for permission to sit beneath a "whites only" shade tree. There was an unwritten rule that blacks couldn't sit beneath the tree. The school said they didn't care where students sat. The next day, students arrived at school to see three nooses (in school colors) hanging from the tree.

The boys who hung the nooses were suspended from school for a few days. The school administration chalked it up as a harmless prank, but Jena's black population didn't take it so lightly. Fights and unrest started breaking out at school. The District Attorney, Reed Walters, was called in to directly address black students at the school and told them all he could "end their life with a stroke of the pen."

Black students were assaulted at white parties. A white man drew a loaded rifle on three black teens at a local convenience store. (They wrestled it from him and ran away.) Someone tried to burn down the school, and on December 4th, a fight broke out that led to six black students being charged with attempted murder. To his word, the D.A. pushed for maximum charges, which carry sentences of eighty years. Four of the six are being tried as adults (ages 17 & 18) and two are juveniles.

We still have much work to do.

Update: The Supreme Court is not helping:

The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected public school assignment plans that take account of students' race.

The decision in cases affecting schools in Louisville, Ky., and Seattle could imperil similar plans in hundreds of districts nationwide, and it leaves public school systems with limited means to maintain racial diversity.

The court split, 5-4, with Chief Justice John Roberts announcing the court's judgment. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a dissent that was joined by the court's other three liberals. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote a concurring opinion in which he said race may be a component of school district plans designed to achieve diversity. But he agreed with Justice Roberts that the plans in Louisville and Seattle went too far.

Thanks, gang of 14! Thanks, Joe Lieberman! Thanks, bipartisan sensible centrist David broder! This is what the good bipartisans in the Senate have brought us!

Later update: Yes, this means the Supreme Court just gutted Brown v. Board of Ed.

Preaching to the Choir

Bush:

President George W. Bush said on Wednesday that he was creating a special envoy to the largest grouping of Islamic nations and called on moderate Muslims to speak out against extremists who are Islam's "true enemy."

Though I think that Bush and many Muslims disagree about who "extremists who are Islam's true enem[ies]" are.

PS - OOOoooohhh look, another czar! Now we know everything will be peaches and gravy. How long before we get a President czar?

Don't Cry for Me, Broderella

Boehlert on Libby's apologists at the WaPo.

h/t Atrios.

Bush's Court

One decision at a time.

All of these decisions are split 5-4, it's not even funny.

Astoundingly Even More Poop

Al-Qaeda.

More Poop

Fired prosecutors.

Poop

Iraq.

What's in a Name?

That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.

Not this time. Via Jessica at Feministing:

It's not enough that rape survivors are re-victimized in the courtroom by having their sexual histories brought up or are accused of "wanting it." Now they can't even call their assaults, well...assaults.

From Dahlia Lithwick at Slate:

...a Nebraska district judge, Jeffre Cheuvront, suddenly finds himself in a war of words with attorneys on both sides of a sexual assault trial. More worrisome, he appears to be at war with language itself, and his paradoxical answer is to ban it: Last fall, Cheuvront granted a motion by defense attorneys barring the use of the words rape, sexual assault, victim, assailant, and sexual assault kit from the trial of Pamir Safi—accused of raping Tory Bowen in October 2004.

The first trial resulted in a hung jury last year, and in the retrial the words will once again be banned. The only word left to use by both the defense and the prosecution to describe what happened? Sex. Uh huh, that's lovely.

From here on, I will refer to anything I think is bad as poop. More descriptive words are prohibited.

Day of the Purple Fingers

Iraq elected a government and all was Good in the eyes of the President.

Iraqi Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, a senior Shiite politician often mentioned as a potential prime minister, tendered his resignation last week in a move that reflects deepening frustration inside the Iraqi government with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Other senior Iraqi officials have considered resigning in recent weeks over the failures of their government to make progress after more than a year in power, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials.

Or was it?

What Digby Said

Dumb and Dumber

Bush.

The dumb:

Pushing back against the Democratic-led Congress, President Bush vetoed a bill Wednesday that would have eased restraints on federally funded embryonic stem-cell research. "Our innovative spirit is making possible incredible advances in medicine that can save lives and cure diseases," the president told an invited audience in the East Room.

Our 'spirit'? This curiously sounds like Bush's green-lantern foreign policy, where what matters is our willpower to get the job done. If we will it, it will happen - except we know how that can turn out. Why are we not using all available tools at our disposal?

The dumber:

"America is also a nation founded on the principle that all human life is sacred. And our conscience calls us to pursue the possibilities of science in a manner that respects human dignity and upholds our moral values."

54 dead Americans troops this month to date and counting...

Hating the Troops

Dirty hippie Jim Webb:

Virginia Sen. Jim Webb criticized the Army's top civilian leader Tuesday for extending soldiers' deployments to 15 months, saying the three-month increase is damaging the health of American troops.

The Vietnam veteran, whose son recently returned from Iraq, urged Acting Army Secretary Pete Geren to reconsider the policy change made last spring that extended 12-month tours of an already strained Army force.

``I am deeply troubled by the 15-month deployment requirement," Webb told Geren, who testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee. ``Who was talking for the well-being and health of the soldiers when this was put down?"

More Like This

Richardson:

Presidential candidate Bill Richardson on Tuesday accused his Democratic rivals of creating too many escape clauses for President Bush to leave U.S. troops in Iraq indefinitely.

"We need to bring them all home," the New Mexico governor said.

In a speech before liberal activists, Richardson tried to differentiate himself in the primary race by stressing that he would leave "zero troops" in Iraq. He pointed out that his leading opponents have supported legislation that would leave behind an undetermined number of residual forces to train and equip Iraqi forces, among other things.

This is the correct answer. It might not be the one accepted by the elite pundits who dominate our discourse, but it is the correct one.

The Boy Who Cried Wolf

Does he even understand his position?

U.S. President George W. Bush reiterated on Tuesday that all options were on the table in dealing with Iran's nuclear challenge.

At the start of a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Bush was asked if military action remained an option for dealing with Iran.

"My position has not changed. All options are on the table. I would hope that we could solve this diplomatically," he replied.

Bush said it was important that Iran faced "consequences" such as sanctions and other economic measures for defying the international community over its nuclear program. "There's a price to be paid," Bush said.

We are ruled by children.

Rule o' Law

Except when it applies to the President. From the GAO:

We found that in 11 signing statements the President singled out 160 specific provisions from the fiscal year 2006 appropriations acts. We examined 19 of these provisions to determine whether the agencies responsible for their execution carried out the provisions as written. Of these 19 provisions, 10 provisions were executed as written, 6 were not, and 3 were not triggered and so there was no agency action to examine. With regard to the use of signing statements by the federal courts, we found that they cite or refer to them infrequently and only in rare instances have relied on them as authoritative interpretations of the law.

Congress passes law and the President decides that it is wrong??!! WTF??? Oh, wait...

Four of the 12 categories we identified relate to the theory of the unitary executive. The signing statements themselves do not explain the unitary executive theory, but simply assert it as a basis for the President’s concern or objection to a number of different provisions. According to the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC), the theory of the unitary executive is rooted in Article II of the Constitution and, specifically, in the vesting in the President of the executive power and the instruction that the President “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

Unitary Executive Theory - (n.) I'm a gonna do whatever I want.

The President also objects to certain provisions based on an asserted authority to withhold from Congress information sometimes considered privileged. These provisions require an executive branch entity to provide Congress with information that the President believes could compromise the deliberative processes of the President or interfere with his general constitutional duties.

Four of the twelve categories relate to a function of the federal government in which the President asserts he has the primary constitutional role. The first of these categories contains provisions that could, according to the President, interfere with his constitutional role as Commander in Chief.

In a third category are provisions that, according to the signing statements, “purport to direct or burden the Executive’s conduct of foreign relations.” According to one signing statement, the Constitution commits to the President the primary responsibility for conducting the foreign relations of the United States.

Translation - these laws are getting in my way and they can shove it.

Someone needs to speak up and remind Bush that he is the president of a democracy, not a dictatorship.

Where Have All the Ponies Gone?

All this time and no pony?

The search for Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction appears close to an official conclusion, several years after their absence became a foregone one.

The United States and Britain have circulated a new proposal to the members of the United Nations Security Council to “terminate immediately the mandates” of the weapons inspectors. Staff meetings on the latest proposal have already taken place, and officials say that the permanent Council members, each of whom has veto power, seem ready to let the inspection group — the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission — meet its end.

I was told that there would be a pony. The people who told me that must be very, very bad.

But never fear, these same people tell me we can find a pony in Iran!

Hortatory Subjunctive

Now you know for sure these people are liars.

Versailles on the Potomac

What Digby said.

Priorities

Over at dkos, McJoan notes that Admiral Fallon is taking Maliki to task for, you guessed it, the oil law. She quotes:

Both independent analysts and officials within Iraq's Oil Ministry anticipate that when all is said and done, the big winners in Iraq will be the Big Four -- the American firms Exxon Mobile and Chevron, the British BP Amoco and Royal Dutch Shell -- that dominate the world oil market. Ibrahim Mohammed, an industry consultant with close contacts in the Iraqi Oil Ministry, told the Associated Press that there's a universal belief among ministry staff that the major U.S. companies will win the lion's share of contracts.

There are no nations, there are no peoples. There is only Exxon Mobile and Chevron, Amoco and Shell. You people have meddled with the primal forces of nature and I won't have it! Is that clear?

Full Frontal Idiocy

I am going to buy Full Frontal Feminism as soon as I finish the book I am currently reading, and among the reasons I am looking forward to reading it, one is to familiarize myself with a narrative that is different from the one spun by the obtuse gasbags who somehow represent acceptable, conventional discourse, but are completely incapable of understanding sexuality, gender issues or even simple logic.

If You Can't Beat Them...

Activist judiciary-style.

Bush Republicans

Edwards:

"If Mayor Giuliani believes that what President Bush has done is good, and wants
to embrace it and run a campaign for the Presidency saying, 'I will give you
four more years of what this president has given you,' then he’s allowed to do
that. He’ll never be elected President of the United States, but he’s allowed to
do that."

The Republican party - and all Republicans in it - is the party of Bush. Let's not forget it.

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

I do not want to do any more statistical debunking this week, but this dog don't hunt:

The U.S. federal government deficit has shrunk by about a third so far in fiscal 2007, the Congressional Budget Office estimated late Wednesday.

Through the first eight months of the fiscal year (through May), the deficit probably
totaled about $152 billion, down from $227 billion at this time last year.

For all of 2007, the CBO still predicts a budget shortfall of between $150 billion and $200 billion. The deficit figures would be much larger if the expected $186 billion surplus from the Social Security and Medicare trust funds were excluded.

Emphasis mine. The notion that the budget is representative of the U.S. government's costs and revenuesneeds to be debunked. The budget is officially what is on the books and has been budgeted for ahead of time - not the actual inflows and, more importantly, outflows. In particular, there is one noteworthy little item called the Iraq War that has not been on the books from the start, because it has been funded with emergency supplemental bills. The cost of the war so far is somewhere around $375-400 billion, $60 billion of which has been approved to be spent on Iraq this year. If you add that on to our deficit figure, we get right back to where we were last year.

Nothing like waging a war off the books so you can dupe your shareholders/constituents into thinking you ar much more financially viable than you actually are. That smacks of Enron-style accounting to me.

Obviousland

The federal government is getting hosed by oil and gas companies.

How could that happen when Exxon-Mobil wrote our energy policy???

Are We There Yet?

Think Progress:

In April, during the congressional debate over war funding, Gen. David Petraeus pushed back against a withdrawal timeline from Iraq “because we’re only about two months into the surge,” assuring Congress that he would be able to report on progress in September:

We’re only about two months into the surge. We won’t have all the forces on the ground until mid-June and I pointed that out to them, and noted that Ambassador Crocker and I would be doing an assessment in early September and provide that to our respective bosses at that time.

But now that the debate on timelines has passed, Petraeus is asking for even more time. Today in an interview with Lara Logan of CBS News, Petraeus tried to argue that the surge hasn’t even started yet:

We haven’t started the surge — the full surge — yet. So let me have a few
months.

Can you now see what is going to happen for the rest of Bush's presidency?

If you cannot, then I am psychic.

Merry Fitzmas!

He earned it.

Former White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison Tuesday for lying and obstructing the CIA leak investigation.

Mr. Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, stood calmly before a packed courtroom as a federal judge said the evidence overwhelmingly proved his guilt.

"People who occupy these types of positions, where they have the welfare and security of nation in their hands, have a special obligation to not do anything that might create a problem," U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton said.

He knows if you've been good or bad, so be good for goodness sake!

Fortune Flunks Reading Comp 101

There is an article on CNN Money today by Fortune assistant managing editor Cait Murphy about how Obama's support of Sen. Tom Harkin's (D-IA) Fair Pay Act of 2007, which would establish guidelines for whether companies are discriminating against one sex of employees by paying them less than their counterparts, is boneheaded and so out of style.

Murphy opens by acknowledging that a report published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that:

In 2005, women who were full-time wage and salary workers had median weekly earnings of $585, or 81 percent of the $722 median for their male counterparts.

It is nice to see that Murphy can state the obvious, but she then backtracks in the most awkward way:

What is more dubious, though, is the assumption that is the heart of the Fair Pay Act: that discrimination is the reason for all or most of the difference. And the act's remedies are absurdly misguided, injecting the federal government into the most routine pay decisions.

...

Let's start with the dubious. To the Fair Pay Act's backers, the simple fact that women make 81% of men's full-time earnings is in and of itself proof of discrimination, past and present. Only a pig-headed sexist would argue otherwise.

Or maybe not. June O'Neill, a certifiably female economist who served as director of the Congressional Budget Office under President Clinton, wrote a peer-reviewed paper for the American Economic Review (May 2003), trying to account for the pay gap. What she found was that women are much more likely over the course of their lives to cut back their hours or quit work altogether than men.

More precisely, of women aged 25-44 with young children, more than a third were out of the labor force; of those women who did have jobs, 30% worked part-time. (The comparable numbers for men were 4% out of the labor force and 2% working part-time).

All told, women are more than twice as likely to work part-time as men and over the course of their lifetimes, work outside the home for 40% fewer years than men. That accounts for a significant chunk of the pay gap. Then there is a more subtle factor. Despite the many advances the women's movement has brought the U.S., what it hasn't done, thank heavens, is make men and women the same. The simple fact is - and there is nothing nasty or conspiratorial about it - the sexes continue to choose different avenues of study and different types of jobs.

Let's start with her first claim: discrimination is not the reason for most of the difference. Her first support (bring out the Democrats!!! Never mind that we not talking about a progressive when it came to business), shows that she cannot read. The first line of the BLS report refers to "full time wage and salary workers." If she could read and comprehend that, why would she trot out an argument about women with part time jobs and women who are not working?

Her next dubious step, that because all women work 40% fewer years than men work, they do not deserve to get paid as much as men do. First, she is mixing apples and oranges because that statistic refers to all women whereas the report refers to full-time workers. Second, this implies that a woman is somehow less capable than a man if she has not worked as long as he has, a laughable line of reasoning.

Her next support - by the way, is she being sarcastic when she says thank heavens that men and women are not [paid] the same? I do not think she is. Also, if she is not talking about pay then she is deceptively blurring the argument - is also a triple fudge sundae of duplicity.

Here's an illustrative example. The college majors with the top starting salaries, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, are: chemical engineering (almost $60,000), computer engineering, electrical engineering, industrial engineering, mechanical engineering. Men make up about 80% of engineering majors. Women predominate among liberal arts majors - whose salaries start at a little more than $30,000.

Here's another illustrative example. If I used Alaska - or Tennessee, or any single state - to generalize about the population, demographics and economics of the U.S., you would laugh me out of the room. The same goes for Murphy. If Murphy had bothered to do the slightest bit of legwork and cross-reference that argument to actual employment statistics she never could have made it with a straight face. Just exactly how many engineers are there that Murphy feels comfortable citing them to show that overall women make less than men because there are more men in the highest paying field and so many of them that they skew overall pay figures?

The answer is not that many. According to the BLS' employment by occupational group figures, there are about 2.5 million architects and engineers, and 3 million computer and mathematical science professionals, out of a total of 132.5 million employees. Even if we assume those fields are 100% male, their percentage of the workforce does not work out to any greater than 4.2%. I would like to see Murphy assert that 4.2% of the workforce accounts for 19% of the sex pay gap in the entire labor market.

A shorter version of the rest of her argument against the act goes something like: OOOGAH BOOGAH!!! TAXES!!! REGULATION BAD!!!! FREEE MARKET!!! FREE!!!!!

I am serious:

The Fair Pay Act is, in short, madness. And it is troubling that Obama has associated himself with this kind of legislation - a position that has the feel of a pander to the feminist left. It is certainly not sound economics.

After destroying her unsound statistics, I am in no mood to believe anything Cait Murphy has to say. Supporting such an act means supporting the notion that all people are equal (or, at least that there is no reason to discriminate against a person based on his or her sex, apparently an argument that Cait Murphy has a huge problem with), not a pander to any specific group (when we do it, it are moral. When they do it, it is politics). Supporting equality between men and women is a moral good.

Murphy has a lot of nerve to publish an article like this in the recent wake of Ledbetter, which gave ample evidence of a woman who worked just as hard and for just as long as her male counterparts, yet was continuously and conclusively discriminated against because of her sex. I wonder if Murphy knows how well she is paid in comparison to her male counterparts. If she is paid less than they are I wonder if she ok with that because she is more likely to work part-time or take time off, or simply because, thank heavens, men and women are not the same. Even if she is, she has no right to project that mindset onto others.

Spending More Time with the Family

Dan Bartlett.

Dan Bartlett, a key member of President George W. Bush's inner circle and an aide for him going back more than 13 years, announced on Friday he is resigning as White House counselor effective July 4.
In an interview, Bartlett, who turned 36 on Friday, said he had been pondering his departure for months and decided now is the best time to get a less demanding job so he can concentrate on helping raise three children all under the age of 4.

Indeed.