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Wednesday, June 20, 2007 |
New Yorker: "How Antonio Taguba, who investigated the Abu Ghraib scandal, became one of its casualties.
His orders were clear, however: he was to investigate only the military police at Abu Ghraib, and not those above them in the chain of command. 'These M.P. troops were not that creative,' he said. 'Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority.'
Whether the President was told about Abu Ghraib in January (when e-mails informed the Pentagon of the seriousness of the abuses and of the existence of photographs) or in March (when Taguba filed his report), Bush made no known effort to forcefully address the treatment of prisoners before the scandal became public, or to re-evaluate the training of military police and interrogators, or the practices of the task forces that he had authorized. Instead, Bush acquiesced in the prosecution of a few lower-level soldiers. The President's failure to act decisively resonated through the military chain of command: aggressive prosecution of crimes against detainees was not conducive to a successful career.
Taguba went on, 'There was no doubt in my mind that this stuff' - the explicit images - 'was gravitating upward. It was standard operating procedure to assume that this had to go higher. The President had to be aware of this.' He said that Rumsfeld, his senior aides, and the high-ranking generals and admirals who stood with him as he misrepresented what he knew about Abu Ghraib had failed the nation."
Truthout: "The Bush administration sometimes fails to follow all provisions of laws after President Bush attaches 'signing statements' meant to interpret or restrict the legislation, congressional examiners say.
Lawmakers who asked the Government Accountability Office to conduct the study said it was further proof that the Bush White House oversteps constitutional bounds in ignoring the will of Congress.
'Too often, the Bush administration does what it wants, no matter the law. It says what it wants, no matter the facts,' Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., said Monday. Byrd and House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., requested the report."
There is only one country in the world where laws are signed by the president, then provided with a signing statement that the president reserves the right not to follow the law. The US is a failed state.
More. And here and here.
CommonDreams: "Presidential adviser Karl Rove sent more than 140,000 e-mails through the Republican National Committee's computer system, circumventing a federal law intended to guarantee the preservation of presidential records, House of Representatives investigators have concluded.
While 88 White House aides used the back-channel system, Rove was its biggest user at the White House, and more than half of his communications dealt with official business, according to an interim report by the House Oversight Committee.
The White House initially had said that about 50 presidential aides used the Republican Party e-mail system to avoid sending political messages improperly through the White House system, which is supposed to be reserved for official government business.
Although 140,216 of Rove's e-mails have been preserved, committee investigators found that e-mails from 51 of the 88 White House aides who used the back-channel message system appear to have been destroyed."
McClatchy: "A former Justice Department political appointee blocked career lawyers from filing at least three lawsuits charging local and county governments with violating the voting rights of African-Americans and other minorities, seven former senior department employees charged Monday.
Hans von Spakovsky also derailed at least two investigations into possible voter discrimination, the former employees of the Voting Rights Section said in interviews and in a letter to the Senate Rules and Administration Committee. They urged the panel to reject von Spakovsky's nomination to the Federal Election Commission."
Politico: "A president with dismal approval ratings and a bitter intraparty rupture over immigration are obvious problems for Republican politicians.
In recent days, however, the combination is emerging as something less obvious: an opportunity.
The decline, according to some Republican strategists, has flashed a green light for lawmakers on Capitol Hill and presidential candidates to put distance between themselves and an unpopular president - a politically essential maneuver for the 2008 general election that remained risky as long as Bush retained the sympathies of Republican stalwarts.
Now that those sympathies have somewhat cooled, the effects are visible: Republican House members upset about immigration policy have spoken of Bush in disparaging terms."
11:03:30 AM 
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EUObserver: "European lawmakers have voted in favour of liberalising EU postal services across the 27 member bloc in four years time, a move that could eventually mean the end national monopolies on delivering lightweight letters and postcards."
That's a great step forward (and two steps backward). A Rumanian farmer will then be allowed to offer his cheap services and bring the outsourced post from Germany to Amsterdam on his cart.
Ah, where are the times that there were several deliveries a day? Soon we'll have to put up with delivery once a week.
10:22:38 AM
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© Copyright 2008.
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