Fox News host Bill O'Reilly and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) are the latest odd couple. The conservative pundit and former anti-war presidential candidiate are blaming high gas prices partly on price gouging.
Kucinich appeared on O'Reilly's show Wednesday to talk about his call for the impeachment of President Bush and for an investigation into oil companies' price manipulation. While O'Reilly disagreed with Kucinich over an impeachment, the pundit said he backs the congressman's efforts to look into price gouging.
"Bill O'Reilly and Kucinich, together at last," Kucinich said.
Read part of the transcript and watch the must-see video below.
KUCINICH: Well, you know what [oil companies are] doing? They're actually standing back while all the speculation is going. It has nothing to do with supply and demand.
O'REILLY: Absolutely.
KUCINICH: Driving the price of oil.
O'REILLY: Get them. Look.
KUCINICH: And.
O'REILLY: ... Congressman..
KUCINICH: You know what?
O'REILLY: ... I'm your best friend on that issue.
KUCINICH: (inaudible) something.
O'REILLY: You ought to take all of your time, knock off the dopey partisan impeachment stuff.
Imprisoned lobbyist Jack Abramoff influenced some White House actions and offered expensive meals and tickets to White House officials, according to a proposed report released by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee today.
The report also states that Abramoff had personal contact with President Bush, and that high-level White House officials held Abramoff in high regard and sought recommendations from him on policy issues.
The committee, headed by Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), today announced the release of the proposed report, which the committee will mark up Thursday.
See the report and the committee's announcement here.
In a letter to members of Congress today, 112 organizations are calling for action on legislation to protect whistleblowers at federal agencies.
The effort was spearheaded by the Government Accountability Project, Public Citizen, the Project On Government Oversight, and the Union of Concerned Scientists. The group also includes the American Civil Liberties Union, Society of Professional Journalists, American Association of Small Business Owners, and Consumers Union.
Citing the recent allegations of former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) today called on the Department of Justice to release FBI interviews with President Bush and Vice President Cheney relating to the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson's identity.
McClellan, in his new tell-all book, has alleged that Bush and Cheney were involved in delivering false information to the public regarding the Plame leak.
In December, Waxman requested materials related to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald's investigation of the leak. That investigation led to the conviction of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby for his involvement. Waxman received redacted interviews with Libby and former White House aide Karl Rove.
But Waxman today said that McClellan's allegations warrant the release of Bush and Cheney's interviews as well. See Waxman's letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey below:
Read more...
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said that the House Judiciary Committee would be willing to arrest Karl Rove if the former White House official doesn't testify about his role in the firing of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006.
Wasserman Schultz, in an interview on MSNBC Tuesday, echoed the demand of House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.) that Rove would not be allowed to invoke executive privilege to avoid testifying. Rove could not invoke the privilege since he said he did not have conversations with the president about the attorneys' firing, Wasserman Schultz said.
Asked by MSNBC host Dan Abrams if the committee would go far as having Rove arrested, Wasserman said it would.
"Well, if that's what it takes," she said. "I mean we really cannot allow the co-equal branch of government, the legislative branch, to be trampled upon by the executive branch. The founding fathers established three branches of government. We are a co-equal branch, and this is an administration that essentially has ignored and disrespected the role of the legislative branch for far too long."
Rove said Sunday that the Judiciary Committee has refused to take up offers by his lawyer and the Bush administration that would allow the committee to find the information it's seeking without Rove's testimony.
The Senate Banking Committee tomorrow will question Steven Preston, President Bush's nominee to replace Alphonso Jackson as chairman of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
Preston looks to face tough questions from the panel's chairman, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), whose reaction to Preston's nomination in April was less than warm.
Read more...
A former State Dept. official told the Democratic Policy Committee (DPC) today that the department has misled Congress and the American public about corruption in the Iraqi government.
Arthur Brennan, who briefly served in Baghdad as head of the State Dept's Office of Accountability and Transparency in 2007 according to the Associated Press, told Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) that Ambassador Ryan Crocker is either misleading the American public about corruption in Iraq, or is unaware of the corruption due to his own negligence.
Brennan made his statements at a DPC hearing in the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The DPC circulated a video of the exchange today; see it below:
When contacted for response, State Dept. spokeswoman Nancy Beck told The Hill, "As we
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) is asking the U.S. Inspector General to look into the Pentagon's program of having generals defend Bush administration foreign policy on talk shows, which was first reported by the New York Times.
"This extensive propaganda program should have been revealed, not by a newspaper, but long-ago by the DoD Office of the Inspector General, which is responsible for eliminating waste, fraud and abuse at the department, as well as promoting integrity and serving the public interest," wrote DeLauro in a letter to the Inspector General. "Now that the program has been halted, we must take the next steps to determine how high-ranking officials within the Pentagon were allowed to operate a program aimed at deceiving the American people."
DeLauro was joined by 40 other House Democrats in her letter, Think Progress reports. In the Senate, Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) has asked the General Accountability Office to determine whether the Pentagon's program was illegal.
The AFL-CIO has filed a complaint with the Bush Administration that says violence against trade unionists in Guatemala may have worsened since the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) became law, reports The Hill's Kevin Bogardus:
Expect the labor union to use the complaint as an argument against the free trade agreement with Colombia. Colombian supporters believe the trade deal would help that country's economy and thus lessen violence against labor activists. But the AFL-CIO complaint on Guatemala runs counter to this argument.
"This petition will demonstrate that labor conditions in [Guatemala] have remained unchanged or have worsened since the trade agreement was ratified," charges the complaint. "The level of physical violence against trade unionists increased markedly since the agreement entered into force in July, 2006. Violations of freedom of association and collective bargaining continue apace, and access to fair and efficient administrative or judicial tribunals remains elusive."
Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee want Attorney General Michael Mukasey to clarify his claim that the the government failed to act on a phone call about the September 11th terrorist attacks.
Mukasey said last month in San Francisco that the government failed to wiretap a phone call from an Afghanistan "safe house" to somebody in the United States prior to the September 11th strike. Mukasey made the claim while arguing that that Congress should renew a 2007 expansion of government surveillance capabilities.
On Monday, House Judiciary Chairman John Conyers (D-Mich.), Rep. Robert "Bobby" Scott (D-Va.) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) sent a letter to Mukasey asking what he was referring to. Mukasey's statement, they wrote, was "very disturbing" because it was the first time someone had referred "to a call from a known terrorist safe house in Afghanistan to the United States which, if it had been intercepted, could have helped prevented the terrorist attacks.
They added: "If such calls were known about and not intercepted, serious additional concerns would be raised about the government's failure to take appropriate action before 9/11."
Here's Mukasey's quote under scrutiny, as reported by the New York Sun:
Officials "shouldn't need a warrant when somebody picks up the phone in Iraq and calls somebody in the United States because that's the call that we may really want to know about. And before 9/11, that's the call that we didn't know about. We knew that there has been a call from someplace that was known to be a safe house in Afghanistan and we knew that it came to the United States. We didn't know precisely where it went."
Mukasey made the claim while calling on Congress swiftly renew an amendment to the Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act (FISA) that had allowed for expanded surveillance activities.
House Democrats have bucked the Bush administration's request, passing their own FISA update last month that does not include retroactive legal immunity for telecom companies that participated in the government's domestic warrantless wiretapping program. President Bush has said he would veto any FISA bill that lacks immunity for the companies.
Read the Democrats' letter to Mukasey here (.pdf).
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