Lawmaker News

Now Mitt Romney lies about hunting.

The former Massachusetts governor said he had been a hunter for just about all his life. Almost immediately his staff reminded him he had only been hunting twice. Presumably Mr. Romney forgot about all the times he never hunted.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is now engaged in intensive preparation for his congressional testimony. Will he accuse his former chief of staff of lying? Or will he admit that he lied himself when he said he was not involved in the U.S. attorney firings?

Of course, Scooter Libby was convicted of lying, to the applause of the neoconservative community, which calls for pardon because, for them, putting one's hand on the Bible with an oath to God Almighty and lying is really OK, thank you.

After many tall tales about Iraq WMDs, a little perjury between friends is no big deal. Read more...

A smart press strategy by Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) crack staff has muffled the potential political explosion of his announced support of an amendment to cut off funding for the troops as they fight in Iraq. But this story is not going away. In fact, Reid’s announcement is not merely a political tactic to get President Bush to the negotiating table. It is philosophical dogma to the hard left of the Democratic Party.

Democratic leftists want us to leave Iraq now. They wanted us to leave Vietnam, too, and guess what happened there. A communist takeover of Saigon, massacres, genocide and a crisis of confidence in the United States that led to a weakening of American influence from Iran to South America to Africa. Read more...

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) is facing the same problems in rounding up a House Democratic majority for a vote on the war as Bill Clinton had in finding support for his economic-stimulus package in 1993. A notoriously fractious bunch, Democrats in the House are almost impossible to discipline. But they can be bribed. Just as Clinton paid them off with all manner of pork, so Pelosi is being forced to add sweeteners, in the form of local projects, to bring all the congressmen she needs to pass her anti-war amendment on board.

The problem is that the pork then acquires a life of its own, and will besmirch the record of Pelosi just as it did that of Clinton. The fact is that when you are depending upon a majority of House Democrats, you are no longer their leader, but instead their hostage, and they are no longer your followers, but become your jailers.

Watching the activity on Capitol Hill this week, I can draw no other conclusion than certain Congressional Democrats need a refresher course on the Constitution they swore an oath to protect and defend.

First, of course, are the bullying tactics employed by the House and Senate judiciary committees to compel testimony from senior White House officials about confidential conversations held both amongst themselves and potentially with the president of the United States. Despite evidence of no underlying crime, these two committees have authorized their chairmen to issue subpoenas to White House officials for privileged conversations — a move that would be held up in the courts for years and one that, according to many scholars, runs afoul of the Constitution. Read more...

Above all, Elizabeth Edwards is a woman of incredible courage, inspiration and grace and we hope and pray she stages a complete and total recovery. Personally I hope that John Edwards, with his prayers for the woman he loves, campaigns brilliantly across the country with the love of his life in his heart every day, and our country in his spirit.

Edwards is not my first choice, but he's a good man and America is well served by his running a campaign of true leadership. Thank God Elizabeth Edwards has a prognosis more favorable than it could have been. It's great John Edwards is staying in the hunt.

The Politico has a good product, but this must be said: The story today reporting that Edwards was going to suspend his campaign, which was stated as a declarative fact, was both shameful and symptomatic of much that is wrong with the media. Read more...

As everyone in Washington continues to watch the clock on the tenure of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, today’s Washington Post story on Bush appointees interfering with the government’s case against tobacco said so much more than the damning words of a former Justice Department prosecutor could tell. Even more damaging than her accusation that the Bush loyalists in the AG’s office micromanaged the strategy to the detriment of the government’s case against tobacco companies was its timing. The first Republican I saw at the Capitol this morning said, shaking his head, that the tipping point on Gonzales had already been reached. “He has no room left for this,” he said.

For its own political stability the Bush administration needs the distraction of a Gonzales resignation. Amidst the brewing constitutional showdown over subpoenas for Karl Rove & Co., some dramatic and lengthy hearings for a different, viable and strong candidate for AG is just what the doctor is ordering. Gonzalez must know this. The fact that he is still standing means he has quite a stomach. I can’t imagine the stomachs in the West Wing being that strong.

On Tuesday afternoon, peace advocates descended on the Longworth office of Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) and said they plan to remain there until they are forced from the building. He is not the first Democrat to be stalked by anti-war protestors, and he won’t be the last. But something about them camping out at the office of Van Hollen, who just lost his mother and is charged as head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee with keeping his party in power in Congress in the next election, seemed particularly ironic. The crowd, no surprise, opposes his plan to support the supplemental Iraq war funding bill coming up for a vote this week.

Outside of the Bay Area home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in San Francisco, the protestors have been waiting patiently for “a dialogue,” and one explained on the Tucker show this week on MSNBC that they play music and serve wine and cheese. Tucker asked that they never hold a wine and cheese party on his lawn -- not exactly something Pelosi and Van Hollen could request, of course. Read more...

“Show trials. Fishing expeditions. Executive privilege. Political witch hunt.” Oh boy, we have heard it all before.

Let’s cut through all this rhetorical presidential anger and get to the heart of the matter. Bush and his palace guard (“loyal Bushies”) have done it again. They put their damage-control machine into high gear and decided that they can cover it all up, sweep it under the rug, and no one will notice.

It worked for six years on everything from the Libby/Plame fiasco to funding the war in Iraq through supplementals because there was no congressional oversight. It won’t work any more. Read more...

The Democrats are drawing the line in the sand at a pretty curious place. Instead of putting all of their efforts into coming up with a coherent strategy on Iraq, or passing legislation that matters to the Democratic base, they are picking their big fight over the attorney general’s firing of seven U.S. attorneys.

Some facts that everybody knows but that bear repeating:

1. The president can fire any of these U.S. attorneys for any reason. They serve at the pleasure of the president. They don’t have a vast bureaucracy with lots of rules to protect them. If the president doesn’t like the color of their socks or if he doesn’t like their prosecutorial pedigree or for any other reason, he can fire them. That is one of the truly great things about being president. You can do that kind of thing.


2. Bill Clinton fired all of the U.S. attorneys when he came into office, including the U.S. attorney who was investigating the president’s Whitewater real estate transaction.


3. Nobody cares about this outside the Beltway.

Read more...

To: Dr. Watson
From: Holmes

Watson, I smell a rat. I want you to devote your investigative resources to uncover the rat. Here is what we know:

1. A well-qualified U.S. attorney in Arkansas was fired under suspicious circumstances.

2. Arkansas is the former residence of one Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has already been subject to unsavory attacks from right-wing conspiracies, vast and otherwise.

3. The well-qualified fired U.S. attorney was replaced by one Timothy Griffin. Mr. Griffin is a former aide to Karl Rove, the King of oppo research and smears. Karl took an aggressive personal interest in his hiring as U.S. attorney. Read more...