This point was made two years ago during the Valerie Plame affair, when Cheney was complicit in leaking her identity as a CIA agent to the press. Now here is another reason to throw him in jail: when a National Archives unit criticized Cheney for resisting their oversight, he suggested abolishing it. Cheney’s legal advisor, David S. Addington, argues that Cheney is exempt from oversight of the executive branch because he is also part of the legislative branch.

Mr. Addington did not reply in writing to Mr. Leonard’s letters, according to officials familiar with their exchanges. But Mr. Addington stated in conversations that the vice president’s office was not an “entity within the executive branch” because, under the Constitution, the vice president also plays a role in the legislative branch, as president of the Senate, able to cast a vote in the event of a tie.

Mr. Waxman rejected that argument. “He doesn’t have classified information because of his legislative function,” Mr. Waxman said of Mr. Cheney. “It’s because of his executive function.”

Cheney’s office is attempting to destroy the balance of power and checks & balances, which have been principles necessary for the U.S. government to serve its ideals of freedom and democracy. Cheney is trying to extend the power of the executive branch over the functions of the legislative, thereby making the U.S. more like a monarchy and aristocracy than a democracy. As John Locke would say, the executive has misused the powers that the public entrusted in him, and thus we are justified in revolt against him.

See ya later, Wolfie.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Embattled World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz will resign at the end of June, his leadership undermined by the generous compensation he arranged for his girlfriend.

His departure was announced late Thursday by the World Bank board.

Wolfowitz’s departure ends a two-year run at the development bank that was marked by controversy from the start, given his previous role as a major architect of the Iraq war when he served as the No. 2 official at the Pentagon. read more.

And again, here’s Juan Cole’s critique of how Wolfowitz’s cronyism which cost him his job at the World Bank was also what caused the Iraq debacle.

As we all know now, once the Bush administration they immediately got to work on winning more elections, getting their buddies rich and attacking Iraq. Of course, these were all a lot of work so they forgot to do one thing: govern.

As witnessed by the fact that the handling of Hurricane Katrina was so incompetent it would be funny if it wasn’t tragic. A new story in the Washington Post reports that the hundreds of millions offered in aid by foreign governments was either left on used or wasted. Some choice excerpts after the jump: Read the rest of this entry »

“Low price at any cost!” Do we want a government that replicates Wal-Mart’s model of catering to consumers and capital without concern for the negative externalities absorbed by workers, the environment, and other public goods?

From NYT story today -

OSHA Leaves Worker Safety in Hands of Industry
WASHINGTON, April 24 — Seven years ago, a Missouri doctor discovered a troubling pattern at a microwave popcorn plant in the town of Jasper. After an additive was modified to produce a more buttery taste, nine workers came down with a rare, life-threatening disease that was ravaging their lungs.

Puzzled Missouri health authorities turned to two federal agencies in Washington. Scientists at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, which investigates the causes of workplace health problems, moved quickly to examine patients, inspect factories and run tests. Within months, they concluded that the workers became ill after exposure to diacetyl, a food-flavoring agent.

But the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, charged with overseeing workplace safety, reacted with far less urgency. It did not step up plant inspections or mandate safety standards for businesses, even as more workers became ill.

On Tuesday, the top official at the agency told lawmakers at a Congressional hearing that it would prepare a safety bulletin and plan to inspect a few dozen of the thousands of food plants that use the additive.

That response reflects OSHA’s practices under the Bush administration, which vowed to limit new rules and roll back what it considered cumbersome regulations that imposed unnecessary costs on businesses and consumers. Across Washington, political appointees — often former officials of the industries they now oversee — have eased regulations or weakened enforcement of rules on issues like driving hours for truckers, logging in forests and corporate mergers.

Since George W. Bush became president, OSHA has issued the fewest significant standards in its history, public health experts say. It has imposed only one major safety rule. The only significant health standard it issued was ordered by a federal court.

… (read the rest of the story here)

And a similar case of a government agency failing to perform its duty to the public: the department of education… see this NYT story: Cuomo Says U.S. Is Lax on Student Lenders.

The problem with the Bush administration’s corruption of these agencies seems easy to articulate. If Bush’s OSHA panders to businesses and consumers, they are abandoning the principles on which OSHA was founded: to serve the public good by protecting worker’s health. Likewise for other regulatory agencies, like the EPA: their corruption to serve industry is an abandonment of their mission to serve the public good by protecting the environment. None of these agencies should be guided by principles of serving businesses or consumers. Those are corporate and private interests, not public interests. There are other organizations and associations that already represent their interests, such as consumer advocacy groups and industry associations. The point of public deliberation in a liberal democracy is that each of these groups and organizations should be able to express and argue for their positions. If we actually had a critical public sphere (rather than the manufactured publicity of most mass media), then these arguments would be able to be adjudicated in public on the basis of careful reflection on reasons supported by empirical evidence. When the agencies that are supposed to articulate reasons in favor of protecting workers’ health, the environment, and other public goods, abandon that job and instead become mouthpieces for other, private interests, then they have lost their legitimacy, and hence they have lost the public’s trust in them, and hence the public has a right to revolt and overthrow the part of the government in charge of them. Hence, we should impeach Bush. (cf. Locke, Rousseau)

All you get is political hackery.

We haven’t talked much about the US Attorney scandal much here. I actually find the whole thing sort of anticlimactic, of all the illegal, corrupt things this administration did this is the one that finally seems to stick. I still find the administration’s view that they can lock anyone up for no reason with no charges to be the most offensive thing they have done (aside from the war), because the idea flies in the face of the spirit, if not the letter, of the constitution and founding principles of this country.

The disturbing thing about the US Attorney story is not the purge of people who weren’t doing what the admin. wanted, or the “lost” emails, or trying to argue that executive privilege extends to the operation of the RNC, but the clear evidence from this that Bush & Co. never intended to actually govern this country. They staffed everything with hack with no experience. There were people at high levels in justice for whom it was there first job outside of political campaigning. They gave presentations to the GSA about how to help republican candidates. They gave key jobs in the Coalition Provisional Authority to 20-somethings with no experience other than the right ideological bent. Its as if they thought that their ideology would magically make everything right and that as long as they stayed in office nothing could go wrong. But at some point the government has to stop campaigning and start governing.

For the past week, CNN’s coverage of Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Syria has been heavily biased against her. Read watchdog Media Matters’ in depth coverage. And tell CNN to shape up

Cronies run our country.

I hope that Rove and Gonzales go down for this one…

from yahoo(AP):

A midday e-mail between two White House staffers, dated Jan. 6, 2005, was titled, “Question from Karl Rove.”

“Karl Rove stopped by to ask you (roughly quoting), `How we planned to proceed regarding US Attorneys, whether we were going to allow all to stay, request resignations from all and accept only some of them, or selectively replace them, etc.,’” Colin Newman, a legal aide in the White House counsel’s office, wrote deputy counsel David Leitch.

Leitch immediately forwarded that message to Sampson. Three days later, on Jan. 9, Sampson sent back a lengthy reply.

“Judge and I discussed briefly a couple of weeks ago,” Sampson wrote, referring to Gonzales, a former Texas state Supreme Court justice. He said the Justice Department was looking at replacing “underperforming” prosecutors. “The vast majority of U.S. Attorneys, 80-85 percent, I would guess, are doing a great job, are loyal Bushies, etc., etc.,” he said.

Sampson noted that, at the time, all 93 prosecutors were in the middle of their terms. “Although they serve at the pleasure of the President, it would be weird to ask them to leave before completing at least a 4-year term,” he wrote.

Politically, Sampson said the firings would upset home-state senators who recommended the prosecutors who lost their jobs. “That said, if Karl thinks there would be political will to do it, than so do I,” Sampson wrote.

Democrats have asked that Rove, Miers and other White House officials appear before Congress for questioning and are considering subpoenas if they refuse to.

Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., said the e-mails “show conclusively that Karl Rove was in the middle of this mess from the beginning.”

The new document also indicates that Gonzales was considering firing prosecutors before he became attorney general on Feb. 3, 2005.

It’s kinda scary if it’s true that 80-85% of U.S. Attorneys are “loyal Bushies.” The Bush administration is apparently a cult of cronyism. I hope that these attempts by the executive branch to inject their corruption into the judicial branch will help to deflate the great-farting strides that Dick Cheney has achieved in strengthening the executive branch. There is a civil war in this country’s government, and we need to get behind the side of the legislative and judicial branches. Besides, the executive is an anachronistic residue of monarchism. Off with the king’s head!