Has Anyone in This White House Actually Read the Constitution?

Suggested reading for Karen Hughes

The London Daily Telegraph is reporting that a Spanish judge has ordered an imam who wrote a book on how to beat one's wife without leaving marks to study Spain's constitution. Perhaps a similar sentence -- we mean the studying-the-constitution part -- would be appropriate for Karen Hughes, George W. Bush's former communications director and current undersecretary of state for public diplomacy.

As Sidney Blumenthal notes today in Salon, Hughes boasted this week in Turkey that she'd set an Egyptian opposition leader straight when he complained about Bush's constant invocations of God. "I had one person at one lunch raise the issue of the president mentioning God in his speeches," Hughes said. "And I asked whether he was aware that previous American presidents have also cited God, and that our Constitution cites 'one nation under God.' He said, 'Well, never mind,' and went on to something else."

Which is all well and good, we suppose, but the U.S. Constitution doesn't say anything about "one nation under God." Indeed, unlike the president, the U.S. Constitution never mentions the word "God" at all. The phrase "one nation under God" appears in the Pledge of Allegiance, to which it was added in 1954.

-- Tim Grieve, Salon.com

Here is Blumenthal's complete article. Another chilling example of Bush's Village Idiot Cronyism putting the country in jeopardy:

The undersecretary's dangerous trip

Karen Hughes takes her "Innocents Abroad" tour to the Middle East -- and plays into the hands of Osama bin Laden.

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By Sidney Blumenthal

Sept. 29, 2005  |  President Bush has no advisor more loyal and less self-serving than Karen Hughes. As governor of Texas he implicitly trusted the former Dallas television reporter turned press secretary with the tending of his image and words. She was mother hen of his persona. In the White House, Hughes devoted heart and soul to Bush as his communications director, until, suddenly, she returned home to Texas in 2002, citing her son's homesickness. There were reports that Karl Rove, jealous of power, had been sniping at her.

From her exile, Hughes produced a memoir, "Ten Minutes From Normal," which is deeply uninteresting and unrevealing. Amid long stretches of uninformative banality lie unselfconscious expressions of religiosity, accounts of how she inserted Psalms 23 and 27 into Bush's speeches after Sept. 11, 2001, and an entire page of small type reproducing a sermon she delivered on Palm Sunday aboard Air Force One. She quotes then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice: "I think Karen missed her calling. She can preach."

After two undersecretaries of state for public diplomacy resigned in frustration in the face of the precipitous loss of U.S. prestige around the globe, Bush found a new slot for Hughes this year. She may be the most parochial person ever to hold a senior State Department appointment, but the president has confidence she can rebrand the United States.

This week, Hughes embarked on her first trip as undersecretary. Her initial statement resembled an elementary school presentation: "You might want to know why the countries. Egypt is of course the most populous Arab country ... Saudi Arabia is our second stop. It's obviously an important place in Islam and the keeper of its two holiest sites ... Turkey is also a country that encompasses people of many different backgrounds and beliefs, yet has the -- is proud of the saying that 'all are Turks.'"

Hughes appeared to be one of the pilgrims satirized by Mark Twain in his 1869 book, "Innocents Abroad," about his trip on "The Grand Holy Land Pleasure Excursion." "None of us had ever been anywhere before; we all hailed from the interior; travel was a wild novelty to us ... We always took care to make it understood that we were Americans -- Americans!"

Hughes' simple, sincere and unadorned language is pellucid in revealing the administration's inner mind. Her ideas on terrorism and its solution are straightforward. "Terrorists," she said in Egypt at the start of her trip, "their policies force young people, other people's daughters and sons, to strap on bombs and blow themselves up." Somehow, magically, these evildoers coerce the young to commit suicide. If only they would understand us, the tensions would dissolve. "Many people around the world do not understand the important role that faith plays in Americans' lives," she said. When an Egyptian opposition leader inquired why President Bush mentions God in his speeches, she asked him "whether he was aware that previous American presidents have also cited God, and that our Constitution cites 'one nation under God.' He said, 'Well, never mind.'"

With these well-meaning arguments, Hughes has provided the exact proof for what Osama bin Laden has claimed about American motives. "It is stunning ... the extent [to which] Hughes is helping bin Laden," Robert Pape told me. Pape, a University of Chicago political scientist who has conducted the most extensive research into the backgrounds and motives of suicide terrorists, is the author of "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism," and recently briefed the Pentagon and the National Counterterrorism Center. "If you set out to help bin Laden," he said, "you could not have done it better than Hughes."

Pape's research debunks the view that suicide terrorism is the natural byproduct of Islamic fundamentalism or some "Islamo-fascist" ideological strain independent of certain highly specific circumstances. "Of the key conditions that lead to suicide terrorism in particular, there must be, first, the presence of foreign combat forces on the territory that the terrorists prize. The second condition is a religious difference between the combat forces and the local community. The religious difference matters in that it enables terrorist leaders to paint foreign forces as being driven by religious goals. If you read Osama's speeches, they begin with descriptions of the U.S. occupation of the Arabian Peninsula, driven by our religious goals, and that it is our religious purpose that must confronted. That argument is incredibly powerful not only to religious Muslims but secular Muslims. Everything Hughes says makes their case."

The undersecretary's blundering grand tour of the Middle East may be the latest incarnation of "Innocents Abroad." "The people stared at us everywhere, and we stared at them," Twain wrote. "We generally made them feel rather small, too, before we got done with them, because we bore down on them with America's greatness until we crushed them."

The stakes, however, are rather different than they were on "The Grand Holy Land Pleasure Excursion." Hughes' trip "would be a folly," Pape says, "were it not so dangerous."

salon.com

2:13:10 PM    comment []  

Quote(s) of the Day

"This has been a high priority for the President since Day One."

--White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, on energy conservation, September 27, 2005

"That's a big 'no'. The President believes that's an American way of life."

--McClellan's predecessor, Ari Fleischer, when asked if Bush believes Americans need to "correct our lifestyles" regarding energy consumption, May 7, 2001   

Thanks to The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

1:52:02 PM    comment []  

Say "Hey!" To The New House Majority Leader!

". . .a parade of gray-suited grafters, a choice of cancer or polio"

--Jagger/Richards

"Meet the new boss, same as the old boss"

--Pete Townshend

The Man From Branson: He Treats His Wimmen Right

A senior Republican lawmaker who requested anonymity said some GOP members worried at the time that it would be "embarrassing" to the party and its new whip if details of the effort were made public. Another Republican said Blunt's effort angered some leaders because there was "so little support for" a pro-tobacco provision likely to generate controversy.

The new majority whip, who has close personal and political ties to the company, instructed congressional aides to add the tobacco provision to the bill -- then within hours of a final House vote -- even though no one else in leadership supported it or knew he was trying to squeeze it in.

Once alerted to the provision, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert's chief of staff, Scott Palmer, quickly had it pulled out, said a senior GOP leader who requested anonymity. Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) also opposed what Blunt (Mo.) was trying to do, the member said, and "worked against it" when he learned of it.

The provision would have made it harder to sell tobacco products over the Internet and would have cracked down on the sale of contraband cigarettes, two practices that cut into Philip Morris's profits. Blunt has received large campaign donations from Philip Morris, his son works for the company in Missouri and the House member has a close personal relationship with a Washington lobbyist for the firm.

It is highly unusual for a House Republican to insert a last-minute contentious provision that has never gone through a committee, never faced a House vote and never been approved by the speaker or majority leader. Blunt's attempt became known only to a small circle of House and White House officials. They kept it quiet, preferring no publicity on a matter involving favors for the nation's biggest tobacco company and possible claims of conflicts of interest.

Several in that circle say they were struck by Blunt's willingness to go out on a limb for a company to which he has ties. What's more, he did it within hours of climbing to the House leadership's third-highest rung, a notable achievement for a man who came to Washington less than six years ago.

A senior Republican lawmaker who requested anonymity said some GOP members worried at the time that it would be "embarrassing" to the party and its new whip if details of the effort were made public. Another Republican said Blunt's effort angered some leaders because there was "so little support for" a pro-tobacco provision likely to generate controversy.

In an interview last week, Blunt said he pushed for the tobacco provision after talking with John F. Scruggs, vice president of government affairs for Altria Group Inc., Philip Morris's parent company. "It's good policy," Blunt said.

Scruggs said in an interview that the provision was "pretty important to us." Philip Morris, the nation's largest cigarette producer, would have benefited from the measure more than any other company.

Several Republicans who learned of the November effort have privately expressed concern that Blunt pushed the provision partly because of his personal relationship with Philip Morris lobbyist Abigail Perlman. Blunt, who several Republicans said spends considerable time with Perlman, would not discuss their relationship or whether the two had talked about the provision.

"I am just going to talk about policy here," he said. Perlman did not return two phone calls placed last week requesting comment.

Andrew B. Blunt, one of the lawmaker's sons, is a lobbyist for Philip Morris in Missouri, where his work is confined to state matters. Andrew Blunt did not return two phone calls requesting comment. Rep. Blunt did not talk to his son about the tobacco provision, the congressman's spokeswoman said.

Philip Morris has contributed more than $150,000 to political committees affiliated with Blunt since 2001, according to Federal Election Commission records.

Blunt said he pushed the provision because he thought it was good policy, much of it drawn from legislation introduced last year by then-Sen. Tim Hutchinson (R-Ark.). Sens. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and Herb Kohl (D-Wis.) recently introduced legislation that would do much of what Philip Morris was seeking to do, Blunt said. He said the provision was relevant to the homeland security bill because news reports last year showed that terrorist groups, such as the Lebanon-based Hezbollah, were profiting from the sale of contraband cigarettes.

Blunt said his actions were no different than those of a member who successfully tucked a provision providing liability protections to the Eli Lilly pharmaceutical company into the same homeland security bill.

The Eli Lilly provision, once discovered, embarrassed the GOP because it appeared the party was using the cover of homeland security to protect a big contributor. No one has acknowledged responsibility for adding the Eli Lilly provision, which Republican leaders later agreed to rescind.

Hastert has not spoken publicly about Blunt and the Philip Morris provision. His spokesman, John Feehery, said yesterday, "It had not been fully vetted and there was no sign-off from the Judiciary Committee, and that's why it didn't go in the homeland security bill."

Because Blunt's actions in the Philip Morris matter were kept quiet, there were no apparent repercussions or threats to his leadership ambitions. Meanwhile, there is evidence that the majority whip has continued to work aggressively on behalf of companies to which he has ties.

In April, for instance, Blunt managed to have a provision inserted into a Senate bill, without debate, on behalf of United Parcel Service Inc. and FedEx Corp. The two companies were seeking to block the expansion of a foreign rival's U.S. operations. Blunt's son Andrew also represents UPS in Missouri, as the Wall Street Journal first reported, and the two companies have contributed a total of $120,000 to Blunt since 2001, according to Federal Election Commission data.

Also this spring, Blunt brokered a deal with Rep. Ernie Fletcher (R-Ky.) to fight for a vote on legislation that could open the door to Food and Drug Administration regulation of tobacco, a top priority for Philip Morris, a senior House GOP leader said. Philip Morris would benefit because it is far ahead of its competitors in designing and selling "safer" cigarettes that could be permitted if the FDA gains regulatory power, lawmakers and industry experts said.

Other tobacco companies oppose linking FDA regulation to a tobacco buyout.

Researcher Alice Crites contributed to this report.

© 2003 The Washington Post Company

Blunt hired consultant who's also indicted

By LARRY MARGASAK
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

WASHINGTON -- The political committee of Rep. Roy Blunt, who is temporarily replacing Rep. Tom DeLay as House majority leader, has paid roughly $88,000 in fees since 2003 to a consultant under indictment in Texas with DeLay, according to federal records.

Keri Ann Hayes, executive director of the Rely on Your Beliefs Fund, said the organization has been has been satisfied with the work done by Jim Ellis, but has not discussed whether he will be retained.

"We haven't had that conversation," she said. So far, she added, Ellis' indictment had no impact on his work.

Records on file with the Federal Election Commission show the fund linked to Blunt retains Ellis' firm, J.W. Ellis Co., and has made periodic payments for services. Political Money Line, a nonpartisan Internet tracking service, places the total at about $88,000.

Ellis is one of three political associates of DeLay, R-Texas, who have been indicted in an alleged scheme to use corporate political donations illegally to support candidates in state elections. Ellis also runs DeLay's national political action committee, Americans for a Republican Majority.

DeLay was indicted on Wednesday, a development that required him to relinquish his leadership post at least temporarily. Blunt was chosen as his successor for the time being.

Hayes said Ellis analyzes House campaigns for Blunt's PAC, which supports Republican challengers and incumbents in House races.

Blunt has been the majority whip since 2003, a position that made him the chief vote counter for his party's conservative agenda.

DeLay's indictment capped a quick rise for Blunt, first elected to Congress in 1996. His district in southwestern Missouri includes Branson, a town of a few thousand residents that draws millions of country music fans each year to its performance stages.

The Future Is Now

Fossil Fuels Set to Become Relics, Says Research Group

8:22:54 AM    comment []