Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Quote of the Day   "He must know that the way he did that, relying on his own judgment and instinct, was not good." --anonymous Bush advisor, on the Harriet Miers nomination 6:22:53 PM    comment []

The Buck Stops Everywhere But Here If this was your toddler, you'd call it a temper tantrum. And, like your toddler, it's everybody's fault but his. Next on the agenda, the President will hold his breath and turn blue until that mean old Mr. Fitzgerald leaves him alone.   Published on Monday, October 24, 2005 by the New York Daily News Bushies Feeling the Boss' Wrath Prez's anger growing in hard times - pals by Thomas DeFrank   WASHINGTON - Facing the darkest days of his presidency, President Bush is frustrated, sometimes angry and even bitter, his associates say. With a seemingly uncontrollable insurgency in Iraq, the White House is bracing for the political fallout from a grim milestone that could come any day: the combat death of the 2,000th American G.I. Last week alone, 23 military personnel were killed in Iraq, and five were wounded yesterday in a relentless series of attacks across the country. This week could also bring a special prosecutor's decision that could shake the foundations of the Bush government. The President's top political guru, Karl Rove, and Vice President Cheney's right-hand man, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, are at the center of a two-year criminal probe into the leak of a CIA agent's identity. Many Bush staffers believe indictments are likely. "He's like the lion in winter," observed a political friend of Bush. "He's frustrated. He remains quite confident in the decisions he has made. But this is a guy who wanted to do big things in a second term. Given his nature, there's no way he'd be happy about the way things have gone." Bush usually reserves his celebrated temper for senior aides because he knows they can take it. Lately, however, some junior staffers have also faced the boss' wrath. "This is not some manager at McDonald's chewing out the help," said a source with close ties to the White House when told about these outbursts. "This is the President of the United States, and it's not a pleasant sight." The specter of losing Rove, his only truly irreplaceable assistant, lies at the heart of Bush's distress. But a string of political reversals, including growing opposition to the Iraq war, Hurricane Katrina's aftermath and Harriet Miers' bungled Supreme Court nomination, have also exacted a personal toll. Presidential advisers and friends say Bush is a mass of contradictions: cheerful and serene, peevish and melancholy, occasionally lapsing into what he once derided as the "blame game." They describe him as beset but unbowed, convinced that history will vindicate the major decisions of his presidency even if they damage him and his party in the 2006 and 2008 elections. At the same time, these sources say Bush, who has a long history of keeping staffers in their place, has lashed out at aides as his political woes have mounted. "The President is just unhappy in general and casting blame all about," said one Bush insider. "Andy [Card, the chief of staff] gets his share. Karl gets his share. Even Cheney gets his share. And the press gets a big share." The vice president remains Bush's most trusted political confidant. Even so, the Daily News has learned Bush has told associates Cheney was overly involved in intelligence issues in the runup to the Iraq war that have been seized on by Bush critics. Bush is so dismayed that "the only person escaping blame is the President himself," said a sympathetic official, who delicately termed such self-exoneration "illogical." A second senior Bush loyalist disagreed, saying Bush knows "some of these things are self-inflicted," like the Miers nomination, where Bush jettisoned contrary advice from his advisers and appointed his longtime personal lawyer. "He must know that the way he did that, relying on his own judgment and instinct, was not good," another key adviser said. Despite the turmoil, Bush is determined to soldier on, already preparing for two major overseas trips in November and helping shape next year's legislative agenda. "I've got a job to do," he told reporters last week. "The American people expect me to do my job, and I'm going to." © 2005 Daily News, L.P. 6:17:53 PM    comment []

Once Again, The American Public Wises Up Too Late   Majority of Americans now feel Iraq war was wrong: poll Tue Oct 25,10:23 AM ET For the first time, a majority of Americans believe the Iraq war was the "wrong thing to do", according to a poll published in The Wall Street Journal. Fifty-three percent of those asked in the Harris Interactive survey felt that "taking military action against Iraq was the... wrong thing to do", against 34 percent who thought it was correct, the newspaper said. The percentage of people opposing the US-led invasion of the country in March 2003 was up from a figure of 49 percent in a parallel poll in September, rising above 50 percent for the first time since the surveys began. A year before, in September 2004, both sides were even at 43 percent. The latest poll also found that 66 percent of Americans believed President George W. Bush was doing a "poor" or "only fair" job of handling Iraq, against 32 percent who deemed it "excellent" or "pretty good". With the number of US military fatalities in Iraq approaching 2,000, 44 percent of those polled said the situation for US troops in Iraq was getting worse, compared to 19 percent who thought it was improving. Sixty-one percent were not confident US policies in Iraq would succeed, two points higher than in September. The poll asked the opinions of 1,833 people online from October 11-17. Copyright © 2005 Agence France Presse 1:44:36 PM    comment []

Another Neocon Milestone We are the hollow men We are the stuffed men Leaning together Headpiece filled with straw. Alas! Our dried voices, when We whisper together Are quiet and meaningless As wind in dry grass Or rats' feet over broken glass In our dry cellar Shape without form, shade without colour, Paralysed force, gesture without motion; Those who have crossed With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost Violent souls, but only As the hollow men The stuffed men.                                        --T.S. Eliot   U.S. death toll hits 2,000 CNN is reporting that the U.S. death toll in Iraq has now reached 2,000. As Reuters notes today, it's hard to come by a reliable estimate of the number of Iraqis killed in the war. Nongovernmental agencies say it's at least 25,000. -- Tim Grieve, Salon.com 12:57:47 PM    comment []

Um. . .Isn't This What Martha Stewart Went to Jail For? The best part is, if Ole Evil Eye has to resign, Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen--a Democrat!--gets to pick his replacement. Bill Frist, moments before his face broke Letters Show Frist Notified Of Stocks in 'Blind' Trusts Documents Contradict Comments on Holdings By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, October 24, 2005; A01 Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) was given considerable information about his stake in his family's hospital company, according to records that are at odds with his past statements that he did not know what was in his stock holdings. Managers of the trusts that Frist once described as "totally blind," regularly informed him when they added new shares of HCA Inc. or other assets to his holdings, according to the documents. Since 2001, the trustees have written to Frist and the Senate 15 times detailing the sale of assets from or the contribution of assets to trusts of Frist and his family. The letters included notice of the addition of HCA shares worth $500,000 to $1 million in 2001 and HCA stock worth $750,000 to $1.5 million in 2002. The trust agreements require the trustees to inform Frist and the Senate whenever assets are added or sold. The letters seem to undermine one of the major arguments the senator has used throughout his political career to rebut criticism of his ownership in HCA: that the stock was held in blind trusts beyond his control and that he had little idea of the extent of those holdings. The extent of Frist's knowledge of the inner workings of his trusts and his family's health care company is related to a recently launched federal investigation of possible insider trading involving the liquidation this summer of Frist's HCA stock. Within weeks of Frist's decision to sell his holdings in June, HCA shares fell sharply because of a weak earnings report. Frist has said he possessed only publicly available and not "insider" information about the company when he directed the sale and, therefore, did nothing wrong. Last week, Frist told reporters that he is "absolutely confident in the outcome" of the inquiries by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission because he "acted properly at every point." He declined to address specifics about the investigations but said he is providing information as quickly and fully as possible. Frist, a heart-surgeon-turned-politician, has been actively involved in shaping national health care legislation, including passage of the Medicare prescription drug benefit, while maintaining a major financial interest in his family-founded health care business. Two watchdog organizations -- Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights -- filed complaints with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics this yearcharging Frist with having a conflict of interest and questioning why he sold his shares after a decade of saying he did not need to. Frist and his family have a dozen federal trust accounts, which are essentially piles of stock controlled by professional money managers. Under the terms of his "qualified" trust agreements set up in 2000, Frist is barred from contacting the managers except under specific circumstances. The managers, however, are required to contact him when the funds they control undergo certain changes -- an arrangement similar to those of several other senators. In January 2003, after winning election as majority leader, Frist was asked on CNBC whether his HCA holdings made it difficult for him to push for changes in Medicare, a federal health program for seniors that added to the hospital company's revenue. "I think really for our viewers it should be understood that I put this into a blind trust," Frist replied. "So as far as I know, I own no HCA stock." He added that the trust was "totally blind. I have no control." Two weeks before that interview, M. Kirk Scobey Jr., a Frist trustee, informed the senator in writing that one of his trusts had received HCA stock valued at between $15,000 and $50,000. "He [Frist] could have been more exact in his comments," said Bob Stevenson, spokesman for Frist. Stevenson added that Frist might better have said he did not know to what extent he owned HCA shares. Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said she was surprised that Frist had ever claimed before this summer's liquidation that he might have owned no HCA stock. "Did he say that? What was he thinking of?" she asked. "How did he know to tell the trustee to sell it [his HCA stake] if he didn't know that he had it in the first place?" Disclosures by the trustees to the Senate and to Frist indicate that Frist and his family probably owned a great deal of HCA stock at the time. When Frist's federal trusts were created in late 2000, the trustees disclosed that one trust alone contained between $5 million and $25 million in HCA shares and that each of seven other trusts held more than $1 million of the stock. Frist was notified in November 2002 that 14,781 HCA shares had been sold from one of his trusts. But he was not told that all of his HCA shares had been disposed of until this summer -- after he had directed his trustees to sell them all, the documents show. Questions about his HCA holdings have been a staple of Frist's public life. The Nashville-based company, the country's largest chain of for-profit hospitals, was founded in 1968 by Frist's father, Thomas F. Frist, his brother, Thomas F. Frist Jr., and Jack C. Massey, the former owner of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Its stock made up the majority of Frist's wealth and was used to help him secure some of the financing for his first Senate campaign. During his first run for the Senate in 1994, Frist was accused of having a "mammoth conflict of interest" by his Democratic opponent, then-Sen. Jim Sasser. Frist promised to put his HCA stock in a blind trust to avoid the problem. This year, as he contemplated a bid for the White House in 2008 and worried about the appearance of conflicts, Frist abruptly changed tactics, aides said. Rather than defend his stock held in trust, he asked his trustees to sell all his HCA shares. Stevenson said Frist's concerns involved the perception of a conflict rather than any real conflict of interest. In 1997 and 1999, the ethics committee cleared Frist to participate in Senate debates involving Medicare and health maintenance organizations despite his "substantial" holdings in HCA. The committee did not take into account whether Frist's holdings were in blind trusts in reaching its decisions. Frist said last week he was not required to set up a blind trust after he went to the Senate, but he wanted to "apply the highest ethical standards I possibly could. I thought, why not raise the bar, why not do a good deed . . . and avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest." Senate rules prohibit any lawmaker with a blind trust from contacting his trustees unless the ownership of an asset poses a potential conflict of interest "due to the subsequent assumption of duties" by the lawmaker. The lawmaker can then ask the trustees to dispose of the asset. Frist did not take on any new duties this year. But a Frist adviser said the senator had been thinking about selling his HCA stake from the time he was elected majority leader in 2002. Frist had not known that he could sell his shares until this spring, the adviser asserted, and so went ahead with the sale based on his nearly three-year-old wish. Staff writer Charles Babington and research editor Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report. 8:29:30 AM    comment []

The New and Improved Web: Now With More Tangles! Just when you thought it couldn't get more delicious. . .   Report: Libby first learned about Plame from Cheney "They turn in clusters, because their roots connect them." At various times over the course of the Valerie Plame investigation, it has been reported that Karl Rove and Scooter Libby told prosecutors that they learned of Plame's identity from journalists. In July, a source told Bloomberg News that Libby had told Patrick Fitzgerald that he first learned about Plame from Tim Russert. At about the same time, a source told the Washington Post that Rove had told investigators that he thought he first learned about Plame from a reporter whose identity he couldn't recall. And just last week, sources told the Post and the AP that Libby and Rove discussed Plame's identity among themselves before Bob Novak revealed it in his column -- but that the two men discussed only information reporters had given them. The truth? Lawyers involved in the case tell the New York Times that Libby first learned of Plame's identity from Vice President Dick Cheney. According to the Times, Fitzgerald has obtained notes written by Libby that show that he and Cheney had a conversation in which Cheney told him that Joseph Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and may have helped arrange his trip to Niger. The conversation happened weeks before Novak's column appeared, the Times says. The significance? First, as the Times explains, the notes "place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration's handling of intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program to justify the war." Cheney's conversation with Libby may not have violated any laws -- as the Times notes, both men presumably have security clearances that authorize their access to such information -- but evidence of the conversation underscores the breadth of White House concerns about Wilson and sheds light on what increasingly appears to be the broad scope of Fitzgerald's investigation. According to Libby's notes, Cheney learned about Plame from former CIA Director George Tenet. Second -- and assuming that Cheney himself isn't in legal jeopardy, more important -- the existence of the notes would seem to make it much more likely that Fitzgerald will bring a perjury, obstruction of justice or false statement charge against Libby. If Fitzgerald is building such a case against the vice president's chief of staff, he couldn't ask for better evidence than notes, taken by Libby himself, that contradict the testimony Libby gave to the grand jury. Next question: Where did Karl Rove really learn about Valerie Plame? -- Tim Grieve, Salon.com 8:19:26 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 Michael D. Zungolo. Last update: 11/1/2005; 8:22:57 AM.