Repudiating the Bush Era

Robert Novak, in his very biased way, points out that Susan Ralston's request for immunity for her testimony to Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform could be very bad news for Karl Rove.  Ralston was Rove's Chief of Staff and before that, she worked for Jack Abramoff.  Waxman, and many others, suspect that Ralston is the link between the disgraced lobbyist and the White House, and now it appears that he's going to get some answers.  Will Karl 'Kryptonite' Rove escape again?R

Read Novak's column...

It certainly looks like it.  Former Deputy Attorney General Comey's testimony indicates that:

1) Gonzalez lied when he testified to Congress in February when he said there was no disagreement within the Administration over the warrentless wiretapping program. 

2)  That he or Comey was referring to another, as yet unknown program.

WAPO has more...

Wolfowitz tenure at the World Bank is coming to a messy close.  At least that's the case if you judge by the press stakeout outside his house.

The NYT says Wolfowitz is resigned about his coming resignation and is not battling over who gets the blame:

Mr. Wolfowitz was said to be adamant that he be cleared of wrongdoing before he resigned, according to people familiar with his thinking.

The negotiations were still under way on Wednesday evening, and bank officials said they were increasingly hopeful that a solution was in sight, ending what had become a bitter ordeal at the bank, within the Bush administration and at economic ministries around the world...

People close to the negotiations said that the threat to oust Mr. Wolfowitz had, in the previous 24 hours, taken a bizarre U-turn, with Mr. Wolfowitz challenging the bank’s directors to vote him out, knowing that the United States would oppose that move. Previously, Mr. Wolfowitz had been doing everything in his power to prevent such a vote.

In effect, bank officials said, he was using the fear among European leaders at the bank of a possible rupture with the Bush administration at a time when the United States and Europe are struggling to cooperate on Iran sanctions, trade and other economic issues.

“The bank board is ready to vote Wolfowitz out of office, and Wolfowitz is calling their bluff,” said a bank official briefed on the negotiations. “It’s going to be difficult for the board to drop its charges against him, but they’re going to have to do it if they want to resolve this. They’re staring each other down, but the bank side is blinking furiously...”

Especially galling to bank board members, various officials said, was Mr. Wolfowitz’s request that the 24-member bank board reject the conclusions of its seven-member subcommittee charging him with violating several codes of conduct and trying to cover up his involvement in Ms. Riza’s salary and promotion.

H/T to CAP:

In a 2006 hearing, when Sen. Chuck Schumer asked him about Comey’s objections to the NSA wiretapping program, Gonzales denied there was any “serious disagreement about the program“:

GONZALES: Senator, here is a response that I feel that I can give with respect to recent speculation or stories about disagreements. There has not been any serious disagreement, including — and I think this is accurate — there has not been any serious disagreement about the program that the president has confirmed. There have been disagreements about other matters regarding operations, which I cannot get into. I will also say –

SCHUMER: But there was some — I am sorry to cut you off, but there was some dissent within the administration, and Jim Comey did express at some point — that is all I asked you — some reservations.

GONZALES: The point I want to make is that, to my knowledge, none of the reservations dealt with the program that we are talking about today.

Gonzales’ answer suggests two possibilities.

1) Comey’s objections apply to the NSA warrantless wiretapping program that Gonzales was discussing. If so, then Gonzales quite likely made serious mis-statements under oath. And Gonzales was deeply and personally involved in the meeting at Ashcroft’s hospital bed, so he won’t be able to claim “I forgot.”

2) Perhaps Comey’s objections applied to a different domestic spying program. That has a big advantage for Gonzales — he wasn’t lying under oath. But then we would have senior Justice officials confirming that other “programs” exist for domestic spying, something the Administration has never previously stated.

The special committee set-up to look into allegations against Paul Wolfowitz at the World Bank has issued its report to the Board of Directors and it's not good for Wolfowitz, who appears pretty disconnected from the rules and reality in his tenure as World Bank President:

The report charged that Mr. Wolfowitz broke bank rules and the ethical obligations in his contract, and that he tried to hide the salary and promotion package awarded to Shaha Ali Riza, his companion and a bank employee, from top legal and ethics officials in the months after he became bank president in 2005.

Citing what it said was the “central theme” of the matter, the report said Mr. Wolfowitz’s assertions that what he did was in response to the requests of others showed that “from the outset” of his tenure he “cast himself in opposition to the established rules of the institution.”

“He did not accept the bank’s policy on conflict of interest, so he sought to negotiate for himself a resolution different from that which would be applied to the staff he was selected to head,” the committee said, adding that this was “a manifestation of an attitude in which Mr. Wolfowitz saw himself as the outsider to whom the established rules and standards did not apply.”

“It evidences questionable judgment and a preoccupation with self-interest over institutional best interest,” it said.

Leading conservative blog www.redstate.com has announced a major campaign to block Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA) from taking Rep. John Doolittle's (R-CA) seat on the House Appropriations Committee.  Doolittle is being investigated by the FBI and Calvert's been accused of similar corruption problems, and Red State has had enough of the House GOP Steering Committee that is filling Doolittle's spot: "The House GOP Steering Committee will either embrace reform or reject it,” he wrote. “And we will encourage them to embrace it."

Don's miss the WAPO article, but it boils down to this - if you didn't disenfranchise voters aggressively enough for Karl Rove's taste, your job was in jeopardy.

The new VoteVets ad is up. The second in a three-ad series, it features Major General Paul Eaton urging Congress to listen to Commanders on the ground in Iraq. For the first, click here.

On Iraq, Congress continues to act responsibly, challenging the Administration to offer more than more of the same.  While the bill passed last night may not become law, our country is now in the midst of a large and important debate about an issue of vital national interest, ensuring that whatever the final outcome the process for getting there will be more of the kind imagined by our founders than the "don't worry be happy" approach of the Bush years. 

In a powerful editorial this morning, the Times sums up the events of recent weeks:

The difference between mainstream hawks and mainstream doves on Iraq seems to have boiled down to two months, with House Democrats now demanding visible progress by July while moderate Republicans are willing to give White House policies until September, but no longer, to show results.

Then there is President Bush, who has yet to acknowledge the reality that Congressional Republicans and even administration officials like Defense Secretary Robert Gates now seem to tacitly accept. Three months into Mr. Bush’s troop escalation, there is no real security in Baghdad and no measurable progress toward reconciliation, while American public support for this folly has all but run out.

The really important question now facing Washington is the one Mr. Bush still refuses to address: how, while there is still some time left, to design an exit strategy that contains the chaos in Iraq and minimizes the damage to United States interests when American troops inevitably leave...

VoteVets.org launched the first of its three-ad series challenging President Bush on Iraq. From Vote Vets:

Our ads are airing in states and districts of those Members of Congress who are very close to breaking with the President on Iraq, and joining the troops and American people. They are: Senators Susan Collins, John Sununu, John Warner, and Norm Coleman, and Representatives Mary Bono, Phil English, Randy Kuhl, Jim Walsh, Heather Wilson, Jo Ann Emerson, Tim Johnson, Mike Rogers, Fred Upton, and Mike Castle. Mentioning them by name at the end, the local spots will call on them to "Protect America, Not George Bush."

Next week, we’ll launch another ad with retired Major General Paul Eaton. And, after that, the campaign will wrap up with a powerful ad from former NATO Allied Supreme Commander, General Wesley Clark.

The first ad is strong and features Major General John Batiste, who calls the President out for not listening to Commanders on the ground. Check it out below: