Bush / GOP

H/T to Paul Bedard of the US News & World Report who shares that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is fed up with the Bush Administration's recess appointments of controversial figures, as a way of avoiding Senate confirmation and is going to do something about it.  He plans to hold pro forma sessions in the August recess (staffed by a local Senator) in which unconfirmed appointees like John Bolton or the more recent Swift Boat ad-funder turned next Ambassador to Belgium, Sam Fox, would be called to the Senate for a later hearing date. 

The Post has an encouraging story this morning that the White House and other Republicans are giving the thoughtful recommendations of the Iraq Study Group Report a 2nd look. 

While this story is encouraging, it is really hard to fathom how repeatedly stupid the Administration has been on Iraq for almost 5 years now.  Almost nothing they've done has been right, thought through, or in our national interest.  Their outright rejection of the simple and reasonable recommendations of this report - something we wrote about a great deal here - was another in an historic set of low moments for the American government.

If you haven't read the Report, you can follow the links in the story to find a link to it.  It is very much worth reading.

The lede Times editorial today captures both the opportunity, and the challenge, of the coming Senate debate on immigration:

The immigration deal announced in the Senate last week poses an excruciating choice. It is a good plan wedded to a repugnant one. Its architects seized a once-in-a-generation opportunity to overhaul a broken system and emerged with a deeply flawed compromise. They tried to bridge the chasm between brittle hard-liners who want the country to stop absorbing so many outsiders, and those who want to give immigrants — illegal ones, too — a fair and realistic shot at the American dream.

But the compromise was stretched so taut to contain these conflicting impulses that basic American values were uprooted, and sensible principles ignored. Many advocates for immigrants have accepted the deal anyway, thinking it can be improved this week in Senate debate, or later in conference with the House of Representatives. We both share those hopes and think they are unrealistic. The deal should be improved. If it is not, it should be rejected as worse than a bad status quo....

Read the full editorial here.  You can read our statement on the deal here, and review some additional thoughts here.

A front page Post piece this morning looks at the GOP reaction to the immigration deal.  Not suprizingly many in the right are rebelling against the most important part of the new Senate deal - the process to legalize the status and provide a reasonable path to citizenship for the 12 million undocumenteds already here. 

While many on the progressive side - including those of us at NDN - have reasons to be concerned about the new immigration deal, it is important to realize how far the GOP has come on immigration, and how, in essence, they have as a national Party repudiated the strategy they used in 2006.  At the press conference on Thursday we saw many Republicans who had previous stayed away from the issue embracing this new construct, including the provision for the 12 million.   Given the rhetoric of the 2006 elections, the blatantly racist ads, the extraordinary obsession with the issue, it is remarkable how far they've come. 

As anyone who has been reading our stuff this past year knows we believe the Republicans made an historic strategic blunder on immigration in 2006.  It became one of the three defining issues for them in elections, after the war and economy/taxes.  They spent tens of millions of dollars on ads, countless hours of free press, and invested their core brand in a mean-spirited and often racist demonization of Hispanics.  It simply didn't work, and was not only ineffective, but had huge opportunity costs for their Party and did a great deal to damage their brand with the fastest growing part of America, the Hispanic community.  Most Republican campaigns closed with other themes as it never materalized as a salient voting issue, even though it had great saliency for a small number of passionate few in their base. 

There was never public or private polling data showing that the way the GOP played immigration in 2006 was going to work.  I always believed that the investment the GOP made in immigration was really because the rest of their agenda had collapsed, and they essentially had nothing to run on.  They had to dig into 2nd tier issues for their national positioning, ones that there was little evidence would work.  Immigration, because of the intensity of the issue in their base, was chosen for promotion to the 1st tier.  It was a terrible mistake, cost their Party dearly, and significantly contributed to their enormous electoral defeat in 2006. 

Up until a few days ago it was not clear that the national GOP understood how damaging this debate had become to their brand.  They had whipped up national concern about an important issue, then offered a wild, ineffective and often racist set of solutions to solve it.  The way they handled the issue played right into the Democratic indictment of the modern GOP - that it was more concerned with [playing politics than solving important problems facing the nation.  I have been quoted, and I still believe, that if the GOP had continued down the path they were on immigration that they were in essence turning the emerging America of the 21st century to the Democrats, as Pete Wilson turned California to the Democrats in the last decade. 

But this new Senate deal, and the appointment of Mel Martinez, a pro-immigration reform Hispanic immigrant, as RNC Chairman, shows that there reasonable elements in the Republican Party who are trying to change the orientation of their Party on this issue of extraordinary consequence.  As progressives we should welcome this change of heart and strategy, and hope that this week, in what will be a remarkable Senate debate on immigration, that the reasonable ones win the battle with the less than reasonable ones, and that we emerge with an immigration bill that shows that our leaders have what it takes to come together and solve the pressing problems facing the nation today. 

As progressives, while there is much we must fight to improve in whatever comes out of the Senate, we have to keep in mind that Senator Kennedy got the GOP to agree to what is the single most important provision in deal - to offer legal status and a path to citizenship for the 12 million undocumenteds already here.  If we can do this, and get a bill signed into law this year, and within a few months see millions of families come out of the shadows, it will be one of the most important accomplishments of our movement in some time, and one of the proudest moments of my time in politics. 

Friends there is much at stake here.  Let us ready ourselves for a debate of great consequence this week, and acknowledge for a moment how far we've come in the last two years on this vital and important issue.

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.

That's right, the GOP Congressman from Orlando didn't just drop a regular jam on the floor of the US House of Representatives yesterday.  Instead, he decided to take this itty bitty world by storm by quoting rapper LL Cool J: "Don't call it a comeback I've been here for years," Keller said, in defense of his long-standing support for a police funding bill.  What Rep. Keller may not know, is that LL is a Democrat and close friends with Congressman Patrick Kennedy.  You could say that the competition's paying the price.  

U.S. Embassy employees in Iraq are growing increasingly angry over what they say are inadequate security precautions in the heavily fortified Green Zone, where recent mortar and rocket attacks have claimed the lives of six people, including two U.S. citizens.

In spite of the attacks, embassy employees complain, most staff members still sleep in trailers that one described as "tin cans" that offer virtually no protection from rocket and mortar fire. The government has refused to harden the roofs because of the cost, one employee said.

A second official called it "criminally negligent" not to reduce the size of the embassy staff, which a year ago was estimated at 1,000, in the face of the increasing attacks and blamed the administration's failure to respond on concerns that doing so might undermine support for President Bush's Iraq policy.

"What responsible person and responsible government would ask you to put yourself at risk like that? We don't belong here," the employee said, adding, "They're not going to send us home because it's going to be another admission of failure."

More from McClatchy...