The List

The List (TM)

Harriet Miers write Brownie an e-mail putting out the facts. It was Andrew Card who asked Brownie not to answer all the questions truthfully.

I got the latter from RAWSTORY.

http://realnews.org/rn/content/index.html

Try this…..

Thanks. I’m not talking about whispering in the president’s ear at a dinner party. I’m talking about meetings where official policy is formulated.

For the record, in case the trolls plan to jump on me for this, I already believe that it was wrong for Hillary Clinton’s Health Care Task Form meetings to be kept secret, so please no one accuse me of “double swtandards.”

Written opinions used by the government should be public record. And the Vice President’s Energy task Fporce and Legislation Writing Team should have been made public. I do not understand the rationale for keeping it secret.

That is what I need to learn. Why is it important to keep the advice (in writings or in meetings) that the president gets secret? Mike Brown is, apprently, alluding to keeping his dialog with the administration over Katrina secret. Under what explanation is this justified?

Why is it bad to have the advice a president gets made public?

Brown: First and foremost I find it a little disingenuous that DHS would claim that they were not getting that information because FEMA held continuous video telephone conferences– So for them to now claim that we didn’t have awareness of it I think is just baloney…

I would think it would depend on your definition of “advice”.

Is someone just whispering in the President’s ear at a dinner party or has a company submitted a written opinion on legislation?

Written correspondence or official meetings I would suppose are public record and should be available according to your open governement theory. However, I don’t know how you could ever enforce making everything the President is told or recommended in passing part of the public record.

Someday the President will be a Democrat again and I don’t think you want that standard to apply. I wouldn’t want that.

According to what Senator Specter said when the AG testified, it would still be a crime to give false testimony to Congress whether or not you were under oath. That suggests to me that the oath is just for show, or to add a second charge of perjury to lying to Congress if the witness lies. Either way, he would not have a license to lie to them, since he could still go to jail for it even though he wasn’t “under oath” (an expression so scary to the president that he refuses to subject himself to it).

To me, the problem with this “reasoning” is that it seems like an excuse to allow people to say that they advised the president one way when they really advised him to do the opposite. And protecting that advice would mean protecting the lie being told afterwards.

Aren’t we supposed to have an open government? If someone from, let’s say, the oil industry were to advise someone in the administration, say the Vice President, why should they be allowed to keep that advice secret? Exactly what and who is being protected? I don’t understand.

In the end, it sounds to me like what the president is saying is that someone might want to secretly advise him one way but publicly suggest otherwise, and that it is important that this lie be publicly maintained. Or is there something else I’m missing?

I would appreciate any serious help with this. Thanks to all.

The White House is just a home base for the new Mafia.

Washington Post
February 10, 2006
Ex-CIA Official Faults Use of Data on Iraq

The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle East until last year has accused the Bush administration of “cherry-picking” intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

Side note:

I love the poll on the page where this article is.

The Republican nominee for either president or vice president was named Nixon, Bush or Dole in every presidential election in the last 55 years except for which one?

1960
1964
1976
1992

Same ol’ sh!t for 55 years.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060210/ap_on_go_co/katrina_congress;_ylt=AgHE7qXXd39bY5g17u8EgAus0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ–

Of course, I want the actual transcript.

WASHINGTON – Top Department of Homeland Security officials were told about New Orleans’ levee failures the day Hurricane Katrina roared ashore, former disaster chief Michael Brown said Friday, contradicting agency officials who said earlier they were unaware of the severity of the problems until the next day.

“I find it a little disingenuous,” Brown, who at the time headed the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told a Senate oversight committee. “For them to claim that we didn’t have awareness of it is just baloney.”

George Bush doesn’t care about black people…

In other words: “You make it so they can’t asked me any questions or I am squealing like a pig.”

Andrew Card also asked him not to answer certain questions.

We all know this is all totally illegal and breaks all kinds of laws. Will anything be done about it?

Dont think so.