Earlier today, White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan revealed a great deal about the President’s lack of commitment to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. The administration’s rhetoric remained the same. “The President is going to continue visiting the region I expect throughout his presidency,” McClellan said. “This is a top priority for the President.”

Bush, however, hasn’t visited the region for 3 months. McClellan said this trip would last less than twenty-four hours — Bush is returning to Washington this evening.

But Bush isn’t even going to spend all of that short period of time in the region ravaged by Katrina. Tonight, Bush will attend a fundraiser at the Palm Beach home of Bush “Ranger” Dwight Schar, who raised more than $200,000 for the President during the 2004 election.

Three months of ignoring the problem, a cursory visit, all capped off with a multi-million dollar fundraiser – pretty much par for the course for Bush in New Orleans.

Today on Tony Snow’s radio show, Vice President Cheney praised a Weekly Standard piece by Stephen Hayes that uses second-hand descriptions of unreleased Pentagon documents to argue that Hussein had extensive ties to terrorists:

SNOW: The Weekly Standard over the weekend published a long piece by Steve Hayes, who talked about emerging evidence of longstanding ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. You’ve heard it said many times there’s no linkage between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. You’ve heard Democrats beat you and the President about the head and shoulders with this. Were there links to — between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think Steve Hayes has done an effective job in his article of laying out a lot of those connections.

Actually, Hayes doesn’t even claim the documents demonstrate a connection between Hussein and al Qaeda. Rather, according to Hayes, the documents show that Hussein provided training for some non-al Qaeda terrorist groups in Northern Africa which have some “ties to al Qaeda.”

If the documents are so beneficial for the administration’s case for war, why haven’t they been released yet? This is where it gets fishy. The Defense Department says it won’t release the documents because, if it did, the documents would create bad press for the administration:

The main worry, says DiRita, is that the mainstream press might cherry-pick documents and mischaracterize their meaning. “There is always the concern that people would be chasing a lot of information good or bad, and when the Times or the Post splashes a headline about some sensational-sounding document that would seem to ‘prove’ that sanctions were working, or that Saddam was just a misunderstood patriot, or some other nonsense, we’d spend a lot of time chasing around after it.”

It seems more than likely that the documents aren’t beneficial and the only way they can get some good press out of them is to characterize them to a right-wing flak like Steven Hayes.

Cheney has gone down this route before. The last time he singled out a Stephen Hayes article, the piece drew an official rebuke from the Department of Defense for disclosing classified materials and misinterpreting raw intelligence.

During this morning’s hearing, Sen. Russ Feingold noted that the same lawyers who created the legal justifications for Bush’s warrantless domestic spying program coached Alito about how to answer questions during the confirmation hearings:

I’m going to say that I am still somewhat troubled by the idea that you were prepared for this hearing by some lawyers who were very much involved in promoting the purported legal justification for the NSA wiretapping program….

I note, for example, that one of the people who participated in these sessions was Benjamin Powell. He recently advised President Bush on intelligence matters and was just given a recess appointment as general counsel to the national intelligence director.

I also see the name of White House Counsel Harriet Miers on the list. And she, obviously, is involved in the president’s position on this matter.

This a serious ethical issue.

Miers personally approved Bush’s warrantless domestic surveillance program as White House Counsel. The evidence suggests that Powell is also a strong proponent of the program. In July, before Bush’s illegal warrantless wiretapping program was revealed by the New York Times, Powell testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to indicate that he wanted to expand the rules that limited intelligence agencies’ authorities to collect and share intelligence about U.S. citizens.

Bush’s warrantless surveillance program may soon come before the Supreme Court. Now we have key lawyers who created legal justifications for the program, such as Powell and White House counsel Harriet Miers, suggesting to Alito how he should respond to senators who ask questions about it. It is hard to imagine that these recommendations were not highly suggestive of how he should adjudicate the issue.

ThinkProgress has obtained a full list of everyone who attended Alito’s “murder boards.” You can check it out here.

is an Abramoff-linked Bush recess appointee; once warned that if there’s another terrorist attack in America “and they come from the same ethnic group that attacked the World Trade Center, you can forget about civil rights.” (Via TPM)

Though the Senate has blocked efforts to drill in the Arctic wildlife refuge for years, the Bush administration yesterday gave oil and gas companies perhaps the next best option.

Teshekpuk, Alaska is a 389,000 acre region featuring “ideal and critical habitat” for “some of the world’s largest congregations of migratory geese, as well as caribou and other wildlife,” according to the Anchorage Daily News.

Already 87% of the region was already open to oil and gas firms. But not even Reagan-era Interior Secretary James Watt — described by the NRDC’s Greg Wetstone as the most “intensely controversial and blatantly anti-environmental political appointee” in modern times — was willing to open up the area directly surrounding Teshekpuk Lake.

Not President Bush. His plan makes every last acre available:

The Los Angeles Times notes that the move to develop the area came “in response to requests by Vice President Dick Cheney’s energy task force.”

An email from Creative Response Concepts, a conservative public relations firm: “Former Alito clerk Gary Rubman witnessed Mrs. Alito leaving her husband’s confirmation in tears and is available for interviews, along with other former Alito clerks who know her personally and are very upset about this development.” (Via TalkLeft)

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) yesterday complained that some senators on the Senate Judiciary Committee have already decided to vote against Alito:

I do think that there are those who have already decided to vote against your nomination and are looking for some reason to do so.

But not a single senator in the hearings has said he or she plans to vote against Alito.

Instead, Cornyn should look toward the four senators (including himself) who have already pledged support for Alito:

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX):

Judge Alito, the reason why these groups are trying to defeat your nomination because you won’t support their liberal agenda is precisely why I support it.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC):

It’s possible you could talk me out of voting for you, but I doubt it. So I won’t even try to challenge you along those lines. I feel very comfortable with you being on the Supreme Court based on what I know.

Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ):

These are the standards for a Supreme Court justice, and you plainly meet these expectations. As a consequence, I view your nomination with a heavy presumption in favor of confirmation.

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KS):

I will be supporting your nomination in front of the committee and on the floor. I think you’re an outstanding nominee, and I have appreciated your thoughts that you have put forward here.

Still in the fight.

at congressional hearings about the President’s warrantless domestic spying program.