Following a classified briefing with the White House today, Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, “gave the Bush administration 18 hours to resolve the controversy over apparent contradictions in Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s congressional testimony”:

Specter aides released a statement late Monday that suggested a bombshell to come on Tuesday afternoon.

“Given the difficulty of discussing classified matters in public, I think it is preferable to have a letter addressing that question [of Gonzales' veracity] from the administration … by noon tomorrow, which will be made available to the news media,” Specter wrote in the statement. “The administration has committed to producing such a letter.”

Specter expects the letter clarifying the attorney general’s testimony to be addressed to himself and Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who declined to comment on the matter.

Specter was equally cagey, telling reporters to wait until Tuesday for any further comment from him.

HT: Crooks and Liars.

In June, House investigators revealed that Vice President Dick Cheney had exempted his office from an executive order order designed to safeguard classified national security information by claiming that the Office of the Vice President is not an “entity within the executive branch.”

After Congressional Democrats called his bluff by threatening to withhold funding from his office, the White House was forced to roll back their rhetoric, claiming “that the rationale had been the view of the vice president’s lawyers, not Cheney himself.”

But in an interview with CBS News’ Mark Knoller today, Cheney refused to say he was a member of the executive branch:

Mark Knoller: Are you part of the executive branch, sir?

Vice President Cheney: Well, the job of Vice President is an interesting one, because you have a foot in both the executive and the legislative branch. Obviously, I have an office in the West Wing of the White House, I am an adviser to the president, I sit as a member of the National Security Council. At the same time, under the constitution, I have legislative responsibilities. I’m actually paid by the Senate, not by the executive. [...]

KNOLLER: But you are principally a part of the executive branch, are you not?

CHENEY: Well, I suppose you could argue it either way. The fact is I do work in both branches.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN

Cheney conceded that he was part of the executive branch during the two hours and five minutes he served as acting President two weeks ago while Bush was in surgery. Throughout the entire interview, however, he refused to say whether or not the Office of the Vice President itself was classified as part of the executive branch.

Cheney has been happy to treat the Office of the Vice President as part of the executive branch when it suits his political purposes:

- In 2001, the White House argued that a probe into Cheney’s energy task force “would unconstitutionally interfere with the functioning of the executive branch.”

- Cheney himself said that the probe concerned “meetings in the Executive Branch between the Vice President and other individuals.”

- On April 9, 2003, Cheney lauded a recent court ruling, stating, “I think it restored some of the legitimate authority of the executive branch, the president and the vice president, to be able to conduct their business.”

Now that the political tempest over Cheney’s exemption of his office has subsided a bit, the Vice President is back to claiming he is a branch of government all to himself — or as he says it, “a unique creature” in constitutional government.

The full interview can be heard here.

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The Washington Post revealed this weekend that William Steiger — a Bush family friend with no experience in public health — blocked a surgeon general’s report because it did not trumpet the administration’s accomplishments. Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) obtained a copy of Steiger’s edits and compared them to the original version. Here’s a slice of what he found:

A comparison of the two drafts reveals striking differences. Dr. Carmona’s draft includes extended discussions of the impacts of women’s rights, poverty, climate change, tobacco, and obesity on global health. Mr. Steiger’s draft omits or barely mentions these topics. Dr. Carmona’s draft describes a U.N. declaration that establishes health as a human right. Mr. Steiger’s draft omits this language. Dr. Carmona’s draft contains references to condoms. Mr. Steiger’s draft does not mention condoms.

Mr. Steiger’s draft is considerably shorter than Dr. Carmona’s draft: 11,400 words compared to 17,000. Despite the shorter length of Mr. Steiger’s draft, it contains many more references to President Bush (ten references) than does Dr. Carmona’s draft (two references). Mr. Steiger’s draft also contains extended discussions of U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Dr. Carmona’s draft does not.

This afternoon on MSNBC, Tucker Carlson expressed sympathy for Brookings analyst Kenneth Pollack, who has been “slammed by the left” all day. “It’s worth pointing out that you were not an apologist for the administration,” said Carlson. “You’ve been really tough on them.” Carlson said that the response to the New York Times op-ed by Pollack and Michael O’Hanlon has been “over the top” by the blogosphere, which is “a pretty hysterical place anyway.” He went on to criticize a post by Glenn Greenwald, whose name he repeatedly mispronounced. Watch it:

ThinkProgress has compiled a list of O’Hanlon and Pollack’s “tough” comments HERE.

Transcript: Read more

suffered a seizure this afternoon. “Roberts, 52, was taken by ambulance to the Penobscot Bay Medical Center, where he underwent a ‘thorough neurological evaluation, which revealed no cause for concern.’”

“Federal law enforcement agents are currently searching the Girdwood home of Alaska U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, an FBI agent said. ‘All I can say is that agents from the FBI and IRS are currently conducting a search at that residence,’ said Dave Heller, the assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Anchorage office. The search began this afternoon, he said. It’s the only such search warrant currently being served, he said.”

The criticism over the people-powered YouTube Democratic presidential debate has been pouring in from the right. First, the White House announced President Bush wasn’t really big on the debates. Then, leading conservative candidates Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani begged out of the Republican forum. Now, Robert Novak is adding his gripes.

Appearing on Bloomberg Television this weekend, Novak said of the YouTube debate, “I thought it was really disgusting. … The reporters were terrible but this was ludicrous.” Novak argued, “You know when we did away with the monarchy and went through democracy, there was a lot of fear that this sort of thing would happen. It took 200 years but we got there.”

Watch it:

Something about power in the hands of the masses appears to trouble Novak deeply. Recently, he suggested heaven would be a “place where there are no blogs.” He previously explained that bloggers “bloviate. They give their opinions. They don’t try to find things out.”

Bloviating has no place when it does not come from Novak’s mouth.

Transcript: Read more

Since FBI director Robert S. Mueller contradicted Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ sworn Senate testimony last week, relations between their respective agencies have chilled. “You could open an ice rink between the buildings,” one Mueller aide told the New York Daily News. Another FBI official criticized the Department’s defense of Gonzales:

Justice spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said “confusion is inevitable” when officials discuss classified activities in public.

FBI officials bristled at that.

“If you read the [FBI] director’s testimony, it is anything but confusing,” said a top Mueller ally at the FBI.