Last month, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) officials revealed that the White House “eviscerated” the congressional testimony of CDC President Julie Gerberding on the “Human Impacts of Global Warming.” The deletions included “details on how many people might be adversely affected because of increased warming” and the scientific basis of specific diseases impacted by climate change.

Last week, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) wrote to President Bush “requesting a full accounting of what occurred during that review process.” Appearing on MSNBC today, Boxer said the administration has stonewalled her efforts, claiming executive privilege:

Many pages of it were redacted… And by the way, we wrote the President. He gave our letter to Fred Fielding, the chief counsel over there, his counsel, who said ‘executive privilege, I don’t have to tell you what she wrote.’ … So yes, I think they are hiding this. I think they are hiding a lot of things. It’s their way, it’s their habit, it’s wrong.

Watch it:

Fielding claimed that “the request by its very nature seeks communications involving pre-decisional deliberative materials relating to an inter-agency review process…it is clear that the request implicates core Executive Branch interests and raises separation of powers concerns.”

Fielding added that he may continue to “withhold documents” in the future and redirected Boxer to Vice President Cheney’s office in regards to Boxer’s “request for vice president records.”

A January report found 435 instances in which the administration interfered with the work of government climate change scientists over the past five years. Despite the administration’s refusal to explain what it is hiding, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino maintains Gerberding’s testimony “was not watered down.”

Read the unredacted version of Gerberding’s testimony at Science Progress.

The House passed the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) passed this evening with a 235-184 vote. Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), on the verge of tears, one of two openly gay members of the House, delivered an emotional speech denouncing the efforts of conservatives who attempted to sabotage the bill with parliamentary manuevers. Frank received resounding applause. Watch it:

Watch ENDA speeches from Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) here.

On Oct. 24, country singer John Rich, one half of Big & Rich, controversially compared homosexuality to incest. Rich was explaining on a radio show that he was supporting Fred Thompson because he agrees with him on issues such as gay marriage:

I think if you legalize that, you’ve got to legalize some other things that are pretty unsavory. You can call me a radical, but how can you tell an aunt that she can’t marry her nephew if they are really in love and sharing the bills? How can you tell them they can’t get married, but something else that’s unnatural can happen?

Rich has apologized for his comments. Apparently that is good enough for Thompson, who will appear with Rich tonight at the Country Music Awards in Nashville.

UPDATE: Coincidentally, Thompson also appeared today on the Steve Gill Show, where Rich first made his controversial comments.

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Barack Obama endorses the Sullivan Case for Obama, saying that he can deliver change in a way Hillary Clinton can’t because she’s stuck in the battles of the 1960s.

For four days after Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency in Pakistan, President Bush refused to directly contact Musharraf. Reuters reports that Bush has finally made the call:

U.S. President George W. Bush said on Wednesday he had spoken to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and urged him to both hold elections and give up his military post. [...]

“My message was that we believe strongly in elections and that you ought to have elections soon and you need to take off your uniform. You can’t be the president and the head of the military at the same time,” Bush said at a joint news conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. “I had a very frank discussion with him, Bush said.

Yesterday, White House spokeswoman Dana Perino stated: “The decision has been made to have Secretary Rice be the one directed to have this communication.”

This afternoon, President Bush held a joint press conference with French President Nicholas Sarkozy. A reporter asked Bush where he stood “on Iraq and your domestic debate on Iraq,” and whether he had a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops. In response, Bush insisted that “freedom’s happening” and Iraq isn’t in a “quagmire”:

I don’t — you know quagmire is an interesting word. If you lived in Iraq and had lived under a tyranny, you’d be saying: God, I love freedom, because that’s what’s happened.

And there are killers and radicals and murderers who kill the innocent to stop the advance of freedom. But freedom’s happening in Iraq. And we’re making progress.

Watch it:

In June, Gen. David Petraeus said that U.S. troops had been in Iraq “long enough to become liberators again,” echoing Vice President Cheney’s infamous pre-war prediction that the United States would “be greeted as liberators.”

Almost five years, 3857 U.S. troop deaths, and more than 76,000 Iraqi civilian deaths later, Bush can’t figure out why Iraqis aren’t jumping around rejoicing in their freedom. (Maybe it’s because they’ve all left the country.)

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Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has refused to condemn immigration head Julie Myers for awarding “Most Original Costume” to an employee “who dressed in prison stripes, dreadlocks and dark makeup for a Halloween gathering at the agency.” The White House has simply stated it is up to Chertoff to “make any personnel decisions.”

Today, Sens. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and John Kyl (R-AZ) also resisted admonishing Myers. When asked whether he and his colleagues “support her at this point,” McConnell ducked the question by saying he was “not up on” the issue. Kyl went so far as to praise her performance at the agency:

MCCONNELL: You know what I always dread at a press conference?

Somebody asking me a question I’m not up on.

(LAUGHTER)

And I really can’t respond to it because I haven’t checked on that nomination lately. … Anybody else got anything?

KYL: Just one thing: In terms of job performance, I don’t know of anybody, now, that believes that she has not done a credible job.

Though McConnell and Kyl tried to brush off the incident, Myers’s actions generated outrage from others on the right and the left. Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) has put a hold on Myers’s confirmation to head ICE. (She currently serves as a recess appointee.) Even right-wing blogger Debbie Schlussel said that “heads must roll.” Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) agreed:

It is extremely troubling and quite unfortunate that Ms. Myers, who serves at an organization tasked with protecting our homeland and civil rights, cannot determine that an employee dressed in black face is both offensive and potentially harmful to workplace morale.

Myers’ qualifications have been questioned from the start. Her appointment was widely seen as an exercise in cronysim. She is the niece of former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Richard Myers and married to Chertoff’s former chief of staff, John F. Wood.

Far from doing “a credible job,” Myers’ time at ICE has seen the agency shift toward a disturbing willingness to retaliate against immigrants who speak up to defend their rights and interests. ICE has arrested individuals for speaking out on everything from immigration reform, to workplace rights, to the right to report crimes without fear of retaliation. Over the summer, ICE officials targeted immigrants in their anti-gang roundups, often arresting legal immigrants without warrants.

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