In an interview with Politico’s Mike Allen, President Bush claimed he gave up golf after UN envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello was killed in Iraq. “I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad…I was playing golf — I think I was in central Texas — and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, it’s just not worth it anymore to do,” Bush said. De Mello was killed on Aug. 19, 2003. The Washington Post’s Dan Froomkin reports today: “Bush’s story doesn’t hold water“:

[T]he Associated Press reported on Oct. 13, 2003, that he’d spent a “cool, breezy Columbus Day” playing “a round of golf with three long-time buddies.

“Bush played at Andrews Air Force Base with Clay Johnson, Office of Management and Budget deputy director, Richard Hauser, Department of Housing and Urban Development general counsel and another friend, Mike Wood.”

On that outing, he was typically full of what passes for good humor at the White House. The AP reported: “‘Fine looking crew you got there. Fine looking crew,’ Bush joked to reporters. ‘That’s what we’d hope for presidential coverage. Only the best.’

“He hit a couple of practice balls before flaring his tee-off shot into the right rough.”

Through a Freedom of Information Act request, the ACLU “has obtained previously withheld documents” from the Defense Department that “shed light on the deaths of detainees in Iraq.” One of the documents is a list of “at least four prisoner deaths” that were investigated by the Navy, including one detainee at Abu Ghraib who died after “his head was beaten with a stove”:

The NCIS document contains new information about the deaths of some of these prisoners, including details about Farhad Mohamed, who had contusions under his eyes and the bottom of his chin, a swollen nose, cuts and large bumps on his forehead when he died in Mosul in 2004. The document also includes details about Naem Sadoon Hatab, a 52-year-old Iraqi man who was strangled to death at the Whitehorse detainment facility in Nasiriyah in June 2003; the shooting death of Hemdan El Gashame in Nasiriyah in March 2003; and the death of Manadel Jamadi during an interrogation after his head was beaten with a stove at Abu Ghraib in November 2003.

The documents obtained by the ACLU are here.

Huffington Post reports that Sen. Larry Craig (R-ID) “quietly created presidential campaign ripples on Tuesday” when he “announced that he would offer an amendment to the forthcoming Iraq war supplemental that would strip the legislation of Sen. Jim Webb’s [D-VA] GI Bill.” Earlier today, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) also played politics with veterans’ benefits using the GI Bill as a “parliamentary gimmick” to kill first responder legislation.

John Edwards reveals himself to be just another trust fund scumbag who’s backing Barack Obama for president.

Yesterday during an interview with Politico’s Mike Allen, President Bush said that the one thing he looks forward to after leaving the White House is getting back to the old days of e-mailing his “buddies” and his “pals”:

ALLEN: Mr. President, the one thing we don’t see in here is a computer, and we know that you went cold turkey off email for security reasons. What are you looking forward to when you finally get your computer back?

BUSH: Emailing to my buddies. I can remember as governor I stayed in touch with all kinds of people around the country, firing off emails at all times of the day to stay in touch with my pals. [...] I want to stay in touch with them and there’s no better way to communicate with them than through email.

While Allen noted that Bush “went cold turkey off email for security reasons,” don’t be fooled. Bush isn’t trying to protect himself from hackers or terrorists. As Bush noted in an October 2006 interview with CNBC, he is afraid of “record requests,” or “in other words,” as Bush often says, he doesn’t want anyone trying to find out what he’s up to:

BUSH: I tend not to email or — not only tend not to email, I don’t email, because of the different record requests that can happen to a president. [...] So, in other words, I’m very cautious about emailing.

Indeed, the entire Bush administration has been “cautious about emailing.” As a result, the National Security Archive and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington are suing the administration for allegedly violating the Presidential Records Act for failing to archive official e-mails. In fact, the administration just revealed that it failed to archive e-mails sent during the launch of the Iraq war.

It’s too bad all of Bush’s unethical and perhaps illegal activity have prevented his “buddies” from hearing from him over the last seven years.

In an April 24, 2007 speech on energy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) criticized China for opposing sanctions in Darfur, saying that the reason it refused to do so was because “China needs Sudan’s oil.” Now, in a moment of irony, the AP reports that McCain’s wife, Cindy, just “sold off more than $2 million in mutual funds” whose holdings include companies that do business in Sudan’s oil industry:

According to McCain’s personal financial disclosure, Cindy McCain’s investments include two mutual funds — American Funds Europacific Growth fund and American Funds Capital World Growth and Income fund — that are listed by the Sudan Divestment Task Force as targets for divestment.

“Those have been sold as of today,” said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers.

Both funds have holdings in Oil & Natural Gas Corp., an India-based company that does business in Sudan. The American Funds Capital World Growth & Income Fund also has holdings in Petrochina, a Chinese government-owned oil company with vast investments in Sudan.

Despite the fact that her vast wealth has been used to benefit her husband’s campaign, Ms. McCain said recently that she will never release her tax returns, even if she becomes First Lady.

Today, House Judiciary Committee leaders sent a letter to Karl Rove’s laywer, Robert Luskin, rejecting Rove’s offer to answer questions on his involvement in the Don Siegelman prosecution and other issues in writing. They wrote that, considering Rove’s willingness to speak to the media on the subject, “we can see no justification for his refusal to speak on the record to the Committee”:

As our previous letters have made clear, the Siegelman case is a principal reason for our invitation to Mr. Rove. But as we have also explained, that issue cannot be separated from the broader concerns about politicization within the Department and the U.S. Attorney firings , and Mr. Rove has made on-the-record comments to the media about all these interrelated matters. [...]

Since you indicate Mr. Rove is now willing to submit written answers to questions, which by definition would be recorded in a manner similar to a transcript, we do not understand why he would not submit to providing transcribed answers to live questions, as he has done in media interviews.

In April, Luskin had indicated that Rove would testify if Congress subpoenaed him. By the end of the month, Luskin backed away from the pledge, claiming he had been taken out of context.