Yesterday, the House Oversight Committee released documents revealing that the Bush administration knew in advance that a major Bush donor’s oil company, Hunt Oil, was trying to sign a contract with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) to develop oil fields in the Kurdish region of Iraq in 2007. At the time, the State Department claimed it had “actively warned Hunt Oil” against the deal and President Bush said he “knew nothing about the deal.”

In the White House press briefing today, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino tried to spin the dissonance between the administration’s 2007 public comments and the documents released yesterday:

QUESTION: Who in the White House was aware of the negotiations between the Hunt Oil Company and the Kurdistan government?

PERINO: As far as I know, I don’t know of anybody who was aware of it, as we had said before. But the State Department had said that they had been aware of it and they had raised questions about it, and that’s what they’re maintaining today. So I don’t know of anybody in the White House who was aware of it.

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Perino’s description of what happened in Sept. 2007 is selective and misleading. According to the documents released by the Oversight Committee, it actually appears that “State Department officials raised no objections to the contract.”

Three days before the oil deal was signed, Hunt’s general manager informed the State Department’s Regional Reconstruction Team that “Hunt is expecting to sign an exploration contract.” According to the general manager, no State Department officials said Hunt should “not pursue” the contract:

There was no communication to me or in my presence made by any of the 9 state department officials with whom I met prior to 8 September that Hunt should not pursue our course of action leading to a contract. In fact there was ample opportunity to do so, but it did not happen.

Unprompted, Perino brought up Hunt Oil CEO Ray Hunt’s letter to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, informing them that “he would be traveling overseas.” She dismissed it as “routine.”

But Perino neglected to mention that more than a month before he informed the board of his travel plans, he sent a separate letter “making clear his intentions to pursue oil exploration in Kurdistan.”

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A recent Department of Justice inspector general report found that starting in 2002, DOJ officials illegally used “political or ideological” factors in its hiring practices, choosing conservative credentials “over more qualified candidates with liberal-sounding résumés” and weeding out “candidates for career positions whom they considered “leftists.’” The LA Times reports today that one of the former applicants, who had actually worked at the department, is suing:

[O]ne of the applicants rejected for a position is suing for $100,000 in damages. Sean Gerlich has filed a class action suit. Gerlich says he was rejected because of his liberal affiliations, which officials dug up through Internet searches. [...]

Daniel Metcalfe, Gerlich’s attorney and a Washington College of Law professor at American University, says his client was upset at being turned down in 2006 because he had received good marks during his previous stint as a Justice summer intern. In fact, Metcalfe says, his client was a law clerk to an unidentified chief in one of the department’s 40 components.

In honor of the upcoming Fourth of July holiday, this morning on her radio show, Diane Rehm hosted a segment on patriotism in America and asked her guests to give their personal meaning of the term. Author and journalist Haynes Johnson stated, “I don’t like people who beat their chests and say they’re more patriotic than their fellow Americans.” But conservative columnist Tony Blankley disagreed, saying one person can be “more patriotic” than another and even suggested that environmentalists are not patriotic:

BLANKLEY: I would take it [to] another area where I think patriotism is slipping…people who have views on the environment may feel that they’re more loyal[] to the environmental principle than they do to American advancement. We see this very specifically on the question of the Kyoto treaty.

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Yesterday, the House Judiciary Committee received a letter from Karl Rove’s attorney Robert Luskin, stating that his client refuses to testify before a House subcommittee, despite a congressional subpoena. He reiterated his offer to have Rove appear for an off-the-record interview, not under oath, about the prosecution of formerly Alabama governor Don Siegelman only. In a response to Luskin, Reps. John Conyers (D-MI) and Linda Sanchez (D-CA) reject the offer:

We want to make clear that the Subcommittee will convene as scheduled and expects Mr. Rove to appear, and that a refusal to appear in violation of the subpoena could subject Mr. Rove to contempt proceedings, including statutory contempt under federal law and proceedings under the inherent contempt authority of the House of Representatives.

Your letter states that Mr. Rove will not attend the hearing because he is “obligated” to disregard the subpoena as a result of the White House’s claim of immunity for former advisors. In fact, precisely the opposite is true. As a private party, Mr. Rove is “obligated” to comply with the subpoena issued to him and, at the very least, appear at the July 10 hearing.

In addition to the Siegelman matter, the committee has also asked Rove to testify on the politicization of the Justice Department, including the U.S. attorney scandal.