Tough news for Vice President Dick Cheney from the federal court in Washington.
No, it has nothing to do with his signature issues -- anti-terrorism intelligence and energy.
This one deals with potential recreational pursuits back home in Wyoming. He is, after all, about to retire.
Well before the surge of interest in snowmobiles, President Richard M. Nixon and then President Jimmy Carter imposed limits on the use of off-road vehicles in the national parks.
In its last days in office, the Bill Clinton administration moved to phase out snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park, but the Bush administration reversed that decision and instead moved to expand their access.
The Grand Teton mountains tower above Jackson Hole, where Cheney maintains a secluded home deep in a heavily forested spread.
Sullivan ruled that the park services "failed to articulate why a plan that will admittedly worsen air quality complies" with federal conservation rules.
The plan developed by the Bush administration "is arbitrary and capricious, unsupported by the record, and contrary to law," said Sullivan, who was nominated to the federal court by President Clinton, after serving in District of Columbia superior and appeals courts to which he was named by Presidents Reagan and George H. W. Bush.
He ruled that "in contravention" of the 1916 Organic Act that created the National Park Service, the snowmobile plan:
... clearly elevates use over conservation of park resources and values and fails to articulate why the Plan’s 'major adverse impacts' are 'necessary and appropriate to fulfill the purposes of the park.'
Remember back in 2002 when then-Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft draped the statue of a bare-breasted woman in the Justice Department--at a cost of $8,000--so he would not have to appear at press conferences in front of the semi-nude figure?
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had a similar problem this summer. The backdrop in the Italian equivalent of the White House press briefing room is a reproduction of a Giovanni Battista Tiepolo allegory from the 18th century depicting the Lady of Truth:
The story first broke in London's Telegraph newspaper, under the headline "Barack Obama would consider charging Bush administration over Guantanamo." The article described a campaign event in Deerfield, Fla., in which, according to the Telegraph, vice presidential candidate Joe Biden said:
"If there has been a basis upon which you can pursue someone for a criminal violation, they will be pursued, not out of vengeance, not out of retribution, out of the need to preserve the notion that no one, no attorney general, no president -- no one is above the law."
Asked about the comment this morning on Fox News, Biden said it is Congress -- not a potential Obama administration -- that is investigating the White House.
And he denied today that an Obama administration would launch criminal investigations against the 43rd president of the United States.
"The Obama-Biden administration is not going to start off saying, "God, let's go take a lot at what [happened]." The American people want to know what we're going to do, not what happened."
Biden also had some things to say about Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's speech to the Republican National Convention Wednesday night, calling it "impressive" but lacking in specifics. And he called the media's treatment of Palin's family life "sexist."
It was almost as if Vice President Cheney had already left the scene, riding off into the sunset like some cowboy to the Wyoming plains.
At last night's Democratic National Convention, Cheney was replaced by Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain in the boo meter from delegates.
Countdown to Crawford has been cataloging the daily Bush mentions from Denver -- see here and here. Wednesday's tally shows that Bush has fallen from 61 mentions to 57, but McCain has shot up to 85. The biggest mentioner was Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, who used Bush's name nine times and McCain's 22. But Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh mentioned Bush 12 times, and vice presidential nominee Joe Biden used McCain's name 13 times and Bush's seven -- if you include the time he misspoke and called McCain "George ... I mean John McCain."
Many of the speakers took shots at the Bush-McCain administration, an attempt by Democrats to tie the Arizona senator to an unpopular president.
Even the White House took note of this development. Asked if President Bush was "surprised to learn that he has been head of the Bush-McCain administration," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said yesterday:
He is willing to -- he is supporting President McCain -- and he's aware of how ...
Told that he'd called the senator the president, Fratto said, "Did I say President McCain? Well we'll all be saying President McCain soon enough, don't worry."
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo: "The Goodnight Bush" chorus sings lullabies to a departing present from the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Credit: Doug Pensinger/Getty Images
What was a top national security aide to Vice President Dick Cheney doing in Georgia shortly before Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili's troops engaged in what became a disastrous fight with South Ossetian rebels -- and then Russian troops?
Not, according to the vice president's office, what you might think -- if your thinking takes you into the realm of Cheney giving his blessing to the Georgian's military operation.
To be sure, Cheney has been a leader of the hardliners in the administration when it comes to standing up to Russia -- to the point that the man who ran the Pentagon as the Cold War came to an end during the administration of the first President Bush has been seen as ready to renew that face-off with Moscow.
It was Cheney who visited the Georgian embassy in Washington last week to sign a remembrance book as a demonstration of the administration's support.
And yes, Joseph R. Wood, Cheney's deputy assistant for national security affairs, was in Georgia shortly before the war began.
But, the vice president's office says, he was there as part of a team setting up the vice president's just-announced visit to Georgia. (It is common for the White House to send security, policy, communications and press aides to each site the president and vice president will visit ahead of the trip, to begin making arrangements and planning the agenda.)
The White House disclosed on Monday that Cheney would hurry over to Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine and Italy next week, almost immediately after addressing the Republican National Convention on Labor Day.
And so it was that a team from the vice president's office, U.S. security officials and others were in Georgia several days before the war began.
It had nothing to do, the vice president's office said, with a military operation that some have said suggests a renewal of the Cold War.
-- James Gerstenzang
Photo of Saakashvili and Cheney in 2006. Credit: David Bohrer / The White House
And now for something completely different: President Bush, yes, this President Bush--as a liberal.
The Canadian magazine Macleans is making that argument, under the shocking headline "The shockingly liberal legacy of George W. Bush."
The irony that it misses: Could it be that Vice President Dick Cheney is the force behind at least one element of the "liberalization?"
In a lengthy article that addresses the breadth of the Bush presidency and notes that the administration's legacy is more than just the war in Iraq, it says: "In some areas it is the result of hard-line conservative ideology — but in others it is surprisingly liberal."
Consider the seeming contradictions: The tax-cutting conservative who ...
Never mind that Vice President Dick Cheney will actually keep his speaking date at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul on Monday night. Or that he never intended to stick around after that anyway. Or that President Bush is speaking that night and also making a hasty exit.
It was just too delicious to ignore: We're talking about the possibility that Bush had found a way to keep the man with an even lower job approval rating than his far from the Twin Cities while the GOP meets there.
It didn't take much to suspect that Bush had something other than national security on this mind when he decided to send Cheney to Azerbaijan, Georgia, Ukraine and Italy next week in the midst of the Republican convention. Can you say "political security?"
Conspiratorialists immediately began fanning the fires, spreading the word that perhaps Bush's real motive in sending Cheney to the Caucasus region was to get him as far from the upper Midwest as possible. The Far East and Middle East are relatively quiet now; a trip there would have been too obvious a detour.
Enter the latest hot spot.
Besides, Georgia is probably somewhat more distant from St. Paul than the vice president's infamous "undisclosed location." With fears of a new Cold War, what better place to send the nation's premier cold warrior?
But Megan M. Mitchell of the vice president's press office had a six-word no nonsense message for any who suspected that Cheney was splitting the country rather than letting himself be seen anywhere in the vicinity of Republicans about to nominate Sen. John McCain as their presidential candidate:
Under the straightforward and innocuous heading "Trip Statement of the Vice President," the White House disclosed this morning that Vice President Dick Cheney is being dispatched to one more international hot spot — and one very delightful Italian resort.
No word on whether the schedule will still allow the vice president to speak next Monday at the Republican National Convention. But the itinerary calls for him to begin the trip on Tuesday, so that should leave sufficient time for a quick round of politics in St. Paul, Minn., where the GOP is meeting, before heading eastward to ... the Caucasus.
President Bush has tasked Cheney with showing the American flag in Azerbaijan, Georgia and then Ukraine, before completing the journey at an international conference, the Ambrosetti Forum, on the shores of Lake Como, in the Italian lake district not far from Milan.
Plunging publicly into a crisis that has tied the U.S.-Russian relationship in knots just as the Bush administration is coming to an end, Cheney will meet with President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan, President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia, and President Viktor Yushchenko of Ukraine, in a clear effort to shore them up with a visible display of U.S. support in the face of Russian military and political pressure.
One of the big questions: To what extent will Cheney wave the blue and white NATO flag — a red flag in Russia's eyes? The Bush administration has been pushing to get Ukraine and Georgia, on Russia's southern border, into NATO, a move that Russia adamantly opposes.
Longtime allies of the vice president have been among those pushing hardest to bring the former Soviet satellites into the Atlantic Alliance fold. And, of course, Cheney isn't known for his soothing words — at least when it comes to national security matters.
His trip will be the third high-level U.S. visit to the region this year, following Bush's stop in Ukraine in March and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit to Georgia earlier this month following the Georgian-Russian clash.
In Italy, Cheney will meet with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, one of Bush's closest allies in Europe.
The Ambrosetti Forum is an annual conference — a miniature, late-summer version of the World Economic Forum that meets each winter in Davos, Switzerland — that aims to bring together world leaders, royalty, financiers and business executives to discuss "intelligence on the world, Europe and Italy."
For the White House announcement, click on Read Full Story below.
By picking Joe Biden as his running mate, Barack Obama has taken a page out of George Bush's 2000 campaign and picked a grownup who knows a thing or two about the adult world. Of course, the Cheney influence hasn't always worked out too well, so here's hoping Biden doesn't become another Darth Vader!
No vice president in American history has done as much damage to national security, constitutional integrity and the moral standing of the United States as Dick Cheney. Biden has aspects of the Cheney pick -- he's older, more seasoned and more adept at foreign policy than Obama. But no one imagines that Obama would delegate -- and all but abdicate -- critical decisions to Biden the way Bush has to Cheney.
Finally, Wayne Slater of the Dallas Morning News reports that White House political guru Karl Rove criticized the Biden pick on Fox News this morning, saying that his weighty resume only reminds voters how thin Obama's is.
But Karl found himself in deep water when a Fox News interviewer asked: Wasn't Dick Cheney picked to be George W. Bush's veep to balance the Texas governor's lack of experience? Did Cheney boost the ticket or just remind people of Bush's inexperience? Totally different, said Rove. Totally different.
Democrat Barack Obama laid out his criteria last night for his vice president.
Amid a frenzied guessing game about who Obama will select, the candidate himself said he wants someone "who has integrity, who's in politics for the right reasons." He also wants a strong voice who can march into the Oval Office and tell the president he's wrong on a policy decision. Somebody "who knows where he came from" and wants to "grow the country from the bottom up."
Mostly, at a rally in Raleigh, N.C., Obama outlined what he doesn't want in a vice president. And it sounded a lot like, well, an anti-Cheney.
Here's what I won't do. I won't hand over my energy policy to my vice president. I won't have my vice president engineering my foreign policy for me. The buck will stop with me, because I'll be the president.
Oh, and one more thing. Just in case it wasn't clear before.
My vice president also, by the way, will be a member of the executive branch. He won't be one of these fourth branches of the government where... he is above the law.
James Gerstenzang and Johanna Neuman are reporters in The Times' Washington bureau. Between the two of them, they have covered the White House, diplomacy, military affairs, the environment, international economics, trade and Congress. They have both spent time in Crawford, Texas.
