Court orders Cheney deputy chief of staff deposition

No, this is not some Halloween stunt. That guy you see over there being held accountable is actually the vice president of the United States.

The U.S. District Court in D.C. ruled today that Vice President Dick Cheney will have to let his deputy chief of staff, Claire O'Donnell, give testimony in a lawsuit over his records.

Cheney, with his well-known passion for secrecy, had argued that a vice president need only preserve records central to his job as the official who presides over the U.S. Senate or records relating to specific tasks assigned by the president. That would narrow the pile considerably.

A group of historians and others at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) have filed a lawsuit, concerned about their eventual access to the vice president's records. In a second round victory, the court today denied Cheney's move to block discovery in the case.

Anne Weismann, CREW's chief counsel, hailed the decision.

Today's decision, allowing CREW discovery in our case against the office of the vice president, moves us one step closer to ensuring that important historical documents will not be lost to future generations. CREW looks forward to deposing Cheney’s Deputy Chief of Staff Claire O’Donnell to get to the bottom of what exactly the administration has been doing with documents that belong not to the vice president, but to the American people.

The vice president's office declined to comment, noting that the case was still in court. Where Cheney may well file an appeal.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Alberto Pellaschiar / Associated Press

President Bush must be wondering: With friends like John McCain...

President Bush doesn't take it personally.

Sen. John McCain hit him for leaving future generations with a mountain of debt, failing to meet the cost of bigger Medicare expenses, and abusing the power of his office. He said of the Bush years and his own Republican Party: "We just let things get completely out of hand."

But White House Press Secretary Dana Perino brushed it aside today.

McCain dissed the president in an interview with the Washington Times -- not a bunch to lightly dis the prez themselves, at least not the way they go after the Democrats. He went after him again today, while campaigning in Florida, for not moving quickly enough to help homeowners in the housing and credit crisis.

But none of it could bring Perino to suggest the president was unhappy with the Republican presidential nominee.

Here's how she dismissed the matter at the daily White House news briefing:

This is all I'll say on it, is that the president stands by his policies. The president believes that a Republican Congress has got a lot more done than the current Democrat-led Congress. He supports John McCain and he still believes that he can and should win, and he'll continue to support him until election day.

Question: Follow on that, McCain said that the president had let things get completely out of hand. That's a pretty damning statement of a president who McCain supported and supports him.

Perino: I'm not going to comment on the words that our candidate chooses to use.  All I'll say is that the president stands by his policies.  He also stands by John McCain.

Question: Does Bush take it personally at all?

Perino: No, he doesn't.

Now, had Barack Obama said the same words...

-- James Gerstenzang

Photo: Stephan Savoia / Associated Press

Dick Cheney can't toss records, says court

Vice President Dick Cheney has a passion for secrecy.

He went to court to protect details about the role of energy executives in private meetings he led to develop the Bush administration's national energy strategy.

He went to Capitol Hill to argue for an exemption to a proposed ban on torture of terror suspects. He wanted to make sure the president had the flexibility to order water boarding or other horrific techniques to prevent a terrorist attack.

Now he's gone to court again to argue that a vice president need only preserve records central to his job as the official who presides over the U.S. Senate or relating to specific tasks assigned by the president. That would narrow the pile considerably.

Saturday, a judge from the U.S. District Court in D.C. rejected that idea, giving a first-round victory to a group of historians and others at Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), who had sued him in court, concerned about their eventual access to the records.

In her ruling, Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly cast doubt on the vice president's argument, given that the Presidential Records Act was specifically amended to prevent former President Richard Nixon from destroying any of the tapes or documents that led to his resignation.

And here's the kicker: Any violation by the preliminary injunction is punishable by immediate contempt -- including the power to jail the offender.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: Alberto Pellaschiar/Associated Press

President Bush and Dick Cheney: Closet liberals?

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 ...

Deadline July 7 for latest subpoena in Plame CIA leak case

More subpoenas have been issued in the case that keeps on going -- the CIA Valerie Plame leak investigation.

Top Bush officials, including former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, leaked stories to reporters disclosing Plame's identity as a CIA operative, ostensibly to discredit the anti-Iraq war views of her husband, former Ambassador Joe Wilson.

Now the House Judiciary Committee, following in the footsteps of the House Oversight Committee, wants to see FBI notes of interviews with President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney as well as interviews on the case from some top names that used to work for them -- political guru Karl Rove, vice presidential aide Scooter Libby, already convicted of lying in the case, and Scott McClellan, the former spokesman with a hot kiss-and-tell book.

In the past, the Justice Department has dismissed the requests on grounds of executive privilege. This time the deadline is July 7, but no one expects the results to be any different.

The committee's news release and link to the subpoena are here.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: M. Spencer Green /AP

In U.S. attorneys case, a judge the White House should welcome

Lawyers for Congress argued in court this morning that executive privilege does not give two top Bush administration officials immunity from testifying about the firing of nine U.S. prosecutors. Democrats charge that the prosecutors were removed for political reasons. And they want the testimony and related documents to prove it.

The Justice Department countered, as it has in court papers, that the president is "constitutionally entitled to autonomy and confidentiality" in talking to Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and former White House counsel Harriet Miers. "The relief sought by the committee is unprecedented and would fundamentally alter the separation of powers," said attorney Carl Nichols.

U.S. District Judge John D. Bates is hearing the case. The administration is probably pleased with the judicial draw.

Bates, who worked for Kenneth Starr and the independent counsel's office during the Whitewater investigation into President Clinton, was appointed by President Bush in 2001. As a judge, Bates in 2002 dismissed the General Accounting Office's effort to learn who met with Vice President Cheney's energy task force.

He also dismissed a lawsuit filed by former CIA agent Valerie Plame Wilson and her husband, Joseph Wilson, against Cheney, White House political advisor Karl Rove, former vice presidential Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, accusing them of leaking her identity.

No matter Bates' decision, court watchers expect the case to be appealed to the Supreme Court.

-- Johanna Neuman

Photo: John Bates. Credit: Beverly Rezneck / U.S. District Court

White House invokes executive privilege on EPA investigation regarding California's vehicle emission standards

"I don't think we've had a situation like this since Richard Nixon was president," Rep. Henry A. Waxman said yesterday after the Bush administration invoked executive privilege to refuse to turn over subpoenaed documents in an investigation of the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to deny California permission to implement its own vehicle emission standards.

Waxman (D-Beverly Hills) was referring to the fact that the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee was deciding on whether to bring contempt-of-Congress proceedings against EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson and Susan Dudley, administrator of regulatory affairs in the White House Office of Management and Budget, for refusing to honor the subpoena.

In asserting executive privilege in the EPA inquiry, the administration made public a copy of a letter sent to the president by Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey saying that releasing internal documents "could inhibit the candor of future deliberations among the president's staff."

EPA spokesman Tim Lyons said the agency had provided the committee with more than 7,000 documents and devoted 2,200 hours of staff time to responding to requests for information, and he called it "disappointing" that the committee had decided to "politicize environmental regulations."

"We don't know whether this privilege that's being asserted is valid or not," Waxman said yesterday, and he is deciding what the committee's next move will be.

-- Tony Pierce

Photo: Getty Images