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discovery in our case against the office of the vice president, moves us one step closer to ensuring that important historical documents will not be lost to future generations.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.
Election day is still one week away, but already the Bush Justice Department is looking into allegations of voter fraud. In Ohio. That's the same state where supporters of Democratic Sen. John Kerry charged foul in the 2004 election.
Responding to a request from Ohio Republican John Boehner, who happens to be the House minority leader, President Bush on Friday asked Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey to investigate the status of 200,000 Ohio voters. If those voters remain on the rolls without added checks, Boehner said, "there is a significant risk, if not a certainty, that unlawful votes will be cast and counted."
But critics argue that an inquiry by a Justice Department that is already tainted by allegations that it fired eight U.S. attorneys for not being Republican enough in their prosecutions looks fishy. As voters in Ohio go to the polls to cast early ballots, as seen in the photo above, Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and five other lawmakers, in a letter, urged Mukasey not to intervene in Ohio.
The eyes of the nation are once again on Ohio in this critical election. We have confidence in the work that is being done by Ohio’s bipartisan group of election officials. ... We respectfully request that you refrain from taking any action absent more compelling evidence than partisan political requests. ... We are concerned that complaints ... are designed to reduce the number of legitimate votes that are cast and counted in our state.
A similar legal drama could play out in Colorado. Republicans there are charging that the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is loading up the voter rolls with unqualified people. Democrats are asking a federal court to reinstate approximately 30,000 Colorado voters purged from registration lists by Secretary of State Mike Coffman, a Republican.
Countdown to Crawford reported last night that a protestor tried to handcuff former White House politicial guru Karl Rove as part of a citizens' arrest in San Francisco yesterday, charging him with treason. She was hauled off.
This got us to wondering: how many times has this happened? Oh, sure, people have publicly complained about Rove -- for abusing his office by leaking Valerie Plame's identity to discredit her anti-war husband, for his role in firing U.S. attorneys who were not sufficiently Republican in their prosecutions. But how many people have actually tried to arrest him?
So today we did a little research. Here's what we found so far.
Rove left the White House -- where he was political advisor and deputy chief of staff -- in August 2007. It was an emotional send-off. He and President Bush hugged. And then Rove went off to make the Big Bucks that usually stick to former White House officials -- signing up as a Fox News analyst, writing columns for the Wall Street Journal and giving lucrative speeches.
On March 9, Rove gave a speech -- the fee was a reported $40,000 -- at the University of Iowa. What was described as a hostile crowd greeted his remarks, often interrupting with shouted questions. Replied Rove:
You got a chance to ask your questions later and make your stupid statements. Let me make mine.
Two people tried to make a citizens' arrest of Rove for his crimes as a member of the Bush administration. At one point, according to CNN, someone in the audience yelled, "Can we have our $40,000 back?" To which the man sometimes known as "Bush's Brain," replied, "No you can't."
Then on July 25, Rove went back to Iowa. Mistake. According to the anti-war group Washington Report on Middle East, Rove was to speak at a Republican luncheon fundraiser at the Wakonda Country Club in Des Moines, Iowa. Four antiwar activists -- aged 80, 61, 57 and 25 -- were arrested for trying to make a citizens' arrest, for war crimes. Two of them had been part of the earlier Iowa attempted bust.
"Major crimes are being committed by our government, and Rove has been one of the key players," explained retired Methodist minister Chester Guinn, the 80-year-old who was making his inaugural run at this. "I cannot be silent."
Then on Sept. 15, a group of students at Claremont McKenna College formed a "Karl Rove Welcoming Committee" to mark Rove's appearance on that California campus. They displayed banners with the words "Face the Charges," this a reference to Rove's refusal to testify before Congress, and "War Criminal," for his support of the Iraq war. Then, according to a progressive magazine called Claremont Portside, some students tried to deliver a citizens' arrest. Police pepper-sprayed them.
Hm. Maybe Karl should stay out of Iowa and California.
An interesting way to show your friends back home that you love 'em: pardon the criminals.
Our colleagues at the Swamp took a look at President Bush's sparing use of pardon power and found that more convicts in Texas and Florida, where his younger brother, Jeb, was governor, benefited from his pardoning and clemency largess than those in any other state.
A matter of size, you say? Bigger states, more criminals? Perhaps.
But consider this: Convicts in Texas and Florida, both states that helped put Bush in the White House, were given 31 acts of presidential clemency. In California, eight convicts received clemency, and in New York, just one. And to which candidate did their electoral votes go?
For the Swamp's full account and a list of state-by-state pardons, click here.
-- James Gerstenzang
Photo: Jeb Bush, left, with President Bush. Credit: Paul J. Richards / AFP/Getty Images
For weeks, conservative political circles have been buzzing with rumors that a grassroots organization called the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has been fraudulently registering low-income Americans to vote. There were reports that Mickey Mouse was registered in Florida, that a man named Freddie Johnson registered 73 times, that somehow ACORN was a front organization to elect Democrat Barack Obama.
Today, the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary Committee asked the Bush administration's Justice Department to investigate. In a statement, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said:
Reports that ACORN registered Mickey Mouse to vote are deeply disturbing. American voters depend on their government to ensure that their votes are fairly counted in an election. Unfortunately, organizations like ACORN that perpetuate voter fraud continue to plague the American electoral system. Congress must make it clear that ACORN, and organizations like it, will not be allowed to steal votes and potentially influence elections.
Both sides in the presidential race have accused the other of ties to ACORN.
Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, in an e-mail to supporters, noted that ACORN has endorsed Obama. The Alaska governor added, "We can't allow leftist groups like ACORN to steal this election."
For his part, Obama said today that his relationship with ACORN stemmed from more than a decade ago, when as a young lawyer he represented the group as it tried to implement the motor-voter law in Illinois that allows voter registration at driver registration agencies. And, in a news conference, he noted that voter fraud does not occur until citizens try to vote.
This isn't actually a situation where people who are going to try to vote, because these are phony names. It's doubtful that Tony Romo is going to show up in Ohio to vote. So, this is another one of these distractions that gets stirred up during the course of a campaign. What I want to make sure of though, is that this is not used as an excuse for the kind of voter suppression tactics that strategies and tactics that we've seen in the past. Let's make sure everybody is voting, everybody is registered, everybody is doing this is a lawful way.
With local officials in several states, including Nevada, investigating suspicious voter registrations produced by ACORN, the organization also is fighting back. Spokesman Scott Levenson told Fox News' Greta Van Susteren Monday that Obama's campaign did not, as rumored, pay $800,000 to ACORN, but paid that amount to CSI, a private organization, which in turn hired ACORN for $80,000 to get out the vote in the primaries.
Today, Levenson said that his group was being demonized for trying to "empower the powerless and enfranchise the disenfranchised." Noting that ACORN itself alerted local officials to instances in which its registrations might not be valid, as required by law, Levenson said he was proud of the organization's record of registering 1.3 million voters.
In an interview with CNN, he said complaints from Republicans are "a sad, cynical sign of how desperate the McCain campaign is."
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo: A police officer entering the ACORN office in Las Vegas on Oct. 7 as part of an investigation into voter fraud. Credit: Jae C. Hong / Associated Press
Democrats in Congress wanted to talk to two of President Bush's top aides about the politically tainted firings of nine U.S. attorneys in 2006. The House Judiciary Committee wanted former White House counsel Harriet Miers to testify and White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten to turn over documents.
In early court rounds, the Dems won. In fact U.S. District Judge John Bates ordered the two Bush advisors to cooperate with the congressional investigation into the scandal that sent former Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales packing.
But the Justice Department went to court with Vice President Dick Cheney's favorite refrain: Congress cannot force presidential aides to cooperate because that would infringe on the executive branch's constitutionally protected independence.
Now a federal appeals court has used a different argument to foil the House Democrats' demands. A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit basically said in its opinion that time's up on this administration:
The present dispute is of potentially great significance for the balance of power between the legislative and executive branches.... Even if expedited, this controversy will not be fully and finally resolved by the judicial branch ... before the 110th Congress ends on January 3, 2009. At that time, the 110th House of Representatives will cease to exist as a legal entity, and the subpoenas it has issued will expire.
To compel the aides' cooperation, the court said, "would be wasting the time of the court and the parties."
Lawyers for House Democrats have said they plan to continue the investigation during the next session, after a new administration takes office. In other words, they'll issue fresh subpoenas.
But Rep. Lamar Smith of Texas, top Republican on the House panel, had another idea. He thinks his Democratic colleagues should just drop their inquiry and let the Justice Department complete its investigation. In a statement, he said:
The facts continue to show that there was no grand administration conspiracy in the dismissal of several U.S. attorneys. Rather than continue to waste the American people's time and money, I hope that next year House Democrats put partisan politics aside and focus on a real agenda that serves the American people.
The decision may turn on who wins the White House in November -- and what tone he wants to set in Washington.
-- Johanna Neuman
Photo: Alberto Gonzales. Credit: Seth Wenig / Associated Press
(An earlier version of this post may have left the impression that Smith wanted his Democratic colleagues to drop the case altogether.)
Mentioning neither William Ayers and the Weather Underground nor the Keating Five, the two hot topics du jour of the presidential campaign, President Bush managed nevertheless to quietly slip himself into the campaign today by delving into a secondary issue: What standards a president should apply when picking judges. (*Update: We misspelled Ayers' name earlier but have now corrected it.)
Bush did not have to say about whom he was speaking. He never said "Obama" or "McCain," "Democrat" or "Republican."
But speaking to a conservative legal gathering in Cincinnati, he injected the subject of judicial appointments -- from the district court level up to the Supreme Court -- into the debate, and made it clear that in considering election choices, the president's role in nominating jurists must not be overlooked.
But the president was using a double-edged sword. It is a topic that can energize activists in both parties.
"The lesson should be clear to every American, and that is: Judges matter," he said. (If anyone doubted that, he offered this statistic: He has nominated more than one-third of the judges now holding lifetime appointments on the federal bench.)
No surprise in his instructions: Find judges who will "interpret the Constitution and not use courts to invent laws or dictate social policy."
And no surprise that they fit nicely with John McCain's approach.
In a report on the 2006 firings of U.S. attorneys, the Justice Department inspector general found that former Atty. Gen. Alberto Gonzales was stunningly out of touch and that the White House stonewalled investigators’ requests for documents and testimony that could have shed light on whether the firings were illegal.
Not exactly a news flash in the closing days of the Bush administration.
But two new characters do emerge in the saga: A husband and wife team, it seems, did all they could do to off one of the fired U.S. attorneys, and in some cases may have gone overboard, the report concludes.
The couple, Joan Meyer and Lloyd Meyer, were once assistant U.S. attorneys in the U.S. attorney's office in Grand Rapids, Mich., which was headed by Margaret Chiara, one of the seven U.S. attorneys fired on Dec. 7, 2006.
The two Meyers, according to the report, got high-level posts at the Justice Department around the time the prosecutor purge was being hatched, and according to the report, they offered their two cents on their old boss.
Among other things, they spread “unproven rumors about a sexual relationship” between Chiara and another assistant U.S. attorney in the office, who was a woman, investigators found.
The report described the conduct as “unprofessional” but concludes that Chiara was ultimately dismissed out of concerns about her management of the office and not “inappropriate factors.”
Joan Meyer is now a partner in a major Washington law firm. Lloyd Meyer took early retirement this month.
-- Richard B. Schmitt
Photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press
The story has been often told, of how Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft was in a hospital bed, recovering from emergency surgery to remove his gallbladder, when White House chief of staff Andy Card and White House counsel Alberto Gonzales showed up in his intensive care unit.
It was not a social visit.
The two asked the attorney general to certify that the president's warrantless wiretapping was legal, even though Justice Department lawyers said otherwise. Ashcroft lifted his head off the pillow, said no, and went back to sleep.
When Gonzales, then attorney general, testified before Congress, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), repeatedly pressed him on whether President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney had sent him to Ashcroft's bedside that night. He refused to answer.
Now comes Murray Waas, reporting in the Atlantic that Justice Department investigators are investigating whether Gonzales created a set of fictitious notes to provide a rationale for President Bush's approval of the program. In the notes, Gonzales says that congressional leaders meeting with Cheney wanted the program continued.
The suspicion is prompted in part by the fact that the notes were written days after the meeting -- and after the president approved the program.
At 7:30 a.m. this morning, they climbed a nine-foot fence to occupy a 35-foot-high ledge at the National Archives.
And five members of the Veterans for Peace organization have been there ever since. They say they're veterans of Vietnam and Iraq, anti-war activists, and soldiers for a cause who plan to fast for 24 hours in protest of the Bush administration.
Seeking the criminal prosecution of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, the organization distributed "Citizens' Arrest Warrants" to tourists waiting in line to enter the archives, which houses the key documents of U.S. history: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Bush and Cheney’s serial abuse of the law of the land clearly marks them as domestic enemies of the Constitution. They have illegally invaded and occupied Iraq, deliberately destroyed civilian infrastructure, authorized torture, and unlawfully detained prisoners. These actions clearly mark them as war criminals. Accountability extends beyond impeachment to prosecution for war crimes even after their terms of office expire....
We are not conducting ourselves in a disorderly manner; our action is well-ordered and well-considered. We are not trespassing; we have come to the home of our Constitution to honor our oath to defend it.
So far, authorities have not interfered with the peaceful protest or the sign.
Yes, there's a sign. A 22-foot-by-x8-foot banner draped across the Constitution Avenue side of the archives says, “DEFEND OUR CONSTITUTION. ARREST BUSH AND CHENEY: WAR CRIMINALS!”
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.
