Congressional investigators told the White House on Tuesday that they intend to question several former Bush administration officials about their knowledge of Pat Tillman’s death, escalating their inquiry into the high-profile friendly fire case.

Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight Committee, and Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., the committee’s top-ranking Republican, also pressed for drafts of a speech President Bush made in the weeks before it became publicly known that the former NFL star was killed by his own troops. In the 2004 speech at the White House correspondents’ dinner, Bush didn’t mention how Tillman died.

The congressmen informed White House counsel Fred Fielding of their intentions in a letter Tuesday. The White House was reviewing the letter, spokesman Trey Bohn said.

“As part of our ongoing investigation, the committee plans to interview or depose former White House officials regarding when and how White House and Pentagon officials learned that Corporal Tillman’s death in Afghanistan in April 2004 was caused by friendly fire,” Waxman and Davis wrote.

The former White House officials would likely be allowed to choose whether to be deposed under oath or interviewed, committee officials said.

More at YahooNews

RALEIGH, N.C. - Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards, who reiterated his commitment Tuesday to never accept campaign donations from special interest groups, recently returned $3,400 from lobbyists.

Edwards spokeswoman Colleen Murray said the campaign returned some money donated by a registered lobbyist last week, and money from two others was refunded Tuesday after The Associated Press inquired about the donations.

“We take every precaution possible, but sometimes people slip through, and when we find lobbyist money we refund it immediately,” said Edwards spokeswoman Colleen Murray.

Edwards has long eschewed campaign donations from lobbyists and political action committees, a stand dating to his first run at political office - a successful campaign in 1998 for a U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina. Asked about that policy Tuesday during a campaign event in Georgetown, S.C., Edwards firmly declared himself clean of special interest donations.

More at YahooNews

Feinstein Questions Gonzales

Leahy Speaks and the public call out for Gonzo to resign

This little story shows the depth of their evilness. They care about NO ONE. They have no compassion whatsoever. The only compassion they show is for their failed policies and fucked up idea of what’s right.

Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales denied today that he tried as White House counsel in March 2004 to influence then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, who was hospitalized and semi-alert after undergoing gall bladder surgery.

Mr. Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee that the visit he made with Andrew H. Card Jr., then White House chief of staff, needed to be understood in context. The purpose of the hospital visit on March 10 was to tell Mr. Ashcroft of the Congressional leadership’s desire that authorization for President Bush’s intelligence-gathering program not expire the next day, as it was scheduled to, Mr. Gonzales said.

“Obviously, there was concern about General Ashcroft’s condition, and we would not have sought, nor did we intend to get any approval from General Ashcroft if in fact he wasn-t fully competent to make that decision,” Mr. Gonzales testified.

Mr. Gonzales’s account contrasted starkly with the recollections of James B. Comey, Mr. Ashcroft’s former deputy, who testified before the committee in May that he had been “very angry” during the hospital encounter because “I thought I had just witnessed an effort to take advantage of a very sick man.”

Continue reading at the NYTimes

It just never ends…….

On Jan. 4, just after the 2006 elections tossed the Republicans out of congressional power, Rove met at the White House with six U.S. ambassadors to key European missions and the consul general to Bermuda while the diplomats were in Washington for a State Department conference.

According to a department letter to the Senate panel, Rove explained the White House views on the electoral disaster while Sara M. Taylor, then the director of White House political affairs, showed a PowerPoint presentation that pinned most of the electoral blame on “corrupt” GOP lawmakers and “complacent incumbents.” One chart in Taylor’s presentation highlighted the GOP’s top 36 targets among House Democrats for the 2008 election.

In a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), the Foreign Relations Committee chairman, asked whether the briefings inappropriately politicized the diplomatic agencies or violated prohibitions against political work by most federal employees.

“I do not understand why ambassadors, in Washington on official duty, would be briefed by White House officials on which Democratic House members are considered top targets by the Republican party for defeat in 2008. Nor do I understand why department employees would need to be briefed on ‘key media markets’ in states that are ‘competitive’ for the president,” Biden wrote.

His aides said Biden plans to raise the matter at a confirmation hearing today for Henrietta Holsman Fore to be administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, whose political appointees received at least two White House briefings in the past 10 months, as well as at an oversight hearing tomorrow on the Peace Corps.

Several months ago, White House aides said that about 20 private briefings were held in 15 agencies before the 2006 midterms and that other briefings were held irregularly throughout Bush’s first term.

Full article at the Washington Post

I liked the format. As in any debate, the problem is trying to get politicians to actually answer the questions.

Facing an unusual series of video-recorded questions from Americans - by turns toughly worded, highly emotional, and simply offbeat - the eight Democratic presidential candidates sparred tonight over race, gay marriage, Darfur and troops in Iraq, while also still finding ways to trade the verbal jabs that typify traditional debates.

The televised debate was unusual from the start: A man speaking on a homemade video - and not the usual television anchorman - opened the forum, sponsored by CNN and the video’sharing Web site YouTube, by imploring the candidates to answer directly and not “beat around the bush” - the last word delivered as a play on President Bush’s surname.

At times the candidates were direct: Representative Dennis Kucinich of Ohio castigated his fellow Democrats for keeping troops in Iraq, saying it was because of politics and fear, while Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware said of children in Darfur, “Those kids will be dead by the time the diplomacy is over.” Some candidates, like Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico and Mr. Kucinich, used the word “you” repeatedly - a popular phrase in the YouTube universe - to refer to American voters and to the people asking the questions by videotape.

More at the New York Times

I remember a time when I so looked forward to these hearings, thinking they would get rid of this evil litttle smirking bastard. He’s still there. He’s still smirking. He still doesn’t recall.

WASHINGTON - The return of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to the Senate Judiciary Committee is in some ways the story of Democratic failure to drum up enough pressure to force President Bush’s hand.

Not so long ago, Republicans as well as Democrats thought they’d seen Gonzales sit before them for the last time as attorney general. There was no way Gonzales could survive the controversy over the prosecutor firings, nor the exposure of other missteps, they said. Certainly he could not resist the widespread calls for his resignation - one, from a Republican - to his face as the proceedings were broadcast live.

They were wrong. Gonzales was called to testify again Tuesday. A Senate vote of no confidence in Gonzales has failed, and Bush has noted that the U.S. attorneys probe did not uncover any clear wrongdoing. And, armed with the president’s support, Gonzales has made clear that he does not intend to leave office before Bush does.

Democrats say the wrongdoing is Gonzales’ broader failure of leadership that extends to the FBI’s abuse of so-called National Security letters and a withered tradition of independence from the political interests of the White House.

“This attorney general has a severe credibility problem,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said in remarks prepared for Tuesday’s hearing. “It is time for the attorney general to fully answer these questions and to acknowledge and begin taking responsibility for the acute crisis of leadership that has gripped the department under his watch.”

More at YahooNews