Poll: Bush would lose an election if held this year

This is from CNN.Com:

(CNN) -- A majority would vote for a Democrat over President Bush if an election were held this year, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released Tuesday.

In the latest poll, 55 percent of the respondents said that they would vote for the Democratic candidate if Bush were again running for the presidency this year.

Thirty-nine percent of those interviewed said they would vote for Bush in the hypothetical election.

The latest poll results, released Tuesday, were based on interviews with 1,008 adults conducted by telephone October 21-23.

In the poll, 42 percent of those interviewed approved of the way the president is handling his job and 55 percent disapproved. In the previous poll, released October 17, 39 percent approved of Bush's job performance -- the lowest number of his presidency -- and 58 percent disapproved.

However, all the numbers are within the poll's sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, so it's possible that the public's opinion has not changed at all.

More than half, 57 percent, said they don't agree with the president's views on issues that are important to them, while 41 percent said their views are in alignment with those of Bush on important issues.

Well, this little poll doesn't bode too well for the Bush White House. When you have more than half the American public saying they don't agree with the president's views and would vote for a hypothetical Democrat in a presidential race, your administration is in pretty deep doo-doo. And the supposed Patrick Fitzgerald indictments haven't even been handed down yet. But it gets better. Continuing on:

On separate issues, a majority of those questioned felt the Democrats could do a better job than Republicans at handling health care (59 percent to 30 percent), Social Security (56 percent to 33 percent), gasoline prices (51 percent to 31 percent) and the economy (50 percent to 38 percent).

Forty-six percent also believed Democrats could do better at handling Iraq, while 40 percent said the GOP would do better.

In 2003, 53 percent said Republicans would better handle Iraq and only 29 percent believed the Democrats would do better.

The only issue on which Republicans came out on top was in fighting terrorism: 49 percent said the GOP is better at it, while 38 percent said the Democrats are.

So the public believes that the Democrats can do better on the issues of health care, Social Security, the economy, gas prices--and possibly energy policy as well. This is pretty much the entire domestic agenda for Bush. The only thing the Republicans can do better than the Democrats is in fighting terrorism--the Republican PR-spin machine is still adept in brainwashing the American public into believing they can do better at fighting terrorism, even though the entire invasion of Iraq was once defined as a goal in fighting terrorism. But now the public is starting to believe that the Democrats can do better in fighting in Iraq over the Republicans. So it may be just a matter of time before the Republicans advantage in fighting terrorism is lost to the Democrats. Also remember, this poll came out BEFORE any possible Fitzgerald indictments. So we don't know how the public will respond if Fitzgerald starts handing down indictments against Rove, Libby, or even Cheney, who are the top advisors to the president.

The Democrats have a golden opportunity here in defining a new agenda for the country. The American public is starting to realize that this country is heading down the wrong path. There is also a realization that this Bush White House has almost no clue in how to respond to events that are out of its spin-meister control. This is a White House that has become reactive, rather than pro-active. And if Rove and Libby are forced to resign due to indictments in the Valerie Plame affair, then the Bush administration loses more of its top political spin and marketing people who could have maintained control of the news events and the agenda. But the Democrats need to start acting now. They need to start proposing a radically new agenda to shift the course of this country. They need to start energizing the public's imagination with bold new ideas and new proposals to solve the nation's issues.

Now is the time to go on the offensive.

The White House cabal

This is a Los Angeles Times opinion piece written by Lawrence B. Wilkerson. Wilkerson worked as chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005.

IN PRESIDENT BUSH'S first term, some of the most important decisions about U.S. national security — including vital decisions about postwar Iraq — were made by a secretive, little-known cabal. It was made up of a very small group of people led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

When I first discussed this group in a speech last week at the New American Foundation in Washington, my comments caused a significant stir because I had been chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell between 2002 and 2005.

But it's absolutely true. I believe that the decisions of this cabal were sometimes made with the full and witting support of the president and sometimes with something less. More often than not, then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice was simply steamrolled by this cabal.

Its insular and secret workings were efficient and swift — not unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy. This furtive process was camouflaged neatly by the dysfunction and inefficiency of the formal decision-making process, where decisions, if they were reached at all, had to wend their way through the bureaucracy, with its dissenters, obstructionists and "guardians of the turf."

But the secret process was ultimately a failure. It produced a series of disastrous decisions and virtually ensured that the agencies charged with implementing them would not or could not execute them well.

I watched these dual decision-making processes operate for four years at the State Department. As chief of staff for 27 months, I had a door adjoining the secretary of State's office. I read virtually every document he read. I read the intelligence briefings and spoke daily with people from all across government.

I knew that what I was observing was not what Congress intended when it passed the 1947 National Security Act. The law created the National Security Council — consisting of the president, vice president and the secretaries of State and Defense — to make sure the nation's vital national security decisions were thoroughly vetted. The NSC has often been expanded, depending on the president in office, to include the CIA director, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Treasury secretary and others, and it has accumulated a staff of sometimes more than 100 people.

But many of the most crucial decisions from 2001 to 2005 were not made within the traditional NSC process.

Scholars and knowledgeable critics of the U.S. decision-making process may rightly say, so what? Haven't all of our presidents in the last half-century failed to conform to the usual process at one time or another? Isn't it the president's prerogative to make decisions with whomever he pleases? Moreover, can he not ignore whomever he pleases? Why should we care that President Bush gave over much of the critical decision-making to his vice president and his secretary of Defense?

Both as a former academic and as a person who has been in the ring with the bull, I believe that there are two reasons we should care. First, such departures from the process have in the past led us into a host of disasters, including the last years of the Vietnam War, the national embarrassment of Watergate (and the first resignation of a president in our history), the Iran-Contra scandal and now the ruinous foreign policy of George W. Bush.

But a second and far more important reason is that the nature of both governance and crisis has changed in the modern age.

From managing the environment to securing sufficient energy resources, from dealing with trafficking in human beings to performing peacekeeping missions abroad, governing is vastly more complicated than ever before in human history.

Further, the crises the U.S. government confronts today are so multifaceted, so complex, so fast-breaking — and almost always with such incredible potential for regional and global ripple effects — that to depart from the systematic decision-making process laid out in the 1947 statute invites disaster.

Discounting the professional experience available within the federal bureaucracy — and ignoring entirely the inevitable but often frustrating dissent that often arises therein — makes for quick and painless decisions. But when government agencies are confronted with decisions in which they did not participate and with which they frequently disagree, their implementation of those decisions is fractured, uncoordinated and inefficient. This is particularly the case if the bureaucracies called upon to execute the decisions are in strong competition with one another over scarce money, talented people, "turf" or power.

It takes firm leadership to preside over the bureaucracy. But it also takes a willingness to listen to dissenting opinions. It requires leaders who can analyze, synthesize, ponder and decide.

The administration's performance during its first four years would have been even worse without Powell's damage control. At least once a week, it seemed, Powell trooped over to the Oval Office and cleaned all the dog poop off the carpet. He held a youthful, inexperienced president's hand. He told him everything would be all right because he, the secretary of State, would fix it. And he did — everything from a serious crisis with China when a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft was struck by a Chinese F-8 fighter jet in April 2001, to the secretary's constant reassurances to European leaders following the bitter breach in relations over the Iraq war. It wasn't enough, of course, but it helped.

Today, we have a president whose approval rating is 38% and a vice president who speaks only to Rush Limbaugh and assembled military forces. We have a secretary of Defense presiding over the death-by-a-thousand-cuts of our overstretched armed forces (no surprise to ignored dissenters such as former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric Shinseki or former Army Secretary Thomas White).

It's a disaster. Given the choice, I'd choose a frustrating bureaucracy over an efficient cabal every time.

We've seen this cabal work through the five years of the Bush presidency. We've seen it develop--through Cheney's office--develop the marketing plan for selling the war to the American public using selectively fixed intelligence. We've also seen this cabal go after dissenters using character assasinations with no regards for the law--see Valerie Plame. We've seen what happens when this cabal is made up of PNAC people intent on implementing their own ideology, without regarding alternative views or even considering that their ideology is fatally flawed. Now that Colin Powell is out, there really is no one capable of cleaning up the crap that has accumulated within the Bush White House that was caused by the incompetence of this cabal. And that crap is now becoming public.

Majority of Americans now feel Iraq war was wrong: poll

The bad news for the Bush White House keeps coming. This is from Yahoo News:

WASHINGTON (AFP) - For the first time, a majority of Americans believe the Iraq war was the "wrong thing to do", according to a poll published in The Wall Street Journal.

Fifty-three percent of those asked in the Harris Interactive survey felt that "taking military action against Iraq was the... wrong thing to do", against 34 percent who thought it was correct, the newspaper said.

The percentage of people opposing the US-led invasion of the country in March 2003 was up from a figure of 49 percent in a parallel poll in September, rising above 50 percent for the first time since the surveys began.

A year before, in September 2004, both sides were even at 43 percent.

The latest poll also found that 66 percent of Americans believed President George W. Bush was doing a "poor" or "only fair" job of handling Iraq, against 32 percent who deemed it "excellent" or "pretty good".

With the number of US military fatalities in Iraq approaching 2,000, 44 percent of those polled said the situation for US troops in Iraq was getting worse, compared to 19 percent who thought it was improving.

Sixty-one percent were not confident US policies in Iraq would succeed, two points higher than in September.

The poll asked the opinions of 1,833 people online from October 11-17.

We are looking at a White House that exists in a fantasyland--completely detached from any sense of reality. Bush still believes he's right about invading Iraq--no matter what the public opinion polls say. The president was probably deceived by Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and the rest of the PNAC people still residing in his administration for invading Iraq and embarking on this failure of American imperialism in the Middle East. And now the PR spin-machine has got a huge monkey wrench thrown into it with the Valerie Plame leaks pointing directly at the president's top men of Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, and Dick Cheney, with the possibility of indictments handed down this week from Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's office. It is completely mind-boggling.

Fitzgerald Collecting Documentation on Forgeries from Italian Government

This is from the United Press International.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 (UPI) -- The CIA leak inquiry that threatens senior White House aides has now widened to include the forgery of documents on African uranium that started the investigation, according to NAT0 intelligence sources.

NATO sources have confirmed to United Press International that Fitzgerald's team of investigators has sought and obtained documentation on the forgeries from the Italian government.

Fitzgerald's team has been given the full, and as yet unpublished report of the Italian parliamentary inquiry into the affair, which started when an Italian journalist obtained documents that appeared to show officials of the government of Niger helping to supply the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein with Yellowcake uranium. This claim, which made its way into President Bush's State of the Union address in January, 2003, was based on falsified documents from Niger and was later withdrawn by the White House.

I'm not sure what to make of this story. So I'll just include the details here:

The initial claims Iraq was seeking raw uranium in the west African state of Niger aroused the interest of vice-president Cheney, who asked for more investigation. At a meeting of CIA and other officials, a CIA officer working under cover in the office that dealt with nuclear proliferation, Valerie Plame, suggested her husband, James Wilson, a former ambassador to several African states, enjoyed good contacts in Niger and could make a preliminary inquiry. He did so, and returned concluding that the claims were untrue. In July 2003, he wrote an article for The New York Times making his mission -- and his disbelief -- public.

But by then Elisabetta Burba, a journalist for the Italian magazine Panorama (owned by Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi) had been contacted by a "security consultant" named Rocco Martoni, offering to sell documents that "proved" Iraq was obtaining uranium in Niger for $10,000. Rather than pay the money, Burba's editor passed photocopies of the documents to the U.S. Embassy, which forwarded them to Washington, where the forgery was later detected. Signatures were false, and the government ministers and officials who had signed them were no longer in office on the dates on which the documents were supposedly written.

Nonetheless, the forged documents appeared, on the face of it, to shore up the case for war, and to discredit Wilson. The origin of the forgeries is therefore of real importance, and any link between the forgeries and Bush administration aides would be highly damaging and almost certainly criminal.

The letterheads and official seals that appeared to authenticate the documents apparently came from a burglary at the Niger Embassy in Rome in 2001. At this point, the facts start dribbling away into conspiracy theories that involve membership of shadowy Masonic lodges, Iranian go-betweens, right-wing cabals inside Italian Intelligence and so on. It is not yet known how far Fitzgerald, in his two years of inquiries, has fished in these murky waters.

There is one line of inquiry with an American connection that Fitzgerald would have found it difficult to ignore. This is the claim that a mid-ranking Pentagon official, Larry Franklin, held talks with some Italian intelligence and defense officials in Rome in late 2001. Franklin has since been arrested on charges of passing classified information to staff of the pro-Israel lobby group, the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee. Franklin has reportedly reached a plea bargain with his prosecutor, Paul McNulty, and it would be odd if McNulty and Fitzgerald had not conferred to see if their inquiries connected.

Where all this leads will not be clear until Fitzgerald breaks his silence, widely expected to occur this week when the term of his grand jury expires.

If Fitzgerald issues indictments, then the hounds that are currently baying across the blogosphere will leap into the mainstream media and whole affair, Iranian go-betweens and Rome burglaries included, will come into the mainstream of the mass media and network news where Mr. and Mrs. America can see it.

If Fitzgerald issues no indictments, the matter will not simply die away, in part because the press is now hotly engaged, after the new embarrassment of the Times over the imprisonment of the paper's Judith Miller. There is also an uncomfortable sense that the press had given the Bush administration too easy a ride after 9/11. And the Bush team is now on the ropes and its internal discipline breaking down, making it an easier target.

Then there is a separate Senate Select Intelligence Committee inquiry under way, and while the Republican chairman Pat Roberts of Kansas seems to be dragging his feet, the ranking Democrat, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, is now under growing Democratic Party pressure to pursue this question of falsifying the case for war.

And last week, Congressman Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, introduced a resolution to require the president and secretary of state to furnish to Congress documents relating to the so-called White House Iraq Group. Chief of staff Andrew Card formed the WHIG task force in August 2002 -- seven months before the invasion of Iraq, and Kucinich claims they were charged "with the mission of marketing a war in Iraq."

The group included: Rove, Libby, Condoleezza Rice, Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin and Stephen Hadley (now Bush's national security adviser) and produced white papers that put into dramatic form the intelligence on Iraq's supposed nuclear threat. WHIG launched its media blitz in September 2002, six months before the war. Rice memorably spoke of the prospect of "a mushroom cloud," and Card revealingly explained why he chose September, saying "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."

The marketing is over but the war goes on. The press is baying and the law closes in. The team of Bush loyalists in the White House is demoralized and braced for disaster.

Cheney Told Aide of C.I.A. Officer, Lawyers Report

This is from the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 - I. Lewis Libby Jr., Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, first learned about the C.I.A. officer at the heart of the leak investigation in a conversation with Mr. Cheney weeks before her identity became public in 2003, lawyers involved in the case said Monday.

Notes of the previously undisclosed conversation between Mr. Libby and Mr. Cheney on June 12, 2003, appear to differ from Mr. Libby's testimony to a federal grand jury that he initially learned about the C.I.A. officer, Valerie Wilson, from journalists, the lawyers said.

The notes, taken by Mr. Libby during the conversation, for the first time place Mr. Cheney in the middle of an effort by the White House to learn about Ms. Wilson's husband, Joseph C. Wilson IV, who was questioning the administration's handling of intelligence about Iraq's nuclear program to justify the war.

Lawyers involved in the case, who described the notes to The New York Times, said they showed that Mr. Cheney knew that Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A. more than a month before her identity was made public and her undercover status was disclosed in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak on July 14, 2003.

Vice President Dick Cheney knew about Valerie Plame. He knew that she worked at the CIA more than a month before her name was made public in Novak's column. And Cheney told Plame's name to Scooter Libby. Here is the link between Cheney, Libby, and Plame. It gets better:

Mr. Libby's notes indicate that Mr. Cheney had gotten his information about Ms. Wilson from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, in response to questions from the vice president about Mr. Wilson. But they contain no suggestion that either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby knew at the time of Ms. Wilson's undercover status or that her identity was classified. Disclosing a covert agent's identity can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent's undercover status.

It would not be illegal for either Mr. Cheney or Mr. Libby, both of whom are presumably cleared to know the government's deepest secrets, to discuss a C.I.A. officer or her link to a critic of the administration. But any effort by Mr. Libby to steer investigators away from his conversation with Mr. Cheney could be considered by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special counsel in the case, to be an illegal effort to impede the inquiry.

Was Libby trying to cover for his boss Dick Cheney? Continuing on:

The notes help explain the legal difficulties facing Mr. Libby. Lawyers in the case said Mr. Libby testified to the grand jury that he had first heard from journalists that Ms. Wilson may have had a role in dispatching her husband on a C.I.A.-sponsored mission to Africa in 2002 in search of evidence that Iraq had acquired nuclear material there for its weapons program.

But the notes, now in Mr. Fitzgerald's possession, also indicate that Mr. Libby first heard about Ms. Wilson - who is also known by her maiden name, Valerie Plame - from Mr. Cheney. That apparent discrepancy in his testimony suggests why prosecutors are weighing false statement charges against him in what they interpret as an effort by Mr. Libby to protect Mr. Cheney from scrutiny, the lawyers said.

It is not clear why Mr. Libby would have suggested to the grand jury that he might have learned about Ms. Wilson from journalists if he was aware that Mr. Fitzgerald had obtained the notes of the conversation with Mr. Cheney or might do so. At the beginning of the investigation, Mr. Bush pledged the White House's full cooperation and instructed aides to provide Mr. Fitzgerald with any information he sought.

The notes do not show that Mr. Cheney knew the name of Mr. Wilson's wife. But they do show that Mr. Cheney did know and told Mr. Libby that Ms. Wilson was employed by the Central Intelligence Agency and that she may have helped arrange her husband's trip.

I would say that the Bush White House didn't even know about these notes, or Libby and Cheney's office had either forgotten them, or carelessly sent them to the Fitzgerald along with other documentation that the special prosecutor requested from the White House. Here's some information about the note:

On June 12, 2003, the day of the conversation between Mr. Cheney and Mr. Libby, The Washington Post published a front-page article reporting that the C.I.A. had sent a retired American diplomat to Niger in February 2002 to investigate claims that Iraq had been seeking to buy uranium there. The article did not name the diplomat, who turned out to be Mr. Wilson, but it reported that his mission had not corroborated a claim about Iraq's pursuit of nuclear material that the White House had subsequently used in Mr. Bush's 2003 State of the Union address.

An earlier anonymous reference to Mr. Wilson and his mission to Africa had appeared in a column by Nicholas D. Kristof in The New York Times on May 6, 2003. Mr. Wilson went public with his conclusion that the White House had "twisted" the intelligence about Iraq's pursuit of nuclear material on July 6, 2003, in an Op-Ed article in The New York Times.

The note written by Mr. Libby will be a crucial piece of evidence in a false-statement case against him if Mr. Fitzgerald decides to pursue it, lawyers in the case said. It also explains why Mr. Fitzgerald waged a long legal battle to obtain the testimony of reporters who were known to have talked to Mr. Libby.

The reporters involved have said that they did not supply Mr. Libby with details about Mr. Wilson and his wife. Matthew Cooper of Time magazine, in his account of a deposition on the subject, wrote that he asked Mr. Libby whether he had even heard that Ms. Wilson had a role in sending her husband to Africa. Mr. Cooper said that Mr. Libby did not use Ms. Wilson's name but replied, "Yeah, I've heard that too."

In her testimony to the grand jury, Judith Miller, a reporter for The New York Times, said Mr. Libby sought from the start of her three conversations with him to "insulate his boss from Mr. Wilson's charges."

So Cheney and Libby had a conversation regarding a Washington Post article about Joe Wilson going to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was buying uranium yellowcake. Such an article would certainly interest both of them, considering Cheney's office was at the forefront of the White House PR machine to sell the invasion of Iraq to the American people. Cheney would have certainly wanted to gather whatever information he could regarding this story. Enter CIA director George Tenet having to provide all intelligence material regarding this matter, and yes possibly including Valerie Plame's name with the material. Tenet may not have expected Cheney's office to possibly use Plame's name as a means to discredit Joe Wilson. Tenet was certainly furious about the Plame leak, ordering his own CIA investigation into the affair. This is just another piece of this complicated puzzle.

Bushies Feeling The Boss' Wrath

Okay, I usually don't quote the New York Daily News, but I do have to wonder if this story has some validity to it. From the New York Daily News:

WASHINGTON - Facing the darkest days of his presidency, President Bush is frustrated, sometimes angry and even bitter, his associates say.
With a seemingly uncontrollable insurgency in Iraq, the White House is bracing for the political fallout from a grim milestone that could come any day: the combat death of the 2,000th American G.I.

This week could also bring a special prosecutor's decision that could shake the foundations of the Bush government.

The President's top political guru, Karl Rove, and Vice President Cheney's right-hand man, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, are at the center of a two-year criminal probe into the leak of a CIA agent's identity. Many Bush staffers believe indictments are likely.

"He's like the lion in winter," observed a political friend of Bush. "He's frustrated. He remains quite confident in the decisions he has made. But this is a guy who wanted to do big things in a second term. Given his nature, there's no way he'd be happy about the way things have gone."

Bush usually reserves his celebrated temper for senior aides because he knows they can take it. Lately, however, some junior staffers have also faced the boss' wrath.

"This is not some manager at McDonald's chewing out the help," said a source with close ties to the White House when told about these outbursts. "This is the President of the United States, and it's not a pleasant sight."

WOW! What a mess of contradictions. He wanted to do big things, but the events have spiraled out of his control, and because of that, he has unleashed his wrath within the walls of the White House. Not some manager at McDonald's chewing out the help? I use to work as a supervisor at a Fosters Freeze hamburger restaurant. Too many rush orders for hamburgers, french fries, and chocolate shakes--coming in at the same time--can cause you very quickly to become helpless. Especially if the kitchen staff is incompetent. Continuing on:

Presidential advisers and friends say Bush is a mass of contradictions: cheerful and serene, peevish and melancholy, occasionally lapsing into what he once derided as the "blame game." They describe him as beset but unbowed, convinced that history will vindicate the major decisions of his presidency even if they damage him and his party in the 2006 and 2008 elections.

At the same time, these sources say Bush, who has a long history of keeping staffers in their place, has lashed out at aides as his political woes have mounted.

"The President is just unhappy in general and casting blame all about," said one Bush insider. "Andy [Card, the chief of staff] gets his share. Karl gets his share. Even Cheney gets his share. And the press gets a big share."

The vice president remains Bush's most trusted political confidant. Even so, the Daily News has learned Bush has told associates Cheney was overly involved in intelligence issues in the runup to the Iraq war that have been seized on by Bush critics.

Bush is so dismayed that "the only person escaping blame is the President himself," said a sympathetic official, who delicately termed such self-exoneration "illogical."

A second senior Bush loyalist disagreed, saying Bush knows "some of these things are self-inflicted," like the Miers nomination, where Bush jettisoned contrary advice from his advisers and appointed his longtime personal lawyer.

"He must know that the way he did that, relying on his own judgment and instinct, was not good," another key adviser said.

I wonder what is going to happen when Fitzgerald starts handing down indictments this week?

FBI Papers Indicate Intelligence Violations

This is what you get when a domestic agency is given unfettered power to spy on you. From the Washington Post:

The FBI has conducted clandestine surveillance on some U.S. residents for as long as 18 months at a time without proper paperwork or oversight, according to previously classified documents to be released today.

Records turned over as part of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit also indicate that the FBI has investigated hundreds of potential violations related to its use of secret surveillance operations, which have been stepped up dramatically since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks but are largely hidden from public view.

This is what you get when the Bush administration and Republicans are given carte blanch in completely shredding your constitutional and civil rights.

In one case, FBI agents kept an unidentified target under surveillance for at least five years -- including more than 15 months without notifying Justice Department lawyers after the subject had moved from New York to Detroit. An FBI investigation concluded that the delay was a violation of Justice guidelines and prevented the department "from exercising its responsibility for oversight and approval of an ongoing foreign counterintelligence investigation of a U.S. person."

In other cases, agents obtained e-mails after a warrant expired, seized bank records without proper authority and conducted an improper "unconsented physical search," according to the documents.

Although heavily censored, the documents provide a rare glimpse into the world of domestic spying, which is governed by a secret court and overseen by a presidential board that does not publicize its deliberations. The records are also emerging as the House and Senate battle over whether to put new restrictions on the controversial USA Patriot Act, which made it easier for the government to conduct secret searches and surveillance but has come under attack from civil liberties groups.

The records were provided to The Washington Post by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group that has sued the Justice Department for records relating to the Patriot Act.

And the Bush White House wants to provide even more powers for the federal government to spy on you via the Patriot Act.

"We're seeing what might be the tip of the iceberg at the FBI and across the intelligence community," Sobel said. "It indicates that the existing mechanisms do not appear adequate to prevent abuses or to ensure the public that abuses that are identified are treated seriously and remedied."

FBI officials disagreed, saying that none of the cases have involved major violations and most amount to administrative errors. The officials also said that any information obtained from improper searches or eavesdropping is quarantined and eventually destroyed.

"Every investigator wants to make sure that their investigation is handled appropriately, because they're not going to be allowed to keep information that they didn't have the proper authority to obtain," said one senior FBI official, who declined to be identified by name because of the ongoing litigation. "But that is a relatively uncommon occurrence. The vast majority of the potential [violations] reported have to do with administrative timelines and time frames for renewing orders."

The documents provided to EPIC focus on 13 cases from 2002 to 2004 that were referred to the Intelligence Oversight Board, an arm of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board that is charged with examining violations of the laws and directives governing clandestine surveillance. Case numbers on the documents indicate that a minimum of 287 potential violations were identified by the FBI during those three years, but the actual number is certainly higher because the records are incomplete.

FBI officials declined to say how many alleged violations they have identified or how many were found to be serious enough to refer to the oversight board.

But in a letter to be sent today to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sobel and other EPIC officials argue that the documents show how little Congress and the public know about the use of clandestine surveillance by the FBI and other agencies. The group advocates legislation requiring the attorney general to report violations to the Senate.

The documents, EPIC writes, "suggest that there may be at least thirteen instances of unlawful intelligence investigations that were never disclosed to Congress."

Don't you feel safe now?

Bush Won't Release Miers Records From White House Work

This is from the Los Angeles Times:

WASHINGTON -- Reiterating a position he has held throughout his effort to win Senate confirmation for Harriet E. Miers as a Supreme Court justice, President Bush said today he would refuse to turn over to the Senate copies of documents reflecting her work at the White House.

Republican and Democratic senators called on President Bush on Sunday to release the documents relating to Miers' service as White House counsel, with some warning that she might not win confirmation otherwise.

But Bush told reporters today that making public such information would dampen the freedom of staff members, in this and future administrations, to give the president unvarnished advice, and "that would make it impossible for me and other presidents to be able to make sound decisions."

"They may ask for paperwork about the decision-making process, what her recommendations were, and that would breach very important confidentiality," Bush said, adding: "It's a red line I'm not willing to cross.

"People can learn about Harriet Miers through hearings, but we are not going to destroy this business about people being able to walk into the oval Office and say, 'Mr. President, here's my advice to you, here's what I think is important.' And that's not only important for this president, it's important for future presidents," he said.

In discussions on television talk shows Sunday, senators of both parties said the biggest obstacle to Miers' confirmation was a lack of information about her capabilities.

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), ordinarily a Bush ally but also a social conservative who is expected to seek the GOP presidential nomination in 2008, warned that the Senate "is not a rubber stamp."

"If we're to give advice and consent, we've got to have a full picture," Brownback said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday."

And this is coming from a Republican senator! Continuing on:

Both Brownback, a member of the Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), the committee's top Democrat, argued that because the president said he nominated Miers because of her White House experience, he should waive executive privilege and release files on at least some of her work.

"The president has based that decision on what he's seen her do in the White House," Leahy said on the same Fox News program. "We ought to at least know what it was she did in the White House."

Brownback added: "I do think we're going to have to see more information. Not attorney-client privilege-type information, but more information of the work product that she was involved in, in the White House, that's not of a legal nature, but that's of a policy nature."

Mr. President, simply parroting the idea that Harriet Miers is qualified because she worked for you and you say she's qualified is not going to get her on the Supreme Court. Like it or not, you better start producing documentation which proves that she's qualified. Because she's made a lousy presentation of herself to both Republican and Democratic senators. First, she submitted one of the worst responses to senators questionnaires. Then she flubbed herself regarding cases in private meetings with senators. And finally, the evangelical right-wingnuts don't believe she's conservative enough for their tastes. Harriet Miers is going down in flames--both due to your incompetence for choosing her, and due to her own poor presentation of herself. And the Democrats don't even have to lift a finger because of it.

But they just may will. The Democrats just may force a nuclear showdown with a filibuster, depending on how Miers does in her confirmation hearings. Or Miers may just screw up so badly in the hearings that she'll be shot down by both Republicans and Democrats--leaving the filibuster ready for if you try to select a Janice Rogers Brown or a Patricia Owens to the bench. If you expect Miers to waltz through the confirmation hearings, claiming she can't say anything about ideological issues since they may come up in the court, a la John Roberts, then you're living in a complete fantasy land.

Republicans Testing Ways to Blunt Leak Charges

This is interesting. From the New York Times:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 - With a decision expected this week on possible indictments in the C.I.A. leak case, allies of the White House suggested Sunday that they intended to pursue a strategy of attacking any criminal charges as a disagreement over legal technicalities or the product of an overzealous prosecutor.

So the White House PR spin machine has been working overtime. Of course, the Sunday morning talk programs was just one way for the PR machine to spin their own tale. We'll start with Kay Bailey Hutchinson:

On Sunday, Republicans appeared to be preparing to blunt the impact of any charges. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, speaking on the NBC news program "Meet the Press," compared the leak investigation with the case of Martha Stewart and her stock sale, "where they couldn't find a crime and they indict on something that she said about something that wasn't a crime."

Ms. Hutchison said she hoped "that if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars."

I love this quote. It is such an absurd circular logic that is amazing. So KBH is worried as to whether Fitzgerald is going to hand down an indictment of a crime, or will it be an indictment of a perjury technicality, when Fitzgerald couldn't indict on a crime or waste time and money on an investigation that went nowhere. Gee...Doesn't that sound like Bill Clinton's own indictments for having an extramarital affair, issued by right-wingnut Ken Starr who was originally meant to investigate an Arkansas land deal called Whitewater, wasted taxpayers time and money while not finding anything criminal against the Clintons in this Whitewater deal? The fun goes on:

But allies of the White House have quietly been circulating talking points in recent days among Republicans sympathetic to the administration, seeking to help them make the case that bringing charges like perjury mean the prosecutor does not have a strong case, one Republican with close ties to the White House said Sunday. Other people sympathetic to Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby have said that indicting them would amount to criminalizing politics and that Mr. Fitzgerald did not understand how Washington works.

Some Republicans have also been reprising a theme that was often sounded by Democrats during the investigations into President Bill Clinton, that special prosecutors and independent counsels lack accountability and too often pursue cases until they find someone to charge.

Congressional Republicans have also been signaling that they want to put some distance between their agenda and the White House's potential legal and political woes, seeking to cast the leak case as an inside-the-Beltway phenomenon of little interest to most voters.

"I think we just need to stick to our knitting on the topics and the subjects the American people care about," Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, said on "Fox News Sunday."

So Mr. Brownback...What subjects should the American people care about? The badly mismanaged Iraq war? The upcoming high energy prices for this winter? The disastrous FEMA aid and reconstruction programs coming after Katrina and Rita? And who knows what will happen as Wilma strikes the Florida coast? So we should just forget about Valerie Plame, and the fact that the Bush administration lied to the American people, then tried to silence criticism through illegally outing a CIA agent.

The case, which traces back to an effort by the White House to rebut criticism of its use of intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq, has grown into a crisis for the administration that has the potential to shape the remainder of Mr. Bush's second term. Democrats signaled Sunday that they would use the inquiry to help weave a broader tapestry portraying the Republican Party as corrupt and the White House as dishonest with the American people.

"We know that the president wasn't truthful with us when he sent us to Iraq," Howard Dean, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said on "This Week" on ABC. "What got Rove and Libby in trouble was because they were attacking, which the Republicans always do, attacking somebody who criticized them and disagreed with them. They make the attacks personal. They go over the line."

The Republicans made the attacks personal. That is the main problem with the Bush White House. And Rove, Libby, Cheney, and maybe even the president himself thought they could be above the law, in getting away with these attacks. Well, they couldn't get away with it this time, and it will almost be difficult for the Bush spin-meisters to talk their way out of this fiasco. Continuing on:

[Fitzgerald's] silence has left much of official Washington and nearly everyone who works at or with the White House in a state of high anxiety. That has been compounded by the widespread belief that there are aspects of the case beyond those directly involving Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby that remain all but unknown outside of Mr. Fitzgerald's office. Among them is the mystery of who first provided the C.I.A. officer's identity to the syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak, who published it on July 14, 2003.

The negative effects on Mr. Bush's presidency if his senior aides were indicted, said James A. Thurber, director of the Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies at American University in Washington, would be as great as the positive effects of Mr. Bush's handling of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"This is the most important turning point for his administration in terms of turning down and losing support," Mr. Thurber said.

A weakened White House, he said, could lead to further infighting among the conservatives who provide most of Mr. Bush's legislative, grass-roots and financial support, and could leave the administration with even less political clout to sway Democrats in Republican-leaning states to back Mr. Bush's agenda.

Republicans acknowledged the problems facing the White House but said Mr. Bush would ultimately be judged on whether he produced results in addressing the issues of most concern to the American people.

We'll just have to wait and see when the indictments are handed out.

Bush to Announce Choice to Succeed Greenspan Today

The cronyism never stops. This is from the New York Times:

WASHINGTON -- President Bush said Monday he was nearing a decision on naming a successor to Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan. An announcement was expected at 1 p.m. EDT.

Several news reports say President Bush has picked Ben Bernanke, his top economic adviser.

Greenspan's term expires in August, 1987. His term as chairman ends Jan. 31.

Asked about the appointment, Bush said, "We'll be making an announcement soon."

Several news reports say President Bush has picked Ben Bernanke, his top economic adviser

So Bernake is Bush's top economic advisor? Why am I not surprised if he is chosen ad chairman for the Fed Reserve.

Judiciary Panel May Ask Dobson to Testify

Here's a screwball turn in the Harriet Miers Confirmation Show. This is from the Washington Post:

The Senate Judiciary Committee is likely to summon a leading conservative Christian to explain the private assurances he says he received from the White House about Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, the committee's chairman said yesterday.

Testimony by Focus on the Family founder James C. Dobson would heighten the political and religious overtones of the already-high-stakes confirmation hearing for Miers, scheduled to start two weeks from today.

Dobson is among several evangelical leaders enlisted by the White House to vouch for Miers's conservative credentials among right-leaning groups unhappy with her nomination. He spoke with Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove shortly before President Bush announced the nomination, and later hinted he had received privileged information. "When you know some of the things that I know -- that I probably shouldn't know -- you will understand why I have said, with fear and trepidation, that Harriet Miers will be a good justice," Dobson said told his national radio audience Oct. 5.

When you know some of the things that I know--that I probably shouldn't know--you will understand why I have said, with fear and trepidation, that Harriet Miers will ba good justice.So tell me Mr. Dobson--what is the secret thing that you shouldn't know about Harriet Miers? What did the White House tell you? The American people should have a right to know--including those of us who are certainly suspicious of Harriet Miers. I know that I don't like this idea of the Bush White House telling its hard-lined right wingnuts secrets regarding a potential Supreme Court Justice. Because, Mr Dobson, if you're making secret deals with the White House regarding this nominee, then I don't want her sitting on the bench.

Young Democrats Sharpen Tactics Against Old Rivals

This is an interesting article from the Washington Post:

With the Capitol all but deserted last Monday night, the Democratic "30-Something Working Group" seized the House floor and took aim at their Republican adversaries.

As C-SPAN cameras beamed their performance around the country, Rep. Timothy J. Ryan, 32, of Ohio and Rep. Kendrick Meek, 39, of Florida recited a litany of GOP misdeeds -- mismanaging Hurricane Katrina and neglecting education and health care, for example -- and offered the Democrats' alternatives.

The two newcomers -- who have served a combined six years in the House -- are part of a new generation of Democrats who are working to try to topple the GOP. Their fresh ideas, modern media skills and aggressive political tactics have inspired a party that has drifted for much of the past decade -- wedded to old notions and seemingly incapable of capitalizing on White House and congressional Republican miscues.

As part of the new approach, House and Senate Democrats are devising an alternative agenda of key policies. Ryan is pushing proposals aimed at drastically reducing the number of abortions over the coming decade by offering support and services to pregnant women. Others are crafting a plan for reducing U.S. dependence on imported oil by using more domestic agricultural products, an approach that would have significant appeal to Midwestern voters.

"We can't be Dr. No to everything Republicans do," said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). "We have to provide our own positive ideas."

The rise of the new breed, including Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and Barack Obama (Ill.), the Senate's only African American and the keynote speaker at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, marks a generational divide in a party long dominated by Northeastern liberals and Southern conservatives.

Unlike some of their forbears, the newcomers are pragmatists who view the past decade of GOP rule not as an aberration but as a sea change in political campaigning, fundraising and lobbying to which Democrats must adjust. They arrived in Washington as challengers and are comfortable questioning the establishment -- because they have not been part of it.

This is one thing the Democrats need to do. They need fresh blood to provide fresh new ideas on how to fix the problems of the country. The Democratic Party needs to come up with new ideas that reflect both government accountability in solving these issues with a free market approach of business stimulation. Great Society programs of the old Democratic Party will not work any more than the unfettered Big Business free market approach of the current Republican Party. The Democratic Party is starting to realize this. Consider the following:

While change within the party has not always gone smoothly, the top leaders recognize the importance of giving newer members running room. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has passed over more senior lawmakers to give newcomers key committee assignments and speaking roles during high-profile floor debates. For instance, she placed Meek on the Homeland Security and Armed Services panels, to enable him to earn national security credentials. And she gave Rep. Stephanie Herseth (S.D.) a prominent role in fighting a GOP plan to reduce Medicaid spending.

She also put junior lawmakers in charge of the 2006 campaign effort. "They are the future," Pelosi said. "And they are starting to set the pace for where things go."

In the Senate, newer faces must vie with Democratic presidential aspirants for media attention. Two who are breaking through are Obama, 44, and Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), 42, one of 22 Senate Democrats who supported John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice of the United States. Yesterday, Pryor gave the Democratic response to Bush's radio address.

"One of the advantages of having a lot of new blood in the Senate is that we don't necessarily come to the chamber with a lot of baggage from past battles," Pryor said. "A lot of my senior colleagues vividly remember the Bork nomination. I don't care about Robert Bork. That's in the past, and I don't think we ought to dwell on that."

Pelosi says House and Senate leaders will soon lay out a slate of new ideas, similar to the "Contract With America" that the GOP used to attract voters in 1994, when it took back control of Congress.

One group that Democrats want to tap is veterans and active military members, who have seen their benefits cut or frozen as part of an ongoing budget squeeze. Rep. Artur Davis (D-Ala.), a second-term House member, believes Republicans could pay heavily at the polls throughout the South for overlooking this crucial voting group.

"When I see white male Alabamians shaking their heads, that tells me there are opportunities for Democrats to make major inroads," Davis said.

The Republicans have concentrated their legislation towards benefiting their big-business / Wall Street benefactors, while extolling the virtues of trickle-down economics the middle and lower classes. And at the same time, they've put on a masterful PR show of defining social and religious issues as the primary reason to vote for candidates in elections. This is how they've controlled the electorate in many of the "red states." Indeed, Karl Rove's election strategy for keeping Bush in office was to concentrate on the Christian evangelicals with carefully crafted messages of gay marriages, removing God from American society, Pledge of Allegiance, and heightening fears of the destruction of the nuclear family. These were issues that resonated with the religious red state voters--never mind the fact that these voters were losing their jobs due to business outsourcing. The Republican message has always been about God, Guns and Gays--and will work up to a point until you start asking, "Are you better off than you were four...eight...ten years ago?" This is where the Democrats can make the inroads. But for the Democratic Party to succeed, they are going to have to take control of the message--get away from the Republican Party's desire to talk about God, Guns, and Gays, and start talking about the issues of class warfare, how the Republican Party benefits only the upper-rich elites and Wall Street at the expense of everyone else.

Start asking the question, "Are you better off than you were six years ago?" You might just start winning elections for the Democratic Party.

DeLay seeks new judge in money-laundering case

And now, here's a little legal mudslinging on CNN.Com:

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) -- Rep. Tom DeLay appeared in court Friday for the first time since indictment, but arraignment on conspiracy and money laundering charges was delayed pending a hearing on his request for a new judge in the politically-charged case.

DeLay, who has stepped aside at least for the time being as House majority leader, did not speak during the brief court session, and was not called on to make a plea.

But at a news conference shortly afterward, he attacked the prosecutor in the case as politically motivated, and said, "I will absolutely be exonerated."

Inside the courtroom, Judge Bob Perkins told defense lawyer Dick DeGuerin that "the best way for me to handle" the request for a new judge would be to defer further proceedings.

That set the stage for a pointed exchange between the two men that seemed as much a campaign debate as a courtroom exchange.

You're gong to see a lot of this in the Tom DeLay Trial. DeLay has already accused prosecutor Ronnie Earle of partisan politics, claiming that Earle is a Democrat--Never mind the fact that DeLay probably did launder money through different campaign organizations. So now DeLay is screaming that the judge is also partisan. Continuing on:

In respectful tones, DeGuerin noted that Perkins had donated money to MoveOn.org, a liberal organization that he said has been "selling T-shirts with Mr. DeLay's mug shot on it."

Judge responds

"Let me just say I haven't ever seen that T-shirt, number one. Number two, I haven't bought it. Number three, the last time I contributed to MoveOn that I know of was prior to the November election last year, when they were primarily helping Sen. Kerry," responded the judge.

MoveOn.org denied it was selling any such shirts, and issued a statement that said, "DeGuerin has either bad information or lied in court."

So, since Perkins donated money to MoveOn.org--which hasn't been selling T-shirts with DeLay's mug shot on it--then that means that Perkins is also a partisan and should be replaced by a friendly conservative judge who'll throw DeLay's case out? I love the judge's response. Of course, prosecutor Earle has some interesting things to say about this fun day in court:

Prosecutor Ronnie Earle signaled he intends to contest the request for a new judge.

"What this means is if a judge had contributed to Crime Stoppers that judge could not hear a burglary case," Earle said. "Carried to its extreme, that is what I think this motion means and I think that's absurd."

"We don't live in a country where political party determines the measure of justice," Earle said, adding that he though DeLay could get a fair trial in the state's capital.

This is going to be a fun trial.

Judge: Scott Peterson not entitled to wife's insurance

And now, for something a little different from the Fitzmas indictments, Tom DeLay's smirk in court, or even Harrient Miers "dog ate my homework" excuse, here's an interesting story off CNN.Com

FRESNO, California (AP) -- A judge ruled Friday that proceeds from a $250,000 life insurance policy Scott Peterson took out on his wife, Laci, will go to her mother instead.

Because Scott Peterson was convicted of killing his pregnant wife, Stanislaus County Superior Court Judge Roger Beauchesne said he is not entitled to collect the benefits of her life insurance policy. Under state law, criminals cannot profit from their crimes.

The judge said the money should go to the executor of Laci Peterson's estate, her mother, Sharon Rocha.

Neither Rocha, who had petitioned the court, nor Scott Peterson's attorney could be reached for comment Friday.

Scott Peterson was sentenced to death earlier this year for killing his wife and their unborn son. Their bodies were found on the shore of San Francisco Bay months after her December 2002 disappearance.

This was the second "Trial of the Century," right after Michael Jackson's molestation trial, that was going on in our sunny state. I guess Scotty wanted to kill Lacy so he can collect the insurance money, then play like he was James Bond with seducing Amber Frey (Or any other Modesto twenty-something he could get his hands on). Well, Scotty--looks like you're out of everything! No insurance money, no Amber, no playing James Bond. At least you can play in the shower with Bubba on Death Row.

Posting of CIA Leak Probe Documents May Signal Indictments Ahead

This is from the Los Angeles Times:

WASHINGTON -- Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor rumored to be wrapping up the long-running investigation of the leak of a CIA agent's identity, set up a website this week posting previously filed documents in the case.

Fitzgerald's spokesman, Randall Samborn, said he "strongly cautions against reading anything into the timing" of the website launch.

However, others familiar with the case said it was unlikely that the prosecutor would set up an Internet page if his investigation was going to close without indictments.

Fitzgerald's site, which appeared Wednesday, has an American flag with the words "Department of Justice" emblazoned over it. Underneath is the prosecutor's name in large type. Beneath that are five documents, including the Dec. 30, 2003 letter from acting Atty. Gen. James Comey appointing Fitzgerald to investigate the leak. Another entry includes a letter from Comey permitting Fitzgerald to expand his investigation to look into other possible federal crimes, among them perjury, destruction of evidence, intimidation of witnesses or obstruction of justice

Here is the Patrick Fitzgerald's website:
Fitzgerald's crossing his t's and dotting his i's. If he is going to hand down indictments, he'll certainly post them on the site--as well as any grand jury report. This has been one of the most talked-about stories over the past two years, not just in the press but also in the blogosphere. There has been plenty of accusations, suspicions, charges and counter-charges made over this scandal on both sides of the political spectrum. So whatever Fitzgerald is going to do, you can bet he's going to post it on this website, due to the intense interest in the scandal.

On another note, the Bush White House has been pretty quiet lately. Here's an interesting story from the Washington Post:

At 7:30 each morning, President Bush's senior staff gathers to discuss the important issues of the day -- Middle East peace, the Harriet Miers nomination, the latest hurricane bearing down on the coast. Everything, that is, except the issue on everyone's mind.

With special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald driving his CIA leak investigation toward an apparent conclusion, the White House now confronts the looming prospect that no one in the building is eager to address: a Bush presidency without Karl Rove. In a capital consumed by scandal speculation, most White House senior officials are no more privy than outsiders to the prosecutor's intentions. But the surreal silence in the Roosevelt Room each morning belies the nervous discussions racing elsewhere around the West Wing.

Out of the hushed hallway encounters and one-on-one conversations, several scenarios have begun to emerge if Rove or vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis Libby is indicted and forced out. Senior GOP officials are developing a public relations strategy to defend those accused of crimes and, more importantly, shield Bush from further damage, according to Republicans familiar with the plans. And to help steady a shaken White House, they say, the president might bring in trusted advisers such as budget director Joshua B. Bolten, lobbyist Ed Gillespie or party chairman Ken Mehlman.

These tentative discussions come at a time when White House senior officials are exploring staff changes to address broader structural problems that have bedeviled Bush's second term, according to Republicans who said they could speak candidly about internal deliberations only if they are not named. But it remains unclear whether Bush agrees that changes are needed and the uncertainty has unsettled his team.

"People are very demoralized and unhappy," a former administration official said. "The leak investigation is [part of it], but things were not happy before this took preeminence. It's just been a rough year. A lot has gotten done, but nothing is easy."

You can bet Fitzgerald's new website isn't making the White House staffers any more happy or relaxed.

Miers Firm Received Bush Campaign Payments

Found this off Yahoo News:

WASHINGTON - George W. Bush's rising political fortunes provided a windfall for Harriet Miers' law firm.

Campaign records show Bush's Texas gubernatorial campaigns paid Miers a total of $163,000 in legal fees, most of it for work done during the future president's 1998 re-election bid.

Some senators are planning to explore Miers' legal work for Bush during her confirmation process to be the newest Supreme Court justice, but the White House says it won't release any memos detailing that work.

So what did Miers do for that $163,000? Continuing on with the money:

Reports filed with the Texas Ethics Commission show that two payments of $70,000 were made to Miers' Locke, Purnell, Rain and Harrell firm in Dallas within a month of each other during the 1998 campaign. Another $16,000 in payments were made between March and December 1999.

The 1998 totals dwarfed the $7,000 Bush paid Miers' firm during his first run for governor in 1994, and are extremely large for campaign legal work in Texas, an expert said.

"I'm baffled," said Randall B. Wood, a partner in the Austin firm of Ray, Wood and Bonilla, and former director of Common Cause of Texas. "I've never seen that kind of money spent on a campaign lawyer. It's unprecedented."

The amount received by Locke, Purnell for the 1998 Texas race approaches the national tab for the 2004 Bush presidential re-election campaign, when at least $191,000 was spent on lawyers, Federal Election Commission records show.

In 2000, the Bush presidential campaign spent about $365,000 on legal services, the records show.

The Associated Press reviewed Texas records between 1993 and 2000, although detailed reports weren't available for the last half of 1995. A state commission spokeswoman said the panel had planned to retain all of the records because of their historic significance when Bush became president, but some were misplaced.

Dana Perrino, a White House spokeswoman, said the legal fees to Miers' firm were for routine campaign work, but declined to be more specific. Presidential aides declined to say whether Miers ever worked on researching Bush's past, such as his military record.

A spokeswoman for Locke, Liddell & Sapp — the firm created when Miers' office merged with another Dallas law firm — said it wouldn't provide details on the payments, citing attorney-client privilege.

I'm not sure what to make of this. George Bush spent a lot of money for Harriet Miers and her firm to do some type of work--work that is consideresensitiveve to Bush. What was that type of work? Did Miers work to remove whatever traces of inconsistencies regarding Bush's national guard military records? And some of these Texas campaign finance records are also misplaced after 1995. What is with that?

What did Miers do for Bush?

It is certainly interesting to note that whatever work Miers did for Bush during his gubernatorial campaign, Bush is now rewarding her with a Supreme Court seat.

Bush vows not to be distracted by political problems

Found this off CNN.Com:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush, jarred by investigations of White House officials and congressional leaders and an uproar over his Supreme Court nomination, said Thursday there was "some background noise here, a lot of chatter" complicating the work of his administration.

But he said, "The American people expect me to do my job, and I'm going to."

Bush's comments, at a Rose Garden news conference with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, reflected the administration's argument that its agenda is moving forward despite a growing list of problems.

At the same time, he said, "There's some background noise here, a lot of chatter, a lot of speculation and opining."

When the president says there's a lot of "background noise here, a lot of chatter," and then says the American people expect him to do his job, he's trying to convey a sense of strong leadership and that his staff is not consumed with the Valerie Plamegate scandal. The unfortunate thing is that the Bush White House is consumed with the Valerie Plamegate scandal. Everyone is waiting to see whether special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will pop up with indictments against Karl Rove or Scooter Libby--or even Dick Cheney. Bush's selection of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court has gotten a ton of criticism from his hard-line base, saying that she's not conservative enough. Of course, Miers didn't help herself with her incomplete answers to the Senate's questionnaire.

What you're seeing here is that the White House no longer has any control over the news events. Instead of projecting news that is favorable to its policies and positions, the White House is instead scrambling to react to news events that are spiraling out of its control. The White House has to react to any indictments that Fitzgerald may serve against Rove, Libby, or other Bush officials. The White House has to react to criticisms against Miers. The Miers story should have been a story that could be controlled by the Bush PR people--similar to John Roberts. Unfortunately there, Bush chose the wrong person for the wrong job--in terms of PR. Hurricanes' Libby, Rita, and Wilma were total disasters that were exaberated by the incompetence of Bush cronies placed into top FEMA jobs. And the DeLay / Jack Abramoff scandal certainly doesn't help the GOP or the Bush administration indirectly. These cascading news events just pile up, one after another, into a snowball effect where it is impossible for any White House PR team to recapture the initiative.

It is going to be a long three years.

Bush Critic Became Target of Libby, Former Aides Say

This is from the Los Angeles Times:

WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff was so angry about the public statements of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, a Bush administration critic married to an undercover CIA officer, that he monitored all of Wilson's television appearances and urged the White House to mount an aggressive public campaign against him, former aides say.

Those efforts by the chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, began shortly after Wilson went public with his criticisms in 2003. But they continued into last year — well after the Justice Department began an investigation in September 2003, into whether administration officials had illegally disclosed the CIA operative's identity, say former White House aides.

While other administration officials were maintaining a careful distance from Wilson in 2004, Libby ordered up a compendium of information that could be used to rebut Wilson's claims that the administration had "twisted" intelligence to exaggerate the threat from Iraq before the U.S. invasion.

So now the details of the scandal are starting to show up. Scooter Libby had a vendetta against Joe Wilson for his criticisms against the Bush administration. And he was gathering up a lot of information on Wilson to use against him. Continuing on:

Libby pressed the administration to publicly counter Wilson, sparking a debate with other White House officials who thought the tactic would call more attention to the former diplomat and his criticisms. That debate ended after an April 2004 meeting in the office of White House Communications Director Daniel Bartlett, when staffers were told "don't engage" Wilson, according to notes taken during the meeting by one person present.

"Scooter had a plan to counter Wilson and a passionate desire to do so," said a second person, a former White House official familiar with the internal deliberations. Like other former White House staff, this person spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing criminal investigation.

So what was Scooter's plan? The Times does have some details:

Libby's anger over Wilson's 2003 charges has been known. But new interviews and documents obtained by The Times provide a more detailed view of the depth and duration of Libby's interest in Wilson. They also show that the vice president's office closely monitored news coverage.

On one occasion, the office prohibited a reporter from traveling with Cheney aboard Air Force Two, because the vice president's daughter said Cheney was unhappy with that newspaper's coverage.

Libby "would see something had appeared in the newspaper or on television and wanted to use the White House operation to counter it," one former official said.

After Wilson published a book criticizing the administration in April 2004, during the closely fought presidential campaign, Libby became consumed by passages that he believed were inaccurate or unfair to Cheney, former aides said. He ordered up a meticulous catalog of Wilson's claims and public statements going back to early 2003.

The result was a packet that included excerpts from press clips and television transcripts of Wilson's statements that were divided into categories, such as "political ties" or "WMD."

The compendium used boldfaced type to call attention to certain comments by Wilson, such as one in the Daily Iowan, the University of Iowa student newspaper, in which Wilson was quoted as calling Cheney "a lying son of a bitch." It also highlighted Wilson's answers to questions from television journalists about his work with Sen. John F. Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee.

The intensity with which Libby reacted to Wilson had many senior White House staffers puzzled, and few agreed with his counterattack plan or its rationale, former aides said.

The more the details come out of this scandal, the more it reminds me of Watergate and the Nixon administration. Scooter Libby creating a single file of Joe Wilson containing press clips and video tapes--including a press clipping from a college newspaper. Nixon had his 'Enemies List' which included information and literature to unfairly attach candidates. There's the ongoing link of Libby and Rove planting Valerie Plame's name to the press. You can bet that Nixon's men planted their own stories in the press to destroy their opponents. It is incredible.

This is what happens when you place ideologues into positions of great power, where they are responsible to no-one. They feel it is their right to use that power--through any means necessary--to destroy the opponents who criticize their policies.

Rove Told Jury Libby May Have Been His Source In Leak Case

Got this from the Washington Post:

White House adviser Karl Rove told the grand jury in the CIA leak case that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, may have told him that CIA operative Valerie Plame worked for the intelligence agency before her identity was revealed, a source familiar with Rove's account said yesterday.

In a talk that took place in the days before Plame's CIA employment was revealed in 2003, Rove and Libby discussed conversations they had had with reporters in which Plame and her marriage to Iraq war critic Joseph C. Wilson IV were raised, the source said. Rove told the grand jury the talk was confined to information the two men heard from reporters, the source said.

Rove has also testified that he also heard about Plame from someone else outside the White House, but could not recall who.

The account is the first time a person familiar with Rove's testimony has provided clues about where the deputy chief of staff learned about Plame, and confirmed that Rove and Libby were involved in a conversation about her before her identity became public. The disclosure seemed to further undermine the White House's contention early in the case that neither man was in any way involved in unmasking Plame.

Can you see where this is going? Rove claims that he learned of Valerie Plame's name through Scooter Libby. Libby will probably claim that he learned of Valerie Plame through someone else lower down the White House totem pole. The president's men are starting to craft their stories of deniability, out of fear of Fitzgerald's up-coming indictments. And when this happens, you can bet the top people will blame the lower underlings for being overzealous in their jobs. The rats are leaving the sinking ship. But there's more:

John Hannah, an aide to Cheney and one of two dozen people questioned in the CIA leak case, has told friends in recent months he is worried he may be implicated by the investigation, according to two U.S. officials.

It is not clear whether Hannah had any role in unmasking Plame, or why he should fear Fitzgerald's probe. But the eleventh-hour emergence of another possible target shows how Fitzgerald has cast his net so widely over the past two years that it is impossible to know who, if anyone, it might ensnare.

Fitzgerald and his team have interviewed or taken before the grand jury at least two dozen officials or staffers from the White House, the vice president's office, the State Department and the CIA, according to people involved in the case.

That is a pretty wide net that Fitzgerald has cast in this probe. Not only is Fitzgerald looking at NY Times reporter Judith Miller, Karl Rove, and Scooter Libby, but he's also interviewed John Hannah, Vice President Dick Cheney, "Mary Matalin, a former top Cheney adviser; Catherine Martin, his former communications adviser; and Jennifer Millerwise, his former spokeswoman." But there's more:

Fitzgerald has dug into the deepest corners of the administration, pressing for information about everything from the mechanics of a secretive group of officials tasked with selling the Iraq war, to the State Department officials who assembled information on Wilson, the diplomat-turned-Iraq war critic, according to people familiar with the case. The focus has been on who leaked Plame's name, and who else knew about it.

Fitzgerald is looking into the entire Bush PR team that was charged with selling the war to the American public. These are the people who demanded that the CIA produce intelligence reports that were favorable to their arguments for invading Iraq. And any dissenters in the intelligence agency would be harshly dealt with--such as Joe Wilson. Cheney's office was central in this PR effort. According to the Post:

Fitzgerald's interest in the vice president's office became clearer as the case continued: Cheney was central to building the case that then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein sought nuclear weapons-grade material in Niger and Libby helped discredit Wilson in part by talking about his wife, according to lawyers in the case.

There's still more. Any dissenters who were critical of the Bush policy of invading Iraq were not only vilified by the administration, but had to be quashed and destroyed. Joe Wilson went to Niger to investigate the claims of Iraq purchasing uranium yellow-cake. He didn't find any proof to those claims, and yet President Bush used that argument to make the case for going to war with Iraq in his State of the Union address. When Wilson criticized Bush in a Times editorial, the Bush White House had to strike back.

[Time Magazine's Matt] Cooper, after receiving permission from sources, testified before the grand jury and later said publicly that Rove and Libby had talked to him about Plame. But other reporters were contacted by other White House officials about Plame during the crucial week in July 2003 after Wilson's views became public, according to government officials and people involved in the case.

This leaves open the possibility of a broader leak campaign. In September of 2003, a senior administration official told The Post that at least six journalists were contacted about Plame by two top White House officials.

And now the memo.

[On the July 2003 presidential trip to Africa,] then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell had a memo that mentioned Wilson's wife, in a section marked "S" for secret, according to some administration officials.

According to people involved in the case, prosecutors believe a printout of that memo was in the front of Air Force One during the July 7-12 trip Bush took to Africa, but investigators are unsure who saw it.

The memo was on Air Force One for all those in the Bush White House to see. Continuing on:

One person in the probe said Fitzgerald showed considerable early interest in the White House Iraq Group, a task force created by Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. in August 2002 and charged with "marketing" the war in Iraq to the public.

The group met weekly in the Situation Room. Its regular participants were Rove, Libby, Hadley, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, adviser Karen Hughes, Matalin, and White House director of legislative affairs Nicholas Calio.

The White House Iraq Group. There's the PR group that Bush used to market the war in Iraq. And look at the names in that group--Rove, Libby, Hadley, Hughes, Matalin, Condi Rice--how much do you want to bet that Dick Cheney attended a couple of those meetings? Any one of these people--who may have been on Air Force One--could have viewed the contents of this memo. They could have made copies for their own files. The big problem here is that Valerie Plame's name is totally out in the open for the Bush White House. Also remember, there was a document circulating at the State Department which also mentioned Valerie Plame's name that was written for Under-Secretary of State Marc Grossman, who was going to use that letter as background material in a White House meeting regarding the criticism of including the yellow-cake intel in Bush's State of the Union speech. This memo was also drafted in June. How much do you want to bet that the meeting was with the White House Iraq Group?

The scandal continues on.

Gov. Spurns Bush in Spat Over Money

This is from the Los Angeles Times:

Long-simmering tensions between Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and President Bush burst into the open Wednesday as the two Republicans clashed over that most basic of political necessities: money.

The governor and president rely on many of the same rich Californians for campaign cash. Yet even in California, a gold mine for politicians, there's only so much to go around, as Schwarzenegger bluntly pointed out Wednesday in Anaheim.

Campaigning for his four initiatives on the Nov. 8 ballot, Schwarzenegger made clear he was miffed that Bush planned to collect $1 million for the Republican National Committee tonight at a dinner for 100 couples at a home in the Beverly Hills area.

"We would have appreciated if he would have done his fundraising after the Nov. 8 election, because you know we need now all the money in the world," Schwarzenegger said. "We want to make sure that we win, that we can have our TV spots out there on television, which is very important."

Responding to questions about Bush's visit, Schwarzenegger stressed his "good working relationship" with the president. But he rejected Bush's invitation to join him Friday morning near Simi Valley to dedicate the new Air Force One exhibit at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. Schwarzenegger said he could not attend because he and his staff were "very busy in our campaigning up and down the state."

A spokesman, however, offered another explanation. Rob Stutzman, communications director of Schwarzenegger's campaign, said the governor needed to honor his "long-standing commitment" to attend a board meeting of After-School All-Stars, a youth program he founded, Friday in Los Angeles.

This week represents a repeat spurning: On Bush's last trip to California in August, Schwarzenegger also declined to see the president. White House spokesman Ken Lisaius declined to respond to Schwarzenegger's comments on fundraising but said Bush "looks forward to working with him on matters of mutual concern in the future."

So the Governator is pissed off at the President for having a fundraising dinner in Beverly Hills, when the Governator needs to collect his own campaign money to fund his special election ballot initiatives. And because of this, the Governator is not going to see the President at the dedication of the Air Force One exhibit--instead, the Governator has to attend a board meeting for a youth program. The board meeting for a youth program could be easily rescheduled, or the Governator could send a representative to the meeting in his place. But it gets better. Continuing on:

For Schwarzenegger, Bush's refusal to delay his trip was particularly irksome because the governor had put himself out for Bush in the tight 2004 presidential contest. He spoke at the Republican National Convention in New York and campaigned for Bush again in the last days of the campaign in Ohio, where victory would ensure the president's reelection. Both appearances are seen in California as having punctured the governor's nonpartisan appeal and contributed to his falling job approval ratings.

At this point, Schwarzenegger's chill toward the president carries a political upside for the governor. Bush has long been highly unpopular among California voters, particularly among the Democrats and independents whose support Schwarzenegger must regain to carry his ballot measures to victory.

The governor has been struggling for months to raise money for the fall campaign. Hobbled in part by the fast pace of his spending on campaign consultants, he has fallen millions of dollars short of what organized labor is pouring into its battle to defeat his election agenda. The governor held a fundraiser Wednesday night at Mission Inn in Riverside and plans to collect more money in the days ahead at events in Fresno, San Diego, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Atherton and Orange County.

Stutzman said the governor's staff recognized that it was tough to change the president's schedule, but "we do think our concerns were voiced early enough that there could have been accommodation."

"We're disappointed they came in to raise money two and a half weeks before the election," Stutzman said.

California Republican Party spokeswoman Karen Hanretty was more confrontational toward the White House in comments Tuesday to the Associated Press.

"Unless President Bush is coming to California to hand over a check from the federal government to help us with the financial challenges we face, the visit seems ill-timed," she was quoted as saying.

There's the big problem. Schwarzenegger campaigned for the president in the 2004 re-elections. He spoke at the Republican National Committee, and was in Ohio days before the election. The Governator threw in his support for the Bush. By throwing his support for Bush, Schwarzenegger has certainly alienated a number of moderate and independent voters who are critical of Bush, and who are now critical of Schwarzenegger due to his pushing the special election ballot initiatives. The special election ballot initiatives are also a problem for the Governator. These initiatives are opposed by big labor and unions--especially the big state employees unions--who have been pouring money in to defeat the measures. The Governator's big-business Republican allies have certainly been raising money as well--but the fundraising campaign is certainly not being helped when President Bush comes out to California to raise money from big business backers at the same time.

Hence--we've got ourselves a lover's spat.

Senators Reject Miers' Replies to Questions

This is from the Los Angeles Times:

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court nomination of Harriet E. Miers, already troubled by a lack of enthusiasm on Capitol Hill, ran into more rough ground Wednesday when senators from both parties rejected her responses to a questionnaire as insufficient.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) and the panel's top Democrat, Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, complained that her answers were at best incomplete — Leahy said some lawmakers considered them insulting — and asked Miers to resubmit answers to some of the questions, especially those about her work in the White House as counsel to President Bush.

I guess the excuse of 'the dog ate my homework' won't work here.

Miers isn't just between a rock and a hard place--she's being flattened by the rock and hard place. First, she was an uninspired nominee that was selected by the Bush White House out of her loyalties to the president, and possibly to provide an ally on the Supreme Court for Bush if any impeachment proceedings take place (If you believe the rumors). Before she can even say anything, the hard-lined right-wingnuts are shredding her, claiming she's not conservative enough or that she'll uphoad Roe, instead of overturning the law as the wingnuts want. And so, to pacify the right-wingnuts, the White House has to spend PR time claiming that Miers is conservative enough to please them, but that type of White House PR is alienating the moderates who don't want ideologues on the Court. And this White House PR is being played out while Miers is trying to woo moderate senators on both sides of the political spectrum, while at the same time trying to avoid answering specific questions regarding her views on social issues--similar to a la Roberts hearings.

Talk about a three-ring-circus. But it gets better. The Times story continues on:

Specter said it was too soon to say Miers was "in trouble." But he described her nomination process as chaotic and said it was being further confused by backdoor messages from the White House intended to reassure conservative leaders — some of whom went public about those discussions — about what she would be like as a judge.

Now here's the fun details:

When Bush nominated Miers to the high court this month, he told skeptics that they would appreciate her virtues as soon as they got to know her. But after meeting with more than 20 members of the Senate and delivering the 57-page questionnaire to the committee Tuesday, Miers seems no closer to winning them over.

She had a misunderstanding with Specter over what she told him about the right to privacy. She stumbled over a softball question from Leahy about whom she most admired among past Supreme Court justices. Even some Republicans who are inclined to support her came out of their meetings damning her with faint praise.

"I might have liked a different type nominee myself, but that's the president's choice," Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said after his meeting with Miers.

The lackluster beginning of her campaign to be confirmed raises the stakes for Miers, and the president, when she appears before the Judiciary Committee. Senators of both parties say her nomination will succeed or fail based on how well she performs.

Senators and aides have been reluctant to provide details of their meetings with Miers because they do not want to antagonize the White House. But some described her as surprisingly reticent and, in a word used by more than one of them, "underwhelming."

Even those who were impressed said that she offered up little of herself in conversation. "In these meetings she has been very guarded," said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

One senator found her much too quiet. The lawmaker had such a hard time hearing Miers that aides had to tell people outside the meeting room to quiet down.

"She doesn't have the gravitas in terms of the constitutional issues," said another senator who has been critical of Miers. The nominee, the senator said, would not answer questions about whether she would recuse herself if issues involving her work with Bush came before the high court.

"Generally when you hold these interviews, people want to show you what they know," the senator said. "She did not respond. Nothing came back."

Miers' questionnaire did little to improve her standing.

"The answers in the questionnaire that came up — the comments I've heard ranged from incomplete to insulting," Leahy said. "Certainly it was inadequate and did not give us enough to prepare for a hearing. We will need to have more."

The senators' request for more detailed answers was unusual in that it was bipartisan and sent one day after Miers delivered the questionnaire.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.), a veteran of 21 Supreme Court nominations, said he could not recall a similar situation where senators from both parties requested that a nominee resubmit responses.

Maybe the dog did eat her homework?

Miers is a political hack. She was selected by Bush out of her loyalty, and the fact that she was his personal lawyer. And you can even make the argument that she was selected to the court to be an ally to the White House, if the Valerie Plamegate scandal opens up with indictments against the top Bush aids (Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney) and possibly if an indictment is handed down against the president. The presidents poll numbers have been sinking fast. Next year is the midterm elections. And if the electorate deserts the president and the Republican Party, you could see a possibility that the Democrats could capture Congress. And if the Democrats do take over Congress, you can bet there will be Congressional investigations into five years worth of Bush scandals--there's going to be something that will come up which will be legal grounds for impeachment of President Bush. Hey, the Republicans tried to impeach Clinton for lying about having an extra marital affair. Miers is being played out to create an ally for the Court--not just for the remote possibility of impeachment proceedings, but also to keep much of the Bush agenda on track--such as the cases for torture against Gitmo prisoners, business deregulation, Social Security privitazation. The problem here is that Miers is not a constitutional scholar. She can't answer these questions of constitutional law and precedent. And there's even more. Continuing on:

In their letter, Specter and Leahy gave Miers a week to answer their questions — including a fuller explanation of why she was briefly suspended from the District of Columbia bar for nonpayment of dues, and how she planned to resolve potential conflicts of interest, including recusing herself from cases involving the administration.

In her questionnaire, Miers had said she would "abide by the spirit and the letter" of the Ethics Reform Act of 1989 in making recusal decisions. The senators appeared to take umbrage at the sketchy response and responded pointedly.

"We are aware of the statutes and codes that generally govern these matters, but recusal decisions of the Supreme Court justices are more complicated because they are not subject to further review," Specter and Leahy wrote. "The committee would like you to address the issues specific to your situation."

Miers sent back an immediate response saying she would work to provide additional materials. But she also raised eyebrows by disclosing that she had neglected to mention a second suspension from the bar — this one from the State Bar of Texas in 1989, also for nonpayment of dues.

White House officials said the suspension was the result of an administrative oversight in her law firm.

"In the mid-1980s, the law firm took over responsibility for paying the annual dues for all the attorneys of the firm," said White House spokeswoman Dana Perino. "In a bulk annual payment in May 1989, the dues for Ms. Miers and two additional lawyers for the firm were inadvertently left out of that payment. As soon as the firm realized the clerical error, they corrected it and she was reinstated with no disciplinary action or sanctions."

But critics said the omissions and errors suggested Miers might be less meticulous than White House aides had painted her.

She failed to pay her annual dues and was suspended by the DC Bar? She's not as meticulous as the White House has painted her. And there was another supension from the State Bar in Texas over non-payment of dues. What is going on here?

I just have to shake my head and laugh.

Texas Court Issues Warrant for DeLay

This is off Yahoo News:

AUSTIN, Texas - A Texas court Wednesday issued a warrant for Rep. Tom DeLay, ordering him to appear at the Fort Bend County jail for booking on state conspiracy and money laundering charges.

The court set an initial $10,000 bail as a routine step before the Texas Republican's first court appearance Friday.

DeLay, R-Texas, could be fingerprinted and photographed, although his lawyers had hoped to avoid this step. DeLay will surrender in his home county, near Houston, although his court appearance will be in Austin.

The warrant, known as a capias, is "a matter of routine and bond will be posted," said DeLay's lawyer, Dick DeGuerin.

DeLay has stepped down as U.S. House majority leader — at least temporarily — under a Republican rule requiring him to relinquish the post if charged with a felony.

Two grand juries have charged DeLay and two political associates in an alleged scheme to violate state election law, by funneling corporate donations to candidates for the Texas Legislature. State law prohibits use of corporate donations to finance state campaigns, although the money can be used for administrative expenses.

Looks like Tom DeLay is gonna do the "perp walk." And you can bet that DeLay's lawyers wouldn't want DeLay to be fingerprinted and photographed--think Michael Jackson! The last thing DeLay would want is to have Democratic and liberal political groups plastering his police mug shot on their campaign literature.