The Spokesman Made for Cable

Presidential Records Watch

Elizabeth Williamson writes in The Washington Post: "A bipartisan proposal targeting White House rules on the release of presidential papers would claw back power over public records from the executive branch, advocates of the bill say.

"The House measure, introduced yesterday, would overturn President Bush's 2001 executive order adding layers of review before presidential papers are made public. Historians and archivists say the order has kept thousands of documents from public view."

Sudeep Reddy writes for the Dallas Morning News: "Unless the order is overturned, scholars said Thursday, Bush's library - expected to be built at Southern Methodist University - may be deprived of much of the substance that would make it a meaningful source of information.

"Archivists and historians are urging SMU to reject the Bush library unless the administration changes its policy. University officials say procedures regarding disclosure of presidential papers should be left to policymakers.

"'We have to ask ourselves whether a presidential library existing under this order, at SMU or wherever it ends up, is but an empty shell of what such a library should be,' Steven Hensen of the Society of American Archivists told lawmakers at a hearing of a House oversight committee. . . .

"Historian Robert Dallek told lawmakers that all presidents 'want the public to think they walk on water - that they are without error, without sin.'

"'People want to be seen in history as successful, as wise, as sensible - and of course they're always less than that,' Dallek said. 'But the public is well-served by knowing what they were doing in the fullest possible way.'

"The House legislation by Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., and three other members - including two Republicans - would put the onus back on an ex-president to make a claim of executive privilege to the current president or a court.

"It also would establish time periods for review and limit such claims only to former presidents themselves, not their heirs."

More information about the proposed legislation is available from Waxman's office.

North Korea Watch

Jonathan S. Landay and Kevin G. Hall write for McClatchy Newspapers: "The Bush administration, which used some false and exaggerated intelligence to make its case for invading Iraq, also may have inflated some of its allegations against North Korea to justify a hard-line policy toward the Stalinist regime.

"President Bush claimed in 2002 that North Korea was making highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons when there was no intelligence that it was doing so.

[See yesterday's column.]

"Now there are new questions about the administration's assertions that a bank in Macau knowingly laundered proceedings from North Korean narcotics trafficking, cigarette smuggling and counterfeit American currency.

"An audit of the Banco Delta Asia's finances by accounting firm Ernst & Young found no evidence that the bank had facilitated North Korean money-laundering, either by circulating counterfeit U.S. bank notes or by knowingly sheltering illicit earnings of the North Korean government. . . .

"Taken together, the pronouncements raised questions about whether the administration has been overstating its case against North Korea, a heavily armed communist dictatorship that Bush included in his 'axis of evil' with Iran and Iraq under the late dictator Saddam Hussein."

The Los Angeles Times editorial board writes: "Did the Bush administration rush to provoke a crisis with North Korea on sketchy evidence, trashing a flawed but workable arms-control agreement? Administration hawks had been on record for years opposing the 1994 deal. Did they 'spin' the intelligence to justify preordained policies? . . .

"[F]or the second time, serious questions have been raised about the credibility of U.S. assessments of the potential nuclear threat posed by an enemy nation. Are these charges justified? Given the U.S. need to enlist other nations to adopt sanctions to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions and deal with other proliferation challenges, that's a question that demands an answer."

The New York Times editorial board writes: "We would like to believe that the Bush administration has finally figured out how dangerous and counterproductive it is to hype intelligence -- and that that's why officials are admitting they're not sure North Korea ever got very far with a secret uranium-based nuclear program. But we doubt it.

"It was just last month that intelligence officials, with their bosses' clear blessings, were insisting that Iran's leaders had personally ordered the smuggling of especially lethal roadside bombs into Iraq. At least they did until the Pentagon's top general admitted that no one knew who in Iran was really calling those shots, and President Bush announced that it didn't matter anyway.

"So we suspect that this week's confessions of doubt about North Korea had less to do with a sudden burst of candor than the fact that Pyongyang has agreed to readmit nuclear inspectors -- who probably won't be able to find the active uranium enrichment program the administration has been alleging for more than four years."

Poll Watch

Marjorie Connelly blogs for the New York Times: "In the months since the Congressional elections, President Bush has lost substantial support among members of his own party, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

"Mr. Bush's approval rating dropped 13 percentage points since last fall among Republicans, 65 percent of whom now say they approve of the way he is handling his job as president, compared with 78 percent last October.

"Over all, Mr. Bush's job approval remains at one of its lowest points, with 29 percent of all Americans saying they approve of the way he is doing his job."

Here are the poll results.

Bush has only 25 percent approval on foreign policy and only 40 percent approval on the campaign against terrorism, both all-time lows.

And the public is deeply, overwhelmingly pessimistic about the value of keeping troops in Iraq. Only 20 percent said they think the U.S. military can be effective in lessening the fighting between groups of Iraqis; 70 percent said that is something the U.S. military cannot do much about.

Scooter Libby Watch

Carol D. Leonnig and Amy Goldstein write in The Washington Post: "Jurors considering perjury charges against I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby signaled yesterday that they were still working to reach a verdict after seven days of deliberations and did not expect to arrive at one this week, according to a note they sent to the presiding trial judge."

Newsweek's Michael Isikoff looks at the juror body language.

Michael Fleming writes in Variety: "Warner Bros. is developing a feature on the lives of Valerie Plame and Ambassador Joseph Wilson, the married couple drawn into a D.C. firestorm."

Appointee Watch

James Gerstenzang writes in the Los Angeles Times: "President Bush said Thursday that he would nominate a senior executive of the largest organization representing the nation's manufacturers to head the government agency assigned to protect consumers from dangerous products.

"Bush's choice of Michael E. Baroody, executive vice president of the National Assn. of Manufacturers, to be chairman of the Consumer Product Safety Commission drew an angry response from consumer advocates and predictions of a tough battle for Senate confirmation from the Democratic majority."

Said Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.): "Here was a golden opportunity to put a true champion of consumers onto a very important commission, and instead President Bush selected someone who represents the special interests... This administration seems incapable of doing anything in the public interest."

Bush the Bookworm

Mary Ann Akers blogs for washingtonpost.com: "President Bush, noted bookworm, held a private confab with leading neoconservatives in the dining room of the White House residence Wednesday afternoon, hosting British historian Andrew Roberts, author of one of the president's favorite recent books, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900. . . .

"Cheney actually took a copy of Roberts' book with him on his surprise trip this week to Afghanistan, where a suicide bomber struck all too close by while the vice president was on Bagram Air Force Base near Kabul. . . .

"Others who attended the coffee klatch included: historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, the wife of Irving Kristol -- a founder of the neoconservative moment -- and mother of Bill Kristol; Allen Guelzo, author of the book Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation; and Irwin Stelzer, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, which lists a 'senior advisor' named Lewis Libby."

Late Night Humor

Jon Stewart on Cheney's trip: "You may have noticed a subtle difference this week in D.C. The air -- a little crisper. The food -- a little more tasty. Homeless people -- weren't being discovered drained of blood. It could only mean one thing: Vice President Cheney was out of town. John Oliver explains Cheney's apparently contradictory statements to Stewart by reporting: "Vice President Cheney is a fleet of cyborgs stationed around the world in vacuum-sealed pods."