White House Still Loves Maliki

Elana Schor writes in The Hill that "the response from the vice president was more surprising, because the White House was believed to have abandoned the argument that Cheney is a hybrid entity with both executive and legislative powers. . . .

"Cheney's lawyers first crafted the argument to bolster his lack of compliance with an executive order on the safeguarding of classified information, a tactic that backfired amid Democratic anger and derisive jokes on late-night talk shows. Yet Cheney counsel Shannen Coffin wrote to Leahy on Monday that 'the issuance of the subpoena to this office was procedurally irregular' because the judiciary panel only authorized Leahy to issue summonses to the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and the Justice Department. . . .

"Telling Coffin to look at the White House website 'may seem too glib an answer,' Leahy told reporters. 'My answer would be look at the law. But these are people that don't look at the law very often.'"

Leahy's Comments

C-Span has the video of Leahy's press conference.

"I've worked in good faith with this administration. I first sought this information voluntarily. I accommodated a request for time," Leahy said. "But when the request for more time was simply followed by delay upon delay, we issued subpoenas in a bipartisan vote. And even then, when the subpoenas weren't followed through, we gave them more time. The time is up. The time is up. We've waited long enough. . . .

"The fact is, they operated outside the law for several years. When you people in the press brought out the fact that they were operating outside the law, they said: Well, let's go with the law, but we had justification, we had legal justification. Everybody's been asking what was that legal justification. We haven't heard it. They recommended a law which would say that they could do whatever Attorney General Gonzales said they could do.

"That, to me, does not give me quite the comfort level I would like."

A Cheney Veto?

And here's a sign of just how much power Cheney was able to wield when the Republicans controlled Congress. From Leahy's press conference:

"QUESTION: Is your impression they're dragging their feet?

"LEAHY: Well, you know, a lot of these questions were asked by the former chairman a couple years ago, and we haven't gotten an answer.

"In fact, we were about to issue subpoenas then and one of the senators came to our meeting and said that the vice president had met with the Republican senators and told them they were not allowed to issue subpoenas.

"Not quite sure that's my understanding of the separation of powers, but it seemed to work at that time."

When exactly was this?

Leahy: "[T]hat goes back to when Senator Specter and I were -- and others senators were asking, when Senator Specter was chairman -- asking AT&T and others why they seem to go along with this warrantless order, whereas other telephone companies said no, they wouldn't.

"And when they went to the -- felt they were not allowed to give an answer, we were about to subpoena them.

"That's when the vice president said, 'No, you can't' -- told the Republicans, 'No, you can't vote for that.'"

Children's Health Watch

Christopher Lee writes in The Washington Post: "The Bush administration, engaged in a battle with Congress over whether a popular children's health insurance program should be expanded, has announced new policies that will make it harder for states to insure all but the lowest-income children.

"New administrative hurdles, which state health officials were told about late last week, are aimed at preventing parents with private insurance for their children from availing of the government-subsidized State Children's Health Insurance Program. But Democrats and children's advocates said that the announcement will jeopardize coverage for children whose parents work at jobs that do not provide employer-paid insurance."

Robert Pear writes in the New York Times: "The administration's new policy is explained in a letter that was sent about 7:30 p.m. on Friday. . . .

"After learning of the new policy, some state officials said yesterday that it could cripple their efforts to cover more children and would impose standards that could not be met."

Bill Hammond writes in his New York Daily News opinion column: "President Bush has a message for the millions of parents who can't afford decent health care for their children: Stop whining and go to the emergency room."

Oh Canada

Bush is holding a joint press availability today with Mexican President Felipe Calderón and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper. I'll write about that tomorrow.

Emily Bazar writes for USA Today from Ottawa: "Protesters greeted President Bush and the leaders of Canada and Mexico on Monday as the three men got together to discuss border security, emergency response, trade and other economic issues."

Ben Feller writes for the Associated Press: "President Bush's summit with the leaders of Canada and Mexico is likely to produce little more than promises of cooperation -- and some signs of disunity."

Iran Watch

The Washington Post editorial board this morning endorses tougher action against Iran. "The Revolutionary Guard is at war with the United States. Why not fight back?" reads the headline.

The editorial accepts allegations by the Pentagon that "one-third of the U.S. troops who died in Iraq last month -- 23 soldiers -- were killed by 'explosively formed penetrators,' sophisticated bombs supplied by Tehran." It notes that blocking the guard from its assets "seems to be the least the United States should be doing, given the soaring number of Iranian-sponsored bomb attacks in Iraq. What's puzzling are the murmurs of disapproval from European diplomats and others who say they favor using diplomacy and economic pressure, rather than military action, to rein in Iran."

At NiemanWatchdog.org, I have a new essay about how the neoconservatives beating the drum for military action in Iran are in a small minority within the foreign policy community -- and that most Middle East experts believe that an attack in Iran would be backfire at least as badly as Iraq.

Gerson Watch

Carolyn Curiel writes in a New York Times opinion piece that "there's never been a speechwriter tell-all quite like the one in the current issue of The Atlantic[subscription required]. In 10 pages of grievances he might as well have nailed to the White House door, Matthew Scully, one of President Bush's former speechwriters, seeks to set right the doling out of credit for the president's speeches. His displeasure centers on the attention given to Michael Gerson, who was chief speechwriter before becoming a policy adviser and then a magazine columnist. . . .

"[T]he scribe smackdown is an amazing look inside the White House, and how individuals are trying to extract what little personal victories they can from their time there. . . .

"Americans certainly have craved more transparency from the Bush White House, but this isn't what they had in mind."

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