A Ludicrous Denial

Grim writes: "Asked a few minutes later for a more official explanation, Conyers told us that Rove has a week to appear before his committee. If he doesn't, said Conyers, 'We'll do what any self-respecting committee would do. We'd hold him in contempt. Either that or go and have him arrested.'

"Conyers said the committee wants Rove to testify about his role in the imprisonment of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, among other things.

"'We want him for so many things, it's hard to keep track,' Conyers said."

Assets Watch

Pete Yost writes for the Associated Press: "The millions of dollars in assets reported by Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynn, nearly triple those held by President Bush and the first lady, Laura Bush, according to newly released financial disclosure forms. . . .

"The reports show that the assets of the president and his wife totaled at least $7.2 million, including the 1,583-acre ranch in Crawford, Texas, valued at $1 million to $5 million. . . .

"The assets of Cheney and his wife, Lynne, amounted to at least $20.8 million last year. . . .

"Because the forms only require public officials to report their income and assets in imprecise ranges, the actual numbers can vary widely.

"If their incomes and assets are at the upper end of the range, the Bushes would be worth nearly $20 million and the Cheneys would be worth nearly $100 million.

"The president and vice president also reported receiving a number of gifts last year. . . .

"The Greenbriar Lodge of Carlisle, Ark., hosted Cheney for two days of hunting and gave the vice president a hunting vest and a hardcover book, 'Duck Calls: An Enduring American Tradition,' all valued at $1,600."

Dan Eggen writes in The Washington Post: "President Bush's financial fortunes appear to have declined over the past seven years, with his family assets dropping as low as $6.5 million, according to disclosure forms released yesterday. . . .

"[The] Cheneys are at least as wealthy as they were when the vice president entered office, and may have added as much as $29 million to their net worth during his tenure."

Military Analysts Watch

Tim Dickinson blogs for Rolling Stone: "The White House has denied knowledge of Donald Rumsfeld's military analysts propaganda program.

"That is clearly untrue. This memo from page 2 of this batch of documents from the Pentagon dump, shows Rumsfeld personally briefing White House National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley on the progress of the program."

The July 2005 memo reads: "Attached is a summary of the military analysts we took down to GTMO earlier this month."

Joseph L. Galloway writes for McClatchy Newspapers that "alarm bells should be ringing all over Washington about The New York Times' disclosure that then-Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld encouraged a secret Pentagon program to care for and spoon-feed more than 50 retired senior military officers whom the administration deemed reliable friends who could be counted on 'to carry our water' on the television and cable networks. . . .

"There's little doubt that this program violated the laws against covert propaganda operations mounted against the American public by their own government. But in this administration, there's no one left to enforce that law or any of the other laws the Bush operatives have been busy violating.

"The real crime is that the scheme worked. The television network bosses swallowed the bait, the hook, the line and the sinker, and they have yet to answer for it."

Bush and the GOP

Peggy Noonan writes in her Wall Street Journal opinion column: "The Bush White House, faced with the series of losses from 2005 through '08, has long claimed the problem is Republicans on the Hill and running for office. They have scandals, bad personalities, don't stand for anything. That's why Republicans are losing: because they're losers.

"All true enough!

"But this week a House Republican said publicly what many say privately, that there is another truth. 'Members and pundits . . . fail to understand the deep seated antipathy toward the president, the war, gas prices, the economy, foreclosures,' said Rep. Tom Davis of Virginia in a 20-page memo to House GOP leaders.

"The party, Mr. Davis told me, is 'an airplane flying right into a mountain.' Analyses of its predicament reflect an 'investment in the Bush presidency,' but 'the public has just moved so far past that.' 'Our leaders go up to the second floor of the White House and they get a case of White House-itis.' Mr. Bush has left the party at a disadvantage in terms of communications: 'He can't articulate. The only asset we have now is the big microphone, and he swallowed it.'"

Eugene Robinson writes in his Washington Post opinion column: "The Reagan era in American politics is about to end, and we have George W. Bush to thank for its demise. . . .

"[T]he paradigm that reigned for nearly three decades -- the notion that government is useless, if not inherently evil -- is no longer operative."

Bush "has interpreted Reagan's small-government mandate as an excuse -- or an instruction -- to abdicate government's most fundamental responsibilities. Anyone who wants to argue this point need simply remember the 'heck of a job' our government did in handling the devastation from Hurricane Katrina. . . .

"Evidence suggests that Americans are tired of a government that is slavishly beholden to a rigid do-nothing ideology -- and that they're ready to punish the president's party for its ineptitude and lassitude."

Torture Watch

The Washington Post editorial board writes: "The ghosts of interrogations past have come back to haunt the Bush administration. This week, the legal officer supervising the military trials at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, dismissed capital charges against Mohammed al-Qahtani, who allegedly would have been the 20th hijacker during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks had he not been prevented from entering the country. The decision has been widely reported as a serious setback for the administration's quest to bring terrorists to justice. It is much more and much worse than that: It is a palpable reminder of the inhumane acts committed by U.S. personnel and sanctioned by top officials in the name of protecting Americans from extremists."

Legacy Watch

Michael Hirsh writes for Newsweek: "In a month of horrific natural disasters . . . it's instructive to consider what one of the biggest unnatural disasters in memory looks like. That is the decline in America's position in the world from where we were when George W. Bush inherited power on Jan. 20, 2001, to what he will bequeath to the next president eight months from now. . . .

"The issue goes way beyond Bush's decision to invade Iraq in the middle of the war in Afghanistan. U.S. government literally broke down during the Bush years. The interagency process was destroyed as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld set up what was effectively a 'black' alternative government. . . . The White House treated its coequal branch, Congress, like an interloper (to the annoyance of Republicans as well as Democrats). Junk science infected the policy-making apparatus on key issues of importance to our allies in Europe and Asia, like global warming. Junk legal reasoning by White House and Justice Department lawyers was used to publicly justify torture, decimating our once high moral stature around the world. Junk economics--an excess of free-market fervor--infected the Federal Reserve and other regulators, who slumbered while Wall Street ran amok selling fraudulent mortgage securities to foreign markets. Congress went to sleep while the administration ran up record deficits. . . . The Department of Homeland Security, misconceived and oversized even at its birth, grew into an unmanageable monstrosity, leading directly to the disaster of the Hurricane Katrina response. . . .

"But what was most unnatural of all about what we Americans did to ourselves was that we missed the grand opportunity staring us in the face. September 11 was an awful day, but in strategic terms it had a silver lining. The sympathy that the rest of the world sent our way post-9/11 was not just good fellowship, it was a recognition that virtually every country around the globe faced the same kind of threat. This was an extraordinary chance for American leadership to renew itself at a time when the international community was adrift. . . .

"Instead precisely the opposite happened."

Late Night Humor

Jay Leno, via U.S. News: "Huge political fireworks today after President Bush went to Israel and he talked about American politicians who might want to talk with Hamas or other leaders. Politicians who would sit down and appease terrorists. He said he would not do it. He would not put up with it. He would never talk to terrorists. And then he flew to Saudi Arabia to spend a couple of days with the Saudi royal family."

Jon Stewart last night took note of Bush's decision to give up golf in solidarity with the families who have lost loved ones in the war in Iraq: "You know what? Pictures matter," he said (rolling footage of Bush mountain biking). "Image is everything," he said (showing Bush fishing). "And when you ask military families to sacrifice so much -- through stop-loss, or multiple tours without proper stateside rest," (showing Bush biking again) "or refusing to fund a proper GI Bill" (showing Bush dancing) "the least you can do is not force them to see you dicking around like you don't have a care in the world." (Bush keeps dancing.)

Cartoon Watch

Mike Luckovich, Mike Keefe, J.D. Crowe and Ann Telnaes on Bush's sacrifice; Tom Toles on political radioactivity; Victor Harville on the Republican dark cloud; David Horsey on Bush and the polar bears; and Walt Handelsman on Bush's not-so-secret message yesterday.