Begging for Information

It's the Congressional passtime.

[Congressman Henry Waxman] is asking for Mukasey's help in obtaining records of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's interviews with Bush, Cheney and other senior administration officials regarding the unmasking of former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson.

  Raw Story

Yeah, good luck with that. This is a guy who’s covering the administration’s ass so well, he won’t even admit that torture is torture.

Waxman charged that the White House is blocking Fitzgerald from handing over copies of interview reports dealing with certain White House officials, especially Bush and Cheney, although he has handed over copies of reports on other administration officials, including CIA officers and State Department employees.

[...]

"I recognize that President Bush and his counsel may not want this information provided to Congress. But the role of the Attorney General is to administer the laws with impartiality," Waxman wrote Monday in a letter to Mukasey. "The Justice Department provided the exact same information to Congress during the Clinton Administration. There is no special standard for President Bush that exempts him and his senior advisors from responsible congressional oversight."

I think it’s called divine right of kings.

Worse than Abu Ghraib?

In high-level meetings over the past several days, U.S. military officials have pressed State Department officials to assert more control over Blackwater, which operates under the department's authority, said a U.S. government official with knowledge of the discussions.

[...]

"This is a nightmare," said a senior U.S. military official. "We had guys who saw the aftermath, and it was very bad. This is going to hurt us badly. It may be worse than Abu Ghraib, and it comes at a time when we're trying to have an impact for the long term."

[...]

"This is a big mess that I don't think anyone has their hands around yet," said another U.S. military official. "It's not necessarily a bad thing these guys are being held accountable. Iraqis hate them, the troops don't particularly care for them, and they tend to have a know-it-all attitude, which means they rarely listen to anyone -- even the folks that patrol the ground on a daily basis."

  WaPo

But, for their sake, Falluja was destroyed and a surge in anti-American sentiment spread throughout Iraq.

And Waxman is claiming that Rice is trying to impede the investigation. That wouldn't be like her, would it?

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Chalk Up Another One

Add the nation's drug czar to the list of agency appointees politicking for the Republican Party.

[Drug] czar, John Walters, and his deputies traveled on the taxpayers' dime to 20 events with vulnerable Republican members of Congress in the months prior to the 2006 elections, according to a committee press release. Not only that, but several of the trips were "combined with the announcement of federal grants or actions that benefited the districts of the Republican members." If government officials were using government funds to help elect Republicans, that would be a violation of the Hatch Act.

[House oversight committee chair Henry] Waxman has uncovered emails [...] that show the White House's enthusiasm for using agency heads as political props. Among them is an email that describes a proud Karl Rove boasting after the 2006 election that the drug czar's office and officials from the departments of Commerce, Transportation, and Agriculture had gone "above and beyond the call of duty" in making "surrogate appearances."

  TPM Muckraker

That's why they don't want to release emails and why they hide emails on a GOP server.

I'd say you'd be pretty safe in assuming all federal agencies to which Bush has appointed a director have been/are being used for political purposes. If you assume that, I won't have to keep posting about it, and we'll just call it done.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

Update: The House Judiciary issued new subpoenas for emails from the GOP servers last week. Yeah. Like that's gonna do any good.

...but hey...

Further Update 7/24/07: A list of federal agencies put on notice by Karl Rove to serve the GOP is at TPM here.

Miss Condi

While Condi has been making up for time since Nancy Pelosi forced her hand in Middle East diplomacy, Congressman Henry Waxman has been writing her suggesting that she may want to rethink obstructing his investigation.

Sibel Edmunds Is Waiting

Okay, listen up. Sibel Edmunds has been ignored long enough. For some background on the former translator working for the FBI just prior to 9/11, if you need it, you can go here. And for information about the legal case she has brought to try to get her testimony aired, you can go here.
Now, ex-CIA agent, Phil Giraldi, has some more to say about it.
Via a post by Lukery at Wot Is It Good For, we’re informed that Henry Waxman’s oversight committee is not interested in what Sibel has to say possibly due to Waxman's attachment to Israel and AIPAC.
Even though Waxman is seemingly hot to investigate the Bush administration on the forged Niger documents and Iraq contracting fraud, he apparently has no desire to look into Sibel’s claims of illegal arms sales in high government places. Has it been so long since the Iran-Contra arms deals that we should think that’s unlikely?

[Ms. Edmunds claims] that investigations already carried out by the FBI would demonstrate that three former senior officials were involved in illegal weapons sales and other activities that would justify charges of espionage and possibly even treason against them.

Who would these three be? Our old friends Doug Feith and Richard Perle, and a former State Department official, Marc Grossman. (She also puts Dennis Hastert and our buddy Paul Wolfowitz in the pot.)
Edmonds’ testimony in the past has been considered credible, but most of it has been kept under wraps, and she has been under a gag order since giving it. Giraldi speculates that Waxman is avoiding Sibel’s claims

[…] possibly because Israeli officials and the country’s defense industry are believed to have been involved in the weapons diversion activity.
Congressman Waxman is regarded as close to Israel’s principal lobby, AIPAC, and even promised Jewish voters back in November 2006 that there would be no Democratic congressional committee chairmen involved with Middle Eastern policy who were not completely supportive of Israel.

Lukery ends his post in the comments section arguing for the possibility that a slow resolution of all these types of inquiries and investigations might be best in the long run to essentially dig out the toxin that is the current administration and GOP from its roots, but that…”If it is business as usual, and Waxman is just bowing to AIPAC’s wishes, then we have truly been taken over and it is time for pitchforks.”
Sibel’s claims are all about illegal arms deals, money laundering and drug trafficking. And it’s been my belief from way back that when you look at those three things, you’ll find essentially all of the corrupt people in top positions of power in our country, and that’s their connection to 9/11. Not too hard to figure – that’s where the money and the power are all around the globe: drug trafficking and arms dealing.

....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.

UPDATE 2/20/18:  Glenn Greenwald Twitter thread regarding Sibel Edmonds, calling her a "pathological liar and an insane person."