Think Progress

Under the Radar

CLIMATE CHANGE -- GORE SMACKS DOWN GLOBAL WARMING DENIERS AT CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS: Yesterday, former Vice President Al Gore testified about climate change before the House Energy and Commerce Committee and the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. At the House hearing, Gore slammed climate change deniers, saying, "The planet has a fever. If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene here, you don’t say, well I read a science fiction novel that tells me it’s not a problem. If the crib’s on fire, you don’t speculate that the baby is flame-retardant. You take action." (Watch his full introductory statement here, as well as other highlights from his testimony here.)  Gore's appearance before Sen. Barbara Boxer's (D-CA) committee was a lively one, with infamous climate "skeptic" Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) trying to cut off Gore's testimony. Boxer would have none of it, telling Inhofe, "You’re not making the rules. You used to when you did this. Elections have consequences. So I make the rules." Inhofe also tried to repeat the right-wing smear against Gore for not signing a "Personal Energy Ethics Pledge" to "consume no more energy than the average American household." Joe Romm of Climate Progress explained why Inhofe's attack is nonsense: "[W]hy should Gore take such a pledge? Gore is a champion of greenhouse gas reductions, not energy reductions. Gore explained he buys 100 percent renewable power and is planning to build a solar power system. Thus the electricity Gore consumes in his Tennessee home does not contribute to global warming."

ETHICS -- JUSTICE DEPARTMENT WITHHOLDS DOCUMENTS FROM KEY 18-DAY PERIOD IN PROSECUTOR PURGE: Earlier this week, the Justice Department released over 3,000 pages of e-mails relating to the Bush administration's prosecutor purge. But there are almost no e-mails from Nov. 16 to Dec. 7, "a critical period as the White House and Justice Department reviewed, then approved, which U.S. attorneys would be fired while also developing a political and communications strategy for countering any fallout from the firings." One of last e-mails before the gap, on Nov. 15, is from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's former chief of staff Kyle Sampson to then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers, asking, "Who will determine whether this requires the president's attention?" On Dec. 7, the Justice Department fired seven of the U.S. attorneys. "In contrast, there are hundreds of pages from the weeks after the dismissals." Yesterday, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said, "I've been led to believe that there's a good response for" the gap, and referred reporters to the Justice Department. But Justice Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse's response in this morning's New York Times was hardly "good." He stated, "The department has provided or made available to Congress all the documents responsive to Congress's requests over the time period in question ... To the extent there was a lull in communications concerning the U.S. attorney issues, it reflects the fact that we have found no responsive documents from that time period, which included the Thanksgiving holiday."

ETHICS -- BUSH LOYALISTS INTERFERED IN GOVERNMENT'S TOBACCO COMPANY INVESTIGATION: "The leader of the Justice Department team that prosecuted a landmark lawsuit against tobacco companies said yesterday that Bush administration political appointees repeatedly ordered her to take steps that weakened the government's racketeering case." Sharon Y. Eubanks, who served for 22 years as a Justice Department lawyer, was in the middle of a government investigation claiming that the tobacco industry had conspired to lie to smokers when "Bush loyalists in Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales's office began micromanaging the team's strategy in the final weeks of the 2005 trial. ... She said a supervisor demanded that she and her trial team drop recommendations that tobacco executives be removed from their corporate positions as a possible penalty." Eubanks said top Justice officials largely ignored the case until it became clear that the government might win against the tobacco companies, recalling that she received an "angry phone call" about the case from Kevin McCallum, the then-Associate Attorney General. Eubanks's supervisors instructed her to tell key witnesses to alter testimony and "read verbatim a closing argument [the Attorney General's office] had written for her." Eubanks said she is revealing the interference now because of the recent revelations about the administration's prosecutor purge. "Political interference is happening at Justice across the department," she said. "When decisions are made now in the Bush attorney general's office, politics is the primary consideration...The rule of law goes out the window."

Think Fast

Bob Novak reports conservatives are angry at CIA Director Michael Hayden for telling Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) that Valerie Plame was covert. “Waxman’s statement astounded Republicans whose queries about her had been rebuffed by the agency. That confirmed Republican suspicions that Hayden is too close to Democrats. ï¿???? When Hayden’s role was pointed out to one of the president’s most important aides, there was no response.”

A review 1,400 veterans hospitals has turned up more than 1,000 reports of substandard conditions. In response, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson this week ordered “immediate corrective action” to fix the problems. Bobby Muller of the Veterans for America said, “There is a social contract between a country and those it sends to war, and America’s social contract is broken.”

“Three of the eight federal prosecutors ousted by the Justice Department as poor performers ranked in the top 10 for prosecutions and convictions by the nation’s 93 U.S. attorneys, an analysis of court records shows.” A fourth prosecutor “ranked among the top third of all U.S. attorneys during four of the past five years.”

House Democratic leaders pressed undecided lawmakers yesterday to support the Iraq war supplemental spending bill, which House leaders expect to vote on this evening. One House Democratic leadership aid said, “We’re close, but not there yet.” The leadership’s vote round-up was given a boost this week by MoveOn.org’s decision to back the bill.

“In a stinging, wide-ranging assessment,” Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction Stuart Bowen found the United States was “unprepared for the extensive nation-building required after it invaded Iraq, and at each juncture where it could have adjusted its efforts, it failed even to understand the problems it faced.” 

3,000: Number of military sexual assault reports filed in 2006, compared to 2,400 in 2005. “Action was taken against 780 people, from courts-martial and discharges to other administrative remedies.”

“Hurricane Katrina drained nearly 300,000 people from coastal areas between Texas and the Florida Panhandle, according to new government population estimates that tally for the first time the storm’s devastating toll on the Gulf Coast.”

The Pentagon is “quietly seeking congressional approval for significant new military sales to US allies in the Persian Gulf region” to counter Iranian influence. The sale of arms -could “spark concerns that further military buildup in the volatile region would bring Washington closer to a confrontation with Iran.”