Think Progress

ADMINISTRATION -- WHITE HOUSE SETS OUT TO SHAPE BUSH'S IRAQ LEGACY: Making the rounds on the Sunday talk shows yesterday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended the administration's decision to go to war in Iraq, which she said it would have done even if it had known that Saddam Hussein did not possess weapons of mass destruction. "I think there were a lot of reasons to get rid of Saddam Hussein. ... [T]his man was a real danger," she said on ABC's "This Week." She insisted that nations "across the world" believed Saddam had WMD and told Fox News Sunday, "I still believe that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein is going to turn out to be a great strategic achievement, not just for the Bush administration, but for the United States of America." Speaking with Charlie Gisbon last week, President Bush also refused to take responsibility for the faulty intelligence about Iraq. "It wasn't just people in my administration. A lot of members in Congress, prior to my arrival in Washington, D.C., during the debate on Iraq, a lot of leaders of nations around the world were all looking at the same intelligence," he said. 

ETHICS -- REPORT: BUSH'S NEW DALLAS NEIGHBORHOOD BARRED NON-WHITES UNTIL 2000: Last week, media reported that President Bush recently purchased a new $2 million home in Dallas, TX,  fulfilling the First Lady's reported desire to return to the city where the family lived prior to Bush's election as Texas governor. The neigborhood, called Preston Hollow, is in a wealthy part of Dallas that is home to celebrities like Dallas Maverick's owner Marc Cuban and Ross Perot. But Raw Story reports that the community "has a troubled history of its own. Until 2000, the neighborhood association's covenant said only white people were allowed to live there, though an exception was made for servants." Enacted in 1956, the original document reads: "Said property shall be used and occupied by white persons except those shall not prevent occupancy by domestic servants of different race or nationality in the employ of a tenant." When asked about his new home in an interview last week, Bush became defensive. "Mr. President -- you excited about your house in Dallas?" a reported asked. "Todd, why do you care?" Bush said. "You live in Washington, D.C."

ENVIRONMENT -- INDUSTRY FRONT GROUP PLANS ATTACK ON WESTERN CLIMATE INITIATIVE: Kevin Grandia of the DeSmog Project writes that a "powerful coal and oil industry lobby group called the the Western Business Roundtable (WBR) is scheming to derail the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), founded by a number of progressive US states and Canadian provinces in 2007 to begin tackling carbon emissions in the face of endless inaction from their national governments." WBR's membership includes Peabody Coal, Shell Oil, and the Western Fuels Association and is a project of the right-wing public relations firm Policy Communications. WCI boasts 11 states and provinces "representing 20 percent of the US, and 70 percent of the Canadian economy." It hopes to lay a "foundation for a continental cap and trade system to limit greenhouse gases 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020." The DeSmog Project obtained a recent internal WBR memo that documents the WBR's strategy for smearing WCI's proposal. The memo describes a soon-to-be-released "economic analysis" aimed at trashing "virtually all aspects" of WCI's cap and trade plan. Among the findings of WBR's "analysis" are that the WCI proposal will "disproportionally impact low-income families," "lack a measurable benefit," amd cost more than the WCI predicts. As Grandia writes, "This 'detailed economic analysis' sounds a lot...like an industry-funded PR campaign."

President-elect Obama voiced his support for workers engaged in a sit-in protest at a recently closed Chicago factory. "The workers who are asking for the benefits and payments that they have earned, I think they're absolutely right and understand that what’s happening to them is reflective of what's happening across this economy," Obama said.

Three top executives in the Pentagon inspector general's office received a hefty bonus of about $30,000 -- 20 percent of their annual basic pay -- and a framed certificate signed by President Bush for outstanding leadership. The award was offered in spite of the agency's low staff morale and strained relations between employees and supervisors.

A congressional oversight panel led by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) plans to ask the National Security Agency "to start an investigation into new evidence that the agency illegally wiretapped a Muslim scholar in Northern Virginia and concealed the eavesdropping during a 2005 trial in which the scholar was convicted on terrorism charges."

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said the situation in Afghanistan is "going to get harder before it gets easier, just like the surge in Iraq was." "It's a stalemate that exists and we’re going to need additional troops," McCain said while visiting the country yesterday. Meanwhile, a report by the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS), a think tank, said the Taliban has a permanent presence in 72 percent of Afghanistan.

The Franklin County Board of Elections declared Mary Jo Kilroy the winner of Ohio's 15th congressional seat making her "the first Democrat to represent any part of Franklin County in a generation." Kilroy "eked out a small but convincing victory over Republican state Sen. Steve Stivers in her second election cliffhanger," according to results released last night.

Obama issued a warning that days of doling out pork projects as a strategy are over: "What we need to do is examine: What are the projects where we're going to get the most bang for the buck? How are we going to make sure taxpayers are protected?"

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman said yesterday that the concentration of the auto industry in Detroit will likely disappear. "It is no longer sustained by the current economy," he said. A Big Three bailout is a "short-term solution" resulting from a "lack of willingness to accept the failure of a large industry in the midst of an economic crisis."

GM Chairman and CEO Rick Wagoner is facing increasing pressure to resign. "If you're going to restructure, you've got to bring in a new team to do this," Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) said. "I think [Mr. Wagoner] has to move on." GM vice chairman Bob Lutz-- who famously called global warming a "total crock of sh*t" -- said Wagoner "is without doubt the best CEO I've ever worked for."

"Although the impact of Bush's judicial appointments is most often noticed at the Supreme Court, it has played out much more frequently and more importantly" in the nation's 13 appellate courts. "Republican-appointed majorities firmly control the outcomes in 10 of these courts, compared with seven after President Bill Clinton's tenure. They also now share equal representation with Democratic appointees on two additional courts."

And finally: Former presidential candidate Fred Thompson is attempting to cash in on Obama's inauguration. Page Six reports this morning that Thompson is "offering to rent his luxury one-bedroom condo in Washington, DC, for five days" for $30,000. An anonymous source told Page Six, "It has a balcony overlooking the inaugural parade route, the Navy Memorial and the US Capitol, and comes with a reserved parking space."