Bad Attitudes

Before going down to Atlanta to join Jimmy Who’s press staff in the summer of 1976, I set out to learn as much as I could about Carter’s term as governor of Georgia. I was sure to be bombarded with questions about it, since the closest thing to the president’s job is a governor’s.

Nothing would have been more predictive of Carter’s eventual performance in the White House, and yet I was never asked a single question about his four years as governor. If you wanted to know about lust in his heart, though, I was there for you.

I’d like to report that things have improved since then, but unfortunately the childishness of the press, being structural in nature, is incurable. Consider the fuss over former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee currently being made by reporters astonished to find among the GOP candidates what appeared to be a human being. There has been nothing to match it since Maureen Dowd went all schoolgirl in the 1999 campaign over the charms of that aging scamp, George W. Bush.

Now consider this from Max Brantley, editor of an alternative weekly in Arkansas:

In the governor's office, his grasp never exceeded ...   more »

Blog | Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

As Anne Weissman notes below, there are more records of Jack Abramoff's visits to the White House. We just don't have them -- yet.

In the meantime, we have put the visitor records that we do have from the White House on line at www.governmentdocs.org, the recently launched online government document database, This link will take you to a search of "Abramoff" and "NARA" (National Archives and Records Administration). You can check the records for yourself.

And, as soon as the new documents are forthcoming, we'll upload them, too.

URL: Blog | Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

Blog | Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

Nearly three months ago the Secret Service, through its Department of Justice lawyers, told the court in two pending cases that it had “recently discovered information” relevant to CREW’s Freedom of Information Act request for records of visits by Jack Abramoff to the White House that it intended to file with the court.

Just yesterday CREW learned from another source that additional Secret Service records of at least two meetings President Bush had with Jack Abramoff have yet to be produced. So just where are these promised Secret Service records -- records, by the way, that would contradict the White House’s repeated claims that but for large social gatherings, President Bush never met with Mr. Abramoff? When pressed for an answer, a Department of Justice lawyer refused to say anything, apparently forgetting the very representations he had made months earlier to the court.

Last night, CREW filed a motion to compel the Secret Service to come forward with these long overdue missing records. Stay tuned for exactly what arguments the Secret Service offers in response, including the convenient defense, manufactured in another case CREW has against the Secret Service, that White ...   more »

Bad Attitudes

URL: Bad Attitudes

Bad Attitudes

Terrific piece at The Smirking Chimp by Ernest Partridge dissecting and discarding the excuses of those — you know who you are — who joined in Bush’s rush to war out of cowardice or good old American bloodlust.

URL: Bad Attitudes

Blog | Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington

Perhaps they are following the tone set by this administration: if you don’t like the record you created, erase it. Yesterday, it was reported that Scott Bloch, the head of the Office of Special Counsel who himself is under investigation for improperly retaliating against employees and dismissing whistleblower cases with little or no examination, used an outside computer techie from “Geeks on Call” to do a “seven-level” wipe of his government computer hard drive. It just so happens that a “seven-level” wipe meets Defense Department security standards for making data impossible to recover.

Now we have learned that former Arkansas Governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee has also been charged with destroying government-owned hard drives when he left office last January. As these incidents show, there is little or no effective enforcement of record-keeping requirements at either the state or federal level.

CREW has been dogging White House efforts to destroy administration records and most recently convinced a federal district court judge to issue a temporary restraining order against the White House for back-up copies of the millions of emails deleted from White House servers. The sad reality, however, ...   more »