Saturday, April 28, 2007

Steve Gilliard Update (12:01 pm)

Jen has a report. Still a long way to recovery, but he has at least some access to a computer.

posted by Brian Zick | start the discussion

Broder’s Transparent Partisan Bias (11:30 am)

Jamison Foser at Media Matters impertinently draws attention to Broder’s blatant double standards and overt hostility towards Democrats.

posted by Brian Zick | 2 comments

DoJ: We Never Let Partisan Politics Affect Hiring and Intern Decisions, and We Won’t Do It Any More (7:26 am)

Dan Eggen and Amy Goldstein for WaPo report:

The Justice Department is removing political appointees from the hiring process for rookie lawyers and summer interns, amid allegations that the Bush administration had rigged the programs in favor of candidates with connections to conservative or Republican groups, according to documents and officials.

The decision, outlined in an internal memo distributed Thursday, returns control of the Attorney General’s Honors Program and the Summer Law Intern Program to career lawyers in the department after four years during which political appointees directed the process.
(…)
The honors program, established during the Eisenhower administration, is a highly regarded recruiting program that attracts thousands of applicants from top-flight law schools for about 150 spots each year and has been overseen for most of its history by senior career lawyers at Justice. Then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft reworked the program in 2002, shifting control from career employees to himself and his aides.

The changes alarmed many current and former Justice officials, who feared that the Bush administration was seeking to pack the department with conservative ideologues. Many law school placement officers said in 2003 that they noticed a marked shift to the right in the students approached for honors program interviews.

Complaints about the program emerged again this month after Senate and House investigators received a letter from the unidentified Justice employees, who alleged that hiring at the department was “consistently and methodically being eroded by partisan politics.” The letter singled out the honors and intern programs,... read more

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Saturday Cartoon (6:04 am)

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics

This MGM cartoon, directed by Chuck Jones and co-directed by Maurice Noble, won the Academy Award in 1966 for best animated short subject. The story is based on the the book by Norton Juster, who also wrote the screenplay. Narration is by Robert Morley. Apart from the charm of the storyline, the cartoon succeeds because the anthropomorphized geometric shapes so effectively come to life, conveying a range of mood and emotional expression without benefit of the characters having eyes and mouths or other body parts which animators would ordinarily use to communicate feelings.

Production Design: Maurice Noble
Supervising Animator: Don Towsley
Animation: Ken Harris, Ben Washam, Dick Thompson, Tom Ray, Philip Roman
Backgrounds: Philip DeGuard, Don Morgan
Typographer: Don Foster
Camera Planning: Buf Nerbovig
Music: Eugene Poddany

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Friday, April 27, 2007

House Armed Services Committee Investigating Iraq Mercenaries (4:46 pm)

Barbara Barrett for McClatchy reports:

Four years after the invasion of Iraq, Congress still has been unable to grasp the scope of armed security contractors working in that country.

This week, House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri and Rep. David Price of North Carolina, both Democrats, asked the Government Accountability Office to provide details on the use of private security contractors in Iraq.

Skelton and Price want to know how many such contractors are working there, for what purpose and under what legal authority. There has been little oversight over cost and operations so far, but many questions.

According to earlier GAO reports, contractors often move into battle zones without the military’s knowledge, and the military in turn has done little training for troops on how to deal with private contractors. There are estimated to be as many as 100,000 security contractors working in the country.

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State Department Official Resigns (12:54 pm)

The State Department announces:

Ambassador Randall Tobias informed Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice today that he must step down as Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance and US Agency for International Development Administrator (USAID) effective immediately. He is returning to private life for personal reasons.

Via Josh Marshall, who anticipates shoes to drop.

dropping shoe update:
Brian Ross and Justin Rood for ABC report:

Deputy Secretary of State Randall L. Tobias submitted his resignation Friday, one day after confirming to ABC News that he had been a customer of a Washington, D.C. escort service whose owner has been charged by federal prosecutors with running a prostitution operation.

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DoJ Criminal Division Official Resigns, Under Scrutiny in Connection with Abramoff Probe (12:07 pm)

Marisa Taylor and David Whitney for McClatchy report:

A senior Justice Department official has resigned after coming under scrutiny in the Department’s expanding investigation of convicted super-lobbyist Jack Abramoff, according to a Justice Department official with knowledge of the case.

Making the situation more awkward for the embattled Department, the official, Robert E. Coughlin II, was deputy chief of staff for the criminal division, which is overseeing the Department’s probe of Abramoff.

He stepped down effective April 6 as investigators in Coughlin’s own division ratcheted up their investigation of lobbyist Kevin Ring, Coughlin’s long-time friend and a key associate of Abramoff.

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Henry Invites George Tenet to Come By for a Chat (6:48 am)

The Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has announced:

Chairman Waxman has invited former CIA Director George Tenet to testify before the Committee on May 10th regarding one of the claims used to justify the war in Iraq - the assertion that Iraq sought to import uranium from Niger - and related issues.

Via David Corn, who thinks Tenet is profiteering from his own craven cowardice and Bush ass kissing, and that he owes the public an apology instead.

Tenet may feel—as he claims—damn lousy about the screwed-up National Intelligence Estimate that helped pave the way to war in Iraq. But he did not feel bad enough to resign—or to disclose earlier what had gone wrong. He sat on the story and now is peddling it for personal profit.

Tenet should have long ago been questioned openly by a congressional committee about all this—though no Republican committee chair would have dared—or he should have spilled all to 60 Minutes and other media, as a public service, not as an advertisement for his book.