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Tag: George W. Bush

The Hits Keep Coming

That port security deal? The one that sailed right through without the legally-mandated investigation? The one that will provide a nice little windfall to the Secretary of the Treasury? The one Bush angrily defended by threatening to veto any legislation that put a stop to the deal to actually, you know, perform the legally-mandated investigation?

It’s even worse than you thought.

WASHINGTON – The Bush administration secretly required a company in the United Arab Emirates to cooperate with future U.S. investigations before approving its takeover of operations at six American ports, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press. It chose not to impose other, routine restrictions.

And what were those routine restrictions?

The administration did not require Dubai Ports to keep copies of business records on U.S. soil, where they would be subject to court orders. It also did not require the company to designate an American citizen to accommodate U.S. government requests. Outside legal experts said such obligations are routinely attached to U.S. approvals of foreign sales in other industries.

Okay, this one just raises all kinds of hairs on the back of my neck. You’re going to let them operate SIX U.S. ports and not require them to keep business records on U.S. soil? Or to designate an American citizen (who would be subject to a federal court’s jurisdiction anywhere in the world) to respond to the government’s requests?

I’m involved in a big-ass fraud litigation with a defendant who’s been playing hide-the-ball with document discovery for the past five years. They just got sanctioned today for blowing off court orders to cough up documents. Getting relevant records from them has been like pulling teeth — and these records are in Connecticut, AND our client is well able to afford our fees for chasing them down. I can’t even imagine what it would be like to be, say, an injured seaman trying to get discovery from a company not required to keep records in the U.S.

In addition, letting them keep records off U.S. soil and not designate an American citizen to respond to the government’s requests means that the government is going to be hindered in any investigation of the company’s operations. They could easily just refuse to comply, they could alter records, destroy them, whatever. Is that the best idea for a company charged with port security for six major U.S. ports?

But most importantly, this is a completely standard and routine requirement for foreign companies doing business in the U.S. Why was it waived in this case?

Shades of Harriet Miers

Bush’s reaction to the outrage over the port-security issue is reminding me quite a bit of his initial reaction to the outrage over his selection of Harriet Miers to fill the Supreme Court vacancy. Just as then, he’s getting awfully pissy with his critics for refusing to take his decision on trust. He’s actually threatening to use his veto power for the first time if Congress takes any action to stop the deal from going through.

And just as with Miers, his critics include Republicans. Even Peter King!

This is an easy issue — and it goes to the heart of “9/11 changed everything.” After spending five years conflating terrorism and the Middle East and of whipping up fears of attack and invasion through our ports (and, of course, assuring the country that only Big Daddy GOP can keep us safe), how else did Bush expect the country to react to the news that he’s turning over port security to a company run by the government of a country which two of the 9/11 hijackers came from? A country through whose banking system the 9/11 hijackers laundered money and through whose ports A.Q. Khan conducted his trade in nuclear components to places like Iran?

Hell, the idea that the government would turn over port security, after 9/11 changed everything, to a private company, is hard enough to swallow. The Administration sure as hell did its damnedest to keep the Chinese from purchasing Unocal, citing national security interests. Given how often we’ve been told that port security is one of the weak points in our national defenses, what Congresscritters in their right minds wouldn’t question this? (I said right mind — which eliminates Joe Lieberman).

And, of course, there’s a lot to question. The 45-day investigation required by law when the acquiring company is controlled by or acting on behalf of a foreign government was not done. Two of the members of the board that approved this deal are Donald Rumsfeld and Tony Snow. Rumsfeld claims not to know any details. Snow has very valuable options vested in a company that sold its shipping operations to the Dubai company, DP World. Then there’s David Sanborn, who runs DP World’s European and Latin American operations and — what a coincidence! — was tapped last month by Bush to head the U.S. Maritime Administration.

Of course, now Bush is admitting that he didn’t even know about the port deal until after it was approved by his Administration.

In short, this whole thing stinks.

Julia has more.

Best Thing I’ve Seen All Day

Perhaps this has been going around for a while and I’m the last one to see it, but you must do this. Google “Asshole” and click “I’m Feeling Lucky.” I guarantee it’s way better than “miserable failure.”

I wonder if this has anything to do with the Bush administration subpoenaing Google’s search records?

Posted in Uncategorized

“I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.”

Er, well, maybe the White House could have, because they were warned:

In the 48 hours before Hurricane Katrina hit, the White House received detailed warnings about the storm’s likely impact, including eerily prescient predictions of breached levees, massive flooding, and major losses of life and property, documents show.

A 41-page assessment by the Department of Homeland Security’s National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC), was delivered by e-mail to the White House’s “situation room,” the nerve center where crises are handled, at 1:47 a.m. on Aug. 29, the day the storm hit, according to an e-mail cover sheet accompanying the document.

The NISAC paper warned that a storm of Katrina’s size would “likely lead to severe flooding and/or levee breaching” and specifically noted the potential for levee failures along Lake Pontchartrain. It predicted economic losses in the tens of billions of dollars, including damage to public utilities and industry that would take years to fully repair. Initial response and rescue operations would be hampered by disruption of telecommunications networks and the loss of power to fire, police and emergency workers, it said.

In a second document, also obtained by The Washington Post, a computer slide presentation by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, prepared for a 9 a.m. meeting on Aug. 27, two days before Katrina made landfall, compared Katrina’s likely impact to that of “Hurricane Pam,” a fictional Category 3 storm used in a series of FEMA disaster-preparedness exercises simulating the effects of a major hurricane striking New Orleans. But Katrina, the report warned, could be worse.

Heckuva job, indeed. No wonder the White House doesn’t want to release documents showing Katrina-related communications among White House staff.

Update: The Rude Pundit on why Katrina’s not going away.

Who Checks the President, and What Should We Ask Alito?

Or, I *heart* law school. And blogging for choice:

Noah Feldman is on it. It’s long, but worth a full read.

Cheryl Mills, who I had the great pleasure to meet last year and who is fabulous and brilliant, has five questions for Alito.

Kenji Yoshino, deputy dean for intellectual life at Yale Law School, has five more that focus on privacy rights, “hidden rights,” and executive power.

Read the whole Thirty Questions series:

–John Yoo, a former deputy assistant attorney general in the George W. Bush administration and a professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley.
–Leonard A. Leo, the executive vice president of the Federalist Society
–Scott Turow, a former federal prosecutor
–Stanley Fish, a former chairman of the English department at Duke University, and a professor of law at Florida International University.

And because it’s Blog For Choice day, my five favorite questions for Alito:

1. If you were sitting on the court in 1973 when it protected a woman’s right to have an abortion in Roe v. Wade, would you have voted with the majority?

2. In a famous debate half a century ago, the legal theorists H. L. A. Hart and Lon Fuller differed on the question of whether Nazi law in Germany was, in fact, law. Hart argued that morally iniquitous laws that have a valid form – laws that have emerged as the result of following legitimate procedures – are still laws, even though we might want to say that they are bad laws. Fuller contended that a legal system devoted to evil aims could not be called law because there is “a necessary relationship between substantive justice and procedural justice.” With which of these theorists are you in agreement? Are law and morality finally one or can they be distinguished? Were the laws denying the vote to women in America real laws or spurious laws?

3. Does the Constitution require that courts provide the same legal protections to gays as to racial minorities and women?

4. Do you believe that the Constitution protects rights that do not appear in the text of the document itself and, if so, how do you think the Supreme Court should go about discerning the nature of those rights?

5. Assume for the sake of this question that the Supreme Court concludes in the future that Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided, and that the Constitution does not protect a woman’s right to have an abortion. Without stating how you would ultimately rule, but speaking simply as a constitutional expert, is there any constitutional provision that might reasonably be thought to reserve the right to regulate abortion to the states, as some Roe opponents contend? Put another way, if Roe was reversed, what constitutional provision might prevent federal efforts to impede or outlaw abortion, like statutes making it a crime to either cross state lines to seek an abortion or place in the stream of interstate commerce any medical device or implement knowing it is likely to be used for an abortion?

Oh My

Sure this isn’t scientific, but this MSNBC poll has some surprising numbers:

Do you believe President Bush’s actions justify impeachment? 182894 responses

Yes, between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to war and more, there is plenty to justify putting him on trial.
86%

No, like any president, he has made a few missteps, but nothing approaching “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
5%

No, the man has done absolutely nothing wrong. Impeachment would just be a political lynching.
8%

I don’t know.
2%

The poll is still open.