Free Republic

If the Senate and House judiciary committees issue subpoenas for Karl Rove and other White House aides to testify to their roles in the firing of the eight U.S. attorneys, President Bush should defy the subpoenas. He should accept the contempt citations and fight it all the way to the Supreme Court. Indeed, he has a duty to do so. For Bush is today the custodian of an office that is the subject of assault by a partisan and hostile Congress. This is about preserving and protecting the integrity of the institution of the presidency. It is about the right...

(AP) WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration asked an appeals court Wednesday to overrule a federal judge and allow the White House to keep secret any records of visitors to Vice President Dick Cheney's residence and office. To make the visitor records public would be an "unprecedented intrusion into the daily operations of the vice presidency," the Justice Department argued in a 57-page brief to the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia. The government was responding to an October order, by U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina, to release two years of White House visitor logs to...

The Bush administration hardly needs encouragement to deny public access to vital government information. Regrettably, encouragement came last week in the form of a federal appellate court ruling supporting the administration's refusal to divulge details about the role of energy industry lobbyists in drafting White House energy policy.At issue were the secretive workings of the energy task force headed by Vice President Dick Cheney early in President Bush's first term. Judicial Watch and the Sierra Club sued to compel disclosure about the panel's work, relying on the Federal Advisory Committee Act, intended to promote government integrity by requiring such panels...

The 8-to-0 decision, handed down months after the lawsuit became an issue in the 2004 election, was a victory for the executive branch in general and the Bush administration in particular. The ruling, by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, upheld the administration argument that it was not obligated to disclose whom it consulted on energy matters early in President Bush's first term and what was said....The Sierra Club, a liberal environmental group, and Judicial Watch, a conservative legal organization, jointly filed the suit. ...The ruling returned the case to the appeals court, which...

A lawsuit seeking to force Vice President Dick Cheney to reveal details about the energy policy task force he headed was scuttled yesterday by a federal appeals court. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously found that two private groups that sued Mr. Cheney failed to establish that the federal government had a legal duty to produce documents detailing the White House's contacts with business executives and lobbyists. The lawsuit, filed by the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch, asserted that energy industry officials effectively became members of the task force, while environmental groups and others were...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered dismissal of a lawsuit seeking to force Vice President Dick Cheney to reveal details about the energy policy task force he headed and the pro-industry recommendations it made. The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit unanimously found that two private groups that sued Cheney failed to establish that the federal government had a legal duty to produce documents detailing the White House's contacts with business executives and lobbyists. The lawsuit, filed by the Sierra Club and Judicial Watch, alleged that energy industry officials effectively became members of...

... The real issue at stake in Cheney is the right of executive-branch officials to seek private advice as they see fit. The Court unfortunately chose not to take this on directly, though Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion makes it clear that the majority believes courts ought to be wary of intruding on the Executive Branch. "Special considerations applicable to the president and the vice president suggest that the courts should be sensitive to requests by the government" in such cases, he writes. Then there's the 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act or FACA. In Cheney, a couple of activist groups...

Excerpts from Thursday's Supreme Court ruling on Vice President Dick Cheney's private energy task force meetings. From the main opinion written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy: "It is well established that a president's communications and activities encompass a vastly wider range of sensitive material than would be true of any ordinary individual. ... As United States v. Nixon explained, these principles do not mean that the 'president is above the law.' Rather, they simply acknowledge that the public interest requires that a coequal branch of government 'afford presidential confidentiality the greatest protection consistent with the fair administration of justice,' and...

Top Court Refuses to Order Release of Cheney Documents Thursday, June 24, 2004 WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court refused Thursday to order the Bush administration to make public secret details of Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force (search), but kept the case alive by sending it back to a lower court. Justices said 7-2 that a lower court should consider whether a federal open government law could be used to get documents of the task force. The decision extends the legal fight over the information. Justices could have allowed a judge to immediately move ahead with ordering the release...

It is a rare instance in today's Washington that a person takes a stand for principle no matter what the price. But that is precisely what President Bush and Vice President Cheney have done in numerous disputes relating to the media and public access to government information. This is particularly true in the current lawsuit relating to the records of the National Energy Policy Development Group (NEPDG), a case soon to be decided by the Supreme Court. Paying a high political price for what the mass media has derisively called its "pursuit of secrecy," the Bush administration has nevertheless...

Just breaking on CNN.

<p>October 28, 2003 -- THE horrors in Baghdad over the past few days have reminded us of the inhuman nature of our militant Islamic foes - and how their mission now as ever is to dishearten and divide us so that we will eventually run away from Iraq and the Middle East and give them free rein.</p>

Why Bush didn't want Condoleezza Rice to testify before the September 11 commission--and why she's going to do so today. TO ALLOW National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice to testify under oath before the September 11 commission today, President Bush had to stand down from a claim of executive privilege. Bush was right to do that, but let's give the privilege its due. Bush has described executive privilege as a "principle" of separation of powers. That's an all too brief way of putting it. The framers of the Constitution understood that there are three kinds of power--legislative, executive and judicial--and that...

When George W. Bush and Dick Cheney took office three years ago, they made no secret of their intention to restore presidential powers and prerogatives that they believed had withered under the onslaught of Washington's cycle of televised, all-consuming investigations. But time and again, that effort by the Bush White House has fallen victim to political reality. It did so once more on Tuesday, when the president made a four-minute appearance in the White House press room to announce that he was giving in to demands from the 9/11 commission that he had resisted for months. His decision to reverse...

Video Clip 1 (G2 multistream format)Video Clip 2 (G2 multistream format) Speakers: Samuel R. Berger, Wolf Blitzer, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Frank Carlucci, Edward Djerejian, Andrew J. Goodpaster, Lee Hamilton, Robert C. McFarlane and Walt W. Rostow. Location: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, DC Date: April 12, 2001 Topic: Forum on the Role of the National Security Advisor Participants: Former national security advisors included Samuel R. Berger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Frank Carlucci, Andrew J. Goodpaster, Robert C. McFarlane and Walt W. Rostow. Wolf Blitzer, CNN anchor, moderated the panel. Edward Djerejian, director of the Baker Institute at Rice, presented opening...

<p>With the latest "uproar" over National Security Advisor Condolleezza Rice's lack of public testimony to the 9/11 commission, I thought everyone might find the following interesting.</p> <p>On July 29, 1999, Richard Clarke was scheduled to appear before the Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem. Senator Bob Bennett (R-UT) chaired the hearing, and made the announcement that Richard Clarke would not be appearing before the committee due to a directive by the National Security Council. Since Clarke was not a confirmed member of the White House staff, the directive was made that Clarke was not allowed to testify before Congress.</p>

(Hartford-AP, July 17, 2002 8:30 PM) _ The state Supreme Court ruled today that the Department of Public Safety cannot charge the Hartford Courant twenty million dollars for a database of criminal convictions. The Hartford Courant requested a copy of the database in 1999. The 850,000 [entries?] in the database give the names, dates of birth, addresses and criminal histories of those who have violated Connecticut law. Public safety officials said the 20 million dollar price tag was based on a state statute that allows police to charge 25 dollars to search for an individual file. The state Supreme Court...