Thread: Rove on the Hotseat?

Originally Posted by SnowLeopard

Waste of time or not, what bugs the hell out of me is an administration acting like it is not accountable, ie won't answer the questions, to the people or their representatives of the United States.
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("Do you swear to tell the truth?"--clerk in an American courtroom
"Tarzan always tells the truth."--Tarzan, (w,stte), "Tarzan's New York Adventure)

They shouldn't be answering questions about matters related to the internal communications of the Executive Branch, which is exactly where this matter falls. This a manufactured, non-scandalous 'crisis', generated for the precise reason of 'gotcha' politics.

dalem's exactly right: this is a distraction to a wartime administration that simply cannot afford this kind of BS. Hell, most of the time, they can barely walk and chew gum at the same time, and knowing this, the Democrats want to turn this into Watergate. The Dems do NOT want to win this war, and they're doing everything in their power to make sure we don't.

Disgusting.

Well, on the face of it, when one is willing to talk about it when there is no record but balks when there will be a record and the force of law for perjury .......... it sure seems like something is stinking. At the very least, it doesn't lend confidence that what could be said behind closed doors is truthful. Further, with repeated stories of a lack of accounting for one thing or the next, this administration has done a pretty good job of showing an indication, whether it is actual or not, that if one doesn't tote the party line, isn't an absolute loyalist, they get canned ..................

...................... which is sort of what is being said of the Congress, self serving to their own interest instead of seeing that the job is done. It might be that both sides are guilty of it, it seems like a hell of mess, and I'm not too crazy about my money being spent like that.

Be that as it may, a thing that I've learned from life is that if the person I am talking to wants to talk in private but never where there are witnesses, then they are trouble and you better watch your back at that point.

Internal matters or not, there are times when Congress needs to get involved. If they didn't, took the word that such was internal and not their concern, we might have lost the Cold War because there wouldn't had been an Admiral Rickover.
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("I was about to have him arrested when he defected."--KGB General Puskin
"Why?"--007
"That's a matter of internal security and not open to discussion.", (wtte), "The Living Daylights")

Looks to me that The administration was fully within it's rights to pick and chose what judges stay and who goes, all without congressional approval. Case closed. However, with a two party system we have, one side always has to grasp at straws to undermine the other guys. What bothers me is that Bush is sending in the clowns, er, aids to testify in congress, but not allowing them to go under the oath. This screams they are hiding something.

They work at the pleasure of the President. He can fire them whenever he wants to. This whole issue has been blown way out of proportion. I wish Congress would focus on something productive (yeah right, wishful dreaming).

Originally Posted by bonehead

Looks to me that The administration was fully within it's rights to pick and chose what judges stay and who goes, all without congressional approval. Case closed. However, with a two party system we have, one side always has to grasp at straws to undermine the other guys. What bothers me is that Bush is sending in the clowns, er, aids to testify in congress, but not allowing them to go under the oath. This screams they are hiding something.

Prosecutors, not judges. Presidental appointed judges are appointed for life; if he had fired them, we would have a vastly different situation.

I basically agree with both parts of that but would be more comfortable with the first part if he had just said so in the beginning (leaving out the similar Rickover example).

BUT on the other hand, it doesn't necessarily bode well for the pillar of freedom when one considers history. Ie, Stalin dumping, okay granted he had them killed which isn't the situation here, all those he didn't think were loyal to him commited an action known as a PURGE.

Further, given the past situation of this administration, ie:

washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600193_pf.html

"Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq
Early U.S. Missteps in the Green Zone"

saying in the effect, "They weren't on my team so I fired them" doesn't really thrill me if the competent are replaced with the incompetent. Now, we don't know the latter; we do know that they were competent because the previous fitreps so reflected that, so to speak.

But at best (not going to approach the possible crooked reasons), if we have the continuing situation of loyalty before competency for the lead manager of the government, that doesn't give me confidence and quite frankly, that needs to stop. It is unacceptable for my government to be staffed with people who are not competent in their jobs (if that is the case).

As such, I expect someone in my government to get to the bottom of it. Granted, of course, they may be doing it for different reasons. IMHO.
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("I don't know what they are teaching you guys in the academy these days but if you can't pull off a simple palace revolution, then what can you do?"--The Doctor to Andred, (w,stte), Dr. Who "The Invasion of Time")

The administration claims, rightfully, in my lay-opinion, that executive privilege applies. And if it doesn't in this case, when would it EVER?

Originally Posted by SnowLeopard

Prosecutors, not judges. Presidental appointed judges are appointed for life; if he had fired them, we would have a vastly different situation.

I basically agree with both parts of that but would be more comfortable with the first part if he had just said so in the beginning (leaving out the similar Rickover example).

BUT on the other hand, it doesn't necessarily bode well for the pillar of freedom when one considers history. Ie, Stalin dumping, okay granted he had them killed which isn't the situation here, all those he didn't think were loyal to him commited an action known as a PURGE.

Further, given the past situation of this administration, ie:

washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600193_pf.html

"Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq
Early U.S. Missteps in the Green Zone"

saying in the effect, "They weren't on my team so I fired them" doesn't really thrill me if the competent are replaced with the incompetent. Now, we don't know the latter; we do know that they were competent because the previous fitreps so reflected that, so to speak.

But at best (not going to approach the possible crooked reasons), if we have the continuing situation of loyalty before competency for the lead manager of the government, that doesn't give me confidence and quite frankly, that needs to stop. It is unacceptable for my government to be staffed with people who are not competent in their jobs (if that is the case).

As such, I expect someone in my government to get to the bottom of it. Granted, of course, they may be doing it for different reasons. IMHO.
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("I don't know what they are teaching you guys in the academy these days but if you can't pull off a simple palace revolution, then what can you do?"--The Doctor to Andred, (w,stte), Dr. Who "The Invasion of Time")

Not enough coffee yet. My bad. I ment to say prosecuters.
Unfortunately nepotism is a big part of any presidential term(has been since day one). Therfore, this concept should be kept in mind and should be included in the decision making process when voting.

I seem to recall the Dems had a kind of pledge card of all the things they were going to accomplish in their first hundred days. How's that going?

Cold shot, Pari.

Originally Posted by SnowLeopard

Further, given the past situation of this administration, ie:

washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/16/AR2006091600193_pf.html

"Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq
Early U.S. Missteps in the Green Zone"

SnowLeopard,

Many of the "facts" in this hit piece have been demonstrated to have been flat out wrong and or interpreted in a distortionary manner.

Power Line: It's not as easy as it looks to the Washington Post
Power Line: James Haveman speaks
Power Line: A hit piece becomes swiss cheese
Power Line: It's not as easy as it looks, Part Two
Power Line: A hit piece takes more hits

The fact that the CPA was never fully manned to me indicates that there weren't enough volunteers from among the State Department (and in fact, they can't even muster up the necessary volunteers as we speak to fully fill all the PRTs in Iraq, having had to ask the military to fill many State slots). So, while I was initially sympathetic in total to this article, I don't find it to be fully credible now.

There were some significant mistakes by Rumsfeld over some personnel decisions, namely Warrick, but there is an underlying story here about bureaucratic infighting between DoD and State, where even Powell's directive to support DoD in the fullest was met with resistance by many of the professional bureaucrats in State (this if from Packer).