1 Boring Old Man

Connect the Dots: Karl Rove’s Politics Uber Alles Strategy and the Utah Mine Disaster

What makes Karl Rove’s politics uber alles strategy chilling is connecting the dots between it and the Utah mining disaster.

Rove’s unprecedented use of federal assets for political gain, laid out in yesterday’s Washington Post, meant that every tool at his disposal was employed to help foster his goal of a permanent Republican majority. "It was all politics, all the time," Rep. Henry Waxman told WaPo.

"It was total commitment," marveled Rep. Thomas Davis III, who worked closely with Rove in 2002 on the GOP’s House reelection campaign. "We knew history was against us, and [Rove] helped coordinate all of the accoutrements of the executive branch to help with the campaign."

These accouterments included, in the words of the Post, "enlisting political appointees at every level of government in a permanent campaign that was an integral part of [Rove’s] strategy to establish electoral dominance." But Rove’s plan involved much more than having Cabinet officials make election year visits bearing federal goodies to the districts of embattled Republicans; it also meant using the government’s regulatory mechanisms to reward major GOP contributors. Major contributors such as Big Coal.

Coal mining interests have donated more than $12 million to federal candidates since the Bush-era began with the 2000 election cycle, with 88% of that money — $10.6 million — going to Republicans.

And what did that largess buy the coal mining industry? Mine safety regulators far more interested in looking out for the financial well-being of mine owners than for the physical well-being of miners.

Exhibit A is Bush’s "mine safety" czar, Richard Stickler, whose agency both approved the controversial mining technique used at the Crandall Canyon Mine before the collapse, and oversaw the rescue operation.

Stickler is a former coal company manager with such a lousy safety record at the companies he’d run that his nomination as head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration was twice rejected by Senators from both parties, forcing Bush to sneak him in the back door with a recess appointment.

In other words, the guy the White House tapped to protect miners is precisely the kind of executive the head of the Mine Safety and Health Administration is supposed to protect miners from. And now Stickler is the one who will lead the "investigation" into what happened in Utah — unless there is enough public outcry to force a truly independent investigation.

The accusation is that the Bush Administration has only been about political advancement of the Republican Party and the agendae of it’s more affluent constituents. It has not been about government of whole country. Dick Cheney’s first job in Washington was under Nixon to assist Donald Rumsfeld in stopping the Office of Economic Opportunity from functioning. He’s been at it ever since. As Gerald Ford’s Chief of Staff, as a Representative for 10 years, or as Secretary of Defense, he has consistantly shown a talent for political manipulation, always in the negative – finding ways around obstacles in the way of some interest he’s trying to help. He may be a Conservative – but his real forte is as a behind the scenes political operator. Karl Rove is the same way. Since he’s resigned, he’s made the talk show rounds speaking of lofty policies and vision. He’s simply a political hack who has abused the power of government to promote the Republican Party. Who knows what Bush is? Whatever he is, he’s no leader nor is he a man of vision. They all three know how to get their way, but none of the three have a "way" for us to go. They’re just taking care of their pals – mostly businessmen who need government to increase their profits and others [like the Religious Right] who control a lot of voters.

[Origin: 1400–50; late ME < MF < ML *dominiōn- (s. of *dominiō) lordship, equiv. to L domin(ium) dominium + -iōn- -ion]

Throughout much of my remembered life, the abiding principle of America was freedom, and the enemy of my youth was the World Communist Movement. The Communists in Russia and Red China were, in our opinion, dead set on spreading their utopian vision of government all over the planet. We, on the other hand, saw Communist Dominion as a plague and fought back at any opportunity. When Communism collapsed, one might have surmised that the world would settle down and live in peace. We had our Democracy, our freedom. In our Action Movies [which rely on an evil enemy], the Communists were replaced by Arab Terrorists – and the new fear was of Middle Eastern Dominionists who would seek to take over the world in some kind of Global Islamic Movement. Same song, new enemy. Again, our freedom was threatened. I don’t really know if Global Dominion is what the Arabs want. They seem to be fighting for Dominion over what they consider their own part of the world – fighting with us, fighting with Israel, and fighting with each other. 

In the post "Cold War" world, something I personally never expected happened. We were swept up in two Dominionist Movements of our own. The first was religious. America is a Christian Nation, we were told. The new Christian Trinity became American Democracy, something called Family Values, and the morality of the Torah [Old Testament]. Fundamentalist religious leaders were joined by organizations like the Traditional Values Coalition, Focus on the Family, and the Family Research Council. The resultant Religious Right forces elected our current President. The other Dominionist Movement came as part of the neoconservative foreign policy – the Bush Doctrine. America would become the dominant force in policing the world. We would spread Democracy to the four corners of the earth. Like the World Communist Movement, or the Islamic Jihadists, we knew what was right for the world and we would deliver it – American Dominion.

I guess Dominion is just part of being human. When we were photographing that beautiful rainbow in Colorado, I moved back to get the cannon in the picture – a testimony to some forgotten assertion of Dominion. No matter what rationalization is used to justify a claim of Dominion over the lands, lives, or minds of others, it’s just about personal greed and fear. People who care about others leave them alone. People who trust others leave them alone. People who love the land, don’t need to own it. Frightened, greedy people fight for ownership. It’s that simple. That cannon is left over from a time when the place was a Frontier Trading Post. It was there to ward off Indian attacks [Is there any question about why the Indians were attacking?].

We know about Dominion – our history books are filled with stories of conquerors and Kings rampaging across the earth. My memory of all those history classes is about power politics – groups subjugating other groups; rebellion of the underclass; upstarts unseating the old guard; etc. I don’t recall much that wouldn’t fall under the categories of greed and fear. In fact, I can’t recall any off the top of my head. All I recall is bigger and bigger cannons.

Vick Agrees to Plea Deal for Dogfighting Charges

Michael Vick, the star quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons, agreed Monday to plead guilty to dogfighting charges in a deal with federal prosecutors that will probably land him in prison while he is in the prime of his N.F.L. career. Michael Vick’s plea deal likely calls for prosecutors to recommend a lighter sentence as long as Vick cooperates with the government’s investigation.

The National Football League, which has barred Vick from the Falcons’ training camp, will probably not announce its punishment for Vick until he accepts the plea in a hearing next Monday. As part of the deal, Vick agreed to plead guilty to the felony charges of conspiring to travel in interstate commerce in aid of unlawful activities and conspiring to sponsor a dog in an animal-fighting venture.

He faces at least a year in prison. United States District Judge Henry E. Hudson, who announced the plea agreement in a meeting with reporters in his courtroom, will probably sentence Vick at the end of November.

Vick, 27, is in a small group of elite athletes, with the baseball player Shoeless Joe Jackson (one of the Black Sox who threw the 1919 World Series) and the boxer Mike Tyson (who went to prison on a rape charge), whose careers were cut short or interrupted at their peak because of legal problems.

Cheney’s Office Says It Has Wiretap Documents

Vice President Cheney’s office acknowledged for the first time yesterday that it has dozens of documents related to the administration’s warrantless surveillance program, but it signaled that it will resist efforts by congressional Democrats to obtain them. The disclosure by Cheney’s counsel, Shannen W. Coffin, came on the day that the Senate Judiciary Committee had set as a deadline for the Bush administration to turn over documents related to the wiretapping program, which allowed the National Security Agency to monitor communications between the United States and overseas without warrants. White House counsel Fred F. Fielding has also declined to turn over any documents about the program, telling lawmakers last week that more time was needed to locate records that might be responsive to the panel’s subpoenas.

The committee’s chairman, Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), said yesterday that he will pursue contempt proceedings against administration officials if the documents are not produced. "When the Senate comes back in the session, I’ll bring it up before the committee," Leahy told reporters yesterday. "I prefer cooperation to contempt. Right now, there’s no question that they are in contempt of the valid order of the Congress."

Administration spokesman Tony Fratto said in a statement that Fielding "is seeking to reach an accommodation" with lawmakers but that responding to the subpoenas will take more time. "We have approached these discussions in a positive way that will not take us down the path of confrontation," Fratto said.

The dispute over NSA records is the latest in a series of battles between the Bush administration and Congress this year over access to witnesses and documents, including those sought in the continuing investigations by the House and Senate Judiciary committees into last year’s firings of nine U.S. attorneys by the Justice Department. In that case, the White House has asserted that the documents and witness testimony sought by Congress would improperly disclose internal deliberations, and thus are protected by a legal concept known as executive privilege.

Both Coffin and Fratto indicated that the administration is considering a similar argument in relation to the NSA program. Nonetheless, Coffin identified by date a series of memos and orders that "may be responsive" to the Senate committee’s demands. They include 43 separate authorizations from President Bush for the program, which had to be renewed approximately every 45 days beginning on Oct. 4, 2001.

US v. Nixon

The Supreme Court addressed ‘executive privilege’ in United States v. Nixon, the 1974 case involving the demand by Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski that President Richard Nixon produce the audiotapes of conversations he and his colleagues had in the Oval Office of the White House in connection with criminal charges being brought against members of the Nixon Administration. Nixon invoked the privilege and refused to produce any records.

The Supreme Court did not reject the claim of privilege out of hand; it noted, in fact, "the valid need for protection of communications between high Government officials and those who advise and assist them in the performance of their manifold duties" and that "[h]uman experience teaches that those who expect public dissemination of their remarks may well temper candor with a concern for appearances and for their own interests to the detriment of the decisionmaking process." This is very similar to the logic that the Court had used in establishing an "executive immunity" defense for high office-holders charged with violating citizens’ constitutional rights in the course of performing their duties.

The Supreme Court however rejected the notion that the President has an "absolute privilege." The Supreme Court stated: "To read the Article II powers of the President as providing an absolute privilege as against a subpoena essential to enforcement of criminal statutes on no more than a generalized claim of the public interest in confidentiality of nonmilitary and nondiplomatic discussions would upset the constitutional balance of ‘a workable government’ and gravely impair the role of the courts under Article III." Because Nixon had asserted only a generalized need for confidentiality, the Court held that the larger public interest in obtaining the truth in the context of a criminal prosecution took precedence.

But, unfortunately, my arguing with Mr. Cheney is for naught. The Bush White House currently controls the U.S. Justice Department. The avenue of a Special Prosecutor is not currently open to pursue these records. Instead, we have Congress [who has one guy, the Clerk of the Senate] trying to fill in for our absent DOJ. So we have Fred Fielding, David Addington, Tony Fratto, and Alberto Gonzales ruling on the law – and nothing in front of a Judge. This is, to me, a Constitutional Crisis extraordinaire. The Bush Administration has shut down the U.S. Justice System on purpose. As Patrick Fitzgerald said, "Obstruction of Justice is a serious crime." What could be a better example of Obstruction of Justice than making the whole justice system inoperative?

Colorado Springs is a pretty town – home to the U.S.A. Olympic Training Center and the Air Force Academy. It’s a retirement town for a lot of military people. As you drive north across the high flat plain, the older city disappears and is replaced by a giant sea of new, subdivisions packed tightly on any available land. In our part of the world, it’s hard to see "sprawl." The trees and hills hide it. But north of Colorado Springs, it’s visible for miles – vinyl sided houses as far as the eye can see. As we rode along Interstate 25 north towards Denver, we saw a blue dome rising above the line of houses. You guessed it – the New Life Church [formerly the venue of Pastor Ted Haggard].

New Life Groups

How do you choose your friends…people who enjoy similar interests…people at the same stage of life…people who share the same goal …? That’s what New Life Church Groups are all about. Building friendships with others whom we share interests.

In the 1940’s and 1950’s, a lot of us grew up in the "suburbs" that blossomed after World War II. It was a little different – not so packed together. The houses had more room, looked different from the others on the block. But there was a lot that was the same. On my block, most of the other families attended the Baptist Church around the corner where their social connections seemed centered.

As I wandered around the New Life campus, I couldn’t help thinking that the appeal of Pastor Ted’s New Life Groups, or his charismatic take on religion, was an antedote to the impersonality of the sprawling sea of similar houses and restaurant chains. But it kind of made me mad. They could do the same thing without demonizing homosexuals, or unwed mothers, or minorities. They could provide a community service without getting involved with politics, without backing an incompetent President because he pandered to their issues du jour. There’s nothing wrong with helping people in an impersonal sprawling world. Why do they have to do the crazy political thing?

Back, closer to town, but still amid the "sprawl" communities, there’s an even bigger campus – James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. It’s even harder to understand. James Dobson grew up in a fundamentalist minister’s family. When he announced that he was going to the prom, his dad resigned and moved his family to another place. James didn’t go to the prom. He became a child psychologist and practiced until he wrote a book saying that it was okay to spank children – which earned him the love of the Religious Right. He now oversees a huge, bustling campus of people giving advice to families. The advice is monotonous – traditional family values. His psychological formulations are sophmoric, and his theology fundamentalist. He’s also a darling of the Religious Right and a homophobe. As Falwell and Robertson receed, he moves increasingly to the forefront of the movement.

And so it goes, day after day. People talk as if it were the days of Father Knows Best or the Donna Reed show. There’s no war in Iraq. There’s no poverty. It’s feels like pap delivered as if the sprawling, impersonal neighborhoods of Colorado Springs are representative of American life, and the planet isn’t burning itself up, and there’s room for unlimited suburbs stretching as far as the eye can see – like what this world’s children need is Christian financial advice.

I didn’t understand North Colorado Springs. I just didn’t know what it was about… 

Schlozman Leaves Justice Department

Bradley Schlozman, a former Justice Department official who was at the center of the U.S. attorneys scandal and is under investigation by the Departments inspector general for his alleged efforts to politicize the Civil Rights Division, has finally left his post at the Department.

After he left his position as the U.S. attorney in Kansas City this April, Schlozman moved to the Justice Department office that oversees all U.S. attorneys. Reached on his cell phone today, Schlozman confirmed that he’d left the Department last week, but refused to say anything more and then hung up.

That makes Schlozman the latest in a long line of Department officials to leave in the wake of the firings scandal, including former White House liaison Monica Goodling, chief of staff Kyle Sampson, Acting Associate Attorney General William Mercer, Deputy Attorney General Paul McNulty, and his chief of staff Michael Elston.

1. Vail: The point of our trip [to Vail] was to get together with a group of our oldest friends from the Air Force [33 years ago for our yearly visit] – a week of good friends, good food, and good times. Then we set off on our own for an exploring week.
2. Leadville: Leadville is nestled in the mountains south of Vail – an old gold rush and later mining town. As a boom town, it was left with lots of brick buildings not turned into shops and restaurants. The old mining train runs as a tourist attraction up to a “moly” mine above the tree line. There’s even a Mining Hall of Fame that was surprisingly interesting. The scenery was spectacular and virtually unpopulated until one reached the city limits [very cold in winter!].
3. Independence Pass: The drive from Leadville to Aspen was breathtakin., in more ways than one [it was our first venture above 12,000 feet].
4. Rocky Mountain National Park: Rocky Mountain National Park is too big to photograph, winding above 12000 feet. On the Skyline Parkway above the treeline, the foliage clings to the rocks for dear life. Evergreens at the treeline are blown “uphill” actually migrating in the fierce winds at high altitudes. There are plenty of Elk [and rumors of Bighorn Sheep, though none showed while we were there].
5. The Colorado River Valley: From its origin on the western side of Rocky Mountain Park, the Colorado River picks up steam flowing westward towards its masterpiece – the Grand Canyon. The valley in Colorado is a collage of petrified sand dunes – some showing a hint of the bright stripes that light up the painted desert in Arizona.
6. The Colorado Monument: The Colorado Monument is a National Park with a harrowing [for me] clifftop drive. One overlooks the Colorado River Valley with distant sand dunes from several prehistoric seas. The eroded sandstone canyons and pinacles stretch for miles [for those who choose to look over the edge]. It’s a preview for Arches just over the Utah border.
7. Arches National Park: We had planned to go to Dinosaur Park but found that the fossil exhibit was closed, so we diverted to Arches National Park in Eastern Utah. There’s not anything like Arches Park on the planet. I’m sure of that. There are miles and miles of massive sandstone pinacles, hoodoos, and the unique arches that give the park its name. The pictures here are a mere sampler from the encyclopedia of Arches Park – truly one of those “you’d have to see it yourself” places.
8. [More] Colorado River Valley: Leaving Arches Park, we took the eastern route back to I-70, along the Colorado River. It was probably the most spectacular drive of the trip – totally unexpected! Walls of sculptured sandstone towered on either side of the river valley. The river itself was lined with cottonwoods. It was “unphotographable.”
9. The Black Canyon of the Gunnison: All of the geology in the landscape and parks before this one were sedimentary formations – the result of erosion on the sandstone layers from the beds of ancient oceans. But the Black Canyon is much older. It’s black color comes from the mica formed when this precambrian sandstone was “cooked” eight billion years ago. The cracks in the black stone filled with magma – pegmatite, a quartz colored pink with feldspar. This canyon cut by the Gunnison River is 2800 feet deep in places – an ominous sparkling black with pink veins.
10. The Arkansas River Valley: The precambrian rock formation runs along the Gunnison River, then picks up on the other side of Monarch Pass in the Arkansas River Valley as the River turns into rafting heaven. The mountain goats were a nice touch…
11. The Royal Gorge: Outside of Canon City, there’s a lesser version of the Black Canyon which is a commercial theme park with multiple ways to “hang out” over the gorge and be terrified. I read a book in the restaurant [bungie jumping into a 2000 plus foot deep gorge is for the young at heart].
12. The Cripple Creek Area: In Colorado, if you’re not on a mountaintop or in a canyon, you can see forever. In Georgia, if it looks like rain, we turn on the Weather Channel. In Colorado, you can see the rain from miles away. We’d dodged showers every afternoon until we drove through the Cripple Creek area. They were all around us, then they converged creating a significant hail storm. It may have been a routine afternoon for locals, but for us it was a life experience.
13. Colorado Springs: We spent the night in Colorado Springs with old friends from the 70’s. The next day, we saw the “Garden of the Gods, the Olympic Training Center, and couldn’t resist taking a trip to see some of the Religious Right bastions headquartered there [more later].
14. Pike’s Peak: What can I say? Pike’s Peak is there and we drove up it. There’s no air there! Absolutely none! On the way down, we flunked the brake temperature test [486°] and got put in time out. There above us while we waited, near the top, a skier was skiing in a patch of left-over snow. That’s what I call insanity!
15. Denver: We weren’t in Denver very long – passing through coming and going. But the last night of our trip, we had dinner with our daughter’s [and our] good friend [blogger] Smoooochie and family. A great treat!

Spurning Criticism, Rove Blames Democrats

During the last eight years, Karl Rove has been lionized and vilified, heralded as making the unlikely election victories of President Bush possible and impugned as reaching too high from an unusually powerful White House perch.

In the eyes of his many detractors, he has helped to send the Bush presidency off track in the process.

But in an interview at an IHOP restaurant here, days after he announced his resignation as Mr. Bush’s top political adviser, Mr. Rove defiantly dismissed the rash of fresh critiques that have come his way in the last several days, blaming the Democrats for the divisive tone that has dominated Mr. Bush’s tenure and for which he has frequently taken the blame.

He said he had no regrets over what some even some allies have called his greatest missteps, like his trying and failing to pass a sweeping overhaul of the Social Security system at the start of Mr. Bush’s second term, and the degree to which he seemed to meld partisan politics and official White House policy in his dual duties as a deputy chief of staff and Mr. Bush’s top political strategist.

He strenuously argued with the dominant characterization of him as the Oz — or, with Vice President Dick Cheney, the co-Oz — behind the curtain of Mr. Bush’s White House and presidency, declaring, “I’m the facilitator,” who has merely helped Mr. Bush as he has sought to shape his own views.

Mr. Rove at the same time described himself as an aggressive and studious inside player at the White House who is still one of the four or five officials forming Mr. Bush’s tight-knit, inner circle, but has had to work hard for the position. He dismissed what he called “the idea that I am somehow this all-powerful figure inside the White House.”

“What I’ve learned is that if I want my voice to be heard around the table,” Mr. Rove said, “it can’t simply be, ‘Well, he’s the long-term associate of Bush from Texas’ — I’ve got to dig in.”

…

And Democrats are currently investigating whether Mr. Rove inappropriately pushed for the dismissal last year of several United States attorneys for political purposes. (“Everything was handled appropriately,” Mr. Rove said.)

“The dividers, over the last six years,” he said, “have been the Democrats, who have routinely said he was not elected, he’s illegitimate, he’s a liar, he deliberately misled the country.”

Mr. Rove was asked whether harsh Republican attacks on the national security credentials of various Democrats in 2002, orchestrated by him, had added to the climate. Among the advertisements that year was one from the Georgia Senate race in which the Republican, Saxby Chambliss, called the Democratic incumbent, Max Cleland, a triple-amputee Vietnam veteran soft on defense and flashed the menacing image of Osama Bin Laden.

“President Bush and the White House don’t write the ads for Senate candidates,” Mr. Rove said, calling himself “a convenient scapegoat,” and blaming Democrats for their losses.

Democrats and even some Republicans have criticized Mr. Rove this week for what they have described as a single-minded pursuit of his goal of a “durable” Republican majority, with policies aimed at stealing away traditional Democratic constituencies like Latinos or weakening Democratic power bases like unions.

Voicing indignation at such critiques, he said, “With all due respect, don’t you think they would like to have a durable Democratic majority and put us as an un-durable minority?”

These facts underscore how much progress has been made in four decades. It has been a remarkable rise. But it is also a cautionary tale of what happens to a dominant party – in this case, the Democrat Party — when its thinking becomes ossified; when its energy begins to drain; when an entitlement mentality takes over; and when political power becomes an end in itself rather than a means to achieve the common good. We need to learn from our successes – and from the failures of the other side and ourselves. As the governing movement in America, conservatives cannot grow tired or timid. We have been given the opportunity to govern; now we have to show we deserve the trust of our fellow citizens.

At one time the conservative movement was largely a reactionary political party – and there was a sense of pessimism even among many of its ardent champions. You’ll recall that Whittaker Chambers, who gave up his affiliation with Communism to join the West in its struggle for freedom, said he believed he was joining the losing side.

For decades, liberals were setting the agenda, the pace of change, and the visionary goals. Conservatives were simply reacting to them. But times change, often for the better – and this President and today’s conservative movement are shaping history, not trying to stop it. Together we are articulating a compelling vision of a better world – and I am grateful to all of you who are making that better world a reality.

 

In the last couple of weeks wandering around Colorado [hiding from the news], I’ve been thinking about the so-called "surge." The Iraq Study Group made a gajillion recommendations, but the idea of a "surge" wasn’t one of them. Where did it come from? It was doomed from the start.  Bush was supposedly off at Camp David contemplating things [an amazing claim!]. Then he announced the "surge," out of the blue. Well, it’s not out of the blue. It’s their standard operating procedure. Looking at Bush’s Approval Ratings, it’s what they always do. When they get behind the eight ball, they come up with something to get them over the hump – like around election time. In the long run, these "surges" don’t change things. It’s just a way to get a temporary boost – crisis intevention. The gains are never sustained. It’s their standard political trick. Well, their "mid-term" surge didn’t work, just like the troop "surge" hasn’t worked. I’m not even sure that matters. They’re just looking for short-term gain – getting people off their backs. Like Bush’s Approval rating, the Iraq situation continues to slide downhill…

An ignoble anniversary

…It hasn’t received much recognition in previous years, but today, Aug. 6, is a noteworthy anniversary as well — six years ago today, the president, on vacation in Crawford, was handed an intelligence briefing document. It was titled, Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US.

In 2004, Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and the State Department’s counterterrorism chief, explained that a Presidential Daily Briefing like that one should have sent Bush back to the Oval Office. Johnson, who’d written dozens of PDBs during Bush 41’s presidency, said the documents are usually brief and dispassionate. The one on Aug. 6, 2001, was a page and a half, with a title meant to capture the president’s attention. “That’s the intelligence-community equivalent of writing War and Peace,” Johnson said.

Johnson added that when he read the declassified document, “I said, ‘Holy smoke!’ This is such a dead-on ‘Mr. President, you’ve got to do something!’ ”

Washington Post:

[A]n unnamed CIA briefer who flew to Bush’s Texas ranch during the scary summer of 2001, amid a flurry of reports of a pending al-Qaeda attack, to call the president’s attention personally to the now-famous Aug. 6, 2001, memo titled Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US. Bush reportedly heard the briefer out and replied: “All right. You’ve covered your ass, now.”

Top intelligence officials — George Tenet, Richard Clarke, and others — were running around with their “hair on fire,” warning that al Qaeda was about to unleash a major attack. Bush, tragically, treated his intelligence briefings about Osama bin Laden as perfunctory chores that he had to endure. Based on the “covered your ass” comment, it was almost as if the president was humoring the CIA briefer…

How Rove Harnessed Government for GOP Gains

Thirteen months before President Bush was reelected, chief strategist Karl Rove summoned political appointees from around the government to the Old Executive Office Building. The subject of the Oct. 1, 2003, meeting was "asset deployment," and the message was clear: The staging of official announcements, high-visibility trips and declarations of federal grants had to be carefully coordinated with the White House political affairs office to ensure the maximum promotion of Bush’s reelection agenda and the Republicans in Congress who supported him, according to documents and some of those involved in the effort. "The White House determines which members need visits," said an internal e-mail about the previously undisclosed Rove "deployment" team, "and where we need to be strategically placing our assets."

…

But Rove, who announced last week that he is resigning from the White House at the end of August, pursued the goal far more systematically than his predecessors, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The Washington Post, enlisting political appointees at every level of government in a permanent campaign that was an integral part of his strategy to establish Republican electoral dominance. Under Rove’s direction, this highly coordinated effort to leverage the government for political marketing started as soon as Bush took office in 2001 and continued through last year’s congressional elections, when it played out in its most quintessential form in the coastal Connecticut district of Rep. Christopher Shays, an endangered Republican incumbent. Seven times, senior administration officials visited Shays’s district in the six months before the election — once for an announcement as minor as a single $23 government weather alert radio presented to an elementary school. On Election Day, Shays was the only Republican House member in New England to survive the Democratic victory.

While Bush is just an incompetent wise guy, his colleagues are something else – something much darker. Here, Karl Rove is blatantly using the governmental agencies and resources for partisan political gain. To me, these three people [Bush, Cheney, and Rove] have made a mockery of our country by ignoring our laws, our legal system. And, in a way, they’ve pointed out a genuine fundamental flaw in our system. Our judiciary can be dominated by the Executive Branch. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales is an Administration Puppet. Thus, there is no check on what the three kings can get away with. Right now, Congress is having a real try at filling in for our absent justice system, but that shouldn’t have to be. Our system allows an incompetent President and his unscrupulous cronies to run free because they’ve been able to paralyze the legal system by appointing a weak and totally controlled Attorney General. That’s a hole in our system – a big one…