So nice to see that our Commander in Chief was able not only to take time from his aggressive vacation schedule not only to go down to the gulf states to engage in Operation Photo-Op, but to sneak in a little recess appointment past the Senate.
Bush says results of hurricane response 'not acceptable' (CNN.com/AP)
Friday, September 2, 2005; Posted: 5:31 p.m. EDT (21:31 GMT)
MOBILE, Alabama (AP) -- Facing sharp criticism, President Bush toured the hurricane-battered Gulf Coast on Friday and vowed the government will restore order in lawless New Orleans. He said the $10.5 billion approved by Congress was just a small down payment for disaster relief. "It's worse than imaginable," the president said after walking through a battered neighborhood in Biloxi, Mississippi. He warned of gasoline supply problems this weekend because of damaged refineries and pipelines. "I'm not looking forward to this trip," Bush said as he set out for a firsthand look at the destruction in Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi. "It's as if the entire Gulf Coast were obliterated by the worst kind of weapon you can imagine," the president said.
Bush opened the day at the White House where he expressed unhappiness with the efforts so far to provide food and water to hurricane victims and to stop looting and lawlessness in New Orleans. "The results are not acceptable," said Bush, who rarely admits failure. The president's comments came after New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin lashed out at federal officials, telling a local radio station "they don't have a clue what's going on down here."
Even Republicans were criticizing Bush and his administration for the sluggish relief effort. "I think it puts into question all of the Homeland Security and Northern Command planning for the last four years, because if we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?" said former House Speaker Newt Gingrich....
Bush Bypasses Senate to Install Official (sfgate.com/AP)
By KEN THOMAS, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, September 1, 2005
President Bush has used a constitutional provision to bypass the Senate and fill a top Justice Department slot with an official whose nomination stalled over tactics at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval facility. Bush used a "recess appointment" Wednesday to name Alice S. Fisher to lead the agency's criminal division. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., had blocked the nomination because he wants to talk to an agent who named Fisher in an e-mail about allegedly abusive interrogations at the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo.
The agent wrote that in weekly meetings with Justice Department officials "we often discussed (Defense Department) techniques and how they were not effective or producing (intelligence) that was reliable." In the next sentence, the agent said Fisher, then the No. 2 official in the criminal division, was among Justice officials who attended the meetings. Fisher has said she does not recall participating in the discussions, and Justice officials have said the agent did not intend to say she had. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales declined to let senators question the agent, saying it would violate long-standing policy....
To be sure, it doesn't take anything like the same amount of focus or attention to do what needs to be done during an ongoing crisis as it does to sign a paper to do an end-run around the Senate.
Except ... that somehow, it was important enough for him to do this at a time when the Senate and, indeed, the nation are severely distracted (to put it mildly). To do this at a time when the Senate and the media are unlikely to ask awkward questions about this sudden penchant for recess appointments, and to point out how swimmingly well the last one has gone, with the State Department and other US diplomats already trying to distance themselves from Bolton's actions.
Nice to know that this administration has its priorities in place.
Posted by iain at September 02, 2005 12:50 PM
