He says he's running out of money. They don't pay him?
He also hints at "a couple" more "high-level" resignations in the months ahead.
I might chalk up all the departures as end-of-the-lame-duck-season maneuvers as people are lining up other jobs in anticipation of a house-cleaning when the new president comes in, if it weren't for all the current scandals and investigations.
The Village Voice has a nice headline:
Rove's 'Generation of Peace' to Finally End
posted: 7:03 AM, August 13, 2007 by HarkavyBush's Rasputin gives two weeks' notice, will flee to Texas.
He said he decided to leave after White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten told senior aides that if they stayed past Labor Day they would be obliged to remain through the end of the president’s term in January 2009.
Rove told the Wall Street Journal, "I just think it's time," adding that he is leaving "for the sake of his family."[...]
Congress is now investigating the attorney general's office over the firing of several U.S. attorneys, but Rove has refused to cooperate in the congressional hearings.
"Where is Karl Rove? Why is he hiding? Why does he throw a young staffer like you into the line of fire while he hides behind the White House curtains?" asked Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., during a judiciary committee hearing.
As for questions on whether he is resigning to avoid testifying in front of Congress, Rove told Wall Street Journal editor Paul Gigot, "I know they'll say that. But I'm not going to stay or leave based on whether it pleases the mob."
Right, Karl. Turd Blossom Karl, who's been with George since before his governorship. Getting out for the "sake of the family". FBI raids on the home and press on the lawn?
He may get to avoid testifying, and he may not be in the office, but he'll still be around.
As people do better, they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing. -- Karl Rove
The President of the National Young Republicans, under allegations of sexually harassing another man, has resigned from his post.An older complaint, from 1988 alleged that Glenn Murphy, whose term at the helm of the group began last month, "had the blankets pulled up over the waist of [redacted] and was committing oral sex on him when he awoke."
Murphy sent an email to friends saying he was resigning from the post he has held for a month for business reasons.
Okay, boys. I don't think "sexual harassment" aptly describes what went on here. If it wasn't agreeable to the previously-sleeping party, that sounds like rape to me. But apparently the accosted man didn't feel it was that serious. Sexual harassment. Sheesh.
Murphy resigned for business reasons all right. No lie there.
Let's just not say that Republicans are anti-gay, when so many of them actually seem to be gay. They are simply anti-gay-rights.
Why do they hate themselves?
Flippancy aside. This is really a sad state of affairs, because it would seem that they do indeed have very low self-esteem and/or fear of being caught. Which, you might think, would inspire them, in their positions of political power, to push for equal rights, openness and liberty and justice for gays.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
White House political director Sara Taylor is out the door at the White House, according to Washington Wire. Taylor came up a number of times yesterday during the Kyle Sampson hearing as having worked closely with Sampson (along with another Karl Rove aide Scott Jennings) to install Rove's former aide Tim Griffin as the U.S. Attorney in eastern Arkansas.
Better start keeping a tally.
And while we're on the subject...
There are some Supreme Court Justices who need to be replaced, too.
The Supreme Court ordered the federal government on Monday to take a fresh look at regulating carbon dioxide emissions from cars, a rebuke to Bush administration policy on global warming.In a 5-4 decision, the court said the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate the emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from cars.
Health and Human Services
Bush appointee Eric Keroack has just resigned.
The head of the federal office responsible for providing women with access to contraceptives and counseling to prevent pregnancy resigned unexpectedly Thursday after Medicaid officials took action against him in Massachusetts.The Health and Human Services Department provided no details about the nature of the Massachusetts action that led to Dr. Eric Keroack's resignation.
Just five months ago, Keroack was chosen by President Bush to oversee HHS' Office of Population Affairs and its $283 million annual budget. [...] Keroack had worked for an organization that opposes contraception.
[...]
Keroack's office oversees family planning services provided through the Title X program. Services include screening for breast and cervical cancer, as well as treatment for sexually transmitted disease.
Keroack told his staff in a letter Thursday that he became aware of action being taken against his private medical practice in Massachusetts. He said he immediately hired an attorney to initiate an appeal. He did not elaborate on why the action was taken.
[...]
Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, called on the Bush administration to appoint as a successor a "medical professional who actually believes in birth control to lead the nation's family-planning program."
There's a laugh.
Now, recall what you read above (if you did read above) about the services this federal office supplies, including breast and cervical cancer screening for poor women. It seems that the Women's Health portion of the budget is about as ephemeral as Bush's AIDS budget.
[T]he FDA has decided to hold $1.2 million of that funding (out of a $4 million total) for use elsewhere in the agency.The Post continued, "Because the remaining $2.8 million has already been spent or allocated for salaries and started projects, the office must effectively halt further operations for the rest of the year, according to a high-level agency official with knowledge of the budget plan."
[...]
The Office of Women's Health is the lead federal agency on gender differences in medicine. It holds health fairs nationwide informing consumers about the latest scientific information available on how pharmaceuticals, surgery and other treatments affect women and men differently. More important, it oversees a variety of important pharmaceutical and surgical research on osteoporosis, menopause and reproductive health. If the office were to shut down for the rest of the fiscal year (which ends in October) all those efforts would come to a sorry halt, and women consumers (and the men who love them) would be the worse for it.
When the complaints were being voiced about Keroack's appointment, an HHS spokesmodel claimed that, in his private practice, Keroack prescribed contraceptives. Conflicted? (Or maybe he prescribed them for the women in his own family.)
Just for the halibut....I ran across this comment on the Think Progress website discussing Keroack's resignation.
How many problems in our current society (or even just Africa) would be instantly solved if everyone waited until marriage to experience God’s gift of sex?Comment by Jake — March 29, 2007 @ 10:16 pm
Maybe he was seriously asking for a number. Anybody? But I don't know how to excuse him for that Africa comment. Actually, I'm not even sure why he felt it necessary to throw that in.
Aaaaaaanyway...
Environmental Protection, Bush Style
The Justice Department is far from the only government agency troubled by politicization under the Bush administration. All you have to do is spin the wheel.So today, it's the Fish and Wildlife Service! And at the center of it is one Julie A. MacDonald, appointed by Bush to be the deputy assistant secretary for fish and wildlife and parks at the Interior Department. The very ugly details of her malfeasance have been exposed by an inspector general report. (Update: MacDonald, by the way, has a degree is in civil engineering and has no formal educational background in natural sciences.)
[...]
Here's how she works: MacDonald just made stuff up. If scientists recommended a certain action, MacDonald would alter the recommendation or simply ignore it if it threatened industry or landowners in any way.
Some examples of her scientific method:
MacDonald tangled with field personnel over designating habitat for the endangered Southwestern willow flycatcher, a bird whose range is from Arizona to New Mexico and Southern California. When scientists wrote that the bird had a "nesting range" of 2.1 miles, MacDonald told field personnel to change the number to 1.8 miles. Hall, a wildlife biologist who told the IG he had had a "running battle" with MacDonald, said she did not want the range to extend to California because her husband had a family ranch there.[...]
The Interior Department's Inspector General has referred the case to Interior's top officials for "potential administrative action." We'll see if she gets a scolding or a pat on the head.
Any bets?
I'm sure the Americas will miss him.The top US diplomat for the Americas, Roger Noriega, resigned his post, Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman, said.[...]
"Noriega confirmed this morning that he'll be leaving the State Department and going to the private sector in September," McCormack said.
Oh, and...Leaked emails from two former prosecutors claim the military commissions set up to try detainees at Guantanamo Bay are rigged, fraudulent, and thin on evidence against the accused.
Two emails, which have been obtained by the ABC, were sent to supervisors in the Office of Military Commissions in March of last year - three months before Australian detainee David Hicks was charged and five months before his trial began.
The first email is from prosecutor Major Robert Preston to his supervisor.
Maj Preston writes that the process is perpetrating a fraud on the American people, and that the cases being pursued are marginal.
"I consider the insistence on pressing ahead with cases that would be marginal even if properly prepared to be a severe threat to the reputation of the military justice system and even a fraud on the American people," Maj Preston wrote.
"Surely they don't expect that this fairly half-arsed effort is all that we have been able to put together after all this time."
Maj Preston says he cannot continue to work on a process he considers morally, ethically and professionally intolerable.
"I lie awake worrying about this every night," he wrote.
"I find it almost impossible to focus on my part of mission.
"After all, writing a motion saying that the process will be full and fair when you don't really believe it is kind of hard, particularly when you want to call yourself an officer and lawyer."
Maj Preston was transferred out of the Office of Military Commissions less than a month later.
No doubt. Beginning with the canning of Major Preston.The second email is written by another prosecutor, Captain John Carr, who also ended up leaving the department.[...]
Capt Carr says that the prosecutors have been told by the chief prosecutor that the panel sitting in judgment on the cases would be handpicked to ensure convictions.
[...]
But the Pentagon's Brigadier General Thomas Hemingway, who is a legal advisor to the military commissions, says an investigation has found the comments are based on miscommunication, misunderstanding and personality conflicts.
He says changes have been made in the prosecutors' office.
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
Corexit: More toxic than the oil
IVAW: Iraq Veterans Against the War
