White House Declines to Provide Storm Papers - New York Times
The Bush administration, citing the confidentiality of executive branch communications, said Tuesday that it did not plan to turn over certain documents about Hurricane Katrina or make senior White House officials available for sworn testimony before two Congressional committees investigating the storm response.
The White House this week also formally notified Representative Richard H. Baker, Republican of Louisiana, that it would not support his legislation creating a federally financed reconstruction program for the state that would bail out homeowners and mortgage lenders. Many Louisiana officials consider the bill crucial to recovery, but administration officials said the state would have to use community development money appropriated by Congress.
Ah, isn’t this just swell? Of course, the Bush Admin. isn’t going to cooperate to find out how bad they really messed up.
“There has been a near total lack of cooperation that has made it impossible, in my opinion, for us to do the thorough investigation that we have a responsibility to do,” Senator Joseph I. Lieberman, Democrat of Connecticut, said at Tuesday’s hearing of the Senate committee investigating the response. His spokeswoman said he would ask for a subpoena for documents and testimony if the White House did not comply…
Yet even Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, objected when administration officials who were not part of the president’s staff said they could not testify about communications with the White House.
“I completely disagree with that practice,” Ms. Collins, chairwoman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in an interview Tuesday.
According to Mr. Lieberman, Michael D. Brown, the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, cited such a restriction on Monday, as agency lawyers had advised him not to say whether he had spoken to President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney or to comment on the substance of any conversations with any other high-level White House officials.
Nevertheless, both Ms. Collins and Representative Thomas M. Davis III, a Virginia Republican who is leading the House inquiry, said that despite some frustration with the administration’s response, they remained confident that the investigations would produce meaningful results.
I wonder how exactly they’re going to have “meaningful result” when BushCo has decidedly stonewalled them. How do they intend to find out what our President and his incompetent advisorts knew/didn’t know about Katrina before and after?
“Our fears are turning out to be accurate,” Representative Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, said Tuesday. “The Bush administration is stonewalling the Congress.”
Can you tell I’m still going through this article? I’m appalled that I and so many other people are right once again. This administration doesn’t care about the people that were affected by this disaster. The cameras have been turned off and they have turned their backs. Compassionate conservatives my big ass. They have once again allied themselves with the money (insurance companies not wanting to pay for flood damage) and left their own people out in the cold.
Where are the Christian Right on this one? Why don’t they demand that Bush do his Christian duty and do the right thing by the people in that area? Well, of course, we’re talking about the ones in the million dollar churches who drive cars that are worth more than my house….they, I’m sure, get something from all of this.
Soon there will be enough people that will be adversly affected by BushCo and their insane policies that these kinds of blogs will not be in the minority anymore. And the media will have to pick up the ball to run with it. And maybe a local newspaper or two will also pick up the stories and let the older, less computer literate population know what’s going on with their venerable leader.
I doubt, though, that’s going to happen anytime soon. We’re getting further and further down that slope. I’m wondering who will be first on the list of detainees when they take full power and start getting rid of enemies. I wonder if even a lowly housewife from nowhere, Ohio will be safe. Luckily, I won’t be lonely in those camps.
Gods, please save us.
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