JUDGE RULES CONGRESS HAS RIGHT TO SUBPOENA MIERS & BOLTEN

Today a federal district judge ruled that Congress does have a well-established right to force former Bush aides Harriet Miers and Joshua Bolten to testify before its committees and produce documents and records. The judge made hamburger out of George Bush's preposterous claim that executive privilege prevents Congress from serving and executing subpoenas on Miers and Bolten.

Previous decisions of the Supreme Court have ruled that the Executive's assertion of unlimited executive privilege is without legal basis or foundation.

Here is the decision of Judge John D. Bates of the Federal District Court of the District of Columbia.

I will have more to say on this after I have more time to study the court's holdings.

SPEAKER PELOSI - DON'T APPROVE COLOMBIA TRADE PACT UNLESS BUSH AGREES TO COOPERATE WITH DEMOCRATS

Deb Reichmann writes in today's washingtonpost.com that George Bush is hectoring Nancy Pelosi and the Congress to approve the trade deal with Alvaro Uribe and Colombia. Pelosi and the Democratic majority in the House should stand firm and refuse to approve the pact unless Bush cooperates with Congress. As a sign of Bush's cooperation, Pelosi should require that Bush agree to sign an extended health insurance bill for children (S-CHIP) that he has vetoed at least twice in the last year.

In fact, if Bush wishes the Congress to go along and pass the Colombian trade pact, Bush needs to show his good will on other matters of importance as well. He needs to show cooperation on the matter of Congressional subpoenas given to Harriet Miers and Andrew Card. In other words, Bush needs to tell Miers and Card to show up and testify under oath. He also needs to do away with his flouting of the law by inserting signing statements that go against explicit provisions of laws that have been subject to bicameral approval and presentment. And most of all, Bush needs to confer with Speaker Pelosi about Iraq and admit it has been a disastrous foreign policy fiasco.

Until Bush cooperates with the Congress on the above matters, I urge Speaker Pelosi to stand resolute and not approve Bush's pact with Uribe or Colombia.

NYT REPORTS MORE WHITE HOUSE INVOLVEMENT IN CIA DESTRUCTION OF TORTURE TAPES

Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane write in today's The New York Times on the previously undisclosed involvement in the CIA tape destruction of White House lawyers over and beyond Harriet Miers.

"At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions with the Central Intelligence Agency between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes showing the secret interrogations of two operatives from Al Qaeda, according to current and former administration and intelligence officials."

"The accounts indicate that the involvement of White House officials in the discussions before the destruction of the tapes in November 2005 was more extensive than Bush administration officials have acknowledged."

This is information not given out so far by the White House. So predictably, Dana Perino, the WH spokesperson, was upset and angry that it was revealed by the NYT.

The BBC reports on Perino's comments:

"We will continue to decline to comment on this issue, and in response to misleading press reports," press secretary Dana Perino said. Nevertheless, she said: "The New York Times' inference that there is an effort to mislead in this matter is pernicious and troubling."
She added that the White House was formally seeking a change to the story - particularly the sub-headline, which read: "White House role was wider than it said."

As Marty Lederman notes in the legal blog Balkinization, the WH is trying obfuscate the central issue on coming clean with all the facts regarding the destruction of the tapes. The WH really does not deny the NYT story:

"The [NY] Times did not write that the White House has lied about WH officials' involvement -- merely that they haven't yet come clean with the full story, which is true. There was some information coming from the White House about its involvement -- they tried to insinuate that the responsibility should be pinned on Harriet Miers alone, a story that was basically inaccurate.

"(Note the careful wording of the Press Statement: "Under direction from the White House General Counsel while the Department of Justice and the CIA Inspector General conduct a preliminary inquiry, we have not publicly commented on facts relating to this issue." One point of the Times piece is that the carefully orchestrated nonpublic leaks from the White House have been importantly incomplete and possibly misleading.)

"But all this is beside the point, which is not whether the White House has been misleading in its "public" comments over the past two weeks, but whether the White House has been complicit in crimes and other wrongdoing over the past several years. And on that question, what's most notable about today's Press Statement is that it does not deny the substance of the Times story."

There was a fire in the Old Executive Mansion building today. The smoke was caused by an electrical fire. Thus the adage about smoke pointing to a fire. We certainly seem to be seeing a lot of smoke on this issue coming from the WH. There must be fire in the story. Thus my question: what else remains that we don't know about the involvement of Bush and Cheney in the destruction of the CIA torture tapes?