Promoted - standingup

As the Bush administration enters its final six months, truthtellers in government positions should take care: government officials will be tempted to sweep their agencies clean of evidence and whistleblowers before a new administration takes over.

Already, the Bush administration has issued a new executive memo allowing government agencies to conjure up their own penalties for disclosing information covered by a new, broad and poorly defined controls on information (thanks, smintheus). It's a bad portent of things to come.

Saving truthtellers and restoring government integrity depends on proposed legislation that would give whistleblowers badly-needed protections; legislation that is now stalled.

Next week, whistleblowers from around the country will meet for a conference in Washington, D.C., to describe the perils of exposing corruption, waste and abuses of power, hopefully to convince Congress to pass legislation that would save others from suffering similar fates. But, their success will depend heavily on public support - a good turnout of citizens attending the conference events or calling their representatives to urge stronger whistleblower protections.

-- promoted-- cho

Greyhawk had this posted at ePluribus about the Military breaking ranks with the White House on the propaganda about the Successful Surge with only this one snippet

"Don't let the quiet fool you," a senior defense official says. "There's still a huge chasm between how the White House views Iraq and how we [in the Pentagon] view Iraq. The White House would like to have you believe the 'surge' has worked, that we somehow defeated the insurgency. That's just ludicrous. There's increasing quiet in Iraq, but that's happened because of our shift in strategy - the 'surge' had nothing to do with it."

And just a few sentences, so I followed the link. Here's abit more to hopefully get you to drop over to the Asia Times online and read the rest.

From here:

"Don't let the quiet fool you," a senior defense official says. "There's still a huge chasm between how the White House views Iraq and how we [in the Pentagon] view Iraq. The White House would like to have you believe the 'surge' has worked, that we somehow defeated the insurgency. That's just ludicrous. There's increasing quiet in Iraq, but that's happened because of our shift in strategy - the 'surge' had nothing to do with it."

It must suck for the WH and their pundits to have the walls of false reality come crashing down around their heads.

promoted -- cho

BarbinMD over on DailyKos recently posted a front-page piece titled Waxman To Hold Hearing On Missing White House E-Mails; she included an excerpt of an exchange that occurred between WH Spokeperson Tony Fratto and the White House Press Corp that reminds me of an Abbot and Costello "Who's on First?" routine. BarbinMD had cut out part of Tony's long response, so I'm pulling the whole quote here:

MR. FRATTO: I think our review of this, and you saw the court filing on this, and our declaration in response to the judge's questions -- I think to the best of what all the analysis we've been able to do, we have absolutely no reason to believe that any emails are missing; there's no evidence of that. There's no -- we tried to reconstruct some of the work that went into a chart that was entered into court records and could not replicate that or could not authenticate the correctness of the data in that chart. And from everything that we can tell, our analysis of our backup systems, we have no reason to believe that any email at all are missing.

Q So where are they?

MR. FRATTO: Where are what?

"Where are what?"

No, What's on second. Who's on First...

Waxman, however, wasn't amused by this and has scheduled hearings. To echo Barb's sentiments -- let's hope subpoenas are issued and acted upon, instead of nothing more than sternly worded letters this time.

promoted -- cho

So it seems the White House reused e-mail tapes... Would someone explain this to me as if I were a six year old?

White House reused e-mail tapes
excerpt:

WASHINGTON - The White House has acknowledged recycling its backup computer tapes of e-mail before October 2003, raising the possibility that many electronic messages — including those pertaining to the CIA leak case — have been taped over and are gone forever.

- snip -

OhioNews Bureau

ONB COLUMBUS: After the record-setting turnout in the Iowa caucuses tonight, made possible by legions of new energized voters, throngs of independents and even some Republicans converting to Democratic Blue, and with fewer than 382 days remaining until the birth of a new nation starts with the sudden death of the George W. Bush presidency, the prospect of Ohio children, and those of other states, no longer having to battle the uncompassionate, uncompromising and incomprehensible denial of Medicaid coverage that forces the needy into the jaws of private health insurers will cease being a dream and become a reality.

Coming as it did on the heels of the first step in the real race to the White House that played out in the frozen frost of Corn Husker country, this report by The New York Times about the imposition of restrictions by the Bush administration on the ability of states to expand eligibility for Medicaid, as Ohio and other states have proposed, is another example of why America needs a Democratic president who will put Mr. Bush’s harmful policies on the moving van along with his furniture and ship them both back to Crawford, Texas.