Thursday, Jul 18th
Last update12:35:31 AM GMT
Political Glance
Next month's Super Bowl broadcast, which garners an enormous TV audience, will feature an advert paid for by an anti-abortion evangelical Christian group.White House emails retrieved from Bush administration records reveal that top Bush Justice Department officials circulated a memo falsely blaming Al Gore for U.S. failure to get Osama bin Laden
The apocryphal Osama-Al Gore-Oliver North story, already debunked on snopes.com, was forwarded internally to administration personnel by David M. Israelite, Deputy Chief of Staff and Counselor to Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft (pictured above right). The existence of such politicized emails may help explain why millions of emails sent to and from the previous White House have gone missing despite rules for preserving presidential records.
Computer technicians have found 22 million missing White House e-mails from the administration of President George W. Bush, according to two groups that are settling lawsuits they filed over the failure by the Bush White House to install an electronic record keeping system.
How Much Longer Will YOU Put Up With This?
US Officials Face 'Pro-Israel' Background Check.
There is an amazing story in Ha'aretz today on the "pro-Israel" litmus test that determines who is permitted to serve in the United States government. Here's the sort of lede you're not likely to read in the New York Times or Washington Post: Every appointee to the American government must endure a thorough background check by the American Jewish community.
The new policy -- issued with little fanfare this fall by the White House ethics counsel -- may turn out to be the most far-reaching lobbying rule change so far from President Obama, who also has sought to restrict the ability of lobbyists to get jobs in his administration and to negotiate over stimulus contracts.
The initiative is aimed at a system of advisory committees so vast that federal officials don't have exact numbers for its size; the most recent estimates tally nearly 1,000 panels with total membership exceeding 60,000 people.
Federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald famously declared in the Valerie Plame affair that "there is a cloud over the vice president." Last week's release of an FBI interview summary of Dick Cheney's answers in the criminal investigation underscores why Fitzgerald felt that way.
Vice President Dick Cheney told the FBI that he had no idea who leaked the CIA identity of Valerie Plame to the news media.Page 124 of 163
