Court backs Texas in dispute with Bush

March 25, 2008
Court backs Texas in dispute with Bush

WASHINGTON - President Bush overstepped his authority when he ordered a Texas court to reopen the case of a Mexican on death row for rape and murder, the Supreme Court said Tuesday.

In a case that mixes presidential power, international relations and the death penalty, the court sided with Texas and rebuked Bush by a 6-3 vote.

An international court ruled in 2004 that the convictions of Medellin and 50 other Mexicans on death row around the United States violated the 1963 Vienna Convention, which provides that people arrested abroad should have access to their home country's consular officials. The International Court of Justice, also known as the world court, said the Mexican prisoners should have new court hearings to determine whether the violation affected their cases.

Carl Bernstein: Bush Administraton Has Done 'Far Greater Damage' Than Nixon

January 24, 2007
Carl Bernstein: Bush Administraton Has Done 'Far Greater Damage' Than Nixon

NEW YORK: In an online chat at washingtonpost.com on Wednesday afternoon, Carl Bernstein, the famed Watergate reporter at that paper and now writing articles for Vanity Fair, took several hard shots at the current Bush administration -- almost every time he was asked about the Nixon era. It came just as news of the death of former Watergate ringleader E. Howard Hunt was circulating widely.

"In terms of small-bore (but dangerous) characters like Howard Hunt and Gordon Liddy with their schemes, I doubt that any presidency approaches the criminality of the Nixon White House. But the Watergate conspiracy--to undermine the constitution and use illegal methods to hurt Nixon's political opponents and even undermine the electoral system--was supervised by those at the very top.

"In the current administration we have seen from the President down -- especially Vice President Cheney, Attorney General Gonzales, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld -- a willingness to ignore the great constitutional history of the United States -- to suspend, really, many of the constitutional guarantees that have made us a nation apart, with real freedoms unknown elsewhere, unrestricted by short-term political objectives of our leaders.

"Then there are the Geneva conventions: Who would have dreamed that, in our lifetime, our leaders would permit their flagrant abuse, would authorize torture, 'renditions' to foreign-torture chambers, suspension of habeus corpus, illegal surveillance of our own citizens....

"But perhaps worst, has been the lying and mendacity of the president and his men and women--in the reasons they cited for going to war, their conduct of the war, their attempts to smear their political opponents.

"Nixon and his men lied and abused the constitution to horrible effect, but they were stopped.

Administration employed extraordinary secrecy in defending NSA surveillance

January 26, 2007
Administration employed extraordinary secrecy in defending NSA surveillance

Some cases challenging the program, which monitored international communications of people in the United States without court approval, have also involved atypical maneuvering. Soon after one suit challenging the program was filed last year in Oregon, Justice Department lawyers threatened to seize an exhibit from the court file.

This month, in the same case, the department sought to inspect and delete files from the computers on which lawyers for the plaintiffs had prepared their legal filings.

Democrats to Bush: You're no longer solely in charge

January 23, 2007
Democrats to Bush: You're no longer solely in charge

WASHINGTON -- Democrats blistered President Bush's war policy Tuesday night, challenging him to redeem the nation's credibility -- and his own -- with an immediate shift toward a diplomatic end to the bloody conflict in Iraq.

"The president took us into this war recklessly," the Democrats' chosen messenger, Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia, said in response to Bush's State of the Union address Tuesday evening. "We are now, as a nation, held hostage to the predictable -- and predicted -- disarray that has followed."

Bush Portrayal of 'The Enemy' Often Flawed

January 24, 2007
Bush Portrayal of 'The Enemy' Often Flawed

In his State of the Union address last night, President Bush presented an arguably misleading and often flawed description of "the enemy" that the United States faces overseas, lumping together disparate groups with opposing ideologies to suggest that they have a single-minded focus in attacking the United States.

Under Bush's rubric, a country such as Iran -- which enjoys diplomatic representation and billions of dollars in trade with major European countries -- is lumped together with al-Qaeda, the terrorist group responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. "The Shia and Sunni extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian threat," Bush said, referring to the different branches of the Muslim religion.

Similarly, Bush asserted that Shia Hezbollah, which has won seats in the Lebanese government, is a terrorist group "second only to al-Qaeda in the American lives it has taken." Bush is referring to attacks nearly a quarter-century ago on a U.S. embassy and a Marine barracks when the United States intervened in Lebanon's civil war by shelling Hezbollah strongholds. Hezbollah has evolved into primarily an anti-Israeli militant organization -- it fought a war with Israel last summer -- but the European Union does not list it as a terrorist organization.

Blame the Top Brass

January 22, 2007 issue (posted January 16, 2006)
Blame the Top Brass

Petraeus was an exception. While other generals were trying by force to crush the insurgents,
Petraeus was working to isolate them by winning the population's hearts and minds. The commander of the 101st Airborne, he labored to pacify Mosul, the area of northern Iraq under his control in the first year after the invasion, by satisfying the people's needs: security, jobs, the repair of local utilities and the rebirth of local democracy. His success there led the press and military
establishment to regard him as a "water walker"; the praise heaped on him—NEWSWEEK ran a
cover story in July 2004 asking, "Can This Man Save Iraq?"—is qualified only by
jealousy.

Bush's approval rating hits new low

January 12, 2007
Bush's approval rating hits new low

WASHINGTON - Public approval of Congress has edged up a bit now that Democrats are back in control, but it's still nothing to write home about. Approval for the way Congress is handling its
job rose to 32 percent in the latest AP-Ipsos poll, up from a meager 27 percent a month earlier.
That puts Congress on par with President Bush, whose 32 percent approval rating represents a new
low for him in AP-Ipsos polling.

Bipartisan agreement: Bush's Iraq plan a loser

January 12, 2007
Bipartisan agreement: Bush's Iraq plan a loser

Lawmakers said they had little confidence that the Iraqi government has the capacity to deliver on
promises to take the lead in cracking down on violent militias and providing security in Baghdad,
as the president's plan contemplates. Democrats and Republicans alike said they were concerned
that Bush's plan, announced Wednesday night in a prime-time nationally televised address, is too
little and too late, and does not appear very different than previous efforts to secure the
capital.

January 20, 2007
Poll: Americans Trust Democrats in Iraq

Bush's Iraq plan isn't doing anything for his personal approval rating either; it's again stuck at
its lowest point in the history of the poll (31 percent). Meanwhile, the new Democratic-controlled
Congress is getting relatively high marks. And 55 percent actually trust Congressional Dems on
U.S. policy in Iraq, far more than the 32 percent who trust their commander in chief.

While Democrats and Republicans have roundly criticized Bush's proposal, the
president—who received his lowest ratings so far for his handling of the war (24 percent)
and terrorism (41 percent)—told a group of U.S. television stations this week that "I
believe it will work." He is in the minority. Nearly half of all respondents to the NEWSWEEK poll
(45 percent) say they "strongly oppose" the plan. Nine in 10 Democrats (92 percent), 70 percent of
independents and close to a third (31 percent) of Republicans disapprove.

Bush's damage to the military can't be easily undone

January 18, 2007
Bush's damage to the military can't be easily undone

Even if the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ended tomorrow, the damage that's been done to our Army and Marine Corps is incalculable, and from past bitter experience after Vietnam, it's a good bet that repairing that damage will take a decade or more and cost trillions.

That means that long after Bush and his deputies have retired to their gated compounds and a $500 million presidential library, we'll be less able to defend our nation in a new era made far deadlier by their disastrous decisions.

Their war-and-peace decisions, warped by arrogance and ignorance, will haunt all of us, and the
postponed sacrifices will come due with a vengeance.

Republicans in Congress are reaching for life vests

January 21, 2007
Republicans in Congress are reaching for life vests

For the legislators of today, this problem is largely framed in terms of Bush's proposal to send
21,500 additional soldiers to Iraq. In the next few weeks, the House and the Senate will take up
resolutions opposing the "surge." Though these measures will be non-binding, they will amount to a
no-confidence test for the Bush presidency. Losing his own party's support on the war would be an
unprecedented repudiation, marking the end of Bush's ability to govern or lead. If you are a House
or Senate Republican, how do you decide whether to join the dissidents or stick with Bush?