Category: death cab for cronyism

Children at Recess

You can't be surprised that President Bush goes all out whenever the Congress is out of session. Now that he's hit his three hundred and sixty-fifth day of vacation in his fifth year as President, he's managed to turn the highest station in our government into something of a recess appointment itself.

This week, Bush nominated Julie Myers to a position at the Department of Homeland Security, as the head of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency. Why does Julie Meyers need to bypass the nomination process? She's married to DHS head Michael Chertoff's chief of staff. She's the niece of outgoing Joint Chiefs Chairman Richard Meyers. In short, she's another phony baloney crony dipshit.

But everyone knows that there is cronyism, and there is CRONYISM. As in Kee-ray-zee Ass Kronytastic Kronygasms. Michael Brown riding backwards and blindfolded on an Arabian steed to the rescue style cronyism. How unqualified do you have to be that the President is too scared to put your nomination before a legislative body that his very own party controls?

It's enough to make you wonder: how outrageously out-of-bounds does a wiretap request have to be for the rubber-stamp-happy, available 24-hours-a-day FISA courts to say no?— DCEIVER

READ MORE: death cab for cronyism , domestic espionage scandal , top

Bound and Gaggled: Dense Undergrowth Edition

From yesterday's press gaggle:

Good morning. Let me update you on the President's schedule. Yesterday, after arriving, he went out and did some cutting and clearing brush, and then was at his home on the ranch. And this morning he had his normal intelligence briefings, and he was out this morning clearing some brush and is right now -- or has just recently concluded a bicycle ride and he'll be spending the rest of the day at home with his wife and mother-in-law.

Jeezy Creezy! Again with the brush? Doesn't the President have some, I don't know...tack to polish? Isn't about time he put down some new shelf liners in the pantry? Considering the steady way this brush encroaches on his ranch like super flora from beyond the moon, you'd think that at the very least, he'd have some cronies-in-waiting willing to take on the task in exchange for political favors.

Seriously, could someone help him? With the President always out in the field machete-ing his way through kudzu, it's no wonder we're always in grave danger whenever he goes on vacation.— DCEIVER

READ MORE: death cab for cronyism , press briefings , top , western white house

Advising and Consenting Finally Explained to Court Nominee, Who Promptly Flees in Terror

All right, we have an explanation of Harriet M.'s pullout, straight from the nominee-no-longer's incorrigibly chipper mouth. Her withdrawal letter to President Bush does not close with the salutation "BFF"--itself a telling indication of how badly things have soured. The main rationale for her decision is that, well, Congress is mean:

As you know members of the Senate have indicated their intention to seek documents about my service in the White House in order to judge whether to support me. I have informed them repeatedly that, in lieu of such records, I would be expected to testify about my service in the White House to demonstrate my experience and judicial philosophy. While I believe my lengthy career provides sufficient evidence for the consideration of my nomination, I am convinced that the efforts to obtain Executive Branch information and materials will continue. . . Protection of the prerogatives of the Executive Branch and continued pursuit of my confirmation are in tension. I have decided that my confirmation should yield.

As near as we can follow this, er, reasoning, Ms. Miers appears concerned that, what, the White House, in one of its charateristically giddy compliances with public request for executive documents would deliver up something compromising? That repeated requests from the Senate would ratchet up this intolerable "tension" between Team Bush and the Hill? Question: If she's been advising the president on sensitive matters of policy and national interest as his White House counsel, how can it be fucking news to her that Congress and the White House don't always get along? And what was she expecting to happen in her confirmation hearings--that in addition to supplying crisp executive summaries of her job duties over the past five years, she'd rattle off birthday greetings to each of her Senate interlocutors?

But that's right: the separation of powers is covered in con law, not contracts. Silly us. It's probably a good thing she withdrew before someone explained to her that Jesus didn't actually write the Constitution. --HOLLY MARTINS

READ MORE: death cab for cronyism , harriet miers , nomination withdrawal , u.s. supreme court

Harriet, We Hardly . . . Ah, Well, We Really Sort of Did Know You Well Enough

The wires are reporting that Harriet Miers has pulled her own plug, amid all the controversy over her qualifications and constitutional law and whatnot. We understand, though, that the official expanation will be that she wants to devote more time to pursuing her strange, asexual relationship with Judge Hecht. --HOLLY MARTINS

Harriet Miers Withdraws Nomination [Yahoo]

READ MORE: death cab for cronyism , ending in tears , harriet miers , supreme court

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