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Under the Radar
RADICAL RIGHT — GINGRICH BLAMES VIRGINIA TECH TRAGEDY ON ‘LIBERALISM’: Appearing on ABC’s This Week yesterday, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA) blamed the Virginia Tech tragedy on “liberalism” and the “culture” it has “created.” In the wake of the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton, CO, Gingrich made a speech in which he said, “I want to say to the elite of this country — the elite news media, the liberal academic elite, the liberal political elite: I accuse you in Littleton…of being afraid to talk about the mess you have made, and being afraid to take responsibility for the things you have done, and instead foisting upon the rest of us pathetic banalities because you don’t have to courage to look at the world you have created.” Asked by host George Stephanopoulos if he would apply those same words to the Virginia Tech tragedy, Gingrich said “yes,” before launching into a ramble attempting to connect Virginia Tech to Don Imus and McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform. Gingrich has repeatedly spun tragedy for ideological and partisan gain. In 1994, after Susan Smith confessed to drowning her two children, Gingrich quickly blamed liberals, saying the only way to avoid similar future incidents was “to vote Republican.” After former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) was forced to resign over his sexually inappropriate behavior towards House pages, Gingrich declared on Fox News that conservatives didn’t stop Foley because they “would have been accused of gay bashing” by liberals. At the Conservative Political Action Conference earlier this year, Gingrich blamed the residents of New Orleans’s 9th ward for “a failure of citizenship” — by being so uneducated and so unprepared, they literally couldn’t get out of the way of a hurricane.”
ETHICS — NUMBER OF WHITE HOUSE OFFICIALS ALLOWED TO INTERVENE IN DoJ CASES JUMPS BY 10,325 PERCENT: In his testimony last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said that it was “very important” that the Justice Department “be independent from” the White House. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) noted that until 2002, to ensure such independence, there were just four people in the White House — the President, the Vice President, the White House Counsel, and the Deputy White House Counsel — who could participate in discussions with the Justice Department “regarding pending criminal investigations and criminal cases.” Just three Justice Department officials were authorized to talk with the White House. This policy, outlined in a 1994 memo written by then-Attorney General Janet Reno, had been Justice Department tradition as “far back as anyone remembers.” But in 2002, former Attorney General John Ashcroft rewrote the rules. There are now over 400 White House officials and 30 Justice Department officials who are eligible to have discussions about criminal cases. Further, according to former associate deputy attorney general Nicholas Gess, the way the policy currently reads, “an intern in the office of the deputy attorney general could be communicating about case-related information to an intern at the White House Counsel’s Office.” Whitehouse asked if “it was wise to allow so many people to discuss criminal matters between the Justice Department and the White House.” Gonzales could offer “no insight into why changing the policy was a good idea,” saying only that Whitehouse had a “good point.”
ETHICS — FORMER ALLIES URGE WOLFOWITZ’S RESIGNATION: Embattled World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is quickly losing support from former allies as the scandal surrounding his promotion of his girlfriend, Shaha Riza, escalates. Last week, a group of 42 former senior World Bank executives wrote a letter to the Financial Times asserting that Wolfowitz “has lost the trust and respect of bank staff at all levels, provoked a rift among senior managers, developed tense relations with the board, damaged his own credibility on good governance, and alienated some key shareholders. … We believe that he can no longer be an effective leader,” the executives wrote. In a “searing indictment” of Wolfowitz, the Independent Evaluation Group, an independent agency assessing the bank’s effectiveness, also urged Wolfowitz’s resignation, as “the current situation could lead to ‘irreparable harm to worldwide efforts in poverty reduction and sustainable development.'” The controversy surrounding Wolfowitz has not only provoked criticism from senior executives, but also evoked long-standing discontent from within the World Bank work force. The World Bank staff association, which represents the 10,000 employees at the bank, “has pushed hard against past presidents, but acrimony has never been so high,” as a staff survey indicated “overwhelming concerns about his conservative politics and role as an architect of the Iraq war.” These bank employees are urging Wolfowitz’s resignation, saying he “had lost trust and respect” of the employees. Although President Bush recently expressed “full confidence” in Wolfowitz, other administration officials are breaking away. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson recently “urged the White House to withdraw its backing from the controversial neoconservative.”
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