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Under the Radar
ETHICS — WHITE HOUSE COMPLAINING ABOUT GONZALES HEARING DESPITE BEING OFFERED EARLIER DATE: The White House is now complaining that the Senate Judiciary Committee refuses to move up the date for Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’s hearing. Presidential counselor Dan Bartlett said yesterday on CBS that the date should be changed from April 17 to next week, and suggested that senators were playing politics by preventing him from testifying earlier: “If they wanted to get to the bottom of it, they would accept the proposal the President’s put forward. They would have the attorney general up there next week, having the testimony in open hearing, on the record, for everybody to see.” This is a ruse. The Senate is on recess next week, virtually assuring that it couldn’t respond to the White House request. Moreover, according to a Senate aide, Gonzales was offered an earlier date and rejected it. Staff members “had proposed an appearance the week of April 10, but the Justice Department ‘said no.'” Additionally, Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) argues that there is now a good reason to keep the current date. The committee plans to use the interim to interview other Justice Department officials and develop a “factual groundwork” before Gonzales testifies. “So, I think to rush this and then have the attorney general say, ‘Well, I don’t know,’ when if you prepared it properly you could say, ‘Well, Mr. So-and-so says you were at this meeting,'” he said. “That’s why we have to wait.”
ADMINISTRATION — WHITE HOUSE CLAIMS FORMER AIDE TURNED ON BUSH BECAUSE OF ‘PERSONAL TURMOIL’: Over the weekend, Matthew Dowd, President Bush’s former chief campaign strategist, went public with what he called “misplaced” faith Bush’s leadership. In an interview with the New York Times, Dowd criticized Bush’s handling of Iraq war, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, and the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal. Dowd — who was intimately involved in securing Bush’s election in 2000 and again in 2004 — said he was in “denial” about the reality of Bush’s tenure as president. In the lead up to Bush’s 2004 victory — while he publicly criticized Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) as “proposing ‘a weak defense'” — Dowd was privately hoping Bush’s “my way of the highway” mentality would give way to his “Texas style of governing” where he worked closely and productively with both Democrats and Republicans. Now, Dowd says, Bush is losing “his gut-level bond with the American people” and has authored, but not published, an op-ed entitled “Kerry Was Right.” Dowd — who’s son will soon be deployed to Iraq — faulted Bush further, saying he was “ignoring the will of the people on Iraq. He added, “If the American public says they’re done with something, our leaders have to understand what they want … They’re saying, ‘Get out of Iraq.'” Asked why he chose to go public with his criticisms he said, “I’m a big believer that in part what we’re called to do … is to restore balance when things didn’t turn out the way they should have. … Just being quiet is not an option when I was so publicly advocating [Bush’s] election.” Over the weekend, Bush’s “shrinking circle of trusted aides” retaliated; counselor Dan Bartlett attempted to smear Dowd as emotional and suggested that Dowd’s views were in some way related to the “personal turmoil” he’s experienced over the last few years. But, as Dowd put it, “I really like [the President], which is probably why I’m so disappointed in things.”
CLIMATE CHANGE — NEW U.N. REPORT FINDS HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS THREATENED BY GLOBAL WARMING: “Climate change could threaten the lives of hundreds of millions of people in the decades to come,” according to a draft of a major U.N. report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to be released later this week. While its “basic findings won’t change” from the last report released in February, which said that human activities were “very likely” the cause of global warming, this report will further document the human and environmental impacts of global warming. “Even the most optimistic forecasts say the climate will continue to change and the planet will be irrevocably damaged. … In the absence of action to curb emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases, the future looks bleak.” The new report indicates that “within two or three decades, there could be 1.5 billion people without enough water,” creating “refugee crises like we’ve never seen.” Poorer nations are likely to bear a disproportionate amount of the negative impacts, as “industrial powers are spending just tens of millions of dollars on ways to limit climate and coastal hazards in the world’s most vulnerable regions — most of them close to the equator and overwhelmingly poor.” For example, as oceans swell, “it is the crowded river deltas in southern Asia and Egypt, along with small island nations, that are most at risk.” While some colder nations believe they stand to benefit from warmer climate, Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC, rebuffed their misconceptions: “Clearly there would be no winners left anywhere.”
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