Iraq: ‘Bring Them On’ Revisited

ETHICS — LEAHY THREATENS COURT ACTION AGAINST WHITE HOUSE OVER U.S. ATTORNEY DOCUMENT STONEWALLING: In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press yesterday, Senate Judiciary Chairman Pat Leahy (D-VT) said he would not hesitate to “cite the White House for criminal contempt of Congress” if it continues to withhold documents related to the firings of nine U.S. attorneys. “If they don’t cooperate, yes, I’d go that far,” he said. The White House has refused congressional requests for internal documents that would potentially clarify the role that senior White House officials had in the removal of U.S. attorneys, citing executive privilege. In a sign of mounting pressure on the White House, Leahy has given President Bush until next Monday to “provide a signed letter from the president asserting executive privilege, as well as a description of each withheld document, a list of who has seen the documents and the legal basis for arguing that the documents may be shielded from public view.” The White House’s stonewalling of the congressional investigation has spawned further suspicions that it had a central role in the U.S. attorney scandal, as a recent legal memo from Solicitor General Paul Clement strongly suggests that the White House played a pivotal effort in the firings. If the claims of executive privilege are deemed invalid by House and Senate committees, Congress could vote that the president be held in criminal contempt and refer the case to the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, creating a legal fight that could last into the next presidency.

HEALTH CARE — UPON HUGE OPENING WEEKEND, MICHAEL MOORE’S SiCKO PASSES FACT-CHECK TEST: On June 29, Michael Moore’s latest film, SiCKO — an exploration of the failings of the current American healthcare system — opened in theaters nationwide. On the heels of strong reviews, the response to the film has been overwhelming, according to Moore, who sent a message to fans this weekend declaring that the film is “on track to have the second largest opening weekend for a documentary in the history of the movies.” In his letter, Moore also noted that the industry polling for the film found that 93 percent of viewers would “strongly recommend ‘SiCKO'” to their friends and family, which is more than double the industry average of 45 percent. Not everyone is reacting so positively to SiCKO, however, as the health care industry and its surrogates on the right are doing all that they can to pushback against the film. Before the premiere, think tanks funded by the healthcare and pharmaceutical lobby launched a smear campaign against Moore, using personal attacks against the director while propagating the message of those invested in maintaining the status quo. Moore’s opponents have thus been forced to resort to personal attacks as SiCKO has stood up to scrutiny: on Saturday, a CNN fact-check found “surprisingly few inaccuracies in the film” while noting that “most pundits or health-care experts…spent more time on errors of omission rather than disputing the actual claims in the film.” Click here to find a showing near you.

GOVERNMENT — ON EVE OF 40TH ANNIVERSARY, FOIA PLAGUED BY GOVERNMENT DELAYS: “This Independence Day marks 40 years since implementation of the Freedom of Information Act, the law aimed at ensuring public access to government records.” Under the law, most federal agencies are required “to provide an initial response to a [request for government documents] within 20 days” and must then “provide the documents in a timely manner.” In reality, according to a new survey from the National Security Archive at George Washington University, “agencies often take months or years to respond to requests for information.” The study found that the “State Department accounted for most of the oldest unanswered requests, with 10 requests filed in 1991 or earlier still awaiting responses” and that “10 federal agencies had misrepresented their backlog of FOIA requests in annual reports to Congress.” Thomas Blanton, director of the Archive, explained the magnitude of the problem: “The law is 40 years old, and we’re seeing 20 years of delay.” “The Internet grew into adulthood in less time than it has taken our federal government to deal with these outstanding Freedom of Information requests,” said Eric Newton, vice president of journalism programs at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. Such delays were highlighted last week when the CIA finally responded to a 15 year-old request for documents by the National Security Archive. The documents — the CIA’s “so-called family jewels, papers that described illegal wiretaps, assassination plots and other agency misdeeds” — were accompanied by a cover letter from the CIA’s information and privacy coordinator Scott Koch stating, “Please be assured that we do not consider acceptable a delay of this duration. … [T]his case was, in fact, the oldest in our backlog.” The National Security Archive noted, however, that the CIA has at least one even older pending request. It was filed by the Archive in 1989. You can find the report at the National Security Archive website.

“At the nadir of his presidency, George W. Bush is looking for answers.” Unbeknownst “even to many on his staff,” Bush has summoned “leading authors, historians, philosophers and theologians to the White House” to discuss questions like, “Why does the rest of the world seem to hate America? Or is it just me they hate?”

“Battle stress may cause combat-hardened Marines with clean records to get into trouble after they return home,” new Marine Corps research shows. “The Marines have a plan to help these troops but not the resources to implement it, said a leading mental health expert with the Corps.”

“Air strikes by foreign forces in Afghanistan have recently killed more civilians than the Taliban and the U.S.-led operation should cut them back,” said Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission. “In the latest incident involving civilian fatalities, Afghan officials said on the weekend that 45 civilians were killed in an air strike in the south of the country.”

“Four U.S. soldiers and a Marine were killed in attacks in Baghdad and Iraq’s western Anbar province, the military said Monday,” bringing the total number of U.S. fatalities to 3,582.

The Bush administration is “considering moving its program for a new-generation nuclear warhead into the development stage within a year, with an eye to putting the program on track before the end of its term in January 2009.”

In 1999, Congress told the federal agencies that they should “award 3 percent of their contracts to businesses owned by service disabled veterans.” But currently, only FEMA has met the target. “Government-wide, less than 1 percent of all federal contracts have gone to businesses owned by service-disabled veterans.”

“The Pentagon has approved an Army recommendation for a 600% increase in production of Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles to protect soldiers from makeshift bombs in Iraq.” Although lawmakers applauded the Pentagon’s increase — which would cost $8.1 billion — Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) noted that he couldn’t “support more than $6 billion in MRAP spending for next year because contractors can’t build the vehicles fast enough.”

And finally: Al Gore is a “die-hard” Sopranos fan, but was going to have to miss last month’s season finale because he was scheduled to be on a plane to Istanbul. So Gore called Brad Grey, the chairman of Paramount, and asked for an advance copy. After originally refusing, Grey eventually “had a Halliburton-made steel case, containing a copy of the episode, delivered to the tarmac where Mr. Gore’s plane sat in Chicago. The case was locked with a code. … Mr. Gore could not open it until the plane was in the air, when he was instructed to call Mr. Grey’s office for the numeric code.”