Chain Chain Chain Cheney's Fool

[Streetstraw 0]

Certain Vedik Raksasas have entire Bhagavatam chapters dedicated to them. Similarly, certain modern day Kaliyuga raksasas deserve their own thread. Who would disagree?

With this idea in mind, Aretha Franklin sang this thread's theme song long before pre-emptive Chaingang Cheney ever appeared on the political spectrum, however hidden.

 

Judge Orders White House Papers' Release

Cheney Lawyers to Ask Appeals Court to Keep Energy Task Force Records Secret

 

By Neely Tucker

Washington Post Staff Writer

 

Friday, October 18, 2002; Page A06

 

A federal judge yesterday ordered the Bush administration to turn over key documents about its energy task force for a second time, while government lawyers gave notice that they plan to take their case to an appeals court before complying.

 

U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan gave lawyers representing Vice President Cheney until Nov. 5 to produce documents that detail the membership rolls and meeting schedules of the National Energy Policy Development Group, which Cheney chaired. Sullivan had ordered the same documents turned over in August.

 

If the government does not produce the documents by the November date, Sullivan said, the administration must submit a claim of executive privilege and the reasons for it.

 

The hour-long hearing, marked by a series of sharp exchanges between Sullivan and Shannen W. Coffin, the Justice Department attorney handling the case, is the latest development in one of a handful of lawsuits that have sought to force the Bush administration to release information about the task force.

 

The Sierra Club and Judicial Watch, the plaintiffs in this case, are two of several groups that have alleged that the administration improperly met with private officials from the energy industry last year while shaping its energy policy. Environmental groups say they were largely excluded from the meetings.

 

While federal judges in other suits have ordered the Energy Department and other agencies to turn over tens of thousands of pages of documents about the meetings, the documents from inside the White House have not been revealed.

 

The Bush administration has said repeatedly that the separation of powers doctrine shields those documents from outside review because they might show the administration's internal, deliberative process.

 

But it has yet to invoke the principle of executive privilege, either, and that position drew Sullivan's ire yesterday.

 

"You have to produce the non-privileged documents and assert the [executive] privilege for those that are," he told Coffin. "You refuse to assert the privilege and won't respond to court orders."

 

Coffin had submitted motions asking Sullivan to reconsider his August ruling and to issue an order that would ensure the documents remain private pending some further court ruling. He wrote that producing the documents "would impose upon the Executive unconstitutional burdens."

 

"The consideration of undue interference requires special treatment by this court in this context," Coffin said.

 

Sullivan rejected the request, and upbraided the lawyer at least twice for interrupting him, a replay of a similar incident during a hearing in August.

 

Coffin said the government would likely ask the judge to stay his own order before the Nov. 5 deadline. He said the government wants enough time to be able to ask an appellate court to intervene if necessary.

 

After Sullivan set a series of deadlines for court motions beginning next week, the hearing appeared to be over.

 

But when Coffin said government attorneys might need even more time because "we haven't done a document review of the office of the vice president," it was Sullivan who interrupted.

 

"That is a startling revelation!" the judge said twice. "How can you be asserting this is privileged information if you haven't looked at it?"

 

"We haven't completed the review," Coffin said. "We've done enough to know our arguments" are correct, he said. "I misspoke."

 

"How could you misspeak on something as significant as that?" Sullivan shot back.

 

Joining in, Larry Klayman, chairman of Judicial Watch, said, "He made a plain statement, and now he's backing off it because it's bad press."

 

"We've made a review," Coffin explained, "but we're not going to ask our clients to complete that review because it's an unconstitutional burden."

 

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.)

 

Print This Story E-mail This Story © : t r u t h o u t 2002

[Streetstraw 0]

Hey Swami, Prabhu, Didi or Mataji, if u had oil interests worldwide u'd use all your influence to protect it too. Don't say u would not.

However, just 100 yrs ago, petroleum was not very important, certainly not essential to everyday life. Someone started a thread here about Hydrogen cars. Is that still available for reperusal?

Gaslight companies were upset when Edison (with Latimore & Tesla's help) introduced vacuum electric light bulbs.

Monopolizers naturally diametrically oppose technological progress unless they themselves directly profit from it.

[Tarun 6]

Wellstones To Cheney: Stay Home - CBS NEWS

Tuesday, 29 October, 2002

 

(CBS) -- MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. -- Many senators, former President Clinton and former Vice President Gore will attend the memorial service for Sen. Paul Wellstone Tuesday evening. But Wellstone's sons reportedly disinvited Vice President Dick Cheney, who planned to represent the Bush administration at the event.

 

A White House spokesman told the Star Tribune of Minneapolis the Wellstones asked Cheney not to attend, though he didn't provide a specific reason. According to a broadcast report, the family was upset with campaign activities by state and national Republicans on Monday.

 

Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson, former governor of Wisconsin, will represent the Bush administration at the event, in Williams Arena on the University of Minnesota campus.

 

The 6:30 p.m. service will honor Wellstone, 58; his wife, Sheila, also 58; their daughter, Marcia Wellstone Markuson, 33; and campaign aides Will McLaughlin, 23, Tom Lapic, 59, and Mary McEvoy, 49. Pilots Richard Conry, 55, and Michael Guess, 30, also died in Friday's plane crash near Eveleth.

 

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, and several others are expected to speak.

 

"I'm just going to talk about Paul Wellstone's legacy, what he meant to us as a party, but also as a Senator," Harkin said in Iowa Monday. "Paul Wellstone was sort of a mirror for all of us to look into and see what we believed in, what we stood for and how much we were willing to fight for what we believe in."

 

Wellstone's campaign bus will be parked outside the arena and be used as a place for people to present flowers and other tributes. Several TV stations planned to broadcast the event and a Twin Cities technology company planned an Internet feed.

 

The arena, where the Minnesota basketball teams play, will seat about 15,000. A video feed will be projected in the adjacent Sports Pavilion building, with seating for another 5,000.

 

Security and traffic both will be heavy. Campus police were preparing for crowds to begin arriving around 4 p.m. and to begin leaving somewhere between 9 p.m. and 10 p.m.

 

Wellstone family members and close friends attended a private funeral for Paul and Sheila Wellstone at a Minneapolis synagogue on Monday. Their bodies were buried in Lakewood Cemetery after the service.

 

More than 700 students, teachers and administrators of White Bear Lake High School, where Marcia Wellstone Markuson taught, paid tribute to her at a service Monday.

 

Wellstone's death threw the battle for control of the Senate into question with the Nov. 5 election nearly a week away. The race had been tight between former St. Paul Mayor Norm Coleman and Wellstone and was a top target of Republicans trying to regain control of the chamber.

 

Former Vice President Walter Mondale has gotten a crucial vote of confidence from the Wellstone family as Democrats scramble to replace the fallen senator on the Nov. 5 ballot.

 

"Mr. Mondale is the choice of the Wellstone family," said Mike Erlandson, chairman of the state's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party. Erlandson said Wellstone's son personally asked Mondale on Saturday to take over the race.

 

A group of up to 875 Minnesota Democrats - delegates and alternates to the party's central committee - will meet Wednesday to officially choose the substitute candidate for Wellstone.

 

Erlandson said the family's choice would weigh heavily in the party's decision. He said he believes Mondale, a household name in Minnesota, will run if nominated.

 

Mondale, 74, hasn't returned calls to reporters or answered the door at his Minneapolis home.

 

Those close to Mondale said he isn't expected to comment publicly on a potential candidacy until after Tuesday's memorial service for the crash victims.

 

Meanwhile, federal officials said the investigation into the plane crash that killed Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone could take months.

 

The lead investigator said the plane is too heavily damaged to tell right away whether de-icing equipment was operating properly.

 

Pilots at the Minnesota airport where the plane was headed last Friday said the amount of ice was no more than normal.

 

The plane went down about two-and-a-half miles from the airport in Eveleth. The landing gear was down and the flaps were lowered properly.

 

Investigators are still studying inspections records and plane parts for clues.

[Tarun 6]

According to Nobel Prize laureate Dr Helen Cauldicott (spelling?) who recently lectured at Smith College:

"Dick Cheney is actually US president. Bush takes his orders from Cheney. Cheney's in control."

1) Don Cheney controlled 12 NBA Boston Celtics, at least on court.

2) Lon Cheney controlled all who stood in his path or dared to stare into his eyes with his 1,000 faces, at least on stage.

Any connection?

[Streetstraw 0]

Most Amerikans think we lost only 144 soldiers in 1991 1st Gulf War.

Actually, 10,000 young Amerikans have died of Gulf War related diseases since then.

Plus our VA is looking at not less than 200,000 Gulf War related disability claims.

Depleted Uranium is nothing to sneeze at.

Amerika's Commercial Media will never reveal such facts, pig stool that they be.

Excuse me, I just insulted pigstool. Sorry.

 

[Streetstraw 0]

Editor's Note: Read it again - Blood Money.

Cheney Still Paid by Pentagon Contractor

Robert Bryce and Julian Borger

The Guardian

Wednesday 12 March 2003

 

Bush deputy gets up to $1m from firm with Iraq oil deal

 

Halliburton, the Texas company which has been awarded the Pentagon's contract to put out potential oil-field fires in Iraq and which is bidding for postwar construction contracts, is still making annual payments to its former chief executive, the vice-president Dick Cheney.

 

The payments, which appear on Mr Cheney's 2001 financial disclosure statement, are in the form of "deferred compensation" of up to $1m (£600,000) a year.

 

When he left Halliburton in 2000 to become George Bush's running mate, he opted not to receive his leaving payment in a lump sum but instead have it paid to him over five years, possibly for tax reasons.

 

An aide to the vice president said yesterday: "This is money that Mr Cheney was owed by the corporation as part of his salary for the time he was employed by Halliburton and which was a fixed amount paid to him over time."

 

The aide said the payment was even insured so that it would not be affected even if Halliburton went bankrupt, to ensure there was no conflict of interest.

 

"Also, the vice president has nothing whatsoever to do with the Pentagon bidding process," the aide added.

 

The company would not say how much the payments are. The obligatory disclosure statement filled by all top government officials says only that they are in the range of $100,000 and $1m. Nor is it clear how they are calculated.

 

Halliburton is one of five large US corporations - the others are the Bechtel Group, Fluor Corp, Parsons Corp, and the Louis Berger Group - invited to bid for contracts in what may turn out to be the biggest reconstruction project since the second world war.

 

It is estimated to be worth up to $900m for the preliminary work alone, such as rebuilding Iraq's hospitals, ports, airports and schools.

 

The contract winners will be able to establish a presence in post-Saddam Iraq that should give them an invaluable edge in winning future contracts.

 

The defence department contract awarded to the Halliburton subsidiary, Kellog, Brown & Root (KBR), to control oil fires if Saddam Hussein sets the well heads alight, will put the company in an excellent position to bid for huge contracts when Iraq's oil industry is rehabilitated.

 

KBR has already benefited considerably from the "war on terror". It has so far been awarded contracts worth nearly $33m to build the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba for al-Qaida suspects.

 

Asked whether the payments to Mr Cheney represented a conflict of interest, Halliburton's spokeswoman, Wendy Hall, said: "We have been working as a government contractor since the 1940s. Since this time, KBR has become the premier provider of logistics and support services to all branches of the military."

 

In the five years Mr Cheney was at the helm, Halliburton nearly doubled the amount of business it did with the government to $2.3bn. The company also more than doubled its political contributions to $1.2m, overwhelmingly to Republican candidates.

 

Mr Cheney sold most of his Halliburton shares when he left the company, but retained stock options worth about $8m. He arranged to pay any profits to charity.