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Tag: Barack Obama
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Burris incurs political wrath after amending Blagojevich testimony
After managing to be seated as Illinois’ senator last month, Roland W. Burris may be self-destructing even before he stands for election.
Burris admitted in a newly submitted affadavit made public Saturday by the Chicago Sun-Times that he was, in fact, asked to contribute money to the ousted Illinois governor, who appointed him to fill Barack Obama’s seat.
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Illinois State Rep. Jim Durkin, the highest-ranking Republican on Blagojevich’s impeachment committee, called Sunday for Burris’ resignation.
“I think it would be in the best interest of the state if he resigned because I don’t think the state can stand this anymore… I can’t believe anything that comes out of Mr. Burris at this point.”
State lawmakers are now talking about a perjury investigation, while Senate Democrats are facing pressure to launch an ethics committee probe to determine whether he should be expelled.
In Burris’ new affidavit – dated Feb. 5, three weeks after he was sworn in to replace President Obama – he admits he spoke three times between October and November to Robert Blagojevich, the former governor’s brother, who solicited funds for the governor’s campaign coffers .
In a sworn statement filed with the House panel Jan. 5, before he testified, Burris said he had no contact with Blagojevich’s camp about the Senate seat aside from his appointment in late December.
Then, when testifying before the committee a few days later, he added that he had spoken with Lon Monk, Blagojevich’s former chief of staff.
The governor, who’d already been arrested on charges that included seeking to sell the Senate seat, was subsequently removed from office by the state Legislature.
Burris called a news conference Sunday to deny that the affadavit had changed his story in any substantive way. He said that the questioning by the committee had led him in other directions, and there was never an appropriate opportunity for him to fully disclose the contacts.
“We went in the direction of the other names,” Burris said.
Burris said Sunday he had decided to submit a new affidavit after reading the full transcript of the state proceedings and realizing it was incomplete.
Some, however, suggested that he offered the new disclosures because he realized he might be on tape in the ongoing FBI probe of the former governor, and wanted to put out information himself before it comes out from other sources. In another statement Monday morning, he denied that is the case.
The newest version of events puts Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) in a difficult spot. The two men had originally refused to seat Burris on the grounds he was appointed by a governor who’d already been arrested for allegedly trying to auction off the Senate seat.
But with African-American supporters charging that the refusal to seat Burris was racist, and concerns about the party losing the seat in a special election, the leaders relented.
As one condition for seating him, Democrats said Burris needed to testify under oath to a state committee investigating whether to impeach the governor.
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This post is tagged with: Barack Obama, Lon Monk, Politics, Recent Stories, Robert Blagojevich, Rod R. Blajojevich, Roland W. BurrisRead related stories: Politics · Recent Stories
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Master of the Upper East Side helps the homelessFebruary 19, 2009 at 10:13am
In a homecoming on behalf of the homeless, celebrated writer Gay Talese made a return this week to The New York Times.
Judd Gregg withdraws as commerce secretary nominee
Republican Sen. Judd Gregg of New Hampshire withdrew his nomination as commerce secretary Thursday, citing “irresolvable conflicts” with President Barack Obama over his stimulus plan and handling of the 2010 census.
“We are functioning from a different set of views on many critical items of policy,” Gregg said in a statement released by his Senate office.
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Gregg, 61, a former New Hampshire governor, had signaled his disagreement with the president’s agenda when he abstained from the Senate vote on the stimulus package, which passed the chamber 61 to 37. He had not offered any public comment on the White House’s plan to have the Census director report to White House officials. Many Republicans, however, had voiced serious concerns about the potential politicization of the department.
A member of the Senate since 1993, Gregg is the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, and has been an outspoken critic of big spending.
In his statement, Gregg thanked Obama for the nomination, saying, “I especially admire his willingness to reach across the aisle.”
But he suggested that he had not fully grasped the scope of his differences, saying, “Prior to accepting this post, we had discussed these and other potential differences, but unfortunately we did not adequately focus on these concerns. We are functioning from a different set of views on many critical items of policy.”
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Feds probe firms close to Rep. John MurthaFebruary 13, 2009 at 10:46am
Another possible pay-to-play arrangement appears to be unraveling under public scrutiny – this one involving Rep. John Murtha, the powerful defense appropriator from Pennsylvania.
Fired U.S. attorney David Iglesias returns to old stomping grounds at Guantanamo
Former U.S. attorney David Iglesias – one of nine U.S. attorneys fired by the Bush administration in 2006 – has a new job.
Iglesias has been hired to prosecute suspected terrorists held in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for the Office of Military Commissions. He was reactivated as a member of the U.S. Naval Reserve JAG corps as part of a special prosecution team for Guantanamo detainees.
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But this job, too, could be politically insecure at a time when the Obama administration is circulating a draft order to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center and review the cases of the nearly 245 inmates still held there.
Iglesias said yesterday that his cases could still go forward in federal court, military court martial or with the commission. But it remained unclear what system the Obama administration hoped to use, and Iglesias stressed he was speaking for himself, not for the Office of Military Commissions.
For Iglesias, working as a Guantanamo judge advocate is a familiar gig.
After graduating from the University of New Mexico School of Law, he became a Navy judge advocate general who defended court-martialed sailors at the Cuban naval base His involvement in a hazing case there became the basis for Tom Cruise’s character in A Few Good Men.
In 2001, after making an unexpectedly strong bid for state attorney general, Iglesias was appointed U.S. attorney for New Mexico by George W. Bush on the recommendation of former Sen. Pete Domenici.
“I think there was a belief that, because I’d run for office, because I knew Heather (Wilson) and Pete (Domenici) personally, that somehow I’d be a much more politically savvy U.S. Attorney,” he told the Albuquerque Tribune in 2007. “When I just looked at the evidence and went by the book, there was this anger that I was acting too much like a career prosecutor and not like a political appointee.”
His 2006 firing played a key role in the subsequent resignation of then-Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. A report by the U.S. Justice Department concluded that he was fired after Republican politicians, including Domenici, complained about his handling of voter fraud complaints and public corruption cases in New Mexico.
Iglesias was born to Baptist missionaries working on a small island off the Caribbean coast of Panama. When he was 7, his parents moved to Oklahoma, then to Gallup, where his father was a pastor. After graduating from Santa Fe High School, he attended Wheaton College and then the University of New Mexico law school.
Before taking his new position, Iglesias had been publicizing his first-hand account of his firing and practicing business law part-time in Albuquerque.
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This post is tagged with: A Few Good Men, Alberto Gonzales, Barack Obama, David Iglesias, George W. Bush, News, Pete Dominici, U.S. Naval ReserveRead related stories: News · Recent Stories0 Comments
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Jill Biden continues role of working spouseJanuary 29, 2009 at 11:38am
Her husband has a new job, but Jill Biden, wife of Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., is continuing to do her old job, albeit at a different location.
Latham & Watkins is feeder firm for Justice Department
Administrations come and go, but Latham & Watkins remains a constant – a white-shoe law firm that serves as a de-facto farm team for the U.S. Justice Department, regardless of a president’s political leanings.
“We’ve said it once and we’ll say it again: Young law dogs with Department of Justice aspirations should consider Latham & Watkins,” advised the Wall Street Journal’s Law Blog. “The firm seems to be the DOJ’s home away from home.”
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The revolving door is also swinging in the other direction. While Ruemler heeds the call of government service in a Democratic administration, Alice S. Fisher, the Justice Department’s criminal division chief who oversaw high-profile prosecutions in counterterrorism and corporate fraud under George W. Bush, recently returned to the firm’s ranks.
And the two are hardly exceptions.
Other Latham & Watkins alumni who worked in the Bush Justice Department include heavyweights Michael Chertoff, who was assistant attorney general before becoming secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; and Philip Perry, the vice-president’s son-in-law who served as associate attorney general before becoming general counsel for the Homeland Security department.
Serving in earlier Democratic and Republican administrations was partner Beth Wilkinson, who prosecuted Timothy McVeigh for the Oklahoma City bombing and who subsequently married Meet the Press moderator David Gregory.
Expanding beyond the Justice Department, the list of the firm’s notable alumni is even broader including Bruce Babbit, the former governor of Arizona and U.S. secretary of the Interior; Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox; and former Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Fred T. Goldberg.
Although the firm is headquartered in Los Angeles, it has offices throughout the world, including in Abu Dhabi, Barcelona, Brussels and Paris.
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This post is tagged with: Alice S. Fisher, Barack Obama, Beth Wilkinson, George W. Bush, Kathryn Ruemmler, Latham & Watkins, Law, Michael Chertoff, Philip Perry, Recent Stories, U.S. Department of JusticeRead related stories: Law · Recent Stories0 Comments
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Former HUD colleagues Cuomo, Gillibrand, cited as Senate prospectsJanuary 22, 2009 at 12:40pm
With Caroline Kennedy out, who is the frontrunner to replace Hillary Clinton as New York’s representative in the U.S. Senate?
Barack Obama assumes U.S. presidency
Starting today, Barack Obama pledged after being sworn in as president, “We must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.”
Speaking before a crowd of 2 million, he pledged friendship to the millions more who watched worldwide.
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Obama’s speech focused on inclusiveness, change and a call to citizenship.
“We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus – and non-believers,” he said. “We are shaped by every language and culture, drawn from every end of this earth; and because we have tasted the bitter swill of civil war and segregation, and emerged from that dark chapter stronger and more united, we cannot help but believe that the old hatreds shall someday pass; that the lines of tribe shall soon dissolve; that as the world grows smaller, our common humanity shall reveal itself; and that America must play its role in ushering in a new era of peace.”
He called for a new era of responsibility, but a return to old values such as “hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism.”
The price of citizenship, he said, is giving one’s all.
“This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed – why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall, and why a man whose father less than sixty years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.”
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Rudin loses in Oscar tug-of-war over Kate WinsletJanuary 23, 2009 at 11:27am
Scott Rudin may be regretting his decision to abandon The Reader after yesterday’s Academy Award nominations, which put up the film for five awards, including best picture, best director and leading actress.
Former rivals consider Hillary Rodham Clinton for State
You could call it a field of dashed dreams.
The Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which convened this morning to consider Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state, is an object lesson on the soaring ambitions of America’s top politicians – and the often deflated realities of their achievements.
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Acknowledging that one former committee member is president-elect, while its former chairman Joe Biden is vice-president-elect, Kerry cautioned younger committee members not to get “too far ahead of themselves” as “myself, Chris Dodd, Dick Lugar and perhaps Senator Clinton can … attest.”
Sitting directly across from him, of course, was Clinton, who came closest of any of those present to realizing her presidential ambitions before she became her former rival’s choice for secretary of state.
But if Kerry harbors any jealousy of the woman who displaced him as the nation’s top diplomat, he betrayed no hint of it. He invited Chelsea Clinton to sit behind him on the dais (offering her a temporary committee internship like that held years ago by her father), so that her mother could look at her while she testified.
And then he launched into a lovefest about Clinton, praising her as a diplomatic veteran on “first-name basis” with world leaders, declaring, “America is back.”
Not to be outmaneuvered in the graceful acknowledgements department, Clinton herself paid tribute to Ann Dunham, president-elect Barack Obama’s late mother, as she pledged to advance the cause of women and girls around the world, calling Dunham “a pioneer in microfinance in Indonesia.”
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This post is tagged with: Barack Obama, Chelsea Clinton, Christopher Dodd, Hillary Rodham Clinton, John Kerry, Joseph Biden, Obama, Politics, Richard Lugar, Senate Foreign Relations Committee0 Comments
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Apple’s Timothy Cook steps up – againJanuary 16, 2009 at 11:14am
The news that Steve Jobs will be taking medical leave from Apple Inc. has once again thrust Timothy D. Cook, Apple chief operating officer, onto center stage.
Gay bishop joins evangelical pastor in inaugural line-up
President-elect Barack Obama has invited V. Gene Robinson, the openly gay Episcopal bishop of New Hampshire and a symbol of the gay rights movement, to deliver the prayer at the opening inaugural event at the Lincoln Memorial Sunday.
The invitation is viewed as an effort to placate gay rights activists who were furious at his decision to have the Rev. Rick Warren, an evangelical pastor who opposes same-sex marriage, deliver the high-profile invocation at the inauguration itself.
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But just as Warren’s choice infuriated the left, Robinson’s is likely to antagonize the right. As the first openly gay man to be consecrated a bishop in the Anglican Communion, his ordination in 2003 touched off a worldwide rift about homosexuality within the Anglican Communion, spurring a schism within that denomination.
In an interview with the New York Times, Robinson said he believed his inclusion in the inaugural events had been under consideration before the Warren controversy erupted, but that Obama was also seeking to heal any rifts that Warren’s selection had caused among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocates.
“They called up and said this has actually been in the works for a long time,” he said, “and at the same time, we understand that people in the L.G.B.T. community have been somewhat wounded by this choice, and it’s our hope that your selection will go a long way to heal those divides.
“In many ways,” he added, “it just proves that Barack Obama is exactly who he says he was and would be as president, which is someone who is casting a wide net that will include all Americans.”
Robinson said that his partner of more than 20 years, Mark Andrews, would accompany him to the inauguration. The two had a civil union ceremony last summer in a New Hampshire church.
The event Robinson will participate in is a concert featuring Beyoncé, Bono, Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder.
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Apple’s Timothy Cook steps up – againJanuary 16, 2009 at 11:14am
The news that Steve Jobs will be taking medical leave from Apple Inc. has once again thrust Timothy D. Cook, Apple chief operating officer, onto center stage.
Top spymaster nominee Dennis Blair brings broad connections, experiences
By naming Dennis C. Blair as his nominee for the nation’s top spy post – director of national intelligence – President-elect Barack Obama gets a brainy, retired four-star admiral with an independent streak.
Blair is a 34-year Navy veteran and Asia expert who was reportedly passed over for the post of chairman of the Joint Chiefs by former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who considered him too independent. His last job in the military was as Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Pacific Command, the highest-ranking officer over forces in the Asia-Pacific region.
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He has also worked the intelligence business from virtually every angle – military commander, White House staffer and CIA official – but has no significant ties to controversial Bush administration policies like offshore renditions and harsh interrogation of terrorism suspects, since he resigned from the military in 2002.
Born in Kittery, Maine in 1947, Blair is a 6th-generation naval officer and great-great-great grandson of Confederate chief engineer William Price Williamson of North Carolina. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1968 with Virginia Sen. James H. Webb and former Reagan adviser Oliver North, and then majored in Russian Studies as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University with Bill Clinton.
He was a White House Fellow in 1975 and 1976, along with retired Gen. Wesley Clark and Marshall Carter, who later became chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.
Famous for his workaholism, Blair is not without a zany streak. Most famously, he tried to water ski behind a Navy destroyer while commanding the ship in Japan.
Blair was not a close adviser to the Obama campaign, but has reportedly impressed the president-elect with his intellect and his nuanced view of intelligence, as well as of U.S. power.
“The use of large-scale military force in volatile regions of underdeveloped countries is difficult to do right, has major unintended consequences and rarely turns out to be quick, effective, controlled and short lived,” Blair testified before Congress in November, 2007.
Blair has handled intelligence in a number of capacities: He worked as the Central Intelligence Agency’s first associate director of military support, and served a tour on the National Security Council. He was also director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, and commanded the Kitty Hawk Battle Group and the destroyer Cochrane.
After his retirement in 2002, Blair has served as president of the Institute for Defense Analyses, a nonprofit research group largely financed by the federal government to analyze national security issues. He stepped down from that post in 2006 amid conflict-of-interest concerns.
The Pentagon’s inspector general concluded he had violated the institute’s conflict-of-interest standards by serving on the board of a military contractor working on the Air Force F-22 jet while the institute was evaluating the program for the Pentagon. However, the inspector general also found that Blair did not influence the organization’s analysis of the F-22 program.
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This post is tagged with: Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Dennis C. Blair, Institute for Defense Analyses, James Webb, Marshall Carter, News, Oliver North, Recent Stories, Wesley Clark1 Comments
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Your piece does not refer to widespread reports of Blair’s complicity in E Timor massacres. Failure to mention does not inspire confidence in your objectivity. Your readers need to know: are these reports are accurate? and if so, why this history is not disqualifying?
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Cohmad Securities, Robert Jaffe face tough questions about Madoff tiesJanuary 15, 2009 at 9:16am
Investigators probing Bernard Madoff’s alleged $50-billion scheme are looking at the role played by an investment firm that he co-founded with an old friend from Long Island that recruited hundreds of investors from New York, Boston and Florida.
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#1. Ted 02.16.2009
Obama’s stealing the census from Congress has suddenly awakened and enraged the Republicans. Maybe this will arouse them as well to challenge Obama for stealing the Presidency itself. They surely know he is not an Article 2 “natural born citizen” (which is more than merely being a 14th Amendment “citizen”) by virtue of either Obama’s birth to a dad of Kenyan/British citizenship or birth in Kenya itself — as manifested by his unwillingness to supply his long form birth certificate now under seal.
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