A Good Day for the Dems

This isn't particularly good news, but in light of the upcoming elections, bad news for the GOP is always good news to me. Here's a quick summary of the headlines:

The Bush Administration Lied (surprise!) About It's Ties to the Criminal Lobbyist Jack Abramoff:

It turns out that Jack and the White House had over 485 contacts over the past 6 years. On May 10th, the Secret Service released a report claiming that the lobbyist had only been to the WH twice. The WH was forced to release the misleading information (after refusing several times) in May by the group Jucidial Watch, which filed a Freedom of Information Act request. Well, it turns out we're not free to see information that the administration doesn't want us to see, even when there's a public request to see information that has absolutely nothing to do with national security.

From Bloomberg.com:

Abramoff, 47, claimed he personally had at least 66 contacts with White House officials, including at least 10 with White House chief political adviser Karl Rove, according to the yet-to- be-released report by the House Committee on Government Reform. Bloomberg News obtained a copy of the study, which was first reported last night by ABC News.
----------------------------------------------

Thanks to Bob Woodward's new book: State of Denial, we have these two new headlines.
Former Chief of Staff Andrew Card And Laura Bush Tried to Convince the President to Fire Donald Rumsfeld Back In 2004

From Washington Post:
Former White House chief of staff Andrew Card on two occasions tried and failed to persuade President Bush to fire Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, according to a new book by Bob Woodward that depicts senior officials of the Bush administration as unable to face the consequences of their policy in Iraq.

Card made his first attempt after Bush was reelected in November, 2004, arguing that the administration needed a fresh start and recommending that Bush replace Rumsfeld with former secretary of state James A. Baker III. Woodward writes that Bush considered the move, but was persuaded by Vice President Cheney and Karl Rove, his chief political adviser, that it would be seen as an expression of doubt about the course of the war and would expose Bush himself to criticism.

Card tried again around Thanksgiving, 2005, this time with the support of First Lady Laura Bush, who according to Woodward, felt that Rumsfeld's overbearing manner was damaging to her husband. Bush refused for a second time, and Card left the administration last March, convinced that Iraq would be compared to Vietnam and that history would record that no senior administration officials had raised their voices in opposition to the conduct of the war.
----------------------------------------------

Bush Ignored Urgent Warning On Iraq

From the New York Times:
The White House ignored an urgent warning in September 2003 from a top Iraq adviser who said that thousands of additional American troops were desperately needed to quell the insurgency there, according to a new book by Bob Woodward, the Washington Post reporter and author. The book describes a White House riven by dysfunction and division over the war.

Robert D. Blackwill, then the top Iraq adviser on the National Security Council, is said to have issued his warning about the need for more troops in a lengthy memorandum sent to Ms. Rice. The book says Mr. Blackwill’s memorandum concluded that more ground troops, perhaps as many as 40,000, were desperately needed.

It says that Mr. Blackwill and L. Paul Bremer III, then the top American official in Iraq, later briefed Ms. Rice and Stephen J. Hadley, her deputy, about the pressing need for more troops during a secure teleconference from Iraq. It says the White House did nothing in response.

In the weeks before the Iraq war began, President Bush’s parents did not share his confidence that the invasion of Iraq was the right step, the book recounts. Mr. Woodward writes about a private exchange in January 2003 between Mr. Bush’s mother, Barbara Bush, the former first lady, and David L. Boren, a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and a Bush family friend.

The book says Mrs. Bush asked Mr. Boren whether it was right to be worried about a possible invasion of Iraq, and then to have confided that the president’s father, former President George H. W. Bush, “is certainly worried and is losing sleep over it; he’s up at night worried.”
----------------------------------------------

Incompetence on the war in Iraq, ignored warnings and close ties to corrupt lobbyists. Bad news like this is great news for the Democrats.