U.S. Government

The Appearance of an Independent Judiciary Goes Up in Smoke

Things are looking grimmer and grimmer for U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales these days. The scandal involving the firing of 8 U.S. attorneys has led to accusations that Gonzales runs the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) to suit the Bush Administration's right wing political ideology instead of to protect the interest of U.S. citizens. Now Sharon Eubanks, the lead attorney in DOJ's racketeering case against the major American tobacco companies, has emerged from her silence and confirmed suspicions of the extent to which politics is running DOJ instead of public interest. Eubanks told the [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/21/AR2007032102713.html Washington Post] that Bush administration political appointees within DOJ repeatedly ordered her to take steps to weaken the government's case against the industry. Eubanks says she was ordered to tell key witnesses change their testimony, was forced to ditch her own closing remarks and made to read closing arguments that her superiors had written for her, and that the DOJ team was told to greatly scale back its requests for remedies against the tobacco companies. Of course, high-ranking Justice Department officials claimed at the time that there was no political meddling in the case, but tobacco control people following the case knew differently. Now Ms. Eubanks has confirmed what we knew all along.

Congress to consider spending bills calling for 2008 U.S. combat withdraw from Iraq

With the Iraq War now in its fifth year, both the House and Senate are (for the first time) poised to consider supplemental appropriations bills which would call on President Bush to remove U.S. combat troops from the country by 2008. In the House, a vote is expected soon on a $124 billion spending bill which includes a binding provision demanding withdraw by September 2008.

Congressional Corruption Cases at Issue in Attorney Firings

Guest poster: Paul Blumenthal of the Sunlight Foundation:

The controversy around the firing of several U.S. attorneys in December has dominated the news coming out of Congress this week and Congresspedia’s staff and citizen editors have been busy tracking developments on our thorough page on the subject. Of central importance to the controversy is the issue of why those eight particular U.S. attorneys were fired. I’ve been looking into the analyses of the documents released by the Justice Department, and they show that the attorneys were at least partially judged by their willingness to toe-the-line — or, as one internal administration document put it, to be good “Bushies” — and were deemed expendable if they moved too far from administration priorities. In the case of some of the fired attorneys, it appears that the offense committed may have been their investigations into Republican officials, including members of Congress, in the lead-up to the 2006 congressional elections.

Here is a look at four of the attorneys at issue and their respective corruption investigations:

96% of MoveOn Members Did Not Show Support for the Pelosi Bill

(NOTE: See an update on this issue at: https://www.prwatch.org/node/6081 )

On Sunday, March 18, Sheldon Rampton and I wrote "Iraq: Why Won't MoveOn Move Forward?", an article now widely circulated online. It has helped to focus debate on whether the Democratic Party is really attempting to end the war in Iraq, or is content to simply manage the war for supposed electoral advantage in 2008.

Help Us Update the Contact Information of the Freshman Members of Congress

Submitted by Judith Siers-Poisson on

One of the key pieces of information on Congresspedia's member of Congress articles is the contact information for the member's district and Washington offices. This helps constituents know exactly where they can go to voice their opinions, deliver petitions or send letters. Congresspedia has all the phone numbers and addresses for the incumbents, but we need to update the pages of the freshman members, which now only list campaign offices.

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Main Source: 
Congresspedia
Topics: 
Citizen Journalism
U.S. Congress
U.S. Government

Chiquita Pleads Guilty to Funding Colombian Terrorists

Submitted by Bob Burton on

The food company Chiquita Brands International, Inc. has pleaded guilty to funding a Colombian paramilitary group designated by the U.S. government as a terrorist organization. According to U.S. Department of Justice prosecutors, the company's Colombian subsidiary, Banadex, paid approximately $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) between 1997 and 2004.

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Main Source: 
Associated Press, March 19, 2007
Topics: 
Agriculture
Crisis Management
Corporate Social Responsibility
Issue Management
Terrorism
Ethics
Human Rights
International
U.S. Government

What Philip Morris Seeks in FDA Regulation: Preservation of the Status Quo

A 23-page, formerly "privileged and confidential" company [http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/lgs32a00 discussion document] outlines [[Philip Morris]]' thinking behind its 180-degree turn from strongly opposing U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) of cigarettes to in fact driving such regulation. It clues us in to the company's logic in proceeding down this path and what the company hopes for and fears most in FDA regulation. It was written by Mark Berlind, who was Assistant General Counsel of Philip Morris Worldwide Regulatory Affairs in 1998.

Berlind recaps PM's history of opposing FDA regulation and recommends that PM USA advocate for regulation instead as a way to maintain the status quo, or "perpetuate the existing framework's philosophy that adults continue to be permitted to assume" the inherent risks of cigarette smoking. Berlind supported the:

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