Obama-Cheney White House
So much for the openness. Obama, on the heals of his Bush-lite surge, starts taking cues from Cheney, cites executive privilege, blocks testimony before Congress re Crashgate. You’d almost think he had a Scooter Libby problem. NYT:
The White House on Wednesday invoked the separation of powers to keep Desiree Rogers, President Obama’s social secretary, from testifying on Capitol Hill about how a couple of aspiring reality television show celebrities crashed a state dinner for the prime minister of India last week.
And the couple will not testify, either, according to a statement released late Wednesday by a public relations firm.
The statement says that the Virginia couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, have provided to the Secret Service and to the ranking members of the House committee conducting the hearing “all relevant e-mails and cellphone records that detail communications with a White House official,” and can do nothing else to help in the inquiry.
That evidence, the statement says, shows that no laws were broken, that White House protocol “was either deficient or mismanaged” and that there were “honest misunderstandings and mistakes made by all parties involved.”
Earlier Wednesday at his regular briefing with reporters, Mr. Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said Ms. Rogers would not testify. “I think you know that, based on separation of powers, staff here don’t go to testify in front of Congress,’’ he said. “She won’t — she will not be testifying in front of Congress.’’
Sounds a bit like the Plame thing when they put it that way.* But in fairness, reality TV wannabes gatecrashing state dinners is a matter of vital national sociality. In time of dire Hope, we can’t really be exposing members of the president innermost social staff to public scrutiny in a non-partisan political free-for-all.
* Viewed through the lens of reality TV history, which is the new American reality … if it isn’t on reality TV, it doesn’t really matter … that Plame thing really was a kind of Iraq war reality TV gatecrashing. Plame fooling people into thinking her husband was a secret agent. Plame fooling people into thinking she was a CIA operative. Influencing national and international affairs through sheer brazenness and a weird sense of entitlement, making bigshot pols dance to their tune. And, while maintaining a sort of indignant reserve, legalistic propriety and a sense of violation, lots of big media facetime.
(Care to comment? Use the “contact” link to assure me you are a real human being interested in commenting on the topics at hand. Include your preferred screenname and temporary password. Lefty Kumbayah singers, moderate handwringers, meanspirited rightwingers all welcome. This is a free speech zone as long as you keep it clean and make an effort to be accurate.)
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:37 am Comments (2) on Thursday, December 3, 2009
2 Responses to “Obama-Cheney White House”
Leave a Reply
Trackback URLYou must be logged in to post a comment.
December 3rd, 2009 at 2:29 pm
We have a reality-TV administration. What else could we have expected?
December 3rd, 2009 at 7:01 pm
[...] Criminalizing Dissent The Forgotten Depression of 1920 Everything they hated about Bush, is what they are. Comments [...]