White House Stalls Katrina Probe! (what else is new)

[KoKo]

Senators: White House Stalls Katrina Probe

By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer 54 minutes ago

WASHINGTON - The White House is crippling a Senate inquiry into the government's sluggish response to Hurricane Katrina by barring administration officials from answering questions and failing to hand over documents, senators leading the investigation said Tuesday.
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In some cases, staff at the White House and other federal agencies have refused to be interviewed by congressional investigators, said the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate
Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. In addition, agency officials won't answer seemingly innocuous questions about times and dates of meetings and telephone calls with the White House, the senators said.

A White House spokesman said the administration is committed to working with separate Senate and House investigations of the Katrina response but wants to protect the confidentiality of presidential advisers.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/katrina_congress;_ylt=AojMUife_300ryadcywIGXas0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--

[SPKrazy]

1. Because they f*cked up bad!

and they know it!

[mcctatas]

2. Can they really just refuse to answer???

What about contempt of Congress?! Talk about a fucking unitary Executive, these bastards make me sick! From Wiki:

From time to time, Congress lodges contempt of Congress charges against members of the U.S. government, usually members of the executive branch who claim that releasing their records to a committee would cause more harm than good, or sometimes that the records are protected by executive privilege and must remain secret. This can put the executive branch in an unusual ethical position, since the executive branch employs the U.S. Attorney, who decides whether to bring cases of contempt of Congress to the grand jury. In addition, it is often the U.S. Attorney who advises executive branch members in the first place whether to withhold controversial documents or provide them to the congressional committees.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contempt_of_Congress

[renate]

3. wow, on Yahoo News!

Yay! I love the way the story starts with "The White House is crippling a Senate inquiry... senators say" rather than the flaccid and wimpy "Senators say the White House is crippling an inquiry" that would have been the first line a while ago.

Since Katrina was the catalyst that started *'s ratings freefall, I say the more Katrina-related flak the administration gets from journalists about stalling, the better.

It's not as though any lives would be saved at this point by a speedy investigation, anyway. Drag it out, Karl, drag it out till November. The new and improved Senate will take it from there.
:popcorn:

[KoKo]

4. Kicking this. It was read on C-Span this a.m. but I couldn't find it

when I just searched Yahoo and WaPo website. It's a story we need to stay on top of. Bush stonewalling his own Congressional Investigations.

[ComerPerro]

5. They probably can't disclose details of those meetings

because I am betting they never happened.

At best, all that they have is records of brief meetings where they decided that it wasn't their problem, and didn't want to interrupt Bush's fund raising and vacation time.