White House Week
The Little Leak That Keeps on Dripping
There was relief last month at the White House when it became known that senior adviser Karl Rove would not be charged in the case of who leaked the name of a CIA operative to the press. The only fallout seemed to be the upcoming trial of vice presidential aide Lewis Libby for perjury. But now Valerie Plame, the former CIA officer, and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, have sued Rove, Libby, and Vice President Cheney himself, claiming the leak violated their rights and put Plame in danger. Their suit charges that the White House revealed Plame's identity to retaliate against Wilson for his criticism of the administration's prewar posture on Iraq. Spokespersons for Cheney and Libby declined to comment. A spokesman for Rove called the lawsuit baseless, and Robert Novak, the columnist who first printed the name, said that he, not Rove, initiated their Plame conversation. Still, a civil suit may drag the matter on well beyond the Libby trial.
Federal Spending: the Naked Truth
Sometimes an idea comes along that is so neat you wonder why no one thought of it before. In that vein, Sen. Tom Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican and chair of the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, has introduced a bipartisan bill to create a Google-like online searchable database of all federal spending. Currently, said Coburn, there is no way for taxpayers to find out what the government is paying individuals, groups, localities, and contractors. "This bill will empower citizen investigators to root out waste, fraud, and abuse," said Coburn, a leading opponent of pork. The bill has some heavyweight sponsors, including Republican Sens. John McCain and Rick Santorum and Democrat Barack Obama.
Mideast Bloodshed Spells GOP Pain
While House Speaker Dennis Hastert last week became the first Republican leader to predict that the GOP will gain seats in the midterm elections, other Republican House and Senate members are worried that the new flare-up in the Middle East can only hurt. They see a surge in gas prices and potentially more terrorism in Iraq, events that could reverse President Bush's recent upward spurt in the polls. "It can make a difference of 1, 2, or 3 percent" in close races, said one Republican senator. Lawmakers are hopeful that Bush can sustain an approval rating in the low to mid-40s, which could render him a neutral factor in the election. But key congressional aides said that the Iraq war, fighting among Israel and its neighbors, and higher gas prices will remain a drag on Bush and the GOP. "The Civil War was not a positive for Lincoln," said the senator.
If It Looks Like Ethnic Cleansing...
U.S. officials are growing increasingly worried about the sectarian strife in Baghdad--and an apparent sharp increase in forced migration there. Observers have detected a significant rise in the numbers of Sunnis and Shiites who are being chased out of their homes, sometimes forcibly, in mixed neighborhoods. The United Nations estimates that tens of thousands of people are moving. Some say the numbers may even be higher and fear that killings of Sunnis by Shiite death squads last week could accelerate the trend. An undetermined number of Sunnis have fled to Syria in recent weeks, while larger numbers of both Sunnis and Shiites have taken refuge in safer neighborhoods.
PHOTO OP: 12:42 p.m., July 13, Capitol Hill
The president last week agreed to let a special court review the legality of his warrantless wiretapping program. Sen. Arlen Specter, who cut the deal with the White House, told reporters how it would work.
With Paul Bedard, Danielle Knight and Kevin Whitelaw
This story appears in the July 24, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.
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