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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dr. Doktor who wrote (230070)	2/22/2002 3:20:55 PM
From: TigerPaw	Respond to of 769667

Dr. Doktor - potassium cyanide Not a great thing? Ya mean like it'll kill the shit out of you if you breathe it. Have you ever smoked cigarettes? If so you've breathed potassium cyanide. TP

To: Dr. Doktor who wrote (230070)	2/22/2002 3:34:21 PM
From: Dr. Doktor	Respond to of 769667

Friday, Feb. 22, 2002 W.House vows battle over principle against GAO WASHINGTON, Feb 22 (Reuters) - The White House vowed to fight a battle over principle on Friday as congressional investigators prepared to file a lawsuit seeking documents from Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force, records that could shed light on ties between the Bush administration and the bankrupt Enron Corp. Sources familiar with the case said the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, appeared on the brink on Friday of filing a long-threatened, unprecedented suit against the White House to get the names of people consulted by a task force that drafted the administration's energy policy. The GAO is seeking the task force's contacts with energy companies including Enron, a major political contributor to U.S. President George W. Bush. Enron's bankruptcy late last year jolted the capital. Preparing for a protracted legal battle, administration officials said Bush has selected Solicitor General Theodore Olson, the government's top litigator, and Robert McCallum Jr., assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department's civil division, to defend against the lawsuit. Olson successfully argued for Bush before the Supreme Court in the battle with Al Gore over the disputed 2000 presidential election. "There are important principles involved that we intend to fight for," said a senior administration official. The White House has refused to hand over the task force records to the GAO, saying disclosure would impede its ability to obtain candid advice from outside experts. White House officials have sought to portray a confident image, saying they expected to win the battle because "principle is on our side." Last winter and spring, Cheney, himself a former head of an energy company, held a series of meetings with energy business executives, and to a smaller degree, representatives from labor unions and environmental groups, to come up with a new energy policy. The task force report said the United States would need 1,300 to 1,900 new electric plants to meet projected demand over the next 20 years. It called for more oil and gas drilling and more nuclear power plants. Environmentalists said they were largely shut out of the closed meetings and that the energy policy did not address conservation issues as much as they would like. The GAO was acting on a request from Reps. Henry Waxman of California and John Dingell of Michigan, both Democrats who suspected private-sector groups heavily influenced the White House energy plan. Waxman has said he found 17 policies in the May 2001 plan that were either advocated by Enron or benefited Enron. The White House has denied that Cheney's group was overly influenced by energy companies. Officials said Bush would insist that the GAO is acting beyond its authority, an unconstitutional infringement on the powers of the presidency. Legal scholars are split on who might win in court. Some believe Bush has a constitutional right to withhold the information, while others say Cheney, in his role as the head of an inter-agency task force, is not protected by the normal constitutional powers of the vice president.