Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Don't Blame Me, I Voted For Kerry -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: American Spirit who wrote (19009)	4/28/2004 9:11:11 PM
From: mph	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 81568

The "medals" flap, imo, has nothing to do with the rightness or wrongness of the Vietnam war. It has to do with evaluating Kerry. Whether he threw medals or ribbons is irrelevant. The symbolism was the same. The problem is that he wanted to simultaneously throw back the medals AND still retain them for when the tide turned and it was expeditious for him to run as a war hero. If his symbolic gesture had true meaning to him, and if he, to this very day, believed everything he said during his protest days, he would have (a) actually thrown all his medals AND ribbons, as he wanted people to believe at the time, or (b) just thrown his ribbons and left the medals in a drawer, closing the door forever on Vietnam rather than displaying the medals in his office and playing the "war hero" card. The latter would have been consistent with his protest and symbolic gesture. The problem is that Kerry is an opportunist and wants it both ways. That's why he cannot reconcile all his prior inconconsistent statements about the medals. And this is why the issue has had so much attention.

To: American Spirit who wrote (19009)	4/28/2004 10:37:10 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 81568

Beyond the Duck Hunt _____________________ Lead Editorial washingtonpost.com Wednesday, April 28, 2004 THE CONTROVERSY over Justice Antonin Scalia's duck hunt with Vice President Cheney has largely overshadowed the case to which it was related, which the justices -- including Mr. Scalia -- finally heard yesterday. The case deals with the energy policy task force that President Bush created after taking office, which Mr. Cheney ran and which produced the administration's deficient energy proposal. The administration has fought tenaciously on a number of legal fronts to keep the task force's proceedings -- including such basic information as whom it met with -- from the public. As a matter of policy, this secrecy has never made much sense. Just read the task force report, and you know that energy executives had greater input than environmentalists. The insistence on secrecy has simply kept the controversy simmering for the entirety of Mr. Bush's first term. As a matter of law, the case now before the Supreme Court is a bit more complex. It involves a suit by the Sierra Club and the conservative watchdog Judicial Watch, which allege that the task force violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA). The act requires that government advisory groups disclose all sorts of information about their proceedings. It does not apply to committees composed only of government officials. The administration maintains that the task force included only officials as members and is consequently exempt. The plaintiffs allege that some outside advisers were so involved in the proceedings that they became de facto members. Citing an appeals court decision in a similar controversy over Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care task force, they argue that this involvement triggers the law's disclosure obligations. A lower court ordered limited production of materials to assess whether the claims have any merit. This creates a potential Catch-22 for the government. If there were a legitimate reason for the secrecy, forcing the government to disclose information in the course of the trial might make Mr. Cheney the loser even if he eventually won the case. Consequently, the government is before the Supreme Court arguing that the law is unconstitutional if interpreted in that fashion. But the lower courts sought to limit disclosure carefully to the sorts of information required to assess the claim. If those documents don't prove the plaintiffs' case, the court could dismiss the case and protect the executive's interest in the secrecy of the rest. More importantly, the government has not bothered to assert executive privilege over any of these materials -- though, as some of the justices noted at arguments yesterday, some of the documents probably would be shielded by such a move. The White House is effectively asking the court to relieve it of the political embarrassment of such a step -- an invitation the court should decline. There are times when fighting tenaciously to preserve executive powers -- even the power of secrecy -- is appropriate. This is not such a case. Legally, the president can keep litigating these questions and dragging the matter out, until the courts finally force his hand. But the secrecy associated with the task force was ill-considered from the start. The energy policy might have been more balanced, and more likely to win support in Congress, had the task force conducted more of its proceedings in public and heard from a broader range of interests. The public now should at least get to find out how this energy policy came to be made. © 2004 The Washington Post Company washingtonpost.com