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Politics : The Obama - Clinton Disaster -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DuckTapeSunroof who wrote (18462)	9/6/2009 12:48:25 PM
From: Hope Praytochange	2 Recommendations Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 103300

Appointed as a special adviser for “green jobs” by President Obama, Mr. Jones did not go through the traditional vetting process for administration officials who must be confirmed by the Senate. So it was not until recently that some of Mr. Jones’s past actions received broad airing, including his derogatory statements about Republicans in February and his signature on a 2004 letter suggesting that former President George W. Bush might have knowingly allowed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to occur in order to use them as a “pre-text to war.” Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary, said on Sunday that Jones had resigned because “the agenda of the president is bigger than any one individual” and he did not want the dispute to get in the way of creating green jobs in this economy. After George Stephanoupoulos, the host of ABC’s “This Week,” asked several questions about Mr. Jones’s past controversial statements, Mr. Gibbs said that the president “doesn’t endorse what he said.” Mr. Jones’s involvement in the 1990s with a group called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement had prompted recent accusations by conservative critics that he associated with Communists. The group, according to a post-mortem written by some of its founders, was an anti-capitalist, antiwar organization committed to achieving “solidarity among all oppressed peoples” with “direct militant action.” Republican blogs and conservative talk show hosts, notably Glenn Beck of Fox News Channel, seized upon Mr. Jones’s statements and associations. Mr. Jones apologized on Wednesday for derogatory words he directed at Republican opponents of Mr. Obama’s Congressional agenda during a lecture in February, calling his remarks “inappropriate” and noting that they were made before he joined the administration. Mr. Jones has also said in the past that the Sept. 11 petition did not reflect his views. “I cannot in good conscience ask my colleagues to expend precious time and energy defending or explaining my past,” Mr. Jones said in a statement announcing his resignation that was released early Sunday morning. That message was followed by another from Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, affirming that she had accepted his resignation. On Friday, Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, chairman of the House Republican conference, called on Mr. Jones to resign, and Senator Christopher S. Bond of Missouri called for a hearing on Mr. Jones’s appointment. Mr. Obama has appointed more than two dozen special advisers who are not subject to the confirmation process. Before joining the Obama administration in 2009, Mr. Jones wrote the book “The Green Collar Economy” and co-founded several nonprofit organizations, including the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and Green for All. Howard Dean, the former head of the Democratic party, defended Mr. Jones on Sunday, saying he was being penalized for not realizing what the petition was. “This guy’s a Yale-educated lawyer,” Mr. Dean said on “Fox News Sunday.” He’s a best-selling author about his specialty. I think he was brought down, and I think it’s too bad. Washington’s a tough place that way, and I think it’s a loss for the country. “Look, all of us campaigning for office have had people throw clipboards in front of our face and ask us to sign. And he learned the hard way you ought not to do that. But I don’t think he really thinks the government had anything to do with causing 9-11.” Peter Baker contributed reporting from Washington, and Joseph Berger from New York.