Archive for the 'Bill Frist' Category
Feb 9, 2006 at 8:09 PM by Political Chase
The White House just crumbled. Murray Waas has blown away the foundation.
Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by Cheney and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration’s use of prewar intelligence in making the case to go to war with Iraq, according to attorneys familiar with the matter, and to court records.
Libby specifically claimed that in one instance he had been authorized to divulge portions of a then-still highly classified National Intelligence Estimate regarding Saddam Hussein’s purported efforts to develop nuclear weapons, according to correspondence recently filed in federal court by special prosecutor Patrick J. Fitzgerald.
Now, let’s see…“other White House ‘superiors.’” Well, Dick Cheney can’t be one of those and a simple process of elimination converts the unnamed to known.
Today is not a very good for the four top Republicans (Bush, Cheney, Hastert, Frist). Speaker of the House Hastert and Senate Majority Leader Fritz, acting on their own and without the knowledge of others, have been slipping in legislation at the bottom of proposed bills, which have now become law.
Technorati Tags : Plamegate, Scooter+Libby, George+Bush, Diok+Cheney, Murray+Waas, Bill+Frist, Dennis, Hastert, Iraq, Patrick+Fitzgerald, WMD
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Nov 15, 2005 at 6:52 AM by Political Chase
More signs of divide and conquer. These guys are all over each other. It’s about time.
In a sign of increasing unease among Congressional Republicans over the war in Iraq, the Senate is to consider on Tuesday a Republican proposal that calls for Iraqi forces to take the lead next year in securing the nation and for the Bush administration to lay out its strategy for ending the war.
The Senate is also scheduled to vote Tuesday on a compromise, announced Monday night, that would allow terror detainees some access to federal courts. The Senate had voted last week to prohibit those being held from challenging their detentions in federal court, despite a Supreme Court ruling to the contrary.
Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who is the author of the initial plan, said Monday that he had negotiated a compromise that would allow detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to challenge their designation as enemy combatants in federal courts and also allow automatic appeals of any convictions handed down by the military where detainees receive prison terms of 10 years or more or a death sentence.
The proposal on the Iraq war, from Senator Bill Frist, the majority leader, and Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, would require the administration to provide extensive new quarterly reports to Congress on subjects like progress in bringing in other countries to help stabilize Iraq. The other appeals related to Iraq are nonbinding and express the position of the Senate.
Nov 13, 2005 at 6:20 AM by Political Chase
Wow! Being out of action for a few days takes it toll in many ways.
You may have already caught this story, but it’s new to me. This is a third-down-the-line (or more) post. Josh Marshall has a post, that in summary, puts the focus on Sen. Bill Frist’s office for leaking the information about the secret prisons in Eastern Europe to The Washington Post.
This is all part of the Republican dismantling that’s underway. If you will remember from a few days back, Trent Lott said, according to The Washington Post, “it was a Republican” that leaked the information. At the moment, I can’t find the specific article in The Post to cite that statement, but this is credible — I will provide the link later. Lott may be enjoying some sweet revenge for his de-throning.
Read Josh’s post and those associated with it. The actual story is a trickle down thing.
I agree with Josh’s statement, “Forget the insider trading thing. Can we just get an investigation going into whether Bill Frist is too big a goof to be in the senate?”
Oct 24, 2005 at 6:04 AM by Political Chase
From the Washington Post:
Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) was given considerable information about his stake in his family’s hospital company, according to records that are at odds with his past statements that he did not know what was in his stock holdings.
Managers of the trusts that Frist once described as "totally blind," regularly informed him when they added new shares of HCA Inc. or other assets to his holdings, according to the documents.
Things don’t look so well for Senator Frist either.
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Oct 12, 2005 at 9:03 PM by Political Chase
It looks like Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist had selective memory about his portfolio when he initially explained the sale of all HCA stock in his “blind” trust.
Maybe the SEC should check under his mattress also.
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Oct 3, 2005 at 2:14 AM by Political Chase
Frank Rich accurately describes the scandals encompassing the White House and the Republicans in Congress. Moreover, he highlights Jack Abramoff’’s expansive web that is attached to almost every issue that inaccurately may seem to be stand-alone matters of investigation. Rich dispels any ill-conceived notion that the flurry of indictments and investigations are isolated items or circumstance.
Those who still live in the reality-based community, however, may sense they’re watching the beginning of the end of something big. It’s not just Mr. DeLay, a k a the Hammer, who is on life support, but a Washington establishment whose infatuation with power and money has contaminated nearly every limb of government and turned off a public that by two to one finds the country on the wrong track.
But don’t take my word for it…Listen instead to Andrew Ferguson, of the conservative Rupert Murdoch magazine, The Weekly Standard. As far back as last December in a cover article on the sleazy lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Mr. Ferguson was already declaring “the end of the Republican Revolution.”
Not to minimize the current allegations against Tom DeLay, Rich equates it to a grain of sand on the beach. Given what is known today, Rich notes that the Delay and Abramoff investigations are not intertwined with the DOJ and SEC investigation of Bill Frist and the expected investigation into the possible fraud of the no-bid contracts issued by FEMA for Hurricane Katrina. According to Rich, Plamegate tops the list.
The mother of all investigations, of course, remains the prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s pursuit of whoever outed the C.I.A. agent Valerie Wilson to Robert Novak and whoever may have lied to cover it up. The denouement is on its way.
The point Rich makes in his article is that corruption, malfeasance, and ethics violations is rampant in the Republican Party – top to bottom. It’s like standing on a mound of fire ants and kicking the top of the mound off. Detainee abuse, Congressional investigations of inspector generals whose responsibility it was to investigate fraud and abuse, a prosecutor being demoted when his focus gets a little too close to Jack Abramoff, more cronyism than can be listed here…yada, yada, yada.
It’s so filthy that the Republican caucus couldn’t even find someone clean to name as Mr. DeLay’s “temporary” stand-in as House majority leader last week. As The Washington Post reported in 2003, Roy Blunt, the Missouri congressman who got the job, was found trying to alter a homeland security bill with a last-minute provision that would have benefited Philip Morris-brand cigarettes. Not only had the tobacco giant contributed royally to Mr. Blunt’s various campaign coffers, but both the congressman’s girlfriend (now wife) and his son were Philip Morris lobbyists at the time.
So, what is to come of all of this? Well, there are the courts, but who is really going to place a lot of confidence in that and there are several issues that do not meet the qualification of criminal (e.g., cronyism and Michael Brown). What the courts can’t take care of, in theory elections can, but that is more than a year away. And I for one don’t find any solace in the elections resolving the overwhelming stench from the Republicans.
Frank’s right. The Bush administration, the Republican Congress, and the corrupt lobbyists have us all standing in the middle of a pig sty. And, to add another item to the list that I neglected to mention, the number of lobbyists has doubled since George Bush became president.
Mid-term elections are a year away; that’s a long time, but it is a short period of time for the Democrats to get things together. If the Democrats don’t roll out a well developed strategy soon, all the crooks that the courts don’t have by election day, will be in the same offices or moved to better ones.
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Sep 29, 2005 at 10:28 AM by Political Chase
If Bill Krystol sees things like this:
"Even though DeLay has nothing to do with Frist, and Frist has nothing to do with Abramoff, how does it look? Not good."
Then there are a few folks weary of some striped sunshine in the future and a few houses tumbling down, not due to high winds and rising tides.
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Sep 25, 2005 at 8:25 PM by Political Chase
The Post has an article today about the woes of Republicans related to ethical and criminal matters. While the article focuses on Frist, it begins with the bigger picture of the substantial number of GOP criminal and ethical investigations . DeLay, Frist, Safavian, Abrahamoff, and others are noted. For whatever reason, they did not mention Plamegate - Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, et. al.
Have Karl and Scooter managed to slip under the radar?
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Sep 24, 2005 at 6:07 PM by Political Chase
Senator Frist seems to have selective memory in addition to his blind trust.
[D]ocuments unearthed yesterday by the Associated Press showed that Frist was told about stock trades in his blind trust. In documents filed with the Senate, trustee M. Kirk Scobey Jr. told Frist in 2002 that HCA stock had been transferred to his trust. Scobey, reached by phone last night, declined to comment.
The AP said that the documents disclosed that HCA stock worth hundreds of thousands of dollars was placed into Frist’s blind trusts several other times in 2002 as well. Frist maintained in a television interview in 2003 that he did not know how much HCA stock he owned, if any. Spokesmen for Frist did not return phone messages last night.
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Jun 17, 2005 at 1:38 PM by Political Chase
The Washington Post reports:
“Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader and a heart surgeon, acknowledged yesterday that Terri Schiavo had suffered devastating brain damage and said his assertion three months ago that she was "not somebody in persistent vegetative state" did not amount to a medical diagnosis.”
That is definitely not how I remember Senator Frist presenting his remarks.
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