All Blog Posts from Political Hotsheet

It seems to some people, even ardent supporters, that President Obama is getting way too much media coverage.

"You don't have to be on television every minute of every day," implored comedian/commentator Bill Maher on his HBO show last week. "You're the President, not a re-run of "Law & Order."

It may not seem like it, but there actually are days when Mr. Obama makes no public appearances, but they're few and far between.

A check of my daily log of presidential activity shows that since taking office, there have been only 7 days on which Mr. Obama did not have a media appearance of some kind. All but one of those seven days were Sundays.

The one exception was last Wednesday. The president stayed cloistered behind the well-guarded doors of the Oval Office.

Though he usually keeps a low-profile on Saturdays, his weekly radio address now puts him on the media scoreboard, because he also delivers it on-camera and posts it on the White House Web site.

Despite the burdens of his office, Mr. Obama repeatedly demonstrates his enthusiasm for making public appearances.

Read full post…

Former President George W. Bush on Wednesday took aim at President Obama's health care goals and economic agenda, praising the free market, according to reports. The former president, speaking at a local business meeting in Pennsylvania, also defended his administration's controversial interrogation policies.

"The way I decided to address the problem was twofold: One, use every technique and tool within the law to bring terrorists to justice before they strike again," Mr. Bush said, according to the Washington Times.

The former president said he would not directly criticize Mr. Obama -- an assertion he has made before -- but he had some choice words with respect to Mr. Obama's plans to close the Guantanamo Bay prison.

"I told you I'm not going to criticize my successor," he said. "I'll just tell you that there are people at Gitmo that will kill American people at a drop of a hat and I don't believe that -- persuasion isn't going to work. Therapy isn't going to cause terrorists to change their mind."

Read full post…

Former President George W. Bush on Thursday defended his administration's use of harsh interrogation techniques against terrorist suspects, insisting interrogators were within the bounds of the law and gained valuable information.

Mr. Bush said that he consulted with his lawyers before deciding to use waterboarding on terrorism suspect Khalid Sheikh Mohammed after he was captured in March 2003.

"The first thing you do is ask what's legal?" Mr. Bush said, according to CNN. "What do the lawyers say is possible? I made the decision, within the law, to get information so I can say to myself, 'I've done what it takes to do my duty to protect the American people.' I can tell you that the information we got saved lives."

The former president also said his decision to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein will one day be vindicated as the establishment of democracy in the Middle East, the Detroit Free Press reported, and that "people will say, ‘Thank God they never lost faith.'"

Mr. Bush, in his biggest speech since leaving the White House, echoed the sentiments of former Vice President Dick Cheney, who last week also defended the administration's interrogation practices.

Unlike Cheney, however, Mr. Bush was careful to avoid criticizing the current president's policies.

Read full post…

Following disclosure by a Senate Armed Services Committee report that she gave verbal approval to CIA Director George Tenet to use waterboarding on detainees, former National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice defended herself in an impromptu interview (see the video below) with Stanford students at a campus reception on April 27.

Rice told the Stanford students that waterboarding is not torture, based on the authorization to use an extreme method that simulates drowning by President Bush and legal counsel. “I didn’t authorize anything. I conveyed the authorization of the administration to the agency,” she said.

In other words, as Richard Nixon said in his interview with David Frost in 1977, "When the President does it, that means it is not illegal."

Read full post…

Four days before leaving office, President Bush signed a directive authorizing the Secret Service to provide a period of extended protection for his daughters Jenna and Barbara.

Last week, the Service mistakenly said that President Obama had signed an Executive Order on behalf of his predecessor’s daughters.

Under the law, the adult children of an American President lose their Secret Service protection when their father leaves office.

But following the lead of Bill Clinton, who authorized an extended period of coverage for daughter Chelsea, Mr. Bush made the same provision for his daughters. He signed a presidential directive on January 16, 2009. The Secret Service requested that the length of the additional protection not be disclosed.

A Secret Service spokesman admits getting it wrong last week when he told the Washington Post that Mr. Obama signed an Executive Order authorizing extended protection for the Bush daughters.

The issue came up when it was learned that a van used by the Secret Service detail assigned to Jenna, had been towed by Baltimore Police because it had accumulated six unpaid parking tickets.

Read full post…

George W. Bush may no longer be president, but he hasn’t lost the ability to bring out protesters.

Mr. Bush is making his first appearance abroad since leaving office in Alberta, Canada today. His luncheon speech at Calgary’s Telus Convention Centre attracted about 1,500 invited guests – who were met upon their arrival by between 200 and 300 protesters, according to the Edmonton Sun.

One protester was reportedly arrested after calling the former president a war criminal, signaling his intent to make a citizen’s arrest and trying to enter the building.

AFP reports that protesters amassed shoes from across the country to throw at an effigy of Mr. Bush outside the convention center. Colette Lemieux of the Canadian Peace Alliance said, “It doesn't matter that he is no longer president – a bank robber who stops holding up banks can and must still be prosecuted for his crimes."

Read full post…

Twenty-four days saved George W. Bush from running up five trillion dollars of government debt.

The latest posting on the Department of the Treasury website shows the National Debt just hit $10.759-trillion dollars. And that $5-trillion and change more than it was on the day Pres. Bush took office on Jan. 20, 2001.

Even so, Mr. Bush ran up the biggest increase in the National Debt of any American president. The Debt was $5.727-trillion on his first day in the White House. And on the day he left, it was $10.626-trillion. That means the Debt increased by $4.899-trillion on his watch. Some would round it off to $5-trillion – but that wouldn’t be fair. He was saved from five trillion dollar infamy by $101-billion.

Read full post…

As part of his continuing quest to sell lawmakers and the American people on his stimulus plan, President Obama penned an op-ed for the Washington Post that ran this morning.

"...each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes," wrote the president. "And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse."

You can read the whole op-ed, in which the president calls on Americans to "act boldly to turn crisis into opportunity," here.

Hotsheet was curious just how novel it is for a president to take his case to the op-ed pages, so we turned to CBS News White House Correspondent and presidential guru Mark Knoller to find out how often Mr. Obama's predecessor did so.

It turns out President George W. Bush took to the op-ed pages at least four times, according to Knoller. The first was on August 12, 2001, when the president explained his decision on stem-cell research.

"The new technologies we create -- with their potential to cure disease and relieve suffering -- may well define our age," the then-president wrote. "But we will also be defined by the care and sense of self-restraint and responsibility with which we took up these new powers."

Mr. Bush's second published op-ed as president came on September 11, 2002, the one-year anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It appeared in multiple newspapers.

"In great tragedy, we have also seen great opportunities," he wrote. "We must have the wisdom and courage to seize these opportunities."

Read full post…

By CBS News White House Correspondent Mark Knoller

---

Barack Obama promised change and on his first morning as president he delivered. He appeared at the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office in his shirt sleeves.

It was part of the story yesterday on the front page of the New York Times – meant to show that Mr. Obama has brought a shift in presidential style and habits to the White House.

His top aides didn’t try to conceal the new president’s less formal dress code. On the contrary, the White House released a photograph of it (above).

It’s only worth noting because for the last eight years, Pres. Bush made it a standing order that he and his staff would always wear their suit jackets in the Oval Office.

“It’s a huge honor to walk in the Oval Office,” President Bush would often tell people. “It’s hard for me to describe what an honor it is.” Though even early in his presidency, he did not think the sanctity of the room would suffer if one of his dogs came into the room.

“Spot was born in the White House in 1989 when my dad and mother were up here, so she's quite comfortable with the surroundings,” said Mr. Bush in 2002 when his new Scottish Terrier Barney was still a pup.

“They don’t let Barney in. It’s a new carpet and Barney’s a new dog.” But in later years, Barney was a frequent companion to Mr. Bush in the Oval Office.

Read full post…

From CBS News Producer Stephanie Lambidakis:

On Monday, January 19th -- as political observers engaged in the "pardon watch" ritual that accompanies the last fevered hours of an administration -- the Justice Department announced the final acts of clemency from President George Bush.

The president granted no pardons, but he did commute the sentences of two high-profile figures on the watch list, Jose Compean and Ignacio Ramos, former Border Patrol agents whose 10-year convictions for shooting a Mexican drug dealer drew howls of protest, especially among conservatives who called the sentences too harsh.

But as Mr. Bush was bestowing those grants of clemency, he was actively rejecting the clemency pleas from six high-profile (and notorious) figures convicted of a wide range of crimes. The Justice Department has now made those clemency denials public.

Read full post…