Last night on The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly showed a clip of a Fox News producer ambushing Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) to accuse him of political hypocrisy for urging an investigation into Bush crimes after he had opposed the Clinton impeachment. “This Leahy thing — this is beyond the pale,” O’Reilly moaned.

Marc Thiessen, Bush’s former chief speechwriter, agreed. Not only would the investigations be hypocritcal, he said, but worse, they would be “terribly dangerous” because they would expose the “facts” of the U.S.’s interrogation techniques to Osama bin Laden:

THIESSEN: [T]he facts that they want to get out are the techniques we use to interrogate terrorists. The techniques that we used to intercept e-mails and communications and telephone calls. And when you get those facts out, it’s not just going out to the American people and to the viewers on television. It’s going out to Osama bin Laden. It’s going out to the terrorists who can use those information to get around our intelligence and plan the next attack.

So it’s very deadly — this is very deadly serious stuff. … And it’s terribly dangerous.

He also emphasized that the people Leahy might investigate “aren’t torturers, they’re heroes.” “They should be getting a parade on Pennsylvania Avenue,” he added. Watch it:

Labels: Bush Administration crimes, secrecy, torture, wingnuttia

Labels: John McCain, secrecy

In June, Andrée McLeod, a self-described independent government watchdog in Alaska, sent an open records act request to the office of Governor Sarah Palin. She requested copies of all the emails that had been sent and received by Ivy Frye and Frank Bailey, two top aides to Palin, from February through April of this year. McLeod, a 53-year-old registered Republican who has held various jobs in state government, suspected that Frye and Bailey had engaged in political activity during official business hours in that period by participating in a Palin-backed effort to oust the state chairman of the Alaska Republican party, Randy Ruedrich. (Bailey has been in the national news of late for refusing to cooperate with investigators probing whether Palin fired Alaska's public safety commission because he did not dismiss a state trooper who had gone through an ugly divorce with Palin's sister.)

In response to her request, McLeod received four large boxes of emails. This batch of documents did not contain any proof that Frye and Bailey had worked on government time to boot out Ruedrich. But there was other information she found troubling. Several of the emails suggested to her that Palin's office had used its influence to reward a Fairbanks surveyor who was a Palin fundraiser with a state job. In early August, McLeod filed a complaint with the state attorney general against Palin, Bailey, and other Palin aides, claiming they had violated ethics and hiring laws. Palin, now the Republican vice-presidential candidate, told the Alaska Daily News that "there were no favors done for anybody."

But more intriguing than any email correspondence contained in the four boxes was what was not released: about 1100 emails. Palin's office provided McLeod with a 78-page list (PDF) cataloging the emails it was withholding. Many of them had been written by Palin or sent to her. Palin's office claimed most of the undisclosed emails were exempt from release because they were covered by the "executive" or "deliberative process" privileges that protect communications between Palin and her aides about policy matters. But the subject lines of some of the withheld emails suggest they were not related to policy matters. Several refer to one of Palin's political foes, others to a well-known Alaskan journalist. Moreover, some of the withhold emails were CC'ed to Todd Palin, the governor's husband. Todd Palin—a.k.a. the First Dude—holds no official state position (though he has been a close and influential adviser for Governor Palin). The fact that Palin and her aides shared these emails with a citizen outside the government undercuts the claim that they must be protected under executive privilege. McLeod asks, "What is Sarah Palin hiding?"

Labels: dictatorship, Sarah Palin, secrecy

A day after “flu-like symptoms” led him to turn his airplane in mid-air and seek medical attention, Rudolph W. Giuliani smiled and said he felt “great” as he walked out of a hospital here Thursday afternoon. But his campaign provided few details of what had caused the problem that led him to spend more than 14 hours in the hospital.

Mr. Giuliani was admitted to Barnes-Jewish Hospital here on Wednesday night after he fell ill on a campaign swing through Missouri. His aides said that he had felt increasingly ill as the day went on, and that after his plane left for New York he experienced such a severe headache and flu-like symptoms that the plane returned to Missouri.

After spending the night in the hospital, and being given a series of tests, Mr. Giuliani walked out shortly before 3 p.m. “I’m feeling fine, thanks to the hospital,” Mr. Giuliani, clad in a dark suit and a blue necktie but no overcoat, told reporters.

Just what had ailed Mr. Giuliani was unclear. His communications director, Katie Levinson, said he had been given “a clean bill of health” before he left the hospital. “Doctors performed a series of precautionary tests and the results of all the tests were normal,” Ms. Levinson said in a statement.

The campaign declined to elaborate on what his symptoms were or to specify which tests were performed. Hospital officials said the campaign had asked them not to provide any information about Mr. Giuliani’s health and to refer questions to the campaign.

What was wrong? What tests did he get? What was causing such severe pains? Giuliani gave no details.

His campaign will not release any concrete medical information to the press -- raising questions about the former New York mayor's health and the transparency of his campaign.

Giuliani was experiencing headache pain so severe Wednesday night he had his charter plane turn around and go back to St. Louis and was rushed to the emergency room.

His campaign shared no concrete medical information about which tests the mayor undertook and what the exact results were, also refraining from allowing the media to see his medical records or speak to his doctors.

A senior Giuliani campaign official told ABC News, "He's fine. He campaigns very vigorously. He did 77 events in 53 cities this month. He just got sick."

The former mayor was all smiles for the cameras as he left Barnes Jewish Hospital in St. Louis Thursday afternoon after spending the night and the better part of a day in a Missouri hospital.

"I feel great. Take care. Merry Christmas, I'm feeling fine, thanks to the hospital. They did a great job," Giuliani said, refusing to answer any reporters' questions as he left the hospital.

Labels: Rudy Giuliani, secrecy

Rudy Giuliani has nothing to hide about his business dealings. Or, rather, he wants everyone to know that if the press finds what he's hiding, everyone will agree that everything's been "totally legal, totally ethical."

Every time reporters press Giuliani on his work with Giuliani Partners, his booming consultancy (Guiliani took home $4.1 million last year and his stake is worth anywhere from $5 million to $25 million), he's got the same answer: I'm not telling, but you should ask the firm. Then the reporter diligently calls over to Giuliani Partners to get the brush-off from its spokeswoman. That's what happened to The Wall Street Journal when the paper had questions about the firm's contract with Qatar. The Chicago Tribune got the same treatment when it asked about the firm's work for a developer's casino resort in Singapore.

When the AP asked him in an interview earlier this month if he'd disclose his client list, he responded that the business was "totally legal, totally ethical," "very ethical and law-abiding" and that there's "nothing for me to explain about it. We've acted honorably, decently." It was unfair to even ask, he said, employing the deft logic that since no one has found anything wrong, people shouldn't even ask the question:

Giuliani Partners and its units have repeatedly become entangled in petty deals that seem unworthy of someone with national aspirations. It has accepted fees from companies with over-the-counter penny stocks, made alliances that have gone nowhere or made little financial sense and engaged with businesses and individuals who have come under scrutiny by regulatory and law enforcement officials. Such associations are astonishing for this tough, Brooklyn-born prosecutor who nailed gangsters like Paul Castellano and white-collar felons like Marc Rich, Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. It's the sort of carelessness that suggests either poor judgment or inattention. "We do this very careful due diligence," says Hess. "We would never get involved in anything that is at all shady or risky or questionable."

Labels: corruption, Rudy Giuliani, secrecy