| August 11, 1:00 AM
, 2020 | - It was reported that Obama's half-aunt Zeitun Onyango lives in a Boston housing project and is an illegal immigrant--a detail likely leaked by the Bush Administration against the procedures of the Department of Homeland Security.
| Source:
TPM Muckraker
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| December 19, 2012 | - The Bush Administration issued new rules that will allow health-care workers, from doctors to janitors, to refuse to perform services that violate their religious beliefs.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| December 28, 2008 | - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters it was too early to judge the Bush Administration a failure. “I mean, for goodness' sakes,” Rice said, “good historians are still writing books about George Washington.”
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| December 12, 2008 | -
Republican
senators killed a plan to loan $14 billion to American automakers, and the White House said it would consider other options to save the industry and as many as three million auto-related jobs, such as diverting some of the $700 billion reserved for bailing out the finance industry.
| Source 1:
WSJ
Source 2:
NYT
Source 3:
AP via Yahoo
Source 4:
NPR
Source 5:
Kalamazoo Gazette
Source 6:
AP via Yahoo
|
| November 14, 2008 | -
Barack Obama's chief-of-staff, Rahm Emanuel, apologized to the Arab community for remarks made by his father, Benjamin Emanuel, who told an Israeli newspaper that his son would “obviously influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn't he? What is he, an Arab? He's not going to be mopping floors at the White House.”
| Source:
BBC
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| November 6, 2008 | - Former Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta was named the head of Obama's transition team, former Clinton political director and House Democratic caucus chairman Rahm Emanuel accepted an offer to become Obama's chief of staff, and it was reported that top Obama aide Robert Gibbs would be named White House Press Secretary.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
Washington Post
Source 3:
Politico
|
| November 5, 2008 | - “It’s important that everybody understands that this is not going to happen overnight,” said Gibbs about reversing the damage done by the Bush Administration. “There has to be a realistic expectation of what can happen and how quickly.” “We're in deep trouble,” said Georgia Representative John Lewis.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
New York Times
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| October 23, 2008 | - Scott McClellan, former White House press secretary for George W. Bush, endorsed Barack Obama.
| Source:
Washington Post
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| September 25, 2008 | - Senator John McCain announced that fixing the economy was more important than politicking, suspended his campaign, and attempted without success to postpone his first debate with Senator Barack Obama, although he continued to run campaign advertisements, including one that declared him the winner of the debate, and appeared on CBS with Katie Couric. McCain then joined congressional leaders, including Obama, at the White House to discuss the stimulus package. “I didn't see any sign,” said Representative Barney Frank, “of our Republican colleagues paying any attention to him whatsoever.” “All he has done,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of McCain, “is stand in front of the cameras.”
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
Washington Post
Source 3:
The New York Times
Source 4:
Politico
Source 5:
The Los Angeles Times
|
| September 20, 2008 | - “My first instinct,” said President George W. Bush, “was to let the market work, until I realized, being briefed by experts… It turns out that there's a lot of interlinks through the financial system.” The Bush Administration's three-page draft bill would permit the Treasury Department to buy up to $700 billion—$2,000 per American—in bad, mortgage-related debt, and would exempt the Treasury from administrative supervision, from legal challenges by any court, and from rules pertaining to government contracts.
| Source 1:
Bloomberg
Source 2:
The Wall Street Journal
Source 3:
The Los Angeles Times
Source 4:
The Washington Post
Source 5:
Politico
Source 6:
Bloomberg
Source 7:
The New York Times
|
| September 19, 2008 | - Central banks poured hundreds of billions of dollars into the market, and the Securities and Exchange Commission temporarily banned the short-selling of 799 financial-institution stocks. The Bush Administration announced that it had a plan.
| Source 1:
BBC
Source 2:
Der Spiegel
Source 3:
The Los Angeles Times
Source 4:
Bloomberg
Source 5:
SEC
Source 6:
The International Herald Tribune
Source 7:
The Washington Post
|
| August 10, 2008 | - A U.S. military jury in Guantanamo rejected the 30-year minimum sentence called for by the Bush Administration and sentenced Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's former driver, to five more months in prison atop the 61 he has already served.
| Source:
The Wall Street Journal
|
| August 2, 2008 | - The United Nations agreed to oversee India's civilian nuclear facilities, a key step toward a U.S.-India nuclear pact desired by the Bush Administration.
| Source:
LAT
|
| August 1, 2008 | - The U.S. unemployment rate continued to rise, as the total number of jobs lost this year reached 463,000. Housing prices seemed to plunge, but some critics of the leading housing-price index said that it exaggerates the market's downside due to the high number of foreclosures. The White House projected a $482 billion federal deficit, and thirty states faced total deficits of $40 billion. “If they gave out Olympic medals for fiscal irresponsibility,” said Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota, “President Bush would take the gold, silver, and bronze.”
| Source 1:
NYT
Source 2:
WP
Source 3:
CNN
Source 4:
SF Chronicle
Source 5:
SF Chronicle
Source 6:
NYT
Source 7:
McClatchy via Miami Herald
Source 8:
NYT
|
| July 19, 2008 | - A White House employee accidentally emailed hundreds of reporters a news item headlined “Iraqi PM backs Obama troop exit plan”; the story detailed how Prime Minister Nouri Maliki had said in an interview that the Obama proposal to withdraw troops from Iraq in sixteen months was “the right timeframe.”
| Source:
ABC News
|
| July 17, 2008 | - President George W. Bush announced that he would now agree to a withdrawal inside “a general time horizon,” rescinded a 1990 ban on offshore drilling on the Outer Continental Shelf that had been imposed by his father, and tried to give a little Kentucky girl named Emily, who had played in the White House T-ball game, a presidential baseball. The child ran away crying.
| Source 1:
AP via Yahoo! News
Source 2:
Washington Post
Source 3:
Washington Post
|
| July 13, 2008 | - The Bush Administration proposed a rescue package for ailing mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that would allow the Treasury to buy billions of dollars of their stock and lend them billions more to meet their short-term funding needs. The two companies' total debt is estimated at $1.54 trillion.
| Source:
NYTimes
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| July 13, 2008 | - Former White House Press Secretary Tony Snow died of cancer.
| Source:
Fox
|
| June 2, 2008 | - A human-rights organization accused the Bush Administration of operating “floating prisons” by holding suspected terrorists on ships and of continuing its policy of extraordinary rendition, a practice it claimed to have discontinued in 2006.
| Source:
Guardian
|
| May 28, 2008 | - Scott McClellan published a memoir about his stint as President George W. Bush's press secretary from July 2003 to April 2006. In the book, McClellan says that he does not believe that the Bush Administration “deliberately or consciously sought to deceive the American people” when it dispensed with “honesty and candor” in favor of launching a “political propaganda campaign” to justify the Iraq War. He also asserts that the media became the administration's “complicit enablers” and that the president said that he did not remember whether he had ever tried cocaine at “some pretty wild parties back in the day.” Senator Bob Dole responded in a note to McClellan: “There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don't have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues.” Ari Fleischer, Bush's previous press secretary, suggested McClellan had been manipulated by his liberal editors.
| Source 1:
Wall Street Journal
Source 2:
Politico
Source 3:
National Journal
Source 4:
New York Daily News
Source 5:
Wall Street Journal
|
| May 7, 2008 | - The FBI raided the headquarters of the Office of Special Counsel, a federal watchdog agency charged with protecting government whistleblowers, and the home of its director, Scott J. Bloch, after Bloch was accused of destroying evidence on government computers.
| Source 1:
The Washington Post
Source 2:
The New York Times
|
| April 25, 2008 | - A Mexican diplomat was fired after a video-surveillance tape showed him stealing BlackBerrys belonging to White House officials at a meeting in New Orleans.
| Source:
Fox News
|
| April 11, 2008 | - Twenty U.S. soldiers were killed last week fighting across Iraq, and 1,300 Iraqi officers and soldiers were fired for poor performance. The Bush Administration said it was optimistic that many more refugees from the estimated 4.4 million people who had fled Iraq or had been “internally displaced” would be allowed into the United States. Since the war began the United States has accepted only 5,000 Iraqi refugees. Sweden has taken 34,000.
| Source 1:
Reuters
Source 2:
IHT
|
| March 8, 2008 | - After John McCain swept Republican contests in Ohio, Rhode Island,
Texas, and Vermont and secured by some counts the delegates required for his party's nomination, his rivals Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul withdrew from the presidential race. McCain visited the White House to eat a lunch of hot dogs with George W. Bush and accept the President's endorsement. “If my showing up and endorsing him helps him, or if I'm against him and it helps him, either way, I want him to win,” said Bush.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
Washington Post
|
| March 2, 2008 | - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his first state visit to Iraq and assailed the Bush Administration. “They will have to accept the facts in the area,” he said. “The Iraqi people do not like the Americans.”
| Source 1:
The Hindu
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| March 1, 2008 | -
White House aide Timothy Goeglein, a liaison to conservatives and Christian groups, was found to have plagiarized 20 of the 38 columns he wrote for the Fort Wayne, Indiana, News-Sentinel.
| Source:
AP
|
| February 12, 2008 | - The Bush Administration announced that it would seek the death penalty for six men allegedly linked to the 9/11 attacks. It will build its case in part on confessions elicited with Starbucks coffee rather than on earlier confessions obtained through waterboarding.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| January 25, 2008 | -
Paul Wolfowitz rejoined the Bush Administration as an adviser on arms control.
| Source:
Boston Globe
|
| December 8, 2007 | - Vífill Atlason, a 16-year-old Icelandic high school student, was taken into custody by the police and questioned after he dialed President Bush's private number and, claiming to be the President of Iceland, asked to “chat” with Bush. “I don't see,” Atlason said, “how calling the White House is a crime.”
| Source:
ABC News
|
| December 7, 2007 | - A dancing blue dreidel joined Attorney General Michael Mukasey as he helped light a giant Chabad-Lubavitch menorah in front of the White House,.
| Source:
Chabad.org
|
| November 25, 2007 | -
Al Gore visited the White House,.
| Source:
ABC
|
| November 21, 2007 | - Former White House spokesman Scott McClellan released an excerpt of his forthcoming memoir. The passage states that he “unknowingly” lied when he denied that White House aides Karl Rove and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby participated in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. McClellan vaguely confesses that “Rove, Libby, the vice president [Dick Cheney], the president's chief of staff [Andrew Card], and the President himself” were “involved” in his relaying “false information,” but he stops short of saying that Bush and Cheney knew they were telling him to lie.
| Source:
Slate
|
| October 27, 2007 | - Senator John McCain promised workers at Thompson Center Arms, a small-weapons factory in Rochester, New Hampshire, that he would “follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell” and “shoot him with your products.” McCain also promised that if he were elected “the background music would be ABBA in the elevators all over the White House” and proposed “Take a Chance on Me” as his campaign song.
| Source 1:
Boston Globe
Source 2:
Austin American Statesman
|
| September 28, 2007 | - A White House transcript of Bush's Wednesday speech on education was amended from “children do learn” to “childrens (sic) do learn.”
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 31, 2007 | - Tony Snow resigned as White House press secretary because the pay was too low.
| Source:
Bloomberg
|
| August 23, 2007 | - In a motion filed by the Justice Department, the Bush Administration argued that the White House Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act, even though the office is listed as one of six presidential entities subject to FOIA on the White House website.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 21, 2007 | - Patrick Leahy, the 67-year old Democratic senator from Vermont who as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is pressing the Bush Administration to turn over documents relating to its warrantless wiretapping program, revealed that he has a small part in the upcoming Batman movie, and that he had to let his remaining hair grow out for the role.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| August 12, 2007 | - Nominally antiwar Democrats Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Edwards admitted that if elected to the White House they would worry about terrorism launched from a failed Iraqi state, threats to the Kurds, and the prospect of Shiite-on-Sunni genocide, and because of these fears they would continue the occupation of Iraq for a long time.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 27, 2007 | - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified that no one in the Bush Administration had voiced objections to the NSA's wiretapping program. FBI director Robert Mueller testified that the surveillance program was “much discussed” by other officials, and Senate Judiciary chair Patrick Leahy of Vermont sent Mr. Gonzales a transcript of his testimony and asked him to “mark any changes you wish to make to correct, clarify or supplement your answers so that, consistent with your oath, they are the whole truth.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| July 20, 2007 | - The Pentagon accused Senator Hillary Clinton of reinforcing “enemy propaganda” when she asked whether the Bush Administration had an exit plan for the Iraq war.
| Source:
The Financial Times via MSNBC.com
|
| July 13, 2007 | -
White House spokesman Tony Snow confirmed that the Iraqi government may take the month of August off, because August is very hot in Iraq. “But, you know,” he added, “they may change their minds.”
| Source:
Businesswire
|
| July 12, 2007 | - A White House report showed that only eight of eighteen benchmarks for progress were being met in Iraq, but President Bush asked Congress to wait for another report in September before passing judgment.
| Source 1:
NYT
Source 2:
NYT
|
| July 10, 2007 | - Dr. Richard Carmona, former U.S. surgeon general, told a congressional committee that the Bush Administration had censored his speeches and discouraged him from discussing science in public.
| Source:
Reuters
|
| July 5, 2007 | - The White House rejected demands to hand over documents related to the firings of eight U.S. attorneys and said Democratic lawmakers should spend their time passing bills that solve domestic problems.
| Source:
AP via Yahoonews.com
|
| May 24, 2007 | -
President Bush expressed his continuing support for embattled Attorney General Alberto Gonzales at a press conference in the White House Rose Garden. “I've got confidence in Al Gonzales doin' the job,” said Bush, as a passing sparrow shit on his sleeve.
| Source:
USA Today
|
| May 21, 2007 | -
Jimmy Carter said the Bush Administration was “the worst in history” in terms of its impact on the world but later said that his words were “careless or misinterpreted.”
| Source:
Times Online
|
| May 16, 2007 | - James B. Comey, deputy for former attorney general John Ashcroft, testified to the Senate Judiciary Committee that on March 10, 2004, Alberto Gonzales and Andrew Card had attempted to persuade Ashcroft (who was hospitalized and had temporarily given up his authority as attorney general to Comey) to reauthorize the Bush Administration's domestic surveillance program, even though the Justice Department had just determined that the program was illegal; Ashcroft, Comey said, refused.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| May 10, 2007 | - Former United States attorney Todd P. Graves claimed that he had been forced to resign for refusing to pursue a politically motivated voter-fraud lawsuit, and Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales continued to defend the Department's firing of eight other U.S. attorneys. Asked how he knew that the President or the Vice President was not involved in the decision, Gonzales replied, “I just know they would not do that.”
| Source 1:
Kansas City Star
Source 2:
SF Chronicle
Source 3:
NYT
|
| April 28, 2007 | - Former CIA Director George Tenet published a book accusing the Bush Administration of taking his phrase “slam dunk”—referring to intelligence that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction—out of context in order to justify a war that the president, the vice president, and the secretary of defense had resolved to wage before September 11, 2001. Tenet complained that the White House and the Pentagon made him their scapegoat when the Iraqi arsenal turned out to be imaginary. A group of former intelligence officers sent Tenet a letter calling him “the Alberto Gonzales of the intelligence community,” reminding him that he had often lied to the public at the administration's behest, and encouraging him to return his Medal of Freedom and donate half his royalties to wounded veterans and the families of dead soldiers.
| Source 1:
Washington Post
Source 2:
TPM
|
| April 3, 2007 | - Vice President Dick Cheney attacked the “self-appointed strategists” in Congress who were hampering the Bush Administration's efforts to prolong the war in Iraq,.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| March 24, 2007 | - The U.S. House of Representatives passed a timetable for ending the Iraq war by a six-vote margin. The bill mandates American withdrawal in September 2008 if the Bush Administration meets certain benchmarks, earlier if it does not. Several Democrats voted against the timetable because it was not sufficiently antiwar, and Republicans derided the inclusion of domestic provisions benefiting spinach growers, citrus farmers, salmon fishermen, and peanut storers. “What does throwing money at Bubba Gump, Popeye the sailor man, and Mr. Peanut have to do with winning a war?” asked Representative Sam Johnson of Texas. “I will veto it,” said President George W. Bush, "if it comes to my desk.”
| Source 1:
New Tork Times
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| March 23, 2007 | -
White House press secretary Tony Snow announced that he would soon undergo surgery to remove a growth from his lower abdomen.
| Source:
Reuters via Yahoo! News
|
| March 18, 2007 | -
Congress continued its inquiry into the role of the Bush Administration in last year's firing of eight U.S attorneys. D. Kyle Sampson, the chief of staff for U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, resigned after claiming, in an apparent attempt to save Gonzalez from the charge of lying to Congress, that he did not tell his superiors at the Justice Department that the White House wanted to fire the prosecutors. The Justice Department released a March 2005 email from Sampson to then-White House counsel Harriet Miers, in which he ranked all 93 U.S. attorneys on their loyalty to the Administration and made a “target list.” In other emails, he cited a little-known provision of the Patriot Act that authorizes the attorney general to replace U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation and consulted with Miers about the possibility of replacing between 15 and 20 percent of U.S. attorneys, “the underperforming ones,” and leaving the “loyal Bushies.”
| Source 1:
WP
Source 2:
WP
Source 3:
McClatchy Newspapers
|
| March 14, 2007 | - Dozens of Republican
Congressmen were turning against the Bush Administration's No Child Left Behind Act,
| Source:
WP
|
| March 11, 2007 | - The scandal surrounding the firing of eight federal prosecutors continued to unfold as it became clearer from congressional testimony that the attorneys had resisted political pressure from the White House to subordinate law enforcement priorities to partisan politics. Karl Rove admitted that he had passed along complaints from the New Mexico
Republican Party chairman about U.S. Attorney David Iglesias to Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, who had referred to the scandal as an “overblown personnel matter.” One day there will be a new attorney general,“ said Senator Arlen Specter. “Maybe sooner rather than later.”
| Source:
Baltimore Sun
|
| February 26, 2007 | - The Bush Administration announced it would reverse its policy of the last several years and discuss stabilizing Iraq with high-level diplomats from Syria and Iran, which it was blaming for manufacturing a cache of roadside bombs found in Hilla, Iraq, inside a fake boulder made of polyurethane. The later discovery of a makeshift weapons factory indicated that insurgents were making their own weapons.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
New York Times
|
| February 7, 2007 | - Al Gore accused the Bush Administration of paying bribes to scientists willing to dispute global warming.
| Source:
CNN
|
| February 2, 2007 | - Former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski warned that the White House was looking for an excuse to attack Iran.
| Source:
World Socialist Web Site
|
| January 27, 2007 | - The Bush Administration suggested that scientists find ways to counteract greenhouse-gas emissions by blocking out the sun. “Possible techniques include putting a giant screen into orbit,” read one newspaper's paraphrase of the suggested U.S. recommendations. “[Or] thousands of tiny, shiny balloons.”
| Source:
Guardian
|
| January 12, 2007 | - The Bush Administration announced plans to increase U.S. forces in Iraq by 20,000 troops.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| January 12, 2007 | -
Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D., Del.) asserted that the authority Congress granted the Bush Administration to invade Iraq did not extend to invading Iran or Syria. “I just want to set that marker,” he said.
| Source:
Slate
|
| December 7, 2006 | - At the White House Christmas party, First Lady Laura Bush changed into another outfit after it was discovered that she and two other women were wearing the same $8,500 red Oscar de la Renta dress. According to the White House social secretary, “It was the right thing to do.”
| Source:
WCBSTV
|
| November 29, 2006 | - The Iraqi parliament voted unanimously to extend the country's state of emergency, and President George W. Bush, who declared himself a “realist,” disavowed a leaked White House memo that suggested that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was either dumb, weak, or a liar. Maliki responded by canceling a dinner date with the president.
| Source 1:
New York Times
Source 2:
Cybercast News Service and New York Times
Source 3:
International Herald Tribune
|
| November 12, 2006 | -
Democratic
senators made it clear that they would not confirm John Bolton (who was installed as U.N. ambassador via recess appointment) to his position in 2007.
| Source:
ABC News
|
| November 11, 2006 | - In Beit Hanun, Gaza, Israeli forces accidentally killed 18 civilians, including seven children; Prime Minister Ehud Olmert described the killings as a “technical failure.” The U.N. Security Council drafted a resolution condemning the attack, but the United States, represented by Ambassador John Bolton, vetoed it.
| Source 1:
The Jerusalem Post
Source 2:
BBC News
|
| November 3, 2006 | - The White House announced that there is mounting evidence that Iran and Syria are conspiring with Hezbollah to overthrow the government of Lebanon.
| Source:
The Age
|
| October 16, 2006 | -
White House press secretary Tony Snow compared the President to “one of those guys at the gym who plays about 40 chessboards at once.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| September 28, 2006 | - President George W. Bush served Presidents Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan and Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan sea bass with stuffed tomatoes, fondue, and a pomegranate-dressed endive salad at a White House dinner.
| Source 1:
BBC News
Source 2:
The Australian
|
| September 26, 2006 | - The Bush Administration declassified an intelligence report that called the war a “cause celebre” for Muslim extremists.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo! News
|
| September 18, 2006 | - Two years after it started, Project BioShield, the $5.6 billion Bush Administration effort to develop and stockpile medical supplies in case of biological attacks, had shown little progress. “The inept implementation of the program,” said the director of the Center for Health and Homeland Security at the University of Maryland, “has led the best brains and the best scientists to give up.”
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| September 7, 2006 | - The White House announced plans to name former American Idol runner-up Clay Aiken to the President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities.
| Source:
Breitbart.com via the Drudge Report
|
| September 5, 2006 | - The White House warned of a “WMD-terrorism nexus” emanating from Iran.
| Source:
New York Times
|
| June 22, 2006 | -
Congressman Steve King said Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi's heavenly reward would be 72 virgins who “all look like Helen Thomas,” the 85-year-old White House correspondent.
| Source:
WKMG-TV via Rafil
|
| June 18, 2006 | -
Pennsylvania
Representative John P. Murtha criticized Karl Rove for “sitting in his air-conditioned office on his big, fat backside saying, 'Stay the course.'”
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| June 18, 2006 | - It was revealed that in 2003 the Bush Administration refused an offer by Iran to end Iranian support of Palestinian
terror organizations and recognize Israel in exchange for an end to sanctions and permission to peacefully develop its nuclear program.
| Source:
The Jerusalem Post
|
| June 15, 2006 | - The Pentagon announced the 2,500th American death in Iraq. “It's a number,” said White House press secretary Tony Snow.
| Source:
Toronto Star
|
| May 16, 2006 | -
White House Press Secretary Tony Snow said that he would prefer not to hug a tar baby.
| Source:
The White House
|
| May 8, 2006 | -
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a letter to President Bush seeking to improve relations between Iran and the United States; the White House denounced the letter but would not confirm whether the President had read it.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 26, 2006 | - Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, released a video in which he showed his face and claimed that the Bush Administration had lied about its military victories. "America," said Zarqawi, "will go out of Iraq, humiliated, defeated."
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| April 26, 2006 | -
President Bush named Tony Snow, a Fox News host, as the new White House press secretary.
| Source:
BBC News
|
| April 16, 2006 | - Under the presumed influence of White House Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, who collects photographs of President George W. Bush's hands, Karl Rove was relieved of his position as presidential policy adviser in order that he might focus his energies on the November midterm elections, and White House press secretary Scott McClellan resigned. “One of these days,” the President said of McClellan, “he and I are going to be rocking in chairs in Texas and talking about the good old days.”
| Source 1:
USA Today
Source 2:
Forbes.com
Source 3:
BBC News
|
| April 10, 2006 | - The Bush Administration continued to plan a major air attack on Iran; a highly placed government consultant said that President George W. Bush believes that "saving Iran is going to be his legacy."
| Source:
The New Yorker
|
| April 7, 2006 | - First Lady Laura Bush welcomed 51 egg artists to the White House for the annual egg display.
| Source:
New Kerala
|
| March 30, 2006 | - It was revealed that lobbyist Jack Abramoff had once helped look for a child's missing hamster.
| Source:
The Miami Herald
|
| March 28, 2006 | - With watering eyes, Andy Card stood next to Bush and resigned as White House chief of staff. "You're a good man, Mr. President," Card said before being replaced by budget director Joshua Bolten.
| Source:
MSNBC
|
| March 24, 2006 | - It emerged that the Bush Administration had quietly issued a "signing statement" on the Patriot Act; the statement indicates that the President intends to ignore oversight requirements built into the act, such as the requirement that the President inform Congress of how the FBI was using its new spying powers.
| Source:
Boston.com
|
| March 5, 2006 | - The White House announced that it would step up its efforts to control leaks.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| March 3, 2006 | -
Laura Bush counted to five on Indian children's TV. "She loved Boombah," said an official from a television studio, "the giant, cuddly, Punjabi-rapping lion."
| Source:
Express India
|
| March 2, 2006 | - It was revealed that the Bush Administration had lowered the fines for mine safety violations and failed to collect nearly one half of the fines levied.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| March 1, 2006 | - It was reported that the White House had ignored repeated warnings about the growing capabilities of the Iraqi insurgency. "This was stuff," said a former high-ranking intelligence official, "the White House and the Pentagon did not want to hear."
| Source:
|
| February 26, 2006 | - President George W. Bush threatened to veto any congressional measure that slowed the acquisition of between six and 22 U.S. seaports by Dubai Ports World, a United Arab Emirates-controlled firm. Critics of the acquisition pointed out that the United Arab Emirates was home to two of the September 11 hijackers and was one of few countries to recognize the Taliban. Dubai Ports World subsequently agreed to a 45-day review of the deal, which will provide the Bush Administration with more time to promote the takeover.
| Source 1:
Newsday
Source 2:
WorldNetDaily
Source 3:
Reuters
Source 4:
Huffington Post via Yahoo! News
|
| February 11, 2006 | - The Bush Administration was drawing up plans to sell 300,000 acres of public land, valued at over $1 billion, in the next decade. The sale is intended to replace the funding for rural schools and roads that was cut from the Administration's 2007 budget.
| Source:
The Houston Chronicle
|
| February 11, 2006 | - Despite White House claims that President Bush could not remember meeting lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Abramoff said that he had met the President almost a dozen times and that they had shared personal jokes. Abramoff's claim was at least partially substantiated when a 2001 photo was published showing Bush meeting with Abramoff client Raul Garza, also known as Makateonenodua ("Black buffalo"), the then-chairman of the Kickapoo Traditional Tribe of Texas. In the photo Garza, who was later indicted for embezzling over $300,000 from the Kickapoo, is shaking the president's hand while Abramoff stands in the background, smiling.
| Source:
Time
|
| February 11, 2006 | - In New Mexico a V.A. nurse who wrote a letter criticizing the Bush Administration to her local newspaper was under investigation for sedition.
| Source:
Editor & Publisher
|
| February 10, 2006 | - Paul Pillar, the CIA's former national intelligence officer for the Middle East, published an article claiming that the Bush Administration had "cherry-picked" intelligence to justify the war in Iraq. "Intelligence was misused publicly," he wrote, "to justify decisions already made."
| Source:
Democracy Now!
|
| February 9, 2006 | -
President Bush announced that in 2002 the White House helped prevent a September 11-style attack on the "Liberty" Tower in Los Angeles. The White House later said that the target was actually the Library Tower, now the US Bank Tower. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said that he only learned the details of the attack from Bush's announcement.
| Source:
Bloomberg News
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| February 8, 2006 | -
Karl Rove was threatening to cut off White House support for Republican Senate Judiciary members who criticize the Bush Administration's
warrantless-wiretapping program. "It's hardball," said a Republican aide, "all the way."
| Source:
Democracy Now!
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| February 6, 2006 | - The Bush Administration submitted a $2.77 trillion budget to Congress calling for a 7 percent increase in Pentagon spending and a $36 billion cut to the growth of Medicare spending. The Administration is expected to ask for an additional $120 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
| Source:
The New York Times
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| January 29, 2006 | - The White House refused to release photographs of President Bush with lobbyist Jack Abramoff, despite requests from Senate and House
Republicans.
| Source:
Reuters
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| January 29, 2006 | - It was reported that one quarter of the Bush Administration's $15 billion in AIDS-fighting money had been given to religious groups.
| Source:
AP via Yahoo! News
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| January 24, 2006 | - A Senate committee investigating the government response to Hurricane Katrina criticized the Bush Administration for ignoring the findings of a hurricane-preparedness exercise called "Hurricane Pam," which had warned that New Orleans would be flooded. "It is apparent that a more appropriate name for Pam should have been 'Cassandra,'" said Senator Susan Collins (R., Maine).
| Source:
USA Today
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| January 20, 2006 | -
Google refused to comply with a Bush Administration subpoena demanding the records for a week's worth of search queries. Yahoo! and Microsoft, however, complied fully, while America Online said it had complied partially.
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| January 18, 2006 | - The White House refused to provide any details of meetings between Bush Administration staff and lobbyist Jack Abramoff. "We are not," said White House spokesman Scott McLellan, "going to engage in a fishing expedition."
| Source:
Democracy Now!
|
| January 16, 2006 | - America celebrated the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Al Gore compared the FBI's spying on King to the Bush Administration's authorizing spying on American citizens.
| Source:
The Raw Story.
|
| December 30, 2005 | - A judge ruled that it was illegal for the Bush Administration to continue to imprison several Chinese
Muslims at Guantánamo Bay. Nine months ago a tribunal determined that the prisoners in question were not actually enemy combatants, but U.S. law will not allow them to be sent to China because China persecutes Muslims, and no other country wants the prisoners. The judge also noted that he had no power to enforce his own ruling.
| Source:
Boston.com
|
| December 7, 2005 | -
Christmas activists were upset to receive White House greeting cards that wished them a happy “holiday season” instead of a Merry Christmas.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| November 30, 2005 | - The White House put up nearly 600 feet of garland and erected an 18-and-a-half-foot fir tree decorated with tulips and azaleas in honor of this year's Christmas theme, “All Things Bright and Beautiful.”
| Source:
The New York Times
|
| November 25, 2005 | - It was revealed that the investigation into illegal payoffs made by lobbyist Jack Abramoff involves not only Representative
Tom DeLay (R., Texas), but Representative Bob Ney (R., Ohio), Representative John Doolittle (R., Calif.), Senator Conrad Burns (R., Mont.), 17 current and former Congressional aides, and two former Bush Administration officials.
| Source:
Reuters
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| November 24, 2005 | - Former FEMA Director Michael Brown announced that he was starting a disaster-preparedness company. “My parents,” noted Brown, “are still proud of me.”
| Source:
CNN.com
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| November 23, 2005 | - After three years in prison, U.S. citizen Jose Padilla was indicted on charges that he conspired to murder individuals overseas and provide support for terrorists; no mention was made of prior accusations that Padilla intended to use a “dirty bomb” or claims that he conspired with Al Qaeda to blow up U.S. apartment buildings. “The indictment,” explained a former Justice Department official, “is doubtless a strategy by the Bush Administration to avoid a Supreme Court ruling that would likely hold that U.S. citizens cannot be detained incommunicado as enemy combatants if they are detained on U.S. soil.”
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| November 22, 2005 | - It was reported that President George W. Bush had, on April 16, 2004, revealed to British Prime Minister Tony Blair a plan to take “military action” against the headquarters of the Al Jazeera news network in Doha, Qatar. According to a leaked transcript, Blair talked Bush out of attacking the television station. The White House called the report “outlandish and inconceivable,” and Blair called the report a “conspiracy theory.” David Keogh, a former U.K. Cabinet Office official, was charged under the Official Secrets Act with leaking the memo, and U.K. Attorney General Lord Goldsmith warned British media that any further reporting based on the leaked memo could be subject to criminal charges. Al Jazeera demanded an inquiry.
| Source 1:
The Daily Mirror
Source 2:
The Toronto Star
Source 3:
The Guardian
Source 4:
News.Telegraph
|
| November 20, 2005 | - The German intelligence officials who interrogated “Curveball,” an Iraqi who provided intelligence that the Bush Administration used to justify the war in Iraq, said that they repeatedly warned the United States that Curveball (who may have been lying in order to obtain a German visa) could not be trusted. “Mein Gott!” said an intelligence official. “We had always told them it was not proven.”
| Source:
The Los Angeles Times
|
| November 17, 2005 | - A White House document showed that executives from large oil firms met with Vice President Dick Cheney's energy task force in 2001; the document was released a week after representatives from those firms testified before a Senate committee that they had not met with the task force.
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| November 1, 2005 | -
Democratic leaders called for a closed session on the Senate floor, which they used to force the creation of a bipartisan committee; the committee will report on the ongoing Congressional investigation (which the Democratic leadership believes is being purposefully delayed) into the Bush Administration's misuse of intelligence to justify the war in Iraq. “They have no convictions,” Senator Bill Frist said of the Democrats. “They have no principles. They have no ideas.”
| Source:
CNN.com
|
| October 16, 2005 | -
The New York Times
finally published an account of reporter Judith Miller's involvement in the Valerie Plame Wilson case. At issue in the case is a notebook in which Miller had written the name “Valerie Flame”; Miller said she could not recall the source of the name, even though she had used the same notebook to interview I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Dick Cheney's chief of staff. “We have everything to be proud of,” said Miller. It was reported that both Libby and Karl Rove would probably resign if indicted.
| Source 1:
The New York Times
Source 2:
Time
|
| September 25, 2005 | - The Bush Administration raised $600 from U.S. citizens to help rebuild Iraq, where at least 42 people died in the fighting this week.
| Source 1:
The Guardian
Source 2:
The Washington Post
|
| September 14, 2005 | -
Senator Robert Byrd called on the Bush Administration to withdraw from Iraq. "We cannot continue to commit billions in Iraq," he said, "when our own people are so much in need."
| Source:
Democracy Now!
|
| August 31, 2005 | - The Bush Administration was working on a new set of pollution controls intended to make it harder to sue power plants.
| Source:
The Washington Post
|
| August 22, 2005 | -
Connecticut filed a lawsuit that argues that the Bush Administration's
No Child Left Behind Law is illegal because state and local funds are required to follow the law. "Give up the unfunded mandates," said Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, "or give us the money."
| Source:
AP
|
| August 17, 2005 | - A file folder describing the affirmative-action work of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts went missing from the Reagan Library after it was reviewed by White House lawyers, and it was revealed that Roberts had once refused a request from Michael Jackson for a special letter of commendation from the Reagan White House.
| Source 1:
The Washington Post
Source 2:
BBC News
|
| July 28, 2005 | - The Bush Administration started referring to the War on Terror as “the global struggle against violent extremism.”
| Source:
Democracy Now
|
| June 15, 2005 | - Philip Cooney, the chief of staff at the White House Council on Environmental Quality, who achieved notoriety when he revised government reports on global warming to cover up the link between greenhouse gas emissions and rising temperatures, quit his job to become a lobbyist for ExxonMobil. “Perhaps he won't even notice he has changed jobs,” said the director of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
| Source:
Washington Post
|
| May 22, 2005 | - The Bush Administration continued to criticize Newsweek for reporting that U.S. soldiers had desecrated the Koran. “People need to be careful what they say,” said Donald Rumsfeld. “Our United States military personnel go out of their way,” said White House press secretary Scott McClellan, “to make sure that the Holy Koran is treated with care.”
| Source:
New York Times
|
| February 13, 2005 | - The Bush Administration continued to promote its plan to gut Social Security.
| Source:
ABC News
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| January 17, 2005 | - The White House continued to work towards a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages.
| Source:
New York Timesimes
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| January 17, 2005 | - The White House was preparing for the president's inauguration, and it was revealed that Laura Bush's inaugural gown is an ice-blue and silver embroidered tulle V-neck dress with matching satin coat, by de la Renta; Jenna and Barbara Bush are being dressed by Lela Rose, de la Renta, Derek Lam, and Badgley Mischka. President Bush will wear a business suit.
| Source:
The Ledger
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| January 13, 2005 | - The Bush administration announced that the hunt for weapons of mass destruction had been a total failure.
| Source:
AP
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| January 11, 2005 | - The White House refused to reimburse Washington, D.C., for inauguration expenses, which will require $11.9 million to be diverted from homeland security funds.
| Source:
Washington Post
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| November 26, 2004 | - The Bush Administration reversed itself and declared that non-Iraqis captured fighting in Iraq are not protected by the Geneva Conventions; such prisoners, it was reported, have already been transferred out of Iraq in recent months and could be taken to Egypt or Saudi Arabia where torture is more common than it is in the United States.
| Source:
Scotsman
|
| September 6, 2004 | - The White House announced that monthly Medicare premiums will rise by a record 17 percent next year.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| September 2, 2004 | -
Colin Powell admitted that the Bush Administration misjudged the potential for armed resistance in Iraq.
| Source:
Associated Press
|
| August 6, 2004 | - The United States announced that it will insist that the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty, which would ban countries from making enriched uranium and plutonium for nuclear bombs, be stripped of any mechanism for enforcement, such as inspections. This position, which would render the treaty useless, apparently was reached because the Bush Administration does not wish to submit to inspections.
| Source:
New York Times
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| July 25, 2004 | - The Bush Administration has decided that consumers should not be able to sue manufacturers of drugs that have been approved by the FDA.
| Source:
New York Times
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| June 23, 2004 | - The White House disavowed a Justice Department memorandum that argues that it's okay to
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