Bush White House

Appeals court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh, a White House lawyer and staff secretary to President Bush, told Senate Democrats on Tuesday that he first learned about the controversies involving warrantless wiretapping, the legal uses of torture and disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff by reading the newspapers. Kavanaugh, 41, is on track to become a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

The White House was calling it the most radical shift in American military policy in 40 years. But in the hands of President Bush, the prime-time speech announcing an epic decision to shrink the nuclear arsenal was a dry recitation delivered without any reach toward eloquence, any clarifying visual aids or even much effort to simplify the military jargon. Until Friday morning, the President had not even intended to televise the speech.

President Obama is reversing White House policy on its visitor logs, records that previous administrations have kept under wraps. In a statement issued from Camp David this morning, Obama said the White House will begin posting online each month the records of visitors from the past three or four months. "For the first time in history, records of White House visitors will be made available to the public on an ongoing basis," Obama said in the written statement. "We will achieve our goal of making this administration the most open and transparent administration in history not only by opening the doors of the White House to more Americans, but by shining a light on the business conducted inside.

Uncle Sam's latest doomsday scenario is out. And it's nothing short of a bureaucratic pecking order that may be unlike any in the history of the republic. To ensure the continuity of government in the post-Sept. 11 era, the White House detailed the line of succession Thursday for numerous federal departments and agencies, reaching down in the ranks well below top management.

The Bush administration defended its decision Tuesday to keep secret thousands of pages of government records involving the pardons President Clinton granted on his last day in office. "The president is entitled to receive confidential advice and candid assessments from government attorneys," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

The Bush White House has never hidden its preference for secrecy. "For 35 years that I've been in town, there's been a constant, steady erosion of the prerogatives and powers of the president of the United States," Vice President Dick Cheney declared in January 2002. "And I don't want to be part of that." From Cheney's energy task force to presidential records, the White House has tried to restrict the information given Congress and the public.

White House officials released a list Saturday of damage they say was done by outgoing staffers of President Clinton, including obscene graffiti in six offices, a 20-inch-wide presidential seal ripped off a wall, 10 cut telephone lines and 100 inoperable computer keyboards. For months, Democrats had questioned the administration's credibility because officials refused to document charges of vandalism they made in the week after President Bush's inauguration.

Escalating a fight with Democrats on Capitol Hill, the White House on Friday invoked executive privilege in refusing to turn over documents to a congressional committee investigating the Environmental Protection Agency's decision to deny California permission to implement its own vehicle emission standards.

The political divide in America runs right through California like an earthquake fault. Coastal California is now perhaps the most Democratic geography in the nation. The Republican Party has largely ceased to exist in most of Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Bay Area. But from San Bernardino County eastward, it is hard to find any place Democrats did well in the 2002 election -- until you get to Chicago. Gov.

It started with Billy Graham's refusal to back out of President Bill Clinton's inaugural ceremony, despite fervent pleas from the religious right.