Bush bypasses Senate to install Justice Dept. official

[sabra]

So glad he had his priorities straight ?!?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-09-01-recess-appointment_x.htm

Bush bypasses Senate to install Justice Dept. official

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush has used a constitutional provision to bypass the Senate and fill a top Justice Department slot with an official whose nomination stalled over tactics at the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, naval facility.

Bush used a "recess appointment" Wednesday to name Alice S. Fisher to lead the agency's criminal division. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., had blocked the nomination because he wants to talk to an agent who named Fisher in an e-mail about allegedly abusive interrogations at the U.S. military prison camp at Guantanamo.

The agent wrote that in weekly meetings with Justice Department officials "we often discussed (Defense Department) techniques and how they were not effective or producing (intelligence) that was reliable." In the next sentence, the agent said Fisher, then the No. 2 official in the criminal division, was among Justice officials who attended the meetings.

Fisher has said she does not recall participating in the discussions, and Justice officials have said the agent did not intend to say she had. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales declined to let senators question the agent, saying it would violate long-standing policy.

[sinkingfeeling]

1. Yes, this type of 'getting in his guy' at all costs takes priority over

people dying in New Orleans!

[AlCzervik]

2. We better be watching them, they will do many things while

the entire nation is looking at the gulf.