Rahm Emanuel Slams Bush Administration

He planned to and he did.

Caught his speech at Brookings on C-Span last night.

Whoa! He took the Bushies to the woodshed in a way I haven't seen in D.C. in a very long time.

Way to go Rahm! There needs to be more truth-telling like this.


Senior Democrat Plans Speech Attacking Bush Record
By Jonathan Weisman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, April 24, 2007; 8:54 PM

A senior Democratic leader, in a speech Wednesday at the Brookings Institution, will tie together a long series of Bush administration scandals, controversies and missteps into what he argues is a campaign to turn the government into an appendage of the Republican Party.

The speech by House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) marks an escalation in the party's rhetorical war with President Bush. For much of last year's campaign season, Democrats called the Bush administration incompetent. Now they are preparing a darker case, accusing the administration of harboring malevolent intent.

To make his case, Emanuel will cite the firings of eight U.S. attorneys, the discrediting of a key critic of the justification for war in Iraq, the hiring of young, inexperienced Republicans to oversee Iraq's reconstruction, secret meetings between Vice President Cheney's energy task force and oil industry executives, the downplaying of links between greenhouse-gas emissions and global warming, the alleged use of the General Services Administration for partisan purposes and the hiring of an attorney for the International Arabian Horse Association to head the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

"Americans have learned just how the Bush Administration works and are discovering that under President Bush, no function of the federal government is free from the influence of politics. And this is no accident. It's all by design," a prepared text of Emanuel's speech reads.

"Under this administration, the federal government has become a stepchild of the Republican Party. And in promoting its partisan interests, absolutely nothing is out of bounds -- from our national security to our justice system and everything in between."

GOP officials said that, in an enterprise as vast as the federal government, individual instances of problems and controversies do not add up to a grand design.

"Talk about conspiracies. Is he arriving for his speech in a black helicopter?" asked Tracey Schmitt, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Democratic leaders were turning to conspiracy theories to distract attention from a faltering legislative agenda. "I think most Americans thought and surely hoped the days of 'the vast right-wing conspiracy' were over, but apparently they're not," she said.

But the White House appears to be preparing for verbal combat. Vice President Cheney on Tuesday changed his six-year-long habit of not acknowledging the shouted questions of reporters while exiting his weekly lunches with Republican senators. Instead of heading for his waiting motorcade, Cheney sauntered over for the first time Tuesday to a bank of microphones and cameras and denounced what he called Democratic "defeatism."

As caucus chairman, Emanuel is tasked to craft House Democrats' messages. His speech coincides with more combative rhetoric coming from Democrats this week. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.) accused Bush on Tuesday of "reaching new heights of hypocrisy" on Iraq. Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) said Monday that the president is in a "state of denial" about the war, while Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (Ohio), long considered on the left fringe of the party, unveiled Tuesday articles of impeachment against Cheney.

Emanuel said his inspiration was the firing of the U.S. attorneys, and he called the speech the harshest, most comprehensive indictment of the administration he has delivered.

"The U.S. Attorney scandal will be to public corruption what Hurricane Katrina was to incompetence in the Bush Administration," he plans to say Wednesday.

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....And The Truth Shall Set Us Free